Thursday, November 05, 2009 

The unreality of Afghanistan.

There's a distinct air of unreality which must around hang around newspaper offices and also the realms of Whitehall. The reaction to the killing of 5 British soldiers by an Afghan police officer, who depending on who you believe, either had a grudge against an officer called Manam, who was also injured and may well have been the original target, or a long-term Taliban agent waiting for his opportunity, was one of a still aloof nation that regards it as unbelievable that it can be so apparently easy to kill Our Boys, while also perplexed at how "Terry Taliban" isn't prepared to play by good old fashioned Queensbury rules. It wasn't so long ago that IEDs were being described as "new" and "asymmetrical" tactics, as if guerilla warfare was some new concept, and that it was perfectly beastly that the other side weren't allowing themselves to be shot out in the open like the clearly inferior fighters that they are. How dare they make the greatest, best trained army the world has ever seen look bad?

The imperial hangover which this country suffers from is reasonable enough, but it still makes you wonder what planet some people are living on when the Mail incredulously asks on its front page "[W]hat kind of war is this?" A fairly standard war, really, considering you're battling against non-state backed fighters. Anyone would think that infiltrating organisations, spying on others and even occasionally carrying out the type of operation as took place on Tuesday was a unique and untested innovation. We seem to forget that our enemy probably feels much the same when a unmanned, unsighted drone suddenly unleashes a Hellfire missile and turns what was the centre of a village into a scene of utter carnage. We like to imagine that we're the ones with the moral authority, that we're not the ones that use children as either suicide bombers or distractions, even while we without a second thought call in airstrikes that are not exactly discriminate in those that they kill and maim. In terms of similar attacks, this one wasn't even exactly highly sophisticated; it was an opportunity which was taken when it arrived. Compared to say, the suicide bomb attack inside the Iraqi parliament, or the attack carried out by Ansar al-Sunnah in which they got inside an American military base in Mosul, killing 14 soldiers, it's not even in the same league.

The problem the attack poses though is obvious: when our policy is to train the Afghan army and police and then get out, or at least that's what it's meant to be, that this officer was apparently not a new recruit and had been in the police for three years raises the nightmare that there may be many more "cells" where we have in fact trained those will then turn on us when the chance arises. This isn't exactly new either though: the Iraqi police and army were and probably still are riddled with those with their own distinct agendas, and that was in a country where there are only two major sects in conflict with each other. In Afghanistan there are at least five different ethnic groups, speaking at least six languages, and where tribal rivalry and personal fiefdoms are far, far older than the modern state itself. Like in Iraq, where a job in the police or the reconstituted army were around the only ones going, that there is a such a low threshold for potential recruits to pass to become officers creates problems in itself. The Afghan army and police are notorious for their unreliability, and I don't think there's been a film yet shot of either Americans or British troops working with them where spliffs haven't been passed around at some point by their companions. The Taliban of course, despite their supposed purity, are probably much the same, especially those who are being paid rather than the true believers, but that doesn't make the situation any better.

Again, none of this would much matter if we had anything approaching another plan to put into place should everything go wrong as it seemingly is, but we don't. The closest thing either us or the Americans have to an advanced military strategy is to flood ever higher numbers of troops into the country. This has been vastly encouraged by the supposed success of the "surge" in Iraq, but that coincided with two much more important occurrences: firstly the setting up of the Awakening councils, when the insurgent groups outside of the hardline Salafists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Ansar al-Islam turned on their former allies, and secondly the ceasefires declared by the Mahdi army, which vastly decreased the attacks by the Shia around Baghdad, as well as the sectarian killings. Despite attempts to encourage something similar to the former in Afghanistan, there's little sign of it happening. The increase in troops is also meant to go hand in hand with the strategy of "taking and holding", having previously only taken land held by the Taliban to then withdraw and let them take it again. This is all well and good, but it still leaves us at some point having to give that which we've taken back, with no guarantee whatsoever that the Taliban won't then come straight back. Training up the Afghan army and police is meant to stop just that, but there's still no real belief that they'll be able to hold their own when the time comes.

With there being no apparent alternative, you have to wonder if Kim Howells' intervention yesterday was meant to further cement the current policy as the only one in town. Only someone in the chair of the completely toothless Intelligence and Security Committee could think that the best way to spend the money saved by getting out of Afghanistan is to raise up the drawbridge here and in Howells' words introduce "more intrusive surveillance in certain communities", which has to be one of the most cowardly ways of calling for more spying on Muslims imaginable. Howells seems to be basing this on the false premise that getting out of Afghanistan would make the security situation here deteriorate, when if anything the opposite would be the case, as well as helping to ameloriate the attitudes which some within this country hold. Just to further flesh out his attitude that this whole mess isn't our fault but rather the Afghans' own, just like some blamed the Iraqis for not embracing the democracy we so kindly imposed down the barrel of a gun, he continues: "I assumed, wrongly, that a desire among ordinary Afghans for peace would prevail over the prospect of continued war and the spectre of being ruled by a tyrannical theocracy in one of the world's poorest and most backward countries." He seems to think that what they're currently experiencing is somehow better. Indeed, some would doubtless suggest, despite the Taliban's brutality, that at least during their short rule there was something approaching security, hardly the case now and hardly the case during the previous years.

We shouldn't pretend that getting out of Afghanistan immediately would either be easy or not have major, long lasting effects on our relationships both with the United States and NATO. It would however be better to consider it as a genuine option and to plan for it than to continue with the lunacy of our current position, knowing that it is untenable as a going concern. Our politicians however, with the exception of the Liberal Democrats, who finally seem to be coming round to the fact that this war is just as unwinnable and disastrous on all fronts as our adventure in Iraq was, seem to be far more prepared to continue lying to the public about al-Qaida and safe havens than admit that this simply cannot go on.

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11/05/2009 08:50:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 02, 2009 

Afghanistan and neo-colonialism.

While I was away I read Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh - hardly the most politically correct of novels today, and it is indeed horrendously racist in places - a satire based around a fictional African country where an Oxford-educated native comes to power and attempts to impose his own idea of "progress" upon a country which is first indifferent then turns resistant when his megalomania extends to introducing a new currency, resulting in a coup launched by the disaffected English general who first brought him to power and the French ambassador. While not an exact fit by any means, the parallels with Afghanistan are there, and beginning to become ever more evident.

There certainly is in any event a satire to be written about the complete gibbering lunacy of our Afghanistan policy, a policy which has never been more exposed that with the reappointment of Hamid Karzai as president after Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a second round of voting. To get just a flavour of the insanity of our current policy, you have to know that despite this being the absolute nightmare scenario, it is at the same time the one which was most favoured given the circumstances. For months the Americans and our own representatives have been pulling their hair out at the intransigence of Karzai - the corruption surrounding him, the patronage he gives to warlords, the obstinacy of the man who is meant to be president of his own country but who has essentially forgotten that he owes everything to us - while knowing full well that he was going to be re-elected not thanks to but along with massive vote fraud. The hope was despite the ballot box stuffing, Karzai would turn out to have got above the 50% needed to avoid a second round, and while the biased in Karzai's favour Independent Election Commission tried its best, it still had to throw out enough votes to take Karzai below the threshold. A second round of voting suited absolutely no one - Karzai was still going to win, especially as Abdullah and the UN's demands to stem the voting fraud by reducing the number of polling stations were thrown out, and yet more lives would be lost as the Taliban would have again stepped up its attacks for a day. Attempts at getting Karzai and Abdullah to lead a coalition were half-hearted at best, and so we have the utterly half-hearted endorsement of a second Karzai electoral term.

If the Bush adminstration was still in power, hardly anyone would be batting an eyelid. After all, an administration which first came to power not on the popular vote but on the verdict of the supreme court, despite the neo-conservative fervour for the installing democracy elsewhere, wouldn't have had much opposition to a similar installation of another president. Now though we have Obama and Clinton, who if anything have even less influence over Karzai and less idea about what the policy actually is than the last lot. Those who have tried to do things differently have now been humiliated by the very man they secretly wanted rid of, and have been left not only looking stupid but have also undermined support back at home by doing so. Lives were lost in keeping those polling stations which were either unused or where the boxes were stuffed open, and for what? So that the same man could be put back in on the back of a vote now regarded as largely illegitimate?

Afghanistan has been described optimistically by some as "the good war". In terms of lives lost, it almost certainly does so far pale into insignificance with the number killed in Iraq. There is though surely now a case to be made for a full reassessment of just what has took place as a result of the initial overthrow of the Taliban. Justified mainly now on the grounds of the threat which was posed by al-Qaida to the West, a threat which has at every single turn been vastly and outrageously exaggerated, we have through our bull in a china shop approach succeeded in forcing al-Qaida and the Taliban into an uneasy but fruitful alliance, have destabilised Pakistan to such an extent that it now faces daily suicide attacks in its major cities, and attempted to impose a democracy on quite possibly the most socially conservative country in the entire region, with predictable results. The more you look at it, the more ridiculous it becomes: Afghanistan was a safe haven, a base for al-Qaida, but it was one in which they were relatively constrained and mainly useful only for training; the actual planning and training for 9/11 itself took place in Germany and America, not Afghanistan. What we have done is involve ourselves in a civil war which has been going on for decades, and which will most likely continue for decades: it would have done had we not involved ourselves and it will do if we leave tomorrow. The justification for staying is no longer any such high motives as protecting a democracy (it isn't one), keeping the Taliban out (they're already there) or protecting women's rights (always a fantasy to begin with and even more so since the passing of the law involving Shia Muslims), but someone protecting ourselves from attack. It doesn't matter that in the same breath ministers admit that the plots which are directed against us are overwhelmingly planned over in Pakistan (where they fled from us in the first place) and that they involve British citizens rather than foreigners, still they parrot the same lies which even they they must know to be completely false.

The biggest success of the war in Afghanistan is that very few outside of the circle of rabid Trots or the likes of Simon Jenkins actually describe this war for what it really is: neo-colonialism orchestrated by those who are supposed to be horrified and opposed to such control over other nations. This is colonialism where the rulers back in London and Washington can't actually influence anything, and where they can't admit that outside of the colonial capital and indeed increasingly within it, they have absolutely no control whatsoever. This is colonialism where the armies, under the auspices of NATO, are left to provide security to a nation which has never been secured in its existence. Their real role is to act as target practice for when the Taliban feel like launching an ambush and as moving, armoured targets for the increasingly sophisticated IED manufacturers. The entire war is based on the false premise that you can stop an idea from flourishing by dropping over a hundred thousand troops in the place where it briefly had a safe haven. Ideas cannot be beaten militarily; they have to been fought intellectually, and in this case by those inside Islam, not outside it. Our approach has resulted in extremist, takfirist, Salafist Islam being far more disseminated than it would have been otherwise, gaining footholds in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and western Pakistan where it may have existed before but without gaining momentum and allegiance. All of these places are and now could be as dangerous as Afghanistan was between roughly 1998 and 2001, but the ideology also doesn't need a safe haven in any event: all it needs is those dedicated enough and knowledgeable enough.

The argument against getting out of Afghanistan now would be that we would abandoning the country to the Taliban when they Afghan people themselves still overwhelmingly reject their return to power. Others would argue that such a move could be just the catalyst needed for those in pursuit of a global caliphate as their ultimate goal to establish the country as the first outpost, the attempt to make it Iraq having failed. The reality however is that the Taliban themselves never successfully conquered Afghanistan, just as no outsiders ever have. They would not immediately overrun the Karzai government, nor would we let them. The best alternative is to draw back now from frontline duties and to concentrate on building up the Afghan army and police as a matter of the utmost imperative. Just as we gave up our old colonies, we have to give up our new ones as well.

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11/02/2009 06:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 03, 2009 

Joyced.

Eric Joyce's resignation as PPS to defence minister Bob Ainsworth is to say the least, intriguing.  Joyce is most certainly on the Blairite wing of Labour, and even under Brown until recently a major loyalist, and with little chance of influencing any sort of attempt to overthrow the prime minister, it seems his decision to go is based purely on his considerable discontent over the war in Afghanistan.

Judging by his previous tenacity in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, Joyce's apparent conversion to an almost anti-war stance on Afghanistan, as that is very close to what he outlines in his resignation letter, is an indictment of current policy.  Then again, anyone could have already pointed that out: the madness of the status quo, where troops apparently give their lives so that tens of ordinary Afghans can vote, sitting ducks acting as target practice for the fighters who disappear as soon as they launch their attacks, while back home the only justification given by a government that also seemingly doesn't believe in what it's doing, the complete joke which is that somehow what the soldiers are doing is preventing terrorism on British streets, is close to being truly offensive in its fatuity.

Joyce sets out, while clearly trying to be as non-threatening and as lightly critical as he can while questioning the entire current strategy, that the public is not so stupid as to believe or to much longer put up with the "terrorism" justification, that we are punching way above our weight in our current operations, and that we should be able to make clear that there has to be some sort of timetable outlining just how long our commitment is both able and willing to last.  All of this should be way beyond controversy, yet already we have the ludicrous sentiment from both Bob Ainsworth and the even more ridiculous Lord West that they don't recognise the picture which Joyce sets out (confused and disjointed was West described it).  This would be reminiscent of Nelson putting the telescope to his bad eye if he hadn't done so with the best of intentions.  The only part which it's difficult to agree with Joyce on is his criticism of the other NATO countries' contribution: who can possibly blame France, Germany and Italy for not wanting to spend a similar amount of both their blood and treasure to us on a war in which they can't even begin to claim as we do that it's preventing terrorism on their streets?

The reason why it doesn't seem right to truly coruscate Labour over the utter cowardice of their current lack of a policy is that it's a failure of leadership which is shared across all three of the major parties.  For all their protests and attacks on the government over Afghanistan, you could barely get a cigarette paper between both the Conservatives and Lib Dems' own ideas on what we should be doing.  All still think, at least in public, despite doubtless their private misgivings, that this is both a war that is worth fighting and one which can be "won", whatever their own idea is of a victory.  Again, perhaps this isn't entirely fair: the Americans, after all, have only just got around to the idea that they should be focusing on hearts and minds and not blowing everywhere where they think there might be a Talib to kingdom come, and to hell with the consequences when it turns out there was actually dozens of civilians in the same compound.

At the same time, it's also hard not to think there might be a touch of cynicism, even conspiracy here on the part of the government and also some of the more pliant sections of the media.  Last week the Sun launched its "Don't they know there's a bloody war on?" campaign, which while not being entirely fair on the government did make me wonder whether there was some collusion with the paper when Gordon Brown the next day turned up in Afghanistan.  Now, exactly a week on from the start of the campaign, Brown will tomorrow be giving the major speech on current policy which the paper demanded, undoubtedly organised weeks if not months in advance.  These could of course all be coincidences, or even the government responding remarkably quickly to a newspaper which it has always gone out of its way to woo, but it's also suggestive of past cooperation between the two.  For the paper which goes out of its way to claim to be the forces' first and last line of both defence and support, such collusion would be incredibly shoddy.  At the same time, it's also a government that cares more for its image, still, than it does for those fighting for it.  To be succinct, there has to be an exit strategy, and at the moment absolutely no one is offering one.

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9/03/2009 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 07, 2009 

Greek tragedy.

Pakistani and American authorities were celebrating today after they had succeeded in cutting off the head of the hydra, also known as Baitullah Mehsud. The weapon used to decapitate the hydra, the pilotless drone, armed with the missile of Hades, aimed a successful strike against the beast's head, cutting it clean off.

Others were however sceptical at whether the cutting off of the Hydra's head would end its reign of terror. One expert said: "This is by no means the end. The cutting off of the Hydra's head will simply result in it growing back two where once there was just one. The only way to bring this battle to an end is not just to cut off the head, but also to scorch the ends where they would otherwise grow back. That is far more difficult."

Osama bin Hercules could not be reached for comment.

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8/07/2009 10:10:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 27, 2009 

Great success!

It's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at the hailing of the first stage of Operation Panther's Claw as a success, not just because of the 11 deaths so far, but also because of the lessons which seem to remaining unlearnt from Iraq. Part of the reason might be due to the fact that it was the US army that made the similar mistakes time and again, but there can't be any excuse for us not to have recognised how the insurgents in Afghanistan are using exactly the same tactics as the Sunni insurgency in Iraq did.

It's even more worrying when the tactics are so alarmingly simple. Whenever the US would launch a "major" offensive, aimed at ridding a certain area of the various fighters both allied and non-allied fighting against them, only the hard core tended to stay to fight. The rest simply left, and then either returned once the soldiers had moved on, or instead engaged in classic guerilla tactics, planting IEDs at night, ambushes etc. This pattern only ceased once the tribal elders and other insurgent groups grew tired of al-Qaida and the other Salafis' brutal tactics and launched the salvation councils/Awakening groups, which along with the "surge" helped to bring the casualties, both of Iraqi civilians and of American troops down. Even then and even now pockets of resistance remain, and Mosul, as well as parts of Diyala province, remain highly dangerous.

The change of tactics in Helmand, from clearing areas of insurgents to now attempting to hold the ground, with the help of the Americans, is a partial recognition that the past policy has failed badly. The insurgents just waited until the troops left and then came back. The problem is that unlike in Iraq, there is no real support from the civilians or other groups to help with the holding of ground. Poll after poll shows that the Afghans prefer the international presence to the Taliban, but on the ground that doesn't turn into enthusiasm for it, let alone armed support. There are no Awakening councils to be formed, and the presence of the coalition, which will undoubtedly increase the risk to civilians, who got out along with the insurgents when Panther's Claw was launched, will exacerbate the problems. Already one soldier has died in the "holding" phase: hitting and running, along with the ubiquitous IEDs, is now likely to be the order of the day.

As Conor Foley points out and as David Miliband today recognised, to imagine that in our present shape we can militarily defeat the Taliban is madness. Up to 80% of those fighting are not the religiously motivated, but either criminal groupings or other insurgents not linked to the Taliban or al-Qaida. Some of these can be either dealt with or bought off: the ceasefire with the "Taliban" in Badghis is encouraging, but whether it will last or not is another matter. The other problem with such deals was shown in Pakistan, when the truce in Swat with the imposition of Sharia law led to the Pakistani Taliban moving to within 100 miles of Islamabad. What has to be dropped is the repeated rhetoric that what "Our Boys" are doing in Helmand is helping to "break" the "chain of terror", an idea that is utterly fatuous and which may well spectacularly backfire. Ministers still though, despite David Miliband's attempt at honesty today, find it difficult to defend a war which they know full well if anything only increases the threat to us, not decreases. Until they come straight, support is only likely, quite rightly, to keep going down.

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7/27/2009 09:56:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 13, 2009 

The folly of Afghanistan.

All nations have their ways of referring to their glorious, and also inglorious, dead. Those who we often find ourselves sided against prefer "martyrs", or shaheeds. We, on the other hand, like "heroes", and even our supposed neutral news organisations sometimes slip into describing them as such, as ITV did last night. It isn't of course fair to focus on the language used to describe the dead when there is little other way to eloquently express the loss when asked to do soon after being informed of the death of loved ones, but when two soldiers are described in almost exactly the same terms, it also shows the fatuity underlying the deaths. Relatives talked in one case of "pride", as if there was something especially noble in dying for a cause which only just less than half the country believes in.

As ever, the Sun remains the most shameless in its boilerplate depictions of those who have laid down their lives for something which it seems only politicians, newspapers and the usual belligerents can find the words to start to justify. "The magnificent eight" it starts one sentence with, which can only bring to mind the way that al-Muhajiroun described the 9/11 hijackers: the magnificent nineteen. Not that the two groups are in any way comparable, but it remains the case that such hyperbole only does disservice to those who were far more modest about what they did than those wishing to lionise them.

It's worth remembering that although we have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, it was only three and a half years ago that British forces were sent to Helmand, in what has turned out to be one of the most ill-briefed and disastrously commanded missions in recent British military history. Supposedly predicated on reconstruction, then defence secretary John Reid hoped that the 3,300 soldiers deployed would be able to return, job done, without "firing a single shot". Since then around 4 million bullets have been expended. From the very beginning there has been two connected failings: a lack of suitable equipment, and a lack of anywhere near the numbers required to be able to hold the ground that the Taliban is either forced to retreat from or which it gives up, only to return to later. Even now that there are approaching 10,000 troops, having finally withdrawn from Iraq, there are still almost certainly nowhere near enough to be able to convince those who they are supposed to be protecting, the Afghan civilians, that they can vote in the elections in a month's time free from threats.

Combined with this we have a political class that simply cannot even begin to be straight with the British public about why the war is being fought, let alone why it should be fought. The poll for the BBC and Guardian shows that the vast majority know the reasoning for why the war is being fought: 80% saying that it's part of the fight against al-Qaida, 78% helping the Afghan government against the Taliban. The problem with this is that these justifications are facile and only half-true. It begins with the false perception that the Taliban and al-Qaida are one and the same thing; they are not. In 2001 al-Qaida were simply the Taliban's guests, and ones which supposedly some of the main benefactors of the regime. Only when both were pushed out towards the Af-Pak border did the two begin to merge somewhat, forced to band together in order to survive. The emphasis on Iraq allowed both to build themselves back up, hence the situation we are now in. They can still though be separated again, and the more moderate elements of the Taliban can be dealt with.

The biggest lie of all, and one which is comparable to those told about Iraq, is that our presence in Afghanistan prevents terrorism, and that by staying there we prevent al-Qaida from returning. Not only does our presence there in fact increase the threat, just as our role in Iraq increased the threat exponentially, but al-Qaida is of course already there, just as it always has been. It might not have the presence that it had for years in Iraq, and still does to an extent, holding whole provinces and cities, but it is there, and it can still operate with impunity.

As has become ever more clear over the last few years, the real problem is not Afghanistan, it is Pakistan. Pakistan's ISI created the Taliban and only very recently has that support seemed to have finally come to an end. As long as there is another safe haven, both for the Taliban and for al-Qaida over the border, wasting a single drop of blood is a waste of time. It took the Pakistani Taliban moving within 100 miles of Islamabad for the government to finally wholeheartedly launch a campaign which has either seen the group routed, or, more likely, as happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan, merely fallen back so that it can once again engage in guerilla warfare, the only way in which it has a chance of winning.

Yet it is the very weakness of Pakistan as a coherent state that also makes the war in Afghanistan unwinnable. Even though the chances of Pakistan either collapsing or being overrun by Islamic extremists have been vastly exaggerated, if Pakistan cannot have sorted itself out having had 50 years to do so, the possibility of turning a nation which has been at war with itself and invaders for over 30 years, where there are five different ethnic groups, six different languages spoken and whole sectors controlled by warlords and distinct fiefdoms is negligible.

Despite knowing every word of this, our politicians, regardless of party or affiliation, all profess in public that either progress is being made, the war is being won or it can be won. The very least they must do is set out something approaching a strategy which is achievable, whether it's building the Afghan army up until it isn't just renowned for those in its ranks marijuana intake, establishing something like government control over areas which are currently no-go zones, or simply declaring victory in Helmand, even if it isn't close to being won. There has to be honesty, but expecting that from either of the main parties is like waiting for Godot. We owe something to those who have lost their sons and daughters, but once that has been achieved, we simply have to get out.

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7/13/2009 09:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 

Change we can believe in.


At least 43 people have died in missile strikes by a US drone aircraft in a militant stronghold of Pakistan, a Taliban spokesman has told the BBC.

The people killed in South Waziristan had been attending the funeral of a militant commander who had been killed in an earlier strike.

This is the sort of thing that jihadists in Iraq have been doing now for a number of years; first killing dozens, then targeting them again when the bereaved bury their dead. It has also been used as a tactic in Pakistan itself. One anti-jihadist blog commented on one of these attacks that apparently nothing was sacred, except jihad itself. It seems that the same applies to the United States, regardless of those at the top of the chain of command.

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6/24/2009 11:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 

Pakistan, Afghanistan and the new American strategy.

In one sense, the claim of responsibility from the Pakistani Taliban for yesterday's attack on the police school, more accurately known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban, headed by Baitullah Mehsud, is something of a relief; it means, that as yet, Lashkar-e-Taiba, another group founded by Pakistan's intelligence agencies, has not declared war on the Pakistani state itself, even if they remain the most likely suspects for the previous attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. It does however show how quickly attacks like those in Mumbai can be copied and carried out, the TTP having previously relied almost exclusively on suicide bombings.

The other sort of good news from yesterday's attack was that a complete bloodbath was avoided thanks to the relatively swift intervention of the Pakistani security forces, those who had been criticised, probably unfairly, after the first Lahore attack. "Only" 11 dead, when there were up to 800 police recruits in the attacked compound, can be seen as something of a success. It might also cause a rethink in the terrorists' tactics: a suicide bombing, especially a truck one, would have almost certainly resulted in far higher casualties and at less expense to the attackers, hence why suicide bombing is such an attractive strategy, however much horror it inspires in those who are under attack.

Apart from those very small consolations, there is much to fear from the continuing spiral into proactive insurgency in Pakistan. The sharia "deal" in Swat was meant to bring a halt to some of the attacks: if anything, they have increased elsewhere, as could have been predicted. The justification given by Mehsud for yesterday's attack was the drone strikes which are also continuing in the semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. While these attacks have been effective in taking out some al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, they are also the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, resulting in civilian casualties which only further enrage public opinion against the Americans, and in turn towards the Pakistani state which they see as colluding with the Hellfire missile assaults, however much they condemn the Americans in public. That the latest attack was again in Lahore, long regarded as being far removed from the tension of Islamabad or the radicalism of the towns and cities further west, also shows just how far the reach of the TTP has spread and also how quickly. The insurgency ostensibly began after the assault on the Red Mosque in 2007, but has since become almost inseparable from the simultaneous jihad in Afghanistan against the foreign forces, as the merging of three separate organisations under the banner of the Council of United Mujahideen last month showed. The new grouping, which also pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, was meant to focus its attacks on the coalition in Afghanistan and turn away from targeting the Pakistani military and police, yet there is no sign of that happening yet. Indeed, if anything, the attacks in Pakistan itself seem to have stepped up further over the past few weeks.

All of this is a direct challenge to the "new" US strategy on both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is fundamentally based around denying terrorists the use of safe havens to attack foreign countries from. In some ways it amounts to a refutation of the previous administration's strategy of tackling rogue states, where the attack on Afghanistan amounted to revenge with the war on Iraq, which had no connection to al-Qaida, the main event, but in other ways it is nothing more or less than simply a justification from Obama to continue the war, regardless of the consequences. The strategy fundamentally ignores what the jihadi motivation is: they themselves are only too aware of their actual weak status, knowing full well that they cannot carry out spectaculars like 9/11 on anything like a regular basis. What they can do however is draw in their enemies and then subject them to asymmetrical insurgency, knowing that unless their tactics become too brutal, as they did in Iraq, resulting in a backlash from those who had fought alongside them, that they have the potential to bog down the invaders or occupiers for years, if not decades, while increasingly gaining recruits to their cause as a result. Afghanistan has not really been free from war since before 1980, and some of those fighting have also been involved since then, showing no signs of getting tired of it.

The biggest problem with it though is that it imagines that it can create safe havens, or even that such a policy is the way forward. Even if you managed to kill bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar tomorrow and most if not all of those currently actively involved in the insurgencies, while it would be a tremendous blow, it would not even begin to challenge the ideology behind the men. Havens also are transient: at the moment it's the FATA area of Pakistan, but bin Laden if we are to use him did plenty of travelling around after the end of the jihad against the Soviets, moving from Saudi Arabia to Sudan and then back to Afghanistan. As Andrew Exum points out, where does it all end? Do we also go after and into Somalia, Yemen, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and anywhere else where jihadist movements are also beginning to spawn and which might at some point threaten the West? Then there's the "virtual" safe havens, the online jihadist networks which currently only involve discussion and distribution of propaganda rather than actual plotting, which instead takes place off the actual forums, but which could at some point potentially fill the void. Thomas Hegghammer points out four very simple things that have to be done but which don't involve violence of any variety which would help immensely:

It is very simple: 1) Say and do things on Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir that make Muslims feel less geopolitically deprived and humiliated. 2) Be nice to the locals in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and broadcast your good deeds, 3) Point out where the jihadis are wrong on substance, and 4) Let mainstream Muslim clerics take care of the theology.

The above is not suddenly going to stop the TTP from launching more attacks, but it will help to staunch the flow of recruits. Pakistan is worrying, but it is not suddenly about to fall into the hands of jihadists who will instantly have their finger on the nuclear trigger. Lastly, we also have to start thinking seriously about an exit strategy from Afghanistan: a country which could never be conquered in the past is not going to be conquered now. Deals, however unsavoury, will have to be made. It probably won't however look as bad as it currently does when the government we helped install wants to introduce such draconian laws on the role of women in Afghan society as those detailed in today's Grauniad.

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3/31/2009 10:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 03, 2009 

The Lahore attack and the resulting fallout.

The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore is likely to become one of those outrages which does genuinely change things, if not forever, then certainly for the foreseeable future. While many called the commando-style attack on Mumbai India's 9/11 and suggested that the city would never be the same again, India's capital has more or less returned to normality, just as the 9/11 attacks, as well as our own 7/7 changed very little about our actual way of life, changes in security and foreign policy not withstanding.

Today's attack however was different. Whether it's completely accurate that athletes have not been specifically targeted by terrorists since the Munich Olympics, jihadists have certainly not shown any past inclination towards targeting sportsmen. Perhaps this is because unlike other so-called Western practices which Islamic extremists routinely denounce as decadent or immoral, few jihadis, even the most hard line, find anything much to complain about when it comes to either football or cricket; indeed, at least one of the 7/7 bombers spent some of his last night alive playing the latter with friends. al-Qaida has not shown any real interest in such attacks, perhaps realising that there is nothing more likely to cause even sympathetic opinion to turn against you than to target universally admired individuals completely uninvolved in politics. In any case, much softer targets are more than available, as they have shown time and again, including in the attack last year on the Marriott hotel, which was far more symbolic and powerful without directly affecting Pakistanis themselves too greatly.

Likewise, today's attack doesn't seem to have been by the Pakistani Taliban, whom only last week signed ceasefire agreements with the Pakistan government in exchange for the imposition of Sharia law in the Swat valley. To jeopardise the truce so soon would be doubtful, even if, as today's Guardian's front page reports, the three disparate groups appear to have joined forces to fight the Americans in Afghanistan now that the Pakistani front has been becalmed. Similarly, despite the fact that it was the Sri Lankan team targeted, it also doesn't seem to have been anything to do with the ongoing conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, neither their work or that of a group acting in solidarity with them, the Tigers also having never previously targeted athletes.

This does however seem to be a day for setting precedents. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group thought to be behind the Mumbai attacks and on whom suspicion is immediately settling, has also never launched an attack in Pakistan itself. Primarily focused on the Kashmiri conflict, but with apparent increasing links with al-Qaida, if this is their work it still seems to be a baffling choice of target. The immediate effect will naturally be the complete suspension of all international cricket in Pakistan, possibly indefinitely. In a nation which can be without cliché be described as cricket mad, and where the game transcends almost everything else, this seems guaranteed to result in overwhelming anger landing on the radicals throughout the country, not just those deemed to be personally responsible. The attack seems to have been designed to make the country more insular, further severing its links with the outside world, just at the time when tourism as a result of the country's shift towards extremism is already diminishing, also not helped by the global downturn which has left the country impoverished, forced to turn to the IMF for help. That the attack was in Lahore, one of the more culturally liberal and safest cities in the country is also causing deep concern; if such an assault can be launched there, it seems that nowhere is now safe from the spreading tentacles of Islamic militancy.

Pakistan has since its creation been a nation divided, one riven by its differences rather than prepared to unite around its common values. It was hoped that last year's election and the end of Musharraf's dictatorship would be a time for healing the old wounds, yet a year later the country is even more fragmented and in discord than before. Few had high hopes in Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, long known as "Mr 10%" because of the accusations of corruption made against him, becoming an uniting figure, but hardly anyone foresaw just how disastrous he might be. The recent banning of Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Muslim League (N) from office illustrated vividly the fractious and bitter nature of Pakistani politics, with violent protests from Sharif's supporters in reaction. The army, which has intervened in the past repeatedly, still has the same links to jihadists as before, while the ISI has not even began to be reformed. It seems doubtful that the army will intervene just yet, its humiliation in being forced into making a deal in Swat too recent, but it certainly cannot be fully ruled out.

It has to hoped that today's attack marks a turning point, with the outrage at the attack and its implications uniting rather than dividing where previous events have not. The risk of Pakistan being overran by extremists and gaining power in a nuclear-armed state has long been exaggerated, but the accusations that Pakistan is rapidly turning into a failed state are not so wide of the mark. Only the Pakistani people themselves, as their politicians have long been so hopeless, can arrest the march towards chaos. It might well have taken an attack on sport, and so the people as a whole themselves, to bring to a head what has been developing for some time.

Related post:
Bleeding Heart Show - Which Taliban?

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3/03/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, January 04, 2008 

The darkening of democracy.

Even before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the apparent stealing of the Kenyan elections by Mwai Kibaki, resulting in violence which has left 300 dead and displaced 180,000, the omens for democracy in 2008 were looking ominous. Time magazine, never the most astute judge of character, having previously chosen Hitler, Stalin, the American soldier (perhaps would have been justified post-WW2; not after Korea or Iraq) and "you", as in the individual in the information age as the person of the year, bizarrely decided that Vladimir Putin, having started the year belligerently fusillading against the west as if the cold war hadn't ended while finishing it by interfering in elections which he would have won anyway was worthy of the title. Elections in Nigeria and Uzbekistan were similarly denounced as flawed and rigged, while only the shock, marginal defeat of Hugo Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms in Venezuela emphasised the power and justice of the least worst system of government of the lot.

Pakistan and Kenya's problems seem on one level to be intertwined. The elections in Pakistan were postponed to February the 18th on the back of the torching of electoral lists and facilities that would have been used in the vote, although one is also mindful of the Pakistani states' interest in hoping that the sympathy towards Bhutto likely to manifest itself in support for her Pakistan's Peoples Party will evaporate over time; in Kenya meanwhile, independent recounts and confirmation of the vote have been made impossible by the rioting which included the destruction of polling stations which still contained the ballot papers. A week after the vote, only now is Kibaki apparently offering a re-run of the election, and even then only if a court orders it, something which would never have been necessary had he and his party not so contemptuously ordered the election co-ordinator to announce the results before he was even certain of them, and then swiftly had themselves sworn back in. Both countries are also frayed on ethnic and tribal lines, Bhutto's supporters from the Sindh denouncing the Punjab at her funeral, while the faults in Kenya have become only too apparent in the aftermath of the burning of the Pentecostal church in Eldoret, carried out by members of the Kalenjin tribe, supporters of the opposition leader Raila Odinga, against the Kikuyu, the tribe to whom Kibaki belongs.

It is however far too easy to slip into hyperbole and exaggeration about the situation in both countries. The BBC's coverage of the fallout following the elections in Kenya, for some reason sending Ben Brown to present short segments from Nairobi, pieces more than saturated with the notion of making the worst out of what has happened so far, seems out of all proportion with what has actually occurred. When the politicians themselves are talking about genocide and ethnic cleansing with all seriousness, when what has actually took place so far have been random acts of savagery committed by those who are always looking to take advantage of such short crises, it encourages the fear and paranoia that has apparently left 500,000 needing immediate help. Before even the torching of the church had took place newscasters were breathlessly murmuring the magic terms, "civil war", just as they had just after Bhutto was murdered, despite her death only leading to understandable rioting and little more. Even less realistic has been the doom-mongering emanating from America about the possibility of the mullahs getting their hands within reach of Pakistan's nuclear trigger, despite the Islamist parties never previously receiving more than 10% of the vote and the conflict in the Afghan border region showing no signs of no spreading, the odd suicide bombing usually targeting the military or not.

The current dip of faith in democracy worldwide can't be written off as one of those blips that occur from time to time. While subverting the vote goes all the way back to the rotten borough, it was the hanging chads of 2000 that showed you can steal an election and get away with it. After all, if you can do it in the greatest democracy in the world, who the hell's going to care when the brutal dictator of a former Soviet state quite clearly breaks every rule going? While Simon Jenkins flails about a little in why we can't ourselves say much, it's an indictment of both own politics when only 22% of the electorate vote for a party which then gets a 60-seat plus majority on such a meagre share of the vote. The irony of the Bush administration's original rhaspodising about the very democracy that had favoured its opponents was only followed by hypocrisy when the wrong people won in the elections forced in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood candidates, although standing as independents, gaining a large number of seats, whilst in the occupied territories Hamas surged to a huge victory over the corrupt Fatah, earning them a boycott still in place for their refusal to compromise with the demands of the international community which says nothing about Israel's continued breaching of UN resolutions and building of settlements in the West Bank, even if Ehud Olmert pays lip service to the road map. The quiet abandoning of the democracy project afterwards was inevitable.

Some solipsists claim that democracy is vital because they don't tend to go to war, or go to war against one another. The west though has only ever been supportive of democracy when it gives a result which is to its liking; from Chile in 1973 to Palestine in 2006, and now Pakistan and Kenya, with America's plans ruined with Bhutto's assassination, and its original welcoming of the result in Kenya, likely because of its support for the "war on terror", only to later embarrassingly withdraw it, democracy is only ever a means to an end. While to those on the ground who find themselves in the thick of it, where it really can be a matter of life and death, we haven't far moved on from the days of putting up with a son of a bitch as long as he was our son of a bitch. Whether this century goes towards Putin's model of managed, illusionary, autocratic democracy or back to its true, localised and liberating form isn't likely in our hands, but in those who still wield the ultimate power of deciding what is righteous and what is against our interests.

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1/04/2008 09:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, December 27, 2007 

A multiple tragedy, and potentially multiple deaths.



The first photo shows the exact moment of the suicide blast; the other two depict the aftermath.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a multiple tragedy. On one level, it continues the personal family tradition of "martyrdom": her father, Zulfikar Ali, was both president and prime minister of Pakistan before he was executed in 1979, ostensibly on charges of conspiracy to murder, but seen more as politically motivated following one of a number of military coups in Pakistan's short independent history, led by Zia-ul-Haq. Haq himself died in a plane crash in 1988. While it is by no means an exact comparison, the Bhutto clan most closely resembles the Kennedys: they both offered and offer the least worst political ideology in their respective countries.

For all of Bhutto's failings, and she had many, varying from the allegations of corruption and murder to the established fact that she was complicit in the military intelligence funding of the Taliban, her return to Pakistan less than three months ago was still welcome. In the face of the blatant gerrymandering of the vote under Musharraf, she at the very least gave hope to her supporters that her presence would stop the military dictator from stealing yet another vote. While his announcement of a state of emergency removed even that, with the supreme court judges who had struck down his reelection as president purged and replaced with obsequious sycophants who overruled the original decision, the longest striptease in political history finally came to an end when Musharraf was forced to shed his army uniform, standing down as its head. Even though the suicide attacks that had increased exponentially since the siege of the Red Mosque and bin Laden's call for jihad against the army and government that helped justify the state of emergency had continued unabated, there was a still a chance that the parliamentary elections, set for early next month, would be somewhat free and fair.

Bhutto's murder has almost certainly destroyed any lingering possibility of that. Although it seems highly unlikely that Musharraf, his supporters or the army were involved in the shooting followed by suicide bombing, he has the most to gain. For all the talk from both Bush and Brown today of not letting terrorism destroy democracy, neither will find much to complain about should Musharraf reinstate the emergency or even declare martial law. Postponement of the elections, possibly permanently, is doubtlessly also on the agenda. It's therefore completely understandable why the initial anger, rather than being directed towards the radical Islamists that had previously so ruthlessly attacked Bhutto's vanity on the homecoming parade and took 140 lives with them in the process, is currently being directed the president's way. The rioting that is being reported in Karachi and in some other areas will gradually turn from reaction to mourning, but not before it too is used as justification for another twist in Pakistan's tortured recent history.

If not Musharraf then, who is most likely responsible? Suspicion will instantly turn towards either al-Qaida itself or the Taliban, who had threatened to assassinate Bhutto and who nearly succeeded previously. The other chief suspects will be independent but al-Qaida inspired militants who declared war after the siege of the Red Mosque, or possibly remnants of other Pakistani terrorist groups formerly more concerned with Kashmir but now also increasingly focused on events in their home country itself. If it is the work of al-Qaida, then it will be the first high profile assassination that they have successfully achieved: while Ayman al-Zahawiri's former organisation al-Jihad aka Islamic Jihad had attempted to kill the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and there have also been previous attempts on Musharraf himself which have only been narrowly thwarted and afterwards linked to al-Qaida, their style has usually been to slaughter innocents, not specifically target politicians. Ramzi Yousef's plans to kill either Bill Clinton or the Pope were not strictly ever the work of al-Qaida itself, despite his involvement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: he was probably the closest takfirist terrorism has come to someone who just liked making bombs and killing people rather than caring about the religious motive, however spurious, behind it.

The rather hysterical claims that Pakistan now faces civil war or at the least the possibility of it are for the moment premature. The government has never really controlled the semi-autonomous, tribal regions of the east next to the Afghanistan border, and it's there that the real battle against those supportive of the Taliban will be decided, not in the cities, despite the suicide bombings which have mostly so far targeted either soldiers or military installations. What Bhutto's assassination has done is thrown even the semblance of normality in the country completely out of the window; how Musharraf responds will be crucial. A temporary harsh crackdown is likely unavoidable, and with the one remaining popular opposition leader Nawaz Sharif declaring he will boycott the elections, there's little reason for him not to go even further and once again rule by decree, again possibly for as long as the West tolerates it.

Whoever was behind the attack, when they murdered Bhutto they were also attempting to kill an idea, an ideology, even hope itself. However the people and the government of Pakistan reacts to this latest atrocity, they should not lose sight of Bhutto's own dream of a secular, peaceful and democratic Pakistan, even if her own flaws and lust for power of that imaginary nation should have disqualified her from leading it. From even the most dreadful and despicable of acts, good can still be drawn. Mourn now and fight for that ambition another day.

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12/27/2007 05:37:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 07, 2007 

The crisis in Pakistan.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but has there been an actual condemnation of what is currently occurring on the streets of Pakistan? Thousands of those opposed to General Musharraf have been arrested, including a number of well-known political activists, the police have been viciously beating those who ignored Musharraf's declaration on Saturday of martial law to protest, television stations have been shut down, the media has in some cases been silenced, yet the only real comment we've made is that Musharraf must keep his promise of holding elections and stepping down as the head of the army. As for all those currently imprisoned for challenging Musharraf's second coup, they may as well consider themselves forgotten.

It's clear that Musharraf's one and only intention in declaring an emergency is to enable him to hang on in power. Although recently overwhelmingly re-elected president after the opposition parties mostly boycotted the vote, the real challenge to his authority has come not from the likes of Benazir Bhutto, who has returned to Pakistan to almost unaminous fanfare in the western media, but rather from lawyers and a number of recalcitrant judges, led by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a judge who Musharraf suspeneded earlier in the year before he was reinstated after mass protests, with the supreme court overruling Musharraf's initial misconduct charges. It was widely expected that the supreme court was about to similarly declare Musharraf's re-election null and void, with the general preemptively acting against the threat.

While Musharraf's other justification for declaring a state of emergency, the spiraling Islamist violence across the country after the siege of the Red Mosque, which lead bin Laden among other takfirists to call for a jihad against the country, has been widely parroted abroad, little mention has been made that the "judicial interference" was also a major factor, with Musharraf claiming that it was making Pakistan ungovernable. Apart from the defiance of Musharraf's will, Chaudhry's other crime was his and other judges' approach to the mass human rights abuses being committed in Pakistan's own "war against terrorism", involving torture and the disappearance of some of those arrested. While no one can deny that Pakistan is in the frontline when it comes to tackling jihadists and extremist Islam, the brutal tactics involved are undoubtedly having the usual effect of filling the ranks of those not only involved in the insurrection in Waziristan, but also that of the Taliban and the insurgency in Iraq.

To begin with it was thought that Musharraf might well have overplayed his hand in declaring an emergency, but the slow and far from unanimous response to what has happened since have quashed any such hopes. The BBC might have just reported that President Bush has personally called Musharraf to urge him to hold elections as planned and step down as army chief, but his real interests have already been overwhelming served. His most bitter opponents in the courts have been removed; the opposition politicians are either in hiding or under house arrest; the public is cowed, thanks to the way the police have cracked down on the few protests that some have staged; and those who were already in negotiations with him about power-sharing, such as Bhutto, have been so slow to respond, partly due to how her party, the Pakistan People's, was mostly ignored to begin with, further undermining any remaining real political standing she had. Even if elections are to be staged as planned now, it seems unlikely that they could be any way be either free or fair, which is exactly what Musharraf intended.

The rehabilitation of Benazir Bhutto shows how desperate politics within Pakistan has become. Anyone would think that she was a new, untainted figure, not someone who spent her time while previously in office turning at best a blind eye to the emergence of the Taliban, at worst using the ISI, Pakistan's security services to help them take control, or a figure with numerous corruption charges in multiple countries hanging over her. There is however no accounting for someone's personal vanity, or for their ability to woo foreign politicos with talk of democracy, human rights and opposition to extremism, all of which Bhutto didn't have much time for previously except as long as it kept her in power. The lack of personal criticism which followed the horrific suicide bombing that targeted her return parade, killing at least 140, was shocking: the takfirists made clear how they would attempt to attack her, yet she still showered in the adulation of her remaining supporters in the most nauseating fashion, endangering them far more than she did herself.

Parallels with Burma and the response to what occurred there only a matter of weeks ago are apt. Burma may not be as quite as internally fracturous as Pakistan currently is, but the crackdown could have been modeled on how the Burmese military and police responded to the mass protests by the Buddhist monks. As opposed to how the world responded to the situation there, Musharraf could not be more pleased with the lack of demands for the instant reinstitution of democracy and release of those arrested.

Like with so much else, post 9/11, it all comes down to Pakistan's admitted major role, not just in stopping fighters from crossing into Afghanistan, something it's failed to do, but also in the increasingly lawless and violent regions in the west, with the Grauniad reporting on how the Swat valley, previously popular with tourists has itself fell victim to "Talibanisation," giving all the more ammo both to Musharraf and the US in continuing the support given to him and the military assault on Waziristan. The last thing the US, or even Nato wants to consider while both are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively is the increasingly likely spread of the conflict into Pakistan itself. Democracy, despite all the rhetoric, will undoubtedly come second to the further shoring up of the discredited and bankrupt Musharraf.

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11/07/2007 09:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

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