Tuesday, March 16, 2010 

American foreign policy explained.

It tells you something about the moral compass of America and Israel that what is being described as the biggest crisis in relations between the two in 35 years has not occurred over say, a war in which nearly 1,2000 Lebanese civilians were killed, or the attack on Gaza last year in which almost 1,000 civilians were killed, but instead over the snub given to vice-president Joe Biden on his visit to Israel last week, which was the perfect day to announce that another 1,600 households would be built in East Jerusalem, exactly the policy of continuing to build settlements which the US has called for an end to. It's hardly the first time which Israel has acted in such a fashion, despite it supposedly being the the lesser partner in the relationship, and while the response of the US in this case has been the angriest and most forceful in recent memory, it will doubtless be forgotten as usual in a couple of months.

Equally instructive is what happens when a war which America urged an ally to fight suddenly comes back and hits too close to home. Obama is "outraged" that three people associated with the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez were murdered, a direct result of the war launched by the Mexican government on the drug cartels which attempt to satisfy the insatiable American hunger, mainly for cocaine but also for other narcotics. Mexico itself has somewhat seen the light, realised that the war against drugs itself cannot possibly be won and ostensibly legalised the possession of small amounts of almost all soft and hard drugs. The war against the cartels however continues, with horrific results: more than 6,500 drug-related killings last year, and barbarity which has come close to that of the likes of al-Qaida in Iraq. While Foreign Policy puts this somewhat into context, only Colombia is fighting a comparable drug war with the complete support, or indeed at least partially on the behalf of the United States. The difference is clear: it's only when those killed are Americans that there is the possibility of any change. The only thing that comes close is when the vice-president is made to look a fool.

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3/16/2010 10:24:00 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

Monday, October 27, 2008 

Just another act of terrorist aggression.

Why is it that whenever the need to strike out against ones foes becomes paramount is it that those damn civilians always seem to get in the way? Another 7 civilians were slaughtered by the United States on Sunday, in what has hardly been unfairly described by the Syrians as an act of "criminal and terrorist aggression". Throughout the last couple of months more and more Predator air drones, piloted back in cosy United States control rooms, have brought swift death to the tribal areas of Pakistan, routinely killing civilians, as well as or instead of those that they were targeting. Now Syria has become the latest victim to start bleeding.

Reputedly aimed at killing Abu Ghadiya, an ISI operative smuggling foreign fighters into Iraq, the images that flashed round the Middle East were undoubtedly those of the innocents caught in the crossfire, that the United States has typically made no comment on. The obvious question, like on the previous post, is why now? After all, while there once most certainly was problems along Syria's border, with foreign fighters able to more or less come and go as they pleased, not only have those wanting to fight their holy war instead increasingly plumped to go to Afghanistan or Pakistan, or one of the other theatres, abandoning Iraq as the "Islamic State" has been diminished, but Syria itself has clamped down on the practice, with even the Americans themselves admitting such. The intelligence this time round may well have been overwhelming, but has it not also been over the past 5 years, especially when disrupting the foreign fighters would have had far more of an impact?

For all the talk of legal justifications for the strike, there was just the one reason why this went ahead, just as it also the reason why the number of strikes within Pakistan has increased: both countries are becoming weaker, and while Pakistan is an ally and therefore unlikely to respond, Syria is simply unable to respond. Bashar al-Assad has faced one setback after another, with the loss of face increasing each time. While it is still disputed who killed Rafik Hariri, the withdrawal of the Syrian security apparatus from Lebanon was the undoubted result. Over the last few years, Syria's hosting of Hamas and Hizbullah and relationship with Iran has started to pall; being part of the second half of the "axis of evil" is taking its toll. Syria's hosting of the hundreds of thousands if not more Iraqi refugees has put serious constraints on the country's finances, further pushing it towards reconciliation with Israel and renewed although secret talks over the Golan Heights. The Israeli strike against the alleged nuclear facility, followed by the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, has only further pushed the state towards a deal and a form of peace. The implication that what could follow is attacks on fighters being trained in Iran is therefore wishful thinking, because Iran has both the means and will to respond, overwhelmingly

Sunday's strike will then hardly change anything in the long term as far as Syria itself is concerned. It would also be too nice to believe though that the outbreak of cross-border attacks is a symptom of the last days of the Bush adminstration. Even if we assume that Obama wins the presidency next Tuesday, there is little to suggest that he will order any drastic change in military policy, especially towards Pakistan, considering he has personally raised the spectre of increasing activity within that country. Pakistan itself is caught in the middle: looking for peace while knowing that any ceasefire is destined to be only temporary, with a foreign power that cares nothing for any internal deals and only for what might be being hatched in its autonomous regions. Whilst it may be that the US military is striking now before the change takes place as a contingency plan, there's more than a hint, as Juan Cole alludes to, of this being staged as a sop to McCain to show that Iraq is not over yet. There are also the domestic issues within Iraq itself to be considered, as a deal over keeping the US forces in the country post the end of the year continues to be fought over. A shot across the bows to suggest to the Iraqi politicians themselves that whatever they decide, the US will reserve the right, as ever, to do whatever the hell it pleases?

Whatever the case may be, innocents have once again been killed for no great reason. Again, for no great gain anti-Americanism has been inflamed. Again, those recruiting to extremist causes will be praising the actions of those that care only for the short-term. And no one has any hope that this will be anything like the end of it.

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10/27/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 01, 2008 

State terrorism without a purpose.

Let's call a spade a spade. The United States has just carried out another act of state sponsored terrorism, launching 4 cruise missiles into the country recently described by the United Nations as suffering from the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the whole of Africa. The target, Aden Hashi Ayro, was killed, with between 10 and 30 others also most likely blown apart by the finest of American weaponry.

The motive behind the attack, much like the last time that the United States admitted to striking Somalia, was to kill an alleged leader of al-Qaida. This time this justification has even less credibility than then.

Aden Hashi Ayro was a leader in the Young Mujahideen Movement, a jihadist group that split from the Islamic Courts Union which briefly held the balance of power in Somalia's capital Mogadishu before being ousted by a coalition made up of the Somali transitional government and Ethiopian troops in December 2006. Although their methods were reminiscent of the Taliban, the ICU succeeded in bringing peace to the Somalian capital for the first time since 1992, removing the warlords that had control of various different sectors for years, and were for that reason at least somewhat popular with the majority of those still left. The last year has seen the ICU regrouping, with an insurgency subsequently raging resulting in human rights abuses on all sides.

The Young Mujahideen Movement and al-Shabaab appear to be one and the same organisation, but the YMM are the online face of the movement to the various jihadist forums. Like the various groups that emerged in Iraq, and also influenced by al-Qaida's media wing, As-Sahab, they've been releasing various videos of their "operations" since early 2007. Unlike the majority of the groups in Iraq who have eschewed suicide bombings, with the exception of the Islamic State of Iraq (formerly al-Qaida in Iraq), Ansar al-Islam and the Shield of Islam Brigades, all of whom share much the same aims, the YMM has released a number of videos of "martyrdom operations", including their most recent one targeting African Union peacekeepers.

There's little doubt then that the YMM and al-Shabaab share similar aims and methods to al-Qaida, although something they don't seem to have done as yet is target market places and general innocents as the ISI has on numerous occasions. Again though, as with most of the insurgent groupings in Iraq, the vast majority of the fighters are indigenous, with very few the much talked of foreign fighters. Put simply, whatever links that Aden Hashi Ayro might have formerly had with al-Qaida, with some claiming that he trained in Afghanistan, which in itself proves very little as there were numerous camps in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, not all of which were anything to do with al-Qaida itself, he would have had few to none now, and as for him being the supposed leader of al-Qaida in Somalia, that is simply a fantasy, much like the belief that al-Qaida had anything to do with the "Black Hawk Down" attacks, something that bin Laden boasted about but which were without foundation.

Just as when the US strike against alleged al-Qaida targets proved al-Zawahiri right that the Americans were just waiting to get involved in a strictly internal affair, the attacks today, which could have been quite easily carried out by the Ethiopians and not by the Americans, will just further the hatred against the US for getting involved in a conflict in which they have no excuse for doing so, and exacerbate the already horrific humanitarian situation. The violence needs to end; the United States' action will only make that even less likely to happen.

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5/01/2008 11:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 

Arms around Iran.

All hail the return of realpolitik. After the most cynical exercise in promoting democracy in the Middle East imaginable turned rather sour, with Hamas being elected in Palestine and dozens of Muslim Brotherhood candidates running as independents gaining seats in Egypt, the United States has quite understandably decided that demanding even piecemeal reform before handing over the bombs is like so 2003.

By far the most tyrannical regime in the region, which also happens to be the home to wealthy individuals who keep the various jihadist battles ticking over with their private funding, Saudi Arabia therefore receives a cool $20m arms package. This would be the country floating on a sea of oil which finds it no difficulty to pay for the laughable Eurofighter and other weaponry provided by our very own BAe Systems, as long as they sweeten the deal with the odd $1bn bung here and there. The very same regime which is so chauvinistic that it doesn't even allow women to drive is being provided with a massive amount of armory by the country that pretended that women's rights was one of the reasons why the Taliban must be defeated at all costs. Egypt gets $13bn, while Israel, already subsidised up its ears with American handouts, gets $30bn.

What then is the existential threat which requires such vast sums to be paid out to the regimes that remain friendly to American power regardless of their failures to institute political reform? It must be al-Qaida, right? After all, President Bush recently mentioned the group 95 times in a speech on why failure in Iraq will mean the inevitability of carnage returning to US streets. Only on Monday Bush declared that Gordon Brown understands the war that the US is waging against al-Qaida and everything that it stands for.

Well, it isn't. The reason why the Saudis and friends need even more cash to spend on the United States' finest weapon manufacturers is Iran. According to Condoleeza Rice:

There isn't a doubt that Iran constitutes the single most important single-country strategic challenge to the United States and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see.

Not a failed Iraqi state which becomes a new haven for jihadis already doing their respective degrees in car bombing, IED planting and the preparation of explosives, or indeed Pakistan, the newest concern for the neo-cons, but rather Iran, the only regime outside of the Palestinian territories which has even a semblance of democracy. Iran, the nation meant to be arming not just the Shia militias involved in the sectarian conflict within Iraq, but also, according to both the US and the insurgent groupings diametrically opposed to al-Qaida, the terrorist organisation that has declared that Shia are "kuffar", as well as the Taliban, the very movement which Iran co-operated with the US in overthrowing originally.

Let's not pretend that Iran is something that it isn't. Despite its "Islamic democracy", the real power lies with the supreme leader, who most certainly isn't going to be going before the country's people any time soon. Its human rights record is still appalling, as epitomised by the recent arrest and detention of Iranian-Americans accused of spying and espionage. In 2006 it was the second highest user of capital punishment after China, even executing those accused of adultery, and also continues to practice stoning. Social repression has increased as Ahmadinejad's other political failings have been exposed. It continues to defy UN resolutions on enriching uranium, which it claims is for purely peaceful purposes despite not having any nuclear power plants. It's the main source of funds to Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia militant organisation that committed war crimes during last year's war with Israel.

Despite all this, it still remains the main bulwark in the region against the Salafism of Sunni fundamentalists, resulting recently in the "Islamic State of Iraq" directly threatening Iran with an insurgency of its own. A meeting last week between US and Iranian officials in Iraq recognised the threat posed to all three nations, with Iran holding the potential olive branch of increased co-operation, possibly in exchange for the five Iranians the US has held in Iraq since January. At the very bottom of the whole issue is that Iran has greatly benefited from the US invasion, something else which Rumsfeld and co either forgot or simply didn't bother to plan for. Iran in 2003 was a place where it seemed possible that the liberal reformists were in the ascendancy: removing Saddam was a dream come true for conservatives, as has been the rise of the long repressed Shia majority in Iraq once their tormentor was removed. At the same time, the resulting encirclement of the country by the US has also enabled the hardliners to play the Great Satan card.

No one is pretending that both the United States and Iran are about to end over 20 years of animosity and bury the hatchet. Both though already recognise the common threats they face. It takes some chutzpah on the behalf of the United States to claim that it's Iran destablising the region, but it's only the crazies that are still thinking that Iran's nuclear programme necessitates a pre-emptive strike. This latest round of sabre-rattling and pork barrel politics only highlights the political bankruptcy of both countries' foreign policy, and how the continuing rise of irrationality shows no signs of even beginning to falter.

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8/01/2007 09:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

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