Paul Rogers | ukwatch.net

Talking Warheads

Ellie Keen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:12:09 +0000

When Saddam Hussein’s forces occupied Kuwait in August 1990, the US led a massive coalition to oust them. Having assembled 600,000 troops and 1,000 planes from more than 30 countries, Operation Desert Storm started in January 1991 with a huge air assault that was confidently expected to force out the Iraqis.

Within 24 hours, however, things had begun to look very different. Iraqi Scud missiles started hitting Israel, leading to a sustained diversion of effort as the Americans and their coalition allies tried to defuse this new threat. To make matters worse, the Iraqis also aimed Scuds at Saudi Arabia, one of them hitting a Marines depot killing 28 people, the worst US loss of life in the war.

Eight years later, it was revealed that another Scud strike had very nearly been catastrophic, and might have affected the outcome of the entire war. It landed in the sea 300 yards from a US Navy aviation support ship and near the amphibious warfare ship USS Tarawa. Both were moored alongside a pier complex at the Saudi port of Jubayl, which included a large ammunition storage dump and a parking lot for petrol tankers. If the Scud had hit its target instead of landing harmlessly in the sea, it could have set off a huge chain of explosions and fires, killing thousands.

Uncomfortable lessons

The 1991 Iraq War was widely seen as a great victory for the West, but behind the scenes in military circles some serious lessons were being learnt. What was expected to be a new world order, in which the ending of the Cold War and demise of the Soviet bloc would lead on to international stability rooted in Western economic and military power, now looked much less certain.

One far-sighted American writer, a former submarine commander called Roger W Barnett, succinctly highlighted the impact of ‘high technology weapons and weapons of mass destruction on the ability – and thus the willingness – of the weak to take up arms against the strong’.

A most uncomfortable lesson of the 1991 war was that a middle-ranking state such as Iraq (previously a close ally of Washington) could use crude 1960s missile technology to probe weak points in the armed forces of the world’s most powerful country.

As a result, during the 1990s, missile defence got a new lease of life. Billions of dollars were poured into ‘theatre missile defence systems’, designed to protect US forces and their allies when they are engaged in military operations in regions such as the Middle East. But the missile ‘threat’ was just one part of a much wider predicament that has brought nuclear weapons right back into the frame for the West.

Nukes for peace

The core problem is that maintaining a world peace centred on Western interests must involve a willingness to use force when those interests are threatened, whether that be in the Middle East, South West Asia or elsewhere. The US may now spend more on its military than every other country in the world combined, and its forces may be pre-eminent in their capabilities, but that does not prevent their use being constrained by crude but powerful deterrents fielded by otherwise weaker states.

Iraq’s Scud missiles were early examples of this, but a much more worrying combination, from the Pentagon’s perspective, is the development of small nuclear arsenals by potentially hostile states such as Iran and North Korea. The Pentagon gets even more concerned when these uncontrolled weapons are combined with delivery systems such as ballistic missiles. The Scuds that hit Dhahran and narrowly missed Jubayl were armed with conventional warheads, but even crude nuclear devices would be far more potent deterrents against Western military interventions.

One response is to call for a nuclear free world in which, cynics might say, conventional military power would rule supreme again; but most strategists don’t buy this. They call instead for robust nuclear forces to be retained indefinitely. This does not mean that arsenals will be kept at anything like the stupefying Cold War levels, but it does mean that nuclear weapons will be with us far into the future.

Just don’t mention the warheads

Britain is a good example of this thinking. It plans to replace its current Trident system of nuclear missiles in a couple of decades with new weapons designed to see the country through to the second half of the 21st century. Alongside them, the UK is planning to build two giant new aircraft carriers, the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy. These will give Britain a warfare capability that will be second only to the United States, enabling it to continue to fight alongside its ally in what it sees as crucial regions such as the immensely oil-rich Persian Gulf.

But what is the use of such warships if regional opponents have their own nuclear arsenals, however small? A 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier and its surrounding flotilla could be destroyed by a single nuclear weapon, so there has to be a back-up. This is where nuclear forces come in useful.

Britain, like the US, France and Russia, has been very careful not to rule out using nuclear weapons to attack first rather than limit their use to self-defence. It has also developed small nuclear warheads whose destructive power falls far short of the feared global cataclysms of the Cold War.

Last year’s White Paper on the Trident replacement did its best to avoid admitting to such thinking, but also had to avoid lying. It therefore limited discussion of such considerations to a couple of short phrases in an otherwise lengthy and detailed document – but these two phrases allowed Britain to maintain the option of first-use of a nuclear weapon as well as the need to have small nuclear weapons, without engaging in an embarrassing public debate as to why.

Moreover, to avoid all talk of nuclear war-fighting, the term ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon was abandoned a decade ago, to be replaced by the more anodyne ‘sub-strategic’, but even that has now been banned from the nuclear lexicon. In polite circles it is simply not the done thing to talk about actually using nuclear weapons.

A slippery slope

These new nuclear realities make it much more difficult for activists to campaign against a world in which nuclear weapons still play a central role. During the Cold War there was a small risk of an all-out nuclear war that would have devastated the Northern hemisphere and much of the rest of the world. We were peering into a nuclear abyss and although the risks might have been relatively small, the consequences would have been utterly disastrous. Now it is more like a slippery slope – a slow descent in which the lead nuclear states refuse to countenance any end to their nuclear dominance.

The risk is that some time in the next couple of decades, a regional crisis will ‘go nuclear’, with two possible outcomes. One is that it might escalate to a global nuclear war. Even if we are down to a few thousand warheads instead of the tens of thousands of the Cold War era, just a fraction of them would cause utter devastation across much of the world.

The other outcome is that a nuclear war stays within a particular region, killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people but not escalating to a global catastrophe. Apart from the dreadful immediate consequences, that could mean that we become accustomed to using nuclear weapons as instruments of warfare. The taboo that has held since Nagasaki
will have been broken, leading to a formidably more insecure world.

For the Western military establishment, nuclear weapons must remain at the centre of their overall approach to security. From their perspective, the coming decades will be fraught with unplanned and uncontrolled developments in which terrorism, extremism, rogue states, mass migration and many other threats all have to be contained. With the ending of the Cold War we had ‘slain the dragon’ – but in the words of one former CIA Director, James Woolsey, we now live in ‘a jungle full of poisonous snakes’. That jungle has to be tamed and controlled. That means we must have the back-stop of nuclear forces for the indefinite future.

Changing the Cold War mindset

The alternative is to recognize that such an outlook is self-defeating. It is best described as ‘liddism’ – keeping the lid on things rather than acknowledging the underlying problems. The main security issues for most of the world’s people are matters such as the widening socio-economic divide, climate change and resource scarcity. If the world’s élites try to close the castle gates and preserve their lifestyles, they will simply end up with an embittered environment in which everyone becomes less secure.

The very fact that nuclear weapons retain their salience is evidence of an utter lack of new thinking by our political leaders. We are still stuck with Cold War attitudes that are at least two decades out of date. But changing this mindset and moving towards an outlook that addresses the real security threats facing the world will require not just the efforts of dedicated anti-nuclear campaigners but the combined work of development and environment activists, North and South.

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.

Afghanistan: state of siege

tim — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:22:54 +0000

On 7 July 2008 a suicide-bomber detonated a large car-bomb at the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing fifty-four people and injuring more than 140. The embassy stands in one of the most secure parts of Afghanistan’s capital, yet this did not protect it from what security forces described as the worst bombing [1] in the city since the termination of the Taliban regime in November 2001. Taliban sources denied that the movement was responsible, while Afghan sources implied [2] (albeit without supporting evidence) a Pakistani intelligence connection. The high death-toll is in part attributable to the fact that many people were queuing at the embassy at the time; this may be a factor too in the Taliban reaction, for it has been a regular practice of the group to deny responsibility for attacks where large numbers of civilians are killed.

Whoever was responsible, the Indian embassy attack came at a time of escalating violence in Afghanistan marked by a number of high-profile paramilitary actions. These include an assassination attempt against President Hamid Karzai at a military parade on 27 April 2008), and the dramatic raid on Sarpoza prison in Kandahar which freed dozens of Taliban prisoners and which was followed by the seizure of several villages close to the city (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war [2]”, 19 June 2008). A day after the embassy attack, a bomb was found [3] on a bus carrying Indian workers in the province of Nimroz (where many Indian projects, including the strategic Zarang-Delaram highway project, are centred).

The seriousness of the situation in Afghanistan has led to the United States navy’s redeployment [4] of a carrier battle-group led by the aircraft-carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea; this will enable [5] US strike aircraft to provide further airpower in Afghanistan.

The problem with this response is the danger it carries of continuing the pattern of inflicting civilian deaths in misdirected air-strikes, which in turn provokes affected communities to turn against the coalition forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC [6]) estimates that in the period of 2-7 July 2008 alone, paramilitary violence and coalition military action together killed at least 250 civilians, and that deaths caused by US air power being a particular source of tension on the ground (see ICRC, “Civilians in the line of fire [7]”, 9 July 2008).

The question of deaths as a result of missile-strikes [8] is a source of great controversy. In two recent incidents, for example, there is dispute over the identity of the dead Afghans. Local Afghan officials claimed that the fifteen people who died in a US missile attack in Kunar province on 4 July [9] were civilians, while American spokespersons insisted that only militants were killed; Afghan officials were equally adamant that the at least twenty-seven victims of a missile attack on 6 July [10] included nineteen women and children, reportedly members of a group of around eighty or so people in a wedding party who were taking a rest while walking to the groom’s house.

Whatever the true circumstances of these and other cases [11], the killing of civilians by coalition forces is deeply unsettling and has added to the anti-western mood in many parts of the country already hard-pressed [12] by problems such as growing food insecurity. The pattern of civilian deaths also comes at a time when coalition sources are beginning to admit to the seriousness of the strategic predicament they face in Afghanistan.

A chain of influence

Each year since the Taliban regime was ended, foreign troop numbers in the country have risen; the single greatest increase has been since early 2007, with 20,000 additional troops arriving to take the overall total to around 66,000 (see the editorial, “Afghan Escalation [13]”, Washington Post, 6 July 2008). Despite this, the intensity of Taliban activity has also increased. Much of it is seasonal, with less fighting during the severe winter months, but even here there has been a change. In recent years, suicide-attacks in cities such as Kabul and Kandahar have increased overall, but they have also continued through the winter months.

For the US forces, the biggest surprise has been the growth in Taliban activity in the eastern part of the country. This region, close to the Pakistan border, has been garrisoned by US forces operating independently of Nato, and there have been frequent claims of progress over the past two years. The US forces and spokespersons have made pointed references to the contrast between their “success” and the difficulties experienced by British troops in Helmand province and the Canadians [14] in Kandahar.

Now, though, the US claims are sounding less assured. The newly-appointed US military commander for eastern Afghanistan, Major-General Jeffrey J Schloesser, has highlighted [15] the increased sophistication of the methods used by the insurgents as a factor in the rising violence. This has led to a near-doubling of the number [16] of US troops killed in the country in the first six months of 2008 compared with the similar period in 2007. What has become particularly noticeable has been the more widespread use of roadside bombs, with tactics developed in Iraq being deployed in Afghanistan (see Peter Spiegel & Julian E Barnes, “Afghan Attacks Rise, U.S. Says [17]”, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2008).

The escalation of violence in Afghanistan has two other elements. The first is a loss of support for the war in a number of Nato member-states that have committed troops. A Pew Global Attitudes Project [17]survey conducted in a number of Nato countries in April 2008 (even before the violence intensified in the following two months) found majority support for the withdrawal of Nato forces – ranging from 54% to 72% in countries including France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Turkey (see Jim Lobe, “Afghanistan Moves Back Into the Limelight [18]”, Inter Press Service, 3 July 2008).

The second element is the steady rise in power of Taliban and al-Qaida paramilitaries in western Pakistan. The Pakistan-based Taliban militias now have considerable influence [21] in many of the border districts of Pakistan, including parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies [22], and North Waziristan and South Waziristan.

This influence in turn has two effects. The first is that Taliban groups fighting in Afghanistan have safe havens across the border [23]; but if US forces mount raids into western Pakistan this simply stirs up more anti-American feelings across the country.

The second effect, and just as significant from a US perspective, is that the Taliban control has allowed al-Qaida to regenerate. An informed assessment is that there are as many as two thousand paramilitaries established in training camps in western Pakistan, up from several hundred three years ago (see Mark Mazzetti & David Rohde, “Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan [24]”, New York Times, 30 June 2008). The issue has been complicated by differences of opinion within the United States over the need for US forces, whether CIA, special forces or regular military, to operate within Pakistan. This remains unresolved but has become even more complicated by the uncertainties of politics within Pakistan itself (see Gary Thomas, “Instability, Uncertainty, Fuel Pakistan, Afghan Attacks [25]”, Voice of America, 8 July 2008).

A “winning fight”

Pervez Musharraf remains president, though his diminishing [26] influence means that his markedly pro-American outlook carries less weight. The coalition government remains in some disarray [27] over the president and other issues, but its overall mood – reflecting an even stronger popular feeling – is unwillingness [28] to allow greater US military involvement in the border districts. The bottom line, which is keenly recognised within the higher echelons of the Pakistani civil service, is that the population as a whole will simply not accept more US involvement. It has become a political non-starter.

The consequences for the US military are thoroughly negative. The senior Nato commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, states:

“The porous border has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border, as well as a greater freedom to resupply, to allow leadership to sustain stronger sanctuaries and to provide fighters across that border” (see Eric Schmitt, “Pakistan is said to be attracting insurgents [29]”, International Herald Tribune, 10 July 2008).

American military and intelligence sources are reporting a marked increase in the involvement of foreign fighters with Taliban militias in western Pakistan. These include young men from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and the Gulf states; since March 2008 the numbers have increased (according to an unnamed Pentagon official) “from a trickle to a steady stream”. This is part of a trend in which Pakistan and Afghanistan are now the focus of attention for paramilitaries intent on fighting western forces.

The International Herald Tribune report on this phenomenon is worth quoting at length:

“The American officials say the influx (of foreign fighters), which could be in the dozens but also could be higher, shows a further strengthening of the position of the forces of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, increasingly seen as an important base of support for the Taliban, whose forces in Afghanistan have become more aggressive in their campaign against American-led troops.

...American intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a ‘winning fight’, compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks recently.

Four senior military officials said that Al Qaeda was strengthening its increasingly close operational ties in the tribal areas with the Taliban and other various militant groups – financing, training recruits and facilitating attacks into Afghanistan, though not necessarily conducting attacks themselves.”

A decisive year

The accumulating result of these trends is a deteriorating security situation across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan, made worse by the Taliban/al-Qaida revival [30] across the border. A forceful United States government might have insisted on taking the war to Pakistan, even against the overwhelming opinion against this within that country. But the George W Bush administration is nearing the end of its term and is, in any case, far more preoccupied with Iran (see “Iraq task, Iran risk [30]”, 3 July 2008).

In April 2008 a number of analysts were suggesting that 2008 would be a decisive year for the seven-year war: either the Taliban would succumb to the overwhelming weaponry available to Nato and US forces, or the movement would increase its power. At the midpoint of the year, the latter view looks more accurate – so much so that Afghanistan might even exceed Iraq as an issue at the heart of the American presidential campaign.

Links:

[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_re_as/afghan_explosion
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5328140
[3] http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=454096&sid=NAT
[4] http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/08/carrier.moves/
[5] http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56054
[6] http://www.icrc.org/eng/afghanistan
[7] http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/afghanistan-news-090708%21…
[8] http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-07-09_D91QAEAO0&show_articl…
[9] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jkKFU8CvHoLV5ont_58iLTVBWLVQD91O9R500
[10] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008036533_afghan07.ht…
[11] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7498041.stm
[12] http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79162
[13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/05/AR200807…
[14] http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=8d56ddc9-9f6d-4f99…
[15] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-usafghan25-2008jun2…
[16] http://icasualties.org/oef/
[17] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/25/world/fg-usafghan25
[18] http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1567
[19] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[20] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[21] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080709/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanattacksin…
[22] http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?issue_id=3893
[23] http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/afghan_pak_border_map.htm
[24] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/washington/30tribal.html
[25] http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-08-voa51.cfm
[26] http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=172441
[27] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c93103c0-4dce-11dd-820e-000077b07658.html
[28] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkOyy6iVkNxhRAX9Mio7wSQxbnYQD91QM9R00
[29] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/10/asia/10terror.php
[30] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/world/asia/10terror.html?em&ex=1215748…

Iraq task, Iran risk

tim — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:27:43 +0000

The architects of the “war on terror” in the George W Bush administration will soon be leaving office. But the four months until the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 could be momentous. In Iraq and Iran, what happens in the next four months – or does not happen – will shape events in the next four years and even beyond (see “Washington’s choice: subdue Iran, secure Iraq”, 12 June 2008).

The current level of conflict in Iraq is lower than for most of the period since the start of the war in March-April 2003, but it continues at a substantial level. The United States military’s losses have also been on a declining trend [1], but it still lost twenty-nine people in June 2008, an increase from nineteen in May. But this is far from the only index [2] of the fragility of the current security environment, as two recent incidents and one longer-term factor show.

The first incident is a US military raid on 27 June 2008 on the town of Janaja in southern Iraq that killed a civilian reported to be a relative of Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The operation involved sixty US soldiers as well as Apache helicopter-gunships; did not include Iraqi units; and was apparently conducted without the knowledge of the provincial authorities, even though Karbala province was supposed to have been under Iraqi control. The response [3] of the Iraqis was, not surprisingly, sharp (see Hannah Allam & Sahar Issa, “U.S. Raid Angers Iraq [4]”, Miami Herald, 28 June 2008).

The second is a suicide-bombing attack in Anbar province on 28 June that killed twenty-three people including three US marines, which an al-Qaida insurgent group said that it had perpetrated (see Alissa J Rubin, “Group Claims Responsibility for Iraq Attack [5]”, New York Times, 29 June 2008). The attack was targeted [6] against local Sunni leaders who were supporters of the anti-al-Qaida “awakening movement”, and the militant responsible had been a member of the movement. It was, in short, an “inside job”.

The trend is the construction right across Baghdad of a network of walls designed to separate armed factions and communities. These have contributed to the decrease in violence, but have also produced a prison-like environment that is resented by many citizens (see Hamza Hendawi, “Iraqis Say Walls Protect But Feel Like Prison [7]”, Associated Press, 28 June 2008).

The Iraq outlook

Beyond the immediate security environment, two large developments are a signal of Washington’s current strategic thinking in relation to Iraq. The first is the opening up of Iraqi oil reserves to thirty-five companies in a bidding competition to increase oil production. At the outset the process involves six oilfields, though five short-term contracts are also being offered to American and European companies (see Sudarsan Raghavan & Steven Mufson, “Iraq Opens Oil Fields to Global Bidding [8]”, Washington Post, 1 July 2008).

The opening of the Iraqi oil industry to private companies represents a major departure from the nationalised industry of the Saddam Hussein era. Such a process was an early aim of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA [9]) established in the wake of the US invasion as the key instrument of US political control in the post-Saddam flux. Many believed and more hoped that a partially functioning Iraqi government has been able to take an independent line on this issue, though it now appears that the process of privatisation has been closely overseen by a group of American advisers. This group itself, moreover, was led by a team from the US state department, thus giving the George W Bush administration a direct role in the process (see Andrew E Kramer, “U.S. helped Iraqis on oil contracts [10]”, International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008).

This series of columns has consistently argued that the primary purpose of the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime was less to gain control of Iraq’s oil reserves, even if they were around four times the size of US domestic reserves; rather, it was the location of Iraq in a region containing nearly two-thirds of all of the world’s oil that was more significant (see, for example, “Iraq’s danger signals [10]”, 13 December 2007). Nonetheless, the manner in which Iraq’s oil is coming under external control does begin to give some credence to those who claim a more direct connection between Iraq’s oil and the decision to go to war.

The plan to expand Iraqi oil production carries a real concern for its designers: that the pipelines and processing plants will be vulnerable to the kind of insurgent activity that inflicted such enormous economic damage in 2004-05. This fear may be connected with the second large development – the plan to maintain US military forces at current levels for at least until mid-2009. The last of the five additional combat-brigades that formed the year-long US “surge” is now departing the country, but plans are already underway to bring 30,000 fresh troops into the country early in 2009 (see Lolita C Baldor, “U.S. To Send 30,000 Troops To Iraq [11]”, Associated Press, 28 June 2008). These will replace existing contingents in a routine fashion, but what is less remarked is their effect on overall US deployment; namely, that that 142,000 troops will remain in Iraq, a number actually 7,000 more than were present before the surge began in February 2007.

It is always possible that violence will decrease to the extent that further withdrawals can take place, but the Pentagon is not currently planning for this. Its calculation is most likely based on a real fear that many of the insurgents are lying low and will return to the conflict in the coming months. If this proves correct, then a likely target will be Iraq’s oil installations just as foreign companies are moving in. This too will become clear by November 2008.

The Iran prospect

The Pentagon’s current preparation for a major long-term military presence in Iraq is accompanied by a sharpening of rhetoric over the putative threat posed by Iran’s nuclear plans. Most of this is at present emanating from some Israeli commentators and some of the Washington-based think-tanks and policy groups that identify themselves with what they imagine Israel’s national interest to be.

Most analysts are aware of the capacity of the Iranians to respond to any military attack by the United States or Israel in numerous ways, by (for example) escalating tension in Iraq or engineering a massive spike in crude oil prices. This often leads them as a result to discount the risk of an attack on Iran. Against this, some circles in Washington argue that Iran’s capacity to react has been much overplayed; in this view, Iran is actually far weaker than is commonly appreciated (see Seymour M Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield [12]”, New Yorker, 7 July 2008). The conclusion is that now may be a good time to demonstrate resolve by targeting Tehran’s nuclear facilities, however limited they might currently be (see Gareth Porter, “‘Weak’ Iran ripe to be attacked [13]”, Asia Times, 1 July 2008).

What has always to be remembered in weighing the effect of these nuances is that there is a bottom-line for Israel: namely, there must never be another country in the region that has nuclear weapons – deterrence must work only one way if Israel is to be secure. In addition, a strong thread within hardline Israeli political thinking in the present political conjuncture (though opinion on the matter is not uniform) is that a Barack Obama presidency would be bad news. He may have sounded hardline over Iran in his speech [14] to Aipac on 4 June 2008, but Obama is seen as a highly intelligent politician with a worrying streak of independence in him (see “Iran and the American election [14]”, 5 June 2008).

It is troubling, then – a matter of concern to those in Israel and Washington who seek to resolve the Iran issue by force – that Obama is ahead of John McCain in the opinion polls. Perhaps, in such uncertain and unpredictable circumstances, now is the time to pre-empt Iranian nuclear developments – whatever the costs – rather than wait for an Obama victory and the nightmare prospect of talking to the enemy?

These, then, are the four months that will determine the future of the region and much of the world – not least the long-term security of the state of Israel – for years ahead. Iran and Iraq at the heart of present concern, though the security deterioration in other areas deserves to be noted: Afghanistan and Pakistan (see Julian E Barnes & Peter Spiegel, “Afghanistan Attacks Rise, U.S. Says [15]”, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2008), and parts of north Africa (see Michael Moss, “Algerian militants win new lease on life as Al Qaeda affiliate [16]”, International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008). Whether the incoming White House tenant faces the ashes of a new landscape of war or merely the fallout of the old one, the world is in for a long and bumpy ride.

Links:

[1] http://icasualties.org/oif/
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR200807…
[3] http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080629/ts_nm/iraq_raid_dc_1
[4] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/586350.html
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?ref=middl…
[6] http://www.metimes.com/Politics/2008/06/28/qaeda_claims_iraq_suicide_bom…
[7] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_inside_the_walls…
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/01/ST20080701…
[9] http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/cpa/
[10] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/30/business/contracts.php
[11] http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=116&sid=1430221
[12] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh/?yrail
[13] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JG02Ak04.html
[14] http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/HQblog/gG5CKp
[15] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/25/world/fg-usafghan25
[16] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/africa/01algeria.php

Prisons of war, furnaces of radicalism

tim — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:20:22 +0000

A long-term consequence of the Iraq war is the production of a new generation of young paramilitaries with combat experience in urban environments against the world’s best equipped army (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war”, 19 June 2008). Even if the conflict in Iraq does ease in the coming months, the experience of combat there will serve well an al-Qaida movement that measures its aims in decades rather than years.

The battalions of paramilitaries in Afghanistan that fought against Soviet conscripts in the 1980s war operated in a largely rural environment, in a conflict very different from its successor. Indeed, in one of the many “blowback [1]” effects of the “war on terror”, the methods and technologies that have been learned in Iraq have now been exported back to Afghanistan. The use of roadside-bombs, for example, has escalated alarmingly in the first half of 2008, demonstrating the skills of Taliban militias as they develop their guerrilla tactics.

The jail blowback

If the combat experience gained in Iraq has been one aid to the paramilitary movements, another has been the unexpected effect of the holding [2] by the United States and its allies of large numbers of people without trial, sometimes for years on end. The overall figures are difficult to assess, although there were indications in 2007 that at least 120,000 people have been detained since 9/11. The great majority of these have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the incarcerated [3] also include some thousands of people across the middle east and south Asia, and hundreds in Europe.

Some details surface [4] from time to time. It is known, for example, that the United States forces in Afghanistan are building a new prison at Bagram capable of housing 600 longterm and up to 1,100 short-term prisoners (see “A world beyond control” [4], 22 May 2008). This is in addition to, and outside the control of, the Afghan prison system. The numbers are far higher in Iraq, where the US forces are currently detaining 21,000 Iraqis – a number exceeded by thousands more held in Iraqi prisons. The American-held number represents a decrease of 4,000 from mid-2007, though US contractors are in the process of building new prisons in the country, such as one in Taji near Baghdad (see Walter Pincus, “U.S. Official Cites ‘Hardening’ Of Iraqi Detainees [5]”, Washington Post, 10 June 2008).

In addition, there is a constant throughput of detainees as new people are imprisoned and others are released. At present, thirty people are detained and imprisoned by US forces every day, while fifty are released. This explains the net drop in overall numbers but also means that, at current rates, about 10,000 more Iraqis experience detention in the US system each year.

US sources report that their own personnel are getting more efficient at determining which detainees are the most radical and will be kept in prison for long periods of time. They estimate that there are approximately 8,000 detainees who cannot be proved to have committed crimes under the Iraqi judicial system and cannot therefore be handed over to the Iraqi for trial. These are people, though, who are deemed to pose such serious security threats that they must be incarcerate even without judicial process.

What this means is that there are many thousands of “hard-core” detainees in the prisons who are interacting repeatedly with much greater numbers coming through the system. It has to be remembered that all of these people are being detained without trial [6] by what is seen as a foreign occupying force. The potential for radicalisation within prison, let alone the impact on their friends and families, is therefore considerable.

In a related issue, there has been recurrent concern within the British prison system that convicted Muslim prisoners will do their best to proselytise fellow Muslim convicts in prison for non-political offences (see Jamie Doward, “Extremists train young convicts for terror plots [7]”, Observer, 15 July 2007). The chief prisons inspector, Anne Owers, drew attention to this issue in supporting the work of Muslim chaplains while highlighting a lack of training for prison officers (see Dominic Casciani, “Warning over jail radicalisation [8]”, BBC News, 14 April 2008).

The enemy effect

The worries reflected in the British reports are shared elsewhere. The most striking example comes from the most closely guarded and controversial detention centre – Guantánamo in Cuba (see David Rose, “Guantá [8]namo: America’s war on human rights [8]”, 23 September 2004). A remarkable report by one of the best informed of US journalists, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers, gives some indication of the extent of the problem (see Tom Lasseter, “How Guantánamo became a terror training ground [9]”, Miami Herald, 17 June 2008).

He starts with an example that is worth quoting in full: “Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.” “US troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from the Guantánamo Bay detention camp the following year, however – after more than twelve months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers – he’d made connections to high-level militants.” “In fact, he had become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 ‘most wanted’ playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan – with Osama bin Laden at the top – Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.”

The detention

In a detailed survey by the McClatchy newspaper group [12], sixty-six former Guantánamo detainees were interviewed and gave a picture of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners that served to build up considerable anger, resentment and above all, a pervasive anti-American mood. What also became clear, both from former detainees and some informal contacts in the US defence department, was that convinced Islamists were adept at using the prison system and the feelings of ordinary detainees to build up a group of potential recruits to their cause.

Some of the techniques were sophisticated, even if they were exploiting the kinds of structures and lines of communication that exist in most prisons. After the original Camp X-ray at Guantánamo had been replaced by Camp Delta, the detention-centre [13] was organised into a series of units that varied in the severity of treatment depending on the perceived security threats from detainees. Those considered most dangerous and difficult were assigned to the most secure units whereas others, including many prisoners with no jihadist connections, were assigned to easier units.

However, even middle-ranking al-Qaida supporters were sufficiently experienced to avoid drawing attention to themselves, so that they could end up in an “easy” unit where they could concentrate on proselytising other inmates. As Lasseter puts it: “An angry cab driver from Kabul… may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three [high security] than an al Qaeda militant was.” Furthermore, senior al-Qaida leaders could order middle-level supporters to cause trouble so that they would end up in a high security unit, enabling them to deliver messages as part of an effective communications network.

Lasseter’s report is primarily significant because it is describing circumstances in a particularly high-security detention centre that is very well resourced and has a substantial staff of guards and detention specialists. In Iraq, the US military are dealing with tens of thousands of detainees, the great majority of whom do not turn out to be dangerous insurgents or paramilitary radicals. If even Guantánamo, with all its security and organisation, can be a paramilitary recruiting-station, then much larger and more loosely organised prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan may well be far more potent.

What this suggests, yet once more, is that yet another part of America’s “war on terror” – the detention of over 120,000 people – stands to be deeply counterproductive. The end results may not become clear for years or even decades but, once again, the United States is inadvertently doing al-Qaida’s job for it.

Links:
[1] http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84601/peter-bergen-alec-r…
[2] http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_detentions
[3] http://www.gulfnews.com/world/U.S.A/10213354.html
[4] http://www.ghostplane.net/AboutTheBook
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR200806…
[6] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/index.htm
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347643.stm
[9] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/572714.html
[10] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[11] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[12] http://www.mcclatchy.com/102/story/354.html
[13] http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/27970res20070111.html

Afghanistan in an Amorphous War

Ellie Keen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:53:14 +0000

An incident causing major loss of life in Iraq, and an enduring pattern of low-level violence in north Africa, have created concern that the cautious sense of progress in the campaign against al-Qaida in recent months may prove more apparent than real. Even these serious events, however, are overshadowed by evidence of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. At the same time, all these theatres of the global "war on terror" share underlying affinities that United States strategy in this war is tending to reinforce.

The Iraqi incident was a car-bomb attack on a crowded Baghdad market on 17 June 2008 which killed sixty-three people and wounded seventy-eight. This, the most destructive explosion in the city since 6 March, was all the more painful for coming at a time when a certain optimism about Iraq's security and wider prospects was achieving traction (see "Iraq starts to fix itself", Economist, 12 June 2008). A further aspect of this was the declining number of victims, both American (in May 2008, nineteen soldiers died, the lowest monthly total than in any month since the war began in March 2003) and Iraqi (civilian casualties were also at a relatively low level in May – although still in the hundreds).

These signs of improvements had done much to support the view – expressed most vocally on the American right, but shared by others too – that the war in Iraq was, or was becoming, winnable. Those sympathetic to John McCain in the presidential campaign suggest that he should make this theme (and his broader support for the war and the US's military "surge" strategy) a centrepiece of his contest with Barack Obama (see Charles Krauthammer, "McCain must make case for Iraq", Newsday, 19 Jun 2008). The implication here is that Iraq is and will remain what it has been – the pivot of the entire "war on terror", where the now-expected destruction of what is termed "al-Qaida in Iraq" is a sign of decisive progress in the war as a whole.

The Afghan landscape

The progress that has been made in increasing security for many Iraqi citizens – partly through the social division of much of the population by repeated bouts of fighting and expulsion, partly through the deals made with elements of the Sunni community against al-Qaida forces, partly though the exhaustions of war – is given as justification of this optimistic view. This approach, however, tends to ignore other, more uncomfortable pointers to the al-Qaida movement's condition – including the attack on 2 June on the Danish embassy in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad; and a series of bombings on 4-8 June in Algeria that killed a number of people (the precise total is in dispute). The most important of these trends is the upsurge in violence in Afghanistan. In May 2008, the deaths among coalition troops in that country exceeded those in Iraq for the first time; June has also been marked by numerous hits against British troops, which took the total killed in the war to 106.

There had earlier been a widespread anticipation that the summer months would see a renewed Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, although there was also some caution about the prospect of major attacks (see "Al-Qaida's afterlife", 29 May 2008). The fact that overwhelming firepower is available to Nato forces has made it all the more likely that Taliban and other militias would opt to diversify and "miniaturise" its tactics, including the use of roadside- and suicide-bombs.

The war in Afghanistan has been attracting less media attention in the United States than that in Iraq, and the evolving reportage of the presidential campaign may accentuate the contrast (see Jim Malone, "Iraq: The Defining Difference Between McCain, Obama", VOA, 13 June 2008). But inside the Pentagon it was becoming clear that the security problem there was rapidly developing, in part because many districts in western Pakistan had become safe havens for Taliban, al-Qaida and other militias.

The US response to this increased threat has been threefold:

increase troop levels in Afghanistan and seek to take overall responsibility for the counterinsurgency war, at least in the southern and southeastern parts of the country
pressurise Pakistan to limit militia operations in its own western districts

make a determined effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

An announcement by Britain's ministry of defence series of incidents in which British troops were killed led the country's Britain's ministry of defence to announce a further increase of 230 in troop numbers, taking the total to around 8,030 by spring 2009 – though this was linked to a claim that the Taliban were in retreat rather than making gains. This bullish assessment contrasted with a more cautious measure of the condition of security in Afghanistan from the senior US army commander in the country, General Dan K McNeill, at the end of his sixteen-month posting on 3 June (see Ann Scott Tyson, "A Sober Assessment of Afghanistan", Washington Post, 15 June 2008).

McNeill emphasised that the last three years had seen a gradual resurgence of Taliban activity. At the same time, the number of troops operating under Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had risen over a three-year period to 53,000 from forty countries. But this was not enough, McNeill contended: a much larger troop deployment would be required if the Taliban militias were to be defeated.

The Taliban vision

Three major developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan that took place within days of McNeill's departure from the country both underpinned his judgment and gave an indication of the likely course of events in summer 2008.

The first was the killing on 10 June of eleven members of Pakistan's official Frontier Corps as a result of a US air-strike. Some reports say that the Pakistani troops were actually aiding a Taliban group under attack by US and Afghan troops close to the border. This has not been confirmed, but it would not be entirely surprising, given local sympathies for fellow-Pushtun Pakistani paramilitaries in some parts of the Pakistani army (see Anna Mulrine, "Pakistan's Border Badlands Are a Challenge for the Next President", US News & World Report, 13 June 2008.

More important, though, is the reaction within Pakistan to this event. The loss of life has intensified a deep-seated public antipathy to the United States and its conduct of its "war on terror". The killing of the Frontier Corps soldiers will make it difficult for a Pakistani government of any persuasion to work with Washington. Moreover, the incident comes at a time when the Pentagon's closest ally in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf – still the country's president, though weakened after the elections of February 2008 – is facing severe political challenges to his authority, and may even be obliged to resign in the next few weeks (see Syed Saleem Shahzad, "US strike hits Pakistan's raw nerve", Asia Times, 12 June 2008).

The second development was the extraordinary break-out from Sarpoza prison in Kandahar, in an operation planned and executed by Taliban elements. In a coordinated assault where the explosion of a bomb hidden in a road-tanker was followed by a direct paramilitary invasion of the city's main prison, several hundred Taliban prisoners were released. The incident is all the more serious because (as is perhaps not fully appreciated in the western media) Kandahar is one of the main centres of coalition military resources in Afghanistan, host (for example) to its second-largest air base.

The third development compounded the Taliban attack on the jail. This was the deployment of at least 500 paramilitaries to overrun a number of villages close to Kandahar. At the same time, the combination of the jail attack and the subsequent offensive is unlikely to mark the start of a Taliban operation to take control of Kandahar, since Nato with all its firepower will not allow that to happen. What is more probable is that this operation is a show of strength, and the prelude to a Nato counter-offensive which the Taliban forces will respond to by melting away until the next opportunity is chosen.

The two actions show is that the Taliban militias do not have to limit their operations to small-scale guerrilla attacks; the level of their support means that they are well beyond that and can engage in large-scale offensives too, at a time of their own choosing.

More generally, the Taliban strategists will see this as one part of the early stage of a decades-long war; they do not have to win in the conventional military sense, they merely have to outlast those foreign forces seen as the occupiers, especially in the face of divisions within Nato (see Anna Mulrine, "A Struggling Coalition of the Willing and the Not-So-Willing", US News & World Report, 16 June 2008).

The global horizon

These recent developments in Afghanistan confirm that the focus of the US "war on terror" may really be shifting eastwards. At the very moment when neo-conservative elements in Washington speak of winning the Iraq war, that very war is becoming less relevant in the context of the larger picture. The US insistence on maintaining a very large military presence there indicates that the Iraq war is far from reaching its endgame, but in one sense it has already served its purpose (see Tom Englehardt, "The Greatest Story Never Told: Finally, the US Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News", TomDispatch.com, 15 June 2008).

More than five years of fighting in Iraq have given the wider al-Qaida / jihadist movement a new generation of paramilitaries trained against well-armed and equipped US soldiers and marines. Many of the tactics honed in Iraq are now being applied in Afghanistan, not least in the form of roadside bombs and the tactical nous employed to avoid Nato's air power (see Caroline Gammell & Tom Coghlan, "The increasing sophistication of Afghanistan's roadside bombs", Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2008). All this, combined with the persistent uncertainties in Iraq, and the significant and under-reported currents in north Africa, means that the "war on terror" has moved on.

Whether they are right or wrong, those who claim that Iraq is or is becoming a success fail to realise that the country's importance in the global arena of conflict is diminishing. This has been the recurrent story of the George W Bush administration's "war on terror". It is a further reason to argue that, in the absence of fundamental changes of approach, the world is still in the early stages of a decades-long confrontation.

Al-Qaida’s afterlife

tim — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:08:11 +0000

A number of current trends in Afghanistan are of far more than local significance. The pattern of violence is the most visible: for example, a series of attacks on 26-27 May 2008 killed [1] thirty seven people (among them police officers, soldiers, and bus passengers) in the provinces of Kandahar, Farah, Khost and Nimroz. But armed action and the bloodshed it causes are also the surface manifestation of a strategic reordering that is inserting the Afghan conflict into regional and even global realities in new ways.

These incidents reflect the fact that many of the paramilitary groups in the country [2] (and not just the Taliban) have become cautious about frontal assaults on western forces and are instead laying roadside- and suicide-bombs (see “Afghanistan’s Vietnam portent [2]”, 17 April 2008). The tactic is routinely directed against Afghan police and army units, as well as government officials and NGO workers (mostly local, since a majority of international agencies have withdrawn).

This incremental rise [3] in the level of violence may continue after the opium-poppy harvest, though so too in all probability will the current minimal level of western media coverage (diminishing to near-invisibility in the United States). But if the media and publics are less than engaged in this, the first theatre [4] of the “war of terror” after the assaults of 11 September 2001, the Pentagon is treating events in Afghanistan [5] with utmost seriousness – and ever greater ambition.

A military-political purpose

A 2,400-strong force of US marines is now deployed in Helmand province, reportedly with as much air support as the British ground forces in the same province (which number 7,300). There are indications that further US contingents amounting to 7,000 extra troops will be deployed; inaddition, the operations in Afghanistan’s embattled [6] southern region will be transferred from Nato to direct US control (see “A war of money as well as bullets [7]”, Economist, 24 May 2008). British, Dutch and Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan have, notwithstanding differences of approach with the US, won a certain professional respect from US military commanders.

But deep divisions among these distinct Nato forces remain, and they are not helped by continuing resource constraints (US demands at the Nato conference [8] in Bucharest in April 2008 for its allies to contribute more have had little effect, apart from a few hundred additional French troops). The result is an American plan (born partly out of frustration) to substantially increase the firepower within the country. But this is only one part of a programme that places as much emphasis on events on the other side of the border with Pakistan.

Two aspects of the Afghan dimension of this agenda are central. The first is to intensify pressure [11] on the Pakistani government over its attitude to Pakistani Taliban leaders – in favour of a tougher approach, rather than continue with the present policy of local negotiations (see Bill Roggio, “Pakistan strikes deal with the Taliban in Mohmand [12]”, Long War Journal, 28 May 2008).

From Islamabad’s perspective, the advantage of the latest phase of its deal-making policy (highlighted in September 2006 when a formal agreement [13] was made with Taliban fighters in the region of North Waziristan) is that this will help ease tensions in the frontier districts. Washington takes a different view: that it creates entire zones free of any government authority where Taliban militias can operate (reminiscent of the territories held by the Farc guerrillas in Colombia [13]). The US military wants to expand its ability to operate in these districts – as does the CIA. Both have already stepped up their activities in the region, such as aerial surveillance and ground-based intelligence (the latter from new posts just inside Afghanistan).

The current state of Pakistani politics complicates this project. The elections [13]Â of 18 February 2008 have opened a new phase of instability, characterised by divisions among the leading parties and personalities (see Irfan Husain, “Pakistan’s rivalrous coalition [13]”, 19 May 2008); but the formation of a new government has also constrained further the ability of the president, Pervez Musharraf, to ensure that Pakistan accedes to American demands. Musharraf was already isolated in his pro-US stance before he was forced to allow a return to (albeit flawed) electoral democracy; now the political leaders are more able to represent the broadly anti-American mood of the country (see Jonathan Manthorpe, “Democracy in Pakistan makes it tougher for its allies [14]’, Vancouver Sun, 28 May 2008).

The power of Pakistan’s military and the rooted influence of the US in the region mean that these US efforts to increase operations in western Pakistan – to, for example, interrupt the Taliban’s delivery of supplies and personnel across the border into Afghanistan – will not be halted altogether. But the Americans now have to tread more carefully with their Pakistani “ally”. The second Afghan aspect of the US’s plan in Pakistan is equally significant: a new-found determination to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A meeting seems to have taken place at a US base in Qatar to plan an operation to this effect, attended by General David Petraeus (the incoming heads of US Central Command), and Anne Petersen (the American ambassador to Pakistan (see Syed Saleem Shahzad, “In the Footsteps of Osama [15]”, Asia Times, 28 May 2008). The focus was on the areas where bin Laden is assumed [16] to operate: western Pakistani areas such as Bajaur Agency [17]Â and neighbouring districts of Nuristan province.

The US’s triple aim, then, is:

to pressure Pakistan to limit [18] negotiations with militia-controlled areas of its own country

to increase its force-level in Afghanistan to enable it to take full control of military operations in

the most violent parts of the country

to intensify the operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

All three aspects, if reflected in actual achievement, would have an important public-relations component. The first and second would be portrayed in terms of effective counterinsurgency policy and action that parallel the advances championed in Iraq (even if the latter are less impressive on close inspection; see “The Iraqi whirlwind [18]”, 3 April 2008). The third objective would be especially welcomed by a George W Bush administration desperate for signs of tangible proof that the “war on terror” is bring won; it would also burnish a discreditable presidential record and may help secure a continuation of Republican control of the White House, while reducing the scale of any electoral reversals in Congress.

A life in death

Such outcomes represent very much the optimal scenario for the United States over the next four months. But even if this arrived by the time the votes are cast, it could not possibly end the serious problems posed by the current he has embodied. True, the death or detention of Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly have an impact on the al-Qaida movement, not least in curtailing some of the funding coming from Saudi Arabia, where the aura of bin Laden’s leadership still carries a cachet (see Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: The Story of a Family and its Fortune [19] [Penguin, 2008]). At the same time, al-Qaida is a far looser entity than in 2001: a new generation of leaders is coming to the fore, and bin Laden himself is increasingly a figurehead rather than a formative influence on this dispersed and often pervasive transnational entity.

Moreover, his death (and to a degree that of al-Qaida’s chief ideologue, Ayman al-Zawahiri) would make him a “martyr” to more than his followers; while his detention (assuming the Americans would be able or prepared to take him alive – and that the “surprise” is not in the other [20] direction) would have the effect of creating a worryingly unpredictable and uncontrollable media cycle and legal process (see “A world beyond control [20]”, 22 May 2008). In strict military terms too, the precedent of Saddam Hussein’s capture [20] in December 2003 – which the Americans confidently predicted would lead to the collapse of the Iraq insurgency, and did no such thing – does not augur well here.

But the Iraqi insurgency has been confined to Iraq. The wider point is that in the years since the “war on terror” was launched, a largely unrecognised process has transformed the Taliban and its partner militias from an Afghan-centred movement with ethnic and nationalist elements to a much more globally-orientated jihadist one (see Malise Ruthven, “The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists [21]”, 29 May 2008). In this light, even “success” for American forces in their current endeavours may well be the seed of further failure.

For if US forces deploy to greater effect in the region – and especially if they capture or kill theirtwo main human targets [22] – the domestic political effect would be more likely to favour the continuation of a hardline military policy by Washington in 2009. That, though, would be just what bin Laden’s successors – who, like their “martyr”, measure in decades the conflict they are involved in – want. Another four years of sustained US military involvement in the middle east and southwest Asia will be sweet indeed for the jihadist camp. In that case, Osama bin Laden’s sacrifice will not have been in vain: indeed, it would symbolise and reinforce the trends that are making the conflict in AfghanistanÂ part of a still-evolving global confrontation.

Links:
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0529/p99s01-duts.html
[2] http://geology.com/world/afghanistan-satellite-image.shtml
[3] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-afghan-pakistan_barkermay24,0,521…
[4] http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FactSheets/OperationsFactsheets/Operat…
[5] http://www.operations.mod.uk/mapping/Afghanistan.jpg
[6] http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/maps/images/maps/afghan_violence
[7] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11402695
[8] http://blogs.sipri.org/Afghanistan/my-first-blog-entry
[9] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[10] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[11] http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jk2aVRuVhP0HgNAsCVkEplizhCrA
[12] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/05/pakistan_strikes_dea.php
[13] http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0908/p01s04-wosc.html
[14] http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/
story.html?id=d390ebe1-47c4-42b9-b767-71aab0b33f47
[15] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE28Df01.html
[16] http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=10…
[17] http://bp1.blogger.com/_h5L0bq0pIhY/R3tSY1ixILI/AAAAAAAAAbg/I_59rNcK0fU/...
[18] http://www.cfr.org/publication/16317/
[19] http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781846141249,00.html
[20] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,544921,00.html
[21] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21438
[22] http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080528/FOREIGN/546311031/1103/ART&Pr…

The war for understanding

tim — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:30:18 +0000

A tendency shared by government policy and establishment media coverage in regard to major issues is that it becomes so routine as to lose an important component of any responsible behaviour: self-awareness. The point is highlighted by the way that the western states in the vanguard of the “war on terror”, the United States and the United Kingdom, are focusing more and more resources on internal security (especially counter-terrorism) even as they and the countries’ leading media organisations portray their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as in essence benign and inconsequential. The result is that so much of the reality they are dealing with remains beyond their grasp.

An important illustration is the British government’s determined expansion of the country’s domestic anti-terrorism [1] forces, which has received far less publicity example than (for example) its attempt to extend the detention without charge of suspects in such cases to forty-two days. There will soon be 7,000 police and support-staff in England and Wales alone working exclusively on counter-terrorism activities, in addition to those among the staff of the security service (MI5 [2]), which has near-doubled in size.

The central component of these police activities is the London based Counter Terrorism Command [3] (launched in October 2006), for which the lead force is the Metropolitan Police. This much-expanded command is being supplemented by eight new centres across the country: three Counter Terrorism Units (with a total of 2,000 staff) based in Leeds [4], Manchester and Birmingham, sharing headquarters with MI5’s new regional offices; and five new Counter Terrorism Intelligence Units based in the east Midlands, east, southeast, southwest, and Wales, with a sixth reported to be in train that would cover the Thames valley area west of London.There is, too, an increase of such forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

These plans build on the establishment (in 2003) of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre [5] and (in 2007) of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism. They are also part of the overall national-security strategy announced [6] by Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown in March 2008, whose other components include greater surveillance of cyberspace [6] and more resources for the state’s monitoring agency, GCHQ.

It is expensive work. The government’s spending on counter-terrorism and intelligence rose from £1 billion in 2001 to £2.5 billion in 2008, and will rise [7] to £3.5 billion by 2010-11. By contrast, educational and other programmes to combat domestic political radicalisation and extremism [8], though also increasing, will cost about £24 million a year in 2008-10 – around 1% of the counter-terrorism and intelligence budget. True, more money is going into what is termed “tackling violent extremism and promoting greater understanding” abroad, mainly involving (again) educational projects in the middle east and southwest Asia (especially Pakistan), but even this amounts to barely 5% of spending on domestic counter-terrorism.

The problem here, however, is not a deficit of resources but of understanding. What still appears almost entirely lacking in government circles is awareness and acknowledgment of the impact [10]of Britain’s role in the “war on terror” on opinion among young Muslims in Britain. This was typified by Tony Blair, who remained committed to the war and to the idea of victory in Iraq to the end [10] of his term as prime minister on 27 June 2007; but the connection is still not being made almost a year later.

The Fallujah echo

Many examples of how this deficiency of understanding deforms public policy and discussion could be made. Two, one each from Iraq and Afghanistan, offer different kinds of lesson.

The Iraqi example is the enduring impact of the United States assault on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004. This was part of a cycle of tensions in the city rooted in the killing of civilians by US forces in the early stages of the war in 2003; these reached a gruesome point in April 2004, when US marines tried to take control of the city after an angry crowd had killed four American security contractors, then mutilated and burned their bodies. The intense effort failed; within a few months Fallujah was seen as the epicentre of the entire Iraq insurgency, and the Americans were determined to try again (see “Fallujah fallout [10]”, 11 November 2004).

A force of over 10,000 US army and marine-corps personnel was assembled, and an intensive two-week assault cleared the city was of insurgent elements. But the apparent success was short-lived, as many of the insurgents simply relocated elsewhere (including to Mosul, scene of an almost instantaneous surprise attack). More seriously, the impact of the Fallujah operation in the United States and across the middle east differed greatly (see “Victory in Iraq [10]”, 15 December 2005).

In the US, the taking of Fallujah was seen as a great victory in the wider war on terror. Many journalists and film crews were “embedded” with the troops, and they reported and broadcast graphic images of tracer-bullets arcing through the sky and across the river into the city (including spectacular examples of shells hitting mosques). The Pentagon’s public-relations teams went into overdrive; at the moment of George W Bush’s re-election to a second term as president, it was a timely demonstration that the US’s enemies could be faced down in their home territory and defeated. Iraq could be portrayed as a worthwhile and perfectly winnable war.

Most western media reports showed the Fallujah attack almost exclusively from the US military perspective, but Arabic and middle-eastern satellite channels such as al-Jazeera showed another side of reality (see “No direction home [10]”, 25 November 2004). This included many bodies lying in the streets, the wreckage of most public buildings and nearly 20,000 houses (half the city’s dwellings) destroyed or badly damaged. They also reported that several thousand civilians had been killed and that 200,000 refugees had fled the fighting.

Fallujah was known across Iraq (and even beyond) as the “city of mosques”, and the attack was seen straightforwardly as an assault on an Islamic centre by an occupying power engaged in an illegal and atrocious war. Americans saw Fallujah in November 2004 as a great and justified success; many in the region saw it as the Arab equivalent of 9/11 (see “Iraq in the mirror of Fallujah [10]”, 21 July 2005).

What happened in Fallujah related mainly to the actions of the United States, but it had a great and enduring [11] impact among Muslims in Europe and elsewhere – young Muslims in Britain among them. In part this was because of the Labour government’s strong support for the Bush administration; in part because British troops had been redeployed from southern Iraq to districts around Baghdad in order to free up American troops for the assault.

The prince’s finger

The Afghan example is the activities of the third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, Prince Harry – and how these have been reported.

The young lieutenant’s presence in Afghanistan’s dangerous Helmand province was reported [12] in the media on 28 February 2008, when he had already been serving in the country for ten weeks. At that point, his reputation was transformed from callow party-lover with a touch of the boor into a courageous and disciplined soldier.

Prince Harry might not have been on the frontline of the anti-Taliban campaign itself, but there is no doubt that he experienced real dangers at firsthand. As a “forward air controller” providing cover for frontline troops, one of his reported tasks was to direct air-strikes onto Taliban positions that were threatening British army patrols, a task which might have contributed to saving the lives of some of his fellow soldiers.

In recognition of his role, the prince received a campaign medal (which television news showed being bestowed [13] by his aunt, Princess Anne, in a formal ceremony). The media reported [14] the event on 5 May 2008 dutifully and with a uniformly positive tone, depicting Harry as having matured into a valued member of the British army engaged [15] in a legitimate war against terrorists who threatened the security of the United Kingdom.

However, many young Muslims in Britain (as well as others) see the soldierly act of directing airstrikes in Afghanistan as entailing the killing of Muslim fighters engaged in legitimate resistance to a foreign occupation of their country. Moreover, the high incidence of civilian casualties in Nato air-strikes means that civilians too might well have been killed. After all, even Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has been critical of such Nato operations.

Prince Harry belongs to a British army regiment assigned to perform tasks assigned by military and political leaders. As such, he is also one small cog in the wheel of a much larger military operation that has, since October 2001, seen over 100,000 civilians killed in Iraq [15] and Afghanistan; at least that number seriously injured; over 120,000 people detained without trial; and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners.

The point here is the conflict of perspectives: between a justified military operation in which a brave young prince plays a heroic role, and a symbolically charged involvement in an illegal and unjust assault on Islam. Perhaps not all the more astute people in Britain’s ministry of defence or the government as a whole would share the first view, and certainly not all [15] Muslims in Britain would share the second. But the dichotomy is there, and it is deep-seated.

There is no prospect either that it will be bridged, in the sixth year of the Iraq war and the seventh year of the Afghan. Yet until it is, the likely consequences will include further insecurity, anger and distrust with possibly dangerous consequences. The governments which devote large forces and sums to domestic counter-terrorism while pursuing military operations abroad – and the media organisations which report these uncritically – might benefit from an educational programme of their own.

Links:
[1] http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/security/terrorism-and-the-law/
[2] http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page15.html
[3] http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm
[4] http://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/section-item.asp?sid=13&iid=3392
[5] http://www.intelligence.gov.uk/agencies/jtac.aspx
[6] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3584179.ece
[7] http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page541.html
[8] http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5957586
[9] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[10] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[11] http://electroniciraq.net/news/newsanalysis/
Fallujah_Now_Under_a_Different_Kind_of_Siege-3249.shtml
[12] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/7269743.stm
[13] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7383789.stm
[14] http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j53T1NT7dwgU9HZTKhSDnkhv9ssw
[15] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/1580102/Prince-Harry…
in-Afghanistan.html

The Iran risk, again

tim — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:12:02 +0000

The risk of a conflict between the United States and Iran is, unexpectedly and in a new context, acquiring fresh force. True, the current scenario has elements of the familiar – the recent deployment of two US carrier-battle groups in the Gulf, a pointed reminder to the Tehran government of the extent of Washington’s naval power; and a continuation of arguments over Iranian nuclear ambitions, including inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the imposition of a third layer of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council. What makes the latest phase of tension between Washington and Tehran different, however, is the influence on US calculations of its predicament in Iraq and Afghanistan – and, in particular, of the upsurge in violence in March-April 2008 in Basra and Baghdad.

Several columns in this series have discussed the possibility of a US-Iran confrontation being sparked by a minor incident, possibly a provocation by either side or by Israel (see “Israel, the United States and Iran: the tipping-point” [13 March 2008]). Such fears seemed to recede with the publication on 3 December 2007 of the US’s national-intelligence estimate NIE) – Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities [1] – which gave a more cautious assessment of the state of Iran’s nuclear expertise and ambitions. The widespread conclusion was that the report made US military action against Iran less likely, though the potential for provocation or unintended escalations clearly remained.

Now, however, the systematic planning for US air-strikes that was prominently discussed is again on the agenda – and the target this time is not Iran’s nuclear facilities, but Pasdaran-e Inqilab (Revolutionary Guard [2]) forces that are accused of supporting insurgents in Iraq (see Michael Smith, “United States is Drawing Up Plans To Strike on Iranian Insurgency Camp [3]”, Sunday Times, 4 May 2008).

What has brought the United States political and military leadership back [3] to this point, as in another part of its universe the presidential-election race consumes so much of the media’s attention?

The cost of failure

The answer begins with the apparent success of the US military “surge” in Iraq, announced by George W Bush in the wake of his rejection of the Iraq Study Group report of December 2006. The surge, entailing the phased deployment of additional contingents of American troops over the period February-July 2007, had (in combination with other factors and measures) some effect in reducing insecurity in certain parts of Iraq. This was generalised by a number of analysts and commentators into an argument that the entire dynamics of the conflict in Iraq were being reshaped in favour of peace and security (to be followed, it was hoped, by an internal political settlement).

This evolving argument was always open to challenge on the basis of a closer inspection of what was happening on the ground in Iraq – and the assessments of senior US officials in the country tended in any case always to be more cautious than the surge’s neo-conservative cheerleaders at home. But the events of spring 2008 is making the case for progress in Iraq look ever more threadbare.

The attempt by forces loyal to the Nouri al-Maliki government to take control of the port city of Basra had a drastic effect in this regard. The Saulat al-Fursan (Operation Knights Charge) campaign of 25-31 March 2008, backed by US forces, was designed to oust the Mahdi army militias around the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A period of intense fighting largely failed to secure this objective, and in turn provoked armed combat in Baghdad too; these included repeated attacks on the highly fortified “green zone”, many of them originating from the fringes of the Shi’a stronghold of Sadr City. In response, US and Iraqi government forces have been engaged in sustained assaults on parts of Sadr City in a major operation that began in the third week of April 2008 and is still unfinished.

These assaults have involved the use by US forces of air-strikes, helicopter gunships and even surface-to-surface missiles in efforts to force supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr to retreat from the areas they control that are closest to the green zone. Hundreds of Iraqis, many of them civilians, have been killed; many more have been forced to flee [6] the area.

As a result of these and other operations, the US military death-toll [6]in Iraq has also been rising. The number of soldiers killed in February-April 2008 was greater than for equivalent period since mid-2007, and much higher than in the period when the surge seemed to be having its greatest effect.

The Mahdi army militias that support Muqtada al-Sadr have mounted strong resistance to the combined US-Iraqi government assault; the sandstorms of 3-4 May in Baghdad provided them with the cover needed to launch further mortar-attacks on the green zone. To complicate matters worse for the US, Sunni militias have also been active. A double suicide-bombing near Baghdad on 1 May killed thirty people and injured sixty-five; and Sunni insurgents killed ten Iraqi soldiers on 5 May (Sholnn Freeman, “10 Iraqi Soldiers Die in Drive-By Attack [7]”, Washington Post, 6 May 2008).

More broadly, US military sources cite recent evidence that the al-Qaida movement in Iraq is undergoing a revival following its reversals of late 2007; they conclude that it is planning a new series of bomb-attacks, especially in Baghdad (see Liz Sly, “Al Qaeda Revival in Iraq Feared [8]”, Chicago Tribune, 20 April 2008). This compounds the problems for a US military already facing combat with a freshly active network of Sadrist militias and with renewed operations by Sunni insurgents.

This is a delicate situation for the US, and some distance from the fleeting optimism of the postsurge period. It means that there is now very little likelihood that the Pentagon will be able to withdraw any further troops from Iraq after summer 2008, by when the surge’s full effects will have been allowed to run their course. This is a severe problem for an overstretched US military, since such withdrawals are seen as a prerequisite of sending reinforcements to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban (see “No US Troop Increase in Afghanistan Without Deeper Cuts in Iraq: Pentagon [9]”, AFP, 7 May 2008).

Indeed, Afghanistan itself continues to present great difficulties for the US and its Nato allies in the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). The attempted [10] assassination of Hamid Karzai in the heart of Kabul on 27 April – the fourth such attempt on the life of the Afghan president – reflects the change of Taliban strategy towards a different style of asymmetrical warfare (see “Afghanistan’s Vietnam portent [10]”, 17 April 2008). This incident was followed on 29 April by a suicide-bombing in Jalalabad, to the east of the capital, aimed [11] at an opiumeradication team; it killed nineteen people and injured dozens more.

In response to a range of challenges in Afghanistan – including the proliferating opium-poppy crop, now being harvested by farmers in many of the Taliban-controlled districts – many Nato contingents are constrained by national rules of engagement. As a result, Washington is exerting strong pressure for US military forces to take over the leadership of Isaf across the south of the country (see Gordon Lubold, “U.S. To Heighten Afghan Role? [12]”, Christian Science Monitor, 25 April 2008).

The Pentagon thus has a clear idea of the necessity of its taking charge in Afghanistan. But from the US’s own perspective, little progress there will be possible unless it can reinforce its troops there. There may now be around 61,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan, the majority of them American, which represents a significant expansion since autumn 2006; but even this has failed to halt or reverse the Taliban’s spreading influence.

For a George W Bush administration in its last months in office, surveying a bleak international landscape in which the grand ambitions of the “war on terror” are very far from achieved, the accumulated result of this unsettlement and pressure is intense frustration that it is not in control. The vaunted success of the surge in Iraq is being reversed; the security situation in Afghanistan is deterioriating; and both trends are happening just as the presidential-election campaign is approaching top gear.

The signs of war

This, by a roundabout but remorseless route, is the heart of the answer to the “why Iran again, and why Iran now?” question. The default American establishment position when faced with problems in Iraq is often in any case to blame Iran. The pattern has been repeated in the past week, with a litany of complaints that Iran is involved in supporting the Shi’a militias.

Iran undoubtedly does provide backing to some of the militias. But it is equally notable that Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi army have tended to distance themselves from Tehran, and that the Nouri al-Maliki government itself maintains strong political links – reflected in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [13]‘s visit to (and warm welcome [14] in) Baghdad in March 2008. Moreover, the Iraqi government is cautious about making strong claims for the closeness of the Iran connection (see Leila Fadel & Shashank Bengali, “Iraq Backs Off Allegations that Iran is Behind Violence [15]”, McClatchy Newspapers, 4 May 2008).

Washington, however, often seems impervious to such important complexities (see Patrick Cockburn, “Who is Iraq’s ‘Firebrand Cleric’? [16]”, Mother Jones, 31 March 2008). So there have been repeated allegations that Iran is fomenting conflict in Iraq, extending now to reports that Hizbollah instructors are training Iraqi insurgents (see Michael R Gordon, “Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say [17]”, New York Times, 5 May 2008).

The Iranians have reacted by withdrawing from discussions with the Americans on security in Iraq. This is at the very time when the chair of the US joint chiefs-of-staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, has gone on record that military options are being considered because of Tehran’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq (see Ann Scott Tyson, “U.S. Weighing Readiness for Military Action Against Iran [18]”, Washington Post, 26 April 2008).

These developments do not make a conflict with Iran inevitable. They do, however, suggest that “something” is being considered. The most likely action might be some kind of “demonstration” air-strike against a Revolutionary Guard base close to the Iraqi border. This need not be imminent; it might well be deliberately timed for late summer.

A US decision to launch such a high-profile, symbolic and calculated attack would also explode into the middle of the campaign for the presidency. The more likely beneficiary would be John McCain rather than his Democratic challenger, since any escalation of tensions with Iran tends to mobilise public and media sentiment behind the Republican, establishment and military currents in American politics.

A military confrontation with Iran, however limited in Washington’s design, will have incalculable consequences in the region (see “America and Iran: the spark of war [18]”, 20 September 2007). Iran – as earlier columns in this series have suggested – is an agent in this overall situation, and will respond in accordance with its own perceived interests by using the range of possibilities at its command (see “The United States and Iran: the logic of war [18]”, 1 February 2007). The attack will also reinforce the position of Iran’s hardliners.

In January 2009, the new US president will be obliged to pick up the pieces of a complex conflict that American action against Iran will have exacerbated But the desired domestic political effect will be secured, in the prolongation of Republican control of the White House. And the “long war” will have entered a new and even more dangerous phase.

Links:

[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_iran-nucle…
[2] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/pasdaran.htm
[3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3868063.e…
[4] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[5] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[6] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/08/iraq.main/
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR200805…
[8] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-iraq-qaeda_slyapr20,1…
[9] http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080506/pl_afp/usafghanistanmilitary_080506…
[10] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3828536.ece
[11] http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-29-voa66.cfm
[12] http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0425/p01s03-wosc.html
[13] http://www.president.ir/eng/
[14] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/03/africa/iran.php
[15] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/35794.html
[16] http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2008/03/who-is-iraqs-firebrand-cler…
[17] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html
[18] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/25/ST20080425…