Somali Insurgent Offensive Vs. U.S.-Supported Ethiopians

While all eyes are focused on the complex dance of Lebanese clients and their international patrons, the U.S. confrontation with Islam continues apace in Somalia. As in Lebanon, resolution of local issues is complicated by the larger competition between external forces (in Somalia, al Qua’ida and the U.S. rather than Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., France, and Israel, as in Lebanon), which enflames the fighting, intensifies antagonisms, and imperils local efforts at conciliation. Unlike Lebanon (since the retreat of U.S. forces in 1983, the retreat of Israeli forces in 2000, and the retreat of Syrian forces in 2005), the Somali situation is further enflamed by the participation in the fighting of foreign ground troops.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali insurgent leader, announced plans to expel U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops from Somalia by force despite on-going indirect peace talks in Djibouti –
talks that were undermined before they could even get started by a U.S. missile strike that killed not only an insurgent leader but two dozen others.

Indeed, opponents of the Ethiopian intervention force fighting in Somalia since December 2006 seem to be on the offensive this week, making good on their promise to avenge that missile attack and enhancing their negotiating position vis-à-vis traditional enemy Ethiopia in preparation for reconvening the talks on May 31. The Islamic Courts Union reportedly seized the agricultural center of Jilib on May 17.

The U.S. missile attack was the fifth since early 2007 on Somalia, attacks which have highlighted a U.S. policy that, according to Lynn Fredriksson, Advocacy Director for Africa, Amnesty International USA, has placed short-sighted counter-terror concerns at the forefront of U.S. involvement in the region, while human rights and humanitarian concerns are routinely pushed aside.” According to Ms. Fredriksson, the attacks have led to “civilian casualties, destruction of civilian property and livelihood, and the widespread belief that the U.S. protects the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and backs up Ethiopian forces, without genuine concern for civilians.”

The UN has warned that half the population faces famine. Troops fired on “tens of thousands of rioters” demanding food earlier in May.

U.S. missile attacks on insurgents may not slow their military activities but do seem quite effective against negotiations. Meanwhile, an additional 50,000 Somalis have been displaced so far this year, for a total of over 10% displaced out of a population of 8,000,000.

War Party Marginalized?

"State Within a State:" An Opportunity?

What would happen if one of the Moslem states that has an opposition "state within a state" inside it simply declared that the existence of that feared "extremist" militia/party was an opportunity rather than a threat and began negotiating how to share the duties of government with it?

So Siniora or al-Maliki, just to mention two examples, calls up Nasrallah or al-Sadr and says, "Let's stop the nonsense. You exist. We're rather tied up at the moment with all this national governance business, so we not only accept your existence, we applaud it. All the territory you say you control is yours. Please give us the phone numbers of your local tax collectors so they can have lunch with our national tax collectors and figure out who keeps what. Keep as much as you want, but obviously the more you keep, the more stuff you are responsible for. Here's what we propose...if you keep 10%, you do the garbage collection and hospitals, we do the rest; if you want 30%, you add police; 50% you add education, etc. Just work it out. Oh, yeah, your title is Governor. Congratulations, Mr. Governor. Please send a report in to the national government quarterly. Have a nice day."

External Patrons & the Collapse of Moslem Polities

Shifting the burden of political compromise to one of cracking down on superficial symptoms such as political instability or the rise of opposition militias is needlessly intensifying local political instability and sacrificing independence to external patrons.

In comparison to most other societies, Islamic societies seem to be experiencing an unusually large amount of political discord. That is pretty obvious. Differentiating between myriad local causes and a few overarching systemic causes originating at the level of the global political system is not so easy, since the two classes of causes interact in any number of ways. But making that distinction is critical to figuring out the solutions. To the degree that the problem is one of distinct local issues of governance the solutions will be very different from those for a situation characterized by a Western-Islamic confrontation.

One of the many patterns that seems to be cropping up with disturbing frequency across the Islamic world is a process of burden shifting that is needlessly intensifying local political instability and, as an unintended consequence, enhancing the power of external patrons over local clients. When external patrons gain influence over local actors, a society’s political process is warped to serve the interests of the patrons rather than the society. The numerous clients in the Mideast who knowingly sell their freedom to external patrons in return for help in fighting their domestic battles are playing with fire.

Burden-shifting is a very common but subtle dynamic in human affairs. We are usually rather good at perceiving symptoms and, perhaps unfortunately, quick to identify solutions that have at least some success in addressing those symptoms. This is arguably unfortunate because those “symptomatic solutions” tend to be short-term “solutions” that provide false assurance and thus blind us to the more fundamental solutions that the situation actually requires. Tricked into thinking we have solved the problem once the particular symptom we have noticed takes a temporary turn for the better, we walk away from the underlying problem, which proceeds to worsen.

But that is just the beginning of the problem. Often, the short-term palliative we have come up with creates a new problem that intensifies underlying problem, perhaps by aggravating the symptom we were complaining about in the first place or perhaps by inhibiting implemention of the fundamental solution (that we haven’t even figured out yet). The “Shifting the Burden” diagram illustrates this whole process. Note that the actual problem is not even in the diagram! Think of the REAL PROBLEM as something hovering in the background, messing up your life but as yet unrecognized by you.

Any number of different specific examples of burden shifting may exist, the research challenge being to identify which ones are operative in any specific situation. One example that appears particularly common today in the Islamic world is “Shifting the Burden of Political Compromise,” illustrated in the graphic. The implied problem in the background is poor functioning of the political system. This problem generates a variety of symptoms, such as political instability and the rise of militias.

A common symptomatic solution to address these symptoms is for the regime to adopt a hardline stance toward domestic political opponents, entailing:

• neglect of social services to those represented by the opposition (e.g., to Palestinians both in conquered territory and even in Jerusalem by Israel, to tribal regions in Pakistan, to the rural Shi’a in Lebanon, to the residents of Sadr City in Iraq, to the rural poor in Colombia, Bolivia [under the previous regime], and Venezuela [under the previous regime]);
• the closing of opposition media;
• efforts to minimize opposition participation in the political process (e.g., refusal by the Siniora-Hariri regime in Lebanon to allow Hezbollah additional ministers);
• the organization of pro-regime militias (e.g., the AUC in Colombia, Hariri’s funding of a Sunni militia in Lebanon over the last two years);
• military strikes against opposition militias (e.g., al Maliki’s attack on the Mahdi Army in Basra and Sadr City).
  

This hardline stance may initially reduce instability and the activity of militias but over time is likely to increase those symptoms because it will in practice tend to minimize efforts to resolve the real underlying problem, which is the absence of power-sharing. One could imagine a sophisticated two-track effort by a regime to, say, attack opposition militias but invite the opposition to participate in the political process. Indeed, both Qatar vis-à-vis Lebanon and Iran vis-à-vis Iraq seem to be advocating such a process at the moment. However, most politicians seem to find it too difficult to juggle a combined hardline/softline policy. Even if a politician happened to have the creativity and open-mindedness to advocate such a sophisticated policy, the hardline aspects will provoke radicalization of the opposition (e.g., Hizballah’s tough reaction to Siniora’s recent attempt to destroy its communications network) and politicians frequently fall into the simplistic trap of labeling the opposition as “evil,” making compromise much more difficult. In brief,

H1 = the more the regime adopts a hardline stance, the more political instability and related symptoms will be provoked.

In addition,

H2 = the more the regime adopts a hardline stance, the less power-sharing will occur, and the less power-sharing occurs, the more
instability will be generated.

That describes the dynamics of the blue arrows.

The red arrows represent an additional set of dynamics. A hardline stance is difficult (e.g., military confrontation is expensive and provokes domestic opposition so it gets increasingly expensive over time). Therefore,

H3 = the more a regime implements a hardline policy toward the domestic opposition, the more tempted it will be to request the support of an external patron.

But that support will come at a cost (patrons want payback), and the cost is likely to be that the patron is getting involved because it has broader reasons of its own to desire the suppression (or at least marginalization) of the opposition, so the cost is insistence of the patron on an even more extreme hardline stance. Thus,

H4 = the more a regime asks for external support for a hardline
policy, the more hardline that policy will become, and the less opportunity there will be for power-sharing.

Of course, like H1- H3, that is just an hypothesis. Such need not be the case: it depends on the attitudes of the various external patrons. The lesson for client regimes: choose your patron wisely.

In today’s Islamic world, the following process is all too common: governance is poor, but the burden of political compromise is deemed too great by the regimes, which therefore adopt a hardline stance in order to alleviate the symptoms. This hardline stance threatens to provoke a domestic reaction that will get the regime overthrown, so it calls in external support, which gets the regime involved in a much bigger game, one that it cannot control, and the influence of the patrons rises. But two can play that game, and the opposition also calls on external patrons. As the process continues cycling, both sides become radicalized. Political disputes turn military; policy differences are distorted into sectarian differences; and each side increasingly thinks and speaks of the opponent as “evil,” thus defining any solution aside from a “final” one as immoral. In practice, a “fundamental solution” has now been defined as impossible, so the society disintegrates.

The subtle process of burden shifting is bad enough by itself. When it aggravates the process of selling out one’s independence to an external patron, it should come as no surprise that the result may well be aggravation of sectarian strife that may lead to years of turmoil, the undermining of economic progress, and the destruction of society. The most critical lesson here is that the many societies we see engulfed in sectarian strife today got there less because of “traditional hatreds” than as a result of external interference that intentionally enflamed local divisions in order to facilitate the manipulation of local actors.

"Talking" Under Attack: The Somali Case

Peace talks moderated by the UN began in Djibouti on May 12 between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), buttressed by Ethiopian troops, and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), which wants Ethiopian troops to depart before engaging in direct talks. Some 1,000,000 people have fled their homes since the U.S.-supported intervention of Ethiopian troops.

As with Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine-Israel, and Iraq, the real action seems to be taking place between hardline and softline factions on each side. For example, Indho Ade, defense secretary for the ARS, has rejected his party's peace talks even as they get started.

Talking is not a prize to be conferred on an opponent in payment for some concession. Talking is recognition that "final solutions" are not the solution.

Attack Iran...Then What?

What plans do the glib and arrogant war party politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv have for dealing with the consequences of the war of aggression against Iran that they keep threatening?

In a recent post, I argued that even if total victory over Iran were guaranteed in advance, to launch a “preventive” war, i.e., a war of choice, a war of aggression, against Iran would be a questionable deal for the U.S., certainly entailing some serious costs that the politicians with their smug grins are not anticipating.

So, what about the reality in which nothing is guaranteed? In a word,

Short of total victory, would a U.S. attack on Iran be worthwhile?

Incomplete victory could occur in any number of ways – military victory but political defeat (a soberingly familiar outcome), inconclusive military advantage (also familiar), or a victory so expensive as to feel like defeat. The U.S. has been fighting continuously in Iraq for 17 years, off and on in Somalia for 15 years, and in Afghanistan for 7 years (not counting the war against the Soviet Union). Israel fought in Lebanon for 18 years (1982-2000) and re-invaded in 2006. In Iraq, a vicious secular dictator has been replaced by utter social chaos plus a terror campaign that did not exist there until we invaded. In Somalia, utter social chaos existed when we intervened on a humanitarian mission and remains now that Washington is supporting the overthrow of a government whose independence was viewed with disfavor. In Afghanistan, a vicious regime that befriended bin Laden has been replaced by a civil war. In Lebanon, civil war was supplemented by a national war of liberation, provoking the rise of Hezballah, now the most modern political party in Lebanon and a model for all Moslems trying to organize national anti-Western movements. This record suggests the possibility that an attack on Iran might also have unpleasant long-term consequences that should be considered before it is too late.


Military Victory but Political Defeat:
Unprovoked military attack would be likely to unite and outrage the Iranian population, just as 9/11 united and outraged Americans. As with 9/11, if the Iranian government continued to exist, conservatives would be likely to reap the benefit of the subsequent “rallying around the flag.” Just as after 9/11, foreign policy militancy would most likely overwhelm calls for moderation. The reservoir of goodwill toward the U.S. visible in modern Iranian society would vanish; any calls for compromise would be attacked as “treachery.” An attack on Iran would leave Iran weakened militarily but more unified and committed both to acquiring weapons sufficient to protect it and to getting revenge. Even a solid U.S. military victory would thus leave the world a more dangerous place.

Inconclusive Military Advantage:
Making war on an industry is a strange concept. Iran denies planning to acquire nuclear weapons but brags about its nuclear industry, which has been widely reported to be vast in scope and widely disseminated throughout the country. Moreover, military power today comes in many guises. Aside from the obvious question of the likelihood of total success in destroying Iran’s nuclear industry, the ability of even the U.S. to destroy all forms of Iranian military power is an open question. What about guerrilla warfare in Iraq? What plans may Iran have put in place regionally or globally to respond even after destruction of the homeland? Might nuclear-armed Pakistan or China--concerned about Iranian oil--or Russia--concerned about limitless growth in American power—provide just enough support to enable Iran to keep resisting? How long would Americans tolerate endless, one-sided, unprovoked slaughter by their own government? Might this war, in ways different from but reminiscent of the years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, just drag on?

Victory So Expensive As to Feel Like Defeat:
“No,” the militarists will surely answer, “this will be a truly overwhelming “shock and awe” campaign that will transform one of the world’s great cultures into a desert. Iran will have no surprises for us. Iran will not manage to fire any of the Russian anti-ship missiles it has reputedly purchased at all the U.S. ships now arguably trapped in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s oil wells will sit quietly waiting for pro-American groups to start operating. Saudi oil facilities will come through unharmed; the Saudi Shi’a will remain loyal to Saudi Arabia. American troops and their families in Iraq at the end of that long supply line will continue to receive food and water. Iranian naval mines will prove to be paper tigers. There will be no ships sunk in the Straits of Hormuz, no oil stoppage, no global depression. In contrast to the war in Iraq, Al Qua’ida will find no opportunity to exploit this American adventure. This war may have fallout, but it will have no fog: all will go according to plan. It will not be like Somalia or Lebanon or Iraq or Afghanistan. The war will play so well on TV that far from turning against Washington, the American people will voluntarily, even eagerly trade in democracy for imperialism. Scientific militarism will control every detail.” That would sound good on the campaign trail, if one of the slick war party candidates were honest enough to go into such detail, but where’s the evidence?

Or will the Iranians’ brand new Russian anti-ship missiles sink a couple aircraft carriers, a Shi’ite revolt force a Vietnam-style flight from Iraq, and attacks on Israel by Lebanese Hezbollah provoke Tel Aviv into another disastrous 1982-style ground war trap? Will the American people kick out the war party and take a turn back toward isolationism? After all, why not, given that the world’s lone superpower now arguably faces both the absence of a credible threat for the first time since the beginning of WWII and a recession caused by mismanagement at home.

The U.S. attacked tiny Afghanistan, a semi-feudal society with no power projection capability, in 2001 and remains bogged down, having facilitated an explosive growth in Afghan heroin exports and provoked destabilization of the bordering region of Pakistan.

The U.S. attacked Iraq, a country whose military and economic capabilities had been severely degraded by a dozen years of U.S. military attack and economic embargo. We remain bogged down there, as well, having destroyed the country’s ability to govern itself, facilitated the rise of Iran as a regional power, and given al Qua’ida a new lease on life.

The U.S. fought two wars against such pathetically weak opponents that Washington decision makers did not consider post-war planning to be necessary. Years later, still with no light at the end of either tunnel, the war party is contemplating a third war, against a vastly larger and more unified opponent that has had years of warning time to conceive of all manner of high tech and asymmetric countermeasures. It would seem that even the most eager imperialist would have to admit that a bit of post-war planning might be in order. (Only a fundamentalist hoping for a final explosion that would end the world and bring to earth a savior to carry the souls of the chosen few to heaven could “rationally” argue against post-war planning.) Post-war planning does not begin with “assuming everything goes according to plan...” Post-war planning begins with evaluating the range of possible outcomes and preparing to deal with each of them.

1. What is the plan to deal with military victory but political defeat?
2. What is the plan to deal with inconclusive military advantage?
3. What is the plan to deal with victory so expensive as to feel like defeat?
4. And finally, what is the plan to deal even with the long-term implications of total victory?

Somalia = Iraq?

The following comments from a perceptive review of the situation in Somalia by Newsweek shines light on how foreign intervention can complicate local politics and generate undesired results.

In late 2006 the United States backed Ethiopia's incursion into
Somalia, designed to oust the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist coalition that had taken over much of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country. (Al-Shabaab was the Courts' military wing.) Washington accused the Islamists of harboring Qaeda operatives involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. But the Courts had also brought more stability than Somalia had enjoyed in years. Somalis could walk the streets and do business again, and many welcomed the Islamists just as war-weary Afghans hailed the Taliban in the 1990s.

Now, by trying to prevent another terrorist haven like Afghanistan from developing, America may have helped create another Iraq, this
one in the volatile Horn of Africa. "Every year this fighting continues, the situation worsens," says Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Abdul Salaam of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government. The Islamists' eviction in 2006 left a power vacuum that the U.N.-backed
government still hasn't managed to fill. Ethiopian troops are loathed as occupiers and rarely leave their heavily fortified bases. And al-Shabaab has broken off from the Courts to wage a brutal and effective insurgency. The guerrillas have overrun at least eight Somali towns this year and control parts of the capital. Where once they brought order to Somalia, they now gleefully spread chaos.

Mogadishu looks like Baghdad during its darker days. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers are hunkered down behind sandbags, concrete
barriers and heavy artillery. Whenever they go out on patrol, their heavily armored convoys are blasted by roadside bombs, rockets and small arms fire. In recent weeks, al-Shabaab has stepped up a suicide-bombing campaign; an attack last week targeted a compound housing African Union peacekeepers, wounding nine and killing one. Leaflets warning of death to government collaborators likewise recall Iraq.

Factions in Islamic Politics

For outsiders, factions constitute one of the most misunderstood aspects of Islamic politics, in part because of lack of familiarity with local culture and politics but also because all too often the dynamic is perceived by outsiders as static. Outsiders tend to underestimate the degree to which the very process of Western intrusion into a Moslem society causes change. In a desperate search for understanding, outsiders quickly label individuals and groups “good” or “bad,” “anti-somebody” or “pro-somebody,” in the assumption that not only are these labels meaningful but that they remain so, failing to understand the degree to which their very intrusion causes the perceptions, attitudes, tactics, and goals of the factions to evolve. Complexity is about adaptation, not stability, and a Western-Islamic sociopolitical confrontation is nothing if not complex.

Such a confrontation challenges rules of morality, norms of behavior, methods of organizing society, and power relationships at every level. This pressure sets off an unpredictable jockeying among all the political forces in the society, as they try to figure out where they should stand and where they want to stand. Since the answers for each individual and group are greatly a function of the conclusions that all other individuals and groups draw, an enormous amount of calculation and recalculation ensues.

This situation gives rise to an endless series of practical questions of enormous import for anyone concerned with taking effective action but whose answers are not only difficult to determine but frequently ephemeral:

• Should the Taliban in Pakistan be viewed as distinct from al Qua’ida? What about the local Uzbekis or various tribal activists? When groups differ, even slightly, what are the long-term implications of subjecting them to the same military pressure?
• Should the Islamic Courts Union and al-Shabaab be viewed as parts of the same faction or should the former be seen as a relatively moderate reformist group and the latter seen as “terrorist,” as some now call it? Do those labels matter? Should a foreign government wishing to have influence refuse to deal with a violent group that arises in reaction to outside military attack?
• How many factions even exist in, say, Iraq? If we simplify and say that, for some purpose, there are four: the Kurds, Abdul-Aziz Hakim’s Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISIC) and its Badr Organization militia, Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the Sunnis, then would it be preferable for some purpose to have three (removing sadr)? What impact will it have on the Sunnis, with their new 100,000-man militia, if the majority Shi’a are reunited under one faction? How would that influence the behavior of the Shi’a? Would a united Shi’a majority be more likely to share oil with the Sunnis, invite them to participate in national government, or admit their Awakening troops into the national army? And how will all this affect the behavior and popularity of the smaller factions (e.g., Maliki’s Dawa) that we so conveniently ignored in order to create the simple mental model of a four-faction political environment?
  
  

Islamist Offensive in Somalia

Continuing the pattern of recent weeks, Islamist forces staged a series of attacks on villages in Somalia this week, killing soldiers of the official government/Ethiopian forces, destroying tanks, and capturing military vehicles. See this CNN report. According to al Jazeera, "Besides hit-and-run attacks on outlying towns in which they usually attack soldiers, free prisoners and voluntarily withdraw, the fighters launch near-daily attacks on government and Ethiopian forces in the capital." Indeed, this week, they repeatedly attacked government checkpoints in the capital. According to Garowe, "Guerrilla attacks have rocked Mogadishu since early 2007 when the Ethiopian army ousted the capital's Islamic Courts rulers and installed the weak transitional government."

Although both the relatively moderate Islamic Courts Union and the transitional government have both recently indicated willingness to consider compromise, since the Ethiopian intervention, the Islamist forces appear to have fractured. Some of the fighting is now being done under the initiative of more extreme forces, complicating the process of achieving peace, with numerous analogies to events in Iraq.

It is only natural for reformers in Moslem societies to include various shades of Islamic thinking. to the degree that moderate Islamic reform movements are excluded from the political process, more extreme factions will arise. Distinguishing between these movements is critical to resolving the socio-political issues that create instability in Moslem societies just as much as distinguishing between social democrats, socialists, and communists was to understanding post-WWII European politics.

For just a few of the innumerable examples, see:

• Marc Lynch's comments on the electoral predicament of the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt;
• my post on Washington's empowerment of Hamas;
• Hassan Abbas' post on the impact of U.S. policy;
• Ben White on Palestinian politics, in which he writes:

Since the PLC elections, carried out democratically and transparently, the legitimate Palestinian government has been subjected to boycott, sanction and threats, and the US and EU have done everything in their
power to undermine and destabilize the representatives of the Palestinian people. Sanctioning the occupied has made an economy already stunted by years of Israeli colonization and siege, a disaster-zone. This is not rocket science; it was highlighted from the beginning by charities, NGOs and the few politicians willing to stand out from the consensus.

Moreover, together with Israel, the US has been openly working to arm Fatah for a coup against Hamas, moves that the latter – who had been elected on the basis of their resistance to Israeli occupation and their track record of humanitarian commitment to the people – were not going to sit by and idly watch. This came only after the attempt to
starve the Palestinians into submission appeared not to be working. This context is strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) missing from most mainstream media coverage, despite the basic facts being widely in the public domain.

.

Power in Moslem States & Societies

The process of creating a state is long and uncertain. A society that has learned to cope well with its environment may have a state that has been so well developed that it appears to be in equilibrium. A society under stress, in contrast, may have a newly emerging state structure/political process. For the latter case, the traditional state-centric approach of political science will not suffice to understand political processes. In the latter case, the state is in flux, its structure is emerging, and its power may well be significantly less than that of other entities in the society (e.g., militias, clans, tribes, corporations, political parties). When foreign leaders interact with the emerging state under the assumption that a state is a state and states are the organizations with a) power, b) legitimacy, c) decision-making authority, they do so at their own peril.

For the purpose of argument, I will make the following assertion: Iraq is not a state.

This assertion is of course more or less true depending on the exact date. The Iraqi state is in the process of being created. At present it no doubt has more of the attributes of what we normally think of as statehood than it did two or three years ago, but if one simplifies the issue to a “yes or no” question, then at present, it seems still to be more accurate to think of Iraq as a society and nation that lacks a state. Iraq is obviously a society because the population exists and interacts; it is also arguably a nation because most of the population appears to self-identify first of all as Iraqi, though the post-invasion pressures have probably weakened such self-identification. It does not, however, yet appear to have what Westerners usually think of when they refer to a “state.” The ability of al Sadr not only to resist successfully in Basra this week but to persuade soldiers and police to join his forces is the most recent piece of evidence.

To the degree this is true, it raises some serious implications:

• What is the significance of making an agreement with the official Iraqi government?
• Would it be more effective for a country wishing to influence the Iraqi people to make an agreement with the official Iraqi government or with some other entity?
• Is there any single entity in Iraqi that can plausibly claim to represent the population?
  If not, how many entities must be consulted to “make an agreement with Iraq?”

If Iraq has a state, then other actors will assume that it makes sense to support efforts by that government to impose itself by force. If, in contrast, Iraq is viewed as a society struggling to create a state but one that currently does not have a state, then logic suggests a totally different approach – working for consensus among all the major power centers. This is of course a vastly more difficult approach and one that cedes power to Iraqi society. An outside power may well be able to exert significant influence over a single institution, particularly if that institution is modeled after Western states. It is far less likely to be able to do so vis-à-vis half a dozen highly heterogeneous groups.

This situation is one of the common patterns seen throughout Moslem societies contributing to the rise of an Islamic political fault line:

• In the case of Iraq, the lack of a modern state structure might mean negotiating with a Sunni party with its own militia and organs of local government, a Shi’ite party that controls the official government, a separate and competing Shi’ite party with its own militia and organs of local government, and a Kurdish autonomous government.
• In the case of Lebanon, it might mean negotiating with multiple Christian and Sunni groups, as well as with Hezbollah.
• In Palestine, it might mean negotiating with Fatah, Hamas, and perhaps even other groups.
• In Somalia, it might mean negotiating with both the recognized but weak “government” and with the Islamic Courts Union.

But a short time later, it might also mean including some new group because to say that the state remains immature and ill-formed is another way of saying that power centers in society are in an unusually rapid state of flux. Moreover, to the degree that other states focus on interacting only with an immature and unrepresentative state to the exclusion of significant non-state power centers in society, they may well provoke still more instability.

For any who wish to deal effectively with such societies, it is critical to make the correct assumption—either that, in practical terms, those societies do or do not have an institution that effectively constitutes a “state.” To classify all non-state actors in a society that lacks a modern state structure as illegitimate and define them as enemies is simply illogical.

Washington Intensifying Its Confrontation with Islam

Bush seems to have decided to maintain his aggressive, militant
course of frontal confrontation with Islamic political actors who do not submit to U.S. leadership.

To understand the dynamics underlying contemporary global political strife, it is essential to comprehend that choices exist. Bush could try to leave office on high note by leading the world away from the law of the jungle toward mutual understanding. Annapolis was the wave of a hand in this direction, though it was clear from the start, given Bush’s refusal to invite two of the key players – Hamas and Iran, that it did not constitute a sincere effort at a new direction.

Alternatively, Bush could pull back and allow others freedom to maneuver. Since the neo-con policy of force is not working, perhaps others have better ideas. Intentionally or not, the effect of the NIE was to put Europe in the driver’s seat in terms of leading the charge against Iranian nuclear program. Beyond this, for every Islamic problem facing Bush, local initiatives to resolve the situation peacefully exist but are being blocked by U.S. policy.

A detailed strategy for resolving the Hamas-Israeli dispute was just published…by an Israeli. This prescription calls for a sustained series of small, incremental steps:

• taking Hamas up on its offer of a ceasefire


• bringing Egypt formally into the picture and opening the Gaza-Egypt border


• working toward an armistice


• working through Abbas for a formal peace agreement to be ratified by plebiscite.

Assuming the process were to work, somewhere along the line, Hamas would presumably have to be offered once again the option of working within a democratic system.

Tehran and Baghdad are at this very moment in the process of working out a modus vivendi that could theoretically bring stability to Iraq and leave al Qua’ida very much out in the cold, recognized by all Iraqi political parties as the spoiler.

All three of the winning parties in Pakistan are calling for talks and compromise with Pakistani militants; in the immediate aftermath of the election, the militants were singing the same tune.

Talk of compromise has also been in the air in tragic, abused Somalia in recent weeks, with Prime Minister Nur Adde offering talks with all sides without preconditions at the end of February.



In Lebanon, the problem is not at all about how to deal with a tiny group of militants trying to force their perspective upon a reluctant population. Rather, in Lebanon, the fundamental issue is whether or not to grant the poor their share of political power. The solution is inherently obvious: the needs and aspirations of Lebanon’s poor need to be recognized. So far, it seems that Hezbollah is the only political organization in Lebanon willing to do that, though such of course need not always be the case. Regardless, a host of Arab initiatives to achieve a compromise have been tried and might, if insulated from broader global interference, yet achieve a settlement that would end the current stalemate while avoiding civil war.



There is little indication, however, that Bush will consider these alternatives. Rather, if various disparate pieces of recent evidence are put together, the resulting pattern suggests that in the waning months of his administration, Bush means to intensify American pressure on the Islamic world, further promoting the emergence of an Islamic political fault line that will split Moslem societies even as it leads to more severe confrontation with the West. If the policy of force has not worked after six and a half years, then apply more force!

Evidence for a Washington policy of intensified confrontation exists in recent events related to Lebanon, Pakistan, and Somalia.


After a year-long but almost totally peaceful deadlock in national politics in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has suddenly advised its nationals to leave the country immediately—just as Washington announces that the U.S.S. Cole is being sent to the region and as Israel and Hamas move away from the peaceful confrontation over the Rafah opening into Egypt into the unusually intense violence of early March. Hezbollah naturally saw that as attempted intimidation; the Saudi foreign ministry had advised its citizens not to travel to Lebanon two weeks earlier.

Gunboat diplomacy has a long history in Lebanon. As noted by the Washington Post, in 1983 U.S. battleships “opened fire on Muslim militias. Retaliation included the suicide bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut and the death of 241 U.S. military personnel, which eventually led to the Marines' withdrawal. ” Despite the fact that the Lebanese suicide bombers were retaliating, Washington has held a grudge against Hezbollah ever since.

Specific threats against Saudi nationals may have been the specific motivation. The broader context includes not only the worsening of the Gaza situation but also apparent rising Saudi-Syrian tension over how to solve Lebanon’s political crisis and, in particular, a U.S.-Saudi plan to pressure Syria.



Hinting at the approach of a crisis, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa noted on Jan 27 that "Foreign influence has become a source of pressure in the Lebanese issue to an unprecedented extent."

Whether any of the above parties are actively planning to launch a war or just engaging in the type of risky behavior that tends to lead to war, the Mideast situation is beginning to resemble the situation in the spring of 2006. At that time minor tit-for-tat moves between Hezbollah and Israel were going on against the background of quiet Israeli planning for a military attack on Lebanon and a rapidly disintegrating Palestinian stand-off between Fatah and Hamas.

Two differences this time:

• Both Lebanon and Iran face upcoming elections, which introduce further potential for instability.
• The Bush Administration is in its last year and may be tempted to “go for broke” to escape from the Mideast quagmire created by its reliance on force rather than diplomacy.

The specific evidence for this over the past few days alone includes the U.S. military strike in Somalia which came even as the Somali prime minister was calling for unconditional negotiations with the government’s opponents; the U.S. military strike in Pakistan – timed to aggravate tensions between the incoming secular administration and Islamic militants; and news that U.S. military trainers would be sent to Pakistan.

New Situation
It is difficult to see changes in the global confrontation between proponents of a Washington-centric world and those who determined to offer Moslem societies an alternative path: the confrontation is too broad and too varied to reveal its course in snapshots. Therefore, if you view it one event at a time, perceiving its reality is essentially impossible. One must step back to gain perspective. Stepping back from the rush of daily events to compare the situation today with that of 9/11 gives a picture that suggests we are in a very different and much more serious situation.

Shocking as it may have been to Americans, the death of 3,000 people on 9/11 pales by comparison to recent global events in terms of casualties: the Khmer Rouge holocaust of Cambodians, the mass slaughter of Rwandans, Sudan’s slaughter of the people of Darfur, the imprisoning of 1.5 million residents of Gaza, the killing of some 100,000 Iraqis as a result of the U.S. invasion.

It also pales in terms of its strategic significant in comparison to the global Western-Islamic situation today. On 9/11 the West was being challenged by a single non-state actor under the protection of one of the world’s weakest countries, Afghanistan. Of course, there were at the time lots of other challenges to the West coming from Moslem regions, but they were fragmented—each focused on local issues.

Al Qua’ida’s goal seems to have been to do something so shocking that it would both inspire Moslems worldwide to join a campaign of resistance against the West and trick the West into committing such atrocities that compromise between moderate Westerners and moderate Moslems would be precluded. If that was al Qua’ida’s goal, over the last six years, it has made significant though partial progress on the former and enormous progress on the latter, leaving the al Qua’ida vision in a far stronger position despite the damage done to al Qua’ida’s infrastructure.

While Moslems may be looking with horror on the endless terror they have encountered (for the impact of al Qua’ida on Moslems has been far worse than on Westerners), they are also looking with horror upon Washington’s strident rhetoric, repeated rejection of compromise, insistence on preconditions before negotiations, and most of all its consistent policy of resolving problems through military force. Grozny (about which Washington did nothing), Fallujah, Jenin, Gaza may be names that bore most Americans; they don’t bore and will not soon be forgotten by Moslems. Even less easy to forgive are the destruction of Iraqi, Afghan, Palestinian, and Somali society.

The degree to which Moslems worldwide have been unified by the events since 9/11 is one of the major questions that will be facing the next U.S. president. But there seems little reason to conclude that al Qua’ida would be dissatisfied with its global position today in comparison with its position on 9/11/2001. Al Qua’ida has succeeded in getting so many Moslems to buy into its premise that the world needs a clash of civilizations that the continued existence of al Qua’ida itself is almost irrelevant. The fight has shifted from being a competition between the West and one non-state actor into the West against insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, and Somalia plus a host of entanglements with Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, and other countries. The broad goodwill of Moslems toward the U.S. on 9/11 has been washed away by the extreme nature of the U.S. reaction. The conflict threatens to become institutionalized. Intensification of American military confrontation is only likely to further al Qua’ida’s long-term goal.

Somali Update: Continuing Chaos

Yesterday, I described the post-9/11 neo-con foreign policy as having failed across the Islamic world, citing, among other examples of failure, Somalia. Given the absence of news about this sad and victimized country in the U.S. media, perhaps some details would be in order.

The Guardian described the situation in Somalia in February as follows:

As many experts warned, US collusion with Ethiopia a year ago to
send Ethiopian troops into Mogadishu to topple the Islamic Courts regime has backfired as badly as the invasion of Iraq. According to reports from UN and other aid workers in Somalia, almost three-quarters of a million people have fled since the Ethiopians arrived. Far from eliminating the Islamic Courts, the invasion attracted waves of new recruits, motivated by resentment at the presence of foreign troops and not just by jihadi ideology. The Ethiopians installed one of the worst Somali warlords as mayor of Mogadishu, allowing him to turn his militia into the police. Most of the capital's people are from a
different clan.

Resistance has intensified in the past months as the occupation shows no sign of ending, and Islamist insurgents now operate well beyond Mogadishu. Indiscriminate mortaring and machine-gun fire by all sides is said by aid workers to be horrendous, though there are no TV cameras to raise international alarm. Adding to the chaos, insurgent groups are splitting - with the same erosion of discipline and clan rivalry that have divided rebel movements in Darfur. This reduces the chance of holding successful peace talks.

Banditry is on the rise with aid workers increasingly targets, as last month's killing of three staff for Médecins sans Frontières demonstrates. MSF has now withdrawn all its international doctors, leaving hospitals without surgeons.

Meanwhile, Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) still
sits in the town of Baidoa, with no presence in the capital except for a
fortified and symbolic mini-green zone. What little support the TFG had in Mogadishu has disappeared.

In the first few days of March alone, the U.S. launched a missile attack on Somali town; its residents held a protest against the attack; Islamists briefly captured two strategic towns-- Belet Weyne, astride the main supply route for Ethiopian forces, and Hudur, also on the road from Ethiopia; and 15 Ethiopian soldiers were killed in Mogadishu. The destruction of Somalia continues...

The Logic & Peril of Bush's Foreign Policy

The logic of Bush administration foreign policy from 9/11 on has consistently been that we—the good guys, with God as our guide—face the Devil incarnate in a battle to the death that justifies putting “all options” on the table, including making war on cities (remember Fallujah?), incarcerating whole ethnic groups as punishment for their leaders’ policies (reminiscent of the logic of al Qua’ida that 9/11 was excusable because in a democracy Americans are all responsible for the behavior of their leaders), allowing countries we chose to invade to collapse into chaos because fighting is more important to us than rebuilding societies we have destroyed, or launching nuclear wars of choice against countries who pose no threat simply because we claim they might pose a threat in the future. If the Bush premise is correct—if the collapse of the world is at hand and we are in holy combat against the devil—well, then what’s the mere destruction of societies and death of thousands of bystanders?

Unfortunately for the Bush place in history and the neo-con hopes of remaining in power, things aren’t working out:

• Al Qua’ida, which pretty much got a pass when the neo-cons in the Bush Administration moved their focus from Afghanistan to the unrelated issue of whether or not to do something about the Iraqi Frankenstein those very same neo-cons had created during the Reagan Administration, remains very much in existence. Moreover, the logic of al Qua’ida’s foreign policy—that they, the good guys, with God as their guide, face the devil incarnate in a battle to the death which justifies all options, including slaughtering innocent civilians in both the enemy camp and among Moslems, provoking civil war among Moslems, and laying traps to trick the “far enemy” (that’s us Westerners) into invading and getting bogged down in Moslem countries—remains intact and possibly more widely accepted across the globe than ever before.


• Afghanistan, apart from its booming heroin export business, is a disaster. Despite rising NATO commitments, the Taliban resurgence continues.


• Iraq went downhill from the invasion until 2007, when things appeared to improve slightly as a result of a decision by Moqtada al Sadr temporarily to avoid confrontations with Washington, rising disgust on the part of Sunni Iraqis with the obscene excesses of al Qua’ida, and a decision by Washington to buy off the very Baathist forces whom we invaded to defeat in the first place. But the fundamental problems of a broken polity, destroyed economy, and wrecked society resulting from the U.S. invasion have yet to be effectively addressed.


• Iran has during this period made such progress in its efforts to become accepted as a regional force that it can successfully celebrate its new-found status in, of all places, the very U.S. colony we just bought and paid for with 3,000 dead Americans, 100,000 dead Iraqis, and 50,000 Americans whose battlefield injuries have permanently ruined their lives. (I did not mention the odd TRILLION dollars spent on the Iraqi invasion because that is not a cost – that is a “transfer” from the generous American people to the loyal American military-industrial complex.)


• Palestine has become a war zone in which the power of Hamas grows daily. Was that part of the deal the U.S. neo-cons promised their pro-expansion Israeli neo-con buddies: “trust us, rely on our forward-leaning policy of strength through force, and we will deliver unto you a world class political power called Hamas!?!?”


• Lebanon is on the verge of becoming another war zone (though if it does, it is not likely to remain separate from the Palestine war zone for long). After Israel’s retreat from Lebanon nearly a decade ago--19 years after its 1982 invasion, an apparently (at the time) overwhelming Israeli invasion in 2006 designed to destroy the Hezbollah organization that arose in reaction to the earlier invasion and a yearlong standoff between the government of Lebanon (energetically backed by Washington, Paris, and sundry Arab dictators) and the poor one-third of its population that has always been ignored by official Beirut, there is only one modern political party in Lebanon: Hezbollah. Are we to believe that the strengthening of Hezbollah constituted yet another promise of Washington’s neo-cons to their Likudnik friends?


• Somalia…the fact that Somalia is even on the list of Bush failure spots tells it all. Somalia is the example par excellence of the rapid spread of American problems around the globe during the Bush years. Needless to say, with the apparent weakening resolve of Washington’s Ethiopian proxy, Somalia looks like another problem the next administration will have thrown in its lap.


• And then there’s Pakistan, where the incoming elected administration is talking about talking to Islamic militants, while the outgoing dictator winks at U.S. strikes on Pakistani territory.

In sum, the Bush Administration has a problem: by the very logic of its own foreign policy, it has failed. It is very active everywhere but seems in control of almost nothing. If all these wars were designed to take over global oil supplies, they have in fact forced prices over $100 a barrel (for Americans – not for those who pay in Euros), providing nice profits to Venezuela and Iran. If the wars were designed to pacify regions we deem threatening, the threat has in fact greatly increased. And if the wars were after all designed to defeat the Devil, well, the Devil seems to be doing just fine…and the Devil is not a lame duck.

That raises the question of what Bush, in his last months, is going to do about his legacy and the political survival of the neo-cons. The answer is fraught with peril for us all.

Election Debate: Where Are the Ideas?

An election in a democracy should be an opportunity for fresh ideas to rise to the top. So where are the ideas in the current U.S. presidential election? The list of dangerous and highly unstable situations in the world that are likely to make life miserable for the next U.S. president is long, and the level of instability is rising. Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, and Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela are all on a knife's edge. Mexico's drug cartel issue is not far behind.

From the Republican side, Ron Paul has been shunted aside, and McCain is grinning, "Full speed ahead!" One wonders exactly where he thinks he is going.

From the Democratic side, Kucinich and Robertson and Gravel have been shunted aside. Obama says "Change!" and says it grandly, but whenever he makes the mistake of becoming specific, he sounds just like every other mainstream leader who has gotten us into this trouble. Clinton can't make up her mind whether she (A) is still part of Bill Clinton's old liberal group that offered such hope to the nation for a brief moment so long ago or (B) another angry Republican suffering from an overdose of testosterone.

Neither Clinton nor Obama looks like Bush, and neither is likely to win by trying. On domestic issues, there are real differences, but the rest of the world is not going to disappear. How to climb out of the hole we have dug ourselves into needs to be addressed.

Nader is not going to win, unless of course the unthinkable happens and we all start thinking for ourselves, but at the moment a protest vote for Nader does indeed, as suggested elsewhere, sound like the way to go.

Somali Crisis Still Burns Hot

Remember the other U.S. war – the one we ignore totally because it is Ethiopian rather than U.S. troops who are on the frontlines? On Feb. 11, the U.N. announced suspension of its operations in Somalia, the country recently called the worst place on earth for children because its local headquarters were attacked. Last fall, when the mainstream media in the US condescended to mention Somalia for a short while, it was reported that some 300,000 people had been displaced as a result of the Ethiopian war against the Islamic Courts Union that had succeeded in nearly unifying the country for the first time in two decades. It’s not over – 40,000 additional people have fled the capital in just the last two months – while the country’s plight was being totally ignored in the west.

Newsweek recently summarized the Somali situation as:

Worse than Darfur. That was the assessment two weeks ago of the United Nations' top refugee official in Somalia, who called the country Africa's worst humanitarian crisis. Somalia has been without a functioning central government for 17 years and has effectively splintered into three separate states: Somaliland in the north, Puntland in the center and chaotic southern Somalia. In December 2006, U.S.-supported Ethiopian troops invaded the country to oust an Islamist government that briefly controlled Mogadishu and the south, triggering a civil war. Islamist and clan-based militias have battled Ethiopian troops and supporters of the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). A small force of African Union
peacekeepers has been powerless to halt the violence. The war has forced 1
million people from their homes.

With the world still trying to prop up the Transitional Federal Government at the expense of the opposition (composed of the Islamic Courts Union and members of the TFG who opposed the Ethiopian intervention), it may be difficult to achieve peace even if African peacekeeping troops do eventually succeed in implementing current plans to replace the Ethiopians. For one thing, the extent of direct U.S. involvement remains unclear.

According to a recent report,

Djibouti City's Camp Lemonier serves as the base for the US Combined Joint
Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Most members of the 1,800-strong task
force appears to be engaged in fairly mundane activities - improving
military-to-military ties, training members of allied regional militaries and
humanitarian projects. However, the CJTF-HOA mission was clearly defined by its
first commander as combating "transnational terrorist groups posing an imminent
threat."

There have been unconfirmed reports of special operations raids in
neighboring Somalia which may have been launched from Djibouti airport or from
the multinational taskforce patrolling the nearby Somali coast and adjacent
shipping lanes.

On the other hand, both the new TFG prime minister and the opposition have expressed a willingness to talk.

Stay tuned; as we have seen repeatedly over the last few years, one-sided external intervention in a civil war tends to aggravate and prolong the pain endlessly.

The Human Costs of Power Politics: Somalia

This video shows some of the human costs when powerful countries play politics in others' neighborhoods.

Should Somaliland Become Independent?

When does a population deserve to have its desire for
independence recognized?

For one example, take a look at this article on an issue barely visible to Americans: whether the Somaliland region of Somalia should or should not become an independent state.

RECOGNITION OF SOMALILAND IS GOOD FOR SOMALIA
By Guled Ismail

Wednesday, December 26, 2007


If there is one issue that
unites Somalia’s famously quarrelsome politicians, elites and ordinary clansmen
it is the issue of Somaliland’s secession: They oppose it to a man, child and
warlord.

Members of the ineffectual but secular Transitional
Federal Government (TFG) oppose Somaliland’s secession as vehemently as the most
fanatical of its Islamist enemies.

What drives this determination
to keep Somaliland into Somalia’s death embrace remains unclear.

The full text of Guled Ismail's article is well worth thinking about.

Further information on this issue from readers would be welcome...

The World Next Year?

New Year is a time to look back and forward, so maybe this is a good time to ask: “What kind of a world might we well be living in, say, by a year from now?”

By the end of the Bush Administration, we could well be faced with:

• A third Intifada in Palestine resulting from accumulating frustrations;
• An invigorated and probably radicalized Islamic Courts Union ruling Somalia, as a result of receiving nationalist support in reaction to the harshness of the U.S.-supported Ethiopian military attack;
• Ethiopian-Eritrean war over both their common border and the Ogaden revolt against Ethiopia, which is being exacerbated by Ethiopian propensity to solve the issue through military force rather than accommodation with local aspirations;
• Collapse of government in Lebanon, where Washington still appears to be counseling the regime to play hardball with Hezballah rather than allowing them the central government political influence commensurate with the size of the Shi’ite population;
• A new explosion of violence in Iraq, resulting from a Sunni Awakening vs Shi’ite civil war or open fighting within the Shi’ite camp;
• End of the Iraqi Kurdish cooperation with US because of US support for Turkish attacks;
• A popular Pakistani revolt against the military, with the pro-democratic forces joining the Taliban against the US-supported military-intelligence complex that runs the Pakistani dictatorship, or a consolidation of military-intelligence control, persuading the generals that they will continue to have a free hand to continue their 20-year-long campaign of passing nuclear weapons technology around the world.

OK, anyone who can rise above obsession with one particular issue and juggle plus or minus 7 facts simultaneously can see the possibility of all these situations occurring more or less simultaneously. The question is what to do about it.

Washington’s approach seems to be military force (vis-à-vis Iraq, Somalia, Hamas); military dictatorship (vis-à-vis Pakistan, Israeli control over Palestine); and no compromise (vis-à-vis Hezballah, Hamas, Islamic Courts Union, Iran). Is this approach working or do we need a fundamentally different way of behaving toward the world?

As the U.S. continues to support military/intelligence dictatorship in Pakistan – now without even the Benazir democratic figleaf; as the US air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan accelerate explosively; as the U.S. proxy war using (primarily) Ethiopian troops in Somalia appears to be collapsing; and as Israel sabotages (e.g., via settlement expansions and economic warfare against the people of Gaza) the already thin hopes that Annapolis would lead to peace in Palestine, attacking Iran seems a step too far. This wouldn’t be what those of little faith mean by imperial overstretch, would it?

Are the risks of continuing the current approach greater or less than the risks of trying a fundamentally new policy? And what might such a policy be?

A reasonable reaction might be: “Easy for you to ask, but not so easy to answer.” Indeed, except that, judging from the political rhetoric in the U.S. today, apparently most folks find such questions too hard even to ask. And if we don’t ask, we will never get the answers.

Is War the Answer?

Caliphate? Democracy?