Iraqi-Iranian Detente: Opportunity or Danger?

If Tehran and the Shi’ite regime in Baghdad are in the process of establishing a closely coordinated relationship, this creates both a long-term opportunity and a long-term danger for the Mideast. The opportunity is to be a middleman for regional compromise. The danger is that this may provoke Iraqi civil war.

An Iraq with close ties to Iran and a government that represents Iraqi Sunnis in a way that Sunnis find more-or-less to their satisfaction would constitute an historic bridge. If, after all the ethnic conflict and government–sponsored discrimination ever since British colonial days in the 1920’s, Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’a can learn how to work together, then why not Arabs and Iranians? The existence of a unified, peaceful, independent Iraq would be the ultimate proof that Shi’a and Sunni throughout the region can live together. That, of course, is a lot of “ifs:” it is not clear exactly how close Iraqi-Iranian ties really are or what it will take to build an Iraqi government dominated by Shi’a but acceptable to Sunni.

The long-term danger is that the closer the Shi’a-dominated regime in Baghdad gets to Iran, the less acceptable it may be to Iraqi Sunni, due to some combination of Sunni nervousness and lessening Shi’ite willingness to give consideration to Sunni desires. Were ethnic conflict in Iraq to intensify significantly, many regional actors would be tempted to intervene, al Qua’ida would be more than happy to pour whatever gasoline it could on the fire, and it would be hard to imagine an effective way of putting such a fire out.

It does not take much ingenuity to conclude that the regional political situation is far from equilibrium. Figuring out which way things will go is rather more difficult. One clue to watch for is balance between Iranian ties with Iraq and Iranian ties with the Sunni Gulf states. Another whole set of clues will be domestic: Baghdad’s treatment of Sunnis, Sunni attitudes toward the Iraqi regime, etc.

It would be more than worth the effort to conduct a detailed scenario analysis of these two alternative paths foreward to lay out exactly how Iraq might, in the near future, turn out to be either an opportunity or a danger for the Mideast.

Black Swans & a Lesson about Hubris from Pakistan

Pakistani lawyer Feisal Naqvi has written an elegant interpretation of the political events of the past year in Pakistan illustrating some interesting lessons for all of us who think we know what we are doing.

In cards, the types of probabilities we face are relatively well known
because all of them come from a universe of known possibilities. Taleb calls this world Mediocristan. But in real life, the biggest problems — and opportunities — we face come from what Donald Rumsfeld once referred to as the “unknown unknowns”. This is the world that Taleb calls Extremistan, a world defined and driven by highly improbable events.The point of discussing all of this is to note that the events which followed the sacking of the Chief Justice of Pakistan on March 9, 2007 were a “black swan” event. Leaving aside the morality or legality of trying to railroad a chief justice in patently unfair proceedings, it can safely be assumed that all those who advised General Musharraf to teach the Chief Justice a lesson did not foresee in all of their predictions the possibility that the deposed chief justice would become a popular hero; that he would be welcomed by the people of Pakistan in numbers not seen since the heyday of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; that emboldened by public support, a 13-member bench of the Supreme Court would restore the Chief Justice; that his restoration would set off such a wave of defiance that the once-closed chapter of General Musharraf’s candidature would be opened to debate; that General Musharraf would be forced to impose martial law against himself to avoid the
danger of a contrary verdict, that General Kayani would direct the army to step out of politics; that relatively fair and free elections would be held; that the masses would vote overwhelmingly against General Musharraf; and, that throughout all of this, the lawyers of Pakistan would never give up on their struggle to establish an independent judiciary.

But now comes the million-dollar question: assuming you are the new political leadership of Pakistan, what do you do with this black swan now that it has shown up? Do you go back to living in Mediocristan? Do you assume that politics as usual is about to return? Or, do you try living in Extremistan in the belief that this is one of those moments when hope and history rhyme? After all, if Taleb is to be believed, the prime mover throughout history has been the improbable event.

asd

Pakistan Update

Views of the turbulence of Pakistani socio-political affairs...

Police Brutality: This picture shows the brave Pakistani police (hidden behind the clouds of tear gas) defending their countryagainst the terrifying onslaught of civil society.

Tribes Caught in the Middle: In January in Darra Adam Khel, the army conducted a campaign against militants. On March 2, an explosion during a tribal peace jirga resulted in 42 deaths.

In the words of an editorial in The News:

The message as such was clear -- with the tribesmen evidently punished for making an effort to restore peace to the lives of people. The 'jirga' had been convened, with official support, in the wake of an operation launched against militants in the Darra Adam Khel area since January. In the months before then, the small, dusty town of Darra Adam Khel, best known for its arms bazaar, had been over-run by militants who closed down schools for girls and ordered men to grow beards.

Continued Abuse of Lawyers: Deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, still under house arrest for standing up to Musharraf's November "coup against himself," terms the government's offer to release his family(!) from house arrest "a joke."

End of the Honeymoon: Khadim Hussain of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn gives us these insights into events in Swat, one turbulent corner of Pakistan:

AFTER living for two years in a land gripped with disaster, frustration, fear and death-like silence haunted with suicide attacks, bomb blasts and beheadings, the hard working, educated, and mature people of Swat Valley spoke loud and clear in the Feb 18 elections.They voted for the Awami National Party (ANP) and sent seven out of eight experienced, mostly young and energetic, persons to the national and provincial legislatures from the party’s platform — a secular, nationalist political party with liberal democratic credentials.The victory of ANP candidates with an overwhelming majority and the
positive response of the losing candidates brought about a harmonious political environment in the valley. As the spring season set in, a paradigm shift appeared imminent in the post-election socio-political and cultural environment of the valley.Then came the death blow on Feb 29 —a bomb blast that left almost 50 dead in a funeral ceremony in the congested part of Mingora. It recast the shadow of fear in the changing environs of Swat valley.

Israeli Security & Working with Opponents

The sad deterioration in the Gaza situation--from the perspective of Gaza residents once again imprisoned and under Israeli attack as well as from the perspective of Israeli citizens under Hamas attack--in comparison with a short month ago is too obvious to need belaboring. This video from Real News sums it up.

The essay from Haaretz that follows is important not just in its bottom line but for the detailed nature of its Israeli perspective - not the pro-regime perspective Americans are familiar with from the narrow range of images in our media, not the perspective of dominant Israeli politicians but the perspective of an Israeli who has thought deeply about Israeli national security.

Talk to Hamas
By Nehemia Shtrasler

In the winter of 1991, Saddam Hussein bombed Tel Aviv. For a month and a half, long-range missiles landed on the city. People panicked and many fled to Jerusalem, while the leaders issued pompous statements about the terrible blow the Iraqi dictator was about to receive. But nothing happened. We did nothing. In February-March 1996, buses exploded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and dozens of people were killed in suicide bombings in the streets and restaurants. People who went to the grocery store did not know if they would return. Those who went to a restaurant or disco were seen as risking their lives.

Shimon Peres, who was then prime minister, realized that the suicide attacks would destroy him politically but could do nothing to prevent them. Sure enough, Benjamin Netanyahu won the elections.

In 2001-2003, terror struck in the heart of Israel again. The suicide bombings emptied the shopping centers, tourism halted, businesspeople went bankrupt and received no compensation. The economy plunged into a deep recession amid rising unemployment. Even then we did not enter an all-out war in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

So it is wrong to argue that the state has abandoned Sderot and the western Negev. If this is abandonment, then Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were abandoned as well. The truth is more prosaic: Power has limitations. The Israel Defense Forces cannot solve everything. Netanyahu may say there is a simple solution - "to move from attrition to the offensive" - but the reality is more complicated. The IDF acted on the outskirts of Gaza's densely populated territory and two soldiers were killed. Had the army pushed deeper, the number of fatalities would have risen sharply. International pressure would have risen as well. The United Nations has already condemned us, Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian arbitrator, canceled his visit to Israel, and scenes from the beginning of the second intifada in October 2000 returned to the West Bank. The Qassam and Grad rockets continued falling even when the IDF was inside Gaza, and yesterday Hamas hastened to declare victory.

Another irritating lie in the Israeli discourse insists that it is appropriate to make Gazans' lives a living hell, so that they will put pressure on their leaders and end the firing of rockets. This thesis was behind the first Lebanon war, but that fallacy didn't work either, even when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese were forced to flee to the north. That was also the thesis behind the Second Lebanon War. But despite the Lebanese population's extreme suffering, it didn't work then either. It is certainly not working in Gaza. There things are horrifically bad. Poverty is awful, the number of fatalities is huge, the hospitals are collapsing from too many wounded, unemployment has reached the extraordinary level of 60 percent, and most of the population subsists on food provided by United Nations organizations.

People in such a difficult situation have nothing left but their self-respect. In these days "all of Gaza has become Hamas," a former Fatah security officer who is far from being a Hamas supporter, told Haaretz. Al Jazeera is broadcasting to every home the horror pictures of the deaths of dozens of children and women. In this situation, hatred triumphs and the only hope is the desire to take revenge. The rocket launchers are thus the heroes who gain the people's sympathy, and support for Hamas is not getting any smaller - it's growing.

So there is no escape but to talk to Hamas. We cannot choose our enemies. We embraced Yasser Arafat after saying for dozens of years (in the words of Yitzhak Rabin) that "we'll meet the PLO only on the battlefield." Indeed, signing an agreement with Hamas is risky. An agreement could weaken Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Israel sees as a fitting partner. But it also harbors hope. We could make a cease-fire arrangement consisting of stopping the rocket fire in exchange for stopping the assassinations. We could agree on a prisoner exchange and bring Gilad Shalit home. We could even alleviate the economic siege in an agreement that would prevent transferring weapons and explosives via the Rafah crossing. All this is attainable, and is many times preferable to continuing the bloodbath, which would only raise the walls of hatred and revenge higher.

Once we didn't want to talk to the PLO and Arafat. Then we humiliated Abbas and didn't want to give him any achievement during the disengagement. Now we don't want to talk to Hamas. So the struggle will continue - until a catastrophe occurs, on their side or ours. Only then will the leaders be forced to sit down and talk around the negotiating table.

No Options Are on the Table

It is one of the tragedies of the modern era that it has become popular in certain circles loudly to insist that "all options" are on the table precisely when the speaker is determined to avoid the whole range of positive, ameliorative, conciliatory options. Instead of implying an openness of mind, "all options" in fact has come to signify that all options except military ones are precluded.

The Post-9/11 Delusion

Uri Averny, among the best that Israeli society has to offer the world, in a discussion of Israel’s dilemma with Hama, put the plight of the contemporary world in a nutshell:

WE ISRAELIS live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not
conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That's how it looks to us, and that's how it looks to the other side, too.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made a similar point just a few days ago:

I pose these questions for your consideration….

Will my region plunge into more chaos and violence, where extremism rules?

Or will it be a peaceful, developing region?

Will it be a region focused on conflicting radical ideologies fueled by the manipulation of sectarian division?

Or will it be a region reaping the benefits of globalization and strong global partnerships?

Will it be a region that rejects Western alliances, perhaps violently, because they have become far too difficult to achieve?

Or will it be a region that is a global partner in progress and prosperity with the West?

The choice is ours. But we must act and time is running out....the wellspring of global division, the source of resentment and frustration within the region and far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.

Extremism begets extremism. Look at any prolonged social conflict (your neighbor’s divorce, the American Civil War, take your pick). The longer it lasts, the harder it becomes to differentiate the good from the bad. Evil behavior either genuinely forces opponents to behave the same in self-defense or simply overwhelms reason and deludes opponents into believing they have no choice. It also provides irresistible opportunities for mischief-makers. The politics of fear is very good business.

The tragedy of the post-9/11 world is that the opportunities offered to mankind by the end of the Cold War have been submerged by a flood of Manichean assertions: all claim to be the Sons of Light battling to the death, with God on their side, against the Sons of Darkness. There seems almost to be a fatal genetic flaw in humans compelling them to throw themselves lemming-like over the cliff of reason into the sea of insane hatred of “the other side.”

Such twilight zone battles cannot be won because they do not exist…except in the tortured minds of the self-deluded combatants. That is, they cannot be won unless you define victory as the creation of chaos. Those who combat “ghosts and monsters” either fight sick fantasies in their own minds or know exactly what they are doing and are consciously seeking chaos in the coldly rational calculation that they can benefit from it.

The two types of course get mixed together and feed on each other, or, more appropriately, feed together on the rest of us. The trick is to remember that almost always the numbers of the self-deluded fundamentalists and the coldly calculating exploiters are small. They win by trickery, by fanning emotion, by confusing thought. The vast majority of people in almost any group will be amenable to reason and most interested in pursuing their lives. The key is to get to them, and the trick is to remember—in the face of all the claims of how evil the other side is—that most of the individuals on “the other side” are just victims who never chose the game they are being forced to play.

Al Qua'ida's Strategic Calculus

This piece on al Qua'ida may see the world and make its strategic calculus is pure gold. If you care about national security, read with care. [See here for related materials from Paul Rogers.]

The SWISH Report (10)
Paul Rogers

The al-Qaida movement again solicits advice from the respected management consultancy. The SWISH experts hint that this could be their last such report.

29 - 02 - 2008

A seventh report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaida Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) on the progress of the campaign and its ultimate realisation. Click here to read earlier reports.
Thank you for inviting us to deliver a further report on the progress of your movement. You will recall that our work for your planning cell commenced with an initial assessment in July 2004, a follow-up in January 2005 and further reports in February 2006 and September 2006. Because of your concerns over the outcome of the United States mid-sessional elections to Congress in November 2006 you asked us to present an additional report, which we did in December.
We appreciate that it is unusual for you to require a further analysis so soon after our last report in November 2007, but we understand that the pace of events in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan - amid the wider context of the United States presidential election campaign, is such that a further assessment would be useful.
We further understand that you are particularly interested in the recent developments in the US and that you require an assessment as to whether your movement should take any action in the context of its forthcoming election in November 2008. We will therefore review briefly the developments in the other countries before focussing on that element.
Finally, you wish us to make an initial assessment of your ultimate aim of establishing a new caliphate. This we will do in the spirit of openness that you have sought in the past. Our conclusions may not be expected and it is possible that this will be the last report you will commission from us.
Pakistan and Afghanistan
The benefit we have of operating in western Pakistan is one denied to most analysts. It allows us to draw attention to one of the most important features of the 18 February elections in the country, which was missed by most foreign commentators: the exceptionally low turn-out - below 30% overall, and below 20% in some districts. This alone means that too much is being made of the outcome. Within that context, three features of the election and its aftermath are relevant. The first is that the decline in the size of the Islamist vote is less significant than it might appear, given the decision by some parties to boycott the elections. Some argue that such boycotts were solely aimed to avert the embarrassment of certain defeat; but the real point is that in many parts of western Pakistan, elections are simply not relevant since politics works in other ways.
The second point is that Pervez Musharraf has been much weakened by the election outcome; even if he survives, he will carry very little authority. This is a concern for the United States which had hoped for a link-up between Musharraf and the Bhutto family's Pakistan People's Party (PPP). If a PPP/Nawaz Sharif coalition emerges instead (as seems more likely), the result is both no guarantee of stability and greater government caution than would otherwise have been the case about supporting or endorsing US military actions in Pakistan.
The third and most important point is the revelation this week that the CIA has been operating Predator drones from a base within Pakistan. In one incident, an armed Predator from this base which fired two Hellfire missiles at a target (also within Pakistan) killed a senior paramilitary leader and many other people. Many observers had assumed that such deployments were indeed part of US policy; this, however, is direct confirmatory evidence that will in due course lead to major problems for the evolving coalition in Islamabad.
Across the border in Afghanistan, we are aware from our local contacts that your Taliban associates are in a position to undertake major actions in spring and summer 2008; we also know that the leadership has excellent intelligence on the build-up of US and British forces in the south and southeast of the country. We have good reason to doubt that a spring offensive will develop as widely predicted. If so, then Nato commanders will hail this as a victory. But they will be wrong.
The Taliban leadership operates with a markedly sophisticated level of military leadership that is recognised among some of the more intelligent senior officers within Nato - though not by the alliance as a whole and certainly not by the western media. This is important enough, but an additional and even more significant development in Afghanistan is the extent to which paramilitaries are now applying the tactics and deploying the munitions developed in Iraq. We strongly doubt that they are going to be in the business of frontal military assaults at any time in the next six months. Instead, they will almost certainly melt away in the face of the additional US marines and Britain's Parachute Regiment forces which will arrive in Helmand province in the coming weeks; and rely far more on urban guerrilla warfare, especially in Kabul, making much use of martyr attacks.
The scale of the revenues now accruing from the drugs trade, especially the move towards the highly profitable refining of raw opium paste into heroin and morphine within Afghanistan, suggests to us the direction of Taliban strategy. Its militia will opt for a slow but persistent campaign stretching over three to four years, designed to wear down the commitment of some Nato states (Canada is the initial focus here). The longer-term nature of this effort means that over the shorter term, Nato may be able to foster the impression of some success and progress. Again, this will be a highly misleading interpretation.
Iraq
The United States military surge has had some effect, but (as we argued in November 2007) this should not cause you concern. As our report then said:
"The Bush administration, and especially its neo-conservative elements, has now focused on an overall Iraqi narrative of 'probability of victory'. We know this is a chimera but they do not. The consequence of this is that the administration will aim to downgrade the Iraq war in the public consciousness in the coming months, even as the surge is forced to come to an end because of military overstretch."
In the past three months that has proved an accurate prognosis. There has been a recent increase in violence in Iraq, but not enough to have an impact within the United States. Unless there are very major changes in the coming months, the US is not going to have its "Suez moment" - as Britain did when facing up to its declining imperial power and the need for decolonisation in the wake of the brief Suez war of 1956.
We also pointed out in our last report that the oil factor remains a foundation of US security policy in the region, and that this alone makes any full-scale withdrawal from Iraq unlikely for some decades. Although circumstances will not always be as favourable as 2006-07, rest assured that your paramilitary combat-training zone in Iraq will remain viable and of great use to you for the foreseeable future.
The US election campaign
What then of US politics? Three months ago we, like most analysts, saw Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton as the frontrunners. We thought Clinton was the best of the Democratic candidates for you, given her relatively hardline stance on middle-east policy, and we regarded Giuliani as even better.
Times have certainly changed (as we did say was possible...) and John McCain now looks the overwhelmingly likely Republican candidate with Barack Obama emerging as the probable (though not yet certain) candidate on the Democratic side. From your point of view, McCain is reasonably good news. He is reliably hawkish on Iraq and Afghanistan, and although the political momentum of an incoming president gives a conservative president greater scope for policy reversals, we believe the power of the defence and energy lobbies may be too strong for any major changes to come in a McCain first term.
We cannot, however, be certain. It is possible for hawkish leaders (who have thus established their security credentials) to become unexpectedly flexible in office - witness Charles de Gaulle and Algeria, Richard Nixon and China, Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinians. You should therefore entertain the possibility of McCain using his "honeymoon" period (if you will permit us an exotic idiom) to order a radical withdrawal from Iraq. If he does, then your immediate response must be a very strong message hailing victory for your movement. This could well lead to a reversal of his policy.
A new perspective is offered by Barack Obama's progress, and we assume that this is the matter that most concerns you. If Obama does succeed in winning the Democratic nomination, and if he then survives the very heavy pressure on him from the Republican machine, then he may be in a strong position as the election approaches. It is at this stage that you may wish to consider your options. These, however - we would stress - depend primarily on how you would expect Obama to perform as president in relation to how you would most like the United States to behave.
What is best for you is that the United States remains resolute in its support for Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; fully addicted to oil and therefore determined to remain dominant in the Persian Gulf; and continuing to pursue its war against you with the utmost vigour. In other words, eight more years for George W Bush would have been ideal.
Sadly for your movement, that cannot be.
What, then, of Obama? The candid answer is that we cannot be sure. All the rhetoric notwithstanding, we actually expect little change should he be elected. Yet since we cannot be certain, we would recommend that any sign of his leading the polls close to the actual election date should be met by strong statements from your leader, welcoming the possibility of the election of a president with whom you can do business. That should do much to prevent his being elected.
The long term
Finally, you ask our opinion on your long-term prospects. We have always taken the view that this is a conflict likely to stretch over decades, and we anticipate that you will eventually take control of a country in the middle east or southwest Asia, as a prelude to establishing a new caliphate. The most propitious time for this to happen is when your "far enemy" has had enough of its burdensome military entanglements, an event that you will no doubt see and claim as a great victory.
Yet we are obliged (to use another exotic idiom) to speak truth to power. In the context of your success in winning control of an individual state, the principle enjoins us to express the conviction that only then will your problems really start. While our institute specialises in strategic hermeneutics, we also cover other disciplines, not least political sociology; and our belief is that your version of uncompromising Islamist rule is as unsustainable in the early 21st century as is the American notion that the US can indefinitely occupy countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Your Taliban associates were initially welcomed by many Afghans in the mid-1990s as a stabilising force in the face of the horrors of warlord rule. Even by 2000, though, the doctrinaire rigidity of its regime was losing the movement support. One of the great unknowns of the decade is what would have happened to the Taliban regime if the 9/11 attacks had failed. We suspect that its regime would have been forced to moderate its style of governance, as indeed was already starting to happen in 2001.
You invoke and celebrate the Abbasids, a thousand years ago, as the greatest Islamic caliphate in history; and you seek to recreate that greatness. But for much of their 250-year history, the Abbasids oversaw a flowering of art, architecture, medicine, mathematics and the sciences; they were also notably tolerant of Christians and Jews. We do not see similar attitudes in the speeches and writings of your leaders. Instead there is a dogmatism of attitude that we think would not allow you to hold power even for a decade - let alone a century.
It is said that revolutions change merely the accents of the elites, and we fear that such would be the consequence of your movement coming to power. A lack of flexibility would lead to unbending pursuit of a false purity that would decay rapidly into a bitter autocracy, leading quite possibly to a counter-revolution.
If you really want to succeed then you have to engage in thinking that goes far beyond what appear to be the limits and flaws of your current analysis. We would be happy to assist, but we doubt that your leadership will be willing to allow us to do so. We therefore submit this as possibly our last report.
WanaSouth Waziristan28 February 2008

Gaza Border Reopened...for Casualties

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been reopened...but this time by Egypt to admit victims of Israel's military onslaught in need of hospitalization rather than by Hamas bulldozers.

As Yossi Sarid put it in Haaretz:

Stop! Will the government have the courage to stop before calamity
hits? Those who sowed this wind of ongoing, not-necessarily-targeted strikes, of
locking the gates and suffocating Gaza on all sides, are now reaping the
whirlwind....The decision on war was made without realizing it, and the cabinet still does not know that this was the decision, exactly as happened in the summer of 2006....There is no choice but to talk to Hamas, indirectly or directly, and without preconditions.

In 2006 when Hamas peacefully participated in and won election as the new governing party of all Palestine, its ability to govern was undermined by U.S./Israeli economic warfare. Following Palestinian infighting partially provoked by Israel and the U.S., Palestine ended up divided, with Hamas governing Gaza and Fatah governing the West Bank, an obviously unstable situation likely to tempt all sides to engage in high-risk behavior. In January 2008, Hamas came up with the ingenious bulldozer diplomacy tactic to break out of the Gaza prison, but its opponents refused to compromise and slammed the door shut again, predictably generating the current fighting. Each time Hamas tests the political waters to see if a policy of peace and compromise might float, its enemies immediately sink it, ensuring the continuation of a needless war. When the world's attention turns from asking who pulled the trigger to asking who benefits from the carnage, then we will have taken the first step toward peace.

Israel Kills 19 Palestinian Children

Israeli onslaught kills "many civilians" in Gaza and "targets" Gaza government headquarters, according to Israeli media, provoking its al Fatah "ally" to break off talks.

Israel Air Force aircraft targeted Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail
Haniyeh's Gaza headquarters early Sunday, firing three missiles at the compound.
Palestinian witnesses say the building completely collapsed, reporting wounded
militants. Earlier, IAF planes struck a Hamas weapon warehouse in northern Gaza.


On Saturday, two Israeli soldiers and 63 Palestinians, many
of them civilians, were killed in an Israeli military operation in northern Gaza
City. The operation is expected to continue for several days. --Haaretz

Israel was responding to a rocket barrage from Hamas, sent in revenge for the earlier killing of several Hamas personnel. Beyond this tactical reason, Hamas was also acting to achieve strategic defense. As Amos Harel put it in Haaretz, "Hamas has been trying for some time to create a balance of deterrence with Israel in the Gaza Strip."

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said, "We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism."

For a description of how the highly skilled Israeli IDF soldiers killed some of the reported 19 children killed, see this story.

Speaking on behalf of the people who once faced a holocaust themselves, Israeli deputy defense minister callously threatened the people of Gaza with a "holocaust."

The Islamic Political Fault Line & the Complexity of Pakistan

Daily media reportage of events make it easy to conclude that an Islamic political fault line, implying a socio-political cleavage consistent in its origins and centered around attitudes toward Islam, is emerging across the Islamic world. One alternative view might be that societies with Moslem majorities just happen to have a lot of different political issues to resolve at the moment. In reality, both hypotheses have validity and are interconnected…which means that even if a particular Moslem country has a unique socio-political dispute unrelated to anything in other Moslem countries, it is likely to be misperceived as part of a titanic “clash of civilizations” or to be exploited as such by those who are trying to invent a clash of civilizations. The result of this process is precisely the emergence of an Islamic political fault line.

If an Islamic political fault line is emerging as a single, unified issue the whole world will have to deal with, it is obviously of critical importance to everyone’s future. The exact nature of the dynamics of such an emergent phenomenon and the degree to which it is a function of voluntary behavior that could be altered, rather than a function of contextual conditions that, over the short-term, cannot be altered, are questions that deserve the closest attention.

To the degree that developmental issues, for example, are misinterpreted as examples of civilizational conflict, we will all pay a heavy price unnecessarily. If a dispute over, say, the price of grain (currently a serious issue in some Moslem societies) happens to be seen as the result of exploitation by non-Moslems, it can get mixed up with a debate over the proper nature of Islamic behavior. Once the price of grain is confused with “us vs. them” emotions, resolving the issue becomes much more difficult – actors trying to provoke cultural discord or actors who may be honestly suspicious inhibit simple technical solutions (recall, for example, the resistance in Islamic regions of Nigeria to polio vaccinations).

The fluidity of Pakistani society and the openness in Pakistani media of the political debate resulting, in part from the way the recent election has shaken up everyone’s expectations make Pakistan an excellent case for studying how local issues and global Islamic issues become intertwined.

Although the dynamics are complex, one conclusion comes through quite clearly from a glance at Pakistani conditions: the Pakistani situation is at present by no means a simple black and white case of a fault line with everyone lined up on one bank of the political crevice or the other. Islamic militants use violence but also offer peace. Tribal leaders move back and forth between militants and the government searching for compromise. Secular political parties propose a wide range of alternative approaches. The stance of Islamic political parties varies unpredictably across the political landscape. Among the militants themselves tactical and perhaps strategic distinctions are visible. So in this one society, maybe an Islamic political fault line is emerging, but if so, the process certainly is not steady and while the fault may be widening by some measures, bridges are nevertheless continually being thrown across it. All this suggests that the process is by no means inevitable; on the contrary, it seems very sensitive indeed to everyone’s behavior.

Fault Lines in Complex Adaptive Systems
The above conclusion that the Pakistani political situation is highly fluid, which was based on reading English-language Pakistani newspapers, fits well with the view that the Pakistani political system (like virtually all political systems except when under extreme totalitarian control or in utter chaos) is a complex adaptive system. Complexity theory would lead one to anticipate a constant evolutionary process in which the process of splitting a system by an emerging fault line would be highly nonlinear and ambiguous because dependent upon numerous underlying, interacting, dynamical processes. If the system is dynamical and interactive and adaptive, then co-evolution of the parts can be anticipated. Thus, the two components separated by a fault line will nevertheless still have linkages, still affect each other: rather than immutable forces in contention, they will change each other. Each side will also constitute a subsystem of components that are also coevolving in an almost infinitely complex process, all colored in tones of gray.

You may counter, “But wait! The question is just how complex the system actually is!” This is a valid point. It is easy to observe that the modern, connected world is more complex all the time, but unfortunately we have no scale to measure the degree of social complexity. A forward-looking foundation might consider sponsoring research along these lines.

A forward-looking foundation might consider sponsoring research to develop a
scale for measuring the degree of social complexity in a given society.

Observations from readers about how the processes discussed here actually work in practice will be warmly welcomed.