Past Now and Then

Libya: War's End or Endless War?

2011-09-20T14:19:00.000-06:00

In 2009 Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi arrived in Rome for a state visit to Italy. Pinned to his uniform was a photograph of Omar Mukhtar, hero of the Libyan resistance to Italian imperialism. In 2011 the rebels fighting to overthrow Gaddafi named one of their military formations the 'Omar Mukhtar brigade'. Both sides in the current Libyan civil war claim Omar Mukhtar as their inspiration. He remains one of Libya's national heroes, the 'Lion of the Desert' who fought the Italian invaders for twenty years, until he was captured and executed by them in 1931.

The Italians had invaded Libya, then ruled by the Ottoman empire, in 1911. The Turks made peace in the following year and handed over the territory to Italy, but the native Muslim inhabitants refused to accept infidel rule. Their resistance struggle went on for more than two decades and Omar Mukhtar became its figurehead.

Today the victory of the NATO-backed Libyan rebels seems almost complete. Yet Muammar Gaddafi and his forces are still fighting, still resisting. Is it possible that he can go on resisting for years just as Omar Mukhtar did?

This seems unlikely since Gaddafi has few of the advantages which allowed Omar Mukhtar to carry on a guerrilla war for decades. These advantages were terrain, religious commitment, foreign support, and the distraction of his enemies.

Omar Mukhtar was a native of Cyrenaica, the north eastern region of Libya, and its difficult terrain provided hiding places for his guerrilla forces. Today Cyrenaica is completely hostile to Gaddafi and its principal city, Benghazi, served as the rebel capital until the liberation of Tripoli. It seems likely that Gaddafi will be driven out of his remaining strongholds near the Mediterranean coast and be forced southwards into the Sahara. There his forces will be even more vulnerable to NATO air attacks.

Omar Mukhtar was a member of the Senussi religious brotherhood, which enjoyed considerable support in North Africa and the wider Islamic world. Gaddafi has few supporters among the world's Muslims and he is regarded as a secular apostate by most Islamists, ranging from Al Qaeda to the House of Saud.

Omar Mukhtar's resistance struggle in Libya received the backing of neighbouring Egypt. Although the Egyptian government of the period was under British domination, the British had little interest in assisting their Italian imperial rivals. Gaddafi is not totally shunned by Libya's neighbours today. Algeria in particular is suspicious that the new NATO-backed Libyan regime is just a front for a revival of Western colonialism in North Africa. However, it seems unlikely that Algeria will give Gaddafi direct military assistance or provide him with a safe haven.

The initial Italian invasion led to the subjugation of most of Libya by 1913, but once Italy joined the First World War in 1915 the situation changed dramatically. Many Italian troops were withdrawn and the Libyan resistance took possession of most of the interior of the country. Even when Mussolini and his fascists came to power in Italy in 1922, Italian control of Libya was still largely restricted to a coastal strip. With no other distractions, Italian military conquest was renewed from 1925 onwards. However, it was only after General Rodolfo Graziani took charge in 1930 that Italian counter-insurgency efforts became truly effective. The rural inhabitants of Cyrenaica were driven into concentration camps; the Libya-Egypt border was sealed; and mobile columns, supported by aircraft, harassed the guerrillas relentlessly until Omar Mukhtar was captured and killed.

The First World War was a major distraction for the Italians. It gave the Libyan resistance a chance to regroup and reoccupy territory, setting back the Italian pacification of the country by perhaps a decade. Despite French president Sarkozy's remark that Syria may well be NATO's next target, it seems unlikely that the alliance will be distracted by a new war before it has finished its work in Libya. Gaddafi, unlike Omar Mukhtar, will not be given a chance to regroup his forces and regain ground. His defeat seems certain.

Yet only ten years ago commentators were making similar predictions about the Taliban in Afghanistan. Western military strategy in that country in late 2001 was very similar to the current strategy in Libya. The West would provide air power, while local forces, aided by a few Western special forces troops, would do most of the ground fighting against the enemy.

Unfortunately, the Taliban, supposedly crushed at the end of 2001, were to enjoy most of the advantages which allowed Omar Mukhtar to prolong his resistance in Libya. The Taliban found refuge in the rugged terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; they continued to enjoy support within the wider Islamic world; many in the political and military establishment of neighbouring Pakistan assisted their cause; and their main Western enemy, the USA, was distracted by a new war in Iraq from 2003 onwards.

These factors allowed the Taliban to survive their apparently crushing defeat in 2001. For the reasons already noted, Muammar Gaddafi does not seem to have those advantages and it seems unlikely that he can stave off final defeat for much longer.

Endgame in Libya: Back to Western Colonialism?

2011-08-19T18:18:00.000-06:00

As the fall of Muamar Gadaffi seems increasingly inevitable, thoughts are turning to what kind of government the Libyan opposition will put in his place. Also worthy of consideration is how far the new Libya will fall under the sort of Western control that existed in the country before Gadaffi's revolution in 1969.

The United States, Britain and France, along with their NATO and other allies, have gone to considerable expense, in treasure rather than blood, to support the Libyan opposition and remove Gadaffi, despite having no United Nations mandate for regime change. Whatever their high-minded claims to be only acting to protect the Libyan people, they will now look for political and economic returns on their investment.

In 1943 the Italian colony of Libya was overrun by the British army. A British military administration was installed in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, with the United States retaining use of various air bases. In the south of Libya, known as the Fezzan, French administrators were installed, running the area as an extension of France's existing North African colonies.

In 1949 the United Nations agreed that Libya should become an independent country, and in 1951 the kingdom of Libya came into being, ruled by King Idris. However, both Britain and the United States retained military bases in Libya.

Initially the bases brought much needed money into an impoverished country, but the situation changed after oil was discovered in Libya in 1959. With the French exit from Algeria in 1962, it seemed that Western colonialism in North Africa had come to an end. However, Western military bases remained in Libya until Gadaffi's bloodless coup in 1969.

In March 1970 the British gave up the RAF base at El Adem; in June the Americans left Wheelus air base; and in October Gadaffi expelled the last Italian settlers from Libya. For the next forty years Gadaffi would keep Libya firmly in the anti-Western camp in international affairs.

Now that Gadaffi seems on the verge of being consigned to the scrapheap of history, what spoils will be demanded by the victors? The Libyan opposition will set up a new government, but the NATO powers who backed the rebels will be the real victors.

Will the United States, Britain and France want new military bases in Libya? These would be useful to keep an eye on Egypt, where the new political setup after the fall of Mubarak still remains in flux. Canada has made its contribution to the NATO war effort against Gadaffi, and the Harper government has said it is looking to create a worldwide chain of Canadian military support bases. Might not Libya host one such base?

Military bases would probably be too provocative to certain sections of the Libyan opposition, especially the Islamists. Nevertheless it seems likely that the new, democratic Libya will quickly be overrun by Western civilian and military 'advisers', while Western oil companies and other businesses will be given economic opportunities in Libya that have largely been closed to them for the last forty years.

The new Libyan regime will have little choice but to give in to Western demands. After all, the West will only unfreeze Libya's financial assets held abroad if it gets a new Libyan government friendly to its interests. Whether this brave new world can be seen as a return to colonial exploitation by the West or as a boost for freedom and democracy in Libya depends on one's political viewpoint.

A Wise Withdrawal or Eternal War?

2011-05-19T15:45:00.000-06:00

The Christian Knights of Malta described their maritime conflict with the Muslims in the Mediterranean Sea as the 'eternal war'. It lasted from the arrival of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in Malta in 1530 until the island was seized by the French under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. If not quite 'eternal', a struggle lasting more than 250 years must certainly have seemed never-ending to successive generations of Christian knights and Muslim corsairs who engaged in the holy war at sea.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the United States has embarked on an apparently never-ending struggle against Islamist terrorism. It is not an 'eternal war', merely a 'long war' according to American strategists. However, since they cannot say what a final conclusion of this conflict would look like, it seems their idea of 'long' may not be so very different from the 'eternal' struggle of the Knights of Malta. The knights could accept such an endless struggle because they regarded the clash between Christianity and Islam as a divinely sanctioned contest. A supposedly secular democracy like the United States cannot view the prospect of endless conflict in such a mystical way.

Despite the regular American denials that their struggle with Muslim terrorists is a war against Islam, few Muslims have any confidence in such assertions. Muslims are no different from the rest of humanity. They judge Americans by what they do, not by what they say. Almost 250,000 US military personnel are waging war within the Islamic world, yet no Muslim nation poses the slightest threat to the United States. Americans protest that they are only fighting a small minority of Muslim extremists, but those extremists could not exist if they did not receive at least tacit support from a significant proportion of the world's Muslims. They receive that support precisely because the USA and other Western powers have invaded the Islamic world on their mission of vengeance for 9/11.

Now that Osama bin Laden, the supposed evil genius behind the 9/11 atrocities, is dead, President Barack Hussein Obama has an ideal opportunity to change this situation. The killing of bin Laden gives him the opportunity to declare victory and bring the bulk of American military forces home from the Islamic world. That military presence has been one of the main reasons for Muslim hostility to America. The Arab revolt of 2011 shows that new forces, mostly not linked to Islamist extremism, are at work in the Muslim world. If most US forces are brought home and a reasonable settlement is agreed over the issue of Palestine, then the Islamist terrorists will have lost the principal grievances that have given them any wider credibility among Muslims.

President Obama must complete the promised US withdrawal from Iraq by the end of this year. He must also expedite the removal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan. These two withdrawals will not mean the end of a US military presence in the greater Middle East, but it will be restricted to naval forces in the Gulf and elsewhere, which will be much less provocative to Muslims than boots on the ground in their own countries. As well as actual aircraft carriers, the United States will also still have its 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' the state of Israel to act as regional policeman on its behalf.

Not only would large-scale military withdrawals end local support for Islamist militants, but they would also benefit the steadily declining economy of the USA. Foreign wars have been a major cause of the US government's increasing indebtedness. Dollars spent on bombing Afghanistan would be better spent on improving health facilities for American citizens at home.

This policy of wise withdrawal would be of infinite benefit to the United States and its people, but it seems unlikely to happen. After Augustus Rome was an empire which still retained the trappings of a republic. Similarly, since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, the USA has been an empire while still insisting that it remains a republic. Once the Roman eagle was planted on foreign territory, the emperor would lose prestige if it was removed. The Americans take a similar view, believing, like the Romans, that they are the guarantors of world order and that any step backwards can only undermine international security.

Other past empires have taken a similar view. In the sixteenth century the rulers of the Spanish empire refused to grant independence to their rebellious provinces in the Netherlands. They believed that any withdrawal would undermine the image of omnipotent Spanish power. For eighty years the Spanish fought to subdue the Dutch. However, in the mid-seventeenth century a bankrupt Spain finally had to accept the reality of Dutch independence. While Spain was bogged down in this long war, its rivals, such as England and France, grew steadily in power and influence. Today powers like Russia and China are not unhappy to see the USA squandering blood and treasure on conflicts in the Islamic world which can only sap its strength.

If the United States chooses to continue its wars in the Islamic world, its burdens and losses can only increase. The Sadrists have already threatened a new war against US forces in Iraq if they do not complete their withdrawal from that country by the end of 2011. The deadline for US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is regularly extended, most recently to 2014, but many Americans seem to want a permanent occupation of the country. The death of Osama bin Laden is totally irrelevant to the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban have fought the infidel invaders of Afghanistan for the last ten years; they can continue that struggle for another ten years if necessary. Most alarmingly, the rapidly deteriorating relations between the USA and Pakistan may lead to open warfare between the Americans and the world's second most populous Muslim state.

Assassinations are always striking events, but whether they have much long-term significance is open to doubt. In 1584 an assassin killed William, prince of Orange (also called William the Silent), the principal leader of the Dutch rebels, after the Spanish offered a large financial reward for his murder. This event did nothing to end the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, and the struggle between the two sides continued for decades. The death of Osama bin Laden is similarly unlikely to have much long-term impact on America's wars in the Muslim world.

President Obama has a simple choice. He can recognize the limits of US imperial power and withdraw most American military forces from the Islamic world. Or he can continue and extend the conflicts carried on by those forces, reinforcing the new 'eternal war' which can only end with the national bankruptcy of the USA.

Libya and the Limits of Air Power

2011-04-12T20:02:00.000-06:00

Almost a century ago, the use of aircraft in military combat was initiated during the Italian invasion of Libya, which was then part of the Ottoman Turkish empire.

On the first day of November 1911 Italian officer Lt. Giulio Gavotti dropped a small bomb from a German-built Etrich Taube aircraft. Its effects on the Ottoman Turkish troops on the ground in Libya remain unknown, but this first aerial bombing raid opened the age of military air power.

In 1912 the Ottoman government made peace with Italy and handed over Libya to become an Italian colony. However, the local Arabs decided to continue their resistance to infidel invasion. After the massive growth of air power during the First World War, Mussolini's fascists made a greater use of aircraft in Italian counter-insurgency operations in Libya during the 1920s. As well as ordinary munitions, the aircraft were also alleged to have dropped poison gas bombs on the Libyans.

In 1931 the principal Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, was captured by the Italians and executed. By 1934 the last insurgents had been defeated and Italy finally had complete control of the country. Air power had played a significant role in the Italian victory, but the activities of soldiers on the ground were still more important.

The Italians used air power to subject the Libyan people to European imperialism. Today the Western powers claim to be using air power to free the Libyan people from the oppressive rule of Muammar Gadaffi.

The destructive power that can be inflicted by aircraft is now vastly greater than it was at the birth of military air power back in 1911. Nevertheless, it may be asked whether the impact of such power is likely to be any more decisive in Libya today than it was a century ago.

The NATO interpretation of the United Nations resolution allowing military action to protect Libyan civilians allows its aircraft to destroy Gadaffi's aircraft and ground weapons such as tanks and artillery. However, both British and French government ministers have openly talked of overthrowing the Gadaffi regime, while American officials have hinted that such an outcome is desirable. Regime change is not mentioned in the UN resolution, and there are considerable doubts whether it can be achieved by air power alone.

After some initial enthusiasm, the United States government now seems to want to take only a supporting role in the air operations in Libya. Air attacks will largely be left to other NATO countries, especially France and Britain. Yet the United States is the only world-class air power. If it declines to take a leading role in the air assault on Libya, the impact of that assault can only be weakened.

France can deploy significant air assets from both its air force and its navy, but Britain's air force is in a weakened condition due to misguided defence cuts and the same cuts have virtually destroyed the country's naval air component. In real terms Britain's air contribution in Libya will not be much greater than that of Canada and other lesser NATO military powers.

Even if the United States decides to reverse its policy and takes the leading role in air operations in Libya. can these operations achieve their stated goals? In 1999 NATO waged an air campaign against Yugoslavia to protect the oppressed people of Kosovo. It was supposed to bring the Yugoslavs to the negotiating table within days. Then the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, but still the Yugoslavs remained defiant in face of the biggest air assault in Europe since the Second World War. Only the threat of a NATO land invasion of Kosovo brought Slobodan Milosevic to terms.

Will Libya be a repeat of Kosovo? It seems a distinct possibility. There have been the usual promises of no NATO 'boots on the ground' in Libya, but if the air campaign cannot defeat Gadaffi, what other course will be open if the removal of his regime remains the declared intention of the Western attackers? A stalemate which leads to a divided Libya is said to be unacceptable, but only ground forces can ensure the fall of the Gadaffi regime. The forces of the Libyan rebels are too weak to do this, so NATO troops must at some point go ashore in Libya.

Military air power was born in Libya in 1911, but almost a hundred years later it is still unable to win a war in that country all by itself. Only military intervention can bring down the Gadaffi regime. How will the Islamic world react to yet another Western invasion of a Muslim country? And how long will it take NATO to subdue Libya? It took the Italians almost a quarter of a century. NATO will no doubt expect a shorter campaign, but its apparently endless struggle in Afghanistan is not an encouraging precedent.

A New Arab World or 1848 Revisited?

2011-03-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

As popular revolution continues to sweep the Arab world, commentators have searched for comparisons with earlier revolutionary outbreaks in history. One choice has been the revolutions of 1848 in Europe.

In a few short months in that year a wave of liberal and democratic revolution swept across western and central Europe, touching states in France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. In a few places rulers lost their thrones, such as King Louis Philippe in France, but in all the places touched by the revolutionary flame, the old regime had to make rapid concessions to the demands of the revolutionaries, even in reactionary Prussia and Austria.

However, just as the waves of the sea rapidly lose their force as they sweep across the beach, so the revolutionary fervour of 1848, seemingly so irresistible, soon began to dissipate. By 1850 most of the concessions which the revolutionaries had won from the old regime had been lost. The reactionaries were back in control almost everywhere. The revolutionaries of 1848 had lacked strong leadership, clear aims, and adequate military force. It proved all too easy for their enemies to exploit the divisions among them, whether political or racial.

France had been the first country to begin the revolutionary outbreak in 1848, but even in the summer of that year, the conservative elements among the new regime were shooting down the workers in Paris. Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Napoleon, was made president of the new French republic, but within a few years he had seized power and turned himself into Emperor Napoleon III, although still claiming to be a 'liberal' emperor.

The state which seemed doomed by the impact of the 1848 revolutionary wave was the multi-national Austrian empire. Young emperor Franz Josef had only just entered into his inheritance, but now it seemed he would lose it all, as revolutions broke out in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and in his Italian possessions. Yet he was to survive these upheavals thanks to the loyalty of most of the imperial army, the exploitation of racial divisions among the revolutionary groups, and the intervention of a foreign army sent by the arch reactionary Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to help the Austrians crush the most serious revolt in Hungary. By 1850 the Austrian empire was back under the control of the government of Franz Josef, and he would remain emperor until his death in 1916.

Of course a historical comparison between events today in the Arab world and those in Europe more than 150 years ago cannot be carried too far. Nevertheless it seems not unlikely that the Arab revolutions will produce more sound and fury than lasting political change. Although leaders like Ben Ali and Mubarak have been driven out, the military and most of the old regime politicians largely remain in control of states like Tunisia and Egypt. Even Muammar Gaddafi may emulate Franz Josef and emerge victorious from a seemingly impossible situation. The emperor was in large part saved by foreign intervention; Gaddafi may be saved by a failure of the international community to intervene in support of the revolutionaries in Libya.

If the current Arab revolutionary wave does collapse like that of 1848, what will this mean for the West? Trying to make up for their decades of support for Arab dictators, Westerners have been shrill in their praise for the popular uprisings in the Arab world, although these words have not been followed by any action. If the much-trumpeted 'new Arab world' fails to emerge and the old regime withdraws its concessions and largely resumes power, will not the Arab people be disillusioned and even more angry? Despite the claims of some alarmist commentators, radical Islamists have not featured greatly in the present revolutionary outbreaks. However, if the promises of freedom and democracy for the Arab masses are not met, then angry young Arabs are going to be much more receptive to the anti-Western message of Islamic militants.

Words and no action from the West may turn the new Arab revolutionaries against the United States and its allies, but will a restoration of the old regime do the West much good either? The Arab dictators consider, not unreasonably, that they have been deserted by their former Western supporters in their hour of need. If the groups that supported the dictators, chiefly the military and the conservative politicians, manage to retain power in most of the Arab countries disturbed by revolution, will they ever trust the West again? Once the tame vassals of the United States and its allies, they seem more likely to take a more independent line in the future on issues such as Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.

For Arabs, the current revolutionary movement may not in the end achieve any major lasting political changes. However, for the West its relations with the Arab world cannot help being substantially altered whichever side eventually emerges victorious. Neither the old regime nor the new revolutionaries are likely to trust the West when its words of support remain just empty promises.

Wars and Rumours of Wars: Iraq and Afghanistan Today; Iran and North Korea Tomorrow

2010-12-09T10:09:00.001-07:00

Since the start of the twenty-first century, the world has been disturbed by both wars in the present and rumours of wars in the near future. The two principal wars, caused by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States and its allies, have been linked to the so-called 'war on terror', a war that is now clearly just a war on Islamic 'terror'.

One of the future wars is also loosely linked to the war on terror. Scarcely a month goes by without rumours that Israel and/or the USA is about to launch a military attack on Iran. These reports have been with us for years, but the assault has not yet taken place. Nevertheless there is little doubt the plans for war exist and the command has only to be given to send missiles and aircraft on their way. Iran has attacked no other country, but the United States and Israel claim the right to launch a pre-emptive attack upon it. Iran's supposed crimes are trying to develop nuclear weapons and aiding Islamic terrorism. There is some truth in the latter accusation, but the former one has still to be proved.

Under the Westphalian system of international relations which existed from 1648 to 2001 pre-emptive wars were regarded as illegal, but since 9/11 the United States has declared it will only recognise international law when it finds this convenient. The Westphalian system rested on a belief in the equal sovereignty of nations. The USA has made it clear it does not recognise the sovereignty of any other nation. Other nations must bend to its will or suffer the consequences. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of the strongest. This is hardly a recipe for international peace.

In the case of Iran, the United States can be sure of support for aggressive action not just from Israel but also from certain Muslim nations in the region. The rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Arab states, all staunch Sunni Muslims, are keen to back an American/Israeli military assault on the Shia Muslims of Iran. Clearly the concept of Muslim solidarity is almost as laughable today as the notion of international law, with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference as irrelevant in world affairs as the United Nations.

With so many countries working for conflict with Iran, that rumour of war may eventually become a reality. One can only hope that such an assault on isolated, militarily weak Iran will be the swift and successful operation its advocates claim, but the law of unintended consequences may come into play here just as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second future war of which rumours have circulated for years may come to reality even sooner than the conflict with Iran and its consequences may be much more dangerous.

The notion of a pre-emptive strike by the USA on North Korea has been around almost as long as the much-discussed plan for an assault on Iran. The communist rulers of North Korea are held to be an even greater threat to the security of the world community than the ayatollahs of Iran. North Korea is considered to have some kind of nuclear weapon and the country's behaviour has been much more provocative than that of Iran. The sinking of the South Korean frigate earlier this year and the recent bombardment of a South Korean island show North Korea is an aggressive power whose conduct must provoke a reaction stronger than words from the United States at some point. America may unleash war on Iran at some point, but North Korea is unwilling to wait passively for a US pre-emptive strike. It is already prepared to risk war with America and its allies.

In contrast to the situation with Iran, America's allies are not thirsting to start a war with North Korea. Probably no nation on earth is better prepared for war than this communist dictatorship. Claims have been made that the North Korean people are starving and their economy is in ruins. Whether or not that is true, one can be sure that the country's military forces are well fed, well armed, and highly motivated. Any American military attack in response to a new North Korean provocation is bound to lead in turn to massive North Korean retaliation. Of course most of the victims of such retaliation will not be Americans. They will be South Koreans, and possibly Japanese.

Thus the governments of South Korea and Japan, despite their strident verbal condemnations of North Korea, are not enthusiastic about taking any significant military action against that country. They look to China to restrain its North Korean neighbour, and for the moment the United States seems prepared to go along with this policy. But is it a realistic policy? Such an approach is akin to expecting the USA to restrain Israel because it has close relations with that country. Far from being under its superpower sponsor's thumb, Israel has recently chosen to ignore American pleas to stop Jewish settlement on Palestinian land and so has ruined hopes of new Middle East peace negotiations. Despite this defiance, the United States will not punish Israel, and in similar fashion China will take no action against North Korea if it ignores Chinese advice.

Iran studiously avoids military clashes with its enemies in the Gulf; North Korea seems to go out of its way to provoke them. And any military clash in the Korean peninsula has the potential to lead to rapid escalation and open war between the opposing sides. North Korea is confident that no matter how much it suffers in such a conflict, it can inflict massive damage on South Korea, and possibly on Japan as well. In addition, should an errant American cruise missile fail to hit its North Korean target and land in China instead, then the situation in the region would become even more explosive.

Assuming neither North Korea nor the United States resort to the use of nuclear weapons, a conventional war would resume in Korea and it would in some ways resemble the conflict of 1950-53 which ended in an uneasy truce. The USA would again have almost complete command of the sea and the air, but on land America would find it difficult once again to achieve a decisive victory over North Korea. American forces in South Korea currently number around 30,000 personnel. If a large scale conventional war broke out, such forces would need to increase to at least 300,000 personnel. If it is assumed that the re-introduction of the draft in the USA is politically unacceptable, then the Americans could only find such a force by removing their last troops from Iraq, stripping their garrison in Germany, and effectively closing down their war in Afghanistan. South Korea would provide the bulk of the allied forces to assist America in the war against North Korea, but no doubt countries such as Britain, Canada, Australia, and Turkey, which provided contingents during the 1950-53 Korean war, might be expected to send forces once more. Despite its 'peace' constitution, Japan could hardly avoid giving military aid to the United States, given that it already hosts American naval, marine, and air force bases.

Even if the United States and its allies assembled sufficient manpower and firepower to inflict serious damage on the North Korean war machine, the USA would eventually face the same dilemma it did in 1950. Should it invade North Korea with the intention of liberating the country from communist rule? In 1950 the Chinese made it clear that although they would accept the defeat of the North Korean invasion of South Korea, they would take action if the Americans attempted to occupy the north. General Macarthur ignored the Chinese warning, entered North Korea, and was then driven out by an army of Chinese 'volunteers'.

How would today's China react to an invasion of North Korea by the United States and its allies? Perhaps not with direct military intervention, but probably by providing sufficient supplies to sustain North Korean resistance. And how would the USA react to that? In 1950 General Macarthur reacted to Chinese military intervention by demanding American atomic bomb attacks on China. He did not get them and President Truman finally decided to sack the general. In 1950 China did not have any nuclear weapons. It does now and they have a global reach. Whatever aid China gave to North Korea, it seems unlikely the United States would risk provoking World War III by taking any military action against China.

Although the assault on Iran which American conservatives and Israeli hardliners have worked for over the last few years would undoubtedly produce a major international crisis, such a crisis would be as nothing compared to the outbreak of a major war in the Korean peninsula. If this rumour of war became a reality, the whole world might be in danger from the ever-escalating consequences of such a conflict. Renewed diplomacy is the only way to avoid this outcome. The United States must agree to a meeting of the six power conference on Korea as soon as possible, making no pre-conditions and avoiding any further military escalation. North Korea may be a rogue state, but if it is driven into a corner, it may, like a mad dog, strike out in all directions with terrible consequences for the region and the world.

Captives in the New Barbary

2010-11-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

The release of the British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler by the Somali pirates is to be welcomed, even at the cost of an estimated US $750,000 ransom. Their year long ordeal has been traumatic for them, but it has also been well-publicised in the Western media, a factor which no doubt assisted in their final release.

What of the other captives in the hands of the Somali pirates? Currently there are at least 435 seafarers from various nations held by the pirates. The largest group are around eighty sailors from the Philippines, a poor nation which supplies a disproportionately large number of crew personnel to the world's merchant ships. Their plight is hardly known outside their home country, a nation which has neither the military nor the political stature in the world community to exert serious pressure for their release.

Some commentators have called the home ports of the Somali pirates a 'new Barbary', referring to the Barbary coast of North Africa which was the base of pirates in earlier centuries. Between 1500 and 1830 the Muslim corsairs from the Barbary states terrorised the Mediterranean Sea, taking Christian ships and captives. At the peak of their activities in the first half of the seventeenth century, the chief corsair port of Algiers held at least 25,000 Christian captives.

However, there are important differences between the Barbary corsairs of old and today's Somali pirates. The Barbary corsairs were more interested in captives than in the ships and cargos they captured. Their captives provided much-needed labour in the local economy or could be ransomed back to Christian countries at high prices. The modern Somali pirates are more interested in collecting large ransoms for seized ships and cargos than for individual captives, except in cases like the Chandlers. Captives are only a useful bargaining tool for the Somali pirates if threats to ill-treat them can stimulate shipowners to a more rapid conclusion of ransom negotiations for the return of their ships.

Also, while the Barbary corsairs claimed holy war, the jihad at sea, as a justification for seizing Christian ships and captives, the pirates of the new Barbary in Somalia are purely mercenary criminals. Muslims are among their captives and Islamic militants in Somalia claim to be bitter enemies of the pirates.

The numerous international naval forces cruising off Somalia's coast have made much of their reduction in the number of attacks made by the Somali pirates, which have fallen by half comparing 2010 to 2009. Yet comparing the first nine months of 2010 to those of 2009, the number of ships taken by the Somali pirates has actually increased, from 34 to 40. Taking more ships in fewer attacks would seem to indicate that pirate productivity is actually increasing.

Not only are more ships being taken, but also more captives. In all of 2009 some 867 seafarers were kidnapped by the Somali pirates. Already in 2010 some 790 seafarers have been made prisoner, so the total figure will probably exceed that for 2009 by the end of the year. In the days of the Barbary corsairs, ransoming captives was a major activity for Christian countries, far more important than getting compensation for lost ships and cargos. Today the captives held by the Somali pirates are, except in cases like the Chandlers, largely forgotten.

Naval patrols can do nothing to help the captives held in the new Barbary. Somali piracy can only be ended by creating a more stable political situation within Somalia, which has been without a functioning national government since 1991, and this requires action on land rather than at sea.

A New Somalia? Time to Face Reality

2010-07-12T15:18:00.000-06:00

Somali president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed chose to mark the recent fiftieth anniversary of his country's independence with a striking gesture. Picking up an AK47 assault rifle, the president jumped on a tank and went to join his men fighting Islamist insurgents. He did not have far to go. The frontline is only a few blocks from his office in downtown Mogadishu.

The United Nations-approved Transitional Federal Government (TFG) controls only a small part of Somalia's capital. Yet the international community persists in seeing this powerless administration as the only body capable of bringing peace and stability to the country, building a new Somalia.

Most of southern and central Somalia, including most of Mogadishu, remains under the control of Islamist militants. The principal groups are Hizbul Islam and Al-Shabab, with the latter having openly declared its allegiance to Al-Qaeda. In the north of the country, however, are two states, Puntland and Somaliland, which have achieved a degree of stability unknown in the rest of Somalia.

Puntland has its own government, but it has promised to rejoin a united, federal Somalia if and when it is created. The area is the principal base for the infamous Somali pirates, but the Puntland government has made efforts to curb their activities. This has been done in spite of the fact that the annual income of the Somali pirates (at least US $50 million in 2009) vastly exceeeds that of the Puntland administration. The pirates rule the Indian Ocean coast of Puntland, but the local government has had some success in reducing their use of the region's coast along the Gulf of Aden.

West of Puntland is the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, which has enjoyed comparative peace since the collapse of Somalia's central government in 1991. Neither pirates nor Islamist militants have a foothold in Somaliland where the local government has achieved a high level of order and stability. Recently a democratic election has taken place and led to the victory of the opposition party. International observers declared the election largely free and fair. No other part of Somalia has witnessed such an election for decades.

Thus, contrary to the picture of war-torn Somalia usually presented in the Western media, the north of the country consists of two states enjoying a measure of stability. Neither Somaliland nor Puntland is hostile to the United States and its allies, unlike the Islamist insurgents who plague southern Somalia, and both states have at various times appealed for support from the international community. Anyone hoping to restore a functioning national government embracing the whole of Somalia would want to use Somaliland and Puntland as basic building blocks to achieve that aim.

However, rather than use existing governments, the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union seem determined to pursue the fantasy of re-creating a national government of Somalia from scratch. In this fairy tale the national government, once established in the capital Mogadishu, will use its Western-trained soldiers to defeat the Islamist insurgents and reduce the regions of Puntland and Somaliland to obedience, restoring law and order throughout Somalia.

The problem is that the TFG can barely survive in Mogadishu let alone move out into the rest of the country. The TFG's own forces are weak and ineffective, and it relies for survival on military support from the African Union peacekeeping troops in the capital, some five thousand men from Uganda and Burundi. The United States has funded training of TFG soldiers in Uganda and Djibouti. Currently the European Union is spending large sums on training two thousand TFG soldiers in Uganda. (In reply Al-Shabab has now carried out suicide bombing in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.) Judging by past experience with such training efforts, once the soldiers return to Somalia most will desert the TFG to join the Islamist insurgents or to take up well-paid service with other Somali warlords.

It is often said that the Somali pirates cannot be beaten at sea, no matter how many foreign warships are cruising off the coast of Somalia. The only solution is a return to law and order on land in Somalia. The only realistic possibility of this happening is if the international community provides support to the existing governments in Somaliland and Puntland rather than wasting time and money on a hopelessly ineffective government in Mogadishu.

Turkey and the Gaza Flotilla: Empty Threats and Real Dangers

2010-06-13T14:24:00.000-06:00

The recent Israeli attack on the peace flotilla seeking to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the people of Gaza caused outrage around the world. Given that all those killed by the Israeli commandos were Turkish citizens, the reaction of Turkey was particularly strident. Commentators rushed to describe this incident as a turning point in the politics of the Middle East. Israel had lost the support of Turkey, its only Muslim ally in the region (although Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia remain as de facto allies of Israel at least in relation to Iran), and things could never be the same again.

In fact, like innumerable Israeli attacks in the past, the affair of the Gaza flotilla is following a very familiar path. The United States and its Western allies support Israel and the outrage expressed by Muslim states will not lead to any significant action against Israel. That the leading angry Muslim state this time is Turkey, NATO member and long-standing US ally, will make no difference.

As prime minister Netanyahu has said, as long as the United States supports Israel the Jewish state need not worry about the opinions of any other country on the planet. Turkey has called for the punishment of Israel and has demanded that the United States condemn Israeli actions. Neither of these demands is going to be met.

Lest it be thought that American indulgence towards Israeli belligerence is unique - a product of the supposed Zionist control of US foreign policy - one should consider the case of Thailand, another close ally of the United States.

Shortly before the attack on the Gaza flotilla, the Thai army crushed a populist protest movement that had set up camp in downtown Bangkok, killing at least seventy-five people and carrying out this repression in full view of the international media. If this action had occurred in Beijing or Tehran, the United States and its allies would have been loud in their expressions of outrage and condemnation. However, in the Thai case they made almost no comment, other than to advise their tourists to avoid the area. When the military forces of a close US ally behave brutally, Washington can be guaranteed to ignore such action.

This may be bad news for the current government of Turkey. The Turkish armed forces, like those of Thailand, have a long history of launching military coups against governments deemed to be insufficiently pro-American. Originally the democratic election of the current moderate Islamist government of Turkey, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was welcomed by the United States and its allies as a progressive step. Now their opinions may be changing.

Erdogan has not only denounced Israel's action against the flotilla, but he has also praised the Hamas party which controls Gaza as a Muslim resistance movement. Since Hamas is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States, Israel, and their allies, Erdogan may be fast losing his reputation as a moderate Islamist. His removal by a Turkish military coup, backed by the USA and Israel, may now be under consideration, but much will depend on whether Erdogan actually follows up his tough talk with action.

Despite all the rage and public demonstrations, it seems unlikely that Turkey will take any serious action against Israel, with which it has close economic and military ties. The Turkish armed forces have been very dependent on Israeli assistance in their recent efforts at military modernization. For example, while the USA has been reluctant to supply the Turkish military with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Israel agreed to sell Turkey some of its Heron UAVs. The Turkish generals will not want to see this contract ended by a general severing of relations between the two countries. In the military sphere, Turkish retaliation against Israel will not go beyond the symbolic cancellation of a few joint military exercises.

Annual Turkish exports to Israel amount to two and a half billion dollars worth of goods, and Turkish businessmen will not want to lose that trade. Turkey also has a long-term contract to supply water to Israel and any attempt to end this would be seen as dangerously provocative. Israeli visitors are also important to Turkey's tourist industry, which would not wish to lose such income because of a politically-motivated ban on such visits.

Since the United States has clearly backed Israel rather than Turkey in the Gaza flotilla affair, will Erdogan retaliate against Washington as well? Suggestions have included the withdrawal of the Turkish military contingent from Afghanistan; the closing of the remaining American bases in Turkey; or even taking Turkey out of NATO completely. None of these things are likely to happen. Should it look as if even one of them was being contemplated by Erdogan, the Turkish generals would no doubt launch a coup with Washington's blessing.

All in all Erdogan's threats to both Israel and the United States are just empty rhetoric. Because they will have no serious consequences in the real world, such words merely invite Western contempt for being just ineffectual Muslim rage. Of course if Erdogan should try to back up his words with action, then he will face the real danger that his government will be overthrown by a military coup. Backed by the United States and Israel, the Turkish generals will no doubt welcome the opportunity to suppress the Islamist movement which has posed such a threat in recent years to the secular state established by Ataturk back in the 1920s.

Unfinished Business: Conflicts in the Caucasus

2010-05-23T10:41:00.000-06:00

The recent sixteenth anniversary of the ceasefire agreement that ended the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh passed largely unnoticed in the world outside the Caucasus. Yet this is one of several 'frozen' conflicts in that region which could break out again at any time with serious consequences both local and international.

In Soviet times Nagorno-Karabakh was a part of the republic of Azerbaijan which had a largely Armenian population. From 1988 onwards these Armenians began to demand separation from Azerbaijan and links with the nearby republic of Armenia. After the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991, both Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent states and the unrest in Karabakh quickly turned into open warfare.

The 1992-1994 war involved the seizure of Karabakh by the local Armenian rebels, backed by Armenia, and the expulsion of the Azeri population. The government of Azerbaijan mounted repeated attacks in an attempt to regain the lost territory, but with no success. Some 15-20 per cent of the territory of Azerbaijan passed into Armenian hands. Over 30,000 people were killed in the conflict and around one million people became refugees. Armenian success was said to be due to military support from Russia and the poor organization of the Azeri war effort.

Much has changed since the ceasefire in 1994. Azerbaijan is now a wealthy country because of its oil riches and it has greatly strengthened its armed forces. Since the start of this year, Azeri nationalist rhetoric about regaining the nation's lost territory has steadily increased. In February the defence minister of Azerbaijan spoke of the likelihood of a 'great war' with Armenia which would lead to the reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh. Could such a renewed war break out?

Armenia's position today appears weaker than in the 1990s. Russia now has close political and economic ties with Azerbaijan and may be less willing to give Armenia military aid if that country is attacked. NATO member Turkey has even closer links with the Azeri Turks, and it has said it will not ratify its US-brokered agreement of October 2009 to normalize relations with Armenia unless the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is settled, presumably by Armenian concessions.

Despite the warlike rhetoric in Baku, a unilateral Azeri military attack on Nagorno-Karabakh seems unlikely. It was such an attack which Georgia launched on her break-away region of South Ossetia in August 2008 to 'unfreeze' a similar conflict in the Caucasus. The results were not to Georgia's benefit. Russia struck back to protect its client state and its forces rampaged across Georgia for several days before the government in Tbilisi came to terms. Unilateral action is clearly not the way forward for Caucasian nations seeking to regain lost territory if it provokes a military reaction from the Russian bear.

NATO promises of support for Georgia proved so much hot air during the short war with Russia in August 2008. Nevertheless since then the Western alliance has boosted its links with Georgia and held out to it the possibility of NATO membership. Might such support encourage the Georgian government to launch a second strike to regain lost territories like South Ossetia and Abkhazia? It seems unlikely. Russia is still the world's second most powerful nuclear-armed state. The USA and its NATO allies are unlikely to risk nuclear catastrophe by supporting a Georgian attack on obscure Russian client states in the distant Caucasus.

The other main conflict in the Caucasus region, Russia's war with Islamist guerrillas in Chechnya and the neighbouring states of Dagestan and Ingushetia, was declared 'won' by the Russians in April 2009 after a ten-year struggle. However, Islamist terrorists from the Caucasus are still able to carry out bombings within Russia as well as attacks in their home region. Low-level conflict of this sort seems likely to continue in the Caucasus for years to come and may grow in strength.

The 'frozen' conflicts in Georgia and Azerbaijan continue to have the potential to flare up again, but it seems that after the failure of Georgia's unilateral attack in 2008, the aggrieved Georgians and Azeris will probably hope that their big-power supporters can achieve favourable diplomatic settlements for them rather than risk further military action by their own forces. The increasing NATO presence in the Caucasus may encourage Russia to make concessions to local states, although there is also the risk that such a presence in an area long regarded by Russia as its own backyard may be seen as a dangerous provocation.

Somali Sea Raiders: Pirates Not Corsairs

2010-04-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

The Samho Dream is the third supertanker to be captured by Somali pirates in less than two years. These ships are the largest vessels ever captured by pirates. Yet are the Somali sea raiders really pirates? The Arabic media use a word to describe them which means 'corsair' rather than pirate, apparently conferring a higher status upon them.

The intention is clearly to associate the Somalis with the Barbary corsairs of North Africa who were a menace to European shipping from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Their victims called them the 'Barbary pirates', but there is good reason to see them as different from pirates, just as there is good reason to deny the label 'corsair' to the modern Somali pirates.

The corsairs of the Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and the independent kingdom of Morocco were in part Muslim holy warriors, carrying on a campaign against Christian ships and coasts. Although also Muslims, the Somali pirates have never claimed to be carrying on a holy war at sea. Indeed they deny all links to the Islamist militants operating in Somalia lest such an association unleash the full wrath of the United States upon them. The Somali pirates are criminals not terrorists.

Pirates operate outside the law, the enemies of all nations as it used to be said. The Barbary corsairs operated under the control of the rulers of their home ports. European states could make treaties with, for example, the government of Algiers to stop corsair attacks on their ships. There is no effective national government in Somalia and the pirates are not even subject to the remaining regional governments in that country. The clan-based Somali sea raiders are true pirates, unfettered by any law, national or international.

For the Barbary corsairs the ships and cargoes they captured were less important than the passengers and crew aboard the vessels. During the period they were active, the Barbary corsairs captured more than a million European and American Christians, who either paid ransom to regain their freedom or remained as slaves. For the Somali pirates the ships and cargoes are more important, being held until multi-million dollar ransoms are paid. The crews aboard the captured vessels are less important, although threats to their safety may encourage reluctant ship owners to pay up.

The reduced importance of the human captives is a sign that the Barbary corsairs and the Somali pirates operate in very different political and economic worlds. The Barbary corsairs lived in a time of emerging European nation states. A French merchant ship, for example, was based in France and had a French crew. To capture it was to invite retaliation from the French government and its navy. Today the international shipping industry is very different. In the age of globalization a ship may be owned in one country, fly the flag of another, and have a crew drawn from any number of countries. It might be said that this modern diversity is reflected in the multi-national composition of the anti-piracy fleet of warships now assembled off Somalia, but the multiplicity of national interests involved in vessels captured by the pirates is a source of weakness not strength.

The celebrated Maersk Alabama incident in 2009 was very much the exception which proves the rule. To have an American warship save the all-American crew of an American-flag merchant ship was an echo of an earlier, simpler time. Generally merchant ships captured by the Somali pirates cause as many international complications as does the successful interception of suspected pirate craft by warships on anti-piracy patrol.

Thus it can be argued that the Somali pirates are not the heirs of the Barbary corsairs. Perhaps we should be glad of this. It took European and American states more than three centuries to defeat the Barbary corsairs. One can only hope that today's international community can curb the activities of the Somali pirates in a rather shorter period of time.

How to Lose Friends: President Obama and the Middle East

2010-03-16T13:51:00.000-06:00

To alienate one long-standing friend is a misfortune. To alienate two such friends within less than a month is a sign of carelessness. Yet this is what President Barack Obama has recently achieved, angering both of America's principal allies in the Middle East, Turkey and Israel.

It might be said that with regard to Turkey the offence was not given by the president but by a committee of the US Congress which called for official recognition of the Turkish killing of Armenians during the First World War as an act of genocide. The White House promptly said it would make every effort to prevent such a resolution being passed by Congress. Nevertheless Obama had promised to support such a resolution when he was seeking Armenian American votes during his presidential election campaign. Turkey has not been appeased and has promised that if such a resolution goes through, it will have a negative impact on US-Turkish relations.

With regard to Israel, whatever the provocations of the Netanyahu government, Obama's promise to re-start the Middle East peace process with regard to the Israel-Palestine dispute was not being fulfilled even before the clash over the expansion of Jewish settlements in Jerusalem. To appease his Arab allies, Obama will no doubt heap all the blame for the current crisis on Israel, but his own failure to take any serious interest in the peace process must also take some of the blame.

One might add that the Obama administration's penchant for offending long-standing allies of the USA is not restricted to the Middle East. During the same weeks that American relations with Turkey and Israel soured, Obama's hostility to Britain once again came into prominence. His administration's proclaimed 'neutrality' in the recent renewal of the dispute between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands did not pass unnoticed by the London media. This confirmed for many the president's anti-British feelings, supposedly caused by the suffering of his Kenyan family during British colonial rule in that country.

Nor can America's Arab allies in the Middle East take much comfort from President Obama's inept diplomacy. They walk a dangerous tightrope. The Arab masses they rule are alienated by their support for America's wars in the Islamic world. These Arab rulers need America to achieve real progress in the Israel-Palestine dispute so they can show their people that they are not just Western stooges, indifferent to the suffering of fellow Muslims. If no such progress can be shown, the Arab masses will continue to be radicalized and fall under the influence of Islamist extremists and terror groups.

The situation is particularly acute in Egypt, the only Arab country which directly assists Israel in the oppression of fellow Muslims through its role in the blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza. Ageing and ill, the current ruler of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, wants a smooth transition when he hands over power to his son. An American-brokered settlement between Israel and the Palestinians which appears to give some gains to the latter would greatly assist such a transition. As it is, the Egyptian government can only seek to appease growing Islamist radicalism by deflecting it into attacks on the country's Coptic Christian minority.

Arab rulers are well aware of the great popularity with the Arab masses of Iran's President Ahmadinejad because of his hostile declarations against Israel. Most of this ranting is just empty rhetoric, regularly repeated precisely because it embarrasses the Arab rulers with their own peoples. Even Syria would not dare issue such dire threats against Israel as those coming from Tehran. Nevertheless it is a high-risk strategy for the Iranians. President Nasser of Egypt repeatedly threatened Israel in such terms, but found himself helpless and humiliated in 1967 when Israel chose to take his words at face value and launched a pre-emptive military attack.

The danger in the current situation is that America's President Obama, conscious of his weak performance both at home and abroad, will feel forced to act tough to repair his image and win back the support of alienated allies. One way of doing this would be to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Such action would be very popular with Israel, moderately popular with the rulers of America's Arab allies, especially in the Gulf, and might meet with Turkey's reluctant approval.

The wider consequences of such an attack for the Middle East and the rest of the world would of course be unforeseeable. Moreover, if for any reason the attack was less than totally successful, there is a risk for Barack Obama that his presidency would be doomed by events in Iran in the same way that Jimmy Carter's presidency was fatally blighted thirty years ago.

Stabilising Somalia: Facing Reality or Pursuing Fantasy?

2009-12-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

In mid-November a murder took place in Bosaso, the largest city and chief port of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia. Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware, a senior member of Puntland's judiciary, was shot dead outside a mosque. Why was the judge killed? For doing his job by sending Somali pirates and Islamist terrorists to jail. Both groups were keen to end the judge's activities. One or the other sent the assassins who killed him.

Puntland may be home to the infamous Somali pirates, but it also has a functioning regional government, which has made some efforts to curb their activities. This has been done in spite of the fact that the annual income of the Somali pirates vastly exceeds that of the Puntland adiministration. The pirates rule the Indian Ocean coastline of Puntland, but the local government has had some success in reducing their use of the region's coast along the Gulf of Aden.

West of Puntland is the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, which has enjoyed comparative peace since the collapse of Somalia's central government in 1991. Neither pirates nor Islamist terrorists have a foothold in Somaliland where the local government has achieved a remarkable level of order and stability.

Thus, contrary to the picture of war-torn Somalia usually presented in the Western media, the northern half of the country consists of two small states that enjoy a measure of stability, though more in Somaliland than in Puntland. Neither state is particularly hostile to the United States and its allies, unlike the Islamist insurgents who plague southern Somalia, and both have at various times appealed for support from the international community. Anyone hoping to restore a functioning national government embracing the whole of Somalia would want to use Somaliland and Puntland as basic building blocks to achieve that aim.

However, rather than use real governments that already exist, the United States and the rest of the international community seem determined to pursue the fantasy of re-creating a national government for Somalia from scratch. In this fairy tale, the national government, once established in the capital Mogadishu, will use its Western-trained soldiers to defeat the Islamist insurgents and reduce the regions of Puntland and Somaliland to obedience, restoring law and order throughout Somalia.

The current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu is at least the sixteenth attempt since 1991 to re-establish a central government in Somalia. It is the only government in Somalia recognized by the United Nations and the rest of the international community. The problem is that the TFG does not even control the whole of Mogadishu let alone any significant area of Somalia outside that city. Only the support of the troops of the African Union peacekeeping force keeps the TFG in existence as its own military forces are weak and ineffective. There is no danger of a TFG judge being shot down for jailing pirates or terrorists as the TFG has no functioning judiciary inside Somalia.

Recently the European Union declared it will be sending a military mission to train the new army of the TFG which is going to restore law and order to Somalia. Of course such training will not take place in Somalia, which would be far too dangerous, but in Uganda. Similarly, when the present head of the TFG, President Sharif Ahmed, was chosen earlier this year, the process took place not in Somalia, but in Djibouti. A government which can only carry on its functions outside the country it is supposed to rule must be considered a pathetic sham, but apparently the international community wants to continue wasting money on it. There is not the slightest chance that it will take control of all the national territory of Somalia.

It is often said the Somali pirates cannot be beaten at sea, no matter how many foreign warships are cruising off the coast of Somalia. The only solution is a return to law and order on land in Somalia. The only realistic possibility of this happening is if the international community provides support for the existing governments in Somaliland and, in particular, Puntland, rather than wasting time and money on a sham government in Mogadishu that is totally ineffective. Then men like Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware who have stood up to pirates and Islamist terrorists will not have died in vain.

Wider Still and Wider: The Continuing Growth of the American Empire

2009-11-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

Enemies of the United States have enjoyed the spectacle of its mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and its economic difficulties since 2007. They have celebrated these events as showing the fragility of American power, as being the prelude to the collapse of the worldwide American empire. However, reports of the death of the American empire are premature. Indeed some would say that American power has been growing around the world since 2001 rather than diminishing.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the American empire faces challenges. In some areas the natives are getting restless. Strangely these malcontents are not Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East, but Latin American nationalists in America's own backyard. To the decades-old defiance of communist Cuba has been added the populist movement of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. His anti-gringo rhetoric has inspired other South American countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to defy their American masters. The recent military bases deal between the USA and Colombia, its most loyal Latin American vassal state, shows that the American empire is preparing the infrastructure from which to launch military action against those states which challenge its dominance.

Much is made of the growing influence of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economic superpowers, so one might expect Brazil to take a leading role in opposing American military expansion in South America. Instead, crippled by its bitter internal social divisions, Brazil raised only a mild protest at the Colombia bases deal and accepted unconvincing American assurances that the bases would not pose a threat to any other country in the region. However wealthy Brazil becomes, it is very unlikely to defy the dictates coming from Washington in the near future.

If Latin America is restive, Europe seems even more securely under American control. After half a century France has finally given up its pretence that it is independent of 'les Anglo Saxons'. Despite President Sarkozy's Napoleonic gestures, he has led his country back to the subordinate position it occupied in the American empire before President Charles de Gaulle came to power and created the Fifth Republic in 1958.

All Europe up to Russia's borders, with the possible exception of the discontented Serbs, is now largely subservient to the USA. For their own administrative convenience, the Americans support the creation of a single European state with its capital at Brussels. However, if the European Union authorities in Brussels do not bend to its will, the USA is still ready to undermine their position by having direct dealings with individual European states. This is particularly true with regard to the ex-communist countries of central and eastern Europe. Those states are keenly aware that the European Union, an economic power but a military eunuch, will never protect them from a resurgent Russia, so they are happy to have direct links with their American protector.

Africa is almost as subservient to the United States as Europe, but there are some problem areas. Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia still resist American dominance in their different ways, but their resistance is not such as to demand actual American military intervention in their affairs. For a time it seemed that the sufferings of people in Darfur might serve as a pretext for American intervention in Sudan, but an American invasion of yet another Islamic country was eventually seen as a bad idea. Eritrea's current dictator is an annoyance to America, but not so much that action needs to be taken against him.

Somalia is an odd case, since at least two of the three constituent parts of that fractured state might well be ready to accept American assistance, but Washington declines to offer it. The self-declared independent state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous region of Puntland are not inherently anti-American like the Islamist insurgents in southern Somalia, but America largely ignores them. The USA, so keen to tear Yugoslavia apart during the 1990s, is perversely determined to keep Somalia at least nominally intact.

The Middle East is the cockpit of America's struggle against its chosen enemy Islamic fundamentalism, but whatever the feelings of ordinary Muslims in the region, their national governments are almost all subservient to America. Should any of these states be tempted to stray, America's regional enforcer, Israel, will be unleashed on them. Of Israel's old Arab enemies, only Syria is still unreconciled. In geostrategic terms, Turkey is probably more important than Israel in maintaining American hegemony in the Middle East. In recent years Turkey, whether under secular or moderate Islamic governments, has taken a more independent line in its foreign policy, but the country seems unlikely to stray far from its alliance with America.

The great American enemy in the Middle East is of course the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state which has defied American power for thirty years and inflicted a number of humiliations on the country it calls the 'Great Satan', such as the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Whatever Iran's current nuclear ambitions and its supposed 'existential threat' to Israel, it is chiefly hated by American politicians and generals because it has successfully resisted American hegemony for so long. Powerful forces in both the USA and Israel continue to work for a military attack on Iran. The rest of the world should hope their plans never come to fruition.

Now that conflict in Iraq has been reduced to 'an acceptable level of violence', it is the resistance of the Taliban in Afghanistan which poses the greatest threat to American imperial ambitions. President Obama is now planning to increase US forces in Afghanistan and conclude the war before the end of his presidential term. Yet even if America was to be defeated in Afghanistan, such a reverse would be no more fatal to the American empire than its earlier defeat in Vietnam. A Taliban Afghanistan, like communist Vietnam after 1975, can be quarantined and left to rot.

The most important recent development in South Asia for the American empire has not involved the strife-torn countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has involved India. The recent nuclear treaty between India and the USA is, as many Indian politicians and commentators have pointed out, a first step on India's road away from national independence and towards becoming a member of America's worldwide alliance of subservient states. Thus a second BRIC country will be brought into the American orbit. Both Brazil and India may prosper economically, but the USA will never allow them to challenge its military domination of the world.

In South-East Asia most countries are long-standing allies or dependents of the USA. The principal exception is Myanmar (formerly Burma) whose military junta has ruled for decades, ignoring American hostility. The generals may continue to do so as long as they keep their country largely cut off from the rest of the world. Further north, economic powers such as South Korea and Japan are close allies of America, and whatever the bold statements of the new Japanese government, it seems most unlikely that Japan will seek any degree of military and strategic independence from the United States. Indeed Japan remains the only foreign country where a large American fleet, in this case the Seventh Fleet, is permanently based.

America's chief problem in East Asia is North Korea. Nuclear-armed, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, North Korea engages the United States in cat-and-mouse negotiations which can swing from cordial to crisis almost overnight. Given its growing internal turmoil, North Korea may collapse before the USA is forced to take decisive action against it, but there is always the danger of some last-minute missile strike before the communist dictatorship implodes.

This short survey of the world must conclude with the last two BRIC countries: Russia and China. Although both are definitely outside the control of the American empire, they are very different states. Despite its enormous natural resources, Russia remains in a fragile condition both economically and militarily. Despite the progress made in the Putin years, Russia is still on the edge. It could advance to regain its superpower status, or it could collapse again into the chaos of the Yeltsin period. Russia and China are allies of a sort through membership of bodies like the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation, but they still eye each other warily. Perhaps the perceived threat from America is all that keeps them together. As Russophobia is now the only acceptable racist doctrine in the Western world, an early rapprochement between Russia and America seems unlikely.

If America no longer fears Russia nor wants the country as a friend, the opposite is true with regard to China. Certain to be the world's dominant economic superpower by mid-century, China at present poses no major military threat to the USA, but its military forces will inevitably expand as its economic power grows. At present the nature of the Chinese 'threat' is deliberately exaggerated by the American military-industrial complex to get more defence funds out of Congress, but it may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy. America certainly needs China's economic support, not least in buying vast amounts of US government bonds, and, despite protectionist urges within America, the USA must avoid offending its increasingly powerful rival.

That China should continue to provide financial support for its supposed rival is not unusual. In the twentieth century the United States was the rising world power, both economically and militarily, yet it was willing to provide financial support to its fading one-time rival Britain. However, one of the conditions of providing such aid was that Britain should dismantle its worldwide empire. It is not unlikely that China will impose similar conditions on the United States at some point in the future if the American empire continues to be dependent on Chinese financial support.

Nevertheless such a scenario is probably decades away. Despite the gleeful forecasts of America's enemies, the American empire is still doing well, indeed expanding its influence around the world. The burden of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been counter-balanced by France's return to the American imperial fold and by India's decision to move into the American orbit. Two of the four BRIC nations, Brazil and India, are now under increasing American influence. Of the other two, Russia is still a fragile outsider, while at the moment China believes it is in its interests to bankroll American power, although it is likely to impose more conditions on that assistance in the future.

Even if the American empire went financially bankrupt, it might not matter in the short term. The Spanish empire, undoubtedly the greatest military power in Europe and much of the world in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, defaulted on its debts a dozen times before its final collapse. Few creditors are prepared to get tough with a debtor that remains a dominant military power. Whatever its current problems, the American empire will probably survive for many decades to come.

Killing the Guards and Facing the Consequences

2009-10-21T13:29:00.000-06:00

The recent attack at Pishin in south-east Iran by a suicide bomber has inflicted significant losses on the higher ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). General Nourali Shoushtari, deputy head of the IRGC's ground forces, and General Rajabali Mohammadzadeh, the IRGC commander in Sistan-Baluchistan province, were among six officers killed, along with more than thirty other people.

Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by Jundallah, a group also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran, which is a Sunni Muslim movement led by Abdolmalek Rigi. Based in Baluchistan, an area straddling the Iran-Pakistan border, Jundallah claims not to be a separatist organisation. Rather its aim is said to be to obtain better treatment for Baluchis, and Sunni Muslims in general, within Shia-dominated Iran. Since 2005 Jundallah's terrorist attacks within Iran have increased in both number and effectiveness.

The Iranian government has a simple explanation for the increasing impact of Jundallah's operations. This is increased foreign support for what Iran regards as a dangerous terrorist group. After the recent atrocity in Pishin, the Iranian government made the usual accusations that the USA and Britain were behind the attack. In response the Americans and the British made the usual denials of any involvement with terrorist attacks inside Iran. More directly, Iran accused Pakistan of allowing Jundallah bases to exist on its territory and demanded that Abdolmalek Rigi be handed over to the Iranian authorities. Pakistan rejected all Iran's accusations and demands.

The American, British and Pakistani denials of involvement with Jundallah are of course not to be taken seriously. For at least five years, the CIA, with full presidential and congressional backing, has been carrying out a strategy to destabilise the government in Tehran by encouraging ethnic insurgencies within Iran. The CIA has been assisted in its operations by Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Pakistan's ISI, and the intelligence service of Saudi Arabia.

Nearly forty per cent of Iran's population are non-Persian and the CIA has sought to encourage terrorist activities by members of these minority ethnic groups. The principal groups involved have been the Azeri Turks in north-west Iran; the Kurds in western Iran; the Arabs in south-west Iran; and the Baluchis in south-east Iran. For several years after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the efforts of the CIA and its allies were concentrated on the Arab inhabitants of Iran's Khuzestan province, which borders southern Iraq. Bombings and other attacks took place, but eventually Iranian security forces got the upper hand. This rebuff led to renewed interest in Jundallah's operations in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of south-east Iran.

Originally suspect because of past links with the Taliban and al Qaeda, Jundallah now seemed an ideal vehicle for creating chaos in a vulnerable area of Iran. Closely connected with the existing drug smuggling trade in a region where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet, Jundallah had much support among the Baluchis and promised to open up a new front against the ayatollahs in Tehran.

The new importance assigned to Jundallah put Pakistan in a difficult position. Within their own borders the Pakistanis were struggling to suppress a Baluchi separatist insurrection, but now they were being asked to provide bases on their territory to support a Baluchi rising within neighbouring Iran. Such a contradictory situation was of course nothing new in the CIA's strategy against Tehran. Iraq's Kurds were encouraged to support Kurdish resistance in Iran while at the same time being discouraged from aiding the Kurdish insurgency within Turkey. As usual the Pakistanis became reconciled to the new situation thanks to suitable payments from their American and Saudi paymasters.

The efforts of Jundallah, the CIA's proxy, have now culminated in the killing of senior IRGC generals. How is Iran likely to react to this provocation? It is certainly not going to be cowed by foreign-sponsored terrorism within its borders. The IRGC, and in particular its elite Qods force, is almost certain to launch violent retaliation against those it regards as responsible.

The Taliban, whether Afghan or Pakistani, and al Qaeda are notorious for their hostility to Shia Muslims. Yet US intelligence has several times accused Shia-controlled Iran of supplying arms to the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan so that they can fight the NATO occupying forces. Clearly the Iranians may be prepared to overlook past differences with the Taliban if they can use them as proxies to strike at the Americans and the British. Perhaps the Iranians might even supply the Taliban with shoulder-launched ground to air missiles, a development long feared by NATO military analysts.

Alternatively, Iran might encourage its proxies in Iraq to launch terror attacks on American forces still based in that country, or bombings might take place in Saudi Arabia's principal oil-producing area on the Gulf, where many oppressed Shia Muslims live. However, it is most likely that Iranian retaliation will be directed at Pakistan, the base for most Jundallah operations in Iran. The government of Pakistan does nothing more than utter muted protests when American UAVs attack Taliban bases on its sovereign territory. It is likely to react more strongly if Iranian land or air forces start attacking Jundallah bases on its territory. Hence Iran will probably use terrorist proxies within Pakistan to attack military and political targets.

No doubt the death of senior IRGC generals has brought satisfaction at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but using proxies to kill supposed enemies is a two-edged sword. The IRGC has proxies of its own who will probably soon hit back at America and its allies.

The War on Terror: Eight Years and Counting.

2009-09-06T14:45:00.000-06:00

As the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, approaches, it may be time to take an overview of the current state of the 'war on terror' which those attacks provoked. The war on terror, or 'the long war' as it was newly designated in a largely unsuccessful rebranding exercise, also has other names. The American neo-conservatives see it as 'the clash of civilizations', with the Christian West, aided by the Jewish state of Israel, resisting the attacks of the Muslim hordes bent on its destruction. To the extreme Islamists, the conflict is also a defensive struggle, but in their view they are resisting 'Crusader and Zionist aggression' against the Muslim world.

Whatever it is called, the war on terror began in the United States in 2001 and any overview should start there. Wide-ranging security measures now make it unlikely that something similar to the 9/11 attacks could happen again, but the possibility of lower level attacks, by residents rather than outsiders, still remains. The large security apparatus built up in the USA in the last few years may be successful in discouraging terrorists, but in a war which is potentially endless, that apparatus may pose a threat to the long-term future of American liberty.

Although Europe has seen no major Islamist terror attacks in recent years, it remains under greater threat than the United States. The Muslim population of Europe, especially Western Europe, continues its relentless growth. Even if only a tiny proportion of that population is ready to assist terrorists, attacks on the scale of those previously carried out in Madrid and London may well occur. The most likely source of such an Islamist threat is North Africa, with the terrorists exploiting the cover provided by the large expatriate North African populations in countries such as Spain and France.

Africa is in many ways the new front in the war on terror. The United States has recognized this by setting up its Africa Command (AFRICOM), a new military command covering all of Africa except Egypt. The command has so far not found a suitable African country to house its headquarters, but the United States already has a large military base on the continent at Djibouti near the Horn of Africa. The principal hotbeds of Islamist militancy in Africa are Algeria, home of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Somalia, where Al Shabaab is currently the leading group. AQIM has tried to expand its operations southwards into sub-Saharan Africa, but with only limited success. Al Shabaab so far has little influence outside central and southern Somalia, the pirates in the north of the country being ordinary criminals rather than ideological terrorists. So far the United States has avoided any large-scale military operations in Africa, preferring to support local forces in their efforts to suppress Islamist terrorism.

The Middle East - now usually taken as including South Asian states such as Afghanistan and Pakistan - remains the main area of operations in the war on terror. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains in stalemate at the moment. Despite optimistic talk to the contrary, it seems unlikely the current hardline Netanyahu government in Israel will make any concessions that might lead to lasting peace with the Palestinians. It has no need to do so. The old 'near enemies' of Israel are now largely no threat. Egypt and Jordan are close allies of America, while the Syrians, and even Hezbollah in Lebanon, are careful to avoid any further military conflict with Israel. Instead Israel prefers to concentrate its propaganda in the United States and elsewhere on the supposed existential threat posed to it by the 'distant enemy', the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The war in Iraq has become largely a low level civil war since the United States withdrew most of its combat troops into their bases in the country. The Iraqi government shows no sign of asking for American assistance no matter what terrorist attacks take place. Similarly, the United States is reluctant to offer aid which might drag it back into major combat operations in Iraq. Despite this situation, the United States shows little urgency in removing its forces from Iraq, even though it has promised to leave by 2011. Iraq offers a valuable, centrally-situated military base in the Middle East from which large US forces can threaten neighbouring states, above all Iran. Such an advantage is not to be given up quickly.

The issue of Iran's supposed efforts to develop nuclear weapons is not directly relevant to the war on terror, but will have an impact upon it. Should further sanctions against Iran escalate into a naval blockade to cut off its supply of gasoline, then Iran may well retaliate by encouraging increased terrorist attacks in Iraq and other countries. Should a naval blockade, in itself a warlike act, be followed by attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, then open war is likely to engulf the whole region, with the war on terror subsumed by the wider conflict.

The war against the Taliban in Afghanistan shows little sign of reaching any conclusion in the near future. Its overflow into neighbouring Pakistan has now largely been contained. However, many Muslims see America's increasingly direct involvement in Pakistan as part of a plot to gain control of that country's nuclear weapons. Pakistan, the only Muslim state with nuclear weapons, is to be disarmed, just as Iran, another leading Muslim state, is to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Only American forces and Israel are to have nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

In other parts of the world, Muslim insurgencies rumble on. Russia this year declared victory in its ten year struggle against Islamist rebels in Chechnya, but armed unrest continues in that region and the neighbouring areas of Dagestan and Ingushetia. In Southern Thailand and the southern islands of the Philippines local Muslim revolts show little sign of ending, but equally they pose no overall threat to the stability of those countries. The Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang, China, continue to resist domination by the Han Chinese, but Western expressions of concern about their sufferings are quickly stilled by Chinese claims that the Uighurs are 'Islamist terrorists'.

As long as Western military forces continue to wage war within the Muslim world, the Islamist resisters will always be able to find enough support across that world to sustain low level military operations almost indefinitely. Western politicians and generals claim to be ready to take up the challenge of this 'long war', talking, for example, of remaining in Afghanistan for another twenty, thirty, even forty years. Whether voters in Western countries share this commitment is another matter. In any case, such plans for the future may soon be moot. If the United States, Israel, and certain European countries continue to escalate their hostile actions against Iran, war may break out with that country. If the whole Middle East is plunged into conflict, with dire consequences for both the region and the world, low level struggles against terrorists will quickly fade into insignificance.

The Uighurs: Exposing the Myth of Muslim Solidarity

2009-07-21T13:24:00.000-06:00

The recent clashes in the Xinjiang region of China between Uighurs and Han Chinese have received media coverage around the world. The battle between the Muslim Uighurs and the ever-growing Han Chinese population in their home region might be expected to attract support for them from around the Islamic world. In fact this has not been the case, once again exposing the myth of international Muslim solidarity.

Within China the Uighurs have received no support from fellow Muslims. Even if one accepts the official Chinese government figure of only twenty million Muslims in the country (others claim at least double that figure, if not more), then the Uighurs, a group of around eight million people, make up the second largest Muslim group after the Hui, who number more than nine million people. However, the Hui are barely distinguishable racially from the overwhelming majority of Han Chinese in the country and they have shown little interest in the sufferings of their fellow Muslims in Xinjiang. Race would seem to be more important to them than religion.

Outside China, only one country, Turkey, has made any real protest about the plight of the Uighurs, even describing their oppression by the Han Chinese as 'almost genocide'. The condemnation came from Turkish prime minister Erdogan, leader of the moderate Islamist government of that supposedly secular state. Yet it is unclear whether Erdogan's solidarity with the Uighurs is derived from considerations of race or religion. Turkey bases much of its influence in Central Asia on spreading the idea of pan-Turkism. Its support for the Uighurs may have more to do with their Turkic ethnicity than their Islamic religion.

The indifference shown by most of the Islamic world to the suffering of the Uighurs is not surprising. Few countries, whether is Islamic or not, wish to offend China, the world's rising economic superpower. Saudi Arabia still has pretentions to leadership of the Islamic world, or at least the Sunni Muslim part of it, but it is reluctant to anger the Chinese, whose appetite for Saudi oil is already large and can only increase further in the future.

Yet certain political groups still like to portray the Muslim world as some sort of monolithic entity whose united power can pose a challenge to the rest of the world. The chief exponents of this view are the opposing extremists who champion the idea of 'a clash of civilizations' between the Islamic world and the West.

On one side are the American neo-conservatives, who are still influential despite the end of George W. Bush's presidency. They still seem to believe that Muslim hordes pose an existential threat to Western civilization and its supposedly beleaguered Middle Eastern outpost, the state of Israel. In their view the so-called 'Islamofascists' are ever-ready to launch terrorist attacks and can rely on the support of the majority of Muslims around the world.

On the other side, the leaders of Al Qaida and similar Islamist terror groups claim that the Muslim masses are only waiting for the call to rise up against the pro-Western governments of their countries. They will overthrow them and then create a worldwide caliphate which will unite all Muslims in a superstate that can resist all Western influences.

Of these two apocalyptic visions, the neo-conservative version is the most obviously absurd. Never in history have the majority of the world's Muslim governments been so submissive to one authority, the United States of America, and a non-Muslim authority at that. Muslim governments are not united against the West; they are united in submission to it. America calls them its allies; Al Qaida and others denounce them as the lackeys of Crusader and Zionist imperialism.

Some 57 countries have full membership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest Muslim inter-governmental body in the world. Of these 57 countries, 56 have functioning national governments. The exception is Somalia which has had no effective national government since 1991. The international community may claim to recognize the transitional regime in Mogadishu as the national government, but hardly any Somalis do and its effective power does not even encompass most of the capital city.

Of the 56 functioning national governments of the OIC, only four are considered to be hostile to the United States and its Western allies. These are Iran, Sudan, Syria and Uzbekistan. The first two countries are likely to remain hostile to the United States in the near future, but America is making efforts to win over Syria, while Uzbekistan may be ready to allow US bases in the country once more in return for large payments and a blind eye being turned to the Uzbek leader's poor human rights record.

When it comes to governments, the Muslim world is united on the side of the West not against it, as in the neo-conservative fantasy. But what about the populations these pro-Western Muslim governments rule? Are they, as Al Qaida claims, ready to rise up and overthrow their oppressive governments and then unite in worldwide struggle against the West? Barely a dozen of the 57 countries of the OIC qualify as democracies. The rest use military and police power to suppress any popular discontent. However, even if all the OIC countries were democracies, would their Muslim populations be as anti-Western as the Islamists claim?

Turkey and Indonesia are Muslim democracies which in the past had military rulers supported by the West. They certainly have Islamist political parties which enjoy wide popular support, but this has not translated into violent anti-Western feeling or a desire to join other Muslim countries in a jihad or holy war against the West. Once Western interference has been removed and democracy established, Muslims seem happy to pursue the economic advantages of association with the West, while in foreign affairs their countries follow their own national interests which may or may not include solidarity with other Muslim states or groups.

The idea of the Muslim world as some sort of monolithic bloc which poses a threat to the West is clearly a myth which is propagated by both American neo-conservatives and Islamist terrorists for their own political purposes. Given a free choice, most Muslims would wish to be friendly with the West provided it ceased all military and political interference in their countries. Similarly, most Muslims have no interest in the deranged fantasies of Al Qaida, but they do want their religion to be treated with respect worldwide. Muslim countries have religion as a common bond between them, but on many occasions their different national interests are likely to be of more importance than religious solidarity, which is probably bad news for the Uighurs.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Spreading Fire or Dying Flame?

2009-06-20T14:41:00.000-06:00

This month has brought Algerian Islamist terrorists back into the news. The group known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) announced it had executed a British hostage, Edwin Dyer, in the depths of the Sahara Desert, while its forces in the north of Algeria carried out successful attacks on security forces. In the most recent incident twenty-four policemen were killed in an ambush a hundred miles east of the capital Algiers.

According to the Algerian government, these incidents are just the last desperate acts of an Islamist terrorist group on the verge of collapse. Yet Western anti-terrorist experts are increasingly concerned about what they see as the spread of AQIM's influence across northern and western Africa and the possibility that its cells among the North African diaspora population of western Europe may carry out terrorist attacks in that region. So is AQIM a dying flame as the Algerian authorities claim, or is it a spreading fire as Western intelligence experts fear?

AQIM has its origins in the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, which broke out after the secularist government and army cancelled national elections in 1992 when it seemed they might be won by an Islamist party. The principal Islamist insurgents came from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), but in 1998 a faction calling itself the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) broke away from GIA in a dispute over tactics. By the year 2000 the counter-terrorist efforts of the Algerian government and its offers of amnesty to surrendering fighters had much reduced the activities of GIA. Soon the GSPC replaced it as the leading Islamist terror group in Algeria.

Although the GSPC was capable of carrying out headline-grabbing operations such as its kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in February 2003 (later released in return for a large ransom), its main efforts against the Algerian government seemed to be faltering. In order to raise its profile and strengthen its wider international terrorist links, the GSPC began to negotiate with Al Qaeda for recognition, affiliation and support.

Finally, in September 2006, Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, announced its approval of a link with the GSPC, which now renamed itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Algerian authorities claimed the name change was just a last-ditch attempt to revitalize a declining domestic insurgency, but AQIM soon carried out some significant attacks within the country, introducing the Al Qaeda tactic of suicide bombings to Algeria for the first time. These attacks culminated in co-ordinated suicide bombings in Algiers in December 2007 which killed thirty-seven people, including seventeen United Nations employees.

As well as intensifying its struggle within Algeria, AQIM has also sought to spread Islamist terrorist operations across neighbouring countries. Efforts in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya have had little success, but the weaker states of Mauritania, Mali and Niger in the Sahara have proved more fertile ground for AQIM's operations. AQIM has forged links with local insurgent groups in those countries, so that the insurgents often kidnap Westerners and sell them on to AQIM for use as hostages.

More worrying for Western intelligence services have been AQIM's efforts to extend its terrorist cell network in western Europe and take over the remains of GIA's support organization in countries such as Spain and France. So far AQIM has failed to carry out any terrorist attacks in western Europe, with a number of its cells being identified and broken up by anti-terrorist police, but new cells seem to be forming all the time. One day they may carry out successful attacks.

The Algerian government claims terrorist activities are declining in that country, which may be true in comparison with the bloodshed of the 1990s civil war, but attacks persist. In 2008 there were an estimated 85 significant bombings in Algeria, with 639 people (409 suspected militants, 158 security personnel, and 72 civilians) killed in terrorist-related incidents. This year there have been 64 bombings from January to April alone, with 247 people (167 suspected militants, 61 security personnel, and 19 civilians) killed in terrorist-related violence in that period. The Algerian government claims AQIM only has a few hundred active fighters left. If so, they still seem able to have a significant domestic impact.

In late 2008 and early 2009 local insurgents in Niger seized two Canadian diplomats on a UN mission and four European tourists. They were later sold to AQIM forces based in the desert areas of southern Algeria and northern Mali. In April the Canadian diplomats and two of the European hostages were released. Despite Canadian government claims to the contrary, ransoms were almost certainly paid to AQIM. Of the remaining European hostages, the British man is said to have been beheaded at the start of this month, allegedly because the British government refused to negotiate with the terrorists, and a Swiss person is still being held. Mali has now been forced to take action, launching attacks on a supposed AQIM base in the country, but no long-lasting damage seems to have been done to the terrorist group.

AQIM, currently led by Abdelmalek Droukdel, seems likely to continue its operations in Algeria and in the weaker Sahara states in the immediate future despite the best efforts of the Algerian government and of the Sahara states who are now getting support from the USA's new Africa Command. Whether AQIM will mount terrorist attacks in western Europe is less certain. AQIM does not seem to be a dying flame, but how far its renewed fire will spread only time will tell.

Yemen and the Somali Pirates

2009-05-26T17:31:00.000-06:00

The government of the autonomous region of Puntland in north-east Somalia claims to be unable to curb the activities of the Somali pirates based there. Yet when a Yemeni vessel is seized by those pirates, the Puntland government is suddenly stirred to action.

In November 2008 the Yemeni cargo ship 'Adina' was captured by Somali pirates while carrying a cargo of steel from Al Mukalla, a port on the south coast of Yemen, to the island of Socotra. The Puntland authorities, usually so indifferent to captures of the vessels of other nations, immediately rushed to take action. Ali Abdi Aware, a Puntland minister, said: 'We will release the hijacked Yemen ship forcibly if they do not release it without a ransom because we have good relations with Yemen.'

Puntland security forces were put on alert, but after negotiations and strong pressure from the Puntland government, the 'Adina' was released in early December 2008. A ransom of US $2 million had originally been demanded for the ship, but no ransom was paid.

The fact is that both the government of Puntland and the Somali pirates who are based there would find life very difficult without good relations with Yemen. Officially the government of Yemen is opposed to Somali piracy, but in ports along the south coast of Yemen many people derive substantial economic benefit from aiding and abetting the pirates as well as supplying the rest of the population of Puntland.

Yemeni fishing boats have on occasion been seized by Somali pirates for use as 'mother ships' so that their fast pirate craft can be launched in more distant waters to capture merchant ships. However, in some cases there have been doubts about whether the Yemeni fishing boats were really victims, with suggestions that their 'capture' may have been arranged in advance so that Yemenis could share in the profits of piracy.

Indeed NATO sources claim ports along the eastern section of the south coast of Yemen, specifically Al Mukalla, Al Shishr, Sayhut, Nishtun and Al Ghaydah, serve as re-supply bases for Somali pirate 'mother ships' operating in the Gulf of Aden, where they make so many of their captures.

The most recent Somali pirate attack on a Yemeni ship took place less than ten miles from the south coast of Yemen. The tanker 'Qana' was seized on April 26 while returning from Al Mukalla to Aden. On the following day Yemeni special forces retook the vessel, killing three pirates and taking others prisoner.

From one point of view this operation might be seen as striking a blow against the pirates since it is the first Yemeni military action ever taken against them. However, on the other hand, the fact that the incident took place so close to Yemen's coast would seem to indicate that the Somali pirates are treating the area as if it was their own home waters and they can count on support from local people.

The Yemen/Somalia connection is increasingly integrated. When not hunting merchant ships to seize for ransom, Somali pirate 'mother ships' often take human cargo (refugees and economic migrants) from Somalia to Yemen and then return with arms, ammunition, and other supplies to support their pirate activities or sell to the people of Puntland.

There is now increasing concern that people on the south coast of Yemen may soon graduate from assisting the Somali pirates to joining them in their activities. Yemen's declining economy makes piracy, with its low risks and high financial rewards, look increasingly attractive. Added to the economic motive may be a political one as well.

The population of South Yemen has never been particularly happy with its union with North Yemen which has existed since 1990. Its attempt to break away in 1994 was brutally suppressed. Pro-independence demonstrations in South Yemen earlier this month would seem to show that this feeling is reviving. If South Yemen was to achieve independence, or even just autonomy on a scale to match Puntland's position within Somalia, then piracy might become attractive, promising valuable income for a new political entity.

At the moment Somali piracy is largely just a criminal activity with no proven links to terrorism. Indeed those groups most likely to be associated with terrorism in Somalia, the Islamist militants in the south and centre of the country, say they are opposed to piracy. They even claim to have carried out attacks on the pirates when the latter have seized ships owned in Muslim countries. How long this separation will continue is a matter for debate. Piracy is the most lucrative economic activity in Somalia and many political groups in the country will hope to get some share in its profits. There are already reports from the body monitoring the UN arms embargo in Somalia that the pirates are bringing arms from Yemen to supply the Islamist militants. However, so far this seems to be a purely commercial transaction and does not imply any commitment to the Islamist cause.

Nevertheless a closer link between Somali pirates and Somali Islamist militants cannot be ruled out. Such a link would be of serious concern to other countries. Of even greater concern would be if Yemeni seafarers took up piracy and then established links with Islamist terror networks. The profits of piracy might finance terrorists who could spread their activities from Yemen into the neighbouring countries of Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The need for concerted international action to stamp out Somali piracy is growing. It must be curbed before piracy can spread to South Yemen, which would extend the zone of instability currently restricted to Somalia into the south of the Arabian peninsula with potentially dangerous consequences for the whole region.

America in Iraq: Leaving or Not?

2009-05-04T17:29:00.000-06:00

At the end of April Britain brought to a close its military involvement in Iraq which had lasted since the US-led invasion of that country in March 2003. The 3,800 British military personnel at Basra airport hauled down their flag and prepared to depart. Yet they handed over their base not to Iraqi forces but to 5,000 American troops newly deployed to the area.

This seems a strange development. The Basra area is one of the most peaceful regions of Iraq, fully under the control of the government in Baghdad. The United States has promised to withdraw most of its combat forces from Iraq, pulling out of the cities this summer. So why is a military base in peaceful Basra being handed over to American rather than Iraqi forces?

The answer would seem to be that some Americans, especially in the higher levels of US Central Command, are having second thoughts about withdrawing from Iraq. They intend to seize every opportunity to keep substantial US forces in the country, whatever the promises of President Barack Obama or the wishes of the Iraqi people.

General Petraeus, the new head of Central Command, likes to take credit for the supposed victory his 'surge' strategy achieved in Iraq. Yet his commanders in that country are now claiming that conditions are becoming insecure once again, and they imply that US withdrawal will have to be delayed or even postponed indefinitely.

In northern Iraq al-Qaeda terrorists, so recently said to be broken and on the run, appear to be staging a come-back, especially in and around the city of Mosul. The local US commander says that American forces may have to remain on duty in the area for the foreseeable future. This will no doubt be good news for the pro-American Kurds of northern Iraq, who are already fearful of attacks by the central government in Baghdad. However, other Iraqis may find a continued American presence less palatable.

Similarly, the Sunni Arabs who deserted the anti-American insurgency to join the Awakening movement during Petraeus' 'surge' operations are now beginning to have second thoughts about their decision. The United States is actively supporting the Shia-controlled government of Nuri al-Maliki in its continuing arrests of important Sunni leaders of the Awakening councils for their alleged past crimes. American promises of amnesty now ring hollow among the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and it seems more than likely that many former insurgents will return to making attacks on American and Iraqi government forces.

Originally the Americans had their doubts about Nuri al-Maliki, but now they are warming to him. He is a potential Iraqi strong man with, unusually, solid democratic credentials for his rule. The Americans are ready to back him against al-Qaeda remnants, Sunni former insurgents, and Shia rivals such as the openly anti-American Muqtada al-Sadr. The problem is that Nuri al-Maliki enjoys popular support precisely because he is seen as the man who is getting the Americans to leave Iraq. If he is seen as being an accomplice to their continued presence, the Iraqi prime minister will soon lose popular support.

Even if the Americans cannot use renewed security problems as an excuse to stay, their withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government still gives them ample room to keep a military presence in the country. Under the agreement, the United states can keep 'residual' armed forces in Iraq, chiefly to train the Iraqi military. Yet some estimates of these 'residual' forces have gone as high as 35-50,000 personnel in half a dozen bases. This is hardly a token presence as it would amount to almost a third of the US military force in Iraq at its peak of deployment. The retention of such a large force in Iraq would be disquieting to both the Iraqi and American peoples after all the promises of complete US withdrawal from Iraq that have been made.

Despite a rising tide of violent incidents in both Baghdad and Mosul, the Iraqi government continues to insist that US forces will leave all Iraqi cities by 30 June and will withdraw from the whole country by the end of 2011. Whether this timetable will in fact be met must be open to increasing doubt.

Turkey: Nobody's Tool

2009-04-17T19:19:00.000-06:00

During his recent visit to Turkey, President Barack Obama praised that country for its role as a bridge between the West and the Islamic world. Such praise is not without an ulterior motive. Turkey was hostile to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in the years following that event Turkish-American relations became increasingly strained. Now President Obama seeks to restore Turkey to its previous position as America's most important ally in the Middle East after Israel.

But does Turkey really want to return to its position as a tool of American power politics in the region? Since the end of the Cold War in 1989-91, Turkey has steadily grown as a regional power, not just in the Middle East, but also in the Black Sea, Caucasus, and Central Asian areas. Turkey is no longer threatened by a Soviet superpower on its borders, a threat which caused it to join NATO in 1952 and become a subordinate ally of the United States for the next forty years.

The Turkish republic created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 had national independence as its foundation, resisting all attempts by foreign powers to infringe on Turkish sovereignty. Alone among the defeated nations of the First World War, Turkey was able to stand up to the victorious allies in the aftermath. The British-backed Greek invasion of Anatolia was repulsed, while French forces moving into Turkey from the south were forced back into Syria. The allies eventually decided to accept the new reality. The punitive Treaty of Sevres (1920), imposed on the last remnant of the old Ottoman government, was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which was more favorable to Turkey.

Ataturk's success against the European imperial powers made Turkey a model for other Muslim states, such as Iran and Afghanistan, which were trying to maintain their independence from Western control. Even the Europeans came to respect the new Turkey and, long before Obama used such words, began to praise the Turkish republic for bridging the gap between the Islamic world and Western modernity.

Ataturk not only wanted to assert Turkey's independence against foreign enemies, but also to make his government the single ruling authority within the country. Islamic religious institutions were seen as a particular rival and were steadily subordinated to the power of the secular national government. Ataturk continued his policies of nationalism, secularism, and modernization up to his death in 1938, and his successors remained true to his legacy. During the Second World War Turkey maintained a firm neutrality, but after 1945 its government became increasingly alarmed by the threat posed by the Soviet superpower that had emerged from the war.

In 1952 the Turkish government decided to join NATO, thus reducing its national independence by becoming a close ally of the United States. Nevertheless this new close link to the West did have advantages other than just military security. From the 1950s democracy became a reality in Turkey, despite occasional military coups, and Turkish trade and industry began to prosper.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, Turkey saw a chance for a more independent foreign policy. Some of the post-Soviet states emerging in the Caucasus and Central Asia had Turkic populations who might welcome Turkish assistance with modernization and nation-building. Freed from the Soviet threat, Turkey was less subservient to American hegemony and began to emerge as a regional power in its own right.

However, Turkish society was changing by the 1990s. Ataturk's secularism and ruthless subordination of Islamic institutions to the state had been most effective in Turkey's cities. Religious observance continued to be important in the rural areas of the country. From the 1950s onwards rural Turks moved to the cities in increasing numbers, bringing their religious practices with them. By the 1990s such immigrants had created a new middle class who were increasingly ready to assert their Muslim beliefs. The old urban elites and the army took alarm at this, feeling it was a threat to Ataturk's policies of secular nationalism.

Despite such fears, Turkey is now ruled by the moderate Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While this government is certainly hostile to Ataturk's legacy of secularism, it has proved no less nationalist than previous secular governments. Although there remains much potential for clashes between Islamist and secular Turks, neither group is ready to give up the increasing national self-assertion that has been such a feature of Turkish policy since 1991.

Whether or not Turkey ever joins the European Union, it will continue to emerge as a major regional power in south-west Asia. Islamist Turks may reject much of Ataturk's legacy, but they are as attached to his policy of national independence as secular Turks. Whatever its future role in international politics, Turkey is unlikely ever again to be the tame ally of the United States it was between 1952 and 1991.

Oil and Autonomy: Will US Withdrawal Endanger Iraq's Kurds?

2009-03-13T10:56:00.000-06:00

In 1930 Britain agreed to grant independence to Iraq, which it had been ruling under a mandate from the League of Nations. In return the Iraqi government allowed the British to retain two air bases in the country and to train, equip, and support the Iraqi armed forces. The promised independence finally came in 1932, and one of the first acts of the new rulers in Baghdad was to send troops to suppress Kurdish separatists in the north of the country. The Iraqi government forces were initially repulsed, but had more success when British aircraft were deployed to support their efforts.

In late 2008, with its United Nations mandate to remain in Iraq running out, the United States agreed with the Iraqi government that all US combat troops would leave the country by the end of 2011. However, 'residual' US forces might remain to train Iraqi forces and these would need to retain some bases. The Baghdad government has now begun to reassert its authority over the Iraqi Kurds, challenging the autonomy they have achieved in the north of the country. The Kurds seem determined to resist this pressure. So far the Americans have said they will not take sides in the emerging struggle. However, America's earlier refusal to condemn Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish PKK guerrillas does not bode well for the future of the Iraqi Kurds.

Such are the similarities between 1932 and 2009. Perhaps more important are the differences. In 1932 British air attacks on the Kurds were nothing new. For the previous decade the British had been attempting to defeat Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq, with only limited success. They were happy to support the Baghdad government in its efforts to subdue the Kurds.

The position of the United States today is very different from that of Britain more than seventy years ago. Iraqi Kurds have been America's most fervent supporters in that country. Indeed, in terms of popular support, Iraqi Kurds are perhaps the most pro-American Muslim group in the Middle East. While NATO ally Turkey refused to give passage to US forces intending to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi Kurds did everything possible to assist the American invaders. When the Sunni Arabs later revolted against the American occupiers, the Kurds were ready to join with the Shia Arabs to form an Iraqi central government that was largely supportive of the United States.

Now, with the prospect of American withdrawal from Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds are becoming increasingly alarmed. The government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad is working to reconcile Shia and Sunni Arabs, but this reconciliation seems likely to be at the expense of the Kurds. The Americans are now increasingly cool towards their Kurdish friends in Iraq. Is the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan coming to an end?

That autonomy had its origins in the chaos that followed Saddam Hussein's defeat in the Gulf War of 1991. Within Iraq both the Shia Arabs and the Kurds rose up against the Baathist dictator. Both groups were brutally repressed, but, unlike the Shia Arabs, the Kurds found support from Britain and America. A 'no fly zone' was established over northern Iraq and 'safe havens', initially protected by Western troops, were set up in the area. Saddam Hussein could no longer harm most of Iraq's Kurds.

During the rest of the 1990s, these 'safe havens' coalesced into an autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, but it was not yet at peace, largely due to disagreements between Kurds and interference from neighbouring states. On several occasions the militias of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by the Talabani family, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by the Barzani family, clashed bloodily, while Turkey sent troops into the region on a number of occasions to attack PKK guerrillas based there.

Nevertheless, the Iraqi Kurds had achieved a measure of autonomy and this increased further after the United States, with help from Kurdish militias, overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. The PUK and KDP came together to present a united Kurdish front at a time when Iraq's Arabs were fighting each other and the American occupiers. Autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), came to look more and more like a semi-independent state. Jalal Talabani might become president of Iraq under the Kurdish-Shia agreement setting up a new Iraqi central government, but most Iraqi Kurds considered Arbil, home of the KRG, to be their capital not Baghdad.

Sunni Arab abstention from local elections in protest at the occupation only further increased Kurdish political power in the border areas of their region. The Kurds built up a strong position in Nineveh province, especially in the city of Mosul, while they sought to reverse the Arabization process Saddam Hussein had imposed on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, where the Kurds had previously been the largest ethnic group.

Oil was an important issue between the rival authorities in Arbil and Baghdad. The KRG began to hand out contracts to search for oil to small and medium foreign energy firms without first getting permission from Baghdad. The central government retaliated by threatening not to share revenue from other oil regions of Iraq with the KRG.

After the recent provincial elections in Iraq, which the Sunni Arabs did not boycott, the Kurdish position in Nineveh and Mosul was considerably reduced. Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's party did well in the elections, getting Sunni Arab as well as Shia Arab votes because of his claim to take a less sectarian approach to national politics than the Islamist religious parties. Although the prime minister has emphasized his commitment to unite all ethnic and religious groups in a new Iraq, it seems unlikely he will resist the temptation to unite the Arabs of Iraq through their common hostility to the Kurds.

In 2008 Iraqi central government forces took control of the oil-rich city of Khanaqin in Diyala province, despite Kurdish claims that they have an interest in the area. Earlier this year the Baghdad government even seemed ready to send its troops to Kirkuk, but later halted the deployment when Kurdish forces in that area threatened armed resistance.

Although oil will remain one of the reasons the Iraqi central government will wish to curb Kurdish separatism, its importance will probably be reduced as the balance changes in Iraq's energy production. The venerable but still important large oilfield at Kirkuk has been producing since the 1930s, but the oilfields of southern Iraq have become more important. Since southern Iraq now seems likely to enjoy a measure of peace and stability in the near future, major international energy companies are signing up to repair, modernize, and develop its oil and gas fields. This will provide the Baghdad government with valuable revenue to fund operations to curb Kurdish separatism.

Whether military efforts to overawe the Iraqi Kurds will be successful is of course another matter. The successive governments in Baghdad have been fighting Kurdish rebels in the north of the country on and off since 1962, with only intermittent success. Nevertheless, if the United States is ready to desert its Kurdish friends, then at least important centres such as Mosul and Kirkuk can be brought firmly under the rule of Baghdad. With the Iraqi Kurds unlikely to get support from any of the neighbouring countries, they may well be forced to agree to a settlement with the Iraqi national government which severely limits their present hard-won autonomy.

Afghanistan: More Troops, More Hostility

2009-02-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

Long ago Britain's General Roberts, hero of the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880 observed: 'I feel sure I am right when I say the less the Afghans see of us, the less they dislike us.'

In our own day President Barack Obama seems to be taking the opposite view. More American and NATO troops are to be poured into Afghanistan in the belief that this will improve Afghan security and end Afghan popular support for the Taliban insurgents. Apparently the more Western troops the Afghans see, the more they will like the West.

This Afghan 'surge' in troop numbers is based on false analogies with the apparent success of the 'surge' in American forces in Iraq. The principal aim of the latter effort was to end the sectarian civil war that was tearing Iraq apart, and this was largely achieved. The conflict in Afghanistan is much more a struggle by the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, to drive out foreign troops, who were once liberators, but are now seen as a Western army of occupation.

The main beneficiary of America's 'surge' in Iraq has been the country's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. With comparative peace restored, he could ask the Americans to leave. The agreement he achieved last year which promised that all American combat troops will be out of Iraq by mid-2011 has proved hugely popular with Iraqis. Maliki received his reward with the success of his party in the recent provincial elections in Iraq.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has little hope of such popular acclaim at the moment. The army of 'foreign infidels' in his country is to be increased, not decreased. Yet even if all the additional reinforcements requested do appear in Afghanistan, America and her NATO allies will only have as many men as the Soviet Union had at its peak deployment during the failed attempt to subdue the Afghan insurgency during the 1980s.

Increased Western forces are said to be needed to increase security for the Afghan population, especially the Pashtuns living in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Afghans are to be 'protected' from the Taliban, as if the Taliban was some malevolent outside force distinct from local people. This is clearly a false picture. Most Taliban are drawn from the local people, whose concerns they can address much better than well-meaning Westerners who arrive surrounded by heavily-armed Western troops.

Even with reinforcements, American and NATO forces are not going to enjoy more than short-term success against the Taliban, if that. By 1984 the Soviets had beaten down Afghan resistance and several insurgent commanders had agreed truces with them. Nevertheless, then as now, as long as the Afghan insurgents had safe bases in Pakistan, they could survive to regroup and fight another day.

If American and NATO commanders want to go a step further and pacify the Pakistani borderlands, which Pakistan's own army has largely failed to do, then they will need reinforcements on a scale which would make the present 'surge' look small. Clearly that is not going to happen, so the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan are likely to continue to exist and as long as they do, resistance in Afghanistan will also survive any temporary setbacks.

President Obama has said the Afghan conflict can only be finally resolved by political means, yet almost the first act of his presidency has been to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan, thus apparently giving his support to the idea that a military victory is possible. Only when Obama's actions match his words can Afghans start to have faith in the new American president.

Real efforts must be made to start a political dialogue with the Taliban movement. If its main groups can be won over, then there is a definite chance of peace in Afghanistan. In addition, just as the Awakening movement in Iraq turned Sunni Arab insurgents against al Qaeda, the Taliban may be turned against al Qaeda once their political concerns are addressed.

One of the principal Taliban concerns is the need to remove foreign troops from Afghanistan. The sooner an outline timetable for the removal of American and NATO troops can be agreed, the sooner peace and stability can be restored to Afghanistan. One may alter General Roberts' observation to say that the less the Afghans see of Western troops, the more likely they are to negotiate a political solution to their problems.

Gaza: Crushed Between Two Myths

2009-01-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

In 2006 the United States launched two proxy wars against Islamist militants. Israel was to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Ethiopia was to crush the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. Contrary to all expectations, Israel's attacks on Lebanon failed to destroy Hezbollah. However, in Somalia, the invading Ethiopians quickly defeated the Islamist militants and installed an internationally recognised Somali government in the capital Mogadishu.

Now, two years later, the Ethiopians are pulling out of Somalia, the Somali government is on the verge of collapse, and the Islamists seem likely to retake Mogadishu. Meanwhile Israel has launched a major offensive against the Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in a determined effort to restore its reputation for military might which was undermined by its lacklustre performance in the 2006 Lebanon war.

Gaza is to be reduced to rubble because otherwise other Middle Eastern countries will think Israel is weak and they will try to destroy the Jewish state. This myth of Israeli vulnerability has a long history. It may have had some truth in the period up to 1967, but the Six Day War of that year showed Israel to be the most powerful military state in the Middle East, a position it has never since lost.

The idea that Israel suffered some sort of defeat in the 2006 Lebanon war that now needs to be redressed by a crushing victory in Gaza is also fanciful. Israel certainly failed to destroy Hezbollah in 2006 and its military operations were mismanaged. However, Hezbollah got the message. The organisation has not launched any attacks on Israel in the last two years. Israel fought for peace on its northern border and it achieved that result.

As to a wider threat which requires Israel to take tough military action, it simply does not exist. Of the Arab states which border Israel, Egypt and Jordan are totally subordinate to America and Israel; Lebanon's Hezbollah is making no attacks; and Syria has not dared to risk any direct military confrontation with Israel for more than a quarter of a century.

If the near abroad poses no threat to Israel, what of more distant countries? Iran's supposed nuclear threat to Israel has been exaggerated by American and Israeli commentators to suit their own agendas. If Iran wants nuclear weapons, the motive is self-defence, to discourage attacks by the United States and its allies, not to threaten other countries.

Thus, on one side, we have Israel attacking Gaza so it can boost its military reputation, even though the idea of Israeli vulnerability is a complete myth. On the other side, the Hamas militants are ready to provoke Israel and resist its forces because they believe in another myth, that of Muslim solidarity.

The idea of the Arab or wider Muslim 'street' rising up to overthrow their rulers if they do not suffort the oppressed Palestinians, in Gaza or the West Bank, is still aired by certain commentators despite its absurdity. As Trotsky said long ago, in the age of the machine gun, mob rule is dead. As long as the undemocratic but pro-Western rulers of countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia retain the support of their security forces, what their populations think about Palestinian suffering is irrelevant.

If there is no chance of support for Hamas in the wider Muslim world, what of its particular friends? We are regularly warned that the evil alliance of Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran poses a threat not just to Israel and the Middle East, but to the whole world. Can Hamas at least expect help from its companions in evil? Apparently not. As already noted, both Hezbollah and Syria have no stomach for a military clash with Israel at the moment. Nor, despite its anti-Israel rhetoric, will Iran take any actions which might give the United States an excuse to launch a military attack on it.

Hamas in Gaza will go down to inevitable defeat still hoping vainly that the rest of the Muslim world will come to its aid. Israel will have shown its toughness once again, although it faces no serious military threat to its existence from any country in the Middle East. The people of Gaza will be the innocent victims, crushed by the weight of two myths, that of Muslim solidarity on one side and of Israeli vulnerability on the other.

Back to Barbary? Muslim Pirates and the West

2008-12-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Muslim pirates seize Western merchant ships and take them to their home ports. There the crews and the ships are only freed on payment of large ransoms to the pirates. This story was of only historical interest until recent years. It was the tale of the Barbary pirates of North Africa who terrorised Christian shipping in the Mediterranean Sea between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. These corsairs combined turning a profit from booty and ransoms with a holy war against the infidel.

Do modern Somali pirates have any resemblance to their Barbary predecessors and do the methods used by Western navies against the Barbary corsairs have any relevance to current anti-piracy efforts?

Originally the Muslim corsairs sailing out of ports such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were genuine holy warriors. However, as the centuries passed, religious commitment became less important than the economic benefits of piracy.

Today's Somali pirates deny any religious motive is behind their actions, while Somali Islamist militants declare they are opposed to piracy. Both groups take these positions to avoid provoking direct American intervention in Somalia. As long as Somali piracy is viewed as a criminal rather than a terrorist activity, the United States seems reluctant to take any major action to suppress it.

Instead we have the bizarre spectacle of the tanker Sirius Star, the largest vessel ever captured by pirates, being taken to a Somali pirate haven while the United States Navy, the most powerful naval force in the world, does nothing except take photographs. If a religious commitment was once a good cover for the piratical activities of the Barbary corsairs, it seems today that being seen as purely secular criminals gives the Somali pirates some sort of immunity.

If modern Somali piracy has important differences from the activities of the Barbary corsairs, do the methods used in the past by Western nations against the forces of Barbary have any modern relevance?

Currently an ever-growing multinational fleet of warships is gathering in the waters off Somalia. Yet hunting small and swift pirate vessels at sea has always been a hit or miss affair, which even modern communications cannot make much more effective. In earlier centuries the fleets of Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and even the infant United States believed that patrolling had to be supplemented by direct attacks on the home ports of the Barbary pirates. Only when the Barbary rulers saw their cities bombarded and their ships sunk could they be forced to at least short-term suspension of their predatory activities.

Recent United Nations resolutions give Western and other countries the right to pursue Somali pirates on both sea and land. However, the chances of Western forces making direct attacks on pirate ports do not seem great. When an Anglo-Dutch fleet bombarded the pirate base of Algiers in 1816, the action was greeted with international approval. If Western forces inflicted similar damage on a Somali pirate port such as Eyl, the modern reaction would be less favourable.

Barbary piracy began to decline during the eighteenth century less because of the actions by Western navies than because the Barbary states increasingly came to see legitimate trade with Christian Europe as more lucrative than pirate attacks. The French might claim their occupation of Algiers in 1830 was the only way to end piracy from that port, but in fact such activities had been in decline for decades.

Naval patrols and even naval or air bombardment of ports can only be short-term ways of dealing with Somali piracy. What is required for a long-term solution to the problem is the restoration of order and effective government within Somalia and the revival of legitimate economic activities which will provide income to match that from pirate ransoms.

Unfortunately such developments are unlikely to take place quickly and Somali piracy will persist in the immediate future. Preventive measures may reduce its impact, but unless the wider problems of the Horn of Africa receive more direct attention from the international community piracy will not be eradicated. It took more than three centuries to suppress the Barbary corsairs. Even the most pessimistic assessment must hope for a more speedy resolution of the problem posed by the Somali pirates.

Somali Piracy: Overlooking Crime to Avoid Militancy?

2008-11-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

Traditionally the world's foremost naval power ensures the safety of ships of all nations on the sea lanes circling the globe. This was what Britain's Royal Navy did in the nineteenth century.

Today's United States Navy is more powerful than any previous naval force in the history of the world. One might expect it to take swift and effective action to crush the growing menace of Somali piracy. In fact it has done remarkably little to deal with the modern heirs of the Barbary corsairs.

More than two centuries ago the activities of those Muslim pirates from North Africa led to the establishment of the United States Navy. Today's Muslim corsairs from Somalia can range across the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean seizing ships virtually unopposed. The ships and crews are held for ransom, while American warships can only watch and wait.

The United States Navy does not lack ships, trained personnel, and cutting-edge technology to deal with these maritime gangsters. What is lacking is the political will in Washington to order the navy into action. Why is this?

It seems to be a repeat of the phenomenon which has already manifested itself in the land war in Afghanistan. In a poor country lucrative economic activities are few. If they are illegal, is it wise for an intervening foreign power to suppress them if such suppression merely provides new recruits for the militant forces which the foreign power is trying to destroy?

In Afghanistan the illegal but lucrative activity is the drug trade in heroin, with poppy the most attractive crop for local farmers. The country is now the world's leading producer of the drug. There has long been a reluctance by the United States to suppress this trade because it provides income for both friendly warlords and ordinary Afghan farmers. Other members of NATO have complained that the heroin trade also provides a major source of income for the Taliban.

To suppress the heroin trade might reduce the Taliban's funds, but it would also alienate a large section of the Afghan population. If Afghan farmers are forced to give up poppy cultivation without being offered a financially viable alternative crop, they will become impoverished and desperate, ready-made recruits for the Taliban.

Piracy is now probably the most lucrative economic activity in Somalia, a nation usually regarded as the perfect example of a 'failed state'. As yet there are no known links between the pirates of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland and the Islamist militants battling in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. Indeed the Islamists have on occasion shown marked hostility towards the pirates.

Similarly the Taliban once claimed to be opposed to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and even suppressed it for a time. However, once they saw its money-making potential, they put aside their scruples and demanded their cut. How long will the Somali Islamists resist the temptation to take a share in the spoils of piracy?

For the moment the Somali pirates are seen as 'ordinary' criminals, with no obvious links to Islamist terrorism that would invite American attacks such as those made in the past on supposed al Qaeda bases in Somalia. Instead American warships escort a few lucky merchant ships, but do not intervene as the pirates take captured vessels back to their home ports. Clearly the rationale is that, as in Afghanistan, it is better to let ordinary crime prosper if suppressing it would provide new recruits for Islamist militants.

Recently NATO, including the United States, has announced its intention to take more forceful action against the heroin trade in Afghanistan. If this action takes place, it may well reduce income going to the Taliban, but it may also alienate large sections of the Afghan rural population, giving the Taliban new supporters. Off the coast of Somalia the pirates continue to ply their trade with minimal interference from the United States Navy. Warships from other NATO nations are soon to join the Americans, but decisive action against the pirates appears unlikely. For the moment it still seems better to overlook crime rather than drive the criminals into the arms of the Islamist militants.

Border Wars, Past and Present

2008-10-10T10:17:00.000-06:00

Since the beginning of September American attacks on supposed Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists inside Pakistan have increased. To date there have been nine missile strikes by UAVs and for the first time a cross-border US commando raid has taken place; all violations of Pakistan's national sovereignty.

The United States and its NATO allies claim that the long-running guerrilla struggle against them within Afghanistan can only be defeated if the insurgents' safe bases in neighbouring Pakistan are destroyed. The efforts of Pakistan's army to carry out this task have had little success and the Americans increasingly feel that only they can carry out the operation successfully. However, any escalation of the border war may have serious consequences for all concerned.

Since 1945 there have been a number of conflicts in which cross-border activities by insurgents have played an important part. The forces fighting such insurgents have usually tried one of two main strategies, or a combination of the two, with varying degrees of success.

The first strategy is for the counter-insurgent force to establish a physical barrier along its side of the border, or, in one case, to establish such a barrier along a strip inside the neighbouring country that is playing host, willingly or unwillingly, to the insurgents. If sufficiently extensive, well-constructed, and well-manned, such a barrier can defeat guerrillas trying to rejoin the struggle from their safe havens abroad.

The classic example of a successful border barrier fulfilling this role was the so-called Morice line built by the French army along the Algeria-Tunisia border in 1957-58. Algerian insurgents trying to return to their homeland from their camps in Tunisia found it almost impossible to break through the Morice line. Their casualties were heavy and by the end of 1958 the Algerians in Tunisia were almost completely cut off from their fellow fighters inside Algeria. During 1959 French forces came near to stamping out the insurgency within Algeria, and the success of the Morice line was an important factor in achieving this result.

During the Vietnam war the USA tried to emulate the French by setting up the so-called McNamara line along the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam from 1967 onwards. Unfortunately the principal routes taking supplies and reinforcements to the communist insurgents in South Vietnam passed through the neighbouring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The South Vietnamese border with these states was so long and its terrain so difficult that any attempt to build a continuous barrier was impossible.

In 1978 Israel seized a strip of Lebanese territory bordering its own northern frontier and established a militarized zone which was to act as a barrier preventing guerrilla attacks on its territory. This zone, which was later extended further into Lebanon, had some success in disrupting guerrilla attempts to reach Israeli territory, and Israel did not give up the zone until 2000.

The second strategy to prevent cross-border insurgent operations is to attack their safe havens in neighbouring territory with air strikes or, in the last resort, destroy them by a land invasion. Even counter-insurgent forces creating barrier lines may still feel the need to strike at enemy bases beyond those lines. The temptation to conduct such operations is even stronger for counter-insurgents who cannot create effective barriers, as in Vietnam in the past and in Afghanistan today.

Even as the Morice line took shape, the French military were ready to risk launching an air strike against an Algerian insurgent base at Sakiet in Tunisia in early 1958. The international outcry that resulted discouraged the French from repeating the operation. In contrast, Israeli air attacks on enemy bases deeper in Lebanon became a regular occurrence when guerrillas attempted to break through their security zone in the south of the country. In Vietnam, once it became clear that no border barrier could stop communist inflitration into South Vietnam, the United States began bombing enemy bases and supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. As in Pakistan today, the US government refused to admit that these air attacks were taking place.

The problem with direct attacks on guerrilla safe havens in neighbouring countries is that they become subject to steady escalation. Rather than helping to stop a war in one country, they end up spreading the conflict into the neighbouring state or states. Cambodia in 1970 is perhaps the best example. Dissatisfied with the results of the 'secret' bombing of that country, American and South Vietnamese forces launched a massive invasion of Cambodia. For three months they scoured border areas, destroying communist bases and inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. Nevertheless the Vietnamese communists survived the blow and continued their struggle. The real victims were the Cambodians. Their country was politically destabilized and the newly installed pro-American government found itself under increasing attack from the communists, both Cambodian and Vietnamese.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 seemed initially to be a much more successful effort to destroy terrorist bases in a neighbouring state. The Palestine Liberation Organization and its fighters were driven out of the country. Unfortunately, Israel's methods in achieving this success increasingly alienated native Muslim groups in Lebanon. Local guerrillas, above all those of Hezbollah, began a war against the invaders in southern Lebanon. By 2000 the Israelis were ready to leave all Lebanese territory, including their security zone. Israel's new assault on Lebanon in 2006 was an attempt to destroy Hezbollah, but it failed to achieve any decisive success.

Launching direct military attacks on guerrilla bases in neighbouring countries clearly brings the risk of expanding wars rather than bringing them to an early end. A barrier strategy might seem a safer course of action. However, in today's conflict along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border no barrier can be built, largely because of the length of the frontier and the very difficult terrain it crosses. Even if a barrier could be built, America and its allies would never be able to man it. The Morice line required 80,000 troops to hold it, that is, more troops than the US and other foreign nations have deployed in the whole of Afghanistan.

The United States has moved towards a strategy of unacknowledged air attacks on insurgent targets inside Pakistan, operations reminiscent of its actions against Cambodia in the Vietnam war. In Cambodia the 'secret' bombing eventually led to a full-scale invasion of the country, with unfortunate long-term consequences for both Cambodia and its invaders. There can be little doubt that an American attempt to launch a major military incursion into Pakistan aimed at destroying Taliban and Al Qaeda bases would set off a chain of events whose consequences would be equally disastrous.

Like all counter-insurgency wars, the struggle in Afghanistan is basically political rather than military. Whatever strategy the US and its NATO allies pursue in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands, it will not bring decisive victory. Militarily France's Morice line was a great success, but in the wider political context of the Algerian war it was almost irrelevant. By 1960 the war-weary French government was ready to negotiate with its 'terrorist' enemies, ending French rule in Algeria in 1962. Increasingly some sort of political settlement with the Taliban seems to be the only way to end the war in Afghanistan, regardless of whether such a settlement will deliver the leaders of Al Qaeda into American hands or not.

Mr Bush's Unfinished Business

2008-09-03T13:56:00.000-06:00

As George W. Bush's second term as president of the United States draws to a close, two of his declared foreign policy aims remain unfulfilled. First, he has not yet captured or killed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda associates who were behind the 9/11 atrocities. Secondly, he has not carried out his endlessly repeated threat to take military action to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

With only a few months remaining of his presidency, Bush has seemed increasingly unlikely to be able to attend to either piece of unfinished business. Now, with the rapid deterioration in relations between Russia and the West as a consequence of the August war in Georgia, it seems even more unlikely that President Bush will have the chance to act against these two designated targets.

If Bush was to order a successful military strike which killed or captured Osama bin Laden and his principal associates, this would undoubtedly boost his popularity with the American people and he could leave the Oval Office on a positive note. Whether such an action would have any long term beneficial impact on the 'war on terror' is another matter. As Osama bin Laden himself noted shortly after 9/11, his life does not greatly matter as he has achieved his goal: to set off a major confrontation between the West and the Muslim world. If he was killed, bin Laden would be just another Islamist martyr and in time somebody else would come to take his place. Israel has been killing Muslim terrorist leaders regularly for sixty years with little sign that the terrorist threat will ever come to an end.

Since Osama bin Laden is said to be hiding somewhere in the tribal territories on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, any major American military strike against him will involve a serious violation of Pakistan's national sovereignty. Civil unrest is already growing in that country and an American invasion would only further inflame the situation. This consideration has so far limited American actions to air strikes by UAVs which both Washington and Islamabad have sought to play down. NATO's war in Afghanistan is going badly at the moment and to spread the war into an already volatile Pakistan would only make a bad situation worse.

The new hostility between NATO and Russia presents a further obstacle to striking against Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Some 90% of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan are landed at the port of Karachi and pass through Pakistan to reach the Afghan border. If this route was closed, NATO forces would soon be in a desperate situation, given that Iran is unlikely to let supplies come in through Iranian ports. All that remained would be the northern supply route across Russia and several of the Central Asian republics.

Earlier this year Russia tentatively agreed to the use by NATO of this northern land route if required. The agreement of the Central Asian states was still to be negotiated. However, after recent events in the Caucasus, it now seems unlikely that Russia would be willing to provide this supply route for NATO. Thus America and its allies would be unwise to destabilise Pakistan, their principal supply route to Afghanistan, by carrying out a major military incursion into that country with Osama bin Laden as their target.

With regard to Osama bin Laden the fear that military intervention might make a bad situation worse is a powerful constraint on American action. With regard to Iran, the second piece of unfinished business, the constraint is slightly different. Here the fear is that American military action against Iran might plunge an improving situation in neighbouring Iraq back into chaos.

Whatever the supposed threat posed by nuclear developments in Iran, the fact is that the Iranians have made some contribution to the present comparative peace in Iraq by mediating disputes between Iraqi Shiite factions. They have encouraged those factions to be patient and wait until the United States has withdrawn its military forces from Iraq, as now seems increasingly likely in the next year or two.

If the United States launched military attacks on Iran aimed at destroying its nuclear facilities, such warfare would inevitably spill over into Iraq, where some Shiite groups would undoubtedly launch attacks on American forces. The present comparative peace in Iraq, so dearly bought with American blood and treasure, would be lost in an instant. This consideration does much to prevent President Bush ordering an attack on Iran.

Russia has up to now co-operated with the Americans and the Europeans in imposing sanctions on Iran in order to curb its nuclear developments. Although Russia no more wants to see a nuclear-armed Iran than does America or Israel, its attitude to the Iranians may well change as a result of Western reaction to the Georgian war. Russia could pull out of the sanctions regime and it might increase sales of defensive military systems to Iran as it has already increased such sales to Syria.

Thus the worsening relations with Russia seem likely to create even more obstacles to President Bush carrying out military action against Osama bin Laden and Iran, his two pieces of unfinished business abroad. However, the Bush administration has shown its indifference to rational calculations in the past and its window of opportunity for military action is closing fast. One can only hope that George W. Bush's years in the White House end with a whimper and not a bang.

Back to the Battlefields in the Caucasus

2008-08-10T09:04:00.000-06:00

The outbreak of open warfare between Russia and Georgia over the disputed territory of South Ossetia underlines the dangerous volatility of the post-Cold War political situation in the Caucasus. The region's numerous nationalities enjoyed an enforced amity under Soviet rule, but after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 ethnic nationalism reasserted itself and rival groups came into conflict. Bitter and bloody in themselves, these Caucasian clashes have a broader significance because of the part they can play in wider geopolitical struggles.

The first such wider struggle which was reflected in the Caucasus was the emerging clash between a newly resurgent Islam and its infidel enemies. Christian Armenia sought to aid the independence struggles of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh within the neighbouring Muslim state of Azerbaijan. Between 1992 and 1994 Russia assisted the Armenians in their war, finally forcing Azerbaijan to give up its efforts to subdue Nagorno-Karabakh, which became a quasi-independent state linked to Armenia.

However, if Russia could defeat Islamic aspirations abroad, it had less success at home in certain parts of the Caucasus which remained within the Russian Federation. The Muslims of Chechnya proved the biggest problem. They had a tradition of resistance to Russian hegemony that reached back several centuries and achieved its peak in Shamil's great struggle during the nineteenth century. It was hardly surprising that when the Soviet Union broke up, the Chechens declared their own independent state.

In 1994-96 the Russians carried on a bitter war to end Chechen independence, but in the end they were defeated. In 1999 Russia resumed its onslaught on Chechnya, leading to further heavy fighting. Nevertheless by 2005 the Chechen resistance had been broken and violence sank to manageable levels. In part this had been achieved by Russia offering deals to certain Chechen resisters. They were allowed to run the state so long as they stayed loyal to Moscow.

In the aftermath of 9/11 it might have been expected that the USA and its allies would show more sympathy for Russia's struggles against Islamist insurgents in Chechnya, but this proved not to be the case, Britain, for example, still providing refuge for Chechen militants. This Western coolness towards assisting Russia in the Caucasus was because that area was now becoming a battlefield for another wider geopolitical struggle. This was between an expansionist USA and a Russia which felt itself increasingly threatened by NATO encirclement.

The Americans made determined efforts to befriend those Caucasian states which had political grievances against Russia. These were Georgia, angry at Russian support for the break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within its territory, and Azerbaijan, which wished to regain its lost region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Another reason for American interest in these countries was oil. The potential of the vast oil and gas reserves around the Caspian Sea became well known during the 1990s. The chief problem in exploiting them was that most of the pipelines from the area to the wider world passed through Russia. The United States wished to find a pipeline route that avoided Russia and seemed to have found it through the Caucasian corridor formed by Azerbaijan and Georgia. There already was an old pipeline following the route from the Caspian to the Black Sea, but the Americans favoured a new pipeline that would go from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, with a terminal at Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea. This pipeline is now operational.

To further secure its new position in the Caucasus, the USA gave military aid to both Georgia and Azerbaijan, and held out the possibility of NATO membership to Georgia. In return President Saakashvili of Georgia was happy to send Georgian troops to America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saakashvili's anti-Russian rhetoric increased markedly during the first half of 2008 and he made clear his intention of repossessing both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, by force if necessary. Apparently both Washington and Moscow did not take his words seriously, given the surprise of both the USA and Russia at Georgia's military move into South Ossetia.

For Russia this is clearly a provocation that cannot be ignored. If pro-Russian South Ossetia falls to Georgia, it can only encourage Azerbaijan to renew its efforts to retake Nagorno-Karabakh. That in turn would probably rekindle the insurgency in Chechnya, seriously undermining Russia's position in the Caucasus. Moscow has chosen to fight. The Georgians are clearly counting on the USA and its NATO allies to come and save them, but are those countries ready to escalate a regional war into a great power confrontation that risks worldwide conflict?

Fifty Years On: A Free Iraq or New Masters?

2008-07-02T15:19:00.000-06:00

The American and Iraqi governments are continuing their negotiations to find a legal basis for a continued US presence in Iraq after the end of this year, when the current United Nations mandate expires. An agreement is promised before the end of July.

Coincidentally, this July will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution which brought to an end the last foreign military presence in Iraq. The coup of 14 July 1958 overthrew the pro-Western Iraqi monarchy, set up a republic, and forced the British to give up their last military base in the country.

By the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty, Britain agreed to give Iraq independence (in 1932), but in return the British government retained the right to keep military forces in the country. The two principal bases were the air stations at Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad, and Shaibah, outside Basra.

In 1952 Egyptian army officers deposed King Farouk and set up a republic, which was soon dominated by Gamal Abdel Nasser. His doctrine of secular pan-Arab nationalism won many adherents throughout the Middle East, and these included senior officers in the Iraqi army.

Nasser believed that one great Arab state could be created and as a first step Egypt and Syria announced their union at the United Arab Republic (UAR) in early 1958. In Iraq both the king, Faisal II, and the prime minister, Nuri al-Said, were hostile to this new creation. As a defensive measure, Iraq announced a link with Jordan, which was also pro-Western, anti-Nasser, and ruled by a Hashemite royal family.

In Lebanon many Muslims wanted the country to join the new UAR, but the Christian Maronites were hostile to such action, moving the country towards civil war. King Hussein of Jordan feared that pro-Nasser elements in his country were conspiring against him and appealed for Iraqi support. The Iraqi government promised to send troops to aid him.

These troops were to travel via Baghdad, giving pro-Nasser army officers such as General Qasim and Colonel Arif the perfect opportunity to launch their own coup. On 14 July Arif's men seized control of Baghdad and murdered King Faisal and most of the Iraqi royal family. On the following day Nuri al-Said was hunted down and killed.

In reaction to these events in the Middle East, President Eisenhower authorised the first US military intervention in the region. American marines landed at Beirut and peace was soon restored in Lebanon. British paratroops were flown to Jordan to bolster King Hussein's grip on power. However, there was no repeat of Britain's 1941 intervention in Iraq to overthrow a hostile government.

Instead Britain tamely accepted the new republican government in Baghdad which was soon dominated by General Qasim. The British government had already relinquished the Shaibah air base in 1956. The new ruler of Iraq now demanded a British withdrawal from Habbaniyah. This was completed in May 1959, ending a British military presence in Iraq which had begun more than forty years earlier during the First World War.

Today the old air base at Habbaniyah is Camp Habbaniyah, garrisoned by US forces. Shaibah was incorporated in Basra International Airport in the 1960s. That airport was occupied by the British during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and is now their last major base in the country. The wheel seems to have come full circle. The bases given up fifty years ago are once again in the hands of Western military forces. How long will they stay this time?

Despite the nationalist protestations of some Iraqi politicians and demands from certain quarters in the United States for an early American withdrawal, it seems unlikely that the US military will be pulling out of Iraq in the near future. All that is up for negotiation is the terms on which the Americans remain in that country. Any country that accepts American bases, whether it be Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, South Korea, or Japan, has to grant US forces extraterritorial status. The Iraqi government too will be forced to do this, although whether this status will be extended to civilian security contractors is another matter. Only a repeat of the 1958 revolution might prevent the Americans from staying on, but that seems a very remote possibility.

Proxy Wars: Spreading the Load or Increasing Instability?

2008-06-07T10:01:00.000-06:00

Last month the Western-backed government of Lebanon made a bold attempt to reduce the power of Hezbollah, the principal Shia party, backed by Iran. This effort ended in rapid and bloody failure. The Lebanese army stepped in, but not to enforce the government's will. Instead the army brokered a settlement that effectively confirmed Hezbollah's power in Lebanon. The American-backed government had been publicly humiliated by Iran's proxy in Lebanon.

This outcome merely confirmed the situation that has existed since 2006. In that year Israel, America's most powerful proxy, willingly undertook the task of destroying Hezbollah. However, it failed and the bloody stalemate that was the result of the July war could be presented by Hezbollah as a victory for them and, implicitly, for Iran.

Why do the United States and Iran need to fight each other through proxies? Do such proxy wars decrease or increase international instability? And if such conflicts do not yield the desired results, will the principals behind the proxies eventually be drawn into direct military involvement?

Proxy wars are obviously attractive to Iran because it can strike at the interests of the United States yet deny direct involvement. Thus the long-threatened and long-feared American attack on Iran can be avoided. Also, Iran, unlike the United States, can exercise a more direct control of its proxies. Hezbollah, like all Shia militant groups around the world, has only one foreign power it can turn to for support and that is Iran.

If Iran is happy to exploit proxies to avoid direct confrontation with the West, why does the United States, the world's only remaining military superpower, feel the need to do so? The fact is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have tied down most of America's land forces. Any further expansion of their commitments would be difficult to sustain and unpopular with voters.

Thus, to spread the load, the United States is happy to call in proxies to fight its battles. Kurdish support has been invaluable to the Americans in Iraq, while Pakistan has engaged in repeated and often bloody campaigns against Islamist militants in its borderlands with Afghanistan.

However, these proxies are less reliable than those employed by Iran. The current Pakistani government's attempts to achieve a peaceful settlement with its border militants has created considerable alarm in Washington. There have been renewed calls for direct American military intervention in Pakistan, the very action that proxy wars are supposed to avoid.

If 2006 witnessed the failure of Israel, America's proxy, to crush Hezbollah, it did see an apparently more successful use of proxy forces in the Horn of Africa. During the year Islamist forces had taken control of most of central and southern Somalia and the Americans were anxious to remove them. Ethiopia was to act as America's proxy, invading Somalia in December. The invaders quickly drove the Islamists from power and installed a Somali government which enjoyed international support. There were promises that Ethiopian forces would be withdrawn within a few months.

Today, more than eighteen months later, Ethiopian forces are still in Somalia, fighting an apparently endless war against Islamist guerrillas, while the Somali government in Mogadishu is on the verge of collapse. To bolster its proxies, the United States has been ready to carry out a few direct military attacks, mostly airstrikes, in Somalia. Such direct American intervention is still unthinkable in the Lebanese proxy war, but it may become more common in the Horn of Africa.

During 2006 the United States backed military action by its proxies, Israel and Ethiopia, against Islamist parties in Lebanon and Somalia. In both cases the interventions have not had the desired results. The respective Islamist groups continue to exist and fight on. America sent in proxies to avoid having to do the job itself, but if the proxies fail, will the Americans eventually be forced to undertake some form of direct military intervention? At a time when Islamist resistance continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be unwise for the United States to be drawn into new theatres of conflict.

America and Muslim Pirates: Then and Now

2008-05-02T10:39:00.000-06:00

Among the deluge of books on Christian-Muslim conflict that have appeared since 9/11, one group has dealt with the clashes between the infant navy of the United States and the Barbary corsairs in the early nineteenth century. This struggle has been portrayed, to use the sub-title of a 2003 book, as 'America's First War on Terror'.

The United States Navy was brought into being to chastise Muslim pirates in North Africa who had been seizing American merchant ships and enslaving American sailors. In wars against Tripoli in 1801-1805 and against Algiers in 1815, the United States forced the Barbary corsairs to respect its power and sovereignty.

Both sides made reference to the religious aspects of these conflicts, but by this period political and economic considerations were more important in motivating both Christian captains and Muslim corsairs. Despite their claims to be carrying on a centuries-old jihad or holy war on the high seas, the Barbary pirates were running a protection racket. They demanded tribute from foreign maritime states in return for not attacking their merchant ships. The frigates of the new United States Navy soon convinced the Muslim pirates that the American republic would not submit to such extortion.

Now, two centuries after the wars against the Barbary corsairs, a new breed of Muslim pirate is active along the coast of Somalia, reaching out as far as two hundred miles into the neighbouring seas to capture ships and crews to be held for ransom. Today the United States Navy is the most powerful naval force in the world - indeed the most powerful navy in world history - and it might be expected to snuff out this new pirate menace with ease. However, such is not the case. Despite the ever-growing provocation by the Somali pirates, the United States Navy has taken only the most tentative action against this mosquito force. Why is this?

In part it is because unlike in the early 1800s America today has no large national merchant fleet needing protection. The mercantile marine of the early American republic quickly grew to be one of the largest in the world, its ships American-built, American-owned, and American-manned. Today, although much merchant tonnage is still American-owned, most of these vessels are registered under flags of convenience, chiefly Panama, Liberia, the Bahamas, and the Marshall Islands. These ships have foreign flags and foreign crews. The chances of Somali pirates seizing a US-flag vessel with an American crew are remote.

Traditionally the world's dominant naval power polices the international shipping routes not just to protect its own merchant fleet, but also the ships of all maritime trading nations. Since the United States has comparatively few merchant ships under its own flag, it now seems to prefer to leave any action against pirates to the navies of their victims. For example, the Somali pirates recently seized a French cruise yacht and a Spanish fishing vessel, so it was left to the navies of those countries to take action. Although in both cases the ships and crews were released safely, ransoms were paid and only in the French case were some pirates captured.

Another reason for the apparent American hesitation to act against the Somali pirates would seem to be the perception that US and other international naval forces in the area are there primarily to fight terrorists while the pirates are 'only criminals'. It is certainly true that the motives of the Somali pirates are at the moment principally mercenary, aiming to collect ransoms. However, is it safe to assume that these Muslim pirates will never be infected by Islamist ideology, taking the jihad to sea as the Barbary corsairs did in past centuries?

The United States and its allies would no doubt say they have already taken sufficient action against the pirates by deploying the multinational naval force known as Combined Task Force 150 in the region since 2002. However, the primary duty of this force is to carry out 'the war on terror' and not to act as an anti-piracy force. Indeed during the years of CTF 150's existence, the threat posed by the Somali pirates has increased not decreased.

In any case, CTF 150 has only fourteen or fifteen ships and its area of operations extends from the Gulf of Oman in the north to the Mozambique Channel in the south, including both the entrance to the Red Sea and most of the western Indian Ocean. This is a huge area, and even if the task force's remit kept it only on the coast of Somalia, that coast is the longest in Africa. Could only fifteen ships effectively cover a coastline which is almost 2,000 miles long?

Currently a resolution is being hammered out at the United Nations which would allow foreign warships to enter Somali territorial waters to hunt down pirates. However, even when this resolution is passed, those pirates can only be suppressed if the United States and other naval powers have the will to act and provide the necessary forces to do so.

The Islamists currently battling against Somali government and Ethiopian forces in and around the capital Mogadishu are said by the United States to have links with al-Qaeda. The latter terrorist group has carried out maritime attacks in the past, including hitting a US warship in Aden harbour and a French tanker off the coast of Yemen. As yet the Somali pirates are not known to have links with the Islamists in their country, let alone al-Qaeda. However, there is always the danger that some pirates might link their actions to the Islamist cause, demanding political concessions as well as ransoms in return for releasing captured ships and crews. In the worst scenario, the pirates might be used as cover for al-Qaeda suicide boat attacks on Western shipping in a maritime choke point like the Gulf of Aden.

Before such scenarios can arise, the international community must take powerful and decisive action to crush the Somali pirate menace, with the United States Navy leading the way as it did in the wars against the Barbary pirates two centuries ago.

Waziristan: Avoiding A Step Too Far

2008-04-03T10:27:00.000-06:00

During the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, the Afghan guerrillas had the great advantage of being able to retreat to safe bases in neighbouring Pakistan if Russian military pressure became too great. With the USA supporting Pakistan, there was never any chance the Soviet Union would attack those bases and risk a major crisis between the superpowers.

Today the Taliban militants operating against Western forces in Afghanistan run their operations from bases in the regions of Pakistan along the Afghan border. These safe havens are chiefly in northern Balochistan and the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas, especially North and South Waziristan. Other than occasional airstrikes, chiefly by Predator UAVs, the Americans have been reluctant to take direct military action against these Taliban and al-Qaeda bases in Pakistan. Instead the USA has encouraged the Pakistani government to suppress them.

So far such Pakistani military efforts have met with only limited success, and there have been increasing calls in some quarters for the USA and its Western allies to undertake direct military action against terrorist bases in the border areas of Pakistan, above all in Waziristan. Such calls must be resisted since for the West to invade a Muslim nation for the third time since 2001 (the other invasions being Afghanistan and Iraq) would only further inflame hatred of the USA and its Western allies in the Islamic world.

The tribesmen of Waziristan have successfully resisted foreign invaders for centuries. Even the British Raj had to recognise their semi-independent status in 1893. However, this did not stop clashes between the two sides. For example, after the short-lived Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, a considerable revolt broke out in Waziristan. British and Indian forces suffered more than two thousand casualties before they forced the tribesmen to make peace in March 1920. Nevertheless further clashes, large and small, continued in Waziristan up until 1947 when Britain could hand the problem area over to newly independent Pakistan.

The Pakistanis avoided serious trouble in Waziristan largely by leaving the local people to run their own affairs. However, after 9/11 and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants, including leaders such as Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, fled across the border into Waziristan and adjacent areas. Under American pressure, the ruler of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, was compelled to send large numbers of troops into North and South Waziristan for the first time in decades. These forces had comparatively little success in rounding up Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, but their presence did anger local tribesmen, leading to increasing clashes between the two sides.

In March 2004 these clashes escalated into an open war between the Pakistani forces on one side and local tribesmen, Taliban guerrillas, and al-Qaeda fighters (mostly foreign) on the other. By the time a peace accord was finally negotiated between the contesting parties in September 2006, an estimated 700 Pakistani troops had been killed, as well as 1,000 militants and 1,000 civilians.

Although fragile, the peace accord did give the Pakistani authorities a chance to exploit divisions among their opponents. Relations between local people and foreign Islamist fighters had not always been good, and in the spring of 2007 violence broke out between local tribesmen and Uzbek fighters linked to al-Qaeda. By mid-April the Uzbeks had been largely driven out of South Waziristan, with Pakistani artillery assisting local tribesmen in some of their attacks.

These favourable developments might have led to further attacks on foreign Islamist fighters in the area, but in July 2007 Musharraf's government enraged radical Islamists all over Pakistan by its clumsy and bloody suppression of militant activity at the Red Mosque in the capital Islamabad. The Waziristan peace accord collapsed and between July and November 2007 there was intense fighting in the region, with suicide bombers taking a new prominence in attacks on Pakistani forces. By early 2008 the estimated casualties after barely six months of fighting exceeded those for the whole 2004-06 war: 850 troops killed, as well as 1,900 militants and 1,800 civilians.

Recently the tempo of the fighting has decreased and the new civilian government of Pakistan is promising to negotiate a peaceful settlement in Waziristan and adjacent areas rather than using further military force. The US government has expressed concern about this approach and some commentators have now suggested the Americans and their allies may have to intervene directly in Waziristan to destroy terrorist bases, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government in Islamabad. Such Western intervention, even if only in the form of increased airstrikes and raids by special forces, can only further inflame the situation in the region.

The only way to root out the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Waziristan and adjacent areas is for the Pakistani government to take action. As shown by the successful efforts against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in 2007, the Pakistanis can get local tribesmen to drive out foreign Islamist militants. This is the only way to go. It may not be swift, but it is likely to be effective in the long run. If impatience leads to clumsy Western military intervention in Waziristan, such action is more likely to spread war across Pakistan than to end it in Afghanistan.

Kosovars and Kurds: Same Game, Different Rules

2008-03-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

There was once a land-locked province in a distant country. One ethnic group formed the majority population in the province, but it was oppressed by the ethnic group which formed a majority in the whole country.

The oppressed provincials finally rose in revolt. After some hesitation, Western nations eventually came to their assistance and by military means, including bombing of the national capital, forced the oppressive national government to withdraw its forces from the province.

The local ethnic majority then set up its own government in the liberated territory. Only one more political step remained to be undertaken. The government would wish to declare national independence and create a new state in the world.

This story outlines the course of events in not one but two oppressed provinces in recent history. One is Albanian-dominated Kosovo, part of Serbia (former Yugoslavia), and the other is Iraqi Kurdistan, the most northerly section of the republic of Iraq.

Recently the Kosovar government in Pristina has been allowed by its Western sponsors to take the final step. National independence has been declared, a unilateral declaration, without even the fig leaf of a favourable popular vote on the subject. Although nobody can doubt the majority of Kosovars support the declaration, the lack of a referendum sets a dangerous precedent.

The situation has been very different in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Despite the declared wishes of both politicians and people, the Iraqi Kurds will not be allowed to declare national independence. While the United States denies the Serbian government in Belgrade has any right to prevent the secession of Kosovo, it is determined to keep Iraqi Kurdistan at least nominally linked to the national government in Baghdad

Why is national self determination permitted to the Kosovars but denied to the Iraqi Kurds? David Miliband, the British foreign minister, declared when he announced UK recognition of the independence of Kosovo that this was 'a unique case' which would not serve as a precedent for dissident regions in other countries. But how can that be? The principle of national self determination must be generally applicable around the world or it is no principle at all.

Mr. Miliband is no doubt keen to stress Kosovo's supposed 'uniqueness' because if a regional government can be allowed to declare its independence from the wider nation without even a referendum on the subject then the United Kingdom will soon be on the road to dissolution. A Scottish nationalist government is already in power in Edinburgh and if it took Kosovo as a precedent, it could declare the independence of Scotland at any time.

The crucial difference in the treatment given by the United States and its allies to Kosovo and Iraqi Kurdistan derives from their different geo-strategic positions and how neighbouring countries will react to such provinces claiming national independence.

With regard to Kosovo, the United States will suffer little damage to its interests from backing independence. Indeed there is already a major US military base in Kosovo and the country is slated to be on the route of an American-backed energy pipeline. Serbian and Russian threats are no more than hot air, with the attack on the US embassy in Belgrade signifying the impotence of Serbian nationalists rather than their strength. With Kosovo independent, the Albanian-majority areas of north-west Macedonia will no doubt demand autonomy at the very least, but whatever the reaction of the Macedonian government, the United States will have the final word.

How different the situation would be if the Iraqi Kurds were allowed to declare national independence. The Baghdad government and neighbouring countries with Kurdish populations would be outraged. The biggest outcry would come from Turkey, where Kurds make up at least twenty per cent of the national population and form a clear majority in the south-eastern provinces of the country. Even more than Israel, Turkey is the most important strategic ally the United States has in the Middle East. Its wishes cannot be ignored.

The Americans who in 1999 rained bombs on Yugoslavia in support of Kosovar guerrillas now try to look the other way while Turkish forces invade Iraqi Kurdistan to hunt down Kurdish guerrillas. The great Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell said that no man can set a limit to the march of a nation. Having encouraged the national independence of Kosovo, it will be interesting to see how long the United States can continue to hold back the national aspirations of the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world still without a state of their own.

To the Shores of Tripoli: Wars Without End - And How They End

2008-02-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

We are told that the present 'war on terror' is a potentially endless conflict. Critics have ridiculed the idea of making war on an abstract noun. Yet this is not a novelty. The present struggle against 'terror' is comparable to the worldwide fight against 'slavery' in the nineteenth century or the centuries-old effort to suppress 'piracy'.

Indeed the latter conflict may offer some parallels to the current 'war on terror'. Today the principal terrorists Western nations have in mind are Islamist ones. The most powerful and dangerous pirates in the past were those associated with the Muslim political entities known as the Barbary states. From the start of the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the Barbary pirates terrorised the Christian nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea and even operated on the Atlantic coasts of northwestern Europe.

The Barbary pirates were based principally at Tripoli (Libya), Tunis (Tunisia), Algiers (Algeria), and Rabat/Sale (Morocco). The long-running Christian-Muslim conflict had been carried on at sea in the Mediterranean before, but generally the Christians had managed to retain the upper hand for most of the time. This situation changed during the sixteenth century and Muslim power at sea increased dramatically. In part this was due to the growing strength of the navy of the Ottoman Empire, but even that force was very dependent on naval assistance from the Barbary states.

The stimulus that converted North Africa into perhaps the most important base for pirates in the world was provided by the final defeat of Islam in Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century. Thousands of Muslim refugees fled to North Africa, thirsting for revenge against the Iberian Christians. Piracy seemed to offer the easiest and most effective way of achieving this.

Of course these Muslim corsairs did not see themselves as pirates. Instead they saw themselves as warriors for the faith, carrying on a maritime jihad against their Christian enemies. If such activities also brought economic benefits in terms of plunder and ransoms, then so much the better.

During the sixteenth century Spain was the principal enemy of the Barbary states and Spanish naval and military forces sought to curb the activities of the Muslim corsairs. The Spanish failed in several attempts to capture Algiers, and although they took control of Tunis several times, they could not keep control of it for more than a few years.

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Barbary pirates enjoyed their heyday. Spanish power was declining, while the growing maritime powers of France, England and the Netherlands did not yet have navies strong enough to inflict serious damage on the Barbary states. This was the period when theBarbary pirates broke out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, raiding as far away as southern England and Ireland, Iceland, and the Newfoundland fisheries.

Only after 1660 did the French, English and Dutch navies begin to make serious efforts to suppress the Barbary pirates. However, they soon came to realise the limits of their coercive powers. A port like Algiers could be bombarded from the sea, forcing the release of Christian captives and obtaining promises of good behaviour from its rulers, but such attacks had little long-term impact on the problem of piracy. Once the Christian warships disappeared over the horizon, the Barbary pirates could return to their depredations. Also, the European naval powers spent more time fighting each other than chasing pirates. When they were at war, the Barbary pirates could be active without fear of retribution.

Even in the eighteenth century the Barbary states still posed a considerable maritime threat. Rather than waste money on ineffective punitive naval expeditions against their pirate strongholds, even major European naval powers were prepared to make deals. In return for immunity from pirate attack for their merchant ships, these maritime powers gave 'gifts' to the rulers of Barbary, though still threatening naval bombardments if the pirates went back on their word. The lesser maritime states had unashamedly to pay 'tribute' to the Barbary pirates to buy a measure of immunity. To keep the pirate business going, the rulers of the Barbary states were careful never to be at peace with all the European maritime states at any one time.

Even as he prepared for the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Admiral Horatio Nelson still sought to appease the Barbary states, less to curb their pirate attacks than to get supplies for his fleet from their ports. The infant United States had initially been forced to pay tribute to the Barbary states, but their continued threat to American merchant shipping eventually led to the creation of the United States Navy. Soon US sailors and marines were sailing 'to the shores of Tripoli' to wage war against the pirates from that port. Somewhat later America had another short war with Algiers. The Barbary rulers were forced to make concessions to the Americans, but as in the past there was no assurance these would continue after American warships withdrew.

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the European powers agreed that they would concert their efforts so as to achieve a final solution to the problem of Barbary piracy. The following years saw more French, British and Dutch bombardments of Barbary ports, but whatever the impact of external force, the decline of Barbary piracy after 1815 was also due to internal changes within the Barbary states themselves.

In the mid-eighteenth century the ruler of Morocco had decided that corsair attacks on Christian shipping were no longer worth the effort. Normal trade with European powers brought greater benefits. Morocco steadily withdrew from the corsair business, and even in ports such as Algiers and Tripoli the number of pirate vessels had considerably declined by 1800 and their activities had been brought under more direct government control.

Although the French claimed that one of the motives for their 1830 invasion of Algeria was to suppress piracy, corsair activity from Algiers had dropped to a very low level by that date. Nevertheless the fear of providing an excuse for invasion by the ever more powerful European powers led the remaining Barbary states to end their last links to piracy. By 1840 Tunisia and Libya were out of the business. The end of piracy may have bought the remaining free Barbary states a reprieve from European conquest for a time, but they fell eventually: Tunisia to the French in 1881; Libya to the Italians in 1911; and Morocco to the French and Spanish in 1912.

To most Europeans living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth centuries a decisive victory in the war with the Barbary pirates must have seemed an impossible dream. Yet in the first half of the nineteenth century this 'endless' war was terminated, with the Muslim states ending their predatory activities. There were two main reasons for this outcome. First, an external factor, the ever-growing military and naval power of the European states, who would eventually come to rule all the Barbary states for a time. Secondly, internal changes within the Barbary states made piracy seem no longer an attractive activity in political or economic terms. Even in ideological terms, the intensity of Christian-Muslim conflict had diminished and trade with the infidels seemed more attractive than maritime holy war.

Does this 350 year struggle against the Barbary pirates have any lessons for the current war against terror? Perhaps. The United States and its Western allies can clearly deploy massive military forces as an external hammer to strike any Muslim state that seems to be supporting terrorism. However, given the bitter past history of relations between the Christian West and the Islamic world, to rely solely on the application of external force is likely to be counter-productive, breeding more terrorists rather than stamping them out. Internal changes within Muslim countries will be more important in draining away popular support for Islamist terrorism.

One view has it that Barbary piracy only came to an end when the Barbary states were occupied by the European powers. However, as we have already noted, pirate activities were largely suppressed before the Europeans invaded. It was Muslim governments that ended the threat. As it is clearly impossible in this day and age for Western countries to occupy Muslim states on the excuse of suppressing terrorism, it is even more true today that the suppression of illegal activity must be carried out by the internal policies of Muslim governments.

One significant difference between the present war on terror and the earlier war against Barbary piracy is the perception of the time the struggle will take. War against the Barbary pirates was just part of a Christian-Muslim conflict that had been going on for centuries, an existential struggle which might continue for further centuries into the future. Europeans were not expecting any quick victory over the Muslim corsairs. They fought to destroy them, but for much of the time they were forced reluctantly to put up with their activities as one of the costs of maritime trade.

Today, Western perceptions are different. Despite the rantings of Osama bin Laden, few Westerners see the war against terror as a war with Islam. Indeed while Western troops fight in the heart of the Islamic world, their home governments allow a steady stream of Muslim immigrants into Europe and North America. Yet it is this reluctance to see the present conflict as just another round in the ancient Christian-Muslim conflict that makes Westerners impatient and unwilling to see the war on terror as a long-lasting struggle.

The war on terror has lasted barely seven years and already the long-term commitment of many Western nations to the struggle is being questioned. If this 'endless' war is ever to be brought to a successful conclusion, the first thing that Westerners must accept is that it may well be a conflict that will last for several generations at least. If such a long-term commitment can be sustained, 'terror' may one day be as much a part of the unhappy past as 'piracy' and 'slavery'.

Another Shift in the Iraqi Kaleidoscope

2008-01-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Given Sunni Arab support for the insurgency, the 2005 Iraqi constitution could only be achieved by a political compromise between the Shia Arab majority and the Kurdish minority in the north of the country. This arrangement begn to collapse in the second half of 2007 as the United States weaned the Sunni Arab minority away from the insurgency and began to move away from its previous support of the Shia Arabs and the Kurds.

By the end of 2007 the United States had armed a 70,000 strong Sunni Arab militia in formerly rebellious parts of Iraq, much to the concern of the Shia Arab government in Baghdad and the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan. This American swing towards the Sunni Arabs was in part just the internal Iraqi aspect of a wider American rapprochement with Sunni Arab states in the region. In return for them joining an American-backed coalition to oppose the growing power of the Shia state of Iran, those states, including Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council, were promised both a settlement of the Israel-Palestine question (still to be delivered) and a definite change in the US attitude to the Sunni Arab minority within Iraq.

This shift in the US position has understandably alarmed Iraq's Shia Arab majority, as it was probably intended to do. When it seemed likely that the USA would launch a military attack on Iran (an attack now at least postponed), the Americans were ready to neutralise possible Iraqi Shia military support for the Iranians by creating a Sunni Arab military counterweight within the country.

In many ways this American shift towards the Sunni Arab minority has been a reversion to the traditional power arrangement in Iraq. After the Ottoman Turkish sultans took the country away from the Iranians during the sixteenth century, they ensured Sunni rule over the majority Shia for the next four centuries. After the British took control of Iraq in 1917-18, they continued this political hegemony, installing a Sunni Arab monarch to rule the country. Even after the fall of the monarchy in 1958, the Sunni Arab minority - including Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti gang - continued to run Iraq. Only since 2003 has the Shia Arab majority achieved political dominance after centuries of oppression. Now those Shia fear that the United States may be going back on its commitment to democracy so as to further the interests of its allies in neighbouring Sunni Arab countries.

The Iraqi Kurds have traditionally been hostile to all Arabs, whether Sunni or Shia, but since 2003 it has been in their interest to ally with the Shia Arab majority, in part because this was what their American friends wanted. Now the amity between Iraqi Kurdistan and the United States is becoming increasingly strained. Despite US denials, American assistance to Turkish air attacks on PKK guerrillas in Iraqi Kurdistan during December 2007 has been patently obvious. For the moment Iraqi Kurds are prepared to overlook this rather than alienate the USA, their principal ally. However, if Turkish attacks continue, extreme Kurdish nationalists may well start hitting back at the Americans was well as the Turks. The continued postponement of the Kirkuk referendum is also increasing Kurdish hostility.

The Americans claim that the success of their 'surge' strategy in reducing the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq has produced an ideal opportunity for a general political settlement in that country. However, neither the Shia Arabs nor the Kurds seem in any mood to do favours for the USA and its new Sunni Arab friends in Iraq at the moment. One sign of this is the continued delay in passing a new Iraqi oil law which would benefit US energy companies. The Americans have certainly shifted the political kaleidoscope in Iraq, but the consequence seems unlikely to be the settlement they desire. Pursuing the Sunni Arab agenda in Iraq seems more likely to alienate old allies from the USA rather than win them to its cause.

Decision Postponed: Will the Kirkuk Referendum Ever Happen?

2007-12-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

One of the vital factors in winning Kurdish support for the 2005 Iraqi constitution was the promise of a referendum on the status of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Kurds claim the city and its surrounding area should be part of the semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government. Their claim matters because near Kirkuk is the most important oilfield in northern Iraq, a field which produces nearly half of that country's oil exports.

If the Kurdish autonomous region gets control of such oil riches, there may be serious consequences. The Baghdad government will lose access to much of its income from oil exports and its already tenuous control of the northern Kurdish region will dwindle to almost nothing. An oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan will also act as a beacon to encourage separatist tendencies among the Kurdish populations of neighbouring countries such as Turkey and Iran.

The Kirkuk oilfield was first discovered in 1927 and went into production in 1934. For more than seven decades this field has provided the backbone of Iraq's oil industry, although new fields were later discovered in the centre and south of the country. This ageing 'supergiant' oilfield is still said to have proven reserves of over ten billion barrels of oil and it currently produces a million barrels a day. Most of this oil is exported by pipeline across Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

Facing a continuing Kurdish insurrection in northern Iraq, the Baghdad government decided in the 1970s to begin a policy of ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk. The majority Kurds and significant minorities such as the Turkomans were expelled from the city and surrounding area, being replaced by Arabs transplanted from central and southern Iraq. This 'Arabization' policy was intensified by Saddam Hussein during the 1980s and by 2000 several hundred thousand people had been removed from their homes in Kirkuk.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Kurds demanded that their people should be allowed to return to Kirkuk. This right of return was granted to them and other expelled groups by the 2005 Iraqi constitution. Arabs were to be sent back to their home areas and compensated. Once the demographic balance had been 'normalized' in Kirkuk, a census would be held and a list of voters prepared for a referendum to decide if Kirkuk should be included in the Kurdish autonomous area.

It was envisaged that the 'normalization' of the population and the carrying out of the census would be completed in the summer of 2007, with the referendum taking place in November 2007. Initial delays in the process led to the date of the referendum being changed to 'the end of 2007', but this timetable has now become unrealistic.

Even in early 2007 the Baghdad government was stating that the Kirkuk referendum would have to be postponed. Now it is claimed that the Kurdish authorities are ready to accept a postponement of the vote for some months, perhaps until May 2008. This delay is said to be due to purely administrative problems, but many Kurds are suspicious and some have threatened a unilateral seizure of Kirkuk if the promised referendum does not take place soon.

The Baghdad government and many American officials would like to see the referendum postponed for some years, if not indefinitely, to avoid provoking bloody ethnic conflict in a part of Iraq which has so far seen comparatively little violence. Neighbouring countries such as Turkey and Iran take a similar view of the proposed referendum because of fears about its impact on their own Kurdish populations. But how long will the Kurds tolerate such postponement?

If the Iraqi Kurds take control of Kirkuk, whether by democratic vote or unilateral action, Turkey has threatened to take military measures against them. This would not only be to protect the Turkoman minority in the city, but also to avoid any possibility of the creation of an oil-rich independent Kurdish state. Of course military action may not be needed to curb the Iraqi Kurds. All Turkey has to do is close the pipeline to Ceyhan and so end oil exports from Kirkuk, although this would probably cause a sharp rise in the world oil price.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is no doubt conscious of these possible actions by rival powers, but it has only limited room to manoeuvre on the Kirkuk issue. A postponement of the referendum for a few months may be acceptable. However, if further postponements follow, direct action can be expected from the more extreme Kurdish nationalists, with possibly dangerous consequences for both Iraq and the wider Middle East.

Muslims Must Lead the Fight Against Islamist Terror

2007-11-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

In November 1997 Islamist terrorists attacked foreign tourists visiting the ancient sites at Luxor, Egypt. More than sixty people were killed, mostly tourists, and then the terrorists committed suicide. Ordinary Egyptians were outraged at this crime. When the killers fled into nearby hills, it was significant that their first pursuers were local people not Egyptian security forces.

The Luxor massacre was a step too far for the Egyptian people and in its aftermath they largely rejected Islamist violence. In the five years before Luxor, Islamist terrorists killed more than 1,200 people in Egypt, many of them foreigners. After Luxor the Islamist terrorist movement in the country largely collapsed. Without some measure of popular support, the Islamists could no longer continue their campaign of violence.

In September 2001 Islamist terrorists launched their attacks in the United States using hijacked airliners as suicide weapons. Almost 3,000 people were killed. Despite the rejoicing of a small section of the Islamic world, the mass of the world's Muslims expressed their horror and disgust at these crimes. This widespread Muslim rejection of al-Qaeda and its actions was underlined by events in Afghanistan in the following months.

Osama bin Laden and his associate Ayman al-Zawahiri had hoped that in reaction to the events of 9/11 the United States would plunge into a war against their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan which would be a repeat of the Soviet-Afghan conflict of 1979-89. The Islamic world would rally to the support of Afghanistan, ready for another struggle against the infidel. Nothing like that happened. The world's Muslims would have nothing to do with the extremist criminals in Afghanistan.

Instead of a ten-year jihad, al-Qaeda and the Taliban were routed in a campaign lasting only a few months. Wisely the US-led coalition restricted its participation in the war to air attacks and the provision of special forces units on the ground. Most of the fighting against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was undertaken by their Afghan opponents and by tribal leaders who had found it prudent to change sides.

By early 2002 the Taliban and al-Qaeda seemed to have suffered a decisive defeat. Nor did their few supporters in the wider world have much impact. According to US State Department figures, the number of terrorist attacks around the world in 2002 was lower than in 2001 and, despite tragedies like the Bali bombing, the number of fatalities caused by such attacks had fallen substantially. Those extremists who wished to bring about a bloody 'clash of civilisations' between the West and the Islamic world seemed to have failed.

Then came the historic folly of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Once it became clear that the swift American victory over Saddam Hussein would not be followed by peace but by an extended guerrilla war, Islamist extremists had the opportunity they had long sought. Thousands of Western troops were battling Muslims in the heart of the Islamic world, and these struggles were broadcast around the world every day. Despite the denunciations of Islamist terror by Muslim governments, increasing numbers of their people were ready to support the resistance struggle in Iraq.

By the end of 2004, the war in Iraq had begun to re-awaken the conflict in Afghanistan. Several years of comparative peace in that country had been wasted. Despite many promises, Western governments had failed to provide sufficient aid and assistance to bring stability and prosperity to Afghanistan. The influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda began to revive and soon they were launching a new war from their bases in Pakistan. Many Afghans who had rejected their extremism in 2001 were now ready to join them.

Of course one cannot blame the strong revival of Islamist terrorism since 2003 solely on the actions of the West. As Osama bin Laden and his associates have made clear, they see many Muslim governments as being as bad as, if not worse than, the Western 'crusaders'. However, Osama bin Laden's endlessly repeated denunciations of 'crusader aggression' would be just meaningless ranting if the West had not taken military actions which gave them some plausibility.

No amount of Western sophistry could explain away the brutality depicted in the pictures of American military police ill-treating Muslim prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Images are always more powerful than words. Most Muslims will never actively support Islamist terrorism, but enough young men have been radicalised by Western military excesses in Iraq and Afghanistan to give a new lease of life to an extremist movement which seemed to be in terminal decline in 2002.

In their reactions to the Islamist terrorist atrocities of 1997 and 2001, Muslims have shown their instinctive hostility to such crimes. However, since 2003 the terrorists have been able to win support in some parts of the Islamic world by portraying the presence of Western military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as 'crusader aggression'. Resistance to such forces is said to be as much a duty for Muslims as was resistance to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Only a rapid reduction of this Western military presence can rob the extremists of one of their chief claims to wider Muslim support. Western governments must not see such a withdrawal as being a defeat. A lasting victory over Muslim extremism can only be achieved by other Muslims. The West may provide weapons, intelligence, logistics, and other valuable support, but Muslim governments must have the main role in suppressing Islamist terrorism.

At present Western military operations seem to be largely counter-productive, merely providing new recruits for the terrorists and alienating opinion in much of the Islamic world. It is time to give up the heavy-handed blundering that has characterised Western strategy since 2003 and attempt to formulate a more skilful and focused approach. In this new strategy Muslim countries must be more closely involved in both the planning and execution of anti-terrorist measures. Only then can the perpetrators of the atrocities of 1997 and 2001 be isolated and defeated, having lost all wider support in the Muslim community.

Turkey at the Crossroads: Will an Invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan Set a Dangerous Precedent?

2007-11-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

One of the few things Turkey's moderate Islamist government of the Justice and Development (AK) party has in common with the secularist high command of the country's armed forces is a declared wish to take strong action against the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and their bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The nationalist current is running strongly in Turkey and public hostlity to perceived enemies such as the Kurds and their American backers is both intense and widespread. The Turkish parliament passed a resolution giving the AK government approval to take military action against PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan by a massive majority. However, is this Turkish nationalist front really so monolithic?

One reason the PKK is desperate to provoke reckless Turkish military action that will rally all Kurds behind them is because their party is losing ground in the predominantly Kurdish areas of south-east Turkey. The AK government has made a significant effort to win over Kurdish opinion in that region by favourable treatment. This is not just a cynical exercise to win support in the European Union, which the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen for Turkey to join. Erdogan wants to win over the Kurds with kindness, but the Turkish military has put him on the spot and forced him to take up a hard-line nationalist position.

Turkey's military high command tried to use scare tactics to discourage the electorate from returning the AK government to power in the July general election. They claimed there was an Islamist plot to overthrow Turkey's secular republic, but the electors were unimpressed, Erdogan returned to power, and an AK party candidate was appointed president. The military has now played the nationalist card, claiming the AK government is failing to stand up to the PKK terrorists. Reluctantly Erdogan has been forced to support the idea of a Turkish military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan to destroy PKK bases.

Yet is the Turkish miltary high command itself really that enthusiastic about such an invasion? Past incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan, such as those of 1992 and 1997, undoubtedly did much damage to the PKK, but they could inflict no lasting defeat upon the insurgents. Those past Turkish incursions actually enjoyed the support of some Iraqi Kurd factions who were hostile to the PKK, but it seems unlikely that Kurdish ranks will be split this time. This will worry the Turkish generals as the last thing they want is to become bogged down in a prolonged guerrilla war, especially as this would restrict their chances of launching a coup against the AK government should its current revision of the Turkish constitution prove a clear threat to the secular state.

Thus both Turkish politicians and generals have reservations about an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, but the less bellicose alternative of economic sanctions against the Iraqi Kurds also presents problems. Most trade to and from Iraqi Kurdistan goes through Turkey, so an economic blockade would be a major blow. However, Turkish business interests have played a major part in the economic development of Iraqi Kurdistan and any such blockade would hit them as well. The Ankara government may refuse to recognise the semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government, but on the ground Turkish companies have been happy to do business with the Iraqi Kurds. A short-lived military incursion would do less damage to such business links than a prolonged economic blockade. In any case, whatever the economic considerations, Erdogan and the generals seem to have painted themselves into a corner. Trapped by their nationalist rhetoric, they have increasingly left themselves with only one option: a military invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Such an invasion will put the USA in a very difficult position. The Kurds are the principal American ally within Iraq, but Turkey is America's most important military ally in the Middle East, after Israel. If armed conflict breaks out between the two sides, who will the USA support? To alienate the Kurds is to inject even more chaos into Iraq; to anger the Turks is to risk losing a vital ally at a time when a final showdown between the USA and Iran seems to be approaching. The Iranians would be delighted to join the Turks in action against the Iraqi Kurds and to seek to draw them away from the Americans.

Unless at the last minute the Iraqi Kurds decide to curb the PKK themselves, Turkish politicians and generals have taken such entrenched positions that they must launch some sort of military incursion in the near future. It will no doubt be a limited operation and the USA will seek to ignore it, restricting any criticism to diplomatic protests. Indeed Turkish action against PKK 'terrorist bases' in Iraq may provide a useful precedent for the Americans, who have long been promising to take action against 'terrorist bases' in Iran. Unfortunately while Turkish attacks on Iraqi Kurds are only likely to produce a short-lived crisis, American attacks on the Iranians will produce a conflict which may engulf the whole Middle East.

The New Route to an American War with Iran

2007-10-05T13:17:00.000-06:00

Seymour M. Hersh's recent article in 'The New Yorker' outlines his belief that the Bush administration's plan for war with Iran is changing. Hersh believes a massive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is now to give place to a series of surgical strikes on the bases of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to end that force's supposed operations within Iraq. However, these two plans are far from mutually exclusive and the new strategy may easily lead on to attacks aimed at Iranian nuclear sites.

Although American attempts to convince US and world opinion of active Iranian involvement in attacks on American forces in Iraq have scarcely been more successful than the Bush administration's constant refrain about Iran's nuclear threat, some incident, real or contrived, may occur which will be used by Bush and Cheney to justify air strikes on Iran.

Initially, limited air attacks on Iranian military targets may not prove to be unpopular in the United States. Outsiders rarely grasp that hostility to Iran's revolutionary Islamic government is almost as deep-seated in many parts of the United States as hatred of the American 'Great Satan' is among much of the Iranian people. This is hardly surprising given that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the only country in the world which has humiliated not one but two US presidents: Jimmy Carter over the Tehran hostages crisis in 1979-81 and Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair of 1986-7.

Even many Congressional Democrats would no doubt be ready to support limited air strikes on Iran if the Iranians could be plausibly linked to incidents in Iraq in which American personnel had been killed. Whatever their reservations about the Iraq war, both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have been noticeably bellicose in their comments about Iran.

Once air attacks on Iranian military targets have begun, they would no doubt become a regular occurrence. American and world opinion would quickly become used to them, familiarity soon blunting initial outrage in most quarters. Like the intermittent Anglo-American air campaign against Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the 1990s, the air strikes on Iran would eventually seem unremarkable. Even Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, a series of major air attacks on Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein's expulsion of UN weapons inspectors, excited only limited international indignation.

Not only would people become used to air attacks on Iran, lessening likely hostile reaction to a shift to nuclear targets, but the attacks themselves would prepare the way for later strikes on nuclear sites by steadily destroying Iranian defences. Anti-aircraft batteries, radar systems, and command and control facilities would have to be destroyed to ensure the safety of US aircraft hitting IRGC 'terrorist bases' however 'limited' the initial air strikes were said to be.

Once Iranian defences have been sufficiently degraded and diplomatic attempts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions have failed, as they probably will, the Bush administration can easily switch to attacking Iranian nuclear sites in the knowledge that such attacks will provoke a much reduced level of international outrage.

Although most scenarios see the excuse for US air attacks on Iran as being an incident in Iraq involving the deaths of US ground personnel caused by Iranian weapons and/or forces, a maritime incident might have advantages for the United States. The most feared Iranian retaliation in the event of an American attack on the country is an attack on tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz which would send world oil prices rocketing into the stratosphere.

If a maritime incident set off hostilities between the United States and Iran, American naval forces in the Gulf could immediately seek to repeat their success in Operation Praying Mantis back in April 1988. On that occasion US forces crushed Iranian naval power in less than twenty-four hours.

Most large surface units of Iran's navy are obsolete, but in recent years Iran obtained three Kilo class diesel attack submarines from Russia. US naval commanders have expressed concern about the threat posed by these vessels to Gulf shipping and they will no doubt welcome the opportunity to destroy them as soon as possible.

Of course the Iranians have so far done their best to avoid provoking the Americans. The arrest of the British naval boarding party in March was a local IRGC initiative and the incident was soon brought to a close by the Tehran government before the Americans could exploit their ally's difficulty as an excuse for war. If a suitable incident does not arise soon, Bush and Cheney may have to create one to justify their planned attack on Iran. Perhaps US naval vessels will be sent into Iranian territorial waters in the hope of provoking a violent response. This was what was done in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 and resulted in the famous 'incident' which led to full American participation in the Vietnam War. Will the American Congress and people fall for the same trick a second time?

Iraq and the O Word

2007-09-21T14:12:00.000-06:00

Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, committed the ultimate crime. He mentioned the 'O word' in connection with America's intervention in Iraq. For such a major public figure to suggest that oil had anything to do with the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003 is heresy of the first order. The Bush administration was quick to criticise Greenspan, and he was even quicker to 'clarify' his statement so that it did not contradict the official line that the need to destroy weapons of mass destruction and to bring democracy to Iraq were the only reasons for American intervention in that country.

Of course to most reasonable people Greenspan's assertion seems no more than a statement of the obvious. No doubt many considerations, strategic, political, and economic, weighed on President Bush and his associates when deciding whether to attack Iraq, but oil was undoubtedly among those considerations. The idea that any responsible statesman would invade one of the world's major oil-producing states without giving thought to what impact this would have on world oil trade is obviously absurd.

The Bush administration that first took office in January 2001 has closer links to the US oil industry than any previous government in American history. It was bound to be willing to help that industry in overcoming its problems, especially if those problems posed a threat to America's international power.

Independent private oil companies, such as the American companies, are facing difficult times. The world's oil is running out and most of those dwindling supplies are controlled by state-owned national oil companies. Some of these national companies are run by American allies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but others belong to hostile states such as Iran and Venezuela. National oil companies either exclude all foreign oil companies or only permit their participation on terms favourable to the host country.

Of the ten top oil companies in the world ranked by oil reserves under their control, only one is an independent oil company. That one is Lukoil of Russia, and many analysts would question its degree of independence from control by the Russian government. America's largest oil company, ExxonMobil, only comes in at number twelve in this ranking, having only a twentieth of the reserves held by the number one oil company, Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia.

Desperate to find new oil reserves, the world's independent oil companies are venturing into the far corners of the world. However, such exploration is increasingly expensive and as yet has failed to find any major new oil fields. How much more convenient it would be for independent oil companies if they could have largely unfettered access to an established oil-producing country where the power of the national oil company had been severely limited. Many people believe that this is the scenario that the Bush administration has been trying to achieve in Iraq to benefit US oil companies.

Iraqi oil production peaked at the end of the 1970s at more than three million barrels per day. Then the consequences of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 and the war over Kuwait in 1990-91 severely crippled Iraqi output for many years. On the eve of the US invasion in 2003 Iraqi oil production was around 1.5 million barrels per day. Today output is over two million barrels per day, but further expansion is held back by insurgent sabotage and antiquated infrastructure.

In an Iraq under American control, a friendly government could be installed and it would then distribute lucrative contracts to independent oil companies, mostly American, to exploit the country's oil wealth. Foreign oil companies which did not meet with American approval, such as those of China and Russia, would be kept out of Iraq. Although a nominal Iraqi national oil company would probably be preserved, real power and profits would belong to US oil companies.

If this is indeed the American scenario for the future development of Iraq's oil industry, it is only making slow progress. The poor security situation in the country does much to discourage oil company activity, although most of Iraq's oil reserves are in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south, areas with less violence than elsewhere. Even the legal basis for a pro-American oil regime in Iraq has not yet been laid.

On those rare occasions when the draft Iraqi oil law is even mentioned in Western media, attention is concentrated on the provisions to share oil royalties equitably among the different regions of Iraq. It is held that this will increase national reconciliation and return peace and prosperity to Iraq. Less attention is given to the provisions which provide unusually favourable terms to foreign oil companies operating in Iraq. Some critics say foreign companies may obtain control of two thirds of Iraq's oil fields. No doubt such companies will have to meet American as well as Iraqi approval before they can operate in the country.

Much to the fury of the Bush administration, Iraq's parliament preferred to take a holiday this summer rather than pass the new oil measure into law, It may become law in the next few months and foreign oil companies are already making plans to take advantage of its generous provisions in their favour. However, do most Iraqis really wish to be the only country in the Middle East that has largely handed over its oil industry to foreign private companies, reverting to a situation that last existed in the 1950s?

Hitting Iran: Surgical Strike or Regional War?

2007-09-07T09:37:00.000-06:00

Military action is a last resort, we are told. Intense diplomacy is the way forward. Sanctions will curb the Iranian nuclear threat. However, with politicians in both the United States and Iran taking up unyielding positions, the risk of military conflict between the two countries remains high. Undoubtedly the USA and its allies have contingency plans for a military attack on Iran. President Bush has made clear his resolve that the Iranians will not be allowed to build up a nuclear capacity that might allow them to develop nuclear weapons.

Supporters of a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities like to present that option as a modern version of Israel's air strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Then Israeli bombers carried out a surgical strike on Iraq's first nuclear reactor while it was still under construction. The facility was heavily damaged and Saddam Hussein's nuclear plans were put back by years. Embroiled in war with Iran, the Iraqi dictator could do little to retaliate against Israel, while the international community restricted itself to diplomatic condemnation of the raid.

All that was more than twenty-five years ago. Today any serious attack on Iran's nuclear sites would require a much bigger military operation than the Osirak raid. Widely scattered, well defended, and with many important facilities hidden underground, Iranian nuclear sites could only be destroyed by a concerted attack from overwhelming air power, including aircraft and missiles. There are a dozen confirmed or suspected nuclear facilities in Iran, of which those at Bushehr, Arak, Natanz and Isfahan are the most important. The Iranians have sworn to protect these facilities with all their forces. At the very least, American attackers would need to destroy Iranian air defences (radars, missiles and airfields) to ensure their own safety.

Iran has threatened to respond to any attack with missile strikes on Israel and on American bases in the Persian Gulf area. Thus attacks on Iranian air defences would need to be extended to include the destruction of Iranian long-range missile forces. Similarly, Iran has threatened to attack tankers in the Gulf and close its entrance at the Strait of Hormuz so as to deal a major blow to world oil trade. To pre-empt this possible mode of retaliation, American attackers would also have to neutralise Iranian naval forces, both the regular navy and the 'mosquito fleet' of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Thus it is obvious that any major American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could not just be a case of hitting a few sites in a surgical strike. A large scale onslaught on all Iran's air, naval and missile forces, plus command and control systems, would be necessary to remove Iranian defences and to prevent any serious military retaliation by that country.

The current Iranian government appears to think that it can use its co-religionists, the Shias of Iraq, as a threat to restrain the Americans from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. They believe Iraqi Shias will rise up and attack American and other coalition forces if Iran is attacked. This may be a dangerous miscalculation, as the Iraqi Shias have disappointed Iranian expectations in the past. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s the Shias of Iraq, the majority population, did not rise up in any numbers to support Iran. This reluctance might be attributed to the efficiency of Saddam Hussein's repressive apparatus, but it gives pause for thought.

Similarly, a country is not an automatic friend of Iran just because it has a Shia majority in its population. This is shown by the ambivalent relationship between Iran and Azerbaijan, with the latter country now largely seen as being in the Western camp. Indeed there has been talk of establishing US bases in Azerbaijan on Iran's north-western border.

Shias now have a degree of political dominance in Iraq that they have not enjoyed for more than 350 years. While some Shia militants might be ready to launch attacks in the aftermath of an American assault on Iran, many Iraqi Shias might well refuse to do so, fearing to lose all their poltical gains since 2003. If Iran actually sent troops into Iraq there is no guarantee they would be well received by the local population.

If those wishing to attack Iran are presenting a misleading picture of the nature of such a strike, many Iranians cling to possibly false hopes that fear of Shia reaction in Iraq will discourage the Americans from taking military action. The result of miscalculations on both sides may well be that what is billed as a surgical strike will instead produce a regional war which will do incalculable damage to the world economy.

Nevertheless a military showdown may be avoided. Twice before Iran has found itself on the brink of war with the United States. First in 1988 during the so-called 'tanker war' in the Gulf, and secondly after the Iranian-backed terrorist attack on American military personnel at Khobar in Saudi Arabia in 1996. On both occasions the Iranians turned away from conflict. Despite the strident rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad and his colleagues, we must hope that moderates in the Iranian government will also prevail on this occasion.

A Restored Caliphate: The Impossible Dream?

2007-08-24T09:17:00.000-06:00

Recently the International Caliphate Conference was held in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir ('Party of Liberation') and was said to be attended by 80-100,000 people. Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international Sunni pan-Islamic organisation whose aim is to unite all the Muslim countries of the world in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, ruled by Islamic law and headed by an elected ruler, the caliph. Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 and today has an estimated one million members worldwide.

The caliph is traditionally the leader of the worldwide Islamic community and the title (which means 'successor') goes back to the period after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. The first four caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) believed themselves to be both the spiritual and political leaders of the Islamic community which had chosen them. However, in 661 the Umayyad family seized control of the Islamic state and made the office of caliph hereditary in the ruling dynasty.

In 750 the Abbasid family ousted the Umayyads and became the new line of caliphs. The Abbasid caliphate would last for centuries, but by the tenth century the unity of Islam had been shattered, new Muslim states had been created, and even rival caliphates had been set up. In North Africa the Fatimids set up a Shiite caliphate in opposition to the Sunni Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad and it lasted from 909 to 1171. One branch of the Umayyad family had fled to Spain when the Abbasids seized the caliphate. In 929 their descendants established their own caliphate in Cordoba and it endured until 1031.

In any case, during the tenth century the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad lost most of his political power and was largely preserved as a religious figurehead by competing court factions. Another rival caliphate was set up by the Almohad dynasty in North Africa and Spain, lasting from 1145 to 1269, but it received little recognition outside those areas.

The Abbasid caliphate ended in 1258 when Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols, but a few survivors from the Abbasid family escaped to Cairo in Egypt. There the Mamluk sultans allowed them to establish a pale imitation of the old caliphate, but always under Mamluk control. This puppet caliphate was largely ignored by other Muslim states. Nevertheless Mamluk control of the three holiest Muslim cities - Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem - did much to support their claims to leadership in the Muslim world.

The conquest of the Mamluk empire by the Ottoman Turkish sultan Selim I in 1517 allowed the Ottomans to claim the title of caliph. However, it was not a title they made much use of before the late nineteenth century. Then, as Ottoman power began to wane, the sultan came to see that his position as titular leader of the world's Muslims might have political benefits.

Sultan Abdul Hamid II (reigned 1876-1909) used his position as caliph to call upon Muslims in the Russian empire to revolt during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. Sultan Mehmed V (reigned 1909-1918) similarly called upon the Muslim inhabitants of the Russian, French and British empires to rise up against their Christian rulers during the early months of the First World War. In neither case did the caliph's call receive much of a response, but the Russian,French and British governments were certainly worried that there might be revolts among their Muslim subjects. By exploiting his position as caliph the Ottoman sultan could at least cause alarm among his enemies.

For this reason there was considerable fear among the world's Muslims that after 1918 the victorious allied powers would seek to strip the Ottoman sultan of his position as caliph. The concern was particularly strong in British India where the Khilafat movement arose and posed the biggest Muslim threat to British rule since the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

However, it was not to be the allies who ended the caliphate but the Turks. They deposed the Ottoman sultan in 1922 and established a Turkish republic. Its leader, Kemal Ataturk, was determined to create a secular Turkish state and in 1924 he abolished the caliphate. For over a thousand years there had always been at least a nominal leader of the world's Muslims. Now that position was gone and consternation spread throughout the Islamic world. However, attempts to save the caliphate were to prove unsuccessful.

Shortly after the Turkish abolition decree, Hussein bin Ali, ruler of the Hejaz, which contained the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, proclaimed himself caliph, but his claim went unrecognised by the wider Muslim world. Soon afterwards the Hejaz was conquered by Abdul Aziz ibn Saud from central Arabia. The Saudi ruler made it clear that he would not claim the caliphate, while a Muslim conference held in Cairo in 1926 to discuss its revival got nowhere. Later some figures in the Muslim world thought of claiming the title of caliph, the most unlikely being the worldly King Farouk of Egypt, but as a new world order took shape after the Second World War, it seemed that the caliphate had been consigned to history.

Muslim organisations aiming to restore the caliphate, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, have grown in strength in recent decades, but their chances of success do not seem to have increased. When the Ottoman empire was at its zenith, it was the military power of the sultan that made him the leader of the Muslim world rather than his title of caliph. When Ottoman power was declining, the sultan's attempts to use his position as caliph as a political weapon could not hide the fact that his power was disappearing and few other Muslims wanted to die for his cause. Caliph is an empty title without real power to back it up.

A number of Islamist groups, including Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, have declared an interest in restoring the worldwide caliphate, but none has the power to achieve that aim. Although Hizb ut-Tahrir has been accused of terrorist links and is banned in some countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, its leaders claim to want a restoration of the caliphate by peaceful means. However, the Islamic world is divided into more than fifty countries and it seems unlikely that all those governments would ever surrender their powers to some Islamic super-state. For the foreseeable future it seems that the restoration of the caliphate must remain a dream.

Turkish Fears and Kurdish Dreams: The Making of a New Iraq Crisis?

2007-08-12T09:51:00.000-06:00

In 1991 the Ukraine became an independent country and Ukrainians ceased to be the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of their own. That unhappy distinction then passed to the Kurds, some 25-30 million people, who are currently spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

Yet 1991 was not a year devoid of hope for the Kurds. After their failed uprising against Saddam Hussein, the Kurds of Iraq were given a degree of protection by the USA and Britain. This allowed Iraqi Kurdistan to achieve a semi-independent status. After the Kurdish assistance to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was recognised as a legitimate authority within the country by the 2005 Iraqi constitution.

Kurds have achieved a semi-autonomous status within Iraq, so why has such success brought almost 150,000 Turkish troops to the borders of Iraq with the apparent intention of invading Iraqi Kurdistan?

The majority of the world's Kurds live in south-east Turkey and make up around twenty per cent of that country's population. Since the republic of Turkey was established in 1923, its rulers have always acted ruthlessly to suppress any separatist tendencies among Turkish Kurds. Apart from participation in the Korean War (1950-53) and invading Cyprus in 1974, the combat experience of the Turkish army since 1923 has largely consisted of crushing Kurdish uprisings.

The most recent outbreak began in 1984 and was organised by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). During the 1990s Turkish troops carried out a number of incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan aimed at destroying PKK bases. However, it was only after the capture of the organisation's leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in 1999 that PKK activities in Turkey began to decline.

In recent years a revived PKK has once again become active in south-east Turkey. The Turkish army is now apparently preparing to return to its 1990s strategy of launching incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack PKK bases. However, there is now talk of Turkey establishing a buffer zone on Iraqi soil to keep PKK forces away from the Kurdish areas of Turkey. Given the long, bloody and unhappy history of Israel's anti-terrorist buffer zone in southern Lebanon from 1978 to 2000, this does not seem a good idea.

However, Turkish nationalists are increasingly alarmed by the growing independence of the KRG in Iraq and the example it sets for the Kurds of Turkey. If the promised referendum in Kirkuk before the end of 2007 brings that city and its neighbouring oil fields into the area under KRG control, Iraqi Kurdistan will have great wealth as well as semi-independence. Some Turkish generals have already made it clear that if the KRG's military forces resist their operations against the PKK, they will be hapy to crush those forces as well.

Although most Iraqi Kurds are ready to put aside dreams of complete independence for the moment, Turkish fears of such dreams may well compel them to undertake an unwise military adventure in Iraq that can only further destabilise the region, seriously damage Turkish relations with the USA, and probably extinguish Turkish hopes of EU membership.

The re-election of the Justice and Development (AK) party government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey's July general election may have done something to reduce the likelihood of a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. The AK party has won support in the Kurdish areas of south-east Tukey; it seems ready to co-operate with the Kurdish deputies in the new parliament; and it has opened negotiations with the Baghdad government in hopes of finding a diplomatic solution to the problem of PKK bases in Iraq.

Nevertheless the large Turkish army assembled on Iraq's northern border cannot be maintained there indefinitely. If there is no sign of a real settlement that will end PKK attacks from Iraq, the Turkish generals may force the AK government to approve an attack before the onset of winter ends the prospect of large-scale military operations in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan this year.

Christian-Muslim Conflict: Distant Wars and Local Echoes

2007-08-11T08:16:00.000-06:00

[This piece was originally to be the prologue of my book 'Faith and Sword: A Short History of Christian-Muslim Conflict' (London, 2006), but was deleted before publication.]

This short book was originally intended to be an overview of the influence of sea power on Christian-Muslim conflict over the centuries. However, while still seeking to demonstrate the often forgotten importance of maritime activities and strategy in Christian-Muslim warfare, the story has been widened to include land warfare and, in more recent times, the impact of air power.

Traditionally the great Muslim empires of the last millenium have been seen primarily as land powers, yet in many areas Christian-Muslim conflict resolved itself into a battle for the control of seas. Throughout all the centuries since the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 one area of constant Christian-Muslim confrontation has been the Mediterranean Sea. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese brought the oceanic naval power of Christian Europe to the Indian Ocean for the first time, and Christian-Muslim warfare was extended to that ocean and its offshoots, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Between the 1760s and the 1870s control of the Black Sea was the prize at stake in the wars between the growing Orthodox Christian empire of Russia and the declining Muslim empire of the Ottoman Turks.

Nevertheless one cannot deny that for centuries it was the military power of the Muslims on land which seemed to pose the greatest threat to the survival of Christian Europe. Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries the Christians fought to expel the Muslim invaders from Spain and Portugal. Yet even before this threat had been finally removed from south-west Europe, a new Muslim military threat, the Ottoman Turks, was advancing across south-east Europe. That Muslim presence in Europe would not be removed until the first decades of the twentieth century.

Yet during the middle ages the Christians of Europe had delivered a counter-attack which struck at the heartlands of Islam. It was growing Christian maritime power in the Mediterranean that was one of the factors which allowed the crusaders to reach the Holy Land at the end of the eleventh century and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. The success of the First Crusade led to the creation of Christian states in Palestine and Syria which survived for almost two centuries before finally being destroyed by the Muslims. Although this Christian success was comparatively short-lived, memories of it lived on in European consciousness.

Indeed the struggle against Islam was one of the fundamental factors that shaped the Europe which emerged from the middle ages into the modern world. It was an influence that spread widely across Christendom, touching places far removed from the main areas of direct Christian-Muslim warfare. The final draft of this book was completed during a stay in Herefordshire, a largely agricultural county of England on the border with Wales. Such an area might seem remote from the battlefields where cross and crescent clashed, but even here links with that struggle can still be found.

North of the small town of Leominster is Croft Castle, which was for generations the home of the Crofts, a family who came originally from Normandy in France. According to family tradition an ancestor, Jasper de Croft, went on the First Crusade and was knighted by one of its leaders, Godfrey of Bouillon, after the crusaders took the city of Jerusalem from the Muslims in 1099.

South of Leominster, tucked away in a wooded valley, is Dinmore Manor. This estate was once a possession, known as a Commandery, of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem. This religious military order, led by warrior monks, was tasked with the defence of the lands in Palestine and Syria which had been won for the Christians by the First Crusade. Landed estates in western Europe, such as Dinmore Manor, provided the money and men to support this distant struggle against the Muslims. Eventually the knights were driven out of the Holy Land, but they continued their war against Islam at sea, basing their galley fleet at the island of Rhodes. One of the last Commanders of Dinmore, Sir John Buck, was killed fighting the Ottoman Turks when they besieged Rhodes in 1522.

In Leominster itself, the town's war memorial includes the names of men of the Herefordshire Regiment who died in Palestine during the First World War while driving the Turks out of the Holy Land. Before Christmas 1917 the British had captured Jerusalem, becoming the first Christian conquerors of that holy city since the soldiers of the First Crusade in 1099. That the Christian-Muslim struggle for Jerusalem should leave such strong traces in a part of England so distant from the Holy Land is a measure of the long and intense nature of that conflict. Jerusalem was the greatest prize, and at Jerusalem this story can begin.

Will the Iraqi Kurds Sacrifice the PKK?

2007-08-08T09:36:00.000-06:00

A Turkish army stands on the northern border of Iraq. It is ready to invade Iraqi Kurdistan and destroy the bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose guerrillas have carried out numerous attacks in south-east Turkey. The PKK and the Iraqi Kurds have promised to resist any Turkish invasion.

The division between Turks and Kurds seems simple, but as in so many disputes in the Middle East, the reality is more complicated. The Turks invaded Iraqi Kurdistan in pursuit of the PKK on a number of occasions during the 1990s. The two principal incursions were in 1992 and 1997. On both occasions Iraqi Kurdish forces assisted the Turkish army in its attacks on the PKK.

It seems entirely possible that a new Turkish attack on PKK bases may once again enjoy local Kurdish support, or the Iraqi Kurds may suppress the PKK themselves, thus removing the need for any Turkish invasion. Both the United States and the government of Iraq undoubtedly hope the latter possibility will become reality.

After their failed uprising against Saddam Hussein in March 1991, Iraq's Kurds eventually received Anglo-American protection which allowed them to establish a safe area in the north of the country. In 1992 the main Kurdish nationalist parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, set up the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The new semi-independent Kurdish state was heavily dependent for its economic survival on trade routes through Turkey. As PKK attacks in Turkey increased during 1992, Ankara forced the KRG to impose restrictions on PKK activities. In retaliation the PKK declared a blockade of Iraqi Kurdistan in July and halted truck traffic by violent intimidation.

This action encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to join in Turkish plans to attack PKK bases in Iraq. In October and November 1992 the Turkish army crossed the border and KRG forces assisted them in their operations against the PKK. Soon most of the 5,000 PKK fighters had been killed, had fled to Iran, or had surrendered to the KRG, which refused to hand them over to the Turks.

The KRG's aid to the Turks angered many Kurdish nationalists, but the issue was soon forgotten as the KDP and the PUK fell out and by 1994 the two parties were at war. The United States tried to halt this Kurdish civil war, but other nations preferred to take sides, Turkey supporting the KDP and Iran the PUK. In 1996 the KDP even called in the help of Saddam Hussein's forces to drive the PUK back to the Iranian border.

With the Iraqi Kurds so bitterly divided, it seemed unsurprising that when Turkey launched another incursion into Iraq in May 1997 the KDP should assist Turkish troops against the PKK. To the KDP, the PKK were not brother Kurds but political rivals. Similarly, later in 1997 when the PUK launched an offensive against the KDP, Turkish air attacks helped to defeat it.

In the new Iraq created since 2003, the Kurds have sought to project an image of unity, with past disputes apparently forgotten. Jalal Talabani is now president of Iraq, while Massoud Barzani is president of the KRG. Feelings of Kurdish solidarity might seem to dictate that they should support the PKK against Turkey, but as already noted, Iraqi Kurds have been ready to assist the Turks against the PKK before. Also Iraqi Kurdistan is still very dependent on Turkey for its economic prosperity.

Iraqi Kurds know that in any serious military clash between them and the Turks the USA will be forced to back Turkey, the most important American ally in the Middle East after Israel. Iraqi Kurdistan has become the nearest thing to an independent state that the Kurdish nation has achieved in its modern history. It seems possible that rather than risk losing this state the Iraqi Kurds will sacrifice the PKK, preferably by suppressing its bases themselves to avoid another Turkish invasion of their territory.

Will War Spread Across the Horn of Africa?

2007-08-04T13:08:00.000-06:00

After the tragedy of 9/11 new American bases for the 'war on terror' were set up around the Middle East. One of the more surprising sites was an old French Foreign Legion barracks in the small republic of Djibouti. This became the home of Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, a unit of US Central Command. (In 2007-8 it will be transferred to the new US Africa Command.)

In fact this was an important strategic position. The United States possessed bases in the Persian Gulf, but it had previously had none in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden area. This region possesses a maritime choke point similar to the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. This is Bab al Mandeb, the strait lying between Yemen to the north and Djibouti to the south, a maritime area where terrorist attacks could be made on shipping heading to and from the Suez Canal. The American warship USS Cole had already been attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists in Aden harbour in 2000, and a French tanker was also struck some time later off the coast of Yemen.

However, the terrorist danger was not just at sea. The area of responsibility of the US task force in Djibouti included all the countries of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya on its southern border. The US embassy in Kenya's capital Nairobi was one of the two American diplomatic missions in East Afica attacked by al-Qaeda in 1998.

The principal area of instability in the Horn of Africa is Somalia, a country which has not had a functioning central government since 1991. The common Western view of Somalia sees it as the lawless land of 'Black Hawk Down', the American military defeat in its capital Mogadishu in 1993. Yet the fact is that much of Somalia has enjoyed comparative peace since the central government collapsed sixteen years ago.

The north of the country is controlled by two autonomous states. In the actual Horn of Africa is Puntland, which declared autonomy in 1998, but is ready to rejoin a federal Somalia at some future date. In the north-west is Somaliland (covering the territory of the old colony of British Somaliland), which declared its independence in 1991. Although not recognised by any other country, Somaliland cherishes its independence and may be reluctant to join a reconstituted Somalia.

Somaliland and Puntland have been largely peaceful in recent years, although ports in the latter state have been used as bases for pirates. It is southern Somalia, especially in and around the capital Mogadishu, that has seen the most violence since 1991, with warfare between local clans who often receive arms and other support from foreign countries.

The United Nations approved the creation of a Somali Transitional Government (STG), initially outside the country, with the aim of restoring peace and unity to Somalia as soon as possible. By 2006 the STG had finally established itself in Somalia, holding a small area centred on the town of Baidoa near the border with Ethiopia.

Meanwhile the warring clans of southern Somalia had finally been subdued by the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). This Islamist body brought peace and order to Mogadishu and other areas for the first time in years. However, the UIC's similarity to the Taliban movement which took over Afghanistan in the 1990s alarmed the United States, especially as there were also claims that the UIC had links with al-Qaeda. Some of the 1998 embassy bombers were said to be hiding in southern Somalia.

When the UIC seemed about to move against the STG in Baidoa, the United States encouraged Ethiopia, its principal ally in the region, to intervene in Somalia, despite the long history of enmity between Somalis and Ethiopians. In December 2006 Ethiopian forces swept across southern Somalia, defeating the UIC and installing the STG in Mogadishu. The United States provided direct assistance by mounting air attacks, probably co-ordinated from Djibouti, on supposed al-Qaeda bases in southern Somalia.

After their victory the Ethiopians claimed they were anxious to withdraw from Somalia and hand over security to STG forces and a peace-keeping force from the African Union. Only a few troops for the latter force have arrived in Mogadishu and Ethiopian forces continue to battle Islamist and clan forces in the capital. Recent attempts to hold a national reconciliation conference in Mogadishu have been hindered by the continued fighting. Now the United Nations has joined the STG and the Ethiopians in blaming such trouble on arms being supplied to the rebels by Eritrea.

Similar allegations have been made against Eritrea in relation to the arming of Somali rebels in the Ogaden region of south-east Ethiopia. This has long been an area bitterly disputed between Somalia and Ethiopia. In 1977 Somalia invaded and 'liberated' the Ogaden, but in the following year the Ethiopians drove out the invaders and took back the province.

Despite this Ethiopian success, the majority of the Ogaden's population are ethnic Somalis and they continue to resent being ruled by the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa. The bloody raid by Ogaden Somali rebels on a Chinese oil company camp at Abole in April 2007 gave notice that the rebels continue to be an active and dangerous force. One reason the Ethiopians invaded Somalia was because they feared that the UIC would stir up the Ogaden Somalis, but this may be happening anyway.

The upsurge of fighting in the Ogaden may well be another stage in the spreading of conflict across the Horn of Africa which commentators have long feared. First Somalia, now the Ogaden. Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of being active behind the scenes in both places. How long before the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which raged between 1998 and 2000, breaks out again? If Ethiopia has to fight on three fronts, how long will it be before that country calls for more American aid than can be provided by the task force in Djibouti?

Divided Islam: An Old Conflict Revived?

2007-07-30T13:17:00.000-06:00

Westerners believed that the centuries-old struggle between Christianity and Islam ended with their victory at the end of the First World War. Events since the tragedy of 9/11 have now revived in a new form this ancient conflict which was thought to have been settled. In a somewhat similar fashion, Sunni Muslims, the majority in the Muslim world, long believed that the struggle between them and the Shia minority in Islam had been decided in their favour during the first half of the seventeenth century. However, since 1979, and even more so since 2001, Muslims have had to face the fact that the old clash between Sunnis and Shias may be reviving in a new and threatening fashion.

When the Safavid dynasty began to impose Shia Islam on the inhabitants of Iran at the start of the sixteenth century, they were creating the most powerful Shia state since the collapse of the Fatimid empire three hundred years earlier. The Ottoman Turkish sultans, believing themselves to be the leaders of orthodox Islam, decided to crush their new heretic neighbours, but it proved to be a long and difficult struggle.

The Ottoman-Safavid wars lasted from 1514 to 1639 and the area which is now Iraq was an important battleground, where the many local Shias preferred Iranian rule to that of the Sunni Ottoman sultans. Suleiman the Magnificent captured Baghdad from the Iranians in 1534, but the latter retook the city early in the seventeenth century. Sultan Murad IV recovered Baghdad in 1638 and forced the Safavid ruler to make peace in the following year. This treaty marked the end of the long Ottoman-Safavid wars and the Sunni Ottomans had finally gained the upper hand over their Shia opponents. The frontier between the two states would remain largely unchanged until the twentieth century.

To underline Sunni success, Iran, the only Shia state in the world, went into steady decline over the next two centuries. It was no longer a threat to its neighbours and it only narrowly avoided being destroyed by the Russian and British empires. Iran began to revive under the Pahlavi dynasty in the mid-twentieth century, but the Pahlavi rulers were dedicated Westernizers with little interest in religion. Only after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran did Shia religious fundamentalism once again appear a threat to its neighbours. The Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988 did much to neutralize this threat. Most Sunni Muslims, especially in Arab countries, supported Saddam Hussein in his struggle against Shia Iran.

By 2001 the threat from Shia Iran seemed to have been contained, and the country faced bitter enemies on two sides: Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. As a consequence of 9/11, and at no cost to the Iranians, the United States removed both these threats over the next few years. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, fought Israel to a stalemate in the summer war of 2006, further enhancing the status of Shias in the Islamic world. These events, along with its growing nuclear ambitions, have allowed Shia Iran to pose as a regional superpower in the Middle East, a status it last enjoyed in the early seventeenth century.

Now the talk is of a Shia revival threatening not just the West but all of Sunni Islam. A 'Shia crescent' is said to be spreading across the Middle East, alarming all Sunni Arab countries. How will they respond to this revival of the Sunni/Shia conflict which Ottoman victory seemed to have ended nearly four centuries ago?

Muslim states were ready to join the American-led coalition against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91. Will Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia be ready to join the United States and its allies in a new struggle against Shia Iran? The recent American decision to make huge arms sales to the Arab Gulf states to ensure their security in face of the supposed Iranian threat might seem to indicate a deepening of the Sunni/Shia split.

The dangers inherent in that split have even caused Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second in command, to stress the need for unity among Muslims. Al-Qaeda's leaders were previously well known for their hostility to Shias, but now apparently they have seen the error of their ways.

The split between Protestants and Catholics in the sixteenth century Reformation destroyed the unity of Christendom. Will a further deepening of the antipathy between Sunnis and Shias create a fatal division within the Islamic world? Since the 1960s Muslims have made great efforts to build pan-Islamic international bodies, such as the Organizaton of the Islamic Conference. Will they now allow themselves to be divided once more? They would do well to rememer that the steady decline of Islamic power in the world from 1700 onwards was not just due to Western technological superiority, but also to chronic divisions within the Islamic world.

A Tale of Three Revolts

2007-07-30T08:04:00.000-06:00

Historical comparisons can both inform and mislead. On one level the present insurgency in Iraq against predominantly American and British forces has similarities with the 1920 Iraq revolt against the British and the 1899-1902 Philippines insurgency against the United States.

In 1898 the Americans landed in the Philippines and claimed to be liberating the inhabitants from oppressive Spanish rule. In 1917-18 the British freed Iraq from Ottoman Turkish rule and promised independence to the Arabs. In 2003 the Anglo-American forces overthrew Saddam Hussein and promised freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. In all three cases significant sections of the liberated populations soon had reason to question the motives of their liberators and to rise in revolt against them.

Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo believed they had been promised independence by the United States and fought the Americans for three years in an attempt to win it. Unfortunately the rebels initially fought conventional battles with the American army in which they were defeated with heavy losses. Turning to guerrilla warfare, Aguinaldo's men had more success, but they were eventually worn down by a twin-track American strategy, combining military operations with medical and social improvement programmes to win support among the mass of the population. Disclaiming the label of imperialists, the Americans claimed to be acting as trustees in the Philippines, merely educating the Filipinos for eventual independence. This was achieved after the Second World War, but the United States retained major military bases and significant political influence in the Philippines until the early 1990s.

In Iraq after the First World War discontent among the urban political elites with British failure to honour wartime promises of independence was upstaged by rural tribal revolts in the summer of 1920. The largely Shiite rebels inflicted some early reverses on the British, but reinforements soon poured in from India and elsewhere. Within three months General Haldane's army of over 100,000 British and Indian troops had broken the back of the revolt. Nevertheless the outbreak forced the British to achieve an early political settlement with the largely Sunni Iraqi elites, installing a national government under King Feisal. Officially Iraq was not a British colony, but a mandated territory the British ruled under the authority of the League of Nations and it was to move rapidly to independence. This was granted in 1932, but the British retained important military bases in Iraq and much political influence in the country. During the Second World War Britain invaded Iraq to remove a pro-Axis government in 1941, and British influence in the country did not finally end until the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958.

So will these historical Filipino and Iraqi scenarios be repeated in Iraq? An initial insurgency is defeated; a local government is put together and eventually granted independence; and the intervening power retains military bases and political influence in the country that may last for decades. Such developments do not seem impossible in current Iraqi conditions, but one must not endow historical comparisons with an air of inevitability. The present insurgency in Iraq has its own unique features which may lead to a different outcome.

Both the ealier revolts took place in a time when direct military interventions by major powers in the affairs of smaller states were still widely considered acceptable. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was crticised by countries large and small around the globe, leaving the question of its legitimacy still open to intense debate. The earlier Filipino and Iraqi rebels had little or no support from outside their own countries, nor did their struggles attract much attention in the international media of their period. Iraqi insurgents today receive much aid from abroad and their activities attract daily attention in media around the world.

The novel features of the new insurgency may require a more sophisticated strategy to defeat them, but valuable lessons in quelling rebellions can still be gleaned from the earlier revolts. The American army of the early twentieth century combined anti-guerrilla operations with successful efforts to improve living conditions among the Filipino population. More than four years after the invasion of Iraq, much of its population still endures a lower standard of living than under Saddam Hussein, while millions have simply fled the country. Establishing security and improving the lot of the population should go hand in hand.

The British suppressed the 1920 Iraq revolt comparatively quickly with a massive use of force, but they knew that an immediate political settlement was needed to prevent further outbreaks. The present 'surge' operations are aimed at stabilising the security situation so that the Iraqi government can win over the Sunni minority with political concessions. In this way the insurgency may be ended. Unfortunately, whatever the military successes of the reinforced US forces, the present Shiite government appears unwilling to make the concessions needed to bring the Sunnis into the Iraqi political process.

History can show us parallels to current events, but it cannot predict future outcomes. If and when the current insurgency in Iraq is defeated, future political developments in that country may well mirror those which followed the defeat of the Filipino rebels and the 1920 Iraqi insurgents, but such developments cannot be taken for granted.

Wars: Long and Longer

2007-07-26T10:42:00.000-06:00

Nearly eighteen months have now passed since the Bush administration sought to re-brand its 'global war on terror' as 'the long war'. In February 2006 the US Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review Report included a section on 'Fighting The Long War'. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, sought to present the war on terrorism as 'a generational conflict akin to the Cold War', which lasted for forty-six years (1945-1991).

Mr. Rumsfeld was sacrificed later in 2006 by President Bush as the scapegoat for American failure to make significant progress in the Iraq war, but the wider war against terrorism goes on and the US authorities continue to present it as a struggle that will last for decades.

The international media have never really taken to the new brand name, still preferring 'war on terror' to 'the long war'. In any case, in the context of struggles between the Christian West and the Islamic world, the latter title is already taken. The conflict between the Austrian Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turkish sultan between 1593 and 1606 in the Croatian and Hungarian borderlands is known to historians as the Long War. Yet this largely indecisive thirteen year struggle scarcely deserves such a title when compared with other Christian-Muslim conflicts over the centuries.

Undoubtedly the longest such conflict was the 800 year struggle between the Byzantine Empire and its Muslim ebemies. It began with the Arab invasions in the seventh century and ended in 1453 when the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II stormed Constantinople and killed the last Byzantine emperor. Only a little shorter in duration was the 'Reconquista', the Christian struggle to liberate Spain and Portugal from their Muslim conquerors. Beginning in the rugged mountains of north-western Spain around 720, the conflict did not end until Ferdinand and Isabella, the 'Catholic Monarchs', accepted the surrender of the Muslims of Granada in 1492.

The most famous Christian-Muslim conflict, the Crusades, and the related struggles of the Christian states set up in the Holy Land, barely encompassed two centuiries, ending with the fall of Acre in 1291. In more recent times, the wars between the rising Orthodox Christian empire of Russia and the declining Muslim empire of the Ottoman Turks lasted from the mid-seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. The Russians appeared to triumph, but the empires of both the tsar and the sultan were brought down by their participation in the First World War.

It might be objected that these centuries-long struggles were not continuous, with long periods of truce or declared peace separating outbreaks of hostilities, but the same could be said of the most famous numerically designated wars. The medieval Hundred Years War between England and France was not a continuous struggle, nor was the Eighty Years War in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when the Dutch successfully struggled to break free from Spanish imperial rule. Similarly the Thirty Years War, the bloody climax of Catholic-Protestant enmity in Europe, is divided into distinct phases, with some periods of peace.

To designate a war that has only been in progress since September 2001 as 'long' seems a little presumptuous when judged against earlier conflicts. In any case most wars receive their enduring historical names long after the event. The only thing that is certain about the presnt conflict is that its end is still not in sight.

US Bases in Iraq: Bastions of Strength or Hostages to Fortune?

2007-07-25T14:59:00.000-06:00

As the US-led 'surge' operations reach full strength in Iraq, some American military planners continue to look for a successful outcome, whatever the doubts of politicians and public opinion at home.

Their scenario is that a US-approved Iraqi government holds the country together; violence is reduced to a low level; and Iraqi forces take over internal security duties so that US forces can withdraw to their own bases within the country. Iraq will become the new South Korea. A US garrison will safeguard the country from outside attack, while local resentment at its continued presence is kept to a minimum.

The current base strategy seems likely to involve a minimum of 30-40,000 US military personnel remaining in Iraq indefinitely. They would be located in four or five major bases, with Balad, al-Asad, Tallil and Taji the most likely sites, plus a further base in the north of the country.

Iraqi Kurdistan might seem the ideal place for the northern base, given that it is the only part of Iraq in which Americans enjoy widespread popular support. However, putting a US base there might be seen as implying support for the semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government, which would anger neighbouring countries such as Turkey.

The overall US headquarters in Iraq would most likely be established in the vast new American embassy in the Green Zone of Baghdad. Other US headquarters in the region, such as the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and CENTCOM in Qatar, might also be moved to Baghdad.

From such a network of bases US forces could support Iraqi internal security operations; defend the country from external attack, e.g. by Iran; and launch power projection missions to deal with other trouble spots in the wider Middle East region.

Such is the strategy, but it is nothing new. Britain, the last imperial power in the area, tried a similar base strategy in both Iraq and Egypt, but in neither case could it be considered a success.

In 1932 Britain granted independence to Iraq, but maintained a military presence in the country at the Royal Air Force bases of Habbaniyah and Shaibah. Aircraft from there continued to assist Iraqi forces in internal security operations and stood ready for deployment to other parts of the Middle East.

However, when a major military crisis finally arose, the RAF bases in Iraq turned into liabilities rather than assets. In 1941 the pro-fascist Rashid Ali government came to power in Iraq, besieged Habbaniyah, and threatened Shaibah. The bases were only saved when British forces from India and Transjordan invaded Iraq and occupied the country.

Similarly, by the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty, Britain agreed to withdraw its forces in Egypt back to a military base along the Suez Canal. The Second World War delayed this redeployment until 1946, but the new Suez Canal Zone was to prove no bastion of strength for the British.

With the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Suez Canal Zone ceased to be of such vital importance for British imperial communications. Instead the Suez Canal Zone became the headquarters for all British forces in the Middle East. With airfields, barracks, workshops, and storehouses, it was a major military base, but its vulnerability was soon revealed.

After its humiliating defeat by Israel in 1948-9, the Egyptian government sought to strengthen its Arab nationalist credentials by tacitly supporting guerrilla attacks on British forces in the Suez Canal Zone. Britain was forced to send thousands of extra troops to defend the base, but clashes continued at the start of the 1950s.

King Farouk's government denounced the 1936 treaty in 1951, but the British refused to give up their base, despite the high cost of holding on to it. Egyptian army officers, led by Colonel Nasser, seized power in Cairo in 1952, and attacks on the British base declined as negotiations took place. Finally the British reached agreement with Nasser in 1954 to give up their base. The last British troops left the Suez Canal Zone in the summer of 1956, only to return for a short period later in the year during the ill-starred Angl0-French-Israeli attack on Egypt.

The British had hoped their 'withdraw to bases' strategy would allow them to keep a presence in the Middle East and be ready for military intervention in the region. In fact such bases only turned out to be expensive burdens that did little to enhance British power in the area and provoked continued local hostility.

It seems unlikely that a similar base strategy by the Americans in Iraq would lead to a happier outcome. US bases in Iraq would not be strong points from which to project power into the wider Middle East region, but would instead become hostages to fortune, potentially beleagured outposts in still hostile territory.