Muslims Must Lead the Fight Against Islamist Terror

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?

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

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

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?

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?

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?

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.