The recent killings of al-Qaida’s top commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan by US airstrikes raise the common question of how such developments are going to affect the organization. Whereas these events highlight another loss for al-Qaida, recent history has shown that the organization recovers quickly and, in some cases, capitalizes on the deaths of its commanders.

The first recent hit was in Iraq. Abu Umar al-Baghdadi (Hamid al-Zawi), the Emir of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), was killed on 18 April in al-Tharthar desert area, north of Baghdad. He was killed with Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Yusuf al-Dardiri, otherwise known as Abd al-Mun‘im al-Badawi), his Minister of War. An Egyptian, who was a former mid-rank in al-Jihad Organization of Egypt, al-Masri succeeded the deputy of Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, in taking the command of al-Qaida on 15 June 2006. In October of that year, al-Baghdadi’s Shura Council of al-Mujahidin and al-Masri’s al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) merged together, along with more than ten other smaller organization and various factions to form the ISI.

However, the formation of the ISI was a beginning of a decline of al-Qaida’s influence. The indiscriminately violent behaviour of AQI and its successor, the ISI, along with the expansion of the lists of enemies and targets to include less cooperative Arab-Sunni tribesmen, in addition to the coalition forces, the Iraqi military and security bureaucracies, Iran, and virtually all non-Sunnis; led to the revolt of Arab-Sunni tribesmen in early 2007. Al-Anbar province started the sahwat (awakening) phenomenon that not only pointed the guns at the AQI instead of the coalition forces, but also disseminated anti-Iranian propaganda and ideological materials as opposed to anti-American. The lack of a charismatic leader after al-Zarqawi and the stricter security policies of Syria and Saudi Arabia to stop the flow of funds and volunteers also helped undermine the AQI. Since no insurgency can survive without popular support, especially when the geography is not insurgent-friendly and the ideology and its manifestations are far from attractive to the locals, there was a sharp decline in the operational capacity of AQI/ISI after 2007.

Despite that, the ISI was swift in replacing its top commanders. Its new communiqué declared that “two were gone and three came.” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurashi became the new emir, Abu Abdullah al-Qurashi became his deputy and first minster, and al-Nasr Lidin Allah Abu Sulayman became the Minister of War, replacing the late al-Masri. All of these aliases have historical and religious relevance. Quraysh is the tribe of Prophet Muhammad and linking the ISI new leaders directly to the Prophet makes them ashraf or ‘noblemen’ in the Islamic culture. Al-Nasr Li Din Allah (The Supporter of the Religion of God) was the title of Saladin, the famous Muslim commander who fought against the Crusaders in the Levant in the 12th century. AQI/ISI is using more symbolism to substitute for the lack of charismatic leadership.

As for the new commanders, there is little known about them. Abu Bakr was a commander of one of small organizations that merged under the ISI. His minister of war is a Moroccan with close contacts to al-Qaida Central, like his predecessor. In his very first statement, al-Nasr followed the rhetoric of al-Zarqawi calling for an escalation against Shiite targets and Iraqi military and security forces.

In Afghanistan, Sheikh Said (Mustafa Abu al-Yazid), another former mid-rank in al-Jihad Organization of Egypt who became a leading figure in al-Qaida and, in May 2007, its top commander in Afghanistan, was also killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on 21 May. But, as opposed to its sister in Iraq, al-Qaida in Afghanistan (AQA) did not lack the charismatic leadership or the symbolism. To avoid the mistakes of Iraq, Sheikh Said declared more than once that al-Qaida is fighting under the banner of the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan (the Taliban). In his interview with al-Jazeera in June 2009, he urged all other armed groups, including the Islamic Party (partly led by Gulbddin Hekmatyar), to join the Taliban. In other words, Sheikh Said was ‘embedding’ al-Qaida in its local contexts to guarantee the lifeline of local insurgent support. This is not far from the pattern in Yemen, where al-Qaida in the Peninsula is trying to avoid the mistakes of Iraq and therefore attentive to the interests of influential tribal leaders as well as the Southern Movement.

The deaths of Sheikh Said, Abu Ayyub and Abu Umar are important development in the war against al-Qaida. But the key lifeline to al-Qaida in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen is its tribal and organizational alliances. Those alliances were undermined quite significantly in the Iraqi case, with the awakening councils, the inhospitable Arab-Sunni tribal areas, and the clashes with other armed groups most notably the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Such developments have no parallels yet in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Decapitating the organizational leaders of al-Qaida, despite its significance, is not enough to end the lifeline for the rest of its transnational bodies. The other effect is that it may enhance the “demand side” to support or join al-Qaida. In his memoirs, Sayyid Qutb mentions that out of the 98 Muslim Brothers member imprisoned with him, 35 strongly supported his newly developed radical ideology, 23 strongly opposed, and 50 were hesitant. After his execution, the number of supporters and sympathizers was not only in the hundreds of thousands, but the commitments and the manifestations, took another level.  

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‘How Terrorism Ends’ was the title of the final panel discussion of the conference, and despite a packed two day schedule, the speakers remained on top form.  Moderated again by Dr. Peter Neumann, the panelists were: Professor Audrey Kurth Cronin, author of How Terrorism Ends; Shiraz Maher, Senior Research Fellow, ICSR and former seniot member of the British wing of Hizb ut-Tahrir; Hekmat Karzai, Director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul; and Michael Semple, Fellow at Harvard’s Carr Centre.

Audrey Kurth Cronin kicked off the session by giving the audience a quick overview of the findings of her fine book, in which she identified the six main ways that terrorist groups come to an end:

1)    A decapitation of the group in which the leader is killed or captured and the organisation dissolves;

2)    Successful negotiations;

3)    The group succeeds in achieving its aims;

4)    The group fails, and loses popular support;

5)    State repressed succeeds in crushing the group;

6)    A re-orientation toward different behavior, whereby the group shifts its focus to criminal enterprise or insurgency.

Of these six, it was the fourth outcome that Kurth Cronin found to be the most common.
Shiraz Maher was then asked by Dr. Neumann what prompted him to leave the extremist organisation in which he was involved for a number of years after 9/11.  As well as citing his move to a city where he was not surrounded by former members, Maher also very interestingly noted of Islamist dogmas that “once you pick at them, they can collapse very quickly.”
Dr. Neumann then asked Hekmat Karzai to share with the audience some of the findings of a recent study his organisation had undertaken on how and why young people were becoming suicide bombers or fighting for terrorist groups in Afghanistan.  Karzai gave five main motivators:

1)    Financial: Many fighters join groups for the monetary benefits, and the families of suicide bombers are often very well taken care of;

2)    Revenge:  civilian casualties have sometimes “provided the oxygen” which fuels extremism;

3)    Lack of governance;

4)    Madrassas: many insurgents and terrorists are brainwashed in religious schools;

5)    Ideology: a salafi-jihadist belief system which demanded confrontation with the West.

Addressing the same issue, Michael Semple said that his research also found that many terrorists in Afghanistan join insurgent groups so as to earn a livelihood and gain a status in society unattainable in most other circumstances. He also cited a desire to be part of a peer network.

Asked by the Chair to compare the conditions for Muslims in Afghanistan and Europe, Shiraz Maher said that although there was a crucial dynamic difference, there is also a global and unified “core ideology”, which is shared by all extremists.  He also referred to a number of jihadist defectors in Britain – such as Noman Benotmen and Abdullah Anas – who were working towards dismantling and countering the ideological roots of jihadism.  Maher also recommended that any strategy adopted by the United States to prevent violent extremism should not co-opt non-violent Islamists, but must instead adopt a “values-led approach” that seeks to groups and individuals who represent these values.

The final part of the discussion addressed a question from the audience about how the current conflict in Afghanistan will end. Although the majority of the panelists agreed that there will have to be some form of political solution, which included negotiations with the Taliban.  Karzai was concerned that the current strategy in the country was contradictory to the achievement of a political solution and that the approach had to change.  The only dissenting voice was that of Shiraz Maher, who was skeptical about the effectiveness of any negotiations with the Taliban.  He pointed to the series of failed talks between the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani government over the past years, which often reached agreements only for the Taliban to renege on them soon after – using lulls in combat to consolidate and expand.

On this interesting, if pessimistic, note, the final panel discussion of the conference was concluded and the stage was set for the final keynote address delivered by H.E. Tsipi Livni, former Israeli Foreign Minister and no leader of the opposition Kadima Party.

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I'd planned to be focusing on final preparations for an upcoming field research trip to Lebanon and Algeria. But then Pakistan went and arrested half the Quetta Shura. The full consequences won't become clear for a while, and a number of questions now loom.

There's obviously the issue of the degree to which this will impair the Taliban operationally. As well as the question of how this move will affect the Taliban's relationship with al-Qaeda on the one hand and Pakistan on the other. The biggest question, for me at least, is what this says about Pakistan's calculus. On the optimistic end one could hope this marks a critical break with Pakistan's past protection of the Afghan Taliban? Or for cynics out there was this a play to remove some of those actors who might have sought a separate peace that excluded Pakistan from the equation?

The Christian Science Monitor, which broke the story, carries a couple of quotes that point toward the latter:

The crackdown may to be related to efforts by some Taliban leaders to explore talks with Western and Afghan authorities independently of Pakistan, the UN official said. Pakistan is widely suspected of backing the Afghan Taliban in a bid to maintain influence in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad has long denied. But Pakistan may also be wary of Taliban attempts to initiate talks without its involvement or sanction.

"Pakistan wants a seat at the table," says the UN official, who is familiar with Taliban efforts to initiate talks. "They don't want the Taliban to act independently."

"It's possible that Mullah Baradar and those around him wanted to start thinking about an eventual settlement," says Mr. Muzjda. Former and current Taliban figures emphasize, however, that such a settlement necessarily involves a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces in the country.    

Perhaps. Or maybe Pakistan concluded that the best way to guarantee a seat at the table was to show the U.S. that it deserved one.

On an unrelated matter, I'm not in the practice of linking to different articles that carry an odd quote of mine. But a week ago I gave an interview to the Hindustan Times about LeT's recent activities and what I said ended up differing from what made it into print. I'm going to chalk this up to a crappy phone connection, but nonetheless some important nuances were lost and I wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight. I appreciate this blog’s readership indulging me.

The crux of the story, which you can read here, was about Lashkar's resurgence especially in light of the recent Pune attack. In it, the reporter quoted me as saying:

Lashkar resurgent spells India bloodied. While Lashkar has shown pan-Islamic tendencies, says Stephen Tankel, author of Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar e Taiba, "for the core leadership, India remains the main enemy." Another fillip for Lashkar, he says, is that despite Mumbai its infrastructure has been unharmed and it's incurred no costs.

I did not say its infrastructure was unharmed and it incurred no costs as a result of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. I said its social welfare operations were restricted, but continued to operate. I also added there was nominal government control over some facets of the organization, but by no means all of it. Further, the government did take JuD [its social welfare wing] out of the formal banking system. While I did say its military infrastructure emerged relatively unscathed, I emphasized I was referring to the military infrastructure and not the overall infrastructure. An important distinction given the restrictions, however minimal they may be, placed on JuD. Overall, I said, the group incurred minimal costs in proportion to the benefits it accrued from the Mumbai attacks.

"Unharmed" and "no costs" are absolutist statements. They give the impression that Pakistan did absolutely nothing, which is not true. I'll be the first to hammer the Pakistanis for not doing nearly enough – and have a number of times – but it's incorrect to suggest they did nothing at all.

Regarding the questionable claim of responsibility by a LeT splinter, the reporter also quoted me as saying  "I've never heard any rumblings about Lashkar splinters." Not what I said. I can name at least one LeT splinter, not to mention the temporary split in the organization in 2004. What I said was that I’d not heard any rumblings about a new splinter organization having emerged.









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On Monday, Fred Kaplan captured the sense of ambivalence many seem to feel about Afghanistan. I've been and remain a proponent of a surge there, but just barely. With that in mind, a few quick impressions from President Obama's speech:


1.    The tone itself is what we’ve come to expect – measured, lacking in hubris and suggesting an extensive cost-benefit analysis. Whether or not one agrees with the Administration, the extensive review process suggests the President means it when he says "I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

2.    The President reiterated his goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies." I'd like to know more about how we’ll deal with actually degrading al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan during the next 18 months. I understand the President was constrained in what he could say, but I was looking for more about how U.S. operations in Afghanistan translated to action against AQ in Pakistan. I think there is a strong case to be made for why continued U.S. action in Afghanistan is necessary to degrade al-Qaeda. I’m not sure whether the President missed a chance to make that case last night or if he smartly avoided getting too bogged down in al-Qaeda. I wonder whether part of this was a response to the previous Administration.

3.    With his mention of Somalia and Yemen, Obama publicly recognized that whatever the U.S. does in Afghanistan, those actions alone will not defeat al-Qaeda. I don’t think, and certainly hope, that this Administration is not planning to launch a COIN-focused strategy against these or other ungoverned spaces. So why should Afghanistan be any different?

The argument has been made that because AQ is now a transnational movement we should not focus so much energy on Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are AQ 1.0 and we’ve already moved on to AQ 2.0 or 3.0. In other words a decapitation strategy won’t work. Further, attacks can be planned anywhere and so there is no point in focusing so many resources on Afghanistan.

This misses a few salient points. Most jihadi groups are waging what I’d call peripheral campaigns against the West, while remaining focused primarily on their own backyards. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership – and by that I don’t just mean the top two – is different. It prioritizes the fight against the U.S. and its allies, and most plots disrupted in the West continue to emanate from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. That makes degrading the capabilities of actors in this region a fundamentally different objective than degrading the capabilities of all jihadi groups in other ungoverned spaces.

4.    Not much was said about Pakistan, but what was said mattered. First, the President made clear that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan would extend – in terms of time and scope – beyond America’s activities in Afghanistan. Second, he made it clear that the U.S. “cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” Getting Pakistan to actually go after all of the militant outfits inside its borders will be no easy task. Building capacity there is a must have, but that alone will not be enough. I’ve often wondered whether the U.S. has more or less leverage over Pakistan when it is fighting next door.

5.    The time horizon is clearly what many people will focus onIt’s almost trite to note by this point, but people in the U.S. don’t believe there will be a drawdown in 2011 and people in Afghanistan don’t believe the U.S. will stay. I don’t really think there was a better option – an open-ended commitment was not politically feasible on the home front. That said, it is somewhat unfortunate that the 18-month time horizon just happens to coincide with the official start of the general election season for the 2012 elections. And that the start of the general election season coincides with the traditional summer season surge of fighting by the Taliban.

On the one hand, I do think that putting out a time horizon is necessary to pressure political actors in Afghanistan. On the other, the Taliban can simply melt away and wait things out. Of course, there is no guarantee that a drawdown will actually begin in 18 months or what that will look like. Also missing was a description of what a withdrawal would look like.

6.    There was a clear commitment to facets of the COIN model – strengthening the ANA and ANP as well as providing security for the populace – but no real details about how this will work. That’s understandable. But given some of the other acknowledgements of past failures and current counter-arguments, I’d like to have seen the President acknowledge the challenge posed here. I assume he did not for fear of undercutting morale in Afghanistan. The U.S. is gambling a lot on the ability to build an Afghan army and Afghan police force in the next 18 months. What happens if [or when, depending on your degree of pessimism] this does not come together?

 

You can have a look at the transcript here.

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The anniversary of the Mumbai attacks is this Thursday, which also happens to be Thanksgiving for those of us here in the U.S. Talk about dichotomous experiences. Before hopping on a plane to go eat turkey with the family, I'll do a proper retrospective. In the meantime, I've got a new piece out in the CTC Sentinel looking at the threat LeT poses to India and the West. For those interested, here is the link.

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I disagree with David Kilcullen on several matters, but I agree 100% with what he said recently at Georgetown, as reported by Bellum. Some highlights:

•    We've suffered from only incrementally increasing the number of troops over the years. The Taliban has proven itself capable of absorbing the impact from an additional 10-30 thousand troops. We need to either "overmatch" them with a substantially larger deployment  or not send any at all (or possibly draw down).
•    Whenever we send more troops, violence will spike almost by definition.
…
•    There is "not much point" to negotiating with the Taliban right now. This is because the Taliban believe they are winning and so have no reason to bargain. Our goal should be to fight first and hard, to convince them that they should talk.
…
•    Successful counterinsurgencies take 15-20 years. Unsuccessful ones take 9-11 years.

It is refreshing to have a president that is deliberative and doesn't just follow his 'gut', but this is getting a little ridiculous. It is decision time.

Mr. Gates said a central focus in Mr. Obama's deliberations was "how do we signal resolve, and at the same time signal to the Afghans, as well as the American people, that this is not an open-ended commitment?"

The latest clues about the president's thinking, as provided by Mr. Gates, came a day after it was disclosed that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country.

The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, three senior American officials said on Wednesday. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

    ...

A central focus of Mr. Obama's questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.

"He wants to know where the off-ramps are," one official said.

The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the Untied [sic] States would not be open-ended.

I am all for an exit strategy, but President Obama should understand that there is a whole spectrum between a timetabled exit strategy and an open ended commitment. The nature of fighting insurgencies is more art than science. Conditions on the ground are constantly changing and strategy needs to be constantly reassessed in concert with policymakers.  The outcome of these deliberations should be setting the best course – not a decision to pick up and leave if this isn't turned around within x number of years (x is likely to be 2 years or less, if we are to believe the leaks coming out of the White House and DoD).

As Kilcullen reminds us: that is not how these things we call insurgencies work.

I will also add these questions for you all to chew on:

Does the United States have a moral obligation to defeat the Taliban? Do we owe anything to the Afghan people, especially in the south and east of the country, who would have to live under continued Taliban governance if the so-called Biden strategy (minimal counterterrorism/special ops effort) is followed?

Speak up in the comments.

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"My son is 20 years old and I am his mother aged 43", wrote Mrs Lauderdalle from Yorkshire to Prime Minister Clement Attlee in February 1948. She went on to say: "I appeal to you to let my boy come home from Palestine".

Another mother sent a letter to the Prime Minister saying, "I am writing to you to demand my son to leave Palestine before he is slaughtered by the Arabs or Jews. I am enclosing this picture published in the Daily Mail today. Thank God! It is not my boy. As I saw the face, I thought for a moment it was him, and I was absolutely devastated. But they are some other mother's boy. Why should our boys die for the sake of lousy Jews and Arabs? It is not our war".

These are two out of hundreds of letters sent to Prime Minister Attlee urging him to withdraw from Palestine. And now we’ve got to do the same: to send hundreds and thousands of letters and emails to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to pile pressure on him to get British troops out of Afghanistan.

We must not, however, delude ourselves: our messages will not change the situation overnight, and it is likely that British troops will continue to patrol Afghanistan for many years to come. You see, it is relatively easy to invade a country, but it is always much more complicated to disengage. As a young captain in the Israeli army I was one of those who invaded Lebanon in an operation which was supposed to last between 48 and 72 hours; troops then stayed in Lebanon for 18 years. What eventually brings about disengagements (the US disengagement from Vietnam, the Israeli retreat from Lebanon, and so on) is a combination of blood and public pressure. And this is how we are going to get out of Afghanistan:

Although they do not know it yet, many British troops will be killed in Afghanistan and return to Britain in coffins. With the growing number of casualties, public pressure on the government to get out of Afghanistan will also increase, but ministers will repeat, like parrots, the mantra that Britain is a "safer place", as long as British troops operate in Afghanistan, and that eventually “we will defeat the Taliban”.

Some ministers will utter this nonsense because they are expected to do so, others because they are ignorant – they either do not know history, or have learned nothing from history. And then more casualties ("Breaking News: 74 British troops were killed when a helicopter ferrying them was shot down in Afghanistan") leading to even more public pressure on the government.

And then a new Prime Minister will be elected (well, as I write, the poor guy is probably still at school) and he will ask: "What's the purpose? Why are we still there? We've already lost 2,744 young men …" He will then set up a committee which will report back that the entire Afghan affair is pointless, because you can not defeat the elusive Taliban and chasing them in the Afghan mountains would not turn Britain into a safer place. The committee will then recommend to get out of this hell-of-a place within 5, 7 or 10 years.

And yes - this is how it will all end. Then, we will all just forget about it, with the only ones to continue and live with this sorry episode being the mothers who, as I write, do not yet know that their world is about to be turned up-side-down.

 

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

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Jean-Pierre Filiu, a leading expert on jihadism, former French diplomat, now a professor at Sciences-Po Paris (who also blogged for a bit on Jihadica) has just published a book which looks at the future of Al Qaeda.

In his most recent book: The Nine Lives of Al Qaeda (in French "Les Neuf Vies d'Al-Qaïda"), he explains that after twenty years of existence, the organisation has never been closer to disappearing.

His central argument is that the election of Obama is the worst thing that has happened to Bin Laden. AQ had planned on a Republican victory with John McCain. But when Obama was elected, they had no plan B. "That's the weakness of Al Qaeda," he says "despite its mobility on the field its ideology is very rigid". With Obama as president Al Qaeda had to improvise: the racist hatred came first, calling him a house slave and then accusing him of betraying his Muslim roots.

Filiu explains that the desire to demonize Obama stems from the lack of directions for Al Qaeda to attack the US. Similarly, Al Qaeda's old propaganda favourites (the war in Iraq, Guantanamo) had vanished in the first months of the Obama administration.

Today Al Qaeda is fighting for its ninth life in Pakistan, in the same zones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the organisation was born 21 years ago, back in 1988 when its militants were fighting against the Red Army in Afghanistan.

With a very thorough analysis Filiu identifies 9 crucial moments in the history of the organisation:

1.    The Great Work : 1988-1991 (Abdallah Azzam, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zahawiri support the Afghan resistance in Peshawar)
2.    The Sudanese Exile : 1991-1996 (thanks to Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi)
3.    The Challenges to America : 1996-1998 (bombing against the US embassy in Nairobi which killed 213 in August 1998)
4.    The Afghan Jihadistan : 1998-2001 (with Mollah Omar and the Afghan talibans)
5.    The Collapse of the Sanctuary : 2001-2003 (the September 11 attacks and the American invasion in Afghanistan)
6.    The Campaign of Arabia : 2003-2004 (attempted Jihad in Bin Laden's natal country)
7.    The Blood of Iraq : 2004-2006 (attempt to take advantage of the American and allies' hodgepodge there)
8.    The Caliphate of Shadows : 2006-2007 (development of AQ in Maghreb and Pakistan)
9.    The Headlong Rush : 2007-2009 ( AQ setbacks in Iraq and its other "mission territories")

The apogee of AQ on 9/11 was also the beginning of its decline, he says "the attack generated a feeling of disgust and reject throughout the Arab world, even the most radicals Sheikhs did not support these actions."

The War in Iraq is another missed opportunity for AQ who lost the fight against the Arabic and Sunni guerrillas. While venturing for the first time on Arab land, AQ suffered its most patent failure and has now lost most of its impact in the Arab world.

In a final spurt of effort Al Qaeda has recently tried to generate support in Maghreb (Algeria) and Sub-Saharan Africa, namely Somalia. But AQIM failed to recruit outside Algeria and Al Shabaab's (Somalia) allegiance to Bin Laden was more of a dare to their direct rivals Hizbul Islam than an utter celebration of Al Qaeda's leadership in Islamic jihad.

The story of AQ, as told by Jean-Pierre Filiu, is one of lucky accidents, gross mistakes made by its enemies and rivalry. That does not mean that people will not be fighting in Jihad anymore, but that the type of Jihad that AQ created, the global Jihad, the cult of Jihad for Jihad will soon cease to exist.

 

For those of you who understand French, Rue89 has a podcast of an interview with Jean-Pierre Filiu. Listen here.

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A whole lot of grief and hurt feelings to judge by the debates going on in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar legislation, a complete version of which can be found here. Several American friends have asked what right Pakistan has to get so upset about receiving $1.5 billion a year from the U.S. And on the face of it that does seem a bit preposterous. Dig a little deeper and the outrage emanating from Islamabad [and really from Rawalpindi where the Army is based] makes more sense.

The conditions within the bill are viewed as a breach of national sovereignty. This is a particularly big deal in Pakistan, a young country which is hyper-sensitive about its sovereignty and which is seeing that sovereignty violated on a regular basis by US drone strikes.

Rather than trying to unpack the Pakistani psyche [as if there were only one] in a single blog post, I'd propose taking a step back and looking at how elites and masses are shaping the current debate. Caveat: this is an oversimplified, strawmaneque way of looking at the problem. But please bear with me.

To the degree that 'the Pakistani street' objects to Kerry-Lugar it is largely a question of trust. During my last trip there I had numerous debates with Pakistani colleagues about the appropriate level of conditionality in US aid.

For most of them the issue of sovereignty was viewed through the prism of trust, i.e. America either trusted Pakistan to sort out its own affairs or it didn't and thus felt compelled to meddle. This goes to both how America is believed to view Pakistan and how Pakistanis view themselves. Some of my debating partners were members of the liberal intelligentsia, people who were critical of the army and the government.Despite all of the vitriol they heaped upon the civilian and military leadership, they nonetheless took great offense at an outside power pushing Pakistan around.  

The political and military elites who have objected to the conditions in Kerry-Lugar appear to be instrumentalizing this national sentiment. I don't doubt that many of them feel the same sense of national pride, but I’d also bet that in some cases others factors are at play.

First of all, Congress wants to know where and how the money is being spent. Given the propensity for cash to be diverted in Pakistan this is an understandable request by Congress. Conversely, given the propensity for cash to be diverted in Pakistani this is an understandable point of contention for certain actors living there.

Second, the US also is making some of the same demands it has made for a while, but is now demanding a certification process. According to the bill:

Certification- The certification required by this subsection is a certification to the appropriate congressional committees by the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, that the security forces of Pakistan–

(1) are making concerted efforts to prevent al Qaeda and associated terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, from operating in the territory of Pakistan;

(2) are making concerted efforts to prevent the Taliban and associated militant groups from using the territory of Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks within Afghanistan; and
    
(3) are not materially interfering in the political or judicial processes of Pakistan.

I've no doubt that a host of other factors are contributing to the discourse in Pakistan right now, not least the overall sense of US meddling. Could the bill have been written in a more sensitive manner? Probably. Is there a philosophical difference, i.e. the US wants metrics and elements within Pakistan see that as a breach of sovereignty. Absolutely.

However, I also have little doubt that beyond their explicit nature, it is the content of the above clauses that is raising some hackles. And I don't think the only reason for that is wounded national pride. It's not just that the US is placing conditions on aid, but the nature of those conditions. For example, is Pakistan acting against groups [LeT, JeM, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqanni Network] that it has been reluctant to move against in the past? Given the news that the Indian embassy was attacked, again, and that last time the ISI was reported to be complicit, these are worthwhile questions to ask.

This does not negate the sense among some Pakistanis that their country is being asked to fight America's war for it. Or among Americans that elements within Pakistan continue to play a double game vis-à-vis militant outfits operating there.

 

It does suggest that we need to move beyond the issue of sovereignty – always useful for whipping up the citizenry – and get down to the fundamental issue that we're dealing with two countries that have vastly different strategic priorities. On that score, it is debatable whether the US should be looking to win hearts and minds or simply looking for leverage where it can find it.

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It was a violent blast which woke up Kabul this morning. A kamikaze detonated a car bomb near the Indian embassy, wounding dozens of people and killing twelve.

The Indian foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, says the embassy was clearly the target: "The suicide bomber came up to the outside perimeter wall of the embassy with a car loaded with explosives obviously with the aim of targeting the embassy."

Rings a bell? Last year, on July 7th 2008 the insurgents had already targeted the Indian embassy, killing and injuring more than 100 people, including two Indian diplomats.

Since then the road in front of the embassy has been barricaded and the diplomatic compound is surrounded by a double layer of high-rise walls.

Even though Nirupama Rao states that she believes "that those measures have worked effectively and have been able to prevent what could have been a tragedy similar to what had occurred in July, 2008," it is clear what the insurgents are trying to prove.

They want the Afghan people as well as the international community to know that they can strike anywhere in Afghanistan, even in central Kabul at rush-hour, despite reinforced security around their target.

An interesting timeline of deadliest attacks in Afghanistan, here.

 

Photo courtesy of AFP

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Last week Saeed Shah reported on Jaish-e-Mohammad's [JeM] construction of a walled-off 4.5-acre compound three miles outside of Bahawalpur, located in the south of Pakistan's Punjab province.

JeM already has a headquarters and a seminary in the city center. This new facility is much grander. It includes a swimming pool, stable for horses and a playground for children. Gotta love those kid-friendly militants. The compound sounds just like my sleep-away camp, except I have a feeling its riflery range may be a bit more robust.

In all seriousness, this is deeply troubling. Over the past six months Pakistan has made strides in its fight against the TTP and TNSM, two organizations that consistently threatened the state. At the same time there seems to be no sign that a seeming reengagement with militant groups, which appears to have begun in 2008, has abated. Rather, the security services continue to provide – at least – passive support to groups like JeM.

It is likely that support for JeM goes beyond merely tolerance. According to a number of interlocutors I’ve spoken with in Pakistan the group is far more dependent on state assistance than is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is financially independent. Further, JeM's hands are not nearly as clean as Lashkar's in terms of violence within Pakistan or involvement with al-Qaeda plots against Western countries. It is JeM’s involvement in such plots that makes the compound in Bahawalpur so troubling.

The site could serve multiple purposes. First and foremost, it could probably be used for training. At the very least, this could include indoctrination. More worrying is that unlike the many guerrilla warfare camps in the mountains, this compound will be used to provide the types of skills needed for urban terrorism. These include not only bomb making, but also reconnaissance and other intelligence-related skills.

Second, according to Shah's report, Bahawalpur serves as an "R&R" safe haven for jihadists battling in Afghanistan. They can rest up far away from the FATA, where militants must be more mindful of U.S. unmanned aerial drones. This means it can also serve as a hub for networking among current and would-be jihadis, which provides another type of functionality: a meeting point for Westerners seeking access to al-Qaeda.

In the past JeM and LeT were valuable to al-Qaeda because of what is called the "Kashmiri Escalator." A disproportionate number of British Pakistanis are of Kashmiri decent and those interested in making contact with a militant group often can employ familial connections in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to find their ways to Lashkar or JeM.

Recruits procure training from one of the two groups, after which some of them are passed on to al-Qaeda operatives who are often in the FATA. In 2009 British security officials estimated that approximately 4,000 people were trained in this way since 9/11 and accounted for three quarters of the serious terrorist plots the UK faced. Westerners in search of training in the FATA now have another jumping off point to get there.

I'm still a proponent of staying in Afghan because I believe it is important to deny al-Qaeda safe haven there as well as to degrade the capacity of al-Qaeda and its allies to destabilize Pakistan. It appears al-Qaeda Central's power in FATA may be attenuating and fissures may be developing with the Afghan Taliban. If remaining in Afghanistan is necessary to keep things moving in that direction, then I'm still on board with the mission.

But developments such as this one give me pause. The Obama Administration recently released its metrics for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Objective 2b is 'Develop Pakistan's counterinsurgency (COIN) capabilities; continue to support Pakistan's efforts to defeat terrorist and insurgent groups.' One of the metrics involved in measuring success is 'Extent of militant-controlled areas in Pakistan.'

JeM is a banned organization and known to be a close al-Qaeda ally. Indeed it is historically closer to al-Qaeda than LeT. JeM operatives have been involved in a number of plots against the West, and more than a few in Pakistan as well. Bahawalpur is not S. Waziristan. It's not ungoverned space. This militant-controlled area exists in the country’s heartland and is being developing in full view of the authorities.

Enormous sacrifices are being made to keep Afghanistan free from al-Qaeda and its allies. Meanwhile, next-door some of those same allies are building away in the seemingly safest of havens.

On a completely unrelated matter, I've been absent from FREErad!cals for too long. A summer associate position at RAND and a book deadline pretty much devoured my entire summer. Blogging suffered as a result. My apologies for that. The summer gig is now over and last week I turned in a draft manuscript for Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba. So I plan to get back to blogging here at least once a week.

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Barack Obama was heard on five US talk-shows yesterday saying that the strategy on Afghanistan had to be re-thought.

He was notably questioned on General McChrystal's report in which the top military commander in Afghanistan makes it very clear that unless additional troops are sent, the conflict "will likely result in failure."

President Obama however refused to say if he planned to send in more troops or not:

"We're going to test whatever resources we have against our strategy, which is if by sending young men and women into harm’s way, we are defeating Al Qaeda and, and that can be shown to a skeptical audience, namely me — somebody who is always asking hard questions about deploying troops, then we will do what’s required to keep the American people safe."

 

Now I am not going to argue here on what should be done. This, readers, is for YOU to debate.

On a more hopeful note, today is Peace Day.

McChrystal said that the troops will be on the defensive but "will not conduct offensive military operations [...] to observe the United Nations' International Day of Peace".

Afghan defence minister's spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi expressed that "the people of Afghanistan are more thirsty for peace than any other nation. They have experienced decades of war and they want peace now".

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Today's big news is certainly the freeing of New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell, a British national, who was abducted four days ago in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan. His interpreter Sultan Munadi (picture) an Afghan journalist who paired with Farrell to investigate the aftermath of a NATO air strike that killed at least 70 people, didn’t have the same luck and was killed during the raid.

Foreign journalists are often taken hostages with their local translator or driver. But where the journalist's life has a real bargaining value and is therefore more protected, it is a known fact that the interpreter's is often much more at stake.

As they were held hostage together, Sultan Munadi told Stephen Farrell, "I think you're going to be O.K., but they've got it in for me." The British journalist himself recalls: "I did not think they were going to kill me, I did think they were going to kill him." Eric Schmitt also recount Farrell’s words in the New York Times:

"While Mr. Farrell said he was treated well — given food, water and blankets and never harmed — the militants increasingly taunted Mr. Munadi. At one point one of the Taliban reminded Mr. Munadi of a case two years ago in which an Italian journalist taken hostage in Helmand Province was freed while his Afghan translator was beheaded."

There have been several other instances of such double-standards notably in Iraq and Afghanistan between foreigner and local lives. As such the tragic case of the kidnapping of an Italian journalist in 2007, who was kidnapped alongside his translator and eventually freed whereas his Afghan interpreter was beheaded by the abductors.

Several reasons can explain those double-standards.

Firstly, foreigners in general (NGO workers, journalists, etc.) have more value to the eyes of the kidnappers than the life of a local driver, journalist or translator.

Interpreters who work with foreigners are also more likely to be targeted by kidnappers or attacks as they are considered as traitors by the insurgency. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, AP considered translating Arabic to Americans "one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in one of the world's most dangerous countries".

Finally, Western governments are more prone to negotiating/paying ransoms to the kidnappers rather than having one of their nationals brutally executed abroad. When the kidnapped translator for an Italian journalist was killed, the Taliban 'spokesman' said at the time that:

"When we demanded the exchange for the Italian journalist, the government released the prisoners, but for the Afghan journalist, the government did not care."

Thus a question springs to mind: should the government of a kidnapped journalist also take responsibility for the local journalist, translator or driver who accompanies him? They certainly are essential in enabling journalists to do their job.

I'll leave you with this quote from Barry Bearak, a Times correspondent who worked with Mr. Munadi in 2001 and 2002:

"The story calls [Sultan Munadi] an 'interpreter,' which misleads the reader about what these great people do for us. They serve as our walking history books, political analysts, managers of logistics, taking equal the risks without equal the glory or pay."

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

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The Afghan elections were yesterday in case you hadn't heard. And if you were counting on this blogger then you probably haven't since I've been the one person in the world not writing obsessively about it. Mea Culpa. In my quasi-lame defense balancing full time job + finishing book manuscript has not left as much time for blogging as I'd have liked. But while I have not been writing about Afghanistan I have been reading about it. So I should probably quit winging and get on with my early thoughts on the election.

Caveat Lector: There will be no predictions in this blog entry and there is, as yet, not much to analyze. I also promise no more pretentious use of Latin for the remainder of this post. But I say no predictions/heavy analysis because we're not going to know who won, whether rigging was a big problem or what the security situation looked like in various places on the ground for a little while. What we do know is based on a lot of snap reporting, emailing, blogging and tweeting.

On that score my colleagues Gilles Dorronsoro and Austin Long over at the Foreign Policy AfPak Channel, both of who are on the ground in Afghanistan, had a brief exchange discussing turnout that went something like this:

Gilles: So some people are not afraid of the Taliban, just cynical?

Austin: I also think you hit the nail on the head on turn-out: it's probably low only in part because of security concerns but mostly due to apathy and cynicism.

Note: They had more to say than that. If you want a play by play: go here. Seriously, you should go check it out. They've got a murderer's row of people on the ground writing in. But finish reading this post first.

Their exchange raises the question: which is worse? Failure to provide adequate security speaks to the distinct operational challenges in Afghanistan. And to be clear, that failure was not a one day affair. Some areas never even had the chance to vote because officials could not get out there to register them. Or polling places were set up far enough away because of security concerns that actually making it to the polls was impossible. On the one hand, it was never reasonable to assume we could secure the entire country for Election day. On the other, this is yet another reminder of how the security dynamic has changed in the past few years..

As hard as it is going to be for Coalition forces in concert with the ANA to protect the population, getting that population to believe in their leaders is probably going to prove even more challenging. Governance and security are intrinsically tied together. But governance clearly goes beyond security. It says something that the Taliban probably wanted to infringe on elections just enough to depress turnout and send a message, without actually keeping Karzai from winning. Anybody who read Elizabeth Rubin's fantastic piece can see why.

None of this is to take away from all those who voted or the countless people on the ground working to make the election happen. Once we have definitive answers on turnout, the security situation and maybe even which candidate won than we can let the real analysis begin.  

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Among the many tough choices that must be made about how to bring stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan the decision to target Baitullah Mehsud was low-hanging fruit. He was responsible for the deaths of countless Pakistanis and under his leadership the TTP threatened the stability of the state. Although his survival was a source of friction between Pakistan and the U.S., Baitullah was also a target both sides could agree was a threat. Killing him was a shared operational priority, worthy of an American breach of sovereignty by way of hellfire missile. One hopes that his death will be a confidence building measure in the Pakistan-U.S. partnership, but the two countries still have divergent strategic priorities and future targets are likely to prove harder to agree upon.

In the event he is really dead (uncertainty still remains) his death will have an impact at an operational level on the TTP. But even this should not be overstated. In the short term his death will degrade the TTP’s unity, making it a less effective force in the short term. Early reports indicate a power struggle might be underway between Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, who are two of Baitullah’s would-be successors. At least one of those men, Waliur Rehman, has denied this. Either way the Pakistani Taliban’s insurgency has always been marked by separateness and togetherness, though it has become more unified recently. On the whole disunity is probably a net plus, but even if the movement returns to a splintered state the actors involved are still a threat on both sides of the Durand line. This is not just a Mehsud family affair and is too complex for one man’s death to unravel it. Recall that Nek Mohammed’s death did not prove to be the Pakistani Taliban’s undoing, but instead paved the way for Baitullah’s emergence who also tangled with fellow commanders.

Competition could also drive additional attacks against Pakistani targets, though its not as if the TTP needs a whole lot more motivation to attack the state. Nonetheless, one of the bits of information I was struck by most when in Pakistan a few months ago was the fact that some militants were attempting to “outbid” one another in terms of the level of attacks they could deliver. As different actors compete for power – at the top and mid levels – attempts to outdo one another might increase violence against the Pakistani state in the short-term.

Of course, it is also possible that if a new leader emerges who can keep the TTP united that he could decide to ratchet back on attacks within Pakistan and refocus on the Afghan jihad. Baitullah’s death aside, the Pakistani Taliban have had an uneven year. They were a whole lot more popular on the home front when killing Coalition forces next door. With the Afghan jihad humming along, one wonders: will the TTP shift focus and, if so, how will the Pakistani state respond?

This operation may have bolstered the Pakistan-U.S. relationship and helped the latter improve its reputation as a team player. But it is highly questionable whether the quid pro quo will result in Pakistan passing along Mullah Omar’s coordinates. There are early rumblings that this could pave the way for cooperation against the Haqqani Network, but action there probably depends as much [or more] on the state of its relationship with Pakistan than on Pakistan’s relationship with U.S. In short, it remains to be seen whether there will be a strategic shift in Pakistan’s behavior vis-à-vis those actors who Washington considers enemies and Islamabad considers assets in Afghanistan. Hopefully this operation not only will disrupt TTP unity, but also help increase cooperation between the U.S and Pakistan. Confidence by both sides in their relationship is important since future decisions will not be so easy to agree upon.

Finally, at the risk of wading into the drone strike debate when I’m about to bump up against a self-imposed word limit: they may be degrading al-Qaeda’s capability to strike Western countries and making some militants uneasy, but they are not a solution for the problem in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. I’m not as orthodox on this as some and do see their value. Taking out targets like Baitullah Mehsud is a net plus even if it has to happen via hellfire missile. If serious infighting results from his death then this would be a prime example of how operational action that can produce strategic results. But the insurgency built strength over a long period of time. Defeating it could take even longer and won’t happen via remote-controlled aircraft alone.



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As we all know by now Taliban-Afghanistan, under the command of Mullah Omar, has issued a document laying down more than a code of conduct for its fighters.

The document was entitled La’iha - da Afghanistan Islamii Imarat da Mujahidinu lparah or The Code of Conduct for the Mujahidin of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It included also theological and ideological legitimatization of most of the military commands outlined. The La’iha is quite comprehensive. It has 13 chapters and 67 articles. The major topics covered can be listed under four categories: military tactics, asylum and prisoners, unity of the 'jihad' and sociopolitical relations.

Regarding military tactics, suicide attacks and civilian casualties were the main highlights in the La’iha.  On the former, the leadership of the Taliban declared that suicide bombings should only be used on 'high and important targets,' and the 'utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties.'” On the latter, the La’iha stresses that governors, district chiefs and line commanders and every member of their armed formations 'must do their best to avoid civilian deaths, civilian injuries and damage to civilian property.'

Regarding asylum, the La’iha recycles 'aman al-'ahad, an established concept in classical Islamic jurisprudence, into an Afghan contemporary setting: 'every Muslim can invite anyone working for the slave government in Kabul to leave their job, and cut their relationship with this corrupt administration. If the person accepts, then with the permission of the provincial and district leadership, a guarantee of safety can be given.' In other words, it provides an exit for government employers and legitimize it in an intelligible narrative.

Regarding prisoners, the policies outlined in the La’iha stresses centralization: 'whenever any official, soldier, contractor or worker of the slave government is captured, these prisoners cannot be attacked or harmed.

The decision on whether to seek a prisoner exchange, or to release the prisoner, with a strong guarantee, will be made by the provincial leader. Releasing prisoners in exchange for money is strictly prohibited.' Depending on the prisoner's rank, the decision to kill or release him is made by the upper echelons of the Taliban. If the prisoner is a director, commander or a district chief or higher, Mullah Omar (referred to as the Imam) or his deputy (na’ib) will decide his/her fate.

The same applies if a NATO soldier was captured: 'if a military infidel is captured, the decision on whether to kill, release or exchange the hostage is only to be made by the Imam or deputy Imam.' In other words, if the captured soldier was killed Mullah Omar and his deputies will be directly responsible.

Regarding unity, the Taliban repeats a chapter from the Algerian GIA's history by outlawing all non-Taliban armed Islamist activities.  The La’iha states clearly that: 'creating a new mujahidin group or battalion is forbidden.'” It implies punitive measures if that order was violated.

Finally, it is clear that Taliban leadership understands the importance of winning the hearts and minds to win this war : 'The mujahideen have to behave well and show proper treatment to the nation, in order to bring the hearts of civilian Muslims closer to them.' More than that, the La’iha has a Taliban-style 'equal opportunity' code: 'the mujahideen must avoid discrimination based on tribal roots, language or their geographic background.'

Overall, the Lai’ha can be seen as an attempt by the leadership of the Taliban to centralize the organization, before possibly launching a new wave of attacks. The development can be also seen as an attempt to distance the organization from al-Qa'ida's and other jihadist experiences in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries – where popular discontent marked the end of the Islamist insurgency.

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... doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. For example, using air power to try to defeat an insurgency.

I'm already on record saying I think that rushing into S. Waziristan before Swat is secure is a bad idea. And by secure I mean knowing that Pakistani forces are able to hold the area and enable refugees to return while ensuring militants do not. Refugees may be returning, but it is far from certain that it is actually safe for them to do so.

On the plus side, the army has pledged to keep a presence in Swat for a year. Though exactly what that means I'm not certain. But as Saed Shah reported over the weekend, Pakistan is anxious that its forces not be overextended, a danger from an all-out Waziristan offensive.

Hmm… yeah, I could see how the Army might be nervous about that.  Presumably, the Army could commit more troops to the fight. Or maybe hold off on the S. Waziristan operation until it could take a comprehensive approach. But according to Shah the Pakistani Army has come up with another solution… bomb their way to victory.

The operation is unlikely to destroy the enemy, however, and will leave in place some Taliban warlords whom the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan regard as a significant cross-border threat. It will raise questions about the seriousness of Pakistan's fight against insurgents after the country won international praise for its concerted efforts in Swat.

 

"The nature of the operation is totally different from what we did in Swat," said a senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "It is just blocking the entrance. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. We'll keep punishing (the enemy) with long arms, air (power), Cobra (helicopters).
    
…

"It won't be the army physically moving and attacking, with your combat power dwindling with each passing day, and the need to put in additional" troops, the security official said, adding that the military couldn't afford to open up more than one front.

To be fair to Pakistan it took America quite a while to (re)figure out COIN in Iraq. And it's taking even longer in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is still trying to get its act together. So it's not like I think we're such geniuses as this. But if they understand what is necessary (and Swat indicates they might) then regressing to an enemy-centric approach in S. Waziristan is all the more baffling.

 

I understand the desire to do something about militants who are savaging the country. But knocking over a bunch of buildings, (probably) wracking up a lot of civilian casualties and maybe clipping a militant here or there is not going to solve the problem.

 

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Kandahar Police Chief Matiullah was killed yesterday during a shootout between Afghan police and an Afghan private security firm said to have been employed by the Coalition.

I'm slammed at work and several serious Afghanistan watchers with a lot more local knowledge than I have [which ain't that hard] are all over this story. So go here to learn more:

http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/kandahar-police-chief-killed-and/

http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/06/29/the-final-straw-slaying-of-kandahar-police-chief-might-be-sympton-of-intractable-problem/

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A week ago Zainuddin Mehsud was going to bring peace to the land. If you define peace as defeating Baitullah Mehsud so that everyone could focus on fighting the infidels in Afghanistan. He was, in other words, a good jihadi in the eyes of the Pakistani government, which (perhaps not surprisingly) distinguishes between people who want to fight inside the country and those preferring to do their killing next door. It seems that Pakistan still believes that it’s better to send a proxy to do the Army’s job.

Protecting that proxy… well, that’s a different story. One common refrain in some of the MSM coverage yesterday is summed up here:

The killing called into question the government’s strategy of exploiting tribal fissures in order to defeat Mr. Mehsud and was apparently intended to serve as a reminder that there were serious consequences for crossing him, analysts said.
'It tells people, if you side with the government, this is what will happen to you,' said Talat Masood, a retired general and a military analyst. 'It says the government can’t give you protection, but the other side can.'

Do people in the FATA really need a reminder?  I mean, isn’t it pretty clear that the neither the Pakistani Army nor the Police have your back?  Joshua Foust made this point yesterday about as well as it could be made.

To me, there are two larger issues here than the fact that you can’t rely on the Pakistani state for protection.

First, I’m bothered by this belief that there is some non-state actor our there that is going to do the state’s job for it. I’m not suggesting that Pakistan should not seek to build and exploit local alliances, though this is probably going to make that even more difficult for them to do. But I am suggesting that the belief that proxies can do this job for them is misguided… and what helped get us here in the first place.

Second, having Zainuddin on side was all well and good in terms of dealing with Baitullah and the TTP. I understand the concept of triage and prioritization in these situations. My concern is that I’m not convinced there was a plan for what comes next. Or for that matter, even an intention for there to be a sustained campaign post-Baitullah.

Color me cynical, but this whole episode smacked of short-term tactical objectives with no plan for long-term, sustained and strategic follow-through.

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Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, who recently emerged as a rival to Baitullah Mehsud, was shot dead in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday morning (Pakistani time). A number of people in Pakistan saw Zainuddin – a well-respected commander and member of the Mehsud tribe – as a potentially powerful ally against Baitullah. I’m crashing on work for my day job, but I’ll try to post a more detailed analysis. At which point I’ll also recap some of the highlights of the Afghanistan/Pakistan panel I sat on today at the International Terrorism and Intelligence conference.

As much as I’d love to point you toward other news analysis on the Zainuddin assassination, the news just broke. Will try to at least link to some decent analysis tomorrow morning.

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I’m off early in the morning to NYC for a wedding, but wanted to quickly draw your attention to this piece on development gone wrong in Afghanistan.

Low point… USAID refusing to subsidize cotton as an alternative to poppy because, ‘U.S. law prevents the government from aiding foreign cotton producers because doing so could help them compete against American growers.’

But apparently helping the Taliban to compete against US soldiers is ok. Or at least what America was inadvertently doing according to Richard Holbrooke, who thankfully has more experience with development work than local Pashtun culture.

"In my experience of 40-plus years -- I started out working for AID in Vietnam -- this was the single most wasteful, most ineffective program that I had ever seen," he said in a recent interview. "It wasn't just a waste of money. . . . This was actually a benefit to the enemy. We were recruiting Taliban with our tax dollars."

The rest of the article is equally devastating.

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I'm not opposed to Richard Holbrooke touring a refugee camp. Every little bit helps in terms of boosting America's image in Pakistan right now. And I'm heartened to read things like the following:

In meetings with Pakistan's government, military, judiciary and political opposition leaders, he pressed the message that getting the refugees back home safely was as crucial, and perhaps even more immediately important, as the ongoing military offensive. Temporary refugee camps tend quickly to become permanent, he argued. They are breeding grounds for public dissatisfaction and recruitment centers for extremists; getting people out of them is key to building confidence in the government.

But is it me or does anyone else think it's problematic that the man responsible for America's Afghanistan and Pakistan policy was making pit stops on his way through the camp looking for information to 'take home to U.S. intelligence analysts and White House policymakers'. Is the U.S. mission in Pakistan that short-staffed?

Because I come pretty cheap and I'm more than happy to go traipsing around the country-side asking people about how the Taliban recruits in their village if that'll free up his time for policy-making and stuff.

Also, I understand building rapport with an interview subject can be difficult, but talk about an awkward moment:

Holbrooke asked some questions about the Taliban but got few answers. 'Are these all your children?' he asked with a smile. Yes, Khan said, he had nine.

'Your daughter is beautiful,' Holbrooke continued, nodding toward a young woman who sat quietly at the edge of the family. Her head was covered in a royal-blue scarf that revealed only her stunningly dark eyes.

'That's not my daughter,' Khan said abruptly. After an awkward silence, the woman explained that she was a Pakistani police officer. It was unclear whether she was there to protect Holbrooke from the refugees, or to monitor what they told him.

In other news, Islamabad is going ahead and wading into S. Waziristan. For the record, not much has changed in terms of my view about this since yesterday.

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Should Islamabad hurry up and bring the fight to the motley crew in S. Waziristan? Nick Schmidle thinks that's a bad idea as does Andrew Exum over at abumuqawama, who beat this blog by at least a day in linking to Schmidle's piece… but given that we just launched like 5 minutes ago (and I just started a new job) let's chalk that up to growing pains. In any event… I tend to agree.

In trying to work out my own thinking on it, I made myself a little good idea / bad idea chart. The good idea / bad idea chart approach is a favorite of one of my wife’s friends who runs a day camp. Whenever a kid ends up in her office for doing something bad, she holds up a piece of oak tag with good idea on one side and bad idea on the other.

Now it's not that I don't appreciate nuanced grey areas – I love to build myself a wall and sit on top of it as much as the next PhD student – but if I ever get a policy job there is no doubt I’ll have that chart hanging in my office.

Good Idea

1. The army is finally engaging and has pretty good success in Swat. More importantly, they seem to have learned a thing or two about how to fight this kind of war. A friend of mine went out there to survey the collateral damage last week and said it looks like they've managed to avoid flattening the place.

And when I was there during the beginning of the offensive, the reports I was hearing indicated that the army was trying to avoid falling back on overwhelming and indiscriminate force. While we shouldn't be inducting the army into the COIN (counterinsurgency) Hall of Fame just yet, they do seem to be improving. So the momentum is there… and in an insurgency, I'm told that is something you don't want to waste.

2. A significant number of the people involved in the violence savaging the rest of Pakistan are either working from, or working with people in, S. Waziristan. Ultimately, putting a stop to the terrorism now savaging the rest of the country is going to require going into S. Waziristan. And the longer Islamabad waits, the longer those attacks go on.

3. The population appears as if it might be primed for this offensive, and given its past history Islamabad should probably avoid looking like it is decided to roll over. When I was there in May the Army was saying it was going into S. Waziristan by June, though Abbas has done a good job of walking back off that particular talking point.

Nonetheless, as attacks escalate in the rest of Pakistan there will be increasing pressure to deal with the people responsible… and a lot of them are in S. Waziristan.

Bad Idea

1. As Schmidle pointed out, S. Waziristan ain't Swat. And it's not like Swat was exactly a cake-walk. More importantly, it's also not over yet. Yes the Army has done a decent job of clearing the area of militants, and of doing so without actually destroying every house in the neighborhood.

But clearing is the easy part, and something the Army has been able to do before. Based on some of the conversations I've had recently with folks on the ground, at least some Pakistani officers are well aware that many of the militants simply melted away. Now they need to hold the area, begin returning refugees to their homes and protect them once they're back.

2. And speaking of refugees… as anyone who picked up a newspaper in the last month knows, Swat created an enormous IDP (internally displaced people) crisis. Which Pakistan really needs to focus on fixing. For so many reasons. First, there is the obvious fact that the level of human misery is high. And all strategy aside, dealing with that is a moral imperative. Second, failing to do so would be a pretty good way to lose popular support. Third, beyond needing to get its governance on in order to maintain the support of its own population this is also a good opportunity for Islamabad to show the rest of the world it can, you know, actually take care of its people. Fourth, refugee camps = militant recruiting grounds. Just ask the guys from Lashkar-e-Taiba… I mean Jamaat-ud-Dawa… no sorry, I meant Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF). I’m told the first thing a refugee fleeing from the fighting sees when he/she comes to the camps in Mardan is a guy waving the LeT/JuD flag.

3. I think its great the Zardari and Sing are supposed to make nice to one another tomorrow (or today or yesterday depending on when this runs), but I’m doubtful that anything said at the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) summit is going to convince the Pakistani army to start pulling its forces off the eastern front in any great numbers.* I believe the Pakistanis are serious about 'getting serious' with the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan). But I'm also inclined to believe their officer corps when they tell me that India is still the long-term existential threat and that any reinforcements for the fight against militancy will probably come from the garrisons and not the Eastern front.

And that's what they were saying to me a month ago… when the cameras weren't rolling. They were also saying that technology is the answer to counter-insurgency, not doctrine or training. Which just made me sad all day. But long story short, it is unclear that the military is entirely prepared for what an invasion of S. Waziristan would entail.

4. And, according to Sabrina Tavernise and Pir Zubair Shah over at the NYT, the militants do seem to be getting prepared.

Mr. Mehsud now has thousands of fighters entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate, and past efforts to capture him, most recently last year, have failed. … Fighters loyal to Baitullah Mehsud have been moving into the area from elsewhere in Pakistan to fortify it. Commanders are dividing responsibilities, designating fighters for bomb making and remote detonation, said a fighter who spoke by telephone from the area.

5. The mission itself seems unclear. Are they going after militancy in S. Waziristan or just its most famous militant? The TTP is an umbrella organization and beneath that umbrella it's fractious. So would killing or capturing Baitullah be a good thing?  Yeah. So would killing bin Laden, but that's not going to stop your AQ problem.

And yes, I realize that analogy only goes so far since bin Laden is far more influential outside of Pakistan and even less hands on operationally inside Pakistan. But my point is that it's not like the TTP is some sort of uber-hierarchical organization you can just decapitate and suddenly it falls apart and people start going home.

5a. The mission itself seems unclear. Part Deux. As the Tavernise and Pir point out, the military won a hard fought victory in Bajaur not so long ago and the militants are back there today. As Talat Massood, who is a seriously astute observer of Pakistan and all-around one of the good guys, made clear in the Times piece: that is because they failed to establish effective local governance structures afterwards. I'm not all that comforted by the idea that success can be declared if they nail Baitullah and his supporters.

So yeah… I can see the arguments for why S. Waziristan makes sense right now, but they fall short of convincing me this is not a bad idea. Because even if Pakistan clears out S. Waziristan – and that is a big if – I'm not yet confident they can keep it militant-free and develop lasting governance structures that work. And I'm even more concerned about what happens to the internally displaced population and the gains they've made elsewhere in the meantime.

* I'm actually not being flip. I think it's great that they are going to hold talks even if that really only amounts to a sideline meeting.

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This section of Free Rad!cals is dedicated to following events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unfortunately for people living in these two countries, a blog dedicated to political violence has a lot to work with when considering their neighborhood.

Given the importance of "AfPak" – a term I've just used for the first and last time – there's hardly an information or opinion shortage about these two countries. There are also a lot of people claiming to be experts on one or both of them. I'm not one of them.

I've been following militant groups in Pakistan for two years now and am writing a book on one of them: Lashkar-e-Taiba. First through desk-based research and then via extended field research trips to Pakistan I've begun developing what my wife considers to be an unhealthy obsession with the country. Also the food. My engagement with Afghanistan has been confined primarily to its role as a playing field for a number of the various militant groups I follow for my PhD research.

Given this background, when I wade in with analysis it will primarily revolve around militant activity. Since Afghanistan and Pakistan constitute what many experts (and quite a few non-experts) consider the central front in the fight against al-Qaeda there should be enough fodder for a blog about political violence.

Clearly, its impossible to write – intelligently at least – about militancy, terrorism or insurgency without considering a host of other issue areas. I can't promise to actually write intelligently, but rest assured I'm at least on board with that "holistic approach" to defeating jihadi militancy that's suddenly all the rage.

However, if you're looking for in depth cultural analysis or assessments of local political dynamics in Afghanistan or Pakistan there are people out there better equipped than me to provide it. And I promise to link to them often, along with highlighting articles, policy papers, and books that may be of interest.
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I should be blogging about radicalisation in Europe – a topic I have been looking at for many years – but it is Bin Laden’s new tape which has caught my imagination.

Assuming it really is Bin Laden – and all the experts seem to think so – the recording proves that Bin Laden is alive and able to communicate with the outside world.

Many questions remain unanswered, however. Where is Bin Laden? Why is it so difficult to find him? Does it matter?

I obviously don’t know where Bin Laden is. Over the years, people have tried to convince me of the wildest theories, ranging from Bin Laden sipping tea somewhere in India to him being locked away in a secret CIA prison in Morocco.

Needless to say, none of my informants could produce even the slightest shred of evidence to substantiate any of these claims.

Still the most plausible scenario is what a very, very senior American intelligence official told me eighteen months ago. Namely that Bin Laden is likely to be somewhere in the Pakistani region of Waziristan.

In his own words: ‘We haven’t stopped looking for him. We still do. But we haven’t had any signal or indication for a long while. It’s embarrassing, but we really don’t know where he is.’

Does it matter? I think it does.

Bin Laden is clearly no longer running Al Qaeda in operational terms. Nor is he the inspirational figure he once was. But he is still an important symbol.

He is the face of 9/11 – Al Qaeda’s one victory, its one moment of undisputed ‘glory’.

No one wants to back a loser. As Bin Laden himself put it: ‘When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.’

I am under no illusions, of course. The problem won’t be solved with Bin Laden’s capture or death. 

 

But if Bin Laden was to be found and caught, the Al Qaeda brand – its mystique and sense of invincibility – would surely take a serious hit. Contract article -