The IRA Puts Down Its Guns Posted by Suzanne Nossel

The IRA formally announced a cessation of its armed struggle, vowing to use only peaceful means to pursue its political aims.  This is a potentially momentous announcement, and one not to be overlooked in evaluating the progress of the war on terrorism.  If this is a sign that Islamic extremists have discredited terrorist tactics in the eyes of groups that were once quite comfortable with violence against civilians, that is no small matter.   

In theory, such a shift of mindset could lead to a reduction in terrorism as groups that do have concrete political aims conclude that by resorting to terrorist means they will utterly isolate and deligitimize themselves.

One problem, of course, is that there is little sign of such a shift in mindset in the Middle East, the source of most of the world's terrorism.  The Iraqi insurgency rages, and Palestinian terrorism seems to be back on the upswing on the eve of the Gaza withdrawal.  Articles like this one and this one reprinted on Watching America (one links to a Dubai television broadcast reporting that “The American's oppressive, inhuman, and undemocratic behavior in recent years has led to the creation of martyrdom-seeking movements everywhere”) point to the widening gulf in perceptions about terrorism between the west and the Mideast.

That the circle of those who reject terrorism may is widening in Europe and elsewhere represents an achievement.  But at the same time it may be shrinking in the Middle East, with the result that the overall threat to the U.S. and our allies could be greater and not lesser than when the fight on terror formally started nearly four years ago.  One step forward two steps back?

Attention to Africa: Be Careful What You Wish For Posted by Heather Hurlburt

This piece in Tuesday's Washington Post is a lovely bit of writing, even if it does draw too heavily on the "white man's burden" school of Africa reporting.  The substance of its coverage, focused on a unit of National Guard reserve Green Berets training Chadian soldiers, under the headline "US Pushes Anti-Terrorism in Africa," was, however, lacking in content and context.  Using the magic of the web, allow me to fill in some gaps.

1.  So, the US has just discovered a terrible terrorism threat in Africa?

For years now, Africa advocacy groups have been toying around with the theme that Africa presents ripe opportunities for terrorists, in hopes that the US would pay more attention.  Well, folks, my mother used to tell me about Saint Theresa, who cursed you by giving you what you thought you wanted -- and here we are.

According to the International Crisis Group, the highest threat of Islamist activity is actually in Mali, "star pupil of 1990s neo-liberal democratisation."  ICG (see links below) also says that the Salafist Brotherhood for Preaching and Combat was dramatically weakened by the raid described in the article.

In any case, what seems clear is that recognition of terrorism in Africa is not, in fact, leading to increased resources for government, health, education and other areas that will, in the long run, give people choices beyond joining terrorist groups and hunting gazelles and/or non-Muslims.   It's leading to more DoD programming with little regard for broader political consequences.  Oh well.

2.  And the military response is the best one?  Thank goodness the Pentagon is on the case.

Back in March, the International Crisis Group published a report on US anti-terrorism activities in Africa which had some rather pungent things to say about where there is a problem:

With the U.S. heavily committed in other parts of the world, however, Washington is unlikely to devote substantial non-military resources to the Sahel soon, even though Africa is slowly gaining recognition -- not least due to West Africa's oil -- as an area of strategic interest to the West. The resultant equation is laden with risks, including turning the small number of arrested clerics and militants into martyrs, thus giving ammunition to local anti-American or anti-Western figures who claim the PSI (and the proposed, expanded Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) still under consideration in the U.S. government) is part of a larger plan to render Muslim populations servile; and cutting off smuggling networks that have become the economic lifeblood of Saharan peoples whose livestock was devastated by the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, without offering economic alternatives. To avoid creating the kinds of problems the PSI is meant to solve, it needs to be folded into a more balanced approach to the region, one also in which Europeans and Americans work more closely together.

3.  Of course, this will also promote democratic accountability, since that is so important to the Bush Administration.

One of the things I love about working with the military is that by and large you get very straightforward answers to questions.  Our Post reporter is clearly troubled by the implications of training a military whose job is to protect an embattled and autocratic government frm its irate fellow-citizens.  She notices that members of Chad's president's small ethnic group control everything and are "feared" by others.  She poses the question to a soldier and gets the following answer, much more straightforward than any comment you will get on the subject back home:

"It just makes sense. They're the president's guard, and so in this region, with all the coups and stuff, you'd want them the best trained," said Capt. Jason, the team leader.  U.S. officials said the battalion is based in N'Djamena to safeguard the government and prevent its vehicles from falling into the hands of regional commanders.

Res ipsa loquitor.  (**Thanks, Dan, for correcting my Latin spelling.)  But there's really no further comment on the old democracy vs. stability argument needed.

4.  And nothing like this has ever been tried before?

Here's where readers can test out their wonk skills.  What do ACRI and ACOTA stand for?  Which was an initiative of the Clinton Administration, and which of Bush 43?  What was the difference between them?

The Africa Crisis Response Initiative was a State Department-managed, DOD-supported program to train selected African militaries for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, and promote Africans' ability to work together (basically, to build a peacekeeping capacity for circumstances in which the US and other Western nations would not send forces themselves).  This was a Clinton-era initiative in the wake of Rwanda.

In FY2004, the Bush Administration replaced this with Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance, focused "on training trainers and providing programs tailored to individual country needs."

Obviously, peacekeeping and terrorist-hunting are not the same things.  But we do have a dismaying track record of Administrations trying out and then abandoning ideas for Africa, as if no one had ever thought of them before.  And then we wonder why our programs encounter difficulty in producing long-term change.

So we know that the trouble with the war on terror is that our allies can't just be Britain, Poland, and those plucky democrats in Georgia and Ukraine.   Now that Secretary Rumsfeld has shored u p our bases in Uzbekistan, and gotten the Kyrgyz to say that they didn't really mean what they said when the Russians and Chinese were in the room, can't we be a little more honest about where we can't avoid dealing with thugs, and a little more discriminating about which thugs we hug?

One is just left with the impression here that this Administration's policy is more like that wonderful board game Risk -- "terrorists here?  let's put some chips there" -- than an actual calculation of the sum total of US interests and how to maximize them.

The International Crisis Group report I linked to above has some good policy suggestions, among them doing more cooperative work with the Europeans in Africa.  At least that would give our soldiers some up-to-date maps of Chad.

(It's good to be back.  I'll have my midwest trip report soon...)

Have Foot, Will Shoot Posted by Michael Signer

Last week, I wrote a piece suggesting that Al Qaeda's strategy to continue to catalyze world opinion against America may have backfired by attacking Great Britain during the G-8 summit.  The argument there was that Al Qaeda, viewed as a strategic actor, wants and needs to have major nations tilting against the United States and toward sympathy with Palestine and allegedly embattled Muslim nations in general.  But it screws this up by attacking a nation who's not as obviously polarizing -- the United Kingdom.

A WaPo article today by Robin Wright suggests that Al Qaeda may have stumbled in another way -- this time domestically (among its own people) rather than internationally (among the world community).  The article discusses survey results among several Muslim nations about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and democratization.  The survey was completed before the London bombings, but its results suggest what Al Qaeda was already up against:

Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday.

Predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries share to a "considerable degree" Western concerns about Islamic extremism, according to the poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.

The numbers are significant.  2 percent of Lebanese respondents and 7 percent of Turkish thought OBL would "do the right thing regarding world affairs."  In Morocco, OBL's support dropped from 50% to about 25% over the last two years, and in Indonesia from 58 percent to 37 percent.

The one exception was in support for opposition to the American occupying forces in Iraq.  Again, taking everyday, lay Muslims as the audience (rather than supercharged fanatical extremists), this makes a certain kind of sense.  It's easy to rationalize, generically, attacks on the imperialist superpower; it's harder to accept the strategy when it bleeds across boundaries into countries that you can conceive as your neighbor.  Ms. Wright quotes an academic:

"Muslims, like non-Muslims, are plugged into the world. . . . It is one thing to be caught up in the supposed glamour of attacking the superpower or global bully, but it is quite another to have to pay the consequences economically, politically -- not to mention personally. This is what has happened in places like Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, where many people now see extremist Islam as a threat to their lives, not a fantasy game of kick Uncle Sam."

The tipping point will come when everyday Muslims see extremist Islam, lurking in their communities and living nextdoor, as the threat.  People overshoot their aims all the time (as we've done in Iraq).  Hopefully, Al Qaeda has done the same thing by bombing innocent civilians in Great Britain, a country that has been gracious about assimilating Muslims (like, ironically, its large Pakistani community). 

God willing, they're pushing themselves over a cliff already.  If only the Bush Administration had the diplomatic savvy to give them a hand.

Facing a Terrorist Posted by Suzanne Nossel

The story is out today about how one of the London suicide bombers was a beloved teacher of immigrant kids in a primary school.  He is being described as "gently spoken, endlessly patient and hugely popular with children."

This is very tough to square with the mentality driving the Global War on Terror.  Among the 19 9/11 hijackers, there never really emerged a human story that gave one cause to consider them as anything but the face of evil.  It will take time to see what if any impact these revelations from Britain have on how terrorist acts by extremists are viewed, but in the meantime one personal story that I've long struggled with:

During the early 1990s I worked in South Africa for something called the National Peace Accord, a multi-party initiative to curb the political violence burning in the country's townships in-between Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990 and the first elections in 1994.

At the time, one of the notorious political prisoners in the country was a guy named Robert McBride who was on death row for having plotted a 1984 bombing at a beachfront bar called Magoos that had killed 3 people and injured 69.   The incident was part of the ANC's campaign of violence against "soft targets" - meaning civilians.   I had grown up associating the term terrorist primarily with Yasser Arafat and I mentally classed McBride in the same camp.   When I heard or read his name, the image was one of a dangerous deviant.

In my Peace Accord work I dealt daily with the ANC (a signatory to the Accord), but was often frustrated with the party's disorganization.  The ANC lacked a full-time regional coordinator who could help me plan our efforts to mediate disputes, convene local multi-party committees and monitor rallies and funerals.    One day an ANC contact told me that a new staffer had just been hired and put him on the phone.  This man was on the ball, cooperative and helpful.  We finalized plans for that weekend's rally and exchanged phone numbers.  Just before hanging up I asked his name.  I will never forget the feeling in my stomach when he said Robert McBride.

McBride had been pardoned as part of a political deal.  He is now (no joke) a police chief:

McBride is also the subject of a terrific documentary on SA's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

At the time I encountered McBride, I was dealing daily with members of the holdover apartheid era South African police and armed forces, people responsible for razing shanty-towns, brutal interrogations, deaths in detention, and (as we suspected and was later proven) funneling guns and money to stoke the very violence they professed to be trying to curb.  How to compare these men to McBride?

The ANC's cause was what had led me to South Africa - I thought theirs was the great liberation struggle of my time, and (as the daughter of 2 South Africans) I wanted to be part of it in some way.  I gradually understood that the definition of terrorist that covered McBride also probably covered Nelson Mandela, who led the ANC into armed resistance.   

Remember the saying "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"?  That's not something we've heard much since 9/11.  We associate it with another kind of terrorism an older and less menacing (though still deadly) version.  Freedom fighters are not out to destroy whole swaths of society.

What of al Qaeda?   I put them in a singular class:  a nihilistic cult of death with no concrete political aspirations or grievances, no openness to reason, no capacity to engage productively in society.  With many notable exceptions including this piece by Zbigniew Brzezinski, pointing out that some terrorists may be acting in part based on legitimate grievances has been a political no-go zone in America for the last four years. 

We don't know enough about this British schoolteacher to say whether his case challenges any of that.  That he lived a quiet, respectable life and was an ostensibly productive member of society says nothing about what his grievances and goals - real or imagined - may have been.    There's a good chance the primary school job was nothing more than a foolproof cover.  Maybe he was a naive flunky who got lured in to do the dirty work.  Was his effort part of a wholesale assault on the West, an heir to 9/11 or did he see it as something different?

We are a long way from understanding the motivations behind this schoolteacher-turned-suicide-bomber (or was it the other way 'round?), his predecessors, and those who will inevitably follow.    But we shouldn't let ourselves off the hook without even trying.

More Musings on London Posted by Suzanne Nossel

just a couple of questions that strike me:

Why has al Qaeda pulled off nothing close to 9/11 ever since.  As terrible as the Madrid and London attacks have been, they don't approach the scope of the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon, etc.  A few possibilities come to mind: 

- They Aren't Capable of Inflicting Worse - The GWOT has severely undercut al Qaeda's ability to operate, such that they could not pull off another 9/11.  This is a tempting thought, although the most difficult part of the 9/11 attack was the undetected advance planning (flight training, etc.) and coordination on the day of the assault.  The simultaneity of the London attack would also have taken careful coordination.  Perhaps al Qaeda has yet to develop a new method of wreaking mass casualties without significant firepower (as was done by using passenger jets as missiles).   In other words, perhaps al Qaeda had just one devastatingly clever terror scheme up its sleeve, and has yet to invent a second.

- Their Major Efforts Are Trained on Iraq - This is a variant of Bush's notion that we're fighting in Iraq to avoid fighting on the streets of New York.  It would hold that al Qaeda now attacks periodically in the West only to prove that they are still capable of hitting us at home.  Perhaps they've concluded that this limited objective can be accomplished without inflicting mass casualties.  In other words, perhaps they've concluded that we're significantly bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan with insurgent attacks, and that the main front of the war is being waged there.  Lest we believe that fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia will forestall attacks in the West, however, they periodically launch an assault.  According to this logic, with sustained casualties being inflicted in Iraq, large scale attacks in the West are in a sense superfluous.

- In the Wake of 9/11, Similar Effects Can Be Achieved With Fewer Casualties - A corollary of the point immediately above, this is the notion that because all subsequent attacks echo 9/11, their impact is more terrorizing than would otherwise be true.  September 11 magnifies all future efforts, allowing al Qaeda to get away with less effort and firepower.   Britain's stoic reaction to last week's attacks calls into question this notion, although the 9/11 hangover understandably remains highly potent here in the U.S.  It may be that Americans were as much or more terrorized by the London attacks than Londoners.

- They Differentiate Between the U.S. and Other Enemies, Saving the Worst for Us - This theory would suggest that another devastating attack along the lines of 9/11 may await us.  Because the Spanish and British are only following the U.S.'s lead (for example in Iraq), the scale of the attacks on them is lesser.  al Qaeda does not want the U.S.'s singular status as the supposed source of Western evil lost on any observers.

Curious what the Qaeda-watchers will say.

Imam Condems Attacks Posted by Lorelei Kelly

I received this encouraging note in my in-box:

A prominent New York City Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf today decried yesterday's terrorist attacks in London as "crimes against humanity."

In his statement, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said: The Holy Quran teaches us that "Whoever kills a human being...it is as if he has killed all humankind: and if he saves a human life, it is as if he has saved the lives of all humankind" Quran 5:32

Today also further emphasizes the need for greater efforts by Muslim leaders & thinkers to come together to present to the world the true essence of Islam as a religion of moderation and compassion. Just days ago, I attended a historic International Islamic Conference "True Islam and Its Role in Modern Society" in Amman, Jordan held under the auspices of His Majesty King Abdullah II. The goal of this conference was to put forth a constructive effort to unify two major branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi'ite, in standing against Islamic extremists.

In addition to gathering over 170 prominent scholars (representing all Madhahib or major schools of thought) from all parts of the Islamic world as well as America & Europe the conference succeeded in attaining the signatures of all attendees on a document that spoke against the practice of labeling others as apostates, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. It also set specific Islamic criteria for individuals to issue religious rulings (or fatwa). The document defined the qualifications for issuing fatwas, since the so-called fatwas justifying terrorism are all being issued outside of the established schools of religious law and are in clear violation of their common principles.

Imam Feisal is the Founder of ASMA: American Society for Muslim Advancement, an Islamic cultural and educational organization dedicated to building bridges between American Muslims and the American public: www.asmasociety.org and Co- Founder of The Cordoba Initiative, a multi faith organization whose mission is to heal the relationship between The Muslim World and America www.cordobainitiative.org

More on London Posted by Michael Signer

A few more thoughts on London, in no particular order:

-  The world and American solidarity with Great Britain is outstanding and heartening.  See these comments at Europhobia for more. 

-  This is going to be difficult and delicate to say, but amid the absolutely valid task of communicating to the world and America both the human tragedy and unfolding events in London, I hope the American media don't overhype the terrifying aspect of this.  Watching the Today show this morning scared me almost as much as the fact of the event itself.  Terrorism works through the exponential effect of the media's replaying of horrible images (not to mention repeating in hushed tones the common fear of Al Qaeda's supposed gathered might).  If the stories simply and only focus on fear and pain, there is a point where they replicate fear and pain, rather than record it.  There is no clear rule to follow here.  The media knows when it goes too far, and I hope they by and large take care not to make this event (50 people have died -- horrible, terrible, heart-wrenching -- but it's not 3,000) what the terrorists want it to be -- a paralytic event for the Western economy as well as the Western mind.

-  I'm not totally convinced that the first, or primary, thought on progressives' minds ought to be "Bush did this," or "Here's how we can finally show him he's wrong."  I hate as much as anyone the cheapness, partisanship, and thoughtlessness of the Iraq war and much of the GWOT in general, and do think the President and his staff are to blame.  But there are larger fish to fry.  Ever since 2002, when the President took the terribly exploitative step of scheduling the vote authorizing force in Iraq three weeks before the mid-term elections, the left has been mired in its own resentment -- which has morphed into ressentiment (which, if you remember your Nietzsche, means self-fulfilling anger that ultimately retards the bearer into backward thinking).  It's all a very understandable reaction to a shocking level of partisanship by the President in the GWOT.  But in my view we should not respond primarily as a party or a side.  We should make this less about the President's errors than about what we as a nation (not as a party or a political side) need to do. 

Al Qaeda -- A Strategic Error? Posted by Michael Signer

My heart goes out not just to Great Britain and Londoners as a whole but to many friends at my former law firm who work in London.  Amid this agony, the horror, and the pain of this morning, I want to try and take a step back -- if that's possible -- and suggest that Al Qaeda may have made a strategic error today.  The long-term consequences of this act may in fact help the GWOE (Global War on Extremism) rather than hurt it.

Tony Blair is saying that the attack was timed to coincide with G-8:

"Just as it is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack or a series of terrorist attacks, it is also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G-8." 

Yet the group claiming responsibility, the "Secret Al Qaeda Jihad Organization in Europe," is saying instead that the attack was meant to retaliate for Great Britain's cooperation with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Al Qaeda was intending the second aim but has stumbled into the first, I hope and pray that they have made a drastic miscalculation.  By hitting Great Britain at a time of most intimate involvement with the leaders of the world community -- not just at the G-8 summit but immediately after, for God's sake, the choice of London for the Olympics -- then Al Qaeda has f'ed this one up badly. 

The Bush Administration has screwed up world opinion so badly with Iraq that we had major countries like France and Germany (not to mention China) teetering on the edge of sympathy with Islamic extremists pleading American imperialism.  This just might be the Al Qaeda mistake we need to get the entire world community firmly back on the right side -- emotionally, diplomatically, militarily.

Not much of a silver lining, but it's something.

London - July 7, 2005 Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Frightening.   Just some preliminary thoughts:

- Prayers, wishes and strength to the people of London;

- As irrational as it may seem, who among us in a major city isn't afraid to get on the subway this morning;

- We're not fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here - that's flat-out fallacy and Bush should never utter it again.  We're fighting them in both places;

- GWOT is alive and kicking - for the Administration and for all of us - a long-term fight against extremism may be the overarching umbrella, but people's lens will continue to be terrorism - the images this morning guarantee that;

- Curious if this bears the marks of al Qaeda.  Some suggest no and another group is being cited as having claimed responsibility.  If it's a different organization, what are we now up against, how will that affect the lens through which we interpret the success/failure of anti-terror efforts so far, etc.

- Yes, Gleneagles should go on.  But Tony Blair may need to be with his people.  There's nothing wrong with that.  It is not a concession to terrorists.

The Vietnam Analogy Posted by Heather Hurlburt

I can't help it -- did anyone else have chills during the description of US advisers (sorry, I've forgotten the term Bush used, which wasn't advisers) living, working and fighting with Iraqi troops?

I yield to those who remember Vietnam...