Topic: Visiting the way stations of a new 'long war'

[Thucydides]

Spreading the conflict. Should the Western response be to try to engage on all cylinders, or to prioritize and only expend blood and treasure where it "counts". I am fairly certain that Somalia and the Horn of Africa can only be an active theater with the cooperation and support of one or more State powers; just look at how fast the so called Islamic Courts Union collapsed when Ethiopia sent a small contingent of troops into Somalia.

A bit of support for African nations threatened by Jihadis hosted by failed States, some SF and SOF "kinetic action" to keep the heads of the Jihadis down and provide detailed intelligence and most importantly, discovering the links between the Jihadi groups and their State sponsors and breaking the links (one way or another) should keep this area quiet. I stand by my prediction that without a State sponsor many theaters will devolve into regional conflicts with more limited impact on us.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/22/wqaeda122.xml

Al-Qa'eda target west from Horn of Africa

By David Blair in Addis Ababa
Last Updated: 2:38am BST 24/10/2007

Special report

In the rapidly changing battleground against international terrorism, the arid plains of the Horn of Africa are becoming a steadily more significant base from which al-Qa'eda's followers can launch their attacks.

# Core al-Qa'eda leadership growing
 
The Horn now ranks alongside the Middle East as the area of greatest concern to British counter-terrorism officials, coming second only to Pakistan, where al-Qa'eda's core leaders are ensconced.

Al-Qa'eda operatives based in the Horn, probably in the failed state of Somalia, could choose to target Britain, which has a large Somali community. Of the four men convicted for the failed bomb attacks in London on 21 July 2005, all were from the Horn and two were of Somali origin.

A few young Britons are also known to have travelled to Somalia in order to fight for the country's Islamist extremists. Meanwhile, al-Qa'eda may also strike in Kenya, which is filled with Western targets ranging from tourists to embassies.

Last week, America's embassy in Nairobi issued a new warning. "Islamic extremists in southern Somalia may be planning kidnapping operations inside Kenya," it said, adding that any abductions would be targeted at "Westerners", possibly tourists on the Kenyan coast.
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As the largest country in the Horn, Ethiopia forms the front line of this battle. Week after week, Ethiopia's security forces are in contact with their British counterparts. "The threats are real and immediate," said an Ethiopian government minister in Addis Ababa, the capital.

Until last December, a radical Islamist regime controlled much of neighbouring Somalia. These extremists, styling themselves the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), captured Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and restored a measure of order after years of chaos.

While many leading figures in this movement had no links with al-Qa'eda, Mogadishu and the area of southern Somalia under their control became a magnet for foreign terrorists. In the annals of Islamist propaganda, the UIC was praised for creating the only truly Muslim state in Africa.

Weapons, funds and armed volunteers reached southern Somalia from across the Muslim world.

Some were probably al-Qa'eda operatives, linked to the network's core leadership, and a few were British citizens. Whether deliberately or not, the UIC was drawn into al-Qa'eda's nexus.

The Ethiopian minister said: "Al-Qa'eda was there and all sorts of international jihadists were flocking to Somalia. There were terrorists who came from many different parts of the world."

Last December, Ethiopia's army responded with a lightning cross-border offensive, toppling the UIC and capturing Mogadishu. Hundreds of Islamist fighters were arrested, revealing the scale of outside support for the UIC.

"I know for sure that there were some from European countries, including those carrying British passports,"

added the minister. Four Britons were arrested in southern Somalia and later released. Human Rights Watch believes that about 100 other suspects are still in Ethiopian jails, including one Canadian. It adds that Ethiopia has allowed American security officials to interrogate them.

The CIA uses Ethiopia for "extraordinary rendition", a programme which critics say allows suspects to be transferred to third countries for torture and mistreatment.

But Ethiopia failed to net all of al-Qa'eda's operatives in southern Somalia. Some leading UIC figures also escaped. Hassan Dahir Aweys, the movement's titular head who appears on an American "watch-list" for suspected terrorists, avoided arrest.

Aweys was once linked to an extremist group styling itself "al-Ittihad al-Islamiya". This organisation may have played a supporting role in al-Qa'eda's successful attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Despite being the subject of an international travel ban, Aweys now lives in Eritrea's capital, Asmara.

Locked with Ethiopia in a bitter border dispute, Eritrea backed Somalia's Islamists on the principle that "my enemy's enemy is my friend". President Isaias Afewerki's regime in Asmara is now harbouring Aweys and other fugitives linked to terrorism.

While Eritrea does not yet appear on America's list of state sponsors of terror, a Western diplomat in Addis Ababa said that day may not be "far off".
    
Elsewhere, terrorist suspects who were scattered by the UIC's overthrow may have found sanctuary and begun regrouping, possibly in remote areas of Somalia, along the border with Ethiopia, and in neighbouring Kenya.

They could soon be in a position to plan and execute attacks.

"At this point, the balance of forces is not in their favour, but they still try. They have never given up attempting," said the Ethiopian minister. "They are coalescing in a way that enables them to attack."

There is another key danger, which Ethiopian officials are anxious to play down.

When Ethiopia's army captured Mogadishu, heavy fighting forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Ethiopian forces are still deployed in Mogadishu, where they are widely hated as an occupying army. Islamist fighters are now waging a guerrilla war against them.

The violent suppression of Mogadishu may create the conditions for terrorism to thrive.

Critics predict that Ethiopia's operation will sow more hatred, radicalise Somalis and open the way for an endless insurgency.

Tom Porteous, from Human Rights Watch, said that Ethiopia's army had been guilty of "war crimes" in Somalia, adding: "I think that conduct will have a radicalising effect and it will play into the hands of the insurgents."

Despite its bid to portray the operation as part of the "war on terrorism", Ethiopia's real motives are more complex. Somalia has a longstanding claim to the Ogaden, a region of eastern Ethiopia populated largely by Somalis.

The two countries even fought a war over this territory after Somalia invaded in 1977.

By ousting the UIC from Mogadishu, Ethiopia removed a hostile regime which was dedicated to capturing the Ogaden.

At heart, despite its status as a key US ally in the struggle against terrorism, the overriding goal of Ethiopia's operation was securing its eastern frontier against subversion.

Ethiopia must live with the constant danger posed by having a failed state next door.

Yet the lesson from Afghanistan's chaos of the 1990s, which allowed al-Qa'eda to plant itself in a safe haven, is that failed states not only threaten their neighbours but also menace the world at large.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

[Thucydides]

The cultural alliance of the "Progressives" and the Islamists:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/03/ichneumon-wasp-european-left-has.html

The Ichneumon Wasp

The European left has reacted to news that the suspects in the March 3 Madrid train massacre were Moroccans by blaming the United States, representing it as the vengeance of Al Qaeda which Spain brought on itself for helping America in Iraq. It was natural that Osama, who remembers the fall of the Abassid caliphate well, should recall how the Mongols erected a tower of skulls before every city sacked before sending word ahead that any resistance would suffer the same fate. And so the Spanish victims caused their own deaths by being tardy in submission. The Left is now the messenger boy of Islamofacism. They know their place.

In the early 1990s, cadres of the Philippine Communist New People's Army went to Mindanao to establish a "tactical alliance" with Muslim separatists. They brought their Maoist Red Books and some light machineguns, thinking to overawe the Islamic yokels with worldly wisdom obtained at the University of the Philippines and a few hoary tips from Soviet training manuals. Instead they found a hard core of thousands who had trained in Afghanistan and the Balkans, who scoffed at the rusty Communist machineguns and whose petrodollars made the paltry Euroleft donations seem like chump change. It was a moment of revelation. Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis describes a similar moment during the early meetings between ETA and Hamas. The home team had brought their pathetic assets to the table.

    The members of ETA said that although they had left in their sufficient arsenal a few hundred packages of dynamite, stolen a little earlier in two gunpowder magazines from France, they feared that it had begun to spoil. In spite of that, Hamas accepted the offer.

In return they were dazzled by a cave of wonders. The Islamists took ETA members to Afghanistan on forged Belgian passports, where they were trained in the use of MANPADS and given a few weapons via Greek freighters and a pleasure boat. That earnest was obviously convincing because somewhat later, the ETA sent 80 militants to Iraq for further training. The pecking order had been established and the coordination structured accordingly. In practice the relation between militants, even in the European and American Left, is governed by threat and intimidation. It is unnoticeable to the outer fringes of the Movement but grows increasingly more severe as one approaches the "committed" core. Among sympathizers in the media, entertainment and academic industries, obedience is largely enforced by social pressure or economic sanction. Closer in the pretenses are dropped and operational rules prevail. At the Central Committee level, as David Horowitz knows, decisions are enforced under penalty of death. Mercy is shown, within the Marxist IRA, by whether your kneecap is blown out from the front or the back. The arrival of the Islamists in the West, like a new gang arriving in town, has changed the dynamic considerably. They are given a wide berth by the Left, not merely out of a shared hatred for America, but out of fear -- pure operational fear. When the adnan or call to prayer is sounded from the bell tower at the state-funded University of Miami (hat tip: Little Green Footballs) to the approval of Leftist claques, there is a more than mutual admiration involved. People remember Salman Rushdie and the BBC Islamic prayer rooms have a certain preventive quality about them. The moribund Left knows who is boss and is selling the only thing they have remaining: access to media and cultural institutions, which suits the Islamofascists just fine. A division of labor has been established in which the Left provides the paralyzing injection on Western society leaving the jihadis a clear field within which to operate.

Steven Jay Gould, in arguing for the existence of natural evil, could find no better analogy than the ichneumon wasp, after which the monster in Alien was modeled, and which not coincidentally describes Islamofascism and its Leftist helpers.

    The ichneumon, like most wasps, generally live freely as adults but pass their larva life as parasites feeding on the bodies of other animals, almost invariably members of their own phylum, the Arthropoda. The most common victims are caterpillars (butterfly and moth larvae), but some ichneumons prefer aphids and other attack spiders. Most host are parasitized as larvae, but some adults are attacked, and many tiny ichneumons inject their brood directly into the eggs of their host.

    The free-flying females locate an appropriate host and then convert it into a food factory for their own young. Parasitologists speak of ectoparasitism when the uninvited guest lives on the surface of its host, and endoparasitism when the parasite dwells within. Among endoparasitic ichneumons, adult females pierce the host with their ovipositor and deposit eggs within. (The ovipositor, a thin tube extending backward from the wasp's rear end, may be many times as long as the body itself.) Usually, the host is not otherwise inconvenienced for the moment, at least until the eggs hatch and the ichneumon larvae begin their grim work of interior excavation.

    Among ectoparasites, however, many females lay their eggs directly upon the host's body. Since an active host would easily dislodge the egg, the ichneumon mother often simultaneously injects a toxin that paralyzes the caterpillar or other victim. The paralyzes may be permanent, and the caterpillar lies, alive but immobile, with the agent of its future destruction secure on its belly. The egg hatches, the helpless caterpillar twitches, the wasp larvae pierces and begins its grisly feast.

    Since a dead and decaying caterpillar will do the wasp larvae no good, it eats in a pattern that cannot help but recall, in our inappropriate anthropocentric interpretation, the ancient English penalty for treason — drawing and quartering, with its explicit object of extracting as much torment as possible by keeping the victim alive and sentient. As the king's executioner drew out and burned his client's entrails, so does the ichneumon larvae eat fat bodies and digestive organs first, keeping the caterpillar alive by preserving intact the essential heart and central nervous system. Finally, the larvae completes its work and kills its victim, leaving behind the caterpillar's empty shell. Is it any wonder that ichneumons, not snakes or lions, stood as the paramount challenge to God's benevolence during the heyday of natural theology?

This thing must never reach the stars.

[Thucydides]

The roots of WWII were planted at the end of WWI, and the war can be said to have started in 1937 with major conflict breaking out between Imperial Japan and China, or perhaps with the Spanish Civil War, with Fascist forces aided by Germany and Italy and Republican forces aided by the USSR and an ad hoc coalition of "progressive" organizations.

The Long War looks like it has far deeper roots than commonly accepted:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q1/view562.html#Friday

    Meanwhile, Hilaire Belloc wrote on Islam in his book _The Great Heresies_ in 1936, and had this to say:

        These things being so, the recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing, and of our civilization again fighting for its life against what was its chief enemy for a thousand years, seems fantastic. Who in the Mohammedan world today can manufacture and maintain the complicated instruments of modern war? Where is the political machinery whereby the religion of Islam can play an equal part in the modern world?

        I say the suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic _but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past:_ one might say that they are blinded by it.

        ............. For all these reasons (and many more might be added) men of foresight may justly apprehend, or at any rate expect, the return of Islam.

    The statement: men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past is worth engraving on plaques and hanging in planning centers and conference rooms.

    Belloc believed that the balance might be tipping toward Islam not so much militarily as because by 1936, the West no longer had strong beliefs of its own to weigh against the fervor of the muslims. The then-popular belief that had replaced Christianity in Western hearts was Nationalism. (By 1936 this was building up to an apocalypse.) A fuller quote is on http://m-francis.livejournal.com/

[Thucydides]

Knowing and understanding that we are fighting against State actors who use Asymmetrical war is important to formulate effective responses:

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/13/osama-bin-elvis/print

Osama bin Elvis
By Angelo M. Codevilla from the March 2009 issue

All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden. But tell that to the CIA and all the other misconceptualizers of the War on Terror.

Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals.

Dead or Alive?

Negative evidence alone compels the conclusion that Osama is long since dead. Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera's Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries. The audio and video tapes alleged to be Osama's never convinced impartial observers. The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between colors and styles of beard are small stuff.

Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

Also in 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, who heads Duke University's religious studies program, argued in a book on Osama's messages that their increasingly secular language is inconsistent with Osama's Wahhabism. Lawrence noted as well that the Osama figure in the December 2001 video, which many have taken as his assumption of responsibility for 9/11, wears golden rings—decidedly un-Wahhabi. He also writes with the wrong hand. Lawrence concluded that the messages are fakes, and not very good ones. The CIA has judged them all good.

Above all, whereas Elvis impersonators at least sing the King's signature song, "You ain't nutin' but a hound dawg," the words on the Osama tapes differ substantively from what the real Osama used to say—especially about the most important matter. On September 16, 2001, on Al Jazeera, Osama said of 9/11: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." Again, in the October interview with Tayseer Alouni, he limited his connection with 9/11 to ideology: "If they mean, or if you mean, that there is a link as a result of our incitement, then it is true. We incite…" But in the so-called "confession video" that the CIA found in December, the Osama figure acts like the chief conspirator. The fact that the video had been made for no self-evident purpose except perhaps to be found by the Americans should have raised suspicion. Its substance, the celebratory affirmation of a responsibility for 9/11 that Osama had denied, should also have weighed against the video's authenticity. Why would he wait to indict himself until after U.S. forces and allies had secured Afghanistan? But the CIA acted as if it had caught Osama red-handed.

The CIA should also have taken seriously the accounts of Osama's death. On December 26, 2001, Fox News interviewed a Taliban source who claimed that he had attended Osama's funeral, along with some 30 associates. The cause of death, he said, had been pulmonary infection. The New York Times on July 11, 2002, reported the consensus of a story widespread in Pakistan that Osama had succumbed the previous year to his long-standing nephritis. Then, Benazir Bhutto—as well connected as anyone with sources of information on the Afghan-Pakistani border—mentioned casually in a BBC interview that Osama had been murdered by his associates. Murder is as likely as natural death. Osama's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is said to have murdered his own predecessor, Abdullah Azzam, Osama's original mentor. Also, because Osama's capture by the Americans would have endangered everyone with whom he had ever associated, any and all intelligence services who had ever worked with him had an interest in his death.

New Osama, Real Osama

We do not know what happened to Osama. But whatever happened, the original one, the guy who looked and sounded like a spoiled Saudi kid turned ideologue, is no more. The one who exists in the tapes is different: he is the world's terror master, endowed with inexplicable influence. In short, whoever is making the post-November 2001 Osama tapes is pretending to far greater power than Osama ever claimed, much less exercised.

The real Osama bin Laden, like the real al Qaeda over which he presided, was never as important as reports from Arab (especially Saudi) intelligence services led the CIA to believe. Osama's (late) role in Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance was to bring in a little money. Arab fighters in general, and particularly the few Osama brought, fought rarely and badly. In war, one Afghan is worth many Arabs. In 1990 Osama told Saudi regent Abdullah that his mujahideen could stop Saddam's invasion of the kingdom. When Abdullah waved him away in favor of a half-million U.S. troops, Osama turned dissident, enough to have to move to Sudan, where he stayed until 1996 hatching sterile anti-Saudi plots until forced to move his forlorn band to Afghanistan.

There is a good reason why neither Osama nor al Qaeda appeared on U.S. intelligence screens until 1998. They had done nothing noteworthy. Since the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, however, and especially after director of Central Intelligence George Tenet imputed responsibility for 9/11 to Osama "game, set, and match," the CIA described him as terrorism's prime mover. It refused to countenance the possibility that Osama's associates might have been using him and his organization as a flag of convenience. As U.S. forces were taking over Afghanistan in 2001, the CIA was telling Time and Newsweek that it expected to find the high-tech headquarters from which Osama controlled terrorist activities in 50 countries. None existed. In November 2008, without factual basis and contrary to reason, the CIA continued to describe him and his organization as "the most clear and present danger to the United States." It did not try to explain how this could be while, it said, Osama is "largely isolated from the day to day operations of the organization he nominally heads." What organization?

Axiom and Opposite

Why such a focus on an organization that was never large, most of whose known associates have long since been killed or captured, and whose assets the CIA does not even try to catalogue? The CIA's official explanation, that al Qaeda has "metastasized" by spreading its expertise, is an empty metaphor. But pursuant to it, the U.S. government accepted the self-designation as "al Qaeda" of persons fighting for Sunni-Baathist interests in Iraq, and has pinned the label gratuitously on sundry high-profile terrorists while acknowledging that their connection to Osama and Co. may be emotional at most. But why such gymnastics in the face of Osama's incontrovertible irrelevance? Because focusing on Osama and al Qaeda affirms a CIA axiom dating from the Cold War, an axiom challenged during the Reagan years but that has been U.S. policy since 1993, namely: terrorism is the work of "rogue individuals and groups" that operate despite state authority. According to this axiom, the likes of Osama run rings around the intelligence services of Arab states—just like the Cold War terrorists who came through Eastern Europe to bomb in Germany and Italy and to shoot Pope John Paul II supposedly acted despite Bulgarian intelligence, despite East Germany's Stasi, despite the KGB. This axiom is dear to many in the U.S. government because it leads logically to working with the countries whence terrorists come rather than to treating them as enemies.

But what if terrorism were (as Thomas Friedman put it) "what states want to happen or let happen"? What if, in the real world, infiltrators from intelligence services—the professionals—use the amateur terrorists rather than the other way around? What is the logical consequence of noting the fact that the terrorist groups that make a difference on planet Earth—such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the PLO, Colombia's FARC—are extensions of, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Venezuela? It is the negation of the U.S. government's favorite axiom. It means that when George W. Bush spoke, and when Barack Obama speaks, of America being "at war" against "extremism" or "extremists" they are either being stupid or acting stupid to avoid dealing with the nasty fact that many governments wage indirect warfare.

In short, insisting on Osama's supposed mastery of al Qaeda, and on equating terrorism with al Qaeda, is official U.S. policy because it forecloses questions about the role of states, and makes it possible to indict as warmongers whoever raises such questions. Osama's de facto irrelevance for seven years, however, has undermined that policy's intellectual legitimacy. How much longer can presidents or directors of the CIA wave the spectra of Osama and al Qaeda before people laugh at them?

An Intellectual House of Cards

Questioning osama's relevance to today's terrorism leads naturally to asking how relevant he ever was, and who might be more relevant. That in turn quickly shows how flimsy are the factual foundations on which rest the U.S. government's axioms about the "war on terror." Consider: We know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) planned and carried out 9/11. But there is no independent support for KSM's claim that he acted at Osama's direction and under his supervision. On the contrary, we know for sure that the expertise and the financing for 9/11 came from KSM's own group (the U.S. government has accepted but to my knowledge not verified that the group's core is a biological family of Baluchs). This group carried out the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and every other act for which al Qaeda became known. The KSM group included the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings Abdul Rahman Yasin, who came from, returned to, and vanished in Iraq, as well as Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that bombing, who came to the U.S. from Iraq on an Iraqi passport and was known to his New York collaborators as "Rashid the Iraqi." This group had planned the bombing of U.S. airliners over the Pacific in 1995. The core members are non-Arabs. They had no history of religiosity (and the religiosity they now display is unconvincing). They were not creatures of Osama. Only in 1996 did the group come to Osama's no-account band, and make it count.

In life, as in math, you must judge the function |of a factor in any equation by factoring it out and seeing if the equation still works. Factor out Osama. Chances are, 9/11 still happens. Factor out al Qaeda too. Maybe 9/11 still happens. The other bombing plots sure happened without it. But if you factor out the KSM group, surely there is no 9/11, and without the KSM group, there is no way al Qaeda would have become a household word.

Who, precisely, are KSM and his reputed nephews? That is an interesting question to which we do not know the answer, and are not about to find out. Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after a trial that focused on his guilt and that abstracted from his associations. Were our military tribunal to accede to KSM's plea of guilty, he would avoid any trial at all. Moreover, the sort of trial that would take place before the tribunal would focus on proving guilt rather than on getting at the whole truth. It would not feature the cross-examination of witnesses, the substantive proving and impeachment of evidence, and the exploration of alternative explanations of events. But real trials try all sides. Do we need such things given that KSM confessed? Yes. There is no excuse for confusing confessions with truth, especially confessions in which the prisoners confirm our agencies' prejudices.

The excuse for limiting the public scrutiny of evidence is the alleged need to protect intelligence sources. But my experience, as well as that of others who have been in a position to probe such claims, is that almost invariably they protect our intelligence agencies' incompetence and bureaucratic interests. Anyhow, the public's interest in understanding what it's up against should override all others.

Understanding the Past, Dealing With the Future

Focusing on Osama bin Elvis is dangerous to America's security precisely because it continues to substitute in our collective mind the soft myth that terrorism is the work of romantic rogues for the hard reality that it can happen only because certain states want it to happen or let it happen. KSM and company may not have started their careers as agents of Iraqi intelligence, or they may have quit the Iraqis and worked for others, or maybe they just worked for themselves. But surely they were a body unto themselves. As such they fit Osama's description of those responsible for 9/11 as "individuals with their own motivation" far better than they fit the CIA's description of them as Osama's tools.

More important, focusing on Osama and al Qaeda distorts our understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan. The latter-day Taliban are fielding forces better paid and armed than any in the region except America's. Does anyone suggest seriously that Osama or al-Zawahiri are providing the equipment, the money, or the moral incentives? Such amounts of money can come only from the super wealthy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The equipment can come only through dealers who work at the sufferance of states, and can reach the front only through Pakistan by leave of Pakistani authorities. Moreover, the moral incentives for large-scale fighting in Pushtunistan can come only as part of the politics of Pushtun identity. Hence sending troops to Afghanistan to fight Pushtuns financed by Saudis, supported by Pakistanis, and disposing of equipment purchased throughout the world, with the objective of "building an Afghan nation" capable of preventing Osama and al Qaeda from messing up the world from their mountain caves, is an errand built on intellectual self-indulgence.

Intellectual Authority

The CIA had as much basis for deeming Osama the world's terror master "game, set, and match" in 2001 as it had in 2003 for verifying as a "slam dunk" the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and as it had in 2007 for determining that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Mutatis mutandis, it was on such bases that the CIA determined in 1962 that the Soviets would not put missiles in Cuba; that the CIA was certain from 1963 to 1978 that the USSR would not build the first strike missile force that it was building before its very eyes; that the CIA convinced Bush 41 that the Soviet Union was not falling apart and that he should help hold it together; that the CIA assured the U.S. government in 1990 that Iraq would not invade Kuwait, and in 1996 that neither India nor Pakistan would test nuclear weapons. In these and countless other instances, the CIA has provided the US government and the media with authoritative bases for denying realities over which America was tripping.

The force of the CIA's judgments, its authority, has always come from the congruence between its prejudices and those of America's ruling class. When you tell people what they want to hear, you don't have to be too careful about premises, facts, and conclusions. Our problem, in short, is not the CIA's mentality so much as the unwillingness of persons in government and the "attentive public" to exercise intellectual due diligence about international affairs. Osama bin Laden's role may be as good a place as any to start.

Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a senior editor of The American Spectator, was a Foreign Service officer and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985. He was the principal author of the 1980 presidential transition report on intelligence. He is the author of The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility.

[Thucydides]

Fracturing the Islamic world and cleaning up the pieces might well be easier than what we are trying now. It might even be quite easy to do...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LI14Ak01.html

Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior
By Spengler

Asymmetrical warfare was supposed to benefit the insurgents. For the price of a few flying lessons a gang of jihadis brought down the World Trade Center, a terrorist with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and powdered Tang can blow up an airplane, and a few pounds of plutonium can cripple a major city.

Meet the Reverend Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior. It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism).

As the youngest of the major religions (apart from Sikhism), Islam must defend its historical narrative more fiercely than the older religions. Islam never withstood the withering criticism of Enlightenment scholars from Spinoza to the Jesus Project determined to discredit sacred texts. And because the Koran is not a human report of God's word, like the Christian and Jewish bibles, but rather the "uncreated word" of Allah himself, any challenge to its authority cuts at Islam's credibility. The fact that Islam has established neither a Magisterium in the Catholic sense, nor an authoritative tradition like that of Orthodox Judaism, leaves it decentralized, divided and fractious.

United States President Barack Obama, top US commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus, the Vatican, and every talking head across the political spectrum screamed in unison until this Florida fringe preacher with a congregation that could meet in a double-wide listened, rather like Dr Seuss' Horton hearing the Who.

Enlightened opinion prevailed, but at high cost: L'Affaire Jones demonstrated that a madman carrying a match and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers. Leftists liked to brag during the Vietnam war that a US$10 hand grenade could destroy a $10 million plane. What's the dollar value of the damage from a used paperback edition of the Koran, available online for a couple of dollars?

As George Packer wrote on the New Yorker website on September 10, "Reason tries in its patient, level-headed way to explain, to question, to weigh competing claims, but it can hardly make itself heard and soon gives up ... One man in Gainesville who represents next to nobody triggers thousands of men around the globe who know next to nothing about it to turn violent, which triggers more violence ... it's so easy to get people to go crazy. If I wanted to, I could probably start another India-Pakistan war all by myself." Several of the world's intelligence services doubtless are thinking along the same lines.

Instead of trying to stabilize the Islamic world, suppose - just for the sake of argument - that one or two world powers set out to throw it into chaos. I am not advocating such a strategy, only evaluating its effectiveness.

It is a misperception that America is the main object of Muslim rage. Most Muslim rage is directed against other Muslims. Religious violence perpetrated by Muslims against other Muslims is a routine feature of life in Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Of the 1,868 acts of religious violence listed by the Global Terrorism Database, all but a handful were conducted by Muslims on Muslims. America has done its best to suppress such violence. What if America (or Russia, or India, or China) were to incite it?

The Islamic world's claim on Western attention rests on its propensity to fail. America has spent a trillion dollars and 5,700 lives to prop up notionally pro-American regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention $2 billion a year to Egypt, and several hundred million each to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, as well as smaller sums to other Muslim countries.

America will continue its efforts to stabilize fractious Islamic lands for the foreseeable future. Obama holds a personal as well as an ideological commitment to foster friendship with the Muslim world, and the Republicans will not admit that they were mistaken to commit so much blood and treasure to nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But America's attitude might change. Iraq may descend into civil war, especially now that the Americans have armed and trained 100,000 Sunni fighters in the so-called Sunni Awakening, Petraeus' "rent-an-Arab" strategy to contain communal violence until American troops could leave.

Pakistan's Punjabis might weary of the Pashtun tribes who have made common cause with the Taliban and Afghanistan. The Balochis, whose homeland is divided between Iran and Pakistan, might revolt successfully against both. Iran - particularly if an Israeli strike crippled its nuclear ambitions - might turn aggressive towards its neighbors. Lebanese Sunnis might have it out with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Some future American administration, though, might throw up its hands in frustration, and a future intelligence chief might whisper to the president, "If they want to kill each other, why not help them?" That was America's stance during the Iran-Iraq War. Divide-and-conquer served the British well; that is how they managed to rule India with only 3,000 regular army officers, most of whom spoke local dialects and donned local dress.

Unlike the British, America has little aptitude for manipulation. Americans believe that everyone is like them and that all movies have happy endings. To start with, Americans don't learn languages. According to the Modern Language Association's (MLA's) 2006 survey of instruction in foreign languages, American universities enrolled only 2,463 students in Arabic at the advanced level. Of those "advanced" students, perhaps one in 10 would become expert. Apart from immigrants, whom intelligence agencies employ only with great caution, the prospective hiring pool of advanced students in Arabic is measured in the hundreds.

Among other languages spoken in Muslim countries, the MLA reports the following number of students (but does not tell us how many are "advanced"): 0 Albanian, 94 Bengali, 243 Farsi, 301 Indonesian, 5 Kurdish, 5 Malay, 103 Pashto, 4 Somali, 624 Turkish, and 344 Urdu. Even if America set out to promote sectarian conflict in the Muslim world, it would have great difficulty making its intentions understood.

Russia has more urgent reasons to sow discord in Muslim countries, and centuries of experience in doing so. Simply because America has committed its reputation and resources to stability in the Muslim world, Russia has an interest in promoting the opposite. Russia views the world as a chessboard, in which pressure on the flanks increases its control of the center of the board. Moscow's on-again, off-again deal to supply Iran with an advanced anti-missile system, for example, represents a bargaining chip that it can use with Washington for a variety of purposes.

There is a deeper Russian interest in fostering Muslim weakness, though. Before mid-century the Russian Federation likely will have a Muslim majority. Russia already depends on 12 million guest workers, overwhelmingly from Turkey or from the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union. Some analysts, for example Stratfor's George Friedman, predict that Turkey will challenge Russia for control of the Caucusus. At the moment, Russian and Turkish interests are linked. Turkey wants to export Russian oil and employ its surplus workers building Russian infrastructure. But this may not be true forever, and Russia must guard against the rise of a new Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey.

Turkey is a hotbed of prospective heresies, often rooted in ethnic substrata that resisted the mainstream Arabic model of Islam. Between 15% and 30% of Turks adhere to the Alevi sect, a nominally Shi'ite sect whose character is hard to define; different scholars attribute influences from Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and even Byzantine Christianity. The most prominent Alevi scholar in the West was the convert Muhammad Sven Kalisch at the University of Munster in Germany. Professor Kalisch since has repudiated Islam and resigned his position as chief instructor of Muslim pedagogues for the German school system, although he continues to teach at Munster.

Kalisch, as I reported at the time, scandalized the Muslim world with a 2008 paper claiming that the Prophet Mohammed was a figure of myth [1]. Citing the work of Western Koran critics, Kalisch claimed that the prophet's life was the fabrication of 8th-century apologists:

    It is a striking fact that such documentary evidence as survives from the Sufnayid period makes no mention of the messenger of god at all. The papyri do not refer to him. The Arabic inscriptions of the Arab-Sasanian coins only invoke Allah, not his rasul [messenger]; and the Arab-Byzantine bronze coins on which Muhammad appears as rasul Allah, previously dated to the Sufyanid period, have not been placed in that of the Marwanids. Even the two surviving pre-Marwanid tombstones fail to mention the rasul.

Islam, he concluded, was a revival of the old Gnosticism expunged by Christianity and embraced instead by the Arabian tribes. In spite of the provocative character of his claims, Kalisch was defended by the large community of Alevi Turks resident in Germany.

Kalisch appears to be the theological equivalent of a lone gunman. He devised his thesis quite on his own, and quashed the controversy he created by abjuring Islam. Nonetheless, he showed how simple it is to invent new Islamic heresies. With handful of provocateurs and a small amount of funding, his project well might have become more than a minor irritation. With a dozen scholars, a score of operatives on the ground, and a budget of a few million dollars, a competent intelligence service could have a handful of Muslim heresies merrily contending for the mantle of the prophet.

Turkey may have its own reasons to meddle in its neighbors' religious affairs. It wants to be the dominant Muslim power, and well may do so; it has the combination of people (over 70 million), economic capability and military power to do so, and does not want its historical rival Iran to become a regional hegemon. A quarter of Iranians are Turkish-speaking Azeris, and an ascendant Iran would have the means and motive to work enormous mischief in Turkey.

Far too much was made of the theology department at the University of Ankara, which Newsweek in 2008 hailed as "the new face of Islam". A new edition of the Hadith (narrations concerning the words and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed) and a desultory gesture towards modernization made the Ankara group celebrities for a moment - before Turkey turned towards a more fundamentalist reading of Islam under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At the time, Sunni fundamentalist websites denounced the Ankara theologians as agents of the Vatican, citing the presence in the department of a Turkish-speaking Jesuit [2]. That is ludicrous; perhaps more than any Catholic order, the Jesuits go to extreme lengths respect other cultures and religions. Although this particular accusation was the product of paranoia, paranoids still have enemies. If Turkish intelligence decided to employ its university theology departments to manufacture designer heresies for use in Iran, for example, the capability is in place.

This sort of speculation may seem fanciful at the moment. In the context of regional conflict, however, the prospect of asymmetrical warfare by religious means might become far more practical. There are so many ways in which the region might descend into religious conflict that it is pointless to make book on the scenarios. In another location I suggested that Petraeus' temporary success in the 2008 surge might lay the groundwork for a Thirty Years War in the region [3]. Weapons are there to be used, and theological weapons may turn out to be some of the nastiest means of war-fighting at hand.

Notes
1. Scandal exposes Islam's weakness Asia Times Online, November 18, 2008.
2. Tin-opener theology from Turkey Asia Times Online, June 3, 2008.
3. General Petraeus' Thirty Years War Asia Times Online, May 4, 2010.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman.

[jollyjacktar]

Fracturing the Islamic world and cleaning up the pieces might well be easier than what we are trying now. It might even be quite easy to do...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LI14Ak01.html

Oh.... I like this 

[Thucydides]

Another confused American response. If the pro democracy faction does not get some sort of support or encouragement, then the most ruthless may well become the winners in Egypt. If it is the government, they will probably be even less accommodating towards US interests while concentrating on keeping the lid on things.If some species of islamist hard liners come to power, then things only get worse.

The Bush administration's strategy of supporting democratic movements and allowing them to unfold is starting to look prescient:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/revolution-is-in-the-air-but-us-sticks-to-same-old-script-20110128-1a8e6.html

Revolution is in the air but US sticks to same old script
January 29, 2011
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Washington appears addicted to propping up tyrants, writes Paul McGeough.

Events in the Middle East are moving too fast for the Obama administration to think it can get away with Plan A and Plan B reaction strategies according to the regimes or leaders it wants to keep in and out of power.

Consider the response of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Hezbollah tightening its grip on power in Lebanon this week - Washington might have to pull its funding worth hundreds of millions for Lebanon, her office warned.

Advertisement: Story continues below
But as democracy demonstrators were confronted by thousands of baton-wielding policemen in the streets in Cairo, there was no mention of pulling the $US2 billion-plus cheque that Washington writes for the octogenarian President, Hosni Mubarak, each year.

Instead, a rhetorical nugget that Mubarak's mouthpieces would use in their defence - ''our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable'' and then some namby-pamby words about how Mubarak was ''looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people''.

That response came on Wednesday - more thugs in and out of uniform in the streets, more tear-gas and 860 more young Egyptians banged up in prison because, Oliver-like, they had the audacity to stand in the streets and to ask for more. Such is stability.

Undaunted, Clinton tried again on Wednesday, when she called on the Egyptian authorities to cease blocking the communications on which the demonstrators relied. But on Thursday the Twitter and Facebook websites were inaccessible and mobile-phone users in Cairo said that it was difficult or impossible to sent text messages.

Clinton uttered the ''stability'' line early in the week - before the seriousness of what is unfolding in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria came in to focus. Consider how it might be interpreted by ordinary Egyptians - the human rights of 80 million people have been trampled for 30 years but what the US Secretary of State is most concerned about is the stability of the state.

And, even as the focus sharpened, the administration refused to tell the truth about the despot upon whom Washington relies - ''Egypt is a strong ally,'' the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, replied when asked if the administration still supported Mubarak.

And, in a week in which the Middle East's historic self-started wave of democracy protests came to a head, Barack Obama might have used his State of the Union address to cheer along all the protesters; and perhaps to warn all the leaders, country by country, of the fate that awaits them.

Instead he confined his specific remarks to Tunisia, saying: ''The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.'' So, in a region of 333 million people, where to varying degrees a good 325 million are under the heel of unelected leaders, the US President addressed only little Tunisia.

The lame excuse offered to reporters was that Cairo erupted late in the drafting process of the speech but that last ''aspirations of all people'' phrase was a recognition that ''what happens in Tunisia resonates around the world''.

By current American thinking it would never do to have Islamists in power in the Palestinian Occupied Territories or in Lebanon and therefore they heed every despot's warning that the Islamists are waiting in the wings across North Africa and the Middle East.

But lost in the lunge to protect US strategic and commercial interests by propping up the region's dictator class is any realisation that that support is what leaves the youth of the region under-educated and under-employed and, thereby, ripe for the picking by Islamist and other underground movements.

In Tunisia the revolutionaries are still searching for a leader who can articulate their demands. And this week a leader flew in to Cairo - searching for a revolution. That was the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, whose return to Egypt underscores a challenge brought on across the region as much by the local community as the international community - the grooming of those who might form a half-decent opposition.

Tracing an arc through Obama's approach to the Middle East, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Fouad Ajami described the President's foreign policy pragmatism as ''a break of faith with democracy''.

Alluding to the suppression of demonstrations in Tehran after the contested 2009 presidential election, he wrote in Lebanon's Daily Star: ''American diplomacy was not likely to alter the raw balance of power between the regime and its democratic oppositionists. But the timidity of American power and the refusal of the Obama administration to embrace the cause of the opposition must be reckoned one of American foreign policy's great moral embarrassments.''

The Mubarak machine's contempt for popular aspirations and whatever the US might think of them was on full display yesterday when Safwat el-Sherif, the head of the ruling National Democratic Party, feigned obliviousness to the reality of political power in Egypt as he lectured the protesters - ''democracy has its rules and process - the minority does not force its will on the majority''.

Abdel Moneim Said, a stooge government-appointed publisher, echoed Hillary Clinton's midweek ''stability'' comment when he told reporters: ''I can't think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime.''

Finding the right policy mix to influence events without being accused of interfering is a fine balance that some observers have concluded eludes the Obama administration.

''It's about identifying the US too closely with these changes and thereby undermining them; and not finding ways to nurture them enough,'' Aaron David Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, observers on the ground in the region shake their heads. ''People want moral support,'' said Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Doha Centre. ''They want to hear words of encouragement - right now they don't have that. They feel the world doesn't care and is working against them.''

His point seems to be this: it is time Washington thought in terms of investing in people in the region, not in dictators.

[Journeyman]

 I would argue that the media reporting on Egypt may be a tad oversimplified. It's not simply protesters, 'Oliver-like,' asking for more.

With the Egyptian police no longer patrolling the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, Hamas is pouring in personnel and weapons for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is fully engaged in the rioting -- in addition to supplying demonstrators with food, drinks, and first aid.

I've heard reports (unconfirmed) that government security forces in plainclothes are destroying public property in order to support the premise that the protesters represent a public menace, 'justifying' further military intervention; currently it remains an internal security-led response.

This morning al-Jazeera reported that Mubarak has designated Ahmed Shafiq as the new prime minister. Shafiq is the former commander of the air force and minister for civil aviation. This follows immediately after having appointed Omar Suleiman, former Egyptian intelligence chief, as vice president, a position that has been vacant for the past 30 years.


So rather than seeing this as "oh those poor oppressed people, against that nasty old dictator," I suspect there are several games afoot.

One is that there is a great influx of radical islamists behind the protests, given Mubarak's ties to the Americans and his willingness to deal with Israel.

Concurrently, I suspect that the military is managing Mubarak’s exit; he is losing control, while the military is ascendant (and messing with Mubarak's plans to be succeeded by his son, Gamal). The military will try to keep confrontations with the demonstrators a police/internal security matter, while juggling the the political infighting.

[Baden Guy]

New York Times

 January 29, 2011
Urging Restraint, U.S. Military Faces Test of InfluenceBy ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON — The officer corps of Egypt’s powerful military has been educated at defense colleges in the United States for 30 years. The Egyptian armed forces have about 1,000 American M1A1 Abrams tanks, which the United States allows to be built on Egyptian soil. Egypt permits the American military to stage major operations from its bases, and has always guaranteed the Americans passage through the Suez Canal.

The relationship between the Egyptian and American militaries is, in fact, so close that it was no surprise on Friday to find two dozen senior Egyptian military officials at the Pentagon, halfway through an annual week of meetings, lunches and dinners with their American counterparts.

By the afternoon, the Egyptians had cut short the talks to return to Cairo, but not before a top American Defense Department official, Alexander Vershbow, had urged them to exercise “restraint,” the Pentagon said.

It remained unclear on Saturday, as the Egyptian Army was deployed on the streets of Cairo for the first time in decades, to what degree the military would remain loyal to the embattled president, Hosni Mubarak.

But among the many fears of the United States was the possibility that, despite the army’s seemingly passive stance on Saturday, the Egyptian armed forces would begin firing on the protesters — an action that would probably be seen as leading to an end to the army’s legitimacy.

“If they shoot on the crowd, they could win tomorrow, and then there will be a revolt that will sweep them away,” said Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on the Middle East and Asia at the Brookings Institution, who predicts that in any event, Mr. Mubarak will step down.

A possible successor — and a sign of how closely the military is intertwined with the ruling party — is Omar Suleiman, head of military intelligence, who state media said had been sworn in as the new vice president.

Mr. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official who led the 2009 White House review of United States strategy in Afghanistan, said that the Egyptian military would be a critical player in any negotiated settlement to remove Mr. Mubarak from power.

At the Pentagon on Saturday morning, American military officials said that the Egyptian Army was acting professionally and that they had no indications that it had swung over all to the side of the uprising. At the same time, the officials noted, the army has not cracked down on the protests.

“They certainly haven’t inflicted any harm on protesters,” said Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “They’re focused mainly on protecting the institutions of government, as they should be.”

United States military officials said there was no formal line of communication between the Joint Chiefs and the Egyptian military, although they said there might be conversations if the crisis deepens. Admiral Mullen had been scheduled to meet on Monday in Washington with Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, who is both the Egyptian defense chief and the chief of staff of the Egyptian Army. But General Enan was the leader of the delegation of senior Egyptian officials at the Pentagon and had left abruptly for Cairo on Friday night.

The question now is how much influence the United States has on the Egyptian military and exactly what, given the chaos on the streets of Cairo, it would like the Egyptian armed forces to do other than exercise restraint.

“Are relations good enough for us to raise questions about excessive repression?” said Anthony H. Cordesman, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Yes. Is it a force that will listen to us if there is a military takeover and we want them to move to a democratically elected government as soon as possible? They will listen. But this is a very proud group of people. The fact that they will listen doesn’t mean we can in any way leverage them.”

American military officials said on Friday that they had had no formal discussions with their Egyptian counterparts at the Pentagon about how to handle the uprising. “No guidance was given,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “In other words, we didn’t say anything to them about how they should handle it, and they didn’t tell us about how they were going to handle it.”

But, General Cartwright said, “hallway” discussions did take place with the Egyptian military about the protests, and American military officials said contingency plans had been made should American Embassy in Cairo have to be evacuated.

Unlike the feared Egyptian police forces, which had mostly withdrawn from central Cairo on Saturday, the army is considered professional, not repressive and a stable force in the country’s politics. Egyptian men all serve in the army, which for the most part enjoys popular support.

But the military is also loyal to Mr. Mubarak, who led the air force before becoming president. The three other presidents who served since the 1952 military coup that overthrew the monarchy have also been generals.

“The Egyptian military is the regime, and the regime is the Egyptian military,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Mubarak’s successor is likely to either be his son, someone else from the military or someone blessed by the military.”

Since 1978, the United States has given Egypt $35 billion in military aid, making it the largest recipient of conventional American military and economic aid after Israel.

Egypt now receives about $1.5 billion in United States aid annually; the Obama administration warned Mr. Mubarak on Friday that it would review that aid.

Most recently, Egypt bought 24 F-16 fighter jets from the United States as well as a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/world/middleeast/30military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print



 

[Journeyman]

As noted above, the internal security forces have been replaced by army troops, tanks, and APCs. During the day, the F16s overflew Cairo several times, (showing presence, not threatening).

Again, from following on al Jazeera, the crowd seems to be largely milling about and chanting....with people taking their pictures in front of the armoured vehs. While the Egyptians have a very high opinion of their military, things can obviously get ugly in stand-off situations.

The military is representative of the society as a whole. There is concern about the number, and radicalization, of islamists in the ranks -- particularly at the LCol/Col rank level, where they could do the most damage. The fact that their presence is known, but they've not been purged, suggests that they're not particularly radicalized. However, this may be an opportunity to rise up against policies they believe to be wrong, ie - ties to the US and Israel.

[Old Sweat]

in my opinion, no one can make any sort of prediction of how this will turn out with any degree of certainty. It is late afternoon there now, no leader seems to be emerging, the US administration is, so far, keeping quiet, and all we can do is wait and see. A wild card is the Israelis. Their ideal situation is probably a return to the staus quo, but they too should probably keep a low profile.

I wonder what the executive jet traffic out of Egypt looks like?

[Journeyman]

in my opinion, no one can make any sort of prediction of how this will turn out with any degree of certainty.

As for a non-military leadership candidate, while I avoid betting on anything that can talk, my money would be on Mohamed ElBaradei -- Nobel Prize; former DG of the International Atomic Energy Agency; outspoken democracy campaigner within Egypt.

I suspect the various factions are looking for an "interim" leader, post-Mubarak, until 'their' group can take control. ELBaradei seems to be one of the few with high enough stature, and who is least offensive to most factions.

Of course, free opinions are worth every penny 

[Old Sweat]

Our combined opinions and ten bucks will get us started at the Brew Pub. After I posted, I mused to myself that many post-revolutionary phases in countries without a democratic tradition begin with a moderate being appointed. He is soon overthrown by whichever bunch of thugs can gain the upper hand, and they in turn clamp down on the population and run the country for their own benefit. The Russian revolution and at least one of the Mexican revolutions are examples of this, as is the French Revolution to a lesser extent, at least in the lack of looting of the treasury. Others, of course, have the strong man take over from the onset, usually because of his bloc's overwhelming power. See Mao and Castro.

I wonder if there is any group in Egypt able to gain enough control to cement its position. Maybe the army will step in to "protect the nation" a la Pakistan, or even Ghana a few decades past.

[Thucydides]

Another working model would be Turkey, where the Army works behind the scenes to maintain a secular democracy (or at least their version of one). The Army (and Armed Forces in general) has the ability to operate on its own and enough clout in the society/economy/culture etc. that they could take on this role while various poltical parties acceptable to the military are allowed to contend for office, pass laws etc.

[Old Sweat]

The following story from the online expat edition of the Daily Telegraph is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Egypt crisis: Will Barack Obama trust 80 million Egyptians?
Mubarak's days are numbered and the US is in a quandary: can it trust a new regime's foreign policy – the implications are huge for the West and Israel, writes Richard Spencer.
 
It started with a doctored photograph. On show were the statesmen of the Middle East, all the big players. Resolute of brow, they marched purposely up a White House red carpet last September towards the waiting cameras. In the middle was President Obama. To his right was the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and to his left, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and King Abdullah of Jordan.

And there, two steps in front of the others – the clear leader of the group – was President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Egypt is historically the leader of the Arab world, so maybe his position seemed justified. But when the picture was carried by the Egyptian state newspaper Al-Ahram it caused hilarity. Everyone knew Mubarak was not at the front because they had seen it on television. He was beyond Mr Netanyahu, and if anything slightly behind his colleagues. The attempt to give him face, courtesy of Photoshop, was laughable.

So, too, as it now turns out, was Mubarak's determination to stay in power after 30 years in office by rigging a series of presidential and parliamentary elections. In December, his ruling party won a landslide of Saddam Hussein proportions. Yet Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, issued nothing more trenchant than some mildly deprecating remarks and President Obama gave the diplomatic equivalent of a wry shrug even as the man who for decades had been a lynchpin of US policy in the Middle East cut an increasingly absurd figure. In Washington, they are now playing a panicked game of catch-up as mobs on the street say what America failed to see – that it was time for Mubarak and his chums across the region to go.

There are similarities between Tunisia and Egypt; but even by Middle Eastern standards the spectacle of an 82-year-old president pressing for yet another term while entering his fourth decade in office was extreme. There is little doubt that Mubarak will now go. The appointment of his security chief as vice president (the post he held himself before taking power) hints that he has given up the idea of installing his son Gamal as successor. The only question is whether he flees in the next few hours or days, or holds on for a more controlled transfer of power. That timing will be crucial for Egypt's short-term interests – from basic questions of law and order to the foreign investment and tourism which provide so many jobs.

America, though, will be looking at the wider picture. The concern in Washington and European capitals is to maintain Egypt's difficult, but broadly stable, alliance with the West.

What comes next? Ask the young men thronging the streets and squares of the capital, and nobody seems to have a clue. "We don't hate Americans," said Ali Abunil, 30, yesterday, a marketing executive for a pharmaceutical company who had defied the curfew to spend the night in Tahrir Square. And this was reflected in posters held up by marchers all week. "America, we don't want to hurt you," they said. Nearby, a middle-aged man screaming "America out" was hauled away by friends. "We are not Iran," said Mr Abunil. "We are not Afghanistan. Egypt is different."

However, probe a little further and the picture becomes more problematic for President Obama, and the country the United States is sworn to protect, Israel. Khaled Awad, 38, an electrical engineer, was typical in his views. "Most people believe that as long as a country supports Israel that much, people cannot be happy with America," he said.

What would he do with Israel? "It cannot survive. Sure, I don't want to terminate the Jews, but this is not their country."

For most of his rule, Mr Mubarak has portrayed himself as a bulwark against two Middle Eastern forces; anti-Israel militarism, and Islamist politics, whether in the semi-establishment guise of the Muslim Brotherhood or the radical form of al-Qaeda. The latter's second in command, Ayman Zawahiri, is Egyptian. The protesters say this argument is wearing thin. Egypt's variegated society, its liberal, secular middle classes, its bloggers and tweeters, and its religiously devout shopkeepers and farmers all want democracy, however it turns out.

"The regime says that if the Muslim Brotherhood governed the country it would be a monster, so bad," Mr Awad said. "But they are themselves that bad."

Many people do not like the Brothers but, rightly or wrongly, believe they can be trusted to enhance, rather than limit, Egypt's freedoms. In free elections they would win a substantial number of seats.

In a novel of another great American dilemma, A Quiet American, Graham Greene invented a protagonist, the hapless agent Pyle, who tries to engineer a third way in Vietnam between pro-Western dictatorship and communist revolution. There is something familiar and appealing about the idealism of those demonstrators who think that a third way can be found for Egypt and the wider Middle East. Proud nations could pursue independent policies, legitimised through the ballot box. Egypt has, after all, 7,000 years of history.

President Obama and, in his own way, George W Bush before him, are also Pyles. Bush argued vociferously for democratic reform in the Middle East. Obama, in a speech in Cairo in 2009, presented a more pragmatic approach – support for the citizenry, but less criticism of the dictators. Much has been made of that difference, and the argument has been made that Obama's shift put him behind the march of history, first in Iran after the 2009 elections and now in Egypt.

It is true that Washington's responses seem tame, but in reality the difference is overplayed. America faces the same fundamental dilemma that the former power Britain failed to resolve in the decades leading up to the Suez Crisis. Do you trust 80 million Egyptians to determine their own foreign policy, in this most vital of regions? It takes a braver superpower than Britain to say yes.

In a former age, British armour surrounded the royal palace to stop the king siding with Nazi Germany. Now the balance of power is maintained in more subtle ways, but another turning point has arrived nevertheless.

As for Egypt, so for America's other allies. Consider that doctored photograph once more. Mr Abbas has presided over some economic growth in his small West Bank fiefdom, but he and his Fatah movement do not speak for Hamas-run Gaza, and still less for the angry millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. In Jordan, King Abdullah rests on the laurels of his astute father, the late King Hussein, and the West loves his telegenic Queen. But the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Jordan, as in Egypt, stands above such sentiments.

And that leaves Mr Netanyahu. In an idealist's world, democratic legitimacy in its neighbours would impel Israel's leaders into concessions they have hitherto been unprepared to offer and the elusive Middle East peace deal would finally be struck. President Obama may still believe that. Neo-Conservative ideology under Bush was said to be driven by the idea that lancing the boil of tyranny would create an environment in which Israel could breathe more freely.

It is hard to see how ejecting Mubarak will achieve that. Israel rarely turns conciliatory in the face of uncertainty. This makes the choice for Obama all the more stark; not just between democracy and stability in the Middle East, but between democracy in the Arab world and his mastery of America's most visceral alliance.

In the real photograph in September, it was Obama who was, naturally, a pace ahead of his visitors from the Middle East. The old joke had it that when Western leaders came to office and told men like Saddam Hussein it was time to quit, invariably it was they who had gone while the dictators remained. With President Obama facing re-election next year, the others in the picture must have thought a few weeks ago the same outcome was likely. Now they are not so sure. The big question for Western policy is this: will a similar gathering of leaders still be possible once the Egyptian crisis has resolved itself?

[Journeyman]

Egypt crisis: Will Barack Obama trust 80 million Egyptians?
Mubarak's days are numbered and the US is in a quandary: can it trust a new regime's foreign policy

Well, that's pretty much a textbook example of putting the cart before the horse.

Let's see what the new regime is.
Let's see if the new regime lasts.
Let's see what, if any, changes to their foreign policy occur

...before worrying about whether "US trust of the regime" is an issue.

[Old Sweat]

I think we are still quite a ways from knowing how this will work out. (It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the Israeli Defence Ministry. They must be concerned that all at once their only secure flank might not be so secure.) Again, that is premature, but I am sure many of us have noticed that many of the Egyptian protestors are of the westernized ilk, and may not necessarily be those who support the Islamist view of the world. This same demographic made up the bulk of the protestors in Iran a while back, but were beaten down by the regime. These people might be able to support a more democratic government which maintains the status quo (quietly) in international relations.

The question might be what will the mass of the poor, down trodden masses do, especially if a leader appears who seems to offer them a solution? I also wonder about the attitudes of the rank and file of the military, as opposed to the senior officers who are living quite well off of the current regime.

The punditry would be well advised to heavily weasel their words. It's too bad the German octopus that predicted the World Cup results died.

[Journeyman]

......many of the Egyptian protesters are of the westernized ilk, and may not necessarily be those who support the Islamist view of the world.

True enough, but as noted earlier, moderate interim leaders often show up in revolutions.... before a more powerful group takes over.

In 1917, the Mensheviks were wringing their hands that Lenin and the Bolsheviks unfairly 'stole' the revolution, but the outcome was the same. (Hmmm....some similar conditions: ideological minority behind protests [many islamist groups present]; country facing financial bankruptcy [exacerbated in Egypt by investors fleeing and tourism collapsing]; wide-spread strikes [called for tomorrow]; army called out to quell protests [yesterday, although that appears to be a bizarre fight between the Ministries of Internal Affairs vs Defence] ).

The westernized protesters should be careful what they wish for. While I believe the country has no desire for a radical islamic government, turmoil has facilitated stranger moves.

Damn, didn't that octopus have any friends or relatives??   

[Old Sweat]

moderate interim leaders often show up in revolutions.... before a more powerful group takes over.

The westernized protesters should be careful what they wish for. While I believe the country has no desire for a radical islamic government, turmoil has facilitated stranger moves.

You'll get no argument from me.

For whatever reason, intuition or deduction, I don't have a warm, fuzzy feeling about this.

[dapaterson]

Hopefully the Canadian Embassy is getting ready for some "unexpected" visitors... not that history ever repeats itself.  Not that a somewhat Westernized country would ever overthrow its American-supproted dictator, and end up a religious dictatorship instead.

[Baden Guy]

BBC
Huge protests fan Egypt unrest

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said that he will not stand for re-election in September, as protests against his rule grow.

Speaking on state TV, Mr Mubarak promised constitutional reform, but said he wanted to stay until the end of his current presidential term.

The announcement came as tens of thousands rallied in central Cairo urging him to step down immediately.

The demonstration was the biggest since protests began last week.

The BBC's Jim Muir, among the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, says the crowd erupted in jubilation after hearing the president's speech.

Egyptians are patient, he says, and may be prepared to wait for a few more months for his departure.

Mr Mubarak said he would devote his remaining time in power to ensuring a peaceful transition of power to his successor.

But he criticised the protests, saying what began as a civilised phenomenon turned into a violent event controlled by political cowards.

He said he had offered to meet all parties but there were political powers that had refused dialogue.

Leaders of the protests had called on Mr Mubarak to step down by Friday, when demonstrators were planning to march on the presidential palace.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12340923

[Journeyman]

Congressional Record Research Service reports provide background information to the US Government, rather than info on 'breaking news,' which are archived by the Federation of American Scientists.

If you're interested in some background info on Egypt and Tunisia (because, he said harpingly, informed opinions are better than mere opinions  ):

See the newly updated report "Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations,"January 28, 2011:  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33003.pdf

On events in Tunisia, see "Tunisia: Recent Developments and PolicyIssues," January 18, 2011:  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21666.pdf

 


Edit:   

[Journeyman]

An interesting view on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood from STRATFOR's Reva Bhalla:

[Relevant copyright warning]

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is playing a very careful game right now. I think the Brotherhood is very well aware that the romanticism of the revolution in the streets could wear off the longer the people go without a regular supply of food, without security, and most important without results. It’s become clear so far that Mubarak does not have any intention of leaving anytime soon.

At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood needs to sustain the momentum in the streets right now. What they want to avoid is having people think that “Look, I waited three decades to get rid of Mubarak, I can wait another eight months until September elections for him to be deposed.”

At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood is very conscious of the negative connotations associated with its Islamist branding and for that reason it’s trying to reach out to certain secularist leaders for example, Mohamed ElBaradei, who may lack credibility but at least he’s a secular leader that a lot of people can at least look to for some sort of leadership while the Muslim Brotherhood works on creating this political opening that they’ve been waiting for for decades.

[Thucydides]

An interesting article that attempts to tie all the pieces together. How much of this is true and how much is speculative remains to be discovered, but certainly there are various webs being spun to evade the sanctions and hobble the Western Alliance:

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2012/01/22/world-war/?print=1

World War

Posted By Michael Ledeen On January 22, 2012 @ 12:54 pm In Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Speaking at the Pentagon on January 5th, President Obama proclaimed: “Even as our troops continue to fight in Afghanistan, the tide of war is receding.”

He could not be more dangerously mistaken. As he spoke, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was packing his bags for yet another foreign sortie, not, as you might imagine, to Damascus to bolster the morale of Bashar Assad — alongside whom Iran’s killers are conducting mass murder [1] in Syria’s cities and villages — but rather to Latin American capitals much closer to us, including Caracas, Quito, Guatemala City, Havana, and Managua. The Nicaraguan visit was on the occasion of the inauguration of our old enemy, Daniel Ortega.  The others are to discuss matters of “mutual interest.”

Venezuela is far and away the most important, but each of the others is significant, and shows that we are engaged in a global war that is advancing, not receding.  The “matters of joint concern” feature military and “asymmetrical” projects aimed directly at the American homeland. And that is only the Western hemispheric dimension of the real war. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts have worked very energetically to forge a global network that includes Russia, China, (sometimes) Turkey, Syria, and the Western hemisphere gang. In part, the network helps Iran bust the sanctions that have recently catalyzed a spectacular drop in the value of Iran’s currency. Money, weapons, refined petroleum products, and even crude oil get laundered through foreign banks, shell companies, and ports.

Sanctions-busting is the least of it [2]. Al-Qaeda terrorists of the stature of Saif al Adel (acting AQ chief between bin Laden and Zawahiri) fought against us in Mogadiscio, and lived for years in Iran.  Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, operated from Tehran for a long time.  Hezbollah, an arm of the Iranian regime, sends killers to Syria to massacre protesters.

The Latin American network sends Iranians (or their surrogates, as in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington) into the United States.  CBN reports that 28 Iranians were detained, arrested and released by Homeland Security in the first two years of the Obama presidency, and promptly vanished.  And numerous reports refer to joint Iranian-Venezuelan ventures, including weapons and missile manufacture and assembly in Venezuela.

The administration is not happy to paint this picture for the American people.  State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, asked on January 6th about Ahmadinejad’s trip, warned that “now is not the time to be deepening ties, not security ties, not economic ties, with Iran,”  But Ms Nuland did not wish to point to the well-established pattern.  Instead, she carefully misdescribed the network as if it were something brand new, as if it were a panicky response to Obama’s tough policies:  “As the regime feels increasing pressure, it is desperate for friends and (is) flailing around in interesting places to find new friends.”

Yes, Iran is under a lot of pressure, both from without and within.  Its currency is in free fall (as of yesterday it had dropped 50% against the dollar since September), there are open rifts within the governing elite, and some of the Revolutionary Guards’ most important bases have been bombed in the recent past.  For extras, the Latin network is not all it can be, since the Iranians are so unreliable.  They’ve promised many things, but delivered only some of them, and the Latinos have complained openly.  But the unkept promises haven’t slowed down the military programs, or the quest for uranium, which, along with the expanding terror network, are the most threatening to us.

Nor are many people paying much attention to the remarkable Chinese activities inside Iran [3], where the People’s Republic is establishing a chain of virtual colonies to ensure its access to Iranian resources.  CNN reports that a draft treaty gives China total control over three big areas, including gas and oil deposits both on the ground and in the Gulf.  All personnel is Chinese, not Iranian.  Security is in the hands of the Chinese, not the Iranians.  There are now upwards of ten thousand Chinese military men in Iran, organizing operations at these sites, which are slated to remain under Chinese control well into the 2020s.  For their part, the Chinese offer banking outside the reach of the United States government, shipping companies that lend their flags to Iranian vessels, access to their ports, and easy entry to the international drug and weapons traffic.  Furthermore, the increasingly effective throttling of the Iranian people’s access to Internet and other communications media is in large part courtesy of the Chinese.  The Iranians then turn around and pass their expertise to the embattled Syrians regime.  Thus, the network sabotages American policy, threatens American security, and tightens the noose around the necks of the people we sometimes claim to support.

For those who might think the rule of law applies to our enemies’ network, consider that, way back in 1965, a European court declared such schemes “Soft Colonialism,” and told all Western countries engaged in such activities to withdraw forthwith.

Then there are the Russians, about whose role in the global war much remains to be learned.  They are clearly part of the money-laundering apparatus, and are major suppliers of weapons. Well-informed people believe that the American drone that recently came to earth in Iran was defeated by a Russian system that jams satellite communications, including sat phones and tv broadcasts.  More ominously, I was informed by a high-ranking Iranian intelligence official that there is also close cooperation between Russian intelligence and the Iranians, including terrorist operations against American troops.

Finally, lest we forget, there are the North Koreans, who provide the mullahs with missile technology, and a considerable work force that is highly skilled at digging tunnels.  Many of the actual diggers for some of Iran’s underground nuke sites were from Pyongyang.

In short, we face a global war waged by a well-established alliance of Iranian and Syrian Islamists, Russian and Chinese crony plutocrats, and Latin American radical leftists who share a love of totalitarian control of their own people and a hatred of America. We have failed to design a strategy to win this war, and indeed it often seems as if our leaders share the world view of our enemies. Obama thought he could make deals with all of them, apparently believing this would come about when they realized he shared their conviction that most of the world’s problems are America’s fault.  Indeed, when push comes to shove in their own countries, his instinctive response, as Fouad Ajami recently wrote regarding Syria, is to favor the success of the anti-American tyrants.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said of Jimmy Carter’s administration that our leaders could not distinguish between our friends and our enemies, and had ended by adopting our enemies’ view of the world.  It’s as accurate today as it was 35 years ago.

Article printed from Faster, Please!: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2012/01/22/world-war/

URLs in this post:

[1] alongside whom Iran’s killers are conducting mass murder: http://gerarddirect.com/2011/12/22/iranian-air-bridge-brings-weapons-men-to-assad/

[2] the least of it: http://www.abc.es/20111212/internacional/abcp-teheran-extiende-iberoamerica-20111212.html

[3] remarkable Chinese activities inside Iran: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-719390

[Thucydides]

Israel has surrounded the Arab world with their strategy. An interesting way to outflank your opponents:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/02/24/lawrence-solomon-israels-oil-diplomacy/

Lawrence Solomon: Israel’s gas diplomacy
Lawrence Solomon  Feb 24, 2012 – 9:07 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 24, 2012 9:43 PM ET

Israel: ‘Gas is our strategic interest for new partnerships’

How do you survive when you’re surrounded by enemies, as is Israel? You win allies among the nations that surround your ­enemies.

This increasingly successful Israeli approach — dubbed the periphery strategy — exploits an arsenal of Israeli assets that its new-found allies need: Israel’s military, its counterterrorism skills, its technology, and especially of late, its surprising wealth of hydrocarbons.

Israel’s periphery strategy is nothing new. After Israel survived its war of independence in the late 1940s, when it was invaded by six neighbouring Arab armies, Israel set about winning friends in the Middle East among non-Arabs. In this it succeeded wildly — Israel won friends among black African states, to which it transferred water-conserving agricultural technologies; among small non-Arab Muslim countries and ethnic groups that were at odds with the Arab states, and with Iran and Turkey, two non-Arab regional powers that became full-blown military allies.

Then the strategy all but collapsed with the OPEC oil boycott of 1973. “Stay friends with Israel and we’ll cut you off from oil,” the Arab states told the many poor oil-dependent countries that had relations with Israel. Poor countries felt they had no choice but to comply. Israel was from that point mostly abandoned, its former friends suddenly harsh critics at the United Nations, where they voted en masse to condemn Israel in one Arab-sponsored resolution after another.

Now Israel’s periphery strategy is back big time, thanks largely to hydrocarbon diplomacy. Apart from a major oil find in its interior, Israel has known gas reserves of some $130-billion in the Mediterranean, with some estimating that twice as much will materialize as exploration continues. Israel’s Mediterranean neighbour, the island nation of Cyprus, is also discovering immense amounts of gas in the sea bed adjacent to Israel’s. The two are now developing their gas jointly, with plans to export it to Europe or Asia or both. Greece, which may have more oil and gas in its extensive Mediterranean waters than either, is now talking of joining Cyprus and Israel in joint ventures.

The sea change in the attitude of Greece and Cyprus is breathtaking. Until recently, these two ethnically Greek nations were frigidly cold toward Israel, partly because they believed their economic interests lay in the more populous Arab world, partly because they feared for the safety of the 250,000-member Greek community in Egypt if they were to establish good relations with Israel.

Today the Greek calculus has changed. Not only did Greek trade with Arab states fail to blossom, the Greek presence in Egypt has all but vanished. Egypt’s Greek-owned industries were nationalized; Egypt’s Greeks were persecuted for their Christian faith. The official remaining count for Egyptian Greeks, once the most affluent and influential minority in Egypt, is but 3,000.



In contrast, Greeks now have common cause with Israel in exploiting their hydrocarbon riches and in defending them — Turkey, an enemy of the two Greek nations as well as Israel, has vowed to stop both Cyprus and Greece from developing their hydrocarbons on the basis of long-standing territorial claims. The Israeli-Greek-Cypriot alliance is likely strong enough to stand up to Turkey and allow these new-found friends to profit together.

But for Israel, profit is only the half of it, as a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu told the press in an interview last week, when the two were in Cyprus to further their hydrocarbon co-operation. “Gas is our strategic interest. It is … a diplomatic tool for creating new partnerships, first in our region, as well as with the great powers of India and China.”

Israel views Cyprus and Greece as part of the “Western arc” of its periphery strategy, along with other European countries such as Christian Romania and Bulgaria, and Muslim Albania, which has been a standout defender of Israel in the United Nations. Israel now also has allies to the east, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan in Central Asia. And as part of its southern diplomacy, Israel recently established an East African alliance with predominantly Christian Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Sudan designed to fend off Iran and Islamist terrorism. Israel’s stock in East Africa is particularly high because of its role in gaining independence for South Sudan, the world’s newest state.

Over much of South Sudan’s half-century struggle for independence, Israel almost single-handedly armed and supported the black African rebels against what was widely recognized as genocide and enslavement perpetrated by the Arabic rulers based in northern Sudan.  In recognition of Israel’s role in its liberation, the leader of South Sudan made Israel his first foreign stop following independence and promised to establish his country’s embassy in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, the only country in the world to do so.

Israel’s military help will continue to be needed in East Africa. The oil-rich South Sudan may well find itself at war again with the north and East African countries may find themselves subject to terrorist attack, particularly since South Sudan plans to pipe its oil eastward to ports in Kenya and Ethiopia instead of north through Sudan, which relies on South Sudan’s oil.

Focus on Israel and it appears to be a tiny isolated country surrounded by a sea of hostile Arab nations. Zoom out, though, and it is the Arab nations that are revealed to be isolated, increasingly surrounded by age-old adversaries, most of which have growing ties to Israel. With Israel’s hydrocarbon assets continuing to grow, and with Israel’s military and intelligence assets remaining dominant in the region, Israel’s periphery diplomacy has emerged as one of the country’s remarkable achievements.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe.