The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

September 9, 2009 at 11:52 am (Articles)

Deepak Tripathi

“America is the Great Satan, the wounded snake.”

– Ayatollah Khomeini, November 5, 1979

“States like [Iran, Iraq, North Korea] constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”

– President George W Bush, January 29, 2002  

Spoken two decades apart, these words sum up the troubled history of the relationship between Iran and the United States. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” His observation holds true about the manner in which Tehran and Washington remain preoccupied with each other. No significant event in Iran can go without repercussions for relations with the West. Almost 30 years after the overthrow of Iran’s autocratic ruler and America’s policeman in the oil-rich Gulf, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the legacy continues to haunt both countries. 

The presidential election of June 2009 has been no exception. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, was seeking reelection after four turbulent years. A range of internal and external peculiarities surrounded the campaign that was both exciting and unique. In a country of 72 million people, two-thirds are under 30 years of age and the rate of literacy exceeds 75 percent. Iran’s economy has suffered a steady decline. Oil revenues have failed to benefit the population. The downturn in the world economy has affected Iranian oil exports particularly hard and its balance of payments difficulties are acute due to low financial reserves.[1]

Inflation was over 30 percent during the summer of 2008, when the Central Bank intervened to limit lending to prevent the resulting expansion of the money supply. In 2009, inflation has come down but has still been around 24 percent. Unemployment is 17 percent, about a third higher than 2005, when Ahmadinejad first became president. The chorus of criticism of Ahmadinejad for economic mismanagement grew as the election drew near, not only from his political opponents but sometimes from his one-time supporters. The Islamic Revolution Devotees Society, a fundamentalist grouping of revolutionary veterans co-founded by the Iranian President himself, accused him for starting huge state-funded projects while Iran’s poor suffered and his stated goal of social justice was undermined.[2]

Ahmadinejad routinely dismisses such complaints. He says they are a product of intervention by hostile media. He blames ‘secret networks’ for rising house prices. He has a doctorate in engineering, but often makes light of complaints about the economy by telling jokes. For instance, he has told Iranian MPs to visit his grocer to find out the truth about the rising price of tomatoes. He suggests that he often takes advice about the economy from his local butcher, who knows about the economic problems of the people. And he says that he prays to God he never learned about economics.

The electoral system of Iran is by no means perfect, but not as bad as in some other countries in the region. In Saudi Arabia, small Gulf emirates and Egypt, elections are either nonexistent or held under extreme restrictions. Rigging is widespread. And these states are ruled by America’s allies. In the June 2009 presidential election, Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, faced three challengers. Mir-Hossein Mousavi was seen as the leading challenger. He was Iran’s last prime minister (1981-1989) before a presidential form of government was introduced.  Three others had been rejected by the Council of Guardians, which vets all candidates. Former President, Mohammad Khatami, a liberal in the context of Iran, announced his candidacy but later withdrew and declared his support for Mousavi. Another ex-President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, often described as a centrist-pragmatic conservative, was also known to be unhappy with the state of affairs.

The high percentage of young voters, economic decline and restlessness among influential Iranians encouraged many inside and outside the country to believe that the time was ripe for political change. President Obama’s Cairo speech, seeking ‘a new beginning between the United States and Muslims’, came a few days before polling day in Iran. His words of reconciliation were a source of new hope for moderates and liberals in that country. They enlivened the prospect for improvement in US-Iran relations, perhaps for the first time since the 1979 revolution.

In the end, Ahmadinejad was declared reelected by a two-thirds majority, primarily because voters in the Iranian countryside did not abandon him. After an exciting campaign, sharp exchanges between candidates during television debates and overly optimistic reports in the foreign press, it was a bitter disappointment for Iran’s opposition. Its supporters came out in large numbers in cities in towns, but their protests did not grow to a popular revolution. The coercive instruments of the Iranian state, the military, the intelligence services and police, remained intact. A crackdown on opposition supporters followed. For a while, there were loud protests in America from the Republican right, the Israel lobby and human rights groups. They only played into the hands of the religious hardliners in Tehran. As a result, the liberal opposition of Iran finds itself isolated even more. It is a dangerous situation.

Relations between Washington and Tehran sank to a new low following the events of 9/11 and Bush’s description of Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil’. Two factors in particular came to the fore: Iran’s nuclear program, assisted by America and its allies when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi used to be Washington’s regional policeman; and accusations of its support for international terrorism. In a leaked letter obtained by Associated Press in September 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency described as ‘outrageous and dishonest’ claims made in a report by the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee that Iran’s nuclear program was geared towards making weapons.[3]

The IAEA letter specifically said the report is ‘false in saying that Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site’. In fact, the agency said, the material produced was only in small quantities far below that can be used in nuclear weapons. The clash between Washington and IAEA experts was reminiscent of the earlier disputes between them over whether President Saddam Hussein was involved in developing weapons of mass destruction. Those claims in Washington and London were given as the principal reason for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The claims were subsequently discredited when no traces of weapons of mass destruction were found. However, it did not prevent the Bush administration from using similar tactics against Iran, with both America and Israel issuing warnings that Iran’s nuclear research facilities might be bombed.

The failure of the US-led invasion forces to produce evidence was one factor that conspired against an attack on Iran. Another was the outbreak of full-scale war following the dissolution of the Iraqi state structure by Paul Bremer, the head of the American-led occupation authority. The conflict in Iraq defied the Bush administration’s calculations and prevented the Americans from using strong-arm tactics against other adversaries. However, diplomatic pressure and threats continue even after the Bush presidency.

On September 7, 2009, the IAEA Director General, Mohamed El-Baradei, delivered his last report to the Board of Governors two months before his retirement. He said that although Iran had ‘cooperated with the agency on some issues’, several critical areas remained ‘unaddressed’.[4] Iran had not suspended its enrichment-related activities or its heavy water-related project, as required by the UN Security Council. Choosing his words carefully, El-Baradei said that these issues needed to be clarified ‘in order to exclude the possibility of there being military dimensions’ to Iran’s nuclear program.

President Ahmadinejad has by now ruled out further concessions by Iran. He recently told journalists in Tehran, “From our point of view, Iran’s nuclear issue is over. We will never negotiate over the obvious rights of the Iranian nation.” Tehran has also accused Washington of faking intelligence reports suggesting that Iran has ‘studied ways to make atomic bombs’.  Press TV, Iran’s state-funded channel, quotes officials saying the United States has not ‘shared the original documents’ it claimed to have a year ago and there is no credible evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

The outgoing IAEA Director General, Mohamed El-Baradei, is also highly critical of the West and its allies, France and Israel in particular. Both have accused El-Baradei of ‘suppressing damning evidence’ of Iranian attempts to build nuclear weapons. To them, the IAEA chief said, “I am dismayed by the allegations … which have been fed to the media that information has been withheld from the Board. These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless.” He bitterly complained that such attempts to influence the work of the IAEA Secretariat and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation … of the IAEA Statute and should cease forthwith.

As El-Baradei prepares to retire, accusations and counter-accusations continue to fly between all concerned parties. There exists a stalemate over the nuclear issue. And the United States with its allies and Iran remain engaged in a game of brinkmanship.

The above article appeared in CounterPunch on September 8, 2009.

 

 

[1] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, ‘Tough Times Ahead for the Iranian Economy’ (Washington: Brookings Institute, April 6, 2009); also Mahtab Alam Rizvi, ‘An Assessment of Iran’s Presidential Elections 2009’ (New Delhi: The Institute for Defense Studies, June 19, 2009).

[2] Robert Tait, ‘It’s the economy, Mr Ahmadinejad’ (Guardian, September 19, 2007).

[3] Amy S Clark, ‘IAEA: Iran Nuclear Report Outrageous’, CBS News, September 14, 2006.

[4] ‘Director General’s Report to Board’ (IAEA, September 7, 2009).

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Obama’s policy on China and Iran

July 20, 2009 at 7:56 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

Recent disturbances in Iran and China have drawn attention to not only the fragility of their socio-political systems but also to contradictions in how the United States and other Western powers react to such events. America’s response  to demonstrations in Iran after the presidential election of June 12, 2009 has grown from one of caution to aggression and confrontation. On the contrary, its reaction over the outbreak of violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in south-east China three weeks later has been one of timidity and silence.

Elections in Iran are not perfect, but China is worse for its citizens, its minorities in particular. The most contentious aspect of elections in Iran is the process of approval of candidates by the Guardian Council, a body dominated by the conservative clergy. That process having been completed, campaigning in the run up to polling had been remarkable. The US-style television debates were notable for their sharp exchanges between candidates. All that changed after the authorities in Tehran announced the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, over his main rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, perceived as a relatively liberal figure in Iranian politics. The margin was overwhelming – 63 percent for Ahmadinejad to 33 percent for his nearest rival, Mousavi.

While the Organization of Islamic Conference, Russia, China and India, among others, congratulated Ahmadinejad on his re-election, allegations of fraud were raised almost immediately in the United States, Britain and other European countries. President Obama appeared reluctant in the beginning to join in the chorus of protests from America’s right. He even said that he did not want to be seen as interfering in another country’s affairs.

America’s political right and Israel lobby, represented by Republicans and Democrats alike, saw an opportunity. The Republican right, in particular, is keen to portray Obama as weak just as it had done during the Clinton presidency. Obama’s statement about ‘unclenched fist and extended hand of friendship’, aimed precisely at countries like Iran, had triggered alarm bells among hawks on both sides. Senator John McCain, defeated by Obama a few months before, thundered on NBC’s Today show, demanding that “Obama declare this a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election. The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.” After that intervention, voices against Iran became progressively shrill.

There are people close to the administration that believe Ahmadinejad actually won the election. The huge margin alone would make it difficult to fix the result in a country where the levels of education and political awareness are high. Time magazine on its website carried an article dated June 16, 2009; the headline was ‘Don’t Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost’. The story, written by the magazine’s intelligence columnist and former CIA field officer Robert Baer, made the point that demonstrations against the election result were held in north Tehran and in public places like Azadi Square, where the educated and wealthy live. These middle class liberals are among supporters of Mousavi, who say the election was stolen from him. Baer pointed out, however, that protests in poor slums and rural areas of Iran were almost absent. It is in these areas that support for Ahmadinejad is concentrated. But such reports are inconvenient for anti-Iran hawks in Washington.

On July 5, Vice President Joe Biden sounded a strident note. In a long exchange on the ABC’s television show, This Week, Biden’s remarks were interpreted as showing the green-light to Israel’s war-mongering Netanyahu government to do what it wants in relation to Iran. Asked whether the Obama administration would stand in the way in case Netanyahu decided that Iran posed a threat and wanted to take out the nuclear program, Biden replied: “We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can or cannot do.” The most one-sided logic if there was one. Clearly, the principle of sovereignty applies to Israel, but not to Iran. Barely 48 hours had passed when Obama was forced to deny there was any green-light from Washington to Israel to bomb Iran.

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was not going to be left behind in this game of aggressive posturing. On July 15, she warned Tehran that Washington’s offer of ‘engagement’ was not indefinite. Iran must respond now to overtures from Obama, or it could face more isolation. How can a US politician known for her closeness to the Israel lobby, and who spoke of ‘obliterating Iran’ during her failed presidential campaign in 2008, be trusted to want peace with Israel’s main adversary in the Middle East? And how can condemnations of ‘election fraud’ in Iran have any real effect from a country where, as many Iranians remember, Al Gore lost the presidency in the most bizarre circumstances to George W Bush in the November 2000 election?

The events in Xinjiang highlight a deep festering crisis in a forgotten corner of China, where some of the most brutal tactics of suppression have been used by Beijing against the ethnic Uighurs, the Turkic Muslim community. Just like Tibet, large numbers of Han Chinese have been moved to the region, reducing the Uighur population to less than half. Xinjiang has seen several rebellions in the past. The toll in the latest violence is high – almost 200 dead, more than 1700 injured and hundreds detained and tortured in one of the most remote parts of the world. The number of Uighurs leaving Xinjiang is in the thousands.  

Despite all this, the response of the Obama administration, in particular of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, continues to be minimalist and weak. The White House spokesman called for ‘restraint’ by both sides – an odd attempt to strike a balance between China’s rulers, whose treatment of dissidents and ethnic minorities has long been brutish and nasty, and a minority at the receiving end of the full force of the Chinese state. This contrast between Washington’s attitudes to Iran and China underlines the vulnerability of the United States today. According to the US Census Bureau, bilateral trade between China and America in 2008 was in excess of $300 billion. America owes China the largest public and private debt of around $2 trillion. And China is still useful as a counter to Russia. In an era of war-weariness and economic vulnerability, the Obama administration continues to show prudence without principle on the one hand and diplomacy without knowledge on the other.

The above article was published by CounterPunch on July 20, 2009.

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Pakistan in Crisis

May 6, 2009 at 6:08 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is this week on his first visit to the United States since coming to office. It comes at a critical time for Pakistan and for America’s relations with that nuclear-armed, but failing, country in South Asia. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s failed neighbor, is also in Washington for trilateral meetings with President Obama and other leading figures in the administration.

Recent escalation of violence in Pakistan has brought grim warnings from senior American officials in Washington about the viability of the Pakistani state. A month ago, General David Petraeus, the top military commander in the region, testified in the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘militant extremists could literally take down the Pakistani state’ if left unchallenged. On the same day, a senior Pentagon official, Michele Flournoy, warned of higher US casualties in Afghanistan in the coming year. And Admiral Eric Olson, chief of America’s special operations commandos, described the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as ‘increasingly dire’. According to one report, General Petraeus has privately told the White House that the administration has as little time as two weeks to determine its future course of action in Pakistan as the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari struggles against an insurgency that is growing alarmingly.

For eight years under the Bush-Cheney presidency, the United States and its European allies were consumed in the fortification of the Western world following September 11, 2001. A vital part of this overwhelmingly militaristic approach was to remake West Asia, resulting in war and occupation in the region during the rest of the decade.

Amid all the media coverage of the threat to the West, what has often been missed is the eastward proliferation of terrorism, throughout Pakistan and to India and beyond. The Council for Foreign Relations, a New York-based research institution, while acknowledging the existence of ‘local terrorist groups’ in the Indian part of the disputed region of Kashmir, goes on to say that ‘most of the recent terrorism has been conducted by Islamist outsiders who seek to claim Kashmir for Pakistan’.[1] According to the organization, many militants involved in attacks across the border in India received training in the same madrasahs where Taliban and al-Qa‘ida fighters have studied since the 1980s. Some received training in Afghanistan when the Taliban ruled the country. Many more represent an indigenous phenomenon in Pakistani society. How did things reach such a point?

With the advent of the 1990s, the rationale for arming militant Islamists to fight the Soviet Union had ceased. The Cold War had ended. The Soviet state had disintegrated and the Najibullah regime in Kabul had collapsed by 1992. The culture of violence had become embedded in Afghan and Pakistani societies. By the mid-1990s, the phenomenon of terrorism had mutated into something far more serious with the emergence of the Taliban, helped by Pakistan. After years of active intervention, the West had moved on to other priorities, leaving the Afghan chaos to its regional allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

It is true that there was not another 9/11-type attack on mainland America during the administration of George W Bush. But this ‘success’ must be seen in perspective, not in isolation. Historically, attacks by external forces on the United States are rare. Furthermore, the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 and activities of anti-state private militias point to a domestic phenomenon in parts of America. Beyond the US shores, the terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004 and Bali and London a year later meant that the West continued to be targeted elsewhere. And thousands of US and allied soldiers continued to die or be wounded in America’s foreign wars.

Meanwhile in Pakistan, the conversion of local supporters of the Taliban to an indigenous group under the umbrella of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has been the most significant development responsible for the proliferation of violence.[2] It began between 2002 and 2004 when Pakistan’s armed forces were busy capturing ‘foreigners’ to hand over to the Americans for money and carrying out military operations in areas linked to al-Qa‘ida. Many of these operations were against groups in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province, not allied to al-Qa‘ida or the Taliban but against those demanding more autonomy and a greater share of income from local resources, principally Baluchistan’s gold, copper and coal mines and vast reserves of natural gas. Washington compensated the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf for prosecuting ‘anti-terrorism’ operations inside Pakistan.

In such turbulent conditions, many local militant groups started to join ranks in Pakistan’s frontier areas instead of merging into the Afghan Taliban. They developed their own distinct identity, sometimes launching attacks, at other times cutting deals with the authorities. According to the Council for Foreign Relations, the Taliban of Pakistan had become an effective fighting force of between 30000 and 35000 strong by 2008.[3] They would network between themselves, as well as with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qa‘ida when it suited them. Their aim – to oppose Pakistan’s military and civilian government and to confront the US-led forces in the region. Today, the Pakistani Taliban have close affiliations with Jamiat ulema-i-Islam, a religious party which insists on the strict enforcement of Islamic law.

The leadership of Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants had connections with al-Qa‘ida since before the advent of the Pakistani Taliban following the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The leader of the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen group, Farooq Kashmiri Khalil, was a signatory to the 1998 declaration of war by al-Qa‘ida. Quoting American and Indian officials, the Council for Foreign Relations says that Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Muhammad group founded in 2000, is suspected of receiving money from al-Qa‘ida. Another group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been active in the region since 1993.

Barely three months after 9/11, the Indian Parliament was attacked in December 2001. The Indian authorities accused Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad for the attack, in which more than a dozen people were killed, including all five attackers. A series of attacks followed. The most audacious was the three-day carnage in Mumbai, the main commercial city of India, in November 2008. Some 170 people of many nationalities died and over 300 were wounded in a coordinated orgy of violence. All but one of the ten gunmen were killed. There is plenty of evidence provided by experts and media reports in the United States, India, even Pakistan, that the attackers came from Pakistan. The group is said to have belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

After vehement denials of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attack, Islamabad, against mounting evidence, admitted that the lone survivor among the gunmen, twenty-one-year-old Ajmal Kasab, was a Pakistani citizen.[4] As early as December 1, 2008, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that he had been trained in marine warfare at a camp in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-held Kashmir, part of a group of about 40 militants who had received commando training. The November 2008 carnage in Mumbai was the most high profile in a long sequence of attacks across India going back to the early 1990s.

The monster of terrorism in Pakistan is a consequence of policies followed over decades. At the heart of these policies has been a tendency to pursue high risk strategies, together with a state of denial. When the Pakistani state was established in 1947, the idea of a separate nation for the peoples of the Muslim faith of British India was not universally supported. Pashtuns under the leadership of Abdul Ghaffar Khan opposed partition. For years after the establishment of Pakistan, the Pashtuns and other minorities continued to challenge the domination of the most populous province, Punjab, in the country.

The response of Pakistan’s ruling military-political elite has been suppression of the country’s minorities. It happened in two ways: by coercive military methods and by playing the ‘Islamic card’ in national politics. When minorities made demands for greater autonomy, they have been portrayed as working against Islam and encountered military force.

The fear of internal collapse is one of the main forces that determines the conduct of the military-political elite of Pakistan. The other is the perceived fear of India. Internal suppression at the expense of the rule of law and a national accord fuels resistance. And violence is diverted towards ‘external threats’ – India on one side, Afghanistan on the other. For decades, this has been the essence of the high risk strategy of Pakistan’s military-political establishment, especially its military intelligence organ, Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The crisis for Pakistan has thus become the crisis for the entire region and beyond. Islamic fundamentalism encouraged by the military ruler, General Zia, to fight America’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s was devastatingly effective in defeating the Soviet Union and its client regime in Kabul. But the phenomenon undermined the rule of law and inflamed religious and sectarian violence. It has had a corrosive effect on national institutions. Pakistan is a failing state.

The election in November 2008 of Barack Obama, the first black to become America’s president in its history, was a revolutionary event. A man of undoubted intellect, Obama’s victory came with enormous odds and a strong desire for change. A leader who emerges in such conditions faces opposing demands. Like the end of the Vietnam era in the mid-1970s and the Cold War in the 1990s, the world’s pre-eminent power looks for peace to recover and rebuild. It cannot make a hasty retreat. So, the preference under the Obama presidency – to work for the beginning of the end of war and to switch to tough diplomacy. The task is turning out to be a lot harder than Obama and his team had thought.

Notes

[1] See ‘Kashmir Militant Extremists’ (Council for Foreign Relations, NY, available on www.cfr.org/publication/9135/).

[2] See Hassan Abbas, ‘A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’ (Sentinel, Combating Terrorism Center, United States Military Academy, West Point, January 2008).

[3] Jayshree Bajoria, ‘Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists’ (Council for Foreign Relations, February 6, 2008).

[4] See Pakistan’s English daily, Dawn, for ‘Surviving gunman’s identity established as Pakistani’, January 9, 2009.

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The Pakistan Enigma

April 7, 2009 at 11:05 am (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

A little over two months after assuming the United States presidency, Barack Obama is making waves in all directions. He leads at a time of multiple crises. The collapse of the economic and financial system, with worldwide consequences and a growing human cost, take center stage in the public discourse in America and Europe. But the threat of terrorism is not far behind.

The West frets over the risk of another attack. A continent away in Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in recent days, in Iraq, violence takes increasing numbers of lives every day. As Pakistan becomes the latest country to suffer a breakdown in order, new fears arise in the region and beyond. It is going to be a severe test of President Obama’s evolving policy on the Afghan-Pakistan front.

The suicide bombing on a Shi’a mosque in Chakwal, in the north of Punjab province, on April 5, 2009 appears to confirm a pattern in the escalating cycle of violence in Pakistan. Some twenty people were blown up in the attack, including the suicide bomber, reported to be a boy dressed in black. Up to a hundred were wounded. For some years, conventional wisdom had been that militant havens existed only in tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier. And attacks were launched on both sides from bases in the autonomous tribal belt. It is not the case, not any longer even if it might have been before.

The assassination of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, in December 2007 was a political earthquake. It laid bare the rapid proliferation of insurgency to the heart of Pakistani society. In September 2008, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was targeted, killing over fifty victims and injuring many more. Violence by the Taliban and their affiliates has since spread to other parts of Punjab province. Then came the attack on Sri Lanka’s cricket team in early March 2009 to the south in Lahore. The attack did much damage to Pakistan’s image as a destination for foreign visitors and forced this year’s Indian Premier League, a money-spinning cricket competition that attracts the world’s top players, out to South Africa.

America under President Obama has abandoned the doctrine of overwhelming military force as the sole option to deal with the terrorist threat. His evolving policy is complex, more nuanced. It aims to enter into a dialogue with sections of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan and isolate Al-Qaeda. The new administration accepts that America cannot impose its will and its own political system anywhere it chooses. It is not possible to transform traditional societies into modern ones all of a sudden. And Washington must have the ‘exit strategy’, but must stabilize and rebuild before taking the desired exit route.

Therein lies the problem. To stabilize and to rebuild means to keep the military and civilian presence in Afghanistan. It necessitates use of military power to control the campaign of violence by militants. Increased American and allied presence, military and civilian, provides the enemy with a greater number of targets. The result could be higher casualties. A determination made to keep the occupation finite involves negotiating with the adversary. And a deadline to expand the domain of constitutional order and peace. However, forces that are there in the region to restore order also provoke resistance.

In Pakistan, America relies on attacks by unmanned aircraft against diehard militants and the capability and the willingness of Pakistan’s security forces. Close secretive ties between Islamist groups and the military since the CIA proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan go back to the 1980s. These ties have proved impossible to break, despite persistent efforts of the United States.

For now, a definite pattern appears to be taking shape. Every American missile which targets a suspected militant hideout reportedly kills some militants, but also civilians. Retaliation by the militants, a Taliban or allied group, follows. Can President Obama achieve what has been illusive for years? That is Obama’s enigma.

 The above article appeared by CounterPunch on April 6 and ZNet on April 7, 2009.

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Obama’s Afghan Surge

December 30, 2008 at 5:51 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

Nearly thirty years after the Cold War exploded into full-scale conflict in Afghanistan, the incoming president, Barack Obama, is about to embark on yet another stage in America’s involvement in that country. In short hand, it is described as Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’. If a recent report in the New York Times is anything to go by, the ‘Afghan surge’ would be remarkably similar to the ’surge’ of 2007 in Iraq under President George W Bush.[1]

The ‘Iraqi surge’ was an attempt to subdue the rapidly escalating cycle of violence in the capital, Baghdad, and Anbar Province covering much of western Iraq. The buildup involved the deployment of thirty thousand extra US troops as part of ‘The New Way Forward’ announced by Bush in January 2007. Barely six weeks before, the Washington Post had disclosed a US intelligence report admitting that ‘the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point’ that American and Iraqi troops ‘are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency’ in Anbar.[2] From village to provincial levels, nearly all government institutions had collapsed. Summarizing the assessment, one American military officer said, “We have been defeated politically – and that’s where wars are won and lost.”  

Today, the situation in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan is grim and reaches beyond the borders of Pakistan. Militants launch audacious attacks from their bases on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Events in recent months have demonstrated that Kabul, Islamabad, Delhi or Mumbai – no major city in the region is safe. Violence in the countryside in Afghanistan and Pakistan goes on largely unnoticed, unless it involves foreign forces.

I referred to similarities between the ‘Iraqi surge’ and the ‘Afghan surge’ earlier. American and British media report that as many as thirty thousand extra troops are to be deployed on the Afghan front by summer 2009. According to the New York Times, preparations are underway ‘to arm local militias to help in the fight against a resurgent Taleban’ in Afghanistan. The government of Pakistan is unlikely to give its official consent to the arming of militias inside its territory. There are several reasons. Contrary to popular belief  in the West, the Taleban are not a homogeneous group, but a loose network bound by a certain interpretation of Islam. The Taleban of Pakistan are firmly embedded in Pakistani society, where the culture of weapons is all pervasive.  

Relations between Islamabad and Washington, and Islamabad and Delhi, have suffered a sharp deterioration. The perception is strong in the ruling establishment of Pakistan that America has switched its support to India. Three main factors are responsible for this change in US policy: Pakistan’s failure to contain the militant groups in its territory, the decision by the Bush administration after 9/11 to invest so heavily in General Pervez Musharraf, then military ruler of Pakistan, and America’s growing economic and military ties with India.

The shift in American policy towards India is likely to continue during the Obama presidency. It means a break in Washington’s strategic alliance with Islamabad going back to the 1950s as part of the policy of containment of the Soviet Union. One of America’s long-term aims now is to counter the growing power of China. But the military-political establishment of Pakistan will see it as encirclement of the country while the occupation forces remain in Afghanistan to the west and US ties grow with India to the east. There is also a perception in Pakistan that the country does rather better under military dictators as an ally of the United States than under a fledgling democracy.

What more does the ‘Afghan surge’ indicate beyond introducing as many as thirty thousand additional troops and recruiting militias to fight the Taleban? In the case of Iraq, most of the extra US soldiers were deployed in Baghdad with the stated aim of improving security in the capital. The tour of duty of several thousand troops already in Baghdad was extended. Many were deployed in Anbar Province, which had suffered some of the worst violence. A report by the Senlis Council think-tank in November 2007 estimated that more than half of Afghanistan had fallen back under Taleban control.

If anything, the situation worsened in 2008. Anti-government forces, enriched by the illicit profits from Afghanistan’s poppy harvest, set up de facto administration in large areas of the Pashtun belt in the south and the east. Insurgents penetrated the security ring around the capital, Kabul. Attacks on government and foreign targets were launched with increasing frequency – the most audacious of them on the Indian embassy in July 2008.

As part of the ‘Afghan surge’, many of the additional US troops are likely to be deployed around the capital, Kabul, as they were in Baghdad in 2007. The need to protect the American and allied embassies, diplomats, Afghan ministries and officials is paramount. Offices of many non-governmental organizations are located in Kabul. It is vital to project Kabul’s image as a secure and stable seat of government – image that has suffered as the situation has steadily worsened. The International (Green) Zone in Baghdad would serve as the model where occupation forces and Iraqi government are concentrated. Surrounded by blast-proof walls, barbed wire-fences and a few checkpoints to control entry, it is in effect a mini-city inside the Iraqi capital. In contrast, Kabul is a sprawling, chaotic town and fortification of a similar kind would be more difficult.

The other side of Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’ is to recruit local militias to fight the Taleban. As the New York Times says, this has raised fears that ‘the new armed groups could push the country into a deeper bloodletting’. Shi’a and other minorities are already concerned over the prospect of new Sunni militias roaming parts of Afghanistan, supposedly to fight the Taleban. Once again, the plan originates from Iraq. US officials say their decision to recruit a hundred thousand Sunni tribesmen, many of them ex-rebel fighters, under the umbrella of Awakening Councils was responsible for the ’steep reduction’ in violence. The logic is that what worked in one country would also work in the other.

In truth, it is too early to claim success in Iraq. American casualties have declined after the handover of security to the Iraqis. But acts of bombing, shooting, abduction and extortion continue almost every day. Under American pressure, the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad took over the responsibility of paying salaries to the Awakening Council militias. But the government remains opposed to assimilating more than a small proportion of them into the regular armed forces. The Shi’a majority of Iraq, together with Iran, will view the Sunni militias as a proxy of Saudi Arabia. The militiamen see an uncertain future for themselves as the occupation forces draw down and Obama turns his attention to Afghanistan. 

We have seen it all before. Following the 1978 Communist coup by a group of army officers in Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter ordered secret aid to the Mujahideen in that country. Encouraged by the American Central Intelligence Agency and its close ally, Pakistan, Mujahideen guerrillas increased pressure on the Communist regime. The Soviet leadership panicked. It invaded Afghanistan to maintain control of a country it regarded as within its sphere of influence. From 1980 on, President Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, armed and financed more than eighty thousand guerrillas to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union.

For almost two decades, the ‘official version’ of history, promoted from Washington, had suggested that America’s military aid to the Mujahideen came after the Soviet invasion of a poor, helpless country. The truth was rather more complex. In 1996, the CIA’s former director, Robert Gates, revealed that the Carter administration had begun to look at ways of providing covert assistance to the anti-Communist forces soon after the 1978 coup in Afghanistan.[3] And in July 1979, nearly six months before the Soviets invaded, Carter issued a directive authorizing secret aid to the Mujahideen.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, spoke in public about the matter for the first time in 1998.[4] He confirmed that Carter did issue the order that started the secret aid program for the Mujahideen. Brzezinski also revealed that he told Carter the American action was ‘going to induce a Soviet military intervention’ in Afghanistan. Brzezinski described it as ‘an excellent idea’, because it had the effect of drawing the Soviet Union into ‘the Afghan trap’. On the day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Brzezinski said, he wrote to the president that the United States now had ‘the opportunity to give the USSR its Vietnam War’.

In 1989, the Soviet occupation forces retreated from Afghanistan, just as the United States had done from Vietnam in 1975. The Soviet Union paid the ultimate price – its own demise – barely three years later. The Communist regime in Afghanistan collapsed a few months after the Soviet state had disintegrated, like the fall of America’s client regime in South Vietnam more than fifteen years before. The Mujahideen march into Kabul was greeted with delight in Washington. And the United States moved on to new priorities. They were to manage the disintegration of the Soviet state and its nuclear arsenal, to oversee the expansion of the free-market system abroad and to help its own economy.

Afghan factions had been supplied with weapons, money and copies of the Qur’an by President Reagan’s CIA chief, William Casey, in the 1980s.[5] In the ruins of war, they were left to fight it out in the 1990s. The civil war gave rise to the Taleban and Afghanistan became a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. Now, after eight years of failed war in Afghanistan under the Bush presidency, comes the latest twist. President Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’ will not only involve extra American troops to defend Kabul and other strategic points; it will include the hiring and arming of pro-US local militias to fight the Taleban in the countryside. And, according to a recent report in the Washington Post, the CIA has begun to supply the sex-enhancing drug, Viagra, to Afghan chiefs to gain information about Taleban activities.[6]

In the Cold War, the CIA handed out money, weapons and copies of the Qur’an to Islamic groups to fight against Soviet communism. Twenty years on, the agency has added Viagra to its list of temptations to lure Afghans in the US war against fundamentalist Islam, which the Taleban and Al-Qaeda represent.

 The above article originally appeared in the Media Monitors Network on December 28, 2008.

[1] New York Times, December 23, 2008.

[2] Washington Post, November 28, 2006. 

[3] Robert Gates, a career CIA officer, served as the agency’s Director between 1991 and 1993. See his memoirs, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp 143-149. Gates became secretary of defense in the Bush administration in 2006. President Obama decided to keep him in the post.  

[4] Brzezinski interview, ‘The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan’ (Paris: Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998, English version posted on October 15, 2001 by the Centre for Research on Globalization, Shanty Bay, Canada, on www.globalresearch.ca).    

[5] See, for example, Chalmers Johnson, ‘Are We to Blame for Afghanistan?’ (History News Network, George Mason University, Virginia, November 22, 2004).

[6] Joby Warrick, ‘Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan’ (Washington Post, December 26, 2008, A01).

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Obama’s Foreign Crises

December 1, 2008 at 9:14 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

The carnage in Mumbai by young, well trained gunmen is the latest chapter in the world’s most complex web of problems today. Not only is it bound to have new consequences, it also throws up fresh challenges for all concerned, not least for America’s President-elect, Barak Obama.

When a bloodbath in India’s main commercial center is played out on television screens across the world, people who have witnessed events in New York and Washington, London and Madrid, Islamabad and Bali immediately connect with a rapidly escalating phenomenon. India is no stranger to terror. Still, it has suffered a huge shock. The Indian economy, already caught up in a global recession, is bound to feel the impact. Tourism and investor confidence may suffer, at least in the short term. The political fallout may go beyond the resignation of the Home Minister, Shivraj Patil. The country faces a general election in May 2009. The governing coalition led by the Congress Party is under heavy criticism from the Hindu nationalists, as well as the population in general.

We have seen instances of backlash against Muslims in the United States and Europe after 9/11. The Indian authorities will be mindful of this possibility in their own country. Violence against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities has been on the increase recently. The authorities have come under criticism for failure to protect them, too. Fortunately, Islam has deep roots in India and the 150 million or so Indian Muslims were all born and brought up in a secular country. This does not, however, guarantee harmony between India’s diverse communities. Opposition among Muslims against Indian rule in Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan, has been a serious problem for the central government. Harsh measures by India’s security forces to suppress the militancy fuel the popular discontent even more.

As investigations continue into the massacre, there are accusations and counter-accusations within the governing coalition and between the opposition and the government. Relations between India and Pakistan have plunged following claims that the gunmen may have come by sea from Pakistan and belonged to a group based there. The attackers had AK-47 assault rifles that are manufactured in abundance on the western frontier of Pakistan, where Taleban and Al-Qaeda have sanctuaries and training camps. The sustained ruthlessness and cold-blooded determination of the gunmen to kill until the end was a product of a hardened, well-trained frame of mind.

The president-elect of the United states, Barack Obama, had made the economy his number one priority upon taking office on January 20, 2009. With the recent events in India, he faces another big challenge. Claims of improvement in Iraq are no longer enough to reduce America’s engagement in the Middle East, to concentrate on the Afghan theater and rebuilding the US economy.

The truth is that the web of crises spans from Palestine through Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to India and further east. The combination of extreme remedies applied as part of the ‘war on terror’ and neglect of the real issue in the Middle East – the Palestinian crisis – by the outgoing Bush administration has added fuel to the fire. The mistakes have alienated many decent ordinary people. The same old condemnations of ‘uncivilized terrorists’ and perfunctory support for their victims seem increasingly meaningless.

A strong sense of alienation, humiliation and injustice pervades the Middle East and South Asia. When the situation is so volatile, local crises feed each other until they become a catastrophe. The chain of events in recent years illustrates the way in which many problems have become one. One-and-a-half million Palestinians remain cut off in the Gaza Strip, virtually imprisoned without sufficient food, fuel and medicine. More than a million of them are registered as refugees with the United Nations. They rely on humanitarian assistance that cannot be distributed as it should. The blockade of Gaza may be aimed at breaking the will of its people to support Hamas, which won the parliamentary elections for the Palestinian Authority in 2006. But the embargo has had the opposite effect. The conditions in the territory are increasingly desperate and desperate people resort to desperate things. Underground tunnels have been dug in to Egypt to secure access to essential goods. The humanitarian situation demands urgent and extraordinary measures to prevent the one-and-a-half million residents of the territory reaching the point where desperation is beyond containment.

The Palestinian problem is central to the wider crisis in West and South Asia. Its solution requires historic efforts involving America and Russia, as well as regional powers including Syria, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India and China. Obama has repeatedly offered friendship and support to Israel – a political necessity for any successful American politician. The time has come to exercise a restraining influence on the Israelis. The president-elect says he is willing to negotiate with Iran – a country which has a nuclear program. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States already conducts discreet negotiations with the Taleban. Israel does the same with Syria. In the light of these overtures, the refusal to hold talks with Hamas does not make sense.

The rest comes after the Palestinian problem. Following prolonged negotiations, the timetable for America’s military withdrawal from Iraq is set. It is to be completed by the end of 2011, provided unforeseen events do not frustrate the plan. For the success in stabilizing both Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran’s cooperation is essential. But the more hawkish the US administration becomes, the less chance there is of securing that vital support. At the same time, cooperation of Syria, another big player in the Middle East, is essential for progress in Lebanon and elsewhere.

The crisis across the triangle that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and India has both distinct and common aspects. The Taleban are an indigenous tribal movement across the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier and cannot be eliminated. But it is possible to influence them if conditions are right in both countries and Washington shows willingness to listen to regional experts. America has been heavily involved in both Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost three decades. It played a role in the war. Now it needs to play a part in their reconstruction and stabilization, in the interests of all. Last but not least is Kashmir, a territory disputed between India and Pakistan since their independence from Britain in 1947. The prospects of a resolution to this intractable problem could improve with democratic reforms in Pakistan and with America’s engagement with Pakistan’s civilian political establishment instead of military. Reforms are also needed on the Indian side of Kashmir, where a combination of political failures and heavy-handed military tactics over many years has fuelled popular disaffection and strengthened the militants.

The above article appeared in CounterPunch on 1 December 2008.

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Uproar in Police-State Britain

November 28, 2008 at 6:15 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

The arrest and interrogation of Damian Green, one of Britain’s leading opposition politicians, by the counter-terrorism police (November 27, 2008) on ’suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office’ is an extraordinary event. Counter-terrorism officers searched his homes and offices in London and his constituency. He was questioned for nine hours and released on bail without charge, but must return next February for further questioning. The police action happened when the world’s attention was focused on the terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai.

The Conservative Party, the main opposition in the British Parliament that has been leading in opinion polls this year, is furious at the treatment of one of its star performers. In all probability, Green, a former journalist on the London Times, would be a minister if the Conservatives won the next general election. He had raised some uncomfortable questions for the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and his government in the past year. In November 2007, he disclosed that the Home Secretary knew as many as five thousand illegal immigrants had been granted licenses to work by the Security Industry Authority, but decided not to make the information public.

In February this year, Damian Green revealed that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the British Parliament and raised questions over its security implications. Then there was a letter from the Home Secretary warning that a recession could lead to an increase in crime. He confronted the British government at a time when public concern over crime was rising. The Home Office later admitted that serious crime had been underestimated in official statistics. Green further made public the existence of a list of Labour MPs who could rebel against their own government’s draft legislation to extend the period of detention without charge to 42 days.

As I have already mentioned, the arrest and interrogation of Damian Green came on ’suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office’. This seems to be related to information passed on to him by a whistleblower in the Home Office – an official who saw government wrongdoing and brought it to the attention of a leading opposition MP. The episode has fuelled worries over the loosely-worded anti-terror laws pushed after 9/11 by Tony Blair, the previous prime minister, and their misuse to suppress information likely to embarrass the government.

A number of senior political figures were informed about the Conservative shadow minister’s arrest shortly before it happened. Among them were the Conservative leader David Cameron, the London Mayor who is responsible for running the Metropolitan Police Force and the Speaker of the British House of Commons. The Home Secretary and others in the government have flatly denied prior knowledge of the arrest. However, an ex-Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, says he cannot believe that ministers did not know in advance what was about to happen. 

Reports and comments on how a prominent politician has been treated under anti-terror laws are all over the British press today. The London Mayor expressed his ‘trenchant concerns’ when told of the impending arrest. David Davies, former shadow home secretary who resigned in protest at the threat to civil liberties earlier this year, has called the situation ‘reminiscent to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe’. The Conservative leader David Cameron has described the action as ‘Stalinesque’ and said the ministers have some serious questions to answer. “If the police wanted answers from him, why did they not pick up the phone,” Cameron asked.

The timing and possible motives of what has happened are worth considering.

Politicians, especially those in power, are very good at engaging in questionable acts when there are bigger events taking place elsewhere. Damian Green’s arrest and interrogation happened when the British public was focused on the terrorist attacks in India – attacks in which there had been hundreds of casualties, including British. There were already numerous examples where anti-terror laws had been used against people who had nothing to do with terror. Journalists and researchers are under unprecedented pressure. Academics at British universities have all but surrendered to the shifting and arbitrary interpretations by the authorities of the meaning and causes of terrorism, to save their careers and to ensure funding for their projects. The picture is bleak. It shows that when governments are able to seize too much power, they abuse it to the detriment of citizens.  

Was the arrest of one of Britain’s leading politicians, possibly a future minister, aimed at sending a message to lesser people in the country to close their eyes, ears and mouths? The good news is that criticism of the police action has been swift, widespread and strong and has only begun. As a front-bench member of the British Parliament, Damian Green has ‘parliamentary privileges’ which would be hard to challenge. His actions are in the public interest. For this reason alone, the government would be foolish to prosecute him in court. Green says it is his job as an opposition politician to hold the government to account and he has every intention of continuing to do so. 

The above article appeared in CounterPunch, November 28-30, 2008.

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Understanding Terror

October 19, 2008 at 10:27 am (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

(ZNet, 18 October 2008)

The 9/11 attacks on America and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ prosecuted by President George W. Bush have brought the debate on terrorism into sharp focus. Hardly any country today can claim to be immune from the threat of terrorism or the impact of the US offensive worldwide. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and increasingly Pakistan, it means war. India, ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia and US allies in the Gulf have become frontline states in the war against terrorism. Beyond the conflict zone, its manifestations can be seen in security operations. These include surveillance, kidnappings and detentions instigated by America and its allies, as well as immigration restrictions and checks on money transactions unprecedented in scale since the end of the Cold War.

 

When changes of such magnitude take place in the name of ‘war on terror’, it is natural to ask what constitutes terror and how is it caused? Yet the reluctance to confront these questions is far greater today than at any time in the last half century. ‘Terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ have become widely used terms of abuse throughout the world by democratic and totalitarian regimes alike. Academics and human rights activists can be denied visas to enter the United State. The political opposition in Zimbabwe and Buddhist monks protesting against Chinese rule, even the Dalai Lama, are accused of engaging in terrorist activities.

 

There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. The term is used so widely and for such a sweeping range of activities today that anybody faces the risk of terrorism-related accusations. The absurdity of this approach has been demonstrated most recently by the British government’s decision to use its counter-terrorism laws to seize the UK-based assets of Icelandic companies following the collapse of an Icelandic bank, caught in the worldwide financial turmoil. The ‘terrorist’ label is used primarily for non-state groups. States, with few exceptions, can employ extreme repressive measures without being called terrorist. The idea of citizens taking up arms against a repressive regime has been buried in history. It has been quite a turn around since the 1970s and 1980s.

 

But there is a way to understand the phenomenon of terrorism objectively, casting aside the subjectivity that clouds the debate today. It is to examine terrorism through the microscope of ‘culture of violence’. Conflicts such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine serve as reference points to study terrorism by this method. 

 

Culture, as defined by E. B. Taylor, is ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and many other capabilities and habits acquired by … [members] of society’. Culture is the way of life which people follow in society without consciously thinking about how it came into being. It incorporates the impact of events, cultivated behavior, experience accumulated over time and social learning and is transmitted from generation to generation over years, decades, even centuries.

 

The fundamental building block of a culture is trait. Traits assume many forms such as tools, houses and lifestyle. Culture represents patterns of behavior – family relationships, attitudes and acts towards neighbors and people from distant places. The way government encourages citizens to conform, or imposes sanctions on them, indicates a certain culture. It is a collective mentality involving shared ways of seeing, understanding and experiencing the world. It distinguishes the members of one group from another.

 

How does a culture of violence take root and how does it grow? The process can be seen in four, sometimes overlapping, phases, starting with internal conflict. In Afghanistan, it began with the fall of the monarchy in 1973 and conflict between rival forces in the country. Iraq had been a tightly controlled dictatorship under Saddam Hussain. Its history under Ba’athist rule, which ended with Saddam’s overthrow in 2003, shows conflict within the ruling party and between the regime and opposition groups. The modern conflict in Palestine goes back to just after the Second World War and the creation of Israel. It, too, can be described as an internal conflict, between Jews and Palestinians, who have competing claims to the same land. But it would be wrong to see the Israel-Palestinian conflict solely as an internal matter today. It is central to the wider Middle East crisis, in which external powers are involved, and oil is key.   

 

The second phase in the growth of a violent culture is associated with the involvement of outside players that fuels the internal conflict. The conditions which led to Afghanistan falling under Communist domination in the 1970s and the war since then have much to do with the actions of the ex-Soviet Union, America and regional powers such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China and India. After the failed attempt to annex Kuwait in the early 1990s, the Iraqi regime was seriously weakened by the imposition of UN sanctions and no-fly zones by America, Britain and, for a period, France, excluding Iraqi aircraft from flying over large parts of northern and southern Iraq. Following the 2003 US-led invasion and the dismantling of the Ba’athist regime, many state and non-state players moved into Iraq, starting a vicious cycle of violence along with internal forces which had been unleashed.

 

The third phase in the growth of a culture of violence involves disintegration of the state structure, as the case of Iraq illustrates. The disintegration of the Afghan state in the 1980s and 1990s was a slow process. Once the institutions had collapsed, the Taleban were left as the only agency with the coercive power necessary to enforce some kind of order. The system which the Taleban imposed was oppressive and isolationist. It turned Afghanistan into a sanctuary for groups like Al-Qaeda. 

 

The fourth stage is the creation of an environment in which the rise of extremism occurs. By this stage, the cycle of violence has matured. Violence has superseded the rule of law. Violent players and their victims have become used to coercion. Their thinking and behaviour are driven by the perceived justification for, or expectation of, the use of force to resolve matters. In short, a condition has been reached in which violence permeates all levels of society and becomes part of human thinking, behavior and way of life. The reign of terror has arrived and becomes a phenomenon that does not know borders.

 

How can it be prevented? There are remedies implied in the discussion above.  

 

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A Bitter Harvest

October 5, 2008 at 8:15 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

[Source: Special to History News Network, George Mason University, Virginia, 5 October 2008]

The audacity of recent attacks by the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan has caused alarm in the region and beyond. The bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul in June 2008 and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad have been devastating. Large swathes of Pakistan’s frontier provide militant groups with sanctuaries, from where they launch attacks in both countries. The targets are chosen with precision and the campaign of violence has spread to India. A few days before the Islamabad bombing, a series of explosions in the Indian capital, Delhi, killed and maimed scores of shoppers at several locations. There have also been attacks in other Indian cities in recent months.

These events have caused tensions between the Bush administration and Pakistan, America’s main ally in the “war on terror.” On more than one occasion, U.S. helicopters carrying troops have attempted to land inside Pakistani territory, without authorization. Pakistani troops have fired on them and the helicopters have had to retreat. The anti-U.S. sentiment has rarely been so strong in the region. The authorities in Pakistan cannot afford to allow American troops on their country’s soil. The authorities in India, with a Muslim minority nearly as large as the entire population of Pakistan, struggle to decide how far to move towards imposing draconian measures. How have things come to such a pass?

The origins of today’s crisis rest in the past. For almost half a century after the Second World War, the United States had been at the forefront in efforts to contain communism. By December 1991, the Soviet empire had collapsed and America was in search of a new role. America’s proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan had ended. Billions of dollars worth of weaponry was left in the devastated country. The strategic importance of Afghanistan had diminished for the United States. The army of Islamic groups, financed and equipped by America, turned bitter. In their eyes, it was a deliberate act of abandonment.

The American economy had suffered years of decline, to which vast military expenditure on foreign wars had contributed. There were new opportunities to achieve economic renaissance at home and reshape the international order abroad. Bill Clinton, who won the presidency in November 1992, was keen to seize these opportunities.

However, there was a problem. Following the breakup of the Soviet state, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus had found themselves with almost all long-range nuclear weapons. Smaller tactical arms were scattered all over the territory of the defunct state. Every republic except Kyrgyzstan had inherited them. One nuclear state had suddenly become many. Unless these weapons were dismantled and Russia was helped to transform itself into a democracy in control of the ex-Soviet nuclear arsenal, the world would be a dangerous place.

When Clinton assumed the presidency in January 1993, America had already liberated Kuwait after brief Iraqi occupation. Clinton moved on to his agenda to stabilize the former USSR and rebuild the American economy. He was aware that a conservative takeover in Russia could start a new arms race and sink his plan for American renaissance. Clinton told his advisers to help Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, in the transformation of his country. The focus of Clinton’s policy was to be investment in Russia.

One of its consequences was a move from Afghanistan, left in a Hobbesian “state of nature” – war of all against all. The policy to rescue Russia continued until the end of the Clinton presidency. In the darkest period of Russia’s economic crisis, Yeltsin was forced to default on repayment of foreign debt and devalue the Russian currency in 1998. Clinton pushed the International Monetary Fund to support a recovery program. Within two years, Russia’s income from oil sales had risen substantially, helped by an increase in the world prices. The crisis had subsided.

It was in late 1994 that a little-known Islamic militia, described as the Taleban, came to prominence in southern Afghanistan, amid the destruction of what was left of the Afghan state. The country was split into numerous fiefdoms run by rival warlords. Afghan and foreign Mujahideen had spent years fighting the Soviet Union and its client regime in Kabul. Now, they had nothing to do. Foreign money had dried up. Weapons were plentiful and America had walked away.

Murder, rape, looting and plundering became the way of life for these fighters, as Pakistan’s rival agencies tolerated or collaborated with the Taleban to impose a brutal regime in Afghanistan. The civilian government of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the most important U.S. ally in the region, were the staunchest supporters of the Taleban regime, which gave sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. America had, in effect, handed over Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, which represents the most totalitarian brand of Sunni Islam. Its junior partner was Pakistan.

The 9/11 attacks prompted the United States to return to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taleban regime and destroy Al-Qaeda. Overthrowing the Taleban regime was the easy task. But the stabilization and reconstruction effort has suffered a calamitous failure. The Taleban and Al-Qaeda are regrouped and reinforced. Their top leaders continue to elude capture. Afghans at first welcomed their liberation from the Taleban. They are now very resentful of the Americans and their use of overwhelming force, resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties.

Afghanistan has been at the center of great power games for centuries. But outsiders have always failed to tame the spirit of resistance of its people. At the peak of their dominance, the British and Russian empires played the Great Game. In the Cold War, it was between America and the Soviet Union. Today, as the United States, the only hyperpower in the world, tries to reshape the Afghan state, it finds the new game as difficult as ever.

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Imperial America: success or failure

October 1, 2008 at 12:25 pm (Articles)
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Deepak Tripathi

In a period of unprecedented financial upheaval, the recent surge in violence in South Asia is perhaps receiving less notice in the west than it deserves. The audacity of attacks by the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan has implications for the region and beyond. The bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul in June 2008 and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20 have been devastating. Large swathes of Pakistan’s frontier provide militant groups with sanctuaries, from where they launch attacks in both countries. The targets are chosen with precision and the campaign of violence has spread to India. A few days before the Islamabad bombing, a series of explosions in the Indian capital, Delhi, killed and maimed scores of shoppers at several locations. There have also been attacks in other Indian cities in recent months. 

These events have caused tension between the Bush administration and Pakistan, America’s main ally in the ‘war on terror’. On more than one occasion, U.S. helicopters carrying troops have attempted to land inside Pakistani territory, without authorization. Pakistani troops have fired on them and the helicopters have had to retreat. The anti-U.S. sentiment has rarely been so strong in the region. The authorities in Pakistan cannot afford to allow American troops on their country’s soil. The authorities in India, with a Muslim minority nearly as large as the entire population of Pakistan, struggle to decide how far to move towards imposing draconian measures. How have things come to such a pass? 

The origins of today’s crisis rest in the past. For almost half a century after the Second World War, the United States had been at the forefront in efforts to contain communism. By December 1991, the Soviet empire had collapsed and America was in search of a new role. America’s proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan had ended. Billions of dollars worth of weaponry was left in the devastated country.  The strategic importance of Afghanistan had diminished for the United States. The army of Islamic groups, financed and equipped by America, turned bitter. In their eyes, it was a deliberate act of abandonment.

The American economy had suffered years of decline, to which vast military expenditure on foreign wars had contributed. There were new opportunities to achieve economic renaissance at home and reshape the international order abroad. Bill Clinton, who won the presidency in November 1992, was keen to seize these opportunities.

However, there was a problem. Following the breakup of the Soviet state, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus had found themselves with almost all long-range nuclear weapons. Smaller tactical arms were scattered all over the territory of the defunct state. Every republic except Kyrgyzstan had inherited them. One nuclear state had suddenly become many. Unless these weapons were dismantled and Russia was helped to transform itself into a democracy in control of the ex-Soviet nuclear arsenal, the world would be a dangerous place.

When Clinton assumed the presidency in January 1993, America had already liberated Kuwait after brief Iraqi occupation. Clinton moved on to his agenda to stabilize the former USSR and rebuild the American economy. He was aware that a conservative takeover in Russia could start a new arms race and sink his plan for American renaissance. Clinton told his advisers to help Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, in the transformation of his country. The focus of Clinton’s policy was to be investment in Russia.

One of its consequences was a move from Afghanistan, left in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ – war of all against all. The policy to rescue Russia continued until the end of the Clinton presidency. In the darkest period of Russia’s economic crisis, Yeltsin was forced to default on repayment of foreign debt and devalue the Russian currency in 1998. Clinton pushed the International Monetary Fund to support a recovery program. Within two years, Russia’s income from oil sales had risen substantially, helped by an increase in the world prices. The crisis had subsided.

It was in late1994 that a little-known Islamic militia, described as the Taleban, came to prominence in southern Afghanistan, amid the destruction of what was left of the Afghan state. The country was split into numerous fiefdoms run by rival warlords. Afghan and foreign Mujahideen had spent years fighting the Soviet Union and its client regime in Kabul. Now, they had nothing to do. Foreign money had dried up. Weapons were plentiful and America had walked away.

Murder, rape, looting and plundering became the way of life for these fighters, as Pakistan’s rival agencies tolerated or collaborated with the Taleban to impose a brutal regime in Afghanistan. The civilian government of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the most important U.S. ally in the region, were the staunchest supporters of the Taleban regime, which gave sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. America had, in effect, handed over Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, which represents the most totalitarian brand of Sunni Islam. Its junior partner was Pakistan. 

The 9/11 attacks prompted the United States to return to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taleban regime and destroy Al-Qaeda. Overthrowing the Taleban regime was the easy task. But the stabilization and reconstruction effort has suffered a calamitous failure. The Taleban and Al-Qaeda are regrouped and reinforced. Their top leaders continue to elude capture. Afghans at first welcomed their liberation from the Taleban. They are now very resentful of the Americans and their use of overwhelming force, resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties.

Afghanistan has been at the center of great power games for centuries. But outsiders have always failed to tame the spirit of resistance of its people. At the peak of their dominance, the British and Russian empires played the Great Game. In the Cold War, it was between America and the Soviet Union. Today, as the United States, the only hyperpower in the world, tries to reshape the Afghan state, it finds the new game as difficult as ever.

As the turbulent presidency of George W. Bush comes to a close, claims are heard about the ‘success’ of America’s military surge from the administration and the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. There is talk of a similar surge in Afghanistan to suppress the violence by the Taleban and their allies. However, the reasons behind the decline in violence in Iraq are many, including the fact that tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen, erstwhile Al-Qaeda supporters, are now paid three hundred dollars a month each not to fight the occupation forces and the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad. Their alliance with America is tactical and temporary. Their long-term intentions are uncertain, especially if America withdraws or they are no longer paid. It all reminds me of the U.S.-Mujahideen alliance in Afghanistan, before it fell apart almost twenty years ago.

The American military presence in Afghanistan today is about a third of the size of the Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s – a total of a-hundred-and-twenty-thousand soldiers. Many experts agree that the strength of the U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan is woefully inadequate and reinforcements are needed. But in the unique conditions of Afghanistan, it is much less certain that a surge there will bring lasting success.

The battlefield now extends from the Gulf all the way to India. The problem requires a different solution involving regional powers, Iran and Syria included – an idea loathed by the neo-conservatives who have been in power for eight years.

The above article appeared in OpEdNews on 30 September 2008.

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