CrISIS 9.

Posted on August 12, 2016 by jsh54

For all those angry with President Obama’s policy, the Islamic State is in retreat. Iraq’s militias under the guidance of Iranian advisors, various Kurdish militias, and the Russian- supported Assad regime have rolled back ISIS gains. At the same time, American efforts to focus narrowly on the danger of ISIS cut across the more powerful enmities and affinities in the region. The Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in the Muslim world frames many local conflicts. Russia has chosen alignment with the Shi’ites (Iran, the majority in Iraq, the Alawites of Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon). The United States is having a harder time making a choice.

After the final American withdrawal from Iraq, the Shi’ite government of Nouri al-Maliki reverted to persecuting Sunni Iraqis. Alienated, many Sunnis withdrew their support from the government. Currently, on the principle of “once burned, twice shy,” the Sunnis of Iraq have been sitting-out the Reconquista by the so-called government of so-called Iraq.[1] However, the occupation of the “liberated” areas by either Shi’ite militias or by Kurds merely shifted the locus of repression for the Sunnis. The government has resisted pressure from Washington to arm Sunnis willing to fight ISIS because those same arms might later be used to resist the Shi’ites.[2]

Neither Russia nor its client Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad cared to focus on ISIS when they saw the other Sunni rebel groups as a target more dangerous and more near at hand. Nor did the Sunni rebels against the Assad government see ISIS as the most pressing danger. They often co-operate with Islamist groups in the fight against Assad.[3] In the recent fighting around Aleppo, the Syrian Conquest Front (formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front—the Syrian off-shoot of Al Qaeda) has done much of the heavy lifting. Will Islamist fighters in flight from the embattled ISIS caliphate head West to join the ranks of the Syrian Conquest Front?

If the Syrian Conquest Front, which the US still regards as a version of its old enemy Al Qaeda, becomes the dominant force in the war against the Assad government, Washington will face an ugly choice. Which does it see as the greater threat? With which will it align itself? Will it support the increasingly Islamist-led rebels against the Assad government, even if that means a tacit alliance with the survivors of ISIS and a re-branded Al Qaeda? Will it support the Assad government, even if that means following the Russian lead into a tacit alliance with the Shi’ites?

Where will future historians locate the root of this disaster? The most obvious cause lies in the American decision to attack Iraq in 2003.[4] Anyone who voted for that war has much to answer for. Even before the occupation had been botched, the Turks had refused to cooperate because they foresaw the effect on Kurdish nationalism. Then the occupation was botched. Then came the Obama administration’s too-ready embrace of the “Arab Spring,” its overthrow of the Libyan dictator, and its un-deft handling of the Russians.

Looking farther back, though, can some of the origins be located in the refusal of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to write-off the loans made to Iraq in order for it to fight the long war in the 1980s against the revolutionary Shi’ite regime in Iran, or to support higher oil prices so that Iraq could earn the money to rebuild? Everything turns out to be complicated, rather than simple.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Islamic State Slips, But Sunnis Are On the Sidelines,” WSJ, 10 June 2016.

[2] For its part, Washington has limited the flow of aid to the Kurds because the weapons supplied to fight ISIS might well be used against the Turks. Given the recent hostility of Turkish president Erdogan to the West generally and to the United States in particular, Washington may decide to re-think this position.

[3] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Syria’s Alliance Hang on Outcome in Aleppo,” WSJ, 12 August 2016.

[4] In my view on specious grounds.

Turk’s Head Knot 2.

Posted on August 10, 2016 by jsh54

Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic by Mustapha Kemal, the military has been the guardian of the secular, Western-oriented policy laid down by “Ataturk.” On many occasions, most recently in 1997, this has led to military coups against elected leaders. When Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power in Turkey in 2003, he presented himself as the champion of a democratic Islamism.[1] However, he took care to cripple the ability of the military to intervene in politics. His efforts included what is now recognized to have been a faked prosecution of military leaders for planning a supposed coup in 2008. After 2011, je also supported the Egyptian Islamist Mohammad Morsi of Egypt, another democratically elected leader. Morsi had faced down Egypt’s military dictatorship for a time. When, in 2013, the Egyptian generals overthrew Morsi, Erdogan had to give thought to his own desperate position. Since 2013, Erdogan has been on a rampage as he sought to shore up his claim on power.

In mid-July 2015, some members of the military of the Turkish Republic got fed up with President Erdogan and tried to overthrow him. They missed their punch. Not the least part of the key to Erdogan’s survival came in the support he received from pro-democracy opposition parties. Ever since, there has been Hell to pay.

The failed coup will have a tremendous impact within Turkey. Erdogan has launched a sweeping purge that targets the military, the bureaucracy, the schools, and the kinda-free media. Alleging involvement in the coup, Erdogan has either dismissed from employment or arrested thousands of people. He has bruited it about that his one-time ally Fethullah Gulen conspired in the coup. The American reluctance to extradite Gulen on what may well be specious charges adds fuel to the fire of Erdogan’s rising hostility to the United States. Turkey is in danger of becoming a “normal” Middle Eastern country.

What impact will these events have in the region? Since 2011, Erdogan has opposed Bashar al-Assad of Syria.[2] Turkey has provided the chief conduit for foreign-fighters of all ideological commitments to reach Syria. Turkey has provided the main road for supplies from elsewhere (i.e. Saudi Arabia) to reach those who are willing to fight against Assad. This seems to have included many people bound for the ISIS caliphate.

Erdogan has turned even more emphatically against Turkey’s Western allies. He had already unleashed a tidal wave of Syrian (and other) refugees on Western Europe in order to extract various concessions from the Europeans. Even more dramatically, Erdogan’s government has accused the United States of complicity in the failed coup.

Furthermore, Erdogan has shifted his stance on the civil war in Syria. He has sought to mend fences with the Russians. The Turkish air force pilots who shot down a Russian strike-fighter over a penny-ante invasion of Turkish air space in November 2015 have suddenly found themselves accused of involvement in the coup. Erdogan’s sweeping purge of the military leadership has dragged down the commander of the Second Army, which controls the border with Syria and Iraq, along with many of his subordinates.

The Assad government might hope that the Turkish supply route for fighters may be closed, while the anti-Assad government might fear that their main supply route would be cut. So, the Russo-Assad alliance took heart. They launched a long-prepared assault to cut the last life-lines into Aleppo. In desperation, many of the rebel groups combined to launch their own counter-attack. It continues, with little chance of success.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Political Foes Stood by Leader,” WSJ, 18 July 2016.

[2] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Upheavals in Turkey Threatens Rebels in Syria,” WSJ, 5 August 2016.

CrISIS 8.

Posted on July 4, 2016 by jsh54

A certain amount seems to be agreed about the history of Islamic fundamentalist ideology: Saudi Arabia sought to fend off criticism of the monarchy by pouring money into the proselytizing of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world; this intellectual milieu opened the road from one form of commitment to other, more extreme, forms of commitment; both al Qaeda and Hamas benefitted from this in the past in the sense that there existed a broad tolerance for Islamist terrorism. However, now ISIS has emerged as the champion of conservative Sunni Islam. The “end-of-days” thread in the thought of ISIS has alienated many (perhaps most) Muslims. That still leaves people (the policy-makers, the politicians who front for them, and the scholars and intelligence officers who advise them) with dilemmas.

For one thing, ISIS might best be thought of as a coalition, rather than a coherent movement. On the one hand, it is essentially an Iraqi Sunni movement. Yes, it flourished in a Syria torn apart by civil war, but it has at its core Iraqi Sunnis who had participated in the insurgency that followed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, then fled to Syria. On the other hand, it is an international “brand” that inspires malcontents elsewhere to act against both “Unbelievers” and “Misbelievers.” Will any one strategy succeed against ISIS or is it just an umbrella term for several separate wars?

For another thing, will mowing the lawn on a regular basis (i.e. drone strikes on Islamist leaders) accomplish anything?[1] The answer probably depends on whether one is attacking a tightly circumscribed transnational terrorist network (like Al Qaeda) or a broadly-based insurgency (like the Taliban). Killing the leadership of a network will disorganize it and disrupt its communications. Killing the leader of a local insurgency may just lead to the movement coughing up another leader, one possibly more radical than his predecessor. The U.S. has faced this dilemma since 9/11. Starkly: hunt Osama bin Laden or invade Iraq?

For a third thing, “is the main threat the radicalization of Islam or the Islamization of radicalism?”[2] That is, do some elements (individuals or groups) of Muslim communities move toward a conflict-oriented fundamentalism? If that’s the case, then the solution may be more effective policing to discern people headed down a pathway to violence. Alternatively, do some madmen just seek a “cause” with which to identify, and ISIS is the flavor of the month? If that is the case, then perhaps the defeat of ISIS will reduce the appeal of “jihad.” (NB: Probably both. So, where are the physical and psychological spaces where the two groups meet?)

The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov reports that about a quarter of the ISIS recruits in Europe are actually converts from some other faith or from no faith, while many of the Muslims come from families that were non-observant. One way to read this is that secularization has left some people intellectually and emotionally adrift. Another way to read it is that troubled people search for some rock to cling to so they aren’t washed away in their inner storms. The two are not incompatible. Moreover, Trofimov is understandably pre-occupied by the danger of attacks in the West. What about the many more dissidents in the countries of the Muslim world?

Can ISIS be defeated? In one sense, yes, obviously. Bomb them back to the Stone Age. But can it “die”? Are Bozo Haram and Bangladeshi terrorists and “lone wolves” in California and Florida actually in touch with the Islamic State in any meaningful way? Or are they just inspired by the example? If ISIS is defeated in Syraqia, will it be discredited or will people continue to evoke it as an ideal? There are no easy answers to any of these questions.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “U.S. Killings of Militant Leaders Deliver Mixed Results,” WSJ, 27 May 2016.

[2] Yaroslav Trofimov, “For Some New Militants, Islam is a Flag of Convenience,” WSJ, 17 June 2016.

Chechen jihadis.

Posted on July 1, 2016 by jsh54

The characteristics of the Second Chechen War were the important role played by radical Islamists and their use of terrorism. Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khatab were important figures.

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (1965–2006) was born in a Chechen mountain village. He did a couple of years in the Red Army, but not in a combat unit.[1] Then he worked on a collective farm; he tried to get into law school, but didn’t make the cut; he studied engineering, but flunked out; and then he sold computers in Moscow. Basically, a slacker who ought to be recognizable to many young Americans: slept all day, played video games all night. Then, in November 1991, Chechnya declared its independence from Russia. Basayev and some friends hijacked a Soviet airliner and took it to Turkey to publicize the cause of Chechen freedom. Then he became a soldier of Islam, or at least of the Muslim areas of the old Soviet Union that were trying to break away. He fought in Nagorno-Karabakh (1992), Abkhazia (1992-1993), and then in the First Chechen War (December 1994-August 1996). The war went badly for the Chechens until Basayev seized a hospital in southern Russia and the 1600 people inside it. He wanted the Russians to stop attacking Chechnya. He didn’t exactly get what he wanted, but he did force a pause in Russian attacks, and he did get away, and he did get a lot of publicity. Which was nice.

Basayev found a kindred spirit in Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem (1969–2002), more commonly known as Emir Khatab, or Ibn al-Katab. Khatab was born in Saudi Arabia. He left at age 18 to join the last stages of the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was in Afghanistan from 1989 to 1994, although with interruptions. Here he met Osama bin Laden. Along the way he lost a chunk of his right hand while handling an IED.[2] In 1992, he may have fought in Nagorno-Karabakh. He fought in the Tajikistan civil war from 1993 to 1995. In 1995 and 1996 he fought in the First Chechen War.

After the end of the war, Basayev tried politics, but his career fizzled out, while Khattab became a warlord in the ruined Chechen republic. Peace did not agree with them so well as did war. In 1998, Basayev and Khatab organized the Islamic International Brigade. Most of its members were from neighboring Dagestan, with a smattering of Arabs and Turks and a few Chechens. In August 1999 Basayev and Khatab triggered the Second Chechen War when they raided into Dagestan. Then the jihadis organized a number of terrorist bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. When the Russians counter-attacked into Chechnya in 1999, Basayev and Khatab led the guerrilla war fought in the Chechen mountains.

Eventually, the Russkies got fed up with trying to kill Khattab by ordinary means. Khattab was a good son: he regularly corresponded with his mother in Saudi Arabia, using a courier named Ibragim Alauri. The Russian intelligence service tracked down Alauri and “turned him.” In March 2002, Alauri arrived in Chechnya with letters to Khattab. He met with Russian intelligence officers. They sprayed the letters from his mother with sarin, a fast-acting poison, then sent Alauri on his way. Khatab died on the night of 19-20 March 2002 from touching the letters.[3]

When the war went badly for the Chechens, Basayev organized acts of large-scale terrorism: the seizure of a Moscow theater, and “Black Widow” suicide bombings by women in burkas from 2002 through 2004. In July 2006 he was killed in the explosion of a land-mine.

[1] The Red Army didn’t train Chechens to be fighters. 1.) Why bother? It’s in their blood. 2.) You’re just storing up trouble for later.

[2] A “Khatabka” is a Russian and Chechen slang term for a home-made hand grenade.

[3] Alauri was killed in April 2002 in Baku by agents sent by Shamil Basayev.

Chechnya.

Posted on July 1, 2016 by jsh54

Chechnya is a little place in the North Caucasus mountains. Russia is to the North, Turkey is to the Southwest, and Iran is to the Southeast. A lot of the country is mountains.

In the 15^th Century, faced with pressure from the Christian Russians, the pagan Chechens converted to Sunni Islam to win the support of the Muslim Ottoman Turkish empire. However, the Chechens weren’t very good Muslims. Paganism remained powerful until early in the 1800s and Chechen Islam absorbed a bunch of pagan practices: mosques were built near streams and Allah was often referred to as Deila, the head god of the pagan Chechens. Furthermore, Muslim religious-based law conflicted with traditional law and people didn’t always think that “sharia” was better. Even today, Chechen Muslims like and continue to use alcohol and tobacco.

After that, Chechnya remained independent—backward as all get-out, but independent—until the end of the 18^th Century. At the start of the 19^th Century the Russkies started pressing again while the Ottoman Empire crumbled. From 1834 to 1859 an imam (Muslim cleric) named Shamil led a guerrilla war against the Russians. The Russkies won, but the whole region of the North Caucasus saw repeated rebellions for the rest of the century. The whole region tried to set up an independent country after the Russian Revolution (1917-1921), with the grandson of the Imam Shamil among the leaders. That didn’t work: the Reds got control of the place by 1922 and Shamil’s grandson ended up in Germany. The Soviets promised the Caucasus peoples autonomy, but soon reneged on that promise. Discontent bubbled until a new insurgency broke out from 1940 to 1944. The Soviets defeated this rebellion, then deported all 500,000 Chechens to Central Asia. Perhaps 120,000 of them died in the process. After the death of Stalin in 1953, the survivors were allowed to return.

Chastened by this hard experience, the Chechens kept their heads down until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Then the Chechens again declared their independence. Their leader at the time was Dzhokhar Dudayev. The Russians, under Boris Yeltsin, declined to accept Chechen succession. If the Chechens bailed out, then lots of other people would bail out. Two years of incredibly brutal and devastating war followed. Chechens won their independence, but the price was extremely high. The war had wrecked much of the country. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had been driven out of the country. The guerrillas who had fought the war had become radicalized as exponents of “jihad” and had a hard time returning to civilian life, such as it was. The country collapsed into chaos, with kidnappings for ransom becoming the only growth industry. (About 1,300 people were kidnapped for ransom in four years. Mostly, they got out alive, if not all in one piece.[1])

Worse followed. In 1999, rebel bands attacked into the neighboring Soviet Union; and a series of bombings of Russian apartment buildings killed about 300 civilians.[2] This set off the Second Chechen War. This time the Russkies beat up on the Chechens and re-gained control of the country—sort of. It also set off a civil war between “opportunist”/Sufi Muslim Chechens who supported the Russians and Wahhabist jihadis who fought them. The Kadyrov family, father and son, led the Sufi faction. In 2004 the jihadis killed the father–Akhmad Kadyrov. In 2007, the son—Ramzan Kadyrov—became President of the Chechen Republic. This guerrilla war continued until 2009. Kadyrov takes a dim view of Wahhabism, and of jihadis.

[1] Clip from “Proof of Life.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2aKHsTOoq0

[2] The Russians blamed these on Chechen terrorists, but a lot of people think the Russian secret service did them as a justification for war. So, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dad said that some secret service had framed his kids for the Boston Marathon bombing, , that’s where he was coming from.

Obama in the Middle East.

Posted on June 29, 2016 by jsh54

Was President Obama wrong to avoid intervention in the Syrian Civil War? Was he wrong to seek escape from Iraq and to hesitate to commit American forces to the war against ISIS? These questions matter on several levels. For one thing, there are an awful lot of dead people, no? Could the huge death toll of the Syrian Civil War been avoided, to say nothing of the Western hostages butchered, and the Jordanian pilot burned to death, and the Yazidis murdered, and the Iraqi soldiers massacred after surrender?

For another thing, we’re in the death throes of an American presidential election. The aspiring successors to President Obama both criticize his eight years of restraint. Recently, a gaggle of American diplomats used the free-speech channel at the State Department to dissent from administration policies, and current-Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged their viewpoints. Whoever wins the election in November 2016, the United States is likely to be blowing up things on a grand scale soon afterward.

Lonely voices defend the president.[1] To the surprise of no one who has spent time studying the history of international relations, countries define for themselves and then pursue their individual interests.[2] Sunni and Shi’a Islam are now engaged in a great civil war in the Middle East and elsewhere. As a result, Saudi Arabia and Iran are at daggers drawn. Or perhaps it is the other way around. Saudi Arabia and Iran are at daggers drawn, so there is a Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. It’s a tricky business. In any event, Iran backs the Shi’ite majority in Iraq and the Alawite minority in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. Saudi Arabia backs the Sunni rebels in Syria, and the government in Yemen, and does nothing very evident to oppose ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Neither country will bend before American will.

Then, Americans often believe that the course of events is determined by Americans. For the Right this often means that the United States must just “stand firm” in a Viagraesque way. For the Left, this means that the United States, usually at the behest of big business, picks the winners in foreign social conflicts. Neither interpretation could be further from the truth.[3] The domestic balance of forces determines the outcomes of conflicts. The United States merely accommodates itself to the de facto government. In the case of the “Arab Spring,” President Obama’s initial idealism soon got short-circuited by reality. In similar fashion, his idealism, and the foolishness of Hillary Clinton, led to a disastrous intervention in Libya. On the core issues, however—Syria, Iraq, Iran—President Obama has been reluctant to intervene in foreign civil wars. Just as Britain and France hesitated to intervene in the American Civil War.

Most of all, the Middle East just isn’t that important to America at the dawn of a new century. Fracking has reduced world dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The Middle East has oil but no industry. The Russo-American conflict is no longer about existential issues. Even terrorism can’t destroy America or Western Europe.

Political scientist (and former Obama Administration advisor on the Middle East) Marc Lynch concludes that “America can be more or less directly involved, but it will ultimately prove unable to decide the outcome of the fundamental struggles by Arabs over their future.” The voice of reason.

[1] Marc Lynch, The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2016).

[2] “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”—Thucydides.

[3] See, for example, Chiarella Esposito, America’s Feeble Weapon: Funding the Marshall Plan in France and Italy, 1948-1950 (Praeger, 1994).

The Great Game.

Posted on June 29, 2016 by jsh54

Under the tsars of the 19^th Century, Russia greatly extended its territories.[1] Some incidents in this expansion caught the attention of Westerners: the “Great Game” played between Britain and Russia in Afghanistan and Persia (now Iran); Japan’s humiliating defeat of Russia in 1905; and the rivalry in the Balkans between Russia and Austria-Hungary that helped bring on the First World War. Less noticed, at the time and since, Tsarist Russia conquered many small Muslim states in Central Asia. This gave Russia, and later the Soviet Union, a huge Muslim population. What was to become of these people if Russia, and later the Soviet Union, broke up? As with Russia’s original expansion into the region, recent events here have not been much noticed by Western media or much discussed by Western officials. For both the Russkies and the local peoples, however, the issues are important.

One example comes from the Turkic region. Back in the First World War, the Ottoman Government had vast visions of a central Asian Empire that encompassed the Turkic people inside the Russian Empire. Defeat in war and the victory of the Communists in the Russian Civil War put paid to that fantasy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the Turkic peoples created various “stans” as independent states. Turkey revived its dreams of extending its influence throughout the region. Turkey spread its influence by fostering cultural, educational (lots of exchange students), and business connections (investment).[2]

However, the particular emphasis—“pro-Muslim Brotherhood, rather than pan-Turkic”—given to this long-term effort by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began to rankle. Russia remains far more important the region than is Turkey. The attitudes toward Islam are more varied among the Turkic peoples than Mr. Erdogan’s own preference.

So problems had been developing. Then the Turks—foolishly—shot down a Russkie fighter-jet that had briefly over-flown Turkish territory while attacking Syrian rebels. The Russkies weren’t too pleased. They slammed on all sorts of sanctions. Russian police and immigration officials continually harass Turks working in or visiting business in Russia itself. Turkic Russians resist burning bridges.

Another example comes from Chechnya.[3] Russia fought several gory wars to retain possession of the little territory in the North Caucasus, then put in a former rebel, Ramzan Kadyrov, as the ruler. Since then, the government has “Islamized” Chechnya. It’s almost impossible to buy alcohol, women wear the hijab, and the mosques are packed. However, Chechnya’s Islamists are Sufis, rather than Wahhabists. Saudi Arabian-sponsored Wahhabism is what inspires ISIS and similar movements. Among those similar movements were the jihadis who initially fought for Chechen independence from Russia.[4]

There are two points worth pondering.

First, Turkey is a member of NATO. Do the Russians have a right to think of Erdogan’s forward policy among the Turkic people—like tighter links between the European Union (EU) and Georgia or Ukraine—as a hostile act?

Second, have the Russians found a means of defusing radical Islam by embracing an equally intense, but less radical, version?

[1] There is a greater similarity here to the simultaneous expansion of the British Empire and to American “Manifest Destiny” than English-speaking peoples like to admit.

[2] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Turkey’s Rift With Russia Frays Ties With Turkic Kin,” WSJ, 24 June 2016.

[3] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Under Putin Ally, Chechnya Islamizes,” WSJ, 3 June 2016.

[4] See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Khattab

Saudi Arabia and 9/11.

Posted on June 18, 2016 by jsh54

In the 9/11 attacks, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.[1] Osama bin Laden was a Saudi who had begun his career in “jihad” by raising money and recruiting men for the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This came to be called the “Golden Chain.” It is now a commonplace to note that Saudi Arabia has promoted the Puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism and that there is a striking similarity between Wahhabism and the ideology of ISIS. Immediately after 9/11, the Saudi Arabian government flew 160+ Saudi Arabians out of the US on chartered jets, while the rest of America was grounded.[2] So, inquiring minds want to know, did Saudi Arabia have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?

Conspiracy theorists aren’t the only ones to ask the question.[3] In 2002, a Joint Congressional Inquiry investigated intelligence failures on the road to 9/11. President George W. Bush felt it necessary to bar release of 28 pages of the report which dealt with Saudi Arabian involvement. (The Congress People[4] are allowed to read the pages under supervision, but they are barred from talking about what they have read.)

Did ObL’s “Golden Chain” continue to operate after the war in Afghanistan? Did Saudi donors finance the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Did Saudi government officials facilitate the work of the terrorists? In response to these questions, equivocation is rife. The Saudi government emphatically denies having anything to do with 9/11. The 9/11 Commission declared that there was “no evidence” of Saudi government involvement at the upper levels. What about at the lower levels? What about rich guys not in government?

People who are privy to the various investigations dissent from the qualified answers offered by the government. John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said that “there was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of these people worked in the Saudi government.” Bob Graham, a co-chair of the group investigating intelligence failures, said that the question of financing of 9/11 “points a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia.”

At what do people look specifically? First, at Omar al-Bayoumi, who is suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer posted in Southern California with a watching brief on Saudi dissidents living in America. In January 2000, two of the future hijackers (who had slipped through the many cracks in American intelligence before 9/11) arrived in Los Angeles. Neither spoke any English, yet they managed to disappear for two weeks. Then they met Bayoumi. He drove them down I-5 to San Diego, found them an apartment (co-signing the lease) and fronted them the rent, and put them in touch with a local imam, Anwar al Awlaki. (See “Just like Imam used to make.”) Second, at Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi consul and imam in Southern California.[5] He had contact with Bayoumi; he was deported in 2003; and he was interviewed by the EffaBeeEye several times in 2004. Thumairy denies everything.

On the one hand, one of the implicated Saudi officials says “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide.” On the other hand, Saudi Arabia recently said that it will sell $750 billion of its American assets (mostly US Treasury bonds) if the secret 28 pages are de-classified. That seems likely a testy response if there’s “nothing to hide.” Still, American officials cringe before the threat.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 15 July 2005, p. 18.

[2] There were 84,436 Saudis in the United States that year. Why fly out only 160 or so of them?

[3] “Saudi Arabia and 9/11,” The Week, 24 June 2016, p. 13.

[4] See their hit song “White-House-C-A.”

[5] Mark Mazetti and Scott Shane, “28 Pages May Not Unlock Mystery of Saudis and 9/11,” NYT, 18 June 2016.

The Islamic Brigades III.

Posted on June 17, 2016 by jsh54

Omar Mateen, the Orlando Islamist homophobe mass murderer is beginning to appear as deranged from youth. Different groups have sought to interpret the massacre to serve their own ends.[1] Republicans harp on the danger from “radical Islam.” President Obama excoriates American gun laws. Gay rights groups trace the line from Stonewall to Orlando. All this is great for an “Inside Baseball” approach to politics. Does it solve any of our problems? No.

Currently, it is all the rage to remark that ISIS exerts a global influence through both its propaganda and the reality of its military threat to Syria and Iraq. This leads to “lone wolf” attacks. However, the “shoe bomber,” the “underwear bomber,” the London transit bombers, and the Madrid train bombers all struck before ISIS was so much as a twinkle in the eye of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Stamp out ISIS and some new source of inspiration will arise.

Both traditional diplomats and modern military intelligence analysts have always sought to understand the “capabilities” of other states, rather than their “intent.” “Intent” can change pretty rapidly, so understanding “capability” is much more useful in interpreting the strategic environment. Peter Bergen, the author of United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists (2016), describes FBI behavioral analysts as doing something similar. They analyze where a subject appears to be on a “pathway to violence.” Neither of the two earlier FBI investigations of Omar Mateen had given any reason to believe that he had advanced far down the “pathway.”[2] Suddenly, a few weeks ago, Mateen began to shift from all talk toward action. He purchased guns; he tried to purchase body armor and ammunition in bulk; he began visiting a number of public sites suitable for targeting large numbers of people. What caused the apparently sudden acceleration down the “pathway”? We don’t know yet.

Terrorism scholars have concluded that the reason that terrorists attack are complex, but highly personal, rather than standardized. Indeed, the “soldiers” of ISIS may be “little more than disturbed individuals grasping for justification.”[3] Thus, Peter Bergen rejects simple answers. In only 10 percent of 300 cases he examined did the “terrorist” have any kind of identifiable mental problem.[4] The share of them who had ever done time in prison was only slightly higher than the American national average.[5] Radical Islam just pulls some people. Why?

Instead of simple explanations, Bergen finds a pattern of complex factors. There is likely to be hostility to America’s Middle Eastern policy (our mindless support for Israel, our wrecking Iraq and Libya). At the core, however, he finds people who have suffered some kind of acute “personal disappointment” or rupture like the death of a parent. To take two examples, Nidal Hassan had few friends, no wife, and both his parents had died; while Tamerlan Tsarnaev had missed his punch in an effort to become an Olympic boxer. Omar Mateen kept getting tossed out of school, losing jobs, and failing at marriage. This, in turn, sends them in search of something that will give their life meaning. That can mean radical Islam. So, are terrorists “failed sons”?

[1] Max Fisher, “Trying to Know The Unknowable: Why Attackers Strike,” NYT, 15 June 2016.

[2] Obviously, this has nothing to do with the important questions, first, of whether someone with such a troubled life history should have been able to buy a firearm; and, second, whether anyone should be able to buy something like an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

[3] Fisher, “Trying to Know The Unknowable.”

[4] Peter Bergen, “Why Do Terrorists Commit Terrorism?” NYT, 15 June 2016.

[5] Terrorists: 12 percent versus American average: 11 percent. However, extraordinarily large numbers of Americans have done time as a result of the War on Drugs, so this figure might look different if set in the context of incarceration rates in other advanced nations.

Arab Spring Board.

Posted on May 3, 2016 by jsh54

For decades since gaining their independence from foreign rule (either Turkish or European), the Arab states have suffered under brutally oppressive, monumentally corrupt, and astonishingly incompetent governments. For decades it seemed that the “Arab street” would do nothing but seethe. In Spring 2011, popular uprisings took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Optimists began to talk of an “Arab Spring.” Realists began to recall the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. Then large, but disparate coalitions of enemies of the old regime toppled their rulers in France, Germany, the Austrian Empire, and in Italy. Equally quickly, the revolutionary tide ebbed when the victors could not agree what they wanted to put in place of the old regime. Five years on, it seems to be widely accepted that the realists were right all along.[1]

That said, a great deal of diversity can be found within this universal model. Tunisia has been struggling on manfully in an attempt to create some kind of non-autocracy and to revive its feeble economy.[2] Egypt’s “deep state” tossed overboard Hosni Mubarrak, let the Muslim Brotherhood take office (if not power), and then staged a well-prepared coup. Libya might have restored the old regime, but American intervention put an end to that chance and the country has virtually disintegrated. Syria, worst of all, collapsed into a civil war that grinds on.

Kenneth Pollack offers a profound-sounding analysis of Worth’s book: “The Middle East [Worth] sketches…is a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all.” In these conditions, the absence of order, “Chaos bred fear, fear bred violence and violence bred revenge and more anger and more violence.” That explanation seems to work well for Syria, but it hardly explains anywhere else in the Middle East.

Unrest did not occur everywhere to the degree that it occurred in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. Much more limited unrest took place in some of the Gulf Arab states, in Jordan, in Morocco, and in Algeria. Virtually nothing troubled the calm in Saudi Arabia. The troubles in Iraq were both graver than in Egypt and arose from different traumas. Yet all Arab governments are more or less oppressive and incompetent. Why did the “Arab Spring” not take place all throughout the Arab world? Why did the unrest have different outcomes in different places?

Part of the answer may be that the price of oil in 2011 stood at $100 a barrel, while the price of oil today is about $45 a barrel. In 2011, Saudi Arabia was rolling in dough. This wealth allowed the Saudi state to buy off any dissent among its subjects. Having staved-off unrest at home, Saudi Arabia could also deploy its wealth in support of friends in other Arab countries. On the one hand, when the United States reduced aid to Egypt after the coup against the democratically-elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia whipped out its check-book to more than make good the loss of American aid. Links between the two Arab countries seem to continue to tighten. On the other hand, when opponents of Bashar al-Assad in Syria called for aid, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States sent money and weapons.

The simple “they agreed on what they were against, but disagreed on what they were for” analysis of the Arab Spring misses yet another parallel to 1848. The multi-national Austrian Empire lashed out against all enemies foreign and domestic. The Czechs, the Italians, and the Hungarians all felt the force of Austrian arms. The threat of Austrian intervention also contributed to the defeat of German nationalism. Will the Saudi victories turn to ashes in ten years’ time, just as did those of Austria between 1859 and 1867?

[1] See Kenneth Pollack’s review of Robert F. Worth, A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2016), NYT Book Review, 1 May 2016.

[2] Now if Islamists would just stop shooting up the tourist resorts.

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