Tag Archives: Terrorism

Yemen and Nomen

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The Christmas Day 2009 “Underwear Bomber” brought attention to a little-known, impoverished, physically desolate, ill-governed, violent corner of the world.  No not Detroit.  Yemen, on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Conditions in Yemen are miserable.  Yemen consists of mountains and deserts and tribes.  Furthermore, there are fewer than thirty million Yemenis, but they own sixty million guns.  Then, the economy is dead: about half the population lives in poverty and over a third of the work force is unemployed.  What little oil there is won’t last much longer.  There is a shortage of water that will only get worse.  Yemeni women have an average of six children, so the population is rising rapidly.

Political conditions make this dire situation even worse.  First, the recetn President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was seen as a crook and a tyrant.  After two successive presidents had been assassinated, the army put him into power in 1978.  He quickly entrenched himself.  Then, in 1990 his government managed to get control of the southern region, which is home to the oil resources of the country.  Since then it has bled the region of the oil revenue while starving it of resources.  So there is an insurgency underway.  Then, in the north there are Shi’a Muslims who dislike being ruled by a Sunni government.  So there is an insurgency under way.  Then, because the economy is in poor shape, unemployed young men tend to have a lot of time to kill.  Fundamentalist religious preachers abound, usually spewing stuff about Islam establishing its world predominance through struggle. One of these preachers was the Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who was in touch via internet with Major Nidal Hasan before he killed thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009, and he met with the “underwear bomber” before his mission in December 2009.  Guy appeared to be in a rut.

So, it is a natural environment for Al Qaeda.  The first Al Qaeda people showed up as early as 1992.  In 2000 Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole when it was entering port in Yemen.  Later on, Yemeni jihadists went to fight the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Many of the survivors of those adventures have returned home over the years.  When the Saudi Arabian government stomped down on jihadists sympathizers after 9/11, many of them fled to Yemen.  Right now it is estimated that anywhere from 300 to 500 committed Al Qaeda fighters are somewhere in Yemen.  (For obvious reasons, it’s a little tricky to go door to door doing a proper census.)  More recently the British and American embassies in the capital city of Sanaa were attacked.  Most recently, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Muslim studying in Yemen, was recruited as the “Underwear bomber.”  So, the place is a pain-in-the-neck for the United States.

Generally, Yemenis don’t like the United States as an abstract concept.  The government is less anti-American than are the people generally, but people don’t like the government either.  If the government co-operates too openly with the United States in opposing Al Qaeda, it will become even less popular than it is now.  The result may be that it will be over-thrown by people who are pro-Al Qaeda.  So, we can let the situation sort of fester in hopes that nothing worse will appear, or we can push for action against Al Qaeda and make that worse situation appear.  I suppose we could invade the place to bring them hope and change, just like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.  “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for you?”

“Terrorism’s new hideout,” The Week, 22 January 2010, p. 11.

Zarqawi

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Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (30 October 1966-7 June 2006) was born in Zarqa, Jordan.  He sprang from a Bedouin family which had settled down in Jordan’s one factory town.  Something went wrong early in life.  He drank a lot and had a great deal of “contact” with the police.  At some point, he got religion and shaped up his life.  A passport photo shows him clean-shaven, with a white shirt and tie—and a sad, mean look.  At some point, he took the alias “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” which means “the father of Musab” and “From Zarka.”

In 1989 he followed the well-worn Young Islamist pathway to Afghanistan.  Here he met Osama bin Laden, may have received basic military training in one of the numerous camps, and wrote some stuff for an Islamist newsletter.  By 1992 he was back in Jordan conspiring to overthrow the monarchy, for which he did five years in prison (1994-1999).  In prison he came under the influence of the Jordanian Islamist writer Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.  No sooner did he get out than he tried to blow up a tourist hotel in Amman (1999).  This didn’t work out any better than his earlier plot.  From 1999 to 2002 he moved to Afghanistan (where OBL fronted him $200,000 to start a Jordanian franchise of Al Qaeda and the Americans almost killed him in a bombing), then to Iraq by way of Iran.  He may have been recovering from an injury in Baghdad for a while.  In summer 2002 he moved into northern Iraq, where he joined an Islamist group that was waging jihad by cutting pictures of women off ads.

More serious work tugged at him.  He helped plot the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan (October 2002); organized the bombing of the UN’s HQ in Baghdad (August 2003); organized attacks on Shi’ite shrines in Karbala and Baghdad (March 2004); planned a huge abortive chemical weapons attack on the offices of the prime minister and the intelligence service of Jordan and on the American embassy (April 2004); beheaded a captured American civilian (May 2004), then posted the film on the internet; sent terrorists on an abortive attack on a NATO meeting in Turkey (June 2004); beheaded another captured American civilian (September 2004), then posted the film on the internet; organized the bombing of three hotels in Amman (November 2005); and organized the attack on the Al Askari mosque in Samarra (February 2006).  These attacks are only the most spectacular of his operations.

Having been organizing in Iraq from before the Second Gulf War, he had the weapons and explosive, the local contacts, the hideouts, and the local knowledge for insurgent war.  What he needed were fighters.  These began to flow to him in the form of the many Islamist foreign fighters who entered the country from 2003 on.  Without local contacts, Zarqawi became their controller.  He probably organized many of the hundreds of suicide bombings that battered Iraq from 2003 to 2006.

Zarqawi had been on American and Jordanian “Most Wanted” lists since early 2002.  In January 2003, the CIA had proposed killing Zarqawi at a camp they had identified in Kurdistan.  The proposal was rejected, possibly out of fear that an attack would release toxic clouds from chemicals stored in the camp.  Once the US invaded Iraq, Special Forces groups hunted Zarqawi with mounting intensity.  Several of these raids came close to capturing him, but always fell short.  (One time they found eggs cooking, but not yet burning, on the stove of his empty hide-out.)  However, the raids did capture some of his associates.  One of these was interrogated—humanely—by an Air Force interrogator who uses the pseudonym “Matthew Alexander.”  Zarqawi had a great many hiding places, but “Alexander” learned the location of one in a village near Baqubah.  It took six weeks of watching before he came in sight.  On the night of 7 June 2006, two precision guided bombs destroyed the house, Zarqawi, and his wife and child–Musab.

The GWOT If Israel was in Charge.

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What if Israel ran the Global War on Terror (GWOT)?

On the wall of his office Meir Dagan had an old black-and-white photograph of his grandfather about to be shot by a German in Russia during the Second World War.  Must be some German soldier’s snap-shot, something he could keep as a trophy or send home to his girlfriend.  I don’t know where Dagan got it.  Probably did a lot of looking through the picture collection at Yad Vashem.  This may not be psychologically healthy.  Perhaps he should consider grief counseling.  On the other hand, Dagan was the head of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.  He can look at it anytime he wants during the day while he tries to figure out how to deal with Israel’s enemies.

One of the units under Dagan’s command is called “Kidon.”  That’s the Hebrew word for bayonet.  (Actually, it probably means “dagger” or “six inches of honed bronze” because Hebrew is a language from the many days ago before Bayonne even existed.)  You go to Barnes and Noble, you’ll find a bunch of books about American snipers with 500 “kills” or sumshit like that.  Kind of FPSy if you ask me.  I don’t think I’ve run across books about sticking a blade in somebody, feeling it grate on a rib, inhaling the coppery smell of blood, hearing the guy gasping for breath like it’s sex.  Nothing FPS about that.  Kidon typifies Israel’s response to terrorism.

After the 1972 Munich Olympics, Kidon launched “Operation Wrath of God.”  (See: “Munich.”)  The Israelis killed eleven PLO terrorists believed to have been involved in the attack.  It took seven years.  Apparently, they’re tenacious and patient.

At least once, in Lillehamer, Norway, they killed a complete innocent.  In front of his pregnant wife.  Apparently, they don’t get thrown off-track by remorse over errors.

After Hamas rose to power in the Gaza Strip in 1993, it sent many suicide bombers into Israel.  The Israelis didn’t take this lying down.  In 1996 they palmed off a “burner” filled with explosives on Yahya Ayyash, the really talented chief bomb maker for Hamas; in 1997 they tried to kill Khaled Meshal, a Hamas leader, by injecting poison into his ear; in 2004 they killed the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, with an Apache gunship; in 2008 they put a bomb in the headrest of a Hamas leader’s car in Damascus.  In January 2010 they suffocated the chief contact between Hamas and Iran in his luxury hotel room in Dubai.  Apparently, they focus on the enemy leadership.

When Hamas took full control of Gaza in 2007, it fired thousands of rockets into Israel.  Israel responded by blockading Gaza: it will not allow in cement, steel, cars, computers, and lots of ordinary food; its navy will not let fishing boats proceed more than three miles from shore; it will not allow any Palestinians out of Gaza.  From December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli forces bombarded the Gaza Strip.  Anything big (police stations, factories, government buildings, schools, hospitals) got blown up; 1,300 people got killed; tens of thousands got “dishoused”—as the RAF used to describe the result of the area bombing of German cities.  Apparently, they don’t care much about making a bad impression on world opinion.

At the same time, Israeli leaders have begun to talk about doing a deal with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights.  Syria is the chief supporter of Hamas.  Probably, the price of the Golan for Syria would include helping eliminate the ability of Hamas to engage in attacks on Israel—before the Syrians get back the Golan. (See: Michael Collins.)  Apparently, they adapt to changing circumstances and will talk to their enemies.

So, tenacity, patience, focus, a thick hide to criticism, and adaptability are keys traits.  The enemy hasn’t gone away, but neither have the Israelis.  They live with a long struggle.

The Gun That Made the Nineties Roar

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The story of the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle can stand in for the history of the Soviet Union more generally.  First, there is the story of its designer.  Timofey Kalashnikov was a “kulak” (one of the well-off peasants who had profited from the pre-revolutionary regime’s “wager on the sober and the strong”).  In 1919 Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was born.  His parents nurtured him through the Russian Civil War.  In 1921 the Bolshevik Revolution ran up against the resistance to “common ownership of the means of production” by the peasant-proprietors like Timofey Kalashnikov.  The Bolsheviks settled for control of the “commanding heights” of the economy, while allowing peasants and shopkeepers to retain possession of their property.  They didn’t like doing this, but they recognized reality.  Then Stalin came to power.  In 1928 he launched the transition to real Communism.  He ordered the “collectivization” of agriculture, by seizing the lands of the kulaks, and by plowing resources into building industry.  The Kalashnikov family had their farm seized, then were deported to Siberia.  Old Pa Kalashnikov soon died.  An older brother mouthed off and got slammed into the Gulag.  So Mikhail Kalashnikov grew up in fear and hardship.  In 1938 Kalashnikov got drafted and learned to drive a tank; in June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union; in October 1941 Kalashnikov was badly wounded.  While in hospital he became interested in weapons design and managed to get transferred to a design unit for the rest of the war.  No Stalingrad for him.  At the end of the war the Allies captured a bunch of German designers.  The US got the great rocket scientist Werner von Braun; the Russkies got the great arms designer Hugo Schmeisser.  Taken to Russia, Schmeisser “helped” design the AK-47, which—oddly—bears a marked resemblance to his own earlier design for the Wehrmacht’s “Sturmgewehr” assault rifle.  So, what did Mikhail Kalashnikov add?

That question brings us to our second theme, the Soviet system of industrial production.  There was a Soviet-era joke that ran: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”  Even the best-rewarded Soviet workers weren’t always delighted with their situations.  A lot of people did sloppy, crude work, chipping at the vodka bottle during the work day.  As a result, the AK-47 is garbage by Western engineering standards.  It isn’t very accurate: it has an effective range of only 200-300 yards.  It is crudely made, rather than engineered so that the pieces fit tightly together.  Perversely, herein lies one of its virtues.  You can get it dirty; you can forget to oil it; and you can blaze away at something without cleaning out the carbon build-up: it still fires.  Then, it is stubby, especially with the butt-stock folded forward, and light, only about ten pounds.  Herein lies a second virtue.  Short and light made it the weapon-of-choice for both child-soldiers and terrorists.  Short, light, and reliable made untrained, even moronic, soldiers a deadly enemy.  In sum, it is a weapon perfectly adapted for war in the Third World.

Third, there is the story of the Communism versus Capitalism.  Colt only manufactured as many M-16s as the market demanded.  The Soviets manufactured stuff to keep their workers employed, without any regard for what the market wanted.  As a result, there are 10 million M-16s, but there may be 100 million AK-47s.  The Soviets gave the surplus arms away to “movements of national liberation” all around the globe during the Cold War.  Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are awash in these things.

As for Kalashnikov, he had all the rewards and special privileges reserved for a “Hero of the Soviet Union” heaped upon him: he was rich enough to buy a vacuum cleaner, a refrigerator, and even a car.  All were built on the same lines as the AK-47.  No wonder the place folded up.

See: C.J. Chivers, The Gun (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).