ZenPundit
Monday, November 05, 2007
PAKISTAN'S REAL CRISIS
Is not that the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf has imposed martial law. Much like Poland under Jaruzelski or the recent crackdown in Burma, martial law in Pakistan was not a transition from one kind of state to another but rather a shift from the hypocrisy of a velvet glove to the honesty of an iron fist. Pakistan is no more a dictatorship today than it was a month earlier.
Pakistanis, it must be said, are not universally outraged by dictatorship per se. The wily and ruthless General Zia ul- Haq was a fairly popular figure in his day. Wild-eyed deobandi fanatics, opposed to Musharraf's regime, long for a Sharia-state tyranny that would be far more brutal and incompetent than is the current government in Islamabad. Nor is the growing corruption of the army in Pakistan the central problem; Benazir Bhutto's party, the democratic faction, once looted government coffers with gusto while wrecking the economy. Her father, once Prime Minister but later executed by Zia, was a notable menace to the concept of good governance.
Pakistan's central problem is a crisis of legitimacy. Nationalism is a waning force these days and even anti-Indian feeling is sustained by a marriage of nationalism with Islamist radicalism. Once, a Pakistani leader could declare that Pakistani's " would eat grass" to make their country the nuclear equal of Hindu India. No more. Musharraf's fear of "national suicide" did not rouse his countrymen to his side and there are some, even in the army, who would hold up jihad above the nation. Well above.
Without nationalism or state competence, people fall back on primary loyalties. Pakistan has no intrinsic reason to exist unless it can be welded together in men's minds.
Is not that the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf has imposed martial law. Much like Poland under Jaruzelski or the recent crackdown in Burma, martial law in Pakistan was not a transition from one kind of state to another but rather a shift from the hypocrisy of a velvet glove to the honesty of an iron fist. Pakistan is no more a dictatorship today than it was a month earlier.
Pakistanis, it must be said, are not universally outraged by dictatorship per se. The wily and ruthless General Zia ul- Haq was a fairly popular figure in his day. Wild-eyed deobandi fanatics, opposed to Musharraf's regime, long for a Sharia-state tyranny that would be far more brutal and incompetent than is the current government in Islamabad. Nor is the growing corruption of the army in Pakistan the central problem; Benazir Bhutto's party, the democratic faction, once looted government coffers with gusto while wrecking the economy. Her father, once Prime Minister but later executed by Zia, was a notable menace to the concept of good governance.
Pakistan's central problem is a crisis of legitimacy. Nationalism is a waning force these days and even anti-Indian feeling is sustained by a marriage of nationalism with Islamist radicalism. Once, a Pakistani leader could declare that Pakistani's " would eat grass" to make their country the nuclear equal of Hindu India. No more. Musharraf's fear of "national suicide" did not rouse his countrymen to his side and there are some, even in the army, who would hold up jihad above the nation. Well above.
Without nationalism or state competence, people fall back on primary loyalties. Pakistan has no intrinsic reason to exist unless it can be welded together in men's minds.
Labels: dictator, islamic world, islamist, military, pakistan, state building, state failure, terrorism
¶ 8:04 PM 6 comments
INSTANT HISTORY
Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border's with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.
Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the "Must read" pile ? I'm currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.
Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border's with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.
Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the "Must read" pile ? I'm currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.
Labels: book, bush, COIN, foreign policy, history, insurgency, iraq, islamic world, islamist, mideast, war
¶ 7:35 PM 2 comments
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
MORE 4GW
Wolf Pangloss has a series of interesting posts on 4GW and information operations that readers might care to consider in light of the discussion that has ensued in the comments section of the post on the strategic analysis of Fabius Maximus. Wolf's posts are:
Democracies at 4GWar
4GW Jihad and the role of the World Media
Conflict Map of the Counterjihad
Media Cheerleaders for Despair
Wolf Pangloss has a series of interesting posts on 4GW and information operations that readers might care to consider in light of the discussion that has ensued in the comments section of the post on the strategic analysis of Fabius Maximus. Wolf's posts are:
Democracies at 4GWar
4GW Jihad and the role of the World Media
Conflict Map of the Counterjihad
Media Cheerleaders for Despair
Labels: 4GW, al qaida, insurgency, islamist, strategy, terrorism, theory, war, wolf pangloss
¶ 8:12 PM 7 comments
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
THE 4GW FESTIVAL OF FABIUS MAXIMUS
" To summarize, we seek to radically change the cultures and political systems for much of the world, to halt foreign revolts and civil wars of which we do not approve, to bring global peace and prosperity, to make friends (even with those states whose rise we seek to restrain), and to “transform” our so far unreformable national security apparatus. Those who thought President Bush was kidding about these learned better in the months following our invasion of Iraq."
- Fabius Maximus
For some time now, an author whose nom de guerre is "Fabius Maximus", after the ancient Roman general of the Punic wars, has been a regular and at times, prolific, contributor to the Boydian and 4GW school oriented Defense & the National Interest. Fabius, who comments here at Zenpundit on occasion, also set off one of the most popular, if heated and controversial, threads at The Small Wars Council, catching the attention of noted COIN strategist Col. David Kilcullen. Kilcullen's theories later became a subject of frequent critique from Fabius in his DNI articles.
While I had hoped to meet Fabius in person at Boyd 2007, he did not attend and I am not privy to his identity or professional background. Fabius' arguments must rise or fall entirely on their own merit and he has been content to engage his critics on this basis at the SWC and elsewhere. Clearly he is a member of the 4GW school and is an admirer of Col. John Boyd, William Lind, Dr. Martin van Creveld and Dr. Chet Richards but has not shrunk from advancing his own ideas or original criticisms.
Recently, Fabius completed his tenth article in a series on America's Long War for DNI and, as Fabius has entertained and enraged members of the community of "reform" defense intellectuals and COIN practitioners, it is timely for us to take stock of his strategic argument:
The Long War Series - from DNI's Fabius Maximus Archive
Part X - One step beyond Lind: what is America’s geopolitical strategy?
Part IX - 4GW at work in a community near you,
Part VIII - How to accurately forecast trends of the Iraq War,
Part VII - Kilcullen explains all you need to know about the Iraq War,
Part VI - The bad news is that Lind’s good news is wrong,
Part V - The Iraq War as a warning for America,
Part IV - Beyond Insurgency: An End to Our War in Iraq,
Part III - Stories or statistics? Read and compare to find the truth!
Part II - News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!
Part I – America takes another step towards the “Long War,”
I have read the roughly 20,000 words offered here previously and I re-read them for this post. I have also read most of the authors of the original works that Fabius Maximus cites in his series. Therefore, I feel qualified to offer a few observations in regard to the strategic paradigm that this body of work represents and the assumptions, clearly stated as well as implicit, upon which it is built.
Many of the specific analytical criticisms of American policy and performance in Iraq and Afghanistan made by Fabius are incisive, some are rather questionable and a few are brilliant. I encourage you to read his efforts for yourself rather than simply accepting my word for it. What interests me most though, given the scope of the series, are his premises. As I discern them, they are:
That 4GW is the environment in which we find ourselves conducting operations - and doing so quite poorly at that with a military predisposed toward 2GW offensives. Or irrelevantly on the strategic level where we happen to be executing COIN well on the tactical level.
We cannot significantly affect the internal dynamics of alien societies that we understand poorly or not at all, regardless of the carrots or sticks used. We are marginal factors at best.
American war policy is being constructed on the false analogy of the Cold War model.
Al Qaida is more phantom than menace.
War is the wrong conceptual metaphor and the wrong operational-bureaucratic response to the conflict in which we find ourselves.
Our response, which serves bureaucratic and factional interests at homes, undermines our global strategic position and wastes our economic strength.
A better grand strategy for America is nonintervention and reducing friction with the rest of the world. Or failing that, at least bolstering states, any states, rather than collapsing them into failure with military attack or other pressures ( Lind's "Centers of Order vs. Centers of Disorder")
If George Kennan argued for "Containment" of Soviet Communism in his "X" article the best descriptor of the grand strategy of Fabius Maximus might be " Conservancy" - dialing down our kinetic response to terrorism to the surgical level and recognizing this contest as more ideological conflict than war and, in general, recognizing our limitations in attempting to become masters of the universe. Many readers would associate this paradigm with the Left but I believe that to be incorrect. Instead, reflecting a deeply paleoconservative reading of history and American traditions in foreign policy that historian Walter A. McDougal called "Promised Land" and others "city on a hill" and " isolationism".
The virtues of "conservancy" as I interpret Fabius is that it minimizes both costs and future commitments for the United States, leaving us better able to afford to deal with strategic threats to vital national interests, when unanticipated threats arise, as they surely will. It would serve as a reality check on statesmen to pursue fewer, more coherent, simpler, more easily realizable and markedly cheaper objectives, which will have far higher probability of success ( as opposed to say, attacking Iran while engaged in Iraq. Or perhaps invading Russia in winter or fighting a land war in Asia. Some folks around PACOM with a few years ago with uber-journalist Robert Kaplan's ear, thought an unprovoked war with China was a splendid idea). When forced to intervene, our footprint will be light; more like British frontier agents of old or the 55 advisers in El Salvador in the 1980's than the invasion of Iraq. As a nation, our foreign policy would stay on the good side of the diminishing returns curve.
The drawbacks include, in my view: being flatly incorrect about al Qaida's potential to initiate attacks on the operational or strategic level specifically, and about the threat of radical Islamist-Mahdist movements in general, when coupled with increasing capacities to leverage against complex systems ( see John Robb's Brave New War); underestimating the geopolitical ripple effect of the U.S. shifting to a conservancy posture, upending the global security arrangements upon which the calculations of statesmen currently depend. The unanticipated consequences of the latter are large. Within two to three levels of unfolding decision-tree possibilities, any potential response by the U.S. is simply swamped. We benefit by the status quo. Changing our position imposes costs.
I invite Fabius Maximus to respond as he likes and I will publish his remarks here, unedited. Readers are invited to offer their own critique in the comments section.
" To summarize, we seek to radically change the cultures and political systems for much of the world, to halt foreign revolts and civil wars of which we do not approve, to bring global peace and prosperity, to make friends (even with those states whose rise we seek to restrain), and to “transform” our so far unreformable national security apparatus. Those who thought President Bush was kidding about these learned better in the months following our invasion of Iraq."
- Fabius Maximus
For some time now, an author whose nom de guerre is "Fabius Maximus", after the ancient Roman general of the Punic wars, has been a regular and at times, prolific, contributor to the Boydian and 4GW school oriented Defense & the National Interest. Fabius, who comments here at Zenpundit on occasion, also set off one of the most popular, if heated and controversial, threads at The Small Wars Council, catching the attention of noted COIN strategist Col. David Kilcullen. Kilcullen's theories later became a subject of frequent critique from Fabius in his DNI articles.
While I had hoped to meet Fabius in person at Boyd 2007, he did not attend and I am not privy to his identity or professional background. Fabius' arguments must rise or fall entirely on their own merit and he has been content to engage his critics on this basis at the SWC and elsewhere. Clearly he is a member of the 4GW school and is an admirer of Col. John Boyd, William Lind, Dr. Martin van Creveld and Dr. Chet Richards but has not shrunk from advancing his own ideas or original criticisms.
Recently, Fabius completed his tenth article in a series on America's Long War for DNI and, as Fabius has entertained and enraged members of the community of "reform" defense intellectuals and COIN practitioners, it is timely for us to take stock of his strategic argument:
The Long War Series - from DNI's Fabius Maximus Archive
Part X - One step beyond Lind: what is America’s geopolitical strategy?
Part IX - 4GW at work in a community near you,
Part VIII - How to accurately forecast trends of the Iraq War,
Part VII - Kilcullen explains all you need to know about the Iraq War,
Part VI - The bad news is that Lind’s good news is wrong,
Part V - The Iraq War as a warning for America,
Part IV - Beyond Insurgency: An End to Our War in Iraq,
Part III - Stories or statistics? Read and compare to find the truth!
Part II - News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!
Part I – America takes another step towards the “Long War,”
I have read the roughly 20,000 words offered here previously and I re-read them for this post. I have also read most of the authors of the original works that Fabius Maximus cites in his series. Therefore, I feel qualified to offer a few observations in regard to the strategic paradigm that this body of work represents and the assumptions, clearly stated as well as implicit, upon which it is built.
Many of the specific analytical criticisms of American policy and performance in Iraq and Afghanistan made by Fabius are incisive, some are rather questionable and a few are brilliant. I encourage you to read his efforts for yourself rather than simply accepting my word for it. What interests me most though, given the scope of the series, are his premises. As I discern them, they are:
That 4GW is the environment in which we find ourselves conducting operations - and doing so quite poorly at that with a military predisposed toward 2GW offensives. Or irrelevantly on the strategic level where we happen to be executing COIN well on the tactical level.
We cannot significantly affect the internal dynamics of alien societies that we understand poorly or not at all, regardless of the carrots or sticks used. We are marginal factors at best.
American war policy is being constructed on the false analogy of the Cold War model.
Al Qaida is more phantom than menace.
War is the wrong conceptual metaphor and the wrong operational-bureaucratic response to the conflict in which we find ourselves.
Our response, which serves bureaucratic and factional interests at homes, undermines our global strategic position and wastes our economic strength.
A better grand strategy for America is nonintervention and reducing friction with the rest of the world. Or failing that, at least bolstering states, any states, rather than collapsing them into failure with military attack or other pressures ( Lind's "Centers of Order vs. Centers of Disorder")
If George Kennan argued for "Containment" of Soviet Communism in his "X" article the best descriptor of the grand strategy of Fabius Maximus might be " Conservancy" - dialing down our kinetic response to terrorism to the surgical level and recognizing this contest as more ideological conflict than war and, in general, recognizing our limitations in attempting to become masters of the universe. Many readers would associate this paradigm with the Left but I believe that to be incorrect. Instead, reflecting a deeply paleoconservative reading of history and American traditions in foreign policy that historian Walter A. McDougal called "Promised Land" and others "city on a hill" and " isolationism".
The virtues of "conservancy" as I interpret Fabius is that it minimizes both costs and future commitments for the United States, leaving us better able to afford to deal with strategic threats to vital national interests, when unanticipated threats arise, as they surely will. It would serve as a reality check on statesmen to pursue fewer, more coherent, simpler, more easily realizable and markedly cheaper objectives, which will have far higher probability of success ( as opposed to say, attacking Iran while engaged in Iraq. Or perhaps invading Russia in winter or fighting a land war in Asia. Some folks around PACOM with a few years ago with uber-journalist Robert Kaplan's ear, thought an unprovoked war with China was a splendid idea). When forced to intervene, our footprint will be light; more like British frontier agents of old or the 55 advisers in El Salvador in the 1980's than the invasion of Iraq. As a nation, our foreign policy would stay on the good side of the diminishing returns curve.
The drawbacks include, in my view: being flatly incorrect about al Qaida's potential to initiate attacks on the operational or strategic level specifically, and about the threat of radical Islamist-Mahdist movements in general, when coupled with increasing capacities to leverage against complex systems ( see John Robb's Brave New War); underestimating the geopolitical ripple effect of the U.S. shifting to a conservancy posture, upending the global security arrangements upon which the calculations of statesmen currently depend. The unanticipated consequences of the latter are large. Within two to three levels of unfolding decision-tree possibilities, any potential response by the U.S. is simply swamped. We benefit by the status quo. Changing our position imposes costs.
I invite Fabius Maximus to respond as he likes and I will publish his remarks here, unedited. Readers are invited to offer their own critique in the comments section.
Labels: 4GW, 5GW, al qaida, COIN, dni, fabius maximus, iraq, islam.insurgency, islamist, john boyd, state failure, strategy, terrorism, war, william lind
¶ 5:58 PM 12 comments
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
ARAB INSIGHT
Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council posted Arab Insight, Fall 2007 (PDF) which has the theme "Do We Hate America? The Arab Response". Definitely worth a look.
Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council posted Arab Insight, Fall 2007 (PDF) which has the theme "Do We Hate America? The Arab Response". Definitely worth a look.
Labels: arab world, islamic world, islamist, mideast, small wars council
¶ 7:20 PM 0 comments
Thursday, October 04, 2007
THE MILITANT IDEOLOGY ATLAS
The most comprehensive, English-language, ideological analysis of Islamist extremist and terror movements yet compiled; assembled by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Executive Summary (23 page PDF)
Research Compendium (361 page PDF)
Hat tip to Charles Cameron for the title of this ( actually, many) interesting scholarly work and to Right Truth for the URLs.
UPDATE:
Heh. Plagued by basic reading comprehension problems last night. Title corrected. Gracias, Charles!
The most comprehensive, English-language, ideological analysis of Islamist extremist and terror movements yet compiled; assembled by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Executive Summary (23 page PDF)
Research Compendium (361 page PDF)
Hat tip to Charles Cameron for the title of this ( actually, many) interesting scholarly work and to Right Truth for the URLs.
UPDATE:
Heh. Plagued by basic reading comprehension problems last night. Title corrected. Gracias, Charles!
Labels: al qaida, analytic, COIN, islam.insurgency, islamist, military, military intelligence, national security, strategy, terrorism, tribes, war, warriors
¶ 6:48 PM 0 comments
Thursday, August 30, 2007
BELATEDLY, KILCULLEN ON THE TRIBAL REVOLT
Great piece by Colonel Kilcullen at SWJ Blog on the "flipping" of Anbar province by the tribal revolt against AQI:
"The implications of the tribal revolt have been somewhat overlooked by the news media and in the public debate in Coalition capitals. In fact, the uprising represents very significant political progress toward reconciliation at the grass-roots level, and major security progress in marginalizing extremists and reducing civilian deaths. It also does much to redress the lack of coalition forces that has hampered previous counterinsurgency approaches, by throwing tens of thousands of local allies into the balance, on our side. For these reasons, the tribal revolt is arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment for several years. But because it occurred in ways that were neither expected nor accounted for in our “benchmarks” (which were formulated before the uprising began to really develop, and which tend to focus on national legislative developments at the central government and political party level rather than grass-roots changes in the quality of life of ordinary Iraqis) the significance of this development has been overlooked to some extent."
We should run with the grassroots and try to get tolerably effective Iraqi self-government at the local and provincial level and simply cut our losses with the central government. Let it fade into irrelevance as most Iraqis already ignore its edicts anyway.
The opportunity of the democratic elections were blown when the Iraqi power brokers (few of whom could be considered democrats in any meaningful sense and see a truly democratic system as inimical in principle to their own in-group leadership) were permitted to drag out negotiations over forming a government until legitimacy and popular interest generated by the elections eroded. We should have instead, followed the example of the noteworthy "Small Wars" fighter, General Leonard Wood.
The general, who was running occupied Cuba as the military governor in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American War, faced a similar situation with the intransigence of wealthy, landed, Cuban elites who filled the legislature who were attempting to outwait Wood by creating a political deadlock until the Americans went home. General Wood, who understood the game being played and the free-for-all that would ensue if American troops left Cuba without a functional government, simply locked the doors of the parliament and his armed soldiers refused to permit anyone to leave until the legislators finished their business and also ratified the unpopular Platt amendment.
The latter effectively made Cuba a protectorate of the United States in name as well as fact but from a realist perspective, it also quashed the possibility of civil war, boosted Cuba's economy and guaranteed a functioning civil government in Havanna for two and a half decades, even if it required a new military intervention. Iraq is not nearly so well off.
ADDENDUM
SWJ BLOG
Glittering Eye
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Global Guerillas
Iraq the Model
Great piece by Colonel Kilcullen at SWJ Blog on the "flipping" of Anbar province by the tribal revolt against AQI:
"The implications of the tribal revolt have been somewhat overlooked by the news media and in the public debate in Coalition capitals. In fact, the uprising represents very significant political progress toward reconciliation at the grass-roots level, and major security progress in marginalizing extremists and reducing civilian deaths. It also does much to redress the lack of coalition forces that has hampered previous counterinsurgency approaches, by throwing tens of thousands of local allies into the balance, on our side. For these reasons, the tribal revolt is arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment for several years. But because it occurred in ways that were neither expected nor accounted for in our “benchmarks” (which were formulated before the uprising began to really develop, and which tend to focus on national legislative developments at the central government and political party level rather than grass-roots changes in the quality of life of ordinary Iraqis) the significance of this development has been overlooked to some extent."
We should run with the grassroots and try to get tolerably effective Iraqi self-government at the local and provincial level and simply cut our losses with the central government. Let it fade into irrelevance as most Iraqis already ignore its edicts anyway.
The opportunity of the democratic elections were blown when the Iraqi power brokers (few of whom could be considered democrats in any meaningful sense and see a truly democratic system as inimical in principle to their own in-group leadership) were permitted to drag out negotiations over forming a government until legitimacy and popular interest generated by the elections eroded. We should have instead, followed the example of the noteworthy "Small Wars" fighter, General Leonard Wood.
The general, who was running occupied Cuba as the military governor in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American War, faced a similar situation with the intransigence of wealthy, landed, Cuban elites who filled the legislature who were attempting to outwait Wood by creating a political deadlock until the Americans went home. General Wood, who understood the game being played and the free-for-all that would ensue if American troops left Cuba without a functional government, simply locked the doors of the parliament and his armed soldiers refused to permit anyone to leave until the legislators finished their business and also ratified the unpopular Platt amendment.
The latter effectively made Cuba a protectorate of the United States in name as well as fact but from a realist perspective, it also quashed the possibility of civil war, boosted Cuba's economy and guaranteed a functioning civil government in Havanna for two and a half decades, even if it required a new military intervention. Iraq is not nearly so well off.
ADDENDUM
SWJ BLOG
Glittering Eye
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Global Guerillas
Iraq the Model
Labels: al qaida, COIN, insurgency, iraq, islamist, kilcullen, military, primary loyalties, small wars journal, tribes, war, warriors
¶ 7:32 PM 2 comments
Thursday, August 23, 2007
A VERY QUICK RECOMMENDATION
Eric Martin who blogs at TIA and American Footprints has a guest-post at The Newshoggers entitled "Guest Post - Who's Killing The Clerics Of Najaf? ". An excerpt:
"The situation in Najaf for Iraq's premier Grand Ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani,
has been growing rather precarious as of late:
Four aides to Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have been killed in Al-Najaf over the past two months, raising many questions as to the safety of Iraq's supreme Shi'ite leader and the motives of the perpetrators of the attacks.
According to media reports, aides to Iraq's three other grand ayatollahs have also been threatened. "The assassination operations are organized and big resources are allocated [to carry them out], which makes it difficult to accuse any local side of being behind" the attacks, the assistant director of the office of Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, Muwaffaq Ali, told the London-based "Al-Hayat" this week.
This is a story that I have been attempting to track over at my other blogospheric venues, but it is an opaque tale of shifting political intrigue that defies easy analysis. For example, it is still unclear which party (or parties) has been behind this series of assassinations, and to what purpose (or purposes). The first two or three killings were thought to be the work of Moqtada al-Sadr's forces - which is completely plausible in at least one of those cases (especially given the history between Sadr's forces and the target in the third killing). But this is speculation, and by no means a given. Such uncertainty is quite remarkable given the stakes involved (and the fact that, generally speaking, parties seeking to send a message in such a manner want the targeted group to know who the sender was). "
Read the whole thing.
Eric Martin who blogs at TIA and American Footprints has a guest-post at The Newshoggers entitled "Guest Post - Who's Killing The Clerics Of Najaf? ". An excerpt:
"The situation in Najaf for Iraq's premier Grand Ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani,
has been growing rather precarious as of late:
Four aides to Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have been killed in Al-Najaf over the past two months, raising many questions as to the safety of Iraq's supreme Shi'ite leader and the motives of the perpetrators of the attacks.
According to media reports, aides to Iraq's three other grand ayatollahs have also been threatened. "The assassination operations are organized and big resources are allocated [to carry them out], which makes it difficult to accuse any local side of being behind" the attacks, the assistant director of the office of Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, Muwaffaq Ali, told the London-based "Al-Hayat" this week.
This is a story that I have been attempting to track over at my other blogospheric venues, but it is an opaque tale of shifting political intrigue that defies easy analysis. For example, it is still unclear which party (or parties) has been behind this series of assassinations, and to what purpose (or purposes). The first two or three killings were thought to be the work of Moqtada al-Sadr's forces - which is completely plausible in at least one of those cases (especially given the history between Sadr's forces and the target in the third killing). But this is speculation, and by no means a given. Such uncertainty is quite remarkable given the stakes involved (and the fact that, generally speaking, parties seeking to send a message in such a manner want the targeted group to know who the sender was). "
Read the whole thing.
Labels: 4GW, 5GW, eric martin, insurgency, iraq, islamist, newshoggers, shia, sistani, terrorism
¶ 8:18 PM 5 comments
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
AN INTRIGUING PROPOSAL
Collounsbury is on to something important.
Collounsbury is on to something important.
Labels: aqoul, islamist, lounsbury, suicide bombing, terrorism
¶ 7:37 PM 0 comments
