Moonbats

In somewhat lighter (though still somwhat sinister) news; from the "anti-imperialist" rag, The Morning Star, comes this twaddle:

As democratic as Mr Gaddafi

You really have to give Prime Minister David Cameron big brownie points for sheer unmitigated cheek and an arrogance that seemingly knows no limits.

His coalition is at present making tut-tutting noises at the Libyan government for being anti-democratic, unresponsive to public opinion and pressure and continuing to prosecute its own agenda regardless of the feelings of its population.

At the same time, however, his cobbled-together coalition is proceeding blithely on its own course, attempting to wreck the welfare state, sell off anything that moves and bury anything that doesn't.

But the Con-Dem coalition has about as much of a mandate to do this as Muammar Gaddafi's minions had to cut loose with guns on the Libyan protesters.

And, while that comparison may seem a little over the top, it should be remembered that Mr Cameron's offensive on the welfare state, encompassing as it does attacks on the National Health Service and the whole range of public services to people at risk, could easily cost lives and will likely result in the destruction of many people's wellbeing.

You have to feel sorry for people who are so blinded by their dogma and Western masochism that they legitimately cannot tell the difference between an elected government in a liberal parliamentary democracy and a brutally repressive military dictator who has had his jackboot on the throat of the Libyan people for 42 years now. Who are so deluded that budget cuts (whether you agree with them or not), in a time of recession, are comparable to hundreds of unarmed protesters being massacred in the streets, and orders to increase tuition fees are comparable to orders given to fighter pilots to strafe and bomb Libyans in the streets.

An article written with the arrogant certainty of a Bethnal Green-living, Shoreditch-partying, Che T-Shirt-wearing, unemployed, dole-claiming, student-dropout, SWP-card-carrying, George Galloway worshipping twat, who got shoved by a "pig" at the student protests and who now thinks that "the mask has come off" and this British "fascist police state" has now "revealed itself."

The Threat from Dissident Irish Republican Terrorist Groups

From the front page of todays Times, comes this story, which I thought would be worth reproducing, and writing a little about, not least because stories from the Times so often get lost on the blogosphere because of their stupid paywall:

Dissident Irish terror cell at large in Britain

An Irish republican terror cell is operating in England for the first time in a decade, creating a growing security problem in the weeks before the royal wedding, The Times has learnt.

Counter-terrorism teams in southern England have been diverted from tracking Islamist cells to examining a potential threat. And Cobra, the Government’s national emergency committee, has increased the number of its occasional meetings in Whitehall to three a week, with some of them chaired by David Cameron.

The threat from dissident groups, the most potent of which is thought to be operating under the name Óglaigh na hÉireann (“Irish Volunteers”), has been anticipated for months by police and MI5. The security situation is, according to one source, incredibly tense, with discussions taking place at the highest levels about the terror threat “coming from two different directions”.

There are two months until the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton; President Obama arrives for a state visit in May; and the London Olympics begin in 18 months.

An attack is not believed to be imminent, however, and the dissident unit is not considered to be as immediately dangerous as a number of home-grown Islamist terror cells with links to al-Qaeda. Some of these groups are known to be plotting a terror attack in the style of the Mumbai assault of 2008, when more than 170 people were killed in a series of co-ordinated shootings and bombings.

Last week police and soldiers took part in an exercise that mocked up the possibility of simultaneous terrorist gun attacks in Birmingham and Reading. The exercise included an emergency meeting chaired by Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

The Times also understands that armed anti-terrorist units were “scrambled” on New Year’s Eve in response to fears that an attack by an Islamist group was imminent. The incident was quickly found to be a false alarm and the teams were stood down.

Until recently the dissident Irish republican threat had been confined to Northern Ireland and the security assessment was that the different factions were too small and inexperienced and lacked the capability to operate outside Northern Ireland. A Real IRA bombing campaign in 2001 was the last time republican groups exported terror across the Irish Sea.

Hugh Robertson, the Olympics Minister, said last week that dissident Irish republican groups were regarded as a real threat to security at the Games.

A counter-terrorism source said: “As the Games get closer the appetite for risk will diminish. The plan will be to disrupt and deter plots, making sure they don’t get off the ground, rather than letting them run to gather evidence and get convictions in court.”

Recent incidents in Northern Ireland have involved car bombs and anti-personnel devices which have usually been preceded with coded, though often confused, telephone warnings to the authorities. They have also, however, targeted individuals with booby traps.

The threat level for Irish terrorism in Britain was raised last September from “moderate” to “substantial”, meaning that an attack was a strong possibility. At the time Jonathan Evans, MI5 Director-General, said that the dissident groups posed a real and rising security threat.

The threat level for terrorism linked to al-Qaeda is currently at “severe”, meaning that an attack is highly likely. The Islamist danger is, however, feared to be changing in character.

One plot being investigated by British, American and other international agencies is for simultaneous armed attacks in Britain, France and Germany. British police are particularly concerned after the case of a former American Marine who allegedly smuggled handguns into Britain on transatlantic flights. Sixty weapons are believed not to have been recovered.

It comes amid a number of recent stories concerning Irish republican dissidents threatening the British mainland. The concerns over dissident republican attacks on the London Olympic Games have been increasingly in the news over the past few weeks. Here is just one story run by the Telegraph a week ago:

Hugh Robertson, the sports minister, said that “threat assessments” had identified a real danger from dissident Republican groups to the 2012 Games.

His comments are the first official confirmation that security agencies fear groups based in Northern Ireland could stage terrorist attacks on the British mainland.

Mr Robertson, a former Army officer who served in Northern Ireland, was speaking at the publication of the annual report on preparations for the Olympic Games, which will be held next summer.

Asked if Republican groups were a significant threat to the Olympics, he replied: “It's a threat to the Games.”

There are three main armed Irish republican groups which are still operational at this point: The Continuity IRA, the Real IRA and Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH). All three reject the power-sharing agreement instituted after the Good Friday agreement of 1998, and seek to force a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland through armed struggle, resulting in the unification of the entire island of Ireland into a single policial unit.

Given the threat indicated by the Times seems to be feared to be coming from Óglaigh na hÉireann, a look at the previous actions of the group, and its capabilities, is very worthwhile.

Óglaigh na hÉireann

Óglaigh na hÉireann was formed in a gradual process after the split in the Real IRA in 2002, over the issue of the "ignominious" ceasefire with the British. From 2009, one of the splinters began publicly identifying itself with the name Óglaigh na hÉireann, and it is from this point that the group really began to operate as an independent, distinct body.
Its operation include (but are far from limited to):

Splinter group blamed for threat - Óglaigh na hÉireann reported to have attempted a home robbery on January 5, 2009.

Member of Real IRA found shot dead in churchyard - Óglaigh na hÉireann thought to have shot another republican dissident in a churchyard on 14 February, 2008.

'Surge' in paramilitary shootings - ONH involved in an increasing number of punishment shootings in mainly Catholic areas of Northern Ireland, as reported by the BBC on April 9, 2009.

'Splinter group' behind road bomb - 600lb car bomb left by Óglaigh na hÉireann in a field in south Armagh on September 9, 2009.

We Planted Car Bomb: ONH - ONH admit detonating car bomb which injured the girlfriend of a police officer in east Belfast on October 17, 2009.

Army Camp Blast Could Have Killed - ONH detonate bomb near a Territorial Army base in north Belfast on October 22, 2009.

Policeman injured in Randalstown bomb critically ill - ONH detonate car bomb in County Antrim, critically injuring a police officer on January 8, 2010.

Bomb intended for the Police is discovered in Belfast - ONH abandoned a bomb on the Antrim Road in Belfast on 26 January, 2011.

The 2008 Independent Monitoring Commission reported that:

"Óglaighna hÉireann (ONH) had continued to be active. It had attacked police officers, a PSNI station and members of District Policing Partnerships; had sought to enhance its capability; and members had engaged in criminal activity including drug dealing." It also reported that in "December 2007 ONH launched a pipe bomb attack on Strabane PSNI station, the second ONH attack on this target in less than six months. The device failed to function as intended. The grouping attempted to recruit and train new members and it undertook targeting for the purposes of possible attacks – mainly of security force personnel and premises. It also attempted to obtain weapons and to raise funds. In October 2007 the PSNI discovered terrorist equipment in Strabane belonging to ONH. We now have information suggesting that in August 2007 (in the preceding six month period) ONH exiled a member for failing to observe the instructions of the leadership. Members continued to be involved in a wide range of serious criminal activity, including drug dealing, mainly, we believe, for personal profit. ONH thus remains a continuing and serious threat, including to the lives of members of the security forces."

Martyn Frampton in his recent report for The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, 'The Return of the Militants:
Violent Dissident Republicanism', wrote:

"Such attacks may suggest that ONH might just be emerging as a possible unifying force around which the different dissident organisations might gravitate. Though often described as small in number, it is reputed to comprise of former senior Provisionals, as well as RIRA members. Furthermore, despite its short-lived existence it has already demonstrated a capacity for successfully carrying out major attacks."

The Belfast Telegraph at the end of 2010 identified ONH as "the most serious terrorist threat in Northern Ireland over the past year":

"It is regarded by police on both sides of the border as the most dangerous of the three main dissident republican groups.

It has about 50 activists and has been attempting to boost its ranks by a recruitment campaign North and South while also stepping up its efforts to purchase arms and develop its skills in manufacturing homemade bombs."

It is clear at this point that ONH is a serious threat to the stability and security of Northern Ireland, and is gaining increasing strength. The report by the Times and the various security warnings give rise to an increasing chance that we will be seeing dissident Irish republican attacks on the British mainland over the next few years, something we have not seen since 2001.

An interview with high-ranking ONH officers in November 2010 revealed that ONH seemed to confirm this threat, and indicated that ONH is very open to the idea of operations on the British mainland:

Rowan: Is Britain – attacks there – part of your focus and thinking?

ONH: Oglaigh na hEireann will decide when and where it attacks. Sceptics will say, ‘they would say that because they don’t have the capabilities’. Eighteen months ago, they told us we couldn’t even detonate a bomb. Nothing is beyond our reach.

Book Review: The Longest War by Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen is a national security analyst for CNN who made his name by producing the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997, and who has previously authored books two books on Al Qaeda: Holy War Inc., a 2001 study of Al Qaeda, and The Osama Bin Laden I Knew a collection of personal accounts of Bin Laden by people who had been close to him at various point in their life. Now, nearly ten years into the War on Terror, Bergen has produced by far the best one volume account of the conflict between America and Al Qaeda, condensing into one book a level of detail and analysis which you would have previously had to have read 10 books to imbibe.

From the first moment you open the book it is clear that Bergen is no instant-expert on Al Qaeda, his many years following the group really does show with the sheer amount of research he brings to the table. I bought the Kindle version, and the footnotes to the book take up about 30-40% of the total size of the book. This is a book which has not been entered into lightly, it is a labour of love which has taken him many years to complete.

He starts with a very short history of September 11, 2001, and how we got to that point. To anyone who has read Holy War Inc., much of this will be very familiar. Peter Bergen is very level-headed in assessing the steps which took us to 9/11 and the motivations of those who committed the atrocities. He judges the actions of various individuals without being preachy, all too many books about Al Qaeda are badly disguised political partisan hackery. My main gripe, though it was a small one, with this section, was how he conceives of the motivations for Al Qaeda's attacks on the United States. He paraphrases Bin Laden, seemingly in agreement that "it was U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world that was the reason al-Qaeda is attacking America". I think this is rather misleading when stated so bluntly. U.S. foreign policy, and resentment of it, of course, should be given careful attention when assessing the motivations of members of Al Qaeda. It should not, however, be taken at face value at the exclusion of other very important issues and ideas within the group. It is impossible to assess the motivations of Al Qaeda and its' members without finding a place for their radical conception of a future, pure Islamic state, governed along the strict lines of Sharia law (as they interpret it). Ignoring this central desire of Al Qaeda means that any assessment of their motivations is likely to confuse means and ends. The means Al Qaeda is employing to meet their ends are attacks on the United States. They feel that by attacking the United States they can inflame a global Muslim uprising and force a withdrawal of the United States from the region which will lead to their desired ends. Al Qaeda ends are the removal of any foreign influence in the Arab and Muslim world, the removal of the "apostate" rulers, and the creation of an Islamic caliphate which will enforce strict Sharia in the style of the Taliban and embark upon an expansionist jihadist foreign policy, expanding the influence of Islam until the world world submits to Islam and says "āʾilāhaʾillallāh, Muḥammad rasūlu-llāh" ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet"). This is their totalitarian desire, and I would wager that this desire would inflame a small number of young, discontented Muslims, whether the US was supporting Israel and or not. Revanchism and a pining for the mythical glory days of past Islamic empires has deep roots, and while the Arab and Muslim world is in such a malaise, it will occur regardless of American foreign policy. I would argue that even if the United States was not following the foreign policies that Bin Laden decries, even if it was an entirely benevolent power, it would still have been attacked due to its power and influence in the region. Bin Laden realizes that the United States is the foremost enemy of his conception of a pure, united Islamic Caliphate. He recognizes that if this utopian goal is to be realized, then American influence in the region must be removed, and without that vital precondition, his efforts will be in vain.

That is not to say that the United States' foreign policy has no effect on this totalitarian movement at all. Clearly, many Muslims have been been inflamed by American actions in Iraq, support for Israel, support for brutal tyrants like the now-toppled Mubarak, and so on, and removing those grievances would go a long way to losing support and recruits for the jihadists, but we should not focus on American foreign policy to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, I feel Bergen gets the balance wrong in his book, and should have concentrated far more on the totalitarian religious utopianism in Al Qaeda's thinking, but it is only a minor gripe in such an excellent book.

From 9/11 we move quickly to the response by the Bush administration and the battle for Afghanistan. One of the best aspects of Bergen's book is his documentation of Al Qaeda's strategic thinking when fighting the war and the developments that it took. He shows the fracture within the jihadist community and Al Qaeda itself over the 9/11 operation. Bin Laden, informed by the ineffectual cruise missile strikes of the Clinton era, as well as the Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia withdrawals, felt that America was a paper tiger, which, if only hit hard enough, would be forced to withdraw from the region. At best, he felt that America would launch another ineffective attack on Afghanistan which he could survive, while bleeding the Americans until they withdrew. He was told by other members of the jihadist community that he was underestimating America, and that attacks like 9/11 would bring disaster on Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and everything they had built. Bin Laden was wrong it turned out, and the dissenters were right. Some analysts of Al Qaeda have developed the idea that what Bush did in Afghanistan is exactly what Bin Laden wanted him to do. Bergen destroys this thesis. Al Qaeda was absolutely smashed by the response to 9/11, in a way they did not plan for, did not foresee and most certainly did not want. They lost many of their members, now either in body bags or in orange jump-suits, lost their safe haven in Afghanistan, and lost in the Taliban what remains the only Sunni Muslim state run along the lines prescribed by Al Qaeda. Only a fool could describe such a disaster as a victory for Al Qaeda. Bergen, using an immense weight of evidence has put such claims to rest.

From here we move on to the by, now familiar territory of the Bush administrations failures. Tora Bora, Guantanamo, the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary renditions, "enhanced interrogations", the "with us or against us" Manichean mentality of the Bushies, the failure to reconstruct and secure Afghanistan and so on. All of it many will have read before, but Bergen does it with such flair, and such depth of research, that it's an absolute pleasure to walk through this familiar landscape again.

Bergen's assessment of Iraq I found to be rather flat in many ways. Bergen was against the invasion, felt it would be a diversion from the fight with Al Qaeda, and would be a huge victory for Al Qaeda, reviving them when they were on the point of defeat. I agree with his assessment to an extent, but I felt that he conformed to the anti-Iraq line a little too much, and without question. He doesn't raise any of the difficult questions surrounding the intentions of Saddam Hussein with regards to WMD, or the possibility of the failure of containment, or the moral costs of leaving Saddam in power, or the possibility that Iraq could have fallen apart without an invasion anyway. I don't have a problem with his opposition to the war, I have very mixed feelings on the decision to invade myself, but I think he skirts round some very difficult questions in this section, without giving them a proper go. Redeeming himself excellently, however, his sections on the surge are absolutely excellent, and the part of the book I enjoyed reading the most. He does not allow his opposition to the invasion to cloud his thinking on how the war should best be ended, quoting approvingly the words of Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen: "Just because you invade a country stupidly doesn't mean you have to leave it stupidly." Anti-war protesters - take note of these fine words.

The last sections of his book were dedicated to the continuing war with Al Qaeda, the possibility of its termination and the war in Afghanistan. Bergen has been an passionate advocate of the NATO/ISAF effort in Afghanistan and the need to combat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the tribal frontiers of the Pakistani mountains. I always sense a genuine streak of humanitarianism and concern for the Afghan people when Bergen talks or writes about the war in Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism and the Taliban there. He poignantly identifies the main problem with the arguments of opponents of the Obama counter-insurgency plans: we have tried the alternatives before, and they were disastrous. We have tried before the anti-war stance of simply "leaving Afghanistan alone". We did it in the 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal - it led to a disastrous civil war, the rise of the Taliban and an unspeakable humanitarian crisis for the people of Afghanistan. We have also tried the "counter-terrorism plus" strategy advocated by so-called realists like Stephen Walt, and Vice President Joe Biden. We tried that after the invasion of late 2001, and this light-footprint strategy also ended in disaster, with a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency. Obama's proposal of a troops surge and a long-term investment in the country may be messy, costly and time-consuming, but it is the only real chance we have, as Bergen makes clear, of reconstructing Afghanistan and making sure it does not again become a source of regional chaos and a safe haven for the worst kinds of terorrists.

Despite some relatively minor criticisms of certain parts of his book, Bergen has written an astounding book, which will be read for years to come. I cannot imagine a better book being written on this period for the foreseeable future, and when the histories are written in decades to come, Bergen's book is undoubtedly going to be a very important reference point.

Terrorism: Then and Now

Reading some primary sources from the Russian Civil War today led me to this little gem of a quote. It is a telegram appeal from Litvinov, representative of the Bolshevik government, to President Wilson discussing the Allied intervention in the Russian civil war, dated December 24, 1918:

I wish to emphasize that the so-called 'Red Terror' - which is grossly exaggerated and misrepresented abroad - was not the cause but the direct result and outcome of Allied intervention.

Hmmm, now where have we heard excuses for terrorism of this nature before? It seems the hard-left's apologies for totalitarian terrorism haven't changed much in the past 100 years or so. Reading the hard-left press in Britain at the time reveals that many of the trade unionists and Communist activists bought into this argument as well. There was even an early 20th Century equivalent of Stop the War Coalition, who made it their goal in life to explain away, lie about and apologize for every imaginable Bolshevik atrocity and try and sabotage any possible opposition to them by the British state.

It is a world view in which the only conscious actor is "imperialism". Since "imperialism" is the dominant power in the world, then anything negative that happens around the world must be caused by it, and any forms of terror are only caused by and reactions to imperialist interventions. If only the imperialist powers would leave everyone else alone, then all would be right in the world. In this view there are no other, independent forms of coercion, authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Everything bad which the Bolsheviks (or modern day terrorists) did is explicable as a reaction to intervention.

The fact that the Bolsheviks had closed down newspapers, imprisoned thousands (many of them socialists), closed down the Constituent Assembly because they fared badly in the elections to it, launched a civil war against not just the reactionaries and the bourgeoisie, but the democratic left as well, long before Allied intervention was really a problem for the Bolshevik government, just doesn't enter into this line of thinking.

There are no totalitarianism (Bolshevik or jihadist). Just imperialism and those who fight it. If they happen to brutally slaughter a few million people along the way, then so be it. They can always just blame it on the imperialists anyway.

Afghanistan: Resolute Humanitarianism or Pick Up Sticks and Run?

Two articles on Afghanistan really caught my eye this week. They are both very good examples of two different schools of thought on not only Afghanistan, but also humanitarian intervention and the reconstruction of shattered societies. I think it's worthwhile putting them side-by-side and seeing how they compare. The first article is entitled Afghanistan is being stifled by military operations by Mark Curtis writing for the Guardian, and the second is entitled News Flash: The Taliban Violate Human Rights by Christopher Hitchens writing for Slate.

Curtis writes:

Five years after Britain deployed forces to Helmand province in Afghanistan it is becoming clear that British and US policies in the country are not helping but setting back development prospects.

Although more children now go to school and health services have improved, it is remarkable how little Afghanistan has progressed, given that it is the world's most aid-dependent country, with 90% of its budget financed by donors. One in five children die before the age of five and one in eight women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

There are few signs that donor support is improving. Hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted while up to 80% of donations return to donor countries in corporate profits or consultants' salaries.

Aid itself has become militarised. Nato's use of the military to deliver much of the aid – essentially as part of its counterinsurgency strategy – turns aid personal and projects into targets for the insurgents. It doesn't help that CIA agents also use aid teams as cover to gather intelligence. Unicef has reported that military operations are making more than 40% of the country inaccessible to humanitarian workers for extended periods. Thus military operations, far from paving the way for development, are undermining it.

The UN security council says that 25 times as many Afghans die every year from poor nutrition and poverty as from the war; yet Britain has spent 10 times more on military operations than on development (for the US, it is 20 times as much). Afghanistan has become the most militarised country on earth, where the government spends nearly half its entire budget on "security". Britain exported to a country already awash with arms £34m worth of military equipment, including more than 18,000 assault rifles, between 2008 and 2010.

Using aid money, from 2004 to 2009 the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development spent £69m on the "shadow army" of private military companies providing "security" and "combat support" to regular forces. These companies have considerable immunity from criminal prosecution but the British government has refused to ban or even regulate them.

Nato has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars recruiting and arming more than 1,000 illegal "armed support groups" to provide security at bases and escort convoys – militias often run by former military commanders responsible for human rights abuses or involved in the drugs trade. Alongside them are thousands of CIA-backed paramilitaries, working closely with US special forces, some of whom are accused of being little more than death squads.

A reduction in the number of civilian deaths would be the one sign of progress, yet the number has increased every year since 2006, and a third of the nearly 10,000 total are attributable to Nato or Afghan government forces. A confidential US military report in 2009 conceded that Nato was causing "unnecessary collateral damage"; but policies causing civilian deaths continue, notably the use of drones for surveillance and "targeted" killings – though they mainly kill civilians.

It is not just the Taliban but also western forces who are holding back the prospects for the next generation of Afghans. Yet our leaders keep troops there. As the defence secretary, Liam Fox, said recently, this is because a withdrawal of troops would "damage the credibility of Nato". Similarly, the chief of the general staff, General David Richards, told Chatham House in 2009 that a key issue was the "grand strategic impact on the UK's authority and reputation in the world of the defeat of the British armed forces and its impact on public sentiment in the UK". The British exit is being delayed by British imperial hubris.

Helping Afghanistan develop means not only facing up to a withdrawal of troops. There is also an even more immediate need to stop the drone attacks, end the backing of militias, regulate private armies, close the secret torture network and stop selling arms.

He perfectly exemplifies what Hitchens is rightly criticizing in his Slate article.

Hitchen's conclusion is especially apt and worth reproducing here (though it seems the realization on the part of aid agencies is far from universal, as shown by Curtis):

I can only too well remember attending some press conferences in Pakistan in the winter of 2001 and seeing the unbearably smug expressions on the faces of various human rights and "relief" spokesmen who were concerned lest the military operation against the Taliban should disrupt their relatively modest efforts. They failed or refused to see that the removal of the Taliban was a necessary precondition of any serious relief and reconstruction. It's heartening to learn that, almost a decade later, they are at least open to the awareness that the Taliban is the worst offender. The next stage—may it come soon—will be the realization that the Taliban does not "violate" human rights, but entirely lacks the concept of their existence.

It's worth adding to Hitchens article by recounting some extremely important, but all too often neglected facts about the Taliban, their time in power, and their actions after their removal from power.

- Banned women riding on motorcycles.
- Banned women from riding in taxis without a mahram (a relative who acts as a chaperone)
- Banned women from working and expelled all female civil servants without offering an alternative livelihood, making many previously employed women destitute and homeless.
- Banned women and girls from education, something they are still attempting to enforce, despite the protestations by their apologists.
- Expelled the United Nations from Afghanistan during their time in power.
- Banned NGOs from operating in Afghanistan, and are still doing it in areas of Pakistan where they have control (they also banned polio vaccinations for children).
- They are still murdering aid workers for being Christian.

The British forces leaving Helmand province to the Taliban, a group that acts in such a way, is supposed to make the lives of Afghans better and allow for increased humanitarian aid to flow to the area? What world does Curtis live in?

The NATO/ISAF presence has been far from ideal, could have been, and still can be, run in a way which helps the Afghan people much more than it is now. The excuse that war is a messy business has a basis in reality, but it should not be used to excuse failings of policy, of which there have been many, especially under the Bush administration which criminally neglected the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan and allowed a movement which had been broken in late-2001 to regroup and restablish itself as a brutally violent insurgency which has increased in strength for years and managed to destablize almost the entirety of the south and east of the country, as well as, increasingly, the north.

Recognizing the many failings of NATO/ISAF policy in the region though, should not blind us to the nature of the Taliban and the threat of humanitarian disaster which they still pose to the Afghan people. NATO/ISAF is not perfect. But it counter-insurgency campaign to combat the Taliban and their allies, and the effort to construct a more stable and secure Afghan state which can protect itself, offers the only chance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and a brighter future for the Afghan people. The Taliban offers no hope to the Afghan people. It offers only poverty, misery and the rough justice of the village Sharia court, enforced through the sword.

Ahmed Rashid in his classic book Taliban, used Tacitus' famous quote about the Roman Empire to describe the peace that the Taliban brought Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001:

They create a desolation and call it peace.

It seems that history needs to be relearned by many of those who would abandon the Afghan people to this desolation called peace because this desolation seems easier to them than the difficulties associated with doing the right thing, condemning the Taliban to the ash heap of history, and establishing a real kind of peace. A peace not of desolation, but a peace of reconstruction, free of terrorism, both of the international kind exemplified by Al Qaeda, and the more national terrorism of the Taliban.

Libya protests: 'foreign mercenaries using heavy weapons against at demonstrators'

According to the Telegraph and a number of other sources, Gaddafi has been shipping in mercenary fighters from across northern Africa to massacre the protesters taking to the streets in an effort to end his 42 year rule.

"Tanks and helicopter gunships full of foreign mercenaries are fighting gangs of demonstrators. At least one dead man had been hit by an anti-aircraft missile, while other bodies are riddled with heavy machine gun fire."
......

Omar added: "Tanks are being used in Benghazi, but there are already soldiers joining the demonstrators. They are on the side of the people." While low-paid Libyan army recruits are always likely to desert, the dictator's third son, Saadi Gaddafi, was said to be coordinating African mercenaries to act as shock troops against the protesters.

A Libyan journalist who is currently banned from writing about the trouble because of a news black-out imposed by Gaddafi said: "Some of these mercenary shock troops have been killed or captured, and some of them are said to on the equivalent of around 500 dollars a day.

"These killers are coming from countries like Chad. They're vicious killers. People are so terrified of them that they've been doing everything possible to get away."

There have been a number of videos leaked from Libya which seem to prove this assertion:

Mercenaries Deployed in Benghazi Libya today 18.02.11



Benghazi Mercenary found dead February 19th, 2011



African Mercenary killed in Libya

Cut off from any modicum of civilized conduct, Gaddafi's regime murder hundreds

The people of Libya today must be praying for the relative moderation and passivity of the Mubarak and Ben-Ali regimes.

Human Rights Watch on Friday recordered an estimated 84 deaths inflicted by the Libyan security services.

The Associated Press, today have come out with claims of much higher death tolls, possibly reaching 300:

CAIRO (AP) — A doctor in the Libyan city of Benghazi says his hospital has seen the bodies of at least 200 protesters killed by Moammar Gadhafi's forces over the last few days. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisal.

Witnesses told The Associated Press a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and Gadhafi loyalists went after demonstrators on Saturday with knives, assault rifles and heavy-caliber weapons. That followed days of protests in Benghazi, a focal point of the uprising aimed at toppling Gadhafi after more than 40 years of rule.

CAIRO (AP) — Libyan protesters defied a fierce crackdown by Moammar Gadhafi's regime, returning Sunday to a square outside a court building in the flashpoint city of Benghazi to demand the overthrow of longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

Witnesses told The Associated Press hundreds of demonstrators gathered early Sunday morning at the court building after a day of bloodshed, during which Libyan forces opened fire on mourners leaving a funeral for protesters.

In the hours after that attack, a medical official said at least 15 people were killed.

But Mohammed Abdullah, a Dubai-based member of the Libyan Salvation Front, said Sunday that the toll could be much higher. He quoted hospital officials in Benghazi saying the death toll might have reached 300. Witness accounts said a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and Gadhafi loyalists armed with knives, Kalashnikovs and even anti-aircraft missiles went after the demonstrators.

AP in a later report from today repeat the death toll as being over 200, and recount stories of unarmed, un-threatening Libyans, peacefully marching being opened up on with live fire and even machine guns:

Libyan security forces opened fire on mourners at a funeral for anti-government protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi again Sunday, a day after commandos and foreign mercenaries loyal to longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi pummeled demonstrators with assault rifles and other heavy weaponry as well as knives. A doctor at one city hospital said he counted 200 dead in his morgue alone since unrest began six days ago.

The latest violence in the flashpoint city of Benghazi followed the same pattern as the crackdown on Saturday, when witnesses said forces loyal to Gadhafi attacked mourners at a funeral for anti-government protesters. The doctor at a Benghazi hospital said at least one person was killed by gunshots during the funeral march, and 14 were injured, including five in serious condition. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

A man shot in the leg Sunday said marchers were carrying coffins to a cemetery when they passed a military compound in Libya's second-largest city. The man said security forces fired in the air and then opened up on the crowd.

There is something of a media blackout in Libya at the moment. The internet has been shut down in this country which has always been one of the most heavily censored regimes in the Arab world. We will almost certainly not be seeing from Libya the amazing footage broadcast live by Al Jazeera in Cairo from weeks past. A number of videos from the protestors are making it out of Libya and onto the internet though. They are a testament to the sheer brutality of the Gaddafi regime and the tactics of his hired thugs and mercenaries.

Al Jazeera: Violent clashes hit Libyan city of Baida:

Protester shot by Libyan security services (very graphic):

Al Bayda (2/18) - Protester shot in the head by Khamis Al-Gaddafi's battalion (extremely graphic):

The levels of violence in Egypt didn't catastrophically spiral out of control for a number of reasons:

- The restraint of the army.
- US involvment in the country and aid to the regime meant that Mubarak could not brutually crush the protestors the way Gaddafi is trying to, for fear of alienating his strong ally.
- The openness of Egypt and its meda (relative to Libya of course), which Mubarak could never shut down, although he tried many times by unleashing his plain-clothes thugs. In a country much less isolated than Libya, like Egypt, it is impossible to simply mow down protestors in large numbers with live fire because the regime is much more susceptible to international opprobrium and sanction.
- The focus of the world's attention having always been much more on Egypt than Libya. Libya has never had the stature, presence and importance that Egypt does on the world stage, therefore it can get away with a lot more with the world not paying full attention.

It was for these reasons that Egypt could topple the regime without a huge amount of blooshed. Mubarak, I think, realized, that if he employed a huge amount of force against the protesters, it would sound his death knell, as his vital allies would be forced to desert him and could pressure him much more. Gaddafi's Libya has always been much more isolated, cut-off and autarkic than Egypt, therefore being internationally ostracized and pressured is nothing new for it, and it can cope very well with it, whereas Egypt has not experienced that and would have been much less prepared to cope with it. It is for these reasons that I fear the Libyan protesters could be in for a much, much rougher time of it than the Egyptians had (without wishing to denigrate the struggle of the Egyptian people, and those who died).

The Guardian is reporting that the pro-government paper, Al-Zahf al-Akhdar:

warned that the government would "violently and thunderously respond" to the protests, and said those opposing the regime risked "suicide".

I fear that this is a promise the regime is more than determined to keep.

Update on what the Egyptian Army wants

Just after I created the post below about the Egyptian Army and the Gaza blockade, I stumble across this article by Yezid Sayigh in the FT from a couple of weeks ago. What I wrote essentially conforms to what he thinks the army will be doing in the post-Mubarak Egypt, namely, aiming to keep the country and its foreign policy stable (though I probably think Egypt's foreign policy is a lot more in Egypts own genuine interests rather than only being in Egypt's interests because of the frosty peace with Israel and the desire to keep the US aid pump running). Here are the most pertinent parts of the article:

The army’s desire for stability has several implications. First, it will prefer the recent democratic advances to continue, albeit in a controlled manner, to ensure an arrangement that will allow it to stay out of politics and off the streets. The appointment of an ex-general as prime minister may have been meant as a sop but the injection of ex-officers into the cabinet is unlikely to have been an army demand. There will be no return to military rule, not even a partial one.

Second, the army will resist radical shifts in foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Israel, not least because of the risk to US assistance, which is crucial for an army that is heavily dependent on US military hardware and technology and on the assured supply of spares, training and know-how. The behind-the-scenes role that it is no doubt playing cannot but be prompted by a desire to prevent changes that might destabilise the cold peace with Israel and jeopardise the special relationship with the US military.

Third, the army will seek to preserve its control over its own internal governance and protect its reputed economic “empire”. This is considerably more modest in volume than is commonly believed, and has probably shrunk in proportion to a national economy that has grown by more than 3 per cent annually since 2003. However, although a few generals are rumoured to have become rich, the main purpose of ensuring a separate income stream that is off-limits to government auditors or parliamentary oversight is to ameliorate the impact of a rapidly privatising economy on the living standards of officers.

Given scenes like this in Cairo, where millions in Tahrir Square are chanting "To Jerusalem (al Quds) we go, for us to be the Martyrs of Millions”, it seems like the army will have its work cut out for it in resisting the anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demogogy.

Given the supreme interest the army has in keeping the peace, keeping stability in the country and the region, keeping the security situation in the Sinai under control, keeping Hamas' and the Muslim Brotherhood's influence from expanding, and keeping US aid filling its coffers, I think the army will manage to resist the calls from the street to take a much harder line towards Israel and to be much more lenient on the Gazans.

It is going to cause a lot of friction, no doubt, but I really don't see the developments in Egypt as having a huge effect on the blockade, or the peace with Israel for that matter, no matter how many times the Muslim Brotherhood calls for the treaty to be abrogated.

Ma'an: 3 Egyptian officers kidnapped near Israel border

From Ma'an:

L-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Unidentified armed men on Sunday abducted three Egyptian officers patrolling the border with Israel, Egyptian security sources said.

Sources told Ma'an that three officers serving in Rafah's central security forces were kidnapped near the barbed wire fence separating Egypt and Israel about three kilometers south of the Kerem Shalom crossing, between Gaza and Egypt.

According to security officials, gunmen arrived in three vehicles without license plates and abducted the soldiers. Egyptian security in Rafah was negotiating with the kidnappers to release the officers, sources added.

Other sources speculated that the officers were kidnapped in retaliation for the killing of a drug smuggler shot dead Thursday in possession of a considerable quantity of hashish.

The ouster of Mubarak last week has prompted many to opine that with a more democratic regime in Cairo, Egypt will be forced under popular pressure to open the border with Gaza, effectively ending the blockade on Gaza, imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took over the strip in 2007.

I for one am not convinced.

Stories like the above are evidence of the problems Egpyt could possibly face if it opens the border to Gaza. There are a lot of misconceptions about the Egypt's blockade of Gaza, and why it was put in place under Mubarak. Many people are of the opinion that Israel, through America (Israel controls the most powerful country in the world don't you know!) had ordered or pressured Mubarak into placing the blockade on Gaza for their own reasons, and counter to the interest of the Mubarak regime. Placing Israel at the heart of every issue in the Middle East, as always, misses the point entirely.

The main reason for the Egyptian blockade was not Israeli or American pressure, but for its own reasons, namely competition from the Islamists in Gaza and Egypt, and security.

It is well known that Mubarak has demonized and crushed the Islamist opposition in Egypt, and presented himself to the West as a bulwark against extremism. "It's either me of the Ikhwan" he claimed, with his hand out to the Americans for more military aid. Partly this was an invention of Mubarak's, but there was also a legitimate concern on the part of the Mubarak regime about the Islamist opposition. Mubarak fought, and won, a bloody war during the 1990s against extreme jihadist terrorist groups who sought to overthrow him and replace his regime with a pure Islamic state run in accordance with the salafi interpretation of Sharia law. He also had to fend off the non-violent, but possible more threatening, opposition in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood. He largely succeeded in doing this, as can be seen by the relatively secular crowds which ousted him last week. The Gaza blockade was part of this strategy to contain the Brotherhood. Hamas is, in its own words, the Palestinian manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Isolating Hamas from Egypt, pressuring it, and not allowing the ideological infection to spread from Gaza to Egypt was clearly always going to be a pressing issue for Mubarak, whether Israel wanted him to put the blockade in place or not.

Secondly, security. Stories like the one above make it clear that there are legitimate security concerns in the Sinai and around the border with the Gaza strip. The New Years Day bombing of the Coptic Church, which left 23 people dead, has been linked back to the Gaza strip, according to Egyptian sources, and other independent sources. Whether that is true or not, there are clearly small Al Qaeda-linked groups operating from the Gaza Strip, which could pose a threat to Egyptian security, if left unchecked. Arms smuggling to and from the strip has posed a security threat to the Sinai, and has resulted in killings, kidnappings, drug running, Bedouin attacks and infastructure attacks in recent years.

So now that the "American/Israeli puppet" Mubarak has gone, and a possible democracy is emerging in Egypt, will we see the end to the blockade of Gaza?

In my view, no.

Under almost any possible scenario the Egyptian army is going to retain a very prominent place in the new system in Egypt. I don't think it's all that unlikely that the military will remain the dominant force in Egyptian political life for quite some time to come. Even if all goes to plan with the transition period, I think that the best outcome for Egypt will look something like what Turkey has had since Ataturk - a stable, relatively democratic regime with a strong and influential army establishment.

The people of Egypt almost certainly want an end to the blockade. Any punative measure taken against Gaza, or left in place against Gaza is going to be incredibly unpopular among the Egyptian people. The regime the Egyptians are going to have, however, is not going to be a pure democracy. It is going to be a compromise between democratic elements and the army. The army is much more security-minded than the Egyptian people, and much less enamoured with the plight of the Palestinians and their struggle. It is for this reason that I do not believe an end to the Egyptian blockade of Gaza is on its way. There will be a change in policy. There will have to be a compromise between the security policies pushed for by the army and the pro-Palestinian agenda of any likely democratically-elected Egyptian government, but I do not think the army is going to compromise so much on this issue that it aghrees to drop the blockade on Gaza completely, or even particularly significantly. What is much more likely to happen will be a half-way house of the army agreeing to let more humanitarian aid through the border-crossing, and allow more Palestinians out of the strip to visit Egypt, but keeping the fundamentals of the blockade in place. The politicians and the masses will grumble about it, but the army will stand firm.

Sometimes populist idealism just isn't enough to overcome hard-headed, security-orientated realism.

The Forgotten Jihads

Something that always manages to perplex me when I think about it, is the attention given to certain conflicts around the world, and the deafening silence about other, far more bloody conflicts. The situation in Palestine, while of course it is tragic, absolutely dominates news headlines around the world, to the point where the conditions of battery hens in Israel get a prominent placing in "the world's leading liberal voice", the Guardian. Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, also capture the attention of the media, not unjustly, given the conflicts there, and the Western involvement in the countries. These headline conflicts, whether they get a proportionate or disproportionate amount of attention from the worlds' media, often overshadow some particularly tragic stories and conflicts. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s, which lasted nearly 10 years, took the lives of between 1 and 2 million people, and created upwards of 5 million Afghan refugees, garned relatively little attention at the time. The Algerian Civil War during the 1990s, sparked by the military regime cancelling elections after the Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, won the first round of the 1991 elections, cost the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Algerians. I forgive most people who have never heard of this conflict. It has all but been forgotten by most people owing to the media's lack of interest in the conflict (though admittedly, this is partly due to the hellish danger for journalists working in Algeria during those terrible years). The India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir hits the headlines when there is a spectacular terrorist attack such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, or a military stand-off between the two nuclear-armed adversaries. What we very seldom read of is the brutal insurgency by salafi-inspired Kashmiris and Pakistanis, and the often heavy-handed security clamp-downs by the Indian army in the Himalayan province. Overall, this insurgency has led to the deaths of some 47,000 people.

To make a quick comparison, the First Palestinian Intifada took the lives of around 2,300 people. The Second Palestinian Intifada took the lives of a little over 6,500 people. I don't need to point out the obvious here - the amount of column inches devoted to these uprisings in the Western press, compared to the insurgency in Kashmir, which has taken the lives of far more people, is many, many times more.

Chechnya is another prime example of a forgotten jihad, and reading about it is actually what inspired me to make this post. It's always great to read good articles about conflicts which are so systematically ignored in the Western media.

Tom Parfitt at Foreign Policy has started writing an excellent journal of his travels through Russia's bloody Caucasus region, a conflict which is perenially ignored by the media. Their silence seems to only be punctured every now and again by spectacular attacks such as the attack on Moscow's international airport last month, the attack on the Moscow subway system last year, or tragedies such as the Beslan school siege.

So my hat is off to Tom Parfitt for travelling through an extremely dangerous, but criminally neglected region on the outskirts of Russia.

Part 1: Sword or Samovar

In popular Slavic imagination, this 700-mile belt of country below the snowy peaks is a domain of warriors and bandits, a stereotype that owes at least something to fact. I met a murderer on the run, got arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and saw more Kalashnikovs than you could shake a stick at. Violence felt like it was always just around the corner. But I was lucky; my journey coincided with a relative lull in the guerrilla war that has gripped the region since the end of full-scale fighting in Chechnya in 2001.

I've quickly found out that the war has spread faster and farther than I expected. To start, there was the corpse I saw on one of my first nights here. I was walking back to my hotel in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, when I passed an apartment block cordoned off by armed police. In the yard behind it, a detective was leaning over and shining a flashlight on a dead body. According to news reports on Sunday, Feb. 13, the victim had been shot half an hour before I passed by; his name was Ilyas Tramov, 42, a father of four who wore the long beard associated with Muslim radicals. His killers, the media suggested, were most likely vigilantes, taking vengeance for real or perceived involvement in the Islamist militia that has ravaged this republic -- once a peaceful backwater.

The brunt of the war, however, is borne some 900 miles south. Here, at home in the Caucasus, the boyeviki -- a loose, multinational coalition of fighting groups called jamaats -- carry out almost daily attacks on policemen, government officials, and even traditional healers, whom they consider pagans. The militants control no permanently held territory, but have proved adept at moving between safe houses and forest hideouts from which they launch guerrilla strikes, bombings, and assassinations.

In turn, Russian security forces have used a brutal mix of kidnapping, torture, and extrajudicial killing in an attempt to subdue the rebels, a tactic that only exacerbates the problem. After the Moscow metro bombings, Umarov said he had ordered the attacks in revenge for Russian commandos murdering a group of innocent young Ingush garlic-pickers in a forest.

Although police and FSB operatives have shown signs of curbing some of their worst excesses, they still act with impunity, persecuting relatives of the fighters as well as conservative Muslims who may have nothing to do with the underground militia.

Overall, the death toll is on the rise. Caucasian Knot, a website that monitors casualties, wrote in a report last month that 754 people were killed in the conflict in 2010, including 178 civilians (the figures exclude victims of attacks outside the region). In Kabardino-Balkaria alone, there was a fivefold increase in terrorist attacks compared with 2009, according to Russia's Interior Ministry.

Part 2: Blood Relations

Human rights groups have cataloged thousands of abuses of civilians by Russian security forces since the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, when soldiers beat and tortured Chechen men at temporary filtration camps. Often the aim was to force innocent victims to confess the names and whereabouts of relatives among the separatist fighters.

Chechen jihadists demand independence from Russia and a Caucasus Islamic Emirate.

I find it amazing that such a bloody and dreadful conflict receives so few column inches in the western media. Given the massively heightened interest in Wahhabism since 9/11, and the corresponding Islamization of the conflict in the Caucasus, it might have been thought that such a development would have increased interest in the region, but this does not seem to have been the case, even for the most Wahhabi-obsessed of talking heads.

Hopefully this blog will be able to cast some light on some of these forgotten jihads and fill in some of the gaps left by the mainstream media.

Greetings!

So let's get this show on the road!

Firstly, who am I? I want to retain a modicum of anonymity on the blog, so without giving too much away, I'm a student of history and politics living in London at the moment, with an aim to progress into postgraduate study in the history and politics of the Middle East. As such, the focus of this blog is going to be on the following issues:

- Middle East politics and history in general.
- The Israel-Palestine conflict.
- The broader war on terror.
- The war for Central Asia (Afghanistan/Pakistan and beyond)
- The war in Iraq.
- Islamist and jihadist extremism.
- Terrorism.
- US and UK foreign policy in the region.

Since I have an overinflated ego and often believe that people are far more interested in the things I have to say than they probably are in reality, the scope of this blog will probably not be confined to the above issues. I will probably also end up posting fairly regularly about the following issues which are important to me:

- Atheism and religion.
- Feminism and women's rights around the world.
- LGBT issues.
- Internal US and UK politics.
- Racism (especially anti-Muslim bigotry (I refuse to recognize the term 'Islamophobia' as a useful term, 'anti-Muslim bigot' is much more accurate for the issues I will be posting about) and anti-Semitism, for obvious reason).
- Movies.
- Anything else I might fancy inflicting on the handful of people who might ever be unfortunate enough to read this blog!

While I start writing up some ideas for posts I've had floating around in my head, what better way to celebrate the launch of this blog than with the amazing video by Tamer Shaaban celebrating the courageous actions of the Egyptian people in standing up to autocracy and proving to the world that the "Western-backed dictator or Islamist extremist regime" dichotomy is a false one.