'Each man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world'
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

'Artists are tricky fellows sir, forever shaping the world according to some design of their own'
-- Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Bury Bahrain - it just doesn't fit

And you thought America had a lot to learn about COIN? Check out the Saudis.



Download this mp3 from Beemp3.com

Libya - Misrata, Benghazi, Tripoli. Saif al-Islam, Kaddafi, No-fly zones. This country is generating all the news and the West is happy for that to be the case. There are some uncomfortable events happening further East, but it just won't do to ponder them too much.

When Ken Waltz declared that, 'Belgium doesn't matter' he only got it half right. He implicitly observed that world affairs are conducted between powerful states, the rest is mere vaudeville In fact, small states matter, provided they are of strategic import to powerful neighbours.

The United States' key ally in the region is Saudi Arabia. Yesterday the two countries signed an Open Skies agreement, not in itself surprising (the US has over a hundred Open Skies agreements with foreign nations), but is indicative of the general strength and continuing development of ties between the two nations. The United States' Fifth Fleet is harboured in Bahrain which enjoys strong links to the House of Saud, both ruling Sunni regimes: all of which explains why the West has been very quiet on the developments there. The regime is employing similar tactics to Iran in the 2009 Green Uprising, when it brutally quelled protests and imprisoned suspected leaders. Four prominent Shias have died after being taken into police custody.

Compared to Libya, the death toll may be small - only just over 20 people are believed to have died in the protests since they began on February 14th, but the heavy handed tactics of the police, watched by some of the 1000 Saudi soldiers sent into the country on March 14 has inflamed tensions and as many as 500 Shias are known to have been detained. The Shias have been angered by the desecration of many of their sacred sites that they say has been authorised, if not conducted, by the Saudi armed forces (informative article by the indefatigable Patrick Cockburn for the Independent). The undisguised hatred that the Sunnis are showing for the Shia make this protest look like escalating. True the Sunnis hold the complete monopoly of violence, but the absence of any economic prosperity can make a majority ethnic component of a country do funny things.

The Shia/Sunni divide has been bitterly felt in the region recently, not least when Zarqawi's reign of violence towards the Shia in Iraq in 2006 precipitated a brutal series of sectarian confrontations that some sources estimate cost 100 lives a day throughout that year. The Bahrain fault line is severe because the Shia form the poor but majority underbelly and the Sunni occupy the ruling eschelons (a typical sunni blogpost looks like this in Bahrain). So not only is there economic disparity but there is economic disparity running along sectarian lines. This then unites the Bahrainis protesting not only under the banners of economics and national freedom but also religion. The West must be hoping that the crackdown quells the protests, because any continuing unrest only heightens the irony in observing the zeal with which the US, UK and France have ridden to the rescue of a population, risen up, now at the mercy of a tyrannical regime intent on retribution. 

The UK and oil in the Iraq War



Finally, no-one should be surprised that the British government and oil companies discussed an Iraqi occupation in 2002, or that it was denied at the time. According to the memoir of Richard Clarke, US national coordinator for Counterterrorism at the time of 9.11, on September 12, 2001, neoconservatives at the White House were already discussing Iraq. Richard Perle had argued for regime change in Iraq in the year previous to 9.11. So it was always on the agenda and Blair would have been privy to the ideas emanating from the White House; it was natural that Britain was at the forefront of other nations considering the Iraq landscape. And on that note I clear the floor for Tarak Barkawi writing in 2006

'The question 'Did the United States really invade because of oil? is somewhat misplaced, however. It is most likely the case that ensuring Western control over oil - say, by the creation and maintenance of friendly regimes in the region - is seen by US elites and others as in the long-term interests of both the Middle East and the West. It is the West that has the appropriate model of liberal democracy and capitalism that in turn ensures economic development for the world. Thus 'appropriate arrangements' for the production and sale of Iraqi oil can be described, with a straight face, as part of the West's civilizing mission...It is nearly always the case that Western military action in the non-European world is represented as a species of 'humanitarian war', warfare that seeks to liberate and civilize. Western self-interest is occluded among tropes of civilization and barbarism'

(Barkawi, Globzalization & War, 2006, p.106) 

Monday 18 April 2011

Will the last person to leave the Maghreb please turn out the lights?

Refugee crisis points to humanitarian disaster on 'Europe's southern border' that will shift European politics to the right. And there was finally a Western ground force committed to Libya, but it was only a massive security detail designed to protect UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie on a visit to a refugee camp.

Angelina Jolie visits a Libyan refugee camp on April 4, 2011. 
The visit was reported by some sources as sparking a 'riot'.
More than 160 000 Libyans are encamped at the country's eastern and western littoral borders. At least 400 000 in total have passed into neighbouring countries - Niger, Chad, Sudan, Algeria, Egypt and the majority to Tunisia. The minority are returning nationals, leaving Libya because of the continued unrest. Against this backdrop, the UK has pledge to aid the 400 000 civilians in Misrata (the IOM estimates that 4000 migrants, ostracised and stricken, are still trapped in the city, the majority from sub-saharan Africa. Approximately 1600 have been taken by ferry to Benghazi and from there will be taken to Egypt). Estimates of the toll from the six weeks of fighting, from a doctor at the main hospital, stands at 1000 dead, 3000 wounded, and 80% of those are civilian.

The humanitarian plight across the Maghreb reverberates across Europe. On April 17, ten trains carrying Tunisian refugees were stopped by French officials and the Italian-French border. Italy has been giving temporary resident status to the 26 000 Tunisian refugees that have landed in the country.  Under the terms of the Schengen Agreement, free internal travel in 25 European countries is allowed by those nationals. The French officials cited 'public order reasons' for denying the entry and said that 'temporary nationality' was not binding. Already this refugee crisis is threatening cooperation between states and we are at the tip of the iceberg. 

The other factor is that we are in midst of a period of high inflation and relatively weak economic growth - against which the relative poverty of European nations is increasing. True Finns party has made electoral gains in Finland arguing against supporting bail-outs for stricken EU countries, whilst in Greece, calls grow louder to default on the debt. Increasing economic duress and added refugees invariably heightens a sense of 'Us' and 'Them'. 'We' become the Europeans, suffering economically because of the unstoppable influx of 'them' the Muslim refugees. And it will be the religion that gets distilled from this by the right wing politicians, not the ethnicity. 'They' will be Islamic and not North Africans - it increases fear and resentment and develops the clash of civilizations idea. Arguably, when the UK and French governments fought for a no-fly zone, preventing a refugee crisis that threatened the fundamental stability of European arrangements, was one reason they had in mind.

Marie le Pen of the far-right National Front Party in France toured an immigrant centre on the small Italian island of Lampedusa in early March and warned Italy to prepare to accept 'half the world's population' if it continues to take in 'economic refugees'. She said she learnt from her visit that the majority of the migrants were men aged between 20 and 30 and obviously 'economic refugees'
The Libyan uprising began in mid-February. It is now into its third month and there is no clear image of what the end result of this conflict may be. There is even less of idea of how the rebel force will now act. It is heterogenous, ill-trained, ill-equipped and bound to be losing morale - a NATO groundforce looks ever more likely unless talks with Kaddafi are progressing behind the scenes - but just how far he now controls the forces professing loyalty to him is unclear. Misrata is a classic civil war set-up - the battle is for control of the city and with that power, the pro-Kaddafi forces will rape and plunder, as war prizes. Currently there are 3-5000 rebel fighters, with questionable leadership, and the reported death of a 'rebel leader' in an attempt to retake a strategically important school building in the capital yesterday. An outright pro-Kaddafi victory in the city of 400 000 would precipitate chilling accounts and images - atrocities that could not be prevented by airstrikes. Libya as a problem embraced by the UK, France and the USA would then escalate by orders of magnitude because a ground force would account itself for images of killing that could then be used as anti-Western propaganda.

None of the ensuing scenarios are particularly optimistic. If Kaddafi flees, there are still pro-Kaddafi troops who have invested everything in fighting the rebels so that they will continue until they are routed. If Kaddafi is killed in a NATO operation then other elements may assume control. In the unlikely event that Kaddafi is routed, the post-conflict landscape would be absent of security of any kind and lacking visible leadership. It would be a country devoid of any coherent narrative and the economic hopelessness would precipitate mass migration. 

Democracy? We trumpet it from the rooftops yet we still teach the politics of Greeks, dead for two thousand years, who advocated benevolent tyranny and philosopher-kings. We proclaim democracy as bestowing political freedom onto a nation, as we go to the polls on May 5 to implement a change to our democratic system. We forget our own nation's history that is stained with the blood of thousands who have fought and died against regimes through the centuries. A transition phase to democracy would not create enough security on the ground to protect civilians from militias that would form in bids to develop local monopolies of violence. At some point, a United Nations or African Union ground force will be required in the country. Oh, and welcome to right-wing Europe.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

America Enmeshed

Protestors in Cairo, during the disruption of domestic
internet traffic, capture images on their mobile phones.
Copyright NY Daily News
'Amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also recognize that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing. These tools are also being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy it, modern information networks and the technologies they support can be harnessed for good or for ill. The same networks that help organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to spew hatred and incite violence against the innocent. And technologies with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights.' 


'On the one hand, anonymity protects the exploitation of children. And on the other hand, anonymity protects the free expression of opposition to repressive governments. Anonymity allows the theft of intellectual property, but anonymity also permits people to come together in settings that gives them some basis for free expression without identifying themselves.'
--Hillary Clinton, Remarks on Internet FreedomNewseum, Washington, D.C, 21 January, 2010


Daniel Finkelstein's article in the London Times and in particular his comment, 'I desire that the President of the United States proves to be a ditherer, a weakling and a fool. I have suddenly realised that if he isn't, if Barack Obama is better than that, we're all in a whole heap of trouble', is indicative of the malaise in which punditry has found itself during this upheaval in the middle east and maghrib. In the aftermath of 9.11, experts bemoaned the paucity of confident leaders that could drive forward a cogent, balanced response to the tragedy and refuse to be drawn into an emotional, ill-conceived reaction that ultimately played directly into the hands of the very actors who had planned the attacks. 


Finkelstein laters qualifies his position by arguing that if Obama is in fact erudite and certain on the world stage, then his withdrawal of American planes from offensive action in Libya represents - rather than uncertain policy and vacillation - the first step in a return to American isolationism. Further, Finkelstein reverts to history, to the post-World War II foreign policy elites that shaped economic interventionism in Europe to assert that the world needs America as its policeman. In fact, the world has changed since the Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods. Pearl Harbor may have shown that a state could attack an American base, but 9.11 demonstrated that its position in the world whether it chooses to pursue isolationism or aggressive imperialism is part of a global nexus of unseen cause, myriad effects and that the rise of the non-state actor reorientates the world of state sovereignty. 


Obama has relentlessly shown his desire for engagement, whether with his Cairo speech in June 2009 in which he articulated a new era of cooperation, saying, 'I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings,' Or at the United Nations, in September 2009, when he asserted that, 'The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation -- one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations'.


This engagement is partly ideology and partly a recognition that America stands in the middle of a giant web of connectivity. China's relative economic rise places even greater emphasis on American foreign policy, particularly as the former is pursuing an unabashed resource grab in Africa. The relative decline of American power is heralded in every new edition of Foreign Affairs, in which academics and policy-makers lament the draining wars pursued under the Bush administration, undertaken whilst sleeping Asian giants conducted various soft power offensives to secure mineral drilling rights across the globe (for the contrary, optimistic view of America's current trajectory, see Joseph Nye in a late 2010 Foreign Affairs article). 


Given this 'majority-view pessimism' it's little wonder that there has been no coherent voice emerge upon the matter of the middle east and maghrib uprisings. After all, what exactly are they? What will be the identity of the states that appear in their place? How will they impact upon the already precarious positions of American, Russia and the geographically adjacent Europe? In fact, the only unequivocal spin-off from the uprisings thus far has been to create a new impetus in the tech-world for mesh-networks. Mubarak's decision to close all domestic internet and telecommunication traffic in late January to combat the use of social media sites to coordinate the uprising was a seminal moment in history. It demonstrated both the coagulating power of instantaneous, free messaging as an instrument for protest, and it showed the ability of a 'democratically-elected' dictator to control communication among his people. 


Mubarak's play was a one time deal that didn't pay off. Ever since, the tech world has become galvanized. Shervin Pishevar wrote an important blogpost at the end of February entitled 'Humans are the Routers' in which he delineated a trajectory that could effectively prevent a regime from removing its population from the Net. The past two months have seen a rapid rise in the software/firmware associated with mesh-networking, which in theory could use mobile phones as nodes in a local platform to connect to Internet network satellites. The evolution has been conducted at a startling pace. Start-up dollars are already in place and OpenMesh has aligned with various other companies to create a software/firmware partnership. Mobiles and networks are the very latest idea in Net development, with some work having been done on this in late 2010. What it demonstrates is that technology, the ability to communicate and evolve a networked structure are being developed at paces that outstrip political action and response. The fallout from the uprisings hasn't even started but already the technology that wasn't there before is being built. The Net abhors a wall. 


I for one want Obama to be a strong leader and assertive. He has already demonstrated an understanding of the networked nature of the twenty-first century and a knowledge too that YouTube just may be the most important news broadcaster of our time. With a mobile phone, everyone is a potential reporter. Kilcullen in his 28 Articles, is instructive: 
‘Remember the global audience. One of the biggest differences between the counterinsurgencies our fathers fought and those we face today is the omnipresence of globalized media. Most houses in Iraq have one or more satellite dishes. Web bloggers, print, radio and television reporters and others are monitoring and commentating on your every move.
It's obvious that Obama doesn't want American planes engaged in bombing Libya, with the possibility of inflammatory images of civilian casualties on the ground that this could entail. That he has removed planes from the Libya action doesn't mean he wants, or even can, remove America from the world stage rather it shows he understands that military action in civilian theatres has consequences. 'Kinetic' activity can lead to severe, unintended consequences: When the Egyptian Islamic Jihad exploded a bomb by prime-minister Atef Sidiqi's armoured car in 1993, he was unhurt. Yet the blast killed a 12 year-old schoolgirl, Shayma Abdel-Halim. The death resonated with the population. When her coffin was carried through the streets of Cairo, mourners shouted, 'Terrorism is the enemy of God'. The backlash against the organization was severe and precipitated Ayman al-Zawahiri seeking closer ties with al-Qaeda.

If Obama doesn't understand that kinetic operations have the propensity to cause myriad consequences, then his staff do. Iraq and Afghanistan have been laboratories for the insurgent and the counter-insurgent, a cauldron of improvisation and evolution, with the Internet being the medium of choice for message. Obama is just careful how he chooses to engage and in which theatres he wants his nation to go kinetic. So don't worry Finkelstein, America is enmeshed.


Anne-Marie Slaughter's (moderator) Panel Discussion on Internet Freedom, 21 Jan, 2010 



Further.
16+ Projects & Initiatives Building Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks
OpenMesh Project
Connection
Hyperactivist
Global Network Initiative is a voluntary effort by technology companies who are working with nongovernmental organizations, academic experts, and social investment funds to respond to government requests for censorship. The initiative goes beyond mere statements of principles and establishes mechanisms to promote real accountability and transparency.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Karzai in the Summer

'There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before'
-- Willa Cather

In the wake of the mob killings in Mazar-i-Sharif, pundits have expressed concern that this area of apparent relative security - now with its obvious underlying volatilty - is due to be one of the seven regions handed over to the Afghan army in June of this year. In fact, since the object of ire was the United Nations (as a not-too-convincing substitute for an evangelical American clergyman who burnt the Koran and uploaded its trial to YouTube for immediate global reach) it seems as if handing over this location to the Afghan army is actually a positive step.

The mob numbered several hundred according to newspaper accounts of the atrocity and suggests that at all levels, this foreign intervention to secure self-government, the great paradox of nation-building, is failing to gain the trust of the heterogenous population. Afghanistan and the Karzai government is an epic fallacy that threatens to unravel at any moment. We in the West assume that because elections were held, however fraudulently, that there is now a represented population and an accountable elite, a dynamic between the two of reciprocity. But the elections served only to legitimate a government, any government in order to ostensibly demonstrate progress towards a Western democratic model. The Karzai government is in no way similar to any nation-state system in the West. The Karzai government cannot, and possibly does not want to, be responsive to the needs of the citzens. It cannot enforce security on the ground and it cannot, without the foreign organizations that dominate the intellectual and kinetic infrastructure in the country, enact change.

The event in Mazar-i-Sharif represents an artificially orientated faultline that jihadists have been trying to exacerbate for a generation. How the United Nations is meant to represent the Koran-burning pastor is indicative of the vague lines that militants will use in attempts to coerce the population. The burning happened on March 20th and garnered almost no media publicity. It has been two weeks since then. According to interviewed UN personnel after the attack, security in Afghanistan has deteriorated in the past five years suggesting that the ISAF is losing the monopoly on violence. There are not enough Afghan troops, numerically, to ensure security across the country, and the neo-Taliban seem motivated and creative in their insurgency. 

The pastor was warned against burning the Koran on September 11th of last year by both Obama and Petraeus, the latter informing him that it would endanger American lives. Instructive, that Petraeus should appeal to nationalist sentiment rather than religious. Petraeus did not suggest that Christian lives would be imperilled. In the end, the odd saga has been the apparent catalyst for an incident that has reignited debate about the immediate future in Afghanistan. No wonder that the US has chosen to pull out of combat missions for the Libyan no-fly zone - all action can in this world of globalized social media catalyse myriad responses.