Some Days The World Is So Boring It's Hard To Stay Awake

There are days when the affairs of the world are ever so interesting, inherently fascinating and filled with reasons to alternate between laughter and tears, between an attack of the go-get-'ems and black depression.  Today is not one of those days.  Today is one of total tedium.  It is a day where the same old, same olds triumph.

There is, for example, another example of the Obama administration teeing off to triple bogey a critical hole in the Mideast/North African course.  You may have heard of the minority group in Algeria known as the Kabyles. This bunch is a subset of the indigenous dwellers of the mountainous interior of North Africa, the Berber.  In Algeria the Kabyles number some ten million out of a total population of just under thirty-five million.  Not an insignificant minority.

The Kabyles are Muslim but lean strongly in the secularist direction.  They have a long and well established record as being hostile to groups such as AQIM which espouse violent political Islam.  Their own more or less official militias have a history of keeping the peace in their home mountains which has benefited the Algerian government on numerous occasions including the long and very lethal insurgency during the Nineties.  Over the years, including those of the Algerian insurgency against France in the Fifties and early Sixties, the Kaybeles have been strongly pro-Western.  They remain such today--for the moment, at least.

The Kaybles are not satisfied with their current relations with the central government and have demanded a referendum on autonomy.  Their search for government agreement on the proposed referendum has so far been without success.  As a result the Kabyles have come to Washington seeking assistance in achieving their goal.

To date the Obama administration has given the Kaybele representatives the coldest of shoulders if not quite the bum's rush.  All the heavyweights at the Pentagon and in the National Security Council are "in conference" when the Kabyles call or stop by.  Text messages and voice mail go unanswered.  Over at Foggy Bottom the supplicants are received but only by low level functionaries.  (Perhaps the Kabyles would get further if they invited the Secretary of State to dinner; the lady does have a real fondness for the swank and swan of a diplomatic do.)

Demonstrations are planned to back the demand for the autonomy referendum.  And, should those prove fruitless, the potential for violence is high, even very high.  The history of the Kabyles is punctuated by periods during which these folks exhibited a very high competence at guerrilla war.  Just ask the French about the Rif War and some of the other frontier fracases which marred their rulership.

The Kabyles have the capacity to put a very large, very highly motivated, reasonably well-armed force in the field.  A Kabyle insurrection would provide the most severe test experienced by the Algerian government during its half century of existence.  At the least the country would be destabilized to a degree tantamount to armed anarchy.

The Obama administration still has some influence in Algeria.  It would be in the best interests of the US, Algeria, and the region if it were to place its weight behind the Kabyle referendum demand.  An autonomous Kabyle state would not impair Algeria's existence or capacity to function.  Nor are the Kabyles unreasonable.  They understand the meaning of the word "compromise" and would be willing to work out one using the US as a mediator.  For some reason or another they still trust us and our intentions.

The situation with the Kabyles in Algeria is so touchy and time sensitive that Mr Obama cannot do what he is famous for doing--temporizing until it is clear which side is winning.  This is an emerging crisis where we cannot play catch-up; we must be ahead of the wave or it will crush us.

Over on the Korean Peninsula it appears that the Hermits of the North are cranking up for a third nuclear test.  The tunnels are under construction.  The combination of Northern determination and American jawboning has convinced the South to drop its (legitimate) requirement that the North apologize for the attacks last year before commencing bi-lateral talks either stand-alone or on the sidelines of a renewed Six Power Talk.  It is easy to see that the North is after a restart of the Six Power Talks not to end its nuclear program for such will not happen, but rather to extort aid, particularly food, from the other participants, South Korea most of all.

After some brief excursions into pushing back against the Northerners and their sponsors in the Forbidden City, the Obama administration has reverted to its default posture of passivity coupled with a touching childlike faith in diplomatic conversations of a multi-lateral sort.  The Obama signed order prohibiting the importation of anything made in North Korea to the US is not a departure from passivity-as-usual.  Nor is it an effective means of coercing the North.

In short, the risk taking, in-your-face policies of the North are again proving successful.  The US lacks the will and imagination necessary to impose any meaningful costs upon the Hermit Kingdom of the North.  The Obama administration has no options at the present beyond bootless palaver with a rogue regime backed by a notoriously self-interested major power.

To zip back to the Mideast.  All the Obama administration can do is look on with white knuckles and tight lips as Egypt moves one more step to full and normal relations with Iran.  The movement of Cairo closer and closer to Tehran has alarmed both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

From the perspective of Israel, the growing affection between the two countries is a genuine national security threat.  The transitional military government has already relaxed its tight controls on the Gaza border such that warlike stores can flow with greater ease to Hamas.  Cozying up to Iran bodes to increase the flow all the more as well as to provide greater state cover for the Hamas threat.

To the House of Saud the partial resurrection of normal diplomatic relations constitutes a species of diplomatic treason.  The Saudis see the move as a defection from the Arab camp to the opposition, the Persian Shiites.  Given the demonstrated involvement of Iran in the unrest in Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud must be feeling a highly unpleasant frisson of fear with this development.

From the Washington point of view, the new diplomatic outreach is not a major development but it is one which runs directly counter to the announced American policy of "isolating" Iran.  It represents a failure of this policy, a failure inflicted by a government which owes a goodly percentage of its successful existence to date to the backroom efforts of the US.

The Egyptian move is a tribute to the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and akin groups on the transitional military government.  It implies that the Egyptians have concluded they can safely singe the beard of Uncle Sam if by so doing they can secure their flank against the domestic advocates of political Islam.  The challenge for the administration is convincing the Egyptians that they have something real to lose if they get too close to Iran.

One last stop in today's trip from monotony to ennui: Africa, specifically Nigeria.  The improbably named Goodluck Jonathan has won the presidency in an election generally conceded to have been the most fair, most honest, most open in that country for two or more decades.  The Christian geologist turned politician won quite convincingly.  He did overwhelmingly well in the Christian oil rich south and performed surprisingly well in the Muslim majority north.

No sooner than the ballots had been counted and the results verified than the Muslims in the north picked up machetes, torches, guns, and clubs with the view of killing Christians and burning churches.  The death toll was rather modest as such affairs go in Africa's most populous country, but the potential for ongoing violence continues unabated.  The Muslims (or at least some) are of the belief that Goodluck's victory somehow violated the informal rotation in office scheme which sees Muslim and Christian alternate in the presidency.  As a consequence they allege vote fraud and look for someone to kill, something to burn.

Nigeria is fifty percent Muslim, forty percent Christian with the balance being primary adherents of traditional animist belief systems.  The Christian south has the oil.  The Muslim north has lots of dirt, rocks, and people.  While apologists for the Muslim violence have averred the cause is the maldistribution of wealth, the substantial cause of violence is the political Islam message pumped out in mosque after mosque.  The efforts of the local apostles of violent political Islam have been backed in their play by international groups including al-Qaeda.

Without very strong support from civilized states, including the US, the newly elected regime will have its plate all too full.  To put it bluntly but not in oversimplified form, Nigeria is on the edge of prolonged, slow motion internal war powered by religion--at least on one side.  At least for the next few weeks or months, Nigeria is trembling on the edge of becoming the Congo with oilfields.  With armed advocates of violent political Islam in the north and the MEND insurgents in the Niger delta, the prospect for energetic dissassembly are high.

This is not a situation in which the Obama administration can adopt a watch-and-wait approach profitably. Neither can it sit on the sidelines until it becomes evident that the wrong side is wining or the state has tumbled into collapse.  Robust and stalwart support for the elected government is needed urgently and quickly.  The support may have to go beyond the level of presidential phone calls or statements.  But, the US does get a fair amount of oil from the place and that should factor into administration decision making.

However if the past is but prologue as so often appears to be the case, the current administration will temporize, stand back, appeal to the "international community," and generally wring its hands over the limits of American power.  Of course, it is not power which is lacking but rather two other commodities--wit and will.  No matter how long on words Mr Obama and his team might be, they are woefully and persistently wanting in both wit and political will.

And, bucko, that is what makes today so damn boring.