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.

Is Tunisia The New Paradigm?

Many observers, particularly those who live in the Arab countries of the Mideast, see the overthrow of the aging authoritarian president, Ben Ali, as a sign of things to come in countries such as Egypt, Algeria, even the feudal oil kingdoms of the Gulf.  These optimistic folk revel in the apparent success of an unprecedented exercise in "people power."

There are striking but superficial similarities between the social, political, and economic dynamic which brought an end to the quarter century of Ben Ali's reign and those obtaining in other Mideast countries, particularly Egypt.  But, as history has so often shown, the differences are far more critical than the appealing similarities.

Ben Ali was only the second chief of state in the fifty plus years of Tunisian independence.  His predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, ushered in both independence and a rigid one party state rule.  Bourguiba was a realist in his domestic and foreign policy pursuing good relations with the ex-colonial power, France, while insisting on secularization, educational development, and economic progress domestically.  His thirty-one year regime provided a sound basis for Tunisia both socially and economically while stunting the country's political growth.

Ben Ali displaced Bourguiba in a non-violent coup in 1987.  His early terms in the office of president were distinguished only by his fealty to Bourguiba's visions.  However, by the end of his fifteenth year in power, Ben Ali had become increasingly repressive, given to nepotism and familial corruption and evermore remoteness from the people of Tunisia.  During terms number four and five, the general distaste for the regime grew apace, but manifestations of discontent were handled readily by the police.

As distaste for the regime grew so also did the wealth of the presidential family including the relatives of his second wife, a nearly illiterate one time beautician.  The situation would have remained in stasis had it not been for the impact of the global recession, particularly the hit taken by the large, educated, secularized, and European oriented youth of the country.

Bourguiba had emphasized the control of population growth with excellent results.  This insulated Tunisia against the early effects of too much education and too few suitable jobs.  However, the global recession upset the delicate balance with results which disproportionately hit the urban under thirty population.  In this context it should be mentioned that Tunisia is heavily urbanized with seven out of every ten people living in the cities.  Similarly Tunisia boasts an unusually large number of people with a post-secondary education.

In many but not all of these features--urbanization, a precarious balance between population growth and job growth, a significant number of young, educated, and under- or unemployed people, a rigid, one party political dynamic, inefficient, overbearing repression by police, corruption and nepotism at the highest level of government, maldistribution of wealth--Tunisia is closely resembled by Egypt, Algeria, and the Gulf states.  The same is true to a slightly lesser degree with respect to Jordan, Libya, and Syria.

None of this should be taken to imply that Hosni Mubarak is soon to go the way of Ben Ali.  The reason is to be found in the differences between Tunisia and the other Arab states.  Most of the critical differences are matters of degree rather than substance.  For example, Tunisia's population has a higher percentage of recipients of post-secondary education than the other countries in the region.  The average family size in Tunisia--an important consideration when evaluating the potential for political involvement by youth--is smaller than in the other Arab states.  The percentage of urbanites is larger.  The percentage of under-thirties with direct experience living in Europe is larger.  In short, the population of Tunisia is disproportionately educated, urban, technologically savvy, literate, and comes from a childhood of relative privilege.

Other differences are structural.  Tunisia has a small and non-politicized army.  While the police are more political than not, the army sat--and continues to sit--on the sidelines.  Its high command refused to suppress the escalating demonstrations/riots.  This was critical to the decision by the president to leave and the prime minister to step aside in favor of the legislative speaker.  Also structural is the matter of religion.  Tunisia is Muslim to be sure, but it is a country in which the seeds of violent political Islam or even the purportedly non-violent sort peddled by the Muslim Brotherhood have never been allowed to take root.

The act which triggered the final month of escalating unrest is quite atypical for an Arab/Muslim state and society but quite emblematic of Tunisia's uniqueness.  The event was the public self-immolation of a twenty-six year old university graduate who was forced to support himself as a fruit and vegetable peddler.  After being hassled by the police for having no license, Mohamad Bouazizi, took his own life in the same attention demanding way as did the famed Buddhist monks of South Vietnam fifty years ago--he doused himself with gasoline and struck a match.

Some Muslim clerics along with government spokesmen condemned Bouazizi's suicide as "non-Islamic."  This attempt at marginalization was unsuccessful to say the least.  It can be argued that the condemnation offered by Muslim clerics deligitimized any Islamist message.  Because of the widespread use of Internet, SMS, and other horizontal means of communication the death of Mr Bouazizi had an impact far from the small town of Sidi Bouzid.

Unemployed graduates were joined by urban workers and others in demonstrations and riots publicized by SMS and social networking sites in a manner redolent of raves and flash crowds.  The demonstrators were never effectively and efficiently repressed by the police.  It is important to note that the Tunisian organs of internal security were not and never have been efficiently repressive.  They could oppress but never gain the unchallenged upper hand which provides the necessary suppression of opposition.  In short, the police could repress enough to be counterproductive but not enough to be suppressive.  That has always been the worst case for an authoritarian regime.

In this very critical way then Tunisia is at a distance from countries such as Egypt.  Hosni Mubarak has a very efficient set of repressive instruments at his disposal including the army.  The same is true with other regimes which superficially resemble the old government in Tunisia.  Not to put too sharp a point on the matter, all the other potentially threatened governments have both the will and the ability to drown the opposition in blood.

It must never be forgotten that other countries from Algeria to Egypt and beyond have strong groups adhering to violent political Islam.  This means the usually more secular folks who would constitute a "people power" opposition would not have the field to themselves but would face Islamists as well as the status quo government and its supporting elites.

Putting together the similarities and differences leads to one conclusion: The events of the past month and days in Tunisia do not constitute a new paradigm for other societies and polities in the Arab Mideast.  While it would be very nice if the contrary were the case, the probability of any other authoritarian regime in the region being toppled in a manner akin to the downfall of Ben Ali is very slim to none.

Still there is a lesson here for the Deep Thinkers of the current administration.  It would behoove the US and other Western states including former colonial powers to take a long hard look at the possibilities for assisting "people power" movements in the region.  The neocon ninnies of the Bush/Cheney administration were right in pushing for democracy in the Arab states even if they were dead wrong in their belief that armed exercises in coerced regime change constituted the best means to foster democracy.  Working with nascent or incipient "people power" movements, even or especially those of the "leaderless" sort constitutes a far, far better way.

The Latest Twist For A Long Running Insurgency

Once upon a time the Spanish flag whipped in the sirocco where sandy wastes met the sea in a geographic expression then known as Spanish Sahara. Thirty-seven years ago, even before Richard Nixon cashed in his Watergate tinted chips, a group known by its Spanish initials as Polisario declared itself to be the vanguard of an independence oriented revolution. (Well, to use the proper term, a defensive insurgency with the goal of making the hot, arid, economically useless desert a zone as free of Spaniards as it is rain.)

The post-Franco Spanish government allowed as how it was quite willing to let this meaningless remnant of past colonial glory go its own way. At a speed which would put a thoroughbred racing camel to shame both Morocco and Mauritania claimed the now orphaned area of miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Polisario disagreed. Forcefully.

The lackluster Mauritanian simulacrum of an army after a tad of defeat in its token resistance packed it in. The Moroccans were made of sterner stuff. By 1976 Morocco was in defacto control of most of what was now called simply, Western Sahara.

Never one to admit defeat--and having secured the not unimportant backing of Algeria--Polisario kept on with the good fight. Over the next decade or so the Moroccans pushed the Berber and Arab fighters of Polisario back until their only secure bases were refugee camps in Algeria.

Following the UN brokered ceasefire in 1991, which had the promise of a referendum on the future status of Western Sahara as a key feature, Morocco secured its status in the largest and more valuable part of the place with a sand berm of monumental dimensions. Polisario repaired to lick its considerable wounds in the Algerian camps. Given that Algeria had leveraged a seat in the Organization of African Unity for Polisario and continued to support its political and military ambitions, the situation was acceptable to the Polisario insurgents, leader and follower alike.

The situation stayed in this stasis with the promised referendum being postponed time after time and Morocco perfecting its hold on most but not quite all of Western Sahara for the next decade. The stasis continued for several reasons chief among which was the political crisis and attendant mass deaths which blighted the Algerian political and social landscapes as government and Islamist (primarily Salifist) opposition. The Algerian military needed more stability not less and thus acted to inhibit Polisario's ambitions.

The new century opened with changes in Morocco, particularly the coming to the throne of Mohammed VI in 1999. Since then the Kingdom has been able to inaugurate a series of political, social, and, most importantly, economic development measures which have had the incidental benefit of strengthening Morocco's hold on Western Sahara. This development has raised the bar to Polisario's success.

Also impairing Polisario in realizing its long-held dream of independence is the recurrent tilt of the UN, particularly the Security Council, in Morocco's favor. Thus frustration has grown year by year during the past decade in the camps of Algeria. No one is more frustrated and willing to embrace the most extreme of measures than the young men who have been born and come of age in the camps.

Once again something first noted in the concentration camps of the American West (aka "Reservations") has been demonstrated in the remote camps of Algeria. As on the assorted "reses" of the US and the refugee camps inhabited by Palestinians, the involuntary "refugees" constitute a ready, willing, able, and eager source of recruits for war. Even the certainty of death in war has once again been proven to be less unacceptable than continued life in the camps.

As a result the young men of the camps have become a source of recruits for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Polisario-AQIM linkage has been demonstrated with increasing frequency in the past several months with Polisario members and leaders such as Imam Muhamad Seedi and Abu Musab Abdul Wadud.

The Polisario recruits are powerfully motivated--and not simply nor solely by the desire for independence. The Salifist ideology of AQIM is at least as important--probably more so--in providing the impetus to revival within the almost moribund ranks of Polisario. This implies that the fresh troops are as willing to kill and die in Algeria as they are in Morocco or Western Sahara.

AQIM is not noted for harboring limited ambitions. The reach of the AQIM dreams (or, perhaps delusions) is seen in their urging that Morocco be attacked. The goal is not the liberation of Western Sahara. No. That would be too limited. The aim is that of compelling the Kingdom and Army of Morocco to serve as the mechanism of Islamist revanchism.

The target of the revanchist dream is Spain. More precisely it is the recovery of the lost province of al-Andalus. Actually the goal is not limited to the far marches of the Pyrenees, and since the Islamic and Islamist tenet is that any territory over which the crescent flag of the Prophet's forces once flew is forever Muslim, AQIM and its supporters demand the reconquest of south France. (Apparently the victory of Geoffry Martel at Tours was only a preliminary decision.)

AQIM has failed to gain great traction in Algeria perhaps because the memories of the pools of blood are too recent in the collective memory of Algerians generally. The addition of a large chunk of the twenty-five or so thousand young men without a country but with a faith is a most welcome boost to AQIM.

The "refugees" from Western Sahara also provide a strong mechanism for penetrating on a peer-to-peer basis the alienated youth of Morocco--thirty percent of whom are currently unemployed. Radicalization of Moroccan young men was shown in a melodramatic way last week with the deportation of two such from Italy following the discovery of their hazy plan to kill the current pope.

Moroccans are well represented in France, Spain, and Italy. They are present all through the EU. Not all are even marginally integrated in their host societies. Not all are meaningfully employed. More than a few have convinced themselves that they and their religion is the focus of baseless excoriation by Europeans. These, particularly those of the last category, represent fertile recruiting pools. The same religion based approach which has proven quite successful with the Polisario in Algeria will work with the rootless young men living in Europe.

Morocco presents a cheerful face to the world, particularly the West and the US. It likes to portray itself as a modern, tolerant, open society with a well-respected and regarded constitutional monarch supported by a democratically elected parliament. In comparison to other Muslim majority states, the Kingdom does enjoy a wide measure of civil rights, a relatively free press, a reasonably efficient bureaucracy, and a prosperous economy.

The image is attractive. It is also fragile. Morocco as a state is tenuous. It would fall before a resolute Islamist attack. This is precisely what AQIM intends as the first, necessary step to grander things.

Polisario provides a tool to mobilize people against the Kingdom. This is the case not only in the arena of domestic stability but also in international fora. Polisario has legitimacy in international affairs given its status in the African Union. It is not a declared terrorist entity unlike AQIM. It has access to the UN. And to the international media as shown by its protests during the vote to reauthorize the UN mandate in Western Sahara.

AQIM and Polisario are not strange bedfellows. Their goals are intertwined, interlocked, not simply coinciding but mutual. Beyond that, the two groups share the most intimate of connections, those of faith.

Just Who Is Winning?

There has been some good news from (some of) the front in the war between the civilized nations of the world and Islamist jihad. The Marja area has been cleared of the majority of Taliban trigger pullers so the civilian government might try to establish itself and gain credibility with and support from the locals. In Pakistan the government, military, and ISI have continued in their program of selective apprehension of Afghan Taliban senior figures.

So much for the good news. It isn't much but it does show a considerable improvement in the AfPak region compared to a few months ago.

Then, there is the rest of the world.

While there is the appearance--and even some reality--of a truce in Yemen, the failing state continues to attract Islamists and jihadi faster than a honey tree draws bees. The pirates of Somalia continue to operate even though the world's press yawns. More importantly the Koran waving, AK toting thugs of al-Shabaab continue to operate with success despite losses in recent combat in the capital Mogadishu.

The al-Shabaab jihadist leadership is feeling symptoms of the "victory disease" in that it has declared war against Kenya, Uganda, and Djibouti. The "war" which has been declared has already been defined by al-Shabaab to be one of suicide and similar terror attacks against which none of the listed countries is well prepared to counter the threat.

The Islamist faction in Nigeria has increased in both size and appeal. The greatest manifestation of this is the up-tick in attacks on Christian communities and churches. The government is going through a period of internal instability with the result it has not been able to suppress the jhadists effectively. Rather they have been repressed just enough to consolidate their structures and enhance their appeal to those who are inclined to feel persecuted or neglected.

Then there is North Africa....

Important in and of itself the countries of North Africa--Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali--are important. They contain vast quantities of natural resources including hydrocarbons. The region is even more critical as a potential launching pad for jihadist attacks on European targets.

These countries--in particular Mali with its vast expanses of nothing but nothingness--are the stomping ground of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.) Currently AQIM is small, not more than a thousand adherents but one has to be bullish on its future.

AQIM is descended from the Algerian Islamist Fighting Front for Salvation and Combat which waged a very bloody war with that country's security forces in the Nineties following the Algerian army's cancellation of elections which would have brought the Islamists to power. The war was, not unlike the long war of national independence, both dirty and deadly. At the end of active hostilities the surviving jihadists withdrew to the desert wastes of Mali, an area about the size of France.

The group spent the years in the wilderness profitably, developing organizational coherence, ideological consistency, and increasingly close relations with al-Qaeda. Capitalizing on a number of grievances within the more marginal members of regional societies as well as the frustrated ambitions of the often over-educated, under-employed urban youth of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and even Libya, AQIM gained supporters, if not active combatants.

In more recent months and years AQIM has concentrated on kidnapping foreigners including oil workers and attacking security forces. This sort of humdrum has been dramatically punctuated by spectaculars, the most eye popping of which was the December 2007 attack on a UN facility in Algeria which killed seventeen staffers as well as twenty locals.

The impoverished, ramshackle governments of Mali and Mauritania have proven themselves to be utterly incompetent in dealing with AQIM even when the group subjects the governments to intense embarrassment both domestically and internationally. The efforts underway in both countries have been complemented (but not made any less ineffective) by both the US and the EU declaring AQIM to be a terrorist entity.

Recent economic aid and preliminary military assistance have not had any measurable or even noticeable impact upon the fortunes of Mali or Mauritania. AQIM continues to operate with impunity in both. Both governments--and some Western analysts--have downplayed the spike in AQIM recruiting and operations by overstating the importance of the working relationship between the Islamist jihadists of AQIM and local criminal gangs including smugglers and kidnappers.

While these relations exist having been carefully cultivated by AQIM during the Wilderness Years, they facilitate rather than replace the abilities inherent in the group. The criminals are a sort of force multiplier and not the force itself. The AQIM force itself has been growing not only by local recruiting but as a result of individuals from Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria having come to join the "good fight." It is only a matter of time (and not much of it) before gunslingers from Iraq and places east start appearing on the overhead imagery of the desert camps.

The initiative continues to reside with the Islamist jihadists for one set of very simple and compelling reasons. The first is the existence of a very credible (to True Believers or wannabe True Believers) ideology promising eschatological rewards as well as anodynes for "this world" inequities and injustices. The second is the self-organizing nature of all the myriad Islamist jihadist groups. The non-existence of a Jihadist Central Command is the second greatest strength of the enemy in the current war(s).

The greatest strength is, of course, the unmentionable reality that the Sacred Writings of Islam contain all the justifications needed for the waging of the dirtiest of wars. Islam provides a credible basis, if interpreted by the "right" cleric for any and all wars including the possession and implied use of nuclear weapons.

The combination of religious predicates and self-organization means the Islamist jihadist enemy can move fast, change locations, agendas, and threaten different targets. It has and will retain the initiative into the foreseeable future. The nations comprising the League of Civilized States may win individual battles, claim victory in assorted little wars, but will not be able to kill the hydra of innumerable heads unless and until the nature and character of the enemy is openly acknowledged.

Don't hold your breath.

Yes, The Dead Really Do Vote

There is a ground truth in war which is both universal and, lamentably, rarely recognised by either historians or policy makers. In war, in all wars of whatsoever nature, there comes a time when the dead propel policy.

In a real way the dead vote. They vote through the living. The dead exercise a profound and often highly unpredictable pressure upon the political will of combatant populations and on the choices made by governments.

During World War I the peace initiative offered by Woodrow Wilson could not but fail even though neither the Entente Powers nor the Central Powers had any realistic hope of victory. The reason for that conclusion is both simple and stark. Had the French, the English, the German or even the Austrian government sought to make a "peace without victors" as the American president proposed, it would have been overthrown in a matter of days.

There was a single sentiment upon which the civilian populations of all the major belligerents could agree. Our dead shall not have died in vain. The populations of France, England, Germany, Austria, Belgium and even Italy were unwilling to see an end to the war without a benefit more than equivalent to the level of sacrifice.

During World War II the British and then the Americans sought to kill enough civilians through the "round the clock bombing campaign" that German civilian political will would collapse with fatal effects to the Nazi government and military. The "death from above" campaign was highly successful in breaking things and killing people, but it was totally counterproductive with regard to its goal of shattering morale. As the bombs fell and the civilian body count grew so also did German military production levels and overall popular commitment to the war.

Both World Wars were total wars of national survival for the primary combatants. They were existential in nature from the perspective of the Germans, the French, the British and the Russians. (Keep that in mind, we'll be coming back to the concept later.)

When a war is not existential for one of the belligerents, the impact of the "Dead Vote" is quite different. Take, for example, the American War in Vietnam. While the conflict was existential for the three Vietnamese belligerents, the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese and South Vietnam, it was not such for the United States. For the US and We the People, the war was a limited one in support of policy. It was not a matter of national life and death.

Through the long years of escalating fighting, the political will of the North Vietnamese grew substantially under the pressure of American bombs. The Viet Cong also experienced a growth of commitment even as their butcher's bill grew. Even the tenacity and will to fight among the supporters of the varied South Vietnamese governments increased--substantially in the closing years of the war following the American withdrawal.

In the United States the "dead vote" was cast differently by the living. Here the lengthening list of the dead resulted in a progressive decline of support for and commitment to the war. Here, We the Living concluded that we must not allow any more to die without useful purpose and in absence of a real, compelling goal.

In short, there are two antipodal "votes of the dead." One is expressed in the context of existential conflict. The other comes about in the lesser, limited wars: the police actions, the foreign interventions, the humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping missions.

The first demands a victory complete, comprehensive and beneficial enough to justify the lives lost. The second demands that no more lives be sacrificed for some hazy and debatable purpose.

Let's pull it down to slogan level. "Our sacred dead shall not have died in vain." Or. "No more wasted lives!"

Interpreting or forecasting the "dead vote" requires considering cultural and religious factors. The Japanese religious and cultural context assured the continuation of commitment regardless of the number of lives lost or the degree of physical destruction and deprivation experienced.

The seven and a half year War of Algerian Independence is a perfect case study of the dichotomy of effect between those whose dead have died in an existential cause and those whose dead have perished in pursuit of a policy goal. It is also a perfect example of the impact of religious and cultural factors on the way in which the living cast the votes of the dead.

In some ways the Algerian War was complex. It involved several distinct communities. It involved vastly different cultures and religions. Yet it can be simplified without doing harm to reality.,

There were two belligerent communities living in Algeria. One was the pieds noirs, the European minority population which had lived in the country for as many as five generations when the war commenced in 1954. The other was the mixed Arab and Berber Muslim majority whose ancestors had been present in some cases from the time of Carthage.

For both of these communities the war was existential. If the Europeans came out on top, then the Muslims would remain strangers in their own land. If the Arab-Berber majority won, then the Europeans would be refugees in the making.

Of course each of these two groups viewed the other through the prism of prejudice and hatred.

The outsider in the war was France. Despite the legalities which proclaimed Algeria to be part of Metropolitan France and ignoring the complications of the French national ego and delusions of continued imperial glory, the war in Algeria was one which was not existential but rather an exercise in support of often ill-defined policy. France could live as well or, as events proved, even better without Algeria as it could carrying the colonial burden.

The dead started voting from the first day of the war. Pied noir dead voted consistently to continue and intensify the war by all means. As the death toll among the Muslim population mounted to its final total of some three hundred thousand, Arab and Berber political will both strengthened in support of total independence and reduced the potential of a moderate "third force" emerging. (It must be mentioned that the nationalist insurgents, the NLF, engaged in ruthless killings to preclude a moderate force from raising its collective head.)

For the outsider, the French, the dead finally voted in the opposite way. War weariness, or what French commentators called "boredom" with the war, was the basis for the DeGaulle government's peace agreement with the NLF. DeGaulle wanted to liquidate the war before it destroyed both the French Army and economy. But, in so doing, he read the mood of the French public perfectly. The war was ended not so much with joy as with an massive sigh of resigned relief.

As some observers mentioned at the time, the Algerian insurgents had a potent advantage. That advantage was defined as the nature of Islam with its emphasis upon martyrdom and a concomitant focus on death--particularly a kind of death which would avoid the perils of hell.

It was also noted at the time that Islam sanctioned, even required, the ghastly ways in which the insurgents butchered their opponents as well as those co-religionists who were suspected of supporting or even not resolutely opposing the French. The throat slittings, the decapitations, the genital mutilations, the torturing of captives, the burnings alive which were features of the war were not incorrectly identified by the French and other observers as being features of Islamic religion and not simply mindless barbarisms.

These features as well as the use of indiscriminate techniques of terror such as bombs planted in cafeterias, lamp posts, beachside dancehalls gave rise to the French and pied noir employment of terror and torture in return. The dead died more savagely. And, their votes counted for more in the minds of all three belligerents.

Islam being death oriented, violently intolerant and afflicted with a propensity for rigid authoritarianism is a powerful force multiplier. The dead of Islam always vote for more war, more death in order that the (literally) sacred Muslim dead will not have died in vain.

This combination of religion and the Vote of the Dead limits fatally the potential for the moderate third force so often sought without success not only in Algeria but over the past decades in the Mideast. Likewise, it limits the potential for any sort of meaningful long-term success for American policy in Afghanistan.

Even if the Son of Surge concept works to assure that the US and its allies achieve the minimum goal of "not losing" in Afghanistan, there is no real potential of a "free democratic, secular" nation-state emerging from the corpses and rubble. The corpses will assure that.

In the Mideast, in the Gaza Strip, the dead vote for more death and the living respond accordingly. This is a very good reason to agree with former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.

Eagleburger, who is a realpoliker to the core, recently opined that the Israeli-Palestinian contretemps is "virtually insoluble." His reasoning focused on the inevitability of any proponent of a moderate settlement ending up dead--sooner rather than later.

If Eagleburger is right, and history is on his side, then there is perhaps only one viable option open for the Israelis (and the world.) That option is unpalatable on the surface, but so also is the endless continuation of the blow-counter blow way of war which has typified recent years.

The unmentionable option might be termed the "Sherman Doctrine." To paraphrase a comment by old William T.: The hand of war must rest so heavily upon those who started and continue the fighting that their descendants will both fear and renounce war forevermore.

After enough dying, even those whose religion sanctifies the fine art of dying, will grow tired of the fear, grow tired of asking themselves and each other, "Where will the next bomb, the next missile, the next shell land?"

Even those who purport to love death, to seek the cold embrace of the grave, will shudder with the endless thought, "Will I be next?"

After enough death, those still alive may well decide that they hear the voices from the grave whispering, "Vote for life. Vote for peace."

Well, one can hope. Sometimes even the dead can come to their senses.

Ayman al-Zawahiri Raises The Stakes

Physcian turned al-Qaeda strategist, al-Zawahiri comes on hot and heavy in his hot off the recorder tape today. While the linkage between al-Qaeda and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is not exactly a recent development despite what many mainstream media reports indicate, the tape is interesting. Perhaps important. Perhaps even very important.

For good reason, Americans focus on the Mideast. Like a precision guided munition on steroids, we keep an unblinking eye on Iraq. A blinking eye on Afghanistan. An occasionally opened eye on Israel.

For Americans, the huge swath of North Africa doesn't exist.

For Islamists and Jihadists, North Africa is a wide open theater of operations not yet properly exploited. That is the real importance of the new al-Zawahiri tape.

In it the man in the shadows behind Supreme Icon bin Laden names the new targets: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. None of these are unimportant little geographic pimples on the map of Africa. None are without recent experience with Islamist threats.

Algeria came within a gnat's eyebrow of voting in an Islamist regime a few years ago. The coup-by-election was forestalled by the Algerian armed forces. Blood flowed fast and hard. While the flow has slackened to a comparative trickle, the combat continues in the souks and in the mountain villages alike.

Tunisia has not been a monument to stability either. The Islamists are alive, well, and killing someone nearly every day. The Tunisian government barely survived the turbulence brought by Arafat and company when they transferred from Lebanon to Tunisia twenty some years ago. Arafat and his coterie of gunslingers and bombthowers have long since departed but not the fissures they left behind.

Libya is not as stable as it once was. Gaddafi is getting on in years. His years of drug use have taken a toll on mind and body alike. The unifying pressure once conveniently supplied by American opposition has faded into the mists of the Cold War. His state security bureau is no where near as efficient as it was back when the East German Stazi provided necessary training and advice. Worst of all, Gaddafi blinked--hard--when we invaded Iraq, (The Colonel didn't need us bombing his tent again.)

Out in the Libyan desert, between the oil pumps and tanks, the Islamists mutter and the Jihadists plot.

Quite recently Morocco has been the scene of several dramatic, if relatively under covered by the mainstream media, acts of Jihadist terror. King Mohammed sits on a throne every bit as unstable as that occupied by King Abdullah of the House of Sand.

Al-Zawahiri is well aware of the weaknesses present in all of these countries. He seeks to exploit them for the benefit of the Islamist cause.

Let's listen in.

"Islamic nation of resistance and jihad in the Maghreb, see how your children are uniting under the banner of Islam and jihad against the United States, France and Spain."

Later the ex-doctor added, "Support... your children in fighting our enemies and cleansing our lands of their slaves (Moamer) Kadhafi, Zine El Abidine (Ben Ali), (President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika and (King) Mohammed VI." The quotes are from the French press agency's translation, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gwwodPc1iWAWogDHpT0pFoMr9bWw.

France, Italy, and Spain all have more directly threatened interests in the countries on al-Zawahiri's little list. Oil leads the list, of course. Beyond that, the European states have wider economic interests which gradate into strategic military and political concerns. All must also view with a fair degree of disquietude the prospect of absorbing a refugee flood if terror attacks rise to a critical level.

The question of economic destabilization as well as that of refugee generation must raise some alarm throughout the European Union. The issue of Muslim immigration is not exactly a below the radar scope matter in most EU members right now.

Islamists have a real need to spread Jihadism beyond its current venues. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been checked--severely. Taliban and its adherents are under increasing pressure in Afghanistan. Pushed by the recent upsurge in Islamist/Jihadist activities, the Pakistani strongman has taken the extreme action of declaring a State of Emergency. It is too early to see how this might play out.

The potential for Pakistani collapse may be high but no one can safely bet that the US would stand by merely wringing its hands. Whether or not the US finds itself deep in the Pakistani morass, the Islamist cause is best helped by horizontal escalation of its war on the West.

That consideration probably lies behind the al-Zawahiri call to Fatah to both overthrow the PA chieftain, Abbas, and join with al-Qaeda and LIFG in one big war.

Horizontal escalation is (or should be) the single greatest nightmare of the deep thinkers in the current administration and the war planners in the Pentagon. In the past, the potential of Soviet horizontal escalation served to inhibit US policy makers and executors alike. (It was one of those if-we-do-this-in-Asia, the Soviets can do something in Berlin considerations.)

So far, the current administration and its critics have been notably silent on the horizontal escalation potential in the "global war on terrorism." There seems to have been some sort of unjustified assumption that we and only we had the initiative in this war.

We made the same mistake in Vietnam. It was one of the main reasons we were shocked to the depths of our collective political will by the Tet Offensive in 1968.

There is no need to be shocked now. The brains of al-Qaeda, the only one of the leadership cadre who might deserve to be termed a political-military strategist, al-Zawahiri, has announced the intent to escalate the war horizontally at a place of the enemy's choosing.

Iran is not the only game in town. Neither is Israel and the West Bank/Gaza Strip.

The current administration and its neocon ninnie supporters need to get a grip on that.

Al-Zawahiri has made that clear. Whether we like it or not, the game will widen.