Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

The Old Whore Keeps Repainting Her Face

War formerly was easy to recognize and define.  In the good old days of not that long ago, most (but, critically, not all) wars were fought between states using organized, identifiable armed forces.  Almost as much ink as blood was spilled on defining the nature of belligerents, the rights of non-combatants, and the limits which might be applied reasonably in the use of armed force.

The exception to the readily defined inter-state war was insurgency.  But even that breed of cat came to be defined and understood over the past two hundred years.  Over time the customary rights and immunities were extended from uniformed soldiers under national flags to those seeking the overthrow of the established political order by force and violence.  After World War II the major powers of the world even came to official agreement regarding the rights of an occupied citizenry to resist the occupying forces even though in the real world these understandings are often more honored in the breech than in the observance.

In most recent years the introduction of non-state actors, part time insurgents, full time terrorists, criminal gangs with ambitions which transcend mere minor league avarice have come to complicate the old picture with results which are most discomfiting to policy makers and military operators alike.  Accompanying these instrumental changes has been a major shift in motivation on the part of advocates of violence.  High on the list here are the reawakening of religious passions and the profit motive.

Both religion and profit have raised the attractiveness of the newer and less readily defined forms of war.  When looking at venues as disparate as Afghanistan and Mexico, the observer not only sees the prominence of the newer forms of non-state, non-uniformed combatant forces but also the potency of both belief and the quest for profit.  For practitioners of older forms of war and coercive diplomacy, the development of alternative means and motives has been an unwelcome and all too often unrecognized phenomenon.

To look briefly at Afghanistan, it has become unpleasantly evident that the power of the mosque, or, to err on the side of accuracy, the local cleric, has more than simply offset the effectiveness of both the escalation of American forces and the new technologies of battlefield supremacy.  It has become the key to looming American defeat.  Not to put too fine a point on this Afghan dagger, the universal message of the thousands of clerics holding forth every Friday has been the need for solidarity in resistance to the foreign infidel.  Given that the mosque and the Friday sermon are the single most important source of news and opinion in Afghanistan, this is a development filled with difficulty for the US.

The resolutely anti-American, anti-foreigner, anti-West, anti-infidel message not only empowers those in the Afghan population most opposed to the outside presence, it undercuts all the well-intentioned efforts at "nation building" in the country.  The total inability of the US and its allies to sell their good intentions to the clerical establishment of Afghanistan has assured that each, every, and all the dollars and lives expended in the quest to transform Afghanistan have been wasted.

The clerical resistance couched as it is in the compelling language of belief has both grown and become more strident year to year since the first American boots hit the Afghan soil.  When the US made the fateful choice to switch objectives in Afghanistan from those of a simple punitive expedition to ones of national transformation, the door was immediately opened to the linkage of faith and nationalism--a linkage which cannot be either undone or defeated.

The single greatest reason the security situation has continued to deteriorate year over year is not the open border (although this is a non-trivial consideration) but rather the monolithic opposition of the Muslim clerics.  The opposition is so solid and so widespread that it has political implications, as when Karzai echoes the complaints of the clerics.  Taken with the corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government, his necessary tilt in favor of the clergy serves to put the international coalition under stresses which will enervate its effectiveness, fatally.

The US is posed for failure not because the opposition has any military advantage.  It is posed for failure not because it has fought the war with inappropriate tactics and methods.  It is facing failure because the faith which motivates the opposition as well as the uncommitted majority of Afghans has proven obdurate.  The US is facing failure ultimately because decision makers failed to consider the nature of the human terrain in the country and limit the goals of the war to those which would be acceptable to the majority of the human terrain.

In short, the US and its allies are likely to be defeated because the Bush/Cheney administration did not recognize the nature of war as understood by Afghans.  As a result of this, the administration allowed or encouraged a redefinition of goals which was way, way too expansive.  At the end of it all, what can be written is that the US was defeated not by bullets or by the enemy having a better theory of victory but by the very nature of the human terrain and its understanding of war.

To our immediate south Mexico is engaged in a prolonged and very bloody conflict.  The irony is that the Mexican government cannot define accurately what is going on beyond the self-evident outpouring of corpses on the streets of Mexico.  The US government is no better off being unable to decide if Mexico is in the throes of insurgency or simply an unusually large scale turf battle between criminal syndicates.  Not that the semantics matter to the average Mexican as he steps over the blood and bodies of the previous day's festivities.

But, what is at work in Mexico is not an academic dispute over semantics or theories of conflict.  It is hard if not impossible to fight any sort of war without knowing what is at stake, what would constitute the better state of peace for which the war is being waged.

Four years ago when he launched the effort against large scale criminal, primarily drug trafficking, gangs, President Calderon probably believed he was inaugurating a simple program of robust law enforcement.  Whether policemen or soldiers did the job, it was the traditional task of compelling acceptance of the law's dictates by the criminally inclined.  There was nothing new at work here.

Whatever Calderon's intentions might have been, no matter what he expected, the outcome was both far more prolonged and bloody as well as inherently destabilizing than he or anyone anticipated.  The Mexican police and military quickly became simply one more combatant in an already underway multi-party struggle over territory and markets.  The government unintentionally became one more gang in a several gang armed contest.

Paradoxically, the entrance of the government allowed greater inter-gang violence.  Whether because of suborned treachery or simply as a fallout from its efforts, the armed forces and police would tilt toward one gang or another in each of the several contested areas.  By so doing, the security forces assured a process of consolidation would occur which would ultimately strengthen the successful gang in its goal of having a "law free zone" in which to carry out its profit making activities.

The process favored the criminals from the beginning.  The drug smugglers knew why they were fighting.  They had goals.  They defined the better state of peace.  By limiting its concept of operations to one of traditional law enforcement, the government was actually clueless in the real world.

The narco-trafficking gangs wanted two things: To eliminate rivals in the several corridors and to establish law free zones so they could operate without fear.  With a few psychopathic exceptions, the leaders of the several syndicates were indifferent as to which of the two traditional methods of accomplishing these goals would be used.  Silver or lead, the choice was up to the recipient not the grantor.

The combination of means as well as the unity of goals gave the advantage to the criminals.  Had Calderon never initiated his Made In Mexico war on drugs, the contest would have been settled with rather less blood and much more corruption.  One gang would have bought out the survivors of the others and established a profitable monopoly.  The law free zones would have been created through corruption not killing and terror.

This conclusion is predicated not on some belief that Mexicans are naturally given to crime and corruption to any unusual degree.  Rather it is based on the history of Mexico, the long-standing traditions of buying one's peace, one's freedom from authority.  More it is based on the equally hoary social, political, and economic dynamics of Mexico, including the remote indifference of the Mexican elites and their tool, the government, from the realities of life as they impinge on the majority of people.

The challenge presented by the Calderon Declaration of War resulted in the development of a form of war not seen even in the days of "narco-democracy" in Columbia two or three decades ago.  The new form of war represents a hybrid of gang conflict and defensive insurgency.  Over the past four years the criminal syndicates shifted from use of graft and corruption to secure territory to a reliance on violence and terror to create the necessary law free zones.

As a result, one which was easily predictable, the gangs have become the de facto shadow government in large swaths of Mexico's border states.  These same states are productive of more than a quarter of Mexico's GDP.  Most of their population and more of their territory now exist outside the authority of Mexico's government or governmental forces.

By virtue of not recognizing that the government was embarking on a new form of the old game of war, the Mexicans have lowered the national flag over a goodly part of their state.  At the same time the criminals have become a de facto government, in effect levying taxes--and collecting them, establishing whatever passes for law along most of the border, and have expanded their criminal enterprises into areas far removed from mere smuggling of drugs to the US.  This means the gangs have given themselves both more political will and more means to act in lieu of the official government.

This does not imply that Mexico is a failed or failing state.  It does imply that Mexico is in a far more desperate contest for survival in recognizable form.  It implies that US policy with respect to assisting the Mexican government has failed as well.

This failure will provide more challenges for the US in the months and years to come.  As the smugglers become more ambitious and more far reaching in their efforts and connections, the probability of diplomatic linkages with states hostile to the US increase as does the risk of adverse personnel and supplies being inserted into the US.

Other than the outcome, there is no real close resemblance between traditional forms of war and what is happening in Mexico.  When night falls, either the Mexican government will or will not be in control of the border states.  It either will or will not have unimpeded sovereignty over its territory.  Right now it looks very dismal for Mexico.

The irony here is that the impending Mexican failure like that of the US in Afghanistan is rooted in a failure to identify accurately the new features of war in play.  It is also rooted, again like the American failure in Afghanistan, in not realising that the local folk define what constitutes war and how to fight it.  It is, again like Afghanistan, based on an insistence that there is only one play book for war fighting--and the government wrote the book, not the locals.

Vladimir Takes On Another Job

Vladimir Putin, who rose to prominence and power as a result of his bare chested, not to say bare knuckled, approach to peace imposition during the Second Chechen War, has appointed himself jefe grande of the Russian government's special commission on the economic and social development of the North Caucasus Region--which includes in its remit Chechnya as well as the several other provinces currently experiencing insurgency with combined nationalist and political Islamist goals.  Putin's announcement on 1 December indicates that he is now personally going to undertake the mission of "clarifying and putting to order the situation in the North Caucasus" which he previously assigned to others.

The assorted former KGB personnel Putin tabbed for the duty have not demonstrated any convincing degree of success.  The lack of their ability to "clarify and put to order" is shown in the recent statement by the Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General, Ivan Sydoruk, that insurgent violence has doubled this year over last in the North Caucasus Federal District.  On the same day (8 December), President Dimitry Medvedev echoed the theme, improving on it by averring that any local officials who said the situation had improved were lying.

While any downtown street in Juarez is much more deadly than the totality of the North Caucasus, the Russian authorities have allowed that some two hundred local cops and Federal Security Bureau personnel have been killed by insurgents this year.  Another five hundred or so have been wounded.

Not that the violence has run one way.  The Deputy Prosecutor-General stated that more than three hundred insurgents have been "neutralized," which number included sixteen "leaders" officially pronounced as "killed."  By official figures, an impressive number of weapons and explosive materials fell into government hands this year so far.

The fighting has not diminished since the words outpouring from Official Russia twelve days ago.  Even though the weather conditions have been somewhere between foul and rotten, the insurgents have gone along planting IED's and conducting ambushes and hit-and-run raids on police facilities.  The FSB and interior ministry forces have not taken the time off having conducted a number of nocturnal raids on the homes of suspected "militants."

And, so the war lurches along.  Neither side seems capable of hitting a knock out blow.  Given the size of the several distinct districts comprising the North Caucasus, there seems little probability that the Russian government can do so--unless it is willing to undertake a massive escalation and accept the consequences both domestic and international of doing so.  Given the internal divisions which characterize the several separate insurgent groups, the probability of these developing sufficient organizational coherence to go beyond the very low level of combat and terror operations seen the past two years can be assessed as low to non-existent.

Even though the war is as low level in its intensity as can be imagined, the continuation of the several insurgencies in the North Caucasus does represent a real threat to the political and social cohesion of Russia.  The insurgencies directly attack a systemic weak point of the Russian polity and society.

That weak point is nationalism.  Today no less than during the long years of the Communist regime and before it that of the Czars, Russia is bedeviled by what Lenin termed "the Nationalities Question."  In truth, Russia has never even made a pretense of being a "melting pot."  It has been and remains a stew of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, different languages, different confessions of faith.

In this stewpot the Slavs have dominated.  Have ruled.  Have conquered.  And reconquered.  But the Slavs have never hit on a way of creating a Russian society and polity in which national identities merge into a single, greater whole.  The results of conquest have never been consolidated, never assimilated, never unified.

The power of nationalism--both Russian, which is to say, Slav, and non-Russian, which is to say everyone else--was brought into high relief earlier this month in the "football" riots in Moscow.  These outbreaks had much less to do with soccer hooligans than with offended nationalism.  As Medvedev and Putin both made clear in their post-riot press encounters, the government fears these were the harbingers of more and worse to come. As is expectable in Russia, the immediate, default, response was a demand for more robust police action.

The Soviet Union was able to keep the nationalities question from being raised violently by constant, effective repression.  Subsequently, the Russian government has been unwilling or unable to do the same.  So far.  And, by now, the resort to Soviet style methods might be both too late and unacceptable in the no longer bi-polar world.

By taking over the de facto top slot in the North Caucasus affair, Putin apparently is acknowledging that the Soviet methods cannot or should not be used.  Rather, by focusing on economic matters, he is going to attempt to bribe his way to success.  It will be interesting to see if money can succeed where force has not as this approach to counterinsurgency has never been made in a systematic and long-term way.

One rather suspects it will fail.  Nationalism is too potent a force in the lives of people to be countered by mere money.  Worse, when the nationalism has inflamed not only minorities but the dominant Slavs, the use of bribery in the North Caucasus region is likely to outrage those who are not in on the cash cow's flow.  This means the Slavs.

So far, the appeal of outsiders who are proponents of violent political Islam have not had a major influence on the course of the nationalists in the North Caucasus.  This does not mean the situation will continue.  An increasing number of foreign fighters has been reported in the region.  Even though these seem to be trigger pullers and not leadership cadre, the increased pressure on jihadi in Afghanistan, the FATA, and the Central Asian Republics, particularly Tajikistan, hints at a greater influx of more determined global insurgents over the next few months and years.

Putin has undertaken a Labor of Hercules with his self-assigned new post.  He must funnel money in a way which undercuts the nationalists while not infuriating his Slavic Russian base.  At the same time his security forces must keep effective pressure on the insurgent hard core so as to gain the initiative and erode insurgent political will and combat efficiency.  While that is in progress, Putin's government and military must interdict the movement of outsiders into the North Caucasus theater of operations.

As if that is not enough to overload the Putin plate, he must nip incipient insurgent movements within other minorities who resent on an increasing basis the privileges presumably enjoyed by the Slavs.  Then, he has to deal with the increasing ethnic and regional divisions which exist in the Russian armed forces fueled by the regionally based system of conscription.

Well, Vlad of the Bare Chest reportedly enjoyed being characterized as an "Alpha male" in one of the WikiLeaks leaked dispatches.  The challenges he faces in the North Caucasus are such that only the most alpha of alpha males would think of tackling them.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

You Bet, Bucko, It's Going To Be A Very Long War

Recently, a friend sent the Geek a very useful review of the foundational literature on which the edifice of violent political Islam has been predicated.  It is more than simply a useful primer in the intellectual basis for the current and future conflicts between the US and other civilized states and the Trigger Pullers For Allah, it gives a strong measure of support for the contention that we are facing a global insurgency with the Bombers Of The One True Faith as the opponents.

An insurgency consists of the quest for political power by an identifiable group of politically disaffiliated people who use a mix of armed and peaceful means to acquire political power at the expense of the status quo authority.  It does not matter if the status quo authority represents the majority of any given population.  Nor does the absolute size of the disaffiliated group matter.

Historically, insurgencies have been frankly political in both nature and goal.   Whether the insurgency was of the offensive variety, (usually referred to as "revolutionary)," or defensive, ("wars of national liberation" or "wars of independence"), the stakes have been limited to political domination of a definable geographic area.  The motives have been rooted in a sense of political emasculation or, more uncommonly, economic exploitation.  The quest has been simply to redress the grievances, peacefully if possible, violently, if that was the only option.

Never before has the human race been confronted with an insurgency which has the political core so wrapped with religious ideology as is the case with the advocates of violent political Islam.  Never before in the entire bloody record of human conflict has there been an insurgency without geographic limits.  Due to the universalism resident in the ideology of Islam and the presence of Muslims in virtually every country on Earth, the developing insurgency by those who espouse political Islam is an absolutely new phenomenon.

As every student of insurgency knows well, such wars are promoted and waged by numerical minorities.  Even insurgencies with globe rocking outcomes (such as the French, Russian, or Chinese revolutions or the American War of Independence) are the creations of minorities too small to register on public opinion polls--had such existed at the time.  The first shots of the current insurgency were fired in Iran by a minority so small that the Shah's security services initially dismissed the advocates of Ayatollah Khomeini as being less than a nuisance.

Insurgencies are like avalanches.  The smallest dislodged stone results in catastrophe.  It is for this reason that the oft proclaimed position by the Obama administration and other apologists for Islam that only a tiny minority of extremists is responsible for the deaths and destruction which have plagued the world for decades now is false--fatally so.  The stone has been kicked--get a grip on it.

Even today, years into the "Global War on Terror," it is no doubt true that most Muslims do not actively support the insurgent efforts of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the others.  This does not matter.  The majority of the Russian population did not support the Bolsheviks--or even know Lenin existed.  Most colonials wanted only to be counted out of the war during the long years of the American War of Independence.  The same was true in Iran even though the Shah was widely and soundly despised.

However, the current insurgent dynamic resembles its smaller, more localized progenitors in other ways as well.  As has always been the case, the status quo authority has had the initiative--and misused it in ways which has driven the insurgency to spread and deepen.

For all too many years the US and other civilized states either ignored the signs of the coming insurgency or, worse, deprecated their meaning.  For example, the administration of Ronald Reagan ignored the evil synergy between the Islamization campaign of President Zia in Pakistan and turning over the endgame of the proxy war in Afghanistan to the Pakistanis.  Later, the Clinton administration totally misread the significance of the declaration of war against the US issued by Osama bin Laden as well as the several attacks on US interests and forces conducted by al-Qaeda.

False policy linkages between the rise of violent political Islam and the relations between Israel and the Palestinians did nothing to bring the emerging threat into clearer focus.  Rather, they did the opposite, encouraging American policy makers in the incorrect belief that peace between Israel and the Palestinians including the successful establishment of the "Two State Solution" would end the growing insurgency.

Another similarity between the Muslim insurgency and its smaller, localized precursors is the mix of violent and peaceful techniques.  The quest for special accommodations to Muslim sensitivities or religious practices by peaceful political, judicial, or public relations means constitutes an effective way of (to use the old Leninist term) "boring from within."  The overarching even if unstated goal of these efforts at "accommodation" is the slow sapping of political will in the US and other countries.  Without political will to continue the war against the Trigger Pullers of the Prophet, the war is lost regardless of what happens on the battlefield.

The presence within American political and public opinion molding elites of apologists for Islam--including the violent political sort--is another point of identity between the present insurgency and its historical progenitors.  The American Declaration of Independence was written with a firm eye on influencing elite opinion in Great Britain.  The existence of a pro-American faction in the British elite was well known in the colonies and the Declaration was a transparent effort to strengthen its potency in parliament.  Note well that the Continental Congress chartered a fast schooner to carry a copy directly to England in order that Edmund Burke and others of the county Whigs persuasion would get the best, latest ammunition.

Similarly, the Russian Revolution--the second one, the one which brought the Bolsheviks to power, had strong supporting voices in the US and Europe.  Lenin might have disparagingly called John Reed and his fellow travelers as "useful idiots," but the utility of these mouthpieces cannot be overestimated.  The Muslim insurgents are equally or better served by their apologists and exponents today.  And, they know it even in the mountains of the FATA.

The final point of coincidence between today's global insurgency and the earlier versions is the most important.  The ultimate test in an insurgency is the political will of the contestants.  The side which can absorb casualties and accept suffering, the side which can spend endless time in a war without milestones or phase lines without losing its political will to continue, is the side which will win.

In this most crucial of areas the present correlation of forces favors the Bombers of the Koran.  There are two major forces at work which move in opposite directions to the disadvantage of the US and other civilized states.

The combination of religion with local, national grievances and causes of political disaffiliation provide a powerful wellspring of political will to say nothing of recruitment.  The power of religious identity is also seen in the total absence of any popular demonstrations by Muslims anywhere against the actions of the advocates of violent political Islam--this means most Muslims either tacitly support the insurgency or have been cowed into silence.

In the US and the West generally there is an identity crisis within the elites.  There is also a sapping conflict between the views and beliefs of the common people and the self-defined elites.  The result is an uncertainty as to who we are and what we are all about which can do nothing but sap political will.  This sapping is exacerbated by the nature of Western culture today with an emphasis on the material and secular with a concomitant unwillingness to confront frankly the threat before our eyes.  Of course, the present and persistent economic decline of the US and Western Europe does no service in this area.

The dynamic hinted at by the present correlation of forces (the Geek loves that old Soviet term) is not favorable at all.  It implies the war will continue for a long, long time with the US and others losing, staying on the defensive for many of the years ahead.  In this way the future will resemble World War II on steroids--a long period of defeat, failure, retreat until the awesome potentials both physical and spiritual of the US and other civilized states is aroused, mobilized, and employed with full vigor.

Until and unless that day of turnaround comes, our future is one of greater constriction, greater fear, greater sense of futility.  The best that can be hoped for is that we will hit bottom quickly so that the rebound can occur before it is one day too late.

It Is An Insurgency In Mexico

There has been a low level rumbling sort of debate regarding this proposition: Resolved, the violence in Mexico does constitute an insurgency.  The negative in the debate argues correctly that Mexico is not so gripped with violence that it is being pushed to the edge of failure.  The advocates of the negative also contend with some accuracy that the organized cartels are not seeking any political goal such as overthrowing the government.

In the second prong of their argument, the upholders of the negative are being disingenuous.  The cartels are seeking two goals.  One is strictly commercial, the allocation of turf.  The other is political, the carving out of zones free of governmental control in which the cartels can operate freely.

Once the second cartel goal is recognized, it follows that the gunslingers are waging a defensive insurgency.  True it is a unique form of defensive insurgency, but that is what it is nonetheless.

Historically, the vast majority of defensive insurgencies have been wars of national liberation.  The insurgents have been either a self-defined and recognizable society and polity ruled by outsiders (think--the American War of Independence) or an identifiable minority living in a defined geographic region within a larger polity (think--the North Caucasus.)  In both instances the ultimate goal of the insurgents is replacement of the status quo regime by one organic to the society supporting the insurgency.

The cartels have a far less expansive goal in Mexico.  The several groups desire to carve out what might be best conceived of as "police free zones" covering the approach routes to the border and, deeper in the interior, areas where illegal products might be manufactured, grown, or stored without anxiety.

There are no indications that any of the cartels want to take over the tedious, mundane quotidian functions of government at any level.  They are perfectly willing to let those who do those jobs now keep on doing them.

Even policing is OK provided the cartels, their members, and activities are exempt.  Everything reduces to the need to conduct business without any hassles from government, press, civic society, or the church.  If and when that occurs, the insurgency will come to an end.

While the smuggling of illegal drugs may have been behind the commencement of the violence, the insurgency now exists independent of drugs per se.  President Calderon may have declared a war on drugs three years ago, but the nature of the stakes has changed greatly as the blood has flowed in ever more impressive quantities.

Even if by some miracle every American who currently uses products transported or grown in Mexico were to wake up with the thought, "Today I join the Nancy Reagan Just Say No club," and followed through, the insurgency south of the border would not collapse.  The same would apply if the morality driven majority of the American polity awoke with an attack of sanity deciding that the game of prohibition was not worth the manifold costs.

The cartels long ago expanded their scope of operations.  Not unlike American organized criminals of an earlier period, the cartel leaders have come to understand that their capabilities were cross elastic.  As a result kidnappings for ransom, hijackings, human trafficking, extortion, loan sharking, and other illegal activities have become major profit centers.

The cartels have also expanded geographically extending their networks and franchises into the US.  There are no major and few medium sized cities here which lack their local affiliate with one or more cartels.  This outreach program not only has made for more profits back home but an expansion of influence, political and otherwise, into domestic communities of Mexican descent.

With the vast expansion of capabilities and consequent cash, the cartels have too much at stake to do other than continue and escalate the insurgency.  To a significant extent the outcome of the insurgency is existential for the cartels.

The outcome of the insurgency is not existential for the Mexican central government nor the elites which support it.  The government and elite can come to an understanding with the cartels, a tacit agreement to live and let live.  Winding down the military operations would be welcomed by the many ordinary people caught in the crossfire.  It would be welcomed by the business community as the ongoing war may have not crippled investment yet, but it bodes well to do so in the not so distant future.

Ending the war, reaching an understanding, deciding to live and let live does not require the government to declare defeat.  It does not even demand an immediate pulling back of the troops and new federal agents to their barracks and offices.  All that need happen is a slow ramping down of "offensive" operations, a bit less zeal in collecting or acting upon information received, a tardy response to cartel actions.  Should the cartels respond by tamping down their violence (roadblocks, shootouts, and similar high profile activities) the tit-for-tat detente will continue.

Money will change hands.  Heads will be averted.  Brave statements will be issued.  Promises to foreign governments will be made.  But, in the real world, affairs will slip to the status quo ante.  Life will go on.

President Calderon has two years left in office.  The next election will be a referendum on his war of drugs.  To continue that war or end it will be the centerpiece of the campaign whether openly or not.  The "war on drugs" is not popular now.  It will be less so two years hence.  It is unlikely to the extreme that any amount of Merinda Initiative money will alter this fact or serve to make the counterinsurgent efforts more effective.

Improvements in intelligence sharing and more US training for Mexican forces will have some slight benefits, but not sufficient to be game changing.  In this context it must be recalled that even the most mediagenic events such as discovering a tunnel equipped with light rail running under the border, or the seizing of thirty plus tons of pot are not indications of the game tilting in favor of the law and order side.  As has been the case ever since Dick Nixon started our "war on drugs," such spectacles are mere blips on the long term trajectory.

It is fully expectable that the Mexican insurgency will come to an end shortly before or after the next presidential elections.  It will come to an end because the Mexican government and elite recognize that Mexico is not Columbia.  They will understand (if they do not already) that the outcome of the cartel insurgency is not existential for the government and elite unlike the previous case in Columbia.

Provided a Mexican equivalent of the Columbian FARC does not emerge from the scrub and sierras and the cartels remain limited in their ultimate goals, there is no threat to the traditional Mexican approach to social organization and politics.  It was the existence of FARC and other expansive goal offensive insurgent groups in tandem with the Columbian cartels which made the situation in Columbia existential for the government.

In short, the Mexican government at all levels can afford a "victory" by the cartels.  What the government at all levels cannot afford is a continuation of the social and political disruption caused by the insurgency.  The violence saps the soul of the nation, rips the Mexican social compact, undercuts the ability of the individual to have any faith in the future, to envision a tomorrow which is not worse than today.  Not even a culture as resilient or as inured to death as the Mexican can survive the current and projected onslaught of blood and disruption with equanimity.

Mexico can survive the coming to pass of the cartels' limited goals.  It can survive the inter-cartel battle for turf.  The question is what the limited "victory" of the cartels means to the US.

The establishment of "police free zones" in which the cartels can carry on their operations without any governmental hindrance will constitute a national security threat for the US.  The capacities of the cartels, their networks, their experience would facilitate the clandestine introduction of hostile personnel and equipment into the US.  And, given the established presence of agents from Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups advocating and practicing violent political Islam in Mexico in areas dominated by one or more cartels, the highest probability is the cartels will provide essential services to these groups and their state sponsors.

It is this probability far more than any fear of a further flooding of drugs or illegal aliens into the US which assures the US has a dog in the fight.  Unfortunately it is dog which cannot be named.  The Obama administration has great difficulty admitting, let alone defining, the pressing but not yet readily apparent threats from abroad confronting us.  So, rather than focusing on the most essential component of the Mexican question, it tiptoes around mouthing platitudes regarding drugs.  The anti-administration groups are no better preferring to view with alarm the matter of illegal immigrants.

While emotionally appealing both drugs and wetbacks do not have the inherent political power to force the government of the United States to take more robust action to assist the Mexicans in controlling the insurgency--or securing the border with greater effect.  Admittedly, there is little that can be done directly to counter the cartels and their insurgency given the very prickly hyper-nationalism of the Mexican public, particularly the political and chattering classes, but more can be done to stiffen the willingness of the government and elite to continue their efforts.

Some of what can be done is not politically popular given the anti-immigrant sentiments so widely spread in our society.  However, one of the most effective ways in which the US can buck up Mexican political will is a reform of immigration laws and procedures which favors the Mexican demands.  By enhancing our role as a critical safety valve for economically excess Mexicans we would put a whopping big obligation on the Mexican government as well as providing ourselves with a lever on their actions regarding the cartels.

The irony in all of this is while the insurgency is in Mexico, it is the US with the most at stake in its outcome.  This means we have no realistic choice other than defining just what is at stake and, given the long term magnitude of that stake, what we must do to help ensure the proper outcome.

Even if the insurgency is not existential for the Mexican government, in the long run it may well be for ours.

The Incontestable Irrelevance Of Military Victories

General Sir David Richards, the new head of Her Majesty's Forces, has opened himself to attack.  The general delivered his view that al-Qaeda and others of the violent political Islam persuasion cannot be defeated in any meaningful sense of the word by military means in a recent interview.  If he becomes the subject of vitriol, he can at least comfort himself with the recognition that he has done nothing but tell it like it is.

Sir David has done something quite difficult for a professional soldier--admitted that military victories can be irrelevant to the solution of larger political conflicts.  As he drew a line between conventional peer-to-peer wars and the sort of asymmetrical and messy affray such as that being waged in Afghanistan, the general has simultaneously underscored the value of his assessment and limited its application appropriately.  History powerfully buttresses the accuracy of his conclusion.

The granddaddy of modern defensive insurgencies, the first war of "national liberation," also known as the War of American Independence, proves Sir David's point.  The British Army won most of the battles, losing only two of any significance, but ended up waving goodbye to the former colonies.  As has been the case in every insurgency whether defensive or offensive in nature, the military, its successes and failures, are merely tools for influencing the political will of the two real contestants--the politically articulate portions of the two opposing populations.

The American War of Independence proved the most central point regarding all insurgencies or insurgency-like asymmetrical  conflicts: The side which can spend time and accept casualties will best the side which seeks to save time and limit casualties.  Additionally, the American War of Independence demonstrated that while a side cannot kill its way to victory, the infliction of casualties without reward will exhaust the political will of the less committed side over time.

The same set of lessons was given to the US during its involvement in the Wars of the Vietnamese.  The US won the overwhelming majority of the company sized and larger engagements.  This was irrelevant over the long---to We the People, overly long--haul.  A sizable segment of the politically articulate American public lost political will to continue the effort.  As had been the case with the British nearly two centuries earlier, the American political structure packed it in, picked up our balls, and went home.

The Algerian War of Independence although more complex in its social, cultural, and racial dimensions shows the same irrelevance of mere military victory to political success.  Overlooked by too many is the simple albeit brutal fact that the French military had the insurgents on the ropes.  The combination of a new operational doctrine in the rural areas and the convincing French success in the Battle of Algiers decimated the insurgent capacity to continue effective military or paramilitary operations.  It didn't matter.  The nature of politics not only in the two antagonistic ethnic groups in Algeria but also in France conspired to offset totally any and all victories by French forces.

General Richards is of the view that the same dynamic exists with respect to al-Qaeda and the other purveyors of violent political Islam.  He is not being pessimistic when he concludes that the very best that can be expected from military means is the containment of the threat.  That is accurate, provided one adds that containment will require punitive expedition employment when a specific threat can be linked to a specific foreign location or governmental facilitator.

Al-Qaeda and the others are ideologically motivated.  Much, if not all, of their ideology is both pernicious and persuasive.  In these factors, the ideology of violent political Islam resembles its precursors of National Socialism and Marxism-Leninism.  The one was defeated by military means solely because its purveyors chose the route of peer-to-peer war as the preferred avenue to global success.  The other, which as a result more closely resembles today's violent political Islam, rejected direct aggression selecting instead indirect, proxy, and other nasty little violent expressions.

As noted in yesterday's post, al-Qaeda has opted for the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts method of conflict.  This means, quite simply, that military muscle is not as relevant as so many of hawkish temper have hoped.  There are roles, critical ones, for military force, but none are sovereign remedies for the threat which will be confronting us for at least another generation.

The general demonstrated his firm grip on reality when he recommended "upstream" means to combat the ongoing threat.  As the conflict is primary one of values, norms, world views, in short, ideologies, his view has great merit.  It is unfortunate that all too may policy makers and "decider guys" in the US and elsewhere in the West define "upstream" means as being economic in nature.  Spreading money as opposed to ideas per se is not the answer, rather the countries of the West must employ the full panoply of soft power mechanisms with an emphasis on education in order to head off the next generation of wannabe martyrdom seekers.

The power and appeal of Western values, norms, world views, and ideas should never be underestimated.  Nor should they be deprecated as is so often the case by members of the assorted national "elites."  As was seen in the long running conflict with the ideas and institutions of Marxism-Leninism, the potency of the West intellectually, culturally, politically was enough to spell finish to both the Cold War and Soviet Communism.

Bombs and bullets are far more inherently limited in their effect than are words and ideas.  It may be rare, but it is more than simply welcome to read a correct appreciation made by a very experienced and quite senior military commander.  Hail, Britannia!

Another Fun War You May Have Missed

Considering all the wars of much higher profile currently underway around the world, a person may have missed the one steadily accelerating in Tajikistan.  Not until eight days ago when the NYT performed its self-assigned task as "the newspaper of record," have events in the faraway Central Asian state of Tajikistan made even the smallest of blips on the Western media (and probably, political) radar scopes.  The attention grabbing specific was one more exchange in the see-saw war between the central government and groups combining adherents of violent political Islam and nationalists who also are Muslims.

Tajikistan's southern border is with Afghanistan.  Its eastern border is with China.  To the west is Uzbekistan while the northern border is with Kyrgyzstan.  Several features unite Tajikistan with its coterminous states or regions.  They are all Muslim majority.  They are all possessed of internal instability including violent unrest and the presence of groups advocating violent political Islam.  With the exception of Afghanistan all are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO.)

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan went through five years of internal war.  The war for control of the state was ethnic (usually camouflaged as "regional") between Uzbeks, who had run the place during the seventy years of Soviet overlordship, and the native Tajiks.  The war ended in a peace of exhaustion which featured the appearance but not the reality of power sharing.  While roughly eighty percent of the population is Tajik, these did not exercise an equivalent amount of power.  Rather, it was the sixteen percent who were Uzbek who got the majority of the "say" as well as the benefits.

It is not surprising that many Tajiks did not find the settlement agreeable.  Retreating to the remote, mountain ringed and almost totally isolated Rasht valley, the die hards rested and regained strength.  They also gained both recruits from and combat experience in Afghanistan.  For years, until May 2009, the valley was a no-go area for the central government and its army.  During the years of immunity, the resting, regrouping insurgents also discovered a very prolific cash cow--establishing drug transportation routes.  While the dollar amount accruing to this ever more lucrative activity cannot be estimated with any pretense of precision, there is no doubt but much, perhaps most of the morphine base flowing from Afghanistan to customers in Russia and beyond came through the friendly Rastht valley.

The Dushanbe government was under Kremlin pressure to "do something" about the embarrassing flow of drugs.  To this end as well as with the expectation of speedily ending the pesky rebels, the army moved a regimental equivalent (say, 2000 men) into the valley in May 2009.  It may be that the Tajik government anticipated goodies from the US and its NATO partners for playing an indirect roll in reducing the narco-trafficking from Afghanistan.

In the event, the insurgents did not pack it when the army showed its flag a year and half ago.  What happened instead was a slow motion but still bloody exchange of raids and counter-raids, ambushes, snipers, vehicle bombings, and the usual accompaniment of atrocities, extra-judicial killings, and general human rights abuses.  But, being remote and in part protected by the media blackout capabilities of both Russia and China, the nasty little war went unnoticed.

Then, in a dramatic change, the government opted for its own version of a war winning "surge."  The surge resulted in a very dramatic culmination: On 19 September a platoon plus sized column of Tajik troops was ambushed in Komarob Gorge by forces headed by a veteran of the earlier civil war, Alovuddin Davlatov.  When the bang-bang stopped, twenty-eight Tajik troopers were dead.  At least twenty-five more were wounded.  The insurgents took no known losses.

The government has made retaliatory raids.  Small success has crowned the efforts.  Effective escalation is not a viable option--unless it was underwritten by an outside power.  And, this is unlikely as the only candidates, Russia and Uzbekistan, are preoccupied with internal problems such that neither would seek further complications either domestic or international.

The capacities of the Tajikistan government are limited by several very powerful constraints.  The first is economic.  Tajikistan is far and away the most impoverished of the states carved from the corpse of the Soviet Union.  It is not a gross exaggeration to say that hunger is already stalking the land.

A second potent limitation on the government's ability to act decisively is the widespread nature of anti-government sentiment.  The impoverished majority blame their situation on the government, its corruption, its inefficiency, its arrogant remoteness, and its minority nature.  This combination propelled the overthrow of a seemingly well-entrenched regime in Kyrgyzstan.  President Rahmon is not eager to share the same fate.

Yet another limitation arises from the low average age of the population.  The median age of men in the place is under twenty-two.  As history and contemporary events show clearly, it is young men who are most amenable to the appeals of true belief such as that offered by political Islam.  Men of this age cohort are also afflicted with the adolescent belief in immortality and invulnerability so are perfect candidates for the excitement, challenge, and specious sense of meaning provided by war.

The US has a presence in Tajikistan which is linked to the overall infrastructure supporting combat operations in Afghanistan.  So the current administration has some reason to worry about the direction of affairs in the country.  So far our response to the growing problem in Tajikistan is an offer to establish an anti-terrorist training center.  Beyond that there is probably a hope that no matter which way the governmental chips might fall whoever is in charge will still need the revenue provided by our base rights lease so we can afford a "what! Me, worry?" approach.  (This level of non-response response is also predicated upon the Kremlin's automatic opposition to any American move which might undercut the presumed Russian preeminence in Tajikistan.)

Russia has much more to fret about, but given the failure of the Kremlin and its handpicked agents to "clarify and put to order" the Muslim insurgency in the Northern Caucasus, it has little to offer.  Further, the relations between the Kremlin and Tajikistan are, to put it in polite terms, "strained."

Then there is China,  China has been having more than a few problems with its homegrown advocates of violent political Islam coupled with nationalism.  They have no reason to ignore a bunch of like minded Muslims next door in Tajikistan.  That, after all, is one of the, more accurately, the reason behind Beijing creating the SCO.  (Russia played a game of "me-too" in a defensive move protecting its privileged position in the Central Asian Republics and isn't thrilled about the SCO's existence.)

Beyond the SCO flexing its semi-mythical muscle, there is nothing real the Trolls of Beijing can do--except send money.  To date the Trolls have seen no need to do this perhaps as they see Rahmon's regime as a poor investment.

Winter's winds are starting to blow from the mountains surrounding the Rasht valley.  The government, having been soundly bested in its attempt to wind up the insurgency before the snow calls a time out, there is not much chance that anything spectacular will happen in the next few months.  Yet, as is the case in most "time-outs" in insurgent guerrilla war, the advantage goes automatically to the insurgents.  They have the greater opportunity to operate, recruit, gain resources.  The government will have the time to be weakened further by the slow but sure erosion of legitimacy and support which comes with pervasive poverty and loss of confidence in the future.

Don't despair, bucko, we will be hearing and seeing a lot more from the fun little war in a very faraway place by the time the next equinox rolls around.

ADMIN NOTE Despite anti-spam comment defenses which can be frustrating the Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments.

It Couldn't Have Happened To A More Worthy Bunch.

The Jundallah (Soldiers of God) have been waging a very low intensity defensive insurgency in the southeast of Iran, the section claimed as part of the latent state of Baluchistan. From time to time the Jundallah bombers and trigger pullers have staged a mediagenic event. The last time around it was an attack on a Shia mosque which resulted in a fair number of civilian casualties.

This time the suicide bomber took on a far more worthy target. The man in "tribal costume" (to quote the LA Times) penetrated the gymnasium where five high ranking commanders of the much feared Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were holding a "solidarity" meeting with a view to bringing the Baluchi Sunnis and the Persian Shia together in harmony. When the man pushed the clicker he took the five heavyweights and a number of others with him.

At nearly the same time a second bomber took out a vehicle containing another bunch of Revolutionary Guard thugs.

The televised images of the carnage at both sites reportedly rocked Iran. The event(s) must have rocked the Revolutionary Guard even more as it showed their vulnerability at the very time they have been riding very high in the saddle.

Not surprisingly the first reaction of the regime in Tehran was to blame the US and the UK for the twin bombings. Being completely unable (not to mention unwilling) to acknowledge that the Baluchi of Iran, not unlike their ethnic and religious fellows in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are pursuing the goal of an independent Baluchistan, the Iranian elite went instantly to the default position: The Great Satan did it.

There can be little if any doubt that the US government is quietly pleased with Iran's discomfiture--up to a point. While anything which weakens the regime's hold on power is to be welcomed, the timing of today's incidents is disquieting. Iran is scheduled to hold yet one more round of talks with the US and its partners in the P5+1 tomorrow. The potential exists for the Iranians to use the twin bombings as an excuse for further delay. As if they really need one.

A State Department spokesman did the expected. The US deplored and condemned the attack and denied any connection with the Soldiers of God. The Brits have probably done the same.

The geographical, political, and social realities produced both the insurgency and its latest expression of political will and military capacity. The lines on the map which split the Baluchi into three national jurisdictions were made without regard for the desires and self-identification of the local inhabitants. For a mort of years this did not matter. More recently, say in the past thirty or forty years, it has not only mattered greatly, it has inspired resistance to all three national governments.

The Baluchi are a readily identifiable nationality. They are ethnically and, to a large extent, linguistically distinguishable from the other peoples inhabiting each of the three states. The Baluchi are also religiously distinguishable in Iran from the majority Shia. The Baluchi in all three countries but particularly in Pakistan and Iran believe with good reason that they have been discriminated against by the governments.

The combination of political disaffiliation and a developing national consciousness gave rise to the pursuit of a state of their own: A unified Baluchistan under the sole control of the Baluchi. As established states are not known for their willingness to voluntarily disassemble, an insurgency of the defensive sort was inevitable.

The existence of hydrocarbon deposits as well as other extractable resources assures that an independent Baluchistan would be economically viable at least in the near- to mid-term. Unlike many independent nation-states of the "decolonised" world, a Baluchistan would have both an economic reason to exist and the means by which existence would be assured. In this way as in features of self-identification, tripartite division, and a resort to defensive insurgency, nascent Baluchistan is identical to another latent state, Kurdistan.

The geopolitical realities of the Baluchi like those surrounding the Kurds presents the US with a set of seemingly irresolvable problems. The ancient, more honored in the breech than in the observance American policy of "self-determination of nations" would seem to require Washington to support fully the aspirations of Baluchi and Kurds alike. At the same time the existence of American agreements with the governments of Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan make support impossible.

Justice as much as such exists in the international arena is on the side of the Baluchis as it is with the Kurds. Both are identifiable nations, both have long standing aspirations for statehood, both have been mistreated, discriminated against, and generally ignored by the sundry national entities, and both have waged long insurgencies for the same reason the American colonials did. But, none of this matters.

As Turkey, Iraq, and Iran cannot continence the amputation of their Kurdish components, Pakistan and Iran cannot admit of losing their Baluchi majority provinces. Nor can the US or any other power give assistance either open or covert to the insurgents.

This means that no matter how much the US might like to contribute to the dismemberment of Iran, it cannot do so. The insurgencies of Kurd and Baluchi alike are not fungible. That means we cannot support an anti-Iran effort without simultaneously supporting the insurgencies directed at our "allies," Pakistan, Iraq, and Turkey.

There is no practical way to assure that any assistance granted to the Soldiers of God in Iran would not translate into aid to their counterparts in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Our personnel turn a blind eye to movement of arms, drugs, or men across the Afghan-Iranian border only at the risk the same will ultimately flow to anti-Islamabad fighters in Pakistan.

The best, most determined efforts to control an insurgency will finally fail. We have learned that lesson before. There is no need to repeat it, particularly given the instability resident within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The pooch in Baluchistan or, to err on the side of accuracy, Sistan-Baluchistan Province, is one which the Tehran regime will and have been screwing--royally. The Persians are a bare majority in Iran. While the Kurds are only seven percent of the sixty-six million and the Baluchi a mere two percent, they are quite set upon their goal of national independence. It may be only a matter of time before the other ethnic and linguistic minorities take the road pioneered by the more factious Kurds and Baluchi.

The regime in Tehran cannot tolerate any dissent. The mullahs and their stooges have shown that repeatedly. The US government might hope that disaffiliation and dissent continue and grow as such might have positive policy implications, but there is nothing that Washington can do directly to foster or support separatist movements.

That is an unfortunate but very real ground truth. And it will remain the truth unless and until the US is willing to embrace the Wilsonian notion of "self-determination" even at the expense of critical countries such as Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan.

The presence of this governing reality does not, however, preclude discrete applause for the Baluchi bombers of the Soldiers of God. It does not prevent saying of the dead and maimed members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, "It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of guys."

(Illegal) Drugs And Insurgency

Hang on, bucko, the Geek is not going to do a replay of all the bloviation on the relation between the opium trade in Afghanistan and Taliban's financial base. Nor is he going to blather on about how FARC is really a narco-trafficking protection racketeer or the similar joining of the renewed Shining Path and the cocaine trade in Peru.

No, siree. Not a chance. Been there; done that.

Today, kids, the focus is on the identity of dynamics between the emergence and development of drug distribution networks and that of insurgent groups and the movements which arise from these. The point of commonality between these two disparate, equally illegal, types of entity is that both are self-organizing, dynamically stable, and far more inherently flexible and adaptive than the social, political, and legal structures which seek to confront and defeat them.

The Geek first noticed the commonalities when he came back to the world after a fun filled multi-year tour in a far away country experiencing armed political turbulence. He had the chance to live for some time in a small city in southern New Mexico which was not only convenient to the international border but possessed a moderately large university with a diverse student body including a number of people from Mideast countries.

As was (and is) so often the case, New Mexico lagged behind the rest of the country in social trends. The Summer of Love had long since come and gone. The "Hashbury" out in San Francisco was overrun by Gray Line buses filled with camera toting tourists, and the hippies had departed for other pastures of plenty. Only then when even Fargo, ND had experienced an influx of drug use did the town where the Geek temporarily lived find the joys of LSD, pot, hash, and other such substances.

Where a demand exists, a supply will surely follow. Adam Smith's "hidden hand" exists to assure that. The Geek watched as the HH went to work.

Several distribution networks emerged in the Fall and Winter of 1968. Of the "big five", three developed among locals, two of these were of middle class Anglo nature with one forming in the Mexican-American contingent. The other two emerged from out-of-state students at the university.

Importantly, all of the "big five" self-organized within social groups comprising people who either had or wished to have psychedelic experiences. The first stage of self-organizing was simply the sharing of stashes and expressing a desire for more of whatever, usually pot, 'shroom, LSD, or, less frequently, speed.

Within each group--groups which were united primarily by a taste for drug use and place of primary residence and little else--one or more individuals showed themselves willing to acquire more for the benefit of the group. It was really rather like the tune done by New Riders of the Purple Sage--the one where Henry goes down south of the border to meet the man "who has it growing from the ground."

After the preliminary couple of trips down south or out to Los Angeles, the intrepid specialists in procurement self-organized into a loosely coordinated "importers association." This allowed for both economies of scale and specialization in procurement. For example, one person ran the speed connection out of LA. Another was oriented toward the acquisition of hash from North Africa coming through Lebanon. Yet others worked the rat line into the interior of Mexico for both weed and 'shroom. Yet another couple of individuals had firm contacts for acid made in labs both in Arizona and California. (For the sake of being complete, peyote was available locally. All one had to do was go out in the desert southwest of the valley and take a look--and harvest.)

The import association assured there was little chance of the "whole town is dry." It also made certain that profits were equitable and greed was restrained for mutual advantage.

Importantly there were no guns involved. (OK, one dude liked to go around strapped, because he had a real macho thing, but his piece was always unloaded.) Neither was there any aggressive marketing. No one hung around the local high schools or middle schools saying, "the first one is free. Heh, Heh. Prices on the street were low, lower than in larger cities such as Albuquerque, Tucson, or El Paso.

The reason for the low prices was quite simply the lack of risk. The movers and shakers of this town had no clue that there was an emergent system in their midst. The low profile, self-organizing nature of the drug distribution network coupled with the absence of violence or spikes in crimes against property as well as the lack of aggressive marketing assured that the emergent system flew below the local radar.

Law enforcement had no priority on counter-drug efforts. The city, for example, had but one drug cop. This man was unambitious and liked to sit in his unmarked car eating Cracker Jacks to an extent that the back seat was so overflowing with the empties that it would have been impossible to put a prisoner in it. Anyway, everyone knew who he was, where he was, and saw no reason to worry.

After a year of development, the multi-group, two tiered network was well developed. Everyone involved seemed quite happy with the arrangement. Well, they went around with quiet, knowing, and pleased smiles on their faces. It looked as if a satisfactory stasis had been achieved.

To the Geek it was all quite similar to the opening phases of the multi-stage process by which latent political discontent slowly evolved toward a political movement with vague goals and hazy leadership. In the area of political discontent and the progress of self-organization toward insurgency, the initiative always rests with the status quo. The Geek suspected it was the same in the evolution of drug distribution networks.

So events of Spring 1969 proved. The precipitating incident was small, even trivial. The results were totally non-linear. That is the output was disproportionate and unpredictable on the basis of the input.

The precipitating event was the discovery by a parent of some pot in the possession of her high school age son. The kid had taken some from the stash of his elder sister as he admitted to dear old mom.

Mom was an activist in the local Democratic Party. She went to a man who was not only a state senator but the president of the biggest bank in town and a genuine heavy hitter in state Democratic circles.

This man saw an opportunity. And he took it. The banker was one of those people who wondered often, loudly, and boorishly about "what the hell is wrong with the kids these days?" Tossing his considerable political weight around, the banker forced the formation of a multi-agency task force to end the drug menace in the county.

The country sheriff as well as the county district attorney was a man with lofty political ambitions. Both had watched enough TV to know that an anti-drug crusade would be beaucoup important to their futures. So they joined the banker with a will, a whoop, and a holler.

Because the banker was head of the relevant Senate committee, the state police joined the effort. Not to be outdone and suspecting an "international" connection, both the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (as DEA was known back then) and the Border Patrol/ Customs joined the wolf pack.

In no time at all an inter-agency task group deployed a flood of undercover officers and sought to recruit informers by the bus load. The banker was pleased. His efforts had created a coalition of city, country, state, and federal lawmen which had a total roster of over sixty sworn personnel and, ultimately, over seventy-five informants. The law enforcers outnumbered the aggregate import association and local dealer assemblage by nearly ten to one.

The high point of the state's reaction to the self-organizing system was a pre-dawn raid conducted by more than two hundred badge wearing men. Over a dozen (fourteen to be precise) dangerous drug dealers and narco-traffickers were arrested. The front page of the local newspaper was filled with pictures under the screaming end-of-the-world size type headline "Handcuffed and Waiting!"

The status quo's exercise in coercion resulted finally in either acquittal or overturning on appeal of all but two of those arrested. More embarrassing to the status quo was the simple fact that virtually all of those arrested were good products of good homes of a solidly middle class and primarily Democratic families. None were the scourge of humanity criminals TV convinced many were at the root of America's drug crisis.

It deserves mentioning that the state's mis-fired attempt to end the drug "menace" only had an impact on two of the "big five" groups and then only in part. The day after the big raid, those who wished to purchase a no-no substance had no difficulty doing so.

In the years following the Great Drug Bust the nature of the drug distribution networks changed. Prices went up. Aggressive marketing tactics were employed. Turf battles occurred. Opiates and cocaine replaced lower profit items. Guns were carried. And used. The new self-organizing systems became more structured, more hierarchical, more, in a real sense, professional, more businesslike, more Mafia like.

Over the next thirty years or so the Geek spent a fair amount of spare time beavering away in archives, old police records, and other documentary sources to get a handle on whether or not what he had observed in the small New Mexico city was standard. He found out that it was.

Starting in the Fifties and ranging forward in time to the Nineties, the pattern was repeated in town after town, city after city, even those cities with pre-existing criminal syndicates. The pattern was simple.

All drug distribution networks are self-organizing. All start at the bottom and organize upwards. Where law enforcement is lax, prices are low, violence is absent, secondary crime (crime committed to obtain habit maintenance resources) low, aggressive marketing nonexistent, as are turf battles. Enhanced law enforcement measures drive evolution of the networks in the direction of greater structure, more aggressive recruitment of new customers, more violence, and all the the other high profile consequences.

At the same time, the enhanced law enforcement is ineffective because the networks never lose the self-organizing capacity with its inherent flexibility. At bottom, enhanced law enforcement is an evolutionary challenge. The new stresses, the increased risks, drive a process of adaptation in which the initially self-organizing dynamic of the network gives it an advantage so that the law enforcers can never, have never, gained and retained the initiative.

In a race between the ponderous structures of the state and the bottom up, self-organized networks, the latter always have the advantage. Indeed, the record suggest that the networks have such an inherent advantage that while some are caught, some are killed, the network will continue--and expand. The proof of this contention rests in the constant dollar cost of an effective dose of whatever illegal drug. Because of improvements in technology which have resulted in ever increasing potency and purity, the average cost of a user's "effective" dose of drugs as disparate as pot and smack have dropped consistently over time.

It is fair to conclude that the state's attempts at coercion have not only failed, they have been counterproductive. As the price of drugs has dropped and availability increased, the consequences of increased pressures such as greater violence and more aggressive recruitment of new customers have grown. From the perspective of the law enforcers it has been a lose-lose situation--for them.

The Mexican government has been learning this lesson in a particularly bloody way in the past two years. So are others albeit in less sanguinary fashion.

Now, bucko, you might have the question, "What has this got to do with insurgency?"

Well, the Geek suggests that you look in tomorrow or the next day. Thunderstorms make the Geek's postings a bit unpredictable right now.

Yemen Zips On Down The Tube

Yemen is an important pimple on the collective rump of the globe. In that way it resembles the other important pimple sitting across the Gulf of Aden. You know, the one called Somalia.

The twin pimples are alike in another way. Both are in the process of succumbing to Islamist jihadist insurgent groups. Sure, Somalia has had all the big news play. Couldn't be helped; the morass in Somalia has been incrementally developing despite (or because of) the good intentions of outside actors including the US. It has also been helped in the old media exposure by the fun and games undertaken by the Merry Pirates of Puntland.

By comparison Yemen has sat back in the shadows unnoticed by the media and most foreign policy wonks. Quietly, but surely the place has been travelling down the same road as Somalia, just at a slower rate.

The spotlight flicked on recently when the government launched an offensive against the Shia insurgents in the north. This Islamist jihadist bunch is headed by Abdul-Malek al-Houthi and is, unsurprisingly, called the "Houthis." It is a revivalist branch of the Zaydi version of Shia. What this means theologically eludes the Geek completely, but it has importance in assessing the overall appeal of the sect to Yemenis generally.

With the start of the offensive including air strikes and armored operations (which while macho as all get out are of very dubious utility in countering tribal guerrillas in rugged terrain), the usual suspects--humanitarian entities and the UN--have raised the expectable cry of humanitarian crisis. Considering that the Yemeni forces are undoubtedly firing shells and heaving bombs with great enthusiasm and little skill, the generation of refugees has been and will continue to be the single major feature of the offensive.

It deserves mentioning that while the Yemeni armed forces are blowing holes in the desert, the country (the Geek uses that term generically only) faces two other, shall we say, "challenges." One of them is al-Qaeda. The other is a regional insurgency in the south which is so far at least relatively untouched by the hot hand of Islamist jihadism.

War has been endemic to Yemen (or, the Yemens, plural since for most of the past several decades there were two, one North and the other South) since 1962. In that far off year when JFK was in the White House and most Americans alive today not yet born, the thousand year old Zaydi imamate was overthrown. Since that distant day war has reigned supreme with assorted truces, ceasefires, peace treaties and even a partition having come and gone with the rapidity of mirages before the eyes of a desert traveler dying of thirst.

Oh, the Brits hung on for a few years trying to keep Aden (or North Yemen) alive and well. But, in 1967 following the "Battle of the Crater," the Labor Government tossed in the sponge and left the field "East of Suez." The ever-ambitious Egyptian government of the day kept on fighting a proxy war supporting South Yemen (AKA The Peoples Republic of Yemen) in its effort to subdue the North. Eventually even Nasser gave up and sought greener pastures by giving the Israelis plausible cover for their Great Land Grab War of 1967.

And so it went, hot war followed by cold peace. The place(s) dissolved more and more over time into a loose assemblage of tribes, religious sects governed locally only by sheiks, or others with local mojo. The central government(s) governed little and loosely.

Even the reconstitution of Yemen as a single entity did nothing to alter the basic dynamics as recent events have proven conclusively. There was little if any functional legitimacy attached to the central regime and utterly no existential legitimacy. The government governed only through the balancing of opposing forces or, less successfully, through naked coercion.

The vacuum at the center encouraged--no--demanded the Zaydi resurrection. That is the name of the game with the insurgent group in the north. It is avowedly Zaydi and demands the reconstitution of the ancient regime, the Zaydi imamate. Turning back time to the years prior to 1962 may be Quixotic, but that does not lower the appeal of the dream, particularly to those living in the long ignored, long impoverished, long futile, and frustrated folks of the North.

The fact that the Zaydi are a branch of Shia Islam is important because it has opened the doors to support by Iran both direct and through the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. While proof of the involvement beyond rhetorical levels is absent, there is strong reason to suspect it, given the military capacities demonstrated by the Houthis.

Be that as it may, Iran has termed the conflict an internal Yemeni matter and called for a political settlement. But, what else would be expected? Iran is already in sufficiently deep kim chee not to desire further submergence.

There is less doubt that Saudi Arabia has been deeply involved on the side of the central government. The Saudis have furnished money, and perhaps more to the Saana regime in the hopes of bolstering the government sufficiently that Yemen will not become even more of a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and similar Islamist jihadist groups. The Saudis have a dog in the fight given the long record of al-Qaeda personnel training and equipping in the hills of Yemen for strikes on Saudi Arabia.

In a real sense the US does not give a fig who wins in the place. Provided that whoever comes out on top--Houthis, Saana or Southern insurgents--they do not give a safe haven to Islamist jihadists. The US administration has been keeping a (deliberately?) low profile in the resurgent fighting, limiting its direct involvement to an appeal to both sides to observe the truce agreement of last year.

The American caution is well-advised. There is no probability that the current Yemeni offensive will be successful even in the most limited definition of the word. Linking ourselves to the Saana government would be counterproductive in the longer haul, should the Houthis win or should they strike a deal with the southern insurgents.

The second alternative is not probable given that both the government and the insurgents in the south are Salafists and this is anathema to the Zaydis of the north. The Salafist orientation of Saana, of course, gives Saudi Arabia cover for its pragmatically based assistance.

Despite its growing military capacity, and regardless of (probable) foreign support and the presence of (possible) foreign fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Houthis do not yet threaten Saana. This will come however as surely as dawn brings prayers across the bare mountains and desert of Yemen.

The worst case outcome from the perspective of Washington would be the emergence of an Islamist jihadist vise with one jaw in Somalia and the other in Yemen. Such a vise would be positioned perfectly to close on the critical southern approach to the Suez Canal.

The vise could also result from the success of an Iranian backed Zaydi government in Yemen. Stop and think for a moment about the implications of Iran having the potential to blockade both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden.

Not a pleasant prospect, eh, bucko? The Revolutionary Guard in their famed inflatable boats could put quite a crimp in international trade and commerce without having to do much of anything. A further deterrent to the exercise of the "military option" in the matter of Iran's nuclear efforts?

Not in the near term, certainly. But, far from improbable in the mid- to long-term. Right now, the dynamics are running in favor of the Houthis. Without resolute assistance from some outside party or parties, selling insurance to the Saana government is a loser.

Oh well, as Allah wills.

The Shooting Starts Again In Nigeria

The good news is that the most recent spate of killing is not the work of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The oil platform and service ship workers can rest easily for the moment. And, the oil speculators won't have to hit the keyboards and up the prices.

The Islamist jihadist monster is once more running amuck on the north of the never particularly stable and peaceful most populous country in Africa. The local Islamist jihadist group the name of which translates as "western education is sinful (or unlawful)" went after the police. The police shot back. Faster. Straighter.

Violence was experienced in three of the twelve provinces which voted a decade back to impose Shariah. The Islamists, who describe themselves as "Nigeria's Taliban," do not approve of the way in which the government interprets and applies Shariah. As a result they went on the offensive over the weekend.

Northeast Nigeria is the place where Islam drifting south from North African ran into the indigenous religions and later, Christianity. Today Nigeria is roughly split fifty-fifty between the two faiths. The record of violence over the past eight years indicates the Islamists within the Muslim community have started slightly over half of the violent encounters.

The Nigerian sectarian conflict takes place in the context of maldistributed wealth, an inefficient and corrupt distant government, and long standing tribal and sectional rivalries. Nigeria may have a lot of people, but it has no single Nigerian nation. The population is deeply fissured along numerous fault lines--tribal, class, sectional, religious.

The political process is not open. It is not transparent. It is not honest. It lacks both existential and functional legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens. The government is not trusted. It is not seen as honest. Or effective. Or representative of anyone or anything that does not reek of bought influence and paid for conduct.

As a result of its own tergiversations, its own corruption, its own systemic and personal inefficiencies and inadequacies, the central government has been faced by the ever-growing threat of MEND which has nibbled away the oil export base of both national prosperity and governmental malfeasance. While capable of killing MEND insurgents, the government and the Nigerian military have been completely unable to suppress the insurgency.

The measures taken by the government and army to defeat MEND have been so disasterously inept that they have grown more insurgents than they have killed or captured. Given the vulnerability of the oil industry, anything other than suppressing the insurgency through meeting its demands, which are neither excessive nor fantastic, is the best option open to the government.

This the government has refused to do--except rhetorically.

Now the central government is faced with the early stage of another insurgency. Lagos must have believed it had bought its peace with the referendum providing for Shariah in the twelve predominantly Muslim provinces. They reckoned without the Islamists for whom the new policy was one illustrative of government weakness.

Bolstered by the endemic poverty as well as the highly evident maldistribution of wealth in the region and the general disenchantment with the central government as well as the several provincial governments, the membership in and affiliations with the Islamist jihadist groups grew as the jihadists became increasingly active and ambitious in demands. Far from having bought its peace, the central government purchased many miles of increasingly bad road.

The election violence late last year gave fair warning of what was to come. Now the second warning shot(s) came over the weekend. The police won in terms of bodies counted and perps arrested. The Lagos regime will take pride in that.

The lesson which should be taken by the government is vastly different. Insurgencies and insurgents are like the Terminator--they will be back. Back stronger, better, wider spread, with more support, more skills, more weapons, more willingness to be (in this case) "martyrs."

Nigeria barely avoided energetically disassembling forty-two or so years ago. The Biafrian separatist movement was narrowly defeated. Nigeria almost died in a welter of tribal and sectional disputes.

Whatever may have been learned in those not-so-long-ago days by the Nigerian political and economic elite has been forgotten. MEND is proof of that. So also is the growing Islamist jihadist driven insurgency in the north and northeast of the country.

The bloody fighters of both MEND and "Western Education is Sinful" have written in letters too large and sanguine to be ignored that the government and its affiliated elites must work--fast--to both repair the economic inequities and the disparity in political power between elite and hoi polloi. The alternative is to fiddle while the country melts around them.

And, that will not be a pretty sight.