The Latest Twist For A Long Running Insurgency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ayman al-Zawahiri Raises The Stakes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's listen in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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