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November 30, 2008

The Mumbia Attacks and The Global Jihad

Other have reported the details of the terrorist attacks in Mumbia (the new name for Bombay) India better than I, and as such there's no need for me to repeat them here. What I'll do is try and see how it fits into the big picture.

In brief, then, what we had was 10-25 Islamic terrorists attack 10 targets in the Indian city of Mumbia and kill approximately 172 people and wound 370. The attacks started Wednesday Nov 26 and did not end until Saturday Nov 29. Among other targets, they attacked hotels frequented by wealthy Indians. Mumbia is the financial and entertainment center of India and the most populous city in the world.

A previously unknown group called Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility, though Indian police say that information from a captured terrorist points to the Pakistan-based Muslim terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is not clear as to whether other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, were involved, at least directly.

What made this attack unique is that instead of bombs, suicide or pre-planted, the terrorists simply used automatic weapons and hand grenades, and ran around trying to kill as many people as they could. In some instances they took hostages, but there were no prolonged negotiations.

Last March I offered up four models for understanding the current situation with regards to all this. Here they are:

War of Ideas: Dr Walid Phares says that our enemy are Jihadists of the Wahabbi, Muslim Brotherhood, and Khumeinist variety. While some of the fighting will be by nature military, it is primarily a war of ideology, and the winner will be the side that convinces young people that it's ideas are better than the other. Future Jihad and War of Ideas are his two most important recent books.

World War IV: Norman Podhoretz believes that our struggle is best termed World War IV. While I have not read his book of the same name, there is much about it on the Internet, including this article in Commentary Podhoretz believes that democratization is the best way to defeat the extremists.

The Power of Demographics All of the strategy and ideas in the world may not help us if radical Islam takes over Europe by producing more babies. This is the theme of Mark Steyn's America Alone.

Global Insurgency: Lt Col (Dr) David Kilcullen spent 20 years in the Australian Army. Throughout 2007 he was a senior adviser on counterterrorism to Gen David Petraeus. He is not a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In his 2004 wor, Countering Global Insurgency, Kilcullen says that our enemy is best thought of as an insurgency, albeit on a global scale instead of just in one country.

In retrospect, I should have added another, and will do so here

Clash of Civilizations: In Samuel P Huntington's 1993 ground-breaking article Foreign Affairs magazine, he proposed that "World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition." Later published as a book by the same name, Huntington warned that we should be worried not so much about Islamic terrorism but about Islam itself.

It is important to note that these five paradigms are not exclusive but compliment each other. All five may be in play at once, each operating on a different level.

So do the attacks in Mumbia fit into any of these models? I think that Kilcullen's idea of a global insurgency, Phares' of a War of Ideas are most apt. We'll start with the colonel.

What Kilcullen saw was a global movement of disparate groups, loosely allied, but all with the same fundamental objective; to destroy Western ideas and implement a sort of global Caliphate, or at least implement Sharia law throughout the world. al-Qaeda was at the center of this spider's web. It's role was not as Moscow's was during the Cold War, issuing orders to subordinates, but more Al Qaeda maintaining links with its affiliated organizations through a variety of links. These links are ideological, linguistic, personal, family relationships, financial, propaganda, operational and planning, and doctrine techniques and procedures. The relationship of the affiliates to al-Qaeda is that of patronage, with al-Qaeda having a patrion-client authority. Kilcullen explains that

What is new about today's environment is that, because of the links described above, a new class of regional, theatre-level actors has emerged. These groups do have links to the global jihad, often act as regional allies or affiliates of al Qaeda, and prey on local groups and issues to further the jihad. They also rely on supporting inputs from global players and might wither if their global sponsors were significantly disrupted.

Sitting above the theatre-level actors are global players like al Qaeda.

As mentioned earlier, the a previously unknown group called Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility. This conjures up images of Black September, the previously unknown group that carried out the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich, Germany. It was later discovered that the members of Black September that carried out this and other attacks were drawn from known Palestinian terrorist groups such as Yassir Arafat's al Fatah, the PFLP, as-Sa'iqa, and others.

Some media speculation is on whether al Qaeda was involved or behind the attack. To me, this misses the point.

Andrew McCarthy nails it, and I can't do any better

When he guest-hosted Hannity & Colmes last night, Rich had a very edifying couple of segments with Mark Steyn and Richard Miniter. Mark made the excellent point about the reluctance to come to grips with the fact that these attacks on iconic targets, which we're now seeing in Mumbai/Bombay but of course have seen elsewhere, are fueled by an ideology. That's exactly right. The obsession over whether al Qaeda or its endless jumble of affiliates pulled off the operation is a misguided attempt to mimimize the challenge. The bin Laden network is not unimportant, but it is tapping into something that is much bigger than itself.

"fueled by an ideology" is, of course, the key part.

Two and a half years ago The Washington Post published what was or should have been an eye-opening story about Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a prolific writer described as the "architect of new war on the west."

Nasar's theory was that isolated cells could wage jihad without instructions from above. Individuals would form small groups, and would plan and execute their own attacks. However, if groups are not possible, individuals could and should act on their own.

It would all add up to a war, albeit a very decentralized one. Indeed Nasar saw a benefit to this decentraliztion, as it would be hard for counterterrorists to use one captured jihadist to reveal confederates of the details of a larger organization.

McCarthy goes on to say that

In July 2007, our intelligence community released findings of a National Intelligence Estimate that indicated jihadist ideology had become so extensively propagated in the West that the mediating influence of terrorist organizations like al Qaeda was no longer essential in order for radical cells to spring up and interconnect. Naturally, these local operatives are spurred, in part, by local and regional issues. But, though the mainstream press recoils from this reality, such local issues are fitted to an ideological framework that is global, hegemonic, and more about the ultimate triumph of fundamentalist Islam than, say, a Palestinian state, Kashmir, Danish cartoons, economic inequality, or whatever this week's complaint is.

So we see that Kilcullen is on to something, though his 2004 thesis may need qualification. The jihad may have reached the point where al Qaeda's guiding hand is not so necessary.

The ideas of Walid Phares are also relevant, in that we are foolish if we ignore the Islamic aspect. The network of terror is important insofar as counterterrorism is concerned. Follow the link to Kilcullen's work for details on how to fight it. But on another level we must also fight our enemies ideas.

Mark Steyn explains that the links between terrorist groups are important,

But we're in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It's the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK and shoot up a hotel lobby....Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological-front organizations. You've already made landfall.

It's missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It's not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That's what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the Central Asian stans to Yorkshire, and coopted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.

Give that man a cigar.

Approaching the attacks in Mumbia from a law enforcement aspect is all very fine insofar as rooting out the networks, but at the end of the day we've got to find some way to make Muslims confront the aspects of their own religion that promote the jihad. And from what i can see, we're not doing it now.

Posted by Tom at 9:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 28, 2008

Gen. Barry McCaffrey Report - November 2008 - Iraq

General Barry McCaffrey (ret.) is back from another fact-finding tour of Kuwait and Iraq. He was there from Oct 31 to Nov 6 and met with dozens of American and Iraqi military and civilian leaders, including Gen. Ray Odierno, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. This, his latest After Action Report, can be found on the website of MCaffrey Associates. Readers are encouraged to download the entire report and read it in its entirety.

I find McCaffrey's reports valuable as a check on other sources by someone who can usually be counted on to provide a non-partisan no-holds-barred assessment. McCaffrey lays out the good, the bad, and the ugly. He does not seem driven by an agenda. He does not see the situation through rose-colored glasses, but by the same token is not knee-jerk "all is lost."

From his bio, McCaffrey served for 32 years in the U.S. Army, retiring in I think 2001 with the rank of four star general. He then notably served as "Drug Czar" until 2005, when he took a position as the Bradley Distinguished Professor of International Security Studies at West Point. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs there. This most recent report was undertaken as part of his professorship.

None of this makes him the end-all-to-be-all, but he does have some credibility.

Here's his bottom line on the current situation in Iraq:

3. THE BOTTOM LINE:

a. The United States is now clearly in the end game in Iraq to successfully achieve what should be our principle objectives:

• The withdrawal of the majority of our US ground combat forces in Iraq in the coming 36 months.
• Leaving behind an operative civil state and effective Iraqi security forces.
• An Iraqi state which is not in open civil war among the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.
• And an Iraqi nation which is not at war with its six neighboring states.

b. The security situation is clearly still subject to sudden outrage at any moment by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) or to degradation because of provocative behavior by the Maliki government. However, the bottom line is a dramatic and growing momentum for economic and security stability which is unlikely to be reversible. I would not characterize the situation as fragile. It is just beyond the tipping point.

• Daily attacks hit a high of 180+ in July of 2007--- they are now down to 20+ per day.
• Civilian deaths dropped from 3700 per month in Dec 2006 --- to 400 + in October 2008.
• US military deaths dropped from 110 in May of 2007---to 10 in October 2008.
• Iraqi Security Forces KIA dropped from 310 in June 2007--- to 50 in October 2008.)

c. The genius of the leadership team of Ambassador Ryan Crocker, General Dave Petraeus, and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has turned around the situation from a bloody disaster under the leadership of Secretary Rumsfeld to a growing situation of security. Ambassador Crocker will be very, very difficult to replace in February 2009. We are fortunate that General Ray Odierno has stepped in to take Joint command of MNF-I. He is very experienced, knows all the players and has sophisticated situational awareness. The Iraqis trust him enormously--- they refer to him as the "big man with the quiet voice."

All this is very good. We have come a long ways and should be thankful for it. President Bush belatedly recognized that things were going wrong, and appointed the new team of Gates, Fallon, and Petraeus to fix things. They did. Later in his report McCaffrey details some of the errors that we made early in the war, remarking that "It is hard to not be bitter about the misjudgments and denial of the DOD leadership during the first years of the war. It did not have to turn out this way with $750 billion of our treasure spent and 36,000 US killed and injured."

True enough, and I do not doubt that his assessment of what we did wrong is incorrect. I won't list it all here, though, because my purpose is what we should do going forward, not what we should have done.

McCaffrey's report is only 9 pages long, and every paragraph a gem, so it's tempting just to reprint the entire thing. Here, though, are a few key statements from his "Context" section

It is unarguable that the past 18 months have witnessed a dramatic, positive change in the Iraqi internal security situation. Iraqi and Coalition Security Force casualties in a comparative sense are now at rock bottom. Ethnic strife between the Shia and the Sunnis has all but stopped. The Shia militias have in general been neutralized--- and the Sunni insurgents bought out by the Sons of Iraq Program....

The lawless disintegration of the state at province and municipal level which was apparent on my earlier visits has now largely abated....

Iranian intervention is relentless, lethal, and implacably hostile to US interests--- but has to a great extent alienated the southern Iraqi Shia and been largely ineffective.

The Maliki government remains largely dysfunctional in its ability to deliver services to the population (jobs, electricity, clean water, infrastructure repair, oil production, budget expenditure, etc)... (but) Mr. Maliki clearly has matured and gained stature as a political leader....

We should have a sense of empathy for these Iraqi politicians. They have survived a poisonous Saddam regime and a culture of intrigue and murder from every side.....

Indeed what has always struck me is the lack of respect Iraqis in general get from people in the U.S. on both sides of the political isle. Conservatives tend to ignore them, crediting everything to the U.S. military, usually even ignoring Amb. Crocker himself. Liberals tend to use them in casualty counts to "prove" how brutal the U.S. led war has been to the Iraqi people. Both sides tend to denigrate Iraqi politicians, caricaturing all of them as corrupt and incompetent.

No doubt the Iraqi government has a long ways to go. We're all familiar with the infighting based on sect, factional, tribe, and clan loyalties. Many have used the security services to murder not just opponents but numbers of ordinary civilians. Corruption is not just rife, but a way of life there, as it is in most of the Third World.

Because the surge has been so successful, we now hear from some on the left "let's immediately stop spending $10bl per month, bring the troops home, downsize the Pentagon and get on with life."

This message comes from those who either never wanted Iraq to succeed in the first place or gave up on it completely sometime after the insurgency started. They opposed the surge, saying that only political progress could save Iraq. Long after it was obvious that the surge was working they continued to deny the obvious progress. Now that the lack of violence is undeniable, and there is a relative stability, they don't even care enough to want to make sure the country does not backslide. All we hear is the same tired mantra; "troops out now!"

Despite our progress, regular readers of this blog know that most commanders, including Petraeus, still say the situation in Iraq is "fragile." Just click on "Iraq II 2007 - 2008" and search for "fragile" and you'll see what I mean.

Knowing this, McCaffrey lays out four scenarios where "success in Iraq could turn to collapse." Download the report and read all four yourself, but here's one:

Precipitous US military withdrawal before the Iraqis have developed a fully functional security presence among all eighteen provinces would also imperil the enterprise. The Iraqis do not have a functional Air Force (lift, gunships, transportation, and close air support). They do not have a Navy and Marine Corps yet capable of protecting their Gulf transportation and petroleum infrastructure. Their Border Security Forces are still anemic. The Iraqi Armed Forces in general lack adequate armor, artillery, maintenance, logistics, medical, and communications to function in counter-insurgency operations or border defense without US support. Their military officer corps is immensely better than a year ago--- but the bench is thin. The young officers at company and battalion level show great promise and courage. The legacy of the Saddam nightmare weighs heavily on the culture of the more senior officers. Finally, the confidence of the Iraqi combat force is still dependant on US mentoring and backup. Their officers are very explicit on this point---THE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES DO NOT WANT THE US COMBAT UNITS TO LEAVE---YET.

So much for blanket statements like "the Iraqis want us to leave." Indeed, USMC Maj. Gen. Martin Post offered a more nuanced statement in a press briefing that I covered Nov 11 when he said, in response to a question on the subject;

Candidly, it depends upon who you talk to. In some cases, if you talk to the local man on the street, they'll look at us and say, "Hey, I think we're ready for you to go."

If you talk to the -- the leadership -- you know, the IP leadership or the Iraqi army leadership or the provincial leadership, they would probably tell you, "Hey, we need you here for some period of time longer." Not really ever saying, "We need you here for one year or two years," but I think we're still, if you would, that security blanket for them, in the -- standing behind them....

This makes sense. If I was an Iraqi I'd say that I want the Americans gone too. No one wants foreign troops in their country. We're lucky we got the Germans to accept such large numbers for so long, Soviet threat or no.

Further, although it has been a maddeningly slow journey to get the Iraqi security forces as far as they are, Gen. Petraeus warned about this in the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24. Take the time to read it if you want to understand where we've been and where we're going.

Driving home the point, at the end of his report McCaffrey says that

...It is essential for both US and Mid East security that we pull out of Iraq in a deliberate and responsible manner--- and leave a stable and functioning state. This is clearly within our capabilities.

Again; "pull out of Iraq in a deliberate and responsible manner," not in the helter-skelter manner advocated by anti-war types.

Two more excerpts from the report and they I'll wrap it up. He has this to say about the senior military leadership:

Finally of note--- the senior leadership at general officer and brigade command is remarkable. They are visible to their troops and share the personal risk of the battlefield. (This is in marked contrast to the stacked helicopters of the Vietnam War commanders.) General Odierno has personally been under direct small arms fire and IED attack during his three combat tours at Division, Corps, and now theater command. LTG Lloyd Austin nearly got nailed by direct machine gun fire while directing forward operations during the recent battle to control SADR City in Baghdad. LTG Frank Helmick and BG Tony Thomas both recently survived an IED attack of an 800 lb suicide vehicle bomb which totally destroyed their MRAP vehicle. (The survivability of the MRAP vehicles has drastically reduced casualties among our forces.)

I've heard our generals talk about how they go out with the troops, and read stories on this too, but didn't know about the attacks they'd survived. We are lucky to have such able and brave leaders.

Lastly, a note to the future:

The likely strategic outcome will be a more rapid forced drawdown than desirable in Iraq in order to enhance combat power for Afghanistan. It will be a tricky balance--- but in my judgment we will pull this off successfully. Iraq will stabilize with the rapidly increasing power of the Iraqi Security Forces ---while we reinforce the inadequate NATO combat power in Afghanistan.

I'd already figured that my own coverage would see a shift to Afghanistan in coming months and years. I've noticed that I've posted more "Afghanistan Briefings" of late.

Previous McCaffrey Reports on Iraq
The December 2007 General Barry McCaffrey Report on Iraq
Barry McCaffrey on Iraq II, March 29, 2007
"The Most Brilliantly Led Military We Have Ever Fielded" May 14, 2006

Posted by Tom at 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 26, 2008

Obama to Keep Gates at Defense

It seems to be true. From yesterday's New York Times

President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama's advisers were nearing a formal agreement with Mr. Gates to stay on for perhaps a year, the Democrats said, and they expected to announce the decision as early as next week, along with other choices for the national security team.

To which I have this to say to all you lefties who thought Obama stood for change;

BRBRRRHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!!

So let me get this straight. For the past two years, we have heard from Senator Obama that our military venture in Iraq was a failure, that the surge would not work, and when the violence did go down it wasn't because of the surge or anything our troops did at all, and now he's going to keep as his Secretary of Defense the very man who carried out the surge and has said (I am sure) that it was responsible for the reduction in violence?

Look, for the sake of our nation I'm glad Obama is keeping Robert Gates. I think he's an excellent Secretary of Defense. I think it is a signal that Obama will not precipitously leave Iraq, which would be a very good thing.

But you have to admit that the chutzpah on display by President-elect Obama is breathtaking. His anti-war supporters are surely very disappointed.

Sure, I know that liberals can turn it around and say to me "see, this proves he's not the extreme leftist you said he was." A fair point, though it's far too early to come to that conclusion. But the fact is that Obama ran on a platform of immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and from this history one would have just about thought that he'd appoint Dennis Kucinich to the post, not Robert Gates.

How is the left reacting? I'm not going to do a full survey, but the two diarists at the Daily Kos I found were upset but less than apoplectic. Kos Diarist bugscuffle says

I suppose it's bad news that a neocon warmonger is to remain at the Defense Department. I suppose it's good news that he's not a former member of the Clinton Administration.

Diarist Meteor Blades quotesChris Bowers at OpenLeft as saying that

This should be an open and shut case. If there was one message that Obama ran on loudly, clearly, and indisputably, it is that he was going to bring "change" to Washington, D.C. If Gates were kept on as Secretary of Defense, it apparently would also mean that all of his top advisors would also stay on, and that it all happened because long-time D.C. operatives said it should. Keeping the same guy and all of his advisors at the behest of old establishment types is about as far from change as possible.

Some commenters try and rationalize the decision, others are mad as all get out. No doubt they don't want to give up on their god messiah leader easily.

Jon Soltz, writing at The Huffington Post, likes the pick, saying that

For those who worry that Gates will somehow drag President Obama to the right on Iraq, I think that fear is really unfounded. If the first question one must ask is, "Why is Obama picking Gates?" then the second question has to be "Why does Gates want to stay with Obama?"

It's not because Gates wants to preserve some neo-con view in the administration -- after all, Gates is a Bush I guy, a moderate who sees more eye-to-eye with Brent Scowcroft (an opponent of the war) than Paul Wolfowitz. It's not to preserve the current course, because Gates is smart enough to know that with Hillary Clinton, James Jones, and Barack Obama, staying the course will never win out.

The only reasonable answer is that Gates clearly understands that there will be a new course for our military, that includes redeployment from Iraq, and wants to make it work.

What Soltz even means when he says that "staying the course will never win out" is something of a mystery. Is he referring specifically to Iraq? Anyone who follows this blog knows that our military commanders in Iraq have been talking about a responsible draw down there for months, and that brigades are in fact coming out.

At least they're more honest over at The Nation, where John Nichols, in an article titled "A Secretary of Defense We Can't Believe In," starts off with

Barack Obama in February, 2008: "I don't want to just end the war; I want to end the mindset that got us into war."

Barack Obama in November, 2008: "Never mind."

I think that's more accurate than the rationalizations I've seen elsewhere.

Bill Clinton famously ignored many of his campaign promises, most notably his middle class tax cut, which he reneged on before even taking office. While this and two years of mistakes gained the GOP the Congress, it didn't do us any good in 1996.

On the other hand, Bill Clinton was elected president with a normal campaign. Obama was elected by a cult following who worships his every move. Their expectations are sky-high.

In the end, I think the left will suck this one up. They've invested far too much in Obama to give up this quickly.

Now, if he doesn't close Gitmo that'll be a different story....

My question for now, however, is how could Obama do this after all that he's said about Iraq? Maybe Shelby Steele was right, when he said that

Of of the things that troubles me about Obama's character is that he can get along with anybody. He can articulate a conservative point of view better than many conservatives can. He can be strikingly far left. The problem is not so much that he's going to reveal who he really is, the problem is that he may not be anybody. He may not have strong convictions.

(Follow the link and watch all five segments of Steele's analysis of Obama and the election. It's on par with the best I've seen or read)

Whether Steele is right or not only time will tell. I think what he does with our detention center in Guantanamo will be a telling moment.

Either way, forgive me for chortling a bit here. This post is a bit out of character. Friday I'll be back to my usual geek analysis with a piece on Iraq that you won't want to miss.

Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 24, 2008

Afghanistan Briefing - 21 November 2008 - Winning Hearts and Minds in Khost

This briefing is by Colonel John P. Johnson, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, otherwise known as Task Force Currahee. Last Friday he spoke via satellite from Forward Operating Base Salerno in the Khost province with reporters at the Pentagon.

Task Force Currahee is responsible for security and stability operations in the central eastern area of Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border.

I am not entirely sure of the chain of command here, but Johnson's's unit is part of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), the NATO operation in Afghanistan. It's commander is General David D. McKiernan. During the briefing Johnson mentioned "General Schloesser, my commanding general." Major General Jeffrey Schloesser is the commander of Combined Joint Task Force 101 in Afghanistan.

Col. Johnson has an "ISAF" patch on his shoulder, yet Task Force 101 is part of Operation Enduring Freedom, so I'm not quite sure how the chain of command works above Gen. Schloesser. I have yet to figure out the command structure for the units in Afghanistan. Be that as it may, please watch the briefing in its entirety.

This and other videos can be seen at the DODvClips website. The Pentagon Channel also has videos and news stories, so visit it as well.

The transcript is on the DefenseLink site.

There was much of interest, but we'll concentrate on how we are separating the populace from the enemy and how this is part of a "hearts and minds" strategy.

From Col. Johnson's opening statement:

COL. JOHNSON: Thanks. To the press corps, good morning. Thanks for attending today. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss our current status here in Afghanistan and to provide some insight from the perspective of a brigade-level task force that has actually been in the fight for the past eight months.

First, let me say that we recognize and appreciate the role all of you play in keeping the American public informed on the tremendous service of their sons and daughters in uniform.....

Combined Task Force Currahee is comprised of approximately 5,000 NATO soldiers, built around the 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It also includes three U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams or PRTs, one Czech Republic PRT and coordination with a Turkish PRT.

We also have unique enablers, such as a human terrain team, law enforcement professionals and interagency advisors at the brigade level from the Department of State, USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Next February and March, we will also be joined by two Agribusiness Development Teams from the great states of Indiana and Tennessee.

The precise composition of the task force has changed over time and, up until last month, also included a Polish battle group that now serves as a separate brigade-level task force in Ghazni Province.

We partnered to accomplish our mission with two brigades in the headquarters of the Afghan National Army 203rd Corps, the 2nd Zone of the Afghan Border Police, which is roughly a brigade-sized element, and our regional, provincial, district-level Afghan National Police, composed of almost 5,700 policemen.

Our operational area is part of the U.S.-led Regional Command East, led by CJTF 101, and currently includes the five provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Lowgar and Wardak, three of which border Pakistan. The under our -- the area under our responsibility is vast, covering almost 43,000 square kilometers.

The terrain is extreme, with an average elevation at around 6,000 to 7,000 feet, and mountains at 10,000) to 11,000 feet. I'm speaking to you from the province of Khost, which includes our lowest elevations, from 3,500 to 5,000 feet....

As I said, the focus of everything we do is the Afghan people, and our intent is to separate the people from the enemy physically, but more important, psychologically. The enemy we face is very complex, but can be broadly defined as any actor the draws the population away from the vision of legitimate government of Afghanistan. This could range from criminals to ideological Taliban led by Mullah Omar to power-based groups such as those led by Jallaludin Haqqani and Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, alliance groups such as the Taliban of Pakistan, led by Baitullah Mehsud, as well as to a variety of foreign fighter elements -- some organized, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or the Islamic Jihad Union -- to ultimately al Qaeda.

As we separate the Afghan people from this complex enemy, we also strive to connect them with the legitimate government of Afghanistan and also connect them with their Afghan national security forces. We do all of this from behind, ensuring that our number-one priority is the capacity-building of the institutions, so vital to convincing the people to reject any alternate vision.

We discussed the "Human Terrain Teams" last week in Col. Spiszer's Afghanistan briefing, and saw the important role that they play. Follow the link for detains. Spiszer also discussed the challenges posed by the extreme terrain in his area of responsibility also, even going so far as to call it his greatest challenge.

The most important statement, though, I think, was Johnson's statement that they were trying to " separate the people from the enemy physically, but more important, psychologically." When I saw this it brought back that most important aspect of winning a counterinsurgency, that of "hearts and minds."

Unfortunately, it's also probably the most misunderstood phrase in warfare. Here's the definitive explanation:

"Hearts" means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. "Minds" means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents.

Please, please, follow the link before that quote for the whole story.

Col Johnson continues:

Broadly speaking, our purpose here is to transform the environment in a way that increases the legitimacy of the Afghan government, at the provincial and the district level, an influences the people of Afghanistan to reject the ultimate vision offered by the anti-Afghan forces.

To secure the people and to accomplish our purpose, the preponderance of our effort has focused on conducting combined planning and operations, with our ANSF brothers of the ANA 203rd Thunder Corps as well as the regional police.

This is exactly what we did in Iraq. Before anything else can be done, the populace must be secured. Political and economic progress can only occur after security is achieved, not before.

It is also all straight out of the book then-Lt Gen. David Petraeus wrote (ok, he led the team that wrote it); the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24. FM-3-24 provided the theory behind everything that we did in the "surge" in Iraq. It doesn't take a genius to know that there are lessons here we can apply in Afghanistan.

As to why we are still at this point in Afghanistan, well that's a long story. Suffice it to say here as Lt. Col. (Dr) David Kilcullentold Charlie Rose "There has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years." For what it's worth, Kilcullen contributed to FM 3-24 and was senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus during most of the surge.

Bottom like though, is that now that we've won the kinetic phase of Iraq we should be able to send more troops to Afghanistan. Hopefully President Obama will beat up our "allies" to do their share, but I'm not holding my breath that they'll come through.

Col. Johnson again:

Quickly shifting to development, we all know that we cannot ultimately succeed here with military power alone, and it is critical to comprehensively approach all of our operations. Where we achieve separation from the enemy, we have to quickly follow with non-lethal effects, such as the infrastructure development necessary to improving the quality of life for Afghans.

In our area, our flagship development project is the $100 million, USAID-funded Khost to Gardez Road, which we call the K-G Pass Road. It will connect the Khost Province, where I'm at, with the rest of the interior of Afghanistan. It also cuts at the heart of the operational intent of our main enemy in this area, the Haqqani Network, which aims to isolate Khost and has a clearly stated objective to prevent the road's construction.

The K-G Pass Road is an example of the "hearts" aspect, of "persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success."

Also, if we can convince the farmers to grow wheat instead of poppies, we deny the Taliban et al a major source of funding. See the UN report here and the US government report here for details on how that is proceeding.

From the Q & A, here's how we're trying to increase agricultural production of food crops and entice the farmers to stop growing poppies:

Q Colonel, it's Jim Garamone, from American Forces Press Service. You mentioned in your introduction something about two teams -- two Agribusiness Development Teams -- I guess one from Tennessee and the other one I didn't quite catch. What are these teams? Are they military teams? Are they -- and what are they going to do for you when they arrive?

COL. JOHNSON: We're really excited about gaining these two Agribusiness Development Teams in our area of operations. They are multi-disciplinary teams that are provided by the National Guards from different states.

There have already been some states -- as a matter of fact, I used to have the province of Ghazni under my area of responsibility. And they currently have an Agribusiness Development Team from the great state of Texas. We are going to gain two additional ones, one from Indiana and one from Tennessee.

And they bring forward a significant amount of expertise in agriculture in a wide variety of ways, not only hydrology, farming, dairy to chicken farming. But as you know -- and I may not have described well in my opening statement, but Afghanistan is largely an agrarian society. But right now, it is largely subsistence farming. And there is a tremendous amount of capacity and potential that is lost every year and food security remains a prime concern over here.

These Agribusiness Development Teams are going to assist the Afghans through Afghan government as well as the development of business models to move from subsistence farming to really sustainable farming, where they have an entire system that allows them to increase production and take advantage of all of the great potential that is here.

They lose a lot of potential every year. And as an example, here in the province of Khost, much of the wheat that is produced here is -- you know, really provides excess capacity for the province, and most of it has to go to Pakistan for processing into flour and then is returned back to Afghanistan and sold at premium, especially when flour prices are high.

Q Colonel, how large are these teams?

COL. JOHNSON: They're roughly 50 to 80 soldiers strong. Much of it, however -- there is a security force element to it. But I would tell you at the heart of it is about 20 or so soldiers that have a significant amount of agricultural, you know, experience. And much of them -- and the entire agribusiness development team also has great backing with academia. They're tied to university systems and a large and growing collaborative network back in the United States that's going to help them, you know, solve problems while they're deployed over here.

Look, I know things aren't going as well as hoped in Afghanistan. I've discussed this in some detail before, so click on "Afghanistan" under "Categories" at right for more.

It is not at all clear, though, that had we not "been diverted' by Iraq we would have won in Afghanistan. Go back and follow the link to Kilcullen's interview with Charlie Rose. it's long but well worth it. Remember that it took the Brits 12 years or more to defeat the communist insurgents in Malaya. We didn't win in El Salvador in a year or two either. Fighting insurgencies is not like World War II. This is what they call "low intensity" war for a reason; it's not all bombs and bullets and it's not all over quickly.

But I also don't really care, as the last thing I want to do is argue over what we should have done. We are where we are. We need to finish up in Iraq and tackle Afghanistan anew. Let's get on with it.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 23, 2008

Creeping Sharia Update

Time for another update on how we're slowly losing our civilization to the jihad.

Losing? To the jihad? Impossible, you say?

Yes, we can lose. Let us not think that what we have will or can last forever. Our bombs and bullets are important, and surely we must win in Iraq and Afghanistan. But let's all be clear that our Muslim extremist enemies aren't simplistic enough to just come at us with their own bombs and bullets. Strykers with cage armor will help us win on foreign battlefields, but here at home we must open our eyes to what is going on around us, be strong enough to withstand the forces of political correctness when they try and denigrate us.

On with it, then.

Bye Bye, First Amendment?

The indomitable Nina Shea reports on two international conferences that were held to promote interfaith dialogue, tolerance, peace, love, understanding... you get the point. One, called the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and held under the auspices of the United Nations. Its 20 member states are without exception Islamic.

Reading the OIC's charter, their objectives all look quite unremarkable and innocuous. But are they?

According to Shea, the

(OIC) has pushed the U.N. to adopt a universal ban on defaming Islam. This measure would aim to curb the freedom not only of Danish cartoonists but also of scholars, writers, dissidents, religious reformers, human rights activists, and anyone at all anywhere in the world who criticizes Islam.

Not it all becomes clear. Their version of tolerance and respect are quite different than ours. Islam must be tolerated and respected; no criticism is allowed. Indeed, Shea says, the good king is trying to strike a bargain with the West; "Suppress criticism of Islam and you will be spared retaliatory violence."

The New York Post (h/t Islamist Watch) has more on what the OIC is up to:

Consider one key draft resolution at the event. Introduced jointly by the Philippines and Pakistan, it openly seeks to limit press freedoms. Sure, as read by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, the language pays lip service to the notion of freedom of expression.

But the document then goes on to emphasize the "special duties and responsibilities necessary for the respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, or of public health and morals."

Translation: Don't even think of publishing those Danish cartoons or anything even close to them. And forget about questioning authorities in places like, say, Riyadh.

Come now, is it really that bad? Yes it is

Consider one key draft resolution at the event. Introduced jointly by the Philippines and Pakistan, it openly seeks to limit press freedoms. Sure, as read by Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, the language pays lip service to the notion of freedom of expression.

But the document then goes on to emphasize the "special duties and responsibilities necessary for the respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, or of public health and morals."

Translation: Don't even think of publishing those Danish cartoons or anything even close to them. And forget about questioning authorities in places like, say, Riyadh.

All that "freedom of speech" stuff is, you know, so old fashioned.

The second conference was called A Common Word. This one was a bit more ecumenical, with Christians apparently being represented too, including some from the Vatican.

A Common Word might prove useful, if, as Shea notes, "open discussion of these texts is permitted in Muslim societies." Otherwise, it's all pointless. We are and should be free to examine any religion here in the West, and it must be that way in Muslim countries also.

What the Muslims want is obvious; they want to make it illegal to criticize Islam, even in the West. Shea further notes that this is not as inconceivable as it may seem, for "already Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Italy, without real debate, have taken tentative steps to deploy defamation, hate-speech, and even long-dormant blasphemy laws."

Yup. Just ask Bridget Bardot about the European version of "free speech."

How About A 0% Savings Account?

The most important aspect of "creeping sharia" is the attempt by Muslims to force their culture and laws on us. Let me be clear from the outset: Sharia (or "shariah")is a totalitarian system of laws that is antithetical to everything that we in the West hold dear. And for you leftists, no I don't want the book of Levicitus incorporated into our legal code (and I'm a conservative Christian evangelical), so don't make fools of yourselves by leaving comments about "Christian theocrats."

"Sharia Finance" is that system of banking and economy based on Sharia law. Follow the link and you'll learn all you need to know about it. You'd better, because it's coming to the United States:

The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.

As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.

Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."

Yes well if that's what it takes to recycle those petrodollars. Looks like the Wahhabist plan to undermine us is working out nicely. Walid Phares must be smiling... or shaking his head.

What's the big problem, you say? If you weren't good and didn't follow the link to Spencer's site above, take it from Frank Gaffney:

What makes the Shariah-Compliant Finance gambit both a big and troublesome "deal" is that, unlike these other religious traditions, Shariah's adherents are pursuing a global theocracy. They believe they must impose their agenda on everybody else, religious and secular alike, using violence if necessary. And SCF is explicitly described by leading practitioners as a complement to violent holy war: "financial jihad" and "jihad with money."

In other words, there is no such thing as free-standing Shariah-Compliant Finance. According to all of the recognized authorities and institutions of Islam, Shariah is a unified, indivisible program to which all faithful Muslims must adhere comprehensively.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Saudis & Co. are not simply seeking to insinuate Shariah-Compliant Finance into our capital markets. They are also advancing creation of a parallel Shariah-governed society through various other means.

One of these techniques will be in evidence when the Saudi monarch himself convenes a meeting in New York City in the hope of imposing Shariah blasphemy laws worldwide.

Get it now?

The Illusion of Safety

A recent case makes it clear that you don't have to actually make criticism of Islam outright illegal to get the same end result. Just this past summer, Random House was on it's way to publishing The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a book about Aisha, the child bride of Mohammed. Then they suddenly changed their mind. Was it because they thought it wouldn't sell? Unfortunately, no.

Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

"In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel," Perry said.

Ah yes, safely. Mustn't upset the Muslims, else some of them become, you know, violent.

And in this case although the decision was cowardly, the concern was warranted. In September the eventual publisher in the UK had his house firebombed.

One might take as the lesson here not to publish books critical of Islam, or you will find yourself targeted. Some will say that because of the firebombing, Random House was therefore correct. I would say that the very reason some find themselves targeted is because others refuse to stand firm in the face of threats. By backing down Random House only encouraged the extremists.

Fortunately, stout hearts at Beaufort Books in the United States and by Gibson Square in the United Kingdom published Ms Jones' book.

Parallel Legal Systems, Parallel Countries

Across the pond, they've decided to let the Muslims have their own court system. Only for family cases, they assure us. For now.

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims....

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.

So what's the problem if they want to have their own court system? Isn't it all voluntary? And don't the Jews have their own courts?

I rather think that we should all know by now that there's not much of anything that's voluntary under Muslim rule. The whole purpose of this is for Islamist community leaders to keep their people, and especially their women, in their place.

Then there's the whole aspect of social cohesion. Diversity yes, but let's draw some limits. At the end of the day we have to all recognize the same laws. Once you head down the path to parallel legal systems you effectively have two different countries.

As for the objection "aren't the Jews allowed their own courts," oh please. The Jewish community is hardly expanding, their culture is not at all based on coercion, and they don't threaten anybody and everyone knows it. More to the point, their system is not parallel to English law but simply complementary. And they're not really legally binding.

Londonistan it is, then.

No Weenies Allowed

Just thinking about this story makes he hungry. Again, from our friends in the British Isles we have this:

Some 300 modern-day Scouts (the word Boy was dropped in the 1960s) settled down to a meal prepared in a 'kitchen marquee' and consisting entirely of vegetarian food - so as not to offend any religious faiths.

Clare Haines, a spokesman for the Scout Association, said: "It was really to do with religion that we were not able to provide sausages and burgers and all that kind of food.

"We have been very careful to make sure food is provided to everybody's tastes and beliefs, so no one feels left out.

"They enjoyed their vegetarian meals, especially vegetable chilli, fresh salads and jacket potatoes."

Oh yes I'm sure they did.

Although the story didn't mention any particular religion, I've never heard of Christians objecting to burgers and weenies.

Not At Your Desks, You Don't!

Glad I don't live in Scotland. I always eat at my desk at work. Of course, we don't really have a lunchroom so it's not much of an option. This time the virus of political correctness strikes Scotland:

The NHS (National Health Service) in Lothian has advised doctors and other health workers not to have working lunches during the 30-day fast, which begins next month.

The health service's Equality and Diversity Officer sent an e-mail to all senior managers, giving guidance on religious tolerance. This includes ensuring Muslim staff are given breaks to pray, and time off to celebrate Eid at the end of Ramadan.

It is understood they also advised hospital managers to move food trolleys away from areas where Muslims work.

A Brief Time-Out

Lest you think I'm just picking on merry old England, au contraire. Just scroll down through my "creeping sharia" posts and you'll see I've gone after everything from Muslim footbaths at George Mason University to the Islamic Saudi Academy.

Ok, now back to picking on England

The Polls! The Polls!

Some people have bought into the standard PC line that "the vast majority of Muslims are just like us, it's only a few extremists causing all this trouble."

I wish.

Less than two years ago John Hood reported on a poll in the UK that showed that

...nearly four out of 10 of British Muslims aged 16 to 24 say they would prefer to live under Sharia law than under British law. That's according to a survey commissioned for the independent think tank Policy Exchange. "The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasized difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines," said the main author of the report.

Some 13 percent of the young British Muslims expressed admiration for "organizations like al Qaida."

Polls showing this sort of attitude are a dime a dozen, and have been reported on regularly. Either you have your eyes open, or you don't.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 21, 2008

Afghanistan Briefing - 18 November 2008 - Task Force Duke

This briefing is by Col John Spiszer, Commander, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. On Wednesday he spoke via satellite from Kabul with reporters at the Pentagon.

Col. Spiszer's unit is known as Task Force Duke, and they are responsible for security and stability operations in the northeastern area of Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border.

I am not entirely sure of the chain of command here, but Spiszer's unit is part of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), the NATO operation in Afghanistan. It's commander is General David D. McKiernan. I'm not sure if McKiernan reports up through NATO or CENTCOM. If it's the latter, his commanding officer is Gen. David Petraeus, who in turn reports directly to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If, on the other hand, ISAF reports directly up through NATO, I'm not sure, as their structure is more than I have time to figure out. Take the Wikipedia article on ISAF for what it's worth.

This and other videos can be seen at the DODvClips website. The Pentagon Channel also has videos and news stories, so visit it as well.

The transcript is on the DefenseLink site.

There was much of interest, but we'll concentrate on four topics; Provisional Reconstruction Teams, Human Terrain Teams (something new to me), relations with the Pakistani military, and the fractious nature of the insurgency.

From Col Spiszer's opening comment, where he discusses the PRTs (Provisional Reconstruction Teams):

COL. SPISZER: ...We have very high hopes for our area. We see great potential in N2KL. A lot of progress has already been made through CERP and by good coordination and the hard work of all of our PRTs, which just rotated over the past few weeks.

In FY 2008, they worked numerous projects to the sum of $160 million toward the advancement and development of Afghanistan.

All the provinces were very heavy into road building, as was Nangarhar, which was also focused on some of its irrigation projects and bridges. Kunar developed a trade school to teach Afghans necessary skills for carpentry, painting, road construction, welding and masonry. Nuristan has started a forest conservation program. And Laghman is working on its agricultural capabilities. It has three rivers that actually run through it, that have water in them year round.

PRTs bring civilian expertise to various projects designed to defeat insurgencies by providing essential services to the people. According to Wikipedia,

There are currently 12 US PRTs in Afghanistan. Within the PRTs in Afghanistan, there are typically three to five civilians; the remainder is made up of military forces. PRTs are backed by local and international security forces. PRTs were originally built and operated by US forces as means of facilitating reconstruction efforts in provinces outside the capital, Kabul. Following NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, command of some PRTs was transferred from the US to the nations under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

It would seem that we're trying to ramp them up, as there are job openings in PRTs listed at the State Dept website.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret) noted that they have been extremely successful in Iraq, and recommended that while we've been using them in Afghanistan too, they'd work a lot better there if the international community would step up and provide some help.

On to the Q & A, and something called a "human terrain team"

Q Colonel, Jeff Schogol with Stars and Stripes. I'm interested to know, are you working with a human terrain team, and if so, what value do they -- does the data they provide bring you?

COL. SPISZER: Well, yes, we do have a human terrain team, got a very good officer on my staff who in his training prior to this point had some good relationships with those guys as they formed out of Fort Leavenworth and out in Monterey. And it's a been a great value added to us. It provides kind of the critical element to our staff that we need to help us understand and gather some of the data that we need to get a full picture of the environment that we're operating in.

The counterinsurgency environment is all about the people, and understanding how to connect to the people, to provide them security and to provide them good governance. And without that understanding, we have a really hard time. And these guys are giving us some of that critical effort.

The thing that we've done mostly is to push them down to the lower unit so they could start interacting and engaging in gathering that information that we need, so that we can further our plans and coordination.

But there's definite value added, and I wish I had more of them, in fact.

Googling around, the best I can find as a definition in the short time for all this I have is again, alas, from Wikipedia:

The Human Terrain Team (HTT) program, begun in late 2003, is a controversial, experimental counter-insurgency effort of the United States military which embeds anthropologists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to help tacticians in the field understand local cultures. "Academic embeds" as the social scientists on teams are known,[3] help troops understand relevant cultural history, engage locals in a way they can appreciate, and incorporate knowledge about tribal traditions in conflict resolution.[2] In interviews, US military officers in Afghanistan have stated that the aim of the program is to improve the performance of local government officials, persuade tribesmen to join the police, ease poverty and protect villagers from the Taliban and criminals. The deputy director is James Greer.

Everything is controversial to someone. These teams sound like a pretty good idea, though. Googling around, I found this article that describes how one HTT (is that the acronym?) helped soldiers in Iraq "understand the cultural landscape." We also get this pearl:

Outside the military, however, the teams have sparked some controversy. Much of the opposition has come from people in the academic world, who, according to Prof. Matsuda, fear the Army will misuse the knowledge offered by social scientists.

"Some are saying anthropology can't be part of the Army without being corrupted," he said.

Prof. Matsuda said some of the concerns are valid, and some are motivated by knee-jerk antimilitarism. Regardless, he said, the stakes are too high in Iraq right now to sit on the sidelines.

Knee-jerk anti-military attitudes in academia? Perish the thought!

Last, we'll cover a few exchanges which touch on relations with the Pakistani military;

Q Colonel, this is Jim Garamone, from American Forces Press Service. Two questions, really. Do you have the coordination centers set up where you work with the Pakistani army and Frontier Corps? And second, what's the trend in violence right now? Has the winter sort of cut down on the number of violent episodes in your AO?

COL. SPISZER: ..But I have not seen a real reduction in the level of violent acts. But it -- you know, I compare it from last year to this year, and May and June were higher. July and August were lower. September was about the same, and October was actually higher. So this past month in my area it was actually higher, despite what was going on with the Pak military in the Bajaur Agency. I think part of that is because of what's going on. Initially we saw a drop when they started their operations, and now I think they might actually be pushing some guys back this way, which might account for some of the rise.

So it's hard to categorize when you compare from one year to the next, and it's also a matter of qualitative differences. Many of the contacts we see now are much less in duration or intensity as well, almost more just -- just to do something is kind of how I characterize it. They're out there just trying to do something. They haven't had very great effect on us at all, in fact, in the last month, despite the levels.

So overall we've had a slightly more this year than last year, but it's been different....

And later, Col Spiszer was asked about what he considered to be his greatest success and greatest challenge. For our purposes here we won't go through the questions. First his success

COL. SPISZER:...The biggest success I'll tell you straight up is the cooperation and coordination that's developing between the Pakistani military. I wish I had more resources to devote to it, and we will have more over the -- over the coming months, but it's also paving the way in this cooperation.

...from my perspective, what they've been doing over the last two months is a sustained offensive that's really put the pressure on the enemy in a way that I don't think, from what I've learned in the past, has happened before. So I think that's the biggest change.

Ok but we also learn that the Paks seem to want to shoot down our drones. I'm not at all saying that Col. Spiszer is being anything less than completely honest. It's just that the Paks are cooperating in some areas, but certainly not in others. I doubt their military is even completely under the control of the government.

And although it doesn't touch on our topic directly, his greatest challenge is of course relevant to understanding the overall situation there:

COL. SPISZER:...Well, I -- you know, along the border, terrain's a pretty big impediment. (Laughs.) Everything else seems to pale beside the terrain.

We've got -- let me take a look at my -- 470 kilometers of -- (audio break) -- N2KL and virtually all of it's above 5,000 feet. So it can't get much worse than that. And then you've got about 10 kilometers of mountains stretching into Pakistan and 10 kilometers or so stretching into Afghanistan. So it's a pretty big mountain range with very few roads and trails through it.

And then, like other places, the enemy's actions as he goes through there and attacks different sides, it makes it hard for them to trust each other and work together because they're never sure who's who. It's very difficult. So the enemy's actions themselves in targeting the border posts make it the next most difficult thing, I think.

I don't know which would be worse, the heat of Iraq being enough to fry your brain, or the mountaintop thin-air cold of Afghanistan.

This next exchange highlights the complexity of fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan. As with Iraq, there is no completely unified insurgency. Neither country is like Vietnam, whereby our enemy was quite unified.

U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24 speaks to how an insurgency can be quite different from one village to the next, and as such there is no "one size fits all" counterinsurgency strategy. Commanders must be able to evaluate each situation and adapt as needed.

Q Can I follow up(David Morgan of Reuters)? If you could -- can you please tell us what sort of volumes you're seeing in terms of militants coming across the border? And are they Afghan, Taliban returning to Afghanistan? Are they foreign fighters? Who are they?

COL. SPISZER: Okay, well, if I saw them all, they wouldn't be around anymore. So I can't give you real definitive figures on what I see happening there. We have a very broad mix up in this area.

In the south, we have what's called the Taliban front, or, correction, the Tora Bora front, which is kind of successors of the Hezb-i-Islami Unis Kalis (ph) faction. We also have a lot of drug smuggling. Then as you work your way up to the eastern side, we have TNSM, which is a Pakistani -- Islamic fundamentalist group that's associated with the Pakistan Taliban. Then we also have Taliban and we also have LET (ph) the Kashmiri separatists.

And they all kind of come across and do different things. Some of them come over here and basically train. They fight us to train to go do things in Pakistan or in Kashmir. Some of them come here because they're paid to. So there's a lot of different reasons and different groups here that don't coordinate their activities very well, which in fact gives us an advantage here.

But I don't see large numbers of foreigners. We hear lots of rumors of foreigners. And you got to remember, up in Nuristan, a foreigner is anybody not from that valley. So it gets very hard to sort some of that stuff out, because it's very isolated. But, you know, and a foreigner is definitely a Pakistani or Punjabi, which we -- is not what we're thinking of when we talk about it. We're talking about Arabs and Chechens and Uzbeks. We hear about them quite a bit, but finding good, solid evidence is very rare.

We face a lot of problems in Afgthanistan, but at least one of them isn't a unified insurgency, which made Vietnam that much harder. Winning here, I think, is going to take longer than Iraq.

Posted by Tom at 10:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 20, 2008

Iraq Briefing - 17 November 2008 - Impact of the SOFA in Sadr City

This briefing is by Colonel John Hort and Dr. Theodore Andrews. Col. Hort is Commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Dr. Andrews is the leader of the Baghdad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team 3. They spoke via satellite from Forward Operating Base (War) Eagle with reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

The 4th ID headquarters Multi-National Division-Baghdad. it's area of responsibility is Baghdad and the surrounding cities and towns. The 4th ID, and Colonel Hort, deployed to Iraq in December of 2007. Dr. Andrews took up his responsibilities in March of 2008.

Col. Hort reports to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commanding general of the 4th ID and MNF-Baghdad. Hammond, in turn, reports to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of Multi-National Corps - Iraq. Austin reports to General Odierno, commander of Multi-National Force - Iraq, who on September 16 replaced his one-time boss Gen. David Petraeus in this position. Odierno reports to Gen. Petraeus, commander of CENTCOM, who in turn reports to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

This and other videos can be seen at the DODvClips website. The Pentagon Channel also has videos and news stories, so visit it as well.

The transcript is on the DefenseLink site.

Although much was discussed, there were three main topics covered during the course of this briefing. One was the dramatic reduction in violence caused by the neutralization of the "special groups" criminals, and the Jaish al-Madhi (or Jaish al-Mahdi) militia (which was created by Muqtada al-Sadr). Second was the transitioning of the Sons of Iraq from an independent force into the security services, and third was the impact of the recently signed SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement). Although all are important, after reviewing the Colonel's opening remarks we'll concentrate on the SOFA.

From Col Hort's opening remarks

COL. HORT: Thank you, Bryan, and good morning, everybody. Colonel John Hort, as Bryan said, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.

But first of all, we've got the Adhamiya District on the east side of the river on the northeast side of Baghdad as well as Sadr City. So they're two very large districts -- Fort Baghdad, about 4 million strong, in terms of the population density. About 40 percent of the Baghdad population kind of resides in our area of responsibility, as well as one Iraqi army division, the 11th Iraqi Army Division, which comprises the 42nd Iraqi Brigade as well as the 44th Iraqi Brigade that partners with us in the security component of our responsibilities over here.

Significant amount of progress, as I'm sure that you all know, has been made in the last year in terms of security, as well as the local governance and economic and essential services progress that we're seeing here on the ground.

To start off with Adhamiya briefly, we've -- when I got here, we were averaging roughly around six to seven attacks a day, which was actually down from the 14 attacks they were -- they were seeing prior to the surge. Since I've been here, in about a year now, we're down to less than one attack a day in the Adhamiya District, which is primarily a Sunni area, just on the river. And then it kind of transcends over to the Shi'a side as you move farther to the east. So a significant reduction in violence in that part of our area of responsibility. And I attribute that largely to what the Iraqi security forces have been able to do over the last year as we partner with them in defeating al Qaeda, which tends to be our biggest threat over here, as well as some special groups of criminals that do, in fact, operate in the Adhamiya district.

What I would call our main effort -- Ted and I's main effort -- is Sadr City, comprised of about 2.5 million people, as most of you might be familiar with; a large population density -- probably the largest density of Iraqis living in one area in Baghdad and probably all of Iraq; prior to the March time frame a very very kinetic area to operate in, not only for coalition forces but for Iraqi security forces.

But through the March-April-May time frame, a significant amount of combat operations were conducted in this area against the special- groups criminals, and some Jaish al-Madhi militia, that resulted in the cease-fire that you probably heard about in May that has really turned the corner, in our estimate, in terms of the special groups being significantly disrupted over here and, some would argue, actually defeated in some cases.

But they're certainly on the run inside and outside of Sadr City....

Most of the key leaders fled around the middle of May, went to various countries or south of Baghdad, and today we're seeing some of those individuals try to make it back, but what's different -- what's different today that they did not see before is that they are, in fact, fugitives now. The Iraqi army is in pursuit of them, attacking them, capturing them and bringing them to justice. And I think that's one of the most significant changes that I have seen in my 12 months, is the Iraqi security forces' willingness and capability to actually go after some of the special-groups criminals that really did not have that to worry about, about seven months ago....

We've been able affect health clinics, schools, parks, to some extent, the electricity in this part of Sadr City as well as trash and sewage, which has been a major focus. And that has worked extremely well, not only in the security component but also giving the people a sense of normalcy and bringing this part of the city back to life.

And it's also had an impact on the government of Iraq, as they have watched kind of our support to the local government down here, in the south part of Sadr City, also start to see some progress up in the northern parts or the parts beyond the gold wall, as we call it.

So once again we see the success of the surge. Not only did it quell the violence, but it has led to political progress. The Iraqi security forces are picking up the pace, and local Iraqi governments are stepping up. As Col Hort noted at the end, there's a cascading effect whereby the central government is affected by success at the local level. Some have said that it progress could only happen from the top down, but this has been disproven by facts on the ground.

Next was the Q & A between Hort, Williams, and the assembled reporters. As mentioned above, we'll concentrate on those questions that touched on the SOFA.

A Status of Forces Agreement is a legal document that provides the legal basis for one country to keep military forces in another. It also covers all manner of legal issues that pertain to individuals and property, both those of regular military personnel and civilian contractors. For example, it covers whose court system tries a soldier or civilian if they are accused of A or B crime. It covers damages that might be made to civilian property by military vehicles in the course of exercises or warfighting. The United States has a SOFA with every country where we have troops.

As everyone knows, a long-awaited SOFA was signed between the governments of the United States and Iraq over the weekend. I have neither the time, the inclination, nor the expertise to analyze the details and all that they mean. That said, The Washington Post has a useful backgrounder(and see this Post story. The Iraq Oil Report claims to have a leaked copy of the agreement itself, though I'll let readers judge the reliability of it for themselves.

So far, Maliki's cabinet has unanimously approved the SOFA, which is good news. Now it must go before the Parliament, and like in any democracy there will be at least some disagreement.

Let's go to the Q & A:

Q Colonel, this is David Morgan from Reuters... The question is this: Given the Sadrist opposition to the SOFA agreement, how do you assess the threat of violence on that count? And is it possible that the May cease-fire could be vulnerable to violence coming from opposition to the SOFA?

COL. HORT: What -- my assessment right now of that particular part of the insurgency is that it is -- it is severely disrupted. As I mentioned, a lot of the leaders left, and they -- we've seen some return of the leadership, either from different countries like Iran or Syria or wherever they fled to, or in parts from the south that they've come back. But they have not all come back. And so that part of the leadership -- at least 50 percent, in my estimation -- is still missing that we saw prior to the May cease-fire. So the leadership itself is not completely intact yet to really affect a large-scale uprising or anything that we have seen before. We still watch that very closely.
...

Q Ken Fireman from Bloomberg News. A question for both Colonel Hort and Dr. Andrews. It now looks like there's a good chance that the SOFA will take effect, given what happened in the cabinet yesterday. If it does take effect, how will that affect the environment -- the political and the security environment in which both of you and your people operate? And how will it affect your day- to-day operations?

COL. HORT: Did you want to --

DR. ANDREWS: Let me just -- excuse me, let me just take an initial swing at that. I don't see any immediate effect on our operations. Our -- (audio break) -- in promoting governance, promoting economic development, promoting essential services for the people.

On this day-to-day level, the SOFA is not a big issue, not with the local-level politicians with whom we're working most closely. It's obviously a piece of the background news and people, I think, will be a little bit apprehensive in the day or so after it, but there's no great apprehension of major problems.

The election is coming up. A lot of the leaders down at the provincial level are really concerned about that. A lot of them are going to be running for the election. And they're also really worried about how are they going to get services in their area. And that's the focus of things, not the SOFA.

COL. HORT: I would just say from the -- taking the security standpoint as we look at SOFA -- (audio break) -- obviously been able to read, kind of, exactly what all of the points and pieces of it are, but as I understand it, it will probably look something like a transition period for coalition to move more to a perimeter type of, you know, support to the Iraqi security forces inside of Baghdad.
...

And so, I think there will be some transition that we have to work through if that's, in fact, where's going. But in general right now, with the exception of Sadr City, we're kind of already moving in that direction, even prior to the SOFA with the Iraqi army taking more and more responsibility, more and more of the lead, particularly the targeting of the bad people -- and I talked about, the special groups, but also the al Qaeda that is not -- is still somewhat out there within certain parts of our area. So I don't -- I don't see a significant change.

We do have some joint security stations and combat outposts that are inside the city that we would probably have to push more out towards the perimeter of the city, but I think that we can work through all of that. And I just will say that the Iraqi army today, more so than when I was an adviser, has got a tremendous amount of confidence in themselves and is doing more and more each and every day that we work with them.

Q For Dr. Andrews, you said that some people in your area may feel a little bit of apprehension about the SOFA. Could you specify what the source of their apprehension would be? What will they be concerned about?

DR. ANDREWS: No, I think -- I'll backtrack a little bit from that, but the issue's that they hear the news stories and just wonder whether things might happen. A few days ago we met with some leaders and they said: Oh, did you hear, the -- you know, that the cabinet had made this decision? Do you think anything is going to happen? And we could say we don't think anything serious will happen.

So it's an issue in the news. People here have been through a lot over the last few years, and they've got very -- you know, they have paid, almost all of them, some sort of personal price. So they've got an obvious concern, but I don't think there's anything specific that they know that we don't know about, of any great danger, that's going to arise simply by the signing of this.

I'll take these two at their word because it makes sense that the signing of the SOFA would cause little immediate effect in Sadr City. It will be interesting to see what happens in future briefings, especially by senior commanders such as Lt. Gen. Austin or Gen. Odierno.

As for the larger picture, an article in yesterday's Washington Times says that the Iraqi PM sees the pact in terms of restoring sovereignty. Iraq is an "honor society," and as such image and perception are all-important. All people want to run their own affairs, and the Iraqis are no different. What is different between them and post-WWII Germany and Japan is that we beat the latter two into oblivion before occupying their countries. Their people were so war-weary they were in no mood to resist whatever treaty or constitution we foisted on them. Our experience in Iraq has been dramatically different, to the point where the Iraqis are asserting themselves sooner.

From our perspective, there certainly are problems with the SOFA. First, although our troops will be tried in our military courts for any alleged crimes they commit while in Iraq, our contractors will have no such protection. Second, we cannot use Iraq as a base for operations against other countries. Third, all U.S. troops must be out by 2011.

Even with these I'm not as worried as some. All this is renegotiable and it won't be for a year or so before we know where things are really headed.

The editors at National Review see mostly good in the pact, saying that it's successful conclusion is "a blow to the schemers in Iran -- and to their cat's-paw, Moqtada al-Sadr -- who did all they could to torpedo the pact." True enough.

On the other side, Andrew McCarthy, also writing at National Review, sees cause for worry. He says that "behind the smiles" lies the inconvenient fact that "the Iraqis don't like us," and he cites polls to support his thesis. To McCarthy, winning is not about establishing a democracy, it is about defeating radical Islam. Because of the terms of the SOFA and leaks as to how the negotiations went, he concludes that the "Iraqis are more concerned about prosecuting Americans than embracing them."

Readers of this blog know that I have a lot of respect for McCarthy, and time will tell whether he's right or not. For now I think he's being a bit too pessimistic. Recall the Nov 10 briefing by Maj. Gen. Martin Post (USMC) in which addressed the issue of whether "the Iraqis" want us to leave or not and said that

Candidly, it depends upon who you talk to. In some cases, if you talk to the local man on the street, they'll look at us and say, "Hey, I think we're ready for you to go."

If you talk to the -- the leadership -- you know, the IP leadership or the Iraqi army leadership or the provincial leadership, they would probably tell you, "Hey, we need you here for some period of time longer." Not really ever saying, "We need you here for one year or two years," but I think we're still, if you would, that security blanket for them, in the -- standing behind them....

This makes sense. Things could go either way in Iraq but right now I'm cautiously optimistic.

More than that, though, I've always taken the long view with regard to Iraq. I know this sounds terribly Wilsonian (not to mention neoconservative!) but I do think that a pluralistic society in Iraq will serve American and indeed Western interests. It's not so much about this or that policy, or whether they allow us to have bases on their soil, but whether it changes their attitude towards the relationship of government to the individual and the role of religion. Sure, Islam is enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution, and I'm less than pleased about it. This may well though prove to have been a temporary measure to satisfy entrenched interests. The enemy of radical Islam or jihadism is pluralistic societies more than it is military bases or particular policies. I think McCarthy is wrong in that there is a link between democracy (or liberty or a pluralistic society, choose your term) and defeating jihadism.

Further, although in the long run having the Iraqis "like us" would be nice, in the short term it's not the point. Much of counterinsurgency revolves around winning the "hearts and minds" of the populace, and note that this is probably the most misunderstood term in all of warfare. From the book that then Lt. Gen Petraeus wrote (ok he led the team that wrote it), the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24

"Hearts" means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. "Minds" means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Before we end, let's look at two other exchanges that highlight issues of importance. In this first one, in response to a question Dr. Andrews discusses something that goes to the heart of counterinsurgency warfare:

DR. ANDREWS: I would just add to that that the biggest problem that we would face is not the -- the biggest problem we would face is that people sometimes feel a little bit hopeless after all the years of fighting that they've had. And the thing we're trying to push them for is not to feel that, not to feel helpless, to let them know they've got institutions that can work to represent their interests, to push their interests. And we're trying to show that there's benefits of working in a democratic way, and I think the vast majority of people in our area get that. So there are services, there is pressure to get more services and that's -- (audio break).

Read this post at Small Wars Journal for the complete explanation.

Beating insurgents is about a lot more than what the military calls "kinetic operations." That's important, to be sure, but in the long run you can't shoot your way out of an insurgency. Sure, violent military operations are important, and no one is saying otherwise. But in the end you have to give the people a reason to side with the government other than that you'll kill them if they don't. This is where the "hearts" part of the phrase comes into play.l

See then-Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno's "exit interview" of February 2008. Odierno said of the Iraqi people that

As long as they (the Iraqi people) feel safe... they will continue to support us... if they feel rejected by their government.. that will be a turning point on what decision they make.

Dr. Andrews and his team are trying to make sure the Iraqi people believe that the government has their best interests at heart. Only if they do will final victory and a stable Iraq be assured.

And speaking of how the people see their situation, this last exchange is important:

Q Okay. This is Joe Tabet with Al Hurra. Quick question. Based on your assessment, how do you see the current status of Jaish al-Mahdi, and how do you see its future?

COL. HORT: ...talking with the Iraqi military that operates a lot inside the parts of Sadr City that I don't go to, they are not seeing the militia that we used to see before, which was brandishing weapons, controlling neighborhoods, extorting money.

And one of the true signs that we see in change is the Jamila market. This market is inside Sadr City. It's the largest market in Baghdad, and I think in Iraq, if I'm not mistaken. It basically distributes out to all different parts of the city, as well as receives the goods in.

So it's a large, large market that supports, you know, millions of people in the city of Baghdad. That market used to be the primary funding -- financing of the Jaish al Mahdi militia, as well as parts of the special groups. Today, that's a free market, controlled by the market owners, the businessmen, as well as those that lease the stalls in that area, and we're not seeing any extortion at all. So that's a sign of progress that the Jaish al Mahdi militia are trying to step away from that type of nefarious activity that they were doing before.

Free markets, owned and operated by Iraqis, largely free of corruption, and where people feel safe, will save Iraq as much as any round from an M-4.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2008

Book Review - Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad

On February 26, 1993, Americans were stunned to learn that a bomb exploded in the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring 1,042. Scenes of panic were on our televisions, and for awhile Americans wondered if we weren't going to suffer a wave of terror as what plagued Europe in the 70s and the Middle East to this day.

Within a week, though, our law enforcement scored what seemed like a stunning triumph against what seemed to be stunningly incompetent terrorists. On March 4 one of the terrorists, Mohammad Salameh, was arrested as he attempted to retrieve his security deposit on the Ryder truck they had rented for the attack.

This in turn led to other arrests, and before too long it looked as if law enforcement had the entire thing wrapped up. I myself remember thinking that it we must either have the world's dumbest terrorists or the world's best law enforcement. From what I remember most other Americans thought the same thing.

But what if we had known that the FBI had had an informant inside the organization that carried out the attacks months before they occurred?

And what if we had found out that the informant had warned the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force; FBI and local law enforcement) that this organization was actively training jihadists in guerrilla tactics for a campaign of assassination and bombing? Or that they were actively experimenting with explosives? And was apparently well-funded?

And despite all this, the JTTF ordered the informant to withdraw from the organization?

We'd have been outraged, that's what.

This and more is told by Andrew C. McCarthy in Willfull Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

McCarthy is in a position to know what he's talking about, because at the time of the bombing he was the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against the masterminds behind it, most notably the "Blind Sheikh", Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven others.

McCarthy's involvement only came after the 1993 bombing, so he was not a part of the missteps with the confidential informant. Nor did he prosecute the underlings who carried out the attack. His job was to go after the terror masters. He did, and his efforts led to the conviction of all of them. The Blind Sheikh was the most important, and dangerous, terrorist ever tried in the United States.

If McCarthy's book was only about the bombing, investigation, and trial of the accused, it would be an interesting but not a terribly important book. As it is, however, McCarthy goes well beyond a simple narrative of the investigation and trial. Much of the book is a discussion of the nature of the jihadist threat that we face.

The Blind Sheikh

Omar Abdel Rahman was born in Egypt in 1938, and lost his sight as a child to diabetes. Early on recognized as something of a prodigy, impressed his teachers early on by memorizing the entire Quran. He attended the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he obtained a degree in Qur'anic studies. He was recognized as a specialist in Islamic law, authorized to issue fatwas and binding legal opinions. Rahman, by now called the "Blind Sheikh" adopted the most radical views, calling for the imposition of Sharia law wherever possible.

The Blind Sheikh saw America, Israel, and secular Arab governments as his main enemies, and called for the overthrow of all of them. Nothing the United States did on the behalf of Muslims anywhere held any water for him. Mubarak, and Sadat before him were mere puppets of America. As for Israel, well, "Zionist" conspiracies were everywhere.

The Blind Sheikh's entire history is long and complicated, but suffice it to say that he developed ties to seemingly every radical and terrorist group in Egypt. He even led fundraising tours for MAK, or Mektab al-Khidmat, the organization from which al-Qaeda would grow.

While in Egypt he became the spiritual leader of an organization called Gama'at al-Islamia, or simply the Islamic Group. Formed in 1973, it is considered an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and is closely tied to al-Qaeda. Their original motivation was to overthrow the secular government of Egypt, but as their ties and size grew, they "branched out" into full-fledged jihad against the West as well.

The Blind Sheikh's method was to issue fiery denunciations of, say the government of Egypt, backed by the relevant Islamic scholarship, but stop short of calling for outright violence. He simply let his followers figure out what he meant. Imprisoned for a time in Egypt, amazingly enough he beat the charges in court by simply quoting Islamic law to the effect that it was every Muslim's duty to engage in jihad against anything anti-Islamic. Since Sadat's government was openly secular, the court was forced to admit that Rahman was right.

He entered the United States on a tourist visa in 1990, this despite his name being on our terrorist watch list. Deciding to stay here, his lawyers successfully fought off deportation orders. He brought his organization with him, and, while continuing to issue orders to his followers in Egypt, also started to pursue jihad against the United States.

The result was the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Worse than that, his organization was working toward bombing five New York City landmarks: the United Nations building, an FBI office, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. It was for this conspiracy, as well as the World Trade Center attacks, for which he and his co-defendants were convicted.

Willful Blindness

On Nov 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir David Kahane was shot and killed by El Sayyid Nosair after giving a speech in Manhattan. A subsequent search of Nosair's apartment revealed what would seem to be a treasure a trove of documents. Box after box of notebooks, assassination manuals, handwritten notes, and jihadi literature was removed. Amazingly, the authorities ignored all of it. They had convinced themselves that Nosair was a loner, and no further investigation was required.

It was an act of willful blindness. The reality was that Nosair was part of a jihadist conspiracy led by the Blind Sheikh.

The Informant

Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer living in the United States, had infiltrated the Blind Sheikh's organization for the best of motives; he believed that jihadists had perverted the religion and he wanted them exposed and convicted. His undercover activities started in 1991. He'd even met Rahman on several occasions, and had so thoroughly convinced him that he, too, was a jihadist that the conspirators had asked him not only to design their bombs but to help build them also.

Therein lie the problem. The JTTF did not want its informant actually building bombs. "Imagine the liability," they said, if Salem engaged in bomb building, and then the jihadists escaped the FBI's surveillance and were successful in exploding their bombs. After all, even the FBI does not have magical powers, but rather limited resources, and such a thing was eminently possible. Thus the decision to withdraw Salem from the jihadist organization altogether.

In retrospect it was clearly the wrong decision, but given the attitudes at the time, an understandable one.

What outraged McCarthy is not just that the JTTF ordered Salem off the case, but that they dropped the investigation altogether. As he points out, they still could have conducted surveillance and used other investigative techniques.

After the World Trade Center bombing, Salem was allowed to re-infiltrate the terrorist organization. He was so successful in collecting evidence that long story short, eventually the Blind Sheikh and his fellow jihadists were all arrested.

A "Perverted Islam"?

In planning his strategy for prosecuting the Blind Sheikh (as McCarthy calls him throughout the book), McCarthy realized that he would have to present a clear motive to the jury. Jurors, he explains, are hesitant to convict on forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony alone. They want to know why the accused did what he or she did. Without a convincing motive, jurors will tend towards giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.

It was clear that the Blind Sheikh was motivated by jihad. For years he had railed against the secular Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, and ever since moving to the United States had taken up the cause against us here.

The question to McCarthy was not how to present this to the jury, for that was easy. The danger was how he would cross-examine the Blind Sheikh should he take the stand. He knew he couldn't engage in a wide-ranging debate about Islam with the Blind Sheikh, for the latter was a world renowned scholar on the subject. Rather, he would try to trip him up on a few points of Islamic theology, showing that the Blind Sheikh had twisted the true, peaceful, nature of Islam into something violent and hateful. After all, we've all been assured by "moderates" that Islam is a religion of peace.

But as he studied Islam, he came to realize that it was the Blind Sheikh who had the better understanding of Islam. McCarthy concluded that "Islam is a dangerous creed" that threatens Western values. The way the religion is practiced today, it's hard to disagree.

As it was, the Blind Sheikh never took the stand, so no cross examination occurred. But if it had, McCarthy concluded, neither he nor anyone else would have been able to show that the Blind Sheikh had twisted Islam into something it wasn't.

The Pre-9/11 Mentality

Much of the book details the comedy of errors that our various government bureaucracies made in dealing with terrorist suspects in the 1980s and 90s. Time and again agencies such as the CIA, INS, and FBI didn't communicate with each other, so that while one would list a particular person as a terrorist suspect and flag him as "no entry" to the United States, the others would not get the message and the suspect would be granted a visa. Four times, for example, the Blind Sheikh applied for visas to enter the United States, and on only one occasion was he denied entry, this despite his history of radicalism if not outright support of terrorism.

Astoundingly, the situation did not improve even after the 1993 WTC bombings, when all of the bumbling was revealed. "We caught them; problem solved." was the prevailing attitude. The public perception was that we were on top of our game and no fundamental changes need be made.

Islam and Terror

At some point during the investigation, it became clear to McCarthy that there was nothing "more elemental to Islamic terrorism than the radical Muslim ideology that fuels it." In order to prove motive it simply had to be addressed. From a legal standpoint it was more important to show that a criminal act affected interstate commerce, for example, than to show that a Salafitst interpretation of Islam was behind it all.

The root of modern Islamic terror, and the primary influence on The Blind Sheikh, can be found in the 13th and 14th centuries, most particularly in the writings of Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymayyah (1263-1328). As also explained by Walid Phares in Future Jihad, Ibn Taymayyan (spellings vary), concluded that the reason that the reason the Mongols had been able to sack Baghdad itself and end the Abbasid dynasty in 1258 was that Muslims had ceased to properly follow the dictates of Allah. The solution, then, was to purify Islam and eliminate or purge it of those who in his opinion were not practicing the religion properly.

To carry this out he developed the doctrine of the takfir, which is essentially the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition. This would later develop into the Salafist movement which would in turn spawn Wahhabism, which in turn spawned al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Ibn Taymayyah led what was essentially a "back to the Dark Ages" movement. Gone was enlightened or "progressive" thought. While Europe would go from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and Enlightenment a few centuries later, the Muslim world did just the opposite. Taymayyah's ideas have dominated radical thinking ever since.

Central to Salafist/Takfiri thinking is the concept of the jihad. Some Westerners have attempted to distinguish between a "greater" and "lesser" Jihad, seeing the first as defensive, or good, and the second as offensive, or bad. The "lesser" jihad, in this thinking, is a vestige of the old days, and is no more. The current, "greater" jihad, is peaceful and used strictly for defensive purposes.

Unfortunately, the idea of a greater and lesser jihad is about as accurate as the portrayal of honor among the Corleone family in the Godfather series. It's good entertainment, but with little or no basis in reality. Even if jihad is strictly defensive, the radicals have been able to twist any and all circumstances into "defense of the faith." This even to the point where resisting the spread of Islam is said to be an attack on the faith and requiring a "defensive" jihad.

Others have tried to portray jihad as a "peaceful inner struggle" one has with oneself in order to purify oneself for God. As with the idea of a "greater" and "lesser" jihad, this is a notion mostly held by Westerners and some Muslims who live in the West. It is not held by many Islamic scholars.

The reality is that jihad is the central tenant that drives Islamic terrorists, and its goal is the worldwide imposition of Islamic law. Issues such as the Palestianian-Israeli conflict are tangential.

The other major influence on the Blind Sheikh was Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of modern jihadist thinking and the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood until his death in 1966. Qutb's focus was on replacing secular Arab governments with Islamic ones, which would be governed by Sharia law. As an Egyptian, his main focus was on Gamal Abdul Nasser. After Nasser died in 1970, the Blind Sheikh took up the cause of overthrowing first Anwar Sadat, and then Hosni Mubarak.

Moderate, progressive, Muslims want the entire concept of jihad to just go away. As McCarthy found out while preparing his cross examination of the Blind Sheikh, they have mostly proven themselves unable to debate with the scholars, virtually all of whom see violent jihad as part of the religion.

What attracts followers is the ideology of radical Islam. What keeps them there is success, and what drives them away is lack of success. It's the "strong horse/weak horse" thing, and so each victory fills