Juan Cole has a fascinating analysis of the latest Bin Laden audio tape and why he is not convinced it is genuine.  See link.  As Cole notes Bin Laden has not been seen on video since October 2004 and the new tape has generally been ignored in the Arab world.  If Cole’s analysis is correct, Bin Laden’s decline also serves as a lesson on why terrorists with no practical positive plan struggle to maintain support.

Bin Laden at one point attracted genuine sympathy and support in the Arab world.  He was the rich kid who abandoned his wealth to fight a jihad against two superpowers back to back.  The perceived impotence of their regimes against Israel and frustration at the lack of political and economic opportunities contributed to his support.  But Al Qaeda never had a serious or practical program to offer.  Unlike Hamas and Hezbollah whose goals are narrower and nationalistic, Al Qaeda has the unrealistic goals of restoring the  pan-Islamic Caliphate.  The entity Al Qaeda wanted existed only in its imagination.  Of the first four caliphs, three were assassinated.  The distance from the capital of Damascus (and later Baghdad) to the extremities of the Empire (Spain and Morocco in the West and the Indus River in the East) meant that provincial governors would always have a lot of local autonomy.  The “golden age” of the famous Harun al-Rashid also marked the disintegration of the empire as Baghdad could not hold effective sway over such a vast region.

Far less ambitious projects like the union of Egypt and Syria (which barely lasted 3 years) crumbled in the 20th century.  Needless to say, no Arab state took Al Qaeda’s goals seriously.  Ultimately, all Al Qaeda offered was terrorism against its presumed enemies with involuntary martyrdom offered to any Muslims who happened to be in the way.  The terror attacks in Jordan, Zarqawi’s blood lust in Iraq that helped give rise to the Sunni Awakening and the terror attacks in Pakistan last year that forced the Pakistani army to respond with lethal force, all have dimmed the rosy glow some had for this band of thugs.

While vigilance must be maintained and bands of murderous fanatics are still out there, such groups do not present and existential threat to the American way of life (unless we do the job for them).  As Fareed Zakaria noted a few weeks back overreaction plays into their hands (see link).  Meanwhile, the location of the chief evildoer (as George W. Bush once named him) is somewhat of a mystery.  As Cole notes he increasingly appears to be an irrelevancy.

Subscribe to Rashtrakut by Email

Barack Obama’s speech yesterday threw no surprises. (Transcript here).   More troops are headed to Afghanistan (see previous post here) which has caused heartburn on the left.  There are assurances that this is not an indefinite mission and troops are supposed to start coming back by 2011 which has caused conniptions on the right.  There have been the expected harrumphs about fighting corruption and getting the Afghans ready to step up when the Americans leave (original post on Afghanistan from this blog here).

What is unclear whether this is feasible.  If the Afghan army is still a figment of imagination (previous post here) and the Karzai government remains as incompetent (both very likely scenarios) will the United States really start withdrawing to the chorus from Republicans that Obama “lost” Afghanistan?  Hopefully the answer is yes, because the prospect of an American withdrawal may be the only way to jolt the Afghan government to action.

What happens if the Taliban withdraws to its safe havens in Quetta?  Will Pakistan, which only reluctantly turned its guns on its homegrown Taliban, start another fight inside its western border in a province (Baluchistan) already brimming  on the verge of open rebellion?

What about the various NATO allies who have started withdrawing their troops?  Obama’s address noted that Al Qaeda’s attacks had targeted them as well.  Will that be sufficient to overcome the war weariness in those countries? Germany’s top general and deputy defense minister were forced to resign last week over a botched air strike and there are calls for a German withdrawal by 2011.

A successful solution is not entirely in American hands and relies a great deal on lady luck (and on wobbly Pakistan doing its bit).  Obama’s speech was a sober and realistic appraisal of the situation on the ground, but perhaps too optimistic (as such speeches always are) about success in the future (See Juan Cole’s take here).  The “success” of the Iraqi surge may have raised hopes of similar success in Afghanistan, but these are two entirely different societies with very different problems.  The future in Afghanistan remains murky.

Subscribe to Rashtrakut by Email

A follow up on a previous post.  There is yet more chatter that the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar is trying to distance itself from the nihilistic campaign of Al Qaeda.  With the American ambassador in Kabul now joining the critics of an expanded military presence in Afghanistan and with Hamid Karzai showing no signs of mending his ways this could enable the United States to cut bait on the Afghan quagmire and focus primarily on Al Qaeda.  Aram Roston at The Nation has a disturbing account of how the webs of corruption in Afghanistan have the United States funding Taliban operations.  The more I read about this mess, the more I gravitate towards the camp wanting to stop wasting American lives and treasure to protect a bunch of corrupt and brutal thugs.

One of the emerging narratives of American military operations in Afghanistan is that the combat there is just another round of the Afghan civil war.  Peter Bergen the posted this column last week disputing this and discussing the “merger” of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  Then comes Vahid Brown with this column suggesting the interests are not as aligned as Bergen thinks.  Which is it?

Ideological movements that claim a global reach have historically run hard into the brick wall of national sentiment.  The Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and other communist countries ultimately put their national interests first instead of heading off into hare brained crusades like Che Guevara (which ended with his execution in Bolivia).  The founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Al Saud used his alliance with the fundamentalist Wahhabi ulema and the religious militia the Ikhwan to propel him to power.  But when the Ikhwan wanted to continue a global jihad and raid neighboring states he crushed them.  As Brown’s link shows, Hamas and Hezbollah have been pragmatically presenting themselves as national movements even if they may have sympathy with Islamic radicals elsewhere  (as an aside Hezbollah from Al-Qaeda’s perspective are Shiite schismatics).

Of course the cold rationality displayed by other fundamentalists does not always translate to the mind of Mullah Omar.  This could be a feint meant to distract public opinion.

But, American foreign policy rhetoric in the cold war and post-9/11 has not always appreciated that every communist and every jihadist is not automatically in bed with each other.  It was this rhetoric that was used to justify the Iraq misadventure (where Saddam Hussein was not an Islamic radical to begin with).  While there may be broad sympathy by ideologues for the cause, it does not always translate into any direct or effective aid.  The Afghan Taliban regime has cause for bitter feelings towards Al-Qaeda.  It is possible that they may be willing to engage in the more pragmatic goals of regaining power instead of engaging in the nihilistic crusades like the one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi waged in Iraq, but at the same time availing themselves of the military aid and training Al-Qaeda is able to offer.

To what extent these purported divisions can be exploited in unclear.  But if they can lead to a repeat of the Iraqi scenario when Sunni groups banded together against Zarqawi’s blood lust,  America, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be better off for it.