Tag: Yemen
Why we are losing the long war
The United States went to war with Islamic extremism in the aftermath of the murder of nearly 3000 people on 9/11, when its adherents were largely concentrated in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration called this the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a term that misleadingly included the invasion of Iraq. The Obama Administration has abandoned that appellation but continued what others now term the “long” war, which has spread throughout the Greater Middle East into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali, Syria, Egypt, Libya and into sub-Saharan Africa, even as it has subsided in Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Asia.
Even this rudimentary description suggests we are not winning. It isn’t even clear what “winning” means, but it almost certainly does not entail spreading the enemy to a dozen or more additional countries, where they are challenging established governments. The geographic spread makes this a tougher fight. Our military much prefers to concentrate forces on a center of gravity whose defeat spells the end of the war.
But now it is no longer clear where the center of gravity is: we used to think it was Al Qaeda Central, holed up in Peshawar or somewhere else along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. But Osama bin Laden’s death did nothing to stem the jihadi tide, even if Al Qaeda Central has lost significance. Today the press would have us believe the center of gravity is with the Islamic State (ISIS), somewhere in eastern Syria or western Iraq. But defeating it there will all too obviously not defeat Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Yemen and Mali, or the ISIS affiliate in Sinai.
Islamic extremism, despite ISIS’s claim, is still more an insurgency than a state. Insurgencies do not need to win. They only need to survive.
This one is not only geographically resilient but also demographically resilient. I know of no indication that anything we have done for the past decade or more has seriously limited recruitment to Islamic extremism. To the contrary, efforts to repress it using military force seem to make recruitment easier, not harder. New leaders have far more often than not stepped into the roles of those we have killed. Nor have any of our propaganda/psychops efforts worked. There is on the contrary lots of anecdotal evidence that ISIS propaganda efforts do work, at least to recruit cannon fodder.
So we’ve got an enemy that is difficult to locate, whose center of gravity is unclear, and whose psychops are better than ours. What should we do about it?
First is to keep a sense of proportion. For Americans, trans-national terrorism is a vanishingly small threat. The odds are one-ninth those of being killed by a policeman, and comparable to those of being killed by an asteroid. Ninety-nine per cent of the time no American need really fear terrorism outside a war zone, and those who enter war zones do so knowing the risks.
Second is to recognize that if we want to reduce the risk–in particular reduce the risk that the risk will grow in the future–military means are proving massively inadequate and inappropriate. Islamic extremism was far less likely to grow like topsy when confined to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than it is now, dispersed in at least a dozen weak states. Those cats are out of the bag. We are not going to be able to force Islamic extremists back to where they came from. But we should be cautious about continuing to bombard them with drones wherever they appear. We may think the risks of collateral damage are minimal, but the people who live in Yemen don’t. For those who join extremist groups because of real or imagined offenses to “dignity,” drone strikes are an effective recruiting tool.
This brings us third to the fraught question of countering extremist narratives. I know of no evidence that direct government efforts to counter extremist narratives have been successful. There is evidence that former terrorists and their families can have some influence, working with local communities. But that requires the existence of a relatively free civil society in which religious institutions and private voluntary organizations are at liberty to organize. Community policing is also an effective strategy. But community policing requires the existence of a legitimate and inclusive state that uses security forces to protect its citizens rather than itself.
It is no wonder that we are losing the long war. We are using our strengths, which lie in technology and military action rather than in the far messier (and more difficult) tasks of building civil society and legitimate governance. It is arguable that our technology and military are actually making the task of countering violent extremism even harder. Drone strikes don’t encourage people to think their government is committed to protecting them. Nor do they encourage former terrorists and their families to speak out against extremism, as community-based civil society organizations might.
If the long war is worth fighting, it should be fought to win. For now, we are fighting it in ways bound to make us lose.
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The troubles we see
This year’s Council on Foreign Relations Preventive Priorities Survey was published this morning. It annually surveys the globe for a total of 30 Tier 1, 2 and 3 priorities for the United States. Tier 1s have a high or moderate impact on US interests or a high or moderate likelihood (above 50-50). Tier 2s can have low likelihood but high impact on US interests, moderate (50-50) likelihood and moderate impact on US interests, or high likelihood and low impact on US interests. Tier 3s are all the rest. Data is crowdsourced from a gaggle of experts, including me.
We aren’t going to be telling you anything you don’t know this year, but the exercise is still instructive. The two new Tier 1 contingencies are Russian intervention in Ukraine and heightened tensions in Israel/Palestine. A new Tier 2 priority is Kurdish violence within Turkey. I don’t believe I voted for that one. Ebola made it only to Tier 3, as did political unrest in China and possible succession problems in Thailand. I had Ebola higher than that.
Not surprisingly, the top slot (high likelihood and high impact) goes to ISIS. Military confrontation in the South China Sea moved up to Tier 1. Internal instability in Pakistan moved down, as did political instability in Jordan. Six issues fell off the list: conflict in Somalia, a China/India clash, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo Bangladesh and conflict between Sudan and South Sudan.
Remaining in Tier 1 are a mass casualty attack on the US homeland (hard to remove that one), a serious cyberattack (that’s likely to be perennial too), a North Korea crisis, and an Israeli attack on Iran. Syria and Afghanistan remain in Tier 2 (I think I had Syria higher than that).
The Greater Middle East looms large in this list. Tier 2 is all Greater Middle East, including Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey and Yemen (in addition to Tier 1 priorities Israel/Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine). That makes 11 out of 30, all in the top two tiers. Saudi monarchy succession is not even mentioned. Nor is Bahrain.
Sub-Saharan Africa makes it only into Tier 3. Latin America and much of Southeast Asia escape mention.
There is a question in my mind whether the exclusively country-by-country approach of this survey makes sense. It is true of course that problems in the Middle East vary from country to country, but there are also some common threads: Islamic extremism, weak and fragile states, exclusionary governance, demographic challenges and economic failure. From a policy response perspective, it may make more sense to focus on those than to try to define “contingencies” country by country. If you really wanted to prevent some of these things from happening, you would surely have to broaden the focus beyond national borders. Russian expansionism into Russian-speaking territories on its periphery might be another more thematic way of defining contingencies.
One of the key factors in foreign policy is entirely missing from this list: domestic American politics and the difficulties it creates for a concerted posture in international affairs. Just to offer a couple of examples: failure to continue to pay Afghanistan’s security sector bills, Congressional passage of new Iran sanctions before the P5+1 negotiations are completed, or a decision by President Obama to abandon entirely support for the Syrian opposition. The survey ignores American “agency” in determining whether contingencies happen, or not. That isn’t the world I live in.
For my Balkans readers: no, you are not on the list, and you haven’t been for a long time so far as I can tell. In fact, it is hard to picture how any contingency today in the Balkans could make it even to Tier 3. That’s the good news. But it also means you should not be looking to Washington for solutions to your problems. Brussels and your own capitals are the places to start.
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In the long term…
Proceedings kicked off at Thursday’s Middle East Institute conference with a panel on A Middle East in Flux: Risks and Opportunities. Moderating was peacefare’s Daniel Serwer, presiding over a star-studded panel consisting of Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan, Robert Ford, former US ambassador to Algeria and Syria, Paul Salem, vice-president for policy and research at the Middle East Institute, and Randa Slim, director for Track II initiatives at MEI.
The panel focused on long-term forces and factors in the Middle East and North Africa. Cole drew attention to the youth bulge, low investment, lack of jobs, and the effects of climate change on the region. The population is growing as resources are shrinking. Dwindling water supplies will create immense social pressures, and may lead to mass migrations and regional tensions, including over water supplies. Sea level rises will inundate the low-lying plains in southern Iraq, areas of the Nile Delta, and other inhabited areas.
This will happen as hydrocarbon production levels off and even declines, squeezing countries made rich by petrodollars. The region needs sustainable development, Cole underlined, which means a shift towards solar and wind power and a big increase in technological capacity.
Agreeing on the importance of resource and economic constraints, Salem underlined the collapse of already weak and corrupt institutions in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. With the failure of the Arab uprisings in these countries, the region has lost its sense of direction, as well as any semblance of regional governance. There is no real alternative to accountable, inclusive and ultimately democratic governance, but it is difficult to see how the region will get there from the disorder into which it has fallen. It needs high-value exports that it is unable to produce today.
The currently oil-rich region must adapt now, before it is left without options. Ford predicts that the Middle East will become a major food-importing region. To generate the revenue needed to pay for this food, the region will need to attract investment. Businesses will want to see fair and honest rule of law before sinking money into the region. Failing to develop economies producing more than commodities risks condemning the region to an impoverished and unstable future.
The panel considered the role of religion in the future of the Middle East, but it said notably little about sectarian or ethnic strife, which is more symptom than cause. Ford hopes that Islamists will be pulled towards the center of the political spectrum, as political Islam cannot provide the answers to all the socio-economic problems faced today. But this only applies to those Islamists actively engaging within the political system. There will be no single solution. With the region in such a dramatic state of flux, Salem cautions that there is a developing contest for defining the region’s cultural identity. Sheikhs, militias, and jihadists are competing to define the future of society and culture in the Middle East. The cacophony risks drowning out more moderate reformers and democrats.
Slim underlined the importance of Iran’s trajectory for the region as a whole. Whether a nuclear deal is reached and the choices Tehran makes about support for its allies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and Palestine will affect Iran’s relations with its neighbors in the Gulf and with the West. There is great potential for improvement, but also serious risk of deterioration if those in Tehran who want a nuclear deal have to pay for it by giving others a free rein to do what they want regionally.
The West must engage better in the battle for hearts and minds. For Slim, the key battle ground is online and across smart phones. ISIS releases thousands of propagandistic tweets, videos and online messages every day. Jabhat al-Nusra has a similarly slick media operation. Media literacy in the Arab world is high. The West should not let extremists be the only voice in cyberspace. Twitter and Facebook are theatres in the war against violent doctrines just as much as Kobani.
But the ideological battle cannot be won only through convincing words and media campaigns. Robert Ford recalled the warm reception he had received at a university in Algeria, which had a link with a university in the US. The few graduating from the program had all found employment. The result was goodwill from an much wider section of the local population. Providing quality education, developing human connections , and working to build the skills that bring employment and prosperity are vital in combating ideologies that preach hatred.
The path to long-term success and stability in a region facing increasing chaos can be summed up by two 1990s political catch phases. Bill Clinton’s “it’s the economy, stupid”, and Tony Blair’s “education, education, education.” Military campaigns against threats such as ISIS may sometimes be necessary, but in the long term the region’s future will be determined by other factors: demographic and climate pressures, the search for dignity, institutional strength and economic success or failure. The US and its allies cannot determine the outcome. They can only encourage and support local actors as they seek to achieve stability and prosperity.
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Hong Kong and the Arab uprisings
The Hong Kong protesters may be disappointed in their televised talks with the authorities, but I’m not. They have achieved something remarkable: a widely disseminated (at least within Hong Kong) public effort by the authorities to justify their rejection of democracy. The fact of their meeting with the students, whose side of the argument was apparently not broadcast by the authorities, speaks louder than words. This is an enormous achievement, even if the talks have inevitably failed to reach a compromise.
The contrast with what is going on in the Middle East could not be sharper. There Islamists are rejecting democracy and secularism, which they associate with autocracy and godlessness. In Syria, Libya and Yemen, large portions of the society (not everyone) have chosen violent means–or tact support for violent means–to achieve their political ends, while in Hong Kong only the police have opted for brutality.
This is as it should be. Nonviolence has a better chance of winning than violence, mainly because some of the forces of law and order will eventually hesitate to use violence against nonviolent protesters. Once a corner of the police is bent to sympathize with the protesters, the Hong Kong authorities will be forced either to call in the army or compromise with the protesters’ demands.
Calling in the People’s Liberation Army would be a clear signal of defeat for the authorities, who have made it clear they fear real democracy would open representation to the votes of the lower classes:
If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month.
This remarkable statement comes from the chief executive in Hong Kong, a loyal Beijing supporter. What has Communism come to?
There is room for compromise here. The nominating committee that is to vet Hong Kong candidates for Chief Executive, slated to be controlled entirely by Beijing, could be opened to broader representation and the criteria for rejecting candidates limited to malfeasance. Only a wide open electoral contest will satisfy student protest leaders, but something short of that might represent real progress in the right direction.
Protesters in the Middle East could learn a lot from their Asian counterparts. The disciplined commitment to sustained nonviolent protest in Hong Kong makes good sense, precisely because the authorities have overwhelming force at their disposal. The protesters have clearly thought this through and are looking to maintain mass support that would be l0st quickly if they resorted to violence. A few may lose patience and head in that direction, but so far at least they have mostly resisted a temptation that would inevitably give the authorities the upper hand.
Would that such discipline were available in the Middle East.
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The next big thing in Syria
It’s been a few days since I’ve written about the importance of state-building in Syria, so maybe I can return to the theme. I’ve just come from a Brookings event at which Ken Pollack made an eloquent and well-argued plea in favor of what he termed nation-building, while Salman Shaikh underlined the importance of promoting a national dialogue in Syria, which is increasingly seen as important preparation for writing a new constitution, which of course is one of the vital tasks in state-building.
This took me a bit by surprise, as I thought the event was to focus on Ken’s most recent report Building a Better Syrian Opposition Army: How and Why. That proposes building over the next year or so a new, apolitical but opposition (to Bashar al Assad) army outside Syria. I’m on board that far. The report doesn’t say much about the state-building process. Some of what it says I can’t agree with:
Once the forces of a new Syrian army had secured a chunk of Syrian territory, they could declare themselves to be a new, provisional Syrian government.
Regular readers will understand that hell will freeze over before I advocate that an army declare itself a government. That is not a formula for good, or democratic, governance. Nor will it bring stability.
What Salman had to say made more sense to me. Syrians of all stripes need to talk with each other in an open and transparent national dialogue. Up to a point, that process worked well in Yemen, where the US and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) insisted on it and the UN made it happen. It was failure to implement its conclusions adequately that led to the current Houthi rebellion, not failure of the national dialogue itself.
Talking is not enough. What Syrians need to do is to define their goals. Salman, who is in active communication with many stripes of Syrians, gave some hints where they are coming out: they want security, rule of law, economic prosperity and better governance. None of that is surprising. Those are in fact four of the five end states in Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction, the book of civilian doctrine for state-building whose preparation I supervised at USIP. The Syrians will discover the fifth end state–social well-being–soon enough. Or they will include it in one of the other categories.
There is nothing at all wrong with reinventing this wheel. People have to discover what they want for themselves, and it won’t always come out so neatly congruent with Guiding Principles. But it is vital that goals be defined. Otherwise, the state-building process has no direction and no way of measuring progress.
The question is whether this state-building process needs to wait until Bashar al Assad is gone. I think not. It needs to begin from the grass roots in liberated areas as soon as possible. The United States has been providing support to local councils and surrogate police forces in some liberated areas. That is all to the good.
But there are two problems. The Assad regime often bombs these areas to disrupt the process of creating alternatives to its own oppressive governing structures. That has to be stopped. It could be done by establishing a no-fly zone over the whole country or safe areas along the Turkish border and perhaps in other opposition-controlled areas. But let there be no doubt: such safe areas will come under attack, likely from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant as well as from the regime. We will have to be prepared to defend them, at least from air attacks (but likely also from artillery bombardment).
The second problem is preventing liberated areas from leading to de facto and eventually de jure partition. That will require they operate under the umbrella of something like Etilaf, the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC). So far, that has not generally been the case. Somehow or other, the breach has to be corrected. Ken proposes that the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General “hold sovereignty until a properly constituted new Syrian government is ready.” More or les that was done in Kosovo, but I can’t picture the Syrians putting up with it. Nor is it possible before Assad is deprived of Syria’s seat at the UN.
The international community I fear is as much part of the problem as it is part of the solution. Humanitarian assistance is usually subjected to serious coordination efforts. I trust that is the case in Syria. But reconstruction assistance rarely is. Donors like doing their own thing, often without regard to governing structures and international community coordination efforts that they in principle support. That has to be somehow avoided in Syria, which will be subjected to strong centrifugal forces of other sorts. The last thing we need in Syria is partition.
Despite President Obama’s reluctance, state-building in Syria is the next big thing. Stay tuned.
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Yemen and Afghanistan
What do Yemen and Afghanistan have in common? They have both reached power sharing agreements in the last couple of days. In Afghanistan, President-elect Ghani has agreed to share power with runner-up Abdullah, who is to be named “chief executive” operating under the President’s authority but sharing the President’s appointment and some other powers. In Yemen, the northern Houthi insurgents are slated to get a bigger slice of power in Sanaa, which they have invested, capturing key installations.
Power sharing is never easy, but sometimes necessary.
In Afghanistan, it will deprive the electorate of what it apparently voted for, which is Ashraf Ghani as president. At the same time, it will avoid a clash that might have become violent, or paralyzing. Abdullah and his supporters are convinced that only fraud could have caused his first-round lead to evaporate. They prevailed on the election commission not to release the final tally, which apparently had the margin as 55/45. Ghani, while insisting on the chief executive reporting to the president will be delegating implementation of government policy to someone he has been criticizing for many months.
In Yemen, the gap is even wider. The Houthi, who are Shia, are expected to share power with the Sunni Islah party. The rivalries among President Hadi, former President Saleh and various military warlords are intricate. Saleh notoriously described governing Yemen as dancing on the heads of snakes. Now Hadi will be dancing with partners on the heads of snakes. But there was no alternative: the surprising military success of the Houthi, who descended on Sanaa from their northern enclave, made it imperative to negotiate a power sharing arrangement, which UN envoy Jamal Benomar obligingly did.
In Ghani’s case, we know in surprising detail what he will try to accomplish. He literally wrote the book on Fixing Failed States. There he put rule of law, a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence and administrative control at the top of the list. Next comes sound management of public finances (he is a former finance minister) and investments in human capital (he is also a former chancellor of Kabul University). Social policy, market formation, management of public assets and effective public borrowing complete his “framework for rebuilding a fractured world.” While I imagine as president Ghani will concentrate his own efforts on the justice and security priorities, he will be an exigent taskmaster in the other areas as well.
No Houthis are writing textbooks in English to my knowledge. The best guidance we have on what is supposed to happen in Yemen is the detailed power sharing agreement itself, which sets out specific deadlines and a detailed process for naming a new, more inclusive, government. It also dictates a series of priority economic, social and electoral reforms as well as security arrangements in Sanaa and other areas of Houthi military activity. The agreement is even more specific than Ghani’s book, which as a generally applicable text needed to maintain a higher level of abstraction. But already the Houthis are said to have refused to sign the annex providing for their own disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.
So what are the odds that these agreements will be implemented as written and hold past the next six months or so? Not good. Experience suggests that they will be renegotiated, perhaps repeatedly. But that is the good news. Their purpose is to avoid or end violence. So long as the protagonists are engaged in trying to ensure implementation of an agreement by peaceful means, we should be satisfied that the agreements are serving their main purpose. And in Africa it has been shown that peaceful outcomes after elections correlate not with successful power sharing but rather with repeated renegotiation of power sharing agreements!
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