Terrorist attack in Dhaka: what does it say about the current government?

To an interested albeit casual outside observer, politics in Bangladesh has long seemed a highly personalized duel between the leaders of the country's two main parties: Sheik Hasina of the Awami League, the current prime minister, and Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).  Punctuated by fairly regular charges of election fraud and nationwide strikes and boycotts, this rather dysfunctional political setting has not distinguished itself in recent months when faced with the challenge of rising jidahist-militant violence, including a string of fatal attacks on bloggers, academics, and others.

The attack on the restaurant in the Gulshan district of Dhaka, for which ISIS claimed responsibility and in which 20 people who had been taken hostage were killed, has led to renewed attention to what the current government has been doing -- or more to the point, not doing -- about the threat and actuality of militant violence.  As Ishaan Tharoor notes in a July 2 WaPo piece (see esp. the links toward the end of the article), close observers have criticized Hasina's government for downplaying or denying the extremist threat and focusing too much effort on consolidating its power at the expense of the BNP.  Until the government's basic approach changes, Bangladesh, which has been one of the Muslim world's relatively secular, as opposed to theocratic, polities, will probably continue to be seen by ISIS and other extremist groups as fertile ground for expansion.

ETA: See also this by J. Allchin, which goes into detail on the recent history and gives one a sense of the complexities of the political situation in Bangladesh.

Lahore bombing

I had not heard of the group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Lahore that killed at least 65 people (evidently mostly Christians, who were intentionally targeted).  Wiki says that the group split from the main Pakistani Taliban organization (the TTP) in 2014.  It is not entirely clear from the Wiki entry exactly what Jamaat-ul-Ahrar's current relation to the TTP is.

ETA 3/28: According to the NewsHour tonight, most of the victims were Muslims.

A photo is worth...

I haven't written anything here about the recent events in France, partly because I can't add much or anything to what has been said elsewhere; however, I just saw, via WaPo, the photograph of Hollande at the mass demonstration flanked by various notables, including Netanyahu and Abbas. Just thought it worth mentioning the presence of the latter two.

Noted

From NYRB (Oct. 24): Malise Ruthven reviews (h/t) Akbar Ahmed's The Thistle and the Drone.

A brief excerpt:

Ahmed argues...that the acts of terror or violence directed at the U.S. or its allies are set off as much by revenge based on values of tribal honor as by extremist ideologies.... It seems fair to argue, as Ahmed does, that the values of honor and revenge inherent in the tribal systems contribute to jidahist extremism, and that by ignoring this all-important factor the U.S. has been courting disaster.

But according to Ruthven, Ahmed sees the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as "countertribal." Anyway, RTWT.

Gilbert on Kennan

In a blog post, Prof. Alan Gilbert of the Univ. of Denver praises Obama's recent speech on counter-terrorism policy, drones, and Guantanamo as a "turning point," while noting (among other things) that it should have come earlier and contending that presidents never do anything decent without mass pressure from below.

Toward the beginning of his remarks Gilbert, referencing his 1999 book Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?, comments briefly and in passing on George Kennan:

In most foreign policy discussion and international relations as an academic field, realist theories - both official ones used in making/apologizing for American foreign policy and more sophisticated versions employed in the critical study of American errors and crimes, even systematic ones - abstain from the outset from looking at the consequences [of U.S. foreign policy] for democracy at home....

For instance, the leading post-World War II realist, George Kennan in American Diplomacy, pits sober, professional diplomacy against democratic crusades like Woodrow Wilson's in World War I.... But in the 1984 edition, responding to the disastrous American aggression in Vietnam, Kennan noticed the war complex, "our military-industrial addiction." He shifted to a more democratic, common-good oriented view without naming the shift.

Kennan opposed the Vietnam War from the start mainly on pragmatic grounds (he testified against it in congressional hearings in 1966), and Vietnam probably did influence his thinking.  There are tensions in Kennan's views deriving partly from the way in which moral considerations are often kept unacknowledged or beneath the surface, with the biggest exception to this being his increasingly passionate writings, starting in the 1980s, about nuclear weapons. But I think Kennan remained ambivalent, at best, about democracy until the end of his life. These tensions (or contradictions) run through much of his career, complicating the idea of an un-named shift "to a more democratic, common-good oriented view." Still, it is interesting that some of the language in American Diplomacy, originally published in 1951, changed in the 1984 edition.

P.s. A minor point: "One of the leading post-WWII realists" would have been better than "the leading," since Morgenthau, Niebuhr, and Kennan are usually given roughly equal billing as the key figures of post-1945 American Realism, with Arnold Wolfers, John Herz, and some others not far behind. (Generationally speaking, Waltz and Kissinger come after this group.)

Added later: It's possible to put a somewhat more uncomfortable (for lack of a better word) gloss on Kennan's position on Vietnam, which would note that, in addition to his (correct) judgment that Vietnam was not a vital U.S. interest, he just didn't care much about the Third World (as it was then called) and didn't think non-Europeans (or non-descendants of Europeans) had much capacity for self-government. But going into that would require another post.

[To find previous mentions of Kennan on this blog, type "Kennan" into the search box in the upper-left corner.]

The apparent mystery of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

If one glances through some of the reportage of the last week on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as I just did, one finds him described by people who knew him as, among other things, "laid back," "nice," "quite studious" and "a pot head." Among people his own age who knew him and among former teachers, there appears to be uniform astonishment and incredulity at his involvement in the Boston bombings. Is this the case of a "normal" 19-year-old who was "corrupted" by his older brother? Or of someone who concealed his views -- and an aspect of his personality -- from people who knew him? Or some of both? There are enough as-yet-unanswered questions here that one can anticipate a small crowd of journalists already gearing up to produce their very-long-articles-based-on-hundreds-of-interviews-shortly-thereafter-to-become-books. (I assume the genre is a familiar one to readers.)   

Why is the U.S. Senate (and one Senator in particular) so dismissive of the rights of terrorism suspects?

Update: The original post has been changed to correct an error (or two).


A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Oops.

I meant: a long time ago, i.e. before 9/11, one could assume that an ideologically middle-of-the-roadish Democratic Senator would support the notion that those suspected of crimes, even of terrorist activity, had certain rights, including the right not to be detained indefinitely without trial.

No longer. The Senate yesterday kept in the defense authorization bill provisions on detention that Pres. Obama has threatened to veto. According to this NYT article:

The most disputed provision would require the government to place into military custody any suspected member of Al Qaeda or one of its allies connected to a plot against the United States or its allies. The provision would exempt American citizens, but would otherwise extend to arrests on United States soil. The executive branch could issue a waiver and keep such a prisoner in the civilian system.

A related provision would create a federal statute saying the government has the legal authority to keep people suspected of terrorism in military custody, indefinitely and without trial. It contains no exception for American citizens. It is intended to bolster the authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which lawmakers enacted a decade ago.

Among the supporters of these provisions is Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. According to an Agence-France Presse article which I saw at Raw Story (and which I'm not linking to because my browser is having trouble with it), Levin denied the provisions would harm civil liberties (!) and (the NYT story also has this) cited a Supreme Court ruling that a so-called enemy combatant, even if a U.S. citizen, may be held indefinitely without trial (this must be Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, but that case also said the detainee had to have the right to challenge his designation as an unlawful combatant).

Interestingly, the Pentagon itself is opposed to these provisions, according to the AFP piece, and the NYT says even some former Bush admin counterterrorism officials oppose them. Why is Levin supporting them? Why did he agree to their being part of the defense authorization package? He's not up for re-election until 2014, so immediate political considerations would not seem to be the answer. Has he always been this bad on these issues?

Terror attacks in Norway

Update: The suspect in custody is described as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist opposed to multiculturalism, etc. Thus, this apparently had nothing to do with Norway's involvement in Libya and Afghanistan.

Someone quoted in this piece about the attacks in Norway says they will "change everything." Hyperbole, but understandable in the immediate aftermath of shocking events.

Targeting young people attending a summer political conference is especially despicable. The linked article says the death toll on the island is now 80. I would guess it's quite unlikely that a single assailant could have caused so many casualties; however, the article doesn't speculate on that. Whether Norway's participation both in the NATO operation in Libya and in ISAF (Afghanistan) was part of the motive for the attacks remains to be determined.

The Ghailani verdict

"The face of the embassy had sheared off in great concrete slabs. Dead people still sat at their desks. The tar-covered street was on fire and a crowded bus was in flames. Next door, the Ufundi Building, containing a Kenyan secretarial college, had completely collapsed. Many were pinned under the rubble, and soon their cries arose in a chorus of fear and pain that would go on for days.... The toll was 213 dead...; 4,500 were injured, more than 150 of them blinded by the flying glass. The ruins burned for days."

Thus Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, describing the aftermath of the August 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi. There's no question that this and the bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam were reprehensible acts. Ayman al-Zawahiri had an al-Qaeda operative throw a stun grenade into the embassy courtyard in Nairobi, thereby drawing people to the windows. Wright notes: "One of the lessons Zawahiri had learned from his bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad three years before was that an initial explosion brought people rushing to the windows, and many were decapitated by flying glass when the real bomb went off." (Looming Tower, p.307)

Despite the depraved character of these acts, however, it's not clear that the conviction of Ahmed Ghailani in New York federal district court on only one count (of conspiracy) as opposed to 200-some counts matters very much. As it is, he may well get a life sentence. Meanwhile Zawahiri, the mastermind of the operations, continues to reside ... somewhere (maybe North Waziristan, maybe not...).

The real issue that should be under discussion is why it has proved so difficult to close Guatanamo Bay (a myopically reluctant Congress deserves a fair amount of blame, no doubt), not the issue of whether detainees should be tried in civilian courts or military tribunals. That has already been debated ad nauseum, positions have hardened, and arguably the main beneficiaries of the entire discussion have been the lawyers, legal analysts, and other talking heads whom it has kept employed. When the definitive history of this whole episode is written, complete with endless litigation, the Supreme Court striking down the original military tribunals legislation, Congress rewriting and re-passing it, etcetera, not to mention the meager results to date -- unless I'm forgetting something, exactly one detainee so far has completed the military tribunal process, pleading guilty in a plea deal [added later: I am forgetting something; it's more than one] -- it will go down as one of the more monumental wastes of resources spawned by the 'war on terror'. It is hard to avoid the feeling that there had to have been a better way than this drawn-out mess. The British government has even concluded that it must pay compensation to several British citizens who were held in Guantanamo. And the talking heads on American TV go on discussing this is in little amnesiac bites, failing to see the larger picture and failing to remind people that they have been having these same factitious debates for years. All in all, a rather appalling spectacle.

Sexual abuse and terrorist activity: is there a connection?

Jessica Stern, lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School and author of The Ultimate Terrorists, gave a talk recently at the University of Maryland that I attended. Part of the talk covered the same ground as her article "Mind Over Martyr: How to Deradicalize Islamist Extremists" (Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2010; link here [full text requires subscription]).

Rather than summarize the whole talk or article, I'll focus on one point. Stern writes:

"One element worth examining...is the potential impact of sexual abuse on radicalization. Much has been written about the role of radical madrasahs in creating terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere.... Outside of the Pakistani press, however, little note is made of the routine rape of boys at such schools. Also troubling is the rape of boys by warlords, the Afghan National Army, or the police in Afghanistan. Such abuses are commonplace on Thursdays...because Friday prayers are considered to absolve sinners of all wrongdoing. David Whetham, a specialist in military ethics at King's College London, reports that security checkpoints set up by the Afghan police and military have been used by some personnel to troll for attractive young men and boys on Thursday nights. The local population has been forced to accept these episodes as par for the course: they cannot imagine defying the all-powerful Afghan commanders. Could such sexual traumas be a form of humiliation that contributes to contemporary Islamist terrorism?"

The answer is not known, but in her talk Stern mentioned that several jihadists she has interviewed have hinted at this. The Western press has reported in recent years on the rape of women and girls in war zones, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Scholars who study the intersection of gender and conflict also have written about the sexual exploitation of women and girls. But the fact that males can be and are victims of sexual exploitation has not been as widely discussed (except in the context of the clergy abuse scandal), and the possible connections to terrorist recruitment and behavior have not been investigated.
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Note: See also the Frontline (PBS) program "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan"; link here.

Strategy against al-Qaeda

Via this blogger, I came across Nicholas Lemann's review in The New Yorker of various recent books on terrorism. One of the books Lemann discusses is Audrey Kurth Cronin's How Terrorism Ends (Princeton Univ. Press). According to the review, Cronin urges, among other things, trying to separate local grievances from al-Qaeda's global ideology:

" 'Bin Laden and Zawahiri have focused on exploiting and displacing the local concerns of the Chechens, the Uighurs, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat in Algeria, and many others, and sought to replace them with an international agenda,' Cronin writes. The United States should now try to 'sever the connection between Islamism and individualized local contexts for political violence, and then address them separately.' It should work with these local groups, not in an effort to convert them to democracy and love of America but in order to pry them away, one by one, from Al Qaeda. ('Calling the al-Qaeda movement "jihadi international," as the Israeli intelligence services do,' she writes, 'encourages a grouping together of disparate threats that undermines our best counterterrorism. It is exactly the mistake we made when we lumped the Chinese and the Soviets together in the 1950s and early 1960s, calling them "international Communists." ')"

Cutting the connection between al-Qaeda's international agenda and its local affiliates sounds sensible, especially since the affiliates already appear to be at least partly driven by local concerns. Take the recent suicide bombing aimed at the British ambassador in Yemen, presumably carried out by al-Qaeda-in-the-Arabian-Peninsula. The intended target was a high-ranking Western diplomat, but that in itself does not mean that the motive for the attack was a grandiose global ideology, as opposed to a desire to strike at a perceived ally and patron of the Yemeni government. And the recent bombings against Shias by al-Qaeda-in-Iraq seem more like a response to the killing of that group's two top leaders than part of an effort to further the establishment of a new caliphate.

The U.S. press, citing intelligence sources, has drawn a portrait of al-Qaeda's central leadership as increasingly isolated somewhere in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and increasingly unable to communicate effectively with its various branches. The connections that Cronin calls for severing on the plane of ideology may thus already be tenuous on the level of organization -- and that in turn may furnish an opening for pressing forward with a strategy of "address disparate threats separately."

A civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan?

A little over a year ago, in December '08, I had occasion to write:

"One aspect of a [U.S.] diplomatic strategy might be to offer Pakistan a nuclear deal similar to the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, on condition that Pakistan take a more vigorously constructive and helpful stance toward the U.S./NATO position in Afghanistan. Now that the A.Q. Khan network has stopped functioning [I might have been premature in this judgment], even if Khan himself remains something of a revered figure in certain Pakistani quarters, there is no principled reason to deny Pakistan the same sort of nuclear arrangement that India has with the U.S. (Concerns about the long-term stability of the civilian government, however, admittedly might be a complicating factor.)"

I was therefore interested to read Christine Fair's recent op-ed column ("Pakistan Needs Its Own Nuclear Deal," Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11; available on her website) in which she proposes "a conditions-based civilian nuclear deal" between the U.S. and Pakistan. She writes:

"This deal would confer acceptance to Islamabad's nuclear weapon program and reward it for the improvements in nuclear security that it has made since 2002. In the long shadow of A.Q. Khan and continued uncertainty about the status of his networks, it is easy to forget that Pakistan has established a Strategic Plans Division that has done much to improve safety of the country's nuclear assets."

What would Pakistan have to do in return?

"First, Pakistan would have to provide the kind of access and cooperation on nuclear suppliers' networks identified in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation. Second, Pakistan would have to demonstrate sustained and verifiable commitment in combating all terrorist groups on its soil, including those groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba that Pakistan often calls 'freedom fighters' acting on behalf of Kashmir and India's Muslims."

Although recognizing that this proposal would be hard to sell in both capitals, Fair thinks it is worth "putting...on the table now."

Unlike the linkage schemes I criticized here as overly ambitious, this one appears to make some sense. Recently, however, there has been increased cooperation between Pakistan and the U.S., especially in the area of intelligence sharing and related matters (see Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung, "Greater U.S. pressure led to Pakistan arrests: new level of cooperation emerging in struggle against Afghan Taliban," Wash. Post, Feb. 19, p.A1). As reported on the NewsHour today, Pakistani officials say that almost 15 senior and mid-level Afghan Taliban figures have been captured recently. If this sort of cooperation continues, the need for a nuclear deal may become less pressing. But it's hard to know whether it will continue.
P.s. Jim Walsh offers a somewhat different (i.e. more skeptical) view of Pakistan-U.S. intelligence cooperation.

Lowther's linkages; or, could a nuclear Iran be good for the U.S. and the Middle East?

In a recent New York Times op-ed ("Iran's Two-Edged Bomb," Feb.9), Adam Lowther argues that a nuclear Iran might be a blessing in disguise for the U.S. and the Middle East. He should have settled for making the point that a nuclear Iran would pose less of a threat than is generally supposed. Instead Lowther produces an intricate and implausible linkage scenario that makes the most convoluted aspects of Bismarck's diplomacy look like tiddlywinks by comparison.

Here's the gist of his argument: (1) a nuclear Iran threatens countries in its region, including, e.g., Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states; (2) the U.S. could offer security guarantees to these countries mainly in the form of "a Middle East nuclear umbrella" and in return (3) the U.S. would demand: (a) wide-ranging democratic and other reforms in Arab autocracies that would drain some of the major breeding grounds of Islamist militancy; (b) higher oil production and lower oil prices from the oil-producing countries and (c) cost-sharing by those under the 'umbrella' for the expense of maintaining it. The result of all this, says Lowther, could be defeat of al-Qaeda and other similar groups; "a victory in the war on terrorism"; lower oil prices; a "needed shot in the arm" for the U.S. defense industry as weapons systems are exported to U.S. allies (read: client states), etc.

Now I happen to think that Western governments and foreign policy establishments exaggerate the potential bad consequences of Iran's getting nuclear weapons. But Lowther's scenario rests on some weird assumptions. First is the notion that trading a U.S. nuclear umbrella for fundamental reforms in Saudi Arabia and other allies is something these allies would go for; if they felt as threatened by a nuclear Iran as Lowther says they would, why couldn't they turn to China or Russia for security guarantees instead of the U.S.? Unlike the U.S., China and Russia would not demand those pesky domestic reforms; instead they would probably be content with economic rewards and concessions. Secondly, Lowther seems to think it would be a wonderful thing to create a Cold War-style regional balance in the Middle East, with a nuclear Iran playing the role of the USSR and Saudi Arabia et al. playing the role of Western Europe under a U.S. nuclear umbrella. How this arrangement, even if it did lead to domestic reforms in the Arab autocracies, would result in the demise of Islamist militancy is something of a mystery. Doesn't Lowther recall that one of al-Qaeda's main complaints was the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia -- i.e., in proximity to some of Islam's holiest sites -- during and after the Gulf War? The notion that the extension of a U.S. nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia would persuade al-Qaeda and similar groups that they should give up the struggle, because the price of said umbrella would be a fundamental transformation of the Saudi polity, doesn't really compute. Where is the evidence for the argument that autocracy breeds discontent which breeds terrorism; therefore get rid of autocracy and you are on the road to getting rid of terrorism? Are those attracted to the jihadist worldview really interested in seeing a parliamentary democracy in Saudi Arabia? To be sure, they want to remove the current Saudi regime, but I was under the impression that it was that regime's links to the U.S. that is one of their prime grievances.

The main argument of Lowther's column has the feeling of a fantasy, of a Rube Goldberg contraption dreamed up at a desk. Instead of arguing that a nuclear Iran could lead to all good things from "victory" in the "war on terror" to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Lowther should have written a column about why in fact a nuclear Iran poses less of a threat than is widely thought, how states that acquire nuclear weapons generally do not become irrational or insane in their foreign policy behavior, and why the West should therefore not be getting its knickers into such a twist over the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Now Lowther does make the point at the end of the piece that "unless the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, and his Guardian Council chart a course that no other nuclear power has ever taken, Iran should become more responsible once it acquires nuclear weapons rather than less." But this sensible sentence has been preceded, unfortunately, by so many non-sensible sentences that I doubt many people will still be reading.

Campos on 'terrorball'

Via C. Carpenter.

Should KSM and the four others be tried in federal court?

I have two brief things to say on this:

1) While the decision can legitimately be questioned, Republican senators' criticisms today (to the extent I heard them) -- e.g., Lindsay Graham saying something like 'this makes horrible history' or sets a horrible precedent -- were overblown.

2) If it was going to be a federal court, better to do it in the Southern District of New York than in the Eastern District of Virginia which, as I understand it, was the other federal venue considered. Some years ago I observed part of a trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. Based on that and some other things, I think Manhattan is the better choice.

'Recruitment tool'

One of the points at issue in the speeches today of Pres. Obama and former VP Cheney is whether Guantanamo Bay, use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and so forth have been a "recruitment tool" for jihadists. Cheney, in particular, ridiculed the idea.

Actually, no one really knows whether or to what extent Guantanamo has been a "recruitment tool," because people signing up for terrorist activity do not usually write neat little explanations of their motives. In some cases, their motives may not be entirely clear even to themselves. (How many of us understand exactly why we do what we do?) My hunch is that civilian casualties from U.S./NATO operations in Afghanistan, as well as civilian casualties in Pakistan, are more powerful "recruitment tools" than Guantanamo Bay has been.

The main case for closing Guantanamo is not that it is a recruitment tool but that holding people indefinitely or for very long periods in a kind of legal limbo violates basic principles of the American legal and constitutional order, and jettisoning those principles here is unnecessary. Practically, the situation is a "mess," as Obama said today, and cleaning it up is not going to be easy. And with Democratic senators unwilling to show political courage in this context, the problem becomes that much more difficult.

Military tribunals for some detainees "still on the table"

See here.

Why is Cuba still on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism?

As Greg Weeks implies, the short answer appears to be that no one knows, not even the State Department people who maintain the list.

Missile strike kills al-Qaeda top operative in Pakistan

The Kenyan-born chief of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and his second-in-command were killed by a missile fired by a CIA drone in South Waziristan some days ago, according to reports. The chief operative, Usama al-Kini, was thought to be involved in the attack on the Islamabad Marriott last September.

Arundhati Roy is mostly right, but not completely

Arundhati Roy's recent Guardian essay on the Mumbai attacks, "The Monster in the Mirror," has been widely circulated. I first saw it when a friend kindly forwarded it to me, and I have just read it again, somewhat more closely than the first time.

To repeat what I said in a comment I left at this blog, I think Roy, while right on many points, is too quick to criticize the Indian government for "inviting" the U.S. to interfere in Indian affairs. What is the invitation, and what is the interference? If she means the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, that is (1)water under the bridge, and (2)in my view, one of the relatively few sensible things the Bush administration has done in foreign policy. If she means sending an FBI team to help in the Mumbai investigation, which I assume has been or will be done, that hardly constitutes undue interference in Indian internal affairs. If she means that improved U.S.-Indian relations have fueled increased terrorism in India, that is possible, but hardly certain. The fact is we don't know what Roy means on this point exactly, because her column doesn't say. Her remark that "superpowers don't have allies, they have agents" does, however, give one a clue. The implication is that superpowers are incapable of treating other countries as equals. To which the answer is that this is perhaps too one-dimensional a view. There is such a thing as cooperation for mutual gain, rare though it may be.