Arab world condemns Israeli attack on Gaza

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Tri-City Herald

The Arab world reacted with outrage at Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, launching scattered protests and calls for retaliation against Israel.
The Arab League announced a gathering of foreign ministers Wednesday would focus on the attack, said the organization's chairman Amr Moussa.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit extended his condolences to the Palestinians killed in the attacks and said Egypt, which brokered a six-month long truce between Hamas and Israel that expired a little over a week ago, has been trying to avoid such an escalation.
"Today everybody has to stand by the side of the Palestinian people and stop this blind military action," the foreign minister said.
Egypt also came under attack by many in the Arab world for its role, along with Israel, in closing the Gaza Strip after the militant group Hamas came to power in June 2007. The closure is often seen as abetting Israel's siege of the crowded strip of land home to 1.5 million people.
A few hundred protesters gathered in Cairo Saturday calling for an end to the strikes.
In Lebanon, about 4,000 protesters marched through a refugee camp in the southern part of the country, condemning the attacks in general, and Egypt in particular.
"Hosni Mubarak, you agent of the Americans, you traitor!" they shouted. They also called on the militant group Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora described the Israeli attacks as a "criminal operation" and "new massacres to be added to its full record of massacres."
The militant group Hezbollah in a statement Saturday called the attacks "a war crime and a genocide," and criticized what it described as the "shameful" Arab silence.
The Libyan foreign ministry issued a statement calling on Arabs to take solid action in "responding to the Israeli brutality against Gaza," and urged the international community to stop Israel's attacks.
Saudi Arabia, which has put forward a plan calling for a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world, in a statement Saturday condemned the Israeli attacks. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Saturday in Riyadh, said the Saudi leader promised to call U.S. President George W. Bush and other leaders to ask them to push Israel to halt its operations.
Hundreds of protesters in the Jordanian capital of Amman demonstrated, waving Hamas banners and condemning Israel's strikes. There were similar demonstrations in other Jordanian towns and Palestinian refugee camps.
The Jordanian ruler, King Abdullah II, called for an immediate halt to "all military actions" in a statement. He also met Saturday with Abbas after the Palestinian returned from Saudi Arabia. In a statement, the two leaders called on the international community to pressure Israel to end its military operations.
In Syria's al-Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus, hundreds of Palestinians also protested, vowing to continue fighting Israel.
"It's a Zionist holocaust, but it won't dissuade us from going on with our struggle to achieve our goals," said Ali Barakah, 42, one of the protesters.
The Sudanese foreign ministry issued a statement calling for an end to the Israeli attacks that it described as "brutal raids" and saying Arab states should take a unified stand to protect the Palestinians.
Even Turkey, with ties to Israel, expressed dismay as about 2,000 people protested in Istanbul, burning an Israeli flag.

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Arab world condemns Israeli attack on Gaza

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Tri-City Herald

The Arab world reacted with outrage at Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, launching scattered protests and calls for retaliation against Israel.
The Arab League announced a gathering of foreign ministers Wednesday would focus on the attack, said the organization's chairman Amr Moussa.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit extended his condolences to the Palestinians killed in the attacks and said Egypt, which brokered a six-month long truce between Hamas and Israel that expired a little over a week ago, has been trying to avoid such an escalation.
"Today everybody has to stand by the side of the Palestinian people and stop this blind military action," the foreign minister said.
Egypt also came under attack by many in the Arab world for its role, along with Israel, in closing the Gaza Strip after the militant group Hamas came to power in June 2007. The closure is often seen as abetting Israel's siege of the crowded strip of land home to 1.5 million people.
A few hundred protesters gathered in Cairo Saturday calling for an end to the strikes.
In Lebanon, about 4,000 protesters marched through a refugee camp in the southern part of the country, condemning the attacks in general, and Egypt in particular.
"Hosni Mubarak, you agent of the Americans, you traitor!" they shouted. They also called on the militant group Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora described the Israeli attacks as a "criminal operation" and "new massacres to be added to its full record of massacres."
The militant group Hezbollah in a statement Saturday called the attacks "a war crime and a genocide," and criticized what it described as the "shameful" Arab silence.
The Libyan foreign ministry issued a statement calling on Arabs to take solid action in "responding to the Israeli brutality against Gaza," and urged the international community to stop Israel's attacks.
Saudi Arabia, which has put forward a plan calling for a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world, in a statement Saturday condemned the Israeli attacks. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Saturday in Riyadh, said the Saudi leader promised to call U.S. President George W. Bush and other leaders to ask them to push Israel to halt its operations.
Hundreds of protesters in the Jordanian capital of Amman demonstrated, waving Hamas banners and condemning Israel's strikes. There were similar demonstrations in other Jordanian towns and Palestinian refugee camps.
The Jordanian ruler, King Abdullah II, called for an immediate halt to "all military actions" in a statement. He also met Saturday with Abbas after the Palestinian returned from Saudi Arabia. In a statement, the two leaders called on the international community to pressure Israel to end its military operations.
In Syria's al-Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus, hundreds of Palestinians also protested, vowing to continue fighting Israel.
"It's a Zionist holocaust, but it won't dissuade us from going on with our struggle to achieve our goals," said Ali Barakah, 42, one of the protesters.
The Sudanese foreign ministry issued a statement calling for an end to the Israeli attacks that it described as "brutal raids" and saying Arab states should take a unified stand to protect the Palestinians.
Even Turkey, with ties to Israel, expressed dismay as about 2,000 people protested in Istanbul, burning an Israeli flag.

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Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis

Image via Wikipedia

FT.com by Martin Wolf
We are all Keynesians now. When Barack Obama takes office he will propose a gigantic fiscal stimulus package. Such packages are being offered by many other governments. Even Germany is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this race.
The ghost of John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics, has returned to haunt us. With it has come that of his most interesting disciple, Hyman Minsky. We all now know of the "Minsky moment" - the point at which a financial mania turns into panic.
Like all prophets, Keynes offered ambiguous lessons to his followers. Few still believe in the fiscal fine-tuning that his disciples propounded in the decades after the second world war. But nobody believes in the monetary targeting proposed by his celebrated intellectual adversary, Milton Friedman, either. Now, 62 years after Keynes' death, in another era of financial crisis and threatened economic slump, it is easier for us to understand what remains relevant in his teaching.
I see three broad lessons.
The first, which was taken forward by Minsky, is that we should not take the pretensions of financiers seriously. "A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him." Not for him, then, was the notion of "efficient markets".
The second lesson is that the economy cannot be analysed in the same way as an individual business. For an individual company, it makes sense to cut costs. If the world tries to do so, it will merely shrink demand. An individual may not spend all his income. But the world must do so.
The third and most important lesson is that one should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideological visions were on offer: the Austrian; and the socialist. The Austrians - Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek - argued that a purging of the excesses of the 1920s was required. Socialists argued that socialism needed to replace failed capitalism, outright. These views were grounded in alternative secular religions: the former in the view that individual self-seeking behaviour guaranteed a stable economic order; the latter in the idea that the identical motivation could lead only to exploitation, instability and crisis.
Keynes's genius - a very English one - was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge. He wished to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society with an urbanised economy. He wished to preserve a market economy, without believing that laisser faire makes everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
This same moralistic debate is with us, once again. Contemporary "liquidationists" insist that a collapse would lead to rebirth of a purified economy. Their leftwing opponents argue that the era of markets is over. And even I wish to see the punishment of financial alchemists who claimed that ever more debt turns economic lead into gold.
Yet Keynes would have insisted that such approaches are foolish. Markets are neither infallible nor dispensable. They are indeed the underpinnings of a productive economy and individual freedom. But they can also go seriously awry and so must be managed with care. The election of Mr Obama surely reflects a desire for just such pragmatism. Neither Ron Paul, the libertarian, nor Ralph Nader, on the left, got anywhere. So the task for this new administration is to lead the US and the world towards a pragmatic resolution of the global economic crisis we all now confront.
The urgent task is to return the world economy to health.
The shorter-term challenge is to sustain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended. Also important will be direct central-bank finance of borrowers. It is evident that much of the load will fall on the US, largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak. Given the correction of household spending under way in the deficit countries, this period of high government spending is, alas, likely to last for years. At the same time, a big effort must be made to purge the balance sheets of households and the financial system. A debt-for-equity swap is surely going to be necessary.
The longer-term challenge is to force a rebalancing of global demand. Deficit countries cannot be expected to spend their way into bankruptcy, while surplus countries condemn as profligacy the spending from which their exporters benefit so much. In the necessary attempt to reconstruct the global economic order, on which the new administration must focus, this will be a central issue. It is one Keynes himself had in mind when he put forward his ideas for the postwar monetary system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
No less pragmatic must be the attempt to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. As Minsky made clear, no permanent answer exists. But recognition of the systemic frailty of a complex financial system would be a good start.
As was the case in the 1930s, we also have a choice: it is to deal with these challenges co-operatively and pragmatically or let ideological blinkers and selfishness obstruct us. The objective is also clear: to preserve an open and at least reasonably stable world economy that offers opportunity to as much of humanity as possible. We have done a disturbingly poor job of this in recent years. We must do better. We can do so, provided we approach the task in a spirit of humility and pragmatism, shorn of ideological blinkers
As Oscar Wilde might have said, in economics, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. That is, for me, the biggest lesson of this crisis. It is also the one Keynes himself still teaches.
martin.wolf@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy policy | Terms
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2008.
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Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis

Image via Wikipedia

FT.com by Martin Wolf
We are all Keynesians now. When Barack Obama takes office he will propose a gigantic fiscal stimulus package. Such packages are being offered by many other governments. Even Germany is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this race.
The ghost of John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics, has returned to haunt us. With it has come that of his most interesting disciple, Hyman Minsky. We all now know of the "Minsky moment" - the point at which a financial mania turns into panic.
Like all prophets, Keynes offered ambiguous lessons to his followers. Few still believe in the fiscal fine-tuning that his disciples propounded in the decades after the second world war. But nobody believes in the monetary targeting proposed by his celebrated intellectual adversary, Milton Friedman, either. Now, 62 years after Keynes' death, in another era of financial crisis and threatened economic slump, it is easier for us to understand what remains relevant in his teaching.
I see three broad lessons.
The first, which was taken forward by Minsky, is that we should not take the pretensions of financiers seriously. "A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him." Not for him, then, was the notion of "efficient markets".
The second lesson is that the economy cannot be analysed in the same way as an individual business. For an individual company, it makes sense to cut costs. If the world tries to do so, it will merely shrink demand. An individual may not spend all his income. But the world must do so.
The third and most important lesson is that one should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideological visions were on offer: the Austrian; and the socialist. The Austrians - Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek - argued that a purging of the excesses of the 1920s was required. Socialists argued that socialism needed to replace failed capitalism, outright. These views were grounded in alternative secular religions: the former in the view that individual self-seeking behaviour guaranteed a stable economic order; the latter in the idea that the identical motivation could lead only to exploitation, instability and crisis.
Keynes's genius - a very English one - was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge. He wished to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society with an urbanised economy. He wished to preserve a market economy, without believing that laisser faire makes everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
This same moralistic debate is with us, once again. Contemporary "liquidationists" insist that a collapse would lead to rebirth of a purified economy. Their leftwing opponents argue that the era of markets is over. And even I wish to see the punishment of financial alchemists who claimed that ever more debt turns economic lead into gold.
Yet Keynes would have insisted that such approaches are foolish. Markets are neither infallible nor dispensable. They are indeed the underpinnings of a productive economy and individual freedom. But they can also go seriously awry and so must be managed with care. The election of Mr Obama surely reflects a desire for just such pragmatism. Neither Ron Paul, the libertarian, nor Ralph Nader, on the left, got anywhere. So the task for this new administration is to lead the US and the world towards a pragmatic resolution of the global economic crisis we all now confront.
The urgent task is to return the world economy to health.
The shorter-term challenge is to sustain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended. Also important will be direct central-bank finance of borrowers. It is evident that much of the load will fall on the US, largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak. Given the correction of household spending under way in the deficit countries, this period of high government spending is, alas, likely to last for years. At the same time, a big effort must be made to purge the balance sheets of households and the financial system. A debt-for-equity swap is surely going to be necessary.
The longer-term challenge is to force a rebalancing of global demand. Deficit countries cannot be expected to spend their way into bankruptcy, while surplus countries condemn as profligacy the spending from which their exporters benefit so much. In the necessary attempt to reconstruct the global economic order, on which the new administration must focus, this will be a central issue. It is one Keynes himself had in mind when he put forward his ideas for the postwar monetary system at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
No less pragmatic must be the attempt to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. As Minsky made clear, no permanent answer exists. But recognition of the systemic frailty of a complex financial system would be a good start.
As was the case in the 1930s, we also have a choice: it is to deal with these challenges co-operatively and pragmatically or let ideological blinkers and selfishness obstruct us. The objective is also clear: to preserve an open and at least reasonably stable world economy that offers opportunity to as much of humanity as possible. We have done a disturbingly poor job of this in recent years. We must do better. We can do so, provided we approach the task in a spirit of humility and pragmatism, shorn of ideological blinkers
As Oscar Wilde might have said, in economics, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. That is, for me, the biggest lesson of this crisis. It is also the one Keynes himself still teaches.
martin.wolf@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy policy | Terms
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2008.
Related articles by Zemanta

• Martin Kettle: How would reform of the global financial system actually work?
• The Controversy over the Milton Friedman Institute--Posner
• John Tepper Marlin: Economic Recovery -- Five Lessons from the Depression
• David Hoyt: Sticking it to Milton
• Readings: Skidelsky on Keynes
• The Government as risk bearer of last resort
• Secondary Sources: Fed, Fed and More Fed
• Deflation or inflation?
• Economists and Bailouts: Mea Culpa
• Backward-looking protectionism

Pakistan Moves Forces as Tensions With India Rise

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

NYTimes.com

Pakistan is moving some troops away from its western border with Afghanistan, where the United States has pressed it to combat Taliban militants, and stopping many soldiers from going on leave amid rising tensions with India, senior Pakistani officials said Friday.
A senior military official said in an interview that the decision to sharply restrict leave for soldiers was taken "in view of the prevailing environment," namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. He added that the Pakistani air force was "vigilant" and "alert" for the same reason. A second Pakistani security official would not say where the forces were being sent, but confirmed the troop movements and the restrictions on leave, saying "there's an obvious reason for that."
The redeployment came as Indian authorities warned their citizens not to travel to Pakistan given the heightened tensions between the two nations, news agencies reported, particularly since Indian citizens had been arrested there in connection with a bombing in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
The senior military official said that the Pakistani troops were being drawn from northwestern Pakistan, where the military is fighting Taliban militants on several fronts. He said that "essential troops in limited numbers are being pulled out of areas where no operations are being conducted," or where winter weather had already limited their ability to maneuver.
The senior official also refused to say where the troops would be redeployed, although The Associated Press quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that the Pakistani Army's 14th division was being sent to Kasur and Sialkot, near the Indian border, and that around 20,000 troops were being redeployed. However, neither the scale nor ultimate destination of the troop movement could be immediately confirmed.
In India, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, summoned the leaders of his country's armed forces to discuss the security situation, Indian media reported on Friday.
The developments added to the simmering tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors one month after the three-day terror assault in Mumbai left 171 people dead. Indian and American intelligence officials have blamed the Mumbai attacks on a Pakistani militant group that has long had ties to the Pakistan intelligence service. But Pakistani leaders reject that argument, saying they have been shown no evidence proving who carried out the attacks.
The troop movements away from northwestern Pakistan may also deepen concerns among American officials about Pakistan's commitment to battling Taliban militants in the country's lawless western frontier regions.
If the Pakistani troops are being sent toward the Indian border, the action is in sharp contrast to efforts earlier this month to cool hostilities between the two countries, which have fought three wars since 1947.
Two weeks ago, for example, Pakistani officials went out of their way to play down as "inadvertent" two incursions of Indian warplanes into Pakistani airspace. Their response to the airspace violations -- which the Indian military denied -- won praise from United States leaders even as Pakistani officials privately said the incursions were likely a test or provocation.

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Pakistan Moves Forces as Tensions With India Rise

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

NYTimes.com

Pakistan is moving some troops away from its western border with Afghanistan, where the United States has pressed it to combat Taliban militants, and stopping many soldiers from going on leave amid rising tensions with India, senior Pakistani officials said Friday.
A senior military official said in an interview that the decision to sharply restrict leave for soldiers was taken "in view of the prevailing environment," namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. He added that the Pakistani air force was "vigilant" and "alert" for the same reason. A second Pakistani security official would not say where the forces were being sent, but confirmed the troop movements and the restrictions on leave, saying "there's an obvious reason for that."
The redeployment came as Indian authorities warned their citizens not to travel to Pakistan given the heightened tensions between the two nations, news agencies reported, particularly since Indian citizens had been arrested there in connection with a bombing in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
The senior military official said that the Pakistani troops were being drawn from northwestern Pakistan, where the military is fighting Taliban militants on several fronts. He said that "essential troops in limited numbers are being pulled out of areas where no operations are being conducted," or where winter weather had already limited their ability to maneuver.
The senior official also refused to say where the troops would be redeployed, although The Associated Press quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that the Pakistani Army's 14th division was being sent to Kasur and Sialkot, near the Indian border, and that around 20,000 troops were being redeployed. However, neither the scale nor ultimate destination of the troop movement could be immediately confirmed.
In India, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, summoned the leaders of his country's armed forces to discuss the security situation, Indian media reported on Friday.
The developments added to the simmering tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors one month after the three-day terror assault in Mumbai left 171 people dead. Indian and American intelligence officials have blamed the Mumbai attacks on a Pakistani militant group that has long had ties to the Pakistan intelligence service. But Pakistani leaders reject that argument, saying they have been shown no evidence proving who carried out the attacks.
The troop movements away from northwestern Pakistan may also deepen concerns among American officials about Pakistan's commitment to battling Taliban militants in the country's lawless western frontier regions.
If the Pakistani troops are being sent toward the Indian border, the action is in sharp contrast to efforts earlier this month to cool hostilities between the two countries, which have fought three wars since 1947.
Two weeks ago, for example, Pakistani officials went out of their way to play down as "inadvertent" two incursions of Indian warplanes into Pakistani airspace. Their response to the airspace violations -- which the Indian military denied -- won praise from United States leaders even as Pakistani officials privately said the incursions were likely a test or provocation.

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Be your brother's keeper, President-elect Barack Obama urges

NY Daily Times

President-elect Barack Obama encouraged Americans on Wednesday to embrace the holiday spirit and be "my brother's keeper" during these trying economic times.
"As we count the higher blessings of faith and family, we know that millions of Americans don't have a job. Many more are struggling to pay the bills or stay in their homes. From students to seniors, the future seems uncertain," Obama said in a Christmas greeting from Hawaii, where he's vacationing.
"This season of giving should also be a time to renew a sense of common purpose and shared citizenship. Now, more than ever, we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans - that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."
While Obama, his wife and two young daughters enjoyed a final family retreat before they move to the White House next month, President Bush and his wife, Laura, huddled for a last Texican-style holiday at Camp David. Enchiladas and tamales were on the Christmas Eve menu, and the traditional turkey and trimmings will top today's Christmas table.
They'll head to their Crawford, Tex., ranch tomorrow and return New Year's Day with 20 days left in his administration.
Bush also made traditional Christmas calls to nine servicemen and women around the world, including Army Spec. Marcus Brown, 23, of Staten Island, who was awarded the Bronze Star for wounds suffered April 30 in Iraq.
"He said the President was 'very bubbly.' He told him he was doing a good job, and keep up the good work and to thank him for putting himself out the way he did to win the Bronze [Star] Medal," said his mom, Michele Brown, 52, who works in customer service for JPMorgan Chase.
She said a third Christmas without her son is tough, but she crowed: "I'm so proud of him. I taught him the right way, not to be selfish. The Army taught him to be selfless."
Obama also urged Americans to keep the the 174,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in their thoughts. "This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent and sometimes in danger," he said.

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Be your brother's keeper, President-elect Barack Obama urges

NY Daily Times

President-elect Barack Obama encouraged Americans on Wednesday to embrace the holiday spirit and be "my brother's keeper" during these trying economic times.
"As we count the higher blessings of faith and family, we know that millions of Americans don't have a job. Many more are struggling to pay the bills or stay in their homes. From students to seniors, the future seems uncertain," Obama said in a Christmas greeting from Hawaii, where he's vacationing.
"This season of giving should also be a time to renew a sense of common purpose and shared citizenship. Now, more than ever, we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans - that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."
While Obama, his wife and two young daughters enjoyed a final family retreat before they move to the White House next month, President Bush and his wife, Laura, huddled for a last Texican-style holiday at Camp David. Enchiladas and tamales were on the Christmas Eve menu, and the traditional turkey and trimmings will top today's Christmas table.
They'll head to their Crawford, Tex., ranch tomorrow and return New Year's Day with 20 days left in his administration.
Bush also made traditional Christmas calls to nine servicemen and women around the world, including Army Spec. Marcus Brown, 23, of Staten Island, who was awarded the Bronze Star for wounds suffered April 30 in Iraq.
"He said the President was 'very bubbly.' He told him he was doing a good job, and keep up the good work and to thank him for putting himself out the way he did to win the Bronze [Star] Medal," said his mom, Michele Brown, 52, who works in customer service for JPMorgan Chase.
She said a third Christmas without her son is tough, but she crowed: "I'm so proud of him. I taught him the right way, not to be selfish. The Army taught him to be selfless."
Obama also urged Americans to keep the the 174,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in their thoughts. "This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent and sometimes in danger," he said.

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MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH, Part 3 - Jordan: Al-Qaeda clouds a precarious future

Image via Wikipedia

Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer
Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan has been a nation living in an uneasy relationship with the Sunni Islamist movement. With a population more than 50% Palestinian, Jordan became an ever-more useful place for Palestinian radicals to hang their hats while preparing plans to destroy Israel.
Under King Hussein bin Talal (1952 to 1999), the radicals were allowed to be in Jordan, but the country's pervasive and effective security services moderated the domestic problems they caused, save for flashes of admittedly intense violence. Over time - and after another war - King Hussein also became a central player in the Arab-Israeli peace process, earning the animosity of some of Jordan's Palestinian guests, as well as those of Jordan's domestic Islamist leaders, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist organizations - most of whom enjoyed external funding from the Gulf.
To say that Jordan was always one step ahead of Islamist trouble probably is fair, but King Hussein proved to be a deft political operator and managed both to keep the security lid on and maintain popularity among the people.
Then Hussein died, his son Abdullah took the throne, and the United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, all of which yielded a significantly more dangerous internal security environment for Jordan. The new king, Abdullah, was not made of the same stern stuff and craftiness as his father and he seemed to exude a Westernized persona that did not sit well with the country's Islamists.
While this weakness might have been overcome in time, Abdullah soon encountered a situation in which he first aligned Jordan with Washington's post-9/11 "war on terror"; then with its invasion of Iraq - for which it was rewarded by a doubling of US aid in 2004 and continuing increases since; and finally with the West's aid-boycott of the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
The Amman regime began running hospitals in Fallujah in Iraq and Mazar-i-Sharif - the latter in North Atlantic Treaty Organization-occupied Afghanistan - and soon after paid the price for supporting US policy in Iraq with attacks on its interests and personnel within Iraq. Most importantly, Jordan now faced a world in which the durable shield of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - which had prevented the entry of large numbers of Sunni jihadis from the Gulf and South Asia - was shattered.
Of the Levant's Arab states, Jordan suffered quickly and most severely from the US-led coalition's destruction of the anti-jihadi bulwark Saddam's Iraq reliably provided on Jordan's eastern border. The end of Saddam's reign vastly increased Jordan's domestic security problems:

• Jordan's domestic Islamists and their organizations not only resented King Abdullah's decision to support both of Washington's wars, but they quickly moved to incite young Jordanian Muslims to go to Iraq and fight the foreign occupiers.
  These groups also assisted non-Jordanian Muslims from across the Islamic community to securely transit the country and enter Iraq to join the mujahideen. That the Islamists' anti-US and anti-regime attitudes found increased popular support after the invasion of Iraq is evident in the success of the Islamic Action Front (the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm) in winning 17 seats in Jordan's parliament in the 2003 election, the largest single group in that 110-seat body. This total dropped to six in the 2007 election when the Front ran candidates in only 30 seats because of the regime's failure to follow through with promised electoral reforms.

• The invasion and occupation of Iraq also gave unexpected scope to the lethal talents of a Jordanian named Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, who quickly rose from being the leader of his own small group to being named the commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi's organization continued expanding inside Jordan while he was in Iraq - including with some success in the country's military - and his heroic style and successful military operations inspired a large number of young Jordanian men. Since al-Zarqawi's death, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups cite what they describe as his "knightly example" as an element of their propaganda products.

• The willingness of the US-led coalition to condone a quiet campaign of ethnic cleansing by Iraqi Shi'ites drove enormous numbers of Iraq's Sunnis abroad. For Jordan this meant hosting 500,000 to 800,000 Iraqi refugees - some estimates range up to a million. Most of these refugees entered the country illegally and so are only slowly becoming known to the security services. In addition, the refugee population contains a proportion of Iraqi Shi'ites, and their presence in the country is sharpening sectarian differences in overwhelmingly Sunni Jordanian society. The large refugee presence, moreover, probably ensures that Jordan would be the scene of fighting between its Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite guests if Iraq slips into civil war.

• Most recently, the apparently temporary success of the US military "surge" in Iraq resulted in a large number of al-Qaeda and Sunni fighters deciding to leave western Iraq for safe havens abroad, a majority of them heading for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. As a result, Jordanian security services are now confronting the potential for trouble posed not only by would-be mujahideen who have been unable to get through Jordan to Iraq, but also by veteran fighters angry that they had to leave Iraq.

In response to these realities, the Amman government clamped down on Islamist activities within the country, especially after Zarqawi's forces launched missiles against Israel from Jordanian territory and bombed the Radisson Hotel in the capital. Jordanian authorities harassed Islamist parliamentary deputies who expressed condolences for Zarqawi; imprisoned a poet writing verse praising Bin Laden; acted to put the authority for issuing fatwas under a state-appointed council; and made state approval necessary before mosque clerics could begin preaching.
After Islamist violence increased in Jordan, Abd-al-Bari Atwan, the editor of London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, wrote, "The most dangerous thing that could result from these bombings is the Jordanian government's exploitation of them to impose more restrictive security measures on the pretext of confronting terrorism."
Atwan's worst-case scenario appears to have come to pass, although it is not clear Amman had any other choice. The government has passed more stringent anti-terrorism laws, and the security services have used them in ways that increased the alienation of much of the Islamist community, especially in the Islamist-heavy towns of Zarqa, Ma'an, Salt and the Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Irbid. The government's heavy hand in checking the Islamists has undermined King Abdallah's efforts to increase his popularity and reinforced the Islamists' negative assessment of Abdallah and his regime as "the West's favorite ally".
Jordan is not, of course, in immediate danger of being swept by an Islamist tide; the domestic Islamist movement is not powerful enough to take power by force, the country's security services are formidable, and the government will not permit a fair general election.
Still, Jordan's long-term stability is precarious because of the Iraq war's negative impact on a society constantly threatened by destabilization because of its Palestinian population and support for the Western-advocated Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As in the case of Lebanon and Syria, the end of the Saddam-maintained barrier preventing the entry of most Sunni militants into the Levant through Iraq has left Jordan to face not only its own growing Islamist community - the growth of which is in part due to Amman's support for the Iraq war - but also an inflow of foreign Islamists, some of whom are veteran mujahideen and many of whom appear to be Saudi-style Salafists.
From al-Qaeda's perspective the situation in Jordan is progressing in a favorable manner. Bin Laden has long targeted the Hashemite monarchy because of its refusal to allow the mujahideen to launch raids from Jordan into Israel. Al-Qaeda itself has had a shadowy presence in Jordan, first led by Bin Laden's late brother-in-law Muhammad Jamal Khalifah, almost since its inception in 1988. Bin Laden and his lieutenants surely see Jordan as a target for destabilization, as well as a place from which al-Qaeda can establish a presence capable of attacking Israel.
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)Related articles by Zemanta

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MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH, Part 3 - Jordan: Al-Qaeda clouds a precarious future

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Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer
Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan has been a nation living in an uneasy relationship with the Sunni Islamist movement. With a population more than 50% Palestinian, Jordan became an ever-more useful place for Palestinian radicals to hang their hats while preparing plans to destroy Israel.
Under King Hussein bin Talal (1952 to 1999), the radicals were allowed to be in Jordan, but the country's pervasive and effective security services moderated the domestic problems they caused, save for flashes of admittedly intense violence. Over time - and after another war - King Hussein also became a central player in the Arab-Israeli peace process, earning the animosity of some of Jordan's Palestinian guests, as well as those of Jordan's domestic Islamist leaders, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist organizations - most of whom enjoyed external funding from the Gulf.
To say that Jordan was always one step ahead of Islamist trouble probably is fair, but King Hussein proved to be a deft political operator and managed both to keep the security lid on and maintain popularity among the people.
Then Hussein died, his son Abdullah took the throne, and the United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, all of which yielded a significantly more dangerous internal security environment for Jordan. The new king, Abdullah, was not made of the same stern stuff and craftiness as his father and he seemed to exude a Westernized persona that did not sit well with the country's Islamists.
While this weakness might have been overcome in time, Abdullah soon encountered a situation in which he first aligned Jordan with Washington's post-9/11 "war on terror"; then with its invasion of Iraq - for which it was rewarded by a doubling of US aid in 2004 and continuing increases since; and finally with the West's aid-boycott of the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
The Amman regime began running hospitals in Fallujah in Iraq and Mazar-i-Sharif - the latter in North Atlantic Treaty Organization-occupied Afghanistan - and soon after paid the price for supporting US policy in Iraq with attacks on its interests and personnel within Iraq. Most importantly, Jordan now faced a world in which the durable shield of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - which had prevented the entry of large numbers of Sunni jihadis from the Gulf and South Asia - was shattered.
Of the Levant's Arab states, Jordan suffered quickly and most severely from the US-led coalition's destruction of the anti-jihadi bulwark Saddam's Iraq reliably provided on Jordan's eastern border. The end of Saddam's reign vastly increased Jordan's domestic security problems:

• Jordan's domestic Islamists and their organizations not only resented King Abdullah's decision to support both of Washington's wars, but they quickly moved to incite young Jordanian Muslims to go to Iraq and fight the foreign occupiers.
  These groups also assisted non-Jordanian Muslims from across the Islamic community to securely transit the country and enter Iraq to join the mujahideen. That the Islamists' anti-US and anti-regime attitudes found increased popular support after the invasion of Iraq is evident in the success of the Islamic Action Front (the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm) in winning 17 seats in Jordan's parliament in the 2003 election, the largest single group in that 110-seat body. This total dropped to six in the 2007 election when the Front ran candidates in only 30 seats because of the regime's failure to follow through with promised electoral reforms.

• The invasion and occupation of Iraq also gave unexpected scope to the lethal talents of a Jordanian named Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, who quickly rose from being the leader of his own small group to being named the commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi's organization continued expanding inside Jordan while he was in Iraq - including with some success in the country's military - and his heroic style and successful military operations inspired a large number of young Jordanian men. Since al-Zarqawi's death, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups cite what they describe as his "knightly example" as an element of their propaganda products.

• The willingness of the US-led coalition to condone a quiet campaign of ethnic cleansing by Iraqi Shi'ites drove enormous numbers of Iraq's Sunnis abroad. For Jordan this meant hosting 500,000 to 800,000 Iraqi refugees - some estimates range up to a million. Most of these refugees entered the country illegally and so are only slowly becoming known to the security services. In addition, the refugee population contains a proportion of Iraqi Shi'ites, and their presence in the country is sharpening sectarian differences in overwhelmingly Sunni Jordanian society. The large refugee presence, moreover, probably ensures that Jordan would be the scene of fighting between its Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite guests if Iraq slips into civil war.

• Most recently, the apparently temporary success of the US military "surge" in Iraq resulted in a large number of al-Qaeda and Sunni fighters deciding to leave western Iraq for safe havens abroad, a majority of them heading for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. As a result, Jordanian security services are now confronting the potential for trouble posed not only by would-be mujahideen who have been unable to get through Jordan to Iraq, but also by veteran fighters angry that they had to leave Iraq.

In response to these realities, the Amman government clamped down on Islamist activities within the country, especially after Zarqawi's forces launched missiles against Israel from Jordanian territory and bombed the Radisson Hotel in the capital. Jordanian authorities harassed Islamist parliamentary deputies who expressed condolences for Zarqawi; imprisoned a poet writing verse praising Bin Laden; acted to put the authority for issuing fatwas under a state-appointed council; and made state approval necessary before mosque clerics could begin preaching.
After Islamist violence increased in Jordan, Abd-al-Bari Atwan, the editor of London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, wrote, "The most dangerous thing that could result from these bombings is the Jordanian government's exploitation of them to impose more restrictive security measures on the pretext of confronting terrorism."
Atwan's worst-case scenario appears to have come to pass, although it is not clear Amman had any other choice. The government has passed more stringent anti-terrorism laws, and the security services have used them in ways that increased the alienation of much of the Islamist community, especially in the Islamist-heavy towns of Zarqa, Ma'an, Salt and the Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Irbid. The government's heavy hand in checking the Islamists has undermined King Abdallah's efforts to increase his popularity and reinforced the Islamists' negative assessment of Abdallah and his regime as "the West's favorite ally".
Jordan is not, of course, in immediate danger of being swept by an Islamist tide; the domestic Islamist movement is not powerful enough to take power by force, the country's security services are formidable, and the government will not permit a fair general election.
Still, Jordan's long-term stability is precarious because of the Iraq war's negative impact on a society constantly threatened by destabilization because of its Palestinian population and support for the Western-advocated Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As in the case of Lebanon and Syria, the end of the Saddam-maintained barrier preventing the entry of most Sunni militants into the Levant through Iraq has left Jordan to face not only its own growing Islamist community - the growth of which is in part due to Amman's support for the Iraq war - but also an inflow of foreign Islamists, some of whom are veteran mujahideen and many of whom appear to be Saudi-style Salafists.
From al-Qaeda's perspective the situation in Jordan is progressing in a favorable manner. Bin Laden has long targeted the Hashemite monarchy because of its refusal to allow the mujahideen to launch raids from Jordan into Israel. Al-Qaeda itself has had a shadowy presence in Jordan, first led by Bin Laden's late brother-in-law Muhammad Jamal Khalifah, almost since its inception in 1988. Bin Laden and his lieutenants surely see Jordan as a target for destabilization, as well as a place from which al-Qaeda can establish a presence capable of attacking Israel.
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)Related articles by Zemanta

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LEBANON-SYRIA: MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH

Image via Wikipedia

Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's organizational goal in Iraq was to acquire contiguous territory from which to spread its influence and operatives, as well as those of its Islamist allies, into the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey.
Having been weaned as an insurgent in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden has consistently refused to commit large al-Qaeda resources to jihads lacking country-wide maneuver room or Pakistan-like contiguous safe haven. The US-led invasion of Iraq, therefore, opened a chance for the above-described expansion by al-Qaeda and its allies that would not have been possible under a Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.
This is the first of four articles that will assess the initial stages of the penetration of the Levant - an ancient term for a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Mesopotamia - by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. This piece will look at Syria, and will be followed by analyses of the bleed-through from Iraq into Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The quartet of articles will seek to assess the validity of the recent claim by the state-run Syrian newspaper al-Thawara that because of the war in Iraq "the [Levant] region is throbbing with terrorists".
After crushing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) at the city of Hama in 1982 - killing up to 20,000 people and leveling a quarter of the city - president Hafiz al-Assad adopted the traditional and traditionally unsuccessful tack of Arab tyrants of trying to use government largesse to co-opt Syria's remaining Islamists and thereby moderate their message. Under Assad's program tens of thousands of new mosques were built; 22 higher-education institutions for Koran-based learning were opened; regional sharia schools for men and women were started; and Muslim students from more than sixty countries were invited to receive their Islamic schooling in Syria.
Assad's son Bashar, however, is discovering that his father's efforts to co-opt Syrian Islamists have yielded not a tame, state-sponsored Islam but a trend toward militant Islamism in both urban and rural areas of Syria. After the September 27 terrorist attack in Damascus, an Arab journalist suggested:
The Syrian regime fell - as have others - in[to] the famous illusion that they can toy with the terrorist fundamentalist bear at the beginning of the day and then get rid of it or put it back in the cage at the end of the day! This is an illusion that is repeated and always repeated in the Middle East region. No side wants to learn from the experience of others. Toying with religion or attempting to revolutionize religion or some of its aspects and then trying to benefit from this revolution on the political level without any repercussions or consequences is the biggest illusion of all. It is the first and last mistake because if you commit this mistake once it would be fatal and there would be no second time!
Compounding the failure of co-optation for Damascus is the fact that the senior al-Assad's Hama operation, although massively murderous, was not comprehensive: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was not wiped out. Besides members who survived Hama and remained in Syria, a number of senior SMB leaders escaped and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states where they found succor, academic posts, and a safe haven in which to reorganize and plan for revenge.
The bin Laden family was among the many wealthy, non-royal Saudi families that had hosted SMB leaders both before and after Hama. Indeed, Osama in his youth met senior SMB leaders on their pilgrimage, and while living in Sudan (1991-1996) several SMB members worked for or were supported by al-Qaeda's multiple businesses.
It is important to note that an al-Qaeda-led mujahideen bleed-through from Iraq to Syria had fertile ground in which to take root in 2003. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous and brutal Syrian security services, there was a Damascus-permitted militant Islamist environment to be exploited when the US-led invasion of Iraq occurred. Not only had the targets of regime co-optation become more militant, but there were also SMB remnants in the country, as well as the long-time official presence of Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and various Palestinian resistance groups.
Into this made-to-order milieu, then, came hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Muslim men from across the Arab and Muslim worlds, eager to enter Iraq and join the fatwa-sanctioned jihad against the US-led coalition. Bashar al-Assad's regime allowed these men to enter Iraq, trusting that they would make life miserable for US forces, kill enough American troops to force a US withdrawal and end up being killed before they could head for home. Washington singled out Damascus for sole responsibility for this cross-border flow of would-be mujahideen, but al-Assad's regime was the focal point for the flow because of the easy physical access to Iraq that it afforded.
Al-Assad certainly assisted his domestic Islamist firebrands to get to Iraq, but the non-Syrian Muslims who came to Syria en route to Iraq were sent by their own governments - Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, etc - in an effort that mirrored Assad's: send the young Islamists to Iraq to fight and die and thereby create a safety valve that lessens the pressure from domestic Islamist militancy. Obviously, al-Assad indulged the other Arab regimes by permitting the flow through. This is the same method of operation that most Arab and many Muslim regimes used during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89).
Having now tightened up Syria's borders with Iraq under pressure from Washington and the French government, Bashar al-Assad is now running a country-size hotel for a variety of ill-tempered Islamist guests. In addition to long-term tenants Hamas, Hezbollah, and the secular Palestinian fraternity, Syrian security has to keep tabs on newer and not fully domesticated guests: a growing Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organization; a militant "official" clergy that is stoking greater Islamic fervor at the grassroots level; more than a half-million Iraqi refugees; a multinational assortment of veteran mujahideen stranded in Syria after leaving Iraq; and would-be fighters who got to Syria but were prevented from entering Iraq.
Among the veteran fighters are a contingent of Syrians who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - some commentators are calling them the "Syrian Afghans" - with military skills they can impart at home and in other countries of the Levant.
All told, Assad - a man not as skilled as his father or as able to control the regime's security services - is faced with a growing Islamist threat to the stability of his regime. While the regime is not in danger of falling, it is likewise not in the same position as it was in the "seventies and eighties when the [Syrian] authorities were able to liquidate, with the use of force only, what they then called the conspiracy of the 'Muslim Brothers'."
For the foreseeable future, al-Assad and his security forces will have to deal with internal Islamist anger and threats - based on Damascus' decision to tighten its borders to prevent jihadis going to Iraq, and its indirect talks with Israel - in a manner that is not so severe and brutal as to promote the coalescing of the disparate Sunni militant groups now in Syria.
They also will have to cope with an external threat by better controlling the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent the infiltration of Islamist fighters angry with Damascus and eager to strike back for the blocking of routes to Iraq. Assad and other Syrian officials have already claimed the border is being infiltrated by violent, Saudi-backed "Salafists", "Takfiris" and other "extremist forces" from northern Lebanon, and several Arab commentators have noted that this is a legitimate concern for Damascus because northern Lebanon lies close to Syria's "Sunni belt", once a hotbed of support for the SMB.
Damascus' recent decision to sign a security-cooperation deal with the Lebanese regime shows the depth of the Assad regime's concern with the Islamist threat, but the time may be passing when either Damascus or Beirut can fully control the Sunni militant forces operating on or from their territory.
Lebanon always has been a country whose people are more loyal to family, clan, tribe and faith than to the concept of Lebanon as a united nation-state. Since 2003, this existing internal divisiveness has been sharpened by the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US-led international effort to drive Syria out of Lebanon.
The former opened a role for Lebanon as part of the path for would-be jihadis traveling to fight in Iraq. The latter - together with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war - forced the precipitate decline of effective governmental authority in Lebanon, allowing jihadis to use the country for transit and basing. This made it a target for aggressive expansionist efforts by Saudis and other Salafis and encouraged the rapid growth of internal violence between political and religious factions.
Overall, the Iraq war and Syria's departure from Lebanon gave al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies an unprecedented opportunity to infiltrate their influence and manpower into Lebanon, as well as help strengthen the Sunni Salafist trend in northern Lebanon.
It is now old-hat to say that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a casus belli for Sunni Muslims worldwide, and especially among the Salafists who are prominent in al-Qaeda, other Islamist radical groups, and the Saudi regime, who are now effectively expanding their power across the Arab and Muslim worlds. A glance at the map showed jihad-bound Sunnis that Lebanon was a geographic key to infiltrating Islamist fighters into Iraq. The war itself made many Sunni Lebanese eager to assist that entry process, with some ready to go and fight there themselves.
With Syria effectively in charge of Lebanon at the start of the Iraq war, it appears that the transit of would-be mujahideen through Lebanon was kept moving by Syrian authorities and did not initially result in the buildup of non-Lebanese Sunni Islamists within the country.
The West's pyrrhic 2005 victory in forcing President Bashar al-Assad to evacuate Syrian forces from the country, however, seems to have created a situation which now finds growing numbers of non-Lebanese Salafi Islamists present in Lebanon and a growing Salafist movement in the north - especially in Tripoli, which is Lebanon's largest, most conservative Sunni city - as well as in the city of Sidon and Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
In addition to the growth of Salifism and Islamist militancy engendered by the passions aroused by the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia has been fishing in troubled waters by encouraging the growth of each in northern Lebanon. Riyadh has paid for the construction of new mosques in Tripoli and reportedly has assisted militants residing in the northern territory abutting Syria.
According to the media, Lebanese and Syrian sources are reporting that Saudi National Security Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is supervising the Saudis' pro-Salafist agenda in Lebanon, a program which includes sponsoring Islamist terrorist operations in Syria. Riyadh's activities in northern Lebanon hold the promise of fulfilling two longstanding Saudi goals: (1) creating a viable, well-armed, and militant Sunni Salafi movement in Lebanon as a military counterweight to the Shi'ite Hezbollah, and (2) to enable Riyadh to cause domestic instability for their Syrian enemy.
The turmoil of post-Syrian Lebanon also has been exploited by al-Qaeda forces based in Iraq. Multiple media reports indicate that al-Qaeda fighters - mostly Yemenis, Saudis and Jordanians who left Iraq to avoid the US "surge" and its surrogate Sunni fighters - went to both Syria and Lebanon. They have established themselves in Lebanon along the Syrian border, in the Lebanese city of Tripoli and in the Ain al-Hawah Palestinian refugee camp; they also have built working relationships with the Sunni militant groups Asbat al-Ansar and Fatah-al-Islam. In 2007, the latter fought the Lebanese army for 15 weeks at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
In the face of growing Salafist and al-Qaeda influence, one Lebanese academic claimed, "Security in Iraq is improving, but the militants are being driven across the border. There are a large number of militants coming into Lebanon and Syria, and our countries are paying the price for what is happening in Iraq." The academic's words are an apt description of the westward-bound jihad highway for Sunni mujahideen that the US and its allies have unwittingly built across Iraq.
As in Syria, the growing al-Qaeda and Saudi-backed Salifist movement in Lebanon's north and its Palestinian refugee camps clearly is in part a product of the militant bleed-through from Iraq. But, as in Syria, Salafism's Lebanese growth is occurring in already fertile soil: Lebanon's Sunni north has been slowly radicalizing for much of this decade - Tripoli's Sunni leaders long viewed Hezbollah as the "resistance", but now regard it as the "party of evil" - and the eviction of Syrian forces has substantially reduced Beirut's ability to limit the growth of Salafism. Bin Laden's operatives and Saudi intelligence will continue to push these trends, thereby once again demonstrating just how closely aligned are the interests of al-Qaeda and Riyadh outside the Arabian Peninsula.
This said, al-Qaeda still has considerable work to do in Lebanon. While Ayman al-Zawahiri said in April 2008 that Lebanon was now "a Muslim frontline fort", Lebanese Salafists will for the foreseeable future be more concerned with securing increased political power and communal autonomy in the country than in flocking to support the worldwide Sunni jihad.
The possibility of the Shi'ite Hezbollah and its allies winning a majority in the spring 2009 parliamentary elections, for example, could provide a flashpoint for a confrontation between Hezbollah forces and the expanding Salafist Sunni force in the north. For now, the Salafist leaders will continue to work with Saad Hariri's "Future Movement". A group of Lebanese Salafists recently told the media, "Hariri is our leader, we respect and support him." Rather ominously, however, they added, "If [cooperation with Hariri] fails, we have another option called bin Laden."
For its part, al-Qaeda will strengthen its presence in Tripoli and the north as well as its ties to Lebanese Sunni militants and Palestinian refugees. It will also continue to spread its influence across the country in a manner that will place its operatives as close as possible to Israel's territory.
NEXT: Jordan
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)

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LEBANON-SYRIA: MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH

Image via Wikipedia

Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's organizational goal in Iraq was to acquire contiguous territory from which to spread its influence and operatives, as well as those of its Islamist allies, into the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey.
Having been weaned as an insurgent in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden has consistently refused to commit large al-Qaeda resources to jihads lacking country-wide maneuver room or Pakistan-like contiguous safe haven. The US-led invasion of Iraq, therefore, opened a chance for the above-described expansion by al-Qaeda and its allies that would not have been possible under a Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.
This is the first of four articles that will assess the initial stages of the penetration of the Levant - an ancient term for a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Mesopotamia - by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. This piece will look at Syria, and will be followed by analyses of the bleed-through from Iraq into Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The quartet of articles will seek to assess the validity of the recent claim by the state-run Syrian newspaper al-Thawara that because of the war in Iraq "the [Levant] region is throbbing with terrorists".
After crushing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) at the city of Hama in 1982 - killing up to 20,000 people and leveling a quarter of the city - president Hafiz al-Assad adopted the traditional and traditionally unsuccessful tack of Arab tyrants of trying to use government largesse to co-opt Syria's remaining Islamists and thereby moderate their message. Under Assad's program tens of thousands of new mosques were built; 22 higher-education institutions for Koran-based learning were opened; regional sharia schools for men and women were started; and Muslim students from more than sixty countries were invited to receive their Islamic schooling in Syria.
Assad's son Bashar, however, is discovering that his father's efforts to co-opt Syrian Islamists have yielded not a tame, state-sponsored Islam but a trend toward militant Islamism in both urban and rural areas of Syria. After the September 27 terrorist attack in Damascus, an Arab journalist suggested:
The Syrian regime fell - as have others - in[to] the famous illusion that they can toy with the terrorist fundamentalist bear at the beginning of the day and then get rid of it or put it back in the cage at the end of the day! This is an illusion that is repeated and always repeated in the Middle East region. No side wants to learn from the experience of others. Toying with religion or attempting to revolutionize religion or some of its aspects and then trying to benefit from this revolution on the political level without any repercussions or consequences is the biggest illusion of all. It is the first and last mistake because if you commit this mistake once it would be fatal and there would be no second time!
Compounding the failure of co-optation for Damascus is the fact that the senior al-Assad's Hama operation, although massively murderous, was not comprehensive: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was not wiped out. Besides members who survived Hama and remained in Syria, a number of senior SMB leaders escaped and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states where they found succor, academic posts, and a safe haven in which to reorganize and plan for revenge.
The bin Laden family was among the many wealthy, non-royal Saudi families that had hosted SMB leaders both before and after Hama. Indeed, Osama in his youth met senior SMB leaders on their pilgrimage, and while living in Sudan (1991-1996) several SMB members worked for or were supported by al-Qaeda's multiple businesses.
It is important to note that an al-Qaeda-led mujahideen bleed-through from Iraq to Syria had fertile ground in which to take root in 2003. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous and brutal Syrian security services, there was a Damascus-permitted militant Islamist environment to be exploited when the US-led invasion of Iraq occurred. Not only had the targets of regime co-optation become more militant, but there were also SMB remnants in the country, as well as the long-time official presence of Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and various Palestinian resistance groups.
Into this made-to-order milieu, then, came hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Muslim men from across the Arab and Muslim worlds, eager to enter Iraq and join the fatwa-sanctioned jihad against the US-led coalition. Bashar al-Assad's regime allowed these men to enter Iraq, trusting that they would make life miserable for US forces, kill enough American troops to force a US withdrawal and end up being killed before they could head for home. Washington singled out Damascus for sole responsibility for this cross-border flow of would-be mujahideen, but al-Assad's regime was the focal point for the flow because of the easy physical access to Iraq that it afforded.
Al-Assad certainly assisted his domestic Islamist firebrands to get to Iraq, but the non-Syrian Muslims who came to Syria en route to Iraq were sent by their own governments - Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, etc - in an effort that mirrored Assad's: send the young Islamists to Iraq to fight and die and thereby create a safety valve that lessens the pressure from domestic Islamist militancy. Obviously, al-Assad indulged the other Arab regimes by permitting the flow through. This is the same method of operation that most Arab and many Muslim regimes used during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89).
Having now tightened up Syria's borders with Iraq under pressure from Washington and the French government, Bashar al-Assad is now running a country-size hotel for a variety of ill-tempered Islamist guests. In addition to long-term tenants Hamas, Hezbollah, and the secular Palestinian fraternity, Syrian security has to keep tabs on newer and not fully domesticated guests: a growing Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organization; a militant "official" clergy that is stoking greater Islamic fervor at the grassroots level; more than a half-million Iraqi refugees; a multinational assortment of veteran mujahideen stranded in Syria after leaving Iraq; and would-be fighters who got to Syria but were prevented from entering Iraq.
Among the veteran fighters are a contingent of Syrians who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - some commentators are calling them the "Syrian Afghans" - with military skills they can impart at home and in other countries of the Levant.
All told, Assad - a man not as skilled as his father or as able to control the regime's security services - is faced with a growing Islamist threat to the stability of his regime. While the regime is not in danger of falling, it is likewise not in the same position as it was in the "seventies and eighties when the [Syrian] authorities were able to liquidate, with the use of force only, what they then called the conspiracy of the 'Muslim Brothers'."
For the foreseeable future, al-Assad and his security forces will have to deal with internal Islamist anger and threats - based on Damascus' decision to tighten its borders to prevent jihadis going to Iraq, and its indirect talks with Israel - in a manner that is not so severe and brutal as to promote the coalescing of the disparate Sunni militant groups now in Syria.
They also will have to cope with an external threat by better controlling the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent the infiltration of Islamist fighters angry with Damascus and eager to strike back for the blocking of routes to Iraq. Assad and other Syrian officials have already claimed the border is being infiltrated by violent, Saudi-backed "Salafists", "Takfiris" and other "extremist forces" from northern Lebanon, and several Arab commentators have noted that this is a legitimate concern for Damascus because northern Lebanon lies close to Syria's "Sunni belt", once a hotbed of support for the SMB.
Damascus' recent decision to sign a security-cooperation deal with the Lebanese regime shows the depth of the Assad regime's concern with the Islamist threat, but the time may be passing when either Damascus or Beirut can fully control the Sunni militant forces operating on or from their territory.
Lebanon always has been a country whose people are more loyal to family, clan, tribe and faith than to the concept of Lebanon as a united nation-state. Since 2003, this existing internal divisiveness has been sharpened by the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US-led international effort to drive Syria out of Lebanon.
The former opened a role for Lebanon as part of the path for would-be jihadis traveling to fight in Iraq. The latter - together with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war - forced the precipitate decline of effective governmental authority in Lebanon, allowing jihadis to use the country for transit and basing. This made it a target for aggressive expansionist efforts by Saudis and other Salafis and encouraged the rapid growth of internal violence between political and religious factions.
Overall, the Iraq war and Syria's departure from Lebanon gave al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies an unprecedented opportunity to infiltrate their influence and manpower into Lebanon, as well as help strengthen the Sunni Salafist trend in northern Lebanon.
It is now old-hat to say that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a casus belli for Sunni Muslims worldwide, and especially among the Salafists who are prominent in al-Qaeda, other Islamist radical groups, and the Saudi regime, who are now effectively expanding their power across the Arab and Muslim worlds. A glance at the map showed jihad-bound Sunnis that Lebanon was a geographic key to infiltrating Islamist fighters into Iraq. The war itself made many Sunni Lebanese eager to assist that entry process, with some ready to go and fight there themselves.
With Syria effectively in charge of Lebanon at the start of the Iraq war, it appears that the transit of would-be mujahideen through Lebanon was kept moving by Syrian authorities and did not initially result in the buildup of non-Lebanese Sunni Islamists within the country.
The West's pyrrhic 2005 victory in forcing President Bashar al-Assad to evacuate Syrian forces from the country, however, seems to have created a situation which now finds growing numbers of non-Lebanese Salafi Islamists present in Lebanon and a growing Salafist movement in the north - especially in Tripoli, which is Lebanon's largest, most conservative Sunni city - as well as in the city of Sidon and Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
In addition to the growth of Salifism and Islamist militancy engendered by the passions aroused by the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia has been fishing in troubled waters by encouraging the growth of each in northern Lebanon. Riyadh has paid for the construction of new mosques in Tripoli and reportedly has assisted militants residing in the northern territory abutting Syria.
According to the media, Lebanese and Syrian sources are reporting that Saudi National Security Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is supervising the Saudis' pro-Salafist agenda in Lebanon, a program which includes sponsoring Islamist terrorist operations in Syria. Riyadh's activities in northern Lebanon hold the promise of fulfilling two longstanding Saudi goals: (1) creating a viable, well-armed, and militant Sunni Salafi movement in Lebanon as a military counterweight to the Shi'ite Hezbollah, and (2) to enable Riyadh to cause domestic instability for their Syrian enemy.
The turmoil of post-Syrian Lebanon also has been exploited by al-Qaeda forces based in Iraq. Multiple media reports indicate that al-Qaeda fighters - mostly Yemenis, Saudis and Jordanians who left Iraq to avoid the US "surge" and its surrogate Sunni fighters - went to both Syria and Lebanon. They have established themselves in Lebanon along the Syrian border, in the Lebanese city of Tripoli and in the Ain al-Hawah Palestinian refugee camp; they also have built working relationships with the Sunni militant groups Asbat al-Ansar and Fatah-al-Islam. In 2007, the latter fought the Lebanese army for 15 weeks at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
In the face of growing Salafist and al-Qaeda influence, one Lebanese academic claimed, "Security in Iraq is improving, but the militants are being driven across the border. There are a large number of militants coming into Lebanon and Syria, and our countries are paying the price for what is happening in Iraq." The academic's words are an apt description of the westward-bound jihad highway for Sunni mujahideen that the US and its allies have unwittingly built across Iraq.
As in Syria, the growing al-Qaeda and Saudi-backed Salifist movement in Lebanon's north and its Palestinian refugee camps clearly is in part a product of the militant bleed-through from Iraq. But, as in Syria, Salafism's Lebanese growth is occurring in already fertile soil: Lebanon's Sunni north has been slowly radicalizing for much of this decade - Tripoli's Sunni leaders long viewed Hezbollah as the "resistance", but now regard it as the "party of evil" - and the eviction of Syrian forces has substantially reduced Beirut's ability to limit the growth of Salafism. Bin Laden's operatives and Saudi intelligence will continue to push these trends, thereby once again demonstrating just how closely aligned are the interests of al-Qaeda and Riyadh outside the Arabian Peninsula.
This said, al-Qaeda still has considerable work to do in Lebanon. While Ayman al-Zawahiri said in April 2008 that Lebanon was now "a Muslim frontline fort", Lebanese Salafists will for the foreseeable future be more concerned with securing increased political power and communal autonomy in the country than in flocking to support the worldwide Sunni jihad.
The possibility of the Shi'ite Hezbollah and its allies winning a majority in the spring 2009 parliamentary elections, for example, could provide a flashpoint for a confrontation between Hezbollah forces and the expanding Salafist Sunni force in the north. For now, the Salafist leaders will continue to work with Saad Hariri's "Future Movement". A group of Lebanese Salafists recently told the media, "Hariri is our leader, we respect and support him." Rather ominously, however, they added, "If [cooperation with Hariri] fails, we have another option called bin Laden."
For its part, al-Qaeda will strengthen its presence in Tripoli and the north as well as its ties to Lebanese Sunni militants and Palestinian refugees. It will also continue to spread its influence across the country in a manner that will place its operatives as close as possible to Israel's territory.
NEXT: Jordan
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)

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