US Sources Question French Intervention Strategy In Mali

Sometimes the most interesting nugget in a story comes buried all the way at the end; that is the case here with this story on Reuters about France's sudden involvement in the slow-burning civil war in Mali. Near the end of the Reuters piece is this comment from the infamous “anonymous source”, identified by Reuters as a US military official, who asks: “I don't know what the French endgame is for this. What is their goal? It reminds me of our initial move into Afghanistan.”

Before we unpack that statement, a little background on the current situation in Mali. Until last year, Mali had been considered one of the more successful states in West Africa, though a state that still dealt with a long-simmering issue of civil unrest in the northern part of the country where separatists hoped to carve out their own homeland. In one of the great examples of the law of unintended consequences, this bid received a massive shot in the arm from the US/French/British-led campaign to support the rebels in Libya in their bid to oust Moammar Gadhafi. His overthrow meant the return of thousands of Tuareg mercenaries, formerly employed by Gadhafi, to their homelands in northern Mali, where they teamed up with al-Qadea-leaning militias and turned a minor bit of civil unrest into a full-blown civil war.

The Malian army, not happy with the way the war was being run, staged a coup, overthrowing Mali's president (The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald notes this is a double-irony for the West since the coup was led by a US-trained army captain). With no functioning military, the Tuareg/al-Qaeda alliance took control over half of the country before having their own setback when the Islamist militias turned on their Tuareg allies. 2012 ended with the situation in Mali an utter mess and Mali's neighbors pleading for assistance to prevent Mali from turning into a failed state haven for al-Qaeda-linked groups.

The US has been promoting a strategy built on the “Somali model”, at least the most recent version of foreign intervention in Somalia, which has been the most successful in the past 20 years. In practice, this means providing funding and logistical support to troops from neighboring African nations who will do the actual fighting. In Somalia this, has been a mix of primarily Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian troops who have managed to largely defeat Somalia's homegrown Islamist militia, al-Shabaab, and restore some semblance of a functioning government to Somalia.

That was the plan, at least for Mali as well, until last week when the French began spearheading their own much more direct intervention, which started with airstrikes against Islamist positions, most notably surrounding the city of Gao. There are now also reports of French special forces troops on the ground in Mali. Why France decided to launch their Mali mission is a topic that is actively being discussed, though it could likely be because the force of 2,000-3,000 peacekeepers from a collection of West African nations would not have been ready to deploy for several months, perhaps not until September, and perhaps not even then.

And that brings us back to our unnamed US military source.  He/she goes on to add: “Air strikes are fine. But pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they [the  militias] head up into the mountains?”  Sadly, since he/she is anonymous, it is impossible to know if they asked these same important questions when the US went stumbling into Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps they are offering up these comments as a sort of advice, hard-won knowledge from the foibles of those two US interventions. But it is hard not to read these comments as being both hypocritical and condescending given the past decade of US foreign involvement, our continued questionable presence in Afghanistan and the calls by the DC warhawks, particularly those of the neoconservative stripe, for a US campaign against Iran, yet another military mission that is unlikely to achieve its tactical goal – elimination of Iran's nuclear program – while possessing a high likelihood of spurring a whole chain of unexpected and unintended consequences.

The “Somali model” idea pushed by the United States sounds good on paper, the problem is that while Somalia had several neighbors with large populations – Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia – to supply troops, the would-be ECOWAS force for Mali is being drawn from a collection of fairly small states like Ghana and Sierra Leone, not countries known for having large and robust armies. Nigeria is the one large neighbor that is pledging troops, but Nigeria is also dealing with their own separatist movement (MEND – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) and their own Islamist uprising (Boko Harum), so it is hard to understand why the Nigerians would then suddenly have such better luck when operating in Mali when they have struggled so much against these two groups at home. The proposed Malian peacekeeping force is also made up of only 2,000-3,000 soldiers; by contrast, the Ugandans alone contributed up to 16,000 troops to the ANISOM mission in Somalia. 

Our unnamed source is asking some good and important questions, but they are questions that highlight the problem with the international community since 9/11: there is now a far greater motivation to intervene in troubled nations (especially when supposed “al-Qaeda” forces are involved) and to intervene right away!  But these proposed interventions are launched without clear military objectives in mind, and more importantly, without a plan for the “day after” the initial military campaign is launched, or in other words, without an exit strategy.  The United States has spent 12 years trying to find a way out of Afghanistan, you have to wonder if France will now find that it was very easy to get into Mali, but that it will be very hard to get out.

Closing Time For The Somali Pirates

It has been awhile since we checked in with our old friends the Somali pirates. A big part of the reason was simply that 2012 was not a good year for piracy, with successful pirate raids dropping off sharply.  This turn in fortune seems to be the motivation for one of Somalia's most infamous pirates to call it quits.  The New York Times is reporting that Mohamed Abdi Hassan, better known by his nom de guerre “Big Mouth”, announced his retirement last week in a press conference broadcast on YouTube.

 

Big Mouth's retirement is a big deal in that he was thought to be the head of a notorious pirate network and was identified in a United Nations report last year as one of Somalia's most influential and most dangerous pirates.  But a host of factors are now working against the Somali pirates, including more effective naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, on-shore raids aimed at disrupting pirating operations ashore and the emergence of effective governments in the capital, Mogadishu, and in the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.  These factors have combined to reduce the pirate's haul down to a mere 13 captured vessels in 2012, making pirating a far more dangerous and far less lucrative business today than it was a couple of years ago.

Big Mouth seems to have been further enticed by the issuance of a passport by the new Somali government that allowed him to travel abroad to visit his family, according to the Times.  In his farewell press conference, Big Mouth claimed to have also influenced a number of his pirate brethren to give up their pirating ways as well.  But while piracy seems to be on the decline off the coast of Somalia, there is concern that the pirates could come back if international navies scale back their patrols, thinking that the pirate problem has passed; at the same time, the pirate problem may be shifting to the coast of West Africa, where pirate attacks are on the rise.

Taliban Takes Stand In Favor Of Polio

According to news reports out of Pakistan, groups affiliated with the Taliban have killed several medical professionals working in remote villages on a vaccination program designed to eradicate polio. The Taliban countered that the vaccination program was actually a Western-designed plot to make their children sick, rather than to prevent illness, and that the whole medical effort was really a cover for covert military operations in these remote areas.

These are the exact same arguments made by the Taliban a few years earlier when they murdered other Pakistani medical professionals to halt an earlier polio eradication effort in 2006, an event outlined in Dominic Streatfeild’s book A History of the World Since 9/11.  In justifying their earlier attacks, the Taliban said that if a few children got ill or died from polio, it was “God's will” and a small price to pay to keep their region free of evil Western influences like, apparently, modern medical procedures.

But there is something more sinister at play here than merely the Taliban's religious-inspired paranoia, the vaccination efforts in these remote mountain villages are the last links in a chain of efforts to end polio, not just in Pakistan, but everywhere on the globe, forever. As explained in A History of the World Since 9/11, diseases can be wiped out if everyone carries an immunity to them – without new hosts, the diseases die. But for an eradication effort to work, everyone must get the vaccine.  Diseases have a stubborn tendency to hide out in remote corners of the world and humans have an annoying habit of not staying put. So, remote corners of the globe, like the AfPak border can be just the right place for a disease like polio to wait out a global eradication effort.

The Taliban's murder of the first group of medical professionals in 2006 meant that the first attempt to end polio failed; if these Taliban villages can't be vaccinated now, this latest effort will fail as well.

Of course the United States hasn't helped matters by using an earlier vaccination program as cover for an intelligence gathering operation around Abbottabad, the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, thus somewhat validating the Taliban's paranoia, and casting a pall over efforts like the current polio eradication program.

Red Dawn Redux: A Shaky Parable For Our Times

The Guardian has taken a first look at the trailer for the remake of the 1980's-vintage action flick Red Dawn, and it raises a few questions much deeper than you'd expect from a movie this vapid.

Just in case you're not up on your late Cold War cinema, the original Red Dawn was the story of a bunch of high school pals in rural Colorado turned guerrilla fighters after the Soviet Union, with an assist from Cuba, decided for some reason to invade the United States in 1985.  The 2012 remake pretty much sticks to the original script, swapping rural Washington state for Colorado and China for the now-defunct Soviet Union in the role of the antagonist.

Or maybe it is North Korea? As I wrote when the Red Dawn remake first went into production, the film's creative team pulled back from the logical substitution of China for the Soviet Union – possibly fearing a political backlash, a loss of Chinese distribution rights, or both – and instead substituted North Korea as the resident bad guys. Though the producers seem to have later decided that the idea North Korea, a nation of 25 million that struggles just to feed its own citizens, could stage a large-scale invasion of the United States stretches credibility too far even for a Hollywood action film (though Hollywood also recently decided that a movie version of Manimal is somehow credible), so now, according to The Guardian, the antagonists are from a “unidentified Asian” country.

Near the end of The Guardian's demolishing of the Red Dawn trailer, writer Stuart Heritage raises a good point: the original Red Dawn was released in the mid-1980s, at a time when the United States was offering moral and material support to the mujahadeen of Afghanistan as they tried to repel the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union.  The original Red Dawn offered up a kinship to be drawn then between our plucky band of Colorado high schoolers and the scruffy Afghanis, who each took to the hills to fight the foreigners who invaded their lands.

Fast forward 27 years though and America's perception of Afghan insurgents has morphed from the heroic mujahadeen into the dastardly Taliban jihadi; the foreigners they fight are no longer the evil Soviets, but rather good red-blooded American boys and girls in uniform.  So while the new Red Dawn is still making the same visceral appeal to the audience to identify with the tragically over-matched band of fighters who want only to free their homeland from an invading foreign military force, the underlying role of the United States in the world has flipped – rather than supporting the insurgents on the sly as we did in the 1980s, we have become the invading heavies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  In reality, Red Dawn is now asking us to emotionally identify with the very people fighting against American troops today. (If the producers of Red Dawn wanted to keep the emotional and subtextual consistency of the original, then instead of fighting, the high school kids in RD:Redux would join a local reconstruction team headed up by a government official from the unnamed Asian nation that might be North Korea).

It does beg the question of what exactly the producers of the Red Dawn remake were thinking in dredging up this largely forgotten bit of 80s pop culture? Why ask an American audience to identify with a band of local insurgents fighting against a vastly superior military power, when at that very same moment American troops are being attacked a half a world away by bands of local insurgents fighting against a vastly superior military power, which, in this case, just happens to be the United States.

Or maybe I am giving the Red Dawn producers too much credit for being able to make these intellectual connections in the first place. After all, their choice to play the All-American lead in this film was Chris Hemsworth, a British actor best known for playing a Norse god. 

Is The US Dashing Israeli Hopes For A Strike Against Iran?

From the file of news that was overshadowed by the dueling Republican and Democratic political conventions is this nugget from Reuters about a US smackdown of Israel over their escalating rhetoric about a war with Iran (Reuters used the more diplomatic term 'chastised', but you get the idea).

Last week, while speaking to reporters in Great Britain, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said that the United States did not want to be “complicit” in a preemptive  attack on Iran and starkly warned Israel that if they went it alone on the attack that they risked unraveling the international coalition that has levied heavy sanctions on Iran's crude oil industry and banking sector; sanctions that Pres. Ahmadinejad admitted earlier in the week were starting to causing real pain in Iran.

It was a bold statement, and one that has sent Israel scurrying back to square one in their efforts to start a war with Iran. The simple fact is that the Israeli Air Force does not have the ability to launch the type of sustained and targeted campaign of air strikes that would be necessary to knock out Iran's nuclear research program.  Or as one unnamed European diplomat was quoted as saying in the same Reuters article: “all this talk of war is bullshit. If they could do it, then they would have already done it long ago.”

For their part, the Israelis are now pushing for the establishment of a clear “red line”, an action by Iran that would guarantee a military response by the anti-Iran coalition (namely the United States). The Israelis are also ramping up their sabre-rattling against Iran's proxy group Hezbollah, threatening retaliation against Lebanon should Hezbollah launch attacks against Israel on Iran's behalf. For their part, the Obama administration is offering up a vague statement that diplomacy cannot go on “indefinitely” and that “military action” remains a possibility if Iran doesn't live up to their obligations.

Of course, it is very hard to imagine the US launching any kind of military action before the November elections, and if reelected, Obama is likely to feel much less pressure to placate the pro-Likud lobby within the United States, which puts into question the likelihood of military action against Iran in Obama's second term.  This does make you wonder if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might not attempt to interject himself into the US presidential race somehow. Netanyahu is a longtime personal friend of Republican Mitt Romney, so it is plausible to think he might try to play the double whammy of encouraging a US strike against Iran and boosting his friend's presidential chances by trying to make Obama look like he is both weak on Iran and putting Israel at risk by not launching military strikes now to stop the imminent threat of the Iranian nuclear program.

This strategy has some real risks attached though: for one, Netanyahu has been saying that Iran was on the verge of getting a bomb since the mid-90s, so his cries of danger have worn a little thin by now; the bigger issue though is that the American populace, mired in a slow economic recovery and weary from a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, might genuinely oppose calls for launching another military campaign in the Middle East, which would weaken, rather than strengthen, Netanyahu's efforts to get the USAF to knock out Iran's nuclear program for him.

If Netanyahu tries to go this route, it will likely be at the United Nations General Assembly set for later this month.

Are US-Israeli Relations Changing?

Two recent statements by US officials have me wondering if we are seeing a subtle shift in US-Israeli relations. One is that for the first time, acts of violence by Israeli “settlers” against Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been described by the State Department as “terrorist incidents”; the second is a statement made by the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro who said that an official Israeli investigation into the death of American activist Rachel Corrie in 2003 was not “thorough, credible and transparent.”

Corrie was only 23 when she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she and others tried to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The action prompted international outrage and became a rallying point for those protesting the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli government promised a full investigation into the incident (a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation, which Amb. Shapiro referenced in his statement).  But last week, Israel closed the formal investigation, concluding it was an accident, but also chiding the now-dead Corrie for inserting herself into a war zone.

Turning back to the terrorist declaration against the Israeli settlers, the State Department took the move after recent attacks by groups of young settlers against Palestinians, including attacks on mosques, beatings and one particularly brutal incident: the firebombing of a Palestinian taxi that left six people injured, including two four-year old twins.  The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2011 included: “Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property and places of worship in the West Bank.” According to the United Nations, which monitors conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have increased by almost 150% between 2009 and the end of 2011.

It is important to note that the State Department isn't going out on much of a limb here. The Israeli media and government have been growing increasingly concerned about the actions of extremist settlers, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the fire-bomb attack of the taxi and other government officials have used the word terrorism when referring to some of the actions taken by a subset of extremist Israeli settlers (though the Israeli government supports the expansion of more “mainstream” Israeli settlements in the West Bank).

But given how reluctant the US typically is to criticize the actions of Israel, it is then quite noteworthy that officials with the US government would, in the space of a week, use the word “terrorism” when referring to the actions of Israeli settlers and would condemn an official report by the Israeli government. Could it be the sign of a subtle shift in US-Israeli relations? Only time will tell.

Russia's Tatarstan Mufti Mystery

Who tried to kill the Mufti?  That's the Question in Russia after last week's car bomb attack on Mufti Ildus Faizov, one of the top clerics in Russia's historically Muslim Tatarstan region, and a man greatly respected by the Kremlin for his promotion of a moderate, peaceful brand of Islam, which stands in stark contrast to the Islamic-fueled insurgency in Russia's Northern Caucasus region.

Initial fears were that Faizov and one of his closest associates Valiulla Yakupov, were targeted by Islamic insurgents from the Caucasus because of their moderate views – Faizov was badly injured in the car bombing but will survive; Yakupov was shot in the head in a separate attack and killed.  Caucasus Islamists may still be behind the attack, though an alternate theory, that the two men were attacked over a business deal, is gaining more credence following the arrest of five men over the weekend. 

The five have ties to a man named Rustem Gataullin who was the former head of the Idel-Hajj company – a firm that organize tour packages for Russian Muslims who want to complete the Hajj, the journey to the holy city Mecca that all Muslims are suppose to undertake once in their lifetimes.  Faizov took over operations of Idel-Hajj in 2011, there is a theory that it is this switch in leadership is the motivation for the attacks.

This would be a good news/bad news scenario for Russia.  On the good side, it would at least dismiss  the idea that the attempted assassination of Faizov was the beginning of a new offensive by the Caucasus Islamists, who in the past have staged high-profile terror attacks in Moscow that have included aircraft and subway suicide bombings.  On the bad side though, if the attack on Faizov was nothing more than an attempted “hit” over a business deal gone bad, this could be an indication that Russia was backsliding to the era of the 1990s when business-related murders were somewhat common – a fact that could likely have a chilling effect on foreign investment in Russia.

Meanwhile, the Russian government is responding to the attack in a sadly predictable way, by trying to impose a media blackout on the whole affair. According to Radio Free Europe, the government in Tatarstan recommended that journalists limit their coverage of the event to stories about life in the capital city (and site of the attacks) Kazan, and only seek comment from a short list of pre-approved “experts”.  An editor of an independent newspaper in the region called the government response “near hysterical” and noted that information on the incident was still freely available on the Internet.     

Islamic Radicals Suspected To Be Behind Assassination, Attempt in Russia

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan got off to a bloody start in Russia as assassins wounded one of the country's top Islamic clerics and murdered his deputy in separate attacks.

Mufti Ildus Faizov, the top Islamic official in Russia's historically Muslim Tatarstan region, survived not one, but three bombs aimed at his vehicle on Thursday in the Tatar capital, Kazan.  Faizov was hospitalized, but made an appearance on regional television following the attack.  His associate, Deputy Mufti Valiulla Yakupov, he was shot in the head and killed by an unknown assailant in an attack staged simultaneously with the attack on Faizov.  The timing of the attacks, and their targets, have Russia calling them an act of terror and suspecting they were organized and carried out by radical Muslim groups from the volatile North Caucasus region.

Faizov has been a high-profile and outspoken critic of the violent extremism that has taken root in the Caucasus region.  Unrest in the region started in the mid-1990s in Chechnya, which was the site of two brutal wars.  In recent years, Moscow has basically turned Chechnya over to local strongman, and Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has used his own brutal tactics to crush the separatist movement within Chechnya.  However, this has only forced Islamic militants to relocate to neighboring Russian republics like Dagestan and Ingushetia, where they are continuing their attempts to carve a fundamentalist Muslim caliphate out of Russia's southernmost flank.  While most of the violence has been confined to the Caucasus region, the extremists have staged a number of high-profile terror attacks in other parts of Russia, the most recent being the January 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37 people.

With an indigenous Muslim population growing faster than the Russian Orthodox segment, Moscow has been eager to support Faizov's more tolerant, more inclusive version of Islam up as a model within the country.  But this has also made him a target for the extremists.

While the militants of the Caucasus region are suspected to be behind Thursday's attacks, no single group has yet claimed responsibility.  It is also too early to tell if the attacks against Faizov and Yakupov are a one-off strike, an attempt at sowing unrest in Tatarstan, or the beginning of a new wave of terror attacks across Russia.

Are America's Right Wing Crackpots Harming US Foreign Policy?

In case you missed this story from last weekend, during the latest stop in her whirlwind tour of the world (that so far has taken her to 102 countries) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade was met in Egypt by a wild mob of protesters who threw shoes and tomatoes at her car while shouting that the US needed to stop its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the political party of Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi, along with chants of “Monica!, Monica!” 

As one of the most popular members of the Obama Administration, Secretary Clinton usually doesn't elicit such angry receptions during her state visits, and given that Egypt has long been an American ally, the reception was quite startling.  So what was the motivation behind it?  Apparently elements of America's own Right Wing lunatic fringe.

It seems that Egyptian conspiracy theorists have eagerly bought into some ridiculous claims currently making the rounds of the Far Right fringe that the US government has been infiltrated by radical Islamists.  Ground Zero for these claims is Sec. Clinton herself, who according to the theory, has somehow been brainwashed by her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who happens to be a Muslim, and therefore a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim infiltration of the US government has been so successful, according to the theory, that the US has gone on to rig Egypt's election in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who we are now funding to the tune of $1.5 billion.

This crackpot theory was apparently started by Frank Gaffney, who went from serving in the Reagan administration to peddling McCarthy-style conspiracy theories about evil Muslims lurking in under the beds of Mr. and Mrs. America on internet-radio programs.  Gaffney's delusional ramblings were eagerly picked up and echoed by such Far Right luminaries as Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and blogger Lucianne Goldberg, which explains the “Monica!” chants at least.  The details of this ring of lunacy have been mapped out by both the New York Times and TheRachel Maddow Show.

Of course in America we know better – at least those of us with an IQ higher than room temperature - than to take any of these idiotic ramblings seriously.  We know that these purveyors of nonsense are merely tossing out rhetorical red meat to folks like members of the Tea Party, who think that anyone not as white, Christian and conservative as they are is obviously some kind of foreign agent bent on destroying America.  We know that in this country anyone with a computer and a few dollars can stake out their own corner of cyberspace and fill it with whatever material they want, no matter how ridiculous, so the caveat that “I saw it on the Internet” is something of a joke about the reader's naiveté.

Unfortunately this model doesn't hold true in other countries, especially countries where an autocracy tightly controlled access to the media for decades.  So in a place like Egypt, being on the internet does confer some sense of legitimacy, as does the ability of someone like Frank Gaffney to be able to say they once worked for the President.  It gives his comments a certain weight, even if they sound like they ramblings of a lunatic and are easily debunked.  For example, “Muslim Brotherhood” agent Huma Abedin is also married to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, himself a Jew – hardly the action of a loyal MB member (I know Frank, it is all part of her amazingly clever cover story...).  The US rigging of the recent Egyptian Presidential election similarly makes no sense: if the US was going to rig the election then they most likely would have rigged it in favor of the SCAF-backed candidate Ahmed Shafiq, so that the US might more easily continue its decades-long friendly relationship with the Egyptian military (which is also the true recipient of the $1.5 billion in aid the Right Wingnuts say the US is providing Egypt).  Let's remember the United States' anemic early response to the Egyptian revolution – in part this was driven by a desire to keep our long-time ally Hosni Mubarak in power; it was also driven by the very real fear that if the Mubarak government fell, it's most likely successor would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, since they were the only opposition party in Egypt with any level of organization.  Rather than wanting a Muslim Brotherhood take-over of Egypt, the United States feared it.

Dealing with idiotic comments is part of the price we pay for the freedom of expression guaranteed to us by the First Amendment.  Most Americans are savvy enough to either ignore comments like those being peddled by this collection of fringe characters or just roll their eyes at their inherent silliness.  Unfortunately folks in places like Egypt don't realize that these statements are the stuff of nonsense, they don't realize that to many Americans, Michele Bachmann is a joke. And, sadly, that means that their craziness is actually harming the United States abroad.

African Nations Calling For Intervention in Mali

In case you were wondering where the world's next armed conflict will be, the West African nation of Mali is looking like a good candidate. 

Members of ECOWAS, the Economic Community Of West African States, is building support for a resolution they will present to the United Nations Security Council requesting an armed force be deployed to the northern part of Mali to combat a growing Islamist movement that ECOWAS says could destabilize the entire region.

Map of Mali

“It is not just a threat for the region, but the world,” said President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger and the man leading the charge on ECOWAS' appeal to the UN.  Issoufou called Mali a potential “West African Afghanistan”, alleging that terror groups from Afghanistan and Pakistan are recuriting among young Islamic militiamen in northern Mali, adding that: “it is an international threat that needs an international response so this is why we have decided to take this to the Security Council.”

Mali, once held up as a model of stability in Africa, has suffered a bizarre and sudden collapse in recent months.  Mali's problems were kicked off in March when a group of army officers overthrew the government of democratically-elected President Amadou Toumani Toure over, what the army guys thought, was Toure's mishandling of an ongoing uprising by Tuareg tribesmen in the north of the country.  The Tuaregs were once the favored mercinaries of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.  When the Gadhafi regime fell, thousands of well-trained, well-armed Tuaregs flooded back into their native Mali and began causing trouble.  The coup plotters claimed that Pres. Toure was not giving them the material and support they needed to effectively fight the Tuaregs.

But it quickly became clear that the coup plotters had no grand plan for governing and Mali fell into chaos, which, ironically, allowed the Tuaregs to launch a major offensive and seize half of Mali.  A power-sharing agreement ended the coup crisis, but the problems with the newly empowered Tuaregs remains; now they are pushing for the creation of an Islamic state carved out of northern Mali.

This is too much for ECOWAS, which claims that the only way to stop the Tuaregs and their Islamist supporters now would be through an international military force.  ECOWAS hopes that the bulk of the support for any UNSC-mandated mission will come from the United States and France.  French President Francois Hollande has stated that France would be ready to support such a mission if it receives the Security Council's blessing.  No word from the US about their possible support for the ECOWAS proposal.

Somalia: When Good Stories Go Bad

There's an interesting piece in Foreign Policy that illustrates the dangers of trying to get out in front of a story from a turbulent region in this era of instant information.

In case you didn't hear, overnight Wednesday a suicide bomber struck at a performance at the National Theater in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing as many as 7 people, including the head of Somalia's Olympic committee and chair of their national football (soccer) program.  The militant group al-Shabaab, which has recently suffered from a string of defeats at the hands of Kenyan, Ethiopian and African Union troops, quickly claimed responsibility and identified the bomber as a 16-year old girl.

The reopening of the National Theater for the first time in 21 years was being widely cited as a sign that a sense of normalcy was finally returning to the capital of what is arguably the world's most war-torn state (I even referenced it in this post).  The theater was the centerpiece of a story by the New York Times Jeffrey Gettleman, who has done some incredible reporting from the region, entitled “A Taste of Hope in Somalia's Battered Capital.”  Gettleman even tweeted up his story with the line: “Who says it's just bad news coming out of Somalia?”

The New York Times webpage with Somali story

Of course as Gettleman was hitting the Twitterverse a teenage girl was blowing herself up in front of a collection of Somali dignataries.  This isn't to criticize Gettleman, who, as I mentioned above, is one of the few Westerners doing solid reporting from this region; rather it is a story that illustrates just how fast information moves today, and how quickly a story can change.

So Why Can't Iran Have The Bomb?

Let's cut to the chase on the whole mess surrounding Iran.  It is looking like a conflict in the Persian Gulf this spring/summer is becoming more of a possibility; the “crippling sanctions” the United States is trying to impose on Iran are leaky enough not to be “crippling”.  India, China and Turkey are all balking at joining in on the isolation, which means that Iran is unlikely to just give up on their nuclear research program.  That kicks the ball back into the court of the US/Israel, both of whom have insisted that Iran not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and leaves US and Israeli leaders with two options: back down or follow through on their threats of military action.

 
The spectre of Iran with a nuclear weapon is driving the march to war, but what does Iran having a nuclear weapon really mean?  So far there are several arguments as to why this is such a terrible idea that war would be necessary to prevent it, but taking a look at each argument shows that they are all fairly weak.  Here they are, in no particular order:

A nuclear Iran is a threat to the United States.  Not really.  Consider that if Iran were to tomorrow announce that they had successfully built a nuclear bomb, the US arsenal would outmatch theirs by a factor of about 3,000-1.  Even if Iran would decide to use this weapon and could deliver it to the United States (a big if), it would be a devastating attack, but not one that would destroy the country, not even close.  Of course it would ensure a retaliatory strike that would destroy Iran.  No country is suicidal, therefore this is not a real threat.

Iran might give the bomb to terrorists!  It is an idea that makes for a great spy thriller, but one that makes no sense in real life.  Do we really think Iran would spend billions of dollars, decades of research and turn themselves into a “rogue state” (at least according to the US) in pursuit of a nuclear bomb, only to give it to a terrorist?  It makes no sense.  Besides, if you want to worry about terrorists getting a bomb, then worry about them stealing one from Pakistan, where nuclear security is particularly weak, or buying one outright from North Korea.

The nuclear dominoes will fall.  Saudi Arabia has said publicly that if Iran gets the bomb, they may be compelled to embark on their own nuclear weapons program.  Of course the Saudis say a lot of things and in the past have threatened to start working on a bomb in response to Israel's nuclear arsenal, but never have.  And even if the Saudis do start work on their own bomb, who will that be a threat to besides Iran?

A nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel.  We're at least getting to the semi-plausible reasons here.  Israel is a much smaller country that the United States, so a much smaller nuclear strike could be devastating to them.  But the Israelis are keenly aware of this and will have prepared a second-strike capability (the ability to retaliate if hit without warning).  Israel's nuclear arsenal is somewhere between 200-400 weapons, meaning that they could likely hurt Iran a lot worse than Iran could hurt them, which makes an Iranian first strike highly unlikely.

That leaves us with something I'll call the Yom Kippur Scenario.  In 1973 Israel fought its last great war when a coalition of Arab states launched a surprise attack during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.  Part of the Arab motivation was revenge for the solid defeat they had suffered in 1967 during the Six-Day War.  The Yom Kippur War started badly for the Israelis, for awhile it seemed as though the Arab forces might be victorious, before Israel rallied and pushed the Arabs back crossing into both Egypt and Syria in the process.

Israel has never forgotten this lesson.  The Israeli nuclear arsenal is to ensure that such a scenario does not again occur.  Basically, if there were to be a repeat of the Yom Kippur War, and if this time Israel were about to be defeated by a coalition of Arab states, they could use their nuclear arsenal to devastate the lands of their attackers, giving the Arabs a true Pyrrhic Victory.  Israel has made this intention clear to their Arab neighbors, and it is an effective deterrent - so long as no one else in the neighborhood has their own nuclear arsenal.  Iranian bombs, and the ability to deliver them, changes this equation, and robs Israel of this deterrent.

Of course a second Yom Kippur War is highly unlikely.  Israel has had calm, if not cordial, relationships with their neighbors for 40 years now.  The Israeli military is by far the most powerful and most capable in the region, since the militaries of most of their neighbors are designed to suppress domestic unrest rather than to campaign beyond their borders.  Yet this is the real motivation for the current standoff with Iran: to prevent a challenge to Israel's military hegemony in the region.

But is this justification for a conflict that will cause upheaval across the region and be a severe blow to an already shaky global economy?  That is the question that we should be discussing. 

Iranophobia!

Be afraid, be very afraid...

That was the message coming from Capitol Hill on Tuesday following a meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee (an oxymoron of a name if there ever was one), where US intelligence chief Gen. James Clapper (ret.) was grilled on the current standoff with Iran over that country's supposed nuclear weapons program.

According to Clapper, there is no credible intelligence of Iranian plans to stage terror attacks within the United States, yet the takeaway from the Committee meeting was that Iran has plans to stage terror attacks within the United States.  The one item offered as proof of Iranian subterfuge within the United States was last year's comically bad alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington DC.  If you recall, this was the plot that used an Iranian-American used car dealer with a sketchy past to hire a hitman from Mexico's Zetas drug cartel to blow up a DC restaurant where the Saudi ambassador was dining.  The plot was discounted by most experts as not being an official Iranian operation simply because it sounded like the plot of a bad spy movie and because the Iranian intelligence agencies pride themselves on being a professional and efficient organization.

Still, that didn't stop the Senate Intelligence Committee from buying into in on Tuesday.  They presented the specter - based on no credible information - of a network of Iranian sleeper cells waiting in America, ready to launch terror attacks if the US followed through on threats of military action against Iran's nuclear research sites.  The threat of retaliatory terror attacks was then used as evidence in favor of military action against Iran. 

And at this point my head really starts to spin at the circular logic being employed by our esteemed Senators.  To quote the great Yogi Berra, this is really starting to seem like deja vu all over again.  It all recalls the tortured logic that led up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Then we were told we had to act because of the threat of a “mushroom cloud” erupting over an American city.  Even though there was no evidence that Iraq had a nuclear program (and after the war we learned definitively that they did not), the Iraqis could not prove that they did not have a nuclear program, which to our leaders at the time was proof enough of a threat.  Once again we are tying ourselves up in logical knots as we rush headlong to what would be our third war in the region in just over a decade.  Considering that we've arguably gone 0-2 in regional conflicts, you'd think we wouldn't be in such a hurry.

Things Fall Apart: Afghan Editon

For the latest indicator of just how screwed up things in Afghanistan truly are, there's this report based on a study of migration patterns in and out of the country by the International Organization for Migration.  Last year more than 30,000 Afghanis sought asylum outside of Afghanistan, a jump of 25% from the year before, though the actual number of Afghans leaving the country though is likely much higher since human smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan has become a billion-dollar business. The numbers point to the reversal of a trend – following the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanis flocked back to their homeland with the hope of starting a new life.  But, according to the IOM, the situation reversed in 2007, when the security situation began to deteriorate.  Fewer Afghans are now returning home, while the number trying to leave has increased each of the past four years.

The reason most cite is the rapidly deteriorating security situation within Afghanistan, a situation most only expect to get far worse once the United States and the rest of the coalition wraps up its peacekeeping mission in 2014.  Europe remains the top destination for Afghan migrants, though for Afghans without the resources to get all the way to Europe, Iran is a low-cost option – a person can be smuggled across the border for just a few hundred dollars.  Most who take this route hope to one day earn the funds to get on to Europe.  And Afghan familes that can't afford to bring everyone out are choosing to send their sons abroad, a situation that will likely only make conditions in Afghanistan worse as the young men who could be rebuilding the country go abroad.

The migrant situation should be another indication of how badly the US-led coalition has managed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and the woeful ineptitude of Hamid Karzai's government.  Aside from its crushing levels of corruption, Karzai's government has failed in its most basic mission – providing security to the Afghan people.  There have been reports from around the country that in some cases the Afghan armed forces and police behave so poorly towards their own people that some villages actually prefer to be back under Taliban control.  And then there is the issue of Taliban infiltration into the Afghan Army.

There was another tragic example of this infiltration last Friday, when an Afghan Army soldier turned his weapon on the French troops instructing with his unit, killing four of the French soldiers and wounding 15 others.  The attack by their supposed allies has the French so enraged that they are threatening to end their participation in Afghanistan and bring their troops home.  “The French army is not in Afghanistan to be shot at by Afghan soldiers,” said France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.  This move would be a critical blow to the coalition, since the French are one of the few participating countries that is actually sending properly armed and trained troops into Afghanistan in the first place.

If Afghanistan is going to have any hope for the future, the trend of migration has to at least be stopped, if not reversed.  For that to happen, Afghans have to believe that their country actually has a future,  and that means that the US and coalition partners have to get serious about nation-building and in forcing the Karzai government to see itself as a servant to the people and not a wealth-extraction machine for the Karzai family.

More Than Just Bad Apples

By now you've probably seen, or at least heard about, the video showing a team of US Marine snipers urinating on the bodies of several Taliban militants whom they had just killed.  Predictably, the Afghan government is outraged at the incident, so too is the leadership of the Pentagon, which has already identified two of the Marines from the video, and is promising to punish the entire team.  Thursday morning on CNN, their resident military analyst, retired Gen. Spider Marks, tried to chalk the incident up to the actions of a few bad apples; it seems like this will be the official line on the matter.

Unfortunately it's not true, the video cannot simply be dismissed as an act of misplaced bravado by a few rogue soldiers.  Rather it is a symptom of the kind of psychosis that comes along with the long-term occupation of a land and its people.  The United States is ten years into its Afghan mission.  We went to Afghanistan to avenge the barbaric acts of 9/11; we were indoctrinated to think that this land hosted individuals with no regard for human life, who would happily kill innocent men, women and children to further their own twisted view of religion.  Al-Qaeda became conflated with the Taliban, who in turn, became conflated with the Afghan people.  We can run all of the feel-good stories we want about American soldiers helping to open medical clinics or schools for girls in Afghanistan, but at home we continue to promote the idea that if we don't continue to fight “them” over there, terrorist acts will return to our shores, just look at some of the rhetoric from the presidential campaign that supports this very idea.  For our soldiers on the ground, they are told of the need to constantly be on guard, that any Afghani they meet could be one of “them”.

The surprise then shouldn't be that a group of US Marines decided to dehumanize a group of enemies they had killed, the surprise should be that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often since it is the natural progression of any long-term occupation – the trend, perhaps the psychological need, to dehumanize those you are occupying, since how could you control every facet of someone else's life, down to their very right to have life at all, if you consider them a human being equal to yourself?  The history of the 20^th century offers ample evidence to support this idea.  Members of the Israeli political left and peace movements decry their nation's occupation of the Palestinian territories for this very reason, adding that Israeli soldiers' dehumanizing of the Palestinians also has a corrosive effect on Israeli society as well; one can also look at the occupations of various European nations during World War II, or Japan's brutal treatment of those in the regions of China they occupied; and, of course, there is also the entirety of Europe's Age of Colonization to consider as well.

Viewing the occupied as something less than human is a natural outgrowth of occupation as the Marine video reminds us.  It should also serve as a powerful example of why it is time for the United States to end its Afghanistan mission once and for all.

Tide Turning In Somalia?

An update now on the ongoing conflict in Somalia.  We have been following Kenya's mission against the militant al-Shabaab organization in southern Somalia – Kenya launched a large-scale military operation designed to capture al-Shabaab's base of operations after the terrorist group attempted to stage several kidnappings of foreign tourists in northern Kenya.  After the mission seemed to bog down, thanks in part to the arrival of the monsoon season and a strategic withdrawal by al-Shabaab, the Kenyans are reporting a number of successes.

According to a report in Bloomberg, the Kenyans claim to have killed as many as 60 al-Shabaab militants in an airstrike.  Other actions in the previous week killed another 25 al-Shabaab fighters, according to the Kenyans, who put their own losses at six soldiers killed and 22 wounded since their offensive, dubbed Operation Linda Nchi, began last year.  Along with the Kenyan military presence, or perhaps inspired by it, other nations in the region are increasing their cooperation in Somalia.  The intelligence agencies of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia are now coordinating their efforts in Somalia and also at preventing reprisal terror attacks in their respective countries from al-Shabaab, the working group claims to have thwarted several attacks planned around the New Year holiday season.  While al-Shabaab has largely operated within Somalia, they did stage a high-profile suicide bombing in Kampala, Uganda, at a World Cup viewing party in 2010 that killed as many as 70 people; this attack was to protest Uganda's support of the African Union peacekeeping (or Amisom) mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, where Uganda currently supplies the bulk of the troops.

The three nations, along with the Amisom mission and some of Somalia's other neighbors like Djibouti, are also increasing their military cooperation.  Ethiopia is also reported to have conducted military operations in the past few weeks within Somalia as well.  All of this is making my prediction here that Somalia could turn into Africa's next Great War seem like more of a possibility.  Some on the Kenyan side are predicting that based on their recent successes, al-Shabaab could be near collapse.  While this may or may not be true, it is worth remembering that the last time a strong Islamic movement was defeated in Somalia – the Islamic Courts Union (or ICU) – a period of chaos followed as outside forces withdrew feeling like they had “won”, while the remnants of the ICU fought amongst themselves with the more militant al-Shabaab eventually emerging as the victor.  The lesson here should be that if the Kenyans are right and al-Shabaab is defeated, that the victors need to stay engaged with Somalia providing security and allowing for the development of a legitimate government, rather than calling it a day, going home and letting something even worse than al-Shabaab emerge from the chaos.

As Iraq Crumbles

Iraq is falling apart at breakneck speed.  With the dust still settling from the US troop convoy out of the country, Iraq is showing every sign of coming apart at the seams. This morning, Baghdad was rocked by a series of coordinated blasts during the morning rush hour that killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 100 others.  But those explosions are masking an even larger problem gripping the Iraqi government.

Earlier in the week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued an arrest warrant for Iraq's Vice President, Tariq al-Hashemi, claiming that al-Hashemi was running his own murderous hit squad.  It's worth noting here that this is Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister trying to arrest Iraq's Sunni Vice President.  In response, al-Hashemi fled to the northern city of Erbil, de facto capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, where he was granted protection by Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani.

So as of Thursday morning, Iraq's whole political system was in a three-sided stand-off broken down along ethnic/sectarian lines.  Part of the reason that this kind of situation could even happen in the first place is that Iraq's national government has obviously taken a lesson from the US Congress and developed an amazing ability to avoid making tough decisions.  The final status of Kurdistan within the Iraqi federal state has gone unresolved for years. The main sticking point is over oil revenues from the oil rich north, which the Kurds think should stay in their autonomous region and the Sunnis/Shiites think should be distributed to the country at-large.  Some oil companies have signed contracts to develop resources in the north with the Kurdish government in Erbil, which the federal government in Baghdad hasn't decided yet whether to honor or not. And then there's the city of Kirkuk, which sits in the middle of Iraq's northern oil patch, that the Kurds say was historically Kurdish and should thus belong to them, but Iraq's Arabs say was repopulated by Saddam Hussein with Shiites and Sunnis and so should not.

Of course the situation involving Iraq's Vice President has sparked claims from the Republican critics in the United States that the possible pending collapse of Iraq is all President Obama's fault for withdrawing US troops too quickly and too soon.  This line of argument ignores the fact that Pres. Obama's decision was motivated by the government of Iraq's refusal to sign an extension of the Status of Forces Agreement (or SOFA) that exempted US troops from prosecution under Iraqi law for any perceived misdeeds (you can only imagine how Obama's Republican critics would have howled if he had left US troops in Iraq without this protection). A larger question for the critics though is if after eight years Iraq's government was so fragile it would start to crack just days after the US withdrew from the country, when then would it be ready to govern? In another five years? Ten? Would the United States need a massive and permanent presence in Iraq to play referee to the feuding ethnic and sectarian groups, and is this what they're advocating?

The United States went to war in Iraq for dubious motives to remove the government of Saddam Hussein.  Our plan for the “day after” Saddam’s fall was to install Ahmed Chalabi, a shifty Iraqi ex-pat, as the new leader, a plan the Iraqis balked at.  It is clear that in the eight years following the rejection of Chalabi, the US never was able to come up with a Plan B other than to try to graft a federal system of government onto three groups with long and contentious histories, a plan that now shows signs, not surprisingly, of coming dramatically apart.

US Sends Marines To Australia

President Obama has finally made good on his twice-delayed state visit to Australia.  The announcement that is grabbing the headlines this morning is that the United States will be basing a contingent of US Marines in Australia.  The Marines will be based near Darwin in the remote, far northern part of the country; 250 Marines will start the mission though their numbers will eventually grow to 2,500.  Darwin has been a historic location for US forces in Australia.  In the opening days of World War II, the US military used Darwin as a forward operating base to defend Australia against a possible Japanese invasion, as that threat subsided, Darwin became a logistical hub for the Allies island-hopping campaign against the Japanese across the Pacific.

What the Marines will be doing in Darwin has not yet been adequately described, though fingers are, of course, being pointed towards China, which has become more assertive in the seas near their coast.  China has had what we would diplomatically call “incidents” with both Japanese and Vietnamese ships in the South China Sea in the past two years; it's likely not a coincidence that these incidents have occurred as each country explores the seabed for oil and natural gas deposits.  And then there is the launch earlier this year of China's first aircraft carrier.  Frankly, I have a hard time getting that worked up about a second-hand, Soviet-era boat from Ukraine, but others point to the ship, and China's renaming it the Shi Lang after the Chinese admiral who conquered Taiwan, as subtle signs of their aggressive intentions in the region.

On one hand, it is hard to see China actually going to war with any of its neighbors.  China seems to have learned the lesson from the Soviet Union that trying to build and maintain an empire through military force is a sure route to bankruptcy.  Instead, China has followed the post-Soviet model laid down by Russia of trying to dominate countries through economics, either as suppliers of raw materials or consumers of your goods.  In that respect, war would be bad for business, and it's worth noting that China and Australia do a lot of business together.  But on the other hand, there's demographics.  Thanks to China's “one child” policy and cultural preference for boys, the male-female ratio is seriously out of whack, one statistic I have seen puts it at 88 women for every 100 men (typically the ratios are near 50/50 with a slight lean towards women).  Historically, societies with male/female ratios of this scale have been far more likely to go to war, since war gives unattached males something to do.

And there's always the modern American policy fallback position of anti-terror operations.  The Obama Administration has quietly, though aggressively, stepped up anti-terror operations by drone aircraft and US special forces around the globe, for example places like Ethiopia and the Seychelles are now bases for US drones, while military advisers were recently sent to Uganda.  Marines in Darwin would be ideally based to carry out operations in Indonesia, the world's largest (by population) Muslim nation and one that is not unfamiliar with Islamic extremism.

If nothing else, the basing of US Marines in Darwin will help to strengthen ties between the US and Australia, a nation that in recent years has been increasingly seeing itself more and more as part of Asia.

This Week At War: Kenyan Edition

Kenya is pressing on with their first military mission abroad, as their troops this week pushed deeper into neighboring Somalia in pursuit of militias allied with Somalia's Islamist al-Shabaab organization. The two sides have already fought several skirmishes, with both Kenya and al-Shabaab claiming to have killed a handful of the other side's fighters. The real battles are shaping up though as the Kenyans plan to take several strategic, al-Shabaab-held towns, including the vitally important port city of Kismayu, al-Shabaab's main link with the outside world. And Kenya is warning residents in ten Somali towns to expect to be “under attack continuously” during the next few days as the Kenyan military pursues al-Shabaab militias. That warning came by way of the Twitter feed of Kenyan military spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir, though you have to wonder if sending out messages via Twitter is really the best way to warn civilians in one of the poorest and most chaotic regions on the planet.

The upcoming attack is part of Operation Linda Nchi, which symbolically means “Protect the Nation” in Swahili. Kenyan officials say that they were spurred into action after al-Shabaab members crossed the border and kidnapped several European tourists from resorts in northern Kenya. Tourism makes up a major part of Kenya's economy, so the Kenyans felt they couldn't let the cross-border raids go unanswered.

But some analysts are questioning the wisdom of Linda Nchi. The Kenyans themselves are unclear about whether they intend to occupy Kismayu, assuming they get that far, or whether they plan to just capture/kill as many al-Shabaab fighters as they can in the city and then leave. And if they do leave, what keeps al-Shabaab from just retaking the area once the Kenyans are gone? It is worth noting that Ethiopia found itself in a similar situation a few years ago and launched their own invasion of Somalia in 2006 in response to cross-border incursions by Islamist militias along their border with Somalia. The Ethiopian army won some early victories against the militias, but soon found itself bogged down in a hit-and-run guerrilla war (much like the ones the US military found itself engaged in in both Iraq and Afghanistan). After two years the Ethiopians had enough and pulled their troops out, leaving a peacekeeping force from the African Union to fight al-Shabaab. The same thing then is likely to happen to Kenya should they decide to stay in southern Somalia. The Kenyans so far haven't offered any plans for how they would stabilize the region as a way of keeping al-Shabaab from returning. The old Kenyan strategy, which we discussed here a few months ago, was to prop up a separatist state in the border region of southern Somalia called Azania (or Jubaland depending on who you talk to), whose “government” pledged to fight al-Shabaab. But according to Tedai Marima on Al Jazeera, working with the folks in Azania/Jubaland can cause a whole new set of problems, since the state they would like to create also includes Somalis living on the Kenyan and Ethiopian sides of the border as well.

And then there's al-Shabaab themselves. Al-Shabaab tends to follow the insurgent's playbook and avoids direct conflict with professional militaries wherever they can, preferring hit-and-run attacks; or just outright acts of terrorism. As “punishment” for supplying the bulk of the troops in the AU peacekeeping mission, al-Shabaab staged a suicide bombing in Uganda's capital, Kampala, last year that killed 70 people. Al-Shabaab has now threatened similar attacks in Kenya.

There's also evidence that al-Shabaab is deepening their ties with the world's most famous terror outfit, al-Qaeda. A correspondent with The Guardian reporting on the ongoing drought in southern Somalia filed this story about al-Qaeda distributing humanitarian aid at an al-Shabaab-run refugee camp. Even more disturbing for Western anti-terror operatives is the claim that the relief group was led by an American al-Qaeda calling himself Abu Abdullah Muhajir. It is not unheard of for Somali-Americans to return to Somalia and take up with an Islamist militia – a recent suicide bombing in Mogadishu was traced back to a recently-returned Somali-American. But Muhajir was described by The Guardian as being “white” and a full-member of al-Qaeda, which changes the equation a bit. It could be a sign that al-Qaeda is taking a serious look at lawless Somalia, which hasn't had a functioning national government for 20 years now, as a new Afghanistan, a central base of operations for them to use while they try to rebuild.

America and 9/11

In my latest post over at The Mantle, I take a look at America's reaction to the 9/11 attacks ten years later. You often hear it said that the attacks “changed everything”, but did they really? And do Americans have an unhealthy obsession with wallowing in the tragedy of the attacks? Surf on over to The Mantle to read my views.