Category Archives: Terrorism

Guantanamo Recidivism

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The Pentagon seems ready to assert that 1 in 7 Guantanamo inmates return to terrorism. It seems likely that this will encourage the recent backtracking on Guantanamo’s closure. Once again, we will hear about how the inmates are hardened killers who hate America, threaten it, do not deserve due process, deserve to rot in a hole, etc. Clearly some of them do. But it must also be admitted that 1 in 7 is not such a bad recidivism rate. 14.28% is actually not that exceptional; compared to US rates it even seems low. It is also not clear just what kind of terrorism they return to.

The knee-jerk response is to say that even 1 in 7 is unacceptable, so W was right that we should just ‘lock ‘em up.’ This is an overreaction I think. There is a political choice here to be made, unless we adopt Cheney’s 1% doctrine that even 1 in 100 is too much. But by this logic, just about anyone we pick up in the GWoT should wind up in a hole, because who knows what he might do if we let him out.

But think more politically about it. 1 in 7 is bad, but it could be a lot worse. 1 in 7 is a ‘reasonable’ or ‘manageable’ number unless we assert that the goal of the GWoT is to kill every terrorist on the planet. This is impossible and would require such extreme means that it would create more problems that it would solve. As we learned in Iraq, we cannot kill (or imprison, torture, etc.) our way to victory. We don’t want the cure to kill the patient. And clearly, the side costs of Guantanamo have been enormous – the reduction of trust in the US, prestige loss, the temptation to torture, hedging by traditional allies, etc. The reasons to close Guantanamo are obvious. Idealistically, it violates core American beliefs of due process, civil liberties, human treatment of prisoners, etc. Realistically, Guantanamo’s damage to America’s reputation and its use in inspiring moderate Moslems that extremists are right about the US, almost certainly outweighs its value. In short, if we learn good intel at Guantanamo, but inspire new terrorists and betray our values in doing so, is it worth it? Is it worth 1 in 7?

Probably not. The answer to 1 in 7 is not the 1% doctrine. Instead it suggests what the lawyers and centrists have sought all along – some kind of investigative and legal process for these people. It is amazing that almost 8 years after 9/11, there is still no proper legal framework for detainees. In the place of ‘lock ‘em all up,’ we need a method to investigate, rules of evidence & appeal, punishment guidelines, special courts if necessary, etc. This process may be different for terrorist suspects and illegal combatants, but the framework must be open for public debate, authorized by congressional statute, constitutional consonant (i.e., acceptable to the Supreme Court), and with proper oversight mechanisms. Problems like this will continue arise as the GWoT rolls on, and the executive branch ad hocery of the last 8 years is both legally confused and insufficient for the burden of people to be processed.

In short, we need to create a legal framework that will allow us to investigate, and if warranted, prosecute and punish these people. This is what we normally do with other lawbreakers. Let’s adapt it to these new circumstances. Clearly some of these people are threats, but also 6 in 7 are not. That is a pretty sizeable number. Instead of absolutist positions like the 1% doctrine, we need a more nuanced, professional and sustainable approach that tries to discriminate the redeemable from the truly awful. This is what courts and investigations do everyday. The requirement to do that here is no different, even if the method will be. And we must be prepared for some recidivism nonetheless. This is the price we pay for being a liberal democracy. We can do as much as we can, within limits, to reduce our exposure, but the 1% doctrine betrays the very openness, generosity, and liberality of our society that we are trying to protect.

“F-16s are an ideal counterinsurgency tool,” or Why Pakistan might Fall to the Taliban

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In case you want to explain why Pakistan might go down in flames in just one sentence, it is hard to beat, for sheer pithy idiocy, this money quote from a WSJ editorial:

“We also hear the [Pakistani] military is reluctant to take up U.S. offers to fix Pakistan’s idle attack helicopters and focus on the hardware suited for a civil war against a lightly armed enemy. Instead, says a U.S. Defense official, "we always hear things like, ‘F-16s are an ideal counterinsurgency tool.’"”

This line is so hysterically (in a bad way) bone-headed, its hard to know where to even begin in response. I will just direct you to my shortened thoughts on proper counterinsurgency.

I’ve been teaching terrorism and the GWoT for 5 years now, and this ranks up there with Rumsfeldian classics like ‘freedom is untidy.’ When I first read that F-16 line, I have to admit I laughed out loud. Good lord, even my undergrads learn basic asymmetry in the GWoT. Sigh…

Maybe I should add a monthly ‘surreality’ feature to the blog. This could be the May edition, while Stalin simultaneously battling aliens and dancing to techno could be the April entry.

Update: Here is a good piece explaining why the Pakis obsess so much over the F-16s: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2008ecb3-3d16-4240-86e0-5516f7e0caed&p=1. But it hardly validates the silly notion of F-16s as a COIN tool. The real, obvious answer is that they are a prestigious tool against India.

Religious Tolerance in Islam and an End to the War on Terror

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Here is a good column on a point widely ignored in the debate over Islam’s relationship with the other two abrahamic monotheisms. C Hitchens at Slate.com has been particularly good on this, but few have mentioned it, likely out of political correctness. The Islamic revival since 1967 has in included a powerful purifying zeal toward non-Muslim remnants in ‘Muslim’ lands. (That very expression of course is unhelpful in itself, as it suggests religious pluralism is somehow an imposition in Muslim-majority countries.) Today this is harshest in Africa, where strident Islamic insistence has generated tension across the Sahel, most notably in Nigeria and southern Sudan. Even as far away as Korea, when I teach the War on Terrorism, a lot of my Buddhist students remember the needless Taliban destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas. The Taliban were quite open in stating that Buddhism was irreligion and paganism. Of course, the Taliban are an extreme marker, but the wider issue of religious pluralism cuts both ways. If Muslims in the West enjoy religious freedom, citizenship, and all the rest, and if Muslim governments feel they can intervene in the West to ‘defend’ their co-religionsists (as the OIC did during the Muhammad cartoon flap), then eventually the question of those rights and privileges will be raised in the Middle East for non-Muslims. Without that reciprocity, the West will slide toward the idea that Muslim states are trying to export sharia to the West.

At some point this has to stop for the War on Terror to stop. If non-Muslims perceive that they will be the targets of harassment and recrimination in Muslim-majority states, the Muslim world’s isolation will only increase, FDI will never pick up, the war on terror will go on and on, Israel will remain recalcitrant on a permanent peace, etc, etc. And an intransigent monotheistic zeal and belligerence at home will certainly translate into foreign adventurism (think 9/11), and this will only encourage the clash of civilizations we all want to avoid.

Worse, thoroughgoing islamification will only worsen the problems of most of these states. The Arab/Muslim world seems to ache for a return to lost glories, but homogenization will only make that return even harder. Jeffery Herf wrote about ‘reactionary modernism’ – trying to find the future by rebuilding a romanticized past through cultural cleansing. But we know this doesn’t work. As Thomas Friedman notes again and again in his books and columns, the future belongs to open societies welcoming globalization and diversity. Ethnic/cultural cleansing reduces the pluralism that generates new ideas or visions, adds flexibility to cope with globalization’s traumas, enlivens cultural offerings from food to music, spurs artists and creators to to new innovations, keeps majorities from slipping into self-satisfied complacency, etc. (Koreans have learned this lesson, albeit with some difficulty, since the ROK’s opening with the ‘88 Olympics. They now realize the value of globalization, so markers, like good English speaking skills, have high social prestige.) It will make Muslim bridges to the rest of the world harder, not just because others will think them intolerant, but because the citizens of these homogenizing states will lack access to local others who can prepare them for globalization, travel, foreign imports and languages, etc. Closed monolithic states slip easily into paranoid xenophobia. (Watch the Russian film East-West on this; note how the ‘foreigner’ is so suspected in the USSR. Or consider Ahmadinejad’s laughable assertion, clearly bred in the isolated womb of a closed society, that Iran has no homosexuals.) The UN Arab Human Development Reports have already expressed great concern about the cultural sealing off of the Middle East. The Middle East is one of the least globalized parts of the world according to Foreign Policy/AT Kearney globalization index. Expurgating the remnants of difference will only accelerate that process, push the ME further and further behind the rest of the globalizing world (and so worsening its relative poverty, status grievances, and anger toward the rest of the world), and so drag out the end of the GWoT. 

Start Investigating the Bush People for Torture

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The debate is beginning on investigating the Bush administration for torture. It seems to me that this is a no-brainer, and I am amazed at the hysterical conservative reaction that this will embolden the terrorists or divide the country. Perhaps the worst GOP cliche is that we will be ‘looking backward when we need to look to the future.’ Gimme a break. Accountability, which includes investigation where suspicion merits, is pretty basic in a democracy.

If the law was broken, there needs to be an investigation and possible prosecution. That is legally required. But of course, the politics of it are far more determinative of whether an investigation will happen.

1. If the Bush people have done nothing wrong, then they have nothing to fear. As Al Haig said to Nixon, an investigation can only prove that Dean is wrong, correct? (Ooops!) Indeed, an investigation will give the Bushies a chance to end this thing once and for all and defend their actions openly. Ex-DCI Hayden has already begun this by saying that torture did save US lives. We need to have this debate, in order to set the historical record straight and to decide if our values will permit torture if/when its efficacious.

2. Transparency and oversight are important. The country is far better off for things like the Watergate investigation or the Church committee. Investigating possible abuses of power so as to avoid them in the future is a fundamental difference between open and closed societies. It is also a major part of the balance of power. Congressional investigations of possible executive malfeasance are an important oversight tool. Having these debates out in public is good for the republic. It keeps government honest and insures the citizenry is informed of what occurs in their name, and hopefully encourages them to participate more. It is a healthy exercise that we do this when called for. It keeps us vigilant over our politics.

3. Walt makes the obvious and excellent point that the US has pushed for investigations and indictments of war criminals in places like the Balkans, Iraq, and Africa. If we brush this under the carpet, it will be far more difficult for the US to advocate for war crimes prosecutions in the future. The hypocrisy is so rank and obvious. To not investigate will damage the soft power and US reputation that Obama wants so much to restore and utilize.

Al Qaeda vs SK? Seriously? Why? The Enemies List isn’t Long Enough Yet?

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Most of the work on terrorism says that al Qaeda is an intelligent, serious organization of dedicated loyalists deeply committed to the cause. In the language of Cindy Combs, AQ is not a crazy or a criminal but a crusader.

This is an important insight, as our reflex is to respond angrily by denigrating them as  mad, crazy, nihilists. During WWII, we used to caricature Hitler as chewing the carpet in wild rages that almost certainly never happened. The reality is that AQ – and Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and most of history’s horribles – are rational, strategic, and intelligent. These various opponents of liberal democracy have different values and pursue different (ie, awful) political goals, but they are rarely stupid or simply nihilistic.

So if AQ is rational, I don’t understand the value of attacking South Koreans. Why are the South Koreans, of all people, now ‘infidels’ too? I understand of course that in a maximal binladenist reading, a vast swathe of humanity, including Shiites, are the enemy. But if AQ is in fact acting strategically, can’t the Koreans wait their turn for elimination after the more proximate and threatening opponents (the West/Christianity, Israel/Jews, India/Hindus)? More practically, shouldn’t AQ just simply be trying to survive the GWoT right now, rather than adding another opponent?

AQ appears to see the world as a clash of civilizations. Islam, in this view, is encircled and already in conflict with errant pre-Islamic monotheisms (Christianity & Judaism), polytheistic Hinduism, and ‘pagan’ African animism/naturalism. Why open another potentially huge front by targeting Buddhist-Confucian states? It seems like a gigantic risk, especially if Japan and China read this as a religious assault on Confucianism and/or Buddhism (which seems to be the point, as AQ refers to the S Korean victims as ‘infidels.’)

The answer is likely that SK is a US ally, but this doesn’t seem like enough to explain 2 quick attacks and the infidel rhetoric. SK is an American ally, but it is hardly involved in the GWoT. Koreans know little about Islam, and there are less than 100 Muslims in the whole country. Given the NK menace, its forces can hardly deploy out-of-area anyway. Although it has a sizeable Christian population now, its deep religious roots are Buddhist-Confucian. And Buddhism and Confucianism are scarcely germane to  the fiery theistic conflicts that divide deep partisans of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

I suppose we can only hope that AQ and radical Islam are foolish enough to declare war on all the world’s (non-Sunni) non-Muslims simultaneously.

Is It Cheaper for the US to Lose in Iraq/Afghanistan?: Costs and Benefits of Hegemonic Retrenchment

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This was originally written in the fall of 2007, but it applies to Afghanistan today as well.

Douglas MacArthur famously suggested, ‘there is no substitute for victory.’ War involves high costs, and victory is to redeem those costs. In rationalist terms, war should pay. Victory implies that payoff, and states should invest in success to achieve it. The benefits need not be material, such as territory or resources; they may be ideological, ideational, or in prestige. Hegemons and great powers particularly place great stock in victory because of perceived credibility and stature threats.

But the populist logic of MacArthur’s statement misses the shifting ground of costs and benefits in wartime. Sunk costs in lives and treasure expand; perceived benefits may wither; perceived costs to defeat may decline. In the history of US foreign policy, the rise and closure of the Vietnam War illustrates these shifting sands of costs and benefits. The domestic costs of lives lost, money spent, inflation, and domestic unrest rose dramatically. The benefits of victory became increasingly ethereal; South Vietnam was clearly a weak ally with little to offer for increasing high American costs. Conversely, the costs of defeat sank as US foreign policy makers realized that Vietnam’s loss would not in fact knock over many dominoes. Australia, Indonesia, and Japan would not ‘finlandize.’ The USSR’s experience in Afghanistan is similar. At some point, it simply is cheaper to lose.

Now apply this model to the current Iraq War. The cost-benefit analysis is (probably) turning against US involvement:

1. The costs of victory are skyrocketing. Estimates of the war range from one to two trillion dollars. Claims of a ‘broken’ army feed fears of imperial overstretch. A steady stream of American casualties from an unwanted nation-building mission has deeply divided and soured American public opinion. America’s global reputation and legitimacy are at record lows.

2. The benefits of victory are increasingly insubstantial. Iraq is back in OPEC. Maliki and the Iraqi religious leadership are no accommodating more of Israel than other regional states. No MWD were found. Iraq will likely be a failed/quasi-state, hardly a reliable or durable ally in the war on terror. Long-term US bases there would be controversial and attacked constantly.

3. The costs of defeat are lower than the US leadership believes. None of Iraq’s neighbors wants Iraq to become an Qaeda sanctuary; it is unlikely to be another Afghanistan. Small cross-border raids with drones and gunships (as in Somalia or Pakistan) will be possible should al Qaeda persist. The US has no clear national interest in the outcome of the Sunni-Shia civil war. Regardless of the outcome, the regional American alliance network will not likely change. Where else can the gulf emirs, Israel, Egypt, etc. realistically go for support beyond the US?

Yet hegemonic states figure in credibility as a cost particular to their status. US prestige concerns likely lengthened the Vietnam war by several years through the Nixon administration, as Soviet fears prolonged the Afghan conflict through the Gorbachev presidency. Both Nixon and Gorbachev promised to end the war but took years to do so. The current Iraq War again suggests that the hegemons will carry punishing cost/benefit equations for prestige. The question I propose to investigate is at what point do the non-prestige costs overwhelm hoped-for, yet hard to calculate, credibility gain.

Al Qaeda as an NGO

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Research Note

1. Argument

Since 9/11, the United States has implicitly treated its terrorist opponents as if they were states. It has deployed traditional assets of hard power against countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush speaks of a global ‘war’ on terror (GWoT) and listed only states in the ‘axis of evil.’ Yet terrorist groups themselves are structurally similar to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). While they may receive state-sponsorship, they frequently are an organizational embodiment of indigenous social movements. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamist groups emanate from the Islamic revival or wave since the 1970s, just as Greenpeace did from the environmental movement. That some of these NGOs or social movement organizations deploy violence distinguishes them tactically, but not structurally. Indeed at least one environmental NGO, the Earth Liberation Front, has slowly drifted into terrorism. Hence, warfighting counterterrorism strategies mischaracterize the opponent. This essay will first, map the structural similarities between terrorist organizations and NGOs through a comparison of Greenpeace and al Qaeda, and second, deduce counter-insurgency rather than warfighting policy implications for the GWoT.

As social movements arise – feminism, Islamism, Irish nationalism – they kick up non-state entities – NGOs – that agitate for new goals. Traditionally the literature on NGOs and social movements has implied that they are leftist or ‘progressive.’ From rising environmental concern emanates Greenpeace or the World Wild Life Fund; civil rights concerns generate the NAACP. Yet this logic does not preclude nationalist, religious, or ‘regressive’ social movements. Rising Irish nationalism in the environment of decolonization generated the IRA, as well as peaceful groups agitating for change. Similarly, an Islamic revival has gripped the Muslim world since the 1970s and created non-state, civil society groups to renew Muslim piety, some of which have reached to terrorism. That some, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, so blur the boundaries between NGO-style aid and charity work and terrorism, intellectually motivates my comparison of the two concepts.

2. Research

Several decades of research on social movements and NGOs has generated a general set of structural attributes of NGOs. For comparison, I choose Greenpeace, because it is a ‘classic,’ well-researched NGO case, and al Qaeda, because it is the best known terrorist group emanant from the Islamic revivalist movement. The following structured, focused comparison will be expanded in the full essay: Both are non-state and transnational. They are networked across borders through national chapters. These chapters have formal memberships, complete with selection criteria and bureaucratic jockeying over advancement, projects, and internal governance. National chapters are complemented by a wider but softer constituency of partially mobilizable sympathizers. Leadership is oligarchic and personalistic; charismatic founders tend to dominate, with limited circulation at the top. Both engage in fund-raising and recruitment within the relevant social movement. They are principled advocates; they seek deep ideational change in world politics. But the ‘deep politics’ of norm entrepreneurship is slow, and both are given to bouts of extraparliamentary direct action for immediate policy change. Neither seeks to enter traditional politics or morph into a political party. Both are media-savvy and engage extensively in public relations campaigns. They heavily use the non-nationalized, deterritorial space of the internet to organize, mobilize and fundraise at a global level for global change. Finally, like many NGOs, both share a general ideological disdain for US-led capitalist modernity.

3. Policy Implications/Results

The policy implications of this analysis, particularly for the current US WoT are significant. Islamism will continue to kick up groups like Al Qaeda or Hamas until the fervor behind the revival fades. As such, militarized strategies that target failed states are unlikely to reduce Islamic terrorism. Indeed, as the National Intelligence Estimates argue, the Iraq war has likely created more jihadists, because it plays to the most extreme variants of the Muslim revival. Warfighting counter-terrorism strategies significantly overrate the relevance of rickety, postcolonial states of the Middle East and Central Asia; they mischaracterize the opponent as a traditional state which can be reduced by traditional means.

If the opponent is primarily ideational – an inspirational social movement – channeled through violent NGOs, then a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy, complemented by containment and counterinsurgency, is likely a more efficacious approach. The model for future Western action in the GWoT would be not Iraq but the Malayan emergency of the 1950s. The norm entrepreneurship of Islamic radicals would be met by a contrasting, liberal campaign for hearts and minds. Where unsuccessful, Islamist regimes like Iran would face containment, and violent NGOs like al Qaeda would face counter-insurgency in fine-grained, patient, well-intelligenced, culturally-literate, small-footprint operations.

4. Method

The method is historical and cross-comparative. I will follow Alexander George’s prescription of structured, focused comparison. Along a series of generalized vectors, I will compare these two cases. The attributes listed above (section 2) are the general markers against which the two cases will be measured. The actual research will only involve reading. The relevant information is already in the public sphere. Because I wrote my dissertation on NGOs, I will likely circulate drafts among my NGO acquaintances; I will make a particular effort to solicit Greenpeace. I will also consult with associates from the CIA, homeland security, the military, and the other terrorism scholars in my professional network.

5. Literature/Contribution

This project contributes creatively to the international relations literatures on terrorism and social movements. To my knowledge, they have never been brought together before. Traditionally, social movement and NGO scholars focus on left-‘progressive’ groups like the anti-globalizers around the IMF and World Bank, or indigenous third world development groups. In Power in Movement, Sidney Tarrow noted that almost no one applies the tools of this work to rightist social movements. By contrast, the counterterrorism literature is dominated by Iraq, tactical considerations of how democracies should respond to terrorism, and state-sponsorship of terror. The structure of terrorist networks is simply taken for granted; they are like brigands or pirates or militias. But the operations of al Qaeda, Hamas and others suggest far greater sophistication.

So I believe I am creatively fusing two previously unaffiliated literatures. Applying our tools, as Tarrow suggests, to a conservative social movement and its emanant NGOs should yield theoretically interesting and policy-relevant results.