Owen Barron is the editor-in-chief of the Harvard International Review.
Witnessing Market Failure
The excellent website Watching America, which collects and translates news and opinion stories from media around the world, has been fascinating to watch amidst the turmoil of the US market freefall. It’s an instructive read, if only because you recognize how high the stakes are for everyone, not just the United States.
For example, here’s a Chinese newspaper, the Oriental Morning Post, watching China’s main economic rival collapse, seemingly before its eyes:
Bad news keeps coming from Wall Street. Again, the decline of U.S. hegemony became a hot topic of debate. Complaining or even cursing a world of hegemony brings excitement to us. However, faced with a decline of U.S. hegemony, the power vacuum could also be painful. We do not like hegemony, but have we ever thought about this problem when we mocked its decline? If the United States is no longer hegemonic, or its strength is declining, then who will be willing to pick up the load that the United States is not able or willing to carry?
It is from this sense that U.S. decline is dangerous. This is why many Western historians share a view that the end of U.S. hegemony is unlikely to nurture a multi-polar world system in an orderly fashion, but will lead to a world torn apart, because no other country is able to play a role of global leader. Ferguson, a British historian, even pessimistically addresses it as a “dark age.”
Meanwhile, in the Manila Times, an editorialist reflects on the repercussions of job losses upon his friends and family in the United States:
I have relatives and friends in every state of the USA, whose savings and small businesses are threatened with extinction—if the $700-billion bailout law is not passed at once.
Millions of Americans will lose their jobs, their children will not be able to go to college, etc.
The decline of the value of good stock in Wall Street by up to 60 percent must also be promptly stopped by restoring investor confidence in the market.
And in Dar al-Hayat, Mostafa Zein connects the market issues to broader discontent with American foreign policy:
The events in Pakistan have coincided with another consequence of the fall of the “Bush revolution,” one that threatens the global economy, with the US economy leading the way, with collapse. The White House has promoted free markets and confronted any state intervention; it forced many countries to privatize public institutions and lift subsidies on basic goods. The president went even further, when he planned to privatize the army, as we see from the example of the mercenaries used in the Iraq war. This administration was obliged to intervene to halt the economic downslide, violating all of the principles of its president, who has proposed pumping $700 billion of taxpayer money into the system. In other words, Bush has resorted to nationalization, even if not on the socialist model, to save what can be saved, abandoning all of his earlier proposals.
Many states have formed and then fallen apart on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Communist and leftist parties have become “orphans,” and some of their leaders have even embraced the Bush revolution. He has raised the neo-liberal banner and justified his wars and the crimes of his administration, from Pakistan to Iraq.
This extra-special scrutiny of America by rest of the world needn’t have policy implications for US legislators and critics: after all, we’ve got our own economy to worry about. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that, at least as the economy is concerned, we truly are a global village.
Farewell Musharraf?
Amid all the hoopla surrounding the Russia-Georgia war, the spectacle of Parvez Musharraf’s impending impeachment or removal has largely gone unnoticed. I’ll direct you to two somewhat contradictory NYTimes articles here and here which cover the unfolding story. The first asserts that Musharraf is likely to resign within the next two days in order to avoid impeachment; the second insinuates that he’s likely to fight it out to the bitter end. I’ll believe the first—that Musharraf will indeed resign—since even the second article contains the following explanation:
Politicians across all parties, however, characterized the public insistence by Mr. Musharraf, a former military man, as a kind of last stand, a bravura performance that could not be maintained under the political reality that almost all of his support had evaporated.
If Mr. Musharraf does not step down voluntarily very soon, the man who succeeded him last year as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will quietly make it clear he has to leave, said two senior Pakistani figures who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The army, which remains the most revered institution in Pakistan, does not want impeachment proceedings to begin, fearing it would be tarnished, several politicians said.
So we’re looking at a cornered politician in his last days. The deck is truly stacked against him; as the Times mentions, Musharraf was demolished in voting in the four provincial assemblies. Both sides had been looking at these votes are as a preview of Parliamentary impeachment voting. And the results aren’t good for Musharraf: in Sindh, for example, Musharraf didn’t even get one vote, and the Islamist MQM, who are his main allies, abstained.
Finally, as the above quote indicates, Musharraf has lost his last bastion of support, the army. Which means that the descriptions of Gen. Kiyani—quiet, apolitical—that we read last November must have been fairly accurate. (From Kiyani’s BBC Profile, 27 November 2007: “Some observers had also contended that Gen Kayani was too much “his own man” for Gen Musharraf to place faith in him. But Gen Musharraf chose to ignore these doubters when naming his successor in early October”).
This is not, however, by any means a substantial revision of Pakistan’s long-term status quo. Kiyani’s unwillingness to let Musharraf drag the army down with him simply reaffirms what we’ve seen repeatedly in Pakistan: The military protects itself. Not its individuals per se, but its institutional status and the many privileges that accompany that status. And this is particularly important when you consider how divided the civilian government is likely to be in the event of Musharraf’s departure. Asif Zardari, whose PPP has the majority in the anti-Musharraf coalition, seems to want the post. That’s a change from his apparent plan, as I discussed in March, to eventually become prime minister. Either way, he’ll face a challenge from Nawaz Sharif, who commands much of the remainder of the coalition. Sharif is unlikely to contest Zardari’s ascendancy, but the Times reports that he’ll insist on stripping the presidency of much of its power. Ironically, some of that presidential authority is power that Musharraf gave the office in just his final years.
What we may be looking at, then, is a restored civilian government that’s hopelessly divided on a number of key issues, and a military that, having shed Musharraf, once again has a free hand. That harks back to Benazhir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif’s experiences in the 1990’s, being constantly undermined by the army, but even they didn’t have to deal with intra-government challenges to their authority. Expect a lot of disappointment all around in the new government.
Finally, worth mentioning is that the United States, having firmly thrown its lot in with Musharraf, has found that it’s reduced to asking for a “dignified exit” for Musharraf. This doesn’t bode well for the US influence in the next government, who will surely remember how America held onto its puppet Musharraf until the last possible moment. I wrote the following in November, “I think the US has to decide, now, that our long-term chances for a relationship with Pakistan, which will eventually tend toward civilian rule, depends on us backing off from our support for Musharraf.” Forgive me then for reasserting this, and for stating that the US would be in much better standing with Pakistan’s new government had it displayed just a bit of evenhandedness about the situation.
Update: Careless research, or lack thereof, led me state that the MQM is Islamist, when in fact they are firmly secular. Thanks to our readers for catching this.
Playing at Democracy in Pakistan
We’re about to discover just how legitimate Pakistan’s “democratic” institutions really are. The latest news out of Islamabad is the power-sharing deal brokered by Asif Zardari of the PPP and Nawaz Sharif of the PML-Q, and President Musharraf’s subsequent summons to Parliament. The body will convene on March 17, but what exactly happens then is, at this point, anyone’s guess. Here are some things to look for:
The nominee for the premiership. Zardari, who since Benazir’s death has stewarded the party on behalf of his 19-year old son Bilawal, holds the power in this regard. The PPP won a plurality of 120 seats in the 332-seat assembly, thirty more than Sharif’s PML-Q, which finished second. So it will ultimately be Zardari who chooses the premier. PPP Vice Chairman Makhdoom Ali Fahim’s name came up early on, as he is popular within the party, and some insiders believe he, not Zardari or Zardari’s son, was Benazir’s true appointed heir. But Nawaz Sharif appears to have objected to this nomination, because, according to Pakistan’s Daily Times, he “expect[s] the nominee for premiership should be strong enough to implement the agenda of the coalition.” Sharif, who is vehemently anti-Musharraf and wants the president out of office, fears that Fahim is a secret Musharraf sympathizer who would not pursue impeachment with enough vigor. In response to this whisper campaign, meanwhile, Zardari has dithered, and his own name has come up repeatedly as a potential candidate. Zardari had previously scuttled such rumors, saying he wanted to focus on building the party, and for obvious reasons: he is not himself an MP, and thus could not become Prime Minister at this point. But with Fahim fading from the picture, and a majority of MNAs-elect now favoring Zardari’s premiership, the situation has changed, and it looks increasingly as if Zardari will become Prime Minister, if not immediately. Under this scenario, Zardari would appoint an interim PM—probably from Punjab—and then assume the premiership after winning an parliamentary seat. A Press Trust of India wire report mentions that the potential candidates include Yousaf Raza Gillani, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar—all from Punjab. Some MPs would, however, still like to see Fahim as the interim prime minister. I would expect an announcement in the next week, and that it would likely be Qureshi or Mukhtar, whose names have surfaced most often.
Musharraf’s future. The biggest breakthrough leading to the Sharif-Zardari deal appears to have been the agreement by Zardari to reseat the 63 judges that Musharraf sacked. Sharif had insisted on this, because it represents the first step toward unseating Musharraf. In return for this agreement, Sharif agreed to let his MPs take the oath of office from Musharraf, something he had foresworn doing. The issue of restoring judges is tricky. Various legal rulings have surfaced, but most agree that a a two-thirds majority in the Parliament is necessary. And the coalition partners, at least, believe they’ve reached this threshold. The anti-Musharraf coalition now includes not just the PPP and the PML-N, but also the Awami Party and the Jamiati-Ulemi Pakistan, giving them 229 out of 332 seats, or 69%. If this coalition holds and the judges are reinstated, the next step will be the invalidation of the fall 2007 elections, which Musharraf opponents argue was unconstitutional because the general was head of the Armed Forces at the time. If the justices determine that the election was invalid, Musharraf will be compelled—legally, anyhow—to step down. The only tricks up his sleeves right now are his prerogative, as President, to dissolve the parliament, and his ability to replace the heads of the armed forces. Armed Forces Chief Kiyani appears to be signaling that under his leadership, the army will respect the democratic process. But if Musharraf decides to retain power no matter what happens, he may go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the process. As for the likelihood of impeachment votes, it seems that Sharif is extremely dedicated to removing Musharraf. But since the President holds the trump card of dismissing Parliament, that consideration will likely weigh heavily on the minds of the coalition partners, particularly those outside of the PML-N.
Changing of the Guard?
Russia’s electoral promenade is concluding, and when the “votes” are in, we will undoubtedly see Dmitri Medvedev take Putin’s place as Russia’s next president. So what’s fascinating to watch is not the theatrics of the campaign (for those, the world turned into the Iowa Caucuses) but the predictions of Medvedev’s future. Several articles seem to make the point that although Medvedev will certainly be weak, he is less abrasive and will invite more citizen participation than Putin. The NY Times and CFR both point to Medvedev’s comments on the need for freedom in people’s lives, and specifically his attack on excessive state control and corruption.
My perspective is that the optimism is probably unfounded. Forgive the comparison, but those of us at Harvard have just undergone a similar presidential selection process, and I think there are more than superficial parallels. Larry Summers drew widespread criticism to Harvard for his (misunderstood) comments on women and science. He was a lightning-rod for controversy, always speaking his mind in a stodgy institution that shuns such behavior, and he clashed with a faculty that didn’t appreciate his interference. In contrast, Drew Faust is historic in her role as the first woman president of Harvard. Moreover, she’s hewed to the general course of Harvard, proposing minor initiatives but shying away from major confrontation.
In the case of both Russia and Harvard, the insiders and the bureaucrats win, and observers get a figurehead whose main virtue is being inoffensive. Let me be clear: I don’t think that post-Soviet Russia is very much like Harvard at all, so I won’t stretch the comparison. But I don’t think we should read too much into minor policy differences and rhetorical platitudes when we make predictions about Medvedev’s presidency. He’s not a KGB man, and the speculation is that he was picked to avoid further infighting in the FSB (KGB’s successor). If there’s any hint that Medvedev will seriously challenge the status quo, he will be marginalized, and quickly.
So bravo, soon-to-be President Medvedev. You may not have won a real election, but you don’t need to worry about holding real power, either.
Arab Censorship in the Modern Age
If you care at all about democracy ever emerging in the Arab world, the recent decision by the Arab League to allow closer government oversight of satellite media should worry you. It shouldn’t surprise you—after all, Arab governments are famous for censorship, disrespect for journalists, and police brutality. But the language of the new League charter, agreed upon almost unanimously, is chilling to those of us in the West who’ve grown to cherish our freedom of the press.
From the BBC:
The document calls on stations “not to offend the leaders or national and religious symbols” of Arab countries, news agency AFP reports.
They should not “damage social harmony, national unity, public order or traditional values,” the charter says.
The regulations affect satellite broadcasters, such as Al Jazeera, which have angered governments in the past with scathing criticisms of authoritarianism and corruption. These broadcasters hadn’t been immune to repression—an Al Jazeera journalist was sentenced to six months in prison after the government accused her of “fabricating” torture videotapes for use in a documentary. But the new regulations expand the scope of regulation frighteningly. Notably, Qatar—which is home to Al Jazeera itself, and which sponsors the station—refused to sign the charter.
What’s important to realize, though, is that satellite media is no longer the most controversial medium for Arab and Middle Eastern journalists. That distinction is now firmly held by the countless Middle Eastern blogs that have proliferated over the past few years. They’ve posted rants against their government, the US, the Zionists, and so on. They’ve posted cell-phone videos of police brutality—and gotten themselves arrested as a result. The crackdown on the Internet in the Arab world began belatedly, and can never be quite effective. Paradoxically, the attempts by governments to spur development by offering free or subsidized Internet access—such as in Egypt—inevitably leads to the sort of political activism that governments try to prohibit. In Iran, whose censors vigilantly monitor the print media, blogs have exploded. No authoritarian government can effectively police the Internet; even in China, which maintains its Great Firewall, the most die-hard bloggers consistently find ways to evade the censors.
So the Arab League is cracking down on satellite TV. That’s terrible, but it’s hardly going to stop the massive upsurge in activism and political expression coming from the new media. The Internet will not be constrained. And all of us should be thankful for that here.
Punk’d by the Great Satan
This article on BBC caught my eye. I suppose it’s the part of the US counter-terrorism strategy where it wins the Arabs’ hearts and minds…but really, MTV?
From the article:
The music and youth lifestyle channel MTV has launched an Arabic service it hopes can tap into a booming appetite for Western-influenced culture.
MTV says it hopes to respect local culture without diluting its brand.
The MTV Arabia service will screen Arab music videos, talent shows, and international programmes like Pimp My Ride adapted for Arab audiences.
My first reaction when I saw this was to compare it to the recent launches of Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV, which seem to be aimed at the young, socially-liberal demographic in the Arab world. This is a real demographic, to be sure, and we needn’t marginalize the success of something like Radio Sawa, which has apparently achieved 94% penetration within the target audience (I’m skeptical of that figure, but it no doubt reflects the station’s general popularity). My beef with Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra is that instead of complementing a more traditional Arabic public diplomacy effort from the US government, it seems to have replaced it entirely. Voice of America has shut down its Arabic division—which, to be fair, was hardly a stellar news source—in favor of the new stations. The problem is that VOA’s demographic was mostly 40-50 year old professional men with an interest in politics. They’re certainly not going to be tuning in to Christina Aguilera. And so the US loses an audience that is now going exclusively to Al-Jazeera for news. I’m not going to play the “Al-Jazeera is a bunch of America-hating terrorists” card, but we can’t imagine that the US gets a fair shake on the network.
Of course, this isn’t relevant to MTV, which has no responsibility to serve anyone but its target audience. So why does MTV believe that “the channel can act as a cultural unifying force in a region known for political tension”? Thinking that Arabs would unite around Britney Spears, or even indigenous pop stars like Egypt’s Ruby or Lebanon’s Nancy Ajram, is as ridiculous as thinking that Arabs unite around bin Laden and burning effigies of Bush. There’s definitely a cultural diversity that’s completely ignored when considering countries foreign to us. Does MTV act as a unifying force in the US? Hardly.
Also: How do you adapt “Pimp My Ride” for an Arab audience? Discuss.
The Paranoia of Dictatorship
Have Robert Mugabe and his administration entered the paranoid and defensive mode of their totalitarian regime? Or do they have legitimate cause for concern? The BBC reports that Mugabe and his government are worried about a possible invasion by Britain, and consider themselves ready to respond to the “sinister threats” of the British. This isn’t completely out of the blue: it comes as a response to comments made by Britain’s former Army Chief, Lord Guthrie. Guthrie mentioned in an interview with the UK Independent that government figures, including Prime Minister Blair, had asked him to consider an invasion of Zimbabwe, as a response to the political violence that enveloped the country in the months before the 2002 election. Guthrie’s advice: “’Hold hard, you’ll make it worse.’”
It’s fairly clear that the UK was not on the verge of invading Zimbabwe in 2002, and even more clear that the military option is not on the table as of now. Britain is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and its people are war-weary. Even in 2002, the consideration seems to have been merely an internal government dialogue, and would have required in any case a good few months of demagoguery to sell the war to the British public. That doesn’t stop Mugabe and co. from spreading the hysteria, though. From the BBC article:
“The government was aware of the plans and the president made reference to the sinister [British] motives on several occasions,” he was quoted as saying.
“A defence plan had been operationalised and in fact, it is still in operation. We were also aware that short of a fully-fledged invasion, the British were and are still contemplating the elimination of our political leadership through a number of assassinations,” said Mr Charamba.
We know enough about Mugabe to be skeptical about any of his claims, or those of his government. Still, it’s worth noting that Pius Ncube, the top cleric in Zimbabwe, has called on Britain to do exactly what Mugabe fears, and remove him. “We should do it ourselves but there’s too much fear,” Ncube said. “I’m ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready.” Numerous Western critics, most notably James Kirchick in the New Republic, have considered the same idea. I think, along with most of the Western world, that Mugabe’s time is long since over, if indeed his rule was ever legitimate, which Kirchick disputes. Removing Mugabe through the power of the formerly-imperialist British military, which Zimbabwe liberated itself from just 27 years ago, probably isn’t the best approach, though.
Dancing the Dance: US Diplomacy and Pakistan
It’s fascinating to watch the US reaction to the events in Pakistan. I’ve been saying it for a while: the Pakistan case is one of the most succinct encapsulations of the dilemmas of US foreign policy in the Middle East. The key elements are: a US-supported autocrat, violent Islamists, moderate Islamists, and secular opposition. We see more or less the same pattern in Egypt, and the trend of an unpopular US-supported dictator is common across the Middle East. In this way, it’s not unlike the Iranian revolution. One thing I thing which I think is crucial to understanding this is how much of a role the non-Islamists are playing. I went this summer to a speech by Tariq Fatemi, the former Pakistani envoy to Washington, who says the big trend here is the galvanization of Pakistan’s civil society. The connection to Iran, then, is that we have a similar storm of opposition to the regime, ranging from die-hard Islamists to the most secular liberals. And if Musharraf persists in his antics, what are the chances that the Islamist voice will be louder? That’s what happened in Iran, though I’m obviously oversimplifying the case. Khomeini wasn’t the only leader, but he was the most visible and charismatic. I think the US has to decide, now, that our long-term chances for a relationship with Pakistan, which will eventually tend toward civilian rule, depends on us backing off from our support for Musharraf. Killing terrorists now is one thing; completely losing the trust of the people for the long term is another one. Can’t you just see the discussions twenty years from now when we’re dealing with a ruthless Islamist regime in Pakistan whose people hate their rulers but hate the US even more, because when we had a chance to support democracy, we paid for Musharraf’s bullets instead? As a realist consideration, we should back off from Musharraf and let him know our support is not unconditional.
Georgia Defaults to Autocracy—Again
If you’re a big fan of the arbitrary abuses of government power, or you happen to have a penchant for watching state police tear-gas their own civilians, well, 2007 is certainly the year for you. We’ve seen an already-autocratic state in Burma move from merely “oppressive” to “brutal,” witnessed the steady regression of Pakistan back towards de facto military rule, and now in Georgia, we see the sudden imposition of emergency law to counter what has been a week of vehemently anti-government protests. Of course, if you happen to support—for whatever reason—representative government and a fundamental respect for civil liberties, then the recent events in Georgia should give you cause for concern.
I wrote about the relations between Georgia and Russia in the Spring 2007 issue of the HIR, in the context of their diplomatic warfare of the past two years. I acknowledged that each party had legitimate concerns—the status of breakaway republics South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for one, and the future of Georgia-Russia economic relations. But I also argued that the two have much to cooperate over, such as terrorism, organized crime, drugs, and so forth. Russia would have to acknowledge Georgia’s move towards the West, and Georgia would have to eventually allow self-determination for the separatist states, but their relationship need not be fundamentally damaged.
I assumed, perhaps naively, that Georgia was interested in true cooperation. It seems instead that Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili is less interested in dealing with Russia than with leveraging his battle for Russia for external and internal political gain. Externally, he emphasizes to the EU and the US his disagreements with Russia—no great friend of the West—to gather support for his suppression of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And internally, he highlights the threat of Russia to justify his arbitrary suspension of civil government. Apparently he blames the recent unrest within Georgia on Russian spies and interlocutors who want to destabilize his regime.
In reality, the protestors his police eventually tear-gassed were protesting the corruption that remains endemic within Georgian politics and the economy. At first blush, this might be surprising: Georgia has, since the beginning of Saakashvili’s rule, undergone one of the most aggressive anti-corruption campaigns in recent years. Saakashvili, a Western-educated lawyer, is dedicated to promoting free and transparent markets and has been award high marks in his reforms by the World Bank and the OECD. Apparently, however, the stain of corruption is not so easy to wash out, particularly when it accompanies the high unemployment rates that free-market reforms often trigger. It is this combination of corruption and umemployment that led to protests, not the insiduous influence of Moscow (which is admittedly very real).
So while Georgia has been temporarily pacified by Saakashvili’s promise to hold elections in January, a full year earlier than required by the constitution, concerns will remain about the president’s commitment to democracy. Saakashvili initially approved of the protests, saying that free people should have a right to demonstrate peacefully against their government, but he evidently decided that there was only so much free speech he could take. It is unlikely that any opposition leader—save perhaps billionaire tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, who just announced—will seriously challenge Saakashvili’s bid for reelection. And neither is the continuation of Saakashvili’s presidency—which has limited corruption while producing growth rates above 12%–a necessarily bad thing. But a regime that feels it can call in the troops whenever the people get just a bit too rowdy, is one that serious democrats should regard with extreme caution.
Afghanistan: Suicide Bombings on the Rise
The news from Afghanistan these days, for those who’ve noticed, tends to be largely concerned with reporting the latest suicide bombings. The BBC, for example, reports today that three British soldiers and three civilians have died in an attack in Helmand province—typical of the Taliban, who tend to target foreign militaries but whose bombings inevitably kill civilians as well. The news will hardly shock an American audience, accustomed as we are to the daily reports of suicide bombings in Iraq, which are even more frequent and deadly. But the fact that suicide bombings have become a part of daily life in Afghanistan is troubling—and it sheds a lot of light on the problems that the country now faces.
Some background, perhaps, is needed to explain the significance of this trend. Suicide, which is already regarded as an abomination within Islam, is especially condemned within Afghan culture. And indeed, while suicide bombing has been used in Israel for years, and rather immediately became a tactic in the Iraq insurgency, it remained strikingly absent from the Taliban’s arsenal throughout 2001 and 2002. Kabul’s Center for Conflict and Peace Studies reports that there was just one suicide bombing in 2002, and just two such attacks in 2003, six in 2004, and 21 in 2005. The situation, of course, is now entirely different. The CCPS noted as early as August 6, 2006 that there had already been more terrorist attacks in 2006 than in the entire previous history of the country. 2007 promises to be even worse, according to an Associated Press article which claims that suicide bombing has roughly tripled, with deaths estimated at 94 coalition troops and 279 civilians.
So why the astronomical increase in suicide bombings? A number of explanations prove useful here. First is the natural shift in Taliban tactics from large-scale rural warfare against coalition forces to more random acts of terrorism. The Taliban, faced with the military superiority of US, international and Afghan army forces, have transitioned from open resistance to the more guerrilla-style tactics favored by Iraqi insurgents. It seems only natural that they should embrace a method of resistance that promises an ideal proportion of insurgent to infidel casualties.
But the real explanation for the increase in suicide bombings is clearly Al Qaeda—both the terrorists still in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and, crucially, the growing Qaeda presence in Iraq. We’ve seen reports that major Taliban leaders have been training in Iraq, and that Afghans have been sent to Iraq for so-called “on-the-job” training. Al Qaeda’s sophisticated propaganda corps, who even have their own video production company, Al-Sahab, have been successfully in arguing for an Islamic legitimization of suicide, on the basis of “martyrdom.” The Taliban have even developed their own video production arm, mirroring Al Qaeda’s, which is especially interesting given that under their tyrannical rule, they banned all television as un-Islamic. Only one conclusion is possible: that the Taliban, forced to adapt by American pressure, have essentially merged with Al Qaeda in both ideology and tactics.
Is their strategy working? The US military reports that some 84% of the victims of Taliban attacks are civilians, and for a movement which seeks to win the “hearts and minds” of Afghans, this is a devastating statistic. Apparently the Taliban were initially quite concerned about civilian casualties, occasionally apologizing for attacks in which civilians died. But recent events, including a June 17 attack on a police headquarters that killed 35 Afghans, 22 of them policemen, indicate that this cautiousness may have fallen by the wayside. Considerable resistance also remains to the notion of using suicide attacks within Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai’s government has tried to capitalize on this, running ads that show a mullah refusing to say prayers at a suicide bomber’s funeral, and saying, “We are Muslims, and Islam does not allow anyone to shed either his own blood or that of his brothers.”
But the Al Qaeda merger is troubling nonetheless. Increased ISAF patrolling can do much to crack down on the lawlessness of the southern regions, where Talibs run amok, and border enforcement can limit weapons trafficking from Iran and Pakistan. But little can be done, militarily, to discourage angry young Afghans from strapping on bombs and blowing themselves up. Afghan clerics need to do more to emphasize the evil of these actions, and NATO forces can be more careful about civilian casualties, which would make it clear that international forces are fighting for the Afghans, not against them. There are no real answers to a terrorist insurgency, though. It will take the combined will of international governments, Afghan forces, and ordinary citizens to defeat what is clearly a growing menace to national stability.