The ISIS Paradox: A Mirage or Mortal Threat?

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-isis-paradox-mirage-or-mortal-threat-10818?page=show

While the group has made significant gains over its adversaries, and controls large swaths of strategic territory in Iraq and Syria, it is beset by several internal contradictions and vulnerabilities. 

Ross HarrisonMichael W. S. Ryan

July 7, 2014 

It is no simple feat to leap almost overnight from being a relatively unknown organization to capturing headlines around the world. From Washington’s vantage point, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has catapulted itself from being merely a localized challenger to secular rebel groups battling the Assad regime in Syria, to now posing a broader threat to regional stability and to the territorial integrity of both Iraq and Syria. By capturing large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, including strategic border crossings, and then subsuming these spoils of war under a self-proclaimed Caliphate, ISIS is making a mockery of the existing regional order, claiming to have permanently erased the boundaries that have served as the framework for regional stability since the end of World War 1. Moreover, in a potentially stunning reversal of fortune, ISIS poses a threat to al-Qaeda, challenging its jihadist cachet and the durability of some of its most strategic alliances.

Washington is treating the threat of ISIS as a byproduct of the governance problems in Iraq and the chronic civil war in Syria. But the problem we are facing today is that ISIS has now already crossed the Rubicon from being merely a symptom of existing conflicts to becoming a source and catalyst of new conflicts. It has done this through its territorial gains, by conflating the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars into one large battlefield, and by threatening the stability of the broader region. What this means is that solutions that might have worked in the past, like changes in the make-up of the Iraqi and Syrian governments, might be necessary, but are unlikely to be sufficient under current circumstances.

As nightmarishly impressive as ISIS’s accomplishments are, it is necessary to also understand that the group represents a paradox: it is both an opponent with very real and treacherous capabilities and ambitions, but it is also a mirage in the sense that those same strengths are likely to become its greatest weaknesses over the long term. While it has made significant gains over its adversaries, and controls large swaths of strategic territory in Iraq and Syria, it is beset by several internal contradictions and vulnerabilities, which over time could lead to its undoing. 

First, let’s examine what is real about ISIS’s strengths. The group’s capability derives largely from its charismatic leader, known by the nom de guerre, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The narrative he has crafted and his very real, and largely destructive, accomplishments appeal to disenfranchised Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis, and other largely Sunni constituents in the region, who are committed to overturn what they deem to be an unjust and unsustainable status quo. And to those with a jihadist bent who believe that al-Qaeda is a diminished organization, he represents the best hope to achieve Osama Bin Laden's aspirations. To them ISIS is in the process of making al-Qaeda’s longer term aspirational goals, of destroying corrupt states like Syria and Iraq, erasing illegitimate and artificial boundaries, and creating a new Islamic Caliphate, a reality today.

Why The White House Ignored All Those Warnings About ISIS

07.06.14 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/06/why-the-white-house-ignored-all-those-warnings-about-isis.html 

Team Obama was told, over and over, that the Iraqi army couldn’t stop a terror group that was ready to pounce. But Washington was a prisoner to its paradox of an Iraq policy. 

On November 1, 2013, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the White House, and made a rather stunning request. Maliki, who celebrated when the last U.S. troops left his country in 2011, asked Obama to quietly send the military back into Iraq and help his beleagured Air Force develop targets for air strikes; that’s how serious the threat from Sunni insurgents led by the extremist group ISIS had become. 

Twelve days later, Brett McGurk, a deputy assistant secretary of state and the Obama administration’s senior U.S. official in Baghdad since the crisis began last month, presented to Congress a similarly dark warning. ISIS was launching upwards of 40 suicide bombers a month, he said, encouraged in part by the weakness of Maliki’s military and the aggressively anti-Sunni policies of the Shi’ite prime minister. It was the kind of ominous report that American intelligence agencies had been delivering privately for months. McGurk added that ISIS had “benefited from a permissive operating environment due to inherent weaknesses of Iraqi security forces, poor operational tactics, and popular grievances, which remain unaddressed, among the population in Anbar and Nineweh provinces.” 

Maliki's requests were rebuffed; McGurk’s warnings went largely unheeded. The problem for Obama was that he had no good policy option in Iraq. On the one hand, if Obama had authorized the air strikes Maliki began requesting in January, he would strengthen the hand of an Iraqi prime minister who increasingly resembled the brutal autocrat U.S. troops helped unseat in 2003. Maliki’s heavy handed policies—such as authorizing counter-terrorism raids against Sunni political leaders with no real links to terrorism—sowed the seeds of the current insurrection in Iraq. 

“It’s simply not true that nobody saw a disaster like the fall of Mosul coming. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I literally predicted this in verbal warnings and in writing in 2010 that Iraq would fall apart.” 

But while Obama committed to sell Maliki’s military nearly $11 billion worth of advances U.S. weaponry, he was unwilling to use that leverage in a meaningful way to get him to reverse his earlier reforms where he purged some of his military’s most capable leaders and replaced them with yes men. As a result this paradox, the Iraq policy process ground to a halt at the very moment that ISIS was on the rise. 

Two months later, ISIS captured the strategically important city of Fallujah in Anbar province. Five month after that, Iraq’s second-largest city—Mosul, in Nineweh province—fell to ISIS and an army of Sunni insurgents. At the time, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to proclaim just how impossible-to-predict the collapse of Mosul was. But interviews with a dozen U.S. and Iraqi intelligence officials, diplomats, and policy makers reveal a very different story. A catastrophe like the fall of Mosul wasn’t just predictable, these officials say. They repeatedly warned the Obama administration that something like this was going to happen. With seemingly no good choices to make in Iraq, the White House wasn’t able to listen. 

The Foreign Policy Essay: Calculated Caliphate

By Thomas Hegghammer

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Editor’s Note: The conquest of Mosul and other cities in Iraq by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has alarmed the United States and its allies and electrified the Sunni jihadist community. On Monday, ISIS went one step further, changing its name to the “Islamic State” and declaring a caliphate with its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the caliph. The implications of this decision, and the strategy behind it, remain uncertain. Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and a leading scholar of the jihadist movement, explores ISIS’s motivations, both strategic and ideological, and the effect this brazen move might have on both the group and the broader conflict. 

On June 29, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared itself a caliphate with its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the caliph. The declaration struck the jihadi movement like a bombshell. Hani al-Siba’i, a radical ideologue based in the United Kingdom, said on Twitter that he nearly choked on his Ramadan breakfast when he heard the news.

The move is bold and unprecedented. The caliphate is a form of government associated with early Islam and with the successive Islamic empires that dominated the Muslim world until the early 1920s. While most Muslims today view the caliphate as a thing of the past, jihadis see it as an ideal form of government that ought to be reinstated. Still, jihadis have thus far viewed the caliphate as a utopia—much like Marxist groups viewed the perfect communist society—because the Islamic legal conditions for establishing a caliphate are difficult to meet in the modern international system. For decades, restoring the caliphate has been the declared end objective of all jihadi groups, but none of them has had the audacity to declare one—until now.

For “old” jihadi groups like al-Qaida, ISIS’s move is utterly preposterous. The veterans see themselves as having spent a lifetime fighting superpowers, all the while holding back on declaring a caliphate—only to see a bunch of newcomers come in from the sidelines and steal the trophy. Adding insult to injury, ISIS is now demanding that the veterans submit to the authority of a young, obscure (at least until yesterday) caliph. That demand comes because in theory, the leader of a caliphate rules all Muslims and has supreme executive authority in military matters. All this while ISIS supporters taunt the old guard on social media with comments such as: “If Al-Qaida and al-Taliban could not establish khilafah [caliphate] with all their power and territory for all these years, how can we expect them to suddenly unite upon haqq [truth] now? Al-Khilafah does not need them, rather, they need al-khilafah.”

5 QUESTIONS WITH THOMAS HEGGHAMMER ON JIHAD AND JIHADI COCKTAILS

http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/5-questions-with-thomas-hegghammer-on-jihad-and-jihadi-cocktails/

Ryan Evans

July 7, 2014

This is the latest edition of our Five Questions series. Each week, we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering five questions on a topic of current relevance in the world of defense, security, and foreign policy. Well, four of the questions are topical. The fifth is about booze. We are War on the Rocks, after all.

This week we spoke with Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. Hegghammer is the author and co-author of several books, including Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge 2010) and The Meccan Rebellion (Amal 2011).

1. Thanks for doing this Thomas! What has been the reaction of other Islamist groups—from the politicos to the jihadis—to the declared return of the “Caliphate”? To what extent are these reactions important? How has it been different from al-Qaida in Iraq calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq years ago?​

Thanks for having me. I can’t wait to get to the last question. In the meantime, let me say that reactions from other groups to the Caliphate declaration have been largely negative. With some notable exceptions, established groups outside Iraq and Syria seem not to be signing up. To be sure, several groups, not least those in the al-Qaida franchise, have yet to respond formally, but I will be very surprised if we see a wave of joiners. At this point the biggest question is more how furious or sarcastic Ayman al-Zawahiri’s response will be. The same is true of the best-known jihadi ideologues. With some exceptions, they’re mostly against.

These reactions are important in the sense of “good for us,” because a transnational jihadi movement united under a single leader would be a terrible prospect for all who believe in democracy. Whether they’re important in the sense of “reliable as an indicator of international jihadi opinion” is another matter. On the one hand, these groups and ideologues clearly command a substantial following of activists and sympathizers. On the other hand, they may not represent the young guard of activists who came of political age during the Syrian war. We may be overestimating the opposition to the caliphate by looking only at the names we know best. I think this is particularly true of radical Islamist communities in the West, where I see a lot of support for the Islamic State (IS). The Westerners fighting with IS have a lot of friends back home who express support for IS on social media. On Friday there was even a pro-IS street demonstration in the Netherlands. It’s probably no coincidence that Anjem Choudhry, the doyen of radical Islam in northern Europe, has not condemned the caliphate.

You are right to bring up the analogy of the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, because it tells us that the caliphate declaration is but the latest in a series of escalating statehood claims by jihadi groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, groups were groups and leaders were leaders. Starting in the late 1980s, groups started calling themselves “emirates” and leaders things like “commander of the faithful” with increasing frequency. After 2003 we have seen the emergence of around fifteen jihadi “emirates” and one “Islamic State”. Since 2006 we’ve had two “Commanders of the faithful”, Mullah Umar and Abu Umar al-Baghdadi (and his successors in ISI). This is clearly the result of a bidding game, i.e. a competition between jihadi groups for the attention of recruits and donors. The result has been a watering down of the sanctity of these terms and titles. “Caliphate” has been the last taboo, hence the reactions, but over time I think Islamists will come to view this as just another group name. We may even see other “caliphates” declared in the future.

After a Week of Trying, the Iraqi Army Still Has Not Retaken the City of Tikrit; Iraqi Victory Claims Contradicted by Evidence On-the-Ground

July 7, 2014

Army Struggles to Retake Strategic City of Tikrit

Matt Bradley

Wall Street Journal

BAGHDAD—Iraq’s military fought insurgents outside the strategically important city of Tikrit on Friday, as the country’s leader rejected calls to step down and yield to a more inclusive government.

There were conflicting reports over whether troops recaptured the town of Awja, the birthplace of late strongman Saddam Hussein, which lies about 90 miles from the capital here. Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, the Iraqi Army spokesman, said his forces had recaptured Awja.

But Iraq’s military has repeatedly announced victories that weren’t supported by evidence on the ground, and two battlefield commanders contradicted him on Friday.

They said in interviews that fighting continued late on Friday outside of Awja and that the army was still launching mortars and helicopter airstrikes at insurgent positions inside Awja.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, rejected calls by Iraqi politicians and religious leaders to step aside to make way for a government that is more inclusive of the minority Sunnis and Kurds that could help battle an uprising led by the Islamic State—formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominant party won the most seats in a recent parliamentary vote and he is trying to cobble together a government.

"I will never waive the nomination for the premier post since my coalition is the biggest bloc and has the right to have the premier post, and it not the right of any other side to place such conditions," Mr. Maliki said in a speech on Friday.

His comments, in addition to the battlefield developments, point to an impasse that stands to delay a resolution to violence that has engulfed major parts of the country and gridlocked its political system.

Meanwhile, Sabah Al Fatlawi, one of the commanders, said Iraqi forces were in control of an important highway west of Awja that connects Tikrit with the city of Samarra, home to a sacred Shiite shrine under threat by the Islamic State.

Iraqi troops also have occupied the sprawling grounds of Tikrit University, just outside Tikrit, for much of the past week after they were airdropped into the campus several days ago. Clashes have continued around the university for days, but residents of Tikrit say militants have checked their progress beyond the university.

If Iraq’s military succeeds in retaking Awja, it would amount to a symbolic victory for Iraq’s military after it was humbled last month by the Islamic State. The town’s capture would also put the army closer to Tikrit, where battles have raged for a week.

ISIS Is About to Destroy Biblical History in Iraq

Christopher Dickey 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/isis-is-about-to-destroy-biblical-history-in-iraq.html

07.07.14 

Iraqi antiquities officials are calling on the Obama administration to save Nineveh and other sites around jihadist-occupied Mosul. But are drone strikes really the answer? 

PARIS — More than two and a half millennia ago, the Assyrian King Senaccherib descended on his enemies “like the wolf on the fold,” as the Bible tells us—and asLord Byron wrote in cantering cadences memorized by countless Victorian schoolchildren: “His cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea.” 

The Assyrian and Babylonian empires appear throughout the Old Testament as examples of ruthless grandeur and godless decadence. The Bible says Sennacherib’s army was destroyed by the Angel of the Lord. The Israelites were carried off to Babylon, where they wept by the waters. And since the middle of the 19th century, archeologists have labored mightily to unearth the mythical and the verifiable past in the extraordinary cradle of civilizations they used to call Mesopotamia and now call Iraq. 

No trace ever has been found of the Garden of Eden, said to have lain near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, but one of the great prizes the excavators did discover was Senaccherib’s capital, Nineveh, which the biblical prophet Nahum called “the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” 

Last month, a new marauder descended on Nineveh and the nearby city of Mosul. He, too, came down like the wolf on the fold, but his cohorts brandished Kalashnikovs from pickup trucks, not shining spears; their banners were theblack flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham. 

The risk now—the virtual certainty, in fact—is that irreplaceable history will be annihilated or sold into the netherworld of corrupt and cynical collectors. 

Soon afterward the minions of the self-appointed caliph of the freshly self-declared Islamic State,Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, paid a visit to the Mosul Museum. It has been closed for years for restoration, ever since it was looted along with many of Iraq’s other institutions in the wake of the culturally oblivious American-led invasion of 2003. But the Mosul Museum was on the verge of reopening, at last, and the full collection had been stored there. 

“These groups of terrorists—their arrival was a brutal shock, with no warning,” Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid told me when he visited Paris last week with a mission pleading for international help. “We were not able to take preventive measures.” 

6 STRATEGIES FOR SYRIA AND IRAQ

http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/6-strategies-for-syria-and-iraq/

Timothy Hoyt

July 7, 2014 

In June, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched a conventional offensive that caught the international community by surprise, temporarily conquering large amounts of territory, capturing the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, and routing the Iraqi army’s 2nd Division in the northwest. Unsurprisingly, the first response in the United States was a cacophony of editorials and interviews providing “strategic” advice to the Obama administration.

Creating or conducting “strategy by op-ed” is a fundamentally flawed approach, but has become increasingly popular and influential inside the Beltway. In 750 words, one can generally lay out one interesting idea with modest detail, and shape it for partisan purposes and domestic political opinion. Op-eds do not, as a rule, consider other points of view — in fact, they often contemptuously dismiss them. Such is the nature of the beast. See, for example the recent broadside by former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, which uses events in Iraq to attack the current administration, but offers nothing like an alternative vision, outside of bombing and “continued presence.”

Lost in the op-ed barrage are some of the nuances that characterize the ISIS challenge. First, the so-called “Islamic State” spans two different but related problem areas for the United States: Syria and Iraq. Second, the ISIS problem is not amenable to a quick U.S. solution. No combination of airstrikes or ground forces will make it go away (although they can kill a lot of ISIS members). Third, despite the fact that commentators routinely exaggerate the imminent threat to the homeland in the interest of spurring immediate action, ISIS constitutes a more distant threat to the United States and an immediate threat to the Middle East and Persian Gulf states, where we have allies, partners, and adversaries. Considering a variety of options — looking at the core assumptions, risks, and the potential consequences — is the best way to begin formulating a strategic approach to ISIS that can be coordinated with U.S. interests and regional stability.

In no particular order, below are six different options for the United States to consider in terms of an ISIS policy. The purpose is to encourage analysts and policymakers to look at a range of possible approaches, and begin assessing which of them is most promising, or perhaps, offers the most flexibility in dealing with a rapidly shifting situation.

1. Be prudent. Minimize the current (minimal) U.S. presence in both countries, and let events unfold.

Assumptions: ISIS is probably prone to self-defeating actions (as Al Qaeda has been), due to its violent nature and alien version of Islam. Both Syria and Iraq are strong enough to hold on to their own turf and eventually counterattack. The United States will not be able to fundamentally reform Iraq, regardless of our troop presence.

Risks: The United States will not look like a leader. There is some risk in allowing ISIS to consolidate, although it is not really clear what we could do to prevent that in the short term even with a massive commitment. This policy also tacitly supports two authoritarian leaders who we have now expressed active dislike for: Nouri al-Maliki and Bashar al-Assad.

Looking Back on a Decade of Secret Drone Warfare: Have Drone Strikes Been a Success of a Failure?

July 6, 2014

Op-Ed: The drone warfare drawbacks

Doyle McManus

Los Angeles Times

The drone has become America’s counter-terrorism weapon of choice. But does drone warfare really further U.S. goals abroad?

To wartime strategists under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the new weapon, like many innovations in the history of military technology, seemed at first like a silver bullet.

Drones with lethal missiles could hover for hours over potential targets, waiting for the moment to strike. They could kill suspected terrorists with relative precision, though not, as the CIA claimed in 2011, without any civilian casualties. Best of all, drones didn’t endanger American lives; the pilots were safe and snug in Djibouti or Nevada.

Drone strikes may be an efficient way to kill terrorists, but they’re no way to make friends. - 

In an almost-invisible campaign that started modestly under Bush and expanded dramatically under Obama, the U.S. has launched more than 1,600 drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and even, in one case, in the Philippines, according to Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations.

But consider how those drone strikes appear if you are an ordinary civilian in, say, northwestern Pakistan. You know you are in constant danger; a missile may strike your home at any time without warning. It’s not clear who’s shooting; the war and its combatants are officially secret. It’s not clear how you can avoid becoming a target; members of Al Qaeda are fair game, of course, but what are their neighbors and cousins and grocery suppliers to do? And if something goes awry, there’s no one to complain to; the CIA doesn’t have a customer service desk, and the government of Pakistan claims (falsely, in most cases) that it has no control over foreign missile strikes.

Drone strikes may be an efficient way to kill terrorists, but they’re no way to make friends.

That’s one of the messages of a stinging new report issued recently by a panel of experts convened by Washington’s independent Stimson Center, a thoroughly establishment group of former officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations. Blue-ribbon commissions in Washington often pull their punches; this one, chaired by retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid and former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, didn’t. Among its highlights:

Just because drone wars have succeeded in killing terrorists doesn’t mean they’re working. “The Obama administration’s heavy reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of U.S. counter-terrorism strategy rests on questionable assumptions and risks increasing instability,” the report warns. After a decade of drone strikes, it notes, we face more Islamic extremists, not fewer.

The widespread use of drones has created a backlash around the world, and not only in remote villages in Pakistan or Yemen. The report quotes retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warning that the tactic creates resentment “much greater than the average American appreciates.”

Reliance on drones for “targeted killing” has allowed the CIA and Pentagon to obscure exactly whom we are fighting. About the only thing the Obama administration has said on the subject is that it has aimed the drone program at “Al Qaeda and associated forces.” But, as the report notes, while U.S. targeters may exercise great care in their decisions, the drone attacks still look perilously like “a secret war, governed by secret law.”

The Great Drone Debate: Time to Move Past Fear and Confusion

Why it is time to embrace a forward-looking U.S. drone policy.

Rachel Stohl

July 7, 2014 

With the emergence of ISIS in Iraq, renewed attention has been given to the use of armed drones to permit greater U.S. intelligence gathering and tactical action, without necessitating U.S. boots on the ground. This is a popular position. A CBS News/The New York Times poll released last week found that a majority of Americans (56 percent) support the use of military drones to carry out targeted attacks against militants in Iraq. Recently, we also saw the court-ordered release of the legal basis for the U.S. targeted killing of American Anwar al-Awlaki by drone strike in Yemen. While the memo provides the public with some useful information, much more is needed to get a full picture of the rationale and basis for the U.S. drone program.

A year ago, President Obama laid out a near-term vision for U.S. national-security policy that included the future direction of targeted drone strikes. Inthat speech at National Defense University, he responded directly to concerns regarding transparency of America’s drone program, pledging to increase oversight of lethal action outside the “hot-battlefield” and “review proposals to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress.” More than a year later, many remain disappointed with the administration’s lack of action on the U.S. drone program. Time has passed—technology has advanced—but America’s drone policy has not evolved.

Missing from America’s current approach to drone policy has been a holistic and comprehensive examination of this complex issue. From the legal and ethical frameworks surrounding the targeted-killings program to the export control decisions, sound policy must balance national security and commercial innovation. For many, in fact, the word “drones” evokes a visceral reaction. For some, drones are equated with a loss of privacy. For others, they are associated with targeted killings and the deaths of innocent civilians. For more still, they represent confusion—a complete lack of clarity of what the United States is doing with this technology at home and around the world.

JUDGING JIM GANT: VIOLENCE AND LEGITIMACY IN AFGHANISTAN

http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/judging-jim-gant/

Isaac Baruffi

July 3, 2014

Several months ago — before the Bergdahl drama and Iraq’s abrupt meltdown — former Army Major Jim Gant received a brief flurry of attention due to the release of his biography American Spartan, authored by Ann Scott Tyson, which chronicles Gant’s turbulent career in Special Forces. It documents his dramatic rise to fame since 2009, when his strategy for Afghanistan, as described in a paper titled “One Tribe at a Time,” went viral among senior military leaders, subsequently becoming the basis for Village Stability Operations. It also details his precipitous fall from grace that followed from his alleged recklessness, substance abuse, and countless other infractions. Suffice it to say Gant is a polarizing figure who has both supporters and critics among those acquainted with his exploits.

But there are also more serious allegations; namely, that he perpetrated war crimes in Afghanistan, or at least supported their commission. In a 2010 blog post titled “Petraeus and McChrystal Drink Major Gant’s Snake Oil,” Central Asia specialist Christian Bleuer accused Gant of engaging in ethnic cleansing based on the following excerpt from “One Tribe at a Time:”

The highland people had taken and were using some land that belonged to the lowland people. The Malik told me the land had been given to his tribe by the ‘King Of Afghanistan’ many, many years ago and that he would show me the papers.[…] I made the decision to support him. ‘Malik, I am with you. My men and I will go with you and speak with the highlanders again. If they do not turn the land back over to you, we will fight with you against them.’[…] Without going into further detail…the dispute with the highlanders was resolved.

Additionally, on April 10 Adam Elkus, a War on the Rocks contributor,tweeted that “…it’s easy to judge. Particularly given that Gant facilitated ethnic cleansing.” Elkus is correct that it is easy to judge Jim Gant for his alleged crime. It is more productive, however, to attempt to understand the logic underpinning the act in question, and to assess its broader implications for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

Gant’s actions, though reprehensible, derive from a theory of victory more consistent with Afghanistan’s political reality than that offered by the prevailing counterinsurgency (COIN) wisdom of the time. GivenAfghanistan’s “kaleidoscopic” political landscape and its relative lack of preexisting political institutions, we should look not to mature Western political orders for models of political consolidation, but to the prerequisite process of state formation. This process is fundamentally illiberal and necessarily involves coercion and the domination of certain actors or coalitions over others. The upshot is that effecting a favorable outcome in Afghanistan, defined by a stable and self-regulating end state, may well demand a degree of complicity in immoral and/or illegal acts. This is not to say that the United States and its allies should engage in such acts. But we must adjust our expectations regarding the potential for self-restrained COIN and Foreign Internal Defense to deliver desired outcomes on acceptable terms, and perhaps should refrain from making categorical judgments about Gant.

Recent Publications

Recent Publications 

Added June 26, 2014 

Democratization and Instability in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus

Authored by Dr. Robert Nalbandov. 

View the Executive Summary

Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus have remarkable variance and incongruence between their levels of democratization, political stability, and economic development. This monograph by Dr. Robert Nalbandov explains the reasons for the different indicators in the three categories and explains the successes and failures of the democratization efforts in three post-Soviet countries. 

Added June 24, 2014 

The Paracel Islands and U.S. Interests and Approaches in the South China Sea

Authored by Lieutenant Colonel Clarence J. Bouchat (USAF, Ret.). 

View the Executive Summary

Learn how the Paracel Islands disputes act as a primer about the South China Sea conflicts and U.S., Vietnamese, and Chinese relations in the region. This analysis may help the reader better understand these disputes, and how the United States may address them. 

Added June 19, 2014 

Operational Reservations: Considerations for a Total Army Force

Authored by COL John D. Ellis, COL (Ret.) Laura McKnight Mackenzie. 

View the Executive Summary

Despite fighting shoulder-to-shoulder this past decade, the U.S. Army is comprised of essentially “three Armies”—the active component, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard. While an intriguing start to integrate the three components, the Army Total Force Policy is not a panacea for reform. Real and meaningful work still needs to be done to bring the three into effective alignment and in a way to foster cooperation and mutual respect. 

Added June 17, 2014 

Moving Beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation

Edited by Mr. Henry D. Sokolski. 

View the Executive Summary

The further proliferation and possible use of nuclear weapons are among the very greatest threats to U.S. and international security, yet most governments and industry officials downplay the risks of civilian nuclear technology and materials being diverted to make bombs. They use this optimistic assessment in formulating U.S. and international nuclear trade and nonproliferation policies. This volume taps the insights and analyses of 13 top nuclear and security experts to weigh the validity of their narrative. The result is a comprehensive counternarrative that recommends a significant tightening of current nonproliferation controls. 

Added June 17, 2014 

2014-15 Key Strategic Issues List

Edited by Professor John F. Troxell. 

For several years, the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) has annually published the Key Strategic Issues List (KSIL). The purpose of this document is to make students and other researchers aware of strategic topics that are of special interest to the U.S. Army. Part I of KSIL is entitled "Army Priorities for Strategic Analysis" (APSA) and is a list of high-priority topics organized to support the Army's five strategic objectives as identified in the "2014 Army Strategic Planning Guidance." Students and researchers are encouraged to get in touch with the topic sponsors listed in the document. Thorough research and solid arguments on these topics are extremely important to the Army in this period of transition and geopolitical uncertainty. 

Steele on Reality, Intelligence, Ethics, & Solutions [Yale, 6 February 2014]

Click on Image to Enlarge

SHORT URL: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-Yale-6

On Thursday 6 February 2014 from 1800-1930, Robert Steele will address a group of undergraduates convened by Yale Politic. The event is free, open to the public without RSVP required, and the media has been invited.

Yale University, Branford College

Trumbull Room

74 High Street

New Haven, CT 06511

Downloadable PPT (30 Pages): Steele @ Yale

YouTube as Presented (Verbatim, Slides Not Really Visible)

Briefing as Planned Below the Line in Full Text

See Also:

YALE The Politic Interviews Robert Steele

2014 Intelligence Reform (Robert Steele)

Clear and present danger

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/clear-and-present-danger-453
Jul 08, 2014

Shankar Roychowdhury

India should keep its sights fixed on its own near neighbourhood in the AfPak region, and the likely impact of ISIS on the Taliban there, after the withdrawal of the US troops. Are ISIS and the Taliban, Pashtun or Punjabi (Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Taliban), two sides of the same coin?

Both politics and religion have long been known as the last refuge of scoundrels, which is becoming increasingly apparent as toxic waste from the Shia-Sunni conflict in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIS, inexorably creeps towards India like a smoking flow of molten lava.

The threat posed by ISIS echoes in the slogans raised by motley groups of shrill demonstrators on the streets of Delhi, exhorting volunteers from India to proceed to Iraq and join in the defence of Shia shrines at Najaf, Karbala, Samarra and elsewhere in Iraq, some of which, like the Imam Hussain shrine in Najaf, were devastated by Sunni suicide car bombers in 2003.

The headlong military offensive of ISIS has overrun large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq where their shadowy leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed an Islamic Khilafat under his supreme leadership. Meanwhile, Russia, understandably chary of stepping into another foreign quagmire after their Afghanistan experience, has sent a few Su-25 ground attack aircraft to Iraq to be flown by Iraqi pilots, while the United States is still holding out for a more inclusive governance and a change in the Nouri al-Maliki regime in Iraq before making up its mind about providing F-16 fighters to the beleaguered Iraqi armed forces.

Whether the presence of “volunteers” of Indian origin, who might have made their way to Iraq disregarding travel advisories issued by the Indian government, can be construed in any way as official acquiescence, stated or unstated, the tangled thicket of thorny sectarian issues pervading that country requires to be examined with the utmost circumspection.

The communally-tinged law and order problems triggered throughout India not all that long ago following an inflammatory “protest meeting” organised at the Azad Maidan in Mumbai in August 2012 by a little known fringe fundamentalist Sunni group calling itself the “Raza Academy”, allegedly to condemn atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, are warnings that “agitational intervention” in foreign countries can have serious repercussions on the internal security of India itself.

The Indian government is reportedly examining despatch of Indian forces to Iraq to assist in the evacuation of Indians stranded in that country, some of whom have reportedly been abducted and held for ransom by elements within ISIS. In the event Indian troops and aircraft are at all permitted to enter that country, they would be utilised solely for rescue and evacuation of Indian nationals. Protection of religious shrines in foreign countries does not fall within their mandate, no matter how revered these might be to their faithful in India.

However, it is also true that religious and sectarian issues are at the origin of many if not most of the current flashpoints on which international attention has been focused. Reports from Iraq about the intensifying Shia-Sunni conflict and stories of the gross atrocities said to have been perpetrated by the advancing ISIS have been brought back by Indian pilgrims returning from Karbala, Samarra and other holy places of Shia Islam. Some of these will undoubtedly have been embellished in the telling, but the net effect of any intervention will be to stoke the myriad internal stresses and strains already festering.

Legalising intelligence gathering

Published: July 8, 2014 

Rana Banerji

AP Language expertise, knowledge of strategic issues, cultural mores of countries, computer know-how and other technological skills may be needed to assess intelligence inputs. File Photo: AP

Intelligence reform cannot succeed unless it is dovetailed with police modernisation and both technological and human capabilities of State police personnel are upgraded

The appointment of a seasoned Intelligence professional as the National Security Advisor (NSA) perhaps augurs well for the neglected issue of Intelligence reform. This is the second time this has happened, though the first occurred more by accident and was not bereft of turf wars. This time, either by accident or design, the government may adopt a wiser approach, keeping options open to seek diplomatic advice from professional diplomats who have better geo-strategic vision and a world view, while focussing more urgently on priority areas of homeland security.

Enthusiasm for intelligence reforms in India has been sporadic. Some years back, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) commissioned a Task Force for the purpose, but after the report was written the then Director, though initially eager, sensed winds of disapproval and sat over it for well over a year before it was published, after a leadership change in IDSA. The late B. Raman, one of the doyens of external intelligence who had been privy to the report during drafting, was mildly supportive of its findings while commenting on the Naresh Chandra Committee on Defence and Security reforms’ access to it. He felt it remained peripheral at best.

The former Information Minister tabled a private member’s Bill on the subject in Parliament and acknowledged later that ‘there was traction’ in the Cabinet Secretariat on many recommendations of both these texts. However, it is not known to what extent this traction may have converted to deeds.

Reform priorities

Simply put, the agenda of intelligence reforms in India should have three or four main priorities. First, activities of all major intelligence agencies should be founded on a legal basis. There should be a law or separate laws to specify the existence, functions and jurisdiction of all such organisations. Though emerging initially from clandestine origins, this has been the pattern of evolution of all modern intelligence organisations functioning in democratic countries. The CIA in the U.S. was provided legal status by the National Security Act, 1947, the Russian FIS by the Law on Foreign Intelligence Organs, 1996, the MI-5 in U.K. by the Security Services Act, 1989 and the MI-6 by the Intelligence Services Act, 1994. In Harman &Hewitt vs U.K., the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 1992 that the ‘lack of a statutory basis could be fatal to claims’ of an intelligence agency to justify that its actions ‘were in accordance with the law.’ With the Right to Information Act having become a reality in India, though some aspects of intelligence activity and operations remain protected outside its ambit, unless we quickly provide legal status protection to our agencies we could be waiting for a Harman & Hewitt to happen here as well.

A GREEN OPPORTUNITY - Indian agriculture needs some radical policy reforms

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140708/jsp/opinion/story_18589095.jsp#.U7s46fmSzyQ 

Writing on the wall - Ashok V. Desai 

The Bharatiya Janata Party government has been friendly to private industry; the relationship has paid off, as shown by Gujarat’s growth rate and share of industry in GDP — close to a fifth by the last count. India is an underdeveloped country; it lags far behind the industrial world. And in the past two decades, it has lagged far behind China. This is depressing. I had hoped that the rise to prime ministership of Manmohan Singh, who came with a reputation as a liberal reformer, would reverse the trend. But it did not. He appointed incompetent ministers, and exercised little control over them. His years as prime minister were a wasted decade, in which the growth rate of the economy nearly halved. For this reason, I welcomed the change in government.

It, however, gives early reasons for doubt. Ram Vilas Paswan, minister of consumer affairs, food and distribution raised import duty on sugar from 15 to 40 per cent. The first question that should be asked is, who is he to raise import duty? Taxes are entirely in the domain of the finance minister; it is he who should raise or reduce them. Even coalition politics does not make it necessary for him to cede power, for his party has an absolute majority in Parliament. If Aya Ram Gaya Ram Vilas Paswan walks out of the government, it would make not the slightest difference. In fact, it is odd that this famously uninfluential old politician should have got a ministership; there must be some reasons that are not easily discernible.

Next, Jaitley should ask himself whether there is any reason for an import duty on sugar. It is a necessity, especially for sweet-toothed Gujaratis; he is wantonly taxing the common man. And the leading producers of sugar are Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, both ruled by parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party; there is no reason for Jaitley to help them. Narendra Modi would want to make India a strong industrial nation like Japan, which he admires. The way to do so is to abolish all import duties. No country can become an industrial leader by protecting its industry and making it less competitive internationally.

One of Jaitley’s biggest worries is inflation in consumer prices; and yet, he condoned it when Paswan pushed up sugar prices by taxing their imports. Either he is not thinking straight, or he is not in control. He should look back to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, under whose prime ministership the government brought down import duties to a negligible level. The BJP has been the liberal party in India. It was under the long decades of Congress rule that India saw the world’s highest import duties and lost the industrial race first to East Asian nations such as Taiwan and Thailand and then to China. Then, finally, it agreed in the Uruguay round to reduction of import duties when it was faced with the loss of the textile market to other developing nations. But it insisted on retaining import duties on agricultural goods. That was a stupid thing to do, for nothing could be more essential to the poor people than foodgrains; a country that cares for its poor should keep grain prices as low as possible. There will always be political parties that want to bribe the wheat farmers of Punjab and rice potentates of Andhra; but there are many more consumers of wheat and rice, even in villages, than farmers. Zero tariffs are good populism. India does not need foodgrain protection. Ten per cent broken parboiled Sarna rice is the cheapest in the world, and India is the price leader in long-grain rice. We could dominate the world market if only we let the prices be determined by the market; we could develop a huge market in the Middle East and Africa.

IN DEFENCE OF 100 PER CENT FDI

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/in-defence-of-100-per-cent-fdi.html

Tuesday, 08 July 2014 | Abhijit Iyer-Mitra |

Sixty years of socialism have not just ruined our country; they have destroyed our human capital. When seen from this angle, 100 per cent FDI is not an investment just in defence, but in our strong youth power that we have let down

For some reason or the other, the issue of 100 per cent foreign direct investment in defence keeps getting muddied by the day, with various industry bodies such as the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry apparently flip-flopping on an hourly basis.

To grasp this issue we need to understand three aspects of the defence trade — the nature of internal markets and export; the role of and impact on industry; and, possibly most important, the state of education in the country.

In terms of national security and indigenisation, this entire debate is moot, because no amount of FDI is going to fix the sorry state that 60-plus years of babudom have brought us. The reality today is our defence budget hovers around the $35 billion mark. Despite the brouhaha that is made about India being one of the biggest defence markets, let us put this figure in context.

The US, which has a $650 billion budget, exports less than three per cent of its value in defence products every year. The US does not depend on the lucrative export market to sustain its industry. Britain and France have a defence budget of around $60 billion each, around 1/10th of the US and exports account for between 15 and 20 per cent of the value added in defence products. Clearly exports are critical to them. Israel, which has a defence budget of around $15 billion to $20 billion, depends to the extent of about 45 per cent on exports to sustain the value added to its industry.

India has to hit the ground running with exports between 25 per cent and 40 per cent to make any indigenisation effort feasible. Anything else defies the laws of economics. Period. This is where 100 per cent FDI makes sense. It brings in foreign companies into a defence market that may be large, but is fundamentally unsustainable as a purely indigenous enterprise. Essentially this is a reality check on the flights of fancy we seem to have with regards to our so-called defence sector.

On the other hand, some of the harm to Indian industry can be quite real, but it can also be ameliorated. For example, despite the utter vicious and step-motherly way it has been treated (by the Government), Larsen and Toubro has sunk enormous amounts of its own money into developing cutting-edge technologies like air independent propulsion for conventional submarines. The entry of foreign AIP suppliers would obviously make L&T’s entire investment in this sphere unviable. On the other hand, it is important that we understand that no original equipment manufacturer actually makes the entire system on its own.

The fiercest of wars lies ahead

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140708/edit.htm#7

As Shia shrines are targeted and Tikrit is strangled, a demoralised army is hoping that the US will step in with drones. However, their use could bring devastating revenge attacks
Patrick Cockburn

THE meltdown of American and British policy in Iraq and Syria attracts surprisingly little criticism at home. Their aim for the past three years has been get rid of Bashar al-Assad as ruler of Syria and stabilise Iraq under the leadership of Nouri al-Maliki. The exact reverse has happened, with Mr Assad in power and likely to remain so, while Iraq is in turmoil with the government's authority extending only a few miles north and west of Baghdad.

Iraqis Shiite Muslims who have joined the Marsh Mujahideen Brigade (refering to the Marsh Arabs from this region) gather in the southern city of Basra on July 5, as they ready to move north to fight against Jihadist militants. AFP

By pretending that the Syrian opposition stood a chance of overthrowing Mr Assad after the middle of 2012, and insisting that his departure be the justification for peace talks, Washington, London and Paris have ensured that the Syrian civil war would go on. “I spent three years telling them again and again that the war in Syria would inevitably destabilise Iraq, but they paid no attention,” the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told me last week. I remember in the autumn of 2012, a senior British diplomat assuring me that talk of the Syrian war spreading was much exaggerated.

Now the bills are beginning to come in, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), declaring a caliphate in northern Iraq and Syria. He has effectively denied the legitimacy of Muslim rulers throughout the world. No wonder Saudi Arabia has moved troops to guard its 500-mile-long border with Iraq. There is a certain divine justice in this, since until six months ago the Saudis were speeding jihadists in the general direction of Syria and Iraq but is now dreading their return. The success of Isis depends on its ability to win spectacular victories against the odds and not on its primeval and brutal ideology. Victory in battle is what makes it attractive to young Sunni recruits and it can also afford to pay them. It cannot sit on its laurels for long but needs to secure the territories it has taken and make sure that its Sunni allies – tribal, Baathist, former members of Saddam's army – who joined it to fight against Mr Maliki will not find the new masters worse than the old and change sides. Isis has moved swiftly to prevent this by demanding that the allies swear allegiance to the caliphate and give up their weapons. But beyond that Isis must show that success at Mosul was not a flash in the pan. As Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi put it last week: "There is no deed better than jihad, so to arms, to arms, soldiers of the Islamic state, fight, fight.” The Baghdad government is hopeful that the White House will ultimately use drones against Isis convoys even if it will not allow air strikes by fixed wing aircraft called in by American forward air controllers on the ground. Drones are particularly appealing to politicians because they appear to maximise damage to the enemy without American loss of life which might anger voters back home. It is true that roving Isis columns of trucks packed with fighters and heavy machine guns have proved effective so far. One Iraqi official compared them to “Arab raiders of old who would strike at caravans and then quickly withdraw”. But the core Isis military leadership is experienced Iraqi military professionals who will make sure their men don't make easy targets. Even so, any American military action, however, limited will buoy up the faltering morale of the Iraqi army.