Kabul - the new Kashmir

Across Afghanistan, hundreds of Indian workers and engineers are repairing disintegrated roads and constructing highways. India is building the country's new parliament building. It is running medical missions and training Afghan police officers, diplomats and civil servants, part of a hearts-and-minds offensive to strengthen old ties in a rough neighborhood.

Like archrival Pakistan, India sees Afghanistan as a strategic prize, but its efforts to establish a big footprint there have been set back twice in 15 months by suicide bombings aimed at its widening presence.

In some ways, India and Pakistan have been waging a quiet battle inside Afghanistan, and experts say the latest attack, on Thursday outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, is bound to intensify that rivalry.

Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has long had deep ties with elements inside Afghanistan, but large numbers of Indian intelligence operatives are also in Afghanistan to counter Pakistan's influence and to act as a check on Taliban militants.



Intelligence agencies blame the Inter-Services Intelligence, better known as the ISI, for a 2008 blast at the Indian Embassy that killed 58 people, including the defense attache. Pakistan denied the assertions.

India's active opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan dates to the 1990s, when the New Delhi government joined Iran and Russia in supporting the Northern Alliance against the Islamist movement. Now, India is spending $1.2 billion in health-care, food and infrastructure aid to Afghanistan, its largest foreign assistance program.

The bombing comes as hostilities between India and Pakistan have intensified after a November terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people and brought India's financial capital to a three-day standstill. Indian authorities said all 10 attackers were from Pakistan. The Mumbai siege rolled back at least five years of diplomatic progress between the two countries.

The Kabul embassy blast, which left 17 dead, came a day after Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that relations between India and Pakistan were thawing and that they could be getting ready to resume peace talks. A Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility for the attack, saying the embassy was the intended target. India has not yet assigned blame.

Experts say there is a growing rift between Pakistan's civilian government and its military, and between the military and the ISI. Those apparent rifts are not lost on Indian diplomats, who realize the limits of Pakistan's government to see through diplomatic promises.

Many in India note that Pakistan's government has been seeking some cooperation with New Delhi, leaving Pakistan's military services and the ISI outside of that diplomacy.

India and Afghanistan appear to be deepening their ties. More than 4,000 Indians work in Afghanistan. There are six Indian consulates there. The main immigration office in New Delhi has a special section for Afghans seeking residency or asylum in India. By helping rebuild Afghanistan, India sees itself as promoting regional stability as well as balancing Pakistan's influence in Kabul.

In recent years, Pakistan's government has been increasingly wary of India's influence in Afghanistan, including New Delhi's close ties to the government of President Hamid Karzai, who studied in India, as did most of Afghanistan's leadership.

An Indian air base in Tajikistan, the first one outside the country, also has increased Pakistan's worries about India's growing strategic reach in the region. The air base is a transit point for security forces and material to Afghanistan.

In the past few years, India has sent mountain-trained paramilitary forces to protect its workers in Afghanistan from kidnappings and attacks. About 500 Indian police officers are deployed there.

India has opened consulates in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif; it also reopened two in Jalalabad and Kandahar that had been shut since 1979. In January, India completed the Zaranj-Delaram highway near the Iranian border. In May, an Indian-made power transmission line brought 24-hour electricity to Kabul, the capital.

The bombings against the Indian Embassy in Kabul will be logged in the Indian mind beside the Mumbai attacks. All this is accumulating in the Indian mind and could lead to some kind of eventual retaliation.
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Way out from Af-Pak Strategy

THE KEY to getting out of Afghanistan without turning Kabul over to the Taliban lies in replacing the failed US “Af-Pak’’ strategy with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China - all opposed to a Taliban takeover - join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.

The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.

Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.



Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.

Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.

“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’

To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:

First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.

Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.

Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.

A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.

If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.

Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy

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The Baltic Blues

The patient emerges from intensive care, hurls the medicine at the doctors and bites his blood donor. That may be an unfair characterisation of the recent news from crisis-stricken Latvia, but it is pretty much how outsiders see it. The prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, is refusing to make the spending cuts mandated by international lenders and has floated a new law that would partially expropriate foreign banks’ loan books.

It would be worrying enough if the European Union’s weakest economy defaults, devalues or implodes. But what scares outsiders more is the effect of Latvia’s latest wobble on other ex-communist economies, which until this week seemed to be surviving the financial crisis with less trouble than some had feared.


In recent weeks, the news from Latvia had seemed mildly encouraging, after a year during which the country has been kept afloat thanks to an $11.1 billion international bail-out. The breakneck decline has slowed: the economy is expected to contract by 17.5% this year, but by only 3% in 2010 and to return to growth in 2011, according to a forecast by SEB, a Swedish bank (and big lender to Latvia). The current account, which showed a yawning deficit of 1.42 billion lats ($3 billion) in the first seven months of last year has been transformed to show a 581m lats surplus in the same period of 2009.

The main outstanding issue is next year’s budget deficit. International lenders had softened the target to a mere 8.5% of GDP; the government still had to push through spending cuts of 500m lats to meet this.

But this week Mr Dombrovskis startled outsiders by saying that cuts of only 225m lats would be necessary. He has pencilled in a further 100m lats in better tax revenues—counting, apparently, on a faster economic recovery than anyone expects. The hesitation has brought stern warnings. Sweden’s finance minister, Anders Borg, said outsiders’ patience was “limited”—his country is due to provide SKr10 billion ($1.45 billion) in a loan tranche in early 2010. The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, has publicly rebuked the government too. Mr Dombrovskis has now backtracked, saying that if the cuts are necessary, they will be made.

But doubts remain. Mr Dombrovskis lacks the authority to push tough measures through parliament and his public wobble could be seen as an attempt to summon up another burst of international pressure on the government to do the right thing. If so, it is risky.

The same could be said about another of Mr Dombrovskis’s moves—calling for a draft law that would restructure domestic liabilities of foreign banks. Lenders would be liable only for the collateral value of their loan (eg, a house bought with a mortgage) rather than the whole amount. Banks would also be unable to evict defaulters from their homes without rehousing them. A fall in property prices of over 50% has sent Latvia’s private-sector debts to foreigners ballooning. They will need restructuring eventually. But this proposal looks unworkable, clumsy and damaging. Shares in Nordic banks, which have been the biggest private-sector lenders to Latvia, dipped on the news.

If Latvia fails, with a strike by international lenders prompting a debt crisis or a bank run, the spotlight then turns to the neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania. They are not in the same political mess, but both have also pegged their currencies to the euro and are facing huge and painful adjustments. Some wonder if the EU might accelerate its recognition of Estonia’s impressive progress in sorting out public finances by giving it early approval of its plans to join the euro in 2011. But where would that leave Lithuania, which is nowhere near balancing its books and borrowing expensively from private lenders instead of turning to the IMF?

An even bigger question involves the future co-operation between the IMF and EU. They worked together closely during the emergency rescue of Latvia in December. Now ties are strained: the IMF thinks Latvia should devalue its currency. EU officials are determined that it should not, for fear of the wider effect on ex-communist countries that are trying to join the euro zone. That has led the EU to squeeze the IMF into accepting softer conditions on Latvia than it would have wished for. For all those involved, in Brussels, Washington, DC, and Riga, patience is running out.
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Obama's policy - Af-Iran, not Af-Pak

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, now-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that like all U.S. presidents, Barack Obama would face a foreign policy test early in his presidency if elected. That test is now here.

His test comprises two apparently distinct challenges, one in Afghanistan and one in Iran. While different problems, they have three elements in common. First, they involve the question of his administration’s overarching strategy in the Islamic world. Second, the problems are approaching decision points (and making no decision represents a decision here). And third, they are playing out very differently than Obama expected during the 2008 campaign.



During the campaign, Obama portrayed the Iraq war as a massive mistake diverting the United States from Afghanistan, the true center of the “war on terror.” He accordingly promised to shift the focus away from Iraq and back to Afghanistan. Obama’s views on Iran were more amorphous. He supported the doctrine that Iran should not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, while at the same time asserted that engaging Iran was both possible and desirable. Embedded in the famous argument over whether offering talks without preconditions was appropriate (something now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked him for during the Democratic primary) was the idea that the problem with Iran stemmed from Washington’s refusal to engage in talks with Tehran.

Iran

Back in April, in the midst of the financial crisis, Obama reached an agreement at the G-8 meeting that the Iranians would have until Sept. 24 and the G-20 meeting to engage in meaningful talks with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P-5+1) or face intensely increased sanctions. His administration was quite new at the time, so the amount of thought behind this remains unclear. On one level, the financial crisis was so intense and September so far away that Obama and his team probably saw this as a means to delay a secondary matter while more important fires were flaring up.

But there was more operating than that. Obama intended to try to bridge the gap between the Islamic world and the United States between April and September. In his speech to the Islamic world from Cairo, he planned to show a desire not only to find common ground, but also to acknowledge shortcomings in U.S. policy in the region. With the appointment of special envoys George Mitchell (for Israel and the Palestinian territories) and Richard Holbrooke (for Pakistan and Afghanistan), Obama sought to build on his opening to the Islamic world with intense diplomatic activity designed to reshape regional relationships.

It can be argued that the Islamic masses responded positively to Obama’s opening — it has been asserted to be so and we will accept this — but the diplomatic mission did not solve the core problem. Mitchell could not get the Israelis to move on the settlement issue, and while Holbrooke appears to have made some headway on increasing Pakistan’s aggressiveness toward the Taliban, no fundamental shift has occurred in the Afghan war.

Most important, no major shift has occurred in Iran’s attitude toward the United States and the P-5+1 negotiating group. In spite of Obama’s Persian New Year address to Iran, the Iranians did not change their attitude toward the United States. The unrest following Iran’s contested June presidential election actually hardened the Iranian position. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained president with the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the so-called moderates seemed powerless to influence their position. Perceptions that the West supported the demonstrations have strengthened Ahmadinejad’s hand further, allowing him to paint his critics as pro-Western and himself as an Iranian nationalist.

But with September drawing to a close, talks have still not begun. Instead, they will begin Oct. 1. And last week, the Iranians chose to announce that not only will they continue work on their nuclear program (which they claim is not for military purposes), they have a second, hardened uranium enrichment facility near Qom. After that announcement, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy held a press conference saying they have known about the tunnel for several months, and warned of stern consequences.

This, of course, raises the question of what consequences. Obama has three choices in this regard.

First, he can impose crippling sanctions against Iran. But that is possible only if the Russians cooperate. Moscow has the rolling stock and reserves to supply all of Iran’s fuel needs if it so chooses, and Beijing can also remedy any Iranian fuel shortages. Both Russia and China have said they don’t want sanctions; without them on board, sanctions are meaningless.

Second, Obama can take military action against Iran, something easier politically and diplomatically for the United States to do itself rather than rely on Israel. By itself, Israel cannot achieve air superiority, suppress air defenses, attack the necessary number of sites and attempt to neutralize Iranian mine-laying and anti-ship capability all along the Persian Gulf. Moreover, if Israel struck on its own and Iran responded by mining the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would be drawn into at least a naval war with Iran — and probably would have to complete the Israeli airstrikes, too.

And third, Obama could choose to do nothing (or engage in sanctions that would be the equivalent of doing nothing). Washington could see future Iranian nuclear weapons as an acceptable risk. But the Israelis don’t, meaning they would likely trigger the second scenario. It is possible that the United States could try to compel Israel not to strike — though it’s not clear whether Israel would comply — something that would leave Obama publicly accepting Iran’s nuclear program.

And this, of course, would jeopardize Obama’s credibility. It is possible for the French or Germans to waffle on this issue; no one is looking to them for leadership. But for Obama simply to acquiesce to Iranian nuclear weapons, especially at this point, would have significant diplomatic and domestic political ramifications. Simply put, Obama would look weak — and that, of course, is why the Iranians announced the second nuclear site. They read Obama as weak, and they want to demonstrate their own resolve. That way, if the Russians were thinking of cooperating with the United States on sanctions, Moscow would be seen as backing the weak player against the strong one. The third option, doing nothing, therefore actually represents a significant action.

Afghanistan

In a way, the same issue is at stake in Afghanistan. Having labeled Afghanistan as critical — indeed, having campaigned on the platform that the Bush administration was fighting the wrong war — it would be difficult for Obama to back down in Afghanistan. At the same time, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has reported that without a new strategy and a substantial increase in troop numbers, failure in Afghanistan is likely.

The number of troops being discussed, 30,000-40,000, would bring total U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to just above the number of troops the Soviet Union deployed there in its war (just under 120,000) — a war that ended in failure. The new strategy being advocated would be one in which the focus would not be on the defeat of the Taliban by force of arms, but the creation of havens for the Afghan people and protecting those havens from the Taliban.

A move to the defensive when time is on your side is not an unreasonable strategy. But it is not clear that time is on Western forces’ side. Increased offensives are not weakening the Taliban. But halting attacks and assuming that the Taliban will oblige the West by moving to the offensive, thereby opening itself to air and artillery strikes, probably is not going to happen. And while assuming that the country will effectively rise against the Taliban out of the protected zones the United States has created is interesting, it does not strike us as likely. The Taliban is fighting the long war because it has nowhere else to go. Its ability to maintain military and political cohesion following the 2001 invasion has been remarkable. And betting that the Pakistanis will be effective enough to break the Taliban’s supply lines is hardly the most prudent bet.

In short, Obama’s commander on the ground has told him the current Afghan strategy is failing. He has said that unless that strategy changes, more troops won’t help, and that a change of strategy will require substantially more troops. But when we look at the proposed strategy and the force levels, it is far from obvious that even that level of commitment will stand a chance of achieving meaningful results quickly enough before the forces of Washington’s NATO allies begin to withdraw and U.S. domestic resolve erodes further.

Obama has three choices in Afghanistan. He can continue to current strategy and force level, hoping to prolong failure long enough for some undefined force to intervene. He can follow McChrystal’s advice and bet on the new strategy. Or he can withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Once again, doing nothing — the first option — is doing something quite significant.

The Two Challenges Come Together

The two crises intermingle in this way: Every president is tested in foreign policy, sometimes by design and sometimes by circumstance. Frequently, this happens at the beginning of his term as a result of some problem left by his predecessor, a strategy adopted in the campaign or a deliberate action by an antagonist. How this happens isn’t important. What is important is that Obama’s test is here. Obama at least publicly approached the presidency as if many of the problems the United States faced were due to misunderstandings about or the thoughtlessness of the United States. Whether this was correct is less important than that it left Obama appearing eager to accommodate his adversaries rather than confront them.

No one has a clear idea of Obama’s threshold for action.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban takes the view that the British and Russians left, and that the Americans will leave, too. We strongly doubt that the force level proposed by McChrystal will be enough to change their minds. Moreover, U.S. forces are limited, with many still engaged in Iraq. In any case, it isn’t clear what force level would suffice to force the Taliban to negotiate or capitulate — and we strongly doubt that there is a level practical to contemplate.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad clearly perceives that challenging Obama is low-risk and high reward. If he can finally demonstrate that the United States is unwilling to take military action regardless of provocations, his own domestic situation improves dramatically, his relationship with the Russians deepens, and most important, his regional influence — and menace — surges. If Obama accepts Iranian nukes without serious sanctions or military actions, the American position in the Islamic world will decline dramatically. The Arab states in the region rely on the United States to protect them from Iran, so U.S. acquiescence in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons would reshape U.S. relations in the region far more than a hundred Cairo speeches.

There are four permutations Obama might choose in response to the dual crisis. He could attack Iran and increase forces in Afghanistan, but he might well wind up stuck in a long-term war in Afghanistan. He could avoid that long-term war by withdrawing from Afghanistan and also ignore Iran’s program, but that would leave many regimes reliant on the United States for defense against Iran in the lurch. He could increase forces in Afghanistan and ignore Iran — probably yielding the worst of all possible outcomes, namely, a long-term Afghan war and an Iran with a nuclear program if not nuclear weapons.

On pure logic, history or politics aside, the best course is to strike Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan. That would demonstrate will in the face of a significant challenge while perhaps reshaping Iran and certainly avoiding a drawn-out war in Afghanistan. Of course, it is easy for those who lack power and responsibility — and the need to govern — to provide logical choices. But the forces closing in on Obama are substantial, and there are many competing considerations in play.

Presidents eventually arrive at the point where something must be done, and where doing nothing is very much doing something. At this point, decisions can no longer be postponed, and each choice involves significant risk. Obama has reached that point, and significantly, in his case, he faces a double choice. And any decision he makes will reverberate.

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Does China want Asia as it's Backyard?

There are definite signals coming out of China that the period of late leader Deng Xiaoping’s direction “hide your strength, bide your time” is over, and the country’s economy, military and diplomacy is strong enough to show case its power projection capability. In early May, the Chinese Ambassador to the UK remarked to a group of university students that the international community recognized China was emerging as a world power, adding that people inside China, however, still recognize there were some weaknesses. What Ambassador Fu Ying conveyed was China will not stop here but pursue its power agenda till it becomes a super power like the USA, China has fixed US global power as its target, and is working towards it steadily.

In mid-April, the authentic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled newspaper, the Global Times, commented that Asia was China’s “great backyard”. The commentary argued China must first dominate Asia and resolve major issues which could turn into “crises” and prevent them from reaching a point of explosion. Ignoring the Asian challenge could lead to its dislocation from the world order.


From 2004, when President and Party General Secretary Hu Jintao took over full powers, becoming the Chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), there have been several characteristic shifts in China’s domestic and foreign policies. That, however, does not mean that he wields supreme power. Far from it. He failed to place his nominee, Li Keqiang as the fifth generation Party General Secretary. As things stand today, Li would have been satisfied as the Premier of the People’s Republic of China. Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin and his Shanghai group managed to place Xi Jiping, a revolutionary’s son, representing the more liberal group as the next Secretary General in 2013.

But Hu Jintao succeeded in using ultra-nationalism as an important tool in shaping an apparently new strategic policy. Starting from a somewhat weak controlling position of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), he compromised with the PLA’s top hardliners to win them over. His initial projected theory of 2004 “Rise of China” drafted by his strategic advisor, gave the first insight into Hu’s strategic thinking.

The year 2004 may be a watershed year in China’s aggressive strategic vision in Asia. This vision envisaged a western line at the extremities of Asia in the west, to extreme geographic line of Asia Pacific region in the east, as China’s region of domination. The strategic debate argued that Deng Xiaoping’s strategic decision of 1991 had served its purpose, and China had achieved total power to establish its sphere of influence. That debate appears to have been co-opted in the country’s foreign policy, and is beginning to be shown to the world, particularly Asia, now.

China is no longer shy to show a glimpse of its military power and capability and project it if need be, in the Asian theatre. There are two demonstrated examples of its capability. One is its determination not to allow even US naval ships to poach in the vicinity of its territorial waters. An US naval survey ship was sharked by Chinese vessels, eliciting a response from the US navy to send warships in the area. The other is to emphatically consolidate claims on sea area.

Following the Philippines and Malaysian actions to affirm their claims on small parts of the Spratly group of islands in the South China sea, the PLA navy has dispatched two ships to patrol the area. They have also contested Malaysian and Philippino claims at the UN on these parts of the Spratly group, and reiterated their sovereignty on the entire group of islands and their adjoining areas. The Chinese claims are based on highly questionable historical incidents which negate claims of other parties like Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Brunei, that are based on geographical realities recognized by the UN Laws of the Seas Convention.

China also claims sovereignty over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands in the East China Sea currently occupied by Japan. Tension has flared up between the two countries several times over the past years. Recently, advanced Chinese monitoring capabilities apparently helped Chinese naval vessels to enter the Senkaku waters when they noticed the absence of Japanese patrols.

The South China Sea is reported to be rich in oil and gas resources. Equally important, it is the shortest route between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, also reported to be rich in gas resources, would extend China’s waters closer to Japan, and into the Pacific. These are potential crisis points the Global Times commentary referred to. China has made these claims non-negotiable, and its earlier position of joint development in both areas with other claimants, but under the condition of recognizing Chinese sovereignty, was not really meant for implementation. This was a ploy to buy time, and project a benign and friendly face of China. Beijing is apparently showing its real face under the mask.

The next question raised by the Global Times commentary is managing relations with the smaller countries of Asia. Mismanagement with these relationships have the potential to disturb China’s relations with the United States and Europe. The Asia Pacific region is the cynosure of global focus of the 21st century, and the western nations and Japan. They are not going to sit by and watch an arrogant China riding rough shod over the South and East Asian arc. USA’s relations with Vietnam and the Philippines are witnessing a new development, and Malaysia sans Mahathir and the newly restructuring Indonesia may not be amenable to Beijing’s dictates if they have reliable support. The word “reliable” is the crux for South East Asian stability.

China’s show of military power began this year with the 2009 White Paper on Defence published on January 20, coinciding with US President Barak Obama’s inauguration. The time was not coincidental. Revealing very little but giving enough for experts to draw their conclusions, the White Paper made it clear that China’s military surge was now unstoppable. It also made it clear that informization of its armed forces and cyber warfare technology were battle ready.

Although the White Paper did not mention building aircraft carriers, soon signals came from Chinese military officials that a final decision to build carriers had been taken. According to available reports three aircraft carriers of 60 thousand dwt are on the anvil along with support ships. The first carrier group is expected to be afloat by 2015 if not earlier. They are expected to carry Russian Sukhois, probably Su-35.

The Chinese naval exposition of April 23-25, to which India, Pakistan, the US and Russia among others were invited made an impressive display. Two indigenously built nuclear submarines were on public show for the first time. But they did not show their best – Type 093 and Type 094 nuclear capable submarines.

An important omission from the invitees list to the naval expositions was Japan. This may have some historical hangover. In a naval battle in 1894 the Chinese navy was totally routed by the Japanese navy. But it has current connotations, too. Despite the huge trade between the two countries, political relations have gone cold under Taro Aso’s Prime Ministership of Japan.

China has officially announced an air force exposition around November 11, this year in which new aircraft, missile, radars and other indigenously built military arms and equipment will be displayed to selected invitees. This is expected to showcase the PLA Air Force’s (PLAAF) reach beyond the immediate coast, and will also leave observers to calculate how the air force can work in co-ordination with the navy in coastal defence and informationized short duration strikes in crisis points or “hot spots” in its neighbourhood.

In the second half of this year, China will hold a massive two-month long PLA exercise that will involve 50,000 troops from four Military Regions (MRs). The largest ever military exercise by China, the exercise will mobilize more than 60,000 vehicles and large weapons and equipments over a terrain that will cover 50 thousand kilometers, and one-way travel for some units will be more than 2,400 kilometers. The Lanzou MR from western China’s Xinjiang will meet up with Shenyang, Jinan and Guangzhou MRs on the seaboard. The exercise is likely to include the Air Force and Army Aviation units. It is notable that the Chengdu MR which is responsible for the Eastern Sector of the Sino-Indian border, and the Nanjing MR which covers Taiwan, have been excluded from Kuayue-2009 (Stride 2009) exercise. But we will have to watch the directions as the drill, which is to be conducted under real battle conditions with live ammunitions, fixes target. The parameter leaves no doubt that the initial targets are East China sea and the South China sea.

Apparently with fast improvement of basic relations with Taiwan under the KMT government led by Ma Ying-Jeo, China has redirected forces on the South China sea territories to exercise sovereignty over this vital sea route. This would have significant implication for global shipping, both commercial and naval.

But China’s muscle flexing has not gone unnoticed. Vietnam has reached an agreement in principle to acquire six Russian kilo-class submarines from Russia for $1.8 billion. Hanoi has also spent $3.8 billion for the procurement of 17 SU-27 and four SU-30 multi role aircraft. With Russian collaboration Vietnam is building 10 Russian type Molnia class missile boats, and Moscow will also supply two Gepard 3.9 class frigates to Vietnam. Vietnamese navy officers have for the first time visited a US aircraft carrier.

Australia’s Defence White Paper 2009, focused on the rise of Chinese military power and approved a special military budget of more than $ 70 billion in the next 20 years to augment its air and naval capability with state of the art arms and equipment. Australia, while underscoring its interest in the region including around Indonesia, also sees a potential face off between China and growing India.

Japan’s navy and air force are no light weights either. The Chinese navy is the largest in Asia in terms of tonnage, but in terms of quality Japan may be having an edge over them. Tokyo is also quietly raising its military might, expanding the area of its operation, and its enhanced military treaty with the USA at the beginning of this decade is no less a formidable defence arrangement for China to deal with.

China has instigated a major arms race in Asia and the Asia Pacific region. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently declared in a pointed but unnamed message to China that the USA was both a trans Pacific and trans-Indian Ocean power and is not going to move out. China would also understand that Russia is an interested party in the region and has its own plans and strategies independent of China-US confrontation. Vietnam and the rest of old Indo-China have not been forgotten in the corridors of Moscow.

South Asia and India cannot remain unconcerned with these developments. Leaving aside Pakistan, China’s permanent and closest ally, the other countries in the region have been periodically trying to use China to counter India, without realizing the ultimate cost to themselves. The Maoists in Nepal have openly invited in Beijing to counter India, and statements from visiting Chinese leaders from Nepal’s soil have had a definite anti-India edge. The new government in Bangladesh under the Awami League has moved to a position of neutrality. In Sri Lanka, the Chinese have made large strides over the last few years, especially with the Mahinda Rajapaksa government.

In the sea-bordering countries of South Asia, China has been seeking strategic port facilities. It has built the Gwadar Deep Sea port in Pakistan at a cost of $2.2 billion. The Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka on the Indian Ocean Sea route is being built by China. President Rajapaksa comes from Hambantota. In Myanmar, the Chinese have Sittwe to Kunming and are building an oil and gas pipeline from South East China. A similar pipe line is to be built from Gwadar Port to Xinjiang. China has also been looking for a sea port facility in Bangladesh’s Chittagong area, to be connected with a link road through Myanmar to Kunming.

It is a fact that China is looking for security for its energy imports. Nobody can deny China having aircraft carriers for defence. But the strategic philosophy behind China’s military modernization has raised serious concerns all around. Beijing wants to establish its ownership in the near abroad, and overlordship over the Indian Ocean and Asia. It wants Asia as its backyard. This contains deadly ingredients for instability.

In this context, it would be pertinent what the Chief of US Pacific Command (PACOM) Admiral Timothy J. Keating told his Indian counterpart during a recent visit. Admiral Keating said a senior Chinese Admiral had informally suggested to him that the US allow the Chinese to keep the Indian Ocean, and the US keep the Pacific Ocean. Such off the record talks or problems by senior Chinese military officers are not idle talks. Such probes have generally proved to be correct in the past. Where does India stand?

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Will Pakistan be able to save itself from itself ?

It was in November 1994 that the first group of Taliban emerged in Kandahar to take control of the city. By the end of the month this mysterious group had taken control of Lashkargah and Helmand provinces as well.

Less than two years later, aided by an eager Pakistani establishment and various other Pashtun groups it supported, the Taliban captured Kabul on September 26, 1996, and in another show of brutality hanged President Najibullah. Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Masood retreated and the Pakistanis presumed they had attained strategic depth.

Fifteen years later, the Taliban, be they Afghans sitting in Quetta or the Pakistani Taliban with total control in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and partial control in many parts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), only confirms that the Pakistani state has retreated from parts of its own territory.

Terrorist attacks attributed to the Taliban have been common even in Punjab province. If the latest reports are to be believed, the Taliban have entered southern and western Punjab with assistance from groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), who have been the Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) favourites.

Pakistan’s best known sociologist and political thinker, Dr Eqbal Ahmad, had anticipated this in his essay, What After Strategic Depth (Dawn, August 23, 1998). In a very perceptive analysis, he had said: "The costs of Islamabad’s Afghan policy have been augmenting since 1980 when Muhammad Zia-ul Haq proudly declared Pakistan a ‘frontline state’ in the Cold War. Those costs — already unbearable in proliferation of guns, heroin and armed fanatics — are likely now to multiply in myriad ways".

He had added: "The domestic costs of Pakistan’s friendly proximity to the Taliban are incalculable and potentially catastrophic... More importantly, the Taliban is the most retrograde political movement in the history of Islam". Today, that elusive strategic depth seems to have become Pakistan’s obscurantist black hole.

Others had given similar warnings. Jessica Stern ended her essay, Pakistan’s Jihad Culture (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2000), with this caution: "...Pakistan must recognise the militant groups for what they are ...dangerous gangs whose resources and reach continue to grow, threatening to destabilise the entire region. Pakistan’s continued support of religious-militant groups suggests that it does not recognise its own susceptibility to the culture of violence it has helped create. It should think again". Pakistan did get that chance after September 11, 2001; but its khaki grandees assumed that duplicity would help them win in the end.
Dr Hassan-Askari Rizvi, another one of Pakistan’s well-known defence and political analysts, had a few questions in an article, Military and Islamic Militancy (Daily Times, May 31, 2004). He asked: "How far has Islamic militancy penetrated the Army? Do some senior officers share the Taliban-type Islamic worldview and support Islamic militancy? Is there any threat of a coup led by an Islamist general? Another set of concerns pertain to the safety and security of nuclear weapons and fissile and radioactive material, against the backdrop of the recent disclosure about nuclear leakages from Khan Research Laboratory. Previously, most analysts dismissed these concerns on the assumption that Islamic extremists have not been able to penetrate the military".

Dr Rizvi made another very ominous but after ignored observation he wrote: "The long years of ISI-directed Islamic militancy were bound to have implications for Pakistani society and the military. In the case of the Army, its personnel were directly exposed to Islamic militancy and propaganda by Islamic groups in support of militancy, and a genuinely Islamic order for Pakistan. The Pakistani state openly identified with Islamic orthodoxy and militancy and it became fashionable to publicly support the militant groups engaged in insurgency in Kashmir".
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (The Saudi-isation of Pakistan) and Rubina Saigol (Myths versus Facts about Fundamentalism) are two other Pakistanis who, in recent weeks, have been brave and forthright enough to express their concern about Pakistan’s future in their aforementioned articles.

Dr Hoodbhoy’s worry is that "in the long term we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic".

Ms Saigol pointed out what we in India have been saying for some time: "The reign of terror had Pakistan’s official support, while the rest of the world remained incredulous. The policy of ‘bleeding India with a thousand cuts’... had state sponsorship. Going into Afghanistan in return for dollars was also a state decision".

Pakistan is still playing the same game, only for more dollars. It continues to raise different bogies in order to win American sympathy. But judging from some recent remarks from Washington, Pakistan’s Indian bogey does not seem to be selling well any longer.
Now that Nizam-e-Adl has officially been promulgated in Swat for implementation of Taliban-style Sharia, it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the state to prevent similar demands from other parts or to describe the Taliban as "anti-state". They have been legitimised. The NWFP governor had claimed that the state had responded to the aspirations of the people.
Responding to the people’s aspirations is laudable, but in this case the government of Pakistan signed a deal with an insurgent force it had not defeated or even overpowered. It was pure appeasement.

Pakistan’s so-called civil society, which had campaigned for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry (who had been deposed by Pervez Musharraf) has all but disappeared, and many of its members are quietly looking for safe havens abroad.
The mainstream political parties, except for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), have acquiesced in the Nizam-e-Adl.

The Pakistan Army, the strongest force in Pakistan today, did not intervene to prevent what could be a cascading effect.

The point, therefore, is whether what happened in Fata NWFP and in Malakand, is an unimpeded march of the Taliban, just a march of folly by the state or an elaborate policy of cultivating hatred that has become a scourge visiting its creators.

Questions will always be raised whether the Pakistan Army was unable, unwilling or complicit in all this. If the Pakistan Army does not reassert itself soon enough, the Taliban, along with elements of the Punjabi LeT and JeM jihadis in their ranks, will become unstoppable. The Taliban’s vacation of Buner was almost as smooth as the takeover; they remain active in the hills of northern Pakistan. They could move into Gilgit and Baltistan.

One should be prepared for renewed efforts to infiltrate terrorists into India as the Pakistani establishment scurries to try and remain relevant in Kashmir.

The Pakistan Army’s future course of action will thus depend on whether or not it is convinced that it must take action against its surrogates, both among the Pashtuns and Punjabis; and if this action will cause multiple ruptures within the Army. The third factor, of course, is the amount of pressure the United States is able to sustain on the Pakistan Army.

Can Pakistan manage to save itself from itself?

Source : Asian Age 29th April 2009

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North Korea - the world's last gulag reaching Persian Gulf

This week International condemnation of North Korea's underground nuclear test resonated the world over - just in time for Pyongyang to defiantly test two short-range missiles. After the U.N. Security Council condemned Pyongyang's long-range rocket launch in April, the country walked away from all previous nuclear agreements and threatened to restore normal operation of the Yongbyon nuclear plant, reprocess spent fuel rods to extract plutonium bomb fuel, pursue a light-water reactor, conduct nuclear tests, and launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. Kim Jong II and company seem intent on pushing the limits of international patience, and raising the stakes with each provocation. But how worried should the world be? That is, what is North Korea actually capable of doing?

Concern over North Korea's tests is warranted. Pyongyang is on a well-planned trajectory to enhance its nuclear and missile capabilities. North Korea had slowed down the disablement of its nuclear facility, Yongbyon. It then launched a multistage rocket and walked away from the nuclear talks. Pyongyang is strengthening its "deterrent" threat by building more bombs, and possibly more-sophisticated ones at that.

How big is the problem?

The history of proliferation shows that few countries actually ever decide to pursue nuclear weapons. Obtaining them requires immense investment, and the ability to focus and coordinate a major national undertaking over time. It is not something a leader like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez could decide to pursue on a whim. A national government must have cohesion over the long span of time necessary to go from the foundations of a weapons program to a meaningful deterrent capability.

In addition to this sustained commitment there must be the willingness to be suspected by the international community and endure isolation which themselves are significant risks for even moderately integrated economies. One must also have reasonable means of deterring a pre-emptive strike by a competing power. A Venezuelan weapons program is therefore unlikely because the United States would act decisively the moment one was discovered, and there is little Venezuela could do to deter such action.

North Korea, on the other hand, has held downtown Seoul (right across the demilitarized zone) at risk for generations with one of the highest concentrations of deployed artillery, artillery rockets and short-range ballistic missiles on the planet. From the outside, Pyongyang is perceived as unpredictable enough that any potential pre-emptive strike on its nuclear facilities is too risky not because of some newfound nuclear capability, but because of Pyongyang’s capability to turn the South Korean capital city into a “sea of fire” via conventional war. A nuclear North Korea, the world has now seen, is not sufficient alone to risk renewed war on the Korean Peninsula.

In other words, some other deterrent (be it conventional or unconventional) against attack is a prerequisite for a nuclear program, since powerful potential adversaries can otherwise move to halt such efforts. North Korea has such deterrent. Most other countries widely considered major proliferation dangers, for example, Iraq before 2003, Syria or Venezuela - do not. And that fundamental deterrent remains in place after the country acquires nuclear weapons.

North Korea shut down Yongbyon in July 2007, but began to restart the facility last month. The country has now restored the reprocessing facility and has begun extracting roughly plutonium from spent fuel. Although Yongbyon will not be able to complete reprocessing for four to six months, the anticipated increase in plutonium is what has allowed it to conduct this week's nuclear test. Without the additional plutonium, Pyongyang was limited roughly four to eight bombs worth. Its small nuclear arsenal was likely also primitive; its first nuclear test in 2006 was only partially successful. Hours before the test, Pyongyang informed China that it would conduct a test at 4 kilotons, but it achieved less than 1 (by comparison, the bomb at Nagasaki yielded an explosion of 21 kilotons). It appears the North Koreans scaled back their original design to 4 kilotons to avoid a massive breach of the test tunnel.

The test this time was more successful, producing a yield that is estimated at 2 to 4 kilotons. This test will enhance Pyongyang's confidence in its arsenal and may be an important step toward miniaturizing warheads to fit on its missiles. Still, the size of North Korea's nuclear arsenal will remain restricted by its limited plutonium inventory. Fully capable nuclear-tipped missiles will require further tests, so the sequence of these provocative steps foreshadows more of the same.

For now, North Korea will remain somewhat trapped by its minimal plutonium supply. To make more, Pyongyang would have to restart its Yongbyon reactor. It will take approximately six months to prepare fuel for the reactor and to rebuild the cooling tower that the country destroyed last June as a symbolic gesture. Once fueled, the reactor will produce 6 kilograms of plutonium, roughly one bomb's worth, per year for the next decade or so. Pyongyang is not currently capable of ramping up plutonium production from there. The threat to develop its own light-water reactor is not a great concern for plutonium production, but it does likely signal that North Korea will now seriously explore uranium enrichment capabilities. But it would take many years for Pyongyang to develop the uranium route to the bomb.

New additions to the nuclear club are always cause for concern. But though North Korea’s nuclear program continues apace, it hardly threatens to shift underlying geopolitical realities. It may encourage the United States to retain a slightly larger arsenal to reassure Japan and South Korea about the credibility of its nuclear umbrella. It also could encourage Tokyo and Seoul to pursue their own weapons. But none of these shifts, though significant, is likely to alter the defining military, economic and political dynamics of the region fundamentally.

Nuclear arms are better understood as an insurance policy, one that no potential aggressor has any intention of steering afoul of. Without practical military or political use, they remain held in reserve — where in all likelihood they will remain for the foreseeable future.

In short, no one was going to invade North Korea — or even launch limited military strikes against it — before its first nuclear test in 2006. And no one will do so now, nor will they do so after its next test. So North Korea – with or without nuclear weapons – remains secure from invasion. With or without nuclear weapons, North Korea remains a pariah state, isolated from the international community. And with or without them, the world will go on with no immediate danger from Pyongyang.

Where is the real threat then?

No, real threat is what North Korea did not threaten about : there is a terrifying way that North Korea could overcome its limitation while simultaneously helping another nuclear aspirant: It could work with Iran - by expanding nuclear and missile cooperation with Iran. The two countries' abilities and needs are highly complementary, and past collaboration tells us that the diplomatic channels may be as well.

Similar to North Korea, Iran is also defended. It can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, to launch a barrage of medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel, and to use its proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere to respond with a new campaign of artillery rocket fire, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. But the biggest deterrent to a strike on Iran is Tehran’s ability to seriously interfere in ongoing U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan — efforts already tenuous enough without direct Iranian opposition.

Pyongyang lacks uranium centrifuge materials, technology, and know-how; Tehran has mastered them. Pyongyang has practical uranium metallurgy capabilities; Tehran has little. Pyongyang has its own nuclear test data; Tehran does not. Pyongyang knows all facets of plutonium technology; Tehran has little more than a plutonium-producing reactor under construction. Pyongyang helped Tehran establish a missile capability; now, Tehran's crash missile-test program and Pyongyang's long-range rocket tests could prove mutually beneficial.

Preventing escalation of nuclear and missile cooperation is critical to avoid destabilizing Northeast Asia and the Middle East. The urgency of this threat is underscored by North Korea's recent covert construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria and its extensive ongoing cooperation in missile technology with Iran. At least in its nuclear reach, Pyongyang isn't quite as isolated as it seems.

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US Counterterrorism

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been carefully watching the fallout from the Obama administration’s decision to release four classified memos from former President George W. Bush’s administration that authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In a visit to CIA headquarters last week, President Barack Obama promised not to prosecute agency personnel who carried out such interrogations, since they were following lawful orders. Critics of the techniques, such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have called for the formation of a “truth commission” to investigate the matter, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to launch a criminal inquiry into the matter.

Realistically, those most likely to face investigation and prosecution are those who wrote the memos, rather than the low-level field personnel who acted in good faith based upon the guidance the memos provided. Despite this fact and Obama’s reassurances, our contacts in the intelligence community report that the release of the memos has had a discernible “chilling effect” on those in the clandestine service who work on counterterrorism issues.

In some ways, the debate over the morality of such interrogation techniques — something we do not take a position on and will not be discussing here — has distracted many observers from examining the impact that the release of these memos is having on the ability of the U.S. government to fulfill its counterterrorism mission. And this impact has little to do with the ability to use torture to interrogate terrorist suspects.

Politics and moral arguments aside, the end effect of the memos’ release is that people who have put their lives on the line in U.S. counterterrorism efforts are now uncertain of whether they should be making that sacrifice. Many of these people are now questioning whether the administration that happens to be in power at any given time will recognize the fact that they were carrying out lawful orders under a previous administration. It is hard to retain officers and attract quality recruits in this kind of environment. It has become safer to work in programs other than counterterrorism.

The memos’ release will not have a catastrophic effect on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Indeed, most of the information in the memos was leaked to the press years ago and has long been public knowledge. However, when the release of the memos is examined in a wider context, and combined with a few other dynamics, it appears that the U.S. counterterrorism community is quietly slipping back into an atmosphere of risk-aversion and malaise — an atmosphere not dissimilar to that described by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission) as a contributing factor to the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks.

Cycles Within Cycles

The decrease in funding not only will affect defensive counterterrorism initiatives like embassy security and counter-surveillance programs, but also will impact offensive programs such as the number of CIA personnel dedicated to the counterterrorism role.

Beyond funding, however, there is another historical cycle of booms and busts that can be seen in the conduct of American clandestine intelligence activities. There are clearly discernible periods when clandestine activities are deemed very important and are widely employed. These periods are inevitably followed by a time of investigations, reductions in clandestine activities and a tightening of control and oversight over such activities.

After the widespread employment of clandestine activities in the Vietnam War era, the Church Committee was convened in 1975 to review (and ultimately restrict) such operations. Former President Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Bill Casey as director of the CIA ushered in a new era of growth as the United States became heavily engaged in clandestine activities in Afghanistan and Central America. Then, the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986 led to a period of hearings and controls.

There was a slight uptick in clandestine activities under the presidency of George H.W. Bush, but the fall of the Soviet Union led to another bust cycle for the intelligence community. By the mid-1990s, the number of CIA stations and bases was dramatically reduced (and virtually eliminated in much of Africa) for budgetary considerations. Then there was the case of Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-educated lawyer who used little-known provisions in Texas common law to marry a dead Guatemalan guerrilla commander and gain legal standing as his widow. After it was uncovered that a CIA source was involved in the guerrilla commander’s execution, CIA stations in Latin America were gutted for political reasons. The Harbury case also led to the Torricelli Amendment, a law that made recruiting unsavory people, such as those with ties to death squads and terrorist groups, illegal without special approval. This bust cycle was well documented by both the Crowe Commission, which investigated the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, and the 9/11 Commission.

After the 9/11 attacks, the pendulum swung radically to the permissive side and clandestine activity was rapidly and dramatically increased as the U.S. sought to close the intelligence gap and quickly develop intelligence on al Qaeda’s capability and plans. Developments over the past two years clearly indicate that the United States is once again entering an intelligence bust cycle, a period that will be marked by hearings, increased controls and a general decrease in clandestine activity.

Institutional Culture

It is also very important to realize that the counterterrorism community is just one small part of the larger intelligence community that is affected by this ebb and flow of covert activity. In fact, as noted above, the counterterrorism component of intelligence efforts has its own boom-and-bust cycle that is based on major attacks. Soon after a major attack, interest in counterterrorism spikes dramatically, but as time passes without a major attack, interest lags. Other than during the peak times of this cycle, counterterrorism is considered an ancillary program that is sometimes seen as an interesting side tour of duty, but more widely seen as being outside the mainstream career path — risky and not particularly career-enhancing. This assessment is reinforced by such events as the recent release of the memos.

At the CIA, being a counterterrorism specialist in the clandestine service means that you will most likely spend much of your life in places line Sanaa, Islamabad and Kabul instead of Vienna, Paris or London. This means that, in addition to hurting your chances for career advancement, your job also is quite dangerous, provides relatively poor living conditions for your family and offers the possibility of contracting serious diseases.

While being declared persona non grata and getting kicked out of a country as part of an intelligence spat is considered almost a badge of honor at the CIA, the threat of being arrested and indicted for participating in the rendition of a terrorist suspect from an allied country like Italy is not. Equally unappealing is being sued in civil court by a terrorist suspect or facing the possibility of prosecution after a change of government in the United States. Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of CIA case officers who are choosing to carry personal liability insurance because they do not trust the agency and the U.S. government to look out for their best interests.

Now, there are officers who are willing to endure hardship and who do not really care much about career advancement, but for those officers there is another hazard — frustration. Aggressive officers dedicated to the counterterrorism mission quickly learn that many of the people in the food chain above them are concerned about their careers, and these superiors often take measures to rein in their less-mainstream subordinates. Additionally, due to the restrictions brought about by laws and regulations like the Torricelli Amendment, case officers working counterterrorism are often tightly bound by myriad legal restrictions.

Unlike in television shows like “24,” it is not uncommon in the real world for a meeting called to plan a counterterrorism operation to feature more CIA lawyers than case officers or analysts. These staff lawyers are intricately involved in the operational decisions made at headquarters, and legal issues often trump operational considerations. The need to obtain legal approval often delays decisions long enough for a critical window of operational opportunity to be slammed shut. This restrictive legal environment goes back many years in the CIA and is not a new fixture brought in by the Obama administration. There was a sense of urgency that served to trump the lawyers to some extent after 9/11, but the lawyers never went away and have reasserted themselves firmly over the past several years.

Of course, the CIA is not the only agency with a culture that is less than supportive of the counterterrorism mission. Although the prevention of terrorist attacks in the United States is currently the FBI’s No. 1 priority on paper, the counterterrorism mission remains the bureau’s redheaded stepchild. The FBI is struggling to find agents willing to serve in the counterterrorism sections of field offices, resident agencies (smaller offices that report to a field office) and joint terrorism task forces.

While the CIA was very much built on the legacy of Wild Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, the FBI was founded by J. Edgar Hoover, a conservative and risk-averse administrator who served as FBI director from 1935-1972. Even today, Hoover’s influence is clearly evident in the FBI’s bureaucratic nature. FBI special agents are unable to do much at all, such as open an investigation, without a supervisor’s approval, and supervisors are reluctant to approve anything too adventurous because of the impact it might have on their chance for promotion. Unlike many other law enforcement agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI rarely uses its own special agents in an undercover capacity to penetrate criminal organizations. That practice is seen as being too risky; they prefer to use confidential informants rather than undercover operatives.

The FBI is also strongly tied to its roots in law enforcement and criminal investigation, and special agents who work major theft, public corruption or white-collar crime cases tend to receive more recognition — and advance more quickly — than their counterterrorism counterparts.

FBI special agents also see a considerable downside to working counterterrorism cases because of the potential for such cases to blow up in their faces if they make a mistake — such as in the New York field office’s highly publicized mishandling of the informant whom they had inserted into the group that later conducted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It is much safer, and far more rewarding from a career perspective, to work bank robberies or serve in the FBI’s Inspection Division.

After the 9/11 attacks — and the corresponding spike in the importance of counterterrorism operations — many of the resources of the CIA and FBI were focused on al Qaeda and terrorism, to the detriment of programs such as foreign counterintelligence. However, the more time that has passed since 9/11 without another major attack, the more the organizational culture of the U.S government has returned to normal. Once again, counterterrorism efforts are seen as being ancillary duties rather than the organizations’ driving mission. (The clash between organizational culture and the counterterrorism mission is by no means confined to the CIA and FBI. Fred’s book “Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent” provides a detailed examination of some of the bureaucratic and cultural challenges we faced while serving in the Counterterrorism Investigations Division of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.)

Liaison Services

One of the least well known, and perhaps most important, sources of intelligence in the counterterrorism field is the information that is obtained as a result of close relationships with allied intelligence agencies — often referred to as information obtained through “liaison channels.”

Like FBI agents, most CIA officers are well-educated, middle-aged white guys. This means they are better suited to use the cover of an American businessmen or diplomat than to pretend to be a young Muslim trying to join al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Like their counterparts in the FBI, CIA officers have far more success using informants than they do working undercover inside terrorist groups.

Services like the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, the Saudi Mabahith or the Yemeni National Security Agency not only can recruit sources, but also are far more successful in using young Muslim officers to penetrate terrorist groups. In addition to their source networks and penetration operations, many of these liaison services are not at all squeamish about using extremely enhanced interrogation techniques — this is the reason many of the terrorism suspects who were the subject of rendition operations ended up in such locations. Obviously, whenever the CIA is dealing with a liaison service, the political interests and objectives of the service must be considered — as should the possibility that the liaison service is fabricating the intelligence in question for whatever reason. Still, in the end, the CIA historically has received a significant amount of important intelligence (perhaps even most of its intelligence) via liaison channels.

Another concern that arises from the call for a truth commission is the impact a commission investigation could have on the liaison services that have helped the United States in its counterterrorism efforts since 9/11. Countries that hosted CIA detention facilities or were involved in the rendition or interrogation of terrorist suspects may find themselves exposed publicly or even held up for some sort of sanction by the U.S. Congress. Such activities could have a real impact on the amount of cooperation and information the CIA receives from these intelligence services.

Conclusion

As we’ve previously noted, it was a lack of intelligence that helped fuel the fear that led the Bush administration to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques. Ironically, the current investigation into those techniques and other practices (such as renditions) may very well lead to significant gaps in terrorism-related intelligence from both internal and liaison sources — again, not primarily because of the prohibition of torture, but because of larger implications.

When these implications are combined with the long-standing institutional aversion of U.S. government agencies toward counterterrorism, and with the difficulty of finding and retaining good people willing to serve in counterterrorism roles, the U.S. counterterrorism community may soon be facing challenges even more daunting than those posed by its already difficult mission.

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US Presidential Realities and Barrack Obama's 100 Days

U.S. presidential candidates run for office as if they would be free to act however they wish once elected. But upon election, they govern as they must. The freedom of the campaign trail contrasts sharply with the constraints of reality.

The test of a president is how effectively he bridges the gap between what he said he would do and what he finds he must do. Great presidents achieve this seamlessly, while mediocre presidents never recover from the transition. All presidents make the shift, including Obama, who spent his first hundred days on this task.

Obama won the presidency with a much smaller margin than his supporters seem to believe. Despite his wide margin in the Electoral College, more than 47 percent of voters cast ballots against him. Obama was acutely aware of this and focused on making certain not to create a massive split in the country from the outset of his term. He did this in foreign policy by keeping Robert Gates on as defense secretary, bringing in Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell in key roles and essentially extrapolating from the Bush foreign policy. So far, this has worked. Obama’s approval rating rests at 69 percent, which The Washington Post notes is average for presidents at the hundred-day mark.

Obama, of course, came into office in circumstances he did not anticipate when he began campaigning — namely, the financial and economic crisis that really began to bite in September 2008. Obama had no problem bridging the gap between campaign and governance with regard to this matter, as his campaign neither anticipated nor proposed strategies for the crisis — it just hit. The general pattern for dealing with the crisis was set during the Bush administration, when the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board put in place a strategy of infusing money into failing institutions to prevent what they feared would be a calamitous economic chain reaction.

Obama continued the Bush policy, though he added a stimulus package. But such a package had been discussed in the Bush administration, and it is unlikely that Sen. John McCain would have avoided creating one had he been elected. Obviously, the particular projects funded and the particular interests favored would differ between McCain and Obama, but the essential principle would not. The financial crisis would have been handled the same way — just as everything from the Third World debt crisis to the Savings and Loan crisis would have been handled the same way no matter who was president. Under either man, the vast net worth of the United States (we estimate it at about $350 trillion) would have been tapped by printing money and raising taxes, and U.S. assets would have been used to underwrite bad investments, increase consumption and build political coalitions through pork. Obama had no plan for this. Instead, he expanded upon the Bush administration solution and followed tradition.

The Reality of International Affairs

The manner in which Obama was trapped by reality is most clear with regard to international affairs. At the heart of Obama’s campaign was the idea that one of the major failures of the Bush administration was alienating the European allies of the United States. Obama argued that a more forthcoming approach to the Europeans would yield a more forthcoming response. In fact, the Europeans were no more forthcoming with Obama than they were with Bush.

Obama’s latest trip to Europe focused on two American demands and one European — primarily German — demand. Obama wanted the Germans to increase their economic stimulus plan because Germany is the largest exporter in the world. With the United States stimulating its economy, the Germans could solve their economic problem simply by increasing exports into the United States. This would limit job creation in the United States, particularly because German exports involve automobiles as well as other things, and Obama has struggled to build domestic demand for U.S. autos. Thus, he wanted the Germans to build domestic demand and not just rely on the United States to pull Germany out of recession. But the Germans refused, arguing that they could not afford a major stimulus now (when in fact they have no reason to be flexible, because the U.S. stimulus is going to help them no matter what Germany does).

Germany’s and France’s unwillingness to provide substantially more support in Afghanistan gave Obama a second disappointment. Some European troops were sent, but their numbers were few and their mission was limited to a very short period. (In some cases, the European force contribution will focus on training indigenous police officers, which will take a year or more to really have an impact.) The French and Germans essentially were as unwilling to deal with Obama as they were with Bush on this matter.

The Europeans, on the other hand, wanted a major effort by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Central European banking system, largely owned by banks from more established European countries, has reached a crisis state because of aggressive lending policies. The Germans in particular don’t want to bail out these banks; they want the IMF to do so. Put differently, they want the United States, China and Japan to help underwrite the European banking system. Obama did agree to contribute to this effort, but not nearly on the scale the Europeans wanted.

On the whole, the Europeans gave two big nos, while the Americans gave a mild yes. In substantive terms, the U.S.-European relationship is no better than it was under Bush. In terms of perception, however, the Obama administration managed a brilliant coup, shifting the focus to the changed atmosphere that prevailed at the meeting. Indeed, all parties wanted to emphasize the atmospherics, and judging from media coverage, they succeeded. The trip accordingly was perceived as a triumph.

Campaign Promises and Public Perception

This is not a trivial achievement. There are campaign promises, there is reality and there is public perception. All presidents must move from campaigning to governing; extremely skilled presidents manage the shift without appearing duplicitous. At least in the European case, Obama has managed the shift without suffering political damage. His core supporters appear prepared to support him independent of results. And that is an important foundation for effective governance.

We can see the same continuity in his treatment of Russia. When he ran for president, Obama pledged to abandon the U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) deployment in Poland amid a great show made about resetting U.S. Russia policy. On taking office, however, he encountered the reality of the Russian position, which is that Russia wants to be the pre-eminent power in the former Soviet Union. The Bush administration took the position that the United States must be free to maintain bilateral relations with any country, to include the ability to extend NATO membership to interested countries. Obama has reaffirmed this core U.S. position.

The United States has asked for Russian help in two areas. First, Washington asked for a second supply line into Afghanistan. Moscow agreed so long as no military equipment was shipped in. Second, Washington offered to withdraw its BMD system from Poland in return for help from Moscow in blocking Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles. The Russians refused, understanding that the offer on BMD was not worth removing a massive thorn (i.e., Iran) from the Americans’ side.

In other words, U.S.-Russian relations are about where they were in the Bush administration, and Obama’s substantive position is not materially different from the Bush administration’s position. The BMD deal remains in place, the United States is not depending on Russian help on logistics in Afghanistan, and Washington has not backed off on the principle of NATO expansion (even if expansion is most unlikely).

In Iraq, Obama has essentially followed the reality created under the Bush administration, shifting withdrawal dates somewhat but following the Petraeus strategy there and extending it — or trying to extend it — to Afghanistan. The Pakistani problem, of course, presents the greatest challenge (as it would have for any president), and Obama is coping with it to the extent possible.

Obama’s managing of perceptions as opposed to actually making policy changes shows up most clearly in regard to Iran. Obama tried to open the door to Tehran by indicating that he was prepared to talk to the Iranians without preconditions — that is, without any prior commitment on the part of the Iranians regarding nuclear development. The Iranians reacted by rejecting the opening, essentially saying Obama’s overture was merely a gesture, not a substantial shift in American policy. The Iranians are, of course, quite correct in this. Obama fully understands that he cannot shift policy on Iran without a host of regional complications. For example, the Saudis would be enormously upset by such an opening, while the Syrians would have to re-evaluate their entire position on openings to Israel and the United States. Changing U.S. Iranian policy is hard to do. There is a reason Washington has the policy it does, and that reason extends beyond presidents and policymakers.

When we look at Obama’s substantive foreign policy, we see continuity rather than changes. Certainly, the rhetoric has changed, and that is not insignificant; atmospherics do play a role in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, when we look across the globe, we see the same configuration of relationships, the same partners, the same enemies and the same ambiguity that dominates most global relations.

Turkey and the Substantial U.S. Shift

One substantial shift has taken place, however, and that one is with Turkey. The Obama administration has made major overtures to Turkey in multiple forms, from a presidential visit to putting U.S. anti-piracy vessels under Turkish command. These are not symbolic moves. The United States needs Turkey to counterbalance Iran, protect U.S. interests in the Caucasus, help stabilize Iraq, serve as a bridge to Syria and help in Afghanistan. Obama has clearly shifted strategy here in response to changing conditions in the region.

Intriguingly, the change in U.S.-Turkish relations never surfaced as even a minor issue during the U.S. presidential campaign. It emerged after the election because of changes in the configuration of the international system. Shifts in Russian policy, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and shifts within Turkey that allowed the country to begin its return to the international arena all came together to make this necessary, and Obama responded.

None of this is designed to denigrate Obama in the least. While many of his followers may be dismayed, and while many of his critics might be unwilling to notice, the fact is that a single concept dominated Obama’s first hundred days: continuity. In the face of the realities of his domestic political position and the U.S. strategic position, as well as the economic crisis, Obama did what he had to do, and what he had to do very much followed from what Bush did. It is fascinating that both Obama’s supporters and his critics think he has made far more changes than he really has.

Of course, this is only the first hundred days. Presidents look for room to maneuver after they do what they need to do in the short run. Some presidents use that room to pursue policies that weaken, and even destroy, their presidencies. Others find ways to enhance their position. But normally, the hardest thing a president faces is finding the space to do the things he wants to do rather than what he must do. Obama came through the first hundred days following the path laid out for him. It is only in Turkey where he made a move that he wasn’t compelled to make just now, but that had to happen at some point. It will be interesting to see how many more such moves he makes.

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Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula

The media wing of one of al Qaeda’s Yemeni franchises, al Qaeda in Yemen, released a statement on online jihadist forums Jan. 20 from the group’s leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi, announcing the formation of a single al Qaeda group for the Arabian Peninsula under his command. According to al-Wuhayshi, the new group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, would consist of his former group (al Qaeda in Yemen) as well as members of the now-defunct Saudi al Qaeda franchise.

The press release noted that the Saudi militants have pledged allegiance to al-Wuhayshi, an indication that the reorganization was not a merger of equals. This is understandable, given that the jihadists in Yemen have been active recently while their Saudi counterparts have not conducted a meaningful attack in years. The announcement also related that a Saudi national (and former Guantanamo detainee) identified as Abu-Sayyaf al-Shihri has been appointed as al-Wuhayshi’s deputy. In some ways, this is similar to the way Ayman al-Zawahiri and his faction of Egyptian Islamic Jihad swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and were integrated in to al Qaeda prime.

While not specifically mentioned, the announcement of a single al Qaeda entity for the entire Arabian Peninsula and the unanimous support by jihadist militants on the Arabian Peninsula for al-Wuhayshi suggests the new organization will incorporate elements of the other al Qaeda franchise in Yemen, the Yemen Soldiers Brigade.

The announcement also provided links to downloadable versions of the latest issue of the group’s online magazine, Sada al-Malahim, (Arabic for “The Echo of Battle”). The Web page links provided to download the magazine also featured trailers advertising the pending release of a new video from the group, now referred to by its new name, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The translated name of this new organization sounds very similar to the old Saudi al Qaeda franchise, the al Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula (in Arabic, “Tandheem al Qaeda fi Jazeerat al-Arabiyah”). But the new group’s new Arabic name, Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Jazirat al-Arab, is slightly different. The addition of “al-Jihad” seems to have been influenced by the Iraqi al Qaeda franchise, Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn. The flag of the Islamic State of Iraq also appears in the Jan. 24 video, further illustrating the deep ties between the newly announced organization and al Qaeda in Iraq. Indeed, a number of Yemeni militants traveled to Iraq to fight, and these returning al Qaeda veterans have played a large part in the increased sophistication of militant attacks in Yemen over the past year.

Four days after the Jan. 20 announcement, links for a 19-minute video from the new group titled “We Start from Here and We Will Meet at al-Aqsa” began to appear in jihadist corners of cyberspace. Al-Aqsa refers to the al-Aqsa Mosque on what Jews know as Temple Mount and Muslims refer to as Al Haram Al Sharif. The video threatens Muslim leaders in the region (whom it refers to as criminal tyrants), including Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Saudi royal family, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It also threatens so-called “crusader forces” supporting the regional Muslim leaders, and promises to carry the jihad from the Arabian Peninsula to Israel so as to liberate Muslim holy sites and brethren in Gaza.

An interview with al-Wuhayshi aired Jan. 27 on Al Jazeera echoed these sentiments. During the interview, al-Wuhayshi noted that the “crusades” against “Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia” have been launched from bases in the Arabian Peninsula, and that because of this, “all crusader interests” in the peninsula “should be struck.”
A Different Take on Events

Most of the analysis in Western media regarding the preceding developments has focused on how two former detainees at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear in the Jan. 24 video — one of whom was al-Shihri — and that both were graduates of Saudi Arabia’s ideological rehabilitation program, a government deprogramming course for jihadists. In addition to al-Shihri who, according to the video was Guantanamo detainee 372, the video also contains a statement from Abu-al-Harith Muhammad al-Awfi. Al-Awfi, who was identified as a field commander in the video, was allegedly former Guantanamo detainee 333. Prisoner lists from Guantanamo obtained by Stratfor appear to confirm that al-Shihri was in fact Guantanamo detainee No. 372. We did not find al-Awfi’s name on the list, however, another name appears as detainee No. 333. Given the proclivity of jihadists to use fraudulent identities, it is entirely possible that al-Awfi is an alias, or that he was held at Guantanamo under an assumed name. At any rate, we doubt al-Awfi would fabricate this claim and then broadcast it in such a public manner.

The media focus on the Guantanamo aspect is understandable in the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Jan. 22 executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and all the complexities surrounding that decision. Clearly, some men released from Guantanamo, and even those graduated from the Saudi government’s rehabilitation program, can and have returned to the jihadist fold. Ideology is hard to extinguish, especially an ideology that teaches adherents that there is a war against Islam and that the “true believers” will be persecuted for their beliefs. Al Qaeda has even taken this one step further and has worked to prepare its members not only to face death, but also to endure imprisonment and harsh interrogation. A substantial number of al Qaeda cadres, such as al-Zawahiri and Abu Yahya al-Lib i, have endured both, and have been instrumental in helping members withstand captivity and interrogation.

This physical and ideological preparation means that efforts to induce captured militants to abandon their ideology can wind up reinforcing that ideology when those efforts appear to prove important tenets of the ideology, such as that adherents will be persecuted and that the Muslim rulers are aligned with the West. It is also important to realize that radical Islamist extremists, ultraconservatives and traditionalists tend to have a far better grasp of Islamic religious texts than their moderate, liberal and modernist counterparts. Hence, they have an edge over them on the ideological battlefield. Those opposing radicals and extremists have a long way to go before they can produce a coherent legitimate, authoritative and authentic alternative Islamic discourse.

In any event, in practical terms there is no system of “re-education” that is 100 percent effective in eradicating an ideology in humans except execution. There will always be people who will figure out how to game the system and regurgitate whatever is necessary to placate their jailers so as to win release. Because of this, it is not surprising to see people like al-Shihri and al-Awfi released only to re-emerge in their former molds.

Another remarkable feature of the Jan. 27 video is that it showcased four different leaders of the regional group, something rarely seen. In addition to al-Wuhayshi, al-Shihri and al-Awfi, the video also included a statement from Qasim al-Rami, who is suspected of having been involved with the operational planning of the suicide attack on a group of Spanish tourists in Marib, Yemen, in July 2007.

In our estimation, however, perhaps the most remarkable feature about these recent statements from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is not the appearance of these two former Guantanamo detainees in the video, or the appearance of four distinct leaders of the group in a single video, but rather what the statements tell us about the state of the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Signposts

That the remnants of the Saudi al Qaeda franchise have been forced to flee their country and join up with the Yemeni group demonstrates that the Saudi government’s campaign to eradicate the jihadist organization has been very successful. The Saudi franchise was very active in 2003 and 2004, but has not attempted a significant attack since the February 2006 attack against the oil facility in Abqaiq. In spite of the large number of Saudi fighters who have traveled to militant training camps, and to fight in places such as Iraq, the Saudi franchise has had significant problems organizing operational cells inside the kingdom. Additionally, since the death of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, the Saudi franchise has struggled to find a charismatic and savvy leader. (The Saudis have killed several leaders who succeeded al-Muqrin.) In a militant organization conducting an insurgency or terrorist operations, leadership is critical not only to the operational success of the group but also to its ability to recruit new members, raise funding and acquire resources such as weapons.

Like the Saudi node, the fortunes of other al Qaeda regional franchises have risen or fallen based upon ability of the franchise’s leadership. For example, in August 2006 al Qaeda announced with great fanfare that the Egyptian militant group Gamaah al-Islamiyah (GAI) had joined forces with al Qaeda. Likewise, in November 2007 al Qaeda announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) had formally joined the al Qaeda network. But neither of these groups really ever got off the ground. While a large portion of the responsibility for the groups’ lack of success may be due to the oppressive natures of the Egyptian and Libyan governments and the aggressive efforts those governments undertook to control the new al Qaeda franchise s, we believe the lack of success also stems from poor leadership. (There are certainly other significant factors contributing to the failure of al Qaeda nodes in various places, such as the alienation of the local population.)

Conversely, we believe that an important reason for the resurgence of the al Qaeda franchise in Yemen has been the leadership of al-Wuhayshi. As we have noted in the past, Yemen is a much easier environment for militants to operate in than either Egypt or Libya. There are many Salafists employed in the Yemeni security and intelligence apparatus who at the very least are sympathetic to the jihadist cause. These men are holdovers from the Yemeni civil war, when Saleh formed an alliance with Salafists and recruited jihadists to fight Marxist forces in South Yemen. This alliance continues today, with Saleh deriving significant political support from radical Islamists. Many of the state’s key institutions (including the military) employ Salafists, making any major crackdown on militant Islamists in the country politically difficult. This sen timent among the security forces also helps explain the many jihadists who have escaped from Yemeni prisons — such as al-Wuhayshi.

Yemen has also long been at the crossroads of a number of jihadist theaters, including Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Levant, Egypt and Somalia. Yemen also is a country with a thriving arms market, a desert warrior tradition and a tribal culture that often bridles against government authority and that makes it difficult for the government to assert control over large swaths of the country. Yemeni tribesmen also tend to be religiously conservative and susceptible to the influence of jihadist theology.

In spite of this favorable environment, the Yemeni al Qaeda franchise has largely floundered since 9/11. Much of this is due to U.S. and Yemeni efforts to decapitate the group, such as the strike by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle on then-leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Ali al-Harithi, in late 2002 and the subsequent arrest of his replacement, Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, in late 2003. The combination of these operations in such a short period helped cripple al Qaeda in Yemen’s operational capability.

As Stratfor noted in spring 2008, however, al Qaeda militants in Yemen have become more active and more effective under the leadership of al-Wuhayshi, an ethnic Yemeni who spent time in Afghanistan as a lieutenant under bin Laden. After his time with bin Laden, Iranian authorities arrested al-Wuhayshi, later returning him to Yemen in 2003 via an Iranian-Yemeni extradition deal. He subsequently escaped from a high-security prison outside the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in February 2006 along with Jamal al-Badawi (the leader of the cell that carried out the suicide bombing of the USS Cole).

Al-Wuhayshi’s established ties with al Qaeda prime and bin Laden in particular not only provide him legitimacy in the eyes of other jihadists, in more practical terms, they may have provided him the opportunity to learn the tradecraft necessary to successfully lead a militant group and conduct operations. His close ties to influential veterans of al Qaeda in Yemen like al-Badawi also may have helped him infuse new energy into the struggle in Yemen in 2008.

While the group had been on a rising trajectory in 2008, things had been eerily quiet in Yemen since the Sept. 17, 2008, attack against the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa and the resulting campaign against the group. The recent flurry of statements has broken the quiet, followed by a Warden Message on Jan. 26 warning of a possible threat against the compound of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and a firefight at a security checkpoint near the embassy hours later.

At this point, it appears the shooting incident may not be related to the threat warning and may instead have been the result of jumpy nerves. Reports suggest the police may have fired at a speeding car before the occupants, who were armed tribesmen, fired back. Although there have been efforts to crack down on the carrying of weapons in Sanaa, virtually every Yemeni male owns an AK-variant assault rifle of some sort; like the ceremonial jambiya dagger, such a rifle is considered a must-have accessory in most parts of the country. Not surprisingly, incidents involving gunfire are not uncommon in Yemen.

Either way, we will continue to keep a close eye on Yemen and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. As we have seen in the past, press statements are not necessarily indicative of future jihadist performance. It will be important to watch developments in Yemen for signs that will help determine whether this recent merger and announcement is a sign of desperation by a declining group, or whether the addition of fresh blood from Saudi Arabia will help breathe new life into al-Wuhayshi’s operations and provide his group the means to make good on its threats.

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