Terror in Belgium

S P SETH

Terror struck Belgium recently with more than 30 dead and many more injured. It had happened before in Paris, last November, with 130 fatalities. Both appear to have germinated in Brussels, with its ring leaders/suicide bombers able to plan and move around Belgian/French borders with ease. What has come out is that Molenbeek district in Brussels is a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. And it has been left to fester and grow because of fragmented governance in the country. For instance, Brussels alone is said to have six police departments and 19 mayors. Different intelligence agencies lack focus and intelligence sharing. Molenbeek district is a sort of no go area where police seemed to follow a laissez faire policy of not wanting to know or act whatever was going on. As a report said, “ [It has] Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts.”

While Molenbeek might be a more extreme case of such concentration of alienated Muslim youth, it seems a fairly representative picture in many European countries. The first generation of migrants simply worked to survive and build up some kind of a future. And they concentrated in ghettos and were largely left to themselves by the mainstream governing institutions. The second, and now into third generations, wanted something more by way of jobs, a vision for future, and above all acceptance. And on all these counts, they felt as outsiders and marginalized, with no real hope for the future. A good number of such youth took to crime by way of drug peddling, burglary and all sorts of criminal involvement. The rate of unemployment has been proportionately very high among Muslim youth in the west, and crime seemed one way of finding some occupation. With a name like Mohammad or Ahmed, breaking into the job market was hard going.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the situation even got worse with racial and religious profiling. At the same time, al Qaeda imbued dissatisfied and alienated western Muslim youth with an ideological and political tool that made them feel empowered. And it also made intelligible in a simple and simplified sort of way-- with most of the onus on the west-- of the desperate situation of the Muslim youth and the Muslims in general. Which, by re-establishing and reviving the so-called caliphate and glorifying the Muslim past in the process, would be rectified. But the problem with al-Qaeda (and as we shall see with IS as well) is that the message of ‘empowerment’ and ‘hope’ is predicated on destroying the western system, culture, traditions and religion (Christianity). The message of 9/11 and the subsequent attacks on the west continue to be one of destruction and savagery.

Take the case of IS which prides itself on being an even ‘better’ killing machine than al Qaeda. Its spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, reportedly told its followers in an audio message in 2014: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European, especially the spiteful and filthy French, or an Australian or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever, kill him in any manner or way however it may be.” And such killing doesn’t exclude Muslims, if they happen to be in the way and, worse still, if they are Shias and do not practice the IS version of Islam.

The IS arose out of the disastrous military intervention in Iraq, supposedly for Saddam Hussein’s alleged links with al Qaeda and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was no angel. In fact he was a maniac and a monster but he was not inclined to be subverted by an ideology or cause that was not centred on him and his power machine. In that sense, he was an obstacle for any grand Islamic vision sponsored by the likes of al Qaeda. The prolonged tragedy in Iraq is now being played out, with even greater destruction, by a revived and expanded version of al Qaeda but with a new brand that has taken on the name of Islamic State (IS), and has managed to capture a fair chunk of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared itself a caliphate. In other words, they are pretending continuity with Islam’s glorious historical past and calling upon Muslims all over the world to rally around the ‘caliphate’ and do and die for it. And this ‘do and die’ call has meant expanding their domain and spreading terror.

And it worked as IS captured Mosul and made some significant gains in Syria, some of them now reversed. They were able to create a financial base for their new state through the illicit sale of oil, by taxing the population under its control and looting the treasury. In the process, IS managed to create an image of a ‘successful’ and ongoing enterprise, which further increased its appeal as committed to the cause of Islamic resurgence and revival it professed. This was happening at a time when al Qaeda increasingly looked marginalized with no territorial base. Not surprisingly, IS was able to attract marginalized Muslim youth in the west, especially with the skillful use of the Internet. And these alienated young people sought to channel their energy into an ‘ideal’ and a cause that seemed noble in a weird sort of way, especially as some of them were simply involved in crime like peddling drugs, burglary and the like and being in and out of jail. It didn’t seem all too hard to create terror and mayhem in Brussels, Paris and elsewhere when they were willing to die.

And if the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is right, the situation in Europe was (is) soft for such incidents of terror. According to Turnbull, “European governments are confronted by a perfect storm of failed or neglected integration, foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria, porous borders, and intelligence and security apparatus struggling to keep pace with the scope of the threat.” And he quotes Bernard Squarcini, a former head of France’s internal intelligence, who “described these factors in Belgium as creating a favourable ecosystem for an Islamist milieu.” 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.  

Russia and the Syrian situation

S P SETH

Russia’s surgical military intervention in the Syrian conflict by way of bombing rebel and terrorist targets, starting September 30, has bolstered up the Assad regime’s position, giving it an advantage in any kind of parleying for a political solution. Before the Russians intervened in a big way, the Assad regime was looking increasingly shaky losing territory to disparate rebel and jihadi groups, including IS. That situation has been reversed and Damascus has recovered fair bit of its lost territory, thanks to the Russian aerial bombing and support on the ground. Having retrieved and, possibly, reversed the military situation to the Assad regime’s advantage, Moscow suddenly announced, as suddenly as they had earlier started their military intervention in September, that it was curtailing and withdrawing bulk of its military activity having largely achieved its objectives against Islamic extremists and terrorists. But that this could easily be reinstated if the situation so warranted. Indeed, Russia continued to help the Assad regime to capture from the IS the historically and strategically important area of Palmyra, which has further bolstered its position.

It is interesting to note that the drawdown of Russian military activity coincided with the starting of the political process in Geneva for a possible political solution. Russia’s action seemed aimed at multiple constituencies in the Syrian conflict from the Assad regime to rebel/jihadi groups, their regional supporters like Saudi Arabia, as well as the US. Above all, it was meant to convey that Russia was a determining force in the Syrian situation intending to help the political process rather than hinder it. For instance, it seemed to convey that Russia was not simply there in Syria to support the Assad regime at any cost. It would be willing to support any viable alternative to stabilize the situation. But at the same time, it would not ditch the Assad regime to make things worse to the advantage of extremists and jihadists of varied persuasions.

Moscow’s determined intervention in Syria is not the result of any kind of idealism. It is part of its policy of bringing Russia back into a global role after the cavalier fashion in which its interests have been treated since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990s. The expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization right on to its borders created the crisis in Ukraine, where it supported and fostered the rebellion in eastern Ukraine, which is still unresolved. And that has brought on Moscow a sanctions regime from the US and its European allies. In the Middle East, Russia found itself sidelined largely until it dealt itself into a determining role by intervening in Syria and virtually changing the internal balance of power in favour of the Assad regime.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union Moscow still maintained military interests and ties following from the Soviet time by way of a naval base and other strategic interests. Moscow has also been trying to cultivate Egypt’s president/dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, seeking to revive, in some ways, Soviet Union’s special ties with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, in power during the fifties and sixties. Putin’s Russia would like to have a broad-based Middle Eastern policy but has found its options rather limited as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are US’ strategic allies and they would rather prefer Moscow to ditch Syria and Iran, where Russia has created strategic stakes.

As pointed out earlier, even though Moscow has scaled down its military involvement to facilitate a political solution, it is retaining the option to up scale it if necessary. And as things stand, the Geneva peace process is not making much headway. Syria’s opposition high negotiating committee’s emphasis remains on creating a transitional political regime minus Assad. Which would basically mean a political order opposed to the existing ruling system. In other words, it would mean installing some sort of a hybrid regime that is difficult to even figure out because of the disparate elements involved with varying ideological, sectarian and regional interests. And this is without even thinking how an alternative (to the Assad regime) political system will deal with the IS and other terrorist outfits that are excluded from any political solution, if a solution were possible at all.

Even as the so far non-existent political permutations and combinations are imagined, the Assad regime is not willing to sign off its death warrant, and what for in any case. There is no visible alternative, even more so now that the Assad regime has further consolidated its territorial control with considerable help from Russian intervention. In this situation, even though Moscow might be willing to entertain a political transition minus Bashar al-Assad, a viable and effective alternative is not around. The US and its regional allies would very much like Moscow to facilitate a Bashar al-Assad alternative but they don’t seem to have any clear alternative. And without that, it would simply be adding further to Syrian chaos and misery. In other words, with all the will in the world, there doesn’t seem, in the foreseeable future, any resolution of the Syrian situation.

The Assad regime is likely to hang around, but with continued help from Russia. As of now, having propped up the Assad regime, Moscow is in a strong position among international players. And that is so because its surgical military intervention has produced results on the ground to make the Assad regime a credible ---some might even say legitimate—stake holder. However, if Russia were to stay around long to prop up the regime, that might be counter-productive because, however strong and decisive it might appear, its economic situation is quite fragile.

It continues to face a comprehensive sanctions regime from the west over the situation in Ukraine, and its major source of revenue from oil and gas exports has been hit hard with falling international prices. And to carry with it the economic burden of military intervention in Syria for an extended period of time will simply make things worse. So far Putin’s popularity at home from action in Ukraine and intervention is Syria has been quite spectacular. But if the Syrian situation drags on, as it looks more likely, Russia could find itself into a quagmire. But so far it is playing its cards well and would hope that it all ends well. 

Note: this article was first published in the Daily Times.  

Turkey and its Kurdish obsession

S P SETH

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to believe that not only is he is  the country’s strongman but also its savior. And that image was further reinforced when his ruling AKP won the November 1 parliamentary elections. Earlier, on June 7, the ruling party had lost its parliamentary majority, though it still had the most seats with 41per cent of the vote. The victory on November 1 was engineered by creating an image of a security crisis for the country from the separatist Kurdish militant movement, PKK. The period between the June and November elections saw an explosion of violence with two suicide bombings, one on July 20 in the border town of Suruc that killed 33 people, and the second in the capital Ankara on October 10 killing 102 people during a peace march. In both cases, the IS was believed to have been behind the explosions and most of the victims were Kurds.

Before the November 1 elections last year, the Erdogan government blamed it all on PKK and the Kurds in general and started a crackdown in the predominantly Kurdish populated area of southeastern Turkey. And it continued even after the ruling AKP won its parliamentary majority. In the November election, even though the predominantly Kurdish party, HDP, still managed to secure just over 10 per cent of the votes as mandatory requirement for parliamentary representation, it wasn’t able to hold on to the 13 per cent it had won with the support of some non-Kurdish minority votes, as Erdogan sought to paint them as well as a security threat.

In other words, all Kurds in Turkey, constituting 15 to 20 per cent of its population, were suspects of some sort or the other. And it has destroyed a political process that was going on, before violence erupted recently, that had sought to accommodate some of the Kurdish cultural and political sensitivities without making them sound anti-national. Erdogan declared, soon after the parliamentary elections, that his government would go after the PKK “until all its members surrender or are eliminated …” He added, “The period ahead of us is not one of talks and discussions.” And now the Kurdish southeast region of Turkey is turned into a battle zone and the region is under seize.

And why has Erdogan gone back on this path, which had marred Turkey in a prolonged bloody conflict with the Kurds costing about 45,000 lives and causing devastation to much of the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region? And there hangs a tale that keeps getting more tangled and dangerous. When IS emerged as a major regional threat after the fall of Mosul in June 2014, Ankara was shaken when its 40-odd consulate staff was taken hostages. But, despite the IS’ usual barbarity in disposing of their hostages, in this case they released their Turkish hostages without any harm, and that was a welcome surprise. When asked about how it happened, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the hostages were freed through the Turkish intelligence agencies’ “own methods.” It certainly wasn’t done through any rescue operations. It would, therefore, appear that there was some tacit understanding/agreement that Turkey would refrain from becoming part of the US-led aerial operations against IS. That received credence when Turkey kept out of the military coalition against IS, nor did it grant the use of its bases for bombing IS targets and territory even though it is a NATO ally. This, though, changed a little later, as we shall see.

During the US-led operations against IS, Kurds emerged as a very effective force on the ground to fight IS, making them a virtual US ally. Ankara saw this as a threat to Turkish national unity, as YPG (Syrian Kurdish movement) virtually carved out an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria on the Turkish border. The Assad regime, overstretched as it was, had earlier withdrawn from Syria’s Kurdish region. And YPG are the ones fielding their fighters on the ground successfully pushing back IS, as the US keeps bombing IS positions. The US supports YPG fighters in Syria that are engaged against IS, while it goes along with Turkey which has outlawed militant PKK.  But Turkey doesn’t make any distinction between the two-- Turkish-based PKK and Syrian-based YPG. They are both terrorists.

Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davotoglu reiterated his country’s position during a recent visit of the US Vice President Joe Biden. Which is that YPG in Syria is part of the larger PKK movement. He also reportedly said that YPG had become an increasing threat to Turkey and it would attack its positions in northern Syria. And this Turkey is doing now so that they don’t consolidate their hold on northern Turkish border. While Turkey is firing at YPG positions, it fears that a recent bomb explosion in the Turkish capital, Ankara, might have been the handiwork of the Kurdish YPG. It could as well be IS as was suspected in earlier bombings, but Ankara is inclined to put it YPG.

For quite sometime now, Ankara has been pushing US to put up a no fly zone over northern Syria to both frustrate the Kurdish designs as well as to deter Russian bombing missions. In other words Turkey would like NATO to be drawn into the whole complicated business of fighting its multiple enemies. The question is: will the US and its NATO allies widen the stakes to make it into anti-Russian operations and in the process be distracted from the main game of destroying IS? So far, Turkey is not succeeding in this.

There are two problems with Erdogan and his administration. First: He sees Turkey in his own larger-than-life image where he is the new Sultan and wants the world to recognize and respect him in that role. And if and when this doesn’t happen, he tends to overshoot, so to say. Its most blatant example was the shooting of a Russian plane to force Moscow to stop propping up the Assad regime, which has backfired. At the same time, it hasn’t been happy with the US for not getting rid of the Assad regime when it used chemical weapons on its citizens.

President Obama had promised, more or less, to do this, as it was tantamount to crossing his ‘red line’. And Erdogan showed his annoyance by keeping out of the military coalition against IS, and denying the US the use of its air base for bombing IS positions, until now. But its obsession remains with the Kurds, where YPG in Syria has carved out an autonomous region and its perceived links with the PKK. Ankara sees that its perceived threat is already a reality. Which accounts for a major part of Erdogan’s irrational policies both at home and abroad. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.    

Saudi paranoia

S P SETH

Saudi Arabia is one terribly insecure kingdom that sees dangers lurking all around and, therefore, tends to shoot in all directions, metaphorically speaking; though it is not much of an exaggeration when one looks at how over-extended it is. It has its forces in Bahrain, it is bombing Yemen indiscriminately to crush the Houthi rebellion there, said to be instigated and supported by Iran, and it has been arming and providing financial support for all kinds of rebel groups in Syria to overthrow the Bashar regime. And Saudi-backed High Negotiating Committee of Syrian opposition and rebel groups has been basically trying to set preconditions at Geneva designed to sabotage the peace process and it looks like they might succeed.  

At home in Saudi Arabia, the regime has a pact of sorts with the country’s clerical establishment, which supports the monarchy and, in turn, the kingdom is the champion of Islamic orthodoxy and promotes the Wahhabi brand of Islam, regionally and globally, with generous funding of mosques, madrassas (religious schools) and in all sorts of other ways. And these Saudi-funded and promoted institutions have been the well-spring of militant ideology embodied in al-Qaeda and now IS, that is causing havoc, starting with the al Qaeda-linked 9/11 attacks in the US and now by IS militants in a number of countries. With no demonstrable popular support at home by way of periodic elections or any other way, the Saudi monarchy has sought to establish legitimacy by championing Islamic orthodoxy combined with the custodianship of Islamic faith’s holiest sites. And its strategic and economic ties with the US underwrote its security and continue to do so. Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil producer, and the US’s increasing dependence on oil imports from it during much of the last century, created a symbiotic relationship between the two countries that seemed to override other considerations.

But things are changing slowly, creating even greater nervousness in the kingdom. First, the eruption of the Arab Spring early in the decade created political turbulence in the region, starting with Tunisia and spreading on to Egypt and elsewhere in the region. Riyadh believed that its long-standing strategic relationship with the US gave it a determining role in Washington’s regional policy, as had generally been the case. But the popular character of the movement and its speed didn’t leave the US much choice but to follow the course being set by the unfolding events. Besides, the incoming Obama administration seemed open to new initiatives. Therefore, all the Saudi protestations with the US to save the Hosni Mubarak regime failed to goad the Obama administration into active intervention against the fully charged Arab Spring at the time. Mubarak fell and Saudi Arabia felt its tremors. If the US didn’t save Mubarak, a long term US ally, Saudi Arabia’s monarchy could be as expendable as well, if it came to that. For a regime without a demonstrable popular base at home, its ultimate protector, the US, wasn’t appearing as reliable as was expected.

Other developments in the region weren’t propitious either. The popular rebellion in Syria, for instance, provided an excellent opportunity to get rid of the Bashar al-Assad regime, regarded as an Iranian proxy in the largely Sunni Arab world, but it wasn’t going by the plan. Iran, considered a malevolent force that sought to destabilize the region by stirring up Shia Muslims in Arab countries, including the oil bearing eastern province of Saudi Arabia, was not contained. Indeed, the Arab Spring had stirred up Saudi Arabia’s Shia population leading to protests and demonstrations that were brutally suppressed. Iran was also considered behind the popular uprising in Bahrain, with its predominantly Shia population ruled over by a Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies sent their forces there to crush the rebellion. And now Saudi Arabia is bogged down in Yemen seeking to crush Houthi rebellion, said to be Iran-inspired, supported and aided, that had overthrown the country’s pro-Saudi Sunni regime. Even though Riyadh has US’ political support and military backing by way of weapons’ supplies, patrolling of the Gulf waters and advanced intelligence and surveillance, it is still not working to Riyadh’s satisfaction.  

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is still there. And that, to Riyadh’s exasperation, is largely because the US wavered in taking decisive action to remove him from power when it was the right time to do and Obama had promised to do. Obama had said that the US would intervene decisively if the Assad regime used chemical weapons against the rebels, as this would constitute his ‘red line’. And when Assad did use chemical weapons, the US wavered and found refuge in the Russian initiative to get rid of the regime’s chemical stocks, which Damascus agreed to surrender, thus staying in power. It wasn’t terribly reassuring for the Saudi regime that the US dithered when Riyadh depended on it to act decisively. In other words, the US and Saudi interests were starting to diverge in some ways.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

And when the US signed the nuclear deal with Iran, despite all Riyadh’s protestations, it looked like a serious breach of trust that only further reinforced Saudi paranoia. It seemed to be losing its centrality in the US scheme of things when it came to the Middle Eastern affairs. Washington seemed to be exploring ways of dealing within the region outside the box to give its policy some flexibility, however limited. In other words, Saudi Arabia was still an important element of its Middle Eastern policy but it seemed to be losing its veto power. And the Saudis have reacted badly to it, having never believed in the efficacy of diplomacy to deal with contentious regional issues, because that is indicative of weakness and vulnerability.

On surface they must show strength against their enemies at home and abroad. And that was unequivocally demonstrated with the execution of the prominent Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, for alleged terrorism offences. And this seemed to have been done without consulting the US as Washington was taken aback counseling both Iran, where anti-Saudi protesters vandalized Saudi embassy in the midst of strong protests, and Saudi Arabia to exercise restraint. Riyadh seemed keen to demonstrate its strength and resolve to crush any kind of dissidence as terrorism. And at the same time, this sounded like the dangerous tantrums of a child used to having its own way. The US thus would have a serious problem diversifying its Middle East policy, with Riyadh ready to act as a spoiler. It would be interesting to see how the US would handle Saudi Arabia’s erratic behavior.