A success, but for both Iraqis and Americans the struggle is far from over
Jun 8th 2006
THE killing this week of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, may look like a stunning reverse for the world jihad against America, not only in Iraq but in the wider Middle East and beyond. From lowly beginnings as a petty thug in Jordan, this man had by the application of extreme violence made himself a hero to jihadists around the world. Though swearing fealty to Osama bin Laden, he had indeed started to become his rival. While Mr bin Laden stayed in hiding, probably somewhere in Pakistan, resting on his laurels from Afghanistan and September 11th, Mr Zarqawi led the Iraqi jihad in person. Lately, he had begun to direct attacks farther afield. He was the mastermind of the triple bomb attacks on Jordan's capital, Amman, last November, in which nearly 60 people died. More recently, Israel claimed to detect his hand in terrorist attacks on its borders. In Iraq itself he was responsible for many thousands of deaths (see article)*.
Killing a man is easy
Despite all this, what Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, called the “termination” of Mr Zarqawi will not terminate the insurgency in Iraq. Such rebellions benefit from having charismatic leaders, and Mr Zarqawi was a godlike emir to his bloodthirsty followers. But they can also flourish without them. Remember, for example, the false hopes raised at the end of 2003, when Saddam Hussein was at last plucked by American soldiers from his hiding hole in the outback. This humiliation, many believed, would show Iraqis that the old order had passed and that they had now to make way for the new. It did not happen. Since 2003 the insurgency has grown more violent, more widespread and more complex. The safest bet this week is that, even without Mr Zarqawi, the violence will go on until the rage that nourishes it has been uprooted.
What are the sources of that rage? They are, alas, multiple. What Mr Zarqawi represented was the pure, jihadist end of the spectrum of hate. In his world view, and that of al-Qaeda, a global war is under way between Islam and the unbelievers—the latter led by America but encompassing also the many Muslim regimes that refused to follow the righteous path and were therefore stooges and apostates. This jihadist banner has attracted volunteers to Iraq from all corners of the Muslim world, just like the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It goes without saying that the zealots who hold such beliefs are not going to be deflected from a sacred cause by the martyring of a single leader. Their operations might be disrupted, but their struggle will continue.
The jihadist strain is, moreover, only part—and almost certainly the smaller part—of the virus of violence that has engulfed Iraq since the American-led invasion. Though it has suited the United States to talk up the role of foreigners in perpetrating the hundreds of suicide-bombings, the plain fact is that most of the insurgents are homegrown. Some may subscribe to some of the views of al-Qaeda, but most have taken up arms for other reasons. These range from a simple nationalist, Arabist outrage at the spectacle of foreign, infidel occupation to a deep fear, especially among Iraq's formerly dominant Sunni Arab minority, of what the future holds.
For many of these Sunni Arabs, the bestowal of democracy is not the boon George Bush says it is. Majority rule, as the recent election demonstrated, looks to them horribly like a formula only for the loss of former privileges and the transfer of power from their own group to Iraq's majority Shias. It does not help that a growing number of Sunnis have come to swallow the al-Qaeda message that Shias are apostates—and that Iraq is in the process of being betrayed to Iran, its non-Arab Shia neighbour and traditional enemy. Violence, moreover, has a habit of feeding itself: since the destruction of a Shia shrine in February, probably by Mr Zarqawi's men, Iraq's Shias have abandoned their former restraint and started to hit back. Ethnic killings have become commonplace on both sides, giving a new spin to a cycle of violence that will not be interrupted by the elimination of Mr Zarqawi.
There is, however, one big way in which this week's success might be able to nudge Iraq in a better direction. It can be used to dispel the impression of military and political impotence that has dogged Iraq's elected government. This process had already got under way in recent weeks after the appointment of Mr Maliki as prime minister. He has acted more decisively than his predecessor, breaking a log-jam in parliament and forming a coalition that includes Sunni parties. On a visit to the fractious south, he scolded Shia militia leaders for their defiance of central authority. By denouncing strongly American excesses in Iraq—such as the alleged massacre at Haditha—and promising an early handover of most provinces to Iraqi military control, he has made it harder for the insurgents to paint him as a stooge of the occupiers. Soon after Mr Zarqawi was killed, Mr Maliki filled the previously vacant posts at the interior ministry and ministry of defence. The claim that Iraq's own security forces were involved in hunting down Mr Zarqawi will add to the government's credibility. Most ordinary Iraqis crave nothing more than law and order.
The mission is still not accomplished
Americans and Iraqis long for a bold stroke that will end Iraq's suffering. It is a vain hope. Neither the killing of Mr Zarqawi nor any breakthrough on the political front will stop the insurgency and the fratricidal murders in their tracks. The painful process already under way—gathering consensus around the new government, spreading its writ, training loyal policemen and reliable soldiers—is the only way ahead. Iraq has no experience of proper democracy and long experience of political violence. Turning it around will take years and cost many more lives. Americans in particular may be prone to impatience. But impatience in the war against Islamist extremism would be folly. Thanks in part to Mr Bush's impatience and neglect, jihadists are recovering ground in both Afghanistan and Somalia (see article** and article***). It is good that a murderer as brutal as Mr Zarqawi has been killed. But it is not yet victory either in Iraq or in the broader struggle against terrorism
*The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Will it make a difference?
The killing of Iraq's bloodiest terrorist leader will boost the new government of Nuri al-Maliki—but not necessarily for long
ON JUNE 7th, American troops killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-proclaimed boss of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in an airstrike near the central town of Baquba. Though details of the killing were still hazy, early reports suggested that Mr Zarqawi was holed up in an obscure hut, hidden by palm-trees; and that his remains were identified by sight and by finger-prints. Hazy, too, is the effect this will have on the insurgency and sectarian war boiling in Iraq. Mr Zarqawi's death will not end the terrible violence, nor perhaps will it even reduce it by much. Though an important cheerleader for Islamist militants in Iraq, and everywhere, Mr Zarqawi probably orchestrated only a small portion of the war. But this was, by any measure, America's single biggest scalp in nearly five years of fighting Islamist terror.
With a $25m bounty on his head, Mr Zarqawi was identified by America as its main enemy in Iraq shortly after it invaded the country three years ago. Most analysts felt this exaggerated his importance: the insurgency from the start was more indigenous and more popular than the Americans admitted. But, perhaps partly as a result of the publicity he received, Mr Zarqawi succeeded in bringing the al-Qaeda brand to Iraq, making the insurgents a source of inspiration elsewhere. He was behind the only efforts yet to export the violence in Iraq around its region. In November last year, suicide-bombers attacked three hotels in Jordan, Mr Zarqawi's homeland, on his instructions, killing some 60 people. More recently, he had planned attacks on Eilat, Israel's Red Sea port and resort. If his death does not much disrupt the insurgents in Iraq, who are organised in many small groups responsible for their own recruiting, supplies and planning, it will dismay their sympathisers elsewhere.
One reason Mr Zarqawi was successful in Iraq was because he started early. He moved there two years before America invaded, to join a local Islamist group, al-Ansar al-Islam, in order to plot the overthrow of Jordan's government next door. His previous history was not unlike many current jihadists. A middle-class drifter, he found meaning in the Islamist guerrilla war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, to drive out the Soviet Union. But, unlike Osama bin Laden, Mr Zarqawi was a very peripheral figure in that war. He arrived in Afghanistan in 1990, after the Russians had withdrawn, and founded a training camp there to prepare guerrillas for a similar struggle in Jordan. Returning home, he was arrested for trying to overthrow the monarchy and jailed for seven years, after which he made his break for Iraq.
Mr Zarqawi's signature violence has been the kidnapping and beheading of Westerners in Iraq. He is believed personally to have sliced off the head of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman killed in 2004. As his fame grew, he made several well-publicised contacts with Mr bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are believed to be hiding in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border. In a letter intercepted by the Americans last year, Mr Zarqawi pledged fealty to Mr bin Laden. He also renamed his movement “al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers”, or al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so capitalised on its global brand.
What contribution he made to the insurgency is unclear: America's understanding of it has often been muddled. But in internet postings and in a couple of recent videos he sold himself as a well-organised enemy of Arab governments, America and Israel. He was helpful, at least, in recruiting several hundred young Muslims into Iraq, mostly through Syria, to become suicide-attackers. At first their targets were American and Iraqi troops. But over the past year or so the blasts have mostly been directed at Iraqi civilians, especially those of the Shia majority, in an effort to stoke a civil war.
This effort has been hideously and dazzlingly successful. Most of the violence in Iraq is now sectarian; and most Sunni insurgent groups are Islamist. Mr Zarqawi's death will not deter them; indeed, having achieved martyrdom, the supposed ambition of all jihadist militants, he may have inspired them more by his death. But it may also be a blow to those in Iraq, especially the small minority of foreign militants, intent on exporting terror around the region and the world. It may also boost the fledgling government of Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's new prime minister, which has made tentative efforts to reach out to Sunnis and draw them back from the Islamist margins.
It is certainly a great and painfully rare victory for American intelligence efforts in Iraq; indeed, the Jordanians have been quick to claim some of the credit for tracking Mr Zarqawi down. In any event, Mr Maliki, who this week at last managed to appoint new ministers of interior and defence, the latter a Sunni Arab, was understandably jubilant.
**Afghanistan
The Taliban resurgent
Anxious times for the under-manned Western forces
ACROSS a wide swathe of southern and south-eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have never looked stronger since they were driven from power by an American-backed alliance in November 2001. And the government of President Hamid Karzai has never looked weaker, controlling only the towns and, during daylight hours, the main roads. The Taliban are not in a position to unseat the government and win the war; not while Western troops remain. Last February, however, General Michael Maples, director of America's Defence Intelligence Agency, told Congress that the Taliban insurgency is growing and presents a greater threat to the Afghan central government's authority than at any point since America's victory.
Contributing to the deep unease about security, and even more insidious, is the existence of a criminal mafia largely funded by the multi-billion dollar drugs trade, whose activities are made easy by endemic corruption. The fact that in many cases the drugs barons hold senior public office discredits the government and its international backers.
“All the promises of the Karzai government and the foreigners are rubbish,” says Lal Hawas, 36, a chemist in the town of Girishk, in Helmand, one of the most wretched of Afghanistan's southern provinces. “In the Taliban time a robber who was arrested would be left hanged for a week in the city as an example. Now if a robber is arrested, he pays a bribe or he has a cousin in the police and he is released.” Another shopkeeper in Girishk, who, like many in the town bazaar, says he supports the Taliban, asks how anything can improve “while the warlords and gunmen in power are supported by the foreigners.”
Belatedly, the Western countries that have committed themselves to saving Afghanistan from further collapse are girding themselves for a new start in the south under the auspices of NATO, which next month will take on responsibility for the four southern provinces. NATO's supreme commander in Europe, General James Jones, has called this the most important mission the alliance has ever undertaken. Some see it as a mission that will either carve out a new post-cold war role for the organisation or, if the alliance stumbles, underline its lack of purpose. So it is alarming that the whole Afghan operation has a make-do-and-mend feel to it.
Under the new plan, the command structure for all foreign forces in Afghanistan, including America's, will be unified, probably early next year, under a NATO headquarters in Kabul. That unity of command will mark a welcome change. At present, there are two Western forces: the International Security Assistance Force, run by NATO, and the American-led coalition, whose job is mainly confined to offensive operations in the south and south-east. But even when they are under one command, the different components will still have different rules of engagement and different operational objectives. The Americans will still hunt the Taliban and al-Qaeda, while the British, the largest part of the new southern force, will focus on helping Afghan forces with security and long-term development.
Another problem plaguing Afghanistan is perennial: there are not enough boots on the ground. In the autumn, the Americans plan to withdraw 3,000 troops. They, it is true, are due to be replaced by larger numbers from other Western countries, including Canada, Australia, Britain, Romania and Denmark. But the British contingent in Helmand province will still be tiny. It consists of only 800 fighting infantrymen in an area 250 miles (400km) by 250 miles, a battalion fewer than many thought the bare minimum. British commanders say they have enough men to make a difference, adding that support troops, artillerymen, even cooks and clerks, can be pressed into the infantry role if need be. But it looks far from ideal.
General David Richards, the (British) overall commander of the NATO force, insists that fighting troop numbers in the south will eventually more than double. But even then, the planned total of 12 companies or approximately 2,400 fighting soldiers looks small given the vast area they must cover. And despite the big increase in numbers the force is receiving no additional transport helicopters, which will compel it to make greater use of the dangerous roads and, inevitably, expose it to roadside bombs and ambushes.
NATO's plan is to assert control of territory and hold it for as long as it takes to saturate the area with “quick impact” rebuilding projects, build up and hand over to local Afghan security forces, and win the trust of the people. But locals are unlikely to co-operate eagerly with the foreigners until they are sure that they are not going to be abandoned to a vengeful Taliban. Winning their confidence and raising reliable Afghan forces could take years, if the current venality of the police is anything to go by. The Afghan National Army is generally a better prospect, but has morale problems of its own. One in four men of the first unit sent to Helmand to give the British operation an “Afghan face” deserted on the way.
Still, there are some signs that local government is getting better. The commander of forces in the south, a Canadian general, David Fraser, is fulsome in his praise for the efforts of several newly appointed provincial governors. They are plainly a more honest bunch than their dreadful predecessors. In Zabul, Governor Delbar Arman is winning particular approval for defying tribal pressures and sacking many corrupt officials. Across the country, provincial and district police chiefs are being made to sit exams. A large number of doubtful characters can expect to get their marching orders. But finding enough honest replacements to do a dangerous and underpaid job will be hard.
***Somalia
Guess who's running it now
Might a victory for Somalia's assorted Islamists offer some hope for its people?
THE speed with which Islamist militias this week at last seized control of Mogadishu, Somalia's ravaged capital, was telling. Gunmen loyal to secular warlords fled without much of a fight, losing a battle not just of territory but also, it seems, of hearts and minds. The Islamists have tightened their grip on Balcad, a strategic town 30km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu, and were advancing on Jowhar, one of the warlords' last redoubts, some 90km north of the capital. Meanwhile, Somalia's impotent and fractured transitional government, recognised by most of the rest of the world but with little sway over Somalia, is nervously camped out in the dusty town of Baidoa, some 250km to the north-west
“The big battle for Mogadishu is over,” says a seasoned Somalia-watcher based in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the main hub of exiles and diplomats trying to make sense of the latest chaotic events. “But the battle for the rest of Somalia is just beginning.” The question uppermost in such minds is whether Somalia—or at least large swathes of it—will now become a training ground and haven for al-Qaeda types, as some American officials fear, or whether, by contrast, a comprehensive victory may offer a chance of stability, whoever the victors are and however authoritarian they may be.
At first glance, the Islamist win is a big bonus for al-Qaeda. Islamists already enjoy support across Somalia's intricate but crucial clan lines. Many children in Mogadishu are already being educated in Islamist schools, with the usual infusion of bellicose propaganda. Islamist militias, under the control of a Union of Islamic Courts, have a unity of purpose reminiscent of Afghanistan's Taliban, which many Afghans at first welcomed in the hope that ruthless authority was better than deadly chaos; there are signs that Somalis in Mogadishu may, at any rate at first, take a similar view. But the new Islamist courts are unbending in their application of sharia law. A recent court verdict allowed a boy to stab his father's murderer to death, in head and chest, in front of a large, cheering crowd.
By contrast, Mogadishu's secular warlords look busted. They formed a self-proclaimed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism earlier this year, with the aim of turning back the Islamists' influence and catching one or two al-Qaeda suspects who might have been hiding in Mogadishu. That was enough to win them the backing of the CIA, which, say several sources, funnelled money to them, with disastrous results. “Everyone was aghast at what the Americans were doing,” says a European diplomat. Some in the State Department and the CIA privately bemoan what they see as both the half-heartedness of the operation and a failure to foresee its messy results. An American diplomat in Nairobi responsible for overseeing Somali politics was removed from his post for speaking out. Some of his dissenting reports did not, apparently, reach Washington.
One result is that the United States is more unpopular than ever in Mogadishu. American flags are being burned even in quieter parts of the city; anti-American rhetoric is finding a wider audience. Memories have been rekindled of 1993, when 18 American peacekeepers were killed in Mogadishu after the downing of two helicopters and several hundred Somalis were killed, mostly by the Americans, during the rescue attempt.
America has also been widely blamed, both inside Somalia and among exile groups and diplomats in nearby countries, for egging on the warlords who have been accused of sparking the gun battles that have flared on and off in northern Mogadishu for the past month. Some 350 fighters and civilians have been killed, and at least 2,000 wounded. One of the two hospitals in Mogadishu being run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is struggling to bring in medical supplies, has been taken over by a warlord's militia.
There is some hope, however, that a comprehensive victory of the Islamists in the south may at least restore order and perhaps give Somalis a sustained period of respite for the first time since General Siad Barre's Soviet-backed regime collapsed in 1991 after 30 years in power. If food, medicine and cash can now be brought in, Somalis may at last be able to start rebuilding their devastated capital.
Much depends on how the Islamists behave and how they are received, outside Somalia and within. So far, they have apparently been acting with restraint, promising to restore law and order, limiting the number of checkpoints and reopening the port. Reports from the capital say that many of its people, even secular-minded ones, reckon the Islamists look less brutal and greedy than the warlords they have displaced. And they are keenly trying to distance themselves from al-Qaeda. In a letter sent this week to embassies in Nairobi, they strongly deny harbouring terrorists, disavow terrorism, and invite diplomats to come and see for themselves.
They have also hinted at a willingness to negotiate with the feeble transitional government in Baidoa, perhaps offering it three or four cabinet posts, including those previously held by the secular warlords sacked for their part in the recent fighting in Mogadishu. As part of such an accommodation, the Islamists would probably have to agree not to impose sharia law on Somalia, at any rate under a transitional government of national unity. Nobody, for the moment, seems to be mentioning elections or democracy.
If a modicum of peace did break out, Somalia would still be a patchwork state—but it might become a more or less functioning one. The recent violence, ending in victory for the Islamists, has been concentrated on Mogadishu, in the country's southern third. Much of the rest of Somalia, however, has been steadier. To the north, the self-proclaimed breakaway state of Somaliland (once British Somaliland, the rest of Somalia being run by Italy until its defeat in the second world war) has been fairly well governed. It has a chance of seceding, especially if it drops its claim to a chunk of Somalia's autonomous north-eastern bit, known as Puntland, which may have oil. Several towns elsewhere, such as Kismayu in the south, have been pretty well self-governing. It is not clear whether the Islamists would ever accept Somaliland's secession; perhaps not.
If their initial restraint is not reciprocated, the Islamists could yet turn radical. Whatever the new rulers say, international terrorists may seek a haven in their domain. Jihadist terrorists of Somali origin have been active round the world, including Britain; two suspects arrested last week in Canada were born in Somalia (see article). And the Americans may try to revive the secular warlords, using Ethiopia as a conduit for cash and guns.
The Islamists may also quarrel among themselves. Somali clan rivalries have a habit of pulling Somalia's governments apart, however unifying the call of Islam. There may also be rows over how to deal with the lucrative trade in qat, a narcotic leaf that many Somalis chew and which is flown into Mogadishu daily from Kenya and Ethiopia, perhaps accounting for as much as half the city's cash economy.
The European Union, with Italy and Britain, as former colonial powers, to the fore, will probably try to shore up the transitional government in Baidoa while coming to terms with the Islamists in Mogadishu. On the whole, they think America would be wise to abandon the warlords and spend cash building up the Somali economy wherever there is a bit of order. The Somalis also want the Americans to press Saudi Arabia to lift its ban on direct imports of Somali livestock. Food and medicine is even more badly needed to fend off the drought afflicting the Horn of Africa. Some UN agencies say that 10,000 southern Somalis a month may otherwise die. The fighting in Mogadishu has raised prices of basic food and fuel by 30%.
Until now, insecurity has made it hard to provide any aid by land or sea. Foreign aid workers have been killed or kidnapped. Extortion has been rife. The UN has received only $135m of the $326m it says Somalia needs merely to keep its people alive. No one knows whether an Islamist government running the south will make the job easier. With luck, it might
Jun 8th 2006
THE killing this week of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, may look like a stunning reverse for the world jihad against America, not only in Iraq but in the wider Middle East and beyond. From lowly beginnings as a petty thug in Jordan, this man had by the application of extreme violence made himself a hero to jihadists around the world. Though swearing fealty to Osama bin Laden, he had indeed started to become his rival. While Mr bin Laden stayed in hiding, probably somewhere in Pakistan, resting on his laurels from Afghanistan and September 11th, Mr Zarqawi led the Iraqi jihad in person. Lately, he had begun to direct attacks farther afield. He was the mastermind of the triple bomb attacks on Jordan's capital, Amman, last November, in which nearly 60 people died. More recently, Israel claimed to detect his hand in terrorist attacks on its borders. In Iraq itself he was responsible for many thousands of deaths (see article)*.
Killing a man is easy
Despite all this, what Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, called the “termination” of Mr Zarqawi will not terminate the insurgency in Iraq. Such rebellions benefit from having charismatic leaders, and Mr Zarqawi was a godlike emir to his bloodthirsty followers. But they can also flourish without them. Remember, for example, the false hopes raised at the end of 2003, when Saddam Hussein was at last plucked by American soldiers from his hiding hole in the outback. This humiliation, many believed, would show Iraqis that the old order had passed and that they had now to make way for the new. It did not happen. Since 2003 the insurgency has grown more violent, more widespread and more complex. The safest bet this week is that, even without Mr Zarqawi, the violence will go on until the rage that nourishes it has been uprooted.
What are the sources of that rage? They are, alas, multiple. What Mr Zarqawi represented was the pure, jihadist end of the spectrum of hate. In his world view, and that of al-Qaeda, a global war is under way between Islam and the unbelievers—the latter led by America but encompassing also the many Muslim regimes that refused to follow the righteous path and were therefore stooges and apostates. This jihadist banner has attracted volunteers to Iraq from all corners of the Muslim world, just like the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It goes without saying that the zealots who hold such beliefs are not going to be deflected from a sacred cause by the martyring of a single leader. Their operations might be disrupted, but their struggle will continue.
The jihadist strain is, moreover, only part—and almost certainly the smaller part—of the virus of violence that has engulfed Iraq since the American-led invasion. Though it has suited the United States to talk up the role of foreigners in perpetrating the hundreds of suicide-bombings, the plain fact is that most of the insurgents are homegrown. Some may subscribe to some of the views of al-Qaeda, but most have taken up arms for other reasons. These range from a simple nationalist, Arabist outrage at the spectacle of foreign, infidel occupation to a deep fear, especially among Iraq's formerly dominant Sunni Arab minority, of what the future holds.
For many of these Sunni Arabs, the bestowal of democracy is not the boon George Bush says it is. Majority rule, as the recent election demonstrated, looks to them horribly like a formula only for the loss of former privileges and the transfer of power from their own group to Iraq's majority Shias. It does not help that a growing number of Sunnis have come to swallow the al-Qaeda message that Shias are apostates—and that Iraq is in the process of being betrayed to Iran, its non-Arab Shia neighbour and traditional enemy. Violence, moreover, has a habit of feeding itself: since the destruction of a Shia shrine in February, probably by Mr Zarqawi's men, Iraq's Shias have abandoned their former restraint and started to hit back. Ethnic killings have become commonplace on both sides, giving a new spin to a cycle of violence that will not be interrupted by the elimination of Mr Zarqawi.
There is, however, one big way in which this week's success might be able to nudge Iraq in a better direction. It can be used to dispel the impression of military and political impotence that has dogged Iraq's elected government. This process had already got under way in recent weeks after the appointment of Mr Maliki as prime minister. He has acted more decisively than his predecessor, breaking a log-jam in parliament and forming a coalition that includes Sunni parties. On a visit to the fractious south, he scolded Shia militia leaders for their defiance of central authority. By denouncing strongly American excesses in Iraq—such as the alleged massacre at Haditha—and promising an early handover of most provinces to Iraqi military control, he has made it harder for the insurgents to paint him as a stooge of the occupiers. Soon after Mr Zarqawi was killed, Mr Maliki filled the previously vacant posts at the interior ministry and ministry of defence. The claim that Iraq's own security forces were involved in hunting down Mr Zarqawi will add to the government's credibility. Most ordinary Iraqis crave nothing more than law and order.
The mission is still not accomplished
Americans and Iraqis long for a bold stroke that will end Iraq's suffering. It is a vain hope. Neither the killing of Mr Zarqawi nor any breakthrough on the political front will stop the insurgency and the fratricidal murders in their tracks. The painful process already under way—gathering consensus around the new government, spreading its writ, training loyal policemen and reliable soldiers—is the only way ahead. Iraq has no experience of proper democracy and long experience of political violence. Turning it around will take years and cost many more lives. Americans in particular may be prone to impatience. But impatience in the war against Islamist extremism would be folly. Thanks in part to Mr Bush's impatience and neglect, jihadists are recovering ground in both Afghanistan and Somalia (see article** and article***). It is good that a murderer as brutal as Mr Zarqawi has been killed. But it is not yet victory either in Iraq or in the broader struggle against terrorism
*The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Will it make a difference?
The killing of Iraq's bloodiest terrorist leader will boost the new government of Nuri al-Maliki—but not necessarily for long
ON JUNE 7th, American troops killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the self-proclaimed boss of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in an airstrike near the central town of Baquba. Though details of the killing were still hazy, early reports suggested that Mr Zarqawi was holed up in an obscure hut, hidden by palm-trees; and that his remains were identified by sight and by finger-prints. Hazy, too, is the effect this will have on the insurgency and sectarian war boiling in Iraq. Mr Zarqawi's death will not end the terrible violence, nor perhaps will it even reduce it by much. Though an important cheerleader for Islamist militants in Iraq, and everywhere, Mr Zarqawi probably orchestrated only a small portion of the war. But this was, by any measure, America's single biggest scalp in nearly five years of fighting Islamist terror.
With a $25m bounty on his head, Mr Zarqawi was identified by America as its main enemy in Iraq shortly after it invaded the country three years ago. Most analysts felt this exaggerated his importance: the insurgency from the start was more indigenous and more popular than the Americans admitted. But, perhaps partly as a result of the publicity he received, Mr Zarqawi succeeded in bringing the al-Qaeda brand to Iraq, making the insurgents a source of inspiration elsewhere. He was behind the only efforts yet to export the violence in Iraq around its region. In November last year, suicide-bombers attacked three hotels in Jordan, Mr Zarqawi's homeland, on his instructions, killing some 60 people. More recently, he had planned attacks on Eilat, Israel's Red Sea port and resort. If his death does not much disrupt the insurgents in Iraq, who are organised in many small groups responsible for their own recruiting, supplies and planning, it will dismay their sympathisers elsewhere.
One reason Mr Zarqawi was successful in Iraq was because he started early. He moved there two years before America invaded, to join a local Islamist group, al-Ansar al-Islam, in order to plot the overthrow of Jordan's government next door. His previous history was not unlike many current jihadists. A middle-class drifter, he found meaning in the Islamist guerrilla war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, to drive out the Soviet Union. But, unlike Osama bin Laden, Mr Zarqawi was a very peripheral figure in that war. He arrived in Afghanistan in 1990, after the Russians had withdrawn, and founded a training camp there to prepare guerrillas for a similar struggle in Jordan. Returning home, he was arrested for trying to overthrow the monarchy and jailed for seven years, after which he made his break for Iraq.
Mr Zarqawi's signature violence has been the kidnapping and beheading of Westerners in Iraq. He is believed personally to have sliced off the head of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman killed in 2004. As his fame grew, he made several well-publicised contacts with Mr bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are believed to be hiding in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border. In a letter intercepted by the Americans last year, Mr Zarqawi pledged fealty to Mr bin Laden. He also renamed his movement “al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers”, or al-Qaeda in Iraq, and so capitalised on its global brand.
What contribution he made to the insurgency is unclear: America's understanding of it has often been muddled. But in internet postings and in a couple of recent videos he sold himself as a well-organised enemy of Arab governments, America and Israel. He was helpful, at least, in recruiting several hundred young Muslims into Iraq, mostly through Syria, to become suicide-attackers. At first their targets were American and Iraqi troops. But over the past year or so the blasts have mostly been directed at Iraqi civilians, especially those of the Shia majority, in an effort to stoke a civil war.
This effort has been hideously and dazzlingly successful. Most of the violence in Iraq is now sectarian; and most Sunni insurgent groups are Islamist. Mr Zarqawi's death will not deter them; indeed, having achieved martyrdom, the supposed ambition of all jihadist militants, he may have inspired them more by his death. But it may also be a blow to those in Iraq, especially the small minority of foreign militants, intent on exporting terror around the region and the world. It may also boost the fledgling government of Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's new prime minister, which has made tentative efforts to reach out to Sunnis and draw them back from the Islamist margins.
It is certainly a great and painfully rare victory for American intelligence efforts in Iraq; indeed, the Jordanians have been quick to claim some of the credit for tracking Mr Zarqawi down. In any event, Mr Maliki, who this week at last managed to appoint new ministers of interior and defence, the latter a Sunni Arab, was understandably jubilant.
**Afghanistan
The Taliban resurgent
Anxious times for the under-manned Western forces
ACROSS a wide swathe of southern and south-eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have never looked stronger since they were driven from power by an American-backed alliance in November 2001. And the government of President Hamid Karzai has never looked weaker, controlling only the towns and, during daylight hours, the main roads. The Taliban are not in a position to unseat the government and win the war; not while Western troops remain. Last February, however, General Michael Maples, director of America's Defence Intelligence Agency, told Congress that the Taliban insurgency is growing and presents a greater threat to the Afghan central government's authority than at any point since America's victory.
Contributing to the deep unease about security, and even more insidious, is the existence of a criminal mafia largely funded by the multi-billion dollar drugs trade, whose activities are made easy by endemic corruption. The fact that in many cases the drugs barons hold senior public office discredits the government and its international backers.
“All the promises of the Karzai government and the foreigners are rubbish,” says Lal Hawas, 36, a chemist in the town of Girishk, in Helmand, one of the most wretched of Afghanistan's southern provinces. “In the Taliban time a robber who was arrested would be left hanged for a week in the city as an example. Now if a robber is arrested, he pays a bribe or he has a cousin in the police and he is released.” Another shopkeeper in Girishk, who, like many in the town bazaar, says he supports the Taliban, asks how anything can improve “while the warlords and gunmen in power are supported by the foreigners.”
Belatedly, the Western countries that have committed themselves to saving Afghanistan from further collapse are girding themselves for a new start in the south under the auspices of NATO, which next month will take on responsibility for the four southern provinces. NATO's supreme commander in Europe, General James Jones, has called this the most important mission the alliance has ever undertaken. Some see it as a mission that will either carve out a new post-cold war role for the organisation or, if the alliance stumbles, underline its lack of purpose. So it is alarming that the whole Afghan operation has a make-do-and-mend feel to it.
Under the new plan, the command structure for all foreign forces in Afghanistan, including America's, will be unified, probably early next year, under a NATO headquarters in Kabul. That unity of command will mark a welcome change. At present, there are two Western forces: the International Security Assistance Force, run by NATO, and the American-led coalition, whose job is mainly confined to offensive operations in the south and south-east. But even when they are under one command, the different components will still have different rules of engagement and different operational objectives. The Americans will still hunt the Taliban and al-Qaeda, while the British, the largest part of the new southern force, will focus on helping Afghan forces with security and long-term development.
Another problem plaguing Afghanistan is perennial: there are not enough boots on the ground. In the autumn, the Americans plan to withdraw 3,000 troops. They, it is true, are due to be replaced by larger numbers from other Western countries, including Canada, Australia, Britain, Romania and Denmark. But the British contingent in Helmand province will still be tiny. It consists of only 800 fighting infantrymen in an area 250 miles (400km) by 250 miles, a battalion fewer than many thought the bare minimum. British commanders say they have enough men to make a difference, adding that support troops, artillerymen, even cooks and clerks, can be pressed into the infantry role if need be. But it looks far from ideal.
General David Richards, the (British) overall commander of the NATO force, insists that fighting troop numbers in the south will eventually more than double. But even then, the planned total of 12 companies or approximately 2,400 fighting soldiers looks small given the vast area they must cover. And despite the big increase in numbers the force is receiving no additional transport helicopters, which will compel it to make greater use of the dangerous roads and, inevitably, expose it to roadside bombs and ambushes.
NATO's plan is to assert control of territory and hold it for as long as it takes to saturate the area with “quick impact” rebuilding projects, build up and hand over to local Afghan security forces, and win the trust of the people. But locals are unlikely to co-operate eagerly with the foreigners until they are sure that they are not going to be abandoned to a vengeful Taliban. Winning their confidence and raising reliable Afghan forces could take years, if the current venality of the police is anything to go by. The Afghan National Army is generally a better prospect, but has morale problems of its own. One in four men of the first unit sent to Helmand to give the British operation an “Afghan face” deserted on the way.
Still, there are some signs that local government is getting better. The commander of forces in the south, a Canadian general, David Fraser, is fulsome in his praise for the efforts of several newly appointed provincial governors. They are plainly a more honest bunch than their dreadful predecessors. In Zabul, Governor Delbar Arman is winning particular approval for defying tribal pressures and sacking many corrupt officials. Across the country, provincial and district police chiefs are being made to sit exams. A large number of doubtful characters can expect to get their marching orders. But finding enough honest replacements to do a dangerous and underpaid job will be hard.
***Somalia
Guess who's running it now
Might a victory for Somalia's assorted Islamists offer some hope for its people?
THE speed with which Islamist militias this week at last seized control of Mogadishu, Somalia's ravaged capital, was telling. Gunmen loyal to secular warlords fled without much of a fight, losing a battle not just of territory but also, it seems, of hearts and minds. The Islamists have tightened their grip on Balcad, a strategic town 30km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu, and were advancing on Jowhar, one of the warlords' last redoubts, some 90km north of the capital. Meanwhile, Somalia's impotent and fractured transitional government, recognised by most of the rest of the world but with little sway over Somalia, is nervously camped out in the dusty town of Baidoa, some 250km to the north-west
“The big battle for Mogadishu is over,” says a seasoned Somalia-watcher based in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the main hub of exiles and diplomats trying to make sense of the latest chaotic events. “But the battle for the rest of Somalia is just beginning.” The question uppermost in such minds is whether Somalia—or at least large swathes of it—will now become a training ground and haven for al-Qaeda types, as some American officials fear, or whether, by contrast, a comprehensive victory may offer a chance of stability, whoever the victors are and however authoritarian they may be.
At first glance, the Islamist win is a big bonus for al-Qaeda. Islamists already enjoy support across Somalia's intricate but crucial clan lines. Many children in Mogadishu are already being educated in Islamist schools, with the usual infusion of bellicose propaganda. Islamist militias, under the control of a Union of Islamic Courts, have a unity of purpose reminiscent of Afghanistan's Taliban, which many Afghans at first welcomed in the hope that ruthless authority was better than deadly chaos; there are signs that Somalis in Mogadishu may, at any rate at first, take a similar view. But the new Islamist courts are unbending in their application of sharia law. A recent court verdict allowed a boy to stab his father's murderer to death, in head and chest, in front of a large, cheering crowd.
By contrast, Mogadishu's secular warlords look busted. They formed a self-proclaimed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism earlier this year, with the aim of turning back the Islamists' influence and catching one or two al-Qaeda suspects who might have been hiding in Mogadishu. That was enough to win them the backing of the CIA, which, say several sources, funnelled money to them, with disastrous results. “Everyone was aghast at what the Americans were doing,” says a European diplomat. Some in the State Department and the CIA privately bemoan what they see as both the half-heartedness of the operation and a failure to foresee its messy results. An American diplomat in Nairobi responsible for overseeing Somali politics was removed from his post for speaking out. Some of his dissenting reports did not, apparently, reach Washington.
One result is that the United States is more unpopular than ever in Mogadishu. American flags are being burned even in quieter parts of the city; anti-American rhetoric is finding a wider audience. Memories have been rekindled of 1993, when 18 American peacekeepers were killed in Mogadishu after the downing of two helicopters and several hundred Somalis were killed, mostly by the Americans, during the rescue attempt.
America has also been widely blamed, both inside Somalia and among exile groups and diplomats in nearby countries, for egging on the warlords who have been accused of sparking the gun battles that have flared on and off in northern Mogadishu for the past month. Some 350 fighters and civilians have been killed, and at least 2,000 wounded. One of the two hospitals in Mogadishu being run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is struggling to bring in medical supplies, has been taken over by a warlord's militia.
There is some hope, however, that a comprehensive victory of the Islamists in the south may at least restore order and perhaps give Somalis a sustained period of respite for the first time since General Siad Barre's Soviet-backed regime collapsed in 1991 after 30 years in power. If food, medicine and cash can now be brought in, Somalis may at last be able to start rebuilding their devastated capital.
Much depends on how the Islamists behave and how they are received, outside Somalia and within. So far, they have apparently been acting with restraint, promising to restore law and order, limiting the number of checkpoints and reopening the port. Reports from the capital say that many of its people, even secular-minded ones, reckon the Islamists look less brutal and greedy than the warlords they have displaced. And they are keenly trying to distance themselves from al-Qaeda. In a letter sent this week to embassies in Nairobi, they strongly deny harbouring terrorists, disavow terrorism, and invite diplomats to come and see for themselves.
They have also hinted at a willingness to negotiate with the feeble transitional government in Baidoa, perhaps offering it three or four cabinet posts, including those previously held by the secular warlords sacked for their part in the recent fighting in Mogadishu. As part of such an accommodation, the Islamists would probably have to agree not to impose sharia law on Somalia, at any rate under a transitional government of national unity. Nobody, for the moment, seems to be mentioning elections or democracy.
If a modicum of peace did break out, Somalia would still be a patchwork state—but it might become a more or less functioning one. The recent violence, ending in victory for the Islamists, has been concentrated on Mogadishu, in the country's southern third. Much of the rest of Somalia, however, has been steadier. To the north, the self-proclaimed breakaway state of Somaliland (once British Somaliland, the rest of Somalia being run by Italy until its defeat in the second world war) has been fairly well governed. It has a chance of seceding, especially if it drops its claim to a chunk of Somalia's autonomous north-eastern bit, known as Puntland, which may have oil. Several towns elsewhere, such as Kismayu in the south, have been pretty well self-governing. It is not clear whether the Islamists would ever accept Somaliland's secession; perhaps not.
If their initial restraint is not reciprocated, the Islamists could yet turn radical. Whatever the new rulers say, international terrorists may seek a haven in their domain. Jihadist terrorists of Somali origin have been active round the world, including Britain; two suspects arrested last week in Canada were born in Somalia (see article). And the Americans may try to revive the secular warlords, using Ethiopia as a conduit for cash and guns.
The Islamists may also quarrel among themselves. Somali clan rivalries have a habit of pulling Somalia's governments apart, however unifying the call of Islam. There may also be rows over how to deal with the lucrative trade in qat, a narcotic leaf that many Somalis chew and which is flown into Mogadishu daily from Kenya and Ethiopia, perhaps accounting for as much as half the city's cash economy.
The European Union, with Italy and Britain, as former colonial powers, to the fore, will probably try to shore up the transitional government in Baidoa while coming to terms with the Islamists in Mogadishu. On the whole, they think America would be wise to abandon the warlords and spend cash building up the Somali economy wherever there is a bit of order. The Somalis also want the Americans to press Saudi Arabia to lift its ban on direct imports of Somali livestock. Food and medicine is even more badly needed to fend off the drought afflicting the Horn of Africa. Some UN agencies say that 10,000 southern Somalis a month may otherwise die. The fighting in Mogadishu has raised prices of basic food and fuel by 30%.
Until now, insecurity has made it hard to provide any aid by land or sea. Foreign aid workers have been killed or kidnapped. Extortion has been rife. The UN has received only $135m of the $326m it says Somalia needs merely to keep its people alive. No one knows whether an Islamist government running the south will make the job easier. With luck, it might
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