Brown Pundits

Comments from Dr Hamid Hussain on an article from Khalid Aziz (first posted at this site, Khalid Aziz original is here). Dr Hamid’s comments are in red. At the end is a comment from Major Amin (in fuchsia) and a couple of completely tangential comments from me (in green) (Omar Ali)

From Dr Hamid Hussain:

A well informed friend wrote a detailed piece about Afghanistan and my comments.  
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Thanks Sir for an insightful and detailed review of the ‘snake pit’.  Old chap Machiavelli is the right person to read when trying to understand the region. I don’t know whether you are still engaged in Track II on this matter and on such forums discourse is more polite.  I’ll be a bit frank in my comments as I think we need to open more windows to let some fresh air. My own limited perspective is based on my own work and interaction with various players. I listen to every narrative and more interested in what ‘real’ thinking process is rather than national narrative which is mostly for public consumption.  National narratives have moved from comic now to the realm of absurd.  My comments in red and bold in your main text. 
“A great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they are realities and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are’.  Machiavelli 

Warm Regards,

Hamid 



Significance of Stability in Afghanistan for Pakistan By  Khalid Aziz 

(Pakistan’s Afghan policy can be summed by Machiavelli’s quote “The people often deceived by an elusive good, desire their own ruin, and unless they are made sensible of the evil of the one and the benefit of the other course by someone in whom they have confidence, they will expose the republic to infinite peril and damage”.)

Introduction 


The world‟s best armies, composed of US and NATO forces, have battled in Afghanistan against the Taliban since December 2001 and by the end of 2014, the US had spent more than $ 1 trillion and the allies had lost numerous soldiers killed and many more injured. (On U.S. part, Afghan war started as revenge.  There was neither any planning nor a medium and long term war gaming.  It was an ad hoc project run by dysfunctional civil and military bureaucracies and evolved over the years depending on the ‘attention span’ at highest level.  Machiavelli said that ‘it is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised’.  Afghan project very quickly got on the back burner when U.S. forces marched towards Baghdad.  A broken Afghanistan has benefited a lot from the charity of U.S. tax payers but if I have to do it again, I wouldn’t waste even a biweekly paycheck on the project. U.S. is a net loser in this adventure.  We fought two wars with about two trillion dollar price tag on credit card.  Reminds me Machiavelli “whoever impoverishes himself by war acquires no power, even though he be victorious.  For his conquests cost him more than they are worth’.  I think it was Stephen Biddle who remarked about Iraq adventure that “American officials in Baghdad resemble apprentice sorcerers who had let loose forces they could barely understand, much less fully control”. Same applies to Afghanistan. There are many genuine national security aspects as far as U.S. is concerned but there are many cheap options.)

Pakistan has suffered considerably during this war; its financial losses amount to $ 107 billion and more than 21,500 civilians died during the war and the related wave of terrorism. Yet the Taliban remain resilient in Afghanistan. The region has suffered immensely and the war prevents economic growth and development. At the same time misgovernance and corruption adds to its risks. Although there is a draw-down of foreign forces in Afghanistan after December 2014, and US forces reportedly will be limited to about 10,000 troops who will provide capacity building to the ANSF and also support it in operations when necessary. Thus notwithstanding President Obama‟s claims, that he is ending the presence of the US troops in Afghanistan, for all practical purposes the Afghan war goes on – but in a different mode. (I partly agree with the policy but will even go further and suggest the number around 2-3 thousand.  Let Afghans decide what they want for their children. Local power elites always take foreigners for a ride for their own interests and play on their fears and ambitions.  It was Czarist Russia, British Empire, Communist Soviet Union, U.S.A. and Taliban yesterday and Daesh tomorrow.  It is a never ending game.  In fact, even a cursory look at history of Afghanistan proves this point.  During Raj, some Afghans regained their throne with British and Indian bayonets while those Afghan elite who lost on the buzkushi power playing field of Afghanistan enjoyed their pension at Ludhiana, Dehra Dun and Karachi. Read the special branch files of the Raj and you will be amused. Their fortunes have been upgraded. Today, some are enjoying comforts of power in Kabul while others living in luxurious estates in Dubai.  Both are paid by either money generated from lucrative drug trade or American taxpayers. No wonder that in 2009, Vice President of Afghanistan Ahmad Zia Masud landed at Dubai airport with $52 million cash in suit cases. Go figure it out how many suite cases you need to stuff 52 million dollars. Today one doesn’t have to wait 10 years for de-classification and Wiki Leaks cables provide good entertainment during free time. Sometimes prospect of hanging from the nearest lamp post spur a lazy person into action.)

It must also be said that it was the success of the Taliban on the battlefield that forced this revision in the withdrawal of troops scenario. The Taliban‟s ability to launch shaping operations, like the one that led to the capture of the Afghan city of Kunduz for fifteen days in October 2015 was a shock to the Afghans and the international community; the New York Times reported, “The insurgents held Kunduz for just 15 days, but during that time they destroyed government offices and facilities, seized military hardware, hunted down opponents, and freed prisoners from the city‟s two prisons”. 1 Why the Taliban targeted Kunduz and not any other city points to ancient rivalries that are at play in this war; the Ghiljai were settled in this region in 1885-86 when Alam Khan Nasher, a Kharoti who had rebelled against Amir Abdur Rehman, the Durrani King. (You bring an interesting point to the table but it needs a little more clarification. Pushtun settlements in north developed in the context of centralization of the state by Amir Abdur Rahman.  He was suppressing the rebellions in Pushtun and non-Pushtun areas.  In fact, he beheaded so many Shinwari Pushtuns when they rebelled that many crossed over and came under British protection.  For many years, Shinwaris on Afghan side used to come to British side to find young Shinwari men for their girls.  Same thing happened to Hazaras.  After pacifying north, he settled many Pushtun clans with twin objectives of having Pushtun elite dominance of the north and to remove troublesome Pushtuns from their ancestral lands thus diluting their strength.  After pacification of the north in late nineteenth century, the Pushtun settlements were established in northern areas especially Badakshan, Kunduz, Jauzjan, Faryab and Badghis provinces. Amir Abdur Rahman cleverly used his rival Ghilzai Pushtuns in the east and settled them in north thus cutting them off from their power base and diminishing their ability to threaten his rule. Durranis were settled there to utilize the fertile lands of the north as insurance to keep their loyalty and also act as guardians of northern frontiers. Certain tribes and clans are more represented in north. Ishaqzai (various clans), Barakzai, Popalzai, Alizai and Nurzai of Durrani stock and Hotaki, Tukhi, Taraki of Ghilzai stock as well as some Mohmand and Wardak are the main groups settled in north. In the civil war of 1990s, there were many rounds of ethnic cleansing in many areas and it will be interesting to know what the current census of Pushtuns in northern areas is? Taliban have made some inroads in these settlements and that is a bad omen for future.  If they kill non-Pushtuns or create enough instability to hinder trade then non-Pushtun backlash on Pushtun settlements will be inevitable.  This may result in punishment from government or non-Pushtun militias with aim of making life for these Pushtuns difficult enough to make them move out.  More important and relevant point in 2016 is that non-Pushtuns are in no mood to accept Pushtun dominance indefinitely.  Future is either for mutual respect and sharing in local resources or in the next cycle of civil war, we may see more displacement of Pushtun settlements in north. Ethnic pride among Pushtuns is no problem but chauvinistic and dominance themes will not take them very far in Afghanistan in 21st century.) 

While it is simpler for the US and NATO to have an easy to understand narrative of the war as, “War on Terror,” actually misleads analysis and hides the real drivers that are at play. However, due to an erroneous aggregation of causes can lead to the execution of ineffective policies; David Kilcullen an expert on insurgencies has identified this problem and has put it eloquently in his new book, “Dozens of local movements, grievances and issues have been aggregated…..into a global jihad against the West.”2 1 Rod Norland, Taliban End Takeover of Kunduz After 15 Days, The New York Times, 13th October 2015, accessed on 20.5.16; http://nyti.ms/27H27eW 2 David Kilcullen, “BLOOD YEAR: THE UNRAVELING OF WESTERN TERRORISM,” Chapter 2, Oxford University Press, New York, 2016. 2
The advent of ISIS in Nangarhar and cross-border raids into Pakistan by the escaped TTP elements, with safe-havens in Afghanistan, has caused further regional insecurity. While the failure of re-conciliation with the Taliban so far places a big question mark regarding the chances of peace in the region, we must not forget that other spoilers who can be best defined as criminal entrepreneurs, will avail themselves of any opportunity that they can find to make money by reducing the ability of the states to guard its people and interdict criminal activities like drug trafficking or gun-running that are the sources of employment and fulfillment of their ambitions that are unrequited due to lack of economic growth for a majority of people in certain parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (This is the political economy of war and state has to eliminate physically as much as it can and then increase the cost of participating in this enterprise high enough to make people think twice. This is then integrated with inclusive political economy to channel discontent via non-violent means.  In view of its history and continuous civil war over three generations, Afghanistan is in a state which Machiavelli described a ‘divided country’ and in a divided country, when a man is injured he approaches his patron for redress and patron to keep his own influence has every incentive to use violence to redress the grievance.  This is the pattern followed by various ethnic groups, tribes and clans. One thoughtful Afghan once told me that unless our people understand what belongs to the individual and what to the nation, they will never see a good day. Reminded me an episode when long after the last Soviet soldier had left, in the free for all fight, one group of ‘holy warriors’ over ran a town and looted the local school and cleaned everything.  In the end some wooden chairs and tables were left.  They couldn’t agree on what to do as they had no use at home for these items.  Finally they decided to chop the furniture and distributed it among the warriors to take home to use as fire wood.)

3 Geostrategic Considerations
Throughout history, the heavily populated regions of what now constitute Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran had growing populations with limited resources to sustain them and were thus unable to generate incomes from trading or agriculture. On the other hand, to the South of this region lay the rich lands of the Indian sub-continent that was home to a very rich and diversified civilization and the Genetic plain alone, generated more than 25% of the world‟s GDP in the 16th and 17th centuries – roughly equivalent to China‟s position today. Kings of the region only knew of two ways to accumulate resources; either through taxes or by war and appropriating resources of weaker neighbors. Mahmud of Ghazni, a ruler of Turkish descent in Ghazni, that lies in today‟s Afghanistan invaded India 17 times in 27 years between 1000-1027 AD. There were other invaders like Babur, the Lodhis, and Khiljis, who came to India and established dynasties there. Another Afghan ruler Ahmed Shah Abdali, who ruled Afghanistan raided India nine times between 1747 to 1769. (Steppes and Afghanistan were sparsely populated countries. Paucity of resources forced them to become soldiers of fortune and predators.  They inhabited resource sparse regions and like any other highlander, descended on their richer and weak neighbors for loot and slaves. They were following the norms of their times.  The one who held power in his native land distributed the booty to his followers and when all the money was spent then he had to lead them again for the next installment; hence repeated invasions every few years –i.e. Mahmud and Ahmad Shah.  If he didn’t do that, he risked losing his own head.  Those who lost in their own land in the power struggle and lucky enough to keep their heads on their shoulder, headed to new pastures and established new fiefdoms and dynasties far away from their lands i.e. Lodhi, Babar.  They are worshiped as heroes today and it tells a lot about what is taught in history classes.)

After the East India Company defeated the Sikhs in the 2nd Sikh War of 1849 the Sikh Empire was dissolved. This brought the British close to what latter became Afghanistan and Central Asia. Britain‟s primary worry was to prevent Russia from threatening their „Jewel in the Crown,‟ that was India. It led to the following boundary creation in the region:  Demarcation of Afghanistan‟s Northern Boundary with Russia in 1885-• 1888  The Durand Line defining the boundary with India 1893-1895•  The Afghan boundary with Russia in the Pamir was delineated in 1895• settling the border between the protectorate of Bokhara and Kashmir, Chitral, Gilgit and Afghan regions of Badakshan and Wakhan. Guarding the North-Western Borderland 3 Khalid Aziz, “Country Paper on, “Drivers of Radicalism and Extremism in Pakistan,” published by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Islamabad, Pp. 21-23, http://bit.ly/1svgLp9, accessed on 20.5.16. 3
British India was very active and concerned in protecting its North-West frontier from any interference from the North; being a world power she had the resources to undertake the guardianship of the North-West. However, when it decided to grant independence to the sub-continent by dividing it into Pakistan and India; Britain for some reason did not make adequate arrangements for the future of this tricky region. Was it thoughtlessness or was there any other reason for this strategic forgetfulness? Did Britain suffer from strategic amnesia or was it a typical Imperial maneuver to keep the successor states dependent upon it for the provision of security? One answer to the mystery is available in the 6th February 1946 letter of the Governor General Lord Wavell addressed to the Secretary of State for India in London, recommended that a part of India comprising of NWFP, Baluchistan, West Punjab and Sindh may be created as another state to protect Britain‟s interest in this part of Asia.4 As we disaggregate the causes that have led to a continuation of hostilities in Afghanistan, we must not forget to underline the important geo-strategic feature of this region. Afghanistan, lies at an extremely important geographic location; to its East lies Pakistan, and a fifty miles long tongue of land in the Afghan Wakhan region acts as an entrant into the strategic Chinese Xinjiang province. To Afghanistan‟s North, lie the former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, that can become the source for future regional prosperity by exporting their abundant energy and mineral resources to Pakistan, India or Westward to the Middle-East and Europe. To its West, Afghanistan is bordered by the regional power-house of Iran, that is now emerging from years of isolation due to the sanctions imposed on it by the West. Further to Afghanistan‟s North lies Russia. As the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan began in 2014, two events put the world back into a familiar Cold War pattern. These events were connected to Russia‟s pre-emptive annexation of Crimea a part of Ukraine and its attempt to shape events in Eastern Ukraine to prevent an expansion of NATO, that was looking eminent. Some have suggested that the US may even be happy to remain in Afghanistan to apply pressure upon Russia and on China. If the US war goal in Afghanistan was the elimination of Al Qaeda as a threat in Afghanistan this was achieved in May 2011 with the death of Osama Bin Laden. Currently the US forces are presumably following a new goal to protect the Afghan state. It is speculated that the presence of US troops in Afghanistan provides her with a pivot to influence the Chinese bid to reshape the region by making it a hub of interconnectivity to other parts of the world based on „One Belt One Road,‟ (OBOR) concept. Ethnic Tensions and Alignments in Afghanistan Dalrymple while identifying the drivers of conflict in Afghanistan has highlighted the tribal conflict that is always simmering below the surface between two of 4 Khalid Aziz, Policy Report, “Causes of Rebellion in Waziristan,” (2007), RIPORT, Peshawar, P. 11, accessed on 21.5.16, URL: http://goo.gl/x2cyH3 4 Afghanistan‟s largest tribal confederacies.  (For a smart chap strategic significance can be a boon but for a dumb chap it can be a curse.  In a divided country, groups and factions can be bought by interested parties and this exactly happened in Afghanistan.  Everyone now has a dog in the fight in Afghanistan. For the un-initiated understanding Byzantine intrigues on Afghan chessboard can be a very dizzying experience.  Look at only one example; Gulbadin Hikmatyar.  For years he ate from the hands of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  He was quite explicit in his anti-Shia rantings. He had no qualms in accepting Israeli weapons that they had captured from Palestinians when later were routed from Lebanon.  In First Gulf War, he somersaulted and started to cheer for Saddam Hussain. When Pakistan put its money on a different horse i.e. Taliban, and he was shunned by his former patrons, he took a residence in Tehran where he comfortably lived.  When Taliban started to creep into his power base in Kunduz and eastern Afghanistan, he had no qualms in passing intelligence to Americans so that his turf was protected from Taliban encroachment.  He was travelling on both tracks of the gravy train extracting resources from Afghan government read U.S.A. by cooperating in some areas and advancing his political and non-violent factions while at the same time taking handsome handouts from Tehran and others via factions who were shooting.  His son was in lucrative business partnership with governors. Kabul is a place where everyone is selling some information to someone.  In some cases, one person is selling different pieces of information to different patrons. Once you understand this basic point then you know why late Mullah Akhtar Mansur who was recently kicked upstairs to meet his 72 virgins (few young boys thrown as a bonus) held a Pakistani passport with valid Iranian visa. This chap like a busy executive was shuttling between Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Dubai. Outsiders can play their own little dirty games as they wish but they should fear the day when some really interested parties put their hands on the heads of some really pissed off Afghans and thoroughly alienated Baluchs in Pakistan and Iran.  I recall as early as 2001-2 when some nationalist Afghans swore that if neighbors don’t behave in the next round, they will make sure that Afghanistan doesn’t burn alone in this fire. Machiavelli told us long time ago that “once the people have taken arms against you, there will never be lacking of foreigners to assist them”.)

The Ghiljai are the largest confederacy in the country and ruled territories of what later became Afghanistan from 1000 AD to 1747, when they were supplanted by the competing confederacy of the Durranis in 1747. The Ghiljai number about 13 million of whom 9 million dwell in Afghanistan; Paktia in Afghanistan is the home of the tribe but they are also found in Jalalabad, Paktika, and Khost. Its largest tribe is the Suleman Khel while the next largest are the Kharotis. The Ghiljais are mostly herdsmen and thus nomadic in their life-style, as they are in search of pasture. Some 4 million Ghiljai live in Quetta, KP and the Punjab in Pakistan. The Niazi branch of Ghiljai in Pakistan live in Bannu and Mianwali. The Ghiljai, Tanoli live in the Tanawal region of Hazara mountains. Based on long term hydrological data available for Afghanistan and the dry Central Asian region indicates dwindling grass land commons for the last many decades. In some cases, in parts of Afghanistan, especially in the dry South, the water table has gone down, drying up the underground water channels forcing the land owners, who belong to the Durrani tribal confederacy to enclose the commons and prevent the Ghiljais from pasturing their herds. This has marginalized them economically and led many of them to find alternate livelihoods; many joined the Afghan armed forces. It has been argued that these dire circumstances pushed the Ghiljai to launch the communist coup against Sardar Daud in 1979 in order to wrest the state‟s control from the Durrani-Tajik clique to improve their livelihoods. Those in the lead of the take-over of power were Ghiljais associated with the Khalqi wing of the Afghan People‟s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). It is argued that when the „Mujahedeen‟ reaction organized by West and managed through Pakistan succeeded, the Ghiljai came back in the garb of the Taliban to control the Afghan state. 5  (It is interesting from historical and anthropological point of view but I’m not sure about its significance and impact on current scenario. Definitions are too broad to draw any conclusion.  Technically, an Ahmadzai in Afghanistan and a Tanoli in Pakistan come under the Ghiljai umbrella but I don’t see any connection.  They have no common interest in any area. Tanoli has even lost his Pushtu language and speaks Hindko. Having said that, this conflict inside a particular region where interests clash may be significant.)

General Stanley McChrystal Commander of US/ISAF forces in Afghanistan in 2009-2010, has argued in his report to President Obama in the „Commander‟s Initial Assessment,‟ (2009) that the ISAF commanders must understand the social and political dynamics prevailing in Afghanistan. Tribal unhappiness generates support for the insurgents and defeats the goals of the coalition.6 This refers to the issue discussed above of the need to disaggregating the problem. And this is something that we don‟t hear much about except as a periodic reference to it by some insightful writer. Within Afghanistan the 9/11 War, was diagnosed as a Pashtun rebellion against President Karzai‟s regime, which supported the empowerment of three ethnic groups – the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of the North. This situation prevailed from December 2001 to the middle of 2006, when his Popalzai tribe became powerful in its own right as 5 Khalid Aziz, “Need for a Pak-Afghan Treaty on Management of Joint Water Courses,” Published by the Regional Institute of Policy Research & Training, Peshawar, (2007), see Pp 1-6, accessed on 21.5.16, URL: http://goo.gl/cldKy. 6 Stanley McChrystal, Commander‟s Initial Assessment (2009), Pp 2-4, accessed on 20.5.16, URL: http://on.cfr.org/1sFZ3jg 5 the US surged its forces in the South and it made the Southern tribes very rich and powerful as the Karzai clan spread its patronage widely in the South through President Karzai‟s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai. His death at the hands of his own body-guard prompted Britain‟s Guardian newspaper to state, “[His death], was the personification of modern-day Afghanistan – corrupt, treacherous, lawless, paradoxical, subservient and charming. Now with his violent death Karzai has also come to symbolize Afghanistan’s enduring tragedy.” 7 The ascendency of the non-Pashtuns prior to 2006-2007, was resented by them and helped spiral the insurgency. (Pushtun and non-Puhstun tensions in Afghanistan need a broader perspective.  In the civil war of 1990s, both communities perpetrated horrendous atrocities.  Rape was used systematically and civilians were indiscriminately slaughtered.  No foreign troops had ever committed such atrocities on Afghans.  This is the collective shame of Afghans but no one will talk about it.  If Pushtuns resented rise of non-Pushtuns in post 2001 then what about pre 2001?  Non-Pushtuns resented the control of the most retrograde movement ever seen even in Pushtun areas to control their lives.  Imagine what an educated Herati and Kabuli felt when a village Pushtun boy with scraggy beard and dirty clothes was beating his educated wife on the city streets with leather lash.  Her crime being that while covered from head to toe with Burqa had the audacity to show her ankles.  This treatment was given to anyone regardless of the ethnicity but the anger and hatred of non-Pushtuns was quadrupled. When the tide turned, non-Pushtuns tried to keep their hold on lever of powers and who would blame them. In peaceful areas in central and northern Afghanistan local communities have reaped the benefits of reconstruction and education and racing forward.  Male and female education among Hazaras is quite impressive.  These traditionally underdogs are excelling in many fields and winning large number of foreign scholarships of higher education.  Insecurity in south and east means that Pushtun is lagging behind.  In near future, how you are going to replace a well qualified non-Pushtun with an unqualified Pushtun? This is the question for Pushtun intelligentsia to ponder over?)

Although there is a counter argument to this finding that says that Karzai may have been beholden to the Tajik prior to the arrival of US troops into the South of the country when the influence of the Pashtuns re-emerged. It may be noted that once institutional changes are ushered it takes a long time to neutralize their effects. For instance, the Tajiks who constitute only 27% of the Afghan population, obtained 70% of the officer Corp jobs in the Afghan army. (I don’t know the source of these numbers but it is quite natural that initially non-Pushtuns fully cooperated to overthrow Taliban and were rewarded.  Just like during Durrani rule, all high posts in military and civil bureaucracy went to Psuhtuns. My own work on Afghan army evolution in the last ten years suggest that this has dramatically changed although I admit that real statistics are hard to get. As far as I recall, last time when I checked Afghan National Army was about 45% Pushtun including many mid and high level Pushtun officers.) 

Although Karzai is himself a Pashtun, yet as William Dalrymple comments, his presence then was seen not more than window-dressing.8 It is true that the power sharing agreement brought the national unity government of President Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah on January 12th 2015 brought to power a new team. Thus far, real power in Afghanistan, still lies with the dominant tribal allegiances within the institutions that occurred from 2001 to 2015. President Ashraf Ghani is an Ahmedzai, Ghiljai, who belongs to the larger Ghiljai confederation. He has begun the process of modifying the leadership in important ministries and has begun to bring in former Khalqis belonging to his tribe. He has been able to do so in the Afghan Ministries of Defence, the National Directorate of Security and the Afghan National Security Council. More changes on these lines are expected in the future. Reaction has not been long in coming from the Durrani-Tajik combine when President Ghani‟s brilliant move to mend bridges with Pakistan, took shape during his visit to Islamabad in November 2014. President Ashraf Ghani took the initiative to bring about cooperation between Pakistan‟s premier intelligence agency the ISI and its Afghan counterpart the NDS, who signed an MoU of cooperation in May 2015. After its signing three things happened in quick succession in Kabul. In the back-drop of stringent criticism in public quarters against the MoU including criticism of the President by his subordinate Director of NDS, Mr Nabil.9 He shortly there-after resigned in protest. The MoU was also condemned in the Afghan parliament and Mr. Karzai, the former Afghan President stated in India, Pakistan‟s obstreperous neighbor, that the MoU was an embarrassment and will not be 7 Guardian 12th July 2011, Simon Tisdall, “Ahmed Wali Karzai, the corrupt and lawless face of modern Afghanistan,” http://bit.ly/1U6haomR, accessed on 21.5.16 8 William Dalrymple, “A Deadly Triangle,” Brooking Essay, March 2013, see section 2, URL http://brook.gs/KCpOOJ, accessed on 20.5.16 9 Afghan Analysts Network, Thomas Ruttig, “Political Cleavages over Pakistan: The NDS chief‟s farewell”, accessed on 21.5.16 URL: http://bit.ly/241dzNJ 6 allowed to remain.10 A statement that would be meaningful coming from someone who still wielded power. To embarrass Pakistan further, the NDS leaked that Mullah Omar, the recluse leader of the Taliban had died earlier but that Pakistan had kept it as a secret.11 This led to an enormous back-lash against President Ashraf Ghani, who in order to retain hold over power and be relevant in Afghan politics criticized Pakistan for terrorist bombings in Kabul in August 2015. (Ashraf Ghani made a genuine effort to placate Pakistanis to end the conflict but he miscalculated the immense hatred against Pakistan among general population in Afghanistan.  He didn’t build a reasonable consensus before embarking on the journey.  Another factor may be that he exaggerated Pakistani influence over Taliban.  Pakistan didn’t help Ashraf to bring some gifts to the table so that Ashraf could convince his critics to give Pakistan more time. I was of the view that the only way Ashraf’s gamble will pay if Pakistan hands him a major gift.  Whether Pakistan had the capacity or intention is another matter.  Pakistan’s problem is that it may have some influence on some factions but it cannot dictate to Taliban.  Those factions who resent too much of Pakistan involvement have already found sanctuaries inside Afghanistan and financial support from many other parties including Iran and Russia.  Everybody is responsible for the mess of forty years and now wants results in months. They need to come down to earth. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, everyone thinks that only they are doing the right thing and everybody else is messing up. My own view is that every country messed up according to its own ability and resources and it will need collective efforts to bring some order.  However, first condition is that every nation has to discard its previous notions and start fresh. I’m near sighted therefore don’t see any change in behavior of all the players. Another important factor is to be realistic about violence.  It is extremely naïve to expect that violence will be completely rooted out.  Even in well established states with good functioning government, violence of various sorts is inevitable.  In case of Afghanistan, as long as violence is kept below a certain threshold where it does not interfere with day to day functioning of government and ordinary life, I’ll consider it a success.)

Clearly, real power in Afghanistan still lies with the ethnic triumvirate of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazaras, although the power is shifting now that President Ashraf Ghani has begun to bring in Ghijai into the power structure; thus clearly a large number of the Pashtun in whose areas the war is being conducted and who have been the main target of NATO/ISAF operations is ignored. This is one big weakness in the fabric of Afghan and West‟s counter-insurgency efforts. It is no wonder that despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and loss of countless lives, the Taliban have not been defeated or reconciled. This absence of ethnic coherence in Afghanistan indicates that unless a solution is found to the larger issue of the tussle between the Ghiljai and the Durrani confederacy‟s is ended the war in some form or another is likely to continue unabated. (In broken societies, this question never gets answered.  There are two dimensions of the problem; one perceptions of non-Afghans and other of Afghans.  As far as outsiders are concerned, first, we are told that conflict between Pushtun and non-Pushtun needs to be settled for peace, then it is between Durrani and Ghiljai.  Even if we miraculously achieve this goal then it will be between tribes, then clans then families.  As far Afghans are concerned they are of the view that the problem lies with foreigners who don’t understand Afghans.  They think that if outsiders stop interference then everything will be fine.  Everyone has the capacity to spoil the game.  Any disgruntled party can pay someone to put a bomb or send a suicide bomber – like any other weapon on the market you can actually buy and sell a suicide bomber.  A society that reaches this low point needs a lot of introspection and reflection.  In my view, even if all the gold of Fort Knox is transferred to Afghanistan, it will not solve their problems.  Only Afghans will solve their own problem.)

India’s Presence in Afghanistan In his insightful essay on the drivers of war in Afghanistan, Dalrymple begins by narrating how a female Indian army officer teaching English to army cadets viewed the events; “Major Mitali Madhumita, was awakened by the ringing of her mobile phone. Mitali, a 35-year-old Indian army officer from Orissa, had been in Kabul less than a year. Fluent in Dari, the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan, she was there to teach English to the first women officer cadets to be recruited to the Afghan National Army.” “It was a sensitive posting, not so much because of gender issues as political ones: India‟s regional rival, Pakistan, was extremely touchy about India providing military assistance to the government in Afghanistan and had made it very clear that it regarded the presence of any Indian troops or military trainers there as an unacceptable provocation.” 12 India‟s presence in Afghanistan is viewed as a mortal threat by Pakistani strategists who would wish that it was not so; yet India remains in Afghanistan and is associated with security matters, reviving memories in the mind of the Pakistanis of a previous Cold War Era when Afghan-India cooperation against Pakistan, when they actively sponsored the irredentist Pukhtunistan movement that at times boiled over into 10 The Hindu, Suhasini Haider, “MOU with ISI dropped says Karzai”, accessed on 21.5.16, URL: http://bit.ly/27KpRyV 11 The Hindustan Times, correspondent, “Mullah Omar „died two years ago‟, Taliban remain mum,” accessed on 21.5.16, URL: http://bit.ly/1OFi0Xy. 12 Brookings Institute, Brooking Essay, William Dalrymple, “Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan & India,” Section 1, accessed on 21.5.16, URL: http://brook.gs/KCpOOJ 7 hot contact with the use of Pakistan air-force and clash of militaries in Bajaur region of Pakistan in the early 1960s. Pakistan fears the re-emergence of a similar alliance and is likely to undertake counter-measures now that there is a strategic alignment also between the US, Afghanistan and India! It is therefore very worrying for Pakistani strategists to note the presence of safe-havens for Pakistani terrorists like Mullah Fazalullah and Mangal Bagh, as well as the Baluch insurgents.  (Mumbai carnage in 2008 was the turning point as far as Indian strategic community was concerned.  I heard from some in India’s strategic community that this issue could shift the balance in India in favor of hawks.  There was lot of ambiguity.  Pakistan’s ISI chief Lt. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha admitted that some former ISI handlers were involved but state was not mad enough to embark on such adventure.  India waited to see how Pakistan will act.  My own assessment at that time was that Pakistan had a very narrow window of opportunity. No one advocated some military operation or other grand scheme.  Only thing was to inform India through a back channel that two or three key players in Mumbai drama will soon meet their maker either a natural or unnatural death.  After all when the state decided, what it did to Mr. Malik Ishaq?  However, it was ten years too late and in this decade state lost the trust of Shia community. Some more water and blood flowed under the bridge but in this time there was a definite shift in India.  Indian National Security Advisor announced that ‘you can do another Mumbai; but you will lose Baluchistan’. In pre-2008 era there was no official meaningful support to Baluchs from any quarter.  In fact, Nawab Akbar Bugti sent a message to Hamid Karzai asking for a safe passage to Afghanistan before moving to hills where he was finally killed. Karzai checked with Americans and the answer was no.  Bugti was told to mend fences with Mussharraf.  This was communicated to me by a good friend of Karzai.  Similarly, there was no presence of Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan.  It was frustration of a decade before many decided that Pakistan will only listen if it is paid in the same coin.  In my view, in post 2001 decision making process, Pakistanis have seriously underestimated two things; first how vulnerable they are and second failing to comprehend internal debates in American, Indian and Afghan security establishments. They don’t have to agree with these debates but they need to take into consideration the impact of the outcome of these debates on their own national security. It is their right to think that some Afghan Taliban could be helpful in their national security policy and follow on this line.  However, they should also be aware of consequences of such policy.  To be fair to Pakistanis, they are not responsible for all the ills of the region and to expect that they have the key to all the problems is unrealistic.  Even if they get out of the room, India still have to deal with discontent in Kashmir and Afghanistan have to solve its own problems.)

The Benefits of Peace for Pakistan: From the above description of the situation, and a different analysis of the drivers of conflict in Afghanistan, it is clear that peace will only come when the issues pertaining to the following class of disputed positions can be ameliorated;  Finding a solution to the on-going conflict between the Ghiljai and the Durrani• tribal confederacies  Creating greater economic opportunities for the marginalized members of the• Afghan population  Reconciliation with the Taliban will be best achieved by bilateral negotiations• between the Afghan government and the Taliban (or should it be conducted as peace building between the two contesting tribal confederacies?). This later is a new design and holds more promise that the QCG approach that grows out of the US‟s narrative of the 9/11 War on Terror and is thus flawed.   (Loss of large swaths of territory by Pakistan at the hands of militants is the direct result of Afghan policy when events spiraled out of Pakistan’s control as more powerful players landed in the neighborhood. However, the disaster was not inevitable.  I held the view in 2001 and advocated that Pakistan had a very narrow window to make a clean break as far as Afghanistan was concerned while at the same time make a proactive move to ensure that disorder doesn’t spread in its own territory.  Shell shocked retreating militants were robbed of even their shoes and money by local tribesmen in Kurram agency.  If state had asserted itself it could have protected its interests at a fraction of a cost.  Strategic myopia at the highest level prevented some common sense measures.  If only high command had read Machiavelli who said ‘one ought never to allow a disorder to take place in order to avoid war.  For war is not thereby avoided but only deferred to your disadvantage’.  We should remember that in 2001-02, the action needed was not war but assertion of state’s authority with vigor and punishing militant start ups promptly to send a message that state meant business. Pakistan deferred it to its own disadvantage. It had to spend lot of blood and treasure to regain the control back from militants. In the end, it did the right thing but in the process lost the good will of a large number of tribesmen. In my own interactions, tribesmen are extremely bitter about state policy that devastated their lands.  No wonder thousands of tribesmen from North Waziristan sought shelter in Afghanistan.)

Bridging the distrust between Pakistan and India on Afghanistan is essential• and must be initiated as early as possible.  (This is a tall order. Both countries are prisoners of their past and willing to mortgage their future for misplaced fear, envy and pride. The grand bargain now means that Pakistan has to wash its hands off Kashmir and let Kashmiris decide what they want and India pull back from a dangerous posture. Both countries are facing many internal pressures due to economic, political, ethnic and religious factors and these forces are straining internal cohesion of both societies.  This phenomenon is not limited to third world countries.  Look at Western Europe where brigade strength of alienated Muslim youth left for the killing fields of Middle East and now fighting for Daesh. It is true that India and Pakistan can stir troubles in each other’s backyard and give some sleepless nights to decision- makers of opposite side. However, igniting a fire in neighbor’s backyard is not a sound national security policy. A new vision directed by young global generation of both countries attempts to understand the other ‘out of the box’ and exert pressure on their own governments so that they desist from self-defeating policies. This is the hope for the future for both countries. It will be truly tragic if they decide to fight another battle on the killing fields of Afghanistan.)

Peace in Afghanistan can only come if the international climate remains• peaceful that does not bring tension to the region related to containment of Russia or balancing China by creating new pressure points. If we are lucky to obtain relief in the areas described above or at least begin to move in the right direction, then one can assume that the following benefits could flow for Pakistan and the region. Once peace is brought to the region the fires of extremism and radicalism will be extinguished. It must be noted that as stated earlier in this research the persons, who are benefitting most from regional unrest are the „criminal entrepreneurs,‟ who want unrest in the region and weak states, so that they may conduct their trade based on drug trafficking, smuggling, human trafficking and gunrunning. Such individuals have an interest in unrest, as it allows them to prosper at the expense of general insecurity for the majority of inhabitants.13 If relative security is created in the region, Pakistan will benefit as under:  Increase in trade with Afghanistan that today stands at about $2.5 billion• annually 13 (Ibid) 3, P. 2 8
Security will allow Pakistan and India as well as the other states in the• region to multiply regional trade by linking up with China, India, S. Asian region, Central Asia, Iran and the Middle-East. This alone can generate billions dollars‟ worth of trade and employment opportunities leading to an average regional annual growth rate of 8-10% per year. This will transform this region and convert it into a hub of economic growth meaning a better life for all its people.  Peace will improve the security situation in Pakistan and concomitantly• reduce its security budget.  It will expedite the completion of power projects like CASA – 1000 and the• TAPI project leading to propelling of industrial growth.  These changes will act as a catalyst for the China-Pakistan Economic• Corridor Project whose benefits will spread much further than envisaged at present.  This design of growth can only come about with the commitment towards• peace by the great powers and India and Pakistan. If peace can double Pakistan‟s total net assets through an 8 -10% annual growth could become a huge engine of regional growth. Naturally, its main beneficiaries are likely to be Pakistan itself as well as its neighbors Afghanistan, India, Iran and China. It is thus obvious that peace in Afghanistan will be of immense significance to Pakistan and the region as well as its poor masses who struggle to make two ends meet.  (I agree that dividends of peace are enormous for everyone.  However, every player is short sighted and their judgment is clouded by existing distrust and imagined fears.  Some Afghans are happy to carry foreigner’s gun and foreigner is happy to fight to the last Afghan.)
“Everyone may begin a war at his pleasure; but cannot so finish it”.  Machiavelli 


Comment from famous military analyst Major Amin: 
DONT AGREE . AFGHAN TALIBAN ARE A PAKISTANI PROXY BUT PAKISTANI STATE WANTS TO DESTROY ASHRAF GHANI REGIME IN TOTALITY THUS THE NON WILLINGNESS TO BRING THE TALIBAN TO TABLE.




My own (tangential) comments:

1. Regarding the Wavell quote and the fact that some (by no means all) British “strategists” thought it a great idea to have a “reliable” pro-British Muslim state on India’s Northwest frontier after they pulled out:
One may add to all this the fact that no person or even institution knows everything and foresees everything. The British had dominated the globe for a 150 years and the “strategic thinking” built around this domination was deeply ingrained in capable senior administrators. In hindsight, any Tom, Dick or Harry can see that there was to be NO British “strategic interest” in Central Asia or even India after Indian independence. They would be VERY junior partners in whatever maneuvering the US and Russia were doing against each other and if they were lucky they could make money in some ventures. That is all. But sane and intelligent people like Wavell were destroying the future of generations of Punjabis and Pakhtoons based on some notion of their “duty” to think ahead and keep British strategic interests in mind! 
In the long run, it does look like a tragic comedy.

2. It is interesting to see that Khalid Aziz sahib, with his patriotic (saner than most) Paknationalist glasses, repeatedly quotes Dalrymple. There is a lesson in there somewhere 🙂

3. Ideologies matter. But only a few people may be promoting a given ideology while fully conscious of its harshest implications (irrespective of what you think about the rightness or wrongness of an ideology, there will always be harsh implications when it comes to large human groups and their clashing interests, or maybe we should say, small elites and theirs). This is true of all dreams (the dream of India, of Hindutva, of America, of one world, of the Ummah, of the Middle Kingdom, whatever), but  the more fantastic ones do require more fantastic change and therefore, more fantastic sacrifice.. Pakistan is a very fantastic dream. It may be better if we can tone it down a bit 🙂

Of course, countless Paknationalists want what is best for Pakistan and its people, but only a small number are willing to get millions killed in that process. Unfortunately, those few are also the ones with the determination, the vision and the persistence needed to make great plans and put them into practice… 

But not to get TOO worked up about this vision thing, we are still human. When we were young Marxists, we believed that none of this dream BS matters. The means of production and so on and so forth. There is probably some truth in that, for better and for worse, that truth may sink ideological nightmares and dreams, eventually.... Besides, I have been told this is especially true in India, where The Man is mostly ignored as people get on with life. As Indians, who knows, we may yet sabotage all the grand schemes of great men. 
Inshallah 🙂

Continuing the random thoughts theme.

This week began with a drone attack that dispatched Mullah Mansoor to meet his 72 virgins. More details have since been revealed about the Taliban chief’s last journey and the Pakistani government has finally confirmed that he is dead, though the whereabouts of his remains are still a bit mysterious (it was reported that he has been buried in Spin Boldak, but the latest Pakistani government statement claims his body is still in Pakistan). The details of his life before the fatal strike are still confusing and contradictory.

Everyone has theories about the significance of this strike and whether it will weaken or strengthen the US-backed Afghan regime or the Pakistan-backed Taliban. Considering that Pakistan is a “major non-NATO ally” and a partner in the ANTI-Taliban coalition (and receives regular payments for these services, freely offered and repeatedly affirmed by Pakistani civilian and military leaders) AND is also the main backer of the Taliban and feels that the US-backed regime and US policy in general are actually a threat to Pakistan (a position also repeatedly affirmed by Pakistani civilian and military leaders, especially when they no longer hold official positions; incidentally this affirmation is shared  by many “pro-Western” Pakistanis), there is no end to the convolutions and contradictions in this situation. So it is impossible for an amateur/casual observer to claim that he knows what is going on and what “really happened”. All we can say is “what a tangled web we weave..” and leave it at that.
But while we may be in no position to say how and why this particular strike took place and who is playing against whom, we can still make a general observation that in war there are only two ways to make peace: either one side wins and the other side accepts defeat (or gets wiped out), OR both sides recognize they are not likely to win outright and there is a compromise position both sides can accept (no matter how unhappily). Now consider the position of the Taliban; if they feel they have no chance of coming back into power and the pain of carrying on is too much, then they may accept a US backed regime and make peace on those terms. But if they feel they can outlast the US and their losses are bearable, then what is the incentive to make peace? Considering that for 15 years the US has not made strategic victory a priority, and is still insisting that the Mullah Mansour strike was a one-off, why would the new leaders compromise? More of the same seems likely..

The other big news of the week on social media was the announcement by the council of Islamic ideology that they are working on an “Islamic” version of the women’s protection bill that would protect the position of women by prohibiting contact with non-mehram males (e.g. by banning female nurses contact with male patients), banning any art education that includes drawing living beings or sculpting them and by permitting husbands to “discipline” their wives by “lightly beating them” if needed. (incidentally, this problem has arisen because the Pakistani constitution has a series of “Islamic provisions” that require ALL laws to be “in accordance with the quran and sunnah”. Many of the framers no doubt thought this could be taken to mean whatever they wanted, but it does give an opening to mullahs and Islamic scholars over and above that afforded to them in countries like Egypt and Turkey).

Needless to say, this news led to a gleeful postings on Islamophobic sites, much outrage among  Muslim women and intense discussion about the locus standi of the CII, the “Islamic” nature of this Islamic proposal and the best way to stop this move. As any fan of Islamic jurisprudence will agree, the proposals are fully in line with classical Shariah law (of ALL major schools of Islamic law), but as these fans are also aware, this law was never fully implemented in the good old days and is even less likely to be enforced today. Very few modern leaders in Muslim nations have seriously considered (much less asked for) the institution of slavery or the practice of using female slaves as concubines, to be freely  bought and sold by Muslim males in a Muslim society. Yet these are also part and parcel of classical shariah. In short, there IS indeed some truth to the claim that contemporary Muslims do NOT necessarily practice (or support) all aspects of medieval Islamicate jurisprudence. But while most contemporary Muslims do not practice or vocally support particular Shariah rulings that are not in line with contemporary mores, they frequently support the abstract notion of “enforcing shariah” and they lack any clear alternative to that law. There have been institutional efforts and there are individual scholars who argue in favor of modern re-interpretation of classical shariah, but these efforts have NOT achieved critical mass. And all efforts at reform face the twin threats of apostasy and blasphemy memes, which have enough support in the Islamic world to make such reform a hazardous undertaking. But all is not lost. As the reaction to the “wife-beating” proposal indicates, this may well be the next shariah rule that will go the way of slavery and concubinage. Inshallah. 🙂

Finally, I happened to be at a Pakistani-American gathering yesterday and was somewhat surprised to run into a couple of vehement Trump supporters. One of them was a very observant Muslim who prays five times a day and is a pillar of the local Islamic center, but who was supporting Trump because “Trump will keep out terrorists who give a bad name to Muslims and who threaten our future and the future of our children in this great country”. And he is not alone. 
Then I woke up to see this tweet from Indian film director Ram Gopal Verma (who happens to have 1.83 MILLION twitter followers):

“3rd world people” like Varma are not necessarily fans of third world people. 

I still hope Hillary wins. I don’t think Trump is fit to be president (on ANY party’s platform). But I also think he COULD win. A lot of people are voting against the bipartisan consensus of the recent past. ..They may be voting for a worst alternative (at least, I think they will be, if they vote for Trump), but there is a lot of resentment and sense of betrayal out there. Interesting times.

So General Raheel wants to make sure the world knows he is dong the right thing all alone in Punjab and (hint, hint) the prime minister and the bloody civilians are (as usual) not up to the job.

ISPR and its superb media machine are busy making sure everyone knows that the army is out there all alone, leading the nation to greatness. This is one aspect of Pakistani internal politics that is reliably unchanging: that the army will use any and all crises to further elbow the civilians aside and to undermine their authority, usually in self-defeating and completely unnecessary ways (unnecessary in the sense that the civilians may not even be resisting “the right thing”, though there can be exceptions to that). Thus the first thing the army did after the latest horrendous attack is to start sending out press releases and tweets via the ever vigilant and extremely efficient ISPR about how it has started taking action in Punjab and to make sure that their supporters/agents in the media amplify this as unilateral action and undermine the credibility of the counter-terrorism department and police (both of which have in fact been active recently against the terrorists) as much as possible. Action is needed against Jihadis, and it is great that the army now wants to kill some of them, but does it have to undermine the police and the civilian institutions as it does so?

And when the hapless (even more hapless in PR, than in law enforcement) civilian regime tried to point out that these were joint operations and that they were fully on board, the army chief went so far as to put it out that the army was NOT doing any joint raids. Every retired air marshal and general has been on TV making sure everyone gets the message.

This would all be fine if the army was as capable in this area as they pretend. But they have a long history of pushing aside civilians (admittedly, corrupt and incompetent civilians) and failing to do what even the corrupt civilians were managing to do. Thus everything from the Water and Power authority to the Railways to everyday policing deteriorated further under army rule (they have also deteriorated under civilian rule, the story is bad all around, but part of that is also due to how the army has undermined civilian institutions for decades, undermining trust in them and tolerating corrupt politicians who do its bidding while making sure anyone half-effective is cut to size).
In the case of the police and the administration the issue is not just that the army does not really know how to handle stuff even at the British Raj level (which outdated level is about the best the civilian administration can manage), but that the army introduces dual responsibility in administration; everybody knows the real power lies with the army, but the civilian chief or police are still responsible on paper, so both sides have no incentive to take any responsibility. It never works well, but the army will do it anyway.

This is more of the same.

They would do much better if they cooperated with the civilians (pushing, if necessary, from behind the scenes in the national interest; but then again, who does that?) but that is never job 1. Job 1 is grabbing more power and making sure the bloody civilians get no credit. This is, at a minimum, unfortunate…

Though I wouldnt mind if the army fires Choudhry Nisar, the interior minister. The thing is, he is probably the one person they will keep when and if they get rid of Mian Nawaz Sharif. So it goes..

But there can be little doubt that it works in the short term. Especially with Uncle Sam and Uncle Chin, both of whom have invested good money in this venture and want a steady well-dressed military hand on the tiller.

The latest Islamist-terrorist atrocity hit the city of Brussels. The attackers no doubt think they are about to meet their 72 virgins. I have nothing new to say about this, but am posting excerpts from two previous posts (one written after the Paris attacks, the second after the San Bernadino attack) that may shed some light on SOME of the cultural and religious issues in this war. I do want to add that I while I think cultural issues are critical in the long run, they matter far less in the short term than policing, spying, arrests and retaliation. Wars tend to do that: they concentrate matters and short term immediate action is what counts most. Intellectuals who specialize in history and philosophy may matter more in the long term, but once war has begun, it’s “action this day”. This distinction is not news, but it does sometimes get lost.

And I would add that I do not believe the “Eurabia” BS either. Even Sweden will not become Muslim. Muslims will assimilate into Europe, or will face fascism, expulsion and worse. And I will go out on a limb and even predict that England will neither become Islamic, nor resort to naked fascism (it has a culture strong enough to survive/avoid both). Maybe this is true of most European countries. We will see. But the “Eurabia” paranoia is just slightly less silly than the Islamicate dream of an Islamicized Europe.

The following post is an unedited mishmash at places, but you will get the point.

1. Is ISIS Islamic? 
Short Answer: Yes
For a “secular observer”, this is a no-brainer. The secular (and even more so, religious) outsider obviously does not believe in any particular version of Islam as the one true faith, etc etc. To them, Islam is (or should be) whatever any Muslim claims as his religion (this obviously means that for any such observer there is no one Islam, there are many Islams). To such an observer (if he or she is well-informed), Islam is a religion that started in Arabia, took up very notable strands from Rome (aka Byzantium), Persia, Judaism, etc and evolved into many different schools and sects. An exceptionally well-informed observer could indeed comment that ISIS does not replicate the dominant Sunni theology of the Ummayads or the Abbasids and has more in common with the relatively small Kharijite tradition, but even so, it would be the height of “Whitesplaining” for, say, professor Juan Cole to step in and deign to tell Syrian and Iraqi Muslims in ISIS that they are doing it wrong and their Islam is not “real Islam”. The appropriate answer (and this is exactly the answer many different Jihadist groups have given) is “WE know what Islam is and you dont have to come down from Michigan to tell us what our religion should look like”.  To sum up: well-informed outsiders can indeed note that ISIS is more like this, less like that; not representative of ALL Muslims (who is?), not representative of all Muslim states, not typical of all Islamist movements, etc. But for Bush or Blair to announce that ISIS is not really Islamic carries no weight. Islamic is what Islamists think is Islamic. THEY disagree among themselves, giving rise to many different Islams, Some represent bigger groups and larger sects, some are small cults, but all are Islamic.

For the believing Muslim, the answer depends on what sect/group/tendency they believe in. If their sect/tendency regards extremely vicious and extremely literalist Islamists as unislamic, more power to them. But some of them do indeed regard ISIS as Islamic (as is obvious from the thousands of Muslims (including neo-converts) who have flocked to the banner of ISIS in recent years. Others regard them as mostly Islamic, but occasionally doing things that a good Muslim would not do. This group is not trivial in numbers. Finally, countless others hold no firm opinion, but waiver between admiration of some acts and total opposition to others. Humans have complicated loyalties and psychologies. Would it surprise anyone (or at least, anyone not educated in the current Western postmodern left-liberal “tradition”) that a Palestinian or a Turk or a Pakistani may hold internally contradictory views on ISIS; sometimes admiring their deep faith and readiness to fight for Islam, even against overwhelming odds, other times cursing them for their cruelties, and last but not least, at other times worrying about what ISIS’ actions may do to his or her job prospects, visa status or college prospects. We are all human.

My own view: ALL of Islamic history is characterized by a struggle between three political-theolgoical camps that all appeared fairly early in the rise of the Arab empire and the Islamic religion (the two, empire and religion were obviously intertwined and interdependent):

1. Sunnis. Those who thought the rising Arab empire was best led by the consensus of the elite, with a tendency to rally around whoever had managed to fight his way to the top, provided he paid lip service to religion, patronized the rising ulama class and (most important) kept his eyes on the ball as far as managing and growing the empire was concerned. While Sunni clerics developed what seems to be a theory of politics (who is a just ruler? who has the right to rule? what do the people owe their ruler? etc.) on closer inspection it turns out to be pretty much divorced from actual politics. Rulers and their courts had more in common with past Roman, Persian and Central Asian traditions than anything specifically Islamic. Rulers usually grabbed power by force, then tried to pass it on to their children rather than some ideal “just ruler”. Dynasties rose and fell with little concern for theological rules. No “Muslim church” acquired a tenth of the influence of the Roman Catholic church. This tradition is not ISIS-like in detail, but it also paid lip service to ideals that ISIS can and does fling in the face of “court clerics” who happily go along with whoever happens to be the ruler (from King Hassan to Hussain to Salman..and even Sisi). Sunni tradition is not ISIS, but it trains and teaches children using ideals that ISIS may aspire to more strongly than the Sunni rulers themselves. This hypocrisy-crisis is a recurrent feature of modern Islamicate politics. And it is the reason why “moderate Muslims” (aka mainstream Sunnis) regularly fall prey to “Wahabism”. They are not falling prey to a new religion, they are falling prey to a more distilled and internally consistent version of what they have been taught is indeed their own religion. Classical Sunni ideals overlap with modern Jihadist ideology, their true-believers tend to find Wahabism attractive.

2. Shias. Those who felt there was something special about the family of the prophet and in particular, the family of Ali and developed theologies that included varying combinations of the charismatic Imamate and its heritage of revolt against Sunni authority. Since Shias are a majority in only a few places, (most important, Iran) and their history includes long periods of conflict with mainstream Sunni rule, they are more or less immune to the appeal of Sunni revivalists, whether they are the milder Maudoodi types or the harsher ISIS types. They have set up their own theocracy in Iran (much more effectively so than any Sunni revivalist has managed to do) but they are not ISIS. For the purposes of this post (i.e. for outsiders who dont have to live in Iran), they are “objectively liberal”.

3. Khwarij. The Khwarij insisted that neither the elite, nor the family of the prophet had a special right to rule. Only the most pious, the most thoroughly “Islamic” person could do that. Muslims who committed major sins or failed to meet their standard of Islamic fervor were as much the enemy as any infidel. Even more so in fact. The Khwarij were always small in number and they were repeatedly defeated by both Shia and Sunni rulers, but their tendency has never completely gone away. Something within Islamic tradition keeps them alive. Mainstream Sunnis frequently pay only lip service to Jihad and the harshest punishments of shariah law (particularly in modern times), but these ideals are present in their theology. This theology that was rarely an impediment to statecraft and its priorities in the actual golden age of Islamic imperium, but it still paid lip service to those ideals. In fact, the more divorced it was from actual politics, the more it could fly off into discussions about the ideal ruler,the ideal law and the ideal Jihad, all un-encumbered by any contact with reality. But ideals can effect some people. True believers arise, and in times of anarchy and state collapse, they may be the lowest common denominator, providing a framework around which the asabiya of Islam can cohere and in which the community can see hope for a return to a commonly-imagined (though mostly imaginary) golden age.

In fact, even reformers who have some mainstream cred can drink quite a bit from #3 in this age of Western domination (perhaps to be replaced soon with mixed Chinese AND Western domination, but still with no Islamic empire in sight); see Maudoodi, Syed Qutb and others. Not as far from ISIS as you may wish.

This post is not really qualified to go too deeply into what religion (any religion) may mean (and may do) to those struck by epiphanies on the road to Damascus. That whole issue is alluded to here by the always erudite Tanner Greer. Hopefully, he will have more to say in a longer post soon.

2. Does Islamist Terrorism have anything to do with Islam?
In light of the above, one answer would be: of course not. There IS no one thing called Islam. There are many Islams. And most of them are not terrorist. Case closed.
But, again in the light of the above, one may also say that mainstream Sunni Islam is remarkably uniform in its theology and its ideals. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunnis. Within Sunni Islam, there are four recognized schools of law. In principle, the vast majority of Sunnis honor and respect these schools and their doctors. The vast majority has no idea what is IN those schools or in the writings of their doctors, but they honor them and idealize them. It is very common for educated Muslims to own a book or two of fiqh and hadith. Rarely read, but always honored. A small minority of highly westernized postmodern Muslims believe that those medieval books and their authors are no longer valid for us and Islam (like modern Christianity) is more or less “spiritual” and can (or should) be whatever a believer sincerely thinks it is. Even these postmodern Muslims frequently believe that the Quran is the inerrant, literal word of God, but given that most classical Islamic theology is not lifted straight out of the Quran, they feel they can safely reject aspects of classical theology that are no longer fashionable. That they have usually not read the Quran makes this kind of cherry-picking even easier. But as numerous public opinion polls have repeatedly shown, most Sunni Muslims do not share this postmodern view of their religion. Whatever they may do in practice (and they frequently do exactly what adherents of all other religions are doing in similar econcomic and political circumstances; the much-mentioned “Muslims who just want to have a sandwich and send their kids to good schools”), they do believe that Islam is more than just an identity token. They believe it is “a complete code of life” and if enforced in its true letter and spirit, it holds the possibility of reversing all our communal ills. And what is that letter, if not that spirit? it is the books of Shariah written by medieval Sunni theologians. Books that were composed in the midst of a warlike expanding empire by confident intellectuals of a dominant creed. Books that idealize holy war (not “inner struggle”, Karen Armstrong notwithstanding) and a society where Muslims rule and non-Muslims know their (inferior) place in society. Books that idealize pious rulers and the enforcement of shariah law (stonings and amputations included). Books that idealize martyrdom and war against the infidels. Books that prime some of them to fall for preachers who preach purity and a true Islamic state.  Only some of them. But that is enough. A convert from France felt strongly enough about this to sacrifice his own life in a suicide mission that aimed to kill random innocent Frenchmen. Well, not innocent in his eyes any longer.

 So yes, classical Sunni Islam tends to prime some people for joining Jihadist organizations (whether ISIS or LET or Islamic Jihad or any other of an alphabet soup of Jihadi groups) and committing atrocities with a good conscience. See the ten young men who went to Mumbai on the first “Mumbai-style attack”; what motivated them to go on that suicide mission? Nothing to do with Islam? I think is hard to say that with a straight face..
Unless you happen to be in the postmodern Western liberal elite, in which case you may suffer from what Tanner Greer calls “the limits of liberal education in the 21st century, far better at teaching platitudes than exploring the depths of the human condition; and the inability of secular elites to understand religion and the religious masses who earnestly believe in them…“

3. George Bush/Western colonialism/imperialism is responsible for this attack. 
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, But.
It is true that the rise of Western power and the defeat of the Ottomans in the first world war created the modern middle east. And it is a staple Western left-liberal talking point (picked up and used by Islamists and by other imperial powers like Russia as needed) that British and French imperialists created the modern Middle East via the Sykes-Picot agreement and messed it up, leading to all or most current problems. This is obviously not true in any strong sense. Britain and France did not look at some blank piece of paper and convert it into the modern Middle East. They grabbed and missed opportunities galore (as did the Turks, who chose the losing side in world war one when they may not have had to do any such thing), worked around existing populations and structures (many of them Imperial Ottoman in origin), argued and tried to double-cross each other before and after Sykes-Picot, were resisted by new forces, adjusted to the results of world wars and local wars, and so on..in short, history happened; not just two people meeting and making up what they wanted and determining all that has happened since then. But let us leave details for another day. Let us use Sykes-Picot as short hand for the modern post World War II Middle Eastern system of nation-states that arose after the brief British and French colonial interlude, primarily (but not always) under the control of local elites groomed or put in place by those two powers.

These elites ruled what were formally (if not very deeply), “Westphalian” nation-states on the “European model”. What that means and why that is so bad (or such an improvement) over past models is another debate we can leave for another day. But the modern Middle East came into being. The states that were created were like most postcolonial states, a mixture of past divisions and new creations, some of them more arbitrary and artificial than others (Pakistani nationalists, take a bow).
Israel was the obvious outlier. With a more Westernized/modern population and with a direct (and at least temporarily, mostly sympathetic) connection to the Western world, it was an order of magnitude more capable (in terms of knowledge, organization, sophistication, ability to fight) than it’s unfortunate neighbors and it’s own aboriginal inhabitants. Even though the physical infrastructure of the state (and the weapons it was able to acquire) were not (at least initially) much superior to those of its enemies, the software was so much better that they were able to whip larger opponents with some regularity. Even so, an order of magnitude is still only an order of magnitude. It may have reached or exceeded the limits of it’s superiority by now. Or it may not. In a battle, it does not matter who is absolutely good at fighting, just who is relatively better. In purely military terms, the Israeli advantage may yet grow; and if present trends accelerate and the Sunni-Shia-Wahabi-Whatever shit totally hits the fan, they may well annex some more territory. History can be cruel. Vae Victis and all that. But moving on..
What about the Arab states of the region?

A. Iraq has splintered after the American invasion and is unlikely to see peace in the immediate future. Some sort of three way division seemed possible, but with ISIS taking over the role of “Sunni resistance”, enough Sunnis may prefer cohabitation with Shias, so maybe the split is not totally final. On the other hand, with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states still interested in fighting Shia-Iranian domination, anti-Shia forces may still get enough weapons and money to keep fighting for a very long time. The safest bet is “more of the same”. But whatever happens, in the near future it will not be able to contend for regional hegemon, that much is given.

2. Syria has totally crashed and burned. Neither the Assad regime nor its various opponents(including irreconcilable Sunni-Jihadists) are in a position to win completely anytime soon. Continuing violence seems to be the near and medium-term future.

3. Yemen is in flames and has now been invaded by a multi-national coalition led by Saudi Arabia (ostensibly in support of the last “elected” government of the state). Conquering North Yemen has never been an easy prospect and great powers from Rome to the Ottomans have tried and failed to impose their authority over the whole country. The British took control of Aden (all they really wanted) and managed the surrounding tribes with bribes and punitive policing, but never controlled the whole country. The Egyptian adventure in the 1960s ended up being “Egypt’s Vietnam”, so the chances that the Saudis will prevail completely are pretty much nil. Stil, in the near-term it is likely that the people of Yemen will pay the heaviest price, not the people or the elites of Saudi Arabia. Yemen is broken and no policy, no matter how sensible (a faint possibility in any case) will put it together again in the foreseeable future.

For some White or Desi (as in Indian-ish) Leftists, this is time to say “I told you so”. Some of them have reacted to these implosions with barely disguised glee, celebrating the collapse of the borders and states they had always decried as a colonial imposition, and throwing in formula appeals for a “revolutionary” or “pro-people” program to build a new future, blah blah blah. We can ignore this lot. Other Leftists (especially those with family and friends in the region, who do not have the luxury of simply enjoying being “right” about Sykes-Picot) are more confused. They know there is no leftist hegemon or potential hegemon in view that has a reasonable chance of building a new peace out of this chaos, and they have too much local knowledge to blithely generate fantasy stories about the heroic Syrian regime, or the Yemeni rebels for that matter. Between Asad and Sisi and ISIS, who is one to root for? Many of them will likely end up rooting for the existing “Sykes-Picot” states and forget the dream of erasing those hated borders?  But still, that order was neo-colonial and will not return to status quo ante even if many people wish it were so. As the colonial and neo-colonial order fades, what will replace it (in the region as a whole)? With little local knowledge it is not for me to attempt a detailed prediction, but even with limited knowledge, we can say this much: as in any region, the power that imposes order will have to possess sufficient solidarity and ideological clarity to be able to ensure the loyalty of their own core and to compel the loyalty of a critical mass of those they incorporate into their system of rule. What ideal and what asabiya will provide that glue and that motivation in the middle east?

Sunni Islam is one obvious contender (Arab nationalism was another, but seems to have lost out. Marxism was never a serious contender, smaller ethnic nationalisms will save some). Western intervention has destroyed some states, but not provided an alternative (and really cannot provide an alternative). The result, in Syria and Libya and Sunni Iraq is chaos. In that chaos, ISIS has risen to power in parts of Syria and Iraq. And it has been attacked by many powers. Among them, France and Hezbollah and Russia. And all three have been hit by atrocities against soft targets in response.

Even if one does not believe conspiracy theories about the CIA and Mossad creating or helping ISIS (I don’t), one can easily say that ham-handed/short-sighted Western intervention in Iraq and Syria created the conditions that allowed ISIS to rise. They also created or supported many of the grievances (real and imagined) that local Muslims find humiliating and unjust (again, whether the anger is all justified or not, it hardly matters, this is how it feels to many people). So yes, Bush and imperialism do share the blame. But not necessarily in the total and exculpatory way the postmodern Left imagines.


Second, and equally important: the Saudi Royal family is not the source of religious ideology in Saudi Arabia. They allied with this religious movement to gain power, but at crucial points, they have been willing to go against the wishes of their Wahabi base. It is the people of Najd (the wahabi heartland, so to speak) and specially their religious scholars, who are the real fanatics in Saudi Arabia. A democratic Saudi Arabia would likely be more Wahabist than the royal family.
Incidentally the main oil reserves are located in the (relatively small) Shia region of Saudi Arabia. This region became part of Saudi Arabia  by conquest (not by imperialist manipulation or “Sykes-Picot”;  Brown people have agency, their leaders can conquer people too). American companies (invited in by Al Saud because he, quite rationally, feared the British imperialists more) found oil there. Soon the world war accelerated oil demand and the US became an ally of the Saudi Royal family, which it remains to this day. For a long time, the US ignored and sometimes (most egregiously, in  Afghanistan and Pakistan) actively encouraged the export of Jihadist Islam from Saudi Arabia. This was short-sighted and morally wrong, but it was based on a serious under-estimation of the potential of jihadism as an ideology, as well as a prioritization of anti-communism over good sense. But contrary to Eurocentric Left-wing propaganda, Saudi support for pan-Islamic causes was not primarily initiated by the US. It was the “push” of their own religious motivation plus the “pull” of demand for pan-Islamism in newly minted “Islamic” countries like Pakistan that drove most of this effort .

In any case, the US has not actively encouraging this process after  9-11. The Saudi Royal family has also slowly (too slowly for most of us) moved away from unrestrained support for the most extreme international  Jihadists, but continues to support many Islamic causes worldwide (not just Wahabi causes, but mainstream Sunni causes that it hopes to co-opt) and continues to support “moderate Sunni Jihadis” in their regional war against Shia Iran and its allies. And of course, they continue to impose ISIS-like punishments (cutting off hands and feet, beheading  etc) for crimes including the crime of apostasy (all of which are a standard part of mainstream Sunni Shariah, and that therefore have the theoretical, but not always the practical, approval of mainstream Sunnis). This causes many liberals in the West (and elsewhere) to insist that the US should break its alliance with Saudi Arabia and even bomb them.  But what happens then? Will they become less jihadist or more? And who gets the oil? Iran? Russia? China?

The point is this: if there is a quick and direct way to weaken Saudi power and the hardline shariah-based Islam they encourage, it requires taking the oil away from them (since oil wealth is the source of their power). This can be done. The local population is historically Shia. Maybe Iran can capture the oilfields and set up a Shia-client state and defend it against Saudi attack? Or Russia Or China can do this job? Or the US can do it itself; but such a grab would be a naked imperialist military intervention, and it would surely require shooting any Wahabi who shows up in the oil-region. There is no pretty way to do it. If the US just breaks off relations, the Saudis will look for a new protector. Pakistan, China, maybe even Russia could be tempted. But Jihadism does not come solely (or now, even mostly) from the US alliance, and will not go away if that alliance breaks. It likely can be moderated if the Royal family is pressured, but it will be moderated against the wishes of the people of Saudi Arabia, not on their behalf. And it will be moderated by an authoritarian regime willing to use torture and violence to impose its will on a hardline Islamic population (at least in the Najdi heartland). If all this is not clear, then the appeals to “break off our alliance” are just liberal posturing and virtue-signaling, not real policy.

By the way, any such invasion and occupation to impose liberalism and good 21st century behavior would also invite the ire of all pro-Shariah-true-believer Sunnis in the world. Prepare for that too. Otherwise, the Royal family is the best bet in Saudi Arabia and that is simply the ugly unpalatable truth.

The alternative to a bad situation is sometimes worse. Shit happens. There is no universal framework of liberal democracy (or socialism, or whatever you regard as ideal) and human rights that exists a priori in all places, only waiting for the overlay of imperialism or neoliberalism to be removed to allow universal peace and tranquility to break out. Everything is hard work. Institutions take time. Ideologies matter. Humans are humans everywhere, but they do not live in the same history and the same circumstances. Within the limits of what can be done with human biology, much can vary. And sometimes, things fall apart.

Even when they don’t fall apart, one can easily see that not everyone is happy in liberal democracies. In fact, some of their best intellectuals are the most unhappy, and are willing to entertain almost any movement that threatens to overthrow this sorry scheme of things entire…Some of us may fear what will follow if the revolution actually happens, but all of us can agree that the revolutionary dream has support. In the Middle East, this dream may take Islamicate forms. No surprise.

4. What next? Spontaneous Jihad Syndrome?

 Any Muslim can become radicalized and fall victim to spontaneous jihad syndrome at any time.
This is the right-wing fringe’s mirror-image of the liberal belief that Islam never causes jihad and all of it can be explained by “inequality” or “Sykes-Picot” or some such story.  Both mirror-images are clearly false. The real situation is that we can look at the Muslims of the world and see several disparate groups; Shias, Ismailis and Ahmedis are outside the Sunni Jihadist universe and so are not going to spontaneously take up arms in the war between shariah-based Islam and other civilizations.  They are all relatively small minorities, but they are the most obvious examples of “Muslims who will not get radicalized and join the Sunni Jihad, foreign policy, Israel, Sykes-Picot and Picketty notwithstanding. These supposedly powerful motives for hating America will not cause these groups to go postal. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

 Coming to Sunni Muslims, we have a very large number are “moderate Muslims”, which is shorthand for Muslims who were not brought up in shariah-compliant households and who do not practice that kind of Islam. Their numbers vary from country to country, but one can say with a lot of confidence that they are not spontaneous jihad material either. They can covert, but it is a slow process, it is observable and even preventable (if they are kept away from hardline preachers). Then there are the shariah-compliant Muslims who believe that the Shariah’s orders for Jihad are meant for very specific situations where a Sunni state has declared Jihad and those situations (fortunately) do not exist. So they get on with life in all parts of the world. Many of them are model citizens because they avoid intoxicants, deal honestly and follow the law. A very tiny fraction of them may “radicalize” but most will not. The same applies to converts. So yes, about these (small) groups one may say “they can radicalize” , but very rarely. And even then, there are warning signs and it is never an overnight process. Finally, there are the true-believer Jihadists. They have obvious links with Jihadist schools, groups and teachers. They are small in number and they are not hard for the community to identify, if is so chooses. And they are indeed high risk. Liberals see none of them, right-wingers see too many. Both are wrong.

I guess what I am saying is that notions of Muslim hordes just waiting for a chance to attack are far outside the bounds of reality. Common sense can actually be a guide here. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and equally there is no need to be willfully blind to warning signs. Biased agenda pushers on BOTH sides of this debate have obscured common sense options. And while Liberals may underestimate or misrepresent the threat from radical Muslims, conservatives frequently generalize the threat to all Muslims.

Last but not the least, all nutcases cannot be stopped beforehand. Some surprises will always happen in a large and complex society . There is no risk-free society, with or without Muslims. But this is not World-War Three. Not in the United States. In parts of Europe the proportion of jihadists is likely higher (for various reasons, including racism and multiculturalist liberalism). Meanwhile, in the core of the Muslim world itself, all bets are off. There is no well-articulated theology of liberal Sunnism. Other organizing ideologies (like Marxism and pan-Arab nationalism) have manifestly failed. The authoritarian regimes that exist are (for now) the only game in town. These authoritarian elites, who disproportionately  benefit from the modern world,  impose their will using a combination of force, persuasion and foreign support. But they lack a deep legitimating ideology. This crisis of ideology is extremely serious, and it may devour some of those countries (though the survival of Jordan is a good example of the fact that even the most arbitrary modern states have more strength than we sometimes imagine). Those Muslim states that are further away from the Arab heartland (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) may do better. They can frequently rely on other identities to maintain the legitimacy of their states and new Islams can arise in them with time. But even they will not be compltely free of Jihadist conflict. No state is completely free of conflict of course, and many conflicts unrelated to Islam or Jihad could easily kill millions and destroy whole countries. But predominantly Islamic countries do have the added burden of the conflict of Classical Islamic ideals with modern civilization (not just Western civilization), and it will take time to resolve this conflict.
Hold on tight.

Do read Tanner Greer’s post about the limitations of the Western liberal worldview when it comes to Islam, or any religion for that matter.
Excerpt: The truth is that most faiths, though of course not all, possess a concept something like what the Christian Church Fathers called metanoia — usually translated as “repentance” but more properly the transformation of the soul. It is visible in the tales of Paul, Raskolnikov, and Malcolm X. It is not “people get[ting] out of [religions] what they bring into them.” Quite the opposite: it is people getting out of religion what they never had before. Max Fisher of Vox does not misunderstand this because he lacks a grasp of faith: he misunderstands this because he does not grasp the nature of man. He possesses a graduate degree in international security issues from the Johns Hopkins University, writes for a major publication, is a go-to for White House narrative promulgation, and he lacks this most basic element of the liberal education.

This is not to condemn him as any sort of unusual creature. He is not the exception. He is the rule. Our elites are well credentialed: but the danger they pose to us lies in the dismaying truth that they are not wise. Worse, they are not even smart.

Also See this from Razib Khan for another angle.
Excerpt:
The power of the Islamic State derives in part from the fact that it inverts the moral order of the world. Some of its soldiers are clear psychopaths, as the most violent and brutal of international jihadis have been drawn to the Islamic State (as opposed to Al Qaeda, which is more pragmatic!). But a substantial number believe in its utopian vision of an Islamic society constructed upon narrow lines. A positive vision of a few evil goals, rather than a grand quantity of small evil pleasures. The Islamic State ushers in an evil new order, it does not unleash unbridled chaos. Though its self-conception that it is resurrecting the first decades of Islam is self-delusion in my opinion, it is still a vision which can entice some in the Islamic international.

I do not think that the Islamic State is here to stay. I believe it will be gone within the next five years, torn apart by its own contradictions and its rebellion against normal human conventions, traditions, and instincts. But that does not mean it is not going to cause misery for many on its way down. The irony is that the iconoclastic Islamic State may as well be worshiping the idols conjured in the most fervid of Christian evangelical apocalyptic literature, because they shall tear the land end to end and leave it in a thousand pieces, a material sacrifice to their god. They live under the illusion that they are building utopia, but they are coming to destroy an imperfect world and leave hell in its wake.

* The modern Salafis are just the latest in a particular extreme of Sunni belief, which goes back to individuals such as Ibn Taymiyyah.

And Shadi Hamid’s excellent post from 2014: The roots of the Islamic State’s appeal.  
Excerpts: 

…
..If ISIS and what will surely be a growing number of imitators are to be defeated, then statehood—and, more importantly, states that are inclusive and accountable to their own people—are essential. The state-centric order in the Arab world, for all its artificiality and arbitrariness, is preferable to ungoverned chaos and permanently contested borders. But for the Westphalian system to survive in the region, Islam, or even Islamism, may be needed to legitimate it. To drive even the more pragmatic, participatory variants of Islamism out of the state system would be to doom weak, failing states and strong, brittle ones alike to a long, destructive cycle of civil conflict and political violence.

Last but not the least, from Ali Minai, unreal Islam. 
Which brings us back to the issue of “real Islam”. As someone in love with the cultural traditions of Islam and as a diligent student of its history, I agree that the acts of the jihadis do not represent the vast majority of Muslims today or in history. Humans are a violent species and Muslims have contributed their share, but it is completely asinine to think that Muslims have been, historically, any more violent than other groups. However, it is equally absurd to deny that the ideology underlying jihadism draws upon mainstream Islamic beliefs and is, therefore, undeniably a form of “real Islam” – albeit of a very extreme form. It is more accurate to say that this extremism is “not the only Islam”, and, by historical standards, it is a version very different from what the vast majority of Muslims have practiced. That’s why groups espousing such puritanical and rigid attitudes were traditionally called “khawarij” – the alienated ones. At the same time, Muslims should acknowledge that they have not constructed the logical and theoretical framework within which extremism can be rejected formally. If anything, the opposite has happened in the last century, with increasingly literalist attitudes gaining strength for political reasons. And that is the core problem: A literal reading of even moderate Muslim beliefs can, and does, lead to behaviors incompatible with modern society. Like Christians, Jews, Hindus and others, Muslims have to turn towards a less literal, more inspirational and humanistic reading of their sacred traditions, drawing from them principles that can stand the test of time rather than literal, ahistorical prescriptions. This does not require the invention of a “new Islam”, or the imposition of an “official Islam” by states. Nor does it require a rewriting of Muslim sacred texts any more than the Enlightenment needed a rewriting of the Old Testament – Thomas Jefferson notwithstanding. What is needed is a change of attitude, of how people relate to the texts and traditions. Strong strands of humanism, compassion, diversity of ideas and acceptance of differences already exist within the Islamic tradition – among Sufis, among poets, and even among scholars. The trick is to rediscover, re-emphasize and reinterpret them for our times. And even as we wring our hands in despair, brave individuals within Muslim societies are trying to ignite just such a change at great risk to their lives. The least we can do is to add our voices to theirs.

Oh, and Razib Khan on the poverty of multicultural discourse: Excerpts
The problem with the bleeding over of academic “discourse” into the public forum is that it obfuscates real discussion, and often has had a chilling effect upon attempts at moral or ethical clarity. Unlike the individual above I am skeptical of moral or ethical truth in a deep ontological sense. But I have opinions on the proper order of things on a more human scale of existence. You don’t have to reject the wrongness of a thing if you reject the idea that that thing is wrong is some deep Platonic sense. I can, in some cases will, make the argument for why some form of the Western liberal democratic order is superior to most other forms of arranging human affairs, despite being a skeptic of what I perceive to be its egalitarian excesses. I can, and in some cases will, make the argument for why legal sexual equality is also the preferred state of human affairs. But to have this discussion I have to be forthright about my norms and presuppositions, and not apologize for them. They are what they are, and the views of those who disagree are what they are.

An academic discourse tends to totally muddy a clear and crisp discussion. The reality is that most Egyptians have barbaric attitudes on a whole host of questions (e.g., ~80 percent of Egyptians favor the death penalty for apostasy from Islam). It was not surprising at all that the majority of the Egyptian electorate supported parties with reactionary cultural political planks; because the classification of these views as “reactionary” only makes sense if you use as your point of reference the Westernized social and economic elite. The majority of Egyptians have never been part of this world, and for them upward mobility has been accompanied by a greater self-consciousness of their Islamic identity.

This reality is not comforting to many, and so there has been an evasion of this. If we accept, for example, the hegemonic superiority of sexual equality, should we not impose the right arrangement upon those who oppress women? This is a serious question, but the fear of engaging in “dangerous” analysis in the “discourse” allows us to sidestep this question. Rather, by minimizing the concrete realities of cultural difference and the depths of their origin, Egyptians are easily transformed into Czechs in 1989 with browner skins and a Muslim affiliation. This is a totally false equivalence. As Eastern Europeans go the Czech population is atypical in its secularism and historical commitment to liberal democracy (one could argue the weakness of the Catholic church goes as far back as the Hussite rebellion and the later suppression of Protestantism by the Habsburgs). While other post-World War I polities switched toward authoritarianism in the inter-war period, the Czechs retained a liberal democratic orientation until the Nazi German invasion. After the collapse of Communism they reverted back to this state. Notably, extreme nationalist parties with anti-democratic tendencies have come to the fore in most post-Communist states, but not so in the Czech Republic.


The irony here is that an academic position which espouses the deep incommensurability of different societies and cultures in terms of their values, rendering inter-cultural analysis or critique suspect, has resulted in the domain of practical discussion a tendency to recast inter-cultural differences of deep import into deviations or artificialities imposed from the outside. In this particular case that artificiality is the Egyptian military, but in most cases it is Western colonialism, which has an almost demonic power to reshape and disfigure postcolonial societies, which lack all internal agency or direction. This is simply not the true state of affairs. The paradoxical fact is that there is commensurability across very different cultures. You can understand, analyze, and critique other societies, if imperfectly. For example, I can understand, and even agree with, some of the criticisms of Western society by Salafist radicals for its materialism and excessive focus on proximate hedonism. The Salafists are not aliens, but rather one comprehensible expression of human cultural types. But that does not deny that I find their vision of human flourishing abhorrent. I understand it, therefore I reject it.

And my own comment on the multiculti question: 

“One angle (not the most important one, but I think its there) could be that while many casual adherents and self-satisfied groupthink nurtured “thinkers” are just mindlessly repeating the party line there ARE a number of people who are seriously committed to what they imagine is a worldwide organized movement to overthrow the existing system (including the system in which they work and draw a salary or get grants). i.e. they may know that a lot of their bullshit is bullshit, but its useful bullshit in a higher cause. It undermines the dominant civilization and its armies and bankers (or so they think..I think the actual contribution of Tariq Ali or even the far more scholarly Vijay Prashad to bringing down Western civ is negligible compared to the contribution of wall street bankers). but there IS a hardcore of calculation and conscious propaganda mixed into the postcolonial bullshit…

Once war has been undertaken, no peace is made by pretending there is no war.
—- Duryodhana (the Mahabharata)

“With two thousand years of examples behind us, we have no excuses when fighting for not fighting well.” T. E. Lawrence

Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson