Despite a formal alliance between Pakistan and the United States, it has become increasingly clear that the interests of the two governments are often in perfect contradiction.  Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, has been accused by the eminently credible Mike Mullen of supporting the jihadist terror cell Haqqani in its October attack on the American embassy in Kabul.  Furthermore, Osama bin Laden managed to hide for an extended period of time in the medium-sized city of Abbottabad, mere blocks from a renowned Pakistani military academy.  Upon his death, the Pakistani military chose to focus solely on the perceived breach of sovereignty by the US, effectively brushing aside its own deficiencies and the impurities inherent in its clandestine system of unsavory partnerships.  In the words of Harvard Fellow Aqil Shah, Pakistan has pursued a “pick and choose approach to counterterrorism,” fighting the Pakistani Taliban, but providing a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban, and allowing other terror cells, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, to exist openly within its borders.  Given the already murky allegiances of the Pakistani military, it’s no wonder that the decision by its leaders to scale back its antiterrorism cooperation with the United States led the US government to drastically cut military aid to Pakistan twice in 2011.

This move by the American government, however, may have been long overdue.  Several experts, including political scientist Seth G. Jones and Pakistan expert Parag Khanna, had already suggested cutting military aid to Pakistan while maintaining a line of support to the civilian government.  This hypothetical aid program was seen by some as a less harmful and more transparent way of assuring that drone strikes in Pakistan were tolerated, NATO supply routes were kept open, and, in general, that Pakistan remained complicit with American goals, even if to a limited extent.

Now, unfortunately, as the lines between Pakistan’s civilian government and military blur, the United States is quickly losing this option to fund one part of the Pakistani government over another.  While the military has shown to have less appetite for a coup than was originally suspected, there is much speculation that the civilian government is attempting to martyr itself for political gain.  Moreover, the Pakistani Supreme Court is effectively attacking Prime Minister Gilani, threatening him with contempt charges.  Even if the civilian government endures until the next election cycle, Imran Khan, the most popular opposition candidate for the prime minister position, is heavily tied to the interests of the Pakistani military.

As the gulf between Pakistan’s leadership circles closes, the US government must modify its foreign policy to reflect the Pakistani government’s shifting power dynamic.  Soon US policy may need to focus on appeasing primarily military leaders rather than civilian ones.  Given the level of corruption, complicity with terror, and general ineptitude that the Pakistani military and the ISI have displayed, aiding Pakistan in a feigned mission to fight the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani, and other terror networks which it has little interest in fighting, is a self-destructive extravagance.   Instead, the United States and Pakistan should, in the words of Jeffrey Goldberg, “ventilate differences rather than paper them over,” which will likely mean recognizing and focusing almost exclusively on the one area of mutual interest: destroying the Pakistani Taliban.  It is through fighting this specific faction of terror that both nations can find that ever-elusive set of aligned interests.  Incentivizing Pakistan to fight its de facto allies rather than their common enemies, after all, had been the root source of the Pakistani treachery that is currently tearing apart US-Pakistan relations.  Furthermore, involving Pakistan in fighting elements with which it has no true quarrel has often proved ineffective and at times counterproductive.

A specific focus of the US-Pakistan partnership on the destruction of the Pakistani Taliban, however, would avoid such a situation of misaligned interests. This program would further serve US goals by bolstering Pakistani state control over its territories, thus avoiding a situation where terror cells can exist in a governmental vacuum, or worse, a situation where insurgents are able to take control of pieces of Pakistan’s overdeveloped weapons arsenal.

Supplemental aid for Pakistani civilian projects may still be an option for the United States.  However, in a nation increasingly controlled by the military, such funds are likely to be misappropriated by the Pakistani government and, thus, as suggested by Parag Khanna, American funds must be allocated for certain, specified projects and be conditionalized on extreme transparency.  Otherwise, if we fail to correctly reallocate our support funds or to take steps to realign our relationship with a rapidly changing Pakistan, US monetary aid could once again fund the whims of the next Pakistani terror cell.

Photo credits: pakarmydefence.blogspot.com

It is regrettable that instead of working with your party to find an amenable solution to the budget crisis, you have opted to drive a fork into the American community by targeting Muslim Americans for acts committed by a small minority of their community. In calling this series of hearings, not only are you stigmatizing law-abiding Arabs and Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, you are heightening Islamophobia in a way that is reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy’s attack on alleged communists in the 1950s.

Why must the United States Congress be dealing with this in such a grandiose way and what does it aim to accomplish? I have watched the hearings and the most telling sign of a hearing gone astray is reducing Muslim American Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) to tears at the recounting of a story of Muslim American patriotism during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Not to mention how polarizing it is among members on both sides of the aisle. What the Congress should be doing, as one intelligence expert claims, is rethinking its “reductionist theory” of homegrown radicalization – that is, that Muslims turn into terrorists simply based on religious markers such as stopping drinking or smoking. The truth is that it is just “not that simple.”

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee of Homeland Security, listens to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) testimony on Muslim Americans.

The United States intelligence service spends upwards of $80 billion to understand just what you are trying to accomplish (with varying results). Would it not be more worthwhile to the American people if you had a more reputable list of speakers that provided testimony on intelligence strategy altogether? We condone the FBI conducting raids on mosques and ethnic communities, but do not think twice about the possible consequences in targeting a particular ethnic group. Cooperation with law-enforcement is a two-way street: Muslim Americans would most likely be more inclined to oblige with law-enforcement officials if they accorded them the same respect that any other American community receives.

When non-Muslim Americans such as Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, or Jared Lee Loughner perpetrate independent acts of violence, Congress seems to perfunctorily cast them aside as isolated cases of insanity, perverted ideology, or both. Yet in doing so, it fails as a body to thoroughly examine the steps of their own “radicalization.” Why are such offenders not afforded a more thorough examination?

I would also like to echo Jon Stewart’s astute observation, Rep. King. In the 1980s, you said the following in declaring your support of the Irish Republican Army, an internationally recognized terrorist group:

“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.” In light of attacks on civilians by the IRA at the time, you went on to state, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it.”

In defending these statements of IRA criminal activities against “British imperialism,” you claim it to be justified since they are not occurring on American soil. I cannot help but realize the inherent hypocrisy of your statement, however.

Would all this not mean that if you were a British member of Parliament, you would endorse the attacks of American terrorists against the government since they were not occurring on British soil? If we are selective in our view of terrorism, we run the perilous cost of alienating our own and not tackling pressing problems head-on.

Finally, I would like to comment on the way in which this scenario ominously parallels the “us” versus “them” scenario commonly associated with the racist sentiment this country embraced during the era of Jim Crow.

In talking to CBS News, Rep. King, you called out to young Muslim Americans and said, “the future is theirs.” Is this an ultimatum of some sort to do as the government wishes or be unjustly assailed? If these young Americans speak out against invasive government practices, are they to be labeled as “un-American” and “jihadists”? We as Americans should be looking for ways to unite against extremism. We should not be afraid to discuss rational ways of curbing domestic extremist influences, yet we should not support stereotypical views that only serve to engulf the nation in turmoil.

Rep. King, please do the truly American thing and adjourn these hearings.

Sincerely,

Naji Filali

Photo Credits: United Press International

Following revelations that the underwear bomber was fitted in Yemen, everyone is (or should be) asking: what is going on over there? The answer turns out to be… quite a bit.

So Yemen is finally front and center on the radar for the U.S. counterterrorism effort.

Not to pat ourselves on the back too hard, but the HPR ran an article about the growing threat of al-Qaida in Yemen a few weeks before the underwear bomber was exposed. Our own Robert Long on what makes the underlying situation so difficult to resolve:

Today, Yemen teeters on the brink of collapse: the army is battling an insurgency in the north, a southern secessionist movement is gaining momentum, and the economic downturn has exacerbated high levels of unemployment. Al-Qaida has reestablished itself with bomb attacks and assassinations that have targeted Yemeni officials, the Saudi government, and the American embassy in the capital city of Sana’a. As al-Qaida exploits Yemen’s growing lawlessness, it threatens oil-producing Saudi Arabia, vital Red Sea shipping routes, and security around the world.

…

Eight years after the Cole attack, Yemen’s deterioration and potential collapse poses a threat to international security that is increasingly difficult to ignore. The coming year will be a critical period in which countries targeted by al-Qaida in Yemen, particularly Saudi Arabia, will be under mounting pressure to ensure the stability of the government in Sana’a before it is too late.

Read the full article here.

Photo Credit: Paul Stephens / IRIN

How a failing Yemen threatens international security

One year before the 9/11 attacks, suicide bombers struck the USS Cole while it was anchored off the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors. In response, the United States and Yemen coordinated a fierce counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaida. By 2004, their combined efforts had virtually eradicated al-Qaida within the country.

Today, Yemen teeters on the brink of collapse: the army is battling an insurgency in the north, a southern secessionist movement is gaining momentum, and the economic downturn has exacerbated high levels of unemployment. Al-Qaida has reestablished itself with bomb attacks and assassinations that have targeted Yemeni officials, the Saudi government, and the American embassy in the capital city of Sana’a. As al-Qaida exploits Yemen’s growing lawlessness, it threatens oil-producing Saudi Arabia, vital Red Sea shipping routes, and security around the world.

Fighting in the North, Unrest in the South

The government in Sana’a faces a host of challenges to its authority, which has always been tenuous in a land of rugged terrain and tribal loyalties. The Shiite al-Houthi rebellion, which has raged intermittently since 2004, intensified in August of 2009 when the government launched an all-out offensive to crush the rebels in the northwest Saada province. President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced in October that the military was on its way to victory, but his rhetoric was not accompanied by progress on the ground.

Christopher Boucek, a Yemen specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the HPR that Saleh’s prediction was unrealistic given the backlash caused by the military crackdown. “There is not a military solution to this conflict,” said Boucek, arguing that the government’s indiscriminate tactics are exacerbating a humanitarian crisis.

In the south, meanwhile, a secessionist movement that began in the 1990s is moving toward open rebellion. Since the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, southerners have resented what they perceive as northern economic and political dominance. Anti-government protests are increasingly violent, and the defection of several prominent government leaders to the movement underscores its growing strength.

Sarah Phillips, a Yemen specialist at the University of Sydney’s Center for International Security Studies, told the HPR that secession is the greatest threat to the Yemeni state. “It’s a widespread popular resistance movement,” she explained. The movement has also disrupted oil production, Phillips noted, as most natural resources are concentrated in the South.

Running Dry

Falling world oil prices and disruptions in oil production have taken a toll on Yemen, which depends on oil for 90 percent of its exports and 70 percent of government revenues. Oil revenues dropped from $2.6 billion to $665 million in the past year and exportable oil is projected to run out by 2015. Phillips told the HPR that the drop in oil production is “the factor that really ties all of the crises together,” noting that the way the government has traditionally dealt with dissent is “by incorporating the leaders driving that dissent into its patronage networks.” As the oil dries up, so does the government’s ability to buy good will.

Yemen is also quickly running out of water. Some wells are falling by as much as 60 feet a year, and Sana’a could become the first world capital to go dry. Poverty drives more and more farmers to cultivate qat, a water-intensive plant that many Yemenis chew for its mild narcotic effects. The major national conflicts make it difficult to curb water shortages, which have in turn sparked many local conflicts.

Al-Qaida Back in Town

These great threats mean that the Yemeni government is largely unable or unwilling to focus on combating al-Qaida. “There are much more immediate priorities for the government than fighting al-Qaida-style terrorism,” Boucek explained. In the past, the Yemeni government has been a key ally in the fight against al-Qaida. Gregory Johnsen, a terrorism analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, noted that the joint campaign against al-Qaida in the wake of the Cole and 9/11 attacks was so effective that “by end of November 2003, the organization as such had really ceased to exist throughout Yemen.”

But al-Qaida has returned as a potent threat in recent years, precisely because of these myriad internal crises that demand government attention. A turning point in al-Qaida’s resurgence came in January 2006, when 13 al-Qaida inmates escaped from a maximum-security prison in Sana’a. Among the escapees was Nasir al-Wahayshi, a former secretary of Osama bin Laden who fought by his side in Afghanistan. Together with Qasim al-Raym, bin Laden’s right-hand man, al-Wahayshi has reassembled al-Qaida in Yemen as an ambitious fighting force. In September 2008, a coordinated assault on the U.S. embassy in Sana’a left 10 dead. In March, suicide bombers killed four Korean tourists and targeted a convoy of South Korean agents investigating the attack.

The group has also expanded its focus to the broader region. In January 2008, al-Qaida in Yemen announced on its website that the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaida were merging to form “al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula,” or AQAP. Johnsen explained that AQAP may intend to use Yemen as “a launching pad for attacks throughout the region.” Al-Qaida has targeted the Saudi government and threatened to disrupt crucial oil infrastructure. In April, Saudi agents arrested 11 al-Qaida fighters crossing into Saudi Arabia. Four months later, a suicide bomber nearly killed the assistant interior minister.

The prospect of a new Afghanistan, a safe haven used to plot attacks against the United States and other Western countries, makes the threat to security truly global. Although al-Qaida’s leadership remains concentrated in Pakistan, an expanding al-Qaida presence represents a growing problem for Washington and Riyadh.

Softening the Blow

The West has attempted to deal with the situation by supplying aid to Yemen, but the crisis of legitimacy surrounding the government has limited the effectiveness of aid efforts. Jane Novak, a journalist who was banned from Yemen for her coverage of the al-Houthi rebellion, told the HPR that the government is so de-legitimized, corrupt, and brutal that “supporting the government perpetuates the problem.”

Yet some government may be better than no government at all – as suggested by the case study of Somalia – and foreign support may be the only way to keep the economy afloat. Boucek pointed to foreign assistance in job training programs and health care, efforts to promote conservation and curb corruption, and greater integration with the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional common market with a defense planning council, as specific, necessary remedial steps.

Eight years after the Cole attack, Yemen’s deterioration and potential collapse poses a threat to international security that is increasingly difficult to ignore. The coming year will be a critical period in which countries targeted by al-Qaida in Yemen, particularly Saudi Arabia, will be under mounting pressure to ensure the stability of the government in Sana’a before it is too late.

Image Credit: Ahron de Leeuw (Flickr)

With fraud-ridden elections, a growing insurgency, and expanding Taliban influence, Afghanistan is at its most critical crossroads since the overthrow of the fundamentalist regime eight years ago. A report leaked last month revealed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, has requested 40,000 troops to supplement the 68,000 already committed to an intensive counterinsurgency strategy.

But many critics of the war, such as Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, argue that there is a much less costly way to achieve America’s interest in preventing a terrorist attack.

“With a counterterrorism approach, rather than occupying Afghanistan with troops and attempting to transform it, we can maintain surveillance to watch for evidence of al-Qaida activity and then use force to suppress that presence,” Bacevich said in an interview with the HPR. This approach would entail the use of cruise missiles, Predator drones, special forces, and bribery of warlords. Yet in light of the conditions that have sustained the Taliban’s rise, the “counterterrorism approach” may not be as simple or effective as it sounds. The Taliban, who remain sympathetic to al-Qaida, have expanded their influence by providing order and security in the absence of strong local governance and co-opting much of Afghanistan’s vast opium economy.

A Shadow Government

The shortarm of the government in Kabul has left many Afghans without basic security and rule of law, leading them to accept Taliban authority in exchange for protection. Nazir Shahrani, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Indiana University, told the HPR, “The international community promised the Afghani people democracy, but instead they have gotten a kleptocracy—a group of thieves who are fixated on bribery.” The Taliban, meanwhile, have become the de facto figures of authority in many local areas.

Under the inattentive administration of current President Hamid Karzai, tribal disputes over land and other resources have festered. This has created opportunities for the Taliban to exploit tribal rivalries and assert themselves as mediators or dispensers of justice. The Taliban have proven especially adept at playing on the discontent of some Pashtun tribes who feel marginalized by the current government.

The Taliban are also able to provide much-needed safety from local bandits and criminals in many areas. By ensuring basic security, the Taliban have persuaded many Afghans that they are a viable alternative to the unresponsive central government.

Warlords and Drug Lords

The Taliban have further extended their influence through the protection of poppy, part of a lucrative drug economy that represents almost half of the country’s annual GDP. This control has furnished the Taliban with hundreds of millions of dollars that it can pour into the insurgency.

The government’s attempts to rein in production by destroying poppy fields, however, have only cemented the bonds between the Taliban and local tribes who rely on the crop to meet their needs. Vanda Felbab-Brown, fellow on foreign policy and defense initiatives at the Brookings Institution, told the HPR, “When poppy is suppressed, the daily life of local farmers is greatly impacted because this provides the money they live on. By protecting poppy fields, the Taliban give immediate material benefits to the rural population.”

In Nangarhar, for instance, a province that traditionally has been antagonistic to the Taliban, new eradication policies drove tribes seeking to protect their livelihood into a relationship with the extremists. A counterterrorism approach may not be able to dissolve the ties between the Taliban and the rural population if it does not reduce dependence on Taliban safeguards for sustenance. An effective counternarcotics program, within a broader counterinsurgency strategy, would likely need to focus on interdiction and rural development to strengthen the licit economy.

Strategic Costs and Consequences

As the Obama administration weighs its options, it will have to assess the different short- and long-term consequences of each approach. With a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy of the kind proposed by McChrystal, counterterrorism tactics would be subservient to long-term objectives of providing security and strengthening the Afghani government. Counterinsurgency is expensive at a time when the war is increasingly unpopular, but unless the “counterterrorism approach” can address fundamental issues such as governance in local areas, it may not prevent a relapse to the pre-9/11 era of Taliban strongholds and terrorist safe havens. An approach based on limited strikes, though politically attractive in the short run, would risk targeting only the most visible symptoms of the underlying problems in Afghanistan.

Executive fiat. Secret orders. Martial law. These are the trademarks of authoritarian regimes, and yet they also rank among powers presumed by the Bush administration in the past eight years. Begun in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush’s unprecedented expansion of executive power sought to permanently redefine the role of the presidency. But did it succeed? The founding fathers designed the executive branch to be flexible in power, peaking in times of national crisis, and virtually every aggrandizement of presidential power by the Bush administration originated as an outgrowth of the War on Terrorism.  When Bush crossed the boundaries of constitutional law, however, the backlash against him left the executive branch functionally weaker than when he entered it.

Answering Terrorism, Asserting Power
As commander in chief, the executive will always command the most power, and fall under the least scrutiny, in times of national crisis. The Bush administration packaged its counterterrorism campaign as a war, arrogating wide surveillance and civil rights concessions under this precedent. But is it fair to think of the “war on terrorism” as a war at all? In an interview with the HPR, Gene Healy, vice president at the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency, noted that it is precisely because that question is so difficult to answer that those concessions are so disturbing. “This war is not going to end in a few years with a peace treaty in Paris and a ticker-tape parade,” he quipped. This particular crisis, and, by extension, the new presidential powers that grew out of it, will survive “as long as there are terrorists who threaten America.”

Those powers include, but are not limited to, warrantless wiretapping in violation of the Foreign Information Surveillance Act of 2006, the detainment of alleged enemy combatants in violation of habeas corpus, and the reclassification and use of illegal interrogation methods. Even aside from infringing on the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments, these transgressions collectively violated both substantive and procedural rule of law. Center for American Progress senior fellow Mark Agrast told the HPR “We’ve seen the perversion of the law itself,” especially in signing statements that seize upon “entirely fictional legal justifications” to undermine the will of the legislative branch.

Blank Checks, Skewed Balances
Often unnoticed by voters and media alike, these signing statements have nonetheless been one of the Bush administration’s most significant vehicles in expanding executive power. Previously mere clarifications of the executive’s understanding of the law, they grew to unilaterally redefine statutes in those cases when a veto would be ineffective; inevitably, cases in which congressional support was strong, bipartisan, and designed to check executive power. One such case, Healy pointed out, was the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) which explicitly forbade “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” of all prisoners. In an act of executive nullification, President Bush “signed the law, and essentially announced that he wouldn’t follow it,” Healy explained.

Even short-term executive expansion would not have occurred without complicity from the other two branches, however, and a number of critics contend that Bush only succeeded because neither branch was willing to exercise its oversight powers in a time of war. In the legislative branch, an increasingly partisan Congress may have neglected institutional checks in favor of party loyalty. “During the Vietnam war, institutional consciousness transcended party identification,” Agrast pointed out, “but that was lost in the Gingrich revolution.”

Furthermore, critics contend that the Bush administration used appointments to both install apologists in the Justice department and to neutralize the constitutional check of the Supreme Court. Both Samuel Alito and John Roberts were junior officials in the Reagan Administration; as Agrast argued, they had been working toward “what they saw as a restoration of executive power lost in the intervening decades.” Indeed, both Bush appointees joined the “solid four-vote minority that [strove to] sustain everything his administration has done.”

The backlash and the legacy
Just as President Bush and his staff fell short of building majority support on the bench, they likewise did not foresee the backlash against their actions. “There’s no question that they attempted to ’rehabilitate’ executive power, as they called it,” Brookings scholar Benjamin Wittes told the HPR, “but whether they succeeded is a different matter.” Ironically, the detainment of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay is the clearest example of their failure: while the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton used Guantanamo to quietly house Haitian and Cuban refugees respectively, “only [George W. Bush] has made it impossible for any future administration to do the same.”

Instead, by directly and aggressively challenging its constitutional constraints, President Bush invited fresh scrutiny from both an increasingly active Supreme Court and a Democratic Congress that his controversies helped elect. This paradoxical result is especially evident in a string of critical opinions beginning with Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in which the judiciary, not the executive, “maximized its authority, since it has gained jurisdiction over military affairs,” argued Wittes, the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror.

As the Bush administration comes to a close, leaders in Washington have expressed their hope that the next executive will bring a very different governing philosophy to the division of powers. In their respective campaigns both presidential candidates criticized the use of signing statements to overrule legislation. On the part of Congress, the introduction of the Executive Order Integrity Act of 2008 by Senate Democrats is evidence of the growing consensus that Congress will apply far tighter restraints upon the White House than it did in the past eight years.

In spite of these restrictions, it is possible that the president’s substantive power will not decline.  Healy pointed out, “there will still be an expectation that the president can provide absolute protection from all matter of harm.” Yet the public’s faith in the executive should not, after the past eight years, overcome the legislative and judicial branches’ new suspicion of its excessive power. Although future presidents will have the political clout to influence legislation, establish new programs, and make substantive decisions within their constitutional powers, they will also face the higher standard of scrutiny left to them by the Bush administration.

They will also have reason to pursue their agenda through constitutional means. After all, when President Bush strained his crisis mandate too far he undermined not only the long term power of the executive, but also his agenda; attempts to expand his statutory powers led to their restriction, and with an approval rating hovering around 25 percent, he has lacked the political capital necessary to govern. A consensus has developed between voters and elected officials alike: a respect for the separation of powers, which is poised to constrain executive encroachment for years to come.