Iraq’s non-state guerrillas aren’t mere proxies of Iran. Instead, they are largely autonomous.

First, these groups don’t rely upon Iran for their operating income since they can manufacture income through participation in black globalization’s multi-trillion dollar economy. A classic example of this is the decentralized and open source marketplace for the transnational smuggling of gasoline.

Today, New Yorks Times reports on a leaked NSC document with a view that supports Robb’s position:

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says that $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid to save hundreds of kidnap victims in Iraq, the report said. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by senior American officials as including France and Italy — paid Iraqi kidnappers $30 million in ransom last year.

Open Source Bazaar and the Sustainable Ecology

Going back to John Robb, one of his themes is the idea of the “Open Source Bazaar“:

The Financiers listed above are Government Insiders, Senior Baathist, Al-Qaida, Tribal Groups and Nation-States – all of them, mostly outsiders or periphary to the Insurgent and Sectarian groups.

This has changed. While outside forces initially strengthened the position and inertia of these groups, we are now seeing a Sustainable Ecology of Iraqi Global Guerrillas
These groups are now trafficking oil and collecting money via kidnappings to sustain and regenerate their operations:

[Jeffery White] said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia to withstand the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”

The insurgents now have network and regenerative properties in recruiting personnel, leadership structure and in financing. This combined with the easily accessible explosive and weapons in the Middle East is proving very challenging against accomplishing US Objectives in Iraq.

Palestinian Children Gather as Human Shields (Source)

Irregular Warfare: Exploiting Morals and Values of the Enemy 

Recently, Israel was pushed towards deferring launching airstrikes against Hamas, to retailiate against continuing rocket attacks against Israel.

Hamas was able to effectively leverage the use of human shields to deter Israel, as reported by AP in "Palestinians form human shield to protect militant’s home from airstrike":

"Hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield around the home of a militant in the northern Gaza Strip late Saturday to prevent an Israeli airstrike on the building, residents said.

…

Israel routinely orders occupants out of homes ahead of airstrikes on suspected weapons-storage facilities, saying it wants to avoid casualties. The incident in Beit Lahiya was the first time Palestinians have tried to prevent such an airstrike."

How can a modern military, a miltiary that aims to upholds the Geneva Convention under tight media scrutiny, respond to such tactics?  

Easy Answer: They Can’t. They have to find something else to target.

What happens when more and more groups/states start following suit when risking military strikes by a Western Power? How will the West balance its normative values with the bluring definition and position of the military and civilian space?

Hamas (and Hezbollah): Perfecting the New Actor on the Global Stage

On the global chessboard of world politics, there are the usual players like international governmental bodies, NGOs, transnational gangs and, of course, nation-states. Hamas and Hezbollah brings has created another category, the "Total Social Movement Organizations". "TSMO" is a wordy phrase, but an apt description.

Hamas and Hezbollah function as a network of charities, religious movement, social movement, political movement and military force. Only such an organization can easily enlist the people as human shields at the face of death. I doubt Hamas was using much if any coercisve force to encourage the Human Shields – faith in Hamas and what it represented was enough.

An organization that combines the full spectrum of human activities – from religious to social justice to military force – will be a resilient force compared to the secular (Post?) Nation-State system that exists in the Wetern countries. They will not replace Western style Nation-States, but will be adapt challengers in the world stage.

I’ve been abstaining from commenting on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict since so many other bloggers and analysts are providing better coverage. But, the analysis from StratFor is very fitting (from "Special Report: The Ground Offensive" 08/01/06):

As we have said before, the strategy looks more like the way the Japanese defended Pacific islands against the U.S. Marines during World War II than anything else. Hezbollah fighters are defending in depth from interlocking strong points…They are forcing the Israelis to close with the strong points and take them in close combat.

… 

If it can fight a battle of annihilation yet delay and hurt the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hezbollah might well force a political settlement. If not, it can still gain a political victory by being the first Arab force to force Israel into high attrition combat.

[The Conclusion?]

… 

Time and casualties could turn a military success into a political defeat for Israel. Moreover, if the outcome of the attack is that Israel is forced to occupy Lebanese territory for an extended period of time, then the cost of counterinsurgency operations mount. Israel’s strategy is clear. Move in fast, deal a catastrophic blow to Hezbollah, withdraw leaving the Lebanese army or a European peacekeeping force in its place. Hezbollah has drawn Israel in. It expects a catastrophic blow but its intention is to impose tremendous costs on Israel and then create a situation in which peacekeeping forces will not deploy, forcing Israel into a counterinsurgency.

Conclusion: Hezbollah

Unfortunately, the Israel-Hezbollah conflict may be a casebook example of the superior political and (to a lesser extant) military power of non-state actors against nation-state states. In the coming days and weeks, we may see a Hezbollah victory – be it political and, maybe, militarily, as noted by Daniel Sensing at Winds of Change.

Israel may still be able to inflict great military damage to Hezbollah, but in the end – unless Israel effectively destroys Hezbollah or neuters it – Hezbollah will win the real victory, the political victory.

Let’s remember that Hezbollah’s advantages include:

• Decentralized Network Strucure = Resilience Against Attrition
  - Provides for non-linear approach to warfare (unlike Western approach)No Logistical Tail (as opposed to convention high-tech army like Israel’s)
• Cheaper, Open Source Procurement of Weapons
• No sense of "Casuality Aversion" like Western Militaries
  - Allows Hezbollah to bleed Israel to political victory, despite severe losses on both sides
• Seen as a charity, education and community institution, not just an instrument of war (e.g. IDF)
• Not Bound to "Geneva Conventions" norms of wars that Nation-States are:
  – Media tends to be harsher on violations by nation-states than non-state actors
  – Soliders in Civilians clothing = More Difficult to Detect, Prove to Media as Enemy
  – Place assets (missiles, artillery etc) in civilian heavy areas but not take the blame when civilian deaths occur (e.g. Israel bombing Hebollah artillery and accidentally killing civilians in apartment nearby)

For more in-depth and strategic view, see John Robb at Global Guerrillas’ "The Secrets of Hezbollah’s Success".

The recent arrests in Toronto, aborting a potential attacking, and a recent article by Michael Scheuer (author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War), reinforce the position that Islamic Terrorism is an organic, decentralized beast. Its bigger than Al-Qaida, bigger than Bin Laden and bigger than the now deceased al-Zarqawi. Al-Qaida does have an important role, but as the instigator, the proclaimed vanguard, of a wider Islamist social movement.

Indeed, as StrategyUnit has noted: “As this war is more of cross between an insurgency and a social movement, there maybe no clean cessation of violence in the near or distant future. And in this conflict, there will be no battlefields, but rather our adversaries will be attached as a Global Swarm as Global Guerillas.”

The Toronto 17
The 17 potential terrorists arrested in Tortonto has direct connections to Al-Qaida and were, like the July 7 Londong bombers, homegrown groups. While the details are coming out, the Internet played a major role in communication, indoctrination (recruitment) and training (bombing making).

The suspected terrorists were, luckily for us, inept. A group of “foreign looking” men doing weapons training in the open and later buying three tons of fertilizers (not a fact easy to hide) are not the hallmarks of terrorist masterminds.

Bin Laden – Status: Success or Failure

Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War, notes that many experts have written off Bin Laden as a failure:

Over the past two years, U.S. and Western commentators have concluded that Osama bin Laden is largely irrelevant as the leader of the worldwide Sunni insurgency. Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, for example, has said that “by now it is surely clear that al-Qaeda can produce videotapes but not terrorism…And the bad guys are losing” (Newsweek, March 15, 2004). James S. Dobbins at the National Review added that bin Laden “made many threats of course, but was never able to back them up, creating an unbridgeable credibility gap” (National Review Online, September 28, 2005). The new CIA chief, General Michael Hayden, has described bin Laden’s recent audiotapes as a public relations campaign to prove he is still alive. “These attempts,” Hayden said, “may be an attempt on their part [bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri] to kind of re-establish authenticity with their followers” (AP, February 5). Finally, from Sarah Lawrence College, Fawaz Gerges all but dismisses bin Laden’s relevance, arguing that “we are in the throes of the beginning of a new wave [in the Muslim world]–the freedom generation–in which civil society is asserting itself” (Christian Science Monitor, February 4, 2004). In short, these arguments assert that the situation has improved.

But indeed, this is not the case. Scheuer correctly points out that Bin Laden, sees himself and Al-Qaida as the final means, but the “match” to light the Ummah (Islamic World) on fire, motivating it against the West:

“[Bin Laden] has never claimed that al-Qaeda could achieve this goal by itself. Quite the contrary, he has consistently maintained that al-Qaeda is only the vanguard of the large-scale movement that is needed to achieve this goal.”

The recruitment of Europeans to fight in Iraq, the Madrid and London Bombings, the abortive attempt in Toronto, the recent alliance of “”Islamist leaders in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Jerusalem” all point to the face that the “flame” is alive and thriving.

Conclusion
The recent Toronto arrests shows that the threat is still very real and is far more diverse than a threat “from over there”, but it is a threat that can be as homegrown as meatloaf and apple pie (for you American readers).

Noah Schachtman of DefenseTech is always a persistent source of great information regarding the technology and equipment that is used in today’s battlefields. (Via Op-For) In PopularSciences, Schachtman and David Axe write on “Winning—and Losing—the First Wired War“: “U.S. forces in Iraq are waging a pivotal campaign in modern warfare—combat on the first “networked” battlefield. One problem: the enemy has a few networks of its own ”

Schachtman and David Axe go to the heart of the issue in Iraq:

“But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. “There is a connectivity gap,” states a recent Army War College report. “Information is not reaching the lowest levels.”

This is a dangerous problem, because the insurgents are stitching together their own communications network. Using cellphones and e-mail accounts, these guerrillas rely on a loose web of connections rather than a top-down command structure. And they don’t fight in large groups that can be easily tracked by high-tech command posts. They have to be hunted down in dark neighborhoods, amid thousands of civilians, and taken out one by one.”

Net-centric Warfare v. Global Guerillas
Net-centric Warfare defined in a monograph at DODCCRP (same folks who published “Shock and Awe”):

“We define NCW as an information superiority-enabled concept of operations that generates increased combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self- synchronization. In essence, NCW translates information superiority into combat power by effectively linking knowledgeable entities in the battlespace”

As Schachtman and Axe noted, NCW is layman’s term the “Walmart-ification” of warfare. (Indeed the monograph of the excerpt above, goes into great detail analyzing the logistical success of Wal-Mart and Dell and other corporations.) But what does NCW look like on the battlefield, Schachtman and Rose describes the following:

“The air-ground collaboration is one of dozens of different ways that network-centric tools are slowly starting to rejigger the military’s hidebound hierarchies. In the Gulf War, the various armed services didn’t talk to one another much, except at the highest levels. That’s partly why there was a six-week air campaign and then a ground attack. During the 2003 invasion, the air and ground assaults struck at once.”

But one of the most powerful tools in battalion command posts like these, notes Garstka, the network-centric theorist, may be one of the simplest: a Web browser, so junior officers can log into secure online forums. There captains and lieutenants can swap tactics, well before they appear in printed field manuals. This is critical in a place like Iraq, where insurgents’ strategies change almost daily. ”

With exception of advance weapon systems and resource intensive efforts like building a Carrier battle group, it is John Robb’s “Global Guerillas” which are best suited to adopting and adapting to technology. For more information on “Global Guerillas”, I strongly suggest reading John Robb’s “THE Bazaar of Violence in Iraq” and “THE Bazaar’s Open Source Platform “. It is required reading in my book.

The US Military and Global Guerillas are both fighting as net-centric agents, but the US Military is after all a hierarchal system, a tool of the nation-state and thus structurally it is slower to adapt. Meanwhile as decentralized and organic entities, “Global Guerillas” naturally evolve into ever more sophistication: the weaker insurgent groups get killed and captured, while the more successful groups sharing and help others replicate their success.

The advantage of the US military (or conventional militaries in general) is its ability to focus its resources into a certain direction in a more coordinated fashion, while the “Global Guerillas” can afford to use a slower trial-and-error method – attrition is not as much as a concern for them.

John Robb’s “Global Guerillas” will always be more nimble and faster that traditional nation-state militaries. The state and its military are by definition more slowly moving, more hierachial and more bound by policies and laws – then numble, adapting, loosely networked, nimble and Global Guerillas. Its not so much that the Global Guerillas are networking better than the US Military, its that the Global Guerillas can afford to adapt more quickly.

Net-Centric Warfare – Myopic Pipedreams
Setting aside the “Global Guerilla” issue, NCW has great limitations. When reading defense experts and their whitepapers/monographs on “Net-Centric Warfare” and “Effects-Based Operation”, we see terms phrases like “information dominance” and “complete situational awareness” and the like.

But the case-studies such war studies experts like to review – Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and Dell – are a world aware from an actual, fluid and “fog” ridden battlefield. There are collecting and analyzing information from a relatively static “battle space” so to speak.

Planning, preparing, executing and adjusting to the changing and fluid battle-space of fourth generation warfare is utterly different than keeping an excellent inventory over your retail logistics network – basically what the Wal-Mart, Dell and Amazon.com case studies are all about. It’s a joke to assume that future soldiers will be equipped with electronic devices to depend on a full host of communication and information share – where will the electricity come from? Are these devices anti-virus proof or even from protected from rough use?

The “Fog of War” will always be a factor that will be foolish to underestimate. Thus, the premise of complete “information dominance” and complete “situational awareness” is a false hope. Net-Centric Warfare is one of the new components of warfare, but it won’t be the last nor the only.

The U.S. and its “War on Drugs” is partially the cause of the escalation of the drug war. The US and other states have escalated the war, only to encourage the development and spread of fourth generation gangs, increasing the corruption of governments – and the growing nexus of gangs and corrupt officials leading to a narco-state.
…
If Mexico slides towards Colombization, two threats will gather strength: 1) the number and strength of potential gangs that could work with groups Al-Qaida will increase; and 2) the spill over of violence and nacro-trafficking from Mexico to the southwestern U.S. states.

While Mexico isn’t Colombia yet, these major threats are more than sufficient enough for the U.S. to strongly reconsider its approach to the War on Drugs and its own domestic drug policies.

The US-Mexican Borderlands
Source: http://www.epa.gov

Follow-Up Since November 2005 Posting: Yes, things are pretty bad

Fast forward to February 2006, the headlines on what’s going on in the US-Mexican border are not encouraging:

Guns and money: U.S.-Mexico border besieged by crime, terror:

Following separate raids on Jan. 12, 26 and 27, U.S. authorities announced they had seized two homemade bombs, materials for making 33 more, military-style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bulletproof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics and cash.

Differing views on Texas/Mexico border incursion:

The chief of the Border Patrol today urged U-S House members not to lose sight of the danger agents face each day along the Mexican border.

The situation has drawn more attention after last month’s confrontation between officers in West Texas and military-uniformed drug smugglers along the Rio Grande.

Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar says agents regularly encounter individuals hurling rocks at them from across the border, ramming their vehicles and sometimes firing at them. (Empahsis mine)

New York Times: US Cites Rise in Violence Along Border With Mexico P

Mexican criminal syndicates are stepping up their attacks on American agents patrolling the border as officials of the Homeland Security Department intensify efforts to stem the flow of immigrants and drugs into the United States, American officials said this week.

In recent months, scores of Border Patrol agents have been fired upon or pelted with large stones as well as with cloth-covered stones that have been doused with flammable liquid and set ablaze. Since October, agents have been attacked in more than 190 cases, officials said on Thursday.

ON THE BORDER: Within hours, violence claims 2 Mexican lawmen:

The police chief of a wealthy suburb of this bustling industrial city was gunned down Monday, shortly after the top police official of another northern Mexican community was kidnapped and shot dead.

Hector Ayala, chief of police for the town of San Pedro Garza Garcia, was driving in nearby Monterrey, whose sprawling metro area is Mexico’s third-largest, when a car overtook his vehicle and opened fire.

Times Online UK: Huge tunnel undermines border

Mexican officials have discovered the deepest tunnel ever gouged under the US border, equipped with electricity and ventilation and concealing two tonnes of cannabis.
The scale of the tunnel — the 21st discovered in more than four years — stunned authorities, who said that the passageway revealed the lengths to which smugglers would go to evade detection.

The underground smuggling route began near the airport in Tijuana, Mexico, and ended 2,400ft (720m) away in a warehouse in San Diego in the US, Michael Unzueta, special agent in charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego, said. It was unclear how long the tunnel had been in operation, he added.

The 60ft-deep (18m) tunnel had a concrete floor, electric lights that ran down one of the hard soil walls and air piped from the surface. An adult could nearly stand in the 5ft-high (1.5m) shaft. “It was like being in a cavern or a cave,” Mr Unzueta said. “It’s just huge, absolutely incredible.”

Conclusion
The instability along the US-Mexican border areas demonstrate the increasing vulnerability of a US that is no longer protected by its vast oceans nor its once-calm borders. If the narcot-gangs continue its viral infection of the US-Mexico borderlands, intertwining with terrorism and corruption, the US will have a soft and vulnerable underbelly threatened by modern, globally connected and resourceful gangs. Nation-states have difficulty adapting fighting such organizations.

Unlike other countries, such as Russia, the US is not accustomed with border instability issues, it will be challenging for the US to understand how to control it borders – a very basic act for a nation-state. Before it was simply about illegal immigration, but now the stakes are higher: narco-fueled terrorism, narco-fueled corruption, nexus between narco-gangs and Islamic terrorism and so on.

But the situation has not reached the tipping point yet, the US must act boldly and strongly reconsider its “War on Drugs” program as the only effective method to de-escalate the narco-gangs driven violence and the instability it brings.

The Premise
In the formulation of my own conceptual framework for understanding GWOT, I submit the following general premises:
1. The need to look beyond the traditional levels of analysis of international relations – personal, state and system level – and to take account local and transnational social cleavages.
2. Instability today is principally caused by the lack of “global connectivity” in certain counties and societies, resulting in local and regional crises and conflicts.
3. Variants of Salafi-Jihadi/Pan-Islamism have conflated these crises and conflicts as a global conflict against Islam and the Ummah by the “Other.”

Of course, there will alway be outlier cases, but the premises serves to cover the vast majority of situations relating to GWOT.

Thomas Barnett v. Samuel Huntington

There is no current theory or framework that can easily match with these premises. However, we can build this framework by synthesizing Barnett and Huntington. Below is a mini-review of their concepts and some of their shortfalls when taken alone.

Thomas Barnett declares that the amount of global “connectivity” in the world defines security issues in the international environment. It is the amount of connectivity a state possesses – in the transnational flow of trade, media, finances, information, culture et cetera – that distinguish between a peaceful, integrated “Core” state and a hostile or unstable “Gap” state. As Barnett states, the “new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root [the Core] and where it has not [the Gap].”(1) In short, the level of strategic regional and global security is directly linked to the level of globalization. This is no difference.

While Thomas Barnett presents a long term “big picture” framework for understanding the source of instability in the world, it cannot alone fully describe the nature of GWOT. It does not explain why certain peoples in certain regions are engaging in a confrontation against the members of the Core. In other words, if the international security environment is defined by those in the Gap and those in the Core, why were the majority of the 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia, and not shamans from Indonesia or Orthodox Christians from Belarus?

The essential variables that need to be added to Barnett’s framework are those of religious and ultimately of socio-cultural factors.

While Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” goes to the extreme in treating cultural regions as nearly monolithic political blocks (that is, civilizations), Huntington does well in thrusting cultural, religious, social, and historical as variables in the calculus that influences the foreign policy orientations of states and non-state organizations. Indeed, Huntington must be acknowledged as prescient in declaring the revival of religions, particularly non-Western religions, as remerging as an important cultural and political force in the world.(2)

Huntington-Barnett with a Social Level of Analysis: Gap Societies?
I agree with Barnett on the instability of regions lacking “global connectivity” and Huntington’s emphasis on cultural and religions as important variables in international politics and his concept of “civilization faultlines.” Barnett’s builds a framework for understanding all global and local conflicts in the long term. Huntington emphasizes culture as the central factor.

Barnett and Huntington’s frameworks are not mutually exclusive and this paper builds on their scholarship and research to explain the nature of this war. Both Huntington and Barnett rely on system – Civilization vs. Civilization, Core vs. Gap – and state level of analysis, where does one place non-state groups like Al-Qaeda, Al Takfir Wal Hijra, Hizb ut-Tahrir and including their support structures and sympathizers? Additionally, how we explain the presence of such groups in the Core states of Western Europe or within the Western Civilization?

An elegant solution to this problem is applying social cleavages as another level of analysis complementing the state and system level of analysis. Organizations like Al-Qaeda to Hizb ut-Tahrir are not just “terrorist groups” or “Islamist extremist,” but groups that represent a worldwide social movement that transcend nation-states, Core or Gap states or civilization blocks. Thus, there is a need to focus on different social groups inside Core and Gap states that are disconnected from the larger society and how they related to other states and societies globally.

Towards a More Total Concept of Warfare
Beyond abandoning the Western concept of state-to-state warfare, this is conflict where the enemy employs a new “combined arms” strategy beyond the traditional means of Western warfare and follows John Robb’s “Global Guerilla” on the more tactical and operational level.

In traditional military usage, the term “combined arms” is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as “The full integration and application of two or more arms or elements of one Military Service into an operation”(3) -such as the integrated and coordinated use of infantry, tank, precision bombers, and reconnaissance under one unified command. As war on the social level against the states and other societies, we see “combined arms” taking not only a purely military dimension but the integration of a full spectrum of human concerns – political issues, social issues, cultural issues, religious issues, etc – under the banner of a unifying ideology. In this case, this ideology is religious in nature.

GWOT as a Radical, Global and Muslim Social Movement
The use of social, cultural and religious issues as important dimensions of the war has it roots in the religious nature of this war – that is, religious as defined by the enemy. Stemming from its roots from Islam, Salafi-Jihadist share the tradition of embracing religion as a totality inseparable from any social sphere. In contrasts with the Peace of Westphalia that helped brought about the separation of the Christian church away from the state in the West, Islam has kept itself as the sole truth for all totality – it applies to and encompasses all aspects of human activity. In the West, the Muslim Brotherhood was most famous in emphasizing this fact of Islam, with its statement of recognizing “Islam as a total system” and the “final arbiter of life in all of its categories.” The most famous quote by the Muslim Brotherhood was its founder’s, Hassan al-Banna, proclamation that “Islam is a faith and a ritual, a nation and a nationality, a religion and a state, spirit and deed, holy text and sword.”(4) Indeed, other Muslim scholars, such as Sayyid Qutb, have criticized the West for its corruption of Christianity with its “schizophrenic” separation between the secular and the sacred, between church and state.(5) In contrasts to Christianity today, he declares Islam as a “system [that] extend into all aspects of life; it discusses all minor and major affairs of mankind.”(6)

Indeed, by actively uniting and linking all human activities to a single religious belief, it is easy to see how local conflicts affecting Muslims can be exploited to be seen as an attack on the entire global Muslim community – the Ummah. This combined with the concept of jihad al-asghar (lesser jihad) explains the confluence of local conflicts involving Muslims – Chechnya, Palestinian Issue, Moro in the Philippines – to being seen as a global conflict against Muslims.(7) And borrowing from John Robb, we see how quickly the conflict can become a social movement and a “Global Swarm”.

The relationship between social conflict and the fanatical organizations that exploit these conflicts are not only self-reinforcing, but help export and spread instability in the region and internationally (as illustrated above). In the primary link, each local conflict begins to be linked to a cause (Islamist jihad) and is transformed to being seen as one of many conflicts (reaching towards secondary linkage). This conflation of the socio-political and socio-economic issues with the Islamist movement reaches the point that, in some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between what are social problems and what is part of the war.

Conclusion
As this war is more of cross between an insurgency and a social movement, there maybe no clean cessation of violence in the near or distant future. And in this conflict, there will be no battlefield,s, but rather our adversaries will be attached as a Global Swarm as Global Guerillas.

If the U.S. and it allies achive victory (how can we even defien this?), there will be neither a ceremony on USS Missouri nor televised collapse of an “Evil Empire”. In the words of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, “Some people see war and peace as a light switch. When the lights are off, it’s peacetime. When the lights go on, it’s wartime. I see more of a dimmer switch. We’ll see the intensity wax and wane, but there will always be some level of conflict going on.” (8) Let us hope that the United States and its allies dims that switch, least it will be a long hard slog.

—–
Sources
1. Barnett, Thomas P.M. “The Pentagon’s New Map.” Esquire. March 2003. (17 November 2003).
2. Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 95-101.
3. United States of America. Defense Department. DOD Dictionary of Military and 3. Associated Terms, 30 November 2004, (04 September 2004).
4. Daniel Pipes, “Fundamentalist Muslims Between America and Russia”, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1986, Accessed Online: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/279 (04 February 2004).
5. Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 89.
6. Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, (New Jersey: Islamic Publications International, 2000), 32.
7. For a comparative to the Islamic concept of jihad al-asghar within the Abrahamic religions, see the Judaic concept of milchemet mitzvah (obligatory war) and the Christian concept of Just War as described in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
8. No Author. “Changing and Fighting, Simultaneously”, 30 October, 2004, National Journal, Available at (03 January 2005).

Its easy to hate and focus on someone when you have a nice quick, short name for them. Lashing out against “Nationalist Socialist”, “Total Socialist System under Centralized Planning” and “Free Spirited non-Conformist” is not easy to do. (And yes, I know some of my descriptions are not absolutely accurate and I included hippies as a joke.)

But same goes for what we are fighting against in this “Global War on Terrorism”. Just who are the bad guys? And what makes them different from the other past bad guys?

I think there is a true strategic and psychological weakness on our side to accurately name our adversary. The guys on the other side can do it easily, condemning us as secular, western, infidels, non-believers and so on. But what are they? How can we fight an enemy when we cant even describe them.

Islamists? “Those that hate our freedom”? Salafist? Global Guerillas?

Islamist or Muslim Fundamentalist sound fine, but we are not fighting some national Muslim Brotherhood movement. We are fighting 1000s of Islamicly inspired groups with a diverse range of immediate goals, motivation, tactics, doctrines…but a common enemy – the West.

There is a constant struggle to define our enemy (which is more of a “swarm” than a singular organizational entity) and we are unable to even define a name for it. This leaves us intellectual and conceptual vulnerable to the enemy.

In my future postings, I’ll dive through this issue deeper and try to offer some suggestions. It will definitely take some time for me to write on this.

This posting was inspired by a commenter on this blog who asked me why I used the word “Islamofacist” and by Dan Darling and John Robb who touched on this issue this week.

[A] divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets’ nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah’s name.

While coming from one of the brightest minds in military thinking, Van Creveld’s opinion is neither unique nor shocking. But what struck me was how John Robb headlined that particular excerpt above: “Iraq in turn destabilizes the region as global guerrillas spread out.”

In the words of Thomas Barnett: Its about Connectivity, Stupid!

As mentioned in a paper I wrote, the principal argument I had made on supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom was that “U.S. intervention aiding in the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq is key in bringing not only liberalism to the region, but in essence exporting a new regime of strategic security to the Middle East.” In short, a liberal Iraq would reach out and bring economic connectivity to the stagnate Middle East region and with it a new security regime.

On the opposite end…One of the more saner arguments against the war, as Van Crevald said, was that the intervention would ultimately fail, launching hundreds of mini-Zarqawis and min-Bin Ladens all over the Middle East.

But in essence, these two arguments are the one and the same and I agree with both:
1. A free, liberal and democratic Iraq can act as a hub to further economic (and maybe even political) connectivity in the region stimulating economic growth and with it regional stability.
2. A divided, failed Iraqi state can act as a hub (a “bazaar of violence” in John Robb’s term) that will reach out to export instability to neighbouring countries while also attracting many to join Al-Qaida-related groups in Iraq.

Its about all connectivity, but different sides of the same coin. Thus, as made time and time again by many – the question is not if we will withdraw from Iraq, but as the Economist puts it “Not whether, but how, to withdraw“.

The War in Iraq is about connectivity. Originally, it was under the idealistic impression that the only connectivity possible was the championing of liberalism in the Middle East, but in the current sobering reality – we know that connectivity cuts both ways.

What connectivity will the New Iraq ultimately bring to the Middle East?

One thing for sure is, if we withdraw unilaterally now, we’ll surrender the chance for liberal connectivity.

“Moises copiously documents how globalization and rampant interconnectivity has led to the rise of vast global smuggling networks….He shows how these networks make money through an arbitrage of the differences between the legal systems (and a desire to prosecute) of our isolated islands of sovereignty. He also shows how their flagrant use of corruption can enable them to completely take over sections of otherwise functional states. ” (Emphasis mine)

As mentioned in Paris Riots: Welcome to Netwar?, Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency” gives an example of what Naim describes – but in the context of netwar, fourth generation gangs and the nexus between narco-gangs and weak governments.

While Manwaring gives examples of distant states in Central America and South America, Ted Carpenter brings the issue a little closer in his 15 Novmeber 2005 article: “Mexico Is Becoming the Next Colombia“.

Indeed, he points to the example of Nuevo Laredo. In June 2005 this year, the Mexican federal government effectively lost control of Nuevo Laredo, a city of over 400,000 (just across Laredo, Texas), and had to send over 800 federal troops to effectively regain control from the narco-corrupted local government and law enforcement. This led to a short-lived gun battle with the Nuevo Laredo police and the federal troops.

”Mexico Is Becoming the Next Colombia”

Here’s a general synopsis of Carpenter’s article:

The Colombian-ization

Militarization of Cartels. Cartels are increasingly employing former military elite forces, Mexico’s Special Mobile Force, as their assassins and hitmen. Carpenter warns this increasingly resembles Columbia in the 1980s and 1990s, which proved disastrous for Columbia’s government and people.

Corruption and the Decline of Government Control. Carpenter cites the showdown between federal troops and law enforcement authorities in Nuevo Laredo as a completely breakdown of authority of the government and its ability to maintain effective independent control from the narco-traffickers. Carpenter goes on to cite maybe other examples, including more commonly known cities like Cancun and Tijuana.

While an extreme case, the temporary loss of Nuevo Laredo has shown that nacro-corruption is endemic in Mexico – resulting in losing government control of a major city. Indeed, in 1997, the Mexican drug czar General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested after three months his appointment for taking bribes the drug lord Amado Fuentes.

Consequences

Deteriorating Cycle.More corruption – unaddressed – only leads to more corruption. And with the nearly bountiful supply of funds and resources of the narco-gangs, this will simply lead to a further spiraling effect that weakens the state of independent control and makes it more beholden to narco-gang interests.

Spillover Effect. Carpenter notes that violence has already been spilling over to the southwestern US states, with law-enforcements officials in Dallas particularly seeing gang violence. Carpenter also cites problems in New Mexico. While not particularly mentioned by Carpenter, there is the fear of such groups linking up with Al-Qaida or similar groups for attacking the United States.

Commentary

Carpenter’s article caught my attention because it strongly relates to: 1) Moise Naim’s “Five Wars of Globalization” article; 2) The Unwinnable Escalation of the “War on Drugs”; 3) Manwearing’s article on Netwar – focusing on nacro-gangs in Central/South America; and 4) Andrew V. Papachristos on the Viral Growth of Gangs.

1. Globalization Wars

In February 2003, Moises Naim wrote “The Five Wars of Globalization Wars”( http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2&page=0), outlining other major challenges globalization present to states, other than that of Al-Qaida and global islamist terrorism:

1. War on Drugs
2. Arms Trafficking
3. Intellectual Property
4. Alien Smuggling
5. Money Laundering

Naim lists the characteristics network-based of these groups, giving them a great advantage over the state:

1. They are not bound by geography.
2. They defy traditional notions of sovereignty.
3. They pit governments against market forces.
4. They pit bureaucracies against networks.

The narco-gangs in Colombia to Mexico definitely hit on all four points.

2. Escalation of the Drug War. “Plan Colombia” – placing Colombian troops on the offensive with U.S. support and with an attempt to offer alternative crops to plant – has not resolved the overall goal of curtailing supply, only serving to shift the cocaine production from Colombia to other places in the Andes.

By forcing on escalating the Drug War on mainly militarily terms, it has also only serves to force the narco-gang networks to evolve more sophisticatedly and drive deeper in bed with corrupt officials.

Here’s a quick except on the growing sophistication of these narco-groups:

Feeding this habit is a global supply chain that uses everything from passenger jets that can carry shipments of cocaine worth $500 million in a single trip to custom-built submarines that ply the waters between Colombia and Puerto Rico. To foil eavesdroppers, drug smugglers use “cloned” cell phones and broadband radio receivers while also relying on complex financial structures that blend legitimate and illegitimate enterprises with elaborate fronts and structures of cross-ownership.” (1)

Escalation of this was is not the goal, it should be 1) de-escalation of the war; and 2) shifting the way the war is being fought (away from military means).

3. Third Generation gangs. The nacro-gangs in Mexico are turning to classical 3rd Gen Gangs. Third Generation gangs operations at a global level and political goals. In most cases, the political goals were focused on helping attain market protection for these organizations. As expounded in more depth by Manwaring’s “Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency”:

This political action is intended to provide security and freedom of movement for gang activities. As a consequence, the third generation gang and its leadership challenge the legitimate state monopoly on the exercise of control and use of violence within a given political territory.

The infiltration and alignment of parts of the governments in the Central and South Americas (at the differing times) with nacro-traffickers/narco-terrorist are examples of this. Unfortunately, so was the dire situation in Nuevo Laredo. Indeed, we cannot simply call the narco-traffickers as pure non-state actors, as with time – they evolve to corrupt and control elements of the states.

(As to not repeat previous material, I strongly suggest checking out Paris Riots: Welcome to Netwar? for brief over and links to more indepth material.)

4. US Policy and the Viral Growth of Gangs. While not directly addressed by Manwaring, Naim or Carpenter – the U.S. policy of deporting gang members who are illegal aliens has only led to the proliferation and globalization of gangs:

“Since the mid-1990s, U.S. immigration policy has dramatically boosted the proliferation of gangs throughout Latin America and Asia by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records back to their home countries each year, including a growing number of gang members. In 1996, around 38,000 immigrants were deported after committing a crime; by 2003, the number had jumped to almost 80,000.
…
In the case of MS-13, the U.S. government has deported hundreds of members, many of whom continue to illegally migrate back and forth, often carrying goods or people with them. Those that remain in their home countries are almost sure to connect with other deported gang members, and authorities in these countries say they are responsible for a large upswing in crime and violence. In a sense, U.S. immigration policy has amounted to unintentional state-sponsored gang migration. Rather than solving the gang problem, the United States may have only spread it. ” (2)

Closing Remarks

The U.S. and its “War on Drugs” are partially the cause of the escalation of the drug war. The US and other states have escalated the war, only to encourage the development and spread of fourth generation gangs, increasing the corruption of governments – and the growing nexus of gangs and corrupt officials leading to a narco-state.

Naim has stated that “in 1999, the United Nations’ “Human Development Report” calculated the annual trade in illicit drugs at $400 billion, roughly the size of the Spanish economy and about 8 percent of world trade.” (1) So, there are a vast group of quasi non-state actors – the Nacro-Network – with a GDP equivalent to Spain.

With the economy the size of Spain at stake, any attempt to diminish to reach of these narco-gangs will have to be found in inventive ways beyond military means.

In February 2005, the Economist declares that: “In five years, Plan Colombia has offered no evidence to weaken The Economist’s conviction that cocaine should be legalized (though its use, like that of tobacco, should be discouraged).”(3)

Indeed, if the United States was to take the Drug War in a big picture view of security threats, they may have to consider some sort of decriminalization of drug use as the means to undercut the power of these gangs.

The El Rukns gang in Chicago represents the worse that can happen. In 1986, El Rukn were contracted out by Libya to carryout acts of terrorism, but were caught before their plans were enacted.

Remembering El Rukns, there are fears that Al-Qaida will attempt similar plans with narco-gangs. There have been rumors of secret talks between MS-13 (orignally based in Honduras) and Al-Qaida on smuggling material and persons in to the United States. Ironically, the deportation of MS-13 members by the U.S. has helped grow the network.

If Mexico slides towards Colombization, two threats will gather strength: 1) the number and strength of potential gangs that could work with groups Al-Qaida will increase; and 2) the spill over of violence and nacro-trafficking from Mexico to the southwestern U.S. states.

While Mexico isn’t Colombia yet, these major threats are more than sufficient enough for the U.S. to strongly reconsider its approach to the War on Drugs and its own domestic drug policies.

Sources:
(1) Moises Naim, “The Five Wars of Globalization Wars, Foreign Policy, February 2003
(2) Andrew V. Papachristos, “Gang World”, Foreign Policy, March/April 2005
(3) “The drug “war” in Latin America”, Economist, 10 February 2005