Global News Journal

from Afghan Journal:

Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America's rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don't see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

"Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren't pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults."

It is a bit of a stretch, though, to compare a police action in a rough part of town with the kind of devastation that the laser-guided Hellfire missile can rain down when fired from unmanned aircraft as scores of Pakistani civilians in the troubled northwest region  discovered in the initial days of the programme launched by the Bush administration.

from Tales from the Trail:

Clinton jokes about Yemen stumble

Call it the Trip.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrapping up a high-stakes trip to Yemen to discuss counter-terrorism cooperation on Wednesday, stumbled briefly upon re-entering her airplane. Clinton was unhurt and newswise it was a non-event -- except that it was captured by television cameras.

Clinton's video misstep ended up going out on YouTube and became a minor Internet sensation, prompting snarky headlines from some of the world's headline writers ("Unexpected trip on Clinton plane!" joked one).

It's the kind of pointless fingerpointing that public figures (and sometimes journalists) loathe because it distracts from real news, in this case Clinton's effort to broaden the U.S. relationship with Yemen, which is gaining notoreity as one of the world's main incubators of al Qaeda.

But Clinton obviously decided to take control of the meme, because she mentioned it herself on Thursday during a meeting at her next stop in the Gulf  state of Qatar.

Qatar's ruler, welcoming Clinton to his palace, spoke about how he had fallen in his home and Clinton responded with her own story. "It happened to me just yesterday actually. I was going up the stairs to the airplane and I was looking over my back and waving and then I turned and there was a bump in the, in the entry into the plane. You know, those things happen," she added.

They do indeed. But when they happen to Hillary Clinton, they usually end up being news.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Al Qaeda, its branches and Afghanistan

So little is known about al Qaeda that it is can be tempting to see patterns when none exist, or conversely to see only madness when there is method at work.

But with that health warning, it's interesting to see Afghanistan cropping up in recent comments from both al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

By way of background, do first read Leah Farrall at All Things Counter Terrorism arguing that that AQAP, which is threatening to launch more low-cost  attacks on the west after last month's intercepted parcel bombs, should not be seen as either a new threat, or distinct from al Qaeda's core on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.  "AQAP is a branch of AQ,"  she writes in this post.

"It is not an affiliate, not a franchise, and not a network. Rather it is  an operating branch of AQ, which means that while it may have authority  for attacks in its area of operations (the Arabian Peninsula), it comes under AQ’s strategic command and control for external attacks outside of this area of operation.  And it has always done so, right back to 02."  (See also an earlier post here, and subsequent one here.)

In a commentary this month on an AQAP statement, Gregory Johnsen at the blog Waq al-Waq notes a reference to General David Petraeus , the U.S. commander in Afghanistan:

"Now, General Petraeus used to be head of CentCom and as such responsible for Yemen, but that hasn't been the case since General McChrystal self-destructed in a Rolling Stones profile. So why mention Petraeus? Well, by itself I would be willing to overlook this as the overwrought hyperbole of a jihadi calling out a famous US General, but I don't think that is the case. This is the latest in a series of suggestions that I have seen lately that lead me to believe that there is some new talent in the organization. And I am of the early impression that it is coming from Pakistan/Afghanistan."

Then just last week al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) demanded the withdrawal of French forces in Afghanistan in return for the safety of French nationals kidnapped in Niger.

from Tales from the Trail:

Qat joins al Qaeda as Yemen threat

U.S. lawmakers, convening a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the threat posed by al Qaeda in Yemen, found themselves focused on another problem stalking the impoverished Arab country:  the mild drug qat, which permeates Yemeni society.

Rep.  Howard Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, launched the discussion of Yemen's drug problem in his opening remarks, noting that qat was "a narcotic plant that produces feelings of euphoria and stimulation, but ultimately undermines individual initiative -- sort of like being in Congress."

Berman noted that many people chew qat regularly  in Yemen -- pushed close to the top of the U.S. security watchlist after the Christmas Day bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner by a Nigerian with Yemeni links  --  and that cultivation of the drug consumes about 40 percent of Yemen's fast diminishing agricultural water supplies.

The focus on qat continued with Rep. Gary Ackerman, who mused that Yemen's drug habit might be undercutting its readiness to sign on to a more forceful campaign against al Qaeda militants within its borders.

"These people spend the afternoon getting away from reality, getting high...it's like, wow," Ackerman said.

Rep. David Scott told the panel that on a recent trip to Yemen he had been appalled by the widespread use of qat, which he called "grotesquely disfiguring" as Yemenis plugged big wads of the plant into their cheeks to chew.

"These weren't just young kids. They were police officers, they were businessmen," Scott said, adding that the water demands of Yemen's qat industry were helping push the country to economic ruin.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Failed airline attack raises fresh questions about battle against al Qaeda

In the absence of a coherent narrative about the failed Christmas Day attack on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the debate about how best to tackle al Qaeda and its Islamist allies has once again been thrown wide open.

Does it support those who want more military pressure to deprive al Qaeda of its sanctuary on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or suggest a more diffuse threat from sympathisers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa? Should the United States open new fronts in emerging al Qaeda bases such as Yemen and Somalia, or focus instead on the fact that the attempted airline attack did not succeed, suggesting al Qaeda's ability to conduct mass-casualty assaults on U.S. territory has already been severely degraded in the years since 9/11?

The evidence so far about the attempt by 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to set off an explosive device on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit can  pretty much be stacked up in favour of whatever argument you want to make.

Abdulmutallab was from a wealthy family in Nigeria, where al Qaeda and its Islamist allies have been trying to make inroads, by and large unsuccessfully so far. Residents in his family home town said they believed he was radicalised during his studies abroad, which included education at a British boarding school in Togo, followed by a course in engineering at the prestigious University College London.  He would not be the first educated young man to be inspired by Islamist radicalism in London -- among those who came before him was Omar Sheikh, convicted for the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

Does this mean Britain has been too soft about allowing radicalism to flourish in its universities, as the conservative Daily Telegraph argues?  Or has Britain's own support for U.S. policies, including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a security crackdown at home, so alienated its Muslim community that a tiny minority will turn to terrorism? (If you ask ordinary Muslims in London what should be done, they are just as likely to give you a lecture about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and Washington's failure to insist on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.)

Abdulmutallab's name had been placed on a British watch-list, suggesting security is already very tight in a country which is on alert for any repeat of the London bombings in 2005.  How much tighter can it get, without a further erosion of civil liberties?

The trail from London then leads to Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, and a country which U.S. officials say is emerging as an attractive alternative base for al Qaeda, after it was largely pushed out of Afghanistan and has since come under growing military pressure in Pakistan. In U.S. questioning, Abdulmutallab said al Qaeda operatives in Yemen supplied him with an explosive device and trained him on how to detonate it, according to a U.S. official.