Dribbling through Islam Dunk

We have engaged in two Middle Eastern wars to grapple with terrorist and terrorist-supporting states, focused heavily on al Qaeda and their less-than-clandestine-supporters, the Taliban. We have proselytized against other groups, with which we have pledged we will not deal, ranging from the Palestinian Hamas Party (ensconced in Gaza and seemingly dedicated to the destruction of Israel) and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which currently seems to be pretty solidly in control in Lebanon. We trash Muslim extremism as a daily ritual.

Days after we left Iraq, the incumbent majority – the Shiite-biased al Maliki regime – set about trying to arrest the most important political leader of the minority Sunni faction. Recent bomb blasts from outraged Sunnis against Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad – like the one that killed 72 people on January 5^th – have escalated to levels where it appears that the sectarian violence we feared has actually begun. To make matters even worse, “[T]he Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is welcoming [a] militant group into Iraq’s political system, a move that could tilt the nation’s center of gravity closer to Iran. The government’s support for the militia, which only just swore off violence, has opened new sectarian fault lines in Iraq’s political crisis while potentially empowering Iran at a moment of rising military and economic tensions between Tehran and Washington.

“The militant group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broke away from the fierce Shiite militia commanded by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has strong ties to Tehran. The American military has long maintained that the group, led by a former spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, was trained and financed by Iran’s elite Quds Force — something that Iran denies.” New York Times, January 5^th. The “stabile and functioning democracy” we claimed we left as our legacy was instantly sorely lacking, clearly unraveling, and as I have written so often, the nation we purportedly “liberated” is falling totally into the Iranian camp.

Farther west in the Middle East, the dreaded Hamas merged with the American-recognized Fatah Party in Palestine, creating a political nightmare for Washington. And with Hezbollah further solidifying its position in Lebanon – notwithstanding the instability with its supporting Assad regime in Syria – again the United States was outmaneuvered in this strategic land.

To add fuel to the fire, the once extreme Muslim Brotherhood (albeit a moderated version… so far) seems to be the apparent victor in the recent parliamentary elections in Egypt. I don’t need to iterate the deterioration of our “relationship” with that large Muslim state, Pakistan, once our purported ally in the pursuit of Muslim terrorism. Oh, and since we first displaced them after 9/11, the Taliban have never had so much power in Afghanistan as they do today.

While al Qaeda seems to have lost its power, glitz and glitter – much because it was so extreme and “stupid” that it found little sustaining traction anywhere in the Muslim community and partly because we decapitated its leadership to a great degree – the underlying rejection of the West and Western cultural/political values and the of the Islamic equivalent of passionate evangelicals seems to have moved a vast segment of the earth’s population closer to the more radical interpretation of Islam. In short, the Islamic world as a whole is less West-oriented that it has ever been. We seem to have lost “the hearts and minds” of major segments of that Islamic world, not to mention our rather obvious military failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So what’s a country to do?

“With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests… The administration’s overtures — including high-level meetings in recent weeks — constitute a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.” New York Times, January 4^th.

In another article: “Giving a first major public sign that they may be ready for formal talks with the American-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced [January 3^rd] that they had struck a deal to open a political office in [neutral] Qatar that could allow for direct negotiations over the endgame in the Afghan war…. The step was a reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that they were involved in, or even willing to consider, talks related to their insurgency, and it had the potential to revive a reconciliation effort that stalled in September, with the assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council.” NY Times. It’s been common knowledge that we have been in back-door negotiations with the Taliban, directly and through the Afghans and Pakistanis, for quite some time. Behind closed doors, American political leaders admit that our recent military escalations in that theater of war have been primarily directed at giving the Taliban a reason to negotiate. And remember, the Taliban want to come back and rule Afghanistan.

“American officials have said in recent months that the opening of a Taliban mission would be the single biggest step forward for peace efforts that have been plagued by false starts. The most embarrassing came in November 2010, when it emerged that an impostor had fooled Western officials into thinking he represented the Taliban and then had disappeared with hundreds of thousands of dollars used to woo him.

“The opening of an office in Qatar is meant to give Afghan and Western peace negotiators an ‘address’ where they can openly contact legitimate Taliban intermediaries. That would open the way for confidence-building measures that Washington hopes to press forward in the coming months. Chief among them, American officials said, is the possibility of transferring a number of ‘high-risk’ detainees — including some with ties to Al Qaeda — to Afghan custody from Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners would then presumably be freed later.

“American officials said they would consider transferring only those prisoners the Afghan authorities requested. Among the names being discussed are Muhammad Fazl, the former Taliban deputy defense minister [pictured above]; two former provincial governors, Khairullah Khairkhwa of Herat and Noorullah Nori of Balkh; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official; and one of the Taliban’s top financiers, Muhammad Nabi. Mr. Fazl is accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shiite Muslims, who are a minority in Afghanistan, while the Taliban ruled the country.” NY Times. Makes you wonder what trillions of dollars and thousands and thousands of American (and regional) lives were spent for. Why did the talking start now… and not a very long time ago? It was just too easy to “send in the Marines.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and Americans are notorious for being quick on the trigger and not thinking out the long-term realities of military conflict.