The Progressive Response

The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)—a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.

Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) www.irc-online.org and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.

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Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

SOMALIA AS MILITARY TARGET
By Stephen Zunes

SOMALIA: ERRORS OF FACT AND ANALYSIS
By Ken Menkhaus

ROADMAP TO UNILATERALIST NUCLEAR POLICY
By Michelle Ciarrocca

NEW SELF-DETERMINATION ANALYSIS FROM FPIF

II. Outside the U.S.

FIGHTING TERRORISM, UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN
By Najum Mushtaq

III. Letters and Comments

THE TERRORISM TRIANGLE

SURPRISED

LEFTIST RUBBISH ABOUT INDIA

I. Updates and Out-takes

SOMALIA AS MILITARY TARGET
By Stephen Zunes

(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201somalia.html .)

The east African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as a possible next target in the U.S.-led war against international terrorism. Somalia is a failed state--with what passes for the central government controlling little more than a section of the national capital of Mogadishu, a separatist government in the north, and rival warlords and clan leaders controlling most the remainder of the country. U.S. officials believe that cells of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network may have taken advantage of the absence of governmental authority to set up operation.

Before the U.S. attacks that impoverished country, however, it is important to recognize how Somalia became a possible haven for the followers of Osama bin Laden and what might result if America goes to war.

In November 1992, the outgoing Bush administration sent 30,000 U.S. troops--primarily Marines and Army Rangers--to Somalia, in what was described as a humanitarian mission to assist in the distribution of relief supplies that were being intercepted by armed militias without reaching the civilian populations in need. The United Nations Security Council endorsed the initiative the following month.

Many Somalis and some relief organizations were grateful for the American role. Many others expressed skepticism, noting that the famine had actually peaked that summer and the security situation was also gradually improving. As U.S. troops began arriving, the chaos limiting food shipments was constrained to a small area, with most other parts of the country functioning as relatively peaceful fiefdoms. Most food was getting through and the loss from theft was only slightly higher than elsewhere in Africa. In some cases, U.S. forces essentially dumped food on local markets, hurting indigenous farmers and creating greater food shortages over the longer term. In any case, few Somalis were involved in the decisions during this crucial period.

Most importantly for the U.S., large numbers of Somalis saw the American forces as representatives of the government that had been the major outside supporter of the hated former dictatorship. Such a foreign presence in a country that had been free from colonial rule for only a little more than three decades led to growing resentment. Contributing to these concerns was the fact that the U.S. troops arriving in Somalia were elite combat forces, and were not trained for such humanitarian missions. (Author and journalist David Halberstrom quotes the U.S. Defense Secretary telling an associate, "We're sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them.") Shootings at U.S. military roadblocks became increasingly commonplace, and Somalis witnessed scenes of mostly white American forces harassing and shooting black countrymen.

In addition, the U.S. role escalated to include attempts at disarming some of the warlords, resulting in armed engagements, often in crowded urban neighborhoods. This "mission creep" resulted in American casualties, creating growing dissent at home in what had originally been a widely supported foreign policy initiative. The thousands of M-16 rifles sent, courtesy of the American taxpayer, to Barre's armed forces were now in the hands of rival militiamen who had not only used them to kill their fellow countrymen and to disrupt the distribution of relief supplies, but were now using them against American troops. Within the U.S. ranks, soldiers were heard repeating the slogan, "The only good Somali is a dead Somali." It had become apparent that the U.S. had badly underestimated the resistance.

In May 1993, the U.S. transferred the failing mission to the UN. This was the first time the world body had combined peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and humanitarian assistance, as well as the first time the UN had intervened without a formal invitation by a host government (because there wasn't any.) Within Somalia there was little trust of the United Nations, particularly since the UN Secretary General at that time was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a major supporter of Barre when he led Egypt's foreign ministry.

Even though the UN was technically in control, U.S. forces went on increasingly aggressive forays, including a major battle in Mogadishu that resulted in the deaths of 18 Marines and hundreds of Somali civilians, dramatized in the highly fictionalized thriller Black Hawk Down. The U.S.-led UN forces had become yet another faction in the multisided conflict. Largely retreating to fixed position, the primary American mission soon became protecting its own forces. With mounting criticism on Capitol Hill from both the left and the right, President Bill Clinton withdrew American troops in March 1994. The UN took its last peacekeeping forces out one year later.

The U.S. intervention in Somalia is now widely considered to have been a fiasco. It is largely responsible for the subsequent U.S. hesitation around such so-called humanitarian intervention (outside of high-altitude bombing.) It was the major factor in the tragic U.S. refusal to intervene--either unilaterally or through the UN--to prevent the genocide in Rwanda during the spring of 1994.

Most likely, the Somalia intervention was an another ill-advised assertion of well-meaning liberal internationalism in U.S. foreign policy. But there may have been other factors prompting the American decision to intervene as well: perhaps as a rationalization for increased military spending despite the end of the cold war, perhaps as an effort to mollify the Islamic world for American overkill in the war against Iraq and the inaction against the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia, and/or perhaps as a preemptive operation against possible Islamic extremists rising out of the chaos. If the latter was the goal, it may have backfired. Islamic radicals were able to find some willing recruits among the Somalis, already upset by the U.S. support for Barre, now with additional anger at the impact of direct U.S. military intervention in their country.

In subsequent years, there has been only marginal progress toward establishing any kind of widely recognized national government. Somalia is still divided into fiefdoms run by clan leaders and warlords, though there is rarely any serious fighting. Some officials in the current Bush administration believe that Al-Qaeda has established an important network or cells within this factious country.

If this is indeed the case, it begs the question as to how the U.S. should respond. It is possible that U.S. forces could obtain highly accurate intelligence that would allow them to pinpoint and take out the cells without once again becoming embroiled in messy urban counterinsurgency warfare, like that of 1993-94, or relying on air strikes in heavily populated areas, resulting in large-scale civilian casualties. Based on recent history, however, this is rather doubtful. The result of renewed U.S. military intervention in Somalia, then, could be yet another debacle that would only encourage the extremist forces America is trying to destroy.

(Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.)

SOMALIA: ERRORS OF FACT AND ANALYSIS
By Ken Menkhaus

Among the most common and potentially dangerous errors of fact and analysis about Somalia include the following:

• Somalia’s Islamist movement, al-Ittihad, is synonymous with al-Qaeda. This is wildly wrong. Al-Ittihad is a small, relatively weak organization, with a mainly domestic agenda. Some individual members have had links to al-Qaeda which merit close scrutiny, but the group as a whole is in no way a subsidiary of al-Qaeda.
• Somalia’s Transitional National Government (TNG) is a front for al-Ittihad. The TNG is not the Somali equivalent of the Taliban government. It is extremely weak, controlling only half of the city of Mogadishu, and while it has some al-Ittihad members in its parliament, it is by no means a front for Islamists. An attack against the TNG would be a serious error.
• Somalia is home to terrorist bases and camps. This is the rationale for considering a bombing campaign there. But Somalia’s al-Ittihad movement abandoned the few towns and rural outposts it once controlled, and has since integrated into local communities as teachers, health workers, and businessmen. Bombing abandoned outposts would be a pointless exercise in rearranging rocks.
• Somalia will be a likely safe haven for fleeing al-Qaeda members. On the surface, this concern has merit. Somalia is a collapsed state with no functional central government; global outlaws there could presumably escape the reach of law. In reality, Somalia is a lousy refuge for non-Somali radicals. Foreigners cannot operate in secrecy in Somalia; everyone knows who you are and what you’re doing, and the Somalis would be delighted to hand over a non-Somali.

(Dr. Ken Menkhaus <kemenkhaus@davidson.edu> is associate professor of political science at Davidson College, NC. He is a specialist on the Horn of Africa and has served as a consultant to the UN and the U.S. government.)

Also see:

Warlordism and the War on Terror
By Ken Menkhaus
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0112quidproquo.html

ROADMAP TO UNILATERALIST NUCLEAR POLICY
By Michelle Ciarrocca

(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201nuke.html .)

In the past year and a half, we've heard George W. Bush talk about the need to move beyond the cold war paradigm of U.S. security policy. Specifically, Bush repeatedly discussed reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal to "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security" and taking these weapons off hair-trigger alert. In mid-November, Bush reiterated that position in meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying, "We are talking about reducing and destroying the number of warheads to get down to specific levels."

The congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR, not to be confused, even for a second with "National Public Radio"), released last week, was an opportunity for President Bush and his team to do just that. The NPR is suppose to provide a framework for formulating a U.S. nuclear strategy for the post-cold war world--something the Clinton administration failed to do with its own nuclear review in 1994.

However, much like the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, which was described by Senator Carl Levin as "full of decisions deferred," ambiguity prevails.

Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch held a special briefing with reporters on Wednesday, January 9, 2002 to highlight portions of the classified review delivered to Congress that same day. How does this new approach change U.S. nuclear strategy? In short, the review's recommendations could push the U.S. into a more dangerous security environment than at the height of the Soviet/American rivalry.

As predicted last year, much of the Bush administration's nuclear review echoes an earlier report released by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP). The NIPP report was directed by Dr. Keith Payne, whose main claim to fame is coauthoring a 1980s essay on nuclear war entitled "Victory Is Possible." Bush National Security Council staffers Robert Joseph and Stephen Hadley were involved in the production of the NIPP study, as was William Schneider, an informal adviser and ideological soul mate of Donald Rumsfeld. (See Bill Hartung's "Bush's Nuclear Doctrine: From MAD to NUTS?" http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0012nuclear.html.)

In general, the NIPP report calls future security threats to the U.S. unknown and unpredictable. Therefore, the report concludes that the U.S. must maintain its nuclear arsenal, as well as the ability to design, build, and test new nuclear weapons. The report asserts that conventional weapons are inadequate replacements for nuclear weapons because they do not have the same "destructive power." As a solution the report recommends the development of "low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons"--in other words, a nuclear weapon the U.S. can actually use.

Not surprisingly, the NIPP panel frowns on arms control treaties because "U.S. policymakers today cannot know the strategic environment of 2005, let alone 2010 or 2020. There is no basis for expecting that the conditions that may permit deep nuclear reductions today will continue in the future."

Explaining the administration’s nuclear policy, Assistant Defense Secretary Crouch said, "I think one of the things that came out of the NPR is that there is not a single solution to the problem of weapons of mass destruction. It is not entirely a military problem; it also is a diplomatic problem. It is also a problem that will involve other aspects of national power," Crouch said. By and large, however, the Bush administration has chosen to deal with weapons of mass destruction militarily--not politically.

The Nuclear Posture Review is the roadmap to a unilateralist U.S. nuclear policy. The review makes no mention of the U.S. commitment under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to take concrete steps toward eliminating its nuclear arsenal, a commitment that was reaffirmed at the 2000 NPT review conference. The U.S. and 186 other countries came to a global consensus on nuclear disarmament, declaring it the "only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons." The U.S. must lead the way toward this goal.

(Michelle Ciarrocca <mciarrocca@hotmail.com> is an analyst with the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute.)

NEW SELF-DETERMINATION ANALYSIS FROM FPIF

*KOSOVO CONFLICT PROFILE
By Fred Abrahams
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/kosovo.html

The newly elected Kosovo parliament should work closely with UNMIK to facilitate the return of the Serb and Roma population. The international community should make it clear that an independent Kosovo state will never be accepted until certain democratic standards are attained.

*U.S. TAKES ANTITERRORISM WAR TO THE PHILIPPINES
By John Gershman
http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/0201philippine.html

The danger of growing U.S. involvement in the military campaign against the Abu Sayyaf is that it displaces attention from the much broader struggles for effective development and political self-determination on the part of other Muslim Filipino political groups.

II. Outside the U.S.

(Editor's Note: FPIF has a new component called "Outside the U.S.," which aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html.)

FIGHTING TERRORISM, UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN
By Najum Mushtaq

(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Outside the U.S. commentary, posted in full at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0201pakistan.html .)

The Pakistani public, by and large, appreciates the many pressures under which General Musharraf must operate. For us, it is a familiar story of a Pakistani military ruler parroting a script written in Washington. All of the previous military rulers--Field Marshal Ayub Khan, and Generals Yahya Khan and Zia ul-Haq--thrived in power because of their alignment with the United States. With the cold war long over and the war on terrorism in vogue, seeking U.S. support makes more sense than ever. Pakistanis, in general, are convinced that the United States makes or breaks Pakistani governments and that the military does Washington's bidding.

As long as the United States backs Musharraf, few will challenge his hold on power, and on the home front there appear to be no serious challenges to his rule. The military's control over state institutions and the country's resources is virtually unchallenged. The norm of military supremacy over civilian authority is well established. Public resistance to the military's ascendancy is conspicuous by its absence. The much-feared backlash to General Musharraf's decisions to back the U.S. war in Afghanistan and crack down on jihadi militant groups operating in Kashmir has not happened and does not look like it will occur very soon, if at all. A mutiny by the Islamists in the military, a favorite scenario among those who take military rhetoric at face value, has no historical precedent, nor does one seem imminent. These so-called "errant" elements within the military establishment may not be as widespread or resourceful as feared, not least because of discreet pruning of Islamist officers since the October 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power.

The military as an institution is well entrenched and in firm control of the state machinery. Many long years of direct military rule have diminished its mystique and charisma, but not its ability to curb dissent or crush any threat to its rule. So it won't be surprising if General Musharraf comes out on top and unscathed in this confrontation with the religious extremists.

But if Musharraf actively pursues his stated aim of turning Pakistan into a modern, progressive, and tolerant society, he will find the military itself standing in the way. The institution has grown in mammoth proportions at the expense of development in other sectors. It is precisely because of how the military has run this country over the years that Pakistani political culture remains weak and civil society virtually non-existent. When all is said and done, the fate of Pakistan will eventually hinge upon the question of military reform.

Can the military submit itself to popular will and abide by the notion of civilian supremacy? If an elected civilian government had taken the recent decisions on Afghanistan and Kashmir, would the military have supported it? Will it ever forego its self-assumed right to rule without the consent of the people? Shouldn't General Musharraf also redefine the role of the military?

General Musharraf has already made it clear that he plans to stay on as president indefinitely. It will be a pity if the United States, in pursuit of its short-term objectives in the "war on terrorism," repeats the errors of the cold war and again provides unqualified support for undemocratic forces in Pakistan. History, however, suggests it is likely.

(Najum Mushtaq <najumm@hotmail.com> is an assistant editor at the News in Rawalpindi/Islamabad.)

III. Letters and Comments

THE TERRORISM TRIANGLE

Excellent article. Thank you. In the very first paragraph of section 4 (entitled "Attacking Root Causes") in FPIF's four-part policy framework "A New Agenda to Counter Terrorism" http://www.fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html you state that "because terrorism is a political act, a preventive strategy must address its political roots." This is certainly true. I submit that in so doing we uncover a paradigm that seems to be shared by the countries that provide the kinds of social, economic, and political opportunities for terrorism organizations to take widespread root. The paradigm looks like a triangle: Education, by developing human capacity, enables people to participate in Economic Growth. And, by bringing about a more informed citizenry, Education also strengthens civil society. We know also that economic growth enables more citizens to become stake-holders in the market and economic system. This triangular relationship between Education, Economic Growth, and Civil Society reflects a deeper relationship between people's capacity, people's access to capital, and people's voice (influence on policy).

In countries where these links are broken--or are tenuous--(i.e. where an increase in people's capacity does not result in an increase in their means, or where economic groups are disenfranchised, or where "education gaps" thwart citizens' opportunities to participate) conditions seem to be quite conducive to exploitation by terror organizations. Such countries range from Afghanistan to Angola, Pakistan to Haiti, Somalia to Chechnya. Again, thank you for a most informative article.

- Bertrand Laurent <blaurent@aaionline.org>
Civil Society Specialist & Development Strategist
The Africa-America Institute

SURPRISED

I have hardly ever seen an article by an Indian which is not biased and arrogant. This article, “India’s Policy of Brinksmanship” http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0201kashmir.html is very unusual in this sense as it is based on the concepts of equal rights and justice.

- Ameer Hassan <ahassan@tricity.wsu.edu>

LEFTIST RUBBISH ABOUT INDIA

The author, Mr. Achin Vanaik, could hardly be called an "independent journalist." His accounts in “India’s Politics of Brinksmanship on Kashmir” http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0201kashmir.html are factually false and illogical. His bias against India's ruling BJP could not be more evident than the following unsubstantiated and baseless assertions.

He writes: "The BJP, which leads the current coalition government, has long been determined to transform the Indian polity and society into a more authoritarian and anti-secular direction." Patently false. Has the author read BJP's party constitution, election manifestos, or any of the major speeches by BJP leaders? BJP is as unequivocally committed to a secular, democratic India as any in India's body politic. What BJP opposes is a soft state of apologists who, as their main political agenda, pander to minorities and win elections through divide and rule of India's electorate. BJP rejects such shameful “vote bank” politics and NOT the secular democratic ethos. As a matter of fact, the only period of “authoritarianism” in India's commendable democratic history came under the so-called pseudo-secularist Congress party which has a history of “sleeping” with the leftists and the communists.

The author then asserts: "This government (BJP-led coalition) has used the developments since September 11 and December 13 to curb civil liberties, harass its domestic opponents, further communalize the Indian education system, spread anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments, and promote a more belligerent and aggressive elite nationalism in keeping with its general political ideology." Without a doubt, this author lives in a fantasy world that only a communist apologist of India has the capacity to conjure up. Or, under the guise of "independent journalist" of some leftist Nehruvian think tank, he is deliberately deceiving the readers and perpetuating falsehood.

Another example. The author claims: "What's more, it (BJP) has diverted attention away from its political failure in Kashmir. The Kashmiri population has been alienated not only by the brutalities inflicted by Pakistan-supported terrorist groups but also by the terrorist repressions carried out by the Indian armed forces in the region." What rubbish. Kashmir problem and Pakistani intransigence is decades old. That's a fact. For almost all of this period, right up to 1998, the so-called Hindu nationalists of BJP was out, and left-leaning secularist Congress was in power.

Criticize and denounce India's politics by all means. But at least get your facts straight. Shouldn't you?

- Tarun K. Seam <tarunseam@hotmail.com>

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