There’s obviously going to be a lot more surrounding this story in the very near future and while it all may be that the accusations are false I have to think that if the evidence could have been discounted and the whole ordeal quietly swept under the carpet it would have been.  The affadavit makes for chilling reading and will undoubtedly be sighted and published all over the Arab world tomorrow.

The Obama administration began its PR campaign (how sincere or significant it actually is I will leave to other authors to answer) with the much heralded interview with Al-Arabiya.  I think it is safe to say that any good will produced by that interview is going to be seriously tested by this incident.  It’s not Abu Ghraib but it’s certainly not what a new administration, trying to put its best foot forward in a region that is highly skeptical and cynical about any US overture needs.  As if the situation in Gaza was not reason enough for the Arab World to be skeptical of the sincerity or willingness of the administration to make hard choices in the region, this incident is going to further evaporate any goodwill that the administration might hope to enjoy post inauguration and will certainly be a serious test of their capacity for damage control.

The long term political implications are probably not that significant but this is exactly the kind of story that has a way of rearing its head over and over again. Do not expect it to disappear anytime soon.  It will also be interesting to see whether AQIM latches onto this or not and what reaction, if any, Bouteflika and the Algerian government will have.

–C

Update: this article in the New York Times doesn’t add too much new information but for what it’s worth it’s here

This post, like most on this blog is at least a week  too late but I feel like all of the chatter on the “AQIM operatives killed by plague” is turning into one of these slightly dubious, only on the internet kind of stories,  that deserves a little slightly more sober analysis. As far as I am concerned there is scant evidence to substantiate any of the claims made by either of the two “newspapers” that have reported on this issue and most of the blog postings I have read on the subject seem to be so far off the mark as to be laughable.

In case you missed it the Sun tabloid (famous for its page three girls) first reported on Jan. 19th that around 40 members of AQIM were killed when some kind of experimentation with a “biological or chemical” weapon went awry.  You can see the original article here. According to the Sun article (which refers to AQIM as AQLIM somewhat oddly) an AQIM operative contracted bubonic plague (the disease we all remember from European History).  To support this claim the Sun quotes from “sources” about the supposed incident. While I mostly restrain my snobby impulses if you’re going to manufacture a story I recommend at least referring to your sources as “security sources” or “intelligence sources” this gives you a vague whiff of some sort of something maybe resembling credibility.

The story was picked up from there and subsequently written about on the 20th in the slightly more reputable Washington Times emphasis on slightly The Washington Times to my knowledge doesn’t to date have bare breasted women occupying the third page of their newspaper. The Washington times article, cites a “senior intelligence official” (that’s more like it!) who claims that, US intelligence “intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.” The story has since then spread a fair bit to a range of different blogs who have picked up the story with gusto apparently enjoying the irony of AQIM terrorists dying of a medieval pestilence carried by fleas and the opportunity to dust off their Monty Python quote book. Most depressingly the story has received further “analysis” in the Counterterrorism blog which seems to have fallen  hook, line, and sinker for this rather dubious bit of “news.”

Quite a few good points are raised by armchair generalist here– but for what it’s worth here are my two cents: the macro problem is the obsession in the blogosphere security community with chem and bio weapons and the desire to rush to the keyboard to type up breathless reports whenever an “incident” raises its head without pausing to give thought to analyze 1) whether the information is actually good 2) to carefully think about the actual security implications 3) to overhype the danger in a breathless doomsday scenario, that is replete with “what ifs.”

A first point is that while Al Qaeda’s interest in chemical and biological weapons is certainly well documented and something to keep an eye on security experts have serious doubts about the viability of terrorists weaponizing chemical weapons in a way that would be particularly deadly.   In the “World At Risk” report made to congress headed by Bob Graham (executive summary here) the commission discounts chemical weapons as being able to cause significant casualties and certainly nowhere near the magnitude of a biological or nuclear attack.  So while I am sure that efforts should be made to keep these weapons out of the hands of Al Qaeda and its supporters chem weapons are way down the ladder in terms of major security threats especially when you consider the tremendous devastation that a biological or nuclear weapon could cause.

Now this is certainly not my field of expertise but my understanding is that even weaponizing biological weapons is difficult.  First of all weaponizing a virus like anthrax requires a certain amount of technical training, as well as some relatively sophisticated technology and a decent lab to make spores smaller so that they can disperse widely.  Even if you were to steal a weaponized anthrax culture, a legitimate security concern,  creating an aerosol system for spreading the biological agent can be tough. As the anthrax letters, immediately after Sept. 11th demonstrated biological agents can cause a tremendous amount of havoc and certainly should be a major focus of counterterrorism efforts but the problem with dubious stories like the AQIM Bubonic plague story is that apart from giving undue credence to what is at best a dubious story they usually provide little to no analysis about how biological weapons are (or might) actually be employed.  While I certainly think keeping WMD out of the hands of Al Qaeda is a huge challenge facing security experts all over the globe a little caution and pragmatism is probably not a bad idea before writing breathless accounts about the potential devastation of Al Qaeda (or its surrogates) launching  flea infested agents into the heart of  of Europe.

Tuareg Rebel Troops are inspected by a commander

It’s been a busy week and a half for the Sahel region.  Not one but two (count ‘em) Sahel themed articles have appeared in the New York Times in the last ten days.  The first article was on the training of Malian and Senegalese armed forces and provides further information on the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) that was the subject of an earlier post on PF that you can find here.  One of the interesting points that comes out of the article is just how small this effort is in the grand scheme of US strategic initiatives and how significant the obstacles are against the Malian armed forces ever being a significant challenge to AQIM or the numerous smugglers running cigarettes, fuel, and arms through the desert.

As the article mentions  the Malian army has only “two working helicopters” and seems to have adopted a “live-and-let-live” approach to dealing with AQIM while they go after Tuareg rebels instead.  Any objective analysis of the challenges facing the projection of power by the Malian government into the Sahara (and this is a similar dynamic for Niger which was also the focus of a Times article this week) must focus on two simple issues geography & economics.

While these are themes that are touched on in all counterinsurgency manuals from the 60s and 70s it is amazing to see the degree of difficulty that they inject into the Malian and Niger cases.  Both of these countries are desperately poor, and have little to no government presence or authority in these remote communities on the periphery of the Sahara.   Reading the article on the US training program in Mali you get the sense that there is a recognition that training troops alone is not enough– the article mentions plans to coordinate with USAID to move funds to support local businesses, teach practical skills, set up FM radio stations and other initiatives to support the quality of life and increase security for Malians in the north.  My concern reading over the article is that while it seems like the US approach combines elements of both counter-insurgency with counter terrorism: winning the hearts and minds of the people, improving military capacity, training and techniques, while trying to reduce or isolate terrorist access to Malians and limit their sanctuaries in the region– this hybrid approach risks failing in the long run unless the US is willing to stay put  and commit serious amounts of money to keep it going. This is not a glamorous “surge” type mission– this is a long term, gradual, and what might be called preemptive counter terrorism model.  I think it’s an interesting mission and renewed US attention to the region is a good thing as long as it doesn’t involve propping up really unsavory characters in local governments in the region– but I am worried about how long US attention will really be focused on the issue especially given that they are trying to project power into one of the most remote, poor and isolated regions of the world.

This is because the challenges at the root of suppressing AQIM in the Sahara: economics and geography, are extreme challenges for the TSCTI but work very much in favor of AQIM.  By operating in the desert, “taxing” smugglers, intimidating locals, and taking what they need in raids AQIM has a steady supply of income and seems to be able to operate relatively comfortably. If they know the desert well they can simply avoid the military forces until they want to engage them in combat and then they can escape again into the desert.  Furthermore, as long as there are tourists in the region there will always be the possibility of kidnapping and ransoming them back which provides another relatively steady source of income. Furthermore if one country pulls out or is not committed to the effort AQIM seems relatively able to shift their field of operations from one country to another. As I remarked in a previous post it makes little strategic sense to push the TSCTI in Mali while cutting Mauritania out of the initiative after the coup– my guess would be that AQIM can move into northern Mauritania if they feel it is preferable to operate there than Mali.  Given the fact that there are literally no significant forces to oppose AQIM’s movement through the desert you need a unified, coordinated, and determined effort from the relevant governments in order to really eliminate the AQIM threat.

The second article that appeared this week was on the growing Tuareg insurgency in Niger against the government over revenues from the sales of Uranium.  I have very little knowledge of the political situation in Niger but one thing that comes through very clearly in this piece are the complications of projecting power against an insurgency with legitimate political grievances in  the Sahara.  The factors are essentially the same: weak state, poor people, little state legitimacy and in this case a long history of resentment against the institutionalized neglect of the north under colonialism and continued post independence.  I am not surprised that the long neglected Tuareg feel that they have a legitimate right to some of the benefits of the uranium currently being extracted from the north.

I am not sure how strong the Tuareg rebels are but note that some of their tactics will be the same as AQIM. Recently a Tuareg group kidnapped a UN diplomat, and they seem to be taking advantage of the terrain, and the ability to move through the desert unimpeded to take potshots at Niger military forces when they feel like it.  I don’t get a good sense from the article how sympathetic local villagers are to the Tuareg cause but you have to think that if they enjoy widespread support the Niger government is going to have a very hard time cracking down and eliminating this threat.  If there are guerrilla attacks against the mine sites or staff this could get messy in a hurry. I also think it’s interesting that uranium is increasingly being seen in paradigm of the “resource curse”– I wonder if anyone from POLISARIO has attacked Moroccan attempts to extract uranium from phosphate deposits in what might be one of the more interesting stories I’ve read recently from Western Sahara.

the Moroccan berm: also omitted from McDonald's Morocco W. Sahara friendly world maps

This recent story in Maghrebia about a gaffe by McDonald’s which included a world map with Western Sahara on it in Happymeals to unsuspecting Moroccan youths  got me meditating on what the future for some kind of settlement is on the region.  Both the Moor Next Door and Western Sahara Info have interesting posts on the recent call by Morocco to open the border which touch peripherally on the issue but I would like to delve a little deeper into what the implications are for the various scenarios from the Moroccan standpoint because Morocco seems to me to be enjoying a period of relative strength and we may soon see a day where McDonald’s will include a map of Morocco without any dividing line across the middle in Happymeals all over the globe.

The Case for the Status Quo: As in all questions of international politics it seems relatively safe to assume that one possibility is that nothing really significant will happen in the short term.  Alle correctly points out this means that Morocco is still going to be spending a high percentage of GNP on maintaining its forces in the Western Sahara but I think that history shows this is a price that Morocco is willing to pay. Presumably paying will be made easier considering that Morocco appears to enjoy a considerable strategic advantage in the region and that time allows them to continue to stack the region with migrants and hold their military gains.  It would take a really significant downturn in the Moroccan economy before the basic military calculus on troop levels is going to change. Furthermore there seems to be a number of additional factors that make either a status quo or settlement in Morocco’s favor likely.

International Politricks: One significant factor in Morocco’s favor is that the major players in the UN all appear to be on their side. France and the US have both been pretty unambiguous about their willingness to accept a resolution favorable to Morocco and I don’t know any other member of the security council that cares enough about the conflict to expend significant energy on behalf of the POLISARIO (Maybe Russia because of their strong ties to Algeria?).  Time also is significant in this equation. As long as Morocco keeps their security forces in check and doesn’t allow them to get out of control and cause a huge uproar in the region their case gets stronger and stronger.  The International Community (especially propelled by France & the US) is unlikely to want to change the situation significantly and the stronger Morocco’s hold gets demographically the harder it is for me to see any real change occurring– unless there is some military or police action which is so egregious that it embarrasses the US and France and undermines their ability to support Morocco. But even so Morocco’s hand internationally is very strong.

Economic$: I haven’t checked prices on phosphates recently but my guess is that they are probably still holding relatively high and with concerns about food prices/shortages everywhere there is probably not too much of a chance that they will go down anytime soon.  While this is in itself is not so significant I think that governments are going to view a deal that accommodates Morocco as the least destabilizing (especially if Morocco is smart about how they pitch the final deal). Morocco is a darling of organizations like the IMF, World Bank, and USAID who want to see it succeed and I think these organizations will caution against any plan that turns those resources over to POLISARIO because they are going to be viewed as less trustworthy than the Moroccans who already have the infrastructure in place and are doing a pretty decent job of exploiting and selling phosphates as fast as they can.

Military Power: Will delve into this a bit more below but it seems to me like Morocco has the will power to stick this one out. While I am certain that there are planners in the Ministry of Defense that would love to drop troop levels in the region so they could get some money towards important projects like a much needed upgrade to the air force, Morocco has been working around the Sahara problem for a number of years now and  the Moroccan’s enjoy a lot of extras from the EU and US in terms of military support (especially post 9/11)  that cuts a little bit of the financial sting.  Finally, the military situation is so much in their favor that it is hard to think of a scenario where there is any real reason not to be careful and conservative.  As Napoleon pointed out, “the victor loves peace.” Morocco can afford to wait until an agreement that suits their needs emerges because there is no significant military challenge to their current position.

Pro POLISARIO Situation: It is hard for me to think of a situation where the POLISARIO have the capacity to influence the negotiations in a way that is favorable to them: their position internationally is weak, their armed forces dwindling, and they are faced with a situation where Algeria can no longer afford to support them explicitly in an outright confrontation with Morocco, because the consequences for Algeria would be too significant.  Until 1985 or so POLISARIO’s military situation was favorable and fighting seemed like a relatively good option but with the completion of the berm militarily things have only gotten worse. The POLISARIO is capable of pushing hard on the PR front but I can’t think of much that POLISARIO can do except negotiate and engage in occasional sabre rattling about not being able to “control” the situation if the solution reached is so unfavorable to POLISARIO that violence reemerges.  Even if violence was to start again in the post-9/11 world I am afraid that not many people are going to view the POLISARIO movement favorably and a resumption of hostilities would allow Morocco the option to press for further gains while pretending to be the aggrieved party.

Pro-Moroccan Solution: This to me seems the most likely outcome in the long run barring some earth shattering change in the political calculus. Negotiations may be long and drawn out and Morocco may need to make some concessions to clinch a deal but on the whole I think that the Western Sahara is currently Morocco’s to lose.  Especially given their strong position within the International System and the factors constraining Algeria from giving the POLISARIO the kind of significant support that they need to be competitive I think that even Algeria will eventually come around and put pressure on the POLISARIO to agree to a negotiated settlement.  The US in particular will be in a position to sweeten the deal for Algeria and if the generals or Boutef is convinced that what the US is offering is better than the gains of destabilizing Morocco on the cheap I don’t think ideological concerns about the justice of the POLISARIO’s fight is going to keep Algeria from forcing POLISARIO to accept some kind of deal.

No longer BFF?

A reuters report this week sheds some light (inadvertently) on the latest projection of US power in the Sahel: via the famous  (TSCTI) Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative.  You can read a good summary of the initiative at global security. The Reuters report explains that US marines stationed in Mauritania who were engaged in training Mauritanian military units have been pulled out of Mauritania since the Aug. 6th coup which strikes me as perhaps one of the sillier expressions of US dissatisfaction with the coup to date and perhaps indicative of a broader problem with the carrot and stick approach to the junta.

While the coup was certainly not something that the US or EU was ever going to look favorably on– the pullout of troops engaged in training operations makes little sense to me. Certainly the US has/and is continuing to do business with non-democratic leaders in the Sahel region and you would think that more pragmatic heads would have prevailed.  Maybe the pullout was partially to demonstrate irritations with General Abdel Aziz’s blatant political manipulation of the terrorist issue but even so, given the importance to the US and other Sahel countries of winning the battle against AQIM and the significant obstacles they face in the region, pulling back these training troops makes little sense– especially if the diplomatic wrangling with General Abdel Aziz is protracted and a resolution takes months.

Part of the problem of course with drawing conclusions from the Mauritanian case is that it is so low on the US radar and because there is little strategic interest in Mauritania from the US perspective EXCEPT for the TSCTI that the US doesn’t have many sticks to hold over Mauritania other than the TSCTI except for sanctions.  Moor Next Door (as usual) has a great roundup on Mauritanian happenings from last month which indicates that while sanctions are being threatened they do not appear emminent. Currently the only sanctions are on travel to the US by certain unnamed members of the junta according to the BBC.

This seems like one of those trainwrecks of policy where military and political objectives collide and coherence goes out the window.  While I agree that the coup was less than ideal most observors note that there seem to be no signficant domestic push for reinstating the disposed regime and while principals are great (if a little dubious coming from the Bush administration) I don’t know that losing ground in the fight against AQIM is worth taking a stand on democratic elected officials in Mauritania of all places.  Although Mauritania is way, way down the list of US diplomatic priorities at the moment (realistically somewhere below that critical study of whether Madonna’s divorce with Guy Ritchie is an auspicious omen for trans-atlantic relations) but these kinds of collisions of politics and security objectives cry out for a slightly more realpolitik unity of policy and strategy.

As almost everyone acknowledges projecting military strength in the Sahara is tough.  The US is going to have a hard time building the capacity and abilities of local military units as it is– starting and stopping the process as if it were an infrastructure project or without carefully considering the broader strategic goals at play seems to me to be very shortsighted.

As always we at PF welcome comments from other Mauritania watchers out there or folks who have information on the latest developments.

Great Diplomat. Great Combover.

Egad PF lovers! It seems that unbeknownst to us the slacker grad students we hired as interns to write this blog while we were away globe trotting and attending fabulous international conferences reneged on their promise to write this blog for us.  We came back to find the PF office trashed, our office stash of fine coffees decimated, and a sodden toga hanging in the closet but clearly no blog posts! That’s the last time we farm out blogging duties to a bunch of smarmy, liberal, slacker, grad students who claim to be interested in international politics.

But have no fear: your regular crew is back in the saddle.  Be on the lookout for a piece on those devilish Somali pirates with their “khat” and “Kalashnikovs” and “piracy” that seem to be all the rage these days.  As well as perhaps something zesty about Afghanistan and the policies of a certain senator from Illinois who seems to have made his way into the white house (hoorah!).

In other news, for all of you Maghreb watchers it was an exciting week in North African politics particularly in Algeria where President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was able to push through an amendment on term limits that will allow him to run for a third term.  For a very knowledgeable and interesting analysis of the wheeling and dealing please check out the always insightful Moor Next Door.

For not very insightful but hopefully interesting musings keep it right here as I think through the implications of a third Bouteflika term on the Algerian amnesty.

Essentially the Algerian amnesty flies in the face of most conventional thinking about transitional justice.  Under Bouteflika’s careful maneuvering the amnesty has basically thrown out every single suggestion regarding transitional justice that would be promoted by most academics or professionals in the field in order to get the major rebel groups to lay down their arms.  These are some bad guys: the GIA and GSPC committed horrible massacres, murders, bombings, rapes and essentially terrorized the country for 10 years. (For an interesting paper exploring the strategic “logic” behind the campaign of massacres checkout a paper by Kalyvas here) Not surprisingly the government has also provided almost de facto immunity for government troops and government sponsored local militias who were responsible for their fair share of egregious violence including torture, disappearances and murder.

Absent from the Algerian amnesty is any attempt to establish a truth commission, much less to punish those who were responsible for the worst crimes in some kind of tribunal, and perhaps most ominously there seems to be some concern that the Algerian amnesty could actually be used to target and arrest Algerian activists who  try to publicize the cause of the disappeared or who advocate for an investigation into the atrocities.  You can see a particularly damning press release by the ICTJ, HR Watch and Amnesty International from 2005 here that describes all the reasons they view the amnesty as flawed.

In short the Algerian amnesty doesn’t do much in terms of reconciliation, or justice.  All of these mechanisms have been sidelined in an attempt to maintain the peace.  Even when there has been a concession, for example the promises of compensation for the families of victims who were “disappeared” this process has been hopelessly muddled by the government, which has had to my knowledge, no clear consistent position, on the disappeared  even though President Bouteflika has acknowledged officially that there were individuals who were “disappeared” during the civil war.

What does all of this spell for a 3rd term of Bouteflika? Well it seems highly unlikely that even in his 3rd term President Bouteflika will or can make the changes needed to restore some teeth to the amnesty and begin to restore some sense of reconciliation to a country that is still incredibly divided just three years after major violence stopped. For one thing Bouteflika has wrapped himself in the amnesty and used the relative peace and stability as a kind of PR campaign to keep him in power: he is not likely to turn on it to correct some of its flaws, even with his new “mandate.”  Secondly, in the current scenario the amnesty bestows impunity for the military, government sponsored militias, and major terrorist groups (except those GSPC members who now constitute AQIM) but the government seems incredibly reluctant to address any of the numerous concerns about the amnesty for fear that any adjustment to the amnesty law or investigation into the atrocities committed during the civil war would open up the proverbial can of worms and risk a resumption in violence.  Even if there was a will on behalf of the Bouteflika government to somehow begin to address these crimes (perhaps with some kind of truth commission like the one currently ongoing in Morocco) if most Algerians see the hands of Bouteflika as too corrupt or involved with the military even if he were to initiate such a proceeding, would his very involvement condemn it? Will Algerians have to wait until the end of the Bouteflika/Pouvoir embrace to finally discover and receive official acknowledgment of the fate of their loved ones? The reluctance to even acknowledge the flaws in the amnesty program smacks of the same tone deafness and resistance of the government to listen to and address the concerns of the people that led to the rise of the FIS in the early 90s.   The list of national concerns confronting the Bouteflika government is lengthy and growing: How effectively or to what degree will Bouteflika be able to address resentment over the amnesty, tackle serious economic challenges, reassure citizens that a 3rd term does not represent some new from of autocracy,  clamp down on an active AQIM, and address a restive host of issues with the Berbers in the Kabyle especially as oil revenues drop? Are there other major challenges I am missing?

So fire away Algeria watchers.  I am eager to hear your thoughts.

- C

Migrants: I recently stumbled across an excellent recent report, by Hein de Haas from Radboud University Nijmegen, on the indispensable migration site migrationinformation.org The statistic that most jumps out from Haas’ excellent study of the changing nature of Moroccan migration is this interesting tidbit, “Receiving $3.6 billion in official remittances in 2003, Morocco was the fourth largest remittance receiver in the developing world.”  Given that measuring remittances is a tricky business we can be sure that the IMF’s current estimate that remittances constitute 9% of Moroccan GDP is actually low. That’s a lot of money especially for a small country which is otherwise dependent on two other major industries: phosphates and tourism for revenue. While the math in these estimates is always a bit fuzzy according to Haas’ report there are 3 million Moroccans living abroad or something close to 10% of the population.  Now, you don’t have to be an economist, (which is good because I am most definitely not) to realize that this is a lot of revenue coming back into the country and a tremendous boost to Morocco especially given that the two other major sources of domestic income are so dependent on the well being of external markets. Remittances give Morocco a regular, fairly steady, and critical boost of cash that it desperately needs especially if fewer tourists decide to holiday in Marakesh this year due to the current credit crunch.  Given this critical flow of cash it’s interesting to examine Moroccan incentives for cracking down on illegal immigration which has been a major focus of negotiations with the EU in recent years.

This is ongoing research on my part but I for one have to say that I am not too surprised that in a quick survey of reports of successful interventions on the part of the Moroccan Navy in the last few years stopping or capturing illegal immigrants either to Spain or the Canaries most of the articles that I have read make mention of a high number of “sub-Saharan” Africans detained but rarely mention illegal Moroccan migrants.  It seems clear that despite the worsening economic conditions in Spain, Moroccans are probably still traveling in significant numbers to Europe– so I doubt it’s that smugglers aren’t taking Moroccans over, but rather that it’s in Morocco’s interest to be rather selective in which smugglers they interdict.  Of course not all, or even most remittances from abroad, come from illegal Moroccan migrants but it seems that capturing and sending sub-Saharan Africans home or simply letting them go allows the Moroccan officials to give Spain and the EU hard numbers and point to the success of their growing naval presence in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and reassure European allies that migrants or asylum seekers from Mali, Nigeria, and Coite d’Ivoire aren’t going to be washing up on the Canary Islands and spoiling anyone’s holiday in the sun while simultanesouly allowing Moroccans to get through to Europe and contining a critical stream of money which if it were to cease, would be devastating for the Moroccan economy. Even in a year, like this one, where I would expect to see a downturn in Moroccan (indeed probably global) remittances it’s going to be a big blow and unless something unforseen picks up you can expect this year to be a tough one for Morocco economically.  Given how little wiggle room there is for Morocco’s economy you have to wonder why on earth Morocco would be motivated to stop one of their most lucrative exports: people.

Take a stroll up the mountain outside of Chefchouen and you'll probbably see something like this

Hashish: Much has been written on the vitality, robustness and well being of the Moroccan hashish industry. Famously King Muhammed V permitted the cultivation of hash, known as “Kif” locally, in 1956 after trouble in the Rif region, located in the mountainous northeast of the country, over the French prohibition of kif cultivation threatened the stability of the region.  You can read an interesting history here on the long tradition of kif cultivation in Morocco (in French) but given this history it shouldn’t be surprising that the illegal sale and export of hash is a signficant industry today.  UNDOC estimates the total cash economy of the hash industry at 12.5 billion, and this is even given a reduction in the total amount of “the cannabis-cultivated land in the north of the country from 134,000 to 76,000 hectares.” Given the considerable size of the industry it is perhaps not a shocker to learn that there have been periodic charges that various important Moroccan officials have gotten involved in the traffic of hashish, including most famously the head of the former King’s Security Haj Mediouri (see an interesting article in MERIP here.)

The comparison here is pretty obvious: what incentive does Morocco have, apart from maintaining its good relations with the EU, to really crack down on the exportation of people or hashish? For a country that, while significantly better off than much of North Africa, is still struggling to develop, with a GDP of approximately USD $50 billion, Morocco would be crazy to significantly reduce two critical streams of income especially if doing so would risk ratcheting up tensions in the Rif or reducing even slightly the amount of remittances the country receives each year.  Who cares that these are two illicit economies that are a major EU security headache? People and narcotics are two well established and hugely profitable Moroccan exports and as such are not likely to vanish anytime soon.  Recent allegations that the sale of hashish has been used to  fund terrorist operations might get the US to weigh in and try to put pressure on Rabat to do more to reduce kif production and I wouldn’t be surprised if the current bilateral discussions with the EU over the creation of a free trade zone didn’t include demands for concessions about cutting down on both hashish and illegal immigrants but given the current economic realities, the lack of the development of economic alternatives, and no strong incentive for the Moroccan government to significantly crack down no one should be surprised to see these two industries growing healthily into the future.

-C

The piece is worth a careful read.

PSW

Graffiti for The Mastiffs: one of the tougher sounding Neapolitan fan clubs

Not only is September back to school time but for those of us at PF with a taste for all things Euro (with the exception of Eurovision) it also means the resumption of European football (that would be soccer to those of us on this side of the Atlantic).  We’ve been remarkably restrained in not flooding this blog with PF office chat about why Robinho is such a wanker, where David Villa will end up, or the latest results of our in house fantasy teams but this gem from the ever vigilant folks at Reuters certainly needed to be addressed.

It seems that there was some fan violence after the opening game between Naples & Rome after some hooligans (ultras in Italian) traveling to the match decided to occupy a train and refused to exit when asked to leave “per piacere” by the authorities.  When the police and railway officials tried to force them off they decided to express their frustration by doing half a million euros in damages to the train.  Now it seems that some of the yahoos may have been acting under the direction of the Camorra (Neapolitan Mafia).

If true this would certainly not be the first time that organized crime has mixed with the world’s game– but it is especially interesting in Naples where organized crime has played a huge role in the current garbage crisis that’s been going on for well over a year now and have a hand in a large amount of economic activity in the city. Blackmailing the club by threatening to incite or otherwise manipulate fan groups would be an interesting innovation on the connections between gangsters and football clubs. Especially as the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), in an effort to clamp down on hooliganism, has significantly ramped up fines and punishments for clubs when there is any misbehavior by their fans.

Not surprisingly the FIGC eager to appear tough (and one has to wonder if this standard will be applied to rowdies from one of the bigger clubs: Milan, Juve, Inter or Roma) has closed the curves of the stadium to fans until next month and the Interior Minister (no less) Roberto Maroni banned fans from Naples to away games for the rest of the reason.  Because the curves have the cheapest tickets and are the traditional home of the ultra groups this represents not just a financial slap on the wrist to management but the ban on traveling fans represents an even bigger psychological blow for the club. In case anyone needs reminding football is big business in Italy and this penalty will surely be a substantial hit for film producer and owner Aurelio De Laurentiis.

Although more information seems to indicate that it was a relatively small number of cammorisiti traveling with the fan groups it would be interesting if the camorra was using the threat of violence or unruly fan behavior to blackmail the club. Of course it’s debatable how much inciting the rowdy ultras really need to stir up trouble but I for one wouldn’t put it past the camorra to use this as an innovative new way of getting something out of the club.

Ciao for now,

C

The bottom line: we have “set preposterously ambitious aims, which included setting up a unitary Western style state in a handful of years, in a country which had just emerged from an ongoing civil war of 30 years and has been steeped in a deeply tribal culture, based on revenge and division for probably thirty centuries.”

His prescription: “So we have to abandon the notion that we can make Afghanistan into a well governed state, with gender aware citizens and European standard human rights. It raises expectations we cannot fulfill and wastes resources better deployed elsewhere. A better governed state is the limit of the achievable…So the realistic aim in Afghanistan, with current resources, is not victory, but containment.”

His policy prescriptions for ‘containing’ Afghanistan and ‘securing’ gains achieved are on the mark. They include correcting the disastrous lack of coordination in international aid efforts and the military campaign, empowering the new UN Ambassador Kai Eide to lead the design of an internationally accepted, country-wide, political-military strategy, engaging the Taliban, and design a regional Dayton-esque process.

The interesting point to highlight here is not just the contrast with McCaffrey’s AAR (see earlier post). It is also the contrast between “Burkian” approach to conflict/post-conflict strategies (those who generally oppose a “surge” in Afghanistan or the notion that we need to make democracy and human right a central objective) and what I would call the idealists (who are uncomfortable with Ashdown’s willingness to admit that even in the best case, Afghanistan will remain a society of “gun drugs and tribalism.”)

Rory Stewart’s approach as well as Benjamin Friedman’s – these are the ones I am inclined to support.

Incidentally, Barack Obama, though supportive of an increase in troops in Afghanistan, seems to have a sensibility about the way change happens – and that it’s not likely to happen overnight in a place like Afghanistan (and certainly not because the US demands it). Obama respects this Burkian conservatism “because it has much more to do with respect for tradition and the past and I think skepticism about being able to just take apart a society and put it back together. Because I do think that communities and nations and families aren’t subject to that kind of mechanical approach to change.”

One of the most important battles over national security should Obama win will be between the “realist” and “liberal internationalists” camp of the Democratic Party. I’m afraid that if the latter win, we will all see less “change” than we were promised.

PSW