Taliban Manual Says Mulla Omar Rules

Mulla Omar has released a pocket book outlining the rules of conduct for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The unimaginatively titled manual "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen" can be seen as an attempt to reign in rougue criminal bands acting in the Taliban's name, and restore central control in the hands of Mulla Omar. It strictly forbids the exchange of hostages for money and says a regional religious authority should always decide the fate of individual captives.
The Manual condemns excessive suicide attacks, saying it should be reserved for "High value targets", and urges fighters to make sure civilians are not hurt in operations. The part about civilians is almost identical to US General McChrystal's announcements about the necessity to win the hearts of the afghan population.
Interestingly the manual also stresses regulating fighters under one command. It says that when mujahedin fighters meet or hear of fighters that don't answer to any of Mulla Omar's religious representatives, they should be made to submit to the chain of command or be disarmed.
This may be the beginning of new infighting, turning Mulla Omar controlled Taliban against criminal bands previously operating under the Taliban umbrella. But it might be premature to suppose, like al Jazeera, that this would make the Taliban weaker, as poor afghans join the ranks of the groups that pay the best, ie. those financed with kidnapping and drugs.
After all, the Taliban's first violent actions were as a vigilante group metering out on the spot justice for roving bands of fighters committing rape, robbery and theft in the nineties. A return to crimefighting and a strong central command might actually benefit the Taliban's image as they try to woe political figures and ordinary people scared of the random criminal acts of both the unreliable afghan police and the Taliban.

Mogadishu's Last Stand

Mansur the American


Street fighting in Mogadishu


Today ends the ultimatum given by the southern somali Mujahedin Youth movement, al Shabab, issued to the transitional government in Mogadishu. They have (through the means of a cassette tape delivered to the government) called for the government to lay down their arms and give up the capital or face being driven out by force.
The government refuses and relies on fresh weapons from the US funneled via Ugandan AU troops. The street battles are only hardening by the day. But there are also signs that the tension in the capital is becoming too great, with not only ordinary civilians among the over 200.000 refugees, but parliament members seeking refuge in autonomous Somaliland, which is generally unfriendly to the TFG.
At the same time comes a salafist recorded tape response to president Obamas trip to Africa tomorrow. In the tape the young, slim man known as Mansur the American engages in bombastic language. According to the FBI Mansur was born in the US and speaks perfectly good english, but has lived for a long time in Somalia and speaks arabic with an american accent. He commands a group of other salafist international tourist fighters for the Youth.
He now lashes out against the US, President Obama, moderate clerics, the somali President and transitional government, and makes a request of biblical proportions: he demands in a lengthy argument that the entire muslim population in the US must emigrate to a muslim country or burn in hell.
But few somalis are convinced of Mansur and his friends' hardline interpretation of Islam. They may go far with their guns, but if they really manage to capture Mogadishu the Youth movement may well find that their reign only lasts as long as the fear they can create with their weapons. They will only be more hated for every beheading they make, and there will be outrage, and there will be resistance.

Somalia - Mind Your Own Business

Ugandan AU forces in Somalia - The last stand?

Yesterday the US State Department announced that it has successfully shipped guns and ammunition to the African Union forces protecting president Sheik Abdullah Ahmed and the transitional government in Somalia, as well as some hard cash to help finance the build up of a functioning security force. But is this too little too late?
The Transitional Federal Government TFG is fighting for its existance. The jihad oriented salafist Al Shabaab, "The Lads", has practically overrun the greater part of the capital and controls most of southern and central Somalia. Yesterday they ostensively cut a hand and a foot off four suspected thiefs in Mogadishu to show that they are perfectly capable of fighting crime and disorder through fear and sharia law. Isolated African Union soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, at the moment 4.300 persons, are holed up and not capable of doing much more than barely defend themselves against mortarattacks and the increasing threat of suicide bombers (until recently not a common occurence in the area). The guns and ammunition now promised has been rushed to the AU forces for immediate use, which will surely be welcomed, but how fast can the government be expected to create a new army to counter the Lads when they don't even control the streets of the capital anymore? The government is recognized only in the north, and is just partially functional as an institution as hundreds of members of parliament and public servants have fled the fighting along with other civilians. Just a week ago the government was desperately calling for help through foreign military intervention.
Now that is something the Lads would surely love. They have been provoking Kenyan troops along the border for weeks with attacks and general acts of banditry, promising that any retaliation would result in a revengeful devastation of the glass towers of Nairobi. The kenyan interior ministry denies any plans to enter Somalia, but troops have effectively been massed on the border. It seems the defense ministry wants to keep the option open, or at least make sure there is an appropriate defense against southern somali militant raids entering the country.
If the kenyan military did enter Somalia however, it could unite a lot of angry people behind the Lads and make the TFG politically impossible.
And any further incursion by Ethiopia would definitely be just as bad, despite having made it possible for the TFG to return to its own country the last time. Even moderate sufis in the TFG, including fiercly anti-ethiopian president Sheik Abdullah Ahmed, would likely oppose such a move. He was after all part of the Islamic Courts Union ousted by Ethiopian forces last time around, and on the other hand his hardliner sharia positive position is something that gives him a slim chance of reconciliation with the south. Few nations could be more hated in the southern parts of Somalia, with the possible exception of the US. The Lads have a trusted ally in Ethiopia's bitter enemy Eritrea for weapons supplies, whether by air or through the port of Kismaayo. Occasional blockading of eritrean ships to the port does not seem to have hindered the Lads taking over Mogadishu. Perhaps an air blockade, as suggested by many african nations, could reduce the amount of arms that enters the south, but it could also hamper genuine aid efforts, and the question is if it really makes any sense anymore.
So what can be hoped for? Well, if Pakistan's Swat valley is anything to compare with (and tourist jihadists from Afghanistan and Pakistan have come in the hundreds in Somalia influencing the Lads), jihadist salafist rule will prove so cruel and foreign to a large mainstream population that it sooner or later provokes more armed resistance of ordinary angry people than it can handle. If the transitional government can lead this resistance and stay in place, or again has to move to safety or collapse entirely, remains to see.
Right now, it can only be said that any foreign intrusion into Somalia will probably backfire as hard as all foreign interventions have for the last two decades.

Afghanistan - Airstrikes against criminals

US policies in Afghanistan has been called into question by the new commander in charge of foreign forces. General Stanley McChrystal says there needs to be a "cultural shift" to avoid civilian deaths and create trust with the local population.
He replaces General David KcKiernan, an old-school cold war general who's main skill lies in moving entire divisions and overrunning a country in three weeks. Stanley McChystal is a Special Forces officer, much more proficient in battling the kind of sporadic guerilla attacks Afghanistan has been seeing. He was running special forces operations Iraq when his men tracked down and killed Abu Zarqawi. In a sense, he is more into police work than traditional warfare. A person who is not in a regular army or police force and is killing people is a criminal, and criminals don't form conventional frontlines that you can attack with airstrikes. This is where special forces often step in, or paramilitaries. When you need to do police work, keeping order and tracking down and taking criminals into custody, but know that those you are looking for probably have access to military weapons.
The question is if McChrystal is police enough, or if he and everybody else he commands are stuck in a military and ethnocentric way of thinking.
After all - and this is important - the new policy is in no grand way different than the one already in place. Civilians must always be respected. The problem is what soldiers on the ground really do when mortar shells are flying around them.
In the end it's all a question of where you draw the line between yourself and others. When you are an american soldier in a foreign land, probably never having been outside the US before, you will unconsciously respect local civilians less than your own comrades. You will have a strong attachment to the men around you who are wounded with you and save your back. And just about anybody else could be a potential danger to you. The same even happens in normal police forces, even when policing your own country, there is a corps spirit that for some eventually can lead to hatred and attacks on innocent civilians. The difference is that your local Bobby doesn't have access to airstrikes.

Ingushetia - Kadyrov to the Rescue

Ready to come to the rescue:
Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov

President Kadyrov of Chechnya suddenly appeared unannounced in Ingushetia this Tuesday claiming he had been authorized by russian president Medvedev to take action following the assassination attempt on ingush president Yevkurov. No one doubts he means what he is saying when he claims that "the revenge for Yunus-Bek Yevkurov will be cruel". The unexpected entry into ingush internal affairs by the infamously hard handed chechen president has stirred up some feelings among the establishment, at the same time as no one wants to contradict the man likely responsible for tracking down and killing opponents even as far away as Austria or Saudi Arabia. No one doubts that any action taken by Kadyrov would be just as cruel and arbitrary as the measures taken by president Zyazikov who stepped down last fall.
Ingushetia's first president Ruslan Aushev says he would be happy to step in again for the wounded president and that the ingush security forces were perfectly capable of dealing with the situation themselves.
Some fear the chechen president could use the incident to effectively take over the country and unite it with Chechnya into a single Vaynakh republic like in Soviet times. Although united by ethnicity and language, Ingushetia was spared of the violence seen in Chechnya during the two wars for independence there.

Ingushetia - The Cars That Go Boom

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, president of Ingushetia

Something odd just happened in Ingushetia yesterday morning. A suicide carbomber targeted a motorcade near Nazran with the president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who is still being treated in hospital for wounds to the chest and head. At least one bodyguard died, several others were wounded. There are conflicting reports as to whether the car was parked by the side of the road or made a maneuver to ram the presidents vehicle, but it seems there was in any case a person in the car triggering the explosion, with the force of an estimated 70kg of TNT.
Those who have followed the conflict in Caucasus know that suicide attacks have been extremely rare, and carbombs even rarer. They have appeared in the conflict as many resistance fighters gradually have turned from a mildly muslim (sufi) nationalism to embrace a more hardline saudi style jihad oriented internationalist salafist ideology, often financed by Saudi nationals concerned about their muslim brethren.
This attack is the latest in a series of high profile assassinations in Ingushetia and Dagestan countering a trend towards stability the latest months. Neighbouring Chechnya has been largely successfully bullied into russian-friendly submission by president Kadyrov and his ruthless above-the-law private army, and in Ingushetia things were seemingly going towards more peace and accountability. President Yevkurov inherited an Ingushetia practically on the brink of civil war in october 2008. His ex-KGB predecessor Murat Zyazikov had become an impossible figure and stepped down after months of draconian repression, including shooting, beating or arresting just about anybody, only further fanned anger and swelled the ranks of militant islamists in the area.
In this context, Yevkurov raised quite some eyebrows as the former military commander (decorated fighting militants in Chechnya) started actually talking to people about their grievances, making serious progress in stopping local blood feuds, and getting serious about cracking down on corruption even when involving other high politicians. In fact, a couple of weeks ago he even announced his own cell phone number on national TV so that people could call him in person if they had a problem with authorities. Stunts like these of course ensured him some widespread popularity, but also got him some quite powerful enemies.
The usual channels of information from guerrilla salafists welcomed the attack on the "apostate puppet ringleader" but seem not to know who was responsible, fanning suspicions that this was a very local initiative, possibly facilitated with intelligence provided by politicians and people in administration with a lot to loose if Yevkurov's war on corruption had gone on.
Around 60 persons have died so far this year in salafist jihadist related attacks and government crackdowns in Ingushetia. But this is an improvement from the situation just a year ago when the whole little country seemed to be breaking apart into another full scale caucasian war between islamic rebels and russian paramilitaries.
If the seriously wounded Yevkurov is now replaced with a tougher Moscow-backed hardliner chosen for anti-terrorist credentials, a return to random police and paramilitary violence could easily push the country, and indeed the region, back into an even greater chaos.

Iran - What not happened and what it means

Beaten, still not submitted.

After a tumultuous and historic weekend in Iran it is interesting not only to get stuck at trying to figure out what happened, but equally telling what not happened.
The protesters did not back down in the face of the more or less blatant threat of violence from Ali Khamenei during Friday Prayer.
They also did not get discouraged by the deaths on Saturday when Basiji sporadically fired on demonstrators, only more determined.
Also telling is the deathtoll, named as 10 officially. Thousands of police were posted throughout Teheran Saturday, trying to disperse tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. Still, only ten people died and only a few hundred were arrested. This is not the crackdown that will silence opposition and show them that it is too dangerous to speak freely. There were no tanks, no military trying to kill entire masses of people, and no deathsquads murdering known protesters in their beds later at night.
Despite being dispersed by numerous checkpoints and not being able to meet up in force at a single location, people protested in the streets anyway as they were redirected in a labyrinthic manner by security forces, making large parts of the center of the city one chaotic, peaceful, low intensive festival. People who were there tell of people helping eachother, giving eachother a ride, driving around in circles looking for protests, laughing, and an absence of fear. The ones fearing the most seemingly the outnumbered Basiji, some seen to panic or cry openly in the street.
This is not just about the election anymore. Khamenei has put his own authority on the line. The whole system of islamic republicanism as we know it in Iran could be on the line if there were a secular figurehead popular enough, but there doesn't seem to be. And Mousavi has not acted like the person who will ruin the entire hierarchical system he helped put in place.
And now, more than a week since the election, the protests are are still not loosing steam. New gatherings are announced already today, calls for strike are made, three days of national mourning will take place later this week.
It will be hard for the hardliners to get out of this one on top.