In the Afghanistan of
1841, with revolts east, west, and south of Kabul, a curiously optimistic Macnaghten wrote to his superiors in India that the
countryside was tranquil. How wrong he was. (Sykes, 23-4.)
To improve his image in
preparation for a promotion to the Governorship of Bombay, in October of 1841, Macnaghten reduced the monetary subsidy paid to the western
Ghilzai tribes by half. The tribes promptly attacked
the next caravan that entered the eastern passes reroute from lndia to Kabul. (Sykes, 24.)
A lengthy debate can
ensue over making such payments in the first place, much as the debate rages
today over pouring money into places such as Fallujah and Ramadi, which have
been the source of so much bloodletting of American troops. The fact of the
matter is that in the tenuous Afghanistan of 1841, such decisions should not
have been made so flippantly for the political showcasing of fiscal
responsibility.
In response to the
caravan attack, Macnaghten sent a British force against
the Ghilzai, and faced surprisingly heavy resistance,
mainly in the face of better Afghan tactics and weaponry. On at least one
occasion, Shujah's cavalry admitted Ghilzai through the lines to conduct a night attack on the
British. While the British insisted on the soon to be outdated British square,
or firing from a concentrated line, the Afghans used the terrain for cover and
as physical support for their firearms. While the British relied on their
smoothbore muskets, Afghan infantrymen used the jezail, an extremely long and
rifled weapon with a much greater range than the British, to target officers
and non commissioned officers with near impunity. For
all of his blunders, as a result of these battles, Macnaghten
recommended recruiting a force of jezailchis to
patrol the passes. He was ridiculed in London at the time, but the idea was
instituted a generation later with the raising of the famed Khyber Rifles. The
modern U.S. military maintains the best arsenal in the world. But they should
study the tactics of their enemy and adjust their own, tactics accordingly.
Throughout October of
1841, numerous reports came in from various Afghan sources that an uprising
against the British was afoot. During that month, Brigadier-General Robert Sale
led a British brigade that was rotating from Afghanistan back to India. He
marched the brigade east through the Khyber Pass toward Jalalabad. From a
tactical perspective, there were positive aspects to the troop movement. Just
beyond Jagdalak, Ghilzai
tribesmen attacked the British column and were driven back when British light
troops drove the tribesmen from the hills overlooking the passes, foreshadowing
a tactic of the future Khyber Riffes. From a strategie perspective, the movement of Sale's brigade out
of Kabul spelled doom for the British expeditionary forces left in Afghanistan.
Upon arrival in Gandamak, located between Kabul and
Jalalabad, Sale received an order to march his forces back to Kabul.
Reports came into the
British that Kabul smiths were producing large caches of weapons. Meanwhile,
the demeanor of Kabul's shopkeepers toward their British shoppers began to
change for the worse. Additionally, Afghan warriors returning from fighting
British soldiers in the eastern passes brashly rode right past British
cantonments on that where send back to Kabul at this point. Some of the more
astute among the British military and political officers were convinced that
the Ghilzai, Kohistanis and
Durrani were conspiring together for the overthrow of
Shujah and the British. Despite all of these combined
precursors, those in command refused to make any proactive decisions.
In modern parlance,
these reports and collateral clues are respectively known as multiple source
reporting and Intelligence indicators. As seen in the reports of the 9/11
commission debates, even in our modern era, such seemingly obvious signs are
not always heeded.
In November of 1841,
Abdullah Khan Achakzai became the ringleader of a group of Afghan chiefs who
spread false rumors that the British were preparing to arrest several prominent
Afghans. Ironically, a descendant of Achakzai served as my linguist during
Operation Enduring Freedom, a Western-led extort to oust the hardline Afghan
leadership from the country. To preempt the supposed pending arrests, a
contingent of Afghans attacked the sm all British
contingent housed near the Balla Hissar.
They killed Sir Alexander Burnes, his brother, Captain William Broadfoot, and their military escort, afterward hacking
their bodies to pieces. The Afghans then stole the entire British treasury,
which had been foolishly stored in a neighboring house. (Sykes, 27-9.)
The British in the
cantonments received news of the disturbance while the mob was still forming
outside of Burnes' residence. British officers recommended sending a regiment
to protect the residence and to arrest the conspirators, but British command
floundered in indecision. Finally, General Shelton marched three
companies toward Kabul, less than two miles away. Along the way, the general received
several contradictory orders telling him to stop, then to continue. In the end,
he marched into the Balla Hissar
and found an astonished Shujah wanting to know why
the general was not quelling the riots in the city below. During the long
British delay, after looting and destroying both Burnes' and the British
paymaster's houses, the rampaging mob spread throughout the city, killing men,
women, and children, and burning shops and houses. The Shah had already sent
one of his own regiments to crush the chaos inside the city. By the time the
British contingent arrived in Kabul, the city was in full revolt. All the
British managed to accomplish was to extract the Shah's regiment. Afghan
snipers had pinned the heavily encumbered force in the narrow alleyways, and
house-to-house fighting took a heavy toll on the Shah's troops. Shortly
thereafter, the Afghans attacked two outlying forts at Charikar,
outside of Kabul, and Shekabad, near Ghazni. The Afghans overwhelmed the British in both forts
and the garrisons were massacred. In the meantime, the British supply fort, so
foolishly located separately from the British cantonments, and a second
detached flour storage area, were attacked and captured, leaving the British
with scarce provisions.
News of these Afghan
victories spread throughout the country and thousands of armed Afghans flocked
to Kabul for an assault on the cantonments. As the British position
deteriorated, the British command ordered General Sir William Nott to send
reinforcements from Kandahar. Nott sent a brigade, but the expedition failed to
get through the bleak snowy terrain of the harsh Afghan winter. As
reinforcements failed to provide any relief, General Shelton was ordered to
bring his small force out of the Balla Hissar to support the cantonments. One cannot help but
wonder what may have transpired had the British decided to do the reverse and
march the entire British force from the nearly indefensible cantonments to the
heavily fortified Balla Hissar.
The British took the other course of action, abandoned the fortress, and
regrouped inside the cantonments.
Shelton's additional
forces made little difference. Afghans began firing into the cantonments from
the Beymaroo Heights, and attacked British positions
from surrounding forts. The British achieved small tactical victories at this
stage with small expeditions sent out against the Afghans, but did so with
heavy losses. In late November, General Shelton marched a force of seventeen
companies of infantry, a hundred sappers, two squadrons of cavalry and one
large gun out of the cantonments to take the Beymaroo
Heights once and for all. The expedition set out before dawn and took the high
ground without a fight. At first light, the British pressed their attack and
the Afghans took cover in the Beymaroo Village below,
returning fire with their jezails. Grapeshot from the sole British gun forced
the Afghans to begin an evacuation of the village, putting the British in a,
perfect position to destroy the Afghans' main effort. The tide then turned on
four key British tactical mistakes.
The British element
that was sent down to occupy the houses took a wrong turn and became bogged
down at one of the only barricaded gates into the village. Now that it was
light, Afghans in Kabul saw the plight of their countrymen and streamed out of
the city to assist the men in the Beymaroo Village.
The British in the cantonments could have sent a cavalry charge into the
reinforcement's flanks, but did nothing. The failure of Shelton to follow a
British standing order never to take less than one piece of artillery into
battle now proved costly. The sole field gun that the British were utilizing
with devastating results overheated and ceased to function. The longer range,
and more effective accuracy, of the Afghan jezails now turned the tide of the
battle. To compound matters, Shelton ordered the men to form into two squares
on top of the hill, massing the British troops into one large target for the
Afghan guns. Finally, the front square misinterpreted General Shelton's movement
toward the rear square to gather more reinforcements as being a retreat. En masse, the British fled toward the cantonments. Mounted
Afghans rode the fleeing troops down in droves. Only the fact that a moderate
nephew of Dost Mohammad commanded the Afghan cavalry prevented the complete
slaughter of the fleeing British troops.
In early December, Macnaghten met with Khan and agreed that the British would
leave the cantonments and begin the march back to India within three days. The
British march was delayed, and during the delay, Macnaghten
attempted to divide the Afghan chiefs' loyalty toward Akbar Khan. The
conspiracy was uncovered, and during a late December meeting with the Khan and
several chiefs along the banks of the Kabul River, Macnaghten
was shot, and his body hacked apart. (Sykes, 30-1.)
When Akbar Khan
returned from nearly two years of exile in Turkestan, he brought with him
thousands of Uzbek fighters. These foreigners were originally welcomed as
brothers in the fight against the British. Once the British were gone, ethnic
tensions flared and the Uzbek presence was viewed with suspicion. This
circumstance occurred time and again prior to the British presence, and
repeated itself with various ethnic groups during the Soviet occupation. These
same ethnic politics are playing out today in Afghanistan where the Uzbeks,
Tajiks and other ethnic groups that led the offensive which succeeded in
ousting the Taliban from power, are now resented amongst the majority Pashtun
population, from Kabul south through a wide swath of the country.
On New Years day of 1842, after months of appalling indecision,
starvation, infighting, and military paralysis, the British signed a
humiliating treaty agreeing to leave the country. A few days later, the British
expeditionary force marched out of the cantonments. There is still much debate
regarding Akbar Khan and the Afghan chiefs' involvement in the pending
massacre. While some believe he oversaw the bloodletting, other sources believe
that the Khan simply wanted to delay the British forces until Sale's brigade
left the Jalalabad fortress and marched into lndia as
had been agreed upon in the treaty. This is a distinct possibility. Had the
British combined their forces at Jalalabad, it would have meant a formidable
fighting force within 130 miles of Kabul. Regardless of the Khan's intentions,
the British forces were attacked on the first day's march. The 16,500-person
force, containing 4,500 fighting men, traveled only five miles before setting
camp. The British did not fare any better on the second day. General. Shelton
recommended that they push through the Khurd Kabul Pass before the ravenous Ghilzai had the opportunity to mass their forces, but
Elphinstone, counting on promises of food and water from the Khan, opted to stop.
When the British entered the five-mile-long Khurd Kabul Pass, a gauntlet of
enemy bullets rained down on them from the surrounding hills. Most of the
baggage, arms, and ammunition were abandoned at this juncture. In this
engagement alone, three thousand men lost their lives. That night, several
hundred more died of exposure.
While it would have
been prudent to push on, British command again ordered a halt in hopes of
resupply. Afbar Khan came into the camp and offered
to take personal charge of European women, children, and wounded
officers. The offer was accepted and the majority of these prisoners survived
to retell the experience. Over the next few days, the British
expedition marched from one frozen pass into the next, the withering fire of Afghan
guns raining down on them. Six days into the march, the last remnants of
British fighting men made a final stand, fighting to the death at Gandamak. On January 13th, 1842, British doctor William
Brydon struggled alone into Jalalabad to announce the massacre. January 2005 I,
(EPW) met with the grandson of William Brydon, himself trained as a cadet
shortly after WWII he still remembered the speech Mahatma Gandhi was invited to
give.
After the disastrous
British retreat in January of 1842, British General Pollock was dispatched to
reoccupy Kabul, accomplishing the task in April of 1842. He did so utilizing
the military tactic of picketing the flank hills to protect a column on the
march in the passes. This was a new maneuver for European military science, but
since time immortal, the Afghans had used the tactic of outflanking and
crowning the heights to defeat rival armies. Once in occupation of Kabul,
Pollock decided that the destruction of the Chahar Chauk, the Grand Bazaar of Kabul, and the outposts of Charikar and Istalif, would suffice in exacting revenge for
the massacre. The British destroyed these symbols of revolt, then, in the fall,
marched back to India, leaving the Afghans to their fate. (Lt. General Sir
George Macmunn, Afghanistan: From Darius to
Amanullah, 1977, 151-4.)
Of course the matter
was widely debated among British commanders but Jasper Nicolls,
Commander-in-Chief of Bengal, issued one of the most succinct lists of causes
for the disaster that is available. They are listed as follows:
1. Making war with a
peace establishment.
2. Making war without a safe base of operation.
3. Carrying our native army out of India into a strange and cold c1imate where
they and we were foreigners and both considered as infidels.
4. Invading a poor country and one unequal to supply our wants, especially our
large establishment of cattle.
5. Giving undue power to political agents.
6. Want of forethought and undue confidence in the Afghans on the part of Sir
William Macnaghten.
7. Placing our magazines, even our treasure, in indefensible places.
8. Great military neglect and mismanagement after the outbreak. (Ibid.)
This list proves
interesting given some of the challenges coalition forces faced in both
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Adding Up The
Strategic Lessons.
In the Sudan, we saw
that the British government's inability to make a decisive decision in
replacing the Mahdi with a viable leader led to a costly war and the death of
thousands of British soldiers and scores of Sudanese. The episode demonstrated
how it is often better to make a bad decision in helping to support a potential
friendly leader, rather than make no decision at all and allow the enemy to
make it for you. In the power struggle between Gordon and the Mahdi, we saw
that winning the support of the general population in any type of insurgency or
counterinsurgency campaign is an absolute must. Gordon's prideful sense of fair
play in not gaining valuable intelligence from a Muslim soldier and the
subsequent loss of the war and his life, demonstrated to us the importance of
human Intelligence.
In British
Somaliland, we saw that near the beginning of the conflict, for political
reasons, the operational commander was denied permission to pursue enemy forces
into Italian Somaliland, allowing the enemy a lifeline to continue the
conflict. The British failed to use the Mullah's brutal tactics, and the
divisiveness of the clans, against him. Instead, at one stage, the British
withdrew to the coast, creating a power vacuum in which a third of the population
was killed. The British experience in Somaliland taught us the concept of
mission creep.
Also in Somaliland, a
key British mistake was becoming too deeply involved in minor affairs of the
indigenous people that did not affect Great Britain's strategic necessity. In
fact such involvements, led to local resentment and actions, which in turn
required further energy consuming interaction, negotiation and/or armed
response.
The British goals in
Somaliland were to keep their colony of Aden supplied with meat and the African
coast opposite the colony free of hostile forces. Despite these simple goals,
the British allowed themselves to get dragged into a twenty-year
counterinsurgency campaign over a wide swath of East Africa.
Today there still is
an Islamic Front in Africa, see Case
Study:
In Palestine, in
contrast, we observed the British military in support of an insurgency. T.E.
Lawrence taught us the importance of understanding the mindset of the
indigenous people. Specific to the Arab world, we saw how the strong bonds of
family, the drive for profit, development of relationships, and the clan,
tribe, and family hierarchy, affected the British ability to mobilize against
the Turks. Lawrence wrote of difficult times when relations were strained
between the British and Arabs due to religious, ethnic, and cultural
differences. Lawrence pointed out the importance of learning the local
language, developing relationships with Arab leaders, and staying in the
background while those leaders move their people in the desired direction.
Lawrence taught us that our indigenous allies in war might not be our preferred
allies in peace. It will be necessary to encourage personnel changes as
friendly governments are formed. In those instances, it is important to provide
proper employment for those that fought the battles, least they turn against
you.
We learned that in post World War I Iraq, the British military occupational
forces started relying on an Indian administrative model that was not a good
fit for the Mesopotamian region. It was sometimes brutal, led to
micromanagement down to an unnecessary level, was expensive, and left the
indigenous Arabs out of the political loop. Few of the British political
officers assigned to Iraq had any knowledge of Iraq's laws, customs, languages
or culture, and they did not have sufficient experience in civil
administration. In addition, the British military allied itself with
questionable leaders regardless of their ethnic, sectarian or tribal
persuasion, leaving the Iraqi people with little hope of controlling their own
affairs. Once the British did begin turning Iraq's affairs over to the Iraqis,
they gave the bulk of responsibility to unpopular Diaspora Iraqis, Christian
Assyrians, and foreign Sunni Arabs, leading to further animosity, especially
among Iraq's Shi'ite population. The British Royal Air Force's indiscriminate
bombing of villages that would not comply with British law only deepened the
resentment.
We witnessed that the
British faced serious problems with anti British
nationalism from the very officers they put in charge of Iraq's security forces
and trained to stabilize the country. These military and police officers
eventually became the senior officers and politicians who drove the British
from the region. We watched as the British invocation of the mandatory
administration over Iraq led Iraqis to launch a full scale revolt. Once the
fatwas were issued sanctioning revolt, the tribes along the Tigris and
Euphrates answered the call, eager to be rid of heavy British taxation and an
unforgiving judicial system. We saw that following the rebellion, due to a fear
of Shi'ite fundamentalism, the British put their World War I allies, the
affluent and educated minority Sunni Arabs, into power. Having shunned the
numerically superior Kurds and Shi'ites, sectarian violence went on for years,
even after the British were forced from the country.
And finally much like
the contemporary relationship with Afghanistan, the British used cash, in
the form of currency and weapons, as their principle form of diplomacy. When
that didn't work, they resorted to force. Thus we saw that the British made two
fatal errors that cost them thousands of lives. First, they were too passive in
responding to armed incursions in and around Kabul. Second, they failed to
establish a dominant presence in the capital itself, putting themselves out of
touch with the Afghan people and allowing the Afghan militants to attrite their
personnel, and their morale.
In going about the
conquest of Afghanistan, we observed how the British made the baffling decision
of bringing a despised former ruler to the throne. He was different in
religion, culture, and ethnicity from the vast majority of Afghans. We saw that
early in the campaign, the Dost Mohammad offered a truce and a compromise
government, with himself as prime minister. Regardless of the fact that the
Dost had never actually opposed British intentions in the region, the British
refused. We learned that once the British took over, they imposed heavy taxes
on the Afghans and used the money to fund the very military that propped up the
despised ruler, acted against the Afghan people without local input, and so
stringently enforced the taxation. We witnessed how the British initially
ignored major indicators that a rebellion was likely. When British officers in
Kabul were killed and the British treasury was stolen, the British failed to
retaliate, making them appear weak. We saw that when it became obvious that an
Afghan revolt was imminent, the British commander of forces requested
additional troops and permission for an aggressive campaign but was denied.
There is no thing guaranteeing that the recommended campaign would have been
successful, but it is nearly doctrine to state that the best defense is a
successful offense. Any decision would have been better than the decision the
British made to do nothing. Then, out of the blue, Dost Mohammad defeated a small
British force just outside of Kabul, rode into the city, and surrendered to the
occupiers. In return, he was rewarded with a comfortable exile in the Punjab.
With this to look forward to as punishment, it is certainly not surprising that
the Dost's son, Akbar Khan, and the other Afghan chiefs, risked fighting
against the British. Sadly, several of the tribes that took part in the
subsequent British bloodbath were, at one time, potential allies. For example
the Durrani tribes of Kandahar were enemies of the
Dost, but the British failed to cultivate a relationship with them. Groups not
opposed outright to our cause should always be co-opted. Most importantly, the
British showed that the key to success in maintaining a presence in the
Islamic world is to understand that within the region, actions against a
Western presence have really been a history of individuals taking advantage of
the indigenous peoples' dissatisfaction with their quality of life, in order to
further their own aims.
In both the Sudan and
Somaliland, the conflicts ended when the British sent a significant force on a
dedicated effort to kill the Mahdi's khalifa
successor and the Mullah. British forces pursued these men until they were
eliminated, and their forces were destroyed or otherwise ineffective. Once the
leaders were dead, their movements died in the harsh African landscape. In
Palestine, it is clear that if the Turks had tracked down and killed Lawrence,
Feisal, and the small handful of prominent Arab tribai
chiefs, the Arab Revolt would have disintegrated into the desert sands. In the
Gulf, we saw how the British delay in retaliating for the massacre of its crew,
along with the initial weak response, only served to embolden further jihadist
outrages. In Afghanistan, Britain's failure to kill Dost Mohammad, his son
Akbar, and the other rebel leaders, cost them the lives of 17,000 British and
Indian subjects. I conclude that the British experience in Africa and Asia
clearly demonstrates that the best strategy in dealing with Islamic militant
groups, while the laborious political goals that led to the Western presence in
the first place are met, is to identify the leaders and eliminate them quickly.
Although on the very
fringes of the Islamic world, one could ad that he Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
turned over the various "Malaysian" straits to the British. When the
British tried to impose the same tribute on the local populace that the Dutch
had, Naning refused, leading to the Naning War of 1831-2. In 1831, a British expedition was
defeated. A second expedition in 1832 defeated the Naning,
but the war negatively affected British diplomatic and economic goals for the
next forty years. During the Selangor Civil War of 1867-73, two Malaya states
went to war, each supported by a Chinese secret
society. The British intervened on behalf of one side, and later turned
the area into a British protectorate. In 1874, the British Resident attempted
reforms that were contrary to local custom. In retaliation, the Sultan and many
local chiefs conspired together and had him killed. During the subsequent Perak
War of 1875-6, British troops responding to the Resident's murder deposed the
Sultan, and arrested the local chiefs implicated in the attack. During the
Malay Jungle Wars of 1948, the British used Malay ethnic and religious leaders
to successfully defeat Chinese Communist incursions into the country. This was
arguably one of the best-fought counterinsurgencies in history.
After defeating a
declining Spanish Empire, the USA made the mistake of assuming that the
Filipinos were incapable of governing themselves. They brashly marched into the
capital of Manila and accepted Spanish surrender of the archipelago with no
input from the native people who had shed copious amounts of their blood to
ensure a compliant surrender. The resulting four-decade counterinsurgency
against the very Filipinos, who gave us the Spanish Pacific Empire on a
platter, cast nearly 4,200 American combat deaths. Much higher then the number of combat deaths the US has experienced in
Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and every other foreign theatre combined,
since 9/11. The American counterinsurgency effort there provides a number of
lessons that can be applied to the current counterinsurgency in Iraq.
Afghanistan and Iraq share the common points of being Muslim dominated states
that the U.S. and coalition forces have invaded since September 11, 2001.
But as if like I suggested some time back the United States would have managed to gain permission
to operate from a friendly country somewhere in Southeast Asia, its military
could have been poised to strike the jihadists training
camps. To be more specific, all the way from Moroteo
on the Atlantic coast of North Africa to Indonesia on the southwestern edge of
the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan will
take years, just as it did in India after the British divided the country and
left.
However the political
futures of Afghanistan and Iraq that look different. Afghanistan has a
historically tenuous political climate with only sporadic moments of truly
centralized governmental control. While this will mean a painstaking movement
toward a viable government capable of functioning without outside assistance, it
has allowed for an easier than expected transition in the post- Taliban era.
President Karzai is not universally liked throughout the country, but because
Kabul has so little control elsewhere, he is at least nearly unanimously
tolerated. This allows for him to slowly build the pillars of a working
government without to much resistance. Events in
Iraq, on the other hand, are moving much more rapidly in the political arena.
There is no Karzai-like figure who is capable of stepping in and pleasing all
factions. With two of the three major ethno-religious communities jockeying for
coalitions, and the Sunnis threatening the entire political process by force,
there will likely be no trickling down of viable government. Instead, Iraq may
go the path of Indonesia after Suharto where coalitions formed and the seeds of
a working government derived from the bottom-up.
Indonesia provides an
example of a predominately Muslim country with a varied mix of ethnic and
religious groups, all of which, to same extent, feel threatened by the others.
Fundamentalist groups of all faiths have formed as counterweights to each
other. Once tensions have settled in one area, these groups often move on to
another location where tensions are simmering. Maintaining the group becomes an
end in and of itself; they are constantly seeking another reason to justify
their existence, and religious tensions actually have overarching political and
economic overtones. ("Indonesia: The Search for Peace in Maluku,"
Asia Report 31, 8 February 2002, 2.)
The military created
many of the Muslim gangs that operate throughout the country, and use them to
suppress secessionist movements, fight democratize opposition, and discredit
politicians. Many of the gangs, in a bid to remain viable and keep their people
employed, have radicalized, joined the likes of AI-Qaeda, and are now beyond
the scope of the military's ability to quietly reel them in. The D.S. did the
same thing in Pakistan in the 1980s to fight Soviet aggression in neighboring
Afghanistan, spawning the region's legions of Islamist warriors. One should be
careful not to repeat these mistakes in the future.
A British failure
that we have seen repeated to some extent was their inability to initially
understand the often-violent Muslim world they entered. Once the British did
develop an understanding, their troops often allowed the pendulum to swing too
far in the other direction and became as savage, if not more savage, than the
natives themselves. The middle ground solution is what will serve our interests
the best as our troops are deployed throughout the Muslim world in the service
of our strategic interests: treat the vast majority of the population with
dignity and respect, while ruthlessly combating aggression.
Doing so, one should
also respect the region's customs because it wins the hearts and minds of the
rest of the people and keeps them from joining the insurgence, including as we
have seen learning their language. Where English has only been the most widely
spoken language in America for less than two centuries. Arabic has been the
predominate language in the heart of the Muslim world for at least 1,400 years.
Plus, Nations that
are most susceptible to ethno-religious conflict are generally poor and
unstable and have a history of violence. But especially young men
throughout the Muslim world see the results of violence every day of their
lives. Combine this with their perception that the world is moving on without
them. Unemployed and without skills in a world that requires the later to achieve
the former, these men feel threatened by our global society and are prone to
react via the only way they know how. They are easy prey for charismatic
leaders seeking foot soldiers in radical causes. Islamic extremist groups give
these socially deprived young men a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to
lash out at the Western world. They attack it through a skewed emersion into
their readily available Islamic faith. (Elliott Leyton, Hunting Humans: The
Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, 2001, 27, 141, 358.)
The US (that allows
for capital punishment) would do wise to infiltrate jihadist group, to
determine who their leaders are. Because whether these Islamist leaders
kill with their own hands or they send others out to do their bidding, these individuals
are multiple murderers. With attributes similar to serial killers elsewhere,
the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist group are often from the middle class
and have some type of college education. In an extended campaign of vengeance,
he murders innocent strangers, taking targets of opportunity from the social
type that he feels has rejected or excluded him. In this case, the target is
Western society. They feel no remorse for innocent civilians, whom they falsely
view as legitimate combatants, and mentioned earlier on this website, bask in a media coverage that
provides them celebrity status. It is foolish to say that by targeting the
leadership of these Islamic terror groups, one is resorting to the same terrorist
tactics that these enemies utilize, since terrorism is the targeting of
civilians to force a change in political perspective. And to a terrorist,
national weakness -the tendency to cut and run-looks exactly like national
weakness.
The lessons terrorists
took away from early attacks on Americans were simple: if you kill Americans,
they will quit. Thus, combating jihadists cannot be viewed as an international
law enforcement issue. While law enforcement plays a significant role in
combating violent Islamic fundamentalists, the very rules and laws that make
for effective police work in the civilized world inhibit it in curbing
terrorist acts. Treating al Qaeda bombings as homicide investigations will not
stop them. Arrests of key leaders is important when feasible, for the sole
reason that quality interrogations can lead to much needed intelligence on the
rest of the group. (Ruth Wedgwood, "Combatants or Criminals? How
Washington Should Handle Terrorists: Fighting a War Under Its Rules," Foreign
Affairs Volume 83, Number 3, May/June 2004, 126-9.)
In fact they are like
organized, highly trained paramilitary units that were and are conducting
offensive campaigns against a variety of nations and social systems with whom
they consider themselves to be at war, warriors and soldiers fighting for a
cause.
It was initially a
reading of The Savage Wars of Peace, by historian Max Boot (2003), that brought
me on the idea to take a closer look at British colonial history in the context
I presented so far, it would be fair to let Max Boot have the last word even in
this case. Of course he specifically talks about the US, whereas my intent was
to refer to the coalition forces as a whole:
“If the American goal
is to re-create Ohio in Kosovo or Haiti, then the occupiers are doomed to be
disappointed. But if the goals are more modest, then American rule can serve
the interests of occupiers and occupied alike. Put another way, "nation
building" is generally too ambitious a task, but "state
building" is a more realistic objective. The apparatus of a f1inctioning
state can be developed much more quickly than a national consciousness.
Successful state building starts by imposing the rule of law . . . Any nation
bent on imperial policing will suffer a few setbacks. The British army, in the
course of Queen Victoria's little wars, suffered major defeats with thousands
of casualties in the First Afghan War. . . This did not appreciably dampen
British determination to defend and expand the empire; it made them hunger for
vengeance . . . Britain battled the "enemies of all mankind," such as
pirates and slave traders . . . Today America faces equivalent tasks-battling
terrorists . . . Many of the steps Britain took . . . were hard to justify on a
narrow calculus of self interest. It acted simply out
of a sense that it was the right thing to do . . . In any combat operation,
blood will be shed, not only on the D.S. side but also among the enemy . . . If
Americans cannot adopt a similarly bloody-minded attitude (as that of the
nineteenth and twentieth century British), then they have no business
undertaking imperial policing. (Boot, 2003, 346-9.)
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