Neither portal nor destination be

This is a set of musings on the nature of blogging brought on via a post at Stacy McCain's site Where Were You in 2002? (h/t: Insty).

Seeing Overlawyered moving over to Cato spurred on the question about 'making the big time' and 'are you a portal or destination?' in Stacy McCain's post.

In 2002 I was healthy, working, and helping to get the last of the Afghan materials out the door in the Agency I worked in before moving over to my R&D slot which I had requested a temporary re-assignment after 9/11/01.  This did not mean I was not interested in blogging, far from it, I was an avid reader of a number of early blogs and attended conferences featuring both Old and New Media (like the old Seybold Seminars or Print '97).  Part of my work was to scour the early web for material and avenues of presenting and using data that were new or novel, that would help move information to the warfighter.  That meant learning all I could about everything from blogging to 3D interfaces to the coming transition to the post-32 bit world and IPv6.  The methodology is straight out of James Burke's Connections series: let the pinball effect give you information and insights from multiple realms and see if the ideas cross into the realm you inhabit so as to allow it to adapt and change.

It is from that perspective that I took in the idea that the Internet is not about portals and destinations, hubs and spokes, nor even about connected clouds of users and information.  I can't tell you who put it like this, there are numerous possible authors, but I picked up on the idea that the Internet, blogs, media sites... the entire thing from static repositories of information like the reference work sites I link to all the way to Big Old Media sites... are something called a hyperlinked conversation.  Hyperlinks are generic in type, they are an unbiased connectivity form for the electronic New Media.  Hyperlinks are also that most powerful of things that mankind invented in the Old Media: an indexing tool.

That comes from James Burke and the power of an index of a book, that list of ideas and pages where they appear, is that they allow you to cross-index.  You can take an idea word, go to a page, find another idea word, go to its index, and find things that it links to via the index.  Hyperlinks do this exact, same function, but a far faster than you can with a static, read-only memory system with a hand/finger interface with leafs to flip through known as a book.  What a hyperlink allows, however, is the ability to show source of an idea via that link, and you can find other ideas that are linked to in the article/video/etc. and follow those links to see how ideas connect.  Everything, even the person who is a minimal utility node in a Metcalfe's Law network offers utility because you can use a search engine (of your choice) to then find out all the other people who link to an article/video/etc. and follow those links back to their sources.  Even the most dead-end of sites, those that studiously don't link to other bloggers, is still connected to them via the link to the source material and your ability to check other incoming links and go back to those sites to find out what ideas are there.  The hyperlink is thus an indexing tool for ideas.

From this there is no such thing as a 'portal' nor 'destination', no 'hub' nor 'spoke', nor even 'communities' of blogs and sites.  What there are is conversations that link to ideas forming their own interconnected set of sites, pathways, and journeys. Following James Burke this means that no site that requires human thought to construct sentences that purvey ideas, that have a logic connecting them, is alone unless it links to no one, and accepts no links and is an isolated node.

That is what I thought in 2002.

People can move around, become highlights or disappear, as I am largely doing, and yet the conversation continues within and amongst humanity.  It is a huge, extended conversation that now includes mini-thoughts via Twitter, picture thoughts and video thoughts (not necessarily stories but just thoughts and ideas) and it is all connected by the generic thing we call the hyperlink.  It is one of the most powerful tools deployed by mankind, and yet its actual invention starts with indexing.  It is the simple but powerful things that move minds, spirits and humanity.  That also has a precursor description in the Noosphere and the Internet can just be seen as a crude, physical form of Noosphere, not the thing, itself.  The next simple tool will not supplant the hyperlink nor index, but will move that conception one more step and then everything changes. 

And yet where it comes from will be obvious. 

What it will enable is beyond imagining. 

Just like the hyperlink and Internet before the invention of the hyperlink.

I can remember where I was in 2002... and with difficulty back to 1992 when there was only the first hint of html via sgml.  Yes, I can do that.  Can you remember the world without the Internet?

Persuasion and marketing

Watching the Glenn Beck program on 13 JAN 2011 was a fascinating experience as the topic was Edward Bernays and marketing. Mr. Bernays was one of the first admen to develop advertising campaigns based on psychological methods to create campaigns. To do this he relied on the works of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, who identified basic drives of the body that are part of the unconscious human psyche. Those advertising campaigns introduced the utilization of these drives (survival, thirst, sex, hunger) as part of their basis, so as to appeal to multiple levels of the unconscious mind and to utilize imagery and words that would linger in the association with whatever was being pushed. Additionally he used an 'appeal to authority' by paying for studies that would 'show' certain scientific based concepts (ex. that hunger is better sated at breakfast with a richer meal including bacon and eggs) then send those to either other 'authorities' or to local individuals involved in that area of work (for the bacon example it was physicians). Throw in some study generated numbers, an important institute or doctor and you have an advertising campaign.

It works, too, this appeal to the lowest part of the human psyche: sex sells. Reading Frederik Pohl's works (both science fiction and some his autobiographical pieces) we get to see how this had worked by the 1950's, to the point where admen could sell magazines to doctors offices that didn't want them. The process of advertising and marketing grows up around the concept of the animal part of man (that is natural man) wanting to be led to the successful conclusion of his desires. That is why sex appeal sells, as well as campaigns for getting people to eat more or drink more, and even campaigns to get you to 'switch' brands are based on things other than the actual product being sold or are secondary to that product by slapping a label on it (like 'healthy' or 'diet'). This concept of a herd driven mentality towards products was utilized in politics to sell political parties, programs and ideologies. We went from a Nation that had politicians not doing much, and rarely being reported on, to one in which they were on the airwaves, giving 'photo ops' of things they don't do in their daily life, and generally drying to mold the mind of public opinion on a constant basis.

Bernays recoiled from how these concepts were used in wartime Germany as they utilized the full suite of Freud and found it to be successful. That suite of drives goes beyond those I've already listed and includes the 'death drive' or 'destrudo'. This is part of the Freudian view of human psychology, and while psychology has varied from that even in the Freudian side of things, when one utilizes the concept of base human drives the destrudo is a functional part of that view. The Nazi Party utilized symbology and iconography to enforce this (ex. the death's head symbol as part of the concentration camp SS insignia) and through the concept that the next generation would be fiercer and 'do what is necessary' for the problems of Germany. This also worked and very effectively, to the point where Germans were turning their heads at cattle cars full of Jews going to the concentration camps. At a subliminal level they had been marketed this idea since the late 1920's as the NSDAP rose to prominence, and part of the idea was to 'perfect' Germany's culture by subtracting the 'unwanted' portion of it.

Here, as James Burke would say in Connections, I could follow many paths.

I could follow down the line of books on The Making of the President XXXX where the year would be in the X's. Those works offer insight into campaigns and reviewing them allows for a longer perspective of how marketing has not only changed political discourse and elections, but change the type and kind of people who run for office.

Or I could examine the way companies have utilized marketing to influence public opinion and then turned a small portion of their dollars into the industry of marketing their ideas to government. That forms a cycle of public funds going to favored companies that have good insider contacts so as to garner those public funds via the appropriation process, and then 'reward' that legislator by putting some jobs or work in their district and sending campaign contributions to them. By getting the idea you can 'regulate' something via appeal to public unconscious drives, legislators then push their programs forward and can find not only electoral success but money from those they regulate. This is usually done through the venue of fear, so that people come to believe they have something to fear about the activities of companies... sometimes you do and other times it is just marketing to push an agenda.

I could even look at the intrusion of marketing into grief, as was done at the recent Tucson, AZ memorial service that, for all the pleasant sounding words of the speech given by the President, the symbology and reactions clash in discord. But I've already done that, and it is actually a spin-off that I put out first to help gel a few ideas.

Instead I'm going to look at that complex between science (or at least scientific sounding) work with marketing and the problem of politicians not understanding that the Freud animal driven complex is not the be-all, end-all of psychological analysis.

The problem with going into the animal based subconscious as being the primary driver of man is that it runs into the problem of rational thought. This is driven by the irrational motivations of the body, in the Freudian venue, but has a wholly different perspective under a different school, that of Carl Jung, say. To become a functioning individual you must integrate the rational and irrational, the conscious and unconscious, and retain conscious autonomy so as to be an individual: you are not a beast in a herd but a conscious animal able to integrate and control base desires with the conscious mind. The horror of subliminal advertising, then, is to approach only the unconscious or sub-conscious mind if the conscious mind does not have the necessary understanding to properly tag the subliminal content so that the unconscious mind can weigh the import of any given message with that rational input.

Jung then posed a second part of the human psyche that was not wrapped up inside individuals, but was held by all mankind as part of our natural background. In this view of the unconscious there are also the archetypes of characters that are the pure forms of those beings we have come to represent through mythology and stories. These forms reside within us unconsciously, and we seek out these archetypes when we are troubled in our lives. As someone said of Batman: 'When I was in danger of losing my life I sought to find the answer Batman would have to my situation, and then did that action'. You rarely, if ever, reach into that storehouse on a conscious basis, and yet it is always available to your unconscious mind. Asking 'What Would Jesus Do?' is doing just that: reaching for that which is Jesus in all of us, so as to find his answer and implement it.

Now to show how this works, we have seen the slow erosion of our political and economic systems via the foundations built by the Progressive movement integrating Freudian concepts into campaigns and pushing agendas. As Bernays said, the end result was to have an elite class that would be a benevolent dictatorship to the masses. If you listen to all the Marxist rhetoric, you would expect people to take to the streets, demand ever more, as that is their base natural desires being denied by the act of government after getting them used to living at the government teat for such things as welfare, unemployment, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid... the list is long. This is what is going on in Europe, by and large and is an age-old, archetypical tradition there that stretches back for centuries or even longer. When the King withholds a good to the populace, the peasants revolt... and then are put down and submit to the ruling order.

In America, however, the concepts of thrift, patriotism and each individual making their own way in life has created a force counter to the Freudian driven addictive force for more government: the Tea Party force for less and more accountable government. The elites are being seen as failures not only on the personal scale (where government programs must win adherents) but at the National level as well. When 70% of the population does not want the debt ceiling raised for the country, they are not drawing upon a Freudian drive but a Jungian archetype that we remember from our Founding and Framing eras. America started in debt and only got out of debt when Andrew Jackson was in office: he was the first President to preside over a debt-free country, and he then proceeded to remove the National Bank from the government's rolls so that it couldn't manipulate the economy directly again.

In the realm of fiction there are very, very, very few authors that even attempt this sort of thing. The best that I've read is Gordon R. Dickson who utilizes this throughout his large Childe Cycle of works but most impressively in his novel Way of the Pilgrim. In that novel Earth is taken over by a kindly but really quite powerful alien race... we get a benign despotism to rule over us. We are handed the 'hope' that in a few generations we will become skilled enough so as to be 'brothers' to them. Mankind, as a whole, slowly begins to reject this but not openly. The first sign to show up is a simple stick figure of a man in a cloak with a staff. He is called The Pilgrim. The Pilgrim, as an archetype, exists across humanity and soon, very soon, people start to take up cloak and staff. First it is scattered, then there are more and more. The aliens don't know what to make of this, it is beyond them. Then The Pilgrim begins to manifest directly in one man and he has no conscious knowledge of what The Pilgrim does when it manifests. The message that is carried: mankind rejects your authority and wants you gone from our planet and we will all die in pursuit of this goal. By then there are millions upon millions across the globe wearing cloak and carrying staff: The Pilgrim has come. Unwilling to commit genocide and unable to deal with something they don't have, they are forced to leave: they have no pool of archetypes to draw upon, no deeply shared unconscious capability, for all their power they have met a power greater than theirs in a realm they can't even go into.

This is why the appearance of the Tea Party is such a shock to the political Left and those who invest strongly in man as a barely rational animal: we are not just animals with a thin veneer of rationality, but a rational mind deeply in contact with our own unconscious not just for our bodily needs but for our outlook in life. This is beyond the realm of politics, marketing, or even advertising as there is no way to influence our archetypes. Those who are integrated individuals are not dictated to, but they tell you they wish to live their own lives in peace and to get the hell out of their faces. We know the ways of the Rattlesnake and it is always fair in its warning and you always get it. The message is clear: back off or suffer the consequences of your ill-thought out actions.

How else can one explain the quick spread of the Tea Party movement, from nothing to political force in less than 2 years? This is a remarkably American phenomena because of our storehouse of archetypes, which is a 'can do', 'if you want it done do it yourself' and 'get the hell off my lawn' formation that is NOT present in any other Nation on this planet. Anyone with the integration capability with their unconscious that has some rational basis for these sorts of ideas CAN get in contact with these archetypes: they are universal to mankind, you just have to be flowing into their formation for them to manifest. And once an archetype catches hold, especially in times of danger, it spreads like wildfire without even the need for conscious intention beyond the need for the answer which only the archetype can give.

Now if that isn't enough to scare the socks off the 'market it to their gonads and their minds will follow' crowd, the next part will remind you of how Einstein described quantum physics: 'spooky action at a distance'.

The concept of the Noosphere is given by Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin as the 'sphere of human thought'. This concept of a 'hive mind' has been around for awhile, that being a conscious construct shared by the entirety of humanity. With that said the physical outlay of it is already happening with the World Wide Web teamed with a new set of laws based on computing, networks and the re-utilization of concepts at different scales (which I go over in this article). The reason I say this is that the World Wide Web is a construct that allows our conscious minds to interact with each other in an asynchronous, multi-media mode. This is not, perhaps, what was envisioned for this concept when it was first proposed, but the interesting parallels between the Web and the Noosphere are obvious.

With that said there is a definite unconscious part of the Noosphere that is only reflected in the consciously available material on the Web, and the rest of the material appears to reside elsewhere pre-Internet era. The Noosphere is used to explain how individuals pick up skills and knowledge faster than those people before them, and this is not even a 'direct teaching' form of learning as something like how to fashion bronze looks to be something less than a 'spread' of knowledge and more a 'multiple learning events' sort of knowledge. This is closer to quantum theory and 'spooky action at a distance' than the relativistic view of information spread via slow word-of-mouth means. There are similarities in stone structures across the world (ex. pyramidal structures in Egypt and Central to South America) that have physical understanding as their basis, which is to say the angle of repose for particles cannot exceed a certain angle that depends on density, particle size and surface roughness. The ability to organize relatively modest populations to complete these tasks is one of convergent understanding at a distance: dissimilar cultures find similar ways to organize to complete similar tasks without referents to each other. That is the unconscious part of the Noosphere at work which is a mirroring of Jungian views on archetypes, though expanded to daily process knowledge (i.e. how to do things, make things, and the necessary skills involved for them).

This, like archetypes, is not something you can market or advertise to so as to influence an individual as it operates independently of the physical basis for mankind as it requires conscious and rational thought to allow access to it. That physical basis coupled with rational thought would then be the necessary 'keys to the kingdom' to have access to this shared knowledge from individuals within cultures across cultural domains.

Where I have some disagreement with the Noosphere and individuals like Kurzweil, is the idea of a 'unity' formation of conscious minds to form one larger, complex, cross-cultural mental structure. To date there are no indications of consciousness either by activity nor by messaging of this Noosphere. The biologically based portion of it has acted more as a reference storehouse of knowledge than a communication system: more library with knowledge available than individual actively sharing knowledge by intent. The dissemination of process information and cultural archetypes has been, instead, a form of dissemination far better described by quantum physics ('spooky action at a distance' between entangled particles sharing information at faster than light speed) than by complexity theory.

What the Noosphere does allow people to do as individuals is to process information faster. This is part and parcel of the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) which I have examined as a phenomena multiple times. It is represented, at first, by our ability to 'catch up' with the news cycle on a faster basis over time, which is to say that the rate of our rate of adaptation is increasing. This is a 'meta' formulation of examining a process or creation of an artifact, so that meta-thinking is thinking about thinking and the meta-rate of change is the change of the rate of change. Col. John Byrd (USAF) described this as getting within the 'OODA loop' of someone else in combat: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. Getting 'inside' and opponent's OODA loop is an essential part of combat operations and Col. Byrd's application of it to USAF concerns has proven to be a single instance within a huge category of human activity. That is to say the OODA loop thesis can be widened in scope (utilizing the Gould scale applicability concept) to encompass how businesses operate, how you drive a car safely, how a chess match operates between human opponents, and, indeed, how you absorb information from the news.

The FFT is the process of tightening the individual's OODA loop to be within that of the overall news presentation cycle so that you are less surprised by future outcomes than the news presenters are. Similarly you are better suited, as an individual, to understand the implications of new technology or world events due to the ability to tap into the Noosphere storehouse and find the way to hone your own perceptive skills so as to implement the FFT, since learning to do so is, itself, a skill. If you wonder why government officials, regulatory agencies and such fall out of step with the way of world events or even just social realities, it is because their outward structure cannot incorporate the Noosphere and, thusly, the FFT. Government is an external management system for the basics of ensuring safety for societies, it is not an operative system for enhancing knowledge or disseminating skills. In fact the failure of those governments that try to do this is littered with millions dead in the vain attempt to create something in the physical realm that we already share in the conscious and unconscious realms. What government is, however, is a physical safeguard of a culture and its territory and it is lent the negative powers that are granted to us by having a physical being by Nature, and we then take oversight of this created power structure for the good of all individuals within society.

Here is where the Jungian concept comes fully into play with the Noosphere: the Noosphere isn't a way to create a mass cognitive structure, but a way to allow the individual to create an individual identity within all of human culture and to find the necessary archetypes and process information so as to allow creativity to expand the overall knowledgebase and enhance archetypes, or even create new ones. Thus the individual melds their physical bodies from Nature with their rational thought system keyed to their culture to allow them to better gain individuality and creative expression of their individual self. Thus, if this is correct, we are heading into the steep learning curve era of enhanced individuality re-asserting its power over the social power structures we know as government, and not just within the USA, either.

For if we apply the Noosphere to the human condition with the understanding that it is to enhance human expression, and therefore human liberty, one must be free to utilize their positive liberty freely. That requires the greatest liberty of all: freedom to utilize your positive liberties outside of the negative power oversight of government.

If you wondered how chapters of the Tea Party can form up in the UK, Germany, Italy, Israel, Russia and Australia, now you know.

The FFT is now in play on a global basis.

Gaining one's liberty from the State has always been fraught with danger.

What happens when this goes on a global scale? My dearest hope is we do not get the kind of carnage of 1775-1783 for 10% dead and 15% fled where the 15% have nowhere to go means disaster. There are better ways to do this as Gandhi and Aquino found, as well as some of the faster transitions of power in Eastern Europe with the fall of Communism. I do hope those in power will learn from the Noosphere that it isn't worth the bloodshed to grasp power to the bitter end. There is just no teaching some people, however, for they refuse to learn from the mistakes and lessons we have learned.

For The Pilgrim will not be denied.

Internetworking and the role it plays

One of the things that has been most difficult to describe is the critical importance of person-to-person networking in the coalescing networks between Transnational Terrorism, International Organized Crime and flow of goods in the black/grey market to support these things. In the good old days of police detective dramas we would see people in rooms full of 3x5 notecards and pieces of string all over the place to map out such networks. Indeed, more than one crime drama would focus on this and someone just looking at the network of who knew who and what happened until it all made sense. Unfortunately very few people can *think* like that and trying to describe what the large-scale internetworking means is very, very difficult.

Today, however, the computer has replaced the notecard and string arrangement, and one of the key elements of police work to bring down gangs, identify gang leaders and how their territory changes is via this method of network analysis. To find Saddam Hussein after his fall from power, he depended upon a close and interwoven set of individuals to provide him with safe houses, transportation, food, supplies and communications. He had hoped to evade capture to a secure location so as to re-emerge from safety at a point that could not be assailed by the Coalition Forces. For him to sustain himself, however, others would find out about the location of his confidantes and that would tie them to him.

When the 'Hunt for Saddam' started, it was a slow going thing as only a few members of the US Armed Forces had the necessary police investigation experience to do the tracking. I will say that from my time in Advanced R&D at one of the INTEL Agencies, that this sort of ability in the US INTEL Community was lacking or missing, completely. A few of us inside the department realized that these critical tools had to be employed to give a good rendition of INTEL across the board, so as to finally start to derive more reliable INTEL based reporting. One of the critical tools was one used by many police departments, but the department looked at many, many other tools, also. Those in Iraq, however, had to make sense of disparate INTEL reports from different groups, with different standards of reliability and to start piecing together just who was or was not in Saddam's 'inner circle'. Who did he trust and why?

For some weeks the notecards and string re-appeared and the experience of just organizing that data started to yield the outlay of that 'inner circle' and their outward bound contacts. Saddam was *not* moving via pre-emplaced government officials and safe-houses, but through a highly personal trust network of reliable individuals. Many of those would end up dead and their body trail was one indicator of his direction of thought and outlook. Reports from those in the second and third circles out would show up with more individuals interrogated and they would point to a region, Tikrit, which would go 'blank' in the notecard arrangement. Even troops on the ground could not get reports from anyone of where Saddam was.

For that narrowing down took place with Military Intelligence moving in, purchasing the police department network software, organizing data & collection standards, and, finally, entering all of the data into a few databases. That, in and of itself, took a couple of weeks (if memory serves) but it was able to remove vast areas where Saddam was *not* and start to tighten the literal circle of reports to show where he *was*. That blank area of reports was due to the brutality of his inner circle to enforce cooperation and obedience. Some of the capture of the 'Playing Cards', members of the higher circles of Saddam's regime, happened as they showed up in the analysis, too. That native, high-level, Ba'athist network got picked apart, but only to a level or so deeper than the High Value Targets. Much of the low-level networking was left in-place by oversight, not design, as it would clutter the search for the HVTs.

Those around Saddam noticed this: more Coalition forces near-by, more roadblocks, more house to house searches, and more members either fleeing or being taken in. Or killed by Saddam's cronies. Finally it was a relatively low-level but highly trusted individual that tipped off the Coalition and got the reward for 'finding Saddam': Saddam's chauffeur. One of the most highly trusted individuals is the one who has to fake his way past check-points, get supplies and ferry goods to and from Saddam. He knew that *his* time was nearly up with Saddam and the question of dying by Saddam's order (and most likely his family getting fallout from that) or turning him in so that he and his family could escape was too stark. He 'walked in', identified himself and within minutes of that he was identified in the network, his position realized, and in one hour a raid staged to get Saddam.

It got Saddam.

These tools and databases of contacts and internetworking served as the basis for much later INTEL work in Iraq and the Military Intelligence folks who, at the beginning of the conflict, were in a pre-automated era of receive reports, digest for a few hours and spit out a report a day or two later had to change their own cycle of analysis and reporting to what was seen on-the-ground in real time. That major change of personal affiliation network analysis has become a vital tool in moving down the command structures of various parts of the 'insurgency'. The 'insurgency' in Iraq, from the way it is described, falls into four highly affiliated internetworks. Individuals and their immediate friendship circles serve as the basis for allowing goods and information to pass from one network to another for joint operations, supplies and some loose deconfliction of events.

As a description and meta-analysis, these fall into the following categories:

1) Ba'athist redentist networks - These are the low level Ba'athists who had some basis for localized power at the time of the fall of Saddam. These low level networks started to re-knit themselves as the HVTs moved down the organizational ladder to attempt to re-network the regime in a new power basis. While many of the critical border operations along Syria and Jordan were re-established, it was the deeper networks into families that was starting to be pulled into this. The timely removal of the HVTs ended that, but caused a lateral spread of the Ba'athist insurgency.


2) Sunni Radicals - These groups utilized the pre-existing Ansar al-Sunnah [correction to Ansar al-Islam as the group at that point in time, with the influence of Zarqawi the name would change, along with operational basis - my thanks to Rusty on that!] bases to move their affiliations outwards, once the regime fell. They could no longer concentrate 'just' on the Kurds as that was a Saddamist goal and, really, had gotten them nowhere. With Ansar being part of the distributed al Qaeda heierarchy, it served to allow individuals to spread into Sunni Arab Iraq and then into the mixed Sunni/Shia areas. This would take a year to do, which is the noted 'breathing time' between the fall of Saddam in MAR-APR 2003 and a year later. These utilized inflows of money from Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda and more distributed elements in Jordan and Turkey to gain a foothold. al Qaeda, in particular, brought in individuals via Saudi Arabia to begin entrenching themselves in places like Anbar province.


3) Shia Radicals - These groups, most notably the Iranian supported and controlled Badr Brigades, plus the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, and a number of Shia Imams and affiliates spreading from the SE border and into Baghdad would be one of the first to stand up a new organization. The Badr Brigades would attempt to shift to temporary support of the Coalition to remove the Ba'athist regime and install a radical Shia outlook. Moqtada al Sadr would organized more wide-spread militias in the mode of Hezbollah, and begin to cycle individuals to Iran for training while attempting to build his own military support base in Baghdad to Basra corridor. The final part to be stood up was the political SCIRI organization, to arm-wrestle the consitution and the first National elections to its outlook, with support of Iran and having a basic anti-Ba'athist and hostile Sunni attitude. This set of organizations continue to utilize supply lines, training and equipment supplied from Iran and Syria, and reached out to the Sunni organizations and Organized crime to facilitate the Syrian inflow of arms and equipment.


4) Organized crime - This is, perhaps, the most overlooked part of how the various operations in Iraq sustain themselves. The original organized crime links to Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia had started at a very low level, as Saddam's regime was more of a Mafia Don that brooked no competition than that of a Nation State. The Kurds, first to get out from his rule after the first Gulf War, had the most effective smuggling operations into Iraq: that first flood of used cars came not from overseas, but from Kurds smuggling in hundreds if not thousands of cheap used vehicles via Turkey, and a few from Syria. The effect of *that* was sudden appearance of cars on the road and the pointing out that there was limited oil refining capacity in Iraq to meet this need. The flood of televisions, radios, computers, refrigerators, stoves... these started with some commercial interests, yes, but those with ready money were in organized crime and their contacts suddenly made 'consumer goods' a high mark-up, hot selling item. The very same black/grey market goods channels to get in arms, munitions, explosives and people during Saddam's reign blossomed to become truckloads of white market goods flowing into Iraq to meet consumer demand. What happened is well known: demand outstripped supply of the ancient electrical system that dates back to the 1960s and '70s with mostly Soviet and some French and German equipment. This would also allow, however, for the influx of large amounts of arms on the cheap form weapon's suppliers like Syria's Monzer al-Kassar who would utilize his Eastern European contacts, along with ones in Turkey and Latin America to spread influence into Iraq. Which is why he was one of the first to go on the Iraqi 'Most Wanted' list after the government finally stood up last year.


What is amazing to hear, throughout that period, was the 'deficiencies of the post-war occupation' from many, many groups and individuals. Apparently the concept of 'set-expectations' trying to meet expanded need had never been brought to their minds and so the recriminations about supply of electricity, gasoline and all of that is blamed on the 'occupation' until some Interim body could be set up to slowly get some handle on all of this. I, personally, had a major problem with those folks as they had spent ZERO time to think about infrastructure maintenance, original design capacity, degraded actual capacity, pent-up consumer demand and such simple things as the Coalition Forces not having the necessary depth of police anti-gang experience to try and track down the networks listed above.

No one has ever addressed *which* grand and magnificent 'plan' by any part of the US Government or any of its Coalition partners had forecasted the two-year sea change in insurgencies, consumer demand, infrastructure analysis or even something so simple as finding reliable individuals who could govern. The four listed networks are not 'separate networks' but ones that can and do inter-cooperate on a local basis, although there is some higher-level antagonism between them. The Ba'athist network had to be the first to go as it was the hardest hit and the most dangerous, from a military perspective: it had the generals, commanders, trainers and everyone needed to restart the regime elsewhere. The paucity of tools to analyze it meant that a broad-based search operation had to be used and the other three network types could not be addressed until they started to show up by activities... terrorist activities. By that point in time it was too late as they had already used the criminal networks to expand their affilitation basis until they were rubbing against each other throughout Iraq.

The expectations of dictatorial regimes fighting it out 'to the bitter end' and either dying on the battlefield or surrendering did not play out in Iraq. Worries of that were ones of a highly influential dictator able to gain approval in the population to support such a fight and then, after the fall of the government, to install a temporary interim government from those that had fled overseas and trustworthy individuals found on the ground during the fighting. The insurgency from that would be entrenched, deeply sustained and have multiple fall-backs inside their own networks. This expectation did not show up and, instead of months of hard fighting, the regime fell in *weeks* and then evaporated.

Another expectation that has trouble materializing is that of how to shift from a State owned and run economy to that or private capitalism. Here the need to plan for shifting individuals in charge of things like electrical production and distribution and utilizing organs of government spun off from the government also did not happen. The government went fully out of existing and only low level technical people were around to keep things running. How does one shift from State to private control when there is: 1) No State, and, 2) no organized private capital ventures to shift control *to*? This is not only for electricity (which goes unmetered in Iraq!) water, sewage processing and such basic infrastructure, all the way down into the moribund agricultural sector, food processing and distribution.

It is a pure fantasy to think that there *could* be a shift of all of that to more localized control in the very best of circumstances. We have that learning experience from the Ex-Eastern Bloc Nations under the USSR to see the differences between glacially slow transfer, as in Russia, to 'Cold Turkey' like in Poland. In between there are a number of different options that are tried and some, like the Russian, are clearly failing. Those are in Nations with intact governments, intact control and distribution systems, backwards economies and no capitalism worth its name when they started. The very best of them, Poland, took 5 years or so to shift out from Soviet concepts of how to run things and get to a stable and slowly increasing economy. That is in the heart of Europe which was stable and peaceful. In Iraq? Getting factories open is only starting within the last 6 months and employment is now increasing and unemployment finally falling. Even without a counter-insurgency operation, which has *always* been seen as necessary, getting Iraq up and on its feet in anything less than Poland, that had advanced help nearby and ready investors lined up, was asinine, in the extreme.

What is even worse is the lack of recognition by the Political Elite and those who try to foist strange ideas of how the world works upon the public, is that the basis for what sort of government one can *get* in the Middle East has changed since 1945! Yes, strange as it may seem the all-mighty Nation State run by Nationalists is no longer the ONLY paradigm in the Middle East. Iran and Afghanistan have demonstrated two other methods of ruling that have very little to do with Nationalism and everything to do with pan-Islamism. Even worse is that the 'Palestinian Territories' have been unable to even FORM a Nation State since 1948, with the best being achieved is the insurgent-terrorist based kleptocracy that has impoverished the people there by feeding them pipe-dreams that cannot happen. Yes, there are some Arab areas that cannot *form* a Nation State even under a good, old-fashioned dictator.... which would be a step *up* for the folks in Palestine.

Somehow those purporting that the post-war policies failed have also failed to address their unreasonable expectations of a post-war situation that was highly unknown and impossible to plan for beyond the most general of outlines and even *those* would end up being scrapped as time went on. By putting down no *goals* that were understood the critics have NO BASIS in their carping. I have previously addressed some of the truly insane concepts of having a 'huge force on the ground' which, if you would notice, would not address the highly person-to-person networks that were developing in any way, shape or form. One could not even get the Shinsekian 500,000 troops without stripping out EUCOM and PACOM, and throwing in the reserves and then you have them for a year. Raw troops, untrained for Iraq, unused to the conditions and having to deal with a highly strange situation that would not make sense to them... and just as the drawdown would begin the actual insurgency would BEGIN. I can hear the screaming of the naysayers in that alternate universe because I can hear their unrealistic outlooks in this one.

Those individuals expecting that Iran and Syria would 'be amenable to diplomacy' forget that the two of them have been most un-amenable to it in Lebanon. The establishment of their proxy in the form of Hezbollah goes unaddressed by the West and those pushing for 'diplomacy' everywhere. If 'diplomacy' had worked, Lebanon would be at peace with no outside influence from Iran or Syria, now, wouldn't it? That hasn't happened. Generating the power vacuum of a fallen dictator invited these two Nations, plus al Qaeda and a scattering of other groups to try their hand in the Middle East power-by-terrorism concept that has worked so famously in Palestine. The Iraq Survey Group's recommendations sounds like something out of the 1950's with North Korea, and look how well THAT worked out.

I am surprised that anyone gives any credence to 'Realism' in Foreign Policy based upon the good wishes of dictators and tyrants. As a concept 'Realism' has not only grossly failed the West and the US, but it has put us in deadly danger by support it gives to radical elements, despots, thieves and dictators in the form of unaccountable foreign policy pay-offs and systems which give them EQUAL VOICE to democracies. In case you missed it, the folks who *caused* Iraq via 'Realism' in Foreign Policy have names like Baker, Scowcroft, Kissinger, Brzezinski and Clinton. These folks stood up an international era in which dictators would NOT be held to account for anything, in which power brokering with thugs would be utilized, and in which actual anti-democratic Nations would be welcomed into the fold to spread their ideals of totalitarian rule and 'gain legitimacy'. The fallout of that decades of being 'realistic' is now criticism based on wanting to, now, CONTINUE supporting tyrants, despots, kleptocracies, thugs and terrorists *against* forming up accountable Nations to confront them.

Isn't THAT a lovely thing to come from 'The Land of the Free'? Support of the most anti-democratic, anti-liberal elements on the face of the Earth because they stand up to the United States and Western ideals. And why do they support them?

First it is 'unrealistic' NOT to! Yes, call a conference of all the thugs, dictators and radial islamists surrounding Iraq... to do what? Really, what works with that scenario that ends up with MORE people leading freer lives with liberty to benefit by the bounty of their own work? Because I just don't see it.

Second they see the cost of support as unsustainable to the US! I really do forget how many of the next largest economies on this planet summed up equals that of the US. It used to be just #2 and 3 combined and I doubt its that anymore. So it isn't the actual, monetary nor capital expenditure costs, which would be the equivalent of refitting a moderately large State in the US that fell into disrepair and asking the folks there to take up the majority of the repair job once we've shown them how to do it. Like NOLA, save that sucker is sinking... so we put billions into a sinking city.

No, the lovely folks who put up a resistance on COST talk about the cost in lives and injuries to the Armed Forces.

The volunteer armed forces.

That they will not SUPPORT in their mission. Who fight and die because they have VOLUNTEERED to do so for the sorry asses of those carping on the losses sustained. And we are not asking them to go into Iwo Jima, Saipan or onto the beaches of Normandy, but to this Nation called Iraq. You remember that? Dictator over it for 30 years? A couple of decades of one-party or dictatorial or military rule before that? A province of the Ottoman Empire for centuries? Hello? You do *remember* that place, right? The one that has NEVER tasted Liberty and Freedom before, ever? No living memory of it. Some of the memories are carved in stone about dictators and Empires, but a freely elected government to represent the People of Iraq?

Apparently there are still Americans that will VOLUNTEER for helping a People who have never experienced Liberty, Freedom and Democracy before to try it out. And it could FAIL. And leave the West with an even larger problem in that doing.

It is very hard to hear those wanting failure - wanting to flee for handfuls of lives lost out of millions to achieve liberty for a downtrodden people in a far-off land.

To hear from Americans who no longer believe in the universality of all people being created equal.

To have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without tyrannical, despotic or autocratic government taking such from them.

Holding onto this concept has a cost, a deep cost to it, which was spoken about before, during and after the American Revolution so we would NEVER EVER forget it.

You may mouth the words, but if you no longer adhere to them, then you turn away from those things it gives us. You flee from death and destruction and seek the oblivion of tyranny by letting those seeking power over mankind get any rest, any surcease and any opportunity to grow and end that dream... that very idealistic dream... that was the basis for the Revolution.

Looking at the large-scale Terrorist internetworks tells me just how little that ideal now means to the West and to the United States. We have not confronted it for decades, and it has grown to infest itself globally... from the heroin centers in the Bekaa Valley to the Radical Islamist Imams in the US. From arms dealers willing to ship their goods without restriction by Western Nations to far off lands where a profit can be made easily and cheaply.

Even in Iraq we do not confront all of that, just a small outgrowth of that large scale internetwork. And the quivering about paying any price *now* will guarantee that these enemies will thrive, prosper and continue their aim of ending liberty once and for all if they can. As a Nation the US cannot run from Iraq to protect the US, those days ended with 'open borders' and FEDEX. Nor can we hide from the responsibilities leveraged upon us when our liberty and freedoms at home have already been attacked by killers for decades, that thrive on the moribund attitudes of one-worldism and transnational capitalism.

The horrific price the US paid by leaving South Vietnam was in the blood on our hands from those that needed protection from tyrants and despots. Destroyed villages, 'killing fields' and 'boat people' who fled from tyranny and death because the fighting did not end after the US left. And the killing only got worse. That led to many outcomes, but the worse is this dream of global pathway to power by just killing to it for an tyrannical ideology. And so you can get an idea of what that looks like on a graphical scale, lets take a look at rough sketching out of some of the links between: Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, FARC, BCCI.

Not very pretty, and only covering about 15 terror incidents and concentrating on the US...call it less than 5% of the high level interconnections with much more from BCCI, BNL, and arms firms needing to be put in along with the Drug Cartels and Kingpins. Plus a hefty amount of the interaction between organized crime and terrorism isn't well scoped out yet.

That is what it looks like when we do not pay attention to tyranny and terror for 30 years.

Too bad so many in the defeatocrat camp don't want to confront it.

It is already here.

Terrorists on the decline?

At American Thinker, Ray Robison looks at the problems al Qaeda is having in: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the forces behind those problems. Each of these has different point sources and may point to a larger strategy to confront al Qaeda based on a wide and deep understanding of regional and ethnic differences between the Arab, Wahhabi oriented al Qaeda and locally oriented resistance to them. Actually, given the inability of US Foreign Policy to understand those things, I am hesitant to put that conception forward as something coming from Foggy Bottom and, with the problems of the CIA, even from Langley. What does describe this better is special forces/special ops work and that 5-sided building in Arlington, VA playing a key role. And when trying to think of how to fracture the Islamic Jihad movement from the Muslim Brotherhood side of things that is a difficult task.

Today the most adaptable part of the US Government to combat terrorism is the Armed Forces and NOT those other places that so many like to point to as places of deep thought and cogitation... I go over the problems with 'Realism' in foreign policy and still, to this day, see that as a guiding outlook on such because of the entrenched bureaucracy there. Looking at the 'group think' of the INTEL Community via the NIE reviews I did (here and here) and in this article on Taming the Turf Wars and more endemic problems government-wide in Iraq and the Turf Wars.

To get a multi-prong, coherent approach to the political, social, and ethnic atmospheres of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan requires a lot of actual on-the-ground knowledge and in some depth so as to figure out the best way to approach each area. That is not descriptive of the CIA's HUMINT capability nor of the State Dept., but is highly descriptive of all the Special Forces and Elite Forces sent over to these places by Coalition Nations. Lets take a quick look at the instances that Mr. Robison cites and see what they would entail. Thus the posited concept and its follow-ons.


The Global Islamic Jihad Movement is Breaking Up

To get an idea of what this entails, we first have to look at the mover behind the Islamic Jihad movement: the Muslim Brotherhood. My most thorough look at the MB was in Rep. Hoyer seeking moderates amongst terrorists, which drew heavily upon previous documents for integrated analysis: Follow the money.... where?, Thoughts stirred on the global connectivity of al Qaeda, Syrian weapons purchases: the unbarked dog, Iranian influence: Bosnia, Dropping the dime on the 'oil drop' , Building the Mosaic of Iraq, Getting to today in, Iran starting in 2000, Dumb Looks time on: Post-Warism!, Creating an Army, The Faultlines shifting the Status Quo, Peace in the Middle East: The Checklist, and the two foundational views on Transnational Terrorism - Template of Terror and The web of the supernote.

Not that I have been looking at Transnational Terrorism for awhile or anything!

The major part of any fraying will be between al Qaeda affiliates and the Muslim Brotherhood which acts as a sort of 'startup' and 'incubator' for Sunni Jihadis, and then as a source of 'venture capital' for establishing and expanding organizations and influence. From it nearly every other terrorist organization on the planet is at most one intermediary away and often there is a direct link for zero degrees of separation. Think of it as 'Jihadi Terror Central'. In truth it operates on a quasi-criminal basis for goods and funds and as a religious institution for radical Islamic placement (the actual putting down of Mosques or sending instructors to established ones).

Any concentrated attack to start breaking up al Qaeda *must* address MB as it is the source of the personal contact network for most of Sunni Radicalism and even has strong contacts with Iran and Shia radicals. Globalsecurity lists the known resource bases of the Hamas, which is a direct military organization of the MB, and al Qaeda would have access to those plus its own networks separate from MB/Hamas ones. That listing is as follows:

Gulf States - A considerable proportion of the aforementioned funds originate from various sources in the Gulf States (The Gulf Cooperation Council States). Most of the funding is from Saudi Arabian sources, with a total value of $12 million a year.

Iran - Its contribution is estimated at $3 million a year.

Charitable associations in the Territories - Funds are raised for the Hamas through the mosques (a convenient domain for fundraising and recruitment of members) and through charity associations and foundations.

Charity associations overseas.

Fundraising abroad and in the territories.

In addition to that, al Qaeda would also need to hit friction between its own organization and its affiliate network and wider network of associates, of which MB is only one. This network of associates and affiliates is as follows, from the Globalsecurity listing for al Qaeda:

Armed Islamic Group
Salafist Group for Call and Combat and the Armed Islamic Group
Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Egypt)
Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya
Jamaat Islamiyya
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
Bayt al-Imam (Jordan)
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Kashmir)
Asbat al Ansar
Hezbollah (Lebanon)
Al-Badar
Harakat ul Ansar/Mujahadeen
Al-Hadith
Harakat ul Jihad
Jaish Mohammed - JEM
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Laskar e-Toiba - LET
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (the Philippines)
Abu Sayyaf Group (Malaysia, Philippines)
Al-Ittihad Al Islamiya - AIAI (Somalia)
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Islamic Army of Aden (Yemen)

Yes, a veritable panoply of organizations, that, plus the listing later cites al Qaeda getting training and support from Iran. Globalsecurity and Terror Knowledge Base both have good references for all of these organizations, between them. So with those as a 'rough and ready' we can hit the rest of Mr. Robison's article!

Problems seen in Pakistan:

First, that reporting from Pakistan showed friction among al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic Party of Gulbudden Hekmatyar. Second, that funding to these groups was drying up due to the loss of state sponsors. While these groups (representative of, but not the entirety of global jihad) continue to receive private donations and surely some rogue regime funding, the loss of Saddam, Libyan, Pakistani and the U.A.E. support could only increase their woes.

Now Gulbudden Hekmatyar sounds familiar! And on Afghanistan Online we can get a biography of him, which is something always handy to have around, needless to say, when looking at individuals. From the opening there we learn the critical associations of him:

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, originally from Baghlan, is the head and founder of Hezbi Islami. Hekmatyar, who is now in his late forties, first studied at the military academy; then in 1968, he switched to the engineering department of Kabul University.

A very dangerous man to combine military AND engineering skills, even if he did not graduate with a degree. Now TKB has a rundown on on Hezbi-e-Islami and offers this bit:

Current Goals: The Hizb-I-Islami split in the late 1970s, with Maluvi Mohammad Yunus Khalis’s faction breaking away from the dominant group led by Hikmaytar. Recent reports suggest that the fragmentation of the Islamic Party has continued, with a group led by Khalid Farooqi proclaiming to support the transitional regime of Hamid Karzai and end their struggle against the Afghan government and coalition troops. Farooqi has claimed that his faction of the group has cut off all contact with Hikmatyar, who remains at large. The precise balance of power within the Hizb-I-Islami remains unknown.

They are undergoing internal factional strife due to the Coalition invasion of Afghanistan and trying to decide who to support. Note that in many terrorist incidents we get the leader in question refered to as a 'Warlord'. There are also connections to the Al-Badr organization of Pakistan/Kashmir from Hizb-e-Islami and this note at TKB on its funding:

Al-Badr has found it increasingly difficult to raise funds and many of its training camps have been closed. However, some Indian intelligence officials believe that Pakistan’s ISI is still feeding funds and logistical support to the group. In addition, Indian intelligence services are currently investigating links between al-Badr and al-Qaeda.

While a smaller group than Hizb-e-Islami, the support of the Pakistani ISI is very troubling as it serves as an independent State source for it. From that we can see that Hekmatyar is a critical individual for al Qaeda to get localized funding from *both* Hizb-e-Islami and al-Badr organizations. And a pass-through from Mr. Robison's citing of further fracturing between al Qaeda and Hizb-e-Islami is this article citing smuggling operations of the latter group in gems, lumber and opium. Over at History Commons we get a bit more on Hekmatyar's influence in the region and their citation of articles pointing to his connections:

Afghan opium production rises from 250 tons in 1982 to 2,000 tons in 1991, coinciding with CIA support and funding of the mujaheddin. Alfred McCoy, a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin, says US and Pakistani intelligence officials sanctioned the rebels’ drug trafficking because of their fierce opposition to the Soviets: “If their local allies were involved in narcotics trafficking, it didn’t trouble [the] CIA. They were willing to keep working with people who were heavily involved in narcotics.” For instance, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel leader who received about half of all the CIA’s covert weapons, was known to be a major heroin trafficker. Charles Cogan, who directs the CIA’s operation in Afghanistan, later claims he was unaware of the drug trade: “We found out about it later on.” [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996; Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/30/2001]

Yes, the CIA funds from 1982-1999 were going through Hezb-e-Islami to the tune of 50% of them. A bit after that we get this from 1983:

Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar emerges as the most powerful of ISI’s mujaheddin clients, just as Rep. Charlie Wilson (D) and CIA Director William Casey, along with Saudi Intelligence Minister Prince Turki al-Faisal, are pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new and more lethal supplies into ISI warehouses.” Hekmatyar is among the most ruthless and extreme of the Afghan Islamic warlords. [Coll, 2004, pp. 119] He receives about half of all the CIA’s covert weapons directed at Afghanistan despite being a known major drug trafficker (see 1982-1991). He develops close ties with bin Laden by 1984 while continuing to recieve large amounts of assistance from the CIA and ISI (see 1984).

We can see connections between Rep. Charlie Wilson, CIA Director William Casey and Saudi Intelligence Minister Turki al-Faisal sending money and goods to Hekmatyar to resist the Soviets. So his 1980's funding sources are wide and disparate, stretching from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia to the CIA. This offers him a wide opportunity to find personal contacts to use later for additional funding, training and supplies. Hekmatyar meets up with bin Laden in 1984:

Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan, and helps run a front organization for the mujaheddin known as Maktab al-Khidamar (MAK), which funnels money, arms, and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war. [New Yorker, 1/24/2000] “MAK [is] nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.” [MSNBC, 8/24/1998] Bin Laden becomes closely tied to the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and greatly strengthens Hekmatyar’s opium smuggling operations. [Le Monde (Paris), 9/14/2001] Hekmatyar, who also has ties with bin Laden, the CIA, and drug running, has been called “an ISI stooge and creation.” [Asia Times, 11/15/2001]

To get to a long-standing relationship between al Qaeda and Hezb-e-Islami requires eroding the trust/patience of Hekmatyar himself. And in 2002, this is what happens to him:

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Iran is supportive of US efforts to defeat the Taliban, since the Taliban and Iran have opposed each other. In 2006, Flynt Leverett, the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council in 2002 and 2003, will recall this cooperation between Iran and the US in a heavily censored New York Times editorial. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious Afghan warlord with close ties to bin Laden (see 1984), had been living in Iran since the Taliban came to power in the 1990s. Leverett claims that in December 2001 Iran agrees to prevent Hekmatyar from returning to Afghanistan to help lead resistance to US-allied forces there, as long as the Bush administration does not criticize Iran for harboring terrorists. “But, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the ‘axis of evil’ (see January 29, 2002). Unsurprisingly, Mr. Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order after the speech.” [New York Times, 12/22/2006] Hekmatyar apparently returns to Afghanistan around February 2002. He will go on to become one of the main leaders of the armed resistance to the US-supported Afghan government. Iranian cooperation with the US over Afghanistan will continue in a more limited manner, with Iran deporting hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives who had fled Afghanistan, while apparently keeping others. But the US will end this cooperation in 2003. [BBC, 2/14/2002; USA Today, 5/21/2003; New York Times, 12/22/2006]

I am sure he was in Iran for purely personal reasons! And as for the US 'ending' the 'cooperation' with Iran, are we sure it wasn't more of a revolving door affair with al Qaeda operatives cycling in and out and only citing the outbound flow and not the inbound? Well, I am sure that ever venturesome reporters DID background that... or not.

But even more interesting is the citation via RAWA that Hekmatyar had links with the Soviet KGB! From their reprint of an 08 OCT 1992 article 'Gulbudden Hekmatyar had links with KGB' from The News International by Imran Akbar:

PARIS: The US House Republican Research Committee of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare has severely criticized the Central Intelligence Agencies and Inter-Services-Intelligence for their gross negligence and cover-up of the misconduct of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan during the 13 year Afghan civil war.

The report also alleged that the ISI propped Hekmatyar as an ultimate Muslim choice, while knowing all along that he was actually working for the ex-Soviet KGB, the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union.

The 19-page report submitted in March 1990 and now doing rounds here, claims that the ISI had created Hekmatyar only to serve the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. The report states: "needless to say, the picture of Hekmatyar's success in the civil war created by the KGB-Khad (propaganda) closely fits the biases of Ziaul Haq and ISI. This Islamist leadership was subsequently adopted by Ziaul Haq because of the ISI's claims of tight control over the radical revivalist Islamist movements as well the ensuring ideological endorsement from Pakistan's Jamat-e-Islami and the Saudi Arabian leadership. (The new prime minister) Benazir Bhutto cannot afford to disavow and disassociate herself from the Afghan leadership built by her father, let alone confront the ISI on the conduct of its Afghan operations."

The report further states, "Given this, the reports of Hezb-e-Islami victories served the ISI's intrinsic interests so well that it had no desire to doubt them and indeed politically could not afford to. With the Zia regime wholeheartedly committed to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, any attempt to challenge or verify his (Hekmatyar's) claims was swiftly crushed by Islamabad's highest echelons. Moreover, it was in the personal interest of numerous ISI senior officers and operatives who were embezzling the ever-growing flow of US and Saudi military and financial assistance to ensure that the process should continue."

The false information from Islamabad to Washington through CIA resulted in the termination of aid in 1989 and the ISI plan to launch a massive attack on Jalalabad.

The debacle was so huge that even today the last body count has not yet been confirmed and neither the original planner brought to justice. The worse part of the story is that the Hekmatyar group was already working for the KGB and had in fact co-operated with the Soviet troops in persecution and subsequent defeat of other resistance factions.

Hekmatyar is also termed in the report as a commander who killed more Mujahideen than Soviet Afghan soldiers. The report recalls a curious incident where the ISI had to lose its two top agents in order to protest Hekmatyar and his KGB network from being exposed to the media. In the spring of 1985, a senior resistance commander's source in the Soviet intelligence network agreed to disclose the Hekmatyar dossier in Moscow in the return for the safe passage for his family. As the CIA prepared itself the task, the whole network was betrayed to the Soviets after a call for a top-level meeting by resistance commanders was intercepted by Hekmatyar.

Within twenty-four hours, a Soviet special flight IL-63M plane was arranged which flew the source to Tashkent never to be heard of again. The aftermath indicated the Hekmatyar was afraid that the credible source would expose his true identity. For the ISI, recognizing the gravity of the betrayal meant doubting the reliability of Hekmatyar and the self-serving empire built around his myth. Therefore, the ISI decided to suppress the incident eve though two of its won/operatives were amongst those arrested and transferred to Tashkent.

Hekmatyar's meteoric rise came after his expulsion from the Kabul Military Academy. Till then, he was a staunch communist and later infiltrated into Muslim fundamentalist groups on the behest of the KGB and Khad. He arranged his first professional assassination of a Maoist communist leader in Kabul in 1972 and then entered the Muslim Brotherhood as the older leadership began to be killed under mysterious circumstances.

The KGB-Hekmatyar co-operation could be judged from the fact that the resistance commanders in the Maidan area were afraid to ambush Soviet envy's for fear of reprisal from Hezb-e-Islami. Hekmatyar also managed to destroy two ammunition depots and five weapons trucks stripping Jamaiat-e-Islami leader Ahmed Shah Massoud of weapons near the Pakistani border of Garan Chashma.

The ISI, the Task Force reports states, monitored the ambush of Tekhar province where senior Jamiat commanders were killed. Some of them were brutally tortured. The communication system and messages exchanged were on the same frequency range as that of the ISI. The tussle between Ahmed Shah Massoud and ISI reached the peak in 1988, when Massoud refused to surrender to ISI pressure. In return, his aid was completely cut off forcing him to buy weapons from the black market.

The assassination of Afghan liberal intellectual, Majrooh, was orchestrated by the Hezb-e-Islami in Peshawar where the Hezb hit-team included a SPETNAZ commando from the Soviet Union. The ISI briefed Hekmatyar and with KGB KHAD assistance, the gulf between Pashtuns and other nationalities widened, Today an average of 200 people are killed daily in Afghanistan in continued battles between ethnic and sectarian minorities.

Have I pointed out that Mr. Hekmatyar is well connected? And to those worrying about the 'horrific death toll in Iraq' may it be pointed out that in Afghanistan, in 1992, the daily death toll was 200 due to ethnic and sectarian violence? Just thought you would like to see what a REAL civil war gets you. But that is what happens when you are being an 'equal opportunity' Warlord and cooperating with everyone against their enemies in the hopes of killing them all off and being the last one standing. Tricky game, but has advantages if it works out.

Now, popping up to 1994 at Cooperative Research we get this little item, which is of interest:

The Boston Herald reports that an internal CIA report has concluded that the agency is “partially culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993) because it helped train and support some of the bombers. One source with knowledge of the report says, “It was determined that a significant amount of blowback appeared to have occurred.” A US intelligence source claims the CIA gave at least $1 billion to forces in Afghanistan connected to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. More than a half-dozen of the WTC bombers belonged to this faction, and some of the CIA money paid for their training. The source says, “By giving these people the funding that we did, a situation was created in which it could be safely argued that we bombed the World Trade Center.” Those connected to the bombing who went to Afghanistan include Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, Clement Rodney Hampton-el, Siddig Siddig Ali, Ahmed Ajaj, and Mahmud Abouhalima. [Boston Herald, 1/24/1994] Additionally, Ramzi Yousef trained in Afghanistan near the end of the Afghan war, and there are claims he was recruited by the CIA (see Late 1980s). “Intelligence sources say the CIA used the al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn—founded to support the Afghani rebels fighting Soviet occupation—to funnel aid to Hekmatyar, setting the stage for terrorists here to acquire the money, guns and training needed to later attack the Trade Center. CIA support also made it easier for alleged terrorist leaders to enter the country.” [Boston Herald, 1/24/1994]

Isn't this just peachy? Yes, those committed anti-Soviet fighters led by Hekmatyar who would switch sides to cooperate with the KGB, helped him to fund and train terrorists for the 1993 WTC Bombing. Do remember, that the 1993 WTC Bombing was, apparently, a cooperative effort by multiple terrorist organizations and with some support from Iraq for getting things like passports and such. The full testimony on 07 OCT 1994 can be found at this link with Globalsecurity.

Any problems between al Qaeda and Hezb-i-Islami needs to be something pretty bad given that Hekmatyar and bin Laden *both* matriculated from the Muslim Brotherhood and would have a large degree of common contacts and support via that. The Jamestown Foundation has an article giving an overview of Hekmatyar's life and that he may now be trying to get into the Afghani government (dated 27 JAN 2005), which would be a major break with bin Laden. And, even worse to al Qaeda eyes, is the involvement of Hezb-e-Islami in the narcotics trade to support themselves, as seen at US News & World Report in an article on 27 NOV 2005 citing the strong involvement of Hekmatyar with the heroin trade, which is something that al Qaeda wants no part of. So while a radical Islamist, Hekmatyar is just of a slightly different stripe than that of bin Laden and al Qaeda. And as Western history can attest, the tiniest of religious differences can fester until they become the main problem in a relationship between two sects that have high degrees of similarity.

From all of this, however, we can see that Gulbudden Hekmatyar has multiple sources of income distributed across Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Kashmir region. Further, al Qaeda, itself, has distributed income sources as identified by The National Bureau of Asian Research with this paper (in pdf) on Funding Terrorism in Southeast Asia: The Financial Network ofAl Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah by Zachary Abuza (DEC 2003). From that we can get a look at the affiliate structure of al Qaeda and how those affiliates assume responsibility for self-funding while al Qaeda uses its wider ranging contacts for its own funding (pp. 7-9):

Al Qaeda’s financial network is very sophisticated and complex, and dates back to the late-1980s. Osama bin Laden set out to establish an organization that would be self-sustaining over time; in part self-reliant, but in part reliant on the ummah—the Muslim community. Beneath bin Laden and his senior lieutenants is the shura majlis, the consultative council. Four specialized committees, military, religious-legal, finance, and media, report to bin Laden and the shura majlis. The finance shura was traditionally the largest of the four, with about 20 members. As Rohan Gunaratna notes, “Al Qaeda’s finance and business committee—comprising professional bankers, accountants, and financiers—manages the group’s funds across four continents.” A Council on Foreign Relations task force notes that:

"Al Qaeda’s financial backbone is built from the foundation of charities, non-governmental organizations, mosques, websites, fund-raisers, intermediaries, facilitators, and banks and other financial institutions that helped finance the mujiheddin throughout the 1980s. This network extended to all corners of the Muslim world."

“The goal of counter-terrorism,” according to Mathew Levitt, “should be to constrict the environment in which terrorists operate,” including “their logistical and financial support networks,” which “denies terrorists the means to travel, communicate, procure equipment and conduct attacks.” This is arguably the most difficult part in the war on terrorism, as terrorist organizations use myriad ways to fund their operations, both legal and illegal, overt and covert, some with paper trails, and some without. It has also never been a priority for law enforcement or counter-terrorism officials. Terrorist financing was always seen as ancillary to counterterrorist operations, but never a priority in its own right.

How does Al Qaeda fund its operations in Southeast Asia? How does its regional affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah support itself? While Jemaah Islamiyah and Al Qaeda are linked, through some joint membership, financial support, and expertise, Jemaah Islamiyah has its own agenda and is not subordinate to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda does not control JI operations, although it has provided financial support and expertise to JI. Malaysian intelligence officials believe that Hambali, the head of JI’s operations and a member of Al Qaeda’s shura, had approximately $500,000 in assets at his disposal for use in operations. A senior Al Qaeda operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who himself had considerable experience in Southeast Asia, was known to be impressed with Hambali’s financial management. According to Mohammed’s interrogation report, Hambali and JI, “Unlike Gulf Arabs, were poor, and therefore take great care in how they spend money for operations.”

JI has wisely and effectively diversified its sources of revenue; relying on no single mechanism. There are eight primary sources of income, both internal and external, though most funds come from external sources. As Ali Ghufron (Mukhlas), the leader of the cell that perpetrated the Bali bombings, said, “Hambali is not known to have any big [local] funding sources.” To that end, Indonesian investigators unequivocally stated that “Jemaah Islamiyah’s jihad operations were funded by Al Qaeda.” The primary sources of funding include:

• Cash brought into the country on person;
• Funds skimmed from Islamic charities;
• Corporate entities (some legitimate business, others front companies for terrorist activities);
• Proceeds from hawala (underground banking) shops;
• Gold and gem smuggling;
• Contributions (zakat and infaq) from JI’s own members and outside supporters;
• Al Qaeda investments and accounts already established in the region, especially in the
Islamic banking system; and
• Proceeds from petty crime, racketeering, extortion, gun-running, and kidnapping.

Al Qaeda, while it does have inroads to State sponsors, does not overly rely upon them and has worked to distribute its income capabilities so that no single strike or set of strikes, even on a global scale, can seriously impact its cash flow base. The Taliban, however, is more highly dependent upon such support and may be feeling a pinch in funds and trying to tap al Qaeda for same. And if Hekmatyar is trying to get in with the new government, he would be unwilling to fund al Qaeda if those funds go to help the Taliban - that indirect support would be traced back to him and ruin chances to get any sort of clemency or inroads to the new government. That is very speculative, but then that is the case with Transnational Terrorism no matter how you deal with it.

Funding does not appear to be an issue with groups like al Qaeda, Hezb-i-Islami or Jemaah Islamiyah as they have worked to get low level, continuous and sustainable sources either through local contacts, like smuggling of heroin, gold and such, criminal work such as kidnap for ransom, and via religious contributions and donations. To clear up that latter one must get the religious institutions and charities to end their funding or put them out of business entirely.

Ray Robison then looks at the Anbar Awakening phenomena and what it is doing:

In the last few months independent war reporting from Iraq has discussed the "anbar awakening." The term refers to the move by Sunni tribal chieftains in the al Anbar province to reassert power by fighting al Qaeda, allying with the Coalition and somewhat with Iraqi government forces. Even the mainstream media has begun to catch up and has reported the new development.

Recent reporting from Pakistan shows a similar but not so friendly development. There is little question that the new power broker of the Taliban, Maulvi Nazir is outwardly anti-U.S. and pro-al Qaeda. Yet at the same time he has adopted a "not in my backyard" stance as his Pashtun forces have killed and run off "Uzbeks" a colloquialism for al Qaeda used to refer to Arab and other foreign fighters (Pashtun and Uzbek ancient rivalries contribute to this designation). It is the age old story of infighting for power but this time it benefits the U.S. by reducing al Qaeda support and capabilities. The Sydney Morning Herald, in a fascinating series of interviews with different elements involved in the saga, quotes a Pakistani Governor about the treatment of "foreigners" - Arab jihadists:

"Virtually all of the tribes are ready to fight the militants. Yesterday the southern tribes held a jurga [council] and decided that any foreigner was to be shot dead and any tribesman supporting the foreigners would be banished from the area or killed too. They have declared jihad and their plan is to annihilate any of the foreigners who refuse to leave."

As a matter of fact, this sounds a lot like what is happening in Iraq. While this certainly does not make the Taliban leader a friend, it is much better to have the enemies killing each other off. It provides solid evidence that al Qaeda is losing a foothold in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The earlier reporting from the region predicted bin Laden might leave the region and now we might have a better idea why.

One of the things I noted last year starting in AUG 2006 or so was that the various weapon's caches found in Iraq had literal tons of guns, explosives and ammunition but no one to guard them. The Riverine Campaign that ended in Tal Afar started to rip up the transportation capabilities of insurgent groups and start the job of isolating them by region. Groups could often get truckloads of supplies in, but getting the people necessary to actually use them was becoming difficult. This 17 AUG 2006 post looks at a couple of weeks of MNF-I reports and in the summation this point sticks out:

4) The entire insurgency is turning into a high-cost, low personnel affair. When you have lots of extra weapons, often 2:1 or 3:1 per individuals captured, and so much damn ammo, what you are seeing is pre-preparation in *hopes* of doing something to get lots more recruits. If any of these groups could get a major foothold in Iraq to do *that* the Nation *would* descend into chaos. And this is at a time when the new Iraqi Army has *proven* itself capable of independent operations and is capable of handling tricky situations on their own. That said that is only their battle-tested groups. Green troops probably are getting rotated through Baghdad and a couple of other hot spots and then rotated *out* to the provinces they control for more normal patrol duties. But with their skill, they are now catching the individuals that are acting like insurgents. After first-hand experience they are seeing things that untrained troops would overlook.

Note that the amount of extra equipment, weapons, ammo and such, goes beyond backups for *everyone* but goes deeper than that to tertiary and more. Equipment is easy to get and put in place, but people who can utilize them are harder to come by. This was a major turning point in sapping the al Qaeda part of the insurgency and its Ba'athist attendants, who may or may not have been using stored funds to keep the supplies coming from Syria. One of the things that any manager learns when scoping out work to be done, be it ditch digging or putting together a robust database or opening a restaurant is this: Equipment is *cheap*, People are *expensive*.

The cost overhead of maintaining a staff are immense: finding them, interviewing them, training them, ensuring they understand the work rules, enforcing said rules, getting productive labor from them, ensuring that they are not doing something to ruin the business or work environment, ensuring that access to food and necessary facilities is provided... The list is endless and all of it is overhead and continuing expense to keep a workforce going. All terrorist operations must face a pared down version of this, but even the average 'walk in and blow yourself to bits' suicide bomber needs to be: found, recruited, trained in the basics of operation, trained in enough COINT work so as not to be caught, taught the basics of security for themselves and the organization and the operation, making sure that the bomber will actually *get* to where they are needed, feeding, care until last day, transportation, entertainment, etc., etc. Those are all non-recoverable costs sunk *in* to someone who will die and the time, money and effort to get those very basic things done cost the organization. Also, as effective personnel are used up, you get less effective newbies. And when skilled managers are lost, like in raids, bombings, etc. the cost to replace them with someone even approaching those skill levels is astronomical.

Buying guns, explosives, det. cord, ammo, cars, and so on is *easy* and fast.

Finding someone to guard them is slow and expensive.

Only at the very highest level of a Nation State does one begin to see anywhere near parity in cost, say with Nuclear Aircraft Carriers with all of their equipment. And that is because the sunk cost of capital is, in and of itself, extraordinary and requires a high and continuous investment in personnel and maintenance to keep it operational. At the very low end, the human costs start to rapidly exceed the cost of equipment value, and 'terrorism on the cheap' is possible only once some of the training and such can be automated or skillfully reduced to its essentials for expendable operatives. For the non-expendable ones, the cost rapidly increases over time so that their skill sets may advance with their position and allow them to become more capable at their work. One of the wonderful ideas from warfare is trying your best to not kill an incompetent general on the other side: he is of more value to you alive and operating poorly with the enemy than he is dead and a somewhat more skilled replacement taking his place. Skilled managers are the main target of counter-terrorism work - you want to get them out of the scene and have someone less skilled and able replace them.

In Anbar and, increasingly, Diyala, and now it appears in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the local tribes have had enough of having their traditional power structure threatened or killed. Especially in Afghanistan that has an ancient warrior custom, the concept of protecting skilled leaders because they have such a high value to the organization because of their skill is paramount. Any outside organization or group that threatens that is then threatening the social cohesion of the tribe, clan or family involved. I go over that sort of background in my Creating an Army document, and it is vital to understand how that tribal culture *undermines* authoritarian Arab Armies. Norvell B. De Atkine goes through that in Why Arab Armies Lose Wars, and it is vital to understand the social structure underlying that outlooks: it is used as a factional basis to pit tribes against each other but not endanger the power structure. By doing so Arab regimes can remain in power by constantly 'stirring the pot' of ethnic, religious, tribal and familial differences so as to prevent any ability to counter the regime. What it does NOT do is make an effective Army, however.

Contrarily, when the social structure of tribalism is upheld by larger government and encouraged, there comes commitment to that government for greater protection against rival tribes and, finally, against outsiders. This is something Afghanistan has had for ages as it is so remote, but this is something that in Iraq has yet to be fully formed. The strength of the Afghan warrior ethos is based upon strong tribal adherance and respect of those tribes by higher government. That is why Communism and the Taliban could only rule by force: they did not respect that basis of social autonomy and so were a threat to it. That authoritarian view at that lowest basis has been in operation for similar ages, but in the Middle East it is used for factional division and in-fighting and is pervasive across the Middle East in nearly every single government there, save Israel. Even Nations that have strong ethnic identities have similar problems with that sub-ethnic stress of tribe and family pulling away from an authoritarian National structure that sees that as a threat.

In my Building the mosaic of Iraq article I look at that via all of the reporting going on from Iraq that is dispersed, diverse and independently funded. Yes, these are bloggers 'paying their own way' and they have offered the most incisive view of Iraqi culture and problems that has ever been done for any similar situation. You cannot get ethnographers, sociologists and anthropologists that can give such good first hand reporting and documentation without turning it into a jargon-based festival of dense linguistic spaghetti. That basic sort of reporting offers us insight by giving the actual folks on the ground their direct say with *no* interpretation by journalists and editorial boards and censors and such. One of the most shocking things to hear was from Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal in this entry, on Fallujah. The town is not only insular, and has been for as long as anyone can remember, but beyond that the very first thing that people wanted rebuilt is highly telling of what has happened to them. It is not the water mains, sewers, electrical grid, streets repaired, schools refurbished, police stations opened up... not even getting shops going.

No they wanted the walls on their family compounds repaired.

I cannot imagine a society that has been so degraded by generations of fighting as to see that as the most basic form of security: the walls around the family compound. There is very little in Western tradition that has ever gotten that bad over time as to require that, although the modern 'gated communities' come pretty close to it. But even those are not actual barriers between families. That is not just 'bunker mentality' nor 'siege mentality'. That is 'the world is out to kill us and we will go down fighting' mentality. I dare say that no one in the Dept of State or CIA or even in DoD prior to getting to Fallujah even had something like that in their mental space for how bad a society can *get*. In Fallujah the Iraqi Army was trusted *more*, even with them being mostly Shia, than anyone the next town over. Yes, absolute strangers with a different religious background and unassociated with anything local could gain more trust by just trying to work with people there than their very own neighbors!

So the Anbar Awakening concept is one that has government backing and is now, from what I have read, heading towards its own autonomous political organization that has this strange idea that technocrats are needed to run things and keep the damned religion out of it. Yes, secular government so that religious minorities will not be oppressed! Damned funny how that crops up from time to time in human history.

And when the provincial elections happen in Iraq, a number of provinces will have starkly different ruling organizations than that of the National Parties. And as the provinces will be getting their equal share, via population, of the oil profits, they will have significant power. There is a word for this, when local governments can wield power for their more regional areas and do it better than National government: Federalism. Strange how that crops up, too. Bill Roggio has been doing excellent work on the Iraq Rising parties in Anbar, Diyala, Salahadin and Babil. Here is a bit from Anbar Rising on 11 MAY 2007:

Col Koenig expects the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Anbar Awakening will be rival political parties. But while the rhetoric between the rival parties may be heated at times, the differences have not led to political violence. The two parties are well aware of the dangers of infighting, and are cooperating in the security sphere.

"We don't want to be like the Palestinians," Col Koenig said is a common refrain among member of both parties, in reference to the fighting between the rival Fatah and Hamas groups in Gaza and the West Bank. "[The Awakening and Iraqi Islamic Party] are like two feuding brothers who ultimately want what's best for their family, and unite against outside attacks," referring to fighting al Qaeda.

A provincial meeting

The first full provincial council meeting was held on May 3. Of the 49 members on council, 40 were in attendance for the 8 hour meeting. The majority of the provincial council is made up of technocrats - lawyers, judges, engineers and educators. Most are aligned with the Iraqi Islamic Party, however an American military intelligence source informed us eight members on the council affiliated with the Iraqi Islamic Party have defected to Sattar's Awakening party. Tribal sheikhs are also on the council, and the Anbar Awakening has been allotted eight seats.

Last week's provincial council, which Sheikh Sattar attended, is viewed as a great success. "Up until one month ago, the focus of government meetings was on security and fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and extremists," said Col Koenig. "Now the council is entering a transition phase, from fighting to governing." The security situation was considered stable enough in most of Anbar the focus of the May 3 meeting was on governance and reconstruction.

As security situation is improving, representative have left hiding or self imposed exile, and are now claiming government funding and performing their functions as government employees. The economic situation is "picking up speed like a flywheel gaining momentum... as security improves," said Col Koenig.

Local autonomy that is at odds with religious parties is taking rood in Iraq and working hard to kill off insurgents and convince neighbors that they have to stop supporting them. That is the Patreaus strategy to get things calm enoug so that other, infamous, 80% can START.

Unfortunately this, from the point of view of purely local organizations, is not something I would call a 'strategy' with a pointed aim to actually get the tribes fighting against al Qaeda.

What it *is* an outgrowth of is that of the Citizen Soldiers of the United States sharing their views on what makes democracy work and why federalism is a good thing for a Nation. It is also that strange view that all people are created equal and should have the right to associate with each other as they like without harming other groups within society. That is an outgrowth of this lovely idea of religious tolerance. It was started in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. What is seen in Anbar, Diyala and Afghanistan is the outlook towards local autonomy through localized democracy, even if it IS through traditional clan arrangements: who are we to say that our version in the United States fits all conditions at all times for all peoples?

That thing being offered is a perspective and outlook upon individuals, what it means to partake in society and why it is important to have a government that *protects* those things. That tends to come and go in Afghanistan, but the local democratic version of councils and such have been around for generations. The Taliban and preceding civil war and Soviet occupation was an interruption of that, not an ending of it. In Iraq they have had very little long term experience with localized self-rule that was *not* dictated by a government. In just a handful of years they are making a jump from tyrannized tribes being played against each other to coalescing into localized self-rule and government. In some places like Fallujah this may be the first time in living memory that has happened, and, if the written accounts are correct, this may be the first time *ever* there.

It is this thing known as 'enlightened self-interest' and 'local government being respected' that is the threat to authoritarian concepts around the world, be they Communist, Fascist or Islamic. The self-autonomous Nation State that affords religious freedom within its borders and rules itself with any sort of reciprocity internally to its People is something that is known as the advance of liberty and freedom. And there is *always* a high price to pay to create that and sustain it.

That Tree of Liberty is, indeed, sustained by the blood of tyrants and patriots.

I can't really call it an obvious strategy... but it has been going on since 1776. It doesn't always succeed the first time and its enemies are legion. And fighting against those enemies is the job of the folks at that 5-sided building in Arlington. And whenever our Citizen Soldiers arrive someplace they do not forget their Citizenship and what it takes to safeguard it. That is why this comes from there, although it is representative of America, only our Citizen Soldiers can carry that light with them to other lands.

It is too bad our political class no longer sustains that light of liberty wherever we go.

Liberty will end because of that if not addressed, and our own will be the hardest hit.

"Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission."
- Andrew Jackson

[08 JUN 2007] Just a quick post-script - Do notice that I do not see any high level friction between al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. From that the problems are not systemic nor endemic for al Qaeda, but very localized. Problems with a key contact and his organization in Pakistan and definite problems with sustainment of operations in Anbar and tough going in the other Awakening Provinces. Those problems, especially in Iraq, may prove to me a bit too much to overcome, and the movement to use new recruits in Lebanon is actually a *good* sign that al Qaeda is realizing that Iraq is eating up their seed-funds and organization multiple times and demonstrates no weakness to it. I don't think the expected the Lebanese Army to go after their new organization structure in Lebanon, either.

So there is long-range structural weakness in al Qaeda by lack of having good middle management and even upper management. The question is where will they shift training operations to? My guess is they are trying Sudan and a few other areas. They are, however, finding their strong-arm tactics are winning enemies, quickly. I would not be surprised to see a reversion to Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria and, perhaps, even Latin America to get those areas out of the 'recruitment for operations' and into the 'recruitment for running al Qaeda'. And that does need to be watched for... and somehow a wedge driven between al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood to end a stream of interim managers. That isn't happening, to-date, and is buying vital time for al Qaeda to re-organize.