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John Esposito: In praise of Obama and dhimmitude

Profundity of thought?

The overarching theme of this wonderful piece of literary dhimmitude is the great need for Americans to "respect" Islam and exhibit "humility" towards Muslims. The logic is that these two approaches will ameliorate "radicalism" in the Muslim world. That the reverse appears to be true; that those two traits in and of themselves -- "respect" and "humility" -- often exacerbate radicalism and are seen as signs of weakness, is of no interest to the professor.

"Obama reaches out: rebuilding relations with the Muslim world," by John L. Esposito for Today's Zaman, February 9:

President Barack Obama has moved quickly to follow up on his inaugural statement: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." He appointed and sent his special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to the region on an eight-day trip.

Then, on Jan. 28, Obama, on Al Arabiya, the prominent Arab satellite TV network, addressed the Arab and Muslim worlds in his first televised interview from the White House.

For many Muslims, eight years of the Bush administration's war against global terrorism has looked more like the use of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and then the promotion of democracy to legitimate a neo-colonial design to redraw the political map of the Muslim world. Conscious of the popular perception and fear that the US has been fighting a war against Islam and Muslims, President Obama sought to counter soaring anti-Americanism and reassure Muslims that "the Americans are not your enemy." Signaling a shift from the global perception of US arrogance and interventionism, Obama declared that, while "we sometimes make mistakes," America is not a colonial power and expressed his hope for a restoration of "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Now one knows why Iran feels smugly entitled to an(other) apology from the US: it sees that they are being issued uncritically. Also, why think that the "respect and partnership" the US had with the Muslim world 20-30 years ago disappeared because the US has made "mistakes"? Sounds more reasonable to believe that "respect and partnership" went the way of the dodo 20-30 years ago precisely because radical Islam, with all its disdain for infidels, began spreading like wildfire in the Islamic world right around then (e.g., Iran's Islamic revolution).

Obama's message did strike many of the right chords. He spoke directly to the peoples of the Muslim world, not to its rulers. He communicated a sense of respect, humility and, at the same time, confidence and conviction. His message was one that emphasized the importance of mutual understanding and respect for the peoples of the Muslim world, declaring: "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people. … My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy." Obama also emphasized a new readiness to listen rather than to dictate.

No quarrel here: To be sure, "humility" (i.e., dhimmitude) is a trait Muslims expect from infidels; moreover, the Islamic world is certainly "filled with extraordinary people."

Gallup World Poll findings in 2007 from more than 35 countries, extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia, underscore the importance of Obama addressing this sense of powerlessness, humiliation and lack of respect. (See, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think").

A book that was also heavily criticized in reviews for distorting and misrepresenting data.

When asked in an open-ended question what the West could do to improve relations, the most frequent response was respect Islam and Muslims, not consider them inferior. Obama clearly spoke to this concern both in his inaugural speech and on Al Arabiya: "In all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith -- and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers -- regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams."

Obama's message of self-criticism and restraint, diplomacy and peace and partnership over unilateralism resonates with the vast majority of Muslims who, like Americans, want peace, not war, security not instability and terrorism, as well as leadership based on partnership not unilateralism. But they also want to see a respect that is reflected in even-handedness and justice.

The president is correct in stating, "We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful." However, in a post-Gaza Middle East, the US cannot signal a new approach to Middle East foreign policy that has credibility if, while rightly reinforcing America's commitment to Israel and condemning terrorist attacks, Obama says nothing critical about Israel's war in Gaza and its use of violence and terror. Israel did not simply attack terrorists and destroy their infrastructure, but Gaza's elected government and its society. The unrestrained violence and terror unleashed on the people of Gaza, the destruction of much of Gaza's infrastructure and institutions (homes, neighborhoods, universities, schools, mosques, police stations and hospitals), and the disproportionate loss of civilian life and casualties (1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians versus 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians) threatens to radicalize a generation of Palestinians.

Obama characterized his approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and his advice to Mitchell by saying: "So let's listen. He's going to be speaking to all the major parties involved." This "new" policy will require that the US work with all the players, Hamas, the Palestinian National Authority and Israel. Whatever it may think of Hamas, a reality-based, pragmatic American foreign policy must remember and respect the fact that the people of Palestine (in the West Bank as well as Gaza) made their choice in democratic elections in 2006, electing a Hamas-led government. The Muslim world remembers that subsequently the US and Israel chose to boycott and blockade Gaza in an effort to undermine and overthrow the democratically elected government.

Esposito has it backwards. That the Palestinians did elect Hamas, if anything, exonerates all US/Israeli actions: after all, the people, freely and willingly, chose a radical Islamist organization, one that preaches nothing but death and destruction to Israel. And this is supposed to make Israel and the US "respect" Palestinians and better cooperate with them? That's the price of democracy: the leaders reflect the people.

As the Gallup World Poll found, both the mainstream Muslim majority and a minority of potential extremists want better relations with the West -- coexistence, not conflict. Most admire America's basic principles and values of self-determination, freedoms, democracy and human rights. At the same time, Obama and the US face a Muslim world in which many have deep fears and grievances, fear of Western intervention, invasion and domination, and the belief that the West, in particular the US, uses a double standard in its promotion of democracy and human rights.

While many Muslims are critical of the policies and actions of the US, Israel and their own governments, the wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, authoritarian regimes, lack of freedoms and human rights, the majority also reject extremism and terrorism as a response. To restore America's global image, moral stature and leadership and further weaken the extremists, the Obama administration must listen to -- not necessarily agree with -- and not dictate to but also seek to work at nongovernmental levels with mainstream Muslim organizations and NGOs in addressing these concerns and injustices.

Al Qaeda's paramilitary 'Shadow Army'

(Compiler's note: Yes, a must read article here.)

By Bill Roggio

Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations that were devastated during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestablished the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

"The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban's consolidation of power in Pakistan's tribal areas an in the Northwest Frontier Province," a senior intelligence official said. "They are also behind the Taliban's successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul."

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of its forces into the Shadow Army, "especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network," a senior US military intelligence official said. "It is considered a status symbol" for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban is the Pakistani Taliban movement led by Baitullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan leader who has defeated Pakistani Army forces in conventional battles. The Haqqani Network straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border and have been behind some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan.

The Shadow Army's effectiveness has placed the group in the cross hairs of the covert US air campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas. In October 2008, the US killed Khalid Habib al Shami, the leader of the Shadow Army, in a strike on a compound in North Waziristan.

A look at the Shadow Army

The presence of the Shadow Army has been evident for some time as there are numerous reports of joint operations between the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, and other terror groups. In January 2008, The Long War Journal noted the various terror groups were cycling through the numerous camps in the tribal areas and have organized under military structure.

While the Shadow Army has been active, there has been little visual evidence of its existence until now. The Long War Journal has obtained a photograph of a unit from the Shadow Army operating in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled district of Swat.

The photograph was taken some time in January of this year. It shows what appears to be either a reinforced squad or two squads of foot soldiers. Fourteen fighters are in view, and others appear to be in the far background. All of the fighters are wearing masks, new clothes, sneakers, and web gear. One fighters is wearing a Camelbak. The weapons are uniform; six AK-47s and one RPG are in view.

A look at the clothing of the fighters gives a good indication of the identity of the fighters, an expert on al Qaeda told The Long War Journal. The length of the pants of pictured fighters are described as being at "al Qaeda height" - meaning only al Qaeda and allied "Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadis" wear their pant legs this high.

"The extremists who follow al Qaeda's religious beliefs think that pants must be at least six inches above the ground because there's a hadith [a saying of the Prophet Mohammed] that says clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and vanity," the expert said. "This, along with the new dyeing of men's beards red or yellow is a sure sign of al Qaeda-ization."

The type of masks worn and the tennis shoes are also strong indicators that these fighters "are non-Afghan fighters," an expert on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan said. "Those types of masks I have seen, and they are always on the Pakistani side of the border," the expert said. "The tennis shoes and socks are a big indicator that they are non-Afghan fighters, probably Pakistanis or Arab/Central Asian fighters."

Military Organization of the Shadow Army

The Shadow Army is organized under a military structure, a US military intelligence officer familiar with the situation in northwestern Pakistan informed The Long War Journal. There are units analogous to battalion, brigade, and division formations found in Western armies.

The military organization has a clear-cut command structure with established ranks. A senior al Qaeda military leader is placed in command of the Shadow Army, while experienced officers are put in command of the brigades and subordinate battalions and companies.

The re-formed Brigade 055 is but one of an estimated three to four brigades in the Shadow Army. Several other Arab brigades have been formed, some consisting of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards as well as Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, North Africans, and others.

During the rein of the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, the 055 Brigade served as "the shock troops of the Taliban and functioned as an integral part of the latter's military apparatus," al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote in Inside al Qaeda. At its peak in 2001, the 055 Brigade had an estimated 2,000 soldiers and officers in the ranks. The brigade comprised of Arabs, Central Asians, South Asians, as well as Chechens, Bosnians, and Uighurs from Western China.

The 055 Brigade has "completely reformed and surpassing pre-2001 standards," an official said. The other brigades are also considered well trained.

One official said the mixing of the various Taliban and al Qaeda units has made distinctions between the groups somewhat meaningless.

"The line between the Taliban and al Qaeda is increasingly blurred, especially from a command and control perspective," the official said. "Are Faqir Mohammed, Baitullah Mehsud, Hakeemullah Mehsud, Ilyas Kashmiri, Siraj Haqqani, and all the rest 'al Qaeda?,'" the official asked, listing senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan that operate closely with al Qaeda. "Probably not in the sense that they maintain their own independent organizations, but the alliance is essentially indistinguishable at this point except at a very abstract level."

The Taliban have begun an ideological conversion to Wahhabism, the radical form of Sunni Islam practiced by al Qaeda. "The radicalization of the Taliban and their conversion away from Deobandism to Wahhabism under Sheikh Issa al Masri and other al Qaeda leaders is a clear sign of the al Qaeda's preeminence," the official noted. Sheikh Issa is the spiritual adviser for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al Zawahiri's organization that merged into al Qaeda, and the leader of al Jihad fi Waziristan, an al Qaeda branch in North Waziristan.

The establishment of the joint Taliban and al Qaeda military formations under the overall command of the Shadow Army has been facilitated by the proliferation of terror training camps in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province.

In the summer of 2008, senior US intelligence officials told The Long War Journal that more than 150 camps and more than 400 support locations were in operation in Northwestern Pakistan. Most of the camps are considered "transient" in nature, an official said. Trainers and recruits may gather in villages and meet to conduct training in the vast mountains and valleys in Pakistan's northwest. As of last summer, an estimated 25 to 40 of the camps were considered permanent.

These camps have various functions, and not all of them are used to train the Shadow Army. Some of the camps are used to indoctrinate and train suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and the West. Some of the camps are devoted to training the various Kashmiri terror groups who have flocked to the tribal areas and are also integrating with the terror alliance. One of these camps serves as a training ground for the Black Guard, the elite bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other senior al Qaeda leaders.

An effective fighting force

The Shadow Army has distinguished itself during multiple battles over the past several years, particularly in Pakistan's tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province. Taliban forces under the command of Baitullah Mehsud defeated the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan during fighting in 2005-2006, and again fended off the Pakistani Army in 2008 after fighting pitched battles and overrunning a series of forts.

In Swat, the Pakistani military was twice defeated by forces under the command of Mullah Fazlullah during 2007 and 2008. Earlier this year, the military has launched its third attempt to secure Swat.

In Bajaur, the hidden hand of the Shadow Army was seen in multiple reports from the region. Taliban forces dug a series of sophisticated trench and tunnel networks as well as bunkers and pillboxes. The Pakistani military took more than a month to clear a six-mile stretch of road in the Loisam region. Pakistani military officials also said the Taliban "have good weaponry and a better communication system (than ours)."

"Even the sniper rifles they use are better than some of ours," the Pakistani official told Dawn "Their tactics are mind-boggling and they have defenses that would take us days to build. It does not look as though we are fighting a rag-tag militia; they are fighting like an organized force."

Taliban forces have also conducted battalion-sized operations in Hangu. In July 2008, a Taliban unit laid siege to a police station and a fort in Hangu. The fort was abandoned by the Frontier Corps and the Taliban destroyed it.

The Shadow Army has had some recent successes in Afghanistan over the past year. In July 2008, the unit made up of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizb-e-Islami joined forces conducted a complex assault on a US outpost in Wanat in Nuristan province. The attack was repelled after the force nearly overran the base. Nine US soldiers were killed in the assault, the largest loss by US forces in a single engagement in Afghanistan to date.

Another engagement in the Surobi region in Kabul province was likely the work of the Shadow Army. A force ambushed a French military convoy in a valley just outside of the capital and pinned down the unit for hours. Ten French soldiers were killed, and the Taliban was able to seize French weapons abandoned on the battlefield.

The effectiveness of the Shadow Army can be seen in a video taken by an Al Jazeera reporter during an operation in Loisam in the Bajaur tribal agency in the fall of 2008 [see video below]. The Taliban forces drive off a battalion-sized assault from regular Pakistani Army troops that is supported by at least a platoon of tanks. The Pakistani tanks are seen racing away from the fighting, and the Pakistani infantry moving in behind them does the same after taking fire. The reporter describes the Pakistani tank commander as "quite shaken." The tank commander calls for airstrikes to take out the Taliban positions, but the infantry and tanks go into full retreat and returns to base after the Taliban counterattacks.

The Pakistani unit involved in the fighting was the 63rd Battalion of the Frontier Force Regiment. This is a regular Army unit, not part of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. The 63rd was deployed to Somalia during the peacekeeping mission in the 1990s. More than 8,000 Pakistan troops were deployed in the Loisam region to clear the Taliban and al Qaeda forces, but only took the village after leveling the town.

The Pakistani retreat sent a chill up the spine of a US Army officer who was shown the video. "Clearly the Pakistani forces lack discipline and morale, but even with these problems the combined armor and infantry attack, backed by air support, should have gone better," the officer said.

"Those troops have obviously met stiff resistance," the Army officer continued. "You just watched a full battalion, supported by tanks, break contact after an attack by a supposedly undisciplined, 'rag-tag' force of Taliban fighters. For the Taliban to drive off that unit, it has to be organized, disciplined, well-armed, and competent."

A Pakistani battalion retreats from a Taliban counterattack. Video from Al Jazeera English.

US to sell plane parts to state sponsor of terror Syria

(Compiler's note: And the purpose of this is to .....?)

by Robert Spencer

"The Obama administration has been more lax in its approach to countries which support terrorism."

Syria has been listed by the State Department as among the State Sponsors of Terrorism since December 29, 1979.

"US Will Sell Syria Plane Parts" from Israel National News, February 8 (thanks to Pamela):

(IsraelNN.com) A Syrian paper reported Sunday that the U.S. Department of Commerce agreed to sell plane parts to Syria. The parts will be used to repair two Boeing 747s which are currently out of use in the country.

Former U.S. President Bush had forbid U.S. commerce with Syria expect for food and medicines. The Obama administration has been more lax in its approach to countries which support terrorism.