Big Think

Paul Cruickshank: Reducing tensions between India and Pakistan is the key to peace

The terrorists who attacked Mumbai sought to inflame the region. Obama's administration must not allow them to succeedAlthough the investigation into last week's attacks in Mumbai is at an early stage, the first indications are that it was carried out by Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), a Kashmiri militant group, with close organisational ties to al-Qaida. According to Indian authorities, a captured Pakistani terrorist has confessed that he was tasked by the Kashmiri terrorist outfit to launch the attacks.The confession did not take terrorism experts by surprise. Last week's suicidal assault on Mumbai – which was both discriminate and wildly indiscriminate, as if the trigger-happy terrorists imagined themselves in some grisly video game where bonus points were awarded for killing Americans, Britons and Israelis – bore both striking similarity to the "fedayeen" operations that LeT has regularly carried out against Indian troops in Kashmir, and the hallmark of a group strongly affiliated with al-Qaida. Furthermore, the terrorists' sophistication, their forward planning, apparent use of booby traps and deadly effectiveness under fire, means they almost certainly received rigorous training from a well-established Jihadist group. Even without the confession supplied to Indian authorities, suspicions would be falling on Lashkar e Taiba. Of all Pakistani militant groups, LeT has long had the most intensive training programme for would-be fighters. And unlike some other groups who mostly recruit from madrasas, LeT has also concentrated its recruitment drive on university-educated individuals that it can train to be skilled operatives. (It is useful here to point out that, according to early reports, the captured terrorist speaks good English).If the attack was launched by LeT, then its immediate goal was almost certainly to torpedo the possibility of a settlement between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The prospects for such a deal had improved after the election of a civilian government in Pakistan, less hawkish on the Kashmir issue than Pakistan's military brass. In the past several months Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has signalled his determination to improve relations between the two neighbours. It has not escaped the notice of counter-terrorism experts that the two most significant terrorist attacks in India in recent years, both attributed to the LeT, also followed a period of rapprochement between Islamabad and Delhi over Kashmir. Having lost thousands of "martyrs" fighting Indian troops, any deal over Kashmir would be an anathema to Kashmiri militants.In July 2001 Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf sat down in Agra, India, with then Indian prime minister Bihari Vajpayee for a historic peace summit, which considerably thawed tensions over Kashmir, while not producing an immediate breakthrough. But in December, the prospects of a deal over Kashmir were in deep freeze after Pakistani terrorists launched an armed raid on India's parliament, which India interpreted as an act of war by Pakistan's military establishment, a longtime sponsor of Lashkar e Taiba. That winter India mobilised hundreds of thousands of troops and sent them to the Pakistani border. Pakistan responded in kind, and in the spring of 2002 the two nuclear powers came to the verge of a full-scale war.Under intense diplomatic pressure from Washington and London, India and Pakistan pulled back from the brink. In January 2004 talks were once more initiated over Kashmir. But peace efforts were yet again set back by a coordinated terrorist bomb attack on Mumbai's commuter rail system in July 2006, which killed around 200 people.There should be no higher priority for the incoming Obama administration than preventing tensions from again rising between India and Pakistan. That will not be easy. With a general election approaching, India's Congress party is under intense pressure to deal decisively with the terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan. Indian leaders may feel, with some justification, that the United States is not the only power with the right to launch unilateral military strikes against terrorists in Pakistan. President-elect Obama, who has articulated a hawkish stance on strikes in Pakistan, limited himself on Monday to stating that as a sovereign nation, India had the right to self-defence.The stakes in south Asia are very high, and not only because of the all-too imaginable consequences of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Already, Pakistani officials have vowed to redeploy troops fighting al-Qaida and affiliated militant groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) of northwestern Pakistan, if India takes retaliatory measures. Such a redeployment threat is credible – the Pakistani officer corps has a very lukewarm attitude towards fighting insurgents within Pakistan – and should also cause alarm. One of the reasons why al-Qaida was able to find safe haven in northwestern Pakistan after the rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan was that most of Pakistan's military resources were concentrated near the Indian border during the first half of 2002. The removal of Pakistani military pressure from the tribal areas would allow al-Qaida to boost its operational capabilities considerably in the area, significantly threatening the national security of many western states. Senior American counter-terrorism sources told Dateline NBC in September that it was in the Fata that al-Qaida trained British operatives to set off bombs on seven transatlantic airliners in the summer of 2006, an attack which, had it been successful, would have produced large loss of life and severe worldwide reverberations. If LeT elements did indeed launch the Mumbai attacks, part of its goal undoubtedly would have been to force a redirection of the Pakistani military from counter-insurgency operations against LeT's allies in the tribal areas back towards confronting India.Despite – or perhaps because of – the risks of nuclear conflagration, the LeT leadership does not find the prospect of war with India unappealing. LeT leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed has said his aim is the "liberation" of all Indian Muslims. LeT leaders may also have calculated that armed conflict between the two states would strengthen the power of hardliners in Pakistan, themselves included.Preventing tensions from escalating between India and Pakistan must only be the first step in a comprehensive South Asia strategy for the incoming Obama administration. Another crisis will soon erupt unless US policymakers devote significant effort to restructuring the geopolitical relationship between Pakistan and India in the medium term. Key here is Kashmir, a conflict hitherto relatively neglected by Washington. The Obama administration should broker further talks about the status of the region; confidence can be built if Pakistan takes verifiable steps to close down training facilities on its territory and if India takes a less heavy-handed approach towards opponents of its rule south of the Line of Control. Additionally, it should not be lost on the Obama administration that several terrorist plots directed against the United States in recent years have had strong Kashmiri dynamics.Ultimately, however, the relationship between Pakistan and India cannot be improved unless the relationship between the Pakistani military and Pakistani state is also restructured. The Pakistani military high command has, with some exceptions, for too long been obsessed with the stand-off with India, a confrontation which has had the not-unpleasant side effect of entrenching their own power within the Pakistani state. Accordingly, the ISI has been willing to enter into a Faustian bargain with extremist militant groups. At little expense, not only have these groups tied down hundreds of thousands of Indian troops in Kashmir, but they have also helped provide Pakistan "strategic depth" in Afghanistan. Over the next four years, the Obama administration should dedicate significant resources to strengthening civilian government in Pakistan, while also putting pressure on the Pakistani military to rein in the activities of militant groups. The Pakistani military may find that more difficult than before. Kashmiri militant groups such as Lashkar e Taiba have increasingly "gone rogue" after former President Musharraf threw in his lot in with the Americans after 9/11, and now increasingly operate outside the direct control of the country's intelligence services. While it is conceivable that some former officers of the ISI encouraged LeT to strike Mumbai last week, the attacks are unlikely to have been directly sanctioned by the ISI.But steps can nevertheless be taken to crack down on these militant groups' activities within Pakistan. Lashkar e Taiba, for example, continues to operate a large network of fundraising offices and recruiting branches across Pakistan. Western nations should help the Pakistani state fund social welfare programs across the country – just like Hizbullah in Lebanon, a significant part of Lashkar e Taiba's popularity derives from it providing hospitals and schools to areas that have none. Yesterday India, rather than announcing a mobilisation of troops, requested Pakistan hand over 20 militant leaders suspected of having previously orchestrated attacks in India, including Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the leader of LeT. If India can produce persuasive evidence that these suspects have been engaged in international terrorism, the United States and Britain should put great pressure on Pakistani authorities to give up at least some of these leaders, even if it causes some internal strife. The alternative will be a new cycle of escalated tension with India. Pakistan has outsourced its wars for a decade and a half to Islamist extremists; it cannot afford to likewise outsource its future.Paul Cruickshank is the author of Al Qaeda: the current threat, (Pocket Issue 2008)Mumbai terror attacksGlobal terrorismKashmirIndiaPakistanAl-QaidaUnited StatesUS foreign policyForeign policyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

December 3, 2008, 6:00 AM

Paul Cruickshank: Established terrorist groups are likely to have been behind the Mumbai attacks

After the violence in Mumbai, the search is on for the militant groups capable of carrying out such a well-organised attackIndia's commercial and cultural capital has been witnessing a terrorist attack whose ambition and scope has led seasoned observers to call it "India's 9/11". But just who was responsible? Shortly after the attacks started, several Indian newspapers reported receiving messages from an unknown group calling itself "Deccan Mujahedeen" and claiming responsibility for the attacks. Could this unknown group be responsible? The answer is almost certainly no. The nature of the attack - something akin to scores of heavily armed terrorists storming the Waldorf Astoria and Ritz Cartlon in New York city and then going on a shooting rampage through Times Square and the Upper East side - suggests months of painstaking logistical and operational planning. Only an established militant group would have had the ability to carry out such an attack. The Deccan Mujahedeen is not such a group.If capability and track record are anything to go by, it is likely that the attack was either carried out by Indian Mujahedeen, an indigenous Indian militant group or a Kashmiri militant group with ties to al-Qaida such as Lashkar e Toiba, or some combination of the two. Indian Mujahedeen first emerged as a terrorist threat in India exactly a year ago when it launched attacks in the north of India. Since then it has carried out about a half dozen attacks across the country, most recently launching an attack on a market place in New Delhi in September. Its signature tactic has been to set off multiple explosive devices simultaneously in crowded public spaces such as market places and buses. Hundreds have died in these attacks. Indian Mujahedeen has not to date carried out the sort of brazen armed attack seen in Mumbai in the last days. But it does appear to have had some access in the past to RDX, a military high explosive, which has reportedly now been discovered in Mumbai. On September 23 Mumbai police arrested five suspected Indian Mujahideen leaders in the Mumbai area and found a quantity of RDX in their possession. Also found in their possession was a large amount of ammunition, including ammonium nitrate rods, detonators and sub machine guns. Indian security services believe that Indian Mujahedeen is an offshoot of the Student Islamic Movement of India (Simi), a radical militant Islamist organization founded thirty years ago, whose stated aim is to create an Islamic state in India. Although Indian Mujahedeen is "home-grown," Indian authorities suspect that the group has close ties to militant outfits in Pakistan, and receives funding from them.Indigenous Indian Islamist militant groups like Simi have long been motivated by domestic grievances, particularly the belief that India's Muslim minority is persecuted by the country's Hindu majority. These grievances appear to be linked to a number of attacks launched by the group Indian Mujahedeen in the last year. For example, after carrying out an attack in Ahmadabad in Gujarat province in July 2008, Indian Mujahedeen claimed that the attack had been launched to avenge a wave of Hindu violence against Muslims in Gujarat province in 2002. But Indian Mujahedeen also appears to have bought into Bin Laden's "Global Jihad". After launching attacks in Jaipur in May 2008 the group released a statement promising more attacks unless India decoupled itself from its strategic alliance with the United States. Such fusing of local grievances with a concept of wider global Jihad within a fringe of the world's largest Islamic community is a development which should cause large concern in New Delhi and Washington DC, even if the vast majority of India's Muslims continue to be remarkably resistant to al-Qaida's ideology. Symptomatic of al-Qaida's creeping popularity amongst Indian Muslims is the fact that at least one Indian Muslim has been implicated in an attack launched on Glasgow airport in the UK in the summer of 2007.Already, Indian authorities are talking about "outside actors" being responsible for the plot, implying they believe this may have been the work of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan. If the plot is traced back to Pakistan, it would certainly be less embarrasing to Indian authorities, but it is likely to signicantly raise tension with its nuclear neighbour. If a Kashmiri militant group was involved in the attack on Mumbai attacks the most likely group responsible is Lashkar e Toiba (LeT) which has track record of launching attacks on high profile targets in India.Lashkar e Toiba emerged as militant force in Kashmir after the 1980s Afghan war, a conflict in which many of its current leaders participated. After the end of the Afghan Jihad, LeT's leadership decided to transfer their energies from fighting Soviets in Afghanistan towards fighting Indian troops in Kashmir. To this end they recruited hundreds of "fedayeen" fighters, from across Pakistan, which they trained in northwestern Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir, and then sent them into battle against Indian troops in Indian-controlled Kashmir. LeT's fedayeen fighters have been distinguished by their desire to die in the course of launching daring "suicidal" attacks so that they could attain martyrdom and heavenly reward. It has not escaped the notice of Western counter-terrorism officials that the armed youths laying carnage to Mumbai have the same fight-to-the-death approach that Lashkar e Toiba pioneered in Kashmir.Lashkar e Toiba operatives are suspected by Indian authorities of playing a role in an attempt to storm the Indian parliament in December 2001 and of launching several attacks in Mumbai in the last several years, including a coordinated bomb attack on Mumbai's commuter rail service in July 2006 that killed around 200. The recent warming up of relations between India and Pakistan following the election of a democratic government in Pakistan may have provided a motive for LeT to again launch attacks. Lashkar e Toiba is virulently opposed to any deal being cut over Kashmir to bring to peace to the troubled region. It does not want a non Muslim power to control any part of Kashmir. There are other Kashmiri groups that could have carried out the Mumbai attacks. Jaish e Mohammed (JeM) has also launched attacks on Indian interests in the past, notably hijacking an Indian airliner in Nepal and diverting it to Kandahar in Taliban-run Afghanistan in December 1999. JeM is also suspected by Indian authorities of cooperating with LeT to storm the Indian Parliament in 2001. Like most other Kashmiri militant groups, JeM has close ties to al-Qaida. Rachid Rauf, the British al-Qaida operative suspected of orchestrating a plot to bring down seven transatlantic airliners in 2006, who was killed in a Predator strike several days ago, had very close ties to the group. It is quite possible, and even likely, that the Mumbai attacks were the result of a joint operation between a Kashmiri group and indigenous Indian militants. According to eyewitness accounts some of the attackers spoke Hindi, which is not a language widely spoken in Pakistan. Conversely Indian authorities have said that at least one of the fighters was a Pakistani national and that another attacker made references to Kashmir when he placed a phone call to make demands. All such claims should be treated with caution, but if there was cooperation between Indian and Pakistani militants, it would not be unprecedented. Indian security services suspect that the July 2006 Mumbai commuter train bombings may have been a joint effort between Indian Mujahedeen and LeT. Inevitably questions are being asked about the role of al-Qaida in this attack. Clearly the targeting and killing of British, American and Jewish individuals, fit into its concept of "Global Jihad". At the very least this seems, therefore, to have been an "al-Qaeda inspired" attack. The exact leadership ties between Indian Mujahedeen and al-Qaida are unclear, but the Indian militant group is thought to send recruits to Pakistan for training, al-Qaida's operations hub in South Asia.The ties between Kashmiri groups and al-Qaida are clearer and stronger. Many of the top leaders of LeT and JeM fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Since 2002, when LeT and JeM were banned by the Pakistani authorities, their ties to al-Qaida have strengthened significantly. The arrival of US troops in Afghanistan, the war on terrorism alliance between former Pakistani president Musharraf and the US's President Bush, fears that former President Musharraf would "sell out" Kashmir at the bidding of his friends in Washington, and anger kicked up by the war in Iraq, all pushed Kashmiri militant groups closer to Bin Laden's worldview. After the US election, Ayman al Zawahiri called on Mujahedeen around the world to continue to inflict pain on Americans and their allies. His call appears to have been answered.Paul Cruickshank is the author of Al Qaeda: the Current ThreatMumbai terror attacksGlobal terrorismAl-QaidaIndiaPakistanUS foreign policyUnited StatesKashmirOsama bin Ladenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

November 28, 2008, 5:30 PM

Paul Cruickshank: Barack Obama won't reverse George Bush's approach to fighting terrorism

Barack Obama's vow to hunt Osama bin Laden suggests he won't fully reverse George Bush's approach to fighting terrorismOn Monday, the New York Times revealed that in the spring of 2004, Donald Rumsfeld, then the US secretary of defence, signed a secret order providing the US military with a mandate and fast-track approvals mechanism to launch raids against al-Qaida terrorists in countries outside the "conflict zones" of Iraq and Afghanistan. The order, it was reported, identified more than a dozen countries where al-Qaida operatives were present, including Syria, Yemen, Somalia and two close allies in the "war on terrorism", Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The disclosures by senior American officials came in the wake of two controversial raids by US special forces in South Waziristan in Pakistan in September and in Syria in October, which reportedly targeted al-Qaida-linked militants orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively. Both the Pakistani and Syrian governments condemned the raids, stated that innocents had been killed, and accused the US of violating the UN charter. What should be made of the revelations? Some Bush critics will no doubt argue that the administration that brought you extraordinary rendition, secret CIA detention and enhanced interrogation techniques has once again, in its final days, been unmasked as pursuing a clandestine programme that not only flouts international treaties but is also deeply counterproductive to winning the war for hearts and minds in the Muslim world. The more sardonic critics may ask why Britain was not also included on the "hit list". According to MI5, 2,000 British residents actively support al-Qaida, and 30 major plots are being hatched at any one time. But this time such characterisations may be unfair. The number of special forces operations launched by the US military against al-Qaida targets under the new authority appears not to have been that high: the number of such raids not previously publicly disclosed was less than a dozen. And, according to the New York Times, several raids, like a 2005 mission to capture Ayman al Zawahiri in northwestern Pakistan, were called off because of worries about American troop casualties, civilian casualties or political fall-out overseas. Moreover, Rumsfeld's 2004 secret order is the one part of the Bush doctrine unlikely to be rescinded by the next occupant of the Oval Office, if statements made on the campaign trail are any guide. In a major foreign policy speech at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC on August 1 2007, Barack Obama stated: "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains [in Pakistan] who murdered 3,000 Americans. … They are plotting to strike again. ... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." Although Obama was criticised by several of his Democratic rivals during the primary season, including Hillary Clinton, and by John McCain during the presidential debates, for having publicly articulated this position, he has stuck firmly to it, despite the emergence a more democratic government in Pakistan. Indeed the Washington Post reports that the president-elect plans to intensify the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a search that will presumably involve US special forces operating clandestinely in northwestern Pakistan. "This is our enemy," one Obama adviser told the newspaper, "and he should be our principal target." Obama's ascendancy will not make "out of area" US special forces operations any less legally problematic. State sovereignty is a sacrosanct principle in the formal text of UN charter. But given al-Qaida's determination to launch another 9/11, the US has a plausible case that such raids are nevertheless legitimate because they represent "self defence", another right guaranteed by a charter document written before the days of potentially catastrophic international terrorism. The Bush administration has belatedly pressed such a case. Additionally, in a speech in the British Parliament on October 31, Michael Chertoff, the US homeland security secretary, argued: International law must begin to recognise that part of the responsibility of sovereignty is the responsibility to make sure that your own country does not become a platform for attacking other countries. … There are areas of the world that are ungoverned or ungovernable but nevertheless technically within the sovereignty of boundaries. Does that mean we simply have to allow terrorists to operate there, in kind of badlands, where they can plan, they can set up laboratories, they can experiment with chemical weapons and with biological weapons?Testifying before Congress on September 22, Robert Gates, the current US defence secretary, who may retain his position in the next administration, defended "out of area" military raids on al-Qaida by stating: "The authorities we have been granted were carefully coordinated over a protracted period of time in the interagency. … I would simply assume that … appropriate international law was consulted by the state department." The Obama administration is likely to reiterate these arguments in order to keep every option on the table in the hunt for Bin Laden. They will have the advantage of facing a somewhat more sympathetic international audience. In making their case, the Obama administration will be able to draw attention to UN security council resolution 1373, passed in the wake of the 9/11, which required all states to "prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other states." In pressing their case, the Obama administration may well argue, in a similar vein to Chertoff, that UN member states not only have a responsibility to protect their own citizens - an emerging principle of international customary law - but should also show due diligence in protecting the citizens of other countries from individuals on their own soil. Pakistan, for instance, has not passed this test with flying colours.That said, the Obama administration would be wise to exercise great caution in launching "out of area" special forces operations so as to minimise political fall-out in countries like Pakistan. Wherever possible the US should encourage the governments in question to act, or collaborate in launching joint-operations. The last seven years have illustrated just how blunt and counterproductive the unilateral deployment of US military power can be to the war on terrorism. It may make sense, therefore, to only launch such raids in the hunt for al-Qaida's very top operatives: Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri and a handful of others. Bin Laden's importance to al-Qaida is hard to exaggerate. His charismatic appeal helps al-Qaida drive recruitment and counter mounting criticism of their tactics in the Muslim world, including from fellow jihadists, arguably al-Qaida's greatest current challenge.In the fight against al-Qaida, the US must be careful not to do anything that reverses this dynamic, but neither can it allow al-Qaida safe-havens around the world to plot attacks. Military force, when deployed judiciously, can significantly damage al-Qaida's capabilities. For example, after US special forces raided a desert camp operated by al-Qaida in Sinjar, Iraq, near the Syrian border, in September 2007, the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq, and the rate of suicide bombings in the country, dropped dramatically. In order to keep his campaign promises, Obama may, in exceptional cases, have to cut through the legal jungle that surrounds the deployment of military force overseas.Paul Cruickshank's book, Al Qaeda: The Current Threat, was published in October by Pocket Issue.US foreign policyBarack ObamaAl-QaidaUnited StatesObama administrationguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

November 12, 2008, 5:00 PM

The post-dictator era

Old-school despots are giving way to a new generation of rulers more open to the west, whose authoritarian tendencies are stymied by globalisationYesterday, Russia's Vladimir Putin voluntarily demoted himself to prime minister. Meanwhile, Cuba's Fidel Castro has hung up his camos after 50 years. Indonesia's longtime strongman Suharto has passed away. Ditto Turkmenistan's all-powerful Turkmenbashi and Chile's Augusto Pinochet. And Saddam's passing is now a popular clip on YouTube.Does this mean we are saying adieu to the dictators? Or with the "election" of the likes of Dmitry Medvedev and Raul Castro to the top job, are we just welcoming in a new generation of duller authoritarians?It's worth noting why old-school dictators, like dinosaurs, no longer roam the planet. Globalisation and open markets have nudged some off their pedestals. As Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria noted back in 1997, dictatorships are increasingly "anachronisms in a world of global markets, information and media".Other despots have seen their power shrunk at the ballot box. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf got pummelled in recent parliamentary polls. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez was cut down in size after a referendum watered down his Bolivarian revolution last year.Some despots have responded to outside pressure. Axis-of-evil ring leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il have showed signs of loosening up - after all, both have done the unthinkable and negotiated with the Great Satan - only after being squeezed from multiple sides with sticks and carrots (or supplies of Hennessy Cognac, in the case of the latter). Prying eyes also helped. The Burmese junta and Mugabe-like African "big men" saw their power erode thanks to greater outside media coverage - the so-called CNN/YouTube effect - of grassroots rebellions. Even Belarus's Alexander Lukashenka, who is really more a Russian stool-pigeon than a Stalinist dictator, has begun freeing political prisoners.Many would-be dictators have just wised up. Libya's Gadafy, for example, made a cost-benefit analysis that it is preferable to be in the west's good graces than on the receiving end of a "shock and awe" campaign. It doesn't hurt that his son and presumptive heir, Seif, is a western-educated liberal who endorses calls for Arab democracy. At the London School of Economics, recalls a classmate of Seif's, their course concentrated on the American philosopher John Rawls, a strong advocate of liberal constitutionalism. In this brave new world of global capital, no child of a despot is left behind. A recent graduate of Sandhurst, Jordan's King Abdullah, studied at several elite British and American schools, while Egypt's putative next ruler, Gamal Mubarak, studied in Cairo's American University before moonlighting as a Bank of America executive.But an western education can also make a despotic prince more cunning. "One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived," Machiavelli advised. Tunisia's French-educated President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, otherwise known as "Mr 99.9%," is a poster child for an illiberal democrat.To an extent, today's despots are just better at masking their authoritarian rule. Freedom House points to "freedom stagnation" - that is, the number of so-called "free" nations has not budged since 1998. China's communist top-brass, shaking off the legacy of Mao, purposefully puts forward geriatric leaders with Dick Cheney-like charisma, who now embrace capitalism and hint, just un-implausibly enough, that they are prepared to experiment with elections in Hong Kong.Depressed? Don't be. Thanks to international institutions and the NGO community, the notion that governments should be constrained by constitutional checks and balances is increasingly becoming a global norm. Just the fact that Putin, who enjoys 80% approval ratings, honoured his term limits and stepped aside shows that democratically elected despots are increasingly having to pay attention to such restraints. Even lip service counts for something. Although prime minister-'elect' Putin is expected to still dominate Russia, relinquishing the substantial formal powers of the presidency will make that less straightforward than before.What has really complicated the lives of dictators, however, has been a communications revolution that has given a growing proportion of the world's population access to the internet and satellite television. Consider how Russians (or for that matter Kenyans) can now follow Barack Obama's roller-coaster ride through countless primary elections and compare it to their own system.That is not to say that political repression is a thing of the past. Far from it. But contrary to what Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution writes in Foreign Affairs that "the democratic wave has been slowed by a powerful authoritarian undertow, and the world has slipped into a democratic recession", in fact the opposite is true. Autocrats everywhere, from Putin to Musharraf, are finding it much harder to command obedience by controlling informational flows. Egyptian bloggers, Burmese YouTubers, Pakistani satellite TV news anchors, and the online community in China and Iran make it much harder for even smarter, savvier dictators to flourish. The future may yet belong to Rawls, not Machiavelli.RussiaCubaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

March 3, 2008, 1:00 PM

The deadly few

Al-Qaida may have thousands of supporters in the UK, but it's those who receive training in Pakistani camps who pose the real threatPakistan's President Musharraf seems to want to have it both ways. At a press conference in London's Dorchester hotel earlier this week he argued that the terrorist threat faced by the United Kingdom was largely a product of home-grown extremism rather than the (alarming number of) visits made by British citizens to the terrorist training camps so prevalent in the tribal areas of his country. But just a few days earlier, in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute, he warned his critics that failure to back him in his campaign against the terrorists in Pakistan would have its impact on the streets of Europe.Musharraf is right that Britain is producing thousands of radical extremists, two thousand of which are being monitored by security services because of their support for al-Qaida. But there is a great deal of difference between an individual supporting al-Qaida's goals and being ready and able to conduct a successful operation on its behalf. Look at the serious terrorist plots in Europe in recent years and in almost every case at least one cell member previously attended some form of terrorist training camp overseas. That surely is no coincidence. Today it is largely in the rarefied air of Pakistan's western mountains that al-Qaida is making skilled operatives out of the merely radicalised.Consider the UK's 2004 fertilizer bomb plot, when five British citizens sought to blow up targets around London. During their trial it emerged that despite their longstanding radical views it was only after attending an al-Qaida-sponsored, makeshift terrorist training camp in north-western Pakistan in the summer of 2003 (along with two of the July 7 bombers) that the group become serious about launching an attack in the UK. Not only were the rewards of martyrdom drilled into them, but they also learned how to make explosive devices step by step and then, just as crucially, test them. Contrary to some received wisdom, it is very difficult to make a bomb from scratch with instructions downloaded off the internet.In his Dorchester hotel remarks, Musharraf argued that Britain needed to find new ways to halt the spread of pro-al-Qaida extremism. He undoubtedly has a point, but dictatorial style rule, his recent tactic of choice, did not work out that well for that other soldier-politician, Oliver Cromwell, either. A better strategy would be to extend the pioneering work of the Metropolitan Police's Muslim Contact Unit to the rest of the UK. By patiently building up a partnership relationship with key sections of London's Muslim community, the Muslim Contact Unit has not only gained crucial intelligence on pro-al-Qaida extremists' activities in the capital, but also emboldened Muslim community leaders to themselves tackle the al-Qaida supporters. These efforts, together with tougher anti-terrorism legislation, have driven al-Qaida's supporters increasingly underground in London. But in Britain's provincial cities, radical zealots still operate all too freely among much more segregated Muslim neighbourhoods.Ultimately, as detective-inspector Robert Lambert, the outgoing head of the Muslim Contact Unit stressed to me recently, al-Qaida values dozens of operatives much more than hundreds of supporters. Despite all the support western governments have provided Pakistan's self-styled Lord Protector, graduates of al-Qaida's Pakistani training camps are currently being deployed in growing numbers on Europe's streets.In September, German authorities broke up a suspected al-Qaida plot to bomb Ramstein air force base and Frankfurt airport, involving three suspects, two of them German citizens, who trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan in late 2006. And just two weeks ago Spanish police broke up a plot targeting Barcelona's metro system, involving nine Pakistani nationals. Several of the plotters, including the alleged bomb maker, spent significant time in Pakistan in the months preceding their arrest. They were presumably not playing cricket.Preliminary reports by investigating authorities, obtained by the Spanish daily El Pais, indicate that the plot was directed by none other than Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban warlord, who the CIA believes ordered Benazir Bhutto killed in December. According to these documents, Mehsud planned to claim responsibility for the Barcelona attack on behalf of al-Qaida and then issue a set of demands which if not met would lead to follow-up attacks in Germany, France, Portugal and the UK.If Mehsud's graduation toward international terrorism is confirmed, it would throw Musharraf's failures to tackle the militants in Pakistan's tribal areas into sharper relief than ever. In 2005 the Pakistani government signed a peace deal with Mehsud in his south Waziristan stronghold in the hope that he would separate himself from al-Qaida. Instead he strengthened his position and appears to have put his considerable resources at al-Qaida's disposal. In an al-Jazeera interview that he taped in early December and that aired last week, Mehsud declared that he had the "utmost love and respect" for Osama bin Laden. And he had a message for western countries too: "We want to eradicate Britain and America ... . Soon we will witness the miracles of jihad."Al-QaidaGlobal terrorismPakistanMiddle Eastguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

February 1, 2008, 2:30 PM