Russia Commits to Fighting Central Asian Drugs and Terrorism

The Obama administration has welcomed Russia’s revived interest in influencing developments in Central Asia as the United States looks to next year withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. Admitting that the United States was unable to meet the needs of nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan, US Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley said agreements reach at this month’s summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Central Asian leaders focused on stabilizing the region and combating terrorism and drugs trafficking contributed to US strategy in the region.

Medvedev’s talks with the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan come two months after Russia launched an international effort at a forum in Moscow to combat drugs trafficking in Afghanistan. During the Sochi summit Medvedev promised to deepen economic ties with Central Asian nations, revive Soviet-era energy and social development project, significantly increase flood-aid to Pakistan and accelerate and expand Russian helicopter production, especially of the Mi-17 and Mi-35 for export to the region. Russia is already refurbishing some 140 Soviet-era installations in Afghanistan, such as hydroelectric stations, bridges, wells, and irrigation systems in deals valued at more than $1-billion.

Medvedev further announced in Sochi that Russia would spearhead a World Bank-sponsored program to expand hydro-electric dams in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that would supply surplus electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The four presidents agreed to link Central Asia to the CIS railway system by building a railroad and highway that will connect Pakistan and Tajikistan.

US officials say renewed Russian involvement in Central Asia is fueled by concern in Moscow that regional terrorism and drugs trafficking will fuel separatism in the Black Sea basin. Russia’s renewed commitment comes two decades after Soviet troops fought a 10-year bloody war in the country that lies in many ways at the root of Afghanistan’s current problems.

Floods Provide Political Boon For Pakistani Militants

Pakistan’s worst flooding in almost a century may well be remembered as much for the magnitude of the disaster as for the fact that it constituted a major setback for the government and its Western and Muslim allies in their competition with militant Islamists for hearts and minds. The floods are joining a long list of disasters in a host of Islamic countries in which militant Islamists garnered popularity by quickly and effectively responding with relief and emergency aid in stark contrast to a government that was slow to react and unable to quickly provide services to victims.

Effective Islamist aid operations strengthen the militants’ contention that governments perceived as corrupt, authoritarian and heavily dependent on foreign aid cannot be trusted to serve the people. In the case of the Pakistani floods, that message is reinforced by mounting criticism of President Asif Ali Zardari for visiting France and Britain during the floods rather than staying at home to coordinate relief efforts, which he says are the responsibility of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The message is compounded by the fact that militant Islamist charities, some designated by the United Nations or the United States as terrorist organizations, provided shelter, food, clothing and medical aid to thousands displaced and made homeless by the floods days before government and foreign aid started to arrive in areas where the government is competing with militants for control. If past disasters in Pakistan itself as well as in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia and Bangladesh are any yardstick, the political capital up for grabs will likely be secured by the militants who for the umpteenth time have proven to be able to deliver where governments failed.

The lesson learnt from these disasters is that economic competition with militant Islamists is as important a component in the struggle to defeat faith-inspired political violence as is military strength and law enforcement. If anything, the study of the world’s most sustainable and lethal, faith-based terrorist groups, including Palestine’ s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taibe and the Taliban in Afghanistan, shows that economic competition may hold the key to substantially weakening, if not defeating these groups. Falah-e-Insaniyat, the charity arm of Lashkar-e-Taibe, widely suspected of being responsible for the Mumbai attacks in 2008, has emerged as the one of the most effective providers of relief in flood-ravaged areas of Pakistan. What makes these groups so effective is the fact that they trace their origins to being faith-based service providers. Only at a later stage, and sometimes only reluctantly, did they bolt a military apparatus onto their civil activity. They successfully win hearts and minds by effectively responding to natural and man-made disasters in areas where governments like that of President Zardari have effectively ceded responsibility for the provision of basic social services, including security, education and healthcare. “With a few exceptions, lasting insurgency endings are shaped not by military action but by social, economic, and political change…The government may defeat the insurgent military cadre, but, with few exceptions, insurgencies do not end until case-specific root causes are addressed: The kind of grassroots support necessary to build and sustain an insurgency is fed on social, economic, and political discontent…,” concludes a recently published Rand Corporation study on how insurgencies end.

The problem for Western governments and their allies is translating the realization that they need to compete economically and not only militarily with militants is translating theory into practice. As is evident with the Pakistani floods, the cost benefit analysis of that realization and the organizational implications it has for the military has yet to sink in. Adapting the organization of armed forces so that they can effectively incorporate economic competition in their strategy is a slow process that contrasts starkly with the speed in which militants like Lashkar-e-Taibe are able to demonstrate institutional flexibility. Western military officials and UN and other aid workers grapple in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, with the fact that the military is structured as a fighting machine rather than a development agency and aid organizations are not geared to defending themselves – a combination of skills and ability inherent to successful militant groups.

Soccer vs. Islam: Football and Militant Islam Compete For Hearts and Minds

By James M. Dorsey

Nowhere does football enthusiasm involve a greater act of courage and defiance than in the war-ravaged, football-mad Arab nation of Somalia. With large chunks of the country controlled by al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab jihadists, football is often a question of life or death. Players and enthusiasts risk execution, arrest and torture -- and not just in Somalia. More than 70 people in neighboring Uganda were killed earlier this month when al-Shabab suicide bombers hit popular spots where fans were watching the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands.

The bombings, the first major attacks by al-Shabab beyond Somalia’s borders, sought to persuade Uganda to withdraw its 3,000 troops from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia and reconsider its plans to send reinforcements. But by targeting football, they also highlighted militant Islam’s love-hate relationship with the game -- a useful bonding and recruitment tool capable of competing with militant Islamists for hearts and minds.

Backed by radical Saudi clerics, some jihadists denounce football as a satanic game designed to take the faithful away from devotion to Islam. Somali jihadists see football as competition for recruits in the world’s foremost failed state where unemployment is rampant and youth have little to look forward to. Youngsters are rustled from the pitch and forced to join the ranks of the jihadis. Jihadists have repeatedly warned the Somali football federation to halt organization of tournaments. In the country’s only football stadium in the partly jihadi-controlled capital Mogadishu, Somalia’s national team clears the pitch of bullets and bodies before training sessions. Threats forced private broadcaster Shabelle to move its operations to Mogadishu’s African Union-protected airport from where it broadcast the World Cup opening ceremony.

In the Middle East and North Africa, a part of the world pockmarked by repressive regimes, football competes with political Islam as a venue to release frustration against authoritarian leaders. As a result, some Islamists seek to co-opt the game while others aim to suppress it. In a controversial religious ruling in 2005, militant Saudi clerics condemned football as an infidel invention and redrafted its International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) rules to differentiate the game from what they described as ‘the heretics.’ The ruling did things like ban the words “foul,” “goal,” “penalty,” and clothes like shorts and T-shirts, and ordered players to spit on anyone who scored a goal. “All fun is bootless except the playing of a man with his wife, his son and his horse,” said Sheikh Abu Ishaaq al Huweni-Huweni. “Thus, if someone sits in front of the television to watch football…he will be committing bootless fun…We have to be a serious nation, not a playing nation,” he said citing the hadith, the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, but ignoring the prophet’s endorsement of physical exercise.

The fatwa was condemned by more mainstream Saudi clerics, who recognize that Saudis are football-mad and passionate about their national team, which historically has fared well in FIFA competitions. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia’s religious police, afraid that believers would forget their daily prayers during the World Cup, rolled out mobile mosques on trucks and prayer mats in front of popular cafes where men gathered to watch matches. More sensitive is the issue of women’s sports, including football. With Saudi Arabia threatened with suspension by the International Olympic Committee if it does not this year create frameworks for women’s sports, debate is raging among the country’s powerful clergy and in the media. Physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girls schools and female athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Women's games and marathons are often canceled if the clergy gets wind of them. Clerics argue that women’s sports are corrupting and satanic and would spread decadence. Nonetheless, women have quietly been establishing their own football and other sports teams with the backing of members of the ruling Al Saud family and under the wings of hospitals or ‘health club.’

Football, despite the condemnation by militant Islam’s most radical fringe, has served Islamists well. Foreigners who fought in Afghanistan organized football matches after the Soviet withdrawal to maintain contact. The perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid subway bombings played football together and a number of Hamas’ suicide bombers trace their roots to the same football club in Hebron. “A reliable predictor of whether or not someone joins the Jihad is being a member of an action-oriented group of friends,” Scholar Scott Atran told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in March. “It's surprising how many soccer buddies join together.”

Osama Bin Laden is said to enjoy playing center forward. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh played defense for one of the Gaza’s local clubs. Haniyeh recently employed football in efforts to heal the rift between Hamas and their secular rivals in Fatah. When Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, it also took over the administration of all Gaza clubs, prompting a rupture with the West Bank-based, Fatah-dominated Palestinian Football Association (PFA) that halted association football in the strip. In a tentative step earlier this year toward Palestinian reconciliation, Hamas and Fatah agreed to jointly administer the Gaza football federation. This allowed for competitive matches in Gaza for the first time in three years. For Gazans, football matches constitute a rare opportunity in a politically restrictive society to release pent-up emotions.

Nowhere is soccer more of a political football than in relations between the Egyptian government and the Islamist opposition. Football passions exploded late last year with violent clashes between Egyptian and Algerian fans on three continents and -- for the first time since the 1969 football war between Honduras and El Salvador -- brought the world to the brink of a soccer-inspired conflict. Egypt recalled its ambassador to Algeria while Algeria slapped Egyptian-owned Orascom telecom’s Algerian operation with a tax bill for more than half a billion dollars, prompting Libyan leader Col. Moammer Gadaffi to intervene to prevent the dispute from escalating. The Egyptian government was quick to fan the flames and ride the tide of emotion in a rare opportunity to bolster its image at the expense of the Islamists. “The violence expressed years of depression of a population that constantly witnesses social, financial and political failure,” said Ahmed al-Aqabawi, a professor at Azhar University. “Soccer is their only ray of light.”