Dec
13
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Saturday, 13 December 2008 |
Sayyid Ahmad Shah is the original modern Mujahidin leader.(1)
Born Ahmad Brelwi in the tumble-down village of Bareli, he was, in teenage years, a follower of the notorious War Lord Amir Khan.
When Amir Khan's forces broke up after the war, Ahmad adopted the title 'Sayyid' which means he is descended from the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
The newly identified Sayyid Ahmad Brelwi's fervent religious beliefs, piety and charisma gained him a following. He denounced many supposedly corrupt forms of worship in Islam and urged a return to the Quran.
Sayyid Ahmad then went on the pligrimage to Mecca, the Haj, and spent four years studying at the Hejaz where his thoughts were reinforced by the Arabian Wahibi school of thought.
He returned after his sojourn and called upon the faithful to wage war against kufars--the non-muslims.
He visited his old War Lord leader, then journeyed through Khandahar, Ghalji and eventually found his largest body of loyal followers in the Yusufzai and Khatak.
The Yusufzai and Khataks, ablaze with tribal pride that demands the expulsion of foreigners and a large dose of religious zeal, followed their new leader who took the name Sayyid Ahmad Shah.
This was the first modern Mujahidin movement. The foreigners were not Americans, or NATO troops, or the Soviets or even the British.
The foreign unbelivers to be expelled and exterminated were Sihks of the Kingdom of Ranjit Singh. The year was 1828.
One hundred and eighty years ago, in what are now known as the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan, the banner of Jihad, the Mujahidin, was raised.
I was reminded of Sayyid Ahmad Shah by the semi-coherent ramblings of the 'New Thought Movement' guru Deepak Chopra and his son Gotham Chopra as they sought to explain the root causes of Islamic terrorism.
Gotham cannot see past the CIA's involvement in the Soviet/Afghan war of the 1980's. Deepak cannot go past the partition of India and creation of Pakistan in 1947.
This rather shallow view of history is convinient for many as it allows them to ignore the fact that violence under the banner of Islam is nothing new and not caused by anything Western.
For more than 1400 years, Muslim warriors have been offering the same bargain orginally made to the Persians and Romans by Khalid bin al Wahid:
"Now then, embrace Islam so that you may be safe, or else make a treaty of protection for yourself and your people and agree to pay the jizyah. Otherwise, do not blame anyone but yourself, for I have brought you a people who love death as you love life." (2)
Khalid was not waging war through Mesopotamia and the Levant in response to poverty and lack of educational opportunities in Dar al Islam.
Sayyid Ahmad Shah was not waging a battle against Western Imperialism. His service under the War Lord Amir Khan was as a mercenary paid for by the British.
Sayyid Ahmad, as a Mujahidin, rallied the faithful "against the tyrant [Ranjit Singh] who was represented as an unbelieving idolator." (1)
The only difference between the Taliban and Sayyid Ahmad's 'Hindustan Fanatics' and Khalid's armies and Al Qaida is weaponry. The AK-47 has replaced the matchlock and the bomb has replaced the sword.
The root cause of Islamic violence is and always has been Islam.
(1) Caroe, Sir Olaf 'The Pathans'
(2) al-Tabari 'The History of al-Tabari Volume XI: Challenge to the Empires'
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Dec
11
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 12 December 2008 |
Information may want to be free, but the people who collect, package and deliver it need to get paid. The way they will be paid in the future may be an old and well established business model.
Not so long ago, when I was fresh out the Marines, I walked into one of the most profitable and well respected businesses in town--WIBW-TV in Topeka, Kansas.
The internet barely existed then and though cable TV existed, there were few channels and large minority of the public still watched TV through a crazy metal thing on their roof.
But even then, the signs were showing.
WIBW won the Neilson ratings year in and year out, but the total number of viewers steadily declined.
I worked my way up through the ranks from photographer to producing the 6 and 10pm newscasts. It was then that I became privy to the market reasearch studies offered by consultants who told us what kind of news should be aired.
General Managers and News Directors had been following the advice of consultants for years, but the total number of viewers kept dropping.
In the winter of 1998 I saw the flaw. The consultants were polling a random sample of people who owned telephones and televisions--everyone--and using those results to guide the priorities of news coverage. They still thought of news as a mass market product like soap, gasoline, luandry detergent, toothpaste, cars and deoderant. Things that people have to buy and that everyone will buy.
But news is a niche market. With the rise of cable news and newspapers putting content on the internet the core consumer had options. They no longer needed to tune in at 6pm and 10pm.
If a newspaper is going to put its content online, why on earth would I buy the print edition?
Two things happened at the same time. Options for the core consumer fragmented the model and the cadre of the core consumer contracted.
Everyday the for past few weeks I have been following the drama of two people whose last names I did not know until I finally broke down and googled them. But their faces were on the cover of US Weekly or some magazine like that perfectly positioned at eye level at the self-checkout stand of my local grocer.
I had no idea who this man and woman were and why anyone would pay the cover price to learn more about them. But obviously people do or I would not be treated to the exploits of Heidi and Spencer who apparantly are the stars of some reality show on MTV.
Talk about niche market segmentation. A magazine cover targetted at people who watch a niche type program on a niche network.
While no one needs to know anything about Heidi and Spencer, there are people who want to know and for some reason will pay the cover the price.
The news, important information, like what the Federal Government is doing with $700 Billion dollars is something the public needs to know. Information that will have a direct impact on your life like the amount of crude oil being extracted from Iraq is something the public needs to know. But the market is showing us that they may not want to know.
Responding to market conditions the people and entities that gather, package and deliver information are contracting--gathering less and delivering less.
Information will become scarce. Those who want to know and need to know will pay for it. Information will become a commodity available only to those who pay for it and price will be steep.
A system like this already exists parallel to the dying mass market media. It is common on Wall Steet and to serious investors and commodoties traders. Services like it are already used by major corporations and law firms. It can be found in nearly every state capital in the U.S.
It is the specialized subscription news letter and news service.
In Topeka, the State Capital of Kansas, there is a one-man news organization who makes a tidy living covering the legislature and politics in depth. His name is Martin Hawver. He is the writer, editor and publisher of Hawver's Capitol Report .
Several hundred lobbyists, politicians and political operatives subscribe to his report. The subscription fees have paid Martin's mortgage for two decades.
Martin Hawver sells a particular type of information to a customer who needs it and wants it enough to pay for it.
Hawver's Capital Report is the localized version of Charlie Cook's reports or Stu Rothenburg's reports or the subscription reports of pollsters.
The future of hard news, pure information, will be specialized and by subscription to those who need it enough to pay for it.
That information will be far more accurate and in-depth than the mass market news being given away now for free. Investment bankers and private equity firms are not going to pay for opinion. There will be hybrids, brief summaries that can draw enough clicks to get some advertising dollars, but the full purpose of the site will be to up-sell into another level of information access.
The mass market products that survive will also have to be purchased. They will be magazines like the New Yorker whose lengthy, well written features are more suited to be read on paper than on a screen. Or the Sunday New York Times which can only truly be enjoyed in your hands while sitting on the couch.
These products though, are not mass market. They are for a niche. A niche that will pay for it and for whom advertisers can micro target.
News organizations like the New York Times and Associated Press with contacts infrastructure around the globe will quit giving their information away for free and get out of the mass market business. The people who really need to know what is going on Thailand will gladly pay for it.
The world will then become a black hole for all but a few news purchasers.
In a darker vision, those with large enough interests will hire out the gathering of information to freelance fact finders. There are some companies who already perform this service along with security and risk analysis under the rubric of 'corporate intelligence.'
Those who already really need to know, are already paying for it.
The age of cheap information is over. The only free information that will be available in the future will be heavily laden with opinion, gossip or associated with celebrities or products to be sold.
Those who gather, package and deliver information have to pay the mortgage. And they will find a way to get paid. Information may want to be free, but gathering it is not.
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Dec
05
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 05 December 2008 |
This item from Powerline caught my eye. Specifically the name of the captured terrorist: Ansari.
Ready for a lesson in obscure and possibly irrelevant Muslim/Arab/Afghan/Indian history?
The 'Ansari' were people from Medina, in the Arabian peninsula, who follow the prophet Mohammed during his flight from Mecca. Families who use the name 'Ansari' do so because they claim to be descended from the families who orginally joined Mohammed.
Whether or not any true Ansari made it to Afghanistan during the Muslim invasions we do not know for sure, but there was a group of purported Ansari popped up around 1550 AD in the mountains near Peshawar.
These Ansari formed a schizmatic sect that orthodox Muslims consider heresy called the Roshanis. (There is dispute on whether these back woods men were truly Ansari. They may have adopted the name to lend credibility to their cause.)
For two generations they were a constant thorn in the side of the Mughal Empire in the areas of the Kyber and what is now Waziristan.
These Ansari/Roshanis were eventually subdued and presented themselves in surrender before the Emperor Shah Jahan in Dehli. The Emperor allowed them and their followers to migrate to the Deccan provinces where they served the empire--often under arms carrying the banner of the empire. Whether they carried on their heresy is not fully addressed, but the British chronicler of things Afghan, Sir Olaf Caroe, points to the notion they came back to Orthodox Muslim beliefs and practices.
The Deccan Provinces are in the southern peninsula, below the Narmada river.
If the Afghan/Peshawar Ansari were relocated to the Deccan provinces, that would explain a terrorist with the Ansari name popping up in Mumbai.
Or, he could be taking the Ansari title as a Nom de guerre--a signal to those who know their Islamic history that he sees himself as one who is a true follower of the prophet Mohammed. In the world of the Islamic extremist, following the ways of the unique Quranic generation, which the true Ansari were members of, is the highest of goals.
Now, is any of this relevant to anything? I will not make that leap. But it does show that there is more to events of today than what happened yesterday.
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Dec
02
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 02 December 2008 |
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In close quarters with friends I will occasionally quip that the solution to the current unpleasantness in Afghanistan to create the country that always should have been--Pashtunistan.
Pashtunistan would run from the plains of Afghanistan, over the Duarnd line to the plains west of the Indus. This would be the tribal areas of Pakistan the mountain regions of Afghanistan populated by the Pathan tribes.
In my not so serious statement, I suggest Afghanistan, Pakistan and the NATO countries multi-laterally declare the new state and promptly declare war on it. Preferrably at the same press conference.
Quite the joke, eh?
Except at least one smart person has a serious variant on it.
In today's Washington Post, Robert Kagan poses the variant on my Pashtunistan scenario writing, "Have the international community declare that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. Establish an international force to work with the Pakistanis to root out terrorist camps in Kashmir as well as in the tribal areas."
The idea of Pashtunistan is nothing new. Since the partition of India into Pakistan there has been an effort to formalize Pashtunistan. The effort has waxed and waned over the decades, but maybe its time has come.
Afghanistan is not a country, it is an amalgamation whose borders were drawn by Russia, Iran (Persia) and Britain. Historically to be an Afghan meant to be a Pathan, a Pashtun to the extent that in the 1964 constitutional Loya Jirgah, it had to be clarified that being an Afghan meant being a person native to the borders of Afghanistan. Throughout the history of Afghanistan, no leader ever really, and definately no foreign force, subdued and controlled the Pathan tribes of the mountains and hill country on either side of Durand line.
Most invaders by-passed the region on their way to or from India.
The Pathan areas have always been a law unto themselves following the Pashtunwali, the code of the Pathans and their own clan and tribal governance.
The difficult part of the recent battles in Afghanistan are what they have been for every foreign invader or Afghan Shah--the Pathans of the hills and mountains. Western Afghanistan is rarely a problem.
My solution, often spoken in jest, is actually based on what has happened in the region for mellenia. Mujahideen fighting the Soviets used the tribal areas of Pakistan as a rear base much as the Taliban do now. The British, while at times able to hold the plains in the 19th century, never controlled the hills, let alone the mountains. None of the great classical empires Persian or Greek controlled the mountains.
You can fight your way through the mountains, you can hold a mountain pass for logistical purposes or even buy off a tribe that has lived in the cliffs above a pass for centuries--but no one has controlled the whole of Pashtunistan. The partition only exacerbates the problem as there are rear areas on either side of the Durand line. If Pakistan gets serious, go west, if NATO and Afghanistan gets serious, go east.
But even this over simplifies the problem because the Pathan hillmen are not the problem per se. It is their guests who use the mountains as a staging area and safe harbour for a war against civilization who are the problem.
The true solution lies in the answer to this question--how do we convince the Pathans to turn over their guests?
They key to the solution--if there is one--lies in the mellenia old Pashtunwali, the code of the Pathans. Crack the code, and you will be able to crack the Pathans.
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Dec
01
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
In the aftermath of the attacks on Mumbai, some people are waking up to the presence of radical Islam in India.
The intellectual foundations of modern Takfiri Islam can be traced to India through the Deobandi School of study to Hassan al Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood to Sayyid Qtub and the current machinations of Ayman Zawahiri. But the story goes back further than that.
In 1539 an Afghan Khan originally named Farid seized control of the Mughal Empire taking the name Sher Shah.
Afghan rule was nothing new to parts of the subcontinent. Pathan (Afghan) Sultans of one type or another had feifdoms in India since the 13th century. Sher Shah's sweep to power over the remnants of Babur's Mughal Empire in many ways was a restoration of power for the Afghans in India according to the British Diplomat Sir Olaf Caroe.
Afghan Muslims nominally ruled India until a revolt was staged against the British in 1857. The British crushed the revolt and what little left of the Muhgals placing the British Raj in power.
The Deoband school of Islam was founded in 1866 by Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi as the Darl Uloom Seminary. The purpose was to restore Islam to its roots, to what many modern Takfiris including Qtub and Zawahiri call the ways of the "unique Quranic generation." Those would be the ways of Mohammed and his original followers--the prophet and his companions.
The crushing of the Muslims in India was another milestone of the West crushing Dar al Islam, which at one time spread from Spain to Indonesia.
Only with a return to the ways of the prophet and his companions, so the theory goes, would Islam once again rise to power and its rightful position in the world.
(The Pathans in Afghanistan always followed a more conservative version of Islam--at least in form. The British Diplomat Montstuart Elphinstone wrote of women wearing Burquas in 1815, more than 50 years before the Deobandi movement.)
The events of last week were not of the making of the last few years or for that matter the 20th century.
Much of the history of India is that of the Raj versus the Khan or the Shah. The Queen, though having a massive sway for three and half centuries, is but a blip in the sweep of history.
History churns on and to understand a news even today, we must often look deep into the past. If the past is understood well enough, the potential future can be understood as well.
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Nov
19
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Wednesday, 19 November 2008 |
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The biggest threat these days may be food poisoning if you are not used to the local "flora" of the Kebabs and Smoothies. Secondary threat--a septic infection from a cut at the barber shop.
But, with some Immodium and an up-to-date tetanus shot, you should be fine.
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Nov
17
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 17 November 2008 |
In Brigadier Richard L. Clutterbuck's book "The Long Long War: The Emergency in Malaya 1948-1960" the end game of the British fight against the communist guerillas is very instructive.
Clutterbuck puts the begining of the end game around 1955. But the end was not until 1960.
I first encountered Clutterbuck and the Malayan civil war as model for counter insurgency in Fallujah in 2005.
After reading the book, I realized it was a blue-print for how to build a counter-insurgency.
The British, like the coalition in Iraq, spent a lot of time on mostly useless hammer and anvil type operations until they embarked on the "Briggs Plan."
If you put the Briggs Plan next to General Petraeus' counter insurgency manual, they are nearly identical. The accounts of the Briggs plan in action mirror the strategies and tactics employed by General Raymond Odierno when he was the Corps Commander in 2007.
The coalition is in a similar position to the British in 1956-1957.
The government of Iraq is becoming more capable. The Iraqi Police and military are more effective. The insurgency is waning and on the run. Many former insurgents, both Sunni and Shia, are being assimilated into mainstream.
But there is still a cadre of dedicated insurgents out there.
The British solution was to keep the emergency regulations in place, but with less strict enforcement on a case by case basis and to work closely with the new Malayan government. The British still kept their full complement of infantry battalions in the jungles, slowly hunting down the remnants and stepped up construction and commercial projects.
The British did not pull back into large bases. They dispersed out even deeper into the jungles of Malaya.
In Iraq, this move would be to reduce our logistical footprint in massive bases and to deploy infantry into even smaller outposts in the population centers where the Soldiers and Marines would live off the local economy as much as possible.
The arc of the war in Iraq has mirrored the British experience in Malaya to an uncanny degree. U.S. Policy makers should study the history of Malayan civil war.
If they do, they will see that we need another three years or more of deliberate and precision hunting down of the insurgent cadres to finish the job permanently, lest the core be able to reconstitute itself.
The surge has worked--to a stunning degree. But the war is not won yet.
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Nov
14
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 14 November 2008 |
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The change from the beginning of the Surge to now, at the end of the Surge has to be seen to be believed.
Luckily, through modern technology, you can see it without going to Baghdad or bending the space-time continuum.
The 2007 video was shot April 29, 2007 with the 1/4 Cav., 4th IBCT.
The 2008 video was shot October 26, 2008 with the 7/10 Cav. 1st IBCT.
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Nov
02
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Sunday, 02 November 2008 |
(Note: In the occasional blog posts I get the time to read in Iraq, I've kept up with Dr. Helen's "Going John Galt" series.
Depending on the turns of history, there could be another type of Galt, not from the business class, but the Guardian class. Allow me to illustrate with this fictional news item. JD)
Lieutenant Colonel John Galt, who commanded an Army Infantry Battalion during the Baghdad Surge, resigned his commission today after declining promotion to full Colonel and the command of an infantry brigade.
Galt's former Battalion, 'The Falcons' was credited with taming some of the most violent districts of Baghdad and the techniques he used have been applied by other units with great success. The success of 'The Falcons' was cited by the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, the Secretary of Defense and even the former President.
"He was on track for a Division command, Corps Command even being a combatant commander," said Lt. Col. Phil Jackson (Ret.) "but he was not willing to take a Brigade to Iraq just to be a rear guard on the withdrawal. Galt wins. He finishes the mission. He does not intentionally lose."
Jackson also recently resigned his commission after a tour as a Battalion Commander.
Galt graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in History and Economics before being commissioned and earned a Masters Degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins. He previously served tours in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
Galt is one of many commanders and field grade officers taking retirement rather than promotion. The trend is also appearing in the Staff NCO Corps as veteran Platoon Sergeants, 1st Sergeants and Sergeants Major are failing to reenlist.
"It is the largets brain and experience drain ever to occur to the U.S. Military," said Thomas Brow, a Sr. Fellow at the Strategic Research Institute, a think tank that tracks trends in national security.
Brow said the loss of experienced and dynamic military leaders will be noted by rivals to the U.S. "They see men like Galt leaving and know that the 'Junior Varsity' will be leading troops for the next generation. The implications for international strategy and negotiations are immense."
Galt left his last post without ceremony, packing up his family and moving to his retirement home in Knoxville, TN where he works part-time as a clerk at small book store.
When asked in person why he left the military after a disguinished career with a bright future he did not comment and only shrugged.
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Oct
29
2008
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 30 October 2008 |
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I bring the rain to FOB Falcon every
time.
Iraq is indeed a desert, but it rains
here in the valley between the two rivers more often than people imagine.
The rainy season, running from November
through April bring torrents flooding the streets and swelling the canals. Even in
May and June there will be occasional storms.
But this year Iraq has been in a dry
drought. My return to FOB Falcon broke the drought--that or by sheer happen stance the drought
ended when I arrived at FOB Falcon.
I snapped the pics below on the drive
from JSS Jihad in Baghdad's West Rashid district to FOB Falcon in the south of Baghdad.
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