CHÁÁVEZ WORKS TO PROTECT VENEZUELA’S INDIAN TRIBES PAGE 8

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JULY2007

GLOBAL JIHAD SPLITS INTOWARSBETWEEN MUSLIMS

MANUEL GEERINCK – Untitled (2003) GALERIE PASCAL PO LAR, B RUXELLES

Kosovo

The question of Kosovo, pending for the past eight years, is again high on the international political agenda. President George Bush upset foreign chancelleries when he declared, probably under the heady influence of the hero’s welcome he received in Tirana (Albania) on 10 June, that at some point in time, sooner rather than later, you’ve got to say, “Enough is enough, Kosovo is independent”. Kosovo would, he said, issue a unilateral declaration of independence soon and Washington would recognise it without waiting for the United Nations Security Council to reach a decision. i

One might well ask why 50 years has not sufficed to establish an independent state in Palestine, with the tragic consequences we see before us, and why the question of Kosovo suddenly has to be settled without delay. In the Balkans diplomatic haste often spells disaster. Remember how German and Vatican eagerness to recognise Croatia’s secession in 1991 precipitated the break-up of former Yugoslavia, the war between Serbia and Croatia, and the war in Bosnia. Without minimising the sinister role of former president Slobodan Milosevic and the extremist advocates of “Greater Serbia”, the European powers also bear some responsibility for these bloody conflicts, the worst in Europe since the second world war. Haste also played a part in the 1999 war in Kosovo, when some European states and the United States broke off negotiations with Belgrade, ii bypassed the Security Council debate and proceeded, without a UN mandate, to use Nato to bomb Serbia for months and force Serbian troops out of Kosovo. UN Security Council resolution 1244 brought the offensive to an end in June 1999. Kosovo was placed under UN administration and Nato units – the 17,000strong Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) – are now responsible for the country’s defence. Under the terms of resolution 1244, Kosovo belongs to Serbia. This is decisive, because the powers involved in the recent wars in the Balkans always respected the internal frontiers of the former Socialist Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia as a matter of principle. The plans for “Greater Croatia” and “Greater Serbia”, which threatened to dismantle Bosnia-Herzegovina, were rejected and opposed on this principle. And Serbia, with support from Russia among others, is now rejecting the plan proposed by international mediator Martti Ahtisaari on this same principle. Independence may be the only possible solution for Kosovo because the obstacles to keeping it within Serbia’s administrative ambit are so enormous. But any such step can only be considered in close and lengthy consultation with Belgrade, which is anxious to protect the Serb minority in the province. The immediate independence that Bush wants to see, independence not negotiated within the UN framework, could lead rapidly to the establishment of a “Greater Albania” and this in turn would automatically reignite Croatian and Serbian irredentism at the expense of Bosnia. Not to mention the explosive international precedent it would set for many entities that are similarly tempted to declare unilateral independence: Palestine (Israel), Western Sahara (Morocco), Transnistria (Moldova), Kurdistan (Turkey), Chechnya (Russia), Abkhazia (Georgia), Nagorny Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Taiwan (China) and even, in Europe itself, the Basque Country and Catalonia (Spain, France), to name but a few. Is Bush prepared to support these claims for independence, as he says he will in the case of Kosovo? We have seen the appalling damage this US president’s irresponsible initiatives have caused in the Middle East. His heavy-handed intervention now in an area as explosive as the Balkans, one of the most dangerous places in the world, is a source of consternation and dismay. IGNACIO RAMONET TRANSLATED BY BARBARA WILSON

iInternational Herald Tribune, 11 June 2007. iiAccused of conducting a policy of massive repression against the largely Muslim Kosovo Albanians, who represent approximately 90% of the population.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Palestine lies in ruins,both physical and political page 3

Americans want out of Iraq – yet the war is politically unopposed page 5

Hong Kong:an economic whirlwind, but not democracy page 6

What is the true environmental cost of biofuels? page 10

American fortune-hunters dig deep in Nigeria page 11

Georgia’s uneasy neo-liberal revolution fuels an arms racepage 12

Making the break:one writer’s escape from prison page 14

The restless American search for a lost invulnerability page 15

Al-Qaida: the unwanted guests

As the arc of chaos grows from Afghanistan to Somalia by way of the Middle East,the region’s states are growing weaker and their armed groups gaining in power.But in this battle for competing visions between the US and al-Qaida,the Sunni resistance is now opposing al-Qaida in Iraq, as are the Taliban in Afghanistan

BY SYED SALEEM SHAHZAD

There is a widening split between armed Islamists, as two recent incidents show. In March the local Taliban in the Pakistani tribal zone of South Waziristan killed foreign fighters from the al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Almost simultaneously, infighting broke out between the Islamic Army in Iraq and the local branch of al-Qaida. The confrontation between the two strategies – and two different ideologies – of the Islamist struggle is getting more violent. Many of the foreign volunteers who have flooded into Pakistan and Iraq since 2003 are Takfirists, who regard “bad Muslims” as the real enemy (see ‘Takfirism: a messianic ideology’ on page 2). Indigenous Islamic resistance groups have reacted uncomfortably to the growth of this near-heresy within al-Qaida which, by waging war against Muslim governments, has brought chaos to the populations it claims to defend. Between 2003 and 2006, across the war zone that is the two Waziristans, Afghanistan and Iraq, the complexity of the situation reinforced al-Qaida’s doctrinaire thinking and reduced indigenous groups to silence. The consequence of Takfirist influence was the emergence in the two Waziristans of a selfstyled Islamic state that challenged the writ of the Pakistan government within its own boundaries and fuelled the spread of armed conflict to major cities. The aim was to provoke armed insurrection against the pro-western military regime. The fierce response of the Pakistani army led to the deaths of hundreds of non-combatants, including women and children, and fuelled the anger of Takfirist ideologues. But many Taliban leaders privately felt that the Takfirists had lost touch with reality and were distorting the sharply focused antiwestern strategy developed during the 1990s by Osama bin Laden. The war of national resistance against foreign occupying forces had been transformed into one aimed at Pakistan’s military establishment. On the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leading Takfirist, arrived from Waziristan to emerge as the frontline resistance leader. He publicly pledged allegiance to bin Laden and became the rallying point for the foreign militants who coalesced into the Iraqi branch of alQaida. The situation in Iraq soon came to resemble

Syed Saleem Shahzad is the Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online(Hong Kong)

that in the two Waziristans and Afghanistan. Resistance in post-Saddam Iraq was slow to mobilise. The realignment of the tribes, fragmented religious groups, former Ba’athist party elements and officers from the defunct republican guard into combat units took several months. Meanwhile, foreign fighters who had streamed into Iraq from the Muslim world to gather beneath the black banners of al-Qaida formed a coordinating majlis al-shura(council). They proved more effective than the leadership of the internal Iraqi resistance, who were left with little scope to express their reservations about the arrivals’Takfirist ideology. It was left to individual elements within the indigenous groups to deplore the excesses of alQaida, which had begun to concentrate on diverting the struggle against occupying forces towards attacks on Shia religious centres. When, in 2006, al-Qaida announced the formation of an ideologically pure Islamic emirate, the strategy of the indigenous resistance groups became subservient to al-Qaida’s Takfirist ideology and divisive global agenda. A war against foreign occupation had turned into a nightmare of sectarian strife. The seeds had been sown for an eventual break between the international combatants and the indigenous resistance. Understanding this split requires an examination of the specific circumstances that led to the ideological transformation of al-Qaida during and after the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Arabs who poured in to join the Afghan resistance fell into two camps, Yemeni and Egyptian. The zealots who went to Afghanistan, inspired by their local clerics, were mostly in the Yemeni camp. In breaks from fighting they spent their days drilling and cooking their food, before going straight to sleep after the isha(last prayer of the day). As the Afghan jihad tailed off, they went home or melted into the population in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where many married. In al-Qaida circles, they were called dravesh, easy-going. In the Egyptian camp were the politically minded and ideologically motivated. Though most belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, i they opposed its commitment to elections and the democratic process. The Afghan jihad cohered these likeminded, often educated, individuals, many of them doctors and engineers or former soldiers associated

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