MENA

 by Sakhi Naimzada

Gulf Rivalries and the Afghan Peace Talks

Major players in the Afghan peace talks. Image credit: Reuters/AP.

There are doubtless domestic factors behind the crisis in Afghanistan, from ethnic problems to low levels of education. Afghanistan’s geographic position is one of the main obstacles to a lasting peace. Surrounded by neighbors with different ideologies and regional interests, Afghanistan is seen as a geostrategic key to future power in the region. Afghanistan’s importance in the eye of rival countries has historically attracted the Soviet Union to the country, with American expertise and support offered through ISI to stand by the Afghans.

Nowadays, foreign intervention in Afghan internal affairs has become a usual part of almost every peace effort. Arab countries- particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, thanks to their shared ideology with the Taliban- are major players in Afghan peace. Saudi Arabia was certainly the most influential foreign actor in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. It raised the idea of Jihad which has since recruited young fighters from North Africa to European city suburbs to the war in Afghanistan.

The ten year Soviet occupation ended in 1989, but the Arab influence still remains. Saudi Arabia continued financing radical Wahhabist ideology during the devastating civil war in Afghanistan until the Taliban took power in 1996. The Taliban regime called itself an Islamic Emirate and was recognized by Saudi Arabia. In recent years, however, things have changed. Now other countries have emerged as mediators in the Afghan peace talks. Qatar is on the top of this list.

Qatar, with a fast rising economy in the Gulf, already influences Muslim countries such as Sudan and Lebanon. Now its influence is extending to Afghanistan. Doha hosted a few intra-Afghan meetings on peace and currently is the city where the Taliban has a political office. Doha benefits from a privileged position to be a conflict resolution actor when it comes to the Afghan peace talks: it has a strategic security and economic partnership with Pakistan and enjoys a friendly relationship with Iran. Iran supplied Qatar with necessary food items and gave airspace access to Qatari air traffic during the Saudi-led Blockade. Iran also hosts the largest American military base in the region, Al Udeid, which is the main source of airpower and logistics for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, does not benefit from Qatar’s international prestige but it is ready to pay billions of dollars to buy the loyalty of other countries. The crowned Saudi prince, King Salman, recently went on a tour of the region where he promised to invest more than $4 billion in Pakistan. Rumors are that King Salman is going to buy the Premier League football club, Manchester United, where Sheikh Mansour, an Emirati royal, owns the Manchester city football club.

The rivalry of these two oil exporters is going to shape a new bloc in the region. They both have sufficient resources to direct relations in their own national interests. Saudi Arabia, losing its influence over the Taliban, is being replaced by Qatar. According to a Taliban official, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to block the Afghan peace talks in Doha while Taliban are happy with Qatari mediation in the process.

The fight between Gulf countries leaves Afghanistan with no saying on its future. With all said and done, would a peace deal brokered by Saudis and Qataris bring peace to Afghanistan? That is the real question, and Afghans do not have a solid answer.

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 by John Wilson

Who are Warren Christopher Clark and Zaid Abed al-Hamid?

Warren Christopher Clark (left) and Zaid Abed  al-Hamid (right) in SDF Custody.

In January 2019, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured a group of men who they state were seeking to launch attacks against civilians fleeing the small pockets of territory still under Islamic State control. The group consisted of men from around the globe, including Pakistan, Ireland, and the United States. Warren Christopher Clark and Zaid Abed al-Hamid, two of the men captured by SDF forces, were named and identified as American citizens by their captors on social media based on forms of identification on their persons. Clark, who goes by the kunya of Abu Mohammad al-Ameriki, has since been positively identified as an American from Texas. Al-Hamid, who now goes by Abu Zaid al-Ameriki, has a much less clear background.

Clark’s background has been explored and significant insight has been gained from Clark himself in videotaped interviews he participated in while in SDF custody. Clark is a former substitute teacher from the Houston metropolitan area. It is believed that Clark is 34 years of age. It has been confirmed that he graduated from University of Houston, where he majored in political science and minored in global business. After several years of being a substitute teacher, Clark began to watch videos of the Islamic State online. Curious, Clark was able to make contact with an Islamic State representative, sending them a resume and cover letter explaining his desire to teach English to children in the caliphate. Clark states that he is a convert to Islam, though it is unclear when he converted. After traveling to Syria via Turkey, Clark states that he never picked up arms for the caliphate. In interviews after he was captured, Clark stated that he did not regret joining the group, and even justified beheadings conducted by the group, comparing them to executions in the United States criminal justice system.

While questions remain about al-Hamid and his background, it is known that he is originally from Trinidad, where he was detained in 2011 for plotting to kill their prime minister. Beyond this, al-Hamid was featured in numerous Islamic State propaganda videos where he discusses converting to Islam and the struggles he faced practicing his religion there. Rumors have circulated that al-Hamid is a dual-US citizen. This has not been confirmed, but his use of al-Ameriki in his kunya suggests some background in the United States. When al-Hamid made his journey to the caliphate, he brought along his wife and multiple children. It is unclear if they are still alive.

Clark, who has been transferred to US custody and brought back to Texas, has since been indicted and charged with providing material support to the Islamic State. The indictment covers a period from 2011, when he first drew the attention of federal law enforcement officials for online activities pertaining to jihadists social media entities.

Early investigation into both Clark and al-Hamid has not resulted in substantial findings in terms of potential solutions for further countering violent extremist ideology. Both Clark and al-Hamid were converts to Islam. In both of their lives, it appears that there was or may have been a feeling of marginalization within society. Clark, despite having a formal education, could not find a full-time position teaching. Al-Hamid, in Islamic State propaganda videos, stated that he struggled practicing his faith in Trinidad and felt like an outsider. Both men appeared to have been at least partially influenced by online extremist sites.

The lessons learned thus far in both Clark and al-Hamid’s cases is limited. However, perceived or real marginalization appears to be an underlying factor in both cases respectfully. Time will dictate policy recommendations to prevent radicalization, but one cannot ignore the continuous appearance of marginalization in case studies of those who have become radicalized towards extremist ideologies.

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 by Sakhi Naimzada

Intra-Afghan Peace Talks in the Absence of Afghan Government

Members of each delegation in Moscow beside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Image credit: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters.

Afghanistan has a long history of participating in local and international conferences on peace. The Bonn Conference was the start of a series of other conferences on peace and stability hosted in Afghanistan. The Afghan government has put together or at least sent a delegation to myriad conferences to gain international support for their peace efforts with opposition groups in the country.

Despite this trend, the last Moscow Peace talks were held in Russia without the presence of an Afghan government delegation. Organized by an Afghan-Russian Association, the conference took place six days after successful talks between the US and the Taliban occurred in Doha, according to US Special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad. The Taliban refused any direct conversation with the Afghan government, but agreed to sit down with delegations from the United Sates, India, Pakistan, China, and prominent Afghan political figures including Hanif Attmar- a favorite to take over as president in the upcoming presidential elections- to talk peace. In the meantime, the Afghan government, the main absentee of the conference, called them traitors and urgently called for direct talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

After two days of negotiations in Moscow, an agreement was reached. The Taliban, accusing the Kabul government of being an “American puppet”, asked for a withdrawal of American forces from the country, the release of detainees, and the inclusion of the principle of Islamic Religion in the constitution. Former president Hamid Karzai, leading the Afghan delegation, declared the talks a “big achievement” that would bring peace and stability in an “Afghanistan free of foreign forces”. Current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani declared the Afghan delegation in Moscow illegitimate to represent Afghanistan in the conference.

Russia has been a low-key player in Afghan affairs since the beginning of the War on Terror. The Russian government, concerned about  security in the Central Asia, keeps a close eye on Afghanistan. The latest peace talk in Moscow was a step by Russia towards taking a major role in influencing Afghan governmental affairs, and sets precedent for future Russian involvement in Afghanistan.

Seeing the Taliban sitting at the table with decades-old political enemies to talk peace is the long-awaited desire of all Afghans, but it certainly poses risks. The Taliban went to Moscow demanding what seems to be the return of the Taliban regime of the 1990s, the withdrawal of foreign forces, Sharia Law, and no sign of womens’ appearance within the government. The Afghan delegation, on the other hand, was comprised mainly of political figures who fought on the front lines of the fight against the Taliban. Thanks to differences  between these two parties and the disparity in their motivations for negotiating, the fear is that an agreement between them would be more of a political move to grasp power in Kabul than a long-term solution for peace.

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 by Caleb Septoff

Terror’s New Form

Source: The East African (2014)

Author: Caleb Septoff

Perhaps one of the greatest scientific achievements in human history is the invention of the internet, which landmarked the beginning of the digital age in the modern era. Its uses span multiple fields and in large part is responsible for the high levels of rapid globalization we have become accustomed to today. Although it has improved humanity in many facets, it has also led to the increase in the susceptibility of nations’ and individuals to cyber-attacks. The internet has evolved over the last decade with the inception of social media and cyber currency, but with this evolution comes a new wave of terrorism in the form of cyber-attacks, propaganda, hacking, and online recruitment. The threat has grown substantially – enough for even university institutions, namely New York University (NYU), to offer cyber security majors and courses solely to deter these types of attacks.

Before venturing into the subject of digital terrorism, it is important to explore something less widely known to the average internet user; this being the deep web and dark net. The internet is composed of two main points of access; the surface web and the dark web. The surface web is most common to everyday users and comprises mainly of search engines, like Google and Bing, and the information found is unrestricted. Comparatively, the deep web differs mainly in size, estimated at four to five hundred times bigger than the surface web, accounting for 90% of the internet. In comparison to the surface web, the wealth of information stored on the deep web is gigantic. Most of the deep web is restricted by applications, which grant access to databases or password protected sites. Anything from social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, to online banking are considered part of the deep web. In addition to its size, the dark web differs  in its accessibility. Despite popular beliefs, the deep web and dark net are not synonymous. Rather, the dark net exists hidden below the surface web. The dark net is almost entirely unregulated and is even harder to access than the deep web. To date, the dark net hosts an unknown number of websites, but the content ranges from people sending messages who wish to maintain anonymity to underground drug dealing, sex trafficking, weapons dealing, and the focus of this article, terrorists and extremists’ sites.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Daesh, was the first terrorist organization to truly maximize their outreach using the internet. When Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi declared the caliphate, a wave of propaganda and recruitment media took social media by storm. While destructive, authorities and the companies themselves were able to mitigate much of the content since it took place on the more accessible surface web. However, the organization consistently found new ways to respond to authorities’ crackdowns. First, they began attracting people through social media and other corners of the surface web and then slowly moved them towards more difficult protected places like domains and chat rooms on the dark net. In addition, the use of messaging applications that offered heavy encryption, like Telegram, were core ways for them to communicate. The use of these cyber tools aided in attracting over 20,000 foreign fighters from more than 10 different countries to flock to Syria to fight on ISIL’s behalf, and even more followers aided the organization from remote positions around the globe. In early 2018, New York Times’ reporter, Rukimini Callimachi, released a podcast by the name of “Caliphate.” The podcast goes into detail about one Canadian man’s experience of being recruited through multiple steps, starting on social media and eventually moving into private chat rooms. Callimachi’s reporting highlights how effective ISIL’s extensive reach was, not only technologically, but by simply creating effective connections with people, especially the youth.

Thus far, terrorists’ groups have not been able to do much more than the defacement of webpages and execution of minor cases of hacking. For example, a series of attacks in 2015, all claiming ties to Daesh, were executed in various countries. Most notably, a self-titled group called Cyber Caliphate managed to hack Malaysia Airlines’ main website, deface the French TV5 broadcast station, and hack the US military Central Command’s YouTube and Twitter accounts. Technology is continuously growing and it gets more sophisticated every year. As greater attention turns to digital recruitment and terrorism, these “small” attacks will grow larger in scope and harm. The possibility of cutting electric to hospitals or inciting mass riots through the spread of false media is very real and dangerous. The need to find adequate responses to the rising dangers of cyber terrorism is crucial to the future of counter terrorism. Perhaps most conspicuously, the important question becomes how to best be proactive in thwarting attacks and rather than simply being reactive.

The international community has a plethora of different third-party watch dogs when it comes to war and terrorism, whether they come in the form of global entities like the United Nations (UN) or International Non-Profit Organizations (INGO). In addition, a multitude of international treaties and agreements exist to set standards for war and outline what is not acceptable. The Geneva Convention, one of the most important and widely known, is comprised of four treaties and three protocols that establish standards for humanitarian rights and treatment during times of war. Yet, something these organizations don’t cover adequately is how to respond to cyber warfare and digital terrorism. One of the greatest challenges in dealing with these online threats is attribution, or ascribing blame to those who have committed the crime and proving it. According to a RAND Corporation video on the subject, they identify three main types of attribution: political (dealing with diplomatic knowledge and political actors’ objectives), technical (IP addresses, log file analysis, etc.), and clandestine (classified information and political insights).

Categorizing makes it easier to decide how to interpret the crime and, thus, how to assign punishment. However, it is not simple to prove digital crimes without access to data that, for the most part, is private, anonymous and not easily tracked. Citizens’ right to privacy and the level of privacy that is entitled has become a topic of high contention in the debate for higher cyber security. Although these are difficult issues to deal with, the international community needs to step up and begin to take action before cyber warfare reaches a level with much higher stakes. Like the UN, there needs to be a large international organization that can specialize in cyber security and cyber terrorism. It would require the nonexistence of any political affiliation to be effective and act on behalf of any country that requires its services to increase its credibility. Perhaps, most important, would be its role in providing international laws on cyber warfare and attacks to clearly and concisely build a foundation or framework for security agencies to work from. It would also be responsible for developing the mechanisms for freedom of expression and privacy; although this would most likely fall to the specific countries rather than the independent watch dog organization.

Social media platforms have done relatively well at combing through their users and content to locate possible terrorist activities, but this is not enough. Further action needs to be taken regarding regulation. Systems need to be devised to adequately monitor both the surface web content and the deep and dark web to locate, deter and respond to these threats before they can implement harm to critical infrastructures, governments, businesses, and even the psyches of viewers. Creating measures to regulate data and prevent data mining for terrorist activities is crucial to preventing the attacks in the future. There is no easy answer to the rising threat of cyber terrorism and warfare, but it’s imperative that solutions and international cooperation begins sooner than later.

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 by Caleb Septoff

ISIS Threat

Since ISIS’, or Daesh’s, ascension to power, following the chaos of the Syrian uprisings in 2011, the world has watched as these Islamists used increasingly brutal tactics to secure huge swaths of land in both Syria and Iraq. They targeted fragile, war-torn countries with low state capacity and worked to push their own agenda. The religious fundamentalists quickly gained international fame as they exploited the realm of social media to a new level, posting videos and creating multiple accounts on different platforms to attract followers from across the globe. However, the magnitude of their global attention eventually worked against the organization as the United States and other nations showed support and entered Syria for the sole purpose of extinguishing ISIS.

Over 30,000 airstrikes later and aggressive military policies by the United States, backed by around sixty-eight other countries, ISIS has lost most of its territory it formerly held in Iraq and Syria. Despite this, the group has managed to keep a small piece of land near the Syrian-Iraqi border for more than a year now. The plot of land is tucked around a quaint Syrian town known as Hajin in the Deir al-Zour province. Occasionally, militants still attempt to stage an attack outside of the small parcel of land they control, but even these attacks appear feeble and unorganized, like the last breath before they cease to exist any longer, unlike their prior attacks. Especially the attacks that took Europe by surprise in 2014 and 2015. However, it has been more than four years since Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Daesh, declared the caliphate and those attacks seem to be a distant memory to many. Today it appears to most of the world that ISIS is not only no longer a threat but has been eradicated from existence.

Maxwell B. Markusen, associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C., spoke to the New York Timesand stated that this rhetoric commonly being used is destructive as it insinuates that ISIS is no longer a threat. Although the area they control has seriously diminished, this is not the case. ISIS’ lightning fast rise to the forefront of the world’s most feared organizations is mainly the result of the propaganda and recruitment arm that remains active. ISIS is currently broadcasting their videos and messages at a similar pace as they were when at the height of their power. There were more attacks in 2017 than in 2016 and although the numbers of successful attacks have gone down significantly, attempted attacks continue at a pace similar to that in 2015. Although their territory has diminished it is thought that they still retain around 30,000 members in total throughout Syria and Iraq, though these numbers cannot be confirmed. The American led fight to take Hajin, the last place ISIS officially operates from, is proving harder than anticipated, even with the help of the Syrian Democratic Forces. ISIS is pushed back against a corner and has no problem fighting like there is nothing to lose. They have been reported to use the civilians which has only slowed fighting further.

Recently, President Donald Trump tweeted a video statement where he declared, “we have beaten them, and we have beaten them badly. It’s time to bring our troops home…We won.” While many families will be rejoicing as their sons and daughters are sent home, one must wonder if pulling the estimated two thousand American troops out of Syria is the correct move. Not only is ISIS’ presence and influence still widely felt, it leaves only Russia, Iran and Hezbollah as the major players in the geopolitical center of the Middle East. Bordering Syria are five of the U.S. allies: Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon. None of these allies will appreciate the abrupt removal by the U.S. Once the U.S. leaves they give up their position of diplomatic leverage and forfeit it to the aforementioned countries still involved. The announcement came as a surprise, but will no doubt be greeted warmly by both Russia and Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria. Russia has long fought for sole influence over Syria and has long desired it as a military base for their naval and air forces. The Trump administrations own team seems to have been taken by surprise as well. Brett McGurk, the State Department’s Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, said at a briefingon December 11th, “if we’ve learned one thing over the years, enduring defeat of a group like this means you can’t just defeat their physical space and then leave. You have to make sure the internal security forces are in place to ensure that those gains, security gains, are enduring.”

Haphazardly pulling troops out may seem like a good move after years of being stationed in a war zone, but McGurk is accurate in his assessment. The U.S. has on more than one occasion, think Afghanistan and Iraq, acted against unfit regimes or terrorist organizations and then quickly left soon after the fighting slowed. ISIS is not obliterated; they still exist and are actively recruiting new followers. Leaving a country without infrastructure or institutions to maintain peace will only result in the resurfacing of the movement. The age old saying, ‘history repeats itself’ will ring true if the U.S. chooses not to learn from its past. In this situation, the U.S. should not pull out all troops and leave the region void of its influence. Instead, the U.S. should focus on rebuilding what they have aided in destroying and use their influence to not only keep ISIS at bay but also to work with other nations, including Syria to rebuild the country and its institutions. This in the long run will leave less space for terrorists’ organizations such as ISIS to flourish as many of the capabilities to protect against extremism are found within strong infrastructure and institutions.

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