Influential al-Qaeda-linked Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Worldfocus takes a look at the evolution of al-Qaeda into a fragmented network of jihadi terrorist elements, often united more by philosophy than by concrete linkages between AfPak and cells in Iraq, Yemen, North Africa and beyond.

The escalated drone war in northwest Pakistan has brought attention to the attenuated al-Qaeda core that moved from Afghanistan in late 2001.

But two events in late December — a failed Christmas Day bombing and a suicide attack on CIA operatives in Afghanistan — have led analysts to re-assess al-Qaeda’s perceived decline in popularity and power.

The somewhat resurgent organization is highly decentralized and relies more on a brand name and local franchises than on ideological, communications and operations control by the group’s top leaders.

An Asia Times commentary article from 2004 addresses the al-Qaeda brand name:

Legitimized by President George W Bush’s administration’s declaration of war, al-Qaeda has now become a global phantom, plagued by its own reputation and in need of solid ground. Indeed, the post-September 11 security environment finds al-Qaeda lacking not only a physical safe haven as it had in Afghanistan, but also the critical manpower and expertise that it had in the moments prior to September 11.

This, by any means, is not the end of al-Qaeda, however. The ultimate power in such groups is not necessarily the leadership, but always the cause that defines the legitimacy of the group and the leadership that guides it. Bin Laden’s existence, perhaps as it always has been, is largely political and symbolic - but will nevertheless remain a powerful source of his straining influence on various members of the global umma. Thus the “war on terror”, although controversial in many minds, has undermined both the conventional and unconventional abilities of al-Qaeda and its global entities…

In sum, the power of the al-Qaeda cause, once inherited and customarily altered from the Muslim Brotherhood, has remained close to the political spirit of many radical variations of Islam. The twist here is that the elimination of the “physical” al-Qaeda nexus and the resulting decentralization of its regional elements into like-minded, local leadership groups may ultimately prove more of stratagem advantage versus US policy than a vulnerability.

Then a 2005 BBC article examined the terrorist organization as a global, corporate franchise:

Most newspaper reports encourage us to visualize al-Qaeda as an army, with a high command; or perhaps as a multinational organization, with bin Laden as its chief executive officer and men like Ayman al-Zawahri as his senior management.

We are told that the Bali bombings, like those in London, Madrid and half a dozen other places since the attacks of 11 September 2001, “bear all the hallmarks of” al-Qaeda - formulaic language that has not varied since the days when the violence of the IRA and ETA was at its peak.

The implication is that its senior figures order these attacks, and that local operatives carry them out…

Just as you can buy the franchise for, say, a Holiday Inn or an Intercontinental Hotel, so you can adopt the principles of Osama bin Laden and set up your own deadly group, murdering those you identify as the enemies of the faith - and anyone else, of course, who happens to be passing at the time.

And an AP article from July 2009 compares al-Qaeda’s expansion to fast food franchising:

The al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is perhaps the best example of how al-Qaeda is morphing and broadening its reach through loose relationships with local offshoots. The shadowy network of Algerian cells recruits Islamist radicals throughout northern and western Africa, trains them and sends them to fight in the region or Iraq, according to Western and North African intelligence officials who asked to remain anonymous because of the nature of their jobs. In turn, AQIM gets al-Qaeda’s brand name and some corporate know-how.

“The relationship with the al-Qaeda mother company works like in a multinational,” says Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s former top counterterrorism judge and an expert on North African networks. “There’s a strong ideological link, but the local subsidiary operates on its own.”

Another Western intelligence official compares AQIM to a local fast food franchise, “only for terrorism.”

The cover of The Guardian Weekly from September 11, 2009. Photo: Wikipedia

The Guardian published a piece in September 2009 — on the 8th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — about the organization’s perceived decline:

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida is under heavy pressure in its strongholds in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas and is finding it difficult to attract recruits or carry out spectacular operations in Western countries, according to government and independent experts monitoring the organization…

Its activity is increasingly dispersed to “affiliates” or “franchises” in Yemen and North Africa, but the links of local or regional jihadi groups to the center are tenuous; they enjoy little popular support and successes have been limited.

Lethal strikes by CIA drones – including two this week alone – have combined with the monitoring and disruption of electronic communications, suspicion and low morale to take their toll on al-Qaeda’s Pakistani “core,” in the jargon of western intelligence agencies.

Interrogation documents seen by the Guardian show that European Muslim volunteers faced a chaotic reception, a low level of training, poor conditions and eventual disillusionment after arriving in Waziristan last year.

“Core” al-Qaida is now reduced to a senior leadership of six to eight men, including Bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to most informed estimates. Several other Egyptians, a Libyan and a Mauritanian occupy the other top positions. In all, there are perhaps 200 operatives who count.

Yet, after a failed Christmas Day bombing and a successful Khost attack on CIA operatives, The Economist ran a piece last month that refuted assumptions about al-Qaeda’s imminent demise:

ONLY a few months ago, intelligence experts were saying that al-Qaeda and its allies were in decline, both militarily and ideologically. But two bombs less than a week apart, one failed and the other successful, have put an end to such optimism.

The talk of al-Qaeda’s downfall did not come from thin air. In the view of many analysts, the network’s central leadership had been decimated through drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal belt; al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch was all but defeated; its brethren in Iraq were marginalized; and those in other regions could mount only local attacks. Al-Qaeda had failed to land a blow in the West since the London bombs of 2005. Funds were dwindling, and more Muslims were eschewing global terror.

Though still dangerous, “al-Qaeda is under more pressure, is facing more challenges and is a more vulnerable organisation than at any time since the attacks on 11 September 2001,” declared Mike Leiter, the director of America’s National Counterterrorism Center last September.

Such assessments are being hurriedly revised. Mr Leiter, Barack Obama’s favorite spook, is now among those having to explain why his newish organization, which is supposed to fuse all information on terrorist threats, failed to connect several partial warnings about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, who moved from London to Yemen last year, tried to set off explosives sewn into his underpants on board a Northwest Airlines flight, carrying 290 people from Amsterdam, as it prepared to land in Detroit on Christmas Day.

For more on al-Qaeda in Yemen, listen to Worldfocus Radio: Yemen’s Multiple Wars.

- Ben Piven

Canada, which has limited exposure to the threat of international terrorism, has been preparing its security arrangements well in advance of the two-week series of events.

Our German partner Deutsche Welle reports on security issues in the host city:

An American soldier in Kandahar. Photo: Flickr user

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

Mankind has engaged in violent extremism since Biblical times. Cain became the world’s first terrorist by slaying his brother Abel. Voltaire pessimistically characterized human history as nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

In a sense, America lost its innocence on 9/11. The international community sympathized with Washington but it also said, “Welcome to the real world!”

The Bush administration with its Manichean world view exploited a fearful populace to execute its agenda of “full spectrum dominance” and preemptive war. It invaded two countries — Afghanistan and Iraq — and openly threatened military action against a third: Iran. In the desire to exact retribution, the motivations driving such terrorist attacks were largely ignored. The lives lost and financial resources squandered have been enormous.

More than 8 years have elapsed since the 9/11 atrocity, but it is a moot point if the U.S. is any safer today. That no further attacks on the U,.S. mainland have taken place, suggests that the revamped security structure despite its flaws, is keeping American citizens safe.

What should be clearly understood is that there is no foolproof security system that can prevent committed terrorists from carrying out violent acts against the citizens of another country.

For years, Armenian terrorists were killing Turkish citizens as revenge for the alleged genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks on its Armenian subjects during World War I. Israelis and Palestinians have been killing each other since the founding of Israel in 1948. Kashmiris and Indians are doing the same in Indian-administered Kashmir. The list goes on.

The Nigerian underwear bomber’s recent failed attempt to blow up an American airliner, which the media played up, has once again brought a wave of fear to our shores. I wish some senior official of the Obama administration had calmed the public by recalling Roosevelt’s sage advice to his countrymen: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Terrorism is propaganda by deed, since terrorism is theater. Al-Qaeda succeeds every time it plants fear and uncertainty in our hearts and minds. We should get over being overly obsessed about our security. Our despondency comes close to pusillanimity, which runs against the America tradition of courage and fortitude.

Capturing or killing bin Laden and his deputy al-Zawahiri should remain a U.S. objective, but without the media hype. Because by doing this, we are in a sense helping to resurrect them for their dwindling band of followers. The less heed we pay them publicly, the more quickly they will fade away into obscurity.

In concentrating on bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, we may be focusing on the symptoms rather than the disease. Let us be clear: if one or both of them are eliminated tomorrow, al-Qaeda, which has become a transnational enterprise, will not fold. It is not even known how much influence these two fugitives continue to exercise on al-Qaeda’s global reach.

Violent extremism is like a chronic disease. It cannot be eradicated but its effects can be considerably mitigated by a combination of soft power and hard power, with soft power being the predominant element in the mix. The U.S. and the West should focus on winning hearts and minds of the people in whose midst violent extremists operate.

Once we empower these people by making them stakeholders in peaceful economic development, violent extremists will be marginalized. Right now the U.S. seems to be relying much more on hard power in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such an approach — far from being crowned with success — is likely to put the U.S. on the slippery path to ultimate failure.

- S. Azmat Hassan

James Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a former assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, and Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Institute of the State University of New York and a former NBC News foreign correspondent and anchor, join Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss Yemen and the fight against terrorism.

This latest warning came as Yemeni officials said security forces killed two al-Qaeda fighters in a gun battle.

And ten days after the attempted bombing of a U.S. jetliner by a suspect who received his training and explosives in Yemen, passengers from Yemen and 13 other countries now face additional aiport security screening.

For more, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Juan Carlos Zarate, senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And Omar Al Saleh reports for Al Jazeera English on the Arabic-language school where the alleged plane bomber studied during his time in Yemen.

Alleged Christmas Day bomber when he was in Yemen. Photo: Al Jazeera

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

Umar Abdulmutallab’s audacious attempt on Christmas Day — to ignite explosives that he had smuggled on board a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit from Holland — has been a top story for the past few days.

Quick thinking by passengers who pinned him down averted what could have been a major tragedy.

Abdulmutallab is quoted as saying that he obtained the deadly explosives from al-Qaeda agents operating in Yemen. He reportedly spent some time in Yemen recently and presumably got indoctrinated there to attack Americans in the sky.

Parallels with Richard Reid, the so-called “shoe bomber” who tried something similar 8 years ago, come immediately to mind.

A somber President Obama said that the obvious security lapse, which allowed a passenger to smuggle explosives sewn in his underwear, was “unacceptable.”

More interestingly, Abdulmutallab’s father, a retired banker, had gone to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria late last year to warn it that his son had been radicalized. Further, that he was a potential menace to the United States. It is not known why the father’s courageous denunciation of his son did not have the desired effect of putting him on the no-fly list.

Five American youth are in custody in Pakistan because their parents had notified the FBI that they were missing and might be in contact with al-Qaeda. This example shows that the Muslim community worldwide is becoming more proactive in revealing contemplated acts of violent extremism emanating from their kith and kin.

Obama is right to order a thorough probe of the Christmas day bombing incident. Better sharing of intelligence among the American security agencies is key to thwarting such attempts to harm Americans. The Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and others must cooperate in getting to the bottom of this security failure.

There are an estimated 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity. A minuscule proportion of Muslim young men, for a variety reasons, become radicalized. Extremist organizations recruit them after pointing to alleged U.S. culpability in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Such alienation leading to radical behavior is not peculiar to Islam. It exists in other major religions as well. Blaming Islam for the acts of a few individuals exhibits both ignorance and bias.

Obama should also be very cautious about getting embroiled in Yemen, a desperately poor country with a weak government facing more than one violent insurgency. He already has his hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan. By all means, Yemen’s counter-terrorism apparatus needs U.S. advice and financial support. But an even more critical need is to use soft power for human development.

If the energies of hundreds of thousands of young Yemenis could be channeled into gainful employment, they are much less likely to be recruited by extremist organizations. Al-Qaeda and their ilk find a ready clientele in poverty-ridden and fragmented states such as Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan — and in the lawless tribal areas abutting the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Poverty was not the motivating factor with Abdulmutallab. He came from an affluent background and was educated in Britain. This goes to show that violent extremism has many faces. It is not possible to build a single profile of what motivates radicalization.

It is virtually impossible to eradicate violent extremism root and branch in our far from perfect world. But the international community — working together and taking affirmative action in impoverished areas of the globe — can certainly reduce such incidents.

Human development is the single most effective antidote to such behavior.

- S. Azmat Hassan

The flag of Pashtunistan. Courtesy: Wiki user Jolle

Worldfocus multimedia producer Ben Piven writes about the U.S. war in Pashtunistan, an often misunderstood place not found on any world map.

The knee-jerk American reaction after September 11th was to strike at the Taliban-ruled nation that was harboring a sizable, international al-Qaeda contingent: Afghanistan.

But these days, it is becoming ever more clear that the U.S. has widened its campaign to the region that some people call Pashtunistan — the area historically inhabited by ethnic Pashtuns.

The vast majority both of al-Qaeda operatives and of Taliban militants who oppose the U.S. are located in Pashtunistan, with little regard for the arbitrary Durand Line drawn by the British that technically separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. The Guardian described the region last year as a “Grand Central Station for Islamic terrorists.”

A number of recent articles highlight that the U.S. is no longer merely involved in counter-insurgency against Afghan terrorists. As drone attacks against targets in Pakistan escalate, allegations arise that the U.S. is actually much more involved in Pakistan than previously known.

A New York Times article from earlier this month suggests that the Obama plan for a troop increase ignores the reality of Pashtunistan:

In his address [December 1], the president mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”

But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.

That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.

Whether Mr. Obama will have better luck there than President George W. Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.

Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.

And an article by Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times looks at the region’s hopes for self-determination:

Tribal Pashtuns (from eastern Afghanistan to western Pakistan) have never given up on being united again. Everyone familiar with AfPak knows the region is still paying the price for the fateful and - what else - divide-and-rule British imperial decision in 1897 to split tribal Pashtuns through the artificial Durand Line. The line remains the artificial border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anyone who ever crossed it at, for instance, Torkham, at the foot of the Khyber pass, knows it is meaningless; people swarming on both sides are all cousins who never stopped dreaming of a pre-colonial, Afghan Durrani empire that straddled a great deal of contemporary Pakistan.

Few have noticed that Pashtuns were recently insisting on a very basic demand - that North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan have its name changed to Pakhtunkhwa (”Land of the Pashtuns”). The demand was shot down this past September by the dominant Punjabis in Pakistan. Pashtun nationalists protested en masse in fabled Peshawar, the NWFP capital. Pashtun national liberation is at fever pitch. Pashtun Guevaras are already issuing a call to arms.

But as much as Washington, now with a little help from its friend/client government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad, has been conducting essentially a war on Pashtuns since 2001, this is no monolithic movement. It all goes back to the early 21st-century maxim that virtually every Taliban is a Pashtun, but not every Pashtun is a Taliban. There are significant strands of secular Pashtuns that shun the TTP [Pakistani Taliban] and its brand of Islamic fundamentalist dystopian dogma, even while the Pashtun masses may see in the TTP the ideal vehicle for the advent of Pashtunistan.

If we follow the money, we see that the TTP in Pakistan is now being financed mostly by wealthy, pious Gulf businessmen and not anymore by Islamabad. The financiers are more interested in jihad than in Pashtun nationalism, and that undermines the legitimacy of the Taliban as vehicles for Pashtun nationalism.

An opinion piece titled “Welcome to Pashtunistan” in The National last week described a covert CIA-funded operation in Pakistan by Xe, the company formerly known as Blackwater. The author, retired Pakistani military officer Shaukat Qadir, alleges that the U.S. has plans to destabilize Pakistan’s government in order to stabilize the broader region in the long-term.

Qadir also suggests that even though U.S.-funded operatives are in Karachi and Peshawar, they have failed to hunt down most of the top al-Qaeda figures.

Security analysts often argue that the current Afghan insurgency is at heart a Pashtun movement — organized and directed by Pashtuns in Pakistan.

If true, Qadir’s assertions would prove that the U.S. has long been devoting significant resources to combating terror in the Pakistani half of Pashtunistan:

[Blackwater's] presence in Pakistan has been an open secret for some years. The investigative journalist and writer Jeremy Scahill, an authority on Blackwater and author of the bestselling Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, revealed last month that it has been there since 2006. He says Blackwater is being employed for covert ops, essentially intended to target high-value al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, but it has also assisted in providing information for drone attacks and has kidnapped suspects and transported them covertly to the U.S. for interrogation…

Mr. Scahill does not engage in speculation, and is not to be taken lightly. So when he states that Xe is sitting in Karachi, he is not likely to be wrong. He has added that the operation is so secret that many senior people in the Obama administration were unaware of it.

However, he seems to have erred in one respect: Xe is not only in Karachi. It also has a massive presence in Islamabad and Peshawar, where I understand the organization has rented up to seven adjacent houses. Neighbors who heard muffled explosions soon after the houses were occupied suspect that they are linked by underground tunnels.

Along with massively expanded counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, the U.S. appears to be quickly but quietly escalating its war in Pakistan.

Over the next few years, we can expect more intensive drone strikes, heightened Pakistani military efforts and a increasingly blurry line that separates the two halves of Pashtunistan.

- Ben Piven

To find out what other countries are doing to protect airline passengers, Martin Savidge speaks with Vahid Motevalli, a professor at Purdue University and expert on aviation security.

Motevalli explains passenger profiling, technological improvements and the long-term threat of terrorism.

A woman in Garhi Habibullah, Pakistan. Photo: Flickr user UNphoto

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

U.S. and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan converge but only up to a point. From 2002 to 2008, the U.S. poured in over $10 billion to the Musharraf government for its support in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.

The money was largely utilized to replenish the Pakistani military’s capabilities. Not much was devoted to human development in the most needy and impoverished tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Today, the United States and Pakistan are no doubt allies battling violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas. It was inevitable that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, after being routed by the United States in 2001, would cross the porous border to seek sanctuary among fellow Pashtuns in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt.

The media tends to conflate the Pakistani Taliban, who are battling the Pakistani government, and the Afghan Taliban, whose main motive is to drive away foreign forces from Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army, in its counterinsurgency campaign, has achieved some success against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan. This group had directly challenged the writ of the state.

But despite the U.S. prodding Pakistan to go after the Afghan Taliban — whose leadership is reportedly hiding in Pakistan’s border areas — the Pakistani government is reluctant to do so.

The reason is simple: the Afghan Taliban do not launch attacks against the Pakistani people. Secondly, the Pakistanis do not want to antagonize a group which could play a dominant role in a future Afghan government.

It would be much wiser if the U.S. and Pakistan undertook a more realistic appraisal of the limits of their alliance. For the Pakistanis, the U.S. has often been an unreliable ally, which has abandoned them in the past. Bitter memories of these episodes remain.

President Obama has announced that the U.S. will start withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. Nobody can predict how long the U.S. will remain in Afghanistan after that date.

Meanwhile, the Taliban will remain a major force in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s influence there will grow if the Afghan Taliban become a partner in a new government in Kabul, which could be on the horizon sooner rather than later.

The U.S. should not feel offended if the Pakistanis cannot meet its demands regarding the Afghan Taliban. On the contrary, since a military defeat of the Afghan insurgency is practically impossible to attain, the U.S. should open serious negotiations with Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban.

Omar has publicly stated that his fight is against the Karzai government. He is not against the United States.

If Omar is promised a share in power, a new coalition government can come into being in Afghanistan. This scenario will further marginalize the dwindling fortunes of al-Qaeda.

Nobody knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, or whether he is dead or alive. He has not been sighted for the past 8 years. His allure as an Islamic leader has been considerably dented. It is unwise to give him an importance or stature that he does not have any longer.

The U.S. should use its considerable soft power in Afghanistan and Pakistan. By helping to build schools, roads and hospitals in the region, the U.S. will achieve much more success in winning hearts and minds.

Hard power has been tried for the past 8 years. It was not successful. The drone attacks targeting Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan have killed some al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Regrettably, they have also killed many more innocent people. Much ill will against the US was created in both countries by this “collateral damage.”

Ultimately, drone attacks are not likely to make an appreciable difference to the insurgencies raging in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A negotiated political approach has a better chance of success.

- S. Azmat Hassan

A de-miner near Srinagar, Kashmir. Photo: Flickr user Haumont

Ambassador S. Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. He is currently an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is a contributing Worldfocus blogger.

Nonaligned India was perceived by most analysts to be largely in the Soviet camp during the Cold War. But the demise of the Soviet Union prompted India to recalibrate its relationship with the world’s only remaining superpower: the United States.

Another major factor assisting in this realignment was India’s embrace since the early 1990’s of free market reforms, trade liberalization and privatization measures. These changes opened up the vast Indian market to U.S. exporters and foreign investors. While millions of Indians are still desperately poor, around 300 million Indians have joined the middle class. Thus a new and expanding Indian market is opening up for a wide variety of U.S. exports, and U.S. investment in Indian industry and infrastructure has risen appreciably in the last few decades.

As a rising regional power, India is anxious to be recognized as a major player not only in South Asia but on the international stage. The importance of India to the U.S. was highlighted by the choice of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the first foreign dignitary to be accorded the honor of a state visit.

A major impediment retarding India’s quest towards great power status is its perennial dispute with neighboring Pakistan over Kashmir. The two oldest conflicts on the agenda of the UN Security Council from the late 1940’s are the Arab-Israeli and Kashmir conflicts.

Despite a number of diplomatic meetings spread over five decades, India and Pakistan have yet to overcome the hurdle of Kashmir, over which they have fought three wars. For Pakistan, Kashmir remains the unfinished agenda of the 1947 Partition. For secular multicultural India, Kashmir is a symbol of its heterogeneity.

President Obama has publicly stated that the U.S. would help India and Pakistan to normalize their relations,  including the dispute over Kashmir. The U.S. can help both countries. If the U.S. can persuade India to withdraw some of its forces on its border with Pakistan, this gesture would enable the latter to commit more of its troops now facing India to its lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

While the Pakistan army has achieved encouraging gains against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan, its counterinsurgency efforts need to achieve more success. Once the tribal areas are pacified, they will no longer afford a sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda elements that cross the mountainous and porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border at will, to attack U.S. and NATO troops fighting the Taliban insurgents.

So it is patently in the U.S. interest to invest more diplomatic capital in New Delhi and Islamabad. India and Pakistan have both suffered from violent extremism. They continue to be plagued by domestic insurgencies. Whether they admit it or not, they have a shared interest in combating the ravages of terrorism in their territories.

As the U.S. footprint in both Pakistan and India assumes greater depth, hopefully the U.S. will nudge both countries to consistently focus on a resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio. A mutually acceptable settlement of this issue should be placed on the same pedestal as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in U.S. calculations.

- S. Azmat Hassan

The decision to reinforce current anti-smuggling efforts came after the devastating Operation Cast Lead, which Israel said was necessary to stop rocket attacks.

The extensive tunnel network is used to import civilian goods as well as military weaponry.

For more on recent events in the Palestinian territories, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Ghassan Shabaneh, a Palestinian-American professor of international studies at Marymount Manhattan College.

Is Egypt justified in cutting off access to Gaza, even if it means severe hardship for the Gazan people?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

The president said, “The belief in peace is desirable rarely enough to achieve it” and called the escalating conflict necessary to protect the world from terrorism. He also said that the U.S. commitment to global security “will never waver.”

Steve Chao of Al Jazeera English reports from Afghanistan about why Afghans don’t think more troops will bring peace.

After hearing from the president today, do you think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

The program is a unique look inside the attacks, featuring closed-circuit television footage and first-hand accounts with survivors, some of whom came face-to-face with the terrorists.

The film premieres nationally Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 8 p.m. (EST) on PBS (check local listings). Actor Liev Schreiber (Taking Woodstock and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) narrates. Secrets of the Dead is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

Here’s an excerpt:

THIRTEEN Forum filmed a panel discussion about Secrets of the Dead: Mumbai Massacre and the events surrounding the November 2008 terror attacks with Director Victoria Pitt, Executive Producer Jared Lipworth, author Mira Kamdar and Al Jazeera correspondent Todd Baer.

The event was moderated by Columbia Journalism School’s Sree Sreenivasan and presented in partnership with SAJAforum. Also, read Todd Baer’s Forum blog post, Revisiting the Mumbai Massacre.

Worldfocus spoke with Sood about her experiences producing the videos.

Worldfocus: Why did you select the taxi as the venue for your reporting?

Vandana Sood: Taxis are a space where interesting interactions take place. Where else can you have a conversation between a driver and a diamond merchant, an IT professional and a washer man? The public yet contained environment of the taxi acts as a meeting ground for people from a diverse cross-section of society.

Taxi drivers represent the working class — the Indian common man, aam aadmi. On the other hand, passengers usually belong to more educated higher socioeconomic groups.

In India, the fault lines based on caste, class, education and creed run deep. Hence it is important to find spaces where it is possible to have a dialogue that overcomes such divisions — especially when the discussion is about terrorism, which does not discriminate amongst its victims and affects humanity universally.

Worldfocus: What has changed in Mumbai in the year since the terrorists attacks?

Vandana Sood: Mumbai is as resilient a city as ever, having faced decades of communal violence and bomb blasts. In a sense, not much has changed in this urban space where people have no alternative but to enter the same train station where armed terrorists opened fire indiscriminately last year. For most people, the attacks (known as 26/11) is ingrained in their psyches. But Mumbai is still in flux — as vibrant and chaotic as before.

In Mumbai, there was an initial burst of activism, which appears to have made way for a more cynical attitude, which is unfortunate. At the same time, there are fewer war cries heard after the initial calls for revenge against Pakistan.

The slow judicial proceedings for Ajmal Kasab, the lone captured terrorist, have led to complaints about the government’s lethargy and corruption. Most people hope that the Indian government has amended its security lapses and will be more prepared next time. The question is: can another 26/11 really be avoided?

Worldfocus: What did you see in the future for the Mumbai megalopolis?

Vandana Sood: The hard truth is that we will be hit again. The subcontinent has become a hotbed for several players like the Taliban, creating serious instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Indian government cannot deal with this matter in isolation but requires the cooperation of world leaders in formulating policies that do not have vested interests. As the financial center of a rising Asian power, Mumbai will have a shaky future in the world economy if these problems are not confronted.

- Ben Piven

A Yemeni government tank used against Houthi rebels in the north. Photo: Al Jazeera video

For the past 15 years, Dwight Bashir has worked on international conflict, human rights and religious freedom issues. He is a senior advisor for an independent U.S. commission focusing on international religious freedom. The views expressed here are his own personal views.

A war of words is heating up between Iran and Saudi Arabia over an ongoing armed conflict in northern Yemen between Shi’a Houthi rebels and Yemeni security forces. This week, Iran accused Saudi Arabia of state-sponsored “Wahhabi terrorism” in Yemen, while the most senior Saudi cleric accused Houthi rebels of being backed by Iran to spread Shi’a Islam in “Sunni Islam’s heartland.”

Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of providing financial and/or military support to the rebels. Iran denies any kind of support for the rebels.

The conflict in Yemen is complex — with numerous interlocking factors, such as underdevelopment, limited resources, tribal tensions, political exclusion and security concerns. Some have posited that the conflict is exacerbated by the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaging in a proxy war on Yemeni soil.

The truth is that for 30 years both Iran and Saudi Arabia have spent billions of dollars exporting competing religio-political ideologies in the region and globally, while committing egregious human rights violations at home to defend and bolster their respective ideologies.

Ever since Saudi Arabia entered the conflict two weeks ago after Houthi rebels crossed into Saudi territory from northern Yemen and allegedly killed two Saudi border guards, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have risen almost daily.

UN officials have estimated that, since 2004, as many as 175,000 people have been displaced in northern Yemen. And at least 240 villages in Saudi Arabia have been evacuated in recent weeks.

To better understand the conflict, it is important to understand religious demographics in Yemen. Between 40-45% of the Yemeni population of 23 million are Shi’a Muslims, mostly from the Zaydi school of Shi’a Islam founded more than 1,000 years ago.

Although Yemen’s majority is Sunni, Zaydi Muslims make up a majority of the population in the north where the fighting is taking place. In general, there are few societal tensions between Yemen’s Shi’a and Sunni Muslims.

The Yemeni government claims that Houthi rebels — considered a Zaydi militant group — have sought to develop a political faction modeled on Hezbollah in Lebanon, in order to undermine the government and impose Shi’a Islamic law. This is similar to how the Iranian government’s interpretation of Twelver Shi’a Islam is the law of the land in Iran.

The rebels follow the late Zaydi cleric, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (hence “Houthi rebels”). Al-Houthi is a former Yemeni parliamentarian who was killed during a 10-week rebellion in 2004 against the Yemeni government in the northern province of Saada, where the fighting started more than five years ago. The rebels claim they are fighting against government repression, although they have never articulated clear objectives, political or otherwise.

Despite both the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels insisting that the conflict is not sectarian in nature, the Iranian government is doing everything it can to portray the conflict as two predominantly Sunni Muslim states, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, cooperating to massacre Shi’a civilians in Yemen. Despite the complexities, these Iranian claims are exaggerated, at best, and downright contrived at worst.

Some Zaydi Muslims in Yemen have been subject to discrimination and harassment for perceived or actual sympathy toward Houthi rebels. According to human rights groups in the region, some Zaydi Muslims not connected to the rebels have been inadvertently targeted by the Yemeni government.

Because Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been promoting competing religio-political ideologies, it is not surprising that both countries would fan the flames of sectarian warfare. Yemen is a fragile state with an active al-Qaeda presence that threatens regional security, and its government is fighting for economic and political stability.

To date, the international community has not played an active role in the conflict. With the spillover into Saudi Arabia, the international community must engage and help broker an end to the current crisis. If not, the conflict could quickly escalate and the region may be facing a new security reality that would likely have wider implications.

- Dwight Bashir

For more, view our Voices of Iran extended coverage page and listen to our online radio show on Baha’i faith and modern Iran.

Martin Savidge hosts Filipino peace negotiator and Catholic priest Eliseo Mercado and security analyst Zachary Abuza when Worldfocus Radio explores the forgotten terrorist front in the Philippines.

For more on Worldfocus’ coverage of the Philippines, including original videos, click here.

Since 9/11, the U.S. has stationed 500 to 600 troops in the Philippines to strengthen military forces there. The U.S. counter-insurgency effort in the Philippines has been applauded as a success story for its mix of military action and soft power — including one of the largest USAID packages in the world.

But how lasting is this counter-insurgency success? Does it solve the root problems of poverty and lack of schools and infrastructure? And, if the U.S. pulls out, is the Philippines prepared to stop the tide of terrorism?

The U.S. strategy has been to root out terrorists from the lawless jungles of the south, which is home to the country’s Muslim minority and vulnerable to external terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

The show:

• explains the current insurgency in the poor, predominantly Muslim south of the Philippines
• evaluates how Filipino counter-insurgency tactics measure up to other Southeast Asian counter-insurgency efforts
• examines the mix of U.S. military might, diplomacy and humanitarian aid to combat local and regional instability
• discusses the importance of peace and reconciliation between the numerous Filipino ethnic groups

Martin Savidge hosts the following guests:

Zachary Abuza is a professor at Simmons College, Boston, specializing in Southeast Asian politics and security issues. He visits the region four to five times a year. Zachary is the author of Conspiracy of Silence: The Insurgency in Southern Thailand and its Implications for Southeast Asian Security, Muslims, Politics and Violence in Indonesia and Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, among other publications. He contributes frequently to the Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Counterterrorism Blog and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

Father Eliseo “Jun” Mercado, Jr. is a Catholic priest and peace advocate who has been extensively involved in the peace process in Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines. He is an expert on the role of Islam in the Philippines and led the independent cease-fire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front separatist group. Father Mercado has also been extensively involved in peace process in Mindanao. In October 2007, he was selected to be one of the 20 delegates representing all NGO and CSO accredited at the UN to the High Level UN Session on inter-religious dialogue.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven

But we don’t hear much about the toll on average Pakistanis and how they cope with the menace of militant attacks every day.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about everyday life in Lahore with Saeed Shafqat, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

For more on Sufism in Morocco, read about the music, mysticism and moderation.

But in the meantime, the Saudi government is cracking down on terror suspects and even has a program to rehabilitate al-Qaeda militants.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks to historian Robert Lacey about the latest developments in Saudi Arabia.

Do you think the Saudi government is doing enough to crack down on Al-Qaeda?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

Wednesday marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The aim was to defeat the Taliban and deny al Qaeda a home base after the September 11 attacks. But today, the Taliban are resurgent, the war has become increasingly deadly for America and its allies, and Osama bin Laden remains a free man. The Afghanistan conflict has gone on longer than anyone imagined it would.

For his part, President Obama says he will not substantially reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan, nor change the mission. But it remains to be seen if he will expand the the American military presence beyond the 68,000 troops already committed as the war becomes increasingly unpopular.

After eight years of war in Afghanistan, are the United States and the world safer from terrorism?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.