Tribal boundaries in Africa are fluid, even more than, say, boundaries between Serbs, Croats, and other groups in the Balkans. You can have several villages of different cultures, speaking different languages, within a few miles of each other. Also, if you marked off an area in West Africa and an area of comparable size in the Balkans, the African area would have more different languages and groups in it. Liberia is geographically the size of Tennessee, and has 31 tribes and 17 languages (counting the Americo-Liberians as a tribe).
Any excuse for tribal warfare will do, but militant Islam and high tech weaponry both are pouring gasoline on the fire. Local Islamic practices are often shot through with traditional magic, which is all about power and control over others. Locals regard imams with the same kind of awe that they regard witch doctors; and often the imams practice both. Add Militant Islam to this, and you get explosions.
While Christian groups tend to be more peaceful, there are cultists who mix traditional practices with Christianity as well, and so you hear of violent groups with Christian-sounding labels.
One of the reasons why Im not in favor of Lindsey Grahamstyle appeasement is because many of the fellows were trying to stay on the right side of are, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts. Theyre several suras short of a Koran. And attempting to appease loons is an even more forlorn enterprise than attempting to appease the merely evil. Take, for example, our friends the Saudis. Its a wealthy and influential nation. These arent your illiterate Pushtun goatherds. Look at the picture accompanying this fairly typical news story in todays Arab News: State-of-the-art office chairs, and a flat-screen TV. And then read the text:
JEDDAH: A total of 30 officials of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) have been trained on how to deal with cases of black magic.
The three-day training program was held in the Eastern Province city of Al-Ahsa.
The commission has achieved remarkable successes in combating black magic in various parts of the country. It has set up nine specialized centers in the main cities to deal with black magicians.
The majority of people arrested for practicing black magic in the Kingdom are Africans and Indonesians.
So most practitioners of black magic are black? Who knew till the Saudi religious police looked into it?
The Riyadh governorate last year launched a campaign against black magicians and those who illegally treat people by reading from the Quran.
Only qualified Saudis are allowed to practice Quranic treatment methods. Expatriates practicing such treatments would be caught and deported.
Since General Petraeuss new strategy seems to be to treat the Afghan people by reading from the Quran, I wonder if the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice will be issuing a ruling.
#1
Only qualified Saudis are allowed to practice Qur'anic treatment methods. However the practice of Koranic treatment methods is still open to any mere mountabank or swindler.
I argued nearly a month ago that the US needs to ask more than just: what comes after Salih?
It should also be asking: what does Yemen look like if Salih stays?
I'm not sure if the US asked itself this question or if it just came to the conclusion that no matter what it did Salih was on his way out, I suspect the latter, but have no inside information.
We should be clear, both scenarios - Salih leaving or staying - are potentially dangerous for US national security, which is one of the reasons the Obama administration is so hesitant to withdraw its support from Salih.
If Salih leaves the US is worried that the next government won't be as willing to meet US requests in fighting al-Qaeda as Salih has been in the past 14 months (because when journalists talk about Salih being an ally of the US in the war against AQAP this is the period they are referring to).
If, on the other hand, Salih stays, in the current environment it would likely take him several months to reassert control over much of the country that he has lost in recent weeks if he ever could, meaning that AQAP would not be as opposed as it has been. Salih has often been mocked as the "mayor of Sanaa," a snide journalistic and diplomatic remark that often betrays more about the speaker's lack of knowledge about Yemen than it does Salih's authority.
But if he stays, this description could very well turn out to be true, and for a US that worries that if AQAP isn't under any pressure it will be free to plan and launch attacks on the US such a scenario is rightly frightening. (Personally, I don't believe that even if Salih remains throughout this term - an outcome I believe is unlikely - he will ever be able to reassert control over the whole of Yemen).
So that is where the US is at in Yemen: two bad options.
Recognizing at the same time that regardless of what course it decides to pursue much of Yemen's future will remain beyond the realm of human engineering. There will only be so much that the US and the future government of Yemen will be able to control and dictate.
I have argued that from strictly a US national security point of view and leaving aside all other considerations (an approach to foreign policy I don't believe is wise) that helping to push Saliih out is the least bad option.
In that scenario the US will have, as I suggested recently in the New York Times, a small window of opportunity to positively impact change in Yemen. I don't have great confidence that the US, the EU, Saudi Arabia, and the GCC will actually be able to take advantage of this but by pushing Salih out at least they will have a chance. And any chance is better than the no chance they will have if Salih remains.
#2
#1 - that only works if containment &/or isolation is used to keep the violence tolerable. Unfortunately the rest of the world keeps sending Muslims vast sums of money to buy plane tickets out our way.
#4
Tribes with flags and guns...nasty combination.
I think, putting on my conspiracy theorist hat, that a goodly sum of this unrest in Yemen is Al Qaeda "encouraged". Yemen has recently cracked down on the AQ's crackpot activities.
So AQ, digs up an old Fatwa and quotes the Quran and gets the locals all in a lather so they can ditch Saleh. Then AQ will turn Yemen into an Arabic Somolia and the latest pest hole to breed this nutjob, crackpot, crazy crap, Islamic nonsense that AQ subscribes to.
Of course Saleh is a tyrant and a brutal enforcer of the laws. How else do you keep these loons in line?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/06/2011 10:09 Comments ||
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#5
They were much happier when they were two countries at war with one another: one Communist, the other totalitarian. Now I suppose one would be Islamofascist, the other Muslim totalitarian. Something must be done with all that surplus population they've been generating, and most are suited only for chewing qat, as far as I can tell.
O'Reilly interviews Dr. Krauthammer, video, about 4 min.
I believe the good Dr. says Ryan's proposal is the most radical ever, and it's only 70 pages long!
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/06/2011 06:32 ||
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Link ||
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#1
I hate to admit it but the Democrats are as bad as the Taliban about bringing out the kiddies, grandma, fluffy chicks, bunnies and duckies.
It is a typical budget debate. The Republicans talk numbers and facts, the Democrats snear, posture, throw things, accuse the Repubicans of not caring about Grandma, whine and tell lies. The press, since most of them do not have the intellectual capacity to understand the facts, report the lies and the slander.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/06/2011 9:57 Comments ||
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#2
Boehner needs to make a big deal about not throwing grandma out on the curb. And all the other crap the Donks spout.
At the very least they can use Fox to get this message out.
#6
Just pass the thing like last time. We'll read it later. We need to act now for the end of the world is near at hand. " By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes".
#7
lets not beat around the bush, throw the worthless dead beats to the curb, if grandma happens to a worthless deadbeat as well, then throw her to the curb too.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
