Blowback against Blowback

I published a post on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 explaining my thoughts on why people became so radicalised that they supported Al Qaeda and even became part of it. I emphasised the importance of cultural dissonance, i.e., feeling apart from a culture. I’m not going to go over the empirical support for my position again – I wanted to give more empirical evidence against a position I dismissed. I did not ignore foreign policy in explanation, but I did say it was neither necessary nor sufficient for terrorism.

The assumption behind thinking foreign policy leads people to lose their morality and start supporting a group that blows people in order to implement regimes that would make whole races and genders second class citizens is that they become aggrieved. This is typically used in the Palestinian context as well: what do you expect the Palestinians to do after their homes have been demolished and their cousins killed? What do you expect the Iraqis to do when the U.S occupies their land?

This assumption is wrong for multiple reasons – it plays on racist assumptions of Arabs as agents moved by external factors. One can point to several societies, including our own, where this faux analysis is not applied – even if there have been comparable or worse atrocities. This post is aimed at addressing that argument so I don’t have to repeat myself. As most of the arguments are about Hamas and Al Qaeda, those are the groups I’ll be addressing.

The Palestinians vs. Hamas

Starting with the Palestinians, this extends not only to IDF attacks but to Israeli policy – like the blockade. Except, there is no empirical proof for it: the blockade was implemented in 2007 – and yet, “according to a variety of polls, support for Hamas has steadily dropped since... its election in January 2006. [P]ublic support for Hamas has not just dropped in the West Bank but in its hometurf of Gaza” (Myths, Illusions and Peace, Ross and Makovsky, p.263).

This result shouldn’t be surprising – it was only after Hamas took over the Gaza strip, carried out a purge of Fatah members and usurped the executive in Gaza that Israel imposed the blockade. Aside from the social and economic woes that followed, this was an illegitimate move: often it is pointed out that Hamas is democratically elected – but this ignores everything that happened the day after the election. Hamas won the legislative elections and then proceeded to take control of the executive functions of government in Gaza – something they were not elected to do. The conflict that broke out between Fatah and Hamas in 2006 led the latter to go after Fatah officials and throwing them off buildings (for a full account of why Hamas took over and initiated a power grab, see here).

Even then, ignoring all of that (which is sufficient to lose all democratic legitimacy), elections have not been held for the legislative or executive body since 2006. Even when the President, who has the right to call them under Palestinian law, calls them, Hamas has consistently opposed them. Israel’s blockade was too restrictive before 2010 and that was wrong – now, the security blockade in place would not be there (as it wasn’t when the PA controlled the area) if there was not a security threat. Palestinians very likely see that – which explains the Palestinians’ continuing opposition to Hamas. Hamas and the other factions have also fired rockets which have led to Israeli response – often in their own areas – which probably explains why 70% of Palestinians want them disarmed.

And this brings us to violence in the Israel-Palestinian conflict – does it really increase radicalisation and lead to more violence? Again, the empirical support is simply not there. Before I get on to the academic literature, I just want to give one example of one set of polling. Operation Cast Lead was carried out from December 2008 to January 2009 – it’s worth looking at polling before and after the attacks to see the support for Hamas. In a December 2008 Near East Consulting poll (before Cast Lead started), support for Hamas was low: Hamas would only have won 10% in the presidential elections, 11% in legislative elections and when asked to respond to the statement, “Some believe that Hamas will win the next election,” a majority obviously disagreed.

In the next Near Consulting Poll in March 2009, the results had not changed much at all: 11% believed Hamas only represented them, they would have received 14% of the vote in presidential elections and they would have won 16% in the legislative elections. Operation Cast Lead seems to have no negligible effect on supporting terrorist organisations. This also explains why Hamas opposes elections: it would get blown out of Palestinian politics.

And this is a consistent finding in the academic literature. In a Journal of Public Economics article, Jaeger et al (2012) investigate “effects of violence on the political preferences of an aggrieved population.” The results are robust and show that “the overall effect of Palestinian fatalities is not statistically significant.” And the same results apply for not just supporting radical groups but their attacks on civilians too. From Haaretz:

According to the poll released by the JMCC [in 2011], since the Gaza war the ratio of Palestinians who opposed "military operations" against Israel rose from 38.1% in January of 2009 to 51.8% in April of 2011 (my emphasis).

Indeed, Palestinians are no more likely to support attacks on civilians than Israelis (in fact, across the Middle East, attacking civilians is a minority position). At the risk of pushing my point again – the same is true for the “killing one of them makes more” argument. Jaeger and Paserman (2008) examine the statistical evidence and conclude “the direction of causality... runs only from violence committed by Palestinians to violence committed by Israelis, and not vice versa.” That is, Israeli casualties lead to Palestinian casualties – but Palestinians casualties do not lead to Israeli casualties. Again, this really shouldn’t be surprising: Israeli counter-terrorism policy through targeted assassination, wide ranging military action is designed to deter and comes in response to terror.

Again, Operation Cast Lead is illustrative of this policy. This came after Hamas first escalated violence in November during the ceasefire and then refused to sign up to another one (see this post for a detailed analysis of the ceasefire). Israel responded – and the result was not more violence:

In fact, post Cast Lead yielded Israel’s “quietest year” in a decade: there was a 90% reduction in the first year and even at its highest levels, rocket fire has not matched even a third of 2007 levels. Something that is even more interesting is how much the circle of violence argument gets it the wrong way around. Hamas, after Cast Lead started patrolling the areas to make sure rockets weren’t fired. They have fired rockets since Operation Cast Lead, but the deterrence – not radicalisation - effect is clear from the graph.

Al Qaeda and its allies

I have covered some of the ground on why foreign policy is not the reason for support for Al Qaeda. Briefly, again, the vast majority of Muslims across the Middle East don’t like Al Qaeda. This gives prima facie evidence to the position I’m advocating: if foreign policy is the cause, why do we not see a wide spread response? To make an analogy: conservatives often argue that pornography leads to violence (in fact, it does the opposite) – but surely, there can be no causal connection by the simple fact that most people can enjoy pornography without grabbing an axe. Even in the West – just think about: a lot of people oppose American foreign policy. They don’t start jumping for AK47s and start supporting Al Qaeda.

And again, the academic support for what I am saying is clear (the support for what is the cause is in the aforementioned 9/11 post). Robert Pape claims to have evidence that occupation leads to suicide terrorism – except his thesis has been thoroughly discredited: the statistics are selective, the thesis inconsistent and stretched to find America at odds. Max Boot has discredited his “study” enough and I would have nothing to add to continue to talk about Pape’s polemics. I would just give one example from Boot of why Pape’s thesis is nonsensical. Over 12,000 people have been killed in Pakistan by Islamist terrorists – and yet there is no occupation. Pape’s answer should have everyone in hysterics: “the alliance between Pakistan and the United States evolved into—what is better termed—an indirect occupation.”

The drone programme also provides another opportunity to put the hypothesis to the test. I have already quoted two studies on how the drone programme has not led to “blowback.” The Washington Post recently claimed that the drone campaign in Yemen is “increasing sympathy for al-Qaeda-linked militants and driving tribesmen to join a network linked to terrorist plots against the United States.” This was based on “20 interviews with tribal leaders, victims’ relatives, human rights activists and officials from four provinces.”

Except, this does not seem to be the end of the matter – Christopher Swift disagrees in an article published in Foreign Affairs. Swift interviewed “40 interviews with tribal leaders, Islamist politicians, Salafist clerics, and other sources.” His conclusions are vastly different from the Washington Post’s:

As a group, they were older, more conservative, and more skeptical of U.S. motives. They were less urban, less wealthy, and substantially less secular. But to my astonishment, none of the individuals I interviewed drew a causal relationship between U.S. drone strikes and al Qaeda recruiting. Indeed, of the 40 men in this cohort, only five believed that U.S. drone strikes were helping al Qaeda more than they were hurting it.

Both studies are limited because they are based on interviews not data on recruitment, attacks and American drone activity. That said, if I had to choose one of these two, I would naturally go with the study with the larger sample. So do I think that “when a U.S. drone missile kills a child in Yemen [or anywhere else mentioned above], the father will go to war with you, guaranteed”? Nope. 

Seumas Milne on Drones

I thought I’d get back into blogging with an easy post. It’s quite easy for me to find an article by Seumas Milne and quickly fisk it in my head – not because of any great skill that I have but simply because the man is a propagandist. His articles are misleading, filled with falsehoods and driven by an ideological zeal that means almost every single paragraph is filled with multiple lines of crap.

So, I thought I’d start with Milne’s latest article on drone strikes. For convenience, I’ve moved some of the paragraphs around where I can respond to them together. I’ve had to cut out some of the stuff because of space – but I’ve addressed all his substantive points. Milne writes: 

More than a decade after George W Bush launched it, the "war on terror" was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as the carnage continues. But another war – the undeclared drone war that has already killed thousands – is now being relentlessly escalated. 

Except that nobody expected it to wind down. All the statements of the officials at the time and since point to a long, ideological drive against Al Qaeda and its allies. On September 17^th 2001, President Bush told Pentagon officials that “It's going to take a long time to win this war.” On September 20^th, the President said “this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion” but a “lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.” 

Donald Rumsfeld stated just 8 days later that Americans should “forget about 'exit strategies'; we're looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines." Robert Gates stated “many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity” referring to it as a “generational campaign” that Vice President Dick Cheney said the War “like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort.”

Milne refers to the “carnage continuing” in Afghanistan. This is arguably untrue: NATO figures show that there was a 9% reduction in violence throughout the country and in areas where the fighting increased, NATO had gone on the offensive. Civilian deaths in the last 4 months have dropped 21%. There was a 2011 UN report which suggested a significant rise but their figures included arrests, searches and “intimidation” as “security incidents.” This is not to suggest that everything is fine or the NATO figures are sacrosanct but that it’s not as one-sided as Milne always argues. 

Milne is also wrong by calling the drone campaign “undeclared.” John Brennan, an Obama official, clearly stated that “the United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa’ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.” The administration has not only acknowledged the policy, but defended it many times. 

From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects – they have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher – plausibly, given the tendency to claim as "militants" victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.

Yes, and the loss of civilian life is regrettable – but that does not make the campaign illegitimate. Al Qaeda operates in areas all over the world, they pose a threat not only to the regimes in which they live but to the West (more on the effectiveness of the strikes below). The official policy of the White House is that there must be a “near certainty” of no civilian deaths – or they must gain President Obama’s approval. Admittedly, I have a problem with the fact that the administration considers all men of military age combatants. 

However, even when we look to the independent figures for the civilians killed, the number is remarkably low (keeping in mind that when operating in Pakistan, the population is quite dense). At the low end, the Long War Journal has 138 civilians being killed from 2006-2012. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann who use “reliable press accounts” 80% of those killed have been militants and 2010 that figure rose to 95%. 

At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens; while in Pakistan, a string of US attacks has been launched against supposed "militant" targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35 people and hitting a mosque and a bakery.

Yes – but killing who? In Yemen, the civilian death rate in 56 out of more 240 militants killed according to the Long War Journal. The example of the mosque does nothing to further Milne’s point either. As the report which he links to notes, “Uzbek insurgents made up the majority of the fatalities from the strike.” Meaning that like other terrorists around the world, they are using places of worship, civilian centres as a shield for their own military purpose. Milne’s unsurprising response is not to attack those individuals, but the United States. 

The US president insisted recently that the civilian death toll was not a "huge number". Not on the scale of Iraq, perhaps, where hundreds of thousands were killed; or Afghanistan, where tens of thousands have died. But they gruesomely include dozens killed in follow-up attacks after they had gone to help victims of earlier strikes – as well as teenagers like Tariq Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani boy decapitated in a strike last November after he had travelled to Islamabad to protest against drones. 

Yes – but who is killing in Iraq and Afghanistan? According to a study by King’s College London looking at civilian deaths from 2003-2008 concludes that of the 92,000 civilians deaths recorded by Iraq Body Count, 12% were attributable to coalition forces. 74% were carried out by “unknown perpertrators” described as “are those who target civilians (i.e., no identifiable military target is present), while appearing indistinguishable from civilians.” This classing encompasses “suicide bombers... sectarian combatants and Anti-Coalition combatants.” A further 11% were carried out by identifiable “anti-coalition forces.”

In Afghanistan, “tens of thousands” of civilians have not died. At the high end, the figure is 14,700 and the low end is 12,500. And again – every single report, every single statistic notes that almost all of these are killed by the Taliban or its allies. Civilian deaths caused by pro-government forces decreased by 24% from 2009-2010, making them responsible for 15% of civilian casualties. UN figures show that only 9% of the civilians killed in 2012 were attributable to coalition forces. 

By the way, Tariq Khan was killed by a drone strike but according to American officials, he was a militant. Is this true? I don’t know but I think I’d tell my readers about it – even if I was going to dismiss it. 

But, as the destabilisation of Pakistan and growth of al-Qaida in Yemen shows, the impact remains the same. The drone war is a predatory war on the Muslim world, which is feeding hatred of the US – and fuelling terror, not fighting it. 

Of course Milne provides no empirical evidence for such a claim. Johnston and Sarbahi (2012) in their analysis of the relevant data find that “drone strikes are associated with decreases in both the frequency and thelethality of militant attacks overall and in IED and suicide attacks specifically.” Jaeger and Siddique (2011) find "strong negative impacts of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, showing thedeterrent effects are quite strong." 

If, like Milne, you like anecdotal evidence – then there is much of it. Tariq Azam (Taliban official) has publically told the press that meetings in Pakistan have been driven underground. The same report notes that the terrorists now suspect eachother of being spies. Pakistani General Mehmood Ghayur “acknowledged the effectiveness of the American drone strikes against foreign militants” 

The day after last Friday's Houla massacre in Syria, eight members of one family were killed at home by a Nato air attack in eastern Afghanistan – one of many such atrocities barely registered in the western media. 

It says so much about Milne that he believes the intentional murder of 92 civilians by cutting their throats for the simple act of protesting an authoritarian is more newsworthy than the unintentional killing of 8 civilians. Both are tragic and should not have happened – but to condemn the press for allegedly not covering it (they did) and suggesting an equivalence is flat out wrong. It goes without saying that these civilian deaths in Afghanistan have not been confirmed by a UN monitoring body (as in Houla) but an Afghan official (which NATO is taking seriously).

The US's decision to step up the drone war again in Pakistan, opposed by both government and parliament in Islamabad as illegal and a violation of sovereignty, reflects its fury at the jailing of a CIA agent involved in the Bin Laden hunt and Pakistan's refusal to reopen supply routes for Nato forces in Afghanistan. Those routes were closed in protest at the US killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, for which Washington still refuses to apologise.

But Pakistan’s consent has always been elusive. The Prime Minister was quoted as saying in 2008 that “I don't care if they do it, as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it." President Zardari has also said that “Kill the seniors. Collateral damages worries you Americans. It does not worry me." Milne’s own paper alleged a secret deal about “violations of sovereignty” last year.


It is true that there have been more vocal condemnations and demands to stop the strikes in the last year. However, as the Associated Press noted there are still “mixed signals.” The Pakistani government, for example, qualified their condemnation by saying it “should be seen in light of the presence of Islamist militants on Pakistani soil.” The AP goes on to say that “many analysts believe some in the government still support the program at some level.”


But lets assume all elements of the Pakistani government want the drone strikes stopped unequivocally – so what? The strikes are significant in decreasing the threat that Al Qaeda and it allies proposes. If Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then the United States and its allies should not have to justify themselves to anyone. 


Milne mentions the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers. Firstly, before the incident with the 24 deaths, there was a similar incident the previous year. In that situation, a joint investigation found NATO at fault – and NATO apologised and supply routes were re-opened. In this case, an American investigation found no fault. It might be that the investigation is wrong – but Milne doesn’t even discuss the possibility. Also, he refers to the “US killing” – but doesn’t mention the context: a joint US-Afghan contingent. According to an Afghan official – it was the Afghan personnel who requested the strike after being fired on. 

Lawyers representing victims' families are now preparing legal actionagainst the British government – which carries out its own drone attacks in Afghanistan – for taking part in war crimes by passing GCHQ intelligence to the CIA for its "targeted killings".

Of course Milne has to involve Britain in some way for these apparent “war crimes.” Yet, he provides no evidence whatsoever to support his claim. In fact if you click on his second link in this paragraph, the care the British military takes in avoiding casualties is shown. The link states the following of several different operations:

[1] Over a period of approximately 8 hours the Reaper crew maintained ‘eyes on’ before eventually seizing the opportunity to strike [a “high value insurgent”] when there was no risk of civilian casualties or collateral damage. 

[2] The crew spotted 2 civilians, one of whom was identified as a child… Realising the danger the crew diverted the missile towards an area of scrub land where it detonated harmlessly

[3] Reaper released weapon against fast-moving target, firing on friendly forces – however weapon diverted to avoid civilian casualties

This is Milne’s own link. There is one incident listed where 4 Afghan civilians were killed but that was in targeting “two insurgents” and “a significant quantity of explosives being carried on the trucks.” And so far as involvement with the Americans goes – there is no reason why we should shy away. These strikes are effective and have low civilian casualties.

Dogs of War

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war

1. No, we’re not gearing up for war (yet)

I don’t really have time to be writing as much as I used to be but I thought I’d just write a post with an assortment of recent issues. Firstly, The Guardian has yet again managed to exaggerate and misrepresent British foreign policy. They start the article of their front page ‘UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears’ with

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.

There are so many things wrong with the story, its hard to know where to start. Firstly, looking at the quotes of the officials, it is no big change in British government policy nor is it as apocalyptic as the Guardian is making it sound. One quote from the officials state

The British government believes that a dual track strategy of pressure and engagement is the best approach to address the threat from Iran's nuclear programme and avoid regional conflict. We want a negotiated solution – but all options should be kept on the table.

But what about the plans!? The Guardian admits ‘there are no hard and fast blueprints.’ But what about other preparations that Guardian mentions?! Well, here’s another quote:

I think that it is fair to say that the MoD is constantly making plans for all manner of international situations. Some areas are of more concern than others.

And just to really drive the point home, a MoD source told The Telegraph ‘We have contingency plans on everything... It doesn’t mean anything will come of it but at least someone is thinking about this sort of thing.’ And lets assume that there were full blown preparations for a military confrontation with Iran – it simply doesn’t mean anything. David Cameron would still have to lobby for support for the war. This isn’t a dictatorship where the UK can simply go into war without any recourse (people made the same misguided argument about Blair).

2. Neither is the U.S

I’m not denying that war with Iran won’t happen in the future, but the current apocalyptic vision seems to be misleading to me. Firstly, it should be kept in mind that the U.S has tried to downplay any suggestion that its seeking a military confrontation with Iran, ‘saying it would rather exercise and exhaust "tough diplomacy" first.’ Secondly according to various reports in American and Israeli media the ‘U.S. is "absolutely" concerned that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.’ Thirdly, it looks like the U.S is going to use the upcoming IAEA report to ‘further isolate Iran’:

Over the longer term, several senior Obama administration officials said in interviews, they are mulling a ban on financial transactions with Iran’s central bank... Also being considered is an expansion of the ban on the purchase of petroleum products sold by companies controlled by the country’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The recent publicised links between Al Qaeda and Iran are only news to people who haven’t read the 9/11 Commission Report. (This is not to entertain the frankly ridiculous idea that Iran had any foreknowledge of 9/11 – as the commission itself said). So, to repeat, there may be a war but the signals that people are reading into are simply not there.

3. In defence of President Obama

I wanted to talk about this blogpost on a website called ‘British Neo-libertarian.’ I read it a lot and I find myself disagreeing with it all the time. It tries to argue that the U.S withdrawal from Iraq is misguided – and it fails terribly to provide any sound reasoning. The first false assumption is:

In 2006, when troop levels dropped in Iraq, there was an explosion of violence... [Then] President Bush decided to reinforce troops in Iraq to root out al-Qaeda through General Petraeus. It has been a large success (Study the US military troop level, and civilian fatalities). It is a simple fact that more US soldiers works in creating conditions for better results.

This simplistic view of the Surge simply withstand scrutiny. While it certainly played a role, as Douglas Ollivant has written, it was primarily the realisation of defeat for the Sunnis that allowed for a settlement:

By late 2006, it was becoming quickly apparent to the Sunni that they were losing, particularly in Baghdad, as entire sectors of the city, and virtually the entire East side, were systematically cleansed of Sunni residents.. The mounting casualty count fundamentally changed Sunni outlooks and caused them to begin to look for a way to reach a settlement

There are many factors in what led to the drop in violence – form concrete barriers to operations against Al Qaeda. It’s also worth noting that the U.S military found Al Qaeda documents and used them to convince Middle Eastern and North African nations to stop would-be suicide bombing leaving the country. General Petraeus credits this diplomatic initiative as being the primary reason for the 85% drop in suicide bombings. So this simplistic and quite frankly propagandistic account of the Surge quelling violence is wrong.

The rebutting of this assumption goes some way in showing how the remaining presence of U.S soldiers will not necessarily make things better or worse. Iraq’s security woes wont be fixed overnight – but as Ollivant wrote in Foreign Policy, ‘these technical gaps can easily be filled, and the market will respond quickly to Iraqi petrodollars.’ Surely someone with libertarian in their blog name will see the utility in this argument? The argument that Iran’s position should determine U.S presence is similarly misguided.

It’s based on the false notion that Iraq is or is going to be a Iranian client state. This is just nonsense; Iran’s staunchest ally won only 20 seats out of over 300 in the last election. Indeed, this was lower than they achieved in 2008 and Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi credits this to the fact that the party was seen as an Iranian client. And, as the New York Times reported in July 2011, ‘Iraqi security forces have unleashed a sweeping crackdown on Iranian-backed Shiite militants responsible for most of the lethal attacks.’ American withdrawal wont stop these operations and wont change Iraqi reluctance toward Iran. If anything, withdrawal will take the rug out from under Iran.

It just seems hard to deny: Iraq is not a puppet state of Iran or the United State. The very fact that a sovereign Iraq has stood by its guns and refused to support even a mild presence also shows, yet again, that this isn’t some pansy puppet government. The security situation may get worse, there may be a series of bombs going off as has happened in the last two months, but they do no justify U.S presence any longer. 

Wikisqueaks

Accused of being ‘irresponsible’ even by a fellow campaigner for transparency in public life, Assange mounts a freewheeling defence in his memoir: ‘It was never my intention to be responsible,’ he says, before proclaiming: ‘We will shine a light into any murky corner…

-          Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, The Sunday Times

State secrecy is essential for any nation - certain things must be kept secret for the sake of national security, for the sake of lives, for a proper criminal process. Sure, essential information is vital for a functioning democracy but never at the expense of national security or human lives. Wikileaks does not take into account diplomacy let alone national security or people’s lives. It's not done in the name of transparent democracy, but spilling secrets because they are secrets. It doesn’t help that they release files to make a political point, not for the sake of openness or transparency. Julian Assange admitted as such when he went on the Colbert Report in the aftermath of releasing ‘Collateral Murder’:

Colbert: There are armed men in the group, they did find an RPG, the photographers who were regrettably killed, were not identified as photographers. You have edited this tape and given it a title 'collateral murder,' thats not leaking.. thats a pure editorial

Assange: So, the promise we make to our sources is not only that we defend them through every means we have available.. but we will try and get the maximum political impact..

Colbert: So collateral murder is to get political impact?

Assange: Yes, absolutely...

Colbert:  I admire someone who is willing to put collateral murder on the first thing people will see knowing they probably wont look at the rest of it..It's an emotional manipulation. This is "collateral murder" and now watch this objectively

Assange: That’s true, only one in ten watch the whole thing.

Assange has explicitly stated that his aim is to ‘end two wars’ – including the war in Afghanistan which liberated the Afghan people from the Taliban and brought a government that the Afghans want to power. Bill Keller has even written after meeting him that he ‘was openly contemptuous of the American government.’ Aside from leaking things for a political purpose, Wikileaks’ work leads to information being published that potentially and actually harms people. It doesn’t seem to bother Assange, that his information might lead to informants who aid the Afghan-supported American military force being killed. Declan Welsh, one of the Guardian’s writers recalls

We went out to a Moorish restaurant, Moro, with the two German reporters. David Leigh broached the problem [of redactions] again with Julian. The response floored me. 'Well, they're informants,' he said. 'So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.' There was, for a moment, silence around the table. I think everyone was struck by what a callous thing that was to say.

This is why Assange’s personal beliefs are important: it means he simply doesn’t care about innocents. The Afghan War Logs were released in coordination with several papers including the New York Times and the Guardian. The New York Times had a clear approach which took into account lives, intelligence and harm to personnel. Bill Keller, the executive editor, wrote

Guided by reporters with extensive experience in the field, we redacted the names of ordinary citizens, local officials, activists, academics and others who had spoken to American soldiers or diplomats. We edited out any details that might reveal ongoing intelligence-gathering operations, military tactics or locations of material that could be used to fashion terrorist weapons

Wikileaks, however, decided to release all the files without redacting people’s names. According to John Burns, another writer for the New York Times ‘several WikiLeaks colleagues say he alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for NATO troops.’  Like normal people, some Wikileaks workers disagreed with what Assange had done. It turned out that they were right to be. They outed hundreds of Afghan informants, including a Taliban defector putting their lives at risk. The Taliban even said they would trawl through the documents, ominously adding ‘we know how to punish them.’

This is a clear example of Assange putting his politics above the lives of individuals (who he says ‘deserve it’). He could have redacted them like the New York Times, The Guardian and Channel 4 – but he didn’t. According to an Afghan official, Assange ‘put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans.’

This chain of events isn’t unique; when it released the U.S diplomatic cables, the BBC noted that they published a document that had ‘long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security.’ The loss of any of these facilities ‘could critically affect US national security.’ Again, a Jihadist group set up a ‘workshop’ to try to ‘categorize and pinpoint all U.S. interests worldwide.’ Wikileaks even published a map of U.S military bases in Iraq.

And this isn’t limited to the Middle East. In Africa, Wikileaks released a document which showed that Morgan Tsvangirai spoke to U.S officials about the possibility of sanctions against the barbarous Mugabe regime. As a result, Tsvangiri is facing treason charges – a crime for which the punishment is death. More recently, two Zimbabwean generals will also face charges for talking to U.S officials. It’s no surprise that Trevor Ncube, a media mogul, has stated that ‘It hasn’t aided the agenda for democracy or accountability. In fact, it has taken the country back five years.’ In Ethiopia, a reporter has had to flee after a cable revealed that he had spoken to someone from the American embassy there.

In Eastern Europe, Wikileaks’ actions are equally deplorable. Assange passed documents to an anti-semite called Israel Shamir. According to Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian,

Subsequently, Shamir appeared in Moscow. According to a reporter on Russian paper Kommersant, he was offering to sell articles based on the cables for $10,000 (£6,300). He had already passed some to the state-backed publication Russian Reporter. He travelled on to Belarus, ruled by the Soviet-style dictator Alexander Lukashenko, where he met regime officials. The Russian Interfax news agency reported that Shamir was WikiLeaks’ “Russian representative”, and had “confirmed the existence of the Belarus dossier”.

This dossier alleged the Belarus opposition was working with the Americans. According to Jo Glanville of the Index of Censorship, ‘Israel Shamir is using his position to support a dictatorship.’ Shamir then went on to provide the authoritarian regime with cables. Shamir even assisted the autocrat Lukashkeno is setting up his own Wikileaks.  James Ball, a former Wikileaks worker, said in the aftermath of all this, ‘For an organisation supposedly devoted to human rights, the apparent lack of concern when faced with such a grave charge was overwhelming.’

In the name of openness, Wikileaks first denied that Shamir worked for them – a claim that has been proven false by an e-mail obtained by the BBC’s Panorama programme in which not only did Assange say that Shamir would continue working for Wikileaks under a different name but that Assange did not find his writings anti-Semitic but after reading a ‘brief sampling’ of his writings found them to be ‘strong and compassionate.’ This is a man who was convicted by a French court for publishing anti-Semitic material and his writings are clear enough.

And its not just government officials and innocent civilians in war zones who have been affected by Wikileaks’ reckless behaviour. Wikileaks published an investigation in Belgium into a child killer, but because they did not redact any files, they left names of witnesses in the case. The ‘dossier mentions names, telephone numbers, addresses and bank details of witnesses and people involved in the investigations.’ Asked if Wikileaks might remove some of the names of innocents and witnesses, a spokesman said ‘That has not been discussed.’

Nor was this the only case involving child abuse. Time Magazine notes that Wikileaks published a file that listed all the websites that the Australian government planned to block. This would have been okay – had Wikileaks minimised the harm caused and not published links to child abuse. I’m not going to link to the cables (as I haven’t throughout this post), but two documents published. Both documents have links to websites which judging by their URLs contain child abuse. 

Just a final word on Assange’s defences of his actions. The claim that Assange does enough is baloney: Amnesty International approached Wikileaks to redact names, Assange in response said he needed $700,000. Of course, Amnesty doesn’t have that money laying around – so the documents were published. Assange admitted that ‘if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it's extremely important to the history of the war.’ According the New York Times, he has even ‘prepared a kind of doomsday option’ where ‘if he was arrested, he would disseminate the key to make the information public.’ Information is released for political or for personal reasons, it would seem.

His accusation against the American government being at fault are similarly dubious. When the New York Times released the diplomatic cables, as mentioned before, it redacted key information. In doing this, it gained a lot of help from American officials:

The administration’s concerns generally fell into three categories. First was the importance of protecting individuals who had spoken candidly to American diplomats in oppressive countries. We almost always agreed on those and were grateful to the government for pointing out some we overlooked... the Obama administration’s reaction was...for the most part, sober and professional.

Wikileaks has put people at risk and in some cases has led to their direct persecution. Assange has deliberately not listened to human rights groups who have asked him to redact names. His employees have aided authoritarian regimes – not brought them down. In the name of human rights. I don’t feel there is any other conclusion one can reach apart from that of James Ball – a writer who left Wikileaks because of its recklessness:

WikiLeaks has done the cause of internet freedom – and of whistleblowers – more harm than US government crackdowns ever could... These cables contain details of activists, opposition politicians, bloggers in autocratic regimes and their real identities, victims of crime and political coercion, and others driven by conscience to speak to the US government. They should never have had to fear being exposed by a self-proclaimed human rights organisation.

What is achieved by outing political dissidents working for freedom, witnesses to a child abuse case, publishing lists of child abuse sites, what government 'lie' is exposed by publish details of military bases, what is essential about lists of civilian sites essential to national security or credit card numbers of individuals - what is the use in all this? There isn't one. Wikileaks has made freedom fighters think twice about talking to nations which can help them. What more could you possibly expect from someone who never intended to be responsible?

Update (04/10/2011): I changed the quote and the top and I'm going to be updating whenever I think there is a story worthy of being shared. Here is one from The Globe and Mail: 

Some of China’s top academics and human rights activists are being attacked as “rats” and “spies” after their names were revealed as U.S. Embassy sources in the unredacted WikiLeaks cables that have now been posted online. The release of the previously protected names has sparked an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with some advocating violence against those now known to have met with U.S. Embassy staff. 

Also named are some of China’s most outspoken intellectuals, including some known for pushing reform of the country’s authoritarian political system. They may now see themselves painted as “American agents,” their arguments for change shoved further to the margins. 

The unredacted cables also give the real names of some prominent Chinese bloggers and Twitter users, who previously were known only by their screen names.

Don't Mention the War

I have never thought it helpful to refer to a "war" on terror, any more than to a war on drugs. For one thing that legitimizes the terrorists as warriors; for another thing terrorism is a technique, not a state. Moreover terrorism will continue in some form whatever the outcome, if there is one, of such a "war".

-          Eliza Manningham-Buller, Former Director General of MI5

I disagree. 9/11 was a criminal and military act which could only be responded to with a military response. There is no contradiction; something can be criminal and it can be a war crime.  After 9/11, given the Taliban’s intransigence and alignment with Al Qaeda, the only way to remove that that threat was war. Afghanistan was and remains a war of self-defence against a group of transnational networked criminal terrorists. (It’s actually noteworthy that despite her insistence that 9/11 was a crime, Baroness Maninghmam-Buller states that ‘we had discussed the near-certainty of a war in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda bases there and drive out the terrorists and their sponsors, the Taleban. We all saw that war in Afghanistan as necessary.’)

However, one must take issue with the concept of a ‘War on Terror’ – or Global War on Terror (GWOT) - not because it gives them ‘legitimacy’ as some have supposed (when they fought in Afghanistan in the 80s, when they attacked Americans pre-2001 – they thought they were warriors). The criticism that the term is a tactic and therefore cannot be fought against is similarly misguided for reasons that I have blogged before: Al Qaeda’s ends are terror: the use of violence to stop non-combatants from that which they have a right to do. A Talibanised Caliphate is exactly that: persecuting those of other religions, stopping women from going to school, stopping people from having the right to self-determination.

It is misleading in a sense because it is simply not a war in the sense of a twentieth century war. We do not live under a constant state of fear, we are unlikely to be bombed, we are unlikely to have parades when ‘victory’ comes. To label it a war is to underestimate the role of the police, security and intelligence services in countering terrorism. But this is simply part of the evolving role of warfare: technology means that terrorists can no longer handles by just military means. Drone attacks carried out from Langley are part of warfare – it matters not that they are carried out by men in suits who drive home.  And even though our reliance on said services has increased – it does not change the fact that we have a prolonged military confrontation for a political purpose. 

My gripe with the ‘War on Terror’ is that it is simply too decisive and does not give us a clear goal. It is decisive because whether we like it or not, there are different definitions of terrorism. Instead of bringing people and nations together it maintains divisions. A better formulation is the War against Al Qaeda and its allies – simply because it is a call that people can get behind: support for Al Qaeda in the Arab world is low and decreasing. Peter Bergen sums up this approach by taking issue with another one of Bush’s phrases:

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," said Bush. An alternative formulation could have been "If you are against the terrorists, then you are with us," and that formulation would have vastly increased the number of potential allies of the United States.

Most importantly, this also allows for us to have a clear goal: the paralysation of Al Qaeda and its allies. A War on Terror – even though, as I’ve argued, makes sense because for Al Qaeda terror is an end, does not embody that fight.  A ‘War on Terror’ goes beyond on strategic resources: we will not be able, anytime soon, to destroy the nations which use violence to stop the right of self-determination. It goes beyond what Al Qaeda is – to nations like North Korea and Saudi Arabia and organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is so broad as to include an ideology. And that is inaccurate for what we are fighting in those fights with Al Qaeda and its allies. President Obama and his administration have got it right. This is an excerpt from an AFP report:

President Barack Obama is replacing the "global war on terror" with a new US strategy more narrowly focused on Al-Qaeda and relying more on a broader effort to engage the Muslim world... "It plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the US is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world," he said. In a question and answer session, Brennan suggested that the new administration was prepared to reach out to groups like the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah that move away from their "terrorist core."

President Obama in a speech has even used something precisely like the recommended formulation above in a speech he gave in 2009 as part of his strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The single greatest threat to that future comes from al Qaeda and their extremist allies, and that is why we must stand together.... So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future... And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: We will defeat you.

This is despite the fact that Obama agrees that we are ‘at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.’ Indeed, Obama’s foreign policy in attacking Al Qaeda is better than Bush’s in that it has increased drone attacks, carried out raids and arrests against Al Qaeda and has increased the troop presence in Afghanistan. President Obama is clearly not a man who disagrees there is a war going on. 

Enemies of Peace: Thunderous Peanuts?

Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,

Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,--

Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,

On pain of torture, from those bloody hands

Throw your mistemper'd weapons to the ground,

And hear the sentence of your moved prince.

-          The Prince, ‘Romeo  and Juliet’, William Shakespeare

Al Qaeda vs. Peanuts

There are several arguments made about terrorism and the threat from terrorism that I’d like to address in the post. But, starting with definitions: terrorism is the deliberate use of violence against non-combatants so that they are stopped from that which they have a right to do, for political ends. In a way, people have the right to life and therefore all terrorist activity that leads to death is self-evidently terrorism – but it also applies to other things: the right to speak freely, the right to vote for one’s own government. It’s not limited to religious people or even non-religious people. It might seem that this is limited to a technique but I think there is a persuasive argument to be made that it is also an end for groups like Al Qaeda.

But I first want to address another argument: those that compare the threat to terrorism and compare it with things like lightning strikes and peanut allergies. What this misses is that terrorism affects our relationship with state and society. The best way to illustrate this is through a hypothetical: there is an administration which supports a controversial war and terrorists target civilian infrastructure inside that country. Three days later, when there are elections, despite what people think about the government’s economic, social and domestic policy, they are more likely to vote against that administration. Despite that person having the right to vote on those grounds, the threat of violence – of terrorism – has meant that the citizen can no longer exercise that right.

This isn’t my argument, Phillip Bobbit made the argument about the Spanish elections after the Madrid bombings in his book ‘Terror and Consent: Wars for the Twentieth Century’ stating

A vast majority of Spaniards opposed the [Iraq] intervention but a clear majority nevertheless supported the party in power... None of the other political issues – the economy, education, health, etc. – could be allowed to be decisive after the bombing. It was a sickening day for democracy...  (p.395)

And the reason I’m not using his example is that there seems to be evidence which shows that voters were driven by ‘their anger at the government's handling of the terrorist attacks.’ Nonetheless, terrorism clearly has the effect of changing the constitutional relationship of consent. Lawrence Wright notes that such withdrawal of consent has been used in the ‘Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua.’ More importantly, in the Middle East and South Asia it is apparent that such tactics are used: attacking girls going to school, killing people as they cast their vote – these not only affect the actions of those who directly suffer them but those who take steps away from doing what they have a right to do.

This is why terror is an end for Al Qaeda as well: they seek, both in Europe and the Middle East a ‘state of terror’ – that is exactly what their dogmatic ideals lead to: stopping girls from going to school, stopping self-determination, killing those who they disagree with – all backed up with the threat of violence.  In Europe, it means crippling not only choices but our decision to act in self-defence or for the good of the people in the Middle East.

Just as a further case study which was suggested by a good friend of mine: Israel. The effects of terrorism can be seen in several respects: firstly, those in the area of terrorism such as those who are affected by the rockets. Schools have had to remain closed because children would be exposed to rocket fire, 20% of citizens have moved, and a medical factory had to be closed because of rocket fire and people lose employment as a result. Peanuts do not have these effects and neither do homicides.

Secondly, in terms of a state response, there is usually a back lash that calls for action. Looking at it from a libertarian or selective left-wing position: these attacks are followed by a curb of consent by governments. Peanut and lightning related deaths do not lead to having to get a petition to protest outside KP or the overarching power to wiretap the clouds. Laws in Britain such as the heinous detention of foreign nationals, while struck down by the House of Lords, show that the threat from the state remains. There is empirical support for this view as well; using data from 111 countries, Dreher et al (2007) find terror 'diminishes governments’ respect for basic humanrights such as absence of extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and torture' and 'civil rights are also restricted as a consequence of terrorism.'

It is only with the hard work of our security services and military that such attacks are thwarted at home and abroad. And while we have not suffered such attacks, it is clear that the threat exists and thus must be avoided; to say it again: 12 attacks were thwarted between 2000-2009 on British soil and the threat remains substantial. Peanuts and lighting strikes do not pose such a threat to an open society where we can exercise our rights - and while it is fortunate that we have ‘only’ lost 4,873 people that does not change this fact. Indeed, Bruce Hoffman includes this in his definition of terrorism:

Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack. It is meant to instil fear within, and thereby intimidate, a wider “target audience”... Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale.

Al Qaeda vs. Other Terrorists

There are also misconceptions about the threat of different terrorist groups. Terrorism is by no means limited to one religious, social, political or national group but there is no doubt that for the United Kingdom, the threat comes primarily from Al Qaeda and its allies, i.e., Islamist terrorists.

It is often quoted that the vast majority of terrorist incidents in Europe comes from separatists but for as Andrew Gilligan of The Telegraph notes this is only really true for ‘two small regions of Europe (the Basque country and Corsica).’ And even then, in terms of deaths, 91% of the deaths are caused by Islamist terrorists across Europe. In the UK, there have been 138 convictions of Islamist terrorists, there have been 12 thwarted attacks including a plot to down 10 commercial airlines. According to MI5, ‘over 2,000 people in the UK pose a terrorist threat and in March 2005 it was estimated that there were up to 200 al-Qaeda trained operatives in the UK.’ In 2006, MI5 stated that they knew of 30 UK plots. And in case thats too much for you, just read this tweet from the Foreign Office.

This is not to say that we are all about to die from Islamist terrorism – when we all go out tomorrow, we are unlikely to die from a terrorist attack. But the threat remains and because of the effects of that threat it is something that requires resources and a place as one of the main facets of government.

There is also a further argument to be made – across Europe and United States – that a comparison cannot be made with Al Qaeda and its allies because they represent a new type of terrorism. Phillip Bobbit refers to this as ‘market state terrorism.’ The former foreign secretary David Miliband on Question Time stated that

Its not the IRA. This is a bigger and more different threat... They did not propagate a global vision, they did not have a global reach and the theological that Al Qaeda tried to engage with. Be wary of words like 'hype.' This was different.

There is simply no denying this: Al Qaeda has subsidiaries: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Shabab – and thats not to mention their allies in Europe. The substance of what Bobbitt says is important: they are global, decentralised and they cause a lot more deaths – and they intend to. As Brian Jenkins notes:

The worst incidents of terrorism in the 1970s caused fatalities in the tens. In the 1980s, fatalities were measured in the 100s. On September 11^th, fatalities ascended to the thousands – and the toll could easily be as higher. (Bobbitt, p.49)

Tony Blair was undoubtedly right when he said ‘Over 3,000 were killed, a horrific event. If these people could have killed 30,000, they would have done.’ Its really no surprise that Al Qaeda is actively going after a nuclear dirty bomb. And as crude as it is to suggest, larger or more frequent death tolls and attacks enhance the response to society in terms of consent. This is precisely why Islamist terrorism is such a threat: because of the intended fearful response it seeks.