The geopolitics of cement

I met a chap last week I know who had just come back from Afghanistan. He commented that it would be a good time to be in the cement industry in Kabul as they are throwing up concrete blast barriers everywhere. He reckoned the whole city felt very uneasy and all the expats were very gloomy and nervous - and that plus the blast walls reminded him of Baghdad in the even-worse-ole'-days.

Still on a cement theme, last weeks episode of This American Life had a remarkable interview with one of the tunnel owners who runs a business smuggling things into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. He noted that building materials still make up a lot of the produce going into Gaza after the war a year and a bit a go, but bizarrely now they are smuggling a lot of guns out of Gaza and into Egypt where they command a higher price. Supposedly the Hamas government in Gaza has banned the public carrying of weapons, plus there are so many stockpiled in the strip, there are now plenty of spares to be sold off to Egyptian crooks.

The Rafah crossing on the blockaded Gaza-Egypt Border (click to enlarge)

Ellroy in Afghanistan, or conspiracies we can believe in.

As I’ve no doubt tediously mentioned in the past, I’m a James Ellroy fan. At Christmas I bought his most recent book, Blood's a Rover. It is the third part of his Underworld U.S.A. trilogy – a sort of alternative history to American history in the 1950s and 60s. A couple of years ago I re-read the second in part of the trilogy, The Cold Six Thousand, and decided that it is one of my favourite books. I then decided I should re-read the first part of the trilogy as well, American Tabloid, so ordered at copy of my own realising I must have borrowed it from someone originally. I finished this re-read just a couple of days back: a dark and wonderful whirl of Cuban exiles, corrupt FBI men, killing-krazed klansmen, ridiculous and violent Mafioso, sleazy lounge singers and brutal gun slingers. Jack the hair, Bobby the dark knight, Fidel the beard, J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Ruby and his dogs all get walk-on roles. Everyone lies, everyone cheats, nothing is at it seems. Forces are in play and those who know about them have no wish to stop them. The denouement, of course, takes place at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, as shots ring out from the Texas book depository.

The vortex of interests and conspiracies are so richly entwined, having finished it I thought I might read the first and last chapters of The Cold Six Thousand for a third time, just to remind myself before diving in to Blood’s a Rover. Of course, it seemed silly to stop after just the first chapter so I’m now 100 pages and will re-read it all once more, just to really be warmed up for the final and supposedly masterful part of this dark trilogy. You just have to keep reminding yourself that this is fiction, and fiction from a depraved-if genius-mind, not history. We were talking about the Bildeberg conspiracy today, and how this old chestnut refuses to die. Probably sooner or later Google will lead a true believer to this post and they can tell me how I have been suckered by the deep forces of global Jewish bankers, space alien lizards or whatever their particular take is on how to explain this ridiculous world where far less goes to plan than the conspiracy theorists would have us believe. Ellroy’s story of Mob/CIA/Cuban exile complicity in the murder of a president is just that. A story. Maybe his story is going in the right direction, maybe it is not, but it remains a tale not history.

Conspiracies are easy ways to understand the world; if 9/11 was an inside job, we don’t need to bother ourselves with understanding how the duelling attempts at nation-building between the House of Saud and Shia clerical dictators of Post-Revolutionary Iran amplified, in different ways, old trends of Islamic radicalism. Or how the fuse was lit under those New York skyscrapers by US-USSR rivalry that turned the Cold War into a hot one in far off land that we cared little about when our soldier weren’t dying in the dust of Helmand province. All these things are beside the point if 9/11 was an attempt to deprive American citizens of their rights by dark forces inside their own government, or even simply insurance fraud by the buildings’ owner. Conspiracies give easy answers.

But Ellroy’s visions of conspiracy: opportunistic actors with get-rich-quick schemes or dogmatic idealists and a fuck-you attitude to those in their way, sometimes moving in parallel with those who share those interests, or who can be paid enough to pretend they do, does have parallels in the America of the modern world. When the Pentagon pays security companies that then pay-off the Taliban, or other dope-slinging Afghan warlords, to protect their Afghan trucks, you get into Ellroy territory. Add in an Afghan-American owner of one of those trucking companies (who just happens to also be son of the Afghan defence minister who is himself a former CIA-supported mujahideen) who on the side runs an influential Washington based campaigning group for US-Afghan relations and we are more Ellroy-esque. Scrape at the surface of that lobbying group a bit more and see that it was set up on the advice of one of the most influential Washington legal and lobbying firms and you can dig it hep-cats – très Ellroy. And let’s not forget that on the board of Mujahideen Jr.’s trucking firm sits one of the most respected former CIA old Afghan hands. And what with Langley subcontracting its worldwide hit squad plan to a shadowy mercenary company, with various 'interesting' Christian right political linkages, and we are just beaucoup Ellroy. But groove on this- it’s all for real.

Halt! Or you will be merchandised!

I was looking at toys on the Sainsbury's website today and was rather surprised to see a range called HM Armed Forces. If you don't believe me, their own website is here, they have a not very good blog here and of course, a (pretty tacky) youtube video:



Thanks to having little kids, I've started paying attention to toys again in recent years. It has struck me that when I was little there were far more realistic 'war' toys around than there are now. My Action Men of the late 70s/early 80s were dressed in the UK uniforms of the time and armed with contemporary weaponry. One was in olive drab and DPM and armed with his SLR so presumably was going to play his part in stopping the Russians getting to the Fulda Gap; another was in all white, had skis and a white SLR so seemed destined to clash with the Spetznaz in a defence of Narvik along side his fellow RM Arctic Warfare Cadre. The last one, most obviously of all, with his all black uniform, H&K MP5 and gas mask was going to go through windows to neatly double tap Libyan terrorists. This was clearly all good educational stuff for a young lad. The Action Men of now are like comic book heroes who seem to fight wars in day glo colours on jet skis of no obvious military utility.

So it's interesting that there seems to be a gap in the market now for "realistic" action figures, but with British troops dying almost daily in Afghanistan it does seem very slightly in bad taste. Is the market gap a new engagement with global reality amongst the male, 5 to 10 year old demographic? Or perhaps more like the nostalgia of thirtysomething dads remembering the SLR wielding Action Men of their childhood. The HM Forces do have an enemy character: "the Mercenary", a suitably PC solution for who it is OK to blow away (although look carefully, that's a German rifle isn't it? Hmmm....). I wonder if next up will be a Taliban insurgent figure? If so, we fortunately already have a Harrier available should your infantryman need some close air support. You can also get an HM Forces radio set, although of course to a be like a real HM Forces radio set, it would have to have taken 20 years to procure, weigh a tonne, work considerably worse than the commercially available alternatives and have costed the tax payer hundreds of millions of quid.

But leaving politics aside - what the hell are HM Forces doing franchising their name? Does Her Maj herself get any say? Or perhaps even a cut of the profits? Will the income stream generated from HM Armed Forces Toys be enough to the plug the helicopter deficit in Helmand? I was just thinking recently how smart HM Forces have been lending their assets (from a Eurofighter to a tank regiment) to the BBC in recent years for various episodes of "Top Gear"* but, in effect, merchandising the Afghan war to toy manufacturers does seem like a rather postmodern step.

*and you have to admit, this is one of the funniest and cleverest pieces of TV entertainment in recent years no matter how much I want to loath Clarkson for everything he stands for.

The Finnish Afghan "debate"

(A Finn on patrol in Afghanistan via YLE) So it's been a big few weeks for Finnish politics, what with the planks an' all. A mate was filling me in this morning on the debate in the Eduskunta (Finnish parliament) he went to watch last Thursday evening - a debate that he reckoned a whole 20 MPs had found the time to turn up to. Regardless of what your position is on the point and purpose of the mission, if troops from your country are volunteering to go out to do a dangerous job in a dangerous place, it strikes me that the elected representatives of that country could at least turn up and hear what the government has to say on it and think about whether it is a wise policy or not.

As recounted to me, the debate amongst the 20 who did make it was acrimonious to say the least, with former chair of the SDP, Eero Heinäluoma, using a rather insulting term for coward from the end of WWII* about Jaakko Laakso of the Left Alliance. From what I've heard Laakso say over the years, the old tankie almost certainly deserved it. The SDP also accused the Left Alliance of knee-jerk anti-americanism, which makes me think this was a certain strain within the SDP talking (which fits with chosen aphorism for the Left Alliance). This is interesting because amongst the other SDP member at the debate was Jutta Urpilainen, the current chair of the party. I don't really know anything about her foreign policy thinking, but she did beat Tuomioja who is from the left-pacifist wing of the party to win the chair. If she had taken the time to be at the debate, and the SDP position is reflected in Heinäluoma's comments, it marks a change in the party's foreign policy thinking from the Tuomioja/Halonen axis perhaps?

Anyway, with sad timing, a Finnish patrol in Mazar e Sharif got blown up by an IED the next day. Two soldiers were seriously injured and have been brought back to Finland, two other are in a German hospital in Afghanistan with less severe injuries. Get well soon guys. Had the poor buggers got blown up the day before, I wonder if a few more MPs might have troubled themselves to turn up to discuss their deployment.

*The insult, käpykaartilainen, or "Pine Cone Guard" was aimed at deserters who hid in the forests and seems to have particular resonance within the different factions of the Finnish left dating back to the civil war. I'm glad I looked that up because just like my teachers said when I was about 7, you learn something new everyday!

Britain in Afghanistan

I'm trying to write a short and basic descriptive piece for work about the British military presence in Afghanistan and the debate over it back in the UK. I've been using the BBC's excellent, if very sad, webpages that keep track of all the fatalities with pictures of those who have died and links to stories about them. Just tonight whilst I've been working on the piece, two more as yet unnamed soldiers have been added to that already too long list. No real point to make tonight beyond just how sad it is. And behind each one of those numbers there is a story that we should try to remember.

Will unusual birds come home to roost?

According to YLE, the Finnish security police SUPO (Finland's only real intelligence agency and something of mix between MI5 and Special Branch in the UK context) has started following developments in Afghanistan for possible spin off effects on Finland.

Which leads to the rather bloody obvious question: what? They weren't before?!?!

The timing of this revelation may be totally coincidental, but it's hard not to wonder whether this has been sparked by the political ruckus that followed the comments of a friend of mine (and indeed the original co-founder of this blog), Charly, who suggested in op-ed piece in Helsingin Sanomat that Finland was now part of a war in Afghanistan.

Michael Yon in Afghanistan

Michael Yon has been doing a series of excellent dispatches showing life for the British Army in southern Afghanistan. It is a good insight into the daily reality for the Brits and Gurkhas out there, and show the kind of terrain, physical and social, they are operating in. All the pieces are interesting and his photos great, so just go to his website and have a look.

His article on the Lithuanian military cooperation with Japanese development aid was particularly interesting if you are interested in crisis management and reconstruction, but I did note the now classic handwear being sported by one Lithuanian soldier in this photo!

Counting al Qaeda

Something that I meant to blog last week and totally forgot about: one of my weekly podcast is the 'Political Scene' from the New Yorker. It's just a few journalists chatting, but they are pros and know their stuff. Last week, in the wake of Obama's Cairo speech, they were discussing US policy and the 'Muslim world'. One of the speakers was New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Wright who I still think has written one of the better books on al Qaeda: The Looming Tower. Wright spent years interviewing spooks, Islamist activists, retired Jihadis, family members of still active Jihadis, local journalists and the like around the world. He clearly has good contacts, and notes in this podcast that he was recently told by Egyptian intelligence that they believe the core of al Qaeda, now mainly based in Pakistan number now below 200 people. Even the CIA number them only between 300 and 500. These numbers don't presumably include any of the affiliates who have adopted the al-Qaeda monniker in more recent years, such as the GSPC in Algeria, but does suggest that for all the weaknesses in US policy towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, the coalition (and Pakistanis) are having some success at keeping al Qaeda's central organisers suppressed.

Wright does make the very interesting point though, that the "Af-Pak" insurgency is become "proletarianized" and the Taliban is taking on a class distinction that wasn't clear before. Landless peasants are joining the Taliban and fighting against the landed class. If the conflict becomes progressively influenced by socio-economic factors, this is a major policy failure as it provides the insurgency with a moral legitimacy that it didn't previously possess.

You can listen directly to the podcast here. Wright's interesting comments begin at about 7.40.

Police on drugs

A year and a bit ago I was interested to read that the Iraqi police were on drugs, but now it looks like the Afghan police are too. The BBC reports that the British FCO reckon 60 percent of the cops in Helmand are drug users, although on World Service this morning they were talking to a former senior American official in Afghanistan who was saying it's probably not as bad as it sound, because some of them will just be smoking dope as opposed to being heroin addicts. So that's fine then.

"Ant and Dec survive Taliban attack"

There are some headlines, such as the one above, that there is simply no way you can avoid clicking on. From Yahoo news:

"TV stars Ant and Dec came under fire while visiting Afghanistan to present a bravery award to troops, it has emerged. Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly were waiting to catch a military flight when the Taliban shelled Kandahar airport, it has been reported."

One wonders if it was personal? Those cheeky chappies can get a tad annoying but it seems unlikely that any Taliban commanders have ever had to sit through that many episodes of Byker Grove. On a more serious note, big-up to Ant'n'Dec for going out in the first place and for reminding perhaps not the most engaged sections of the community back home that: "It was pretty hairy - not something I'd like to experience again... It shows what our troops go through every day."

Book review: "God's Terrorists" by Charles Allen

It was the subtitle of this book that made me buy it - "The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of the Modern Jihad". I've been trying to understand more about modern Saudi political history, and how the official Wahhabi form of Islam in Saudi Arabia has produced both a very politically conservative form that is absolutely supportive of the Saudi monarchy and the Salafi-Jihadis who want the violent overthrow of the same royal family, and thought the book might have something to say on the background of this. I was to be disappointed.

"God's Terrorists" isn't a bad book, it's just 90% a different book to the one suggested by the cover. See the camels in the picture? And the head scarves? Doesn't that sort of suggest Arabia? But oddly this is a book about Imperial India. Allen is a respected historian of the Raj, and perhaps that should have been a clue, but I would say both the front cover and back cover blurb deliberately set out to suggest this is book about the roots of modern jihadi terrorism and not about Empire-era India. What the meat of the book is about is Muslim radicalism within British-India, generally known at the time as the "Hindustani Fanatics". This is a fascinating story in itself: the origins of this group were Indian Muslims who in the early 19th century had gone to Saudi Arabia and had been inspired by Wahhabi puritanicalism and brought their zeal back with them. They were somewhat involved in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but this was not a Muslim thing in particular with Hindu regiments mutinying as well. They fled India to hide out in the mountains of the North West frontier, bringing British and Indian-native forces into various skirmishes and minor wars with Pashtun tribes of the India/Afghanistan border regions. The Pashtuns didn't think much of the British invading their lands, but they didn't think much of the Wahhabis either, with the Imperial forces sometimes doing deals with them to drive the fanatics out - much like the current Pakistani government at times tries to do, co-opting the tribes against various foreign al-Qaeda groups.

This is all very interesting but really didn't have much to do with what was happening in Saudi Arabia at the time. In fact Allen notes that the Deobandi school of Islam, the specifically South Asian school that began in India in 1866, was set up in opposition to the Wahhabi inspired Hindustani fanatics (p.206-7). The Deobandi school has an important role to play in the development of Pakistani Islamism, and more globally because of the influence of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, who along with Sayyid Qutb, was central to the development of modern Islamism. The Taliban are also described as Deobandi, although some say the claim is problematic.

There are some chapters that deal with Saudi Arabia, both the beginnings of the Wahhabi sect in 18th century and its more modern history, but they aren't anything I haven't read elsewhere and feel like a basic review of the known history, rather than an a fresh delve into primary sources - diaries, reports, statistical data - that Allen clearly has mastery of in the case of Raj-era India. Perfunctory would be the word. His descriptions of minor battles and skirmishes between the British and Indian Armies and the Pashtun tribesmen at the fag-end of the 19th century are well written military history. This is obviously Allen's 'thing', not Saudi Arabia. I'm pretty certain Allen had a book pretty much written just on Muslim radicalism during the Raj, but then his publishers suggested that if he gets the words al-Qaeda and Taliban in there a few times, and they put the word "terrorist" in the title, it would sell 20 times the amount that a military history of British Army skirmishes in the Hindu Kush a century ago. I bought it, so they were probably right. More fool me.

You will learn lots of things if you read this book. Just not what you expected.

DJ Besho

So the FT isn' t the most likely place to find tips for cutting edge hip hop, but I just read an article in their weekend magazine on DJ Besho, Afghanistan's preeminent MC. As ever, he's already on YouTube:



I think the song is called "Shoma Afghanistan" ("You're an Afghan") and if you listen carefully you can hear him name check all the provinces of the country. According to the FT it's a song about peace and an end to fighting between Afghan brothers. He's got the Hummer in the video - of course - (actually - there are Hummer's in Afghanistan that aren't full of US squaddies?!) but no women. As Besho told the FT: "In Kunduz there were more than 1,000 people in the audience but no women. This is a problem for Afghanistan". I don't think he means just at hip hop concerts.

Nevertheless there is something quite heartwarming about, pro-peace Pashtun hip-hop.

In your best Westwood accent: No doubt, no doubt. Maximum respect to DJ Besho. Peace, out.

Vaguely amusing sub-news story for the day

The plane that Vice President Cheney was using on his visit to Afghanistan (the visit became news mainly because of the suicide bomb attack outside of the base - i.e. kilometers from where the VP actually was) is called "The Spirit of Strom Thurmond"!

That is quite some spirit.