PoliticalWarfare.org

Paranoid FARC executes 26 of its own

So paranoid is the Colombian FARC guerrilla group that it executed 26 of its own combatants - more than a third of an entire unit of 70 fighters.

And that was before last week's hostage rescue. The pace of executions, according to a former hostage, was painfully slow. They took place over a five-month period of internal tribunals, where commanders tried to root out traitors from their ranks.

With hundreds of FARC members deserting or defecting to the government every month, taking with them priceless intelligence about the internal workings of the organization, the command structure is eating itself alive. Defectors helped military intelligence understand the anxieties of individual FARC commanders, allowing the army to build psychological profiles and devise ways to exploit them to save the hostages.

Those defectors, plus broken communications and internal paranoia, have been an important asset to the army. Colombian military intelligence officers who planned the rescue said that the FARC's own disarray and demoralization have been the army's best counterinsurgency weapon.

Another victory to apply to the fight against Islamist extremists. Does anyone remember how, not so long ago, American and international politicians were denouncing US and Colombian counterterrorism policy as wrong-headed, needlessly tough, and so on? That the FARC was too powerful to defeat? That our Colombian allies didn't have their act together and didn't deserve our support? That our whole approach was misguided? Where are those politicians today, so long after having helped boost the FARC's morale?

Click here for a good Washington Post recap of the rescue planning.  (Photo: Hundreds of thousands march against FARC in Cali, Colombia.)

'Brutal psychological hit' against FARC

Audacious thinking, clever use of defectors, three-way electronic intercepts, copycatting precedents set by Hugo Chavez, exploiting broken command and control, and playing on the targets' egoes were among the elements of Colombia's successful hostage rescue this week, what a senior Colombian officer calls a "brutal psychological hit" against the FARC.

Today's Wall Street Journal captures these elements, showing how the skillful use of psychological means can defeat terrorists and other extremists:

• Taking advantage of a leadership crisis within the FARC, to compromise communications and make FARC units think they were transferring the hostages to the group's new leader;
• Infiltrating the FARC leadership and command structure with penetration agents;
• Copying Hugo Chavez's propagandistic recovery of hostages last January and February, by re-enacting a similar scenario with Russian helicopters painted with similar color schemes;
• Using deception to communicate between FARC leaders and the guerrillas' security detail guarding the hostages, disinforming the security detail to move the hostages to a location where they would be transferred by a helicopter under ostensible FARC control;
• Hollywood-style acting classes for undercover Colombian military intelligence officers, taught by American acting coaches and FARC defectors, to make the officers look and act like real FARC men - even mimicking the way the guerrillas walk and talk;
• Coaching to make a Colombian officer look like an Australian leftist;
• Dressing cameramen to look like they were from Chavez's Telesur satellite TV channel, copying Telesur's participation in the previous rescues (see video embed);
• Using "more cunning than firepower."

"The plan had a chance of working because, for months, in an operation one army officer likened to a 'broken telephone,' military intelligence had been able to convince [former senator and presidential candidate Ingrid] Betancourt's captor, Gerardo Aguilar, a guerrilla known as 'Cesar,' that he was communicating with his top bosses in the guerrillas' seven-man secretariat. Army intelligence convinced top guerrilla leaders that they were talking to Cesar. In reality, both were talking to army intelligence," according to the report.

Fruits of the operation include:

• Rescue of high-value hostages whom the FARC never had any intention of releasing;
• Provoking recriminations within the FARC, further splintering the organization and causing more desertions and defections;
• Further demoralizing the FARC and its supporters;
• Humiliating the FARC's strongest supporters, including Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, both of whom praised the rescue and criticized the FARC, with Castro calling the FARC "cruel" and Chavez telling the FARC to free all hostages and to disarm;
• Boosting the standing of Colombian President Uribe and the US strategy to assist Colombia;
• Increasing the domestic and international prestige of the Colombian military, which has made huge strides in its professionalism over the past decade;
• Causing liberal and left-wing groups to concede that their go-soft negotiations approach was wrong, and that Uribe's tough approach was the right thing to do.

The Wall Street Journal carries this precious quote from a top NGO leader who had criticized Uribe's approach and urged a soft line: "I have to recognize that the strong hand has prevailed," said Robert Menard, a liberal human rights activist and founder and secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders. "Our insistence on the need to negotiate with the FARC, hoping they would release their most valuable card, was foolish."

A textbook operation - one for the history books of how to do things exactly right. Notably, the US was closely involved with this Colombian operation. Now, if we can do this type of thing with the Islamists, we'll be doing just fine.

Colombia's amazing rescue operation - and the political death of the FARC

Hugo Chavez helped dig the FARC's grave a little deeper earlier this year when he sent in a white helicopter to ferry out hostages, and video crews to reap propaganda benefits.

I wondered why the Colombians would ever allow Chavez to send in the white Venezuelan helicopter to bring some prisoners held by the FARC to Venezuela. It looked like a big propaganda boost for Chavez at the time, as it certainly was. Apparently the Colombians had something bigger in mind: using Chavez's media stunt as a precedent to camouflage a daring mission of their own.

How else to rescue 15 hostages without anyone getting hurt?

This week the Colombian army sent in its own white helicopters, unmarked Russian Mi-17s supposedly under FARC control, on the gutsy freedom mission. The captives - the most important of an estimated 700 in terrorist hands - included former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, 11 Colombian policemen and three American private military contractors.

News coverage justifiably focuses on the amazing nature of the mission, which took months for the Colombians to prepare. Rescuing the three Americans, who were Defense Department contractors assisting a US-Colombian counternarcotics program, was a top priority of Admiral James Stavridis, head of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).  Initial news reports say that Colombian agents infiltrated the FARC at its highest levels, penetrated the FARC security detail in charge of the hostages, and mounted a complex deception operation to move the hostages on a 93 mile trek through the sweltering mountains to a point where the Colombian army could extract them.

Undercover Colombian agents wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and posing as FARC terrorists arrived at the extraction point in a unmarked white helicopters, allegedly to move the hostages to visit an unspecified international delegation. Once the 15 hostages were safely aboard and taken from the area, the agents identified themselves as Colombian military and announced that the captives were free.

It was a fantastically successful operation. And there's more mileage to be squeezed from it. Right now, the FARC is discredited, broken and factionalized. Its longtime leader is dead, the Colombians killed other senior commanders, FARC sponsor Chavez has rhetorically become very harsh against the organization, and the rescue has humiliated the group further. Even better, the Colombian military revealed it had infiltrated the FARC's seven-person central secretariat as well as the most sensitive parts of the group's security apparatus.

This means that FARC commanders can no longer trust one another. They must now become especially suspicious of one another: Who among them is a spy for the Colombian or American governments? Who has already betrayed who to whom? Who will sell out next?

Isolated extremist groups like the FARC tend to breed paranoia in their ranks, and this paranoia will only heighten as uncertainties swell about where the organization is headed now that its leadership is dead, compromised or factionalized. About 300 FARC members are defecting monthly, the group has lost its hero status and is widely viewed in Colombia as a mafia, and President Alvaro Uribe, who led the no-compromise fight, is the considered the most popular president in Colombia's history.

This is great news! Over the next few months, Colombia and its friends should play on FARC's divisions, humiliation and fears to goad FARC commanders to turn against one another, do one another in and sell one another out. Helping the FARC self-destruct is a big part of the game.

We can thank Hugo Chavez for the white helicopter idea. And also for the use of video camera crews to provide propaganda support for his "rescues" earlier this year. According to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, the Colombian planners deliberately mimicked the precedent he set, and they fooled the FARC completely. Gracias, Hugo!

(Time magazine has a rather good analysis, if late in the game.)

Photo: Venezuelans protest the FARC at a Caracas rally, February 2008. The placards read, "No more FARC." 

Brilliant results: Chavez proves we can goad our adversaries into doing our work for us

All it took was to expose raw battlefield intelligence and let the facts speak for themselves. The release of the contents of captured FARC computers has forced Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez on the defensive and deliver an astonishing propaganda blow to the narcoguerrillas whom he has been backing.

The sweet results came in yesterday, when Chavez unexpectedly caved under international pressure and publicly gave the FARC a propagandistic heave-ho. Here's the point: Hugo Chavez can be pressured to sell out his friends! His comments are an enormous psychological blow to the 44 year-old guerrilla movement, which through various means has lost several of its top leaders recently.

In an information operation that cost practically nothing, Colombia and its US ally has goaded Hugo Chavez has run a crippling PSYOP against the FARC that we could never do on our own. All we (or most probably, the Colombians who aren't as reticent as we are to release intelligence to fight a good international political warfare battle) had to do was quickly declassify the material and set it out for the world to see. The rest was up to international public opinion, including some great diplomatic work, to set up Chavez to deliver the message that we and the Colombians could not.

Chavez is not a brilliant strategist. To the contrary. It's easy to set him up. He's an egomaniac and a bigmouth. He's a tactician. He can be outmaneuvered. And so it was proven in this case. This is an important lesson for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Here's the astonishing story, as reported from Medellin on June 10 by London's Daily Telegraph:

The Venezuelan president said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] were "history", and called on them to release their hostages and end a decades-long war with the government.

"Enough of so much war, it is time to sit down and talk of peace," he said. "The guerrilla has passed into history.

"You in the FARC should know something: You have become an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us," he said, referring to the United States. "The day that peace arrives in Colombia, the empire will have no excuses."

He directly addressed the organisation's leader, Alfonso Cano, to tell him to release their hostages "in exchange for nothing".

The comments were a complete change of tack for Mr Chavez, who earlier this year asked the European Union to take the FARC off its list of terrorist organisations and recognise it as a legitimate guerrilla army. . . .

What might have prompted the change in heart are the contents of computers seized from guerrilla camp bombed in March by the Colombian air force in Ecuador.

Colombia troops violated Ecuadorean sovereignty to carry out the bombing raid, but killed the FARCs top commander, "Raul Reyes", and seized his corpse and three computers.

They allegedly contain proof that Mr Chavez gave the FARC $300 million and was exploring the possibilities of supplying them with weapons.

Hawks in Washington have already called for Venezuela to be added to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism, on which Mr Chavez's close allies Cuba and Iran lurk. . . . Officially accusing Mr Chavez of supporting the FARC could involve applying economic sanctions, including a ban on dealing with Venezuelan companies, as is the case with Cuba. . . .

Mr Chavez comments are just the latest in a series of setback that have the FARC reeling and put them in their most vulnerable position in 44 years of fighting. 

Chavez further validates this blogger's long-held view that the US and its allies release as much raw battlefield intelligence as possible to the public, in order to expose their enemies, turn the propaganda tide, and put the bad guys on the defensive. As much for the Islamist enemy as for the FARC and others. I argued this last year in Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

Such an information warfare tactic helps the good guys win while saving lives and shortening the conflict.

Only a fool would think that Chavez will actually cut off the FARC completely. For now, that's almost beside the point; we must assume he will continue and we must continue to expose him. What our side must do now, though, is to pocket a pivotal political victory and drive that psychological stake through the hearts of the FARC and its ideological supporters around the world: Hugo Chavez has abandoned them, sold them out, and called them a threat to the progressive movement. The FARC is shaken. It's time to break the organization's will to fight, and then break its will to become a political force.

A sound spanking for crybaby terrorists

Widow Beats Terrorist with Shoe

With women enjoying near-subhuman status among most Islamist extremists and the sole of the shoe being a cultural metaphor for dirt and shame, Iraqis have developed a way to punish terrorists.

That's right: Allowing a woman to beat terrorists with a shoe.

It might sound odd to American ears, but for Iraqis and others in that part of the world, it's perfectly appropriate. This video is old - aired on Iraqi TV in 2005 - but given the previous posting I thought it worth highlighting.

The woman identified three terrorists as the murderers of her husband. She is apparently at a police station, smacking them around with a shoe. The terrorists are sitting on the ground, appropriately stripped of their ability to terrorize, sobbing like crybabies.

Overall an appropriate use of humiliation to tear down the terrorists' stature a notch or two, which is probably why Iraqi TV aired the clip in the first place. Too bad we Americans are too squeamish about such things, whereby we've worked ourselves up so much that hurting terrorists' feelings is now considered a war crime.

Shame and blame: Just the ticket

"I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools."

These aren't the words of a fringe anti-war politician here at home. They're from a Saudi man, a former al Qaeda terrorist and one-time Guantanamo detainee.

Khalid al-Hubayshi is living proof that former enemy combatants can have powerful psychological messages that can be used to undermine and demoralize al Qaeda and other extremist forces. From the perspective of the enemy a shameful, negative message that he is being defeated (and therefore is in disfavor with God) is more powerful than a positive message about the US.

The Washington Post interviewed al-Hubayshi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the government apparently rehabilitated him from al Qaeda extremism (and presumably toward the regime's official Wahhabi ideology, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Look at the excellent themes that emerge from al-Hubayshi's story:

• Al Qaeda doesn't help Muslims; it harms them. "I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools," says al Hubayshi.
• Local Muslims blamed al Qaeda - not the United States - for the deaths inflicted during the war in Afghanistan. "On Sept. 11, 2001, Hubayshi said, he was training Chechen fighters in explosives in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In October, when the first U.S. airstrikes hit Jalalabad, the Afghans 'blamed us . . . and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks.'"

• Al Qaeda's ideology is shaky. Al-Hubayshi said he was attracted to al Qaeda during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but by 2001 "the fight had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn't convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group." 

• Bin Laden is a liar who uses his people. "'What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?' Hubayshi said he asked. 'That you don't betray us and we don't betray you,' bin Laden responded, and offered him a plot of land, Hubayshi said." Read on.

• Bin Laden is a coward who betrayed his own fighters. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden dug in at Tora Bora to fight the Americans, and called his fighters into the mountain fortress. The Post paraphrases al-Hubayshi's story: "As the airstrikes moved closer, and with the United States' Afghan allies advancing, bin Laden decided to retreat and left one morning. His aides told 300 Arab fighters to make their way to Pakistan and surrender to their embassies. Pakistani authorities stopped the fighters near the border and handed them over to the US military, which sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Hubayshi remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden's betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there."
• Bin Laden is no hero. "There was no dignity in what he made us do."
• "Jihad" does not mean to attack innocent civilians. "Hubayshi said he is sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians: 'That was wrong. Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier.'"

There's a lot more in this story. This blogger has discussed problems with Saudi ideology before and will do so again, and has warned against viewing only the immediately violent extremists as strategic threats when subversive Islamist threats remain. But for the time being, let's just look at the example of Khaled al-Hubayshi and the opportunity it brings us to undermine the most immediate violent threat.

A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

Memo rips Foreign Service's 'gripping culture of excused inaction'

A senior State Department contractor who completed a year's tour of duty in Baghdad has written a scathing memo describing how the Foreign Service bureaucracy is undermining the war effort in Iraq.

Manuel Miranda, Director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft in the embassy’s Political Section, addressed the February 5 memo to Ambassador Ryan Crocker as a “departure assessment.”

The memo is the most withering internal critique of the State Department bureaucracy that I have ever seen - and it is consistent with what I have been hearing for years. I quote at length from the memo below, and attach a copy of the original here: Download mirandamemo1.pdf

From his State Department in Baghdad, Miranda was a senior adviser to the Iraqi Prime Minister's office. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Miranda has extensive international legal and business experience and also served as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as counsel to the US Senate Majority Leader. He also has written for the Wall Street Journal. 

Miranda won't be a media favorite because he supports the war effort in general, and backs what General David Petraeus and the other warfighters are trying to do in particular. His criticism to Ambassador Crocker was directed squarely at the “Foreign Service and the State Department’s bureaucracy” as being “at the helm of America’s number one policy consideration.”

“We have brought to Iraq the worst of America – our bureaucrats – and failed to apply, as President Roosevelt once did, the high-caliber leadership class and intellectual talent, whose rallying has defined all of America’s finest hours," he said.

“After a year at the Embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service [are] not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq. It is not that the men and women of the Foreign Service and other State Department bureaus are not intelligent and hard-working, it is simply that they are not equipped to handle the job that the State Department has undertaken. . . .

“The purpose of the Surge, now one year old, was to pacify Iraq to allow the GOI [Government of Iraq] to stand up. The State Department has not done its part coincident with the Commanding General’s effort. This is not the fault of the intelligent and hard working individuals skilled at the functions of the ‘normal embassy.’ The problem is institutional. The State Department bureaucracy is not equipped to handle the urgency of America’s Iraq investment in blood and taxpayer funds. You lack the ‘fierce urgency of now.’

“Foreign Service officers, with ludicrously little management experience by any standard other than your own, are not equipped to manage programs, hundreds of millions in funds, and expert human capital assets needed to assist the Government of Iraq to stand up. It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken.”

Miranda assailed what he called "the Foreign Service’s gripping culture of excused inaction.” Among his points:

·         “. . . neither the State Department nor its Foreign Service is competent to manage or lead personnel who have been hired and brought to Iraq as experts, or to synchronize expertise, funds, and programs to support the GOI.”

·         “The American people would be scandalized to know that, throughout the Winter, Spring and Summer of 2007, even while our Congress debated the Iraq question and whether to commit more troops and more funds, the Embassy was largely consumed in successive internal reorganizations with contradictory management and policy goals. In some cases, administrative and management goals that occupied our time reflected the urgencies and priorities that could only originate in Foggy Bottom and far-removed from the reality or urgencies on the ground. The fact that over 80 people sit in Washington, second-guessing and delaying the work of the Embassy, many who have been to Baghdad, is an embarrassment alone.”

·         “. . . the State Department’s culture of delay and indecision, natural to any bureaucracy, is out of sync with the urgency felt by the American people and the Congress in furthering America’s interests in Iraq. The delay in staffing the Commanding General’s Ministerial Performance initiative (from May to the present) would be considered grossly negligent if not willful in any environment.”

·         “. . . if the management of the Embassy and the State Department’s Iraq operation were judged by rules that govern business judgment and asset waste in the private sector, the delays, indecision, and reorganizations over the past year, would be considered willfully negligent if not criminal. In light of the nation’s sacrifice, what we have seen this past year in the Embassy is incomprehensible.”

·         “The Embassy is also severely encumbered by the Foreign Service’s built-in attention deficit disorder, with personnel and new leaders rotating out within a year or less. . . .

·         “. . . there is a near complete lack of strategic forethought or synchronization between Embassy staffing and program initiatives and funding . . . Only the military takes seriously the Joint Campaign and its metrics of achievement, while State Department leaders use it only when advantageous.”

·         “The waste of taxpayer funds resulting from such mismanagement is something that only a deeply entrenched bureaucracy with a unionized attitude, like the Foreign Service and Main State [Department], could find acceptable.”

·         “This past year, the State Department and the Embassy has been led by two misguided premises: first, the obsessive aim that the Embassy be turned into a ‘normal embassy’ and, second, that the State Department cannot be faulted for things that the GOI is not doing, i.e. ‘the Iraqis need to do this themselves.’”

·         “The impulse to transform the Embassy into a ‘normal embassy’ displays most starkly the State Department bureaucracy’s endemic problems, including inflexibility and the inability to understand alternative management principles, use expertise and funds in any manner outside the State Department’s normal experience, the inability to respond to the urgency of America’s presence in Iraq, and the inclination to make excuses and blame the Embassy’s failures on others.”

·         “The second mantra, that political success in Iraq depends entirely on Iraqis, amounts to little more than excuse-making by people who cannot imagine alternative paths and who are limited by their own limited experience in government and economic development.”

·         “Simply put, Foreign Service officers are not equipped to manage process-oriented assistance programs and yet we have put into their hands hundreds of millions of dollars. Any American graduate school study group could do better.”

·         “In this excuse-making culture, the State Department has been an albatross around the neck of the Coalition command, whose leaders and personnel have a leadership profile radically opposite to the State Department’s. Among other things, the State Department has failed to assist Coalition initiatives by delaying or failing to supply the civilian expertise needed in a thoughtful and timely manner and also delaying decisions on funding and staffing vital to GOI (and our) success.”

·         “In the greater degree of importance, the Foreign Service culture has created a situation where important information is kept from vital decision makers. In my year in Baghdad, I have seen the Embassy intentionally keep information from: the White House and relevant policy-making agencies; the State Department in Washington (because ‘we cannot trust that they will not leak to the press’); and the Commanding General (because ‘we do not wash our dirty laundry in public’).”

·         “I have also witnessed a relentless culture of information-hoarding within the Embassy. The dysfunctional failure to communicate and share information is beyond anything that can be imagined under any circumstances. It is endemic of a bureaucracy that is far beyond its pale of competence and experience.”

·         “Needless to say, I have also witnessed the failure to coordinate and communicate with allies and international organizations.”

·         “. . . despite the countless and deeply-researched written products created by the Embassy over 5 years, and by contractors who are paid millions of dollars for the work product, the Embassy has no system in place to retrieve vital information about Iraq, its government and laws, and past experiences and decisions.”

·         “Embassy (and Coalition) personnel are in a constant state of information-gathering that relies mostly on luck and personality, and is always retaking the same ground.”

·         “Only American bureaucrats, without practical legal or business experience, who spend their careers abroad, could fail to understand the role of legislative practice in our own country, or the need for a concerted, professional support effort in our Embassy in Baghdad.”

·         “America’s success in Iraq will not be had with older or more Foreign Service officers doing the little that the Foreign Service is competent to do. The last thing that we need in Baghdad is more Foreign Service officers. We need experts, experienced human capital managers, and leaders who can think outside the box to synchronize staffing, funding, and urgent needs.”

·         “In addition . . . there are no lack of Americans who are willing to come to Iraq. At the Embassy today, there are Americans who have foregone incomes five times greater than what they make now and who put aside careers to serve. If I thought the State Department were competent, I would have been glad to sign on for more than a year. Recruitment is not your problem. Your system of staffing is.”

·         “The State Department would do the nation a service if it admits that it is not equipped to do the job you have undertaken. Our Congress has an obligation to give you the oversight our national sacrifice demands. We are now living our latest error.”

Muslim pop artists lead youthful resistance to Islamist extremism

by J. Michael Waller
Serviam magazine, January-February 2008

Al Qaeda has identified one type of enemy that it can’t fight against: Muslim rock stars. U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that the terrorist group had considered murdering top Egyptian performing artists for being “infidels” but decided against it for fear of creating a youth grassroots backlash from Arabs.

That decision not to kill shows the sheer power of an underappreciated weapon in the war of ideas. Just as jazz and rock music were credited with fueling grassroots resistance to Soviet communism, popular culture is making a stand against Islamic extremism.

Pakistani superstar guitarist Ali Zafar illustrates the youthful resistance movement by posting two quotes prominently on his blog. “God does not change the condition of any people unless they themselves make the decision to change,” reads the first, taken from the Quran 13:11. The second is attributed to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “You will have to repent in this generation, not only for the words and actions of the bad people, but also for the appalling ‘silence’ of the good people.”

The 27-year-old Zafar, son of two professors at the University of Punjab, is unabashed about his Muslim faith and his conviction that, more than anyone else on earth, innocent Muslims are the greatest victims of Islamic extremism.

Last year Zafar joined seven other top Pakistani artists to cut a music video to rally young people against terrorism and the extremist Islamic ideology that drives it. The song, “Yeh Hum Naheen,” is in the Urdu language; the title means “This Is Not Us” or “We Are Not That.” Done in a low-tech Bollywood style that’s popular with the intended audience, the six-minute video was recently released in the United Kingdom after its smash success in Pakistan.

Waseem Mahmood, a Pakistani-British author and media consultant, conceived of “Yeh Hum Naheen” to be reminiscent of Bob Geldof’s Band Aid and Live Aid concerts. He says his British-born children were sick of how Islamic extremists were radicalizing young people and trying to mainstream militant distortions of Islam. The goal was to inspire a popular resistance to extremism.

The low-budget music video attracted an impressive number of top performers—eight of Pakistan’s top 10. The production was very much a family affair. The video is “consciously simple,” says Mahmood, whose adult children not only inspired the project but helped produce it. “For me the glamour of the video was in assembling the biggest star cast ever seen in Pakistan in one single shot, something that had never been achieved before,” Mahmood says.

At a time when the U.S. and British governments were flailing in their efforts to counter the extremist narrative around the world, Mahmood’s personal initiative made a big difference in a volatile nation. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes dismissed the performance when briefed on it, and did nothing to promote it.

The market showed how badly the State Department misjudged the cultural message. “Yeh Hum Naheen” went platinum in Pakistan and was such a hit that EMI Records re-released it with English subtitles for the Pakistani diaspora in the U.K., and Mahmood is planning an Arabic version.

Resistance in World’s Largest Muslim Country

Meanwhile, the most popular rocker in the world’s most populous Muslim country had already been building a cultural resistance movement of his own.

“Pop culture is helping to rescue an entire generation of young Muslims from extremists who seek to turn them into ‘holy warriors’ and suicide bombers,” according to the LibForAll Foundation, a North Carolina-based nonprofit founded and chaired by American telecom executive C. Holland Taylor. “LibForAll’s mission is to encourage the growth of peaceful, tolerant and free societies—built upon a foundation of civil and economic liberty and the rule of law—in order to reduce religious extremism and discredit the use of terror worldwide.

“Our primary focus is on supporting moderate and progressive Muslims in their efforts to promote the culture of liberty and tolerance, while preserving the positive values of local, native traditions throughout the entire Muslim world.”

Taylor, who speaks fluent Indonesian, teamed up with two of the most culturally influential leaders in Southeast Asia: a senior statesman and a superstar pop singer likened to Bono of the Irish band U2.

The statesman, Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, was the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, who for years has led the world’s largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, which claims nearly 40 million members. Wahid has been resisting the aggressive and militant strains of Arab-inspired Islamism, from the subversive Muslim Brotherhood to openly pro-terrorist Wahhabi Islamism, promoting peace, tolerance and brotherhood with people of other religions.

The performer, Ahmad Dhani, plays an edgy guitar as leader of Dewa (pictured), the most popular rock group in Southeast Asia. Like Bono or Geldof, Dhani is a thoughtful artist with an activist global vision. Attracted by Taylor’s ideas, he serves on the board of LibForAll.

Armed with his own studio and multiplatinum popularity across Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, Dhani and Dewa took on the terrorists after widespread atrocities against Muslims and Christians in the eastern Indonesian provinces of Maluku and Sulawesi in 2004. Dhani, whose band includes Muslim and Christian members, satirized the killers, an Islamic terrorist group allied with al Qaeda called Laskar Jihad (Warriors of Jihad) in an album titled “Laskar Cinta” (“Warriors of Love”). The album had no title track, so in late 2005 he recorded a single with the same name, which EMI Records released in early 2006 on Dewa’s smash-hit album, “Republik Cinta” (“Republic of Love”).

EMI also bankrolled the production of “Yeh Hum Naheen.” One of the four largest recording labels in the world, the British company and its subsidiaries have signed on a variety of big performing names in various genres, from Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and the Kingston Trio to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Kraftwerk, R.E.M., and Iron Maiden.

“Dewa” means “god” in Javanese and Sanskrit. Rolling Stone said of Dhani and his band, “Armed with big dreams and a name laden with significance, they moved forward, not realizing how enormously their decision to form the band would affect their lives in the years to come.”

Dhani and Taylor designed the Indonesian performance campaign-style to motivate people. “This musical campaign has been endorsed by key Muslim theologians, who are joining with pop culture celebrities and other like-minded leaders in the fields of religion, education, entertainment, government, business and media to encourage people of good will of every faith and nation to unite as ‘warriors of love,’ and to reject all forms of religious hatred and violence,” according to LibForAll.

“Warriors of Love,” which became #1 on MTV Asia’s Ampuh hit program in early 2006, was written to promote what Dhani calls “the values of spiritual love, freedom and tolerance,” using lyrics inspired by verses from the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

“Hey there, all you lovers of peace,” the lyrics call, with a youthful twist that delightfully seizes back the militants’ narrative. “Watch out, watch out and be on guard—for lost souls, anger twisting their hearts, for lost souls, poisoned by ignorance and hate. . . . Warriors of Love, teach the mystical science of love, for only love is the eternal truth and the shining path for all God’s children everywhere in the world.”

Not surprisingly, Islamic extremists have condemned Dhani, a devout Sufi Muslim, as an “infidel” and “Zionist agent.” Militants took the musician to court on allegations of defaming Islam, and, according to LibForAll, “sought to ban his use of rock music to promote a spiritual and progressive interpretation of Islam that threatens the appeal of their own Wahhabi-inspired extremism.”

Militants threatened Dhani’s family, forcing the performer’s wife and children to flee their home. They also threatened to burn music stores carrying his albums. Their attempts not only failed, but prompted a public backlash against their cause.

“Competent Public Diplomacy”

“Muslims themselves can and must propagate an understanding of the ‘right’ Islam, and thereby discredit extremist ideology. Yet to accomplish this task requires the understanding and support of like-minded individuals, organizations and governments throughout the world. Our goal must be to illuminate the hearts and minds of humanity, and offer a compelling alternate vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged,” Wahid wrote in an essay for the Wall Street Journal last year.

The newspaper’s powerful editorial page has been a strong supporter of the Indonesian project. “LibForAll is itself a model of what a competent public diplomacy effort in the Muslim world should look like,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens in a profile of Taylor. The American businessman “has engaged influential and genuinely reform-minded Muslims—as opposed to the faux ‘moderates’ on whom [President George W.] Bush lavished praise at the Islamic Center [in Washington]—to articulate and defend a progressive and tolerant version of Islam.”

The foundation has accomplished far more than any U.S. government-sponsored action in the war of ideas. “In its brief life, LibForAll has helped turn back an attempted Islamic takeover of the country’s second-largest Muslim social organization (with 30 million members), translated anti-Wahhabist books into Indonesian, sponsored a recent multidenominational conference to denounce Holocaust denial, brought Mr. Dhani to Colorado to speak to U.S. military brass and launched a well-researched ‘extremist expose’ in order,” the Wall Street Journal says of Taylor, “to get Indonesian society to consciously acknowledge that there is an infiltration occurring of radical ideology, financed by Arab petrodollars, that is intent on destroying Indonesian Islam.”

Even though Undersecretary Hughes met with Dhani, heaped praise on him and proclaimed, “people like you are exactly what we need,” the State Department failed to provide the multiplier effect the artist could have used to magnify his freedom message. Taylor told the Wall Street Journal, “She then asked us whether [Dhani] would be willing to work with the State Department, whether he’d be willing to travel and whether there was anything she could do for him,” says Taylor. “We answered all three questions affirmatively. Since then there’s been a vast silence.”

A New Internationalism

Pakistan's Amazing Pop Talent “Yeh Hum Naheen” is more than a song—it’s a musical movement with some incredible talent. Here are the profiles of some of the performers. more >>

In contrast to the State Department’s indifference, Pakistanis and others worldwide have caught on and say they want more. “I have been inundated with messages of support and congratulations from young Pakistanis around the world who have thanked me for standing up and giving voice to their sentiments,” says Waseem Mahmood. “The response from the international music industry has been equally humbling—major stars, many of whom I have idolized myself, have contacted me to say how much they loved the song and video and would like to collaborate with us on an English version. I guess that we must have done something right!”

Serviam spoke with Taylor in Indonesia just hours after the December 27, 2007, assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Taylor had heard of “Yeh Hum Naheen,” but his foundation had had no contact with the Pakistani performers or producers. When told of the planned versions in Arabic and English, Taylor suggested a performance in Indonesian.

LibForAll and the Yeh Hum Naheen group had long had plans independently to internationalize their musical movement across language and culture. Now Pakistani and Indonesian artists work together with the goal of starting a worldwide Muslim popular cultural movement for religious tolerance and against Islamic extremism.

The LibForAll Foundation seeks out partners in the developing world and supports the activities of those committed to civil, economic and religious liberty. “We believe that the rule of law, an honest and competent judiciary/public administration, free trade, freedom of conscience, free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, the sanctity of contracts and universal education are key to civil and economic development, and to the creation of just, prosperous and tolerant society,” the foundation says in its credo statement.

The foundation’s strategy is based on an “indirect approach” designed to reduce religious extremism and terror by rendering them socially unacceptable, and repugnant, to people and cultures throughout the world.

LibForAll’s patron and senior advisor in Indonesia is His Excellency Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia’s first democratically-elected president and the longtime head of the world’s largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, with nearly 40 million members. For more information, contact: LibForAll Foundation, 3524 Yadkinville Road, No. 357, Winston-Salem, NC 27106 USA. info@libforall.org. or visit www.libforall.org.

TSA's great new terrorist posters

Having written about some silly Homeland Security media at Dulles International Airport in Washington, it's only right that I take note of an excellent poster in other airports.

The poster reminds us why law-abiding travelers have to go through the huge hassle (and expense, if you look at your airline ticket receipt) of going through lengthy, cumbersome and often embarrassing security processes. Affixed to the waist-high corral posts in the security lines, the full-color wanted posters contain the pictures and names of some of the world's most notorious wanted terrorists. I don't have an image of them yet, but they are similar to the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" poster, featured above, released in December 2006.

Those who traveled to Germany in the 1980s will recall the ubiquitous "TERRORISTEN" posters featuring the mug shots of Baader-Meinhof terrorists. Today's US posters are smaller, but similar. If they're at Dulles airport I didn't see them, but I have noticed them at Reagan National Airport in Washington, and in other parts of the country. To those responsible for the poster - and for not caving in to the sensitivity police - Nice job!