Center for a New American Security

Tripoli and other Qadhdhafi-held areas of Libya are now suffering from crippling shortages of both food and fuel. I want to prepare you all for the very real possibility that the United Nations or other multi- or international organizations will have to provide humanitarian relief to the people of Tripoli in the near future -- because the international community earlier intervened on behalf of Libyan rebels and has now enabled those rebels to march on those areas loyal to Qadhdhafi. If you're confused by war waged via the logic of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect ... you're not alone.

UPDATE: From a reader...

FYI, WFP has been sending in thousands of metric tons of food to Gaddafi controlled areas for well over a month, purchase with funding from USAID, among others.

 

Ostensibly this food is being distributed by the Libyan Red Crescent to various bakeries from distribution to the public, but trust me when I say they have absolutely know way to verify this.

 

I've been participating in this "humanitarian intervention" since the end of February, and I really don't have a fucking clue what we're doing here.

You think the United States has played its hand poorly during the Arab Spring?

Hizballah busied themselves airing claims I am some kind of spy over the weekend, but if I were them, I would be less worried about American researchers and more worried about how they handle a post-Asad Syria. It will almost certainly not be as friendly as the one that currently helps funnel Hizballah weapons and money.

Some fascinating reporting from Homs by Anthony Shadid:

Perhaps most pronounced is the anger at Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant movement in Lebanon that has bluntly supported Mr. Assad’s government. Hezbollah was widely popular in Syria, where sentiments against Israel and longstanding American dominance of the region run deep. But Hezbollah’s backing for Mr. Assad has unleashed a sense of betrayal at a movement that celebrates the idea of resistance. At times, it has also given rise to chauvinism among Syrian Sunnis against Hezbollah’s Shiite constituency.

 

“We’ve started to hate them more than we hate Israel,” said Maher, a young father and protester in Hama, sitting with a friend who gave his name as Abu Mohammed.

 

Abu Mohammed said that in the 2006 war fought between Hezbollah and Israel, which forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, he sheltered 40 Shiite families for as long as a month. “Food, drink, and I accepted nothing in return,” he said. “Now they’re with the regime, but it wasn’t the regime who opened the doors of their homes to them.”

A few days ago, I was accused by a German conspiracy theorist of having assassinated former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. On first glance, this is kind of funny. Yesterday, for example, the Twittersphere was joking about all the other people I might have killed: Stringer Bell, Bill, Tupac, Iranian nuclear scientists, the sheriff and the deputy, Amy Winehouse, a man in Reno (just to watch him die), etc. One friend, employing the same "logic" as this conspiracy theorist, noted that I was also "suspiciously near" the scene of dozens of bombings in Iraq in 2003 and that 338 people have been murdered since I moved back to Washington, DC in 2009. Also, this same friend noted, I have never been able to prove that I did not meet with Mohammed Atta in Prague.

Quite quickly, though, what's kind of amusing on the first glance is not at all funny. If you are a journalist or researcher working on the Arabic-speaking world, what do you think is the worst possible thing someone could do to endanger your work and your life? If you guessed "holding a press conference in Beirut to announce you are working for the Mossad or CIA," you're either correct or close to the mark. As several other scholars of the region noted in emails to me yesterday, my research in Lebanon and the broader region will almost certainly be complicated by this crank and his new pet conspiracy theory.

But at least I have a nice job in Washington, D.C. that allows me to do a lot of my work from a comfortable air-conditioned office. Spare a thought for my ex-girlfriend, who I mentioned in a New York Times op-ed a few days after the assassination and who now works as a credentialed photojournaist in the Arabic-speaking world. With no evidence whatsoever, this German "journalist" has now quite literally endangered both her life and her livelihood. 

A few notes about the claims themselves, which were made on the pro-March 8th Coalition website tayyar.org as well as on Hizballah's television station, al-Manar. Unsurprisingly and aside from the basic fact that I did not assassinate the former Lebanese prime minister*, the claims are riddled with factual errors. I am not even Jewish, for example.** On all four sides of my family, I am the latest in a long line of Scottish Presbyterians who have all been in the United States since well before the American Revolution. Prior to this century, the only times we felt the need to leave the United States was to invade and defeat Germany on a few occassions, the first defeat of which was explained away by some German extremists by blaming it on a Jewish conspiracy against Germany, and the second of which ... well, you get the point. At some point, amidst the rubble and the mass murder of millions of Jews, Roma, and other minorities, most Germans and other Europeans decided blaming the ills of the world on Jewish conspiracies was not in anyone's best interest. Most Germans, it seems.***

Second, if anyone wanted to actually see my military record, they could do the responsible journalistic thing and submit a freedom of information request. There is nothing classified in my military record, and you can see for yourself exactly what I did, where I deployed, what medals I earned, etc.

Third, and along the same lines, I am a semi-public figure. I have a Wikipedia page, a publicly available biography (all of the facts of which you can check), and a publications record a mile and a half long. Do I behave, in any way, shape, or form, like a spy?

This entire experience is deeply frustrating and troubling. I am not aware of any legal recourse I have available, though the claims being made by this guy endanger both work as well as the life and work of my ex-girlfriend. (Who is a great and wonderful person despite having dated me and was never my fiancee. I am happily married, as many of you know, to a woman who will surely be cannonized at some point.) I am hardly the first American to do research on the Middle East to be accused of being a spy, but this is upsetting nonetheless.

Last fall, I was actually contacted by this conspiracy theorist. I responded in good faith to his first email but ignored his others as they grew weirder. If any of you out there, by the way, send me requests for research assistance and such out of the blue and wonder why I have never responded, you have cranks like this guy to thank. I am attaching the full text of this guy's emails to me below and, when I get to work tomorrow, will scan and publish a .pdf of these emails as well.

*I cannot believe I actually had to write this sentence. Do I also need to let you guys know I did not assassinate Imad Mughniyeh?

**Although rest assured, if I were blessed enough to be one of God's chosen people, I would be very proud of that.

***Today, Germany boasts an impressive Holocaust education program, and even in the madness of the early 20th Century, many brave Germans spoke out for the Jews and against anti-Semitism. I am not trying to tar an entire noble people with the same brush here, but I find this especially disturbing a German is peddling this nonsense when surely he should know the power of these kinds of conspiracy theories.

 

Hariri assassination; your articles_4

juergen_ck [juergen_ck@t-online.de]

Sent:    Friday, November 12, 2010 4:17 AM

To:      

Andrew Exum

 

Dear Mr. Exum,

 

I want to mention you and XXX in my next book. Your presence at the Hariri crime scene is remarkable and raises questions. I like to repeat my question: Have you been asked by UN investigators and how did you respond?

 

Regards

 

JCK

 

Von: juergen_ck [mailto:juergen_ck@t-online.de]

Gesendet: Freitag, 5. November 2010 11:46

An: 'Andrew Exum'

Betreff: Hariri assassination; your articles_3

 

Dear Mr. Exum,

 

I have one last question: Have you been questioned by the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission or the Special Tribunal for Lebanon regarding your observations prior and after the Hariri assassination, the kind of disaster tourism you executed and your motive to visit the crime scene and so on?

 

Regards

 

JCK

 

Von: juergen_ck [mailto:juergen_ck@t-online.de]

Gesendet: Dienstag, 2. November 2010 11:51

An: 'Andrew Exum'

Betreff: Hariri assassination; your articles_2

 

Dear Andrew,

 

thank you very much for your quick reply.

 

Yes, I know Fisk and his article with his unforgettable impressions. He’s living a few hundreds meter from the blast scene and therefore he was one of the first there. Unlike you he describes the tragic situation very vividly. This is not meant to be an accusation. Apparently you have all seen through the eyes of a military. I would indeed do so, I'm a criminologist.              

 

But let me make some other remarks.

 

You wrote: “As a former soldier, I couldn't help but marvel for a moment at the audacity of the attack and the meticulous planning involved. The Corniche at this point takes a sharp turn, forcing cars to slow. The men who placed the bomb surely knew this. In addition, the building across from the St. George was also under construction and uninhabited, so any collateral damage to civilians would have been minimal. Further down the Corniche, the road is wider and would have been choked with pedestrians. Whoever planned this attack had been calculating as well as ruthless.”

 

I do not share your opinion on any kind of intended prevention of collateral damage to civilians: At the end 21 people died and about 220 persons were wounded!

 

You wrote: “The crater it left in the middle of the Corniche was at least three meters deep and 20 wide, astonishing given all the asphalt and rock it had to blast through.”

 

Indeed, Beirut was built on a rocky promontory. And the crime scene behind the Rocky-coast-Line between Ain al Mrayseh and Zaytuneh is located in a cove with rocky underground. Now let’s go back to bomb. OK, we are not experts but as former officers we should know a little bit about explosions. The bomb produces primarily heat. The bomb itself and the material in their environment evaporate. It creates abruptly a (relatively) small area with very hot and high pressured gas. All around is just a vacuum, so the gas expands, and that is the pressure wave. But a more complex problem is the behavior of the pressure wave of any explosion under reflection. An explosion near a flat hard surface (rocky basement of the coast) leads to a strengthening of the pressure wave. The relationship between the reflected shock wave and the incident shock wave is called the reflection coefficient. And don’t forget the reflection from the buildings around the crime scene. The explosion was calculated to do maximal damage. That’s my opinion.

 

Remember Fisk; he wrote: “The blast had sent another car, perhaps one of Hariri's, soaring through the air into the third floor of the empty hotel's annex, where it was still burning fiercely.”

 

It was a powerful explosion that shot a car from a weight of about one ton to a height of 6 to 7 meters. Did you see the car? I can find neither any photo nor another source.

 

Best and thanks

 

JCK

 

Von: Andrew Exum [mailto:]

Gesendet: Montag, 1. November 2010 16:20

An: juergen_cain_kuelbel@t-online.de

Betreff: FW: To Mr. Andrew Exum: Hariri assassination; your article

 

Juergen,

 

Answers below. IN CAPS.

 

Best,

 

Ex

 

From:

Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 10:53 AM

To: Andrew Exum

Cc: CNAS Information

Subject: FW: To Mr. Andrew Exum: Hariri assassination; your articles

 

From: jürgen_cain_kuelbel [mailto:juergen_cain_kuelbel@t-online.de]

Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 8:31 AM

To: ; CNAS Information

Subject: To Mr. Andrew Exum: Hariri assassination; your articles

 

Dear Mr. Andrew Exum,

 

my name is Jürgen Cain Külbel, I’m a German author and former criminalist. I’m just writing my second book about the Hariri assassination and the assassination series in Lebanon from 2005 to 2008.

 

I studied your interesting articles “Blood, Smoke and Tears in Beirut”, (NYT, 16 February 2005) and “Hope amid tragedy” (saloon.com) over the weekend. You are something like an “eye witness” of the devastating bombing and I’d greatly appreciate if you could kindly answer my few questions.

 

You wrote: “Firefighters and police officers worked to keep back the crowd, then soldiers slowly began to pour in.”

 

Questions:

 

How did you manage to escape police or soldiers and climb up the hotel St. George although a large fire was raging inside the shell of the hotel?

 

THERE WAS NO LARGE FIRE. I MUST HAVE ARRIVED 10 MINUTES AFTER THE INITIAL BLAST AND DID NOT SEE ANY SECONDARY FIRES INSIDE THE HOTEL. THE ONLY SECONDARY EXPLOSIONS THAT I SAW CAME FROM A FEW CARS WHOSE GAS TANKS HEATED UP AND EXPLODED.

 

Was the crime scene not secured at that time (you arrived around ten minutes after the blast)?

 

HA. IT WAS “SECURED” IN THE LEBANESE SENSE OF THE WORD. WHICH MEANS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I IDENTIFIED OURSELVES AS WORKING MEMBERS OF THE PRESS AND, WITHOUT ANY ACCREDIDATION, SLIPPED THROUGH THE OUTER CORDON ESTABLISHED BY THE POLICE AND ARMY. AT SOME POINT, A LITTLE LATER, THEY REALLY SEALED OFF THE BLAST SITE. BUT INITIALLY, IT WAS REMARKABLY OPEN. I SAW OTHER REPORTERS THERE, INCLUDING ROBERT FISK. AND THERE WERE ALSO WHAT LOOKED LIKE ORDINARY LEBANESE. ANYWAY, IN THE INITIAL CONFUSION, IT WAS QUITE EASY TO GET CLOSE. AND EVENTUALLY TARA AND I JUST CLIMBED UP INTO THE ST. GEORGE.

 

You wrote: “… and I climbed up the ruins of the St. George and looked down at the crater. It was easily 25 yards wide and at least three deep. To create a hole this size, you would have to fill a large truck or van with high explosives, first re-enforcing the shock absorbers to accommodate all the extra weight.

 

Questions:

 

This is a very smart first analysis because the experts argued at length about theories of aboveground or underground explosions. How do you get the smart idea of a large truck or van with re-enforced shock absorbers? Did you have some experiences? Did you ever see in Iraq or Afghanistan such kinds of terror trucks or explosions?

 

I SERVED TWICE IN AFGHANISTAN AND ONCE IN IRAQ. AT THE TIME OF THE BLAST, I HAD ONLY BEEN RETURNED FROM IRAQ FOR A YEAR AND FROM AFGHANISTAN FOR JUST SIX OR SEVEN MONTHS. SO YES, I HAD A LITTLE BIT OF EXPERIENCE WITH EXPLOSIVES AND WITH CAR BOMBS. I ALSO HAD EXPERIENCE WITH CRATERING CHARGES. THE U.S. ARMY WOULD USE THOSE IF YOU WANTED TO CREATE A HASTY ROADBLOCK. IT TAKES A LOT OF EXPLOSIVES! SO I KNEW, FIRST, THAT A LOT OF EXPLOSIVES HAD TO HAVE EBEN EMPLOYED TO HAVE CREATED A CRATER THAT LARGE IN ONE BLAST. I KNEW, SECOND, THAT ANY TRUCK OR CAR YOU LOADED UP WITH THAT MUCH EXPLOSIVES WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN REINFORCED IN TERMS OF THE CAR’S SHOCKS.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Best regards

 

Jürgen Cain Külbel

 

Berlin

If you watch U.S. cable news in the aftermath of today's attacks in Norway -- and really, why are you watching U.S. cable news? -- you are likely to see various "terrorism" "experts" talking about what happened. If you are lucky, you'll see someone like Peter Bergen who has written extensively and well on various jihadi groups, but beyond that, the quality can go downhill pretty quickly.

As a service to the readership, the following is an incomplete list of several scholars who write and comment well on terrorism.

1. Will McCants. Will, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis, worked in the State Department's counter-terrorism shop until recently. Armed with excellent Arabic and a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton, Will is a serious scholar of both Islam and jihadi movements. He founded the website Jihadica and can be followed on Twitter at @will_mccants.

2. Thomas Hegghammer. A Norwegian himself, Thomas is the author of this incredible book and introduces the field of jihadi studies quite well in this excellent if dated essay.

3. Brynjar Lia. Another Norwegian, Brynjar also wrote a rather wonderful book and is an analyst at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.

4. Leah Farrall. Aussie goddess of all things counter-terrorism. Follow her on Twitter at @allthingsct.

5. Brian Fishman. A research fellow at the New America Foundation, you might actually see Brian on television. He probably will not say anything ignorant. Which is more than you can say for most people you will see on television. @brianfishman

You will note my incomplete list of counter-terrorism experts is somewhat biased toward those with language skills and formal education in the subject and away from law enforcement and military experience. This is not an accident. Nothing wrong with the latter, of course. It's just that if you want someone to explain the origins of al-Qaeda, some guy who used to kick down doors is probably not your man. (Though he may be, I guess.) My list is also biased toward experts on Islamist terror. There are those in the field of strategic studies who focus more on terror and coercion as general subjects, but I have found they are less likely to be able to say something of consequence about specific groups than people who are experts on specific groups can say something of consequence about terror tactics and coercion in general. Anyway, do add your own names in the comments section.

P.S. This list was compiled after jihadi groups claimed responsibility for the Norway attacks. If the attacks were instead the acts of what we social scientists call an "LDA," or Lone Derranged A******, save this list for the next time there is an attack by bona fide terrorist group or you're just otherwise curious about terror and counter-terrorism.

I am in Ithaca, New York preparing to teach a module on insurgency and counterinsurgency tomorrow as part of the Summer Workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (SWAMOS). I myself am a SWAMOS alumnus (Class of 2008), so when the great Richard Betts asked me to teach this year, I was humbled and honored to accept. The students this year seem to be a really interesting mix of graduate students, some with military experience, and I am sure the questions they ask will be excellent. So although I will not be blogging, I will be taking notes of the best questions I hear tomorrow to be discussed in blog posts when I return. I'm teaching a morning introduction to insurgency and counterinsurgency and will then lead a structured afternoon discussion of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I have taught one-day seminars on counterinsurgency before, but those have been for military officers and others in government, so I have written new slides for a more academic audience. (And I assigned Chapter 5 of Kalyvas for advance reading, though I'm sure half of the students have already read the entire book.) I'm sticking around to listen in on another day of lectures and return Thursday night.

Micah Zenko has a piece up on Foreign Policy's website about gender (im)balance in think tanks. His data (which I assume he took from our website, here) demonstrates that only 18% of our policy-related staff is female and that just 31% of our overall staff is female.

There are lies, though, damn lies, and then statistics. In this case (and I can only speak for myself, obviously), CNAS does not seem like such a male-dominated place if you actually work here. This is because our staff includes a lot of non-resident and part-time staff who are rarely here. If you subtract part-time staff like Tom Ricks and Bob Kaplan (sorry, guys) who are rarely here and non-resident staff like David Asher and Nancy Berglass (who are almost never here), the numbers are different: CNAS actually has just as many female full-time staff (50%, or 11) as we do male full-time staff. (And two more females are about to join the full-time staff in the next week, putting men in the overall minority.) Among our research staff, we do have a big gender imbalance: 11 men to just three women. (With another on the way, making the percentage either 21% or 27%, depending on how charitable you want to be.) That having been said, our director of research is Kristin Lord, and her deputy is Nora Bensahel. So to the degree that we are hierarchical, women are in real positions of authority when it comes to shaping our research agenda.

As either Reinhold Niebuhr or Brother Mouzone once said, "The game is the game."

Ahmed Wali Karzai, long a case study for how U.S. government agencies and departments pull in different directions in Afghanistan, was killed today in Afghanistan. 

I am neither the pro's pro on Ahmed Wali Karzai or southern Afghanistan, but let me direct you to Mattieu Aikins' excellent recent profile of AWK and also to Matt's Twitter feed, which I will be watching today for further news and cogent analysis.

Finally, you will note that our tech-support team at CNAS has added CAPTCHAs to the comments section in order to combat the spam. Fans of cut-price NFL jerseys may be upset, but I hope this makes the blog more reader-friendly for the rest of you.

Ready?

1. This nonsense about adding new medals to recognize service in Iraq and Afghanistan is just as ridiculous as people have been saying, and for even more reasons. The way the U.S. military has divided up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into arbitrary phases is unnecessary and confusing. Ask a soldier if they have served in either country, and they will likely say, "Yes, two deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan" or something similar. They do not say, "Well, let's see, I had one deployment as part of the Liberation, one as part of the Transition, one deployment that overlapped between the Surge and Iraqi Sovereignty ... and then I deployed to Afghanistan as part of the Consolidation." That's silly. Just award one medal for service in each combat theater, and if you want to keep score beyond that, well, that's why God invented service stripes and valor awards.

2. I have mixed feelings about the news that the White House will now issue condolence letters to the families of soldiers who have committed suicide. First off, I care a lot less about condolence letters than I do about investing in psychological screening and counseling to reduce the number of suicides in the first place. Second, not all suicides are the result of combat stress. (One study demonstrated that "79 percent of army suicides occurred within the first three years of service, whether soldiers were deployed or not.") I have known soldiers who have died in Afghanistan in helicopter accidents and soldiers who have died in stateside helicopter crashes. Although neither crash was directly caused by enemy action, the families of the former received condolence letters. The families of the latter did not. If you're going to start writing letters to the families of all soldiers who commit suicide (where indirect cause of death cannot be clearly determined), should you not also start writing condolence letters to the families of all servicemen who die while serving on active duty? And what about the soldier who returns home from war, horrified by what he has seen, gets really drunk and dies (and maybe kills a few others) while driving under the influence? Does that guy's family get a letter? I mean, where do you draw the line between those who receive condolence letters and those who do not? My man Yochi Dreazen gets deeper into these questions in this National Journal article.

3. Speaking of PTSD, if a U.S. soldier wrote a difficult, painful-to-read, searingly honest essay on his or her struggle with PTSD, no one would tell that soldier that he or she does not have the right to write such an essay because they failed to also consider the effect of the war on innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. People would just accept that everyone has the right to share his or her own personal narrative, and that when people are brave enough to open up about their personal experiences, we should all give them the space to do so. Which is just one of the reasons why the outrage over Mac McLelland's essay annoys me.

CNAS is closed for the week, so I am at home catching up on my reading and workouts. A few random thoughts, though:

1. The Dutch are justifiably ashamed of what happened -- and what did not happen -- at Srebrenica, but someone explain to me how today's ruling is good for peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention. If you can be held responsible in a court of law for things you did or did not do in a peacekeeping operation, what incentive is there for top-flight military organizations such as those that belong to the NATO countries to participate in peacekeeping operations? Will you not be left with only those countries who need the money? I am not trying to say military organizations in peacekeeping operations should not be held accountable for their actions. I just see today's ruling unhelpful. When the United Nations next goes around looking for participants in peacekeeping operations, we might see fewer hands go up. Or rather, we might see fewer hands go up from among the better militaries.

2. 197 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year.* 195 were killed in the first six months of 2010. Does this mean anything? Well, not really. First off, let me start off by saying that those 197 men and women are "statistically significant" to the mothers, fathers, friends and other family they left behind in the United States. We Americans all mourn their passing and honor their sacrifice. But in terms of trying to wrap our heads around the conflict, an increase of two is statistically insignificant. Or maybe it is significant when you consider there were roughly 30,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2011 than there were in the first six months of 2010. So you have more troops in the country, contesting more areas, and the number of U.S. casualties more or less held steady. That might be good news, then? But we have a real problem with data in Afghanistan. Most of the data we do have actually tells us little about the direction of the conflict. And much of the data we want to have is uneven, unstandardized, and has massive gaps in it.

3. The security services of the Pakistani state are an annoyance to the United States. They are a hazard to the people of Afghanistan. And they are an absolute menace to the people of Pakistan itself.

*A number of readers pointed out that this figure is lower than the one tracked by iCasualties. That figure is 203, which I do not think changes anything. (Though, again, I realize every single one of these fallen soldiers is someone's son or daughter, so I am not trying to be insensitive here.)