Center for a New American Security

Well, readers, I am back from a much-needed vacation -- and took Lady Muqawama on her first visit to the Arabic-speaking world. We arrived in Casa Blanca and over the course of a week visited Rabat, Fez, and Tangier, spending three nights in the latter as we stayed for a friend's annual party weekend. In Fez, allow me to recommend the excellent Riad al-Bartal (maybe the coolest hotel in which I have ever stayed), while in Tangier I remain a fan of the Dar Nour in the Kasbah. In Rabat, I stayed with my friend Issandr, who passed along this, ahem, interesting map of the Middle East. 

Now that I am back, expect normal blogging service to resume.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Warning: this post has nothing to do with war or counter-insurgency.]

The New York Times has a travel article today on the city of Tangier, where I spent the summer of 2007 thanks to a language fellowship from the U.S. Department of State. I am an enthusiastic champion of this city. You know the scene in the last Bourne moviewhere the annoying Julia Stiles character gives the assassin his new cell phone? (You're ashamed to admit that yes, you remember the scene.) I spent every afternoon in that same cafe doing my Arabic homework and reading the newspapers.

Tangier is wonderfully resurgent city. If you have never traveled to an Arabic-speaking country, a short ferry ride from Spain to Tangier (followed by a train ride to either Fez or Marakesh) would be a great introduction. (Also, the "Tangerines" often speak Spanish and/or French as well as Moroccan Arabic -- which, I confess, I can't understand very well myself.) The expatriate community of artists in Tangier is something special as well. My friend Irina's mother has a nice quote at the end of the article:

“There’s a wonderful term in ornithology that is perfect for the kind of people that end up here,” said Elena Prentice, an American painter and philanthropist who lives in Tangier. “They are called accidentals, birds that end up in an area they don’t really belong. Everyone in Tangier is some form of accidental.”

1. Troop levels to remain more or less steady in Iraq through December: This has more to do with the Iraqi elections in October than it does with the American election in November, and Abu Muqawama understands the reasoning. But honestly, if the elections don't happen or if all hell breaks loose and the elections don't allow the Sunni some way back into the political process, we have to admit the surge was a brilliant tactical victory but of less value strategically. Michelle Flournoy: “The only happy ending to the surge is for it to produce some strategic results, which it has yet to do.” And by that time, it's a new president's problem. Thanks, George!

2. Abu Muqawama still can't get over all that crap about Iran which leaked into AEI's plan for Iraq. There was a lot of stuff in the AEI report that was really good and suggested serious thought and analysis, but that stuff on Iran is what happens when you let a bunch of Iran hawks with their own agenda (we would never name names) into the planning process. The result is a report containing some very good recommendations tainted by the ideological crusades of some beltway warriors. (Also, the failure to mention the needs of and situation in Afghanistan as part of the recommendations was, again, especially galling.)

3. A reader we'll identify as John N. for the sake of anonymity sent along this op-ed by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal on the debate among Sunni clerics about the requirements for jihad and the constraints they put upon al-Qaeda recruiting. It's an interesting read (albeit with a title that's a little too hopeful). Readers wanting to know more about how the requirements for jihad play out in the minds of wannabe jihadis -- you must ask your Mom and Dad for permission, you must pay off debts, etc. -- would do well to read Andrea Elliott's excellent report from Tetouan for the New York Times Magazine a few months back.

Update: Lady S. suggested that Abu Muqawama do some sort of comparison between al-Qaeda recruitment and recruitment for, say, the US Marine Corps. Abu Muqawama had actually thought about throwing in some snarky line into the original post about how the requirements for jihad were stricter than the requirements for joining the Marines or U.S. Army. After all, as any officer and NCO who supervises troops knows, you can enlist in the Marines or Army with plenty of debt and you don't need your parents' permission. (Unless you're under 18.) So by one measure, it's easier to go fight in Iraq as a Marine than it is as a suicide bomber.

Update II: Holy %$#@, it's baseball season already.

THE French cut off the medina with three cordons of troops, through which no Arab could escape. Inside the medina were detachments of Foreign Legionnaires, colonial infantry with tanks, barefoot Berber goumiers, whose hatred of the Arabs is legendary, and French police from whose wrists swung weighted truncheons. Police men, working with maps, split the medina into half a dozen sectors. Then the legionnaires, working systematically, began breaking down the doors of every house.

Once a door was smashed, in went the goumiers and drove out every male, except small boys. Women cried out in terror, and were beaten back with clubs or gun butts.

On top of a low hill in Port Lyautey's medina is a dusty sheep market. Legionnaires drove the Arab men there and herded them under the muzzle of a Patton tank. A dozen policemen formed a gauntlet, six on either side. One by one, the Arabs were thrust forward, each with his hands on his head.

"Entrez done, Monsieur," said a reserve police colonel. "The session is about to begin." He smiled broadly, then hit a middle-aged Arab with his right fist, below the belt. As the Arab went down, the colonel kneed him in the groin. The Arab tried to get up; another cop caught him across the jaw with a club. Down went the Arab and the next cop kicked him, twice. He got up again and ran into the arms of still another policeman, who poked him into a sitting position with the muzzle of a carbine.

Abu Muqawama has been searching in vain for something in the news to highlight today, but the only thing being covered in most newspapers is Hillary Clinton's continuing and hilarious efforts to get John McCain elected president. That said, via Angry Arab, Abu Muqawama came across this report from TIME Magazine's correspondent in Morocco, in 1954, on the brutal counterinsurgency tactics employed to pacify one of the troublesome Arab quarters. The fact that this particular quarter was in Port Lyautey (now Kenitra) is ironic.* Hubert Lyautey -- along with Bugeaud and Gallieni -- was one of the first theorists of population-centric counterinsurgency. (There is a good chapter on him in Paret's Makers of Modern Strategy, authored by Douglas Porch.)

Not too long ago, Thomas Rid was kind enough to send along a copy of Lyautey's famous Du Role Colonial de L'Armée (Paris: Armand Colin & Co. 1900). As Porch makes clear, the French never really bought into population-centric COIN in the way that Lyautey would have liked. And he himself found such tactics difficult to employ in practice. But Lyautey & Co. are important because their ideas form the intellectual basis for the writings of David Galula and Roger Trinquier, which in turn help form the intellectual basis for that copy of FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency sitting beside you. For all the great French contributions to the theory of counterinsurgency, though, they never really nailed it down in practice, did they? Comparatively, the U.S., in Iraq, has had much more success executing population-centric COIN than the French ever did in Morocco, Indochina, or Algeria.

Ah, but it's like what the French bureaucrat said: "I see how it works in practice, but how does it work in theory?"

*There was also, apparently, a Cold War-era U.S. Naval Air Station in Port Lyautey. Abu Muqawama has passed through Kenitra on the train but has never visited.

My goodness, this place was a New York Times Magazine cover story waiting to happen. Abu Muqawama -- along with friends Little Becks and "el-Hamaat" -- visited Tetouan this summer. We had to be at a certain spot to catch the bus back to Tangier, so Abu Muqawama led the three of us on a "shortcut" back to the rendez-vous point. Oh, it was a shortcut, alright -- but it wound through some of the more shady barrios any of us had ever walked through. A week later, Abu Muqawama was visiting Issandr in Rabat and found out Tetouan was the place in Morocco that provided more jihadists who go fight in Iraq than anywhere else. Anyway, Abu Muqawama woke up too late for morning services today, so this will be what he's reading over his breakfast.

(Question: Andrea Elliott often reports on Islam for the New York Times, but does anyone know if she speaks Arabic? Even if she doesn't, she could have probably gotten away with Spanish in Tetouan -- it used to be the capital of the Spanish mandate in northern Morocco. Anyway, just curious.)

Update: Google is an amazing thing: "Ms. Elliott was born on December 14, 1972, in Washington, D.C. to a Chilean mother and American father. She is fluent in Spanish, is proficient in Portuguese and is learning Arabic. She is married and lives in Manhattan."

Update II: Speaking of the Times, if you are unlucky enough to be working your way through Tom Friedman's latest nonsense today, read it all the way until the end. There's a gem after the final paragraph that makes all the pain worth it: "Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich are off today." Praise the Lord and pass the PBR.