One key fault line in the Arab world is the divide between countries ruled by hereditary monarchs —the Emirs, Sultans, and Kings of the region—and those countries that overthrew monarchs or won independence and established republican governments. This is a major factor that divides the government, law, culture and society in the countries of the Arab world.

When Iraq—a socialist republic that overthrew its Hashemite king in the late 1950s—invaded the Persian Gulf Emirate of Kuwait, one justification was the “liberation” of the country from a tyranical monarch. Not surprisingly, the reaction by Arab governments to this invasion was closely linked to its system of government. Consider the following map, together with the map above:

The divide is clearest in the Arabian Peninsula—all the monarchies of the GCC backed fellow charter state Kuwait, while Yemen, which had overthrown its monarch in North Yemen in the 1960s and which had a contentious relationship with the Saudis, backed Saddam. The Palestinian Liberation Organization also voiced support for Saddam (which drastically hurt their international political standing for several years). Libya spoke out against any Arab military action against Iraq, Sudan quietly voiced support for Saddam, while Morocco’s King sent troops to join the coalition forces. Looking at the first map, and seeing the conflict as a republican v.s. monarch war, the allegiances thus far look relatively predictable.

It is only in Egypt, Jordan and Syria that this model is reversed. US ally Egypt and pro-Iranian Syria backed the US coalition. Jordan’s King Hussein decided to voice support for Saddam, either because of general public opinion or because of his refusal to ally with the Saudis against another Arab country, and its US relationship suffered as a result. Meanwhile, Algeria, which was in the process of violent democratic reforms, saw its political elite divided on the subject and never took any official position, while Tunisia, a monarchy republic of the Mediterranean, wanted to stay out of the conflict. (Lebanon barely had a foreign policy at the time and trying to escape its violent civil strife and ipso-facto control by Syria was just coming to an end at this time.)

These fault lines were completely different during the Iran-Iraq War, when two republics were warring with each other. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE (through Abu Dhabi), and most Arab countries backed Iraq, and it was only Syria, Libya, and Sheikh Maktoum of Dubai that backed Iran. But that was when a secular Sunni Arab state was fighting a Shitte Islamist revolutionary republic. Then, the fault lines were different.

Yemen is probably the most misunderstood international story in the Western mass media since… well, Uganda in September 2009. As was the case during the Uganda uprising, I believe the problem originates in the ignorance of regionalism in Yemen, or as Professor Harm J. De Blij has written time and time again: geography matters.

There are two major yet unrelated conflicts taking place in Yemen—the Sunni and Al Qaeda-linked separatist threat in the central south of the country (a major concern of the United States) and a Shia uprising in the north (alarming to the Yemenis and Saudis, possibly supported by Iran, but of little relevance to the rest of the world). And carefully distinguishing between the two is critical to keep the US out of a real quagmire.

Let’s start from the beginning. A century ago, Yemen was divided into two spheres of influence, with the Ottomans controlling the Red Sea coastal area (North Yemen), while the Aden coast was a protectorate of the British (South Yemen). After World War I, a Shia spiritual leader established himself as King in North Yemen and titled his country the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. Although he initially fought with the growing Saudi state, the Saudis backed the king during the 1960s civil war, whereas the Soviets and Egyptians backed a republican insurgency, which came to an end in 1970. Meanwhile, the former British Protectorate became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1967, also enjoying backing from the Soviets. Perhaps due to the dual Red sympathies, perhaps due to Arab nationalism, the two states agreed to unify in the early 1970s, and ultimately merged in 1990. (A group in South Yemen declared and fought for independence during several months in 1994.)

The Cold War conflicts are essentially unrelated to today’s violence. Back then, the differences were primarily political. Today, the roots of the conflict are religious and tribal. The northern uprising in the mountains along the Saudi border is a Shia rebellion based on anger and frustration with the persecution and neglect of the mountainous region by the (Sunni) government. The Yemeni and Saudi governments are fighting this rebellion, and the Saudis have blockaded the coast, on the pretext of stopping Iranian arms from reaching the rebels. The violence has caused widespread displacement of people in the areas, as the Shia rebels and government troops treat civilian casualties as a secondary concern.

The border with Saudi Arabia and Yemen was definitively demarcated in 2000.

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Farhat Taj has a very interesting article in the Daily Times (Pakistan) that vigorously justifies drone attacks. Taj’s credentials are curious—she is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research at the University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy—yet it is with that background that she writes from first hand experience praising US drone attacks and saying that Waziristan locals agree with her. For what the article lacks in sophistication and structure it makes up for with its unique perspective.

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

I would challenge both the US and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’ because of drone attacks on Waziristan, i.e. names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations of the strikes and, above all, the methodology of the information that they collected. If they can’t meet the challenge, I would request them to stop throwing around fabricated figures of ‘civilian casualties’ that confuse people around the world and provide propaganda material to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the politics and media of Pakistan.

I pose that challenge because no one is in a position to give a correct estimate of how many individuals have been killed so far in drone attacks. On the basis of American media estimates, 600 to 700 ‘civilian population’ have been killed. The Pakistani government, pro-Taliban political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Tehrik-e-Insaf, and the media are quoting the same figure. Neither the government of Pakistan nor the media have any access to the area and no system is in place to arrive at precise estimates. The Pakistani government and media take the figure appearing in the American media as an admission by the American government. The US media too do not have access to the area. Moreover, the area is simply not accessible for any kind of independent journalistic or scholarly work on drone attacks. The Taliban simply kill anyone doing so.

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. People usually appreciate drone attacks when they compare it with the Pakistan Army’s attacks, which always result in collateral damage. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. Thousands of houses have been destroyed and hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by the Pakistan Army. On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit… I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing.

According to a French negotiator, the usual “progress” (that occurs in all peace talks before they fail) is occurring in current talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabagh. Yet, far more interesting than the lack of actual information from that report and than the talks which are very likely to fail, are the statements coming from the Azerbaijani President.

But in remarks broadcast on Azeri TV on Saturday, Mr Aliyev said that if the Munich talks failed to reach agreement he would be “left with no other option”. “We have the full right to liberate our land by military means,” he said.

Granted, this statement is nothing new. Baku has been crying wolf for years after being thoroughly beaten and embarassed by the (Russian backed) Armenian forces in the 90s. Yet, Azerbaijan seems to be indicating that it sees the current Munich talks as the last ones. On the one hand, this could merely be a tactic to put pressure on Armenia and others to reach a settlement. On the other hand, Baku may be issuing a genuine warning. Given it’s long insistence on the right to use force, its constantly growing military budget, and its clout as a major energy producer, the idea that Baku may have finally had enough of talks and waiting approximately 15 years to get its territory back (from its perspective), is hardly far fetched.

Additionally, it’s not as if hostilities have ceased. Mine fields still abound (as this author saw while carefully walking around NK) and each side still fires on the other almost daily. Since the international community failed to insert peacekeepers or at least monitors along the cease fire line, it would take very little for full scale fighting to resume. Were that to happen, Baku may count on the world’s dire energy situation and the West’s current focus on non-Russian energy routes to come down on Baku’s side. Given Armenia’s pro-Russian foreign policy and its allowing Russian troops to be stationed on its soil, it would likely find few friends, save Moscow. Lord knows Moscow would surely like to intervene elsewhere in the Caucasus.

While it would be easy to continue with conjecture, it would be wise to follow the current Munich talks closely as well as signs coming from Baku, Yerevan and Moscow. Like so many other rounds in the past this may be nothing again, but when something does happen, it is bound to be big.

Throughout the years here at Coming Anarchy, we have not forgotten.

2008: 90th Anniversary: Lest we forget

2007: Remember

2006: 1 minute silence at 11:11 on 11/11 and Armistice Day

2005: Lest we forget

2004: Belated Remembrance Day

For the past couple of weeks I have had some extra time and have been missing my days at graduate school. I decided to pretend like I was a student again, flex the muscle between my ears, and catch up on some history. This has resulted in a World War kick.

I have been listening to two lecture series from The Teaching Company: World War I: The “Great War” and World War II: A Military and Social History. Both are great overviews with very engaging lecturers. When I can get a quiet moment to sit and read I have been going through B. H. Liddell Hart’s Strategy to get his commentary on the wars. Next on the reading list is John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, which has long been in my anti-library. Interspersed between the listening and the reading I have been taking in war movies to “relax”. I rewatched All Quiet On The Western Front for WWI. As a Canadian, I really want to see Passchendaele but I have no access to it here in Japan. For WWII I rented Valkyrie which is probably the only WWII movie made in the last 30 years that I haven’t seen. During the daytime I have been watching the amazing 1973 British television series The World at War. With simultaneous audio, text and video I am getting fully immersed in the topic.

Many of our commenters are more steeped in the World Wars than I. As an undergraduate a decade ago I only took one western military history course. Like everyone I am familiar with all the major battles and personalities, and have seen all the movies and tv shows. But listening to courses like these puts everything in perspective. Combine that bird’s eye view with a book like Strategy which focus on specific events in the wars, and your mind is challenged. Unfortunately, there is so much going on in my mind that I have nothing solid to blog about! I will, however, have some notes from Strategy to post in a week or so, which may spark some conversation.

Just prior to this World War kick I was on a navy kick (after rewatching Master and Commander and listening to the Modern Scholar series High Seas, High Stakes: Naval Battles That Changed History. I hope to return to that topic soon as I have a long post on the evolution of naval strategy that has been in draft mode for about two weeks.

Anyways, back to the front!

Amazing caricature map of 1914 Europe by artist Keith Thompson for the steampunkesque WWI graphic novel Leviathan. The commentary actually gives some insight regarding the outlooks of the Great Powers at the time of the real First World War.

So Craig Mullaney quotes Cormac McCarthy in his highly regarded memoir The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education. Very fitting for a story of a young idealist that discovers the price of leadership in a tragic firefight in Afghanistan.

First things first: The Unforgiving Minute is a memoir. It is the coming-of-age-story of the authour. You will not get any insight into US policy in Afghanistan, nor military strategy. In fact, what military theory that is presented in the book, is unsophisticated. The book is written for a civilian audience, with detailed explanations of US military tradition and ceremony. It is for the “average American” who has limited knowledge of the military or what goes on beyond US borders. On the other hand, the book is confessional, acute with the guilt of Mullaney’s Catholic upbringing. It is an explanation and a call for forgiveness to the parents of a soldier that died under Mullaney’s command. Mullaney’s introspectiveness makes this book so endearing. The writing is good with flashes of true excellence. Mullaney is well read, and it shows in his writing.

The book is split into three parts: life at West Point as a cadet; life at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; and life at the front in Afghanistan as a platoon commander. The final chapters are a sort of epilogue that tell of Mullaney’s return home to the US, his marriage, and his ambivalence towards his younger brother’s future. At the very end of the book, Mullaney attends his younger brother’s graduation ceremony at West Point — exactly where Mullaney was seven years previous, except this time with Iraq looming ahead.

I enjoyed the book more the further I read. The West Point section is not as entertaining as Bonk on the Head, the infamous “fictional” memoir of life at the Royal Military College of Canada. Furthermore it suffers from the forced modesty of those that attend milcol, those that are told day-in and day-out that they are the best. At Oxford Mullaney begins to unwind and becomes much more introspective. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the book, which made me nostalgic for my own days at the pub debating with academics. Like the rest of the book, Mullaney’s account of Afghanistan is told with deep emotion. The frustration he feels is palpable: frustration with Pakistani soldiers who implicitly support the Afghan resistance; and frustration with Big Army, which sits idle in concrete bases enjoying lobster and flatscreen televisions. Mullaney offers his thoughts succinctly (pp 362):

The best thing we could have done for Afghanistan was to get out of our Humvees and drink more green chai. We should have focused less on finding the enemy, and more on finding our friends.

The editorial reviews of this book are a roll call of foreign and military affairs experts. Wesley Clark’s comment that “[e]very young man and woman in America should read this book” may be prophetic. The book is accessible and lauded enough that we may see it read by every highschooler in the the US. That is, if Americans were truly interested in what goes on in war, a rhetorical question asked throughout the book itself. Obviously, the kind of people who read ComingAnarchy.com are interested in these topics, and thus will enjoy this book I think.

Below the fold I have embedded a speech at a bookstore in Washington, DC. You can watch the clip or download the MP3. Mullaney draws upon excerpts of the book and also offers some insight into why he wrote the book. It is worth a listen, even if you don’t plan on reading the book.

Also, see the book trailer, Mullaney appearance on The Daily Show, and other information about Mullaney and the book at craigmmullaney.com.
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I’m pretty disappointed with the quality of the media reports concerning the riots in Uganda. Articles from America’s most reputable news sources confuse facts, give insufficient background, and muddle the narrative—and that’s the case in numerous accounts in mainstream outlets. No story explains why “one of the kings” is behind the riots, and why there are multiple kings.

Regular ComingAnarchy readers shouldn’t be so confused—I explained the five constituent kingdoms of Uganda earlier this year, and you’ll forgive me if I say that post is probably the best concise explanation on the internet of these restored cultural institutions. In a nutshell, landlocked Uganda remained independent from European colonialism longer than most other parts of Africa, and several of its kingdoms survived through colonialism, only to be abolished upon national independence. Uganda restored the five kingdoms in 1993, but only as cultural entities and the kings are not allowed to participate in politics, which practically means they cannot tax and they must raise money through their own business.

The problem gets down to this—the borders of these kingdoms were never finalized, and basically reflect the kingdoms as their borders were at independence. Buganda is the largest kingdom due to its cooperation with the British authorities, who granted the Buganda large land concessions, whereas historically Bunyoro was the largest kingdom, and from which most modern kingdoms received independence.

Bugerere County is one of many places that is part of Buganda but wants to seced. Situated on the map above within Buganda territory south of the lake in the north, it is looking to join the neighboring Buyoro kingdom, and in the wake of its effective secession, the king of Buganda planned to visit there. The government blocked his visit and violent riots erupted in protest.

Bunyoro was the largest kingdom in Uganda from the 16th to 19th centuries, and most other kingdoms won independence from Bunyoro at some time in history. But Bunyoro is also the site of the recent oil discoveries in Uganda, and stands to profit enormously from the extraction—which is even more important for Uganda’s kings since they must finance their own cultural regimes. Bunyoro is respected among the citizenry and perceived by Buganda to receive favoritism from the government (the powerful President Yoweri Museveni has held the position for two decades and is himself a member of the Ankole kingdom).

That is the origin of the crisis, distilled down to a few paragraphs. Uganda has long seemed a peaceful nation when compared to the violence in neighboring Rwanda, DRC, Somalia, and Kenya—but the disputes between and inside the kingdoms of Uganda. Said one member of parliament representing a district inside Bunyoro: “Who says Bunyoro has ever been stable? This situation has been hibernating and now that it is out in the open, it is potentially explosive unless resolved. Of course, oil production will be affected.”

Colin S. Gray’s Parameters article from earlier this year — The 21st Century Security Environment and the Future of War — is not about the security environment of the next one hundred years, but about how to think about conflict in the next hundred years. Gray cautions would-be future wars analysts that they “cannot predict the future, so do not try”. Nevertheless, he offers some advice to those that would try anyways. I found Dictum 2 (pp. 18) to be particularly noteworthy:

To advance understanding of war and strategy we need to theorize on the basis of history, without being unduly diverted by the singularity of events. Social scientists are skilled, sometimes overskilled, theorists, while historians most typically are not. But a little theory goes a long way.

Theory is the root of the religious wars between historians and social scientists. While writing my master’s thesis on strategic culture and potential military conflict between China and Japan I felt like one of the Light Brigade with “Historian to right of me, Political Scientist to left of me” (and Supervisor behind me), cannons a-blazing. Though Gray’s comment cannot resist making a dig at social scientists, it is directed at historians, which in my experience are far more allergic to scientific rigour than social scientists are to historical contextualism.

Gray offers his own framework for a “general theory of war” (pp. 18):

• What is war? (nature)


• Why does war occur? What is it about? (causes, origins, and triggers)


• Does war lead to peace? Does peace lead to war? (consequences)


• What is war like? (nature and experience)


• How is war fought? (character)


• Why is war won or lost? (methods and means)

This is by no means the sterile, “objective” and quantifiable framework of a social scientist, but I found it an interesting way to dissect the study of war into different themes (nature; causes, origins, and triggers; consequences; nature and experience; character; and methods and means). This is a challenging set of questions, and I cannot resist wondering if it is truly exhaustive. It is worth pondering, as Gray’s short article is worth reading — despite its cold warrior bias and constant references to Thucydides (fairly weak criticisms of the article, I admit). Many of the bloggers in this corner of the blogosphere think about future war on a daily basis. Do you have any specific methodologies or advice you would like to share with the rest of us?

Final note: I was originally was alerted to this article by zenpundit. Yes, it did take me six months to actually get around to read it.