The situation in Somalia, where the Islamic Courts Union has overtaken the majority of the country, is set to worsen with the introduction of Ethopian troops. The troops have made Baidoa, the only town still controlled by the transitional government, their base of operations:

The standoff is between the transitional federal government, which has U.N. recognition but little authority on the ground, and the Council of Islamic Courts, which controls most of southern Somalia.

Residents as far away as Bur Hakaba _ 40 miles east of Baidoa _ were evacuating.

“We are seeing strong military movements from both sides,” said Mohamud Ahmed, a father of six. “We don’t believe we will be able to continue living in our town peacefully.”

Ethiopia fears millitant Islam surrounding it, threatening its traditionally Christian culture and government. With an unstable Sudan to the west — a country that glady housed Osama bin Laden in the 1990s — and now Islamic Courts Union-ruled Somalia to the east, Ethiopia is certainly in a precarious position. The question is how much support will Ethiopia receive in its operations against the Courts Union in Somalia; will the US provide military aid?

As scrutiny on extremist elements increases in the Middle East, there is a greater chance that they will view Africa as the central and southern Asia of the 21st century; a relative backwater where extremist elements can operate with little scrutiny. The United States and its allies cannot sit idly by and watch such an outcome occur. Bin Laden chose Sudan and then Afghanistan since it was clear no one paid attention to either Africa or Central Asia. Perhaps attention should be paid this time.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei today claimed in a meeting with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in Tehran that Iran is ready and willing to share its nuclear technology. Via the NY Times:

“Iran’s nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists,” said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.

Mr. Khamenei’s comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.

If the West wasn’t in all out crisis mode over Iran’s nuclear development before, it should be now. If Iran openly exports its technology, especially to a place like Sudan, it would make it much easier for terrorist elements to attain nuclear material. It’s not so much that Bashir would actively hand nuclear secrets over to al-Qaeda or one of its subsidiaries, but I wouldn’t trust anything nuclear in an extremely volatile country where ultra-Islamist Hasan al-Turabi and his supporters walk around openly. The last thing the world needs is a North African country actively enriching its own uranium as terrorist organizations increasingly shift their central operations from the Mesopotamian hot zone to the relative backwater of Africa.

What I find rather difficult to figure out is why Khamenei is openly announcing this by way of the Islamic Republic’s state-run media. Is it a bluff designed to reiterate Tehran’s independence from the West, or something else? If anything, it’s reckless. Saudi Arabia has to be looking at its supposedly dormant nuclear program currently and moving toward a hard decision. After all, with Iranian influence spreading deep into southern Iraq, how long can the Saudis remain oblivious to Iran’s nuclear posturing? An unstable regime in the very center of the world’s most unstable region locked in a nuclear showdown is the true nightmare scenario.

I have to disagree with Asia Times writer Syed Saleem Shahzad’s conclusion that Iran is a logical ally of al-Qaeda, prepped to serve as a central base for Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Take the following passage, featuring commentary by a Pakistan-based Muslim scholar, with a rather hefty grain of salt:

[A]lthough the Afghan resistance is linked with the Iraqi resistance and they have started open battles against US-led forces in Afghanistan, the question of a unified command that would control resistance movements whether they be in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan is still unanswered.

This is where Iran could now fit in, by evolving from an inspirational anti-US model to taking a lead role in orchestrating resistance movements, in collaboration with al-Qaeda.

For radical Islamists, the situation is a major turnaround for their cause of pan-Islamicism and one that could even resolve 1,400 years of historical, ideological and political differences in the Muslim world.

"The Islamic Revolution of Iran [1979] was in fact a victory of all Islamic movements which were striving to establish one Islamic role model in the world so that it would be an inspirational force and would convince the masses that the Islamic system of life was still workable after 1,400 years," Muslim intellectual Shahnawaz Farooqui explained to Asia Times Online.

…

"The Iranian revolution was in fact a complete revolution under the leadership of imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini. It was above any sectarian bounds. After the revolution, Khomeini announced that the base of Shi’ite-Sunni differences was historical rather than theological.

…

"Unfortunately, imam Khomeini could not convince anybody - neither his internal circles of clerics nor Al-Howza [the supreme Shi’ite religious council in Iraq] as no one among the Shi’ites was ready to give up their historical position on the question of the caliphate.

"However, the situation turned bad after the demise of Khomeini and it was felt that during the period of [ex-president Hashemi] Rafsanjani and [former president Mohammed] Khatami the Iranian revolution was somewhere lost.

"However, the victory of President Ahmadinejad has once again revived the very spirit of the Iranian revolution, and once again all Islamic movements, whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-i-Islami, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other, are joining hands with Tehran," said Shahnawaz.

"To me, President Ahmadinejad has redeemed the Iranian Islamic revolution with all its ideological legacies," Shahnawaz added.

Note the phrase I bolded: historical rather than theological. I am certain Shanawaz is easily more versed than I on Islamic issues, but the divisions between the two sects are historical and theological; the two cannot be logically separated. The history of Islam in and of itself is theological — the disagreement over who would lead the caliphate following the Prophet’s death was obviously a question of religion. Besides, there are also political concerns. Shanawaz (and Shahzad by association) seem to be foregetting that Iran actively attempted to topple the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan due to its ideology, religious and political, and for the instability it fomented on Iran’s border by simply existing. Certainly Iran was not serving as the happy-rainbows-and-sunshine pan-Islamic regime then.

If anything, the expansion of al-Qaeda-linked control in the mountainous regions of the Pakistan/Afghanistan frontier is not being greeted warmly by those in Tehran, and is, in fact, creating concern for the same reasons Taliban-led Afghanistan did. The US and NATO presence in Afghanistan is, in actuality, acting as a buffer that protects Iran’s interests nearly as much as it protects the West’s.

Iran’s preference for the wilayat-al-fiqh system of government (or, rule by Islamic jurists), clashes with Sunni ideas of rule by the umma, or the Muslim community. That combined with the historical/theological disagreements held between the sects over a millennium maintains an environment where little revolutionary cooperation between Iran and extremist Sunnis can exist. Certainly Iran will work with extremist Sunni elements to push its agenda (as it has in the past), but to suggest it would actively support the rising of Taliban-esque governments in southern Asia and throughout the Middle East borders on ludicrous. The rise of radicalized Sunni regimes in the region would not only undermine Iran’s desire to push its own style of revolution, but incite its ethnic minorities, includig Arab Muslims living primarily in its border regions, toward their own sort of localized revolutions. In short, such cooperation could very well create instability within Iran itself.

Also, the article suggests Iran needs al-Qaeda to seriously undermine Western efforts in the case of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, Tehran’s own terrorist networks — including Hizbollah, but more importantly the IRGC, Quds Force, and Basij militia (basically an army of potential suicidal "martyrs") — are more than adequate to cause chaos throughout the region and the world. Why would Tehran want to be beholden to outside groups for its security and quick strike capability, regardless of who it is?

Brookings’ Flynt Leverett, in an article that opens by comparing the Syrian regime to the Godfather, takes a similar line as myself on Bashar al-Assad’s most attractive option in the wake of the UN demand for full investigative cooperation:

But [Asef] Shawkat and Maher [al-Assad] may have ambitions of their own. Shawkat’s wife, Bashar’s older sister Bushra, is by all accounts the most politically astute and ambitious of the Assad children, but because of her sex, she must pursue politics through her husband. Shawkat himself is no shrinking violet; he eloped with Bushra over her family’s objections when Hafez Assad was at the height of his powers. Bashar’s younger brother Maher has been described by an astute Western diplomat who knows him as a brutal and primitive man, possessing “all of Basil’s appetites but none of his qualities.” Maybe, just maybe, Bashar will treat the U.N. investigation as a chance to get rid of one or both of his most potent long-term rivals, and be the only man left standing at the end of the day.

Leverett suggests that Assad may not have directly ordered the assassination, which is not exactly outlandish. His disdain for Hariri was not exactly secret, and it’s highly doubtful he shed crocodile tears at the news of the assassination. However, there is simply too little information available — at least in the public sphere — to adequately put events together and ascertain where, exactly, the idea came from. Assad could have ordered the assassination or Maher, or Shawkat, could have taken the initiative for a despotic dictator that has traditionally been viewed as too weak among Damascus-based hardliners. Now dead (by suicide, supposedly) interior minister Ghzai Kana’an also plays into the story. If anything, the Mehlis report has cemented the fact that Syria is run by a regime of hotheads and countervailining personal and professional interests, led by someone comparable to the absent-minded professor with a lisp. Not exactly a non-toxic combination, but, sadly, it may be the least dangerous of all Syrian configurations currently available.

More tonight, hopefully, after the day job and class.

Hussain Haqqani’s "Jihad and Jihadism" concerning Pakistan is rather ancient in blog terms (it was published on August 3), but I still find it timely considering my semi-recent discussions of Pakistan and terrorism. Haqqani focuses primarily on Musharraf kicking foreign students out of madrassas a few weeks back, which was obviously nothing more than an attempt to deflect further criticism following the London bombings:

The Pakistani government’s decision to bar 1,400 foreigners from studying at the country’s madrasas is not the solution to terrorism. None of the terrorists involved in international attacks linked to Pakistan , even tenuously, over the last several years have been regular foreign madrasa students. Pakistan ’s real problem is the training camps established by Jihad ist groups in the country, which were tolerated by the Pakistani state for strategic reasons. Some of these camps operated under the cover of madrasas. By focusing on madrasas, and then only on foreigners within the madrasas, Pakistani officials are again missing the opportunity to move forward with a complete roll back of Jihad ism.

 

Blaming foreigners has become a convenient excuse in Pakistan , and elsewhere in the Muslim world, to avoid condemning the extremist Jihadists’ ideology of hatred. It is not necessary for everyone in Europe or the Muslim world to agree with all aspects of US or British policy to acknowledge that many Muslims have been so consumed by hatred of the West that they have lost their moral compass. Terrorism is reprehensible. Extremist ideologies that feed, justify or condone terrorism deserve unequivocal condemnation. Instead, non-steps such as expulsion of foreign madrasa students continue to distract Gen Musharraf’s regime.

…

For Pakistan ’s intelligentsia, too, this is a moment of truth. The perceived or real flaws of Europeans and Americans must not be used as the basis for shifting responsibility for Islamist terrorism from its ideology of hate to specific US policy decisions. The bulk of the recent victims of global terror have been Muslims, slaughtered by those claiming to speak in the name of a purer Islam. This slaughter is hardly a rational response to ‘‘occupation of Iraq , Afghanistan and Palestine ,'’ as some commentators describe terrorist attacks.

A good column, definitely recommended in full.

The Bush administration needs to start applying some sort of pressure to Musharraf over the madrassas themselves, as well as the established terrorist camps being kept around for a number of reasons, one of those being their strategic importance in a possible future conflict with India. One way I’d go about it is through utilizing the Pakistan-India-Iran natural gas pipeline project as leverage. Back in June the US threatened unilateral sanctions on Pakistan if it continued with the project, although that was meant primarily as a warning against closer Islamabad-Tehran ties. If the administration’s willing to go that far to affect Pakistani regional policy, I don’t see why it cannot link the pipeline to internal reform, as well. Of course, the US would have to consider the project as a carrot in such negotiations, or, perhaps, replace it with a push for increased bilateral economic relations, something very much desired by high level and influential Pakistanis including Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri.

As it stands currently, US sway in the region, particularly with India, is going to kill the pipeline, anyway, perhaps in lieu of a different, more US-friendly project based in Qatar (Chevron, Mobil, and Enron are all involved in Qatar’s energy industry.) It’s conceivable that one reason the US pledged civil nuclear support to India was to dismantle New Delhi’s need for the natural gas pipeline to begin with. Obviously, no one should pledge nuke cooperation with terrorist-harboring Pakistan, but alternatives are out there, ready to be utilized to modify Musharraf’s more dangerous behavior.