A Year of War Between the Wars?

Continued Turmoil Throughout a Troubled Year

By MICHAEL C. DUNN

Dr. Michael Collins Dunn is editor of The Middle East Journal, a scholarly quarterly published by The Middle East Institute, and editor and publisher of The Estimate, a biweekly newsletter of political and security intelligence on the region.

The United States continued to fight its war on terrorism during 2002, but there was a sense that it was a year of quasi-war between "real" wars, with the war in Afghanistan having largely been won before the end of 2001, and a prospective war with Iraq looming as the year neared its end.

Still one of the most overlooked aspects of the war in Afghanistan, except in naval circles, was the projection of U.S. power from the sea into a landlocked country of Central Asia. Naval and Marine aviation operated from the Indian Ocean and other areas while U.S. special operations forces were deployed from a carrier dedicated as a special operations platform, also offshore. The century-old debate between the disciples of naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan and of the prophet of the geopolitical "heartland," Sir Halford Mackinder, would seem to have been resolved. Forward from the sea, indeed, into a landlocked country far from any sea.

But the war in Afghanistan was, from the beginning, a very special case, and planners are right to warn about not expecting too much of the "Afghanistan model" in any conflict with Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan were a particularly antimodern, unpopular, brittle regime with little infrastructure and little domestic support, and they fell quickly. Rooting out the last Taliban and al Qaeda fighters from the mountains and deserts of the country will, however, take a very long time, if it is practical to do it at all.

One of the more important lessons learned from the war in Afghanistan is that that country is different from almost any other likely venue for a war. It is far from clear, therefore, that the same pattern--using air power and special operations forces fighting alongside regional allies and indigenous forces--could be adequate to bring down a more entrenched and sophisticated regime. For precisely those reasons, the Afghan model probably will not be used in Iraq.

The Middle East did see the continued mopping-up in Afghanistan in 2002, and the beginnings of a political transition there. Throughout the region, though, much was still fragile and uncertain: Assassination attempts and plots against interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai were reported periodically, and Karzai was only partially successful in bringing the rival warlords of the country under his control. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued to deteriorate, with the vestiges of the peace process in tatters. The U.S. confrontation with Iraq persisted, while a debate over whether, and how, to fight a war with Iraq continued within the Bush administration as well as outside it. And one of the explicitly naval threats continued to plague the Middle East--namely, the security of the sea-lanes against terrorist attacks from small vessels (or against other threats, such as frogmen).

More Cole-Style Attacks?

A continuing concern for the United States and allied navies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) is the threat of additional small-boat attacks such as the one that seriously damaged the Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbor on 12 October 2000. Throughout 2002 there were indications that al Qaeda might be planning to replicate that attack, which remains a classic case of asymmetric warfare.

Early in the year, a senior al Qaeda official captured in the fighting in Afghanistan reportedly warned U.S. officials of a plan to bomb Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain. Security was intensified then and on several other occasions during the year. In June, several suspected al Qaeda operatives were arrested in Morocco, reportedly for planning to attack vessels of the United States and Great Britain in the Strait of Gibraltar. That plot was foiled by their arrest, but the British press reported that the Royal Navy moved two fast patrol boats from Northern Ireland to Gibraltar in response.

But on 6 October 2002, six days before the second anniversary of the Cole bombing, a French-owned supertanker, the Limburg, was damaged in an explosion that, after several days of uncertainty, was attributed to a terrorist attack--which is believed to have occurred as the Limburg was taking a pilot aboard while standing in to load oil at a port near Al-Mukalla in eastern Yemen. Al-Mukalla is the port serving the Hadramaut region, an area known to be used by al Qaeda because of its remoteness (and because Osama bin Laden's ancestral roots are there). As the pilot boat approached from the port side, crewmen reported seeing another small boat traveling at high speed toward the ship's starboard side, where the explosion occurred.

Unhelpful Reminder

The attack on a commercial vessel was a reminder that military ships are not the only potential maritime targets for terrorists, and the fact that the attack was against a French ship served to remind Europeans that they are not immune to the hostility of al Qaeda, which makes few distinctions among the Western powers. Any attack on tanker traffic near the Gulf has a tendency to make the oil markets jittery, and Yemen reportedly was losing several million dollars per month, in port revenues alone, after insurance costs for the ports of Aden and Hodeida were increased in the wake of the attack on the Limburg.

Following the attack on the Limburg, Britain's new First Sea Lord, Adm. Sir Alan West, told reporters that more such attacks "can be expected," and that Britain, for one, had begun arming its naval vessels with machine guns--which can be used more effectively than missiles, torpedoes, or naval artillery to stop attacks by small boats.

In November, the United States let it be known that it had captured 'Abd al-Rahman al-Nashiri, suspected of being al Qaeda's senior operations man in the Gulf area and the man directly responsible for the attack on the Cole in 2000. (Experience suggests, however, that the arrest of one operations chief does not significantly reduce the threat level elsewhere.)

Elsewhere in the region, and in a somewhat different context, Palestinian suicide bombers detonated an explosive in a fishing boat after being intercepted by an Israeli patrol boat on 22 November. The two Palestinians died, and four Israeli sailors were wounded. The Palestinians, apparently from Gaza, were intercepted shortly after entering Israeli waters.

It was not clear, however, that they were attempting to attack an Israeli warship or (perhaps likelier) simply to land somewhere along the Israeli coast. In response, Israel--already carrying out operations aimed at Gaza and other areas under the Palestinian Authority--closed the waters off Gaza to all Palestinian fishermen.

Pinpricks and Chokepoints

Clearly, these sorts of attacks--both on commercial shipping and on naval vessels--are pinprick-style efforts that pose only a limited threat to the major Western navies. But the use of suicide bombers against naval vessels could prove problematical during large-scale military operations such as a prolonged campaign in Iraq. The Middle East has always been a classic region of naval chokepoints: the Turkish Straits, the Suez Canal, the Straits of Tiran, Bab al-Mandeb, and Hormuz.

These narrow waters, vital to the world's petroleum traffic, also are essential to the logistical support of any military operations in the Persian Gulf region. The U.S. and allied Navies are far superior to any regional naval forces likely to be deployed against them. But defense against suicide bombings from small craft--which provide an asymmetric threat against which it is hard to defend--is a much more difficult problem.

To take one example: Although a number of Middle Eastern states deploy submarines, most cannot be considered a serious threat to U.S. operations. The submarine forces of Turkey, Israel, and Egypt are friendly; Pakistan's are mainly deployed to counter the Indian Navy. Iran possesses three Russian-built Kilo-class diesel submarines, but the Persian Gulf is a shallow sea and not good submarine country, and they probably would not be wasted challenging the United States. So, despite the presence of some small submarine forces in the region, submarines are unlikely to challenge U.S. access to the Gulf. But the sort of small-craft attack used against the Cole and apparently the Limburg could prove much harder to defend against than a submarine threat, which the West has long understood how to counter.

Similarly, Iraq has few naval assets to speak of. It has only the narrowest of seacoasts, in the Faw area, sandwiched between Iranian and Kuwaiti territory at the mouth of the Shatt al-'Arab, the river that carries the waters of both the Tigris and Euphrates into the Persian Gulf. Most Iraqi naval units either were destroyed in 1991 or caught abroad and impounded. No conventional Iraqi naval forces are going to challenge the U.S. Navy if the countries go to war.

But either Iraq or its sympathizers and well-wishers abroad will certainly recognize the vulnerability demonstrated by the attacks on the Cole and the Limburg. The latter may in fact be the more cogent comparison, since far more civilian tankers than American warships ply the waters of the Gulf, and they carry few if any weapons for defense. It would take only a few attacks on tankers to undermine the security of the world's oil supplies, distort the global price of oil, and undercut the economies of countries in the region friendly to the United States. A few small-craft attacks like those on the Cole and the Limburg could very easily destabilize the oil markets, therefore--and the economies of all the nations in the Free World. This may be a vulnerability that an adversary such as Iraq might seek to exploit.

A Year of Little Progress

In December 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sought--in a speech pledging U.S. support to a Palestinian state if the Palestinian Authority reformed itself and worked harder to prevent suicide attacks on Israel--to restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. For most of 2002 the United States was at least nominally promoting such a plan, but no real progress was made. Israel continued to pressure Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, and to retaliate for suicide bombings in Israel and attacks on Israeli settlements in occupied territory. Arafat promised new elections for January 2003, but conditioned them on Israel withdrawing from areas it had reoccupied.

By December 2002, however, Israel was expanding its reoccupations, and whether Palestinian elections would be held at all was unclear. Moreover, even if the elections are held, it seems almost a certainty that Arafat would easily win the presidency. In addition, efforts supported not only by the United States but also, and more quietly, by several key Arab countries--e.g., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt--to create the office of prime minister and make Arafat a figurehead have not yet borne fruit.

Israel's increasing assertiveness late in 2002 was due as well to the withdrawal from the National Union Government of the Israeli Labor Party. The Labor Party had joined Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government and two strong party leaders, Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, held the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry, respectively. As the intifada worsened, pressure built from the left wing of the party to pull out of Sharon's coalition. When Ben-Eliezer, facing a challenge to his leadership of the party, did so, it left Sharon's Likud and a number of right-wing and religious parties narrowly controlling the government. Sharon called for new elections on 28 January, then fought off a challenge from former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the Likud leadership.

Sharon won. But Netanyahu meanwhile had replaced Peres as foreign minister and hardline former Israel Defense Forces commander Shaul Mofaz, who retired from active duty in 2002, had taken over from Ben-Eliezer as defense minister, despite a tradition that a retired general waits a few years before becoming the "civilian" minister of defense.

Meanwhile, after departing the coalition, Ben-Eliezer lost his leadership race to Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna, a former general running on a dovish platform promising negotiations with the Palestinians and a withdrawal from the settlements. Although Mitzna, who is seen by many as a welcome change from the same old familiar Labor leaders who have long dominated the party, won considerable popularity, polls taken in early December suggested that, unless circumstances change dramatically, Sharon would easily win on 28 January.

Or, more precisely, Likud would win. After changing the electoral law to allow the direct election of the prime minister in recent years, the country has changed the law back, and now will vote only for parties. In true parliamentary faction, the leader of the largest party will then try to form a government. Ironically, Labor was the largest party in the outgoing Parliament, but Sharon had won the prime ministership by direct election in 2001.

Several Other Elections

The upcoming Israeli elections are but one of several helping to change the face of a region where, as conventional wisdom usually has it, there are no democracies. In Pakistan, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf sought to reestablish parliamentary life, but with some restrictions, and in a sense created an unforeseen situation when, by barring the two most popular political figures from running (Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif), he unwittingly increased the vote for an anti-Western extremist Islamist movement that took control of the local government in the North West Frontier Province and won a strong plurality in Baluchistan; both provinces adjoin Afghanistan.

Bahrain held its first parliamentary elections in over a quarter of a century and, although there were some complaints about the creation of a new, appointed, upper house, the elections went smoothly and Bahrain joined Kuwait as a Gulf emirate with a parliament. Unlike the situation in Kuwait, women were allowed to vote in Bahrain, as they will be in Qatar, which is now writing a constitution and also preparing for parliamentary elections.

At the other end of the Arab world, Morocco also held new parliamentary elections, and there was some surprise when, although the ruling Socialist Party and the old-line conservative Istiqlal ran first and second, as expected, a formerly fringe third party with Islamist elements ran third. It will not, however, be part of the new government.

A Split in Turkey

Something quite different happened in the most resolutely secular of Middle Eastern states: Turkey. Longtime Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's health had been failing, and critics within his own Democratic Left Party bolted, leaving the government without a majority. By the time the elections finally arrived, all of the country's main centrist parties had failed to do very well, and only two parties won the 10 percent of the vote necessary under the Turkish Constitution to hold seats in Parliament: the newly-created Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the Republican People's Party (CHP).

The latter is the old party of Kemal Ataturk and, ironically, had failed to make the 10 percent mark the last time around in 1999, and thus had not been represented in Parliament. The AKP, on the other hand, is the result of a split in the old Virtue Party, an Islamist movement that was banned by the courts. The pragmatic wing evolved into the AKP, which became the first party since the 1980s to win enough seats to govern by itself, without a coalition.

Despite the fact that each of the AKP's predecessor parties had, in turn, been banned for being against secularism, the AKP insists that it wants to work within the secular system, and the powerful Turkish Army has indicated it will not interfere--so long as the AKP does not violate the secular nature of the state.

There is a catch, though: the AKP's leader, the charismatic Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been barred from politics, when he was Mayor of Istanbul in the mid-1990s, for quoting a nationalist poem that the Army felt criticized the military. As a result, although the AKP made a surprisingly strong showing, the party's leader is barred from office. A deputy, Abdullah Gul, therefore took over as prime minister. Meanwhile, Erdogan himself made a tour of Europe to reassure Europeans about the AKP, and likely will become prime minister once the Constitution can be amended to allow him to serve.

Some analysts looked at the elections in Pakistan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Turkey and professed to see an Islamist wave. But the differences in the four elections are profound. Only in Pakistan is the Islamist party particularly anti-Western. In Turkey, the AKP is in fact a strong advocate of that country joining the European Union. The long history of extreme secular laws in Turkey--for example, barring women from voluntarily wearing a headscarf in any government building, including university classrooms--needs to be kept in mind in understanding the backlash in Turkey. The AKP insists that it is an Islamic Party only in the sense that the Christian Democratic Parties of Europe are Christian: drawing on ethical and cultural norms rather than seeking to impose Islamic law. It will apparently be given a chance to prove its case.

The Continuing War ...

Meanwhile, the war on terrorism has continued apace, with U.S. forces operating not only in the Middle East and Afghan-istan but also in Central Asia, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, and perhaps elsewhere.

Most counterterrorism activities receive little publicity unless a senior al Qaeda figure is captured or there is a terrorist attack or major firefight. However, U.S. Navy and Marine deployments in the Gulf region and the Mediterranean have recently been stepped up, both as part of the antiterror war and as part of the buildup for a potential war with Iraq; a U.S. Navy and Marine presence, along with other special operations forces, has been quietly assembled in Djibouti on the Red Sea, close to potential operating zones in Somalia or Yemen. The apparent genuineness of a tape that would seem to prove that Osama bin Laden is still alive, the attack on an Israeli-owned hotel, and a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya, on 28 November were further reminders that the war on terrorism goes on. If, as seems likely, the Mombasa attacks were linked to al Qaeda, it would be the first attack by that group on Israeli targets.

Many of those who question the wisdom of going to war with Iraq, including a number of former military people who have served in the region, point to the fact that al Qaeda is still in the field as an indication that the United States should not begin "another war"--not, at least, until the bin Laden network is eliminated. Those who support a move against Iraq, though, see it as a seamless continuation of the same global war on terrorism and the rogue states that have supported terrorists.

... And the Next War

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander, U.S. Central Command, has had to preside over the continuing efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and pursue remnants of the al Qaeda and Taliban forces, while also overseeing a major new logistics buildup and the preparation of war plans for a possible attack on Iraq.

It is no secret that there have been divided counsels in the Bush administration over a possible war with Iraq, and that there is something less than unanimity in the uniformed services as well. The fact that advocates of an "Iraq next" scenario initially argued for a virtually unilateral operation that would bypass the United Nations helped sharpen opposition as well. In the end, President Bush chose to seek adoption of a new Security Council resolution, thus potentially permitting many countries that otherwise might find it awkward to support a U.S. attack to accept it.

The United States has said that its goal is the disarmament of Iraq rather than regime change, but there seem to be few who expect a genuine Iraqi change of heart. Any renewed evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might allow supporters of a war to argue, not in favor of preemption, but simply for a resumption of the previous hostilities--if, indeed, it can be shown that Iraq has violated the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire that ended U.S.-Iraqi hostilities at the time. As of year's end, however, the final decision on a new, or renewed, war with Iraq was still in the future. *