The killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza on 22 March has dominated this weeks news from the Middle East. This incident does indeed have an importance that extends far beyond the Israel-Palestine confrontation, though recent developments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have equally serious implications.
Israel-Palestine
Within Israel and Palestine, a new Hamas leadership centred on Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Khaled Meshal seems almost certain to respond with force to Yassins killing. Even if this is not immediate, the assassination will have a more general impact on radical Islamic groups across the Middle East and beyond. Their militancy will be fuelled by the evident policy of the Sharon government to continue and even expand its assassination programme.
The condemnation of the killing of Sheikh Yassin has been surprisingly widespread, including an atypically firm statement from the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw. The real significance of the aftermath, however, is the lack of even minimal criticism from Washington reinforcing the view held throughout much of the Middle East that the Sharon government is merely an adjunct of the Bush administration in an anti-Islamic crusade.
Such a perception is heightened by the use of a US-made helicopter to carry out the attack. For most people in the United States, Sheikh Yassin was killed by an Israeli Defence Forces helicopter, but to Islamic radicals and their supporters he was killed by a US helicopter piloted by an Israeli.
While Sheikh Yassins death increases tensions across the region, it comes at a time of turmoil elsewhere: continuing violence and insecurity in Iraq, an assassination and its violent aftermath in Afghanistan, and most tellingly major problems for the Pakistan army in the developing war on the Afghan/Pakistan border (see the columns of 11 March and 18 March 2004 in this series).
Iraq
In Iraq, attacks on Iraqi security forces have escalated as the authorities attempt to seal recent political reforms by the end of March, whereas attacks on United States forces have declined. Meanwhile, assaults on civilians working for the Coalition Provisional Authority have also increased.
The four-day period from 21-24 March, for example, has seen numerous violent incidents, many of them unreported in western countries outside of the specialist media.
In Baghdad on Sunday 21 March, a US soldier from the 1st Armoured Division and an Iraqi interpreter were killed in a bomb attack, and three American soldiers injured. The same day, insurgents fired three rockets at the coalition headquarters in Baghdad; one wounded an American soldier, the other two killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded five. In a further attack, a car bomb near a US base at Balad, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded twenty-five.
On Monday 22 March in Basra, fourteen British troops and six civilians were injured when a crowd threw rocks and petrol bombs and the soldiers responded with baton rounds. During the disturbance, some demonstrators chanted condemnation of Israels killing of Sheikh Yassin.
On Tuesday 23 March, eleven Iraqi police officers and trainees were killed in two separate attacks. South of Baghdad, four police officers and five trainees were killed in a gun attack and two police officers were killed in a separate attack in Kirkuk; in Mosul, two Iraqi civilians were killed in a mortar attack on a new Iraqi army base; and elsewhere in Mosul, a security guard with the US-sponsored Facility Protection Service was shot and seriously wounded.
On Wednesday 24 March, a rocket attack on the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel caused no reported injuries, but it came as part of a sequence of attacks on this site and the neighbouring Palestine Hotel, both located in a heavily-protected compound in the centre of Baghdad. The same day, two US troops were wounded in a roadside bomb attack near Fallujah and two Iraqi civilians were killed by crossfire in the subsequent response.
Afghanistan
Meanwhile, a similar pattern is evident in Afghanistan, where resurgent Taliban elements and other militia have continued their actions, especially against aid workers. (British Agencies Afghanistan Group Monthly Review for February). In mid-February, four local staff of the OMAR de-mining group were shot dead; five Afghans working for the Sanayee Development Foundation were killed; and an Australian helicopter pilot was killed and two other expatriates were seriously injured near Kandahar.
The Hamid Karzai administration has responded by trying to expand the activities of the Afghan police and army, including the long-term deployment of 300 additional police to Kandahar. But the killing of the aviation minister, Mirwais Sadiq, in Heart on 21 March indicated the continuing instability in the country. Sadiq was the son of the powerful warlord and governor of Heart, Ismail Khan. His death was followed by intense violence involving forces loyal to Khan and others supporting a local military commander, Zaher Naib Zada, with up to 100 people killed.
Sadiq was the third member of Karzais cabinet to be killed since the administration was formed. The event illustrates the twin problems facing the president: internal dissension and a potential Taliban resurgence. The latter is the primary concern of the United States, and it forms the basis for the so-called hammer and anvil operation involving American, French and other forces on the Afghan side of the border as well as a substantial Pakistan army operation in western Pakistan.
Pakistan
The development of the conflict in the border areas of Pakistan is particularly difficult to analyse at present, because of an almost complete exclusion of journalists from the region. However, early indications are that Pakistans army has found the operations far more difficult than expected even with substantial aid from US intelligence, reconnaissance and special forces elements.
Some ten days ago, bullish reports from Islamabad talked of 400 militants surrounded in a cluster of fortified villages around Wana in South Waziristan, with the strong likelihood that they included Osama bin Ladens close associate and key strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Although the situation is now very fluid, the picture that is emerging is very different. Whereas Pakistani military leaders were expecting considerable resistance from Taliban, al-Qaida and other militia, the surprise has been the opposition from the inhabitants of the area.
In the light of several recent incidents involving civilians being killed by Pakistani troops, this should not come as a total shock. On 28 February, eleven people were killed at a road-block some may have been armed, but in any case the killing was strongly condemned by politicians in North-West Frontier Province.
More recently and since the fighting intensified in mid-March, casualties on both sides have risen markedly. On 16 March, sixteen Pakistani soldiers were killed in a failed attack on a fortified compound; by the end of last week, Pakistani forces were endeavouring to negotiate the release of twelve paramilitary soldiers and two local government officials who had been taken hostage.
On 20 March, thirteen people (including women and children) died when a Pakistani helicopter gunship fired on two vehicles. This and other incidents have been partly responsible for the high levels of opposition facing the force of up to 7,500 Pakistani troops concentrated in the Wana area.
The Pakistan military has been particularly surprised by the manner in which the opposition forces, whether local or foreign, have been able to take the offensive. Examples include a rocket attack on government facilities in Peshawar, far from the fighting, together with an intensification of counter-attacks closer to the South Waziristan district.
On 22 March, a reinforcement convoy was attacked on its way to South Waziristan, destroying a fuel tanker and several trucks, killing eleven soldiers and injuring many more. The following day an army camp in the Kurram area adjoining North Waziristan was attacked; three soldiers were killed and four seriously wounded.
The relevant point here is that both these attacks occurred away from the immediate area of confrontation around Wana and there are indications that those responsible were local militias rather than foreign elements.
The implications of this for United States operations in the region are considerable. It is always possible that US or other special forces may kill or capture significant elements of the Taliban or al-Qaida leadership. Such is, after all, the main purpose of the hammer and anvil operation.
But for the moment there is mounting evidence that this military strategy is proving much more difficult to implement than had been expected, with the Pakistani forces especially experiencing major reversals. To put it bluntly, the hammer is beginning to look like a boomerang and the mirror decidedly cracked.
