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Why Do Suicide Bombers Attack the UN?

Last week, a UN compound in Afghanistan was attacked by suicide bombers.  This marks about the seventh time since 2003 that the United Nations has been the target of suicide terrorism. I speak to Robert Pape, a leading authority on suicide terrorism about why the UN is emerging as a target.

When newspapers are closing their foreign bureaus…

...who will report from the desolate border area between Kenya and Somalia?  For now, fortunately -- though covering what seems like half a continent -- there is The New York Times' Jeffrey Gettleman, who reports how easily Somali al-Shaba militants are slipping easily to and from the thinly marked border with Kenya.

The most interesting takeaway from the piece, for me -- more so even than the dangers of Shabab recruitment in refugee camps, of destabilization in Kenya, or of the bribery that is rife along the border -- is that the region is not going unwatched.

Ever since Al Qaeda blew up the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands, American counterterrorism officials have been watching East Africa warily. But in the areas along the Kenya-Somalia border, it seems that anti-Americanism is still spreading, despite the millions of dollars the American government has spent on a hearts-and-minds campaign.

Take an American-built well in the village of Raya. No one is using it, though Raya is desperately poor and dry.

“The Americans wanted to finish us,” said one villager, Ibrahim Alin, convinced that the American water engineers who built the well had poisoned it to sterilize him.

Bizarre.  I don't think this shows the futility of "hearts-and-minds" campaigns, but it does speak to their great difficulty, when anti-Americanism is such a cheaply easy political card for regional actors to play.

(image from flickr user doneastwest under a Creative Commons license)

Jakarta bombing

By now you have heard of the twin suicide bombing attacks at the Marriot Hotel and Ritz Carlton Hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia.  At least 8 people were killed and 50 injured. Smart money is that Jemaah Islamiya is behind the attack. I found this video depicting the chaos following the explosion. 

This is how terrorism affects innocents

Not just directly, but indirectly:

The United Nations food agency has suspended aid work in the southern Philippines after a spate of deadly bombings in the region.

The U.N. World Food Program feeds more than 300,000 families displaced by conflict in the southern Philippines. On Wednesday, the Manila office advised its staff in the region to suspend food distribution this week because of a series of deadly bombings.

That so few can prevent so many from being fed, and sabotage the peace prospects for an entire country, is a travesty.

(image from seav, under a GNU Free Documentation License)

Scooby Doo as counter-terrorism model

Esteemed foreign policy commentators like Dan Drezner, Stephen Walt, Fred Kaplan, and Michael Tomasky have already plied their film knowledge in listing the top international relations movies.  I'll try to pick up what Matt started earlier today and start an internet meme about the cartoons with the most interesting implications for foreign policy and geopolitics.

I'm tempted to draw a lesson about hubris, paranoia, the place of cold and calculating intelligence in world politics, and the futility of global domination from -- where else? -- "Pinky and the Brain."  But I don't think neoconservatism needs any further rebukes.  Instead I'd nominate Scooby Doo.

Consider the Scooby Doo villains as rudimentary terrorists.  They dress up as scary monsters, terrify the local population, and chase Shaggy and Scooby through endless halls and mismatched doorways.  That they wear masks, and often are after financial gain, may make them seem to resemble old-school bank robbers, but the crux of their power is the terror they invoke in residents.

The mysteries are inevitably solved by the members of the team -- Fred, Daphne, and Velma -- who remain relatively calm and treat the monsters as criminals -- not, say, "enemy combatants" of the beleaguered town.  This is despite the fact that they are impersonating what is, in terms of fear-inducing presence, essentially a child's equivalent of a bomb-laden terrorist.

But no lockdowns are conducted, there is no torture for information on the monster's identity, and no pre-emptive strikes.  (The only "operations" are limited to Rube Goldberg-esque traps that are conducted only once the team has accumulated enough evidence to identify the villain, who, naturally, "would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you lousy kids!")  The culprit is then arrested by the local police, and, instead of bundling him in the Mystery Machine and sending him/her to Guantanamo, s/he is presumably headed for a normal civilian jail.

Are Deaths From Terrorism Qualitatively/Morally Different?

Cross-posted at Huffington Post

The establishment approach to counter-terrorism is based on an implicit assumption that there is a fundamental difference between the death and destruction caused by terrorist attacks and that caused by crime, hunger, disease and other such threats.

This unspoken assumption is used to justify the suspension of rules and standards that are employed when dealing with other causes of death and injury. And it explains a disproportionate urgency in contending with a single existential threat over others (global warming, environmental degradation, poverty, gun violence, etc.).

Pirates on the Other Coast

Just when you think you got 'em under control, they hit you from the other side:
World attention on piracy off Somalia has diverted attention from the growing threat of attacks off west Africa, according to shipping experts. The International Maritime Bureau says it knows of more than 100 pirate attacks off west Africa last year - yet only 40 were reported.
Oi. Maybe one of the only instances where "world attention" is focused more on Somalia than anywhere else.