How close is Saudi Arabia to a normalization deal with Israel?

This article appears in the Jerusalem Report of 11 October 2021

          Back in December 2020 the Jerusalem Post reported that “some of Israel’s highest echelons” expected normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia to have occurred by the end of 2021.  As for exactly when this was likely to take place, the word during the fall of 2020 had been that Saudi Arabia would wait till it knew the outcome of the US presidential election on November 3, but that the covert exchanges and visits by leading US, Israeli and Saudi figures over the previous few months indicated that Saudi-Israel normalization was imminent.

   Then-Mossad director Yossi Cohen, speaking a week before the US presidential election, said that if Trump won, there could be an almost immediate announcement, but that a Biden administration may want to link Israeli-Saudi normalization to progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

In the event, Cohen’s prediction was stood on its head.  It was not US President Biden who began linking normalization deals to solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

Then came the Israeli elections of March 23, 2021, which  proved something of a catalyst.  By then the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain had been joined by Sudan and Morocco in normalization deals with Israel, while Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, had placed his country firmly on the sidelines.  On February 11 he stated that Oman was satisfied for the time being with its relations with Israel, adding that the country was: “committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on a two-state solution.”

In the run-up to Israel’s elections, then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had boasted that four more countries were close to establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.  He did not specify them, but in a radio interview later that day Intelligence minister Eli Cohen named them as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Niger (as yet none has signed up to the Accords).

Top officials from Saudi Arabia and Qatar instantly denied that they were considering normalization, while Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir, declared that his country would not establish formal ties with Israel until an agreement with the Palestinians had been found.

This position was strengthened one day before Israel went to the polls.  Nawaf Obaid, a former senior adviser to the Saudi Arabian government, said in an editorial published in the Palestinian Al Quds newspaper that the kingdom would not normalize ties with Israel until there was a peace agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state.  Obaid claimed to be citing the views of the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

This official Saudi position was reaffirmed as recently as August 3 at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual US-based conference at which global leaders discuss the most pressing foreign policy and security issues of the day.  The 2021 occasion was a virtual event held on 3 and 4 August, and was attended by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

On the Abraham Accords issue, Prince Faisal was unequivocal.  Reaffirming the kingdom’s position that Palestinian statehood was the best way to achieve peace in the Middle East, he said Saudi Arabia had no current intention of joining the Accords.

Despite this forthright and reiterated message, Saudi’s Crown Prince MBS is certainly aware of the kingdom’s role as a key member of the group of gulf states pursuing coordinated foreign policy objectives, and that the considerations that led to the UAE’s and Bahrain’s normalization deals with Israel – which include determined opposition to Iran’s regional ambitions – apply equally to Saudi Arabia.  He must also have in mind that Saudi and Israel have cooperated covertly for years, mostly around security issues and intelligence-sharing, and that the prospects of an exponential growth in hi-tech and trade are very tempting.

The factors inhibiting the kingdom from formally embracing normalization include its unique status in the Islamic world as the custodian of the two holiest places in Islam, and the powerful hardline factions within the establishment that would oppose any such relationship with Israel.      

The sad history of Saudi activist and journalist Abdul Hameed Ghabin is a case in point.

 Well before the Abraham Accords Ghabin, writing fearlessly in Arabic-language media, openly supported peace and full normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  The authorities at the time didn’t know what to do with him. On the one hand, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. On the other, he was embarrassing the kingdom’s top officials, who were trying to portray themselves as defenders of the Palestinian cause. He became a victim of behind-the-scenes conflicts within the Saudi Arabia establishment. Moderates didn’t want to hurt him, but extremists managed to have him arrested.

The Saudi journalist spent a year in prison, in addition to five months he was held at a police station. During that time his citizenship was revoked and the authorities tried to accuse him of spying for Israel. The charges against him included smuggling money, supporting the British, and harming Palestinians. He was convicted of none.

Ghabin was recently released, many believe either at the instigation of the Biden administration or from a desire not to damage Saudi-US relations.  Possibly both. A state committee is now examining the affair. If it concludes that Ghabin has been wronged, which is likely, he will be compensated.

The younger elements within Saudi society are more liberal than the official government stance indicates.  The new generation, led by MBS, is clearly trending toward an approach to Israel that does not preclude normalizing ties ahead of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Some believe that normalization could itself facilitate a resolution of the problem.  Moreover, despite hardllne reservations, the Saudi-Gulf axis views a closer relationship with Israel as an indirect means of preserving its long-established security partnership with the US.

The prestigious think tank, the Brookings Institute, believes the Gulf states may reasonably assume that creating linkages with Israel will help shore up their own security ties with the US.  The Gulf states know from experience, writes the Institute, “that being Israel’s ostensible enemy has not aided their relationship with the United States, has not endeared them to certain quarters of the American political and diplomatic establishment, and has obstructed their acquisition of advanced military hardware and technology reserved for Israel and other close allies outside the region.”

But now the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan has become a factor.  Prestige being a huge, if unmeasurable, factor in Middle East politics, the US’s loss of face following its disastrous flight from Kabul may give the kingdom pause before formally binding itself to the US’s main Middle East ally. Unfortunately, Biden seems to be following ex-President Obama in reducing America’s standing among the more moderate Arab states in the region.

Which pragmatic considerations will prevail? Is the linkage in Saudi thinking between developing a thriving partnership with Israel and supporting the Palestinian cause too strong?   Or will self-interest carry the day?  December 31, 2021 is still some way off.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 30 September 2012:

https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/how-close-is-saudi-arabia-to-normalization-with-israel-680678

Published in Eurasia Review:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/20082021-how-close-is-saudi-arabia-to-a-normalization-deal-with-israel-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal:
https://mpc-journal.org/how-close-is-saudi-arabia-to-a-normalization-deal-with-israel/

Published in Jewish Business News:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/08/20/how-close-is-saudi-arabia-to-a-normalization-deal-with-israel/

Palestinians challenge the PA

 

In the small hours of June 24, 2021 fourteen Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers burst into a house in Hebron, made for a room where 42-year-old Nizar Banat was sleeping and, according to his family, began beating him with metal bars. Security camera footage from the night-time raid shows Banat being dragged away and pushed into a car. Within an hour, he was declared dead.

Nizar Banat was a Palestinian activist, who had attracted a following on social media with unusually outspoken posts alleging corruption among members of Fatah, the party which controls the PA. Some of his video messages had attracted tens of thousands of hits.

Banat's death sparked widespread anger among the Palestinian public.  Weeks of protests followed, calling for a fully transparent investigation and the prosecution of those responsible.  Breaking up the demonstrations, Palestinian security forces used tear gas and stun grenades and arrested dozens of participants. 

More than two months after Banat’s death, on September 6, Palestinian security forces spokesman Talal Dweikat announced that military prosecutors had completed their investigation and had decided to charge a Preventive Security Service commander and 13 other officers involved in Banat's arrest.  He said they were accused of “taking part in the beating that caused the death of Banat", as well as "abuse of power and violating military instructions".

The outburst of anger and resentment triggered by Banat’s death had been building for some time among Palestinians in the West Bank.  Polls of Palestinian opinion, which are taken regularly by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, had for a long time been revealing disenchantment with both the ruling Fatah party and PA president, Mahmoud Abbas.  For example, two-thirds of those polled in December 2020 favoured Abbas’s resignation, partly as a result of his decision to resume security collaboration with Israel on the West Bank. 

The latest upsurge in public discontent began when Abbas cancelled the legislative and presidential elections scheduled for May 2021.  The polls revealed that few believed the reason advanced by Abbas – that Israel was blocking Arab inhabitants of East Jerusalem from voting.  Many felt that the vote was called off because of Abbas’s poor showing in the polls and the growth in popularity of Hamas.  The most recent poll of Palestinian opinion showed a two-thirds majority condemning Abbas’s decision.  The PA announcement on September 16 of municipal elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza this December is more of a hope than an expectation, since they have to be confirmed by Hamas which boycotted such polls in 2017 and 2012.

One BBC reporter has noted a return on Ramallah’s streets of a slogan recycled from the Arab Spring:  "The people want the fall of the regime".  Journalists have been high among those targeted by Palestinian forces as they suppress popular demonstrations.

The Bisan Center for Research and Development, registered officially by the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior, is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization.  In the first days of September its director, Ubay al-Aboudi, appeared in court together with others, charged with defaming the PA and organizing an illegal demonstration in July.  The case was adjourned and judicial proceedings will be resumed in October.

"I'm not ashamed that I'm a critic of the PA,” al-Aboudi is reported as saying. “They have failed politically, they have failed economically…We are sliding more and more into a dictatorship."  He said there was growing resentment among ordinary Palestinians towards the PA's political elite, generally perceived as benefitting financially from their positions and obsessed by an internal power struggle over who will succeed Abbas.

Underlying the current unrest among ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank is widespread disillusion with the PA in general and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, in particular.  Most of the public thinks that the Palestinian regime is riddled with corruption and nepotism, and continuously and blatantly violates human rights and democratic principles.  Moreover the efforts by Hamas, in its confrontation with Israel in May 2021, to portray itself, rather than the PA, as the true champion of the Palestinian people and defender of Muslim rights in Jerusalem, proved very successful.  The latest poll of Palestinian public opinion shows that the majority of those questioned believe that Hamas, not Fatah under Abbas, deserve to represent and lead the Palestinian people.

At the start of the latest popular protests against the PA following the death of Banat, there was an attempt by Hamas to inflame and even lead the demonstrators. For a time it almost seemed as if Hamas was spearheading a revolt against the PA.  This manoeuvre by Hamas sparked concern among Fatah, whose activists mobilized demonstrations of support for Abbas, and issued public warnings of a strong response to any attempt to destabilize the regime in Ramallah. 

Yet the episode may indeed illustrate a shift within Palestinian public opinion away from the PA and towards Hamas – a shift already apparent in the recent polls. When eventually the long-delayed Palestinian legislative and presidential elections do occur – and they cannot be deferred indefinitely –it seems unlikely they will result in any sort of success for old-guard PA stalwarts or policies.  If Hamas scores any sort of electoral success, renewal of a peace process with Israel is unlikely, though an indefinitely extended truce is an option that has received serious consideration in the current Egypt-led discussions. 

Meanwhile the PA-Hamas feud rumbles on.  Its latest manifestation is the PA’s withdrawal from its agreement to transfer Qatari aid money to pay the salaries of public servants in the Gaza strip.  Many, if not most, of those public servants are Hamas supporters, and the PA claims that to distribute funds to them would lay the PA open to accusations of financing terrorism.  The result of their decision, however, is to produce resentment against the PA among yet another segment of the Palestinian public.

Given the current state of the PA and the growing appeal of Hamas, is the PA capable of ever regaining the trust and support of the Palestinian people? 

Published in Eurasia Review, 24 September 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/24092021-palestinians-challenge-the-pa-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 23 September 2021:
https://mpc-journal.org/palestinians-challenge-the-pa/

Published in Jewish Business News, 24 September 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/09/24/palestinians-challenge-the-pa/

No end to the UK Labour party’s Jewish problem

This article of mine appears in the current issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 27 September 2021

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the UK’s Labour party in 2015 heralded a period of controversy, rancour, rebellion and resignations.  The internal turmoil largely centered on a perceived growth of frank antisemitism within the ranks of the party, countenanced or down-played by the leadership.  At the height of the storm, the party was made the subject of a legally-based inquiry into antisemitism within its organization, and was subsequently sued for libel based on its reaction to a BBC investigation into the allegations.  These events undoubtedly played a part in the Labour party’s worst electoral defeat for eighty years in the general election of 2019, and Corbyn being replaced as leader.

Corbyn’s election as leader, an unpleasant surprise to most of his parliamentary colleagues, represented a well-orchestrated protest from the left-wing of the party at the social democratic policies that had marked the thirteen years of “New Labour” under Tony Blair.  Ed Miliband, Blair’s marginally more left-wing successor, had done little as leader to assuage the thirst of the grass roots for more full-blooded socialist policies.

   Corbyn was a known left-wing rebel who had often voted against his party in its “New Labour” guise.  From the moment he became leader, hard-left views on a variety of topics became mainstream within the Labour party.  Among them was “intersectionality”, the accepted left-wing term for perceiving a direct link between all victims of oppression, whether sexual, racial, political, or economic, and for supporting all as a matter of course.  Accepted left-wing doctrine deemed Palestinians to be oppressed and Israel to be the oppressor. As a result unequivocal support for the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel was de rigueur. 

   Some zealous supporters of Corbyn found it convenient to label their opposition to Israel anti-Zionism, making no distinction between opposing Israeli government policies and the very existence of the state. Some found it difficult to separate opposition to Israel from opposition to Jews generally – Israel was, after all, the Jewish state – and anti-Zionism morphed easily enough into plain antisemitism. 

As cases of alleged antisemitic activity within the Labour party began to mount, so did public unease.  Corbyn deemed it expedient to set up an internal inquiry.  Its findings, announced in May 2016, were that the party was not "overrun by antisemitism or other forms of racism", a conclusion that convinced few, particularly as the tide of antisemitic incidents and allegations within the party showed no signs of abating.  Finally in May 2019 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a body legally charged with promoting and enforcing the UK’s equality and non-discrimination laws, launched a formal investigation into whether Labour had "unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimized people because they are Jewish".

In its report, published in October 2020, the EHRC determined that the Labour party had indeed been "responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination".  As a result, the party was legally obliged to draft an action plan, based on the EHRC recommendations, to remedy the unlawful aspects of its governance.  The EHRC was required to monitor it and, if necessary, take action to enforce it.  That is the current state of play.

        The EHRC had no sooner issued its report than Corbyn issued his response.  He asserted that the problem of antisemitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by opponents and the media.  In short, he rejected the conclusions of the EHRC, implying they were politically motivated.  That created a storm of media comment and resulted in his suspension from the party.  One month later, though, Corbyn issued a conciliatory statement, and the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) lifted the suspension. 

Labour’s newly-elected leader Keir Starmer, however, pledged as he was to extirpate antisemitism from the party root and branch, refused to readmit him to the parliamentary Labour party.  So Corbyn is currently a free-floating Member of Parliament. 

It is no surprise that the opinion that resulted in his suspension is held quite widely within the left-wing of the party, and continues to bubble to the surface from time to time.  On July 20, 2021 Labour’s NEC, determined to demonstrate that it is taking effective action against antisemitism, banned four far-left factions known to support Corbyn.  All were accused of asserting that claims of antisemitism in the Labour party were politically motivated, and of condoning inappropriate comments by party members.  The ruling was that belonging to any of the four factions would be grounds for removal from the party.

Along with the ban, and in accordance with its EHRC obligations, Labour introduced a new process under which complaints will in future be handled by a panel of independent lawyers reporting to a new independent appeal board. In addition it announced that all prospective Labour party candidates will henceforth have to be trained by the Jewish Labour Movement about how to deal with antisemitism.

“We are acting decisively to put our house in order,” said Anneliese Dodds, Labour party chair. 

Keir Starmer’s determined action against Corbyn, allied to his centre-left politics and his somewhat lacklustre performance as leader, has alienated his hard left.  On August 14 eminent British filmmaker, 85 year-old Ken Loach, announced on Twitter that he had been expelled from the Labour party by “Starmer and his clique”.

“Labour HQ finally decided I'm not fit to be a member of their party,” he wrote, “as I will not disown those already expelled. Well, I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimized by the purge. There is indeed a witch-hunt."

Left-wing activists, including Corbyn and other sitting MPs, rushed to Loach’s defence, describing him as Britain’s greatest living film-maker whose films “exposed the inequalities in our society”.  Loach has a long history of condemning artists who perform in Israel, charging them with supporting an “apartheid state”.  He has allowed his own films to be shown in Israeli cinemas.

Also under investigation by Labour is Jenny Manson, the co-chair of Jewish Voice For Labour (JVL), a group which has consistently sought to downplay allegations of antisemitism under Corbyn, describing them as “exaggerated”.  At the same time JVL is heavily involved in another incident arising from Labour’s Jewish problem. 

On July 10, 2019 the BBC Panorama programme investigated antisemitism in Corbyn’s Labour party. Seven former Labour staffers, responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct by party members, testified to a catalogue of efforts by party members and officials to subvert their work.  The official Labour line, following the programme, was to denounce them as "disaffected former staff" with "personal and political axes" to grind, and to accuse journalist John Ware, who made the programme, of “deliberate and malicious representations designed to mislead the public.”

All of them sued the Labour party for libel.  Losing its case in the High Court in July 2020, the party, authorized by Keir Starmer, issued an unreserved apology for making "false and defamatory" comments about Ware and the seven whistle-blowers, and agreed to pay substantial damages to them all.

But JVL had voiced its own denunciation of Ware on BBC radio the day after the Panorama programme was transmitted.  During the broadcast interview Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, JVL’s media officer, accused Ware of “a terrible record” of Islamophobia and far-right politics, claiming he had previously been disciplined and that the BBC had had to apologize. Ware sued JVL for libel. Following the preliminary hearing on August 18, 2021 the judge ruled that there was “no dispute” that the meaning of Wimborne-Idrissi’s words was defamatory.  She ruled similarly in respect of a post by Wimborne-Idrissi on the JVL website.  Unless a settlement is agreed, the case will now proceed to trial, where Wimborne-Idrissi will have to try to prove that what she said was true.

The storm whipped up during Corbyn’s time as Labour leader rumbles on.  In its glory days during the mid-twentieth century, Labour used to boast that it was “a broad church”, successfully accommodating a wide range of political opinions.    At the time this meant that it was able to include extreme left-wing elements within its ranks.  The hard left has always been a minority within the Labour party, and British political history shows that whenever it gained a certain dominance, the result was electoral disaster.  With the antisemitism debacle and its aftermath reducing any chance of winning power within the party to near zero, the hard left must be considering the possibility of a formal break from mainstream Labour.  That would be a totally unforeseen, but not universally unwelcome, fallout from the whole unsavory antisemitism episode in the history of Britain’s Labour party.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 14 September 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/no-end-to-the-uk-labour-partys-jewish-problem-679395

"Enemies and Allies" - a review of Joel C Rosenberg's new book

 My review appeared in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine on 10 September 2021

             Joel C Rosenberg has many faces.  He is best known, perhaps, as the author of a series of best-selling political thrillers, most of them set in the Middle East.  He is also a policy analyst who seeks to influence public opinion through journalism, as a documentary filmmaker, and by direct contact with leaders and opinion-formers.

His name suggests that he is Jewish, but he describes himself as “a follower of Jesus Christ from a Jewish background.”  Born to a Jewish father and a gentile mother, he is an Evangelical Christian who believes profoundly in the literal truth of both the Old and the New Testaments.  High among the principles that govern his approach to the Middle East are the biblical injunctions to love Israel and her neighbors, and to be a peacemaker.

In line with his principles, he and his wife left the US in 2014 and moved to Israel, where he became a dual US-Israeli citizen. Two of his sons have done military service in the Israeli army.

For some twenty years Rosenberg has been active in the political field.  He has led ground-breaking Evangelical Christian delegations to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.  He has spoken personally with Israel’s previous president, Reuben Rivlin, with Benjamin Netanyahu when prime minister, and with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egypt’s President Fatah el-Sisi, and the two Crown Princes who dominate the Middle East – Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) of the United Arab Emirates, and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia. He has had face-to-face conversations with then-President Donald Trump, and with his vice-president, Mike Pence, and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

Rosenberg says: “I can’t explain why doors to such intriguing leaders have opened for me,” but open they did.  In “Enemies and Allies” he provides details of these encounters, and of many more with US intelligence and security officials and others across the Middle East, and draws on them to make a clear-eyed assessment of the realities behind the chaos that is the Middle East in the first quarter of the 21st century.  He calls them "an unforgettable journey inside the fast-moving and immensely turbulent modern Middle East"

“Enemies and Allies” is unlikely to commend itself to a large swathe of US Democratic opinion, or to many powerful and persuasive figures in the European Union or the UK.  It is doubtful if US President Joe Biden, or the president he served for eight years, Barack Obama, will concur with Rosenberg’s conclusions on the Iranian issue, which are way out of line with the widespread and influential body of opinion in the West that believes the way to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear arsenal is through negotiation, financial concessions and the prospect of being welcomed into the so-called “comity of nations”.  Rosenberg believes Iran poses a threat like no other, because the West cannot, or will not, see that the Iranian leadership is working to its own unshakable Islamist agenda.  These “apocalyptic Islamists” in his words, “want to use violence to try to annihilate the State of Israel, neutralize the United States, decimate Christendom, and hasten the establishment of their global Islamic kingdom and the coming of their savior, the Mahdi.”

This sector of Western opinion is also likely to reject Rosenberg’s unalloyed commendation of the courage and wisdom of those responsible for initiating the Abraham Accords. He identifies them as Trump, Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.  The first such agreement, between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, was brought to fruition against a very difficult background, with Netanyahu apparently on the brink of annexing large areas of the West Bank. “It almost did not happen,” writes Rosenberg.  “But by the grace of God, the prayers of millions, and the leadership of three men and their closest advisors, it came to pass. For me, each absolutely deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Based on his discussions with White House officials and US political leaders, Rosenberg lays bare the strategy behind Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan, the so-called “Deal of the Century”, and how it smoothed the path leading to the Accords.

            Many senior officials told Rosenberg that while they had wanted to create the most detailed and realistic peace plan possible, they knew that the Palestinian leadership had no interest in a final deal.  So they calculated that if they based their deal-making on trying to get the Palestinians to say yes, the whole peace effort would be dead on arrival.  But if they decided that one of their objectives was to expose Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his inner circle as perennial rejectionists of all peace proposals, however reasonable, their plan could pave the way to a normalization deal with at least one, and possibly several, Arab states.

Rosenberg had been given covert warning of this approach from a variety of sources.  Pence told him that Trump had thrown out “the old playbook”; Pompeo said that Trump had chosen to “flip the switch” on Obama.  White House peace negotiator Jason Greenblatt told him that Trump wanted his team to be “willing to think outside the box” and be able to persuade other leaders in the region to do the same.

“I don’t think we could have jumped from nothing to the Abraham Accords,” said Greenblatt.  “I think that putting out a plan that we deemed realistic and implementable…was an essential step.”  In fact, he added, “the Palestinians’ rejection of the plan…removed the “veto card” from the Palestinian leadership, and cleared the way for Arab countries to make their own decisions with regards to Israel.”

            And indeed, as Rosenberg points out, “the Trump approach worked,” especially as the UAE agreement was quickly expanded to include Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

            Joel Rosenberg has gained access to some of the world’s leading political figures and held in-depth discussions with them.  In “Enemies and Allies” he generously shares his experiences.  He takes his readers into the inner sanctum of high-level politics in the Middle East.  We gain a unique insight into the thinking of world leaders, and rightly feel privileged to have done so.  Whether one agrees or disagrees with Rosenberg’s conclusions, “Enemies and Allies” undoubtedly provides a degree of enlightenment not otherwise available. It is highly recommended.

Published in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine, 10 September 2021

https://www.jpost.com/j-spot/an-unforgettable-journey-inside-the-turbulent-modern-middle-east-678998

Published in the Eurasia Review, 17 September 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/17092021-enemies-and-allies-book-review/

Published in the MPC Journal, 16 September 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/enemies-and-allies-joel-c-rosenbergs-new-book/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 17 September 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/09/17/enemies-and-allies-joel-c-rosenbergs-new-book-reviewed-by-neville-teller/

IS(K) – the Taliban’s worst enemy

 

          The Taliban has just won a 20-year war against America and its allies and sent them packing. The triumph is so complete that the US no longer represents any sort of threat to the Taliban’s long-held aim to rule the country according to its own interpretation of Sharia law. But the taste of victory is far from sweet, because the Taliban faces a home-grown challenge to its ambitions, and its enemy is all the more dangerous because it fights on the ground that the Taliban claims as its own – Islamism. The challenge to its authority comes from the shadowy group that claimed responsibility for the horrific bombing at Kabul airport on August 26 leaving some 170 people dead – the Islamic State Khorasan, known as ISIS(K), or simply IS(K). Khorasan is a historical term for a region that includes present-day Afghanistan and parts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

IS(K), an affiliate of ISIS, was formed in early 2015 when ISIS was at its heyday controlling large areas of Iraq and Syria.  It was set up by disaffected ex-members of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, who pledged their allegiance to the self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  A 2015 video caught the group's leader at the time, Hafiz Saeed Khan, and other top commanders, swearing their loyalty to Baghdadi, and declaring themselves administrators of a new ISIS territory in Afghanistan.  Khan was killed in 2016 during a US drone attack. Baghdadi died in 2019 after he set off an explosive vest to avoid being captured by US forces.

Currently estimated to number some 4,000 fighters, including jihadist prisoners released when the Taliban captured Kabul on 15 August, IS(K) is bitterly opposed to the Taliban on the most intractable of all grounds – religion.  It believes the Taliban does not subscribe to the central purpose of the Islamic creed – to spread the faith throughout the world.  IS(K) is at one with the central aim and intention of its parent body, ISIS – to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate of which Afghanistan would be a part.  IS(K) is a segment of the global IS network that, in pursuit of its fundamental objective, seeks to carry out attacks on Western and international targets wherever it can reach them. The Taliban has no such ambition. Its objective is to establish an emirate in Afghanistan. 

This clash of basic motivation also explains IS(K)’s bitter opposition to the Taliban sitting down with US representatives in a series of peace negotiations, starting in February 2020.  It accuses the Taliban of abandoning jihad and the battlefield in favor of cozy conversations in "posh hotels" in Qatar’s capital, Doha.  Reports suggest that, as the negotiations proceeded, a number of Taliban adherents opposed to the talks switched over to the more extremist IS(K). One report has the IS(K), increasingly incensed at the discussions, declaring that killing Taliban members is a higher religious duty than targeting Americans.

IS(K) is a formidable enemy.  Unrelentingly savage, it has staged dozens of attacks over the past few years, killing scores of Afghans.  It has been accused of attacking a girls’ school, a hospital, a university, and even a maternity ward where the militants reportedly shot dead pregnant women and nurses. 

   Nothing is simple in Afghanistan. Bitter enemies though they are, IS(K) and the Taliban have recently been linked operationally.  The connection exists through a third body, the Haqqani network, which has strong ties with both.  One expert on Afghanistan’s militant bodies says that "several major attacks between 2019 and 2021 involved collaboration between IS(K), the Taliban's Haqqani network and other terror groups based in Pakistan."

The Haqqani network is a jihad group incorporated in Pakistan.  The US has offered rewards of millions of dollars for the capture of two of its members, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Khalil Haqqani.  Both are senior members of the Taliban.  Even so, the Biden administration has sought to distinguish between the Taliban and the network.  State Department spokesperson Ned Price has called them separate entities.

“If this is the understanding of the State Department,” said the Hindustani Times on August 28, “then the war against terrorism globally is doomed.”

The newspaper considered the distinction false. “Everyone knows,” it wrote, “that Mullah Omar, the one-eyed founder of the Taliban, was radicalised in Darul Uloom Haqqania…from which the Haqqani network derives its name.”  It believes the US tried to separate the two bodies in the public’s mind in order to justify liaising with the Taliban, while painting the Haqqani as the real terrorists.

   However close the Taliban may be to the Haqqani network, and whatever the connection between the network and IS(K), there is now no community of interest between the Taliban and the IS(K).  The two are at daggers drawn.  Although IS(K) is vastly outnumbered at present, it is said to be counting on a rapid expansion as foreign fighters already in Afghanistan vie to join its ranks.  In a June report, the UN estimated that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters in the country, emanating from Syria, Iraq and other conflict zones.  Many are still susceptible to the enticing ISIS message of eventual world domination.

The Taliban’s faults are manifold and egregious, but they have evinced no desire to dominate the world.  Their aim is to dominate their native Afghanistan, and that objective they are on the verge of achieving.  Only a succession of ruthless terrorist attacks or savage guerilla warfare could rob the Taliban of complete victory and plunge the country into a state of constant conflict.  Is this what the Taliban face in the coming months from their worst enemy? 

Published in Eurasia Review
https://www.eurasiareview.com/03092021-isk-the-talibans-worst-enemy-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/09/03/isk-the-talibans-worst-enemy/

Published in the MPC Journal
https://mpc-journal.org/isk-the-talibans-worst-enemy/