The Possible Death of a Terrorist

It was reported today that terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar has been killed by Chadian soldiers, perhaps supported by French special forces.

My first reaction was disappointment. I wanted to follow him and find out more about him.

But he was a brutal man, responsible for innocent deaths.

The Chadians also claim to have killed his former partner and rival, Abu Zeid.

We’ll see if it’s true.

If so, it could be very bad for the five or six Westerns hostages held by these groups.

I talked about it with Henry. What did he think about all this?

He says the countries set up by departing colonial powers in the 1950’s and 60’s often contained different ethnic and religious groups. They were hard to rule. The West tolerated autocratic dictators and strong men who often used brutal methods to keep the countries together, clamping down on minority groups and dissidents, especially Islamists.

That was because the autocrats supported the Western Cold War policy.

With the end of the Cold War it was clear that the policy gradually changed.

The change was obvious from the Western encouragement of the string of revolutions that began in Tunisia in December 2010. There was no support for Hosni Mubarak in Egypt although he had generally supported US policy in the Middle East.

Now free elections have opened up these countries to Islamist parties which do not necessarily support freedom of faith and free speech.  The Ennahda party won the majority of seats in the Tunisian elections. Its leader was quoted as saying, at a meeting with representatives of Hamas, that it was “a divine moment… hopefully, a 6th caliphate.”

“A modern state is built on the forcible repression of minorities”, said Henry. “You could call it a war of the nation against the tribe. It has to be won, totally. Only then does the political culture change. And even then a nation has to work hard to keep its citizens loyal.”

He thinks many more states may disintegrate. That will pose great challenges. Did he think the West had made mistakes? What should the West have done?

“You can be sure that is a huge topic in the ministries of the West. Take the Second Iraq War. It was won, but the West has not won the peace. The same in Afghanistan. Decisively winning the peace in Iraq would have meant a huge investment in blood and gold. In fact that war may have been a mistake. The attack on the Twin Towers signalled that the West was now fighting a different kind of war, against non-state actors, who were a challenge not only to the west but to Islamic states as well.  It was as if the USA was irritated by the Twin Towers attack into waging a conventional war against another state, just the kind of war it understood and in which it had massively superior armaments. Saddam Hussein was a dreadful person. But it might have been better if it had tried to consolidate world-wide opposition to his abuses….”

Two days after this Henry emailed me. He said he reads a lot of political blogs and Twitter feeds and has decided to start his own blog.

“Can I make you one of my first subscribers?”, he said. “Of course”, I said.