Of Mosques, Oil Fields and Ports

By George Friedman

Last week was dominated by three apparently
discrete events. The al-Askariyah mosque -- a significant Shiite shrine in
As Samarra, Iraq -- was bombed, triggering intensifying violence between
Shiite and Sunni groups. A group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility
for attacking a major oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. And a furor
broke out in the United States over the proposed purchase, by a
government-owned United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm, of a British company that
operates a number of important American ports. Apart from the fact that all
of these incidents involve Muslims, the stories don't appear to be linked.
They are.

All three stories are commentaries on three things. First,
they are measures of the current state of the U.S.-jihadist war. Second,
they are measures of the Bush administration's strategy of splitting the
Islamic world against itself, along its natural fault lines, and using that
split to contain and control the radical Islamist threat against the United
States. And finally, they are the measure of U.S. President George W. Bush's
ability to manage public perceptions of his plans and
operations.

The Fault Lines in Iraq

Begin with the
bombing of al-Askariyah, or "the Golden Mosque," in As Samarra.


After the failures of U.S. intelligence and operations in Iraq in
spring 2003, the United States adopted a long-term strategy of using the
natural split between the country's Shiite and Sunni populations to first
stabilize its own position, and then improve it. During the first phase,
Washington tilted heavily toward the Shia, doing everything possible to
assure that there would be no Shiite rising to accompany that of the Sunnis.
Since the Shia had no love for the Sunni minority, given their experiences
under Saddam Hussein's anti-Shiite regime, this was not overly difficult. In
addition, the Shia were able to take advantage of the U.S.-Sunni war to shape
and dominate post-Hussein politics. The Shia and Americans suited each
other.

In the second phase of this policy, the United States reached
out to the Sunnis, trying to draw them into a Shiite-Kurdish government.
Washington had two goals: One was a Sunni counterweight to the Shia.
Whatever it had promised the Shia, Washington did not simply want to hand
Iraq over to them, out of fear that the country would become an Iranian
satellite state. The second goal was to exploit fault lines within the Sunni
community itself, in order to manipulate the balance of power in favor of the
United States.

By the time this phase of the policy was being
implemented -- at the end of the first battle of Al Fallujah, in 2004 -- the
U.S.-Sunni war had developed a new dimension, consisting of jihadists. These
were Sunnis, but differed from the Iraqi Sunnis in a number of critical
ways. First, many were foreigners who lacked roots in Iraq. Second, the
Sunni community in Iraq was multidimensional; Sunnis had been the backbone
of support for Hussein's regime, which had been far more secular than
Islamist. The jihadists, of course, were radical Islamists. Thus, there was
the potential for yet another rift; the stronger the jihadists grew, the
greater the risk to the traditional leadership of Iraq's Sunnis. The
jihadists might increase their influence within the community, marginalizing
the old leadership.

The U.S. success in manipulating this split
reached a high point in December 2005, with Iraq's national elections. The
jihadists opposed Sunni participation in the election, but the Sunni
leadership participated anyway. The jihadists threatened the leadership but
could not strike; as foreigners, they depended on local Sunni communities to
sustain and protect them. If they alienated the Sunni leadership without
destroying them, the jihadists would in turn be destroyed.

Thus,
after the disaster in December, the jihadists embarked on a different
course. Rather than focusing on American forces or Shiite collaborators, the
goal was to trigger a civil war between the Shia and Sunnis. The brilliantly
timed attack on the Golden Mosque, much like the 9/11 attacks, was intended
to ignite a war. There would be an event that the Shia could not ignore and
to which they would respond with maximum violence, preferably against the
Sunnis as a whole. In an all-out civil war, the Sunni leadership would not
be able to dispense with the jihadists, or so the jihadists hoped. Their own
position would be cemented and the Americans would be trapped in a country
torn by civil war.

The Sunni leadership, of course, understands the
situation. If the Sunnis protect the jihadists who carried out the attack --
and we are convinced they were jihadists -- they will be in a civil war they
cannot win. Given their numbers compared to the Shiite majority, the Sunnis
-- if they were to break with the Shia -- eventually would have to come back
to the table and make some sort of a deal. The jihadists are betting that the
terms the Shia would impose would be so harsh that the Sunnis would prefer
civil war. The United States has an interest in limiting what terms the Shia
can impose, and the Iraqi Shia themselves understand that if there is civil
war, they will need Iran's help. Getting caught between the United States
and Iran is not in their interest.

There is, interestingly, the
possibility of what passes for peace in Iraq embedded in all of this. The
jihadists, marginalized and desperate due to American maneuvers, have tossed
up a "Hail Mary" in the hope of disrupting the works. It is certainly
possible that the maneuver will work. But a more reasonable assumption is
that the bombing of the Golden Mosque achieves merely a shift in the time
frame the Sunnis thought they had for negotiations. What might have taken
months now could take much less. Certainly, the Sunnis have been forced to a
decision point.

Attempt at Strategic Attack

The al
Qaeda attack against the Abqaiq facility has similar roots.

Prior to
2003, the Saudi position on al Qaeda was one of benign neglect. The Saudi
regime tried to limit both its exposure to the American war against the
jihadists, and to intelligence cooperation with the United States, out of
fear of the consequences from al Qaeda. After the invasion of Iraq, however,
and the realization that the United States was rampaging just to the north,
the Saudis shifted their position, and significant intelligence cooperation
began. There were two consequences of this shift: One, the United States was
receiving Saudi intelligence and became much more effective than before in
blocking al Qaeda attacks and disrupting their operations; and two, the
jihadists went to war against the Saudi regime, launching a series of
strikes and counterstrikes over the next two years. The United States had
split the Saudi government off from the jihadists, and the Saudis absorbed
the price of collaboration.

Al Qaeda has been relatively quiet in
Saudi Arabia since June 2004. It had appeared to many observers that al
Qaeda was finished in Saudi Arabia. Thus, just as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's
faction in Iraq had to assert itself or be marginalized, the al Qaeda
faction in Saudi Arabia had to demonstrate its continued capability to mount
operations -- however dangerous and difficult that task might be. It was Hail
Mary time in the kingdom as well. The result was the Feb. 24 attack against
Abqaiq, a critical oil processing facility.

This was intended to be
a strategic attack. A strategic attack differs from a tactical attack in
several ways:

1. It shifts the political equation dramatically by
demonstrating capabilities.

2. It involves a strike against a target
or resource that, if destroyed, changes the economic or political scene
definitively.

3. It requires a substantial commitment of resources.


The Sept. 11 strikes amounted to a strategic attack; a suicide
bombing by jihadists in Iraq normally does not. The Abqaiq operation was an
attempt at a strategic attack. It was designed to be a shocking
demonstration of al Qaeda's continued capabilities -- and to massively
affect world oil supplies. Such an operation would involve a great deal of
planning and, we suspect, a substantial proportion of trained and available
al Qaeda personnel in Saudi Arabia (as opposed to sympathizers).

But
the strike was a fiasco. Rather than demonstrating al Qaeda's capabilities
in Saudi Arabia, the attackers barely penetrated the first security cordon
before they were gunned down by security forces. Certainly, they
demonstrated that al Qaeda still has operatives who are willing to attempt a
strategic attack, but they failed to demonstrate that they still have the
ability to actually execute one. Special operations are always difficult,
but it now appears that either the group had been penetrated by Saudi
security from the beginning, or the cell was not trained in the arts that al
Qaeda previously dominated. All three cars used in the strike appear to have
been identified and destroyed before there was any possibility they could
reach their targets inside the Abqaiq compound.

In Iraq, two
divisions in the Muslim world revealed themselves and were manipulated. The
first was the Sunni-Shiite split, the second was the rift between the
jihadists and mainstream Sunnis. In Saudi Arabia, the split was between, on
one side, the state apparatus and the leaders of the royal family -- who had
lost their ability to remain neutral in the face of the Iraq invasion, U.S.
bellicosity and the fear of a U.S.-Iranian entente over Iraq -- and an
increasingly radicalized faction of the religious establishment that was
supporting al Qaeda. Within the kingdom, the latter could not withstand the
weight of the former, and the result showed itself last week, with a feeble
al Qaeda effort that was followed by bombastic rhetoric.

The
Debate on the Ports Deal

The third dimension in all of this
became apparent with the ports issue. Washington has tried to draw a line
between Muslim states that have cooperated with the United States in due
course -- regardless of what their earlier behavior might have been like --
and those states that it still doesn't trust. It distinguishes in this way
between, for example, Syria and Kuwait. The former has always been seen as
hostile to the United States, the latter has been a mainstay of American
strategy since its liberation by the United States in 1991. The rest of the
Muslim world is distributed along a continuum between these
poles.

Washington's only hope for something approaching a
satisfactory outcome in Iraq was to work with factions it never would have
spoken to prior to 2003. Its hope for a satisfactory outcome in the global
war with the jihadists was in getting Saudi intelligence to work with the
United States. That also required actions and compromises that would not
have been made before 2003. Finally, in order to reshape the Muslim world,
the United States needed to have relations with countries that did not have
immaculate records but which, on the whole and for a variety of reasons, now
found it in their interest to work with Washington.

For Saudi Arabia,
the motivating factor was fear. For the UAE, it was greed. To be more fair,
the UAE is something like a Switzerland: Its business is business, and it
tilts its politics in such a way that business is likely to be good. The
Islamic world is a complex place, and there are many players. If the United
States is to be successful, it must divide, manipulate and conquer that
world along the lines of its complexity. The Sunni-Shiite fault line is one
axis, but the division between countries that are motivated by mercenary
considerations, as opposed to those that have more complex motives, is
another.

The UAE wants to do business, and it is good at it. One of
its businesses is managing ports. Purchasing a British company in the same
industry is a natural thing to do in business; the fact that the purchase in
question would give the UAE company oversight of ports in the United States
is another attraction of the deal. The attraction is not that the UAE could
facilitate the movement of al Qaeda operatives into the United States; that
is not what the UAE is after, since it would be bad for business. What it is
after is the profits that come from doing the business.

Now, some
argue that this business deal will make it easier for al Qaeda operatives to
get into the United States. We find that doubtful. Al Qaeda operatives -- the
real ones, not the wannabes -- if they are out there, will get into the
United States just fine by a number of means. And if they try to slip a bomb
into a container ship, it won't be one sent from a Muslim country -- the
level of scrutiny there is too high. It would be from a place and under a
flag that no one would suspect for a moment, like Denmark. At any rate,
given what it means to "operate a port," the risk to the United States from
having a British company manage its ports is about the same as that from the
UAE: Has anyone noticed that holding a British passport these days is no
guarantee of loyalty to Western ideals?

The Administration's
Strategy

The point here is not to argue the merits of the Dubai
ports deal, but rather to place the business deal in the context of the U.S.
grand strategy. That strategy is, again, to split the Islamic world into its
component parts, induce divisions by manipulating differences, and to create
coalitions based on particular needs. This is, currently, about the only
strategy the United States has going for it -- and if it can't use
commercial relations as an inducement in the Muslim world, that is quite a
weapon to lose.

The problem has become political, and stunningly so.
One of the most recent opinion polls, by CBS, has placed Bush's approval
rating at 34 percent -- a fairly shocking decline, and clearly attributable
to the port issue. As we have noted in the past, each party has a core
constituency of about 35-37 percent. When support falls significantly below
this level, a president loses his ability to govern.

The Republican
coalition consists of three parts: social conservatives, economic
conservatives and business interests, and national security conservatives.
The port deal has apparently hit the national security conservatives in
Bush's coalition hard. They were already shaky over the administration's
personnel policies in the military and the question of whether he had a
clear strategy in Iraq, even as they supported the invasion.

Another
part of the national security faction consists of those who believe that the
Muslim world as a whole is, in the end, united against the United States,
and that it poses a clear and present danger. Bush used to own this faction,
but the debate over the ports has generated serious doubts among this faction
about Bush's general policy. In their eyes, he appears inconsistent and
potentially hypocritical. Economic conservatives might love the ports deal,
and so might conservatives of the "realpolitik" variety, but those who buy
into the view that there is a general danger of terrorism emanating from all
Muslim countries are appalled -- and it is showing in the polls.

If
Bush sinks much lower, he will breaks into territory from which it would be
impossible for a presidency to recover. He is approaching this territory
with three years left in his presidency. It is the second time that he has
probed this region: The first was immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He is
now down deeper in the polls, and it is cutting into his core constituency.


In effect, Bush's strategy and his domestic politics have
intersected with potential fratricidal force. The fact is that the U.S.
strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the
other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the
end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the
strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the
failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that
is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy.

The problem is that
the political coalition has eroded to the point that Bush needs all of his
factions, and this policy -- particularly because of the visceral nature of
the ports issue -- is cutting into the heart of his coalition. The general
problem is this: The administration has provided no framework for
understanding the connection between a destroyed mosque dome in As Samarra,
an attack against a crucial oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE buyout
of a British ports-management firm. Rather than being discussed in the light
of a single, integrated strategy, these appear to be random, disparate and
uncoordinated events. The reality of the administration's strategy and the
reality of its politics are colliding. Bush will backtrack on the ports
issue, and the UAE will probably drop the matter. But what is not clear is
whether the damage done to the strategy and the politics can be undone. The
numbers are just getting very low.