The Benghazi-Botch And No Retreat Now

A few unresolved old questions have once again been raised by the tragic incident in Benghazi.

Pankaj Mishra in his article “America’s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East” in the September 24, 2012 issue of The New York Times said: “The drama of waning American power is being re-enacted in the Middle East and South Asia after two futile wars and the collapse or weakening of pro-American regimes.”

Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, continued with his dissection: “[T]he United States […] missed the central event of the 20th century: the steady, and often violent, political awakening of peoples […] This strange oversight explains why American policy makers kept missing their chances for peaceful post-imperial settlements in Asia.”

He pinpoints a few embarrassing facts: “[President Woodrow Wilson], a Southerner fond of jokes about ‘darkies’, believed in maintaining ‘white civilization and its domination over the world’. Franklin D. Roosevelt was only slightly more conciliatory when, in 1940, he proposed mollifying dispossessed Palestinian Arabs with a ‘little baksheesh’.” Roosevelt changed his mind after meeting the Saudi leader Ibn Saud and learning of oil’s importance to the postwar American economy.”

A practical problem is identified by Mishra: “Given its long history of complicity with dictators in the region […] the United States faces a huge deficit of trust”.

He mentions another embarrassing incident that expresses a dilemma also: “It is not just extremist Salafis who think Americans always have malevolent intentions: the Egyptian anti-Islamist demonstrators who pelted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s motorcade in Alexandria with rotten eggs in July were convinced that America was making shady deals with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

On the basis of a trend Mishra assumes “a strategic American retreat from the Middle East” as he observes, “the limits of both American firepower and diplomacy have been exposed. Financial leverage, or baksheesh, can work only up to a point […]”

This leads Mishra to conclude: “It is the world’s newly ascendant nations and awakened peoples that will increasingly shape events in the post-Western era. America’s retrenchment is inevitable. The only question is whether it will be as protracted and violent as Europe’s mid-20th century retreat from a newly assertive Asia and Africa.”

The opinion is accompanied by a report in the September 24, 2012 issue of The New York Times: “Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to C.I.A. Efforts”. The report said: The attack in Benghazi “has dealt the CIA a major setback […] at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.”

It informed: “Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault […] were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information […]” The CIA’s surveillance targets include Ansar al-Sharia and suspected members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa. “Eastern Libya is also being buffeted by strong crosscurrents that intelligence operatives are trying to monitor closely”, said the report.

Quoting an American official the report said: “It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss. We got our eyes poked out.” “Senior American officials acknowledged the intelligence setback, but insisted that information was still being collected using a variety of informants on the ground, systems that intercept electronic communications like cell phone conversations and satellite imagery. ‘The U.S. isn’t close to being blind in Benghazi and eastern Libya’, said an American official.”

The NYT report informed: Within months of the start of Libyan upheaval in February 2011, the CIA began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi. American intelligence operatives helped train Libya’s new intelligence service. Though the agency has been cooperating with the new post-Qaddafi Libyan intelligence service, the size of the CIA’s presence in Benghazi apparently surprised some Libyan leaders. The deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagour, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week saying that he learned about some of the delicate American operations in Benghazi only after the attack on the mission, in large part because a surprisingly large number of Americans showed up at the Benghazi airport to be evacuated. The CIA personnel carried out their missions. The New York Times agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in dangerous settings.

Mishra will appear logical if one listens to Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s president, and Barack Obama, US president, along with the NYT’s Benghazi-report and recent incidents in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

On the eve of his first visit to the US as Egypt’s president, Mohammed Morsi said he will demonstrate more independence from the US in decision-making. He told Washington not to expect Egypt to live by its rules. Morsi’s message was through an interview with The New York Times. The NYT asked Morsi if the US was an ally, “to which he replied with a laugh by saying: ‘That depends on your definition of ally.’ However, he quickly followed by saying he wants a real friendship with the US, ‘real friends’.”

On the other hand, President Obama responded at Mitt Romney’s criticisms of his handling of Syria and Iran, saying that if the Republican standard-bearer “is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so.”

The tones of two presidents, one of independence and another of conciliation, may sound strange. Further developments in New York and Libya followed.

Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, offered Libya more help stressing that Washington will remain a firm partner. Mrs. Clinton met Mohammed Magarief, the interim Libyan leader, in New York, and received his personal apology for the Benghazi attack. Citing a senior US official media report informed: Clinton reviewed US assistance to Libya and crack down on armed militia groups. “The secretary offered to intensify our support and help for the Libyan government in all of those areas”, the official said following the meeting. Despite a temporary drawdown in US personnel following the Benghazi attack, the official said security cooperation and training was ongoing and would expand.
In Libya, the country’s army has removed the heads of two of Benghazi's main militia groups, The February 17 Brigade’s Bukatif and Rafallah al-Sahati’s Ismail. The Ansar al-Sharia group was driven out of Benghazi. Two militant groups based in Derna were disbanded on Sunday. Magarief, on Sunday, issued a 48-hour deadline for militias to vacate state property. Magarief asserted: “[We want to] dissolve all militias and military camps which are not under the control of the state.”

In the Middle East, days of disorder lie ahead as competing capitals are trying to gain control. Africa, actually, is being re-conquered by the same competing interests. Interference, covert war and secret backing to bands are parts of regular activities by powerful players. Possessions are changing hands, and positions are being strengthened and widened in the continent. Business and investment reports, trade agreements and contracts, and political, diplomatic and military maneuvers in the region reveal the fact. Incidents in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan are not isolated developments.

A single example: Hollande, the French leader, in his first appearance at the UN general assembly, is expected to call for backing for an international force to be sent to Mali to help dislodge Islamist militants who have taken over the north of the country. Examples of maneuver, to deepen involvement and extend hands, are abundant in the region and the continent. The continent carries lucrative promises for capital.

Neither the competition nor the contradiction is with the militants. Interests are there, who arm and train bands. The interests are competing, and competition is accelerating and intensifying.

In a time of compounded competition, the question of retreat is difficult to consider, at least now. Decline within doesn’t always lead to retreat. Arrangements, deals and agreements, widening area of operation, being done by competing interests don’t signal: It’s time to retreat.

The Benghazi-botch, the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi and murder of four Americans there, is not equal to the Tehran-thorn, seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. The situation is not also equal to the fall of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in 1975. These are neither in terms of local condition nor in terms of international array of forces.

The latest one, Benghazi incident, shows a number of limitations that may appear strange but not strange in real perspective. Is the incident a mere technical, security and intelligence, failure or assumption and management mistake? Are there shadow players, deeply entrenched, in the “game” with a long term agenda? Is there any trace of factionalism, not only in Libya and Egypt, elsewhere also? Unattended questions related to involvement, contradictions, imbalance of power, decline and aggressiveness move around while instigations are made and lives are lost.