The White City Grenade Attack And Its National Security Implications

“Make us enemies of every people on earth, but save us from civil war” - Lucan, Bellum Civile, c. 48.

The aftermath of the grenade attack.

The grenade attack aimed at assassinating President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, at White City Stadium, on 23 June 2018, missed its target completely but killed 2 aides and injured Vice President Kembo Mohadi as well as Minister Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri. This grenade could have potentially wiped out the country’s Presidency and a host of high ranking officials. There was no claim of responsibility so we can only make educated guesses as to who was responsible. As for the National Security implications, we can discuss that with what approaches mathematical certainty.

Who Was Responsible?

If we really want to get to know who was responsible, we must discuss matters objectively. First to go is the notion that what happened in Zimbabwe in November was not a Coup. It was a Military Coup. Necessary yes, but it was a Military Coup. Whoever was aggrieved by this change of the man at the helm, is the first suspect in deciding who could have tried to assassinate the current President. This step will also allow us to get to the next step: political implications had the assassination attempt succeeded.

President Mnangagwa has accused the G40 faction in ZANU PF as the people responsible for this latest attempt on his life. The G40 was the other competitor to succeed Robert Mugabe, and they lost out their pole position when Mugabe was removed from power. By accusing the G40, President Mnangagwa is really accusing Robert Mugabe, as the G40 was Mugabe’s favoured project in ZANU PF prior to his ouster. The accusation against Robert Mugabe also sticks because he has not been repentant, and has shown himself very willing to politically undermine President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Either Robert Mugabe ordered the grenade attack himself, or those still loyal to him did it without his say so, but he would have been the (willing) political beneficiary had the attack succeeded.

If I know the above dynamics, enemies of Zimbabwe also know the same dynamics and could have carried out the attack to throw the country, or at least ZANU PF, into civil war/conflict. As to what these other people would benefit from such a scenario, one would have to know all the concerned parties and their interests, and how those interests would be served by a civil war. It is beyond the scope of this short entry to make such an analysis.

Political Implications:

Had President Mnangagwa and his two Vice Presidents been eliminated, Constitutional Lawyers will tell you that the Speaker of Parliament would have assumed the Presidency until Elections had been held, but that’s just lazy theorizing. The reality is this: those who carried out this attack would have wanted Robert Mugabe reinstated as President, as a “corrective measure” against the Military Coup that removed him in November. It would then be up to Mugabe to go ahead with Elections, or declare a State of Emergency to allow him time to get back at his “enemies” in the Armed Forces of Zimbabwe. This is also where the grenade attack planners show their myopia, or desperation; the Military, instead, would have stepped in automatically and ruled Zimbabwe under State of Emergency powers. There is a unity in the Command Element of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces that has defied outsider meddling for a long time (as Robert Mugabe found out when he tried to set then Lt. General Valerio Sibanda, against General Chiwenga, on his return from China in November last year).

National Security Implications:

The throwing of the grenade was a desperate act of people who would rather see the country burn in a civil war than prosper under someone else. A scorched earth policy mentality that very much characterised Robert Mugabe’s conduct towards the time of his removal from office. The possibility of a civil war was there had President Mnangagwa’s calming influence at the helm been removed. The military’s first instinct is to use force. After all, you can be assured that Robert Mugabe has not yet suffered the fate of Gaddafi only because President Mnangagwa holds in check, this extreme instinct of the security establishment. Robert Mugabe also did this same thing very well with Morgan Tsvangirayi. There are times when Diplomacy trumps the use of force. Without this calming civilian influence, the military would make missteps that will lead to civil war (or the need for intervention by outsiders).

Islamic State On The Korean Peninsula

“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know” - Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense.

What comes after Kim Jong-un? That is the question.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence under George W. Bush during the 2003 Iraq invasion, said something that greatly amused pundits, he said: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” While pundits and comedians were amused insofar as this could be a punchline when they tell their next joke at a party, the person who studies international dynamics, to make predictions on the next security threats, must take a different instruction from the “unknown unknowns” quote.

Donald Rumsfeld was trying to make the case that they should invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to obviate the danger of the “unknown unknowns” threat from Saddam Hussein. In hindsight, it was a disingenuous and cynical claim, because as it turns out, the invasion caused more instability and suffering than any unknown Saddam Hussein capability. This is not lost on analysts who notice that, the result of the invasion, was suffering for the Iraqis, and the creation of a hitherto unheard of armed group that now threatens Europe at will – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

With the knowledge we now have of how things turned out in Iraq and Libya, after United States regime change actions there, we can make the case – with mathematical certainty – that if the United States attacks North Korea as threatened, the outcome is knowable. The United States thinks it can make a decapitating strike on the North Korean Supreme Leader. This will then lead to the population being freed from a dictatorship and thus there will be no retaliatory strikes from North Korean Rocket Forces. The problem with that line of reasoning is that experience belies it. It is no longer a case of unknown unknowns what will happen after regime change action, but known knowns: civil war and rise of armed non-state actors in those ungoverned spaces.

What will happen if the United States attacks North Korea, is that North Korea’s Rocket Forces will retaliate with missiles against South Korea and Japan – a situation which will put over 20 million people directly in harm’s way. But even if this danger was not there, and Kim Jong-Un could be removed by force, wherever a power vacuum has occurred, non-state armed groups have invariably filled the vacuum. We have never heard of a single terrorist attack in North Korea, but this will not be the case once the monopoly on the legitimate use of force is taken away. And with Islamic State being the umbrella of choice for those aggrieved by the West, it is not inconceivable that terrorist attacks against Western interests will start happening on the Korean Peninsula, if use of force is pursued as an option against North Korea. 

Russian Involvement in Syria: Enforcing Its United Nations Security Council Veto.

“Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage” - Thucydides, The History Of The Peloponnesian War, 5th Century B.C.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin of the Russian Federation at the United Nations Security Council.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

The Western mainstream media has been working hard to portray Russia’s involvement in the Syria conflict, on the invitation of the legitimate government there, as an act of misplaced geopolitical ambitions which has prolonged the conflict and suffering. The Western media and government officials are peddling the idea that Russia is on the wrong side of history and international law. I cannot say much about who is on the right and wrong side of history, as that is a subjective determination. In Libya, the intervention in 2011 was claimed by the same sources to be on the right side of history – a narrative which is belied by the facts of Libya today. We can, however, say something definitive about Russia’s intervention in Syria vis-à-vis International Law.

The closest the international society of states has to a Constitution (a repository of public international law), is the United Nations Charter, and the highest enforcement body of the United Nations is the Security Council (UNSC). Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter is where the Security Council’s powers and functions are described. The UNSC sits in deliberation over breaches of international law and passes binding United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR). Any one of the five Permanent Members can block the passing of a Resolution by resorting to its Veto power. The Veto is a mechanism which allows a Permanent Security Council to block the passing of a United Nations Security Council Resolution. Once the Veto has been deployed, no actions that undermine that Veto should be taken by the other Members of the international community. A Permanent Security Council Member thus has three options available to it when deliberating a Resolution: Vote for, Abstain, or Veto. The United States tends to Veto all Resolutions demanding that Israel should observe rules of common decency in its occupation of Palestine. Once the United States vetoes a Resolution on Israel, the matter is closed.

I have characterised Russia’s intervention in Syria as enforcing its United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Veto. I am thus talking about something that is only happening because, in pursuit of its perceived exceptionalism, the United States and its allies have chosen to deliberately circumvent Russia’s Veto of the UNSC Resolution on Syria. Syria, too, cannot be discussed in isolation from Libya and the UNSC Vote authorising use of force there. The Russian Federation abstained from the UNSC Resolution establishing a No-Fly Zone over Libya, the United States then overstepped the limits of the Resolution and effected Regime Change in Libya. The result is that Libya is now in a state of anarchy. Russia, having given the United States the proverbial enough rope in Libya, rightly, vetoed the Resolution proposing protection of civilians in Syria. Experience had shown that protection of civilians is only a cover for the United States’ geopolitical manoeuvres. Having failed to get the Resolution, the United States decided to still give arms to the rebels and terrorists fighting the Syrian Arab Army, in direct contravention of the rules of Security Council Veto.

Russia’s intervention in Syria should then be viewed in the light of these facts. Russia and Iran are the only countries that are in Syria legally. Turkey, the United States, United Kingdom, France and Jordan are in Syria illegally. Use of force without a United Nations Security Council Resolution is illegal, as is being in a country without the invitation of the legitimate government of that country. Russia is in Syria on the request of the Syrian Arab Republic government, and Russia’s actions have so far prevented regime change there, as would have been the case had the UNSC Resolution on Syria passed. The Veto, therefore, has been enforced.     

Alexander Prokhorenko, the Russian Spetsnaz Operative who called an airstrike on himself to avoid being taken prisoner by ISIS in Syria.

Book Review. A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence.

“Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian Author.

Myself with two of the authors - Dickie Davis and David Kilcullen - at the book launch in London.

On 16 May 2016, I attended the A Great Perhaps? London Book Launch at the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall. I did not manage to engage in the actual discussion myself because, up to then, my knowledge of Colombia was very limited. But this has since changed after I managed to finish reading this book in a record 4 days, despite my other commitments. I now know enough to have a competent discussion on Colombia, as this book has illuminated a part of the globe that was previously dark to me. 

The book is very readable (and accessible) even to a non-academic readership. I have sometimes read books that are quite useless to the policy-maker as they are laden with high sounding academic premises and analyses that have no relation with reality, the type that is often referred to by the shorthand - “ivory tower speculation.” This book avoids that pitfall. The authors have military backgrounds in counterinsurgency campaigns such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan and, therefore, manage to get the balance right between academic premise and practicality. A Great Perhaps? thus succeeds in its main stated aim, that is, to furnish the policy-maker with actionable intelligence insofar as it explains the dynamics of Colombia’s conflict, and what lessons can be drawn from them by African governments.

The whole of government approach (Defence, Development, Diplomacy) is emphasized as the solution to Colombia’s problems, and the book finds endorsement from African leaders such as Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Donald Kaberuka (African Development Bank), and Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria). I presume they have read the book, Obasanjo certainly, for he wrote the foreword and was involved in the project. Lessons learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq have proved what should have been obvious all along, that: even a military with an annual budget of over $700 billion may not win against a rag tag militia. Military power alone does not solve conflict, attention has to be paid to the political and socio-economic issues as well if success is to be attained. This is the important lesson that comes from this book for the policy-maker.

But, dismayingly, the book also highlights that there are people known as ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ who may have no interest in peace because they benefit from the war economy. These conflict entrepreneurs can be found in the government as well in the insurgencies and will not be enticed by the prospects of peace. A further disheartening point is that even if peace is negotiated successfully in Colombia, it may actually sow the seeds of the next conflict. From reading this book, the advice I would give to any African countries is that, if they can help it, they should never open the door to war, as once war starts, it has logics of its own which defy human control.

The main weakness of this book is that although it mentions the 'dual economy’ in Colombia, the racial differences, the need for land reform, the marginalisation of indigenous people, human rights abuses by the government and other genuine grievances, the authors were hosted by the Colombian government and the book is essentially written from the point of view of the government. The story of the poor, the marginalised, and the disenfranchised who fight on the side of FARC is not given its own voice. But this is excusable because these authors are former military men and advise “legitimate” governments all over the world. This defect in their book can be easily corrected by picking up the works of FARC sympathisers, to which I am certain there is no law against. 

David Kilcullen et al (2016). A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict And Convergence. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.

My copy, signed by two of the authors.

Information Superiority In Warfare: A Myth?

A diagrammatic representation of USAF Col John Boyd's Observe - Orient - Decide - Act (OODA) Loop.

The above decision making model will be my reference point during my attendance at a major warfare conference in London in the next few days. The OODA Loop is fully explained here and a good example of how Donald Trump has (unwittingly) used it appears here 

The conference is on information superiority in warfare and, make no mistake, information, in all walks of life, is an invaluable commodity. The thing to remember, however, is that information has its own nature and rules which defy total domestication even by the most dedicated adherent. So, even before I attend this important conference, I am already circumspect about the grand pronouncement western war fighting says it aims at;  

Information Superiority is defined by Western militaries as “the operational advantage derived from the ability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same.” 

With an annual budget of over US$700 billion, failures to win (outright) the war in Afghanistan, makes a mockery of such a grand pronouncement and opens up avenues to discuss more decisive factors in warfare.

ISIS May Yet Punch Way Above Its Weight

The Russian Su - 24 All Weather Bomber that was shot down by Turkey in Syria on 24 November 2015.

If the unthinkable - nuclear war - were to happen over Turkey's downing of a Russian bomber jet in Syria, then ISIS will have punched way above its weight in style. The fable that readily comes to mind in illustration, is the African folk tale: The Hare, the Elephant and the Hippopotamus. 

Zimbabwe's Coming Civil War: A Cadmean Victory

Great Zimbabwe, the ruins near Masvingo where Zimbabwe draws its name from. Picture Credit: Great Zimbabwe University.

"Make us enemies of every people on earth, but save us from civil war" - Lucan: Bellum Civile, c. 48

I attended a discussion at Oxford University on reforming the security sector in Zimbabwe, and the general gist of the discussion led me to believe that "reform" was actually a euphemism for "weakening the security services." A respected academic no less, said to me, in confidence; "the problem in Zimbabwe is how to get arms of war to the general population." That's what he said to me.

Well, history is philosophy teaching by examples. The Security Sector Reform discussion I attended was held before the examples we now have of Syria, Yemen and Libya. What these examples have incontrovertibly shown us is that a civil war can only result in a Cadmean Victory - a victory purchased with one's own ruin.

The Most Potent Global Security Threat Of The Twenty First Century

The unthinkable is the logical conclusion of all the great powers' strategic manoeuvring. Picture Credit: Wonderful Engineering.  

The greatest global security threat of the 21st century is the United States of America's fear of losing its status as the world hegemony. From this fear precipitates actions - in the name of "strategic manoeuvring" - that have destabilized, to name only the latest places: Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Ukraine represents exactly the kind of overreach, on the United States' part, that may result in the unthinkable.

This is the top tier of global security threats, all other threats should be viewed through this prism. It is also not necessarily that America is evil, Thucydides writing in the 5th Century already showed that all pre-eminent powers will behave this way. The only difference now is that a war fought to maintain such a hegemony will be the last war.