http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s6_15.asp
Monday, June 18, 2007 <http://worldtribunecomments.blogspot.com/2007/06/poll-finds-most-of-world-i s-cool-with_18.html> Ortega in Tehran: Attracted not by love, but hate [of U.S.] Yes, in case you missed it, indeed, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro's old wannabe, was grandstanding in Tehran. The Nicaraguan - whom American apologists once told us was just an "agrarian radical" - went to visit the Mullahs because "the Sandanistas' revolution [which] took over the power in 1979, the exact year that the Islamic revolution succeeded in Iran. are twin revolutions which had and still pursue similar goals, such as justice, freedom, sovereignty, and fighting imperialism." Never mind defining those terms: But why would an archtypical Latin American, Marxist, anticlerical caudillo join with a hate spewing Islamofascist [awaiting he says the return of the Lost Inman], President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s6_15.asp#> , to "work together to put in place a world order based on peace and justice"? It's been love at first sight. Ahmadinejad had already visited Managua in January shortly before Ortega's trip back into power courtesy the fracturing of Nicaragua's democratic forces and maladroit Washington strategies in Central America. Through the din of media hype and the gruesome reality of suicide bombings against innocents, a significant pattern is developing, not to be ignored by Washington strategists and the Democratic Party skeptics of the Bush Administration's proclaimed war on terror. Despite all the unique qualities of jihadist violence, it borrows heavily not only tactics and weapons from the Cold War <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s6_15.asp#> - as it improvises very effectively new ones. Increasingly, worldwide the jihadists are fitting their campaigns into old overall patterns and strategies not all that alien to regional and world politics. True, the Islamofascists are largely loosely allied autonomous gangs of fanatics dedicated to nihilistic goals in particular regions. But increasingly their activities merge into old state-directed campaigns, sometimes outgrowths of the Cold War itself, but as often even older struggles for hegemony. It's not clear how much the lovefest between Tehran and Managua will produce in the long run when the rhetoric cools. There are opportunities for the jihadists in Latin America. There have been rumors of training camps and drug-related funding operations in the old black market triangle of Argentina-Paraguy-Brazil. That two of the accused plotters for a JFK Airport terror attack came into this country as illegal teenagers across the southern border gives one pause. But, in general, Iran is willing to aid and abet the remnants of the old Sandinistas in their "traditional" version of Latin American anti-Americanism in an effort to frustrate Washington's aims in that region as part of their overall worldwide strategy of discrediting the U.S. and minimizing its power potential by taxing its resources on all fronts. Throughout the Cold War, Moscow exploited targets of opportunity; often uniting what otherwise would have seemed to have been forces with little common interest, but with the aim of creating difficulties for the U.S. and its allies in the West. [To take a far-out example: When Sri Lanka began to move toward the West with its critical position in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and away from Soviet-sponsored New Delhi "neutralism", Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi blessed the Soviet-inspired Palestinian Liberation Organization training of Ceylonese Tamil separatists in camps in south India. The Sri Lankans, the Indians, and the world, are still paying the cost of that little accommodation.] Conversely, of course, the U.S. has had some strange bedfellows - following what FDR said was his Nicaraguan policy of favoring the dictator Somoza on the eve of World War II when Washington toppled a pro-Nazi government in neighboring Panama for the security of the Canal. ["He's a sonnavabitch, but he is our sonnavabitch!"] That's why despite its internal problems which could implode the Persian Empire - as it has so many times in the past - Tehran is back at the old stand of attempting to break through Arab defenses. It feeds the disaffection of Shia Arab minorities and the old Persian-speaking mercantile networks in the Persian Gulf <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s6_15.asp#> ; not least in Bahrein where a Shia majority smarts under a Sunni dictatorship just outside the U.S.' principle base in the Gulf. It has made a client state of Syria, despite that country's Sunni majority and minority Alawite [heretical Shias] ruling clique. It funded and supplied Sunni Hamas' takeover of Gaza in mid-June even though Hamas was founded as the Gaza Wing of the [neighboring] Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, the intellectual grand-daddy of current Al-Qaeda and Sunni jihadism]. It funded and armed [through Syria] Hizbullah militia among the southern Lebanon Shia as a threat to Israel and a pro-Western Lebanese government. Washington now officially acknowledges Tehran has been arming Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan, turning its back on its former allies, the Afghan Shia Hazarras. In a sense, there is nothing new about a program to foster Persia's ancient goal - sometimes accomplished - of ruling the whole Middle East. In southern Thailand, the jihadists are falling in with longtime ethnic Malay separatists. In the southern Philippines islands, they are aiding the same Moros whom "Blackjack" Pershing put down in rebellion at the turn of the 20th century after decades of their war against Spanish colonial rule. West Javanese [Pasoendan] Muslim extremists are again arrayed against their less orthodox Javanese countrymen in a fight when Dutch colonial conquest of the East Indies paralleled Islam simultaneously consolidating its hold in the Islands. The jidhadists have thrown their weight to the Baluch - not all that devout Muslims - whose feudal elite are fighting off the encroaching modernizing presence of the central Pakistan government [and its army and its ethnic majority Punjabis]. Sudanese Arabs appear ready to sacrifice their relationship with the larger jihadist world by collaborating with American intelligence on al Qaeda <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s6_15.asp#> to fend off Washington pressure opposing their centuries-old effort to subdue the African population in Darfur. All this means there is, indeed, a worldwide war on terror, but it often camouflages and sometimes reinforces older and perhaps in the long-term, stronger, powerful geopolitical currents. To wish them away as some in the current Washington debate would seem to want to do, is to defy history. _____ Sol W. Sanders, ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and <http://www.east-asia-intel.com/> East-Asia-Intel.com. 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