Are the various entities within the Nation of Islam a nation? If they are politically organized, yes.
Is there, really, a discrete “Nation of Islam”? Outside of the Islamist imagination, at least?
Are the uncontrolled areas of Africa (with borders) nations? If they have their own territory and government, yes. There is no requirement that a government be effective to attain nation status.
Agreed.
Is a federation of tribes a nation? Yes.
Depends on the federation, and the circumstances.
In the case of the Taliban, they governed and controlled territory. That meets at least one definition for nation as well as the UN definition for state.
The Taliban were the governing party of the nation of Afghanistan. That was one example of a nation that openly harbored and sponsored terrorists. That government is now gone. The terrorists aren’t. They made the mistake of establishing a fixed base, and paid for it. Don’t count on them making the mistake again.
If you carefully examine the leadership of many/most of the terror sponsoring groups that are presently attacking us and others, you surely must see the intricate web carefully interwoven between most terrorist groups' leadership and the governments of the states where they reside.
Not always. The terrorists are rapidly discovering that their safest havens are not within supportive nations, but in superficially hostile nations that lack the will or the physical control of their own territory needed to uproot the terrorists. Countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco, to name a few, are among the safest places for terrorists these days (the same could be said of much of Europe). US forces have to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of these states, and have a very limited capacity to attack the terrorists sheltering there. Indigenous forces lack the will or ability to act effectively on their own. It is these states, not those openly sympathetic to the terrorists, that are the real problem in the war on terror.
When GWB and Colin Powell talk about state-sponsored terrorism, they are using the internationally recognized UN definition of state. They mean nation sponsored terrorism too.
Again, the terrorists will take state sponsorship when they can get it, but they are perfectly capable of operating without it, and they are actually safer within the territory of our allies. A functioning AQ operative is safer in Marseille than in the Sudan: he knows he won’t get a missile through his window.
The Afghanistan operation was, IMO, completely justified and appropriate. It didn’t eliminate AQ, but its adverse effect on AQ was real and well worth the commitment of resources. I can’t say the same for Iraq. I don’t doubt that Saddam was in contact with AQ, but I see no reason to suppose that he was ever a major AQ supporter, or that his removal had a significant negative impact on AQ. All in all, I’d say the net gain to AQ in propaganda value and soft targets was greater than their net loss. I don’t think that’s an accident: it seemed to me from the beginning that the Iraq war was designed more for impact on domestic politics than for impact on AQ.
We still have serious hostile-state problems in Iran and the Sudan. We still have a huge problem with terrorists entrenched in nominally friendly nations that are incapable of acting against them, a situation for which we have yet to devise an effective response. These were bigger problems than Iraq before the Iraq war, and they remain with us now. |
