The TAZ and black globalization

Mark, over at ZenPundit, has an excellent (!) post on the virtual-state (not sure that 4GW, as a description of a form of warfare, works as a label for this).

Here's the money quote from Rohan Gunaratna:

Osama bin Laden will be its sultan; Mullah Omar its spiritual leader; heroin and smuggling its economic drivers; and terrorism its primary export. "Al Qaeda is building a mini-state, an enclave, in the FATA.."

NOTE: I use the term "virtual state" from Bobbitt's framework since it works well (I have a formal paper on this. If anyone is interested in it, send me a note).

Comments

[Fabius Maximus]

Very interesting post on a valuable article.

But how much of this is true? Since official US policy designated al Qaeda as our master global enemy, we can expect to see these "commie under the bed" articles appearing frequently in the mainstream US media.

Note how easily the US mainstream media adopted the "al Qaeda as our primary enemy in Iraq" narrative, with so little supporting evidence.

Perhaps some care is required with this material.

[a517dogg]

For a different kind of virtual state, see this Spiegel article on the expected disappearance of Tuvalu:

""Is it supposed to become a virtual country?" asked Rainer Lagoni, Professor of Maritime Law at the University of Hamburg. There is no legal definition for a country entirely without land."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,505819,00.html