284 - Are Assassinations Effective? Or Do They Prolong War?

Israel and Sudan

            Did the assassination of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh by a delayed bomb do anything to accelerate the end of the war in Gaza, diminish the strength and fighting abilities of Hamas, or weaken host country Iran?  Likewise, have Israel’s retaliatory annihilations of Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr and Hamas’ Muhammad Deif from the air weakened the embattled state’s adversaries in any material or lasting manner? 

            An assassination is an expressive, not an instrumental act.  In the very recent cases, Israel may have hoped to reduce Hamas and Hezbollah’s military prowess by removing its top plotters and strategists. Certainly, Shukr and Deif had hands on the key levers of attack. Deif was one of Hamas’ leaders who planned the dastardly Oct. 7 massacres. Shukr pressed the missile triggers But Haniyeh was a political leader possibly un-consulted about October and someone from his base in Qatar who was helping to broker the kind of Gaza ceasefire that both Hamas and Israel could accept. Why remove a relatively sane and tolerant voice of peace and reconciliation?

            Doing so made and makes no sense in terms of peacemaking.  But there are those on the extreme radical right in Israel’s government who view and will view these acts of revenge as instrumental when, from a longer view, they are merely expressive. They demonstrated Israel’s extensive reach into and beyond Iran’s defenses, and allowed Israel to humiliate Iran just at the moment when a possibly more moderate approach by its brand-new President Masoud Pezeshkian was about to bring Tehran out of the cold and diminish the grip of Ayatollah Khameini.  Why make it hard for Pezeshkian to modernize Iran’s diplomatic outreach? Why not reward Iran to curb the zeal of its destabilizing proxies – the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas?

            Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will argue that the assassinations were truly instrumental, reducing the ability of Hamas and Hezbollah to prosecute the wars against Israel and, also, warning off Iran.  But there is paltry evidence that the eliminated leaders will not immediately be succeeded by deputies waiting in the wings just for this newly provided opportunity to be even more destructive and successful.  There is no historical evidence that assassinations accomplish more than further radicalization of movements of resistance and movements of aggression.

            By sabotaging the ongoing negotiations potentially leading to a Gaza ceasefire (which Haniyeh was encouraging), hegemonic power in Hamas now falls fully into the hands of Yahya Sinwar, chief perpetrator of the Oct. 7 massacres and the head of Hamas hiding somewhere inside a Gazan tunnel. 

Netanyahu seems to prefer battlefield competition to war cessation. He reckons that the longer the Gaza and other Middle Eastern wars continue, the longer he can remain in charge, avoid an election, and forestall his pending corruption trial.

The assassinations were about saving Netanyahu’s power and his hide as well as they were about accomplishing instrumental goals. Expressive accomplishments instead boosted Netanyahu’s legitimacy among a segment of the Israeli public, among the extremists upon whose backing his premiership rests, and conceivably among his Iranian antagonists.  But not necessarily among Israel’s generals, who want an end to war.  Nor among President Biden’s team, desperately trying to rein Israel in and end the damage to civilians in a Gaza now ruled more by criminal gangs than either Hamas or Israel.

            Presumably, Israel has many more targets for assassination.  But replacements are always available and both Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran itself, have redoubled reasons to try to show their own potency by striking back at Israel. Tit or tat achieves little.  And despite the roughly15,000(?) Hamas combatants killed by Israel (alongside even more civilians), Hamas is gaining new recruits and a greater Middle Eastern following (but not among Gazans themselves) that enables Hamas to soldier on.  Netanyahu’s tactics are not doing much except to save himself and prolong war – which seem to be the main objectives.

            Possibly emboldened by Israeli tactics, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary army of 100,000 or so, tried last week to gain an upper hand in its sixteen-month-old devastating struggle against Sudan’s regular army by sending a drone to kill General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s nominal head of state. The RSF strike failed.  But even if it had succeeded, a deputy would have replaced Burhan and the completely senseless struggle for control of Africa’s third largest polity would have continued at a high intensity.

            Backed substantially by Russia’s former Wagner Group and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the RSF has gained control of about half of Sudan and pushed the regular army command out of Khartoum, the capital, to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Burhan and his army control the eastern and northern sectors of Sudan, the RSF most of the south and west. They are battling for control of Darfur Province, in the far west, where the RSF is committing atrocities against Darfur’s African inhabitants, forcing thousands to flee into Chad.  Overall, the combat in Sudan has put 27 million civilians at starvation’s door, displaced 10 million from their homes, and made what once was one of Africa’s most prosperous and peaceful nations a place of terror and extreme humanitarian crisis.

            The original assassins, as they were called, were Shiite Ismailis who split off from other Shia adherents in the eleventh century, disputing the succession to the leadership of the Fatamid caliphate. They recognized a new imam and established a fortified castle in what is now northwestern Iran, near the Caspian Sea. Politically and theologically, the Nizari Ismailis set themselves apart and strove until the thirteenth century to secure their separateness from the caliphate that wanted to eradicate such dissidents. Although they developed a formidable reputation as martial defendants of their own version of Islam, the Nizaris were studious and learned. Their sect was named by others in Arabic as hashasheen, possibly reapers of crops or smokers of weed (hashish). Transliterated, they became known as assassins.

They posed a threat to the rest of Shia Islam, which forced the Nizaris to defend their faith, to create a network of mountain fortresses, and to carry out clandestine killings by dagger to protect their community. They were never mercenary marauders. But they employed stealth tactics to keep enemies at bay.  At least they did so until Genghis Khan’s Mongols spread from the east and overran their fortresses and ended the Nizari schism.

            Netanyahu’s assassins attack mostly from their air, often with devastating effect.  But it is not yet certain that his and their tactics will be any more effective in preserving the Israeli community than the Nizaris were in avoiding eventual ruin. Reconciliation and mutual rebuilding may comprise a much more sustainable strategy, particularly since Netanyahu and some of his compatriots really act in the absence of any strategic insights.  (Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and many others have been trying to guide Netanyahu toward an effective strategy, so far without success.)  A successful Israeli strategy would prioritize peace making over expressive targeted killings.

.