tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81801795781297060302024-03-13T07:48:16.081-04:00Park ItPerspectives
on the US
Global MissionChuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-8044234214945165712008-12-17T13:25:00.003-05:002008-12-17T13:32:48.152-05:00Dick Cheney's Fantasy World<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUlFt1w3nUI/AAAAAAAAAN8/pR1Pr0hj-OA/s1600-h/ht_cheney_sunglasses_080410_main.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUlFt1w3nUI/AAAAAAAAAN8/pR1Pr0hj-OA/s320/ht_cheney_sunglasses_080410_main.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280828691897097538" border="0" /></a><br />by Scott Ritter<br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/16/dick-cheney-iraq-war-wmd">read the original at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span>>></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998 and is the author of Iraq Confidential (IB Tauris, 2006).</span><br /><br /><div id="article-wrapper"> <p>In yet another attempt at revisionist history by the outgoing Bush administration, vice-president <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/dickcheney">Dick Cheney</a>, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, <a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=6464919&page=1">took exception</a> to former presidential adviser Karl Rove's contention that the US <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6723">would not have gone to war</a> if available intelligence before the invasion had shown <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq">Iraq</a> not to possess weapons of mass destruction. Cheney noted that the only thing the US got wrong on Iraq was that there were no stockpiles of WMD at the time of the 2003 invasion. "What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stock."<br /><br />The vice-president should re-check both his history and his facts. Just prior to President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, the UN had teams of weapons inspectors operating inside Iraq, blanketing the totality of Iraq's industrial infrastructure. They found no evidence of either retained WMD, or efforts undertaken by Iraq to reconstitute a WMD manufacturing capability. Whatever dual-use industrial capability that did exist (so-called because the industrial processes involved to produce legitimate civilian or military items could, if modified, be used to produce materials associated with WMD) had been so degraded as a result of economic sanctions and war that any meaningful WMD production was almost moot. To say that Saddam had the capability or the technology to produce WMD at the time of the US invasion is <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report/">a gross misrepresentation of the facts</a>.<br /><br />While one can make the argument that Saddam had the people, insofar as the scientists who had participated in the WMD programmes of the 1980s were still in Iraq and, in many cases, still employed by the government, these human resources were irrelevant without either the industrial infrastructure, the economic base or the political direction needed to produce WMD. None of these existed. The argument Cheney makes on feed stock is even more ludicrous. Precursor chemicals used in the lawful manufacture of chemical pesticides were present in Iraq at the time of the invasion, but these were unable to be used in manufacturing the sarin, tabun or VX chemical nerve agents the Bush administration <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm">claimed existed inside Iraq in stockpile quantities</a> prior to the invasion. </p><p>The same can be said about Iraqi biological capability. The discovery after the invasion of a <a href="http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,515036381,00.html">few vials of botulinum toxin</a> suitable for botox treatments, but unusable for any weapons purposes, does not constitute a feed stock. And as for the smoking gun that the Bush administration did not want to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, there was no nuclear weapons programme in Iraq in any way shape or form, nor had there been since it was dismantled in 1991. Cheney's dissimilation of the facts surrounding Iraqi WMD serves as a distraction from the reality of the situation. Not only did the entire Bush administration know that the intelligence data about Iraqi WMD was fundamentally flawed prior to the invasion, but they also knew that it did not matter in the end. Bush was going to invade Iraq no matter what the facts proved.<br /><br />Cheney defended the invasion and subsequent removal of Saddam from power by noting that "this was a bad actor and the country's better off, the world's better off with Saddam gone". This is the argument of the intellectually feeble. It would be very difficult for anyone to articulate that life today is better in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra or any non-Kurdish city than it was under Saddam. Ask the average Iraqi adult female if she is better off today than she was under Saddam, and outside of a few select areas in Kurdistan, the answer will be a resounding "no". </p><p>The occupation of Iraq by the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a> is far more brutal, bloody and destructive than anything Saddam ever did during his reign. When one examines the record of the US military in Iraq in terms of private homes brutally invaded, families torn apart and civilians falsely imprisoned (the prison population in Iraq during the US occupation <a href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90001020">dwarfs that of Saddam's regime</a>), what is clear is that the only difference between the reign of terror inflicted on the Iraqi people today and under Saddam is that the US has been far less selective in applying terror than Saddam ever was.<br /><br />At a time when the US and the world struggle with a resurgent Iran, the Iranian-dominated Dawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/05/iraq.middleeast">governs Iraq today in name only</a>. The stability enjoyed by Iraq today has been bought with the presence of 150,000 US troops who have overseen the ethnic cleansing of entire neighbourhoods in cities around Iraq, and who have struck temporary alliances with Shia and Sunni alike which cannot be sustained once these forces leave (as they are scheduled to do by 2011). </p><p>Invading Iraq and removing Saddam, the glue that held that nation together as a secular entity, was the worst action the US could have undertaken for the people of Iraq, the Middle East as a whole and indeed the entire world. For Cheney to articulate otherwise, regardless of his fundamentally flawed argument on WMD, only demonstrates the level to which fantasy has intruded into <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/16/dick-cheney-abc-interview-iraq">the mind of the vice-president</a>.</p> </div>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-72291334491185178062008-12-17T10:58:00.002-05:002008-12-17T11:11:37.473-05:00Robert Irwin's top 10 books on Islam and Islamic culture<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/18/top10s.islam">read the original article at <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span>>></a><br /><br />Writer and broadcaster Robert Irwin is the author of The Alhambra, recently published by Profile. He is also the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion and The Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature as well as six novels.<br /><br /><h2>1. The Koran Interpreted, translated by Arthur J Arberry</h2><p>Strictly, Muslims hold that a translation from Arabic of the Koran is not possible. However, this is the best attempt at a translation into English. Not only is this one the most accurate, it also captures the rhythm and poetry of the original. Arberry was a devout Christian who nevertheless identified strongly with the mystical strain in Islam.</p><h2>2. The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook</h2><p>However good the translation you read (or even if you can read it in Arabic), the text of the Koran still needs a lot of glossing and some context. Cook is erudite, witty and incisive and he packs a huge amount into his 150 pages. Even specialists in Koranic studies are likely to learn something from this amazingly efficient account of how the Koran was put together, what it contains and how it is studied and recited today. Apart from anything else, this book should serve as a model of how to write a very short account of anything whatsoever.</p><h2>3. The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran by Roy Mottahedeh</h2><p>There is no other book quite like this. Mottahedeh, a brilliant Princeton professor, based his account of spiritual life in Iran on a series of lengthy interviews with an Iranian mullah, tracing the holy man's career from childhood in the holy city of Qom to a senior position in the ranks of the Iranian clergy. This searching exploration of the spiritual and intellectual life of Shi'i Islam is effectively an insider's account of an educational curriculum that has not significantly changed since the middle ages. Modern political and social tensions in the region are also explored.</p><h2>4. A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century. Shaikh Ahmad al-'Alawi by Martin Lings</h2><p>This book changed my life. It is an inspiring account of the career and teachings of a great Algerian Sufi mystic master. Al-'Alawi, a holy man and profound thinker, founded one of the most important North African Sufi orders. Lings is a convert to Islam and his account of al-'Alawi's teachings manages to convey something of authentic Sufism, (as opposed to the ersatz new age stuff that is otherwise so widely available in the west). This is a book that may give you some sense of why and how Muslims believe in Allah.</p><h2>5. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism by Carl Ernst</h2><p>This is an outsider's account of Sufism written by an academic specialist in Islamic studies. Ernst lucidly sets out the mystical elements in the Koran and provides a potted history of the great Sufi orders from medieval times onwards. He is very good on the great Sufi poets, Hafiz and Rumi, but the most interesting chapter is the last, on contemporary Sufism.</p><h2>6. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (3 volumes) by Marshal GS Hodgson</h2><p>Hodgson died before he could quite finish this massive cultural history of Islam but, even so, it remains a great monument of learning and cross-cultural empathy. Hodgson attempted to rethink the way Islamic history was traditionally written about and he wanted to ditch Orientalist cliches. Since he was largely successful in these enterprises, his book has been hugely influential. It is particularly good on the achievements of Persian, Turkish and Indian Muslims.</p><h2>7. Atlas of the Islamic World by Francis Robinson</h2><p>This beautifully produced atlas is one of the books influenced by Hodgson's rethink of Islamic culture. The pictures (of Persian miniatures, Mughal architecture, African mosques, modern political posters and much else) are lovely. The accompanying text is intelligent and entirely reliable. Robinson reminds us, if the reminder is necessary, that Islam is not the monopoly of the Arabs and that high Islamic culture did not come to a screeching halt some time around the 11th century.</p><h2>8. A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani</h2><p>Although Islam is not the monopoly of the Arabs, they have played rather a large part in its propagation. Hourani was a fastidious stylist and this book, a glowing and sympathetic account of Arab achievements, was his last masterpiece. The narrative has a fine sweep and is not clogged with detail about people with unpronounceable names marching off to fight in unspellable places. Anyone thinking of going to the Middle East should read this first. So should Kilroy Silk.</p><h2>9. Islamic Art and Architecture by Robert Hillenbrand</h2><p>Hillenbrand is the top man on Islamic art in Britain today and in the past he has ranged extremely widely in his more specialist studies on Islamic art and architecture. His general book on this topic is compact and attractively illustrated. The quality of his prose and its effectiveness in evoking the appearance and aesthetic effect of the objects he is describing is marvellous. His description of the Alhambra, for example, is simply breathtaking.</p><h2>10. Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices by Andrew Rippin</h2><p>This is probably the best general account of what Muslims believe. Rippin instructs his readers in the elements of Islamic history and the evolution of theology and law, as well as meaning of such things as the hajj, salaat, Ramadan and jihad. He explains the differences between Shi'is and Sunnis. He is particularly strong on the challenges and opportunities facing modern Muslims, so that contemporary Islam's encounter with modernity, feminism and democracy are all thoughtfully explored.</p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-19120036822989505442008-12-16T10:50:00.003-05:002008-12-16T12:24:23.945-05:00Afghanistan and Neighbors Discuss Close Cooperation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUfkNj4cL3I/AAAAAAAAANs/H_xWXsmTxhY/s1600-h/15france_190.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 132px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUfkNj4cL3I/AAAAAAAAANs/H_xWXsmTxhY/s400/15france_190.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280440009736597362" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Iran absent from negotiations</span><br /><br />By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/steven_erlanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Steven Erlanger">STEVEN ERLANGER</a><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/europe/15france.html">read the original article at the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> site>></a><br /><br />PARIS — <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Afghanistan.">Afghanistan</a> and most of its neighbors agreed at an informal conference here on Sunday to work together to stabilize the country, restrict narcotics traffic and coordinate action against terrorist groups.<br /><p>The conference of foreign ministers, organized by <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about France.">France</a>, was aimed at shoring up regional relations in the interest of security and stability.</p><p>“There is a consensus that there can be no peace, security and prosperity in Afghanistan without the strong involvement of its neighbors,” the French foreign minister, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/bernard_kouchner/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Bernard Kouchner.">Bernard Kouchner</a>, said after the meeting. “And there can be no peace, security and prosperity for the region without a stable Afghanistan.”</p><p>But the notable absence of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Iran.">Iran</a> left a gaping hole in French hopes for the meeting. Though Iran had said its foreign minister would attend — then said no, then said yes and then said it would be represented by its ambassador to France — no Iranian official showed up, according to the French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Eric Chevallier. </p><p>“It’s unfortunate, but when nobody showed up this morning, everyone sat down to work,” Mr. Chevallier said. “No one explained why.” </p><p>Iran was annoyed with the French president, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/nicolas_sarkozy/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Nicolas Sarkozy">Nicolas Sarkozy</a>, for remarks he made last week criticizing constant threats by Iran’s president, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/mahmoud_ahmadinejad/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</a>, against Israel. It may be that with Iranian elections coming in June, it was more politic for the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to stay home.</p><p>The conference was meant to bring together all the countries touching on Afghanistan, including former Soviet republics like Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as well as China, India and Pakistan. Held behind closed doors at the Foreign Ministry residence at La Celle-St.-Cloud, west of Paris, the conference also included the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the United Nations.">United Nations</a> special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and senior <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the European Union.">European Union</a> officials responsible for foreign policy and aid.</p><p>Germany, which provides significant financial backing for <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/north_atlantic_treaty_organization/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.">NATO</a> operations in Afghanistan, was also invited, and it will be asked to do more on the ground there, with civilian and police trainers, if not with many more troops. Russia also attended, along with all countries with troops in Afghanistan, including the United States and Britain.</p><p>With President-elect <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Barack Obama">Barack Obama</a> vowing to increase the number of troops and civilian advisers substantially to try to stabilize Afghanistan, the French, who hold the European Union presidency until the end of the year, wanted to present a forward-looking European initiative, French officials said. </p><p>Although Iran did not attend, Pakistan, another critical player in the region, did. Pakistan has been accused of not doing enough to prevent cross-border operations by the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Taliban.">Taliban</a>, and NATO convoys and supply depots for the military effort in Afghanistan have recently been attacked in Pakistan itself. </p><p>On Sunday in Bahrain, Gen. <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_h_petraeus/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about David H. Petraeus.">David H. Petraeus</a>, head of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the problems in Pakistan brought “new urgency” to finding alternate supply routes through the “stans” of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. </p><p>The Paris conference also provided an opportunity for a high-level diffusion of tensions between India and Pakistan after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last month, which have been linked to a Pakistani militant group. </p><p>Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said at the meeting that the siege “was an attack on us all” and promised to do more to stop terrorism, a French official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in accord with normal diplomatic practice.</p><p> An Indian minister of state for external affairs, Anand Sharma, called for “effective, visible and coordinated cooperation,” the French official said. </p><p>The conference became more detailed on economic regional cooperation, officials reported, with the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about European Commission">European Commission</a> offering to host a meeting of economic experts to prepare better for a regional economic conference planned for Islamabad, Pakistan, early next year.</p>A French official, in answer to a question, said that issues of the Afghan government’s competence and reputation for corruption “did come up, in the context of the interests of the Afghans themselves.” Neighbors and allies all wanted “better compliance and implementation of programs,” the official said.Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-90130810121760890272008-12-11T19:41:00.006-05:002008-12-12T12:44:47.528-05:00Congresswoman Barbara Lee Introduces Resolution Opposing U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUKjChkWVxI/AAAAAAAAANc/tMzf8cOIPc8/s1600-h/rep_leepress.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 178px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SUKjChkWVxI/AAAAAAAAANc/tMzf8cOIPc8/s200/rep_leepress.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278960976997537554" border="0" /></a><br />Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced a resolution Wednesday disapproving the security agreement reached between the Bush Administration and the Government of Iraq. Questioning the length of troop commitments and constitutionality of the agreement, Lee expressed her reasoning for the bill saying, “The resolution puts the House of Representatives on record in opposition to the agreement because it does not comply with constitutional requirements and is not in the best interests of the United States. For starters, the Agreement contemplates a timetable that could leave U.S. troops in Iraq until December 31, 2011. Aside from the fact that the America people are plainly fed up with this unnecessary war and occupation in Iraq and want to see it ended, occupying Iraq for three more years under the Bush plan would cost American taxpayers $360 billion based on current spending levels. That amount is nearly half of the money paid by taxpayers to bail out Wall Street and obviously could be better spent digging our economy out of the ditch the policies of the Bush Administration have put it in. <p>“Second, the Bush agreement undermines the constitutional powers of the next president by subjecting American military operations to the approval of the Iraqi government, by giving operational control to ‘joint mobile operations command centers’ controlled by a joint American-Iraqi committee. Throughout history, American troops have been placed under foreign control in peacekeeping operations only where authorized under treaties ratified by the Senate.</p> <p>“These are serious deficiencies and there is little doubt that others will soon be discovered and brought to light. It is a seriously flawed agreement which illustrates perfectly the necessity of Congressional review and approval of any agreement concerning the United States Armed Forces and the security of Iraq. An agreement to commit American troops to the defense and security of another country is a major commitment that must have the support of the American people, which can only be reflected by the Congress of the United States. That process has not been followed in this case and for this reason the Agreement should be disapproved. The resolution I have introduced provides the House of Representatives an appropriate vehicle to register its disapproval of this seriously flawed agreement.”</p> For a copy of the resolution, click <a href="http://lee.house.gov/uploads/LEE_284_xml.pdf">here</a>>>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-82786842422417582992008-12-10T10:11:00.002-05:002008-12-10T10:14:14.157-05:00Warlords Toughen US Task in AfghanistanBy <span class="name"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="javascript:window.open('/time/letters/email_letter.html','letter','width=400,height=420,status=no,scrollbars=yes')">Aryn Baker / Kabul</a></span><br /><a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1865255,00.html">read the original article at Time>></a><br /><br /><div class="photoBkt"> <div class="tout"> <div class="imgcont"><img src="http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2008/0812/dostum_1208.jpg" alt="General Abdul Rashid Dostum." title="General Abdul Rashid Dostum." width="525" height="294" /></div> <div class="caption">General Abdul Rashid Dostum.</div> <div class="credit">Paula Bronstein / Getty<br /><br /></div> </div> </div> <!-- /div.artTools --> <!-- Article Body Start --> Like many mothers in Afghanistan, Maghferat Samimi has affixed the photo of a child to her mobile phone. But the two-and-a-half-year-old is not her daughter. She is a rape victim, one of scores that Samimi, a researcher with the Afghan Human Rights Organization, has documented in the country's northern provinces over the past six months. Witnesses to the child's abduction by a local militia commander — a person who would once have been called a "warlord" — have had their rape claim backed up by a nearby hospital, but the district police chief maintains that the child fell on a stick. The police chief's refusal to issue an arrest warrant, he says, has nothing to do with the fact that he is friends with the militia commander. Seeking justice from government officials, says Samimi, "is like going to the wolves for help, when the wolves have stolen your sheep." That is what it is like in Afghanistan, where lawless warlords are now the law.<br /><br /><p>The Afghan warlords largely responsible for assisting the U.S.'s ousting of the Taliban in 2001 are now deeply entrenched in Afghan society. They have positions in government, in the police, in the army and in business. Though they have largely relinquished their tanks and heavy artillery, most have been able to maintain their core militias in the form of private security companies, political parties or loose business networks. Allegations of land grabs, rape, murder and kidnapping are rife. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Afghan human rights organizations such as Samimi's have documented extortion rackets run by former warlords and militia-run prisons where captives are held for ransom. Afghan journalists covering their crimes have been harassed by police or thrown in jail. Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.</p> <p>Faced with <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1865223,00.html" target="_new">a rapidly spreading insurgency</a> that threatens to overturn seven years of incremental progress in Afghanistan — a survey released Monday by the International Council on Security and Development reports that the Taliban are present in 72% of the country — <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1823945,00.html" target="_new">the U.S. and its allies are struggling to find a new strategy to stabilize Afghanistan.</a> President George W. Bush has announced that about 4,500 more soldiers will be sent there early in the new year, but that is a fraction of what General David McKiernan, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has said that he needs to successfully conduct the war. Meanwhile, allied forces have been forced to rely on local militia leaders for intelligence gathering, delivery of supplies and to better understand the country's southern tribal networks. In the north, where the Uzbek and Tajik warlords' historic hatred of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban has maintained a stability that has so far been unattainable elsewhere, both national and coalition leaders are loathe to upset the balance by pushing for prosecution. One former NATO official in Afghanistan compares the warlords to shrapnel lodged in an artery — infection is a risk, he says, but pulling it out could be even worse. "There are so many other things we have to worry about, so why go and open this can of worms?"</p> <p>In a new article in <i>Foreign Affairs</i> magazine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes, "Over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, [military] operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance ... and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit." But so far, the U.S. is failing to do that. With the possibility that <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1857953,00.html" target="_new">Indian threats of retaliation</a> over last month's terror attacks on Mumbai could force Pakistan to move its military to the east from the Afghan border, where it is currently fighting elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is more important than ever that Afghanistan's central government be strengthened. The perception that warlords, protected by their influence and threats of violence, can commit crimes with impunity has rocked Afghan society, and threatens to undermine the very government that the United States and its allies are trying to build up. </p> <p>This is not the first time warlords have had positions of power in Afghanistan. Following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, rival mujahedin groups that had united to drive the foreigners out turned on each other, further destroying the country in a brutal civil war marked by warlord rule. The government collapsed, and militia commanders were able to seize territory, terrorize the population and, in some cases, even issue currency. The Taliban capitalized on widespread disgust with their savagery, eventually coming to power in 1996. The U.S., unwilling to commit large numbers of ground troops when it went to overthrow the Taliban government, relied instead on the northern warlords and their militias. In a grave mistake that was to haunt Afghanistan for years to come, many of those leaders were given prominent positions when the new Afghan government was formed, enabling them to claw back credibility that had been lost due to their abhorrent behavior in the civil war. Samimi laments the lost opportunity for Afghanistan to start over. "Right after the collapse of the Taliban, the government had the opportunity to go after these commanders because they were scared and weak," she says. "Instead the international community and the government supported them and made them stronger. They didn't bring them to justice; they waited until they committed more crimes. For this we ousted the Taliban?"</p> <p>It is the unfulfilled promise of a new, clean democracy that has alienated the very Afghans that the West depends on to build a strong, stable country. Educated moderates, such as Samimi, have no love for the Taliban, but they have also become disillusioned with the current government's failings, as exemplified by the unaddressed predations of militia commanders. Francesc Vendrell, the former European Union envoy to Afghanistan, holds that "warlordism," as he calls it, is just as much at the root of the insurgency as religious ideology. "In Muslim society justice is the most essential element and, here in Afghanistan, people simply don't see it exist. They see impunity; they see a few people become extremely wealthy and they see cruelty," he says. "Therefore I think many of them are fence sitters. And you can't hope to win an insurgency when the civilians are sitting on the fence."</p> <p>For some Afghans, however, it may be too late. Among Samimi's other rape cases is 11-year-old Sweeta, whose attacker was protected by his employer, a local commander. The family's repeated attempts to bring the rapist to justice have been borne little fruit. In an interview with TIME this summer, President Karzai was told about Sweeta's case and promised to look into it, but Sweeta's sister Saleha had already given up on the government, and wondered if the past seven years of foreign intervention have brought any progress at all to Afghanistan. "If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now. It would have been a lesson for all," she says. "If there is no law, and the government does not listen to people's complaints, then it is better to go back to the Taliban era. At least then we had justice." —<i>With reporting by Ali Safi / Shebergan</i></p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-85611640235294448342008-12-08T17:48:00.003-05:002008-12-08T18:07:42.399-05:00The Ultimate Berlin Airdrop...from Space<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/ST2kcrM72zI/AAAAAAAAANM/tk5gmOvlWpA/s1600-h/SSP03-350.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 220px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/ST2kcrM72zI/AAAAAAAAANM/tk5gmOvlWpA/s400/SSP03-350.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277555150888360754" border="0" /></a><br />Commentary by Charles Holden<br /><br /><br />President-elect Obama hopes to be seen as effecting some of the promises of transparency and open government made during his campaign. An email <a href="http://change.gov/page/-/open%20government/yourseatatthetable/SeatAtTheTable_memo.pdf">(containing this memo)</a> from Obama transition team head John Podesta went out today to Obama supporters announcing a <a href="http://change.gov/page/-/open%20government/yourseatatthetable/SeatAtTheTable_memo.pdf">"seat at the table"</a> for the American public. However, the transition meetings at which various interest groups present their agendas will not be videotaped and posted on youtube. Instead, the documents presented at these meetings will be posted on the <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g4lGoK6HNkNLnGEAuHJ5LDrYlMxQ">change.gov website set up by the Obama campaign post-election</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1208/Strautmanis_Tchen_to_the_White_House.html">With the appointment of Michael Strautmanis</a> to Valerie Jarrett's office Friday, Dec. 5, Obama selected a long-time Chicago associate to head the transparency initiative of the pre-administration. Strautmanis assumes the title of Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, and is apparently charged with administering the Seat at the Table initiative, which according to the promotional video, allows the public to track meetings, view documents, and leave feedback. <a href="http://change.gov/open_government/yourseatatthetable/P10/">In current practice, however, the "track meetings" functionality appears not to be in use (I see no attendees lists, meeting notes, minutes, or best of all possible scenarios, video)</a>.<br /><br />Interest groups from <a href="http://change.gov/open_government/entry/national_council_of_la_raza_institute_for_hispanic_health/">La Raza's Institute for Hispanic Health (beneath which proposal one may find a lively discussion thread debating the merits of affirmative action)</a> to the <a href="http://change.gov/open_government/entry/women_business_owners_platform_for_growth/#IDComment12252346">Women Business Owner's Platform for Growth </a><a href="http://change.gov/open_government/entry/women_business_owners_platform_for_growth/#IDComment12252346">(beneath which proposal one may find a lively discussion thread debating the merits of affirmative action)</a> have submitted briefs supporting their agendas. There are many noteworthy groups and proposals, but the one that caught my eye was entitled <a href="http://change.gov/open_government/entry/space_solar_power_ssp_a_solution_for_energy_independence_climate_change/"><strong>Space Solar Power (SSP) — A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change</strong></a>, cooked up by the "imagineers" over at the Department of Defense's National Security Space Office’s Advanced Concepts Office [aka "Dreamworks"].<br /><br />The Dreamworks folks (apologies here to Spielberg) seem to be promoting the place of the big idea, in this case space, where they envision a field of solar panels with capacity to collect gigawatts of unobstructed solar energy to be beamed back to earth. In addition to the energy required to make possible to the entire world American levels of energy (although the implied capacity for altruism is perhaps as far away as this proposal's success), the project could also serve the Department of Defense's own requirements. "Energy beamed from space at over 5MWe's of energy would prove a disruptive game-changer on the battlefield" (as the safe remote reception of energy could theoretically allow for the military to set up power sources anywhere on earth).<br /><br />The imperative of neutralizing energy scarcity has seemingly forced a "no stones unturned" approach at Defense, as can be demonstrated by this proprosal's genesis, being brought neither by NASA nor the Department of Energy. The back of a napkin cost ($15,000/5kW solar panel system x 110M American households = $1.65 Trillion) of outfitting every American with their own solar panels would likely compare favorably to the cost of implementing the full-scale program as envisioned, so it is not surprising that the proposal is limited in scope to demonstrating a viable space-based model for the purposes of lowering barriers to entry for business ventures.<br /><br />Still, the fulfillment of the Defense Department's dream of realizing energy-on-demand to all corners of the globe would certainly ensure the US would not be beholden to Middle Eastern oil (except perhaps when it comes to the production of plastics). The message from the Department of Defense's NSSO appears to be an <span style="font-style: italic;">Obaman</span> "We Can Dream."Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-69333257275619879732008-12-08T12:37:00.003-05:002008-12-08T12:41:55.183-05:00Obama's Foreign Policy on Meet the PressPresident-elect Obama appeared on <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28096219/">Meet the Press </a>yesterday, and discussed briefly his positions on foreign policy.<br /><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/28096701#28096701" scrolling="no" width="425" frameborder="0" height="339"></iframe>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-34248800195366332552008-12-05T11:55:00.002-05:002008-12-05T11:59:23.921-05:00Obama's Afghan Dilemma<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STld0dnL5rI/AAAAAAAAAM8/S7CexPZ9ios/s1600-h/1228330673-large.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 296px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STld0dnL5rI/AAAAAAAAAM8/S7CexPZ9ios/s400/1228330673-large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5276351594324813490" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Robert Dreyfuss<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081222/dreyfuss">read the original article at <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nation</span></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081222/dreyfuss"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>>></a><br /><br /></span>President-elect Barack Obama says that Afghanistan is "the right war." "It's time to heed the call from General [David] McKiernan and others for more troops," Obama said in late October, referring to the US commander in Afghanistan. "That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan." He's coupled that with tough talk about hitting Al Qaeda anywhere, including next door in Pakistan. "If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out," Obama said in the second of his three debates with John McCain. "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda."<br /><br />Despite such rhetoric, however, nearly two years ago Obama began assembling a cast of experts steeped in the intricacies of South Asian affairs, and they have provided him with a far richer and more sophisticated view of the Afghanistan-Pakistan tangle than emerged in the campaign. "The format of presidential debates does not lend itself to a nuanced discussion," says Bruce Riedel, wryly. A former CIA specialist on South Asia who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush, Riedel led an advisory task force on Afghanistan-Pakistan for Obama. Interviews with Riedel and other Obama advisers--who made it clear they were not speaking for the president-elect--suggest that Obama intends to reorient US policy in the region significantly, and a key plank in that reorientation includes negotiations with the enemy. But assertions by the US command and the Obama team that we can both "surge" and negotiate overlook the glaring reality that sending more troops into the Afghan quagmire and urging the Pakistani government to escalate the war it is fighting against its own people will make the crisis worse, not better. <p> The outlines of Obama's strategy, which aren't likely to be articulated fully until after the inauguration, include a repudiation of the strident "global war on terror" rhetoric that marked President Bush's years and that only inflamed Muslim attitudes toward the United States. Campaign sloganeering aside, Obama may try to curtail the indiscriminate use of air power in Afghanistan against often ill-defined targets ("just air raiding villages and killing civilians" was how he put it in 2007), though how he'll do that while adding more troops and escalating the war isn't clear. He'll slow down, if not halt, the provocative cross-border attacks into Pakistani tribal areas against insurgent bases, even as he reserves the right to hit bin Laden. The incoming administration will take steps to strengthen the fledgling civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan against the machinations of the Pakistani army and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which maintains covert ties to a wide range of extremist groups, including the Taliban. And it will support a major boost in economic aid to both countries. </p> <p> Nearly all of Obama's advisers--along with members of a parallel task force at the Center for American Progress, a think tank likely to be the source of many Obama appointees--insist that a central part of a new US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan must be to facilitate a peace process between Pakistan and India, its giant neighbor to the east. For decades, Pakistan's military and the ISI have lent covert support to Islamist terrorist groups, in Afghanistan and in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as part of a strategy of asymmetric warfare against India. A Pakistan-India accord would strengthen Pakistan's civilian government and undercut the rationale for the army and ISI's ties to the Taliban, allied Afghan Islamist warlords and Kashmiri Islamist militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected of involvement in the Mumbai terror attack. Wendy Chamberlin, US ambassador to Pakistan on 9/11 and a member of Obama's Pakistan task force, is a strong supporter of efforts to forge a Pakistan-India accord. "I argued for it [in 2002]," she says. And I got dismissed." </p> <p> Many of Obama's advisers are open to the notion of bringing Iran into the mix, pointing out that Iran was helpful in 2001 in building the original coalition behind Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Iran's role was also highlighted in a September report by a private working group led by Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. They suggested connecting Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Iran in a regional economic community, concluding, "The U.S. should...reconsider its opposition to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project." Tariq Ali, a British-Pakistani scholar and author of <i>The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power</i>, has called for creation of a South Asian Union to facilitate a regional economic resurgence. </p> <p> Even as they favor eventual talks with "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban movement, some of Obama's advisers and Gen. David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, defend their call for a surge by arguing that their first priority is to stabilize Afghanistan militarily. "Trying to divide your enemy is always a smart thing to do," says Riedel. "But until we break the momentum that the Taliban has today, where they feel that they're the winner, I don't see that you have any credible chance of persuading even a small number of Taliban to break. They think they're winning, and if you look at the numbers, you can make a pretty convincing case." </p> <p> In the first ten months of this year, 255 US and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan, more than all those who died in the first four years of the war in Afghanistan put together. Entire swaths of southern Afghanistan, in provinces along the Pakistan border south and east of Kabul, are controlled by the Taliban and their allies. Lately they have been able to strike with impunity even within Kabul, the Afghan capital. The CIA has been warning for more than two years that Afghanistan was spinning out of control. A forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of sixteen US intelligence agencies, warns that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and, according to the <i>New York Times</i>, "casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there." The enemy has also evolved as a fighting force. Already by 2006, according to a report for West Point by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Taliban were fielding battalion-size units of more than 400 fighters. In some provinces the Taliban and their allies are creating a parallel state, appointing governors and provincial officials and establishing Sharia-style courts. </p> <p> The counterinsurgency is made all the more difficult by the nature of the enemy, an exceedingly complex, multiheaded Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It goes far beyond Mullah Omar's Taliban and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. "Calling it the Taliban is a failure to understand what's going on," says Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan and terrorism at the RAND Corporation. "It's a movement, not an organization," explains Chas Freeman, president of the Middle East Policy Council and a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "What we conveniently have been labeling 'the Taliban' is a phenomenon that includes a lot of people simply on the Islamic right." In all, the US military has identified at least fourteen separate insurgent organizations in Afghanistan, and according to Riedel, there are as many as fifty separate Islamist formations in neighboring Pakistan [see Anand Gopal, page 17, for more on the insurgency]. </p> <p> At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman, a sober-minded, conservative military analyst, sounded the alarm. "We are running out of time," he wrote. "We currently are losing, and the trends have been consistent since 2004...we face a crisis in the field--right now." The situation, he said, is far more urgent than anything that can be solved by economic aid or nation-building efforts. "At least during 2009-10, priority must be given to warfighting needs." McKiernan, the US commander, has called for at least four more brigades, perhaps as many as 25,000 troops. He warned that the mission in Afghanistan will require a "sustained commitment" lasting many years, and the United States has announced plans to help more than double the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA), to 134,000 troops. "This is a decades-long project," says Ashley Tellis, a former National Security Council specialist on South Asia, who adds that it will take at least ten years before the United States can withdraw and let the ANA fight its own battles. "The transition alone will take a decade, until you can switch to the ANA," he says. </p> <p> But surging troops into Afghanistan would be akin to sending the fabled 600 into the valley of death. As in Vietnam, tens of thousands more troops will only provide the Taliban with many more targets, sparking Pashtun nationalist resistance and inspiring more recruits for the insurgency. Advocates of sending additional US forces into this maelstrom have yet to articulate exactly how another 25,000 can turn the tide. Tariq Ali says that pacifying the country would require at least 200,000 more troops, beyond the 62,000 US and NATO forces there now, and that it would necessitate laying waste huge parts of Afghanistan. Many Afghan watchers consider the war unwinnable, and they point out that in the 1980s the Soviet Union, with far more troops, had engaged in a brutal nine-year counterinsurgency war--and lost. British Ambassador to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper-Coles has warned against precisely the escalation that Obama and Petraeus advocate. Sending more troops, he says, "would have perverse effects: it would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets [for the insurgents]." A top British general, Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, says, "We're not going to win this war.... It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat." </p> <p> "What began as a punitive raid aimed at beheading Al Qaeda and chastising its Afghan household staff has somehow morphed--with no real discussion or debate--into a prolonged effort to pacify Afghanistan and transform its society," says Freeman. "This moving of the goal posts gratified neoconservatives and liberal interventionists alike. Our new purpose became giving Afghanistan a centrally directed state--something it had never had. We now fight to exclude reactionary Muslims from a role in governing the new Afghanistan." Freeman suggests that this is an untenable goal, and that it is time to co-opt local authorities and enlist regional allies in search of a settlement. </p> <p> Those who insist the war is winnable, including US and NATO commanders, also say that it can't be won without taking the war across the border to Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas, an escalation that's already under way. But this poses a whole new set of problems. The situation in Pakistan is only slightly less dire than in Afghanistan. The country emerged this year from nearly a decade under a US-backed military dictatorship and faces a daunting set of challenges. A multipronged insurgency based in the tribal areas is spreading its influence into the neighboring North-West Frontier Province, and it has reached all the way to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, where assassinations and suicide bombings occur regularly. The new government is weak and divided, with little or no control over the Pakistani army and ISI. And its economy is virtually bankrupt: with inflation at 25 percent and vast unemployment, the country is desperately seeking $10 billion to $15 billion in immediate financial aid. </p> <p> Yet the fragile Pakistani state is being pushed to the breaking point by the Bush administration. Since August, nearly two dozen CIA Predator missile attacks in tribal areas have inflamed much of the country against the United States. Already, before the spate of attacks, public opinion polls showed that 86 percent of Pakistanis say the goal of the United States is to "weaken and divide the Islamic world," 84 percent say the United States is a greater threat than Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and 89 percent oppose Pakistan's cooperation with the US "war on terror." Many Pakistanis blame the United States for its fifty-year record of propping up military dictators, which makes it hard for the United States to support even its allies, such as President Zardari. "Right now, we're kind of the kiss of death," says Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute who was part of Obama's Pakistan task force.<br /></p><p>Since 9/11, Pakistan has received more than $11 billion in US aid, but almost all of it has flowed into the coffers of Pakistan's army and ISI, with little or no oversight. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, between 2002 and 2007 only 10 percent of US aid was devoted to development and humanitarian assistance. That avalanche of cash to the military has allowed the ISI free rein to support its network of Islamist extremists, which it has built up systematically since the 1980s. As long as ISI helped nab an occasional Al Qaeda bigwig, even as it tolerated or supported the Afghan Taliban and other Islamist radicals, the United States went along. "We've got to put an end to this dirty game, where Pakistan uses surrogate terrorist groups," says Chamberlin.<br /></p><p>Even those fighting the war have difficulty distinguishing friends from enemies. Michael Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflicts, who oversees a Pentagon anti-terrorism force, isn't sure. Asked if ISI is on our side or not, he pauses. "It's complicated. I'll put it that way," he says finally. "It's not black and white." Last summer Zardari attempted to bring ISI under the control of the civilian-run Interior Ministry, but the idea was quickly shot down. "That lasted eight hours," says Steve Coll, author of <i>Ghost Wars</i>, a book about the CIA and Afghanistan that Obama was recently seen carrying. "Somebody told the ISI about the announcement, and they said, 'No, that won't be happening.'" Then, in the fall, Pakistan's army chief of staff installed a new set of generals atop the ISI, though there was widespread skepticism that the move reflected a real policy change by the army. </p><p> Yet Pakistani attitudes are slowly changing, even inside the military, analysts say. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto a year ago and the massive bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September alarmed many generals about the threat to Pakistan from its Islamist creations. "Pakistan has had a tolerance and a see-no-evil attitude toward the Taliban," says Riedel. "But the Afghan Taliban has also created a Pakistani Taliban, which is a Frankenstein the Pakistani army can't control. So it still has relations with parent Taliban, but the infant Taliban is now increasingly a threat to the cohesion of the Pakistan state, and it's a physical threat to the Pakistani army and even to the ISI. This is the classic case of a covert action program getting out of control." </p> <p> As a result, of late the army is scrambling to control a crisis of its own making, without much success. It has launched a three-pronged military offensive in the tribal areas and nearby districts, but--having spent a half-century preparing for a tank war with India--the Pakistani army is not well equipped to fight a counterinsurgency war. And in the tribal areas the Pakistani army, which is mostly Punjabi, is seen as a foreign force by local Pashtuns, while many Pakistani officers and enlisted men are loath to fight against their compatriots in what they see as America's war. Both the military and the Pakistan government have tried to build tribal militias to combat the Taliban, but so far this effort hasn't paid off. And the government has tried to encourage the holding of tribal jirgas, or councils, to generate grassroots opposition to the dominance of Taliban-like elements in and around the tribal areas. That, too, hasn't worked well, since the Taliban have engaged in murderous counterattacks, including gruesome killings and suicide bomb attacks aimed at the jirgas. Many in Pakistan are operating under outdated assumptions about the tribes in the northwest, says Christine Fair, an independent expert on South Asia who took part in the Center for American Progress study. "The jirgas used to be made up of secular tribal leaders," she says. "Now, they meet in mosques and madrassas." Since the US-backed anti-Soviet <i>jihad</i> of the 1980s, madrassas, or religious schools, have become factories and recruiting areas for militant Islamists. </p> <p> Part of the solution, stressed by all of Obama's aides, is more economic support to both countries, targeted toward building infrastructure, improving agriculture, providing microcredit for small business and constructing schools and clinics. One member of Obama's task force on Pakistan is Jonah Blank, a senior staff member at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is a key aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Blank was a driving force behind the Biden-Lugar-Obama bill to provide $1.5 billion a year for ten years in economic support to Pakistan. A parallel effort for Afghanistan, including what Obama calls a Marshall Plan-style mobilization, is also under way. "Call it a democracy dividend," says Blank. "The civilians can say, 'See? We deliver.'" </p> <p> But economic development takes a long time to be felt, and the crisis is now. If the wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan aren't going to be resolved militarily--and they won't be--the solution to both crises, now inextricably linked, must be a diplomatic one: first, negotiations with many of the forces opposing the two governments and the US presence in the region, and, second, progress toward a Pakistan-India accord. </p> <p> In Pakistan, the Zardari government and the Parliament have strongly endorsed talks with the Taliban, better organized than the faltering accords announced in 2004 and 2006. In Afghanistan, Karzai declared in mid-November that he is open to direct talks with Mullah Omar. And in late October, tribal elders and dozens of Pakistani and Afghan officials convened a two-day "mini-jirga" intended to be the start of a dialogue with the Taliban. Owais Ghani, governor of the North-West Frontier Province and a leader of the secular, nationalist ANP party, said at the mini-jirga: "We will sit, we will talk to them, they will listen to us, and we will come to some sort of solution." </p> <p> Karzai's offer to Mullah Omar, which was unprecedented, followed two years of quiet discussions in South Asia, Europe and the Middle East among Pakistani and Afghan officials, former leaders of the Taliban and members of Saudi Arabia's royal family, including King Abdullah. Among the participants: Karzai's brother and Nawaz Sharif, a Pakistani politician with close ties to the religious establishment who spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia. According to news reports, London and Paris provided logistical and diplomatic support for the contacts. The Pakistani daily <i>Dawn</i> reported that French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner is supporting talks between Karzai and "moderates within the Taliban," and he has invited Iran and Pakistan to Paris to participate in talks on Afghanistan. </p> <p> So far, Mullah Omar has rejected Karzai's offer of direct talks, and the Taliban continues to insist on the withdrawal of US and NATO forces before any deal. A deal with the Islamist insurgency, or at least enough of it to make it stick, is an exceedingly difficult undertaking, and most of Obama's advisers are skeptical that it can work. India, Iran and Russia, which supported the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in the decade before 9/11, won't look with favor on a US-Saudi effort to allow the Taliban back in power, so their concerns will have to be taken into account. The fragmented nature of the Taliban movment makes it hard to figure out whom, exactly, to negotiate with. And though parts of the movement may be pragmatic enough to strike a deal, other parts are likely to fight to the bitter end. </p> <p> The Obama team is far more supportive of an urgent diplomatic initiative to bring Pakistan and India toward an accord. But after the Mumbai attack, with its potential to bring the two countries back to the brink of war, that is a task that has just become far more difficult. "This requires great subtlety and a degree of sophistication that, I have to say, is not the norm in American diplomacy," says Riedel. "It calls for a stretch. I think the way to start is with very, very quiet conversations between the United States and India, and I think that the new relationship that we have with India gives us a better platform than ever before." India, Riedel says, is worried that the United States will seek a deal with Pakistan at India's expense. But closer US-India ties, cemented by a recent deal over India's nuclear program, give Washington new credibility to assure New Delhi that its interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan, where India is worried about a Taliban resurgence, will be protected. </p> <p> India is deeply involved in Afghanistan now, and its role there is causing a degree of paranoia in Pakistan. India, along with Iran and Russia, helped oust the Pakistan-backed Taliban in 2001. India has provided $1.2 billion in aid to Afghanistan since then, and it has opened consulates in four Afghan cities that, Pakistan fears, could be bases for Indian intelligence. It is against that threat, historically, that Pakistan has supported right-wing Islamists. But India is a power with global ambitions, a thriving economy and powerful armed forces, and it is becoming clear in Pakistan that it can no longer compete with India, which is causing an outbreak of realism inside the Pakistani army. Ashley Tellis, now of the Carnegie Endowment, has had extensive contacts with Pakistan's military. "The mainstream of the Pakistani army no longer sees India as the main threat," he says. "There may be some of the far right, among the Islamists, who believe that India is the central danger." But Tellis says they are a minority. "To protect their institutional interests, they know that they must have a rapprochement with India." </p> <p> The opportunity for a dialogue with elements of the Taliban and the possibility of a peace process between Pakistan and India constitute the true exit strategy for the United States in Afghanistan. But to nail down a deal with the insurgents, the United States will have to offer them what they most want, namely, a timetable for the withdrawal of US and NATO forces. "What the insurgents do seem to agree about is that foreigners shouldn't run their country, and that the country should be run according to the principles of Islam," says Chas Freeman. </p> <p> "We need to recall the reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place," he says. "Our purpose was...to deny the use of Afghan territory to terrorists with global reach. That was and is an attainable objective. It is a limited objective that can be achieved at reasonable cost. We must return to a ruthless focus on this objective. We cannot afford to pursue goals, however worthy, that contradict or undermine it. The reform of Afghan politics, society and mores must wait." </p> <p> Meanwhile, the stage is set. The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan want peace talks with Islamist insurgents and the Taliban. Outside powers, led by Saudi Arabia and quietly supported by Britain and France, are facilitating behind-the-scenes contacts between the Taliban and key Afghan and Pakistani leaders. Neighboring states, including India, Russia and Iran, while hardly enamored of the Taliban, might underwrite a truce. And the possibility of a regional economic pact linking Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India could tie it all together. </p> <p> Al Qaeda, pushed into remote redoubts in Pakistan's mountains, is most certainly still plotting against the United States. But many, perhaps most, of its fair-weather allies on the Islamic right, including the Taliban, might very well be persuaded to make a final break with Osama bin Laden and his ilk if they can get a better deal, including a share of power in Kabul. Will President Obama seize the moment? Will he have the courage to offer an end to US occupation of Afghanistan if the Taliban-led movement abandons its ties to Al Qaeda? </p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-58144103668532913112008-12-04T12:24:00.004-05:002008-12-04T12:30:24.977-05:00Obama and Clinton Foreign Policy Similarities Outweigh Differences?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STgSsaSHWVI/AAAAAAAAAM0/63mlni1Suv4/s1600-h/obamahill_art.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STgSsaSHWVI/AAAAAAAAAM0/63mlni1Suv4/s320/obamahill_art.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275987517643381074" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">by John Isaacs<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span></span></span><a href="http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/nuclearweapons/articles/120108_obama_clinton_more_agreement_than_disagreement/">read the original at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation</a>>><br /><br />President-elect Barack Obama announced today that he will nominate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to be Secretary of State. Selecting a former rival for the most prestigious of cabinet positions has unleashed a torrent of media coverage, most of which has focused on grossly exaggerated disagreements during the presidential campaign and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. <p>This reporting misses the point. As Lt. General Robert Gard, chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lt-general-robert-g-gard-jr-/its-not-hillary-its-the-p_b_147379.html">wrote recently</a>, “<strong>It’s not Hillary, it’s the policy stupid!</strong>” Reporters tend to exaggerate conflict because it makes for more interesting copy. The fact is, however, that when it comes to foreign policy, Obama and Clinton agree far more than they disagree.</p> <p>The following comparison of Obama and Clinton's positions is based on several indicators: U.S. Senate voting records; national security platforms as laid out in articles and op-eds; and responses to queries in debates, public appearances, and questionnaires. Although campaign pledges and voting records do not always accurately translate into actual policy, they can provide important clues as to policy inclinations.</p> <h2>IRAQ</h2> <p>Hillary Clinton's position on Iraq has been complex. She joined Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in supporting the 2002 authorization to go to war, and although she has refused to apologize for the vote, she <a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/13285/">later said</a>, "<em>If I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way</em>." As a presidential candidate, Clinton <a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/15274/democratic_debate_transcript_las_vegas.html?breadcrumb=%2Fcampaign2008%2Fspeeches%3Fpage%3D2">promised</a>, within 60 days of taking office, to begin withdrawing troops at the rate of one or two brigades a month, with the goal of getting most combat troops out by the end of 2009.</p> <p>In 2002, when he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama opposed the war. After he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he and Clinton both voted against early proposals by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and others to set a timetable for withdrawal; now both Obama and Clinton vote consistently in favor of establishing a timetable. <a href="http://change.gov/agenda/iraq_agenda/">Obama's plan</a> for exiting Iraq would, like Clinton's, send home one or two combat brigades a month, with all combat troops out by the end of 2009. However, at an <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21013767/">MSNBC debate</a> in September 2007, neither Clinton nor Obama would guarantee that they would have all U.S. forces out of Iraq by the end of their first term. Both Obama and Clinton have opposed permanent bases in Iraq.</p> <h2>IRAN</h2> <p>President Bush has displayed unremitting hostility toward the radical regime dominating Iran, a country that U.S. intelligence sources report had previously been pursuing a nuclear weapons program. He branded Iran part of the "axis of evil" and promoted regime change as the preferred U.S. policy. With a few limited exceptions, the United States under Bush has refused to talk directly with Iran.</p> <p>Obama and Clinton have delivered messages on Iran that were mixed. Obama <a href="http://pol.moveon.org/townhall/iraq/transcripts_p.html">promised</a> to open a dialogue with Iran without preconditions to attempt to work out a solution. However, he <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/281249,CST-NWS-OBAMA03.article">called</a> Iran "<em>a threat to all of us</em>" and suggested in March 2007 that the military option should remain on the table. At the same time, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/politics/27debate_transcript.html">said</a> that it "<em>would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran</em>" and <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16898435">condemned</a> the administration's "<em>saber-rattling</em>" on Iran.</p> <p>Clinton <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16788619/">pledged</a> to reach out immediately to Iran, saying, "<em>you don't make peace with your friends. You have got to deal with ... people whose interests diverge from yours</em>." At the same time, she <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/02/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Iran.php">indicated</a> that she remains open to all options, including military ones. Clinton also <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/02/america/NA-GEN-US-Clinton-Iran.php">declared</a>: "<em>We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons</em>." She voted for a controversial <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00349">amendment</a> offered by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Lieberman that proposed labeling Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Obama missed that vote but <a href="http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071027/FRONTPAGE/710270355">called</a> the amendment a repeat of the mistakes that led to war in Iraq; however, he <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/12/obama_launches_attack_on_clinton_over_iran/?page=2">cosponsored</a> an earlier bill declaring the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.</p> <h2>NUCLEAR WEAPONS</h2> <p>In 2007, a bipartisan group of senior and former government officials called for moving toward a "<a href="http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/6731276.html">world free of nuclear weapons</a>." In their article by that name, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA), and former Secretary of Defense William Perry urged the United States to lead an international effort to rethink traditional deterrence, reduce nuclear weapon stockpiles, and take other steps toward the longer term goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.</p> <p>Obama has been clear in his support of their effort. In response to a Council for a Livable World <a href="http://www.clw.org/assets/pdfs/2008_presidential_candidates_questionnaire_responses.pdf">questionnaire</a>, he promised: "<em>As president, I will take the lead to work for a world in which the roles and risks of nuclear weapons can be reduced and ultimately eliminated</em>." Clinton <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-080118clinton-story,0,3734644.story">said</a> that "<em>I endorse the vision set out by Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, and George Shultz of a world without nuclear weapons and their idea of taking practical steps toward that vision</em>."</p> <p><strong>New Nuclear Weapons:</strong> The Bush administration has put forward proposals to build a new generation of nuclear weapons; however, these plans might be seen as conflicting with U.S. efforts to restrain other states' nuclear ambitions.</p> <p>Clinton voted against these programs all four times. She was clear in response to a Council for a Livable World <a href="http://www.clw.org/assets/pdfs/2008_presidential_candidates_questionnaire_responses.pdf">questionnaire</a>: "<em>The Bush administration has dangerously put the cart before the horse, planning to rush ahead with new nuclear weapons without any considered assessment of what we need these weapons for or what the impact of building them would be on our effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons around the world</em>." Obama, only in the Senate for the fourth vote, also opposed the new weapons. He was less categorical to the Council's queries, <a href="http://www.clw.org/assets/pdfs/2008_presidential_candidates_questionnaire_responses.pdf">responding</a> that he did not support "<em>a premature decision to produce the [Reliable Replacement Warhead]</em>."</p> <p><strong>Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty:</strong> One of the longest sought goals of the nuclear age has been a global ban on all nuclear test explosions as an important step to advance nuclear nonproliferation. In 1996, after 50 years of work, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed and opened for ratification. However, three years later, the Senate decisively rejected the treaty. Although the United States has not conducted a nuclear test explosion since 1992, the Bush administration has not put the treaty forward for a new vote.</p> <p>Although neither Clinton nor Obama were in the Senate at the time of the 1999 vote, both have <a href="http://www.clw.org/elections/2008/presidential/2008_presidential_candidates_questionnaire_responses/">promised</a> to make the test ban treaty a priority of their first term in office and pledged to work to rebuild bipartisan support for the treaty.</p> <h2>MISSILE DEFENSE</h2> <p>In 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and since then has moved swiftly to deploy national missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California. The latest fiscal budget request for 2009 is $12.3 billion for all forms of missile defense.</p> <p>Obama has been <a href="http://obama.senate.gov/press/070716-obama_statement_73/">critical</a> of the Bush missile defense plans: "<em>The Bush Administration has in the past exaggerated missile defense capabilities and rushed deployments for political purposes</em>." Clinton's position has been more ambiguous. Of three key votes in 2004, she voted in effect for missile defense once and against it twice. However, she <a href="http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=3908">criticized</a> President Bush's decision in 2001 to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and both she and Obama voted for an <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00311">amendment</a> offered by Sen. Carl Levin in 2005 (the last major vote on missile defense) while McCain missed the vote. She also <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86601/hillary-rodham-clinton/security-and-opportunity-for-the-twenty-first-century.html?mode=print">criticized</a> the Bush administration of "<em>focusing obsessively on expensive and unproven missile defense technology</em>." Neither Clinton nor Obama has indicated plans for missile defense.</p> <p><strong>Missile Defense Site in Europe:</strong> Obama has not been clear what he would do with the Bush proposal, but <a href="http://obama.senate.gov/press/070716-obama_statement_73/">indicated</a> that he would not allow the program "<em>to divide 'new Europe' and 'old Europe</em>.'" It is also unclear what Clinton's position is.</p> <h2>OTHER ISSUES IN BRIEF</h2> <p><strong>Closing Guantanamo Bay prison</strong>: <a href="http://www.justhillary.com/herwords/gitmo0426.php">Clinton</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/AR2007062401046.html">Obama</a> agree: Close the prison.</p> <p><strong>U.S.-India nuclear deal:</strong> Obama and Clinton <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00270">voted</a> for the U.S.-India nuclear deal in 2006, but they also voted for amendments to condition the deal on India ending military cooperation with Iran and a presidential certification that nuclear cooperation with India will not aid India in making more nuclear weapons.</p> <p><strong>Military forces:</strong><a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/13172/">Obama</a> and <a href="http://www.cfr.org/bios/8211/hillary_rodham_clinton.html#11">Clinton</a> have called for expanding the size of our active duty military forces.</p> <p><strong>North Korea:</strong> Obama <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html?mode=print">called</a> for "<em>sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy</em>" with North Korea. Clinton <a href="http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=1266">called for</a> "<em>direct contact, engagement</em>" with Pyongyang.</p> <p><strong>Nuclear nonproliferation:</strong> Clinton and Obama <a href="http://www.clw.org/assets/pdfs/2008_presidential_candidates_questionnaire_responses.pdf">committed</a> to securing all vulnerable nuclear weapons materials around the world within four years of taking office.</p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-91504801947047423092008-12-04T12:01:00.001-05:002008-12-04T12:04:06.125-05:00Afghanistan's Turbulent History<b>Afghanistan's descent into conflict and instability in recent times began with the overthrow of the king in 1973.</b><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1569826.stm">Read original article at the BBC>></a><br /><p>Zahir Shah was in Italy for an eye operation when he was deposed in a palace coup by his cousin, Mohammad Daoud. </p><p>Daoud declared Afghanistan a republic, with himself as president. </p><p>He relied on the support of leftists to consolidate his power, and crushed an emerging Islamist movement. </p><p><b>Defining moment</b> </p><p>But towards the end of his rule, he attempted to purge his leftist supporters from positions of power and sought to reduce Soviet influence in Afghanistan. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229223_39090244.jpg" alt="Zahir Shah - Afghan king for four decades" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">Zahir Shah - Afghan king for four decades</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> It was this that helped lead to a defining moment in Afghanistan's recent history - the communist coup in April 1978, known as the Saur, or April Revolution. <p>President Daoud and his family were shot dead, and Nur Mohammad Taraki took power as head of the country's first Marxist government, bringing to an end more than 200 years of almost uninterrupted rule by the family of Zahir Shah and Mohammad Daoud. </p><p>But the Afghan communist party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan - or PDPA - was divided, and splits emerged. </p><p><b>Ruthless leader</b> </p><p>Hafizullah Amin, who had become prime minister, was opposed to Taraki, and in October 1979 Taraki was secretly executed, with Amin becoming the new president. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229224_39091114.jpg" alt="Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">Soviet forces left in 1989</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> <p>Amin, known for his independent and nationalist inclinations, was also ruthless. </p><p>He has been accused of assassinating thousands of Afghans. </p><p>To the Soviets in Moscow, he was looked upon as a threat to the prospect of an amenable communist government bordering Soviet Central Asia. </p><p>In a swift chain of events in December 1979, Amin was assassinated and the Soviet Red Army swept into Afghanistan. </p><p>Babrak Karmal was flown from Czechoslovakia, where he was Afghan ambassador, to take over as the new president, albeit as a puppet leader acceptable to Moscow. </p><p><b>Million killed</b> </p><p>The Soviet occupation, which lasted until the final withdrawal of the Red Army in 1989, was a disaster for Afghanistan. </p><p>About a million Afghans lost their lives as the Red Army tried to impose control for its puppet Afghan government. Millions more fled abroad as refugees. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229225_40419543.jpg" alt="Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">The mujahideen could not share power</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> <p>Groups of Afghan Islamic fighters - or mujahideen - fought endlessly to try to force a Soviet retreat, with much covert support from the United States. </p><p>After nearly 10 years, the Soviet Union eventually withdrew, leaving in power President Najibullah, who had replaced Karmal as leader. </p><p>He hung on for three years after the Red Army's departure, but fell in 1992 as the United Nations was trying to arrange a peaceful transfer of power. </p><p>The mujahideen swept victoriously into Kabul. After a short interim measure, Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani became president of the new Islamic Republic. </p><p><b>Infighting</b> </p><p>But their victory was soon soured by infighting, as the mujahideen factions failed to agree on how to share their new power. </p><p>During the Soviet occupation it was predominantly rural areas that suffered military onslaught as the Red Army tried to flush out the mujahideen. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229226_39200586.jpg" alt="Children play on a crippled Soviet tank in Kabul " vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">Afghanistan's war-torn past still haunts its future </div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> <p>But when the mujahideen took over, it was the turn of urban areas to suffer from the conflict. </p><p>This was especially true of the capital, Kabul, about half of which was literally flattened. Tens of thousands of civilians lost their lives, and the country slid more and more into a state of anarchy. </p><p>It was towards the end of 1994 that the Taleban emerged in the southern city of Kandahar, heart of Afghanistan's Pashtun homeland. </p><p>Their initial appeal - and success - was based on a call for the removal of the mujahideen groups. </p><p><b>Taleban years</b> </p><p>At first they succeeded in gaining control of Pashtun areas with little fighting. Mujahideen commanders defected to their ranks. </p><p>But as their control spread to other, especially non-Pashtun, areas, the fighting intensified. </p><p>The Taleban went on to control about 90% of the country. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229227_39427185.jpg" alt="Taleban fighters in 2001" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">The Taleban were toppled after the 9/11 attacks on the US</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> <p>It was in 1996, as they captured Kabul, that much of the outside world first reacted in dismay to the Taleban's extreme Islamic policies, especially towards the place of women in society. </p><p>As Taleban control spread, the Western world intensified pressure on the Taleban to ban the growth of opium poppies, Afghanistan being the source of most opiates reaching Europe. </p><p>The United States, in particular, also began their pressure on the Taleban to give up the militant Saudi, Osama Bin Laden, whom the Taleban described as their "guest" in Afghanistan. </p><p>Washington blamed Bin Laden for masterminding the suicide attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on 11 September 2001. </p><p>The following month the US and its allies began air attacks on Afghanistan which allowed the Taleban's Afghan opponents to sweep them from power. Kabul was retaken in November and by early December the Taleban had given up their stronghold of Kandahar. </p><p><b>Road to elections</b> </p><p>On 5 December 2001 Afghan groups agreed a deal in Bonn for an interim government, at the head of which Pashtun royalist Hamid Karzai was then sworn in. </p><p>The Bonn conference, held under UN auspices, forged a political blueprint leading to elections scheduled for summer 2004. </p><p> <!-- S IIMA --> </p><table width="226" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45229000/jpg/_45229228_39784741.jpg" alt="Hamid Karzai [R] with former king Zahir Shah" vspace="0" width="226" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" /> <div class="cap">Karzai (right) shows the constitution to former king Zahir Shah</div> </div> </td></tr> </tbody></table> <!-- E IIMA --> <p>In June 2002 a loya jirga, or grand council, elected Mr Karzai as interim head of state. A second loya jirga in January 2004 adopted a new constitution. </p><p>In September, 2002, Mr Karzai survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar blamed on the Taleban. There have been other near misses since. A number of his ministers and other senior figures have been less fortunate. </p><p>Mr Karzai has been able to exert little control beyond the capital. </p><p>Turf wars between local commanders have been a feature of the post-Taleban period. </p><p>And the Taleban themselves have re-emerged as a fighting force, worsening the security situation first in the east and south-east, and then across much of the country. </p>Thousands have been killed in the violence in recent years, including many militants and foreign and Afghan troops, as well as large numbers of civilians. <!-- E BO -->Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-53485975903806208522008-12-02T09:47:00.015-05:002008-12-04T12:35:39.059-05:00Obama's 'Pragmatic Use of Power' Just Political Opportunism?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STah25dXPpI/AAAAAAAAAMs/tbGRdjqS0iU/s1600-h/Obama+war+cabinet.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 189px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STah25dXPpI/AAAAAAAAAMs/tbGRdjqS0iU/s320/Obama+war+cabinet.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275581978020101778" border="0" /></a><br />Introducing his new Secretaries of State and Defense yesterday morning, President-elect Obama noted that both Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates "share my pragmatism about the use of power and my sense of purpose about America's role as a leader in the world." It is interesting that he should choose the umbrella of pragmatism to draw together figures from the two prior administrations and his own.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span> columnist David Ignatius <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082202400.html">noted, back in August 2007, candidate Obama's <span style="font-style: italic;">pragmatic </span>approach to foreign policy.</a> By positing the imperatives for a timetable to direct a draw-down of Iraq troop levels, and a policy of direct engagement with Iran, the Obama campaign pushed for their foreign policy tact to be cast as responsive and realistic. Standing in contrast to the Bush administration's stated positions at that time, Obama's elucidated positions appeared to orient his candidacy with a position of consensus-building. Candidate Clinton portrayed herself as more experienced without specifying action plans to contradict Obama's. Obama was at that point praised for his pragmatism, but questioned over political opportunism.<br /><br />And still we are left to wonder at Obama's motives--beyond taking advantage of a politically opportune moment to consolidate power by co-opting his rivals, what does an Obama administration stand to gain from the appointment of Clinton and Gates? Why does Obama emphasize his "pragmatism about the use of power"?<br /><br />Taking Webster's pragmatism, "a practical approach to problems and affairs," as Obama's point of commonality with prior administrations, I suppose the "practical approach" could encompass a spectrum of relational postures vis-a-vis the use of power, from Clinton's backing of Wesley Clark's Kosovo air strikes to the Bush-Rumsfeld "nothin' but a brush-fire" stance on "small wars" such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations had problematic relationships with the exercise of American force, so exactly how do the experiences of these two mindsets imply pragmatism with respect to the exercise of American power?<br /><br />Critiquing the philosophical school of pragmatism <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Social-Analysis-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415325072/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228264740&sr=8-1">in his socio-political analysis <span style="font-style: italic;">Power</span></a>, Bertrand Russell turned over some thoughts that could hold application to pragmatism in the vernacular<span style="font-style: italic;">:</span><br /><p></p><blockquote>Pragmatism, in some of its forms, is a power-philosophy. For pragmatism, a belief is 'true' if its consequences are pleasant. Now human beings can make the consequences of a belief pleasant or unpleasant. Belief in the moral superiority of a dictator has pleasanter consequences than disbelief, if you live under his government. Wherever there is effective persecution, the official creed is 'true' in the pragmatist sense. The pragmatist philosophy, therefore, gives to those in power a metaphysical omnipotence which a more pedestrian philosophy would deny to them. I do not suggest that most pragmatists admit the consequences of their philosophy; I say only that they are consequences, and that the pragmatist's attack on the common view of truth is an outcome of love of power, though perhaps more of power over inanimate nature than of power over human beings.</blockquote><p></p> Pragmatism in common usage implies a study in outcomes, emphasizing what is tenable and required as opposed to that which is not. The relationship of power and moral superiority is raised by Russell. Taking ourselves as example, if America's power yields a pragmatist's moral superiority, is not everything the government undertakes pragmatic (that is, tenable and required), from wars of occupation, "regime-change", to any other means of establishing a world that is more receptive to American directives?<br /><br />What is untenable/unpragmatic for today's America? Are limits to the exercise of power actually being contemplated? Or is the carte blanche of war-time executive power to continue unabated, unthreatened by an inactive and un-empowered legislative branch, enabled by an uncritical citizenry?Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-88665696509611687102008-12-01T11:19:00.004-05:002008-12-01T14:27:39.704-05:00Hillary's Impact on Obama's Policy: The Team of Rivals Effect<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STQO8yFemhI/AAAAAAAAAMk/eZvwLjI1TiI/s1600-h/20081126_hill_w.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/STQO8yFemhI/AAAAAAAAAMk/eZvwLjI1TiI/s320/20081126_hill_w.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274857500957383186" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/alec_macgillis" class="greytext">by Alec MacGillis</a><br />For Barack Obama, forgiveness has few bounds if it means he can surround himself with the best people - and that includes a former enemy, Hillary Clinton--<br /><br />read original article at <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/11/obama-clinton-former-iraq"><span style="font-style: italic;">New Statesman</span></a> >><br /><br /><br /><p> So unapologetically giddy is Washington about Barack Obama's likely selection of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state - with all the entertaining musings about gender and generational power dynamics and about Bill's role that this would provide - that it is easy to overlook how remarkable this turnabout is.</p> <p>There have been many knowing allusions to <em>Team of Rivals</em>, Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of Abraham Lincoln's cabinet of former antagonists. But the happy historical reference glosses over the ill-feeling of the 2008 primaries. Think of Hillary's mockery of Obama's rhetoric ("Now I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect,'" she once riffed, voice viscous with scorn) or of her use of the very culture-war tropes that John McCain would adopt against Obama - "links" with a former radical, her appeal to "hard-working Americans, white Americans".</p> <p>It is true that one difference between the two has been overstated: Obama's willingness to meet "without preconditions" with enemy leaders. Clinton hammered this as "irresponsible and frankly naive", but it boiled down to a semantic dispute. Still, the campaign exposed a genuine difference in world-views. Obama's opposition to the Iraq War was couched in a broader argument that Democrats could be tough and smart about national security without always looking over their shoulder at the Republicans, as many liberals felt Clinton had done in voting to authorise force in Iraq. That, as Obama often put it, "I don't want to just end the war, I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place" - an argument further fuelled by Clinton's vote to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist force. And there were nasty disputes about experience - Clinton ridiculed Obama's claims to insight from living abroad and said he lacked readiness for the "3am phone call", while Obama belittled first-lady teas and said she had exaggerated her role in Northern Ireland and Bosnia.</p> <p>Now, Clinton is poised to carry out the foreign policy agenda that Obama's campaign defined by its break from the strictures that bound her thinking. Cynics see a Machiavellian move - to remove Clinton from the Senate, where she could undermine him, to a slot where she (and Bill) must work with or for him. Others wonder whether Obama now sees less of a policy gap with Clinton. Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University professor and leading conservative critic of the Iraq War, says that Obama has moved towards Clinton's more conventional outlook with his call for sending more troops to Afghanistan.</p> <p>"The guy who once asked fundamental questions about how we got into Iraq would ask searching questions about how to get out of Afghanistan, and would not see sending reinforcements into Afghanistan as an approximation of a change in policies," Bacevich told me. "I wonder if . . . the guy who early on was willing to make bold moves that break the mould by the election had come to recognise the . . . constraints within which an American president operates."</p> <p>Or Obama may simply see Clinton as the best person for the job. Her relative hawkishness on Iran and Israel could lend political cover to a push for Middle East peace. For all her ambition, Clinton is a team player and dutiful overachiever who applies herself fully to any task given her. And she would carry a higher profile abroad than Obama's other choices. The president-elect may be demonstrating, in the most striking way possible, his preference for people of stature, irrespective of past disagreements. This was on display again when he announced the appointment as a top economics adviser of Larry Summers, the abrasive and intellectually impressive former treasury secretary, and of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary. Geithner, like Obama, is 47, spent part of his childhood in Asia, and is possessed of a calm temperament. (He worked under Summers at the treasury and has since run the New York Federal Reserve, where he has been at the centre of fitful rescue efforts.) Both men are linked to Robert Rubin, the former treasury secretary and leading advocate for the deregulation that many, including Obama, blame for the financial collapse.</p> <p>But for Obama, it appears, forgiveness has few bounds when it comes to smart and formidable people he believes can play a role for him - and who, in the case of Summers and Geithner, are now sounding all the right left-of-centre notes. This magnanimity is disconcerting to some liberals, who were also taken aback by his clemency toward Joe Lieberman, the Democratic senator who vigorously campaigned, as a friend, for McCain.</p> <p>One ardent Obama supporter, the former New Hampshire legislator Carol Moore, suspects Clinton might fare well as secretary of state but still has misgivings. "I feel less worried about it than I feel irritated about it," she told me. "I don't want to hear about the Clintons any more. I can't get over, 'Why the hell would he even want to do that? Why go there?'" She concluded: "It's like he's become borderline obsessed with this 'team of rivals' thing." </p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-35494604246544976572008-12-01T09:58:00.002-05:002008-12-01T10:05:37.741-05:00Group Accused in India Carnage Thriving Despite Ban<span style="font-size:85%;"> <div id="byline">By <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/candace+rondeaux+and+craig+whitlock/" title="Send an e-mail to Candace Rondeaux and Craig Whitlock">Candace Rondeaux and Craig Whitlock</a></div> Washington Post Foreign Service<br />Monday, December 1, 2008; Page A13<br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113001904.html">Read article in <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post >></span></a><br /></span><p> </p> <span id="aptureStartContent"></span> <p> ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 30 -- In January 2002, the government of Pakistan reluctantly announced that it would ban Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Kashmiri guerrilla group suspected of crossing the border into India and storming the Parliament in New Delhi, an incident that nearly triggered a war between the two nuclear-armed countries.<br /></p><p> Almost seven years later, Lashkar-i-Taiba, or Army of the Pious, once again stands accused of helping to carry out a stunning terrorist attack in India, this time in Mumbai. The group, although technically still outlawed in Pakistan, has managed to expand its membership, its operational reach and its influence among the constellation of radical Islamist networks seeking to spark a revolution in South Asia. </p> <p>Inside Pakistan, Lashkar still operates training camps for militants, runs a large charitable and social-services organization that has been embraced by Pakistani officials, and even has designated spokesmen to handle inquiries from the news media. </p> <p>It has also branched out globally from its roots in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, opening fundraising arms in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Some of its fighters have traveled to Iraq and East Africa. It has nurtured a mutually advantageous alliance with <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Al+Qaeda?tid=informline" target="">al-Qaeda</a>, a longtime benefactor of its activities. One of the British suicide bombers in the July 7, 2005, London transit attacks spent time at a Lashkar-affiliated religious school in Pakistan. </p> <p> "One thing that has changed is their view of their mission," said Michael Scheuer, a former <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Central+Intelligence+Agency?tid=informline" target="">CIA</a> analyst who specializes in al-Qaeda and other radical groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "They're a much more international organization than they were in 2002. They're better trained, and they operate all over."</p><p>Lashkar was founded two decades ago, with sponsorship from the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pakistani+Armed+Forces?tid=informline" target="">Pakistani military</a>, to combat Indian troops in Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought repeatedly since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. For years, Lashkar openly ran a 200-acre training complex, including a religious school, conference center and fish farms, in the village of Muridke in eastern Pakistan, outside Lahore.<br /></p><p>The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+State?tid=informline" target="">U.S. State Department</a> declared Lashkar a terrorist organization in December 2001, days after it and another Kashmiri militant group, Jaish-i-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, were accused of attacking the Indian Parliament. </p><p>The Pakistani government followed suit soon after, arresting dozens of Lashkar's leaders and shuttering its recruiting offices in the country. But Pakistan refused to extradite Lashkar operatives suspected in the Parliament attack, and after international political pressure began to subside, it released the group's leadership. </p> <p>To get around the ban, Lashkar renamed itself Jamaat-ud-Dawa. It began to bill itself as a charitable organization and was instrumental in delivering aid to victims of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. </p> <p>The U.S. government classified Jamaat-ud-Dawa as a terrorist group in April 2006, calling it an "alias" of Lashkar. But the Pakistani government has not reciprocated and allows the network to raise money, run religious schools and offer social-service programs. It hosts <a href="http://e.jamatdawa.org/index.php" target="">an extensive Web site, with versions in English and in Urdu</a>. </p> <p> On Sunday, Indian officials said that the lone gunman in the Mumbai attacks to be captured has confessed to being a member of Lashkar and that the network was behind the plot. Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria said the suspect told interrogators that he had received training at a Lashkar camp in Pakistan. Maria blamed the attacks on "a hard-core group" within the Lashkar network but did not provide details. U.S. counterterrorism officials also have said that there are signs that Lashkar was involved. </p> <p>Official representatives of Lashkar have denied the accusations. "We condemn the loss of precious lives, and we also demand an independent investigation into this incident," Abdullah Ghaznavi, a spokesman for Lashkar, said in a telephone interview. "Whenever something happens on the Indian side, they single Lashkar-i-Taiba out for it. But the fact is it's their own obsession. It's very convenient to blame Lashkar-i-Taiba for everything." </p> <p>The Indian government has accused Lashkar of continuing to sponsor attacks in Kashmir, as well as being involved in several other plots in India, including bombings in the southern city of Hyderabad in August 2007. </p> <p>In an interview in Pakistan, a Lashkar operative speaking on the condition of anonymity said commanders of the group have ordered followers to go underground in recent days, anticipating a crackdown by the Pakistani government. But he denied that they had played a role in the Mumbai massacre. "Whenever we have attacked, we have targeted military or government installations," he said. </p> <p>The operative acknowledged that Lashkar still has thousands of members and trains fighters in camps in Kashmir, on both sides of the Indian-Pakistani line. Analysts said Lashkar also operates training camps in northern Pakistan, near Gilgit, as well as in the tribal areas along the Afghan border. </p> <p>It is difficult, analysts said, to pinpoint the extent of the relationship today between Lashkar and Pakistan's main spy agency, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pakistani+Inter-Services+Intelligence?tid=informline" target="">Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence</a>, or ISI. Some said the ISI severed support for Lashkar after its operatives were suspected of involvement in an assassination attempt on then-President <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pervez+Musharraf?tid=informline" target="">Pervez Musharraf</a> in 2004. But officials in India have been more skeptical. </p> <p> Shaun Gregory, a professor of international security and a Pakistan specialist at the University of Bradford in England, said that in contrast to its operations against the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Taliban?tid=informline" target="">Taliban</a>, al-Qaeda and networks of foreign fighters along the border with Afghanistan, the Pakistani military has taken a hands-off approach with Lashkar. </p> <p>Unlike those groups, he said, Lashkar does not pose a threat to the Pakistani state, so its training camps are tolerated. "Lashkar-i-Taiba understands where its bread is buttered," he said. </p> <p>Gregory and other analysts noted that Lashkar is riven by factions; although some leaders may have been opposed to a spectacular attack on Mumbai, other members may have seen it as a catalyst for sparking an all-out war in the Asian subcontinent, a longtime goal. </p> <p>Some Indian and U.S. officials have said that they doubt Lashkar was capable of pulling off the Mumbai attacks on its own and may have worked in tandem with sympathetic groups, including Muslim radicals in India. Another partner may have been Dawood Ibrahim, the fugitive boss of a Mumbai crime syndicate who was blamed for a series of bombings in the city in 1993 that killed more than 250 people. </p> <p>"What we've already seen is a nexus between Lashkar-i-Taiba, Jaish-i-Muhammad and Dawood Ibrahim -- between terrorism and organized crime, if you will -- that's been able to work very effectively together in India," said Scheuer, the former CIA analyst. </p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-40557861411092773212008-11-29T15:33:00.002-05:002008-11-29T15:37:16.529-05:00Mumbai Attacks Could Chill India-Pakistan Ties<div class="storysubhead" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(51, 51, 51) ! important;">The nuclear-armed rivals have been trying to mend their relationship, but now India suspects Pakistani militants were involved in the ram<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">page.</span></div> <div class="storybyline" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(153, 153, 153) ! important;">By Mubashir Zaidi and Laura King <br />November 29, 2008<br /><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-pakistanblame29-2008nov29,0,6527283.story">read original article at <span style="font-style: italic;">LA Times>> </span></a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad, Pakistan -- With India casting suspicion on Pakistani militant groups in the Mumbai attacks, analysts and diplomats warned Friday that slowly warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals could suffer a reversal, with potentially serious repercussions for the entire region.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Pakistani authorities have vehemently denied any involvement in the three-day rampage by groups of gunmen in India's commercial capital, which left at least 150 people dead. But in contrast to bellicose rhetoric in previous times of crisis with its neighbor, Pakistan coupled its denials with conciliatory gestures, including the highly unusual step of agreeing to send a representative of its main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to help investigate the attacks.</span><br /><br /><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="storybody"> That move was particularly symbolic because Pakistan's intelligence apparatus itself had been accused of helping Pakistan-based militant groups carry out previous attacks on Indian soil -- most notoriously in the 2001 assault on India's Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad.<br /><br />In the first hours of the Mumbai crisis, India used veiled though widely understood language to suggest Pakistani involvement. As investigators began interrogating captured assailants, reportedly finding Pakistani nationals among them, the accusations turned sharper.<br /><br />"Preliminary evidence . . . indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said Friday in New Delhi.<br /><br /></div> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Pakistan responded with fresh protestations of innocence. "Pakistan has nothing to do with this incident, no link with this act," Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani said. "We condemn it."</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Pakistan, nudged along by the United States, recently sought rapprochement with India. President Asif Ali Zardari rattled his country's military establishment by asserting that India did not represent a threat to Pakistan, and by offering to repudiate first use of nuclear weapons.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> This month, Zardari -- a political neophyte who inherited his leadership role from his assassinated wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- astounded his compatriots with a flowery declaration that in every Pakistani's heart there was a bit of India, and in every Indian heart a bit of Pakistan. That came close to heresy in a country where schoolchildren are taught that India is Pakistan's most enduring foe, and where many believe that India represents a greater threat to national security than do militant groups like the Taliban.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> The moves to mend their relationship included preliminary talks on the disputed territory of Kashmir.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> But relations suffered a setback in July when the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul was bombed, an attack that killed about 60 people. Afghanistan accused the ISI of having aided militants who carried out the bombing, a claim supported by U.S. intelligence.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> And many observers contend that if there is even a hint of Pakistani involvement in the bloodshed in Mumbai, relations probably will turn chilly and mistrustful.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> "It would certainly complicate everything, put things on hold, make any negotiations harder," said Terry Pattar, a counter-terrorism associate in the Strategic Advisory Services at Jane's Information Group.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Analysts said reverberations from the Mumbai attacks probably would be felt in Afghanistan, long a staging ground for India-Pakistan rivalries. Renewed enmity would jeopardize U.S. hopes that Pakistan can be persuaded to marshal its energies to fight Islamic insurgents in the tribal lands bordering Afghanistan, rather than devote massive military resources to guarding against attack by India.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> "Disruption of India-Pakistan ties at this juncture entails serious fallout in Afghanistan," said a commentary Friday in Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> "Everyone's kind of holding their breath on this, because it will definitely play out here as well," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss implications of the attacks.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Barack Obama's incoming administration has signaled ambitions for a speedy resolution of the Kashmir question. With such an accord in place, tens of thousands of Pakistani troops patrolling the Indian frontier could be deployed to operations against Islamic militants in the tribal areas.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Such a campaign is already taking place in the Bajaur tribal region, where Pakistani government forces say they have killed hundreds of militants in an offensive that began in August. North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders in Afghanistan say that from their side of the border, they are seeing the positive effects of the Pakistani campaign. But Pakistani military officials are already complaining about the burdens of an unpopular offensive, hinting that it cannot continue indefinitely.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> For Pakistan's fledgling civilian government, however, the more immediate concern may be its own uneasy dealings with the ISI, over which it has been trying to assert greater control. Until 2001, the spy agency was the chief patron of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a now-banned militant group created in the 1980s to foment unrest in Kashmir. Some analysts have said the carefully choreographed Mumbai attacks bore some of the group's hallmarks, though no conclusive evidence has emerged.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> "It's very likely this group has an involvement at some level, but it's difficult to characterize because of the murky nature of how they operate," said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> While pressure over the Mumbai attacks has the Pakistani government on edge, the public has been nearly as riveted as if the violence had taken place on home soil. Pakistanis clustered around TV sets as news networks, in cooperation with Indian channels, carried nonstop coverage of the unfolding drama. Newspaper editorials uniformly expressed shock and sympathy.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> In another break from the past, the Mumbai attacks generated a near-constant stream of high-level communication between the two countries. On Friday, Zardari reminded Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of his own wife's assassination by suspected Islamic militants, appealing to the Indian leader not to let insurgents set the regional agenda.</span><br /> <br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> "We should not fall into the militants' trap," he said.</span><br /><br /></div>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-83317020612119725462008-11-25T09:11:00.004-05:002008-11-25T15:21:48.128-05:00Obama's Foreign Policy ABC's<div class="storysubhead" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(51, 51, 51) ! important;"><span style="font-style: italic;">An old friend and traveling buddy, Wess Mitchell, has written a very memorable prescriptive for changing course from the unipolar mindset of the Bush administration:</span><br /><br />The United States today faces an unfamiliar and rapidly changing world landscape.</div> <div class="storybyline" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 15px ! important; color: rgb(153, 153, 153) ! important;">By A. Wess Mitchell <br />November 23, 2008<br /><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mitchell23-2008nov23,0,3844969.story">Read original article at <span style="font-style: italic;">LA Times</span>>></a><br /></div> <br />When Barack Obama enters the Oval Office as commander in chief for the first time in January, it's not hard to imagine him walking to the globe beside the window, giving it a good spin and running in his mind through the list of global burdens he has inherited from his predecessor. What he will see is unlike anything any American statesman has ever had to confront. Two simultaneous land wars; a rapidly arming Iran; an atomic, post-Musharraf Pakistan; a resurgent, energy-rich Russia; a China that holds 10% of U.S. currency; a $10-trillion public debt; the worst recession since World War II; and a weak dollar.<br /><br />Reflecting on this list, it may occur to Obama that he faces the most densely packed and danger-fraught international agenda of any American president since Harry S. Truman -- but the weakest hand of any president since Warren G. Harding. To use the prevailing economic terminology, he will inherit a leveraged superpower.<br /><br /><div class="storybody">Many have noted the perils of America's wars and recession and have dilated gravely on the courage and creativity they will require of the new president. But few have called attention to the deeper structural significance these challenges collectively hold. For of the many "firsts" that Obama will register in the history books, the most important but most frequently overlooked is that he will be the first American president to have to come to grips with the full-blown psychological reality of global multipolarity.<br /><br />This is neither the geopolitical straitjacket of bipolarity, with its furrowed map and hair-trigger standoffs, nor is it the permissive strategic environment of unipolarity, with its cooperative center and untamed periphery. Multipolarity has never existed on a global scale. The closest parallel we have to it is late 19th century Europe, with its narrow power differentials and multiple actors jostling for influence in the finely tuned regional balance of power.<br /><br />The 21st century wasn't supposed to look this way. Only 18 years have passed since Charles Krauthammer proclaimed the advent of the "unipolar moment." The leitmotif of this new era was supposed to be incontestable American strength. Krauthammer acknowledged that new powers might arise at some point, but that, he said, was decades away.<br /><br /></div> Now, however, the multipolar moment has arrived ahead of schedule. Signs of its advent are everywhere. China continues its peaceful half- century march to superpower status, amassing an economy that will be larger than America's in a decade and a globe-girdling array of Third World client states. Russia, long thought a geopolitical washout, has used a combination of natural-gas wealth and diplomatic braggadocio to expel U.S. influence from Central Asia and reinsert itself into the ranks of the great powers. India, now a member of the nuclear club, is quietly dethroning the U.S. high-tech industry and carving out a geopolitical sphere of influence in South Asia.<br /><br />Although the U.S. will still be the strongest power in this new system, it will not enjoy the sway it did in the early 1990s.<br /><br />Talking this way in Washington will earn you the pejorative label of "declinist." Thus, arch-neoconservative Robert Kagan used a recent Washington Post column to warn the new administration against constructing a realist foreign policy template premised on an acceptance of attenuating American strength. By equating American primacy with "optimism" and "limits on our power" with defeatism, Kagan sent an unmistakable political message to the new Democratic president: Persist with the orthodoxy of unipolarity or risk the epithet "declinist" in the Republican Party's 2012 comeback narrative. "The danger of today's declinism," Kagan wrote, "is not that it is true but that the next president will act as if it is."<br /><br />But the real danger is precisely the opposite -- that America is in a state of relative decline but that the new administration will act as if it is not. The latest forecast from the National Intelligence Council, the strategic forecasting unit of the U.S. intelligence community, depicts, by 2025, a world in which U.S. preeminence is deeply eroded and in which Washington maintains a decisive edge only in military hardware.<br /><br />This is the world that Obama must equip the nation to navigate. It is imperative that he initiate a fundamental break from the post-Cold War U.S. strategic playbook. He must find a way to be flexible without being perfidious, to be a realist without being cynical, to match American policy ends with American power means. He must not persist, like his immediate predecessor, with a unipolar mind-set and a bipolar tool kit in a multipolar world.<br /><br />What is an eager but overburdened young president to do? Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is not suited to playing power politics: Realpolitik, it is said, is not in our political DNA. And indeed, we are not a cynical people. But Obama need not reach far to find a shrewd new way to cope with an imposing new world. Embedded in our own domestic political system are the tools he will need. Three concepts, each deeply rooted in American democracy, may prove useful. Think of them as the ABCs of American statecraft for a multipolar world:<br /><br /><b>A</b>: Allies are the political "base." As Obama knows, successful candidates take care to maintain their links to the party faithful. Lose them, and a politician deals from a position of weakness. In a multipolar world, allies provide the crucial "votes" that America needs to succeed against rivals. The first rule of American politics should be the first rule of American geopolitics: "Tend to your base."<br /><br /><b>B</b>: Bargains are the coin of the realm. Every American politician understands the importance of trade-offs: Help a rival senator pass a bill, and he'll help you build that new highway back home. It's the same in foreign policy. "Ice NATO expansion," Moscow may tell the new president, "and we'll help you with Iran." As they do in the Senate, these offers force us to weigh values and interests. And as in the Senate, America must beware of cutting deals at the expense of our most precious resource -- our base.<br /><br /><b>C</b>: Checked power is safe power. The concept of a balance of power is the taproot of American political thought. Congress, courts and the president contain and curtail one another in an elaborate dance that sifts power, protecting the republic. Understanding this separation of powers will equip Obama well for multipolarity. He need not dominate the new system or head off peers, only keep their power in manageable bounds.<br /><br />The notion that democracies in general, and America in particular, are at a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble world of geopolitics must be jettisoned. The skills we need are all well known to President-elect Obama. Incorporating these most American of concepts into our foreign policy may offer the new president some surprising advantages for coping with an unfamiliar new world.<br /><br />America, it turns out, can handle the end of the unipolar moment.<br /><br />A. Wess Mitchell is co-founder and director of research at the Center for European Policy Analysis.Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-19455808167428457802008-11-24T10:16:00.007-05:002008-11-24T19:31:24.923-05:00Oil Price, Not Subprime Loans, Broke US Consumers<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SStHUSc2GrI/AAAAAAAAAMc/55iKcMT_IqE/s1600-h/ChartA.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SStHUSc2GrI/AAAAAAAAAMc/55iKcMT_IqE/s320/ChartA.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272386202643077810" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />by Judith Apter Klinghoffer<br /><a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/57356.html">Original Article on George Mason University site>></a><br /><br />Last week Tom Friedman urged his readers to go shopping. This week he tells them to eschew restaurant food in favor of a home made tuna fish sandwich. In other words, Friedman suggests that it is time to panic. Why? Because the US is filled with W.M.D. called subprime mortgages. I beg to differ.<br /><br />Subprime mortgages are a problem but they are not the cause of the collapse. The collapse was caused by an OPEC generated precipitous rise in oil prices. Subprime mortgage buyers could no longer pay their mortgages because too much of their pay check had to go to pay for gasoline. Yes, I know, gas prices have since declined but not before Humpty Dumpty, the American consumer, was broken.<br /><br />Much of the economic development around the world rested on the willingness and ability of the American consumer to absorb a large portion of the excess global production especially from emerging markets. It was the role of the producing nations to enable the American consumers to fulfill its role, i.e, live above its means, by lending it the needed funds. All subprime loans did was to encourage poor people to join the national spending spree. The hope was that emerging markets consumers will slowly begin to follow in the footsteps of their American brethren enabling a careful rebalancing of the global economy.<br /><br />Indeed, when Oil rich nations decided to squeeze the American consumer by not only raising oil prices but also by ending or lowering their investment in the American financial markets, they assumed that there were enough new consumers in Asia to replace the American ones. In other word, they assumed that the collapse of the US economy would not lead to the collapse of the global economy, most especially, the Asian one.<br /><br />They were wrong. Instead of proving that the world no longer needed Americans and their dollars, they ended up proving that the US and its consumers were needed more than ever. Just note the post crisis rise in the value of the dollar and the enormous popularity of US treasury bonds.<br /><br />So where are we now? OPEC got the American president it wanted but at an exorbitant price. To steady the American economy, oil prices will have to stay low and foreign government will have to buy more American debt than ever. The projected American deficit next year is going to be around a trillion dollars to which a stimulus package of about another half a trillion dollars will probably be added.<br /><br />If all goes well, the American consumer (excluding its poorest component) will have a short memory and it will renew its reckless spending. If it turns thrifty, the recession will last longer. Either way, the new, less confident developing world consumers are no longer likely to follow suit and the corporate world is going to be much more risk averse. In other words, the era of fast paced global development is probably over and the poor will stay poorer longer.<br /><br />What is to be done? We must use this crisis to make major strides towards energy independence. A major part of the stimulus package should be spent on investment in our energy resources. This is the time to take a holistic approach. We should do everything, so that never, but never, will energy warlords be in a position to hold us hostage again. As in 1973 and 1979, they have demonstrated yet again that they cannot be trusted. Enough is enough.Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-69826133921289140142008-11-21T12:32:00.008-05:002008-11-24T20:16:33.181-05:00Withdrawal, Secrecy and the Imperial PresidentAfter posting my mission for this blog as well as a good deal of source material, I feel that today would be a fine time for my first commentary, in this case on the secrecy with which President Bush has treated the recently agreed-upon "security pact" that was negotiated with Iraq.<br /><br />Yesterday, <a href="http://cantdriveit.blogspot.com/2008/11/us-iraq-security-pact-poses-legal.html">as noted in an earlier posting</a>, and as reported by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AI8OT20081119?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0">Reuters ("Lawmaker accuses Bush over Iraq Deal")</a> and the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/11/20/us_iraq_security_pact_may_be_in_violation_congress_is_told/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Globe</span> ("US-Iraq security pact may be in violation, Congress is told")</a>, a Congressional sub-committee heard testimony that the US Constitution may have been breeched in the act of negotiating a security treaty with the nation of Iraq. Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEf7fcEzAfY">seen here on C-Span in previous testimony on the same subject</a>, notes that, based on Constitutional precepts provided by the Supreme Court in the case of <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0343_0579_ZO.html">Youngstown</a>, "an agreement entered in by the President on his own authority could not guarantee that we [the US] would come to the defense of Iraq. That is because the President as Commander in Chief does not have the power to declare war, as that is a power granted to Congress."<br /><br />However, <a href="http://www.afsc.org/Iraq/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/71012">the agreement as approved by the Iraqi cabinet</a>, sets up a "Joint Military Coordination Committee" in Section 23 of the agreement, as below:<br /><blockquote>The Joint Committee of Ministers will create the Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC) that includes representatives from both sides. The Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC) will be jointly led by both sides.</blockquote>Problematically, this committee would cede aspects of operational command over the US Armed Forces.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The Bush administration has had earlier conflicts with even the most conservative elements of Congress <a href="http://www.acsblog.org/separation-of-powers-guest-blogger-youngstown-case-still-a-check-on-executive-power.html">(as when Attorney General Gonzalez tried to defend the wire-tapping executive orders before Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina)</a> on the same issue of executive overreach. As <a href="http://www.acsblog.org/separation-of-powers-guest-blogger-youngstown-case-still-a-check-on-executive-power.html">noted by Creighton University Law Professor Michael Kelly</a>, <em></em>"Justice Jackson's concurring opinion in <i>Youngstown</i> said that a president's power is at its 'maximum' when he is acting with Congress, but his power moves into a 'twilight zone' when he is acting on his own in the face of Congressional silence, and his power is at its 'lowest ebb' when he is acting on his own against the implied or express will of Congress."<br /><br />The will of Congress to be brought to the negotiating table has certainly been expressed, <a href="http://www.house.gov/delahunt/wdbushmandate.pdf">as in this Ocotber 29,2008, letter to George Bush from the House Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee Chair Bill Delahunt </a>, which alludes to the troubling aspects of the US Congress and citizenry being shut out of any discussions with Iraq despite long-running requests for consultation by Congress. The letter goes on to discuss the imperative of Congressional Approval of this pact to meet standards of Constitutional legality:<br /><blockquote>In testimony earlier this year, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and the Coordinator for Iraq, Ambassador David M. Satterfield, suggested that the joint congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq gives your administration the authority to engage indefinitely in offensive combat operations in Iraq.<br /><br />We respectfully disagree. The joint resolution clearly provides you with authority to fight only to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq," which no longer exists, as Saddam Hussein's regime has been replaced with a friendly government, and to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." The UN Mandate is all that allows the administration to meet this second criteria, making a continuation of the Mandate, congressional approval of the U.S.-Iraq security pact as a congressional-executive agreement, or approval of the agreement as a treaty by the Senate essential to ensuring that our combat troops are on sound legal ground.</blockquote>What appears to be George Bush's final major stroke in Iraq, the signing of the US-Iraq Security Pact, resembles, in effect, a peace treaty (or at least the legally binding path to a peace), as it negotiates the halt of US combat operations on Iraqi soil with the government of Iraq. While it should be cause for optimism that the terms of peace have been discussed and laid out, the lack of public oversight in the process is more than just a cause for concern. It is a subversion of the checks and balances that our government is founded on.<br /><br />Without the Congress to give voice to the people, and the Judiciary to ensure the rule of law, the Executive becomes a voice unto itself, set upon the international body politic with no limits, to make decrees as it might wish. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger introduces this thesis in his work <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Presidency-Jr-Arthur-Schlesinger/dp/0618420010/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227286782&sr=8-1">The Imperial Presidency</a>:</span><br /><blockquote><br />"It is chiefly in its foreign relations," as Tocqueville noted long ago, "that the executive power of a nation finds occasion to exert its skill and its strength. If the existence of the American Union were perpetually threatened, if its chief interests were in daily connection with those of other pewerful nations, the executive would assume an increased importance." But the nation that Tocqueville inspected in the 1830s lived in happy isolation from world power conflicts. In consequence, he wrote, "the President of the United States possesses almost royal prerogatives which he has no opoportunity of exercising." In the last half century, international crisis, genuine, contrived or imagined, has at last given Presidents to exercise these almost royal prerogatgives--with the results Tocqueville predicted. This is the story of the imperial Presidency.</blockquote><br />The practical implications of allowing the Bush administration free reign to direct the theatre of Iraq have been extraordinarily costly to date in terms of lives, expense to our economy, our standing in the world, and in terms of our security. Rather than allowing Bush to cloak this final act in secrecy (there have been no American press reports of the actual agreement), the Senate should act to debate this issue as a full body, and they should pass a resolution demanding that Congress be consulted; otherwise the issue should go immediately before the courts.<br /><br />Not only in the United States, the manner of introducing this act before the Iraqi Parliament appears, at the least, to have been polically ill-prepared. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSLL721530">Al-Sadr's supporters have been demonstrating en masse with snipers looking down from above</a>, while al-Sistani's neutrality or support for the agreement is yet to be fully confirmed. The Bush administration has claimed that a simple majority of Iraqi Parliament will be required to pass the bill, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD94IKOBG1">but if broad consensus is not reached, al-Sistani could voice discontent</a>, leading to mass unrest. In the interests of the American and Iraqi people, this issue deserves the scrutiny of the Congress.<br /></span>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-26926610937275543212008-11-20T10:24:00.004-05:002008-11-20T21:02:45.160-05:00Full Text of Secret Iraq Withdrawal AgreementMassachusetts Congressman William Delahunt this morning criticized the Bush administration for its policy of secrecy regarding the US-Iraq Security Pact <a href="http://cantdriveit.blogspot.com/2008/11/us-iraq-security-pact-poses-legal.html">(see below)</a>, which stipulates the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011.<br /><br />Below follows an excerpt from the text of that secret document, a translation from an Iraqi newspaper, <a href="http://www.afsc.org/Iraq/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/71012">originally published by the Society of Friends (Quakers). </a><br /><br /><p align="center"><strong>An agreement regarding the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq and regulating the U.S. activities during its temporary presence, between the United States and the Iraqi government</strong></p> <p align="center"><strong>November 16th, 2008</strong></p><br /><p align="center"><u>Foreword</u></p> <p>Iraq and the U.S., referred to here as “both sides”, affirm the importance of: supporting their joint security, participating in global peace and stability, fighting terrorism, cooperation in the fields of security and defense, and deterring invasions and threats against Iraq’s sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and Iraq’s democratic federal constitutional regime. </p> <p>Both sides affirm that this cooperation is based on mutual respect of both sides’ sovereignty in accordance with the United Nations’ goals and principles.</p> <p>Both sides want to achieve mutual understanding to support their collaboration, without jeopardizing Iraq’s sovereignty over its land, water, and sky, and based on the mutual guarantees given as equal and independent sovereign partners.</p> <p>Both sides have agreed on:</p> <p align="center"><u>Article One</u><br /> <u>Scope and Goal</u></p> <p>This agreement specifies the rules and basic requirements that regulate the temporary presence and activities of U.S. troops and their withdrawal from Iraq.</p><p>...<br /></p>___________________________________________________________________<br />___________________________________________________________________<br /><br />...<br /><p align="center"><u>Article Twenty Three </u><br /> <u>Implementation</u></p> <p>The following entities are responsible of the implementation of this agreement and the settlement of any disputes over its interpretation and application:</p> <p>1- A Joint Committee of Ministers that includes members with a minister rank chosen by both sides. This committee will deal with the basic issues needed to interpret the implementation of this agreement.</p> <p>2- The Joint Committee of Ministers will create the Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC) that includes representatives from both sides. The Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC) will be jointly led by both sides.</p> <p>3- The Joint Committee of Ministers will create a Joint Committee formed by both sides that includes representatives chosen by both sides. This committee will deal with all issues related to this agreement that do not fall under the mandate of Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC); this committee will be jointly led by both sides. </p> <p>4- The Joint Committee will create subcommittees in all different areas. Subcommittees shall discuss issues related to interpretation and implementation of this agreement each in accordance with its expertise. </p> <p align="center"><u>Article Twenty Four</u><br /> <u>Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq</u></p> <p>Recognizing the improvement of the Iraqi security forces and their increased capabilities, and the fact that they are in charge of all security operations, and based on the strong relationship between the two sides, both sides have agreed on the following:</p> <p>1- All U.S. forces must withdraw from all Iraqi territories no later than December 31st 2011.</p> <p>2- All U.S. combat forces must withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages as soon as the Iraqi forces take over the full security responsibility in them. The U.S. withdrawal from these areas shall take place no later than June 30th, 2009 </p> <p>3- All withdrawn U.S. combat troops in accordance to paragraph 2 regroup in installations and areas agreed upon located outside cities, towns, and villages. These installations and areas agreed upon will be specified by the Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee (JMOCC) before the date mentioned in paragraph 2 of this article.</p> <p>4- The U.S. recognizes Iraq’s sovereign right to request a U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq at anytime. The Iraqi government recognizes the United States’ sovereign right to request a U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq at anytime. </p> <p>5- Both sides agree on creating mechanisms and arrangements to reduce the U.S. forces levels within the specified time period, and both sides must agree on where these forces will be located.</p> <p> </p> <p align="center"><u>Article Twenty Five</u><br /> <u>Procedures to end the implementation of chapter 7 on Iraq </u></p> <p>Recognizing the Iraqi government’s right in refraining from requesting a renewal of the multi-national forces mandate in Iraq granted by the Security Council resolution 1790 (2007) expiring on December 31st 2008; </p> <p>Pointing out the letters addressed to the Security Council and attached to resolution 1790: one letter from the Iraqi prime minister and the other from the U.S. secretary of state consecutively dated 7th and 10th of December 2007</p> <p>Noting the third part of the declaration of principles signed by the Iraqi PM and the U.S. president on November 26 of 2007 in which Iraq requested a final renewal of the U.S. mandate until December 31st of 2008;</p> <p>Recognizing the important and positive developments in Iraq, and keeping in mind that the situation in Iraq is fundamentally different from that existing at the time the Security Council adopted resolution number 661 (1990), especially that the danger posed to international peace and stability by the former Iraqi government is now gone; </p> Both sides confirm that after the expiration of the United Nations mandate for the multi-national forces in Iraq on December 31st 2008, Iraq should regain the international and legal position that it used to enjoy before Security Council resolution number 661 (1990). Both sides confirm that the U.S. will make its best effort to help Iraq take the necessary steps to accomplish that by December 31st of 2008. <br /><a href="http://www.afsc.org/Iraq/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/71012"><br />Read the full text of the agreement here>></a>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-26215103153595435792008-11-20T10:13:00.004-05:002008-11-20T10:20:23.880-05:00US-Iraq Security Pact Poses Legal Issues in US, Iraqfrom the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/11/20/us_iraq_security_pact_may_be_in_violation_congress_is_told/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Globe>></span></a><br /><span id="byline">By Jenny Paul </span> <span id="dateline"> Globe Correspondent <span class="listPipe">/</span> November 20, 2008<br /><br /></span>WASHINGTON - Passage of the US-Iraq security pact under the terms both countries' leaders have advocated could violate the constitutions of both countries, specialists told a congressional subcommittee yesterday.<br /><p>They instead pressed for an extension of the United Nations mandate authorizing US troop involvement in Iraq, which expires Dec. 31.</p><p>American constitutional law scholar Oona Hathaway said she believes the Constitution requires Congress to also approve the agreement. The Bush administration has labeled the pact a "status of forces agreement," which can be implemented without congressional approval.</p><p>But Hathaway said the US-Iraqi pact is more comprehensive than previous agreements because it allows US troops to engage in military operations and specifies timetables for military withdrawal.</p><p>"These are unprecedented in a standard status of forces agreement, have never been part of a standard status of forces agreement, and extend in my view far beyond what the president can do without obtaining congressional approval," said Hathaway, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law.</p><p>She also dismissed contentions that the administration can continue combat operations in Iraq after Dec. 31 based on the congressional resolution that authorized the 2003 US invasion.</p><p>"This was enacted, remember, in 2002, when Saddam Hussein was in power, and we were hearing about weapons of mass destruction, and so it was clear what the threat posed by Iraq was," she said. "It was posed by the government of Iraq. Of course, that government has changed, and those same threats to the United States do not exist."</p><p>The hearing was held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on international organizations, human rights, and oversight.</p><p>Its chairman, Representative William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that he has "serious reservations" about the pact and argued that an extension of the UN mandate would be a viable stopgap measure.</p><p>The security agreement, which the Iraqi Cabinet approved on Sunday and the United States and Iraq signed on Monday, requires US troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Iraq's parliament must approve the agreement before it takes effect.</p><p>Iraqi lawmakers, however, are debating the number of votes needed to pass the agreement. Most of the ruling parties argue that current law requires only a simple majority, while opponents say a provision in the Iraqi constitution calls for a two-thirds majority of the 275-member parliament, said Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi architect who is a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee.</p><p>Opponents of the pact introduced a bill Monday that would set a two-thirds standard for approval of agreements like the security pact.</p><p>"No one has ever proposed to have a simple majority for this type of agreement," Jarrar said. "Many people think that the new argument of just requiring a simple majority is politically motivated."</p><p>Yesterday, opponents of the agreement, including followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, disrupted a second reading of the agreement in parliament.</p><p>Jarrar told the House subcommittee a simple-majority approval of the pact could provoke unrest and violence in Iraq.</p><p>"Most of the groups who are opposing it in the parliament, have been saying, 'If you wanted to go through some loopholes - not send it to Parliament or pass it through a simple majority - we will quit this political process as a whole, and we will go back to armed resistance,' " he said.</p><p>Delahunt said US and Iraqi officials should begin working on a six-month to one-year extension of the UN mandate instead of pushing the security agreement through the Iraqi parliament before it recesses next week.</p><p>The extension would allow President-elect Barack Obama and his administration to review and "improve the agreement to meet the campaign promises of Sen. Obama." Obama has advocated a 16-month time frame for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.</p>Delahunt also berated the Bush administration for refusing to release an official copy of the agreement to the public.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/11/20/us_iraq_security_pact_may_be_in_violation_congress_is_told/">Read this article on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Globe </span>site here></a>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-31187758644308553672008-11-19T15:49:00.005-05:002008-11-19T16:25:09.979-05:00Principles in the Pipeline: Managing Transatlantic Values and Interests in Central Asia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SSSCpewmfcI/AAAAAAAAALs/DiU9n4GSGK4/s1600-h/pipeline.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 204px; height: 147px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SSSCpewmfcI/AAAAAAAAALs/DiU9n4GSGK4/s200/pipeline.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270481113073483202" border="0" /></a><br />by ALEXANDER COOLEY<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The West’s Central Asian Dilemmas</span><br /><a href="http://www.gmfus.org//doc/Cooley.TransatlanticCentralAsia.pdf"><span style="font-style: italic;">full article >></span></a><br /><br />Throughout the 1990s the Central Asian states remained a low foreign policy priority for the United States and Europe. It was not until the next decade that the Euro-Atlantic community developed compelling security and commercial interests in the region. After 9/11 the Central Asian states hosted coalition military bases and became important security partners for operations in Afghanistan.<br /><br />The rising price of oil and gas, coupled with a renewed western concern about its energy security, made the development and export of Central Asian production a much more pressing commercial and strategic priority for Brussels and Washington than it was in the 1990s. A region that was effectively ignored for over a decade has now become a vital area of transatlantic interest.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this new period of transatlantic engagement has not been accompanied by positive changes in the quality of Central Asia’s democratic development and internal governance. Mired in post-Soviet legacies of patronage politics, strong presidencies with authoritarian powers, endemic corruption and widespread poverty, the Central Asian states, unlike many of their post-communist counterparts, have failed to make meaningful progress in enacting political and economic liberalization. In fact, while pursuing these new strategic interests the West’s credibility as an agent of political reform has been undercut by a series of mis-steps and concessions made to Central Asia’s authoritarian regimes.<br /><br />Managing the balance between promoting the interests and the values of the transatlantic community has been rendered all the more difficult by the fact that its most effective mechanisms for encouraging institutional change are not available for engaging with this region. Since the Central Asian states are not, and almost certainly will never be, candidates for membership in the European Union or NATO, they do not have to enact the necessary institutional changes and conditional reforms that helped to transform their post-communist counterparts in East and Central Europe, the Balkans and the Black Sea region. The United States and Europe have not collaborated to formulate a common Central Asian strategy, nor have they advanced a strong common response to the floundering role in the region of international organizations such as the OSCE. The trend of developments has indeed taken quite the opposite direction: many western international and non-governmental organizations that have emphasized a values-based agenda have been criticized and even driven from the region by Central Asian governments that are keen to limit outside interference in their domestic affairs. Supported by Russia’s resurgence and criticism of the West, the Central Asian states have recast the West’s values agenda as a political threat.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.gmfus.org//doc/Cooley.TransatlanticCentralAsia.pdf">Continue reading this article on the German Marshall Fund US website >></a><br /><br />Published in <span style="font-style: italic;">International Affairs</span> 84: 6, 2008Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-71158173627172567602008-11-17T18:10:00.007-05:002008-11-18T10:29:35.649-05:00The Afghan Trap: The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan and the USSR's "Vietnam"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SSIEGKnRLmI/AAAAAAAAALk/uo6vNSMYG9w/s1600-h/Brzezinski_Zbigniew.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 141px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SSIEGKnRLmI/AAAAAAAAALk/uo6vNSMYG9w/s200/Brzezinski_Zbigniew.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269779017951686242" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, <div class="info"> President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser </div><br /><div class="info2"> Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998<br />Posted at <a class="gr" href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/">globalresearch.ca</a> 15 October 2001</div><br /><hr /> <p class="q"> Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct? </p> <p> Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. </p> <p class="q"> Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it? </p> <p> B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. </p> <p class="q"> Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today? </p> <p> B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. </p> <p class="q"> Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists? </p> <p> B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? </p> <p class="q"> Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today. </p> <p> B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries. </p> <p> Translated from the French by Bill Blum </p> <hr /> <p class="url">The URL of this article is:<br /><span class="url">http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html</span> </p> <p class="copyright"> Copyright, Le Nouvel Observateur and Bill Blum. For fair use only. </p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-57356740472428608382008-11-17T13:18:00.006-05:002008-12-01T09:58:35.834-05:00Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyers<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/g6HLD5eDeGU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/g6HLD5eDeGU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><b>Part <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpzVc0OtyFY&feature=related">2>></a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njUqT63w5oE&feature=related">3>></a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wovw4iM7rKw&feature=related">4>></a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Yb4gSt-mQ&feature=related">5>></a> </b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRR2DwQ9vQ&feature=related"><b>6>></b></a><p><b>From Bill Moyer's Conversation with Andrew Bacevich:<br /></b></p><p><b>BILL MOYERS:</b> You say, "U.S. troops in battle dress and body armor, whom Americans profess to admire and support, pay the price for the nation's refusal to confront our domestic dysfunction." What are we not confronting? </p><p><b>ANDREW BACEVICH:</b> The most obvious, the blindingly obviously question, is energy. It's oil. I think historians a hundred years from now will puzzle over how it could be that the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, as far back as the early 1970s, came to recognize that dependence on foreign oil was a problem, posed a threat, comprised our freedom of action. </p><p>How every President from Richard Nixon down to the present one, President Bush, declared, "We're gonna fix this problem." None of them did. And the reason we are in Iraq today is because the Persian Gulf is at the center of the world's oil reserves. I don't mean that we invaded Iraq on behalf of big oil, but the Persian Gulf region would have zero strategic significance, were it not for the fact that that's where the oil is. </p><p>Back in 1980, I think, President Carter, in many respects when he declared the Carter Doctrine, and said that henceforth, the Persian Gulf had enormous strategic significance to the United States and the United States is not going to permit any other country to control that region of the world. </p><p>And that set in motion a set of actions that has produced the militarization of U.S. policy, ever deeper U.S. military involvement in the region, and in essence, has postponed that day of reckoning when we need to understand the imperative of having an energy policy, and trying to restore some semblance of energy independence. </p><p><b>BILL MOYERS:</b> And this is connected, as you say in the book, in your first chapters, of what you call "the crisis of profligacy." </p><p><b>ANDREW BACEVICH:</b> Well, we don't live within our means. I mean, the nation doesn't, and increasingly, individual Americans don't. Our saving - the individual savings rate in this country is below zero. The personal debt, national debt, however you want to measure it, as individuals and as a government, and as a nation we assume an endless line of credit. </p><p> As individuals, the line of credit is not endless, that's one of the reasons why we're having this current problem with the housing crisis, and so on. And my view would be that the nation's assumption, that its line of credit is endless, is also going to be shown to be false. And when that day occurs it's going to be a black day, indeed. </p><p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09262008/transcript1.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Full Transcript of Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyers Journal </span>(original airing 9/26/08)<span style="font-weight: bold;">>></span></a><br /></p><p><br /></p>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-20768913736969892912008-11-16T17:44:00.000-05:002008-11-16T17:57:38.988-05:00The Limits of Power<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SRoxP2ZF0xI/AAAAAAAAAKY/vv2a6zFjy-M/s1600-h/The+Limits+of+Power.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QNawrJ4Z3PA/SRoxP2ZF0xI/AAAAAAAAAKY/vv2a6zFjy-M/s320/The+Limits+of+Power.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267576862531769106" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />This week I picked up the recently-published book on current American policy by realist <a href="http://www.bu.edu/ir/faculty/bacevich.html">Andrew Bacevich</a>, entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-End-American-Exceptionalism/dp/0805088156/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226451643&sr=8-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Limits of Power</span></a>. Among Bacevich's most provocative concepts is his dissection of American National Security ideology, from which the following is an excerpt:<br /><br />"President Bush's critics and his dwindling band of loyalists share this conviction: that the forty-third president has broken decisively with the past, setting the United States on a revolutionary new course. Yet this is poppycock. The truth is this: Bush and those around him have reaffirmed the preexisting fundamentals of U.S. policy, above all affirming the ideology of national security to which past administrations have long subscribed. Bush's main achievement has been to articulate that ideology with such fervor and clarity as to unmask as never before its defects and utter perversity.<br /><br />"Four core convictions inform this ideology of national security. In his second inaugural address, President Bush testified eloquently to each of them.<br /><br />"According to the first of these convictions, history has an identifiable and indisputable purpose. History, the president declared, 'has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.' History's abiding theme is freedom, to which all humanity aspires. Reduced to its essentials, history is an epic struggle, binary in nature, between 'oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.'<br /><br />"According to the second conviction, the United States has always embodied, and continues to embody, freedom. America has always been, and remains, freedom's chief exemplar and advocate. 'From the day of our Founding,' the president said, 'we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth.' As the self-proclaimed Land of Liberty, the United States serves as the vanguard of history. Revising, refining, and perfecting their understanding of freedom, Americans constantly model its meaning for others around the world. In 1839, the journalist John L. O'Sullivan described the young United States as 'the Great Nation of Futurity.' So it remains today. Within the confines of the United States, history's intentions are most fully revealed.<br /><br />"According to the third conviction, Providence summons America to ensure freedom's ultimate triumph. This, observed President Bush, 'is the mission that created our Nation.' The Author of Liberty has anointed the United States as the Agent of Liberty. Unique among great powers, this nation pursues interests larger than itself. When it acts, it does so on freedom's behalf and at the behest of higher authority. By invading Iraq, the United States reaffirmed and reinvigorated the nation's 'great liberating tradition,' as the president put it. In so doing, 'we have lit a fire as well--a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.' Only cynics or those disposed toward evil could possibly dissent from this self-evident truth.<br /><br />"According to the final conviction, for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere. Only when the light of freedom's untamed fire illuminates the world's darkest corners will America's own safety and prosperity be assured. Or as the president expressed it, 'The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.' In effect, what the United States offers to the world and what it requires of the world align precisely. Put simply, 'America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.' This proposition serves, of course, as an infinitely expansible grant of authority, empowering the United States to assert its influence anywhere it chooses since, by definition, it acts on freedom's behalf.<br /><br />"This line of thinking comes with a rich and ancient pedigree. We can trace its origins back to 1630, when John Winthrop enjoined the first white settlers of Massachusetts Bay to erect a 'city upon a hill,' or to 1776, when Tom Paine declared that it lay within American's power 'to begin the world over again'--sentiments, as we have noted, that Ronald Reagan skillfully resurrected. Time and again during America's ascent to power, variants of this ideology provided the impetus for expansionism. Appearing in 1846 under the guise of Manifest Destiny, it lent moral cover to James Polk's efforts to secure the lebensraum Americans coveted. In 1898, urgent calls to 'liberate' nearby Cuba nudged William McKinley into a war that ended with the United States in possession of a maritime empire that extended all the way to the western Pacific.<br /><br />"Yet only since World War II has this ideology established itself as the fixed backdrop for policy. Indeed, it derives much of its persuasive power from the way that Americans remember that war, converting the events of the 1930s and 1940s into a parable of universal significance. Hence the inclination to portray almost any heavy not to Washington's liking as another Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, with the failure to confront that adversary as tantamount to 'appeasement' and with nothing less than the survival of civilization itself at stake."Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-36283215284248997622008-11-14T14:17:00.003-05:002008-11-24T19:38:22.540-05:00The Harsh Lesson of Afghanistan: Little has Changed in 200 YearsFrom yesterday's Times (London):<br /><h2 class="sub-heading padding-top-5 padding-bottom-15"><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article5141513.ece">As President Karzai visits Britain, an account written by the first European to visit his country still has much to teach us</a></h2><!-- END: Module - Main Heading --><!--CMA user Call Diffrenet Variation Of Image --><!-- BEGIN: Module - M24 Article Headline with no image (a) --> <!-- getting the section url from article. This has been done so that correct url is generated if we are coming from a section or topic --><!-- Print Author name associated with the article --><div id="main-article"><div class="article-author"><!-- Print Author name from By Line associated with the article --><span class="small"></span><span class="byline"> Ben Macintyre </span></div></div><!-- END: Module - M24 Article Headline with no image --><!-- Article Copy module --><!-- BEGIN: Module - Main Article --><!-- Check the Article Type and display accordingly--><!-- Print Author image associated with the Author--><!-- Print the body of the article--><div id="region-column1-layout2"><style type="text/css"> div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited { color:#06c; } </style><div id="related-article-links"><!-- Pagination --><p>Two hundred years ago this month, in the middle of the Great Indian Desert that separated British India from the uncharted lands to the northwest, British soldiers encountered Afghan warriors for the very first time.</p><p>The British force, led by a Scottish diplomat with the splendidly imperial name of Mountstuart Elphinstone, consisted of several hundred near-mutinous sepoy (native Indian) troops, a handful of white officers, 600 camels, and a dozen elephants loaded with gifts. </p><p>Elphinstone, the first European diplomatic envoy sent to Afghanistan, had been dispatched from Delhi to coax the “King of Caubul” into an alliance against Napoleon, to explore this terra incognita, and - in the unlikely event that he survived - to report back to London on the “wild and strange” land beyond the mountains.</p><p>For a month Elphinstone slogged through the desert wastes, encountering bandits, warring clans and ferocious tribal chiefs off their heads on opium and alcohol who could be spoken to only in the early afternoon, that being the “interval between sobriety and absolute stupefaction”. For guidance, he had to rely on accounts of Alexander the Great's expedition, written more than 2,000 years earlier.</p><p>Just inside the border of what is now Pakistan, on November 21, 1808, Elphinstone was met by a body of 150 Afghan mounted troops, riding two to a camel, terrifying bearded figures each carrying a glittering matchlock musket. “Their appearance,” he recorded with fine Scots understatement, “was altogether novel and striking.” No one in his party could understand a word that they were saying.</p><p>So began the first formal contact between the British crown and the fractured state of Afghanistan. The latest chapter in that story will be written today, when the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, arrives in Britain for the Prince of Wales's birthday party. </p><p>Astonishingly little has changed in the intervening two centuries: the Afghans are still regarded by Britain with a strange mixture of awe and incomprehension. The histories of our two countries are entwined like no other, yet that history has been routinely and tragically ignored or forgotten.</p><p>At 29 years old, Mountstuart Elphinstone was absurdly young, entirely fearless and very slightly mad. But he was also highly intelligent, fluent in Persian and Hindi, and profoundly observant. His book about his Afghan adventures - An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul - remains one of the most perceptive surveys of Afghanistan yet written, with such sublime chapter headings as “Rapine - how occasioned”.</p><p>In many ways, the society he described has barely changed.</p><p>The first meeting between the British diplomat and the Afghan King took place on February 25, 1809, in Peshawar, east of the Khyber Pass. As David Loyn recounts in Butcher and Bolt, an excellent new study of British engagement in Afghanistan, Elphinstone was stunned by the opulence of the Afghan king's outfit - “one blaze of jewels” - and the huge diamond, the cursed Koh-i-Noor, hanging from his wrist.</p><p>The British visitor was also intrigued by the Afghans' strenuous fitness regime, and one exercise in particular. “The performer places himself on his hands and toes, with his arms stiff and his body horizontal... he then throws his body forward, and at the same time bends his arms, so that his chest and belly almost sweep the ground.” This special form of exercise torture has been inflicted on soldiers and schoolchildren ever since. Elphinstone had discovered the Afghan press-up.</p><p>But he also noted something more profound. For all the finery, Afghanistan was chronically unstable, and about to tear itself apart. He compared it to ancient Scotland, a place of complex tribal animosities, clansmen raised on mountain hardship and bloodshed, riven by untraceable feuds and alliances, where central authority barely extended beyond the royal palace gates.</p><p>As so many British observers have been, he was drawn to the Pashtuns, with their fierce code of honour. “Their vices are revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity and obstinacy; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependants, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious and prudent.” They spent most of their time fighting each other, but they swiftly combined to repel any outsider and were ever “ready to defend their rugged country against a tyrant”.</p><p>Afghanistan, he wrote, could be understood only through its kaleidoscopic tribal structures. “The societies into which the nation is divided possess within themselves a principle of repulsion and disunion too strong to be overcome,” he noted. When the British marched into Afghanistan to bring about regime-change a few years later, Elphinstone, now in retirement, advised that the venture was hopeless. </p><p>Sure enough, in 1842, 16,000 British soldiers and camp-followers were slaughtered during the retreat from Kabul, the worst military disaster the Raj had suffered.</p><p>Britain's subsequent misadventures in Afghanistan followed a similar pattern, as successive generations of diplomats and soldiers sought to shape policy and impose change from outside without regard to local circumstances. In 2001 the EU representative to Kabul, Francesc Vendrell, candidly admitted that, since democracy had apparently been implanted in the country, “it was not thought necessary for us to understand the tribal system”.</p><p>There are small signs that the realities Elphinstone understood two centuries ago may finally be sinking in: General David Petraeus, fresh from Iraq, plans to enlist tribal leaders against the Taleban; a political settlement, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, insists, is essential to a long-term peace.</p><p>Barack Obama has pledged greater commitment to the Afghan conflict, and will soon be making his own perilous journey into the diplomatic and military wilds of Afghanistan. Before he sets off, he might ponder the insights of the very first emissary to that beautiful and benighted place, and the words of an Afghan tribal elder who accosted Mountstuart Elphinstone, two centuries ago, to explain his turbulent world.</p><p>“We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood,” the old man said. “But we will never be content with a master.”<br /></p><p>Read the Original at <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article5141513.ece"><span style="font-style: italic;">Times Online</span></a>.<br /></p></div></div>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8180179578129706030.post-55209967550785437782008-11-12T16:17:00.005-05:002008-11-12T16:32:33.409-05:00Descent Into Chaos: Charlie Rose Interview with Ahmed RashidThis video from the Charlie Rose show, first aired in June '08 features veteran Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid (from minute 32) discussing Pakistani and Afghan developments, as well as his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Descent-into-Chaos-Building-Afghanistan/dp/0670019704/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226525171&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Descent Into Chaos</span></a>. Among other topics, Rashid touches on the "Talibanization of Pakistan", the threat that offshoots of the Taliban taking shelter in Afghanistan are persuading tribes in Pakistan to fight for the Taliban, and that these tribes are taking on their own agenda of promoting "Taliban values" in Pakistan.<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1230957839718666570&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>Chuck Holdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02786452610867163981noreply@blogger.com0