(BN) Iran Gains Military Technology From U.S. Suppliers Via Malaysia Middlemen

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.

Iran Gains U.S. Military Technology Through Malaysia Middlemen

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Iran increasingly is obtaining U.S. military equipment and technology through shipments to Malaysian middlemen that illegally circumvent trade restrictions, according to American officials and analysts.

The U.S. has charged, convicted or sentenced defendants in at least six cases involving Malaysia since August 2008. The shipments have included parts for bombers and items sent to firms linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program, according to court papers. More Malaysia shipments are under investigation, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The shipments illustrate how difficult it is for U.S. law enforcement to keep military secrets and equipment from reaching Iran, a country the U.S. accuses of developing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism. The U.S. bans most trade with Iran.

Middlemen also have operated out of the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai. Shipments through Malaysia increased after the U.A.E. cracked down on exports more than a year ago, said Steven Pelak, the principal deputy chief of the Justice Department's counterespionage section in Washington.

"We've seen a lot more being now diverted through Malaysia in particular," Pelak said in an interview. "We have seen Iranian front companies there and we've seen an increase there since there's been a tightening in Dubai."

Military goods also have been illegally shipped to China, which has been trying to obtain missile, imaging, semiconductor and submarine technology from the U.S., according to a Defense Department report this year. Espionage allegations against China are "unwarranted," said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the country's embassy in Washington.

Shopping List

The Iranian government creates a shopping list of items it wants and gives it to middlemen who seek the products in the U.S. and elsewhere, said Pelak.

When one country that is home to intermediaries cracks down, the shipments move elsewhere, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and a former Iraqi weapons inspector.

The activity in Malaysia "poses a threat," Albright said in an interview. "It allows Iran to improve its military capabilities, nuclear capabilities."

In a case unsealed last year, the Justice Department alleged that electronics were illegally sent from the U.S. to Iran through Dubai and Malaysia. Some of those electronics are the same type found in roadside bombs in Iraq.

U.S. Supplier

Shipments to Malaysia have increased, Albright said, because "it's harder to do it from Dubai. You're trying to get a U.S. supplier to send it to a false end user."

The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 after militant Iranian students occupied the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak declined to comment, according to an aide. Afdal Hashim, a spokesman for the Malaysian embassy in Washington, didn't respond to phone calls or an e-mail.

The U.S. companies that supply middlemen typically are closely held sole proprietorships, said Pelak.

In 2007, the U.S. brought charges against a larger company, defense contractor ITT Corp., based in White Plains, New York, for allowing the transfer to China of night-vision technology. The company agreed to pay $100 million and plead guilty to two criminal charges.

Military Items

The U.S. announced a crackdown in 2007 of illegal exports of restricted military technology and "dual-use" equipment with military and commercial applications.

The multiagency effort resulted in criminal charges against more than 145 defendants in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 32 percent increase from the year before. Nearly half of the 2008 cases involved munitions or other restricted items headed for Iran or China, according to the Justice Department.

Authorities increased enforcement after concluding other countries were taking advantage of the U.S. to develop their own militaries and compete economically, said David Szady, who retired as an assistant director of the counterintelligence division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2006. The FBI trained agents to better detect illegal exports of sensitive materials, he said in an interview.

Evertop Services

In a March criminal complaint, the U.S. said Iranian national Majid Kakavand oversaw an international network that purchased thousands of military and commercial items from U.S. companies and illegally sent them to Iran via Malaysia.

Recipients included two Iranian military firms that the U.S. says are linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, according to court papers.

Kakavand allegedly used a company in Malaysia called Evertop Services Sdn Bhd to purchase products for Iran from U.S. and European companies, according to court papers. Among the items were capacitors, spectrometers, resistors and airborne antennae. It's unclear whether Evertop is still operating. The company couldn't be located.

Kakavand concealed from the U.S. companies that the products were going to Iran, according to court papers. He was arrested in March in France. The U.S. is seeking his extradition.

The U.S. ambassador to Malaysia, James Keith, said in a February speech in Washington that Malaysia should create a strong system to control exports. A proposed law has been pending since 2004, he said.

"One reason this has become an increasingly urgent priority is trade diversion to Iran by entities who seek to exploit the Malaysian system," Keith said, according to the prepared text of his speech. "Malaysia has more to contribute to international mechanisms to manage the flow of sensitive technology, including nuclear and missile-related equipment."

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Blum in Washington at jblum4@bloomberg.net

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In Harm's Way: The Post-9/11 Diplomat

From the Newsweek issue dated 14 September 2009:

By Ryan Crocker

The 8 a.m. US Airways shuttle from Washington to New York City took off pretty much on time. The mid-September sky was clear, the air still, and most of the flight was perfectly uneventful. My State Department colleague David Pearce and I read the papers and looked over our notes as the plane began its descent toward LaGuardia.

"Look!" somebody said, and a rumble of alarmed voices spread through the cabin. One of the towers of the World Trade Center was on fire, and smoke churned over the upper stories like a thunderhead over lower Manhattan. We craned our necks to see through one window, then another as our plane banked and made its approach to the runway. Then, just as we landed, we saw in the distant skyline the second tower erupt in flames. Cell phones rang out, and random, frightened voices tried to make sense of what was happening.

For a diplomat, I have seen a lot of violence in my career. I survived the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut that was, until that day in September 2001, among the most infamous attacks on Americans in the history of terrorism. David is as experienced in the Middle East as anyone we have at State. But you didn't need our expertise to know, when that plane hit the second tower, that this was the work of terrorists.... (more)

Khatami on Iran's Lost Chance

"We believe they destroyed in this election the biggest opportunity that had come about for the Islamic establishment and the country," Khatami said in a meeting with university professors in Tehran, the ILNA news agency reported.

He said: "We are opposed to the interpretation of religion by those who in the name of confronting Western liberalism want to drive people by force on to the path they regard as prosperous using a fascist or totalitarian approach."


By Reza Derakhshi and Fredrik Dahl

TEHRAN, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A leading Iranian reformer accused hardliners of a "fascist or totalitarian" approach, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new cabinet prepared to hold its first meeting on Sunday after his disputed re-election in June.

The hard-hitting comment by former President Mohammad Khatami was a further sign of the moderate opposition's intention to keep up protests over an election it says was rigged.

It came three days after parliament approved most of Ahmadinejad's government ministers in a move that bolstered his position after nearly three months of political turmoil in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

The reshuffled government was due to meet for the first time on Sunday evening in the northeastern city of Mashhad, site of Shi'ite Iran's holiest shrine.

The presidential poll, which was followed by huge opposition demonstrations, plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening rifts within its ruling clerical and political elites.... (more)

From Foreign Policy:

Ted Kennedy's World

The late senator will be remembered mostly for contributions to domestic issues such as health care and education, but here are five areas where the Lion defined the U.S. foreign-policy debate.

BY JOSHUA KEATING | AUGUST 26, 2009

IRAQ

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Words: "There is clearly a threat from Iraq, and there is clearly a danger, but the administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary. Nor has the administration laid out the cost in blood and treasure of this operation. With all the talk of war, the administration has not explicitly acknowledged, let alone explained to the American people, the immense postwar commitment that will be required to create a stable Iraq.” —The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, Sept. 27, 2002 ... (more)

W.H. Auden: "September 1, 1939"

W.H. Auden: "September 1, 1939"

(From "One Poet's Notes" by Edward Byrne)

On the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Germany and the opening of World War II, perhaps today presents the perfect time to revisit W.H. Auden’s famous poem, “September 1, 1939,” written in the immediate aftermath of those events. The piece appeared in The New Republic in October of 1939, and it was included in Auden’s 1940 collection of poetry, Another Time, published by Random House. Although this poem has been a favorite of many readers ever since, it received particular renewed attention in the days after September 11 in 2001, and not just for the uncanny superficial similarities in lines like the following: “The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night.”

However, we also know Auden became disenchanted with his own poem soon after its publication. Auden attempted editing the work from the very start, omitting a couple of stanzas even before its publication and later changing one of the poem’s most memorable lines, which Auden concluded displayed “dishonesty”: “We must love one another or die” became “We must love one another and die.” Auden eventually revised the poem by deleting the stanza containing that line. Finally, still unhappy with the language, he tried to limit reprinting of the poem altogether by refusing almost all requests for its inclusion in anthologies.

One reason for Auden’s change of heart about this poem could be a personal shift in political perspective on his part as he moved from England to the United States and drifted away from his earlier stance as one sympathetic to socialism, adopting more concern for religion as well. The poem also attracted criticism from some readers for what they perceived as too easy an explanation for horrible actions, if not an excuse for evil behavior, in lines such as the following: “Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.”

Nevertheless, as evidenced by the work’s enduring stature seventy years after its composition despite Auden’s attempts to erase it from his body of work, and as witnessed in the poem’s recent popularity after 9/11, most readers have responded well to the poetry, even if many apparently seem to misread some of its elements. As Adam Gopnik has written in The New Yorker (“The Double Man”: September 23, 2002): “‘September 1, 1939,’ far from being a call to renewed conscience after a period of drift, is actually a call to irony and apolitical retreat, a call not to answer any call. But, past a certain point, poets can’t be misread, not by an entire time, no more than an entire family can misread a father: the homecoming noises in the hallway are the man; the accumulated impression is the poet. What matters is the sound he makes. Auden’s emotional tone is our tone, even if his meanings are not always our meanings.”

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night....(more)

The Real Winner of Afghanistan's Election

Meet Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the unsavory Tajik warlord whose grip on Afghanistan just got a whole lot tighter.

BY HILLARY MANN LEVERETT | AUGUST 31, 2009

The real winner of Afghanistan's presidential election will not be Hamid Karzai or his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah. It's a man named Mohammad Qasim Fahim. He is Afghanistan's senior-most military commander, with the lifetime rank of marshal, and was Karzai's running mate during the campaign. Whether Karzai or one of his opponents wins, Fahim will hold and exercise extraordinary influence over the country's military and security apparatus -- more so than the elected president.

This means the real loser of Afghanistan's presidential election -- besides the Afghan people -- will be the United States' long-standing ambition to train and equip enough Afghan forces to allow for an eventual withdrawal of the U.S. military. Building up the Afghan military and police is at the heart of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's latest assessment for Washington of what needs to be done in Afghanistan. But McChrystal's forces will be training Afghan soldiers and police to work for Fahim: a human-rights-abusing, drug-trafficking warlord who might also have had a role in al Qaeda's assassination of his political godfather, Tajik warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud, on Sept. 9, 2001 -- an operation widely viewed in retrospect as a precursor to the terrorist attacks in the United States two days later.... (more)

Iran to offer new nuclear package to West

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:46:55 GMT

Iran - a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- says it will not relinquish its nuclear rights under Western pressure.

Iran has prepared an updated nuclear package and is ready to hold talks with the world powers on its nuclear program, Press TV has learned.

The package will be offered to the veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany (P5+1).

The six world powers will meet in the German city of Frankfurt on Wednesday to discuss Iran's nuclear issue.

Confirming the report, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili told reporters on Tuesday that the Tehran government has updated its proposed nuclear package in view of last year's global developments, including the economic downturn and the Georgian crisis.

Jalili, who also heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council, added that the Islamic Republic is ready to cooperate with Western countries to 'remove common concerns [about its nuclear program] in international arena'. ... (more)

Reappraising U.S. Withdrawal from Iraqi Cities

Interviewee:	Jane Arraf, Baghdad Correspondent, Christian Science Monitor
Interviewer:	Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org

August 25, 2009

Veteran reporter Jane Arraf says in an interview from Baghdad that the massive truck bombings on August 19 in the capital have shaken the Iraqi people and government. She says the repercussions will be lasting. U.S. authorities, Arraf says, may have to take a new look at the policy of leaving security under Iraqi control in urban centers. She says that the bombings may make it more difficult to continue the reconciliation policy of bringing Shiites and Sunnis closer. "Iraq is a really complicated place to begin with but this attack, and its repercussions, could really threaten stability," Arraf says.

In recent days there were truck bombings in the center of Baghdad, killing many people. There have been a lot of recriminations as to who was responsible--al-Qaeda, the Baathist party. On the other hand it's the start of Ramadan, which is usually the time when people try to get together late at night to celebrate. What is the mood like in Baghdad right now? I assume it's very hot?

It's actually about 120 degrees and there are many, many people who don't have air conditioning and still have electricity only an hour or two per day. It is pretty brutal, which is why not a lot usually happens during Ramadan when it falls in the summer. The bombings occurred last Wednesday and they were really incredibly devastating. We're talking about suicide truck bomb attacks on two of the symbols of Iraqi sovereignty, at the heart of Iraqi statehood, the finance ministry and the foreign ministry. At the foreign ministry, where I went just after the bombing, and where over the weekend I talked to some of the survivors and the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, we saw a truly devastating site. These were the worst attacks in more than a year and half, but it's really the repercussions that will have as major an impact as the bombings themselves.

What kind of repercussions?

On the security level, it has cast light on what really, truly does appear to be systemic failure of the Iraqi security apparatus. We're talking about the ability of whoever was behind this to put together two huge truck bombs--these were four-ton trucks. The one that hit the foreign ministry was packed with two tons of explosives and they were allowed to drive through the streets on roads where you're not supposed to drive any trucks in daylight hours. That says something about what the government believes is negligence, if not collaboration, by some of the security forces. They've arrested eleven security commaders for investigation.

The foreign ministry is protected by the pesh merga, the military arm of the Kurds. Each ministry here was given to a specific political party or political faction as part of the way that the country was set up when the United States was in charge. The foreign minister is Kurdish and the pesh merga control the foreign ministry. According to the foreign minister, there hasn't been a security breach within the building in six years. When the Baghdad government and higher authorities decided that things were safe enough, they [dismantled] some of the blast walls and some of the checkpoints, [but] they didn't actually consult with the foreign ministry. And that's part of the reason why this truck bomb was able to barrel down that road. That in itself was a huge breach. In July in towns throughout the north, some of them in disputed areas, there were horrendous bombings at Shiite mosques and other soft targets. Some people believe that this is all connected, that those security breaches should have been examined. Part of this, of course, is the fact that the United States had a different role here after June 30 when it pulled out of the cities, which means the United States doesn't really have a visibility, they can't do the same intelligence gathering, which really means they can't play as much of a role as they did before June 30...(more)

The Drug Story / War Story in Afghanistan

THE TALIBAN'S DRUG DEALERS

An interview with Antonio Maria Costa of the UNODC in the current issue of Newsweek International (dated September 7, 2009)

After spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to eradicate the fields of poppies that produce opium in Afghanistan, the U.S. suddenly announced in June that, in the words of special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke, "eradication is a waste of money." Instead, NATO and Afghan forces are trying to focus on the nexus between the opium trade and Taliban financing. Nobody has watched these developments more closely than Antonio Maria Costa, head of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. A frequent visitor to Afghanistan himself, he also has a staff of some 360 locals "crisscrossing the country," tracking the growth and sale of narcotics. In a series of interviews with NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey before the recent election in Afghanistan, Costa talked about the surprising drug story behind the war story there. Excerpts:

Why give up on poppy eradication?
Last year the Afghan government eradicated 5,000 hectares of about 159,000 that were cultivated. More than 70 military and militia men were killed, and a couple of hundred million dollars were spent—tens of thousands of dollars per hectare—to destroy 3 percent of the crop. Eradication is supposed to have a double function: first, to reduce cultivation; and, second, to deter farmers from planting. But nobody is deterred by a 3 percent risk. The money would be better spent on development assistance like hospitals and schools.

You've suggested Afghanistan produces much more opium than the world actually consumes.
Oh, yes. Since 2005 the Afghans have cultivated almost twice world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market. But it hasn't. Prices are back down to where they were a decade ago, but they should be much lower considering the amount of opium being produced. That suggests that a lot of opium is not reaching the market. We have been wondering where it is. Now, in a number of military operations in the southern provinces, NATO troops have found huge amounts, which is evidence that the Taliban have been sitting on huge stockpiles. I can report—and this is breaking news—that opium cultivation and production fell for the second year in a row in 2009. But again this year, supply exceeds demand. Someone is hoarding 10,000 tons of opium—enough to satisfy two years of world heroin addiction, or three years of morphine prescription. Where and why? We don't know. But it's strange and potentially dangerous. ... (MORE)

Ignatius: The Rise of Iran in Iraq

One of David's columns that should have gotten more attention:

Behind the Carnage in Baghdad

By David Ignatius

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

As security deteriorates in Baghdad, there's a new cause for worry: The head of the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) has quit in a long-running quarrel with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- depriving that country of a key leader in the fight against sectarian terrorism.

Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, the head of Iraqi intelligence since 2004, resigned this month because of what he viewed as Maliki's attempts to undermine his service and allow Iranian spies to operate freely. The CIA, which has worked closely with Shahwani since he went into exile in the 1990s and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars training the INIS, was apparently caught by surprise by his departure.

The chaotic conditions in Iraq that triggered Shahwani's resignation are illustrated by several recent events -- each of which suggests that without the backstop of U.S. support, Iraqi authorities are now desperately vulnerable to pressure, especially from neighboring Iran.

An early warning was the brazen July 28 robbery of the state-run Rafidain Bank in central Baghdad, apparently by members of an Iraqi security force. Gunmen broke into the bank and stole about 5.6 billion Iraqi dinars, or roughly $5 million. After a battle that left eight dead, the robbers fled to a newspaper run by Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of the country's vice presidents.

Abdul Mahdi, once an American favorite, has admitted that one of the robbers was a member of his security detail but denied personal involvement, according to Iraqi news reports. Some of the money has been recovered, but the rest is believed to be in Iran, along with some members of the robbery team.... (more)

Beyond Predator: The Vultures are Circling

For unmanned drones, the sky is not the limit

Flight researchers aim high for next generation of UAVs

By Mark Abramson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Thursday, August 27, 2009

Courtesy of Lockheed Martin Corp.

Courtesy of Aurora Flight Sciences

Courtesy of Boeing Co.

An unmanned aerial vehicle that would dwarf the ones known as Predator and Reaper — and could keep an eye on an unsuspecting enemy for years, rather than hours — is under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

DARPA calls the aerial vehicle the Vulture, and major aviation players such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. are working on the project, which researchers admit poses significant challenges.

What the Vulture’s role would be and what type of payload it would carry have not been specified, but it obviously could be used for surveillance, intelligence and as a relay for communications, said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker.

Derek Bye, Lockheed’s Vulture program manager, said he envisions the Vulture as a propeller-driven vehicle that looks like a flying wing spanning 200 to 500 feet with solar cells on top. The power could be stored in fuel cells.

The Vulture would probably fly at 60,000 feet and higher to stay above the weather, Bye said. The biggest issue would be operating it at higher latitudes in winter because of the sun’s low angle, which would affect how the sunlight reaches the solar cells. The vehicle has to be able to fly at night and in bad weather, Walker said.

The Vulture must require no maintenance while it’s airborne, and there is the question of how you power an unmanned aerial vehicle for years, Walker said.

Vulture is just one of the many projects that DARPA has on the drawing board. Most of the agency’s ideas take about four years to develop, but the more advanced programs take longer, Walker said.

"This is like the Holy Grail of all airplanes," said Bye. "What we are looking at is long-term surveillance at a very low cost, and this is a fundamentally different approach."

The savings on maintenance would be one of the big advantages, Bye said.

DARPA officials compare the Vulture to a satellite, but say it would offer more flexibility because it would be easier to move.

"As for what that does, it moves us towards kind of a satellite paradigm," said Walker. "Even things like Global Hawk (UAVs) don’t have an endurance that approaches years; [their endurance is] a matter of hours."

Vulture’s development comes at a time when UAVs such as the Predator and Reaper are playing an increasing role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent Washington Post article quoted an Air Force source as saying the service was going to train more UAV pilots this year than fighter and bomber pilots.

But the Vulture is a completely different bird from what is flying in the war zones. And, according to experts, putting a weapon on something that stays in the air for five years wouldn’t be practical.

DARPA developments

Apart from the Vulture, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on a smorgasbord of ideas that would make a Hollywood sci-fi movie maker salivate. They include:

• A plane that becomes a submarine to carry eight troops to an enemy’s shores without detection. DARPA issued a solicitation outlining the submersible aircraft’s requirements for any company interested in developing it.

DARPA wants it to be able to fly 1,000 nautical miles, operate like a boat on the surface for 200 nautical miles and maneuver like a submarine in shallow depths for 24 nautical miles. The agency sees this machine as a way to reduce the risks of landing troops. It would have to be able to float offshore for up to three days.

• Power Swim, a device that propels swimmers twice as fast through the water as swim fins. It mimics the motions made by a seabird to boost a swimmer’s speed, range and endurance.

"Power Swim has been going on for some time. It has been tested with users in the water and we have been very pleased," said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. "It is well under way certainly to the point where we have a working model."

• Fracture Putty, a substance to treat broken bones. It would create what DARPA dubs a "bone-like internal structure" that would degrade as the injured person’s bone regenerates.

"The healing process is a very long process. We are trying to develop this material to provide support to the bones as they heal and allow the injured soldier to get back on his feet," Walker said.

• DARPA is funding research by the University of California, Berkeley, to develop a cyborg beetle that would be controlled by electrodes. Such a beetle was flown by university researchers earlier this year.
• Disc Rotor, another aviation project in the early stages of development. The disc would be on top of aircraft and have retractable rotor blades enabling the aircraft to take off, hover and land like a chopper, but fly like an airplane without having to tilt its wings like a V-22 Osprey.

Syria Comment: The Damascus-DC Minuet

Syria Seeks to Separate US Relationship from Arab-Israeli Conflict

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

US-Syrian relations have continued to improve over the two weeks that I was on vacation. A second US military delegation visited Damascus to work on implementing agreements on Iraq security and intelligence sharing. Doubtlessly there will be hiccups in this process. American will want quick compliance and its requests met in full; Syria will hold back information and access until it is satisfied that its demands, particularly on the economic front, are being met. Economic demands are the most easy for the US to deliver on. Even then, US diplomats will claim that congress, the pro-Israel lobby, and “old-think,” stand in the way of change.

Al-Maliki, upset that the United States has taken it upon itself to negotiate over Iraq’s security with another country, followed the Americans to Damascus. “Iraq is still complaining about the infiltration of Arab and foreign terrorists into Iraq,” said Ali al-Moussawi, an adviser to al-Maliki. As the US pulls out of Iraq, Baghdad authorities are beginning to accuse Saudi Arabia of fueling the continuing violence against Shiites.

Al-Akhbar claims that Obama has moved the Syria and Lebanon file from the State Department to the White House, which is theoretically less subject to pressure from pro-Israeli elements. I have no idea if this is true. President Bush was the first president to move the Syria-Lebanon file to the White House, where it was jealously tended by the NSC and Elliott Abrams. Abrams served as a point person for policies related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he viewed Lebanon and Syria policy as a subset of the Israeli-US relationship. He used his perch in the NSC to fight efforts to push diplomatic approaches to the crises in the Middle East. In particular, he saw Saudi King Abdullah’s Arab Peace initiative as dangerous. He sought to prevent land for peace discussions and tried to stop Condoleezza Rice from pushing them forward. He used democracy promotion as a weapon to prevent engagement with Syria or the Palestinians and to divert discussion from talking about land to “capacity expansion”, “institution building,” etc., which led no where. This permitted him to focus on the enemies of Israel, which he was determined to destroy.

It was said that Obama would unwrap his Middle East Peace Plan during August, but this seems unlikely today. It is clear that Israel will not freeze settlements and will fight Obama by going to the Senate, Republican Party, and US evangelicals. See the article on Hukabee copied below.

Foolishly, the Obama administration asked Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Arab states to “normalize” relations with Israel in exchange for Netanyahu’s acceptance of the two-state solution and the freeze. Predictably, they have brushed off this suggestion, claiming that it would be putting the cart before the horse to normalize before a sovereign Palestinian state is established. and they are correct to do so.

The Arab refusal, however, has been useful to Israel supporters and opponents of the Obama initiative in the US government, who can now attack the Arabs for torpedoing the US plan. Two of my very smart students returned from an AIPAC led trip to Israel. They explained to me that “Obama is a well meaning man, who doesn’t understand the Middle East and is tilting at wind mills in trying to promote a two-state solution, which was never viable. Why,” they say, “even the Arab states are ignoring Obama’s requests. Why would Israel be a sucker and comply?” Then they decried the PLO conference, lamenting how no moderates remain among the Palestinians for Israel to negotiate with. They insisted that Obama was squandering his precious political capital on foreign policy when he needs it all for health care at home.

So how does this impact Syria? Damascus is trying to separate US-Syria relations from the Arab-Israeli conflict in anticipation of the day that Obama’s initiative founders. Even Hussein Agha and Robert Malley are claiming that “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything”. Syria’s effort to develop a relationship with Washington that is not ultimately contingent on Israel will be difficult.

The only reason most policy makers in Washington are interested in Syria is because of Israel. They want to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, but they have to do it without forcing Israel to give up the Golan because they are incapable of pressuring Israel. Clinton got close in 2000, but was ultimately unable or unwilling to pressure Barak to give up the Golan.

President Assad spent Wednesday in Iran to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad on his election. He has been able to use his good relations with Iran to free a French-Iranian recently imprisoned in Tehran. Assad condemned foreign intervention in Iran’s internal affairs, saying that “the main purpose of the interference of enemies and the West in Iran’s internal affairs is to prevent Iran and Syria from gaining consecutive victories in the next four years.”

An Opening From The Supreme Leader?

http://cnnmobile.com/primary/_VA5Apw-iq1iDw55g

Sent from my iPhone

Al Qaeda Sheikh in Syria?

Senior al Qaeda leader leaves Pakistan, directs Iraq operations from Syria
By Bill RoggioAugust 21, 2009 7:01 PM
A senior al Qaeda leader and ideologue who was based in Pakistan's tribal areas has taken control of al Qaeda in Iraq's organization in Syria and is operating from the capital, Damascus.
Sheikh Issa al Masri is thought to have entered Syria in June 2009 and has been consolidating control of the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq to refocus the group's efforts to destabilize the Iraqi government.
Sheikh Issa was detained by Pakistani security forces in January 2009, according to the Asia Times. It is unclear if he escaped or was released from Pakistani custody, US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal.
After leaving Pakistani custody, Sheikh Issa traveled to Iran prior to entering Syria, according to a report in Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper. Al Qaeda has an extensive network inside Iran which receives support from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to the US Treasury Department, which has sanctioned several members of al Qaeda's organization in Iran.
Sheikh Issa is believed to be based in Damascus and is protected by the Mukhabarat, Syria's secret intelligence service. From Damascus, Sheikh Issa has been instrumental in reorganizing al Qaeda in Iraq's network and is thought to be behind some of the most deadly attacks in Iraq, including Wednesday's coordinated bombings in Baghdad that killed more than 90 Iraqis and wounded more than 1,200.
Sheikh Issa has been aided by Abu Khalaf, a senior al Qaeda operative who has been instrumental in reviving al Qaeda in Iraq's network in eastern Syria and directing terror operations in Iraq, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal....

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/08/senior_al_qaeda_lead_5.php#ixzz0P6M4INO3

The original piece by Guido Olimpio in Corriere della Sera:

La mano dello «sceicco» dietro la nuova offensiva che sfida la normalizzazione
C' è la mano di Issa Al Masri, detto lo «sceicco», dietro la nuova offensiva terroristica in Iraq. Un uomo abituato a organizzare, pianificare e guidare anche sotto il profilo ideologico i gruppi di fuoco qaedisti. Reduci di Albania Egiziano, finito in galera dopo l' omicidio del presidente Sadat, Issa - ma il suo vero nome è Marjan Mustafa Salem Al Juhari -, è amico e complice di Ayman Al Zawahiri con il quale ha militato nella Jihad. Condannato in contumacia nel processo ai «reduci di Albania», si è rifugiato in Pakistan alla corte di Bin Laden. Per diversi anni ha agito nell' area tribale e i servizi segreti sospettano che abbia partecipato ad un complotto contro Musharraf nel 2004, quindi al piano per assassinare l' ex premier Benazir Bhutto. Proprio dopo questo omicidio si era sparsa la voce che fosse stato ferito da un razzo sparato da un drone Usa. Rifugio sicuro Gli americani considerano lo «sceicco» uno dei responsabili militari di quello che resta della Al Qaeda originale. Per questo, in giugno, si è spostato in Siria. Fonti libanesi hanno rivelato al Corriere che Al Masri, proveniente dall' Iran, si sarebbe sistemato in un rifugio sicuro nella zona di Damasco. Protetto dal Mukhabarat, avrebbe esteso il suo controllo su un buon numero di militanti attivi in Iraq. E la sua mano si è fatta sentire con una serie di attentati spaventosi, avvenuti in momenti-chiave. I segnali I qaedisti hanno replicato con i kamikaze alle analisi ottimiste del governo iracheno che, pochi giorni fa, aveva sostenuto che «la sicurezza non era più un tema prioritario». Quindi hanno mandato un segnale di sangue al premier Nuri Al Maliki in visita in Siria. Una missione legata proprio all' ospitalità che Damasco concede a jihadisti e ad una robusta colonia di baathisti, ex seguaci di Saddam. Bagdad preme perché i siriani li mettano alla porta e lo stesso sta facendo con i sauditi, ma i due paesi nicchiano. È chiaro che Damasco e Riad - con l' aggiunta di Teheran per quanto riguarda gli estremisti sciiti - vogliono avere delle pedine da muovere sulla scacchiera irachena. La coincidenza Difficile dire se gli attentati hanno un legame con le cruciali elezioni in Afghanistan - anche lì gli attentatori suicidi sono al lavoro - ma la percezione è quella di un attacco su più fronti che restituisce l' iniziativa a qaedisti e talebani. A Bagdad come a Kabul. I terroristi «votano» con le bombe, colpiscono i simboli del potere, sfidano le misure di sicurezza, ribadiscono di essere in grado di contrastare la normalizzazione raggiungendo ancora la superprotetta «zona verde». Gli strumenti Il ricorso a camion, letteralmente imbottiti di esplosivo, testimonia poi la determinazione nell' inseguire l' obiettivo di distruzione e nel provocare un alto numero di vittime. Arieti letali alternati con i baby-kamikaze, altro prodotto della fabbrica della morte irachena. Ragazzini di 14-16 anni capaci di immolarsi con la cintura-bomba. Piccole avanguardie di un movimento che ha atteso il ritiro dei soldati Usa dai centri abitati e la rimozione di alcuni posti di blocco per infiltrarsi. I leader che guidano alcune delle fazioni qaediste avevano promesso lotta ad oltranza, irridendo anche Barack Obama e il governo iracheno: «Non pensate che sia finita». Hanno allora chiesto ai reclutatori di fornire nuovi kamikaze e hanno studiato raid terroristici simili a bombardamenti aerei. Così sono riusciti a centrare i ministeri nel cuore di Bagdad. Lo sceicco Issa e i suoi «fratelli» hanno compiuto la missione.

Disturbing Portents

I found the subject of Frank Rich's column in Sunday's New York Times, "The Guns of August," very worrisome indeed:

“IT is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “blood.”... (more)

When I put it on Twitter and Facebook, friends were quick to point out how much the mood and rhetoric resembled what they had heard in the Holy Land before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, which surely was -- from the murderer's point of view -- the most successful act of terrorism ever carried out in Israel.

A further reflection of the darkening zeitgeist is the lead story in the current Marianne weekly:



Historical and philosophical covers are ubiquitous in French news magazines in August. (One brought out a special issue on Spinoza this month, another on Pascal.) But Marianne tries to combine a historical anniversary with the spirit of the age: "400 Years After the Death of Henry IV: Those Political Assassinations that Change the Course of History."

Lebanon Defined: Then and Now

Two amazing visions of Lebabon, one a trite travelogue from the 1960s that nonetheless shows how it was, the other a dazzling essay from today that explains exactly how it is.



(Thanks to Eric Pape for bringing the video to my attention)

And this, from a just-published essay on the anonymous but always intriguing Beirut blog, "Thinking Fits":

For me, the Lebanon I am living in could have become, in time, a mirror of its best yarns but instead decided to settle for its worst illusions. It is the Lebanon where the harassed, tree-rich mountains of yore peer over a filthy, ecoli- infested sea; where gorgeous parties float on thinly roofed lakes of your and my feces; where electricity still comes in dribs and drabs to entire communities; where rampant poverty is tempered and masked by a web of sectarian and feudal patronages; where food poisoning, skin diseases from toxic swimming pools, car pollution and day-long waits in traffic jams during the summer months are brandished as proof of tourism’s love of this haunt; where public works celebrate almost quarterly anniversaries on the same sites year after year after year.

This is the Lebanon that glides, haggard, stateless and broken, through life as if it’s waltzing its evenings away on marble; that thinks its sexy, beautiful, sophisticated, “with it”, when in actual fact it is over the hill, ugly, passé, money grubbing, uncouth, farts all day long, has BO and is downright moronic to boot.

August is a mother, ain’t it?

No, really, on a serious note, the other day, I was leafing through Phillips de Pury & Company’s catalogue for the May 16, 2009, auction and came across two photographs. One, titled Saida, is a shot by Elger Esser of the sea-planted citadel facing the city of Sidon. In life, it is decrepit and swimming in ink blue waters. Through Esser’s lense, it is poetry; for me, if not for him, a visualization of Lebanon as it should be: its damaged beauty still obvious to the eye, still loved, its mood melodic, even serene, its present mature and not allergic to introspection. The other photograph, by Fouad el Khoury, is of Beirut’s corniche on a very stormy day, blurred, perturbed and unbearably sensual. This imagined Lebanon is like a great idea that lives in its lazy author’s head refusing to dart out and become a full-grown story. Of my country’s many tragedies this one tugs most at the heart—at least mine.


[To read the full essay, click here.]

La Guerre n'est pas finie

French police find 2 more ETA weapons stashes

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London Times: At Home With Lockerbie Bomber

Martin Fletcher in Tripoli

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Is he the evil perpetrator of the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, or a sick old man, a loving father and grandfather, who has suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi put on a virtuoso performance when The Times came calling yesterday.

His house, in the Dimachk area of Tripoli, was not hard to find. Policemen stood guard outside. The road was lined with the BMWs of smartly dressed friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects. The high outer walls were festooned with fairy lights and with pictures of the Lockerbie bomber as he looked when he left Libya more than a decade ago. In the garden stood a marquee where he had evidently been welcomed home the previous night.

We sent in our business cards and waited, more in hope than expectation. But ten minutes later we were ushered into the spacious hall of the distinctly plush villa where chandeliers hung above a marble floor — a far cry from the Scottish prisons where al-Megrahi has spent the past eight years. His family bought the house a couple of years ago with help from the Libyan Government.

The man himself was waiting in a reception room at the top of a wide and curving staircase; the curtains were drawn against the fierce afternoon sun and tropical fish swam in illuminated tanks.

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• PICTURES: hero's return for Lockerbie bomber

He looked weak and grey, far older than his 57 years and scarcely recognisable as the man I last saw at his trial in the Netherlands in 2001. He was supporting himself on a walking stick. Like everyone else he wore flowing Arab robes of spotless white — “not what I wore in prison”, he joked in a soft voice and fluent English. He was seeing us, he explained, “because you came to our house. It is our culture.”

We sat on sofas. No tea was offered because it is Ramadan. To be free, he said, was “something amazing. I’m very, very happy.” When the doctors had told him he had just a few months left to live “this was my hope and wish — to be back with my family before I pass away . . . I always believed I would come back if justice prevailed”.

His mother, 86, had not stopped crying, he said. “I told her, ‘You should laugh, not cry’. She doesn’t know I’m ill.” He asked us not to tell her.... (more)

The CIA's Wet Works...All Wet

AP source: CIA hired contractor to kill al-Qaida

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Russia arrests eight for hijacking cargo ship

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Reuters - Iran's Mousavi says government agents raped detainees

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Iran's Mousavi says government agents raped detainees

Tuesday, Aug 18, 2009 5:46PM UTC

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi accused "establishment agents" of raping and abusing detainees imprisoned after Iran's June presidential vote and urged the powerful clerics to do their duty and speak out.

"They (authorities) asked those who were abused and raped in prisons, to present four witnesses (to prove their claim)... Those who committed the crimes were the establishment's agents," Mousavi said in a letter to reformist leader Mehdi Karoubi, the reformist mowjcamp.com website reported.

"They were threatening detainees to keep silent ... it is not possible to appease the suppressed people by using money and force," Mousavi said.

In a forthright declaration that puts the Islamic republic's influential top clerics on the spot, Mousavi demanded that they step in and pass judgment on a growing political scandal.

"It is the main duty of revolutionary clergy to reflect the realities, but some have closed their eyes and ignored this responsibility," Mousavi's letter added.

His accusation lent support to Karoubi, who angered hardliners for saying some post-election protesters were raped in jail. The authorities have rejected the accusations as "baseless."

"I praise your courage and hope the other clerics join and strengthen your efforts," Mousavi's letter said.

Some hardliners have called for Karoubi to be arrested or tried if he failed to prove the abuse accusations. Karoubi says he has evidence of mistreatment of detainees. Last Thursday, he said some of those arrested were killed under torture.

The June 12 poll and its turbulent aftermath have plunged Iran into its biggest turmoil since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposing deepening rifts within its ruling elite and also further straining relations with the West.

Iran arrested thousands of people after the election during its worst street unrest in three decades.

At least 200 people remain in jail, including senior moderate politicians, activists, lawyers and journalists. Iran has this month staged three mass trials against detainees. A fourth trial will be held on Wednesday, official media reported.

Mousavi and Karoubi, who came second and fourth respectively in the election, say it was rigged to secure hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. Ahmadinejad and his allies deny it.

The hardline president has until Wednesday to present a cabinet to parliament for approval but may get a rough ride from the conservatives who dominate the assembly, as well as from his moderate foes who see his next government as illegitimate.

The losing candidates say 69 people were killed in unrest following the vote. The figure is more than double the official toll of 26.

(Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Rachel Maddow Interviews Bahari's Wife

Reuters - Iran releases French teacher on bail: Elysee

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Iran releases French teacher on bail: Elysee

Sunday, Aug 16, 2009 8:38PM UTC

PARIS (Reuters) - Iran has freed on bail a French teaching assistant charged with spying, President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement said Clotilde Reiss, 24, was well and would stay in the French embassy in Tehran pending a verdict.

Reiss has been charged in a mass trial with aiding a Western plot against the government after Iran's disputed presidential election in June and has been held in prison since early July.

A French embassy employee, Nazak Afshar, who faces the same charges, was conditionally released earlier this week by Iran and will also stay at the embassy ahead of the verdict.

"The French authorities now ask that the judicial case against Clotilde Reiss and Madame Nazak Afshar, which cannot be justified in any way, come to a swift conclusion," Sarkozy's office said.

Sarkozy thanked other countries, including Syria, for supporting France in the case, which has further strained already tense relations with Iran.

Earlier on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told state television that France had agreed to post bail for Reiss, saying the authorities had not sought an "enormous sum."

"The verdict might come in the next eight days. Perhaps a bit longer," he said.

Sarkozy's office said the president had spoken to Reiss immediately after her release and praised her courage.

"Clotilde Reiss is in good health and has maintained good spirits," the statement said.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Iran puts more post-vote detainees on trial

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Iran's leader appoints new judiciary chief: report

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Khalaji's Who's Who in Khamenei's Iran

Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has published an interesting, if brief, academic paper on The Militarization of the Iranian Judiciary. I found the segments below of particular interest, since relationships through ancestry and marriage count for a lot among the mullahs, but family trees are hard to come by:


Who is Sadeq Larijani [who may be the next minister of justice]?
Born in 1960 in Najaf, Iraq, Sadeq Larijani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Hashem Amoli and the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani, currently one of the most widely followed marjas, “sources of emulation” whose rulings are regarded as binding by devout Shiite believers. Larijani’s two older and well-known brothers — Ali Larijani, speaker of the Majlis (Iranian parliament) and former nuclear negotiator, and Mohammad Javad Larijani, the deputy head of the judiciary, former deputy foreign affairs minister, and mathematics graduate from the University of California, Berkeley — are also married into respected clerical families: Ali is the son-in-law of the late Morteza Motahhari, an ideologue of the Islamic government, and Mohammad Javad is the son-in-law of Hassan Hassanzadeh, an ayatollah in Qom. Khamenei, at one point the supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), became intimate with the Larijani family during Ali’s several-year post as deputy commander of the IRGC.
Sadeq justifies his lack of political experience in a short autobiography on his website. Because he “felt that the West’s cultural invasion was no less important than a military invasion,” he decided to prepare himself for “confronting the cultural invasion,” in part by learning English. ...
Sadeq first made a name for himself by criticizing religious intellectuals such as Abdulkarim Soroush and eventually became one of the main voices of the Islamic Republic. Larijani taught courses on Islamic ideology, both at the seminary in Qom and at various IRGC bases around the country.
In 2001, Sadeq Larijani was the youngest jurist ever to be appointed to the Guardian Council, the twelve-person body responsible for approving all laws passed by the Majlis and for supervising elections. In the course of his Guardian Council activities, he has tried to remain under the radar by avoiding public appearances and media interviews. He has also made every effort to keep his relationships with Khamenei, the intelligence apparatus, and the IRGC under wraps.

Militarizing Iran’s Institutions
In his twenty years in office, particularly in recent years, Khamenei has replaced military, political, economic, cultural, and clerical officials with a new generation of politicians and clerics who owe their political or religious credentials to him. The IRGC and intelligence apparatuses became the main avenues through which young ambitious men loyal to Khamenei could enter the political scene.
Although most of these new politicians and clerics are close to Khamenei, they are not traditional clerics with independent political and religious credentials, such as those who participated in the 1979 Revolution. Instead, most of the new generation began their careers in the military, the IRGC, and the intelligence services. Notable examples include Ahmad Khatami (no relation to former president Muhammad Khatami), an influential intelligence agent who is now a member of the Assembly of Experts and the Friday prayer Imam of Tehran; Ahmad Salek, Khamenei’s representative in both the Qods Force and IRGC intelligence and a member of the Militant Clerics Society of Tehran; Hossein Taeb, the commander of Basij militia and former head of IRGC intelligence; and Sadeq Larijani.

BBC Mobile | BBC News | Top stories | Hamas crackdown on radical group

Holier than thou?

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Latest appearance on France 24: Korea, Iran, Fatah, etc.

The World This Week

Friday 07 August 2009

The issues of the week with our guests Barbara Giudice (Radio France International), Christopher Dickey (Newsweek Magazine) and Nicholas Norbrook (The Africa Report).

The F24 Debate

http://www.france24.com/en/20090807-the-world-this-week-1


http://www.france24.com/en/20090807-the-world-this-week-2

Palestine's Warlords, Then (2000), and Now

By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer – Tue Aug 11, 2:57 pm ET

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Fatah has elected a rejuvenated leadership that will likely bring the mainstream Palestinian movement more in line with President Barack Obama's vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, according to unofficial results released Tuesday...
Though the younger leaders endorse creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, they do not offer far-reaching concessions.
Most prominent among the newly elected leaders is Marwan Barghouti, 50, a diminutive, charismatic homegrown leader who was the West Bank Fatah commander when he was arrested by Israeli forces in 2001. Convicted of involvement in several fatal Palestinian attacks, Barghouti is serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison.
Before the eruption of a Palestinian uprising in 2000, Barghouti met regularly with Israeli peace activists and expressed readiness for mutual compromise. After the violence erupted, however, he adopted an increasingly tougher line toward Israel, mirroring other disillusioned Palestinian moderates.
In recent statements, Barghouti has rejected resumption of peace talks with Israel unless it first halts all construction in its West Bank settlements and pledges to free all prisoners and agrees to withdraw from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — items Israel believes should be the heart of negotiations.
"This election is setting a new future for the movement, a new democratic era," said Mohammed Dahlan, 47, a former Gaza security chief who was one of the winners, according to the unofficial results.
Also elected was Jibril Rajoub, 56, a former aide to the late Yasser Arafat who led several crackdowns against Hamas.
A prominent election loser was Ahmed Qureia, 72, who served as Palestinian prime minister and most recently as chief negotiator for talks with Israel. Though he clashed repeatedly with Arafat, Qureia was identified with the Fatah old guard.

THIS IS FROM NEWSWEEK'S US EDITION OF 11 DEC 2000, A LONGER VERSION APPEARED IN NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL AND NEWSWEEK IN ARABIC, BUT DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE AVAILABLE ON LINE:

Bursts of automatic-rifle fire echo up the street; wisps of tear gas float in the air. An ambulance rushes toward the scene, where Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah are using live ammo to force back a rock-throwing mob. Marwan Barghouti stands out in the open, watching from 100 yards away, hands in his pockets, as relaxed as if he were at a family picnic.
In fact, he's at a funeral: a procession bearing the corpse of a young Palestinian shot the day before has just ended nearby. Now, older mourners and local politicians, handkerchiefs over their noses because of the tear gas, are paying their respects to the 41-year-old Barghouti. They go to him for advice because he runs a group of Fatah militias, guerrillas the Israelis call Tanzim--the shock troops of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank. One of the mourners, a gray-haired man cringing at the noise of guns, asks with deference just when the dying might end. "We are at the start of this intifada," Barghouti declares, not a tear in his eye. "It has only been two months."
Only two months, but it must seem like eons to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The uprising led by new warlords like Barghouti essentially toppled Barak's government last week. Facing overwhelming opposition within Israel's Knesset, the prime minister was forced to call new elections--opening a campaign season that promises to be ruthless. Now he has perhaps six months to produce the kind of peacemaking results he can win on. To do that, Barak will need to appease not just Yasir Arafat and the familiar old PLO sycophants who surround him. He'll also have to find common ground with a younger generation of Palestinian street leaders who, like Barghouti, have emerged to lead the bloody fight against Israeli occupation. These are men in their 40s, mostly, who were previously in the shadow of the traditional PLO leadership. They are the someday successors to Arafat, and even now it is not altogether clear whether they are following his orders or he is following their lead. ...
Yet the rising stars of the intifada are not just a threat to Barak. While they demand an end to Israeli settlements, they're also challenging the old-line PLO leadership to clean up its act. Since Arafat's cronies arrived on the scene seven years ago, they've grown rich while most Palestinians have grown poorer. Barghouti and the other warlords are senior officials in the Fatah faction Arafat founded, and proclaim eternal fealty to the old man. But the current uprising "changed the rules of the game," Barghouti told NEWSWEEK. "What the leadership must do is adapt to the new rules."
Hussam Khader, an organizer of Fatah militias around the West Bank city of Nablus, goes further. He openly accused 50 members of the Palestinian Authority of taking their money and their families out of the country during the uprising. "Arafat is the umbrella for these corrupt people, but he still leads the national party," says Khader. "If Arafat didn't exist, this intifada would have been against the Palestinian Authority. And if this intifada fails to reorganize the Palestinian house, then I would consider this intifada failed."
Israel's expectation of Arafat has always been that he'd keep order, come what may. No longer: "The way it looks right now, the situation is fast going toward a state of anarchy," a senior Israeli Defense official told reporters last week. He cited six different, and often competing, security organizations operating in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, Arafat's two Preventive Security chiefs, who are supposed to control Palestinian violence in the interests of the peace process, have been increasingly reluctant to act against their own people. The West Bank operative, Jibril Rajoub, has tried to avert potential clashes: last Friday he posted his men inside the Al Aqsa Mosque on the sacred mount claimed by both Muslims and Jews when it was opened to tens of thousands of worshipers, and the prayers remained quiet. But Mohammed Dahlan, security chief in Gaza, says he is "fed up" with trying to protect Israelis--especially after they rocketed his new headquarters in October. He told NEWSWEEK he has no interest in investigating who was behind a recent bombing inside Israel that killed two Israelis and wounded more than 50. "It's not my business," said Dahlan. "It used to be my business. Understand?"...

The tone is menacing, to be sure. But the emerging warlords of Palestine are also pragmatic. They were born under Israeli rule, grew up in camps and slums patrolled by Israeli soldiers, learned Hebrew in Israeli jails. They have a ferocious familiarity with the occupiers that older Palestinians, who spent decades in exile, could never begin to have. Yet none of them embraces the apocalyptic rhetoric of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, which would erase Israel from the map. All of them accept its right to exist. What they say they reject is the kind of peace that Barak has been offering, which they see as a continuation of occupation in a different guise.
"We want to save our blood and their blood," says Dahlan. "But going back to negotiations under the old rules, that's bull----. Enough. Do you think a Palestinian state can ever be established without Jerusalem? A state full of settlements? A state surrounded by the Israeli military? What kind of a state is that?" "We are not against any negotiations," says Barghouti. "But according to our experience, over seven years [since the Oslo accords] there is no result without pressure on the ground, without resistance to the occupation. For negotiations to succeed, we have to continue the intifada."
Beyond the bravado, it's not at all clear that these new street fighters can really achieve much against the region's most powerful military. So a key question for Israelis and American mediators concerns the role of Arafat now. Has he lost control or are these really his boys, doing his bidding? One Arab intelligence source who knows him well insists that the aging guerrilla is content to see the violence continue. Since the latest uprising began, he has been treated as a hero by the rest of the Arab world, and promised more lavish funding from them than he has seen in years: as much as $1 billion. "Arafat is looking for ways to keep the fire warm while drawing money from the Arabs," said this source. Before, almost any deal he signed would have been condemned by Islamic leaders. "Now, with this so-called Independence War, he is covering his a-- from anyone who would call him a traitor."
Ever the survivor, Arafat could conceivably be strengthened by the recent mayhem. Grim as the violence has been, over the long run it could serve to prepare an exhausted public on both sides for practical concessions on territory, settlements, foreign observers, even a division of Jerusalem. Khader, in Nablus, describes the new uprising as "a sort of surgery performed to fix the malfunctions of the peace process." But there is also the risk that between the bluster of Israeli elections and the brutal brinkmanship of Arafat and his proteges, the chances of peace will be dimmed for years to come.

Maziar Bahari's wife, Paola, on CNN

French Commanders in NATO

French general takes over NATO command in Virginia

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(BN) Holbrooke Says U.S. End to Afghan Drug-Eradication Effort `Well Received'

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.

Holbrooke Says U.S. End to Afghan Drug Eradication Gets Results

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration's decision to stop eradicating drug crops in Afghanistan and increase funding for agricultural development is the "most well-received change of American policy" in the region, a U.S. special envoy said.

Richard Holbrooke, who returned July 28 from a weeklong trip to the region, told reporters yesterday the Bush administration wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on "counterproductive" efforts to wipe out opium poppy production.

"All we did was alienate" poor farmers who had no alternative cash crops or means of livelihood, "and we were driving people into the hands of the Taliban," said Holbrooke, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The amount of hectares we were destroying was inconsequential and the amount of money we were denying the Taliban was zero."

The decision to stop eradicating opium poppy was part of a larger policy shift ordered by President Barack Obama, who announced four months ago that he would send more troops, diplomats and development workers to Afghanistan to spearhead an integrated civil-military approach to eliminating terrorist safe havens in the region, including in Pakistan.

The new U.S. approach to drugs in Afghanistan "flies in the face of a lot of conventional drug-enforcement doctrine," said Holbrooke, a former ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton.

In countries such as Mexico, Colombia and parts of Thailand, much of the focus of U.S. policy has been to eradicate drugs, he said. "Here, the purpose of our policy is to strengthen the government and help defeat the Taliban," Holbrooke said. "And we were not doing it."

Interdiction Efforts

Rather than spending an estimated $44,000 per hectare, or 2.47 acres, to eradicate poppy crops, the U.S. will focus on drug interdiction efforts that target traffickers and the development of alternative crops, Holbrooke said.

He said that on his latest trip to Helmand and Kandahar provinces, two strongholds of the Afghan Taliban that are also among the most heavily planted with poppy crops, he had seen "the first tangible evidence that one of the most important policy shifts" made by the U.S. for the region "is beginning to show results."

Holbrooke said farmers had begun to understand that the U.S. was plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into developing the cultivation of lucrative legal crops and roads to marketplaces, providing alternatives that would allow them to abandon poppy cultivation.

In a separate roundtable yesterday, Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based UN World Food Program, said improved distribution techniques in Afghanistan have helped spur demand for wheat to the point where it's becoming competitive with the price of poppies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net

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Shadowland Replay from November 2003

Written about Iraq, relevant to Afghanistan:

Lessons of History

War can never be democratic. The danger of winning in Iraq could be losing in America


President Bush made one of his great speeches this week, calling for an end to despotism in the Arab world and preaching the values of democracy as the key to life, liberty and stability.

It's a vision that most Arabs would embrace. They're sick as hell of the repression, stagnation and tyranny the United States supported for so long just because certain rulers helped guarantee a reasonable price for oil, or fought communism in the 1980s, or fought Islamism in the 1990s or signed peace treaties with Israel. If the United States is truly making democracy its first priority, and putting all those other issues on the back burner, it could have the Arab masses firmly behind it.

But let's get real. The journey from despotism to democracy in the Middle East is going to take us down a bloody, thankless road and, the truth is, it's a trip that could put America's own democracy in danger.

Occupied Iraq is the critical test case. No need to recount once more all the delusions and illusions that led us into that mess. The position of the administration is now clear: we're not leaving until the country is up and running, with a constitution, elections and all the trappings of pluralism. No democracy, no exit.

But democracy doesn't beat an insurgency, which is what we're looking at right now. I've been covering guerrilla wars for almost 25 years, and in every case I've been convinced that the only way to defeat committed insurgents fighting on their home ground, in the short and medium term, is with ferocious, unrelenting repression. Afterward, compromise with the insurgents can help finish the job for good, and the democratic process can be part of that. But first: force.

This is one of the points the best-selling military historian John Keegan makes in his new book, "Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al Qaeda" (Knopf) His argument is that intelligence is helpful in any battle, but rarely decisive. "War ultimately is about doing, not thinking," he concludes. And what you do in war can never be called democratic.

The first insurgency I covered in detail was El Salvador in the early 1980s. Back then, it was conventional wisdom among liberals that the activities of right-wing death squads were not only morally repellent, they were counterproductive in the fight against communists. They supposedly drove people into the arms of the rebels. In fact, the death squads were morally repellent. The slaughter they carried out, murdering and torturing many more of the innocent than the guilty, was nauseating. But it was effective. The urban infrastructure of the Salvadoran rebels was virtually obliterated, preventing them from launching any effective uprising for years to come. Salvadoran democracy, such as it is, was built on the corpses of those killed by the death squads. The party that has held the presidency ever since that war ended was founded by the leader of the death squads.

Much is made of guerrilla ideologies--communist, or Islamist, or Baathist. But the driving force in most guerrilla movements is simply dignity. Throughout history, long before any "-isms" were known, men fought against conquerors and occupiers because they found the presence of the foreigners humiliating. They used any means at their disposal to strike back, and as often as not they were denounced by the occupiers as bandits, savages and, yes, terrorists for doing so.

You discover the same pattern repeated over and over again, literally for thousands of years, in Robert Asprey's "War in the Shadows," a two-volume history of guerrilla warfare that came out in 1975 and really ought to be reissued now.

You read about a general in an occupation force saying, "There is but one way of inducing the violent rebels to become our friends, and that is by convincing them it is in their best interest to do so"--a none-too-veiled threat. Another complains that "the violence and passions of these people are beyond every curb of religion, and Humanity, they are unbounded and every hour exhibit dreadful wanton mischiefs, murders and violence of every kind, unheard of before."

The sentiments are familiar enough in Iraq right now even if the syntax is not. But the officers quoted by Asprey were British--Lord Cornwallis and Brig. Gen. Charles O'Hara--writing about Francis Marion, "The Swamp Fox," and other guerrillas in the Carolinas during the American Revolution. Cornwallis shattered the conventional American Army in the South in less than an hour at the Battle of Camden, but he couldn't get rid of those guys in the South Carolina Low Country, who just wouldn't play by the rules. The political leadership back in London was balking at the cost. The local allies Cornwallis picked up started to desert him. He couldn't get the boots on the ground to do the job. And he just couldn't understand why he couldn't win.
Some readers will call this moral relativism (and they're welcome to expound on the subject at Shadowland@newsweek.com). But it's really just a matter of learning from the past experience of guerrilla fighting, and of terrorism. There are few mysteries here, unless we refuse to read the history at all....(more)

BBC Mobile | Iran intelligence minister sacked

http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/bbc_news/top_stories/816/81698/story8169839.shtml?

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CNN: From Queens to Al-Qaeda

http://cnnmobile.com/primary/_2Nr9lG-iVqG01zYv

New Yorker says he would have been suicide bomber Jul 23, 2009 231 GMT

A New York man who pleaded guilty in January to charges of aiding al Qaeda was ready to be a suicide bomber for the organization, but was told he needed more religious instruction, according to a document obtained by CNN on Thursday.

Bryant Neal Vinas gave an interview in March to Belgian prosecutors as part of a terrorism case there involving a cell he was associated with. CNN obtained the prosecution-prepared interview summary document from a Belgian defense attorney, and it was authenticated by both a federal prosecutor in New York and Vinas' defense attorney.

The French-language document gives a detailed picture of how Vinas traveled from New York to Pakistan and what he did while he was there....

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(BN) Bashir Says Indonesian Policies to Blame for Terror Attacks That Killed 9

For the record....

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.

Bashir Blames Indonesian Policies for Jakarta Attacks

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir blamed the Indonesian government's policies for the suicide attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta and said terrorism won't end until authorities respect the supremacy of Islamic law.

"The main cause of this disaster is the Indonesian government," the Australian newspaper cited Bashir as saying yesterday. "This will not end until the government follows the right path."

Bashir, who is the alleged spiritual leader of Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah and lives in the grounds of an Islamic school in Java, refused to condemn the attacks and said violence was justified in the fight against non-Muslims, the newspaper said.

Authorities are struggling to identify the two bombers, who killed themselves and seven other people in the July 17 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels. Indonesian police yesterday released sketches of the suspects and appealed to the public for help.

The Marriot bombing suspect was described as a male aged 16 or 17, while the man who attacked the Ritz was said to be between 20 and 40 years old.

Police say the attacks may be linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, which is blamed for killing more than 280 people in a six-year bombing campaign in Indonesia.

Bashir endorsed the work of Noordin Mohammad Top, a wanted terrorist allegedly linked to the bombings, saying he "fights to defend Islam," according to the Australian.

Holy War

Bashir denies being JI's spiritual head and his conviction for involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that left 202 people dead was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2006. He continues to call for jihad, or holy war, against the West.

Some terrorism analysts say the government must crack down on Bashir and other clerics in order to uproot Islamic extremism in the nation of 248 million people, the world's most populous Muslim country.

"If Indonesia is serious about fighting JI they must arrest and retry" Bashir for "preaching hatred," Rohan Gunaratna, head of the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said this week.

Police carried out DNA tests on the remains of the hotel bombers in an effort to identify them, police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said yesterday. The results showed they didn't belong to men called Nur Hasbi and Ibrahim, who were identified in local media reports as the suspected bombers.

Soekarna declined to comment on media reports that Noordin's wife was arrested by counterterrorism police in Central Java.

Suspected Mastermind

Noordin is the suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali attacks and was allegedly involved in the 2003 bombing at the same Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people, a 2004 blast outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that killed at least nine, and another attack in Bali in 2005 when three suicide bombers killed themselves and 20 other people.

He leads a JI splinter organization, and after the Bali attack in 2005 identified himself as the head of a group called al-Qaeda for Southeast Asia, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice Program refers to Noordin as one of the most dangerous members of JI, saying he is "believed to be a top recruiter, strategist and fundraiser."

Foreigners Killed

The near-simultaneous bombings on the hotels were the first terrorist attacks in Indonesia in almost four years. The attackers killed themselves and wounded about 50. Three Australians, one New Zealander and one Indonesian were among the dead and police are carrying out tests to confirm a Dutch couple was killed.

The attacks came nine days after elections in which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a second five-year term, partly on his perceived ability to contain extremism.

"Terrorism is the enemy of all of us," Yudhoyono told members of his Democrat Party at a post-election meeting in Jakarta late yesterday. "They destroy everything and their victims are plenty. Let us save this country through prevention and by not giving space to these terrorists."

To contact the reporters on this story: Achmad Sukarsono in Jakarta at asukarsono@bloomberg.net Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net .

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NYTimes: Iraqi Leader’s Visit With Obama Dwells on the Positive

From The New York Times:

Iraqi Leader's Visit With Obama Dwells on the Positive

By JEFF ZELENY

President Obama told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki the U.S. was on track to withdraw combat forces by next August....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/world/middleeast/23prexy.html

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The Leader: Not so supreme?

Iran president defies supreme leader over deputy

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_15884/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=dflHuWeg