A Pakinstani's note on the bombing in Kabul

A Pakistani friend of mine, call him "Sami", has written me a note about the issued entailed in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. I thought it was worth posting here. RLC

For most Indian and Western observers yesterday's suicidal terror attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan didn't require any evidence to convince them that an anxious, India-obsessed "strategic elite" based in Islamabad was to blame for the carnage. Unlike other random terrorist attacks that occur on a daily basis in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, indiscriminately claiming civilian and military lives (as well as the recent attack on the Danish embassy in the supposedly secure environs of Islamabad's diplomatic quarter), there is no reluctance in this case to directly accuse the Pakistani security establishment.

Pakistan's international reputation as a country that at one time allied itself with the Taliban and supported the infiltration of irregular fighters into Indian Kashmir is such that it's government bears a permanent stigma and is sure to be suspected of being involved in any terrorist incident that occurs beyond its borders in Afghanistan or India. This happens despite the fact when the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or some other domestic Pakistani militant outfit usually claims credit for an attack. Diplomatic murmurs and media undertones hint at some level of official Pakistani involvement - rogue or otherwise - can still be heard. But since yesterday's particular target happened to be Pakistan's regional arch-rival, India, many commentators were (perhaps too) quick to assume Islamabad was sending a not so subtle message of displeasure to New Delhi regarding the latter's extremely cozy relationship with the (anti-Pakistan) Karzai regime in Afghanistan. Of course there would certainly seem to be obvious motivations for Pakistani military hardliners to be hostile toward the growing Indian interest and involvement in Afghanistan.

For one thing, New Delhi's own covert financial and materiel support to the Balochi separatist insurgency via its consulates in southern Afghanistan has been a major destabilizing factor that the Pakistani military has had to contend with over the past four years. Islamabad's official complaints against New Delhi have thus far gone unheeded and only convinced Pakistanis of the dangers that lie ahead if India maintains its current alliance with a hostile client regime in Kabul. Already, in the absence of direct conflict along Line of Control (LOC) in disputed Kashmir, Afghanistan is being seen as the primary battleground for an ensuing Indo-Pakistani proxy war, in which the Indians seem to be backing Baloch guerrilla groups against Islamabad, while the Pakistanis appear to tolerate, even encourage Taliban fighters to undermine the Karzai government - by attacking NATO troops who happen to be caught in the middle of an Indo-Pakistani Cold War.

While there is an undeniable appeal to this sort of logic for many, from the official Pakistani point of view, it would have been extremely counter-productive to indirectly antagonize India in this way and further undermine what little confidence exists between Pakistan and its deeply distrustful Western allies, particularly the United States. The consequences of yesterday's terrorist attack are already evident with the sympathy New Delhi has been able to garner, perceivably at Pakistan's expense. If this was in fact yet another reckless act of Pakistani state-sponsored terror, as the country's detractors claim, it has backfired most disastrously for Islamabad.

On the other hand, we could choose to make an exception in this case, by looking beyond the usual Pakistani scapegoat for culpability, and examine the past behavior of the Pakistan-based militant groups such as Laskhar -e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad who have in recent years attempted to provoke direct India-Pakistan conflict to further their own narrow agendas. The most notable instance in which this terrorist strategy nearly succeeded was in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that led to military mobilization by both sides along the border and came very close to resulting in the world's first nuclear exchange.

The Pakistani military - whatever disagreeable factions it may consist of - does not, as a unified institution in anyway prefer to push itself further away from the West and thereby reward Indian interests. It can be counted on to make the pragmatic choices that need to be made in the interests of defending the Pakistani homeland as well its own self-preservation. However, the destructive logic of Pakistan's many jihadi terror groups is not known to take the long-term geopolitical considerations of state-actors into account. The winding down of jihadi terrorism in Kashmir means the withdrawal of earlier state support obviously means their terrorist infrastructure will be put out of business.

Accordingly, these pro-Kashmir jihadi groups reject as "selling out" any concessions Pakistan might make to India on the Kashmir issue, in the interest of defusing nuclear tensions in the subcontinent. For those who haven't been following the diplomatic zombie-dance known as the "India-Pakistan peace process" there have recently been some relatively optimistic developments and declarations regarding the future of Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations. As little as two weeks ago, Asif Zardari, currently the key power-broker in the Pakistani political scene stated his party's policy on Kashmir would be to work with Manmohan Singh, the current Indian PM, to achieve some sort of condominium arrangement between India and Pakistan while at the same time proceeding to dismantle the jihadi terror networks that continue to jeopardize the peace process.

The difficulties of negotiating Pakistan's schizophrenic relationship as both past sponsor and current target of terrorist entities of its own making was evident yesterday, not just in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, but also in Islamabad and Karachi as the anniversary of the Pakistani military's Lal Masjid raid was commemorated with revenge suicide bombings.

Still, yesterday's denunciations against Pakistan for what happened in Kabul hardly mentioned these other murderous terrorist acts. Perhaps this is so because demonizing a country seems much easier that actually trying to understand a country confronting the demons destroying it from within.

Pakistan again? More denial, to be sure; but the truth?

The blast that took place today in front of the Indian Embassy in Kabul reveals, again, how callous and dedicated some people are in the Pakistan government. They are carrying on their war in the name of Islam. I regret to say that the connection between Pakistan's interests and the Taliban, manifest in this cruel and inhuman suicide blast, seems too evident. Pakistan seems to be infested with so many competing Islamist groups, so many elements working at cross-purposes, that no denial by the Pakistan government can suffice. That it is contrary to the official position of the Pakistan government is evident enough, but this regime is so out of control that many of the top leaders are in fact unlikely to know about the involvement of other Pakistani elements in this attack.

The intelligence elements of Pakistan have over and over again demonstrated their close engagement with the Islamist elements within Pakistan as well as those whose ambitions reach outside -- the Taliban, who are trying to re-take Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda whose agendas are more focused on states elsewhere, the Arab world, and (for some of them) the Central Asian states (mainly Uzbekistan, it is said, and Xingjiang, China) -- so that those of us who have lost all respect for the regime are immediately inclined to blame rogue elements in Pakistan.

The Pakistani people deserve better than the self-serving figures who claim to be representing the people while they bilk the system in their own interest. Among those figures, notably, are the top generals of the army who still are fighting a war with India, and embarrassing themselves.

And what can we make of the immediate denial of involvement by the Taliban? That group is also not a single organized body but a congeries of groups whose concerns presumably vary. That they deny involvement might in fact represent, again, how much the Pakistani elements operate outside of the Taliban network.

[click here for the New York Times article on the event]

A fissure in the structure of the Taliban, and it reveals

The report that Jalaluddin Haqqani has challenged Mullah Muhammad Omar’s leadership of the Taliban (published by the Kabul Press and Payman Daily, discussed by Waliullah Rahmani in Terroism Focus, Volume 5, Issue 25 (July 1, 2008)) suggests that the Taliban are not as united as they have been, or at least have seemed to be. At an earlier time, when the authority of Mullah Muhammad Omar was being threatened, he had the temerity to grasp the sacred cloak of Muhammad and put it on, an act that risked the wrath of God if he was not worthy. This was the time when loyalists declared him Emir of the Umma. He appears not to have been seriously challenged since.

So Jalaluddin Haqqani’s demand for a change in leadership of the Taliban is significant. I was struck by Rahmani’s note that Haqqani was “little influenced by the religious and political thought of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and early 1990s.” Indeed, the Taliban are themselves not really an “Afghan” movement, infused as they have been by so many non-traditional influences: the ideas of the Wahhabi-biased madrassas of Pakistan, the Pakistan military (whose interest in Islamism is entirely opportunistic), Osama Bin Laden’s “Arab Afghans” whose concerns are animated by quarrels with the leadership of some of the Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, mainly), and others (such as, it is said, Uzbeks and Uighurs, who can have little interest in Middle Eastern affairs). Haqqani is still essentially a Pushtun – an authentic Pushtun nationalist. He claims to have consulted many other Taliban commanders, presumably other Pushtun nationalists like himself. So the Taliban are animated by various concerns, not all of them of equal importance to everyone -- and this seems to be a factor in Haqqani's challenge.

Also interesting is – again – evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service is involved in the Taliban movement. According to his letter Haqqani believes that the “Taliban’s shura (consultative council) in Quetta has made a deal with intelligence agencies to kill those insurgent commanders who are opposed to working with Mullah Omar’s representatives.” It is not merely that Pakistan’s intelligence service is sympathetic; they are in fact prepared to exterminate Pushtun leaders who have doubts about Mullah Muhammad Omar. And, according to the letter the intelligence service seems to be in league with the “foreign forces allied with the Taliban leadership.” This would mean, essentially, the Arab Islamists connected with Osama Bin Laden.

In a sense, none of this is a huge surprise: it was only a few days ago that a former Taliban figure revealed that he was being pressed by Pakistanis in military dress to participate in the insurgency. But it is important for revealing – again – that the Taliban are not as spontaneous a movement as they appear to be. They are in part animated by various non-Pushtun interests: notably, Islamists from the Arab world, and (again it is evident!) intelligence agents of the Pakistan government.

Click on the title to see the original article.

McClatchy’s reporting on abuse of American prisoners

We need to appreciate McClatchy papers for their faithfulness in reporting; they have developed a fine reputation for seeking to know and report what is going on in contested places; they were, I gather, one of the best in reporting on the Iraq debacle. Here are some recent articles that should be broadly read [not pushed in the other papers].

• General Taguba, now retired (and able to say what he thinks?) now accuses Bush of criminal behavior http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/41514.html

• A notable prisoner, abused in this story: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/38888.html

• Deliberate deception by the US government: “US hid detainees from Red Cross and masked abuses” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/41394.html

McClatchy papers have recently published a series on the detention system of the American military. This is what they say about the series:

“An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

• “Sunday: We got the wrong guys
• “Monday: 'I guess you can call it torture'
• “Tuesday: A school for Jihad
• “Wednesday: 'Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo'
• “Today: 'You are the king of this prison'

“READ THE EVIDENCE

“Browse an archive of documents obtained by McClatchy in the course of this investigation.”

Pakistan: still the source of insurgency in the Middle East

It is hard to believe that the Pakistan government continues to deny that Pakistani territory is a source for Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents to base their activities in harassing Afghanistan. Once again an Afghan official is charging Pakistanis as giving sanctuary to insurgents. And once again the Pakistanis are ignoring and denying such claims.

We have just heard of another person's report, through personal sources. on a recent visit to Quetta. They report that Taliban and Al Qaeda members openly walk the streets of Quetta, and openly recruit fighters in their war against Afghanistan. They are paying families for allowing their young men to go off to the “holy war” against the Afghanistan government and the Americans. They seem, again, not to lack funds, and there are few jobs for the local recruits.

Pakistan is a festering source of insurgency – in fact, not only in Afghanistan but elsewhere in the Middle East.

The long-practiced denial in Washington is being emulated in Islamabad.

Recent Works on Radical Social Movements in Central and South Asia

[addendum June 9, 08, June 14, 08, June 16, 08]

So much stuff has been written on radical social movements in Central and South Asia that it is difficult to keep up. I recently made a list that was out of date within a few days. Here is a list, already in need of updating; I will add to it as I can, in order to try to keep a fairly current list at hand. [Note the addition of Rashid's Descent into Chaos below.]

Bajoria, Jayshree. 2008. “Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists.” Council on Foreign Relations, February 6. [http://www.cfr.org/publication/15422/pakistans_new_generation_of_terrorists.html]

Crews, Robert D. and Amin Tarzi. 2008. The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Karagiannis, Emmanuel, and Clark McCauley. 2006. Hizb-ut Tahrir al-Islami: Evaluating the Threat Posed by a radical Islamic Group that Remains Nonviolent. Terrorism and Political Violence 18: 315-334.

Sageman, Marc. 2008. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Torres, Manuel R. 2006. Analysis and Evolution of the Global Jihadist Movement Propaganda. Terrorism and Political Violence 18: 399-421.

Weitz, Richard. 2006. Terrorism in Eurasia: Enhancing the Multilateral Response China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(2): 11-17.

Wright, Lawrence. 2006. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 911. New York: Knopf.

Wright, Lawrence. 2006. “The Master Plan: For the new theorists of jihad, Al Qaeda is just the beginning.” The New Yorker. September 11.

Addendum:

Rashid, Ahmed. 2006. "Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave." New York Review June 12, 08. Review article referring to 7 recent works on the topic.

Rashid, Ahmed. 2008. Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of National Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Viking. [This is a vigorous exposure of the failures of all the regimes involved in the Middle East -Central Asian crisis; should be read widely. If it will be read, it will be a bombshell.]

Kim Cragin, Bruce Hoffman. 2003. Arms Trafficking and Colombia. RandCorporation. 81 pages. ISBN:0833031449

Scott McClellan's non-event: All this was already broadly known

The new dust-up over Scott McClellan’s new book declaring that the Bush administration “oversold” the Iraq situation in order to justify a “pre-emptive” attack is really a non-event. What McClellan is saying has been known for a long time. The problem for the Bush administration – which has hastened to reject MeClellan’s claims – is that this news comes from one of its own, one of the inner circle. Everyone in that group could not have missed the deliberate attempt by the administration to sell the attack in the face of world opposition and in the absence of concrete evidence for its claims. Those claims – now clearly known to be false – were reiterated many times.

The new book by Rein Mullerson on Central Asia

It seems that Central Asia inspires books that are not only long but great, in the sense of a broad compass covered with erudition. The books that have awed me and helped me understand the historic processes in Central Asia are not numerous but have provided, for me, a basic education in how to think about social processes over a long trajectory. The most notable one was Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China, which I had to teach several times in order to have felt I comfortably had internalized Lattimore’s sense of the sweep of history. From Lattimore I learned all the more how valuable Marx is for the understanding of history. Grosset’s Empire of the Steppes is of course another awesome work. And, even though much more modest in size but no less seminal, were the several works on Central Asia [“the world island”] by Halford MacInder. Another work that few would connect with Central Asia that has given me a sense of the impact of the Central Asia “hordes” has been Marc Bloc [Feudal Society, about a medieval world that regularly prayed for protection against “the arrows of the Hungarians,” p 41]. [Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History, for all its coverage of the world elsewhere, says little about Central Asia per se.] And I am awed, even cowed, by the recent work of Djalili and Kellner, Géopolitique de la nouvelle Asia centrale: De la fin de l”URSS à l’après-11 septembre.

But the discovery of Rein Mullerson’s Central Asia : A Chessboard and Player in the New Great Game [Kegal Paul] has humbled me all the more. Mullerson displays a broad grasp of the literature of the region, including of course that in Russian, as well as a rich sophistication in the great works of the English speaking world. The price, however, is outrageous : $144.00. Such is the value of the dollar now.

Signs of yet another crisis in Lebanon

The wars all across the so-called "Muslim world" in our times are violent manifestations of a series of critical issues powerfully at work in the region. There are now, or recently have been, wars -- mostly civil wars -- in Chad, Sudan, Somalia, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the wars in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Lebanon have only recently calmed down.

And now there is reason to worry about Lebanon -- again -- and as usual there isn't much reliable information about it. Or rather there isn't much analysis that would give outsiders a sense of how complex the issues are there now. Today's New York Times has an article about the disruptions in Beirut.

I am thankful that friends of ours have been willing to clue us occasionally to the slow tortuous decline toward another possible civil war. The note we got today was that the blog, "The Angry Arab News Service" by As'ad is a good summary of the situation there. Written hurredly and with verve, this site reveals how convoluted the alliances there are and how many crosscurrents are at work. And if not in his text itself then in the reactions to it by other Arabs, you can see how intense the opinions are. We need to be watching.
Click on the title for a link to that blog.

Torture in our name: An embarrassing library of evidences

[addenda and corrections 5/7/08, 5/15/08, 6/9/08]

Nicholas Kristof’s comment about prisoner abuse in our military facilities [NYTimes 5/4/08], notably in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, prompts me to wonder how many cases we know about. Here are the cases he mentions that are not as yet published:

• Kristof says, “On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. … [He] was beaten…” Arrived “so frail when he arrived that he had to be carried off the plane and into an ambulance.”

• Also: “Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, has just published a memoir of his nearly five years in Guantánamo. He describes prolonged torture that included interruptions by a doctor to ensure that he was well enough for the torture to continue.”

• Also: "Italian Trial of CIA Operatives Begins with Torture Testimony." [NYTimes 5/15/08] A Muslim cleric's wife testifies of the capture and "extraordinary rendition" of her husband to Egypt by the CIA, where he was tortured.
  

I went looking on the web for recent publications on torture. There are more than I thought. How many more books will have to be published before the American people internalize what has been done to other human beings in their name? None of us believes that torture is consistent with the ideals of our country and yet the practice persists -- and few voices have been raised about it. When our country realizes what has been done in its name, many of us will be tempted to feign ignorance.

The sad thing is that our country, like so many others, is enveloped in fairly sealed "information worlds.” Like people elsewhere -- many Germans during WW II, like the Serbs under Miloshivich and in fact the populations of most countries -- most Americans cannot believe that our people could have done what they did (our troops), or authorized what they authorized (e.g., John Yoo), organized what they organized (our generals), and carried out the abuses they carried out. Witness the attitude of the Serbs, many of whom to this day believe their people were not guilty of the well documented abuses during the recent wars in Yugoslavia; witness also the Iranians and the Pakistanis, who reject all accusations of abuse. In fact, they are unaware of them. What has been going on in those countries has remained invisible to the common public as many abusive practices seem to be (but are not) invisible in our country.

One of our problems is that despite the presumed superiority of our media, the American people remain informed only of those events that are presentable on TV; what we know is limited to the moving images that someone has been able to get, and essentially only those that are current, of what is happening in the world.

In chronological order, from the newest to the oldest, I list here those works documenting instances of torture perpetrated by our government. This is what I could find easily; there must be more.

• Steven Wax. (June 3) 2008. Kafka Comes to America. Other Press.

• Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. 2008 [May 15]. Standard Operating Procedure. Penguin. [Reviewed, along with film of the same name, by Ian Buruma, New York Review June 26, 08, p 6,8]

• Eric Lichtblau. 2008. Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice. Pantheon.

• Philippe Sands. 2008 [May 13] Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. Palgrave.

• Mahvish Rukhsana Khan. 2008. My Guantánamo Diary. Public Affairs. [A pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his country was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy water and paraded around naked. Finally, after three years, officials apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home.]

• Darius Rejali. 2007. Torture and Democracy. Princeton University. [880 pp. “the most compendious and the most rigorous treatment of the subject yet written.”]

• Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian. 2007. Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. NAL. [A developed version of a story widely available in the media and on the Internet. Lagouranis became a central figure to Iraq war opponents by describing his role as an army interrogator at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.]

• Stephen F. Eisenman. 2007. The Abu Ghraib Effect. Reaktion Books. [“Scholarly, succinct, and flush with photos, Eisenman's analysis is art history at its most compelling.”]

• Tara McKelvey. 2007. Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War. Basic Books. [[A]buses at Abu Ghraib, in particular the abuses visited upon women prisoners]

• Bob Brecher. 2007. Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series). Wiley-Blackwell.

• Jack L. Goldsmith. 2007. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. Norton.
  

• Joseph Margulies. 2007. Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power. Simon & Schuster

• Alfred McCoy. 2006. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Holt Metropolitan Books. [“From the start of the Cold War to the early nineteen-sixties, the C.I.A. spent billions of dollars developing psychological tools for interrogation. … [Documentation] from the Phoenix program in Vietnam—which was designed to ferret out high-level Vietcong, although of the more than twenty thousand people it killed most were civilians—to the actions of agency-trained secret police in Honduras in the nineteen-eighties, and the treatment of hooded detainees at Abu Ghraib.]

• Tara McKelvey (Editor). 2006. One of the Guys: Women as Aggressors and Torturers. Seal Press.

• Stephen Grey. 2006. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. St. Martin's.

• Sanford Levinson (ed). 2006. Torture: A Collection. Oxford University Press, USA. [Sections on "Philosophical Considerations"; "Torture as Practiced"; "Contemporary Attempts to Abolish Torture Through Law"; and "Reflections on the Post 9-11 Debate About Legalizing Torture.]

• Stephen Grey. 2006. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. St Martin’s Press.

• Steven Miles. 2006. Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror. Random House. [ … the work of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (known as BSCTs, or "biscuits") active in Iraq and Guantanamo: groups of psychiatrists and psychologists who used detainees' medical charts and test data to devise "physically and psychologically coercive interrogation plans" designed to break their resistance. In at least one camp in Iraq, all harsh interrogations reportedly were first approved by the medical team.]

• Jennifer K. Harbury. 2005. Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture. Beacon. [A "wink and nod" approach, sending clear signals to the Salvadoran team that the abductions, tortures, and kidnappings were to continue. ..."]

• Dianna Ortiz.2004.Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey From Torture To Truth.Orbis.["... going through the court proceedings mirrored the situation of the torture, perhaps asserting myself and having a team of people with me to support me would be a ..."]

• Karen J. Greenberg, Joshua L. Dratel, and Anthony Lewis (Eds). 2005. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib. Cambridge University Press. [Bush administration officials and top military brass continue to maintain that the well-documented abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were the isolated actions of a few rogue guards. … [The editors] believe the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the claimed abuses at Guantanamo are the direct result of administration policies. … [A] compilation of administration documents … clearly reveal that, at the highest levels, the Bush administration sought legal justification to circumvent both the Geneva Convention and other international accepted norms regarding the interrogation and treatment of military detainees.]

• Karen J. Greenberg, ed. 2005. The Torture Debate in America. Cambridge University. [The documents, memoranda, and reports that comprise the material in The Torture Papers.]

• Michael Ignatieff. 2004. The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. Princeton University.

• John Conroy. 2001. Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture. University of California Press. [His question: How is it that otherwise normal people can become part of the institutionalized practice of torture? … He investigates the "five torture techniques" (hooding, noise bombardment, food deprivation, sleep deprivation and forced standing against a wall) inflicted on 12 Irish prisoners in 1971; a late 1980s round-up on the West Bank of Palestinians, who were bound, gagged and beaten; and Chicago's notorious John Burge case, in which police officers systematically beat and electrocuted (on the head, chest and genitals) a man suspected (and later convicted) of killing a police officer.]

Addendum, August 5, 2008

• Jane Mayer. 2008. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. New York: Doubleday. "What Woodward and Bernstein's book "All the President's Men" did to the Nixon administration, Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side" will do to George Bush's administration: blow away, like a piece of straw, the last sliver of credibility that the few remaining supporters of George Bush desperately cling to. "We don't torture", said the President, and Jane Mayer has responded with this book, as if to say: "That is a lie"."

"Greater Central Asia," the new geopolitically reified region

The term Greater Central Asia seems to have caught on. I used the term in an article written as the Soviet Union seemed to be weakening and was published shortly after it expired.

• “Restructuring in Greater Central Asia: Changing Political Configurations,” Asian Survey, Vol. 32, No. 10 (Oct., 1992), pp. 875-887.

Two years later the Russian political scientist Vyacheslav Ya. Belokrenitsky used the term again in the same journal:

• “Russia and Greater Central Asia” Asian Survey, Vol. 34, No. 12 (Dec., 1994), pp. 1093-1108.

The term seemed to me useful even though its meaning was at that point somewhat imprecise, including the several nations (different ones, depending on how you count) that were liable to link up together, once the Soviet Union had expired.

It's interesting to track what has happened to the term since then.

The term was used in a paper written in January, 1996, and published in 2000:

• “The New Great Game in Muslim Central Asia,” by Mohammed E. Ahrari with James Beal. McNair Paper 47. January 1996. Institute for National Strategic Studies. National Defense University. Washington, D.C. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=rd-OCF M4UEC&dq=%22mohammed+e+ahrari%22+central+asia&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=OAFEpedzOd&sig=oxmW4Xl3qrPjDWieUrdpZUSsuWo#PPP3,M1

The Environmental and Social Impacts Group used the term in 2002 in its proposal but they referred to a more easterly sector of the region (Xinjiang) than Belokrenitsky and I had in mind (see also their ESIG Alert # 1 report).

• “Development of a Desert Affairs Center in Western China,” ESIG Alert #2, November, 2002.

In 2003 Rajan Menon used the term in a sense more consistent with our usage:

· “The New Great Game in Central Asia” by Rajan Menon. Survival, Volume 45, Number 2, 2003 , pp. 187-204(18).

Menon defined “Greater Central Asia” as “the region consisting of the five Central Asian states, plus Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Xinjiang, and Afghanistan” and he argued that it had been “strategically transformed” by the American commitment to the region after the attack of September 11, 2001. During that time the several authoritarian governments of the region were trying to take advantage of the new American interest in their neighborhood to escape the historic Russian hegemony. But they would be frightened by the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia (2003), the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine (2004) and the government of Kyrgyzstan would itself be overturned by a similar movement (“Tulip Revolution”) in 2005. Also in 2005 the Americans clashed with President Karimov over the massacre of hundreds of Uzbek citizens in Andijan, and were forced to evacuate their airbase at Karshi-Khanabad.

It was not long before the political exigencies and economic possibilities of the time were being recognized in the term “Greater Central Asia.” Now the term stood for a new region of geopolitical interest, to the United States and to those becoming alarmed by its rising hegemony there. S. Frederick Starr promoted the importance of the region in his article,

• "A ‘Greater Central Asia Partnership’ Partnership’ for Afghanistan and Its Neighbors,” in a publication of the Central Asia -Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program and in Foreign Affairs magazine (July / August, 2005) http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:lkrBqq2AldUJ:www.stimson.org/newcentury/pdf/Strategy.pdf+Greater+Central+Asia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a; http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84412/s-frederick-starr/a-partnership-for-central-asia.html

Starr advocated the formation of a Greater Central Asia Partnership for Cooperation and Development in which, of course, Washington would be central. “Recent progress in Afghanistan,” he said, “has created a remarkable opportunity . . . . The United States now has the chance to help transform Afghanistan and the entire region into a zone of secure sovereignties sharing viable market economies, enjoying secular and open systems of government, and maintaining positive relations with the United States.” This was the hubristic language of that time, which like so many of the grand aspirations of sounds quaint and dated now. A reference to Greater Central Asia appeared in a report of the Rand Corporation in the same year.

· “Faultlines of Conflict in Central Asia and the South Caucasus,” by Olga Oliker and Thomas S. Szayna. Rand Corporation, 2005. www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/RAND_MR1598.sum.pdf

The new American interest in the region worried the Chinese, as reflected in another publication in 2005 that used the term:

• “China and Central Asia: A new Great Game or traditional vassal relations?” by Niklas Swanström. Journal of Contemporary China 14(45, Nov.) 569-584. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/docs/publications/2005/JCC_Swanstrom.pdf (Also see People’s daily 8/4/06: http://english.people.com.cn/200608/03/eng20060803_289512.html.)

And it had a similar impact on the Russians.

• “Russian foreign policy experts debate interaction with America in Greater Central Asia,” by Igor Torbakov, Volume 2, Number 196, Friday, October 21, 2005. Eurasia Daily Monitor. [Jamestown Foundation.] http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2370378

Greater Central Asia was now becoming a region of trade. A conference of “experts and officials from throughout Greater Central Asia” was convened in Kabul on April 1-2 of 2006 on a topic of:

• "Partnership, Trade, and Development in Greater Central Asia" Kabul, Afghanistan, April 1-2, 2006 updated April 25, 2006. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/forum/trade_kabul_description.html

At this conference Kassymzhomart Tokaev, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan said his Government “supports the idea of a a Greater Central Asia as a way to promote intra-regional trade and development and reconnect Afghanistan to the regional and global economy.”

• “Kazakhstan Calls for a Greater Central Asia" Kazakhstan news Bulletin [Embassy of Republic of Kazakhstan to theUSA and Candada] Vol. 6, No. 14. April 7, 2006. http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xzBZAV1-UzEJ:www.kazakhembus.com/April_7.pdf+%22Greater+Central+Asia%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Representatives of the United States government also participated and indicated an interest in “partnering” with the states of the region on matters of trade, and a panel discussion took place in Washington, DC, on July 18, titled “The New Silk Roads: Transport and Trade in Greater Central Asia.” It was sponsored by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI). One wonders if the drug trade was given much attention in either of these conferences, but clearly it was already a powerful source of wealth for some of the countries of the region. In fact, Svante E. Cornell was sounding an alarm at about this time.

• “The Narcotics Threat in Greater Central Asia: From Crime-Terror Nexus to State Infiltration?” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 4, No. 1 (2006) p. 37-67.

And Richard Weitz was warning that a “great game” was taking form like that of the nineteenth century.

• “Averting a New Great Game in Central Asia.” The Washington Quarterly • 29:3 pp. 155–167. 2006.

And M. K. Bhadrakumar was suggesting that South Asia already being caught up in the geopolitical “game” of earlier times.

• “'The Great Game' comes to South Asia.” Asia Times, May 24, 06 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HE24Df04.html

Indeed it was clear that the Russians were bothered by American meddling in their backyard:

• “Moscow making Central Asia its own.” M K Bhadrakumar. Asia Times Online, Aug 25, 2006. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HH25Ag01.html

All of these articles referred to the region as “Greater Central Asia”.

The new geopolitical focus prompted research activity. In 2006 the Social Science Research Council announced that it would provide teaching tools on the history of Greater Central Asia.

• “Teaching Resource Tool: Histories of Central Asia.” http://programs.ssrc.org/eurasia/TRT_CentralAsia/

In 2007 an important work was published, firmly anchoring the terminology for the region in the strategic discourse.

• The New Silk Roads: Transport and Trade in Greater Central Asia. Edited by S. Frederick Starr. Washington, D.C. and Uppsala, Sweden: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program. 2007. 514 pp. http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/publications/GCA.html

With chapters by S. Frederick Starr (overview), Masood Aziz (Afghanistan), councilor at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., Aftab Kazi (Pakistan), professor of international and comparative politics at American University in Bishkek, Abbas Maleki (Iran), director general of the Institute for Caspian Studies in Tehran, Niklas Norling (China), project director of the Silk Roads Studies Program, Taleh Ziyadov (Azerbaijan), deputy executive director of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, and others.

Robert M. Cutler has delimited the region precisely, distinguishing “Central Asia” from “Greater Central Asia” from “Central Eurasia” from “Greater Southwest Asia” from “Greater South Asia.”

• “U.S.–Russian Strategic Relations and the Structuration of Central Asia,” by Robert M. Cutler. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology Vol. 6, No. 1-3: 109-125. (2007). http://www.robertcutler.org/download/pdf/ar06pgdt.pdf
• “TAPI in the Asian Energy Space,” Powerpoint presentation, November 13, 2007. www.harrimaninstitute.org/MEDIA/01097.ppt and http://www.robertcutler.org — rmc@alum.mit.edu

So the term “Greater Central Asia” is now a real place, having been reified by geopolitical policy and debate. Some recent works using the term are the following:

• “Political Development and Organized Crime: The Yin and Yang of Greater Central Asia?” Niklas Swanström. China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 5, No. 4 (2007) p. 83-101. http://www.isdp.eu/files/publications/cefq/07/ns07politicaldevelopment.pdf

• “Central Asia: Managing the delicate balance between the ‘discourse of danger,’ the ‘Great Game,’ and regional problem solving,” by Dennis J.D. Sandole. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Vol 40 (1): 257-267. 2007. (Special Issue). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGF-4NTHMYN-1&_user=741313&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2007&_rdoc=11&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236037%232007%23999599997%23660270%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=6037&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=11&_acct=C000041138&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=741313&md5=85deec427c4379e7b5f0bf96c2e19ce5

· “U.S. Aims in Central and South Asia Challenged by Russia and China,” by Richard Weitz World Politics Review Exclusive, 27 Jul 2007. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=964

· “Eurasian Trade And Transport: New Silk Roads Or Old Pipedreams? “
Richard Weitz. Eurasianet 7/24/07 http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav072407a.shtml

· “Americans Still Think All Stans Are Same,” Adam Kesher. Politics, Foreign Affairs, April 16th, 2008 http://kazakhstan.neweurasia.net/2008/04/16/americans-still-think-all-stans-are-same/

• [seminar proposal] Security in Greater Central Asia, Tensions and possibilities of destabilization from Astana to Islamabad. Didier Chaudet. http://www.sciences- po.fr/formation/cycle1/programme_international/cours_pdf/chaudet.pdf

The Taliban: how many incarnations are there? And how will they affect the negotiations?

[addendum to this June 14, 08: Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos is a major addition to the list below.]

Ismael Khan and Carlotta Gall are reporting that Pakistan is close to making a deal with the Islamist insurgents in the tribal territories [NYT 4/25/08]. The question is with which Islamists? And who will enforce the deal? We have known all along that there were various kinds of Islamist insurgents, but now it appears that the “Pakistani Taliban” are the real concern, and the object of the negotiations. We need to distinguish the various incarnations of the Taliban, as the new variants may now be the key players in the negotiations.

Original Taliban and their associates:

The first incarnation emerged out of Kandahar and were then joined by various other groups with somewhat different perspectives. This period of the Taliban has been well described in several works (in chronological order): William Malley, ed. 1998. Fundamentalism Reborn?: Afghanistan and the Taliban. New York: NYU; Peter Marsden. 1998. The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan; Ahmad Rashid. 2000. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University; Neamoatollah Nojumi. 2002. The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War, and the Future of the Region. New York: Palgrave.

NeoTaliban:

The second incarnation of the Taliban has developed in the last few years, becoming a serious menace to the stability of Afghanistan in the last year or so, although the reconstitution of the group began soon after its near-destruction in 2002. This incarnation is described in the new work: Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi. 2008. The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan. Boston: Harvard University.

Pakistani Taliban

But from the NeoTaliban has appeared a new variant that now looks eastward. Rather than posed against the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the new Pakistani Taliban are posed against Islamabad, especially that is, the Pakistan army. This is blowback with a vengeance, for the Pakistanis have been protecting and nourishing various mujahedin groups (see Taliq Ali, “the Colour Khaki,” New Left Review, and Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift to Extremism) in order to have recruits ready for any potential conflict with India. Two authors have written about this group in the very recent past: Nocholas Schmidle. 2008. “Next-Gen Taliban.” New York Times, January 6; Jayshree Bajoria. 2008. “Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists.” [Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/publication/15422/pakistans_new_generation_of_terrorists.html] The Pakistani Taliban are Pushtuns like the others but they have been attacked on their own ground by the army and so have come to regard the government not merely as an alien force but a surrogate for the “infidel” American government. Bajoria says “they have begun to organize themselves around a Taliban-style Islamic ideology pursuing an agenda much similar to that of the Afghan Taliban,” only now it is against their own government. They are even against their own tribal system, having killed as many as 200 tribal elders, according to Hassan Abbas [Schmidle’s source, p 9, says the number killed was 150.]. They have “effectively established themselves as an alternative to the traditional tribal elders,” taking the name “Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan”
[Pakistan Taliban Movement] for themselves.

But these mujahedin are, as Bajoria say, “fiercer, younger and impatient for results.” Bajoria quotes Steve Coll: They “are a younger generation of more violent radical leaders who are in a hurry and have no patience with compromise with the state.” They are “hard-core breakaway children militias” who define “the law” in their own terms, considering music, TV, and luxuries like massage parlors to be un-Islamic. These Islamists are having a powerful impact on the situation in tribal territory. Schmidle’s interviews with the leaders of the Jamat-e Ulema-e Islami, an Islamist political party that was swept into power by the election of 2002, reveal what the appearance of these young militants has done. They have created fear even among other Islamists. A leader of the party said plainly “Everyone is afraid.” “These mujahedeen don’t respect anyone anymore.” The head of the party, Maulana Fazlur Rehmen, said “we are now afraid of the young men fighting.” Rehmen has at other times played up his connections with Islamists such as the Taliban but he has been sobered by, for instance, an intense clash between the new Pakistan Taliban and the military at the Red Mosque in Islamabad last July. “They have gone to the extreme” [p. 6] he said; “They are simply beyond me,” he admitted [p. 5]. Even before the clash someone had pointed out to Schmidle that “[e]verywhere you look, you can see youngsters rejecting the old ones because old people do not like change.” A notable leader of this sort was Maulana Fazlullah, leader of a militia in the Swat Valley. His men began taking over police stations in November, 2007, replacing the Pakistani flag with one of their own, and instituting their own version of Islamic law, rejecting leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehmen as too moderate.

This is the context of the negotiations now taking place in Pakistan. Deals have been made with tribal insurgents in the past and failed, so what is the hope that the deal now being struck with the Pakistani Taliban will hold? Not much. But fear is a powerful force. Could such former radical Islamists like Maulana Fazlur Rehmen now become a help in bringing the Pakistani Taliban to a sustainable agreement?

Thank you, General Anthony Zinni

We have been hearing about generals who, connected with the military contractors, connived with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to trash the military experts who called it as they saw it. We can thank Gen. Zinni, in contrast, for calling a spade a spade at a time when American and Iraqi lives were at risk because of the decisions of the Bush administration. He was fired by Rumsfeld for saying that we would need 300,000 troops to do the job in Iraq. And he was trashed by self-serving generals for saying that the war in Iraq was in trouble. It is a shame that government officials like Rumsfeld would turn the job of administrating a war into mere public affairs and that formere generals would prostitute themselves and their profession by protecting the American public from the truth about what was going on in Iraq. Many people could not believe that things were as bad as they were until Bush final admitted it by proposing a "surge" to solve the problem. Anyway, Thanks, General Zinni. I wish we had more like you.

On his history: From 1997 to 2000, he was commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command, in charge of all American troops in the Middle East. Then became a special envoy to the Middle East of the Bush administration. But he broke ranks with the administration over the war in Iraq. He has even criticized senior officials at the Pentagon as guilty of dereliction of duty. Before the second war in Iraq Zinni advised against a pre-emptive attack. It is in his recent book on Iraq that he says the Pentagon was derelict in its duty, guilty of "negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni believes it is part of your duty to speak out. “It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result,” says Zinni. “I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? It’s leading down a path where we're not succeeding and accomplishing the missions we've set out to do.”

Zinni said that "the books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence (that supported the claims made to support the need for war) was not there."
There was a "lack of planning" for the post-war stablization and reconstruction of Iraq. There was “insufficiency of military forces on the ground."

Twenty-seven million slaves -- who could have imagined?

The world is moving so fast and in so many ways with so many complexities that we can only hope that we have a reasonable grasp of it. I have the funnest job in the world, even though my topics are often unsettling; one of the reason it is fun is my students, who help me attempt to track what is going on. Here are some notes that Traci Horner has produced regarding a book that everyone should read.

Bales, Kevin. 2004. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

Twenty-seven million human beings are slaves in the modern world. Most of us thought that slavery has been abolished but it is not so. There are slaves in the sex industry in Thailand, in the delivery of water in Mauritania, in charcoal production in Brazil, in brick-making in Pakistan, and in farming in India – the main locations of slave labor. There are an estimated 3,000 household slaves in Paris. In every case there is a legal cover for the practice of slavery. Many are in debt; some were forced into debt by subterfuge and seduction of desperate people; some are sold or given away to pay debts. Even though slavery is illegal nearly everywhere, it is protected by exploitative practices. After World War II the population explosion produced a growing body of people who had so little to live on and such little leverage that they were easily exploited. Now there is an abundance of slaves, which drives the price of them down. Desperate and helpless people are now abundant and disposable. There is little incentive to pour resources into maintaining a slave and once one is exhausted and no longer useful her or she can simply be cast out, abandoned (p. 15). “Slaves are now so cheap,” Bales writes, “that they have become cost-effective in many new kinds of work, completely changing how they are seen and used” (p. 14). “[S]laves are cheap and disposable; control continues without legal ownership; slavery is hidden behind contracts; and slavery flourishes in communities under stress” (31).

An example is Sari, a 15-year-old woman in Thailand. She was sold into bondage by her parents. She will be bought by as many as 10 or 15 men every night. Her “resistance and her desire to escape the brothel are breaking down and acceptance and resignation are taking their place” (34). . The police and her pimp beat and rape her at will. The impact on her is to believe that “she is a bad person, very bad to have deserved what has happened to her” (36-7). The industrialization of Thailand has created a whole new class of men with money to spend. One place they spend it is in the brothels, so “commercial sex is a social event, part of a good night out with friends” (45). As it happens, early all of the society either participates in or accepts the sex industry. In fact, between 80 and 87 percent of the male population of Thailand has had sex with a prostitute (p. 45). Many officials are bribed into ignoring the laws; others are regular brothel visitors (64). Many see sex slavery as a way to spur the national economy. In the 1960s, Thailand’s interior minister championed the sex industry as a way to promote international tourism. Even brochures advertise the joys of a prostitute in Thailand: “little slaves who give real Thai warmth”, reads a brochure from the Netherlands (76). Sex tourism brings in a great deal of money to the nation, and makes the slavery practiced in Thailand a global issue. The entire world is complicit in this industry.

A different practice of slavery exists in Mauritania. There it is “less a political reality than a permanent part of the culture” (83). Slavery was abolished there in 1980, but no one bothered to pay attention. Scarcely anyone questions the practice. A slave named Bilal works for his master delivering water door to door every day. If Bilal does not return with the required amount of money he will be beaten or yelled at and his food will be reduced (102). Because slavery is so pervasive, and because Mauritanian slavery has a racial component, slaves have almost no other options. The racism is so strong “that no official segregation is needed: the lines of family and tribe are exact and impermeable” (119). So if a slave leaves a master, there is nowhere for him to go. He is immediately recognizable based on skin-color, as well as clothing and speech, and will not be able to find work (87).

In Brazil poor individuals are lured into isolated work camps in the forest where they are forced to work in squalid conditions, without pay or communication with the outside world. This work is temporary, however, because the destruction it involves is temporary, and slaves get used and then discarded (122). They are held as debt laborers who have no hope of paying off their debt. The system diffuses responsibility so that recruiters and landowners and officials all have an excuse.

In Pakistan an entire families are sold into debt bondage to work in brick kilns, working in extreme conditions with next to zero rewards. As elsewhere slaves have no hope of paying back their debt, and to ensure they remain in place a slaveholder may take a child hostage (152). All services to the slaves are accounted as debts and the owner manages accounts. And they are sold and re-sold: an extended family of forty-four were sold from one kiln to another, without the consent of any members of the family, then sold again; all the while the costs were added to their debt. Local governments largely ignore the slave industry.

The practice of slavery in India is “a survival of the oldest enslavement on the planet” (197). The debts of agricultural slaves in India can go back for centuries (202). Baldev, for instance, did not know how long his family had been enslaved. “We have always lived here…It’s a regular thing. Kohl people like us have always been bonded to Brahmins like my master” (206). And yet some slaves have come out of bondage thanks to government assistance (211). But many stories of corrupt government dealings lead Baldev and others to reject government help, for they have heard of government officials who receive bribes to forget about the slaves they were sent to free (214).

If any aspect of the human condition exposes the underside of human nature it has to be slavery. The willingness of modern human beings to tolerate such treatment diminishes all of us.

World oil shortage: A fatality as sure as death and taxes?

Jad Mouawad, in today’s NYTimes [4/19/08] has pointed out some things about the oil reserves around the world that are worth noting and keeping track of. He provides a number of statistics that may be well enough known to the experts but are generally outside of the purview of most of us. Here are some notes on the present world situation that ought to cause serious concern – along with all the other conditions that we need to worry about.

• The planet’s population is expected to grow by 50 percent to nine billion by sometime in the middle of the century. The number of cars and trucks is projected to double in 30 years
• global oil consumption will jump by some 35 percent by the year 2030
• The world’s total energy demand — including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro power — is set to rise by 65 percent over the next two decades,
• the energy crunch might … result in a global scramble for resources, energy wars, and much higher energy prices.
• The North Sea and Alaska are slowly running out of oil and producers there are struggling to keep production from falling. Russia’s phenomenal oil surge is coming to an end
• Fourteen of the world’s Top 20 oil companies are state-owned giants, like Saudi Aramco and Russia’s Gazprom. That leaves Western oil companies in control of less than 10 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves.
• Despite spending over $100 billion on exploration last year, the five largest international oil companies found less oil last year than they pumped out of the ground.
• [G]iven the current rate of growth in demand, a trillion of [the 1.2 trillion barrels of known conventional oil reserves] will be used up in less than 30 years.
• Oil now accounts for just 19 percent of China’s energy needs. But China’s oil demand is expected to more than double by 2030 to over 16 million barrels a day,
• China has now surpassed both Germany and Japan to become the second-largest car market in the world, and is set to overtake the United States by around 2015 …

So what do you make of this? One more view of the future that makes us wonder.

In the mean time journalists are asking Presidential candidates why they don’t wear flags on their lapel.

[Click on the title for a link to the article.]