Ominous Predictions for the future of Iraq: Burns and Baker

John Burn’s prediction, in an interview with Charlie Rose, for what to expect if/when the Americans leave Iraq, is frightening. Compare it with James A. Baker III’s explanation for why the first Bush administration did not try to capture Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War of 1991. Here is John Burns to Charlie Rose: “… a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing with all kinds of implications for the world’s flow of oil, for the state Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there’s complete chaos in the region?” Here is James A. Baker III, on the reasons the first Bush administration did not try to find Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War: “… If Saddam were captured and his regime toppled, American forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify a country and sustain a government in power. The ensuring urban warfare would surely have resulted in more casualties to American GIs than the war itself, thus creating a political firestorm at home. And as much as Saddam’s neighbors wanted to see him gone, they feared Iraq would fragment in unpredictable ways that would play into the hands of the mullahs in Iran, who could export their brand of Islamic fundamentalism with the help of Iraq’s Shiites and quickly transform themselves into a dominant regional power. Finally the Security Council resolution under which we were operating authorized us to use force only to kick Iraq out of Kuwait, nothing more. As events have amply demonstrated, these concerns were valid. I am no longer asked why we did not remove Saddam in 1991!”

What Constitutes a "World War"?

What constitutes a “world war”? Just glance at affairs from South Asia to North Africa: A bomb blast in Islamabad, rising activity of the Taliban along the eastern and southern borders of Afghanistan, Iran effectively declaring war against Israel and installing equipment to produce enriched uranium, violence in Beirut between pro-government mobs and Hizballah loyalists, quarrelling between Russians and Georgians over a Russian scientist’s attempt to peddle enriched uranium in Georgia, anti-Russian rebellion still simmering after a crushing defeat in Chechnya, Americans trying to bring order in an ever more bitter clash between ethnic factions in Iraq, Sunni and Shi'a militia's fighting in the streets of Baghdad, Hamas and Fatah shooting each other in Gaza, Ethiopians invading Somalia, American air strikes against "Islamist" groups in Somalia, atrocities in Darfur that exceed the imagination, the Darfur war spilling into Chad. From Chad to Pakistan war and more war, from civil war to civil war. This is a span far greater than all of Europe: If all those countries were engulfed in conflict would they call it a World War? If this is not a world war, what is it?
RLC

Canada to Pay $9.75 Million to Man Tortured in Syria

Canadian government has apologized to Mahar Arar for its part in the abuse Mr. Arar suffered, mainly by Americans, for unsubstantiated accusations of being somehow connected to Al Qaeda. He was captured by American officials while passing through New York, shipped off to Syria, a country already criticized by the Americans for torturing its prisoner, and, of course, tortured. When it was determined, finally, that he had nothing to give, he was returned and even then defamed by anonymous police officials trying to protect their own behinds. Eventually the Canadian court adjudged that Arar had been unjustly treated. Prime Minister Harper has apologized, and the Canadian government has agreed to a settlement of 11.5 million Canadian dollars. Mr Arar still suffers emotional problems but is of course elated. Now it is the turn of the American government, who in fact was the main abuser.
RLC

Further evidence of Pakistani support for the Taliban: The beating of Carlotta Gall and Akhtar Soomro of the New York Times

The Times printed an article by her on January 21, more than a month after the event. It not only told the details of the beating and intimidation but also provided more details about the involvement of the Pakistanis – the ISI as well as in particular Hamed Gul and other un-named officials – in the Taliban movement. It is becoming ever more clear that the Taliban movement is by no means spontaneous or even locally inspired but a deliberate creation of at lease some official Pakistanis. Given the way the government is constituted it becomes ever more clear that Musharraf cannot be totally unaware of what is going on in, as in this case, Quetta.

On December 19, after about “two weeks of reporting” along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, interviewing more than two dozen folks on both sides of the border, Ms. Gall and her photographer, Akhtar Soomro, were attacked in their respective hotels. They seized Mr Soomro’s computer and equipment, held him for five hours. The intruders into Ms Gall’s hotel room twice punched her in the face, knocking her to the floor. The men did not reveal their identity but directed her to the Special Branch of the Interior Ministry to obtain the items they had confiscated. Several hours later their goods appeared but it was clear that all of their notes had been compromised: intelligent agents went around and interviewed the various folks she had interviewed. Intimidation was clearly the intent: They warned Mr. Soomro not to work for the New York Times and told Ms. Gall that she could not visit a certain part of Quetta, Pushtunistan, or interview Taliban; what they said to her contacts was unreported. Mr. Soomro has indeed, for the moment, stepped out of reach.

To strike a woman, to intimidate a reporter and photographer for a newspaper with world-wide readership – this has to be a blunder of colossal proportions. There is no way the event would have been hushed. Why would the Pakistan intelligence service in Quetta have acted so crudely? Perhaps like Daniel Pearle Ms. Gall was getting too close. Was she penetrating the clandestine workings of a powerful intelligence network? Could the rising intensity of criticism for Pakistan’s handling of the Taliban in the frontier areas begun to impinge on their operations? Could this have been merely the behavior of a few rogue officers?

Whatever the reason for their attack, it could hardly improve the situation for Pakistan. In fact, Ms. Gall’s report in the January 21 article revealed more about the connections between the Taliban and Pakistan’s intelligence service. Here are some details she provides:

>> Jamiya Islamiya is a religious school in Quetta that openly sympathizes with the Taliban. A sign in the courtyard exclaims, “Long live Mulla Omar,” head of the Taliban, and “Long live Fazlur Rehman,” leader of the Jamiat ul Uluma-y Islami, a political party that supports the Taliban, and a member of Parliament. “We only provide moral support,” says their official representative. Members of this party frequently visit the school and “people on motorbikes with green government license plates visit at night.”

>> Some of the students in this school have, with “the blessings” of their teachers, gone into Afghanistan as suicide bombers.

>> But contrary to what has been reported about the families in the Arab world, the families of these boys have not rejoiced at their loss. They are afraid to talk owing to fear of the officials. Dozens of families have lost sons in Afghanistan.

>> A former Taliban commander had been jailed by Pakistan intelligence officials because he refused to go fight in Afghanistan. In fact, his incarceration was claimed to be evidence of a crackdown on Taliban.

>> Former Taliban who refused to fight in Afghanistan were arrested, even killed.

>> The intelligence services rigged votes for the militant religious parties because the activities of the parties gave the intelligence services “deniability.” They are fully aware of the training camps of the militant parties where young Taliban recruits are trained.

>> In Pushtunabad, the neighborhood of Quetta Gall had been warned against, Taliban commanders have close contact with members of the intelligence services. Also there is a madrassah where suicide bombers have been trained. Only recently three students were sent into Afghanistan.

>> Afghanistan’s intelligence has arrested two Afghan generals and a Pakistani and charged them with spying for Pakistan.

>> General Hamed Gul, former director of the ISI, publicly supports the Taliban insurgency. He visits the madrassahs producing Taliban fighters, and even speaks in support of jehad at their graduation ceremonies. He has an office in Nowshera from which he “facilitates” the training and logistic support for the Taliban.

>> A number of young men from the district of Pishin, NW of Quetta, have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan.

>> The small town of Karbala in this district is a center of the Taliban jehad: it is notably more prosperous than any of its neighbors, with “lavish houses, mosques, and madrasas”.

>> A family in the Pishin area lost one of their sons. They were searching for information about him when they discovered a Taliban propaganda CD showing their son taking an oath before the Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah. The family blames the Pakistan ISI for the recruitment of their son for suicide.

Indeed, one of them believes all of the Taliban are creations of the ISI. “All Taliban are ISI Taliban. It is not possible to go into Afghanistan without the help of the ISI.”

Pakistan’s fingerprints seem to be all over the Taliban.

Lament for Hrant Dink, and for journalism

Yesterday I was talking to a student writing an honors thesis on the media coverage of last summer’s war in Lebanon. I was so impressed with what she was doing that I blurted out, “This is going to be great. You would make a great journalist,” adding as an after thought, “Only you would probably get killed.” Little did we know that only a few hours earlier a famous journalist had just been gunned down in Istanbul.

Hrant Dink, editor of the Armenian and Turkish language weekly, Agos, had been in trouble with the Turkish government because of an article in the Armenian Diaspora in which he referred to the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-1917, an event that the Turkish government insists was part of a war in which killing took place on both sides, and in any case, they say, an attempt at genocide of Armenians never took place. [http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/962/prmID/172] Dink had been in court several times, his appearances often disrupted by hecklers supporting the government position. Even though his sentence of six-months in prison (on October 7, 2005) was suspended and he has been able to work, he received many death threats. Today’s New York Times says he recently wrote of the toll that those threats were taking on him: “I do not know how real these threats are, but what is really unbearable is the psychological torture that I’m living in, like a pigeon, turning my head up and down, left and right, my head quickly rotating.”

One of the problems with this murder is that besides the government, and presumably many people in the wider Turkish community, he has enemies in the Armenian community. They believed he should have insisted that Turkey acknowledge the genocide as a condition of entry into the European Union, whereas he argued for Turkey’s entrance into the European Union as a means of strengthening democracy in Turkey. It is fair to say that for the government the event was truly unfortunate: Prime Minister Recep Tyyip Erdogan expressed it well: “A bullet was fired at freedom of thought and democratic life in Turkey.” [NYTimes]

The problem for journalists – and anthropologists and other social scientists – is that they are supposed to represent the world as they find it, not as politicians want it or as the public imagines it. So there are risks, especially for journalists, because they are the individuals on the streets and in homes trying to report on events as they take place. (Anthropologists have a similar problem, but usually they take too long to get anything written; by the time they publish their results the world is no longer interested in the topic. When I first went to Afghanistan to do field work, the individual in the Foreign Ministry who was supposed to authorize my research stated the problem elegantly in one sentence: “We don’t like anthropologists because of the questions they ask, mainly about religion and politics.”) Governments don’t like folks who ask questions that reveal embarrassing details. It is journalists who are most of at risk these days because, as it happens (at least in the Middle East and Central Asia) asking questions, mainly about religion and politics, can be dangerous.

In the present world journalists are getting mauled because of their quest for specific and accurate information. For all the talk about a free press in the West, it is no less resented by those in power. The Bush administration has spent most of its time in office dismissing most reports on what was going on in the Middle East and Central Asia by claiming they were merely biased reports of a liberal press. Finally, in 2006, George W. Bush joined the “liberal press” in recognizing that the war that he had started was out of control. As is often said, those in power would prefer that journalists never remember what they said and did in the past: reporters should be stenographers with amnesia. We’ll see next summer how eager General George W. Casey Jr. is to be reminded of yesterday’s statement that, with the help of the additional troops President Bush will be sending him, the people in Baghdad “will feel safe in their neighborhoods” by late summer. Many such statements by American officials in the past have been made, and we would all so very much like to believe them, but even though we live in a world we have created, as Marx said, it is not the world that we would like it to be. Are such promises fabrications of reality to justify actions in the present? Always the question is, how well do our images of the world correspond with the world as it is? Often, it turns out, we get it wrong. The world as it is has its own properties and its own dynamics, whatever we presume it to be, and (as the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has famously put it) it need not correspond to our image of it.

That’s the problem for journalists. Often good journalists get in trouble with everyone, because they want to talk about the world as they find it, not as those in power would like to represent it and most of us would like to imagine it. And as it turns out, the closer to the ground folks are the more difficult it is to be sure of what is going on. Last year Dexter Filkins wrote a piece in the New York Times about how difficult it was to actually find out what happened in a specific situation. He had just gone to the location of an intense fire-fight, but when he began to ask what happened he got four different stories. The reporter on the ground could not be sure what actually had taken place, whereas in the mean time, there were folks in Washington quite certain about what was going on in Iraq. Politicians and radio talk show hosts (to name a few such folks) never lack certainty.

So the journalists that seek to expose the truth as they best can find it – knowing of course that certainty will elude them – are in danger of rejection by a public already sure of "the truth" and by officials who need to make sure the public gets only a certain view of it. We lament the loss of a courageous man who, doing a service of desperate importance to his world, could not be borne by those who regarded his reports as threatening. And because they took brutal means to silence him, concealing their identity, they again fulfilled the ancient judgement of the wicked: “Men loved darkness because their deeds were evil; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed.”

In some places it is still dangerous to expose the world as it is.

Mullah Omar 'Hiding in Pakistan'

Interesting news. Some of us have suspected that Pakistan officials have been dodging the truth when they have insisted that Mullah Muhammad Omar, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri are not really in Pakistan. It turns out that a former spokesman for Mullah Muhammad Omar has claimed that the Taliban leader is in Pakistan, in fact living pretty much openly in Quetta. BBC News reports that he is being protected by Pakistan's intelligence directorate, the ISI, in particular by its former director, Hamed Gul. In the face of this, however, Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao continues to assert that "We have no information on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar. He is not living in Pakistan."
Misrepresentation of the truth is not limited to Pakistan officials, however, as we well know. This is the way of governments: They have to distort the truth in order to maintain the fiction of rectitude, to retain their legitimacy. The Bush administration has misrepresented the truth many times ("Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attack"; "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction"; "The CIA does not "remand" prisoners to other countries to be tortured"; "We do not torture prisoners", etc. [See my note on December 17.]).
RLC

Professors in Iraq Have Been Killed

I have just heard about a number of professors in Iraq who have been assassinated or otherwise intimidated. This is what was sent to me:

Among the more than 250 college professors who have been killed since 30 April 2003 in Iraq are the following historians:

**Khalid M. al-Janabi, PhD. in Islamic history, faculty member at the College of Art, Babylon University. Date of assassination unknown.

**Essam Sharif Mohammed (also spelled Hissam Sharif), Ph.D in History, assistant professor at the College of Art, Baghdad University. Date of assassination: 25 October 2003.

**Mahfoudh al-Qazzaz, PhD. in Islamic history; faculty member at the College of Art, Mosul University. Killed by a death squad in front of his family at his home in Mosul on 20 December 2004.

**Jamhour Karim Kammas Al Zargani, PhD. in History; department head at the College of Education at Al- Basrah University. Abducted for two days, tortured, and killed. His family found the dead body with broken arms and legs in a nearby street in Basra on 19 August 2005.

**Kemal Nassir, professor of history, lecturer in Mustansiriya and Kufa. Date of assassination: 1 October 2006.

**In addition, Abd-Asalam Ali Hussein, PhD. in Islamic History, was arrested on 22 May 2005.

RLC

Encouraging and Dispiriting

The behavior of the Democrats now is both encouraging and dispiriting. They are so indignant, so outraged, so bold in their criticisms of the Bush policy in the Middle East. It's about time that someone began to ask the obvious questions. So in that sense there is reason for being encouraged.

But where were these folks four years ago, the time when the boondoggle of the Bush administration policy could have been exposed. There was so much to be questioned. Shifting attention from Afghanistan before Osama and his people had been caught and punished: what did they say then? Preemptive war: what did they say then? Phony claims that Saddam was involved in the attack on 911: what did they say then? Removing General Shenseki, who said they would need 200,000 troops to manage Iraq after they had taken over the country: what did they say then? Sending in too few troops, with scarcely any meaningful plan, and with insufficient armament: What did they say then?

One of the most costly features of the Bush decision to invade Iraq was the abandonment of the war in Afghanistan. They had not caught either Osama Bin Laden head of Al Qaeda or Mullah Muhammad Omar, head of the Taliban. And in 2002 the best American military assets were being redeployed elsewhere to prepare for the assault on Iraq. The failure -no, refusal - to catch and try the key figures who had killed nearly 3000 people on American soil was simply a betrayal of the American people and even of the administration's stated goals. And since then the preoccupation has continued to be elsewhere, Iraq. What that means is that, for all the expense of human life and wealth now wasted in Iraq, the group that attacked the United States in September, 2001, are still at large. They are still heroes to some militants. And their eminence has swelled in the last five and a half years. The original project was abandoned and, even when the fiasco in Iraq is resolved - very likely in humiliation for proud Americans - it still has to be resumed. The Reagan administration requited no cost on those who killed 241 Marines in Lebanon; the Clinton administration reacted ineffectually to the dual bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; now, the Bush administration has embarrassed itself in Iraq rather than confronting the aggressive elements that attacked our country in 2001. This is a record that the militants elsewhere have taken careful note of. This is the legacy of the Bush administration.

Some of the experts have already noted that the Bush administration's new accusations against Iran and Syria will provide the administration with an excuse for failing in Iraq. Let us watch how they deflect attention elsewhere, apparently in hope they won't be blamed for their unfathomable folly.
RLC

The gathering of insurgent groups in Iraq in 2006

The following are the sites from which the New York Times obtained an important report on the formation of the insurgency in Iraq [1/7/07]: http://www.globalterroralert.com/pdf/1206/iraqinsurgency1206.pdf
http://www.globalterroralert.com/pdf/1206/iraqinsurgency1206.pdf. However, it seems totally unrecoverable on the NYTimes web site; the web version doesn't admit to the existence of the page in front of me [Week in Review, p 5].
In fact, the information comes from Evan F. Kohlmann’s website [above] which describes the several militant organizations that joined the Al Qaeda network in 2006. It seems ever more clear that the core of Al Qaeda is a mere small group but the organization has grown in influence and numbers by the accretion of other groups, presumably because of a desire to gain legitimacy or perhaps to get help and money, and to gain collective strength by becoming part of a single larger organization. In any case the web sites indicated above reveal that a group formed in January 2006 calling itself the “Mujahedeen Shura Council” and became a core of a larger movement that is allied with Al Qaeda. on March 23 an organization calling itself the “Society of the True Believers” joined them. On Oct 12 two other groups merged with this group, “Supporters of Monotheism” and “Our Creed.” Only 3 days later they were joined by two other groups, the “Army of the Prophet’s Companions” and the “Army of the Conquerors”. The new organization now called itself “The Islamic State of Iraq” and claimed responsibility for managing eight largely Sunni provinces bordering on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. On November 29 two other groups joined them, “The Knights of Monotheism” and the “Army of the Abrahamic Tradition.” There are other groups said to be loosely allied with Al Qaeda: “Mujahedin Army,” “Ansar Al-Sunnah Army,” which is said to be Kurdish (all the others are Arab). Virtually all of these organizations are described as “brutal.” The commander of Al Qaeda’s Islamic State claims that scores of fighters have sworn allegiance to his group, including members of another group calling itself “1920 Revolution Brigades.”

The zeal to join together in a common organization indicates that there is a broad social movement afoot. Militant Islamism is a social movement in the sense that there are large, broad social conditions at work, setting a context that favors this kind of behavior. What those social conditions are, and the contexts in which individuals find a way to join a radical organization are matters that still need to be better specified. [Sageman, Understanding Terrorist Networks, is very good on this; other good sources can be found on my “Terrorism” site (Go to artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/home.html and click on AN4243 “Terrorism…”)]. Perhaps the militant Islamism of our times is driven by similar forces as those of the Ghost Dance of the Great Plains, a movement that took form as some Native Americans sought a way to recover the world of social relationships and opportunity that they had lost because of the overwhelming advance of the whites. Al Qaeda, at least, claims that the state of Muslims is indeed desperate. Islam is at risk, they say. Such claims have an influence on how some radical Muslims (not all, however) are reacting to the dramatic changes in their world as well as to the abuses of the local autocratic regimes that most of them have to deal with.

How Will History Judge Rumsfeld?

You know the worm has turned when even Parade Magazine is saying that history will be harsh on Donald Rumsfeld’s service as Secretary of Defense. There appears to be a growing recognition of the severe blunders of this administration. If this is what Parade will say about Rumsfeld as he leaves office, what will it say
about George W. Bush when he leaves office? By then the scale of the disaster will be even broader, the extent of the waste in human life and American treasure even greater, the sweep of the humiliations before the world even more evident, even to Bush’s most loyal followers. By that time not only Bush and his administration will be vilified for its follies but also the public who supported him – the minions who followed him, accepted his misreprentations of truth at face value, and provided the grass-roots operations that activated a movement to support the implausible claims and promises of the neo-cons who could never have gained so powerful a voting constituency without them. Those hard core followers were of course the “far right,” the white middle-class church-going “evangelicals” – among them many of our closest friends – who were animated by the wedge issues, abortion, gay marriage, flag burning, etc.

A disturbing element of the Bush follies has been its linkage with a religious movement. As the Bush administration’s excesses of ignorance and arrogance become broadly recognized the religious elements that supported it will be impugned along with it. The claims and ideals of the evangelicals will be discounted along with those of the neo-cons who scarcely respected them even as they found them useful.

The pendulum is swinging. What kind of excesses will be generated in the other direction?
RLC

Diplomat's Suppressed Document Lays Bare the Lies Behind Iraq War

The American and British’s governments’ case for going to war in Iraq was “torn apart” by the publication of previously suppressed evidence. In fact, Tony Blair – and no doubt many people in the Bush administration – were pretty sure that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. This is only the beginning; we are going to see many more instances of ‘laying bare’ the lies that were told to enable the ‘pre-emptive’ war against Saddam Hussein to start. So many lives lost, so much money spent, so much respect lost – how can the costs of this blunder ever be recovered?
RLC

Ahmadinejad Attempts to Deny the Holocaust

The attempts of President Ahmadinejad to deny the holocaust is another indication of the way contemporary societies re-interpret the past in order to define the present. "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, portrays participants like David Duke, the former Louisiana Klan leader, and Robert Faurisson of France, who has devoted his life to trying to prove that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth, as
silenced truth-tellers whose stories expose Western leaders as the hypocrites he considers them to be." Because of the broad resentment against Israel in the Middle East his attempts seem to be gaining traction.

Ahmadinejad intends to make Iran – and Shi’ism – the dominant power in the Middle East. No wonder the Saudis threaten to support the Sunnis of Iraq if the Americans leave. This is no surprise and surely cannot be new: Already the sympathies of the Saudi Arabian people is with the Sunnis of Iraq. Wealthy Saudis must be providing at least some support for them even now: We keep wondering if private Saudi money is not already heavily invested in the activities of the most militant Sunnis (takfiris) in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
RLC

Bush's Insistence That The Military Stay

I have been so accustomed to being offended, even scandalized, by the policies of President Bush that my first reaction to the report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group has been to accept it, and to again see Bush’s refusal to accept all that they recommend as more of his usual ignorant obstinacy. However, after a little reflection I have to say that their recommendation that the U. S. military get out of Iraq by a certain time is a mistake (anyway, it will not happen, as I explain below). Here, at least, I understand George W. Bush’s insistence that the American military should stay long enough to quell the opposition.

The invasion of Iraq was a blunder of incomparable proportions – it was a blunder to go in under false pretenses (to say nothing of the dishonesty of leading the American people to believe that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attack), and it was a blunder to start a “pre-emptive war” – but now that we have actually invaded Iraq, what is there to do? Bush claims that we have to finish the job; indeed, I do so wish that the US could overcome the image that its troops normally flee from conflict after a few losses. I grieve for the loss of American military personnel for what was a boondoggle of unforgivable proportions. None of this had to be. But now – now that the mess has been made, the U. S. may create more mayhem if it does not follow through.

The pattern has not been missed on Osama, who has repeatedly pointed out the American practice of avoiding conflict: American troops withdrew after 241 servicemen were killed in Lebanon in 1983; they withdrew after 19 were killed in Mogadishu in 1993; they did nothing much to avenge the deaths of 5 servicemen in Riyadh or 19 killed in Dhahran in 1996; and after 220 people were killed in the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration did no more than fire off some rockets into Afghanistan (most of which missed). If the American servicemen are withdrawn now, after four years of war, the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, and the squandering of scandalous billions of dollars, Osama and the most radical takfiri militarists will, as they suppose, be proven right. The most radical of militants will be emboldened to continue violent causes, if not in the West then least in various countries of the Middle East.

The situation is complicated by multiple mis-readings of each others’ point of view. The Americans think of themselves as liberators who are doing good – even if as it happens they are acting very much in their own self interest (more below). The Iraqi people want the Americans to leave because they see the Americans as invaders like the Ottomans and British. The radical Islamists see themselves as fighting unbelievers in the Middle East and Americans as well as others in the West in order to establish – rather, re-establish – a proper Islamic society under a true Caliphate, the sort that has not existed since, say, the eighth century. What is not being made clear is that even if our troops are “pulled out” they will not be far away and could be sucked into conflict again. Whatever the Americans do or appear to do, there is virtually no chance that they will genuinely “leave” the area: The huge natural wealth of the region will continue to draw American interests, indeed those of the whole world, into the area.
Note this map:

Within this ellipsis is 70% of the world’s known oil resources and about 70% of the world’s known gas resources. This region is destined to be the focus of future struggles for dominance in the world. (BGR, 2006, “Petroleum” Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Hannover. http://www.bgr.bund.de/cln_030/nn_468074/EN/Themen/Energie/Bilder/Ene__Erdoel__allg__BILD2__g__en.html (accessed October 14, 2006)]

No wonder the Americans are building the largest embassy in the world just outside Bagdad – to mention another matter not much reported to the American people. The new embassy will be as big as the Vatican, about 104 acres. It will house a number of high-rise buildings, already being constructed. That the Bagdad embassy will be strategically situated in such fossil-fuel rich area is of course no accident. So it turns out that, whatever the appearances, whatever the Baker-Hamilton report recommends, the United States is not really leaving.
RLC

The Jirga Method of Peace-Making

Dawn has an editorial that addresses the discussion about a joint-Afghan-Pakistan jirga (council of elders), brought on by the rise of the Taliban. Pakistanis - the official ones -- still can't quite believe the Taliban are a creation of their own policies. But the voice of a sensible public observer is a good sign. Even so, if, as is reported, the escalation of violence comes from outsiders, mainly from Egypt, promoting their own brand of "takfiri" radicalism (justifying the murder of almost anyone different from them), then the situation is far more serious than this article seems to acknowledge. Lets hope for progress, but we can't hold our breath.
RLC

Enough Evidence to Believe There Is No Exit From Iraq

Eurasianet's Weekly Update provides more than enough evidence to believe that there will be no useful exit for the Americans from Iraq and that the region more generally could easily decay into a broad civil war:
Sunni - Shia with Iran being the main source of funding for the Shia side and Saudi Arabia for the Sunni side. Or am I unusually pessimistic?
RLC


Mr. Sheikh, as the Editor in Chief of Al-Jazeera, you are one of the most important opinion-makers in the Arab world. What do you call suicide bombers?
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Lunch with Robert Fisk: Video: Robert Fisk talks about his latest posting to Lebanon, shares his intimate understanding of the Middle East and tells us where the region-wide struggles are heading
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U.S. made Hezbollah stronger, analysts say: America's failure to stop Israeli attacks weakened the Lebanese government, critics argue
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Taliban 'Mini-State' In Pakistan?: Peace deals between Islamic militants and Pakistan's government have created a virtual Taliban mini-state near Afghanistan, giving militants a "free hand" to recruit, train and arm for cross-border attacks, a think tank reported Monday.
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Darfur crisis crosses borders : Both Chad and the Central African Republic have become engulfed in fighting that involves a toxic mix of rebel groups, government forces, armed militias, and civilians.
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Britain stops talk of 'war on terror':
A Foreign Office spokesman said the government wanted to 'avoid reinforcing and giving succour to the terrorists' narrative by using language that, taken out of context, could be counter-productive'. The same message has been sent to British diplomats and official spokespeople around the world.
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Sunni and Shiite Resistance Remain Mystery to U.S., Iraq Report Charges :
Nearly four years after the invasion of Iraq, the United States still does not understand the enemy that American troops are fighting, according to last week's report by the Iraq Study Group.
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Prominent Saudi Muslim clerics urge Muslims to support Iraqi Sunnis against Shiites: Over 30 prominent Islamic clerics from Saudi Arabia on Monday called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the insurgency.
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History will not treat us kindly By Tim Andersen
We will be remembered as the Americans who insulated themselves from reality and remained self-absorbed, concerned with their own personal comfort and privilege while our government wrecked havoc on the world and destroyed our own culture.
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LATIN AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS PRESENT A MANIFESTO "AGAINST TORTURE"
The militarily organized practice of torture, the sexual abuse, and all other abuses of men and women, clandestine incarcerations and forced disappearances, are not new in the history of the Third World, and of Latin America in particular. It has been instead an historical constant of colonial, neocolonial and neoliberal domination.
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Revolution in the air as Lebanon's rift widens By Robert Fisk
With Fouad Siniora's cabinet hiding in the Grand Serail behind acres of razor wire and thousands of troops - a veritable "green zone" in the heart of Beirut - the largely Shia Muslim opposition, assisted by their Christian allies, brought up to two million supporters into the centre of the city yesterday to declare the forthcoming creation of a second Lebanese administration.
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The Americans don't see how unwelcome they are, or that Iraq is now beyond
repair By Patrick Cockburn: Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ... brought to light 1,100 acts of violence".

Good News and Bad News From Afghanistan

There is both good news from Afghanistan and bad news. The BBC published an encouraging report on Herat on 12/5/06. Herat has had five years of relative calm since the fall of the Taliban, whereas the Taliban have been gaining strength in Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban were never accepted here. This is a Persian speaking city (the Afghans call their dialect "Dari"), and mainly Shi'ite, so the Taliban had no use for the local population. The Taliban spoke Pushtu and the widespread use of Urdu among them emphasized that their roots were really Pakistan rather than Afghanistan. Now that they are gone schools for girls are no longer banned, television is available, music is now again part of every day affairs. People wear clothes, jeans. Medical care is better: women doctors and nurses can work now. "There are a lot of private clinics and labs with relatively sophisticated diagnostic machines. Health facilities have been opened up in remote areas." Even so, many women are still wearing the burka - preferring to remain covered to avoid insults from the men.

But the BBC has also published a report on suicide among Afghan women. "Driven to desperation by forced marriages and abusive husbands, more and more are seeking release through self-immolation." Such a painful way to die - and some survive: we wonder what kind of world they will be able to live in now. Jealousy, forced marriages, a culture that permits domestic violence, and the hardships of living in a society broken by war - these are the sources of the despair of young women seeking to destroy themselves.
RLC

Exposing the Truth of Abu Ghraib Wasn't Easy

Joe Darby is the man who revealed the abuses at Abu Ghraib. For revealing the abuse of other human beings he was rejected by his fellow soldiers and his home community. He feared for his life and even now lives incognito, in fear that someone from his former company or community might do him in.This is America? Even what our leaders say our troops were fighting for was being outraged. Consider the moral values of the American heritage: "The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.":
Angelica Grimke - (1805-1879) Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836

The Plot Against Musharraf

It’s curious that the western press made little of the coup attempt against Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan soon after his arrival from abroad. The attempt did not take place while he was away but immediately after he returned. Presumably the idea was to shut him up so that after the coup he would have no voice to reveal information about his usurpers. A ring of rockets was set up to attack his residence and apparently one was set off by an Air Force officer by his cell phone, which was discovered, leading police to him and a long list of others involved with him. Mostly they were said to be middle rank officers in the Air Force, all of whom are described as “Islamists”. All of the several attempts on Musharraf’s life have come from the armed forces, and especially the air force. And presumably all have been instigated by Islamists. While in the United States Musharraf had admitted that former ISI officials had been supporting the Taliban. Apparently he decided to reign in those elements even before he returned: he sent instructions to “check on top officials.” The most notable of them were retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, former director general of the ISI, and retired Colonel Ameer Sultan, who is said to have “founded” the Taliban movement. Musharraf also is said to have ordered that some major Al-Qaeda figures being protected by the Taliban in Waziristan be apprehended, contrary to a deal the Pakistani army had made with the tribesmen in Waziristan. It was in this context that retired squadron leader Khalid Khawaja, a former ISI official who once fought alongside Osama bin Laden against the Soviets in the1980s, said plainly what some of us have wondered about: that the officials who were helping the Taliban were doing so on state instructions. For the state to renounce them and punish them for what they did, as if they were acting illegally was a betrayal. No wonder the military are disaffected. How long can Musharraf survive?
RLC

Qom to be Home to Cutting Edge Rail Industry

IranMania reports that one of “the most advanced” rail industry complexes in the Middle East is to be built in the region of Qom, Iran. How the world has changed. Qom, a historical center of Shiite learning and religious activity, was of no interest to the Shah who saw himself as a modernizer and the Shiite figures who dominated affairs in Qom as social and political drags on progress. Qom was therefore marginalized in the days of the Shah, its marginalization objectified by the neglected roadways leading to it; in time of travel it was far away. Now that Iran is being led by Islamic scholars, most of them trained in Qom, the city is a major hub in the infrastructure of the country. And will become even more central: The new rail complex will be reflect “highly developed management and engineering know-how on factory construction.”
RLC

Perspectives From Central Asia: Installment Four

More on public sentiments in Central Asia:

Kate Clark of Unreported World has reported that "five years after the fall of the Taliban, western intervention has produced a mafia-style state" in the northern part of the country.

Clark was far from the region where the Taliban are rising, but there she found "an economy dominated by the drugs trade." Those in power are the commanders from the days of the Northern Alliance. Now they are prominent in the police and in parliament, and some of them are accused of human rights abuses. "The father of a child killed in an attack on NATO Peace-keeping forces says civilians have no-one to turn to - commanders are powerful in the local administration and foreign peace-keepers are seen to be working with them." Clark interviews a local commander who claims that "senior members of the police force with links going up to the heart of the Kabul government" are in involved in the drug trade. He tells her that the local people are "re-arming themselves and selling weapons to their old enemies, the Taliban," because not only in opium but in weapons "serious money" can be made. She is shown "palaces" that "commanders and cabinet ministers have built on government land." She meets a woman, unnamed, who has "publicly criticized the warlords" and so has become "a magnet for those wanting to complain about abuses." The
young woman is, however, plagued by death threats. Such is the situation in late 2006.

Compare the hope that was expressed by a courageous young woman in 2004, Malalai Joya, in the face of threats in her time. Joya was at that time was running an orphanage and health clinic. "One woman's words defy might of Afghan warlords; Malalai Joya tells Hamida Ghafour of the threats she faces in a battle to end her country's violence"] She also was courageous, openly accusing the "warlords and criminals" of her area, Farah, of "drug trafficking, land seizures, rape, and looting of houses." Farah is a very different province of Afghanistan, and it is now at risk of being overrun by the new Taliban. Even in those days Joya was being threatened; her home had just been ransacked by soldiers. Even so, she had been able to persuade President Karzai to evict the sitting governor of Farah for criminal activity. "These people should be taken to court," she said. If not, she warned, "Those people will be in parliament and the country will revert to bloodshed. Maybe it will be me they kill, but there will be others whose voices will be louder than mine." The bloodshed she predicted seems to be coming true, but we wonder if there will really be others like her with the courage to speak out. Pray that she and others like her will have the courage to call a spade a spade in the face of the rising criminality of public officials.
RLC