Combatting extremism in Yemen

Asharq al-Awsat reports that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih has formed a council of senior Muslim clergymen to preach to Yemen's youth, especially returnees from Afghanistan, about the dangers of religious extremism. They will conduct open discussion and dialogue sessions, both voluntary and with extremists in prison. Non-government sources estimate that hundreds of young Yemenis are in prison on charges of belonging to al-Qaida or to Yemen's al-Jihad al-Islami. The latter organization, founded in 1992 by returnees from the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, consists of about 200 individuals and has run terrorist training camps in Yemen's mountainous regions.

Yemen is cooperating with the FBI and the US military in chasing down al-Qaida elements in that country.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

al-Qaida Funding

Two contradictory reports are out. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal says that his government has blocked $90 mn. from going to al-Qaida in the past few months. (That it was blocked is the good news. That Saudis still want to send that kind of money to al-Qaida is the bad news).

The other report was leaked from the United Nations Security Council, saying that efforts to stop money from going to al-Qaida have stalled internationally and it is still getting substantial funding.

This latter conclusion has long been my own conviction. The petroleum wealth in the Gulf, plus the wealth of Islamist expatriates in the West, has created very large numbers of persons for whom a $100,000 contribution is simply not that big a deal. If even a relatively small number of these persons is pro-al-Qaida, they could fund it to the tune of $ 1 mn. per every ten contributors. A thousand of them could come up with very substantial money for terrorist operations, which can often be done on the cheap. Money is fungible, and stopping them from transferring these funds would require a whole new micro-surveillance of wealth transfers in the world. You have to fight al-Qaida by tracking its members down, infiltrating its constituent networks, and developing better human intelligence generally. You can't completely turn of the money spigots from above.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

al-Qaida in Iran

Iran has denied a Washington Post report that two senior al-Qaida figures are hiding out in far eastern Iran near the Afghan border, saying it has a policy of not giving asylum to al-Qaida members.

One thing no one has pointed out is that the southeast of Iran is very rugged and dominated by a tribal, Sunni Baluch population not exactly friendly to the ayatollahs in Tehran. I wonder if Baluchi patrons or criminal elements (Zahedan lives on smuggling) have taken money to shelter the al-Qaida leaders? If so, we should find out. Tehran is not powerful in that part of Iran, but it can go in and get someone if it wants.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bin Ladin Back in Control?

Al-Quds al-`Arabi, a London newspaper, is reporting that Bin Ladin is firmly back in control of al-Qa'ida and that the organization is digging in for a guerilla war against the US presence in Afghanistan.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

No Security Council Resolution?

The Los Angeles Times reported today that the Bush administration will likely not seek a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing war against Iraq. The report said that Bush fears a veto by Russia or China. Most US European allies, and even some in the Middle East, such as Kuwait, have said such a resolution would be necessary before they could agree to support such a US move.

Earlier reports had speculated that the US could get a favorable Security Council resolution, since China usually abstains on such matters and Russia needs US economic aid and good will. Of course, France is also opposed to an Iraq war. If it is true that Bush has given up on the security council, it means that the US is really isolated on this issue.

The depth of the opposition to such a war in the Arab world has probably been underestimated by the administration all along, and the degree of influence the Arab League states have with France, Russia and China is also not negligible.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq and al-Qaida (Again)

The attempts to tie Baathist Iraq to al-Qaida continue among the hawks in Washington, and they continue to be without logical or evidentiary foundation.

Al-Qaida wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It hates him. Bin Ladin was angry at the Saudi government in 1990 for not doing in Kuwait what was done in Afghanistan and allowing the Islamic International to deal with Saddam instead of inviting the infidel Americans to tread sacred Arabian soil. Saddam views al-Qaida as a dire threat to Baath Party, secular Arab nationalist dominance of the Middle East.

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that myths among Brazilian Indians had their own logic, and one of the key principles was "contiguity." That is, mythic symbols evoke things in nature that appear to be next to one another.

The current spate of attempts to link Iraq to al-Qaida is characterized by this mythology of contiguity.

The way it goes is this. The only group in al-Qaida with any Iraq links at all is a small Kurdish terrorist organization called Ansar al-Islam, which is able to operate in Kurdistan only because the United States has kicked the Baath Party out of that part of Iraq. There are no Ansar al-Islam cells in Arab Iraq, under Baathist rule. Some Kurds linked to Ansar al-Islam were in Afghanistan with al-Qaida. It is the looser political and social controls under the American fostered free Kurdish north that allows Ansar to operate.

Ansar al-Islam has conducted operations against the forces of the traditional Kurdish tribal leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani who account between them for the loyalties of virtually all Kurds in northern Iraq. In a particularly gruesome politics of theater, Ansar al-Islam recently desecrated the tombs and shrines of Naqshbandi Sufi leaders (mystical Islam is overwhelmingly popular among Kurds as opposed to the fundamentalist Ansar, which like al-Qaida is influenced by puritan Wahhabi strictures against any cult of saints).

US intelligence sources allege that Saddam has given money to Ansar al-Islam to stir up trouble in Kurdistan.

The syllogism goes that since Ansar has shadowy links with al-Qaida, and Saddam has been alleged to occasionally use Ansar, therefore Saddam is up to his neck with al-Qaida. Safire, with breathtaking dishonesty, even has tried to call Ansar members caught in Afghanistan "Saddam's men." This would be like calling Phalangist rogue terrorists in Lebanon "America's men" because the US occasionally worked with them.

Rumsfeld has now also charged that a thousand members of al-Qaida fleeing Afghanistan have taken refuge in Iraq, and that this is another reason to attack Iraq. Of course, *thousands* of al-Qaida and Taliban have fled to Pakistan, which seems unable to locate the vast majority of them (including possibly Bin Ladin and Zawahiri themselves). And yet this (quite rightly) is not held against Pakistan. The idea that Iraq is deliberately harboring Islamist terrorists is absurd, since the Baathists would be afraid of them themselves. The US can't even find the al-Qaida cells in the US, but expects Iraq, which isn't very organized after ten years of international boycott, to be able to out-perform the FBI.

The irony is, of course, that the depth of past US support for the radical Islamic anti-leftist terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere far exceeds the tenuous links attributed to Saddam. Among the favorites of the CIA was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, guerilla leader and mass murderer who has now returned to Afghanistan from his sanctuary in Iran and joined al-Qaida remnants in opposition to the Karzai government. Orrin Hatch, Fred Ikle and other members of the Reagan administration flew to Beijing in January of 1986 to plead with China to intercede with its close friend Pakistan to allow the US to give Hekmatyar and other terrorists Stingers to use against the Russian boys. Pakistan gave in. One of those Stingers was found last November outside Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia, and it had apparently been fired by an al-Qaida member at a US fighter jet without effect. Maybe, in view of the long and profound links of the Republican Party with extremist Islamic terrorists, we need a regime change in Washington.




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Whatever Happened to the Iraqi Airforce (Iran-Iraq relations)

Someone asked of the 1990 pilot defections:

>1) Were these defections spontaneously carried out by Iraqi pilots,
>or were they part of an some kind of official Iraqi policy (perhaps
t>o maintain a force-in-being in a neutral country)?

Since Iraq had just fought a long and bloody war with Iran and still had lots of POWs, it is highly unlikely that either the Iraqi high command deliberately wanted to "park" the planes in Iran or that the Iranians would have been willing to be so used.

The most likely explanation is that the pilots decided to avoid being executed by superior American F-16s, and basically escaped to a place where Saddam could not order them up and where the Americans were unlikely to come after them. Some of them may have been ethnic Shi`ites (I don't know), which might make a little more sense of why they went to Iran.

>2) What eventually happened to the planes? Were they repatriated or
>did Iran keep them?

As G. says, Iran kept them. However, since they don't have training or spare parts for them, I presume this step was simply to deny them to Iraq.


>3) What light does this incident shed on Iraqi-Iranian relations with
>the United States?

Those relations have been very bad. It was reported in ash-Sharq al-Awsat recently that Saddam's son was sent to Iran secretly to ask for Iranian military and civilian help in case of a war with the U.S. The report said that the clerics in Iran rudely rebuffed this approach, though they did allow that in a post-war situation where Iraq needed relief aid, Iran was always ready to help anyone on humanitarian grounds. (This last is an insult). The clerics have publicly condemned the idea of the US going to war with Iraq, but likely in private they don't really mind it all that much.

If a post-Saddam Iraq were governed by democratic principles, the 55-60% majority of the Iraqi Shi`ites would give them power, and they have extensive ties with Iran. So Iran would be trading a hostile Sunni secularist regime as a neighbor for a Shi`ite dominated friend. Ayatollah Baqir Hakim and his son, who are Iraqi exiles in Iran, have openly discussed their continuing dialogue with the U.S. and the son says Rumsfeld assured him post-Saddam Iraq would be a democracy (which implies, Shi`ite-dominated).

The Shi`ite Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has called for a post-Saddam Iraq to incorporate extensive elements of Shi`ite practice. It is among the administration's primary allies in the planning for ousting the Baathists. I am not entirely sure why the war party in Washington thinks promoting Shi`ite revolution is such a great idea, since they have called Iran's Shi`ite theocracy part of the axis of evil. Is it 'anything but Saddam'? And there are lots of questions. Are the Kurds and Arab Sunnis (the latter the traditional elite) really going to put up with Shi`ite dominance without a fight? And, why wouldn't a democratic Shi`ite Iraq want nukes, given that Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India all have them among the neighbors, and Iran is apparently trying hard? What will all this really change?



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi Terrorism and War with Iraq?

There is a double standard in Western approaches to Middle Eastern movements. On the whole and by and large, few sane observers suspected the United States government of supporting Communist movements for Machiavellian purposes during the Cold War. I am not speaking of WW II, when the US saw the major threat to be from fascism. I am talking about 1946 forward, when Communism was the main opponent. Anyone who suggested that the US helped the communists in Greece or tried to put Allende in power in Chile would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. This is because Western political actors are assumed to have principles and to adhere to them by and large under ordinary circumstances.

Iranian Shi`ites feel about hyper-Sunni movements like Wahhabism exactly as the Cold War US felt about Communism. No Shi`ite looks upon Saudi Wahhabis as allies in any way shape or form. Saudi Arabia funded Iraq's war on Iran precisely because it was so afraid of Shi`ite republicanism spreading its influence. And Shi`ite Iran never gave any support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, despite what authors such as Bodansky have alleged. Shadowy allegations to the contrary play on an Orientalist trope of the unreliable and unprincipled Easterner, a la Forster's *Passage to India.*

I agree that the question of Iraqi support for terrorism is insufficient as a casus belli or cause for going to war. There is not good evidence for any significant Iraqi terrorist operation outside Iraq. Some operations that have been alleged, such as the supposed 1992 attempt to assassinate Bush senior in Kuwait, have been sharply questioned by investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh. Baathist stirring the pot in Kurdistan by giving some money to the ultra-fundamentalist Ansar al-Islam is not international terrorism; it is a brutal form of domestic politics. It can be dealt with by acting against Ansar al-Islam in liberated Kurdistan.

None of us likes the idea of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. However, the tradition of the United States is that we go to war only if attacked. I am very nervous about a first strike doctrine, which sounds to me more Prussian than American. A first strike doctrine might well cause wars, by making enemies trigger happy. If China knows we have a first strike doctrine, what will happen the next time there is a serious tiff over Taiwan? Might they not lash out with nuclear weapons because they fear we will do so first?

Moreover, it is not in fact clear that Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction that it can deliver to the United States, or that it would if it could. Several US enemies have had far more deadly arsenals than Iraq will ever have, and yet these were never used because regimes dislike being obliterated.

As we saw last fall, anthrax and most other biological weapons are not easy to deliver, and nor are chemical weapons. Cities are thermal pumps that throw microbes into the upper atmosphere. Aum Shinrikyo only killed 12 with its sarin attack in Tokyo, but had dreamed of killing thousands. Strains can be traced (the anthrax was the Ames strain and most likely came from Ft. Detrick), and so for Iraq to release them would invite a nuclear attack on Iraq. Moreover, in today's globalized world, any significant disease outbreak would go back to Iraq. So far, the biological weapons programs of the U.S. military in Maryland have probably contributed (unwillingly, of course, via a rogue biologist) to more American deaths than any foreign power. Perhaps we should begin by closing down Ft. Detrick before addressing hypothetical threats from Baghdad.

Iraq does not have nuclear weapons, nor does it have any means of delivering a nuclear bomb to the US, lacking ICBMs, nor is there any reason to believe that it would do so if it could, since that would invite the nuclear obliteration of Iraq by the US.

Most arguments for a US first strike on Iraq assume that Saddam would behave like al-Qaida if given the opportunity. He would not. Al-Qaida as a covert organization could strike the US and hope to survive. A state like Iraq could not do so, and Saddam certainly wants to survive and enjoy his tinpot dictatorship.

Moreover, lots of countries are bigger potential threats to the US than Iraq at the moment, China most of all. But how can we be sure that if we increase the strength of our alliance with Pakistan we might not face a threat from New Delhi, which has more proven weapons of mass destruction than does Iraq? Do the Washington hawks propose a series of wars against all the other countries in the world with WMD capabilities? If not, then why single out Iraq, which is weaker and less likely to attack the US than the others? Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter thinks the Iraqi capabilities virtually nil.

These considerations do not even begin to take into account the possibility that a US war on Iraq will throw the Middle East into even greater turmoil, detract from our ability to wage the war on al-Qaida, actually give a recruitment boost to al-Qaida and cause new massive terrorism against the US, etc., etc.

I'd like to see Saddam removed from power and the installation of a democratic Iraq. I'd rather see the Iraqis arrange for that than for it to result from an unprovoked neo-imperial war not sanctioned by the UN Security Council or by NATO.








For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Guardian Blows the Whistle on the Ersatz Middle East Experts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html:

US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy

Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues

See also:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest

The Nation, September 2

The Men From JINSA and CSP
by Jason Vest


lmost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

No Iraq link to al-Qaida

Thanks to M.S. for his further comments.


There is also, however, no credible evidence of *indirect* Iraqi, Baathist
support for al-Qaida. The US has an enormous number of documents bearing
on funding for al-Qaida, gathered from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and no
money comes from Iraq. No training of al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. No
al-Qaida informant or defector has mentioned Iraq. That Baathist Iraq's
ideology is secular and nationalist and virulently anti-Islamist would not
absolutely prevent some sort of shadowy cooperation with theocratic
al-Qaida, I suppose. Such cooperation is, however, unlikely and
counter-intuitive and therefore would have to be demonstrated. It has not
been demonstrated. Since the war advocates in Washington--with their
enormous resources and access to classified intelligence--have been trying
hard to make the argument for 11 months, I presume this means it cannot be
demonstrated.


There is no evidence of Saddam Hussein being willing to talk to al-Qaida,
and some to suggest that he repeatedly refused to do so.


If the US government wants to invade Iraq, I presume it can do so. There
may be reasons for doing this, though I am unable to comprehend them,
myself (as is, apparently, the international community). However, an
al-Qaida-Iraq link is not such a reason because none exists.


Many implausible things are alleged by supposed experts that fall apart if
one begins examining the available evidence. There is no evidence that
Shiite Iran was behind Wahhabi Bin Laden, as Josef Bodansky asserted, and
this idea is frankly preposterous. Yet Bodansky is a security analyst for
the U.S. Congress and gets lots of television time. In fact, Iran nearly
went to war against the Taliban regime because of its Sunni bigotry and
mistreatment of the Hazara Shiites in Afghanistan, and al-Qaida-related
groups have conducted a campaign of assassinating Shiites in Pakistan,
including Iranian attaches in Karachi. Iran recently handed 16 al-Qaida
detainees over to Saudi Arabia.


I am simply pleading for an end to argumentation from innuendo, unsupported
allegations, and vague guilt by association on this important topic. We
are historians interested in diplomatic history, which has always been
driven by solid documentation. It is not too much to ask for such
documentation when an Iraq link with al-Qaida is implied by someone.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iran has turned over 16 al-Qaida terrorists to Saudi Arabia, according to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. These were Saudi nationals who had escaped from Afghanistan to Iran. This report challenges earlier charges by Pentagon officials that Iran was deliberately giving safe haven to and harboring al-Qaida remnants. This allegation never made much sense, since strongly Shi`ite Iran deeply dislikes the hyper-Sunni al-Qaida and Taliban, and almost went to war against the latter itself.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

al-Qaida acted alone

For anyone interested in the documents on Usama Bin Laden, a very useful web site is:

http://www.robert-fisk.com/understanding_enemy.htm

The September 11 operation was neither complex nor expensive, and well within al-Qaida resources. Almost all the money has been traced by the FBI, which came via either al-Hasawi in the UAE or other cell members in Hamburg to US based accounts. The hijackers kept these accounts in their own names, with no attempt at camouflage, so confident were they. The whole operation appears to have cost on the order of $500,000. Al-Qaida paid salaries like a cheapskate, often only $15,000 to $20,000 a year, and some defectors left precisely because they felt as though they were badly used. It could act this way because most of its cadres were so committed and had other sources of income. Atta even sent back $15,000 that hadn't been spent to al-Hasawi so it could be used to fund other plots.

The operation simply involved training a small group of pilots to use computerized jet liner guidance systems, which is not an impossible task. These were kept as sleepers in the US. At the last moment "newskins" were brought in, largely Saudis personally loyal to Bin Laden who had been trained as muscle in Afghanistan. Bin Laden seems to say that the muscle was only told they were on a suicide mission at the last moment. The combination of sleepers and newskins in a covert operation is apparently something al-Qaida learned from the CIA back in the 1980s when the two were cooperating.

Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah leader Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman has admitted that back in the early 1990s he and his circle of radical fundamentalists were trying to think of some way to get explosives on a plane and then to ram it into a major building. When Muhammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah were recruited in Hamburg, al-Qaida (which had picked up the remnants of the Gamaa and al-Jihad al-Islami, which had been forced to flee Egypt) got highly trained engineers who knew that jet liners are themselves bombs when they first take off, because they are heavy with jet fuel. Atta was a key planner in the attack, and Bin Laden and he and others in Afghanistan had a discussion as to whether the planes could destroy the WTC Towers. Everyone but Bin Laden was convinced that they would hold but suffer substantial damage. Bin Laden, himself an engineer, says he believed that at least the floors above the planes' impact would collapse. The operation exploited a simple security hole in US thinking, which was the premise that hijackers would not kill themselves in a concerted manner.

There is no evidence of direct funding for the September 11 operation by any organization or state other than al-Qaida. The money trail all goes back to known al-Qaida operatives. Although the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence certainly gave substantial support in money and arms to the Taliban, whether they helped fund al-Qaida is unknown and perhaps unknowable. In any case ISI was forced to cut off its clients in Afghanistan and turn against them in the aftermath of Sept. 11, or risk becoming a target of the US itself.

The Saudi intelligence chief appears to have met with Bin Laden once or twice, but this was to put pressure on him to stop his operations. Bin Laden wished to overthrow the Saudi government. The mantra one keeps hearing that the majority of the hijackers was Saudi is misleading if it is used to imply that there is any general support in the Saudi government or in the mainstream of Saudi society for terrorism against the US. Al-Qaida is a tiny fringe wherever it exists, rather analogous to the Weathermen in the US in the 60s.

There is likewise no evidence of Iraqi involvement. The Baath Party is militantly secular and has killed thousands of Iraqi Islamists of the sort who might lean toward al-Qaida. Al-Qaida wishes to see states like that of Saddam Hussein overthrown.

Some sources in Czech intelligence believe that Muhammad Atta met with the Iraqi intelligence station chief, al-Ani, in Prague in spring of 2001. This meeting is disputed and unclear, and the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies deny the meeting. There is some evidence that Atta was known to be in Florida when the Czechs allege that it took place.

I do not believe such a meeting is relevant either way. The Iraqis are unlikely to have been willing to deal with al-Qaida, and even if al-Ani met Atta, Atta may have misrepresented himself as sympathetic to the Baathists. Atta had shaved his beard and al-Qaida had absorbed from its earlier CIA partnerships the idea of "false flag tradecraft." That is a fancy way of saying you misrepresent yourself to a potential agent so as to get him to work against the interests of his own government without knowing it. If Atta and al-Ani met, it would have been to discuss a terrorist action against the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, which broadcasts into the Middle East (including Iraq and Afghanistan), and is a pain in the neck to both the Baathists and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida was very good at leveraging resources, and getting Iraq to help it do something that was foolish and for which Iraq would take the fall would have been delicious to them.

Allegations of Iraqi involvement in al-Qaida are completely unsubstantiated and one should be very suspicious of them because the war party in Washington is attempting to trump up a casus belli so as to drag us into a war. Former CIA director Jim Woolsey and others have essentially lied repeatedly on national television, or employed innuendo and spin, to give this impression. An added benefit for the war party is that the Congress has already authorized military reaction to 9/11, so if one could hang it on the Iraqis one would not need to go back to Congress. I write Iraqi history and I see *no* credible evidence of Iraqi involvement in September 11, and there are many reasons to think it implausible.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Isolation on Iraq

There were several international and national developments with regard to the coming US attack on Iraq on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned in Bild that "any military attack on Iraq could destroy the international coalition against terrorism." He said, "This fight (against terrorism) is not yet won and that is why I am warning against an attack on Iraq," adding "It will not be well understood as a means of defence and could destroy the international alliance against terrorism." Bild likewise reported that the Christian Democrat candidate in the upcoming elections, Edmund Stoiber, *also* said, "New commitments abroad by the Bundeswehr [German military] are not on the agenda."

AFP reported that the European Union diplomats insisted that all diplomatic means to resolving the conflict with Iraq be exhausted before a military solution was adopted.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called a military strike on Iraq "unacceptable."

Also on Wednesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud said "publicly and privately" that "the U.S. military will not be allowed to use the kingdom's soil in any way for an attack on Iraq." (AP). He added, "We have told them we don't (want) them to use Saudi grounds" for any attack on Iraq, he said. [This wording leaves in question whether the US will be permitted to use Saudi airspace, which from a military point of view is highly desirable and perhaps necessary to the whole operation.]

Prince Saud also complained about the briefing given to a Pentagon advisory board on Monday by a Rand analyst, Laurent Murawiec, who had called for all relations with the Saudis to be cut off and alleged that "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," and that it "attacks our allies and supports our enemies." This presentation was apparently arranged for the board by Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (who serves on it), as part of an ongoing neoconservative attempt to drive a wedge between the US and Saudi Arabia. This effort is being pursued in a concerted manner by AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Hudson Institute--all supported by anonymous wealthy donors and all with a policy tilt toward the Likud Party. Apparently the effort is mounted both because Saudi Arabia is an obstacle in the planned attack on Iraq, which is being pushed by the same think tanks, and because of Saudia's role in the Mideast conflict.

Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham criticized Washington for rejecting out of hand an Iraqi offer to resume weapons inspections. He insisted that any US action against Iraq must be authorized by the UN Security Council (a stance also taken by Kuwait's foreign minister). Canada, he said, would decline to join in any military action without UN sanction.

The Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) announced during a visit to Ankara that he would not blindly commit to a U.S. action against Baghdad. He seemed especially worried that the US intends to replace Saddam with just another dictator, and said this would be unacceptable. (Christopher Hitchens in this week's Nation also raises the possibility that the Bush administration really seeks a more malleable replacement for Saddam rather than a truly democratic regime).

On the other hand, the Tehran-based chairman of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI , Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, has come under severe pressure from conservatives in Iran because of his decision to continue contacts with the Bush administration (this from a special to Asharq al-Awsat). The Shi`ites are the cooperative ones here, folks.

A busy day. Even the days just previous had some significant developments.

On Tuesday the spokesman for China' foreign ministry welcomed Saddam's hedged offer to allow UN weapons inspectors back in. China has repeatedly criticized any notion of Washington expanding the war on terror to Iraq, with which China has good relations. A diplomatic emissary from Baghdad will visit Beijing and Moscow later in August.

In Amman, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri met withTurkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel to discuss the possible US attack on Iraq. Gurel urged Iraq to resume weapons inspections as soon as possible.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under pressure to recall Parliament (in recess until Oct. 15) to debate a military move against Iraq. A recent poll showed that a little over half of UK citizens opposed a war with Iraq. A British Foreign Office minister said on Wednesday that war was "imminent" but not "inevitable."

It seems obvious that the Bush administration remains internationally isolated on the issue of a war against Iraq. I suspect the war party in Washington underestimates how important a UN Security Council resolution would be to legitimizing such an effort. At the moment, I count France, China and Russia as "no" votes on the Council, and of course it only needs one really stubborn member willing to use a veto to torpedo any resolution.

In the meantime, I continue to be amazed at the blatant unprofessionalism of most cable television news interviewers and the breathtaking dishonesty of their guests. Repeated unsubstantiated allegations are made hourly with regard both to Iraq's supposed links to al-Qaida and with regard to the Saudi government being full of terrorists. Bill O'Reilly launched into a frankly racist tirade against a poor German correspondent over Schroeder's statement. Probably only a couple of million Americans watch such programs, but these techniques and statements are mirrored on conservative radio talk shows, which have much larger audiences. The sad state of US mass media news may well help pitch us into perpetual war because it is not doing its job of reporting critically on the facts and keeping interviewees honest.

















For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Realism vs. Humanitarianism in Afghanistan and Iraq

One element of this debate, it seems to me is not in actual doubt. That is the very early and correct Bush administration identification of al-Qaida as the source of the attack. Moreover, this assessment was based on intelligence to which any president would have had access.

The Bush White House team, including the National Security Staff, identified al-Qaida as the source of the September 11 attacks right from the morning of September 11. Just by the way, I identified al-Qaida as the source on Detroit's Channel 7 that evening. It was obvious to anyone who had been following al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, al-Jihad al-Islami, and al-Qaida. Ramzi Yousef, who was the mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, drew up plans in the Philippines for flying a jet liner into the CIA headquarters when he was in Manila in the mid-1990s, which were captured by Philippine intelligence when he had a fire in his kitchen and had to leave abruptly. The MO was typical of al-Qaida thinking.

The money trail goes back to the UAE (via Mustafa al-Hasawi, an old Bin Laden associate from Sudan days) and thence to Pakistan. Atta and others went to Afghanistan for training. Al-Qaida informants report seeing some of the hijackers in al-Qaida camps. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar met with the al-Qaida station chief in Malaysia before going on to San Diego. (There is even a videotape of this).

And, Bin Ladin has been caught on tape talking about the planning of the operation! Ahmed Ressam (now in federal penitentiary), Djemal Baghal of Algeria (now in prison in France) and Ra'id Hijazi (now in prison in Jordan) have given extensive information on al-Qaida activities that has been proven accurate, and they knew, as well, that September 11 was theirs.

Even just from open sources an airtight case can be constructed (and was constructed last September), and there is much that hasn't been released to the public.

Al-Qaida had 40 training camps in Afghanistan that had graduated thousands of jihadis in bomb-making and other deadly skills, and sent them back to home countries or Europe to form operational cells. That structure had to be destroyed, obviously, and the Taliban government was in the way of doing so, and so made itself a target. I don't see how any of this changes with a change of party in the White House.

Pentagon insiders say they have seen contingency plans for an invasion of Afghanistan from 2000 that track fairly well with what actually happened. That is, the military planners of the late Clinton administration were already considering support for the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. This is further evidence for the cross-administration nature of such planning and thinking in the military.

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Realism vs. Humanitarianism in Afghanistan and Iraq

Thanks to [TM] for further comments.

He wrote:

>Does Mr Cole believe that the current war in Afghanistan, and the coming
>war in Iraq, are "humanitarian" interventions? One is a search-and-destroy
>mission against the terrorists who attacked us, the other is to finally
>remove the danger from an avowed enemy who is not only a demonstrated
>threat to peace but also seeking nuclear weapons. That sure doesn't seem
>like Somalia Redux to me.


My point with regard to both Afghanistan and Iraq is that they are not in fact merely military operations.

The search and destroy portion of the Afghanistan campaign is now winding down, but success in Afghanistan in the long term will be measured by the degree to which it is denied to al-Qaida and al-Qaida-like groups as a base of training and operations in the future. Even the early search and destroy operation required that the US ally with the Northern Alliance and maneuver it into a coalition with US-created Pushtun anti-Taliban forces such as those of Hamid Karzai and Gul Agha Shirzai. That is, one of the things the US has been doing in the past 9 months in Afghanistan is creating a state. The creation of that state is an ongoing process to which the US is now committed in the long run.

Moreover, the US has pumped and cooperated with the pumping into that country of vast amounts of humanitarian aid, forestalling a famine that was projected to kill 5 to 7 million persons as late as last summer. It had to do so, because otherwise the famine would have been (quite inaccurately) blamed on the US war effort. The US is training an Afghan army, intervening in local Afghan politics on a daily basis, and generally engaging in all those "state-building" and "humanitarian" activities that George W. Bush campaigned against in 2000. US AID has a huge mission in Afghanistan, and the next phase of its activities will be finding ways of restoring the country's agricultural base, which has shrunk to 50% of its former dimensions under the impact of a 4 year long drought. (I read the Afghan newspapers in Dari, by the way).

An attack on Iraq that removed the Baath party from power would require an even larger investment of US resources in post-war state building and humanitarian activities. Iraq is unlike Afghanistan in being a densely populated and complex modern urban society. A US air war against it would greatly disrupt the functioning of Iraqi water treatment and other essential services and provoke a spike in infant and other mortality owing to drinking non-potable water and the resultant diarrhea and dehydration, along with sporadic cholera outbreaks. After the Gulf War, it took several years to restore such services. This time the US will be in charge of doing so. The Wolfowitz plan for Iraq would certainly involve creating a new Iraqi state, overseeing elections, attempting to get Sufi Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shi`ite Arabs to work together politically, rebuilding industrial capacity, etc., etc. That is, the US will be required by this impending war to expend lavishly on state-building and humanitarian activities in Iraq. (I have written about Iraqi history and know Arabic).

These post September 11 wars have as part of their premise the long-term removal of terrorist or WMD threats to the US. Since it is failed and rogue states that produce these threats, the wars willy-nilly entail removing such states and building different ones, indeed, involve attempts to re-engineer entire political cultures.

I am personally a strong supporter of the War on Terror and know something serious about al-Qaida and its constituent elements. My remarks about state-building are not a criticism of that effort but simply an acknowledgment of what it entails. It is my analysis that realism and humanitarian considerations are now dove-tailing in US political discourse, which is why I do not believe the distinction, if it was ever politically salient, is a useful one for viewing the current crisis.

With regard to the Pentagon, of course this is an inexact synechdoche. The civilians in the upper echelons of the Department of Defense do of course change with administrations. I was speaking of the military men, equipment, strategic planning, and so forth, which are less sensitive to changes in administration. My point was that the persons in charge of prosecuting the war in Afghanistan--the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the heads of the various services, the CINC, the commander of the US forces in the region, the planning staff in the Pentagon, and the various sorts of military weaponry, the tactics, and logistics considerations, do not change dramatically with a change in the party in charge of the White House. (It is true that under Clinton the number of divisions was reduced from 16 to 10, but in a post-Soviet environment it is not clear that a Republican administration, say that of Bush, could have mustered enthusiasm for a 16 division military).

And, although it is a counterfactual proposition, I personally cannot see any way in which it would have mattered materially with regard to al-Qaida and Afghanistan whether a Democrat or a Republican had been in office. I believe the events of September 11 would have required a war of any sitting president, and that once a war was entered upon, the options for fighting it would have been the same.


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History News Network

7-29-02: Culture Watch

Should College Kids Be Required to Read About the Koran?

By Juan Cole


The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assigns three books to incoming students every year. This year, one of the books, by Michael Sells of Haverford College, is about the Koran. Amazingly, the assignment of the book has sparked controversy and now a lawsuit.

The legal action by three anonymous students is supported by a right-wing Christian organization, the Family Policy Network. It alleges that the students' first amendment rights are being violated by a form of religious indoctrination. The lawsuit further alleges that Sells's book translates only the early chapters of the Koran, leaving out the later, more militant verses that were quoted by the al-Qaida terrorists.

Since the title of Sells's book is Approaching the Qur'an, Early Revelations the last charge may presumably be acknowledged from the outset. The book was never intended to be a holistic overview of Islam or even of the Koran. Students at UNC do not even have to read the text, and can simply hand in to the professor a 300 word essay on why they declined to do so.

Robert Kirkpatrick, a UNC professor of English who was among the faculty members who made the decision to adopt the book, says he knew nothing of the tenets of Islam before reading this book. Bill O'Reilly (July 10) brought up in an interview the "indoctrination" issue. Kirkpatrick said, "No, it has nothing to do with that. It's a text that studies the poetic structure of the Koran and seeks to explain why it has such an effect on two billion people in the world."

O'Reilly riposted by comparing the class reading of a book about the Koran now to assigning Mein Kampf or a work about Japanese emperor worship during World War II. He let slip his reasoning, saying, "But I'm telling you, these are our enemies now. I mean, the Islamic fundamentalism is our enemy"-only catching himself with the second sentence.

How non-Muslim professors could indoctrinate students into Islam is unclear. Moreover, as Sells points out, Bible texts are routinely read in university classes on Western civilization. In response to this argument, Joe Glover of the Family Policy Network said on Hannity & Colmes (July 26) that he would be equally opposed to the assignment of a book by Jerry Falwell on the Gospels "because I wouldn't expect them to get that right either." Glover claims a knowledge monopoly such that he and those who think as he does "get" everything, including the Koran, "right."

In fact, the Koran grew up in the early 600s in a multicultural Arabia and approves of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It says that "Chistians are closest to Muslims in love," and that righteous Jews and Christians have no fear of hellfire. The phrase in some renderings commanding that Muslims should not take Christians and Muslims as "friends" is a translation error. The text refers not to friends but to "patrons." It was a custom in Arabia for weak clients to adopt powerful protectors, but it gave non-Muslims the leverage to make newly converted Muslims leave Islam.

Sells's book is about the early phase of Islam, when the Muslims were persecuted by powerful pagans who violently rejected its message of monotheism and its praise of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mary. The later wars of the Muslims were against an aggressive Mecca determined to wipe them out. Why it is wrong for the Koran to urge the destruction of battlefield enemies but not for the Book of Joshua, Donald Rumsfeld, and Jerry Falwell himself to do so is unclear to me. On the other hand, the Koran forbids naked aggression.

That merely having American university students know something serious about the Muslim scriptures should be controversial suggests that our society is not as informed or tolerant as we like to think. President Bush has been careful to insist that the enemy of the U.S. is not Islam or Muslims, but a fringe of terrorists. Those to his Right disagree with him, and wish to demonize all Muslims as enemies of America. Likening the Koran to Mein Kampf or banning it from U.S. classrooms may have the unfortunate effect of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.




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Coming Showdown in Pakistan

Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, was required by his country's Supreme Court to hold parliamentary elections by October of 2002. He has attempted to set the elections up so that he could meet the formal requirement but keep most power in his own hands. Some of his moves have a populist tinge, but their underlying premise is that he and only he knows what is best for the country.

He held a referendum last spring on his "presidency," allowing him to avoid running against another candidate in fall elections. He won the referendum, but it seems fairly meaningless. It is not clear whether he would win if it were held now.

He required the major political parties to hold internal party elections for the first time, to choose their flagbearers. In the past, the parties were run by cronyism and the consensus of party elders. He also attempted to ban his major rivals, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- both of whom had been prime minister in the 1990s, and both of whom are shadowed by corruption and high-handedness--from further political office.

Nevertheless, the Pakistan People's Party voted for Benazir as party head, and she says at least that she is coming back to fight the election. Musharraf has vowed to jail her if she does, on the embezzlement charges outstanding against her. The Muslim League (N), loyal to Nawaz Sharif, also appears set to make him party head, though it is also rumored that his daughter might stand in for him. She has just left Jiddah and according to Agence France Press, is back in Pakistan with her husband. Sharif and about 200 family members and retainers were exiled to Saudi Arabia after Musharraf's coup of fall, 1999. His daugher Maryam's return appears to be a breach of the agreement then reached.

The parties have refused to take Musharraf's hint and to produce new in-country leadership not tainted by past excesses. Such new leadership would have been weak and easily outmaneuvered by Musharraf, of course. If he responds to their defiance by canceling elections, or jailing party heads, or taking other Draconian action, he will look very bad in the West. Whether the parties retain enough organizational ability to defy him with rallies after nearly 3 years of dictatorship is unclear, and whether the army will be committed to the fray is uncertain. What does seem clear is that Musharraf's dictatorial instincts are running up against a still feisty Pakistani political culture, and that the people are not yet ready to roll over and play dead.
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