*Pakistan will back a second UN Security Council resolution against Iraq, essentially authorizing war, according to the Los Angeles Times. The government is aware that the war will be hugely unpopular with the Pakistani people and that there will be large demonstrations. They are reported as saying they are confident they can "weather" those demonstrations. They are almost certainly right. The pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslime League (Q) now has a majority in both houses of parliament, and the government is not going to fall any time soon. Even the opposition parties don't want that. Only the small fundamentalist religious parties are likely to push demonstrations very hard, and it is unlikely that they will get much traction. They protested the Afghan war, too. But the crowds that they could bring out were relatively peaceful and the army never had to be called in. This performance is likely to be repeated.

*The US has also picked up support from Mexico, and apparently thinks Angola and Guinea are warming to its position. It needs one more (Chile or the Cameroons) for a majority of nine in the Security Council, and it needs to avoid a veto from France, Russia or China. The Bush administration may yet pull off a resolution. It would make things easier for them. Saudi ambassador to the UK Turk al-Faisal, former head of Saudi intelligence, said that the kingdom will not support an Iraq war without an explicit Security Council go-ahead. The US doesn't need much from Saudia any more, though, any way. Overflight rights and maybe some indirect support at Prince Sultan air base. They probably can have that anyway.

*Between 140,000 and 250,000 Egyptians of various political stripes demonstrated against the looming war yesterday in Cairo. They chanted, "America and Israel are one enemy to the Arab people." The Egyptian government declined to get involved in Wolfowitz's adventure in Iraq, so it is apparently avoiding being the target of this popular rage. But let's just say now is not a good time to book a Nile cruise if you are an American. Bush will say this is another "focus group."





For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A poster to one of the lists I am on wrote:

"US policy is to allow no sanctuaries anywhere on the globe for anti-American terror groups. No training camps. No organizations, no fronts. No funding. No meetings. No travel. Identified leaders will be taken out. Operations such as those which existed a year or two ago in Afghanistan and Hamburg will not be allowed. Now that is American policy since 9-11 regardless of Iraq, but a major military victory in the Iraq campaign will, I suggest, drive the point home to everyone concern and provide the US with a major military base in the Middle East to monitor the situation."

I (JC) replied:

I am certainly all for preventing any attacks on the US by terrorist groups anywhere. It just seems to me that the ambition outlined above is a mere abstraction not grounded in the realities of the world situation. For anyone who has actually been to Yemen or Pakistan, or for that matter the not so nice parts of Marseilles, the idea that this level of control could be achieved seems nonsensical. There is also the question of whether, in trying to achieve it, the US will make more new enemies than it is worth. The idea that terrorists willing to commit suicide will be afraid of the US after it invades Iraq is just a misreading of human nature. Terrorism is produced precisely by humiliation and hopelessness and living in fear (which is not a life worth living). It cannot be stopped by inducing more fear and humiliation. You will note that Ariel Sharon has been trying out this tactic for 30 years and it hasn't worked.

The US so far has not even caught Mulla Omar or Osama Bin Ladin or Ayman al-Zawahiri or Shaikh Khalid Bin Muhammad, the people who planned out the first attack! An estimated 1000 al-Qaeda operatives fled Afghanistan to Pakistan a year ago, and only half have been apprehended (and that was largely because of the excellent cooperation the US got from Pakistan, for which Pakistan gets precious little credit over here). And this failure is despite our ostensible control of Afghanistan and close working
alliance with Pakistan!

If we cannot even catch the leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who already struck us, in areas we *control*, how in the world can we hope to prevent meetings of terrorists about whom we do not even know in places we don't? These are tiny groups, often clan-based, which have only vague affiliations to umbrella organizations like al-Qaeda. You think you can stop a radical set of friends and relatives from meeting in Antwerp? In Hadhramawt? Unlikely. And, it is not as if we have loads of CIA field operatives who speak Arabic and can infiltrate such groups! It will take years to develop that capacity. We don't even have an Arabist at the top echelons of the National Security Council.

Nor is it clear that going about having serial wars with Iraq, Iran, Syria, N. Korea, and apparently ultimately China [these are the ideas thrown out by the Richard Perle/ Paul Wolfowitz circle that controls our Defense Department] is going in any way to help with this task of surveillance and infiltration. Surely serial wars in the region are a distraction from the struggle against terrorism, especially since those
countries are not doing anything to the US.

Moreover, the idea that a US military occupation of Iraq will deter as oppose to provoking more attacks on US interests is awfully optimistic. The main problem an organization like al-Qaeda has is to recruit further members and keep current members from melting away in fear. They recruit best when the young men are angriest. What are they angry about? The Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza; the almost daily shooting by the Israeli army of innocent noncombatants; the progressive colonization of Palestinian territory by--let us say--idiosyncratic settlers from Brooklyn (all of this is on t.v. every day over there); the harsh Indian police state erected over the Muslims of Kashmir; the economic stagnation and authoritarian policies of many Middle Eastern governments that are backed by the US; and the poverty and prejudice Muslim immigrants to places like France and Germany experience daily.

I don't have any idea how to resolve all these grievances; but the young men are very angry about and humiliated by them, and al-Qaeda plays on that anger to seduce them into attacking US interests. A US occupation of Iraq is not going to address the grievances, and is likely to create new bitterness and so help the recruitment drive. If the US really wanted to stop terrorism, it would invade the West Bank and Gaza and liberate the Palestinians to have their own state and self-respect, instead of heading to Baghdad.

Iraq is rugged; tribal forces are still important; and the majority population is Shiite, as is that of neighboring Iran. What will happen if US bombs damage the Shiite shrines, the holiest places for 100 million Shiite Muslims in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bahrain? What will happen if there is a riot in a shrine city like Karbala and US marines put it down by killing rioters? Do we want 100 million Shiites angry at us again? (Lately they have calmed down and it is the radical Sunnis that have given us the problems).

What happens if the Iraqi Sunni middle classes lose faith in secular Arab nationalism because the Baath is overthrown, and they turn to al-Qaeda-type Islam, in part out of
resentment at American hegemony over their country? What will happen if we give the Turks too much authority to intervene in Kurdistan, and fighting breaks out between the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds, and if the Iraqi Kurds turn against the US?

Colin Powell explained in Qatar last week on an Arabic talk show that the US war will be followed by a period of US military administration of the country by a general, followed by a year or two of US civilian administration of the country. This plan is an abandonment of earlier pledges to Iraqi expatriate dissidents that there would be a direct transition to a new Iraqi government. There has been a howl of outrage and betrayal by Kanan Makiya and other dissidents, once close to the Bush White House. If our friends and supporters among Iraqi dissidents are so unhappy now, will everyone in Iraq be just delighted to still be under US administration a year or two from now?

So, this business about controlling everybody all around the world just sounds to me like pie in the sky, and the same sort of thinking that got us mired in the jungles of Vietnam.

I will be ecstatic to see Saddam go. But I have a bad feeling about this, as Han Solo once said prophetically.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf expressed reluctance to endorse war between the US and Iraq at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Pakistan is on the Security Council at the moment and is one of 6 nations from which the US hopes to draw supportive votes for the resolution just introduced by Britain and Spain, authorizing the war. The Pakistani parliament will meet Weds., and will take up issues like whether the recent martial law amendments to the constitution made by Musharraf last summer are . . . constitutional. About 20% of seats are held by the fundamentalist Muslim parties, who are pro-Taliban, and who have announced their die-hard opposition to an Iraq war. They have even recently more or less called for jihad volunteers to go from Pakistan to fight US forces in Iraq if the Iraqis ask for help. (This move would not be effective against US air power, but these statements point to the depth of polarization in Pakistan over the issue).

Many think that in the end, Musharraf will back the US on Iraq, given Pakistan's need for US economic and military help. There will be hell to pay in Pakistan if so, though Musharraf can probably weather the strom. It is a little unlikely that the four pro-war countries can pick up the needed 5 votes from the undecided six, though. France is convinced that the three African countries will vote no. Mexico and Chile are skeptical. Even if just the Cameroons and Guinea side with France, the US will lose the vote. It will be ironic if the US loses in the Security Council in part because Chile won't back it. The US helped overthrow the elected government of Chile in 1973 and installed a brutal and virtually genocidal strong man, Gen. Pinochet, who ruled in ways not so dissimilar from those favored by Saddam Hussein. Now that it wants international approval for regime change in Iraq, Chile may not give it.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Pakistan's four provincial legislatures voted for 80 members of the Federal Senate, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) and its allies, who control the lower house, seem close to having a simple majority in the upper chamber. Some of the seats were distributed to "technocrats" and women who ran unopposed, their party affiliations determined by how well parties did in the elections for the lower house of parliament. In a continued sign that the Northwest Frontier Province is politically unpredictable these days, three independents routed the Pakistan People's Party. If PML-Q can cobble together a majority in the Senate, Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Jamali will have a good chance of remaining in power some time and getting something done in the legislature. Even deputies from parties opposed to his do not wish to see his government fall or become unstable, because they are determined to keep the army from coming back in and declaring martial law again.

Meanwhile, there is some good economic news. The balance of trade surplus has grown, and the pace of economic growth has again picked up after the doldrums induced by last year's war in Afghanistan (when Pakistan grew only about 1.5%, down substantially from the 5% per annum it used to achieve).

*Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz addressed a town meeting in Dearborn, near Detroit, of Iraqi Americans concerned about US plans for their mother country. “It’s not going to be handed over to some junior Saddam Hussein,” he told the heavily Shiite group of about 300. “We’re not interested in replacing one dictator with another dictator.” He promised that an Iraqi democracy would emerge. Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post reported that Wolfowitz got heavy applause from the audience when he called Saddam one of the most evil rulers of the past 100 years. He said the Pentagon hoped Iraqi-Americans would join the military reserves and agree to use their talents in helping the US military in Iraq.

*Frantic US consuls in embassies throughout the world have been sending urgent cables to Washington warning the US government that in many countries President George W. Bush is seen as a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.

*Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf called on the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Kuala Lampur to help resolve hot spots such as Palestine and Kashmir. His statement drew an angry rebuke from Indian PM Vajpayee, who tore up his original remarks and insisted that bilateral issues should not be brought up at the conference. He was supported in this stance by the conference's Malaysian hosts.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Dawn reports that a senior US State Department official has said, Pakistan's nuclear weapons are in safe hands and the United States is satisfied with the measures Islamabad has taken to secure them, says a senior official of the US State Department. The official was not named by Dawn but presumably was Undersecretary of State for South Asia Christine Rocca. She is quoted as saying, "Our overall assessment is that Pakistan has control of its nuclear arsenal and there is very little doubt about the fact that they have got it under wraps." The US has not given Pakistan the sort of help it gave post-Soviet Russia in securing its nuclear weapons sites. Pakistan has not requested such assurance. Although the US seems satisfied at the moment, things could change. Were there to be a coup against Musharraf by radical fundamentalist officers aligned with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, there seems little doubt that the US would immediately try to take out Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at Kahuta. What would happen if the fundamentalist Muttahidah Majlis-i `Amal or United Action Council, which controls the NWFP, came to power in the federal parliament, is not clear. It would probably provoke a similar crisis unless the Pakistani military could reassure Washington that the civilian politicians had no access to the nukes.

*[With regard to categorizing Muslim political groups:] I may sometimes
use it, but I am not enamored of the phrase "Islamist." It
will never catch on with the journalists, but I would propose that we make
some distinctions for academic purposes. Let us take the universe of
political and social groups that define themselves with reference primarily
to Islam.

1) What is a group's political goal? If it is a Muslim dictatorship or
oligarchy and the thoroughgoing implementation of a fundamentalist reading
of Islamic law, the group consists of *Muslim theocrats*. If it is
parliamentary democracy with a mixed legal system that includes input from
Islamic law, the group consists of *Muslim democrats.*

2) The second question is how the goal is to be achieved. If the group is
committed to using violence, it has chosen a radical path. If it is
willing to work in a law-abiding way for its goals, it has chosen a
moderate path. (The goal may not strike anyone as moderate, but the way of
achieving it is nonviolent and so moderate). Note that none of these terms
is meant to be value-laden. George Washington was a radical democrat. The
ancient Israel Americans hear praised every week from the pulpit could
probably be categorized at some points as a theocracy. On the other hand,
realistically speaking, radicals will be disliked and where possible
prosecuted by states.

Logically speaking then, we have two possible goals and two possible
methods, yielding four potential combinations. You can have

a) radical Muslim theocrats
b) moderate Muslim theocrats,
c) radical Muslim democrats
d) moderate Muslim democrats.

Radical Muslim theocrats are represented by the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and by
Omar `Abdu'r-Rahman's al-Gamaa al-Islamiya and Ayman al-Zawahiri's al-Jihad
al-Islami in Egypt. Moderate Muslim theocrats are represented by the new
al-Gamaa al-Islamiya in Egypt that has renounced violence from Tura Prison.

Most Muslim democrats, whether Soroush in Iran or the Ak Party in Turkey,
are moderate. But one could imagine radical religious democrats, as, for
instance, with the American Baptists who fought in the Revolutionary War
for democracy. I have the sense that by 2001 some of the anti-Taliban
Muslims in Afghanistan aligned with the Northern Alliance were hoping for a
parliamentary system that could accommodate the shariah or Islamic law.
They were entirely willing to support violence against the Taliban.

Dick Bulliet has usefully divided political groups in the Muslim world into
those who support an imarah system and those who support parliamentary
democracy. The imarah option is essentially one-man rule by an Amir with
implementation of the shariah or a fundamentalist approach to Islamic law
as his policy--what I am calling theocracy. The Taliban, obviously, is an
example of the imarah, and I would argue that 1980s Iran under Khomeini,
despite some nods to controlled elections, was more or less an imarah. The
Jama`at-i Islami in Pakistan during the 1980s also denounced parliamentary
democracy as un-Islamic and advocated having a pious amir (which made it
easy for them to ally with Gen. Zia ul-Haqq, who came close to their
ideal). Hasan Turabi in the Sudan was a similar story until the military
government broke with him. These are all theocrats, whether radical
(Khomeini's Hizbullah) or moderate (Pakistan's Jama`at-i Islami).

On the other hand, I think the Muslim Ak Party in Turkey genuinely has
committed to parliamentary politics, and so are in my schema moderate
Muslim democrats. I would argue that there is a range within the Muslim
democrats, from those who just object to a totally secular legal system and
want more Islamic-law influence, to those who want Islamic law to be the
primary legal basis of society. If they are committed to regular free and
fair elections on a multi-party basis, they would be democrats regardless
of their legal philosophy, in my schema. Thus, the old Welfare Party led
by Erbakan probably wanted more in the way of Islamization than does
today's Ak Party (though Ak wants some, certainly).

The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan al-Muslimin has decided to
cooperate with parliamentary elections in Egypt and, where possible, in
Jordan. The Egyptian Ikhwan has also foresworn violence as a root to
power. For the most part, then, the Ikhwan are *not* radicals according to
my typology. The problem is that this decision is different from saying
that the Egyptian Ikhwan backs "democracy." Were they to get into power,
we cannot know if they would simply decide not to hold any more elections.
I am not prepared to say that the Egyptian Ikhwan has gone so far in this
direction as has Ak. I suspect that most politically active Ikhwan are
moderate theocrats. Their ultimate goal is not democracy.

This question of how committed the Ikhwan are to democracy goes back to a
time when Egypt had something more like meaningful elections, however
corrupt the old Wafd was. Al-Banna announced around 1941 that the Ikhwan
should join the political system. But then he subverted that system with
terrorist training camps, assassinations, and paramilitary activities for
the rest of the '40s, via the "secret apparatus." I think he was a
theocrat all along, and that we cannot trust his public pronouncements
about getting involved in the parliamentary system.

That is, when we analyze fundamentalist Muslim political parties, we cannot
simply take their statements at face value, since they have a history of
covert policies and use of extra-legal and paramilitary measures.

FIS in Algeria likewise decided to contest elections in the early 1990s,
but it is not clear that its leaders were committed to parliamentary
democracy in principle. It would have been entirely possible for them to
annul the constitution and implement a theocracy. The vehemence with which
they turned to terrorism when they were blocked from taking power strikes
me as suspicious.

I do not know enough about Ghanoushi and al-Nahdah in the present
incarnations to be sure where to place them. In the 1970s Ghanoushi was a
theocrat, but he may have changed. Tunisian university friends of mine
remember him trying to take over the faculty union and get them fired for
being secularists. They remember him as ruthless.

Sami al-Arian is certainly a fundamentalist Muslim theocrat with regard to
his goals. That is not in question. The question is whether he is a
radical activist who actively contributed to the implementation of
terrorist acts. The US appears to have gathered enough evidence for the
latter from its surveillance abroad to risk going to a judge with it.
Apparently in the 1990s it was not possible to present such evidence,
gathered overseas, at the trial of a US resident. That has now changed.
Essentially the Justice Department is now applying the techniques it
earlier honed against the Mafia to Muslim radicals.

I am not sure we will get to see the evidence (nor would I be happy if
not), but I think it is premature to assume that there is no solid evidence.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kurdish civilians are scattering from their towns, fearful of being bombarded with poison Iraq by the Baath Party if war breaks out with the US. The Baathists hit the Kurds with poison gas in 1988 for colluding with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The horrible attack on Halabja in March of that year left an estimated 5,000 dead. Journalist Shirzad Shaykhali toured the area for Asharq al-Awsat and found many people terrified and moving or thinking about moving to the countryside.

It would be a grotesque nightmare if Saddam tried to take more innocent Kurds down with him as his armageddon approaches. It seems to me, though that he would have difficulty delivering the gas at this point. The US would interdict gunship helicopters or fixed wing planes, and it is not clear he has any scuds left. Let's hope I'm right.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*In an interview on an Arabic television program in Dubai, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that in the case of a war, there would be only a brief period of rule over Iraq by a US military leader, so as to ensure order. He said the US wanted to rebuild Iraq, not to destroy it. As soon as possible, he said, the military administration would transfer its authority to a civilian one. (Apparently this is to be a US civilian proconsul, a la Lord Cromer in British Egypt, though the US says it will be just for a year or two until an Iraqi government can be implemented). Powell, when asked if the US was implementing a form of imperialism, said the US has a track record in this regard. He denied that the US is occupying Afghanistan, and pointed to its record after WW II in Japan, Germany and Italy. This reply does not seem to me very convincing, since the question is whether the new doctrine of aggressive preemption is changing those past policies.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Iraq is denying earlier reports that it has closed its borders to Iranian pilgrims seeking to visit the holy shrines of Najaf and Karbala. Turning the tables, the Iraqi spokesman said it was Iran that was preventing people from making the pilgrimages.

*Reuters and Asharq al-Awsat report impressions from Iranians interviewed that they despise Saddam and won't be sorry to see him go. But many also worry that Tehran will be America's next target after Baghdad.

*Asharq al-Awsat reports that an obscure group called "Banners of Abu Bakr" has tried to take credit for the downing near Kerman of an Iranian airliner that had taken off from Zahedan near the Pakistani border. All 302 persons aboard died, including 18 crew members; the rest were members of the Revolutionary Guards. Journalist Ali Nurizadeh said that a source in the Interior Ministry did not think it unlikely that the plane carried recently-captured members of al-Qaeda, who have come over the border from Pakistan recently in some numbers. All this does not make much sense to me. The "Banners of Abu Bakr" would be a Sunni dissident group, perhaps Baluchi. If it knew that al-Qaeda prisoners were aboard, it is unlikely to have tried to destroy the plane. I suppose it is possible that they just wanted to strike at the Shiite Revolutionary Guards and did not know about the Sunni prisoners. On the other hand, local Iranian air traffic controllers say the pilot reported bad weather and strong winds as he was coming in, so this may just be a weather-related accident--wind shear or something.

*Haaretz says Ariel Sharon wants 100 changes in the "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by the Quartet. Apparently the main change he wants is just one--no Palestinian state at all and Israeli annexation of much of the West Bank and Gaza, leaving the Palestinians on the equivalent of 19th century Indian reservations. No doubt Sharon can have whatever he wants, since he seems to have found a way to buy off Bush. But in definitively humiliating and dispossessing a whole people, he is ending any hope of peace in our lifetimes and setting up Israel for long-term security worries. There is such a thing as Karma. He has been blustering for decades that you can control people if you just hit them hard enough and cow them. I don't see that his policies have produced the sort of peace he promised they would, and I predict he is leaving a legacy of almost permanent bitterness and violence.

Israeli attacks on terrorists continue to produce unacceptably high Israeli killings of innocent non-combatants--4 the day before yesterday in Gaza, another in Nablus yesterday. These are human beings who did nothing wrong, folks. Arrest terrorists all you like, but surely this can be done without so much gratuitous killing? It is unacceptable from a civilized country to behave this way. That the world greets these outrages with a yawn demonstrates the continued racism faced by ordinary Arabs; their lives apparently are worth nothing.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking in Berlin, expressed the view that Washington is unlikely to give Saddam Hussein more than two or three weeks to disarm. He said he himself agreed that the inspection process should not go on forever. He advised Saddam to comply. He also said Saddam would not be welcome in Egypt as an asylum seeker. He insisted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued to be the most important problem facing the region. It was almost as though he had written Iraq off, and looked forward to having the war over so he could hope to turn US attention back to Palestine. If Mubarak is speaking this way in Berlin, Saddam is in big trouble.

*Saudi Interior Minister Naef bin Abdul Aziz announced that 90 Saudis had been arrested for having ties to al-Qaeda, and were currently being tried by Islamic-law courts in the kingdom. He provided few details, but said these were not high-level operatives, but rather young men who got pulled in. Even so, this seems a major development, insofar as the Saudis are actually admitting they have an al-Qaeda problem and beginning to deal with it.

*Trial began yesterday in Casablanca, Morocco, of 14 individuals accused of satan worship. They were arrested Sunday after having held a Black Sabbath at which heavy metal music was played. They have been under observation by security for a year, and in January the main fundamentalist party had complained about them in parliament. This is the first such trial in Morocco. The Federation for Secularism has contacted the French embassy and the minister of culture on behalf of 11 of the young men. It maintains that this is just a heavy metal band, and has nothing to do with literal satan worship. Asharq al-Awsat reports that a satan-worshipping "cell" was begun in Casablanca in 1996 by two Portuguese youth, and that the phenomenon spread in some quarters of the city, taking on proportions that became worrisome to the establishment.

*Meanwhile at another trial in Casablanca, the prosecution asked for the death penalty against 5 accused members of an al-Qaeda cell. Three Saudis and 7 Moroccans were accused of forming a sleeper cell and planning terrorist attacks against ships entering the Straits of Gibraltar. Hint: This is what the Moroccan legal system should be concentrating on, not Kiss wannabes.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Turkish newspapers report that that country is prepared to send as many as 55,000 troops into Northern Iraq to establish a demilitarized zone in case war breaks out in Iraq. The Turkish president said that his country's support for a US invasion would depend on having an "international" decision (i.e. a second UN Security Council resolution authorizing the war). The Turks are still not satisfied with the economic deal the US is offering them, or perhaps are not happy that it is being offered only orally without a firm written commitment. The last time, the US promised them $1 bn. and then never paid it.

*The Kurds are not going to be happy with these reports of Turkish plans to occupy part of northern Iraq. In other news, the Washington Post says that ordinary Iraqi troops in Kirkuk are practically starving to death and are highly unlikely to figh, though the Republican Guards have better esprit de corps.

*Kuwait is angry at Lebanon. At a summit a few days ago, Syria presented a proposal that Arab states not provide facilities for an attack on Iraq. Kuwait's representative wanted an up and down vote on the text, but the Lebanese foreign minister blocked any vote. Apparently the statement was adopted by consensus. Kuwait was alone in opposing it. An Islamist member of Kuwait's parliament called for Kuwaiti aid to Lebanon to be cut off, pointing out that Iraq wasn't the one rebuilding Beirut and establishing clinics in Lebanon. Kuwait clearly feels the danger that the Gulf countries cooperating with Washington will be isolated diplomatically in the Arab world, where publics overwhelmingly oppose and Iraq war.

*France is calling home its aircraft carrier, the Charles DeGaulle from the Mediterranean, ending any chance that it would play a role in the American war on Iraq. Apparently Rumsfeld ruffled Chirac's feathers irretrievably. It needn't have been handled that way. Chirac had earlier held out the possibility of supporting the war. It was a dispute about timing, not a declaration of disloyalty, on the part of the French.

* My response on an email group to an attempt to justify US inaction during the Baathist massacres of dissidents in spring, 1991:

Not interdicting Iraqi use of helicopter gunships and tanks in putting down the Shiite and Kurdish rebellions of spring, 1991 was tantamount to permitting a Baathist genocide. The helicopter gunships could and should have been interdicted by the terms of the cease fire.

President Bush senior had called upon the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Several times, including in clandestine broadcasts beamed into Iraq. Apparently, being from a genteel social class in which the servants are always polite, he expected the Iraqi public to understand that he was speaking to their betters among the Iraqi officer corps, not to the plebeians. When the Iraqi officer corps left a defeated Saddam in power, he was shocked. When it was the street rabble and middle classes of the Shiites and Kurds who responded to his call, he was shocked even more.

A Shiite-Kurdish rebellion that overthrew the Baathists would have been completely unacceptable to US close allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It therefore had to be allowed to fail. Tens of thousands of Shiites were mercilessly mown down in Najaf, Karbala and Basra as the US military watched and declined to do *anything*. Had the Kurdish population not panicked at the vicious Baathist riposte, and fled to the mountains where they threatened to starve to death on the Bush doorstep in the hundreds of thousands, so to speak, Bush senior had not been inclined to intervene in any way.

The US screwed the Iraqi dissidents over. Maybe you could make some argument to justify what was done. You couldn't argue that it was not deliberate, or that it was not a betrayal or that it was noble.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*The head of French intelligence insists that there is no proven link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Pierre Bousquet de Florian told Television Channel 2,"One thing is certain. There is no physical link between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda." He admitted that even though Saddam and Osama despise one another, "sometimes they have interests in common." He also worried that a second Gulf War would fuel more terrorism, saying tht even if "the prospect of a (military) intervention in Iraq does not change the nature of the threat, or heighten it, it helps to maintain it." That, folks, is what intelligence assessment looks like when it isn't under pressure from lobbying by the DoD.

* Saddam's government continues to force Kurdish families out of the oil city of Kirkuk, resettling them in large Arabic-speaking areas in order to Arabize them. If a war breaks out, the Kurds are going to try to take Kirkuk, in all likelihood, and Saddam does not want them to have a local fifth column.

* Iraq has closed its borders to Iranian pilgrims seeking to go to the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, citing the threat of war. Presumably this is a way of denying funds to the Iraqi Shiites and weakening their ability to rise up in case of an American invasion. It also sends the signal that what the Americans are doing will disrupt their economy and hurt their pocket books. Likewise, it cuts down on the chance of pro-American Shiite SCIRI agents infiltrating Iraq from Iran.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*A new, 50-minute Bin Laden tape aired on al-Jazeerah, calling for Muslims to make a united stand against the looming US war in Iraq. Like Bush, Bin Laden insisted that Muslims are either with him or against him, no shades of grey. He called the Gulf leaders cooperating with the US "Karzais," a reference to the pro-American president of Afghanistan who helped overthrow the Taliban. He also said that the final object of U.S. strategy is to create a greater Israel, covering "large parts of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, the land of the two holy shrines (Saudi Arabia) and the whole of Palestine." He further asserted that "what is happening to our relatives in Palestine only represents a model" which will be implemented all through the Middle East by the "Zionist-American alliance".

It has often been said that al-Qaeda is not interested in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, but this assertion has always been silly. Bin Laden fulminated against the Israelis in a sermon given in Jidda in 1990 during the first Intifada, and al-Qaeda has all along had prominent Palestinian members. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, checked out Israeli sites for a terrorist attack, and more recently we had the Mombasa attack on Israeli vacationers.

The spectacle of Ariel Sharon repeatedly invading Palestinian territory, subjecting it to harsh occupation, having rockets fired into civilian apartment buildings, starving Palestinian children, shooting civilians, imposing collective punishment, and so on, is guaranteed to cost American lives because all this will be blamed on the US by the radicals. If Bush had been smart, his first move after Afghanistan would have been to throw his muscle around and settle the Palestine issue by forcing an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Apparently he has fallen for a line from the neocons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon's ass. So, he has put Sharon on a very long leash. Rightwing Zionists keep claiming you can't criticize Israel unless you criticize all the other human rights violators in the world at the same time. But what other country is running a colony as a prison camp in the 21st century?

*The divorce rate among Israeli settlers on the West Bank and in Gaza is way up during the past year, and is much higher than the 33% divorce rate in Israel proper. Apparently stealing other people's land and shooting their children provokes a lot of domestic arguments.

*In an interview with Time magazine, French President Jacques Chirac said: "a war of this kind cannot help but give a big lift to terrorism. It would create a large number of little bin Ladens". The French have much more experience dealing with Muslim radicals like the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, and were much more aware than the FBI and the CIA of the threat they posed in past years, and Chirac may be counted on to know whereof he speaks. In contrast, I very much doubt that President Bush could tell you what the difference is between a Sunni and a Shiite. Moreover, France is near to Muslim North Africa and has 5 million Muslims living in the country, and these issues affect it directly on a scale dwarfing the situation in the US.

*Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya has been at the forefront of urging a US war on the Baathist regime. On Sunday, however, he broke with Washington. The Bush administration put enormous pressure on Makiya, whom President Bush had appointed to a special commission on Iraq, not to go public with his concerns. He published his critique, however, in the Guardian's Observer. You can read it in full here: http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,896554,00.html.

He writes: "The United States is on the verge of committing itself to a post-Saddam plan for a military government in Baghdad with Americans appointed to head Iraqi ministries, and American soldiers to patrol the streets of Iraqi cities. The plan, as dictated to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a United States-led delegation, further envisages the appointment by the US of an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government."

In other words, the Bush administration is not actually going into Iraq to establish democracy. Rather, the Iraqi people will just be forced at gunpoint to trade a belligerant dictatorship for a pliant one. This is to be Chile 1973, not Japan 1945. I have been very afraid myself all along that the Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes would pull this switch on us at the last minute. In my view, the Left should be concentrating on this issue. There is some point in demonstrating against the looming war, simply to remind the gang in Washington that they rule over real people with real opinions, and can't count on getting away with perpetual wars. The war will happen anyway, though. The most useful thing we could do is to hold the Bush administration to its promises about democracy in Iraq. If this war is fought merely to replace one dictatorship with another, it will be a black stain on the American soul ever after.

*A hundred deputies in the Iranian parliament called Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on the mat for inviting his Iraqi counterpart, Naji Sabri al-Hadithi, to Tehran. They say they will introduce a motion for his dismissal if al-Hadithi sets foot in Tehran. Many Iranians have not forgiven the Baath regime for the Iran-Iraq war, which killed hundreds of thousands and wounded many more. Anti-imperialism means little to them beside that catastrophe, and they don't want Kharrazi conferring with the Iraqi even to coordinate efforts at forestalling an American invasion.




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

* Pakistani sucurity forces believe the US is overestimating how many al-Qaeda members are in Pakistan's tribal belt. They complain that in 90 percent of cases, information supplied by the CIA and Centcom about targets lead to nothing when the Pakistanis follow up on them. Pakistani officials think there are only 30 to 50 al-Qaeda men at most in that area. This motley crew consists mainly of Chechens and Uzbeks, though a few may be Arabs. *Dawn* Reported that they are stuck. "They have been trapped there and don't know where to go," said one Pakistani official. The Pakistan security forces have captured about 500 of the 1,000 al-Qaeda fighters thought to have fled south from Afghanistan last year, and have turned about 450 of those over to the Americans.

*A UN official told me he had never seen someone humiliated as badly at the UN as Colin Powell was today by the comments in the Security Council. The French essentially accused him of not being truthful in his attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. (I am afraid the French are right about this one.) Everyone but the British wanted to give the inspectors more time. This individual thought that the meeting ended the prospects of a war on Iraq any time soon. I told him I disagreed. I very much doubt that Donald Rumseld cares what the Security Council thinks, and if he wants to go to war, he will. Hint: The World Bank, a UN institution, is refusing to send any representatives to Pakistan between now and early March for fear an Iraq war may break out in that period. Do they know something we don't? A recent poll showed that most Americans want Bush to give the inspectors more time.

*Meanwhile, President Bush called Pakistan's military "president," Pervez Musharraf, and got Musharraf to agree that Iraq should voluntarily disarm immediately. (Musharraf still wants a second, explict UNSC resolution authorizing war on Iraq, though). At the same time, US Sec. of State Colin Powell was pledging he would ask Congress to waive possible sanctions on Pakistan for violating rules against dangerous technology transfer (they bought missiles from N. Korea) and democracy (the recent elections were only semi-democratic). The US has already forgiven $1 bn. of the $3 bn. Pakistan owes for loans, and the other $2 bn will probably be forgiven as well, if Pakistan goes along with another Iraq war. The official Pakistani position is that the inspectors should be given more time. Musharraf will probably cave, though many of the elected Members of Parliament in Pakistan, especially the fundamentalist MMA are hopping mad about US imperial interventions. They warn that Pakistan is next on Rumsfeld's list (probably not true).

*Turkey is seeking at least $14 bn and possibly $25 bn. from the US as an incentive to cooperate in the Iraq war. They asked for $1 bn. in 1990, the US agreed, and then Congress refused to pay it. If I were the Turks, I would get the money in the bank before the war starts. Selling your soul is one thing; selling it and not ever receiving the payment is about the worst thing you could imagine. Egypt is also seeking extra aid to make up for the economic damage of the war to their economy (tourism is worth billions of dollars a year, and the tourists don't go to Egypt when there is a war in the Middle East). And, the Israelis want an extra $2 bn. and $10 bn. in loan guarantees. Bush senior was ribbed because he was said to have rented out US troops to the Kuwaitis and Saudis, who largely paid for the Gulf War. But he was a better businessman than W., who is having to buy acquiescence to US military action in the Middle East, and not on the cheap, either.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*There is not much good news these days, so the ruling of the Belgian supreme court that Ariel Sharon can be tried there for war crimes is most welcome. An Israeli commission already found Sharon at least partially responsible for the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982. Accusations usually concentrate on this incident, in which he deliberately handed over unarmed Palestinian populations to the far rightwing Phalangist militiamen, who promptly mowed them down with machine gun fire. Photos show women and children lying awkwardly on the ground. But the entire 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was a war crime. It killed 18,000 people, 9,000 of them innocent noncombatants; and there was no legitimate reason for the invasion. Sharon just wanted to reshape Lebanese politics, the way his disciples in the Bush administration now want to reshape Iraqi politics. We'll see if the American Likudniks have more luck than Sharon himself did. His invasion failed to crush the Palestinians and ultimately stirred the Lebanese Shiites to turn fundamentalist and attack the Israelis with a new technique: suicide bombings. Then last year Sharon ordered Israeli pilots to fire rockets at an apartment building in which a Hamas terrorist was thought to be present. Over a dozen innocent civilians were killed, including a little baby. You can't just fire rockets into people's apartments! Terrorism wrought on Israelis by Hamas is a horrible thing, but this sort of reprisal tactic is never justified. Sharon should stand trial for this alone (so should the pilot). The Israelis have launched a vicious verbal attack on Belgium and are trying to get the US to pressure the government to back down. But, if Pinochet can be arrested in Europe, why not Sharon? Pinochet killed many more people, but a war crime is a war crime.

*What seems striking to me about Bin Laden's list of governments ripe for overthrow [in his recent message] is that it excludes both Egypt and Algeria. I am sure the exclusion is only a matter of prioritizing; He hasn't given up altogether.

Bin Laden began supporting the radical Islamists in Algeria soon after the Algerian army stepped in to cancel the results of the 1991 elections that gave FIS (the Islamic Salvation Front) a majority in parliament.. The radical Islamists broke off from FIS subsequently and formed the Armed Islamic Group under Mourad Sid Ahmed (a returnee from Afghanistan with strong links to Bin Laden). Sid Ahmed and other "Afghan Arabs" had returned to Algeria after 1989, and insisted on wearing Afghan clothing in the streets of Algiers. The Armed Islamic Group has mainly carried out terrorism in Algeria, where it has killed over 100 foreign nationals, and has killed many more locals in the rural areas. Ahmad Ressam, the Millennium Plot bomber who was caught at the US-Canadian border in 2000 with explosives in his truck headed for the LA airport, was an example of the GIA/ al-Qaeda nexis.

The civil war between the army and the Islamists in Algeria has, as everyone here knows, resulted in more than 100,000 deaths, and GIA (Armed Islamic Group) leaders have been killed in large numbers. Antar az-Zouari was killed by security forces just a few months ago.

In Egypt, as well, there was a huge fight between the regime and the radical Islamists in the 1990s, in which the Mubarak regime imprisoned an estimated 20,000 - 30,000 and killed some 1500 in street battles. The once-radical leadership of the al-Jama`a al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad al-Islami in Tura prison renounced violence in 1998, and all but about 12,000 of the detainees have been released.

My guess is that Bin Laden has dropped Egypt and Algeria because the Islamists there have been devastated, and most likely the "Afghan Arabs" who were part of his network are dead or exiled. Indeed, the September 11 attacks were launched against the US partially because of frustration that it had succeeded in shoring up the Egyptian and Algerian governments, and Bin Laden hoped to push America out of the Middle East by making such support seem costly. (This was a miscalculation on his part, since in actuality the US is moving into the Middle East big time instead).

Bin Laden is therefore suggesting that his followers concentrate on overthrowing regimes that are more fragile than those of Egypt and Algeria, where the radical Islamists have not met with such devastating setbacks yet.

This pragmatism is in part driven by Bin Laden's urgent need for another regime friendly to al-Qaeda, given the fall of the Taliban and the loss of the support of the Pakistani Interservices Intelligence (which is being purged of pro-Taliban officers). I think he is saying that his followers should stop beating their heads against the wall in Egypt and Algeria and concentrate their efforts on regimes that are potentially more vulnerable.

*In addition to Irene Gendzier's forthcoming article, there is a good summary of the evidence for US supply to Iraq of significant materials and precursors for its weapons of mass destruction by William Blum in a 1998 issue of the Progressive at:

http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html

One Reagan administration official was quoted as saying that the US had been determined to "do whatever was necessary" to save Iraq from Khomeini.

Some key information in this regard was unearthed by a Senate investigation of the early 1990s, which published its report in 1994


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Pakistan's fundamentalist Jama`at-i Islami, has warned that after Iraq, the US intends to take over Pakistan. This allegation is ridiculous, of course, but it will be widely believed. Qazi Hussain's fundamentalist coalition now rules the Northwest Frontier Province, and has 20% of the seats in the national Parliament. He has advocated kicking US troops and FBI agents out of Pakistan and stopping the manhunt for al-Qaeda there. (Last I knew, of the estimated 1000 al-Qaeda fugitives in Pakistan, who fled there from Afghanistan, about half had been arrested and the bulk of those turned over to the US.) The fundamentalists in Pakistan have already had rallies against the looming Iraq war, and these will grow as the war breaks out. The elected Pakistani government probably has enough legitimacy to weather these protests, but it is hard to see how they will not interfere in the war on terror. Will Pakistani police in the Northwest Frontier really be so eager to cooperate with the FBI if they think the Americans are genocidal, or are coming after Pakistan next? The Bush administration has, apart from anything else, badly timed this Iraq campaign. The effort against al-Qaeda has been left half accomplished, and an Iraq war could cost us the cooperation of key publics like that of Pakistan.

*The new Bin Laden speech is translated at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2751019.stm

The first thing to say is that Bin Laden has gotten his history wrong. The Koran sides with the Byzantines, not with the Persians. It predicted victory for Heraclius over the Sasanians in Koran 30:1. Early Arab Muslim attacks on what is now Jordan, Syria and Egypt took place before or contemporaneously with the conquest of the Persian Sasanians and Iran-held Mesopotamia. This mistake is important because it shows that Bin Laden projects a Muslim-Christian struggle into early Islamic history and assumes that the Muslims took actions that benefited other easterners, i.e. the Iranian Zoroastrians. In fact, the Koran says that Christians are closest in love to Muslims. And, far from helping the Persians, the Muslims overthrew the Sasanian empire immediately, whereas they co-existed with the Byzantines for centuries (often being at war with them, it is true).

I suppose it is hopeless to try to correct this, but Koran 5:50/51, which says that Muslims should not take Jews and Christians as their wali (pl. awliya'), does *not* mean they should not have Jewish or Christian friends or allies. Muhammad and his followers had plenty of both at one time or another. Wali here is an ancient Arabian technical term meaning "patron." Whether a Muslim should have relations of clientelage with Jews and Christians depended on the circumstances, but it did open him to social pressure that might be undesirable. At-Tabari gives evidence that this verse is a complaint about the alliance of Abdu'llah b. Ubayy with some Jewish patrons that had become increasingly uncomfortable with Muhammad's leadership of Medina. When another Muslim came to Muhammad after the verse was revealed and said he was ready to give up his ties of clientelage to Jews, Muhammad said that he was referring to Abdu'llah b. Ubayy and he could keep his. At the very least, at-Tabari begins by noting that there is controversy about the meaning and universal applicability of the verse. Unfortunately Bin Laden does not care about things like scholarly Koran commentary, he just wants to find excuses to kill people.

If I were Saddam Hussein, I would not give weapons of mass destruction (or any weapons at all) to someone who spoke about me the way Bin Laden did: "Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden." I think Bin Laden has made it clear what should be done to infidel regimes. I fear in his use of this tape to tie Iraq to al-Qaeda, Secretary Powell has hit the low point of his public career.

The non-utopian element in al-Qaeda strategic thinking is also demonstrated by Bin Laden's choice of governments to be overthrown: "The most qualified regions for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia], and Yemen." It is interesting that he seems to have given up on Algeria (at last) for the moment. Well, maybe Morocco is a utopian choice, though the Islamists did better than expected in the recent elections there. Northern Nigeria could easily emerge as a successor to the Taliban as the most fundamentalist Muslim polity in the world. The other places he mentions have had substantial Islamist popular political movements or have a social base for such movements were they to be allowed by the rulers. They also have fragile regimes open to overthrow by military-populist coups by Islamist officers (something al-Zawahiri's group, al-Jihad al-Islami, is particularly aware of because of their infiltration of the military academies in the late 70s).




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Usama Bin Laden has resurfaced with a 20 minute tirade broadcast by al-Jazirah, calling on his followers to attack the United States and to carry out terrorism on its soil, and calling on Iraqi Muslims to resist the coming US invasion. I think there is in fact a danger that Bin Laden will have some appeal for Sunni Arabs in Iraq if Baath-style secular Arab nationalism is completely discredited by a US invasion. In any case, Bin Laden denounced secular socialism of the Baath sort, but said it was all right if there was sometimes a congruence of interests between Islamists and socialists.

I did not see it widely reported, but when Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf was in Moscow recently, he reversed himself on whether Bin Laden was alive. He said there were indications that Bin Laden was alive, and inside Afghanistan. He expressed nearly complete confidence that he was not in Pakistan. He insisted that al-Qaida as an organization in the area is disrupted. Well, maybe. But one notes it is not so disrupted that Bin Laden can't get a video produced and aired. Disrupted into the grave would be better.

*Dutch F-16s "dropped 5 GBU-12s (bombs) and fired more than 100 rounds of ammunition" in the Baghran valley in Uruzgan province on a band of armed men that had fired on US troops in the valley from about a mile away.

*Asharq al-Awsat has reported some of the elements of a French position paper at the UN calling for more inspectors in Iraq and an increase in the depth of the inspection process.


[The following message derived from a question on [a] list about the
history of the French nuclear reactor, Osirak, and its putative use for an
Iraqi nuclear weapons program.]

There are two major narratives about Osirak. The American Federation of
scientists explains that:

"Iraq . . . wanted to purchase [a] reprocessing plant needed to recover
the plutonium produced in the reactor. Even through these requests were
denied, France agreed to build a research reactor along with associated
laboratories. Iraq built the Osiraq 40 megawatt light-water nuclear reactor
at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center near Baghdad with French assistance.
Approximately 27.5 pounds of 93% U-235 was supplied to Iraq by France for
use in the Osiraq research reactor. The reactor was a type of French
reactor named after Osiris, the Egyptian God of the dead. The French
renamed the one being built in Iraq, "Osiraq" to blend the name Osiris with
that of the recipient state, Iraq. French orthography then made it
"Osirak."

The FAS wording obscures the key point that the lightwater Osirak reactor
was incapable of producing plutonium, needed for a bomb. This organization
accepts the standard story that Israeli intelligence gained credible
information that Iraq was using Osirak to seek nuclear weapons. However,
this narrative is by no means historically verifiable, and it raises many
questions. Israel had no obvious intelligence assets in Baathist Iraq in
the early 1980s, and Osirak could not produce plutonium, and the Likud
leadership has been known to shoot first and ask questions later.

FAS explains that after the Israeli raid, "IAEA [International Atomic
Energy Agency] officials . . . reaffirmed their position on the Iraqi
reactor, that is, that no weapons had been manufactured at Osiraq and that
Iraqi officials had regularly cooperated with agency inspectors. They also
pointed out that Iraq was a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (informally called the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT) and
that Baghdad had complied with all IAEA guidelines. The Israeli nuclear
facility at Dimona, it was pointed out, was not under IAEA safeguards,
because Israel had not signed the NPT and had refused to open its
facilities to UN inspections."

The other major narrative derives from Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi
nuclear scientist who joined the program in 1975. He gave an extended
interview to Peter Jensen, published in the Irish Times on Jan. 6. He said
that Iraq had no serious nuclear weapons program until *after* the Israeli
bombing of Osirak in 1981. It should also be noted that the main impetus
to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was Israel's nuclear weapons
program, the first and still the only successful such program in the area,
which has produced several hundred nuclear warheads.

Khadduri said that "the US had initiated Iraq's nuclear programme in 1956
by dispatching to Baghdad the "Atom for Peace library" which, during
the Eisenhower administration, was supplied to many world governments and
used by at least two, India and Pakistan, as the starting point for
bomb-making." He said that the non-military Atoms for Peace program was
continued in Iraq by the Arif government, which bought from the Soviet
Union "a two-megawatt research reactor which went critical in 1966-67."

He explained that "During 1975 France provided Iraq with a light-water
reactor, Osirak, which was specifically designed to be unsuitable for the
production of plutonium for a bomb."

He maintained that "The bombing by Israel of Osirak in June 1981 prompted
Iraq to take the decision to go ahead with weaponisation."

His allegation is supported by large numbers of informed Iraq analysts.

So from the point of view of at least one highly informed insider, the
common US media story about all this is topsy turvey. The US was the one
that got Iraq interested in nuclear power. The Soviets were the first to
give Iraq a small reactor. The French were careful, when they followed up
on these initiatives, to supply a lightwater reactor that could not produce
plutonium, and they refused to supply a reprocessing plant that would
produce plutonium. The Israelis convinced the Baathist regime that it
could only hope to survive as an independent power in the region by having
nuclear weapons of its own. They did this both by aggressively developing
their own impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons, introducing them into the
Middle East conflict as a power factor, and by unilaterally and illegally
bombing the civilian Osirak reactor.

It is not, then, after all, clear or incontrovertible that the Israelis
have done the world any favors by their policies toward nuclear weapons in
the Middle East.

The Khadduri interview can be found here.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Asharq al-Awsat has gotten hold of a confidential Iraqi memo that outlines Saddam's plan for a diplomatic blitz in the Arab world after the end of the Muslim holy day, the Eid al-Adha. He will send personal representatives to various Arab countries to make the case that Iraq has complied with inspections. He will offer to attend an Arab summit to discuss the crisis. The memo dismisses the idea of Saddam going into exile from Iraq. [For the likelihood that all this diplomatic maneuvering inside the Arab League will amount to anything, see my comment yesterday about Mubarak's hopelessness.]

*A new poll shows that 94 percent of Turks oppose an Iraq war and 74 percent oppose extending facilities to the US to pursue it. I take it this means that 20 percent of Turks think the war is terrible but Turkey should let the Americans launch it from their soil. Pragmatists.

*Muhammad Samir Abussu`ud, Egypt's Interior Minister, announced that on-going investigations indicate that the jihadis or religious extremists among Muslim radicals in Egypt continue to exist and to plan operations. One, Jund Allah (the Army of God), is a branch of al-Jihad al-Islami. Extremist groups once seemed extremely important in Egyptian politics, especially in the early to mid-1990s. But a massive government campaign of repression, with some 20,000 jailed and 1500 killed in street fights with Egyptian security, appeared to repress the movement. Its own excesses also turned Egyptians against it, as with the killing of Spanish tourists at Luxor in 1997 (most Egyptians make some money, at least indirectly, from tourism). The leadership of the Islamic Grouping in Tura prison has renounced violence. But Abussu`ud says new groups have taken its place. One planned to attack Israel via the Egyptian desert last August but failed, another plotted violence against the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

*[Note: this message replies to a debate at H-France over French differences
with the US with regard to Iraq policy. It attempts to root the
differences in French domestic politics and diplomatic realities, rather
than, as in some media commentary, French "national character."]

The reluctance to see a major war in Iraq on the part of Chirac and his
cabinet has several motives, none of which have much to do with objections
to unilateral military interventions in the Third World. After all, French
governments of the Right have frequently intervened in their former
colonies in Africa. Indeed, it is amusing that in 1956 the shoe was on the
other foot, and Eisenhower was furious about the French invasion of the
Suez Canal zone alongside British and Israeli co-conspirators.

Nor should the French position be caricatured. Here is what Chirac said of
Saddam just last September: "I haven't seen him for a long time . . . He's
probably changed since. So have I." He called Mr. Hussein "especially
dangerous to his own people," adding that he personally wished for the
Iraqi's political demise and would not rule out the use of force against
him if it were approved by the United Nations Security Council. See
http://senrs.com/war_talk_hits_its_first_target_the_pivotal_ally.htm

The issue for France as I read it is whether to have a war for sure in
March or to possibly have a war much later, if the inspections haven't
borne fruit. In other words, they are not as cynical about the inspections
process as the Bush administration is. Indeed, it seems obvious that the
inspections from a Bush admin. standpoint were always expected to fail and
were intended to be a casus belli rather than a genuine investigation.
Chirac's policy inner circle is also said to believe that Iraq could be
reformed without a war, through international pressure, and that Saddam's
younger son Qusay is someone who could be worked with. See Amir
Taheri's analysis at:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-taheri110402.asp

Although I haven't found public statements about it, the French government
is almost certainly alarmed at the doctrine under which the US is going to
war against Iraq, which is the new security policy pushed by Undersecretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It holds that the US will not allow any
military peers to develop anywhere on the globe, most especially in
countries hostile to the US, and will intervene unilaterally to stop
weapons development by such emerging peers. It is not hard to see that
DeGaulle's old force de frappe and reminder to Washington that missiles can
be pointed both ways might well have qualified Paris for invasion under the
Wolfowitz doctrine. French nationalists would have every reason to
obstruct the implementation of the new doctrine anywhere, including in Iraq.

Then, France is a democracy that holds elections. An American war against
Iraq is deeply unpopular with the French electorate as a whole. The
Gaullists want to be reelected and do not want the Socialists to get back
in. For them to take a hard, pro-American line on Iraq would outrage the
Socialist key constituencies, such as school teachers and labor, and would
risk giving the Socialists an excellent hook in the next elections. A new
poll shows 66% of the French are against such a war, up from 58% opposing,
last summer. See

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0117/p07s01-woeu.htm

An American war against Iraq is especially unpopular with French Muslims.
There are about 5 million French Muslims, nearly ten percent of the
population, and although only a third of them are eligible to vote, a
constituency of 1.5 million is a swing vote of some importance. They are
vehemently against such a war. A nice article on the French Muslims and
electoral politics is:

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/08042002-094413-8059r.htm

As was noted, about 18 percent of the French are practicing Catholics, and
they vote solidly for the Right (except for their priests, who tend to vote
Socialist :-) Not only has the Pope come out against the war, but the
French Bishops did, as well, last fall. See

http://www.cathnews.com/news/210/93.php

They are a constituency that any Gaullist government would need to please.

I am an Arabist and happen to know something serious about Baathist Iraq,
which paralyzes me from opposing a war for regime change in that country
(Milosevic did not kill nearly as many people). If it is true that Chirac
thinks the Baath party can be reformed from without, he is simply wrong.
But the French position is neither crazy nor irresponsible. And it has
perfectly rational roots in French politics and diplomacy.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, was asked at a mini-summit of Arab governments (Syria, Libya, Egypt and the head of the Muslim League) whether their deliberations could avert the looming war in Iraq. "We would make ourselves a laughing stock if we thought we could postpone a war . . . "There is the (US) Congress and administration, a (UN) Security Council, a British parliament, they are the ones that can bring forward a war, wage war or postpone it . . ." He also admitted that Saddam Hussein could avert it by cooperating with weapons inspectors.

For the heir of the Young Officers' coup of 1952 to admit the complete powerlessness of Arab governments in relation to a war in the Arab world must have been humiliating and tragic for Mubarak.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

*Dawn (Karachi) reported that the Council of Saudi Ulema (clergy) issued a fatwa that prohibits attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims. The ruling says that one could not just arbitrarily term persons "infidels" and then make them targets. It specifically referred to the bombing of buildings, ships, and public and private facilities in such a way as to kill innocents. Tthis stance is a traditional one for the Saudi ulema, but the timing of the fatwa just before the second Gulf war is significant. I have not seen it reported at Arab News or Asharq al-Awsat or other likely venues, and it certainly wasn't noticed in the Western press.

* Dina Wadi reports in Asharq al-Awsat from Cairo that journalist Ibrahim as-Sahari of al-`Alam al-Yawm has been jailed by the security forces. He has been active in criticizing the looming American war in Iraq and the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis. The Union of Newspaper Writers has protested the incarceration to the Egyptian government, saying it should have been informed before the arrest and that he should not be questioned without one of their representatives being present.
The Center for Socialist Studies also condemned the jailing and reiterated its protest of the arrest of 8 socialist party members at a demonstration in Sayyida Zaynab in the middle of last month. These arrests were made under the Emergency Law used for the last 22 years, which the Center urged be abolished. I would just note that there has been friction between the US and the Mubarak government over human rights issues, and President Bush himself complained about the jailing of human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. But is this honeymoon with human rights in Washington now at an end?


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According to Ali Nurizadeh in Asharq al-Awsat, the British government has given Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi an undertaking that in the aftermath of the Anglo-American attack on Iraq, Iran would not be subject to any military action. Iran has been nervous about British intentions since a recent invitation was issued to Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, to speak at the Royal Institute for International Affairs recently. The UK has tried to allay those fears.

The Iranians are also very worried about whether they will have any influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Nurizadeh argues that the Iranians had their hands burned in Afghanistan because they had expected `Abdu'l-Karim Khalili, head of the Shi`ite Hizb-i Vahdat, to be a useful tool for them against the Americans and President Karzai. Khalili, who is one of Karzai's vice presidents, however, has refused to play that role, saying he is an Afghan first and a Shi`ite second. Since they had put all their eggs in the Hizb-i Vahdat basket, they were stuck. They also received hostility from US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who accused them of using warlord Ismail Khan of Herat to establish hegemony over western Afghanistan.

The Iranians had invested similar hopes in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. But al-Hakim, Nurizadeh alleges, was mainly backed by the US State Department. At the insistence of Khalilzad and Condaleeza Rice, the Iraqi dissident committee has been enlarged from 65 to 100 so as to dilute the influence of SCIRI, and seats have been given to other Shi`ite Iraqi voices such as the al-Da`wa Party, and to independent political tendencies such as those of `Abd al-Majid al-Khu'i, Shirazi, and the Organization of Islamic Action. Iran has, in tandem, attempted to broaden its relations with the dissidents likely to replace Saddam, as with its meeting in Tehran with Ahmad Chalabi.



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*Colin Powell did a good job at the UN Security Council in making the case that Iraq has tried to thwart the weapons inspectors and is actively not cooperating with Resolution 1441. The Bush administration has all along known that this would be the case, and crafted 1441 as a trap for Saddam, into which they knew he would fall. The difference between the US and most other Security Council members is that the US views this non-cooperation as a casus belli or justification for war, whereas most other countries do not. The US government decided to launch this war shortly after September 11 (some administration figures had wanted to do so for many years before), and the war is going to happen. I suspect the Security Council in the end will go along with it reluctantly or at least not formally object.

I was sorry to see Powell try to link Saddam to al-Qaida. That is just propaganda. Terrorists are shadowy and pop up various places. That Abu Musab Zarqawi managed to get treated at a Baghdad hospital is no proof of active cooperation between the Baath and Usama Bin Laden (which anyway makes no sense since they hate each other). The US case is weakened rather than strengthened in this disregard for all evidence to the contrary on this issue.

*Fighting broke out in Kardway about 80 miles north of Qandahar between the forces of Gul Agha Shirzai and remnants of the Taliban, one of whom was wounded and captured. The rebels just had machine guns and the government expects to mop up the opposition shortly. A fuel truck exploded in Kabul suspiciously near a UN fuel supply depot. It is not known if this was terrorism or just an accident.

*Baghdad residents are storing water containers in their yards in expectation that US bombing will cut off water supplies in a few weeks.

*Former UN weapons inspector and Gulf War veteran Scott Ritter said in Tokyo that he expects the air war to begin soon and to go on until the end of February, with a land invasion at the beginning of March. He said he expects the war to be long and bloody.

*A Kuwaiti soldier accused of opening fire on two American GIs in December is claiming to be mentally ill and says he has nothing against Americans. Most of the al-Qaida members picked up lately appear to be mentally ill or marginal personalities. Richard Reid is an example and Moussaoui is another. One begins to wonder if Atta and Jarrah, German-trained engineers, were the best al-Qaida ever recruited, and whether what is left is really that formidable.


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History News Network

2-04-03: Fact & Fiction

Did Saddam Gas the Kurds?

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq. This issue has taken on importance because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds is often given as one ground for the U.S. to go to war to effect regime change. As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.

As a result of the successful bid for autonomy of Kurds in northern Iraq under the U.S. no-fly zone, tens of thousands of documents from the Iraqi secret police and military were captured by Kurdish rebels from 1991 forward. These were turned over to the U.S. government. Some ten thousand of them have been posted to the World Wide Web at the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~irdp/.

The captured documents explicitly refer to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurds, called "Anfal" (spoils) operations. Some documents were reviewed by Human Rights Watch in the early 1990s, which issued a report, entitled "Genocide in Iraq." Robert Rabil, a researcher with the IRD Program, has also published an analysis of the documents, in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

The documents under review never mention Iraqi authorities taking precautions against Iranian uses of chemical weapons, and there is no good evidence that Iran did so. Since Iran and the Kurds were allies, Iran in any case had no motive to gas thousands of Kurds. The Baath documents do frequently mention the Anfal campaign of February-September 1988, when high Baath officials in the north were authorized to gas the Kurds.

The Kurdish minority of northern Iraq speaks an Indo-European language very different from the Semitic language of Arabic, and has long sought greater autonomy from Baghdad. Largely farmers and pastoralists, they practice a mystical, Sufi form of Islam that is distinctive in modern Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, which Saddam Hussein launched against his neighbor, the Kurds sought Iranian support for their insurgency. The Baath regime, threatened, responded by destroying Kurdish villages in strategic zones, resorting to ethnic cleansing.

These brutal conventional measures failed to achieve their objective, and for that reason the Baath regime initiated its chemical warfare on the Kurds in 1988. The operation was headed up by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, the Secretary-General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'th Organization. For this reason, Iraqis call him "Chemical Ali."

The Baath regime launched 39 separate gas attacks against the Kurds, many of them targeting villages far from the Iran-Iraq border. Beginning at night on Thursday, March 16, and extending into Friday, March 17, 1988, the city of Halabja (population 70,000), was bombarded with twenty chemical and cluster bombs. Photographs show dead children in the street with lunch pails. An estimated 5,000 persons died. Although some analysts say the gas used was hydrogen cyanide (not in Iraq's arsenal), others have suggested it might have been sarin, VX, and tabun. Iraq is known to have these agents. (Iran is not known to have hydrogen cyanide, in any case).

High Iraqi officials, including Vice-Premier Tariq Aziz, have since admitted using chemical weapons against the Kurds. Last year, Radio Free Iraq broadcast the allegation by a former brigadier general in Saddam's air force that the command to use "extraordinary" weapons against Halabjah came from the president himself.

The Anfal campaign deeply traumatized the Kurdish people, and its psychological effects are felt powerfully to this day. Kurds of Halabja recently protested against Western skeptics who questioned whether Saddam had and would use chemical weapons. They said they were living proof that he did and would.

There is no doubt that Saddam launched this chemical weapons campaign (which was also waged on the battlefield against Iranian troops, with devastating results). Persons may argue in good faith about whether his resort to weapons of mass destruction in 1988 justifies forcible regime change now. My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power.



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*The Iranian courts--get this--have according to some sources sentenced two pollsters to 7-8 years in prison because their poll showed that a majority of Iranians favors a dialogue with the United States. This news could not be absolutely verified at time of writing. Abbas Abdi and Husayn Ghaziyan are apparently being used as object lessons. Abdi has been active in the reformist faction, which the clerical hardliners in charge of the courts wish to crush. Someone should get those mullahs up to speed; we are living in the 21st century, and you don't imprison people for thought crimes.

*Iraq has been moving oil supplies and equipment down to Baghdad from the Kirkuk fields in the north, in preparation for the coming war.

*Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on political leaders and parties in Yemen to work within the constitution and democratically for change rather than resorting to violence. Yemen is among a very few Arab countries that has moved toward more openness and parliamentary elections in recent years. But some elements in the Islamist Islah Party appear to have ties to al-Qaida, and to have taken advantage of the greater openness. There has been violence in Yemen, including tribal elements fighting government troops trying to capture al-Qaida suspects, and some rocket fire and bombings.

*See the article at Plain Dealer (someone forgot to tell them to bury this in the back pages; the advantage of being in Cleveland rather than in a big city).

The mainstream US media continue a virtual news blackout over the Sharon government's egregious violation of The Fourth Geneva Conventions. In the past week the Israeli army has devastated commercial districts in two Palestinian towns, tearing down 28 shops in Nazlat Isa and destroying dozens of shops in Gaza City in a fire started by indiscriminate Israeli rocket fire. Presumably the goal of these actions is to throw the Palestinians into such penury that they will have no choice but to emigrate. It is absolutely outrageous that these actions are being taken by a government that is signatory to the Geneva Conventions. One would have thought that a country of the descendants of Holocaust survivors would be a little more interested in international legality. The Geneva Conventions, after all, were designed to forestall the kinds of abuses and war crimes we saw in WW II. I suppose these massive demolitions do not show up on television because the Israeli forces are clever about keeping camcorders away, and so there is no good footage. But sometimes you wonder if the American news channels would bother to show it if there were footage. The poverty, misery, and hunger of the Palestinian children continues to grow daily. UN workers say they have never seen it so bad. The destruction of so many shops can only contribute to the misery. The days of collective punishment should be over. The only good news is that Amram Mitznah, the labor party head, is laying down some firm conditions for joining a national unity government, including Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza and a return to direct talks with the Palestinian Authority.

I know, I know. Partisans of Sharon will say that Palestinian terrorism justifies this action. That is such a pitiful, morally bankrupt stance. Punish terrorists by all means. Don't tear down (or burn down) shops just because the proprietors are of the same ethnicity. All you have to do is reverse the situation, so that some government was collectively punishing Jews for the actions of a few hotheads, to see what is really going on here.









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Saudi astronaut Sultan b. Salman b. Abdul-Aziz, the first Arab Muslim in space, said that the accident in which the shuttle Columbia was destroyed was regrettable, as is any incident in which human life is lost. He expressed confidence that NASA's safety procedures are impeccable, and he did not think that is where the blame lay. Asked if the accident would deter him from ever going up again, he said "no." He said he believed in God and pointed out that people don't stop driving because there are auto accidents.

Sultan b. Salman's expression of grief over the loss of any bashar or human being was a great universalist sentiment.

The Columbia crew included an Israeli, former figher pilot Ilan Ramon, as well as an Indian-born astronaut, Kalpana Chawla. Indian External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha expressed deep shock and grief at the tragic loss of lives.

Space travel is far more multicultural now than it was in the days of Gus Grissom. But it still isn't safer. The miracle is that we have lost as few astronauts as we have. The Arabic for astronaut is probably more accurate than the English word, which literally means star-traveller. In contrast, Ra'id al-Fada' literally means trailblazer in space; it gives the sense of someone trekking into an unknown frontier, and doing something dangerous.

Those brave souls on Columbia were trailblazers for us all:

STS-107 Flight: January 16-February 1, 2003
Crew:

Commander Rick D. Husband (second flight),
Pilot William C. McCool (first flight),
Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson (second flight),
Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (second flight),
Mission Specialist David M. Brown (first flight),
Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark (first flight),
Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel (first flight)

Since it is dangerous for a species to exist only on one planet, they were engaged in an endeavor that might help assure the longevity of humanity. They were brave human beings.




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*Asharq al-Awsat reports that in private, many Iraqi embassy staff abroad have begun thinking about a post-Saddam Iraq and what it will mean for their lives. They deny this concern is selfish, saying they can see that the regime could well fall soon. I can only imagine that ambassadors and chargés of Iraq in Europe are high Baath officials with things to answer for, and I guess they are right to be worried.

*There were large demonstrations yesterday at the al-Azhar seminary and at al-Husayn square in Cairo, Egypt, against [alleged] US aggression toward Palestinians and Iraqis. Mainstream politicians from the left parties attended. The al-Azhar demonstration included both secular politicians and Islamists who came for prayer. A left/Islamist alliance helped overthrow the Shah, and if such relationships are being forged in Egypt it is a bad sign for Mubarak's regime.




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