Daily Archives: September 19, 2007

EDITORIAL: How to counter terrorism

How to counter terrorism
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 19, 2007

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone is on a mission to promote to promote “religious enlightenment.” The programs he oversees as commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, are designed to shape Iraqi detainees and “bend them back to our will.” It sounds like Stalinism.

The idea of rehabilitating jihadists isn’t new; this just sounds like a somewhat mangled version of a program that was devised in Yemen and has been applied with great success. Yet the philosophical approach is profoundly different. Contrast Stone’s aim of bending wills in what he calls “the battlefield of the mind,” with the approach masterminded by former judge Hamoud Abdulhameed al-Hittar, who is now the Minister of Human Rights in Yemen.

This is how Hittar lays the foundation for his work:

Dialogue is a part of human nature. The first step in the creation of human beings was dialogue.

The Qur’an addresses the idea of dialogue with people we don’t agree with. The Pharaoh called himself a god. He said that he was the creator of Mankind. And even then, God granted a dialogue with the Pharaoh. This is an example for us to talk with people, regardless of how bad they are. No matter how much we agree or disagree with them, we should not avoid talking with them.

It is under this principle, that we dialogue with the people from Afghanistan [returning jihadists]. In the tradition found in all religious scriptures, as transmitted by Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Jonas, etc., dialogue is a necessity.

Continue reading →

NEWS: Iran will retaliate against attack

In case of war, Iran has plans for airstrikes on Israel, general says
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2007

A senior Iranian military official said today that his country had drawn up plans to launch airstrikes against Israel in case of war between the two countries, according to an interview published by an Iranian news agency.

Gen. Mohammed Alavi, a deputy commander in the Iranian air force, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that his country could attack Israel with long-range missiles as well as fighter planes in case of war between the two countries.

Israeli and U.S. officials have threatened the possibility of preemptive attacks on Iran to block it from obtaining advanced nuclear technology that could be used to build atomic weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is meant to augment civilian energy needs.

Military analysts say Iran could retaliate against any U.S. or Israeli air raids by hitting targets in the Persian Gulf, disrupting oil flows or launching attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — When for weeks the Bush administration has been doing nothing to dampen speculation that Iran has been targeted for bombing, and after Israel’s recent mysterious attack on facilities in eastern Syria, it is completely disingenuous for the White House to claim that Iran’s comments on retaliation were “totally unprovoked.”

Israel itself has downplayed the Iranian threat:

Israeli officials are treating Iran’s latest claims that it has 600 Shihab-3 missiles aimed at targets throughout the country the same way it treated Teheran’s claims last month to have crossed a key nuclear threshold: by listening carefully, but not believing everything they hear.

Is this the response we would expect from a nation that supposedly lives in the shadow of an existential threat?

OPINION: Who will start the war on Iran?

Why Bush won’t attack Iran
By Steven Clemons, Salon, September 19, 2007

During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was NSA to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Here’s the inside story from someone who knows more than the insiders. Steve Clemons always comes up with interesting stuff. He is of course far too modest to divulge whether he was one of the high-powered people at the dinner party he describes, but he was obviously there in spirit if not body, casting his vote with Scowcroft. By the end of the piece though, the insider’s insight — that Bush won’t initiate an attack on Iran — becomes what Clemons should concede: a moot point.

Clemons says that “a classic buildup to war with Iran, one in which the decision to bomb has already been made, is not something we should be worried about today.” He nevertheless concedes that we should be worried about an “accidental war” — one not preceded by a classic buildup. This sounds like a distinction that probably concerns high-powered dinner-party pundits more than anyone else.

What should concern us all is whether those who are trying to build up the momentum for war can effectively be disempowered. In that regard, the role of the press is crucial and just as happened in the buildup to the war in Iraq, with all too much frequency the press is letting us down by parroting unsubstantiated accusations and failing to challenge their precious political sources.

OPINION: Iraq – who wins?

The victor?
By Peter Galbraith, TomDispatch, September 19, 2007

Iran’s role in Iraq is pervasive, but also subtle. When Iraq drafted its permanent constitution in 2005, the American ambassador energetically engaged in all parts of the process. But behind the scenes, the Iranian ambassador intervened to block provisions that Tehran did not like. As it happened, both the Americans and the Iranians wanted to strengthen Iraq’s central government. While the Bush administration clung to the mirage of a single Iraqi people, Tehran worked to give its proxies, the pro-Iranian Iraqis it supported — by then established as the government of Iraq — as much power as possible. (Thanks to Kurdish obstinacy, neither the U.S. nor Iran succeeded in its goal, but even now both the US and Iran want to see the central government strengthened.)

Since 2005, Iraq’s Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries’ strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraqi government. According to a senior official in Iraq’s Oil Ministry, smugglers divert at least 150,000 barrels of Iraq’s daily oil exports through Iran, a figure that approaches 10 percent of Iraq’s production. Iran has yet to provide the military support it promised to the Iraqi army. With the U.S. supplying 160,000 troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to support a pro-Iranian Iraqi government, Iran has no reason to invest its own resources.

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran’s strategic victory is the most far-reaching. In establishing the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire in 1639, the Treaty of Qasr-i-Shirin demarcated the boundary between Sunni-ruled lands and Shiite-ruled lands. For eight years of brutal warfare in the 1980s, Iran tried to breach that line but could not. (At the time, the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein precisely because it feared the strategic consequences of an Iraq dominated by Iran’s allies.) The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished what Khomeini’s army could not. Today, the Shiite-controlled lands extend to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain, a Persian Gulf kingdom with a Shiite majority and a Sunni monarch, is most affected by these developments; but so is Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, which is home to most of the kingdom’s Shiites. (They may even be a majority in the province but this is unknown as Saudi Arabia has not dared to conduct a census.) The U.S. Navy has its most important Persian Gulf base in Bahrain while most of Saudi Arabia’s oil is under the Eastern Province. [complete article]

NEWS: Iraq unravelling

Future look of Iraq complicated by internal migration
By James Glanz and Alisa J. Rubin, New York Times, September 19, 2007

A vast internal migration is radically reshaping Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian landscape, according to new data collected by thousands of relief workers, but displacement in the most populous and mixed areas is surprisingly complex, suggesting that partitioning the country into semiautonomous Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves would not be easy.

The migration data, which are expected to be released this week by the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization but were given in advance to The New York Times, indicate that in Baghdad alone there are now nearly 170,000 families, accounting for almost a million people, that have fled their homes in search of security, shelter, water, electricity, functioning schools or jobs to support their families.

The figures show that many families move twice, three times or more, first fleeing immediate danger and then making more considered calculations based on the availability of city services or schools for their children. Finding neighbors of their own sect is just one of those considerations. [complete article]

NEWS AND OPINION: Hamas becomes an ‘enemy entity’

Israel pressures Hamas ahead of Rice’s arrival
By Steven Erlanger and Helene Cooper, New York Times, September 19, 2007

Under international law, Israel is considered an occupying power in Gaza, even though it has removed its troops and settlers. Denying civilians access to the necessities of life is considered collective punishment and a violation of international law under both the Hague and Geneva conventions although the amounts involved could be subject to dispute. Electricity, water and gasoline are considered by many, like the Israeli rights lobbying organizations B’Tselem and Gisha, as well as Oxfam and other groups, to be necessities. But the United States argued, when it bombed power plants in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, that electricity furthered Serbia’s war effort; Israel argued similarly when it bombed Gaza’s main power station in July 2006, after the capture of one of its soldiers.

“Regardless of how they might cloak it, cutting off electricity to a civilian population is collective punishment and a violation of international law,” said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem. “It doesn’t really make a difference whether it’s cutting off the supply from Israel or bombing the power station.”

Israel says it would not cut off water, but most of Gaza’s water is indigenous, pumped from wells with electricity; electricity also is important for sewage treatment, Ms. Michaeli said. She condemned the Qassam rockets and said that Israel was legally obligated to defend Israelis, but not by violating international law. [complete article]

Hamas denounces curbs on Gaza as ‘declaration of war’
Haaretz, September 19, 2007

Hamas denounced as a “declaration of war” the Wednesday decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” and to approve curbs in electricity and fuel supplies to the population of the strip.

“They aim to starve our people and force them to accept humiliating formulas that could emerge from the so-called November peace conference,” said Hamas spokesman Barhoum, referring to a U.S.-sponsored meeting expected to be held in two months.

“It is a declaration of war and continues the criminal, terrorist Zionist actions against our people.” [complete article]

It depends who is doing the torturing
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, September 19, 2007

According to the findings of Palestinian human rights organizations, hundreds of Hamas activists have been arrested, and are still being arrested, in blatant violation of Palestinian law, and by some security forces who do not have the authority to make arrests. Reports from Nablus speak of security personnel who are waiting, with the advent of Ramadan, outside the mosques in order to arrest Hamas activists after evening prayers. Disturbing testimony is piling up that speaks of the severe torture of some detainees – a few of whom required hospitalization. Revenge and intimidation are the name of the game. Some of those released testified that they had been forced to sign a promise to keep completely silent about their experiences during their detention. The arrests are part of a whole complex of offensive tactics: shootings of Hamas activists; attacks, including arson, on Hamas offices; threats to Hamas representatives on local councils, to journalists and members of parliament; and infringement of freedom of the press (including blocking the distribution in the West Bank of the two Hamas newspapers). [complete article]

NEWS: Dividing Jerusalem

Uproar over plan to split Jerusalem
Al Jazeera, September 19, 2007

Israel’s deputy prime minister has sparked uproar with a proposal to divide Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians as part of a peace deal.

The proposal by Haim Ramon, reported on Wednesday, was made in a letter to a member of the Jerusalem city council.

In his letter, Ramon suggested that Israel cede control over the occupied and annexed eastern sector to the Palestinians. [complete article]