Monthly Archives: December 2007

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: In Iraq, division will undermine reconciliation

Editor’s Comment — The good news coming out of Iraq is that most Iraqis see an end to the U.S. occupation as being the key to national reconciliation. The bad news is that the damage done to Iraq’s social frabric over the last five years is going to be extremely difficult to repair. The problem is starkly depicted in these two maps of Baghdad. In the space of eighteen months, the city has transformed from being predominently made up of mixed neighborhoods (depicted in yellow), to being sharply divided between Shia and Sunni sectors. Now, colliding with this division are returning refugees:

A small fraction of the millions of refugees who fled Iraq have come back. While the government trumpeted their return as proof of newfound security, migration experts said most of them were forced back by expired visas and depleted savings…

The American military has expressed deep concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to feed and house its returnees, or manage people who wish to reclaim their homes. It is widely feared that property disputes or efforts to return to newly homogenized neighborhoods could set off fresh waves of sectarian attacks.

For most Iraqi refugees, the trip home is just the beginning of their troubles. Many return to find their homes destroyed or filled with squatters, most of them displaced people themselves. But the government committee that decides property disputes is charged with hearing only cases that predate the invasion of 2003.

Strategy that is making Iraq safer was snubbed for years
ByPeter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, December 19, 2007

[A] USA TODAY investigation shows that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a “strategic alternative” for beating the insurgency and IEDs.

That plan and others mirroring the counterinsurgency blueprint that the Pentagon now hails as a success were pitched repeatedly in memos and presentations during the following two years, at meetings that included then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The core of the strategy: Clear insurgents from key areas and provide security to win over Iraqis, who would respond by helping U.S. forces break IED networks and defeat the insurgency.

Bush administration officials, however, remained wedded to the idea that training the Iraqi army and leaving the country would suffice. Officials, including Cheney, insisted the insurgency was dying. Those pronouncements delayed the Pentagon from embracing new plans to stop IEDs and investing in better armored vehicles that allow troops to patrol more freely, documents and interviews show.

Even after the Pentagon began committing substantial resources to combat IEDs, USA TODAY found, its spending focused mostly on high-tech devices with limited utility. Some silver-bullet solutions, such as microwave beams designed to destroy IEDs before they blew up, never worked.

By the time the Pentagon moved to a counterinsurgency strategy at the end of last year, the bombs had been the top killer of U.S. troops for three years, claiming more than 1,160 lives. To date, they are responsible for more than 60% of combat deaths. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Torture complex uncovered

Torture house, mass graves discovered in Iraq
CNN, December 20, 2007

Coalition forces found 26 bodies buried in mass graves and a bloodstained “torture complex,” with chains hanging from walls and ceilings and a bed connected to an electrical system, the military said Wednesday.
[…]
The complex was in an area thought to be an al Qaeda in Iraq haven and operating base, the military said. Iraqis had told the military about the site during an earlier operation.

“Evidence of murder, torture and intimidation against local villagers was found throughout the area,” the military statement said. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The unfortunate but predictable effect of a report such as this is that it will empower those who want to argue that “their torture is worse than ours.” But the more important question is this: Have their torturers been empowered by ours? To imagine that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, renditions and secret CIA prisons have had little impact on the outlook of America’s enemies (and friends) is both ignorant and naive.

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Promoting democracy in Israel; war on Hamas

Adalah center says it may seek supranational regime in ‘all historic Palestine’
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz, December 20, 2007

The Arab minority rights center, Adalah, is considering a proposal calling for a “democratic constitution for a supranational regime in all of historic Palestine,” including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This constitutes a shift from the proposed Democratic Constitution that Adalah offered as a constitution for Israel.

While it is not clear when this change occurred, Adalah sources said Wednesday that the effort does not aim to do away with Israel or delegitimize its existence.

Adalah announced in its monthly newsletter Wednesday that it seeks to establish a group of international experts, including Palestinians and Israelis, to help “finalize the text of the Democratic Constitution.”

In its proposal for a constitution for all historic Palestine, Adalah points to the European Convention on Human Rights as a model. [complete article]

For Israel’s Arab citizens, isolation and exclusion
By Scott Wilson, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes.

But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town’s admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of “social incompatibility.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The difference between Israel and South Africa is that the South African whites took pride in their racism and thus gave it a name and a rationale. Most Israeli Jews on the other hand are too attached to their pluralistic Western image and thus an approach described as ensuring “social compatibility” refuses to accept its real name: apartheid.

Israelis cool to an offer from Hamas on a truce
By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, December 20, 2007

Officials in the Israeli prime minister’s office reacted coolly on Wednesday to an indirect approach by the Hamas leader in Gaza offering talks on a truce.

The offer was relayed through an Israeli reporter, Sleman al-Shafhe, of Channel 2 television. On a news broadcast on Tuesday night, Mr. Shafhe said Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, had called him earlier in the day to convey a message to the Israelis.

According to Mr. Shafhe, Mr. Haniya said he had the ability to stop the rocket fire directed at Israel from Gaza, on condition that Israel stopped the killing of Palestinians there and lifted the blockade of Gaza.

Mr. Haniya’s call followed Israeli military strikes that killed at least 10 Palestinians in Gaza between Monday night and Tuesday morning, in a concerted effort to suppress the rocket fire. Eight of those killed were from Islamic Jihad, which has been responsible for most of the recent rocket fire, and included a top commander of the group’s military wing, Israeli officials said. [complete article]

Israeli operations in Gaza meet little resistance in Washington
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, December 19, 2007

As Israel stepped up air attacks on Gaza this week, the Bush administration refrained from blocking any measures or criticizing Israel’s activity.

The Israeli Air Force last week renewed the practice known as “targeted killing” against members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza. Israeli officials have said in recent weeks that if rocket fire against Israeli towns is not stopped, further escalation might be imminent, including a full-scale ground incursion into the Hamas-controlled strip.

Administration officials have directed all the blame for the deteriorating situation in Gaza onto Hamas, which seized control of the area in June. Israel, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, was not asked to scale down its actions or to refrain from a ground operation. “I haven’t heard of any red light,” an Israeli official said. The administration’s policy since the recent Annapolis, Md., peace summit entails a two-pronged approach toward the Palestinian Authority. On one hand, Washington will allow Israel to take tough measures against Hamas-ruled Gaza. On the other hand, assistance will be increased to the government of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. At a December 17 donor conference in Paris, the administration pledged $550 million in aid to Abbas’s P.A., an amount that exceeds any previous American financial assistance to the Palestinians. [complete article]

NEWS: Syria turned away A.Q. Khan

Syria spurned atom smuggler approach in 2001: Assad
Reuters, December 19, 2007

Syria rebuffed a possible approach in 2001 from Pakistani-led traffickers in nuclear arms technology, President Bashar al-Assad said.

In an interview with Austrian daily Die Presse, Assad said an unnamed person delivered to Syria a letter purportedly from A.Q. Khan, the now-disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb who supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear parts and know-how.

“At the beginning of 2001 someone brought us a letter from a certain Khan. We did not know if the letter was genuine or a forgery by Israel to lure us into a trap,” Assad was quoted by Die Presse on Wednesday as saying. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: The torture tapes

The torture tapes
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 19, 2007

Spooks and crooks have a lot in common. Success in either field depends on not getting caught. And as every criminal and spy knows, success depends in large part on the ability to destroy evidence. No evidence, no crime — thus the criminal logic works. So why would the CIA create an evidentiary trail in the first place? Why document torture?

Documentation is institutional insurance. We’ve long known that CIA interrogators are afraid of being hung out to dry. Their fears are well-based, given that they are working for an administration notorious for the lack of accountability among its top officials. Anyone instructed to engage in torture would obviously want to be sure that a clear record would be maintained showing that they had been following their orders with rigorous discipline and precision. The torture tapes must have been created by CIA officers who wanted to be sure that they wouldn’t be disowned by the chain of command. It thus seems reasonable to ask: have all the tapes actually been destroyed? Were no copies made? Contrary to official statements, the interests of the interrogators would more likely be protected by keeping the tapes than by destroying them.

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the most eager desire to have the tapes destroyed appears to have come from outside the CIA and straight from the White House. As the New York Times today reports:

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The lesson from Abu Ghraib was that the worst political damage came not from the abuse itself but from the images. If the photos had never been leaked, the haunting images of abuse would still be locked inside the minds of the torturers and their victims. In America, outside the Pentagon, no one would even have heard the name Abu Ghraib.

The political calculation that was weighed in deciding whether to destroy the torture tapes would thus seem to have been quite simple. Which would exact a higher cost: dealing with questions about the destruction of evidence, or dealing with the repercussions of indisputable evidence that as a matter of policy and practice, the United States Government engages in torture?

George Bush and Dick Cheney don’t want to be remembered as the president and vice-president who undermined American democracy by sanctioning torture. The alternative — to be seen as underhand, duplicitous, and unaccountable — that’s just the dirty world of politics-as-usual.

NEWS & OPINION: The administration of torture

Picture of secret detentions emerges in Pakistan
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, December 19, 2007

The director of the human rights commission, I. A. Rehman, said the government had set up a nearly invisible detention system. “There are safe houses in Islamabad where people are kept,” he said, citing accounts from the police and freed detainees. “Police have admitted this. Flats are taken on rent; property is seized; people are tortured there.”

In some cases, detainees recounted that they had been interrogated in the presence of English-speaking foreigners, who human rights officials and lawyers suspect are Americans.

A United States Embassy spokeswoman said she could not comment on the allegations and referred all questions to Washington. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on Mr. Rehman’s accusations, or on any specific detainees.

One detainee, a Jordanian named Marwan Ibrahim, who was arrested in a raid in the city of Lahore, where he had been living for 10 years, said he was sent to a detention center in Afghanistan run by Americans, then to Jordan and Israel, and was finally released in Gaza, according to an account Mr. Ibrahim gave to Human Rights Watch, another independent group.

Another detainee, Majid Khan, 27, a Pakistani computer engineer who disappeared from Karachi four years ago, surfaced April 15 this year before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay. His American lawyers say he was subjected to torture in C.I.A. detention in a secret location. Mr. Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, declined to comment, except to say that the “C.I.A.’s terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful, and highly productive.” [complete article]

FBI, CIA debate significance of terror suspect
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, December 18, 2007

According to Kiriakou’s account, which he said is based on detailed descriptions by fellow team members, Abu Zubaida broke after just 35 seconds of waterboarding, which involved stretching cellophane over his mouth and nose and pouring water on his face to create the sensation of drowning.

But other former and current officials disagreed that Abu Zubaida’s cooperation came quickly under harsh interrogation or that it was the result of a single waterboarding session. Instead, these officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months.

The videotaping of Abu Zubaida in 2002 went on day and night throughout his interrogation, including waterboarding, and while he was sleeping in his cell, intelligence officials said. “Several hundred hours” of videotapes were destroyed in November 2005, a senior intelligence officer said. The CIA has said it ceased waterboarding in 2003. [complete article]

Former U.S. interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq
El Mundo (via Informed Comment), December 10, 2007

But Bagram has an underworld in which the CIA tortures the leaders of Al-Qa’idah. “One day I went to an interrogation session and as soon as I arrived I knew that it was not a normal case. There were civilians, among them a doctor and a psychiatrist. The prisoner was called Omar al-Faruq, an Al-Qa’idah leader in Asia who had been brought to the prison by one of those agencies”, recalls Corsetti. “I don’t want to go into details because it could be very negative for my country, but he was brutally beaten – daily. And tortured by other methods. He was a bad man, but he didn’t deserve that”. Al-Faruq escaped from Bagram in action which, according to some, was tolerated by the USA and was killed in April 2006 by the British in the Iraqi city of Basra.

Corsetti says that he never took part in the torture. “My sole job was to sit there and make sure the prisoner didn’t die. But there were several times when I thought they were about to die, when they were interrogated by those people who have no name and who work for no-one in particular. It’s incredible what a human being can take”. A resistance similar to that of the memory of those torture sessions. Because Corsetti, a veteran of two wars, says: “I have seen people die in combat. I shot at people. That is not as bad as seeing someone tortured. Al-Faruq looked at me while they tortured him and I have that look in my head. And the cries, the smells, the sounds, they are with me all the time. It is something I can’t take in. The cries of the prisoners calling for their relatives, their mother. I remember one who called for God, for Allah, all the time. I have those cries here, inside my head”.

“In Abu-Ghurayb and Bagram they were tortured to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. And the fact is that at times the torture had no other goal that “to punish them for being terrorists. They tortured them and didn’t ask them anything”. That is the case of the practice known as “the submarine”: to simulate the drowning of the prisoner. “They have them hooded and they pour water on them. That makes it very difficult to breath. I think you can’t die with the submarine. I certainly never saw anyone die. However, they do cough like crazy because they are totally submerged in water and that gets on their lungs. Perhaps what it can give you is serious pneumonia”. The civilians who took part in the interrogations used the submarine whenever they wanted. They gave it to them for five or 10 minutes and didn’t ask anything”. [complete article]

The president’s coming-out party
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 15, 2007

The Justice Department has announced an “initial probe” into the destruction of the CIA torture tapes. There is no credible basis upon which this can be viewed as anything other than a conscious crime. The tapes were destroyed, even according to sources within the CIA, because of imminent fear that they would constitute evidence in a criminal prosecution of persons involved in the acts of torture. And even beyond this more general concern, they were destroyed so they would not be turned over to a federal judge who was demanding them. They were destroyed to protect a series of false official statements about the way individual prisoners, whose statements would be used in evidence, were in fact being treated.

Remember, in these trials, a defendant can seek to exclude evidence if it was secured through torture. But the defendant has an obligation to prove this contention. The tapes would have provided such proof. Destroying them would therefore help make the evidence admissible.

Note also, no one has ever even raised the possibility that the destruction was inadvertent or accidental.

All that being said, we should ask: why do we need an “initial assessment”? Things couldn’t possibly be more clear. It is as if Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the floor of the senate with a hundred onlookers, and now the Justice Department wants to weigh carefully whether there is evidence sufficient to justify a homicide investigation. [complete article]

Congress defies Bush on CIA tape probe
By John Cochran, ABC News, December 17, 2007

House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes told ABC News today that he will ignore the Bush administration’s request to drop its investigation of why CIA interrogation tapes were destroyed.

“This is an administration that frankly does not have a good track record of policing itself,” Reyes said. “We intend to go forward and issue subpoenas next week because we are a whole equal branch of government.”

After telling Congress to get out of the way, the Justice Department took the highly unusual step of telling the same thing to a federal judge.

In 2005, Judge Henry Kennedy ordered the government not to destroy any evidence of mistreatment or torture at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Administration says that because the destroyed tapes were interrogations of two suspects in secret CIA prisons, not at Guantanamo, the judge should not interfere.

“This is becoming increasingly bizarre,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. “The Justice Department insists it will essentially investigate itself and then tells the court that because it is investigating itself it won’t turn over evidence of its possible criminal misconduct. It’s so circular, it’s maddening.” [complete article]

NEWS: Turkish ground attack follows air attack

Turkish soldiers cross border into northern Iraq
AP, December 18, 2007

The Turkish army sent soldiers about three kilometres into northern Iraq in an overnight operation on Tuesday, Kurdish officials said. A Turkish official said the troops were still in Iraq by midmorning.

The troops crossed into an area near the border with Iran, about 120 kilometres north of the city of Irbil, said Jabar Yawar, a spokesman for Kurdistan’s Peshmerga security forces.

About 300 Turkish troops crossed the border at 3 a.m., said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the regional Kurdistan government. He said the region was a deserted mountainous frontier area. [complete article]

U.S. military not told of Turkey bomb plan
AP, December 18, 2007

U. S. military commanders in Iraq didn’t know Turkey was sending warplanes to bomb in northern Iraq until the planes had already crossed the border, The Associated Press has learned.

Americans have been providing Turkey with intelligence to go after Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. And a “coordination center” has been set up in Ankara so Turks, Iraqis and Americans can share information, two officials said Tuesday.

But commanders and diplomats in Baghdad were angered when they were told of Sunday’s attack after it was already under way, defense and diplomatic officials said in Washington and Baghdad. [complete article]

Iraq Kurdish leader snubs Rice over Turkey raid
Reuters, December 18, 2007

The president of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region refused to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday because of Washington’s tolerance of Turkish military attacks, his prime minister said.

Rice’s unannounced visit to Iraq was overshadowed by an incursion by about 300 Turkish soldiers into the Kurdish province of Dahuk in the north of the country.

The operation was condemned by the Iraqi Kurdish government of President Masoud Barzani, which has also criticized U.S. tolerance of Turkish previous air and artillery strikes targeting separatists based in northern Iraq. [complete article]

U.S. helps Turkey hit rebel Kurds in Iraq
By Ann Scott Tyson and Robin Wright, Washington Post, December 18, 2007

The United States is providing Turkey with real-time intelligence that has helped the Turkish military target a series of attacks this month against Kurdish separatists holed up in northern Iraq, including a large airstrike on Sunday, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. military personnel have set up a center for sharing intelligence in Ankara, the Turkish capital, providing imagery and other immediate information gathered from U.S. aircraft and unmanned drones flying over the separatists’ mountain redoubts, the officials said. A senior administration official said the goal of the U.S. program is to identify the movements and activities of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which is fighting to create an autonomous enclave in Turkey.

The United States is “essentially handing them their targets,” one U.S. military official said. The Turkish military then decides whether to act on the information and notifies the United States, the official said. [complete article]

NEWS: Afghanistan may pose a greater longer-term challenge than Iraq

Bush faces pressure to shift war priorities
By Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker, Washington Post, December 17, 2007

With violence on the decline in Iraq but on the upswing in Afghanistan, President Bush is facing new pressure from the U.S. military to accelerate a troop drawdown in Iraq and bulk up force levels in Afghanistan, according to senior U.S. officials.

Administration officials said the White House could start to debate the future of the American military commitment in both Iraq and Afghanistan as early as next month. Some Pentagon officials are urging a further drawdown of forces in Iraq beyond that envisioned by the White House, which is set to reduce the number of combat brigades from 20 to 15 by the end of next summer. At the same time, commanders in Afghanistan are looking for several additional battalions, helicopters and other resources to confront a resurgent Taliban movement.

Bush’s decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan could heavily influence his ability to pass on to his successor stable situations in both countries, an objective his advisers describe as one of the president’s paramount goals for his final year in office. They say Bush will listen closely to his military commanders on the ground before making any decisions on troops but is unlikely to do anything he believes could jeopardize recent, hard-won security improvements in Iraq.

Administration officials say the White House has become more concerned in recent months about the situation in Afghanistan, where grinding poverty, rampant corruption, poor infrastructure and the growing challenge from the Taliban are hindering U.S. stabilization efforts. Senior administration officials now believe Afghanistan may pose a greater longer-term challenge than Iraq. [complete article]

NEWS: Administration tries to control JAGs

Control sought on military lawyers
By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe, December 15, 2007

The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination – which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment – is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers. [complete article]

NEWS: Viewing terrorism with a sense of proportion

Al-Qaeda ‘only one of many’ major security threats to UK
By Jamie Doward, The Observer, December 16, 2007

Britian’s outgoing intelligence chief believes there is a danger of exaggerating the threat posed by al-Qaeda at the expense of equally significant security issues, such as global warming.

Sir Richard Mottram, who has just stood down as Permanent Secretary in charge of Intelligence Security and Resilience, the body that advises the Prime Minister on the country’s response to emergencies, will use a lecture this week to call for individual citizens to play a new role in combating the risks associated with increasing globalisation.

Mottram, a career civil servant who, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was responsible for evaluating the security threats posed to Britain, said there needed to be a ‘cultural shift’ to ensure the public played a broader role in making the country safe.

There was a danger, he said, of over-emphasising the spectre of international terrorism, which could play to al-Qaeda’s advantage and divide communities. [complete article]

NEWS: Big Brother

Wider spying fuels aid plan for telecom industry
By Eric Lichtbalu, James Risen, and Scott Shane, New York Times, December 16, 2007

For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.

The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure. [complete article]

NEWS: Iran’s nuclear expansion

Iran receives nuclear fuel in blow to U.S.
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, December 18, 2007

The United States lost a long battle when Russia, as it announced on Monday, delivered nuclear fuel to an Iranian power plant that is at the center of an international dispute over its nuclear program. Iran, for its part, confirmed on Monday plans to build a second such plant.

In announcing that it had delivered the first shipment of enriched-uranium fuel rods to the power plant, at Bushehr in southern Iran, on Sunday, Russian officials said that while the fuel was in Iran, it would be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear monitoring agency for the United Nations. Russia also said the Iranian government had guaranteed that the fuel would be used only for the power plant.

The Bush administration took pains not to criticize the Russian move publicly, even expressing support for outside supplies if that led Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program. [complete article]

Iran suggests it is building 2nd nuclear plant
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, December 18, 2007

Iran confirmed Monday that it had received the first fuel shipment for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr, but also indicated for the first time that it was building a second nuclear power plant.

The revelation came in comments by the president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, made to state-run television and reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency. He was dismissing speculation that the arrival of the fuel would allow Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, in Natanz.

“We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovein,” he said, referring to a southern city north of Bushehr. [complete article]

NEWS: Sharif excluded from upcoming election

Pakistan rejects Sharif’s election bid appeal
Reuters, December 18, 2007

Pakistan’s Election Commission has upheld an election ban on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his lawyer said on Tuesday, barring a main rival of President Pervez Musharraf from the January polls.

Sharif, who Musharraf ousted in 1999, was allowed back from seven years of exile last month and has been campaigning for the January 8 general election despite the ban, imposed this month for past criminal convictions he says were politically motivated.

Sharif had challenged the ban, but the Election Commission rejected his appeal, saying it should be filed with an election tribunal made up of judges who swore allegiance to Musharraf after he imposed emergency rule on November 3. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Aid to Abbas; divide and rule hasn’t broken Hamas

Palestinians ‘win $7bn aid vow’
BBC News, December 17, 2007

Foreign aid of at least $7bn (£3.5bn) has been pledged to the Palestinians at a major donors’ conference in Paris, France’s foreign minister has said.

The figure cited by Bernard Kouchner exceeded the $5.6bn over three years which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked for. [complete article]

“Follow us not them” – The Ramallah model: Washington’s Palestinian failure
By Geoffrey Aronson, Conflicts Forum, December 17, 2007

George Bush’s “vision” of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on the supremacy of the “Ramallah model” over the “Gaza model.” U.S. policy intends that the advantages championed by Ramallah in negotiations with Israel and the economic revival enabled by international assistance will “strengthen Abu Mazen” and undermine the Palestininian majority for Hamas. In this contest, however, Hamas, from its base in Gaza, retains significant advantages. As long as the limitations of U.S. policy prevent an end to occupation, the Ramallah model will be compromised and the process of “strengthening Abu Mazen” will continue the process of Fateh’s marginalization and Hamas’s empowerment that has been the legacy of the Oslo era. [complete article]

Lack of confidence in peacemaking keeps Hamas’ popularity stable: Poll
AP, December 17, 2007

A lack of confidence in recently renewed peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians has kept Palestinian support for Hamas stable despite worsening conditions in the Gaza Strip, according to a poll released Monday.

However, the Islamic militant group’s popularity lags far behind that of the rival Fatah movement, said the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent polling agency. [complete article]

Despite isolation, Gazans show allegiance for Hamas
By Steven Erlanger and Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times, December 16, 2007

About 200,000 Gazans rallied in support of Hamas on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of its founding.

It was a significant show of force from Hamas, which took over Gaza six months ago in a rapid rout of Fatah forces. The rally was intended to display popular “samoud,” or steadfastness, in the face of the diplomatic and economic isolation of Gaza, which Israel has declared a “hostile entity.” It was easily as large as one a month ago for its rival, the Fatah faction, on the anniversary of the death of Yasir Arafat, and estimates ranged up to 250,000 people. [complete article]

Hamas: Advanced defense plan ready for when IDF enters Gaza
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz, December 17, 2007

Hamas’ armed wing said Monday that the Islamist organization has completed preparation of its new defense program and is ready to face the Israel Defense Forces when it invades the Gaza Strip.

The remarks were made by Iz a-Din al-Qassam’s spokesman, Abu Obeida, in an interview with the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat.

Abu Obeida said that the IDF has not yet encountered such a high level of resistance in its previous incursions into the Gaza Strip. “The Israeli army won’t know where the blows are coming from, and how its tanks will be hit by missiles in our possession,” Abu Obeida said, adding that IDF troops would encounter militants trained in new combat methods acting upon instruction from an operational command center shared by all of the Palestinian organizations. [complete article]

A daily exercise in humiliation
By Mark Mackinnon, Globe and Mail, December 18, 2007

Under the supervision of an Israeli soldier clutching an M-16 assault rifle, Qassem Saleh begins his daily disrobing.

First, he lifts his bright orange shirt so the soldier can see there’s no bomb strapped to his torso. Then, after passing through a metal floor-to-ceiling turnstile, he undoes his belt and hands it over for examination to a second soldier, along with his wallet, mobile phone and cigarettes.

The second soldier peruses his documents and asks his reason for travel. The answer is a simple one: Mr. Saleh goes through all this, not to board a plane or visit a prison, but so that he can go home to his family after a day’s studies at An-Najah University in Nablus. It’s a process Israel says is necessary for security, but one that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians consider their daily humiliation. [complete article]

Israel to allow building in settlements
By Adam Entous, Reuters, December 17, 2007

Israel will allow construction within built up areas of existing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, but will not expand beyond those areas, Israeli officials said on Monday.

The position could widen the rift in U.S.-backed peace talks launched by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Annapolis, Maryland last month.

The Palestinians say the negotiations, the first in seven years, hinged on Israel committing to halt all settlement activity, including so-called natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled “road map” peace plan.

The Bush administration has likewise urged Israel to stop settlement expansion.

A senior Israeli official said: “America doesn’t have to approve or not to approve if we are doing something that we think, as a sovereign state, we should do.” [complete article]

Israel bars violinist from Gaza peace concert
By Ruth Eglash and Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2007

Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim spoke out against Israel Monday, following the refusal of the Israeli authorities one day earlier to allow a prominent Palestinian violinist to pass through the Erez border crossing and perform in a peace concert in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.

At a press conference in Berlin on Monday, the South American-born Jewish conductor expressed his “deep dismay at this blatant discrimination against a Palestinian musician, which prevented the orchestra from performing this vital humanitarian act for the people of Gaza.” [complete article]

Islamic Jihad swears revenge as 13 killed in IDF raids in Gaza
By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz, December 18, 2007

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday continued its assault on Gaza Strip militants responsible for the Qassam rockets that batter southern Israel on a daily basis, raising the death toll among Islamic Jihad and Hamas to 13 in the past 24 hours.

The strikes are the IDF’s most deadly military response in months to the frequent attacks from the Hamas-controlled territory. [complete article]

NEWS: Murder and chaos in Basra; U.S. concentrates forces in Baghdad

UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief
By Mona Mahmoud, Maggie O’Kane and Ian Black, The Guardian, December 17, 2007

The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed yesterday as the city’s police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic.

As British forces finally handed over security in Basra province, marking the end of 4½ years of control in southern Iraq, Major General Jalil Khalaf, the new police commander, said the occupation had left him with a situation close to mayhem. “They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world,” he said in an interview for Guardian Films and ITV.

Khalaf painted a very different picture from that of British officials who, while acknowledging problems in southern Iraq, said yesterday’s handover at Basra airbase was timely and appropriate. [complete article]

U.S. to keep most troops in Baghdad
By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2007

In a change of plans, American commanders in Iraq have decided to keep their forces concentrated in Baghdad when the buildup strategy ends next year, removing troops instead from outlying areas of the country.

The change represents the military’s first attempt to confront its big challenge in 2008: how to cut the number of troops without sacrificing security.

The shift in deployment strategy, described by senior U.S. military officials in Iraq and Washington, is based on concerns that despite recent improvements, the capital could again erupt into widespread violence without an imposing American military presence. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Turkish attack on PKK

Iraq angered by Turkish bombing
By Damien Cave, New York Times, December 18, 2007

Iraqi leaders criticized Turkey on Monday for bombing Kurdish militants in northern Iraq with airstrikes that they said left at least one woman dead.

The Turkish attacks in Dohuk Province on Sunday — involving dozens of warplanes and artillery — were the largest known cross-border attack since 2003. They occurred with at least tacit approval from American officials.

The Iraqi government, however, said it was not consulted or informed about the attacks.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, condemned the assaults as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty that undermined months of diplomacy. “These attacks hinder the political efforts exerted to find a peaceful solution based on mutual respect,” he said in a statement. [complete article]

‘U.S. backed’ Turkish raids on Iraq
BBC News, December 16, 2007

Turkey’s air strikes against Kurdish rebels in Iraq on Sunday were approved by the United States in advance, the Turkish military has said.

The country’s top general, Yasar Buyukanit, said the US opened northern Iraqi airspace for the operation.

Jets targeted the Kurdish rebel PKK in areas near the border. The Turkish media said up to 50 planes were used. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This will comes as news to most Americans, but according to the State Department, the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party) — generally known as the PKK — poses a threat to the United States. State Department spokesman Tom Casey this afternoon said, “we remain concerned by the threat posed by the PKK to Turkey, to Iraq and to the United States.” Curious then that the U.S. seems to content to sit back and let Turkey deal with that threat — the only qualification being that next time Turkey bombs Iraq the State Department would like the Turks to talk to the Iraqi government (presumably before the attack). As for whether the U.S. expects consultation with the Turks on its bombing operations in Iraq, the U.S. government is being quite explicit in saying that no prior consent is required. “I don’t think it’s for us to accept or reject,” said Casey when asked whether the U.S. accepts Turkey’s military action. And as the Turkish newspaper, Zaman reports: “Kathy Schalow, the spokesperson for the US Embassy in Ankara, was quoted as saying that the Turkish side had informed US authorities beforehand about Sunday’s operation but underlined that the decision to carry out the strike was up to the Turks and no US consent was needed.”

What, I wonder, does Iran make of this? For several months Iran has also been shelling Kurdish villages in Iraq where it claims guerrillas are based. If Iran was to now escalate its attacks and conduct air raids, would the U.S. be issuing another no-consent-required statement? I guess not:

Turkish officials privately attribute US reluctance to crack down on the PKK to its covert support for its so-called sister organisation, the Pejak, or Free Life party of Kurdistan, which is battling over Kurdish areas of north-western Iran. This is seen as part of a broader US effort to counter Iranian meddling in Iraq, and destabilise hardliners in Tehran.

ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: All the news that’s fit to print — with Pentagon approval

Case lays bare the media’s reliance on Iraqi journalists
By Tim Arango, New York Times, December 17, 2007

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning.

He was held for around 20 months by the military — in Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, with no right to contest his detention — before being turned over to an Iraqi magistrate, who will act as a one-man grand jury and decide if there is enough evidence to link him to the insurgency. He has not been formally charged with a crime.

The Associated Press has staunchly defended Mr. Hussein, pointing out that his role as a journalist involved getting close to the insurgency. Over the last three years, the American military has held at least eight other Iraqi journalists for periods of weeks or month without charges and released them all, apparently unable to find ties to the insurgency, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit organization.

As for Mr. Hussein and his lawyers, “they were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense,” The Associated Press said in a statement last week, noting that Mr. Hussein was still being detained without formal charges. “The Associated Press continues to believe that claims Bilal is involved with insurgent activities are false.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The one indisputable fact in this story is that Bilal Hussein is not guilty as charged — unless of course one wants to include “charges” made by the U.S. military, delivered by email to the New York Times. As for the Times’ own ability to report the facts and nothing but the facts, the paper gives the game away in this line: “The [Western] reporters and editors said that they often had to filter out obvious sectarian biases from news copy [provided by Iraqi journalists], and, as a matter of policy, would not run statistics like death counts from the field without official confirmation from the military.”

“All the News that’s Fit to Print” — so long as it gets official confirmation from the military.

FEATURE: Al Jazeera goes mainstream

Al Jazeera goes mainstream
By Ed Lamont, The Nation, December 14, 2007

Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared that the terrorists “hate our freedom…. They can’t stand the thought that people can go into the public square in America and express their differences with government.” I recently spent a hot day in October at the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, which is a virtual public square, giving voice to Arabs who challenge their governments, and ours.

On my first visit to the Middle East in twenty years, it was startling to see how the satellite has transformed the region. Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, has taken the Middle East by storm. The stodgy government-run channels of yesteryear–featuring emirs shaking hands with other emirs–proved easy pickings for the hypercaffeinated talk shows. One of these, The Opposite Direction, is the Arab world’s most popular talk show, spotlighting the popular host Dr. Faisal al-Qasim, a high-octane blend of Jerry Springer and Bill O’Reilly, who thrives on pitting two ideological combatants against each other and egging them on.

Talk shows and the stick-in-the-eye newscasts have propelled Al Jazeera to the top of the ratings heap since its launch ten years ago. At first, Saddam Hussein sent out the satellite police to track down insurgent dishes that could receive it and follow the coaxial cables back to the offending TV sets. And the Saudis played endless loop recitations of the Koran on the same frequency to jam an offending broadcast channel. But the dishes kept procreating. [complete article]