Whether we like it or not, as Jewish Americans we are in the middle of this mess. Not only do our taxes pay for the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but our very bodies have been appropriated by Israel, which claims to speak for Jews everywhere. Certainly it can be said this is an American issue—which of course it is—and certainly religion and ethnicity can be tiresome and traditional. But I think the end result of taking this position and not supporting a Jewish voice against the occupation would abrogate our responsibility to resist injustice and would, in fact, hurt the anti-occupation struggle.
I have participated in several demonstrations in the last few years where just the sight of self-identified Jews denouncing Israel’s policies causes jaws to drop. This visual breaking of the stereotype—of Jews unendingly supporting whatever Israel does—seems to fry the synapses of bystanders. Of course it is met with abuse by some frantic and hysterical Jews who see this as the height of disloyalty. For instance, in addition to the constant refrain of “fuck you,” certain words seem to predominate: “ugly bitch,” “Nazi,” and “traitor.” (The vocabulary of hatred seems to be quite limited.)
But the sight of us doing the unthinkable has many benefits: There are a few Jews who are happy and relieved to see us because it opens the door for them. They have felt uneasy about Israeli policies for a long time, and seeing us seems to give them more courage to speak their minds. There are also some gentiles who are happy to see us because they have been afraid for a long time of being called anti-Semites if they criticize Israel. [continued…]
The Iran show By Laura Secor, The New Yorker, August 31, 2009
In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations. Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions. But the spectacle has found a subversive afterlife on the Internet. One image that has gone viral is a split frame showing two photographs of former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Before his arrest, on June 16th, he is a rotund, smiling cleric; in court on August 1st, he is drawn and sweat-soaked, his face a mask of apprehension. The juxtaposition belies the courtroom video, making the point that the only genuine thing about Abtahi’s confession is that it was coerced through torture.
Show trials have been staged before, most notably in Moscow in the nineteen-thirties. Typically, such rituals purge élites and scare the populace. They are the prelude to submission. Iran’s show trials, so far, have failed to accrue this fearsome power. In part, this is because the accused are connected to a mass movement: Iranians whose democratic aspirations have evolved organically within the culture of the Islamic Republic. It is one thing to persuade citizens that a narrow band of apparatchiks are enemies of the state. It is quite another to claim that a political agenda with broad support—for popular sovereignty, human rights, due process, freedom of speech—has been covertly planted by foreigners. [continued…]
The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.
The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.
When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general’s findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder’s associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider.
With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda. [continued…]
Under the new guidelines, interrogators must stay within the parameters of the Army Field Manual when questioning suspects. The task force concluded — unanimously, officials said — that “the Army Field Manual provides appropriate guidance on interrogation for military interrogators and that no additional or different guidance was necessary for other agencies,” according to a three-page summary of the findings. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters freely.
Using the Army Field Manual means certain techniques in the gray zone between torture and legal questioning — such as playing loud music or depriving prisoners of sleep — will not be allowed. Which tactics are acceptable was an issue “looked at thoroughly,” one senior official said. Obama had already banned certain severe measures that the Bush administration had permitted, such as waterboarding.
Still, the Obama task force advised that the group develop a “scientific research program for interrogation” to develop new techniques and study existing ones to see whether they work. In essence, the unit would determine a set of best practices on interrogation and share them with other agencies that question prisoners. [continued…]
American military commanders with the NATO mission in Afghanistan told President Obama’s chief envoy to the region this weekend that they did not have enough troops to do their job, pushed past their limit by Taliban rebels who operate across borders.
The commanders emphasized problems in southern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents continue to bombard towns and villages with rockets despite a new influx of American troops, and in eastern Afghanistan, where the father-and-son-led Haqqani network of militants has become the main source of attacks against American troops and their Afghan allies.
The possibility that more troops will be needed in Afghanistan presents the Obama administration with another problem in dealing with a nearly eight-year war that has lost popularity at home, compounded by new questions over the credibility of the Afghan government, which has just held an as-yet inconclusive presidential election beset by complaints of fraud. [continued…]
The main challenger to Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that he has received “alarming” reports of “widespread rigging” in Thursday’s presidential election by pro-government groups and officials, but he called on supporters to be patient and said he hopes the problem will be resolved through the official election review.
“The initial reports are a big cause of concern, but hopefully we can prevent fraud through legal means,” Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, said at a news conference. He said his campaign has filed more than 100 complaints of ballot-box stuffing, inflated vote counts and intimidation at the polls by Karzai partisans, often in places where threats from insurgents resulted in low voter turnout.
The allegations of fraud, combined with the slow pace of vote tabulation and the cumbersome process for investigating complaints, are raising political tensions as the nation waits to see whether its second presidential election will produce a result that Afghans can trust. If not, there is concern that voter anger will unleash violence along the ethnic and regional lines that divide this fragmented society. [continued…]
As the Barack Obama administration struggles to devise a strategy for dealing with Iran’s intransigence on the uranium-enrichment issue, it appears to be gravitating toward the imposition of an international embargo on gasoline sales to that country.
Such a ban would be enacted if Iranian officials fail to come up with an acceptable negotiating plan by the time the United Nations General Assembly meets in late September – the deadline given by the White House for a constructive Iranian move.
Iran, of course, is a major oil producer, pumping out some 4.3 million barrels per day in 2008. But it is also a major petroleum consumer. Its oil industry has a significant structural weakness: its refinery capacity is too constricted to satisfy the nation’s gasoline requirements. As a result, Iran must import about 40% of the refined products it requires. Government officials are attempting to reduce this dependency through rationing and other measures, but the country remains highly vulnerable to any cutoff in gasoline imports. [continued…]
He may have finished last in Iran’s disputed presidential election, but in the weeks that followed, Mehdi Karroubi has often taken the lead in challenging the Iranian government. After the announcement of the result triggered massive demonstrations in June, Karroubi was one of the first major figures to blame the government for the violence — a brave act considering that the state media was calling the demonstrations riots instigated by foreign powers. And when Basiji militiamen roughed him up on the way to Friday prayers last month, Karroubi spoke out again. “They want to create an atmosphere of threat and terror so that people are kept silent,” he said. And despite the growing atmosphere of official intolerance for challenges to the postelection order, Karroubi has again infuriated supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by publicizing the charge that opposition protesters were raped and abused in prison. [continued…]
As Iranians celebrated the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, they were confronted Saturday with new charges of reform movement supporters being tortured in prison and of bodies being secretly buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran.
The accusations, filed on Web sites affiliated with the reform movement, added to the push and pull between an opposition movement struggling to keep itself from being silenced and a government that has tried to move past the crisis over the country’s disputed presidential elections in June. [continued…]
Military officials are anxiously watching the brittle partnership between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq as U.S. analysts warn that renewed waves of violence have put the country at a crucial crossroads.
Sunni militants are widely thought responsible for bombings in Baghdad last week that left 95 dead. But a key question being debated in Washington is whether the larger Sunni community has begun implicitly supporting the attacks.
For the moment, military officers and American analysts do not believe that a new sectarian war has broken out. But the U.S. withdrawal from Iraqi cities June 30 has unnerved Sunnis who saw the American presence as protection against Shiite oppression, and experts hope Prime Minister Nouri Maliki finds a way to quickly calm Sunni fears. [continued…]
Iraq’s military showed on Sunday what it called the confession of a mastermind of last week’s deadly attacks on two government ministries, and it announced the arrests of police and army officers the man said had been bribed to allow a huge truck bomb through checkpoints into Baghdad.
In brief, edited excerpts of videotaped remarks, the man, identified as Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim, calmly explained how he had organized one of the two bombings, which killed almost 100 people on Wednesday and wounded hundreds more. He said he did so on the orders of a man in Syria who wanted the attacks “to shake the administration.”
He described himself as a former police officer in Diyala Province and a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is banned in Iraq and which officials in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government routinely blame for much of the violence in the country. [continued…]
Allies of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday they have formed a new alliance to fight January’s general election, but the increasingly influential Iraqi leader has not joined the bloc.
The new alliance will be headed by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), one of Iraq’s most powerful Shi’ite groups, and will also include followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and other smaller groups and influential individuals.
It has been named the Iraqi National Alliance (INA). [continued…]
The idea of a “revived” Shiite alliance with a more “national” orientation was first introduced publicly by Muqtada al-Sadr in Qum, Iran, in mid-February 2009, when he requested a full makeover of the UIA which in the future should be referred to as the “United National Iraqi Alliance”. Sadr was responding to the results of the January local elections, in which the Daawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was rewarded by voters for a rhetoric in which the sectarian agenda was pushed in the background and the focus on national and centralist values was strengthened. After Sadr’s initiative, other forces in the old UIA, including the pro-Maliki independent Abbas al-Bayati as well as Ahmad al-Chalabi, soon offered their support, but it was not until May that the project got going in earnest. By that time, ISCI – which had been punished particularly hard by voters in the January polls – had taken over the initiative, and within weeks several dozen key UIA members paid their visits to ISCI’s ailing leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim at a convalescent home in Tehran where details of the new alliance were discussed. Reportedly, Muqtada al-Sadr also made the journey from Qum to reconcile with Hakim, a long-time opponent, apparently seeing the symbolic change of name as a “Sadrist demand” that could justify their return to the UIA. [continued…]
When will President Obama abandon the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas? During a press conference in Gaza City a few weeks ago, Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, declared: “If there is a real project that aims at resolving the Palestinian cause on establishing a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, under full Palestinian sovereignty, we will support it.” And in an interview shortly after, Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas’s political bureau, welcomed the “new language towards the region” from President Obama.
Hamas is trying to convey to the US its willingness to accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that it is willing to play a productive rather than obstructionist role in the peace process. But is the US listening?
It depends on what the US is listening for. If the US is waiting for Hamas to accept its three demands to renounce violence, honour past agreements and recognise Israel’s right to exist, it will probably be disappointed. To expect your opponent to give up all of its leverage before negotiations actually begin is hardly realistic. Rather, the US should interpret Hamas’s statements with two points in mind. [continued…]
There is no sign of a slowdown in the construction of homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank despite Israel’s announcement that it has stopped approving new building, the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a report issued Sunday.
Under U.S. pressure to freeze settlements, Israel indicated last week it had stopped green-lighting new construction projects, part of an attempt to bridge the gap between the two allies. The efforts to achieve an elusive agreement on settlements will continue this week at a London meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell.
But while Peace Now confirms the freeze on approval for new projects, the group’s report says settlement construction is continuing and that settlers can easily build thousands of housing units based on old plans that have already been approved.
There is existing permission for the construction of up to 40,000 housing units, the report said. Construction has begun on around 600 new housing units in 2009, it said. [continued…]
Fghting in the mountains of northwestern Yemen intensified Sunday as the government announced that it had killed more than 100 Shiite Muslim rebels, and humanitarian organizations voiced alarm over an estimated 100,000 people who have fled their homes since the conflict flared nearly two weeks ago.
The rebels rejected a cease-fire offer from the Sunni Muslim-dominated government at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan on Friday. The region has since echoed with the fire of artillery, tanks and aircraft as Yemeni forces moved to crush a five-year rebellion led by Shiite militant Abdul Malik Houthi in Saada and Amran provinces.
The fighting near the border with Saudi Arabia was another spasm across an increasingly unstable Yemen, a poor yet strategic country on the Gulf of Aden. U.S. officials are concerned that the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is engulfed in conflicts that also include a separatist insurgency in the south and growing numbers of Al Qaeda fighters using the nation as a base to launch attacks across the Middle East. [continued…]
Was Israel’s secret service behind the mysterious hijacking of a Russian freighter to foil a secret attempt to ship cruise missiles to Iran?
The mystery surrounding the hijacking of a Russian freighter in July has taken a new twist with reports claiming the pirates were acting in league with the Israeli Mossad secret service in order to halt a shipment of modern weapon systems hidden on board and destined for Iran.
While Israeli and Russian officials dismissed the reports, accounts published in the Russian media sounded more like a spy thriller than a commercial hijacking.
“There is something fishy about this whole story, no doubt about it,” Israel’s former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told The Media Line. “But I can’t comment further on this.”
The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported over the weekend that the vessel Arctic Sea had been carrying x-55 cruise missiles and S300 anti-aircraft rockets hidden in secret compartments among its cargo of timber and sawdust. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — Mossad has always been the darling of conspiracy theorists, but in this case the disappearance of the Arctic Sea presented a rather difficult question to answer: why would anyone attempt to hijack a cargo of lumber passing through European waters? An operation to intercept missiles being secretly exported to Iran? It actually sounds quite plausible.
A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency’s post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, Newsweek has learned.
According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri’s interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. “The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up,” said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with “imminent death.”
The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general’s report alludes to more than one mock execution. [continued…]
In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan run by United States Special Operations forces, according to three military officials.
The change begins to lift the veil from the American government’s most secretive remaining overseas prisons by allowing the Red Cross to track the custody of dozens of the most dangerous suspected terrorists and foreign fighters plucked off the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a major advance for the organization in its long fight to gain more information about these detainees. The military had previously insisted that disclosing any details about detainees at the secretive camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions. [continued…]
President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?
To be sure, such historical analogies are overly simplistic and fatally flawed, if only because each presidency is distinct in its own way. But the L.B.J. model — a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad — is one that haunts Mr. Obama’s White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.
In this summer of discontent for Mr. Obama, as the heady early days give way to the grinding battle for elusive goals, he looks ahead to an uncertain future not only for his legislative agenda but for what has indisputably become his war. Last week’s elections in Afghanistan played out at the same time as the debate over health care heated up in Washington, producing one of those split-screen moments that could not help but remind some of Mr. Johnson’s struggles to build a Great Society while fighting in Vietnam.
“The analogy of Lyndon Johnson suggests itself very profoundly,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. Mr. Obama, he said, must avoid letting Afghanistan shadow his presidency as Vietnam did Mr. Johnson’s. “He needs to worry about the outcome of that intervention and policy and how it could spill over into everything else he wants to accomplish.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — It’s not too soon to be comparing Obama to LBJ and it’s not too soon to be asking whether he’ll seek a second term. To call the war in Afghanistan a “war of necessity” was a strategic blunder. Obama first paddled up shit creek and then decided to throw away his paddle.
‘Is he weak?’ By Jim Hoagland, Washington Post, August 23, 2009
Shortly after the Group of 20 summit concluded in London in April, Nicolas Sarkozy blurted out to a small group of advisers a question that weighed on him as he watched President Obama glad-hand his way through the gathering: “Est-il faible?” (Is he weak?)
The French president did not answer his own blunt query, which faded as the American leader commanded a hectic round of domestic economic intervention and agenda-setting abroad in the weeks that followed. Initial doubts about Obama’s toughness went on the shelf at the Elysee Palace and elsewhere.
But the Sarkozy question was abruptly dusted off as Obama began hitting resistance to some of his most ambitious goals, including health-care reform, Middle East peacemaking and engagement with Iran. Is Obama making tactical retreats to gain better position on these hard cases — or is he, well, weak? [continued…]
American Marines secured this desolate village in southern Afghanistan nearly two months ago, and last week they were fortifying bases, on duty at checkpoints and patrolling in full body armor in 120-degree heat. Despite those efforts, only a few hundred Afghans were persuaded to come out here and vote for president on Thursday.
In a region the Taliban have lorded over for six years, and where they remain a menacing presence, American officers say their troops alone are not enough to reassure Afghans. Something is missing that has left even the recently appointed district governor feeling dismayed. “I don’t get any support from the government,” said the governor, Massoud Ahmad Rassouli Balouch.
Governor Massoud has no body of advisers to help run the area, no doctors to provide health care, no teachers, no professionals to do much of anything. About all he says he does have are police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for “vacation.” [continued…]
Making Helmand safe to vote had been Britain’s military priority this summer, the bloodiest since 2001. The aim of the five-week operation Panther’s Claw, involving 3,000 British troops, was to push the Taliban from the north of Lashkar Gah.
Ten British soldiers died in the campaign. Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Fair, commander of the Light Dragoons battle group, wrote in his diary afterwards that, as a result, people who had been subject to the rule of the Taliban could now live without the fear of them “visiting in the middle of the night”.
With some optimism he added that they now had “the freedom to vote … the chance to look forward to enjoy some of the rights and privileges that we are lucky enough to take for granted”.
In Babaji district, where the British claimed they had brought 80,000 villagers under government control during daylight hours at least, only 150 people cast their vote. “There were supposed to be three polling stations but they were closed,” said Sardar Mohammed, 54, who lives in the district. [continued…]
US officials are strategizing about how to persuade Afghan President Hamid Karzai to overhaul his government, which is widely viewed here as corrupt and ineffectual, if he wins a second term.
At the same time, some in Washington fear a runoff election could steal valuable time from the international efforts to stabilize the country. Both Mr. Karzai and his leading challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have claimed significant leads.
Results of Thursday’s presidential balloting in Afghanistan may not be available until Tuesday. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, and a runoff is necessary, these U.S. officials said it could be Oct. 1 before there is a functioning government in Kabul. [continued…]
A senior leader of the Pakistani Taliban announced Saturday that a brash young commander with a reputation for pitiless violence appeared to have won the struggle to lead the group — even as the government wrestles with conflicting information about whether that commander is even alive.
Intelligence officials in Pakistan say that the newly proclaimed leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, is dead. But Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, said Saturday in an interview that he was alive, although gravely injured, and that Taliban fighters were desperately searching for his younger brother as a stand-in.
The news on Saturday adds to the confusion that has surrounded the leadership of the group since its head, Baitullah Mehsud, was reportedly killed this month in a drone attack.
Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, deputy commander of the group, had proclaimed himself successor to Baitullah Mehsud just a few days ago. But on Saturday he told reporters by telephone that the much younger and more aggressive Hakimullah Mehsud would be the insurgency’s new leader. [continued…]
When Canadian businessman Sam Ismail brought his wife and five children to visit his brother’s family in Ramallah last week, he planned to stay for 10 days and tour both Israel and the Palestinian territories. They had flown into Amman, crossed over to the West Bank. Knowing that Palestinian Authority license plates are banned in Israel, Ismail reserved a car at an Israeli rental company. But, when he got to Israeli border control, he was shocked to discover that his Canadian passport was stamped “Palestinian Authority Only.” “Last time they came, they visited Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem — the whole country,” Ismail’s brother Nedal, who lives in the West Bank, told TIME. “This time they packed up after 96 hours and spent the extra week in Jordan instead.”
Ismail had fallen afoul of an Israeli border policy, quietly begun in June, that bars foreigners who say they are visiting the Palestinian Authority from entering Israel. Israel says the visa helps to exclude visitors who threaten security. According to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad, the procedure is based on an unpublished 2006 decision by the Israeli interior and defense ministers that “any foreign national who wants to enter the Palestinian Authority must have a permit issued by the army, and entry is permitted only into PA territory.” [continued…]
Uri Davis is used to denunciations. A “traitor”, “scum”, “mentally unstable”: those are just some of the condemnations that have been posted in the Israeli blogosphere in recent days. As the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, an organisation once dominated by Yasser Arafat, Davis has tapped a deep reserve of Israeli resentment. Some have even called for him to be deported.
He has been here before, not least as the man who first proposed the critique of Israel as an “apartheid state” in the late 1980s. Davis’s involvement in the first UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. During a career of protest he has been described – inevitably – as a “self-hating Jew”. He calls himself an “anti-Zionist”. And his personal history is a fascinating testimony to the troubled history of the postwar Israeli left and forgotten trajectories in the story of Israel itself.
The man elected to the Revolutionary Council in 31st place from a field of 600 has been as much shaped by the tidal forces of recent Jewish history – not least his own family’s sufferings in the Holocaust – as any fellow citizen of Israel. But he disputes a largely manufactured account of that experience that he believes has been used deliberately “to camouflage” its “apartheid programme”. Now he enjoys an extraordinary mandate to explain his own views. And he hopes, too, that just as the small number of white members of the ANC widened its legitimacy during the apartheid era in South Africa, other Jews can be attracted to participate in Fatah, transforming it into a broader-based movement that stands for equal rights for both Arabs and Jews in a federated state. [continued…]
Eyebrows were raised around the world Aug. 14 when Hamas security forces in Rafah swiftly, and brutally, destroyed an al-Qaeda-inspired group that had proclaimed the southern Gaza town an “Islamic emirate.” After all, Hamas is listed by the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist organization, and many in the West don’t expect an avowedly Islamist political organization to forcefully suppress jihadist groups.
Yet, that’s exactly what happened when pro-al-Qaeda cleric Abdel Latif Moussa gathered about 100 of his heavily armed supporters in a mosque to denounce Hamas rule and declared himself the “Islamic prince” of the new “emirate.” Hamas security men moved in to disarm the group, and 24 people, including Moussa and about 20 of his followers, were killed in the ensuing firefight. Their group, Jund Ansar Allah, claimed inspiration from al-Qaeda, and condemned Hamas both for maintaining a cease-fire with Israel and for its failure to impose Islamic Shari’a law after taking full control of Gaza in 2007. It had mounted small-scale attacks on rivals inside Gaza, and two months ago failed in a bizarre cavalry charge by mounted fighters against Israeli border guards. Following the Rafah showdown, the fringe group has vowed to wage war on Hamas, turning Gaza’s rulers into an unlikely ally against Osama bin Laden.
The horsemen of Jund Ansar Allah on training exercises in preparation for their quixotic attack on an Israeli border post in June:
Still, there was little surprise about the Rafah confrontation for longtime observers of Palestinian politics. Hamas, in fact, has always been at odds with al-Qaeda. Despite its Islamist ideology, Hamas is first and foremost a nationalist movement, taking its cue from Palestinian public opinion and framing its goals and strategies on the basis of national objectives, rather than the “global” jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda. For example, Hamas has periodically debated the question of whether to attack American targets in its midst, and each time has reiterated the insistence of the movement’s founders that it confine its resistance activities to Israeli targets.
“What distinguishes Hamas — as well as organizations like Hizballah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — from groups like al-Qaeda is that they recognize, whether out of principle or practical necessity, that the will of the people they claim to represent is paramount,” says Mouin Rabbani, an Amman-based analyst with the Center for Palestine Studies. “In deciding their actions, they’re ultimately more responsive to their environment than to their principles.” [continued…]
A Hamas representative said on Thursday the Palestinian Islamist group was still positive about reconciliation with its rival Fatah, days ahead of an expected new round of Egyptian-brokered talks.
“We are going to continue the dialogue with a positive mentality, but we must settle the question of (Hamas) political prisoners in the West Bank,” Hamas official Osama Abu Khaled told AFP. [continued…]
Palestinians are as eager as anyone to see positive economic development for their tormented country. But they know full well that real economic progress awaits their release from Israeli military occupation (West Bank, East Jerusalem) and siege (Gaza Strip).
Consider the recent media promotion of the Netanyahu government’s view that the occupied West Bank is witnessing rapid economic growth. Thomas Friedman picked up on that theme in his New York Times column, as did Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, in this newspaper. The selective economic data they provide ignore the reality: Occupied Palestinian territory is not a sovereign country where traditional economic measures apply.
I was the manager who oversaw the establishment of the first modern mall in the West Bank—the Plaza Shopping Center in El Bireh. I can attest that the success of a West Bank mall rests on a thin layer of elite consumer privilege poised precariously over a chasm of widespread disempowerment. Until West Bank Palestinians gain free and open access to the world economy, beyond the markets of the occupying power, major enterprises in Palestinian towns will suffer. [continued…]
Saigon 2009 By Thomas H Johnson and M Chris Mason, Foreign Policy, August 20, 2009
For those who say that comparing the current war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War is taking things too far, here’s a reality check: It’s not taking things far enough. From the origins of these North-South conflicts to the role of insurgents and the pointlessness of this week’s Afghan presidential elections, it’s impossible to ignore the similarities between these wars. The places and faces may have changed but the enemy is old and familiar. The sooner the United States recognizes this, the sooner it can stop making the same mistakes in Afghanistan.
Even at first glance the structural parallels alone are sobering. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan (prior to the U.S. engagement there) had surprisingly defeated a European power in a guerrilla war that lasted a decade, followed by a largely north-south civil war which lasted another decade. Insurgents in both countries enjoyed the advantage of a long, trackless, and uncloseable border and sanctuary beyond it, where they maintained absolute political control. Both were land wars in Asia with logistics lines more than 9,000 miles long and extremely harsh terrain with few roads, which nullified U.S. advantages in ground mobility and artillery. Other key contributing factors bear a striking resemblance: Almost exactly 80 percent of the population of both countries was rural, and literacy hovered around 10 percent.
In both countries, the United States sought to create an indigenous army modeled in its own image, based on U.S. army organization charts. With the ARVN in South Vietnam and the ANA in today’s Afghanistan, assignment of personnel as combat advisors and mentors was the absolute lowest priority. And in both wars, the U.S. military grossly misled the American people about the size of the indigenous force over a protracted period. In Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. military touts 91,000 ANA soldiers as “trained and equipped,” knowing full well that barely 39,000 are still in the ranks and present for duty. [continued…]
Ma bi-shomarim / We are countless
— Slogan of the Green Movement in Iran
Within minutes of the picture of a frail and fragile Mohammad Ali Abtahi appearing on the Internet, the blogosphere was flooded with split images of him before and after his predicament. Having lost some 20 kilos since his incarceration in late June, his handsome, always smiling and endearing, face thinned beyond recognition, disrobed of his clerical habit, his turban lost, and clad in unseemly prison pajamas, the former vice president under President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), a leading reformist, and particularly popular with bloggers because of his own weblog, Abtahi’s case was particularly heart- wrenching to his young admirers.
The belligerent custodians of the Islamic Republic had forced him to confess to crimes that would make a dead chicken laugh, as we say in Persian, and as an oppositional figure quickly pointed out. This is a velvet revolution, he was made to say, plotted by the reformists, supported by the “Enemy,” and there was nothing wrong with Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory. Instead of sadness and disappointment, the blogosphere was abuzz with love and admiration for Abtahi. He was instantly declared a national hero. “For the first time,” said one blogger, “I learned to love a cleric — and then I looked again; he had no clerical robe anymore.” Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the leading Iranian filmmaker now active in support of the Green Movement, delivered the most memorable punch line in support of Abtahi and dismissing his forced confessions. “If Khamenei were to be treated like Abtahi in jail, the Supreme Guide would come to national television belly dancing!”
Every state is founded on force, Max Weber believed early in the 20th century. What Weber termed “legitimate violence,” as the defining apparatus of any state, is predicated on what he called “external means” and “inner justification”: the more a state has to resort to external means (use of violence), the less its claim on inner justification (constitutional mandates) on its citizens. The massively orchestrated and naked violence that the Islamic Republic has launched against its own citizens (young and old, men and women, rich and poor) has not only delegitimised its claim to the notion of a “republic”, it has, ipso facto, discredited any claim to “Islam” that it may have while bordering on discrediting Islam itself, which is the reason why so many prominent, high-ranking, Shia clerics are coming out so forcefully and categorically denouncing the violent crackdown of peaceful demonstrations, in both juridical and rational terms. There were many Iranians who doubted the accuracy of the June presidential election results, and there were those who thought they were perfectly accurate. But the vicious, blatantly criminal, activities of people in positions of power in the Islamic Republic have now assumed a reality sui generis, beyond anything that any critic of this election had ever uttered. The Islamic Republic of Iran is self-destructing. [continued…]
My interrogators explained to me that the United States, bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no longer contemplates military action against Iran. Rather, they said, Washington is engaged in a long-term plan for regime change in which a crucial role is assigned to America’s great universities and think tanks, such as the one where I work. These institutions target Iran’s intellectual elites — the same class that led political revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. They use fellowships, conferences, workshops and speaking invitations to recruit Iranian intellectuals, journalists, academics and political activists, and they turn them into willing or unwitting partners in this conspiracy. The plan feeds upon itself: ideas, recruitment, linkages with politicians, mass protests and then regime overthrow.
I was supposed to be the mastermind or at least a key player in this project. My chief interrogator offered to let me off if I implicated my employer, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. At one point I replied to my interrogators that Iran is not a banana republic to be overthrown by 20 scholars sitting around a conference table.
Eventually, I was freed. But in the mass “trials” that began this month, the government prosecutor laid out precisely the same “conspiracy” I was charged with. Using the same mad logic I faced during interrogation, he managed to link together foreign governments, the BBC, other journalists, a French-language teacher, anti-regime monarchists, a former guerrilla organization and prominent leaders of the Islamic Republic. All are supposed to have joined hands to bring about regime change. [continued…]
Iran agreed with United Nations inspectors to grant greater monitoring of Tehran’s uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz as well as a nearly completed heavy-water reactor, according to officials briefed on the talks.
The accord breaks a monthslong impasse between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency that has fed into concerns Tehran is moving toward developing atomic weapons. Officials involved in the diplomacy hope Iran’s decision could signal a greater willingness by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government to cooperate with the West.
President Barack Obama has set a late September deadline for Tehran to respond to an international offer to negotiate on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, or face a new round of economic sanctions.
Tehran, engulfed in a postelection political crisis, has offered conflicting signals in recent weeks about its response. But Iran experts said Tehran’s decision on the monitors is likely a harbinger of the conciliatory stance it will take toward the international community as the deadline looms, even if it doesn’t scale back its nuclear work. [continued…]
Iran’s embattled leader toned down his rhetoric, softened his voice and attempted to directly woo the people in a live prime-time television interview Thursday before what most analysts predict will be a fierce fight with parliament over his proposed Cabinet.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said 11 of his 21 nominees have doctoral degrees, and said it was an advantage that many of them appear to be staunchly loyal to him.
“Some people suggested that such and such person is capable but he does not agree with you,” he said. “I say . . . the Cabinet ministers must be in coordination with the president so that we create synergy.”
As he spoke, the capital erupted with defiant cries of “Allahu Akbar!” and “Death to the dictator!” from rooftops and windows in what has become a nightly ritual of protest against the nation’s June 12 presidential election, which was marred by allegations of massive vote-rigging in Ahmadinejad’s favor. [continued…]
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces a tough battle to win parliament’s approval for his new cabinet after some deputies signaled they were likely to reject several nominees.
“Those nominated by the president for government posts must have sufficient expertise and experience, otherwise a great deal of the country’s energy would be wasted,” state broadcaster IRIB quoted parliament speaker Ali Larijani as saying on Thursday.
Vice speaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar, a pragmatic conservative who has been critical of the hardline president in the past, suggested up to five members of Ahmadinejad’s 21-strong cabinet risked being voted down by parliament. He did not give names. [continued…]
Built to spill By Will Ward, The National, August 20, 2009
Iran’s Achilles heel, goes the mantra of many Washington hawks, is its dependence on imported petrol – the result of underinvestment in its energy industry during three decades of sanctions. While the country is a net oil exporter, Iran’s domestic refining capacity lags, forcing the Islamic Republic to import roughly a third of its daily petrol needs from abroad and ration consumer fuel purchases.
The US Congress is currently considering a bill, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would exploit this weakness by penalising companies and individuals that import petrol into Iran or invest in its domestic oil and gas infrastructure. The rosy logic behind the sanctions bill, which currently enjoys majority support in both houses of Congress, is not new: the hope is that ordinary Iranians, squeezed at the petrol pump, will pressure their recalcitrant leaders to halt uranium enrichment, embrace Israel and stop their unpalatable activities in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. That, or Tehran will lash out frantically in response, which will lead to an international consensus for even tougher sanctions – or worse.
Opponents of the bill have already pointed out many of its flaws: for starters, Iran could seek investments from Russia and China to build new refineries. Beyond that logistical loophole, it is also the case that Iranians generally support the country’s nuclear programme – and even if they didn’t, forcing Iran’s increasingly authoritarian government to reverse course would require months, if not years, of struggle and bloodshed. Sanctions against oil-producing nations often starve business and civil society, while the continuing flow of oil profits to the state leaves the targeted regimes more, rather than less, powerful – Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq being the best example. [continued…]
From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq. [continued…]
The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency’s interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.
If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify. [continued…]
No one has taken responsibility for the horrendous bombs that shattered the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad and took more than a hundred lives yesterday but the finger must point to Sunni Arab radicals. The foreign ministry is run by Hoshyar Zebari, a prominent Kurdish politician, while the finance ministry is in the hands of the Shia hardliner Bayan Jabr, who represents the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and infuriated Sunnis during his previous post as interior minister. He was moved from that post after death squads operating directly or indirectly under cover of the ministry were revealed four years ago to have held and tortured hundreds of Sunnis. That brutality helped to start the sectarian revenge killings that so disfigured Iraq in 2006 and 2007.
The bombings may therefore have been meant in part as a Sunni Arab warning to the Kurds. Tensions and armed clashes between Kurds and Arabs are the biggest danger currently facing Iraq. Until now they have centred on the disputed city of Kirkuk as well as the land surrounding Mosul in the northwest, which Kurds also claim. Bombings in Kirkuk and Mosul have been frequent in recent months. Yesterday’s blast in Baghdad could be a way of showing Kurds that their positions in Baghdad are also vulnerable and that Sunni Arabs can hit them in the capital.
But they are also a warning to Shia hardliners, and by extension the whole of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated Iraqi government, that its policies are still not giving Sunnis a fair share of power. The disbandment of the Sunni Arab militias known as the Awakening movement, which successfully confronted al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007 has angered many Sunnis who felt they deserved more in gratitude and reward. It took courage for Iraqi Sunnis to challenge al-Qaida, and this should have been recognised by Shia leaders. Instead, the government has been slow to honour promises to take former Awakening members into the national army and police. [continued…]
Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, asserts in a new book that he was pressured by top advisers to President George W. Bush to raise the national threat level just before the 2004 election in what he suspected was an effort to influence the vote.
After Osama bin Laden released a threatening videotape four days before the election, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Mr. Ridge to elevate the public threat posture but he refused, according to the book. Mr. Ridge calls it a “dramatic and inconceivable” event that “proved most troublesome” and reinforced his decision to resign.
The provocative allegation provides fresh ammunition for critics who have accused the Bush administration of politicizing national security. Mr. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, were locked in a tight race heading into that final weekend, and some analysts concluded that even without a higher threat level, the bin Laden tape helped the president win re-election by reminding voters of the danger of Al Qaeda. [continued…]
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