Author Archives: News Sources

If President Obama is sincere …

The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee comments on the Obama administration’s silence on the continued imprisonment of a Palestinian champion of non-violence.

Amid a flurry of European diplomatic attention over the imprisonment of Bil’in’s Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the United States has stayed strangely silent on the issue. Abu Rahmah, a non-violent leader from the West Bank village of Bil’in, has been in an Israeli military jail for over one year stemming from a charge of incitement and illegal protest levied against him after he was arrested in a night raid on his house on December 10th, 2009. After serving his sentence in full, the Israeli military prosecution demanded that he stay in jail while they file an appeal asking for a harsher sentence in order to ‘make an example’ of him.

On Friday, 10 December, AP reporter Matt Lee directly addressed Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s case during a US State Department briefing. US State department spokesman PJ Crowley responded that he was unable to provide a comment on the trial. When Matt Lee pushed, arguing that the EU and other foreign dignitaries had labeled Abu Rahmah a human rights defender, Crowley responded that he will “[find] out what we know.”
At his appeal hearing at the Ofer military court of appeals on 6 December 2010, a dozen European diplomats from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Malta were on hand to observe the trial. Sir Vincent Fean gave a short statement to the press, noting his support of EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton’s statement labeling Abu Rahmah as a human rights defender. He also pointed out that last month Abu Rahmah had already finished serving his sentence. Last month, British Foreign Minister, William Hague, met with leading Palestinian grassroots organizers in an unprecedented show of support in the face of ongoing Israeli repression.

The current US administration has made repeated statements on the need to support civil society activists, such as the one made by Secretary of State Clinton in July, 2010 the Krakow Community of Democracies meeting, in which she saluted “civil society activists around the world who have recently been harassed, censored, cut off from funding, arrested, prosecuted, even killed.” Clinton explained that when we defend civil society activists “we are defending an idea that has been and will remain essential to the success of every democracy.” She called for action to “protect civil society,” “to do more to defend the freedom of association,” and to “coordinate our diplomatic pressure” “to address situations where freedom of association comes under attack.”

Despite such statements, absent from the diplomatic core were representatives of the United States. In fact, the United States has not yet made any public statements on Abdallah’s imprisonment.

Yesterday, 15 December 2010, the issue of Abu Rahmah was followed up by the AP. Crowley answered that the case is ‘watched closely’ by US representatives in Israel. Far from releasing a statement on Abdallah Abu Rahmah, Crownly confirmed the silent position on Palestinian non-violence that the United States has maintained in recent months.

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How the Afghan counterinsurgency threatens Pakistan

Anatol Lieven writes:

By now, almost all the likely outcomes of US strategy in Afghanistan are bad ones. They range from unending civil war, with government forces barely managing to hold their own against the Taliban, to de facto partition of the country. There is a chance that the Taliban would accept a settlement involving a timetable for the complete withdrawal of US forces and a neutral central government of respected Muslim figures, together with de facto Taliban control of the Pashtun heartland in the south and Western economic aid. In return they would have to promise to exclude Al Qaeda and crack down on opium cultivation in their areas (as they did in 2000).

Given that most ordinary Taliban fighters, as expressed in a survey organized by Graeme Smith of the Toronto Globe and Mail, want the exit of Western troops and a Muslim (but not necessarily Taliban) government, it’s likely that the rejection of such terms by the Taliban leadership would undermine their support on the ground. This solution would, however, be heavily dependent on the help of Pakistan as a mediator and as one of the regional guarantors of the subsequent settlement.

The top leadership of the Afghan Taliban is based in Pakistani Baluchistan under the protection of Pakistani military intelligence, and Pakistan has prevented the United States from launching drone attacks on them there (in contrast with the intensive campaign against targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north). Taliban forces use Pakistani territory for rest and recuperation, with the support of the local Pashtun population. Pakistan also has close ties to the two other Afghan Pashtun Islamist forces allied to the Taliban, the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network in the Afghan region of Greater Paktika. All of this gives Pakistan considerable influence over the Afghan Taliban—though it must be stressed that this influence is also limited. Any settlement brokered by Pakistan would have to be one the Taliban could accept without humiliation.

But if Pakistan is vital to a settlement, Pakistan is also vital in itself. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the survival of Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the most important issue for Western and global security in that region. With six times Afghanistan’s population, plus nuclear weapons, a highly trained 500,000-man army and a huge diaspora (especially in Britain), Pakistan would increase the international terrorist threat by orders of magnitude if it collapsed. There is a widespread (though exaggerated) view in the West that the weakness of the Pakistani state and the strength of Islamist support makes the country’s collapse a real possibility. Leaving aside the danger (as exposed by WikiLeaks) of nuclear materials and skills reaching terrorist groups, the disintegration of the Pakistani army, with its highly trained engineers and anti-aircraft forces, would vastly increase the “conventional” terrorist threat to India and the West.

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Israel leaves us no choice but to boycott

Ali Abunimah writes:

Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Danny Ayalon, paints a picture of an innocent Israel yearning for peace, virtually begging the intransigent Palestinians to come negotiate so there can be a “two-states-for-two-peoples solution” (“Who’s stopping the peace process?” Dec. 14). But it’s one that bears no resemblance to the realities Palestinians experience and much of the world sees every day.

Ayalon claims that the settlements Israel refuses to stop building on occupied land are a “red herring” and present no obstacles to peace because in the “43 years since Israel gained control of the West Bank, the built-up areas of the settlements constitute less than 1.7% of the total area.”

But let us remind ourselves of a few facts that are not in dispute. Since the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel signed the Oslo peace agreement in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has tripled to more than half a million. Ayalon’s deceptive focus on the “built-up areas” ignores the reality that the settlements now control 42% of the West Bank, according to a report last July from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

B’Tselem points out that there are now more than 200 Israeli settlements “that are connected to one another, and to Israel, by an elaborate network of roads.” These roads, along with various “security zones” from which Palestinians are excluded, cut across Palestinian land and isolate Palestinians in miserable and often walled, ghetto-like enclaves.

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Threat of civil war looms in Lebanon

The Guardian reports:

More than six months of menacing political rhetoric is likely to reach a potent day of reckoning in Lebanon soon when indictments are handed down after a five-year investigation to determine who killed the fragile state’s former leader Rafik Hariri.

The indictments are almost certain to implicate at least three members of the militia group and political powerhouse Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of the elder statesman and patron to the country’s Sunni Muslims.

The potential implications of that have taken Lebanon to a point that veterans of the country’s civil war had vowed never to allow again.

Tensions are palpable on the streets of Beirut, which has cast itself as a city that rose from the ashes of the 15-year conflict as a cosmopolitan and tolerant capital. Now, a generation on, residents of the city and enclaves around the country are demonstrably falling in behind sectarian positions. Many fear that bloodshed cannot be avoided.

“You are not wrong,” said a former president, Amin Gemayel, when asked about a sense of foreboding. “This is the most dangerous period in Lebanon for many, many years.”

“Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah in a direct engagement and the Lebanese guerrilla group would inflict heavy damage on the Israeli home front if war broke out, a former Israeli national security adviser said Thursday,” Reuters reports.

“Israel does not know how to beat Hezbollah,” said Giora Eiland, an army ex-general who served as national security adviser to former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

“Therefore a war waged only as Israel-versus-Hezbollah might yield better damage on Hezbollah, but Hezbollah would inflict far worse damage on the Israeli homefront than it did 4-1/2 years ago,” he told Israel Radio.
Echoing serving Israeli officials, Eiland said:

“Our only way of preventing the next war, and of winning if it happens anyway, is for it to be clear to everyone … that another war between us and Hezbollah will be a war between Israel and the state of Lebanon and will wreak destruction on the state of Lebanon.

Eiland went on to say: “Our only way of preventing the next war, and of winning if it happens anyway, is for it to be clear to everyone … that another war between us and Hezbollah will be a war between Israel and the state of Lebanon and will wreak destruction on the state of Lebanon.”

He calls this “effective deterrence,” but it can also be viewed as an effort to incite civil war by suggesting to Hezbollah’s enemies that if they don’t break Hezbollah’s power, then everyone in Lebanon will suffer the consequences.

The latest evidence of Israel’s efforts to interfere in Lebanese affairs was revealed yesterday.

Haaretz reports:

Lebanese television published Thursday photos of spy installations that the Lebanese Army had found in mountainous areas near Beirut, showing one of the devices bearing Hebrew writing.

The Lebanese Army said Wednesday it had uncovered two Israeli spy installations in mountainous areas near Beirut and the Bekaa Valley – one on Sannine mountain and another on Barouk mountain.

The photos released Thursday show a device bearing the words “mini cloud” in Hebrew, along with the name of the manufacturer – “Beam Systems Israel Ltd.” – in English.

According to reports, the installations included photographic equipment as well as laser and broadcast equipment.

Earlier Thursday, the Voice of Lebanon radio station reported that the explosion heard in Lebanon late Wednesday was an Israel Air Force operation aimed at destroying an espionage device it had installed off the coast of the city of Sidon.

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff add:

Since the beginning of 2009, Lebanese intelligence, with the aid of Hezbollah and apparently Iran, have been trying to uncover what has been called an extensive spy network operating on Israel’s behalf.

More than 100 Lebanese civilians and soldiers have been arrested as part of this effort, including fairly senior Lebanese Army officers.

According to Hezbollah, eavesdropping equipment was planted in the cars of the senior Hezbollah leadership.

Israel has never responded to the reports from Lebanon.

Reports from Lebanon need to be understood in the context of rising political tensions as The Hague’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon prepares to announce an indictment against senior Hezbollah officials in connection with the death of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the father of the current premier, Saad Hariri.

The discovery of further supposed Israeli spy activity in Lebanon serves Hezbollah interests by reminding the Lebanese public that Israel, not Hezbollah, is the real enemy.

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The United States: imperial by design

In The National Interest, John Mearsheimer writes:

In the first years after the Cold War ended, many Americans had a profound sense of optimism about the future of international politics. President Bill Clinton captured that mood when he told the UN General Assembly in September 1993:

It is clear that we live at a turning point in human history. Immense and promising changes seem to wash over us every day. The Cold War is over. The world is no longer divided into two armed and angry camps. Dozens of new democracies have been born. It is a moment of miracles.

The basis of all this good feeling was laid out at the time in two famous articles by prominent neoconservatives. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama argued in “The End of History?” that Western liberal democracy had won a decisive victory over communism and fascism and should be seen as the “final form of human government.”1 One consequence of this “ideological evolution,” he argued, was that large-scale conflict between the great powers was “passing from the scene,” although “the vast bulk of the Third World remains very much mired in history, and will be a terrain of conflict for many years to come.” Nevertheless, liberal democracy and peace would eventually come to the Third World as well, because the sands of time were pushing inexorably in that direction.

One year later, Charles Krauthammer emphasized in “The Unipolar Moment” that the United States had emerged from the Cold War as by far the most powerful country on the planet.2 He urged American leaders not to be reticent about using that power “to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.” Krauthammer’s advice fit neatly with Fukuyama’s vision of the future: the United States should take the lead in bringing democracy to less developed countries the world over. After all, that shouldn’t be an especially difficult task given that America had awesome power and the cunning of history on its side.

U.S. grand strategy has followed this basic prescription for the past twenty years, mainly because most policy makers inside the Beltway have agreed with the thrust of Fukuyama’s and Krauthammer’s early analyses.

The results, however, have been disastrous. The United States has been at war for a startling two out of every three years since 1989, and there is no end in sight. As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of world events knows, countries that continuously fight wars invariably build powerful national-security bureaucracies that undermine civil liberties and make it difficult to hold leaders accountable for their behavior; and they invariably end up adopting ruthless policies normally associated with brutal dictators. The Founding Fathers understood this problem, as is clear from James Madison’s observation that “no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Washington’s pursuit of policies like assassination, rendition and torture over the past decade, not to mention the weakening of the rule of law at home, shows that their fears were justified.

To make matters worse, the United States is now engaged in protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have so far cost well over a trillion dollars and resulted in around forty-seven thousand American casualties. The pain and suffering inflicted on Iraq has been enormous. Since the war began in March 2003, more than one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed, roughly 2 million Iraqis have left the country and 1.7 million more have been internally displaced. Moreover, the American military is not going to win either one of these conflicts, despite all the phony talk about how the “surge” has worked in Iraq and how a similar strategy can produce another miracle in Afghanistan. We may well be stuck in both quagmires for years to come, in fruitless pursuit of victory.

The United States has also been unable to solve three other major foreign-policy problems. Washington has worked overtime—with no success—to shut down Iran’s uranium-enrichment capability for fear that it might lead to Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. And the United States, unable to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place, now seems incapable of compelling Pyongyang to give them up. Finally, every post–Cold War administration has tried and failed to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; all indicators are that this problem will deteriorate further as the West Bank and Gaza are incorporated into a Greater Israel.

The unpleasant truth is that the United States is in a world of trouble today on the foreign-policy front, and this state of affairs is only likely to get worse in the next few years, as Afghanistan and Iraq unravel and the blame game escalates to poisonous levels. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey found that “looking forward 50 years, only 33 percent of Americans think the United States will continue to be the world’s leading power.” Clearly, the heady days of the early 1990s have given way to a pronounced pessimism.

This regrettable situation raises the obvious questions of what went wrong? And can America right its course? [Continue reading.]

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The House Committee for Promoting Islamophobia in America

The New York Times reports:

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man and a legal resident of the United States, who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway system. Mr. King said that Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam in Queens who had been a police informant, had warned Mr. Zazi before his arrest that he was the target of a terror investigation.

“When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders,” Mr. King said.

The move by Mr. King, who said he was planning to open a hearing on the matter beginning early next year, is the latest example of the new direction that the House will take under the incoming Republican majority.

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India accused of systematic use of torture in Kashmir

The Guardian reports:

US officials had evidence of widespread torture by Indian police and security forces and were secretly briefed by Red Cross staff about the systematic abuse of detainees in Kashmir, according to leaked diplomatic cables released tonight.

The dispatches, obtained by website WikiLeaks, reveal that US diplomats in Delhi were briefed in 2005 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about the use of electrocution, beatings and sexual humiliation against hundreds of detainees.

Other cables show that as recently as 2007 American diplomats were concerned about widespread human rights abuses by Indian security forces, who they said relied on torture for confessions.

The revelations will be intensely embarrassing for Delhi, which takes pride in its status as the world’s biggest democracy, and come at a time of heightened sensitivity in Kashmir after renewed protests and violence this year.

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Al Qaeda braced for a war without end

Syed Saleem Shahzad reports:

Richard Holbrooke, the United States special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan who died on Monday aged 69, had come to the realization that the nine-year war in Afghanistan had to come to an end.

Stopping the war will not be an easy matter. The situation on the ground is not so simple.

For instance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claims success against the Taliban in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, but what has happened is that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have stepped into the vacuum and they will continue the battle.

Similarly, Pakistan claims success in its tribal areas, but a more defiant and more ideologically motivated group has emerged to take ownership of the war.

Wali Mohammad, the brother of slain Taliban commander Nek Mohammad (see The legacy of Nek Mohammed Asia Times Online, July 2004), has taken over command of militants in South Waziristan.

Last week, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, accompanied by other top brass and members of the media, traveled to South Waziristan to showcase the military’s “victory” against militants. They were greeted by four missiles. No one was injured in the attack, but the message is clear – the militants are back.

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Who gets to feed from the trough of classified information?

Robert Naiman points out that the only reason we know that President Obama’s Afghan “progress” report is at variance with the reports coming from the intelligence community, is thanks to classified information being made public — without being declassified.

[T]he reason that we know that the collective assessments of the 16 US intelligence agencies give a very different picture than the “progress” story that the administration is presenting to the public today is that news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have reported on the National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) for Afghanistan and Pakistan, even though the NIEs are classified.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday [my emphasis throughout the following]:

Two new assessments by the US intelligence community present a gloomy picture of the Afghanistan war, contradicting a more upbeat view expressed by military officials as the White House prepares to release a progress report on the 9-year-old conflict.

The classified intelligence reports contend that large swaths of Afghanistan are still at risk of falling to the Taliban, according to officials who were briefed on the National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which represent the collective view of more than a dozen intelligence agencies.

The reports, the subject of a recent closed hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee, also say Pakistan’s government remains unwilling to stop its covert support for members of the Afghan Taliban who mount attacks against US troops from the tribal areas of the neighboring nation. The officials declined to be named because they were discussing classified data.

[…]

Pakistan, which is due to receive $7.5 billion in US civilian aid over three years, denies secretly backing the Taliban. However, intelligence gathered by the US continues to suggest that elements of Pakistan’s security services arm, train and fund extremist militants, according to military and State Department documents disclosed this year by WikiLeaks.

[…]

Key members of Congress are watching the Obama strategy warily. “Our political and diplomatic efforts are not in line with our military efforts,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who is under consideration as the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.” It may be time to consider a smaller troop footprint.”

Speaker-designate John Boehner announced yesterday that Rogers will indeed be chair.

The New York Times reported:

As President Obama prepares to release a review of American strategy in Afghanistan that will claim progress in the nine-year-old war there, two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.

[…]

The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The findings were described by a number of American officials who read the reports’ executive summaries.

[…]

The White House review comes as some members of Mr. Obama’s party are losing patience with the war. “You’re not going to get to the point where the Taliban are gone and the border is perfectly controlled,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Smith said there would be increasing pressure from the political left on Mr. Obama to end the war, and he predicted that Democrats in Congress would resist continuing to spend $100 billion annually on Afghanistan.

Note that the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times cite unnamed officials, and then quote members of the Intelligence Committee. It’s a reasonable guess that Representative Rogers and Representative Smith are familiar with the contents of the NIEs, and that they are among the unnamed sources.

Today, the Washington Post reports on the White House/Pentagon review:

A White House review of President Obama’s year-old Afghan war strategy concluded that it is “showing progress” against al-Qaeda and in Afghanistan and Pakistan but that “the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable,” according to a summary document released early Thursday.

[…]

The overview of the long-awaited report contained no specifics or data to back up its conclusions. The actual assessment document is classified and will not be made public, according to an administration official who said that interested members of Congress would be briefed on it in January.

This example shows why we need journalism on classified information, including WikiLeaks. If the assessment of the 16 intelligence agencies is different from the White House/Pentagon review, the public need to know that in order to have an informed opinion.

Clearly there is a public need for access to classified information, but what we see here is the subtext to the WikiLeaks story. It is not about secrecy per ce; it is about the government’s ability to act as the gatekeeper of classified information, so that officials retain a measure of control over when such information is released and to whom.

Classified information is food for journalists and it is provided on mutually understood but unstated terms: that journalists thus rewarded will use the material in such a way that they can expect to continue being offered future rewards. WikiLeak’s “crime” is that it operates outside this circle of privileged access to information and thus robs government officials of a significant measure of the power through which they can manipulate the media.

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The DOJ’s conspiracy to criminalize investigative journalism

The New York Times has reported that the Department of Justice is investigating the possibility that Julian Assange could be charged as a conspirator in the leaking of classified documents. The aim would be to draw a distinction between Assange’s actions and those of journalists. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, investigation journalism involves all sorts of actions which would fall foul of the same theory of conspiracy.

Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren’t typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau described how they granted anonymity to “nearly a dozen current and former official” to induce them to reveal information about Bush’s NSA eavesdropping program. Dana Priest contacted numerous “U.S. and foreign officials” to reveal the details of the CIA’s “black site” program. Both stories won Pulitzer Prizes and entailed numerous, active steps to cajole sources to reveal classified information for publication.

In sum, investigative journalists routinely — really, by definition — do exactly that which the DOJ’s new theory would seek to prove WikiLeaks did. To indict someone as a criminal “conspirator” in a leak on the ground that they took steps to encourage the disclosures would be to criminalize investigative journalism every bit as much as charging Assange with “espionage” for publishing classified information.

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Will the Afghanistan war break Obama’s presidency?

Simon Tisdall writes:

Barack Obama puts a brave face on it. The Afghan war is winnable, he insists. “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum,” he told US troops at Bagram this month. He repeated the mantra today. But American commentators and analysts, across the political spectrum, are wondering aloud: will it happen the other way around? Will the war break Obama’s presidency?

Obama is not yet the Rose Garden prisoner of a failed policy – the fate that befell a Democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, whose administration was taken hostage by Iran’s revolutionary mullahs. But he’s uncomfortably close, for all the determined White House talk.

Obama the presidential candidate talked up the war, spoke of fighting the good fight in Afghanistan in contrast to Iraq, wrote Peter Feaver in Foreign Policy. But Obama the president struggles to communicate his aims, much as he struggled on healthcare. Feaver said:

“The administration’s strategy appears to be to drive the public narrative underground.”
In other words, Obama would rather not talk about it unless he cannot avoid it.

This reluctance is political and intellectual. Veteran foreign policy analyst Leslie Gelb, writing in the Daily Beast, said Obama can no longer persuasively answer the basic question: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, at an annual cost of $113bn?

A New York Times report from Kunduz indicates that as the US has focused its efforts on securing the south, the Taliban is now taking control of the north.

This city, once a crossroads in the country’s northeast, is increasingly besieged. The airport closed months ago to commercial flights. The roads heading south to Kabul and east to Tajikistan as well as north and west are no longer safe for Afghans, let alone Westerners.

Although the numbers of American and German troops in the north have more than doubled since last year, insecurity has spread, the Taliban are expanding their reach, and armed groups that purportedly support the government are terrorizing local people and hampering aid organizations, according to international aid workers, Afghan government officials, local residents and diplomats.

The growing fragility of the north highlights the limitations of the American effort here, hampered by waning political support at home and a fixed number of troops. The Pentagon’s year-end review will emphasize hard-won progress in the south, the heartland of the insurgency, where the military has concentrated most troops. But those advances have come at the expense of security in the north and east, with some questioning the wisdom of the focus on the south and whether the coalition can control the entire country.

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Israel never really wanted peace

Elie Podeh writes:

To a great extent, Netanyahu and his cabinet are representative of Israeli society today. Public opinion polls point to increasing extremism, bordering on racism, in Jews’ opinion of Arabs, as well as to alienation and a distrust of the other side’s goals and intentions. Given these circumstances, it’s no wonder there is no public pressure on the government to advance the peace process and that there was no significant public response to the dramatic announcement that the talks had been suspended.

When it comes to peace, Israel’s position today is similar to its position after the wars of 1948 and of 1967: The potential for negotiations was there, but the cost was considered too high. Now, too, maintaining the status quo appears to be preferable to making changes that Israelis perceive as threatening, even if they do not necessarily pose a genuine danger.

In the past decade, Israel has faced a number of Arab initiatives: the Arab League peace plan, Syrian offers to negotiate, Palestinian willingness to move forward and even moderate declarations from Hamas. Successive Israeli governments responded to all of them with restraint and icy indifference (with the exception of the waning days of Ehud Olmert’s term as prime minister ).

Israel’s listless response to these proposals cannot be understood as coincidental or circumstantial; it is a pattern of behavior. And Israel has never proffered its own initiative that would indicate a desire for peace. This leads us to the unhappy conclusion that Israel – both its government and its people – are not really interested in peace; at most, they make the sounds of peace, but that is not enough.

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Top Democrat sticks up for WikiLeaks

Justin Elliot reports:

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this morning on WikiLeaks and the Espionage Act, the law that has been touted as opening up a possible route to prosecute Julian Assange. But the most interesting part of the hearing has been listening to a prominent congressional Democrat, committee chairman John Conyers of Michigan, argue strongly against prosecuting WikiLeaks in haste — or at all.

“As an initial matter, there is no doubt that WikiLeaks is very unpopular right now. Many feel that the WikiLeaks publication was offensive. But being unpopular is not a crime, and publishing offensive information is not either. And the repeated calls from politicians, journalists, and other so-called experts crying out for criminal prosecutions or other extreme measures make me very uncomfortable,” Conyers said, according to his prepared remarks.

“Indeed, when everyone in this town is joined together calling for someone’s head, that is it a pretty strong sign we need to slow down and take a closer look,” he continued.

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Julian Assange freed on bail

The Guardian reports:

Britain’s high court today decided to grant bail to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape.

Justice Duncan Ouseley agreed with a decision by the City of Westminister earlier in the week to release Assange on strict conditions: £200,000 cash deposit, with a further £40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of £20,000 and strict conditions on his movement.

The New York Times reports:

Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

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Middle East peace process: Dead but not buried

In an age where the newspaper editorial has become an anachronism, few are worth reading. This, from The Guardian, is an exception and for that reason I include the whole piece.

The Middle East peace process died a quiet, undramatic death with the statement last week that the US had given up trying to persuade Binyamin Netanyahu to stop building on occupied land as a prerequisite to direct talks with the Palestinians. Few, however, are interested in burying the corpse.

The rightwing coalition under Mr Netanyahu is relaxed about the failure to restart the talks, because half the cabinet do not accept that they are occupying any land other than their own. And anyway, every day without a final status agreement is another day when the cement mixers can whirl and the cranes swivel. Palestinian leaders who recognise Israel are also reluctant to make good their pledges to resign, because they, too, would lose position, power and political meaning. Fatah has still legitimacy, but where would the Palestinian Authority be in Palestinian eyes other than as a surrogate for Israeli soldiers?

The US is unwilling to set a date for the funeral, because to recognise that a death had taken place would entail an inquest and an examination of 18 fruitless years of failed attempts. And that is the last thing a US president fighting re-election will do. The radical part of Barack Obama’s Middle East strategy has already been and gone. He has spent his political capital and needs to conserve the dimes in his pocket. All of these are compelling short-term reasons for doing nothing, for saying, as if this has not been said often enough in the past, that the time is not ripe, the leaders are too weak, the sides are not ready. But they are dreadful long-term ones. Israel will continue to impose its own one-state solution, with separate roads, and separate governance for Jew and Arab. The Palestinian leadership will continue weak and divided. The argument that Hamas and other militant groups use, that Israel makes territorial concessions only when it is forced to, will grow in resonance. And, inch by inch, the next conflict – be it in the form of a strike on Iran, or a third Palestinian uprising – will come closer. Doing nothing is not just the counsel of despair. In the asymmetry of relations between the growing state of Israel and the shrinking non-state of Palestine, doing nothing is a deeply partisan act.

There are political moves that could release the log jam. Israel’s Labour party could pull out of the coalition, making good on frequent threats to do so. If its leader, Ehud Barak, was right when he said that there is a contradiction between the structure of the government and the chance of promoting negotiations, and he is, then Labour should pull out. President Mahmoud Abbas should also consider steps that would end the current sham. If, in his words, he is presiding over an authority without any authority, and if he is right when he says that the PA’s very existence has made Israel’s occupation the cheapest ever, it is time to end this state of affairs. What exactly is there to lose? Disbanding the PA would mean a return to direct occupation, and seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state, or handing over responsibility for the Palestinian territories to the UN, would attract a US veto. But if this US president or any future US president were pushed to the point at which the US could abstain in such a vote, all bets would be off.

The contradiction at the heart of US policy is that its support for Israel is unconditional. Even the offer of billions of dollars of aid did not turn Mr Netanyahu’s head, because he knew, if he refused, the flow of US money and weaponry would continue unabated. Any future US president, not just the current one, must calibrate the relationship with Israel as the US does with any other ally. The cost of each new housing unit built in occupied territory should be deducted off US aid. The realities that make such a measure inconceivable today do not lessen the case for such moves tomorrow. They make them compelling.

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Why Ahmadinejad fired FM Mottaki

insideIRAN.org reports on the sudden removal of Iran’s foreign minister on Monday.

Mohammad Reza Heidari, a former high-ranking Iranian diplomat in Norway, announced in December 2009 that he was quitting the foreign ministry and not returning to Tehran. He now lives in Oslo, where he spoke with Arash Aramesh of insideIRAN.org about Mottaki’s firing.

Q: Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki was suddenly removed today. Did this surprise you and your friends in Iran’s diplomatic community?

A: In recent months, a number of events took place, which were interpreted by President Ahmadinejad as defeats for Mottaki. Mottaki was blamed for failing to prevent the passage of the UN resolution condemning Iran’s violation of human rights. He was blamed for failing to lead Iran to obtaining a seat in the UN Women’s Rights Panel. Then came the embarrassing story of sending illegal weapons to Nigeria. Mottaki traveled to Nigeria to minimize the damage but he failed there too. And the final blow came when UNESCO did not see Iran fit for holding a conference on philosophy. This was embarrassing to the Islamic Republic. The president tied these so-called defeats together so, if necessary, he would be able to convince the Supreme Leader that Mottaki had to go. Some of my friends and former colleagues in Tehran have told me that the Supreme Leader was not really involved in this and Ahmadinejad made this decision on his own.

He was suddenly removed. This is against diplomatic norms. It is very odd for the country’s top diplomat to be fired like this when the Foreign Minister is on an official visit delivering President Ahmadinejad’s message to the Senegalese government. This is very surprising.

Q: The Minister of Foreign Affairs has always been handpicked by the Supreme Leader. How could the president remove the Minister of Foreign Affairs without Ayatollah Khamenei’s knowledge or consent? Is this a show of power by President Ahmadinejad and sign that the Leader’s position has weakened?

A: There are rumors that Mr. Khamenei is very ill and some decision makers on the top have begun to exclude him from the decision-making process on some issues. It seems that Ahmadinejad’s supporters are stronger now. Mr. Mottaki had the backing of the Leader. Just months ago, the Leader wrote a letter asking Iranian officials to put aside their differences. The Leader specified that the country’s diplomatic affairs must be handled by the foreign minister.

Q: What is the main reason behind Mottaki’s removal?

A: Ahmadinejad wants to homogenize the government and make the nuclear issue the main pillar of his government. I have heard from my friends in the Ministry that Ahmadinejad has expressed his dissatisfaction with Mottaki. Ahmadinejad appointed Ali-Akbar Salehi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, as acting minister. Salehi is trusted by the Leader as well.

This is also a signal to the world: the person in charge of Iranian diplomacy is the head of Iran’s nuclear program. This implies that the Iranian foreign policy is nothing but the nuclear issue; they are the same thing. The president wants to silence dissenting voices in the ministry. He wants to silence dissent in the Supreme National Security Council, headed by Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. Ahmadinejad wants a confrontational policy and does not like what moderates like Jalili and Mottaki have to say.

Supporters of Ahmadinejad do not want to talk about stopping enrichment. They want to be recognized as a nuclear power to satisfy their fantasy of being a power. Moderate conservatives are cautious and do not like this. The president has been constantly fighting with the parliament. He has had issues with his own conservative camp.

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US Air Force censors media access

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The U.S. Air Force is blocking its personnel from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other major publications that have posted classified diplomatic cables, people familiar with the matter said.

Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, Spain’s El Pais, France’s Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, “ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored,” according to a screen shot reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The notice warns that anyone who accesses unauthorized sites from military computers could be punished.

The Air Force said it had blocked more than 25 websites that contained the documents, originally obtained by the website WikiLeaks and published starting late last month, in order to keep classified material off unclassified computer systems.

Major Toni Tones, a spokeswoman for Air Force Space Command, wouldn’t name the websites but said they might include media sites. Removing such material after it ends up on a computer could require “unnecessary time and resources,” Major Tones said.

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Rethinking terrorist blacklisting

Gavin Sullivan writes:

Terrorist blacklisting has been a central plank of the “war on terror” pursued by western states since 9/11. The idea is simple. International or regional bodies (such as the UN and EU) and states (such as the UK) designate individuals and groups thought to be terrorists or “associated with” terrorism, freeze their assets, impose travel bans, criminalise their membership and prevent others from supporting them. Yet after almost 10 years – following a plethora of successful legal challenges, the failure of reforms that have tried to render listing procedures compliant with human rights, and widespread criticism by judges and other officials – the policy of blacklisting is now facing a fundamental crisis of legitimacy.

The evolution of this crisis, and the possible ways of moving beyond it, are detailed in a critical report launched today by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which suggests that the time has come for radically rethinking the policy of blacklisting. Following the recent recommendations of Martin Scheinin, the outgoing UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, it calls for the two key security council resolutions underpinning the blacklisting system to be abolished.

Resolution 1267 (and the resolutions that amended it) created the UN sanctions committee, comprised of all members of the security council, to compile a list of individuals and groups “associated with” Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban and compel states to bring proceedings or penalise those designated. Resolution 1373 requires states to criminalise the support and financing of terrorism while giving them the autonomy to set up their own domestic blacklists. The EU has used it to set up its own list criminalising groups such as the PKK and the LTTE as terrorist organisations.

The most persistent criticism of both regimes is that they breach fundamental rights. Most listing decisions are based on secret intelligence material that neither blacklisted individuals nor the courts responsible for reviewing the implementation of the lists will ever see. As courts have repeatedly affirmed, one cannot oppose allegations against them (and exercise their right to judicial review) if they are prevented from knowing what the allegations actually are. Such treatment is a fundamental breach of the right to a fair trial. Yet it is an ongoing Kafkaesque reality for the majority of those who are placed on the blacklists.

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