Author Archives: Paul Woodward

Iraq veterans find Afghan enemy even bolder

Iraq veterans find Afghan enemy even bolder
By Richard A Oppel Jr, New York Times, July 26, 2009

In three combat tours in Anbar Province, Marine Sgt. Jacob Tambunga fought the deadliest insurgents in Iraq.

But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar.

Like other Anbar veterans here, Sergeant Tambunga was surprised to discover guerrillas who, if not as lethal, were bolder than those he fought in Iraq.

“They are two totally different worlds,” said Sergeant Tambunga, a squad leader in Company C, First Battalion, Fifth Marines.

“In Iraq, they’d hit you and run,” he said. “But these guys stick around and maneuver on you.”

They also have a keen sense of when to fight and when the odds against them are too great. Three weeks ago, the American military mounted a 4,000-man Marine offensive in Helmand — the largest since President Obama’s troop increase — and so far in many places, American commanders say, they have encountered less resistance than expected.

Yet it is also clear to many Marines and villagers here that Taliban fighters made a calculated decision: to retreat and regroup to fight where and when they choose. And in the view of troops here who fought intensely in the weeks before the offensive began, fierce battles probably lie ahead if they are to clear the Taliban from sanctuaries so far untouched. [continued…]

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High turnout in Iraqi Kurds’ elections

High turnout in Iraqi Kurds’ elections
By Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 26, 2009

Voters in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region cast their ballots on Saturday in local presidential and parliamentary elections as a hunger for political reform clashed with a desire to maintain stability.

Turnout was high — 78.5 percent according to the Electoral Commission — and voting was extended by an hour to accommodate the crowds.

Preliminary results were not expected until Sunday, but by Saturday night an opposition party was already charging fraud and the governing coalition was claiming a regionwide lead.

There was little doubt here that the governing coalition would maintain its ironclad grip on this region of 4.5 million people. Many Kurds credit the regional government for the relative security and prosperity the region enjoys compared with the rest of Iraq. [continued…]

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American forged own path into Al Qaeda

American forged own path into Al Qaeda
By Josh Meyer and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2009

Bryant Neal Vinas’ unlikely odyssey from Long Island, N.Y., to Al Qaeda’s innermost circle of commanders in Pakistan was achieved without any help in the U.S. from the well-oiled “jihadist pipeline” that has guided so many militants from Europe and other countries — a fact that is cause for concern, current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials said.

His case, which became public last week, showed that a U.S. convert to Islam bent on waging holy war could — without much difficulty — rely largely on friends and acquaintances to find his own way into the shadowy terrorist networks.

Current and former intelligence officials said that although they were able to at least partly track Vinas, they fear that the informal network of militants in Pakistan that he tapped into is widespread and below the radar of U.S. intelligence gathering.

Juan Zarate, the former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism in the Bush administration, said that the Vinas case illustrated how difficult it was to follow young men who become radicalized and make their way to militant camps in Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. [continued…]

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Opponent says Jane Harman represents Israel, not California

Opponent says Jane Harman represents Israel, not California
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, July 24, 2009

Democrat Marcy Winograd (left) is primarying Congresswoman Jane Harman in California. Winograd ran in 2006 and got 38 percent, she says. And Winograd, who is Jewish, is making the race all about the special relationship with Israel. Like, she’s having a reading of My Name Is Rachel Corrie in LA in August.

And she is accusing Harman of dual loyalty. Remember that when some opponent accused Rahm Emanuel of dual loyalty a few years back in Chicago, he got crushed, accused of anti-Semitism. A legitimate question, when Emanuel had run off to serve as a civilian at an Israeli base during the Gulf War. [continued…]

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The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil

Bush weighed using military in arrests
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnson, New York Times, July 25, 2009

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.[…]

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody. [continued…]

The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, July 25, 2009

This new report today from The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston reveals an entirely unsurprising though still important event: in 2002, Dick Cheney and David Addington urged that U.S. military troops be used to arrest and detain American citizens, inside the U.S., who were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda. That was done pursuant to a previously released DOJ memo (.pdf) authored by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, addressed to Alberto Gonzales, dated October 23, 2001, and chillingly entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the U.S.” That Memo had concluded that the President had authority to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens on U.S. soil. Far worse, it asserted that in exercising that power, the President could not bound either by Congressional statutes prohibiting such use (such as the Posse Comitatus Act) or even by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which — the Memo concluded — was “inapplicable” to what it called “domestic military operations.”

Though it received very little press attention, it is not hyperbole to observe that this October 23 Memo was one of the most significant events in American politics in the last several decades, because it explicitly declared the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights — inoperative inside the U.S., as applied to U.S. citizens. [continued…]

The alarming record of the FBI’s informant in the Bronx bomb plot
By Graham Rayman, Village Voice, July 7, 2009

Last month, police and the FBI arrested four Newburgh men on charges that they had plotted to bomb synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and fire a missile at a military jet.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly held press conferences at the synagogues to reassure New Yorkers about their safety. During Kelly’s remarks, it was startling to hear the commissioner refer to al-Qaeda by name, if only to say that the four purported home-grown terrorists had no ties to Osama Bin Laden’s organization.

As more details emerged, however, the less the four defendants sounded like men with the skills to plan a sophisticated terror plot. They were small-time crooks, felons with long criminal records whose previous activities revolved around smoking marijuana and playing video games. One defendant, Laguerre Payen, was arrested in a crack house surrounded by bottles of his own urine; his lawyer describes him as “mildly retarded.”

It seemed fairly astounding that, for a full calendar year, such a group could remain interested in and plan anything more complex than a backyard barbecue, let alone a multipronged paramilitary assault, as the indictment against them alleged. [continued…]

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Ahmadinejad bows to Khamenei on first vice president

Ahmadinejad bows to Khamenei on first vice president
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 25, 2009

This issue of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appointment of Esfandiyar Rahim-Masha’i as his first vice president came to a head on Friday. Rahim-Masha’i, the father of Ahmadinejad’s daughter-in-law, had offended the hard liners last year by saying Iranians are friends of the Israeli people (as opposed to the ‘Zionist regime.’)

Ahmadinejad was presumably, by his appointment of Rahim-Masha’i, trying to signal three things.

1. He is not just a puppet of the hard liners, or even of Khamenei (Ahmadinejad portrays himself as a populist standing up to the fat cats and elites on behalf of the little person, a message he could hardly keep on point if he is just a hired gun of . . . the elite).

2. Ahmadinejad is tolerant of Iranian liberals. Rahim-Masha’i has been accused of favoring religious pluralism (saying that all the great religions are true) and of declaring that “Islamism” is outmoded and its era over with (thus he is accused of being a ‘post-Islamist’ in Asaf Bayat’s terminology). The appointment may have aimed at mollifying some of the reformists?

3. Ahmadinejad is not the crackpot on the question of Israel that his opponents in the presidential race, such as Mir Hossein Mousavi, had painted him.

Of course, if those were his goals, they were unlikely to be achieved in this way, and now the whole thing has in any case come undone. [continued…]

Iran’s top cleric pushes Ahmadinejad on aide
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2009

Questions surround the Mashaei controversy.

Some analysts have said hard-liners oppose him because of friendly comments he made last year about Israel. Others say he is a member of a secretive sect, the Hojjatieh, which has a messianic worldview so extreme that the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had outlawed it. A video posted online shows Mashaei making a speech in line with Hojjatieh philosophy.

According to Islamic Republic News Agency reports, Ahmadinejad has described Mashaei as a “pious man who is a devotee of Imam Mahdi,” a Shiite saint whose return is awaited by believers.

Several weeks before the June 12 presidential election, Rezai said Ahmadinejad was “surrounded by dangerous individuals” pushing the country toward a precipice. Many considered that to be a jab at the messianic bent of some in his inner circle.

Others describe Mashaei, born in 1960 in the Caspian Sea town of Ramsar, as an opportunist who has parlayed his longtime friendship with Ahmadinejad, an in-law, into a position of power.

Several sources say the two men met in the 1980s while serving in the Revolutionary Guard. Mashaei cultivated strong ties to the intelligence and propaganda divisions of the Revolutionary Guard, as well as the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, where he served in the 1990s. In 2004, Ahmadinejad named him to a position within the Tehran municipality.

Publicly, conservatives say they despise Mashaei for his comments about Israel. He was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency as saying in a July interview last year that, despite the conflict between the governments, “Iran is friends with the American and Israeli people. No nation in the world is our enemy.”

He has since strenuously disavowed the comments.

On Friday, a news website quoted Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf as accusing Mashaei and his wife of supporting the Mujahedin Khalq, an outlawed Iranian exile group that seeks to overthrow the government and that the United States considers a terrorist group.

Qalibaf said Mashaei’s wife is a former member of the group and the two met in prison, where he was her interrogator. A source close to the Mashaei family confirmed that, saying that she had been sentenced to hang when he proposed to marry her to save her from the gallows. [continued…]

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Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal

Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal
By Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, July 25, 2009

When insurgents attacked an American convoy with AK-47 rounds and a couple of grenades on a dusty highway in a Baghdad suburb this week, U.S. soldiers returned fire, chased the suspects through narrow alleyways and raided houses.

Tuesday’s clash killed two Iraqi adults and a 14-year-old and wounded four people, including two children.

When the shooting subsided, another confrontation began. A senior Iraqi army commander who arrived at the scene concluded that the Americans had fired indiscriminately at civilians and ordered his men to take the U.S. soldiers into custody. The U.S. military said the soldiers had acted in self-defense and had sought to avoid civilian casualties; U.S. commanders at the scene persuaded the Iraqis to back down.

The incident, apparently the first time a senior Iraqi commander has sought to detain U.S. soldiers, signals a potential escalation of tensions between U.S. and Iraqi forces trying to find a new equilibrium as Iraq assumes more responsibility for its security. [continued…]

Iraq presses U.S. on pact with Sunnis in Turkey
By Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 24, 2009

Iraq’s government said Thursday that it was demanding explanations from the United States and Turkey about a protocol signed this year between an American official and a representative of a group of Iraqi Sunni insurgents in Istanbul as a precursor to negotiations between the two sides.

The Iraqi government said in a statement that the protocol amounts to “an interference in Iraq’s internal political affairs” and that it was expecting “clear explanations” from American and Turkish officials at the embassies in Baghdad.

Contacts between the American government and Iraqi insurgent groups are nothing new, and the most recent ones have occurred with the coordination of an Iraqi government reconciliation unit attached to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s office. The goal is to get insurgents to renounce violence and embrace the political process.

But the release of the document of the protocol appears to be an attempt to embarrass the United States and show how deeply involved it remains in Iraq’s affairs. It also underscores just how hostile Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-led government remains to any serious engagement with Sunni insurgents, especially those suspected of having links to Saddam Hussein’s former ruling Baath Party. [continued…]

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Fatah’s leadership crisis deepens

Fatah’s leadership crisis deepens
By Helena Cobban, IPS, July 24, 2009

Fifty years ago, a small group of Palestinian teachers and engineers living in Kuwait founded a secretive movement aimed at liberating those portions of previously British-ruled Palestine that became the State of Israel in 1948.

The group they founded, Fatah, went on to dominate the entire Palestinian political scene. In 1969 it took over the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which had been founded by the Arab states – as a counter to Fatah – a few years earlier.

In 1993, it was Fatah/PLO head Yasser Arafat who signed the ‘Oslo Accord’ with Israel; and the following year Arafat became president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) established in occupied Ramallah.

But for several years, Fatah has been in crisis, and now that crisis is coming to a sharp head. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is planning to convene a meeting of Fatah’s policymaking General Conference Aug. 4. By insisting on holding it in occupied Bethlehem – which will enable Israel’s security forces to completely control who attends and who does not – he has helped split the group’s historic leadership down the middle. [continued…]

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How the Bush administration tried to cover up mass murder

How the Bush administration tried to cover up mass murder
Fresh Air, NPR, July 23, 2009


AfghanMassGrave.org

Dr. Jennifer Leaning, Nathaniel Raymond and Dr. Nizam Peerwani of Physicians for Human Rights discuss with Terry Gross their investigation of the alleged massacre of hundreds or possibly thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners at Dasht-i-Leili in Afghanistan in December 2001.

Nathaniel Raymond [Physicians for Human Rights]: Our consuming fear from day one, Terry, was that any evidence there was going to be removed and/or destroyed. We were also deeply concerned about witnesses who had spoken to journalists such as Newsweek, to the United Nations and to others and now sadly we know two things: One, we know that there is clear evidence — our forensic team documented [this] in 2008 — of tampering at the site. And we also have satellite imagery which shows that in 2006, less than a month approximately after we filed a Freedom of Information Act request in US federal court, there is one large hole present at the site and what appears to be a hydrolic excavator and a truck digging what becomes the second large trench that our forensic team found in 2008. But for me, and I want to make this very clear, the great tragedy in this case has been the loss of the witnesses.

We now know through State Department documents we received through Freedom of Information Act request that at least four witnesses — innocent men who were bulldozer drivers and truck drivers — have been tortured, killed and disappeared.

Terry Gross: Nathaniel, your Freedom of Information Act files related to the mass grave — your request was made in June of 2006 — and I know you had a lot of trouble getting the Freedom of Information files, although you finally got them. What kind of trouble did you have?

NR: Well, the trouble that Physicians for Human Rights had was the Bush administration did not want to release any documents and so with the help of Ropes and Gray, a law firm in Washington, we were able to pressure them to release the documents and we started receiving them in 2008 and what we found was frankly jaw dropping.

In a November 2002 State Department intelligence report there was a body count and it was from a three-letter redacted intelligence source, which means we couldn’t see who was reporting it, but whoever was reporting it was identified by three letters [editor’s wild guess: possibly a combination of the letters “C”, “I” and “A”]. And this three-letter source said at least 1,500 to as many as 2,000 had died as part of the massacre.

And what we also learned, which was very hard for us at Physicians for Human Rights to see, is that the US government had confirmation that at least four witnesses had been tortured, killed and/or disappeared.

TG: What does it say to you that within these Freedom of Information Act files there was a source, whose name was redacted, who actually gave an estimated body count in this mass grave?

NR: Speaking with former Bush administration officials, that source was an agency. And we still do not have confirmation about what US intelligence agency that was, but it was absolutely outrageous. The fact that the US government would be saying there was no grounds for a US investigation, no grounds for security of the site, no grounds for protection of witnesses, but they had a body count for years, and they had clear evidence that people — innocent bystanders in this case — were being killed and they did nothing. [continued…]

Afghan massacre: the convoy of death (video)

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What Israel needs to know about Sharia

What Israel needs to know about Sharia
By Osama Abu-Irshaid and Paul Scham, Foreign Policy, July 22, 2009

We argue that engagement with Hamas is essential, and possible. To understand how, it is necessary to take into account that many of Hamas’s statements and actions are governed and limited by its understanding of Islamic religious law (sharia), a comprehensive code relevant to all aspects of life for believing Muslims, very much including politics. We maintain that Hamas cannot be understood without understanding the sharia background of many of its policies.

By its reading of sharia (a reading it shares with the Muslim mainstream), Israel’s establishment is illegitimate and unjust, and its recognition by Muslims is forbidden. Thus far, the Muslim states that have recognized Israel, including Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, have made a political decision to do so, one not grounded in Islamic law. Similarly, the Arab Peace Initiative — which offered full recognition of Israel by all 19 remaining Arab states in return for Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries and an “agreed-upon” settlement of the Palestinian refugees — is a political, not sharia-justified, compromise.

Hamas maintains that accepting Israel’s legitimacy necessarily renounces the Palestinian narrative, which defines Palestine as Arab and Muslim, in contrast to the Jewish narrative, which defines the Land of Israel as Jewish by God’s promise, by legal right, and by history. Can these two worldviews be reconciled? Absolutely not. Can Hamas and Israel co­exist peacefully? We believe they can. Reconciliation is much harder than coexistence. [continued…]

Hamas shifts from rockets to public relations
By Ethan Bronner, New York Times, July 24, 2009

Mr. Taha and others say that the military has replaced field commanders and restructured itself as it learns lessons from the war. The decision to suspend the use of the short-range Qassam rockets that for years have flown into Israel, often dozens a day, has been partly the result of popular pressure. Increasingly, people here are questioning the value of the rockets, not because they hit civilians but because they are seen as relatively ineffective.

“What did the rockets do for us? Nothing,” Mona Abdelaziz, a 36-year-old lawyer, said in a typical street interview here.

How long Hamas will hold its fire and whether it will obtain longer-range missiles — which it says it is seeking — remain unclear. But the shift in policy is evident. In June, a total of two rockets were fired from Gaza, according to the Israeli military, one of the lowest monthly tallies since the firing began in 2002.

In that tactical sense, the war was a victory for Israel and a loss for Hamas. But in the field of public opinion, Hamas took the upper hand. Its leaders have noted the international condemnation of Israel over allegations of disproportionate force, a perception they hope to continue to use to their advantage. Suspending the rocket fire could also serve that goal.

“We are not terrorists but resistance fighters, and we want to explain our reality to the outside world,” Osama Alisawi, the minister of culture, said during a break from the two-day conference. “We want the writers and intellectuals of the world to come and see how people are suffering on a daily basis.” [continued…]

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White House sends A-Team to Israel to try to overcome settlements impasse, talk Iran

White House sends A-Team to Israel to try to overcome settlements impasse, talk Iran
By Laura Rozen, Foreign Policy, July 23, 2009

A flurry of upcoming meetings between senior U.S. and Israeli officials suggest that Washington is determined to try to overcome the current impasse. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrives in Israel Monday for talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other leaders. Aides declined to discuss the secretary’s agenda at all except to confirm the trip.

Mitchell too is headed back to Israel Sunday, after visits today in Abu Dhabi, and Damascus tomrrow, and before going on to Egypt and Bahrain. One notes that Mitchell’s and Gates’s trips might overlap, and that both have Defense Minister Barak as one chief interlocutor.

National Security Advisor Gen. James. L. Jones also confirmed to Foreign Policy that he plans to lead a separate multiagency team that reportedly includes officials from the Treasury Department, CIA, as well as NSC Senior Director for the Central Region Dennis Ross to Israel for meetings next Wednesday with Israeli national security advisor Uzi Arad and others. Iran is expected to be the major focus of these talks, which are separate from the Gates’ trip, a U.S. defense official said. Some Iran watchers believe if Iran hasn’t responded to the offer for talks by September, that the process for organizing a tougher sanctions regime targeting Iran will begin to get underway at the U.N. General Assembly in September and subsequent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, although administration and outside sources have indicated Russia is not likely to support such measures until after the end of the year. [continued…]

An Economist debate: This house believes that Barack Obama’s America is now an honest broker between the Israelis and the Arabs
Daniel Levy in debate with David Frum, The Economist, July, 2009

Daniel Levy: “Brokering real progress on Israel-Palestine is now more readily understood as being in the US national interest. An especially compelling case can also now be made on why a two-state solution is urgent for Israel and its future as a democracy, and there are new progressive dynamics in America’s Jewish community and in online political organising that support this trend.

“Against this backdrop, Mr Obama is staking out that role of the honest-enough broker. His administration has made public its disagreement with Israel’s settlement policy, unequivocally calling for a full freeze. US relations with Syria have been upgraded. The president has made a point of reaching out to the Arab and Muslim worlds, notably in his Cairo speech, and has done so respectfully, eschewing the arrogant and lecturing tone of his predecessor. Obama has conveyed his determination to realise a two-state solution, just last week telling American Jewish leaders that he would be ‘evenhanded’, having honest conversations with and putting pressure on both the Israeli and Arab sides.” [continued…]

U.S., Israel abort missile test
By Margaret Coker and Josh Mitnick, Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009

Israeli and U.S. military officials this week aborted a test of a missile-defense shield under development by the two countries, raising questions about the reliability of Israel’s defenses against a potential Iranian attack.

The news, which military officials were careful not to characterize as a failure of the Israeli missile-defense program, comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East over the strengthening of Iranian hawks loyal to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s recent electoral victory has fueled renewed debate in Washington and European capitals about whether to rely on continued diplomacy to curb what the U.S. and Israel see as Iran’s intention to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. [continued…]

Israeli warships’ passage through Suez Canal causes a stir
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2009

There’s no sneaking a warship through the Suez Canal, so it’s best to sail through and remain coy.

Israel has done just that. At least two of its missile-class Saar 5 warships and a Dolphin submarine have sailed through the canal in recent weeks, prompting conjecture about Israel’s intentions. Possible scenarios include the sending of a message to Iran about Israeli military might and giving the impression that Israel and Egypt, which controls the Suez, are closely cooperating against regional security threats.

The Israeli government has said little about why the vessels were on missions that took them through the Suez, but they come as Israel has grown insistent on stopping Iran’s nuclear program. That fits in with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to link the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with agreements from Arab states to help Israel counter Iran. [continued…]

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Iranian opposition figure’s brother in detention

Iranian opposition figure’s brother in detention
By Robert F Worth, New York Times, July 24, 2009

The wife of the Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi spoke out forcefully on Thursday against the recent publication of accusations against her imprisoned brother, saying the accusations were false and amounted to a new effort by Iran’s hard-line leadership to discredit the opposition movement.

Mr. Moussavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is a well-known figure in Iran who played an important role in his campaign before the disputed June 12 election. She made her statement on Thursday after a hard-line lawmaker accused her brother in print of helping orchestrate the post-election rallies and riots. The brother, Shahpour Kazemi, was arrested a month ago, and the Iranian authorities are reported to be preparing to broadcast videotaped confessions by some people detained in the unrest.

“I am announcing that if they force a confession out of Mr. Kazemi or publish a hundred pages of accusations against him, neither I nor the people of Iran will believe it,” Ms. Rahnavard said, in comments published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site. [continued…]

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A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world

A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world
The Economist, July 23, 2009

What ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure.

They have, for a start, failed to make their people free: six Arab countries have an outright ban on political parties and the rest restrict them slyly. They have failed to make their people rich: despite their oil, the UN reports that about two out of five people in the Arab world live on $2 or less a day. They have failed to keep their people safe: the report argues that overpowerful internal security forces often turn the Arab state into a menace to its own people. And they are about to fail their young people. The UNDP reckons the Arab world must create 50m new jobs by 2020 to accommodate a growing, youthful workforce—virtually impossible on present trends. [continued…]

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Jerusalem impasse threatens Obama peace plan

Jerusalem impasse threatens Obama peace plan
By Tony Karon, Time, July 23, 2009

Last summer, in the course of a campaign speech reaching out to pro-Israel groups concerned about his commitment to the Jewish state, then presidential candidate Barack Obama declared, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Those words, which he later qualified, may now be coming back to haunt the President as he seeks to restart the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process by getting Israel to freeze all construction outside its pre-1967 borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn a line in the sand over Jerusalem, vehemently rejecting Washington’s demand that he halt a construction project in the Arab eastern portion of the city that was occupied by Israel in 1967. Israel claims sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, and Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that this claim was nonnegotiable.

Although the U.S. has routinely opposed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem — President Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it “unhelpful” — Netanyahu appears to be betting that by very publicly challenging Obama on Jerusalem, he can rally support from those Jewish leaders in the U.S. who have lately expressed disquiet over the President’s Middle East policies, and also from Christian conservative supporters of Israel. And the Israelis are plainly looking to make a campaign of it, with the mayor of Jerusalem being dispatched to the U.S. to rally opposition to the Administration’s position on the city. [continued…]

Take the case
By John Dugard, New York Times, July 23, 2009

A request is pending before the International Criminal Court in the Hague into whether international crimes were committed during the Israeli operations in Gaza in December 2008.

Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including at least 900 civilians, and over 5,000 wounded in the offensive. Some 3,000 homes were destroyed, as were many government buildings, schools, universities, mosques, hospitals and factories.

Several investigations — including one by the Arab League Independent Fact Finding Committee (I.F.F.C.), which I chaired — have found considerable evidence that serious crimes were committed in Israel’s offensive. [continued…]

Israel doesn’t see U.S. limiting loan guarantees
Reuters, July 23, 2009

Israel does not expect the United States to limit use of loan guarantees despite a dispute with Washington over building in East Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Thursday.

“I don’t see any limitations on the horizon. It’s not time to be concerned about that,” Steinitz told reporters. [continued…]

Israel’s barrier to progress
By Seth Freedman, The Guardian, July 22, 2009

In many parts of the West Bank, Israel’s much-vaunted separation wall is conspicuous by its absence; Ha’aretz reports that only around 60% of the barrier has been completed will come as no surprise to those who spend time in the area around the project’s proposed route.

In places such as the South Hebron Hills, the only obstacles separating thousands of Palestinians from Israeli communities are sporadic flying checkpoints thrown up by the army, or flimsy, unguarded wire fences ostensibly keeping the terrorist hordes at bay. If mainstream Israeli thinking is to be believed, the “security” wall is vital for the safety of Israel’s citizens, the implication being that scores of would-be bombers are daily banging their heads against a concrete wall as they try desperately to reach Israeli cities to unleash carnage on unsuspecting women and children. [continued…]

Israeli PM says West Bank barrier there to stay
AFP, July 22, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the occupied West Bank would not be pulled down.

“I hear today people who say that because the situation is calm in the West Bank we can dismantle the security barrier, but it is in fact because of this barrier that there is calm,” he told a session of parliament.

“It is because of this barrier and because of a certain improvement on the part of the Palestinian security services that the situation is calm,” Netanyahu said. “The barrier will stay.” [continued…]

Senior Fatah official: We won’t recognize Israel
By Ali Waked, Ynet, July 23, 2009

As the Fatah movement prepares for its upcoming leadership convention, a senior group member says the event will be used to display Fatah’s commitment to the armed struggle against Israel.

Preparations for the convention, scheduled for August 4, are in full force at this time. During a series of preliminary meetings ahead of the event, senior Fatah official Rafik al-Natsheh said that the group will not be recognizing Israel.

‘We will maintain the resistance option in all its forms and we will not recognize Israel,” he said. “Not only don’t we demand that anyone recognize Israel; we don’t recognize Israel ourselves. However, the Palestinian Authority government is required to do it, or else it will not be able to serve the Palestinian people.” [continued…]

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Don’t worry so much about Iran’s nukes

Don’t worry so much about Iran’s nukes
By Joe Klein, Time, July 23, 2009

“We all have been harmed. Today more than ever we need unity,” said former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani during Friday prayers at Tehran University on July 17. It was a crucial sermon and, in the manner of many things Persian, purposefully and delicately opaque. Some thought Rafsanjani’s speech was a direct threat to the Ahmadi-Khamenei regime. He demanded the release of political prisoners, an end to violence against protesters, the restoration of Iran’s (intermittently) free press. Others thought Rafsanjani, speaking with the approval of the Supreme Leader, was trying to build a bridge between the opposition and the regime. For me, it brought back memories of a less opaque Friday-prayers sermon I’d actually seen Rafsanjani deliver in December 2001, in which he spoke of the need for an “Islamic bomb.”

The signature foreign policy initiative of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was his desire to begin negotiations with Iran. It was ridiculed by John McCain and by Hillary Clinton, now his Secretary of State. Obama persisted, with reason: it was a good idea. How he proceeds now, after Iran’s brutal electoral debacle, could be the most important foreign policy decision of his presidency. As Clinton made clear in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations two days before Rafsanjani spoke, the Obama Administration has not wavered in its desire for talks. And yet, the body language has changed. [continued…]

U.S. may put up ‘defense umbrella’ over Mideast
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009

In raising the possibility of a “defense umbrella,” Clinton insisted that she was not abandoning the current U.S. policy toward Iran, which involves a combination of diplomatic outreach and sanctions. Even so, her words suggested that U.S. officials are looking ahead in case the approach, which faces formidable obstacles, proves unsuccessful.

Although President Obama has pushed hard to draw the Islamic Republic to the negotiating table, some U.S. officials and many outside experts have doubts that outreach efforts will succeed. And the likely next step, an effort to organize tougher international economic sanctions, faces strong resistance from Russia, China and India. [continued…]

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Iran opposition leader plans large-scale social movement

Iran opposition leader plans large-scale social movement
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009

Iran’s political crisis intensified Wednesday when the nation’s main opposition figure announced that he would create a political organization to “lay the groundwork for a large-scale social movement” stemming from his disputed election loss to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Many supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi had feared the announcement would amount to a disavowal of the civil disobedience campaign that has sprung up since the June election in which the government has been accused of massive vote fraud. Instead, Mousavi explicitly praised the protest movement as a cornerstone for change in Iran.

In his most extensive remarks in weeks, Mousavi said that “power is always inclined to become absolute, and only people’s movements can put a hold on this inclination.” Several other opposition figures, emboldened by high-ranking clerics and unbowed by the severe government crackdown on protesters, have also issued challenges to the authority of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his ally Ahmadinejad. [continued…]

Amid crackdown, Iranians try a shocking protest
Time, July 22, 2009

Street demonstrations erupted in Iran once again on July 21 as thousands of people gathered in small pockets around central Tehran on the anniversary of an uprising in 1952 in which government security forces refused to fire on the crowds. This time, the Basij militia and members of the élite Revolutionary Guards were less kind, chasing protesters with batons, firing tear gas to disperse the crowds and, according to reports, arresting dozens in the process. One source said that the underground Haft e-Tir subway station was teargassed. Two Revolutionary Guards were seen with bandaged noses around Haft e-Tir Square; the exact toll of the violence was not immediately clear.

In retaliation, the government shut down mobile networks, and for perhaps the first time since the June 12 presidential election, the Internet was disconnected for several hours late Tuesday night. But protests appear to be coordinated and to be taking other forms apart from street action: on Tuesday, for example, thousands of disgruntled Tehranis tried to bring down the electrical grid at 9 p.m. by simultaneously turning on household appliances like irons, water heaters and toasters. Streets lights in the eastern suburb of Tehran Pars reportedly went off shortly after this, but electricity was not interrupted in central Tehran. [continued…]

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Group plans lawsuit to unveil the CIA’s ‘Pentagon Papers’

Group plans lawsuit to unveil the CIA’s ‘Pentagon Papers’
By Ryan Singel, Wired, July 21, 2009

The CIA and other agencies are sitting on a trove of documentary evidence of actual and suspected wrongdoing under the Bush administration, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to file a lawsuit Wednesday to force the intelligence community to come clean, the group says.

At issue are the misconduct reports the spy agencies are required to file with the Intelligence Oversight Board, a board of private citizens with security clearances who oversee the spy agencies and report to the president. The board is tasked with evaluating the self-reported malfeasances of intelligence agencies, looking at the agencies’ responses, and forwarding on the worst to the attorney general when it believes criminal prosecution is called for.

The CIA is among the agencies that failed to respond to the EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for copies of the reports. Given the unfolding controversy over the CIA’s apparent failure to notify Congress of a secret agency assassination program, the withholding of these documents takes on even greater importance, according to EFF lawyer Nate Cardozo. [continued…]

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U.S. judge challenges evidence on a detainee

U.S. judge challenges evidence on a detainee
By William Glaberson, New York Times, July 23, 2009

The Obama administration has until Friday to decide whether to continue to defend the six-year imprisonment of an Afghan at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was a teenager when he came into American hands.

The decision was prompted by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court, who last week criticized the government’s case against the detainee as “an outrage” that was “riddled with holes.” Judge Huvelle’s comments, made at a hearing in district court in Washington, were not reported at the time.

The detainee, Mohammed Jawad, has drawn international attention because of questions about his treatment as one of the youngest prisoners at Guantánamo. [continued…]

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