Author Archives: Paul Woodward

OPINION: The astronomical and unconscionable costs of the Iraq war

The (White) House of Shame
By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, November 14, 2007

It’s been three years since President George W. Bush experienced what he called his “accountability moment,” i.e., his re-election. And it’s a year now since American voters sent a Democratic majority to the House and Senate on the delusional assumption they’d hold this administration responsible for what it’s done to the United States and the world. We know how that hasn’t happened.

So why would the folks in the Bush White House be the least bit perturbed by publicity about the mind-boggling long-term costs of the war in Iraq that they rushed to wage? I don’t think they are, and I wouldn’t expect them to be. This is an administration that admits no guilt and knows no shame, and in that it is a perfect reflection of what America and Americans look like to the rest of the world. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Not a counterintelligence case?

How big a role did disgraced CIA officer have?
By Andrea Mitchell and Robert Windrem, NBC News, November 14, 2007

There’s new information about the young Lebanese woman who pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges she lied about her background to get jobs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency.

Current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News that Nada Nadim Prouty had a much bigger role than officials at the FBI and CIA first acknowledged. In fact, Prouty was assigned to the CIA’s most sensitive post, Baghdad, and participated in the debriefings of high-ranking al-Qaida detainees.

A former colleague called Prouty “among the best and the brightest” CIA officers in Baghdad. She was so exceptional, agree officials of both agencies, the CIA recruited her from the FBI to work for the agency’s clandestine service at Langley, Va., in June 2003. She then went to Iraq for the agency to work with the U.S. military on the debriefings. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Sometimes the press can’t resist jumping on a narrative that seems irresistable even if it might not be true. If this is really a tale of intelligence intrigue on a par with the best ones from the Cold War, how come Nada Nadim Prouty is merely facing charges of violating immigration laws and making unauthorized computer searches? No doubt there are and should be strict regulations preventing government officials accessing classified records for personal reasons, but the Hezbollah angle on this story sounds utterly contrived. Somehow, I don’t imagine that Prouty truly stands out as a disgraced CIA officer if the main thing she is guilty of is using the privileges provided by her position just to look for information about her own relatives.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: The problem with militias

U.S. forces accused of shooting Sunni allies
By Leila Fadel and Mohammed al Dulaimy, McClatchy, November 14, 2007

Members of a Sunni Muslim group that was formed with American backing to fight Sunni militants charged Wednesday that a lengthy U.S. air and ground attack killed at least seven of its fighters.

Mansour abd Salem, one of the leaders of the Sunni Awakening council in Taji, north of Baghdad, charged in a television interview that U.S. forces had “deliberately” killed members of the group in a “hideous” assault.

The U.S. military said that the operations targeted armed “associates of senior al Qaida in Iraq leaders,” killed 25 suspected terrorists and detained 21 suspects.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, the U.S.-backed Iraqi government seized the offices and shut down the radio station of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni group that’s voiced support for al Qaida. In a television interview, the group’s leader, Sheik Harith al Thari, who’s now in Jordan, once said that, “We are from al Qaida and al Qaida are from us.” [complete article]

The problem with militias
By Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect, November 13, 2007

Everywhere you go in Iraq, there’s victory. The commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, told reporters last Wednesday that he had wiped al-Qaeda in Iraq out of the city. Stability in Iraq is “within sight, but not yet within touch,” he said. And while categorical statements about progress have come back to haunt U.S. officials, commanders are evincing more certainty about the possibilities of success than they would ever have dared prior to Gen. David Petraeus’ September testimony. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has gone even further, proclaiming “victory against terrorist groups and militias.” It’s pretty bewildering, even for those who’ve seen some recent reasons for cautious optimism.

Perhaps the only voice of caution over the last two weeks has been Ambassador Ryan Crocker. When last Crocker drew attention, it was during his shared testimony with Petraeus, in which he showed a surprising eagerness to lie about the pace with which sectarian reconciliation had advanced. These days, he’s warning of a looming danger — militias taking over the mechanics of running Iraq. Using the military’s acronym for Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, Crocker recently mused, “We have seen JAM Militant transform into JAM Incorporated. They may not be shooting at us or Iraqi soldiers, but [they are] controlling gas stations, real estate, trade and services. … That is a major challenge to the state.”

Right Crocker is. But if he recognized how his observation undermined his colleagues’ declarations of victory, he didn’t show it. Consider the case of the newest militias on the block — the so-called Concerned Local Citizens, a mostly Sunni collection of ex-insurgents and rejections that’s responsible for much of the spring in the steps of U.S. officials. The CLCs represent the U.S.’ first attempt at actually creating Iraqi militias, and U.S. officials are enthusiastic about the effort. Few seem to have noticed that everything Crocker says about the “major challenge” posed by the militias applies to U.S.-friendly militias as much as it does to U.S.-opposed militias. And yet, these new militias are, in large part, the basis for the success that U.S. and Iraqi officials are claiming. [complete article]

Muqtada moves to stop a Sunni ‘surge’
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, November 16, 2007

The world is seemingly too busy these days to mind the day-to-day news coming out of Iraq – much to the pleasure of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. With the spotlight off him, Maliki gave an interview to the Saudi television channel al-Arabiyya, in which he asserted that “There is no civil war in Iraq.” He added, “We don’t have a militia problem in Iraq anymore.” He wrapped up by noting that Iran does not have a decision-making influence on the Prime Minister’s Office in Baghdad.

Maliki knew that he was, to put it politely, not telling the truth. In addition to spreading false public relations about his administration’s effectiveness in combating terrorism, the Iraqi premier was also doing something very important. He was reconciling with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. Or at least, he was trying to find common ground with his former allies, recently turned enemies. Muqtada quit the government this year.

This week, Muqtada called for a renewal of his truce with both American forces and those of the Iraqi government. It is a gesture of goodwill towards Maliki. Another six months of peace and quiet from the Mahdi Army, giving the prime minister more room to concentrate on other pressing issues, like the looming war between Turkey and Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. [complete article]

F.B.I. says guards killed 14 Iraqis without cause
By David Johnston and John M. Broder, New York Times, November 14, 2007

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter. [complete article]

Iraqis wasting an opportunity, U.S. officers say
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, November 15, 2007

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.

In more than a dozen interviews, U.S. military officials expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government’s failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but “it’s unclear how long that window is going to be open.” [complete article]

NEWS: Iran’s internal divisions widen

Former Iran negotiator charged with spying for UK
By Anne Penketh, The Independent, November 15, 2007

Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, has been charged with passing classified information to the British embassy, the Iranian intelligence minister has revealed.

The decision to make the charges public could be a further sign that the radical Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is consolidating his hold over the country’s nuclear policy. A deepening split has become apparent within the normally secretive leadership, which is facing increased international pressure to halt its uranium enrichment programme.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, remains in charge of nuclear policy but Mr Ahmadinejad appears to be increasingly influential.

The Foreign Office had no comment yesterday on the comments by the intelligence minister, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, who told the official news agency that Mr Mousavian’s crime “from the viewpoint of the Intelligence Ministry is obvious and provable”. [complete article]

Gloves come off as Iran moderates battle Ahmadinejad
AFP, November 15, 2007

Iran’s moderates are intensifying criticism of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, landing their first blows in a bitter political fight ahead of elections next year.

The moderate heavyweights Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have been unusually explicit in their criticism of Ahmadinejad’s economic policies and his analysis of the threat posed by the United States.

Ahmadinejad has shot back using language colourful even by his standards, warning he would expose “traitors” in the nuclear standoff and accusing critics of “being less intelligent than a goat”.

The sharp rhetoric is the upshot of concerns over the mounting international crisis over the Iranian nuclear programme and a sign of the proximity of legislative elections on March 14. [complete article]

OPINION: Israel prevents the two-state solution

Who wants a Jewish state
Editorial, Haaretz, November 15, 2007

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been speaking enthusiastically about “two states, two nations” ever since her conversion from the Greater Israel ideology. She can easily convince people why Israel must have a right of return only for Jews, while an independent Palestine would grant the same right only to Palestinians.

Like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Livni has realized belatedly that this is the only way two democratic nation states could survive. This simple, rational idea could have been implemented easily had not Israel’s leaders rejected it for generations – for 40 years the border line has been obstructed by settlement building.

Now on the eve of the Annapolis conference, Israel has suddenly come up with the absurd demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state – after Israel’s own leaders have done everything in their power to sabotage it.

It is easy to speak about a Jewish state, but difficult to find the political courage required to do what it takes: Settlements scattered in the heart of the Palestinian population make it impossible to separate between Israel and Palestine along a plausible and viable border. With each passing day and each passing year, every settlement expansion, every outpost and every road built to reach it disrupt the chance to separate the two nations. [complete article]

NEWS: Abbas calls for overthrow of Hamas

Abbas calls for Hamas overthrow in Gaza
AP, November 15, 2007

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called for the overthrow of Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers, his first explicit call that they be removed.

“We have to bring down this bunch that took over Gaza with armed force, and is abusing the sufferings and pains of our people,” Abbas said in a speech in Ramallah.

The Palestinian leader, who has set up a separate government in the West Bank, previously had not gone beyond demanding that Hamas apologize for overrunning Gaza and reverse the takeover. [complete article]

NEWS: The media’s role in promoting Islamophobia

Study shows ‘demonisation’ of Muslims
PA, The Guardian, November 14, 2007

A “torrent” of negative stories has been revealed by a study of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the media, according to a report published yesterday.

Research into one week’s news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, who commissioned the study, said the findings were a “damning indictment” of the media and urged editors and programme makers to review the way they portray Muslims.

“The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west,” he said. “There is a scale of imbalance which no fair-minded person would think is right.” Only 4% of the 352 articles studied were positive, he said.

Livingstone said the findings showed a “hostile and scaremongering attitude” towards Islam and likened the coverage to the way the left was attacked by national newspapers in the early 1980s. “The charge is that there are virtually no positive or balanced images of Islam being portrayed,” he said. “I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims.” [complete article]

NEWS: CIA taped interrogations

CIA admits to recording interrogations of top al Qaida captives
By Greg Gordon, McClatchy, November 13, 2007

The CIA has three video and audio recordings of interrogations of senior al Qaida captives but misled federal judges about the evidence during the case against terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, federal prosecutors revealed in a Nov. 9 court filing that was made public Tuesday.

The disclosure is unlikely to undo Moussaoui’s conviction because the agency said the material on the tapes doesn’t pertain to his case.

However, the disclosure that the government taped some interrogations of high-value detainees could invite fresh scrutiny of the CIA’s treatment of so-called “enemy combatants” who were held at secret prisons or U.S. bases overseas.

John Radsan, a former CIA assistant general counsel who teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., called the revelation of the tapes “huge” news.

“So far, there has been great mystery about what was actually done to the high-value detainees,” he said. “A videotape is worth a thousand words.” [complete article]

FEATURE: Dowd’s split with Bush

Bush strategist looks back in sadness
By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2007

Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak — a word he uses — of his split with President Bush.

Dowd, 46, is one of the nation’s leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush’s policies — policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

He began expressing his disillusionment, tentatively at first, at a UC Berkeley conference in January. Since then, he has grown more forceful.

On the administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks: “I asked, ‘Why aren’t we doing bonds, war bonds? Why aren’t we asking the country to do something instead of just . . . go shopping and get back on airplanes?’ ” [complete article]

OPINION: The West’s silence on Egypt’s assault on human rights

Behind closed doors
By Ibrahim El Houdaiby, The Guardian, November 14, 2007

The justice systems in Britain and the US may not be perfect. But viewed from Egypt, the jurisprudence and transparency that attend the vast majority of trials there are very much to be envied.

In Cairo today, some 40 leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood are facing a secret military tribunal. Thirty sessions have been held so far, while all journalists, reporters and domestic or international human rights observers have been denied access. These members of the country’s most powerful political opposition – which holds about a fifth of the seats in Egypt’s parliament – stand before this tribunal despite civilian courts acquitting them four times of all charges brought by the notorious state security prosecutor, describing them as “fabricated, groundless, and politically motivated”.

They are standing before the tribunal despite a court ruling that found the president’s decision to transfer them to a military tribunal “unconstitutional”, on the basis that they are civilian opposition leaders who should be tried by civilian courts. The treatment of these representatives of the region’s largest Islamist movement, which advocates a moderate, peaceful approach, has been roundly condemned by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. [complete article]

NEWS: LAPD ditches Muslim map plan

LAPD’s Muslim mapping plan killed
By Richard Winton and Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2007

The LAPD on Wednesday abruptly scrapped a program to map the city’s Muslim population, a major retreat for a department that said the system was needed to identify potential hotbeds of extremism.

The reversal comes after a week of protests from Muslim groups and civil libertarians, who equated the mapping with religious profiling. Others questioned whether it was possible for the LAPD to accurately map the city’s far-flung Muslim community.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing said Wednesday that in the wake of the protests, officials would drop the mapping aspect of the plan but continue their efforts to reach out to the Muslim community. Downing and other police officials plan to outline the new strategy to Muslim American activists at a meeting today. [complete article]

EDITORIAL & ANALYSIS: Negroponte – the messenger without a message

Negroponte goes to schmooze with the indispensable General
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 13, 2007

So, Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, is rushing off to Islamabad (via Africa). Having last week told Congress that the Bush administration regards General Musharraf as “indispensable,” Negroponte is now going to say what?

Several times today the New York Times has insisted on referring to Negroponte as an “envoy” even though at the White House press gaggle this morning, press secretary Dana Perino made it clear that the administration wants to dampen expectations that anything of consequence may follow from the Negroponte-Musharraf tête-à-tête:

MS. PERINO: I think that description was a little bit too strong in terms of “envoy.” Deputy Secretary Negroponte will be traveling there later in the week. I believe that’s who they were referring to [as an “envoy”].

Q But why is “envoy” too strong?

MS. PERINO: Well, he’s not going in terms of — he’s not going in a different capacity than what he is, which is the Deputy Secretary of State.

Later in the day, State Department spokesman Tom Casey was at pains to “deal with some of the other stories that were out there today that seemed to talk about some kind of special envoy or talk of him as a special envoy to Pakistan.” He was eager to impress upon those most obstinate members of the press who were still referring to him as an envoy that Negroponte is not an envoy.

Here’s where he cut to the chase after being asked whether Deputy Secretary Negroponte would be taking any special letter or any kind of message from Secretary Rice or President Bush other than to repeat what has already been said. “No, I think you’ll expect him to, again, deliver the same kind of message that we’ve already talked about publicly before. I’m not aware,” Casey said, “of him carrying any kind of special proposals or letters or things like that.”

So there we have it. Negroponte is not an envoy because he doesn’t have anything to say that hasn’t already been said before.

Will he have any time for sightseeing? Pick up any souvenirs? Maybe join in one of those festive get-togethers that all the lawyers are having.

I do have one suggestion though: He might want to consider compressing his Africa schedule by a few days. Otherwise, by the time he shows up in Islamabad, the General might be too busy to have the Deputy Secretary of State over for tea and scones.

His bridges burned, Musharraf has nowhere to turn
By Mark Tran, The Guardian, November 13, 2007

With pressure mounting on him at home and from abroad, the chances that General Pervez Musharraf will survive politically are looking increasingly bleak.

The prospects of a power-sharing deal with the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto that would have enabled Musharraf to cling on to power as president are diminishing rapidly. The more pressure Musharraf is applying on Bhutto, the more she is pushing back.

Today, as she was put under house arrest for the second time in five days, the opposition leader moved closer to a clean break with Musharraf.

For the first time, Bhutto called on him to resign as president altogether, adding for good measure that she could never serve in a government under him. Anyone associated with the general, she said, “gets contaminated”. [complete article]

Miscalculations
By Steve Coll, The New Yorker, November 19, 2007

Musharraf’s miscalculations were abetted by the United States, which until recently all but ignored the political aspects of counterinsurgency in Pashtun territory. The Bush Administration, distracted by the war in Iraq, and conditioned by its long dependence on Pakistan’s Army, outsourced its Pakistan policy to Musharraf and bankrolled his narrow, increasingly self-defeating strategies. Of the approximately ten billion dollars in overt funds delivered to Pakistan since September 11th, for example, less than a hundred million has gone toward education, an issue about which Musharraf has spoken often but done very little.

The Pakistani Army’s intermittent attempts to suppress the Pashtun Islamists have failed, and these reversals have recently produced stresses within the military not witnessed since the country broke in half, in 1971: the humiliating surrender and capture of hundreds of Pakistani soldiers and local Pashtun paramilitaries, which have led to prisoner exchanges with the Taliban; reports of desertion and mutiny; and a succession of demoralizing battlefield defeats. About fifteen per cent of Pakistan’s Army officers are Pashtun, and the danger of revolt or division among them is deepening. [complete article]

See also, Musharraf’s army losing ground in insurgent areas (WP) and The answer in Pakistan (Thomas R. Pickering, Carla Hills and Morton Abramowitz).

NEWS: The not-so hidden costs of war

‘Hidden costs’ double price of two wars, Democrats say
By Josh White, Washington Post, November 13, 2007

The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs”– including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled “The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,” estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. [complete article]

NEWS: Chalabi returns

Chalabi returns to prominence and power
By Christian Berthelsen, Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2007

Three years ago when the U.S. military came calling on the onetime darling of Washington’s neoconservatives, it raided 11 of his properties and left his compound in ruins.Chalabi, who helped the Bush administration make the case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq,denounced the American occupation of Iraq. It was the denouement to an increasingly fractured relationship between Washington and Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who provided intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program that proved to be false.

The Pentagon, which had provided millions of dollars to Chalabi’s group, the Iraqi National Congress, cut off funding and accused him of passing sensitive U.S. secrets to Iran. His prospects appeared to reach a nadir last year, after his party failed to win a single seat in Iraq’s 2005 parliamentary elections and he was later excluded from the government.

Now the 63-year-old Chalabi, ever the political chameleon, has maneuvered back into prominence and power. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki appointed him to a pivotal position last month overseeing the restoration of vital services to Baghdad residents such as electricity, potable water, healthcare and education. The U.S. and Iraqi governments say the job is crucial to cement security gains of recent months — and that failure could cause the country to backslide into chaos. [complete article]

ANALYSIS: Peace through division

In Iraq, the silence of the lambs
By Ali al-Fadhily, Asia Times, November 14, 2007

The separation of religious groups in the face of sectarian violence has brought some semblance of relative calm to Baghdad. But many Iraqis see this as the uncertain consequence of a divide and rule policy.

Claims are being made that sectarian violence in Iraq has fallen because that the US military “surge” has succeeded in reducing attacks against civilians. But Baghdad residents say that they now live in a largely divided city that has brought an uneasy calm.

“I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and that everything is fine,” retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told Inter Press Servce (IPS) in Baghdad. “But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq.” [complete article]

OPINION, NEWS & ANALYSIS: The Palestinian struggle

Hamas and Fatah are betraying Arafat’s legacy
Editorial, Daily Star, November , 2007

Yasser Arafat has been dead for three years, harried to an early death by the Israeli siege of his battered presidential compound in Ramallah. Two camps – his own secular Fatah faction and the Islamist group Hamas – that claim to carry on his struggle for Palestinian rights have effectively been at war for months. In so doing, they have undermined their shared goal of justice for the Palestinian people and trampled a principle of ideological inclusiveness that was perhaps the most important hallmark of Arafat’s leadership. And now they have marred the anniversary of his death with bloodshed.

Leaders of both Fatah and Hamas need very much to take a step back and think about the position of their people – not their respective constituents, but the Palestinian people whom they both purport to represent – and therefore about the consequences of their actions. Their people have been dispossessed for decades, and their Arab allies have never been of much help except (in a limited fashion) when it has suited their own purposes. Their would-be peace partner, the Israeli government, has made clear that it is in no rush to conclude an agreement, and the Jewish state’s cohorts in Washington can be relied upon to support this intransigence as best they can. [complete article]

Fatah members rounded up in Gaza
BBC News, November 13, 2007

Hamas says it has rounded up dozens of Fatah activists in Gaza, a day after a huge rally commemorating Yasser Arafat ended in gunfire killing seven people.

Witnesses say security forces opened fire on unarmed crowds after the rally turned into a protest against the Hamas movement’s takeover of Gaza in June.

Hamas says its police came under attack from Fatah gunmen and returned fire. [complete article]

Hamas debates the future – Palestine’s Islamic Resistance Movement attempts to reconcile ideological purity and political realism
By Khalid Amayreh, Conflicts Forum, November, 2007

Palestine’s Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — won a surprising electoral victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Almost immediately, Hamas leaders, movement activists, and Islamist academics began to debate the future course of the movement. Under what conditions would Hamas recognize Israel? What was its place as a movement in the Middle East? How should it approach the question of governance of the Palestinian territories? And finally, and most importantly, how would it balance its need to remain an Islamist party while adopting more pragmatic political programs? [complete article]

NEWS: Ahmadinejad lashes out at opponents

Ahmadinejad steps up rhetoric against critics at home with threat to expose ‘traitors’
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, November 13, 2007

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, raised domestic tensions over the country’s nuclear policy to higher levels yesterday by labelling his opponents “traitors” who are working for the west and threatened to expose them in a political witch-hunt.

In an offensive that exposed the fissures within the Islamic republic’s power structure, he accused “domestic elements” of seeking to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment programme and said they had inflicted more damage than its foreign enemies.

“If the domestic elements do not stop imposing pressure over the nuclear issue, they will be unmasked before the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad told students at Tehran’s science and industry university. [complete article]

NEWS: Fight against terrorism threatens “fundamental principles of a democratic society”

Panel decries terrorism blacklist process
By Molly Moore, Washington Post, November 13, 2007

The methods used by the United Nations and the European Union for blacklisting terrorism suspects are “totally arbitrary” and “violate the fundamental principles of human rights and rule of law,” a European human rights panel said Monday.

The Council of Europe’s legal committee urged an overhaul of international regulations so that individuals and groups being blacklisted — which imposes a freeze on assets and a ban on traveling — would have access to evidence against them, rights to a fair trial or impartial review within a reasonable time and compensation for wrongful designation as a terrorist. [complete article]