Category Archives: Issues

ANALYSIS: Democracy’s only good when it’s good for America

On human rights, U.S. seems to give Egypt a pass
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 16, 2007

Last month, Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian human rights advocate, met with President Bush in Washington when he was flown there for an award granted by the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. Kassem, the only winner from Egypt, said that Mr. Bush had spoken effusively about promoting democracy to the other recipients, but he did not address the topic when it came to Egypt.

“In comparison with my colleagues from other countries, this was the least of his interests,” Mr. Kassem said.

He and other democracy campaigners in Egypt say that when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Egyptian officials in Sharm el Sheik on Tuesday as part of her preparation for a Middle East peace summit meeting, they expect from her a similar approach to Egyptian human rights and democracy. Even if she does raise the issues, analysts here say, it will have little impact.

That is in sharp contrast to the administration’s aggressive campaign for democracy in 2005 and 2006, which did have an effect and shows shifting American priorities, advocates and analysts say. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The strategic importance of Myanmar

The geopolitical stakes of ‘Saffron Revolution’
By F William Engdahl, Asia Times, October 17, 2007

…the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations in Myanmar. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED [National Endowment for Democracy] activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The US’s NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.

The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Col Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.

A relevant question is why the US government has such a keen interest in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington’s paean to democacy is propaganda cover for another agenda.

The question is, what would lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar?

Geopolitical control seems to be the answer – control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world’s most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The sparks of a conflagration

Ticking clocks and ‘accidental’ war
By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, October 14, 2007

Whilst Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary, to bomb or to acquiesce decision, facing President Bush over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent and arriving in a roundabout way, through the backdoor – either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria; or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both interacting with each other. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. They see the Wursmer ‘engineered’ war that ultimately will extend to Iran, as almost upon them; and they wonder at the silence from Europe and from informed observers in the US. Is it, they speculate, that everyone is so focused on Iraq, and so convinced that Iraq will be the arena in which the decision on Iran will be shaped, that they have forgotten to attend to the backdoor that David Wurmser (until last month Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser) already has a foot around? [complete article]

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Cheney takes a sabbatical

Pre-emptive caution: the case of Syria
By David E. Sanger, New York Times, October 15, 2007

It was President Bush who, a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rewrote America’s national security strategy to warn any nation that might be thinking of trying to develop atomic weapons that it could find itself the target of a pre-emptive military strike.

But that was the fall of 2002, when the world looked very different from how it does in the fall of 2007. Now, the case of Syria, which Israeli and American analysts suspect was trying to build a nuclear reactor, has become a prime example of what can happen when Mr. Bush’s first-term instincts run headlong into second-term realities.

Five years later, dealing with nations that may have nuclear weapons ambitions — but are also staying within the letter of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — looks a lot more complicated than it once did. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If it depends on journalists like David Sanger, he’s probably right in predicting that, “It may be months or years before all the mysteries surrounding the attack on Syria become clear.” Meanwhile, Sanger seems happy to keep on drinking the White House Kool-Aid. Should we be concerned about the chances for a U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Far from it, Sanger reports, since those ubiquitous senior officials he’s been hanging out with assure him that the administration is far too prudent. “Iran, they say, has too many ways to strike back at American interests — in Iraq, in the oil markets and throughout the Middle East.” Does the vice president know that? In Sanger’s analysis, Cheney in conspicuously absent. The administration is now being controlled by pragmatic realists, while the president is focused on his diplomatic achievements.

Getting a deal with North Korea to disgorge its own nuclear fuel and weapons may require looking past whatever North Korea might have sold to another country. And it may mean engaging the Syrians, even before they answer the question of what, exactly, they were building in the desert.

Who could have predicted such a sunny turn of events? The only question now is, how can the Israelis be persuaded to sign up with the diplomatic program. What Sanger implies is that a White House, sobered by experience, may offer Israel wise council but that there’s not much chance they’ll listen.

And as for those readers who still have nagging questions about what happened on September 6, the latest word from Israel is that it is “plausible” and “logical” that a nuclear reactor under construction was hit. The IAEA has put in a request for information.

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NEWS: America’s own unlawful combatants

America’s own unlawful combatants?
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2007

As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.

The question is an outgrowth of federal reviews of the shootings, in part because the U.S. officials want to determine whether the administration could be accused of treaty violations that could fuel an international outcry.

But the issue also holds practical and political implications for the administration’s war effort and the image of the U.S. abroad.

If U.S. officials conclude that the use of guards is a potential violation, they may have to limit guards’ tasks in war zones, which could leave more work for the already overstretched military. [complete article]

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OPINION: Iraqis want the troops out

Ask the Iraqis
By Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, October , 2007

In the upcoming Presidential primaries, Americans will have the chance to choose among candidates who propose immediate withdrawal from Iraq (Richardson), rapid drawdowns (Edwards and Obama), open-ended commitment to the war (Giuliani, Romney, McCain), or a resigned middle ground, notably Hillary Clinton, who acknowledges that the occupation will likely endure well into the next Presidential term no matter which party occupies the White House.

The Iraqi people have no such choice, even though it’s their future that is at stake—and even though the creation of a democratic republic, one in which the Iraqis command their own destiny, has been a stated goal of the war. According to President Bush, American troops will leave whenever the Iraqis ask us to. “It’s their government’s choice,” he has said. “If they were to say, leave, we would leave.” But while the Iraqi government is divided and uncertain about the presence of occupying forces, the will of the Iraqi people has been clear from the beginning: they want the troops withdrawn. [complete article]

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NEWS: Turkish-U.S. ties threatened

Turkish general warns of irreversible damage to U.S. ties if genocide resolution passes
AP, October 14, 2007

Turkey’s top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.

Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue. [complete article]

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OPINION: The courage to chart new ground and take bold steps

‘Failure risks devastating consequences’
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Carla Hills, Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, Thomas R. Pickering, Brent Scowcroft et al., NYRB, October 10, 2007

The Israeli-Palestinian peace conference announced by President Bush and scheduled for November presents a genuine opportunity for progress toward a two-state solution. The Middle East remains mired in its worst crisis in years, and a positive outcome of the conference could play a critical role in stemming the rising tide of instability and violence. Because failure risks devastating consequences in the region and beyond, it is critically important that the conference succeed.

Bearing in mind the lessons of the last attempt at Camp David seven years ago at dealing with the fundamental political issues that divide the two sides, we believe that in order to be successful, the outcome of the conference must be substantive, inclusive, and relevant to the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians. [complete article]

See also, Only Bush can (Akiva Eldar), Egypt suggests delaying Mideast peace meet (AFP), and Rice says time for a Palestinian state (AFP).

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NEWS: Boost for mainstream investigative journalism?

Group plans to provide investigative journalism
By Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times, October 15, 2007

As struggling newspapers across the country cut back on investigative reporting, a new kind of journalism venture is hoping to fill the gap.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations. [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The phoenix of preventive war arises from Syrian ashes

Preemption, Israeli style
By Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for the laws of war and preemption that President Bush has been trying to redefine ever since his 2002 national security strategy paper.

First, Syrian spokesmen complained that Israeli planes had violated their country’s airspace on Sept. 6 — and had been driven off, or so they said. Within a few days came stories — mostly from anonymous sources — that the planes had fired into Syria; these were followed by still other stories that a target had in fact been hit. But what was it?

After further journalistic digging, the most plausible accounts said that the Syrian targets were related to nuclear weapons activity and may even have been manned by North Koreans. Later reports suggest some dispute within the U.S. government about how far Syria had progressed in achieving its nuclear ambitions, but these same reports confirm that this is what Israel was targeting.

The obscurity of this episode results in part from uncharacteristically tight lips in Jerusalem and Damascus. But that is not the whole of the reason. There has also been a deafening silence from the international community and especially from the other states of the region. This highly unusual reaction is one of the oddest parts of the whole episode and, in some ways, the most meaningful. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The neoconservatives and their Iraqi allies famously predicted that American soldiers would be greeted in Baghdad with sweets and flowers. As if to outdo themselves in making wild predictions, with Iran now the target, the suggestion being floated by Joshua Muravchik and other neocons is that alarming predictions about the consequences of a US/Israeli attack on Iran are being vastly overstated. The lesson from Syria, so we are supposed to believe, is that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will be greeted by deafening silence.

Eager to boost her stock in the Israel lobby and implying to neocons that there is such a thing as life-after-Cheney, Hillary Clinton was unequivocal in expressing her support for the Israeli attack:

“We don’t have as much information as we wish we did. But what we think we know is that with North Korean help, both financial and technical and material, the Syrians apparently were putting together, and perhaps over some period of years, a nuclear facility, and the Israelis took it out. I strongly support that.”

Clinton’s Iran vote: the fallout
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, October 14, 2007

Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted against it. Senator Barack Obama said he would have voted against it if he had voted. Former Senator John Edwards implied he would have voted against it if he could vote.

And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? She voted in favor of the measure in question, which asked the Bush administration to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move — more hawkish than even most of the Bush administration has been willing to venture so far — would intensify America’s continuing confrontation with Iran, many foreign policy experts say.
[…]
Think of it as Iran declaring that the United States military is a terrorist organization because it carries out President Bush’s orders. Such a move, say some Iran experts — including some advisers to the Clinton campaign who declined to publicly criticize their possible boss — runs the risk of further alienating the Iranian population, because many Iranians are tied to the Revolutionary Guard or its many offshoots and enterprises in some way.

“What Senator Clinton and the other legislators who voted for this bill don’t seem to realize is that the Revolutionary Guards are not Al Qaeda,” said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re not a group of voluntary jihadists signing up to fight the United States. Many are conscripts taken from the regular army.” [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: America’s shadow

The ‘good Germans’ among us
By Frank Rich, New York Times, October 14, 2007

We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.

I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin. [complete article]

See also,

Editor’s Comment — As Frank Rich notes:

It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.

Yet what is missing in these observations about the multiple ways in which our humanity has been compromised, is an acknowledgment of the degree to which the administration’s policies have been buttressed by a current in American politics and across American culture that provided the bedrock for America’s response to 9/11, namely, xenophobia. This isn’t xenophobia that was triggered by 9/11; it was an already prevailing sentiment that the Bush administration could easily harness in support of its policies.

When GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, recently said, “we ought to double Guantanamo,” he wasn’t sticking his neck out; he knew he was appealing not only to his base but to also to those xenophobic Democrats who fear that a liberal in the White House might make America more vulnerable to the foreign threat.

And when last year the controversy blew up over the outsourcing of US port management to Dubai’s DP World, Democrats in Congress didn’t hesitate to jump on the xenophobic bandwagon.

And after four Blackwater mercenaries were brutally killed in Fallujah in 2004, the Pentagon knew that domestically there would be little significant political fallout from the ensuing Battle of Fallujah in which an estimated 600 Iraqi civilians died. Just as in Mogadishu, when American lives had been lost, any notion of proportionality went out of the window.

And now that in the millions, Iraqis have had to flee their war-torn country, Congress seems more concerned about the Armenian genocide than about America’s responsibility for accepting refugees. While Sweden — a country that has had no role in the war — has accepted Iraqis in numbers which would be the equivalent of the U.S. taking in about 500,000 refugees, politicians in America know that pushing for a similar response here would involve unacceptable political risks. In May, in a token humanitarian gesture, the House of Representatives proposed a four-year plan to accept up to 60,000 Iraqis who worked for at least a year with U.S.- or U.N.-affiliated groups. This reflects the way in which in much of the public debate on the refugee issue, the focus has been narrowed to one of employer-employee obligations.

When it comes to Iraqi refugees, the same America that thought it could have a free war, would rather turn away from its responsibilities than open its doors.

No need for a warrant, you’re an immigrant
By Julia Preston, New York Times, October 14, 2007

Long Island officials protested when federal agents searching for immigrant gang members raided local homes two weeks ago. The agents had rousted American citizens and legal immigrants from their beds in the night, complained Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau County police commissioner, and arrested suspected illegal immigrants without so much as a warrant.

“We don’t need warrants to make the arrests,” responded Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge in New York for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that conducted the raids.

His concise answer helps explain the friction that the Bush administration’s recent campaign of immigration enforcement has caused. Last week, immigration officials announced that they had made more than 1,300 arrests across the country over the summer when they went looking for gang members. Since the raids were carried out under immigration law, many protections in place under the American criminal codes did not apply. Foreign residents of the United States, whether here legally or not, answer to a different set of rules.

Immigration agents are not required to obtain warrants to detain suspects. The agents also have broad authority to question people about their immigration status and to search them and their homes. There are no Miranda rights that agents must read when making arrests. Detained immigrants have the right to a lawyer, but only one they can pay for. [complete article]

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FEATURE: The Taliban’s confederation of warlords

The new Taliban
By Jason Burke, The Observer, October 14, 2007

The bomb was far from the biggest seen on the North-West Frontier but it did its job well. Placed in a water cooler, it ripped through the Nishtar Abad music market, sending shards of glass and splintered CDs in all directions. ‘Miraculously, no one was killed,’ said Mohammed Azam, who was shopping for presents for the Muslim holiday of Eid this weekend. Twenty people were injured, three seriously, and a dozen shops gutted.

For the police chief of Peshawar, the dusty Pakistan city 40 miles from the Afghan border, it was clear who planted last Tuesday’s bomb. ‘We suspect the involvement of those people who in recent months had sent letters to the CD and video shops, warning them to shut their businesses, saying it is against Islam,’ Abdul Majid Marwat said.

The ‘Pakistan Taliban’ – or one of the various groups claiming the name – had struck again. Within hours the debris was being cleared away and the blood wiped off the walls. ‘This is the life we lead,’ said Azam.’ We have no choice but to continue.’

The Pakistan Taliban’s campaigns go way beyond bombing music shops. Fifty miles south of Peshawar last week, a full-scale pitched battle, complete with air strikes and artillery barrages, raged between the Pakistani army and local and international militants dug into fortified positions in remote tribal villages. By the time a fragile calm had settled on the rocky hills, scattered palm trees and desiccated fields of Mir Ali, 50 soldiers, a 100 or so militants and around 100 civilians had died. Given the inaccessibility of the battlefield and the conflicting claims of the military and their opponents, accurate casualty figures are simply not available.

What is not in doubt is the scale of the fighting. It was a bloody week for everyone as half a dozen ragged conflicts raged across a stretch of land the size of Britain, from the Indus river to the central highlands of Pakistan. [complete article]

Terrorists in training head to Pakistan
By Dirk Laabs and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

As Al Qaeda regains strength in the badlands of the Pakistani-Afghan border, an increasing number of militants from mainland Europe are traveling to Pakistan to train and to plot attacks on the West, European and U.S. anti-terrorism officials say.

The emerging route, illuminated by alleged bomb plots dismantled in Germany and Denmark last month, represents a new and dangerous reconfiguration. In recent years, the global flow of Muslim fighters had shifted to the battlefields of Iraq after the loss of Al Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary in late 2001. [complete article]

See also, Taliban use hostage cash to fund UK blitz (The Telegraph).

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PREVIEW: The Cheney coup

Cheney’s law
Frontline, PBS, October 16, 2007

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy — without congressional approval or judicial review.

Now, as the White House appears ready to ignore subpoenas in the wiretapping and U.S. attorneys’ cases, FRONTLINE’s season premiere, Cheney’s Law, airing Oct. 16, 2007, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), examines the battle over the power of the presidency and Cheney’s way of looking at the Constitution. [complete article]

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NEWS: Former U.S. Iraq commander: U.S. suffers from “incompetent strategic leadership”

Lt. Gen. Sanchez says Iraq effort is ‘a nightmare’
By David S. Cloud, New York Times, October 13, 2007

In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current addition of American forces as a “desperate” move that would not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va. [complete article]

See also, Top Marine sticks by Afghanistan proposal (NC Times).

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NEWS: Abdel Aziz al-Hakim throws down the gauntlet

Leading Shiite politician calls for total US withdrawal from Iraq
AFP, October 13, 2007

A key Shiite member of Iraq’s ruling coalition called Saturday for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from his country and rejected the possibility of permanent bases.

Ammar Hakim, a leading figure of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), told a gathering celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr: “We will work not to have fixed bases for foreign troops on Iraqi lands.”

He also called on American forces to be more careful in their use of force after recent bombings killed civilians in a Shiite village north of Baghdad and in a Sunni area northwest of the Iraqi capital. [complete article]

Son of Shiite leader backs federalism
By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

The Shiite heir apparent to a key U.S. political ally added his voice Saturday to calls for the division of Iraq into semiautonomous regions based on sect and ethnicity, throwing down a gauntlet on an issue that has stirred fierce emotions in Iraq.

Ammar Hakim’s appeal before hundreds of supporters gathered for prayers marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan came just weeks after passage of a nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution calling for a devolution of power to three self-governing regions — for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: The Kurds

U.S. urges Turkish restraint on Kurds
By Molly Moore and Robin Wright, Washington Post, October 14, 2007

U.S. officials began an intense lobbying effort Saturday to defuse Turkish threats to launch a cross-border military attack against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and to limit access to critical air and land routes that have become a lifeline for U.S. troops in Iraq.

“The Turkish government and public are seriously weighing all of their options,” Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said after meetings with Turkish officials in Ankara, the capital. “We need to focus with Turkey on our long-term mutual interests.”

But even as the U.S. official appealed for restraint, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a political rally in Istanbul on Saturday, urged the parliament to vote unanimously next week to “declare a mobilization” against Kurdish rebels and their “terrorist organization,” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). [complete article]

Kurdish dreams find a foothold in Iraq
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2007

From their autonomous enclave carved out after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds have for years quietly undermined attempts by Syria, Iraq and Iran to halt their community’s cultural and political aspirations, throwing open the doors to their brethren in neighboring countries. In doing so, they have also provided shelter to the separatist groups fighting the Turkish and Iranian governments.

“We can’t help them,” a Kurdish official in this city said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But we can’t hand them over, either.”

Turkey, Iran and Syria, which have long histories of suppressing Kurdish separatist movements, eye the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq warily, even though all have an economic stake in the enclave and maintain cordial ties with its leaders.

In the last five years, hundreds of foreign Kurds have come here to study at universities. Kurdish filmmakers from Iran make movies here that would be forbidden by the Islamic Republic. Linguists have reinvigorated efforts to unify the populace by bridging the gaps between Kurdish dialects that have bedeviled the struggle for a pan-Kurdish movement.

In addition, Kurdish exile groups and political parties, along with Kurdish refugees from neighboring countries, have found protection from political persecution. [complete article]

Iraqi warlord’s defeat only hardens his resolve
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

The Muslim warlord reclines in suburban opulence. He smiles mischievously despite his recent troubles.

Over the last five years, his once heavily armed Kurdish militia has been disbanded, his mountainside base crushed by U.S. cruise missiles, his movement thrown into chaos. He was locked up at Baghdad’s notorious Camp Cropper with his former blood enemies, including former President Saddam Hussein.

But Sheik Ali Bapir, the charismatic 46-year-old leader of a Kurdish organization called the Islamic Group, believes he has come through his travails as a winner.

His bestselling memoir has gone into a second printing and has been translated into Arabic. He leads a large political movement with its own satellite channel, news publications, six seats in the Kurdistan regional parliament and a plush compound on the outskirts of this predominantly Kurdish city. [complete article]

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NEWS: U.S. threatened by its own weapons

U.S. military technology being exported illegally is a growing concern
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, October 14, 2007

Pentagon investigators thought they had discovered a major shipment of contraband when they intercepted parts for F-14 Tomcat warplanes headed to Iran, via FedEx, from Southern California. Under U.S. sanctions since its 1979 revolution, Tehran had been trying for years to illegally obtain spare parts for the fighters, which are used only in Iran.

But when agents descended on the Orange County, Calif., home of Reza Tabib, the 51-year-old former flight instructor at John Wayne Airport who sent the shipment, they were astonished to discover 13,000 other aircraft parts, worth an estimated $540,000, as well as a list of additional requests by an Iranian military officer and two airplane tickets for Tehran.

Caught red-handed, the Iranian-born American citizen pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to two years in prison.

The Tabib tale is among a growing array of cases either under investigation or being prosecuted for illegally exporting sensitive military equipment, from missile parts and body armor to nuclear submarine technology, according to the Justice Department. Many are destined for groups or countries that target the United States and its allies, such as night-vision equipment destined for Iran and for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and components for improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, used against U.S. troops in Iraq. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: “Nuclear project” – story still under construction

Analysts find Israel struck a nuclear project inside Syria
By David E. Sanger and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, October 14, 2007

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.
[…]
The officials did not say that the administration had ultimately opposed the Israeli strike, but that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were particularly concerned about the ramifications of a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an urgent threat.

“There wasn’t a lot of debate about the evidence,” said one American official familiar with the intense discussions over the summer between Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. “There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.”
[…]
The partly constructed Syrian reactor was detected earlier this year by satellite photographs, according to American officials. They suggested that the facility had been brought to American attention by the Israelis, but would not discuss why American spy agencies seemed to have missed the early phases of construction.

North Korea has long provided assistance to Syria on a ballistic missile program, but any assistance toward the construction of the reactor would have been the first clear evidence of ties between the two countries on a nuclear program. North Korea has successfully used its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex to reprocess nuclear fuel into bomb-grade material, a model that some American and Israeli officials believe Syria may have been trying to replicate.
[…]
While Bush administration officials have made clear in recent weeks that the target of the Israeli raid was linked to North Korea in some way, Mr. Bush has not repeated his warning since the attack. In fact, the administration has said very little about the country’s suspected role in the Syria case, apparently for fear of upending negotiations now under way in which North Korea has pledged to begin disabling its nuclear facilities.

While the partly constructed Syrian reactor appears to be based on North Korea’s design, the American and foreign officials would not say whether they believed the North Koreans sold or gave the plans to the Syrians, or whether the North’s own experts were there at the time of the attack. It is possible, some officials said, that the transfer of the technology occurred several years ago. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In spite of the fact that hard evidence has yet to be produced, let’s for now take it as given that Syria was building some type of nuclear facility and that it was destroyed by an Israeli air attack. Although the Times notes, as has been repeated so often, that “information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy,” the question — why the secrecy? — remains all important.

Suppose Israel was reluctant to be perceived as having acted without US support and it waited until it got the green light from Washington — except, when the green light came, it came from the Vice President’s office. Now that would be one incredibly compelling reason for secrecy from all quarters! That’s something neither Cheney, nor Bush, nor Olmert could afford to reveal.

Of course I speculate, but while this story remains so murky, speculation will be rife.

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