OPINION: The rising power of subnational identities

What people will die for
By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, January 5, 2008

In the press conference at which the 19-year-old son of Benazir Bhutto was crowned co-head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, one note was striking. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s brief comments began with a pledge to “stand as a symbol of federation.” His words were carefully chosen. Pakistan’s deepest cleavage is not between religious extremism and liberalism, nor even dictatorship and democracy. It is between the country’s various regions. And in this regard, Pakistan is part of a growing phenomenon—the persistence and growing strength of subnational groups. With the end of the battle of ideologies—communism, socialism, liberalism—human beings’ oldest identities have moved to the core of politics. It is why people vote and what they will die for. [complete article]

NEWS: U.S.-backed insurgents find empowering role

New leaders of Sunnis make gains in influence
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, January 8, 2008

Saad Mahami wanted more firepower. He didn’t trust the Iraqi government to give him support, so inside Patrol Base Whiskey, at the edge of this village south of Baghdad, he told U.S. commanders that his 71 Sunni fighters needed additional weapons to fight the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

As he listened to Mahami’s demand, Capt. David Underwood reminded his superiors that Mahami’s men — all members of a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary movement called Sahwa, or “Awakening” — were already buying arms with U.S. reward money for finding enemy ammunition dumps. “And as we confiscate weapons, we hand them to Saad Mahami,” Underwood told Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top commander in the region, during their meeting with the Iraqi.

The United States is empowering a new group of Sunni leaders, including onetime members of former president Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, intelligence services and army, who are challenging established Sunni politicians for their community’s leadership. The phenomenon marks a sharp turnaround in U.S. policy and the fortunes of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

The new leaders are decidedly against Iraq’s U.S.-backed, Shiite-led government, which is wary of the Awakening movement’s growing influence, viewing it as a potential threat when U.S. troops withdraw. The mistrust suggests how easily last year’s security improvements could come undone in a still-brittle Iraq. [complete article]

NEWS: In Pakistan, Bhutto dynasty continues; Islamic parties lose support

Islamic parties lose support in Pakistan
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, January 8, 2008

As Pakistan confronts an uncertain future after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s slaying, one thing is clear: Islamic parties sympathetic to al Qaida and the Taliban have lost a great deal of support since they won their greatest political victory in the country’s history five years ago.

“Giving your vote to the religious parties is just wasting your vote,” snorted tailor Abdul Sattar Mughal, 37, as he sat at an old sewing machine in a tiny back-street shop close to where Bhutto died. “They don’t deliver anything; just slogans, nothing more.”

The parties have been hurt by internal splits, leadership rivalries and widespread disdain for the hard-line Islamic rule they advocate. An outpouring of sympathy for Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party unleashed by her death Dec. 27 appears to have drained more support. [complete article]

Benazir Bhutto’s son says he fears Pakistan may disintegrate
By Philippe Naughton, The Times, January 8, 2008

Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son made his political debut in a London hotel today and was forced to defend the decision to hand him the leadership of his mother’s Pakistan’s People’s Party “like some piece of family furniture”.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari chose his mother’s favourite boutique hotel in Knightsbridge for his first press appearance since her assassination in Rawalpindi 12 days ago.

He began by issuing an appeal to the media to respect his privacy while he completes his education at Oxford, where he is a first-year student at Christ Church college.

But Mr Bhutto Zardari, who was named chairman of the PPP shortly after his mother’s death, made it clear that he intended to follow the family tradition and move on to a career in politics. The PPP was founded 40 years ago by his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former president and prime minister who was executed in 1979. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: What makes Obama unbeatable

What makes Obama unbeatable
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 8, 2008

Barak Obama’s message is deceptively simple:

It’s not about me; it’s about you.

That’s a hard idea for the worldly-wise commentator to swallow because it sounds too glib. Even so, it is a message that resonates with Obama’s audience because he possesses that rarest of political commodities: authenticity.

To the cynical eye, Obama embodies the superficiality of American presidential politics. He is seen as the kind of candidate that Hollywood would dream up if concocting a modern-day JFK: good-looking; brimming with confidence and charisma; multicultural; a black man who sounds like a white man — the perfect star for an all-American blockbuster. As an icon, he makes the perfect contrast to Mitt Romney who, as Michael Kinsley wrote the other day, “radiates conventionality, with his ‘Leave-It-to-Beaver’-and-then-some family and his good looks straight out of ‘Mad Men,’ the TV series about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s.”

To the outside world, Obama represents a passionate yearning for America to redeem itself — for an end to the nightmare of the Bush era; for reconciliation and forgiveness; for the hope that the United States will once again resume an honored place within the community of nations.

To his supporters and an increasing number of other Americans, Obama has captured the hope that he can reclaim the possibility of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

In the world of a televised presidential contest, the primaries bear a disquieting resemblance to so many other TV games of elimination. Who’s going to get the prize? Who’s going to get bumped off the stage? Who scored points and who took the hard hits? As a game contestant, Obama’s performance has been mixed — but this isn’t why he’s winning.

He’s winning because whereas his opponents appear to be promoting themselves, he conveys a compelling sense that he’s rooting for America. This is quintessential populism but the unique distinction that Obama lends this is that his appeal to the collective is credible.

September 11 brought Americans together, but this was a unity forged through fear. It was the solidarity that comes from facing a common enemy. It was not and could never be sustainable. It was from its inception, ripe for abuse.

The unity that Obama has tapped into and is eager to cultivate comes from recognizing a common purpose and collective interests. It’s not about for-us-or-against-us; it’s about us.

While American democracy might be cursed by a poorly informed electorate — especially in the arena of international affairs — America’s voters are not lacking in the canniness that judges character and ultimately makes democracy work.

For many months, Hillary Clinton’s popularity was sustained as much by the expectation that her nomination was a foregone conclusion, as it was by her political acumen. But as soon as Obama upturned the equation, the zeitgeist shifted.

The prosaic questions facing the voters used to be, which among these candidates is capable of winning the election, of guiding the country in the right direction, and “appears presidential”?

The question then became, is it possible that the United States could have a president who actually places the country and not him or herself at the center of their vision of leadership?

Clinton said of herself when interviewed on CNN today, “I am so other-oriented,” yet as sincere as she might be in making that claim, she is running a campaign in which she places herself squarely at the center. In contrast, Obama puts the country first, yet if this was merely for rhetorical effect, it could as easily be imitated — just as the campaign theme of “change” has of late been universally adopted. What cannot be mimicked is authenticity.

When Obama says, “we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come,” this resonates with his audience not simply because they like the message, but because they hear in this declaration the voice of a genuine catalyst for something much larger than himself.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Bush heads to Middle East

Remember him? Bush begins Middle East tour
By Leonard Doyle and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, January 7, 2008

Voters in the United States may have switched their attention to the contest to find his successor, but George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort to salvage a legacy from two terms in office overshadowed by a catastrophic foreign policy that has earned him the distinction of being one of the worst presidents in the country’s history.

The Bush legacy will not be peace in the Middle East nor an end to conflict in Iraq, but it could be a political earthquake among voters so dismayed by the mess he has made of America’s foreign policy and fearful of economic recession that they are deserting his party in droves.

As he prepares to board a plane for Israel and wrap himself in the tattered flag of victory in Iraq, Mr Bush’s real legacy to the American people is evident in the disillusionment on display in New Hampshire. [complete article]

See also, Army of 8,000 to protect George Bush visit (Telegraph).

Israel’s false friends
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special relationship” with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does. [complete article]

A hostile president
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, January 6, 2008

George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel. [complete article]

Israel warns of Iranian missile peril for Europe
By Carolynne Wheeler, The Telegraph, January 7, 2008

Iran is developing nuclear missiles capable of reaching beyond its enemies in the Middle East to Europe, President George Bush will be warned when he visits Israel and the Palestinian territories for the first time since entering the White House. [complete article]

Israel to brief George Bush on options for Iran strike
By Uzi Mahnaimi, The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

Israeli intelligence is understood to agree that the [nuclear weapon] project was halted around the time of America’s invasion of Iraq, but has “rock solid” information that it has since started up again.

While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium – which could be used for civil or military purposes – and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. [complete article]

Israel not honoring pledge, Olmert says
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2008

Israel has failed to keep its pledge to stop enlarging Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged in an interview published Friday, addressing a criticism he expects to hear next week from President Bush.

“Every year all the settlements in all the territories [of the West Bank] continue to grow,” Olmert told the Jerusalem Post. “There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised. . . . We have obligations related to settlements and we will honor them.” [complete article]

Nudged by Bush, Israel talks of removing illegal outposts
By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 5, 2008

Pressed by President Bush to keep promises to destroy illegal settler outposts, Israeli leaders said Friday that they hoped to take action after his visit to the region next week.

The awkward exchange through the news media exemplified the importance of Israel’s relationship to the United States and the way in which Washington can sometimes push it to take controversial steps that benefit the Palestinians, who have little diplomatic weight of their own. [complete article]

Hamas confirms: Swiss probed possibility of talks with Israel
By Ali Waked, Ynet, January 1, 2008

The “Swiss Document”, as it was dubbed Tuesday by Former Palestinian Foreign Minister and top Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, in fact exists. This refers to a deceleration of intent, drafted by Swiss officials, paving the way for negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) confirmed the existence of the “Swiss Document” Monday, and stated that the Swiss had mediated direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas. In his comments Tuesday, however, al-Zahar noted that there were no direct talks between Israel and Hamas. [complete article]

Just going to work, Palestinians and Israelis travel different roads
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy, January 6, 2008

Before they set out for work each morning, neighbors Naim Darwish, a Palestinian Muslim, and Jacob Steinmetz, an Israeli Jew, begin their days in quiet meditation.

In the pre-dawn chill, Darwish sets his Muslim prayer rug on the floor facing Mecca. In the soft morning light, Steinmetz throws on his prayer shawl and turns toward Jerusalem. Then the lives of these West Bank neighbors diverge.

It takes Steinmetz about half an hour to drive and hitchhike the 20 miles to the West Bank office where he works as an Israeli government attorney. If he’s lucky, it takes Darwish two-and-a-half hours to travel the 30 miles to his computer engineering job at a Palestinian high-tech company in Ramallah. [complete article]

NEWS: Iranians grab attention; Hormuz incident produces brief blip in the markets

U.S. describes confrontation with Iranian boats
By Thom Shanker and Brian Knowlton, New York Times, January 8, 2008

One Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe early reports from the Navy’s regional headquarters in Bahrain, said that the Iranian boats made a radio threat that the American ships would explode.

“The five Iranian fast boats essentially came in and charged the ships,” the Defense Department official said. The verbal warnings heard in English over the internationally recognized bridge-to-bridge radio channel said, “I am coming at you, and you will explode in a few minutes,” the official said.

A few minutes later, one of the Iranian boats placed two white boxes, possibly meant to be taken for mines, in the wake of one of the Navy ships, which caused another of the American vessels to take evasive action.

“Whether they’re just testing us to learn about our procedures, or actually trying to initiate an incident, we don’t know,” the official said.

The five fast boats were identified by Defense Department officials as belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Traditionally, the Revolutionary Guards’ maritime forces have operated in a far more hostile manner than the regular Iranian Navy.

“We have found in the past that the regular Iranian Navy was a courteous and professional organization, and our relations are as we would have with any other navy in the world,” said one Pentagon official who has studied the issue. “The I.R.G.C. Navy has a tendency to act in these unprofessional ways, and to be very provocative at times.”

Last March, Revolutionary Guards sailors captured 15 British sailors in waters the British insisted were international, and held them for nearly two weeks. [complete article]

Hotdogs and brinkmanship
By Cernig, Newshoggers, January 7, 2008

There’s a fair bit of speculation on Iranian motives today, from Blake Hounsell wondering if the IRGC commanders are doing some oil-market speculating to talk of a “Gulf of Tonkin” exersize and the inevitable Rightwing calls to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Others see this incident as being connected to the US nomination races (no, really – everything is about the races for some folk) or to Bush’s Mid-East visit.

While the latter is the most likely if this event – not unusual except for one Iranian redneck on a radio – was deliberately singled out for orders to that effect by some senior commander, I’m going with Dave Schuler’s take – dumb hotdogs playing brinkmanship games.

I think it’s more likely that it’s just a bunch of IRG’s horsing around, taunting the Great Satan. You can’t peddle that sort of stuff for a generation or more without it having some effects.

On both sides, Dave. [complete article]

Diplomatic two-step in Iran
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2008

Tehran in recent days reshuffled its diplomatic team in key Middle East posts. It has cut short the tenure of its ambassador to Syria after just a two-year stint, replacing him with another hard-core loyalist of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Tehran government has also announced the departure of its point man on Iraq to a post in far-flung Japan.

The moves have sparked speculation that Ahmadinejad wants more control over the country’s foreign policy on Iraq and Lebanon.

But they could also just be complicated maneuvers to consolidate power within the ruling elite’s treacherous factional politics. [complete article]

Oil shrugs off Iran-US bounce, falls below $97
By Santosh Menon, Reuters, January 7, 2008

Oil fell more than $1 to below $97 a barrel on Monday, handing back gains triggered by reports of fresh tensions between Iran and the United States. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Pakistan says no (again) to foreign troops; Pakistan’s ethnic faultlines

Pakistan says won’t let in foreign troops
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, January 7, 2008

Pakistan will not allow any country to conduct military operations on its territory, officials said on Monday, rejecting a report that said the United States was considering authorising its forces to act in Pakistan.

The New York Times said on Sunday the U.S. government was considering expanding the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in Pakistan.

The U.S. officials considering the move were concerned over intelligence reports that al Qaeda and the Taliban were more intent on destabilising Pakistan, the newspaper said.

Pakistani government and military officials dismissed the report and said Pakistan would not permit any such action.

“Pakistan’s position in the war on terror has been very clear — that any action on Pakistani soil will be taken only by Pakistani forces and Pakistani security agencies,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.

“No other country will be allowed to carry out operations in Pakistan. This has been conveyed at the highest level,” he said. [complete article]

Waziristan: the hub of al-Qaida operations
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, January 7, 2008

The killing of eight tribal elders involved in peace negotiations in the Waziristan region of Pakistan is the first flash of violence in the area for about six months.

The bloodshed unfolded in a series of attacks between Sunday night and Monday morning around Wana, the lawless capital which is a hotbed of al-Qaida linked violence.

The Pakistani military reported attacks on two “peace committee” offices in Wana and the nearby Shikai Valley, a rugged mountain retreat where soldiers discovered a network of al-Qaida safehouses in 2005.

The bloodletting underscores the collapse of government authority in Waziristan, where 100,000 troops are deployed, and the perils run by those engaged in controversial efforts to broker peace between the government and well-armed militants. [complete article]

Strains intensify in Pakistan’s ethnic patchwork
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, January 7, 2008

To Khaled Chema, an unemployed 32-year-old living in a sprawling slum of this mega-city by the sea, Benazir Bhutto wasn’t assassinated because she opposed extremism and advocated democracy. She was killed because, like him, she was a Sindhi.

And just as her father did before her, Bhutto died a long way from home — in the back yard of the Punjabi establishment. Her assassination has inflamed long-simmering resentments among ethnic minorities toward the dominant Punjabis.

In Pakistan — a federation of four provinces, each associated with a different ethnic group — the issue of ethnic identity has long been troublesome, imperiling the unity of the state.

In Baluchistan, many people are in open revolt. Pashtuns in North-West Frontier Province have joined their clansmen on the Afghan side of the border in a bloody insurgency against both governments.

Now, Bhutto’s assassination in Rawalpindi, a key city in Punjab province and the home of the military, has endangered the uneasy balance in which Sindhis suppressed their ethnic-nationalist desires because they knew that one of their own was among the most popular politicians in the country. [complete article]

FEATURES: The next president’s foreign policy challenges

The Democratic foreign policy wars
By Ari Berman, The Nation, January 21, 2008

At the Des Moines Register presidential debate in December, Barack Obama was asked how voters could expect him to provide a “break from the past” when many of his top foreign policy advisers were holdovers from the Clinton Administration. Obama gracefully parried the challenge by saying he was willing to take good advice from several previous administrations, not just Bill Clinton’s. But the question did reflect a common suspicion that despite all his talk about providing “change,” the Obama campaign’s differences with Hillary Clinton on foreign policy may be more stylistic than substantive.

It’s true that a number of Obama’s key advisers–like former National Security Adviser Tony Lake, former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig–held prominent positions under Bill Clinton. At the same time, Obama’s team includes some of the most forward-thinking members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment–like Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, the party’s leading experts on nonproliferation and defense issues, respectively, along with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Added to the mix are fresh faces who were at times critical of the Clinton Administration, like Harvard professor Samantha Power, author of “A Problem From Hell”, a widely acclaimed history of US responses to genocide. These names suggest that Obama may be more open to challenging old Washington assumptions and crafting new approaches. [complete article]

Trouble ahead
By Strobe Talbott, Financial Times, January 5, 2008

When taking the oath of office on January 20 2009, the next president of the United States will be assuming responsibility for the most difficult, dangerous and complex set of foreign-policy challenges ever to face a newcomer to the White House. Whatever is then happening in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israel peace process, it is safe to predict that George W. Bush will, in each case, be passing on to his successor either a daunting piece of unfinished business or a full-blown crisis.

Moreover, in dealing with that morass, the US will need help from a world where its reputation is scraping bottom, from an enfeebled United Nations and from allies whose confidence in America’s stewardship of its own power and their interests has been profoundly shaken. Although Bush has been making an effort to mend fences, and hopes to score some diplomatic points in his final year as president, his bungled occupation of Iraq and his swaggering disregard for international institutions and opinion during his first term still rankle around the world. Many of his fellow leaders are counting the days until he steps down (381 from today). [complete article]

OPINION: Fighting terrorism with terrorists

Fighting terrorism with terrorists
By Joshua Kurlantzick, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

In the fall of 2002, the Indonesian island of Bali, once known for its luscious beaches and vibrant Hindu culture, became synonymous with terror and radicalism. After a massive bombing in Bali’s nightclub district killed more than 200 people, the world suddenly realized what many locals had known for years: Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation on Earth, faced a serious internal terror threat.

Even before the Bali attack, Indonesia had suffered a wave of bombings in the winter of 2000, and earlier that year someone had bombed the Jakarta Stock Exchange. The Al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah was actively recruiting across the archipelago, establishing radical schools to train a young generation of jihadis and planning attacks in Indonesia and throughout the region, including in the Philippines and Thailand.

But today, Indonesia has become a far different kind of example. Even as terrorism continues to grow more common in nations from Pakistan to Algeria, Indonesia is heading in the opposite direction, destroying its internal terrorist networks and winning the broader public battle against radicalism. And it has done so not only by cracking heads but by using a softer, innovative plan that employs former jihadis to wean radicals away from terror. [complete article]

OPINION: Second thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War

Second thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War
By Chalmers Johnston, TomDispatch, January 6, 2008

I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives — the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee — from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.

Both men flagrantly abused their positions — but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system — retire and become a lobbyist — whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service’s first “honored colleague” award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan. [complete article]

NEWS & REVIEW: Taxi to the Dark Side

The power of authority: a dark tale
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 1, 2008

Frank Gibney was old and sick and a little more than a month away from dying. But he was filled with righteous anger, and he had some things to say. He told his son, the documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, to unplug a noisy oxygen machine and to grab a video camera.

The older Mr. Gibney, a journalist and scholar who died in April, had served as a naval interrogator in World War II. In a moving statement that serves as a sort of coda to “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a new documentary about the Bush administration’s interrogation policies in the post-9/11 world, he said it had never occurred to him to use brutal techniques on the Japanese prisoners in his custody.

“We had the sense that we were on the side of the good guys,” Frank Gibney said, seething. “People would get decent treatment. And there was the rule of law.”

There would seem to be an enormous distance between the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where the central events in “Taxi to the Dark Side” take place, and Enron’s headquarters in Houston, where the machinations of white-collar criminals brought down the giant energy company and became the backdrop for Mr. Gibney’s entertaining 2005 documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” But Mr. Gibney said the two projects have common themes.

“The subject of corruption unites my films,” he said. “‘Enron’ was about economic corruption, and ‘Taxi’ is about the corruption of the rule of law.” [complete article]

Padilla sues John Yoo over detention
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, January , 2008

Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was held in military detention for more than three years as an enemy combatant, filed a lawsuit Friday against a former Justice Department lawyer who helped provide the legal justifications for what the suit says was Mr. Padilla’s unconstitutional confinement and “gross physical and psychological abuse.”

The lawyer, John C. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote or helped prepare a series of legal memorandums on interrogations and the treatment of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks. [complete article]

Foiling U.S. plan, prison expands in Afghanistan
By Tim Golden, New York Times, January 7, 2008

As the Bush administration struggles for a way to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a similar effort to scale down a larger and more secretive American detention center in Afghanistan has been beset by political, legal and security problems, officials say.

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners — more than twice the 275 being held at Guantanamo. [complete article]

NEWS: Key “Sunni Awakening” leader killed

Suicide bomber kills key Sunni leader in Baghdad
By Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times, January 8, 2008

A suicide bomber assassinated a key leader of American-backed militia forces in a Sunni stronghold of Baghdad on Monday morning, the latest attack on nationalist Sunnis who have recently allied themselves with American troops. That attack, and a second bomb that exploded minutes later, killed at least six and wounded another 26 in total, hospital officials said.

The killing of the militia leader, Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, on the fringes of north Baghdad’s Adhamiyah district, was one of the most significant attacks so far on leaders of former Sunni insurgents who have banded into militias, known as Awakening groups, to fight extremist militants.

Colonel Samarrai was one of the leaders of the Sunni Awakening movement in Adhamiyah, and was also a close aide and a security adviser to the head of the Sunni Endowment, which oversees Iraq’s Sunni mosques and is one of the most powerful Sunni institutions in Iraq. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The new Cambodia?

U.S. considers new covert push within Pakistan
By Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 6, 2008

President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s never enough just to know what was said; we need to know who was talking.

This is a report that illustrates well the need for newspapers to limit their use of anonymous sources. The key to unlocking the article’s significance is knowing who was talking to the New York Times. On that basis we could attempt to understand the sources’ motives for making this information public. For instance, if the sources are intelligence officials we’d have reason to think they might be talking to the press in an effort to kill a harebrained plan before it gains momentum. If on the other hand the sources are inside the White House, then we’d have to wonder whether a political agenda was trumping the need for operational security. Myers, Sanger, and Schmitt should know the answer, but of course their sacred duty to protect the confidentiality of their sources prevents them from adding meaning that currently only they are in a position to discern. Still, why call it reporting if the reporter is only willing to tell part of the story?

What’s more important? That the New York Times is able to protect the privilege of its access to those in power, or that it uses all its means to hold those in power accountable to the people they represent?

Since the Grey Lady is so firmly wedded to its institutional authority, what can we do but go back to parsing the Times as though we were reading Pravda.

This is what I’m able to glean. President Bush, who was in the White House on Friday, did not attend the meeting. The key players at the meeting are named in the article and since they didn’t include Bush, it seems reasonable to infer he wasn’t there. Too busy? We do know for sure that Defense Secretary Gates wasn’t there, so it looks like this was Cheney’s meeting.

Midway through the article, our steely reporters toss in an idle piece of speculation about why the discussions in the White House were taking place: “In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.” Does this mean that the Times was told by its sources, this was the main reason for the discussions, but you can’t attribute that to your sources, or was this just some journalistic day-dreaming? Let’s assume the former. And if that’s the case, this discussion may have more to do with domestic American politics than a desire to bring stability to Pakistan.

Perhaps the most revealing lines in the report are these: “The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf…. But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority [of the CIA] in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country.” In this changing power structure, the administration’s focus remains unchanged: its interest in working more closely with Pakistan’s military than with its civilians. At the same time, the administration appears to want to communicate indirectly with Pakistan’s military by getting its ideas floated in the press. Is this a case of putting the word out to see if it provokes civil unrest?

It’s starting to sound like Cheney might be on the war path again. Iran is off the table, but maybe Pakistan will provide the CIA with an opportunity to help the administration pull its chestnuts out of the fire before November ’08. If they haul in or kill America’s most-wanted men, the presidential race might be nudged back onto national security, and maybe Bush and Cheney won’t go down in history as the men who destroyed the Republican Party.

Could Pakistan go up in flames in the process, al Qaeda’s leaders elude capture and the war in Afghanistan expand into a full-fledged regional war? These are all risks the vice president might be willing to take.

But I digress. The reporters at Pravda — I mean the Times — could do a bit more to enlighten us, couldn’t they?

NEWS, FEATURE & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pakistan’s complex political landscape

Next-gen Taliban
By Nicholas Schmidle, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The intelligence officer I met in Dera Ismail Khan, whose area of operations included the Taliban-ruled enclave of South Waziristan, maintains that his contacts with the militants were severed long ago. “We can hardly work there anymore,” he told me. “The Taliban suspect everyone of spying. All of our sources have been slaughtered.”

I asked [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief, Maulana Fazlur] Rehman, who used to refer to the Taliban as “our boys,” if he still considered the Taliban, even those who might be firing rockets at his house, his boys. “Definitely,” he replied. “But because of America’s policies, they have gone to the extreme. I am trying to bring them back into the mainstream. We don’t disagree with the mujahedeen’s cause, but we differ over priorities. They prefer to fight, but I believe in politics.”

Mushahid Hussain, secretary general of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, told me that no one can negotiate the politics of the North-West Frontier Province better than Rehman. “We know that we need a bearded, turbaned guy out there,” Hussain told me. It is perhaps a measure of how inextricable Islamism and politics have become in Pakistan that even the United States would deal with an anti-American like Rehman. In September, he had the first meeting of his 30-year political career with an American ambassador. What did Rehman and Anne Patterson, the American envoy, discuss? “She urged me to form an electoral alliance with Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf,” he told me a few days after the meeting. “I am not against it. But politically, because of the American presence in Afghanistan and rising extremism, it is a bit hard for us to afford.” Plus, the fact that the Americans thought Bhutto could tackle the Taliban had simply baffled him. “She has no strategy in those areas, and nothing to do with those people,” he said.

When asked if Patterson’s meeting signaled a change in American attitudes, an embassy spokeswoman said it “reflects our approach to democratic politics in Pakistan” and was “part of a process of talking to all those who represent political movements in Pakistan, across the spectrum.” The U.S. has given more than $5 billion to Pakistan in the past few years to fight Islamist militants, but recent reports suggest that the aid has not been effective. Late last month, Congress put restrictions on some military aid and called for the restoration of democratic rights. [complete article]

Democracy gets small portion of U.S. aid
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 6, 2008

Two years before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leading her Pakistan People’s Party in its campaign against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration devoted this much new aid money to strengthen political parties in Pakistan: $0.

The entire U.S. budget for democracy programs in Pakistan in 2006 amounted to about $22 million, according to State Department documents, much of it reserved for aiding the Election Commission — an entity largely controlled by Musharraf. That $22 million was just a small fraction of the $1.6 billion in aid the United States gave Pakistan that year, and it was equivalent to the value of jet engine and helicopter spare parts that Pakistan purchased in 2006 with the help of U.S. funds.

In the past year, as Musharraf’s grip on power became increasingly fragile, the Bush administration has scrambled to build contacts with the opposition and to provide expertise to opposition parties. The money devoted to democracy programs in the 165 million-person country was almost doubled in the fiscal 2008 budget, to $41 million, but that is still less than the $43 million set aside for such efforts in Kosovo, the former Albanian enclave of Serbia with a population of 2 million. In the region, U.S. democracy programs aimed at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt are all larger than the effort in Pakistan. [complete article]

At the heart of Pakistan, life keeps a normal beat
By Jason Burke, The Observer, January 6, 2008

The presence of a Western journalist provokes rowdy debates. The collective answer to the question ‘Is the West anti-Islamic?’ is that governments are, but people are not. Razzaq, the teashop owner, answers the question of whether the dozen or so men there feel themselves to be Pakistani, Sindhi or Muslim. ‘We are Muslim and then Pakistani,’ he says to general approbation. The television, momentarily ignored, is tuned to a satellite TV station broadcasting in the local Sindhi, not Urdu, the national language.

Faith and politics are intertwined with local identity, too. Radical Islam that probably led to the killing of Bhutto is seen as foreign here, where the folksy, pluralistic Barelvi strand of the faith is dominant.

‘We are not extreme,’ said Maja Ali, Old Jatoi’s storekeeper. ‘We are Sindhis. We are secular and democratic people. We are not sectarian. We are not like people in other parts of Pakistan.’ The regional pride is sometimes hidden, but always there in the background. When one of the rare local supporters of Benazir Bhutto blames ‘the Punjab’ for her death, he is at the same time accusing the army, dominated by Pakistanis originating in the eastern province, and expressing a long-standing resentment against the politically and economically dominant north.

But the political debate does not last long. The villagers return to topics of more interest: the cricket, inflation and the interesting stories about the barber’s wife who, everyone agrees, is as beautiful as the heroine of a Bollywood movie, the highest possible praise. [complete article]

See also, It’s troubled, but it’s home (Mohsin Hamid).

Editor’s Comment — It’s not that the United States needs to be spending more on “democracy promotion” in Pakistan or anywhere else. Such efforts can rightly be regarded as intrusive. The need is simply to spend less on butressing governments that suppress the rights of their own people to self-determination. The will of the people has to be expressed — guess what? — by the people.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: How stable is “stability”?

Ghosts that haunt Pakistan
By John F. Burns, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The legend cultivated by Pakistani politicians like Ms. Bhutto and her principal civilian rival, Nawaz Sharif, cast the generals as the main villains in stifling democracy, emerging from their barracks to grab power out of Napoleonic ambition and contempt for the will of ordinary Pakistanis. It is a version of history calculated to appeal strongly to Western opinion. But it has been carefully drawn to excuse the role the politicians themselves have played in undermining democracy, by using mandates won at the polls to establish governments that rarely amounted to much more than vehicles for personal enrichment, or for pursuing vendettas against political foes.

William Dalrymple, a British author who has written widely about India and Pakistan, put it bluntly in an article for Britain’s left-of-center Guardian newspaper in 2005. “As Pakistan shows, rigid, corrupt, unrepresentative and flawed democracies without the strong independent institutions of a civil society — a free press, an independent judiciary, an empowered election commission — can foster governments that are every bit as tyrannical as any dictatorship,” he wrote. “Justice and democracy are not necessarily synonymous.” [complete article]

Musharraf apparently riding out crisis
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

In the first days after the Dec. 27 attack, the already unpopular Musharraf’s grip on power seemed to hang in the balance. Riots raged for three days in Karachi, Bhutto’s hometown, and across her home province of Sindh.

Much of the fury over the killing of the former prime minister and one of the most popular politicians in the country’s history was aimed directly at one man: the president. In a dozen cities, demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Musharraf, dog!” and “Musharraf, killer!”

But a scant week later, analysts and observers said the Pakistani leader appeared to have weathered the storm, methodically taking a series of steps aimed at shoring up his position, at least in the short term. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Remember who said, “it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path”? Of course President Bush was talking about Iraq and the Middle East and it was four years ago. Pakistan isn’t in the Middle East, neoconservatism is festering in the garbage can of history, and the word on everyone’s lips is not “democracy”; it’s “stability.”

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Sibel Edmonds claims nuclear secrets have been sold

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

A whistleblower has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to Australia’s Luke Ryland (via The Brad Blog), the “well-known senior official” is Marc Grossman. For detailed background on Sibel Edmond’s efforts to make her story known, see David Rose’s Vanity Fair article from 2005, An inconvenient patriot.

NEWS & OPINION: Mismeasuring regional dynamics

Why U.S. strategy on Iran is crumbling
By Marc Lynch, Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2008

‘Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Gulf dignitaries in Bahrain last month. But in reality, everywhere you turn, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, you now see Iranian leaders shattering longstanding taboos by meeting cordially with their Arab counterparts.

The Gulf has moved away from American arguments for isolating Iran. American policymakers need to do the same.

The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are accommodating themselves to Iran’s growing weight in the region’s politics. They remain key parts of America’s security architecture in the region, hosting massive US military bases and underwriting the American economy in exchange for protection. But as Saudi analyst Khalid al-Dakheel argues, they are no longer content sitting passively beneath the US security umbrella and want to avoid being a pawn in the US-Iranian struggle for power. Flush with cash, they are not interested in a war that would mess up business. [complete article]

Yo, anyone who fears Iran
The Economist, January 3, 2008

The smart people are getting out of Jerusalem next week. Traffic mayhem is assured as George Bush and his entourage, about 800 souls, guarded by thousands of Israeli police, are whisked about in a fleet of armoured vehicles, complete with a bespoke helicopter brought in to fly the president to Capernaum, in northern Israel, where Jesus chose his apostles.

What is less clear is what Mr Bush will bring his hosts apart from gridlock. The man who hoped his invasion of Iraq in 2003 was going to bring peace to Palestine and democracy to the Arabs has not exactly over-achieved. So the main aims of the tour he begins on January 8th are more limited: to give a nudge to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks he launched in Annapolis in November and to shore up America’s allies against Iran. [complete article]

Iran ‘could restore ties with U.S.’
BBC News, January 4, 2008

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said relations with the US could be restored in the future.

In a speech to students, he said the time was not right to restore ties, but if it were ever in Iran’s interests he would endorse such a move. [complete article]

Hezbollah sets resolution terms
BBC News, January 4, 2008

The Lebanese opposition group Hezbollah has said openly that it will not allow a president to be elected unless it gets a third of the cabinet seats.

This would give Hezbollah and its allies a veto over key decisions. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, blamed the US for obstructing a solution to Lebanon’s political crisis by opposing such a move. [complete article]

OPINION: Hopes on the rise

How Obama’s message found its mark
By John Dickerson, Slate, January 3, 2008

The big question of Barack Obama’s campaign has always been whether his high-flying rhetoric could ever produce real results. Sure, he could create crowds visible from space, but during the summer—when his polls flattened and his backers got nervous—political elites wondered whether he had peaked. He was the girl you dated, not the girl you married, plenty of political analysts told me.

Not any more. In the campaign’s first test, Obama has beaten two tough opponents by a healthy margin. For a candidate promising to create a movement—an “army for change,” as he calls it—a victory like this not only helps his political prospects in the upcoming primaries. It substantiates a key element of the theory of his candidacy, that he can mobilize people behind a movement. [complete article]