"You Have to Be with the Democratic Forces"

There are a couple of things in today's NYT article about the big news from Pakistan (Musharraf is expected to resign soon) that need to be highlighted.

First is this:

The continued support of Mr. Musharraf by the Bush administration, anchored by the personal relationship between President Bush and Mr. Musharraf, has infuriated the four-month-old civilian coalition, which routed the president’s party in February elections. “Now the reaction from the American friends is positive,” Mr. Khan said.

While Mr. Bush has kept up his relations with Mr. Musharraf -- including regular telephone conversations -- the administration has also been trying to build its relations with the new Pakistani government, as it demands greater action against militants based in this country.

Mr. Khan, is Nisar Ali Khan, a senior official in the religious, conservative paraty, the Pakistan Muslim League-N. The PML-N is the minority party in the parliamentary coalition that has powered the effort to get rid of Musharraf. I think it's a good sign that despite Bush's reactionary policy of sticking by Musharraf for the last 10 months, the PML-N isn't bashing the U.S., and in fact, sounded a positive note.

Bush actually met with Pakistan's prime minister a few weeks ago in Washington, Yousaf Raza Gillani, who leads the majority party in the coalition, the Pakistan People's Party. Despite the coalition, the liberal PPP are bitter rivals with the PML-N. In that context, Khan's upbeat quote says to me that the PML-N are grown ups and recognize that the political game is on, and they want to be in the mix and build a relationship with the U.S.

Let's not blow it. There is an opportunity here. The media has been beating the war drum on Pakistan, but this proves we've got better options.

Indeed, the more important snippet from today's article was this:

Mr. Sherpao represents a parliamentary constituency in the North West Frontier Province on the edge of the tribal area where the Taliban are winning control in village after village with little opposition from the military or government forces.

After consulting “with every friend” in his area “not a single person was in favor of Musharraf,” Mr. Sherpao said.

“With one voice they said: ‘This is the time you have to be with the democratic forces.’“

I cannot stress enough how this renewed push for democracy in Pakistan, which has blossomed in the last year, represents a viable, popular antidote to the Taliban and Qaeda who are (symbolically and literally) banished away in the hinterlands. While Al Qaeda and the Taliban plot in their tree house, let's work with the majority of the country who want democracy not sharia.

The Best Offense...

The NYT filed this scary report today:

Al Qaeda’s success in forging close ties to Pakistani militant groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan, the American government’s senior terrorism analyst said Tuesday.

Al Qaeda is more capable of attacking inside the United States than it was last year, and its cadre of senior leaders has recruited and trained “dozens” of militants capable of blending into Western society to carry out attacks, the analyst said.

The news is not surprising—the NYT has made the threat in Western Pakistan its top Middle East story for months now. And while this report seems to confirm what they've been writing, that Al Qaeda has reestablished a credible threat to the United States in the hinterlands of Pakistan, I stand by the series of posts I've put up here lately that the best strategy for dealing with the Qeada threat is defense.

There are four plays to this defensive strategy:

1) Support the emerging democratically elected, parliamentary coalition in Islamabad.

2) Continue spook work to monitor Qaeda plots—which will be easier if the terrorism analyst is right and Al Qaeda goes operable in the U.S. According to my military source, PEQ-2A: "If AQ 'goes western' with their operatives, then they have also unwittingly opened the door for us to penetrate the organization and destroy it from within. While you could easily argue that having western looking operatives allows them to blend in better with 'us' — that conduit works both ways. Once we have penetrated the organization—then it's through. Potentially, this is the mistake we have been waiting for them to make."

3) Keep a military presence in Afghanistan that draws Qaeda out into battles on Afghani turf.

4) Do targeted strikes against Qaeda and Taliban sites in Western Pakistan when the opportunities come up.

These are all wise alternatives to destabilizing Pakistan with a full-on offensive—an option that is likely to sink the emerging government and feed Qaeda's M.O. Qaeda wants the U.S. to fight on their turf and their terms. Yawn.

Lebanon's Radicals? Not Hezbollah

One of the earliest posts on this blog was a profile of the radical Lebanese Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam.

(I occasionally profile people and groups who seem to be underrated players in the weird Middle East equation.)

Fatah al-Islam is noteworthy because they are a militant challenge to both the Westernish governing faction and Hezbollah, the powerful opposition party.

In June, I wrote:

Today's news that Fatah al-Islam took credit for a deadly bomb blast that killed a government troop in Northern Lebanon last week (Al Jazeera has the story) is a scary reminder about this newish and hot-headed militant faction. While Hezbollah, the Shiite militants backed by Iran and Syria, has everybody tweaked out, it's actually Fatah al-Islam that's willing to upset the urgent political compromise that cooled sectarian violence and political tensions in Lebanon last month. (Hezbollah, in fact, is invested in the political truce.)

According to this breaking report, Fatah al-Islam appears to have struck again this afternoon:

The Tripoli bombing was the deadliest single attack in Lebanon in more than three years. It left a scene of carnage at rush hour in this northern city’s crowded commercial center, at a bus stop where Army soldiers were known to catch buses to their posts farther south every morning.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but some Lebanese political figures said they believed the bombing may have been revenge for the Army’s role in Nahr al Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp. The Islamist group that fought the Army there, Fatah al Islam, has claimed several small attacks on soldiers since then, including one that killed a soldier near Tripoli on May 31.

Post-Misstep Policy: Pakistan

There's some big (and good) news out of Pakistan today: The leader of the Pakistan People's Party, Asif Ali Zardari, and the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, Nawaz Sharif, emerged from days of backroom meetings and held a press conference announcing their joint call to impeach intransigent Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

It's not so much that getting rid of Musharraf is good news (which it is, but it's also inevitable and obvious and overdue). It's that the joint announcement repairs the parliamentary coalition that, in my opinion is the obvious—although, apparently invisible to media pundits and NATO generals and U.S. Presidential candidates—solution to the Al Qaeda/Taliban "crisis" in Pakistan.

The liberal PPP is the majority party in the parliamentary coalition elected in February. (Yousaf Raza Gillani, who just visited the U.S. and played into the NYT "crisis" storyline, is the PPP Prime Minister. Zardari is the more powerful PPP chairman).

Sharif's conservative, religious PML-N is the minority partner in the parliamentary coalition.

Sharif's PML-N was starting to call the shots and gain steam as the more popular party this summer and spring when they got behind the popular lawyer's movement to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry. President Musharraf had ousted Chaudry along with several other Supreme Court judges last November, after Justice Chaudry called Musharraf's Presidency illegal. Both the PPP and the PML-N had pledged to reinstate the judges when they formed their coalition after the Feburary elections, but Zardari's PPP backed away from the pledge. (The PPP, former leader Benazir Bhutto's party, is Westernish and is wary of alienating the Bush administration, which has strongly and block-headedly backed Musharraf.)

Also: Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, feared the reinstatement of Chief Justice Chaudhry because Chaudry was/is likely to go after Zardari on previous corruption charges.

However, the main issue is Musharraf. The PPP/PML-N coalition had also promised to get rid of him. (Reinstating Chaudry was seen as the way to get rid of Musharraf.) By calling directly for Musharraf's impeachment today, Zardari has sidestepped the Chaudry issue for now and has put his party back in sync with popular opinion.

With the dissident PML-N having a monopoly on the populist anti-Musharraf movement, the status quo government was losing legitimacy and further destabilizing Pakistan. The PML-N had left the governing coaltion back in May over the Chaudry issue. With the PML-N leaving the governing coalition and gaining steam as popular agitators, Pakistan's fragile democracy was at risk. And certainly, the PPP's legitimacy was at risk. Aitzaz Ashan, the popular leader of "the Lawyers' Movement"—the movement to reinstate Chaudry and other anti-Musharaff Supreme Court judges—is a prominent PPP member who was starting to become more aligned with the PML-N thanks to the PML-N's correct reading of the crisis: Sharif joined Ashan and the Lawyers' Movement out in the streets in June. Zardari did not.

The PPP's decision today could reverse their missteps. This is good news. Zardari's sense to shore up the coalition by biting the bullet and getting on the right side of history and going after Musharraf is a boon for stability and democracy—which is the antidote to the reemergence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Western Pakistan that's fueling so much war-beat media coverage in the U.S. and causing so much hand wringing for NATO. Let's hope the U.S. reverses its missteps and has the sense to get on the right side of history now as well.

With a working, popular parliamentary coalition, the ability for the U.S. to maneuver and make bold decisions about confronting Qaeda in Western Pakistan along the Afghani border becomes easier. The bold decision? Cool it with all the war talk and get behind the PPP/PML-N coalition and help build democracy in Pakistan. And watch Al Qaeda recede further and further into the hills, metaphorically and literally.

Staight Out of Tehran

Given the subtitle of this blog—the prize lyric from "Rock the Casbah," the Clash's prescient takedown of militant Islam and its revolution fake out—I must alert everyone to this.

Fighting to Go Mainstream

Today's Stratfor report summarizes the drama along the Afghan-Pakistani border—and the apparent conundrum for the US: The increasing power of the Taliban in Pakistan's western no-man's land is pressing the US to take more serious military action, but:

The jihadists are actually hoping for large-scale U.S. military activity on Pakistani soil because they desperately want to broaden the scope of their insurgency from one currently being waged by a religious ideological minority to one of a nationalistic flavor bringing in participation from more mainstream cross-sections of Pakistan.

"Ideological minority" is right.

Far from being a conundrum, Stratfor's read on things actually highlights why chest-forward Americans (including Obama liberals who want to go into Pakistan as a way to right Bush's blunder in Iraq) are way off base when they haul out the "Pakistan 2008=Afghanistan 2001" analogy.

In 2001, when Al Qaeda had its pretty set up in Afghanistan, Afghanistan was actually under the Taliban's control. Pakistan, while definitely a bit of a mess, has a secular-liberal party with a majority in parliament (parliament!), a mainstream conservative religious party in the minority, and streets flooded with activists rallying around the country's well-established secular legal system.

Basically, there are democratic institutions (and an engaged population) in play in Pakistan that Americans can support. Doing so will isolate and unplug the losers in the hinterlands.

Hezbollah Changes its Mission Statement. No One Notices.

Ever since Hezbollah's military "victory" against Israel in 2006, the media has been hyping their ascendancy.

I've always disagreed with the widespread assessment that 2006 was a military victory for Hezbollah. It's true that Israel didn't vanquish Hezbollah (kind of an unrealistic expectation), but look at the map on the ground after the war: Hezbollah no longer occupies southern Lebanon. And that was, in fact, Israel's goal with that invasion. The U.N. cease fire also mandated that Hezbollah disarm. So far, Hezbollah has been able to skirt the mandate to disarm, but it increasingly dogs them as they engage politically in Lebanon.

Indeed, much more important, Hezbollah's ascendancy has actually brought them into the political mainstream.

And stop the presses: They don't seem to have an interest in going toe to toe with Israel anymore. (Hmmm... I wonder why. Could it have anything to do with this?)

Check out this (garbled) passage in today's NYT story. Despite the NYT's off-topic aside—"Sheik Nasrallah [Hezbollah's leader] did not sound concerned"—the report actually says that Hezbollah supports a peace deal with Israel (a complete reversal of anything they've ever said) and they're willing to negotiate disarming.

The NYT writes:

If Israel’s goal of the release was to begin to strip away the issues that Hezbollah uses to justify keeping its weapons — as some political analysts in the region speculated — Sheik Nasrallah did not sound concerned. After leaving the stage, in remarks broadcast to the audience, he said that he would be willing to accept a diplomatic solution to the remaining land disputes with Israel — and with Lebanese factions that are opposed to Hezbollah keeping its weapons.

It seems to me like that revelation warrants a little more attention.

We Win

I keep arguing that containment and bolstering the economy (not invading) is the way to beat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan.

The quote of the morning from this NYT article is the proof that I'm right:

They were denied cellphones, the most valued possession among the Taliban.

What's their favorite brand? Nokia? T-Mobile? HP?

Re: Al Qaeda in Yenemsvelt.

A former CIA agent agrees with me and writes an opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

He concludes:

The threat from Islamic terrorism is no larger now than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. Islamic societies the world over are in turmoil and will continue for years to produce small numbers of dedicated killers, whom we must stop. U.S. and allied intelligence do a good job at that; these efforts, however, will never succeed in neutralizing every terrorist, everywhere.

Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush administration has said since the beginning of the "Global War on Terror"? This administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight -- thereby comforting the administration's preconceptions and policy inclinations.

We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.

Al Qaeda in Yenemsvelt

The NYT continues its drumbeat for action against Pakistan: With a smidgen of breaking news (the latest word from the DOD) they published this today.

American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there.

The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West, these officials say.

The American officials say the influx, which could be in the dozens but could also be higher, shows a further strengthening of the position of the forces of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, increasingly seen as an important base of support for the Taliban, whose forces in Afghanistan have become more aggressive in their campaign against American-led troops.

I understand that the idea of an Al Qaeda haven is startling and conjures up images of Afghanistan circa 2000, AKA: A launching pad for another September 11. But this fear mongering is stirring up calls for an irrational, expensive, useless, and self-defeating mission: Bashing Qaeda in Western Pakistan.

Containment is the smarter policy.

Here's why: Before September 11 we were not on the alert domestically. And so, Bin Laden got lucky. Qaeda may be operating in Western Pakistan right now, but—given our stepped up surveillance and Homeland security measures—I'm not convinced a base in the mountains of Pakistan translates into another 9/11 (or even any sort of Qaeda victory. It's certainly not comparable to the Viet Cong taking Saigon.)

Our policy should be a stalwart defense: 1) Hold the line in Afghanistan (forcing Qaeda and the Taliban to launch attacks into Afghanistan, which pisses off the Afghanis) while strengthening the Karzai government in Kabul, and 2) Keep the radicals isolated in Western Pakistan while strengthening the Democratic government in Islamabad—the coalition between the recently elected Pakistan People's Party and Pakistan Muslim League-N.

The radicals in Western Pakistan want to draw the U.S. in to a full-fledged war there. It will give them a cause. And the fight will be on their terms. The U.S. should not take the bait. The U.S. should focus on what's important: Building up democratic governments and real economies in Pakistan and Afghanistan that engage the public. This strategy will have the added bonus of delegitimizing the radicals who will up their (counterproductive) campaigns of violence.

The radicals in Pakistan also have a major problem: Their game plan relies on recruits from the Saudi Peninsula. This is not a coherent nationalist movement for Pakistan. This is a "movement" with a weird worldwide agenda. The only thing that would help legitimize their fantasy would be if their ranks were seen as rushing in to defend the Islamic world against the U.S. But if the U.S. is helping bring stability to Pakistan and Afghanistan—countries where the public is already intimidated by and weary from the radicals violent operations—the Qaeda troops will remain isolated in the mountains.

There's a metaphor in the fact that Qaeda operates in the hinterlands of Western Pakistan rather than out of Islamabad. The U.S. should concentrate on turning this metaphor into a fact.

Footnote. And apparently the bogeyman in today's NYT article, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, isn't as popular among the radicals as the NYT spins it. Check out this recent post, "Pakistan's tribal militants turn against each other," from Foreign Policy magazine's blog.

Update: This Newsweek article—which argues the Al Qaeda is not the great Existential threat the GOP wants it to be (to justify Bush's aggression) and the Left wants it to be (to prove Bush has failed)—seconds what I just wrote about going for a more comprehensive strategy of supporting democracy than itching for combat.

It's worth quoting at length:

It is by now overwhelmingly clear that Al Qaeda and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization's ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an "existential threat" to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al Qaeda and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.

The evidence supporting this view of the threat was already growing by 2003. Scholars like Benjamin Friedman, Marc Sageman and John Mueller collected much of it. I've been making a similar case in columns and a book since 2004. James Fallows wrote a fine cover essay in The Atlantic in September 2006 arguing that if there was ever a war against militant Islam, it was now over and the latter had lost.

These writings never really changed the debate because they fell into a political vacuum. The right wanted to argue that we lived in scary times and that this justified the aggressive unilateralism of George W. Bush. And the left was wedded to the idea that Bush had screwed everything up and created a frighteningly dangerous world in which the ranks of jihadists had grown. But these days, the director of the CIA himself has testified that Al Qaeda is on the ropes. The journalist Peter Bergen, who in 2007 wrote a cover essay in The New Republic titled "The Return of Al Qaeda," recently wrote another cover essay, "The Unraveling," about the group's decline. The neoconservative Weekly Standard finally recognizes that "the enemy," as it likes to say ominously, is much weaker now, but quickly notes that Bush deserves all the credit. Terrorism is down in virtually every country, including ones that took a much less militaristic approach to the struggle. (Ironically, the two countries where terrorism persists and in some cases has grown as a threat are Iraq and Afghanistan.)

The administration does deserve some credit for its counterterrorism activities. The combined efforts of most governments since 9/11—busting cells in Europe and Asia, tracking money, hunting down jihadist groups—have been extremely effective. But how you see the world determines how you will respond, and the administration has greatly inflated the threat, casting it as an existential and imminent danger. As a result, we've massively overreacted. Bush and his circle have conceived of the problem as military and urgent when it's more of a long-term political and cultural problem. The massive expansion of the military budget, the unilateral rush to war in Iraq, the creation of the cumbersome Department of Homeland Security, the new restrictions on visas and travel can all be chalked up to this sense that we are at war. No cost-benefit analysis has been done. John Mueller points out that in response to a total of five deaths from anthrax, the U.S. government has spent $5 billion on new security procedures.

Of course, this is actually what Osama bin Laden hoped for. Despite his current weakness, he has always been an extremely shrewd strategist. In explaining the goal of the 9/11 attacks, he pointed out that they inflicted about $500 billion worth of damage to the American economy and yet cost only $500,000. He was describing an LTA, a leveraged terrorist attack. But by the same token, the 9/11 attacks caused an economic swoon because of their scope, and because they were the first of their kind. Since then, each successive terrorist attack—in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Britain—has had a much smaller effect on the world economy.

We are in a struggle against Islamic extremism, but it is more like the cold war than a hot war—a long, mostly peacetime challenge in which a leader must be willing to use military power but also know when not to do so. Perhaps the wisest American president during the cold war was Dwight Eisenhower, and his greatest virtues were those of balance, judgment and restraint. He knew we were in a contest with the Soviet Union, but—at a time when the rest of the country was vastly inflating the threat—he put it in considerable perspective. Eisenhower refused to follow the French into Vietnam or support the British at Suez.

Turkey's Loopy Liberal Set

The secularists in Turkey don't get it. They're trying to get rid of the conservative government (this time apparently, with a coup!) because Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his parliamentary majority tried to overturn a law barring women from wearing the hijab on campus.

The secularists see this as an affront to Turkey's constitutional mandate for separation of Church and State—and I get that they feel threatened by the conservatives—but Turkey's liberal set completely misunderstands the idea of separation of Church and State: It doesn't mean the state can prohibit individuals from following the rules of their religion. It means the state can't force people to follow the rules of someone else's religion (or any religion).

It's supposed to work like this: Public institutions like schools, banks, legislatures, the police, the army, and hospitals cannot endorse or promote a religion, nor discriminate based on religion. This means, for example, a public school cannot make women wear the hijab, but it also means it cannot stop a woman from wearing a hijab.

Take a current example of how Separation of Church and State works in the U.S. If my girlfriend needs Plan B, the state can't force her to go without Plan B because someone else's religious views frown on Plan B. They could, however, find a way to accommodate an Islamic pharmacist from personally filling the prescription by assuring another pharmacist is on duty who will fill the scrip.

The liberals in Turkey are being crazy.

The most important line in this morning's story about the securlarists' coup plot, though, is this: "Erdogan's party, formed in 2001 by politicians who once belonged to Turkey's Islamic movement, denies it has an Islamic agenda, noting that it has backed reforms to help Turkey start EU membership negotiations." (emphasis, mine.)

Economics is the bottom line. If Turkey joins the EU—and economic liberalism has always been a part of Erdogan's agenda—the secular class in Turkey has nothing to fear from the otherwise self-righteous Islamists.

The Republican People's Party (the liberal opposition) should focus on the ballot box instead of coups and convoluted court rulings. They should hone their message—bashing the conservatives as reactionaries and sexists all they want—and win an election.

All Battles are Confusing

Courtesy of An American Pessoptomist comes this scary story about war crimes that may have been committed by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia.

And in the American version of Somalia, these are the good guys?

No wonder the radicals on the other side have traction.

What's Next?

The New York Times is rolling out a series of lengthy stories about the reemergence of Al Qaeda. In the last two days they've documented Qaeda's strength in Pakistan and Algeria.

The stories have an obvious for-the-history-books agenda about them: The NYT wants to mark the end of the Bush era with documentation of President Bush's ultimate failure—Al Qaeda is alive and well.

In addition to all of Bush's other failures, this one is intended to be the most embarrassing for the outgoing president: His only remaining plus is supposedly his tough-guy Republican schtick, but it looks like he's even botched that one too.

Sure liberals hate him for illegal wiretapping (what a bunch of nudge-y sticklers we are about the Constitution), but now the case is being made that Bush isn't even good at GOP type stuff like beating up on the bad guys.

The problem is: In their need to mark Bush as a monumental failure, the NYT is coupling this parting shot indictment with a de facto prescription for the next president (most likely Barack Obama). These fear mongering-stories are hot with a war agenda.

I understand that liberals are getting off on being stronger patriots than Bush, but the chest-thumping seems like a simple-minded way to kick off the Obama era. (I think Obama's talent is that he knows how to lower the temperature.)

I wish the The NYT would also file some editorials on Al Qaeda to provide some direction to the coverage, which otherwise seems like straight up saber rattling.

Let's cool it on the Qaeda fetishism and let Obama fully break with Bush. Figuring out a way to get out of Iraq and into Pakistan would be a smart change, but I'm not sure it would be a fundamental change.

It's time to reevaluate our priorities. Qaeda sure seems like one, but—despite the title of this blog— I'm beginning to wonder if militants boxed into the netherlands of Western Pakistan and the hills of Algeria should be our #1 concern.

FYI, the Reason the Doha Agreement is Failing in Lebanon...

...

is because Hezbollah didn't get everything it wanted.

Yes, as was widely reported in late May, after a week of street fighting where Hezbollah routed pro-government militias: Hezbollah scored big in the cease fire talks in Doha.

Despite being a minority in the proposed governing coalition with the majority March 14 Coalition, Hezbollah won veto power over cabinet decisions and got the government to back off the demand that Hezbollah dismantle its independent telecom system.

However, something else happened after Doha: The new governing coalition re-appointed the Sunni March 14th-Coalition's pick for prime minister, Fouad Siniora. (Hezbollah boycotted the governing coalition 18 months ago when Siniora was appointed the first time by the majority March 14th Coalition. The Hezbollah boycott is what eventually what led to the street fighting.)

Hezbollah's aspirations for power are at odds with the political facts on the ground, which demands compromise and coalition.



The fighting will continue.

The Correct Afghan Analogy: 2002 not '89.

Al Qaeda wants to set up a pre-fab Afghan War in Pakistan, and the U.S. just might go in. As the NYT reports, NATO was drawn in and returned fire this afternoon.

By "Afghan War," Al Qaeda means the Soviet/Afghan War of the 1980s.

By "pre-fab," I mean that a U.S. shoot out with the Islamist fighters in the mountains of Western Pakistan might look and feel like the Soviet standoff with the Mujahideen in the 1980s, but the comparison would be dumb.

Yes, the Afghan Mujahideen was a religious army, but at its root, the movement was a nationalist fight against an illegitimate government, not a holy war without a nationalist base. Indeed, bin Laden's "Afghan" template for defeating the U.S. in Pakistan is ill-conceived for two reasons: 1) His edited version of what went down in Afghanistan in the 1980s—where he commanded what was known at the time as "The Brigade of the Ridiculous"—is off base to begin with and 2) the current situation in Pakistan doesn't line up with the situation that actually existed in Afghanistan in the '80s either.

Bin Laden made the same mistake about Afghanistan after 9/11 when he predicted—conjuring up images of the Soviet defeat— that a U.S. invasion there would destroy the U.S. rather than doing what it actually did: topple the Taliban and send Al Qaeda into retreat in Pakistan. Obviously, the U.S. has botched things since, but that has more to do with subsequent policy by the Bush Administration—shifting the fight to Iraq (?), effectively baling on Karzai— than with any equation on the ground that naturally favored Al Qaeda.

Unlike the Afghan Mujahideen of the 1980s (who defined the nationalist uprising), the radical Islamists in the Western region of Pakistan are far removed from the political action currently redefining Pakistan. The movement, which seems poised to oust the Musharaff government today, stars mainstream political parties, all with bases of popular support—the conservative PML-N, the liberal PPP, and the lawyers movement.

For example, Aitzaz Ashan, the leader of the lawyers movement —which sent hundreds of thousands to the streets in peaceful protests earlier this month— is, in fact, a member of the left-leaning PPP.

Translating the current situation into a fight against an American (or NATO) invasion of Western Pakistan seems several steps removed from the action. (Although, there is some wiggle room for smoke and mirrors by the Islamists because the blockheaded U.S. still supports Musharaff.)

If the U.S. wasn't in Iraq, I would support calling Al Qaeda on its bluff and pulling off another "Afghanistan." And by "Afghanistan," I mean the U.S. victory there in 2002 (not the Soviet fiasco in the '80s)—because that's the template that actually fits the facts on the ground.



Indeed, another thing Bin Laden's "Afghanistan" fantasy leaves out: Lots of U.S. money and missiles helped drive the Soviets out in the 1980s.

Israel's Diplomatic Pinball Game Focuses on Hezbollah More Than Iran

A McClatchy Newspapers report today about Israel's recent flurry of diplomatic efforts—the cease fire with Hamas, its talks with Syria, its overture to Lebanon—tries to make sense out of Israel's multiball play:

The nascent negotiations represent Israel's most concerted diplomatic effort so far to blunt the expanding influence of Iran by striking deals with some of Tehran's allies.

"There's a real strategic imperative to undermine the Iranian camp and build up a counter-coalition," said Mark Heller , a leading researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.

Iran is a piece of it. But I think you have to do one more calculation to get to the real bottom line, which is Hezbollah.

First of all, Syria, a Sunni country, and Lebanon, with its secular-leaning government, are not exactly allies with Shiite Tehran.

What Syria and Lebanon have in common is Hezbollah. Certainly, Iran figures into Israel's diplomatic math, but look a little closer.

1. The main agenda item for Israel and Lebanon is the Shebba Farms territory.

2. The main agenda item for Israel and Syria is Syria's relationship with Hezbollah.

The common denominator: Hezbollah.

It's self explanatory that Hezbollah figures into the Israeli/Syrian discussion about Hezbollah. As for Shebba Farms—the disputed territory in southeast Lebanon that abuts the Israel/Golan/Syria clusterfuck? Well, it's occupied by Israel which makes Hezbollah's blood boil.

Israel's presence in Shebba is Hezbollah's number one grievance with Israel. Hezbollay cites the presence of Israeli soldiers in Shebba as the reason they remain armed in their guerrilla war against Israel. (According to UN resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Hezbollah is supposed to disarm.)

Israel would be smart to negotiate away Hezbollah's excuse for remaining armed because pressure is already mounting in Lebanon for Hezbollah to chill out and join the political mainstream. Last month's deal between Hezbollah and its rival, the dominant Future Movement party, established a compromise government in which Hezbollah has an active role. Hezbollah's affinity for violence has already made them unpopular with many Lebanese, particularly after Hezbollah's bloody stand against Sunni Lebanese in Mid May. Staying in an armed, belligerent posture will deligitemize Hezbollah further as they're supposedly trying to help the battered country stabilize under the new government—a new government whose dominant party, legendary Rafik Hariri's Future Movement, is wildly popular. Handing the Lebanese government a victory like Shebba Farms would isolate Hezbollah.

Israel's talks with Syria dovetail with this strategy. For starters, Shebba is part of the Golan Heights, the long-disputed turf that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 War. A land-for-peace swap could involve an agreement that ends Syria's patronage of Hezbollah.

Here's where it comes back to Iran, though. By isolating Hezbollah (which has always been in a relationship of convenience with Syria while actually being true BFF with its other patron, Iran) it will become clear that Iran's interest in Hezbollah is more about Shiite and Sharia expansion than it is about Israeli occupation. This move will put the Sunni Arab world even further at odds with the Shiite and Persian Iran, isolating Iran that much more.

Iran, however, is a tangent. The endgame for Israel is checking Hezbollah.

War & Peace

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Lebanon's new president, Michel Suleiman on Monday June 16 in Beirut


There are three news stories breaking in the Middle East this week.

1) Israel and Hamas have negotiated a cease fire.

2) U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Lebanon's new president Michel Suleiman, figurehead head of the new unity government. Lebanon's new power-sharing government is the product of a compromise between the secular Sunni-dominated majority (mainly represented by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his Future Movement Party) and the opposition, led by the veto-wielding Shiite faction, the ascendant Hezbollah and its allies.

3) NATO and Afghani forces have begun an assault on the Argandab district in Southern Afghanistan. Taliban troops recently took over the Argandab district, located just 12-miles outside of Kandahar (where 600 Taliban staged a massive jail break last week ).

There's no connecting thread to the three stories, but obviously two of the stories—the news out of Lebanon and the news about Israel and Hamas—hint at an emerging theme in Middle East politics right now: Temperatures are lowering and enemies are talking. Hamas and Israel? The U.S. and Hezbollah?

It's weird that this line (in the second paragraph) of the NYT story on Rice's visit to Lebanon wasn't a page 1 headline:

"Ms. Rice met with government leaders from both the government majority and the Hezbollah opposition..."

It's 10 O'clock, do President Bush and John McCain know where Condoleezza Rice is? She's out appeasing!

Meanwhile, not only are Israel and Hamas signing deals, but Israel is talking about peace with Lebanon too. Israel isn't really in a stand off with Lebanon, though. I think Israel's peace talk overtures to Lebanon are code for engaging Hezbollah—nudging Hezbollah to transition into a political rather than military force. More simply put (and this is connected to the story about Secretary of State Rice in Lebanon): There's a growing recognition of Hezbollah's political legitimacy, which is causing Hezbollah's enemies (namely Israel) to think diplomatically rather than militarily. Israel is also in peace talks with Syria.

NATO's military offensive in Afghanistan isn't in synch with all the olive branch headlines, but it does represent the other dominant story in the Middle East right now: The all-out war that's on its way between the United States and the Qaeda and Taliban forces grouping in Western Pakistan. Tuesday's front-page NYT feature on unchecked Pakistani Taliban comander Mualavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, was just the latest in a run of recent stories about the brazen Taliban and Qaeda operations in the Western hinterlands of Pakistan.

Re: My Prediction that the United States is Going to Invade Pakistan

I was recently disabused of this notion by a friend with some expertise about the U.S. military.

He said the key to Pakistani unity and stability is its military. Despite all the factional turmoil in the country, the military stands in the background giving people a sense of national identity, stirring pride across ethnic and political divisions as a symbol of the country's historic battles for independence.

The U.S. needs to keep good relations with the Pakistani military. If the U.S. loses its alliance with the Pakistani military, it will lose all the leverage it has in the country. Invading western Pakistan, to get at al Qaeda and Baitullah Mehsud's Taliban—even though that clearly wouldn't be a hit on the Pakistan government—would put the Pakistani military on its heels.

Yes, Pakistan has a problem with militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), but it's their problem. The moment the U.S. struck, there'd be no hope for an alliance with Pakistan.

This morning's headlines make me think the U.S. has found away around the problem: "Karzai Threatens to Send Forces Into Pakistan."

And isn't this cute? "NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it was not going to comment."

That's a cover. A reverse-psychology cover. They want to sound disdainful and disapproving.

Quote of the Day

"Hamas is Fatah with Beards." —Fatah supporter in Gaza

Today's NYT article about Hamas rule in Gaza outlines a familiar story line in the Middle East: Orthodox Islamist group takes over, and while the public is annoyed at the crackdown on drinking, kissing, movies, political freedom, and the fits of brutality, the public also comes to appreciate the diligent and efficient governance.

Less predictable (although, it makes sense): Being in power for a year has also had an effect on a hardline Islamist group like Hamas:

While few dispute that Hamas has changed Gaza, a more complicated question is whether ruling Gaza has changed Hamas. Many in the movement and even outside it say that it is less ideological that it was at its founding or even a year ago.

Whereas Hamas says it will never recognize Israel, its leaders say that if Israel returned to the 1967 borders, granted a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and dealt with the rights of refugees, Hamas would declare a long-term truce. This is not that different from what the rest of the Arab world says or the Fatah position in peace talks with Israel.

Jawad Tibi, a health minister under the Fatah government and a Fatah advocate in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, is angry at Hamas. Still, he said, “Hamas is talking about a 30-year truce which is no different really from what we want. Hamas is Fatah with beards.”

Profile #4: Hizbul al-Shabaab

This week's news that Somalia's Islamist opposition and Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) signed a peace agreement in Djibouti was quickly undermined by the bad news: Somalia's radical Islamists, the Islamic Courts Union, or ICU, (the ones actually fighting the U.S.-and-Ethiopian-backed government), denounced the agreement and immediately staged attacks—including an attack on the airport today as Somalia's president, TFG's Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, was getting ready to fly to Ethiopia.

None of this is a surprise. The ICU had boycotted the Djibouti meetings from the start. (Check the skeptical footnote I wrote next to the link when news broke in late May that there were peace talks in Djibouti:

"'Somalia's rivals launch peace talks,' AlJazeera, 5/31/08 (Annoying note: The article does not make it clear what parties are at the negotiating table and if, for example, the ICU is involved in the talks.)"

Indeed, it turns out, the ICU wasn't involved in the talks. They denounced them. Al Jazeera quoted one of the ICU's original leaders, Shiek Hassan Dahir Awyes ultimately condemning the deal:

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, former leader of Somalia's Islamic Courts' Union, has rejected a new peace agreement between the country's interim government and its main political rivals.

The deal faced criticism just hours after it was signed. Speaking to the Reuters news agency by phone from Eritrea, Aweys said: "We encourage the insurgents and the Somali people not to be tired of combating the enemy."

"The aim of the meeting was to derail the holy war in the country."

The ICU's other former leader, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was actually part of the Djibouti peace talks with the TFG, yet the ICU still didn't want any part of it. (In Djibouti, Ahmed was now representing the more moderate Islamist opposition, the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, the ARS). But without the ICU at the table, the agreement seems sort of like getting permission to stay up past bedtime from Dad, but never getting the okay from Mom. (TFG prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein agreed to make Ethiopian troops to leave the country in 120 days and the "opposition" agreed to a cease fire. We shall see.)

The proof of ICU's radical position—more than its dismissal of Ahmed and the Djibouti agreement—is the ascendance of its youth wing, Hizbul al-Shabaab (Party of the Youth). The militant Al-Shabaab, the ICU militia's special forces, have basically taken over the ICU in the last year and a half.

In December 2006, the ICU was run out of country into the bordering Kenyan hinterlands by Ethiopian and American troops—true—who were backing the TFG.

After that defeat, the ICU, renaming itself the Popular Resistance Movement in the Land of the Two Migrations (PRM for short), pledged to run a guerrilla war to retake Somalia—which the ICU had dominated for most of the decade, and outright controlled in 2006.

Operating out of Kenya and southern Somalia now during this recent guerrilla phase, the ICU's youth forces, al-Shabaab (which had gained a reputation during the ICU's command of the country in the mid-90s and 2000s as a bloody and reckless goon squad brigade that often embarrassed the more moderate ICU leadership), began to emerge as the lead fighters in the guerrilla movement. The war has killed about 6,000 civilians in Somalia in the past year.

al-Shabaab flag

Al-Shabaab surfaced in the mainstream media in spooky fashion this week in reports about the endangered Djibouti agreement.

The faction that signed the deal does not include influential leaders like Sheik Aweys or the Shabab, a separate militant group responsible for much of the current fighting. The group seems to be gaining strength, with government troops defecting to it and Shabab fighters seizing town after town. Much of south-central Somalia is now under the control of the Shabab or other Islamist groups.

Shabaab's leader is Aden Hashi Farah Eyrow, a protoge of Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys (the Islamist leader mentioned in the NYT account directly above and in the Al Jareeza accounts at the top denouncing the recent agreement). During the '90s and 2000s, Aweys was the co-leader of the ICU along with Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (the former ICU leader who signed off in Djibouti, now as a member of the more moderate ARS).

During their ICU days, Aweys was basically the ICU's prime minister and Ahmed its president. Aweys, always the more radical of the two (and formerly the head of a Somalia-based Qeada-related terrorist group, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya) resurfaced in Eritrea in 2008, the country which had armed the ICU during the ICU's heyday. Ahmed, the ICU's spiritual founder (a former high school history teacher, a Koranic scholar who studied law at a Libyan university, and something of a moderate) resigned after the military defeat in December 2006.

On the ground now in Southern Somalia, and pushing back into Mogadishu, it's Awey's follwer, Eyrow, and his militant ICU youth offshoot, Shabab. Their goal is to establish sharia in Somalia. (Despite being Sunni, they sent some 720 fighters to Lebanon in July 2006 to fight alongside Shitte Hezbollah against Israel. Hezbollah wants to bring sharia to Lebanon)

The ICU wasn't always so radical. They emerged in the early '90s as an antidote to the anarchy that plagued Somalia under feuding warlord rule. The ICU set up a loose confederation of 11 autonomous Islamic courts in 11 towns throughout Somalia to deal with rampant crime. The order they brought was welcomed by the muslim population, which wasn't necessarily as religious as the courts, but longed for some peace and quiet. Soon the courts started dealing with civil matters and routine things like car titles. They also created a higher court to bring consistency to their legal system, the Supreme Islamic Court of Banadir (headed by Ahmed). They also established an army.

Additionally, they created a governing body, the Shura Council, headed by Aweys. (Both Aweys and Ahmed had been judges in one of the original 11 regional courts, with Ahmed establishing himself as more of a moderate and Aweys aligning himself with the more orthodox courts who were issuing death sentences, cracking down on bollywood movies and "licentious music," and reportedly going after porn and soccer.)

As the ICU's power grew in the 2000s, and as they threatened the warlords, the warlords banded together and formed The Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). The ARPCT, funded by the CIA, was the precursor to the TFG. The ICU and the ARPCT duked it out until the ICU eventually took control of the capital, Mogadishu, and most of central and Southern Somalia in the summer of '06. This led to the U.S. and Ethiopian military campaign in December '06 that toppled the ICU, sending them fleeing south to Somalia's netherland border with Kenya. Ethiopia's interest in toppling the ICU stems from their concern about having a radicalized Islamic state as their neighbor.

Defense Update and GlobalSecurity.Org have both published good primers on the ICU.

Link Think

There's an ultra-contrarian post up today on the Middle East Strategy at Harvard website.

Martin Kramer, an Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard, argues that peace in the Middle East does not "run through" Jerusalem or "run through" Tehran or "run through" Baghdad. (Okay. But really, the only person who ever believed peace in the Middle East ran through Baghdad was Vice President Dick Cheney. Thanks for that magical analysis.)

Kramer's point being: "Linkage" is a red herring for political leaders and diplomats and negotiators who want peace in the Middle East. Kramer argues that "linkage"—the notion that resolving one central conflict (the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in this case) will bring peace to the entire region, like curing one malady that's responsible for a host of related maladies—is an inapplicable principle from the 1940s when diplomats brought peace to Europe. Kramer says "Linkage" theory doesn't apply to the contemporary Middle East as it did to Europe because there's no controlling theme or system in the Middle East.

He writes:

The concept of linkage requires another belief: that the Middle East is a system, like Europe, and that its conflicts are related to one another.

Europe in modern times became a complex, interlocking system in which an event in one corner could set off a chain reaction. In Europe, local conflicts could escalate very rapidly into European conflicts (and ultimately, given Europe’s world dominance, into global conflicts). And Europe had a core problem: the conflict between Germany and France. Resolving it was a precondition for bringing peace to the entire continent. Churchill put his finger on this in 1946: “The first step in the re-creation of the European Family,” he said, “must be a partnership between France and Germany.”

Linkage, I propose—and this is my original thesis—is a projection of this memory of Europe’s re-creation onto the Middle East. The pacification of Europe was the signal achievement of the United States and its allies in the middle of the 20th century. It then became the prism through which the United States and Europe came to view the Middle East. From NATO to the European Union, from the reconstruction of Germany to Benelux, Europe’s experience has provided the template for visions of the future Middle East.

It was this mindset that led analysts and diplomats, for about three decades after the creation of Israel, to interpret Israel’s conflict with its neighbors as “the Middle East conflict.” Like the conflict between France and Germany, the Arab-Israeli conflict was understood to be the prime cause of general instability throughout the region, as evidenced by repeated Arab-Israeli wars, in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973.

The flaws in the analogy only began to appear after Egypt and Israel achieved peace in 1979. From that point onward, the Arab-Israeli conflict moved in fits and starts toward resolution. Yet other conflicts in the region intensified. Large-scale wars erupted—not between Israel and its neighbors, but in the Persian Gulf, where a revolution in Iran, and the belligerence of Iraq, exacted a horrendous toll and required repeated U.S. interventions.

By any objective reading, the reality should have been clear: the Middle East is not analogous to Europe, it has multiple sources of conflict, and even as one conflict moves to resolution, another may be inflamed. This is because the Middle East is not a single system of interlocking parts. It is made up of smaller systems and distinct pieces, that function independently of one another.

I'm not sure how Kramer's point applies practically. While he seems exacerbated by all the domino-effect emphasis that's put on securing peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he doesn't suggest an alternative approach (nor, obviously, does he suggest abandoning negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.)

And I would argue that there is a controlling theme in the Middle East (it's what this whole blog is premised on, damn it): The running stand off between secular and religious aspirations. I don't, however, have a theory about addressing that bigger conflict to bring peace to the Middle East.

Really, Kramer's post is worth reading for the list he provides at the end, his thematic breakdown of all the conflicts in the region. (His 7th category—"the nationalist-Islamist conflicts within states"—is what I'm talking about):

Clusters of Conflict

First, the Arab-Persian conflict (with its origins in earlier Ottoman-Persian conflict). This manifested itself in our time most destructively in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and it continues to inflame post-Saddam Iraq and other parts of the Arab/Persian Gulf (even the name of which is the subject of dispute). This is probably one of the oldest rivalries in the history of the world. It has been exacerbated by the bid of Iran, under the Shah and now under the Islamic regime, to restore lost imperial greatness and achieve hegemonic dominance over the Gulf and beyond.

Second, the Shiite-Sunni conflict, which goes back in various forms for fourteen centuries, and which the struggle for Iraq has greatly inflamed, both within that country and beyond. There is some overlap here with Arab-Persian conflict, but the Shiite-Sunni conflict also divides Arabs against each other, in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gulf countries. The ruthless violence between the sects in Iraq suggested the savage potential of this sectarianism, which has some potential to spread to other places in the Middle East where Shiites and Sunnis contest power and privilege.

Third, the Kurdish awakening, which involves a large national group experiencing a political revival in the territory of several existing states. Over the past two decades, violent conflict generated by Kurdish aspirations has torn at the fabric of Turkey and Iraq. Kurdish groups have used terrorism, and states have used scorched-earth repression and chemical weapons against Kurds. Now that Iraqi Kurds have established a de facto state in northern Iraq, there is every prospect that the Kurdish awakening will generate more conflict, and that it will spill over borders, possibly involving Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

Fourth, the inter-Arab conflict among Arab states over primacy, influence, and borders—the result of disputes created by the post-Ottoman partition of the Arab lands by Britain and France. In some places, these disputes are exacerbated by the inequities in nature’s apportioning of oil resources. The most destructive example of such a conflict in our times was Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait—the attempted erasure of one Arab state by another. Other examples include Nasser’s invasion of Yemen and Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.

Fifth, conflicts over the political aspirations of compact Christian groups with strong historic ties to the West. Foreign Christian minorities were turned out of the region decades ago, but the Maronites of Lebanon and the Greeks of Cyprus have held their ground. In the 1970s, wars were launched to deprive them of their political standing, leading in Cyprus to de facto partition between Greek and Turkish areas, and in Lebanon to a quasi-cantonization. These conflicts have defied all attempts at final resolution.

Sixth, conflicts that arise from the quest of Arab states to preserve or restore parts of their pre-colonial African empires. The most significant conflicts in this category are the long-running war in Sudan, which has descended into genocide in Darfur, and the festering contest over Western Sahara.

Seventh, the nationalist-Islamist conflicts within states, which are the result of failed modernization and the disappointed expectations of independence. The costliest of these conflicts in our time were the Iranian revolution in the 1970s (Islamists prevailed), the Islamist uprising in Syria in the 1980s (nationalists won), and the civil war that ravaged Algeria for much of the 1990s (nationalists triumphed). Smaller-scale conflict has occurred in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and is now afflicting the Palestinian territories.

Eighth, numerous conflicts, centered in the Persian Gulf, generated by the addiction of the industrialized West to the vast oil resources of the region, and the need of the United States to maintain its hegemony over the world’s single largest reservoir of energy. The United States essentially keeps the Gulf as an American lake, using aggressive diplomacy, arms sales to clients, and its own massive force to keep oil flowing at reasonable prices. This has put the United States in direct conflict with regional opponents—Islamic Iran, Saddam’s Iraq, and a non-state actor, Al-Qaeda—who have seen its dominance as disguised imperialism. In particular, U.S.-Iranian conflict for regional hegemony has escalated over the last thirty years, and is now being exacerbated by Iran’s nuclear ambitions and pursuit of regional power status.

Ninth, there is conflict involving Israel, on three planes: Arab-Israeli (that is, Israel versus Arab states), Palestinian-Israeli, and Iranian-Israeli. The Arab-Israeli conflict produced a series of four inter-state wars in each of the four decades beginning in 1948. But since Egypt’s peace with Israel, three decades ago, there have been no general Arab-Israeli wars, and Israel has negotiated formal or de facto agreements or understandings with neighboring states. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict periodically erupts and subsides (most dramatically in two intifadas), and continues to defy resolution, but hasn’t led to a regional conflagration. The brewing Iranian-Israeli conflict isn’t about the Palestinians; it is an extension of the contest between the U.S. and Iran for regional dominance. So far, this conflict has manifested itself in short but sharp contests between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Never Mind Iran

I wrote this post yesterday afternoon, but I didn't publish it because it wasn't anything more than a flip, smart aleck one-liner about a U.S. invasion of Pakistan. It seemed pretty dumb.

Then I woke up to this NYT headline today: "Pakistan Says U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 of Its Soldiers."

Here's what I wrote yesterday:

Today's NYT editorial page is on alert about U.S. saber-rattling against Iran.

But the U.S. is not going to invade Iran. The U.S. is going to invade Pakistan.

"Last week John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, used perhaps the strongest language yet against Pakistan, saying that the United States found it 'unacceptable' that extremists used the tribal areas to plan attacks against Afghanistan, the rest of the world and Pakistan itself. 'We will not be satisfied until the violent extremism emanating from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is brought under control,' Mr. Negroponte told the National Endowment for Democracy." —"Pakistan Defies U.S. on Halting Afghanistan Raids," NYT, 5/16/08.

"Pakistan's new government yesterday agreed to pull its forces out of a restive region near the Afghan border and allow elements of Islamic Shariah law to be imposed there in return for a promise by local Islamic militants to end a wave of terror and arrest foreign terrorists operating in the area. The accord came a day after Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte expressed deep reservations about such accords, noting that a similar deal struck by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2006 had allowed Taliban and al Qaeda forces to recruit and rearm. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday the United States is 'reserving judgment' on the new pact, acknowledging that previous attempts to negotiate had not curbed militant activity on the border. Mr. Negroponte was more explicit in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, saying the Bush administration 'has some skepticism about [Pakistan's] ability to enforce any such arrangement.' 'There is a lot at stake here, and we have made that point repeatedly,' he said." —"Deal Reached with Pakistan’s Militants," Washington Times, 5/22/08.

Here's some more recent coverage of the run up to the pending attack:

June 5, 2008: "Afghan Borders Concern NATO Force Leader,"

June 2, 2008:"Taliban Leader Flaunts Power Inside Pakistan,"

May 30, 2008: "NATO Chief in Afghanistan Says Pakistan’s Tack on Militants Is Not as Expected,"

May 22, 2008: "Pakistani Taliban urges sharia rule,"

May 22, 2008: "Pakistan and Taliban Agree to Army’s Gradual Pullback,"

May 21, 2008: "Pakistan troops to vacate Swat,"

May 6, 2008: "U.S. Worry Grows over Pakistan's Tribal Peace Deal,"

and

April 22, 2008: "Pakistan Taliban vows to fight on."

Profile #3: Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora

Thankfully, an emergency summit in late May in Doha, Qatar halted the violent clashes in Lebanon that had broken out earlier in the month between government opponents from Hezbollah and pro-government militias. The Doha accord, reached on May 21, set up the framework for a unity government and prevented a civil war.

The word after the Doha agreement was completed was that Hezbollah had become the ascendant power in Lebanon. (The agreement granted Hezbollah veto power in the new unity government.)

Hezbollah, the militant Shia group based in Southern Lebanon, is backed by Syria and Iran (and clearly more BFF with the Shiite theocrats who run Iran than with Sunni Syria, which is Hezbollah's patron only because it gives Syria a foothold in Lebanon). Hezbollah seems to have two things on its To Do list: Destroy Israel (blah blah blah) and, according to their founding manifesto, establish an Islamic state in Lebanon.

However, there's a man in Hezbollah's way on item #2; a man who's been trying to disarm Hezbollah, Fouad Siniora. Siniora was just elected prime minister of Lebanon's new unity government on May 28th.

In fact, Siniora was the previous prime minister of Lebanon, until Hezbollah and its Shiite allies—demanding Siniora's resignation—quit the unity government in late 2006, crippling Siniora's relevance and the government's authority and legitimacy. Then Hezbollah shut down Beirut by staging an 18-month sit-in, and eventaully routed government allies in armed street battles in May 2008—setting the stage for the Doha agreement which reconstituted the government largely on Hezbollah's terms.

One thing that didn't go Hezbollah's way after Doha: Once the government got set up again in late May, it reappointed Siniora.

"But despite the power sharing deal, the Hezbollah-led opposition and the ruling coalition continue to squabble over the formation of a government of national unity.

Siniora's recent reappointment as Lebanon's prime minister was met with dissatisfaction by members of the opposition."—Al Jazeera, 6/7/08

Fouad Siniora, 65, is the chairman and managing director of a major Lebanese banking group, Groupe Mediterranee. He also served under former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, as finance minister. (Groupe Mediterranne, in fact, is part of the Harari family business empire.)

Siniora's close ties to the now-legendary Hariri are central to Siniora's current position. Rafik Hariri was Lebanon's prime minister from 1992-1998 and from 2000-2004. (Siniora was a minister in all of Hariri's cabinets.)

Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, shortly after resigning office in October 2004. He had resigned out of frustration with Syria's involvement in Lebanon's affairs.

Hariri's assassination led to the "Cedar Revolution"—a broad-based reformist movement. On March 14, 2005, a month after the assassination, and after weeks of escalating demonstrations, a million people took to the streets of Beirut, establishing the Cedar Revolution's March 14 Coalition of Sunnis, Socialists, secularists, Druze, and Christians. They demanded that Syria, widely believed to be responsible for Hariri's murder, withdraw it's 14,000 troops from Lebanon. (Syria had had as many as 30,000 troops in Lebanon in the 90s, meddling in Lebanon's affairs and supporting Hezbollah ever since Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990.)

The government that was in power at the time of Hariri's assassination—Prime Minister Omar Karami's government, which had replaced Hariri's government after Hariri's 2004 resignation—was staunchly pro-Syriaian. Kamari resigned in late February 2005 as the demonstrations gained steam. And then Syria withdrew all of its troops in late April, 2005.

New elections held in the Spring of '05 put the The Future Movement (Hariri's party), which now carried the banner of the March 14 Coalition, into power, with an unprecedented mandate for reform. The March 14 Coalition, its biggest member being the The Future Movement (winning 36 seats), won 72 seats total out of 128 in Parliament. Hezbollah (14 seats) combined with its allies to control 35 oppostion seats.

Siniora, with the support of the March 14 Coalition and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri, Rafik's businessman son, became the prime minister in July 2005. He quickly called for the investigation into Rafik Harari's assassination, which was likely to implicate Hezbollah sponsor, Syria.



Eventually, in November '06, Hezbollah quit the government, demanding Siniora's resignation. Without a coalition, there was no way to actually govern. The Future Movement maintained rule over a Lebanon in limbo. (The melting-pot army, under the rule of Michel Suleiman, was the de facto authority).

The shaky calm was formally shattered in mid-May 2008, when the government tried to crack down on Hezbollah's state within a state, attempting to shut down Hezbollah's independent telecommunications network. Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, described the government affront as a "declaration of war" and soon enough armed street fighting broke out between Hezbollah and government surrogates from The Future Movement and Druze Muslims aligned with the government. Hezbollah routed the the pro-government militias, taking control of Beirut.

Qatar hosted peace talks in late May 2008 to end the crisis. Hezbollah got the better end of the deal: They would rejoin the government, but only with veto authority. Another major victory for Hezbollah (and Iran and Syria) in Lebanon.

However, despite getting the veto power in the new 30-member cabinet—which will include 3 appointments by the president (the popular former head of Lebanon's army, Michel Suleiman, a Maronite Christian), 16 representatives from the Western-leaning, Sunni-ish March 14 Coalition majority, and the veto-strong 11 representatives from the opposition (Shia Hezbollah and its allies like the Shiite group, Amal)—Hezbollah's nemesis, Sunni-banker-turned-prime minister, Fouad Siniora, with the popular Future Movement backing him, is the boss. Again.

Lebanon's constitution requires that the President be Maronite Christian, the PM be Sunni, and the Speaker of Parliament be Shiite. Nabih Berri, a member of Amal, a de facto Hezbollah ally in the opposition ranks, is the Speaker.

(Religion is a touchy issue in Lebanon. This was tragically demonstrated during Lebanon's complicated 15-year civil year between 1975 and 1990. It's so touchy that the government hasn't done a census since 1932. It's estimated, though, that Lebanon has a 69/39 Muslim/Christian split with, of course, dicey subsets within those two groups.)

One final note on Siniora and Hezbollah: A major event during Siniora's first go round as PM in 2005 and 2006 was the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon in July '06. (Hezbollah was still part of the government at this point.) Siniora praised Hezbollah, condemned Israel's "criminal" attack, and led the fight for an unconditional cease fire. Afterwards, however, he accused Hezbollah of staging a coup in Lebanon, and he pressed to disarm Hezbollah. Although, he said his government would and could not do that on its own. (Disarming Hezbollah was one part of the August 2006 U.N. Security Council agreement that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Resolution 1701, that never happened).

War Reporting

To get the gist of the Senate's new report on President Bush's dishonest case for invading Iraq, read today's NYT editorial about the report and this bullet-point summary from the LA Times:

The report on the Bush administration's case for war, 170 pages long, reads like a catalog of erroneous claims. The document represents the most detailed assessment to date of whether those assertions were backed by classified intelligence reports available to senior officials at the time.

The report largely exonerates Bush administration officials for some of their prewar assertions, including claims that Baghdad had stockpiles of illegal chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing a nuclear bomb. Even though those claims were subsequently proved wildly inaccurate, the report notes, they were largely consistent with U.S. intelligence at the time.

But the report says the Bush administration veered away from its own intelligence community's conclusions in two key areas: Iraq's relationship with Al Qaeda and the difficulty of pacifying Iraq after a U.S. invasion.

Statements in dozens of prewar speeches and interviews created the impression that Baghdad and Al Qaeda had forged a partnership. But the report concludes that such assertions "were not substantiated by the intelligence" being shown to senior officials at the time.

Claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, for example, were dubious from the beginning and subsequently discounted. The idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda hinged on intelligence from a source who soon was discredited.

Bush officials strayed even further from the evidence in suggesting that Hussein was prepared to provide weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda terrorist groups -- a linchpin in the case for war.

In October 2002, for example, Bush warned in a key speech in Cincinnati that "secretly, and without fingerprints, [Hussein] could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." The threat was repeated frequently in the run-up to war but was "contradicted by available intelligence information," the committee says.

On post-war prospects, the report contrasts the rosy scenarios conjured by Cheney and others with more sober intelligence warnings that were being presented to senior officials.

Cheney's prediction that U.S. forces would "be greeted as liberators" was at odds with reports from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which warned nearly a year earlier that invading U.S. forces would face serious resistance from "the Baathists, the jihadists and Arab nationalists who oppose any U.S. occupation of Iraq."

Discouraging.

There's an era-defining elegance to the Senate report and the news articles, particularly as we head into the Presidential contest between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain with 150,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq.

Here's a run down of the candidates' positions on Iraq.

Profile #2: Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey's most powerful court ruled this week that female students cannot wear the hijab (the Islamic headscarf) on campus. The NYT reported yesterday:

The secular opposition Republican People’s Party, called the verdict a triumph of justice and said it showed that secularism and democracy were “constitutional principles that can’t be separated from one another.”

Mr. Erdogan calls the case a matter of individual rights, contending that all Turks should be able to attend universities no matter what they wear or believe.

All but lost in the debate have been the voices of the women whose futures are caught in the political cross hairs. Neslihan Akbulut, 26, a sociology graduate student, said she cried when she heard the verdict.

“There is no way for me in Turkey now,” she said.

I agree with Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamic conservative, on this one.

It seems to me that the secular Republican People's Party doesn't have a handle on secularism. Secularist governments shouldn't be in the paranoid business of banning religious expression, they should be in the business of protecting individual rights, including religious expression. Government's only role in regulating religion is to make sure that institutions charged with doing the people's business—legislatures, schools, the police, public hospitals, banks—don't endorse or promote a religion. Certainly, this involves preventing a school from making women wear the hijab, but that shouldn't be confused with stopping a woman from wearing a hijab.

Let's rewind.

On February 9, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's governing conservative party passed legislation, getting 441 yes votes in the 550-seat parliament, allowing female university students to wear the hijab. (Wearing the hijab had been banned in public buildings since 1980.)

"Tayyip, take your headscarf and stuff it," demonstrators chanted as an estimated 200,000 people gathered in a rally for "Secularism and Independence" to protest as parliament voted.

Erdogan addresses parliament

Yesterday, Turkey's highest court, The Constitutional Court, ruled that allowing women to wear the hijab on campus violated Turkey's secularist guidelines.

More from yesterday's NYT report:

Turkey’s highest court dealt a stinging slap to the governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, ruling that a legal change allowing women attending universities to wear head scarves was unconstitutional.

Turkey's top court ruled today that Islamic head scarves violate secularism and cannot be allowed at universities. The Constitutional Court said in a brief statement that the change, proposed by Mr. Erdogan’s party and passed by Parliament in February, violated principles of secularism set in Turkey’s Constitution.

The ruling sets the stage for a showdown between Turkey’s secular elite — its military, judiciary and secular political party — and Mr. Erdogan, an observant Muslim with an Islamist past.

Prime Minister Erdogan, head of the Justice & Development Party (AKP) is in his second term. He was first elected in 2003 and again in 2007—the second time by an even wider margin.

He's definitely a social conservative. As mayor of Instanbul, he outlawed alcohol in cafes. And as PM he's fought to have Islamist justices appointed to Turkey's famously secularist courts. He can also be a firebrand. He was briefly jailed in 1998 after he emerged as the charismatic spokesperson for the outlawed religious conservative Welfare Party (the party he had represented as Mayor of Istanbul, which was declared unconstitutional by the state in 1997 for its apparent Islamic agenda.) Specifically, Erdogan was charged with "religious hatred" for invoking the Islamist poem, "Prayer of the Soldier" at a rally to protest the government's decision to ban his Welfare Party:

Mosques are our barracks,
domes our helmets,
minarets our bayonets,
believers our soldiers.
This holy army guards my religion.
Almighty our journey is our destiny,
the end is martyrdom.

The Welfare Party reinvented itself as the Justice and Development Party, AKP, and Erdogan was elected PM as the AKP's leader in 2003.

The Constitutional Court, a zealous enforcer of secularism, has a history of banning religious-leaning parties, and observers believe the Court is going to use the flap over the hijab to outlaw AKP and bar Erdogan from politics.

If the secularist arbiters in Turkey aren't careful, they're going to stir up a heated backlash.

Coming from a working class background, Erdogan, 54, (here's a BBC profile), emerged as a promising political figure in the 1970s when he joined the National Salvation Party (which was outlawed in 1980), a precursor party to the Welfare Party.

Recognizing Erdogan's political skill and charisma, National Salvation Party leader Nercmettin Erbakan—who himself would become Turkey's first Islamist prime minister in 1996 as the leader of the Welfare Party, promoted the young Erdogan, a former semi-pro football player who worked at Istanbul's transit authority. Erdogan became chairman of the Welfare Party in Istanbul in 1985.

Erdogan ran (and lost) for mayor in suburban Istanbul (the Beyoglu district) in 1985; ran repeatedly for parliament, finally winning in 1991—when, for the first time, the Welfare Party passed 10 percent threshold; and, tapped by Erbakan, was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994—a powerful and high-profile position that eventually turned him into the popular, dissident spokesman for the outlawed Welfare Party in the late 90s.

Erdogan softened his Islamist image to win election as prime minister in 2003, condemning the radical Turkish Islamist group, PKK, for example. (Although his opposition from the center-left Republican People's Party doesn't buy it).

Erdogan advocates a pro-Western economic platform (he's pushing to join the EU) and is admired—even by his secular foes—for his success running the economy.

In other news from Turkey this week: Turkey has joined forces with Iran to fight the Kurds in Northern Iraq. And as I posted (skeptically) earlier this week, religious scholars from secularist Turkey figure prominently in the news that the Islamic world has begun to reevaluate al Qaeda's orthodox ideology.

Obama Bashert (באַשערט)

Some political observers may think it's ironic that, thanks to the scheduling Gods, Sen. Barack Obama's victory lap ended up taking place, of all places, at a speech in front of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby.

Obama at AIPAC conference in DC, NYT photo

I happen to think it was appropriate. Destiny even.

Certainly, there is cause to see irony in the fact that immediately after clinching the Democratic nomination on June 3, Obama's first big speech on June 4, would take place at an AIPAC conference. Indeed, while Obama grabbed the nomination by firing up the traditional liberal coalition— minorities, youth, post-college grads, upscale urban voters, and, in this cycle, anti-war voters—he's actually had a highly-publicized problem with another standby bloc in the Democratic equation: Jewish voters.

CBS exit polling of 30 primaries confirmed Obama's "Jewish Problem" —showing that Obama trailed Clinton 45 to 53 among Jewish voters. [Note, every time I try to link the CBS poll, my computer crashes. You will find a link to the poll on this page.]

There were obvious reasons, fair or not, for Obama's troubles with the Jews: Obama's camera-happy, longtime minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, liked to channel trite anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan; Obama's mixed messaging on Iran (he's willing to hold talks of some kind with loopy hater Mamoud Ahmadinejad) raised questions about Obama's commitment to Israel; as did that unsolicited endorsement from Hamas. And there was also his "suspect" Muslim name.

Additionally, Obama has had to contend with some bad history. American Jews and American blacks have had a chilly relationship (think Jesse Jackson, Crown Heights, and Louis Farrakhan again) ever since the Black-Jewish alliance of the Civil Rights era came unglued in the late 1960s. The logic of Black nationalism connected African Americans with Third World Liberation movements starring revolutionaries like Yasser Arafat's PLO. It also emphasized Black self reliance, which shattered a long standing relationship where Jews had been at the forefront of desegregation. Resentment replaced camaraderie.

Obama is keenly aware of his problem with Jews. Last January, he went out of his way to speak out against "the scourge of anti-Semitism" in the black community in front of a black audience during an MLK celebration at MLK's own Ebenezer Baptist.

So, is it ironic that Obama would wind up speaking at AIPAC's annual conference on the very day his campaign—despite lukewarm support from Jews—triumphed? Or did the scheduling Gods know exactly what they were up to?

I think the scheduling Gods knew exactly what they were up to. It was bashert, (Yiddish for destiny): On this, Obama's first day as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting (with the cameras of the world rolling,) Obama landed in a roomful of Jews where he got to set the record straight and set the stage for his campaign agenda.

Obama told the initially cordial, but ultimately cheering crowd, that he would "take an active role ... from the start of [his] administration" (a nice dig a Bush) and "make a personal commitment" to "a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security."

It was a bit of destiny because I think it's going to happen. Despite the mess that President Bush has made in the Middle East (or perhaps because of it), fate has set the table for a change agent like Obama.

While I've been a bitter Clinton fan, I recognized how awesome an Obama presidency would be. The one thing that's genuinely excited me about Obama all along is my belief that he'll be a miracle worker in the Middle East.

Here's why.

1) Obama is a PR disaster for Osama. If America elects a black man (and not a former Joint Chiefs of Staff black man, but a liberal Democrat who worked as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago), Bin Laden's rhetoric about America's "imperialist and racist" policies is going to fall flat in the Arab world. Electing Obama would be a shocker to the haters. And a conundrum for their despots.

2) Obama himself, as the symbol for this revolution of equality (and of America's true values), is going to have rock star status around the world. He will be greeted in the Middle East with cheering crowds. This good will on the ground is going to allow him to press adversaries for change.

(Check it, even as the Islamic world postures about Obama's AIPAC speech, the Iranians shelved their usual bombast. According to Al Jazeera today:

"Iranians responded cautiously, but optimisticly, with officials expressing hope he can bring about change in Iran-US relations.Hamidreza Hajibabaee, member of Iranian parliament, said: 'We hope that Obama turns his words into actions, helps the Islamic Republic of Iran believe that the US has given up enmity and paves the way for fair negotiations.'"

3) Obama is a peacemaker. I'm not sure what the appropriate comparison is. It's not at the level of MLK or Ghandi, (maybe it's Andy Griffith's Sheriff character from the Andy Griffith Show?), but I'm curious to see how Obama's political foes— domestic and internationally—will navigate this dude. He challenges belligerence with that Jay-Z "Dirt off Your Shoulder" thing. Unlike Bush, who played into Ahmadinejad (and infamously now) bin Laden's hands, Obama lowers the temperature, inspiring conversation rather than shouting.

He's not a wimp or an "appeaser" though. I finally recognized that Obama's got game when McCain tried to frame Obama as a dangerous Commie symp for suggesting that the U.S. shoud talk to Iran or Hamas. (President Bush seconded McCain's trap by hinting to the Israeli Knesset that Obama was Neville Chamberlain.) Obama spun out of the full-court-press trap by expertly reframing the whole issue— with the liberals as the bad asses.

"What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of?" Obama countered, "the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. When the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America."

He added:

"If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with Ronald Reagan, 'cause that's what he did with [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, or Richard Nixon 'cause that's what they did with [Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung]. That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe."

Suddenly, the softy liberal position—talk instead of testosterone—became the macho one (with a macho subtext: We've got something to say to Iran.) It was an unprecedented move for a liberal, and Obama did it flawlessly.

Probably said all this much better—this idea that the stars have aligned and now's the time for Obama—in the Stranger's Obama endorsement in February with this quick line: "And no, it's not about race (although we don't underestimate the symbolism—to the rest of the world—of electing a black man after eight years of John Wayne diplomacy)."