As threats multiply and power fragments, the coming decade cries out for realistic idealism

Timothy Garton Ash

An Islamist terrorist caught trying to crash a plane over Detroit creates a flash of illusory clarity. The decade might have ended with another 9/11. So was George Bush right after all? Is the "global war on terror" the defining struggle of our times?
In which case, what about climate change? And the fact that more than a billion human beings have to live on less than $1 a day? And nuclear proliferation; the threat of a worldwide pandemic; the crisis of globalised capitalism – not to mention the old-fashioned risk of war between states, which always increases as rising powers jostle for position with established ones?
When vendors of the Big Issue accost me at street corners with cries of "Big Issue! Big Issue!", I want to say: "Yes, but which one?" Islamist terrorism is a big issue. It will take a long struggle to reduce the threat to a bearable minimum, and that struggle will need to be conducted more skilfully than it has been over the last 10 years. But the trouble with the decade that starts tomorrow is that there are already half a dozen other king-size threats to the freedoms and way of life enjoyed by most – though not all – who live in developed liberal democracies. And that's before the 2010s have even begun.
There is, however, a pattern that is common to most of these big issues, and may therefore itself stake a claim to be the big issue. We face more and more risks, threats and challenges that affect people in one country – say, Britain – but originate mainly or entirely in other countries, and can only be addressed by many countries working together. That is true of the financial crisis, organised crime, mass migration, global warming, pandemics and international terrorism, to name but a few. The need for international co-operation has never been greater, but the supply has not kept up with the demand. In some areas, we have more international co-operation than we had 10 or 20 years ago. In important ways, however, it has become more difficult to achieve.
One of the main reasons for the difficulty is that power has been diffused both vertically and horizontally. I have written "countries" and "international" co-operation, but the power of national governments is increasingly constrained by multinational companies, banks, markets, media, non-governmental organisations and information flows, by international organisations supposedly above governments and by regions (including nations within states), provinces and cities supposedly beneath them. Beside this vertical diffusion there is the horizontal one: from the west and north to the east and south, with the emergence of new (or new-old) great powers to compete with the United States, Europe and Russia. The rise of China is the most important, and will be a central story of the 2010s, but there are also India, Brazil, South Africa, and others.
None of this is yet properly reflected in the institutional arrangements of the post-1945 international organisations, be it the permanent membership of the UN security council or voting rights in the International Monetary Fund. Historically, major shifts in the power relations between states have usually been accompanied by war. Rereading Samuel Huntington's book The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, first published in 1996, I was reminded that he imagines a Chinese-American war taking place in 2010. Things are not that bad yet, but over the next few decades, the mere avoidance of a major war, whether between China and America or inside Asia, will require conscious effort and statecraft of a high order. Yet this age of transnational problems demands not merely states that don't fight each other – the most basic condition of international order – but states that actively co-operate with each other as they have never done before.
Back in 2000, the United States could still have given a decisive lead, but it wasted a huge opportunity in the eight years of President Bush. The American foreign policy expert Richard Haass, himself a member of the Bush administration in its early years, talks of "a decade of strategic distraction". Now Barack Obama is trying to pick up the pieces, but it may be too late. Historians may yet say: Bush could have, but wouldn't; Obama would have, but couldn't.
At decade's end, the Copenhagen summit on climate change was a perfect vignette of this world of global problems without global governance. In theory, the nearly 200 states of the so-called "international community" would, under UN auspices, seal a legally binding international agreement to address the most obviously global challenge of our time. In practice, at 7pm on the very last day, the US president walked in to what is described as an "unscheduled meeting" with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa, and asked "Mr Premier, are you ready to see me?" The five – America, China, India, Brazil, South Africa – then cobbled together a weak political declaration of intent, which the conference subsequently, under protest, endorsed. At the crucial meeting, Europe was nowhere to be seen. Europe's leaders were then photographed huddling disconsolately around a coffee table with Obama, looking like the losing team in a pub quiz.
So at the start of the 2010s we have not so much a multi-polar as a no-polar world. The internet and other forms of instant, worldwide communication offer unprecedented chances for making transnational campaigns on particular issues, but this is no substitute for what, in the jargon, is called global governance. The key to that, even within the international organisations, still lies with the governments of states. For all the proliferation of non-state actors, we still live in a world of states; and, I'll take a bet, still will in 2020. The EU is the exception that proves the rule: it, too, can ultimately only do what the governments of its member states allow it to do.
There are some initiatives we can take directly as citizens. The 10:10 campaign to cut our own personal carbon footprints by 10% by the end of 2010 is a good example. But, rationally, the main target of political activism must continue to be governments. Beyond what our own governments do in our own countries, the ones that matter most will continue to be the most powerful ones. That is simply a fact of life.
According to the best available projections, by 2020, the US, China and the EU will between them produce around half the world's GDP. If, on any of the big issues, you had a shared position of this "G3", together with some or all of the most relevant other major powers, such as Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, that would not be the end of the matter. You would still want to go, perhaps via the G20, to the broadest possible international coalition, ideally under UN auspices. But it would be a very good beginning. To build such strategic coalitions of the willing and able, coalitions that will vary from issue to issue, is the daunting task of realistic idealism in the 2010s.

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/30/threats-multiply-power-fragments-realistic-idealism

The Announcement of Balochistan package

Hafeez Hassan Abadi

The issue of Baloch and Balochistan has now attained the attention of entire world community. And it seems that the thinking of world community, towards Baloch issue, is taking a new form and shape. Baloch nation, once punished by British Empire by dividing Balochland into parts for being patriotic and liberalist who defied death to depend their homeland, has compelled world into thinking of new perspectives to address the new requirements and apprehensions, that if a nation adores its identity and homeland in either way, whether in love or hate, is far better then the hired slave, who is all set to do anything for its interests.

Despite being a polarized and backward nation, Baloch are struggling to defend every inch of their homeland to the last drop their blood, even with desperate conditions, the courage, with which it’s confronting two powerful countries, has drawn the attention towards a real power which is capable of providing the world community a rare pleasant opportunity to bring relative peace in the region. That real power is possessed by Baloch nation, if pulled together, can rectify the imbalance of power in the entire region, even after a great chaos. The world community is undergoing through the same punishments by the hand of Iran and Pakistan , which were once inflicted upon Baloch for the sins they have never committed before, albeit under the compulsion of new exigencies. These two countries have plunged the world community into insecurity to the extent that it has now started to regard them scrupulously otherwise. Yet, both countries have the realization, that the world community does not tolerate their double-crossing anymore. Therefore, at state level, both have skillfully started to create new hurdles to detract the world attention towards the real problem.

The announcement of Balochistan package and the program to pacify the Baloch people is nothing more then a time being self deception, so that it could pay full attention towards Afghanistan for inflicting a shameful defeat upon America and its allies as soon as possible, and compelling them to withdraw from Afghanistan leaving behind them the "dirty job", so that it could sustain its survival for a few more time. Therefore, Pakistani state has now launched a systemic media war against America . On the one hand, at state level rulers talking about unified efforts to tackle the terrorism, on the other, all Pakistan media is engaged in a malicious campaign against America, where hardly an affective program is aired, in which America is not depicted as the biggest Satan in Sketches, songs, and dramas.
In short, America and its allies are hardly being spared in their campaign, but the most dangerous point here is that in this storming propaganda what is emerging out of it, is that once again Islam being used, this famous sentence is widely being used in the media war; "conspiracy is being hatched against Islam". In this ardent campaign, as if a public opinion is being created to pave the way of a war between Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, which could be much more lethal for world community then the Al Qaeda and Talban, in the shape of a will organized power.
To say less, it seems that an unnecessary and meaningless hue and cry about Baloch and Balochistan is being created as a part of a wider campaign where it gives a cover to their 'real intention' to turn the entire region into a hell for America and its allies.

Apart from all these shenanigans, Balochistan package is nothing more than a jugular box used to get the trained political monkeys of the establishment play deception act. But Baloch nation has abandoned the habit of paying any attention to such a package a long time ago. They are struggling for their survival, for even a slightest moment, Baloch are not oblivious of the fact that jugulars are playing sophisticated tricks to trap them in.
It is not hard to see how biased Islamabad has become in devising this Balochistan package towards Baloch, which has not only been rejected by those who are engaged in different level of struggle for freedom from Iran and Pakistan, but also by those political parties who have not yet abandoned parliamentary politics. Every sentence of this package is implying that Baloch are enslaved by dominant prejudiced Pakistani state. Each and every point of this aforementioned package is a box filled with deception. Had they taken into confidence anyone, then why prime minister and president had to release a press statement that they had taken all into confidence?

According to BNF spokesperson, no political prisoner has been released of the front, except Shafique Baloch. Then what was the necessity of resorting to bluffing in parliament, that "all Baloch missing persons will reach their home from today"? Let alone the thousand missing persons, those who have been taken notice of by prime minister himself have not yet reached their homes. Even worst, after the statement of the prime minister, BSO's ex vice chairman Sangat Sana and Gaffar Langu along with their friends became the added victims packed up by state agencies. In addition, the martyrdom of 10 BRP innocent workers and almost 25 other injured Baloch in Dera Bugti area are worthy to be mentioned here.
Surpassing all limits of meanness, in the cover of withdrawing the fabricated cases against the workers of BNF, all the cases of criminals have been withdrawn, hired by the government salaried politicians and chieftains.

It must not be forgotten that all political parties in BNF (Balochistan National Front) have constantly demanded that if there are cases against the missing persons, then it is the moral obligation of the government to produce them before the courts. If proven, of course, should be punished.

Similarly regarding the military operation in Balochistan, all tricks of Machiavellian are deployed in broad daylight. The Persian saying that "what happens if an ass comes and a cow goes" is fully justified if said about the announcement of the deployment of the Frontier Corps in the place of regular army in Balochistan. These are the two most sensitive crises which have turned Balochistan into an erupting volcano. If the irresponsible attitude of the government towards these sensitive issues is as such, than it is not hard to imagine what rulars would do with other issues.

In short, no improvement is going to take place in Balochistan situation by this package; however, here rises the question, eventually there comes a result out of this situation, but what kind of a result would emerge?

We believe that Pakistan has to pay a heavy price for the ridiculous jokes, Islamabad used to play with Balochistan. As usual, This Balochistan package is designed to cater to salaried privileged class and ridicule Baloch nation.
Naturally, the people who have been taken in by the government statement would start believing those who have been saying all along, that this package is a jugular box filled with deception.
As consequences, this package, designed to weaken Baloch resistance, would backfire and Baloch youths in a greater number join the resistance movement. There should be no doubt about these facts that the majority would join the ranks of Sarmachars (freedom Fighters) and those who were vacillating so far, would throw their weight behind the pro independent parties and help them to hold successful rallies and protests in cities. It spurs the freedom movement in entire Balochistan to new heights and increases their power of resistance in cities and mountains, and the government grip loosens eventually. The Government stance and the arguments about Balochistan to remain within Pakistan not only would be rendered ineffective, but would rather intensify the unacceptability of Pakistani state.

The parties, which are So far bogged in the marsh of opportunism, demanding that three or four subject, should remain with federation and the remaining should be conferred to provinces, not only would be unable to justify their stance, but also would remain silent.

In the event of intensification of the resistance movement, Pakistani forces, out of sheer desperation, would commit such heinous crimes, thereby the hatred increases against Pakistan . It would urge Baloch liberalists within Balochistan and Karachi to close their ranks and draw new strategies. The leadership leaving in abroad, particularly Khair Beyar Marri would have to intensify his activities. His bold and candid speeches, about independent Balochistan in different international forums, have made him a popular leader. Now it is the call of the hour for all political parties in Baloch National Front to jointly persuade him into accepting the job of representing the Baloch nation in abroad. And at the same time it is his job to form a five or seven member's team, so that it could substantially present Baloch national case for freedom in the international forums in the event of the possible intensity of Pakistan 's volatile situation.

Meanwhile, it is highly possible that BHRC based in London, would get its acts together in a proper manner and disassociate itself from the parties who are bogged in the marsh of opportunistic Pakistani parliamentary politics, demanding the right to self determination, (according to the current situation it is a hypocratic slogan). And it is hoped that it categorically reminds the world about the violation of Baloch human rights and that Baloch on both sides of the border living a slavish life. Along with Eastern Balochistan , pro independent parties in western Balochistan, particularly Baloch Raaji Zrombresht and Baloch Liberation Organization would also get more active, because, nowadays Raaji Zrombrsht leaders are ardently participating in all those programs and seminars where Baloch national Leader Hair Beyar Marri participates. Thus, it is how the government joke (the rights package) would serve as a wake up call for all hibernating Baloch on both sides of the border to rise on occasion.

The virus of this package is not so potent; one might fear that it would kill off Baloch national movement. But its not so, the virus that can not kill would surly fortified the defensive system of the host body.

It is highly possible that Pakistan's some of those problems would get exacerbated and go beyond the control of the government, which were once Pakistan's own making invented to detract the public attention from bigger problems. During all this while the state establishment would be able to avail itself from two fronts; first, in the cover of the chaotic situation, it would allow the Talban's selected leadership to elapse into save heaven. And on the other side it would succeed in creating loyalty for extremists and hatred for other religions, which would eventually help exhaust American and its ally's patient about Pakistan . It would be an unexpected surprise for Pakistan . While on the other side, during all this while, the sure footed Baloch national struggle would be moving towards its destination with rather confidence, and the world community would regard Baloch nation as a potent power to bring relative peace in the region.

Source: dailytawar newspaper
Translated by: Archen Baloch

Recieved through email

There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran

By ALAN J. KUPERMAN

PRESIDENT OBAMA should not lament but sigh in relief that Iran has rejected his nuclear deal, which was ill conceived from the start. Under the deal, which was formally offered through the United Nations, Iran was to surrender some 2,600 pounds of lightly enriched uranium (some three-quarters of its known stockpile) to Russia, and the next year get back a supply of uranium fuel sufficient to run its Tehran research reactor for three decades. The proposal did not require Iran to halt its enrichment program, despite several United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding such a moratorium.
Iran was thus to be rewarded with much-coveted reactor fuel despite violating international law. Within a year, or sooner in light of its expanding enrichment program, Iran would almost certainly have replenished and augmented its stockpile of enriched uranium, nullifying any ostensible nonproliferation benefit of the deal.
Moreover, by providing reactor fuel, the plan would have fostered proliferation in two ways. First, Iran could have continued operating its research reactor, which has helped train Iranian scientists in weapons techniques like plutonium separation. (Yes, as Iran likes to point out, the reactor also produces medical isotopes. But those can be purchased commercially from abroad, as most countries do, including the United States.) Absent the deal, Iran’s reactor will likely run out of fuel within two years, and only a half-dozen countries are able to supply fresh fuel for it. This creates significant international leverage over Iran, which should be used to compel it to halt its enrichment program.
In addition, the vast surplus of higher-enriched fuel Iran was to get under the deal would have permitted some to be diverted to its bomb program. Indeed, many experts believe that the uranium in foreign-provided fuel would be easier to enrich to weapons grade because Iran’s uranium contains impurities. Obama administration officials had claimed that delivering uranium in the form of fabricated fuel would prevent further enrichment for weapons, but this is false. Separating uranium from fuel elements so that it can be enriched further is a straightforward engineering task requiring at most a few weeks.
Thus, had the deal gone through, Iran could have benefited from a head start toward making weapons-grade 90 percent-enriched uranium (meaning that 90 percent of its makeup is the fissile isotope U-235) by starting with purified 20 percent-enriched uranium rather than its own weaker, contaminated stuff.
This raises a question: if the deal would have aided Iran’s bomb program, why did the United States propose it, and Iran reject it? The main explanation on both sides is domestic politics. President Obama wanted to blunt Republican criticism that his multilateral approach was failing to stem Iran’s nuclear program. The deal would have permitted him to claim, for a year or so, that he had defused the crisis by depriving Iran of sufficient enriched uranium to start a crash program to build one bomb.
But in reality no one ever expected Iran to do that, because such a headlong sprint is the one step most likely to provoke an international military response that could cripple the bomb program before it reaches fruition. Iran is far more likely to engage in “salami slicing” — a series of violations each too small to provoke retaliation, but that together will give it a nuclear arsenal. For example, while Iran permits international inspections at its declared enrichment plant at Natanz, it ignores United Nations demands that it close the plant, where it gains the expertise needed to produce weapons-grade uranium at other secret facilities like the nascent one recently uncovered near Qom.
In sum, the proposal would not have averted proliferation in the short run, because that risk always was low, but instead would have fostered it in the long run — a classic example of domestic politics undermining national security.
Tehran’s rejection of the deal was likewise propelled by domestic politics — including last June’s fraudulent elections and longstanding fears of Western manipulation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially embraced the deal because he realized it aided Iran’s bomb program. But his domestic political opponents, whom he has tried to label as foreign agents, turned the tables by accusing him of surrendering Iran’s patrimony to the West.
Under such domestic pressure, Mr. Ahmadinejad reneged. But Iran still wants reactor fuel, so he threatened to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level. This is a bluff, because even if Iran could further enrich its impure uranium, it lacks the capacity to fabricate that uranium into fuel elements. His real aim is to compel the international community into providing the fuel without requiring Iran to surrender most of the enriched uranium it has on hand.
Indeed, Iran’s foreign minister has now proposed just that: offering to exchange a mere quarter of Iran’s enriched uranium for an immediate 10-year supply of fuel for the research reactor. This would let Iran run the reactor, retain the bulk of its enriched uranium and continue to enrich more — a bargain unacceptable even to the Obama administration.
Tehran’s rejection of the original proposal is revealing. It shows that Iran, for domestic political reasons, cannot make even temporary concessions on its bomb program, regardless of incentives or sanctions. Since peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work, and an invasion would be foolhardy, the United States faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
The risks of acquiescence are obvious. Iran supplies Islamist terrorist groups in violation of international embargoes. Even President Ahmadinejad’s domestic opponents support this weapons traffic. If Iran acquired a nuclear arsenal, the risks would simply be too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon, an atomic bomb.
As for knocking out its nuclear plants, admittedly, aerial bombing might not work. Some Iranian facilities are buried too deeply to destroy from the air. There may also be sites that American intelligence is unaware of. And military action could backfire in various ways, including by undermining Iran’s political opposition, accelerating the bomb program or provoking retaliation against American forces and allies in the region.
But history suggests that military strikes could work. Israel’s 1981 attack on the nearly finished Osirak reactor prevented Iraq’s rapid acquisition of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon and compelled it to pursue a more gradual, uranium-based bomb program. A decade later, the Persian Gulf war uncovered and enabled the destruction of that uranium initiative, which finally deterred Saddam Hussein from further pursuit of nuclear weapons (a fact that eluded American intelligence until after the 2003 invasion). Analogously, Iran’s atomic sites might need to be bombed more than once to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As for the risk of military strikes undermining Iran’s opposition, history suggests that the effect would be temporary. For example, NATO’s 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia briefly bolstered support for President Slobodan Milosevic, but a democratic opposition ousted him the next year.
Yes, Iran could retaliate by aiding America’s opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does that anyway. Iran’s leaders are discouraged from taking more aggressive action against United States forces — and should continue to be — by the fear of provoking a stronger American counter-escalation. If nothing else, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that the United States military can oust regimes in weeks if it wants to.
Incentives and sanctions will not work, but air strikes could degrade and deter Iran’s bomb program at relatively little cost or risk, and therefore are worth a try. They should be precision attacks, aimed only at nuclear facilities, to remind Iran of the many other valuable sites that could be bombed if it were foolish enough to retaliate.
The final question is, who should launch the air strikes? Israel has shown an eagerness to do so if Iran does not stop enriching uranium, and some hawks in Washington favor letting Israel do the dirty work to avoid fueling anti-Americanism in the Islamic world.
But there are three compelling reasons that the United States itself should carry out the bombings. First, the Pentagon’s weapons are better than Israel’s at destroying buried facilities. Second, unlike Israel’s relatively small air force, the United States military can discourage Iranian retaliation by threatening to expand the bombing campaign. (Yes, Israel could implicitly threaten nuclear counter-retaliation, but Iran might not perceive that as credible.) Finally, because the American military has global reach, air strikes against Iran would be a strong warning to other would-be proliferators.
Negotiation to prevent nuclear proliferation is always preferable to military action. But in the face of failed diplomacy, eschewing force is tantamount to appeasement. We have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.
Alan J. Kuperman is the director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/opinion/24kuperman.html?pagewanted=all

Tehran's Biggest Fear

By SELIG S. HARRISON

The biggest threat to the ruling ayatollahs and generals in multi-ethnic Iran does not come from the embattled democratic opposition movement struggling to reform the Islamic Republic. It comes from increasingly aggressive separatist groups in Kurdish, Baluch, Azeri and Arab ethnic minority regions that collectively make up some 44 percent of Persian-dominated Iran’s population.
Working together, the democratic reform movement and the ethnic insurgents could seriously undermine the republic. But the reform movement, like most of the clerical, military and business establishment, is dominated by an entrenched Persian elite and has so far refused to support minority demands.
What the minorities want is greatly increased economic development spending in the non-Persian regions, a bigger share of the profits from oil and other natural resources in their areas, the unfettered use of non-Persian languages in education and politics and freedom from religious persecution. Some minority leaders believe these goals can be achieved through regional autonomy under the existing Constitution, but most of them want to reconstitute Iran as a loose confederation or to declare independence.
Should the United States give money and weapons aid to the ethnic insurgents?
During the Bush administration, a debate raged between White House advocates of “regime change” in Tehran, who favored large-scale covert action to break up the country, and State Department moderates who argued that all-out support of the minorities would complicate negotiations on a nuclear deal with the dominant Persians.
The result was a compromise: limited covert action carried out by proxy, in the case of the Baluch, through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate or, I.S.I., and in the case of the Kurds by the C.I.A. in cooperation with Israel’s Mossad. My knowledge of the I.S.I.’s role is based on first-hand Pakistani sources, including Baluch leaders. Evidence of the C.I.A. role in providing weapons aid and training to Pejak, the principal Kurdish rebel group in Iran, has been spelled out by three U.S. journalists, Jon Lee Anderson and Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker and Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times, who have interviewed a variety of Pejak leaders.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking in the Kurdish city of Bijar, charged on May 12 that the Obama administration had not reversed the Bush policy. “Unfortunately, money, arms and organization are being used by the Americans directly across our western borders in order to fight the Islamic Republic’s system,” he declared. “The Americans are busy making a conspiracy.”
Mossad has long-standing contacts with Kurdish groups in Iran and Iraq established when the United States and Israel wanted to destabilize the Kurdish areas of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But now the United States wants a united Iraq in which Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis cooperate. Iran, too, wants a united Iraq because it fears cooperation among its own Kurds and those in Iraq and Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan. So aiding Pejak would hamper future Iran-U.S. cooperation in Baghdad in addition to complicating the nuclear negotiations.
Both the Baluch and the Kurds are Sunni Muslims. They are fighting vicious Shiite religious repression in addition to cultural and economic discrimination. By contrast, the biggest of the minorities, the Turkic-speaking Azeris, are Shiites, and Ayatollah Khamenei himself is an Azeri. His selection as the supreme leader was in part a gesture to the Azeris designed to cement their allegiance to Iran and to blunt a covert campaign by ethnic kinsmen in adjacent Azerbaijan to annex them. The Azeris in Iran are better off economically than the other minorities but feel that the Persians look down on them. Prolonged rioting erupted for days after a Tehran newspaper published a cartoon in May 2006, depicting an Azeri-speaking cockroach.
The Arabs in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, who are also Shiites, pose the most dangerous potential separatist threat to Tehran because the province produces 80 percent of Iran’s crude oil revenue. So far the divided Arab separatist factions have not created a militia but they periodically raid government security installations, bomb oil production facilities and broadcast propaganda in Arabic on satellite TV channels from shifting locations outside Iran.
The most serious military clashes between the Revolutionary Guards and separatist groups have come on the Kurdish border, where Iran repeatedly bombarded Pejak hideouts in September 2007, and in Baluchistan, where the Guards frequently suffers heavy casualties in clashes with militias of the Jundullah movement operating out of camps just across the border in the Baluch areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Compared to the massive protests in the streets of Tehran and Qum, the uncoordinated harassment of the regime by ethnic insurgents may seem like a sideshow. But if the ethnic insurgents could unite and if the democratic opposition could forge a united front with the minorities, the prospects for reforming or toppling the Islamic Republic, now dismal, would brighten.
For the present, the Obama administration should tread with the utmost care in dealing with this sensitive issue, guided by a recognition that support for separatism and engagement with the present regime are completely incompatible.
Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and author of “In Afghanistan’s Shadow.”

NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28iht-edharrison.html

The Afghanistan Surge: A Logistical Challenge with a Cast of Thousands

David Wood

Troops are jamming two dozen at a time into eight-man Arctic tents hastily erected beside the runways at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, as the first of the 30,000-plus reinforcements ordered by President Obama arrive for the expanding war.
It's simple enough for the commander in chief to order the additional troops into the fight at "the fastest possible pace,'' as Obama did in his West Point speech Dec. 1. Getting it done, safely and on time, will be barely short of miraculous, given the risks and vulnerabilities involved.
Heavy-lift cargo planes jammed with troops or armored vehicles are lumbering over the rocky peaks that ring Bagram Air Field and into airspace already crowded with jet fighters, unmanned drones, bombers, helicopters and small cargo and passenger jets. Just maneuvering along taxiways overcrowded with parked aircraft and support trucks is a nightmare, pilots say.
tweetmeme_source = 'politicsdaily';
Get the newPD toolbar!Most (80 percent) of the military cargo headed into Afghanistan goes by land, squeezing through one of five major bridges or mountain passes and along roads made treacherous by winter storms, insurgents attacks, and bandit hijackings.
An incident -- a downed planeload of soldiers, a crucial bridge blown, an insurgent rocket attack that leaves burning cargo planes blocking a single runway -- could derail the entire sequencing of the surge.
"We could lose everything . . . there are a lot of things that could come down,'' said the man at the center of it all, Air Force Gen. Duncan J, McNabb. He heads the U.S. Transportation Command and is responsible for all movement of military people and equipment worldwide, by air and sea. Right now, his focus is on Afghanistan and what he worries about is "a catastrophic failure.''
So far, McNabb told reporters earlier this month, things are flowing okay. "But I basically would like to have at least double the capacity that we need. Now we don't have all of that in place, but that's kind of where I'd like to be.''
Part of the problem is the flow itself. U.S. military facilities, from air bases to remote Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), were tight a year ago, before Obama took office, when there were only some 30,000 American troops in Afghanistan. By next summer there will be three times that many. But already, the primitive country is starting to resemble a crowded department store where shoppers are getting off of escalators faster than the aisles can absorb them, creating angry bottlenecks.
Engineering crews are working at Bagram and across Afghanistan to expand runways, aircraft parking areas, cargo yards, and to build new FOBs, air strips, and logistics bases. But much of the problem is at Bagram, the former Soviet air base that now serves as the United States' main operating hub in Afghanistan.
There, the heated tents going up beside the runway are only one sign of growing strain. Already, Bagram is handling up to 2,000 inbound and outbound troops a day, and just recently loaded 925 tons of cargo in one day, up from about 400 tons a day last summer.
"Every square inch of this air base is utilized,'' Air Force Maj. Jack Elston told me by phone. "Bed spaces are coveted. When your replacement gets here, he gets your bed and you've got to go someplace else.''
Elston is operations officer for an expeditionary civil engineering squadron at Bagram, responsible for building space for airplanes, cargo and people. Even before the surge gets fully underway, "we are at max capacity,'' he said. "We're trying to bring in new airplanes and there's no place to put 'em.''
Bagram's vast acres of concrete look accommodating, but can hold only so many aircraft. That limit is known as the Maximum on Ground, or MOG. Once it's reached, a red flag goes up on computer screens at the Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. " Bagram's mogged out,'' an operator will announce, and inbound flights start getting diverted like passenger jets from an O'Hare snowstorm.
Afghanistan is a big and mostly empty place. But simply expanding out into the desert is not an easy option. "Before you use any land, it has to be de-mined,'' Elston said, cleared of the land mines buried by Russians and warlords and insurgents over at least three decades of war. De-mining is mostly done by Afghans hired to gently probe the ground with sticks. I've also seen it done at Bagram by brute force, with a huge armored bulldozer just plowing up the dirt and taking an occasional clanging hit.
Other frustrations: Afghans hired for construction work often quit because the risks of working with Americans outweigh steady wages, Elston said. Getting construction material delivered is difficult because trucks can get hijacked and containers stolen or pirated, he said.
One project at Bagram is installing relocatable buildings, basically steel shipping containers that are stacked and welded and hooked up to power and ventilation and used as offices and living quarters. The buildings require land to be cleared and foundations to be built, and the effort is six months behind.
"Part of our mission is to help the Afghans learn construction, so projects take a lot more guidance and take a lot of attempts before they get finished,'' Elston said. "It's frustrating because we need these facilities right away.''
Getting the stuff into Afghanistan remains the larger problem. McNabb's staff is working on four innovations to help ease the strain:
-- They have begun using Boeing's huge 747-400 freightliners to airlift M-ATVs, the new armored vehicles built for Afghanistan directly from Charleston S.C., where the vehicles are finished, nonstop right into Afghanistan. Each 747 carries five M-ATVs. That's more expensive than shipping them by sea, but an enormous saving of time.
-- Instead of flying the normal route from Charleston Air Force Base to Germany and on into Bagram, what about flying over the North Pole and south across Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan right into Bagram, a much shorter distance? McNabb has already held two demo flights over Russia and discussions are underway to make a regular polar route possible. One problem: that's the same trajectory that intercontinental ballistic missiles would take in a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.
-- Increasing air drops. Some of the cargo, rigged to parachutes, can be shoved out the back of C-130 cargo planes, as I wrote about last summer. That takes the load off hubs like Bagram, and means fewer truck convoys on the roads.
-- Most intriguing, McNabb's team is experimenting with unmanned cargo aircraft that could pick up and deliver small but valuable cargo. Unmanned aircraft would remove air cargo crews from the risks of flying into ongoing firefights, as they sometimes do now. No word on whether the experimental craft will be ready in time to serve in the surge.

Daily Politics

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/23/the-afghanistan-surge-a-logistical-ballet-with-a-cast-of-thousa/

Unjust War

by Doug Bandow

Afghanistan is the sort of country which humanitarian-minded people understandably want to “fix.” It has become a target of aggressive pro-war activists ranging from neoconservatives who believe in remaking other societies at gunpoint to feminists who believe in waging war to improve the status of women.
The latter group belies the common assumption that the Left opposes war. While the Right traditionally resisted imperialistic social engineering around the globe, many on the Left believed military intervention abroad to be a logical extension of its attempt to perfect mankind at home. The roots of liberal war-making are older than today’s militaristic nation-building neoconservatives. Woodrow Wilson more than Theodore Roosevelt is the philosophical father of today’s militaristic crusaders, those willing to kill in the name of promoting democracy.
President Barack Obama appeared to be a liberal hawk in March, when he explained his first troop escalation in Afghanistan: “For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people—especially women and girls.”
However, he took a very different tone when announcing his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. He sounded much closer to a cautious realist than the crusading George W. Bush ever did. President Obama that “Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda.” He refused to “set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests.”
This disappointed the pro-war Left. Dana Goldstein of The Daily Beast wrote:
. . . a number of prominent women’s and human-rights organizations have declared themselves disappointed-not only by Obama’s choice of words, but, more significantly, by his plan to begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 18 months, which they say is far too little time to improve the situation markedly and turn women’s rights efforts over entirely to the Afghan government and NGOs.
Explained Sunita Viswanath, founder of Women for Afghan Women (WAW): “When I think of why the U.S. and the world have a moral obligation to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, women are the central issue.” Getting Afghanistan “up on its feet, able to govern, run, and secure itself” simply is not “in the realm of possibility” in the near term, she added. Without a long-term U.S. military commitment, women “will be back in the dark ages.
Esther Hyneman, also with WAW, warned: “If the U.S. left, women would be back in their burkas.” Masuda Sultan, a WAW board member, said a troop surge was “the platform on which everything else can be built.” Indeed: “We have a moral obligation to continue to follow through for Afghan women who have put themselves at risk over the last eight years.”
Palwasha Hassan of the taxpayer-funded U.S. Institute for Peace argued that Washington had an obligation to Afghan women growing out of its support for the mujahideen, some of whom turned into the Taliban. She explained that she wanted more than just troops, “a very holistic approach to Afghanistan-longer-term thinking.” Goldstein quoted Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation as criticizing the president’s plan: “it’s perplexing, disappointing, and I don’t understand why.”
Obviously, these women do not speak for all feminists, let alone all liberals. Nevertheless, the idea of a feminist military crusade is odd enough in theory. It looks particularly unwise in Afghanistan.
Although women have made “modest” gains since the ouster of the Taliban, in Viswanath’s words, the status of women remains wretched. A new United Nations report concluded that violence against women is “widespread and deeply rooted in Afghan society.” Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently called the status of women “dismal in every area.”
Malalai Joya, a woman attacked by traditionalists for running for parliament, complained to Westerners: “Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords.”
The Karzai government may not be as bad as the Taliban, but remaining in power is its first priority: if that means working with abusive warlords and accepting traditional social restrictions, so be it. Indeed, reported HRW, “Women will not seek help because of their fears of police abuse and corruption, or their fears of retaliation by perpetrators of violence.”
Some war advocates admit as much, and want the United States to do more to transform Afghanistan. For instance, Zia Moballegh, acting country director for the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, contended: “No real peace and national development are possible without the elimination of violence against women.”
How to achieve that? Rachel Reid of Human Rights Watch argued that Washington must push the Afghan government to make “painful political reforms to address the systematic problems Afghanistan has with its culture of impunity.”
That’s easier said than done, however. What evidence is there that the West can force peace and national development at the point of a gun? The fact that the end is desirable—and, indeed, that many Afghans desire that end—does not mean that it can be achieved through outside intervention. To the contrary, attempting to impose liberal social policies will make respect for women look like a Western import and Afghan officials look like Western puppets. Any gains won in this way would not likely be sustainable over the long-term.
Moreover, escalating the war is not likely to improve the status of women. Defeating the Taliban would be a positive, to be sure, but even after the president’s planned force build-up allied forces will lag far behind the minimum number suggested as necessary by anti-insurgency doctrine to triumph. If the consequence of U.S. policy is to extend the war rather than reach a compromise political settlement, all Afghans are likely to be worse off.
The issue is not one of intentions, but consequences. War is no gentle tool for transnational social engineering. Observed Glenn Greenwald of Salon: “the claim that we’re fulfilling some sort of moral responsibility to the plight of Afghans by continuing to occupy, bomb and wage war in their country—and by imprisoning them en masse with no charges—is sheer self-glorifying fantasy.”
Most important, the war cannot be justified in feminist terms given the cost to the American people. Viswanath said of the president’s speech: “this sounds to us like it isn’t a statement of ‘we’re with the people of Afghanistan for the long-haul or committed to staying with you until you’re able to secure and govern yourself.”
Viswanath apparently wants a potentially limitless commitment to war in Afghanistan irrespective of the cost in lives and money. That’s impossible practically and wrong morally.
Even if humanitarian intervention was as effective as its proponents unrealistically assume, it would still have to be balanced against the cost of promiscuous war-making. Ultimately, the lives and wealth of Americans should not be sacrificed unless their own political community has something fundamental at stake in a conflict. Promoting democracy, women’s rights, or other liberal values in other societies, though worthy, doesn’t warrant war. Which means the president deserves praise for his honesty. Noted Greenwald: “There were no grandiose claims that the justness of the war derives from our desire to defeat evil, tyrannical extremists and replace them with more humane and democratic leaders.” Rather, President Obama contended that we are in Afghanistan to protect America. (A dubious contention, but at least he is using the right criteria to judge U.S. intervention.)
Tragically, many nations violate human rights. The status of women is an important value, but not the only, or even most important, measure of liberty. Countries like Burma and North Korea murder, imprison, and brutalize both men and women on a large scale. The behavior of the Taliban, though awful, still lags far behind that of other groups and regimes.
While the United States has a strong interest in promoting human rights for others, it has an even stronger interest in maintaining the peace for its own people. In Afghanistan the situation of women in Afghanistan, though horrid, cannot justify more years of costly war.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Reagan and the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon).

TNI

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22694

Strategic Balochistan becomes a target in war against Taliban

Declan walsh

21 Dec. 2009

Look around Balochistan, and you may not see much. Pakistan's largest province is also its poorest and least inhabited – an expanse of rocky deserts and ramshackle villages where hardy tribesmen live by ancient laws. But to outside eyes, Balochistan's barren sands glisten with hidden value.
Mining companies eye its natural riches: vast and largely untapped reserves of copper, natural gas and possibly oil. Criminals see easy money: the world's heroin superhighway, a network of smuggling trails, cuts through its lonely borders. Foreign governments consider its location: wedged between Iran and Afghanistan, and covering two-fifths of Pakistan, Balochistan occupies highly strategic real estate.
But for the black-turbaned clerics commanding the Afghan Taliban, the desolate province offers something else: a welcoming rear base. As the Taliban insurgency oozes across Afghanistan, Nato generals complain that the fighting is being directed from Balochistan.
In a bleak report to President Barack Obama last September, the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, said the "Quetta shura" – a 15-man war council based in or around the Baloch capital and led by Mullah Muhammad Omar, his deputy Mullah Baradar and his military commander Abdullah Zakir – was dictating the pace of the war. It posed the greatest threat to western troops, and was already planning for the 2010 fighting season, McChrystal said. "Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. The Quetta shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Omar announces his guidance and intent for the following year." Yet efforts to break up the Taliban's Pakistan sanctuary have so far been concentrated to the east, in Waziristan. Here, CIA-led drone strikes hit al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts, while the Pakistani army battles with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan – a militant faction that strikes Pakistani cities with suicide bombs. On 17 December, drones fired 10 missiles at a house in North Waziristan, killing at least 12 people.
But in Balochistan militants broadly known as the "Afghan Taliban" operate without fear or hindrance. The long and largely unpatrolled border touches Kandahar, Zabul and Helmand, where almost 10,000 British troops are stationed. Commanders there complain that the Taliban are supplied in men, weapons and bomb parts from Balochistan. But British diplomats are strangely silent, worried that criticism could jeopardise counter-terrorism co-operation with Pakistan.
The Americans, however, are taking a more direct approach. Obama's announcement of another 30,000 troops for Afghanistan has triggered a diplomatic offensive across the border in Pakistan. Officials including the CIA director Leon Panetta and the military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, have visited, urging Pakistan to act forcefully. Specifically, they want action against Sirajuddin Haqqani, a warlord with a network of fighters in North Waziristan. They also want to extend the controversial drone campaign to include the Quetta shura in Balochistan.
"It makes perfect sense to focus on Balochistan, which has been largely neglected until now," said Art Keller, a former CIA case officer who worked in Pakistan in 2006. "The question is how."
Such talk deeply irritates Pakistan's military. Pakistan officially ended its support for the Taliban in 2001, and since then has become embroiled in a dirty war against national insurgents in Balochistan. But although it denies covertly supporting the Taliban, the military has conspicuously turned a blind eye.
Five years ago, in a shop selling cassettes of Osama bin Laden speeches in Quetta, two young fighters told the Guardian they were enjoying a rest after a busy stint fighting Americans in Afghanistan. Two years later, Balochistan's health minister delivered the oration at a funeral for a Taliban fighter killed in action near Kandahar.
Things have tightened up: the Osama tapes are no longer sold, and holidaying fighters are more discreet. But the safe haven remains. Wounded fighters are quietly ferried across the border for treatment; commanders find recruits in decades-old refugee camps along the border. The violence is spilling into Balochistan itself: last summer Nato supply convoys heading for the border came under attack for the first time.
"The whole war in Afghanistan is being launched from here," said Abdul Rahim Mandokhel, an outspoken senator from Zhob in northern Balochistan. He accuses Pakistan's intelligence agencies of carrying out a "double" policy. "One thing is clear: the area is being used for cross-border offences," he said.
So far, the only western intervention in Balochistan has been covert. A former Nato officer said SAS commandos had raided heroin convoys along the province's unmanned border in 2002, 2003 and possibly later. "The SAS was performing a service to the rest of the coalition," he said, explaining that other western forces were not allowed to attack drug smugglers at the time.
US special forces have also been active along the border, in the tribal belt east of Balochistan. The source said US commando units had conducted four cross-border raids into Pakistan since 2003. Only one, in September 2008, was reported. The first three went undetected thanks to "constant reporting about American spies" in the tribal belt.
The former Nato officer said: "There's so much bullshit out there – the militants blame everything on American soldiers or spies or helicopters. So [when we did act] it was real easy to become part of the background noise." A US embassy spokesman in Islamabad declined to comment.
The new US approach to Balochistan is driven by battlefield realities. By next summer 30,000 western soldiers – a third British, the rest mostly American – will be based across the border in Helmand. Seth Jones, a civilian adviser to the US special forces commander in Afghanistan, said this month that the US must "target Taliban leaders in Balochistan" through an expanded drone strike campaign. Pakistani officials trenchantly oppose the idea.
"We can't fight everyone, everywhere. We need to be pragmatic. And we will not be dictated to," said a senior official with Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), speaking on condition of anonymity. The official admitted that insurgents "do come and go" in Balochistan, but insisted the ISI was already cooperating with the CIA in the province, citing 60 joint raids over the past year.
Drone strikes in densely populated Quetta would be "disastrous", he said, both in terms of civilian casualties and anti-American hostility. "I think this is just pressure tactics, the Americans aren't stupid enough to [extend drone strikes]. But if their objective is to destabilise Pakistan, that would be a good way to do it."
Analysts say Pakistan is playing a complicated strategic game – fighting the "bad" Taliban in Waziristan, but secretly allying with the "good" militants attacking Afghanistan. "I can imagine the Pakistanis symbolically allowing the Americans to take out a few guys from the Quetta shura," said Rifaat Hussain, a defence studies professor at Islamabad's Quaid-I-Azam University. "But I can't see them entirely turning the tables. Pakistan's main concern is not to burn its boats with all shades of the Taliban."
The reason, he said, is India. Fearing Indian influence in Afghanistan, Pakistani military planner see the Taliban as their ticket to influence once western forces depart. Obama announced a US withdrawal starting mid-2011.
"They see these guys as their allies in the post-American scenario – a strategic asset to be used when power is up for grabs in Afghanistan," he said.
American officials are becoming aware of Pakistani concerns. "Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan," McChrystal wrote, "is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures." A former US official said the Obama administration was aware of a possible backlash, should drones start hitting Balochistan.
But, the source added, there is a growing recognition that "if we are serious about going after targets in Balochistan, particularly Quetta, then we'll have to do it ourselves". And, he added, should military casualties continue to rise across the border, drones could be sent in regardless of what Pakistan's government says.
"We've already established that precedent with the Pakistanis," he said. "We told them: 'We want you to do this.
"But if you won't, we will. So get out of our way'."
Home to 7 million people, the province of Balochistan occupies 43% of Pakistan's land area. Mostly desert and mountain, it is rich in untapped resources: natural gas, uranium and possibly oil. Since 1948 ethnic Balochs have demanded greater autonomy and more control over revenues from their gasfields, and the Pakistani government has put down four insurgencies; the fifth and current rebellion started in 2003, led by the Balochistan Liberation Army.
There are small Baloch minorities in eastern Iran and south Afghanistan. But north Balochistan, along the Afghan border, is largely inhabited by ethnic Pashtuns, who have different preoccupations. The provincial capital, Quetta, is widely assumed to be the HQ of the Taliban and al-Qaida in their war against Nato in Afghanistan – the US has flown drone aircraft from a desert strip in Balochistan.

the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/us-taliban-balochistan-strategy-pakistan