An investigation by the US Congress into weapons of mass destruction published yesterday made a chilling prediction of terrorists mounting an attack using biological or nuclear weapons within the next five years.
The six-month inquiry mentioned Pakistan as one of the likeliest sources of such an attack. The target could be the US or some other part of the world.
The report, by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, said "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013".
"Terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon," it said.
George Bush said the report highlighted the greatest threat facing the US and was "dangerously real". He said that after the 9/11 attacks he had put in place policies tackling the threat and he was leaving a good foundation for his successor.
Barack Obama's incoming administration, which is to prioritise tackling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, was briefed on Capitol Hill yesterday about the findings in the 132-page report.
The commission, led by former Democratic senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, was given six months to complete the report. It followed on from the work of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.
Graham told reporters that a biological or nuclear attack within the next five years was not inevitable and the commission's reports included a series of recommendations which, if implemented, could diminish the threat. The recommendations included the creation of a White House post focusing on proliferation and more emphasis on diplomatic efforts.
The team's remit ranged from lack of security at biological labs in the US to the safety of nuclear stockpiles in Russia. It conducted 250 interviews with scientists, analysts, intelligence agencies and the military.
The report concluded that the risk from biological or nuclear weapons was higher than sceptical foreign policy and defence analysts have so far suggested. Those analysts had pointed to the complexity of transporting such weapons and the limitations of a nuclear "dirty" bomb, whose radius of damage is minimal compared with missile-delivered warheads.
The report disagreed, saying: "No mission could be timelier. The simple reality is that the risks that confront us today are evolving faster than our multi-layered responses.
"Many thousands of dedicated people across all agencies of our government are working hard to protect this country, and their efforts have had a positive impact. But the terrorists have been active, too - and in our judgment America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."
It added that much dangerous biological and nuclear material around the globe was "poorly secured - and thus vulnerable to theft by those who would put these materials to harmful use, or would sell them on the black market to potential terrorists".
As well as the threat from stateless militant groups, the commission expressed concern about the danger posed by proliferation of nuclear weapons in countries such as Iran, saying the Obama administration must stop Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.
It pointed to Pakistan, both at state level and among stateless groups, as one of the areas of most concern. "Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan," the report said.
Talent told journalists: "It is the epicentre of a lot of these dangers." He said the report had been drawn up before the Mumbai attacks. The commission recommended that Pakistan be top priority for the Obama administration in terms of terrorism and proliferation.
Proposals include eliminating terrorist safe havens through military, economic, and diplomatic means, securing nuclear and biological materials in Pakistan, countering and defeating extremist ideology, and constraining a nascent nuclear arms race in Asia.
Other recommendations include strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and other international safeguards, creating a US national security force appropriate to the 21st century and developing a more coherent strategy for countering ideologies that lead to terrorism.
At home, the commission was disturbed by the apparent lack of security at laboratories dealing with dangerous biological materials.
Government investigators sent to check on the vulnerability of such research sites were able gain access to the outside of these buildings and then observe work inside.
It was fortunate that they were from the government and not al-Qaida as these were precisely the lethal trove that the terrorists have been seeking for years, the report said.
The investigators watched a pedestrian simply stroll into one of the buildings through an unguarded loading bay.
The commission recommended tighter oversight of the 400 research facilities and 15,000 staff engaged in such work.
Another recommendation was for the establishment of an anthrax preparedness strategy.
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/04/terrorism-nuclear-attack-congress-report
Monday, January 12, 2009
Finding Russia's place in Europe
Joschka Fischer
For 19 years, the west (America and Europe) has been putting off answering a critical strategic question: what role should post-Soviet Russia play globally and in the European order? Should it be treated as a difficult partner or a strategic adversary? Even when this choice became critically acute during the crisis of Russia's short war against Georgia last summer, the west didn't provide a conclusive answer to this question. If you follow most east Europeans, the UK and the Bush administration, the answer is "strategic adversary". But most west Europeans prefer "difficult partner". These seemingly mutually exclusive alternatives have one thing in common: neither of them has been thought through to the end.If you see Russia as a strategic adversary ? and the restoration of Great Russian power politics under Vladimir Putin, to the detriment of the rule of law in domestic and foreign policy, does indeed speak for it ? then the west should fundamentally change its agenda. While Russia is no longer the superpower it was in the Soviet era, militarily it is still a great power, at least in Europe and Asia. To address the numerous regional conflicts (Iran, Middle East, Afghanistan/Pakistan, central Asia, North Korea) and global challenges (climate protection, disarmament, arms control, nuclear anti-proliferation, energy security) that have high priority on the western agenda, co-operation with Russia is necessary. A strategic confrontation with Moscow, ie a new kind of "mini-cold war", would undermine this agenda, or at least complicate its implementation significantly. So the question is simply whether the threat emanating from Russia is so grave that this kind of strategic reorientation on the part of the west is required? I believe it is not. Putin's claim to great-power status and his great-power policies are structurally very vulnerable. This is especially true at times where the price of oil has fallen below $40 per barrel. And he knows that. Demographically, Russia is in a dramatic nosedive; it remains economically and socially backward; its infrastructure is underdeveloped, as are its investments in education and vocational training. Economically, it mainly relies on energy and commodity exports, and in its modernisation efforts it is largely dependent on the west, particularly Europe. Due to its geopolitical position and its potential, however, Russia will remain a permanent strategic factor in Europe and Asia that cannot be ignored. To integrate the country into a strategic partnership is therefore in the west's interest. But this would require a western policy based on long-term thinking and a self-confident and strong power position, because the Kremlin will perceive any sign of division and weakness as encouragement to return to Great Russian power politics.A few months ago, the Russian government came up with a proposal to negotiate a new European order within the framework of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Russia considers the agreements from the 1990s unjust, based as they were on its weakness at the time, and it wants to revise them. Moscow's main strategic objective is the weakening or even rollback of Nato as an anti-Russian military alliance and the re-establishment of its east European and central Asian zones of influence. But Putin is making a big mistake here, because all these aims are unacceptable for the west, and the Kremlin still doesn't seem to understand that the best and most effective guarantee of Nato's existence was, is, and will continue to be an aggressive Russian foreign policy. In the former mother country of Marxism-Leninism, the leaders still don't seem to understand dialectics. After all, if Russia's government really wanted to achieve a change in the post-Soviet status quo, it should, first and foremost, pursue a policy vis-a-vis its neighbours that reduces rather than increases fears. But this applies similarly, if in reverse, to the west: on the one hand, the principles of a new Europe as defined by the OSCE after 1989/90 don't allow decisions about alliances to be subject to the veto of a large neighbour. The same is true for free and secret elections and the inviolability of borders. On the other hand, the missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the prospect of Nato accession for Georgia and Ukraine, assume confrontation where this was not at all necessary. The west should not reject Russia's wish for new negotiations on a European security system. Instead, it should be viewed as an opportunity finally to answer the key question of Russia's place within Europe. Nato must play the central role here, because it is indispensable for the vast majority of Europeans and for America. The possible trade-off could be that the existing principles and institutions of the post-Soviet European order, including Nato, remain unchanged and are accepted and implemented by Russia, which would get a significantly enhanced role within Nato, including the perspective of full membership. The peripheral nature of the Nato-Russia Council was clearly not enough and did not work.But why not think about transforming Nato into a real European security system, including Russia? The rules of the game would be changed and a whole variety of strategic goals could be achieved ? European security, neighbourhood conflicts, energy security, arms reduction, anti-proliferation, etc. Yes, such a bold step would transform Nato. But it would transform Russia even more. If the west approaches these discussions with Russia without illusions, with a clear understanding of its own strategic interests and with new ideas for partnership and co-operation, the worst to be feared is failure. Of course, this approach presupposes two things that don't exist at the moment: a common transatlantic approach to dealing with Russia, and a European Union that acts in much greater unison and is therefore stronger. Nonetheless, the challenge posed by Russia does not allow any further procrastination. There is simply too much at stake. Joschka Fischer, a leading member of
Germany's Green party for almost 20 years, was Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 until 2005
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/11/russia-eu
For 19 years, the west (America and Europe) has been putting off answering a critical strategic question: what role should post-Soviet Russia play globally and in the European order? Should it be treated as a difficult partner or a strategic adversary? Even when this choice became critically acute during the crisis of Russia's short war against Georgia last summer, the west didn't provide a conclusive answer to this question. If you follow most east Europeans, the UK and the Bush administration, the answer is "strategic adversary". But most west Europeans prefer "difficult partner". These seemingly mutually exclusive alternatives have one thing in common: neither of them has been thought through to the end.If you see Russia as a strategic adversary ? and the restoration of Great Russian power politics under Vladimir Putin, to the detriment of the rule of law in domestic and foreign policy, does indeed speak for it ? then the west should fundamentally change its agenda. While Russia is no longer the superpower it was in the Soviet era, militarily it is still a great power, at least in Europe and Asia. To address the numerous regional conflicts (Iran, Middle East, Afghanistan/Pakistan, central Asia, North Korea) and global challenges (climate protection, disarmament, arms control, nuclear anti-proliferation, energy security) that have high priority on the western agenda, co-operation with Russia is necessary. A strategic confrontation with Moscow, ie a new kind of "mini-cold war", would undermine this agenda, or at least complicate its implementation significantly. So the question is simply whether the threat emanating from Russia is so grave that this kind of strategic reorientation on the part of the west is required? I believe it is not. Putin's claim to great-power status and his great-power policies are structurally very vulnerable. This is especially true at times where the price of oil has fallen below $40 per barrel. And he knows that. Demographically, Russia is in a dramatic nosedive; it remains economically and socially backward; its infrastructure is underdeveloped, as are its investments in education and vocational training. Economically, it mainly relies on energy and commodity exports, and in its modernisation efforts it is largely dependent on the west, particularly Europe. Due to its geopolitical position and its potential, however, Russia will remain a permanent strategic factor in Europe and Asia that cannot be ignored. To integrate the country into a strategic partnership is therefore in the west's interest. But this would require a western policy based on long-term thinking and a self-confident and strong power position, because the Kremlin will perceive any sign of division and weakness as encouragement to return to Great Russian power politics.A few months ago, the Russian government came up with a proposal to negotiate a new European order within the framework of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Russia considers the agreements from the 1990s unjust, based as they were on its weakness at the time, and it wants to revise them. Moscow's main strategic objective is the weakening or even rollback of Nato as an anti-Russian military alliance and the re-establishment of its east European and central Asian zones of influence. But Putin is making a big mistake here, because all these aims are unacceptable for the west, and the Kremlin still doesn't seem to understand that the best and most effective guarantee of Nato's existence was, is, and will continue to be an aggressive Russian foreign policy. In the former mother country of Marxism-Leninism, the leaders still don't seem to understand dialectics. After all, if Russia's government really wanted to achieve a change in the post-Soviet status quo, it should, first and foremost, pursue a policy vis-a-vis its neighbours that reduces rather than increases fears. But this applies similarly, if in reverse, to the west: on the one hand, the principles of a new Europe as defined by the OSCE after 1989/90 don't allow decisions about alliances to be subject to the veto of a large neighbour. The same is true for free and secret elections and the inviolability of borders. On the other hand, the missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the prospect of Nato accession for Georgia and Ukraine, assume confrontation where this was not at all necessary. The west should not reject Russia's wish for new negotiations on a European security system. Instead, it should be viewed as an opportunity finally to answer the key question of Russia's place within Europe. Nato must play the central role here, because it is indispensable for the vast majority of Europeans and for America. The possible trade-off could be that the existing principles and institutions of the post-Soviet European order, including Nato, remain unchanged and are accepted and implemented by Russia, which would get a significantly enhanced role within Nato, including the perspective of full membership. The peripheral nature of the Nato-Russia Council was clearly not enough and did not work.But why not think about transforming Nato into a real European security system, including Russia? The rules of the game would be changed and a whole variety of strategic goals could be achieved ? European security, neighbourhood conflicts, energy security, arms reduction, anti-proliferation, etc. Yes, such a bold step would transform Nato. But it would transform Russia even more. If the west approaches these discussions with Russia without illusions, with a clear understanding of its own strategic interests and with new ideas for partnership and co-operation, the worst to be feared is failure. Of course, this approach presupposes two things that don't exist at the moment: a common transatlantic approach to dealing with Russia, and a European Union that acts in much greater unison and is therefore stronger. Nonetheless, the challenge posed by Russia does not allow any further procrastination. There is simply too much at stake. Joschka Fischer, a leading member of
Germany's Green party for almost 20 years, was Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 until 2005
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/11/russia-eu
Why Iran Seeks Nuclear Weapons
Arch Roberts Jr.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL: Expert observers of Iran hang on the latest reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency of how many centrifuges are running, how far the country must go to build a bomb, the latest inflammatory remarks from President Ahmedinejad, speculation about a lame-duck Bush administration military strike, or the same from Olmert’s Israel.
Iran’s decision on nuclear weapons was made at least two decades ago. Despite its professed peaceful intentions, nobody in their right mind would disagree with the notion that Iran maximizes its room for maneuver by all possible means, with nuclear arms or without. Tehran doesn’t mind foreign suspicions at all; rather, its strategic interest is to encourage them, if only to achieve the effect of nuclear deterrence before possessing a nuclear device. Iran’s policy has created a virtual deterrent, and its policies across the board, from the mullahs’ point of view, amount to “constructive irresponsibility.” Iran wants us to spend time guessing its next step.
The current conflict in Gaza provides an example of Iran’s strategic ambitions. Iran has long used Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies in pursuit of its interests. At arm’s length, these organizations support Iran’s long-term goals: tie down Israel’s actions in the short term, and frustrate all efforts at Middle East peace. Israel’s 2006 failure in Lebanon, chasing down Hezbollah, only served to embolden the mullahs in Tehran. The assault on Gaza, while it may stop rocket attacks on civilians, could be expected to achieve much the same result.
There’s no plausible peaceful explanation for Iran’s uranium enrichment program: The fuel for its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr will be provided by Russia, with a requirement that spent fuel, full of weapons-usable plutonium, will be returned to Russia. Plans for future reactor construction are well in the distance. So the non-bomb uranium Iran has produced to date has no purpose besides that of a nuclear “breakout” option: kick out the inspectors, run the uranium through the centrifuges several more times, work on missiles and other delivery means, and finish up with a couple of bombs. In the view of Iranian leaders, this posture improves Iran’s strategic military perspective.
Put yourself in Ahmedinejad’s, or more important, Khamenei’s, position. How could you not pursue the nuclear option? A proud and ancient nation, subject to a long history of Western meddling, a Persian oasis in a multitude of Arabs and others, a combatant in many bloody wars, must have insecurities that far outweigh the prospects of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions. The flood of diplomats into Tehran over the last several years only increased the value that Iran’s leaders, and much of its public, place on the virtual deterrent option that’s a stockpile of uranium sufficient for a bomb.
Consider the current environment and the history that informs Iran's leaders. Iran has declared the United States its principal strategic threat for three decades; indeed, this enmity has been a central organizing principle for the government. Flirtations with more normal relations with the US have been frequent, from the end of the Carter Administration through Iran-Contra to the present consideration of opening an American Interests Section in Tehran. But the government of Iran has been divided in important ways since the revolution, with many observers noting its conflicting signals to the major powers, simultaneously conciliatory and defiant. This behavior only increased during the term of fiery Ahmadinejad.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel has had nuclear-capable missiles since 1966 – perhaps the most significant political driver of Iran's national policy. But there are many others as well: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, using chemical weapons and pursuing nuclear ones, waged a punishing war against Iran for a decade after the 1979 revolution. The US has had a considerable military presence on Iran's land borders since 2001, a continuous and significant naval presence in the Gulf for longer, and it shot down an Iranian airliner during the Reagan administration.
In Kenneth Pollack's excellent book, "The Persian Puzzle," he relates the tension among Iranian policymakers between transparency and concealment regarding the nuclear option. Concealment was the policy for 20 years until the revelations of 2002. Once revealed, the public face of Iran’s policy changed to one of declarations of capability and denials of intent to build a nuclear weapon. On this question, Iran has many models to consider. Israel, as late as 2006, famously stated it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the Middle East, a contrived ambiguity that has served its national interests, but leaves no confusion about its intent. Ironically, this Israeli policy is perhaps most consistent with Iran's current posture. The mere possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon approximates its actual possession.
Another mature nuclear power in the neighborhood, India, has pursued a similar approach to Iran’s. After its first nuclear test in 1974, India tried to persuade the world that the test was for peaceful purposes, with little success and few penalties. North Korea conducted a nuclear test in 2006, in the midst of the Six-Party talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, another virtual deterrent.
The model Iran may follow is China, which pursues a policy best described by Jeffrey Lewis and others as "minimum deterrence." Apart from fielding the largest army in the world, China maintains perhaps 200 nuclear weapons and declares a no-first-use policy. China enjoys a level of respect and consideration Iran's leaders have never enjoyed, but to which they logically aspire.
Let’s go back to the box in which Iran’s policymakers have placed themselves: After at least two decades, Iran got caught, publicly, in 2002, and had to submit to inspections of items never declared to the IAEA. Libya renounced its nuclear program around the same time. If you’re the Supreme Leader in Iran, what do you do? You pretend to cooperate with inspectors, work your Non-Aligned Movement allies in the UN system and slow-roll the slow-response mechanisms of the UN – all the while not compromising the strategic decision made decades ago. This is predictable, not radical behavior. Iran can always hang opposition to its actions from the US and others on outsiders and “Zionist tendencies,” and pin IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s technical statements on the fact that he’s an Egyptian, and therefore suspect. (Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei must have the patience of Job.)
So what’s to be done? The only way out of this mess is more of the same: call a high-level Middle East peace conference; think creatively about the kind of no-first-use nuclear policies that have served China well; include Israel while protecting its strategic interests; find ways to guarantee Israeli and Iranian borders; and, most important, focus on nuclear issues before it's too late.
No one can doubt the commitment of the US to Israel’s security, nor should anyone question the value of a prospective region-wide commitment to security behind currently-agreed borders. Israel might even rethink its own nuclear posture in light of such developments.
Iran would likely participate in any regional conference devoted to Middle East peace. Such a meeting would mark its undeniable influence in the region and perhaps mitigate the toxic relations existing with the US since 1979. It might just reduce the nuclear impulses that Iran cultivates as a counteraction to US and Israeli military power, as well as those they may harbor in a long-range analysis of a nuclear Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Why not? Absent an acceptable, overarching alternative, accepting Iran’s ambiguous nuclear power may all we’re left with.
Arch Roberts Jr. is a consultant on international affairs, formerly a staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and elsewhere in the United Nations system. These views are his own.
Yale Global Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11793
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL: Expert observers of Iran hang on the latest reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency of how many centrifuges are running, how far the country must go to build a bomb, the latest inflammatory remarks from President Ahmedinejad, speculation about a lame-duck Bush administration military strike, or the same from Olmert’s Israel.
Iran’s decision on nuclear weapons was made at least two decades ago. Despite its professed peaceful intentions, nobody in their right mind would disagree with the notion that Iran maximizes its room for maneuver by all possible means, with nuclear arms or without. Tehran doesn’t mind foreign suspicions at all; rather, its strategic interest is to encourage them, if only to achieve the effect of nuclear deterrence before possessing a nuclear device. Iran’s policy has created a virtual deterrent, and its policies across the board, from the mullahs’ point of view, amount to “constructive irresponsibility.” Iran wants us to spend time guessing its next step.
The current conflict in Gaza provides an example of Iran’s strategic ambitions. Iran has long used Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies in pursuit of its interests. At arm’s length, these organizations support Iran’s long-term goals: tie down Israel’s actions in the short term, and frustrate all efforts at Middle East peace. Israel’s 2006 failure in Lebanon, chasing down Hezbollah, only served to embolden the mullahs in Tehran. The assault on Gaza, while it may stop rocket attacks on civilians, could be expected to achieve much the same result.
There’s no plausible peaceful explanation for Iran’s uranium enrichment program: The fuel for its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr will be provided by Russia, with a requirement that spent fuel, full of weapons-usable plutonium, will be returned to Russia. Plans for future reactor construction are well in the distance. So the non-bomb uranium Iran has produced to date has no purpose besides that of a nuclear “breakout” option: kick out the inspectors, run the uranium through the centrifuges several more times, work on missiles and other delivery means, and finish up with a couple of bombs. In the view of Iranian leaders, this posture improves Iran’s strategic military perspective.
Put yourself in Ahmedinejad’s, or more important, Khamenei’s, position. How could you not pursue the nuclear option? A proud and ancient nation, subject to a long history of Western meddling, a Persian oasis in a multitude of Arabs and others, a combatant in many bloody wars, must have insecurities that far outweigh the prospects of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions. The flood of diplomats into Tehran over the last several years only increased the value that Iran’s leaders, and much of its public, place on the virtual deterrent option that’s a stockpile of uranium sufficient for a bomb.
Consider the current environment and the history that informs Iran's leaders. Iran has declared the United States its principal strategic threat for three decades; indeed, this enmity has been a central organizing principle for the government. Flirtations with more normal relations with the US have been frequent, from the end of the Carter Administration through Iran-Contra to the present consideration of opening an American Interests Section in Tehran. But the government of Iran has been divided in important ways since the revolution, with many observers noting its conflicting signals to the major powers, simultaneously conciliatory and defiant. This behavior only increased during the term of fiery Ahmadinejad.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel has had nuclear-capable missiles since 1966 – perhaps the most significant political driver of Iran's national policy. But there are many others as well: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, using chemical weapons and pursuing nuclear ones, waged a punishing war against Iran for a decade after the 1979 revolution. The US has had a considerable military presence on Iran's land borders since 2001, a continuous and significant naval presence in the Gulf for longer, and it shot down an Iranian airliner during the Reagan administration.
In Kenneth Pollack's excellent book, "The Persian Puzzle," he relates the tension among Iranian policymakers between transparency and concealment regarding the nuclear option. Concealment was the policy for 20 years until the revelations of 2002. Once revealed, the public face of Iran’s policy changed to one of declarations of capability and denials of intent to build a nuclear weapon. On this question, Iran has many models to consider. Israel, as late as 2006, famously stated it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the Middle East, a contrived ambiguity that has served its national interests, but leaves no confusion about its intent. Ironically, this Israeli policy is perhaps most consistent with Iran's current posture. The mere possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon approximates its actual possession.
Another mature nuclear power in the neighborhood, India, has pursued a similar approach to Iran’s. After its first nuclear test in 1974, India tried to persuade the world that the test was for peaceful purposes, with little success and few penalties. North Korea conducted a nuclear test in 2006, in the midst of the Six-Party talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, another virtual deterrent.
The model Iran may follow is China, which pursues a policy best described by Jeffrey Lewis and others as "minimum deterrence." Apart from fielding the largest army in the world, China maintains perhaps 200 nuclear weapons and declares a no-first-use policy. China enjoys a level of respect and consideration Iran's leaders have never enjoyed, but to which they logically aspire.
Let’s go back to the box in which Iran’s policymakers have placed themselves: After at least two decades, Iran got caught, publicly, in 2002, and had to submit to inspections of items never declared to the IAEA. Libya renounced its nuclear program around the same time. If you’re the Supreme Leader in Iran, what do you do? You pretend to cooperate with inspectors, work your Non-Aligned Movement allies in the UN system and slow-roll the slow-response mechanisms of the UN – all the while not compromising the strategic decision made decades ago. This is predictable, not radical behavior. Iran can always hang opposition to its actions from the US and others on outsiders and “Zionist tendencies,” and pin IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s technical statements on the fact that he’s an Egyptian, and therefore suspect. (Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei must have the patience of Job.)
So what’s to be done? The only way out of this mess is more of the same: call a high-level Middle East peace conference; think creatively about the kind of no-first-use nuclear policies that have served China well; include Israel while protecting its strategic interests; find ways to guarantee Israeli and Iranian borders; and, most important, focus on nuclear issues before it's too late.
No one can doubt the commitment of the US to Israel’s security, nor should anyone question the value of a prospective region-wide commitment to security behind currently-agreed borders. Israel might even rethink its own nuclear posture in light of such developments.
Iran would likely participate in any regional conference devoted to Middle East peace. Such a meeting would mark its undeniable influence in the region and perhaps mitigate the toxic relations existing with the US since 1979. It might just reduce the nuclear impulses that Iran cultivates as a counteraction to US and Israeli military power, as well as those they may harbor in a long-range analysis of a nuclear Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Why not? Absent an acceptable, overarching alternative, accepting Iran’s ambiguous nuclear power may all we’re left with.
Arch Roberts Jr. is a consultant on international affairs, formerly a staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and elsewhere in the United Nations system. These views are his own.
Yale Global Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11793
Monday, December 1, 2008
A return to 1815 is the way forward for Europe
Christopher Meyer
Those who think that there is such a thing as progress in international affairs - that we are capable of learning the lessons of history - have been brutally disabused by the Georgian crisis. You can have all the rules you like to discipline international behaviour; but they are not worth the paper they are written on if they run against fierce nationalisms and ethnic passion.
Ethnic and nationalist rivalry is as old as sin, and as inextinguishable. As a diplomat in Britain's Moscow Embassy during the Cold War, I spent time in two of the Caucasian republics, Georgia and Azerbaijan. They were then under Moscow's heel as part of the Soviet Union. Their loathing of Russians was palpable.
At the time of my visits, Stalin, a Georgian by birth, was still officially a non-person, airbrushed by his successors from the annals of Soviet history. But in defiance of Moscow his portraits could still be seen in Georgian state farms and government offices. I asked a Georgian official why this was so. “Because he killed so many Russians,” came the sardonic reply.
The feeling was mutual. Later in Moscow I related my Caucasian experiences to Leonid Brezhnev's interpreter, Viktor Sukhodrev. “That's no place for a white man,” he said with his impeccable North London accent (he had equally good American).
Recent events have shown no weakening in these ancient hatreds. But the Western powers behaved as if caught on the hop. Last year a French diplomat warned me that once Kosovo got its independence (itself the unnatural product of Balkan hatreds), Russia would feel free to make its move in Georgia. And so it has come to pass. As a Times leader put it recently, history has resumed, leaving Francis Fukuyama, the apostle of its end, trailing in its wake. But Professor Fukuyama was adrift from the very start. Once the iron fists of the former Soviet Union and Tito's Yugoslavia had been removed, nationalist and ethnic tensions broke surface with the murderous velocity of the long suppressed. Contrary to what David Miliband has been telling us, the glacial years of the Cold War were “the period of calm”. The years since have been marked by the constant turmoil of history's march.
Globalisation and interdependence were supposed to have swept aside these ancient feuds and rivalries. Theories of the postmodern state now abound. Tony Blair preached how national interest would be trumped by the spread of “global values”. This is self-evident rubbish. For here is the paradox of the modern world. Money, people, culture, business and electronic information cross porous frontiers in ever-increasing volume. But as national boundaries dissolve in cyberspace, so everywhere the sense of nationhood and national interest strengthens. Five minutes in Beijing, Washington, Tehran or Moscow will tell you that. What is the European Union if not the 21st-century arena for the intense and competitive prosecution of the national interest by its 27 member states?
It is useless to say that nationalism and ethnic tribalism have no place in the international relations of the 21st century. If anything the spread of Western-style democracy has amplified their appeal and resonance. The supreme fallacy in foreign policy is to take the world as we would wish it to be and not as it actually is. In Britain's case, the delusion is compounded when we are powerless to effect the outcome we desire. This has been particularly the case with Russia, where we have managed to be both impotent and provocative. If we really want to put a halt to bad Russian behaviour, let us do so where we can make a difference, and where it is justified - starting with the expulsion of the vast nest of Russian intelligence officers in London, as Labour and Conservative governments did not hesitate to do in the 1970s.
We can foolishly downgrade national interest within the armoury of British diplomacy, if we wish. But we had better not underestimate its driving force in the international behaviour of others. That is the road to dangerous miscalculation.
Take Russia, China and Iran. Each seethes at the recollection of what it considers historical humiliations visited on it by Western powers. For all three the beginning of the 21st century has opened opportunities for payback - for getting respect as a nation (just look at recent Russian newspapers). You don't have to like or approve of these regimes. But not to understand their histories is not to understand the mainspring of their external policies - in Russia's case its determination to rebuild its greatness, dismantled, as millions of Russians see it, by Mikhail Gorbachev and his Georgian Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, aided and abetted by the West. I would bet a sackful of roubles that Russian foreign policy would not be one jot different if it were a fully functioning democracy of the kind that we appear keen to spread around the globe.
What is to be done, as Lenin once put it? The first thing is to sweep away any rose-tinted illusions left from the Blair-Bush era. For the democracies of North America and Europe, relations with Russia are always going to be awkward and bumpy, at best co-operative and adversarial in equal measure.
The fall of the Soviet Union did not wipe the slate clean. The Russia that we are dealing with today, with its fear of encirclement, its suspicion of foreigners and natural appetite for autocracy, is as old as the hills, long pre-dating communism. It is a Russia that will never be reassured by the West's protestations of pacific intent as it pushes Nato and the EU ever eastwards.
Most important of all, Russia and the West need to draw up rules of the road for the 21st century. Mr Miliband and others have condemned the notion of returning to the geopolitics of the Congress of Vienna which, in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, divided Europe into spheres of influence between empires and nations. They perhaps forget that what was agreed at Vienna held at bay for almost a century a general European war.
Something similar is needed today, based again on spheres of influence. Nato must renounce the provocative folly of being open to Georgian or, worse, Ukrainian membership. This strikes at the heart of the Russian national interest and offers no enhanced security to either Tbilisi or Kiev. As for Russia, it must be made unambiguously clear where any revanchist lunge westwards would provoke a military response by Nato.
This may sound shocking and anachronistic to the modern sensibility. But, there is no other way to remove the scope for miscalculation, the mother of far too many wars.
Sir Christopher Meyer was Ambassador to Washington, 1997-2003
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4656255.ece
Those who think that there is such a thing as progress in international affairs - that we are capable of learning the lessons of history - have been brutally disabused by the Georgian crisis. You can have all the rules you like to discipline international behaviour; but they are not worth the paper they are written on if they run against fierce nationalisms and ethnic passion.
Ethnic and nationalist rivalry is as old as sin, and as inextinguishable. As a diplomat in Britain's Moscow Embassy during the Cold War, I spent time in two of the Caucasian republics, Georgia and Azerbaijan. They were then under Moscow's heel as part of the Soviet Union. Their loathing of Russians was palpable.
At the time of my visits, Stalin, a Georgian by birth, was still officially a non-person, airbrushed by his successors from the annals of Soviet history. But in defiance of Moscow his portraits could still be seen in Georgian state farms and government offices. I asked a Georgian official why this was so. “Because he killed so many Russians,” came the sardonic reply.
The feeling was mutual. Later in Moscow I related my Caucasian experiences to Leonid Brezhnev's interpreter, Viktor Sukhodrev. “That's no place for a white man,” he said with his impeccable North London accent (he had equally good American).
Recent events have shown no weakening in these ancient hatreds. But the Western powers behaved as if caught on the hop. Last year a French diplomat warned me that once Kosovo got its independence (itself the unnatural product of Balkan hatreds), Russia would feel free to make its move in Georgia. And so it has come to pass. As a Times leader put it recently, history has resumed, leaving Francis Fukuyama, the apostle of its end, trailing in its wake. But Professor Fukuyama was adrift from the very start. Once the iron fists of the former Soviet Union and Tito's Yugoslavia had been removed, nationalist and ethnic tensions broke surface with the murderous velocity of the long suppressed. Contrary to what David Miliband has been telling us, the glacial years of the Cold War were “the period of calm”. The years since have been marked by the constant turmoil of history's march.
Globalisation and interdependence were supposed to have swept aside these ancient feuds and rivalries. Theories of the postmodern state now abound. Tony Blair preached how national interest would be trumped by the spread of “global values”. This is self-evident rubbish. For here is the paradox of the modern world. Money, people, culture, business and electronic information cross porous frontiers in ever-increasing volume. But as national boundaries dissolve in cyberspace, so everywhere the sense of nationhood and national interest strengthens. Five minutes in Beijing, Washington, Tehran or Moscow will tell you that. What is the European Union if not the 21st-century arena for the intense and competitive prosecution of the national interest by its 27 member states?
It is useless to say that nationalism and ethnic tribalism have no place in the international relations of the 21st century. If anything the spread of Western-style democracy has amplified their appeal and resonance. The supreme fallacy in foreign policy is to take the world as we would wish it to be and not as it actually is. In Britain's case, the delusion is compounded when we are powerless to effect the outcome we desire. This has been particularly the case with Russia, where we have managed to be both impotent and provocative. If we really want to put a halt to bad Russian behaviour, let us do so where we can make a difference, and where it is justified - starting with the expulsion of the vast nest of Russian intelligence officers in London, as Labour and Conservative governments did not hesitate to do in the 1970s.
We can foolishly downgrade national interest within the armoury of British diplomacy, if we wish. But we had better not underestimate its driving force in the international behaviour of others. That is the road to dangerous miscalculation.
Take Russia, China and Iran. Each seethes at the recollection of what it considers historical humiliations visited on it by Western powers. For all three the beginning of the 21st century has opened opportunities for payback - for getting respect as a nation (just look at recent Russian newspapers). You don't have to like or approve of these regimes. But not to understand their histories is not to understand the mainspring of their external policies - in Russia's case its determination to rebuild its greatness, dismantled, as millions of Russians see it, by Mikhail Gorbachev and his Georgian Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, aided and abetted by the West. I would bet a sackful of roubles that Russian foreign policy would not be one jot different if it were a fully functioning democracy of the kind that we appear keen to spread around the globe.
What is to be done, as Lenin once put it? The first thing is to sweep away any rose-tinted illusions left from the Blair-Bush era. For the democracies of North America and Europe, relations with Russia are always going to be awkward and bumpy, at best co-operative and adversarial in equal measure.
The fall of the Soviet Union did not wipe the slate clean. The Russia that we are dealing with today, with its fear of encirclement, its suspicion of foreigners and natural appetite for autocracy, is as old as the hills, long pre-dating communism. It is a Russia that will never be reassured by the West's protestations of pacific intent as it pushes Nato and the EU ever eastwards.
Most important of all, Russia and the West need to draw up rules of the road for the 21st century. Mr Miliband and others have condemned the notion of returning to the geopolitics of the Congress of Vienna which, in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, divided Europe into spheres of influence between empires and nations. They perhaps forget that what was agreed at Vienna held at bay for almost a century a general European war.
Something similar is needed today, based again on spheres of influence. Nato must renounce the provocative folly of being open to Georgian or, worse, Ukrainian membership. This strikes at the heart of the Russian national interest and offers no enhanced security to either Tbilisi or Kiev. As for Russia, it must be made unambiguously clear where any revanchist lunge westwards would provoke a military response by Nato.
This may sound shocking and anachronistic to the modern sensibility. But, there is no other way to remove the scope for miscalculation, the mother of far too many wars.
Sir Christopher Meyer was Ambassador to Washington, 1997-2003
The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4656255.ece
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
One Surge Does Not Fit All
By DONALD H. RUMSFELD
THE surge in Iraq has been one of the most impressive military accomplishments in recent years. It has been so successful that the emerging consensus is that what may now be needed in Afghanistan is a similar surge of American forces. President-elect Barack Obama campaigned on his intention to do so, as did his former opponent, John McCain.
As one who is occasionally — and incorrectly — portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful. President Bush’s bold decision to deploy additional troops to support a broader counterinsurgency strategy of securing and protecting the Iraqi people was clearly the right decision. More important, though, it was the right decision at the right time.
By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point:
•
Al Qaeda in Iraq’s campaign of terrorism and intimidation had turned its Sunni base of support against it. The result was the so-called Anbar Awakening in the late summer of 2006, followed by similar awakening movements across Iraq.
•
From 2003 through 2006, United States military forces, under the leadership of Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, inflicted huge losses on the Baathist and Qaeda leadership. Many thousands of insurgents, including the Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, were captured or killed and proved difficult to replace.
•
The Iraqi Security Forces had achieved cohesion, improved operational effectiveness and critical mass. By December 2006, some 320,000 Iraqis had been trained, equipped and deployed, producing the forces necessary to help hold difficult neighborhoods against the enemy. By 2007, the surge, for most Iraqis, could have an Iraqi face.
•
And the political scene in Iraq had shifted. Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, declared a cease-fire in February 2007. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, seated in May 2006, moved against militias and Iranian-backed militias and has imperfectly, but notably, rejected narrow sectarian policies.
The best indication that timing is everything may be that there had been earlier surges without the same effect as the 2007 surge. In 2005, troop levels in Iraq were increased to numbers nearly equal to the 2007 surge — twice. But the effects were not as durable because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq’s security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough.
The decision to conduct a surge came out of an interagency review in the fall of 2006. By mid-December, as I was leaving the Pentagon, there was a rough consensus in the Defense Department that deploying additional combat brigades to Iraq was the right step. Some military leaders raised reasonable questions about the potential effectiveness of a surge, in part because of a correct concern that military power alone could not solve Iraq’s problems. I agreed, and emphasized that a military surge would need to be accompanied by effective diplomatic and economic “surges” from other departments and agencies of the American government, and by considerably greater progress from Iraq’s elected leaders.
During my last weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces in Iraq, as General Casey’s tour was coming to an end. General Petraeus and his deputy, Gen. Ray Odierno, had the experience and skill to recognize and exploit the seismic shifts that were taking place in Iraq’s political landscape. And United States troops had the courage to win the alliance of Iraq’s people against a common enemy — and the benevolence to win their friendship.
At the critical moment — a moment when the Iraqis were able and willing to be part of the surge with the American forces — the United States surged into Iraq with the right commanders, additional forces and a fresh operational approach rooted in years of on-the-ground experience. Americans can be proud of what has been accomplished in Iraq over the last five-plus years. They should also be impressed by the results of the surge, which, thus far, has outstripped expectations, including mine.
President Bush’s decision to increase combat troop levels in Iraq in January 2007 sent a clear message that he was determined not to abandon a people to death squads and terrorists. We will need the same commitment to helping the people of Afghanistan succeed, but that does not mean we will achieve it with the same tactics or strategies.
The way forward in Afghanistan will need to reflect the current circumstances there — not the circumstances in Iraq two years ago. Additional troops in Afghanistan may be necessary, but they will not, by themselves, be sufficient to lead to the results we saw in Iraq. A similar confluence of events that contributed to success in Iraq does not appear to exist in Afghanistan.
What’s needed in Afghanistan is an Afghan solution, just as Iraqi solutions have contributed so fundamentally to progress in Iraq. And a surge, if it is to be successful, will need to be an Afghan surge.
Left unanswered in the current debate is the critical question of how thousands of additional American troops might actually bring long-term stability to Afghanistan — a country 80,000 square miles larger than Iraq yet with security forces just one-fourth the size of Iraq’s. Afghanistan also lacks Iraq’s oil and other economic advantages. It is plagued by the narcotics trade. Its borders are threatened by terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan. Fractured groups of Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border do not yet appear willing to unite and take on the insurgents in their midst, as Arab tribes did in Iraq.
Further, Afghanistan has a long history of defeating foreign armies that sought strength in numbers. The Soviet Union tried to occupy Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of troops — and withdrew, defeated and broken. More United States troops could raise tensions, particularly in Afghanistan’s Pashtun south, where the insurgency is strongest.
Only capable indigenous forces can ultimately win an insurgency. Afghan forces, backed by coalition troops, will need to move into the most violent areas to secure and protect the local population, enabling Afghans to cooperate with their government without losing their lives.
To do this, the size of the Afghan National Army will need to be increased well beyond its 70,000 or so troops and its training accelerated. More American forces will need to undertake the unglamorous work of embedding with Afghan soldiers as advisers, living and fighting together. Kingpins and senior facilitators in the thriving poppy industry that helps to fuel the insurgency will need to be treated as military targets, as Qaeda and Taliban leaders are. Reconstruction projects should be focused on provinces and towns that are cooperating with the Afghan government, instead of making blanket commitments to increase foreign assistance across Afghanistan and possibly fostering a culture of dependence.
The current suggestion of “opening negotiations” with the Taliban may well win over some low- and mid-level supporters, but if history is any guide, offering the hand of peace to hardened fanatics is not likely to prove successful. Aggressive action against Taliban and Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan will need to continue. Pakistani officials will have to isolate any factions in their military and intelligence services that are sympathetic to the Taliban.
In a few weeks, the new commander in chief, Barack Obama, will assume the responsibility of leading a nation at a time of war. Time and flexibility are the two constants of military success. In a struggle with an adaptable, thinking enemy, there is no single template for success. More is not always better. One size does not fit all.
The singular trait of the American way of war is the remarkable ability of our military to advance, absorb setbacks, adapt and ultimately triumph based upon the unique circumstances of a given campaign. Thus it has been throughout our history. And thus it will be in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we have the patience and wisdom to learn from our successes, and if our leaders have the wherewithal to persevere even when it is not popular to do so.
Donald H. Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006.
Source: NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23rumsfeld.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1227589200&en=17a6020edb96eb41&ei=5087%0A
THE surge in Iraq has been one of the most impressive military accomplishments in recent years. It has been so successful that the emerging consensus is that what may now be needed in Afghanistan is a similar surge of American forces. President-elect Barack Obama campaigned on his intention to do so, as did his former opponent, John McCain.
As one who is occasionally — and incorrectly — portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful. President Bush’s bold decision to deploy additional troops to support a broader counterinsurgency strategy of securing and protecting the Iraqi people was clearly the right decision. More important, though, it was the right decision at the right time.
By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point:
•
Al Qaeda in Iraq’s campaign of terrorism and intimidation had turned its Sunni base of support against it. The result was the so-called Anbar Awakening in the late summer of 2006, followed by similar awakening movements across Iraq.
•
From 2003 through 2006, United States military forces, under the leadership of Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, inflicted huge losses on the Baathist and Qaeda leadership. Many thousands of insurgents, including the Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, were captured or killed and proved difficult to replace.
•
The Iraqi Security Forces had achieved cohesion, improved operational effectiveness and critical mass. By December 2006, some 320,000 Iraqis had been trained, equipped and deployed, producing the forces necessary to help hold difficult neighborhoods against the enemy. By 2007, the surge, for most Iraqis, could have an Iraqi face.
•
And the political scene in Iraq had shifted. Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, declared a cease-fire in February 2007. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, seated in May 2006, moved against militias and Iranian-backed militias and has imperfectly, but notably, rejected narrow sectarian policies.
The best indication that timing is everything may be that there had been earlier surges without the same effect as the 2007 surge. In 2005, troop levels in Iraq were increased to numbers nearly equal to the 2007 surge — twice. But the effects were not as durable because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq’s security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough.
The decision to conduct a surge came out of an interagency review in the fall of 2006. By mid-December, as I was leaving the Pentagon, there was a rough consensus in the Defense Department that deploying additional combat brigades to Iraq was the right step. Some military leaders raised reasonable questions about the potential effectiveness of a surge, in part because of a correct concern that military power alone could not solve Iraq’s problems. I agreed, and emphasized that a military surge would need to be accompanied by effective diplomatic and economic “surges” from other departments and agencies of the American government, and by considerably greater progress from Iraq’s elected leaders.
During my last weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces in Iraq, as General Casey’s tour was coming to an end. General Petraeus and his deputy, Gen. Ray Odierno, had the experience and skill to recognize and exploit the seismic shifts that were taking place in Iraq’s political landscape. And United States troops had the courage to win the alliance of Iraq’s people against a common enemy — and the benevolence to win their friendship.
At the critical moment — a moment when the Iraqis were able and willing to be part of the surge with the American forces — the United States surged into Iraq with the right commanders, additional forces and a fresh operational approach rooted in years of on-the-ground experience. Americans can be proud of what has been accomplished in Iraq over the last five-plus years. They should also be impressed by the results of the surge, which, thus far, has outstripped expectations, including mine.
President Bush’s decision to increase combat troop levels in Iraq in January 2007 sent a clear message that he was determined not to abandon a people to death squads and terrorists. We will need the same commitment to helping the people of Afghanistan succeed, but that does not mean we will achieve it with the same tactics or strategies.
The way forward in Afghanistan will need to reflect the current circumstances there — not the circumstances in Iraq two years ago. Additional troops in Afghanistan may be necessary, but they will not, by themselves, be sufficient to lead to the results we saw in Iraq. A similar confluence of events that contributed to success in Iraq does not appear to exist in Afghanistan.
What’s needed in Afghanistan is an Afghan solution, just as Iraqi solutions have contributed so fundamentally to progress in Iraq. And a surge, if it is to be successful, will need to be an Afghan surge.
Left unanswered in the current debate is the critical question of how thousands of additional American troops might actually bring long-term stability to Afghanistan — a country 80,000 square miles larger than Iraq yet with security forces just one-fourth the size of Iraq’s. Afghanistan also lacks Iraq’s oil and other economic advantages. It is plagued by the narcotics trade. Its borders are threatened by terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan. Fractured groups of Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border do not yet appear willing to unite and take on the insurgents in their midst, as Arab tribes did in Iraq.
Further, Afghanistan has a long history of defeating foreign armies that sought strength in numbers. The Soviet Union tried to occupy Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of troops — and withdrew, defeated and broken. More United States troops could raise tensions, particularly in Afghanistan’s Pashtun south, where the insurgency is strongest.
Only capable indigenous forces can ultimately win an insurgency. Afghan forces, backed by coalition troops, will need to move into the most violent areas to secure and protect the local population, enabling Afghans to cooperate with their government without losing their lives.
To do this, the size of the Afghan National Army will need to be increased well beyond its 70,000 or so troops and its training accelerated. More American forces will need to undertake the unglamorous work of embedding with Afghan soldiers as advisers, living and fighting together. Kingpins and senior facilitators in the thriving poppy industry that helps to fuel the insurgency will need to be treated as military targets, as Qaeda and Taliban leaders are. Reconstruction projects should be focused on provinces and towns that are cooperating with the Afghan government, instead of making blanket commitments to increase foreign assistance across Afghanistan and possibly fostering a culture of dependence.
The current suggestion of “opening negotiations” with the Taliban may well win over some low- and mid-level supporters, but if history is any guide, offering the hand of peace to hardened fanatics is not likely to prove successful. Aggressive action against Taliban and Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan will need to continue. Pakistani officials will have to isolate any factions in their military and intelligence services that are sympathetic to the Taliban.
In a few weeks, the new commander in chief, Barack Obama, will assume the responsibility of leading a nation at a time of war. Time and flexibility are the two constants of military success. In a struggle with an adaptable, thinking enemy, there is no single template for success. More is not always better. One size does not fit all.
The singular trait of the American way of war is the remarkable ability of our military to advance, absorb setbacks, adapt and ultimately triumph based upon the unique circumstances of a given campaign. Thus it has been throughout our history. And thus it will be in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we have the patience and wisdom to learn from our successes, and if our leaders have the wherewithal to persevere even when it is not popular to do so.
Donald H. Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006.
Source: NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23rumsfeld.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1227589200&en=17a6020edb96eb41&ei=5087%0A
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pakistan’s Dangerous Double Game
Ron Moreau and Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK
Mullah Nasrullah, a Taliban commander, made what has become a routine trek from his guerrilla base in Afghanistan across the jagged peaks into Pakistan last month. His destination: the headquarters of his patron and supplier, the powerful insurgent leader Sirajuddin Haqqani. A genial young man in his late 20s or early 30s with a bushy black beard, Haqqani leads the bloody Taliban insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, where American casualties are highest. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Nasrullah refused to specify the reason for his meeting with Haqqani, though it's likely he was looking for more suicide bombers, explosive vests, weapons and money to use against U.S. and NATO forces.
Once inside Pakistan, Nasrullah says, he traveled between insurgent camps. He rode in a new four-wheel-drive vehicle with a towering radio antenna fixed to the front bumper, followed by four pickup trucks filled with militants. Yet their convoy sailed through Pakistani military checkpoints. Whenever they neared one, the jihadists would hail someone named "Col. Niazi" on the radio, who would arrange their safe passage. Nasrullah believes this was a Pakistani Army officer and possibly an operative in the military's premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. "He seems to feel invulnerable," Nasrullah says of his patron, Haqqani. "The ISI protects him."
Washington seems to agree. Combating Haqqani fighters has become one of the top priorities for American commanders in Afghanistan. But U.S. officials who would speak only on condition of anonymity when discussing sensitive matters say they have evidence that some elements of Pakistan's ISI are protecting or even helping the Haqqani network. That's helping to drive a far more aggressive U.S. strategy in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups have established a network of safe havens and training camps for their own and Al Qaeda fighters. And it's raising tensions between America and Pakistan, supposed allies in the war against terror, to levels not seen since September 11.
Senior Pakistani officers say now is not the time to move against Haqqani. They have limited forces, and are concentrating on militants like Baitullah Mehsud, another powerful Taliban leader who is the source of most of the suicide bombers deep inside Pakistan, and who may have been behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Because of their mistrust of the United States and neighboring India, the Pakistani military and the ISI may also see the Haqqani network and other Taliban forces as potential assets to gain influence inside Afghanistan. As long as they're not attacking Pakistani targets, say several Pakistan experts, the Haqqanis are not a priority.
According to the Americans, however, Pakistani inaction has allowed the Haqqanis to grow from one insurgent group among many into perhaps the most deadly threat to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This July, top U.S. military and CIA officers confronted their Pakistani counterparts with evidence of the ISI links to Haqqani. One consequence: over the summer President George W. Bush approved new, more relaxed rules of engagement along the border. The Pentagon once required "90 percent" confidence that a "high-value target" was present before approving Predator strikes in Pakistan territory. Now U.S. officials on the ground need to have only 50 to 60 percent confidence to shoot at compounds suspected of sheltering foreign fighters, according to knowledgeable U.S. sources who would speak of sensitive matters only anonymously. The CIA declined to comment.
The new rules also allow "hot pursuit" incursions by U.S. Special Operations troops into Pakistan, a move that Bush had long avoided so as not to offend his close ally President Pervez Musharraf, who resigned last month. On Sept. 3, in the first known raid in Pakistani territory, two dozen U.S. Navy SEALs were airlifted into a cluster of huts near the village of Angor Adda, located about one mile from the Afghan border. Last week Pakistani Army chief Ashfaq Kayani furiously denied the existence of "any agreement or understanding with the Coalition Forces" allowing them to cross the border, and he said he would not permit such actions.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States took a sharp downward turn after the July meeting between Kayani and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which one Pakistani military official described as "extremely testy." Perhaps seeking to placate the Americans, Kayani ordered a new offensive in early August in the Bajaur tribal area in northwestern Pakistan. Afterward, Kayani asked for another meeting with Mullen and other senior U.S. commanders, according to the Pakistani military source, who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely. In late August, the Pentagon responded by inviting Kayani to huddle on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf with Mullen and a team that included incoming CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus; Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Adm. Eric Olson, chief of the Special Operations Command.
At that meeting, pressed to deal with Haqqani's growing power as well as that of other militants, Kayani told the Americans that he didn't have the military capability to take on several, sizable insurgent strongholds at once. He asked Washington to provide more modern and highpowered military equipment, notably attack helicopters. But the U.S. commanders were apparently not prepared to give the Pakistani Army chief what he wanted. According to a Pakistani diplomat who asked for anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, the Americans told Kayani the United States now reserved the right to strike, even on the ground, against significant Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan without getting prior approval. Less than one week after the aircraft carrier meeting, the U.S. military launched the Sept. 3 operation, killing what U.S. officials say were two dozen Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Kayani and his high command were embarrassed by the operation and became enraged, Pakistani officials say. The Pakistanis insist that the dead were almost all civilians, including women and children. "The attack was carried out with bad and faulty intelligence," says the senior military source. "It crossed an acceptable threshold and had a negative impact inside the military and on Pakistani public opinion." Despite protests, at least four more Predator attacks were carried out shortly afterward in North Waziristan against areas controlled by the Haqqani network. One attack on Sept. 8 hit a madrassa complex where Haqqani family members lived and where Qaeda and Taliban fighters frequently sheltered while moving back and forth across the border.
At least one U.S. official, who would discuss American dealings with Islamabad only on condition of anonymity, suggests that there may be some political theater at work in the Pakistani reaction. He says that the U.S. and Pakistani military have reached a "more than tacit" understanding about the new U.S. tactics, in which the Pakistani side has agreed to allow "hot pursuit" operations by American troops, provided that Pakistani authorities are allowed to maintain complete "deniability." That means the Pakistanis will be permitted to publicly criticize the United States for any such operations and assert, without fear of contradiction from Washington, that U.S. forces were acting without Pakistani approval.
Still, U.S. officials acknowledge that if they're not careful, these new aggressive U.S. tactics could backfire. If large numbers of innocents are being killed, U.S. attacks could motivate even more Afghans and Pakistani tribals to join the insurgency on both sides of the frontier. That would widen the war further and undermine the already shaky Pakistani government. It could also create more Islamist sympathizers inside the Pakistani Army and ISI.
Washington is willing to take that risk, in part because Haqqani has become the most active, aggressive and powerful Taliban commander along the border. The son of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, an aging, ailing former Afghan mujahedin commander who became legendary leading the fight against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Siraj is increasingly admired by many jihadists for his smarts and discretion. "He is always friendly, polite and simple, is a good listener, answers directly and has a computerlike memory," says Nasrullah. "He is wise beyond his years."
Under Siraj's leadership, the Haqqani network has come a long way since 2004, when its men were waging small-unit, small-arms, hit-and-run attacks on U.S. bases just a mile or two across the border. Qaeda military experts, ideologues and senior leaders now operate out of Haqqani bases in the tribal areas, and the network has become the primary pipeline for foreign fighters looking to join the jihad in Afghanistan. According to senior Taliban sources who did not want to be identified for security reasons, Siraj also enjoys a steady stream of funding from the Gulf, where three of his brothers are based. "We weren't strong like they are today," says Malem Jan, 42, a veteran Haqqani fighter who led guerrilla strikes across the border until he defected in early 2005 because he thought the Americans were "invulnerable." "If I'd known Siraj would get so strong, I would have never defected."
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, who leads the 19,000 U.S. soldiers operating on the frontier, estimates that his forces are facing some 7,000 to 10,000 insurgents in eastern Afghanistan—a higher number than previously disclosed by any U.S. commander. Most of them operate under Haqqani's control, including the insurgents who launched a multiple suicide-bomber attack on a major U.S. military base, Camp Salerno, in Khowst province, last month. Schloesser says the attack was striking because all the suicide bombers were Arabs and Chechens; normally foreigners act as trainers and organizers, not cannon fodder. He says combat incidents have risen by 20 to 30 percent this year compared with last—one reason Bush recently announced that he plans to send an additional 4,000 or so troops to Afghanistan.
Haqqani has also claimed responsibility for the January attack on Kabul's premier hotel, the Serena, that killed seven and nearly missed the Norwegian foreign minister, and the abortive April assault on the country's National Day parade that targeted Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who escaped unharmed. Afghan and U.S. intelligence have fingered Haqqani as the mastermind of the bloody suicide car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul last July that killed two Indian officials and more than 40 others. U.S. officials say they intercepted communications between an ISI officer and the Haqqani operatives who were planning the embassy attack. Pakistani officials strenuously deny the charge.
U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked for anonymity discussing official assessments, say they do not believe that the top levels of the Pakistani military or ISI have sanctioned aid to the Haqqanis; they think local and perhaps retired operatives are to blame. Nevertheless, the insurgents certainly believe that they have powerful connections. One jihadist, a 25-year-old named Shah Muhammad who fights for Haqqani, says he recently got caught in a roundup of militants by the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan. After checking the identity papers and the loyalties of the fighters, the soldiers released the Afghans who could prove they were linked to Haqqani and arrested those tribal militants linked to Baitullah Mehsud.
Today, Haqqani has become the ISI's "darling," says a former Taliban cabinet minister who is still an active supporter of the insurgency and who would speak only on condition of anonymity for security reasons. According to Jan, the Haqqani defector, the clan frequently received visitors he believed to be ISI operatives in the family's North Waziristan camps back in 2004. Jan says a young Pakistani Army officer named Salim, who he believed worked out of the ISI office inside the 11th Army Corps's main base at Miran Shah, located near the Haqqani madrassa complex, used to meet regularly with Siraj. Jan also claims he believes the Pakistanis used to tip off Siraj whenever a U.S. missile strike was imminent. Soon after suddenly huddling with a visitor, whom Jan associated with the ISI, Siraj would immediately change his position and order his men to move from the Miran Shah area to the mountains.
While top Pakistani officers reject out of hand any accusation that the ISI or any Pakistani intelligence agency is aiding the Taliban, Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the armed forces' spokesman, does not rule out that the ISI is maintaining contacts with the Haqqanis. "Do you think any intelligence agency in the world would like to sever its last contact with any organization it has an interest in?" he asked rhetorically. "It would like to maintain at least one last channel through which it can access and get feedback on the on the-ground realities." Indeed, Afghan Taliban sources say that at the behest of the ISI, Haqqani may now be trying to persuade his ally Mehsud to cease his attacks against Pakistan and to focus on Afghanistan instead.
Whatever ties they may have to the ISI, the Taliban don't feel entirely secure, says the former cabinet minister. He claims the ISI knows the location of Taliban safe havens, training and military facilities, and the precise addresses in towns and villages along the border where commanders and their families live. "I wouldn't be surprised if the ISI arrested us all in one day," he says. "We are like sheep which the Pakistanis could round up whenever they want." He adds that many insurgents still don't have a strong enough foothold inside Afghanistan to spend the winter months there. But more and more are planning to do so, worried about their position within Pakistan.
Recognizing that trend, Schloesser plans to keep his troops operating deep inside Taliban territory this winter. "I plan on having a winter campaign that will take advantage of the mobility that I have to seek out any [insurgent] safe havens in Afghanistan, any facilitation areas, any places they go to for rest and recreation in Afghanistan," Schloesser says. "We're going to give them those options: either flee, get killed or captured, or reconcile." But if they escape across the border—and Islamabad doesn't step up—a new kind of war could well begin.
Source: Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/id/158861
With John Barry and Michael Hirsh in Washington
NEWSWEEK
Mullah Nasrullah, a Taliban commander, made what has become a routine trek from his guerrilla base in Afghanistan across the jagged peaks into Pakistan last month. His destination: the headquarters of his patron and supplier, the powerful insurgent leader Sirajuddin Haqqani. A genial young man in his late 20s or early 30s with a bushy black beard, Haqqani leads the bloody Taliban insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, where American casualties are highest. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Nasrullah refused to specify the reason for his meeting with Haqqani, though it's likely he was looking for more suicide bombers, explosive vests, weapons and money to use against U.S. and NATO forces.
Once inside Pakistan, Nasrullah says, he traveled between insurgent camps. He rode in a new four-wheel-drive vehicle with a towering radio antenna fixed to the front bumper, followed by four pickup trucks filled with militants. Yet their convoy sailed through Pakistani military checkpoints. Whenever they neared one, the jihadists would hail someone named "Col. Niazi" on the radio, who would arrange their safe passage. Nasrullah believes this was a Pakistani Army officer and possibly an operative in the military's premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. "He seems to feel invulnerable," Nasrullah says of his patron, Haqqani. "The ISI protects him."
Washington seems to agree. Combating Haqqani fighters has become one of the top priorities for American commanders in Afghanistan. But U.S. officials who would speak only on condition of anonymity when discussing sensitive matters say they have evidence that some elements of Pakistan's ISI are protecting or even helping the Haqqani network. That's helping to drive a far more aggressive U.S. strategy in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups have established a network of safe havens and training camps for their own and Al Qaeda fighters. And it's raising tensions between America and Pakistan, supposed allies in the war against terror, to levels not seen since September 11.
Senior Pakistani officers say now is not the time to move against Haqqani. They have limited forces, and are concentrating on militants like Baitullah Mehsud, another powerful Taliban leader who is the source of most of the suicide bombers deep inside Pakistan, and who may have been behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Because of their mistrust of the United States and neighboring India, the Pakistani military and the ISI may also see the Haqqani network and other Taliban forces as potential assets to gain influence inside Afghanistan. As long as they're not attacking Pakistani targets, say several Pakistan experts, the Haqqanis are not a priority.
According to the Americans, however, Pakistani inaction has allowed the Haqqanis to grow from one insurgent group among many into perhaps the most deadly threat to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This July, top U.S. military and CIA officers confronted their Pakistani counterparts with evidence of the ISI links to Haqqani. One consequence: over the summer President George W. Bush approved new, more relaxed rules of engagement along the border. The Pentagon once required "90 percent" confidence that a "high-value target" was present before approving Predator strikes in Pakistan territory. Now U.S. officials on the ground need to have only 50 to 60 percent confidence to shoot at compounds suspected of sheltering foreign fighters, according to knowledgeable U.S. sources who would speak of sensitive matters only anonymously. The CIA declined to comment.
The new rules also allow "hot pursuit" incursions by U.S. Special Operations troops into Pakistan, a move that Bush had long avoided so as not to offend his close ally President Pervez Musharraf, who resigned last month. On Sept. 3, in the first known raid in Pakistani territory, two dozen U.S. Navy SEALs were airlifted into a cluster of huts near the village of Angor Adda, located about one mile from the Afghan border. Last week Pakistani Army chief Ashfaq Kayani furiously denied the existence of "any agreement or understanding with the Coalition Forces" allowing them to cross the border, and he said he would not permit such actions.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States took a sharp downward turn after the July meeting between Kayani and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which one Pakistani military official described as "extremely testy." Perhaps seeking to placate the Americans, Kayani ordered a new offensive in early August in the Bajaur tribal area in northwestern Pakistan. Afterward, Kayani asked for another meeting with Mullen and other senior U.S. commanders, according to the Pakistani military source, who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely. In late August, the Pentagon responded by inviting Kayani to huddle on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf with Mullen and a team that included incoming CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus; Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Adm. Eric Olson, chief of the Special Operations Command.
At that meeting, pressed to deal with Haqqani's growing power as well as that of other militants, Kayani told the Americans that he didn't have the military capability to take on several, sizable insurgent strongholds at once. He asked Washington to provide more modern and highpowered military equipment, notably attack helicopters. But the U.S. commanders were apparently not prepared to give the Pakistani Army chief what he wanted. According to a Pakistani diplomat who asked for anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, the Americans told Kayani the United States now reserved the right to strike, even on the ground, against significant Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan without getting prior approval. Less than one week after the aircraft carrier meeting, the U.S. military launched the Sept. 3 operation, killing what U.S. officials say were two dozen Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Kayani and his high command were embarrassed by the operation and became enraged, Pakistani officials say. The Pakistanis insist that the dead were almost all civilians, including women and children. "The attack was carried out with bad and faulty intelligence," says the senior military source. "It crossed an acceptable threshold and had a negative impact inside the military and on Pakistani public opinion." Despite protests, at least four more Predator attacks were carried out shortly afterward in North Waziristan against areas controlled by the Haqqani network. One attack on Sept. 8 hit a madrassa complex where Haqqani family members lived and where Qaeda and Taliban fighters frequently sheltered while moving back and forth across the border.
At least one U.S. official, who would discuss American dealings with Islamabad only on condition of anonymity, suggests that there may be some political theater at work in the Pakistani reaction. He says that the U.S. and Pakistani military have reached a "more than tacit" understanding about the new U.S. tactics, in which the Pakistani side has agreed to allow "hot pursuit" operations by American troops, provided that Pakistani authorities are allowed to maintain complete "deniability." That means the Pakistanis will be permitted to publicly criticize the United States for any such operations and assert, without fear of contradiction from Washington, that U.S. forces were acting without Pakistani approval.
Still, U.S. officials acknowledge that if they're not careful, these new aggressive U.S. tactics could backfire. If large numbers of innocents are being killed, U.S. attacks could motivate even more Afghans and Pakistani tribals to join the insurgency on both sides of the frontier. That would widen the war further and undermine the already shaky Pakistani government. It could also create more Islamist sympathizers inside the Pakistani Army and ISI.
Washington is willing to take that risk, in part because Haqqani has become the most active, aggressive and powerful Taliban commander along the border. The son of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, an aging, ailing former Afghan mujahedin commander who became legendary leading the fight against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Siraj is increasingly admired by many jihadists for his smarts and discretion. "He is always friendly, polite and simple, is a good listener, answers directly and has a computerlike memory," says Nasrullah. "He is wise beyond his years."
Under Siraj's leadership, the Haqqani network has come a long way since 2004, when its men were waging small-unit, small-arms, hit-and-run attacks on U.S. bases just a mile or two across the border. Qaeda military experts, ideologues and senior leaders now operate out of Haqqani bases in the tribal areas, and the network has become the primary pipeline for foreign fighters looking to join the jihad in Afghanistan. According to senior Taliban sources who did not want to be identified for security reasons, Siraj also enjoys a steady stream of funding from the Gulf, where three of his brothers are based. "We weren't strong like they are today," says Malem Jan, 42, a veteran Haqqani fighter who led guerrilla strikes across the border until he defected in early 2005 because he thought the Americans were "invulnerable." "If I'd known Siraj would get so strong, I would have never defected."
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, who leads the 19,000 U.S. soldiers operating on the frontier, estimates that his forces are facing some 7,000 to 10,000 insurgents in eastern Afghanistan—a higher number than previously disclosed by any U.S. commander. Most of them operate under Haqqani's control, including the insurgents who launched a multiple suicide-bomber attack on a major U.S. military base, Camp Salerno, in Khowst province, last month. Schloesser says the attack was striking because all the suicide bombers were Arabs and Chechens; normally foreigners act as trainers and organizers, not cannon fodder. He says combat incidents have risen by 20 to 30 percent this year compared with last—one reason Bush recently announced that he plans to send an additional 4,000 or so troops to Afghanistan.
Haqqani has also claimed responsibility for the January attack on Kabul's premier hotel, the Serena, that killed seven and nearly missed the Norwegian foreign minister, and the abortive April assault on the country's National Day parade that targeted Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who escaped unharmed. Afghan and U.S. intelligence have fingered Haqqani as the mastermind of the bloody suicide car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul last July that killed two Indian officials and more than 40 others. U.S. officials say they intercepted communications between an ISI officer and the Haqqani operatives who were planning the embassy attack. Pakistani officials strenuously deny the charge.
U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked for anonymity discussing official assessments, say they do not believe that the top levels of the Pakistani military or ISI have sanctioned aid to the Haqqanis; they think local and perhaps retired operatives are to blame. Nevertheless, the insurgents certainly believe that they have powerful connections. One jihadist, a 25-year-old named Shah Muhammad who fights for Haqqani, says he recently got caught in a roundup of militants by the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan. After checking the identity papers and the loyalties of the fighters, the soldiers released the Afghans who could prove they were linked to Haqqani and arrested those tribal militants linked to Baitullah Mehsud.
Today, Haqqani has become the ISI's "darling," says a former Taliban cabinet minister who is still an active supporter of the insurgency and who would speak only on condition of anonymity for security reasons. According to Jan, the Haqqani defector, the clan frequently received visitors he believed to be ISI operatives in the family's North Waziristan camps back in 2004. Jan says a young Pakistani Army officer named Salim, who he believed worked out of the ISI office inside the 11th Army Corps's main base at Miran Shah, located near the Haqqani madrassa complex, used to meet regularly with Siraj. Jan also claims he believes the Pakistanis used to tip off Siraj whenever a U.S. missile strike was imminent. Soon after suddenly huddling with a visitor, whom Jan associated with the ISI, Siraj would immediately change his position and order his men to move from the Miran Shah area to the mountains.
While top Pakistani officers reject out of hand any accusation that the ISI or any Pakistani intelligence agency is aiding the Taliban, Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the armed forces' spokesman, does not rule out that the ISI is maintaining contacts with the Haqqanis. "Do you think any intelligence agency in the world would like to sever its last contact with any organization it has an interest in?" he asked rhetorically. "It would like to maintain at least one last channel through which it can access and get feedback on the on the-ground realities." Indeed, Afghan Taliban sources say that at the behest of the ISI, Haqqani may now be trying to persuade his ally Mehsud to cease his attacks against Pakistan and to focus on Afghanistan instead.
Whatever ties they may have to the ISI, the Taliban don't feel entirely secure, says the former cabinet minister. He claims the ISI knows the location of Taliban safe havens, training and military facilities, and the precise addresses in towns and villages along the border where commanders and their families live. "I wouldn't be surprised if the ISI arrested us all in one day," he says. "We are like sheep which the Pakistanis could round up whenever they want." He adds that many insurgents still don't have a strong enough foothold inside Afghanistan to spend the winter months there. But more and more are planning to do so, worried about their position within Pakistan.
Recognizing that trend, Schloesser plans to keep his troops operating deep inside Taliban territory this winter. "I plan on having a winter campaign that will take advantage of the mobility that I have to seek out any [insurgent] safe havens in Afghanistan, any facilitation areas, any places they go to for rest and recreation in Afghanistan," Schloesser says. "We're going to give them those options: either flee, get killed or captured, or reconcile." But if they escape across the border—and Islamabad doesn't step up—a new kind of war could well begin.
Source: Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/id/158861
With John Barry and Michael Hirsh in Washington
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A doomed presidency
Peter Preston
Forget labels. In reality, two giant parties struggle perennially for power in Pakistan. One is the politicians' party, whose candidate, Asif Ali Zardari, has just been elected president. The other is the army party, which prefers bazookas to ballot boxes. Democracy in this pivotal country is a frail blossom. And Zardari is as frail as they come.
The crude apology for a party system in Pakistan is 60 years old and shows scant sign of changing. First, the politicians have an election and govern for a while. When they falter, the generals take over. Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf - they come and go, punctuated briefly by elected prime ministers (mostly called Bhutto). It's a malign sort of game, growing perilously close to an endgame now. Indeed, President Zardari's inevitably brief tenure may well be the end of it all as a third party - young, idealistic, fervent and brave - begins to tip the board over. You may not have heard the Taliban so described before, but that doesn't mean that brute force isn't with them.
In the wake of Benazir Bhutto's murder by hands unknown last December, the Pakistan People's party had a triumphant election. It possessed just enough numbers in the national and provincial parliaments to deliver the presidency, but you'd be hard pressed to invent a more hopeless, doomed prospectus.
This president isn't a politician. He's a businessmen who's been haplessly entangled in too much monkey business over the years. Nine years in prison for corruption on trumped-up charges? Perhaps they have never been fully, fairly investigated, but to too many Pakistanis he is Mr Ten Per Cent. He vows to fight against the Taliban and defend US interests, even when they include US special forces staging bloody raids inside Pakistan's borders. He promises to put right a broken, increasingly beleaguered economy, and to spend another $15bn of American aid wisely and well. But what comes next will be failure, unpopularity and a new tide of sleaze allegations.
A year or two down the line, the men in braid will sense a familiar opportunity and mount another coup. Washington, glad to have the military back at the top, will find another $15bn. The army will buy more guns, and feed more of its private bank accounts. The looting of Pakistan's hope and Pakistan's future will proceed on schedule.
The twin supposed champions of democracy - Zardari and Nawaz Sharif - couldn't have made a lousier fist of the past eight months: any sense of national interest was lost immediately in an orgy of squabbling. The governing party couldn't have chosen a worse candidate for commander in chief (retaining most of Musharraf's powers). And Nato's American leadership, insisting increasingly shrilly that feebleness in Islamabad will give Waziristan's cross-border invaders free rein in Afghanistan, couldn't be hastening the demise of democracy more idiotically.
Zardari announced his arrival - to the Washington Post - as a warrior from Sind bent on destroying the "Lahore-Islamabad oligarchy". The oligarchs scheduled for destruction are Sharif and a military top brass trapped between a new leadership they despise and a religious insurrection that is beginning to dismember the nation.
Yet the Taliban, whom the generals must defeat to get America's billions, are much more than a gang of terrorist thugs. They are also a madcap reform movement of young men disgusted by corruption and the godless wheeler-dealers they think have drained the purity out of Jinnah's "pure state", and the success they're experiencing in the borderlands and beyond shows that many ordinary Pakistanis agree with them. It's a battle for hearts and minds and, on his record, Asif Ali Zardari is the predestined loser of last resort.
the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/pakistan/print
Forget labels. In reality, two giant parties struggle perennially for power in Pakistan. One is the politicians' party, whose candidate, Asif Ali Zardari, has just been elected president. The other is the army party, which prefers bazookas to ballot boxes. Democracy in this pivotal country is a frail blossom. And Zardari is as frail as they come.
The crude apology for a party system in Pakistan is 60 years old and shows scant sign of changing. First, the politicians have an election and govern for a while. When they falter, the generals take over. Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf - they come and go, punctuated briefly by elected prime ministers (mostly called Bhutto). It's a malign sort of game, growing perilously close to an endgame now. Indeed, President Zardari's inevitably brief tenure may well be the end of it all as a third party - young, idealistic, fervent and brave - begins to tip the board over. You may not have heard the Taliban so described before, but that doesn't mean that brute force isn't with them.
In the wake of Benazir Bhutto's murder by hands unknown last December, the Pakistan People's party had a triumphant election. It possessed just enough numbers in the national and provincial parliaments to deliver the presidency, but you'd be hard pressed to invent a more hopeless, doomed prospectus.
This president isn't a politician. He's a businessmen who's been haplessly entangled in too much monkey business over the years. Nine years in prison for corruption on trumped-up charges? Perhaps they have never been fully, fairly investigated, but to too many Pakistanis he is Mr Ten Per Cent. He vows to fight against the Taliban and defend US interests, even when they include US special forces staging bloody raids inside Pakistan's borders. He promises to put right a broken, increasingly beleaguered economy, and to spend another $15bn of American aid wisely and well. But what comes next will be failure, unpopularity and a new tide of sleaze allegations.
A year or two down the line, the men in braid will sense a familiar opportunity and mount another coup. Washington, glad to have the military back at the top, will find another $15bn. The army will buy more guns, and feed more of its private bank accounts. The looting of Pakistan's hope and Pakistan's future will proceed on schedule.
The twin supposed champions of democracy - Zardari and Nawaz Sharif - couldn't have made a lousier fist of the past eight months: any sense of national interest was lost immediately in an orgy of squabbling. The governing party couldn't have chosen a worse candidate for commander in chief (retaining most of Musharraf's powers). And Nato's American leadership, insisting increasingly shrilly that feebleness in Islamabad will give Waziristan's cross-border invaders free rein in Afghanistan, couldn't be hastening the demise of democracy more idiotically.
Zardari announced his arrival - to the Washington Post - as a warrior from Sind bent on destroying the "Lahore-Islamabad oligarchy". The oligarchs scheduled for destruction are Sharif and a military top brass trapped between a new leadership they despise and a religious insurrection that is beginning to dismember the nation.
Yet the Taliban, whom the generals must defeat to get America's billions, are much more than a gang of terrorist thugs. They are also a madcap reform movement of young men disgusted by corruption and the godless wheeler-dealers they think have drained the purity out of Jinnah's "pure state", and the success they're experiencing in the borderlands and beyond shows that many ordinary Pakistanis agree with them. It's a battle for hearts and minds and, on his record, Asif Ali Zardari is the predestined loser of last resort.
the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/pakistan/print
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