Rubin: SAVING AFGHANISTAN – THREE REPORTS CALLING FOR RETHINKING STRATEGY

Several groups of the U.S. foreign policy establishment have released reports calling for major changes in strategy on Afghanistan (I am a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, the first mentioned). From a media advisory (links added):

Three independent reports have concluded this month that a major new effort is needed to succeed in Afghanistan. These reports – by the Afghanistan Study Group, established by the Center for the Study of the Presidency following the Iraq Study Group; the Strategic Advisors Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States; and the National Defense University – concur that without prompt actions by the U.S. and its allies, the mission in Afghanistan may fail – causing severe consequences to U.S. strategic interests worldwide, including the war on terrorism and the future of NATO. The U.S. cannot afford to let Afghanistan continue to be the neglected, or forgotten, war.

(Only the ASG report seems to be available on the web -- I would be grateful for pointers to the other reports.)

This morning (Thursday January 31, 2008) the co-chairs of the ASG, General James Jones and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, will be testifying at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They will be preceded by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher and joined by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Readers of this blog will not find anything new or surprising in the ASG report. They will just find many of the same judgments echoed in a more considered establishmentarian tone of voice.

On the Ashdown smash down: a more considered view will follow. Just a note from Kabul (where I am currently defrosting slightly after a cold snap): Zalmay Khalilzad did not plot to undermine Ashdown to clear the way for a presidential bid. According to quite good reports (not from Khalilzad), he did his best to convince President Karzai to accept the proposal.

(As Khalilzad is the only member of the entire Bush/Cheney foreign policy and security team who still has a chance of escaping the sinking ship with his reputation afloat, some nuts in the White House are now attacking him for sitting next to the Foreign Minister of Iran on a panel at Davos, where Khalilzad faithfully reiterated the administration's position and never spoke to or greeted Minister Manouchehr Motakki.)

The super-envoy position may not have been defined as needed to be effective; Ashdown may or may not have been the right person for the job, and he may or may not have focused too much on pressuring the Afghan government rather than disciplining the internationals; but the way in which President Karzai handled this decision has damaged his relations with the US, UN, and UK at a time when he needs to conserve his political capital to resist pressures for some major unwise policy decisions.

Besides the well-known dispute over aerial poppy eradication and eradication in areas where farmers have no alternative livelihoods (but are said to be "greedy and corrupt"), the US is now pressing the Afghan government to use the Afghan National Army to provide security for eradication operations. Sources in the Afghan government who do not wish to be named state that this will make the ANA fight the people and destroy its morale. Morale is already falling, since mullahs who conduct funeral services for fallen ANA soldiers risk assassination. But the Bush administration is apparently determined to wreck its one partial success story in Afghanistan before leaving office. Read more on this article...

Rubin: More on the Dangers of Poppy Eradication in Afghanistan

Under the provocative title Poverty feeds Afghan drugs trade, Alastair Leithead of the BBC reports from Helmand and Balkh in southern and northern Afghanistan. His findings, like my arguments, contradict the claim by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (echoed of course by the US) that "opium cultivation is no longer linked to poverty." Leithead interviewed some of those farmers whose "greed and corruption" UNODC claims is responsible for poppy cultivation in Helmand:

The farmers are weeding the fields at the moment in Helmand. It is a family business, and they insist there is no alternative.

"I only have a small area of land and 10 people in my family," one farmer says angrily. "I can only grow enough wheat to last two months on this land, so the only way to feed them is growing poppies."

It is very fertile land, but the farmers complain the cost of fuel to pump irrigation water and the lack of markets and infrastructure makes anything else untenable.

Another man had his poppy crop eradicated last year, but it will not stop him trying again. "I lost my poppies, but those grown by the rich and the powerful aren't touched. So why should I stop growing them?" he asks.

Leithead also paid a call to Balkh, part of the "opium-free north":

After meeting and drinking tea with a number of contacts in different homes outside Mazar, a bearded, cheerful drug dealer took us to a place where they displayed plastic bags of liquid opium. He explained how the traffickers would come round to all the villages, buying what they had before taking it out of the country. "Ordinary people like you and I can't take drugs out of the country," he explained. "Only the foreigners and the big men with contacts can do it. They are stopped at police checkpoints, but they call the police chief, or a minister or the governor and they are allowed to pass."

But poppy cultivation has indeed decreased! Instead:

Although they have lost a profitable crop, for now another alternative is bridging the gap. In a mud compound a short walk away another man goes through the process of stripping the buds off giant cannabis stalks. In the autumn vast forests of marijuana plants scatter the landscape. It is something that has always been done here, but the price has gone up by a factor of four in just a year.

Richard Holbrooke, principal foreign affairs adviser to Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton, slammed the Bush administration's pressure for crop eradication in the Washington Post:

But even without aerial eradication, the [crop eradication] program, which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy. It's not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as criminal elements within Afghanistan.

Read more on this article...

A Serious Political Blow to Ahmadinejad or an Election Maneuver?

Farideh Farhi

Something interesting happened in Iran yesterday that some, particularly outside of Iran, are interpreting as a serious political blow to Ahmadinejad. I am not sure whether it should be considered a serious blow or more of an election maneuver on the part of the current speaker of the parliament speaker, Gholamali Haddad Adel, trying to improve his standing among his conservative colleagues who have to decide soon who should lead their list of candidates for the next session of the parliament or his Tehrani constituency who will have to make a decision soon about whether or not he should be re-elected.

The story goes something like this. Apparently some time in the past week or so Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the speaker complaining about parliamentary legislation passed which mandate policies that, from his point of view, clearly infringe upon the prerogatives of the executive branch. Calling these legislations - which included retuning to daylight savings time after Ahmadinejad had rashly abandoned it or the law mandating the executive branch to specify budgetary lines for certain allocations – unconstitutional, he asked the speaker to stop these “evident” violations of the constitution. He also said that he would not implement a legislation to supply cheap gas to villages suffering power cuts in an unexpectedly harsh winter because the source of funding was not specified.

But in registering these complaints Ahmadinejad was standing on shaky grounds as the Iranian constitution has a rather clear and peculiar institutional set-up for finding which legislative acts are unconstitutional. The Guardian Council has the task of validating both the Islamic and constitutional nature of legislation (with the Expediency Council as the final arbiter if the parliament and Guardian Council cannot reach an agreement). Regarding the latter, it often sends back legislation it deems unconstitutional on the basis of Article 75 of the constitution which requires specification of compensation or source of funding for any legislation that leads to the reduction of public revenues or increase in public expenditures. By in effect proclaiming the executive branch a constitutional authority and then using that authority to not implement laws that couldn't have become laws unless the Guardian Council had agreed were constitutional, Ahmadinejad is walking on very thin legal reasoning as far as the parameters of the Islamic republic are concerned.

Haddad Adel decided to solve the problem by writing a letter to the leader, who, since the 1989 constitutional revision which significantly expanded the power of his office, is endowed with the responsibility of resolving conflicts among the three branches of the government. Ayatollah Khamenei responded immediately in a short, terse note, stating "All legal legislation that has gone through [the required] procedures stipulated in the constitution is binding for all branches of power."

Receiving the response, Haddad Adel immediately released all the relevant written exchanges, making a point that the leader had taken the side of the parliament.
As I mentioned above, some outsiders, perhaps looking for individual conflicts at the top as the explanation for why things happen in Iran they way they do (a sort of Kremlinology, if you will, applied to Iran) and trying to extract what these conflicts indicate about the direction of Iranian politics, saw this intervention as the “latest in a series of recent signals that Khamenei is losing patience with a president to whom he once showed staunch loyalty.”

In Iran, though, the commentary was much more skeptical and focused not on Khamenei’s action but Haddad Adel’s. Why did he publicize this? Why did he do it now? To some the move was a good one but rather late. After all, as one current reformist deputy put it, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly violated legislative authority on financial matters by making promises of major projects in his numerous provincial trips without going through the required funding process in the parliament. Even more problematic the parliamentary leadership had said nothing despite repeated complaints by various deputies.

A couple of conservative deputies, frustrated by the parliamentary leadership’s passivity, were more brutal, pointing out that Ahmadinejad’s unilateral moves had undermined and weakened the institution of the parliament which instead of “being behind the government was more held in its fist.” This is why to them what Haddad Adel did seemed more like a “propaganda move” to hide the lowering of the status or weakening of the parliament that had occurred under Haddad Adel’s own leadership.

Etemad newspaper saw the move less in terms of shaping public opinion and more as part and parcel of an attempt to force the conservative coalition to place Haddad Adel on top of its list of candidates for the city of Tehran, enhancing his chance of re-election but also for becoming a speaker again. This was more than anything else “a message about Haddad Adel’s spiritual influence and current position in the Islamic republic and that because of this influence the conservative leadership has no other choice but to accept him as the list leader and probably his leadership again in the 8th parliament.” One deputy quoted in the Etemad piece even goes so far as to suggest that the whole thing was a mere personal feud between the two men.

From his point of view, Ahmadinejad had not implemented many legislations in the past and will continue to do the same in the future (indeed even after the leader’s intervention, he went on and insisted that what the parliament was doing was still unconstitutional). His mistake this time around was simply to put his long-held position in writing, giving Haddad Adel an opportunity to capitalize and letting those making decisions about the candidate lists know about his clout and his ability to get the support of those who really matter in Iran.

Accepting Etemad’s version of what happened essentially implies that everyday politics in contemporary Iran, like everywhere else, may simply and merely be interesting, intricate and yes petty, nothing more and nothing less. Trying to read too much into everyday politicking of Iranian politicians interested in securing their position in relation to other politicians is increasingly looking like an over-interpretation intended to fit Iran into a narrative that implicitly or explicitly asks us to think of its politics as different from elsewhere in so far as some fundamental change about power relationships are about to happen.

Strangely despite all the economic problems, external pressures, and even the reality of a president who has antagonized a whole of array of elites in Iran and is deemed both incompetent and rash by many of them, Iran looks pretty settled to me; settled enough for dirty laundry to be washed in public for electoral gains. In any one day, the president can yell constitutional disaster; the speaker of the parliament can make big noises about parliamentary prerogatives; the all powerful leader can intervene presumably for the good cause of parliamentary vigor; commentators can look around for a second, detect manipulation and personal rivalries, note it and then get ready for commentary on the next public drama. Life goes on! Read more on this article...

Poverty and Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan: Open Letter to UNODC and Reply

Barnett R. Rubin

On Sunday, January 13, I sent a letter (via email) to Antonio Maria Costa, the administrator of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna. In that letter I challenged several assertions in UNODC's Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007, in particular these:

First, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty – quite the opposite. Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile, in the past the breadbasket of the nation and a main source of earnings. They have now opted for illicit opium on an unprecedented scale (5,744 tons), while the much poorer northern region is abandoning the poppy crops.

Second, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is now closely linked to insurgency. The Taliban today control vast swathes of land in Hilmand, Kandahar and along the Pakistani border. By preventing national authorities and international agencies from working, insurgents have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields.

I have appended the full text of the letter to the end of this post and also posted it here. The main point of my letter was:

I believe that the assertions in the two paragraphs are wrong, not supported by evidence, and are being used in support of a policy that will greatly hinder achievement of the over-riding goals of the Afghanistan Compact, “to improve the lives of Afghan people and to contribute to national, regional, and global peace and security.” The statements also contradict other well known policies of the United Nations: the estimated average per capita income of the residents of Hilmand province, the “richest” province in the supposedly richest part of Afghanistan, is estimated to be $1 per person per day. As you know, the first of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to “Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.” The United Nations thus has defined the average income in “rich” Hilmand as the threshold of absolute destitution.

UNODC replied by raising a straw man and implicitly admitting that the statement in the Opium Survey 2007 was wrong:

Dear Mr. Rubin,

Thank you for letter (via e-mail) to Mr. Costa dated 13 January. We appreciate the fact that you respect and rely on UNODC's research, and the trouble that you have taken to put forward an extensive letter with a number of thought-provoking points.
We are aware of the policy impact of UNODC's work. We also realize the complexities of promoting both security and development, and the need to eradicate poverty and not just opium.

In due course we will post a discussion paper on the UNODC website (www.unodc.org) that will present some evidence to show that poverty is not the single, exclusive driver of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. When the paper is uploaded, you may wish to make a link from the UNODC website to your blog.
Mr. Costa will also put forward his views on the subject at the Joint Cooperation and Monitoring Board in Tokyo.

Thank you again for raising these important issues.

Sincerely,

Walter Kemp
Office of the Executive Director
UNODC

I replied:

In your response you say that the discussion paper you plan to post will "present some evidence to show that poverty is not the single, exclusive driver of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan." Such a paper would be welcome, but please note that there is not a single person in the world, including me, who has ever claimed that poverty is the "single, exclusive driver of opium cultivation in Afghanistan." David Mansfield, on whose work for UNODC and others I have relied heavily, argues that the main driver is insecurity, and this is the hypothesis borne out by the data presented in the 2007 Opium Survey.

UNODC's 2007 Opium Survey, however, stated, “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.” To the average reader this would mean that poverty is not a driver of opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Your statement in your reply to me, implying that poverty is one of several drivers of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, directly contradicts the statement in UNODC's 2007 Opium Survey. I hope your paper will include a correction of the serious error.

The text of my letter follows (PDF version here):

13 January 2008
Antonio Maria Costa
Administrator, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Vienna, Austria
Via electronic mail

Dear Mr. Costa:

I regret that we have not met in over a year, since we testified together at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations on September 20, 2006. I am writing now to follow up on an informal query I sent to your office that has remained unanswered, probably because of the informal and indirect way that I sent it.

I am now writing formally to request a response. At the hearing I had the pleasure of meeting the head of your office in New York, Simone Monasebian, with whom I have developed very good cooperative relations. After the publication last summer of UNODC’s Afghanistan Opium Poppy Survey 2007, I wrote to Simone informally to ask her to pass on a query to UNODC headquarters. I asked UNODC to provide the empirical basis on which the Survey made the following statements:

First, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty – quite the opposite. Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile, in the past the breadbasket of the nation and a main source of earnings. They have now opted for illicit opium on an unprecedented scale (5,744 tons), while the much poorer northern region is abandoning the poppy crops.

Second, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is now closely linked to insurgency. The Taliban today control vast swathes of land in Hilmand, Kandahar and along the Pakistani border. By preventing national authorities and international agencies from working, insurgents have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields.

I have not yet received an answer to this informal query, which, as I noted, could easily have been misplaced. I am therefore writing to explain why I consider this question to be important and to request an answer by January 21, in advance of the February 6, 2008, meeting of the Afghanistan Joint Cooperation and Monitoring Board, which will meet in Tokyo to discuss action on counter-narcotics. I consider this matter important, because these two paragraphs are cited by proponents of expanded forced eradication of the opium poppy crops. I believe that the assertions in the two paragraphs are wrong, not supported by evidence, and are being used in support of a policy that will greatly hinder achievement of the over-riding goals of the Afghanistan Compact, “to improve the lives of Afghan people and to contribute to national, regional, and global peace and security.” The statements also contradict other well known policies of the United Nations: the estimated average per capita income of the residents of Hilmand province, the “richest” province in the supposedly richest part of Afghanistan, is estimated to be $1 per person per day. As you know, the first of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to “Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.” The United Nations thus has defined the average income in “rich” Hilmand as the threshold of absolute destitution.

In my discussions with policy makers about counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, I have at times encountered a dismissive attitude toward research that does not conform to their policy preferences and “academic” forms of argument in general. But UNODC has an extensive and highly respected research department full of academic experts, for whose work I have enormous respect and on which I have often relied. While policy makers cite this work because it justifies what they want to do rather than because they believe the analysis of United Nations Agencies (you may compare your experience with that of your colleague Mohamed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency), I believe that I owe your researchers a reasoned response based on data and established principles of analysis. I hope you will bear with me as I proceed through this exercise.

The first paragraph makes two empirical assertions:

1. That “Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile [provinces in Afghanistan], especially compared to “the much poorer northern region.”
2. That because in the past few years there are trends toward reduction of poppy cultivation in the north and its concentration in southern provinces, “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.”

Nowhere does the report define what it means by “rich” and “poor” provinces or how this is measured. David Mansfield, a researcher who has worked for UNODC in the past, with his co-author, Adam Pain, believes that the assertion is based on “the finding that households in these provinces reported higher average annual incomes ($3,316 for poppy-growing and $2,480 for others) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north ($2,690 for poppy-growing and $1,851 for others) or centre ($1,897 for poppy-growing and $1,487 for others).” There are many ways in which this data is inadequate as a justification for policies such as requiring forced eradication of poppy crops in insecure areas under Taliban control adjacent to areas of Pakistan where Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and al-Qaida are well positioned to exploit discontent in either country. Mansfield and Pain mention some of those technical and academic points such as lack of reporting of sample size and statistical significance. They also note that household income is notoriously difficult to estimate and unreliably reported. I will not repeat their arguments here, though I would appreciate a response to them.

The argument fails primarily because of the ecological fallacy, an error of inference from aggregate statistics that I warned my students against back when I was an assistant professor of political science. The arguments make assertions about the “north” and “south” by aggregating provincial averages for all provinces. Yet is it not true that every province in the south is “richer” even by this flawed measure, than every province in the north. Mansfield and Pain note:

Household data produced by the Central Statistics Office of Afghanistan in 2004 and collected by the 2005 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) rank the southern provinces relatively low in terms of social and economic well-being. Of the 34 provinces, Helmand ranked 6th, Kandahar 15th, Uruzgan 32nd and Zabul 33rd. The seven northern provinces ranked higher: Jawzjan 1st, Balkh 9th, Baghlan 11th, Samangan 13th, Bamyan 18th, Faryab 25th and Sar-i-Pul 31st. These rankings do not substantiate the argument that farmers in the south are significantly wealthier than those elsewhere in the country. Moreover, in 2005, Helmand reported some of the country’s worst school enrolment rates for children aged between 6 and 13, and one of the highest illiteracy rates. Given the intensity of the conflict in the south, these indicators are likely to have dropped further over the two years since the data were collected.

Let me simplify. Of these eleven provinces, the estimated ranking from most to least well-being is:

1. Jawzjan (N)
2. Hilmand (S)
3. Balkh (N)
4. Baghlan (N)
5. Qandahar (S)
6. Samangan (N)
7. Bamyan (N)
8. Faryab (N)
9. Sar-i Pul (N)
10. Uruzgan (S)
11. Zabul (S)

I am not sure which is the fifth southern province to which UNODC is referring. The inclusion of Farah, Nimruz, or Paktika would not change the overall picture, which is that there is much greater difference in social and economic well-being within both the south and the north than between the two regions considered as a whole.

This fallacy is related to the major conclusion of the paragraph, which is frequently cited by proponents of eradication: that “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.” UNODC has produced no evidence to support this assertion, and the available evidence contradicts it.

UNODC’s argument is: higher average household incomes across multi-provincial regions are correlated with increased poppy production in those multi-provincial regions. Therefore poppy production is not associated with poverty. Indeed the second paragraph goes even further, stating that poppy cultivation is due to “greed and corruption.” This is a very grave conclusion, with major policy implications, which should not be taken lightly on the basis of flawed data and faulty reasoning, compounded by negative stereotyping. Yet, in my view, this is what UNODC has done.

Decisions about poppy production are not made by regions consisting of several provinces that are closely identified with particular ethnic groups. Nor are they made by provinces. They are made by households. This too is overly simplified, as any piece of farmland may be owned by one family, sharecropped to another, and may employ labor from yet another family. Just as there is greater variation within north and south than between them, so there is greater variation within each province than there is among them. There are many desperately poor households in even the “richest” provinces. Valid inferences about the relationship of poverty to poppy cultivation must be based on household-level data. Research by Mansfield, the World Bank, and others using household level data is quite clear. I am sure that your research department is quite familiar with the research showing that dependence on opium poppy cultivation is highest among the poorest households. To put it statistically, among households, poverty is correlated with dependence on opium poppy cultivation.

Therefore, those dependent on opium poppy cultivation in Hilmand are likely to be the poorer households in that province, those with an income less than one dollar per person per day. Does UNODC consider such households to be rich, greedy, and corrupt because households in Balkh have an average income of only $0.70 per person per day?

The second paragraph is more complex, as it is phrased so that it can be subject to several interpretations. The key sentence is “By preventing national authorities and international agencies from working, insurgents have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields.”

This statement is true in the following sense. As research by scholars such as Francisco Thoumi of Colombia has demonstrated, the cultivation of raw materials for illicit narcotics migrates to those naturally suitable areas that are most insecure. Hence opium poppy cultivation has migrated from other countries to Afghanistan. Furthermore, within Afghanistan it has migrated from the more secure areas to those where the insurgency is more concentrated. The one way that north and south are indeed very different is that the insurgency is much more widespread in the south and security is worse. That, as you know, is due to the geographical position of the southern Afghanistan rather than its alleged wealth.

Insecurity leads to poppy cultivation in part because, as UNODC says, national authorities and international agencies cannot work where it is insecure. As a result, the government and international community cannot provide security and all of the other supportive public goods necessary to agriculture and other forms of employment, such as financing, technical assistance, and marketing. Instead all of these are supplied by the drug industry.

I will make one parenthetical remark here. The U.S. government says that this does not apply to Helmand, which, if it were a country, would be the fifth largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. This is a very deceptive statistic. What the U.S. government measures is the amount that it has spent (or authorized) for projects located in Helmand. The single largest and most expensive project in Afghanistan today is the Kajaki Dam, located in Helmand Province. The bulk of U.S. expenditures in Helmand are for this project. As you know, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on that project, it is not yet operational. As the people of Helmand have yet to receive any benefits from this project, it is deceptive to characterize them as its “recipients.”

I have no quarrel with characterizing drug traffickers and their protectors as greedy and corrupt. While policy should be based on analysis of what actions are effective, rather than value judgments alone, certainly this characterization of drug traffickers and their protectors provides moral support for effective measures of interdiction. In my discussions with policy makers, however, they have applied these terms to cultivators of opium poppy in Helmand and used the UNODC statement as justification for eradication. Does UNODC consider opium poppy cultivators in Helmand to be primarily driven by greed and corruption?

Of course, even if that were true, it would not be a reason to carry out eradication, as policies should only be carried out if they are effective. That is not the subject of this note. But I would like to point out that there is a relationship between what I consider to be UNODC’s erroneous arguments and policy on eradication.

The National Drug Control Strategy of Afghanistan states that the Afghan government will “conduct targeted and verified eradication where there is access to alternative livelihoods.” Proponents of increased forced eradication have taken the two paragraphs from the UNODC Survey above as evidence – indeed proof – that Helmand province is such a place and that eradication should therefore be carried out there. I do not think that the fact that the U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an unfinished project in a province where the average income per person is one dollar a day and where insecurity has prevented the delivery of education and healthcare constitutes evidence that in Helmand province “access to alternative livelihoods” is available. Does UNODC consider that access to alternative livelihoods is available in Helmand Province and that it therefore should be subject to increased forced poppy eradication?

Some policy makers are aware of these problems and try to compensate for them by arguing that eradication will be targeted against the truly rich, corrupt, and powerful. They have not explained to me yet how they will target the rich owners of land cultivated with poppy without targeting their poor sharecroppers and laborers, who will bear the brunt of the cost and have no access to alternatives. As UNODC’s own outstanding research has documented over the years, the opium economy creates powerful ties of dependency between those who control the economy and the poor who are dependent on it.

I believe that the misleading presentation of research by UNODC is providing a justification for a very mistaken and dangerous policy in Afghanistan. I would appreciate any explanation you can provide of why the assertions in the UNODC Afghanistan Opium Poppy Survey are correct. If I receive a reply by January 21, I will post both this letter and your reply to my blog and circulate them to my mailing list. If I do not receive a reply by that time, I will circulate this letter while awaiting your reply.

Sincerely yours,

Barnett R. Rubin

Read more on this article...

Palestine-Israel - a Bush Sea-Change? Charles Smith

I am delighted to revise part of my earlier comments to note that President Bush did address Palestinian-Israeli issues in his Abu Dhabi speech and did call on Israel as well as the Palestinians to make sacrifices: acceptance of a Palestinian state was necessary for Israel's long-term security, in his words. This is noteworthy - what will come of it remains to be seen, especially with respect to how these remarks are interpreted not only in the region but in the U.S.
One sign of alarm comes from Daniel Pipes, always a good sign. Pipes is so perturbed that he has written an op-ed in today's (1/17) Jerusalem Post condeming the idea of, quote, a "sovereign" Palestine. Pipes states that "the mischievous goal of creating 'Palestine' [his quotes] will inspire more fervor to eliminate the Jewish state, especially if accompanied by a Palestinian 'right of return'." [his quotes]
Pipes makes clear here what was only suspected before. Pro-Likud alarmists like Pipes oppose the creation of any Palestinian state in principle since any state will supposedly seek to eliminate Israel; therefore it should be opposed. What the alternative is is carefully avoided. Admittedly Pipes qualifies this by his reference to the right of return issue, but analysts in general accept that in reality there will only be a token return accepted. What is important to Palestinians is that the issue should be negotiated, not rejected and taken off the table before talks begin. As former security chief Ami Ayalon has noted, what Palestinians want is Israeli acknowledgement of the PRINCIPLE of a Palestinian right of return. This would mean that Israel would also be acknowledging that the creation of Israel led to the Palestinian refugee problem that now creates the demand for a right of return.
That Israeli forces, official and terrorist (Irgun, LEHI), participated in the ousting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is no longer in question for scholars, other than those on the far right of the Israeli spectrum. But dealing with historical reality is difficult for many Israelis. Prime Minister Olmert has stated he will never admit that Israel played a role in the Palestinian exodus and Likud historian Efraim Karsh is now the leader of "Project 1948" sponsored by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (besacenter.org) at Bar-Ilan University and championed by former prime minister Bibi Netanyahu; Project 1948 is dedicated to publishing the "basic truths" of what occured.
With this in mind we can look forward to "scholarly" publications on the issue, especially if matters come to the point where actual negotiations occur, as opposed to preliminary forays and subsequent denials of accomplishments. But there is hope that we can also look forward to further encouraging and surprisingly balanced statements from the president. Whether that inspires any American presidential candidates of either party to openly applaud the president, and thus appear to even tacitly question Israeli policy in an election year, is an entirely different question. But it does put them in the dilemma as to whether they should openly oppose him, with Rudy Guiliani being the exception - his advisers include Pipes, Martin Kramer, and Norman Podhoretz.
But, for now, despite the obstacles to found in the region, we have a somewhat sophisticated and open statement addressing both sides from an unexpected source. That itself is an accomplishment. Read more on this article...

Pakistan Commentary: Haqqani, Hoodbhoy, Daily Times, Bergen

There's a set of recent articles on Pakistan I'd like to call to readers' attention.

Husain Haqqani called attention to an editorial on the Daily Times (Lahore), which makes clear a point I argued earlier, that the Pakistan Army is not just a defense organization but Pakistan's ruling party, controlling all branches of government. Haqqani is Director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations, Co-Chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy. and the author of the Carnegie Endowment book "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military." He served as an adviser to Ms Bhutto. The editorial, entitled PPP and the Pakistan Army, opens:

President Pervez Musharraf’s view, expressed to an American magazine, that the late PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, “was very unpopular with the military”, clears the issues surrounding his policy drift in the last eight years and foreshadows what might transpire in the coming months. He began his career as the ruler of Pakistan by stigmatising both the mainstream parties, then plumping for the breakaway PML, in line with his military indoctrination against the PPP. The army’s dislike of Ms Bhutto dated from her 1988-1990 government when she was reluctantly allowed to rule under “conditions”, but was doubly disliked when she failed to walk in step with the military adventurers of Pakistan.

Haqqani has published two articles of his own. First, Healing the Rifts:

Pakistan is a nation in need of healing. The last one year has highlighted the many fissures that have festered below the surface for years. Unity of command, so effective in running a disciplined force like a military unit, has ended up dividing the Pakistani nation. The first opinion poll, conducted by Gallup, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto showed that nearly half of the sample suspected Government agencies (23%) and Government allied politicians (25%) of killing Ms Bhutto. The response to such widespread mistrust of the government is not dismissive statements by the country’s rulers. A serious effort is now needed to bridge the gap between Pakistan’s state and society.

Second, Advancing the Bhutto Legacy:

Too much commentary on Pakistan has focused on the flaws and feudal nature of its politics. Given the choice between flawed politicians and a military-intelligence establishment that has fostered terrorism for years, the international community - including the United States - must side with Pakistan's politicians. Politics can change. Continued rule by a nontransparent secret service with ties to militant jihadis (which is what General Pervez Musharraf represents) will always create a security dilemma.

The Pakistan People's Party's decision to elect Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as co-chairmen of the party is being criticized as representing dynastic politics that does not promote democracy. A distinction must be made between dynastic politics and the politics of family legacy.

It is difficult for Westerners to understand a situation in which a well-organized political party unites around the charisma of a single family while retaining a vast pool of talented leaders. Family legacies have worked to build democracies in countries as far apart as Greece and India. The Papandreou and Karamanlis families have provided leaders for rival parties in Greece for years, and the Nehru-Gandhi family has been the focal point for the Indian National Congress. The Pakistan People's Party, like other parties with family-based leadership in Greece, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, has a lot of talent in its ranks. That talent remains available to the party regardless of who leads it.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad and the author of "Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality," addresses Pakistan's State of Denial about the threat posed by its nuclear weapons:

A cacophony of protests in Pakistan greeted a recent statement by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad ElBaradei. "I fear that chaos, or an extremist regime, could take root in that country, which has 30 to 40 warheads," he said. He also expressed fear that "nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of extremist groups in Pakistan or Afghanistan."

But in Pakistan, few worry. The Strategic Plans Division, which is the Pakistani agency responsible for handling nuclear weapons, exudes confidence that it can safely protect the country's "crown jewels."

After reviewing the deep inter-penetration of the Pakistan military and jihadi militants, he concludes:

[W]e Pakistanis live in a state of denial. Even as suicide bombings escalate, criticism of religious extremists remains taboo. The overwhelming majority still attributes recent terrorist events - such as the assassination of Benazir Bhutto - to the Musharraf government. But these delusions will eventually shatter. At some point we will surely see that ElBaradei's warning makes sense.

Peter Bergen, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know, examines the evidence surrounding Bhutto's assassination in The Killer Question (The New Republic, subscribers only). Read more on this article...

Naser Shahalemi: Firsthand Experience of Terrorism in the Serena Hotel

I received the account and photos below from Naser Shahalemi, an Afghan-American friend living and working in Afghanistan. He has agreed to their publication. I also received some other pictures that I am not publishing, because they show the two fingers of one of the bombers that Naser found in his car. I assure readers that the report is substantiated.

Barnett R. Rubin

Naser writes:

It was 5:30 PM [Monday January 14, Kabul time, 13:30 GMT] and I was wrapping up my day in the office. My cousin Arif, my office manager, and I decided to head off to the Serena Hotel for a classy 5- star dinner, a rare commodity in Kabul. My two drivers were out driving the employees home and so Arif decided to drive and we left without a driver which may have saved their lives.

We arrived at Serena Hotel, on the outside gate. The same friendly faces, all 4-6 guards posted outside, one a good friendly face Aghai Sultan always gives me a friendly wave and waves my car in after checking the vehicle.

Everything smooth, and everything is normal. We walk to the Restaurant section and they have not yet setup the final buffet, the friendly hostess tell me we need 15 minutes. I look at Arif and I say come on lets take a walk until things are setup. I head back walk into the lobby see a few friendly faces. I sat down in the lobby a few minutes, and Arif said hey lets wait here until time is ready. Then I remembered the nice teahouse on the left side of Serena called the Chai Khana. So we went for a quick cup of tea in the Chai Khana.

We sat down, tea in hand and then it began. All of sudden BOOM! A suicide bomber dressed as police had walked into the security X-ray booth with a vest of explosives attached on his chest and blew himself up killing half of the guards in the booth.The windows began shaking, I quickly think hey that was a bomb but the Serena Glass is thick so we don't know if its close or far. Usually a bomb like that I would estimate it was 5 blocks away then all of a sudden BOOM again and then rapid gunfire. The guards killed 1 attacker and but two more get inside the main lobby of the Serena.

Everyone gets up, and starts getting back into a slip door, that connects to a second lounge. I quickly move looking around thinking very quick anything could happen. I don't hear anything I walk back to the original spot I was in looking for some signal of what was happening. I look through the glass outside and see a Corolla turn and wrap to the front of the Serena Door and then the driver jumps outs and throws himself on the ground. The Corolla hits the wall of the front glass doors.Then I just hear hundreds of bullets shooting, I hit the ground because the bullets at this point sound extremely close to me. I start crawling through the Chai Khana on my knees and I get back to the second lounge in the slip door.

The Serena worker is quickly telling me to move and get to the basement as soon as possible. Grenades are being thrown and the lobby is covered in a thick smoke that no one can see. I hear more explosions, one Serena employees is being carried past me covered in blood by two other Serena employees. His hand is is covered in blood. His face is covered in blood. I am hearing gunshots in the lobby, the terrorists have infiltrated the lobby and are now shooting anyone.

I turn on the afterburners and start cutting up the hall following a trail of blood leading to the basement. Everyone is running as fast as possible. I lost my cousin Arif in this mess. I get down two flights of steps in the secure basement of the Serena where I see Arif. We greet each other, and I check to see he isn't injured. I asked him are you OK, he is fine, we quickly move to the deeper portion of the basement. Amongst us is the Norwegian Foreign Minister, and his security contingent. Also is the UN Human Rights activist Sima Samar [she is Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in the Sudan], also a former Women's Minister of the Karzai Administration [and Chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission]. We get in the cafeteria and more Afghan politicians are amongst us, with Europeans and foreigners. Karzai''s oldest brother is also trapped with us and he is pacing frantically as we are unaware of what is going on in the lobby. We can hear shots and we can hear booms, but the remaining security personnel is posted at the doors and is ready to shoot at will.

More people come to the basement, as the terrorists have infiltrated the gym and spa area. They have shot dead the spa manager, Zina a very pleasant Filipino Girl who was just doing her job working in Afghanistan to support herself and family abroad. The Terrorists move into the gym and shot an American dead in the face on the treadmill. The president of the Olympic Committee, Mr. Anwar Khan Jagdalak [a former mujahidin commander of Jamiat-i Islami] was in the locker room getting dressed when the Terrorist came face to face to with him. Mr. Jagdalak asked him in Persian "Khaireyaat Khob ast?" (Is everything OK?), and then he turned his gun and took a shot at the president of the Olympic Committee. Mr. Jagdalak made an Olympic dive and fled, and quickly found refuge in some space in the locker room where the Terrorist couldn't find him. He escaped to the basement through another pass.

The doorman, was carried down to the basement by Serena Staff. He had passed out from all of the events he saw, and they were opening up his vest to get him air and began sprinkling water on his face. Then all of sudden a bunch of Serena employees started running down the hall in the basement like they were being chased. This in turn caused two Russian girls to start screaming, and made everyone start to hide including President Karzai's oldest brother who was also trapped with us. What could you do, what would you do if you knew people were coming to shoot you? Turns out the terrorists had not infiltrated the basement, and the Russian girls had to be calmed down, and were given cigarettes to relax.

Hours pass, and we are all sitting and reminiscing about what the hell just happened in front of our eyes who and what we saw. Then all of a sudden two U.S. Marines come down to the basement armed to the teeth, asking everyone if they are all right. We were kind of relieved to see the Marines. The Marines then called out for all US Citizens and they took me, and about ten other people out including Arif whom I told the marine was with me. They said fine, but let's move. We started moving with the Marines out the basement, guns drawn, coming upstairs through the same hall I ran down. There was a pool a blood where I was standing before when everything began and now there was blood everywhere in the lobby, broken glass, black walls from the bomb blasts. Hundreds of Afghan Secret Service and NDS [National Directorate of Security, Amaniyyat-i Milli] guards were standing around. The US Marines got us out and put us in armored vehicles and took us to the embassy where they treated us, took reports and gave us medical checkups.

They later than released us, and my driver and guards came and picked us up in another car and we went home. Next day I came to get the land cruiser I left parked at the entrance of the door when the bomb went off. Amaniyyat (Afghan CIA) [NDS] asked us some questions then let us in. I looked at my car, I couldn't believe what I saw. Blood, guts, black marks from the bomb blast everywhere. The land cruiser from behind was filled with bullet holes throughout the vehicle. The second Suicide bomber had detonated himself five meters away from car once he got inside and his finger ended up in my back of my land cruiser, and his thumb was on my dashboard. I peered inside the back of the land cruiser through the broken glass and saw the finger, I am not at all accustomed to seeing those types of gruesome items up close it was pretty damn disgusting. The lack of respect for their lives was proven in this heinous crime.

This whole thing has me really spooked, now Taliban are vowing more attacks on Kabul restaurants where foreigners and expatriates are attending. I am unsure what to make of all these tragic events however the situation in Kabul is obviously deteriorating.

Read more on this article...

More Thoughts on the Serena Bombing: Back to the Light Footprint; Democracy in Pakistan

Update: There are some good comments. They are a bit long, so I am not promoting them to the front any more, but I recommend taking a look if you have time.

I had a few conversations that led me to the following thoughts about the Serena bombing:

Whatever happens next, this is a major decision point for everyone concerned in Afghanistan. Such operations will continue. Even if the vast majority do not succeed, the result will be a mix of the following:

1. Many if not most of the civilian foreign expatriates currently involved in the delivery of aid or other activities in Afghanistan will leave.
   
2. Most of the rest will be concentrated into a Forbidden City like the Green Zone in Baghdad. The U.S. Embassy is already such a compound, and the area around it in Wazir Akbar Khan is already so fortified that it might not take much more to turn that and the adjacent areas of Shahr-i Naw (palace, main ministries, UN offices, embassies) into such a zone.

This is happening at the same time that it is necessary to increase development assistance, as the absorption capacity of the Afghan government and society is finally starting to increase. These alternatives are unacceptable. They would make aid even more wasteful and out of touch than it is now.

The alternative is to go back to the original much misunderstood idea of the "light footprint." People say that Lakhdar Brahimi's idea of the light footprint has failed. They even confuse the idea with Donald Rumsfeld's idea of "economy of force." But there has never been a light footprint in Afghanistan. Brahimi imagined in the fall of 2001 that most of the aid to Afghanistan would be delivered through UN agencies, as it was in East Timor. As Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN, he advocated a light footprint for those agencies, so as to channel most of the aid to building up the capacity and legitimacy of the Afghan government rather than into parallel structures that would suck all the talent and money away.

That never happened. The SRSG could not control the agencies. But even that hardly mattered. Most of the aid was not delivered by UN agencies. It was delivered by an army of foreign contractors, consultants, and NGOs working for bilateral donors (that's aid-speak for "countries," like the US). And all those foreigners need security that NATO, the Coalition, and the Afghan government cannot provide: hence the proliferation of foreign owned-private security contractors -- and the Afghan private security contractors that they have spawned as their subcontractors, many of which are composed of supposedly demobilized militias.

I'm not attacking all those aid workers. I'm one of them. The point is not about our individual merits -- there are saints and sinners among us. God knows, I am probably a more legitimate target for the Taliban than that Filippina woman they killed in the gym. But collectively we have generated an infrastructure serving only our needs that dwarfs the infrastructure provided for Afghans. This infrastructure -- of which the Serena Hotel is the flagship -- is the most visible part of the aid system to Afghans. Projects may mature in a few (or many) years, but right now Afghans see the guest houses, bars, restaurants, armored cars, checkpoints, hotels, hostile unaccountable gunmen, brothels, videos, CDs, cable television, Internet cafes with access to pornography, ethnic Russian waitresses from Kyrgyzstan in Italian restaurants owned by members of the former royal family and patronized by U.S. private security guards with their Chinese girlfriends and Afghan TV moguls, and skyrocketing prices for real estate, food, and fuel, traffic jams caused by the proliferation of vehicles and exacerbated by "security measures" every time a foreign or Afghan official leaves the office -- I could go on, but the Serena is a symbol of all that.

Is there a way to make this danger into an opportunity? The Afghan government from the beginning has asked for more aid to go through the Afghan government budget, more contracts to be given to Afghan firms. The international reply has always been "lack of capacity," though I am not sure which is a more serious problem: Afghans' lack of capacity to do what foreigners require of them to get aid, or foreigners' lack of capacity to build meaningful skills or deliver aid in a way that Afghans perceive as effective.

We don't have the luxury of waiting around for some mythical "capacity building" programs that the "international community" apparently lacks the capacity to conceive or run (my apologies in advance to the exceptions -- please don't flood me with emails about how your program works -- I know some of them do). Do we want to support the Afghanistan that actually exists, or are we waiting for a new Afghanistan of our imagination to appear out of the mists of the Hindu Kush and deserve our aid? (Of course Afghans are also waiting for the superpowers and aid donors of their imagination to materialize, but it turns out that in reality -- well, see above.)

As far as I know, all this aid is not there because of anybody's generosity, though Afghans are required to say so from time to time. Did the US and other donors suddenly develop a bad case of generosity after September 11? I tried that argument from time to time during 1992-2001, but it didn't work. The US and others are in Afghanistan for their national security interests. So we can't just pack up and walk away if the Afghans don't conform to our desires. Sometimes I wish the Afghan government would keep that more firmly in mind.

It is possible -- though not necessarily so -- that these interests will coincide with that of many Afghans for a while. That's the question Afghans are asking: are the foreigners here to help us as well as themselves, or to help only themselves, even at our expense? That's the political question at the heart of counter-narcotics policy. That is the political question at the heart of disputes over civilian casualties, status of forces agreements, detainees, and how aid is delivered.

In fact it's the dispute that started the whole thing. Remember, Bin Laden stated on October 7, 2001, that the international state system (symbolized by the Treaty of Lausanne, to which he referred as the start of 80 years of humiliation) was a source of oppression to Muslims. He cited lots of examples. Muslims don't want to believe him. Whatever they have suffered or think they have suffered in this system, most don't see Bin Laden (or the Taliban) offering an alternative to modern education, science, health care, development, legality, and so on.

But they have to ask themselves -- what is the alternative the international system is actually offering us? For citizens of the UAE -- not so bad! For Afghans? They don't want more bombings, killings, executions, torture, corruption, invasions, ignorance, poverty, disease.... When I visited Afghanistan under the Taliban in 1998 people quietly let me know how frustrated they were. In the Pashtun areas, at least, people felt a degree of personal security as long as they obeyed the Taliban, but they were bitter about their poverty and lack of development and freedom. The universal strength of that feeling was the most lasting impression of that visit. Everything I have seen since has confirmed and reconfirmed it. But it has also confirmed and reconfirmed that Afghans are losing faith that they are actually being offered a share of what they think the "international community" has to offer.

I don't have a blueprint on my hard drive on in a cache somewhere. But the Serena bombing is a sign that unless Afghans are really in charge of their country, it will not be rebuilt. I know that some plans are out there. It's time to take a new look at them. Are they unrealistic? Maybe. But what is definitely unrealistic is thinking we can succeed with the approach we have used so far.

Now for Pakistan: the Afghan NDS says that the attackers were trained and equipped by networks based in Pakistan. That's not much of a surprise. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the UN already published a report on suicide bombings in Afghanistan, showing that they were organized, funded, and planned in the Tribal Agencies of Pakistan. Pakistan's main response (always proactive) was that its UN representative called the UN Secretary General and demanded that the report be taken off the website.

But I don't want to "attack Pakistan" (more emails). Pakistanis are asking similar questions: is the War on Terror making us more or less secure? Is it a common interest we have with the Americans or something imposed on us against our interest? Right now, there is an unbridgeable gap in Pakistan between the population's perception of security threats and the military government's doctrine of security threats, conforming to Washington's.

According to poll data, most Pakistanis seem to see the Pakistani military as the most immediate threat to their security. Nawaz Sharif told a cheering crowd the other day that a government supinely following the Americans' War on Terror had "drowned the country in blood." He was referring to the military offensives in the tribal territories and the attack on the Red Mosque in Islamabad last summer. Does his audience want to be ruled by Taliban and Usama Bin Laden? I haven't interviewed them, but I will hazard a guess: no they don't. But right now that is a secondary threat to them. Telling them they have to be for us or against us will only convince them that they are against us.

Conclusion: until Pakistan develops a legitimate political elite with a reasonable consensus about the national interest and national security, Pakistan will not be a "reliable ally in the war on terror." Why are the supporters of Benazir Bhutto more hostile to the military government than to the militant groups that probably killed her? Because they know that the military government used US aid to nurture those same militant groups and their civilian political allies in order to impose its own dictatorship. Reversing that calculus is the single most important task for security in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now people will ask me how to do it. I have some ideas ... I'd like to hear some others. One hint: missiles, Drones, commando raids, and more military rule in Pakistan are not the preferred options.

Response from Farid Maqsudi, promoted from Comments:

The key to success for Afghanistan and stakeholders such as USA and the international community, is the shift of burden from US and international community to Afghans.

The accountability for the success and failure needs to be with the Afghans and the Afghan government.

A common Afghan knows what he/she wants and needs for better life.

I agree in principle with the government's position that aid should flow through it. But as President Karzai acknowledges the increasing corrupt environment, he must first take serious action against the corrupt culture to gain the confidence of the donors, citizens and the private sector.

I am involved in the reconstruction economy of Afghanistan and from experience, I can tell it is better for Afghanistan and the world to stop with much of the technical studies and consultants to consultants in the reconstruction projects.

Afghans are hearing about billions and billions of aid money but they don't see it benefiting them. Let's talk smaller money and extend it directly to the people so they appreciate the challenges of reconstruction as well as the benefits.

The Afghan government should promise and deliver to its citizens a number of high impact projects that will boost the confidence of its citizens and stakeholders.

No doubt that various entities in Pakistan are taking detrimental actions against Afghanistan but Pakistan is not the entire cause of the problems in Afghanistan. The Afghans on both sides of the border should demonstrate their patriotism for Afghanistan by taking constructive and peaceful actions.

It is high time that we address the basics.

It is time for President Karzai to take the respectful robe off and pull up the shirt sleeves.

It is time for President Karzai to spend several continuous months in each regional capitals like Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat to bring attention to security and reconstruction.

It is time for the international community to support Afghans.

It is time for the country to come together. Read more on this article...

New York Times on ISI; Serena Hotel Attack (Plus Update Connecting the Two and Historical Background)

David Rohde and Carlotta Gall deserve huge credit for an outstanding investigative article today on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. This article makes sense out of all the contradictory indications about the ISI's links to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as well as other armed militant groups. It also covers the ISI's role in domestic politics, including election rigging. It is clear from the article that a military regime cannot (and some will not) control the militants it created and that the military will also not permit civilians to take control of the state. But at least President Bush is hard at work building the broadest possible global alliance against Iranian speedboats and Filipino radio pranksters. Bush reportedly does not believe his own intelligence agencies' report on Iran, as it failed to coincide with what he knows to be true. (More on this from Scott Horton....)

The attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul is a shock for all of us foreigners who have gone there for tea. conferences, or brunch, even if we never stayed there. Like most people who go in and out of the Kabul expatriate community, I imagine, I knew a couple of people who were there -- in my case including some Norwegian diplomats.

News reports mention that this was Afghanistan's only "five-star" hotel. They don't mention that nearly all Afghans live in "zero-star" conditions, including the thousands of people who pass that traffic circle every day and see inaccessible luxury behind thick walls. The rioters attacked the Serena in May 2006, apparently believing that alcohol is served there, though it is not.

I am sure that the people of Kabul don't want more violence in their city. They were badly frightened by the riots in 2006. But there is huge resentment and anger building up at the overbearing foreign presence. The May 2006 riots were sparked by an accident where US military vehicles killed a pedestrian. Afghans see and often do not distinguish among the "Chinese restaurant" brothels and the glittering restaurants (by Afghan standards, not ours) serving luxuries, including alcohol, to foreigners, some of whom are being highly paid to destroy Afghanistan's opium livelihood, which Afghan Islamic figures say is no worse than the alcohol they drink at night after destroying farmers' poppy crops.

Many Afghans think that money that is supposed to be used to help them is instead being used to pay for the good life for foreigners in the Serena hotel. Alas, it is true. When aid donors boast of how much technical assistance they are giving Afghanistan, they provide data on the size of the contracts they have given to consultants. I have spent some of the grant and contract money that pay for my salary and travel expenses on meals and tea at the Serena Hotel. These expenses are counted as someone's assistance to Afghanistan.

This is a new kind of target for the Taliban. Foreigners going to restaurants in Kabul (including some where, unlike the Serena, alcohol is in fact served), sometimes joke that they feel like targets. Up to now, however, they have not been. The Taliban have mostly attacked the international forces and Afghan army, police, and officials, as well as other "collaborators," such as employees on reconstruction projects or public figures who support the government. Sometimes they kill civilians indiscriminately when they attack government buildings (including cases when they killed students in schools). But as far as I know, this is the first attack targeted at the foreign assistance community and the "corrupt" lifestyle it has brought to Afghanistan. I imagine it will not be the last.

Update: AP quotes Amrullah Saleh, head of the National Security Directorate of Afghanistan, as saying that the attack was planned by the network headed by Siraj Haqqani, a native of Khost currently based in the North Waziristan Tribal Agency of Pakistan. So it seems the two posts above might be connected. In case this hypothesis proves true, here is some background.

Haqqani's father, Mawlawi Jalaluddin, was a highly praised mujahidin commander in the 1980s. He was called "Haqqani" because he attended the Deobandi madrasa Haqqaniyya in Akhora Khattak on the Grand Trunk Road between Peshawar and Islamabad, headed by Senator Sami-ul-Haq of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema. This madrasa trained many Taliban leaders.

Haqqani was one of the CIA's favorites because of his penchant for "killing Russians" and executing Afghan "communist" prisoners after trial for apostasy. He was one of ten commanders known as "unilaterals" who got aid directly from the CIA, not filtered through the ISI. His huge base (later occupied by al-Qaida) was built by a Pakistani construction company connected to the military and paid for by private Saudi donations (not sure whose, but it could easily have been Bin Laden).

Though not a member of the Taliban core group in southern Afghanistan (he is from the Zadran/Jadran tribe in Khost, in the east), he became an important minister and commander of the Taliban, leading offensives in the Shamali plain north of Kabul in cooperation with al-Qaida.

During the Coalition operation against the Taliban in the fall of 2001, the ISI brought Haqqani to Islamabad several times, offering him to the U.S. as a "moderate Taliban" replacement for Mullah Umar, but Haqqani did not cooperate or at least he didn't deliver. In December 2001 Mawlawi Jalaluddin announced that despite his opposition to the U.S. invasion, now was the time for peace in Afghanistan, and he sent a delegation from the Jadran tribe to attend the inauguration of Hamid Karzai. Someone (reportedly Mawlawi Jaluluddin's rival, Pacha Khan Zadran, though there are other suspects as well) warned the U.S. that Taliban were approaching Kabul, and a U.S. bombing raid killed over 60 elders of the tribe who were on their way to Kabul for reconciliation.

Since that time, Mawlawi Jalaluddin (who may have died -- reports are unclear) and his son Sirajuddin have built up a powerful front based in North Waziristan. The Jadrans remain factionalized and their loyalties have vacillated -- today many are serving in pro-government militias, and cross-border attacks from Waziristan are said to have decreased.

The Haqqanis are considered by the U.S. military to constitute almost a separate operation from (though nominally affiliated with) the Taliban under Mullah Umar. They are one of the pivotal points of cooperation between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, as the Haqqanis have close relations with Baitullah Mahsud, Amir of the Pakistani Taliban and commander in South Waziristan.

If anyone believes that the ISI does not know where the Haqqanis are, there is a bridge not far from my office in lower Manhattan I would like to show you.

Historical Note: In May 2002 in Kabul I attended a meeting at the home of the former king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, where he received a delegation from the Jaji tribe in Paktia, neighbors (and at times rivals) of the Jadrans. The Jaji elders reminded Zahir Shah that their fathers and grandfathers had helped his father, Nadir Shah, overthrow a usurper in Kabul, Amir Habibullah Kalakani, known as Bacha-i Saqaw (son of the water carrier) and Khadim-i Din-i Rasul Allah (servant of the religion of the Messenger of God). Habibullah came from the Tajik village of Kalakan north of Kabul, which briefly became a "Maoist" bastion in the early 1980s.

The elders offered to help Zahir Shah evict the Northern Alliance from Kabul, as they had helped his father before him. Zahir Shah said he wanted to work for peace and asked them to participate in the Emergency Loya Jirga scheduled for the following month.

By the way, when Nadir Shah (then Nadir Khan) mobilized the Jajis, Jadrans, Ahmadzais, and Tanis against Amir Habibullah, he was sitting in Waziristan, receiving aid from the British through the political agents in the Tribal Agencies. . . . Read more on this article...

Bush and Palestinian-Israeli Peace Efforts

Bush and Palestinian-Israeli Peace Efforts.
Charles D. Smith
Any doubts as to the president’s sincerity in committing himself to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were increased, not dispelled, by his performance once he left Israel for Abu Dhabi. There he delivered a speech portrayed by his aides as the “centerpiece” of his Middle East trip. It focused on Iran as the threat to peace and attempted to reassert his commitment to democratic trends in the region. No mention was made of Israel or the Palestinians, a serious disconnect from the reality perceived by his hosts who consider the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli issue, not Iran, as a far greater threat to regional stability and their own security against popular unrest.

Were there any good signs from Bush’s visit to Israel and the West Bank? Upon arriving at Ben-Gurion airport he immediately lambasted Hamas for undermining the Gazan economy, spurring CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman to post a story on babies dying in Gaza hospitals because of the American-backed Israeli blockade of most goods in and out of the area; no similar story appeared in the mainstream media. But Bush’s Israeli hosts were concerned. Prime Minister Olmert’s airport welcome was so effusive that many winced. Olmert had himself given an interview a week before where he had said that many “painful decisions” would be necessary regarding withdrawal from West Bank settlements. The question remains whether the pain Olmert forsees for Israelis by confronting settlers will be sufficient to meet minimum Palestinian expectations regarding the borders of a viable Palestinian state.

To his credit, Bush did speak openly of the need for Israel to end its “occupation” of Arab land. Israelis bristled at the word “occupation.” He referred to a “viable, contiguous, and sovereign” state, indicating that the Israeli right of oversight of Palestinian movements would be curtailed. He also called for the end of settlement building and removal of unauthorized outposts. But much of this can be reinterpreted to mean something quite different than what one might expect.

What does the word “contiguous” signify? Ariel Sharon referred to “transportational contiguity” for Palestinians on the West Bank. He meant that Israeli settlements and bypass roads would remain, some such as Maale Adumim virtually cutting the West Bank in half. Palestinians could connect between the northern and southern areas by means of tunnels under the Israeli bypass roads, overseen by Israeli troops on the roads above. That’s not exactly what contiguity usually means. Olmert himself has referred to contiguity with the idea that Gaza and the West Bank must be connected to form one Palestinian state; no mention of West Bank contiguity that could only be assured by removal of Malae Adumim. Olmert is adamant that that settlement will remain part of Israel.

Indeed, Israel officials can rely on Bush’s April 2004 letter, written with the aid of Elliott Abrams of the NSC, assuring Sharon that the “facts on the ground,” major population areas in the West Bank, could remain part of Israel. But where some might think that referred only to the Etzion and similar blocs close to Jerusalem, Israeli officials appear to have other towns in mind, including Ariel, an town that thrusts well into the northern West Bank and around which the security barrier is being extended. Once Bush had left, Israeli officials said with assurance that major settlement expansion would continue.

In such circumstances, we should not expect that any Palestinian leader, however conciliatory he might wish to be, could accept such a process where the “painful concessions” amounted to very little from a Palestinian perspective. Olmert may fear his settler constituency and civil war if required to abandon many settlements, but Abbas’s position depends on achieving nearly the maximum possible with respect to Israeli-occupied land across the 1967 Green Line.

Interestingly, Secretary of State Condalezza Rice appears more determined to confront the issues than President Bush. She has been cited in the Israeli press as saying that Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank reminds her of her childhood as a black woman in the American south. Strong stuff. But if Olmert feels he can bypass her and rely on Abrams to get to Bush, he may not feel too threatened.

Under the circumstances, with Bush far more focused on Iran than the Palestinians, we should not expect too much for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Bush has strong emotional ties to Israel, fueled by his helicopter survey of the West Bank with Ariel Sharon in 1998. As the Washington Post reported, Bush viewed the ten-mile width of Israel within its 1967 borders and quipped that there were driveways in Texas longer than that. What the Post did not note was that Bush made that remark at the AIPAC convention in spring 2000 as he appealed for Jewish support in the election campaign.

As Olmert noted in his Jerusalem Post interview, Israel faced the quandary of either withdrawing from much of the West Bank, to ensure a Jewish state, or retaining hold and taking on governance of the Palestinian population, denying the possibility of a Jewish state. Recognizing the dilemma and doing something about it are two different things. It is more likely that Olmert may hope that Palestinian rejection of a supposedly generous offer -recall the fictional narrative of what happened at Camp David 2000- will enable him to evade confrontation with the settlers. But such evasion threatens rather than ensures Israel’s security in the long term. Mahmud Abbas, on his part, must demand almost full Israeli withdrawal or be forced out of office. In such circumstances, what Olmert views as necessary for his political survival, which includes escaping assassination by settlers, will likely be what Abbas cannot accept if he himself wishes to survive.

Serious discussions of these matters may await a new administration. If Democratic, it will likely include Dennis Ross overseeing the supposed peace process. That is not encouraging. Ross essentially falsified the information he gave the American public on the Oslo process and Camp David. He willingly acknowledged to a European audience in Charles Enderlin’s Shattered Dreams [now in English] that Israel was as responsible for the failure of the peace process as the Palestinians. He specifically mentioned Israeli settlement building from 1993 onward to 2000. In his memoir for Americans, The Missing Peace, he never mentions Israeli settlements after the year 1993, thus evading the 1993-2000 period he mentions in Enderlin.

Such an example of bias does not inspire confidence for what might happen beyond the end of this year. We may have to hope for more boldness from Israelis and Palestinians than concrete initiatives from Washington, especially in a presidential election year. Read more on this article...

Let Them Eat Cake

Of course, one needs flour to make cake. Pervez Musharraf recently opined that the flour crisis is not real and that the cost of flour in Pakistan is, in fact, cheaper than neighboring countries. Let it be noted that the price of flour in Pakistan is 3 or 4 times the normal rate and that is only if you can find any. [The BBC Urdu article notes that the price of flour in India is three times lower.] The things are so dire that army troops are guarding wheat shipments. I wonder if our informed commentator, Fareed Zakaria, was served cake while having tea with Musharraf.

It is not hard to imagine what the lack of basic foodstuff, and basic security, can mean for this nation in crisis. Read more on this article...

Fareed Zakaria: Musharraf's Last Stand

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek has just returned from a trip to Pakistan, where he met with, among others, President Musharraf. The result is one of the best analyses to appear in the media: Musharraf's Last Stand. A few excerpts:

In the past year Pakistan has suffered its worst violence since the riots that followed its founding in 1947. And in the past six months it has careered from one political and constitutional crisis to another, none of which has been resolved, or is likely to be resolved by parliamentary elections scheduled for Feb. 18. . . . In fact, Pakistan is facing two crises—one political and the other security-related. . . .

There is a solution to Pakistan's political crisis, one that will allow Musharraf to leave on a high note. First, he must hold free and fair elections. . . . Musharraf should recognize that he has become far too controversial to be able to lead his nation and should instead recede from power.

That still leaves Pakistan's other, more dangerous, crisis—the new jihad. . . . The most troubling aspect of this wave of terror is that no one in Pakistan seems to understand why it's happening. . . . Theories abound. The Pakistani military was never fully committed to battling jihadists. Having spent decades training fighters for Kashmir and Afghanistan, the Army withdrew support but would not kill or arrest its former charges.

Washington itself bears a significant part of the blame. The Taliban were never really defeated after the fall of Kabul. They simply went into hiding and regrouped, and yet the American Army declared victory and left. . . . The American debate has been, as is often the case, largely removed from reality.

The real question we face in Pakistan is what to do about the upcoming elections to ensure that they are free and fair. We need to walk Musharraf back from a power struggle in which he is pitted against an independent judiciary and democratically elected politicians. And above all we must find a way to work with the Pakistani people and not a handful of generals. Otherwise the intense anti-Americanism in Pakistan—fast rising because of our support for Musharraf—will produce a new wave of jihadists, born in the mountains of the frontier, tested in battle against the Pakistani Army and thirsting to fight the ultimate enemy, thousands of miles away.

Read more on this article...

Erroneous Talking Points on Opium Poppy Crop Eradication in Afghanistan

The major donors and troop contributors to Afghanistan will meet in Tokyo on February 6, 2008, to review progress in Afghanistan. One major theme of the meeting will be counter-narcotics, as opium production increased last year. The U.S. position, as stated in its official counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan, demands forced eradication of a significantly larger portion of the crop, especially in areas under Taliban control. In the absence of aerial eradication, which the Afghan government has rejected, this requires forced eradication, using troops and police to protect manual eradicators and possibly fighting in order to obtain access to areas for eradication. Though there is agreement on many other areas of counter-narcotics policy, many in Afghanistan believe that such forced eradication is likely to backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

I have concluded from my discussions with US officials that they believe that the expansion of the opium economy in southern Afghanistan, and especially in Helmand province, has strengthened the Taliban and that crop eradication would therefore weaken the Taliban by depriving them of funds. I believe that this argument is wrong and that forced eradication in hostile areas will not defund the Taliban or increase security. It will weaken the government and strengthen the insurgency. Eradication is part of a balanced counter-narcotics policy, but gaining control of territory and providing security and starting development come first.

It is wrong to imply, as some US officials do, that the Taliban have become so powerful in Helmand because the GoA failed to implement its CN policy. The Taliban became powerful in Helmand because until 2006 the US put only 150 Special Forces there to catch terrorists and did little to provide security or development to the population. Consequently the government of Afghanistan and aid organizations could not work there. Furthermore, the U.S. ignored warnings about the development of Taliban leadership and infrastructure in Quetta, Pakistan, right across the border, and took at face value the statements of the Government of Pakistan, which, according to Pakistan's Daily Times, are believed by no one in Pakistan itself.

So when the British arrived to lead the NATO deployment to Helmand in 2006, they found that Taliban controlled most of the province, poppy cultivation was expanding because of the lack of government control, and the Taliban were safely ensconced right across the border in Baluchistan. Meanwhile, the U.S. government was focused on Iraq.

Other erroneous talking points on this subject:

1. The US and UNODC claim that poppy cultivation is not related to poverty because southern provinces where poppy is grown are richer than northern provinces where it has been reduced. Wrong. First they are using average income to measure poverty, which is highly inaccurate and not the preferred measure. Even using this flawed measurement, official statistics show that the northern provinces of Jawzjan, Balkh, Samangan, and Baghlan are all “richer” than the southern province of Qandahar. All seven northern provinces are richer than the southern provinces of Zabul and Uruzgan. The average income in Helmand is indeed estimated to be greater than in Balkh, amounting to $1 per person per day rather than $0.70 per person per day. A dollar a day, the average income in "rich" Helmand, is the internationally accepted definition of destitution. And within each province, the poorest people are the most dependent on poppy cultivation. In any case, the argument against eradication is not bleeding-heart liberal (or Christian) sympathy for the poor. It is analysis that the net result of forced eradication will be greater insecurity and a stronger insurgency with no negative effect on Taliban operations or financing.
2. The US and UNODC claim that the fact that poppy cultivation is concentrated in the south, where the insurgency is, proves that the insurgency grows because of the drug trade. Wrong. Poppy cultivation follows insecurity. Since the Taliban control so much of Helmand,where natural conditions favor poppy cultivation, poppy is grown there. Natural conditions also favor poppy cultivation in Badakhshan and Nangarhar, but because the insurgency is weaker in these provinces, security is better and communities have more alternatives to the drug economy.
   
3. Crop eradication will deprive the Taliban of funds. Wrong. Did the Taliban lack money in 2000-2001, when they decreased opium poppy cultivation by 95%? They continued to tax trafficking of existing stocks. If the government with NATO back-up manages to eradicate in Helmand this year, the first year or two trafficking will continue from stocks. After that, either poppy will be grown elsewhere and trafficked through Helmand, at a higher price, or the government will lose control of Helmand and poppy will come back. Crop eradication does not defund the Taliban.
4. The successful capture of Musa Qala district from the Taliban in northern Helmand shows that eradication will defund the Taliban, because the area had been turned into a heroin production center to fund the Taliban. U.S. Ambassador Wood stated that "in Musa Qala Afghan and international forces found a reported $500 million in street value of drugs warehoused in the district." The use of "street value," (i.e. price to the final consumer in Europe) exaggerates the local value of the drugs by a factor of at least 20. In fact the seized narcotics in Musa Qala show that forced eradication is not necessary for tackling the link between insurgency and narcotics. There was no eradication in Musa Qala. A successful political-military operation (negotiation with Taliban leader Abdul Salaam, who came over to the government side, plus the military operation) enabled the government to get control of the area, seize drugs, and destroy heroin labs. This is interdiction, not eradication. If the government had forcibly eradicated the crop, would Mullah Abdul Salaam have come over to the government side? Would the operation have succeeded? Now the government and international agencies can start programs to help people in Musa Qala and ask them to refrain from planting poppy.
5. Helmand has received so much money in US aid that if it were a country it would be one of the leading aid recipients. This is the kind of argument that sounds good in Washington and rings false in Afghanistan. What is true is that the U.S. has appropriated and partly spent that amount of money for projects in Helmand. The largest project in Helmand is the Kajaki dam hydro-electric project, which I think is the single biggest project in Afghanistan. Much of the money for Helmand has been spent on equipment and operations for the Kajaki Dam, which is not yet operational, largely because the Taliban managed to entrench themselves around it, thanks to the Bush administration's neglect of Afghanistan. No one in Helmand has yet “received” any benefit from these expenditures, so it is deceptive to claim that they are "recipients" of this amount of aid. The implication that Helmandis are greedily enriching themselves off of US aid and then enriching themselves further with poppy (and then asking the Taliban to come and protect them!) is false. It also inflames regional and ethnic conflict in Afghanistan, which is not helpful.

The turning of a major Taliban commander to the government side in Helmand, the successful seizure of large quantities of heroin, and the destruction of about 60 heroin refineries in Musa Qala are successes. Forced crop eradication before the government can provide security and economic opportunity will reverse these successes. Read more on this article...

Half of Pakistanis believe Bhutto Killed by Government: Gallup Pakistan

Husain Haqqani of Boston University, a foreign affairs adviser to the late Benazir Bhutto, writes:

Below please find the first opinion poll, conducted by Gallup, since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Several things stand out:

• First, that BB’s death has caused across-the-board grief that was not found after the deaths of her father and General Ziaul Haq.
• Second, that a majority of Pakistanis (53%) think the PPP’s decision to select Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as the party Co-Chairperson was correct.
• Third, that 48% of Pakistanis blame either government agencies or politicians linked to the government as responsible for the murder.
  

On most points the conventional wisdom of educated, elite Pakistanis that form the backbone of the US foreign policy community’s interaction with Pakistanis appears to be quite different from widely held public perceptions in Pakistan –a fact borne out by polling data in the past as well. Perhaps one of the many aspects of healing Pakistan is the need to bridge this divide between educated, professional, managerial, urban, well off Pakistan and the rest of the nation.

According to Gallup, “Nearly half of the sample suspected Government agencies (23%) and Government allied politicians (25%). Al-Qaeda or Taliban were suspected by 17%, while 16% suspected other external forces, principally the United States (12%) and India (4%). 19 % said they would not know.” If so many people mistrust their own government, how can that government be an effective US partner in fighting terrorism and winning hearts and minds against Jihadists?

Read Gallup Press Release here. Read more on this article...

“If Americans Are Wise They Would Not Meddle in Iran's Affairs

Calling for the American use of wisdom was Gholamali Haddad Adel, the conservative speaker of the parliament, as he was registering as a candidate for the upcoming March 14 parliamentary elections. “Last time Bush also advised people not to participate in the elections. His suggestions this time will also have the same fate as his last suggestion. If Americans are wise they would not meddle in Iran's Affairs.”

The issue of "U.S support for some groups" in Iran’s elections was also brought up is a January 8 speech given by Ayatollah Khamenei. He said, “The sensitivity of the leadership regarding elections is due to the concern that some individuals find their way to the parliament who have tendencies towards being dominated, weak in front of powers, and passive when facing international agitations.”

Two days later, reacting angrily to the call for the international observation of Iranian elections by the opposition group, Freedom Movement, Ayatollah Khamenei was even more explicit:

“American support for anyone in Iran is a disgrace. Both people and the group for which the president of America has declared his support should think why America wants to support that group and that group had what deficiency that made America to come to its support… We must be careful so that the elections do not become a plaything in the hands of foreigners and political groups and individuals should define their boundaries with the enemy because if these boundaries lose their color or are erased, there is the possibility of the enemy crossing these boundaries or some individuals carelessly falling into the lap of the enemy…Political groups and individuals, along with delineating their boundary with the enemy, must also define their boundary with the hired hands, servants, and individuals who are in the service of the enemy.”

Taking cue, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the current deputy speaker, decided to talk about the “hatred” of the people for groups that are “petrified of” and are supported by foreigners. “The experience of a colored coup in Iran has been defeated and the groups connected to foreigners cannot go up the ladder of elections through agitation and making noise and surrender the country to foreigners.”

All this accusatory and threatening thunder occurred in a week in which candidates for the March 14th parliamentary elections are registering (registration period was extended for a day and will end on Saturday). So the question is what the conservatives, with the protection and cue from Ayatollah Khamenei, are up to. I can think of two objectives; one having to do with transforming the general atmosphere that has characterized recent elections in Iran and second essentially revolving around the conservatives’ campaign strategy.

Regarding the transformation of the atmosphere, I should make clear that Iranian elections (and amazingly this will be the 28th election since the 1979 revolution, counting the first three elections regarding the founding of the Islamic Republic, election of the Constitutional Assembly, and ratification of the constitution) are always raucous with lots of accusations flying around from all sides. But the periods leading to elections, particularly in the past few elections, are usually periods when a conversational space opens and many issues regarding the manner elections are held, the vetting process, handicapping of many political players, constraints imposed to prevent a truly competitive process, and impediments to a truly democratic process are aired. The clear and unambiguous references to the “enemy hands” and domestic groups and individuals wanting to “surrender to the enemy” are intended to close that conversational space and in all likelihood will be successful at tightening it.

To be sure, there will be numerous complaints about the tightening of this conversational space in reformist and opposition blogs and websites but newspapers connected to various political groups which are contesting the conservative control of the parliament will have to stay away from complaints about the rules of the game lest they’ll be accused of having sold their souls to George Bush. In Iran, like in other contested political environments, the charge of weakness against the enemy, or using the enemy’s talking points, is usually a pretty good conversation killer.

It is the desire to close this conversational space about the unfairness of the rules of the game that made the supreme leader to talk disdainfully - in a not so disguised reference to the reformist deputies who engaged in a 2004 parliamentary sit-in when they found out that they were barred from standing in the next election through disqualifications - about “those who intended to suspend the elections four years ago with a show and a game.” This open expression of disdain is of course also a cue from the leader that the wholesale disqualification of the reformists of the type who won in the sixth parliamentary elections is not only fine but expected.

The tightening of the conversational space is only one aspect of what is going on. For the conservative candidates like Haddad Adel and Bahonar, the focus on foreign enemies and their domestic servants is also intended to serve the much more mundane purpose of helping them win in an election which they worry conservatives might lose to more centrist candidates.

By pointing the accusatory finger towards the reformists, they hope to change the conversation and deflect attention from the criticism - coming even from the centrist candidates and parties with a good chance of doing well in the election - that the conservatives controlling the executive and legislative branches have been both reckless and incompetent in their running of the economy.

Instead, the "successes" the conservatives have had in defending Iran’s “national sovereignty” and standing tall on the nuclear issue will be touted with a constant reference to those who were ready to give in on the question of enrichment out of fear. This attempted change of conversation is also important for the maintenance of some sort of unity among the conservative ranks which are deeply divided over economic issues and policies pursued by President Ahmadinejad

The upcoming election will still be highly contested and choices have to be made. According to the Ministry of Interior, which is in charge of running the elections, already close to 4200 candidates have so far signed up for the 290-seat parliament (including some big names such as the conservative Ali Larijani who was pushed out of his job as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator by Ahmadinejad). But the acrimonious nature of US-Iran relations is being used as an excuse to narrow the choices the electorate has. So the conservative Haddad Adel is probably secretly hoping that the Americans do keep meddling, of course only with their words and not in their deeds. Read more on this article...

WHO/Iraqi study of civilian deaths (UPDATED)

(Also posted on my own blog.)

The new study, which includes more extensive sampling than the earlier one published in Lancet in 2006, estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died violent deaths in the first three years (2003-6) following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is still a likelihood of undercounting, but this is likely to be right order of magnitude. This is a sobering finding and it helps to emphasize the horrors through which Iraqis have lived. (Previous comment here.)

The new study will appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008. Catherine and John Brownstein's "perspective" on the study will also appear in the January 31 issue, but an advance copy is available here.

New Estimate of Violent Deaths Among Iraqis Is Lower
Read more on this article...

The US and Iran after the NIE

I have written a piece about the implications of the National Intelligence Estimate for US-Iran relations for the MIT Center for International Studies. In it I conclude:

Today, Tehran is possibly stirring a return of strategic thinking to American foreign policy, even if the lethargic Bush administration is unlikely to take up the challenge. But the reduction of the Iran question to “the bomb” and “chaos” misses the basic question that is implicit in the NIE report and Bush’s successor has to face regarding Iran: If the regionally ascendant Islamic Iran, with or without an actual bomb, is here to stay, would U.S. interests in the region be better served through a friendlier, even if not trouble free, relationship with it, or further antagonism that pushes Iran to act as a spoiler in the region and look for tactical and strategic alliances to the East to counter to American belligerence?

You can read the whole thing here. Read more on this article...

AHMED RASHID IN NAUDERO, AT THE GRAVESIDE OF BENAZIR BHUTTO.

A shorter version of this article appeared today in the Daily Telegraph.

AHMED RASHID IN NAUDERO, AT THE GRAVESIDE OF BENAZIR BHUTTO.

Nearly two weeks after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, people are still coming in their tens of thousands to condole with her husband Asif Ali Zardari and weep and rage at her graveside.
They come on camels and tractor trolleys, luxury cars and private planes. Like an endless stream the lines of vehicles clog this small village sending up showers of dust that settle on the lush fields of sugar cane. Some have walked the 300 kilometers from Karachi like monks doing penance.

There are Sindhis with their embroidered caps, Punjabis with enormous turbans and fierce looking Pashtun and Baloch tribesmen, as well as Kashmiris and Afghans with their winter caps and Mongols who live close to the Chinese border. In death no other politician in Pakistan has the capacity to assemble the entire nation in such a way – a nation usually divided by ethnic and sectarian hatreds.

In the feudal family farm house of Bhutto at Naudero, Zardari sits in the middle of a warren of rooms and courtyards jam packed with mourners. He moves from room to room hugging friends and raising his hands in frequent prayer. The rooms are windowless, built over the years to accommodate the maximum number of supplicants as Bhutto herself was a feudal land lord. Now the walls are covered with pictures of her and her children and people bust into tears looking at them. We are now in the tenth day of the 40 day mourning period prescribed by Islam and the crowds should be thinning out, but there is no sign of that as yet.

As we wait to see Zardari, sitting next to me are one of the country’s top industrialists, senior lawyers and Pakistan’s leading landscape painter. Also an elderly woman who bursts into tears every few minutes and wails, ‘’Oh God could you not have taken me instead of her.’’ Outside in the courtyard thousands of peasants mill around, dazed and confused waiting to touch the hem of Zardari’s clothes, if not his hands.

Since Bhutto’s death the Western media has revived Zardari’s nickname ‘Mr. Ten Percent’, accrued from the commissions he allegedly made in deals when Bhutto was Prime Minister twice in the 1990s. At one point he was immensely disliked in the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) but now the same leaders say he is a changed man, more mature, responsible and more humble.
For starters he spent eight years in jail under Musharraf but was never found guilty of any of the charges against him. For many in the PPP he has paid his dues with his excessively long jail term. Not a single Pakistani newspaper has used the nickname since Bhutto’s death and the media now hang on Zardari’s every word. In the light of his wife’s murder, he has been forgiven his sins – for the time being at least.

He has said he will guide the PPP up to the elections on February 18 and then take a back seat. The permanent leader of the party is his son Bilawal Bhutto, aged 19 and now in his first year at Oxford University. Zardari will not contest a seat in parliament and he has appointed another PPP leader, fellow Sindhi landlord Amin Fahim as the party candidate to be Prime Minister.

Again much criticism has come from the Western media about the dynastic succession and the lack of democracy in the party – but in rural Sindh people would accept nothing less than a Bhutto to lead them. Benazir was first and foremost a Sindhi and even if Bilawal is underage, unimpressive and raw he is a Bhutto. Politics across South Asia is littered with political dynasties and there is nothing anyone can do about it for the time being.

Zardari escapes with a small group of journalists into his hideaway, a tiny soundproof room which can only seat five people. In a private conservation he unburdens his thoughts and fears for the future. < style=""> them for the first time. Bhutto dictated her orders to them, Zardari says all decisions are being made collectively and through consensus. He says nobody can replace Benazir with her knowledge and experience –‘’we need all the brains we can muster to take the right decisions,’’ he says. In every sentence in invokes her name and her memory.

Zardari along with every other Sindhi and perhaps the majority of Pakistanis is convinced that the government, the army and the intelligence services were involved in Benazir’s murder. Despite the heated government denials, the bumbling mistakes made by the regime since her death and the total lack of remorse shown by Musharraf and his political partners have only further convinced the public of a conspiracy. Zardari and the PPP insist that nobody had the capacity to carry out such a murder except the state, the so called establishment.

Zardari and the PPP also fear that Musharraf and the military will never allow general elections to take place on 18 February because there will be a landslide sympathy vote for the PPP. All the indications are that he is right.

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) is in a panic, their leaders dare not come out of their house for fear of crowds beating them up or blaming them for Bhutto’s death. Some PML politicians are trying to whip up Punjabi-Sindhi ethnic tensions – a sure fire way to get the polls postponed. Nobody rules out more political assassinations either.

Zardari asks, that when Musharraf has done everything possible in the past nine months to stop the PPP juggernaut – declared an emergency, suspended the constitution, imprisoned thousands of people, curbed the media and sacked Supreme Court judges – how can he now allow free and fair elections.

Equally the military could try and rig the elections but that is more difficult now than it was on the original election date of January 8. Now there is greater public vigilance and much greater hatred for the regime. Zardari does not doubt that the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) will use the next eight weeks to try and break the PPP.

Either way Zardari and the PPP have to find answers and a strategy to deflect all these possibilities. The distraught mourners also expect answers. Beyond the gates of Naudero the stream of people head to the massive mock Moghul tomb three miles away.

Here Benazir is buried next to her beloved father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who was hanged by the military in 1979. Just four weeks ago she had come to lay a wreath at her father’s grave and is if full of premonitions, had marked out exactly where she wanted to be buried, telling attendants to fence off the area.

There are moving displays of public grief at her graveside, but even more there is boiling public anger. The noise is deafening as men and women walk in together chanting not prayers, but slogans against Musharraf. Two black banners hanging above her grave, say it all. One whispers ‘’Benazir – the unblemished and innocent,’’ the other cries out, ‘’we will take revenge on her killers.’’

Her grave is covered in a mountain of rose petals – outside flower vendors say her death has sucked up all the roses of Pakistan like a giant vacuum cleaner. Some people pick a rose petal of her grave, carefully smell its fragrance and then pocket it. The memory of her and the manner of her death will haunt Pakistan for years to come. Read more on this article...

Do Taliban Represent Pashtun Identity? A Letter from Kurram

But before I get to that, a couple other items: The word from Pakistan (via telephone) is now that there may be no elections. Free and fair elections would produce an angry, empowered, PPP-led government,perhaps allied with Nawaz Sharif, that would be likely to confront the military. If the PPP, PML-N, and their allies controlled 75% of the seats, they could impeach the president. Rigged elections would not be accepted in the current mood and could lead to confrontations in the street. The solution: Postpone the elections for a year, while replacing the caretaker government with a government of national unity including the PPP, PML-N, and other major parties, with a significant role for the Islamist MMA alliance. The army would act as the guarantor of this agreement and therefore would continue to exercise hegemony.

Rasul Bakhsh Rais has sent his excellent article, "Pakistan's Elections: Troubled Legacy."

Also: excellent article on Benazir Bhutto by Mahnaz Ispahani in Slate.

Delayed elections are the latest effort by the Musharraf government to limit the power of civilian political parties in Pakistan. In this context, the lessons of Benazir Bhutto's life and her ghastly death must be a wake-up call to the Bush administration and certainly to its successor: Accepting a garrison state, however disguised, over a legitimately elected civilian government, is an acknowledgment of terror's emerging triumph in Pakistan. It has always been a short-term, tactical, and doomed solution to the long-term, incendiary problem of security of governance in a nuclear-armed state. The lesson of Benazir Bhutto is that without a long-term and significant investment in civilian political institutions, especially political parties, Pakistan, and with it the "global war on terror," will be lost. The task is frustrating, requires a significant financial commitment, and is not without risks, but the potential rewards are far greater than a continuing alliance with President Pervez Musharraf.

Finish it here.

To the main theme:

This week I received a query from someone writing an article for a magazine:

To what extent should popular support of the Taliban/militants in the FATA and NWFP be understood simply as an expression of Pathan solidarity? And to the extent that that's the case, do the locals perceive the Pakistani army operations as a Punjabi assault on their territory?

The idea that Taliban are Pashtuns fighting against foreign invaders is a common one. It is the official position of the Government of Pakistan. When I was in Pakistan in November, one of my Pashtun nationalist friends asked, "If Taliban are Pashtuns fighting against foreigners, who are the foreigners in Swat?"

This week I received a copy of a letter dated December 29, 2007, written by Dr. Abid Ali Shah, a Pashtun from Kurram Agency, to Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, a Pashtun ex-general also from Kurram Agency, who was at that time Governor of the Northwest Frontier Province. Since that time Governor Orakzai has resigned. Orakzai originated the policy of seeking negotiated truces with the Pakistan Taliban in the tribal agencies and reportedly opposed plans for the use of force there in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

Here is what Dr. Shah had to say (facsimile of letter here):

Your Excellency,

With due respect I just remind that today is the 44^th day of clashes and unrest in Kurram Agency. . . . Your Excellency knows the number of killed, injured, suffered, and displaced. The over all views is misery, blood shed and anarchy.

There are sick, elder, women and innocent children in need of immediate attention. There are families starving and if you look from top of Parachinar till lower end at Chappary gate, each house or family has suffered in one or other way. Every body is not fighting but in fact the whole zone is under the anarchy of known wanted militants.

Your Excellency just imagines, the respectable commander Kurram militia was requested to intervene but he proudly answered that, I do not want my jawans [soldiers] to be killed. I ask your Excellency, if the national security is under threat, is the soldier has right to say that I don’t want to be killed? Who is then responsible to implement Govt writ?

Your Excellency, this is very interesting that security forces have vacated their positions for militants and each person is fighting for his own sect. If this becomes the trend, then what will be the end result and who will do justice?

Your Excellency, this is undeniable fact that all wanted militants from Waziristan, Uzbeks and outlawed Lashkar e jahangwi are encamped in lower Kurram and fighting so called jehad. Why they have such free and easy access and no one is in position to tackle them?

I hope and request your Excellency to act immediately to implement Govt writ and restore Peace in the beautiful valley.

While the populations of Upper and Lower Kurram are Pashtun, the Aurakzai tribe of lower Kurram is Sunni, while the Turi tribe of upper Kurram is Shi'a, as presumably is Dr. Abid Ali Shah. Dr. Shah claims that the militants in Lower Kurram are Pashtun (from Waziristan), Uzbeks (from Uzbekistan), and Punjabis (from Jhang, home of the Deobandi extremist group Lashkar-i Jhangvi). He does not see them as expressions of his ethnic identity. Instead he asks the Governor (also a Pashtun) to restore the authority of the Government.

As a result of these clashes, according to UNHCR, about 6,000 Pakistani Pashtuns, mostly women and children from Kurram Agency have fled to Afghanistan in the past week. Pashtuns are fleeing the Pakistani Taliban to seek refuge in the most insecure parts of Afghanistan.

Perhaps this is an exception, since these Pashtuns are Shi'a, unlike the majority. But elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies:

Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead eight pro-government tribal leaders in the troubled South Waziristan region on Afghanistan's border, officials say. . . .
Officials say they suspect the attackers to be Uzbek militants, who are opposed to Mullah Nazir. Although a Taleban commander, Mullah Nazir recently fought foreign militants with the backing of Pakistani government troops.

That is the official story: Uzbek militants affiliated with al-Qaida killed former Taliban Pashtun elders who sided with the government. Another story circulating is that the pro-government elders were assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban themselves, who then blamed Uzbeks. In neither case is Islamic militancy an expression of Pashtun identity.

Taliban are not an expression of Pashtun identity or Pashtun or Afghan nationalism, though some people are fighting the foreign troops in Afghanistan with such motives. The Taliban make effective use of Pashtun tribalism and cross-border ties. Al-Qaida has even exploited the tribal code by portraying Bin Laden and his companions as persecuted Muslims seeking refuge (nanawati in Pashto), who must be protected. But the Pakistani government and the British Indian government before them also used Pashtun tribalism for political purposes. The Taliban use transnational commerce or ethnic ties as they serve their goals; but those goals are not ethnic or nationalist. Pashtun nationalists see the Taliban as a threat to, not an expression of, Pashtun identity. Read more on this article...

Pakistan: The Art of Rigging (Updated with Description of New Security Measures)

Update: I previously summarized how post-poll election rigging has taken place in past elections in Pakistan and how, therefore, it might occur again. After my last post, based on an article in The Friday Times, I asked Staffan Darnolf, a Swedish electoral expert working with the Electoral Commission of Pakistan, to respond. He argues that new safeguards introduced for this election make the previous type of post-poll rigging impossible:

The one thing the people trying to rig the elections at the Assistant Commissioner offices have to overcome this time around is the uniquely numbered plastic security seal that prevents the new translucent ballot boxes’ slot from being opened without detection. Party agents, international observers and the 20,000 FAFEN [Free and Fair Election Network, a Pakistani election monitoring organization] observers have all been trained to record the unique serial numbers of the seals used on the ballot boxes in the polling stations, so they have to be prevented from entering the polling stations throughout the Election Day, which would defeat the alleged clandestine stealth-rigging at a select number of polling stations. Also, the party agents and observers at the Returning Officer office have been trained to record these serial numbers and will compare the numbers with the once recorded by their colleagues at the polling station level.

We have ordered 6.5 million seals to the ECP and every single seal has a unique number. The Presiding Officers have no way of knowing which seals will be used in their particular polling station until election day. So, unless each and every AC office has access to 6.5 million identical seals on their premises and can go through every single box and find these unique 30 seals it cannot be done. Also, logistically, someone need to order 1,768,000 million seals on the international market, have it shipped to Pakistan, and then park a couple of sea containers on each premise of the AC just to store the 6.5 million seals. In addition, you probably need to have a couple of hundred workers in each location to find those seals. All this without anyone spilling the beans. I find this non-plausible.

The original post follows:

Pakistani journalist Raheel Asghar Ginai published a complete guide to the "Art of Rigging" in The Friday Times (behind subscription firewall) on December 28, the day after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The method described is exactly the one I was discussing in previous posts, but the account is more detailed. The description is accompanied with an arithmetical illustration from the 1990 election, where I first encountered this system.

Ginai shows that the overall results can be decisively changed by rigging only a few well chosen polling places in a few key constituencies and that the visible part of the polling and vote counting can be done in a completely legal and transparent fashion. Here is the system:

Methodology of Rigging on Election Day

The technique followed on the day of elections is very simple, but foolproof, and comprises the following steps:

l Political parties to be defeated and to be elected are identified

l Seats that are sure to be won by opposition candidates with clear margins are not touched. Fair elections are held in their constituencies

l Similarly, seats in which opposition candidates lose elections with large differences are also not chosen for rigging

l Only those constituencies are chosen where a close fight is expected and the difference of a few thousand votes can swing the results

l A normal constituency consists of about 250 polling stations. Out of about 250 polling stations, hardly 25 to 30 polling stations are chosen for rigging. The remaining polling stations are not touched at all. Fair elections are held in these polling stations as well

l No interference is carried out during polling at any station. Even at the twenty to thirty polling stations designated for rigging, nothing is done till polling is over. As a result, voters observe no rigging anywhere.

l The presiding officers of the chosen 20 to 30 polling stations are appointed by the approval of the intelligence services. They are trustworthy and ‘reliable’.

l Police personnel posted at all polling stations are instructed to obtain a copy of the result from the presiding officers at the end of counting of votes. These results are compiled unofficially at secretly established offices (mostly offices of Assistant Commissioners) to determine how many votes are required to make a defeated candidate win the elections.

l The selected presiding officers now play their pivotal role. They do not pass on a copy of the result to the polling agents of contesting candidates who are threatened by the police to leave the polling stations and disappear without contacting their candidate till the announcement of the result for that particular constituency. Tactics like threats of involving them in murder cases, drug trafficking etc. are used against the polling agents.

l The presiding officers of the chosen polling stations, instead of going to the returning officers at the end of polling, take their record to the secret offices mentioned above. Assistant Commissioners, who have the statistics of the results obtained by the police, cast the required number of votes in favour of the government candidate to make him win.

l The presiding officers then take the modified record of their polling stations to the returning officers, who declare the results according to the figures presented to them by the presiding officers.

l Obviously, the results of such polling stations reach the returning officers with delay, and perhaps are the last to be received. Before arrival of their results, the counting by the returning officers show opposition candidates in the lead. Their supporters start celebrating victory. But the tables are turned by the rigged results of the chosen polling stations towards the end of counting.

l To avoid detection of rigging, polling station–wise progressive results are not released to the media during counting of votes step by step as they are received. Only the final result of the constituency is announced. Only in the 1971 elections, polling station-wise progressive results were made public during counting, because the government did not intend to rig those elections.

With this methodology, voters and observers alike observe no rigging at all throughout the polling day. Changing results by a very small percentage at a very few places produces the desired results against the will of the people and an unpopular government is placed in power ....

Using figures from the 1990 elections, Ginai shows how rigging only 2.84% of the votes could account for the shift of 47 seats from the PPP to the Islami Jamhuri Ittihad, which he characterized as "a creation of the intelligence agencies." This shift made the difference between a PPP government and an IJI government. Today the PML-Q plays the role that the IJI did in 1990.

Ginai offers useful advice for poll watchers and election observers on election day:

Political parties, contesting candidates, the media, and international observers and the voters have to be made aware of this methodology of rigging. The movement of each presiding officer will have to be monitored on the evening of Election Day, till the result of his polling station is released to the media, and the presiding officer reaches the office of the returning officer. Polling station-wise results must be released to the public and private TV and radio channels progressively. Inquiries must be made into results of polling stations that arrive with abnormal delay to the returning officers. Candidates should make attendance of all of their polling agents of all polling stations compulsory at a prescribed point in the evening of the polling day. Any missing polling agent must be traced and questioned in privacy.

Normally, the media and international observers try to observe the polling process at various polling stations. But as rigging is not done during the day, it remains undetected. At the most they will point out some instances of pre-poll rigging, which is rampant these days. People at large form their opinion about the fairness of elections by observing order and discipline at the polling stations. They will, thus, be satisfied, as nothing untoward will be observed at any polling station, and it will never come to light how the will of the people was robbed with the secret casting of just four fake votes per thousand by the district administrations.

Note on Asif Zardari's sarcastic name for PML-Q. I have seen several reports that Asif Ali Zardari has called the PML-Q a "killer" party. This is an untranslatable play on words. PML-Q stands for Pakistan Muslim League -- Quaid-i-Azam. This distinguishes it from the PML-- Nawaz, the offshoot (or original) headed by Nawaz Sharif. Quaid-i-Azam is the quaint olde transliteration of Qa'id-i-A'zam, or Great Leader, the title bestowed on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and President of the original Muslim League. (Qa'id is the same Arabic word that entered Spanish as "El Cid," or "alcalde," the Spanish word for "mayor.")

The word for "killer" used by Zardari is "qatil," which starts with the same Arabic letter, qaf, as qa'id. So what he is saying is that the PML-Q is actually the PML-Qatil. Read more on this article...

Iran’s “Unduly Provocative Act” Against the US Navy?

"Unduly provocative" is the characterization used by Navy Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, who also commands U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, to term the incident that just took place between the Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps and the US Navy. But I am still not sure if I understand what exactly happened. Clearly there are different versions.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman portrayed the incidence as a routine interaction which passed as the Americans identified themselves while Fars News is quoting an unidentified source from IRGC’s Navy as saying that the three American ships were contacted by Iranian vessels “as usual” to identify themselves and, after they did, continued their path.

The American versions of the event, however, include not only getting close (which according to an anonymous military official is usual) but something more. According to Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, “three U.S. ships had been in international waters passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday when they were approached by five fast boats, at least some of which were visibly armed.” Iranian vessels apparently made “some aggressive maneuvers against our vessels and indicated some hostile intent." According to Whitman “the speed of the Iranian boats and their distance from the U.S. Navy vessels demonstrated potentially hostile intent. Bridge-to-bridge radio communications between the Iranian vessels and the U.S. Navy ships reinforced this impression.”

On record, Pentagon initially stayed mum about the content of the communication but an anonymous official told CNN the U.S. Navy received a radio transmission that "officials believe came from the Iranian boats." The transmission said, "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," CNN further reported that when the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away. CNN goes on to say, “After the radio transmission, one of the Iranian boats dropped white boxes into the water in front of the U.S. ships.”

A variation of the sequence of events was relayed by Vice Admiral Cosgriff who said that after five boats approached the U.S. formation and "maneuvered aggressively in the direction of the U.S. ships, "U.S. captains called on the radio and sounded the ships’ horns to warn the Iranians off. It was apparently after this initial contact that “the (U.S.) ships received a radio call that was threatening to our ships to the effect that they were closing our ships and that the U.S. ships would explode.” So it seems to me that there needs to be some clarification about who called who first and when the verbal threat was voiced. There also needs to be a bit more clarity about exactly what words were used and whether there was a possibility of miscommunication.

I ask these questions because if such a verbal threat did actually occur, this is a big deal that cannot, as Juan Cole suggests, simply be attributed to “some gung-ho local IRGC commander who'd been at sea way too long.” As far as I am concerned, if there was indeed such a threatening communication to which the US Navy reacted, we are either talking about a case of miscommunication (a genuine mistake/misunderstanding on the part of US Navy) or an outright provocation on the Iranian part, the order for which must have come from the top perhaps to make a point prior to George Bush’s visit to the Middle East that Iran can make trouble for the US forces if it wishes to.

While I cannot rule out the possibility of this provocation, neither can I rule out the possibility voiced by some in the Iranian media that, given the big hoopla made about the incidence in the US as well as Arab media, that the Bush Administration is essentially trying to heighten the Iranian threat right before George Bush’s trip to the region which according to most observers has as one of its objectives the cementing of a coalition against Iran.

By the way, in the process of checking the reaction in the Iranian press, I stumbled on a denunciation in the hard-line Rajanews of the “unprecedented and provocative act” by the website belonging to the US Naval Forces Central Command identifying the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf. Iranians of all ilks are rather testy about this so I checked the command’s website and sure enough the first news item identifies the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.

I have to admit that I am not very up to date about the controversy over the usage of the term and do not know if this is something new but a quick check of the command’s website suggests that it must not be as the command’s mission statement and map of the region also identify the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf. I had heard that in recent years various branches of the US armed forces had issued directives to their members to use the "Arabian Gulf" when operating in the area, presumably due to increased cooperation with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Apparently all multinational naval forces (including Australia, the US and UK) use "Arabian Gulf" during operations, and their naval charts reflect this. But my understanding was that since the United States officially accepts the Persian Gulf as the proper name (see for instance the CIA Fact book map of Iran) that the name was still used in official publications and websites of the military branches. I guess I was wrong. Learning something new everyday… Read more on this article...

"PAKISTAN AFTER THE ASSASSINATION": Interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of nuclear and high-energy physics, and chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, has been interviewed by Stefania Maurizi for Il Venerdi (Friday supplement) of La Repubblica, where the interview will be published in Italian. With permission, I extract a few excerpts of particular relevance to the U.S. and reproduce the entire interview afterwards in the original English, as supplied by Professor Hoodbhoy.

On the immediate future:

Q: Ideally, what do you want to see happen in the next few weeks?

A: I want Musharraf to go - resign or somehow be removed, preferably without bloodshed. I want the independent judiciary restored, a new neutral caretaker government installed for overseeing free and fair elections, and then elections that would decide upon the new parliament and prime minister. This will not immediately solve Pakistan's fundamental problems - army dominance, maldistribution of wealth, religious fanaticism, provincial imbalances - but it would get Pakistan on the track to democracy instead of the self-destruction it is now racing towards.

On U.S. policy:

Q: People in Washington are increasingly frustrated with Musharraf's counterterrorism efforts, however they think there are no alternatives to Musharraf. What do you think about this?

A: The Americans have tunnel vision. They want lackeys like Musharraf who do their bidding, although here too there is deception at work. They know, but choose to forget, that Pakistani military leaders, Musharraf included, are the makers of the jihadist monster. . . .

Musharraf is extremely unpopular now and the Americans will have to dump him at some point. It is hard to find a pro-Musharraf person anywhere in the country except in the top business circles and the top army leadership. Until recently he ran both the army and the government himself, with the connivance of a rubber-stamp Parliament put in place through rigged elections. When the courts were about to rule that he could not legally be president, Musharraf chose to suspend the constitution and impose emergency rule. He dismissed the Supreme Court and arrested the judges, replacing them with judges who obey his every command. He blocked all independent television channels, and punished the news media for disparaging him or the army. His police arrested thousands of lawyers and pro-democracy activists. He ordered that civilians be tried in closed military courts. This was necessary, he said, to save Pakistan from a rapidly growing Islamist insurgency. But he released 25 Islamic extremists on the day that the judges were arrested. In spite of all this, George W. Bush called Musharraf "a democrat at heart". It makes you sick.

The Americans have shot themselves in the foot by supporting the army consistently for decades. They have lost credibility and respect among Pakistanis. Everybody laughs when they hear that America wants democracy for Pakistan. In this situation, even if Musharraf goes and Gen. Kayani (the new army chief) takes over, the best that American can hope for is for the status quo. This is sad, because America is a great country with many virtues. If only they could get over their hangup of wanting to run the world! It's an impossible task anyway.

On al-Qaida and Taliban:

Q: What could be an effective way to fight Al Qaeda and the Taleban in Pakistan?

A: To fight and win this war, Pakistan will need to mobilize both its people and the state. The notion of a power-sharing agreement between the state and Taliban is a non-starter; the spectacular failures of earlier agreements should be a lesson. Instead the government should help create public consensus through open forum discussions, proceed faster on infrastructure development in the tribal areas, and make judicious use of military force - troops only, no air power. This should become every Pakistani's war, not just the army's, and it will have to be fought even if America packs up and goes away. But, as long as Musharraf is president, it will be impossible to get popular support for the war. If presented with a choice between Musharraf and the Taliban, the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis would want the latter - although I am sure they would regret it later.

Here is the full text of the interview:

Q: Let's start with the tragedy of Bhutto assassination. Today, international media remind us she was the first woman to become the PM of an Islamic country, she was a democratic leader, etc. Nonetheless, she was the scion of a feudal family, which was primarily responsible for making Pakistan an atomic power and she was known for the authoritarian control of her party. Looking back, how do you judge Benazir Bhutto?

A: Having first known Benazir Bhutto from high school in Karachi, and then later in Cambridge (Massachusetts), I am deeply saddened by her murder. But, although the international media paint her as someone who could have led Pakistan into the modern age, the truth is very different. Her two tenures as prime minister were a nightmare of autocratic government and mis-governance. Billions disappeared from foreign aid. A Swiss court found her guilty of money laundering in 2003. Ms. Bhutto owned mansions and palaces across the world. She even tried to steal land from my (public) university to feed the rapacious appetite of her party members.

Even during school days, Benazir thought she had been born to rule. More importantly, she made not the slightest effort to change the feudal character of Pakistani politics and society. The Bhuttos own vast tracts of agricultural land in Sindh that is worked upon by serfs. Although she promised to bring democracy to Pakistan, after returning to Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto made clear that for a few table scraps she would be happy to team up with General Musharraf under the hopelessly absurd US plan to give our military government a civilian face. Her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party was her fiefdom. She appointed herself as "chairperson for life". Reflecting the mindset of a feudal princess, she even named her successors to be male members from her family: her 19-year son, who is a student at Oxford and knows nothing about Pakistani culture, as well as her phenomenally corrupt husband, initially known as Mr Ten Percent and later as Mr. Thirty Percent.

Q: Was Ms. Bhutto a model for Pakistani women?

A: She was courageous and single-minded. And she showed that a woman could be the head of a conservative Islamic state. Nevertheless, it is hard to see what she wanted beyond personal power. Although she said that she was fighting for grand causes, I'm still trying to figure out what they were. She certainly did nothing for Pakistani women during her two stints in power and left untouched the horrific Hudood laws, according to which a rape victim needs to produce 4 witnesses to the act of penetration (else she could be punished for fornication). Nor did she try to overturn the Pakistani blasphemy law that prescribes death as the minimum penalty for those convicted of insulting the prophet of Islam or his companions. As for democracy: she had been desperate to do a deal with Musharraf who dangled over her head the many corruption cases that she was charged with. But he proved too clever for her and she was forced into the opposition.

In foreign policy, she played footsie with the army. It could do whatever it liked, including making nuclear weapons, sending Islamic militants into Kashmir, and organizing the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. In 2002 she regretted having signed the document authorizing funds for the Taliban forces poised to capture Kandahar. But Ms. Bhutto makes an excellent martyr. In her death she will doubtlessly play a more positive role than when alive.

Q: Al Qaeda was immediately blamed for Bhutto assassination. However, many people hated her: Musharraf, the Army, and the infamous ISI, which in 1990 removed Bhutto from power after she had replaced General Hameed Gul, the man who invented the Taliban [While Professor Hoodbhoy did not distract the interviewer from the subject, it should be noted that Hameed Gul was not involved in the origin of the Taliban. The principal general involved in 1994 was General Naseerullah Babar, principal advisor on Afghanistan to both Zulfiqar Ali and Benazir Bhutto. -- BRR] . Do you believe that Al Qaeda was really responsible for killing Benazir Bhutto? Who is going to gain from Bhutto's death?

A: There are different possibilities and much confusion. But some facts are certain. There definitely were gunshots, and this was followed by a suicide blast. Now, I do not think that suicide bombers can be bought with any number of rupees. Only a religious fanatic lured by heavenly rewards would blow himself up. Therefore Al-Qaida, the Taliban, or other Islamic jihadist groups are strong possibilities. They always hated Bhutto, but even more after she announced in Washington that, if elected prime minister, she would fight them even more vigorously than Musharraf. Of course, rogue elements of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, who are also strong Islamists, and who lie deeply hidden within the establishment, could also have done it. They have a stock of suicide bombers available to them, as evidenced by the success they have had in organizing suicide attacks upon army commandos as well as their own colleagues.

So did Islamists of one or the other flavour do it? Maybe, but the waters have been muddied by the government. First, publicly available photographs and videos show a modern-looking gunman accompanying the suicide bomber. He fired three shots, heard by all present, at least one of which hit Bhutto. Some say that there was a second sharpshooter in a building too. On the other hand, the government initially insisted she died from concussion and not a bullet wound - an obvious lie immediately refuted by those in the same car as Bhutto. Second, in just an hour after the assassination, the police washed away all the bloody evidence with water hoses. So, it is quite possible that non-Islamists in the government have somehow used brainwashed suicide bombers, trained in mosques and madrassas, to do their dirty job. But, as in the JFK murder, the truth will never be known.

As for the gainers and losers: Islamist groups saw Bhutto as a tool of America that would be used against them, and a leader who could secularize Pakistan. Plus, she was a woman and popular. But Musharraf and his political party, the PML(Q), have also gained because a political rival has been eliminated. The losers are those Pakistanis who wish for a secular, modern Pakistan and not one that is run by mullahs. Although she never delivered on her promises, her followers never lost faith.

Q: There is a lot of concern about the future of Pakistan. How real is the threat of an Islamic takeover, in your opinion?

A: It has already been taken over! Twenty five years ago the Pakistani state began pushing Islam on to its people as a matter of policy. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts required that the candidate demonstrate knowledge of Islamic teachings, and jihad was propagated through schoolbooks. Today government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. But now the state is realizing that it shot itself in the foot. The fanatical jihadists it created have turned against it. It is supreme irony that the Pakistan Army - whose men were recruited under the banner of jihad and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam - is now frequently targeted by suicide bombers who are fighting a jihad to bring even stricter Islam. It has lost a thousand or more men fighting Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The pace of radicalization has quickened. There are almost daily suicide attacks. This phenomenon was almost unknown in Pakistan before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now it is common in major cities as well as tribal areas. The targets have been the Pakistan army, police, incumbent and retired government leaders, and rival Islamic sects. But this is just the tip of the iceberg; we'll see much more in years ahead.

Q: Ideally, what do you want to see happen in the next few weeks?

A: I want Musharraf to go - resign or somehow be removed, preferably without bloodshed. I want the independent judiciary restored, a new neutral caretaker government installed for overseeing free and fair elections, and then elections that would decide upon the new parliament and prime minister. This will not immediately solve Pakistan's fundamental problems - army dominance, maldistribution of wealth, religious fanaticism, provincial imbalances - but it would get Pakistan on the track to democracy instead of the self-destruction it is now racing towards.

Q: People in Washington are increasingly frustrated with Musharraf's counterterrorism efforts, however they think there are no alternatives to Musharraf. What do you think about this?

A: The Americans have tunnel vision. They want lackeys like Musharraf who do their bidding, although here too there is deception at work. They know, but choose to forget, that Pakistani military leaders, Musharraf included, are the makers of the jihadist monster. In 1999, after Musharraf launched the secret Kargil operation in Kashmir, the United Jihad Council celebrated him as a true fighter for Islam. After 911 such praises disappeared, but under his leadership the army still covertly supported jihadist groups and the Taliban in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Musharraf is extremely unpopular now and the Americans will have to dump him at some point. It is hard to find a pro-Musharraf person anywhere in the country except in the top business circles and the top army leadership. Until recently he ran both the army and the government himself, with the connivance of a rubber-stamp Parliament put in place through rigged elections. When the courts were about to rule that he could not legally be president, Musharraf chose to suspend the constitution and impose emergency rule. He dismissed the Supreme Court and arrested the judges, replacing them with judges who obey his every command. He blocked all independent television channels, and punished the news media for disparaging him or the army. His police arrested thousands of lawyers and pro-democracy activists. He ordered that civilians be tried in closed military courts. This was necessary, he said, to save Pakistan from a rapidly growing Islamist insurgency. But he released 25 Islamic extremists on the day that the judges were arrested. In spite of all this, George W. Bush called Musharraf "a democrat at heart". It makes you sick.

The Americans have shot themselves in the foot by supporting the army consistently for decades. They have lost credibility and respect among Pakistanis. Everybody laughs when they hear that America wants democracy for Pakistan. In this situation, even if Musharraf goes and Gen. Kayani (the new army chief) takes over, the best that American can hope for is for the status quo. This is sad, because America is a great country with many virtues. If only they could get over their hangup of wanting to run the world! It's an impossible task anyway.
Q: In Pakistan what is the man on the street thinking?

A: Almost everyone holds the government responsible for the assassination. Tragically, suicide bombings are not condemned with any particular vigor. There is no strong reaction against the mullahs, madrassas, and jihadis. Perhaps people are afraid to criticize them because this might be seen as a criticism of Islam. Interestingly, in all the street demonstrations I have gone to after the Bhutto assassinations, there was no call for cracking down on extremists. Yesterday I met the lone taxi driver who thought the Islamists did it. I tipped him well.

Q: What could be an effective way to fight Al Qaeda and the Taleban in Pakistan?

A: To fight and win this war, Pakistan will need to mobilize both its people and the state. The notion of a power-sharing agreement between the state and Taliban is a non-starter; the spectacular failures of earlier agreements should be a lesson. Instead the government should help create public consensus through open forum discussions, proceed faster on infrastructure development in the tribal areas, and make judicious use of military force - troops only, no air power. This should become every Pakistani's war, not just the army's, and it will have to be fought even if America packs up and goes away. But, as long as Musharraf is president, it will be impossible to get popular support for the war. If presented with a choice between Musharraf and the Taliban, the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis would want the latter - although I am sure they would regret it later.

Q: Let's talk about Pakistan's nukes. There a lot of concern about the possibility that nuclear weapons could end up into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Early in December the Washington Post revealed that a small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence analysts convened in Washington for exploring strategies to secure Pakistani nukes if the Pakistani regime falls apart. Their conclusions were very scaring, as, - there are no palatable ways to forcibly ensure the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. What do you think about this?

A: The government says there is absolutely no danger of loose nukes. Pakistan has been sending serving officers of the Strategic Plans Division, which is the agency responsible for handling nuclear weapons, to the United States for training in safety measures (PAL's locking devices, storing procedures, etc). But there's no way of telling if this will be effective. Extremists have already penetrated deep into the army and the intelligence agencies. We now see repeated evidence: for example, last month an unmarked bus carrying employees of the Inter Services Intelligence [Pakistan's secret intelligence], was collecting employees early in the morning. It was boarded by a suicide bomber who blew himself up killing 25. It was an inside job.
And now there are many other such examples, such as that of an army man killing 16 Special Services Group commandos in a suicide attack at Ghazi Barotha. A part of the establishment is clearly at war with another part. There are also scientists, as well as military people, who are radical Islamists. Many questions come to mind: can there be collusion between different field-level commanders, resulting in the hijacking of a nuclear weapon? Could outsider groups develop links with insiders? Given the absence of accurate records of fissile material production, can one be certain that small quantities of highly enriched uranium or weapons grade plutonium have not already been diverted? I do not know the answers. Nobody does. Read more on this article...

Economists Weigh in on Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan

Amid all the ideologically-driven policy proposals about narcotics in Afghanistan, the Financial Times has done reality a favor: it has published a proposal from two real-life economists, about how to use economic policy to help Afghans move out of illicit drug production.

Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate in Economics, and Graciana del Castillo (ex-IMF), both now of Columbia University, note the elementary but often ignored point:

Lack of productive alternatives [not GREED! -- BRR] has driven farmers to turn to growing poppies. Drug-traffickers support farmers by advancing credit and sharing some of the risks of production. Some farmers can survive only by selling their crops in advance. If the crops fail, they become in debt to the traffickers, creating a vicious circle.

Phelps and del Castillo repeat just what the Afghan government has been saying about the massive failures of the international aid program:

Since US military intervention and the Bonn agreement of late 2001, government tax revenue has averaged only about 5 per cent of gross domestic product. Warlords have been left to control a large percentage of customs revenues collected at the borders. Furthermore, donors channel a large part of their aid – up to 75 per cent at times – outside the government budget or control. As a result, the Karzai government has been unable to provide basic services and lawful employment. Un­fulfilled expectations of better living conditions and the thriving drug business have put the Taliban back into control of large parts of the territory.

The international community is not helping Afghanistan to stand on its own feet.

Instead of asking the tiresome, patronizing, ignorant and ultimately destructive question, "How do we stop greedy Afghan farmers from growing such a profitable crop," they ask the right question:

Is it possible to turn the entre­preneurial spirit of the Afghans away from producing drugs into lawful production such as cotton and textiles?

After briefly dismissing the pillars of conventional anti-drug policy (as I did at greater length but perhaps not to greater effect in a series of posts here), they propose solutions based on a reformed aid system and creating markets for Afghan products (not just crops):

Both the US and the European Union assist their farmers through loan and price support programmes and other incentives. If donors want to “do good”, they should support a two-pronged economic reconstruction strategy.

First, donors should channel reconstruction aid through the budget to enable the government to provide subsidies or other incentives (such as price support programmes) to replace poppies with lawful crops such as cotton, which was produced in the past. The UK government is at present considering price support for Afghan farmers. Other donors should do the same.

Second, once production of lawful crops increases, donors should provide know-how, technical support and credit for the local industrialisation of such crops. At the same time, donors should open their markets through special preferential tariff treatment to light, labour-intensive manufactures from Afghanistan, including textiles.

On February 6, all the major donors and troop contributors will meet with the Afghan government in Tokyo for the seventh meeting of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board of the Afghanistan Compact. The main subject will be counter-narcotics. The Afghan government is likely to present proposals similar to what Phelps and del Castillo suggest.

I'd like to hear from the U.S. presidential candidates on this.

Read more on this article...

Asia Society Recordings on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Fora.tv has posted a video recording of yesterday's Asia Society (January 4) Town Hall meeting on "The Crisis in Pakistan: What Next after the Bhutto Assassination?" (Picture, left to right: Barnett R. Rubin, Kiran Khalid, moderator, Richard Holbrooke, Asia Society.)

From the Asia Society website:

NEW YORK, January 4, 2008 -In response to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, leading experts participate in an emergency town hall meeting at Asia Society's headquarters in New York and discuss the present domestic political situation in the country as well as implications for US policy.

Barnett Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, where he also directs the program on the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, discusses Bhutto's assassination in the context of her return to the country following a US-brokered deal with Musharraf.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, 2007-08 Annual Pakistan Studies Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, joining via teleconference from Pakistan, says the opposition to the military in general and Musharraf in particular is growing rapidly in the country.
Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the UN and Chairman of the Asia Society, argues that US policy towards Pakistan will change in the coming year following the presidential elections as President Musharraf has lost support both at home and abroad.

Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the UN and Chairman of the Asia Society, argues that US policy towards Pakistan will change in the coming year following the presidential elections as President Musharraf has lost support both at home and abroad.

The Asia Society has also posted a video of an interview with Ahmed Rashid and me earlier in December and also has a useful page on the Crisis in Pakistan. Read more on this article...

Free Fouad الحرية لفؤاد

"In Saudi Arabia, there is no guarantee that you won't be arrested because of your frankness and speaking your mind on your blog." posted Fouad al-Farhan on his blog. He was correct.

He has been detained by Saudi authorities for over 24 days.

There is no power, we bloggers hold over states or royals. There is only the power of disseminating information freely and widely and, in the interest only, of truth. Here are some of the posts that reportedly got him in trouble - specifically his call to free Saud al-Hashmi - and other academics and professionals under state detention.

CM stands with many others who call upon the Kingdom to free Fouad. Human rights, social justice and the freedoms of conscience and speech are solutions, and governments--here or abroad--viewing them as problems must be resisted by whatever peaceable means present themselves. Internet commentators can do little, it's true. But one thing we can do is bring attention to bald injustices. Fouad's detention is the detention of everyone who speaks his or her mind, and we intend to do what we can to point and yell until someone gets embarrassed and sends our fellow home to his family. Send letters. Post and link. Lest you think such missives don’t help, you’d be wrong. Lest you think such missives don't help, you'd be wrong.

You can follow the case, and show your support, on this website maintained by family and friends.

January 2, 2008
His Royal Highness King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud
c/o His Excellency Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037

Via facsimile: 202-944-3113

Your Royal Highness:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to protest the continued detention of Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan, a leading Saudi blogger who has been held without charge since early December 2007.

We believe al-Farhan is being held for comments published on his Web site, Alfarhan.org. On December 10, Saudi security agents detained al-Farhan at the Jeddah office of the IT company he owns. Security agents later visited his home and confiscated his laptop.

This week, nearly a month after al-Farhan’s detention, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry at last acknowledged that he has been detained, but would not give the reason for his incarceration. Ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour al-Turki was quoted by several newspapers as saying that al-Farhan was being questioned “about violating non-security regulations” but would not elaborate. Calls from CPJ to the Saudi Embassy in Washington were not returned.

In an e-mail sent to friends prior to his arrest, al-Farhan explained that he had received a phone call from the Saudi Interior Ministry instructing him to prepare himself “to be picked up in the coming two weeks” for questioning by a high-ranking official. He also stated in the e-mail that he believed he was being summoned “because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running an online campaign promoting their issue.” In one of his last posts before his detention, al-Farhan sharply criticized 10 influential Saudi business, religious, and media figures.

Your Royal Highness, we find it deplorable that Saudi authorities would continue to hold our colleague in near secrecy after nearly a month. Arbitrarily detaining a writer and holding him for weeks without saying why violates the most basic norms for free expression and serves as a chilling reminder to those seeking to express their opinions. It also runs counter to official Saudi statements in support of reform and a more open press.

During meetings with CPJ representatives in Riyadh in 2006, Saudi officials affirmed the country’s commitment to gradual reforms and praised the recent loosening of restrictions on the local press. We urge you to use all your influence to ensure that our colleague Fouad al-Farhan is released at once.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter and we look forward to your reply.

Sincerely yours,

Joel Simon
Executive Director

CC:
His Royal Highness Prince Sultan Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince and Minister of Defense
His Royal Highness Prince Nayef Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud, Minister of Interior
The Honorable Ford M. Fraker, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Louise Arbour, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Amnesty International
Article 19 (United Kingdom)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Freedom Forum
Freedom House
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Center for Journalists
International Federation of Journalists
International PEN
International Press Institute
The Newspaper Guild
The North American Broadcasters Association
Overseas Press Club
Reporters Sans Frontières
The Society of Professional Journalists
World Association of Newspapers
World Press Freedom Committee

PS. I am shocked that EFF is not a signatory nor is there any mention of Fouad on their site. What gives? Read more on this article...

Pakistan in Crisis-Townhall Meeting in NYC

Our esteemed colleague, Barney Rubin, will be participating in an emergency townhall meeting discussing the situation after Bhutto’s assassination, and the situation that Pakistan is now facing, at the Asia Society, tomorrow, Friday January 4th, 2008.

It will also be webcast live on the internet, so you can listen in during the program and email any questions you have for the speakers.

Asia Society cordially invites you to an emergency town hall meeting

Pakistan in Crisis:
What Next After the Bhutto Assassination?


Speakers:
- Hasan-Askari Rizvi, 2007-08 Annual Pakistan Studies Scholar, The Johns Hopkins University (via teleconference from Pakistan)
- Barnett R. Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New York University
- Kiran Khalid, Freelance Broadcast Journalist and documentary filmmaker of "We Are Not Free" about media censorship in Pakistan (moderator)


The assassination of former Prime Minister and then leading prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto, just days before the planned parliamentary elections,
(now postponed), has brought Pakistan into even deeper crisis. This caps one of the most turbulent years in Pakistan’s history with waves of violence, suicide attacks, assassination attempts on politicians, unprecedented public protests, constitutional crises, and the resurgence of pro-Taliban forces plaguing the country. This emergency town hall meeting will explore the national, regional, and global implications of the Bhutto assassination.

Please join us at Asia Society’s New York Headquarters or online via live Webcast, to discuss these and other pertinent issues. Internet listeners will be able to ask questions and offer comments via email during the webcast. Please send your questions to moderator@asiasociety.org

Friday, January 4, 2008
8:00 – 8:30 AM Breakfast and Registration
8:30 – 10:00 AM Program

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, New York City


Policy programs at the Asia Society are generously supported by the Nicholas Platt Endowment for Public Policy

Read more on this article...

More on Election Rigging in Pakistan

UPDATE: I have posted a scanned copy of the PPP's report on election rigging, Another Stain on the Face of Democracy. According to the sub-title, this report is only about pre-poll rigging. This is apparently the report that Benazir Bhutto was planning to give to a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation the evening that she was murdered. See below.

The summary is as follows:

The Master Plan of Rigging 2008 Elections Unveiled

The administration has planned to rig the Elections in the following manner:

1. Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls for at least 3 - 4 hours. The polling stations will be granted extended opening of thirty minutes which will not be made up for the time lost.
2. Where they collect and secure the ballot box at the end of the polling day, the place will be broken into and ballots will not be stolen but thrown on the floor so they will have solid basis to call for a re-count during which process they will add the votes for their candidates.
3. 90 percent of the equipment that the USA gave the government of Pakistan to fight terrorism is being used to monitor and to keep a check on their political opponents especially the PPP. All of our communications as well as that of other major leaders in other parties are compromised by them. They listen to our conversations up to a mile away and intercept our communications.
4. The regime has asked government-sponsored candidates to give names of their security guards and local thugs to enroll them into the police for three days on election duty. These also include ex-Army personnel. They will be used to fire at voter's stations and drive voters away so that ballots can be stuffed.
5. Election officials are still being changed/transferred.
6. Military Intelligence sits in the offices of returning officers, police officials and other elections officials.
7. Election agents with voters' lists are being asked to give tampered lists to presiding officers.
8. Election being stitched up.
   

The version I have is only 47 pages long, whereas press reports speak of 160 pages. It appears on quick reading to argue that Military Intelligence, rather than the ISI, is the agency responsible for assuring that the election is rigged. I will post more as I receive it.

Original Post:

From now until February 18, when the general elections in Pakistan are scheduled, we will hear a lot about election rigging. I have written about it here and here and also discussed it with Scott Horton of Harpers. I would now like to present some more material, including my correspondence with Staffan Darnolf, a Swedish electoral specialist who has been working with the Electoral Commission of Pakistan for over a year. I was delayed in posting this, as I was waiting for consent from Darnolf in Islamabad, who just gave his approval, remarking, "Just had our fourth power cut today, so sorry for the late reply."

First, general background: Professor Rasul Bakhsh Rais of Lahore University of Management Sciences has written a paper called "Pakistan Elections: Troubled Legacy," a summary of which appeared in The News (Lahore). I will ask Rasul (whose office was next to mine at Columbia University many years ago) for a full copy of the paper and try to make it available. On December 5, the government filed charges against four professors of LUMS, including Rasul, as well as two students,under the Maintenance of Public Order Act, for some act of protest against Emergency rule and dismissal of the Supreme Court. As far as I know, however, the authorities have not gotten around to actually arresting them, as they are preoccupied with other matters. Here is the core of what Professor Rais has to say:

There is lot of evidence to support the allegations that elections have rarely been free or fair in the history of Pakistan except the 1970 [elections]. No elections ever since have been acclaimed as fair and its outcome accepted without doubts and reservations. However the intensity of the claim, as to how the elections were rigged, to what extent, and to favour whom have varied from elections to elections in Pakistan. The question why the outcome of elections has been contested, leads to the second characteristic of the Pakistani elections, the mistrust of the electoral machinery of the country. The Election Commission of Pakistan.

It is because the Commission has failed to cultivate impartiality and trust the two values that would be necessary to make any electoral exercise as successful. This begs another question; have the regimes in power used the electoral machinery to produce results to suit their interests? The answer to this question leads to the third feature of the Pakistani elections-partiality of the executive branch of the government. Interestingly, seven out of eight general elections since 1970 have been conducted either by a military regime directly or by an interim government that it created under its supervision. Therein lies the real dilemma of Pakistan's electoral politics-the civil military relations in Pakistan. The military in Pakistan has its own vision of good politics, good society, good economy and good democracy. It doesn't trust the politicians, nor does it believe that they are genuine representatives of the people of Pakistan. All the military leaders who captured power have viewed free play of democratic forces as dangerous, anti-development, and pregnant with the potential of degenerating to lawlessness and anarchy. In military-dominated or military-directed political system, the electoral process loses its credibility, as it seen by the public as an exercise to bring into power the most favoured groups and route out those opposed to its interventions. The real value of the electoral process lies in facilitating a representative government, and not in being an instrument of political manipulation. Unfortunately, the later expression is true of the way elections have been conducted in Pakistan. It is widely alleged and believed that through its intelligence agencies the military in the shadows or over the horizon has attempted to change the loyalties of politicians, has funded political campaigns of the favourite groups, and has used the Election Commission to change electoral results selectively, if not wholly. [emphasis added.] With low trust in the electoral process and frequent allegations of defrauding the opposition of its true electoral representation, the voter turn out in Pakistani elections has declined. It is also a reflection of distrust of the political class in Pakistan.

Next, recent events: Both the Guardian and the Times of London have reported that, the evening of her assassination, Benazir Bhutto was to present to visiting U.S. Senators and Congressional representatives a report on preparations being made to rig the elections. Declan Walsh of the Guardian:

Bhutto had obtained details of an Islamabad safe house run by the country's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency from where it intended to manipulate the poll, said Sarfraz Khan Lashari, an official on her party's 10-member election monitoring cell. The ISI-led operation would rig the vote in favour of President Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q party through ballot stuffing in constituencies across Sindh and Punjab provinces, he said. The ISI has a long history of meddling with elections in Pakistan, usually in the interest of the country's military establishment.

In 1990 the ISI received 140m rupees (£1.1m at current values) to rig national elections, according to supreme court testimony by the then chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg.

There is no ISI spokesman but a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied the claims. "How can you run an election rigging campaign from a safe house? There is a lot of talk about the ISI but not much substance," he said.

The PPP claims to have identified the safe house, the location of which is given in a smaller document "of much greater sensitivity." According to Jeremy Page for the Times:

The second report, which Ms Bhutto did not plan to release to the media, alleged that the ISI was using some of the $10 billion (£5 billion) in US military aid that Pakistan has received since 2001 to run a covert election operation from a safe house in G5, a central district of Islamabad, he said.

“The report was done by some people who we’ve got in the services. They directly dealt with Benazir Bhutto,” [Lashari] continued, adding that Ms Bhutto was planning to share the contents of the report with the British Ambassador as well as the US lawmakers.

Finally, my discussion with Staffan Darnolf. In his first note, Darnolf wrote:

It was with great interest that I read your interview in Harper’s Magazine. Since working on the Afghanistan elections back in 2004 & 2005, I have always tried to read your work and commentaries. For the last 15 months I have now been working with the ECP [Electoral Commission of Pakistan] here in Pakistan.

I am the first to recognize that the electoral process in Pakistan leaves much to be desired. This includes the method for allocating voters to polling stations, ECP's interaction with political parties and the aggregation of results. In order to achieve the necessary improvements I am of the opinion that we must accurately present the problems.

In this article you mentioned that the elections are likely to be rigged with the assistance of ISI and district administration as “[t]hese ballots, already printed, filled out, and prepared, are then added to those transported from polling places for the final count.” Could you elaborate a bit more here, as I simply don’t understand your argument. The reason being that no central counting of ballot papers take place. The ballot boxes are opened at the polling stations and the ballot papers are counted at the individual polling stations.

I responded:

The method of rigging that I described is sometimes called "ghost polling places." Nawaz Sharif was quoted in the NYT today.

[I erred, as the quotation was actually from Nawaz's brother, Shahbaz Sharif, reported by Jane Perlez:

He [Shahbaz Sharif] accused the current chief minister of Punjab, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, of planning to distribute forged ballot papers and to create “ghost” polling places in order to swing the election in favor of Mr. Musharraf’s party. “Ghost” polling places are extra polling places that are often created in Pakistani elections to enhance the vote totals of one side or another.]

I myself witnessed the ballot counting at the polling place in Sukkur in 1990. It was a model of the democratic process! Then the ballots are sealed with the total and sent to the division center or somewhere [the Returns Office for the constituency] for the totaling of all the polling places in the constituency. The polling places are forbidden to release their counts to the public. But they are monitored by the ISI elections cell. The elections cell checks the "real results" and then adds results from "ghost polling places" before the final count is announced in order to achieve the desired outcome. The ballots are prepared in advance for those constituencies where the ISI's pollling indicates it is necessary. (The desired result is not 99% for PML-Q, but the right balance of seats to leave the military firmly in control while making it look like a parliamentary system.) This produces some odd turnout figures unless real turnout is kept down, which is why the latter is important.

Darnolf replied:

The results aggregation process you are describing in your email might have been in place 17 years ago, but is no longer the case. Nowadays the ballots are counted at the polling station immediately following the end of polling. Party agents and observers are given a copy of the results form. The results forms, and other election material, are sent to the Returning Officer in-charge of the constituency in question, for aggregation. However, no physical counting is taking place at the RO-level. The RO will review the results forms and tally the results based on these documents. In accordance with the National Reconciliation Ordinance and ECP procedures, the aggregated results are shared with party agents and observers present at the Returning Officer premises. Unfortunately, observers and party agents have not always focused on this part of the process, or in some cases been refused access to the RO, which is of great concern to me.

In his final note, in response to my request for his permission to publish his views, he added:

What my argument boils down to is that this notion of ghost polling stations is a red herring. Why go through this huge exercise involving thousands of people to try to siphon off ballot papers, get your hands on ballot boxes, security seals, the right stamps, the original forms, prep the ballot papers and then have them sent to the Returning Officers' premises where no counting of the ballots are taking place? Also, how do you produce faked voters list for these ghost polling stations now when the voters lists are computerized and can be easily verified?

To me, this seems as far-fetched as the allegation by some political parties in late November and the first week of December stating that 108 Punjab NA constituencies had been selected for rigging, as the ruling party's representatives had already received 20-30K (the reported number varied) extra ballot papers for stuffing. The problem with this accusation is that candidate nomination only ended on Dec 15. And before that no one knows which parties and candidates will actually run for office. Hence, it is only on December 16th that the final design of the real ballots are known and they can be produced for any of the 849 directly elected constituencies.

I would be grateful for any further contributions to this discussion. Read more on this article...

Guest Op-Ed: Bush’s Hands Bear Bhutto’s Blood

U.S. Foreign Policy Continues to Destabilize Pakistan

Shahid Buttar*

When news first broke of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, I sat in the home of a judge in Islamabad, glued to the television with an off-duty doctor from the hospital where Bhutto was treated. While the nation and the world continue to reel from the murder of a world-historical figure, relatively little attention has focused on the central role of U.S. foreign policy in causing her death.

Mohtarma and Musharraf

A great many voices have commented on Bhutto’s immense historical stature. Others have noted the tremendous loss her death represents to the people of Pakistan and its grave implications for the nation’s democracy. Benazir Bhutto was a forceful champion for the downtrodden, the most effective international diplomat Pakistan has ever produced, and an inspiration to millions (and possibly even billions) of people stirred by her service as the Muslim world’s first female head of state.

Allegations of corruption dogged Bhutto throughout her public service career, and the essentially hereditary ascension of her son to her party’s leadership begs questions about its sincerity in seeking meaningful democracy. But her untimely death renders those questions less relevant than the current leadership’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law.

Parvez Musharraf’s administration has taken a sharp turn over the past year, destabilizing the country by severely undermining freedom of the press, judicial independence, individual liberties, and democratic transparency – all while relying on ongoing White House support.

Over the past year, Musharraf (whom many Pakistanis call “Busharraf”) has presided over one of Pakistan’s most turbulent periods in its 60-year history. While claiming to address extremism, he has instead gutted the nation’s strongest institutional and cultural defenses against fundamentalism. Having twice sacked the Supreme Court’s popular and independent Chief Justice and jailed the leaders of the democracy movement, Musharraf also imposed several constitutional amendments and severe restrictions on the press that continue to stifle debate.

In this environment, violence and terror are all too predictable. And the enabling complicity of the U.S. is alarming.

Assassination Allegations Suggest Varied Implications

A host of competing theories attempt to explain Bhutto’s assassination. The government predictably blamed al-Qaeda within a day, while offering a theory of her death described by BBC as “bizarre.” Observers have offered several alternative possibilities.
Noting Bhutto’s prior comments that elements within the administration and security apparatuses . . . want me out of the way,” members of her family accused the government – either for killing her outright, or for complicity by notorious rogue elements within the security services, or at least for offering inadequate security to her campaign – as Bhutto herself alleged before the fact. American authorities have reportedly begun investigating Pakistani special operations forces for their potential involvement.

Others blame Bhutto’s husband, Asif “Mr. 10 Percent” Zardari, who plundered state coffers during her rule, allegedly ordered the 1985 and 1996 murders of her brothers in order to eliminate their potential political rivalry, and may have perceived opportunity in his wife’s removal. Some circumstantial evidence supports this theory: in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari refused an autopsy that may have shed light on the cause and is now co-Chairman of the political party she once led.

The Common Element: a Dictator’s Failure to Address Extremism

Regardless of which theory may ultimately prove accurate, the aggressive presence of extremists in Pakistan – if nothing else, for the sake of providing cover for Bhutto’s assassins – was a necessary element for each possibility. Musharraf has harbored extremists in Pakistan since 2001, while duping the U.S. out of roughly $10 billion, of which allegedly half has been consumed by graft.

Despite occasional shows of force, Musharraf conceded territory to terrorists in Pakistan’s anarchic tribal areas. He agreed with tribal leaders to withdraw the Army presence and allow the tribes to police the Afghan border themselves. Al-Qaeda seized the opportunity opened by the agreement, fleeing Afghanistan (where the U.S. trained its precursors as anti-Soviet mujahiddin before expelling them after 9-11) to rebuild itself in Pakistan’s borderlands.
The White House refuses diplomacy with Iran, ignoring an official conclusion that Iran four years ago stopped the nuclear program recently characterized by President Bush as a looming threat. Yet Musharraf refuses the one useful step within his reach: allowing international investigators to debrief atomic scientist A.Q. Khan, whose weapons research made him a Pakistani national hero even while he passed nuclear secrets to North Korea.

All this from a military dictator hailed by President Bush as his “critical ally in the War on Terror.” At the very least (setting aside allegations of his involvement in Bhutto’s assassination), Musharraf allowed al-Qaeda the chance to regroup in Pakistan. And the White House, displaying its characteristic blindness, paid his regime billions to do so.

U.S. Policy Encouraging Terror

Even worse, events in Pakistan send the wrong signal to other countries whose iron-fisted rulers see, in Bush's support for Musharraf, an invitation to suppress democracy in their own countries. 

Terrorists of many stripes, including al-Qaeda, have long based their violence on the premise that it represents the only way to resist dictators supported by post-colonial western patrons. No terrorist recruiting pitch could outmatch America’s hypocrisy towards democracy.

U.S. support for dictators – not only in Pakistan, but also Egypt and Saudi Arabia – will continue to drive young people into the arms of fundamentalists. And their expanding ranks will challenge international security efforts in each of those countries, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Earlier this year, opposition forces non-violently rose against Musharraf to challenge his suspension of Pakistan’s Constitution and imposition of martial law. The White House maintained its support despite Musharraf’s poor counter-terrorism record, or his subjugation of the media and judiciary, emphasizing the need to hold elections.

The elections, which were today rescheduled from next week until late February, have been beset by accusations of pervasive bias and, before the rescheduling decision, appeared to lack any pretense of freedom or fairness. Even if they could capture Pakistan’s majoritarian preferences, the country’s judiciary can neither defend counter-majoritarian rights nor check the executive.

The White House pretends that elections will defuse Pakistan’s political crisis – overlooking that a rigged process will only further inflame tension and increase the risk of violence.

Bhutto Falling on Bush’s Sword

Bhutto returned to Pakistan this October, at the invitation of U.S. officials eager to reinforce Musharraf’s flagging dictatorship with the veneer of democratic legitimacy. She (and other members of the Pakistani opposition) endured violence in order to challenge Musharraf in the democratic arena, tolerating widespread accusations of early vote-rigging and politicized election administration, while enduring restrictions on their electioneering, as well as media criticism of the dictatorship. Like Iraqi Kurds and Shiites slaughtered by Saddam Hussein when Bush’s father failed to fulfill promises to support their revolution in the 1990s, Bhutto paid the ultimate price for answering the White House’s call.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice suggested that, The way to honor [Bhutto’s] memory is to continue the democratic process in Pakistan . . . .” But despite the younger Bush’s rhetorical support for democracy abroad, the reality of his defending dictatorship both poisoned Pakistan’s democratic aspirations and sealed Bhutto’s doom. Whether spilled by extremists or the Pakistani government – or some collusion among elements within them – Benazir Bhutto’s blood stains George Bush’s hands.

* Shahid Buttar is a Pakistani-American lawyer, scholar, media activist, poet, hip-hop MC, and grassroots community organizer based in Washington, DC. He is currently traveling throughout Pakistan to conduct an independent investigation of events since the first removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury in March, 2007. To read more articles or to listen to his music, visit HYPERLINK "http://www.ShahidButtar.com" www.ShahidButtar.com. Read more on this article...

BANNED AND BOOTLEGGED IN BEIJING

By PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

I was browsing for DVDs on a cold winter afternoon in one of Beijing's finer bootleg shops when I came upon three boxed sets of DVDs critical of communism. One of the pirated sets, produced by Turkish presenter Harun Yahya, promised to detail the horrors of communism from an Islamic perspective, another by an American producer chronicled the uncomfortably bloody rise of modern China and the third contained Tiananmen footage from BBC TV News. Presumably the DVD pirates were in it for the money, but were they also unwittingly making China a freer place?

The underground network and commercial resourcefulness of the pirates makes it technically possible for startling and truthful images to be sold more or less in the open in a less-than-open-society. In that sense, lax enforcement of intellectual copyright may inadvertently engender a kind of information freedom and even allow for the infiltration of revolutionary ideas.

If so, then the copyright zealots, mostly big US companies, with profit first and foremost on the mind, come down firmly on the side of information control and in that sense side firmly with the Beijing authorities. Subversive access of the sort I had just tapped into would dry up if US anti-piracy efforts were successful.

"The Bloody History of Communism" DVD set, presented by Turkish activist Harun Yahya, promised to show, among other things, "the cruelty Communist China inflicted on the Muslim Turks of Eastern Turkistan." This is clearly an awkward if not absolutely taboo topic for China today, given Beijing's uneasy embrace of its own ideology at a time when there is an upswing in religious activity in sensitive border areas.

Despite the provocative cover, it turned out to be rather thin gruel despite the premise and promise of "truth revealed". The three-disk series about three godless despots, namely Lenin, Stalin and Mao as featured on the cover, seemed dangerously unorthodox for China until I discovered the case only contained two disks. Mao was missing.

In what has to be considered a shrewd decision somewhere in the supply chain, the series about three godless despots came up one despot short. Harun Yahya (pseudonym for Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar), may yet find fans in China's vast and diverse population, but whoever is distributing his material in China has judged that bashing Mao is not the best point of entry into a market where the legendary old Chairman still has legions of defenders and believers.

"The Bloody History of Communism" that is available to Chinese DVD viewers is a generally well-mannered rant about the evils of communism as illustrated with stock newsreel footage from the early days of the Soviet Union, basically taking the Soviet leaders to task for cruel deceptions and excessive use of violence, broadly hinting that they in turn were influenced by an abominable Englishman named Charles Darwin.

But the product available on the streets of Beijing starts and stops in Russia; China gets a free pass. Ideologically edgy, if not eccentric, as Harun Yahya's overall critique may be, it is unlikely to incur the wrath of Beijing authorities as long it steers clear of Mao and doesn't touch on "Eastern Turkestan."

"China: A Century of Revolution" produced by Sue Williams for WGBH in Boston offers six hours of dependable, received thinking about China, at least to this American viewer, but it might trouble the powers that be in Beijing, sensitive as they are about Tiananmen and related protests. It's strong point is that it contains footage from China rarely seen in China, such as scenes of the allegedly traitorous Lin Piao in the company of Mao, and describes in detail the harrowing death of Mao's former number two Liu Shaoqi. Williams' reconstruction of the social malaise preceding the events at Tiananmen in 1989, most especially the rising expectations, frustrations and sporadic student unrest in 1986-7, was superior to her disappointingly sketchy narrative about Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Although "Revolution" contains terrific archival material, it was too often overlaid with soothing, evocative music unrelated to the matters at hand. One might even get the mistaken impression that rock singer Cui Jian was the ultimate "black hand" behind the student movement. I was with Cui Jian on and off the Square during those heady days of May 1989 when the crowd swelled to a million strong. We talked to students on campus and watched the Goddess of Democracy being assembled on the Square, but his role was more concerned observer than activist or conspirator. To watch scenes of Tiananmen put to his music makes for great rainy day viewing, curled up on the sofa, sipping a cup of tea, but it is ahistorical and misleading.

"Fifty Years of BBC Television News" a bilingual twin disk package, is titled "BBC fengyun wushinian" in Chinese. Who translated it? Was BBC, its news website perennially blocked by Beijing authorities, trying to penetrate the China market by stealth with a cross between yesterday's news and yesterday's technology presented in translation?

Given the obvious English misspellings on the jacket, BBC probably just got indiscriminately pirated, but either way it works for them if more Chinese consumers come to view their product.

Tiananmen left a deep mark on global public consciousness in part because of the scope and setting of the events therein, but also because TV cameras were up and running (in anticipation of Gorbachev's visit) making it possible for the revolution to be more or less televised. It was a news story par excellence; reported quickly, not always accurately, off-the-cuff but immediate and compelling. I thus looked forward to seeing what context the BBC retrospective had been put in and what value-added analysis, if any, had been gained from the intervening years.

I fast-forwarded through decades of BBC news stories, till I got to BBC in Beijing covering June 4, 1989. My first reaction was a quiet thrill at having obtained banned footage of Beijing on the streets of Beijing.

The 1980s section of BBC's best hits was narrated by BBC ace reporter John Simpson in his signature know-it-all tone, the voice of the winning side in the Cold War, a register of voice both authoritative and warmly familiar to British viewers: "The 1980s were a period of remarkable change, the Cold War faltered and people like ME [emphasis added] through the new technology were able to give some sense of immediacy of what was happening. Television news was beginning to bring news home to people as never before. In 1989 change worldwide had EVEN [emphasis added] reached China. I watched the troops move in to clear out the Square."

And as I viewed the hauntingly familiar, flickering scenes of Beijing people power in its last throes, as armored personnel carriers breached the barricades on Tiananmen Square, as the injured protesters lay slumped in the streets, I thought my illicit DVD purchase a small victory for getting the truth out.

How ironic that Beijing censors had pulled out all stops to block BBC on the internet and in the sky, only to be out-flanked by lowly, low-tech DVDs sold as contraband on street corners!

But is BBC's take on Tiananmen a victory for the truth?

The images culled from BBC archives were devoid of context and narrated in a way that heightened the personal sense of danger faced by BBC's brave reporters. I can attest to the bravery of those reporters because I was there, working for BBC TV news on the Square during the June 4, 1989 crackdown. But the story was bigger than any number of observers; in the end, BBC's take on the event was about many things, but mostly about BBC. Hearing John Simpson review the events of that night was not only akin to hearing a blind man over-generalize about one part of an elephant, but to hear a rote retelling despite ample opportunity to reflect and correct faulty first impresions.

The problem with TV news and documentary as currently practiced by BBC, CNN and PBS and others, is the cult of personality. TV news fails to serve the public, let alone provide an objective draft of history, when it focuses too much on the star reporter and not enough on the lives of others.

A famous newsman or narrator can be forgiven for knowing next to nothing about China. But in what is basically a triumph of format and style over content, an all-knowing narrator can cast a powerful spell, imparting an iconic gloss to distant events, making viewers back home feel smug and comfortable even as the world falls apart on the screen.

Watching banned product on bootleg DVDs in Beijing turned out to be more frustrating than enlightening because it drove home the point that important topics, to date imperfectly covered by sketchy foreign reports, still can't be honestly researched, written about or openly discussed in China today.

Until China's Communist Party comes clean on Tiananmen, the media taboo will remain an open wound on the Chinese psyche. Blocking websites and banning media reports on the topic not only serve as an effective prod for the proliferation of underground DVD products, but more importantly delay the day for national reconciliation.

Until China acknowledges what happened and engages in necessary reconciliation with its own people, Tiananmen will remain the intellectual property of the John Simpsons of the world.

(A version of this article first appeared in the Bangkok Post, January 2, 2008) Read more on this article...

Pakistan Election Rigging: Corrections and Clarifications

In response to my previous post, Pakistan's Power Puzzle, I received a note from a very knowledgeable international official working on electoral matters in Pakistan raising questions about some of my statements. I hope that tomorrow I will be able to publish his views. The official referred to two points I made, rigging elections through "ghost polling places" to obtain the desired result by adding forged ballots to those received by the returning officer, and an allegation that computers supplied by the U.S. to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) were not plugged in.

I erred in stating that the computers in question were supplied by the U.S. My source (below) did not say who funded the computers. This report was circulated by a Pakistani colleague who accompanied it with some critical remarks about U.S. aid to the ECP, which I confused with the report itself. There is no reference to U.S. aid in my source (below). Also, the computers were plugged in but not turned on. My source was a Reuters report from Attock on December 25, 2007. Attock is the historical fortress town on the bend of the Indus River marking the boundary of Punjab and NWFP. At one time it was the frontier of the Mughal Empire with Afghanistan. It is about 80 km (50 miles) from Islamabad on a well-trafficked multi-lane highway:

ATTOCK: The Election Commission’s office in Attock is in a run-down building on the outskirts of town.

Several dusty computers sit on tables, none of them switched on, and the office has no internet connection [high-speed internet connections are widely available in Pakistan], said the only person there on Monday morning, a caretaker with a grey beard. “No one’s here,” said the caretaker, Ghulam Rafiq, when a Reuters reporter stopped by. Transparent plastic ballot boxes were stacked up with piles of election manuals in boxes.

“He comes very rarely,” Rafiq said when asked about the district’s main election officer. “He’s a man of his own will.” Pakistani opposition parties are pinning their hopes for free and fair parliamentary elections on Jan 8 on Election Commission offices like the one in Attock.

But in this town on the Indus River in Punjab province, opposition politicians said the commission was ignoring complaints of unfair electioneering by candidates who support President Pervez Musharraf.

“The election commission seems to be totally paralysed,” said Malik Amin Aslam, a former environment minister running as an independent candidate. “We are providing them information with proof,” he said of his complaints about unfair electioneering by his opponents.

“There’s no doubt there’s a plan to support certain politicians and parties.” Three members of a powerful political family that supports Musharraf are contesting in Attock’s three constituencies.

The father of one of the candidates is the district government chief who is meant to be impartial but on Monday was seen asking voters to support the three. His photograph appears on his daughter’s election posters.

“Voters are being openly threatened and they are changing their loyalties but the election commission is paying no attention. They are part of this rigging plan,” said Sheikh Aftab Ahmed, a candidate for PML-N party. But Attock’s assistant election commissioner, Sardar Mazhar Hussain, tracked down at a town court, said his office had not got any complaints in writing so there was nothing he could do.

“There’s no question of taking action against anybody.” Attock’s chief election commission official, district returning officer Tariq Abbasi, said his office could do much more if it had the resources and workers.

On post-polling rigging, my correspondent argued that some additional safeguards had been introduced. I hope to publish his description tomorrow and seek comments from others.

Meanwhile, I have located online the National Democratic Institute's Report of the International Observer Delegation to the Pakistan Elections in October 1990. Unfortunately the file is posted in a nearly illegible (pre-PDF) format. It includes the report I drafted of my experiences on election day in Sukkur, Sindh, together with my colleague, Senegalese journalist Boubacar Toure. (Toure and I were surprised to find among the disenfranchised PPP supporters in rural Sindh a man of unmistakably African appearance, perhaps a remnant of the Indian Ocean slave trade.) These experiences (only partly reproduced here) have left me with a persistent skepticism about elections in Pakistan:

Around 11:30 that night we went to try to find the DC [Division Commissioner] and see what happened elsewhere. Our car was unavailable, so we went out in the street and more or less stood there until a passing motorist picked us up. He took us to the home of the commissioner of Sukkur division, where we found the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner Kamran Lashari, and a commander of the police rangers.

Lashari asked us how our day had gone. We told him what we had seen [several incidents of violence, booth capturing, intimidation] and said he was surprised. He was under the impression that order had been restored in Ghotki, and he did not realize that the polling agents had been kidnapped. We gave him the written Urdu statement to read.

The three officers present were receiving telephone calls giving them information on the law and order situation (which was now generally calm) and on the election returns. They told us what they were hearing. While we unfortunately did not take notes on these results (which we imagined were definitive), we later compared our recollection of these events, and we are in agreement that we remember hearing the following two statements:

1. The PPP had carried all three seats in Sukkur district. This includes NA 153, where the son of Pir Pagara [a large landowner from a Sufi family aligned with the government], Sadruddin Shah, was running against the PPP.

2. Asif Ali Zardari [PPP candidate, husband of Benazir Bhutto] had defeated Murtaza Jatoi [son of caretaker Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi] in Nawabshah.

The next day in Karachi we were surprised to read in the newspapers that Murtaza Jatoi had been declared the winner in Nawabshah by the Election Commission in Islamabad. We were also surprised to hear from Jam Sadiq Ali [Chief Minister of Sindh] that the son of Pir Pagara had won in NA 153.

For those not familiar with this cast of characters, Jam Sadiq Ali was thus memorialized by Dawn columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee:

Blackguard, murderer, grand larcenist (he died before he could be convicted). He was a likeable rogue, who never denied the fact that he was a rogue.

Despite all his attributes, he was chosen to be the chief minister of Sindh by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan to serve his nefarious purposes. GIK wished to remain in power for eternity. Jam as CM robbed and plundered again - as he had done during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's regime. But this time around he did not kill. Cancer killed him.

He left a very charming Hindu wife, lots of offspring, and lots and lots of moolah.

The internet includes some helpful descriptions of how Jam Sadiq Ali carried out his job.

This just in: a Report on Pakistan from the International Crisis Group:

Islamabad/Brussels, 2 January 2008: If Pakistan is to be stable in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’'s murder, President Pervez Musharraf must resign and a quick transition follow to a democratically elected civilian government.

After Bhutto’'s Murder: A Way Forward for Pakistan, the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, concludes that Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, is no longer, if he ever was, a factor for stability. Particularly the U.S. must recognise he is a serious liability, seen as complicit in the death of the popular politician. Unless he steps down, tensions will worsen and the international community could face the nightmare of a nuclear-armed, Muslim country descending into civil war from which extremists would stand to gain.

“Bhutto’s death has drawn the battle lines even more clearly between Musharraf’'s military-backed regime and Pakistan’s moderate majority, which will settle for nothing less than genuine parliamentary democracy”, says Mark Schneider, Crisis Group'’s Senior Vice-President.

Crisis Group agrees with the Election Commission decision to postpone the parliamentary election scheduled for 8 January to 18 February – but only if additional steps are taken so that the delay contributes to the creation of conditions for free and fair elections and the restoration of democracy.

These include, in addition to Musharraf’'s resignation: appointment, in consultation with the political parties, of caretaker governments at federal and provincial levels; full restoration of the constitution; and restoration of judicial independence, including reappointment of the judges Musharraf dismissed because they would not do his bidding in November when he declared martial law. The international community should also support an independent, fixed-deadline investigation into Bhutto’s murder.

“It is time to recognise that democracy, not an artificially propped-up, defrocked, widely despised general – has the best chance to provide stability and turn back extremists’ gains”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director.

Read more on this article...

Pakistan's Power Puzzle (With Corrections from Comments)

The Pakistan Electoral Commission's decision to postpone the elections scheduled for January 8 because of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto could be justified on technical grounds, but few people in Pakistan will believe the decision was made on technical grounds. Under current conditions in Pakistan, which are worse that most U.S. reporting indicates, it is impossible to hold a free and fair election. But there is little indication that the government ever intended to hold a free and fair election, even when it could have.

I called a friend in Lahore this morning. The obstacles are not just that electoral materials (possibly including those prepared for rigging) were destroyed in the rioting. The country's infrastructure is under severe stress. In Lahore there are only 7 hours of electricity a day, and water pressure is also reported to be unreliable (I know those of you in Kabul may not feel their pain). Optic fiber lines were cut in Sindh, blacking out telecommunications for a while. The front page of Dawn online yields the following: There has been massive damage to the country's rail network. Fuel is in short supply, and the shortages are likely to get worse. The stock market and the currency are both crashing. Government ministers are charging "foreign elements" (i.e. India) with organizing the riots, a useful excuse for martial law.

In Pakistan there is a massive outburst of rage against Musharraf and everything associated with his government, including the government's claim that it has evidence that the Pakistani Taliban, led by Baitullah Mahsud, carried out the assassination. I still lean toward the hypothesis that the operation was carried out by organizations connected to al-Qaida. Given the relationship of the Pakistani military to jihadi organizations that by no means absolves the Musharraf regime of responsibility.

But what recent events demonstrate even more clearly is that the Bush administration's policy of relying on a personal relationship with a megalomaniac manipulator like Musharraf to fight al-Qaida has strengthened that organization immeasurably and perhaps fatally damaged the U.S.'s ability to form the coalition it needs to isolate and destroy that organization.

Many, probably most or nearly all, Pakistanis don't see the "War on Terror" as struggle of "moderates" against "extremists." They see it as a slogan to legitimate the military's authoritarian control . Through the classic psychological mechanism of reducing cognitive dissonance, it is only a short jump from believing that the threat of al-Qaida is being manipulated to strengthen authoritarian rule, to believing that the threat of al-Qaida is a hoax perpetrated to strengthen authoritarian rule. A similar mechanism of reducing cognitive dissonance has led many Americans to accept propaganda that the "anti-American" Saddam Hussein and the "anti-American" Islamic Republic of Iran" must be allied with the "anti-American" al-Qaida. (Before some member of the nutosphere calls me out for using quotation remarks around "anti-American," let me stipulate that the purpose of the quotation marks is to call attention to the fact that every organization that opposes the U.S. is not defined solely or even primarily by that opposition. It is not to claim that these entities are in fact "pro-American.")

The Bush administration's terrible simplification has not only harmed U.S. security interests; it has also done perhaps irreparable damage to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some readers protest when I lead with the implications of such events for U.S. foreign policy, as if I didn't think it worthwhile to mention the effects on those directly concerned. Believe me, I understand that Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all those other countries out there have purposes other than playing a role in scripts drafted in Washington.

But I am an American writing for a primarily American audience. I don't think that Pakistanis are looking to me to explain their country to them. I am trying to use my experience and expertise, such as it is, to convince my compatriots, our allies, and the international organizations to which we belong, to change their relationships with other countries. Sometimes I appear on the media here (the US) or speak to non-specialist audiences. They always ask me to explain the implications for them.

There is a connection, however, between the foreign policy interests of the U.S. and the direct effect on, in this case, Pakistan. That is because the script writers in Washington impose their own terrible simplifications on the people whose behavior they are trying to affect, without understanding who those people are and what they want, often with disastrous consequences.

The current situation in Pakistan is a case in point. The Bush administration has decided that in the "Muslim world" a battle is going on between pro-American "moderates" and anti-American "extremists." According to them, the "Muslim world" has a two-party system organized around how Muslims feel about America. In Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf is a "pro-American moderate." Benazir Bhutto is a "pro-American moderate." Therefore it is only logical (and in U.S. interests!) for the U.S. to realign Pakistan politics so that the "moderates" work together against the "extremists."

This ignores a few problems. It is not just a random problem that the "pro-American moderate" institution headed by General Musharraf executed Benazir's father and held her for years in solitary confinement. Despite Musharraf's propagation of the PR slogan, "enlightened moderation," the institution that he headed, and which put him in power, supported the Taliban unstintingly for many years and failed to deliver any results against al-Qaida when it would really have counted. This is the same institution that massacred hundreds of thousands of its own countrymen in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

The administration's plan for Pakistan was based on a model of transition from authoritarianism that took place in several Latin American countries, which is known as a "pacted transition." (If you want to know more about it, Google "transitology.") The basic idea is that the "moderates" in the bureaucratic authoritarian regime and the "moderates" in the democratic opposition negotiate a peaceful process of extrication of the military from power through elections, which may initially be "guided" rather than "free and fair." Of course the administration seem to have neglected one of the research's main findings: pacted transitions give rise to "democracies with birth defects." Among those birth defects are continued control by the military over key areas of policy and the limited consolidation of democracy. Much depends on what the leaders of the military are actually trying to accomplish.

This already happened in Pakistan. In 1988 General Zia-ul-Haq's hand-picked Prime Minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, got in several conflicts with Zia over Afghanistan (the negotiation of the Geneva Accords and the explosion of weapons destined for the Afghan muijahidin at an ISI warehouse in Rawalpindi). After the as yet unsolved Case of the Exploding Mangoes, which killed General Zia, ISI Director General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, and U.S. Ambassador Arnie Raphel, the military dismissed Junejo and agreed to a reasonably free election, which was won by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. After the death of General Zia, whom Bhutto and many Pakistanis held responsible for her father's death, she was able to return.

But her electoral victory did not settle the issue. Bhutto first had to negotiate with the military and agree not to remove military authority over security issues, notably Afghanistan, the nuclear program, Kashmir, and senior military appointments. After the failed attempt by the ISI with U.S. backing to orchestrate the conquest of the Afghan city of Jalalabad in March 1989 (using not only Afghan mujahidin but also al-Qaida), Bhutto sacked ISI director General Hamid Gul. Other conflicts with the military ensued. As a result, the military had President Ghulam Ishaq Khan remove her on corruption charges in August 1990. The military and bureaucracy rigged the elections in October 1990 so that she would be defeated by Nawaz Sharif.

I will come back to the election rigging, because the government used the same technique that it was apparently planning to employ this time as well, namely the establishment of "ghost polling places" to return fake ballots in key constituencies identified by the ISI's Electoral Cell. This method of rigging is not visible to foreign election observers.

When Nawaz Sharif in turn became too independent, it was his turn to be sacked. This was followed by two rounds of alternance determined by the military (Bhutto in 1994, Sharif in 1996). The final confrontation between Nawaz Sharif and General Musharraf was provoked again by a struggle over the military's prerogatives. Sharif charged that Musharraf organized the Kargil campaign in Kashmir on his own initiative, while Sharif was pursuing negotiations with the U.S. over Bin Laden behind Musharraf's back.

The leaders of the Pakistan military, of which Musharraf is a typical example, do not see themselves primarily as "pro-American moderates" battling with "anti-American extremists." They see themselves as responsible for building a powerful militarized state in Pakistan representing the heritage of Islamic empires in South and Central Asia against the threat from India and the selfish maneuvers of politicians (not necessarily in that order). In the course of doing so, they have enriched themselves and gained control of much of the economy and civilian administration. The military has always aspired to control the judiciary as well, and Musharraf has now restored to that institution the supine illegitimacy that it possessed under General Zia. This means of course that the use of institutional power for private gain by the military is legal (as the judiciary has no power over the military), while similar use of institutional power by civilians is "corruption."

The military allies with the U.S. because that is the only way to get the weapons and money for their national security project and to prevent the U.S. from aligning with India. It has nothing to do with "moderation." The "pro-American moderate" Pakistan military has used the "anti-American extremist" jihadis for its national security project. (By the way, the Afghan Taliban were not originally anti-American. In 1997, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil, who later became foreign minister, told a meeting I was chairing at Columbia University that the Taliban would help the U.S. "in its struggle against international terrorism," and nobody wanted to build the Unocal pipeline more than they did.)

The goal of the Pakistan military has been neither moderation nor extremism as defined in Washington. Its goal has been to stay in power in order to pursue its national security project, which is also in its institutional interest and the private interest of its members. So why did Musharraf enter into negotiations with Bhutto? As Chief of Army Staff, Musharraf occupied a role similar to that of head of the ruling party in a one-party dominant system. His party, the military, unlike the other parties, is a disciplined cadre organization which, along with its fellow travelers (civilian allies of the military) controls all the key levers of power, including the civil administration and the judiciary. Such control is, it believes, required by the national interest. Musharraf added to this an economic policy under the guidance of his Prime Minister, former Citibank official Shaukat Aziz, that has indeed succeeded to some extent. In fact it helped create the middle class and new communications media that are leading the fight to oust Musharraf.

In order to maintain the essential base of his party's control (U.S. weapons and money) after 9/11, Musharraf had to abandon the military's historic political alliance with the religious right and its allied militants.But Pakistan is not a "banana republic," i.e. a tiny country with a single cohesive landowning elite that can run a dictatorship informally through intimidation, violence, and patronage (though these have a role to play). It is a country of 160 million with one of the largest cities in the world (Karachi) and a well-developed middle class. Running such a country requires a higher degree of institutionalization and political legitimation. Hence Musharraf needed new political allies to run institutions.

But he did not want political allies to negotiate a transition to democracy: he wanted political allies to legitimate continued military rule. The Islamist parties were willing to partner with the military on that basis, because it was their only way of acceding to power. But the PPP and the PML-N (Nawaz Sharif's party) could actually win elections. While the military tried to use Washington's interest in an alliance of "moderates" to legitimate its own rule, it could not allow a party that actually aspired to rule to come to power. Enter the PML-Q (Musharraf's party, aka the King's Party). The military assembled this party out of notables of various sorts to represent those civilian allies that supported military rule. This description does not apply to every official of the PML-Q (some of whom are friends of mine), who joined for different reasons. Some, in particular, supported the relatively successful economic policies of Shaukat Aziz. But the party exists basically in order to win elections rigged by the military.

Benazir Bhutto, however, probably imagined that the opening provided by the U.S. pressure on Musharraf for a "moderate" alliance (to legitimate Musharraf's power for the sake of the "War on Terror," not democracy) might provide her with an opening she could exploit to regain power. I will not attempt to judge among the various claims about Bhutto -- from heroine of democracy to power-hungry corrupt feudal. I will just note that she knew she was risking her life and did not need to do so. When President Karzai met her the morning of her death, she told the Afghans she feared she would be assassinated soon. She represented the hopes of millions of people. To represent them, she would have had to challenge the military's power. Nor did she take the easy populist route (seemingly chosen by Nawaz Sharif) of belittling the threat of the militants. Though what she said about the militants pleased Washington, many things she said about General Musharraf did not. I believe that events will tragically show that she was right.

Her strategy appeared to be to exploit the military's weakness and the support of the U.S. to enlarge the space for her party's power, and therefore, in the flawed sense this word has in the real world, of democracy. (The family inheritance of leadership has a rational function too: without it, there is a good chance that the PPP would tear itself apart in factional struggles. It still might do so, but the appointment of her son as heir and her husband as regent has provided some breathing space.)

But Musharraf was not going to let her win. On December 11 Dawn published a story purportedly announcing the "official poll results" nearly a month before the scheduled elections. The PML-Q was to win the most seats, with the PPP second and PML-N third. The numbers were chosen in such a way that the Islamist parties that supported the Afghan Taliban, the military's old partners, would have few seats but enough to hold the balance of power.

How to get such results? The ISI has an electoral cell that, among other things, conducts polling. (A friend who is familiar with the operation claims that the polling is not reliable and tends to be driven by the desired outcome.) The purpose is not to win a referendum with 99% of the vote, but to get a balance that leaves the military in charge through its political allies. This does not require rigging every constituency, but controlling the media and administration to create a positive environment for the military's allies, and then rigging only a few dozen constituencies where the outcome is nonetheless in doubt (plus constituencies of key leaders). The principal technique is the printing of more ballots than are needed and the establishment of "ghost polling places" in the constituencies that are to be rigged. The excess ballots are filled out for the desired candidates and placed in "ballot boxes" belonging to the ghost polling places. The ballot boxes and their fictitious totals are forwarded to the returning officer together with the legitimate ballots. The system needs only to approximate its target to achieve the desired political results.

The PPP now wants to capitalize on the public's anger and sympathy. The time that the electoral commission could use to reconstitute the infrastructure for a free and fair election is also time that could be used to reconstitute the infrastructure for rigging. Hence the PPP probably sees no good reason to allow the electoral apparatus to reconstitute itself.

A genuine free election in Pakistan today could very well confront President Musharraf with a parliament that would not recognize him and that would openly challenge the power of the army. But the military no longer has the capacity or legitimacy to rule Pakistan. The time for a pacted transition is past. The choice before Pakistan is democracy or disintegration.

In a further post I will discuss hypotheses about responsibility for Bhutto's assassination and the relationship of the Pakistan army to the jihadi militants.

UPDATES: Ahmed Rashid has published an incisive analysis from Pakistan in Yale Global Online. He writes:

In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan faces the gravest threat to its unity since the country was born amid bloodshed 60 years earlier.

Although the security of the whole world is at stake from the way power is transferred in this nuclear weapon state, world leaders can do little but look on helplessly as Pakistan’s cowed political establishment and dispirited military face the threat of a determined Al Qaeda–backed Islamic extremists. While enormous public anger and mistrust swells in the nuclear-armed nation, both President Pervez Musharraf and his leading backer, the US, have lost all credibility over managing free and democratic elections, combating extremism or delivering stability to the troubled region.

Read the rest.

Pajhwok Afghan News interviews former Afghan Interior Minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, on the regional impact of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Excerpt:

Benazir Bhutto's loss is devastating not only for Pakistan but also for a region that suffers from instability and violence fueled by religious extremism and militancy. Bhutto was strongly committed to fight the threat in her country through restoration of democracy that could foster the empowerment of moderate forces. Bhutto's death, therefore, is a serious blow to democracy and moderation in Pakistan with rippling impact in the region and beyond.

The use of religious militancy as an instrument of foreign policy by Pakistani military regimes in the recent past has helped the rise of extremism and entrenchment of trans-national terrorist groups in Pakistan. Talibanization of Pakistani tribal areas is a dangerous outcome of the ill-fated policy. Further, Pakistan has gradually become a center of the al-Qaeda web that radiated out to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. I hope the tragic loss of Bhutto will finally strengthen the determination of Pakistan government to act decisively against the militants and enlist the political weight of moderate forces in the struggle through democratic changes.

Read more on this article...

New Year's Vow: Not Another Step!

Scott Horton at Harper's is calling attention to an important reflection on where we are as a nation and where we are as citizens:

In a truly extraordinary editorial, the New York Times measures what the country has lost and presents the challenge that it faces in the election year 2008:

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001. The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer. In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review. Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

On October 5, 2001, I made a mistake. Less than a month earlier, I had been walking around Greenwich Village on my first day back from a European vacation, watching the Twin Towers burn. Thousands of people were walking north from the financial district like war refugees. I said to a colleague, "It's like a war zone," before I realized, "It is a war zone."

I went up to the roof of a friend's apartment building, together with a friend of hers whom I did not know. It was about noon. The Towers had collapsed, and we saw the huge clouds of smoke. At that time we didn't know about the heroic achievement of the New York Police and Fire Department in evacuating people from the buildings. I thought I was watching the death of 10,000, maybe 20,000 people. And I was pretty sure who was responsible. I had been writing about the "Arab Islamists in Afghanistan" since 1989. Now I knew why Ahmad Shah Massoud had been assassinated two days earlier, on September 9, 2001, in Afghanistan's first suicide bombing.

My old friend (she had been a fellow student of my wife at the University of Chicago 30 years before), knowing of my "expertise," asked me the question I dread, What happens now? My standard answer is that I am not an expert on the future; I have never even been there. But on September 11, 2001, I lost my pessoptimistic irony. I didn't know what would happen. But I knew what I feared: that the U.S. would lash out in anger, blaming Afghans for an act planned in their country by a group they did not control. "I hope we don't just carpet-bomb Qandahar," I said. I don't recall what my friend's friend said exactly, but it was something like, "Kill them all." And this was within shouting distance of where Bob Dylan and Joan Baez started their careers when I was in junior high school....

On Friday, October 5, I was in Washington. That morning I went to a part of the Hart Senate office buildings that was not quarantined because of the still unsolved anthrax attacks to meet Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) in his temporary office. One of my former students from Yale, where I taught in the 1980s, had set up the meeting. She was working for Wellstone and wanted to help him think through his position.

We knew the start of the military operations was not far off; they began the next Sunday. I have no notes from that meeting, but one exchange sticks in my mind. By then over three weeks had passed since September 11 without military action.

Though I had not supported George W. Bush, I was starting to feel relieved. The contrast with the Clinton administration's response to the bombing of US embassies in August 1998, which included immediate rocket strikes, had somehow encouraged me. The team of national security veterans around Bush would know how to use military power for strategic goals. Sure of their credentials, they could resist the public sentiments like those I had heard on the Greenwich Village roof.

As I was leaving Wellstone's office, we had a moment alone. "For once," I said, "I'm glad the Republicans won the election." Wellstone raised his eyebrows. I explained, "I'm not sure that a Democratic president could have resisted the pressure to lash out from a Republican Congress baying for blood." He appeared to consider my remarks and finally concluded, "I'm not there yet."

A little more than a year later, on October 25, 2002, Paul Wellstone, his wife, his daughter, and five others died in a plane crash in Minnesota. It was a great loss for many, but it took years before I realized how great a loss it was for me. I never had the chance to tell Paul Wellstone how wrong I was.

Horton again:

The developments of the last three years have exposed the leaders of the current Administration. . . . .They are driven not by concern about our security (which they undermine with every breath) but by their own monomaniacal accumulation of power.

And their nobility of character can be encased in a few scenes. They do not stand up and take responsibility for their decisions. Instead they cower behind deception and falsehood. They offer up 19-year-old soldiers, whom they have sent into battle without guidance or support, as sacrifices to be consumed by the anger of the public and the world. They deride these young soldiers as “rotten apples,” and send off-the-record spokesmen out to imply that we’re recruiting too many criminals into the Army today. We watched this happen in the wake of Abu Ghraib, but no one could muster the fortitude to say what was obviously passing before our eyes. Their lies reverberated in stereo and on HDTV.

And now, in these very weeks, we see it again with the scandal surrounding the destruction of the torture tapes, done with the full complicity of the White House at the highest levels. Now they busily prepare again to scapegoat some young case officers at the CIA, and perhaps some middle management figures. For what? For crimes that they designed, worked out and ordered to be performed. These men have long forfeited any claim to moral leadership. They are staining our nation and its high offices. But we cannot despair over the task of purging these stains.

I too feel a vision of America slipping away. It’s the Founder’s vision of America, of a republic erected as a bulwark against tyranny with individual freedom as its aspiration, and the threat of accumulation of power in the hands of a few men acting in concert—or of a sole tyrant—as its nemesis. The protections that the Founders put in place to defend us against the one true nemesis—the internal one–are being disassembled one by one. First habeas corpus is abolished, and then the protection against warrantless intrusion sputters and fades. To cover their vandalism they maintain a drumbeat of fear, encouraging every cowardly and servile impulse. The media who should be our watchdogs have gone silent. In their place come corporate interests playing a siren’s song, luring us all to complacency, to sleep.

When I hear people talking about the need for "bi-partisanship," I think back to my own bi-partisan mistake. The bi-partisanship we need right now is a clear repudiation by conscientious Republicans of the crimes and catastrophes of the Bush administration. I have heard that at times from Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and former Senator John Danforth of Missouri. Danforth has a lot to answer for, notably his sponsorship of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court, but unlike many of his colleagues, when he speaks I can recognize the country whose values I remember being taught in school:

Danforth said he remains a Republican but finds little cause for optimism among the current GOP candidates. "My party is appealing to a real meanness," he said in an interview, "and an irresponsible sense of machismo in foreign policy. I hope it will be less extreme, but I'm an American before I'm a Republican." Danforth has also written critically about the impact of religious conservatives on the Republican Party.

He's getting there -- toward a bi-partisan repudiation of this administration. But if Republicans can't deliver it, I'll settle for a partisan repudiation. It will take a tough, determined new administration to expose even a part of what this administration has committed, not an administration committed to comity above all. When the truth comes out, we may finally get that bi-partisan repudiation. But the truth must come out.

So I endorse Scott Horton's vow for the New Year:

So let’s put one resolution at the top of our list: Not another step! We will not abide one more step in the destruction of our civil liberties. We will defy the forces of tyranny that are vandalizing our Constitution and traditions. We will guard the Founders’ vision. In 2008, the time is here to give expression to values we want to retain, or see them vanish forever. It starts with remembering what we have lost. It continues with thought, word, action and vote.

I seek the consent of my learned colleague to amend the proposed resolution by addition of the following clause to the second sentence, following "destruction of our civil liberties":

Nor will we tolerate further contempt for what the Founders called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" by destroying international law in the name of security.

I hope Paul Wellstone, wherever he may be, and all his heirs and assigns, will accept this amendment in his memory.

Remember, we have 366 days this time. So no excuses.

UPDATE: My learned colleague has adopted (and posted) the amendment with unanimous consent. Read more on this article...