Agency

Pakistan is in dire straits. It is a nation at a crossroads. Extremism is around the corner. The politicians are corrupt. The nukes could end up in the hands of bin Laden.

Pakistan is in dire straits. Its people demand accountability. Those who claim to protect it and make it prosperous seem busy keeping themselves in power. There is no hope for change since the people have no power. They are stuck under a dictator. If the citizens of Pakistan are to be real agents of change, they need a way forward. They need democracy.

In March of 2007, when lawyers came out on the streets, there were only two available narratives. Those who held a results-based approach argued that Musharraf's dictatorial regime was the best case scenario, the lesser of the two evils. The evil being, of course, justice, accountability and democracy. They raised the specter of rampant jihadism spreading through the populations. They pointed towards the economic development that had occurred on Musharraf's watch. They warned that Pakistan had some amazingly corrupt politicians. And that US needed a stable ally, a dependable ally, in our war against terror(ism).

Then there were those of us who trusted the people of Pakistan. We knew that jihadism is not some air-borne virus that people can contract by simply inhaling. We knew that it wasn't Musharraf who had brought about economic development but the people themselves. We knew that politicians are corrupt everywhere - including the US - so why the exception of dictator for Pakistan? We knew that a partnership can only be among equals. And the will of the people needed to be heard.

Ah. But this so-called Lawyer's Movement was a big sham, we were told. These are just elites. Where are the "people"? Why can't the Lawyers bring out the masses? Why do they insist on democracy and justice when the people are more concerned with food and security.

Well. Pakistan just had a slow-burning, people-powered, secular revolution and they forced a sitting dictator - who had the complete confidence and support of the only superpower in the world - out. Peacefully. Without any bloodshed. Without any crazy mullah grabbing the nukes and blowing up the world. Without inflation hitting 10,000,000%. Without any riots. With suicide bombings in Lahore. With two regions embroiled in near civil-war. With the same corrupt politicians in charge. With the unshakeable faith, the belief, that they deserved justice. That they deserved the right to have the power to act. That they were citizens of their country, not keeps.

This is unprecedented. This is historic. This is a momentous time in the history of this nation. It has successfully forced accountability - through peaceful and legal means - on its leaders. The people of Pakistan - lawyers and all - have exercised their agency.

And like every other such exercise - be it the election of 2000 or the upcoming election of 2008 in the US - the outcome is up in the air. And hence, the hope is not in the fate of this particular dictator, it is in the accountability to the Pakistani publics, of their representative. If we really want a secure ally in Pakistan, we would do our best to strengthen the people of Pakistan.

PS. If you are curious about Musharraf's speech, I live-blogged it. Well, most of it.


PPS. If you have further curiosity, you can hear me on Chicago's excellent Worldview with Jerome McDonnell. Read more on this article...

PERSONAL BEST FROM THE WORST EVER

By PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM


BEIJING While China has been dazzling the world with its economic prowess and Olympic pyrotechnics, a very unpopular US president has quietly dazzled his Asian hosts with uncharacteristically diplomatic behavior.

It may be a case of too little too late, but nuanced diplomacy from a man best known for swagger and war-mongering comes as a counter-intuitive surprise. Has the self-styled cowboy president finally learned to walk the walk and talk the talk of diplomacy? Can small gestures of humanity from the poster boy of a generally inhumane administration reverse the self-inflicted decline of American values at this late hour?

Consistently courteous, even going out of his way to make a show of compassion, and speak in favor of peace, President Bush in recent days has given us a glimpse of what his administration might have been like had he been more like his father, had he not, in some kind of weird Oedipal rage, stacked the deck in favor of Dick Cheney and the neo-cons.

In recent days Bush Junior, sometimes with Bush Senior standing at his side, has spoken up in favor of core American values such as free press, religion and assembly with his usual degree of certitude but without the haughty neo-con triumphalism that threatened to make freedom, as in freedom fries, an empty Orwellian word.

After seven years of belligerent posturing and mangling of the English language, Bush shows up in Asia relaxed, affable, almost reasonable. It’s as if he never truly wanted to be president in the first place and is relieved to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Going to South Korea, as he did, at a time when incipient anti-Americanism threatens to explode takes a certain degree of political courage, as did his initially unpopular decision to attend the Beijing Olympics. Putting Thailand on his itinerary was an important diplomatic gesture to an old friend and ally of whom much has been demanded as an outpost in the war on terror but for whom little compassion has been evident since the economic crisis of 1997.

So when 9-11 came around and the US tried to paint the world into two camps, "with us or against us." Prime Minister Thaksin’s response was loaded with a kind of passive-aggressive ambiguity. “We’re neutral.”

The mere visit of a US president can't change all that but there are signs of healing, no where more evident than in the photo-op of President Bush gently embracing a sick child at Father Joe Maier's mission for the poor in the slums of Bangkok.

While the sight of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and President Bush conferring is enough to cause a university cynic to take umbrage, wondering how two decidedly second-tier intellects could actually become national leaders, one might also extract something positive from that fact that two legal, if not fully competent, representatives of two friendly peoples are offering a toast to continued Thai-American amity.

Since arriving here in Beijing, his performance has soared. He has deftly balanced pressures from home to speak out on human rights while not unduly offending the Olympic hosts, who also happen to be legal representatives, fully competent or otherwise, of the most populous nation on earth.

Chastising China on human rights from a podium in Bangkok may have sounded like something of a pot shot, and Chinese authorities immediately feigned indignation with a mild boiler-plate denunciation of his denunciation, but his hosts were clearly pleased that he got most of that out of his system before arriving at Beijing Airport.

Commandeering the spanking new Westin Hotel for the traveling White House, which just happens to be across the street from the brand-new US embassy where Clark Randt, an old buddy serves as ambassador, Bush quickly set an amicable tone for a visit that, in media terms at least, has been hard to distinguish from a family vacation, albeit, that of an extremely privileged family.

What sports fan wouldn’t envy the magic pass to any Olympic event that strikes his fancy, with VIP seats and brisk motorcade access via emptied streets guaranteed? Bush attended the opening ceremony, much to the pleasure of his hosts, along with his family and old, doddering Henry Kissinger in tow. At the founding ceremony for the new embassy he exchanged quips with his father, who he had briefly resided with at the American mission in Beijing in 1975, and spoke with credibility about how China has changed for the better since then.

Bush Senior seems to have finally instilled some understated Yankee restraint in a quasi-rebellious son prone to fits of Texas bragging, the productive result being a more nuanced China policy than the anti-China Cheney cabal would ever be capable of.

The presence of Russia's paramount leader, not to mention 80 other heads of state in Beijing, offered the American president a rare opportunity for personal diplomacy, most especially with the man whose soulful Russian eyes he once gushingly approved of.

Vladimir Putin's impatient, pale countenance at the stunning opening ceremony held at the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing reflected pressures other than the oppressive heat --his country was exchanging bloody strikes with Georgia as he sat through the interminable introductions in French, English and Chinese of sweaty athletic delegations from 204 countries.

The message Bush had for Putin in the days that followed was simple; so simple one wishes Bush could have heeded the same advice on Iraq: make peace not war.

The family vacation trope continued to tickle the news media regardless of political tensions mounting behind the scenes. There’s something about faraway Beijing, where the hospitality for visiting heads of state is first-class, that appeals to presidents unpopular at home. That it imparted a second life and legacy for Nixon’s career cannot be disputed. Bill and Hillary Clinton famously spent a full week in China in 1998, visibly reluctant to face the heat back home due to the minor but memorably salacious Lewinsky scandal then creeping into US headlines.

In tourist mode, Laura Bush got to wander around an empty Forbidden City, a stunning privilege I can vouch for as I once had rare access to the same locale while in the employ of Bernardo Bertolucci during the filming of “The Last Emperor.” Meanwhile the president, who can’t be bothered with reading the first draft of history in newspapers, let alone thick tomes, remains admirably active for a man of his age and elected instead to hit the biking trails for some exercise.

The light-hearted tone of the Bush visit continued, mixed with soft-spoken prods on human rights mixed and respectful comments about China finding its own way. The US president found himself in a decidedly less-than-presidential dilemma at the beach volleyball venue at Chaoyang Park when a sexy bikini-clad US athlete invited him to smack her backside. It’s best left to the reader to surmise what Bush's immediate predecessor might have done with such an invitation while noting that Bush handled the crisis-in-opportunity well, patting the sportswoman high on the back like he does with Putin, Hu Jintao and everyone else he wants to establish alpha-male status with.

All in all, a compelling performance from a man whose historical legacy hovers near “worst ever”, a man who conned a frightened nation into war while blithely ignoring the worst natural disaster in recent US history, a man who trampled on US human rights and racked up credible charges of war criminality in his treatment of foreign enemies.

If only he could make the first seven years of his presidency go away, he’d be on track to re-invigorating US-Asia relations. Where was George W the diplomat when the world needed him most? Read more on this article...

John K. Cooley--R.I.P.

From the field: John K. Cooley--R.I.P.: "One of the great old hands has died. Younger readers will not know this, and older readers may have forgotten, but there was a time when the Christian Science Monitor was a giant of a paper for its foreign coverage. More than three decades ago, the paper was a broadsheet published six times weekly. In those pre-Internet days, people in the U.S. interested in following events in far away places would have a mail subscription to the Monitor. The paper never rivaled the NYTimes in circulation, but it had a loyal readership of informed readers. I remember walking through the corridors of the State Department in 1975, when I was there on a fellowship, and outside every office you would see the discards of the day's papers for recycling. There would typically be copies of the Monitor right there in the pile with the Times and Post. One reason the paper was so popular was that the paper had great correspondents of the caliber of John K. Cooley. He was a Middle East hand, and wrote fairly and honestly about a range of topics, especially developments in the Arab-Israeli zone. His 'Green March, Black September' is a seminal account of the fedayeen (to use his spelling), but his old accounts of the some of the marking moments of the 1970s also remain invaluable.

He deserves a moment of quiet thanks for his contributions." Read more on this article...

Iran's Majles Confirms All Three of Ahmadinejad’s Ministerial Candidates

Farideh Farhi

What a strange pandemonium the confirmation hearings for Ahmadinejad’s three proposed candidates for the ministries of interior, economy and finance, and transportation turned out to be. Despite vociferous opposition to two of the candidates, all three were finally confirmed in a session publicly described by one deputy as “Isfahan’s Monday Bazaar” for its lack of order. Left unanswered are questions about what happened, Larijani’s leadership capabilities in maintaining some sort of Majles decorum, and whether the results were influenced by the public announcemnt of Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s preferences.

Majles rejection of ministerial candidates is not unheard of in the Iran. In fact, four of Ahmadinejad’s initial ministers were rejected when he first became president. But it is the combination of public charges made and the eventual confirmation that makes this Majles fracas unusual.

The day began with literally no one speaking in opposition to the proposed candidate for the Ministry of Economy and Finance(217 out 271 eventually supported his candidacy), which is strange given the controversy that surrounds Ahmadinejad’s Economic Transformation Plan. But the candidate’s promise to not rattle the foreign exchange market by increasing the value of Iranian Rial, as was proposed by the previous ministerial candidate, may have calmed some nerves. Majles deputies may have also resigned themselves to the fact that less than a year prior to a presidential election is no time to make a fuss over economic policies that they have very little impact on anyway.

But the debates, which as all Majles proceedings were aired live on the Iranian radio, turned patently bizarre with the discussion over the candidate for the Interior Ministry, Ali Kordan. First the attempt by several conservative deputies to close the session, so that opposition to his candidacy could be voiced frankly, was rejected by Majles Speaker Larijani who was then angrily accused by well-known conservative deputies, such as Ahmad Tavakoli and Elias Naderan, of going against the rules and making decisions on his own.

Then several other conservative deputies held little back and effectively accused Kordan of being a charlatan; that is, someone who has lied about his honorary doctorate degree from Oxford (he has none), received salary from the government on the basis of that degree, and taught law at the university level with a mere associate degree. One conservative deputy and long-standing Ahmadinejad supporter even went so far as to suggest that Kordan “believes that our system is a leader-based system and does not believe in elections,” a serious accusation against a person who is expected to head the ministry in charge of conducting elections. Another conservative deputy identified Kordan as extremely political and partisan: “even if we consider him to be a principlist, he is partial toward a specific group and this is not right for the country.” He went on to say, “I do not say he is corrupt but he may have made mistakes.”

Despite the public airing of all this dirty laundry by very conservative deputies, Kordan, who was previously Larijani’s deputy at Iran’s radio and television broadcasting, was approved by a vote of 169 out of 271 present. It is really hard for me to explain what happened. If the vote was the result of a pre-arranged compromise between Larijani and Ahmadinejad, after the latter’s previous candidates were deemed unable to get through Majles, then why allow the public airing of such damning charges?

Now, it is possible that some deputies thought that it is counter-productive to keep a government without effective ministers for too long and voted on that basis. Perhaps others, as suggested by a couple of conservative websites, were moved by Ahmadinejad’s words relaying Ayatollah Khamenei’s support for Kordan. Still the lack of synchrony between the charges aired and the final vote is bound to cast a pall on Larijani who proved quite inept in controlling his own conservative flank and Ayatollah Khamenei who seemed unable to stay above the fray and was once again dragged into a partisan fight solidly, at least in appearance, on the side of Ahmadinejad, in this case for a minister with serious questions about his honesty.

The only winner, not surprisingly, may be Ahmadinejad. I cannot really remember a public official in Iran ever quoting the leader in support of a candidate as bluntly as Ahmadinejad did in today’s session. There are of course always rumors about who Khamenei supports but the direct reference to his support led at least one member of the parliament to say that he was moved to give support because of what Ahmadienjad said.

At this point, whether Ahmadinejad had the support of Ayatollah Khamenei or not may be irrelevant. His blunt approach is actually quite brilliant politically and will be of great use to him as he runs for his second term as president in June 2008. It is convincing others that he has Khamenei’s support, if not he would not speak in such direct terms.

Whether Ayatollah Khamenei will remain silent on this blatant use of his name for political purposes is yet to be seen. But the editorial by hard-line Hossein Shariatmadari of Kayhan suggests that Ahmadinejad's move did not go unnoticed and even some of his avid supporters have been taken aback. In his editorial, Shariatmadari, based on "reliable and detailed information," accuses Ahmadinejad of distorting Khamenei's words of not objecting to the nominations and turning it into a statement of support. More importantly, he chastizes him for using the leader for political purposes. This verbal distortion, Shariatmadari suggests, questions the legality of the vote taken and necessitates a re-vote!

It could be that Ahmadinejad just went one step too far but unless a re-vote is actually in the cards, one has to give this round to Ahmadinejad, yet again. Read more on this article...

MIT-EJMES--a PDF download

MIT-EJMES
This theme issue of the Electronic Journal for Middle Eastern Studies is titled "Commemorating the Naksa [calamity], Evoking the Nakba [catastrophe]", and it is edited by Maha Yahya.
Contributors include Alain Gresh, Islah Jad, Salim Tamari, Ilan Pappe and several other accomplished scholars and writers. The sober, thoughtful contributions emphasize the lived experiences of the Palestinians. Read more on this article...

THE APPEAL OF A FORBIDDEN CITY

by Philip J Cunningham

Beijing August 3, 2008


“Where’s the Forbidden City?” a blonde-haired woman asks at an Olympic information kiosk. The Beijing volunteers sporting blue and white T-shirts take so long to come up with an answer that I am almost tempted to intervene.

“Forbidden City? You’re in it!”

Beijing, under strict watch and privileged as the capital to begin with, has become a bit more forbidding than usual with all the Olympic rules, regulations and tight security precautions. The clean, spruced up streets have become further rarified by sending hundreds of thousands of rural workers back to the provinces while restricting the number of foreign tourist with new visa regulations. For those of us privileged enough to be here, there are still boxes within boxes to negotiate, as the city is carved up into forbidden zones of privilege to accommodate the Olympics in impeccable style.

There’s the vermillion walled grand palace once occupied by the purple and yellow clad Qing emperors of course, known to most Chinese as “gu-gong”, but even that sweeping architectural monument is dwarfed by the sheer number of forbidden zones in the modern city. There are vast walled compounds for leaders, party officials, military, police, diplomats, foreign residents, and now, for the time being at least, strictly guarded zones related to the Olympics which go beyond the Olympic Village to include dozens of major hotels, and college campuses.

Even Tiananmen Square, that once open and unbounded plaza located smack in front of the entrance gate to the feudal Forbidden City, putting old China in symbolic counterpoint to the egalitarian promise of the new China, is now reduced to a heavily guarded, fenced-in site with limited access.

If the people of China sometimes grumble or shrug their shoulders about being "put out" by playing host to the world, their discomfort is mitigated by a shared cultural imperative to do the right thing when “having company.”

That’s not to say that treating guests differently from locals is not without its awkward moments. When I arrived in China by boat from Japan in July, disembarkation was delayed an hour by due to a safety check. Far more discomforting than the muggy heat was the announcement that travelers had to line up by nationality.

As an American I was directed to the head of the line, followed by Japanese, followed by the majority of passengers who were Chinese. The intent may have been Olympic-style courtesy in name of international harmony, but it created a sense of unease instead, especially for families of mixed nationality.

It reminded me of China in the early eighties when Chinese and foreigners lived side by side in parallel worlds, moving with apparent freedom but never intersecting, like bishops of opposite color on a chessboard.

What is it about China then and now, that makes being forced to inhabit a no-Chinese zone the highest honor that can be bestowed on foreigner who ostensibly wants to see China and rub shoulders with its people?

At Tianjin train station, the segregation was strictly economic, the “soft” waiting rooms of the sort once reserved for foreigners and VIPs now available for a fee. From that modest enclave we were whisked to Beijing on a sleek Chinese bullet train named Harmony only to encounter intense chaos at Beijing Station due to a taxi-queue monopoly and the sealing off of the subway entrance, explained by exasperated locals as an Olympic-related move to inhibit the flow of provincial arrivals.

Is it a triumph of traditional hospitality or a failure of confidence that a city be cordoned off for the “convenience” of guests?

The customary street-life of the Beijing neighborhood where I’ve lived on and off for twenty years has been oddly subdued in recent days. The habitual sidewalk vendors, beggars, buskers, DVD touts and lookers-on have vanished without a trace, replaced by a trickle of foot traffic watched over by police and security guards resting under red and yellow umbrellas sporting the “I’m Lovin’ It” logo. The best café and best restaurant in the area had to halt business, fenced off inside a sterile zone created for the American delegation, but the adjacent fast food joint remains open.

Even if members of the American delegation were to step beyond the comfort zone created expressly for them to grab a burger or perhaps take a walk for a taste of quotidian life, they might find it hard to appreciate that what they see and don’t see is a direct result of their presence.

The American footprint on campus and the surrounding neighborhood is so heavy it has altered the topography.

Twenty-two years earlier I had been assigned “foreign” housing on the same campus, but being a student of Chinese history I bristled at the idea that I live in a habitat created for foreigners. It took a letter of introduction from the widow of a former PLA war hero to secure a place outside of foreign-designated zone, and even that “breakout” put me in an anomalous situation. I dined and bathed in shabby communal splendor with local students, but was under curfew and close watch in the “Inside Guesthouse.”

Over time I’ve come to appreciate that this leafy campus is not just about students but is also the de facto public park for the neighborhood, a place where old timers take walks, kids frolic in front of library where the Mao statue used to stand and joggers enjoy free run of the tracks.

No more, at least not until the Olympics are over. Campus is under a kind of double lock-down, outsiders can’t get in and insiders are denied freedom of movement within. Resident families are carded at every gate and uniformed guards are posted every hundred steps along the leafy campus thoroughfare. Outside nearly every building or sports ground an American is likely to use, temporary tents house X-ray machines and inspection teams. The Inside Guest House was razed, replaced by a modern amenity center for American athletes. The twin campus running tracks are wrapped in opaque blue shrouding.

The uncanny stillness at the normally bustling East Gate of campus brings to mind Brandenburg Gate in the days when Berlin’s main thoroughfare was divided by a wall, only now, in the spirit of openness, economy and flexibility, vermillion walls and stone turrets have been replaced unsightly wire fences of the sort used to keep North Korean refugees from scaling embassy walls.

Security concerns are real and athletes intent on being the best in the world require privacy in habitats that are familiar and convenient.

So, if it’s inconvenient it is mostly understandable, though some of the rules, such as bans on outdoor parties, kite flying and nightlife are at best only tenuously linked to the welfare of visiting guests.

Athletes and foreign dignitaries, including the US president, will also move inside narrow sterile zones within wrapped in forbidden zones, seeing Beijing without seeing Beijing.

It is a testament to how much China has and hasn't changed in the last quarter of a century that forbidden zones abound and access remains defined by status.

Although the foreigner-only Friendship Stores and Friendship Hotels are dinosaurs of a by-gone era, new elite comfort zones create a modern equivalent of the same, based more on money than passport.

Today’s draconian rules are resented but not resisted because of the unspoken compact that things will loosen up again when the honored guests leave. But in a city as status-driven as Beijing, forbidden zones have an innate appeal. Even after the shrouds, facades and temporary fencing come down, one wonders if the playing fields that count the most will ever be level.

pc Read more on this article...

Rubin: ISI supports Taliban and Other Revelations

I know I should write something about the startling revelation that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) appears to be supporting insurgents and terrorists in Afghanistan, but I am just too shocked, shocked to comment at the moment.

In other news, Captain Renault has uncovered an illegal gambling ring at Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Pakistanis on Pakistan

Scott Horton of Harper's has interviewed Ahmed Rashid, whose book "Descent into Chaos" has just come out, on Pakistan and the Taliban:

The CIA, we learned in a report today, has compiled damning evidence of the Pakistani military’s complicity with the Taliban. But this is hardly news. Indeed, one analyst has repeatedly warned that Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence service have been taking America for a ride, pretending to support U.S. counter-terrorism operations while sheltering and supporting the Taliban and numerous other extremist organizations. That analyst is Ahmed Rashid, and he is the most articulate of the observers of the region between the Oxus and the shores of Karachi. Based in Lahore, Rashid combines scholarly excellence with popular appeal, as demonstrated by his book on the Taliban, which is Yale University Press’s all-time best-seller. Rashid’s latest book, Descent into Chaos pulls back the cover on American operations in Afghanistan, which were hampered from the outset by chronic bad judgment on the part of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

The following article by Afrasiab Khattak, the head of the Pashtun Nationalist Awami National Party in the Northwest Frontier Province (Pakhtunkhwa) appears in Dawn today. I have not been able to find it on the website yet. Khattak is provincial head of the party that heads the elected government of NWFP and has been appointed Pashtun Peace Envoy by the NWFP Provincial Assembly.

FATA’s growing disconnect

By Afrasiab Khattak

IT is hardly an exaggeration that the security of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the entire region and indeed that of the whole world will be defined by developments in Fata over the next few months. Different scenarios are being painted by military strategists and political experts.

Al Qaeda, after regrouping in the militant sanctuaries of the area, is acquiring the capacity to repeat attacks in North America or Europe similar to those carried out in 2001 in the US.

If reports about the exchanges between Pakistan and the US at the highest level are anything to go by it is pretty clear that the US will retaliate against Pakistan, probably even more severely than it did against the Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. Similarly the use of these militant sanctuaries for cross-border fighting is so large in scale (in fact all the six political agencies bordering Afghanistan are being used) that denial in this regard is no longer plausible.

The federal government has to either admit defeat or muster the political will to resolve the problem, or else justify the existence of militant sanctuaries by explaining their usefulness to the national interest. We have run out of time and this decision cannot be delayed any more as there are no takers of the denial line.

As if this were not enough, armed lashkars (armies) from militant sanctuaries in Fata are poised to penetrate/invade the contiguous settled districts. The events in Hangu some three weeks back are a case in point. The Hangu police arrested four Taliban commanders from a car that also contained weapons, explosive material and manuals for making bombs in a place called Doaba not far away from the Orakzai Agency border.

Hundreds of Taliban surrounded the Doaba police station and demanded the commanders’ release. They also blocked the Hangu-Kurram highway. During this confrontation the Frontier Constabulary was ambushed near Zargari village and 16 security personnel were killed. Subsequently the army was called in to launch a military operation in Hangu. This action was not just in retaliation for the murder of 16 FC men but also came in view of the threat of attack by four to five thousand Taliban from Orakzai and Kurram agencies.

By now the said military operation has been completed and the targets achieved to the extent that the Taliban have been chased out of Hangu. Nevertheless, they have fled to Orakzai Agency where they are regrouping and preparing for future attacks.

The NWFP (Pakhtunkhwa) government is in a quandary. It has to call in the army whenever armed lashkars threaten to overrun a district as the police force simply does not have the capacity to fight an ever-expanding insurgency.

After Swat the army has also been deployed in Hangu. In view of the militant sanctuaries situated nearby, the army cannot be withdrawn in the near future. Imagine if the story is repeated in other vulnerable districts. Will the army also have to be deployed in all these other districts? Will such measures not bring the existence of the civilian provincial government into question?

Is it not amazing that in spite of such high stakes the presidency that has a monopoly over governance in Fata seems to show no anxiety over the prevailing situation? It is continuing with the policy of keeping Fata a black hole where terrorist groups from across the globe run their bases. It is still a no-go area for the media and civil society, and so far there is no corrective measure or policy change in sight. So much so that we have failed to take even the most preliminary step of extending the Political Parties Act to Fata.

It is only natural that we are perturbed when attacks are launched from across the border. But should we not be equally sensitive to the loss of our sovereignty over Fata to militant groups? Strangely enough we do not seem to be bothered about the militants’ total control of Fata. When the international media carries reports about this situation we dismiss them as ‘enemy’ propaganda against Pakistan. We have failed to grasp the fact that in the post-cold war world there is a universal consensus about two things. One, that all assault weapons that can be used for launching a war cannot be allowed to be kept in private possession. Two, that no state will allow the use of its soil by non-state players against another state. The entire world is astounded by our fixation with the cold war mode. We have developed an incredible capacity to live in unreality. This is indeed dangerous for any state system but it can be catastrophic for a state dancing in a minefield.

Where does all this leave the people of Fata? They are victims and not perpetrators as some people would like us to believe. They are in fact in triple jeopardy. Firstly they are groaning under the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901. They have no access to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan since they are not justiciable outside of the jurisdiction of the higher judiciary.

Secondly the tribal belt has almost been occupied by foreign and local militant organisations that are better equipped, better trained and better financed than the local population. More than 160 tribal leaders have been killed by terrorists in North and South Waziristan who operate with total impunity. Today’s Fata is not dissimilar to the Taliban and Al Qaeda controlled Afghanistan before 9/11.

Thirdly, the people of Fata get caught in the crossfire between militants and security forces from both sides of the Durand Line. The so-called collateral damage has seen a cancerous growth in Fata. The people of Fata have lost the support and protection of the state. They have no access to the media, courts and hospitals or to humanitarian assistance. The only intervention by state players takes place through their armies and air forces in which people of the tribal area are mostly on the receiving end.

For any informed and sensitive Pakistani, the situation in the tribal area is the top-most priority when it comes to policy formation and implementation. We must realise that the question of dismantling militant sanctuaries in Fata and taking short-term and long-term measures to open up the area and integrate it with the rest of the country needs urgent national attention if we are to avoid the impending catastrophe.

Read more on this article...

Iran’s Eighth Majles Faces Its First Real Test

Farideh Farhi

In the parliamentary elections that took place in March 2008, the core issue was not whether reformists or conservatives would win – a conservative win was presumed - but whether the new elected Eighth Majles can act in a more effective manner in the face of an executive branch that had learned to play fast and loose with the constitutional requirements of checks and balances, particularly in the budget process where Iran's Parliament has traditionally played an important oversight role.

The previous Seventh Majles, after its first year, had become accused of being weak, repeatedly consenting to Ahmadinejad’s expansionary economic policies and raiding of the oil fund despite qualms and public criticisms, and closing its eyes to the executive branches numerous violations in the implementation of passed legislations. Last year, for instance, Ahmadinejad withdrew $1.2bl from the oil fund for food imports despite Majles’ explicit rejection as a budgetary line item and later went on to say in a television interview that he had received approval from Ayatollah Khamenei to do so.

So, when Ali Larijani was unanimously elected as the speaker of the new Majles, handily beating out the previous speaker, Gholamali Haddad Adel, most observers presumed that his leadership was itself a signal that the era of Majles submission was over, despite hints of a backroom deal between Ahmadinejad supporters and Larijani’s more traditional conservative allies. Larijani had resigned his post as Iran’s nuclear negotiator in an open conflict with Ahmadinejad and this singular act provided the hope for a changed environment in the new Majles when he was elected as speaker

The new Majles has not done much since its convening in late June because it has been mostly been in summer recess. With its return to session, however, the coming week will provide a good testing ground for assessing whether such an expectation was justified. The occasion for this is the confirmation process for three vacant ministries.

Currently there are three ministries – Economy and Finance, Interior, and Transportation - that are being run by caretakers after the firing or resignation of their ministers. The use of caretakers has been Ahmadinejad’s favorite instrument in going around the Majles regarding appointments for which he thinks he will have a hard time receiving approval. But Article 135 of the Iranian constitution is quite clear that the president can only appoint a caretaker for a maximum period of three months.

This is something Ahmadinejad did not do for the all important Ministry of Economy and Finance (and the deadline for the Ministry of Interior is approaching) essentially because he was worried that his caretaker appointee, Hossein Samsami - a rather young Najaf-born economics professor with not much experience in running a government bureaucracy - was not going to be approved by a parliament particularly worried about his newly touted Economic Transformation Plan; a plan whose details have yet to be spelled out beyond the idea of some sort of direct cash payments to the needy as a substitute for untargeted subsidies. A similar situation was brewing at the Interior Ministry where the caretaker, Mehdi Hashemi, is someone whose candidacy for minister of welfare was rejected by the parliament when Ahmadinejad first became president.

Parliamentary complains about the delay was temporarily solved last week by an intervention by Ayatollah Khamenei in the form of a publicly announced but yet unpublished “state order.” Through this order the leader allowed Ahmadinejad to extend the 3-month limit for the Economy and Finance Ministry. What was initially not clear was whether this order extended Samsami’s stay until Majles came back from summer recess (which was last Sunday), as maintained by Majles members, or another three months as claimed by Ahmadinejad’s liaison to Majles.

But it didn’t take long to become clear that support for a longer period and continued constitutional violation was not forthcoming and two days after deputies came back from summer recess, Ahmadinejad hastily introduced his three ministers. Interestingly, though, only the least controversial caretaker, for the Transportation Ministry, was offered as a candidate. For the other two ministries, Economy and Interior, Ahmadinejad was effectively forced to withdraw the names of the caretakers and offer two other candidates.

In the case of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, this withdrawal came after Samsami had a disastrous meeting with the members of the parliament which lasted only 20 minutes. In the case of the Interior Ministry, the withdrawal came after the caretaker had publicly announced that he will probably be the candidate! So there is no doubt that the parliament did manage a pushback.

And despite the last minute changes, Ahmadinejad’s troubles with getting his candidates approved may still not be over. Even Ruhollah Hosseinian, a well-known hard-line deputy from Tehran, is on record saying that he was shocked to hear the names of the candidates and did not see any of them as being effective.

Hosseinian does have a point. Samsami’s replacement is Seyyed Shamseddin Hosseini who seems even more inexperienced in the running of a bureaucracy. His latest portfolio is Secretary of the Working Group for Economic Transformation, which is more of a consultative position. Majles should have at least as much trouble with Hosseini as it did with Samsami unless a backroom deal has been made between Speaker Larijani and Ahmadinejad to ignore Hosseini's inexperience for the sake of trying to overcome at least the appearance of disarray that is plaguing Ahmadinejad’s economic agenda and team. The number of votes received by Hosseini will be a good test for Larijani’s leadership as well as a marker for the extent to which the new Majles is willing to go beyond talks and complains and actually act differently from the previous parliament.

Also to be watched is the vote for Ali Kordan, the candidate for the Interior Ministry. The sudden choice of Kordan is actually quite strange. His name gained prominence last October as someone who might be nominated the head the Petroleum Ministry but, given his low chances of approval, he was never introduced. Instead, despite his lack of experience in the oil industry, he was imposed on the newly approved Petroleum Minister, Gholamhossein Nozari, as his first deputy for human resources and management with rumors abound that he was really the one running the ministry. But Rajanews, which is close to Ahmadinejad, is reporting that his choice was a compromise because he is a friend of Larijani (Kordan was Larijani’s deputy both at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

We shall have to see if there is any truth to all these speculations and whether, if there has been some sort of backroom deal between Larijani and Ahmadienjad, the rest of Majles will agree to the deal. What is not speculation is the reality of Ahmadienjad working with a very limited pool of trusted appointees who are acceptable to both him and the Parliament. What has also been manifestly on display is the dysfunctional relationship Ahmadinejad has developed with the rest of the Iranian political system.

He was able to bully the Seventh Majles by either imposing his will on it or ignoring its legislative dictates on occasions it decided to stand against him. He managed to do it because he has essentially maintained, with quite a bit of righteousness, that there is really no other institution besides the office of the supreme leader that can prevent him from the routine ignoring of the constitutional mechanisms for legislative action and oversight.

Given his brazen attitude, even if the makeup of the new parliament translates into a stronger stance against Ahmadinejad, it will ultimately be Ayatollah Khamenei’s public and explicit orders that will allow Majles' stronger stance to place effective limits on Ahmadinejad’s policies and behavior. Given the record of the past three years, whether he chooses to do so is not at all clear. But this must not be a comfortable position for the supreme leader more used to subtle nudging and ambiguity as a means to maintain the appearance of his office staying above the partisan fray. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Milanovic on Globalization and Corrupt States

In my first post on former US Afghanistan counter-narcotics coordinator Tom Schweich's article claiming that Afghanistan is a narco-state (with the connivance of the US Department of Defense, Democratic Party, and NATO among others) I mentioned a World Bank article on the world drug economy and corruption by a Hungarian economist. I was pretty close, really: actually it's an article by a Serbian economist, Branko Milanovic, published by Yale Global Online.

Here's some of what Milanovic has to say in his essay, Globalization and the Corrupt States:

Intensified trade and travel have enabled the rise of corrupt states that thrive on illegal businesses. Only by changing the rules of the same global trade that has allowed corrupt states to grow can one hope to remove this blot on globalization.

"Corrupt states" are different from a more commonly used category of "failed states." The distinguishing characteristic of a failed state is its inability to exercise control over its national territory; a key feature of a corrupt state is its weak governance structure, lawlessness and inability to move toward self-sustained development. While failed states have existed in the past - think of the Ottoman Empire in its last century - the spread of corrupt or criminalized states is a recent phenomenon, almost non-existent before the current wave of globalization. Is this a coincidence?

Globalization influences the relative profitability of different activities. In the US, globalization reduced profitability of steel production and increased it for software. In corrupt states, profitability soars in the production of goods and services that are internationally illegal: drugs, sex trafficking, contraband weapons or cigarettes, or counterfeit goods. . . .

Once organized crime and its supporters become the largest employers in the country, they play the same role that a more conventional business plays in other countries. They try to influence the political process. Moreover, they need to control the political arena - election of presidents and parliaments - even more tightly than "normal" business people because their very existence depends on having a government willing to tolerate violation of international rules as the country's main activity.

The government structure that emerges is "endogenous": It reflects domestic social and economic structure, which in turn is the outcome of greater international trade and economic incentives, much like other countries, except that the governance structure is, almost inevitably, more corrupt. The recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund's insistence on reforming governance in these countries is bound to fail because the cause is misdiagnosed.

Governance is viewed by the international organizations as something "exogenous," something that a country just happens to have and which - through a better electoral process, more transparent laws and more honest lawmakers - can be improved. Thus the international organizations are in a permanent, and fruitless, search of an "honest" lawmaker, an Eliot Ness who will bust corruption and illegality. They fail to notice that governance structures respond to underlying incentives, and to expect an honest person to rise to power in a corrupt state is akin to expecting a person with no financial backing from big business to be elected president of the US. In both cases, the outcome of a political process reflects the country's underlying economic conditions.

A different approach is necessary: legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking. If prostitution and drugs indeed became like haircuts and candies, their production would obey the same rules: Countries that export beauty services and confectionary products are not notably more corrupt than others. Some of the current entrepreneurs would remain in these activities, others would move to others. In either case, there would be a general "normalization" akin to what was observed after prohibition on alcohol sales was lifted in the US. Thousands of "bootleggers" became normal producers of alcohol, alcohol-linked criminality decreased, and only a minority of those with preference for high risk and crime moved to other illegal activities. . . .

The key is that meaningful reforms do not begin in the corrupt states themselves, but in the rich world that is the main consumer of illegal goods and services. This requires a total overhaul in our thinking about the root cause of a corrupt state. Many of the most corrupt states are "corrupt" because they specialize in goods and services that are deemed illegal. But what is illegal today is not necessarily illegal tomorrow. "Illegality" is a historical category, as the long history of accepted prostitution and drug use shows. Thus if illegality is the main cause of corrupt governments, then the best way to root out corruption is to remove illegality.

The way to help corrupt countries does not lie in hectoring them about the virtue of good governance, but in pushing for the legalization of their main exports. The target constituency of the international organizations' advocacy thus becomes the rich, not the poor, world.

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Rubin: Bush Administration on Drugs in Afghanistan -- So Wrong, So Long

This reminds me of an old Jewish joke (scroll down for joke), updated:

The rabbi was in his study deep in thought, when in rushed Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Thomas Schweich, Senior Coordinator for Rule of Law and Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan, and Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State. It was clear that they had been having a heated argument that only the learned rabbi could resolve.

"Rabbi, goodness gracious, this mission creeper wants to drag our warfighters into police work!," burst out Rumsfeld. "First we must win the war on terror, even if it means arming, funding, and protecting drug traffickers! Then let others win the war on drugs! Mercy me!"

The rabbi thoughtfully scratched his beard. "You're wrong," he said.

"Of course he's wrong, rabbi," yelled Schweich. "Drugs are funding the Taliban and al-Qaida! Not only that -- our supposed allies in the Afghan government are protecting traffickers! The poor Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras have all stopped growing poppy and only the greedy rich Pashtuns still want more! Even the UN Agency that I fund says so! The only answer is aerial spraying!"

The rabbi studied the commentaries in a holy book and seemed lost in contemplation. "You're wrong," he said.

"But rabbi," pleaded Condi Rice, "Both of these political appointees from different factions of the Republican Party have the ear of the President! So what if neither of them knows anything about Afghanistan or the economics of the drug industry or counter-insurgency? They can't both be wrong!"

The rabbi stared at the ceiling, as if seeking the counsel of a Higher Father. Finally he spoke: "You're wrong too."

(Note to Afghans: to change cultural context, replace learned rabbi with Mullah Nassruddin. Christians -- not sure, but you could try Father Ted or a character from Garrison Keillor.)

If only I were exaggerating....

Rumsfeld armed and empowered anybody who would or could fight the Taliban and resisted any attempt to curb them, since he didn't want any trouble while we saved our forces for success in Iraq (and then needed more to make it even more successful!). The U.S. doesn't do nation building, it does regime destroying. The Bush administration didn't even allocate any new money for reconstruction the first year! They wanted other countries to clean up Afghanistan after we had destroyed al-Qaida and Taliban. Then -- next!

Schweich (and his predecessor, Bobby Charles) revolted against this policy. Drugs, they rightly argued, were funding the insurgency and government corruption. The war on drugs is part of the war on terror. We have to do both at the same time! Spray the fields and arrest the power-holders! If anyone opposes us, arrest them too!

But nobody ever explained how to win over the farmers while destroying their crops before they had secure alternatives. (Schweich denies he was doing this, which shows how little he understands peasant villages in general, let alone Afghanistan.) Nobody every explained how to fight the Taliban and build security in alliance with a government based on the power of drug-trafficking militia commanders funded and armed by the U.S. while arresting these same people. Consequently the U.S. pursued a bad counter-insurgency strategy and a bad pro-insurgency strategy simultaneously, which Schweich confirms in his account of the total absence of an inter-agency process for implementation of counter-narcotics . It's difficult to say if the government as described by Schweich was not implementing a strategy or implementing no strategy.

The answer is, THINK!!! What are we trying to accomplish, where, with whom, and with what resources? Then develop a strategy for the specific situation instead of taking dogmatic unexamined concepts like "war on terror" and "war on drugs" and trying to smash them together.

The goal is political -- to help our Afghan allies win the battle for legitimacy. The political, military, and economic strategies (including counter-narcotics, which cuts across them) have to be integrated for that end. Yes, integrate counter-insurgency, counter-narcotics, development, and lots of other types of operations by disaggregating them into lines of policy and figuring out priorities and relationships: strengthen counter-insurgency AND counter-narcotics by massive aid to increase the productivity and connectivity to markets of rural communities without attacking their livelihoods before the aid comes to fruition; strengthen legitimacy and governance with massive aid to the police and justice system (refused by Rumsfeld to President Karzai's face) while offering a package of cooptation or marginalization for leaders formerly or presently involved in trafficking; use military force sparingly but only against the highest part of the value chain (heroin labs, major trafficking operations); and attack the sources of the drug industry outside of Afghanistan by programs against the export of precursors to the country and money laundering.

I know that was an excessively dense paragraph. For an excessively lengthy exposition of the same thing, see the report I wrote with Jake Sherman.

In conclusion, a warning from Mullah Nasruddin about policy recommendations:

At a gathering where Mullah Nasruddin was present, people were discussing the merits of youth and old age. They had all agreed that, a man's strength decreases as years go by. Mullah Nasruddin dissented.
- I don't agree with you gentlemen, he said. In my old age I have the same strength as I had in the prime of my youth.
- How do you mean, Mullah Nasruddin? asked somebody. Explain yourself.
- In my courtyard, explained Mullah Nasruddin, there is a massive stone. In my youth I used to try and lift it. I never succeeded. Neither can I lift it now.

Only God knows the whole truth.

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Rubin: Liberal Reality Attacks Bush Appointee's Claims on Colombia and Afghanistan

One of the recurrent themes in Tom Schweich's report from the front about how "odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban [prevented] the implementation of an effective counterdrug program," is that the strategy he was proposing was tried and true. It had demonstrated its effectiveness all over the world, especially in Colombia.

This just in:

PASTO, Colombia — Along with Colombia’s successes in fighting leftist rebels this year, cities like Medellín have staged remarkable recoveries. And in the upscale districts of Bogotá, the capital, it is almost possible to forget that the country remains mired in a devilishly complex four-decade-old war.

But it is a different story in the mountains of the Nariño department. Here, and elsewhere in large parts of the countryside, the violence and fear remain unrelenting, underscoring the difficulty of ending a war fueled by a drug trade that is proving immune to American-financed efforts to stop it.

Soaring coca cultivation, forced disappearances, assassinations, the displacement of families and the planting of land mines stubbornly persist, the hallmarks of a backlands conflict that threatens to drag on for years, even without the once spectacular actions of guerrillas in Colombia’s large cities.

Soaring narcotics cultivation in the areas affected by the insurgency . . . . Sounds just like Afghanistan. . . .

But then "reality has a well-known liberal bias." Read more on this article...

Rubin: Schweich, ICG, etc. -- Assume the Existence of a State in Afghanistan

The buzz about Afghanistan (outside of Afghanistan) has focused on Thomas Schweich's New York Times Magazine article, Is Afghanistan a Narco-State? This article contains the startling revelation that corrupt Afghan officials protect the drug trade, and that neither President Karzai nor the U.S. Department of Defense believes that direct confrontation with some of the most powerful people in Afghanistan while we are already losing the struggle with the Taliban is a good idea.

Before I proceed, I would like to stipulate that I know and like Tom Schweich. He came into his job as coordinator for counter-narcotics and rule of law in Afghanistan with virtually no background on the subject and read into his brief very quickly and impressively. He is very smart, and he works harder than I do. Unfortunately, he has no idea what Afghanistan is.

(For a detailed analysis of the drug economy in Afghanistan, counter-narcotics policy, and the fallacies of arguments like Schweich's see the report I co-authored with Jake Sherman.)

(Another point: drugs is by far the largest industry in the Afghan economy, probably accounting for a quarter to a third of GDP. It is not a "deviant" activity in the sociological sense. As a political scientist, I don't know of any government in the world that does not have relations with the owners of its country's largest industry and biggest employer. There was a very good essay on this general problem, not focusing on Afghanistan, by a Hungarian World Bank economist. I'll post the link as soon as I can find it.)

I'm going to criticize the Bush administration later in this post (no fainting please), but the basic error Tom makes is not limited to the Bush administration, Republicans, people on the right, or Americans. Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group and many others (for example in my own human rights community, if I have not yet been excommunicated) make the same mistake, which we might call the Can Opener Assumption.

According to a story I heard in graduate school, a chemist, a physicist, and an economist were stranded on a desert island where their only provisions were canned food. How would they eat? The chemist tried to analyze the composition of the metal and searched for materials that would rapidly corrode it. The physicist sought to create a lens out of palm leaves and sea water to concentrate the sun's energy enough to pierce the metal. All failed. Finally, they turned to the economist to ask his advice.

The economist examined the can. After reflection he said: "In principal the problem is very simple. First, assume the existence of a can opener."

In this case, the solution is: assume the existence of a state.

Tom summarizes President Karzai's view as:

"[Mr Karzai] perceives that there are certain people he cannot crack down on and that it is better to tolerate a certain level of corruption than to take an aggressive stand and lose power."

I imagine that is a fair statement of President Karzai's view. He has decided not to lose power trying to do things that might fail disastrously. Tom never says that Karzai is wrong about this, so I wonder what his objection is. Maybe such a grim analysis is contrary to his moral principles.

I happen to think that the President of Afghanistan does not have to be that weak, and there is more he could do, though not the way Tom recommends. But Tom tells us a few things he does not comment on, and he refers to a few things he does not say explicitly, that might explain some of President Karzai's problems.

I'm going to make this short, because there is nothing new here. The Bush administration responded to 9/11 by arming and funding every commander they could find to fight the Taliban, regardless of criminal past or involvement in drug trafficking. Then they refused to get involved in "nation building" activity and instead got other "lead nations" to be responsible for various security issues with insufficient funding and capacity, including counter-narcotics. Then, every time that President Karzai tried to remove one of the U.S.-funded commanders from a position, Donald Rumsfeld would warn him against it and say the US would not back him if there was a problem.

Then the Bush administration decided narcotics in Afghanistan was a problem, but since they didn't want to move against the power holders, they decided to attack the poor -- at least they are consistent in their domestic and foreign policy: eradication, eradication, eradication. They wanted to have a "balanced" policy in Afghanistan: alongside our counter-insurgency policy we should also have a pro-insurgency policy. Karzai resisted that too.

(The charge about poverty is the one that upsets Tom the most. He cites the UN, actually the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, which argues that poverty and poppy cultivation are not connected and says he would not support a policy that attacked the poor. I am analyzing the effect of the policies not the intentions behind them. See our report for an explanation of the poor data and statistical fallacies on which UNODC bases its claim. The World Bank takes the position that "Dependence on opium cultivation is associated with poverty.")

To his credit, Tom tried to introduce more incentives and more enforcement. It is very good that he compiled a list of corrupt officials with data that would hold up in a US court (and he is a law professor, not, I think of the Yoo/Addington variety, so he should know). But just who did he think was going to arrest or fire these people?

It's simple: assume the existence of a state.

What does this mean? Tom Schweich says that Afghanistan's Attorney-General, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, says he wanted to arrest 20 corrupt officials and that Karzai stopped him. Unlike Tom, I have known Sabit for 20 years. He helped me in my research by introducing me to some of his colleagues in Hizb-i Islami. But I would not necessarily take everything he says literally.

Actually Sabit did try to arrest a corrupt official one time, General Din Muhammad Jurat, one of the most powerful Northern Alliance commanders in the Ministry of the Interior. The upshot was that Jurat detained Sabit and disarmed and beat his men. This was not in a remote area on the Pakistan border but less than an hour's drive north of Kabul in an area considered to be under "government" control. What does that mean? It means that Jurat and people like him are the government. There is no state that operates independently of power holders like Jurat. The project is to build such a state, not assume its existence and use it based on that false assumption.

The same applies to Samina Ahmed's incoherent critique of "talking to the Taliban," though at times she opposes negotiating with the Taliban and at other time accepting the Taliban's most extreme demands, as if this were the same as talking to them (this is the John Bolton approach to diplomacy: surrender first, then we'll discuss the terms). (Samina is also a friend, but I wonder if ICG takes the same position on Hamas, Hizbullah, or Iran?)

According to Samina, the international community should first build a state in Afghanistan and then negotiate the Taliban's surrender. Talking now would just be a "quick fix" that would not work. First we should build a functioning nation-state, and then construct the political agreement on which it will be based. Sounds good to me! And how do we build that state without a political agreement? Assume the existence of legitimacy. Read more on this article...

Jalili’s Predicament

Farideh Farhi

Upon his return to Iran from Geneva, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator was very clear in only one respect. Responding to a question from the Iranian press, he stated that in Geneva there was no discussion of Iran’s suspension of uranium enrichment. Jalili is actually quite correct.

The Geneva talks were not supposed to be about suspension. They were intended to help launch an intermediary step – freezing the Iran's uranium enrichment program at its current level in exchange for the freezing of UN sanctions at the current level in order to engage in a dialogue over how to move to the next stage of actually negotiating over the package of incentives Iran has been offered if Iran suspends its uranium enrichment activities..

Beyond this selective clarity, however, Jalili’s language was an exercise in obfuscation. According to him, “what was discussed in the Geneva talks was merely focused on dialogue about the approaches of the sides regarding the continuation of the path of negotiations and specified structures and time lines in the direction of reaching a comprehensive agreement.”

I do not know whether Jalili has a problem in the use of the Persian language or the problem is in my understanding of the language but I had to read this statement at least 10 times to realize that he is doing his best to say that Iran wants to continue talks with the six countries present at Geneva (including the United States) without telling the Iranian public that in order to do this Iran has to accept the freeze for freeze formula.

So, he states flatly that there was no discussion of suspension in Geneva, which is true. But in the process he gives the impression that the negotiations will continue without Iran taking the step of agreeing to a freeze of its nuclear program at the current level.

Now the interesting question to me is why Jalili has such a hard time giving a straight answer to the question of whether Iran is willing to go for the freeze formula. After all, enriching at the current level, and not beyond, for only six weeks, give or take, is not suspension and should not harm Iran’s nuclear program. It also has potential benefits if the Iranian negotiators are able to pin down the elements of the incentives package offered to Iran more precisely. Again, after all, the major criticism of the incentives package inside Iran has always been that the package is full of immediate demands on Iran and lots of future and non-specified promises by the Europeans and the Americans. In addition, if there is any chance of convincing the United States to accept some sort of enrichment facilities on the Iranian territory (intrusively inspected and/or multinational), it has to come through negotiations that includes the Americans.

One possible answer to this question could be that Jalili is simply an inexperienced diplomat or negotiator. But the more likely answer to his verbal acrobatics (which does not necessarily exclude the first possibility) is that Ahmadinejad’s administration has turned the issue of Iran’s right to enrichment into such a national spectacle that Jalili has to worry about his moves being perceived by his hard-line audience as a retreat, rather than a mere sensible or even shrewd compromise at a time of great opportunity.

It is probably because of this worry that almost all the newspapers, news agencies, and websites close to the government (such as Farsnews, Rajanews, and Kayhan) are so busy trumpeting the Bush Administration’s “retreat” on negotiating with Iran, ironically approvingly quoting Wall Street Journal as a definite source for the fact that such a retreat has actually occurred. This is while there is literally nothing but the straightforward reporting of Jalili’s words in the reformist or centrist media, probably because there has yet again been a Supreme National Security Council directive forbidding any analysis or commentary about what happened at Geneva.

I am further willing to bet that this hard-line audience is also the reason why the non-paper Iran presented in Geneva does not include any written reference to the freeze on the Iranian part; only a freeze on the current level of sanctions! The worry is so overwhelming that it prevented Jalili to state, as Iran’s previous nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani plainly stated, that "the shift in U.S. diplomacy has created a very good opportunity for Iran and we should do our best to make use of it." Instead Jalili said, “We welcome the fact that the atmosphere of talks in Geneva was constructive and forward looking.” And this is the only comprehensible part of an otherwise very long sentence about Iran’s presence in and view of the talks being “strategic and long-term.”

My bet is that Jalili’s hope is that Solana can convince the six countries that a verbal commitment on the part of Tehran about what amount to an effective freeze would be sufficient for Iran’s interlocutors to continue the talks. It is of course for Solana and the other six countries to decide whether to cover for Jalili. I doubt that they will and I certainly hope that they do not. The news that Iran has agreed to a compromise in order to kick start stalled negotiations is something a good number of Iranians would probably be happy to hear about. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Hizb-i Islami Blames Northern Alliance for Attack on Indian Embassy in Kabul and Everything Else

Ahmadullah Archiwal, an Afghan student in New York, has translated the Hizb-i Islami (Hikmatyar) press release on the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul from Pashto to English. I also received an official English version issued by Hizb-i Islami from a colleague in Kabul, but it seems that the official English version de-emphasizes certain points, so I prefer to use Ahmadullah's version. As there has been some confusion in the past, I would like to emphasize that by publicizing a document I am not endorsing its content. I think the content indicates something about the strategy of HIkmatyar and his backers and is therefore worthy of study. Here is the text:

Press Release of Hizb-i-Islami on the explosion in the front of Indian Embassy

While strongly condemning all the criminal acts of targeting helpless and innocent Afghans we recommend to our Mujahideen to demonstrate practically to the nation that they are not involved in such acts, have paid their full attention towards the actual enemy, and do not want to fire a single bullet to other than their enemy.

Some Afghans might ask that, who are responsible, for the explosions that result in the death of innocent and helpless Afghans, for explosions in the mosques, for killing of the religious scholars (Mullahs), for burning the schools, for detonating clinics and madrasas. Why do they commit such crimes? Why any one does not claim responsibilities for such crimes? Are they Taliban and Mujahideen or some circles in the American government of Kabul?

Everyone knows that Northern Alliance wants to demonstrate to their foreign supporters that their long armed presence in the government of Kabul is imperative. They want to get more aid from India. America and their puppets want to intensify the rivalry between India and Pakistan and to turn our country a site for their rivalry. Those who will be benefited are Americans, who will sell their weapons to both the countries, and is the Northern Alliance who will get more aid from New Delhi for their enmity with Pakistan.

This is their reason for opposing Islamabad; otherwise, it is clear that Islamabad is a strong supporter of the USA in the on going war. Pakistan is also a strong supporter of the Afghan government. It is the country that with the pressure from the ISI imposed the leader of Northern Alliance twice on Afghans.

Those who detonate bombs in Iraqi mosques, Kills Iraqi scholars, scientists and make Sunnis kill shites and shittes to kill Sunnis….. They are the same circles who are also behind such acts in Afghanistan. We should not undermine the remarks of the United Nations representative who has said: The intelligence organizations of some countries are involved in acts in which ordinary people are killed!!

If they think that CIA, MOSAD, Sipah –i-Pasdaran are behind such acts in Iraq, then it is a fact that those and some other agencies are behind the same acts in Afghanistan as well. As a matter of fact such people do not believe in God, do not have any sacred goal, they are the ones who do not give any importance to the blood of Afghans, and those who killed more than fifty innocent people in only two provinces in a week in their blind bombardment, they also commit the same crimes .Sometimes, they do such acts directly by themselves and some times do them through the Afghan Intelligence Agency.

Members of the Northern Alliance who were serving the Russians and now serving Americans do such acts in Herat, Khost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Paktia, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman and other provinces. They are the people who are in the control of the Khad, they invited Russians and then Americans to attack Afghanistan, and they requested Iran to occupy Herat and pressed Americans to intensify their bombardment and to drop heavier bombs on Afghans. They are the ones who have made private prisons for Americans in Kabul and Panjsher where innocent Afghans are tortured. They are the people who spy for the imperialists and invite them to drop bombs on the villages, cities and mosques of Afghanistan. They are fighting under the command of imperialists against their own people in the East, South and South Western parts of the country and commit such crimes that even foreign military officers, who command their subordinate to keep such acts secret, feel shy to talk about them. Northern Alliance, internal enemy of Afghans and the collections of the foreign servants are responsible for all such crimes. They even dropped bombs and fired rockets on the innocent citizens of Kabul during their reign so to blame real Mujahideen!!

While strongly condemning all the crimes that targets helpless and innocent Afghans we recommend to our Mujahideen to demonstrate practically to the nation that they are not involved in such accidents, have paid their full attention towards the actual enemy, and do not want to fire a single bullet towards other than their enemy. Avoid conventional fighting, the harm of such fighting is greater than their gains, ordinary people are targeted and are forced to leave their houses in such fighting.

We also tell to the nation to pay attention to the conspiracies of the internal and external enemies and to be prepared for the days when the imperialists will withdraw from our country. That time is closer, American system is closer to collapse. The present situation of Afghanistan is just like those days when the Soviet troops were making preparations for their withdrawal. All those Afghans, who want the independence of their country, collapse of the reign of the foreign servants, the end of the conflict, opportunity for Afghan nation to determine their own future by themselves without the foreign intervention, and the establishment of an Islamic system, should come closer.

With a hope for those sacred goals.

Long live Mujahideen.

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