By July-August 2001, it was clear that something dramatic was about to happen. Pepe Escobar, our "Roving Eye", was
traveling in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. The rumor was that US forces were about to use Pakistan to launch a raid into Afghanistan. Escobar's article, published by Asia Times Online on August 30, 2001, was headlined  Get Osama! Now! Or else ... Our Karachi correspondent, Syed Saleem Shazad, was meanwhile filing articles like Osama bin Laden: The thorn in Pakistan's flesh (August 22, 2001) ...

Pakistan goes after India's 'Osama'
Improving Pakistan-India relations bode ill for India's most wanted man, Mumbai bomber Dawood Ibrahim. If Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf - already putting on the pressure - is able to snag the underworld don, who has close ties to Pakistan, there would be an unprecedented breakthrough in cross-border relations. - Siddharth Srivastava (Feb 26, '04)

A lesson in 'disappearing the dead'
In fighting a war of choice - such as the United States-led invasion of Iraq - a nation needs to maintain the support of its public, which means painting as pretty a picture as possible as casualties mount. - David Isenberg (Feb 26, '04)

Defiant sheikhs and deadly shakedowns
The Iraqi sheikh and his cousins are convinced that the British occupiers of almost a century ago treated the population much better than today's Americans do, but either way, they insist, "Iraq is the cemetery of all its occupiers." In Romeo Charlie Seven sector, meanwhile, there's some dispute over a deadly shootout at a house packed with ammunition and bomb-making material. - Nir Rosen (Feb 26, '04)

COMMENTARY
Dangerous illusion of a Shi'ite democracy
Conventional thinking in Washington, if one can call the neo-conservatives conventional, is that the future of democracy in Iraq, and the region, rests with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the majority Shi'ite population. Such a view is fatally flawed as it ignores the ethnically/religiously separate components of the Iraqi population. - Marc Erikson (Feb 25, '04)

'Key capture' tightens net on bin Laden
Reports filtering from Pakistan's tribal areas, where large-scale operations are under way to find Osama bin Laden, suggest that the son of al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has been "smoked out" into United States hands across the border in Afghanistan. If true, the net could well be closing on bin Laden. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 25, '04)

THE ROVING EYE
Bring me the head of Osama
Amid the hive of military activity on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States' chief headhunter for Osama bin Laden, fresh from nailing Saddam Hussein, is in position to make the ultimate catch. But what if bin Laden doesn't play ball? - Pepe Escobar (Feb 25, '04)

And in Iran, the winner is ... Rafsanjani
Struggles in the Iranian parliament have pitted reformers against conservatives, with the former making no progress. Now, with the reformists crushed following weekend elections, the battle will be among conservatives, with veteran politician and former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani emerging as a key figure. - Safa Haeri (Feb 24, '04)

Desperately seeking solutions in Iraq
With no consensus in sight on the timing or nature of elections, and with a fast-approaching June 30 deadline for the United States to hand over sovereignty to Iraq, the pressure mounts to come up with some answers, and quickly. (Feb 24, '04)

Afghanistan: Now it's all-out war
The latest United States-led offensive in Afghanistan, complemented by Pakistani troops across the border, has begun. While Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are certainly targets in the operation, the US has a much broader, and longer-term strategy: total destruction of the Afghan resistance. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 23, '04)

Iraq: Enemies and neighbors
R H keeps an M16 in his living room. He's an affluent Sunni, and he doesn't get on with his Shi'ite neighbors. Just down the road, a bomb exploded in the newly built Husainiya, a Shi'ite shrine. Nir Rosen talks to the residents of Haybat Khatun Street, where Shi'ites and Sunnis are at loggerheads. (Feb 23, '04)

Base motives for the war
Saddam Hussein is gone, the Americans are in Baghdad, and that's all that matters. Forget about weapons of mass destruction, says a leader of the Iraqi opposition who helped the US find "evidence" of the weapons. And the real motivation for going to war? Military bases, says the general formerly in charge of planning Iraq's reconstruction. - Jim Lobe (Feb 23, '04)

Osama between a hammer
and a hard place
The United States has turned its full attention to some "unfinished business" in Afghanistan: the capture of Osama bin Laden. Integral to its "hammer and anvil" strategy to smoke out the al-Qaeda leader from where he is suspected of hiding on the Pakistan border is the Pakistani military. Therein lies the tricky part. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 20, '04)

No polls, but Iraq gets sovereignty
Following United Nations recommendations, Washington will return sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, without first insisting on any form of elections to create a new government. Just who will "accept" sovereignty, then, remains a mystery. Meanwhile, the occupation troops stay firmly in place. (Feb 20, '04)

POW Saddam awaits his day in court
Now that Washington has declared former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, held by US forces at an undisclosed location in Iraq, to be a prisoner of war, people are beginning to wonder just when he will be brought to trial. (Feb 20, '04)

Beware of Iraq's whipping boys
Many hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites will gather in the sacred Iraqi city of Karbala this week to commemorate the seventh-century martyrdom of Husain, the third imam. The 10-day ceremony, marked in part by acts of self-flagellation, has deep, intrinsic political content and symbolism nurtured during the history of Shi'ite oppression. For Iraq's Shi'ites, this year's commemoration could mark a turning point in that history. - Nir Rosen (Feb 18, '04)

Afghanistan: When push comes to shove
Once again in its blighted history, Afghanistan stands at a critical crossroads at which it could take the path of peace, or follow the road to further destruction. Its direction depends largely on one man who, over the years, has already played a leading role in the country's (mis)fortunes - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 18, '04)

Japan builds 'Fortress of Solitude' in Iraq
Tokyo, fearing major casualties would spell domestic and diplomatic catastrophe, is building a high-tech, well-nigh impregnable cocoon for its troops in Iraq. Some will venture forth on a strictly humanitarian mission, while most will stay behind and literally guard the fort, Fortress Japan, or as Superman might say, the Fortress of Solitude - plus karaoke. - J Sean Curtin (Feb 18, '04)

The neo-con philosophy of intelligence
"I don't know all the facts," President George W Bush said recently about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps he should have known them before declaring war. But, respond the neo-conservatives who are leading the push to reshape the US intelligence apparatus, intelligence shouldn't be about facts, but about basic instincts. (Feb 18, '04)

'Al-Qaeda' missive holds mixed message
Neo-conservatives, in the quick declassification and wide dissemination of a letter purportedly written to senior al-Qaeda leaders by a key associate, appear to have missed some important points that seriously challenge their assumptions on Iraq, rather than support them. - Jim Lobe (Feb 17, '04) 

Al-Qaeda or not, al-Zarqawi's worth $10m
Depending on Washington's needs of the day, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is either a "close associate" of Osama bin Laden, or has an "uncertain" relationship to the al-Qaeda leader. Either way, the man the US suspects of masterminding much of the violence in Iraq has a US$10 million bounty on his head. (Feb 17, '04)

THE ROVING EYE
IRAQ AND AL-QAEDA
Part 1 - The usual suspects
The apparent discovery by the United States of an al-Qaeda memo outlining plans to foment sectarian strife in Iraq fits well with the Bush administration's take on events in that country. On the ground, though, such an interpretation makes little sense. This is the first article in a two-part report by Pepe Escobar. (Feb 12, '04)

THE ROVING EYE
IRAQ AND AL-QAEDA
Part 2: Why al-Qaeda votes Bush
Al-Qaeda may have given the Bush administration the perfect motive for bombing Afghanistan and then invading Iraq. But the flip side of the coin is that even though seriously disabled, al-Qaeda benefits enormously from all the attention it receives in Washington. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 14, '04) 

   Iraqis lean toward direct elections

Journalists sucked into Iraqi violence
It's a classic vicious circle: journalists in Iraq solicit the services of armed security personnel to protect themselves, which in turn makes them even juicier targets for the resistance. Yet not many in the media are prepared to walk around the country's mean streets with only their press card as a shield. - Iason Athanasiadis (Feb 14, '04)

Part 1: Starting with a solid base The process of creating and maintaining an empire, as the United States is doing, is costly, in terms of lives, money and liberty. It requires a large military establishment, and it also requires stationing and deploying forces around the world: the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the US and its territories. This is the first article in a two-part report by David Isenberg. (Feb 12, '04) Part 2: Counting the dollars and cents Maintaining the military muscle necessary to police the empire that the United States is creating does not come cheap. Think billions of dollars, many, many billions, and the bills will keep on pouring in as long as Iraq and Afghanistan defy "pacification". This is the concluding article in a two-part report by David Isenberg. (Feb 14, '04) When the wheels fall off The longer history of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq is still being written, but the US Army already has produced its own "quick history" of the war against Saddam Hussein. It's not a happy story, outlining personal conflicts in the Pentagon, ill-equipped and overextended troops, and the fact that much of what has gone wrong was predicted well in advance. - Keith Andrew Bettinger (Feb 12, '04)

Bush's Pakistan contradiction
"Our message to [nuclear] proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear: We will find you, and we're not going to rest until you are stopped." So said President George W Bush this week, just days after dismissing Pakistan's misdeeds as an "internal" matter. - Seema Sirohi (Feb 12, '04)

Among the ruins of Arab nationalism
While it's acknowledged that political Islam retains its vibrancy, many observers believe that Arab nationalism - already terminally ill - died on the day that Baghdad fell last April. The dream of a single Arab state may be dead, but there are other forms of political amalgamation that make it too early for a eulogy just yet. - Ashraf Fahim(Feb 11, '04)

First the stick, now the US offers carrots
The American predictions that the war in Iraq would set off a wave of democratic reform across the region have proved to be wishful thinking. But Washington has a new plan. (Feb 11, '04)

Musharraf not out of the woods just yet
As far as President General Pervez Musharraf and the international community are concerned, for now at least Pakistan's nuclear proliferation problems are a thing of the past. Not so easily fobbed off, though, are people in Pakistan, particularly some who wear uniforms. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 11, '04)

Iran, N Korea join nuclear blame game Iran and North Korea have both denied receiving nuclear technology or information from top Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, yet another twist in a complex story that will not go away and which has far-reaching ramifications not only on the world stage, but within Pakistan itself. (Feb 10, '04) If Dr Khan were in India ... The Indian government has been markedly restrained in its response to the unraveling revelations of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, slightly smug, nevertheless, in the belief that it could never happen in India. - Siddharth Srivastava (Feb 10, '04)

SPENGLER
Happy birthday, Abe - pass the blood
War ranks among the strangest forms of willful self-destruction, and America's Civil War ranks among the strangest of all wars. To this day, the United States perpetuates two consoling lies about it; God help the US's enemies if it regains its frame of mind of the 1860s. (Feb 9, '04)

A day that rocked Dick Cheney
Thursday was a day that US Vice President Dick Cheney would like to forget in a hurry. First some Halliburton skeletons fell out of the closet, then questions were raised over his political ethics, and finally further questions were asked over his role in the weapons of mass destruction fiasco. What Cheney might forget, though, others in high places will not. - Jim Lobe (Feb 6, '04)

Big guns fired in intelligence war
A year ago, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq had WMD. To this day, the CIA director and the Pentagon chief are still trying to justify these claims. (Feb 6, '04)

THE ROVING EYE
(DIS)UNITED EUROPE
PART 2 - Ever changing alliances
Europe may look like it has been broken, but under the direction of the Franco-German duo - with increased British input - the shape of things to come indicates that Washington and Brussels won't be haggling only about steel quotas, bananas and genetically modified crops, but geopolitics as well. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 6, '04)

Premier's son linked to nukes probe ... Malaysia is the latest country to surface in media reports of a nuclear black market. But the allegations, which involve a company called Scope and the prime minister's son, could be particularly harmful: the news was revealed at the same time that the police themselves have come under the spotlight. - Anil Netto (Feb 6, '04) ... and Megawati to Saddam's oil The Iraqi Governing Council is probing a published report that more than 270 public figures, politicians, companies and organizations around the world received bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime in the form of commissions from oil sales. Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri is on the list of suspects. - Bill Guerin (Feb 6, '04)

India forced to bite its tongue
India is mightily miffed that the United States has reacted so calmly to Pakistan's unfolding nuclear proliferation saga. After all, Delhi has been making such accusations for years. But in the interests of longer-term goals, mum's the word. - Sultan Shahin (Feb 6, '04)  

Pakistan's nuclear aces win the day
After some tense moments, Pakistan's military establishment has stared down its "rogue" nuclear scientist, who is expected to be offered clemency in return for taking personal responsibility for Pakistan's proliferation over the years. Everyone is happy for now, Washington and India included, even though much has been swept under the carpet. (Feb 5, '04)

Pakistan's nukes: General mayhem
Having been caught red handed in the nuclear proliferation game, Pakistan is scrambling for damage control, which means ensuring that under no circumstances is blame laid on the military establishment, past or present. Fortunately for President General Musharraf, the US is on side. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 4, '04)

Proliferation passed United States by
Revelations of Pakistani nuclear proliferation to Iran, North Korea and Libya raise the question of how this could have escaped US scrutiny. (Feb 4, '04)

Another dirty little war in Nepal?
Lying as it does in the upper stories of the Himalayas, Nepal hardly seems ground zero for the Bush administration's next crusade in the "war on terror", but an aggressive US ambassador, a strategic locale, and a flood of US weaponry threaten to turn the tiny country into a counter-insurgency bloodbath. (Feb 4, '04)

Why the US is begging for UN backing ...
Given its embarrassing Iraq tribulations, the Bush administration has had a change of heart and is banking on the United Nations' return to Iraq to provide the backing it needs for an announcement - with great fanfare and just in time for election campaigning - that the occupation is over. But what the UN could, and should, undertake is an entirely different ball game. (Feb 4, '04)

  ... As the UN readies its elections team

Japan's opposition can't halt troop dispatch
Japan's political opposition has been fulminating, but it's helpless to prevent the dispatch of troops to Iraq. Although Japan is overwhelmingly pacifist and its constitution officially renounces war, the opposition has been unable to head off Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's decision to send soldiers into potential combat for the first time since World War II. Why so? - Axel Berkofsky (Feb 4, '04)

SPEAKING FREELY
Bush and Blair on the rationalization trail
The military, which is an arm of a country's legal authority or government, has a specific function to perform: to secure the rights of the citizenry. In the manner in which they have gone after Iraq, both President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have clearly and blatantly abused their militaries. - Tibor R Machan (Feb 4, '04)

Foreign aid budget takes on Cold War cast
The numbers are out, and not surprisingly it's a win for military and security assistance. With his focus on the "war on terror", President George W Bush's foreign aid request skimps on humanitarian and development accounts - a telling reminder of the spending priorities and deficits during the Cold War. - Jim Lobe (Feb 4, '04)

Bush barking up the CIA's tree
So was the intelligence tail wagging the policy dog, or was it the other way around? President George W Bush, in appointing a panel to look into the flaws in US intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, surely already knows the answer. But he doesn't want it made public just yet, not with elections coming up. - Jim Lobe (Feb 3, '04)

Turkey back on side with the US
The United States's strategic support for the Kurds is a short-term interest, since it is only concerned with preventing northern Iraq from falling into violence. Washington's strategic support for Turkey, however, is a long-term interest that Ankara is doing its best to nurture. (Feb 3, '04)

   Lethal wakeup call for Kurds

Pakistan fights back after nuke confessions
Reports that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, has confessed to transferring technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea should set alarm bells ringing in Islamabad. On the contrary, Pakistan views the development as an opportunity to exploit its strategic advantages in Afghanistan. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Feb 2, '04)

Iraqi police a law unto themselves
Poorly paid, open to grave physical danger and often maligned by their fellow citizens, police in Iraq don't have it easy, and they don't always play by the book. - David Enders (Feb 2, '04)

Yellow handkerchiefs for Japanese troops
Japanese support for the dispatch of nearly 600 troops to Iraq is inching upward as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi underscores the humanitarian aspects of the mission along with efforts to ensure troops' safety. As part of a recent media blitz, his political allies and corporate backers have begun waving yellow handkerchiefs - but they haven't caught on in this pacifist nation where many are calling such action a gimmick. - J Sean Curtin (Feb 2, '04)

Mistaken aims toward Indonesia
The United States could be committing a serious error by focusing solely on ways to combat terrorism in Indonesia, a country that would benefit far more from efforts aimed at improving democracy. (Feb 2, '04)