December 2007

Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto killing
Interrogations are said to have revealed the existence of a vast al-Qaeda network to track down and kill “precious American assets” in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, assassinated on Thursday, was one of the foremost of those American assets. Her death was “our first victory”, in the words of an al-Qaeda spokesman. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 27, '07)

Cautious hope for peaceful Middle East
Change is the only constant, it seems, in the volatile Middle East, but a calmer, even peaceful, 2008 is possible if President George W Bush embraces a last-minute "peace legacy"; if Hamas and Fatah can mend fences in Palestine and if Israel is serious about reducing tensions. Turkey and its incursion into northern Iraq is another wild card, and there's always Iran. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 21, '07)

How's al-Qaeda doing? You decide
United States intelligence believes al-Qaeda has successfully regrouped and is capable of attacking inside the US. At the same time, al-Qaeda continues to suffer from manpower losses in Iraq. Other developments in the Muslim world and in the affairs of al-Qaeda and its allies suggest it has been a mixed year for the group, but it depends on how one looks at the data. - Michael Scheuer (Dec 20, '07)

Iraq is on the Pentagon's track
The Pentagon's latest report on Iraq points to "considerably improved overall levels of security". The report attributes this to a number of factors, including a decrease in the capabilities of al-Qaeda and militia extremists. What's not mentioned are the difficulties in maintaining staff levels in the Iraqi military and police. - David Isenberg (Dec 20, '07)

'Paper' Iraqi police just don't do the job
With employment options mostly limited to collecting garbage or joining the police, many Iraqi men choose the latter. Trouble is, once they sign on for their US$300 a month job, hundreds of thousands of them simply vanish - but remain on the payroll. The security gaps are filled by what the US military euphemistically calls "concerned citizens". (Dec 20, '07)

Eyeball to eyeball in the Persian Gulf
Escalating military deployment, murky maritime borders and the presence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards make for a combustible equation in the waters of the Persian Gulf. One analyst says an incident-at-sea agreement is overdue, as it is the only way to prevent unwanted, even accidental, confrontations. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 20, '07)

FILM REVIEW
Iraq's heart of darkness
Redacted by writer-director Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma presents a harrowing fictional account of the true-life 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl at the hands of US soldiers. Despite some unsympathetic American stereotypes, this is a powerful antiwar film that depicts the terror in which a soldier lives and the evil that can result. (Dec 20, '07)

Radio Mullah vs Gandhara Buddha
In the Swat Valley, Pakistan's latest pro-Taliban frontline, girls' education, music, television, free polio vaccines and the region's centuries-old Buddha - esteemed the most important of its kind in South Asia - have all become victims of the campaign for strict Islamic law. The once-popular tourist spot now epitomizes the crisis of radicalism in Pakistan. - Caroline Watson (Dec 19, '07)

Turkey gets a free hand in Iraq
The Iraqi government in Baghdad and the semi-independent Kurdish regional government can complain as much as they like about the Turkish air and ground raids over the past few days into northern Iraq to strike at Kurdish rebels. Washington, while not explicitly sanctioning the incursions, has little choice but to condone them to protect its recent gains in Iraq. - Sami Moubayed (Dec 19, '07)

Bush's new McSpinmeister
With the resignation of the top US government spin doctor, President George W Bush had to go looking for a second opinionist. Enter James Glassman, a former syndicated columnist and a cast-iron neo-con now tasked with improving the US's ugly image abroad. As America's new idealogue, many are saying Glassman is less than ideal. He's already under attack for a number of ethical gaffes, including touting for McDonald's. (Dec 19, '07)

Bush has a little secret on Iran
A senior Iranian military defector is believed to have played a key part in convincing the US intelligence community to radically change its mind on Iran's nuclear program. And despite White House obfuscation, it appears President George W Bush knew all about the reversal at the beginning this year. - Gareth Porter (Dec 18, '07)

Al-Qaeda plays deal-breaker in Pakistan
The almost farcical escape from Pakistani custody of Rashid Rauf points to the likelihood of a deal between Islamabad and militants who had threatened to boycott and disrupt Pakistan's general elections next month. But Rauf, a British subject of Pakistani origin once linked to a plot to blow up commercial aircraft and wanted in Britain in connection with a murder probe, is only part of the picture. It's not in al-Qaeda's interests to have militants making deals, and it might yet have the last word. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 18, '07)

Pakistan learns the US nuclear way
The United States has spent US$100 million helping Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons and the materials used to make them. Yet the US - which for years had the launch codes for its nuclear missiles cunningly set at 00000000 -  suffers serious problems with securing its own nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and weapons-related information. (Dec 18, '07)

COMMENT
Kissinger's foggy focus on Iran
The old Cold Warrior is back. At age 84, Henry Kissinger has embroiled himself in the escalating debate over Iran's nuclear intentions. In a newly published opinion piece he dismisses US intelligence estimates, misunderstands the new realities of the Middle East and proves just how  out of touch he is with the American public. This is Kissinger, king of contradictions. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 17, '07)

Touchy, feely in the kill chain
In its push for a more culturally sensitive military, the post-Rumsfeld Pentagon is scrambling to recruit top academics to assist in the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's becoming the era of the embedded anthropologist, and the prospect is confounding the halls of higher education amid a growing debate over whether posts with the military violate core professional principles. - David Isenberg (Dec 17, '07)

Iran's engagement is al-Qaeda's threat
Mahmud Ahmadinejad's pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia - the first by an Iranian president since 1979 - is just one example of increased Iranian interaction with its Arab neighbors, under the watchful, and somewhat approving eye of the United States. There is even talk of Tehran returning hundreds of al-Qaeda members and militants to authorities in their Arab countries of origin. Previously, al-Qaeda has had only one response to such situations: terror. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 17, '07)

Iraq's Muqtada not quite Hezbollah mold
US fears of the emergence of a Hezbollah-style group in Iraq are centered on cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Certainly there are similarities between Muqtada and Hasan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah in Lebanon. But there are also important differences, notably Muqtada's poor image projection and inferior education - deficiencies he aims to put right. - Sami Moubayed (Dec 17, '07)

British 'success' under siege in Afghanistan
The British have hailed their recapture this week of Musa Qala town in Afghanistan's Helmand province as a "significant success" against the Taliban. Their jubilation is premature. They failed to consolidate their previous hold on the town by not winning over the local population, and without this support any efforts to tackle poppy growing and smuggling in the strategic province will be doomed, and the Taliban will be back. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 14, '07)

Ties on Iran's nuclear program loosen
New cracks in Washington's hardline stance against Iran's nuclear program are emerging, including US experts calling for limited uranium enrichment capability or simply for strict nuclear transparency. The White House and Iran might not yet agree, but it's clear that the time to end United Nations sanctions has arrived, and the US's own sanctions on Iran are now due for reconsideration. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 13, '07)

Strange bedfellows emerge in Pakistan
Just weeks ahead of Pakistan's national elections, militants based in the tribal areas, the country's premier urban-based Islamic party, civil society and even al-Qaeda find themselves on the same side. They are lined up against the political parties now under the military establishment's wing headed by President Pervez Musharraf. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 13, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
It's a fragile 'quiet' in Iraq
The decline in violence in Iraq rests uneasily on several unrelated and loosely related processes. The "surge" is certainly one, but it is not foremost. Iranian pressure is another, as is the forced relocation of 2 million or so Sunnis who have fled to foreign countries. The attendant fragility of these factors does not inspire confidence that the decline in violence can continue. - Brian M Downing (Dec 13, '07)

British pullout stokes Iraq's southern fires
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in effectively ending a three-year military operation in Basra in southern Iraq, talked of the job being done, but he stopped short of declaring success. And therein lines the rub. The city the British troops will leave is already a hotbed for militants and Islamic fundamentalists, and the situation can only deteriorate. It's also controlled by ambitious Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in which Iran is taking more than a passing interest. - Sami Moubayed (Dec 12, '07)

Al-Qaeda fights for its mark in Pakistan
With militants in the Swat Valley in Pakistan on the run from government troops, al-Qaeda has sent in its fighters to conduct a guerrilla war. The aim is not so much to inflict casualties as to prevent the flag-bearers of the "war on terror" from turning the struggle in the valley from that of a jihad for the establishment of a caliphate into a local conflict. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 12, '07)

Death squads, disappearances and torture
It's an unholy trinity that for decades has been increasingly refined by the US and its allies, beginning in the 1950s in Latin America, on through Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s, to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and beyond in the CIA's shadowy "extraordinary rendition" facilities. - Greg Grandin (Dec 12, '07)

Taliban regroup after losing city
Rumors of brutality by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters spurred Afghan President Hamid Karzai to order the attack that led to the recapture of the key southern town of Musa Qala. But even as the Taliban, reported to be 2,000-strong in the area, fled into the mountains, counterattacks were mounted just south of the newly secured area near a key dam reconstruction project. (Dec 12, '07)

Fighting talk from Turkey's generals
Eight retired Turkish generals have shared their sometimes divergent opinions on Turkey's military attempt to quash the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party, as well as their views on US and European involvement. And only one appears optimistic about the prospects for a resolution. (Dec 11, '07)

COMMENT
Stop getting mad, America. Get smart
It may be too late to convince the world to like the United States. But America's use of "smart power" could be a timely answer to the neo-conservative foreign policy train wreck that has made the US globally unpopular. It's about balancing coercion with attraction, abandoning the September 11 mindset, and investing in the global good. - Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye (Dec 11, '07)

SPENGLER
Iran: The wrong options
on the table
The neo-conservatives "idealists" in the US had an easy, neat and plausible solution to the Middle East in the form of exporting democracy to the region. They were wrong. Similarly, the "realists", who, judging by the recent intelligence estimate on Iran, are in the ascendancy in the Bush administration, have a neat and easy solution - balance of power and deterrence. They are also wrong. There will not be a happy ending. (Dec 10, '07)

The neo-cons strike back
Neo-conservatives and former officials of the Bush administration have launched a ferocious counterattack on the intelligence community's assessment on Iran, and more pointedly at its authors - the officers whose goal they say is to undermine George W Bush's policy agenda. - Khody Akhavi (Dec 10, '07)

A smart side to US intelligence...
The US intelligence assessment on Iran may well have been the brainchild of bureaucratic infighting aimed at fettering the neo-conservatives who pin their hopes on a US attack on Iran. This it has done. Equally important, its side effects, such as sidelining Europe, torpedoing the ship of Iran's cooperation with Arab states and easing nerves over Middle East oil, may yet prove to be a unique example of American smart power. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 7, '07)

... and the flip side
From underestimating the Soviet Union's ability to detonate a nuclear bomb to almost missing India's, American intelligence has got it wrong more often than not when it comes to assessing foreign powers' nuclear prowess. The rapidity with which the spies have reversed course on Iran should itself induce circumspection. - Jacob Heilbrunn (Dec 7, '07)

Espionage enters the 'un-Rumsfeld' era
The National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran ditched its nuclear program in 2003 highlights a sea-change in the direction of the US's $60-billion intelligence-industrial complex. In the wake of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his successor Robert Gates is working to soften the Pentagon's footprint on national security policy and pushing to place intelligence collection in the hands of elected leaders concerned with national security, not just the tactical needs of the military. (Dec 7, '07)

Israel's 'auto-pilot' policy on Iran
With the chances of US-Iran diplomacy improving, the Jewish state looks increasingly alone in the world. As senior Israeli officials rush to dismiss recent US intelligence claims, and maintain hawkish rhetoric against Tehran, analysts say Israel appears paralyzed, locked into a tired policy that ignores a new strategic chessboard. - Trita Parsi (Dec 7, '07)

A new Chinese red line over Iran
The Middle East "hell disaster" has just become less hellish. The chances of a United States military strike against Iran have been dramatically reduced. And Washington's push for more sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program, now that Iran is US-certified not to be developing nukes, can be expected to run into a Russian and Chinese brick wall. Indeed, Beijing has emerged as the key player in getting the George W Bush administration to enter into a constructive engagement with Tehran. - M K Bhadrakumar (Dec 6, '07)

Bin Laden hits a note with US's allies
Osama bin Laden's latest appeal to the people of Europe to rethink their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has been dismissed by many as an old, ridiculous tactic. But the message sounded a pitch-perfect note to the Europeans and fortuitously coincided with a fresh reminder that Europe and America are vulnerable to radiological attacks by non-state actors. - Michael Scheuer (Dec 6, '07)

SPEAKING FREELY
The plan to topple Pakistan's military
For the United States, it is not about President  Pervez Musharraf any more. It is about clipping the wings of a strong Pakistani military, denying space for China in Pakistan, squashing the intelligence services, stirring ethnic unrest and neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear program. Musharraf shares the blame for letting things come this far. But he is also punching holes in Washington's game plan. - Ahmed Quraishi (Dec 5, '07)

Spies show Bush a way forward on Iran
While US inteligence agencies assert that Iran has halted its nuclear-weapons program (if it ever had one), President George W Bush now says merely the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear bomb is enough to make Tehran "dangerous". Yet the latest assessment points the way to a policy of negotiation that promises Iran security benefits. This was the approach of Britain, France and Germany - rejected by Washington - four years ago when the Iranians are now said to have stopped their weapons program. - Gareth Porter (Dec 5, '07)

US spies concoct a potent Iran brew
US intelligence agencies, having said in 2005 that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons", now say Tehran stopped the program in 2003. It's a remarkable flip-flop that on the surface takes the heat off Iran over its nuclear program. Not so. The vast cadre of intelligence "alchemists" has given the military option a new lease of life with the allegation of past proliferation activities. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 4, '07)

US on Pakistan's campaign trail
The United States has stepped up its pressure for the formation of a popular unity government in Pakistan by urging political parties not to boycott next month's national vote, although one of the frontrunners, Nawaz Sharif, has already been declared ineligible. Washington does not want its plans disrupted. These include using Pakistani soil to stir up an insurgency against the Iranian government and supporting counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Dec 4, '07)

COMMENT
Neo-cons have it wrong on Pakistan
Neo-conservatives in the United States have been wringing their hands over what to do about Pakistan, suggesting the US military could intervene, alongside the Pakistani army, to keep the country's nuclear weapons safe. What will do the trick, though, is not playing footsie with the Pakistani military, which is far from a force for "Westernization", but a culture of civilian supremacy. - Najum Mushtaq (Dec 3, '07)

SPENGLER
Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam
Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of several high-profile such people to have gravitated towards atheism. She is unequivocal that the West is - or should be - at war with Islam. The reasons she has chosen atheism are less clear, but, contrary to superficial impressions, Islam is much closer in character to atheism than to Christianity or Judaism. (Dec 3, '07)

Iran turns the charm on its neighbors
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has unexpectedly been invited to attend the summit meeting of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council as a special guest. With his new mantra of resolving problems "through love and kindness", Ahmadinejad will be looking to find allies as Iran faces a third round of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Dec 3, '07)

November 2007