Abdullah May Withdraw from Second Round

Abdullah Abdullah is threatening to withdraw from the presidential runoff contest in Afghanistan if the head of the Electoral Commission is not replaced. That commission oversaw the fraud-ridden first round. President Obama has put off his decision on Afghanistan policy until the presidential election is concluded, but what if it never really takes place and the US is willy-nilly stuck with Hamid Karzai and his wounded legitimacy?

Over 1,000 US troops have been wounded in Afghanistan in the past 3 months.

Congress is pressing the Pentagon to find more effective ways of combating roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices.



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Baltzer and Barghouti on Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart this week showed his usual stone cold courage in having on to his show Palestinian activist Moustafa Barghouti and Jewish-American peace worker Ann Baltzer for a frank discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. A hard line Likudnik audience member heckled them and ultimately had to be escorted from the studio. Here is an eye witness account at MondoWeiss.

Part 1 of the interview:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Here is part 2:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

As usual, the Likudnik Dirty Tricks squad has been pressuring Stewart and Comedy Central over this outbreak of frank talk about Israel.

Rawstory has more on the controversy.

Please support Stewart: at http://www.comedycentral.com/
help/questionsCC.jhtml, selecting The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the menu. If you prefer to call, the number is 212 468 1700. If you liked what you saw, give it support. Numbers matter in these things and actually the Likudniks aren't all that numerous, it is just that so few in the mainstream bother to speak out.

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For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Pakistan Press: Clinton 'White Goddess'; US should Leave Afghanistan

The USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases Urdu editorials on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's controversial visit to Pakistan

Pakistan: Urdu Press Roundup Discusses Hillary Clinton's Visit to Country
The following is a roundup of excerpts from editorials and articles on the visit of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton to Pakistan, with particular reference to Washington's policy towards Islamabad, war on terror, and the Taliban, published in the 30 October editions of seven Urdu dailies.
Pakistan -- OSC Summary
Friday, October 30, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Ausaf Editorial Sees Shift in USPolicy Regarding Taliban

Maintaining that the United States wants to hold talks with the moderate Taliban for resolving the Afghan imbroglio, the 30 October editorial says: " US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that those who were forced to become Taliban members would have to be separated from the militants.

She said that every gun-wielding individual was not a terrorist,but there were those, who were supporting the extremists out of compulsion.

The policy that the United States is deliberating these days concerning the Talibanis that the Taliban should be divided into two groups, good and bad, then the good members of Taliban should be isolated from the bad ones, and talks should beheld with them."

Jinnah Editorial Holds US Responsible for Talibanization

Recalling that it was the United States that had organized and provided resources to these people (Taliban) in its war against the Soviet Union; the 30 October editorial states: "The United States itself is the motivator for the apprehensions that the US secretary of state hasbeen expressing during her visit to Pakistan.

The United States used to provide weapons and other paraphernalia to the Taliban to fight against the Soviet Union and declared them as jihadists.

It used the shoulder of the Taliban jihadists to shatter the Soviet Union. Later, when the shattered Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan, the United States left the Taliban unmonitored."

Mashriq Editorial Claims US Mulling Change in Policies

Referring to the joint press conference of Hillary Clinton with Foreign Minister Qureshi, the 30 October editorial states: "Anyhow, it can be guessed from the news conference of the US secretary of state that her country wants to bring change in its policies.

She has acknowledged to the extent that the United States had not benefited with direct contact with the rulers, rather they have suffered losses. Therefore, it now intends to establish direct contact with people."

Express Article by Tanvir Qaisar Shahid Discusses Impact of Visit

Talking about the statement of the Indian prime minister about holding talks with Pakistan on the eve of Hillary Clinton's Pakistan visit; the 30 October article comments: "The visit of the US secretary of state proved hard for Pakistan.

As soon as she reached Pakistan, a bomb blast occurred in Peshawar. Over 100 hundred people were killed, and 200 otherswere critically injured.

One benefit of her visit was that on the very first day of her visit, the Indian prime minister announced that his country was willing to hold unconditional talks with Pakistan."

Islam Editorial Urges US To Review Policies

Advising the United States to bring about changes in its policy for peace and security in the region, the 30 October editorial says: "Ignoring the international norms and diplomatic demands, the US secretary of state talked about, with full comfort, the appointment of the chief of the most sensitive agency of the Pakistan Army.

If the United States wants to improve its image, it should pull out of the Afghan war.
At the same time, it should also abandon its conspiracy to bog down the Pakistan Army into this war."

Islam Article by Khawar Chaudhry Links Operation With Visit

Emphasizing that stepping up of operation was imperative to pave the way for the visit of the US secretary of state; the 30October article states: "Preparations had been ongoing since the start of October for getting a glimpse of the white goddess (Hillary Clinton).
The series of offering sacrifices was also underway to appease her.

It is obvious that the visit of the goddess was necessary for a glimpse and a particular environment was also required for her arrival."

Khabrain Editorial Criticizes US Approach Toward Pakistan

Highlighting the recent US measures that prove contrary to Pakistan's sovereignty and independence; the 30 October editorial says: "The way in which people have suffered hardships because of Hillary Clinton's visit it says that if the US secretary was facing grave threats, whywas this visit to Pakistan organized?

Talking to the media, the US secretary of state said that her country would always support Pakistan.

However, when asked about the illegal measures of the United States, she evaded to answer. Pakistanis are questioning Pakistan's sovereignty and independence after the US drone attacks and armed patrolling by the US soldiers in Islamabad."

Nawa-e Waqt Editorial Exhorts Leaders To Reject US Aid, Presence of Soldiers

Goading the rulers to show national honor and dignity and rise to the occasion; the 30 October editorial comments: "Keeping in view the national sovereignty the US secretary of state should be asked to withdraw the US aid and troops.

At the same time, she should be told that we cannot sell away our independence and sovereignty for the sake of the US aid, and that weare capable of defending our independence and integrity in our capacity as anuclear power."

Nawa-e Waqt Article by Dr Hussein Ahmed Piracha Questions Double Standards of US

Deploring that the United States has been conniving at the Indian intrusion into Pakistan and its backing of the terrorists, the 30 October article says: "It should have been asked from Hillary Clinton that on one hand you have been praising the Pakistan Government and Army for launching effective operation against the terrorists in Swat and Malakand, and on the other, India has been providing weapons and dollars to the same terrorists by setting up consulates in border areas under the US patronage. India continues to cater to these elements."


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Should US Troops in Iraq be held Hostage to the next Election?

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi parliament again on Thursday failed to pass an electoral law to govern the holding of the planned January 16 parliamentary elections. The Kurdish delegates refused to come into the parliament building, thereby denying the session a quorum. The Turkmen and Arab delegates had demanded that Kirkuk be treated differently in the legislation than other provinces (Kurds are now a majority in Kirkuk, and the Kurds wish to annex the province to their Kurdistan Regional Government, a semi-independent confederacy in northern Iraq; Turkmen and Arabs consider the majority artificial, the result of Kurdistan-backed Kurdish in-migration, and consider having an ordinary election there a reward to the Kurds for land-grabbing. Kurds maintain that the province has long been theirs and that they are just correcting the 'Arabization' or ethnic cleansing and settlement policies of Saddam Hussein, who brought Arab families north to make the oil-rich province indisputably Arab).

Many pundits are maintaining that the failure to hold parliamentary elections on time will, perhaps, force US troops to stay longer and in greater numbers than envisaged in the Status of Forces agreement.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government arrested dozens of security officials, saying that they were implicated in Sunday's attacks.

Back to elections. Elections in Iraq cannot be held to international standards. There typically are no big public rallies, for fear that they would be blown up by Sunni Arab guerrillas. Candidates can seldom campaign publicly for fear of assassination. For the election itself, the US military declares a curfew and prohibits vehicular traffic for 3 days. Everyone is reduced to walking to the store to buy bread and other necessities. You can't drive. This measure prevents car bombings of the polling stations.

So why does the US still have 120,000 troops in Iraq? They aren't for the most part doing patrols anymore. They are just being kept in place so that they can swing into action as soon as the election date is fixed, and protect the electoral process from sabotage by bombing.

Is this rationale really a good enough reason to keep so many troops in Iraq? Shouldn't the Iraqi army by now be able to supervise a vehicular curfew on its own? And, why should the Obama administration care if the election is held or not? Saudi Arabia hasn't held any elections lately and it is our ally. The Iraqis were made by the US to have several elections, and they know how to do it if they want to. Why allow their interminable parlays on basic things like an electoral law to hold US troops hostage in the country with nothing much to do for a year?

The parliamentary and provincial elections and the referendum on the constitution were always imagined by the Bush administration as propaganda exercises on behalf of the Republican Party and Neoconservatism. Although the elections have not been meaningless, and a lot of Iraqis obviously express their political spirit through them, they have been highly flawed and artificial. The first, in January 2005, completely excluded the Sunni Arabs because it was not based on voting districts, and it appears to have been stolen by Iran, much to the delight at the time of the Red States (?). In some ways that election provoked the Great Sunni-Shiite Civil War. The constitution was rejected by a majority in each of the major Sunni Arab-majority provinces and so is not a national constitution, and it has a strong theocratic overtone (read it and weep, Christopher Hitchens). Islam is the state religion and parliament may pass no legislation contradicting sharia or Islamic canon law. Kurdish separatism is virtually enshrined in it. The Muslim fundamentalists won the December 2005 parliamentary elections as well. Critics accused Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of using intimidation by tribal forces and the advantages of incumbency to skew the results of the provincial elections of January, 2009 toward his Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party. (Some charge al-Maliki of increasingly adopting the techniques and rhetoric of the region's 'soft' dictators).

Iraq is a poor candidate for successful transition to democracy or for social peace. It has a low per capita income if you subtract the notional petroleum income, which is not exactly shared out with the people. Poor countries often fail in their attempt to democratize. It does not have a long-established, respectable business class. It has no effective trade unions to speak of, since the Baath Party had coopted them and then Paul "Jerry" Bremer dissolved them by viceregal fiat. The UN/ US sanctions of the 1990s and the US occupation has pushed literacy down to 58% from more like 78% in the heyday of the pre-Saddam Baath Party. The country has come to be strongly divided by ethno-religious divisions. Its economy is dominated by a pricey primary commodity, petroleum, and gasoline is easily stolen and fought over, producing militia competition and deaths. . All of these factors have been cited to explain failure at democratization and/or high rates of political violence, and all are present in Iraq in spades.

Me, I don't think the US troop withdrawal should be tied to the successful holding of a parliamentary election, in which US troops are assigned the role of watchmen. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) should be adhered to, and the Iraqis will just have to decide if they want to hold an election or not, and if they do, their troops should supervise it.

I'm as in favor of democracy as anyone else. But I'm a also skeptical that it can be imposed at the point of a gun on a deeply divided society that is at the moment dirt-poor.

The time for elections as US propaganda victory has passed.

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Blast At Peshawar Bazaar Kills 105

The story of the gigantic car bombing of the area between Meena and Kochi bazaars in Peshawar, which killed at least 105 persons, is especially heartbreaking. Muslim extremists in Darra Adam Khel appear to have planned and carried out the attack, done by remote-controlled car bomb. They had threatened the markets with retribution if they did not forbid women to shop there. Pakistani extremists often preach 'char divari' or the immuring of women-- keeping them within the four walls of their homes and forbidding them to go out at all. This idea, typical of Taliban sorts of thinking, is not Islamic and is contradicted by what we know of early Muslim history, in which women played an active and public role.

In any case, the extremists then bombed the area around these markets, since Kochi is a women's market. At least 70 of the victims were women and children.

Darra Adam Khel is an Afridi Pashtun village in the North-West Frontier Province between Peshawar and the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Kohat (which itself witnessed a big bombing last week). Darra Adam Khel is notorious as a center for arms and munition production, using artisanal techniques. Adam Khel tribesmen can reproduce virtually any rifle or other weapon with which they are presented.

Of course, a further context for the attack is the ongoing Pakistani military campaign against the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan in South Waziristan.


Aljazeera English has video of the Peshawar tragedy:



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in Islamabad after the attack. ITN has video:



Clinton pledged the Pakistanis American aid in increasing and making more reliable their electricity production. Pakistan has been plagued by brown-outs, referred to in India and Pakistan as 'load-shedding.' These electricity outages are more than mere annoyances. You cannot run a factory if the electricity keeps going off. Details of the energy aid plan are here.

The USG Open Source Center translates from Jang for Weds. October 28:

"Pakistan is facing stern energy crises. The industrial, trading, and domestic consumers are affected so severely that approximately 24000000 workers will face unemployment only in the textile sector because of energy crisis. These crises will badly affect the textile sector and other sectors also. During the past week, the Standing Committee of Senate on Petroleum has been informed that the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) is facing problems in producing 300 MMCFD (millions of cubic feet per day) gas and 7000 liters of oil daily and there are cases filed in several courts, while 250 stay orders are there in this regard."

The aid of which Clinton spoke, assuming it is efficiently delivered and used, could therefore be key in preventing a big rise in unemployment, and thus could help forestall disturbances deriving from bitter and unemployed workers (who are more numerous and more potentially disruptive than mere rural Taliban). Pakistan will grow a little over 3% this year, though to tell you the truth, that is their population growth, as well. So their net collective increase in gross deomestic product will be . . . zero.

Clinton's press conference was overshadowed by the bombings, and most channels put her on a split screen with the bombing aftermath, rather undermining her message of reconstruction.


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Corey: What Afghanistan (Should) Mean to Us

Scott Corey writes a guest op-ed for IC:

The Afghanistan debate is mired in the very shortcomings that have kept us from doing well there up to now. We need a qualitative shift of policy, but we dither about metrics and troop levels. We ask ourselves if we should “get out” as if there is somewhere to go that is out of range. Meanwhile, our enemies control the political meaning of everything we do. We need to take that control away from them, and that requires us to know our world, our enemy, and this struggle.

Today, power is so diffuse that empire and isolation are equally dead. Control of information, money, natural resources, and ideological persuasiveness all move parts of the political world. Still, all of it hangs on a framework of formal authority residing in a collection of states that wield force, legitimacy, representation, and diplomacy.

Terrorism prospers in the complexity of this political world. Political identity is no longer simple and fixed, so friend and enemy are hard to know. If I hit you, we fight, because the enmity is clear. If I coerce you with weapons, you might be intimidated or you might defy me, but the choice is clear. However, if I kill someone else in a spectacular manner, you need to know why before you can react. My cause might be just. My enemy might be your enemy. Or I might be coming for you and yours if you take the wrong path.

So “terrorist” is not just a dirty word for your enemy. Terrorism exists and has character that can be understood and fought. Using violence to raise uncertainty in an audience is terrorism. It earns the terrorist the authority to relieve that uncertainty about who will be killed and why. Making “war” on terrorism is usually just an attempt to build authoritarian power on the back of someone else’s atrocities. If the terrorist is demonic, the pretended savior can claim to justify methods drawn from “the dark side.”

Terrorism is strong because it is indirect. It appears to attack one group in order to persuade a different group. On the other hand, terrorism is weak because it is so often hypocritical. In the French Revolution, the vast majority of guillotine victims were commoners executed as “aristocrats.” In the Algerian Revolution, the bombings mostly killed Arab Muslims in the name of evicting French colonialism. The audience really is the victim, but does not see that truth.

Thus, terrorism (from above or from below) is different from ordinary coercion because it depends less upon credible threats than viable lies. It gets away with these lies because the terrorist establishes control over what people think the violence means. This control can be so strong that it dominates the thinking of friend and foe alike. It took 200 years of research to reveal that the French Revolution was not a class war.

This is where we are in Afghanistan and the struggle with Muslim radicalism generally. Muslim terrorists are seeking a level of authority over Islam that no one has exercised since the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims die from Muslim radical violence in vastly greater numbers than do Americans. All the ramblings about destroying the West or creating a global caliphate are just background noise. The biggest debate al Qaeda ever had was whether to attack the US at all.

That attack on America transformed a band of fewer than 400 militants into global rebels because the US embraced the imperial role al Qaeda cut out for us. Yet there is no serious, ongoing attempt to overthrow the West. The true goal of the radicals is shown in the brutal rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Swat region of Pakistan. It showed itself in parts of Iraq controlled by the al Qaeda affiliate there.

No movement of US troops (or drones) into or out of Central Asia will help in this struggle as long as the radicals control what our coming and going means to the Islamic world. If we stay we are imperialist, if we leave we are defeated. To succeed, we must take control of the meaning of the struggle.

The only viable posture is a self-limited commitment. This is a struggle within Islam. We are useful victims, and we have a right to hit back. But we are neither the political audience, nor the group that will most suffer under the rule of Muslim radicalism if it wins. Our military power can only be effective if it is explicitly expeditionary, not imperial. We must say that, and prove it, at every opportunity.

Promise Afghanistan two years of major combat support. Proud local rebels who only want us out need only wait – no point in being killed over the inevitable. If the radicals want to come after us without a recruiting pool in the Afghan villages, they are welcome to take the unreplaced casualties. The Afghan government has two years to be viable, or it will be thrown to the wolves, and Afghanistan will revert to the status of international shooting gallery. In the meantime, the better it does, the better we do.

Such a posture is credible. We were deeply involved in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and we left then, and we are leaving Iraq now. It is sustainable, because it matches how the American public sees our legitimate use of force in the world. It makes our point about who we are and what the terrorists really want, no matter how well Kabul fares down the road. It puts our allies on notice – we can give many forms of ongoing help, but when it comes to military force our help comes tailored to a sink or swim world of independent states, and we are not afraid to invade a place twice if we need to do so.

There will be fighting, but this is not a war. It is a violent argument and it is a race. The argument is about whether the US is an imperial foe, or a tough friend, of the Islamic world. The race is to get Kabul to rebuild its power on its own people, not our might. If we lose the race, Afghans suffer. If we try to make this an open-ended war, we lose the argument. Should that happen, the next generation of Muslims may justly curse us for abetting the oppressive radical movement that prospered when we were strong, but not wise.

Scott Corey

---

Scott Corey has a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley, and did his dissertation on political violence. He now works at a small non-profit crisis center in the Sierra Nevada.

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UN Guest House Attacked in Kabul; 8 More US Troops Killed in Bombings; FSO Resigns in Protest; President's Brother CIA Agent, Drug Lord

Afghanistan continues to generate bad news at an alarming rate. Gunmen stormed a UN guest house in Kabul, deploying small arms fire and killing 3 UN staff members along with 4 other persons. A Taliban spokesman said his group was behind the attack and that it was aimed at disrupting the Nov. 7 presidential runoff election. At the same time, a rocket slammed into a five star hotel in Kabul.

Heavy gunfire reverberated through the streets shortly after dawn and a large plume of smoke rose over the city following the attack on the hostel in the Shar-e-Naw district. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahman said seven people were killed, including some attackers.

The killing of 8 US troops by roadside bombs on Tuesday has brought the number of US troops slain in October in Afghanistan to 55, making this the deadliest month so far in the 8-year US war in that country. The US currently has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, in addition to NATO forces.

AP has video:



Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and a Foreign Service officer in Afghanistan has resigned in protest against the conduct of the US war in Afghanistan, the first such FSO known to have done so. He protests that we are simply propping up a corrupt and feckless urban-based government that is being opposed by a rural religious-nationalist movement, and that we are highly unlikely to succeed in settling this three decades-old conflict. Karen DeYoung of WaPo reports that Hoh believes many Pashtun guerrillas have taken up arms against the US and NATO simply because these foreign troops are in their country, so that we are generating the conflict we say we are ameliorating.

Underlying Hoh's point about corruption, the NYT reports that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, who has been accused of involvement in the drug trade, has for some years been on the CIA payroll. So it makes you wonder, has the US been winking at Ahmed Wali's alleged drug running because he is an asset who is doing something for Washington? If so, how far up does this operation extend? Afghanistan looks more like Vietnam every day.

Meanwhile, Washington is abuzz with plans and counter-plans on Afghanistan. They include paying the Taliban not to fight the US, focusing mainly on Pakistan, and withdrawing US troops to the major cities.

The Soviets more or less withdrew to the cities in the mid-1980s, and it didn't stop them from being forced ultimately to withdraw from the country. And they even had loyal Communist Party cadres and large numbers of urban women on their side. I doubt there is any similar genuine support group for US and NATO presence in the country, though the Tajiks don't so far seem to mind it the way elements among the Pashtuns do.

What I still don't hear is what the objective of the war is, and how it will be accomplished in some reasonable time frame. If the objective is that Pashtun tribesmen shouldn't feud with each other and with their government, and should become secularized, then this really is a 40-year war.

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Bittle & Johnson: Will America's Short-Term Memory Loss Kill the Climate Bill?

Scott Bittle & Jean Johnson, Authors of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, write in a guest op-ed for IC:

Imagine if the Senate hearings about a climate change bill had been held a year ago.

Think of the context: $4 per gallon gas and oil over $130 per barrel. Waiting lists to buy popular fuel efficient cars. Polls in summer 2008 found 7 in 10 Americans saying there was solid evidence of global warming, and presidential candidates of both parties reiterating that it was real and had to be addressed.

It wouldn't have been an easy debate. Most Republicans were busy chanting "drill baby drill" while most Democrats were swooning at the very mention of green jobs and solar panels. But at least the public would have been engaged.

Now? Not so much. Certainly there's strong and urgent rhetoric from world leaders about the need to come up with a plan to cut greenhouse gases at the international climate conference in Copenhagen. But gas has settled back to $2 per gallon, the number of Americans who say there's evidence of global warming has dropped 14 points, and surveys show climate change and energy policy as dead last among priorities for Congress. The twin problems we face on energy -- controlling global warming and ensuring we've got enough fuel to go around -- are just not registering with the public.

"How quickly we forget" is one possible reaction, but Ronald Reagan's "There you go again," is better.

The United States has been around the block multiple times on energy policy, much like Bill Murray living the same sequence of events over and over again in Groundhog Day. Oil and gas prices shoot up. Voters get upset. Politicians say we absolutely, positively need to change the way we get and use energy. We make a few adjustments here and there -- both in the country's overall policies and in our own personal habits. Then a couple of years later, we seem to forget the whole thing. At least Bill changed his line of attack after hearing Sonny and Cher sing "I Got You Babe" on his radio alarm for the umpteenth time.

Our boom-or-bust mind-set on energy poses a genuine hazard to our economy -- one that could last decades. The notorious energy crises of the past (for those too young to remember) were painful, but relatively brief. They were generally set off by events that caused problems somewhere in the supply system -- war in the Middle East, American diplomats held hostage in Iran, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pushing up prices because some refineries were knocked out by the weather. However troubling and unpleasant these situations were, they were temporary.

The conditions that generated the country's more recent energy problems are not going to go away quickly, even though they have been tempered by the worldwide economic slowdown. We're competing with many more people worldwide for the energy that's available. There are truly astonishing levels of growth in China, India, and elsewhere. These countries need massive amounts of energy for their factories and transportation. As they become more prosperous, people living there will start buying cars and refrigerators and microwaves and computers. All these things use energy.There's also a pretty solid expert consensus that humans are beginning to use up most of the oil that's easy to get to. It's not going to be Mad Max exactly, because the world is not actually going to run out of oil in our lifetimes, but chances are that it's going to get tougher and more expensive to find it.

Plus, if we're going to do anything about controlling greenhouse gases, we need a steady, consistent effort to change our energy mix. You can't do this by fits and starts. We need both steady investment in new technology and long-term commitment to changing the economic rules of the game so that clean energy is a reliable, affordable alternative to fossil fuels.

Is there any hope that Americans will support (or at least not oppose) major changes in energy policy? In fact, there is some. According to research by our organization, Public Agenda, 73 percent of Americans disagree with the statement that "If we get gas prices to drop and stay low, we don't need to be worried about finding alternative sources of energy," and fully 53 percent "strongly disagree." Moreover, despite partisan debate, Americans find common ground on at least 10 major energy proposals that would provide incentives for more energy efficiency, reducing gasoline usage and supporting alternative energy have widespread support -- at least in concept.

It's quite possible that prices for oil and gas will stay relatively low in the next few years due to the global economic shake-up, and there have been some new oil discoveries and production breakthroughs that are exciting the industry. They won't produce enough oil and gas to solve the world's long-term problem, but it may be enough to hold prices down for a while.

This puts an even greater burden on leaders to help Americans understand that, for the sake of the planet and our economic stability, we need to get a sound energy plan together and stick with it even when the pressure is off. Besides, there are so many avenues for addressing our energy challenge. People will and can disagree over which ones are best, and no doubt the country will make some mistakes along the way. But the most damaging mistake of all would be to assume that just because energy prices are lower now, our energy problems are behind us. That would be a truly gigantic error.


©2009 Scott Bittle & Jean Johnson, authors of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis

Author Bios

Scott Bittle, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, where he has prepared citizen guides on more than twenty major issues including the federal budget deficit, Social Security, and the economy. He is also the website director for Planet Forward, an innovative PBS program designed to bring citizen voices to the energy debate.

Jean Johnson, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is co-founder of PublicAgenda.org, and has written articles and op-eds for USA Today, Education Week, School Board News, Educational Leadership, and the Huffington Post Website.

For additional energy resources and supplemental material, please visit www.whoturnedoutthelights.org

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Cole in Salon: "Obama's Foreign Policy Report Card"

My Salon column , "Obama's foreign policy report card," is available online.

Excerpt:

' When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced something close to an insurrection from some of his commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S. were virtually on a war footing and there had been no direct talks between the two countries on most of the major issues dividing them. In February, the government of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter's fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly bold extremists.

Eight months later, it is a different world. '

Read the whole thing.

Also, if you haven't checked in on Tomdispatch.com in the past week, you'll find three closely argued new articles there on the drawbacks of the new American militariesm.

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Rivals Blame al-Maliki for Poor Security Arrangements

The death toll of Sunday's twin bombings in Baghdad has risen to 155, and tragically it turns out that two dozen children were among the victims.

I still disagree with those who have been alleging that the bombing puts the upcoming parliamentary election in question, or raises questions about whether the Iraqi troops can keep order. These big bombings have been going on for years, and they went on when the US was in charge of security, as well. In fact, civilian deaths from political violence have fallen in recent months.

Although initial reports about the massive bombings in Baghdad on Sunday said that they were car bombs, McClatchy is now reporting that they were large trucks. One was packed with C4 explosives and the other with TNT. The Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq are still mining old Baath weapons depots, but my suspicion is that the C4 probably was imported from outside the country. Al-Hayat transmits from AFP in Arabic that one of the trucks was a Renault from the Water Department in Falluja, a city to the west of Baghdad that has been a center of Sunni Arab fundamentalist resistance to the US and the Shiite government. In November-December of 2004, the US military invaded and destroyed Falluja, so there may be people there for whom Sunday's bombings were a form of revenge on the capital.

Many in Baghdad are scratching their heads and wondering how in the world these big trucks filled with explosives were allowed to get anywhere near government ministries. Dark suspicions of security personnel bribed or traitorous are circulating.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports in Arabic that public confidence in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been shaken by the bombings, and quotes opposition politicians from rival groups such as the Sadrists as slamming the PM for not doing enough to provide security in the capital.

In the light of the security lapses for which he is now being taken to task, al-Maliki's decision to stay out of the National Iraqi Alliance coalition joined by most other Shiite parties may have been the wrong move. He is now running against parties which can depict themselves as out of power and so not responsible for the steady drumbeat of bombings. Al-Maliki has no larger coalition partners in whom he could take cover. If his Da'wa Party loses big time in the parliamentary elections, that loss could help destabilize Iraq. A new prime minister will have to struggle to get hold of the security and intelligence forces, and the US military will have to work with a new cast of characters.

Government workers who reported for work on Monday, according to CBS, said that they felt as though they were at a funeral. Some were afraid there might be more attacks on government offices:



Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that there is a great deal of popular anger over the slowness of the rescue operations in Baghdad.

Aljazeera English reports on popular anger at the government and security forces over the lapses that allowed the drivers of the trucks to position themselves downtown in the morning.



Russia Today's Baghdad offices were devastated by the blasts, and that channel reports from Baghdad:



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MPs Wounded in Blast; al-Maliki Decries Baathists, al-Qaeda; Kurds Threaten Election Boycott

Al-Hayat reporting in Arabic surveyed the reactions of Iraqi politicians to the massive bombings on Sunday. As with Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, they blamed remnants of the former, Baath, regime and "al-Qaeda" (Sunni fundamentalist militants). I was struck by how they for the most part responded technocratically, by pledging a review and an improvement of security procedures.

As I predicted yesterday, some figures are already using the blasts for politics. Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament and a leader of the paramilitary hard line Shiite Badr Corps, implicitly came after al-Maliki. "We've heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front," he said. "Where are these successes?" The Badr Corps is aligned with its parent organization, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is running against al-Maliki's State of Laws coalition in January.

Al-Zaman reports on some of the casualties. A woman member of parliament, Maha al-Duri, was wounded and two of her bodyguards were killed. The lieutenant governor of Baghdad Province was wounded. Several members of the Sadr Bloc were wounded as they were commemorating the anniversary of the death of Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr in the Justice Ministry building.

Meanwhile, one of the more contentious issues in the upcoming parliamentary elections is how to deal with the contested province of Kirkuk. The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Kurdish press in which major Kurdish parties threaten to boycott the elections if a special election law for Kirkuk is passed. (Kirkuk is by now probably majority Kurdish, so the Kurds will dominate its provincial council unless the Kurdish bloc is diluted by special provisions in the electoral law).

Iraqi Kurdish lists to boycott elections if consensus not reached
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Iraqi Kurdish lists to boycott elections if consensus not reached

The Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Union of Kurdistan (IUK) lists have said they would boycott the Iraqi upcoming parliamentary elections if a special election law for Kirkuk is passed, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) media website reported on 24 October.

The alliance and the IUK's representatives expressed their concerns in a press conference which was held today in the Iraqi parliament's office in Arbil Governorate.

The deputy head of the alliance, Sa'di Barzinji, said in the press conference that there were elements in the Iraqi parliament who wanted to pass a special election law for Kirkuk, adding that such efforts were contrary to the country's constitution.

We, the Kurds, work in accordance with the Iraqi constitution, and the country's High Constitutional Court has rejected a special election law for Kirkuk, Barzinji said.

Barzinji said that no changes were made to the voter registration, referring to these elements' demand for a special election law.

He said that the increase in Kirkuk's voter registration was only 30 per cent, while in other parts of Iraq was 100 per cent. He added that the number of Kurds in the city was significantly reduced during the country's former regime and thousands of them were killed in the area.

Barzinji said that they would not allow the special election law to pass, even if it is passed, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, can veto it twice and that the law also needed 66 per cent of the parliamentary votes to be passed.
Barzinji said that the Kurds would not participate in the elections if such law is passed; and the Kurds wanted an open election system.

Meanwhile, the IUK's MP in the Iraqi parliament, Zuhair Khoshnaw, said that his list would not allow a special election law to pass for Kirkuk, adding that the efforts to pass the law were contrary to the constitution.

Khoshnaw said that the Kurds wanted Kirkuk to be treated like other parts of the country. He added that if they did not reach an agreement with the other parties in the parliament, they would refer the issue to the Iraqi political council.

(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Sorani Kurdish -- Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website)

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Baghdad Devastated by Massive Blasts, 136 Killed, 500 Wounded, Ministries Destroyed

Two massive blasts shook central Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 136 people and wounding 500, and destroying three government ministry buildings, according to the Times of London's Oliver August reporting from Baghdad. It was the most destructive attack of 2009. August notes that the likely perpetrators were either Baathists from the old regime or Sunni Muslim extremists, both of whom want to stop a new, Shiite- and Kurdish- dominated status quo from settling upon Iraq.

AFP Arabic service says that the first car exploded at 10 am Baghdad time at a crowded intersection near the ministry of justice and the ministry of municipalities. The second was detonated ten minutes later on Salihiya St. in front of the Baghdad Province administrative office. Many dead bodies are suspected of still being beneath the rubble of the ministries of justice and public works buildings, which collapsed on the employees.

The ministries were protected by blast walls and the truck bombs could not get that close, but the explosives used were so ungodly powerful that they swept the blast walls away. I have no pretensions to forensics expertise, but that sounds like a clue to me; where are the guerrillas getting such remarkable high explosives?

Aljazeera English has video:



The particular ministries that were struck may be significant, since Iraq operates on a spoils system and ministries tend to be dominated by political parties and ethnic groups. The Minister of Public Works is Riyadh Gharib, a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is close to the clerics in Tehran. Public Works as a ministry would thus have a lot of ISCI party members as employees and it is also a huge source of political patronage. Baathists or Sunni extremists would have every reason to hit it.

The Ministry of Justice had been less politicized, but from 2007 was in the control of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. The Minister of Justice from last February is Judge Dara Nur al-Din, an independent Kurd. He had been a member of the Interim Governing Council under Paul Bremer, for which some groups in Iraq may not have forgiven him. The ministry of justice also oversees court cases and executions, including of prominent Baathists, executions that Nur al-Din has defended, and which have angered the anti-government guerrillas.

As for the Baghdad Provincial government (it is both a province and a city), it has been dominated since the January, 2009, provincial elections by the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the leading element of which is the Shiite Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa).

So if the guerrillas who set these bombs were trying to kill party cadres attached to ministries, you'd have to conclude they were trying to kill those of the ruling Shiite religious parties, and also to take revenge on the new regime for the Ministry of Justice's executions of Baathists and Sunnis.

The attacks inevitably had implications for the January, 2010, parliamentary elections, insofar as they make Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his ascendant Islamic Mission Party look incompetent in providing security. Since al-Maliki has done a fair job of restoring security to cities such as Basra, this success is a campaign talking point for him, which the guerrillas are attempting to deflect.

There are two dangers here. One is that US hawks will make such attacks a pretext for delaying US troop withdrawal. These sorts of attacks happened all the time when the US troops were patrolling Baghdad, and they only ever were stopped by extreme measures that were impractical for the long run, such as walling off whole neighborhoods and producing 80 percent unemployment.

The second is that Nuri al-Maliki will attempt to deflect any blame for the blasts onto Syria, which he views as harboring Baathist elements who plan these attacks out. Shaky revolutionary regimes like that of Baghdad often go to war to shore themselves up, and Iraq-Syria border clashes are not impossible.

The US Republican Party's avaricious and illegal war on Iraq destabilized the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps for decades, creating long-term challenges to US and global security of which the Baghdad blasts are very possibly only minor omens.

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Pakistan Army Takes Militant Stronghold

The Pakistani military announced Saturday that its troops have taken Kotkai in South Waziristan, the erstwhile headquarters of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. Both Hakimu'llah Mahsud and Qari Husain, leaders of the TTP, hail from the city. Dawn adds that Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said:

' 21 terrorists have been killed in South Waziristan on Friday and Saturday while three security personnel laid down their lives and another eight sustained injuries. About Kotkai, he said the place was a militant stronghold where most of the houses stood converted into bunkers. The town also has a training camp run by Qari Hussain for suicide bombers. Security forces are in the process of clearing the built-up area of IEDs, mines and booby traps.'

Aljazeera English has video:



Meanwhile, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League, Qa'id-i A`zam (PML-Q) said Saturday that only a US withdrawal can bring peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Muslim League split into several groups, with the most numerous one now being Nawaz Sharif's branch. But the PMLQ had been popular earlier in the decade, but shrank dramatically in the 2008 parliamentary elections and now really only has a vague coalition in Baluchistan province to support it.

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Taliban Attack Pakistan Air Force Base

A suicide bomber at the gates of the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (an Air Force base) detonated his payload on Friday, killing 8 and wounding 17. Kamra is northwest of the capital, Islamabad, on the way to Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province.

AP has video:



The Pakistani Taliban also set off a bomb in Peshawar, a major northern city.

Aljazeera English reports on the negative effect of militants' violence on Pakistan's retail sector, as most people prefer to stay home than to risk bombings.



The USG Open Source Center looks at Pakistani editorials on the attack in Islamabad on a Brigadier General:

Pakistan: Urdu Press Roundup Denounces Security Arrangements in Islamabad-- OSC Summary
Friday, October 23, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Maintaining that the terrorists targeted the military officer in reaction to the operation against the terrorists in South Waziristan; the editorial states: "It isquite clear that it will not be difficult for the militants, who can target theGeneral Headquarters and military van in Islamabad, to target the Army in their own stronghold Waziristan. A police officer believes that the attack on the military van on 22 October can be the reaction to the ongoing operation in Waziristan.It appears that the assailants had fully monitored the areas beforehand."

Jinnah Editorial Points Finger at Blackwater

Discussing the free movement of the US security agency in Islamabad, the editorial says:"US vehicles were checked many times and weapons were found in it. It is probable that Blackwater personnel are involved in gunfire on the sensitive agency's van because this organization is famous for target killing. No matter whether it functions under a cover name, its objective is to create turmoileverywhere."

Jang Article by Farooq Baloch Deplores Insufficient Security Arrangements

Terming the incident proof of security agencies' failure to hunt down terrorists in the federal capital; the article comments: "Long queues of vans on blockadesand shanty towns in the city can prove prelude to some great devastation.However, no attention has since been paid on these problems. This led to a great tragedy in G-11 sector of Islamabad on 22 October, where a brigadier and a soldier were shot dead by the terrorists."

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Phase 2 of Waziristan Campaign; Pakistan Closes Schools; Mahsud Civilians Barred from Roads

Pakistan's military began "Phase 2" of its campaign in South Waziristan on Thursday, with a siege of Kotkai, the home town of Hakimullah Mahsud, the leader of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. So far the army claims to have killed 100 militants, and 300 homes are said to have been damaged. Locals maintain that some of those killed are actually innocent civilians, and most of the houses were unconnected to the Taliban. Even if they were accurate, these numbers suggest that the Taliban have not stood and fought, but rather have melted away, since they only have light arms and would have been killed in large numbers by the Pakistani army, which has artillery and fighter jets.

AP has video of the fighting:



France24 has video of local reactions to the fighting in S. Waziristan (locals are critical of the federal government and sympathetic to the militants).



Indeed, Amnesty International worries that the Pakistani military is simply engaged in a vendetta with even the civilian members of the Pashtun Mahsud tribe. AI notes:

'
The Pakistani military has refused to allow members of the tribe, some of whom are involved in the senior leadership of the Pakistani Taleban, to use major roads to flee the conflict zone, witnesses told Amnesty International.

"Mehsud tribespeople, including women and children, are being punished on the roads as they flee simply because they belong to the wrong tribe," said Sam Zarifi, director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific programme. "This could amount to collective punishment, which is absolutely prohibited under international law." '

Blake Hounshell considers the evidence from David Rohde and others that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is backing the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, and, indeed, he notes that the Haqqani fighters appear to have let the Pakistani military use their territory as a staging ground for attacking the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Taliban Movement of Pakistan) in South Waziristan. As I noted a couple of days ago, the current campaign in Waziristan does nothing to weaken the groups most active in killing US and NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Gunmen in Islamabad killed a brigadier general and a soldier of the Pakistani army on Thursday, underlining the way in which the army's Waziristan campaign has become a feud of sorts, with the militants targeting officers. Ironically, the Pakistani officer corps had once generally backed the militants, as a means of projecting influence into southern Afghanistan and into Kashmir.

A police dragnet in Islamabad and Rawalpindi has resulted in some 300 arrests, including of Afghans and a Saudi. Some of those arrested had suicide belt bombs or bullet belts on their persons at the time of arrest, according to the police, and appear to have been on the verge of carrying out a terrorist attack in the capital.

All schools and universities in most of Pakistan have been closed until at least Sunday, in response to the recent bombing at Islamic International University. An exception is Sindh Province, where there is no history of Taliban activity.

Dawn has video on the impact of the move on students. Footage includes outraged students insisting that they will not be made afraid by the militants, and protesting the schools closure.



Aljazeera English reports that 150,000 civilians have now left South Waziristan (pop. 600,000), and another 100,000 are trying to get out.




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Iraqi Parliament Gives up on Drafting Electoral Law; Cross-Sectarian Political Coalition Announced

President Barack Obama's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday generated few deadlines, but some important things were said.

Obama stressed the need for the Iraqi parliament to pass an election law to enable parliamentary elections to be held on January 16. If the law isn't passed soon, the elections won't be held on schedule.

This delay would be a severe problem for the US military, which is stuck in Iraq without much to do but waiting to play one last big role, in closing down the country and providing enough security so that elections can be held. While the Iraqi army has gotten better at doing independent patrols and taking on gangs and militias in Shiite areas, it still is not very much in control of the Sunni regions, and it is not clear that it could oversee elections even in the wilder Shiite provinces such as Maysan. (That Iraq still cannot hope to have a simple election without massive security and the prohibition of vehicular traffic for 3 days speaks eloquently to how hard a row genuine democracy still has in that country. That US troops are available for joint patrols with the Iraqi army, which it helped train, but that the Iraqi army is studiedly disinterested, shows how much Americans are actually disliked in Iraq, a very nationalistic country that feels itself run roughshod over).

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Iraqi parliament has thrown up its hands in despair about crafting an election law. Many parliamentarians haven't even been coming to the sessions, because there is such bad blood among the MPs over this and other issues. Some blame the intransigence of the Kurdistan Alliance, which is sensitive about the conditions under which elections are conducted in Kirkuk Province, which the Kurdistan Regional Government wants to annex, but the annexation of which is opposed by Arabs and Turkmen.

So parliament is asking the Political Council for National Security to draft the legislation, and to have parliament simply conduct an up and down vote on the resulting bill. The PCNS consists of President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, Vice President Adil Abdul Maliki, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and Kurdistan Regional Government president Massoud Barzani. The council is not specified in the constitution, much less having been given a legislative role, and some critics of this plan are complaining that it is unconstitutional.

It takes 90 days to organize an election in Iraq, so last Monday was technically the deadline for the passage of the legislation. The election must be held by Jan. 31 to be constitutional. The prospect of another sketchy election, after the fiasco in Afghanistan, is worrying the UN and the US military.

Meanwhile, what is probably the last of three major political coalitions was announced on Tuesday, and is analyzed by Reidar Vissar. It comprises both the Sunni Awakening Councils of al-Anbar under the leadership of Abu Risha, and the coterie of Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani, a Shiite independent. Reidar hails it as cross-sectarian but admits that it may not amount to much in the actual election. I concur in his pessimism. My guess is that the Shiite religious coalition and the Government of Laws coalition (mainly the Islamic Mission or Da'wa Party) of PM al-Maliki will be the major Arab forces in the election, and will likely go into a post-election coalition with one another, preserving the dominance of the religious Shiites.

One wild card is that the Iraqi constitution stipulates that the largest single party in parliament gets the first shot at forming a government. If al-Maliki's party doesn't do as well as he expects, he could well lose the prime ministership. Since some of the improved security in Iraq derived from al-Maliki's talent in gaining control of the army and security forces, and since a new prime minister may not be as adept, the post-election situation in Iraq could be very unstable. That situation would in turn put pressure on the Obama administration to slow the US troop drawdown, at a time when Afghanistan will likely still be very hot and making demands on the administration's resources. Bush bequeathed Obama two major wars, and it would be ironic if Iraq and Afghanistan both deteriorate simultaneously, putting a squeeze play on the administration and endangering its reelection prospects.

Here is the White House video of the Obama/al-Maliki press conference. (Al-Maliki looks a little impatient during the long preface on Afghanistan issues, which surely signal which country is more important to President Obama). The emphasis on investment opportunities in Iraq is probably premature; if a country can't hold elections without a large foreign army's help, it is too soon to make big investments in it.




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Taliban Attack Islamabad University, kill 6, wound 37

Two suicide bombers attacked the campus of the Islamic International University in Islamabad on Tuesday (with one of them tageting the women students), killing 6 persons and wounding 37. The attacks had two contexts. They were meant as revenge for the Pakistani government campaign against the Taliban in Waziristan. But they also were patriarchal protests against higher education for women and assertions of extreme Puritanism.

The three women known to have bee killed by the bombing strike as as every bit martyrs to the cause of educated women standing up to authoritarian religious regimes as Neda Agha Soltan, who was killed in Tehran this summer.

CNN has video:




Aljazeera English has raw video from the scene in Islamabad:



The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Pakistani press on the Taliban's campaign for puritanism:

Pakistan: Public, Clerics Join Hands Against Cable Network in Balakot
Unattributed report: "Demand To Stop Cable Network Over Spreading Immorality"
Shamal
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Haripur -- Strong voice of religious scholars from Balakot has shaken the religious scholars of Haripur from their deep slumber.

Public pressure has also been increased in Haripur after the religious scholars acted against the cable network saying that it spreads immorality and obscenity.

Strong protest of people led by religious scholars against cable network also forced the religious scholars of Haripur to stand up against the spread of obscenity through cable network.

Cable network has been blocked after the protest of religious scholars in Balakot.

That is the reason that people of Haripur stressed that their religious scholars lead the public for rising up against the cable network.

(Description of Source: Abbottabad Shamal Online in Urdu  The North, a conservative daily focusing mostly on issues related to Hazara, Mansehra Region of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Its chief editor and publisher is Niaz Pasha Jadoon.
It is also published in Swat and Karachi.
Claims it has the "highest" readership in NFP; URL: http://www.dailyshamal.com)

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ECC: Karzai must Stand in Runoff Election

The UN-sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission in Afghanistan has determined that after fraudulent ballots are thrown out, incumbent Hamid Karzai received less than 50% of the vote, forcing him into a runoff with challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

Karzai is now expected to accept on Tuesday that he must face a second round of elections, though over the weekend he was making noises about standing firm and refusing to accept the ECC verdict. This intransigence probably in itself delayed President Barack Obama's decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, since he could hardly decently do so to support a corrupt and discredited government that stole the election no less surely than had Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Update Karzai just formally acquiesced in the runoff, which has been set for November 7.

CBS reports this morning on the pressure applied to Karzai by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry.



ITV reports on the downside of having a runoff election in Afghanistan, including the potential for violence. When the runoff is held this fall, it will exclude many Afghans who live in snowy places or high altitudes, since winter is arriving in some of the country. There is also danger of Pashtun- Tajik violence, since the two ethnic groups are backing different candidates.



Aljazeera English has video on the ECC decision and its tussle with the local, Karzai appointed electoral commission.



On Iranian official television, outspoken MP George Galloway debates Dr Michael Williams, an Afghanistan expert at Royal Holloway College who has advised President Obama. Galloway argues that people are dying like flies in Afghanistan and that hopes for "developing" the country by military might are 'doomed.'




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Pakistani Army Advances into Waziristan; Effect of Campaign on US in Afghanistan Doubted; Taliban threaten India

Islamabad's campaign against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan is largely irrelevant to the struggles of the US and NATO in Afghanistan across the Durand Line, according to Afghanistan News Net. The relevant groups are the Old Taliban led by Mullah Omar, based in Quetta; the Haqqani Network of Siraj and Jalaluddin Haqqani, based in North Waziristan and targeting the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika; and the Hizb-i Islami or Islami Party of Gulbadin Hikmatyar, which is mainly based in Afghanistan but has a presence in Bajaur, the northernmost of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan.

So what is in South Waziristan? Groups that are targeting Pakistan itself. These include the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan [TTP] or Pakistani Taliban Movement and elements of anti-Shiite Sunni extremist groups from the Punjab, who have begun hitting Pakistani government targets. The campaign will thus have little effect on the fighting in Afghanistan, except to the extent that some militants may be displaced from Pakistan north to Afghanistan.

Dawn reports on the Pakistan military's advance into South Waziristan on the campaign's second day.

I picked out some worrisome parts of this report which are mentioned but not highlighted:

South Waziristan's population is 600,000; the campaign has already displaced 100,000 of them.

Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Sangin has brought in 1,500 Afghan Pashtun fighters to support the Pakistani Taliban Movement in South Waziristan.

Azam Tariq, spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban Movement, said that militants’ supporters from Muslim seminaries in Punjab, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province were in touch with the Taliban and were coming to the battle zone through various routes.

(In support of this last point, police teams intensively investigated seminaries or madrasahs in the capital of Islamabad and some other areas on Sunday.)

Pakistan may even have to close its schools for a week because they have been threatened by the Taliban.

In other words, this military campaign is not just a matter of troops versus guerrillas. It is becoming a rallying point for Muslim radicals, with volunteers coming in from Afghanistan and others from madrasahs from all over Pakistan-- and with Pakistan's own security hanging in the balance.

Tariq took responsibility for the recent horrific bombings in the Punjabi city of Lahore, which targeted Pakistani security forces, thus claiming that South Waziristan had a very long reach into the rest of the country.

Pakistani security forces also arrested some 300 Afghans on Sunday.

CBS reports on the Waziristan campaign:



Reuters also has a video news report.

As if the fighting in Pakistan itself is not worrying enough, the USG Open Source Center translates a threat against India from TTP leader Hakimullah Mahsud:

' Pakistan: TTP Chief Hakimullah Mehsud Says India Next Target After Country
Unattributed report: "We Shall Declare War Against India After Islamic States Is Established in Pakistan: Hakimullah Mehsud"
Khabrain
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Islamabad -- Hakimullah Mehsud, chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has threatened that the Taliban will send terrorists to fight against India after succeeding in establishing an Islamic state in Pakistan. He said in the footage shown in a British news channel Sky News : "We wish to make Pakistan an Islamic state, and we are striving for this objective. We are battling against the Pakistan Army, the police, and militia."

(Description of Source: Islamabad Khabrain in Urdu  News, a sensationalist daily, published by Liberty Papers Ltd., generally critical of Pakistan People's Party; known for its access to government and military sources of information. The same group owns The Post in English, Naya Akhbar in Urdu and Channel 5 TV. Circulation of 30,000)'

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Revolutionary Guard Commanders Killed in Iranian Baluchistan

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps personnel who traveled to the town of Sarbaz, district Pishin in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan fell victim Sunday morning to two bombing attacks carried out by the dissident Baluchi group Jundullah. Altogether the death toll in the attacks is about 29 as I write and it is expected to rise.

Iran, a country of 70 million, has 30 provinces. Some 90 percent of Iranians are thought to be Shiite Muslims, and some 51 percent speak Persian as their mother tongue. Baluchis are Sunnis and speak another Iranian language, Baluch, and there are substantial discontents in that province with the rule of the Persian Shiites. The province is vast geographically, but small with regard to population-- a little over 2 million. It is among the poorest provinces in Iran and the most neglected by Iran's authorities. It has been harmed by the spill-over of ethnic violence from Pakistan and Afghanistan, by the drug trade, and by religious radicalization. The mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, is a Baluch from Pakistan brought up in Kuwait, and he is alleged to have had ties to radical Sunni Baluch groups, some of which later congealed into Jundullah.



The Iranian state is aware of the unhappiness of the Baluch and was attempting to stage a reconciliation meeting with tribal leaders, perhaps influenced by the way the US military dealt with Dulaim tribal chieftains in al-Anbar, Iraq. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, having come out on top in the recent political turmoil in Iran, spear-headed the reconciliation drive, and thus were targeted by Jundullah, who do not want reconciliation. Presumably they were tipped off by tribal allies in Sarbaz.

Iran charges that US intelligence supports Jundullah's terrorist efforts as a way of destabilizing Iran. Rep. Jane Harman in Congress once seemed to call for breaking up Iran along ethnic lines, apparently in a bid to marshall pro-Israeli lobbying money, but later recanted.

Here is an official Iranian television documentary in English or with subtitles on Jundullah from last summer. I'm not endorsing the point of view, simply diversifying information sources. Caution: some graphic scenes.



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Pakistan Begins Major Campaign in S. Waziristan

Dawn reports that about 30,000 Pakistani troops on Saturday moved into South Waziristan, a stronghold of the Mahsud tribe, whence have sprung important leaders of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or Pakistani Taliban Movement. One such leader, Baitullah Mahsud, was killed by a US drone strike this past August.

The fighting continued for a second day on Sunday morning, with the army meeting stiff resistance.

South Waziristan has a population of about 500,000. It is estimated to have 10,000 armed religious extremists, of whom about 1500 are foreigners, mostly dissident Uzbeks from secular Uzbekistan just north of Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials allege that 80% of the terrorism in Pakistan emanates from militants based in South Waziristan.

Aljazeera English reports on the beginning of the Pakistani army campaign against the Taliban and allied tribes in Waziristan.



AP also did a video report on the beginning of the campaign:



Aljazeera English reports on the frantic civilian exodus from Waziristan:



The USG Open Source Center translates an interview at the GEO Urdu-language satellite news station. This paragraph comparing the new operation to that in Swat last spring struck me as scary: "Not only that the resistance here would be much stronger than that in Swat but also the Taliban will mainly retaliate in the other parts of the country. Secondly, the Swat Taliban did not have many routes to flee the area nor was Swat located near the Afghan border from where they could receive reinforcement or where they could flee." Here is the rest:

'Pakistan: Analyst Says Stronger Taliban Resistance Likely Against Army Operation
Words within double slantlines as received in English
Geo News TV
Saturday, October 17, 2009 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Now we will discuss Waziristan operation. We have senior analyst Salim Safi with us on telephone line:

(Begin live relay) (anchorperson Gharida Faruqi) Mr Safi, the Swat operation was very successful and was completed in a short time but certain circles are expressing doubts about Waziristan operation. You are one of them. You have also written a //column// in today's Jang. Why are you opposing this operation?

(Safi) Gharida, in fact, I believe that unless certain other aspects of this issue are resolved we will probably not be able to achieve the desired results only by launching an operation in South Waziristan. Not only that the resistance here would be much stronger than that in Swat but also the Taliban will mainly retaliate in the other parts of the country. Secondly, the Swat Taliban did not have many routes to flee the area nor was Swat located near the Afghan border from where they could receive reinforcement or where they could flee But you can see that foreigners are present in South Waziristan. Foreigners are also there in Ahmadzai Wazir area.

The operation is not going on in North Waziristan but you see that on the very first day a retaliatory action was taken there. The other thing is that during this time....(pauses) Though the government has made full preparations this time and it seems that in this operation the forces will show greater seriousness than the previous operations and aerial and land power will also be used extensively. But on the other hand the Taliban have also made full preparations in that area and then they have //sleeper cells// in different parts of the country who have sent their activists in different areas and especially the banned organizations... (interrupted)

(Faruqi) Mr Safi, you are talking about the preparation of the Taliban and you said that this time a stronger resistance might be faced. What type of greater resistance? What type of greater preparation?

(Safi) In fact, during the past two or three years when operations were initially launched in Waziristan there were only local Taliban or Arab, Uzbek or Chechen militants with were there them. But during the past three-four years this development has taken place that the Taliban have established links with the banned organizations of Pakistan -- some jihadi and sectarian outfits. Leadership of most of these organizations is either in their hands or the Al-Qa'ida is providing //coordination// among these groups. So, now trained people from those outfits are present in every nook and corner of the country. As we have seen in the past week mostly these were the elements active in the attack on the GHQ and in the attacks in Lahore.

(Faruqi) Thank you very much, Salim Safi, for talking to Geo News. (end of live relay)

(Description of Source: Karachi Geo News TV in Urdu -- 24-hour satellite news TV channel owned by Pakistan's Jang publishing group, broadcast from Dubayy. Known for providing quick and detailed reports of events. Programs include some Indian shows and dramas which the group claims are aimed at promoting people-to-people contact and friendly relations with India.) '


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4 US Troops Killed in Afghanistan' Insurgency called too Far Gone for US Surge to Work

A Taliban roadside bomb attack killed 4 US soldiers in the south of the country, it was announced Friday.

Gareth Porter reports on an alternative to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposal for an additional 40,000 US troops in Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Daniel L Davis, who has experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and canvassed other officers with Afghanistan experience, believes that the insurgency in some Pashtun provinces has gathered too much momentum for the US now to hope to quash it. He urges what sound like surgical strikes rather than lots of new boots on the ground.

Meanwhile, Aljazeera English reports on an alleged instance of a NATO strike in Ghazni that killed civilians rather than Taliban:




Also on Aljazeera English, Riz Khan explores Pakistan's internal divisions:



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Afghanistan Election Run-Off, Italian Scandal, Lahore Attacks on Eve of Obama Decision

Four pieces of news from what Washington now calls AfPak raised questions about the stability of Central and South Asia on Thursday and Friday morning. Given the energy resources in Central Asia and the emergence of India as a regional superpower, the destabilization of this region and continued American military involvement with it has momentous implications for geopolitics in the coming decades.

The Pakistani Taliban upped the stakes in their life or death struggle with the Pakistani state by hitting not only their traditional targets, such as Kohat in the northwest, but striking at the heart of the state's security apparatus in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province. There is a sense in which the Pakistani army's struggle against the Taliban is increasingly an ethnic war between radical Muslim Pashtuns and more traditionalist or secular Punjabis. (Punjabis are 55% of the population and dominate the army; Pashtuns are more like 12% of the population and disproportionately rural and poor).

President Obama is now said to have completed his policy review of Afghanistan and now to be moving toward making a decision about whether he will pursue a wide-ranging counter-insurgency strategy that implies substantial investment in state-building (as recommended by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and apparently by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), or whether he will adopt the much more modest counter-terrorism strategy proposed by Vice President Joe Biden.

It now seems increasingly likely that there will be a run-off in the Afghanistan presidential contest between incumbent Hamid Karzai and his chief rival Abdullah Abdullah. As fraudulent ballots have been tossed out, Karzai's margin of victory has apparently fallen below the 50% threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a run-off. Since, however, Abdullah Abdullah's support largely comes from the Tajik (Dari Persian-speaking Sunnis) ethnic group, and Karzai's strongest support comes from anti-Taliban Pashtuns, there are fears that the run-off might produce increased ethnic tensions and even violence. On the other hand, had Karzai been declared the victor on the basis of clearly fraudulent ballots, it would have fatally undermined the legitimacy of his government.

Meanwhile, NATO is being roiled by reports that Italy bribed the Taliban in its area of Afghanistan (Sarobi) to remain quiet, but did not inform France of the arrangement when it took over, thus setting French troops up for ambushes when the payments were discontinued. Bad blood among NATO allies is bad news for Obama.

The impact on Pakistan of the Taliban resurgence was visible on Thursday, as guerrillas attacked security centers in the eastern city of Lahore, far from the Pashtun areas. Ten attackers in their late teens hit 3 separate targets, killing 17 persons and spreading fear throughout Lahore. Because of the city's proximity to the Indian border, the attacks also threw a scare into External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. Xinhua also reports on Indian apprehensions of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan.

Altogether, Taliban attacks in various cities left dozens dead on Thursday. Pakistanis are nervous about the deteriorating security situation.

Aljazeera English has video:



Dawn has raw video:




Aljazeera English on how President Obama's decision on what to do about Afghanistan will have a general impact on the region-- Pakistan in particular. (I would also add that there is some potential for destabilizing Tajikistan and other areas of Central Asia, as the US and NATO increasingly use them for resupply, thus making them targets for the anti-government guerrillas.



The recent Frontline report on the "Return of the Taliban" seemed to me an eloquent argument against the likelihood that Gen. McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy can succeed in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. One thing the report neglects is kinship. It depicts the Taliban as outsiders, but likely they were the cousins of the villagers with whom US troops were trying to make friends. If so, no wonder no shopkeepers opened businesses in the Marines' bazaar. (For the FCC: IC carried an ad for this program via blogads for one week).

AFP reports that even officials in Karzai's circle are now acknowledging the likelihood of a run-off election. Peter Galbraith, who as a UN official played an important role in forcing the issue, also seems reassured that there will now be a second round of voting. The allegation is that the gray diplomats of the UN in Afghanistan were initially so afraid of ethnic violence that they had been ready to acquiesce in Karzai's ballot fraud and just declare him the president. Galbraith courageously blew the whistle on this approach. Ironically, his role in Iraq as an advocate of Kurdish secessionism has now come under question because of his investments in Kurdistan petroleum.

Jake Tapper at ABC News had argued that if Karzai refused to accept a run-off, his consequent lack of legitimacy would affect Obama's decision on strategy.

Aljazeera English reports on Abdullah Abdullah's own demand for a run-off election, and his conviction that he will win on the second round.



Italy denied on Friday that it had been bribing Taliban to keep quiet, but neglected to tell the French about the deal when it handed the region over to French troops. The allegations were reported by the Times of London. The bad news for President Obama is that such discord among NATO allies makes it even more unlikely that member states will send substantially more troops, as Obama has requested. While Britain will send 500 extra troops, France is declining to increase its contingent.

France24 has video:




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Bombings in Karbala, Mortars in Baghdad; Al-Maliki closes Mustansiriya U. and Bans on-Campus Politics

Mortars were fired in Baghdad, killing 7, and three bombs went off in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing 4 and wounding 48. The bombings were near to holy Shiite shrines, which is extremely dangerous. The bombing of the golden dome at Samarra in February of 2006 set off a vicious Sunni-Shiite civil war that killed thousands each month. The shrine of Imam Husayn, the Prophet's martyred grandson, in Karbala is among the holiest sites of Shiite Islam.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered the closing for one week of Mustansiriya University in downtown Baghdad and the banning of partisan political activity on campus. The moves alarmed the PM's critics, who worry that he is gradually abolishing the freedom of speech in the new Iraq and making himself a strongman.

Aljazeera English has video:



Mustansiriya's student government and administration has been dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and by the Sadr Movement, two Shiite religious parties that are rivals of the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party of PM al-Maliki. Although Western reporters for some odd reason want to depict Da'wa as more secular than the others, it is not. It is, however, less puritanical than the Sadrists and led by lay fundamentalists rather than by clerics, in contrast to ISCI. Since ISCI and the Sadrists are part of the National Iraqi Alliance coalition contesting the upcoming parliamentary elections, and Maliki's Da`wa is running against them on the Government of Laws slate, there is bad blood among the Shiite fundamentalist parties at the moment.

Mustansiriya U.'s president was Imad al-Husayni of the Islamic Supreme Council of iraq. Then Minister of Higher Education Abd Dhiyab al-`Ujayli dismissed al-Husayni and appointed Taqi al-Musawi as university president. But al-Husayni refused to step down. So Mustansiriya U. limped along with two administrations that were constantly fighting with one another.

Then PM al-Maliki stepped in and appointed a third man, a professor in the School of Education, as leader of the university. But that only produced three rival administrations. But beyond personality conflicts, the religious parties and the student unions they dominate were jockeying with one another.

When al-Maliki appointed a personal friend as president, it set off two days of student demonstrations and protests, on Monday and Tuesday, demanding al-Husayni's reinstatement (i.e. the student unions controlled by ISCI were attempting to flex their muscles). In Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, institutions of higher education have often come to be controlled by fundamentalist political parties, who then give preference to student party members from their party in the admissions process and also favor party members for faculty posts. That is, universities are often part of the same spoils system that operates in government ministries. Having control of a university has many benefits for a party, since it provides it with opportunities for patronage, and gives it a large, visible social space and lots of potential campaign workers.

So al-Maliki was perceived as shifting Mustansiriya out of the ISCI column and making an attempt to put it under the control of his Islamic Mission Party.

Al-Maliki has reacted to the strikes and demonstrations by closing the university down for a while and dissolving the party-based student organizations, attempting to depoliticize student activism. It remains to be seen whether the closing will have much effect, and whether it is really possible to stop politics on campus by fiat.

As for the charge that al-Maliki is acting unconstitutionally in forbidding partisan political activities on campus, it has merit. It would be as though US universities were forbidden to host the Young Republicans or the Young Democrats. Iraq may or may not regain political stability any time soon, but the likelihood that it will have democratic government is low. Censorship is a genuine problem in the Arab world, as Cynthia P. Schneider and Nadia Oweidat argue, and the project of posting to the internet the works of the great Muslim modernists and liberals that they suggest should definitely be pursued. The question is who would pay for all that typing, or at least correction of the OCR. (One caveat: these authors romanticize the 19th century thinkers, who were not as liberal and not as free to express themselves as they suggest; Rifa'a al-Tahtawi was never head of al-Azhar and his textbook was written for the state, relatively secular khedivial schools that the authors think did not exist.)

Ominously, Iraq has had to slash its government budget and is running a substantial budget deficit this year which is impeding both spending on civilian infrastructure and the purchase of military equipment.

And, the Kurdistan Regional Government and al-Maliki's Baghdad are sparring over oil exports. The Kurds are on strike, refusing to export the 100,000 barrels a day their region typically had been sending out through federal government pipelines. A deep Kurdish-Arab divide could end the alliance Kurdish parties have had with the Shiites in parliament, and set the stage for one more civil war.

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Russia Rebuffs Clinton on Iran Sanctions; Putin Takes Moscow Closer to Beijing

McClatchy reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met a rebuff in Moscow on Tuesday from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the issue of further United Nations sanctions on Iran. Lavrov said of Iran, "We are convinced that threats, sanctions, or threats to use pressure are counterproductive in the present situation." This language closely echoes that of China. It also reflects the position of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had said in September that "any use of force, delivering any kind of strike, won’t help, won’t solve the problem. On the contrary, it will hurt the entire region. As for sanctions, they won’t bring the desired effect.” In contrast, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev had seemed more open to further sanctions, though he may have thought them farther off than did Washington. Lavrov's remarks are further proof, if any were needed, that Putin is still calling the shots in the Russian Federation.

Russia Today has video of the Clinton/Lavrov press conference:



The USG Open Source Center translated Lavrov's remarks on Iran from Vesti TV:

' Lavrov said the Russian and US positions on the Iranian nuclear issue coincide, but he believed imposing sanctions would be counterproductive at this stage.

He said: "We are not asking anything of each other regarding Iran, because it would be strange to ask for something on an issue where our positions coincide. We want to resolve all issues relating to Iran's nuclear program, so that that country can make full use of its rights as a non-nuclear member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and of all opportunities arising from this connected with the use of peaceful nuclear energy, but at the same time ensuring that the non-proliferation regime is in no way violated.

"And this is absolutely firm ground on which Russia and the USA, along with our European partners and the People's Republic of China, are promoting their proposals for talks with Iran regarding the settlement of all the existing issues."

Lavrov went on to say that Russia was "fully committed to the two-track approach" to the settlement of Iran's nuclear issue, stressing that the second track [i.e. economic sanctions] only has "an auxiliary function, that of influencing Iran with a view to achieving success on track one."

"Today we have, albeit not 100-per-cent, still quite good chances of achieving progress on the first track," he said.

Referring to agreements reached at the 5+1 meeting [with Iran] on 1 October in Geneva, Lavrov said: "We have agreed today that all those agreements should be implemented in full. We expect that at the specific contacts planned for this month, practical work to implement those agreements will begin in all three areas (resuming talks on Iran's nuclear program, inspections of the Qom uranium enrichment plant, and supply of low-enriched uranium to the Tehran research reactor).

"So we base our position on this, and also on the fact that at this stage all efforts should be employed to maintain the negotiating process which began on the first track. We are convinced that threats, sanctions, or threats to use pressure are counterproductive in the present situation." '

Meanwhile, PM Putin was in Beijing doing economic deals that included Chinese loans to Russian banks and Russian help in building a petroleum refinery near the Chinese capital, according to FT. I am of a generation whose mind is boggled at the idea of China lending money to Russian banks. Putin had hoped to nail down a Chinese agreement to import natural gas from Russia, but made little progress beyond a meaningless memorandum of agreement. China does not need to import much natural gas, in contrast to petroleum (it imports nearly 4 mn. barrels per day of oil), and still has not gotten the terms from Russia it is seeking. Putin's initial approach to China with regard to natural gas exports created fears in Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, that their supply might be reduced in favor of Beijing. These anxieties and considerations around energy supplies are likely to drive geopolitics in the 21st century.

In any case, Russia's tightening of ties with China is of a piece with its Iran policy, which mirrors that of Beijing, and the congruence is unlikely to be accidental. The Russian-Chinese cooperation is given institutional form by the Shanghai Cooperation Council and seems pretty explicitly aimed at excluding the US from hegemony in Central Asia. Keeping Iran from being crushed by US-led sanctions would be consistent with that approach. Of course, neither Russia nor China wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and evidence that it was doing so might change their minds on sanctions. After years of running interference for North Korea, China has this year proved more willing to back strict sanctions against Pongyang after N. Korea tried its patience once too often on the nuclear issue.

Russia Today has video on Putin's deal-making in China:



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"Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago"

Scientific American summarizes two new studies giving evidence that the earth's climate is highly sensitive to the amount of carbon dioxide in it. One is a a Science article by Aradhna K. Tripati, Christopher D. Roberts, and Robert A. Eagle. David Biello writes:

' "Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago," Tripati says, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher and temperatures were at least 3 degrees C warmer on average. "During the middle Miocene, an [epoch] in Earth's history when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at values similar to what they are today [330 to 500 ppm [parts per million]], the planet was much warmer, sea level was higher, there was substantially less ice at the poles, and the distribution of rainfall was very different."

Further, "at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present," Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And "our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature"—indicative of a very sensitive climate.'

As I note in Engaging the Muslim World,, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, testified in 2008 that twenty years earlier he and his colleagues had worried that 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would trigger catastrophic climate change. But by the time of his testimony last year, Dr. Hansen and colleagues had concluded that 387 ppm was already catastrophic and that the world had to be taken back to the 280 ppm of the pre-industrial era if global calamities were to be avoided.

Hansen's reasoning assumes that the world's climate is sensitive to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and has little "give" in this regard. The research cited by SA supports the "sensitive" argument.


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41 Killed, 61 wounded in Pakistan Bombing; US Aid Package Controversial in both Washington and Islamabad

A suicide bomber targeted a Pakistani military convoy in the town of Alpuri in Shangala district northeast of Peshawar on Monday, killing 41 persons and wounding 60.

The bombing may have come as revenge by the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban Movement) for the killing of their leader, Baitullah Mahsud.

Aljazeera English has video on the Shangala attack:



The attack comes as the Pakistani military prepares to launch a major operation in Waziristan, one of 13 Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the border with Afghanistan, where Pakistani and Afghan Taliban hole up.

The military is using Pashtun tribal chieftains as go-betweens with the main militant leaders in Waziristan, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Sadiq Nur.

The Gul Bahadur group in particular infiltrates into Afghanistan to hit NATO forces. The group has also hit Pakistani forces, as late last July when it captured 10 soldiers of the Shawal Rifles, a unit of the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

The Pakistani Taliban have claimed to be behind the the attack Sunday on the Pakistani army HQ in Rawalpindi. The Pakistani military says that the attackers had intended to take senior officers hostage. If so, they were foiled by checkpoint guards who questioned their credentials to come on base despite stolen uniforms and phony paperwork, which actually speaks well of security at the gate. The Western press commentary on how this attack demonstrates weaknesses in Pakistani security does not reckon with what a disaster the attack turned into for the Taliban, who accomplished none of their goals and just wasted several trained men.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Quraishi is in Washington for consultations over the $7.5 bn. civlian military aid package, which is welcomed by Pakistanis in principle but some provisions of which have raised hackles since they appear to limit Pakistani sovereignty (such as the demand that the civilian government excerse effective control over the military).

The aid bill is also controversial in Washington, where a US AID official has complained about the plan to funnel it through Pakistani contractors rather than through American ones. The Agency for International Development official maintained that Pakistani organizations cannot be monitored effectively by the US, raising the possibility that the money will be embezzled. He also slammed special envoy Richard Holbrooke for micromanaging the grants, effectively over-ruling and second-guessing US AID staff on the ground in Pakistan who, he said, were more knowledgeable about and attuned to local conditions.

I understand the difficulty of auditing NGOs in dangerous places like the FATA tribal areas. But it seems to me that it must be possible to audit the Pakistani pass-through organizations elsewhere regularly, and that the shell game of Congress giving foreign aid to a country in a way that actually just benefits US corporations and contractors is counter-productive.

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Taliban Condemn Obama Nobel Peace Prize

The USG Open Source Center Translates the Taliban reaction to President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

Afghan Taleban 'strongly' condemn Obama peace prize - agency
Afghan Islamic Press
Friday, October 9, 2009
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Afghan Taleban "strongly" condemn Obama peace prize - agency
Text of report by private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency
Kabul, 9 October: Taleban says Obama is following Bush's pathway.

Talking to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) on US President Obama's winning of noble peace prize, Taleban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed said that Obama was following Bush's path so it would not be correct to declare him as Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Mojahed added that they did not see any change in Bush and Obama's policy. Obama is also following up Bush's policies and it was not suitable for him to win the peace prize. We strongly condemn this act, he said.

He added that if Obama really wanted peace all over the world he should pull his troops out of Afghanistan so there will be peace in Afghanistan and all over the world.

Mojahed said that since Obama took office the war has continued in Afghanistan and that US troops had killed and wounded thousands of Afghans and forced them to leave their houses, and that the war was still going on.

"Our nation is occupied by US and other nations, so how is it possible that Obama wins peace prize?", he said.

He said that if US President Barack Obama really wants peace all over the world he should withdraw his forces from Afghanistan and send a real message of peace to the entire world.

(Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto -- Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans. The agency used to have good contacts with Taliban leadership; however, since the fall of the Taliban regime, it now describes itself as independent and self-financing)

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23 Dead, 100 wounded in Ramadi Blast; Election Law still in Doubt

Liz Sly reports from Baghdad on the three bombings that shook Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar Province, to its core on Sunday and left at least 26 dead and a hundred wounded. The first two bombings occurred outside the Governor's mansion where delegates from the Shiite-dominated government of PM Nuri al-Maliki were meeting with Sunni tribal leaders of the Awakening Council, which had turned against Sunni Muslim radicals and cooperated with US forces. Al-Zaman writing in Arabic says that the second bomb was timed to go off just as rescue workers arrived to deal with the victims of the first one, though another official said there were only 7 minutes between the blasts. A suicide bomber hit the hospital, perhaps timing his attack with the arrival of victims of the first two, though al-Zaman says that he initially tried to bring a truck bomb close to the hospital and was stopped by alert guards. He then came to the hospital wearing a suicide belt bomb and killed two persons when he detonated his payload.

According to al-Sharq al-Awsat, Ali al-Hatim, the paramount tribal leader or sheikh of the Dulaim tribe traded accusations with Gen. Tariq al-Asal, the head of al-Anbar's police force, over who was responsible for the lax security that allowed the bombings. Sheikh Hatim accused Gen. al-Asal of bearing responsibility for the bombings, and demanded his resignation. He said he has been buttering up PM al-Maliki by joining the Awakening Council to the central government, but that the cost of this policy was borne by ordinary residents of al-Anbar. Gen. al-Asal in turn accused al-Anbar's tribal leaders of maintaining secret ties to militants and to Syria, and blamed the bombings on Sheikh Hatim. Al-Zaman maintains that violence is back in the Sunni Arab areas, and that the lessened death toll of 2007-2008 has now been reversed by and that deaths are back up in Sunni Iraq.

Meanwhile, in the northern Sunni Arab center of Mosul (pop. 1.8 mn.), Iraqi security forces have recently made dozens of arrests, according to al-Hayah [Life]. Those taken into custody include many shopkeepers, and Sunni Arabs are accusing the government of taking a shotgun approach, arbitrarily rounding up people on the bsis of profiling, etc. A demonstration was mounted against the arrests.

As Liz Sly points out, the renewed violence comes on the backdrop of wrangling over Iraq's upcoming elections. In fact, presumably al-Maliki was trying to get Sunni Arabs to join in his command. There are so many US troops in Iraq (130,000 or so) because it is thought they will be needed to close down the country for the elections. But parliament has still not passed an electoral law. It is thus unknown whether Iraqis will vote for individual candidates or for a whole party list. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is lobbying for an open system.

As Sly says, the US withdrawal timetable is premised upon there being elections in January, which may or may not happen. Or may or may not go smoothly.

The US media and public have taken their eyes off this ball. But if Iraq's elections don't go well, there could still be a lot of violence ahead.

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What did Rawalpindi Militants Want?

A hostage standoff at Pakistani military HQ in Rawalpindi ended violently on Sunday morning when Pakistani troops stormed the compound where the militants had holed up with 25 hostages. Three of the hostages were killed in the course of the assault, along with two army troops and four militants.

Earlier the militants, some dressed in Pakistani military uniforms, had driven up to the entrance. When they were nevertheless challenged, they opened fire, killing several Pakistani troops and two officers, one a brigadier, and some of them were killed. Others escaped, and managed to take hostages for a time.

AP has video on the end of the hostage crisis at the military HQ. One of the hostage-takers is said to have been wearing a suicide bomb belt, but Pakistani Special Ops agents took him out before he could detonate it.



Since there is a general American hysteria over Pakistan, it is important to note that the militants just carried out a garden-variety terrorist operation. They did not take or hold anything except on a very temporary basis, and there were not that many of them. The incident is a sign that small terrorists bands can be resourceful and can deploy terrorist operations for civil political gain. The incident does not prove that military HQ is open to being routinely attacked. Any mention of Pakistan's nuclear enrichment program in this connection should be viewed with suspicion.

Geo satellite television broadcasting in Urdu reported that the "Amjad Faruqi Brigade" of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan) called the television station and said it was responsible for the attack on Pakistan army HQ in Rawalpindi. The group made several demands:

1. Former President Gen. Pervez Musharraf must be brought to justice

2. The US military must cease being afforded the use of military bases in Pakistan

3. Xe (the mercenary outfit they still call Blackwater) must be expelled from Pakistan (the Pakistani public believes that their country is crawling with Xe mercenaries)

On Friday, some 49 persons were killed and dozens wounded in a market bombing claimed by the Taliban, as Aljazeera English reports:



The Pakistani government underlined that these attacks have only stiffened its resolve to launch a major military operation in Waziristan to clean out the Taliban and allied movements.

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Obama as Nobelist, Obama as game-changer

I was listening to National Public Radio on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, and they brought on some nonentity from one of Rupert Murdoch's faux "magazines," who delivered himself of the remark that when he heard the news, he broke out laughing. He laughed at Obama. He is being paid by the Aussie media monopolist, the billionaire bully, to laugh at Obama.

The Right in the US objected to Obama getting the peace prize on the alleged grounds that he had not yet done anything to deserve it. But the Right in the United States is to peace as velociraptors were to vegetarianism. They don't believe in the ideal for which the award stands in the first place. And they find President Obama laughable, so they can't imagine him getting any awards. They have underestimated him badly and will probably pay a price for that. They misunderstand the Nobel Peace Prize and its history, and the Rupert Murdoch Right (he pays for a lot of this pollution of our airwaves) would not have agreed with any of the past awards.

Alfred Nobel outlined in his will the grounds on which the Peace Prize was to be given, saying it should go annually to the person who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses." The modern committee considers work toward the reduction of nuclear arsenals in the same light as the reduction of standing armies, hence its award to Linus Pauling.

The American Rightwing would not have approved of Woodrow Wilson getting the prize for helping found the League of Nations. They do not believe in international cooperation or multilateralism in the first place. They think America should cowboy it. They are the tribe of 'bring'em on' and 'wanted dead or alive.' They are about trapping the country in quagmires so as to throw cash to their cronies in the military-industrial complex. They like wars, not peace. They don't care how many people they kill in the global south. A million Iraqis dead? They deny it or justify it or blame it on someone else. They are bottom feeders.

They would have considered Frederic Passy, the first peace Nobelist, as woolly-headed dreamer and laughed at a Universal Peace Conference organized just a little over a decade before the mass slaughter of World War I. They would have dismissed Jane Addams as a "socialist." And what would have provoked them to more gales of laughter than the 1935 award to the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky. How'd that work out, they'd snicker as they elbowed each other (with any luck breaking some of each other's ribs). If there is anyone they find more laughable than Barack Obama, it is Jimmy Carter (the greatest ex-president in American history), the 2002 awardee. Mohammad Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly got in the way of the American Right's war plans, so presumably they didn't rejoice at his 2005 prize. They don't believe in climate change or global warming and want us to switch to the dirtiest coal possible, so Al Gore's 2007 prize set them giggling, as well.

Matt Corley explained at the time how Murdochians insisted that Al Gore had no accomplishments worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize and that it should have gone to Gen. Petraeus instead. I admire both men, but by the criteria outlined in Nobel's will, it was Gore who had a claim on the prize.

Barack Obama was given the prize because he is a game-changer. Obama has dedicated himself to reducing and ultimately scrapping the nuclear arsenals that threaten the world with nuclear winter or a destruction of the ozone layer; either event would be catastrophic for human beings' existence on the planet. Obama has already made a substantial change in relations between the US and the Muslim world. Two years ago we were talking about whether Cheney could convince Americans to go to war on Iran. Now Washington is engaging in direct talks with Tehran that have eased tensions.

Whether she or he actually achieves peace or not is unpredictable, but game changers are clearly visible to everyone. The hand shake between Rabin and Arafat in the early 1990s was potentially a game changer, and the Oslo deal would have profoundly enhanced world peace if it had worked (it might even have averted 9/11 and the subsequent wars). Al Gore's campaign for the environment was a game changer. Shirine Ebadi's dedication to a rule of law in Iran is a game changer, and she gives hope to many otherwise cynical youth and women.

For those who are giggling and demanding concrete improvements, it is worth noting that most of the recipients have been idealists rather than practical persons. Obama is both, and therefore he has a real shot at vindicating the social worth of his policies in future. Rightwing policies were tried for 8 years and they failed. Miserably.


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Taliban say they are No Threat to International Community; Bombing targeted Indian Embassy; Will Afghan Election Fraud Sway Obama

According to this Persian site, the old Taliban of Mulla Omar have issued a communique that holds out a promise and a threat. They said that if the outside Powers want to transform the proud, pious Afghan people into a colony, they were steadfast and ready to fight a very long war against this effort. But they assured the world community that the Taliban do not form a threat to outside countries.

The Guardian broke the story in English and says that the Obama administration's National Security Council staffers are studying the statement in preparation for Obama's announcement on Afghanistan policy.

Actually, I think the Taliban have all along been a local Pashtun puritanical movement with no particular international implications. Afghan Taliban have almost never been involved in international terrorist operations in Europe or elsewhere, as Marc Sage showed in his Understanding Terrorist Networks. (Kashmiris are similar-- they commit violence in Kashmir about Kashmir but have seldom taken their struggle international). Middle class anti-American Pashtuns such as Najibullah Zazi are a separate and post-Taliban development arising from the US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan.

Moreover, some of the groups called 'Taliban' in the West aren't even actually seminary students or connected to madrasahs, and are just the same warlord groups that used to fight the Soviet Union and get praised for it by the Evangelicals and by Ronald Reagan in the US. Gulbadin Hikmatyar's Hizb-i Islami and Jalaluddin Haqqani's network are two of the more important such groups, and they would likely be willing to come in from the cold.

Aljazeera English reports on the massive bombing on Thursday in Kabul, which appears to have targeted the Indian Embassy and killed 17 persons.



CBS has an eyewitness account of the bombing:



Russia Today also reports on the increasing Taliban violence:



Unlike US mass media, the Australian Broadcasting Company is on top of the story of massive voter fraud in the recent presidential elections in Afghanistan. The fraud is further undermining the legitimacy of the government of president Hamid Karzai, and may influence President Barak Obama's decision on future Afghan policy:



The report is based in part on WaPo's analysis of leaked voting statistics, such as that in Paktika only 35,000 people voted but Karzai got about 193,000 votes. Nice work if you can get it.

Nasrine Gross broke this story at IC, and provided the following raw data for Kandahar.

Robert Naiman at HuffPo reviews MSM reports, such as that of the WSJ, that the more experienced Afghanistan hands in the Obama administration, such as Barnett Rubin, are arguing against big new troop contingents in that country as opposed to counter-terrorism measures.

Tom Engelhardt wickedly reviews American officials' complaints about the unreasonable attachment of Pakistan and Afghanistan to their national sovereignty.

And here, the USG Open Source Center translates the statement of a group of tribal leaders in northwest Pakistan, whose touchiness about national sovereignty and objections to US drone attacks in their region has led them to threat reprisals agains the US in Afghanistan if they continue. Many Pakistani politicians, such as those of the Muslim League (Q), and the Pakistani generals, are angry about provisions in the proposed US $7.5 bn. civilian aid package that detract from Pakistani sovereignty. (The military is especially disturbed by the language in the Kerry-Lugar aid law that insists on civilian control of the military; Pakistan has a long tradition of military coups and of military interference in civilian politics).

' Pakistan: Tribal Leaders Accuse US of Terrorism, Warn To Attack Kabul, Kandahar
"Stop Drown Attacks Otherwise We Will Join Taliban in War Against NATO, Warning by Taliban" -- NNI headline
Khabrain
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Miranshah -- Spy planes continue flights round the clock. Our houses and pulpits were unsafe. We are patriotic Pakistanis. The United States is indulging in terrorism.

All tribesmen are ready for any action, press conference by tribal leaders. The Kerry-Lugar Bill is tantamount to selling the national integrity. Criticize government.

Tribal leaders and elders, Malik Jalal Manzarkhel, Malik Inayat Khan Dawar, Malik Muhammad, Nawaz Muhammadkhel, and Malik Faridullah, have unanimously decided in a big jirga (assembly of tribal elders) that if the United States does not stop attacks in the tribal areas then they will open a new front against the United States and NATO in Afghanistan.

Malik Jalal Khan said that the United States, in collusion with its Pakistani agents, had started a big war against Islam, the Muslims, and the tribesmen. He further said that it had fired guided missiles on innocent women, children, and old people.

He said that if the United States did not change this strategy then youth from the tribal areas would be voluntarily allowed to join the Taliban. He said the United States and NATO would be retaliated in Kabul and Kandahar.

Jalal Khan Wazir also threatened that revenge of the blood of innocent Taliban and drone attacks would be given in Afghanistan through suicide attacks to that the tribal areas could be saved. During the press conference Malik Jalal threatened that if the drone attacks and the US interference in the tribal areas did not stop, then Kabul and Kandahar would be attacked, after consultation with the tribal elders from both sides of the border, by providing military and manpower support to the Taliban.

The tribal leaders, while criticizing Pakistan, said that the drone aircraft hover round the clock over the tribal areas on Pakistan's behest, and they added that their homes and places of worship were unsafe from the drones.

(Description of Source: Islamabad Khabrain in Urdu  News, a sensationalist daily, published by Liberty Papers Ltd., generally critical of Pakistan People's Party; known for its access to government and military sources of information. The same group owns The Post in English, Naya Akhbar in Urdu and Channel 5 TV. Circulation of 30,000)

Riz Khan at Aljazeerah English reviews the first 8 years of the Afghanistan war:




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Nearly One in Four Persons on Globe is Muslim

CNN reports that nearly one in four human beings is Muslim, based on a new extensive survey by the Pew Forum for Religion in Public Life.

The number of Muslims they estimate, about 1.5 billion, is the one I have been using for some time based on my own back of the napkin calculations, but one often sees in the press estimates of one billion or 1.2 billion. The Pew conclusions are higher than the researchers had expected going into the study.

If current demographic trends continue, moreover, the world could level off at about 9 billion persons in 2050, and nearly 1/3 of those could well be Muslim. The really big Muslim populations are not in the Middle East, which is largely arid and wouldn't support such populations. It is in relatively well-watered places such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia in Asia where the bulk of Muslims live. Pakistan now has about 170 million people but is likely to rival the current US population of 300 million in the next few decades. (When I first went to Pakistan in 1981 I think its population was, like, 70 million).

I don't think most people in the West realize the implications of the likelihood that one-third of humankind may soon be Muslim. We don't have a real sense of scale in the US. We don't realize that Brazil alone is nearly as big as the US in area, or that the US could be fitted into East Africa. We don't realize how huge Iran is, or what it implies when we call India a subcontinent.

One of the implications is that the US is a little unlikely to thrive as a superpower in the 21st century if its more venal and bloodthirsty politicians go on barking about "Islamo-fascism" (they never said Christo-Fascism even though Gen. Franco in Spain was a good candidate for the label) and denigrating Islam and Muslims and seeking to militarily occupy their countries and siphon off their resources. That kind of behavior may have worked in the 19th century before Muslims were mobilized, but it does not work now.

The Muslim world is the labor pool of the next century, and is also the custodian of much of the world's fuel. New American crusades of the sort favored on the right of the Republican Party may finally induce imperial overstretch and deeply harm the US. Some 5 percent of the population cannot dominate by force 25 percent of the globe and what may eventually be 33% of the globe.

Obama's strategy, of positive engagement, is the only viable way forward.

I underline this need in my recent book, Engaging the Muslim World.


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ECC Will Count Fraudulent Ballots Against Candidates; Obama won't Slash Troop Numbers

Another big explosion has rocked Kabul, killing several persons and wounding more.

I don't know if Peter Galbraith still has a job at the United Nations after he went public with charges that the Electoral Complaints Commission, mainly appointed by the UN, was ignoring large-scale fraud in the August 20 presidential elections, fraud that mainly benefited incumbent Hamid Karzai. But he certainly sacrificed something. And it was not for naught.

On Wednesday, the ECC reversed itself on the way it will recount ballots suspected of being fraudulent. The recount will attempt to determine which candidates benefited most from fraud. If, as is widely suspected, it is Karzai, then his current estimate of 54% of the vote could be reduced below 50%, triggering a runoff election between him and his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah. The ECC reversal almost certainly comes from the firestorm of criticism over its apparent willingness to ignore ballot fraud by the incumbent, provoked in important part by Galbraith's speaking out.

Russia Today reports that President Obama has ruled out slashing the US troop contingent in Afghanistan. So now the question is whether he will yield to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops.



Meanwhile, NATO is pressuring Russia to supply more equipment and training to Afghanistan army troops. That is one of those ironic, science-fictional sentences that non-fiction authors seldom get to pen.

The Cato Institute reviews the Afghanistan war and worries that once the original mission, to capture Usamah Bin Laden, failed, it morphed into an open-ended project of nation-building with no end in sight. The documentary argues that a huge Western military footprint in a fiercely independent tribal society will backfire. If the object is to wipe out al-Qaeda, a smaller military force would be more effective. The film also is critical of forcible poppy field eradication as a means of dealing with Afghanistan's drug problems (though to be fair, the US has abandoned that strategy).



Russia Today also asks what would happen if US troops pulled out of Afghanistan and talks with Cato:




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Rethinking Afghanistan

You get your pick of polls on the Afghanistan war this morning. AP-GfK found only 40% of Americans any longer support the war, though they back sending one-off expeditionary forces to fight specific terrorist threats. Quinnipiac found a slight majority still in favor of the war. Widely diverging results such as this one suggest either small samples or poorly worded questions. But it seems to me clear that if Obama makes a big commitment of troops and resources in Afghanistan he will face increasing public disillusionment over time, especially in his own party, now the majority party in the country.

Aljazeera English on assessing al-Qaeda's strength in Afghanistan:



CBS reports on Afghanistan's political future in view of the disputed presidential election (see below).



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Gross: Massive Fraud in Afghanistan Election

Nasrine Gross writes in a guest op-ed for IC

Friends & Colleagues,

I have just returned from Kabul. And I am shocked how little the extent of fraud in the presidential elections is understood outside Afghanistan. In this regard I have some data that I would like to share.

During the summer and up until I left a few days ago I worked as a volunteer for Dr. Abdullah’s campaign. I was impressed with how well the campaign was being conducted with so many experienced, educated and prominent Afghans as well as eager and dedicated young men and women, but I was stunned by how much people were seeking Dr. Abdullah. In Kabul alone, on a daily basis, around 10,000 persons came to the campaign headquarters in Char-rahi Shahid, and when Dr. Abdullah was in the office in Char-rahi Ansari, he met with about 2,000 people. The office was open twenty-four hours and campaign workers and Dr. Abdullah himself saw people and/or attended to other work, very often until after 3 a.m. I was enormously proud of my people, most of whom only have the experience of the last two elections (presidential 2004, and parliamentary 2005) to be so gung-ho on this process of democracy and instinctively doing it right.

I worked in Dr. Abdullah’s office and so the multitudes that I ran into, and I really mean multitudes, gave me a new perspective on my country: From every part of Afghanistan, from every ethnic, religious, linguistic and locality group, from every political persuasion, from men, women, old, young, poor, rich, educated and illiterate, people came in droves. In those hot summer days, especially when electricity would go off and the fan would stop running, sometimes there were more than fifteen people in my office waiting to see their candidate, in a space of no more than 14 feet by 9 feet! They were also in every corner of that house turned office, in the corridors standing, in the lawns sitting and squatting, in the rooms in the outhouses lying on mattresses, on chairs in the waiting rooms inside the building, in the dining area, in the utility room, in the cook’s quarters, there were human bodies, turban’ed, burqa’ed, veiled, suited, in groups, chaperoned, or in single file, but there were people - - as if all of a sudden they had realized they had a real choice and flood gates had burst open, they were rushing to see Dr. Abdullah! I could not hear my own thoughts; such were the din of their presence! I got to learn a lot of Pashto, some Uzbeki, heard a lot of Noorestani, many dialects of Hazaragi, and many other languages. I met so many more people from so many other places and provinces and of course so many women! Ah, it was tiring but also a real treat to be part of this wonderful sea of humanity stumbling over itself to do something right!

And then there was the campaign trail that I did not participate in but heard about from my office mate who was in charge of the foreign press and went to every pit stop with the candidate - - and brought me stories and photos for the website. When we had Jalalabad, we thought ‘oh wow!’ and upon his return, gave our candidate a standing ovation over lunch (at 3:30 pm!) But then Herat happened where it took him more than two hours to go a distance that normally takes twenty minutes and for several subsequent days, the cuts and scratches on his fingertips to his upper arms were witness to the pull of the thousands who had thronged his motorcade and had clasped him in welcoming gestures! Well, we were elated and could not find words for it but knew that this was a turning point in the campaign, that our dreams were going to have more flesh, that the foreign press was really talking about it. And then, the thousands in Paktia, Paktika, Bamiyan, Ghor, Pul-e Khomri, and in Kandahar three thousand men and one thousand women met him in separate rallies, the same city where Mr. Karzai was received by 500 mostly complaining people! By the time Mazar rolled around with over one hundred thousand persons, we had gotten used to it: Dr. Abdullah had transcended all molds of Afghan leaders, candidates and elections, people were rallying around him like their long lost guiding light, embodying all their hopes for change, for the future, for dignity that trust in tomorrow brings. It was giddying and we did not mind the twenty hour days - - I remember one night - - actually morning at 3:30 am, my brain had gone to mush but Dr. Abdullah was still going strong!

On Election Day and afterwards I worked specifically on 8 provinces: Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Ghazni, Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Urozgan. It is in regard to these 8 provinces that I am enclosing some of my findings.

1) For my base data I used the data provided by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) for each province. Because I had received many calls during the Election Day from these provinces about problems with polling areas and people not participating, I used the IEC province and polling center data and met with our representatives from these provinces. Specifically, I wanted to know whether a polling center was open or closed, and what the problems were in the polling centers regardless of their being open or closed. To make sure that I had good data, I met separately with different people from each province and double checked and triple checked what they reported (I am speechless that these people worked with me in the most professional manner despite the fact that the sense of betrayal, insult, anger, humiliation, shame and disbelief was eating away at their very soul and many of them, grown men and women alike would uncontrollably shed tears when reporting the situation to me echoing what one of them had said ‘I only had my vote and he (Karzai) stole it from me; I feel like my person has been violated!’

The results of these verifications I have compiled in large Excel tables for each of the 8 provinces. I also made a smaller aggregate table. I am sending you this table which shows that in these 8 provinces there were over 1,680 polling centers (each consisting of many polling stations) and 56% of them were closed and 73% had problems. The table also shows the problems in each province, as reported by these witnesses and workers.

2) After the IEC started posting the results of the polls I took one of the IEC partial data (I think it was at 71% of total polling stations) and subtracted the votes reported from closed polling centers. The results were phenomenal. Only a very partial list of polling centers in each province, totaling 120 centers, showed the extent of fraud clearly: a) in terms of total votes for Mr. Karzai, b) the percentage of votes for Mr. Karzai vis-à-vis the total votes cast, and, c) in terms of the total votes reported versus the total estimated voter population in any polling center.

Here, I am sending the partial list of only one province, Kandahar, where you can see that the IEC Pro-Karzai votes are over 45,000 and those reported from closed polling centers amount to over 31,000 of them! You can also see that in several of the polling centers the votes reported are more than 100% of the total estimated voter population of the area. How can that be when there was such a bad security situation in all of Kandahar that day? In several polling centers you can see that the percent of the vote for Mr. Karzai is above 70%. We know that extremely few women, perhaps as little as one hundred women in the whole of the province went to vote. Assuming that not every woman in that center had registered to vote, this is an impossibility to have over 70% of an entire population consisting of males! You can also see that in several places 100% of vote went to Mr. Karzai. Again, how could there be not even one vote against Mr. Karzai in a province that has seen so much conflict and where so much criticism of Mr. Karzai’s family exists? These trends are very evident both across the entire province and in all the other 8 provinces that I dealt with.

3) I also have a copy of a letter the campaign headquarters sent to the Election Complaints Commission (ICC). This letter describes the types of systematic fraud we had uncovered until then including the computer fraud. In this particular type of fraud, through hard core programming of the system, all candidates were beneficiaries, only that Mr. Karzai was by a much larger multiplier than the rest - - so some of the fraud attributed to Dr. Abdullah is actually Mr. Karzai’s people trying to be smart! (I can send you a copy of this letter if you so wish.)

4) Finally, since one day after the election, droves of people from each province of Afghanistan have been coming to Kabul to present evidence of fraud, report their eyewitness and meet with Dr. Abdullah regarding a course of action to redress the wrong that has been done to them. Sometimes they come in tens, but most often they come in hundreds. Usually, they hold press conferences. Dr. Abdullah keeps asking these disgruntled voters to keep calm, to wait for the ICC to complete its work, to have faith.

A few days ago, more than six thousand of these people coming from 33 provinces of Afghanistan (for the 34th province, Kabul, people were already there) met with Dr. Abdullah at Kabul’s Uranus Hotel. Together they passed a resolution. I have translated it and am sending it to you as well. You will see that these people are reasonable, rational and intent on success for Afghanistan and its friends and allies.

I hope that this documentation will shed better light not only on the extent of fraud and the premeditated and planned nature of it but also on the desire of Afghan people to see their voice recognized, and to help the international community make the right choice - - for Afghanistan and for the world at large. My people want that we must not discard the real votes; that we must not sanction fraud; that we must honor the right of the people to choose. This is the sure way to building security, stability and peace!

I know it is my right I am talking about; but make no mistake, it is also the path for peace and success for all our friends around the world, not the least of whom are the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States and other countries fighting the Taliban, Al Qaida and who knows who else in Afghanistan!

I assure you that no calamity would befall Afghanistan or the world if the right, democratic path is taken: There will be no rejection or revolt by the Pashtun population (Working with Pashtuns from these 8 provinces I know for a fact that a majority of the Pashtuns did not vote for Mr. Karzai; their vote was stolen from them for one candidate). The non-Pashtuns will not feel that their vote was squandered. The enemies of Afghanistan will receive a loud and clear message that the world is on the side of Afghanistan as are the Afghans. And, those countries and organizations aiding the enemies of Afghanistan will realize that their advantage is to approach Afghanistan in a different manner.



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Iran and Nuclear Latency

When you tool around the blogosphere and the news sites, the discourse about Iran's nuclear program is maddeningly contradictory. But I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are:

1. Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independently enriching uranium to at least the 5 percent or so needed for energy reactors and also to the 20 percent needed for its medical reactor.

2. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a fatwa in 2005 that no Islamic state may possess or use atomic weapons because they willy nilly kill masses of innocent civilians when used, which is contrary to the Islamic law of war (which forbids killing innocent non-combatants).

3. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied that they are working on a nuclear bomb or that they aspire to have one.

4. US intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran has done no weapons-related experiments since 2003, and that it currently has no nuclear weapons program.

5. Israel forcefully maintains that Iran's nuclear program is for weapons and has repeatedly threatened to bomb the Natanz enrichment facilities.

6. Iran recently announced a new nuclear enrichment facility near Qom.

Those who insist that Iran is trying to get a bomb have a difficult time explaining why Khamenei forbids it as un-Islamic and why the president and others all deny it. It is possible that they are lying, but their denials at least have to be noted and analyzed. The skeptics also have to explain away why the 16 US intelligence agencies say after exhaustive espionage and investigation that there is no weapons program now and that there hasn't been one for some time.

Those who agree with the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as with the International Atomic Energy Agency, that there is no evidence for Iran having a nuclear weapons program have to explain Iran's insistence on closing the fuel cycle and being able to enrich uranium itself.

The answer I propose, which explains all the anomalies elegantly and concisely, is that Iran is seeking nuclear latency. Latency is the possession of a nuclear energy program and of reactors, which would allow the production of an atomic bomb on short notice if an extreme danger to national autonomy reared its ugly head. Nuclear latency is sometimes called the 'Japan option,' because given its sophisticated scientific establishment and enormous economy, Japan could clearly produce a nuclear weapon on short notice if its government decided to mount a crash program.

The reason for the construction of the Qom facility, in this reading, would be that the Natanz facility is too easily bombed or struck with missiles. Moreover, the Israelis and some Americans have repeatedly threatened to strike it. A nuclear enrichment program such as that at Natanz, which is subject to being wiped out by a military strike, cannot truly provide nuclear latency. The Qom facility was necessary in the regime's eyes if the latency strategy was to be preserved.

The regime has every reason to maintain latency and no reasons to go further and construct a nuclear device. The latter step would attract severe international sanctions.

I was on an email list where someone expressed suspicion of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's 2005 fatwa against the possession and use of nuclear weapons by an Islamic state.

One suggestion was that Khamenei is not a real Shiite jurisprudent and has eschewed having followers inside Iran. But, no, Khamenei is a mujtahid or independent jurist and has the standing to issue a fatwa or considered ruling on the law.. A mujtahid may always decline to accept muqallidun or followers, which Khamenei appears to have done for Iranian nationals, without that affecting his legitimate right to issue fatwas. The theory of ijtihad or independent jurisprudential reasoning holds that the law inheres in the reasoning processes of the jurisprudent; whether the jurisprudent has followers or not is irrelevant to the discovery of the law in a particular instance. Moreover, as rahbar or supreme leader,, Khamenei's pronouncements on such matters might even be seen as a hukm or standing command. Finally, since he sets policy on such matters, what difference, in any case, would it make what exact jurisprudential standing his fatwas enjoy?

The only real question is whether he is lying and insincere. That would be a dangerous ploy on his part, in a state premised on Islamic jurisprudence, as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out.

As for the general Islamic law of war, it forbids killing innocent non-combatants such as women, children and unarmed men; ipso facto it forbids deploying nuclear weapons. It was suggested that Iran has chemical weapons and that these would as much violate the stricture above as nuclear warheads. I do not agree that Iran has a chemical weapons program, but in any case chemical weapons have for the most part been battlefield weapons used against massed troops or in trenches. Having such a program does not imply intent to kill innocent civilians. Whereas making a bomb does imply such intent and is therefore considered by most Muslim jurisprudents incompatible with Islamic law.

Khamenei seems to me to have decided some time ago on a policy of nuclear latency, for two reasons. Nuclear reactors lend Iran a hope of energy independence. Iran produces 3.8 million barrels per day of petroleum and uses about 2 mn. b/d itself. It is likely that soon Iran will use up all of its daily petroleum production, leaving it without the petroleum income windfall upon which its government depends. At that point, Khamenei fears, Iran would be dragooned back into the neo-liberal, America-centric order that had dominated Iran under the shah. Second, nuclear latency would help fend off aggressive attempts at regime change by the Western powers or Israel.

Nuclear latency has all the advantages of actual possession of a bomb without any of the unpleasant consequences, of the sort North Korea is suffering.

Even if my thesis that Iran seeks nuclear latency were accepted, isn't there a chance that in the future the leaders of the Islamic Republic might seek a weapon?

Scott Sagan noted in one of his essays that one impetus to seek an actual bomb is regime and national pride in the country's modernity. But this motivation does not exist in the case of Iran, since the Islamic Republic is a critic of the alleged horrors of modernity and because it defines nuclear bombs as shameful, rather than something to boast about.

Moreover, latent nuclear states sometimes give up their latency and foreswear even a nuclear option. Brazil and Argentina mothballed their programs in the 1980s, either because they saw each other as insufficiently threatening or because their move to democratic rule lessed the power of the military-industrial complex in each country that had been plumping for nukes (Sagan thinks it is the latter).

The problem for the West is that nuclear latency is not illegal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And conveniently for Khamenei, nuclear latency is not incompatible with Islamic law. That is why the US and its close allies have to pretend that Iran is actually going for a bomb, despite the lack of good evidence for serious weaponization; they are using this pretense as a way to attempt to forestall a Japan option, which is what they really object to, since it is a geostrategic game changer for the region in and of itself. Unfortunately for them, the General Assembly is unconvinced, and China and Russia are reluctant.

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8 US troops Killed in Nuristan; UN Official Says He was Pressured to Wink at Karzai Ballot Fraud; Abdullah Defiant

On Saturday morning, a force of some 300 guerrillas attacked a US outpost and an Afghan police outpost in Nuristan. They killed 8 US troops and two Afghan police, but failed to overwhelm the bastions, and had to withdraw in the face of withering US air power once it arrived. Some of the fighters are reported by Dawn to have been driven from the Swat Valley this summer by the Pakistani army. It is a worry that as the Pakistani military prepares for a major campaign in South Waziristan, it may inadvertently increase violence in Afghanistan, as the fighters move up to Helmand and Uruzgan.

On Monday morning, Taliban blew up a bomb in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad near the World Food Program offices. Early reports said at least three people were killed. The Taliban have suffered many reversals in Pakistan in the past few months, and this bombing seems likely an expression of frustration and revenge.

AP has video on Saturday's battle in Afghanistan:



The LAT suggests that the attack may have been planned by the Hizb-i Islami or 'Islamic Party' of Gulbadin Hikmatyar (an old-time 1980s anti-Soviet 'freedom fighter' once backed to the hilt by the US and Pakistan), who now considers US and NATO troops foreign occupiers every bit as objectionable as the Soviet Red Army had been. But if Dawn is right that many of these fighters were from Swat, it could have just been a tribal attack.

Just to say that it worries me that the guerrillas were able to fight in a unit as large as 300. I don't think the Iraqi Sunni radical guerrillas ever assembled a force greater than 30 or so except maybe at Fallujah. I suppose in Iraq the US air force would have destroyed such a large troop contingent in the desert, whereas Afghanistan's craggy geography makes that a more difficult proposition.

National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones told CNN on Sunday that Afghanistan is not on the verge of falling to the Taliban, that the Taliban are not "coming back," and that there are less than 100 al-Qaeda personnel in the whole country. Well, I guess we aren't spending billions and tying down our army to fight al-Qaeda, then.

CBS reports on a US military effort against the Haqqani Network in Eastern Afghanistan.



I was struck by the confidence of the US military personnel that they could attract the loyalty of the pro-Haqqani tribes this winter when the guerrillas withdraw during the bad weather to Pakistan for more training. I'd want to know how alienated locals were by the searches conducted by the US troops through their villages; and how many of the villagers are cousins to the more committed guerrillas, who might have rather minded the helicopter gunship attack on 14 of the latter from the air, which the video shows. And, if it were possible to attract the loyalty of locals, why hadn't it been done before now and why are so many more Pashtuns gradually going over to the anti-government fundamentalists? And, wouldn't the Kabul government be the one that had the most chance of attracting the loyalty of Afghans? I have a dark suspicion that the US commanders think the locals are only supporting the guerrillas because they are coerced into it (as, to be fair, was often the case in Iraq). In Afghanistan, I don't think there is the same disjuncture between Pashtun tribes and militant guerrillas as there was in Sunni Iraq. Someone like Jalaluddin Haqqani has been fighting as a guerrilla in those areas, first against the Soviets and now against the Americans, for nearly 30 years. Surely he has constituencies that won't just abandon him. Ironically, some of those constituencies were built up back in the day with Reagan's money.

This report in Dari Persian about hundreds of demonstrators in the western city of Herat who came out Sunday to chant "Death to America" is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. The protest was also a funeral procession, for a 20-year-old Afghan man, who had been traveling on a road outside the city when he was kidnapped. The thugs demanded a $100,000 ransom, which his family did not have. The demonstrators, however, blamed the United States and the Karzai government for the lack of security. That is, as security deteriorates, there is a danger of a snowball effect, whereby the US loses any legitimacy even in the eyes of Persian-speaking Tajiks precisely because it is unable to provide basic needs like security. If the foreigners aren't even useful foreigners, the Afghans are unlikely to want them occupying the country.

CBS also reviews the course of the war in Afghanistan and explores Gen. McChrystal's proposed counter-insurgency strategy, which he contrasts with a smaller, targeted counter-terrorism strategy:



One of the keys to successful counter-insurgency is the establishment of government legitimacy and efficiency. In Afghanistan, things are going in the opposite direction. Peter Galbraith, who formerly served in the UN in Afghanistan, says that the UN collected evidence that one third of the ballots for incumbent Hamid Karzai cast last August 20 in the presidential election were fraudulent. If this is true, it would drop him from the current 54% of the vote he is said to have received to less than 50%, triggering a run-off. Galbraith charges that he was pressured to cover up the fraud in the interests of national peace. He was fired from his post and made to leave the country because of differences with his boss, Kai Eide of Norway. Some UN and US officials worried that a runoff election between Karzai, who is backed by Pashtuns, and his chief rival Abdullah Abdullah, who is backed by Tajiks, could throw the country into ethnic turmoil just as the US military was implementing a policy to pacify the Pashtun provinces.

But Galbraith's charges have stiffened Abdullah Abdullah's resolve to contest the results to the end, making him the Mir Hosain Mousavi of Afghanistan. In a news conference on Saturday, Abdullah pointed to Peter Galbraith's letter as proof that the UN is not an impartial watchdog of the elections. Besides, a conviction that Karzai was fraudulently elected would be far more damaging to Tajik-Pashtun relations than would a free and fair runoff.

In a Persian interview, Abdullah pledged to use all legal means to protest the unjust character of the declared election outcome. That sounds like instability to me.

Meanwhile, Aljazeera English says that Pakistan is pushing back against American demands that Washington be allowed to hit Taliban targets in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, via drones firing rockets. The current drone strikes most target the no-man's land of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which are vaguely akin to US Indian reservations. But to allow a Western, Christian power to bomb a major Pakistani city and provincial capital is a different matter altogether.



As it is, Pakistani public opinion is vehemently against US drone strikes on Pakistani soil.

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On How Iran is a Military Nothing despite What Propagandists Say; and on How Even Israel Dwarfs Iran Militarily in Every Way that Matters

Some random anonymous person got posted over at Daily Dish who critiqued my column on the top things you think about Iran that are not true. This person pretended to refute my column, but as is typical in propaganda, he really only harped on a few minor details and said nothing about the column's larger point.

The source of some of my statistics was Globalfirepower.com. The poster at DD maintains that the estimate for Iran of the annual military budget is out of date and that it should be "a little over $7 bn. per annum" instead of "a little over $6 bn." But my point was comparative, to countries like Norway and Singapore, who also likely increased expenditures over time. Given that the true US expenditure on things military is about $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) a year, I think we may conclude that a difference of a billion isn't fatal to my argument. Besides which, these comparative estimates are always slightly out of date and potentially misleading. Was the poster's estimate of $7.4 bn. calculated in terms of purchasing power parity? What was it in riyals? Given that Iran had 30% inflation last year, anything calculated in riyals would be worth substantially less this year in real terms than last.

The individual argues that military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is more telling than a per capita figure. But actually both ways of figuring have drawbacks. Figuring expenditures per GDP means that poor countries look more militaristic than they really are and rich countries look pacifist when they are anything but. The CIA listing of countries by military expenditure as a percentage of GDP puts powerhouses like Oman, Eritrea, Burundi, and the Maldives at the top of the world list. The US, which spends more on the military than the next 40 countries combined, comes in 27th on this list behind the countries just mentioned. Of what use is that? Doesn't it just tell us that many of the countries at the top of this list are poor and if they buy so much as a rusty artillery piece, it is a big part of their income? And by the way, if we figure it this way, Iran is 67 in the world. While the poster puts that between India and Vietnam, it is also between the Congo and Portugal. My original point, is that a country that spends $6 or $7 bn a year on military affairs doesn't amount to much of a military threat to the US, is not damaged by this rather silly argument.

The poster also points to the sheer size of Iran's army and reserves, which globalfirepower.com puts at 875,000. But it estimates Israel's active military and reserves at about 600,000, and if we wanted to pull a Jonah Golberg and make a bet on which of the two would win if they went to war in 2009 I'd put my whole life savings on Israel's 600,000 versus Iran's mangy 875,000. Iraq was also puffed up by American hawks as having had a "million-man army," but I think we all saw in 1991 and 2003 what that really amounted to.

Demonizing and building up as threats to the US small third world countries like Cuba, Grenada, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, and Iran has been a cottage industry since the fall of the Soviet Union and the adoption by the Chinese of the Capitalist Road deprived hawks of any credible great-power rivalry with which to scare Americans into allowing themselves to be fleeced by the military-industrial complex. It is natural that I should be attacked for puncturing the illusion of menace that the American Spartans (slogan: live poverty-stricken in barracks but own Big Spears) want to project about Iran.

When Andrew Sullivan first linked to my post, he asked what the comparison would be to Israel. First of all, Iran ranks much higher on the Global Peace Index than does Israel. Then, here are some comparative statistics as between Iran and Israel, in answer to the question. But note that the comparisons are misleading. Israel has 1220 aircraft and Iran has 84. But Iran's include a lot of things like old F-4 Phantoms from Nixon in the 1970s whereas Israel's are state of the art. And, while Israel's military budget is now estimated at a little over $13 bn. annually, it should be noted that over $2 bn. of that is extracted from us Americans and handed over directly with no oversight to Tel Aviv every year, so it isn't exactly all Israel's money (and of course these are only the official figures, ignoring a lot of informal tariff and other tax breaks and transfers of resources). Israel's massive nuclear weapons industry is not counted in the $13 bn. Again, the figures for what they are worth are from Globalfirepower.com. You'll have to scroll down because somehow my table formatting is making an unsightly gap between this text and the table, below.

Population	Israel: 7.2 mn.	Iran: 70 mn.
Wars launched on neighbors:	Israel: 1956, 1967, 1982, 2006, 2008-9	Iran: 0
Nuclear Warheads	Israel: ~200	Iran: 0
Military Budgets:	Israel: $13.4 bn.	Iran: $7.4 bn.
Per capita military expenditure:	Israel: $1,805	Iran: $105
Total Aircraft	Israel: 1,220	Iran: 84
Active Military and Reserve Personnel	Israel: ~600,000	Iran: 875,000
Total land-based weapons:	Israel: 14,200	Iran: 5,499

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Ron Paul on Iran; Ahmadinejad has Jewish Heritage

International Atomic Energy Agency official Mohammad Elbaradei arrived in Tehran on Saturday to begin making preparations for the inspection of Iran's new nuclear research facility near Qom.

The NYT reports that an internal IAEA report concludes that Iran now has the data to construct a nuclear weapon. Which means that there is no point in bombing them, since knowledge is unlikely to be destroyed that way. Me, I think they just want a 'Japan option'-- the ability to construct a bomb if they come under threatening attack.

The Telegraph newspaper reveals that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have Jewish antecedents, back in the 1940s when the family was still called Sabourjian (makers of Jewish shawls). This discovery was made via a photograph of his identity card, There have been many conversions from Judaism to Islam, many of them voluntary. In the real world people get all mixed up. Iran has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East aside from Israel itself. In the 19th century there were forced conversions of Jews to Shiism in the eastern city of Mashhad. Since converts intermarry with the majority community, this means that many Mashhadis have a Jewish great grandfather and may not know it. It isn't just Iran. One genetic study found that some 20% of the Spanish had Jewish haplotypes and 10% had an Arab ancestry. The revelation in Iran doesn't change anything; Ahmadinejad does not make his critiques of Israel with reference to his own heritage but on the basis of a radical interpretation of Khomeinist ideology. The latter in its full form is only a little over 40 years old, so for everyone in Ahmadinejad's age cohort, it is an adopted ideology for those who adhere to it, not an inherited one.

Rep. Ron Paul (R.-TX) discusses the current hype about Iran and makes the excellent point that the likely beneficiary of increased US-Iranian tension or even war would be China, which has excellent relations with Tehran:



Ron Paul points to the attempts of Neoconservatives such as Elliot Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz to foment war on Iran or at least keep the US from negotiating with it. Stephen Walt discusses the Neocon attack op-eds in the light of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett's sober advice on how to engage Iran.

Russia Today says that the US is pressuring Russia to supply weapons systems to Saudi Arabia instead of Iran, and Saudi Arabia is sweetening the deal by being willing to pay top dollar.



Pepe Escobar at Tomdispatch discusses the oil and gas dimensions of US policy toward Russia and Iran.

The US regularly accuses Iran of backing terrorism, but the Iranians feel as though they are on the receiving end of it. Aljazeera English reports on PJAK, a revolutionary Iranian-Kurdish group that holes up with impunity inside American-occupied Iraq and which Tehran says hits targets inside Iran.




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Russia, China, Satisfied with 10/1/09 Talks

The US plan to place further sanctions on Iran for its nuclear energy research program may founder at the United Nations Security Council because of the reluctance of Russia and China to see the sanctions ratcheted up.

Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed cautious optimism on Friday on the Iran issue: He said, "The agreements reached inspire cautious optimism. The most important thing now is to make sure these agreements are fully and timely met . . ."

Russia Today reports on Iran's agreement to send over two tons of low enriched uranium to Russia for enrichment for Iran's medical isotope reactor.



Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry also hailed the progress made in Thursday's talks in Geneva.

China imports 15% of its petroleum from Iran, and China is now the world's second biggest oil importer after the United States. The Chinese are opposed to placing any further sanctions on Iran


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Obama pwns Bush-Cheney on Iran; First day of Talks Yields Significant Confidence-Building Steps

For 8 years, Bush-Cheney practiced what I call "belligerent Ostrichism" toward Iran. They refused to talk to Tehran. They wanted to ratchet up sanctions on it. Bush sent 2 aircraft carriers to the Gulf to menace Iran. Bush's spokesmen professed themselves afraid of Iran's unarmed little speedboats in the Gulf. Aside from issuing threats to attack and destroy Iran the way they did Iraq, Bush-Cheney had nothing else to say on the matter. During the 8 years, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly. Bush-Cheney gesticulated and grimaced and fainted away at the horror of it all, but they accomplished diddly-squat.

Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling.

Delegates of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany met with representatives of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for 7 and a half hours on Thursday for talks on Iran's nuclear research program.

Amazingly, there were signs of significant progress even on the first day, which most seasoned observers had not expected.

1. Iran agreed to allow inspectors from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the newly announced facility near Qom within the next two weeks.

2. Iran agreed to meet again at the end of October.

3. Iran agreed to send "most" of its stock of low enriched uranium (3.5%) to Russia for processing to the roughly 20% degree of enrichment needed to run its small reactor producing medical isotopes. Iran has about 3200 pounds of low-enriched uranium, and is willing to send 2600 to Russia. That is a little over a ton, or about what a single Ford Focus weighs.

Iran does not anyway have the ability to enrich to more than about 4.8% at the moment, and the medical reactor will be out of fuel in a little over a year, so if they continued to want the medical isotopes they would be forced to take this step anyway.

Russia Today has video:



The NYT report on all this adds in all kinds of extraneous and unproven allegations, of a network of secret enrichment plants or secret stores of low-enriched uranium or nefarious Iranian plans to make a bomb, or of Iran having enough nuclear material to make a bomb (irrelevant if they can't enrich to 90%), and what Israel thinks of all this (since the Israelis really have thumbed their nose at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and made a whole arsenal of bombs, thus further destabilizing the Middle East, why they aren't under UN sanctions I'll never understand; but they certainly don't have standing to dictate anything to other countries on the proliferation issue). It reminds me of all the NYT front page stories about aluminum tubes and Iraqi WMD of Judy Miller in 2002. Isn't it bad journalism to report completely unproven allegations for which there is no evidence?

Back to the real world: The steps outlined above are only pledges on Iran's part, of course, and we have to see if they are implemented.

President Obama made much the same points, demanding that Iran follow through on fuller IAEA inspections, a long-time demand of the US.

Presumably the regime is being so forthcoming because it needs a win on the international stage to shore up its flagging legitimacy at home, in the way of presidential elections widely viewed as fraudulent. It is possible that hard liners like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps will attempt to torpedo these positive moves.

For further proof that Congress has numerous brain-dead people in it, its reaction to Iran's being forthcoming in Geneva was to authorize legislation that would try to punish companies for supplying gasoline to Iran. Somehow I think someone will take the contract, and anyway Iran will up its petroleum refining capacity in the coming couple of years. Congress should worry how the US is going to fuel its transportation in coming years.

The USG Open Source Center translated the remarks of Khamenei's secretary, Sa'id Jalili, on the Geneva negotiations:

"FYI -- Iran Nuclear Negotiator Jalili Says 5+1 Talks Positive
Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN)
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) in Persian at 1636 GMT began a live relay of a news conference by Iran's Supreme Security Council secretary Sa'id Jalili in Geneva following the 5+1 nuclear talks. The news conference was also broadcast live by Press TV and Al-Alam TV.

Jalili said that today's talks concentrated on security, international developments, economy, and regional issues. He added that these talks could be a platform to resolve the regional and global issues. Jalili said that one of the most important issues is global security. Jalili added that some media try to create terror within their audience. He called it "media terrorism."

Jalili said: "One of the important issues we have proposed in the proposal package is to deal with some of the genuine threats which the human community suffers from and should be concerned about. One of these issues is the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). WMDs are a threat to the human community, which must definitely be dealt with through international cooperation. The issue of disarmament is the most important one."

Iran's nuclear negotiator asked for all nuclear arsenals to be destroyed. Jalili said that at the same time countries have the right to achieve peaceful nuclear technology. Jalili said that best method is to boost international regulations bodies, such as the IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Jalili then referred to the global financial crisis. He said that worldwide cooperation could be useful in resolving this matter. Jalili criticized the country's that support sanctions and said sanctions will not help the global financial crisis.

Jalili then talked about terrorism, narcotics, and organized crime. He said that if the public are not scared then a basis for mutual cooperation will be created.
Jalili called the Geneva talks constructive. He said: "Today we have agreed to continue these talks with a positive thinking. Hopefully next month we can reach an agreement on how to continue these talks so that cooperation would become reality."
Jalili then started answering questions.

In response to a question by an Egyptian correspondent, Jalili said: Worldwide and regional security is only possible through cooperation.

Jalili said that today's talks mainly concentrated on how to take these talks forward.

An Israeli correspondent asked Jalili about Ahmadinezhad's comments on Israel. Jalili refused to answer his question. Another correspondent asked the same question from Jalili. The Iranian official said that the Palestine problem is a 60 year-old issue. Jalili said that Iran wants a democratic solution to the Palestinian territories. He added that only a just solution could work for the people of this region.

A German correspondent asked if there are any unknown nuclear facilities in Iran. Jalili said that everything has to go through the IAEA. Iran's peaceful nuclear activities are in full cooperation with IAEA, Jalili said.

One correspondent asked about the outcome of talks with William Burns, the US representative. Jalili said that he was aware that the 5+1 countries had a united stance against Iran, but that the talks were productive.

Fars news agency, affiliated to Iran Revolution Guards Corps, asked if the talks with the 5+1 countries would continue and Jalili's response was positive."



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Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.


Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."

Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'

Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?

Actuality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.

Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.

Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.


Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.

Actuality: Iran's reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.

Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?

Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.

Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.

Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.


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Obama Meets Advisers on Afghanistan; Ismail Khan Warns against US Troop Surge

President Barack Obama met Wednesday afternoon for 3 hours with his advisers on the Afghanistan war, including VP Joe Biden and, by teleconference, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He is said not to have made any decisions as yet about a new strategy or increased troop levels, both asked for by Gen. McChrystal. Some of those voiced demanding that Obama make a precipitate decisioin on how to proceed were the same ones, like John McCain, who rushed the US thoughtlessly into a six-year quagmire in Iraq.

CBS has video:



According to VOA, some experts believe that the US needs a different strategy for each of the country's major regions. Those interviewed by VOA (below) suggest that some insurgents might be amenable to negotiations:



Obama got support from the secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on his deliberate (some say way too slow) policy review on Afghan strategy. Rasmussen agrees that strategy is more important than sheer numbers.



In contrast, John Feffer at Tomdispatch.com wonders if the Afghanistan misadventure will be the thing that tears NATO apart.

And Fred Kaplan at Slate argues that Obama should ask two questions. The first is whether President Hamid Karzai is capable of attracting the allegiance of the Afghan people, so as to be an effective leader and ally of the US. The second is whether a long, costly, and potentially lethal counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan is really worth the cost to the US.

But any Obama "surge" in Afghanistan is going to meet severe opposition from some members of the government of president Hamid Karzai. Aljazeera English reports on a speech by powerful warlord Ismail Khan of Herat, who serves as Energy and Water Minister in the Karzai government, in which he attacks Gen. Stanley McChrystal as ignorant about Afghanistan and condemns the notion of the US sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan.

As I pointed out on Monday, Ismail Khan is furious about the deteriorating security that nearly allowed his assassination, and said that the US will meet a more decisive defeat in Afghanistan than did Russia. And he's a Tajik member of the Karzai government, which is allied with the US! He is threatening to withdraw from the cabinet.

Ismail Khan says that a Shura Council of Warlords should be formed to direct the country. Afghan president Hamid Karzai presaged this policy by gathering around himself 1980s warlords (then all backed by the US) such as Rashid Dostam (Uzbek from Mazar), Karim Khalili (Shiite Hazara), Muhammad Fahim (Sunni Tajik or Persian speaker) and Ismail Khan himself (Sunni Tajik of Herat and client of Iran). What Ismail Khan cannot understand is that bloodthirsty warlords tore the country apart in the 1990s, and few want them back.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Defense Ministry insists that security problems in northern provinces such as Kunduz and Baghlan have been dealt with and there is an improvement, especially now that local people are vigilant against the Taliban.


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Cole on KCRW and Iran and an Israeli Attack

I was on the KCRW in Los Angeles's "To the Point" on Wednesday discussing the Iranian nuclear program and the prospects of an Israeli attack on Iran. It was not a calm discussion. I don't come on until 2/3s the way through:



US and Iran, Face-to-Face for the First Time in 30 Years (12:07PM)

A historic meeting will open tomorrow in Geneva, Switzerland, when the permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, France, Britain, China and Russia -- plus Germany, sit down for talks with Iran about its nuclear program. The meeting marks the first time the United States and Iran have engaged in direct negotiations in thirty years. But Iran has said it wants to discuss trade, not nuclear power. With recent revelations about a second Iranian nuclear facility, and missile test firings in recent days, what signals is Iran sending? Will the US push for tougher sanctions against the regime? What can diplomatic efforts yield if Iran refuses to make concessions? Is a military strike by Israel a possibility?
Guests:

* Paul Brannan: Senior Research Analyst, Institute for Science and International Security
* Hooman Majd: journalist and author
* Gerald Steinberg: Professor of Political Studies, Bar Ilan University
* Juan Cole: Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Michigan

Links:

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran


• Brannan on Qom uranium enrichment site


• Majd's 'The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran'


• Cole's 'Engaging the Muslim World'

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