Afghan Officials Say Former Gitmo Detainee Now a Taliban Commander

[Like so many before him, the new Taliban #2, Commander Zakir, is a former Guantanamo inmate.  Think Abdullah Mehsud.  What a perfect cover for a "Manchurian Taliban."  Watch your back, Mullah Omar!]

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan —  A man freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.

Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press.

The story of Abdul Qayyum could add to the complications President Barack Obama is facing in fulfilling his pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo by sending some prisoners back to their home countries or to other willing nations, while putting others on trial.

U.S. intelligence asserts that 20 percent of suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison have returned to the fight and the number has been steadily increasing.

Qayyum’s key aide in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who told his U.S. interrogators he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.

He rejoined the Taliban, they said. Akundzada said he warned authorities against releasing both him and Qayyum.

Like Qayyum, Rauf is from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. During the Taliban’s rule, which ended in late 2001, Rauf was a corps commander in the western province of Herat and in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said Akhundzada.

The intelligence officials were interviewed in Helmand, where the Taliban control several districts, and spoke on condition of anonymity lest they attract the militia’s attention.

They said Qayyum was given charge of the military campaign in the south about 14 months ago, soon after his release from the Afghan jail to which he had been transferred from Guantanamo. That includes managing the battle for the town of Marjah, where NATO troops are flushing out remaining militants.

Qayyum, whose Taliban nom de guerre is Qayyum Zakir, is thought to be running operations from the Pakistani border city of Quetta. A Pakistani newspaper report that he was recently arrested was denied by Abdul Razik, a former governor of Kajaki, Qayyum’s home district, which is under extensive Taliban control.

One of the intelligence officials also questioned the report. He said a house Qayyum was in was raided about two weeks ago and three assistants were arrested but he escaped. A week ago he was seen in Pishin, a Pakistani border town about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Quetta, the official said.

“He’s smart and he is brutal,” said Abdul Razik. “He will withdraw his soldiers to fight another day,” he said, referring to the Marjah campaign.

Qayyum, who is about 36 years old, is close to the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. He has been tipped as a candidate to replace the militia’s second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was among several Taliban leaders arrested recently in Pakistan.

A Taliban commander in the 1990s who was notorious for brutality and summary executions, Qayyum was captured in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo. According to interrogation transcripts, he identified himself to his American captors by his father’s name, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, and said he had been conscripted by the Taliban but left at the first opportunity.

According to a military transcript of his subsequent hearing, he said, “I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family.” In December 2007 he was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government and held in Pul-e-Charkhi jail, on the eastern edge of the Kabul.

A year later he was set free, despite warnings he would return to the Taliban, said Sher Mohammed Akundzada, the former governor of Helmand province, where the battle for Marjah was waged.

Afghanistan’s deputy attorney general said Qayyum went before an Afghan court, which ruled he had served his time. The U.S.-backed Afghan government generally gets a promise from former Guantanamo prisoners that they won’t join the armed opposition. Qayyum made no such promise.

“The court decided time served was enough,” said Faqir Ahmed Faqiryar. “When the court is involved there is no need to promise anything.”

Abdul Razik, who knows the family well, said he wrote to Qayyum’s father warning him to keep his son under control. “He told me, ‘I have no control over him.’ “

Through interviews from Kabul to Helmand province, the AP traced Qayyum’s steps from the Afghan prison, across the border into Pakistan, through Peshawar to Quetta, back into Afghanistan to his village of Soply, and then to Quetta again.

A loner who trusts few people, his only company was a driver known to the Taliban and who has since been arrested, Razik said.

In Soply, his native village in Helmand, Qayyum stayed for two days with his sister, according to a neighbor who saw him outside the house and was quickly warned to “say nothing.” He returned to Quetta, from where he oversees four southern provinces: Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, said Sharifuddin, a former Taliban official who lives near Soply, Qayyum’s village. His information was confirmed by Razik and the intelligence officials interviewed by the AP.

“From his houses in Quetta he appoints the (Taliban) governors, the district governors,” Sharifuddin said. “Nothing happens in these provinces without his approval.”

Arrest of No 2 may signal Taliban feud: McChrystal

[The General is right on the money.  The ISI was taking-out the Taliban's trash, expendable, less fanatic "reconcilables."]

BY PETER GRAFF, REUTERSMARCH

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Photograph by: SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan – The arrest of the Afghan Taliban’s former number two figure may have been the result of an internal feud and purge among Taliban leaders, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces said on Thursday.

The arrest in Pakistan of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in a U.S.-Pakistani operation confirmed last month, was described as a major intelligence coup and a possible sign Islamabad is becoming more willing to help fight Afghan militants.

A theory in some intelligence circles, however, is that Baradar was captured only after he had already effectively been expelled from the Taliban after an internal tribal feud, leaving behind a more radical rump Taliban leadership.

U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal said it was not entirely clear why Pakistan arrested Baradar now, but that an internal Taliban feud was one plausible explanation.

“I think that’s very possible,” McChrystal said in an interview with Reuters and the New York Times, when asked about reports that an internal Taliban purge had led to the arrest. “I did hear that. I can’t confirm it but I find it possible.”

“Whether an internal feud within the Quetta Shura produced Baradur being captured, again, I can’t confirm that but I find it plausible.”

Washington refers to the main Taliban leadership as the “Quetta Shura”, after the Pakistani frontier city where it says the militants are based.

“I’m glad that it happened, but I’m not prepared to tell you that I know why at that particular time he was arrested. Again: I think having him out of circulation is positive,” McChrystal said.

LED CAMPAIGN

Baradar, a top Shura member, was the main day-to-day military commander of the Taliban and believed to have served as the number two to the group’s reclusive chief, Mullah Omar.

Western forces believe he was responsible for leading the increasingly bloody campaign against U.S. and NATO troops, plotting suicide bombings and other major attacks.

However, he is also a member of President Hamid Karzai’s patrician Popalzai tribe of ethnic Pashtuns, and has occasionally been mooted as one of the senior Taliban militants who might be willing eventually to accept Karzai’s invitation to peace talks.

Kabul has asked Islamabad to send Baradar back to Afghanistan. A Pakistani court has ruled he cannot be extradited.

Some regional experts have suggested Baradar’s arrest, along with those of other Taliban figures, could be Pakistan’s way of bringing Afghan Taliban leaders in from the cold to help prod a reconciliation process between fighters and Karzai’s government.

However, a Taliban purge of Baradar and other figures along tribal lines could also leave the Islamist movement even more radical than before, and therefore less likely to accept a negotiated end to the eight-year-old war.

There has been speculation in Afghan media that Baradar has been replaced as top Afghan Taliban military commander by a relative of Mullah Omar known as Mullah Zakir, from a Pashtun tribe thought to be more hostile to Karzai.

“What has happened is, in fact, a purge by Taliban hard-liners of men perceived to be insufficiently reliable, either ethnically or politically, or both,” two prominent war critics, Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason, wrote this week in the journal Foreign Policy.

“The Quetta Shura has used the ISI, its loyal and steadfast patron, to take out its trash,” they wrote of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “Those few mullahs suspected of being amenable to discussions with the infidel enemy and thus ideologically impure have now been removed from the jihad.”

© Copyright (c) Reuters

Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring

by Declan McCullagh

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who said that Einstein 3 could only be discussed in a classified setting, speaks at the RSA conference on Wednesday.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO–Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.

The Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.

Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein “makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces” over time.

Not much is known about how Einstein works, and the House Intelligence Committee once charged that descriptions were overly “vague” because of “excessive classification.” The White House did confirm this week that the latest version, called Einstein 3, involves attempting to thwart in-progress cyberattacks by sharing information with the National Security Agency.

Greater federal involvement in privately operated networks may spark privacy or surveillance concerns, not least because of the NSA’s central involvement in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping scandal. Earlierreports have said that Einstein 3 has the ability to read the content of emails and other messages, and that AT&T has been asked to test the system. (The Obama administration says the “contents” of communications are not shared with the NSA.)

“I don’t think you have to be Big Brother in order to provide a level of protection either for federal government systems or otherwise,” Schaffer said. “As a practical matter, you’re looking at data that’s relevant to malicious activity, and that’s the data that you’re focused on. It’s not necessary to go into a space where someone will say you’re acting like Big Brother. It can be done without crossing over into a space that’s problematic from a privacy perspective.”

If Einstein 3 does perform as well as Homeland Security hopes, it could help less-prepared companies fend off cyberattacks, including worms sent through e-mail, phishing attempts, and even denial of service attacks.

On the other hand, civil libertarians are sure to raise questions about privacy, access, and how Einstein could be used in the future. If it can perform deep packet inspection to prevent botnets from accessing certain Web pages, for instance, could it also be used to prevent a human from accessing illegal pornography, copyright-infringing music, or offshore gambling sites?

“It’s one thing for the government to monitor its own systems for malicious code and intrusions,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It’s quite another for the government to monitor private networks for those intrusions. We’d be concerned about any notion that a governmental monitoring system like Einstein would be extended to private networks.”

AT&T did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Cooperation, or a loss of control?
At the RSA Conference here on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stressed the need for more cooperation between the government and the private sector on cybersecurity, saying that “we need to have a system that works together.”

During a House appropriations hearing on February 26, Napolitano refused to discuss Einstein 3 unless the hearing were closed to the public. “I don’t want to comment publicly on Einstein 3, per se, here in an unclassified setting,” she said. “What I would suggest, perhaps, is a classified briefing for members of the subcommittee who are interested.”

Some privacy concerns about Einstein have popped up before. An American Bar Association panel said this about Einstein 3 in a September 2009 report: “Because government communications are commingled with the private communications of non-governmental actors who use the same system, great caution will be necessary to insure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are adequately considered.”

Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher and programmer for the Tor anonymity project, said that expanding Einstein 3 to the private sector would amount to a partial outsourcing of security. “It’s clearly a win for people without the security know-how to protect their own networks,” Appelbaum said. “It’s also a clear loss of control. And anyone with access to that monitoring system, legitimate or otherwise, would be able to monitor amazing amounts of traffic.”

Einstein grew out of a still-classified executive order, called National Security Presidential Directive 54, that President Bush signed in 2008.

While little information is available, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff once likened it to a new “Manhattan Project,” and the Washington Post reported that the accompanying cybersecurity initiative represented the “single largest request for funds” in last year’s classified intelligence budget. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit (PDF) to obtain the text of the order.

Homeland Security has published (PDF) a privacy impact assessment for a less capable system called Einstein 2–which aimed to do intrusion detection and not prevention–but has not done so for Einstein 3.

The department did, however, prepare a general set of guidelines (PDF) for privacy and civil liberties in June 2009. In addition, the Bush Justice Department wrote a memo (PDF) saying Einstein 2 “complies with” the U.S. Constitution and federal wiretap laws.

That justification for Einstein 2 “turned on the consent of employees in the government that are being communicated with, and on the notion that a person who communicates with the government can’t then complain that the government read the communication,” said CDT’s Nojeim. “How does that legal justification work should Einstein be extended to the private sector?”

Declan McCullagh is a contributor to CNET News and a correspondent for CBSNews.com who has covered the intersection of politics and technology for over a decade. Declan writes a regular feature called Taking Liberties, focused on individual and economic rights; you can bookmark his CBS News Taking Liberties site, or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can e-mail Declan atdeclan@cbsnews.com.

Pentagon Subway Shooter Obsessed With Military Drug-Smuggling Case

Official: Gunman who injured two police at Pentagon was well-armed

WASHINGTON (AP) — A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived at the military headquarters’ subway entrance armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the U.S. government and airing suspicions about the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, California, was named as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack. Authorities said he’d had previous run-ins with the law. Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism, and the attack that superficially wounded two police officers at the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of “a single individual who had issues,” Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, told a news conference Friday. Keevill described Bedell as “very well-educated” and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit when he showed up at the secure Pentagon entrance about 6:40 p.m. and blended in with workers. He was concealing two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition. “He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting” at point-blank range, Keevill said. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.” Bedell died Thursday night from head wounds received when the two injured officers and another officer returned fire, Keevill said. The exchange of fire at the subway entrance in Arlington, Virginia, lasted less than a minute but numerous shots were fired, Keevill said, adding that investigators were “still counting.” Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added. The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries. Keevill said he did not know what motivated the shooting: “I have no idea what his intentions were.” Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the 2001 terrorist attacks. In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up. Sabow’s family has maintained that he was murdered because he was about to expose covert military operations in Central America involving drug smuggling. Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made “a final determination” that the shooter was the same Bedell. The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.” That same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, California, involving allegations of cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting. The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits. Copyright 201

Ultimately, Dr. Sabow believes his brother was killed to cover up the government’s drug-smuggling activities.

His suspicions about Colonel Underwood would prove portentous.

“We developed information that implicates Underwood in an operation that involved the misappropriation of C-130 Hercules aircraft to small proprietary airlines,” says Sabow. “These in turn were contracted to the CIA and other agencies for unauthorized activities such as the transportation of weapons to Central and South America, as well as bringing cocaine into the U.S. on their return trips.”[*]

According to the OIG report:

“Mr. [Gene] Wheaton alleged that MCAS El Toro was being used in support of a legal covert activity that had been undertaken by a U.S. intelligence agency under the cover of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program named “Screw Worm,” allegedly a program to eradicate the screw worm in Mexico. Mr. Wheaton also alleged that the covert operation was actually legitimately providing weapons, ammunition and other material to the Government of Peru in their struggle against guerrilla forces know as the “Shining Path.” Mr. Wheaton further alleged that a number of individuals involved in this covert operation were concurrently conducting an illegal covert operation whereby they were smuggling additional weapons, ammunition and material to Peru. The individuals were allegedly selling the weapons, ammunition and material to the Shining Path as well as to the Government of Peru, for money and narcotics. The money and narcotics were then allegedly smuggled back into the United States and air dropped at remote locations on military installations in the western part of the United States…. Mr. Wheaton further alleged that this operation continued until approximately the time of Col. Sabow’s death.”[19]

Interestingly, General Tom Adams, El Torro’s base Commander, was the base Commander at Yuma, Arizona Marine Corps Air Station in the mid ‘80’s at the time when several duffel bags full of cocaine were dropped “by mistake” next to the runway. Sabow was Commander of the Third Marine Air Group stationed at Yuma during that time. This base was the very first secret National Programs Office (organizationally part of the NSA), set up in 1983 by Oliver North. According to CIA researcher Brian Downing Quig, “NPOs are top security guarded by the CIA.”[20*]

The OIG report continues:

“Mr. Wheaton alleged that his investigation had developed witnesses who stated that during the period of time from 1989 to about the time of Col. Sabow’s death, C-130 aircraft landed at MCAS El Toro in the middle of the night, unannounced and unknown to anyone on the installation other than Col. Underwood. Mr. Wheaton told us that, according to his witnesses, the aircraft were unmarked or marked with logos of civilian companies, and were flown by nonmilitary type crews, i.e., long hair and bluejeans. The C-130s would go to a remote part of the airfield, described as “Spook Corner,” where unidentified material and equipment was loaded or unloaded as part of the illegal covert operation or for some sort of servicing of the aircraft. The aircraft would then depart El Torro. Mr. Wheaton stated that he had MP witnesses who had provided testimony to this effect. Mr. Wheaton identified one such witness as Mr. Robinson, but he refused to identify any other member of the military who possessed knowledge of these alleged covert operations. Mr. Wheaton alleged that Mr. Robinson had informed him that Col. Underwood had directed the Provost Marshal, Capt. Betsy Harries, to keep all military policemen away from the unidentified aircraft while they were on the airfield.

“In our interview of Mr. Robinson, he stated that on one occasion he had gone to Col. Underwood’s office to brief him on an investigation and that Capt. Harries had accompanied him. During the conversation the topic of aircraft landing late at night came up and Col. Underwood told them “Keep your ass off the airstrip at night. Leave those airplanes alone. Don’t go near them. Don’t worry about them….”[21*] (See Appendix)

A similar illegal operation, “Operation Black Eagle” was the basis for what came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair. (The exposure of the sale of TOW missiles to Iran, a relatively minor event by comparison, was intended to divert the attention away from the government sanctioned drug-running.)[22]

Al Martin, a self-described former Naval officer, claims to have set up phony corporations for former Major General Richard Secord (a close associate of Ted Shackley and Tom Clines), through which wealthy right-wing donors could “invest,” money funneled to the Contras. They would then write off the investment on a two-for-one basis.

Martin told the author via numerous interviews that he worked closely with Oliver North, Felix Rodriguez, Secord, and Jeb Bush (son of then-Vice President George Bush).

According to some in the foreign press, Jeb Bush and his Colombian-born wife are reportedly big in laundering dope proceeds overseas.[23]

The operation reportedly involved sophisticated electronics developed by NSA contractor E-Systems of Greenville, Texas. E-Systems, owned by Raytheon, allegedly developed sophisticated systems to create electronic “holes” which would allow planes to cross the border without tripping aircraft warning systems. (See Chapter XX) E-Systems, a major intelligence contractor which allegedly has “wet-teams” (assassination teams), was directed by former NSA Director and CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman.[*]

Other facilities were reportedly located at Mena, Arkansas, Fire Lakes, Nevada, Joppa, Missouri, and Iron Mountain, Texas, some guarded by Wackenhut.  (read HERE)

Mullah Omar’s son-in-law held from Karachi

* Former Afghan PM Motasim Agha Jan arrested from house in Ahsanabad area
* Afghan Taliban spokesman denies arrest

By Faraz Khan

KARACHI: Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar’s son-in-law – who was ranked seventh in terms of seniority in the Taliban Shura hierarchy – has been arrested in a raid conducted in Karachi.

Sources said that Motasim Agha Jan – Mullah Omar’s son-in-law – was arrested from a house in Ahsanabad area late on Wednesday night. They said while “some aides” accompanied Jan at all times, he was alone in the house at the time of the raid. Citing two intelligence officials, the AP news agency confirmed Jan’s arrest.

Meanwhile, Afghan Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied Jan had been arrested. The sources said Jan had held various important Taliban posts after the end of the Cold War. They said he held the office of prime minister during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They said he was the seventh most senior leader of the Taliban Shura.

Jan’s capture marks the third major scalp for Pakistani security forces in a crackdown on the Taliban leadership. The latest success follows the arrests, also in Karachi, of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar – the Taliban military commander – and Mullah Omar’s former spokesman Syed Tayyab Agha. Three other “top-ranked al Qaeda members” were also arrested along with Baradar.

The arrests have been hailed by US officials and several analysts as a major blow to the Taliban in Afghanistan, although they caution that the group has rebounded from the death or detention of previous leaders. There had been speculation that Mohtasim was in the running to replace Baradar.

Two sides of the same COIN

Two sides of the same FOIN

By Erum A. Haider exclusively for Dawn.com

The Pakistan Army will have to work with political parties for a long-term solution to the security problems in the tribal belt. – File photo

Never mind the thousands of civilians dead, displaced, and dispossessed by militancy and its backlash. Never mind that a politician who was set to capture a significant percentage of votes was assassinated by a terrorist organisation based not in India, but on Pakistan’s own territory. Never mind that hundreds of armed soldiers and security guards have been kidnapped, beheaded, and blown up by groups claiming a hard-line Islamic ideology.

The idea of a “pro-Pakistan,” Taliban regime in Afghanistan makes us grin. A pro-India regime in Afghanistan makes us queasy. Sixty years on, Pakistan (still) has an India problem.

In Washington DC, an understanding of Pakistan’s regional strategy in Afghanistan is defined by what they call the country’s ‘national security calculus’ – in other words, ‘Pakistan’s India problem.’ The story goes as follows: the Pakistan Army fomented insurgency in the 1980s with the help of the CIA, mostly because it wanted to hedge its bets against a hostile India by having a favourable regime in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, it continued its campaign of using militants in Kashmir as low-level irritants against the Indian Army.

In recent years, intelligence agencies have found their network amongst militants to be disassembling. Meanwhile, army officials have been targeted by the same militants they once cultivated, and the Frontier Corps have faced high casualties. As a result, the strategy has “switched” from one of FOIN (fomenting insurgency) to one of all-out COIN (counter insurgency).

The Pakistan Army now realises that the Pakistani Taliban are part of the national security threat, which is why there has been a “paradigm shift,” in the words of strategic analyst Haider Mullick of the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. Mullick’s new book, Pakistan’s Security Paradox, provides insights into what has been the cornerstone of the Pakistan Army’s strategic outlook for the last 30 years.

The powers that be remain reluctant about owning up to the Pakistan Army’s dealings with militant groups. But assuming a FOIN strategy exists, what would it look like? Mullick describes FOIN in great detail: for the numerically weaker Pakistan Army, “friendly” militants in Kashmir provided “plausible desirability.” That is, they did not operate on domestic soil and therefore posed no immediate threat to the country. They were a cheap tool against the Indian forces in Kashmir and acted as a force multiplier. After all, says Mullick, the Indian Army had more guns pointed at militants than it did at the Pakistani force in Kashmir.

Of course, even while fostering militancy, the Pakistan Army simultaneously conducted its own brand of counter-insurgency. Secessionist movements from Bangladesh to Baluchistan have faced the full force of the army. The picture is complicated when, between 2002 and 2008, the army seemingly increased domestic COIN tactics even while refusing to go after those groups it had carefully cultivated over the years. It is only in recent weeks, with the capture and killing of several high-level militant figures, that the army has shown that it can have its cake and eat it too.

The question persists, though: why does the Pakistan Army single-handedly continue to define national security, despite the installation of a democratically elected government at the centre? If analysts such as Mullick are correct, then the army has outwitted fate – by creating a problem and then solving it. Secondly, such an argument claims that it is perfectly reasonable to expect Pakistan to have national security concerns against India and deal with them in any way it sees appropriate, while simultaneously fighting terrorists that have killed thousands of Pakistani civilians.

It doesn’t take a military strategist to understand that what has happened in the Pakistan Army’s calculus is not a “paradigm shift,” but a “selective readjustment.” India is still the number one enemy, and militants are still the best resource for the Pakistan Army to maintain its influence in the region.

Although Pakistanis do not like the US government telling us our army harbours militants, we are not ready to admit that, at some level, our national security concerns are driven entirely by the “Indian threat.” Some seek solace in the fantasy that perhaps India is behind the terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. Many among the public are willing to believe that Islamic hard-liners in Waziristan and Punjab take orders from Hindu agents, rather than admit the obvious.

In any other country in the world, it makes perfect sense to deal strategically with an army, and diplomatically with a civilian government. The underlying assumption is that the civilian government defines a country’s overarching goals while the army deploys the best possible strategy to fulfil those goals. In Pakistan, the army has had the privilege of being able to define national security goals and see them to their end. The civilian government, meanwhile, particularly in recent decades, has taken cues from the army and not the other way around.

Today, Washington puzzles over why the Pakistan Army is successfully “clearing” swathes of militant territory, but has not been able to “hold” it. The answer, any analyst will tell you, is that there is a complete lack of engagement of political parties when it comes to military strategy: they don’t understand it and are therefore justifiably left out of decision-making processes on the issue.

America would do well to realise that a long-term settlement of the tribal regions must involve political parties such as the Awami National Party and other vote-seeking, representative groups. Far more crucially, this is an excellent time for us to realise that there is something inherently dangerous and self-destructive about leaving the process of defining a nation’s goal to its brute force.

We in Pakistan like to think that as long as our army is strong, no external force can touch us. This is absurd logic for people whose house is on fire. Part of the army’s strength as the country’s “most efficient and stable institution” derives from our blinkered faith in, and support for, its policies, regardless of how disastrous they are for the country in the long run. Consequently, neither the Pakistan Army, nor the decision makers in Washington want to seriously engage with politicians.

Allowing the army to make decisions on our behalf is a comfortable way out of having to make hard decisions about the country’s ideology and national security. For instance, it is time we asked why India continues to be our biggest national security threat?

The fact is, engagement with politicians is the only long-term solution to Pakistan’s security problems. Political parties need to be given the encouragement and support they need to define national security goals. And they certainly need to be at the dead centre of any solution in the tribal areas. Anything else is a stop-gap measure.

Suicide Bomber Hits Govt. Convoy Escorting Shia to Peshawar

Suicide bomber kills at least 10 in Hangu

Four vehicles were also destroyed in the Hangu attack. – (File Photo)

HANGU: A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of civilians guarded by security forces in Pakistan’s northwest on Friday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30, police said.Suicide bombings have eased in recent weeks but it is not clear whether that is because security has improved after military gains against the Taliban, or if the insurgents are merely regrouping for more attacks.

“Our convoy was hit by a big explosion. It’s all chaos here. I myself have seen four dead, two of them are children. I have seen four wounded women,” said witness Javed Hussain, who was in the convoy of vehicles carrying Shia Muslims to the city of Peshawar.

“We have now a confirmed figure of 10 dead, including four women. Thirty wounded have been admitted to hospitals,” Fazal Naeem, the regional police spokesman, said.

Eye witness accounts reveal that a boy blew himself up near the convoy when it reached a petrol pump in the Thall Tehsil of Hangu. Four vehicles were also destroyed in the attack. The security forces have cordoned off the entire area and a curfew has been imposed.

Sunni Tehreek/Sipah-e-Sahaba Confrontation In Karachi

ST issues three-day ultimatum to evict Sipah-e-Sahaba from two mosques

Rally after Friday prayers today

Friday, March 05, 2010
By our correspondent

Karachi

The Sunni Tehreek (ST) has given a three-day ultimatum to the government to get two mosques belonging to the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat evicted from “terrorist groups.” This was announced on Thursday at a press conference at the ST office.

A rally in this regard will also be staged after Friday prayers, from the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat Markaz to Empress Market.

“The government should get the two Jamaat Ahle Sunnat mosques vacated from Sipah-e-Sahaba; otherwise we will announce our future line of action and the government will be responsible for the consequences,” ST Ulema Board Deputy Convener Allama Khizr-ul-Islam Naqshbandi said.

The ST has also announced issued a strike call on Friday and a countrywide “Day of Condemnation” against the alleged desecration of holy places and crackdowns against Jamaat Ahle Sunnat activists. The group has demanded that a ban be imposed on the defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba, which, they said, misusing the name of Jamaat Ahle Sunnat. “The Sunni Tehreek has no links with this banned militant outfit,” Naqshbandi claimed. “Ten of our people were killed and 80 injured in Dera Ismail Khan on the 12th of Rabiul Awwal.”

“We had called off a protest in the best national interest and on the assurance of Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who had telephoned ST leader Sarwat Ejaz Qadri. Unfortunately, the crackdown against ST workers still continues in Faisalabad after the Rabiul Awwal procession was attacked,” Naqshbandi said. “Ironically, the administration continues a crackdown against our followers even though our people sacrificed their lives during the attack and several were injured.”

Mohmand TTP Leaders Killed

30 militants killed in Mohmand Agency

GHALNAI: Forces killed thirty militants including some important commanders in Tehsil Pandyali of Mohmand Agency.

According to the sources, security forces shelled a house on a tip-off that killed thirty militants including commanders FaqirMohammad, Qari Ziaur Rehman and Fateh.

Another TTP leader nabbed

Karachi

Another Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader, Alam Mehsud, was nabbed on Thursday by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)-Sindh.

Alam Mehsud is said to be a close aide of former TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud, and also served under his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud.

SSP Mohammad Fayyaz Khan said that as part of investigations into sectarian violence in the city, the Criminal Investigation Department received a tip-off that a militant was hiding in Surjani Town. A CID team subsequently raided a hideout on early Thursday morning, and managed to arrest Alam Mehsud.

Arms and ammunition were also recovered from his custody, the SSP said, adding that the suspect was being tracked by the Criminal Investigation Department in several cases.

Upon questioning, Alam Mehsud revealed that he had served as a Qazi (judge) under Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan Agency, and even worked for Hakimullah Mehsud after Baitullah was killed. However, once the military operation started, Alam Mehsud and his comrades fled to Sargodha.

Alam Mehsud assumed charge of TTP activities in Sargodha, but he had to escape to Karachi in a bid to avoid being arrested by security forces. According to the police, Alam Mehsud was trying to set up a wing in Karachi, but a timely operation has now thwarted such attempts.

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Paul Craig Roberts Owes Iraqi People Apology

[The former Reagan official, turned journalist, seems blind to the destabilization operations in Iraq that turned sectarian differences into a war.] Qais Nawwaf March 4, 2010 As an Iraqi, I took serious offense to Paul Craig Roberts’ patronizing article, “Muslim Disunity: A Religion Divided Among Itself,” in Counterpunch, March 2, 2010. Roberts audaciously states that the “reason Americans are still in Iraq is because the Iraqis hate each other more than they hate the American invader.” Roberts blames the vast majority of the violence in the war on Iraqis themselves. It almost defies logic that, after the murder of 200,000 people in the 1991 war, the death of about 1.7 million under 12 year-long sanctions, the murder of more than 1.2 million under yet another war, brutal military occupation and the unrestrained use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium, Iraqis have caused more damage to themselves than the United States has. It is a claim as bizarre as Zionists’ complaints about Palestinian resistance in an asymmetrical warfare setting; while Israel possesses nuclear weapons, tanks and F-16’s, with which they murdered over 1,400 people in Gaza last year, Palestinians get the brunt of the criticism for killing 13 Israelis. Roberts’ condescending assertion, that Iraqis have harmed themselves more than the US has, echoes Donald Rumsfeld’s delusional statement: “The sooner the Iraqis can defend their own people and generate revenue, the sooner they will be self-reliant and not dependent on either foreign troops or international assistance.” Roberts also insults the Iraqi resistance by stating it inflicted losses on the American superpower “in their spare time” off from fighting Shi’is. Completely disregarding 1,400 years of Islamic history, a single athletic dispute leads Roberts to conclude that “Muslims cannot even play together”. This focus on an isolated event is selective, as Mr. Roberts doesn’t appear to recall that Sunnis and Shiis both celebrated the Iraqi soccer team’s victory in the 2007 Asian Cup.  Even if we were to assume Iraq’s Muslims aren’t united enough for Roberts’ taste, he seems to have ignored the USA’s critical divide-and-conquer role in Iraq. He doesn’t appear aware of the USA’s deployment of Shii and Kurdish troops to battle Sunni cities, such as Fallujah in November 2004. He ignores the USA’s political and financial support of sectarian parties, politicians and clergymen. He also neglects to mention the Israeli role in sowing the seeds of conflict in Iraq, outlined in Oded Yinon’s infamous A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. Roberts is unaware of 17-year old Othman from A’athamiya, a young Iraqi who drowned after rescuing nearly a dozen Iraqis when the A’imma Bridge in Baghdad collapsed in 2005. He also overlooked the joint Sunni-Shii celebrations of Muntathar Zaidi’s throwing his shoes at Bush. The US corporate media, which cheerlead for the war, has every interest to blackout, marginalize and ignore stories of Iraqi unity. It is regretful that Roberts condescends Iraqis in the same manner. One wonders whether Mr. Roberts would’ve displayed this same white man’s burden, vilifying misbehaving oppressed peoples, by admonishing Native American tribes who may have been at odds during the theft of their land by white settlers. Would Mr. Roberts have weighed in on the dispute between the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X? Would he have demonstrated moral authority to arbitrate between Martin Luther King Jr’s philosophy of nonviolence and Malcolm X’s commitment to freedom by any means necessary? Would he have appointed himself as judge between the North and South Vietnamese? Dictating derogatory suggestions to the oppressed is no business of “solidarity” activists. If Roberts is entitled to instruct Iraqis to unite, surely Iraqis are far more entitled to tell Americans, including Roberts, to put their right-wing, left-wing, class and racial divisions aside to meaningfully mobilize to end their seven-year occupation of our country (by “meaningful”, I mean more substantive than symbolic anti-war protests every anniversary of the war). When they have extra time on their hands, Iraqis could probably tell Americans to unite on their debilitating healthcare disputes. It is frustrating enough when the operators of the US war machine and their mouthpieces in mainstream media refer to Iraqis in demeaning sectarian language. It is far more disappointing when those involved in the “anti-war” movement, who are supposedly in solidarity with Iraqis, use such divisive, disrespectful discourse. I call on Mr. Roberts to apologize to the beleaguered Iraqi people, victims of two decades of his country’s ruthless foreign policy, funded by his tax dollars, for publishing such an undeserved portrayal. Qais Nawwaf is one of millions of displaced Iraqis. He resides on a colonized part of Indigenous territory commonly referred to as the “United States.” He has a degree in a discipline invented by his ancestors: writing. He may be reached at: qnawwaf@gmail.com.

:: Article nr. 63874 sent on 05-mar-2010 05:04 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=63874

Link: dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/roberts-owes-iraqi-people-apology/

Flexible Afghanistan War Objectives: And the Agony Grinds On

By Ramzy Baroud

March 4, 2010 Washington and its willing mouthpieces in the media have for years been trying to sell us the preposterous war in Afghanistan. While they attempt to convince us that the war is predicated on a faultless military logic and moral wisdom, it remains in fact a tragic adventure with no decipherable objectives, and involving several countries, private contractors, and all sorts of firms seeking to make a quick buck. The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable. The decision of the US to continue with its brutal military adventurism in Afghanistan can only be understood in terms of its limited and highly selfish political logic. Let us start by ruling out some of the ridiculous assumptions that have permeated this war since it began in 2001. First, we were told that the war was aimed at eliminating al-Qaida. However, a retied CIA Station Chief who has served in the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff, has claimed that, “al-Qaida is finished in Afghanistan.” He further argued that, “the Obama administration, like its predecessor, claims we are fighting terrorism there. That is simply not true. It is a pure counterinsurgency issue.” Indeed, even the most ardent war hawks are exerting little effort to delineate the link between Taliban and al-Qaida. If the link is infused, it is readily unleashed to demonstrate al-Qaida’s links to Pakistan’s tribal areas, thus urging ‘action’ in that part of the country, and not in Afghanistan. Thanks to the random military ‘strategy’ of the US and its allies, al-Qaida has spread in all sorts of directions and branched off to many al-Qaida offshoots in various parts of the world. Without a centralized leadership in the military sense, al-Qaida inspired groups and individuals now are now working for localized sets of objectives and respond to different stimuli. So if it’s not al-Qaida that is inspiring the awesome, although largely futile firepower and military surges in Afghanistan, then what is? This is where the idealists come in. They talk of nation-building, Western-style democracy, regional security and so on. Some of them genuinely mean what they say, and some don’t believe the present military surges and Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s rural area fight to the death will yield its intended results. Still, they contribute to the illusion that good intentions – starting with the initial hype about saving Afghani women, then ‘liberation’ from foreign terrorists, then democracy and nation-building, and so on – had anything to do with this bloody war. With their insistence on using such positive terminology, they continue to provide Washington’s political elites – and Kabul’s as well – with the benefit of the doubt that while we may disagree with their methods, we still trust their overall intentions. It behooves those democracy-inspired, nation-building enthusiasts to remember that Washington has done much to stifle genuine democracy movements around the world since its occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. Palestine and Lebanon remain the most obvious examples. As for nation-building, compare the astronomical amounts invested in financing the destructive war in Afghanistan and to prop up the corrupt puppet regime in Kabul, to the miniscule sums devoted to enhancing the country’s stone-aged economic infrastructure. The US military budget for this year is set to exceed $693 billion, not counting the $42 billion set aside for Homeland Security. According to CostofWar.com, the financial cost of war in Afghanistan alone has exceeded the $256 billion; both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are approaching the $1 trillion threshold. The war in Afghanistan cannot possibly be defended on any moral grounds. The official death count of Afghani civilians in 2009 is estimated at 2,412. The actual death toll is probably far, far higher, as polls do not account for the many more who perished in distance villages across the south and east, areas that are not accessible to outsiders. The death of these innocent people alone should silence the few who still speak of ethics and morality in relation to the disastrous war. But not everyone is so overtly misguided in their assessment of the war. Some fully understand that the war in Afghanistan is a self-seeking, political and strategic venture. Still, they giddily welcome it, including one Con Coughlin whose recent article in The Telegraph was tellingly entitled, ‘India and Pakistan must bury the hatchet for the Taliban to be crushed.’ The India-Pakistan rapprochement is seen as beneficial only insofar as its potential to ‘crush’ someone else. And considering that that someone else is not a band of aimless terrorists, but a well-grounded, grass-roots, popular insurgency, the price of that “crushing” is likely to be tens of thousands of innocent people. Coughlin uses the same haughty and generalized language of “militant Islamist groups” to be crushed, failing to understand or appreciate the distinctiveness of each and every situation, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else. Instead, Coughlin nonchalantly expresses concern about the danger these militants pose to “the survival of the ruling classes” in Islamabad. What a compelling reason to get Richard Holbrooke, Washington’s special envoy to the region all fired up over the need to preserve the survival of the ruling classes, not just in Islamabad, but in Kabul and Delhi as well. The war in Afghanistan has turned into find-an-objective-as-you-go military march to nowhere. It is proving futile and indefensible on every ground, be it political or military or moral. Moreover, as Haviland Smith concluded in his grim assessment, “it doesn’t really matter that we think of ourselves as benevolent liberators, it only matters that Afghans think of us as foreigners occupiers.” When will we all face up to this reality? - Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

Turkey And Israel: What Lies Behind The Recent Volte Face

By Gonul Tol for MEI

In recent months, the Israeli-Turkish relationship, strong and stable during the 1990s, has been placed under severe pressure. Tensions began in January 2009 when Israel launched military operations in Gaza, later prompting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to walk out of a televised debate with Israeli President Shimon Peres following a heated exchange over the issue. Relations were further strained in early January 2010 when the Turkish ambassador to Israel was summoned to a meeting by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and subjected to a humiliating public reprimand in protest to a Turkish television series that included a scene in which an Israeli soldier shoots a Palestinian child.

It seems that the Turkish-Israeli love affair of the initial post-Cold War days is over and a new era in bilateral relations has begun. The volte face in Turkey’s policy vis-à-vis Israel has been attributed to a range of issues including: the rise of Islamism in Turkey, the ascendancy of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Ankara’s need for petrodollars, and Turkey’s attempts to strike a balance between the Middle Eastern and European aspects of its identity, to name a few. Only scant attention has been paid to the changing geopolitical and structural factors which have driven Turkish policy in the Middle East – and toward Israel in particular.

Turkish-Israeli rapprochement in the 1990s was the outcome of Turkey’s perception of geopolitical necessities at the time. The end of the Cold War brought about new regional dynamics which Turkey wanted to exploit in order to retain its strategic importance to the West. Turkey’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East in this period was directly tied to security concerns, which made the security defense establishment, especially the military, the main actor in the formulation of Turkish foreign policy. The new national military strategic concept of the post-Cold war era identified two threats facing the Turkish state: Kurdish irredentism and Islamic fundamentalism which were mainly fed by two external actors, Syria and Iran. Within the context of deteriorating relations with these countries, the Turkish elite saw strategic cooperation with Israel as a way of securing the territorial integrity of the country and the survival of the secularist regime. The United States, which was trying to create a “new Middle Eastern order,” supported the rapprochement between Israel and Turkey. Ankara’s disappointment with its own pro-Arab tilt of the mid-1960s to the 1980s, especially on the issue of Cyprus, made an alliance with Israel an attractive strategic alternative. Initiation of the Arab-Israeli peace process in 1991 removed the last barrier toward strategic cooperation with Israel.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the geopolitical and structural factors that brought Israel and Turkey together in the 1990s have changed dramatically, altering Turkey’s threat perceptions. The influence of the military, the chief architect of the Turkish-Israeli rapprochement in the 1990s, has declined as a result of the European Union reform package that went into effect in 2003. As the civil-military balance in foreign policy making changed in favor of civilian forces, Turkey moved away from a security-oriented foreign policy discourse to one that increasingly stresses soft power.

With the rise of a new foreign policy elite, non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial interests have become the “primary currencies” in foreign policy-making. The pursuit of economic interest has become one of the main elements of Turkey’s diplomacy, especially in the Middle East. Within this newly desecuritized and multi-dimensional foreign policy approach, Israel lost its privileged position. Syria and Iran, once considered as the common enemy, have become Turkish allies, decreasing Turkey’s need for a strategic partner in the South to counterbalance Damascus and Tehran. In addition, in the aftermath of the 2003 US-Iraq war, rising Kurdish nationalism in northern Iraq replaced Syria and Iran as the main threat to Turkish security.

The rumors that Israeli intelligence and military operatives are quietly at work in the Kurdistan Regional Government, providing training for Kurdish commando units and running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria added to the ambiguity toward Israel’s role in the region. Turkey’s strong reaction against Israel’s three week offensive in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 that claimed the lives of 1400 civilians crystallized the changes in Turkey’s understanding of geopolitical necessities, apprising the start of a new era in bilateral relations.

Today there is a new regional setting in the Middle East where Turkey’s threat perceptions – and interests — are different from those in the 1990s. A recalibration of bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel requires recognition of this new geopolitical setting. Those who long for the golden age of Turkish-Israeli rapprochement in the 1990s should be ready for a long wait, as it is quite unlikely that the quality of the bilateral relations will return to its 1990s’ level in the near future.

Gonul Tol is Director of the Center for Turkish Studies and Adjunct Scholar. Assertions and opinions in this Policy Insight are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Institute (MEI), which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy, and where this article first appeared and is reprinted with permission.

Israeli concern at Turkish crackdown on secular forces

by Andrew McLeod

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Picture: Randam

Israel is carefully watching a crackdown by the Turkish government on the country’s staunchly secular armed forces, with observers warning that Turkey no longer regards Iran as an enemy, and one newspaper suggesting a coup might be the way out of the crisis.

Turkish General Saldiray Berk, commander of the 3rd Army, on Tuesday became the first serving general to be arrested in connection with an alleged plot to destabilise the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

A state prosecutor, Ilhan Cihaner, who had been investigating Islamist networks in Turkey, was also arrested in the government’s attempt to root out members of what Turkish media has described as an ultra-nationalist movement known as Ergenekon, of which Berk is alleged to be the leader.

Over 200 people, including retired generals, lawyers and journalists, have been already been charged in connection with the organisation.

Israel and Turkey have held close links for years, partly because both share Western-style governments. The relationship is also strategic, with the Turkish armed forces seeking to distance the country from Sunni and Shiite Islamist fundamentalism.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however, has edged away from this traditional policy, and in 2008 the constitutional court found the AKP guilty of attempting to turn Turkey from a secular into an Islamist state, though Erdogan and his party were not closed down. Relations with Israel took a turn for the worse when Israel’s war in Gaza in 2008 broke out just as Erdogan was playing “honest broker” in secret talks between Israel and Syria. The talks broke down as a result of the Israeli invasion.

Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza have put most Turks at odds with their own armed forces.

Israeli analyst Shlomo Brom, told the Christian Science Monitor last month that Israel had noted that “Turkey’s military is no longer calling all the shots. Things have changed because there isn’t the same perception … that we have common enemies. Turkey is no longer looking at Iran as their enemy, as they did then.”

The Jerusalem Post today described the crackdown as the most severe crisis since Mustafa Kemal Attatürkfounded the secular republic in 1923, saying “the denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.

“The AKP [has] thrown down the gauntlet, leaving the military leadership basically with two unattractive options: (1) continue selectively to acquiesce to the AKP and hope that fair elections by 2011 will terminate and reverse this process; or (2) stage a coup d’état, risking voter backlash and increased Islamist electoral strength…”

The Post seemed to be calling for the latter when it added: “AKP domination of the military means Islamists control the country’s most powerful secular institution, proving that, for the moment, they are unstoppable. But if the military retains its independence, Atatürk’s vision will remain alive in Turkey and offer Muslims worldwide an alternative to the Islamist juggernaut.”

West biased by guilt towards Israel

“The question about the West’s sympathies with Israel is always old, always new. It can still be asked today, tomorrow and every time the West turns a deaf ear to the values of justice, impartiality and human rights,” wrote Soliman Abdul Munaim in the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds.

In fact, the West’s attitude towards Israel’s inhumane practices goes beyond mere compassion to become a mixture of bias, consent and even defence. Western reactions to the recent assassination of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai only corroborate this view.

This persisting western empathy with Israel is due to a number of reasons. First, the historical sense of guilt westerners feel with respect to the persecution, mass murder and repression that the Jews were subjected to in Europe during the Second World War. This is most manifest in Germany which, until recently, has been paying Israel significant amounts of money in compensation for what the Jews experienced under the Nazis.

Second, the West is empathetic towards Israel because it deems it to be a democratic state, a view it doesn’t extend to any of the Arab states. But if the primary reason is this persistent sense of culpability, then why does the West feel no remorse about what the Palestinians have been enduring for decades at the hands of the Israeli occupation?

No-war, no-peace phase is ending

“Has the no-war no-peace chapter in the Middle East already ended, or is it, at least, coming to an end? That’s what it looks like,” wrote Saad Mehio, a columnist with the Emirati newspaper Al Khaleej.

Whenever there is positive talk about peace, especially between Syria and Israel, sudden prospects of war emerge.

While Israel is getting ready for war as if it would happen tomorrow, the Israeli army has leaked information to the effect that it deems peace with Syria to be a very convenient exit out of the strategic predicament it is in these days, sandwiched as it is between the imminent Iranian nuclear bomb and Hizbollah’s rockets.

Fearing a major escalation in the region that could be harmful to its own interests in Iraq and the Gulf, the United States still refuses to give Israel the green light to strike Iran. But when it comes to the prospect of war with Lebanon and Syria, all lights are blurred.

“The US is consistently sending out messages – on a daily basis, apparently – to Israel and Syria urging them to exercise restraint. At the same time, however, Washington conveys tacit threats to Syria by insinuating that it can’t hold back Israel forever.”

This equivocal US stance sounds alarms in Damascus and across the Arab world.

Turkey sloughs off its old skin

The West is concerned about the new Turkey that is currently taking shape after the Turkish military suddenly surrendered to the executive power of the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wrote Mazen Hammad, a commentator with the Qatari newspaper Al Watan.

“Arresting senior officers is such a serious development, for no one in Turkey has dared to lay a finger on the military body before.”

Now a number of questions are arising about the future of post-revolutionary Turkey, a country whose army has been the foremost guardian of the principles of secularism for 85 years.

“As Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University, has it: it’s over now. The country is sloughing off its skin and seems to be quite nervous because it doesn’t know what will happen next.”

Now that Turkey has stepped into this uncharted territory, there is great concern among millions of secular people in the country who fear that the ruling Justice and Development Party, which adheres to a moderate Islamic ideology, will clamp down on their rights.

Turkey, then, is on the brink of a dramatic change, which will push western countries to start reassessing their strategy towards the country as it further embraces its Islamic character.

A humiliating return to talks with Israel

As expected, the Arab ministerial committee in charge of the Arab Peace Initiative follow-up has approved the US proposal to begin indirect peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds al Arabi wrote in its editorial.

The US administration is putting extraordinary pressure on the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas – namely by threatening to suspend financial support for the Palestinian Authority – to make him ditch his stated decision to boycott peace talks until Israeli settlements in the West Bank are completely frozen.

Resorting to a “defunct” Arab committee to regenerate a “rotten” initiative is then an obtrusive attempt to provide an Arab cover to the Palestinian president’s relapse.

“For sixty years, we’ve been putting forth one initiative after the other, and making concession after concession, to embarrass Israel by showing our Arab good will for peace before the international community. The results were consistently disastrous: more Israeli settlements, more carnage and more abuse.”

If decades of direct talks have yielded nothing, what can you expect of indirect talks now?

* Digest compiled by Achraf A El Bahi

aelbahi@thenational.ae

Measuring The Radiation Spewing From Your iPhone.

Tawkon Measures The Radiation Spewing From Your iPhone. No Wonder Apple Doesn’t Approve It.

by Roi Carthy on Mar 4, 2010

Here we go again . . . Apple App Store Fail No. 5102928. A few weeks ago stealth Israeli startup Tawkon gave me a sneak-peak developer build of what I believe is the most important app on my iPhone. What does it do? It analyzes the cellular radiation your iPhone emits at any given moment, at any given location, whether in standby mode, or within a call.

Sounds like science fiction, right? Well, that’s where Israeli hardware and software engineering prowess come into play (more on that in a second). Sadly, Israeli military training may have met its match . . .  the infamous iPhone App Store approval process.

The purpose of Tawkon’s app is to provide the user with an indication—or “prediction” as they call it—of the radiation level being emitted by the iPhone. This level changes based on environmental conditions, distance from cell towers, and even the manner in which the device is held. To illustrate: the iPhone’s antenna is located at the bottom of the device. If the user cradles the phone too tightly in the palm, the antenna has to work harder, thereby increasing radiation. The 3GS models have improved chipsets, so radiation would be lower on them compared to previous versions, and Tawkon takes this into considering when calculating its prediction.

When launched, the app instantly provides users with an indication of the radiation level in the iPhone’s stand-by mode. A green/orange/red pulse makes this dummy-proof. For example, radiation levels in my office are minimal, but are much higher in the men’s room which is deeper in the building, where more concrete forces the iPhone to work harder to hold a connection to the nearest cellular base station.

To find out what the radiation levels are during a call, the app lets users launch a call through the iPhone’s address book. It then monitors the radiation levels in real time and sends prompts via vibration and a tone should they reach the high-end of its threshold. The app also employs the iPhone’s proximity sensor and provides suggestions such as moving location, using a headset and even changing the iPhone’s orientation to your face.

So how does Tawkon do it? Algorithmic magic analyzes your phone’s dynamic SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) levels, location, environmental factors, as well as unique smart-phone capabilities such as bluetooth, accelerometer, proximity sensors, GPS and compass. The level of radiation a person is exposed to during calls is determined by analyzing several dynamic parameters, including the impact of environmental factors such as distance from cellular towers, network and weather condition, terrain, antenna’s proximity from the body, antenna orientation (if the user is holding the phone vertically or horizontally) and travel speed.

It’s perfectly natural to be skeptical about Tawkon’s app, so let me lay out a couple of things to set the record straight: first, Tawkon is not looking for controversy. They contacted me weeks before they submitted the app to the App Store with the sincere hope of not being stonewalled. Ironically, were this a gag app, not only would there have been no controversy, the app’s revenue potential may actually be higher. Second, I have no way of testing whether the app’s output is actually correct. However, I took the time to meet the three founders and feel comfortable stating that they struck me as serious, highly capable hardware and software engineers who’ve spent 18 months developing a technology they believe holds real compelling value for users. They claim the app has gone through lab testing to ensure its output is correct. For what it’s worth, I take their word for it.

Tawkon’s app has been in the approval process for a couple of weeks with the App Store denying approval on the grounds that a diagnostic tool of this nature would create confusion with iPhone owners from a usability perspective. This reasoning was communicated by an App Store representative on a phone call with the Tawkon team. I find this claim questionable as I’ve been using the app and there’s nothing problematic about it in this respect.

Tawkon is keeping optimistic, holding hope that Apple will approve the app which they intend to sell for between $5-$10. In the mean time, it’s plugging ahead in its development of Blackberry and Android versions.

California Is Looking Like Greece–Social Unrest Is Building

By Reed Saxon, AP

Demonstrators protest on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles March 4. Students, teachers, parents and others rallied throughout California and many other states to protest deep cuts in funding for schools and universities in what is being called the “March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education.”

Students block Sather Gate on the University of California at Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., March 4. In California, budget cuts that have led to canceled classes, faculty furloughs and steep fee hikes.

By Ben Margot, AP

College students protest, block campuses over funding

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Rowdy protesters blocked major gates at two Californiauniversities and smashed the windows of a car Thursday amid campus protests across the nation against deep cuts in education funding.

Protesters at the University of California, Santa Cruz surrounded the car while its driver was inside.

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The uninjured driver was not trying to get onto campus and appeared to have been singled out at random, Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark said.

University provost David Kliger said there were reports of protesters carrying clubs and knives, but Clark could not confirm those reports.

No arrests had been made at the school, but at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee police detained 15 people following a tuition protest that turned violent, says a school spokesman Tom Luljak. About 150 students gathered around an administrative building Thursday afternoon, he says.

The protesters wanted to deliver petitions to the school chancellor. Luljak says campus police allowed one person inside, and when she emerged she encouraged everyone to rush the building.

Luljak says when police turned them away, some protesters threw punches and ice chunks. Sixteen people were detained, but Luljak says one was an innocent passerby who was released.

A message left with campus student government representatives was not immediately returned.

An advisory posted on its website urged people to avoid the campus because of safety concerns. It also said protesters had photographed the license plate of a staff member trying to enter the campus.

Marches, strikes, teach-ins and walkouts were planned nationwide in what was being called the March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education.

Organizers said hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and parents were expected to participate in the demonstrations.

Some university officials said they supported the protests as long as they remained peaceful.

“My heart and my support are with everybody and anybody who wants to stand up for public education,” University of California President Mark Yudof said in a statement. “Public education drives a society’s ability to progress and to prosper.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, a small group of protesters formed a human chain blocking a main gate leading to the campus. Later in the day, hundreds more gathered for a peaceful rally against major cuts to higher education funding.

“We’re one of the largest economies in the world, and we can’t fund the basics,” said Mike Scullin, 29, a graduate student in education who plans to become a high school teacher. “We’re throwing away a generation of students by defunding education.”

The steep economic downturn has forced states to slash funding to K-12 schools, community colleges and universities to cope with plummeting tax revenue.

Experts said schools and colleges could face more severe financial trouble over the next few years as they drain federal stimulus money that temporarily prevented widespread layoffs and classroom cuts.

Protest actions were held at most of the 10 University of California campuses, 23 California State University campuses and many of the state’s 110 community colleges.

Demonstrations were also planned at universities in New York, Alabama, Michigan and Massachusetts.

Students, teachers, parents and school employees from across California gathered in Sacramento for a midday rally at the Capitol to urge lawmakers to restore funding to public schools.

Linda Wall, a state Department of Mental Health employee, said she had two children attending Sacramento State University. Hikes in student fees and mandatory furloughs for state workers have strained her budget.

“Their tuition has taken a big chunk of my paycheck and my paycheck is shrinking, so it’s a double whammy,” Wall said.

Large regional rallies were planned at San Francisco Civic Center, Pershing Square in Los Angeles, Balboa Park in San Diego and public plazas in other cities.

Education cuts have been particularly devastating in California, which has been grappling with massive budget shortfalls for the past two years.

In response to a 20% reduction in state funding, the University of California and California State University systems have imposed furloughs on faculty and staff, sharply reduced course offerings, turned away thousands of qualified students and raised tuition by more than 30%.

“You’re paying more and you’re getting less for it,” said Katelyn Rauch, a senior majoring in political science at California State University, Channel Islands. “Classes are being cut, students aren’t able to graduate on time, entire majors are being closed.”

California’s K-12 schools were preparing to lay off tens of thousands of teachers, pack more students into classrooms and scrap many academic programs because of deteriorating finances.

Many of the demonstrations Thursday were being organized by student groups, faculty associations and employee unions that often have a contentious relationship with the universities.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Exposing India

FOREIGN Secretary Salman Bashir has declared that if India continued to intrude into Pakistan’s internal affairs, it would have negative consequences. Clearly this is a reference once again to India’s assistance to militants in Balochistan and FATA. But it is absurd to claim that Pakistan does not have to provide proof to anyone since India knows exactly what it is doing. Of course, India does but the rest of the world is not informed properly on this and India is taking full advantage of the international community’s ignorance on the aiding and abetting of terrorism within Pakistan by India. It is the job of the Pakistan government, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to inform the world about India’s dangerous games in this region. On this count, we have been found badly wanting. It may also have something to do with the lack of clarity in terms of foreign policy that this government has, beyond kowtowing to the US. Whatever the causation, the nation is paying a heavy price for our effectively doing nothing on Indian interference of the worst kind in Pakistan.
The Foreign Secretary was correct on another count also, when he stated that India is simply using the words of Hafiz Saeed’s to continue stalling the dialogue process when these do not represent the views of the Pakistan government. In fact, as he pointed out, it would be like Pakistan allowing Bal Thackerey’s repeatedly hate-filled words to dictate its policy towards India. The absurdity was highlighted as it should have been, because it reveals that India is simply grasping at straws to prevent the composite dialogue from restarting again. However, if this is the Indian position, it would make little sense for Pakistan to push for the recommencement of this process as India would be in no mood to proceed substantially on the conflict issues. And without such movement on the part of India, no dialogue can be effective.

Moreover, India is having its own internal problems with regard to its Pakistan policy as the harsh exchange between Prime Minister Singh and BJP leader Advani in the Lok Sabha over Kashmir, reflects. India seems confused, as never before, on how to proceed with Pakistan. The confusion seems most acute over the issue of Kashmir since India is realising the costs of its occupation and the futility of using force to gain acceptance. Generations of Kashmiris have given their lives to continue their struggle against Indian occupation and the struggle continues and seems destined to do so till Kashmiris get their right to self determination as guaranteed to them by the UN Charter (of which India is a signatory), UN Security Council resolutions and India itself through Prime Minister Nehru’s pledge to the Kashmiri people.
It is time Pakistan exposed Indian designs and stopped being in a rush to restart the composite dialogue or any other form of dialogue until India becomes more rational in its Pakistan policy.

Zionist Congressmen Drive Wedge Between US and Turkey

[Israel's two most faithful "US" Congressmen, authors of the s0-called "Iran war resolution," Berman and Ackerman, are behind the drive to stigmatize Turkey for this World War I issue.  Just as they tried to bind the United States to Israel's schemes to blockade Iran (an act of war), they are now succeeding in their efforts to drive a wedge between us and vital ally Turkey.  Turkey is the linchpin for all Western plans in Central Asia and the Middle East, in particular, energy transmission plans.]

House panel narrowly passes recognition of Armenian genocide

The resolution sparks instant backlash from the Turkish government, which warns that the passage could negatively affect the country’s relations with the U.S.

By Richard Simon and Teresa Watanabe

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington – Sponsors of a long-debated congressional resolution to officially recognize the Armenian genocide cleared a key hurdle by a one-vote margin Thursday, but face a tough battle ahead to bring the measure before the House.

The resolution passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee 23 to 22 over opposition from members of both parties who warned it could damage U.S. relations with Turkey, an important ally.

The Turkish government reacted immediately, recalling its ambassador, Namik Tan, in protest, and warning that the resolution’s adoption “could adversely affect our cooperation.” The United States has been seeking Turkey’s support for new sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

Panel Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) pressed for the vote, even after receiving a call from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressing concern it could “impede progress on normalization of relations” between Turkey and Armenia, according to an administration spokesman.

But Berman said that the United States, as a leader in promoting human rights, had a “moral responsibility” to pass the resolution. “Perhaps there will be consequences. . . . But I believe that Turkey values its relations with the United States as much as we value our relations with Turkey.”

The vote came in a packed meeting attended by three elderly genocide survivors, who support the measure. Pointing to the survivors — ages 97, 98 and 105 — Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said, “They’re here for justice. How long can they wait?”

The Turkish government has disputed that the World War I-era killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks were genocide, contending that both Turks and Armenians were casualties of the war, famine and disease. But historical evidence and authoritative research support the term, and The Times’ policy is to refer to the deaths as genocide.

The resolution has been closely followed by California’s large Armenian American population, and is backed by much of the state’s congressional delegation. The tight vote underscored the challenge facing the resolution’s sponsors in winning House approval.

“We have our work cut out for us,” said Kenneth V. Hachikian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, adding that he was “extremely disappointed” in the Obama administration’s position.

Indeed, when the resolution appeared at risk of being defeated, its chief sponsor, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), rushed to the House chamber to get supporters to the committee room to cast their votes.

In Southern California, the vote drew passionate and mixed reactions.

“I’m outraged and disappointed,” said Ergun Kirlikovali, president-elect of the Assembly of Turkish American Assns., an umbrella group of 63 community organizations. He, like the Turkish government, disputed the use of the term genocide and said it was “being used as a tool by the Armenian lobby to defame Turkey, a reliable friend and ally in the troubled Mideast. And Armenians don’t care.”

Kirlikovali said the vote jeopardized U.S. interests in the Mideast, as Turkey could retaliate by withdrawing military cooperation.

But Father Vazken Movsesian, an Armenian priest in Glendale, hailed the vote as an acknowledgment of the truth.

He said he was in his car driving back to California from Arizona when he got a Twitter alert that the committee had passed the resolution. His joy was cloaked in caution, as he noted that other hurdles remained before the resolution could pass.

“We won a battle, not a war,” he said. “But one day or another, the truth will come out. There’s no question about it.”

The new effort comes after a House vote was called off in 2007 when a similar measure, initially backed by a majority of the chamber, lost support as the vote neared.

The George W. Bush administration and Turkish government warned that passage could lead Turkey to block U.S. access to air bases used to get supplies to U.S. troops.

The resolution’s supporters said they were unlikely to bring it to the House floor until they were confident they had the votes to pass it.

“The whipping operation starts today,” Schiff said.

richard.simon@ latimes.com

teresa.watanabe@ latimes.com