UN nuke watchdog chief presses Israeli ministers

JERUSALEM – The Associated Press

The U.N.’s atomic watchdog chief held talks with Israeli officials Tuesday in what was expected to be an effort to push the country to open its secretive nuclear program to international scrutiny.

Yukiya Amano’s low-profile visit to Israel comes ahead of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s September board meeting and general conference. Israel will likely be a central topic at the meeting, at which Arab countries are expected to continue a recent push for more scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

Israel refuses to confirm it possesses a nuclear arsenal, following a long-standing policy it terms “nuclear ambiguity.” But it is widely considered to be the Mideast’s only nuclear power. During the two-day visit, Amano was set to hold talks with Cabinet ministers in charge of atomic energy and strategic affairs, as well as with President Shimon Peres, Israeli officials said.

He was not slated to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The officials said talks were expected to focus on the desire by the U.N.’s Vienna-based watchdog, the IAEA, to see Israel join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Amano’s schedule was not officially announced.

Earlier this year, The Associated Press learned that Amano had sent a letter soliciting proposals from the agency’s 151 member states on how to persuade Israel to sign the nonproliferation treaty.

The latest pressure has put the Jewish state in an uncomfortable position. It wants the international community to take stern action to prevent Iran from getting atomic weapons but at the same time brushes off calls to come clean about its own nuclear capabilities.

In Vienna, IAEA spokesman Ayhan Evrensel said Tuesday only that Amano would “exchange views on issues of mutual interest” while in Israel. Amano replaced the IAEA’s former chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, in December.

The Early Anti-Taliban Team

Iran-India-Russia-US plan to hunt Taliban before 9/11

India and Iran will “facilitate” the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban

By Our Correspondent

26 June 2001

India and Iran will “facilitate” US and Russian plans for “limited military action”against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist regime.

The Taliban controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan and is advancing northward along the Salanghighway and preparing for a rear attack on the opposition Northern Alliance fromTajikistan-Afghanistan border positions.

Indian foreign secretary Chokila Iyer attended a crucial session of the second Indo-Russian joint working group on Afghanistan in Moscow amidst increase of Taliban’s military activity near the Tajikistan border. And, Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (the former KGB) chief Nicolai Patroshev is visiting Teheran this week in connection with Taliban’s military build-up.

Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of “facilitator” while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-Sharief, a city in northern Afghanistan.

Military action will be the last option though it now seems scarcely avoidable with the UN banned from Taliban-controlled areas. The UN which adopted various means in the last four years to resolve the Afghan problem is now being suspected by the Taliban and refused entry into Taliban areas of the war-ravaged nation through a decree issued by Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar last month.

http://www.crescentlife.com/heal%20the%20world/india’s_role_in_anti-taliban_attack.htm

Ex-Soviet commander unveil Masoud’s secret pact

The News International, May 17, 2001
BUREAU REPORT

PESHAWAR: General Gramov, commander of ex-soviet invading army in Afghanistan, has revealed that present leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan Ahmad Shah Masoud had inked an agreement with Moscow that ensured safe passage to the former USSR troops through Salang and Panjsher valleys during the Afghan jihad.

Ahmad Shah Massoud, Qasim Fahim and other commanders of Shura-e-Nezar with Parchami (Russian puppets regime) army generals Nabi Azimi, Noor-ul-Haq Ulomi, Asif Delawar and others.

According to an Afghan journalist Sami Yusafzai, General Gramov has exposed many facts about the 10 years-long Soviet involvement and Afghan resistance movement in his took “Soviet Army in Afghanistan”.

He reveals that when the first Russian troops left Hairatan on Afghan-Uzbek border for Kabul via land route in 1980, the soviets feared that the passage of the army through Salang valley and high peaks of Panjsher valley which were manned by the mujahideen of Ahmad Shah Masoud was not only difficult but also almost impossible. The army of famed Jihadi commander Ahmad Shah Masoud, Gramov said, could convert the area into graveyard for the Russian troops by only throwing rocks.

Gramov says at that critical time the then Khad chief Dr. Najibullah acted very shrewdly and contacted Ahmad Shah Masoud who demanded direct talks with the Russians. The Soviet General says they immediately met Masoud and signed an agreement with him that ensured safe passage of Russian army through the dangerous Salang and Panjsher valleys and thus onward to the southern, central and eastern Afghanistan.

General Gramov says Ahmad Shah Masoud in return continued to get Russian assistance. He says Masoud sometimes used to stage sham skirmishes with the Russian to put off chances of suspicions about his activities among other mujahideen groups. He says the Soviets feared that Masoud would use the agreement for dishonest gains but he acted on the accord and avoided creating problems for the Russian army till its withdrawal in 1998.

Gramov says differences between Ahmad Shah Masoud and Gulbuddin Hikmatyar dated back to their days at engineering faculty of Kabul University when both were members of an Islamic student organization. He says that besides being a high caliber military commander who never stayed for two days at a place, Masoud had a political mind.

The Persian-speaking Afghans, Gramov says, consider Masoud as their leader and hero. Mining and export of the precious stones at Panjsher, he says, is major source of income for Masoud. He says Masoud had especial links with France where the press has helped him earn world fame. Gramov says Masoud leads his life in accordance with Islamic principles but according to Russians’ reports he used to take liquor in the company of his close friends.

Gramov further says that on the one hand Masoud had an agreement with the Russians for safe passage at Salang pass and on the other his military council Shura-i-Nazar, fought with them on many fronts in northern Afghanistan and killed many Russian troops.

General Gramov says that in case of hard times his armies could contact the mujahideen in northern Afghanistan and struck a deal on the based of some give and take. However, he says in the eastern and southern Afghanistan where the Pukhtun were in majority such incidents were rare.

Gramov says the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a blunder that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

“In 1983 Masoud agreed to a temporary cease-fire with the Soviets”

Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1999
By DEXTER FILKINS
In 1975, at the age of 22, Masoud led a revolt–later known as the Panjsher Valley Incident–aimed at toppling the regime. Most of his colleagues landed in jail, but Masoud made a narrow escape–his first of many. After receiving military training in Pakistan, Masoud returned to Afghanistan in 1978.

….

In 1983, Masoud agreed to a temporary cease-fire with the Soviets, who were then free to attack other areas. To this day, some of Masoud’s old rivals express deep bitterness at his dealings–which may have kept him alive but made their lives much worse. “Masoud deceived everyone,” said a former commander of the moujahedeen, or holy warriors.

The American spy who headed the CIA’s efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan credited Masoud with impressive military feats. But he added that, in the later years of the war, Masoud spent most of his time preparing for the coming civil war–not fighting the Communists. “He was not that reliable,” said Milton Bearden, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan during the war. “Toward the end, he spent most of his energies on consolidating his own position.” Masoud said he agreed to the 1983 cease-fire to buy time to build up his forces. Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, said Masoud spent the year setting up a vast political organization across northern Afghanistan. “Masoud was a very effective leader and a very effective fighter,” said a former CIA agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “One of the criteria of an effective fighter is, you don’t pick fights you can’t win.” Masoud led the final drive into Kabul in 1992 and became defense minister in the new government. Shooting broke out among the moujahedeen almost immediately. The fighting, which lasted four years, destroyed Kabul and killed tens of thousands of Afghans. Thousands more were maimed, raped and robbed.

… in one terrible incident in 1993, documented by the State Department, Masoud’s troops rampaged through a rival neighborhood, raping, looting and killing as many as a thousand people.

“Panjshiri Mafia,” Afghanistan’s Massoud Legacy

Edward Girardet

The real issue at hand is that the Panjshiris fail to see the need to share their power with anyone else. They perceive themselves as the country’s natural born leaders, gained by their ability to resist both the Soviets and the Taliban, with an undisputed right to represent Afghanistan, largely to the detriment of other tribal or ethnic groups

The powerful Panjshiris are seeking to impose their dominance at the Loya Jirga, but they risk losing everything unless they make a greater effort to support a truly broad-based Afghan administration.

The 70-mile-long Panjshir valley remains littered with military wreckage from the Soviet occupation of the1980s when the Red Army repeatedly tried — and failed — to quash the region’s armed resistance led by guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud.

The Northern Alliance commander — who was assassinated last September 9, two days prior to the Al Qaeda attacks in the US, by suspected members of the militant Islamic group and now lies buried on a hill overlooking
the Panjshir River — also represented the main opposition to the Taliban.

As with the Soviets, Massoud succeeded in preventing them from taking the Panjshir — and thus acquiring direct access to the north-east of the country — as part of their strategy to control the entire country.
Over a dozen years after Moscow’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the symbolism of the shattered Red Army tanks and armored personnel carriers lying by the roadside or half-submerged in the river as it churns its way down from the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains is more than one of victory over a 20th century Super Power. It is one of resilience, obstinacy, and, increasingly, arrogance. And it is this arrogance that is causing one of the greatest problems for Afghanistan today.

Representing a population of less than 300,000 both inside and outside the valley, the Panjshiris are asserting a disproportionate and often heavy-handed control over Kabul. The Panjshiris currently control three key ministries — defense, interior, and foreign affairs — and are now seeking to impose their dominance at the Loya Jirga.

They are doing this through a combination of bribes and intimidation, including physical threats, of the delegates, who, for the first time, seem to represent the Afghan grassroots over the interests of the warlords.

The real issue at hand is that the Panjshiris fail to see the need to share their power with anyone else. They perceive themselves as the country’s natural born leaders, gained by their ability to resist both the Soviets and the Taleban, with an undisputed right to represent Afghanistan, largely to the detriment of other tribal or ethnic groups.
Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who was appointed head of the Northern Alliance following Massoud’s death, recently maintained that the Panjshiris had assumed control in Kabul because there was no one else proficient enough to run the key ministries.

While claiming to support any government named by the Loya Jirga, he also said that he would not relinquish control until peace and security were “fully restored” and “acceptable”. To do so otherwise, he maintained, would be “irresponsible”.

Another problem is that, since Massoud’s death, there is no single leader amongst the Panjshiris capable of making decisions as a group. As a result, each faction, whether headed by Fahim or Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni, is doing its utmost to retain power.

This is compounded by the lack of any clearly stated policy by the United States. “The message that needs to be communicated is that the Americans will not tolerate any form of government that does not fully represent a broad-based consensus,” said one senior UN official.

The US is regarded as the only power in the position to assert firm influence over the Panjshiris. In addition, he maintained, the international donors need to impose conditional aid based on how the country’s leadership perform over the next 18 months.

During the Soviet-Afghan war, Massoud and his men, primarily Panjshiris but also other northern Tajiks, represented one of Afghanistan’s most effective fighting forces. They were revered by Afghans throughout much of the country, and became the favourites of many journalists and aid workers.

I first came across Massoud in the summer of 1981. I had trekked several hundred miles by foot across north-eastern Afghanistan to report on this “extraordinary” guerrilla commander, an Afghan “Che Guevera” who was not only good at fighting but also cared for the civilian population.
As the Soviet war dragged on, Massoud’s reputation grew. I met with him on various occasions throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There was no doubt that he was an impressive man with strong leadership qualities coupled with a vision for an independent and moderate Afghanistan uniting all ethnic and tribal groups.

Not only did he succeed in leading his valley against the Soviet empire, but he later developed his Shura-e-Nezar (Supervisory Council of the North — soon to be labeled the Northern Alliance) into the only force capable of staving off the Taleban.

And the Panjshiris knew it. With Massoud their hero, they walked tall wherever they went, instantly recognizable by their longish hair, camouflaged uniforms and woolen Chitrali caps. When the Soviets finally left in February 1989 and the communist regime in Kabul fell more than two years later, the Panjshiris were among the first to enter the capital.
They immediately began to dominate the city by packing the government with their own people, competent or not. Corruption abounded and their disdain for other ethnic groups, particularly the Pashtuns, became more pronounced. Massoud’s insistence on holding the capital in 1994 during the bitter factional fighting with other former mujahed fronts, such as Guldbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, resulted in the destruction of much of the city and the loss of over 50,000 lives. His forces also brutally put down Hazara opposition to his authority.

As a politician, Massoud failed badly. He had genuinely sought to bring together Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic and tribal groups as part of a new government of unity, but there was too much distrust and the Pashtuns considered him too powerful. By the time the Taleban took control in 1996, Massoud and his Panjshiris — once the heroes of the Jihad — had become overwhelmingly unpopular both in Kabul and many other parts of the country.

Massoud was fully aware of his shortcomings. He was also informed of the abuses committed by his Panjshiri supporters. Prior to his assassination, Massoud warned his commanders to never again commit the mistakes of the early 1990s. This was reiterated during the Bonn talks in December 2001. The only way for a new government to succeed, he had stressed, was through equitable power sharing among all groups.

The reality today, however, is far different. Since re-taking Kabul last November, the Panjshiris have once again sought to control as much as possible. Known as the “Panjshiri Mafia”, they immediately took the main ministries and are now involved in mafia-style rackets ranging from imposing their own taxi cartels to beating up competitive Pashtun merchants.

For a faction that claims to represent Afghanistan as a whole, the Panjshiris have promoted Massoud’s image to one of almost mythical proportions. His portrait appears in virtually every shop, tea house and mosque in Kabul and the northern areas. It is also featured in every police or army facility. All of this does not go down well with Afghans, particularly Pashtuns, who do not regard Massoud as their leader.
“If the Panjshiris were really interested in projecting a unified image, they should include other heroes such as Abdul Haq,” said Anders Fange, a senior UN official with many years experience in Afghanistan, referring to the renowned Pashtun resistance commander who was killed by the Taleban in eastern Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001.

Perhaps most critical of all, the Panjshiris run the Amniyat, the National Security Directorate, or secret police, which, as with the Soviet-backed KHAD of the 1980s, is much feared and largely run by armed thugs. In a move that may totally torpedo the credibility of the Loya Jirga, UN special representative Lakhdar IBrahimi and the assembly commission made a last minute decision on Sunday to grant the Amniyat full access to the proceedings.

This unexpected move came despite warnings by various advisors, including senior UN, aid agency and peacekeeping representatives, to keep the Amniyat out. According to one UN official, who requested anonymity, the secret police can now be expected to step up its pressure in favor of the Panjshiris, whose current support within the Loya Jirga, UN estimates believe, stands at barely 20 per cent.

Regardless what happens at the Loya Jirga, the Panjshiris are clearly determined to hold on to their influence. But their arrogance may also prove to be their downfall. Unless they make a greater effort to support a truly broad-based Afghan administration, they risk losing everything.
They may end up with another war on their hands, but this time as an unpopular minority faction with no international sympathy or support.

Geneva-based Edward Girardet is director of Media Action International and editor of the Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan. He is currently writing a book on 23 years of reporting the wars in Afghanistan

Revival of Russian/Indian Northern Alliance and the Partition of Afghanistan

Partition of Afghanistan Is a Quixotic Adventure

Ehsan Azari Stanizai

Dr Ehsan Azari Stanizai is an Adjunct Fellow with the Writing & Society Research Group, University of Western Sydney (UWS)

As the fog of weariness over the war in Afghanistan is growing thicker, some political analysts have come up with the idea that the partition of Afghanistan might be the only alternative to the present counterinsurgency war. In theory, it may seem a panacea but in practice, it could be a frivolous adventure.

This idea was put forward first in an article by Mr. Robert Blackwell, former US Ambassador to India and a presidential envoy to Iraq during the George Bush Administration, in Politico Online on July 7th and then backed up favorably by The Financial Times, Newsweek, The Washington Times and The Economist.

Mr. Blackwell argues that since the present battle plan is not going to weaken the Taliban, and the Pushtun support for the US in the south is unwinnable, a “partition of Afghanistan is the best policy option available to the United States and its allies”. In the same way, as reported by The Economiston July 22, 2010, a former UN and EU envoy to Kabul, Francesc Vendrell, has also held out that the approaching September parliamentarian elections could play as a mechanism by which “the south is handed over to the Taliban and the north to Uzbek, Hazara and Tajik warlords”.

Moreover, in an essay co-authored by three experts, Foreign Affairs (July/August) advises the division of Afghanistan on ethnic lines is the best option for the US to implement its core security interests. The authors conclude that a “mixed sovereignty,” not the present policy of centralized democracy will place the country on a path towards stability.

Under this approach, the Taliban will take over the south, but if they try to welcome Al-Qaeda back or seek to attack the north, the United States will retaliate using air bombing, drones and surgical operations by its elite forces. Partition could have an adverse impact on Pakistani military in that it will likely break ranks with the Taliban. As a result, Pakistan would reverse its current policy largely for the fear that partition of Afghanistan could turn its own Pashtun Taliban into a Baluch-like separatist movement for forming a greater Pashtunistan.

The reality is that these scholar-officials have a run-of-the-mill local knowledge. They perceive Afghanistan still in terms of Afghanistanism– the American newsroom argot of the 1960s, which was used as a metaphor for a far-away, obscure and negligible place or situation. In real life, however, Afghanistan is as Richard Nixon put it in The Real War, “has long been a cockpit of great-power intrigue for the same reason that it used to be called the turnstile of Asia’s fate”.

Afghanistan has been an apologia for imperial miseries throughout its history. In his quest for empire, Alexander the Great was the first European emperor who rode across the Afghan mountains. After conquering Persia in six months, he found his army bogged down in an endless war in Afghanistan. “I am involved in the land of a leonine (loin-like) and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldiers. You have brought one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called Alexander,” in a famous letter, he wrote to his mother in 330 BC.

However, for all that toughness, Afghanistan has a history of partition. The country suffered the pains of partition when the British Raj drew a border (known as Durand Line) between Afghanistan and the British India in 1893. The aim of the partition was to divide and weaken the unruly Afghan tribes. More than a century later, the Durand Line remains one of the most disputed borders in the world. Pashtun tribes in Pakistan and Afghanistan have never recognized this line. In the Afghan narrative, this border represents the greatest national disgrace. Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India ingeniously predicted this by calling the border “the razor’s edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war and peace, of life and death to nations”.

Afghanistan’s recent history offers ample evidence of resistance against the old colonial motto: divide and rule. During the past three decades, Afghanistan has had no functioning government, but it remained united against foreign invasions. In a final attempt, before leaving Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union nurtured the idea of Afghanistan’s partition to win the war. In 1987 when I was working with The Kabul Times, the news leaked out that the Russians wanted to shift the Afghan capital from Kabul to Mazari-I-Sharif in the north and cede the south to the US-backed anti-communist guerrilla fighters. However, the Soviet leaders backed out from this strategy and accepted an unconditional withdrawal, even though by then they were in a stronger position for only Amu Darya divided the Soviet territory from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is indeed an ethnic mosaic. Except for two or three out of 33-provinces of the country, you can hardly find a place identified with one ethnic identity. Separatism has never been an issue of concern in Afghanistan. During Afghanistan’s civil war in the early 1990s, when a fierce internal competition for control of Kabul was raging, no ethnic group and no warlord ever called for partition. The anti-Soviet resistance in the north remained always as strong as in the south. And let’s not forget that there are millions of Pashtun in the north as well.

Afghanistan’s partition would be an invitation to a Russian roulette in the regional nuclear club. It will strengthen the Taliban beyond imagination and hearten Al-Qaeda for exploiting the crisis. Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons, and Iranian unpopular mullahs have their hearts set on. The ripple effects will reach China and Russia, who are already keen on play their parts in the great game.

Dr Ehsan Azari Stanizi is an Adjunct Fellow with the Writing & Society Research Group, University of Western Sydney (UWS)

India to reopen Kabul mission: report

(AFP) – 9 hours ago

NEW DELHI — India is to reopen a medical mission in the Afghan capital Kabul that was hit by militant suicide attacks in February, a report in New Delhi said Wednesday.

Nine Indians were killed in one of the deadliest Taliban strikes on foreigners in Kabul. A total of 16 people died and 20 were critically injured when suicide bombers targeted two guesthouses in the Afghan capital.

India blamed Pakistan-based militants for targeting the medical mission in a power struggle between the two rival countries in Afghanistan that many analysts fear will erupt into a “proxy war” when foreign troops withdraw.

“The medical mission in Kabul will resume full-scale operations shortly,” an anonymous source told the Times of India. “The staff who had been injured are being replaced.”

India suspended medical aid and a number of teaching programmes in Afghanistan after the attack and Indian businesses and charities were reported to have slashed staff over fears they would be targeted by militants.

Indian interests in Afghanistan have been repeatedly targeted. Its embassy was bombed in October last year and on July 7, 2008.

The New Delhi government believes the attacks on its medical mission on February 26 were launched by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the same group that it blames for the Mumbai attacks in November 2008.

India, which has repeatedly urged the global community to “stay the course” in Afghanistan, is worried that Pakistan and the Islamist Taliban will assume key roles once international forces pull out.

Deserters threaten Afghan security

[With nearly one out of four recruits deserting, coupled with countless incidents of Afghan recruits attacking their Western trainers, it is easy to see that the alleged American solution of training a sufficient sized Afghan replacement force is a no-win situation.  The concept of training an Army's replacements while waging a type of war that pushes every red-blooded man in the country to want to join the resistance, is a complex deception that anyone with half a brain should be able to see through.  We are led in a war of lies by professional liars, masquerading as world-class "statesmen."]

• From:The Times

NATO forces are struggling to build an Afghan army big enough to take over security responsibilities in the country.

This is because of high desertion rates, a top US commander has revealed.

Training a credible Afghan security force, both army and police, lies at the heart of NATO’s exit strategy from a war that has already lasted nine years and President Barack Obama’s hopes of beginning a drawdown of US troops from July next year.

Despite intense training and literacy lessons, 23 per cent of Afghan army recruits taken on to serve with coalition forces against the Taliban, and 14 per cent of the police, are leaving their posts and vanishing, according to Lieutenant-General William Caldwell, the US commanding-general of NATO’s training mission in Afghanistan.

Underlining the challenge he faces to increase the size of the Afghan National Security Force to 305,000 by the end of October next year, General Caldwell said that to produce the next 56,000 trained Afghans he was going to have to recruit 141,000 just to meet the target. That is a number equivalent to the current size of the whole Afghan army.

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The “attrition rate”, as General Caldwell called it, is one of the biggest obstacles facing US and other NATO trainers as they try to develop local security forces. General Caldwell said the desertion rate was considered to be “the endemic enemy”, undermining the efforts to meet Mr Obama’s timeline for bringing the first US troops home.

Although General Caldwell said significant progress had been made, especially in the past nine months, he explained that some crucial aspects of the program to convert the Afghan military into a proper professional organisation had still hardly started.

Afghan combat troops being mentored by the coalition forces could not survive on their own because they did not have any of their own back-up units trained

in intelligence, communications, transport and logistics. These key support elements were still all provided by the coalition.

Aware of the gaps that still exist, General David Petraeus, the overall US commander in Afghanistan, appeared to back-track on the testimony he gave to congress in July when he stated that he supported Mr Obama’s strategy to start pulling out US troops in July next year.

He told the BBC that if he felt the deadline for the first withdrawals was too risky, he would say so to the President.

General Caldwell’s warnings about desertions among Afghan soldiers and police officers highlight grave concerns among NATO trainers about their ability to persuade well-trained locals to stay in the job.

President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader, said last week that he believed that some of the deserters were being employed by private security companies, which he wants to evict from Afghanistan.

General Caldwell said that might be true. “The Afghans coming out of the 17-week training program are a whole lot (more employable) than they were when they went in,” he said.

To meet the challenge of high desertions, General Caldwell said Afghan soldiers and police were now better paid — $US165 ($186) a month –and offered bonuses.

General Caldwell admitted that until November last year, the training program for the Afghan National Security Force had been inadequate. There had also been no focus on the high illiteracy rate among the Afghans recruited.

“You can’t expect a soldier to account for his weapon if he can’t even read the serial number on his rifle,” General Caldwell said.

Analysis: Doubts over new Afghan security strategy

Photo: Masoomi/IRIN

There are concerns over how new recruits will be trained and held accountable

KABUL, 23 August 2010 (IRIN) – Jobless rural youth are the focus of a new Afghan security plan designed to help defeat Taliban insurgents mostly in the south, east and southeast of the country.

The government, which already has about 200,000 national police (ANP) and army personnel at its disposal, says it also needs local combatants to help fight Taliban insurgency.

In a donor-funded project, which has already started in some provinces, about 10,000 men will be paid to fight Taliban insurgents in their villages, officials said.

“It’s not a militia force. It’s a community police [force] which will defend its homes and villages from the enemy,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Zamary Bashari.

“They will use their own weapons but we will give them salary and uniform,” said Bashari, adding that only “qualified” people would be hired by the project.

“We have to address the insecurity in some parts of the country – this is an interim solution,” Masoom Stanikzai, a security adviser to President Hamid Karzai, told IRIN.

We have to address the insecurity in some parts of the country – this is an interim solution

However, many Afghans are worried the project will merely strengthen local warlords and militias accused of perpetuating human rights violations. Ex-Taliban fighters who join the government’s reintegration process can also join the new force, officials said.

“These forces will have carte blanche to kill. They can kill and harm anyone on mere charges of insurgency,” said Mir Ahmad Joyenda, a member of parliament from Kabul.

Some people say the project could push the country into 1990s-style internecine fighting.

Government officials say the new force will be controlled by the ANP and held accountable for its actions. “God willing warlords will not be empowered,” said Bashari.

Others have pointed up an apparent contradiction: “The government says it is hiring community fighters due to the absence of national police in villages, and then says the police will control these militias – it’s absurd,” said Joyenda.

With corruption, illiteracy and abuse of authority allegedly widespread in the police, holding the new force to account will be extremely difficult in practice, experts said.

Amir Mohammad, a tribal elder in Kandahar, warned: “People are not stupid to take up arms and fight the Taliban for this government. They will use the opportunity to gain wealth, power and do whatever they want.”

Blow to disarmament efforts?

In the past seven years donors have spent hundreds of millions of dollars collecting weapons and disbanding militias in Afghanistan through two UN-backed projects: the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR – completed a few years ago), and the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG – ongoing).

Where the new community force does not have the means to fight the insurgents, the government will distribute weapons in return for assurances they will be returned upon request, according to the scheme.

The redistribution of weapons and the re-emergence of semi-formal militias are seen by some as a severe blow to the DDR/DIAG projects.

“Redistributing weapons in insecure areas will only exacerbate the situation,” warned Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and Karzai’s top rival in the 2009 presidential election.

He said DIAG was not being effectively implemented in some areas, and this had contributed to worsening insecurity.

Photo: Masoomi/IRIN

The government is to pay, and sometimes arm, local men to fight Taliban insurgents in their villages

Officials played down concerns that the establishment of community fighters would effectively invalidate the DIAG project.

“Where the government has the ability to protect people, they don’t need to have weapons – so DIAG is absolutely needed,” said Masoom Stanikzai, chairman of the DIAG secretariat.

The European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL), which promotes police reform and offers training in the country, said it was concerned about the creation of community police forces.

“The police are for post-war situations. The police do not kill people but protect them,” Gary Menzel, a chief police mentor with EUPOL, told IRIN, adding that his organization would not provide training for the new force.

Apart from civilian duties, ANP has been widely engaged in counter-insurgency activities, and sustained very high casualties (over 1,200 deaths) in 2009, officials said.

“The key to conflict resolution is good governance and the provision of justice to the people. Peace cannot be won by more combatants,” said Abdullah Abdullah.

Difficult environment

Karzai has vowed that Afghan security forces will assume overall responsibility for security by 2014, allowing NATO-led forces to leave the country.

Donors have agreed to help Afghanistan build up about 300,000 ANP and army forces over the coming years.

The move to set up community police forces comes just a few days after an announcement by Karzai that all private security companies will be banned by the end of 2010.

“Private security companies are thieves at day and terrorists at night,” Karzai said in a speech on 7 August, adding that they were operating as states within the state.

Up to 40,000 locals are employed by private security firms – Afghan and foreign -which provide different security and protection services mainly to foreign military entities, embassies and international development agencies.

Over 130,000 foreign troops are currently in Afghanistan.

Turkey To Put Military Base In Azerbaijan As NATO Surrogate?

[The great deception in this phase involves creating the image that Gul and Erdogan are acting independently of Washington, as they present a challenge to Russian domination of former Soviet territory (SEE: America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread).   Little by little, everything seems to be working out according to plan.]

On Turkey’s challenge to Russia’s “Caucasian triumph”

RF President Dmitry Medvedev’s state visit to Armeniaovershadowed the earlier begum Turkish-Azerbaijani meetings. On August 16-17, Turkish President Abdullah Gul was on an official visit to Baku. A Turkish-Azerbaijani agreement on strategic partnership and mutual assistance was signed during the visit. The document provides for the deployment of Turkish military units in Azerbaijan or, in other words, the creation of military bases of Turkey, a NATO member, in the country.

Following the Russian leaders’ visit, Russian and Armenian experts, speaking of a new level of bilateral relations, addressed the possible enhancement of Turkey’s role in the region in the context of the latest Azerbaijani-Turkish agreements. Talking to NEWS.am, Head of the Russian Center of Military Forecasts Anatoly Tsyganok voiced the opinion that a Turkish military base might be deployed in Nakhichevan as well. “It can be supposed due to Gul’s gentle hints in Azerbaijan,” he said. Many other Russian experts, addressing the recent developments in Armenian-Russian relations, have spoken of Armenia’s increasing role in the region, Russia’s greater strategic role, pointing out closer Turkish-Azerbaijani military ties.

“Turkey’s latest actions, as well as possible deployment of a military base in Azerbaijan, are nothing but a challenge sent to Russia. It is surprising Russian experts are not frank about it,” the military expert Artsrun Hovhannisyan told NEWS.am.

President Gul’s visit to Azerbaijan on August 15-17 was not mere coincidence. It was planned in advance, as Turks knew Armenia and Russian were going to sign a document on military base #102. “Gul’s visit was ‘a counterblow’ to Medvedev’s Caucasian triumph, which made it clear Turkey laid as serious claims to the South Caucasus as Russia did,” the expert said. He stressed that the current Turkish administration is the author and bearer of Neo-Ottomanism.

Hovhannisyan believes Neo-Ottomanism is a political ideology aimed at extending Turkey’s influence over the borders of the former Ottoman Empire. This ideology also supports Pan-Turkism and lays claims to leadership in the entire Islamic and Turkic world. “Gul, Erdogan and Davutoglu told the whole world their foreign policy was aimed at restoring the once great influence of the Ottoman Empire. However, Russia is the first world power preventing this ideology from becoming reality. So it is really surprising that Russian experts hardly address the topic,” Hovhannisyan said. Delegating greater powers to the Russian military base or the Turkish-Azerbaijani agreement on strategic partnership can by no means be considered local factors. Turkey is making obvious moves to bring the South Caucasus from under Russia’s control. In response, Russia should make a bolder step, the expert said.

“Rumors about possible reopening of a Turkish military base in Nakhichevan are circulating at various levels. I think it is absurd, and Russia should properly respond at a state level. Under a Moscow Treaty of 1921, Russia and Turkey pledged to deal with any issue related to military presence in Nakhichevan. Even a soldier’s presence – to say nothing of a military base – is a matter of bilateral intergovernmental discussions,” the expert said. Abrogating or even revising the treaty poses a great risk to the region. “An explosive situation may develop, with potential hostilities of a much larger scale than the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – Nakhichevan’s geographical location is of strategic importance for Pan-Turkism programs,” Hovhannisyan said.

The Armenian expert also commented on his Russian counterparts’ opinion that in making moves toward Nakhichevan Turkey would not damage its relations with Russia – Ankara and Moscow signed agreements on large-scale investment programs. “The needle for injecting Turkey is presently in Russia’s hands. It should be remembered, however, that Turkey has changed several doctors over the past several hundred years – France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States – and, after being strengthened, aimed its power at Russia,” Hovhannisyan said. Taking advantage of the fact of its getting out of the U.S. control, Turkey is strengthening its ties with Russia. On a large scale, it is one more step to get a new donor for economic development.

Turkey will remain Russia’s traditional rival, as it seeks to extend its influence over entire Central Asia, as far as Siberia, the entire Caucasus, as far as the Volga River and Tatarstan, as well as the Crimea and Ukraine. “As to the Russian needle, Turkey may replace it with a Chinese or Indian one tomorrow. Or it will continue on the Russian needle, ‘doing its business’,” Hovhannisyan said.

NEWS.am reminds readers that during the hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh the press circulated rumors about Turkish companies in Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan, which pledged to defend Nakhichevan. Indeed, Russians repeatedly faced big and little problems after ignoring or underestimating the Turkish factor. For example, the Turkish army has for a long time been implementing a re-equipment program worth hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars. Besides numerous types of modern weapons, it plans to purchase 100 U.S. fighters of the 5th generation, whereas Russia only recently started the relevant development work.

Kowtowing to the Israeli Right

Amjad Atallah

After almost one year of intense pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by the Obama Administration, direct talks between Israel’s right-wing government and the PLO are set to resume next week. Israel insisted and received guarantees that there would be no guarantees. The talks will include all final status issues but have no agenda. The Palestinians did get a one-year timeframe, but with no word on what happens if that timeframe is not met. Not surprisingly, there is little excitement or optimism among Israelis or Palestinians.

Is this just the latest in a series of serial diplomatic failures on the Israeli-Palestinian front or is there something different brewing this time? In fact, there are three new factors at play:

• The United States now owns the process lock, stock, and barrel. No matter how many times American diplomats may try to slough off blame by saying that “we can’t want peace more than the parties,” there is no doubt that the Arab and Muslim worlds see this as a referendum on what role we can play in the region.
• The United States over the last year has empowered and entrenched the right wing government in Israel and weakened the pro-U.S. Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.
• Hamas and other potential spoilers have been left in a very comfortable position to watch and wait – and to pick up the pieces if the United States fails.

There are two dominant (and negative) stereotypes of the United States in the Middle East: we are either seen as an imperial force working with Israel to keep the region divided and undeveloped or we are a well meaning democracy and superpower that nevertheless is too weak to represent our own interests in the region when they conflict with Israel’s. Indeed, a recent poll of Arab public opinion by Shibley Telhami and Zogby International showed that while an amazing 86 percent support a two state solution, 61 percent of Arabs are “most disappointed” with Obama’s policies on Palestine/Israel in the past year.

In light of these attitudes, and after literally dragging the Palestinians into talks with an extreme right-wing government in Israel, the United States will be expected to either deliver Palestinian freedom or to support the Netanyahu government’s vision for a “state” with only symbolic sovereignty and little land. If the U.S. chooses the latter, as the most domestically painless course, it will cement the Arab public’s vision of the United States as a problem to be solved – not a source for stability – in the Middle East. Our failure will be a force multiplier for America’s detractors at a time when we are still at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan, still competing with Iran, and still trying to eliminate al-Qaeda.

The second change is that we have weakened the Israeli center and the PLO leaders in Ramallah, America’s traditional allies. By accepting the dictates of the Netanyahu government – including a US-back down on settlement construction and acceptance of an agenda-less set of direct talks without terms of reference – the United States has limited the ability of the Israeli center to pressure the current right-wing government. Simultaneously, by preventing Palestinian reconciliation, the United States has ensured that President Abbas goes into the talks with a fractured constituency; especially vulnerable to the expected humiliations Netanyahu has a habit of delivering (ask Vice-President Biden).

This leads us to the third change – Hamas is now arguably in as comfortable a position as it has ever been. Hamas is happy to sit this out and watch President Abbas get beaten by an intransigent Netanyahu and a quiescent Obama administration. If talks fail, and the Israelis manage to convince the Americans to once again blame the Palestinians, Hamas can simply fill the political void that will be left by Fatah’s and the PLO’s collapse – an outcome that some in Fatah are afraid is not far removed from the goals of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet.

However, if any American president can take a bad hand and turn it around, it is Obama. But turning it around will mean an unprecedented expenditure of domestic political capital as the US faces off against Netanyahu. The only reason the political right in the US has not gone full bore against the President for pushing talks is because Netanyahu is the one that insisted on them. The moment the President begins advocating for vital US national interests in the form of a genuine peace, you can expect a firestorm of criticism from Likud’s allies in the American right.

It is a fight the President can certainly win, and with a majority of American’s behind him, but is it a fight he is willing to have? America’s interests hang in the balance.

Amnesty wants U.S. to clarify role in Yemen killings

* Amnesty: U.S. may have taken part in Yemen operations

* Yemen extrajudicial killings of al Qaeda suspects unlawful

By Raissa Kasolowsky

DUBAI, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Amnesty International said on Wednesday the United States appeared to have carried out or collaborated with Yemen in attacks that killed suspected al Qaeda militants, violating international law.

Yemen’s killings of al Qaeda suspects, often in aerial bombings, are extrajudicial executions and are unlawful, the human rights watchdog said, and urged Washington to clarify the involvement of U.S. forces and drones in such attacks.

U.S. officials say only that Washington plays a supporting role by helping Yemen track and pinpoint targets. But the United States has long been involved in fighting militants in Yemen.

“The USA appears to have carried out or collaborated in unlawful killings in Yemen and has closely cooperated with Yemeni security forces in situations that have failed to give due regard for human rights,” Amnesty said in a report. It urged Washington to “investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by U.S. forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones”.

Yemen, which shares a border with top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, launched a major crackdown on al Qaeda after the movement’s Yemen-based regional arm said it was behind an attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane in December.

Washington, fearing that al Qaeda was using Yemen as a base for attacks abroad, stepped up its training, intelligence and military aid to the state and sent special forces there.

In May, Yemeni opposition media reported that a drone had carried out an air strike aimed at al Qaeda that mistakenly killed a government mediator, sparking clashes between government forces and his kinsmen.

Yemen’s foreign minister said Sanaa would try to find out whether a drone was involved.

“The U.S. government has deployed drones in Yemen to kill those it describes as ‘high value targets’, a practice that has been increasingly criticised as involving unlawful killings,” Amnesty said, without mentioning specific incidents.

“Often used in remote areas, drones are particularly suited to secret use and it is invariably difficult to investigate and assess allegations that they have been used to assassinate specific individuals,” it added.

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATED

Amnesty said it had also obtained photographs apparently showing the remnants of missiles known to be held only by U.S. forces at the site of a December air strike against al Qaeda suspects that killed 41 people, half of them children.

Amnesty said that air strike, in southern Abyan province, was an example of security forces “killing unlawfully by using excessive force”.

Amnesty said Yemen was increasingly sacrificing human rights in the name of security. It is under pressure from Washington and Riyadh to deal with a range of threats — al Qaeda, southern secessionism and a now dormant Shi’ite rebellion in the north.

Amnesty said the latest fighting with the northern rebels, before a February truce brought relative calm, saw both Yemen and Saudi Arabia appear to violate international law when they apparently bombed homes and apartment blocks.

“Aerial and other bombardments of markets, mosques and other places where civilians gather, as well as of large residential properties, apparently killed hundreds of men, women and children not engaged in the fighting,” the report said.

In the south, Yemen has used “excessive and lethal force” against demonstrators and carried out arbitrary detentions, torture and unfair trials of southern activists, Amnesty said. (Reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky, editing by Tim Pearce)

China’s epic traffic jam ‘vanished’

Traffic into Beijing slowed to a snail’s pace in June and July for nearly a month [Here for 9 days, gone overnight.  Beijing hates bad publicity.]

(AFP)

XINGHE COUNTY, China — Can a monster traffic jam spanning dozens of miles and leaving drivers stuck for days really disappear overnight?

For days, Chinese and foreign media have issued reports explaining how thousands of vehicles were trapped in an epic traffic jam stretching for more than 100 kilometres (60 miles) on a highway leading to China’s capital Beijing.

The bottleneck on the Beijing-Tibet expressway, which began on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks and was compounded by road maintenance works… seems to have vanished.

A team of AFP reporters drove 260 kilometres Wednesday along the highway out of Beijing, through the northern province of Hebei and into Inner Mongolia — and did not encounter anything but intermittent traffic jams at toll booths.

Hundreds of trucks were on the road to Beijing, packed with everything from produce to live goats — but the traffic was moving.

“The situation has gotten much better recently. I don’t know why,” a female gas station attendant in Huailai county, roughly halfway from the capital to Xinghe county in Inner Mongolia, told AFP.

Officials at the Beijing traffic management bureau were not immediately available for comment.

The state-run Global Times said Monday the jam had spawned a mini-economy, with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers’ predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices.

The stretch of highway has become increasingly prone to massive tailbacks as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods.

Traffic slowed to a snail’s pace in June and July for nearly a month, according to earlier press reports.

China has embarked in recent years on a huge expansion of its national road system but traffic periodically overwhelms the grid.

According to government data, Beijing is on track to have five million cars on its roads by year’s end. The four million mark was passed in December.

The head of the Beijing Transportation Research Centre, Guo Jifu, warned this week that traffic in the capital could slow to under 15 kilometres an hour on average if further measures were not taken to limit the number of cars.

US and Corporate Pressure Push 2nd Phase of NABUCCO Feeder Lines Ahead of First Phase

Nabucco confirms two-feeder routing cuts Iran

Aug 23, 2010

Christopher E. Smith
OGJ Pipeline Editor

HOUSTON, Aug. 23 — Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GMBH confirmed that feeder lines into the natural gas pipeline would run to the Turkish-Georgian and Turkish-Iraqi borders and ordered engineering works for these two lines. Nabucco, however, cited political concerns in tabling a third potential feeder line to the Turkish-Iranian border. The announcements came following the pipeline’s latest steering committee meeting in Ankara.

The two-feeder routing plan offers Nabucco access to supplies from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Iraq.

In April European Union Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger touted the importance of Turkmenistan as a gas supplier to Europe through a southern Caspian corridor. Other southern corridor projects cited by Oettinger as part of the EU’s efforts to diversify supply sources away from Russia include the White Stream pipeline from Georgia and the Interconnector among Turkey, Greece, and Italy (ITGI). Parties to the ITGI signed a memorandum of understanding on the project in June, with the 804-km line expected to enter service in 2015 (OGJ Online, June 21, 2010).

The 56-in. OD Nabucco pipeline will bring gas to the Baumgarten hub in Austria near the Slovakian border at a rate of 31 billion cu m/year, before moving it on to Western Europe. Feasibility studies have led to a two-stage construction plan. The first phase, starting in 2011, calls for 2,000 km of pipe between Ankara, Turkey, and Baumgarten, allowing 8 billion cu m/year of gas from the existing Turkish pipeline network to be transported through the line by 2014 (OGJ, Feb. 15, 2010, p. 48). Second-stage construction would begin in 2012 and build eastward from Ankara to the Iraqi and Georgian borders, bringing total pipeline length to 3,300 km.

Nabucco has six equal shareholders: Turkey’s Botas, Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD, Romania’s Transgaz, Hungary’s MOL, Austria’s OMV, and Germany’s RWE.

Nabucco estimates total pipeline cost at €7.9 billion.

Contact Christopher E. Smith at chriss@ogjonline.com.

Iran Begins Work On Peace Pipeline

Iran inaugurates new cross-country gas pipeline

Tehran Times Economic Desk

TEHRAN — Iran’s 7th cross-country gas pipeline was officially inaugurated on Monday.

The project, which cost $1.7 billion, is regarded as the first phase of the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, which is also known as the Peace Pipeline.

The pipeline, which extends 902 kilometers from Assalouyeh in the southwest of Iran to Iranshahr in the southeast, will transfer natural gas from the South Pars gas field to some of Iran’s southern provinces.

First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi and Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi attended the inauguration ceremony.

The second section of the pipeline, which is to be about 400 kilometers in length, will be established by Iran’s Khatam-ol-Anbia Construction Headquarters at a cost of 200 to 250 million dollars.

Iran, Pakistan, and India conceptualized the Peace Pipeline project in the 1990s to promote peace and increase security in the region.

The IPI gas pipeline is a proposed 2,775-kilometer pipeline for delivering natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and India, though the signature of a final deal agreement has been delayed several times over price and political issues.

Due to tense India-Pakistan relations, New Delhi stepped back from the later stages of negotiations, although it has never formally withdrawn from the project.

Iran’s proven natural gas reserves stand at about 1,000 trillion cubic feet, of which 33 percent is located in associated gas fields and 67 percent in non-associated gas fields.

Iran has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas after Russia.

Iran-Turkey Gas Pipeline Hit by 2nd Blast in One Month

An explosion has targeted a pipeline that carries Iran’s natural gas to Turkey in the country’s eastern province of Agri, which borders Iran.

Iran-Turkey gas pipeline hit by blast, flow stopped

* Iranian gas imports halted, repairs underway

* Second blast on key link since July 21

(Adds details, background)

ISTANBUL, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Iranian natural gas flows to Turkey were halted after an explosion and could take up to a week to resume after repairs are completed, officials at the Turkish pipeline operator Botas said on Wednesday.

It was the second time in a little over a month that an explosion halted gas imports from Iran on the key link.

“The fire has been extinguished, and repair work is ongoing,” one official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Another Botas official said the blast, the cause of which was not immediately clear, occurred late on Tuesday. Repairs could take six to seven days to be completed, he said.

When an explosion on July 21 halted gas flows, it took 10 days to fix the pipeline. The cause of that blast was also not known.

Officials did not say on which side of the border the blast occurred.

Guerrillas from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have in the past claimed responsibility for attacks on oil pipelines from Iraq and Azerbaijan.

Neighbouring Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest supplier of natural gas after Russia, sending 10 billion cubic metres of gas each year. Turkey uses gas to fire half of its power plants. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Orhan Coskun; Editing by William Hardy)

Afghan girls fall ill after apparent gas poisoning

[This has been going on for a while.]

More than 80 girls hospitalised by ‘poison gas attack’

12 May 2009

Taliban uses poisonous gas in attack on Kabul girls school

Published 5 May 2010

Afghan girls fall ill after apparent gas poisoning

KABUL

(Reuters) – About 40 schoolgirls became ill and were taken to hospital after a suspected gas poisoning in the Afghan capital Wednesday, another apparent attack by hardline Islamists opposed to female education.

The Taliban banned education for girls during their Afghan rule from 1996-2001, but have condemned similar attacks in the past. They have, however, set fire to dozens of schools, threatened teachers and even attacked schoolgirls in rural areas.

Wednesday’s incident followed a similar pattern to other recent attacks at girls’ schools involving an airborne substance which officials said could be some form of gas.

Asif Nang, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, said the girls, of differing ages from a school in Kabul’s east, were being treated in hospital. Their illnesses were not believed to be serious.

“It looks like it is another case of gas poisoning, but it is being investigated now,” he said.

The Afghan government, however, did not suggest who may have been responsible for the apparent attack.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Bombings in Iraq from Basra to Kirkuk–(Sure Smells Like Victory)

Wave of deadly bombings in Iraq

Basra was one of several cities targeted by bombers

About 40 people have been killed and dozens injured in a series of bomb attacks across Iraq.

There have been several blasts in Baghdad, including one in which 15 people died. At least 15 were killed in a suicide attack in Kut in the south.

One person was killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk, and there were explosions in Basra, Ramadi and Karbala.

The violence comes ahead of the formal end of US combat operations at end of the month.

In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb hit a police station in the Qahira district in the north-east of the city, killing 15 people, most of them police.

Residents trapped

Police and hospital officials said 58 people were wounded in the explosion, which left a crater 3m (10ft) wide and caused houses to collapse, trapping people inside.

“We woke up to the sound of this powerful explosion that shook the area,” resident Abu Ahmed, 35, told the Associated Press news agency. “I searched for victims in the destroyed houses and evacuated seven dead children and some women.”

Elsewhere in the capital, a parked car bomb in the centre of the city near the Muthana Airport Highway killed two people and injured seven.

There were three other explosions, in Haifa Street, in Karrada, and in Ahmeriya, injuring 11 people.

In other incidents:

• in Kut, south of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber attacked a police station, killing at least 15 people and injuring 84
• in Kirkuk, a car bomb killed one person and injured eight
• in Falluja, a soldier was killed and 10 people injured when a suicide bomber drove into an Iraqi army convoy
• in Tikrit, a roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded another
• in Basra, a car exploded as police towed it from a parking lot, killing one person and injuring eight
• in Ramadi, a car exploded as alleged bombers were working on it, while a second car exploded about 1km away, injuring 12 people
• in Karbala, a suicide car bomb exploded at police checkpoint at the entrance to police station, injuring 30 people

The Reuters news agency reported other explosions in Dujail, Balad Ruz and Samarra, but these could not be confirmed.

No groups have yet said they planned the attacks, although the BBC’s Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says the attacks are likely to be linked to a branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Violence in Iraq is down from the peak seen during the sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, although the number of civilian deaths rose sharply in July.

Continue reading the main story

• In pictures: Iraq bombings

Almost daily attacks on Iraqi forces and traffic police in Baghdad and Anbar province, west of the capital, killed more than 85 people in the first three weeks of August.

On Tuesday, the US military said the number of US troops in Iraq had fallen to 49,700, ahead of a 31 August deadline for US combat operations to end.

The remaining US troops will continue in Iraq until the end of 2011 to advise Iraqi forces and protect US interests.

They will be armed, but will only use their weapons in self-defence or at the request of the Iraqi government, and will work on training Iraqi troops and helping with counter-terrorism operations, the US military said.

Iraq’s top army officer recently questioned the timing of the pull-out, saying the country’s military might not be ready to take control for another decade.

Meanwhile, Iraqi politics has remained deadlocked five months after national elections, with no new government yet in place.

A Terrible Disease of the Mind–Part I

A Terrible Disease of the Mind

By Zaid Nabulsi

I lost my gloves one day in a coffee shop in Geneva, and I tell you, it’s difficult to ride a motorcycle without them when it’s really cold. So as I was paying for a new pair with a credit card, the salesman – who I knew was from Israel – asked me what my family name means. I told him that it relates to the city of Nablus where my family is originally from. Suddenly, the most bewildered look got plastered on his face.

“Where is Nablus?” he asked, “I’ve never heard of it”. Then he pretended to remember. “Ah, Shkheim you mean?”

With my insistence not to learn these ugly sounding names that the Zionists have dug up from oblivion to erase our identity, that name certainly didn’t ring a bell.

Now it was my turn. Although I knew where he was from, I asked: “And you’re؟ from?”

As he smiled, I replicated the look on his face moments ago. “Israel? Where is that?”

Then after a brief pause: “Ah, the land of Canaan you mean. Palestine.”

You see, if you want to get biblical, there was never such a thing as Israel, and I made that very clear to this gentleman with obnoxious chutzpah.

So here we were all of a sudden; my family descended from a place called Shkheim, and this guy became a Palestinian. God does work in mysterious ways, but I still thanked Him for His small mercies; that at least my name was not Zaid Shkheimy.

While the gloves warmed up my grip on the bike, my heart was still frozen. I just cannot stand thieves who steal your gloves, or any other kind of thieves.

Then it finally dawned on me. Zionism is a sickness, for it takes much more than just a twisted ideology to make people think like that. It requires a profound leap of immorality of a higher order to instill this mentality in your followers. Zionism is not merely a political movement, but in its essence represents a deeply disturbed view of the world, resulting from a terrible affliction of the mind.

Indeed, to deny the existence of a vibrant communit! y such a s the Palestinian society in the early 20th century and describe Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” is a serious blinding ailment.

To assert property claims over real estate after thousands of years with the same certainty of title as if one resided there yesterday is the essence of arrogance.

To describe the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people with no proven historical link to the ancient Israelites – and whose great, great recorded ancestors have never set foot there – as some kind of a “return” to that land is a distorted misapplication of the verb to “return”.

To blame the Palestinians for being unreasonable in rejecting a partition plan in 1947 which gave the Jews, who only owned 7 per cent of the land, an astounding half of Palestine, is an arithmetical impairment.

To eventually grab 78 per cent of Palestine through war, evict the population through massacres and then live in their same houses is unashamed theft.

To deny the orchestrated eradications of hundreds of Palestinian villages in 1948 and then denounce the Israeli historians who later exposed this truth as self-hating Jews is compulsive forgery.

To claim that having escaped the horrors of the Nazis is a justification for the murder, expulsion and occupation of another, guiltless, people is moral incapacity.

To legislate that any resident of Poland, New York or Brazil, who happens to be blessed with a Jewish mother (yet cannot point to Palestine on the map), has a right to “return” and settle in Palestine, unlike someone who has been expelled from his own land, confined to a squalid refugee camp and still holds the keys to his house, is racism.

To blame God for the theft and occupation of someone else’s land by claiming that it was He who had pledged this land exclusively to the Jews, and to seriously promote the myth of a land promised by the Almighty to His favourite children as an excuse for this crime, is insanity.

To milk t! he pocke ts of the entire world for the atrocities of the Nazis, while stubbornly refusing a simple admission of guilt, let alone compensation or repatriation, for the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people, is perverted conceit.

To keep blackmailing the world with expensive museums and endless movies of the plight of the Jews under Hitler 70 years ago, while at the same time inflicting on the Palestinians today the fate of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, is acute schizophrenia.

To impose collective guilt on the Western civilisation for the Holocaust and to criminalise all legitimate historical debate of the nature and extent of that horrific event is thuggery.

To incarcerate the Palestinian people inside degrading cages, destroy their livelihoods, confiscate their lands, steal their water and uproot their trees, and then to condemn their legitimate resistance as terrorism, and to exact vengeance on the innocent families of suicide bombers by punishing them with the dynamiting of their homes is sadistic cruelty.

To describe the offer of giving the Palestinians 80 per cent of 22 per cent of 100 per cent of what is originally their own land as a “generous” offer is macabre Shylockian humour.

To believe that you have the God-given right to continue to humiliate the Palestinians at gunpoint by making them queue for hours to move between their villages, forcing their mothers to give birth at checkpoints, is a predisposition to bestiality.

To flatten the camp of Jenin on its inhabitants’ heads and deny any wrongdoing is a severe delusional disorder.

To build a huge separation wall which disconnects farmers from their farms and children from their schools, while stealing even more territory as the wall freely zigzags and encroaches on Palestinian land is unrepentant immorality.

To leave behind, in the last 10 days of a losing war in Lebanon, more than one million cluster bombs which have no purpose except to murder and maim unsuspecting civilians is murderou! s deprav ity.

To believe that the entire world is out to get you, and to denounce any critic of the racist policies of the state of Israel as an anti-Semite, the latest victim being none other than peace-making Jimmy Carter, is hysterical mass paranoia.

To possess, in the midst of a non-nuclear Arab world, more than 200 nuclear warheads capable of incinerating the whole planet, in addition to having the most lethal arsenal of weaponry on earth, while continuing to demand sympathy, is the ultimate false victimisation syndrome.

And today, to blockade the world’s most densely populated strip of land for 18 months, suffocate its already displaced and miserable inhabitants by asking them to die a slow death, and then punish them for refusing to die silently by deliberately bombing their schools, mosques, hospitals and ambulances with internationally prohibited weapons and poisonous gasses in the ugliest televised massacre of children in modern history, all the while looking the world in the eyes and claiming that this is an act of self-defence, is a critical stage of dangerous psychosis, and is pure, unadulterated madness.

Yes, and for that salesman in peaceful Geneva to be as insecure as a common thief to refuse to acknowledge the name of the largest West Bank city under his country’s brutal military occupation is, sadly, more of the same infectious and ultimately fatal disease of the mind.

The writer is an attorney, partner in Nabulsi & Associates law firm. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

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Zionization–A Terrible Disease of the Mind: Part II

A Terrible Disease of the Mind: Part II

Excellent article excluding the remarks regarding the Prophets Solomon and David.

By Zaid Nabulsi,

DissidentVoice

My family and I long to return to the Gardens of Cordoba (Qurtuba). We agonise with every breath to re-inhabit the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah). In our veins, there runs an eternal longing to walk again in the footsteps of our forefathers in Zaragoza (Saraqusta). We yearn to once again cultivate the orchards of Valladolid (Balad Al Waleed). We shall strive, by military means if necessary, to see the blessed day when we can tread along the rose-scented pathways of the splendid palace of Al Hambra (Al Hamra’a) in Granada (Ghirnata). Every stone and every particle of sand in that Iberian holy land belongs to me and to my people, exclusively. No Spaniard terrorist has the right to obstruct the will of God and deny my family the legal title to the land of our ancestors. It is God who had given us Andaluc’a (Al Andalus), and it is God who promised us that we, the exiles, shall ingather there once again.

I would indeed have to be a certified lunatic if I had meant a word of the above. Yet, the only difference between my disease of the mind and that of the millions of Jews who claimed to have “returned” to Palestine, is that in my case, at least the monuments and Arab names I am referring to are real and do actually exist today, and it is not contestable that the direct ancestors of my people did actually build that great civilisation.

On the other hand, all Zionist archaeologists have failed – after digging up every conceivable corner of Palestine for the last 62 years – to come up with a single credible Jewish teapot or tablespoon, let alone excavate an alleged Jewish temple remotely matching the grandeur of any of the visible relics of Andaluc’a.

Not only that, but they needn’t have bothered digging. Two years ago, Israeli Professor, Shlomo Sand, argued, with meticulous scholarship in his earth-shattering book, The Invention of the Jewish People, that the claim that the Jews of today are the ethnic offspring of the biblical Jews is yet another Zionist myth, because all records tell us that the current Jews are the descendants of Khazar tribes who converted to Judaism, and have no genetic link whatsoever to the Jews who lived in Palestine during Roman times. The latter, he concludes, are, most ironically, none other than the Palestinians of today who converted to Islam (or Christianity), because the Romans apparently never exiled anybody. Moreover, Sand demolishes the myth of the kingdoms of David and Solomon by proving they are pure legends that never existed. What is astonishing is that, to date, no Israeli historian has been able to debate, let alone refute, any of Sand’s devastating findings.

Yet, not only would I need to be in a straitjacket if I were serious about reclaiming Spain for the Arabs – irrespective of our real history there – but the Spanish people would have the right to laugh at the sheer absurdity of my hallucinations, if not get gravely offended by their audacity.

I cannot, for example, visit the magnificent Hall of Abencerrajes (Ibn Sarraj) in Al Hambra and then, after explaining to my children that it was Arab Muslims who constructed these wondrous architectural miracles, go on and indoctrinate them that this piece of real estate should belong to them. I cannot do that any more than an Italian tourist can visit Jerash in Jordan, and thereafter decide to build a settlement and live there because, he says, it really belongs to his great uncle, a certain Mr Julius Caesar.

This is the case simply because, in this modern world, we do not go around stealing other people’s land by attributing our crime to an ancient historical link to such land, or because we believe that we belong to the same race or religion of the people who once lived there.

But the Zionists get away with it the whole time, and have been doing so for far too long – despite the total lack of any real historical connection to the land of Palestine (not that it matters or makes it any more legitimate if they did have such a connection).

For who can, in their heart of hearts, credibly deny the blatant repugnancy of the whole underlying premise of Zionism, the very madness upon which Israel was founded? Indeed, any person who happens to support the immorality of the theft of the land of Palestine under such religious or forged historical pretexts would, in reality, be making up excuses for blatant colonisation that are far more ridiculous than my demented ranting about returning to the gardens of Cordoba.

So why do these Zionists get away with such a ludicrous monstrosity?

We all know why. The hegemony over world media exercised by Jews is crucial so that no one can ever challenge the Zionist narrative or point out the naked, unadulterated lunacy of the whole Zionist enterprise. Coupled with a world conscience shrouded in a cloud of Holocaust guilt, an event that is forbidden to even debate, you get an oppressive atmosphere that has suffocated the ability of Western civilisation to deconstruct Zionism down to its most basic insanities.

For how is it conceivable for otherwise rational populations to even entertain, let alone accept and adopt, the twisted Zionist logic about the Jews “returning” to a promised land after so many thousands of years of supposed separation? And how can these same people acquiesce to Israeli politicians openly using such religious nonsense as a justification for the contemporary and ongoing catastrophe inflicted upon the millions of guiltless Palestinian inhabitants of that land?

Take, for example, Jose Mar’a Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, who recently gave a solemn warning on the pages of The London Times: “anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region ةif Israel goes down, we all go downة”.

Well, Mr Aznar, we do not advocate for Israel to disappear or go down anywhere, because, despite the evil deeds accompanying its creation, Israel is a fact that we have to live with today. Likewise, the Israelis are fellow human beings upon whom I do not wish to impose the televised barbecuing of the eyes and flesh of their children using white phosphorus, nor shall I ever tolerate such horrendous barbarity to be inflicted upon them.

But, hey Jose, if you see nothing wrong with what Israel is, and regard its Goldstone-documented war crimes as a mere “distraction”, while ignoring that it is the source of all the “turbulence” of the region you mentioned, then you might as well give us back Malaga and Marbella. After all, in Andaluc’a, no Christian or Jew was ever persecuted or burnt at the stake, nor had his bone marrow fried by any other means.

Yet, the travesty continues unabated. Take this most recent manifestation of the mental illness enveloping the racist state of Israel (branded by Jewish US Media Inc. as “the only democracy in the Middle East”). Hillary Rubin is a US Jew from Detroit who decided to move to Israel in 2006, something millions of Palestinian refugees can only dream of. But that is not the story. Rubin happens to also be the niece of Zionist leader, Nahum Sokolow, so you would’ve supposed that she is a Jewish notable, revered in Israel for her noble lineage. Last month, she fell in love and wanted to get married to a nice Jewish boy from Herzliya. According toHa’aretz newspaper, after filing for a wedding licence, she was refused and was told that she needed to prove the Jewishness of her maternal lineage for – listen to this – four entire generations. This is not 1933 Germany, but modern day Israel. So she got letters from four Conservative rabbis and one Chabad rabbi attesting to her Jewishness. But the Herzliya Rabbinate still wouldn’t have it. To allow her to marry her sweetheart, these men of God stipulated she comes up with the birth or death certificates of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, something she, of course, failed to do. This is not an isolated incident, but the official applicable Israeli law on the books.

Oh, yes! Adolf Hitler is turning in his grave at this news. “And they dared crucify me for the Nuremberg laws?” the Fuhrer is muttering to himself.

Well, there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen. Didn’t I tell you that Zionism is nothing but a terrible, incurable disease of the mind?

See also “A ‘terrible disease of the mind.’“

Zaid Nabulsi is a partner in the law firm of Nabulsi & Associates. He has spent many years working for the United Nations in Geneva, and has a passion for Harley Davidson bikes. Read other articles by Zaid.

Hazara Shia As Prey of Lashkar i-Jhangvi

‘We are not separatists’

By Qurat ul ain Siddiqui

Abdul Khaliq Hazara, Secretary-General of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP)

Dawn.com speaks with Abdul Khaliq Hazara, Secretary-General of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP). The party has given a political voice to Balochistan’s 300,000 Hazaras. Here, Mr Hazara explains challenges the Hazara community in Pakistan faces and deconstructs their role in Balochistan’s tense political environment.

Tell us about the HDP and the constituency it represents.

The HDP was formed in 2003, but was publicly announced on July 7, 2004. It is a truly democratic party. Every third year, we call together a congress that elects the party’s central council.

There are about 300,000 Hazaras in Balochistan, based in Quetta, Khuzdar, Zhob, Loralia and Dera Murad Jamali. Before the HDP’s formation, these people did not have a formal political entity and didn’t have much share in provincial or national politics. But we are trying to orient the community into becoming aware of the region’s politics and to protect their interests. However, non-Hazaras are more than welcome to join the party. In fact, we already have several non-Hazara party members and the party is coming to play an important role in provincial politics.

The party also has a women’s wing constituting of nine units. We encourage female participation on all levels of sociopolitical life. We are a liberal and democratic party and we firmly believe in equal opportunities for women in national life.

On January 26, 2009, HDP’s then chairman Hussain Ali Yousafi was assassinated. How did the party react?

I was at home when I got the phone call that Yousafi had been shot. My first concern was to make sure he was in a secure hospital where he would be treated properly. The party leadership was shocked. There have been attacks against our community, but this was targeted against our chairman who led our party and the Hazara people. Some 40,000 mourners came to Yousafi’s funeral. A case was also registered with the area police, but no real investigations materialised.

During the past few years, attacks against Hazaras have increased, with Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) claiming responsibility for many of these attacks. What do you think?

All Hazaras are Shia Muslims, hence easy targets of sectarianism in Pakistan. LJ has claimed many of these attacks and the government claims to have arrested suspects in this regard, but the alleged assailants are not brought before the public or in any court of law. Why is it so hard for the government to expose the suspects to the public? As long as the government is not going to reveal results of investigations and the accused, we cannot say anything definitively.

On 18 January, 2008, LJ’s most wanted terrorists Dawoodi Badini and Usman Saifullah Kurd escaped from a cell in the Anti-Terrorist Force’s (ATF) highest security zone. Attacks during the past 13 months in which Hazaras have been could be linked to this escape and to Kurd, who heads the LJ in Balochistan.

Does the HDP support calls for a more autonomous Balochistan?

We do want greater autonomy for the province but we are not separatists. We are all for Pakistan. Even one of Pakistan’s army chiefs, General Musa Khan, was a Hazara. In fact, most officers in the army who have been inducted from Balochistan are ethnic Hazaras.

That said, Balochistan needs to be treated fairly and the exploitation of its resources must be stopped. Every government has suppressed the Baloch and even now, while the government denies it, the military operation in Balochistan is going on. Chief Minister Raisani and President Asif Zardari talked of reconciliation on several occasions, but did not take it forward the way it should be taken forward.

For a meaningful reconciliation between Islamabad and Balochistan, the military operation needs to be stopped and the missing political prisoners need to be released. The countless displaced must also be duly compensated. And for an effective continuation of such reconciliatory measures, free elections should be allowed and interference of intelligence agencies in politics should no longer be tolerated.

Are Hazaras among Balochistan’s missing persons? If not, why?

No, because we are not involved in any militant activity. We have also never been separatists.

What is the future of the Hazara community in Pakistan?

The community is very focused on education and is liberal in its approach. Pakistan Air Force’s first female pilot was a Hazara girl. So we are also for gender equality. Many Hazaras are also successful in trade and business. Now, the community is striving to consolidate its position in mainstream politics. As such, the future of the Hazara community in Pakistan is quite bright.

Many analysts are of the view that the tensions in Balochistan heightened after the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti. What do you think?

After the murders of Nawab Bugti and Balaach Marri, political consciousness and activism among the citizens of Balochistan heightened immensely. Even people who were pro-Islamabad once are now joining the resistance. The recent killings of Ghulam Baloch, Sher Mohammad and Lala Munir have only added to these tensions.

Do the Taliban have a presence in Quetta?

Not only are the Taliban in Quetta, but they are also in Zhob, Qila Saifullah, Khuzdar and other areas of Balochistan. In Quetta, they can literally be seen roaming around the city’s centre. But their main entrenchments are in areas that surround Quetta.

How can the Taliban have a foothold in Quetta without someone’s consent?

Invisible powers – those who want to destroy peace in Pakistan and think that the Taliban are good for the country – would consent to having them here. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Quetta is slowly being turned into another Swat.

As for the Hazaras, apart from being ideological opposites, we have historic grudges against the Taliban, who, according to an Amnesty International report, killed some 12,000 Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan during their reign in Afghanistan. So we are surely not on the list of people who would welcome them in Quetta and the rest of Balochistan.

The writer can be contacted at quratulain.siddiqui@gmail.com

The Criminal War Sneaks Into Yemen

U.S. Weighs Expanded Strikes in Yemen

By ADAM ENTOUS And SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials believe al Qaeda in Yemen is now collaborating more closely with allies in Pakistan and Somalia to plot attacks against the U.S., spurring the prospect that the administration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen.

AFP/Getty Images

Yemeni security man a check point in Abayn province in southern Yemen on Sunday, after seven al Qaeda members were killed in clashes with the army in the area.

Such a move would give the Central Intelligence Agency a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely be modeled after the CIA’s covert drone campaign in Pakistan.

The U.S. military’s Special Operation Forces and the CIA have been positioning surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to step up targeting of al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, and Somalia’s al Shabaab—Arabic for The Youth.

U.S. counterterrorism officials believe the two groups are working more closely together than ever. “The trajectory is pointing in that direction,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said of a growing nexus between the Islamist groups. He said the close proximity between Yemen and Somalia “allows for exchanges, training.” But he said the extent to which AQAP and al Shabaab are working together is “hard to measure in an absolute way.”

Authorizing covert CIA operations would further consolidate control of future strikes in the hands of the White House, which has enthusiastically embraced the agency’s covert drone program in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Congressional officials briefed on the matter compared the growing relationships to partnerships forged between al Qaeda’s leadership in Quetta, Pakistan, and increasingly capable groups like Taliban factions and the Haqqani network, a group based in the tribal areas of Pakistan that has been battling U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

“You’re looking at AQAP. You’re looking at al Qaeda in Somalia. You’re looking at al Qaeda even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and you see a whole bunch of folks and a whole bunch of activity, as ineffective as it may be right now, talking about and planning attacks in the U.S.,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, who is the top Republican on the House intelligence committee.

White House officials had no immediate comment.

Defense officials have long seen links between al Shabaab and al Qaeda as an emerging threat, but some in the CIA were more skeptical. Those disparate views appear to have converged during a recent White House review of the threat posed by the Somali group.

Some lawmakers and intelligence officials now think AQAP and al Shabaab could pose a more immediate threat to the U.S. than al Qaeda leaders now believed to be in Pakistan who were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but have largely gone into hiding. AQAP and al Shabaab have increasingly sophisticated recruitment techniques and are focused on less spectacular attacks that are harder for U.S. intelligence agencies to detect and to stop.

“It’s very possible the next terrorist attack will see its origins coming out of Yemen and Somalia rather than out of Pakistan,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

AQAP was behind the failed bombing of a U.S.-bound jetliner last Christmas Day, and has gained in stature in Islamist militant circles in large part because of the appeal of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born, Internet-savvy cleric who some officials see as the group’s leader-in-waiting.

U.S. officials have seen indications that al Qaeda leadership is discussing with AQAP an expanded role for Mr. Awlaki, who was allegedly involved in the Christmas bombing attempt and had communicated with Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan.

“They are moving people in who understand the U.S.,” a U.S. official said, adding that such people have a unique ability to inspire extremist sympathizers in the U.S. “They know what their vulnerabilities may be. It concerns me a lot.”

Al Qaeda’s central leadership and affiliates in Yemen and Somalia are increasingly strengthening their ties and have even discussed efforts to attack U.S. interests, U.S. officials say.

Mr. Hoekstra said he was particularly concerned about communications between al Qaeda in Yemen and Shabaab in Somalia. “We get indications their goals are more in alignment in terms of attacking American and western interests and doing it in Europe and the [U.S.] homeland,” he said.

This increasing alignment has spawned a debate within the administration over whether to try to replicate the type of drone campaign the CIA has mounted with success in Pakistan. The CIA has rapidly stepped up its drone hits in Pakistan under the Obama administration and is now conducting strikes at an average rate of two or three a week—which amount to about 50 so far this year. Since the beginning of the Obama administration the strikes have killed at least 650 militants, according to a U.S. official. Earlier this year, a U.S. counterterrorism official said around 20 noncombatants have been killed in the CIA campaign in Pakistan, and the number isn’t believed to have grown much since then.

Such a move would likely find bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Mr. Hoekstra said he would support a more aggressive effort like that in Yemen. “The more pressure we can keep putting on al Qaeda whether it’s in Yemen, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, the better off we will be,” he said. “If they asked for the funds, Congress would provide them with it.”

Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who serves both on the House intelligence and armed services committees, also said it would be helpful to take similar measures in Yemen.

“The intelligence community, broadly speaking will need to increase its focus on Yemen,” he said, adding that the efforts needed aren’t just CIA operations but also counterterrorism efforts of other agencies, including the U.S. military.

Giving the CIA greater control of counterterrorism efforts in Yemen could run into resistance from some in the Pentagon who feel a sense of ownership of a campaign against extremists that began last year.

The military’s Central Command under Gen. David Petraeus had lobbied aggressively to sharply increase military assistance to Yemen. The military has carried out several strikes against al Qaeda militants in coordination with Yemen’s government. One in May killed a deputy governor, angering Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

Afghan Police Trainee Goes Berserk, Kills 3 Spanish Trainers, Before Being Shot

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Rogue Afghan policeman shot, protesters target base

HERAT | Wed Aug 25, 2010 3:58am EDT

Afghanistan (Reuters) – NATO-led troops in a Spanish-run base in Afghanistan’s northwest shot and killed an Afghan policeman who had opened fire on them, officials said, sparking angry protests by at least 1,000 residents.

The governor of Badghis province in the northwest said the rogue policeman was killed by foreign troops after he opened fire on the troops during a firing exercise inside the base in the provincial capital, Qalay-e Naw.

“Three foreign soldiers were wounded in the firing by the police,” said governor Dilbar Jan Arman.

He said at least 1,000 protesters tried to storm the base, which lies near the border with Turkmenistan.

Residents however said thousands of protesters had set fire to one part of the base.

One protester, who identified himself only as Abdullah, said there were also casualties among the protesters after troops inside the base fired on them.

An official for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the protest, but did not have more information.

NATO-led forces are ramping up efforts to train the Afghan army and police to eventually take over, with U.S. President Barack Obama set to begin a scaled withdrawal of forces from July next year, depending on the readiness of Afghan units.

Doubts surfaced this week among senior U.S. commanders about that timetable, with the head of the U.S. Marines bluntly saying on Tuesday that setting such a schedule could give sustenance to the Taliban.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has set an ambitious target of 2014 for Afghans to take over complete security responsibility.

The push to ramp up Afghan forces has created tensions on the ground, and there have been several recent incidents of “rogue” soldiers and police turning on their trainers.

In July, an Afghan soldier killed three British Gurkha soldiers. Afghan authorities said last year they were tightening vetting procedures after a similar incident when a renegade soldier killed five British troops.

The rapid creation of a national army and police force since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 has seen tens of thousands of Afghans join up, raising concerns about the quality of the vetting process and whether former insurgents, or sympathizers, may be among them.

(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait and Sanjeev Miglani)

Rogue Afghan policeman kills three Spaniards

By Sharafuddin Sharafyar

HERAT, Afghanistan — Two Spanish police and an interpreter were killed when an Afghan policeman they were training turned on them before he was shot dead, officials said, as protests against the killing turned violent on Wednesday.

The incident appeared to be the latest in a string of recent attacks by “rogue” police and soldiers, underlining the pressure as NATO-led troops try to train Afghan forces rapidly to allow the handover of security responsibility to begin from mid-2011.

“The incident took place during a police training course and two Spanish policemen and an interpreter of Spanish nationality lost their lives,” said Spain’s Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told Spanish radio.

“The security forces responded to the attack and shot and killed the assassin,” he said.

The attack occurred during a weapons training exercise at a Spanish-run base in Qalay-e Naw, the provincial capital of northwestern Badghis province.

The incident sparked angry protests outside the base.

Badghis governor Dilbar Jan Arman said at least 1,000 protesters tried to storm the base, which lies near the border with Turkmenistan. Residents said thousands of protesters had set fire to one part of the base.

A Western-Oriented “Moderate Muslim” Political Movement Attacks Hezbollah Now?

[I smell a rat.  Here we have an anti-Hezbollah attack by a "moderate Muslim" Western-oriented outfit.  That sounds like a description of America's other premier moderate Muslim political wing, Fatullah Gulen.  If this escalates into a replay of last year's  Lebanon conflict between Hezbollah and Israel/Saudi/American-backed March 14 Alliance in south Beirut, then we will know who is behind it.] 

Al’Ahbash advocates Islamic pluralism and opposition to political activism(its slogan is “the resounding voice of moderation”).^[1] It also promotes its beliefs internationally through a major internet presence and regional offices, notably in the United States.^[2]

It is highly controversial within Islam for its anti-Salafi religious stance and with Sufi and other beliefs seen as heretical,^[1][2] and its political alliances (pro-Syria and conciliatory toward the West).

Hizbullah, Ahbash Officials Killed in Fierce Armed Clashes in Burj Abi Haidar

Three people were killed in fierce armed clashes between members of Hizbullah and partisans of the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (Al-Ahbash) in the Beirut area of Burj Abi Haidar on Tuesday evening.

Police told Agence France Presse the fighters were using shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in the fighting, in which several other people were wounded.

The state-run National News Agency said Hizbullah’s official Mohammed Fawwaz and his bodyguard Ali Mohammed Jawad were killed in the fighting.

Media reports said an Ahbash official was also killed in the clashes.

“A personal fight between a supporter of Hizbullah and another of Al-Ahbash erupted just after 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) in Beirut’s Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood and escalated into a firefight in which two men were killed, one of whom has been identified as a supporter of Hizbullah,” an army spokesman said.

“The army has intervened and is trying to restore calm in the area,” he said.

An AFP correspondent said troops had cordoned off the area and were firing warning shots into the air as several Red Cross ambulances arrived at the site of the clashes.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the fighting, which continued late into the evening in Burj Abi Haidar, an area in west Beirut considered a stronghold of parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri’s Shiite AMAL Movement.

AMAL members briefly joined the fight on Hizbullah’s side, an AMAL partisan told AFP.

Hizbullah, Lebanon’s most powerful political and military force, is backed by Syria and Iran.

Al-Ahbash is also pro-Syrian and describes itself as a charitable organization promoting Islamic culture.

It first came to light in 1983 and gathered strength during the Syrian military presence in Lebanon.

The fighting took place as Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed an all-women iftar banquet.(Naharnet-AFP)