Govt. Troops Raining Tear Gas On “Georgian Spring”

Govt. Troops Raining Tear Gas On “Georgian Spring”, posted with vodpod

Dead Terrorists Wore High Tech Black Uniforms

All terrorists killed in Navy base operation: Rehman Malik

Published: May 23, 2011

Malik talks to the media after PNS Mehran operation in Karachi. PHOTO: REUTERS

KARACHI: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that 10 people have been martyred and four terrorists have been confirmed killed in the operation between militants and security forces at the PNS Mehran base.

Talking to the media after a survey of the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, Malik said security forces launched a coordinated operation to regain control of the navy base.

“We wanted to bring all the logistics under one command against the enemy,” said Malik, adding that navy forces were assisted by commandos, firemen, Rangers and police.

He said that among the six terrorists present at the site, one suicide bomber’s head had been recovered, while four bodies were also found. He added, however, that two individuals were seen running off the base.

Malik mentioned that one terrorist, whose picture was shown, was ready to blow himself up.

The interior minister mentioned that the terrorist’s suicide jacket was still operational and there were several undetonated grenades on the site as well, adding that there might be explosives in the building which collapsed.

The terrorists had been using heavy weaponry, said Malik, “the kind no common man can afford to buy”.

He said the terrorists had to be receiving support and equipment from somewhere.

Malik said the terrorists were wearing “western clothes, had small beards and three of them had sharp features”.

He said two of the attackers look to be around 22 years of age and one of the suicide bombers was around 25 years of age. He said they were dressed in black clothes “like they do in movies”.

‘They were dressed like Star Wars characters,’ said Malik.

Joint investigation team formed

Malik said an investigation team led by the navy has been formed and will include members from the FIA, police, Rangers and other intelligence units. Malik said that team has been asked to file the report as soon as possible.

He added that terrorists were planning attacks on sensitive installations and army institutions, and that names of several officials who they were planning on attacking had come forward.

The interior minister said there was a chance the terrorists might carry out another operation.

Special tribute

“I want to pay special tribute to martyred Lieutenant Yasir, who gave up his life and saved valuable lives and assets,” Malik added.

He also acknowledged the services of the firemen and other security personnel who lost their lives.

“We are fighting a war against a cunning enemy,” said Malik, urging people to condemn those trying to destabilise Pakistan.

Foreigners present, but safe

Malik confirmed that six Americans and 11 Chinese citizens were present at PNS Mehran when the terrorists took over.

“The foreigners were all evacuated from the base. They were training our men about these aircrafts.”

Dharna disfavour

Referring to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s sit-in on Sunday, Malik said that Rangers’ attention had been diverted from sensitive targets and deployed at the dharna site.

“Please have mercy on Pakistan. Do not divert attention of Rangers, police and intelligence agencies. Please do dharnas when your county can bear it,” said Malik.

US Central Asia Policies and the River of Denial

Our Other Perennial Theme: Central Asia

by JOSHUA FOUST

REGISTRAN.NET

Going right back to our founding in 2003, Registan.net has been consumed with one very fundamental conceit: the region of Central Asia is important, both strategically and economically, to the world in general and the West in particular. So it was with some dismay that I read the latest CNAS report, which details their proposal for a regional strategy for South and Central Asia, and saw the actual region of Central Asia de-prioritized:

This report focuses primarily on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, viewing the surrounding neighbors as influential but ultimately less vital actors…

From a military standpoint, an improved network of trade and transport throughout Central Asia would provide the United States and NATO robust options for supplies beyond overland routes through the to Torkham Gate and the port of Karachi, removing one more point of Pakistani leverage over the allied effort in Afghanistan…

The United States will also need deeper intelligence and security relationships with the states of Central Asia to contain and defeat al Qaeda and its allies, as these terrorist groups seek new locales that offer respite from the intense pressure they now face in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, deepening these relationships creates a conundrum for the United States, since autocrats rule these countries and democratic movements are often suppressed. The United States must continue to advocate for democratic reforms while engaging in these counterterrorism partnerships. In the best case, military-to-military and other security relationships may help establish a standard of democratic civil-military values in the region. This is an important and consistent component of any U.S. military assistance efforts.

And that’s… just about it. Now, no one would argue that from the strict perspective of terrorism, Pakistan is the enormous elephant in the room: it is the greatest agent promoting instability, the most likely to fall apart, and the most dangerous to its neighbors should that eventually happen. Pakistan is why the war in Afghanistan has dragged on for so long—and Pakistani-trained militants are killing hundreds of NATO soldiers and thousands of Afghan civilians each year.

Now, all of that being said, CNAS includes in their report at least part of why the northern post-Soviet States are so important, even if they discount the real importance those states might hold. To an extent, I’m retreading the argument I laid out for The Century Foundation Task Force on Afghanistan, namely:

• The Central Asian states do not have the same interests in Afghanistan that we do, and those interests might in fact work at odds to what we want to accomplish regionally;
• The promise of economic growth and development is very appealing to the governments of the region, and a U.S.-led crusade against terror groups is very unappealing;
• Given their involvement with several militias and other organizations involved in the war, as well as their linguistic and social proximity to half of Afghanistan, the Central Asian states can play a positive role in any reconciliation efforts.

But these points also bear expanding upon. As CNAS notes, the state of strategic energy in the region will be very important, and the NDN provides a vital way of asserting alternative leverage against Pakistan (which routinely holds our access to the Torkham and Chaman border crossings hostage). We could probably add, in Kazakhstan at least, a compelling interest to prevent the proliferation and sale of dangerous nuclear materials (though this is a problem in most of the region).

CNAS is very wrong, however, about the need to deepen our relationship with the intelligence and security services in Central Asia (what is a “standard of democratic civil-military values” anyway?). It is that belief—that our interests are best served whilst in bed with the local thugs contributing to the problem—that brought us to our current dysfunctional relationship with Pakistan. We would do well to avoid the same mistake in Central Asia. Hopefully without ruffling too many feathers, this is a common mistake when people who do not understand Central Asia very well try to craft policy in the region.

As I noted in my six-year retrospective on the Andijon massacre, the U.S. government gets a deeply distorted picture of the players and problems in the region when they rely too heavily on the local governments for understanding. It was how the assumption—as false as they can get—thatAkromiya was behind the initial street protest took root in the DC policy community, and how, even to this day, some former administration members insist some super-secret shadowy Islamist group no one ever really hears from was behind an uprising that never happened.

Christian Bleuer has documented on more than one occasion that in Tajikistan—the Tavildara area “scares the shit out of us,” according to a senior Obama official in 2009—the reports of “insurgency” are little more than rumors. The “insurgency” there has very little to do with radical Islam, but is instead about social and political factors.

As a result, the U.S. in slowly funneling more and more money into “military training centers” both in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (they’re hiring!) to address a problem that actually has very little to do with us. In effect, we are helping those countries suppress their populations—with the unintentional consequence that we actually make the al Qaeda problem we’re seeking to contain much worse in the long run. (There is a related problem: the popular writers people listen to about Central Asia, like Ahmed Rashid, actually have no idea what they’re talking about and areconsistently wrong about the region.)

The end result of relying too much on host governments to get intelligence about a problem we don’t understand leads, predictably, to building bases to train militaries that don’t actually address the problem we’re concerned with. This is important, though not the most important thing to U.S. strategy in the region—and in fact, many would say that it suggests evenless engagement so as to prevent the accidental misuse of resources. But that’s not quite right either.

In a very real way, the Central Asian states represent what happens when the U.S. decides an area is unimportant to its interests—as it did in the 1990s.

Islam Karimov and Tahir Yuldashev (IMU), posted with vodpod

That’s Uzbek dictator (don’t sue me, bro!) Islom Karimov debating future IMU commander Tohir Yo’ldosh in Namangan in December of 1991. Karimov basically says that if he becomes a tyrant he can grant them their Islamic State, just as they want, but those pesky trappings of Democracy are getting in his way. There is a helluva lot more to the story of how Karimov responded to the existential threat the IMU posed to his government, but here’s what I find so interesting: as the 1990s wore on and the IMU moved first into Tajikistan and then into Northern Afghanistan, it became integrated into the power structure of the Taliban. And as the 2000s wound on, the IMU became much closer to al Qaeda.

This is badly simplifying a complex story for the sake of argument, but in large part the reason why we even face an IMU—which continues to assert control over Northern Afghanistan and threaten to undo the war’s progress there—is because we chose not to care about what was going on in Uzbekistan in the early-to-mid 1990s. Even today, a single-minded focus on counterterrorism clouds out actual understanding of the countries and groups involved, which leads us to misjudge both the situation and what to do about it.

To bring it back to the CNAS report: I do not dispute that Pakistan is the biggest problem to be addressed, and that the Central Asia states are at the periphery of this problem. However, a regional strategy is a regionalstrategy, and looking at Pakistan only in terms of Pakistan is mistaken and shortsighted. The CNAS authors hint at a regional strategic rivalry (disappointingly, they call it a “New Great Game”) between China and India. This is very true, but that game isn’t being played out only in Pakistan—it is also being played out in Kazakhstan, in Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere. Iran is one of Tajikistan’s largest investment donors.

The NDN through Central Asia is America’s best shot at disentangling our reliance on Pakistani territory for supplies and transit, thus increasing the leverage we could exercise over Pakistan’s support of militancy—yet it is given barely more than a passing mention by the CNAS authors. And let’s not even talk about Manas, and the many problems we’ve contributed to Kyrgyzstan through a laser-focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan to the exclusion of smaller, “unimportant,” states in the region (or, for that matter, the nasty choices our desire for an air base in the region has prompted policymakers to make).

While definitely not at the center of the immediate threat coming from the region South and Central Asia, it is shortsighted to pretend that the Central Asian states don’t really matter to the region’s future. They matter deeply, and if they’re not paid attention to, they have the potential to act as spoilers. They can also contribute substantially to a good outcome. But only if we take the time to understand what they’re like, what their priorities are, and how we can work with them and through them.

Wooing Cairo

By William deB. Mills

Everyone now wants to be friends with Egypt, to put it differently, everyone now wants to push Egypt to remake itself in a way convenient to them: Riyadh and Tel Aviv missing the nice, safe old dictatorship, Tehran searching for entrée into the Mideast community without having to bow down to Washington, Ankara looking to buttress its position as leader of the moderate middle. Meanwhile, Cairo’s face is properly veiled, as she considers her options.

The Suitors. Riyadh crassly flashed its wealth, first allegedly threatening economic punishment of Egypt were Egypt to pursue Mubarak and then offering a big ring (economic aid) at a price (“security”) that could be read as an insulting attempt to interfere in Egypt’s delicate domestic affairs, where the issue is not security but liberty. Riyadh also allowed Mubarak to make a speech on Saudi TV that widely irritated Egyptian reformers; Cairo’s investigation of a Saudi billionaire’s land deals in Egypt suggested a lack of proper deference to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.

Tel Aviv’s influence over Cairo remains palpable, but a cautious Cairo has slightly softened its own blockade of Gaza (which still buttresses that of Israel), and a Cairo-sponsored Hamas-Fatah deal that leaves Tel Aviv out of the loop is breaking news. With the collapse of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, it seems unlikely that Cairo can continue to keep the Gaza issue on the back burner. A newly free Egyptian populace demonstrated against Israel’s attack on Gaza on April 8 and again on April 12, and the newly independent Egyptian daily Al Ahram reported the events. Indeed, an Egyptian diplomat has reportedly stated that changes in Egyptian rules governing the Rafah border crossing, now that long-time critic of Mubarak’s Gaza policy–Nabil El-Arabi–is the new Egyptian foreign minister, are imminent. Tel Aviv needs a zero-based foreign policy rethink.

The tone of ties with Tehran has already improved, with the passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal in February and Foreign Minister El-Arabi’s recent public advocacy of thereestablishment of official relations. But Ankara has already traveled this path with Tehran, obtaining few Iranian concessions in return. Tehran needs to decide if it wants inclusion in a new Mideast that may be less dependent on Washington but still hardly “on Tehran’s side” or whether it prefers the status of remaining outsider and troublemaker.

Ankara faces both an opportunity and a trap. As Davutoglu’s discussions with the new Egyptian civilian leadership on April 10 illustrate, Turkey and Egypt can cooperate to resolve a host of regional problems, with Gaza perhaps the key test, assuming they can avoid falling into the trap of competing for leadership of a moderate bloc at the expense of substantive accomplishments.

Cairo’s Calculus. Egypt now has the opportunity to step into the limelight, with all those suitors precisely when Washington, having overplayed its regional hand, is nursing its wounds, struggling with the effects of mismanaged imperialist adventures and a mismanaged domestic economy. Whatever Egypt may lack in terms of money, oil, or military power, Egypt now has pride, stands center-stage with de facto leadership of the emerging bloc of post-dictator states, and has more flexibility than any other regional state: Cairo’s moment has arrived.

The mere hesitation of Cairo to commit herself creates a new regional fluidity: where diplomacy in the old Mideast tended to be zero-sum, it can now be positive-sum. Done carefully, Cairo can have her cake (independence) and eat it too (cooperation with Iran and Turkey, continued U.S. aid, peace with Israel, pride, status, and regional influence). Extremists, from Zionist expansionists to Salafi jihadists, won’t find such an outcome to be “positive-sum,” but all regional societies eventually will.

Ankara needs help making the case for a policy of good neighborliness to replace the old confrontationalism. Tehran needs the security guarantee of friendly ties with a major Sunni state to break the Arab-Israeli-U.S. front that has been opposing it. Saudi Arabia may find that it too has needs – the support of an independent regional power, rather than just a handful of sheikdom clients. Washington needs the cooperation of a Sunni power that is moderate, democratic, popular, and successful: what better antidote to jihadi terror could one imagine?

Storm Clouds.

So the storybook romance, in this case, is that the beautiful girl should marry no one, date everyone! But storm clouds darken the horizon:

Gaza. Israel has been playing Nazi Germany to Gaza’s Warsaw Ghetto. That approach is not working. Gaza, both literally as an incubator of extremism and figuratively as a global symbol of oppression, is a terrorism factory. If a new Egypt actually does emerge (not yet certain), Gaza will be an intolerable contradiction with an obvious “solution:” opening the Rafah border crossing. Can Cairo manage the instability that might result?

The Egyptian Economy. If Egypt’s revolution produces a democracy without economic progress, the democracy will quickly give way to chaos, zenophobia, fundamentalism, chauvinism or some other process of desperation. Total GNP and corporate profits are not the issue; payoff for the population is.

Egypt’s Governance. Notwithstanding all the bravery by Egyptian democracy protesters over the last five months, the prospects of Egypt achieving responsible governance remain dim. With military aid pouring in from Washington and economic aid pouring in from Riyadh, the temptation on the part of the “temporary” military dictatorship to hold onto political power will be hard to resist.

Iran’s Neo-Cons. What highly factionalized Tehran really wants remains unclear. Although working with Ankara and Cairo might be a deal attractive to Tehran national security types, it would also come at a domestic political cost to the anti-Saddam war generation of “Iranian neo-cons,” a political clique exploiting Palestine’s plight to pad their own resumes. An Ankara-Tehran-Cairo partnership could trim Israel’s sails, but such a partnership would require Tehran to make hard choices.

Bahrain. Repression of dissent in Bahrain will empower hard-line Iranians, making more likely sectarian violence and an Iranian-Saudi military clash. Riyadh’s Bahraini chickens will come home to roost, undermining efforts to promote regional compromise.

Revenge of the Fanatics. Fanatics, extremists, those who believe that only those who obey are “friends,” will seek to punish Cairo for moderation; Egypt will need to get its own house in order quickly in order to keep its balance.

Yemen. Yemen is a disaster unfolding before our eyes and a potential trap that could once again entangle a reactionary Riyadh with a progressive Cairo. Alternatively, a post-Saleh Yemen could conceivably join Egypt and Tunisia in a new progressive bloc that, given well managed coordination with Turkey, could revolutionize Mideast politics.

Cairo’s Tipping Point.

Washington can play a critical supporting role by guiding rather than opposing change. It should stake out a position in support of Bahraini democracy that will offer Bahraini dissenters an alternative to putting themselves in the hands of Iran. Washington needs to demonstrate that ties with the U.S. can translate into a better life for a mistreated population and, specifically, for a Shi’i majority. Equally urgent is a solution for Gaza that would remove Israel from the equation,accept Hamas as the political party currently in charge, and provide Hamas with the means to govern well in return for mutual security along the Gaza-Israel border. Washington’s standards for interacting with Damascus and Sana’a also need to be brought into sync.

Whether Washington helps or hinders, Cairo now finds herself at a tipping point. She can try to hand victory back to the counter-revolution, thereby encouraging empire-builders and advocates of the Zionist garrison state while empowering both Iranian rejectionists and militant Sunnis to whom many embittered moderates will feel forced to turn. The rising frustration of Tahrir Square activists at the self-appointed Cairo military government’s agonizing crawl toward democracy,Cairo’s endless toying with a pro-Palestinian policy regarding its joint border with Gaza, and Cairo’s acceptance of a massive economic aid package with God knows what secret strings attached from arch-conservative Riyadh all illustrate the obstacles facing Egyptians who advocate change. Clearly, the danger of Egypt tipping back into dictatorship remains very real.

Alternatively, Cairo can make Egypt the center of a new moderate, democratizing movement to offer the Mideast a positive-sum vision of progress for all of Egyptian society and for the whole Mideast. Cairo can tip toward a combination of domestic democratization and foreign policy independence based on Arab nationalism.

May she choose wisely.

The Talibanization of Saudi Women

[It will be a major test of Obama's character, or complete lack thereof, whether he fails to do the simple correct thing of standing-up for these democratic ladies.]

Saudis Face Problems Beyond Women Protesting Anti-Driving Laws

Manal Al-Sherif and the Right of Saudi Women to Drive Cars

Mark Whittington

COMMENTARY | Manal al-Sherif, a 32-year-old Saudi woman, is an unusual champion for civil rights. The right she is campaigning for and for which she has so far been arrested twice  is the right to drive a car, according to the Weekly Standard.

Al-Sherif is campaigning for Saudi women to defy the ban on driving June 17 as an act of civil disobedience. She was arrested Sunday for driving in the Saudi town of Khobar.

The Saudi regime, unique among every country in the world, forbids women to drive automobiles. Even countries such as Iran, not known for its adherence to the rights of women, do not go that far. Saudi women, who are able to at least own cars, are obliged to hire male drivers or else disguise themselves as men while at the wheel.

Besides official sanctions, there seems to be an unofficial backlash among Saudi men. Before it was taken down, a Facebook page urged Saudi men to beat women who choose to defy the driving ban, according to Fox News.

The idea of Saudi women driving automobiles to defy the ban on driving harkens back to civil rights protestors in the Jim Crow-era South who rode at the front of buses and sat at whites-only lunch counters in defiance of discriminatory laws extant at that time. However, unlike Mississippi or Georgia of the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia is somewhat insulated from the pressure of public opinion.

First, it is easy for Saudi authorities to deny access to the media. It is true that civil rights protestors will likely be able to get the word out about suppression of women through the Internet. However, the effects of media exposure depend on the capacity of Saudi Muslims to be embarrassed by their own behavior. When one believes that the maltreatment of women is in accordance with the will of God, then the opinion of men does not hold as much weight.

Second, the world community is somewhat reticent to pressure Saudi Arabia on the subject of its numerous human rights abuses, especially against women, because of its oil. Many of the world’s oil reserves happen

to reside beneath the sands of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the need of oil to fuel modern, technological civilization gives the Saudis leeway to do what they want.

Of course, the upheaval of the so-called “Arab Spring” has yet to reach Saudi Arabia. If it does, the world will be rocked to its foundations. Chaos occurring where the life’s blood of civilization resides will benefit no one. It may behoove the authorities to grant their people freedom now, before they decide to take it later.

Source: Saudi Wahhabis vs. Women Who Want to Drive Cars, Rfan al Alaw and Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard, May 25, 2011

Saudi Facebook Campaign Calls for Men to Beat Women Drivers, Fox News, May 25, 2011

Published by Mark Whittington

Mark R. Whittington is a writer residing in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo and Nocturne. He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington Post, USA Today…

The Middle East–The Persian Illusion

Shashank Joshi, June 2011

The World Today, Volume 67, Number 6

A spectre is haunting the Persian Gulf – the spectre of Persia. The era of the Gulf’s most iconic bête noire, Saudi born and raised Osama bin Laden, has drawn to a close. But outsiders persistently underestimate the degree to which it is a state – the Islamic republic of Iran – rather than a non-state group, al Qaeda, which today captures the strategic attention of those in the corridors of power in Riyadh, Manama, and Amman.

Dangling a few hundred kilometres above the Gulf states, like a geopolitical Sword of Damocles, post-revolutionary Iran has long been the principal strategic concern for the sheikdoms and emirates on the other side of the water.

And yet, the strenuous efforts to place Iran at the heart of pro-democracy uprisings reveal a more cynical and selfserving effort at threat inflation, distracting attention from the unavoidable reform agenda dodged for so long by the Gulf autocracies.

Of course, the Iranian threat is not without pedigree. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the export of revolution – sudur inquilab – was adopted as official policy. Even after its Office for Global Revolution closed in the late 1980s, Tehran was abetting (mainly, but not exclusively, Shia) armed movements in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia responded in kind by backing the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sunni militias in revolutionary Lebanon, and extremist parties in Pakistan, to mention but a few. Saudi state institutions disseminated a retrograde and radical interpretation of Islam – its Wahhabi variant – around the world drawing, from the 1970s, on their extraordinary oil wealth. Both these sets of actions were largely destabilising and often subversive of nascent democratic currents.

Then, in the five years after 9/11, Iran found not only that two long-standing adversaries – the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq – had been eliminated by the United States, but also that its ally Hezbollah had been emboldened and aggrandised by an urban war with Israel. Iran’s regional clout was at a high, though no one was quite clear on whether this ‘clout’ was usable. Moreover, its opaque nuclear programme raised the troubling question of whether, like Pakistan with its support for Lashkar-e-Taiba and other jihadi groups, Iran might soon possess a nuclear shield behind which it could safely wield the instrument of proxy militants.

It is therefore unsurprising that states like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are seemingly convinced that pro-democracy protesters are Iranian fifth columnists, less interested in basic rights for downtrodden Shias than in clerical rule and Iranian hegemony over Arab lands. It is even less surprising that western observers have bought this line, and are muted in their criticism for the de facto Saudi occupation. After all, Iran claimed Bahrain as its own territory for many years, and has been locked in a pseudo-sectarian cold war with the wider Saudi-led bloc.

But the truth is likely to be less sinister. Firstly, Bahraini protesters agitated not for the overthrow of minority Sunni rule, but for their fair treatment within existing political structures. Their demands for political liberalisation were predicated on the royal family’s own pretensions to reform, which have stalled or regressed in the past five years.

In 2002, the king tore up the results of an earlier referendum and introduced his own constitution that gave greater power to the forty appointed parliamentarians rather than their forty elected colleagues. In the interim, widely accepted allegations of torture and arbitrary detention have been rife.

During this crisis, it was the regime’s use of often indiscriminate violence, divisive sectarian rhetoric, and imported Sunni mercenaries that transformed a restrained and cross-sectarian protest movement into something more unruly, with a distinctly anti-Sunni inflection. The Bahraini and Saudi monarchies know this, but are obviously unwilling to articulate that their violent techniques are aimed at the perpetuation of their rule rather than national security.

Secondly, the effort by the Saudi and Bahraini monarchies to slander the protesters as Iranian stooges was a disturbing echo of early modern Europe’s obsession with ‘Popish plots’ concocted by subversive Catholic minorities.

In fact, most Bahraini Shias are Arabs and have little interest in serving Iran’s regional ambitions. Iran responded to the Saudi injection of troops into Bahrain by withdrawing its ambassador and urging ‘resistance’, but this was of little relevance or interest to nationalist protesters, many of whom had constructively worked within Bahrain’s progressively enfeebled parliament and had set out with a gradualist, not radical, agenda. Al-Wefaq, the paramount Shia political grouping, formed in the aftermath of an anti-Shia crackdown in the 1990s, has worked inside Bahrain’s parliament for five years despite continuous gerrymandering and repression. Many Shia groups have also noted the example of Lebanon, where Iran had helped Hezbollah shatter that country’s institutions, as a cautionary tale.

Thirdly, the Iraq war ought to chasten western policymakers about the dangers of threat inflation. It can undercut efforts at engagement, harden already rigid differences in perception, and induce reckless and disproportionate policy responses. This does not require appeasement, but does require identifying between actual and amorphous threats.

A sign of how low the threshold for alarm has fallen is the reaction to Iran’s transparently diversionary effort to send two warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since 1979. Aside from undertaking a perfectly legal journey, neither they nor Iran’s creaking navy present any conceivable military or intelligence threat to Israel or Gulf states. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime acted not from strength, but weakness. Yet regional powers, both Arab and Israeli, unwisely rose to the taunt, and expressed dark and implausible visions of encirclement.

None of this is to deny that Iran is likely, willing, and probably able to foment some degree of violence inside Bahrain and its anxious neighbours, if it was determined to do so. It is prudent to warn off Iran, given its history of intervention and impetuous diplomacy.

But what is more likely to render aggrieved Shia groups receptive to Iranian meddling: peaceful dialogue and meaningful reform, or bitter sectarian accusations and crushing violence?

The Saudi-led effort to vilify essentially moderate demonstrators will, in the long-term, radicalise these groups, harden confessional fault-lines, and thereby produce the very Iranian backlash on which these policies are conditioned.

Shashank Joshi is a doctoral student of International Relations at Harvard University and is an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Russia Joins Libya Wolf Pack–Syria Is Next

Moscow Welcomes Libyan Opposition Leader

by Staff Reporter (iWireNews.com and OfficialWire) MOSCOW (RUSSIA) OfficialWire News Bureau

Moscow recognizes the Libyan Transitional National Council as the legitimate overseer of the future of the country, the Russian foreign minister said Tuesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting with Libyan opposition member Abdel Rahman Shalgam the transitional group was lobbying for influence in Libya’s future. “The Transitional National Council does not seek to be recognized as the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people but wants to be seen as a legitimate partner in negotiations on Libya’s future,” the foreign minister was quoted by the state-run news agency RIA Novosti as saying. Moscow abstained from votes at the U.N. Security Council that authorized military force in Libya. London has reached out to the transitional council and Washington is said to be hosting an office for the opposition group but stopped short of formal recognition. The U.S. role in enforcing the U.N.-mandated military intervention in Libya is controversial. Critics of U.S. President Barack Obama said his administration overstepped its authority by committed military assets to the conflict. “There are serious costs to your administration’s failure to appropriately engage Congress on these important matters,” warned U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. U.S. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., however, introduced a bipartisan measure that expresses support for Obama’s decisions on the Libyan conflict.

Dubious Reports of Major “Al-CIA-da” Concentration In Pakistan’s Tribal Region

Foreign fighters massing in Pakistan tribal region to launch attacks in Afghanistan

Foreign fighters are massing in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas as they prepare to launch attacks across the border on international troops in Afghanistan, according to an al-Qaeda member captured by Nato.

Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Rob Crilly, Islamabad

The Moroccan man, who was captured earlier this month, has told interrogators how he helped fighters enter Afghanistan.

“After his capture the facilitator provided details about his personal travel from Germany,” said a statement from the International Security Assistance Force.

“He also observed foreigners from many countries converging inPakistan to conduct attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.” Ten insurgents died during the exchange of fire. Passports from France, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were found among the bodies.

The unnamed captive, who had been living in Germany, described travelling through Iran and Pakistan – a well-known route for foreign fighters to reach Afghanistan.

His evidence of foreigners arriving will increase fears that the death of Osama bin Laden – killed by American special forces in Pakistan on May 2 – will provoke a backlash against international forces in Afghanistan.

At any one time the US military estimates there are about 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

So far Pakistan has borne the brunt of the revenge attacks. On Wednesday, a car bomb demolished a police station in Peshawar, killing five people, the latest in a bloody string of bombings in Pakistan since the al-Qaeda leader was shot dead.

Pakistan’s mountainous regions along the border are out of reach of the 130,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan and are known as havens for al-Qaeda linked groups, providing bases for cross-border attacks.

The US has repeatedly asked the Pakistan military to launch operations in North Waziristan in order to protect troops in Afghanistan.

However, Pakistan has so far refused saying its forces are overstretched elsewhere although suspicions remain that Islamabad retains links to militant groups that it once nurtured in their fight against Soviet occupation.

Instead, the CIA runs a secret programme of drone strikes to target terrorist suspects.

As many as 20 Britons are thought to be among the recruits at training camps.

Indian Expert On the Hidden Meaning of Abbottabad

Indian Expert: Pakistan Hit Bin Laden

Abhishek Raghunath and S. Srinivasan

Pakistan might gain a strategic edge in South Asia as quid pro quo for its covert role in the killing of Osama bin Laden. India must move quickly to nullify it, strategic affairs expert Sundeep Waslekar tells us.

How do you see the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan changing?
This [killing of Osama bin Laden] is clearly a deal between the U.S. and Pakistan. What we don’t know are the terms of the deal. And until we know the terms of the deal, we will not be able to make any kind of evaluation of what has happened and a forecast of what will happen, both in terms of a bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan and also in terms of its wider implications for South Asia, particularly India and Afghanistan. I am not sure whether we will ever know the terms of the deal. This may remain one of the best-guarded secrets in geopolitics.

America got bin Laden and it is vacating Afghanistan slowly. Does it need Pakistan at all now?
Pakistan has been a close ally of the U.S. since the 1950s and at that time there was no al-Qaeda and no Osama bin Laden. In fact, Osama bin Laden was a product of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and not the other way around. The death of bin Laden may have a certain impact on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship but it doesn’t take away the fundamentals that have built this relationship since the 1950s.

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been strained recently. How do you see it now?
The point is that their relationship has been very close. Despite the cordiality, there has always been a strain. Both cordiality and strain are contradictory but consistent characteristics of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. I wouldn’t take the recent strain very seriously. Bin Laden was found in a house which is a kilometer from the [Kakul] Pakistan military academy. This has been described by various experts as the equivalent of Sandhurst and West Point which are the leading military academies in the U.K. and U.S. It was a house which was very noticeable. It was a house with high walls, barbed wires and no Internet or telephone connection. So a large haveli which is being covered in this way and which has got security guards would be very conspicuous.

The circumstantial evidence shows that the Pakistan government, particularly the Pakistani military, was aware of the precise whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Whether they have arranged his stay there is something we don’t know. And it is quite possible that if they have been aware, they have played some role in his protection. And the decision to kill Osama bin Laden was a political decision taken by Pakistan after being aware of his existence for several years. It’s also likely that the safe house was provided to him so close to the military academy precisely for protection, so that no one would come and attack him there.

What price will Pakistan extract from the U.S. for this decision?
That is something we don’t know. Pakistan has two main strategic concerns: India and Afghanistan. And obviously, any Pakistani ruler who tries to extract a price will do it with regards to India and Afghanistan. With regards to Afghanistan, it’s a lot clearer. This incident provides a justification for the U.S. to reduce its military presence and also advise NATO to do the same. Once their presence is reduced, it would be very easy for Pakistani military to deploy its stooges, whether they are the Taliban or any other forces, in Kabul. Basically, Pakistan would get a much greater say in the Afghan power structure. The U.S. may not withdraw from Afghanistan completely because it has a lot of strategic value but it will withdraw substantially. But once the U.S. leaves, Pakistan will get a certain degree of control in Kabul and that gives it a strategic edge against India. And that could be a deal that doesn’t have to hurt India directly. [But it will hurt us indirectly]. Pakistan’s second security concern is India. The U.S. could pressure India for talks on something like Kashmir. We don’t know for sure.

What’s the future of al-Qaeda and the Taliban?
The history of every terrorist organization in recent times shows that whenever the head of the organization is killed, the organization diminishes more or less. For example, when Prabhakaran was killed, the LTTE was also over.

In al-Qaeda’s case, it is even easier. In 2001, its strength was around 1,000 which had come down to 100 in any case. It has been emasculated. But that is not saying much. I believe what the Pakistani military has done is that they have reduced the strategic value of al-Qaeda and they have in proportion increased the strategic value of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. And Lashkar has emerged as the new al-Qaeda.

So al-Qaeda being eliminated doesn’t really affect anybody except in its symbolic value. Much of al-Qaeda’s role in the last two years has been taken over by an organization called Pakistan Taliban. What you have is organizations that have succeeded al-Qaeda rather than a succession in al-Qaeda.

Is the sense of safety that people are feeling now misplaced?
The ability to inflict a large attack like one comparable to 9/11 is perhaps not there. But the ability to inflict small attacks would be there with many organizations. Terrorism that affects common people will continue but something that affects the honor of large states in the West, for the time being, would not be there. Until Lashkar-e-Tayyaba makes up its mind if it wants to confine itself to the Indian sub-continent. That is the big question: Whether Lashkar-e-Tayyaba will confine itself to South Asia or go beyond it?

a diplomatic strategy which should begin now to protect moderate forces in Afghanistan and to garner international support around it. And that approach, even the Americans won’t be able to ignore completely despite the promises they might have made to Pakistan. You don’t depend on the U.S. completely. I think this is where India should really reach out to Europe.

For the medium term, we should consolidate our relationship with Central Asian republics. Therefore, Pakistan’s influence cannot extend beyond the Western side. We have a military base in Tajikistan. One of the most important strategic moves that India can make is to bolster its military base in Tajikistan and make a public statement about it. That will give a signal that we are there to protect Afghanistan and that no one should take Afghanistan for granted.

Sundeep Waslekar is president, Strategic Foresight Group.

This article appears in the May 20 issue of Forbes India, a Forbes Media licensee.

Will the Saudis Kill the Arab Spring?

Illustration by Ryan Waller

By Vali Nasr

Vali Nasr is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. From 2009 to 2010, he was an advisor to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

In his speech last week on the Middle East, President Barack Obamaleft little doubt that America stands with the people of the region in their demand for change. This puts the U.S. on a collision course with Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom has emerged as the leader of a new rejectionist front that is determined to defeat popular demand for reform. One would have expected Iran to lead such a front, but instead it is America’s closest Arab ally in the region that is seeking to defeat our policy. Though the president made no mention of Saudi Arabia in his speech, in the near term, dealing with the kingdom is the biggest challenge facing the U.S. in the Middle East.

Saudi rulers have made clear that they find U.S. support for democracy naive and dangerous, an existential threat to the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. If the U.S. supports democracy, the Saudis are signaling, it can no longer count on its special bond with Riyadh (read: oil).

The Saudi threat is intended to present U.S. policymakers with a choice between U.S. values and U.S. interests. The idea is that either Washington stays the course, supporting the Arab people’s demands for reform, and risks a rift with Saudi Arabia, or it protects that relationship and loses the rest of the Middle East.

In fact, the choice between U.S. values and interests is a false choice, as the president made clear in his speech. Now, American policy has to reflect this truth. So far, Washington has tried to placate the Saudis. It is time we challenged their words and deeds, instead.

Tectonic Shift

It’s no surprise that the tectonic shift in Arab politics, a popular revolt calling for reform, openness and accountability, worries the Saudi monarchy. The kingdom, like the rest of the Arab world, has a young population that wants jobs, freedom and a say in politics. Thirty-nine percent of Saudis ages 20 to 24 are unemployed. Having watched Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak step down amid protests in which Egyptian youths played a key role, Saudi King Abdullah announced $35 billion in new social benefits to head off demands for reform at home. That bought the monarchy time, but too many dominoes are falling in its direction to allow for complacency. Violent protests on Saudi Arabia’s borders, inside Bahrain and Yemen, have been particularly troubling.

From the outset, Riyadh encouraged every Arab ruler to resist reform. The more Washington embraced the Arab Spring, the more Riyadh worried. Saudi rulers took particular exception to Washington’s call for Mubarak to resign, and when the U.S. urged reform in Bahrain, they saw U.S. policy as a direct threat to them.

Encouraging Dialog

Washington had encouraged Bahrain’s king, Hamad ibn Isa al- Khalifa, to enter into dialog with the opposition there, and American diplomats were directly involved in mediating talks. An agreement was almost at hand when Riyadh took the rare step of undermining U.S. policy. Saudi rulers persuaded Bahrain to scuttle the talks and bring in troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to suppress the protests.

The weak excuse for this clumsy crackdown was that Iran was orchestrating the protests and Iranian expansionism had to be stopped in its tracks. A local protest inspired by popular demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt was transformed into a regional conflict. The Saudi strategy was clear: shift the focus from democracy to the bogeyman, Iran.

Emboldened by the outcome in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia has mounted a regional strategy to defeat the Arab Spring. Riyadh has called for expansion of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Arab countries that are oil-producing and sit on the Persian Gulf, to include Jordan and Morocco, which qualify on neither count.

Mollifying Protesters

The expansion would transform the GCC into the Arab world’s club of monarchies. Membership would provide cash-strapped Jordan and Morocco ample financial resources to mollify angry protesters. In return, they would have to abandon reform and be prepared to lend their more serious militaries to put down protests should they erupt again in Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia’s new posture is a serious challenge to U.S. policy. Conceding to Saudi demands will put America on the wrong side of a widely popular historical transformation in the region, and thus will only hurt U.S. interests in the long run. Bahrain’s heavy-handed suppression of protests has already dented American standing in the region.

Having Saudi Arabia deliberately ratchet up tensions with Iran is also risky. The Persian Gulfmonarchies don’t have the military muscle to back their aggressive policy toward Iran. Their credibility depends on U.S. support. And if baiting Iran escalates tensions in the Gulf, U.S. interests and the sheer size of its military presence there will inevitably put the U.S. in the middle of the conflict.

Confronting the Challenge

For all these reasons, the U.S. needs to confront the Saudi challenge head-on. Failure to do so will hurt our standing in the region and alienate public opinion there, which will only benefit Iran.

The U.S. should assert its leadership role in the Middle East. It should make clear that, our close ties to Saudi Arabia notwithstanding, we will be as vigilant in pushing for reform in Bahrain as in Libya or Syria. Washington should be prepared to act if the monarchy in Bahrain doesn’t end its crackdown and start a meaningful dialog with the opposition. We should also make clear to Jordan and Morocco that America supports their reform initiatives and won’t look favorably on reversing course.

It’s true that we rely on the GCC for oil, but there will be no interruption in the flow of oil if we disagree with the Gulf states. Their livelihood depends on oil; to profit from it, they must sell it. Moreover, the GCC countries need us to protect their security, as was made amply clear in both wars with Iraq. What should concern us, then, is not the Saudi threats but rather how the people of the Middle East will judge our policies at this critical juncture in their history.

(Vali Nasr is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the author of this column: Vali Nasr at vali.nasr@tufts.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this column: Lisa Beyer at lbeyer3@bloomberg.net

No deal on Gwadar port, says China

ANANTH KRISHNAN

APPakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, left, and Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing on May 20, 2011

The Chinese government on Tuesday said it was unaware of any deal with Pakistan to take over operations at the Gwadar port, contradicting Pakistani officials’ claims that the project had been discussed during Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani’s recent visit to Beijing.

“It is my understanding that during the visit last week this issue was not touched upon,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu told reporters here on Tuesday.

She was responding to a question about Pakistan Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar’s statement on Saturday that China had “acceded to Pakistan’s request to take over operations” at Gwadar, following the expiration of the current agreement with the Singapore Port Authority.

He had also suggested the two sides had discussed the building of a naval base during Mr. Gilani’s visit. While Pakistan had expressed its gratitude for Chinese help in building a port, the country would be “more grateful” if the Chinese agreed to build a base, he had said.

But Ms. Jiang said she “had not heard of” this project being discussed.

She did, however, add that China would continue assisting development projects in Pakistan. “Over the years, China has provided assistance to Pakistan within its capacity,” she said. “We hope this assistance will help Pakistan to improve its livelihood and realise sustainable economic and social development and we will continue to do so in the future.”

During Mr. Gilani’s visit, the two countries agreed a deal for China to expedite providing 50 JF-17 Thunder aircraft. His visit was seen as bringing the two allies closer, amid recent tensions between the United States and Pakistan in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2.

The Defence Minister’s statement on Gwadar was seen as a further indication of China stepping up military ties, even as U.S. lawmakers called for a scaling back of support.

But even as Pakistani officials have drawn attention to both countries’ close defence ties following the strains with the U.S., Chinese officials and analysts have, contrastingly, sought to play down any suggestions that a rift was bringing the “all-weather” allies even closer.

Officials have also voiced concern that any toning down of U.S. support would lead to instability, with China expressing reluctance to provide any military support even while seeking a greater economic footprint in the region.

“The international community should give Pakistan more understanding and support,” Ms. Jiang said. “The stability and development of Pakistan is closely linked to the stability and development of the South Asia.”

Rong Ying, vice-president of the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS) and an expert on Sino-Pakistan relations, added in an interview with The Hinduthat defence ties “were not the focus” of Mr. Gilani’s visit, which, he said, would have no significant bearing on either country’s ties with the U.S.

PNS Mehran attack: Nationality of 4 terrorists identified

[Is that a tattoo on this dead terrorist's forearm?]

http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakistans-war/109914-attack-pns-mehran-base-paf-faisal-base-125.html#post1778631

http://www.siasat.pk/forum/showthread.php?66816-Exculsive-Image-of-Terrorist-Killed-in-PNS-Mehran-Operation.&s=0d90484d3dea8704d70bb0a98f94c316&p=406352&viewfull=1#post406352

By JAZBABLOG

KARACHI: Four terrorists killed during PNS Mehran operation had been identified in terms of their nationality as 3 among them were Uzbek and one was Afghan national.

The post mortem reports of the dead terrorists have been completed and samples of DNA test have been handed over to police. Bodies of terrorists have been shifted to Edhi mortuary.

Abdul Sattar Edhi told that they would be buried in Edhi graveyard. The identification of two bodies became possible while the bodies of remaining two are torn into pieces.

PNS Mehran Attacker Dead Bodies in Hospital

Latest Terrorist Image Exclusive PNS Mehran Attack, posted with vodpod

Controlling the Internet–Weaponizing the Web

Sarkozy: Gov’ts must regulate the Internet

PARIS – From wires dispatches

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy gestures, during a e-G8 conference. AP photo.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that governments need to lay down and enforce rules in the digital world – even as they need to foster creativity and economic growth with the Internet.

The French leader acknowledged he took a risk and faced mistrust over his push for the so-called e-G8 conference when Japan’s earthquake, fiscal troubles in Europe and revolutions in the Arab world have filled the plate for the Group of Eight summit later this week in Normandy.

The two-day gathering is bringing together Internet and media world gurus like Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Paris plays host to the e-G8 at a time about simmering concerns that some countries – including several in Europe, including France – have taken measures or enacted laws that could curb Internet freedoms.

And it comes after social media played an important role in a push for greater freedoms across the Arab world – with many people mobilized and brought together through Twitter or Facebook.

Conflicting visions about the Internet – notably about how regulated it should be – has pit companies like Amazon.com and Google in opposition with governments who to protect privacy and copyrights online. Sarkozy alluded to the tensions. “We need to hear your aspirations, your needs,” Sarkozy told hundreds of business executives, creative minds and journalists at Tuileries Gardens in Paris. “You need to hear our limits, our red lines.”

Policymakers like Sarkozy say the blistering pace of growth has often left regulators behind. He said a “balance” needed to be struck to prevent misuse of the Internet – such as to protect children who might Web surf – and boost its potential as a tool for economic growth.

“That’s the meeting point, and the balance, that we are going to try to reach: to keep everything that you bring, and at the same time, understand there is a minimum value of rules that must not impede your development but will allow for us to continue together toward much higher growth rates,” said Sarkozy.

The two-day conference of top digerati is billed as the first of its kind, and is expected to draw recommendations for the G8 summit Thursday and Friday in the English Channel resort town of Deauville.

2nd Kazakh Security Services Bombing Since Joining US/Afghan Coalition

[SEE: Taliban warns Muslim Kazakhstan on entering Afghan war ]

Kazakh blast kills two outside security building

ASTANA – Agence France-Presse

A blast tore through a car Tuesday outside a security service building in the capital of Kazakhstan, killing two people in the second such incident in the usually stable Central Asian nation in a week.

Initial reports attributed the blast to a suicide bomber, but the ex-Soviet republic’s interior ministry later played down the terror link. The interior ministry said in a statement that two people died after a “spontaneous explosion” tore through the car.

“These circumstances point to the absence of signs that this was an act of terror,” the ministry statement said. Interior Minister Kalmukhanbet Kasymov later told reporters that “there is no evidence of their involvement in any religious or extremist organizations.”

The blast coincided with a visit to Astana by Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus who is negotiating an emergency loan for his ex-Soviet state. The blast went off early Tuesday morning on a square that includes a remand prison operated by the Committe of National Security, KNB, the country’s main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

But the square also has a train station, and Kazakh state media only referred to that building when telling the nation about the location of the blast. The police also dismissed initial reports by the private Russian-based Interfax news agency that attributed the incident to a suicide bomber.

The blast came just a week after a suicide bombing outside the headquarters of the security service in the northwestern Kazakh city of Aktobe, which wounded three people including a member of the security services.

Such attacks had until now been rare in Kazakhstan, the most stable and prosperous of the Central Asian republics, whose vast mineral wealth has been overseen since the Soviet era by President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The veteran leader won an overwhelming re-election last month that was once again criticized by observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has never recognized a Kazakh election as fair.

Nazarbayev has nevertheless enjoyed broad public support, fostering a business-friendly economic environment and building warm ties with both Russia and China as well as the United States.

The country’s parliament, which includes only members of the ruling party, recently passed a draft law allowing Kazakh servicemen to join the international coalition in Afghanistan. A top U.S. embassy official in Astana said Monday that the move should not directly threaten Kazakh security, but warned of the continuing dangers posed by the Taliban.

This Neocon Is Asking a Lot of Important Questions on Obama’s Reversal Policies

In September, Obama’s Middle East Policy Will Collapse

BARRY RUBIN

Prediction: In September, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy blows up in his (and our) face(s). It’s totally obvious and yet no one is focusing on it.

I’m not referring to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for unilateral independence at the UN. I’m referring to the Egyptian parliamentary election.

It is totally obvious that in that election Egypt will elect a radical, anti-American, hate-Israel parliament which will then write the country’s new constitution. This is a turning point in Middle East history. And Obama is unaware of it. Quite the contrary, he declared in his State Department speech that everything is great with the “Arab spring.” Nothing can go wrong. It is the expression of a yearning for prosperity and freedom.

The Arab spring began when a frustrated man in Tunisia set himself on fire.

It will now move to the new phase: the whole Middle East will be set on fire.

Is that alarmist? Not at all, except in the sense that when one sees a fire he sets off the fire alarm.

Don’t be distracted by the question of whether Islamists will have a majority or the even narrower question of whether the Muslim Brotherhood will have a majority.

There WILL be a radical majority, there MIGHT be an Islamist majority, there won’t be a Muslim Brotherhood majority but it will ALMOST CERTAINLY be the largest single party.

Why do I say this? Well, Amr Moussa, who isn’t an Islamist and is Egypt’s most popular and important Egyptian politician says so.

There is no sign—no sign—that the moderates are organizing serious parties. Instead of getting to work, they’re complaining. Meanwhile four radical, anti-American, passionately anti-Israel forces are organizing:

–The Muslim Brotherhood, which should get one-third or more of the seats and is contesting half of them, obviously in the districts where it has the best chance of winning.

–Smaller and even more radical Islamist parties (referred to as Salafists) who could form agreements with the Brotherhood so that they won’t hurt each other’s chances.

–Left-wing neo-Marxist parties.

–Radical nationalists.

There will probably be a number of independents who will be courted and won over by one of these blocs.

Imagine the day after that election. What will the mass media say? What will the American politicians say?

–That they were wrong about the Egyptian revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood?

–That by helping to bring down the old regime, U.S. policy foisted a disaster on the region and on its own interests?

–That by celebrating how great the “Arab Spring” is and refusing to acknowledge the real threats and problems, Obama made catastrophic errors.

–That his policy has led to many advances for America’s enemies?

–That Israel is in a far worse strategic situation and certainly can’t and shouldn’t make any more concessions?

–That the Islamists are emboldened and thus both Hamas and the radicals who run Fatah are taking an even harder line?

–That the loss of faith in America by its Arab allies is now undeniably clear and they are scrambling to make their own deals with Iran and other extremists?

–That there is a real possibility of a war in which Egypt either joins directly or backs Hamas? Imagine, Egypt stays “neutral” but nobody stops thousands of Egyptian volunteers from crossing into Gaza to fight or even across the Egypt-Israel border to launch terror attacks?

–What will the Obama Administration do if in practice Egypt tears up the Israel-Egypt peace treaty even if it pretends that it isn’t doing so?

–People are insisting that if Hamas in practice becomes part of the Palestinian Authority that the United States, and certainly Congress, will cut off aid. But what will happen when the Obama Administration does everything possible to prevent an aid cut-off and nothing possible to pressure the PA into changing its policy or behavior?

These are not speculations. These things WILL happen. Nobody in the United States or Europe is seriously discussing these scenarios and what should be done about them.

And I didn’t even mention the Egyptian presidential elections or, for that matter:

–An emboldened Turkish Islamist government if it wins the June 11 elections the:re,

–A Lebanese government controlled by Syria and its clients, especially Hizballah, if it ever gets a new prime minister and cabinet installed in that country.

–The survival of an anti-American Syrian government that has murdered hundreds of its citizens and will be arresting and torturing thousands, in part due to the Obama Administration’s failure to try to overthrow it?

–The sight of Iran ever closer to nuclear weapons and admissions that the sanctions had only a limited effect?

These are not far-out scenarios. All of them have a 90 percent or more likelihood of happening.

I don’t want to take your time here for a history lesson but consider precedents:

–1952. Radical regime takes power in Egypt. U.S. realizes the threat by April 1955 but then saves the regime from being overthrown by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956. Result: Violence, disruption, and anti-American problems in the region for decades.

–1979. Radical regime takes power in Iran. U.S. policy makes a mess in dealing with the revolutionary crisis. Americans taken hostage, revolutionary Islamism flourishes, thirty plus years of violence, September 11, Islamist movement still growing.

September 2011 will be another of those moments. Mark that on your calendar. On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the United States will be watching the triumph of the ideology and movement–not Usama bin Ladin, of course, but his smarter counterparts–in much of the Middle East.

SOURCE: The Rubin Report

Mehran Attack, Another Orchestrated Attempt To Justify Pak Nuke Seizure Operations

Pakistan militant attack – blueprint for nuclear base raid?

Military personnel keep guard under an old aircraft displayed at the Mehran naval aviation base after troops ended operations against militants in Karachi May 23, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Athar Hussain

By Alistair Scrutton

ISLAMABAD

(Reuters) – A group of highly-trained militants with night-vision goggles and the collusion of sympathetic Islamist military officials storm a heavily-guarded navy base situated only a few miles from where a unstable Pakistan stores some of its nuclear weapons.

That is the scary way of looking at the attack on the navy base in Karachi on Sunday night that destroyed two U.S.-built aircraft and killed 10 military personnel, fuelling worries about the safety of the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal.

The consensus remains that Pakistan’s 70-100 nuclear weapons are safe. Security at installations is reportedly much higher. It is almost impossible for a rogue team to launch any missiles and the vetting of staff at these bases is extremely rigorous.

But each attack in Pakistan seems to up the ante, surprising analysts and military alike about how far militants can reach into the heart of the powerful military establishment — perhaps one day doing enough to steal nuclear material for a “dirty” bomb or successfully penetrating a nuclear facility.

In Sunday’s attack, attackers scaled walls with ladders to enter PNS Mehran, one of Pakistan’s most heavily guarded bases, and held off the military for nearly 17 hours.

“It reinforces the fear that terrorists have now developed a range of tactics – foreknowledge, use of uniforms, simultaneous attacks on different entry points, etc – which enable them to penetrate high-security bases and, crucially, hold space within them for hours,” Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University, wrote in an email.

“This is a blueprint for an attack on a nuclear facility.”

The attack took place only 15 miles (24 km) away from a suspected Pakistan nuclear weapons storage site at Masroor air base, a sign of how close the nuclear arsenal is to the growing violence from the Pakistan Taliban and other militant groups.

Even in some of Pakistan’s more nationalistic media, which for years has dismissed criticism of the safety of the nuclear arsenal as foreign-inspired propaganda, doubts have surfaced.

“This easy action by the terrorists has rightly raised concerns among the nation that neither any part of the country nor our nuclear installations are safe,” Urdu newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt said in its editorial on Tuesday.

Some commentators said it was possible that the attack could only have happened with help of insiders within the base – perhaps disaffected and low-level military personnel angry at increasingly open U.S. operations on its soil.

The fear is these kind of insiders could assist an assault on a nuclear base. Even an unsuccessful attack could sow panic in the military and spark more pressure from Washington.

The Taliban hinted at local help, but remained coy to whether there were inside the base.

“Our ‘local friends’ from Karachi helped us in yesterday’s operation but I would not say whether we had friends on the base or not,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters from an undisclosed location.

ONLY THE LATEST SETBACK

The attack comes after the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces sparked suspicion the al Qaeda leader may have been helped for years by sympathisers within Pakistan’s intelligence services.

Nor was this the first attack at the heart of Pakistan’s military. There was an attack at the army general headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. Later investigations found low ranking soldiers and officers were involved in planning the attacks.

U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 published in local media showed then Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Operations, Air Vice Marshal Khalid Chaudhry as reporting of small scale sabotage from low ranking Islamist officials to stop aircraft being deployed in security operations along the Afghan border.

This all may lead to a nightmare scenario for the West of a small group of officials managing to steal nuclear material, load it up with conventional explosives, and set it off.

“(The) major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon,” U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said in a 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks, according to media reports.

U.S. officials have said that they do not know everything about the size and location of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, but have publicly voiced confidence in Pakistan’s ability to secure its weapons.

There are some 10,000 soldiers guarding the facilities and only 5 percent of individuals pass strict screening tests for staff at the facilities, according to a report by Shashank Joshi of the U.K.-based Royal United Services Institute think-tank.

Experts say nuclear weapons are stored separately from delivery systems – meaning any militants ability to launch weapons is almost impossible.

But analysts point to weakness in the system.

“Separate storage may provide a layer of protection against accidental launch or prevent theft of an assembled weapon, it may be easier for unauthorized people to remove a weapon’s fissile material core if it is not assembled,” The U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a report in January.

There are also concerns that any future stand-off with nuclear foe India could lead to a chaotic situation with nuclear weapons dispersed around the country, straining Pakistan’s military command structure.

Pakistan’s move to develop short range tactical nuclear weapons may also make them more vulnerable to theft or a mutiny by a group of military officers.

“If they are designed for battlefield use, they could present an easier target for terrorists to seize and use themselves,” wrote Ben Rhode, research associate for non-proliferation and disarmament at The International Institute for Strategic Studies, in an email to Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Alex Richardson)

Will Female Saudi Drivers Who “Take the Risk for Reform” Have Obama’s Support?

SAUDI ARABIA: Security forces clamp down on those allegedly behind campaign to defy ban on women drivers

Saudi Arabian authorities have clamped down on women’s rights activists after a bold call by a group of women in the ultra-conservative kingdom on social media sites on the Internet to break a ban on women driving.

Saudi police arrested at least two people linked to the campaign and shut down a Facebook page meant to promote civil disobedience, according to the Abu Dhabi-based English-language newspaper the National.

Saudi security forces loyal to King Abdullah, whose family has ruled the kingdom for 80 years, arrested Manal Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant, and her brother, the National reported.

On Facebook and Twitter, activists had launched a campaign calling on women in Saudi Arabia who hold international drivers’ licenses to get behind the wheel on Friday, June 17, and drive their cars to protest the country’s ban on women driving.

Their call is a daring initiative. Women who have defied the ban in the past have lost their jobs, been banned from travel and denounced by members of the country’s powerful extremist religious establishment.

The women say their planned move is not a protest nor an attempt to break the law, but rather a bid to claim basic rights as human beings.

“We women in Saudi Arabia, from all nationalities, will start driving our cars by ourselves,” read a statement posted on the group’s Facebook site, I will Drive Starting June 17, before Saudi censors took it down. ”We are not here to break the law or demonstrate or challenge the authorities. We are here to claim one of our simplest rights. We have driver’s licenses and we will abide by traffic laws.”

Their Facebook group had garnered more than 11,000 supporters and around 3,000 people followthe group’s account on Twitter.

Critics say Saudi, a staunch U.S. ally and largest exporter of oil in the world, has a horrific record on human rights and women’s liberties. In addition, it’s said to be pumping cash into global Islamic organizations that promote extremist Islamic thinking across the Islamic world, including the nascent democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

But some Saudis themselves are trying to challenge the conservativism of their own country.

On recent incident suggests things are already heating up on the women’s ban driving issue. A few days ago, 30-year-old Saudi housewife and mother Najla Hairiri told Agence-France Presse how she drove her car in the streets of the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jeddah for four days before getting stopped.

She took the decision “to defend her belief that Saudi women should be allowed to drive” and said she wasn’t afraid of being hauled into detention for flouting the driving ban because she felt she was setting a good example for her daughter and other young Saudi women.

“I don’t fear being arrested because I am setting an example that my daughter and her friends are proud of,” she said, adding that she also offers driving lessons for women.

Below is a video clip showing Saudi women’s right activist Wajeha Huwaidar driving her car in a rural part of the kingdom on International Women’s Day in 2008 and talking about the problems that come with not letting women drive in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict interpretation of the ultra-conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam. Aside from being banned from driving, Saudi women face a myriad of other restrictions. They cannot travel on their own without getting authorization from a male guardian, cannot receive an education without male approval, and are not allowed to cast ballots in municipal elections — the only kind of elections that currently exist in the absolute monarchy.

If the call for defying the driving ban on women materializes on June 17, it will not be the first time women in Saudi Arabia will have gotten behind the wheel and taken to the streets in protest. On Nov. 6, 1990, a group of women drove through the streets of the Saudi capital Riyadh before getting pulled over and stopped.

Several of the women reportedly lost their jobs and were denounced as by powerful religious figures.

Recent comments by Saudi religious clerics about the June 17 campaign suggest the sight of women driving in the streets will go down with the religious clergymen as badly as it did in 1990.

Saudi cleric Mohammed Nujaimi told Bloomberg News that the women’s plan was “against the law” and that driving does “more harm than good” to women, because they might intermingle with males who are not their relatives, such as mechanics and gas-station attendants.

– Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: A screenshot of the Facebook group  “I Will Drive Starting June 17″. Credit: Facebook.

Obama’s Middle East Speech Plagiarizes Bush’s 2nd Inaugural On Revolutionary Democracy

Obama’s Middle East speech is the bookend to George Bush’s 2nd Inaugural address, Obama is providing the current specifics on the generalities outlined by Bush, even expressing the Bush Doctrine in his own counterpoint:

Bush–“This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary.”

Obama–“In fact, real reform will not come at the ballot box alone.”  (The unspoken qualification is that some cases, like Libya will require bullets.)

Overlooking the obvious fact that Bush used a much more eloquent speech-writer, it is apparent that whoever cobbled together the Obama speech merely copied the highlights of Bush’s “Revolutionary-Democracy” speech/Inaugural and mixed it together with a bunch of crap about Israel, creating the big ego-injection Team Obama felt was called for. 

Bush–“So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Obama–“It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region and to support transitions to democracy.”

Bush–“We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies, yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”

Obama–“If you take the risks that reform entails, you will have the full support of the United States…Across the region, we intend to provide assistance to civil society, including those that may not be officially sanctioned, and who speak uncomfortable truths. And we will use the technology to connect with — and listen to — the voices of the people…What we will oppose is an attempt by any group to restrict the rights of others, and to hold power through coercion — not consent.”

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Pakistani tribesmen settle scores through US drones–(Mehsud -vs- Wazir)

Pakistani tribesmen settle scores through US drones

By AZHAR MASOOD | ARAB NEWS

ISLAMABAD: While attacks by US unmanned planes in Pakistan have become a contentious issue, tribesmen hired by US drone operators to tip off the CIA on terror targets have been using the opportunity to settle scores with rivals.

They provide false information identifying their rivals as terror targets prompting US drone operators to hit them. Mehsud and Wazir tribes are said to be locked in the tussle and they settle their scores using US drone attacks against each other.

Drones, in many cases, have hit high-value targets. Taleban leader Baitullah Mesud was killed in a drone strike, but on many occasions the information drone operators relied on proved wrong.

Consequently, CIA established its own network on Pakistan-Afghanistan border and gave more credence to ground information provided by locally hired agents both from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the adjoining provinces in Afghanistan.

For almost a decade US drones have been making relentless efforts to hunt down Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants hiding along the tribal belts in South and North Waziristan. At times they have accurately hit their targets but in many cases civilians have become victims. Earlier, US drone operators used to rely on information provided by sources within the Pakistan Army, but subsequently, they switched to tribesmen who formed a network eavesdropping on suspected terrorists in the tribal belt.

The shift in US strategy came after several errors where drone attacks killed civilians instead of terrorists.

The first error was when drones fired missiles at a school in Dama Dola killing 70 students. Later similar mistakes were committed. Even the field intelligence of the Pakistan Army and the CIA are unaware of the exact casualties and damage to properties caused by drone strikes.

But, with the change in strategy, more innocent people have lost their lives. The latest example was a drone attack on a Jirga (meeting of tribal leaders) in Khyber Agency.

The locally hired operatives who tip off the CIA on terror targets have now started using the opportunity to settle their scores. These CIA agents who are from Mehsud and Wazir tribes identify their rival positions as terror targets prompting US drone operators to hit those targets.

While the ISI and Pakistan Army are watching the new game carefully, reports emanating from Dera Ismail Khan suggest tribes are settling their scores through drone attacks.

Local tribesman and Afghans providing false information to US drone operators is not a new phenomenon.

These agents provide information to US drone operators in exchange for hefty remunerations. According to observers, local tribesmen will continue to keep the CIA busy as long as they get money and are also able to avenge old tribal enmity.

Genocide-ignoring lies in Obama’s Mideast speech

By: Dr Gideon Polya

Obama’s speech on the Middle East is extraordinary for its comprehensive dishonesty involving egregious deceit, lying by commission and lying by omission. Obama’s ignoring of the US-imposed Muslim Genocide (about 12 million indigenous deaths in Palestine, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan) is far worse than genocide denial or holocaust denial because at least “denial” admits the possibility of public discussion.
One is reminded of Winston Churchill who completely omitted from the text of his Nobel Prize-winning, 6-volume treatise “The Second World War” any mention the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust in which he deliberately starved to death 6-7 million Indians.
Obama’s falsehoods in his 19 May 2011 Middle East speech are so numerous that one must confine analysis to the biggest lies as set out below.
Iraqi Holocaust,
raqi Genocide
Obama: “After years of war in Iraq, we have removed 100,000 American troops and ended our combat mission there. In Afghanistan, we have broken the Taliban’s momentum, and this July we will begin to bring our troops home and continue transition to Afghan lead”.
Reality: ignoring US interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and Israeli bombing of Iraq prior to 1990, the US has been making war on Iraq since 1990. In the Sanctions period 1990-2003, violent Iraqi deaths in the Gulf War totalled 0.2 million, avoidable deaths from war- and sanctions-imposed deprivation totalled 1.7 million and under-5 infant deaths totalled 1.2 million, 90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes. Post-invasion in the period 2003-2011, violent deaths have totalled 1.5 million, post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation total 1.2 million, under-5 infant deaths total 0.8 million (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention) and refugees total 5-6 million. 1990-2011 has seen an Iraqi Holocaust involving 4.6 million dead, an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention. 50,000 US troops remain in Occupied Iraq backing a puppet Iraqi Government elected under Occupier guns and a semi-autonomous Kurdish Government in northern Iraq.
Obama’s personal contribution to this carnage in occupied Iraq in the 2.3 years since his inauguration can be crudely assessed as 2.7 million x 2.3 years/ 8.3 years of occupation = 0.75 million dead Iraqis, this including 0.9 x 0.8 million infant deaths x 2.3 years/ 8.3 years of Occupation = 0.2 million dead Iraqi infants.
Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide.
Obama: “In Afghanistan, we have broken the Taliban’s momentum, and this July we will begin to bring our troops home and continue transition to Afghan lead”.
Reality: the US-backed coup against a progressive secular government led ultimately to Russian invasion and war and civil war with the US backing fundamentalists such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden. Excess deaths in the period of the war against the Russians and their indigenous supporters (1979-1989) totalled 2.9 million. Excess deaths in the subsequent Afghan civil war (1989-1999) totalled 3.3 million. Although the Taliban Afghan Government offered to send Osama bin Laden to a third country for investigation over the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 dead), the US preferred war that so far has killed 5.0 million Afghans, this including 1.2 million violent deaths, 3.8 non-violent avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation and 2.7 million under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention). There are 3-4 million Afghan refugees and Obama’s extension of the war to Pakistan has created 2.5 million Pashtun refugees, with US bombing of Pakistan being obscenely expanded after the devastating floods that made 20 million Pakistanis homeless. According to UNICEF Under the lying Bush-Obama official version of 9-11 no Afghans were involved in the 9-11 atrocity. Indeed bin Laden denied involvement in 9-11 and was not wanted for that crime by the FBI.
Obama’s personal contribution to this carnage in Afghanistan in the 2.3 years since his inauguration can be crudely assessed as 5.0 million x 2.3 years/ 9.75 years of Occupation = 1.2 million dead Afghans, this including 0.9 x 2.7 million infant deaths x 2.3 years/ 9.75 years of Occupation = 0.6 million dead Afghan infants.
Somali Holocaust,
Somali Genocide
Obama made no reference to occupied Somalia, occupied Haiti or occupied Diego Garcia in his speech.
Reality: Somalia has been variously invaded and partly occupied by the US and thence by US-backed UN forces (December 1992- May 1995) or US surrogate forces (in the period 2006-2011) and it remains substantially occupied by US-backed foreign forces. Post-invasion excess deaths in this 18.5 year period (December 1992 – May 2011) can be crudely assessed from infant mortality data to be about 1.8 million. Excess deaths from deprivation are 1.4 times under-5 infant deaths, 69,000 under-5 year old Somali infants die each year (UNICEF) and hence on this basis total excess deaths in the post-9-11 era total 920,000. This catastrophe merits the term
Obama’s personal contribution to the post-9-11 part of the Somali Holocaust and Somali Genocide can be estimated as 1.2 million x 2.3 years in office/ 9.75 years post-9-11 = 0.3 million, this including 0.9 x 9.75 years x 60,000 under-5 infant deaths per year x 2.3 years /9.75 years = 124,000 dead Somali infants.
US-linked 9-11
atrocity and
murder of bin Laden
Obama: “And after years of war against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, we have dealt Al-Qaeda a huge blow by killing its leader – Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was no martyr. He was a mass murderer who offered a message of hate – an insistence that Muslims had to take up arms against the West, and that violence against men, women and children was the only path to change. He rejected democracy and individual rights for Muslims in favour of violent extremism; his agenda focused on what he could destroy – not what he could build. Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some adherents. But even before his death, Al-Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance, as the overwhelming majority of people saw that the slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries for a better life.”
Reality: Osama denied involvement in 9-11 and was clearly not physically involved according to the lying Bush-Obama official version (in which all the alleged perpetrators conveniently allegedly died). Scientific evidence (notably compelling evidence for the explosive demolition of the 3 World Trade Centre buildings) and science, architecture, engineering, military and intelligence experts say that the US did 9-11 (possibly with Israeli involvement) and not “men in caves in Afghanistan”