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U.S.
State Department's
Report
on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2002
The
US State Department's Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2001
|
IN SEARCH OF AN IRAQ EXIT STRATEGY
The British government has warned Washington that Iraq could see a nationwide uprising if the U.S. still holds power in Baghdad a year from now. And with an election looming, the Bush administration would like nothing more than to hand over the reins of power to friendly Iraqis by next summer. The problem is that the process of constitution-making and elections, under the auspices of the unwieldy Iraqi Governing Council, is bogged down by the divisions built in to its careful balances of ethnic representation, and is unlikely to complete its work within a year. That has left the U.S. considering whether to shelve the process of constitution-making and leave it instead to some form of internationally-recognized "transitional" government, along the line of Hamid Karzai's administration in Afghanistan.
(The Telegraph, November 11, 2003)
The New York Times reports that U.S. viceroy in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, has rushed back to Washington for urgent consultations at the White House over ways to accelerate the transfer of power to an Iraqi authority. Despite frustration over the political logjam in the Iraqi Governing Council, the administration has not yet settled on a clear political alternative, according to the Times.
The Washington Post first reported that the U.S. is deeply frustrated by the performance of its hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council, and suggested Washington may now be more inclined to accept the French proposal for an interim government along the lines of the one in Afghanistan. Originally Washington had pegged its own departure schedule to the holding of new elections, but those are looking unlikely to be held by next year.
The Guardian reports that some Iraqi observers believe the leaks to the Washington Post on the U.S. considering alternatives to the IGC were designed to light a fire under the Iraqi body. Still, such is the "shambolic" nature of the body that many in Washington are coming around to the French proposal for the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty to begin with an interim government elected by a national conference along the lines of Afghanistan's "loya jirga."
The Carnegie Endowment's Marina Ottaway tells the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. is confronting a familiar problem in Iraq: Elections in post-conflict situations can have a divisive rather than a nation-building effect. Stability in Iraq has always depended on strong control from Baghdad, but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein may have unleashed centrifugal forces, and simply holding the country together during a transition period will be a significant challenge.
Senator John McCain warns that focusing on an exit strategy from Iraq sends the wrong message to the insurgents. The U.S. can't afford to leave until the insurgency is beaten, he argues, and signaling that the U.S. is looking for an accelerated departure will embolden the insurgents and undermine Iraqi confidence in Washington's commitment.
McCain's position is echoed by the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, which suggests that plans to reduce troop levels and accelerate the transfer of political authority may undermine President Bush's goal of exporting democracy.
McCain's position is echoed by the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, which suggests that plans to reduce troop levels and accelerate the transfer of political authority may undermine President Bush's goal of exporting democracy.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced last week that security permitting, the U.S. would draw down its total troop level in Iraq to 105,000 by next summer. But whether the security situation will indeed permit such a cut is currently open to question. And in the interim, a further 40,000 reserves will be sent to relieve some of those currently in Iraq.
The Washington Post reports that in order to relieve the burden on U.S. troops, the Pentagon is expediting the training of Iraqis. But whether hastily trained Iraqi gendarmes will be up to the challenge of rooting out the insurgency remains to be seen.
But NBC reports that for U.S. troops, the combination of combat missions against the insurgents with civil policing and reconstruction duties, sometimes in the course of a single day, is creating confusion.
IRAQ: FROM PEACEKEEPING TO COUNTERINSURGENCY
When the U.S. response to the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter by Iraqi insurgents near Tikrit last Friday included air strikes and artillery, it was plain that the military's mission in the "Sunni Triangle" had shifted to full-blown counterinsurgency. The heavy U.S. strikes were part of "Operation Ivy Cyclone," designed as a show of strength in Saddam's heartland at the end of a week in which the U.S. lost more than 30 soldiers in Iraq. And they portend a long and bitter campaign ahead.
(Observer, November 9, 2003)
Tough action in the "Sunni Triangle" raises a dilemma for the U.S., according to the Christian Science Monitor. Security-starved Iraqis may want to see tough action against the authors of terror strikes in Baghdad and elsewhere, but military sweeps tend to alienate the local population in the target area. And, some Iraqis warn, an escalation of fighting may be taken by many Iraqis as a sign that the old order is far from dead.
The downing of a third helicopter in two weeks suggests that Iraq's insurgents are becoming more skilled , says a commentary in the LA Times -- after all, they have fired at coalition helicopters for months with little success. Their expanding capability will force the U.S. to alter its tactics.
Egypt's Al Ahram reports that many residents of Baghdad condemn attacks on civilians and aid workers -- which they blame on foreigners -- while endorsing attacks on U.S. troops as legitimate resistance to occupation. And also that resistance to the occupation has blurred the lines distinguishing Baathists from Islamists on the ground in Iraq.
U.S. officials have warned Syria and Iran to tighten up border controls in the hope of stopping infiltration of jihadis into Iraq. But the Institute of War and Peace Reporting suggests that, in fact, al-Qaeda members are entering from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Milt Bearden notes in the New York Times that the Iraqi insurgents are borrowing the tactics that worked so well for the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets. And Bearden ought to know, having served for much of the '80s as the CIA's liaison with the mujahedeen.
Asia Times suggests that the U.S. continues to pay a high price for summarily disbanding the Iraqi army -- that's because U.S. forces have a very poor intelligence picture of the structures of the Baathist movement and elements with whom they may have made common cause in the insurgency, whereas the Iraqi military would have been better positioned to act against them given the appropriate political incentives.
Newsday notes that the U.S. miltary's own analysis appears to concur, suggesting that while the Iraqi military was a rotten fighting force, the one field in which it excelled was intelligence.
General John Abizaid tells the Washington Post that the insurgents have used media coverage of their recent spate of high-profile attacks to create an exaggerated picture of their strength. But that's what guerrillas have always done in the age of mass communication.
SAUDI ARABIA: AUTOCRACY, DEMOCRACY AND TERROR
President Bush has vowed to make democracy the lodestar in U.S. dealings with the Arab world, warning that authoritarian autocracies by their nature foster terrorism. He didn't mention Saudi Arabia by name, of course, but the implication was obvious - and al-Qaeda, or like-minded elements in the kingdom sought to make the same point in a deadly terror strike on a housing complex last Saturday that killed at least 17 people. The extremists and the Saudi regime have been trading fierce blows for months now, as Riyadh has launched an aggressive campaign to uproot al-Qaeda. For both sides, it may be a battle for Saudi public opinion: The Islamists hope to capitalize on the resentment of ordinary Saudis against the closed political system maintained by the House of Saud; the government hopes that by spilling the blood of ordinary Muslims as they did last Saturday the al-Qaeda elements will alienate Saudis. But a domestic "war on terror" is likely to restrain Saudi Arabia from embarking on the path of democratic reform, warns the BBC's Paul Reynolds.
(BBC, November 10, 2003)
The latest bombing has left observers struggling to read al-Qaeda's strategy in Saudi Arabia, reports the Financial Times. Previously its attacks in the Kingdom had been directed mostly at Westerners, but by attacking Arabs working in Saudi Arabia, some fear that Bin Laden's group may be following the Algerian strategy of wholesale, bloody destabilization of the regime.
The danger in the current pressure-cooker political atmosphere in Saudi Arabia, warns the New York Times, is that disaffected young men with no peaceful channel to express their frustrations may begin to look to Bin Laden for leadership.
Saudi officials are hoping that the attacks swing public opinion behind the government crackdown, as when Egyptians rallied behind the government to stamp out an Islamist terror campaign against tourists during the 1990s. But, the Christian Science Monitor warns, while rounding up terrorists may not be particularly controversial, the government could find itself in trouble if it goes after the clerical and social infrastructure that has helped foster Islamist radicalism inside Saudi Arabia.
The Boston Globe reports that Saudi Arabia has killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives in the Kingdom over the past six months. But Riyadh's campaign against the organization has revealed that al-Qaeda's organizational infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is significantly larger than anyone had assumed.
The Riyadh attacks underscore the difficulty of defending against terror strikes. The New York Times reports that the U.S. had received tips about an attack, prompting it to close embassies and consulates, but had no idea of the intended target.
ARABS SKEPTICAL OF BUSH AS CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY
Calling for nothing less than a revolution in U.S. foreign policy, President George W. Bush last week vowed to make the pursuit of democracy in the Arab world a foreign policy priority commensurate with the Cold War waged by his predecessors. While Arab autocrats aligned with Washington -- presumably an endangered species in the face of Bush's self-styled "democratic revolution" -- largely remained mute, many among their citizenry who have long pressed for democracy were derisive. Even in the embattled ranks of liberal democrats in the Arab world, Washington's backing of Ariel Sharon's policies and its occupation of Iraq are cited as reasons that make it an unlikely champion of democracy.
(Jerusalem Post, November 7, 2003)
President Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy attempts to define his "war on terror" in the positive, by casting it as a campaign to democratize the autocratic Arab regimes whose closed societies generate terrorism.
The Washington Post's Robin Wright observes that one of the greatest obstacles to pursuing Arab democracy is, in fact, the war on terrorism. Washington's campaign against al-Qaeda and radical Islam more broadly often requires that Arab regimes follow U.S. dictates when those are in conflict with the sentiment of their own citizenry. A Muslim nation such as Turkey has, as a result of its progress towards democratization, begun to distance itself from the U.S. And democratizing Arab societies would likely have a similar effect.
The Carnegie Endowment has assembled a collection of backrgound papers and briefings on democracy in Iraq, and the Middle East more broadly.
WHO LOST TURKEY?
If the Bush administration's prewar attempts to win Turkish support and participation in the Iraq invasion were singularly inept, the handling of the postwar effort to bring Turkish troops in to support the occupation mission have turned into a diplomatic disaster. Having persuaded Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cajole his reluctant parliament into accepting a Turkish deployment in Iraq, Washington was then forced to cancel the request in the face of opposition from its own allies inside Iraq. The fiasco has embarrassed Ankara, and placed further strain on the already troubled U.S.-Turkey relationship. And, says the New York Times, different camps in Washington are trading barbs on how the blunders were made.
(New York Times, November 10, 2003)
Having been rebuffed by the Iraqi Governing Council, Turkey is sounding a bellicose note on protecting its own interests in northern Iraq. Specifically, it is threatening military action against the forces of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a terror campaign inside Turkey, taking shelter in the mountains of Northern Iraq. But Turkey's agenda includes limiting any autonomy claimed by Iraqi Kurds in a new constitutional arrangement in Iraq.
WTO STEEL RULING POSES BUSH DILEMMA
From an electoral point of view, some Bush advisers may counsel the President to hang tough against the World Trade Organization's ruling that Washington's tariffs on steel imports are illegal. But Europe is ready to go to the mat on this one, vowing to impose the $2.2 billion of tariffs on imports from the U.S. allowed by the WTO ruling. And some of those tariffs may hit exports from key electoral states, such as Florida oranges.
(The Economist, November 11, 2003)
SHEVARDNADZE HOLDS ON DESPITE RISING TIDE OF RAGE
Opposition protestors are continuing to occupy part of Tbilisi in protest against what they say was an election stolen by supporters of President Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze has rallied support of his own, and may see out the storm. But the increasingly sharp divisions in Georgian society reflect mounting public anger over the corruption and poverty that has marked Shevardnadze's decade in power.
(ABC News, November 11, 2003)
The BBC reports that many Georgians fear that with his back to the wall, Shevardnadze may reverse his efforts of the past ten years to limit Russian influence in his country, by appealing to Moscow for help.
DESPITE ARAFAT'S DOMINANCE, ISRAEL MAY TALK TO NEW PA GOVERNMENT
Until now, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has insisted he won't deal with a Palestinian government under the influence of President Yasser Arafat. But indications that his government plans to meet and offer concessions to new prime minister Ahmed Qurei, despite Qurei's losing a battle with Arafat over control of the security forces, suggests that Sharon is under mounting domestic political pressure to show progress towards a political settlement with the Palestinians.
(Haaretz, November 10, 2003)
Graham Usher writes in Al-Ahram that Arafat is now determined to curtail U.S. influence over Palestinian politics, portraying ministerial candidates acceptable to Washington as part of a conspiracy against Palestinian interests. Still, under pressure from his own generals to ease the terms of occupation, Sharon has an interest in dealing with Qurei's government to sustain "the illusion of progress."
"America's interests cannot be separated from Israel's interests," says Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an interview with Al-Ahram. Still, he insisted that Hamas would avoid military cooperation with groups of a similar ideological bent waging war on the U.S. And he suggested that Hamas is open to the new cease-fire being sought by Qurei, as long as it can guarantee an end to Israel's assassination of its activists.
U.S. AND INDIA TAMP DOWN SRI LANKA CRISIS
Sri Lanka's Prime Minister is once again talking to the country's president, who mobilized the military last week to back her attempt at a constitutional putsch. And Asia Times reports that it was discreet intervention by India and the United States that stopped the power struggle short of a dangerous showdown.
(Asia Times, November 10, 2003)
The BBC reports that Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and President Chandrika Kumaratunga remain fundamentally divided over how to pursue peace with the Tamil Tiger rebels, meaning that new elections may be required to break the deadlock.
|
The LA Times showed
young Israelis partying
in the Himalayas
|
WHY ACID TRIPPING IN INDIA
HAS BECOME AN ISRAELI YOUTH RITUAL
The trip abroad of choice for many young Israelis completing their military service is to India -- and it involves plenty of psychedelic drugs. Tens of thousands of Israelis go every year, partying on beaches, taking acid or Ecstasy in the mountains and getting as far away as they can from the stresses of daily reality in their garrison nation. But often the combination of the daily doses of heavy drugs and the stress of what they've been through in the West Bank or Gaza combine to produce psychological breakdowns. Indeed, the phenomenon is so common that the Israeli government is establishing programs to respond. And Israeli sociologists see it as a symptom of the breakdown of their country's ideological identity.
(LA Times, November 10, 2003)
The
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