THE CENTER FOR WAR, PEACE AND THE NEWS MEDIA AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY November 25 - December 2, 2003

Charlie Cray: on stopping Iraq's war profiteers

Ralph A. Cossa: on progress over North Korea talks

 

New York University

 

 

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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

 

 

 

ANXIETY OVER GEORGIA'S 'VELVET REVOLUTION'
Last weekend's mass demonstrations in Tbilisi that brought down Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze over a stolen election have reshuffled the deck in the geopolitical card game in the Caucasus. Georgia is a regional fulcrum both in terms of the politics of Caspian sea oil, which is to be piped through Tbilisi to the West, as a transit route westward from Central Asia and as a sanctuary for Chechen separatists fighting the Russian government, some of whom have intermingled with operatives of al-Qaeda. Shevardnadze's role, while serving as Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign minister, in dismantling the Soviet Union, and his efforts to bring Georgia into NATO, have made him a hated figure in Moscow, and Russia piled on the pressure by backing secessionist movements, stationing troops in Georgian territory and using its monopoly over Georgia's energy supply to threaten Tbilisi. But Shevardnadze's backers in the West eventually grew tired of the rampant corruption and economic stagnation that characterized his rule. And while Moscow will shed no tears over his ouster, it may soon have to contend with a new, even more Western-oriented leadership.
(Financial Times, November 25, 2003)

  • The Moscow Times reports that while the Kremlin is blaming Shevardnadze's fall on his own mistakes. Chief among those from Moscow's perspective, of course, has been his handling of relations with Russia. President Vladimir Putin has warned Georgia's new leaders to avoid antagonizing Russia.
  • Eurasia net report that Georgia's new leaders will face immense challenges, foremost among them managing the potentially violent conflicts with some of the country's breakaway regions over which some of the new leaders want to reassert Tbilisi's control.
  • The Telegraph warns that despite Shevardnadze's ouster, great potential for outbreak violence remains, both in respect of secessionist movements and because of the uncertainty created by the fact that his replacement has not yet been chosen.
  • The Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that no matter what comes next, Georgia's insurrection was a model of peaceful democratic action by the citizenry that will inspire others. (PDF download)
  • Indeed, the Washington Post notes the active influence of Serbian democracy activists in last week's events in Tbilisi.

    U.S. SEEKS ISRAEL'S ADVICE ON MANAGING IRAQ OCCUPATION
    Finding itself increasingly bogged down in Iraq managing a resentful Arab population, the U.S. military is turning for advice to the experts: The LA Times reports that U.S. officers have held intense and ongoing consultations with their Israeli counterparts on urban warfare, house-to-house searches and other tactics of occupation. The paper sees the increasing use of U.S. air power in Iraqi urban areas and the demolition of homes of known insurgents as indicators of lessons learned from the Israelis. One problem, of course, is that Israel's tactics have failed to suppress the intifadah -- some of Israel's leading security personnel have recently suggested that their army's actions are, in fact, fueling rather than smothering the uprising.
    (Financial Times, November 25, 2003)

  • Center for Defense Information associate Seva Gutinskiy suggests that the U.S. may do better in Iraq by heeding the lessons of Chechnya. Foremost among those may be the idea that while for the occupying army, "collateral damage" may be an unfortunate by-product of the conflict, for the occupied people it often defines the conflict.
  • The Christian Science Monitor suggests a more pertinent lesson for the U.S. in Iraq may be the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, where all of their tactical success in engagements with the insurgents added up to no strategic progress.
  • The Guardian reports that two U.S. soldiers shot dead by insurgents in Mosul were then beaten in broad daylight by a crowd of young Iraqis, who stole the personnel effects from their lifeless bodies. The incident is a worrying indicator that the ugly mood in Iraq is not confined to the members of clandestine insurgent cells.
  • The U.S. occupation authority and its Iraqi allies this week closed down the operations of the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV network , allegedly because of its broadcast of Saddam Hussein's messages, reports the Washington Post. The closure has the added benefit, however, of shutting off the most consistent source of video images of U.S. forces in the wake of attacks.
  • Former Reagan administration Defense Department official Lawrence Korb recently visited Iraq. In a diary posted by the Center for American progress, Korb warns that there is no early exit for U.S. troops from Iraq, and that the engagement there is degrading the U.S. military.
  • The New York Times reports that although they're not engaging U.S. forces, Lebanese Hizbollah militants may be operating in Iraq. But Juan Cole suggests Hizbollah may have complex motivations for entering Iraq.
  • Former President Bill Clinton suggests that best course for the U.S. in Iraq is to put the security mission there under UN auspices.

    IRAQ: A THREE-STATE SOLUTION?
    Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus Leslie Gelb advocated the hitherto unthinkable this week in a New York Time op-ed, suggesting that the U.S. recognize the futility of trying to turn Iraq into a friendly democracy and simply divide it into three states: A Kurdish one in the north, a Sunni one in the center and a Shiite one in the south. After all, dismembering Iraq in this way is simply putting asunder that which the British cobbled together in the 1920s. Perhaps. But redividing Iraq is fiercely rejected by all of its neighbors because of the inevitability of it starting new wars; and the there's no support for it either among the Shiites or the Sunnis that together make up three quarters of the population. The very fact that such a proposal is being seriously entertained now suggests a growing sense of panic in parts of the traditional foreign policy establishment over the prospects for achieving a decent outcome in Iraq.
    (New York Times, November 25, 2003)

  • Trepidation over the prospects for the latest plan to transfer authority to Iraqis appears to extend to the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Hardly a week after it signed off on a plan for a new transitional government to be indirectly elected next year, IGC members are now reportedly asking to keep their jobs and renege on the agreement to disband the Council once the new assembly is created. As the International Herald Tribune note, it appears that a few IGC members recognized belatedly that they may not survive even the tightly restricted election process envisaged for a new assembly.
  • Gelb's argument would likely get its strongest support in northern Iraq, where the Christian Science Monitor reports that the Kurds are reluctant to be drawn back under Baghdad's political umbrella.
  • The firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr remains the most powerful Iraqi politician currently outside of the IGC, and his influence among the Shiite urban poor is seen as potentially critical in managing the outcome in Iraq. So, what does Moqtada want? The LA Times went to find out, and learned that he's going to insist that Iraqis themselves control the political transition, and that there be no role for the U.S. and Britain in shaping the country's future.
  • Former President Bill Clinton suggests that best course for the U.S. in Iraq is to put the security mission there under UN auspices.
  • The Guardian asked a number of experts to lay out an exit strategy for the coalition in Iraq Respondents range from former UK Foreign Secretary David Owen and former State Department spokesman James Rubin to serving soldiers and Iraqis.

    IRAN DEAL: GOOD COP-BAD COP?
    An International Atomic Energy Agency resolution condemning Iraq for its failure to reveal some of its nuclear activities over the past two decades appears to be a compromise between the U.S. effort to take the matter to the UN Security Council in search of sanctions, and the British-French-German preference of engagement with Iraq and rewarding good behavior. But, says the BBC's Paul Reynolds, rather than an open conflict between the U.S. and its allies, it may have been a case of playing good cop-bad cop to ensure Iraqi compliance.
    (BBC, November 26, 2003)

    U.S. LOOKS TO AFGHANISTAN EXIT
    Almost two years after the fall of Kabul, the Bush administration is looking to fast-track its exit from troubled Afghanistan, reports the Asia Times. U.S. troops there continue to suffer casualties and the security situation remains bleak. The key to Washington's new strategy, therefore, is to make peace with a moderate segment of the Taliban and draw them into government, in the hope of weakening the movement's resurgent insurgency.
    (Asia Times, November 22, 2003)

  • The New York Times reports on ongoing U.S. troop casualties in the 'other' war.
  • The Guardian writes that in an effort to choke of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, U.S. forces are planning a campaign to destroy Afghanistan's forthcoming bumper opium harvest.

    ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS ACCEPT FOR PEACE DEAL
    When a group of former Labor Party government officials met with Palestinian counterparts over a few months in Geneva and put the finishing touches to the "peace agreement" they had first started negotiating at Taba two months before the election of Ariel Sharon, Sharon was able to dismiss it as a marginal piece of political grandstanding by his vanquished foes. But opinion surveys now show that a majority of people on each side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are willing to accept the terms of the deal, which envisages two states separated by Israel's 1967 borders, sharing Jerusalem, with most settlements evacuated and Palestinian refugees confining their "right of return" to the Palestinian state. That's a problem for Sharon, who fiercely rejects the proposals.
    (International Crisis Group, November 24, 2003)

  • The full text of the "Geneva Accord" is available on the Haaretz web site.
  • Evacuating the settlements may be a popular idea, but as Ahdaf Soueif shows in the Observer, settlements are a mushrooming reality in the West Bank and there is nothing impermanent about them.
  • Graham Usher reports in Al-Ahram that while the Palestinian Authority wrangles over a new government to negotiate with Sharon, Hamas is providing real governance on the ground in Gaza.

    BEIJING SENDS A SUBMARINE WARNING ON TAIWAN
    A recent incident in which an Chinese submarine dodged Japanese and U.S. reconnaissance to surface deep inside Japanese waters was intended as a warning to Taiwan, writes Iris Tsang. Beijing is demonstrating its ability to elude the defenses of precisely those powers who are guaranteeing Taiwan's security. But the response may be an acceleration of the U.S. upgrade of Taiwan's naval capability.
    (Asia Times, November 25, 2003)

  • David Isenberg reports that Taiwan's efforts to acquire new submarines of its own have hit a snag over the prices charged by the U.S. manufacturer .

    BEIJING SENDS A SUBMARINE WARNING ON TAIWAN
    A recent incident in which an Chinese submarine dodged Japanese and U.S. reconnaissance to surface deep inside Japanese waters was intended as a warning to Taiwan, writes Iris Tsang. Beijing is demonstrating its ability to elude the defenses of precisely those powers who are guaranteeing Taiwan's security. But the response may be an acceleration of the U.S. upgrade of Taiwan's naval capability.
    (Asia Times, November 25, 2003)

  • David Isenberg reports that Taiwan's efforts to acquire new submarines of its own have hit a snag over the prices charged by the U.S. manufacturer .

    WOMEN HOLD THE KEY TO ARAB DEMOCRACY
    Council on Foreign Relations fellow Isobel Coleman argues that the first step in Saudi Arabia's political reform, and in the wider democratization of much of the Arab world, should be to accord women the rights of citizens.
    (Council on Foreign Relations, November 25, 2003)

  • Martine Golzan writes in the French magazine Marianne that the engine of democracy in Iran is not U.S. intervention, but the growing movement of women demanding their rights.

    DOES THE 'WEST' STILL EXIST?
    Absent the Soviet threat to keep them united, Europe and the United States have drifted far apart, writes Dominique Moisi. No matter how much leaders on both sides of the Atlantic proclaim their shared values, they are increasingly divided by their different worldviews. Acknowledging and respecting these differences should be the starting point of a reinvention of the West, he argues, because the two sides now need each other more than ever.
    (Foreign Affairs, December, 2003)

  • Harvard's Joseph Nye argues that the preemptive application of force impedes, rather than promotes the spread of American values, and that the U.S. needs a multilateral approach to realize President Bush's vision.
  • Financier George Soros compares the Bush doctrine to a "bubble" economy, suggesting that in Iraq and elsewhere its moment of truth may have arrived.
  • New York Times correspondent Warren Hoge tells the Council on Foreign Relations that President Bush enhanced his standing among Britons during his recent visit to London.

    • A Burgeoning Brand?

    TURKEY BOMBINGS RAISE
    TERROR WAR CONUNDRUM

    The latest wave of bombings attributed to al-Qaeda in Turkey are an indicator that in its efforts to fight terrorism, the U.S. and its allies may have created more enemies than they have eliminated. Jason Burke writes in the Guardian that widespread rage at U.S. actions in Iraq and elsewhere have helped Osama bin Laden mobilize many of the regional jihadis whose concerns and priorities had always previously been their local battles into a global jihad against the U.S. And the movement's growth potential has grown exponentially as U.S. actions have appeared, in the eyes of much of the Muslim world, to confirm Bin Laden's claims that Washington is on a crusade against Muslims. Unless the U.S. and its allies address the political conditions that nurture a terrorist response, they're fighting a losing battle.
    (Observer, November 23, 2003)

  • The Independent notes that while intelligence and security operations have successfully eliminated thousands of al-Qaeda's core operatives, the movement's structure has changed fundamentally. Today, those core operatives are simply working with some of the tens of thousands of Islamists from insurgencies as far afield as Indonesia, China, West Africa and elsewhere who received training in its camps over the past decade.
  • The Guardian's Jonathan Steele argues that like poverty and drugs, terrorism is not an enemy entity that can be defeated in war. Instead, it is a technique adopted by radical groups to promote their political agenda. And unless it is addressed as such, the "war on terror" may actually produce the opposite result to the one intended.
  • The Washington Post reports that al-Qaeda has "franchised" its operations, like a transnational corporation. Instead of micromanaging operations from a distant head office, it has established a recognizable "brand" of political violence that can be waged by local groups with little direct communication to an operational center.
  • The Saudi authorities are hoping that terror attacks that claim innocent Muslim lives will prove to be al-Qaeda's undoing. The Saudis have televised statements by radical Islamist clerics denouncing such attacks, in the hope of undermining the popular legitimacy of bin Laden's movement.


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