The Ancient game

Hello Dearhearts –

Gracie’s broken arm and birthday [5,] Wyatt’s birthday [8,] mine [never you mind] and Thanksgiving … now sweet and/or chaotic memories and a collection of digital photos mark their passing [not counting the leftovers in the fridge.] I trust your holiday was likewise a time of pleasures large and small, and mishaps … not so much. And with all that behind, I will attempt to be more faithful to my plan of one-a-day posts; today we’ll look at BushWarII, how it’s going [and how it's going is a bit like wildfire ... predictably tragic, unstoppable and mindlessly violent.]

In the last six months or so, when I think of Iraq I “see” choppers filling the air to rescue from rooftops — a Saigon redux. It does not have to come to that … I’d like to see some good sense kick in now. Today the bombing made it into American safety zones. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks evidently has the same vision I do.

Here’s the report of the day … the situation has been out of Bushy control since almost the beginning; what he could control pre-mid-term was only the spin — now, not even that. The public is getting its full frontal, with the headlines gory and hopeless and of our own making.

Last bit, interviewing King Abdullah, is interesting — they know Baker in the Middle East … he is respected; but this game is the Ancient one that we wish to retire … war, in all its aspects. Abdullah has more faith in Baker than do I … and likely more tolerance for war.

Jude

Helicopters on Rooftops
Cenk Uygur
Nov 25 2006

Iraq has passed the tipping point. It is spiraling out of control. There are no more solutions. There has never been any good solutions, but now there are no solutions whatsoever. Everyone is wasting their breath trying to figure out a sensible and moderate way out of Iraq. It is completely hopeless.

Today, Shiite militiamen burned six Sunnis alive in the street while the crowd - and the Iraqi army - watched. Nearly every day, people show up with drill holes all over their body and their heads missing. The death toll is almost averaging a hundred people a day. It’s over. We have broken Iraq and there is nothing we can do to fix it.

I am a huge advocate of constructive criticism. It is easy to say what is wrong, much harder to say how to fix it. At every step along the way of this great Iraqi misadventure, I have tried to lay out what I thought was the best choice out of all the bad options in Iraq (there have been no good options in Iraq since we invaded, only the lesser of horrible evils).

But now we are completely out of options. The bloodletting has slipped past the tipping point. There is no way to undo what has been done. We can stand in the middle but, unfortunately, we can’t make the situation any better. And there is an excellent chance we are making it much worse.

First of all, we are training an Iraqi army when there is no such thing as Iraq. No one in the streets of Iraq believes in their country above their ethnicity anymore. A united Iraq is a western fantasy. In reality, we are training a Shiite army that will eventually butcher the Sunnis, become an ally of Iran and, in the end, turn on us. This is so obvious. I find it shocking that people can’t see what is clearly in front of their eyes.

Do the Shiites look like they’re going to live with the Sunnis happily ever after? Why on God’s green earth wouldn’t a Shiite Iraqi army be a natural ally for a Shiite Iran? Why can’t we learn the lesson of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein Iraq - that when you arm people in the Middle East to fight against your enemies of the moment, they wind up coming back to fight you eventually?

I wonder if history would repeat itself if we ever had leaders who didn’t have their heads buried so far up their asses. Has anyone in this government read the history of our involvement in the Middle East? This is why people talk about the drastic step of impeachment. Our leaders have set the world on fire, they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and they promise to only make it worse. If a serious, thinking adult doesn’t take over this government soon, the consequences are going to be even more devastating.

I have been warning on our show for the last year that if we didn’t straighten out the ship as soon as possible that we would eventually leave Iraq in helicopters from rooftops. Well, it looks like we are now inexorably headed in that direction.

What are we going to do as the violence spirals around us? Wait for the mythical united Iraqi army to stand up? Wait for national reconciliation in Iraq? Wait for a stable, thriving democracy in Iraq? What the hell are we waiting for?

I can promise you this — none of President Bush’s so-called goals in Iraq are going to be accomplished, even the dramatically scaled back ones. We won’t even have a vague semblance of stability. Instead the violence will circle us and threaten to swallow us whole … until we load up the last Americans on a couple of choppers on the roof the largest embassy in the world and leave Iraq in disgrace.

You can furiously disagree with me and call me a defeatist (if any simpleton tells you that we are going to have “victory” in Iraq, just ask him what that means and watch him flounder around for five minutes until he finally blurts out, we have to “nuke them all”). In the end, no matter how much anyone huffs and puffs now, the result will be the same.

I am not hoping for this outcome, I am only cataloging it. Wishing it wasn’t this way doesn’t make it so. The whirlwind has started and it’s headed in our direction.

Mortars Set Fire to U.S . Base in Iraq
BASSEM MROUE
Nov 26

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two mortar rounds hit a U.S. military post in eastern Baghdad on Sunday, setting it on fire, police and witnesses said. A large cloud of black smoke was seen rising above Baladiyat, a predominantly Shiite area of capital, at about 3 p.m.

Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that “indirect fire rounds” had landed in the vicinity of the coalition forward operating base, but he refused to describe the results of the attack, saying that would allow “the enemy” to assess its effectiveness.

He said the strike was launched from just outside nearby Sadr City, the Shiite slum where more than 200 people were killed on Thursday in an attack by Sunni Arab insurgents using car bombs and mortars.

No casualties were reported by Bleichwehl or by police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani, who said Iraqi security forces didn’t have access to the U.S. military post.

Earlier on Sunday, Iraq’s leaders promised to track down those responsible for the war’s deadliest attack by insurgents, and urged the country’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians to stop fanning sectarian violence by arguing with one another.

“We promise the great martyrs that we will chase the killers and criminals, the terrorists, Saddamists and Takfiri (Sunni extremists) for viciously trying to divide you,” the country’s top politicians said in a statement Sunday, referring to the 215 people who died when Sunni insurgents attacked Sadr City, the capital’s main Shiite district, on Thursday.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh read the statement on national television as Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sunni Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and Kurdish President Jalal Talabani stood around him.

Al-Maliki also urged his national unity government of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to curb the sectarian violence by stopping their public disputes.

“The crisis is political, and it is the politicians who must try to prevent more violence and bloodletting. The terrorist acts are a reflection of the lack of political accord,” he said, after meeting with al-Mashhadani, Talabani and other members of Iraq’s Political Council for National Security for a third day to discuss Iraq’s crisis.

Al-Maliki is facing strong criticism from top Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders alike as he prepares for a summit meeting in neighboring Jordan with President Bush next week.

Shiite politicians loyal to the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if al-Maliki goes ahead with the planned summit on Wednesday and Thursday. The political bloc, known as Sadrists, is a mainstay of support for al-Maliki. The White House has said the meeting is still on.

Meanwhile, fierce fighting between Iraqi police and Sunni Arab insurgents erupted in Baqouba for a second day on Sunday, and the government partially lifted a 24-hour curfew it had imposed in the capital after the bombing and mortar attack in Sadr City.

At least 11 suspected militants were killed in Baqouba, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity as Iraqi security forces often do in an area subjected to widespread fighting and revenge killings.

Few details were immediately available about the clashes, but during Saturday’s fighting police killed at least 36 insurgents and wounded dozens after scores of militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked government buildings in the center of the city, police said.

The fighting raged for hours in Baqouba, which is 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Iraqi police have reported no casualties.

On Saturday, Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obaidi; Gen. George Casey, Iraq’s top U.S. commander in Iraq; and other officials met and decided to fire Diyala’s police commander, saying he was unable to stop infiltration of the force by Sunni insurgents, two officials said on condition of anonymity.

One U.S. soldier was killed in Diyala on Saturday by a roadside bomb, the military said. That same day, two U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar province, the area of western Iraq where many Sunni-insurgent groups are based.

One of the main challenges that U.S. and British forces face in recruiting and training Iraqi military and police forces is that soldiers and police often are attacked by insurgents and militias fighting the coalition. Militants and militias also have infiltrated some security forces to kill and kidnap in disguise.

In Baghdad, some Iraqis went shopping at local vegetable and fruit markets Sunday after being confined to their homes for two full days. The markets often had only limited supplies since the curfew also banned vehicles and all commercial flights at Baghdad International Airport.

“The situation is better today because we can finally get out and buy food for the first time in two days,” said Hussein Fadel, a Shiite civil servant, as he shopped in Sadr City, where Muslim memorial services were still being held for people killed in Thursday’s attack. “I hope the city is less tense today.”

No fighting was reported in the capital on Sunday morning, but several explosions occurred in central Baghdad near the Green Zone, where Iraq’s government and the U.S. and British embassies are based. One sent up a large cloud of black smoke on the opposite side of the Tigris River, but no casualties were immediately reported.

The curfew’s traffic ban remained in place, and the capital’s streets were empty of all cars and trucks, except those being driven by Iraqi and U.S. security forces.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi police checkpoint on a highway near a Sunni mosque in Mahmoudiya city Sunday morning, killing five policemen and wounding 23, said police Capt. Muthanna Khalid Ali. The city of Shiites and Sunnis is about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

I remember the quiet day we lost the war in Iraq
02/11/2006

It was the moment I should have twigged. It was the moment I should have realised that I had voted for the biggest British military fiasco since the Second World War. I was wandering around Baghdad, about 10 days after Iraq had been “liberated”, and it seemed to me that the place was not entirely without hope.

OK, so the gunfire popped round every corner like popcorn on a stove, and civil society had broken down so badly that the looters were taking the very copper from the electricity cables in the streets. But I was able to stroll without a flak jacket and eat shoarma and chips in the restaurants.

With no protection except for Isaac, my interpreter, I went to the Iraqi foreign ministry, and found the place deserted. The windows were broken, and every piece of computer equipment had been looted. As I was staring at the fire-blackened walls a Humvee came through the gates. A pair of large GIs got out and asked me my business. I explained that I was representing the people of South Oxfordshire and Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph.

That didn’t cut much ice. Then I noticed a figure begin to unpack his giraffe-like limbs from the shady interior of the Humvee. He was one of those quiet Americans that you sometimes meet in odd places.

He was grizzled and in his mid-50s and with a lantern jaw, and unlike every other US soldier I’d met he had neither his name nor his blood group stitched on his person. I grasped at once that this quiet American was no soldier. He had that Brahmin air, a bit Ivy League, a touch of JK Galbraith.

Yes, folks, he was some kind of spook.

I remember how he walked slowly towards the shattered foreign ministry building, stroking his chin. Then he walked back towards us, and posed a remarkable question. “Have you, uh, seen anyone here?” he asked.

Nope, we said. All quiet here, we said. Quiet as the grave.

“Uhuh,” he said, and started to get back in the Humvee. And then I blurted my own question: “But who are you?” I asked. “Oh, let’s just say I work for the US government,” he sighed. “I was just wondering if anyone was going to show up for work,” he said. “That’s all.”

And that, of course, was the beginning of the disaster. Nobody came to work that day, or the next, or the one after that, because we failed to understand what our intervention would do to Iraqi society. We failed to anticipate that in taking out Saddam, we would also remove government and order and authority from Iraq.

We destroyed the Baathist state, without realising that nothing would supplant it. The result was that salaries went unpaid, electricity was not generated, sanitation was not provided, and all the disorder was gradually and expertly fomented until it was quite beyond our control.

And what we had failed to see in advance was that almost from the outset the Iraqis would blame us – and not just the insurgents – for every distress they experienced.

It is now commonplace for people like me, who supported the war, to say that we “did the right thing” but that it had mysteriously “turned out wrong”.

This is intellectually vacuous. It is like saying British strategy for July 1, 1916 was perfect, but let down by faulty execution. The thing was a disaster from the moment we invaded, and it wasn’t poor old Rumsfeld’s fault for failing to send in enough troops, or failing to do more “planning” for the post-war. No quantity of troops could have prevented this catastrophe; and the dreadful thing is that I think Saddam knew it.

A couple of years ago I had a chilling conversation with a very senior British general who was then intimately involved in our efforts in Iraq.

The trouble was, he said, that Saddam had thought it all through. He knew he hadn’t a hope against the Pentagon, so he had a three-stage strategy.

First he instructed his army not to put up much resistance to the Patton-like thrusts of the US army. Then, when Baghdad had fallen, he encouraged his soldiers to melt away to their homes and keep their weapons. The third stage, said this British general, was the one we had been embroiled in ever since: a guerrilla war, spiced with sectarian violence, to become gradually more intense until it became no longer possible for the allies to remain in Iraq.

And was he right in his analysis, this British general? Look at the place now. If Saddam had somehow managed to elude capture and stay in that hideyhole, people might now say he was on the verge of a sensational victory. Last time I was in Basra I was able to go for a run past the Shatt-al-Arab canal. You’d need a death-wish to do that today, and even in the massively fortified British compound the risk to life is so great that the Foreign Office has pulled most personnel back to the airport.

Of course we must resist the great national sport of wallowing in our own failures. Of course it is still true that some good will ultimately come, just as some good comes from all disasters. But we must be honest and accept that the price has been far too high, and that General Dannatt is right to say that our presence is making things worse.

As long as we are there, the terrorists know that they can maximise the damage to Bush and Blair by blowing up our troops, and so we incite the very violence we are trying to quell. We need to plan for withdrawal, and we need to understand why, why, why we were so mad as to attack Iraq without working out the consequences. That is why I want an inquiry. I want to interrogate our Government, and above all I want to hear from the Americans.

I want to find that tall, quiet American spook, and get him to explain to a parliamentary committee exactly why he thought there would be people in that Iraqi government building. And I bet most British soldiers would be interested to know the answer.

U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself
JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE, NYT
November 26, 2006

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.

A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.

A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.

The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.

For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.

But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.

The document says the pattern of insurgent financing changed after the first 18 months of the war, from the Hussein loyalists who financed it in 2003 to “foreign fighters and couriers” smuggling cash in bulk across Iraq’s porous borders in 2004, to the present reliance on a complex array of indigenous sources. “Currently, we assess that these groups garner most of their funding from petroleum-related criminal activity, kidnapping and other criminal pursuits within Iraq,” the report concludes.

One section of the report is dedicated to the role played by “sympathetic donors,” including Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations. It says that “intelligence reporting” indicates that only 10 to 15 of the 4,000 nongovernmental groups support terrorist and insurgent groups, but that those few take advantage of lax Iraqi regulation to divert funds to insurgent and other armed groups and, in some cases, “to provide cover for insurgent recruitment and the transport of weapons and personnel.”

The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war here is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, as Afghanistan became under the Taliban. But that suggestion was one of several aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government who were given the outline of the findings.

While noting that the report appeared to reflect a major effort by the administration to learn more about the murky world of insurgent financing in Iraq, the experts said the seven-page document appeared to be speculative, at least in its estimates of the funds available to the insurgent and terror groups. They noted the wide spread of the estimates, particularly the $70 million to $200 million figure for overall financing, the report’s failure to specify which groups the estimates covered and the absence of documentation of how authors had arrived at their estimates.

While such data may have been omitted to protect the group’s clandestine sources and methods — the document has a bold heading on the front page saying “secret” and a warning that it is not to be shared with foreign governments — several security and intelligence consultants said in telephone interviews that the vagueness of the estimates reflected how little American intelligence agencies knew about the opaque and complex world of Iraq’s militant groups.

“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.

“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.

Several analysts said that, except for the possibility that Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia might be transferring money to Qaeda factions elsewhere, the assertion that insurgent money might be flowing out of the country was doubtful considering the single-minded regional focus of most of the militants operating here.

Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, an author of extensive studies of the Iraqi insurgency, said he doubted Iraqi groups were ready to finance terrorism outside the country. “There’s very little evidence that they’re preparing to export terrorism from Iraq to the West,” he said. “I think it’s much too early for that.”

The document tracing the money flows acknowledges that investigators have had limited success in penetrating or choking off terrorist financing networks. The report says American efforts to follow the financing trails have been hamstrung by several factors. They include a weak Iraqi government and its nascent intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between American agencies, and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, primarily sustained by couriers carrying cash rather than more easily traceable means involving banks and the hawala money transfer networks traditional in the Middle East.

“Efforts to identify key financial facilitators, funding sources and transfer mechanisms are yielding some results, but we need to improve our understanding of how terrorist and insurgent cells interact, how their financial networks vary from province to province or city to city and how they use their funds,” the report says. It also says the United States must help the Iraqi government “to excise corrupt officials from its law enforcement and security services and its ministries” and “to prevent smuggled Iraqi oil from being sold within their borders.”

Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.

Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”

Jeffrey White, a defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. “We’ve had some tactical successes where we’ve picked off a financier or whatever, but we haven’t been able to unravel a major component of the system,” he said. “I’ve never seen any indication that they’re strapped for cash, never seen any indication that they were short on weapons.”

He said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in withstanding the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”

Reporting was contributed by Mark Mazzetti from Washington and James Glanz from Baghdad.

Jordan King: 3 Mideast Civil Wars Possible in 2007
Abdullah Calls U.S. Diplomat James Baker An ‘Honest Broker’
ABC This Week transcript

Nov. 26, 2006 — - The week’s flare-up of violence in Iraq has been met by a flurry of new diplomacy. Vice President Cheney has just returned from a one-day visit to Saudi Arabia, and President Bush is heading to Amman this week for a summit with the Iraqi prime minister, hosted by King Abdullah of Jordan. ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos spoke with King Abdullah on “This Week.”

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Welcome back to “This Week,” Your Majesty.

KING ABDULLAH II OF JORDAN: Thank you very much, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is this Amman summit the last chance to save Iraq?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, we hope that this is an opportunity for both President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki to be able to come together in a common understanding on how to bring the sectarian conflict much lower.

We are very, very concerned for the future of all Iraqis, and we hope that there will be something dramatic.

The challenges, obviously, in front of both of them are immense.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say, “something dramatic.” What could that be?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, we have to make sure that all parties in Iraq understand the dangers of the ongoing escalation, and I hope that Prime Minister Maliki will have some ideas to be provided to the president on how he could be inclusive in bringing all the different sects inside of Iraq together.
And they need to do it now, because, obviously, as we’re seeing, things are beginning to spiral out of control.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Many here in the United States say that, if Prime Minister Maliki doesn’t come forward with that kind of a package, President Bush should issue an ultimatum: It has to happen now or we’re going to begin to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

Would that be useful?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, I’m not exactly privy to what the discussion points will be between both sides. But there needs to be some very strong action taken on the ground there today.

Obviously, the indicators are of tremendous concern to all of us, and I don’t think we’re in a position where we can come back and revisit the problem in early 2007.

There needs to be a strategy. There needs to be a plan that brings all the parties together, and bring them today and not tomorrow.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it a civil war in Iraq right now?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, George, the difficulty that we’re tackling with here is, we’re juggling with the strong potential of three civil wars in the region, whether it’s the Palestinians, that of Lebanon or of Iraq.

And I hope that my discussions, at least, with the president will be to provide whatever we can do for the Iraqi people. But at the same time, we do want to concentrate ourselves on the core issues, which we believe are the Palestinians and the Palestinian peace process, because that is a must today, as well as the tremendous concern we’ve had over the past several days, what’s happening in Lebanon.

And we could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands. And therefore, it is time that we really take a strong step forward as part of the international community and make sure we avert the Middle East from a tremendous crisis that I fear, and I see could possibly happen in 2007.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is a frightening prospect, the prospect of three civil wars. All three of those societies — Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority — have had elections over the last couple of years. And now we’re seeing the prospect of civil war.

Could the United States push too hard, too fast for democracy?

KING ABDULLAH: The issue is not whether you’re pushing one agenda or another. The issue is we have not been able to deal with the core problem of the Middle East.

Now, I know people will say that there are several core problems in the Middle East. Obviously, the closest to American minds, because of your commitments of soldiers is Iraq.

But for the majority of us living in this part of the world, it has always been the Israeli-Palestinian, the Israeli-Arab problem.

And I fear that if we do not use the next couple of months to really be able to push the process forward, I don’t believe that there will be anything to talk about. In other words, there will not be enough of circumstances to create a two-state solution — in other words, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and harmony.

If we don’t solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, then how can we ever solve the Israeli-Arab problem?

And I don’t believe that beyond mid-2007, if we don’t get the process going, there will be anything of a Palestine to talk about. And therefore, do we resign this whole region to another decade or two of violence, which none of us can afford.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary of State Baker is considering just that prospect, pushing for a comprehensive peace plan as he looks at solutions for Iraq, as well.

But help me out here. Doesn’t the situation in Iraq now have a logic of its own, the Sunnis and the Shiites killing each other in an uncontrolled manner?
What does that have to do with what’s going on in Palestine?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, the thing is, as we look at the three potential flash points, before, I believe, the Lebanese war this summer, I would have put Iraq in the number one position. After the Lebanese war, the Palestinian scenario was in the number one position, followed very closely in the past several weeks. I would say that the Lebanese problem and the Palestinian ones are neck-in-neck.

They’re all extremely important. Solving all three of them are going to be critical.

But the priority I believe today in the long term is the Israeli-Palestinian one, because it resonates beyond the borders of Iraq, beyond the borders of the Arab and the Muslim world. …

And you know, you’ve been with this issue for many years. It is still the emotional core issue for our part of the world.

The problem when we discuss this sometimes with the American public, they say, no, this is just an excuse, because there are other problems in the Middle East.

But the emotional impact that the Israeli-Palestinian problem has on the ground can be translated to the insecurity and the frustrations throughout the Middle East and the Arab world. For me, that is the priority.

When it comes to things exploding out of control, I would put today, as we stand, Palestine and probably a close tie with Lebanon. Iraq, funny enough, although as concerned as I am with Iraq and the major problems that that might bring to us, is in third position. Obviously, this is all relative.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, one of the ideas for dealing with all three of these conflicts is an international conference that would include Jordan, would include Saudi Arabia, would include Egypt and include the United States, but also Syria and Iran.

Do you think it would be useful to include Syria and Iran in that kind of a conference right now? And what kind of leverage does the U.S. have over that?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, look. We always believe that dialogue is a way of reaching out to each other.

As we continue to push each other into corners, then the only alternative is to have more of a violent reaction than common sense leading the way.

I do believe that there are feelers going to different countries to see if we can come together on the issue of Iraq.

But I think, the problem is, is that America needs to look at it in the total picture. It’s not just one issue by itself.

I keep saying Palestine is the core. It is linked to the extent of what’s going on in Iraq. It is linked to what’s going on in Lebanon. It is linked to the issues that we find ourselves with the Syrians.

So, if you want to do comprehensive — comprehensive means bringing all the parties of the region together.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And does it also mean — when you talk about a reinvigorated U.S. effort, what are you looking for exactly? What kind of a sign are you expecting from the United States to prove that the Bush administration is serious about seeking this kind of comprehensive effort?

One idea being floated right now is that former Secretary of State Baker be appointed a special envoy by President Bush. Would that be useful?

KING ABDULLAH: Well, from my point of view, I’ve known Secretary Baker for many years. He was a good friend of his late Majesty King Hussein. He has a tremendous, strong reputation in this part of the world as being an honest broker.

Obviously, that’s a decision for the American president and his administration. But he is probably — Secretary Baker is one of the qualified … people I’ve ever come across in being able to deal with Middle East issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: King Abdullah, thank you very much for your time this morning.

KING ABDULLAH: Thank you.

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Weekend Roundup

Ceasefire agreed for Gaza Strip
25 November 2006

Both Israel and the Palestinians have agreed on a halt to hostilities in the Gaza Strip, senior officials say.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has won a commitment from all militant groups to halt rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, his office said. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has in return agreed to halt hostilities, his spokeswoman said. The ceasefire will begin at 0600 (0400GMT) on Sunday. BBC correspondents say the announcement is unexpected and a major development.

Israel had said its Gaza operation was to prevent cross-border rocket attacks. Earlier on Saturday, at least one Hamas activist was killed by an Israel air strike on Gaza, Palestinian officials said. Two cars were targeted, and four men were reported injured.

‘Chance for stability’

The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Gaza says it seems Mr Abbas phoned his opposite number on Saturday evening to say he had agreement from all Palestinian factions that they would stop their rocket fire.

This offer was received well by the Israelis, our correspondent says, and they agreed that they would halt hostilities in Gaza. However, it is not yet clear whether Israeli troops will have withdrawn from the Gaza Strip by the time the ceasefire comes into effect.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister, Miri Eisin, told the BBC that Mr Olmert had agreed that Israeli forces would not initiate any offensive action after that time. But she said Mr Olmert had made it clear that it might take some time to pull all Israeli troops out of the Gaza Strip if the ceasefire held. Ms Eisin said Mr Olmert believed this was a chance to achieve stability and one that Israel could not miss.

The BBC’s Simon Wilson in Jerusalem says that although there has been talk of a possible ceasefire in recent weeks, such a direct acknowledgement from the Israeli prime minister’s office comes as a surprise. Officials have indicated in the past that they do not believe Mr Abbas has the power to enforce a ceasefire among Palestinian groups, he says.

Ground offensives

Palestinian militant groups have been firing Qassam rockets into Israel on a daily basis. They have killed two Israeli civilians in the past 10 days. Israel has launched frequent ground offensives into Gaza Strip to try to stop the militants who launch the rockets. It has also shelled targets in Gaza heavily.

Israel evacuated its settlements and military bases in Gaza last year, but the military renewed ground operations after militants captured an Israeli soldier in a border raid in June. Since June, Israeli troops have killed more than 400 Palestinians in Gaza, roughly half of them civilians. Three Israeli soldiers have died in operations.

Experts Concerned as Ballot Problems Persist
November 26, 2006

After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nation’s voting system, this month’s midterm election revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts.

Tens of thousands of voters, scattered across more than 25 states, encountered serious problems at the polls, including failures in sophisticated new voting machines and confusion over new identification rules, according to interviews with election experts and officials.

In many places, the difficulties led to shortages of substitute paper ballots and long lines that caused many voters to leave without casting ballots. Still, an association of top state election officials concluded that for the most part, voting went as smoothly as expected.

Over the last three weeks, attention has been focused on a few close races affected by voting problems, including those in Florida and Ohio where counting dragged on for days. But because most of this year’s races were not close, election experts say voting problems may actually have been wider than initially estimated, with many malfunctions simply overlooked.

That oversight may not be possible in the presidential election of 2008, when turnout will be higher and every vote will matter in what experts say will probably be a close race.

Voting experts say it is impossible to say how many votes were not counted that should have been. But in Florida alone, the discrepancies reported across Sarasota County and three others amount to more than 60,000 votes. In Colorado, as many as 20,000 people gave up trying to vote, election officials say, as new online systems for verifying voter registrations crashed repeatedly. And in Arkansas, election officials tallied votes three times in one county, and each time the number of ballots cast changed by more than 30,000.

“If the success of an election is to be measured according to whether each voter’s voice is heard, then we would have to conclude that this past election was not entirely a success,” said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan election group that plans to release a report Wednesday with a state-by-state assessment of voting. “In places where the margin of victory was bigger than the margin of error, we looked away from the problems, but in 2008 we might not have that luxury.”

Accusations of missing ballots and vote stuffing were not uncommon with mechanical voting machines. But election experts say that with electronic voting machines, the potential consequences of misdeeds or errors are of a greater magnitude. A single software error can affect thousands of votes, especially with machines that keep no paper record.

There were a few signs of progress this month. Several states that faced computer difficulties in the primaries fixed the kinks by Election Day and were better stocked with backup paper ballots. Fears that more stringent identification laws in Indiana and Arizona would create confusion at the polls did not pan out.

And though recent test runs of new computerized voter registration rolls in Indiana and Missouri revealed large numbers of errors, on Election Day reports of problems with the databases were few and isolated. The National Association of Secretaries of States, which represents top election officials from across the country, has said Nov. 7 was generally “a good day.”

But some of the biggest states have not been able to overcome problems with new technology or rules and the lightly trained poll workers who must oversee them. In Ohio, thousands of voters were turned away or forced to file provisional ballots by poll workers puzzled by voter-identification rules. In Pennsylvania, the machines crashed or refused to start, producing many reports of vote-flipping, which means that voters press the button for one candidate but a different candidate’s name appears on the screen.

Perhaps most notoriously, officials in Sarasota County say nearly 18,000 votes may never have been recorded by electronic machines in a Congressional race, even though many voters said they tried to vote.

The recent problems will probably help propel legislation that has stalled for months in Congress mandating that electronic voting machines have a paper trail to better enable recounts. Less clear, experts say, is whether anything will be done to address concerns about the lack of technicians to troubleshoot machines, polling places with too few machines and poorly trained workers, and a system run by partisan election officials who may decide conflicts based on politics rather than policy.

“These types of low-tech problems threaten to disenfranchise just as many people, if not more, but they tend to get less attention,” said Tova Wang, an elections expert with the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in New York. “We still have a long way to go toward fixing the biggest problems with our election system.”

Election workers and experts say the advances in technology have simply overwhelmed many of the people trying to run things on the ground. At a hearing in Denver last week, one focus was on how hard it has become for the poll workers, often retirees getting paid $100 for a 14-hour day, and what it would take to attract younger people who are perhaps more savvy about computers.

“It used to be that you would come in, set up the machines, make a cup of coffee and say hello to your neighbors,” said Sigrid Freese, who has worked at Denver polling places for more than 20 years. Now, she said, the job is complicated and stressful, and “I know a lot of people who said, ‘Never again.’ ”

After widespread confusion and controversy caused by the hanging chads of the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002 to help states phase out old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines and to introduce electronic voting equipment. But with malfunctions reported from a handful of states in the primaries earlier this year, many voting experts and state officials feared that the new technology might have only swapped old problems for newer, more complicated ones.

On Election Day, two voting-rights groups, Common Cause and the Election Protection Coalition, fielded nearly 40,000 telephone calls on two national hot lines from voters’ reporting of problems or seeking information, and both groups are due to release their findings within the next two weeks. An initial review of their data, along with interviews with officials and experts, reveals that Florida, Maryland , Ohio and Pennsylvania were among the states with the most calls reporting trouble, including long lines, names missing from voter registration rolls, poll worker confusion and computer failures.

In a few places, the difficulties started as soon as voters walked up to the sign-in tables.

In Ohio, even a congressman, Steve Chabot, a Republican, was turned away from his polling place because the address listed on his driver’s license was different than his home address. Mr. Chabot was able to vote only after he returned with a utility bill. The state’s top election official had to fax a midday notice to all precincts that such minor discrepancies were acceptable.

In Denver, the culprit was a new electronic poll book, which workers had to consult through laptop computers. The system was supposed to verify each voter’s name in less than a minute. But it started slowing at 7 a.m. and eventually had to be turned off and rebooted, after taking up to 20 minutes to find each name.

As a result, voters waited in line for two to three hours. Liz Prescott, a computer industry executive, said she twice tried to vote but was deterred by the lines. “I’m just flabbergasted that this system at all levels failed,” Ms. Prescott said.

John Gaydeski, Denver’s election director, acknowledged that the system had not been tested properly before the election.

In Arkansas, Florida and Pennsylvania, the questions were about the voting machines themselves. In addition to the Sarasota issue, which may have been caused by a software problem, there were similar problems in the Florida counties of Charlotte, Lee and Sumter. In those counties, said Barbara Burt, vice president and director for election reform at Common Cause, more than 40,000 voters who used touch-screen machines seemed not to have chosen a candidate in the attorney general’s race. But since one candidate won by 250,000 votes, the anomaly has been generally overlooked.

On election night in Arkansas, officials discovered that erroneous results had been tallied in Benton County . After retabulating the votes, they announced that the total number of ballots cast had jumped to 79,331 from 47,134, which meant a turnout of more than 100 percent in some precincts. After a third tallying, the total dropped to 48,681.

In Pennsylvania, computer problems forced polling places in Lancaster and Lebanon Counties to stay open late. In Westmoreland County, a programming error in at least 800 machines caused long lines.

Mary Beth Kuznik, a poll worker in that county, said she had to reset every machine after each voter, or more than 500 times, because the machines kept trying to shut down.

Howard Shaub, the elections board chairman in Lancaster County, counseled patience. “We used those old lever machines for 20, 30 years,” Mr. Shaub said. “We just have to have better quality control and the new machines will work fine.”

But Ms. Kuznik said one man refused to vote on the electronic machines and demanded a provisional ballot. “At least my vote will be on a piece of paper,” Ms. Kuznik recalled his saying.

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former US army general
25 Nov 2006

Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison’s former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain’s El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

“The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: “Make sure this is accomplished”,” she told Saturday’s El Pais.

“The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation … playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably … Rumsfeld authorised these specific techniques.”

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer “no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion” to secure information.

“Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind,” the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski’s accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorised the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

“We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions.”

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

U.S. President George W. Bush announced Rumsfeld’s resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

Thousands in Turkey protest pope’s visit
26 November

Tens of thousands of protesters chanted “No to the pope!” and waved anti- Vatican banners Sunday in a defiant display of the pro-Islamic anger that could await the pontiff on his first papal trip to a mostly Muslim nation.

About 25,000 people filled a square in a working-class district of Istanbul at a rally organized by an Islamist political party whose leaders have denounced the pope’s remarks in September that linked violence and Islam.

“The pope is not wanted here,” said Kubra Yigitoglu, a 20-year-old protester in a head scarf, ankle-length coat and cowboy boots who called Turkey “an Islamic republic.”

The demonstration highlighted the deep strains in Turkey ahead of the pope’s four-day visit beginning Tuesday.Turkish officials hope to use the visit to promote their ambitions of joining the European Union and to showcase its secular political system. But pro-Islamic groups — which have been gaining strength for years — perceive Pope Benedict as a symbol of Western intolerance and injustices against Muslims.

The pope plans to first meet with political and Muslim religious leaders in the capital, Ankara , including Turkey’s president and the Islamic cleric who oversees Turkey’s religious affairs. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is scheduled to attend a NATO meeting in Latvia during the papal visit, but could briefly greet the pontiff at the airport.

Benedict later heads to Istanbul — the ancient Christian capital Constantinople — to be hosted by the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. The pope strongly backs efforts to close the nearly 1,000-year divide between the Vatican and the Orthodox churches.

The pope also is expected to continue the Vatican ’s efforts to heal rifts with Muslims. The Vatican has expressed regret for offending Muslims and sorrow for the violent backlash to his comments — which the Vatican said were an attempt to show the incompatibility between faith and violence.

At the Vatican on Sunday, Benedict expressed his “feelings of esteem and of sincere friendship” for Turks and their leaders. The Vatican spokesman also confirmed that the pope would visit Istanbul ’s famous 17th-century Blue Mosque as “a sign of respect” to Muslims.

The mosque, a major tourist attraction and prominent landmark on Istanbul’s skyline, faces the Haghia Sophia, a former Byzantine church that was converted to a mosque following the fall of the city to Muslim armies in 1453. It is a now a museum.

But Benedict may also use his time in Turkey as a forum to demand that Islamic nations offer greater rights and protection to Christian minorities, such as the remnants of the once-thriving Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said Benedict’s visit could help “remove some misunderstandings” between Christians and Muslims.

“The messages the pope gives here will, of course, be very important,” Gul said at a news conference.

But the protesters sent a loud message that the pope is not welcome until he offers a full apology for his remarks, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”

“The pope was disrespectful to us and he needs to apologize,” said one banner at the rally, which is in the heart of Istanbul’s conservative districts and is often the site of pro-Islam gatherings. More than 4,000 police — including riot squads — ringed the protest as police helicopters buzzed overhead.

Seafetin Tuleg, 70, wrapped himself in the red flag of the Felicity Party which organized the demonstration. He said Muslims revered the Jewish and Christian prophets but did not receive the same respect for their own.

“We love Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, but the pope doesn’t love Muhammad and Islam,” he said.

Officially, Turkey is a rigidly secular republic, though around 99 percent of its population is Muslim. In 2004 before becoming pope, the then- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cast doubt on whether Turkey has a place among EU nations.

“Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe ,” he was quoted by the French magazine Le Figaro as saying.

On Sunday, Turkey ’s state-run Anatolia news agency quoted the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, as saying that the Vatican was not against Turkish membership in the EU. The Vatican city-state is not an EU member.

Iraq and Syria begin Mid-East shift
24 November 2006

The restoration of relations between Iraq and Syria is part of a series of manoeuvres in which new diplomatic horizons in the Middle East are being explored by all sides. Iran has simultaneously offered to host a three-way summit between itself, Iraq and Syria this weekend.

The Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, is expected to go to Tehran, though it is not known if the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, will attend. President Talabani’s spokesman said there would not be a summit but that Mr Talabani would meet the Syrian president at some other time.

For the embattled Iraqi government, these moves give it some hope that its neighbours believe that it is here to stay and that they must come to terms with it. Iraq is also using the restoration of ties with Syria for its own security purposes and is stressing that Syria must act to stop foreign fighters from crossing its borders into Iraq.

Clout and tactics

For Syria, the move gives it new clout in the region and a possible softening of its difficult relations with the United States.

It is a major move by Syria, given that it was hostile to Iraq for years. It sided with non-Arab and non-Sunni Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, though that was largely due to animosity between the then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein, rivals in the pan-Arab Baath movement. Syria also fought in the coalition against Iraq in 1991.

Iran ’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a master tactician of the unexpected and presumably hopes to position Iran as a key influence in the future history of Iraq, which is dominated politically by fellow Shias.

It could be that both Iran and Syria see a chance to involve themselves in Iraqi affairs more closely, whatever the US says.

Problematic for Washington

The moves present the Bush administration with some difficulties. It is believed that the Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton might recommend that Iran and Syria be brought in as part of wider efforts to help stabilise Iraq, but the administration is reluctant to get too close to two countries whose policies it so strongly opposes.

It has laid down for example that Iran must end its uranium enrichment programme before it can be considered as a diplomatic partner by the United States, something Iran is unlikely to do.

Getting the UN or like-minded governments to impose sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear activities will be harder to achieve if Iraq and Iran suddenly emerge as more friendly neighbours.

On the other hand Washington can hardly prevent the Iraqi government from acting, as the sovereignty of Iraq is supposed to be paramount. It might therefore have little choice but to go along with all this, especially since President Bush’s position has been weakened following the mid-term elections.

Words and actions

So far the State Department has reacted to these latest moves by simply stressing the difference between words and actions.

“While there have been positive statements from the Iranian government about wishing to play a positive role in Iraq, those statements haven’t been backed up by actions,” said the spokesman Tom Casey.

As for Syria he said: “The issue here again is not the words, it’s the actions that are taken, and certainly what we would like to see the Syrians do is take actions, to, among other things, prevent foreign fighters from coming across the border into Iraq.”

Washington will at least be pleased to see that in the statement announcing the restoration of ties, Syria accepted the Iraqi and UN formula about the presence of US troops in Iraq. Instead of demanding their immediate departure, Syria agreed that they should withdraw gradually when not needed.

Military options

Meanwhile, there is more discussion in Washington about the next US military moves in Iraq. The Pentagon is reported to have put forward three options, known as “Go Big, Go Long and Go Home”.

“Go Big” would see an additional 20,000 US troops sent to reinforce the 140,000 already there. This would be a short-term measure to get on top of a critical security situation.

“Go Long” would stress the build-up of Iraqi troops with US help.

“Go Home” envisages a timetable for withdrawal.

The Iraq Study Group is expected to report next month and decisions by the administration could follow not long afterwards. Both diplomacy and military tactics are on the move.

Ban on ‘brutal’ fishing blocked
24 November 2006

United Nations negotiations on fisheries have ended without a global ban on trawling methods which destroy coral reefs and fish nurseries. Conservation groups and some governments had argued for a ban on bottom-trawling, which drags heavy nets and crushing rollers on the sea floor. Negotiators could only agree on a limited set of precautionary measures.

Last month, leading scientists warned there would be no sea fish left in 50 years if current practices continued. Negotiations at the UN in New York aimed to secure an agreement to go before the General Assembly next month.

Slow growth

Central to discussions was bottom-trawling, widely regarded as a destructive fishing practice. It targets slow-growing species such as orange roughy, which take decades to reach breeding age. Such species are especially vulnerable to overfishing because the population replenishes itself very slowly.

For three years, conservation groups have been pushing for a UN moratorium on bottom-trawling; for the third year running, they have been disappointed.

“We had been hoping the amazing creatures and habitats of the deep sea would get an early Christmas present this week,” said Bryce Beukers-Stewart, fisheries policy officer with the Marine Conservation Society.

“But once again, short-term political and economic interests have over-ridden common sense.”

Bottoming out

Eleven nations have bottom-trawling fleets, with Spain ’s being the biggest. Studies have indicated that none would be commercially viable without government subsidies.

In 2004, a report compiled for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and other environmental groups concluded that bottom-trawling was “…highly destructive to the biodiversity associated with seamounts and deep-sea coral ecosystems and… likely to pose significant risks to this biodiversity, including the risk of species extinction.”

In the same year, 1,100 scientists put their names to a petition supporting the demand for a moratorium. All this scientific evidence could not convince enough UN delegates that a moratorium was needed.

The eventual deal which goes forward to the General Assembly mandates governments to adopt unilateral “precautionary measures” to ensure their bottom-trawlers do not cause significant damage to marine ecosystems.

In areas covered by Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), “precautionary measures” must be established by the end of 2008.

“The final agreement has more loopholes in it than a fisherman’s sweater,” fumed Greenpeace oceans policy advisor Karen Sack.

Conservation groups accused Iceland in particular of blocking further protection. Iceland is already under fire from the conservation lobby over its recent decision to resume commercial whaling.

“The international community should be outraged that Iceland could almost single-handedly sink deep-sea protection and the food security of future generations,” said Ms Sack.

Last month, an international team of scientists, having compiled a vast range of data from a wide variety of sources, warned that at current rates of depletion, there would be no viable populations of fish left in the seas by the middle of the century.

A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So?
November 26, 2006

Is Iraq in a civil war?

Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that most of their number are in agreement that Iraq’s conflict is a civil war.

“I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” said James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford.

While the term is broad enough to include many kinds of conflicts, one of the sides in a civil war is almost always a sovereign government. So some scholars now say civil war began when the Americans transferred sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi government in June 2004. That officially transformed the anti-American war into one of insurgent groups seeking to regain power for disenfranchised Sunni Arabs against an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and increasingly dominated by Shiites.

Others say the civil war began this year, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a chain of revenge killings that left hundreds dead over five days and has yet to end. Mr. Allawi proclaimed a month after that bombing that Iraq was mired in a civil war. “If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,” he said.

Many insurgencies and ethnic or sectarian wars are also civil wars. Vietnam and Lebanon are examples. Scholars say the Iraq civil war has elements of both an insurgency — one side is struggling to topple what it sees as an illegitimate national government — and a sectarian war — the besieged government is ruled by Shiites and opposed by Sunni Arabs.

In Iraq , sectarian purges and Sunni-Shiite revenge killings have become a hallmark of the fighting, but the cycles of violence are ignited by militia leaders who have political goals. The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosovic, did this during the wars in the Balkans.

The civil strife in Iraq largely takes place in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas that include the cities of Baghdad , Mosul and Baquba. In Anbar Province, which is overwhelming Sunni Arab, much of the violence is aimed at American troops. Large swaths of Iraq have little violence, but those areas are relatively homogenous and have few people.
Governments and people embroiled in a civil war often do not want to label it as such. In Colombia, officials insisted for years that the rebels there were merely bandits.

Some Bush administration officials have argued that there is no obvious political vision on the part of the Sunni-led insurgent groups, so “civil war” does not apply. In the United States, the debate over the term rages because many politicians, especially those who support the war, believe there would be domestic political implications to declaring it a civil war. They fear that an acknowledgment by the White House and its allies would be seen as an admission of a failure of President Bush’s Iraq policy. They also worry that the American people might not see a role for American troops in an Iraqi civil war and would more loudly demand a withdrawal.

But in fact, many scholars say the bloodshed here already puts Iraq in the top ranks of the civil wars of the last half-century. The carnage of recent days — beginning with bombings on Thursday in a Shiite district of Baghdad that killed more than 200 people — reinforces their assertion.

Mr. Fearon and a colleague at Stanford, David D. Laitin, say the deaths per year in Iraq, with at least 50,000 reportedly killed since March 2003, place this conflict on par with wars in Burundi and Bosnia .

Iraq’s president and prime minister avoid using the term, but many Iraqis say extremists have thrust the country into civil war, even as moderates have struggled to pull back from the brink.

“You need to let the world know there’s a civil war here in Iraq,” said Adel Ibrahim, 44, a sheik in the Subiah tribe, which is mostly Shiite. “It’s a crushing civil war. Mortars kill children in our neighborhoods. We’re afraid to travel anywhere because we’ll be killed in buses. We don’t know who is our enemy and who is our friend.”

The spiraling bloodshed here bolsters arguments that this is a civil war. A United Nations report released Wednesday said at least 3,709 Iraqis were killed in October, the highest of any month since the American-led invasion. More than 100,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing to Syria and Jordan .

“It’s stunning; it should have been called a civil war a long time ago, but now I don’t see how people can avoid calling it a civil war,” said Nicholas Sambanis, a political scientist at Yale who co-edited “Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis,” published by the World Bank in 2005. “The level of violence is so extreme that it far surpasses most civil wars since 1945.”

Among scholars, “there’s a consensus,” Mr. Sambanis said. Scholars in the United States generally agree that there have been at least 100 civil wars since 1945. At the smaller end of the scale is the war in Northern Ireland . Measured by total killed, the largest modern civil wars were in Angola, Afghanistan, Nigeria, China and Rwanda.

However, there are some dissenting historians on the definition of civil war, and whether it applies to Iraq . John Keegan, the British writer of war histories, finds only five clear-cut cases, starting with the English civil war of the 17th century through to the Lebanese war of the 20th century. His criteria are that the feuding groups must be vying for national authority, have leaders who publicly announce what they are fighting for and clash in set-piece battles while wearing uniforms, among other things. He argues in the December issue of Prospect magazine that Iraq is therefore not in civil war.

On Friday, Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, insisted that the Iraq conflict was not civil war, noting that Iraq’s top leaders had agreed with that assessment. Last month, Tony Snow, the chief spokesman for President Bush, acknowledged that there were many groups trying to undermine the government, but said that there was no civil war because “it’s not clear that they are operating as a unified force. You don’t have a clearly identifiable leader.”

By contrast, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Fox News in September that “a political solution is necessary to end the civil war in Iraq.”

In 2003, at the start of the Sunni-led insurgency, Bush administration officials called the guerrillas “dead-enders” and insisted their only goal was to sow chaos. Now, American commanders acknowledge that political dominance is at the heart of this conflict.

In Congressional testimony this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power” and said the country was moving closer to a “significant breakdown of central authority.”

Many Iraqis and Americans who have tracked the insurgency say it has been strongly shaped by former Baath Party members who want to keep Shiites from taking power. Even the newer jihadist groups have articulated political goals on Web sites — most notably to establish a Sunni-ruled Islamic caliphate.

“There was a whole regime that ruled this country for 35 years,” said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish legislator. “Now they’ve gone underground. This is the main body of the resistance.”

Scholars say it is crucial that policy makers and news media organizations recognize the Iraq conflict as a civil war.

“Why should we care how it is defined, if we all agree that the violence is unacceptable?” asked Mr. Laitin, the Stanford professor. “Here is my answer: There is a scientific community that studies civil wars, and understands their dynamics and how they, in general, end. This research is valuable to our nation’s security.”

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