In the Red
Draining the Sunni Triangle swamp.

It is less than 90 days before we are scheduled to turn Iraq over to an interim government, and neither is the nation ready for the government, nor is the government ready for the nation. We're finally taking action -- after months of diplo-dithering -- to drain the Sunni Triangle swamp. As Monday dawned, American Marines, accompanied by about two battalions of Iraqi security forces, cordoned off the city of Fallujah to hunt for the soulless barbarians who ambushed, killed, and mutilated four American civilians last week. They are accompanied by units with loudspeakers who are driving through Fallujah telling the Iraqis to abide by the new curfew, and not to worry: the Coalition is in town to capture or kill the terrorists. An arrest warrant (issued months ago) for 30-year old radical Shiite mullah Moqtadar Sadr is now being enforced as a result of Sadr ordering his Iranian-funded militia to attack Coalition forces.
For many months, Ambassador Paul Bremer has been far too soft and indecisive in dealing with those inciting violence. He brought in Gen. John Abizaid -- our highest-ranking officer of Arab descent -- to speak with Ali al-Sistani and the other principal religious leaders and obtain their cooperation in pacifying Iraq. They made comforting noises but ignored Abizaid's admonitions. As one Iraqi source e-mailed me Monday, "Look what is happening now to Al Sadr and his radical followers. Why [was] Al Sadr was not arrested from day one? He killed Abdul Majid Al-Khoie [a leading Shiite cleric who favored peace] in Najaf, established his own courts, intimidated even Al Sistani, and [yet was] left alone.... As if, if you leave bad guys alone they will leave you alone."
Our policy toward the radical mullahs has to be consistent and firm. Those who plan and organize terrorism, like Sadr, must be arrested and imprisoned. The only real difference between Sadr and Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani -- the most prominent Shia cleric -- is that al-Sistani hasn't openly called for violence. If he crosses that line, he should have a cell next to Sadr's. Because you call yourself a cleric doesn't give you immunity from capture and punishment if you're organizing violence. Just as the Israelis were right in killing Yassin, the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, we have not only the right but the obligation to arrest and silence those Iraqi "spiritual leaders" who are organizing and inciting murder.
The Sunni Triangle is a war zone. You need only to look at the pictures of the Fallujah incident to see the proof. If you want to see the inhumanity of the enemy -- and I don't recommend it -- you can see the atrocity, and the faces of some of the barbarians who perpetrated it at www.bambili.com. It's as bad as anything I've ever seen, including the pictures of American soldiers murdered by Iraqi troops during last year's campaign.
Because we haven't destroyed the terrorist networks in the Sunni Triangle and elsewhere, it is almost impossible to see how we can turn Iraqi sovereignty over on the schedule we so foolishly announced. The president unwisely reaffirmed his commitment to the June 30 date Monday. Of the many lessons Vietnam taught us -- or should have -- one of the most important is that if you establish a schedule, it's not just yours: It's the enemy's as well. It's no accident that the violence is escalating as our "deadline" approaches. The enemy is preparing the battlefield for their fight against any democratic Iraqi government. We must also prepare the battlefield to ensure that when a new government is ready, it can function with authority and credibility.
The occupation force has been drawn down to less than 150,000. We may need to add more troops temporarily, but the issue is not how many troops we have there, but what we're ordering them to do. If we had started cleaning out the Sunni Triangle six months ago -- and used the forces we have there effectively -- the area would be far quieter today. And we have not done nearly enough to end the outside interference from Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the Syrian Baathists keep the Sunni Triangle ablaze while the Iranians are sending everything from money to silk Persian rugs to pay mullahs like Sadr to stir up violence. There will be no real peace in Iraq until we force these nations to end their interference.
The Fallujah incident illustrates all too vividly the difference between what we have been doing and what we should have been doing. I've gotten an earful about Fallujah from the spec-ops community. The problem, they say, is not only with the mullahs and terrorists there. It is also with some of the "PMCs" -- private military companies -- we have hired to support the Coalition.
Under contract with the CIA, these men are tasked with protecting dignitaries, making sure that Coalition installations are safe from terrorist attacks, and performing any other mission the "customer" imposes. Most of these men are former Navy SEALs, Army special forces, Marine Recon, or Air Force PJs. When they join the civilian companies, they have the skills they need to seize ships, rescue hostages, and the other things the spec-ops guys do so well. But, as one of the former operators who worked for a PMC in Afghanistan told me, their skill sets and trained mental attitude aren't what's needed on the streets of Iraq.
One man I spoke to was sent to Afghanistan with hardly any training. The PCM planned a patently inadequate three days of preparation to test basic skills and make an operator ready for the Afghan streets. There was apparently no training in small-unit tactics designed to create cohesion among the operators. This operator told me that the pressure to get men in the field overcame the contractor's already too-low training standards, and people were sent out long before they were ready.
It's almost certain that we'll never know just what the four men killed last week were doing driving around Fallujah. It's just as certain that some or all of them would have been killed even if their training had been different. But their training and alertness should have enabled them to avoid the ambush in the first place. Apparently, they were neither "switched on" nor "in the red," meaning that they weren't acting like they were in a war zone, at the highest state of alert in every waking moment. They hadn't been trained in avoiding ambushes like the Fallujah attack, or in the escape-and-evasion tactics necessary to any chance of escaping it.
One of the other puzzles is why the $18 billion in reconstruction money appropriated last fall still isn't being spent. The reason: The political gurus don't want another "Halliburton" campaign issue, and are trying to award the contracts as they would in peacetime, and it's taking far too long. Thousands of Iraqis who could be employed building their nation now are unemployed. They have nothing better to do than sit around and listen to the mullahs preaching violence against Americans. Bremer's contracting shop is too politically sensitive to get this under way, and someone needs to light a fire under them right now. (There are other problems in that shop. One source investigating the U.N. oil-for-food scam told me that while Bremer and his immediate staff appear perfectly honest, there is corruption in contract award and administration.)
In the next 90 days, the anti-Coalition violence in Iraq will continue to escalate, aimed at preventing the new government from establishing itself. Regardless of the progress made in building Iraqi security forces, it's obvious that the Iraqis aren't going to be able to defeat the terrorists or end the mullahs' incitement any time soon. Which means everyone from Bremer on down needs to be "in the red" and "switched on" from now on. And it also means that we have to delay turnover until several milestones are reached.
First, security has to be established in each of the major population centers. Without it, nothing else can succeed. Second, the Iraqis need to have basic services, such as water and electricity, reliably available. Third, we have to push the construction contracts through, and get as many Iraqis as possible working to build their nation, taking the audience away from the radical clerics. Fourth, the Iraqis have to establish their constitution and courts and begin trying criminals such as Saddam.
Functioning courts, reliable basic services, and ongoing construction of Iraq's infrastructure would be important evidence that the government is real and working. It is only after the Iraqis can manage to meet these goals that the turnover of sovereignty can occur. If we force it before those goals are met, Iraq may end up like Vietnam.

-- Jed Babbin, an NRO contributor, is author of the forthcoming book, Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe are Worse than You Think.
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Sadr Signs
The sky is not falling.
By Michael Rubin
Eight American troops died in Baghdad, as fighting erupted between Coalition troops and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. Hearing the news, Senator Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) declared Iraq to be "George Bush's Vietnam." Evening-news anchors question whether this weekend's violence marked the start of a Shii revolt. Quite the contrary.
Far from rebelling, the majority of Shia are breathing sighs of relief. Iraqis consider action to rein in Muqtada al-Sadr long overdue. An Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Muqtada's arrest last summer, charging him with instigating the April 10, 2003, murder of respected cleric Majid al-Khoie, hacked to death in Najaf's holiest shrine. American hand wringing and delay has allowed Muqtada al-Sadr's operation to metasticize into a more lethal network.
In Najaf, Baghdad, and Basra, followers of the 30-year-old firebrand cleric have terrorized the local population. Since liberation, Iraqis have had the freedom to watch satellite television stations, except in Najaf, where Muqtada al-Sadr's militia members invade homes and smash satellite dishes in a scene more reminiscent of the Taliban's Afghanistan than of Iraq. In Baghdad and Basra, Muqtada's vigilantes beat and harass women. Doctors, lawyers, tribal leaders, and shopkeepers repeatedly ask visiting Americans why the Coalition has failed to rein in Muqtada al-Sadr.
Muqtada al-Sadr does not represent Iraq's Shia community. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shii religious figure in Iraq, will have nothing to do with him, nor will the myriad of lesser ayatollahs or the large, secular Shia community. Even in Sadr City, a large Shia slum on the outskirts of Baghdad (named not after Muqtada but rather the late Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr), Muqtada's support is weak. Since his power peaked shortly after Baghdad's liberation, Muqtada has steadily lost his Sadr City constituents to Ibrahim Jaafari of Dawa and Abdulaziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Muqtada al-Sadr's real symbolism is not as the personification of Shia struggle, but rather in his challenge to rule of law. On March 8, Governing Council members representing Iraq's major political trends agreed to an interim constitution. Salma al-Khufaji, whom Governing Council colleagues identify as Muqtada al-Sadr's de facto proxy, signed off on the document. Most members I spoke with acknowledged the transitional law was a political compromise ideal to none, but fair to all. Some pundits may say that the Coalition Provisional Authority imposed the TAL on a rubberstamp Governing Council. Such a charge is not only false (negotiations and drafting occurred absent the presence of Coalition officials), but also racist in its assumption that Iraqis are not sophisticated enough to operate independently.
While President Bush hailed the signing of the Iraq's interim constitution "as a historic milestone in the Iraqi people's long journey from tyranny and violence to liberty and peace," Iraqis are cynical. The Baath party has long ignored legal and constitutional guarantees. Constitutions are not worth the paper upon which they are printed if they are not enforced. Shia in Najaf and Nasriyah as well as Kufa and Kut, watched as Muqtada al-Sadr's 3,000-member militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, kidnapped people off the street, tried them before ad hoc courts, and meted out medieval punishment. In recent days, Muqtada al-Sadr has increased the virulence of his rhetoric and threats. On April 2, Muqtada announced "solidarity" with Hezbollah and Hamas. "Let them consider me their striking hand in Iraq when the need arises," he declared in his sermon. On April 4, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network reported Sadr's call to commence armed operations.
Most Iraqis recognize that Muqtada al-Sadr is not a true grassroots figure. He receives money through Ayatollah Kazim al-Husayni al-Haeri, an Iraqi cleric based in Iran who himself is a close confidant of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In a brazen power grab deemed illegitimate by Iraq's entire Shia hierarchy, on April 7, 2003, Haeri sent a handwritten note to the houzeh declaring Muqtada al-Sadr his representative in Najaf. "His position is our position," Haeri declared. Muqtada, not educated enough to write his own sermons, relies on supporters in Iran. He has made several trips to Qom to pick-up instructions and money. Much of his violence has been directed not against "occupation forces," but against tolerant, traditional clerics like al-Khoie, who in challenge to Khamenei, favored separation of mosque and state. While pundits and ivy-tower academics speak of Muqtada's appeal to the poor and downtrodden, they fail to question where he gets the money to charter hundreds of buses each weak to transport followers the two hours from Baghdad to Kufa, where they listen to his sermon and enjoy a free meal.
The sky is not falling. The decision to confront the Muqtada al-Sadr's challenge to rule-of-law and liberty will cause a short-term spike in violence, but lead to long-term improvement. Iraqis see any failure to defend rule-of-law as Coalition weakness. How could the United States be serious about democracy, Iraqis ask, when we left such a challenge to rule-of-law go unchallenged? Thankfully, Iraqis now know that we will meet challenges head-on. It is a lesson that should also be understood in Syria and Iran.

-- Michael Rubin, a former CPA political officer -- the only one who lived outside the American security bubble -- is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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US pushing arms, reforming export controls
By John Feffer
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell okayed the arms deal with a tap of a finger, unveiling the State Department's new D-Trade, a fast, paperless process for granting licenses to US military contractors for arms sales. After joking that State had only recently junked its last vintage Wang computer, Powell pushed one button to approve the sale of a pair of night-vision goggles to the United Kingdom. US government oversight of the arms trade had officially entered the virtual age.
The electronic licensing of D-Trade is only one of a range of pending reforms that would substantially recast and expedite the way the US government handles arms exports, from lowly and innocuous spare parts to the latest unmanned aerial vehicles. The implications for Asia are significant. The United States hopes to facilitate arms sales to such allies as Australia and South Korea, but also to expand new relationships with Pakistan and Indonesia. Taiwan was the world's largest arms importer in the late 1990s, and the US wants a bigger piece of this market. The Europeans, contemplating a lifting of the arms embargo against China, are eyeing an equally lucrative market.
The global arms market is fiercely competitive, and sellers are always looking for an edge. Although the US is the world's largest arms exporter, controlling nearly half of the international market of about US$30 billion a year, both the government and industry have been pushing for the better part of a decade to increase this market share. One way of boosting exports is to make it easier for sellers to get licenses. Every year, the US government processes more than 50,000 export licenses for military goods. Defense contractors frequently complain about bureaucratic delays, which they argue make the US less competitive against other high-ranking exporters such as Russia and France.
But what looks like a delay to one person is a justifiable concern about national security or proliferation to another. In streamlining the process of exporting arms and equipment, skeptics question whether the administration of President George W Bush is seizing market share at the expense of national security.
"Since the late 1990s, industry has been pushing the State Department to remove what they perceive are barriers to defense trade cooperation and US competitiveness in the international arms market," says Matt Schroeder, an arms-trade specialist with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). "The problem is that many of these barriers help to prevent military technologies from ending up in the wrong hands."
Cutting red tape on innocuous items
Joel Johnson of the Aerospace Industries Association disagrees. He lists various components - steering wheels, air conditioners, hydraulic hoses - that have been only very slightly modified from their commercial versions to serve military functions and yet require separate licenses. "There's still an awful lot in the system that shouldn't be there," he says. "Just give me an 'officer of common sense' - I'd hold [these components] up to him and he'd said, 'Nah, we're not interested in that, that's not what we have in mind.'"
The push for arms-export reform originated in the administration of former president Bill Clinton. As part of its geo-economic philosophy, his administration urged the defense industry to become more competitive, enter new markets such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, and ink global co-production agreements for the latest high-tech bomber, the Joint Strike Fighter. The Bush administration enthusiastically embraced this policy. After September 11, 2001, the administration used the "war on terrorism" to boost military aid to countries such as the Philippines and India and to provide anti-terrorism funding for the first time to such countries as Tajikistan and Indonesia.
Last month, the administration designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally". Once a pariah state because of its nuclear program with potential military uses, Pakistan now has access to a wide range of US military goods, even though it remains under a cloud for selling advanced military technology to such countries as North Korea and Libya.
The Bush administration also wants systemic change in the arms export system. For instance, the administration hopes to expedite sales to the UK and Australia by granting them exemptions from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The US provided an ITAR exemption to Canada but narrowed it in 1999 after the discovery of several cases of unauthorized re-export of US military goods.
The arms-control community is concerned that something similar will happen with the UK and Australia. Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information cites a high-profile cases of arms-trade violations in the UK, including the 1998 Sandline scandal in which the British government broke a United Nations arms embargo by supplying weapons to Sierra Leone. She also worries that US weapons, such as small arms bound for Australia, will end up in places such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which are fighting insurgencies and separatist movements that some label as terrorist. "I lose more sleep over the United Kingdom than Australia," Stohl says, "but because of the geographic position of Australia, we have to be concerned there as well."
Export of C-130 transports might be expedited
Also up for its rolling quadrennial review is the US Munitions List (USML). One possible item to be removed, according to a source in the arms-control community, is the C-130 transport plane, which Pakistan has been offered through a foreign military financing grant and which China also would like to acquire. The China military market, which the United States has not supplied since the 1980s, is particularly controversial.
"Changes to the Munitions List thus far have been modest and demonstrate an acute awareness of the security threats posed by decontrol of US defense articles," says Schroeder, the FAS arms-trade specialist. "We hope that changes to the remaining USML categories will reflect similar thinking and priorities."
The European Union, meanwhile, is debating lifting the arms embargo on China imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. According to Ian Anthony, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "The embargo was never intended to be a permanent policy, and there does not seem to be a large volume of trade with China in those items of defense equipment that are not subject to the current embargo. The statements from the European and Chinese sides are that they do not anticipate any sudden increase in arms sales - rather the removal of a political impediment to improved EU-China relations." A 1998 code of conduct restricts EU arms sales to China that could be used for waging war or suppressing internal dissent.
The US sees this policy debate very differently. A State Department official confirmed that lifting the EU ban "cannot help but have a very negative impact" on winning congressional approval for facilitating arms trade with allies such as the UK, "even if the European Union views this only as a symbolic step".
The Bush administration has further assailed the EU on this issue by pointing to continued Chinese violations of human rights. Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information says the human-rights argument is a red herring. "We can't underestimate the power of competition behind these [US arms export] reforms," she points out. "Markets are very tight. The United States wants to make sure it has access to these new markets."
All-or-nothing controls make poor policy
Joel Johnson of the Aerospace Industries Association proposes a compromise on exports to China. "All-or-nothing controls are probably poor policy," he says. "We should be sitting down with our European brethren to talk about the high-end things we don't want exported to China."
The Bush administration was expected to push arms-trade reforms through more than a year ago. But a string of more critical events - September 11, the war in Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq - have delayed the unveiling of plans to overhaul defense-trade relations with allies. According to one State Department official, "We're hoping to have it rolled out soon. It has not yet gone to the president."
The delays involve not only war but politics. The administration "might have gotten tripped up on its own rhetoric of 'you're either with us or against us'," says William Hartung, arms-trade expert and author of the recent book How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? Isolationists within the Republican Party are not happy with the idea of facilitating arms transfers to allies that may not always support US policy. As Hartung summarizes this argument, "If you can't trust them, it doesn't make sense to sell them everything on an open basis."
Although D-Trade is now up and running, the other elements of the reforms may wait until after the US elections in November. The State Department is optimistic. But Hartung predicts that if the Bush administration were smart, "it would wait until after the elections - to avoid being accused of loosening restrictions on the merchants of death". Joel Johnson also expects further delays. "We'll have to wait until after the elections. Congress will be sidetracked, the executive branch will be sidetracked. In the next administration, whether Bush or [Democratic presidential contender John] Kerry, lots of people will change and you'll have another shot at finding someone who thinks export controls need to be changed."
John Feffer (www.johnfeffer.com) is the author, most recently, of North Korea, South Korea: US Policy at a Time of Crisis.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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EU turns to India's arms market
By Stephen Blank
Much diplomatic and journalistic ink has flowed recently concerning China's efforts to get the European Union to terminate its sanctions and resume arms sales to it. France and Germany, too, have each expressed the desire to persuade the European Commission, the EU's governing authority, to lift the sanctions. On the other hand, Washington weighed in strongly against this move, creating substantial pressure on the EU. Therefore it is not surprising that at its meeting on March 25-26, the commission said nothing publicly about the entire issue.
However, the EU has already decided conclusively to move in a big way into the Asian arms market, and not only with China, at least for now. Instead, its flagship arms company, the European Aeronautical Defense and Space Company (EADS) is pushing joint ventures with India, China's main continental rival in Asia.
The EU's motives are quite obvious. EADS executives predict that 20 percent of its arms sales will come from the Asia-Pacific by 2009, and 30 percent by 2015, and that does not necessarily include China or the Chinese defense market. Since current sales account for 7 percent of its revenues, this means a tripling and then quadrupling of current sales within a decade.
Moreover, India is increasingly viewed as a promising market for all kinds of high-tech ventures. Its economy is expected to grow nearly 10 percent this year, and Indians hope that this means the breakthrough to sustained long-term development, like China's trajectory in the past decade. But even if the Indian economy grows at about 6 percent annually, as it has over the past decade, this opens up substantial opportunities for foreign arms companies, especially as India has recently undertaken a vast modernization of its weapons systems, and is also trying to overhaul its dysfunctional defense industry.
Although EADS concluded an agreement in 2003 with China's state-owned AVIC II aircraft manufacturing group, the sanctions still in place inhibit military sales to China. No such barrier exists regarding India. And it is highly unlikely that Washington, which is itself expanding its defense sales to India, will object on the same grounds to EADS or the EU's presence in India, although the commercial rivalry between them may cause tensions. EADS' civilian center of gravity is the Airbus to deal with an expected increase of Asian passenger traffic, which will be considerably fueled by India and China. But its defense sales to India are equally, if not more interesting. The EU, like other sellers to India: Russia, Israel and the United States, will move away from "sub-contracting helicopters or selling missiles" to a more elaborate system. As reported by Aviation Week and Space Technology, this system entails long-term partnerships with both state and privately owned Indian defense firms.
This development is in line with India's program for reforming its indigenous defense industry through privatization and opening it up to foreign competition so that it will be forced to become more competitive and allow India to become a major weapons exporter in its own right.
Thus Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, (HAL), India's major defense company, will become a global supplier for EADS of parts, components and assemblies. In other words, EADS and HAL will become partners in designing, developing and producing specific versions of helicopters, and this relationship might then spread to other weapons plants. In this respect, the development of EU relations with India's defense industry will resemble the Indo-Russian agreement to design, develop and produce a fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
So this kind of relationship is now becoming a common one in international defense relationships. Similarly, other EU members' firms are now submitting proposals to India's Ministry of Defense to build engines and air-to-air, air defense and anti-tank missiles. Undoubtedly, such partnerships will spread to other weapons systems and create a network that goes beyond leasing and sub-contracting to encompass joint design, development, production and marketing for a whole range of weapons. This goes far beyond anything now possible with China.
And it certainly accords with the growing diversification of India's foreign weapons purchases, a process that has led to major contracts with France, Israel, Great Britain and Italy, not to mention the US and Russia. Indeed, Indian analysts suspect that India will further Westernize its purchases due to the high price and relatively low quality of Russian weapons, parts and servicing compared to European, Israeli, and American systems. While this does not mean suspension of purchases from Russia, it does raise disturbing trends for the Russian defense industry. Both official and expert commentaries have expressed growing resentment and concern over India's excessive dependence on Russian arms, high prices, poor quality and service, and the slow pace of negotiations with Russia. For example, the negotiations for the Gorshkov aircraft carrier lasted for 10 years, almost as long as it would take to build one, and India ultimately had to pay dearly for the retrofitting of the carrier's Mig-29 fighters, which are no longer state of the art.
If India turns away from Russia it will represent a major blow to Russia's struggling defense industry, which gets 40 percent of its foreign sales revenues from exports to India, its largest customer. It will become even harder for that industry to compete globally or to become a reliable supplier to Russia's armed forces, a condition which it has yet to achieve. In turn, this could seriously set back Russia's industrial, defense industrial and overall military modernization.
EU sales to China, if they do materialize, will similarly affect Russian defense manufacturers, who now sell about 30 percent of their annual exports to China. Though China now buys between US$2 billion and $2.5 billion annually from them, increasingly it is buying technology and know-how rather than new weapons. Certainly, China, too, would prefer, all things being equal, to buy high quality foreign systems that it could then indigenize as India is now trying to do. Its track record with Russian purchases suggests as much to foreign observers. Thus if the EU lifts sanctions, not only will that seriously affect its relations with Washington and US ties to major EU producers like France and Germany, that decision will also seriously hurt Russian interests.
Though the Russian angle has not been explored publicly in the diplomatic moves and countermoves now under way, one can rest assured that the Kremlin fully understands what is at stake. Its efforts to obtain or at least retain market share in these two countries will necessarily increase, making the international arms market even more of a buyers' market, where India and China can make demands of sellers that would hitherto have been unthinkable.
Moreover, if the Asian-Pacific market becomes so much more competitive, we can expect a renewed push by Russia elsewhere: Southeast Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South America in particular. But it is by no means clear that these areas can make up for what the Russian defense industry might lose if these projects go through and if sanctions are lifted. Nevertheless, the growth of Asian-Pacific economies clearly coincides with growth in their overall technological, and especially defense technological, and defense capabilities. And these growing capabilities may well come at the further expense of Russia's already fragile economic and strategic position in Asia.
Stephen Blank is an independent security affairs analyst residing in Harrisburg, PA.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)


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France 'sought secret UN deal' in bid to avert row
Blair told of US plans in 2001, says report
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Monday April 5, 2004
The Guardian
The French government offered a surprise compromise to the US president, George Bush, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, according to a detailed investigation published in Vanity Fair this week.
The report undermines the public perception of France standing resolutely against the US and Britain in the United Nations security council as the two countries tried to win a second resolution in support of war.
According to a 25,000-word investigation into the diplomatic wranglings in that pre-war period, the French government was offering to cut a behind-the-scenes deal with the US government.
At a lunch in the White House on January 13 last year, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, an adviser to the president, Jacques Chirac, and Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador in Washington, put the deal to Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser.
In an effort to avoid a bitter US-French row, the French officials suggested that if the US was intent on war, it should not seek the second resolution, according to highly placed US sources cited by Vanity Fair.
Instead, the two said that the first resolution on Iraq, 1441, passed the previous year, provided enough legal cover for war and that France would keep quiet if the US went to war on that basis.
The deal would suit the French by maintaining its "good cop" status in the Arab world and safeguarding Franco-US relations.
But the deal died when Tony Blair led a doomed attempt to secure a second resolution to try to satisfy Labour MPs and government lawyers who questioned the legitimacy of the war. France ultimately vetoed the resolution.
The investigation also claims that Mr Blair and Mr Bush discussed war against Iraq only nine days after the attack on New York on September 11 2001, even though Mr Blair was insisting up until just before the Iraq war began on March 20 last year that no decision had been taken.
Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, is quoted in Vanity Fair as saying Mr Blair told Mr Bush over dinner that the US president should not be distracted by Iraq from the war against al-Qaida.
But Mr Bush replied: "I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."
Sir Christopher said it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq, it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions". The government line is that war was never inevitable because Mr Blair and his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, successfully pressed the US to go down the UN route, which it did, and that Iraq could have avoided war by complying with UN demands.
In another twist, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, admitted over the weekend that his claim at a UN security council meeting before the war about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction might have been incorrect. He told US reporters that his allegation that Iraq had mobile laboratories for preparing WMD might not have been based, as he claimed at the time, on solid evidence.
Mr Powell said: "I'm not the intelligence community, but I probed and I made sure, as I said in my presentation, these are multi-sourced. Now, if the sources fell apart we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position."

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Never say inevitable
An Islamist terrorist cell is surrounded and blows itself up in Spain; eight terror suspects are arrested in greater London; a plot to gas the tube is apparently foiled. We shouldn't be surprised, says intelligence expert Crispin Black - we have all the resources we need to overcome this terrorist threat
Wednesday April 7, 2004
The Guardian
In his recent evidence to the 9/11 Commission, Richard Armitage, George Bush's deputy secretary of state, said: "I don't think we had the imagination required to envisage such an attack." I sympathised, because the same thing had happened to me - as it has, I suspect, happened to most intelligence analysts at some time or other. My own imagination failed in the run-up to the fall of the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995, when I was the head of the Yugoslav crisis cell in the defence intelligence staff. I expected Mladic, the Serb commander, to shoot any Bosnian Muslim fighters who fell into his hands, but it never occurred to me that he would murder all the men and boys in the city. I never made the same mistake again. In the current war against Islamist terrorists, we must ensure that we are never again taken by surprise as we were on September 11 2001.
So how are we doing so far? In many ways, the news is good. The raids in the home counties on March 30, and the rumours of the thwarting of a chemical attack that emerged yesterday, suggest that our security services are able to acquire actionable intelligence on which to act. Source information is rightly highly classified, but the March 30 swoops, which netted not only men but bomb-making material, indicate either good signals intelligence (better than the "chatter" we so often hear about), or a very good human source.
To an extent this is hardly surprising. The US and UK, in concert with other English-speaking allies, operate the most powerful interception system on the planet. Codenamed Echelon, this system of listening stations and computers is able to "sniff" millions of messages a day for hints of terrorists communicating with each other. We should remember that the majority of the UK's Islamic community is just like everyone else - they condemn terrorism and would alert the authorities to suspicious groups or individuals. And there will always be men prepared to keep their eyes and ears open in return for money or the promise of a helping hand with the immigration or welfare authorities.
So we should be encouraged by our recent successes against terrorists. We can also take some reassurance from a good general counter-terrorism record stretching back nearly 60 years. Most recently, our record against the IRA has been good. After a steep learning curve in the early years, the army and the intelligence services managed to squeeze the IRA, primarily through surveillance. IRA teams never knew when their operations had been compromised. This kind of life is wearing and diverts the energies of terrorists away from attacks and towards their own security. To some extent this kind of atmosphere can deter even suicide terrorists - the last thing they want is Parkhurst rather than Paradise.
So how do Islamist terrorists plan and mount their attacks - and how can intelligence help to thwart them? Although most such groups attempt to maintain a low profile, we already have one inestimable advantage in our battle against them: we know where to look. This kind of terrorism has a kind of epidemiology that tends to lead back to various forms of extremist preaching or mentoring. It is generally practised by young men in their 20s - the individuals arrested in the UK on March 30 are between 17 and 32.
They do not attack out of nowhere. Nearly all attacks are a long time in gestation, and even a suicide terrorist is invariably the final link in a long organisational chain involving others who have no intention of killing themselves. Remember, it is only the finished-product suicide bomber who is supposedly undeterred by death. Everyone else within the chain or in support roles falls within the usual rules.
For example, target selection, the first stage of a terrorist operation, usually requires some reconnaissance. The Spanish authorities will probably discover in time that the Madrid terrorists took the appropriate trains more than once, and probably held a dress rehearsal for the operation. Secondly, the terrorists have to be recruited. Suicide terrorists usually require some form of brainwashing, or "grooming". In addition, terrorists have to get hold of explosives: in Madrid they appear to have bartered hashish in return for explosives used in the mining industry, while in London the March 30 plotters appear to have stolen a large quantity of fertiliser from a farm in Abergavenny. All these activities are difficult to mount without attracting attention.
Sometimes the intelligence is not specific. Usually this means that electronic intelligence alludes to the possibility of an attack - this is what is meant by "chatter". Or it may be that a human source has picked up a rumour of an attack, but is unable to pin down details. This is probably what lay behind the cancelling of BA flights to Washington and Riyadh earlier this year and the alert at Heathrow in 2003.
This kind of warning is difficult for the authorities to handle. If they put in place extra security measures, they are accused of over-reacting. But if you are a GCHQ officer at Cheltenham monitoring email traffic between Islamist extremists and you start to pick up vague messages that might suggest Heathrow is being targeted, you have little choice but to act. In the days when the IRA was our principal problem, it was easier: a slight increase in security and vigilance around Heathrow could well deter an IRA operation.
The Madrid bombings on March 11 also give us some pointers in how to uncover terrorist plots. Far from being a daring and brilliant attack, it looks, on deeper examination, to have been a ruthless but bog-standard terrorist operation which could have been revealed at any stage if the authorities had enjoyed a little more luck. The mobile phones used to set off the bombs were bought from a dealer already under observation by the Spanish police. A stolen car carrying the terrorists and their payload was stopped for a routine traffic check in February. A further attack on the high-speed Madrid - Seville railway line on Friday April 2 appears to have been thwarted by basic security checks.
The mechanics of the plot became apparent soon after the attacks. A number of arrests were made quickly, and most of the remainder of the gang, including the ringleader, were tracked down to a flat in the Madrid suburb of Leganes on the Saturday night, where they blew themselves up. Two further members of the gang may be still on the run, but within three weeks of the outrages this cell appears to be neutralised: a significant post-attack success for the Spaniards. All of which suggests that despite the organisation behind the original bombings on March 11, the terrorists' own security plans were not that sophisticated.
Will it happen here? Certainly, public alertness in this country has increased over the past few weeks, but preaching the "inevitability" of an attack, as the Metropolitan police commissioner did on March 16, is a dangerous message. It suggests that we cannot so arrange our security affairs as to stand a good chance of thwarting catastrophic attacks. This is a bad idea, as any general or football manager will explain. Assigning inevitability to Islamist terror attacks risks aggrandising the terrorist in his own mind as well as that of the public. The home secretary has rightly now modified the message.
My guess is that both our political and security force leaders are going to have to raise their game in the years ahead. European countries must ensure that they improve cooperation with each other. It may also be necessary to consider restricting free movement throughout the EU, which may be giving terrorists too much operational freedom. (Interestingly, the Spanish authorities intend to suspend the Schengen agreement temporarily prior to the wedding of the heir to the Spanish throne in May.)
But tightening existing procedures may not be enough. We need to think imaginatively about how we will combat Islamist terrorism in the medium to long term. I have two suggestions which I believe will help us win this war. First, the English-speaking intelligence world, so often dismissive of European agencies, should learn from their European counterparts, especially the French. Both the American and British models have come to rely too much on technical intelligence, monitoring of electronic bits and pieces which rarely present a coherent picture. The French arrange things differently, basing their work on the human intelligence acquired by the Renseignements G?n?raux, a section of the French police based in Paris. France's president and prime minister receive a daily report on the mood of the capital, which frequently concentrates on the mood within France's five million-strong Islamic community. Although it will report unfolding operational developments rapidly up the chain of command, it is principally interested in moods and intentions. This system is manpower-intensive and expensive, but it provides France with a better understanding of the sources of Islamist terror within its own population than any other European government.
Second, we should widen the recruiting base of our intelligence services. Currently, we have highly effective and professional "doers". What we need now is "thinkers", men and women who can steal a conceptual and intellectual march on Islamist terror. Somehow we need to entice our best analytical brains into the intelligence services. After all, the great triumphs of British intelligence in the second world war were largely the responsibility of talented individuals imported from the private sector at short notice. Some of the most outstanding analysts at Bletchley Park were recruited through a crossword competition held by the Daily Telegraph in November 1941.
Islamist terror is not as great a threat to our way of life as nazism, but the dangers are sufficient, and will persist for long enough, for us to look imaginatively at who we should employ in the intelligence war that will underpin our safety in the decades to come.

? Crispin Black was a government intelligence analyst until 2002.

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Jingle trucks don't pass without OK from the `J-Team'

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
PFC Justin Payne, from Burlington Iowa, climbs down after inspecting a "jingle truck." The decorated trucks, driven by local drivers, are used to ferry supplies to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. -- Steve Elfers / Military Times
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SOLERNO, Afghanistan -- They call themselves the "J-Team." Judging from the seriousness of their gaze, these warriors clearly aren't going to break under pressure.
Their job is crucial and they know it. And it doesn't look like there's any way they're going to be jawed into bending their will.
Desperate Afghan drivers are begging them anyway, hoping these stern soldiers will let them pass so they can drop off their cargo and be on their way.
Rather than ship supplies to this base 100 miles from Bagram on secured Army convoys, the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment who occupy this base contract out trucking to local drivers who brave the sometimes-treacherous byways of Afghanistan for the daylong trip.
Each day, dozens of trucks wait to enter the base. They are required to wait outside the wire for a few days -- a quarantine intended to set off any timed explosives they might be hiding or to force away a would-be terrorist on a tight schedule.
"If they start getting edgy or acting strange, we'll know they've got something bad in there," said Capt. Dave Butler, a native of Long Island, N.Y., and the unit's logistics officer.
Rows of colorful trucks parked end to end waited to enter camp, their innocuous cargoes enlivened by intricate paintings and dangly accents festooned above their cabs. The soldiers here call them "jingle trucks," and their entry into this base is at the mercy of the four-man J-Team.
They've been doing this mission nearly their whole deployment here, and these airborne infantrymen relish the power.
"No way, man. Tell him if he keeps up with this he's not going to get in for a week!" one of the J-Team said to an interpreter. The crowd backed off, kicking up a fine dust that clung to their tattered sandals.
The four soldiers with Headquarters Company, Support Platoon certainly would rather be humping it in these rugged mountains looking for bad guys -- what are colloquially called "anti-coalition members," or ACMs. But they're keeping busy with their job and finding time to have a little fun, too.
As PFC Matthew Carstensen checks the truck cabs for weapons, Spc. David Farnsworth peers beneath the undercarriage for hidden bombs with a mirror at the end of a pole. They shuffle through the crowd, pulling drivers toward the trucks that will make it in today, sweeping a metal detecting wand around them for one final check.
But sometimes, as on this day, something stops them in their tracks.
"They say that truck won't start and needs to be pushed," the Afghan interpreter, Wazir Jan, said, pointing to a road-weary rig just a few feet away.
"You think these things will start with a key," Farnsworth jibed, "you gotta be kidding me!"
The drivers looked at the soldiers, their eyes expectant.
"They got all these guys here, tell them to push it themselves," team leader, Sgt. Luke Bunner, said.
After Jan translated Bunner's answer, the crowd erupted in what sounded like an argument over responsibility. Then they all moved over to the broken down truck, and with a heave, the engine turned and it was soon in line to enter the base.
With that, the soldiers bundled up their interpreter and mounted back into their Humvee, escorting the Afghan trucks to the logistics areas one more time.
They'll do this again tomorrow and the next day, each time another argument with the truckers, more stalled vehicles and lousy excuses, until they leave this arid land for their home base in Alaska.
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Troops in Korea take part in urban-warfare anti-terror drill
By Hans Greimel
Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea -- Soldiers are training this week for possible urban warfare with terrorists or communist commandos in South Korea, practicing house-to-house combat against a fictitious North Korean platoon leader dubbed "Kim Murderman."
Sweeping through a model city outside the capital, Seoul, about 160 military police are taking part in the drills -- shooting down pop-up targets, raiding mock apartment blocks and clearing buildings of "opposition forces," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for the 8th Army.
The drills, which end April 8, are part of regular training for U.S. troops on the divided Korean peninsula -- where North Korea operates the world's largest special forces, with more than 100,000 commandos.
But the training also comes amid stepped up anti-terrorism security in South Korea after the Spain train bombings that killed more than 200 people, and new threats against allies of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.
Seoul plans to send 3,600 troops to Iraq, making it the biggest coalition partner after the United States and Britain.
This week's training scenarios include one in which a platoon of North Korean terrorists, led by "Kim Murderman," seizes an apartment block and must be captured or killed.
Kim is a common Korean surname -- and also that of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose country is on the State Department's list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.
"It's a made-up scenario that is close enough to what you might consider realism to give them something to train toward," Boylan said.
Col. Peter Champagne, chief of the 8th Military Police Brigade drilling this week, told the U.S. military newspaper Stars & Stripes that preparation would be key if war breaks out with communist North Korea.
"We see what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan in urban environments," Champagne said. "Korea has a lot of cities too, and if we ever get into a conflict with North Korea, one of our missions is to defeat North Korean special forces in urban environments."
The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Combined with about 600,000 South Korean soldiers, they stare off across the world's most heavily fortified border at North Korea's army of 1.1 million troops, the world's fifth largest.
If war occurs, North Korea's special operations forces are expected to try opening a "second front" in the South by infiltrating and attacking air bases and communications nodes, and by interrupting the flow of U.S. reinforcements, the U.S. Forces Korea predicted in a background paper on North Korean capabilities.
Washington branded North Korea a terrorism-sponsoring country after linking it to the 1987 bombing of a South Korean jet near Myanmar that killed 115 people.
The isolated country is currently engaged in a standoff with its neighboring nations and the United States over the development of nuclear weapons. Washington believes North Korea already has one or two atomic bombs and could quickly make more.

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Stryker Brigade draws praise for Iraq work
By Matthew Cox
Times staff writer
Most know the soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (SBCT) as the Army's first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. But in some parts of Iraq, they're known as the "Ghost Soldiers."
That's what came out of reporters round-table meeting at the Pentagon Monday, where Army acquisitions officials praised the performance of the first Stryker brigade in Iraq.
"The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division is performing extremely effectively in combat in Iraq. The SBCT has effectively used speed and situational understanding to kill and capture dozens of enemy fighters, said Col. Nick Justice, acting assistant deputy for acquisition and systems management for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology.
Most of the meeting dealt with the Army's plan for fielding five additional Stryker brigades.
But officials pointed out that the senior leadership is pleased with the Fort Lewis, Wash.-based 3-2's ability to launch its infantry forces on short notice into areas such as Samarra in December during a combined operation with the 4th Infantry Division to clean out former regime loyalists and other troublemakers.
"They have earned the nickname of the "Ghost Soldiers," as the non-compliant forces have great difficulty detecting their arrival," Justice said.
Before 3-2 deployed to the Iraqi theater in November, a key concern among observers was whether the Stryker vehicles would provide enough protection against rocket-propelled grenade attacks.
Justice said that the slat armor installed on the Strykers in Kuwait had performed well so far.
"The [Stryker] system has proven survivable as advertised," he said. "There have been five separate documented attacks with improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades. The most serious injury as a result of those attacks has been a broken ankle."
However, three soldiers from 3-2's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment troops died Dec. 8 when a road embankment at Duluiyah apparently collapsed under two Stryker vehicles, causing them to roll over into the canal upside down. The Army Safety Center is still investigating the accident.
Overall though, Justice and other Army officials maintain that the Stryker program is a success, since it started out as a concept just four years ago.
"From concept, to acquisition, to fielding of systems, to testing, evaluation, training and employment of the first brigade took only four years, Justice said. "That is precedent-setting. It historically takes the Army about 10 years to acquire, test, and field a major system to the force."
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Saddam being held in Qatar: report
Tue Apr 6, 7:19 PM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo!

LONDON (AFP) - Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is being held at a US military base in Qatar, rather than in Iraq (news - web sites).
Following his capture by US forces in December last year, Saddam was first moved to a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf for interrogation, a British newspaper reported, without citing its sources.
He was then -- at a time not specified by the report -- transferred to Qatar under great secrecy, with even the state's royal family not informed of his presence.
Major violence in Iraq over recent days which has seen more than 100 Iraqis killed as well as 20 coalition troops, meant Qatar was now seen as a far safer place to keep the ousted leader, the paper added.
In December, Qatar's government dismissed earlier news reports that Saddam had been moved to the emirate, while Iraq's interim Governing Council insisted that he was still being held in Baghdad.
At the end of the last month, Saddam's wife left Syria for Qatar, according to a Jordanian lawyer who says she retained him to represent her husband.


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Mrs. Clinton Pens Afterword for Paperback
Tue Apr 6, 4:22 PM ET

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
NEW YORK - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) says that she's still not quite sure why her memoirs, "Living History," sold so well.
In a four-page afterword to the paperback edition, which comes out April 19, the former first lady lists a few possibilities.
"I knew that some readers just wanted to see how I would explain the personal challenges I had faced," she writes. "Apparently, a few wanted a signed copy to sell on eBay. Others were eager to see me in the flesh and decide for themselves whether or not I was a normal human being."
Clinton received $8 million from Simon & Schuster to write "Living History" and didn't take long to earn back her advance. Nearly 1.7 million copies of the hardcover are in print and a 525,000 first printing is planned for the paperback.
Her afterword is both earnest and lighthearted, an author's reflections and a politician's commentary.
She accuses the Bush administration of hostility to the middle class, and says that efforts to get along with her opponents, "including a few who led the charge for my husband's impeachment," have often been defeated by "ideology and partisanship."
Clinton toured five countries for the book and signed copies until her hands became swollen, leading to a "newfound appreciation for ice packs and hand braces." By tour's end, her signature resembled "the tracks of a confused chicken."
She became convinced that her "life, though lived in the spotlight and blessed with greater opportunities, echoed the experiences of millions of other Americans." Some readers, however, had other agendas.
Clinton writes of being approached by two long-haired, bearded men, "looking like characters from `Lord of the Rings,'" who wanted her to join their campaign to "let men look as God intended." She recalls a man who handed her a business card with the handwritten inscription, "If you're ever single, give me a call."
Lines were long and one young fan entertained the crowd by playing the violin. Another time, Clinton looked up and saw her grinning daughter, Chelsea, waiting her turn for a signed book.
At one stop, "Living History" was upstaged by an even greater publishing phenomenon. Clinton describes a night last summer when she was signing copies, only to have hundreds of kids rush into the store, "not to see me, but to camp out until midnight to snatch up the first copies of the new Harry Potter (news - web sites)."