WASHINGTON

>> FRUM NODS...
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp

MAY. 5, 2004: STATE DEPARTMENT LOGIC

Let's see if I have this straight: Ahmed Chalabi has been condemned as an Iranian agent and is therefore to be shunned by all agencies of the US government. But Iran itself is to be courted by the United States, and its terrorism and nuclear development is to be ignored. Sound logical to you?
Yesterday, we read in Newsweek and Salon a government-sourced full-blast attack on Chalabi's connections with the Iranians. But ask yourself this: When was the last time you saw government sources revealing anything untoward about the Iranians themselves?
You may remember that the International Atomic Energy Commission caught the Iranians in a series of lies about their nuclear program last spring and summer. The Iranians themselves finallyy admitted that they had deceived the world for 18 years. It was no longer seriously possible to doubt that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons - or that it had already acquired much of the capability to build them.
In the first shock after the discovery, many expressed fear that the Bush administration would be tempted to act unilaterally to shut down the Iranian nuclear program. Britain, France, and Germany pressed the United States to work through the International Atomic Energy Commission instead - and the US agreed. In November 2003, the IAEA condemned Iran's past violations of IAEA rules and voted a new set of inspection procedures. The IAEA threatened that if Iran continued to violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the case would be referred to the Security Council - which could (theoretically) vote for harsh sanctions against Iran, including (again theoretically) military action.
On Nov. 26, 2003, Colin Powell said that he was "very happy" with the IAEA's actions.
But of course, Iran has paid scant attention to the IAEA. The Iranian nuclear program races ahead. And the IAEA has done nothing. No UN referral; no sanctions.
And those intrepid foes of Iranian imperialism at the State Department? What have they done? In March 2004, Colin Powell agreed with the European allies to drop US demands for Security Council action against Iran. US policy is now one of "engagement" with Iran - even as Iran hosts al Qaeda on its territory and supports terrorism inside Iraq.
US inaction has allowed Iran to assert itself as a contender for paramountcy inside Iraq. The US has accepted Europe's "do-nothing" policy on Iranian nukes. No wonder Ahmed Chalabi joined that phone call to Teheran. Maybe he thought he was doing what America wanted. Unfortunately for him, he misread the policy. America's clients in Iraq are not allowed to truckle to the tyrannical mullahs of Teheran. Only Americans themselves may do that.

08:03 AM


MAY. 4, 2004: THE CHALABI SMEAR

Really, if the CIA and State Department fought this country's enemies with even one-half the ferocity with which they have waged war on Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, the United States would be a vastly safer place. Yesterday, the agencies launched their latest offensive against this leader they so detest: They leaked Mark Hosenball of Newsweek a story claiming that Chalabi has betrayed US interests to the Iranians.
"U.S. intelligence agencies have recently raised concerns that Chalabi has become too close to Iran's theocratic rulers. NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with `sensitive' information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could `get people killed.' (A Chalabi aide calls the allegations `absolutely false.')"
You have to give credit where credit is due: This is an audacious accusation. Audacious because it demands that the State Department's and CIA's cheering sections in the media perform a cult-like reversal of belief in everything they were saying about Iraq, Iran, and Chalabi himself up until now.
But those of us with memories that extend back beyond the past 24 hours will have some questions for Newsweek and its sources:

ITEM: Up until now we were supposed to believe that the INC produced no useful intelligence - that it dealt only in fantasies and lies. Now suddenly the INC is accused of being in possession of accurate and valuable sensitive information. How did Chalabi go from know-nothing to valuable intelligence asset overnight?

ITEM: A government source says that the security information Chalabi may or may not have provided could "get people killed." Get them killed by whom? Up until now, the CIA and State Department have resolutely refused to acknowledge that Iran might be supporting the insurgency in Iraq. Now they are willing to admit reality - but only in order to use it against what they perceive as the real threat: Chalabi.

ITEM: Chalabi has been caught talking on the phone to the Iranians. But wait - hasn't the State Department been arguing for months that the US should talk to the Iranians about Iraq? In testimony to Congress in October 2003, State number 2 Richard Armitage explicitly disavowed regime change in Iran and called for discussions with Iran on "appropriate" issues. In January 2004, Secretary of State Powell openly called for "dialogue" - and the Bush administration offered to send Elizabeth Dole and a member of the president's own family to deliver earthquake aid to Iran. (The British sent Prince Charles.) Since then, the hinting and suggesting have grown ever more explicit. What, pray, is the difference between the policy Chalabi is pursuing and that which his State Department critics want the US to pursue?

ITEM: Chalabi is now accused of playing a "double game" in Iraqi politics, an offense for which he must forfeit all rights to a role in Iraq's future. This "no double game" rule is a new and impressive standard for judging our allies in the Arab Middle East. Question: Will that same standard apply to those former Republican Guard generals whom the State Department is now so assiduously promoting? Will it apply to the former Baathists that Lakhdar Brahimi wishes to include in the provisional Iraqi government? Will it apply to Lakhdar Brahimi himself? Will it apply to the Saudi royal family? Will it apply to the Iranians? Or is it only Ahmed Chalabi who must swear undeviating loyalty to the US policy-of-the-day in Iraq?

ITEM: Salon magazine last night published a lengthy attack on Chalabi by John Dizard. In it, former Chalabi business partner Marc Zell calls Chalabi a "treacherous, spineless turncoat," for failing to deliver on Chalabi's alleged promises to open Iraq to trade with Israel. I don't know that these promises were ever made - and if made, I wonder whether Chalabi ever suggested that they would rank first on a new Iraqi government's list of priorities. But never mind that: Chalabi has not exercised executive power in Iraq for even a single day. How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?

Ahmed Chalabi no doubt has many faults. I have never been easy in my mind about the collapse of the bank he ran in Jordan back in 1989. (Although the charges that Chalabi himself stole money from the bank are not very convincing either.) But I do know this: Chalabi is one of the very few genuine liberal democrats to be found at the head of any substantial political organization anywhere in the Arab world. He is not consumed by paranoid fantasies, he understands and admires the American system, and he is willing to work with the United States if the United States will work with him. He risked his life through the 1990s to topple Saddam Hussein, which is more than can be said about any of State's or CIA's preferred candidates for power in Iraq. Compared to anybody other possible leader of Iraq - compared to just about every other political leader in the Arab world - the imperfect Ahmed Chalabi is nonetheless a James bleeping Madison.

And maybe that's exactly why he is so very unpopular with so many of the local thugs and tyrants who unfortunately command the attention of America's spies and diplomats.




10:21 AM


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IRAQ


Shiite leaders want Sadr out of Najaf

Shiite leaders gather in Baghdad to make demands of the firebrand cleric and his militia.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0505/dailyUpdate.html
by Matthew Clark | csmonitor.com
Shiite leaders have had enough of Moqtada al-Sadr's hijacking of Najaf. More than one hundred prominent Iraqi Shiites agreed Tuesday in Baghdad that the fiery anti-coalition cleric must remove his militia from the holy shrines in the cities of Najaf and Kufa, reports The Los Angeles Times.
"It was the clearest such statement by a group of powerful Shiite Muslims and could open the way for a resolution of the standoff in Najaf, where US troops have surrounded the city in an effort to pressure Sadr to disband his Mahdi militia, which has set up illegal checkpoints, taken over police stations and seized civil authority."
Sadr must also relinquish control to the police and defense corps and cease stockpiling weapons in the cities, according to the report.
Joad Al Malki, a member of the political bureau of the Shiite Dawa Party reportedly told the Times that "five representatives traveled to Najaf [Wednesday]" to inform Sadr of the decision.
Sadr has been holed up in Najaf for several weeks, after the US-led coalition issued a warrant for his arrest in connection to a murder of a rival cleric last spring. But, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) waited until early last month to make that move after Sadr's militia began a violent revolt because the CPA had closed Sadr's anti-coalition al-Hawza newspaper.
The New York Times reports that the Shiite leaders also called for "a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future," which have been stalled by violence throughout central Iraq and in the Sunni triangle city of Fallujah. The leaders also warned US troops again not to go after Sadr in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
The Times reports that the leaders "effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr ... began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq's future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations."
The Washington Post reports that a 21-member committee of Shiite tribal, religious, and political leaders "hopes to broker a deal" for Sadr to leave Najaf. Members of this committee said "any arrangement would likely require US officials to cancel the arrest warrant against Sadr and allow him to be taken into protective custody by a group of respected Shiite clerics in Najaf or to leave the country," according to the Post.
Meanwhile, Knight Ridder Newspapers reports that a group of young men in Najaf has gathered nightly since mid-April to attack members of Sadr's Mahdi army and force them out of the city. "If we capture them and they swear on the holy Koran they will leave Najaf and never come back, we let them go," a 20-year-old furniture maker named Haider told Knight Ridder. "If they resist, they are killed."
So as to prevent a larger conflict, "the grand ayatollahs who guide the Shiites are withholding support from Haidar and his band of vigilantes," says Knight Ridder. Many Shiites in Najaf say only a small number of Iraqi Shiites supports Sadr, according to the news service.
The Associated Press reports that the month-long standoff between Sadr's militia and coalition troops has cost the holy city of Najaf around $1 billion, according to Faisal Mathbob, deputy head of Najaf's Chamber of Commerce. AP also explains why the loss is particularly tough for the city.
It's a major blow to a city that was in the midst of a revival with the fall of Saddam Hussein, who had restricted the freedom of Shiite worship for decades. Pilgrims from Iran and other countries had again flooded in to visit a colorful shrine to Shiite Islam's most revered saint, bringing money and prosperity back to Najaf. ...
Up to 35,000 pilgrims from Iran alone visited Najaf each day. Now, only a few are seen.... With no agriculture or industry to speak of, Najaf depends on the visitors to fill hotels, restaurants, and shops. The crowds are large enough to sustain more than a 1,000 hotels and private guest houses in Najaf.
According to AP, some residents blame Sadr's militia for bringing the conflict with the coalition troops that has kept the pilgrims away from Najaf.
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UNITED NATIONS


'We Have Other Priorities'
Why won't the U.N. answer questions about its Iraq scandal?

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, May 5, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

The harder the United Nations tries to keep a lid on Oil for Food, the more the scandal keeps boiling over. This past Sunday Secretary-General Kofi Annan appeared on "Meet the Press," rejecting as "outrageous" allegations that this graft-ridden U.N. relief program for Iraq had helped prop up Saddam Hussein's regime, and denying that the U.N. has made any attempt at a coverup. Asked by host Tim Russert why only a portion of the documentation requested of the U.N. by the U.S. General Accounting Office had been turned over, Mr. Annan protested: "We are open. We are transparent."

That sounded lame enough, coming just after Mr. Russert on national TV had flourished in front of Mr. Annan a letter sent by Mr. Annan's own Secretariat on April 14, advising one of the pivotal Oil for Food contractors, Saybolt International--which oversaw Saddam's oil exports--to keep quiet.

Now investigators for the House International Relations Committee have dug up a second hush letter, this one dated April 2, sent by the U.N. to yet another crucial Oil for Food contractor: Cotecna Inspections. This is the company that for the last five years of the seven-year program held the U.N. contract for the sensitive job of authenticating all goods being shipped into Iraq under Oil for Food--and was recommended last October by Oil for Food's executive director, Benon Sevan, for the work it is still doing in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority. (Cotecna is also the company that for the better part of three years before winning its slot in the Oil for Food program, in December, 1998, employed Mr. Annan's son, Kojo Annan, first on staff and then as a consultant, a potential conflict of interest that the U.N. did not declare.)

Both letters, to Saybolt and Cotecna, are signed on behalf of Mr. Sevan, each by a different member of Mr. Annan's staff. Mr. Sevan was on vacation, pending retirement, when they were drawn up. The letter to Cotecna was a pointed reminder of terms of the U.N. contracts with Cotecna, detailing that all documentation connected with Oil for Food "shall be the property of the United Nations, shall be treated as confidential and shall be delivered only to the United Nations authorized officials on completion of work under this contract."
In the letter to Saybolt, dated 12 days later, the message had become tougher and yet more detailed, telling the company that any requests for information not already public should be relayed to the U.N., including "the reason why it is being sought." The letter to Saybolt also made specific mention that if U.N. internal audit reports are asked for, "we would not agree to their release." These would be the same internal audits that the U.N. Secretariat--which administered the Oil for Food program--did not share with the Security Council and has refused to provide to Congress.

In other words, in the interval between March 19, when Mr. Annan finally conceded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the program might after all need investigating by independent experts, and April 21, when former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker was appointed to head to the investigation, Mr. Annan's office explicitly reminded these two crucial contractors, which worked for the Secretariat's Oil for Food program checking the imports and exports involved in more than $100 billion worth of Saddam's oil sales and relief imports, to keep quiet.

Mr. Annan's reaction when confronted with the Saybolt letter was to explain that "we are protecting all the material for the investigation that's been handed over to the Volcker group," as well as to say he himself had no knowledge of the letter: "This is news to me." Mr. Annan's office has since defended such letter-writing on grounds that "this is standard procedure" and "an institutional response." According to Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, "To protect our name and our documentation, we put in every contract with a supplier that documentation relating to UN business can only be released to the United Nations, unless otherwise authorized."

It's that phrase, "unless otherwise authorized," that needs attention. The U.N. has the authority to open the books if its officials so choose; the main question is whether the boss wants to. A senior congressional staffer notes that "with the stroke of a pen, the U.N. can clear the companies from all confidentiality."

Instead, after years of insisting on the confidentiality of vital details of Saddam's deals, on grounds such as the argument that disclosure would offend the "sensitivities" of some member states, the U.N. last month came up with a new reason. Secrecy must be maintained, or so says the U.N. letter to Saybolt, "so as to avoid impeding the Secretary-General's independent inquiry and to accord due regard to the Organization's privileges and immunities."

It's high time for Congress, which appropriates 22% of the U.N.'s core budget, to ponder precisely why these U.N. privileges and immunities should be allowed to outweigh the rights of both U.S. taxpayers and Congress to know what it was within Oil for Food that some of the participants were so sensitive about.

There's also the question of why Mr. Annan's Secretariat itself is so sensitive. Take, for example, those April letters to Saybolt and Cotecna, signed on behalf of Benon Sevan. On Monday, when only the Saybolt letter had come to light, I phoned Maurice Critchley, the U.N. official who had signed that letter on behalf of Mr. Sevan. He told me that Mr. Sevan had no hand in it: "The letter was not done on any request or instruction on his part." So who, then, initiated Mr. Critchley's signing of the letter over Mr. Sevan's name?
Mr. Critchley declined to answer, and instead directed me to Mr. Annan's office--to which I sent three questions pertaining to the Saybolt letter. The answer was an e-mail from Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, which began with the accusation that "you twist the facts." Mr. Eckhard went on to say, "Frankly, we have other priorities. I will answer one of your questions, the first one." This was a question about who, precisely, at the U.N., had authorized the signing of the Saybolt letter over Mr. Sevan's name. To this, Mr. Eckhard gave the answer quoted above, that it was "an institutional response."

The second question, which Mr. Eckhard did not answer, was whether the U.N. had sent similar letters to other contractors, "For example, has the Secretariat sent a similar letter to Cotecna?" The answer to that is now clear, with the Cotecna letter cited above surfacing via the House International Relations Committee the next day.

The third question was, who is the individual on the U.N. staff now fielding Oil for Food matters and authorized to give definitive answers? That one Mr. Eckhard also did not answer, but Mr. Critchley did: "The Secretary-General."

Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.


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UNfit for Iraq
The United Nations can't escape the Oil-for-Food scandal.

By John O'Sullivan

Not for the first time, the shrewdest analyst of international affairs turns out to be the great comic novelist, P. G. Wodehouse, writing on this occasion about the United Nations. The plot may be bleaker than that of a "Jeeves and Bertie Wooster" novel, but the banana-peel factor is about the same.
Consider: In recent weeks the pressure has been inexorably building in favor of a much stronger and more "central" role for the U.N. in Iraq. The partisans of "multilateralism" in the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office, France, Germany, the Democratic party, and the New York Times editorial page had all been arguing that the U.S. would inevitably fail in Iraq without the "legitimacy" bestowed by U.N. involvement. Nor would an Iraqi government handpicked by the U.S. have any better hopes of success. Only one handpicked by the U.N. -- and by its representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister -- would enjoy the respect of Iraqis and of the world.
The Bush administration, buffeted by its setbacks in Iraq and apparently hoping that U.N. support would encourage nations like France and Germany to commit troops, capitulated to this pressure. The U.N. was invited in, and Brahimi began calling the shots. He warned strongly against sending the U.S. Marines into Fallujah. (They were withdrawn to the sidelines.) And he let it be known that the new government would be very different from the governing council that the U.S. had recruited -- and that had taken great political risks for the past year to restore some sort of decent Iraqi rule after fifty years of savage oppression.
At no point, however, was it suggested that the U.N. would provide either troops or money to restore public services and order in the country. The division of labor was clear: The U.N. would provide "legitimacy," and the U.S. would provide everything else. In return they would share political power between themselves -- and with whatever Iraqi government emerged from Brahimi's conversations.
Nice work if you can get it. In the words of the Immortal Wodehouse, however, "Meanwhile, unnoticed in the background, fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove." (I quote from memory, but that is the gist of it.)
For several years, rumors had been circulating that the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program in Iraq -- ballyhooed as the largest aid program in the world -- was seriously mired in corruption. Reuters news agency, watchdog groups such as the Coalition for International Justice, and the Wall Street Journal had all drawn attention to the increasingly blatant corruption of the program involving (according to the CIJ) not merely "informal on-the-sly deals," but even "formal government-to-government arrangements." But the reaction of the U.N. to these charges had been to deny any wrongdoing, to claim that Oil-for-Food was the most audited U.N. program ever, and to tighten the secrecy surrounding it. And largely because of the U.N.'s saintly reputation, the world moved on to other things.
But the fall of Saddam meant that Iraqi records were suddenly open to inspection. Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority were asked to investigate any irregularities. Hence, two weeks ago, the dam burst -- and revelations of extraordinary corruption poured forth at exactly the moment when the U.N. was poised to take control of Iraq.
The Claudia Rosett, whose reporting (including in NRO) has done much to bring the scandal to light, gives the clearest and most comprehensive account of its spreading tentacles in the current issue of Commentary magazine. To summarize it briefly here, however, a program that was meant to underpin sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq by moderating its effects on innocent Iraqis with humanitarian aid became a joint venture by Saddam, senior U.N. officials, and public figures in Security Council member states such as France and Russia to divert many billions in oil revenues into their various pockets; to bribe governments, companies, and individuals in Saddam's behalf; to establish a network of corrupt cronies beholden to Saddam around the world; to build up Saddam's machinery of war and oppression in Iraq; and to do little or nothing for the ordinary Iraqis who were the poster children for the entire enterprise.
The Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada, whose investigative reporting has also driven the revelations, found a list in the Iraqi oil ministry of 270 people in 50 countries who allegedly received oil "vouchers" worth millions from Saddam Hussein -- including the former French interior minister, the present Indonesian president, a number of Russian oil companies, the Russian state, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the family name, Sevan, of the U.N. director in charge of the Oil-for-Food program. In all likelihood, Oil-for-Food is the biggest financial and political scandal in world history -- nothing less.
U.N. officials at a very high level were apparently complicit in this vast fraud. Among them was Benon Sevan, the program's director and a long-time U.N. official, reported directly responsible to the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. U.N. officials -- whose approval was required for certain expenditures -- okayed such purchases as Mercedes Benz touring sedans and the rebuilding of Saddam's Interior Ministry.
Some will -- and should -- go to prison. Kofi Annan should at least resign since he presided, knowingly or not, over this vast robbery. Needless to say, the entire scandal casts a dark backward light on the U.N.'s convolutions in the run-up to the Iraq invasion -- France, Russia, the U.N. bureaucracy, and the "peace movement" all had an undeclared interest in the survival of their co-conspirator, Saddam Hussein, at the very moment when they were seeking in the Security Council to save him from the consequences of his defiance of U.N. resolutions.
We should not be altogether surprised at the corruption revealed here. Multi-national organizations like the U.N. and the European Union are regularly plagued by financial scandals because they bring together three incentives for dishonesty: large sums of money sloshing around, the absence of the financial accountability built into the political arrangements of established nation-states, and a belief in their own sanctity and importance that enables them to overlook any sins they may commit. Similar scandals, admittedly on a smaller scale, flourish in almost all places where the U.N. rules. Maybe some attention will now be paid to them.
What is more worrying is what the Oil-for-Food scandal tells us about the political attitudes of both the U.N. bureaucracy and the political elites of the European continent. None of them was seriously hostile to Saddam Hussein or his brutal kleptocratic state -- they struck attitudes in public that their private actions belied. None of them was even slightly concerned about the Iraqi people, despite their crocodile tears about the impact of sanctions -- they colluded in denying promised humanitarian aid to those in need. None of them wanted to see U.N. resolutions enforced despite their sanctimonious rhetoric about the U.N. being the fount of legitimacy. All of them were mainly concerned with obstructing the Anglo-Americans in their campaign to enforce those resolutions and oust Saddam.
Now that these facts are known, the power of the U.N. to bestow legitimacy anywhere, let alone in an Iraq that is the main victim of the Oil-for-Food scandal, has evaporated into thin air. It has precious little legitimacy to bestow on itself.
If the Bush administration, because it is hoping to hand the problem of Iraq over to someone else, now grants real power to the U.N. there, it will be a betrayal of the Iraqis it intervened to liberate. And the American people -- to borrow another insight from Wodehouse -- if not actually disgruntled, will be very far from being gruntled.

-- John O'Sullivan is editor-in-chief of The National Interest. This piece first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and is reprinted with permission. O'Sullivan can be reached through Benador Associates
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PAKISTAN

Pakistan authorities uncover hijack plot
ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Pakistani authorities have uncovered a plot by a small terror cell to hijack a plane en route to the United Arab Emirates and possibly blow it up, the prime minister said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali told The Associated Press in an interview that authorities believe there was a group of about four to six people who wanted to hijack a plane. Intelligence indicated they wanted to blow it up, he said.
Jamali had no details on how close the plotters came to carrying out the attack.
Details of the plot came a day after Pakistan said it was beefing up security at 35 airports nationwide. Airports remained open and flights were not disrupted, although security was raised to its highest level, Jamali said.
"Naturally when one gets some hint about (a plot) or one gets a feeler or is informed directly or indirectly, I think this high alert is a must," he said.
The United Arab Emirates is the main financial hub of the Arab world. Dubai also is a regional transit hub and a destination for several flights most days from the Pakistani cities of Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.
Pakistan International Airlines, Emirates airlines and Gulf Air all fly to the Emirates from Pakistan.
In March, the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai briefly shut their doors after receiving a "specific threat," though there was no indication it was connected to the recent Pakistani alert.
The United States has had friendly relations with the UAE since 1971, and the UAE military has provided humanitarian assistance in Iraq.
Jamali did not say whether the plot involved Pakistanis or foreign terrorists.
"Hijackers have no nationality," he said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Rauf Chaudhry told AP that a Pakistani intelligence agency had issued the warning, but no arrests had been made. He also would not reveal whether the plotters were believed to be linked to al-Qaeda.

Pakistan has been beset by a string of terror attacks since President Gen. Pervez Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S. war on terror following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Musharraf survived two suicide attacks in December that he blamed on al-Qaeda. Dozens of people have been killed in attacks on foreigners and minority Christians.

A bus bombing killed three Chinese engineers working on a major port project in the remote southwest Monday.

In March, a bomb was found and defused outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.


Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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PAKISTAN
The Politics Of A Retreat
The military regime is currently caught in the dilemma of protecting the surviving remnants of its own creation, the Taliban, and the need to project the image of a responsible state internationally.

KANCHAN LAKSHMAN

Ever since President Musharraf announced a turn-around on his country's support to the Taliban and Al Qaeda on September 19, 2001, Pakistan has been treading a thin line between placating the domestic Islamist extremist constituency and maintaining the alliance with the United States. Since the volte face, Pakistan has arrested more than 500 Al Qaeda/Taliban operatives, handing a majority of them over to US custody. Last week, however, saw the military regime adopt a strategy of amnesty, not an uncommon approach across many theatres of anti-state violence in South Asia.

Five tribesmen accused of sheltering Al Qaeda terrorists surrendered to the Pakistan army at a Jirga (tribal council) on April 24, 2004. The five men, led by Nek Mohammed, from the Zalikhel tribe turned themselves in before the Jirga and reportedly pledged loyalty to Pakistan in return for clemency. "We give amnesty to these people in return for their pledge of brotherhood and loyalty," said Peshawar Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain after the wanted men joined him in the ceremony that occurred at a Madrassa at Shakai, South Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region.

The military regime has reportedly agreed to halt its operations against Nek Mohammed's tribal combatants, set free most of the 163 suspected Al Qaeda supporters who were captured during the March 2004 operations, and provide a grant of Rupees 90.1 million for development in Waziristan. In return, Nek Mohammed and his clique promised to refrain from attacks on Pakistani forces and the U.S. troops in adjacent Afghanistan. Among others, the unwritten agreement also specifies that: local tribesmen will not provide protection to 'foreign terrorists' (Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks among others) in the FATA; the tribesmen will surrender their heavy arms to local authorities; tribesmen are to ensure registration of all foreigners who would then be given amnesty and residence by the state.

As a result, the tribal combatants, designated as 'most wanted' only a month ago, were seen embracing the military regime's representatives after a deal reportedly brokered by leaders of the Islamist grouping, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). Startled by the bonhomie expressed at the surrender ceremony, a Western diplomat in Islamabad said, "How can you go and fight these people last month and embrace them this month?"

The 30-something Nek Mohammed, who was a 'commander' at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule, and his tribal combatants had, in March, led a fierce resistance to an army-led offensive on their hideouts in the remote South Waziristan area, where senior Al Qaeda leaders are thought to have taken refuge. At least 145 people, including 46 troops, were killed during these operations. Some Western diplomats have claimed that Nek not only harboured, but also supplied arms and men to Central Asian Al Qaeda-linked terrorists for cross-border attacks on aid workers, troops and government targets in Afghanistan over the past 12 to 18 months. "He is, indirectly or directly, responsible for the deaths of up to 400 people in Afghanistan," an unnamed Western diplomat based in Pakistan told AFP.

Since the March operations, the state had been threatening military action against the tribal fighters and had also postponed deadlines for threatened military action on two occasions. That Nek Mohammed, reportedly a popular figure in South Waziristan, was a crucial actor is evident from the fact that a wide spectrum of powers within the Pakistani state was involved in the negotiations.


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SYRIA


A cold Ba'ath
By Guy Maayan
"The Face of Syria: Society, Government and State" by Eyal Zisser. The Red Line Series, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 346 pages, NIS 88.
It will soon be four years since Bashar Assad became president of Syria. In the Israeli media, Assad is often depicted as an obsessive Web surfer and Sony Playstation buff, clumsy and uncharismatic. Israelis like to compare him with his late father, commenting on the son's inferior skills and claiming that he is held captive by the old guard of the Ba'ath Party leadership. Many commentators believe that Syria's military forces and oppressive security mechanisms are all that keeps the Assad dynasty and the Alawi regime in power, allowing an ethnic group that accounts for only 13 percent of the population to remain in control of the country.
Viewing the Syrian leader and his enforcement mechanisms, however oppressive they might be, as the totality of Syria's being is problematic. At best, this is a fraction of the bigger picture - and not necessarily the most important fraction. It is often showcased to further a political agenda, whether of right-wingers opposed to a political settlement with Syria, or left-wingers entranced by Assad's aggressive rule. Anyone expecting these kinds of claims from Eyal Zisser will soon discover him to be a serious scientist who shies away from cliches. His previous book, "Syria under Assad: At a Crossroads," concluded five years ago with some unanswered questions about the internal mechanisms that have granted legitimacy to the current regime. The new work sets out to examine these questions.
Israeli academics wishing to write about Syria should know they are facing an uphill battle. First, they will encounter objective problems, such as the physical inaccessibility of our northern neighbor and a dismal lack of archival sources. A second, equally oppressive obstacle - for better or worse - is the giant shadow cast by Patrick Seale, a British journalist who had close ties with the late Hafez Assad. Seale's writing on Syria is based on sources that Israeli scholars will never get to see, even if they are someday permitted to eat hummus on the banks of Abana and Pharpar.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the Israeli author approaching this daunting task will have to deal with symbols and images that have inscribed Syria in the Israeli consciousness as the most extremist, uncompromising and belligerent country in today's Middle East, a country that will stop at nothing to get what it wants. The Syrian tank serving as a monument at Kibbutz Deganya; the story of Israeli POW Uri Ilan, who committed suicide in a Syrian jail; the case of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was caught by the Syrians and hanged; and the struggle for control of water sources - all these were fixed by the agents of our national memory as the image of Syria long before the battle of Tel Elfahar, the 1973 war and the emergence of Hezbollah. Some will even say that the subject is impossible to tackle. Zisser, however, rises to the challenge.
"The Face of Syria" is a rare (for Israel) retrospective account of an Arab country's society and government. Zisser's discussion focuses on internal processes and leaves as background Syria's foreign relations, and especially its charged relationship with Israel. In choosing this strategy, he is trying to shake off the provincialism of the "old" Israeli scholarship, which held that the Arab world's internal processes needed to be seen through the lens of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The result is compelling, if, sadly, less than perfect. Zisser is among those who rightly refuse to see the modern Middle East as created solely by European imperialism. He points to certain primal elements embedded in the Syrian identity, primarily the sense of belonging to the region between the Euphrates River and the Mediterranean. This sense of regional kinship, though it does not fully reflect the country's actual territory, has been an important facet of Syrian nationalism since the days of the French Mandate. Hafez Assad, for his own reasons, cautiously promoted this unique identity as part of the pan-Arabic identity to which both the Ba'ath Party and he personally were committed.
A slow machine
Francis Bacon once compared the state to a huge machine that moves slowly, and this definition is largely true of Syria in recent decades. Clearly, the country's greatest achievement has been a static stabilization based on a delicate balance of its various social forces, like the balance that was maintained (or, more accurately, was supposed to be maintained) by the regimes preceding the Ba'ath's 1963 rise to power. Zisser shows how the Syrian territorial state managed to win legitimacy even before Assad senior became president, despite the country's religious and ethnic complexity. He also follows its slow construction of a political center.
Zisser points to the process by which ethnic and religious minorities came increasingly to identify with the Syrian state, to join the republic's various frameworks of action, and in a sense to blur their own ethnic identity. The primary victims of this process were the urban Sunni Muslims, who lost their hold on the government in the 1960s. Still, representatives of this group - which accounts for some 60 percent of the population - continue to hold key government positions. Examples include Vice President Abd al-Halim Khaddam, Foreign Minister Farouk Shara and Defense Minister Mustafa Talas, all of whom have many proteges within the bloated Syrian administration.
The strengthening of the political center in Damascus brought prosperity to the city's inhabitants, the majority of whom are also Sunni. They were grateful to Hafez Assad and did not take part in the Islamic revolt (1976-82), which occurred mostly in the north of the country. Zisser, however, is careful not to idealize Syria's inter-ethnic relations, stressing the extreme delicacy of the socio-political balance. Last March's riots show that the internal tensions are still there, even if they have been temporarily kicked to the sidelines of Bashar Assad's playing field.
It seems to me that recent developments could also be placed in a different, more comparative perspective. Paradoxically, the revolutionary Ba'ath regime is gradually adopting the conservative Ottoman model, in which the central government serves as arbitrator between sub-forces within a clear framework of status quo. In Syria this framework is rigid, as are the means used to protect it. Frequently, the central government responds to offenses against the status quo by harshly suppressing those who challenge it.
Syria's transformation into a distinct status-quo state has greatly decreased internal pressures. This change created - though with much difficulty - a consensus around the ruling oligarchy (the so-called "jama'a") and allowed for the smooth transition of power from Hafez Assad to his son.
Ba'ath pragmatism
As Zisser says, Syria is far from being a democracy, nor is it close to developing Western institutions of government, and it needs to be viewed as inseparable from the development of other Arab regimes. However, the Syrian status quo would best be examined vis-a-vis the revival of Ottoman order in the region, and especially in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Another factor that must be taken into account is the central role played by oligarchic structures, based in part on family or ethnic affiliation, in economics and politics. In some of the empire's regions, which became republics or democracies (Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Greece, Israel, and Egypt as well to some degree), the process has also been characterized by the rise of family dynasties of political leaders and by the proliferation of patron-client systems, familiar to us from the internal workings of our own political parties.
Zisser's descriptions are diligent and meticulous. His chapter on the relationship between the state and the army is the best part of the book. It was actually Assad senior - the former head of the air force, who used the army to seize the presidency - who understood that he had to minimize the army's political involvement in order to keep his country stable. Zisser shows how, in the first decades of Syria's independence, the army began to play a key role in politics, due to the weakness of the political center; he also traces the military's gradual dismissal and return to the barracks as part of the creation of the status quo.
Nevertheless, the author is sometimes tempted to repeat his own previously published claims; this is especially evident in the chapter on relations between state and religion. Yet he makes some fascinating comments about the pragmatism of the Ba'ath regime, which, despite its commitment to secularism, conducts a dialogue with the country's Islamic elements. Moreover, following the brutal 1982 massacre in the city of Hamat (and in many ways as a result of it), there has been a shift in the government's attitude toward Islamic groups. Here, too, we see a return to a pre-Ba'ath pattern: the Islamic groups, for their part, accept the existence of the regime as a fait accompli, while the government acts to strengthen its own Muslim image.
It is unfortunate that two major topics - economy and culture - are not subjected in the book to a thorough analysis, despite their importance to the development of the new Syria. The country's economy is mentioned offhandedly, and its literary, philosophical and artistic activity are not included in the "face of Syria." One also cannot shake the impression that the book was written from a local-historicist perspective, lacking exhaustive comparison to other countries in the region or to parallel global developments.
The book also suffers from a large number of editorial and factual errors, as well as spelling mistakes. The separatist regime was not in power from 1958 to 1961 (page 39); these, of course, were the days of the union with Egypt. You need not be a Francophile to realize that the Syrian flag, and not the French one, is "comprised of two red and black stripes on a white background, with two green stars in between" (page 109). There are many of these embarrassing errors, indicating some sloppiness in the editing stage.
Yet the book's great virtue lies in the fine links it establishes between long-term historical processes and present-day developments in Syria. The book serves as a platform for the extensive knowledge Zisser has accumulated through his study of Syria and in the now-extinct journal Middle East Contemporary Survey. In this context, there is symbolic value to the editorial error that caused the book's back-cover blurb also to appear on page 346. One of the most aggravating features of university libraries is that frequently used books are often re-bound in thick, opaque cardboard, making it impossible to read their back covers. The editor's error will spare book lovers this annoyance, as "The Face of Syria" is sure to command a place on library shelves for many years to come.

Guy Maayan is scientific editor of the Hebrew translation of "What Went Wrong" by Bernard Lewis, forthcoming from Dvir Publishing House.


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ISRAEL

State Comptroller's report finds Housing Ministry sent $6.5 million for illegal West Bank construction

By Ziv Maor and Gideon Alon
The Housing and Construction Ministry has funneled nearly $6.5 million to illegal settlement construction in the West Bank in the past three years, more than half of it to outposts Israel pledged to remove, according to the annual State Comptroller's Report, released yesterday.
State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg wrote in the second part of his annual report that the Housing Ministry has funneled money to settlement construction that had not received cabinet or Defense Ministry approval - as required by law - and in cases where land ownership was still under dispute. Of the $6.5 million given to illegal West Bank construction, about $4 million went to the outposts, the report said.
The money was sent even as a branch of the Israel Defense Forces was "investing resources to track down and demolish illegal construction" in settlements and outposts, Goldberg wrote.
From January 2000 to June 2003, the Rural Building Administration's Jerusalem district office approved 77 contracts for construction projects in 33 West Bank areas, 18 of them unauthorized outposts, the report said. The administration is considered an arm of the Housing Ministry that enables it to carry out irregular activities, particularly in the territories.
The contracts were for housing units, security paths, approach roads, open public spaces, electricity hook-ups, water supplies and public buildings.
The comptroller hints that there was no due diligence and transparency in the geographical distribution of the ministry's budgets. From the budget it is not clear what monies were sent to the territories.
Minister Effi Eitam said he has decided, in the wake of the report, to set up a system of inspection over the transfer of the budgets. Ministry officials said the report deals with activities between January 2000 and June 2003, and that there had been four ministers during this period.
Eitam said he was determined to ensure the budgets were appropriated according to law, "so no damage would be caused to the settlement enterprise."
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered a freeze last month on government funding for settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza after reviewing Goldberg's initial findings. Mazuz lifted the freeze after approving a monitoring system to prevent funding of illegal projects, the Justice Ministry said yesterday.
Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now welcomed the comptroller's report. "This confirms everything we've been saying for eight years," he said. "We are going to request a police inquiry, and we are filing an immediate police complaint against the housing minister."
Numerous reactions came from Knesset members as well. Labor MK Eitan Cabel called on the prime minister to fire Eitam, saying he was behaving as though the ministry was his personal estate. Eti Livni (Shinui) asked Mazuz to examine the possibility of opening an investigation into the way the ministry distributed public funds.
Meretz MK Haim Oron said the report showed clearly that there was a separate entity alongside Israel - the Yesha state that has no laws and no regulations. He said the government was implicated in the illegal activities of the settlers.
Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz asked that Eitam be dismissed and the ministry be run instead by an appointed committee. Ilan Leibowitz (Shinui) said that the secret that had been known for years was now officially revealed by the state comptroller - squandering of millions in public funds on the settlements, without any supervision or planning.

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State drops charge that probe into PM was hindered by leak
By Zvi Harel
The state has decided to slightly amend the indictment against suspended prosecutor Liora Glatt-Berkowitz, it was revealed yesterday. Glatt-Berkowitz is on trial for giving details to Haaretz correspondent Baruch Kra about the investigation into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the case of money loaned to the Sharon family by British/South African businessman Cyril Kern.
The state has decided to withdraw its allegations that the prosecutor's leak had disrupted the investigation against Sharon in the Kern affair. This is, however, merely a cosmetic change as it does not affect the charges in the indictment.
The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court yesterday rejected a request by Glatt-Berkowitz to reveal who the source was who told investigators that she had spoken to a journalist about the case.
On December 25, 2003, Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi issued a gag order on releasing any details concerning the source, known as "Eagle."
In the request to the court, Glatt-Berkowitz's lawyers argued that "Eagle" is actually a journalist who revealed their client's name to police and Shin Bet security services investigators for money.
The attorneys claimed that there was a "give and take" relationship between this source and the investigating body, which is an intolerable situation. The request argued that Glatt-Berkowitz only handed over the information to Kra, without getting anything in return.
The court has not yet reached a decision on Glatt-Berkowitz's demand to call former attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein and State Prosecutor Edna Arbel as witnesses in order to prove she has been discriminated against, compared with other public servants accused of leaking information.
The prosecution has charged her on two counts: revealing information she received in her professional capacity; and fraud and breach of trust.
Her lawyers contend that Glatt-Berkowitz has been discriminated against because the article under which she is being tried has never before been enforced. They say this trial is being held because of ulterior motives, adding this is the only case of its kind since the establishment of the state.
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Arik beat Sharon

By Israel Harel

"All the options are open; it is not too late" goes the popular song that Army Radio dedicated to boost Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's morale, and in effect also its own. "Our mood will improve tomorrow," continues the song. From the broadcasts of this station and others, it was clear that the broadcasters and commentators were mourning the defeat no less than Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The failure of the man to whose cause the media had enlisted, and particularly the electronic media, was also their failure, and the media are not willing to come to terms with this. Onward, they are now urging Sharon - ordering him is more like it - go back to the uprooting and thumb your nose at the referendum.
That was one of the hidden, though resolute, messages voiced by the media after the defeat: Please, Sharon, deliver the goods for which we made a type of plea bargain with you, in order to realize the ambition on which we have focused all our energies: the withdrawal and the uprooting of settlements. We built your image as a courageous statesman, the only one who can break the vicious cycle. Now you must fulfill your part of the bargain, and we don't care how.
Even though he is already suffering blows from those demanding the payment of the debt, Sharon is incapable - despite the fact that he and those hitting him continue to pretend that "only Arik can" - of uprooting the Likud from its main ideological positions. Were it not for those basic positions, the settlers, even if they were to triple and quadruple their efforts to convince Likud members, would not have been able to sway them and defeat the leader of their party. The landslide proved that Sharon, despite the many years he has spent in the company of his party faithful and the settlers, remains a foreign element, both mentally and ideologically, among those two groups. This is also evident in his sharp veering to the left.
If he could understand the code that enables them, and particularly the settlers, to overcome the terrible events they are going through, such as the murder on Sunday of Tali Hatuel and her daughters, and to cleave with even greater strength to their life's work, their homes and their faith, it is reasonable to assume that he would not have concocted the uprooting plan.
The conciliation gestures of Uzi Landau and Effie Eitam, who now prefer a lame duck to a succession battle, are deceptive: Sharon's fate as the leader of the national camp was sealed - the Likud members simply ratified it, and by an overwhelming majority - the moment that "Arik" the uninhibited adventurer overtook "Sharon" the seasoned politician, and ran to announce to Yoel Marcus of Haaretz that he was about to uproot settlements in the Gaza Strip.
From meetings between visitors from Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza) and Likud members (the homes of some 50 percent of the party's members were visited), it became clear - and was proven by the results - that most of them consider ideology more important than solidarity with their leader. More than a few of them also feel that he transgressed, both ideologically and personally.
It also turned out that the heavy barrage by the media to convince Likud members in favor of disengagement only strengthened, rather than weakened, their ideological positions against it. Just as some 4,000 mortar shells and dozens of Qassam rockets have only strengthened us, said one resident of Gush Katif, so too has the media assistance to Sharon.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that another media dictate also had an effect: If Likud members do not approve the disengagement plan, stated the ultimatum, "we will not forget and will not forgive." Even the threats that the American guarantees would be cancelled, that the stock exchange would tumble and that the terror would escalate did their jobs against Sharon.
The opponents of the uprooting had another secret weapon: Olmert, Omri Sharon and their ilk. In Ashdod, for example, the settlers were told not to waste their breath because, "this is Omri's territory." The result - some 60 percent voted against the uprooting. A. from Holon told her visitors that Sharon and Olmert, who went to the elections with a platform promising that the Likud would prevent the uprooting of settlements, were now implementing the platform of former Labor party leader Amram Mitzna. It was Sharon and Olmert, and not the settlers, who had instigated a hostile takeover of the Likud, A. asserted.
According to the referendum it is A., and not those who are licking Sharon's boots, who represents the firm faithful core, whose members are never floating voters, of the Likud. It is thanks to that core that Sharon's new commitments to go ahead with his plan are empty promises.

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Sharon's challenge



In the wake of the overwhelming rejection of his Gaza-West Bank disengagement proposal by Likud voters, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not giving up. The Israeli leader vows to forge ahead with a modified version of his plan to unilaterally withdraw from some of the settlements he had proposed to leave in the referendum. As Mr. Sharon moves forward with this politically courageous step, he will deserve and most likely receive the strong support of President Bush. The two leaders are likely to discuss the matter when Mr. Sharon travels to Washington several weeks from now.
We remain convinced that the strategic rationale behind Mr. Sharon's approach is sound. There are just 7,300 Israeli settlers living in Gaza today, where they are surrounded by more than 1.3 million hostile Palestinians. There is no realistic chance that Israeli settlements will be able to remain in Gaza if Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace agreement. The resources that Israel spends to protect the outlying Gaza and West Bank settlements Mr. Sharon has proposed to evacuate could be better spent on winning the war against the terrorist organizations operating out of Gaza and the West Bank.

As he prepares to meet with Mr. Bush, the Israeli leader faces a difficult challenge: crafting a new disengagement plan in which Israel withdraws from a smaller number of settlements (thus mollifying some on his right) without alienating Washington by limiting the scope of an Israeli pullback. When Mr. Sharon visited Mr. Bush at the White House last month, he won U.S. support for his positions that Israel would be able to retain some West Bank settlements in a peace agreement and that the Palestinians would not be granted the "right of return" to Israel. Mr. Sharon counts his excellent relationship with Mr. Bush among his foremost achievements as prime minister. He does not want to run the risk of jeopardizing it by holding on to settlements that serve no vital security purpose.
An unnamed State Department official quoted yesterday by The Washington Post complained that the United States would "get hammered" following the referendum defeat and would have to show that "we weren't played by Sharon." But Secretary of State Colin Powell later praised Mr. Sharon, noting that his push for the settlement pullout was unprecedented for an Israeli prime minister.
The prime minister is actually in a stronger political position than imagined vis-a-vis his critics among the settlers. For one thing, public opinion polls suggest that close to two-thirds of the Israeli electorate as a whole favor his disengagement plan. But even among Likud voters, Mr. Sharon retains a surprising degree of support. In the referendum proposal defeated Sunday, some 59,000 Likud Party members voted against Mr. Sharon. But, by way of comparison, 1 million Israelis voted for Likud in the last election. According to a poll published yesterday in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, 55 percent of Likud voters -- roughly 550,000 people -- favor the prime minister's disengagement plan.
In short, Mr. Sharon's disengagement concept remains very much alive. Mr. Bush should continue to support the Israeli leader as he attempts to win a popular mandate for his forthcoming plan at home.


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Mergers & Acquisitions
Hezbollah tries to fill Hamas's power vacuum.

By Aaron Mannes
Israel's elimination of the Hamas leadership -- most recently Sheikh Yassin and Rantissi, but also several mid-level leaders -- has created a power vacuum in Hamas, allowing Hezbollah, and its sponsors Syria and Iran, to move in. With the removal of Saddam, Syria and Iran are making a play to become the dominant powers in the region. To do so they need to do two things: kick the U.S. out of Iraq, and neutralize the region's strongest military power: Israel. Hamas has key assets to contribute to this Syrian-Iranian gambit.
Hamas's utility against Israel is apparent. With its network of schools and hospitals and its history of successful terror attacks, Hamas has street credibility not just among the Palestinians, but also throughout the Middle East. For the last several years Hamas has been split between the leadership in Gaza and the leadership in Damascus. The Damascus leadership, which disburses Iranian money within the organization, has grown closer to its patrons. The Gaza leadership hates Israel just as much, but tries to preserve its independence. As the effective Gaza leaders are eliminated the Damascus leadership has a free hand to run Hamas in accord with Iranian-Syrian goals.
Hezbollah has been providing technical and financial support to the Palestinian factions, and building its own network in the West Bank, Gaza, and among the Israeli Arabs since the late 1990s. According to the Israeli daily Maariv, with Arafat sidelined and his organization in disarray, most of the funding for the Arafat-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades comes from Hezbollah. The minor Palestinian factions are already tied into the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad receives all of its funding from Iran. The secular "fronts" are based in Damascus and rely on Syrian support. By pulling Hamas into the fold, Hezbollah becomes the real power behind Palestinian violence.
With Hezbollah pulling the strings, Israel will face a coordinated campaign along three fronts. In addition to terror attacks, the Katyusha rockets threatening Israel's north could be augmented by artillery and rocket attacks from Gaza and the West Bank capable of reaching Israel's population centers and commercial airspace -- effectively encircling Israel.
Hamas's assets will also be useful to Hezbollah and its patrons in Iraq, where they seek to undermine the American endeavor and create a weak Iraq dependent on Iran. Hamas has already opened offices in southern Iraq to foment anti-American activities. Gaza and the West Bank could be fertile recruiting grounds for jihadists wishing to fight the United States in Iraq.
Hamas has links to radical Sunni groups throughout the Middle East and could build relations between them and Shiite Hezbollah. Jordan -- a key U.S. ally bordering Israel, the West Bank, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia -- could be target number one. With a majority Palestinian population, Jordan is particularly vulnerable to Palestinian unrest, and Hamas has close ties to Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood and particularly the Islamic Action Front. Indeed, Jordan recently thwarted a massive terror attack. But another incident, in Kosovo -- where a Jordanian policeman serving with the U.N. contingent shot and killed two U.S. policemen -- is a warning that, even within the security forces that prop up Jordan's monarchy, there is unhappiness with the regime's pro-Western tilt. If Jordan fell into the Syrian-Iranian camp it would become a base for attacks on Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Finally, Hamas could augment Hezbollah's already formidable ability to launch terror attacks around the world. Hezbollah has already unleashed terror on Europe, the Middle East, and even Latin America -- and attempted to do so in Asia. Hamas has an international fundraising network (particularly in the United States, where Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzuk lived for nearly 20 years) that can also be used to provide logistical support for terrorist operations and recruitment. The April 30, 2003, attack on a Tel-Aviv bar by two British citizens of Pakistani descent who were recruited into Hamas is a harbinger of this possibility. In another ominous sign, in November 2003, Israel arrested a Canadian citizen of Palestinian birth for training and plotting terror attacks in North America. This ability to recruit Westerners is an important asset in conducting international terror, which Hezbollah and its sponsors have already used effectively around the world.
Hamas personnel, resources, and "brand name" fit neatly into the regional and global plans of Hezbollah and its sponsors. To head off this threat, the U.S. should not merely support Israeli action against Hamas. The U.S. should be actively coordinating with Israel to neutralize and destroy Hamas, particularly by pressuring sponsors Iran and Syria. In the Middle East one often hears the old saying: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Surely, then, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. And Hamas's enmity is not reserved for Israel alone.

-- Aaron Mannes is the author of TerrorBlog. This piece is adapted from his article in the April 2004 edition of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mannes200405050929.asp


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US BUSINESS & ECONOMY

CVS chairman: Legalize prescription drug imports
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Breaking with others in his industry, the chief executive of CVS/pharmacy called Wednesday for temporarily legalizing imports of prescription drugs.
"While many in our industry believe that importation is a fundamentally flawed concept and oppose it without exception, I have come to a slightly different view," Thomas Ryan, CVS chairman and chief executive officer, said in prepared testimony for a government task force on drug importation.
Ryan is the first executive of a large drug store chain to support importing drugs from countries where prices are controlled by governments so that people can fill prescriptions more cheaply than they can at U.S. pharmacies. Ryan said such a move would be a recognition of reality.
"Millions of Americans already have opted to import drugs because they can't afford not to. We owe it to them to face this issue head on and not look the other way," Ryan said.
The government panel is considering whether and how drugs could be safely imported from Canada and elsewhere.
The Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, have opposed legalizing drug imports, citing safety concerns.
Ryan said, however, that he believed importing prescription drugs can be done safely by using established distributors of pharmaceuticals in this country. He suggested a two-year trial run while the government seeks a long-term solution to soaring U.S. drug prices.
Three governors also called on the federal government to put in place in quickly a means of safely allowing importation.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, whose agency has led the opposition to imported drugs, on Tuesday became the first senior Bush administration official to say that legalizing drug imports appears inevitable.
Thompson said imports would save consumers money and that he would urge President Bush not to stand in the way of legislation in Congress to make them legal.


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Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Tied & Tested
China and the U.S. are linked . . . a good thing.

By Larry Kudlow
Columnist Tom Friedman of the New York Times wrote that "When Chinese authorities told banks last week to cut back their wild lending, commodity prices and stock markets tumbled all over the world." The always clever Friedman then conjured up a prayer that concluded, "May China's leaders live to 120, and may they enjoy 9 percent GDP growth every year of their lives. Thank you, Father. Amen."
While it's good to see Friedman appealing to a higher power, his prayer has already been answered over the past ten years. Since China's 1994 currency stabilization reform, which firmly linked the yuan to the dollar, real economic growth in the country has averaged 8.9 percent per year -- with no recessions. Call this the post-Tiananmen Square modern era of Chinese growth.
Most important to the continuing health of China's rapidly emerging economy have been pro-growth measures to reduce tariffs, market-liberalization steps to reform and modernize the Chinese economy, agriculture reforms going back to the late 1970s, and, in particular, the currency reform to stabilize the yuan -- which has been crucial to attracting deep-pocketed international investors. These measures set the stage for the decade-long durable economic boom which shows absolutely no signs of stalling.
China has become one of the world's primary growth engines. Almost single-handedly China has pulled Japan into an export-led recovery, ending a fifteen-year Japanese downturn. In fact, China has anchored an economic revival throughout the Asian-Pacific rim. Its huge industrial demand has contributed mightily to a revival of the U.S. commodity and manufacturing sectors and has had a boom-triggering impact on world shipping.
In short, the global economy needs China.
In recent weeks China has taken a few modest steps to slow its allegedly overheated economy. It raised bank-reserve requirements, clamped down on cement, steel, and aluminum projects to curb excess development, and implemented some land-use rules to slow industrial growth.
Amidst the current growth wave, government-reported Chinese inflation has picked up. In mid-2002 China was deflating at a 1.3 percent pace, but recent consumer-price-index readings have hovered around 3 percent. The corporate-goods index, a proxy for wholesale prices, was deflating at a 4 percent clip in 2002. Now it's rising at a 6? percent rate.
Look familiar?
In effect, China's price trends mirror and magnify U.S. price trends. This is because the yuan is tied to the dollar. So it is really the U.S. Federal Reserve calling the tune for Chinese money.
As the Fed reflated its way out of deflation in recent years by lowering interest rates and expanding the money supply, China's economy benefited enormously (as did emerging country economies worldwide). And as China's economy is not nearly as diverse, flexible, or developed as America's, price swings up and down tend to be more exaggerated than those in the U.S.
Still, there is no inflation crisis occurring in either country.
The Greenspan Fed undoubtedly overshot liquidity additions to the U.S. economy in fighting deflation in 2000-02. Some of this spilled over to China. Yet while core inflation (excluding food and energy) is creeping up in the U.S., it is only 1.4 percent over the past twelve months -- nothing to panic over. Still, it is noteworthy that the overall Consumer Price Index did rise 5.1 percent annually in this year's first quarter.
Here are some other telling parallels: As U.S. Treasury bond rates have increased recently from 3.6 percent to 4.5 percent, China's government bond yield has turned up from 4 to 5 percent. In recent weeks the U.S. dollar has reversed a two-year decline and appreciated by roughly 6.5 percent. This means the dollar-linked Chinese yuan has also appreciated in lockstep with the greenback.
Currency appreciation amounts to a de facto tightening of monetary policy in both countries. As currency values rise, increased consumer and business purchasing power will slow price increases. In response to this restraint, U.S. dollar-denominated commodity prices -- such as gold, copper, steel scrap, and wheat -- have corrected sharply lower with stock markets also losing some of their steam of late. But these are overreactions to a very mild dose of monetary restraint in both China and the U.S.
Today's Federal Open Market Committee meeting will lay the rhetorical groundwork for an overdue increase in the federal funds policy rate. Most market mavens expect a rate hike in June or August. Really, the central bank should act today. Global stock, bond, currency, and commodity markets have already built in about a 75-basis-point Fed move. Why wait? The sooner the Fed acts, the less action it will have to take later on.
That said, Federal Reserve policy will remain relatively accommodative for quite some time. The boom in the U.S. and China will not end. Instead, with a bit of stimulus removal -- actually nothing more than a lightening up on the monetary accelerator -- rising inflation expectations can be stopped dead in their tracks. This would prolong bull-market prosperity cycles in both countries. Once again, Mr. Tom Friedman's prayer would be answered.

-- Larry Kudlow, NRO's Economics Editor, is CEO of Kudlow & Co. and host with Jim Cramer of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer.
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RUSSIA


US and Russia nukes: still on cold war, hair-trigger alert
A Clinton-era plan to enhance US-Russia early warnings systems languishes under bureaucracy.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
MOSCOW - It promised to be a quiet evening at the Soviet nuclear early warning center when Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov settled into the commander's seat on Sept. 26, 1983.
But within minutes, Colonel Petrov was locked in perhaps the most dangerous drama of the cold war. An alarm sounded, warning screens blinked. A computer map on the wall showed the hostile launch of a US nuclear warhead.
"Every second counted.... My legs were unsteady, my hands were trembling, my cozy armchair became a hot frying pan," says the former officer. It only got worse. Within five minutes the computer registered five more launches; the alarm flashed: "Missile Attack."
The decision that Petrov made in those pressure-cooked minutes - that the computer was in error, and the elaborate early warning system that he helped build was wrong - may have prevented a nuclear holocaust.
Twenty years later, there is growing concern that a similar nuclear miscue could happen again. The lone superpower and its former rival still aim thousands of missiles on hair-trigger alert at each other's major cities. As the US rushes to deploy a missile shield this summer designed to intercept North Korean warheads, Clinton-era plans that would improve both US and deteriorating Russian detection systems are stalled.
At presidential summits in both 1998 and 2000, the US and Russia announced plans for a joint, real-time warning system in Moscow. The blueprint, drawing on American's sophisticated satellite network and Russia's wide radar net, promised to keep better tabs on the superpower arsenals as well as on terrorist threats.
"I wish I could say there is no chance of it [today]," Petrov says, in a matchbox kitchen with a yellowing star chart. "But when we deal with space - when we [play] God - who knows what will be the next surprise?"
Dreams of joint efforts ground to a halt long ago. Meanwhile, neglect has left Russia's system in disrepair.
"The fact is, the Russians are flying blind," says Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "There are huge portions of their periphery that are unmonitored because their satellites are down, and they've lost a number of [Soviet-era] radar sites."
The result is a growing concern about false readings that could show a hostile nuclear launch, and provoke real retaliation. Such fears have been augmented by a string of Russian military accidents, from failed test missile launches to a sunken nuclear submarine.
After a secret year-long investigation into the 1983 incident, Petrov says the false readings that shocked him and his team were attributed to a rare but predictable reflection off the earth. The system was fooled again in 1995, when Russians briefly thought that a scientific launch from Norway was a nuclear-tipped US missile heading their way. President Boris Yeltsin reportedly brought out the launch suitcase called the "nuclear football" - perhaps the closest it's ever come to being used in Soviet or Russian history - before coming to believe there was no need to respond.
"There are examples of weather satellite launches, the full moon rising, flocks of geese - all these horror stories in history," says Mr. Wolfsthal. Part of the solution was meant to be a joint warning center built in Moscow. It was to have been completed years ago.
When President Bill Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin first announced plans to build the center in 1998, it was heralded as a breakthrough in preventing a "false warning" leading to accidental war. When Russia's new President Vladimir Putin signed the deal in 2000 with Mr. Clinton, the White House touted it as a "milestone in ensuring strategic stability."
Expert advice backed up that view, with compelling findings in the mid-1990s that combining the US and Russian systems would significantly boost results.
"We went through a whole simulation of different missiles fired by different countries from the Mideast to Europe at different targets at different trajectories," says Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington who oversaw the detailed research with Russian scientists.
"We looked at detections of the US system operating alone, and the Russian one alone, and found the combined performance would be 20 to 70 percent better," says Mr. Blair, a former Minuteman launch officer and early proponent of the joint warning center.
With seven Russian radars stretched from the Baltics to Azerbaijan - which can pick-up Middle East launches - and the US satellites, "you just have a lot more assets focusing on the threat," adds Blair. "We could work together and have a much better ability to detect third country attacks."
US and Russian leaders had another reason to be optimistic. Russian missile officers used a US command center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for months at the end of 1999, to familiarize themselves with the US early-warning system - and to be on hand during the Millenium New Year - to ensure direct contact with Moscow in case any Y2K computer "bug" affected the Russian system.
"It was incredibly useful, and built a lot of trust between ... early-warning groups on both sides," says Carnegie's Wolfsthal. "But in the end, they went away, and we're left without real-time sharing."
The joint project, first envisioned for completion in mid-2001, has foundered on everyday issues of what Russian taxes should be paid for imported US equipment, and legal concerns about liability.
"It's a lack of political will on both sides," says Vladimir Dvorkin, a former major general in Russia's nuclear forces, and a top strategist until 2001. Russia's early warning is "less trustworthy" than the American one, he says, though its readings "will never serve as the only guide [to launch]."
Even more important, General Dvorkin says, is "joint analysis of threats coming from unstable regions with authoritarian regimes."
The mundane points stalling the project are surprising security experts. "If you're a lawyer at the State Department, [liability and taxes] may be very important issues," says Wolfsthal. "But if you are concerned about the geostrategic survival of the human species, they are minuscule in their relevance."
Experts on both sides are planning to issue a wake-up call, however. A group has planned to begin a year-long modeling exercise that will examine the risks of inaction, and the need for the joint center.
"We want to show what can happen without this center," says Pavel Zolotarev, a former Strategic Forces major general. "If such a center were already open here, these threats would probably not lead to dangerous situations. We'll get these results in a year, but who knows when we will be able to convince the leadership?"
Over the past decade, the US has spent roughly $7 billion funding nuclear-threat-reduction programs to control "loose nukes" and to secure weapons-grade nuclear material and scientific expertise that might be easy targets for terrorists. The $1 billion total spent per year on all threat reduction amounts to less than one-third of one percent of US defense spending.
Taking the thousands of warheads off hair-trigger alert, experts say, would also help lower risks. Experts estimate that there is a world total of 30,000 assembled nuclear weapons and enough bomb-grade material to create nearly a quarter million more.
Some Russian experts argue that, since they have no intention of ever "launching on warning," Moscow is deliberately letting its early-warning system deteriorate.
"Certainly if you look at what they do to maintain their satellite constellation, it's pathetic," says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center. There is virtually no coverage of areas where US submarines could launch missiles - long considered the first phase of any attack on Soviet forces.
"I can't imagine a Russian president awakened in the middle of the night with a blip on the radar screen, saying 'Yes, I'm going to launch the missiles on that basis,' knowing what he has to know about the state of their early-warning system," says Mr. Bunn.
* Second in an occasional series on US-Russian strategic issues. "Old weapons, new terror worries," ran April 15, 2004.
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>> TROUBLE WITH ISLAM 1

France tries to soften local style of Islam

Officials there have deported two allegedly radical clerics, leading a Europe-wide crackdown.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
PARIS - As European governments crack down on radical imams as part of their battle against Islamic terrorism, they have laid bare a central problem for millions of their Muslim citizens: a lack of homegrown religious leaders to guide their integration into Western societies.
Overwhelmingly foreign, and sometimes speaking only Arabic, Europe's imams often have little understanding of their host countries, and their teachings run counter to modern European values and gender roles, say Muslim leaders and government officials. But there seems little chance of any change soon, they add.
"There is an abyss between the imams' vision of the world and that of young Muslims born here," says Dounia Bouzar, a member of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, a body established last year to lead the Muslim community.
France has taken the lead in a Europe-wide crackdown on radical clerics. French officials have deported two allegedly fundamentalist imams in recent weeks, and are threatening to expel three more. Italy expelled a Senegalese imam last November, and the British government is seeking to deport the Egyptian born radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, accusing him of supporting al Qaeda.
"Under the cover of religion, individuals present on our soil have been using extremist language and issuing calls for violence," French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said Saturday. "These favor the installation of terrorist movements. It is necessary therefore to oppose this together and by all available means."
Since the Madrid bombing in March, European authorities are paying new attention to the possibility that fundamentalist preachers are sheltering and supporting jihadist bombers.
French authorities announced with great fanfare two weeks ago that they were deporting Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian imam, after he defended wife-beating and stoning adulterous women in a magazine interview. They expelled him before he had a chance to appeal the ruling, which a court later overturned.
Officials told reporters that Mr. Bouziane had ties to terrorist groups, and that the police were keeping a close eye on about 30 mosques whose preachers were suspected of fundamentalist leanings.
The hasty expulsion drew criticism. "You cannot fight an antidemocratic movement by using its own methods," complained opposition Socialist Party spokesman Malik Boutih on French radio Tuesday.
Some Muslim leaders fear the government has made political use of the affair. "They are dramatizing it so as to show that all imams are foreign," complains Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the influential Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF). "They are preparing the ground to set up a government institute to train imams, and we are against such government interference."
Ninety percent from abroad
An estimated 90 percent of imams in France are indeed foreign citizens, mostly from North Africa. Some "have not evolved in French society," says Mr. Breze, whose group is considered close to the Muslim Brotherhood. "Some adapt fast, but lots do not."
Dalil Boubaker, the head of Paris's Grand Mosque, is harsher. "There are 1,500 places of Islamic worship in France," he says. "Five hundred of them have proper imams. The other thousand are clowns."
Who chooses the imams?
While the Algerian government (which funds the Grand Mosque) sends 80 imams to France, and the Moroccan government sends dozens more, most prayer leaders are chosen by local groups that run their own mosques, often in the run-down, big-city suburbs where most of France's five million Muslims live.
Very few of them are paid for their services. Most live on welfare, supplemented by donations from the faithful.
The imams of the 250 mosques affiliated with the UOIF must meet certain criteria, says Breze.
"Our preachers must speak French,they must have been here for many years if they are not French citizens, and their sermons must strengthen social peace," he insists. "We don't want imams who rouse their congregations against their country or a government."
Authorizing imams
Breze would like to see the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM) - set up last year at the urging of the government to provide the authorities with a representative Islamic body they could deal with - set similar conditions in drawing up a list of approved imams.
Dr. Boubaker, head of the CFCM, proposed such a scheme in a meeting Monday with Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin. "We must distinguish between real imams and subversives who call themselves imams," he says. "Imams in France should absolutely stop talking politics."
The CFCM, riven by internal divisions between different branches of Islam, would probably not able to draw up a credible list of "authorized" imams, however, and some members doubt it should try. "It might look like police-style management," worries Ms. Bouzar. "A lot of Muslims already think the government is trying to control them through the council, and this could revive the anxieties."
Some Muslim leaders look to the training of French-born young men as imams as the solution, hoping that they would be more moderate and nonpolitical, and better attuned to the realities of life in a secular Western nation.
The UOIF runs a small college in the French countryside that turns out about 10 new imams a year, but officials acknowledge that this is nowhere near enough to meet the demand. The problem is not only to find enough young Frenchmen attracted by the life of an imam; equally difficult is the question of financing a training institute.
In Muslim countries, governments generally subsidize such institutions. In secular France, with its strict separation of church and state, such an idea is anathema. "This is precisely the CFCM's mission and task. The ball is in their court," says Interior Ministry spokeswoman Veronique Guillermo. "The French state will have nothing to do with how a religion organizes itself."
But the Muslim community in France does not have the resources to fund four-year imam training courses, Muslim leaders say, and they are reluctant to turn to traditional donors, such as wealthy patrons in Gulf countries, for fear of the influence that would give them.
"The question of money is key," says Bouzar. "But the whole imam situation is a reflection of the state of relations between French society and Islam. Islam used to be seen as a foreigner's religion. Today we have a generation which wants to be Muslim and French. Before we can decide what we want from our imams we have to reflect on what it means to be a Muslim in a secular society, and we have a long way to go in that reflection."

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>> TROUBLE WITH ISLAM 2
Outside Encouragement
Sharia rules Nigeria -- with the help of foreign Islamists.

By Paul Marshall

It is a pretty good rule of thumb that where you find Muslim extremism, Islamist terrorism, and women being sentenced to death by stoning, there you will find Saudi funds and Saudi-trained personnel. One exception to this rule has been Nigeria, but now evidence of Wahabbi mischief is surfacing there as well.
Since the governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Ahmed Sani, introduced a draconian version of sharia in 1999, 11 of Nigeria's 36 states have followed suit. Five women have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, though no punishment has yet been carried out. Thieves have had their hands amputated by court order. One man had his eye removed after accidentally blinding a friend (he could have escaped this by paying 60 camels, but the injured party wasn't interested in the camels).
Under these sharia dictates, women are harshly subjugated. In northern Nigeria, they have been forbidden to rent houses and barred from riding motorbikes or traveling in the same vehicles as men. Taxi drivers have been caned for carrying female passengers. Zamfara requires all high-school girls to wear a hijab and bars them from wearing skirts and other "Western" forms of dress. State officials have advocated public flogging of those violating an "Islamic" dress code. Prostitution charges have been leveled at women merely for the crime of being unmarried after the age of 13. Judges in Bauchi State have told women to get married immediately or be sent to prison. One judge ordered four of them to pick out husbands from among the men in the court. Women are at a particular disadvantage in these criminal prosecutions since their testimony usually counts for only half that of a man.
Non-Muslims, usually Christians, have become second-class citizens. Their taxes pay for Islamic preachers, while hundreds of churches have been closed by government order. Last week, Sani announced that all "unauthorized" places of worship in Zamfara State would be demolished. Those who exercise their right under the Nigerian constitution to change their religion from Islam are threatened with death, a punishment for apostasy under sharia law. The Catholic and Anglican churches have had to set up protected centers for converts.
This spread of radical Islam has also led to riots, mob attacks, and vigilantes, producing the largest death toll in Nigeria since the civil war over Biafra in the 1960s. Over 10,000 people have died in the last four years in sharia-related violence -- perhaps over 1,000 in the central states this year alone.
Recent months have seen the emergence of more organized militias. In early January, in Yobe State, there was an uprising by a group calling itself the "Taliban," led by a "Mullah Omar," and demanding an Islamic state. It took several hundred troops two weeks to put it down.
Foreign groups have been aiding the institutionalization of Islamic law. Saudi, Sudanese, Syrian, and Palestinian representatives appeared with Governor Sani in the days before he announced his plans for sharia. The Jigawa State government has sent Islamic judges for training in Malaysia and Sudan. The government of Katsina State has sent a delegation to Sudan to study its laws. Other states have been offered assistance from some these same countries as well as from Iran and Libya.
In January, the Saudi religious and cultural attach? in Nigeria, Sheik Abdul-Aziz, said that his government had been monitoring the implementation of sharia in Nigeria and noted the results "with delight."
There is also evidence of infiltration by foreign Islamic radicals. According to some reports, extremists from neighboring Chad were involved in the July 2001 violence in Bauchi State. In November 2001, Nigerian police arrested six Pakistani preachers, accusing them of inciting religious violence in Ogun state. The police have announced that scores of Pakistanis have been arrested in different parts of the country for allegedly fomenting religious trouble since 9/11. Church spokesmen in Plateau State said last month that local Muslim extremists have brought in thousands of mercenaries from Niger and Chad to invade Christian towns and villages.
However, despite repeated rumors, there has until this year been little evidence of organized foreign support for violence and domestic terrorism. Now such evidence is appearing. On February 3, the Nigerian government announced that an unnamed Iranian diplomat was arrested on January 23 in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, after he was found taking photographs of Churches, a presidential villa, the defense headquarters, and the Israeli, British, and American embassies.
The usually reliable news service Compass Direct reports that one of January's "Taliban" raiders, Muslim cleric Alhaji Sharu, confessed to police that he was a middleman between Nigerian extremists and the Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust, a Saudi funded "charity" headquartered in Britain. Sharu said that the Trust's money had been used to propagate a Wahabist version of Islam in Nigeria and fund religious violence.
Subsequent investigation by Nigeria's police led to "the discovery of financial transactions running into millions of dollars" between Sharu and the Trust's local head, a Sudanese businessman named Muhiddeen Abdullahi. Authorities arrested Abdullahi on February 20, accusing him and the Trust of financing attacks on Christians, including the January Taliban uprising.
When authorities released Abdullahi 10 days after his arrest, more than 5,000 Qadiriyya Sufi Muslims, the largest tradition within Nigerian Islam, mounted a protest march. Chanting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great"), demanded that Wahabbis be banned from the country. Their spokesman, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, told journalists, "As a matter of urgency, the state government should close the office of Al-Muntada Al-Islami because of its activities which have resulted in religious unrest in Nigeria."
If Nigeria's moderate Muslims can call for the rejection of Saudi interference, there is nothing stopping the Nigerian government from doing the same, and little stopping the U.S. government from encouraging it to do so.

-- Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. He is author of Islam at the Crossroads and God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics.

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IRAQ 2...

Loose Canons
Unacceptable and Un-American
By Jed Babbin
Published 5/5/2004 12:07:25 AM
That's what Big Dog called the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and, as usual, he was dead right. Unfortunately, those words seem to describe more than the outrageous and illegal actions of a few soldiers and civilians there. There is a sense of disarray about Iraq this week, and those who want us to fail there are doing everything they can to magnify it. The Marines had the city of Falluja cordoned off for almost a month, and -- having paid for the real estate with blood -- they were ordered to pull back. We had one former Saddamite general put in charge of a small new Iraqi force going into the city to restore order and drive out the insurgents. But after a couple of days it was clear that this general -- Jasim Muhammed Saleh - was performing up to the standards of Hans Blix.
Saleh was chosen on the recommendation of some members of the Iraqi Governing Council. But we later discovered a small problem. Gen. Saleh had a role in crushing the Shia revolt America invited and then abandoned in 1991. Somehow, Gen. Saleh -- garbed in his old uniform and surrounded by red-bereted cohorts -- wasn't able to locate any of the foreign insurgents and dead-ender Baathists who have made Falluja a battleground that has claimed too many American lives. Exit Saleh, stage left.
Now we have another former Saddam general, Muhammed Latif, who is at the head of the 900-man Iraqi "force" in Falluja. The IGC and Ambassador Bremer have apparently done a better job of vetting this guy. Gen. Latif -- who spent seven years in jail for resisting Saddam's orders -- seems a slightly better bet than Saleh. But only slightly, because it's not clear that he can command any loyalty from the few troops at his disposal, or cooperation from the locals.
WE'RE FACED WITH one of the central dilemmas of this war: How do you instill a sense of freedom and democracy among a population that is -- at least partly -- tolerant of, if not sympathetic to, barbarians who murdered and mutilated four Americans who fell into their hands? As one Defense Department source told me, we have a 21st century military trying to restore order among a 12th century population without turning everything into a smoking pile of rubble. Every instinct tells me that we should have ordered all the women, children, and elderly out of Falluja quickly then systematically destroyed the pockets of insurgents that our scout-sniper teams were locating. A 500-pound precision-guided bomb does the job in a manner that won't need to be repeated, at least in regard to those within a half a block. We were doing that when a halt was imposed. Now we have chosen to test this "Iraqification" option. By doing so, we are pretending that we have obtained the results we should have in the past year, and haven't.
The Iraqis are unready. Thirteen months after the fall of Saddam's regime -- hell, six months after his capture -- Iraq is not ready for a new government, and a new government is not ready for Iraq. There's plenty of blame to go around, but that's for another day. (Or not. One wise man told me soon after L. Paul Bremer was appointed proconsul over Iraq: "If you want anything to be accomplished, never hire someone whose first name is 'ambassador.'") The issue now is how to push Iraq along. Face facts: June 30 will be a symbolic turnover, not a substantive one. American troops will be there for many years to come. Paul Bremer will leave on June 30, and John Negroponte - until recently, our ambassador to Kofi and the Kupcakes -- will take over in what may seem a lesser role. But he has his work cut out for him, as do the soldiers who will remain.
This Churchillian situation (Sir Winston once said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing, but only after they try everything else) can't be fixed quickly. As we are discovering, you can't make up for lost time when you're nation-building. Lost time is just lost. The President tried to make up for it by making his most puzzling pronouncement to date: that the U.N.'s representative -- the anti-American Algerian, Lakhdar Brahimi -- will choose the new Iraqi government. Those of you who know what the acronym FUBAR stands for can derive my prediction for the U.N.'s success. We will waste another year at this, and then realize that we don't need more ambassadors and diplomats.
WE -- AND THAT MEANS Uncle Sam, and our real allies -- need to establish several things before Iraq can be stable enough to govern itself. First, it needs security. Which means we need to protect it from external threats coming from Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and get the Iraqis to the point where they are capable of dealing with the internal mess themselves. Second, it needs a functioning legislature and courts, which means it needs something like the Afghan "loya jirgha," an assembly of local leaders who choose the new government and can pass laws and establish courts. ASAP. Third, it needs to provide evidence of the functioning government including the security, but also services, schools, and hospitals. The $18 billion in construction money should be spent now to employ restive Iraqis and help get their economy going. That is more than enough for our new representative to Iraq, John Negroponte, to deal with after June 30. The prisoner abuse matter makes everything worse. It has energized every opponent we have and makes our continued presence in Iraq more difficult, though not less essential.
One general has been suspended, six soldiers are facing courts-martial, and a number of others, including a military intelligence colonel, will probably be prosecuted. The military justice system is, in truth, better than its civilian counterpart. There are at least six investigations ongoing, and there will be trials. They can't happen fast enough, be public enough, or impose sentences severe enough. Those few -- those miserable few -- have dishonored the service of tens of thousands of devoted, brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines and made their jobs even more dangerous. Think of the next American soldier captured by the insurgents. His -- or her -- fate will be horrible, and the insurgents will say it is payback for what happened at Abu Ghraib.
The Blixiecrats in Congress and our pals in the Arab press are in full cry. Teddy and Carl Levin are harrumphing because they weren't told about the investigation before it was leaked to the press. They are trying to make things worse by saying that the problem is much more widespread than any facts indicate. But the seriousness of these incidents is not to be underestimated. At this writing, there are new allegations that at least two prisoners were murdered, and there may also have been abuses in Afghan jails.
The military justice system is cranking along, and it will meet out justice to the perps. Those not under military jurisdiction will have to face Iraqi justice. At least three civilians are implicated, and one of them may have participated in one of the murders. They should be held in Iraqi jails, and tried in Iraqi or Afghani courts. Until then, they should remain in the Abu Ghraib jail or the Afghan equivalent. As prisoners, not as jailers. They are certain to be treated better than were the prisoners they are accused of abusing.
[Nota Bene: On Tuesday, the junior senator from Massachusetts was said, by his Vietnam-era Navy boss, to have been a "loose cannon" while in the war zone. Said junior senator is in no way connected to this column, the proper spelling of its banner, or its author. Except as to be hoisted on its petard.]


TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author of the forthcoming book, Inside the Asylum: How the U.N. and Old Europe are Worse than You Think.

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L'?ditorial du Monde
Torture en Irak
LE MONDE | 03.05.04 | 12h49
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Le Monde ?DITORIAL
LES ACCUSATIONS de torture contre des prisonniers irakiens ne pouvaient tomber plus mal pour la coalition am?ricano-britannique, ? l'issue du mois le plus sanglant du conflit depuis la fin - officielle - de la guerre. Les t?moignages et les photographies d'actes brutaux et d?gradants commis par des militaires am?ricains sur des d?tenus ont fait le tour du monde, et leur impact dans la rue arabe ne saurait ?tre minimis?. M?me si un doute subsiste sur l'authenticit? des clich?s impliquant des Britanniques.
Il ne s'agit pas de jeter la pierre ? la seule coalition. Les opposants irakiens ne sont pas en reste avec leurs attentats aveugles. Et la torture est, h?las, un sous-produit condamnable mais habituel des situations de conflit et de r?pression. Aucun pays n'en a ?t? exempt, la France incluse, pour ceux qui n'ont pas oubli? les heures noires de la guerre d'Alg?rie.
Il n'en demeure pas moins que ces actes inadmissibles ont eu lieu dans le cadre d'une exacerbation des relations entre Am?ricains et Irakiens depuis la "lib?ration" de leur pays. Et qu'ils s'inscrivent en faux contre cette id?e de l'administration Bush qu'elle n'a pas ? ?tre li?e par des conventions internationales encombrantes.
Depuis son arriv?e en Irak, l'arm?e am?ricaine a eu la main lourde et a, pour le moins, manqu? de doigt? dans sa guerre psychologique. En m?me temps, le Pentagone avait gravement sous-estim? les effectifs n?cessaires pour y ramener la paix. Il n'en reste pas moins que m?me une r?action rapide de Washington ? l'encontre des coupables risque d'?tre insuffisante, tant l'hostilit? des Irakiens, chiites comme sunnites, est g?n?rale.
Au moins aussi grave est la d?gradation du prestige du pr?sident George W. Bush, que cette affaire implique : une administration de donneurs de le?ons se retrouve prise ? son propre pi?ge. Et, comme le remarque le Washington Post, "les politiciens et les chefs militaires am?ricains doivent en tirer une le?on importante et implacable : les r?gles de droit comptent, m?me quand il s'agit des pires ennemis de l'Am?rique".
Comment, par exemple, justifier que l'interrogatoire de prisonniers, de guerre ou autres, puisse ?tre "sous-trait?" ? des "consultants" civils, mercenaires recrut?s aupr?s d'officines sp?cialis?es ? Il est crucial, pour l'image comme pour l'efficacit? de la coalition, qu'elle respecte les conventions de Gen?ve. Sur le terrain comme dans cette zone de non-droit qu'est la base de Guantanamo.
Il n'est pas certain que cela suffise ? redresser la situation sur le terrain. Il y va, malgr? tout, de l'honneur des Etats-Unis, ancien leader du "monde libre" et unique superpuissance, de faire en sorte que les coupables soient ch?ti?s, que ces atrocit?s ne se reproduisent plus et que le droit de la guerre pr?vale.
Sinon, comment convaincre Irakiens et musulmans - si cela est encore possible - de la bonne foi de Washington ? Et comment persuader d'autres pays - europ?ens en particulier - de participer sous commandement am?ricain au processus de paix en Irak ?

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 04.05.04
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A Bagdad, d'autres t?moignages ?voquent des tortures "bien pires"
LE MONDE | 03.05.04 | 13h21 * MIS A JOUR LE 03.05.04 | 15h58
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Bagdad de notre envoy?e sp?ciale
C'est presque avec soulagement que beaucoup de Bagdadis ont accueilli la publication des photos de prisonniers tortur?s dans la prison d'Abou Ghraib. "Tous les Irakiens le savaient, maintenant, l'Occident sera oblig? de le savoir aussi", dit Omar, un ancien militaire sunnite de la capitale. Durant deux jours, les t?l?visions satellitaires arabes, Al-Jazira en t?te, - les plus regard?es en Irak - ont ouvert par ces images leurs bulletins d'information, largement consacr?s aux r?actions officielles qu'elles ont provoqu?es.
Al-Jazira n'a pas manqu? de montrer celle d'un des membres du Conseil int?rimaire de gouvernement (CIG, install? par les Am?ricains), celle du chef kurde Talabani. Apr?s avoir d?nonc?, un peu formellement, ces "actes indignes", il a pr?cis? que "pour les Irakiens, qui ont connu bien pire sous Saddam -Hussein-, cela n'est pas tr?s important". Chacun, en Irak, en est bien conscient, mais cette phrase prononc?e ? l'?cran - qui plus est, avec le sourire - a provoqu? un grave malaise pour les uns, la fureur pour des autres, partisans de la "r?sistance" en Irak.
L'?pisode a mis ? nu le dangereux foss? qui s'est ?largi, depuis "l'insurrection d'avril" des sunnites arabes et des partisans chiites de Moqtada Sadr, entre ces derniers et les Kurdes, seul grand groupe rest? en bloc alli? des Am?ricains en Irak.
TORTURE SYST?MATIQUE
Certains commentaires rapport?s de la rue ? Bagdad sont d?sabus?s : "Quoi attendre d'autres des Am?ricains ?" "C'est ?a leur civilisation !" Les "?lites" plus ou moins pro-am?ricaines expliquent, elles, que si les r?actions en Irak ne sont pas plus violentes, "c'est parce que tout le monde sait aussi que les m?dias arabes, et Al-Jazira en particulier, se sont bien gard?s de d?noncer, en leur temps, les tortures autrement plus terribles pratiqu?es dans les prisons de Saddam", comme le dit un professeur d'Universit? chiite. Autre type de r?action, celui de sunnites de la province d'Al-Anbar, surtout, qui s'indignent du fait que la d?nonciation de ces s?vices pratiqu?s dans la vaste prison d'Abou Ghraib masque des tortures "bien pires" pratiqu?es dans les nombreux centres de tri et d'interrogatoires pr?liminaires.
De nombreux t?moignages concordent, depuis au moins sept mois, pour dire que les d?tenus sont syst?matiquement maltrait?s, frapp?s ou tortur?s, r?ellement ou par simulacre, dans ces centres o? ils sont gard?s de deux ? dix jours avant d'?tre dirig?s sur Abou Ghraib ou d'autres prisons.
"Le pire, c'est ? Baghdadi", un centre de d?tention situ? entre Ramadi et Hit, plus ? l'ouest, entend-on souvent. "Beaucoup y sont morts et des corps tortur?s ont ?t? rendus aux familles, ou jet?s sur les routes", assure ainsi un membre du Parti islamique - sunnite "mod?r?" - de Fallouja. Il se souvient du nom d'un seul Irakien ainsi martyris? - Nafe'Khalaf Ghadban -, mais chacun autour de lui opine ? ses dires.
Cheikh Jalal, 60 ans, une des autorit?s religieuses les plus respect?es de Fallouja, a ?t? rel?ch? jeudi 28 avril - dans le cadre des accords pass?s avec ses insurg?s - de la prison d'Abou Ghraib, o? il fut d?tenu sept mois. Ce "soufi", qui pr?che aussi fermement la l?gitimit? de la r?sistance que la n?cessit? du pardon, dit que lui n'a jamais ?t? frapp?, contrairement ? son jeune fils : "On lui a cass? des chaises sur le dos, il a ?t? rel?ch? au bout de dix jours, mais il souffre encore de ces coups."
Il dit aussi que beaucoup de ses compagnons de d?tention ont ?t? "brutalement frapp?s, humili?s, ramen?s nus des interrogatoires" ? leur tente de d?tention, o? ils avaient "tout le temps faim et soif, alors que les d?tenus criminels mangeaient comme dans un palais". Interrog? pour savoir s'il "est vrai que les Am?ricains arrachent les ongles ?", il r?pond qu'il ne le pense pas - "c'est sous Saddam qu'ils faisaient ?a". Il n'a pas vu lui-m?me les femmes "que les Am?ricains arr?tent quand ils ne trouvent pas leurs maris". Mais il est s?r qu'il s'en trouve, ? Abou Ghreib, "dans les pires cellules, souterraines et sans lumi?re".
Sophie Shihab

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 04.05.04

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Interrogators pressured to make inmates talk

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller arrived in Baghdad in September with one urgent mission: Improve the intelligence gathered from Iraqi detainees in 16 Army-run prisons, including Saddam Hussein's favorite, Abu Ghraib.
Saddam was still on the run, and commanders desperately needed information on him and on a growing insurgency that was killing American troops daily. The recommendation was to "Gitmo-ize" interrogations, or bring them more in line with practices at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Gen. Miller, who ran the Guantanamo Bay compound for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, advocated centralizing military intelligence interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Cellblocks 1A and 1B, which served as the prison's maximum-security wing, became home to a relatively modest number of insurgents thought to hold a wealth of facts on the enemy.
"He wanted all the interrogation teams in one location," said Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve military police officer (MP) who served as warden for all 16 prisons as commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. "They were putting a lot of pressure on the interrogation teams to get more information.
"The problem was he had 800 MPs to guard 600 prisoners [in Guantanamo]. We had 130 MPs for about 8,000 detainees," Gen. Karpinski told The Washington Times yesterday.
Gen. Miller now runs the Army's Iraq prison system.
What followed in those two cell blocks was three months of abusing prisoners by MP guards and interrogation teams.
Whether the abuse produced the coveted intelligence information is not clear. But publicized graphic photographs of Iraqis forced to form naked pyramids or simulate sex acts has enraged the Arab world and President Bush and have sparked at least six formal investigations.
Army officials say at this point, the abuse seems to have been limited to those two cellblocks that held captured Iraqi insurgents and to incidents at another camp.
Six MPs face criminal charges. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who heads Combined Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) in Baghdad and is up for a fourth star, has reprimanded six officers at the prison and admonished a seventh.
Gen. Karpinski thinks the scandal is rooted in the pressure that Gen. Sanchez's command exerted on the interrogation teams after he accepted Gen. Miller's recommendation.
"The combat divisions were being more vigorous going out on raids," she said. "They wanted to get actionable intelligence."
To Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who completed an investigative report in March, the scandal can be traced, in part, to training and resources.
"I find that the 800th MP Brigade was not adequately trained for a mission that included operating a prison or penal institution at Abu Ghraib prison complex," he said in a secret report obtained yesterday by The Washington Times. "I also find ... that the 800th MP Brigade as a whole was understrength for the mission for which it was tasked."
Gen. Karpinski said she would have stopped the abuse had she known about it. For what the Army considers command failures, she has received a written admonishment. She said she remains in command of the 800th MP Brigade, which demobilized as scheduled with members returning to their hometowns.
"She has not been suspended, reprimanded or relieved of her command," said Neal A. Puckett, her civilian attorney and a former Marine Corps judge advocate.
The one-star general ran a two-tiered prisoner system. The Army housed criminals and some insurgents in 15 detention centers around the California-size country. Gen. Karpinski said the system holds few, if any, classic prisoners of war -- that is, Iraqi soldiers captured during the war to topple Saddam. Virtually all of those individuals have been released.
The system also does not house the infamous 55-member "deck of cards" -- the most senior Ba'athists, including Saddam. The coalition detains those prisoners in undisclosed lockups.
Abu Ghraib became the hub for what are called "security detainees" -- those involved in attacking coalition forces. The 7,000 to 8,000 population is a mix of Ba'ath Party loyalists, former intelligence security officers and criminals who joined an anticoalition cell.
Some are accused of killing American troops.
Of that population, those thought to hold special information on Saddam loyalists and their whereabouts were moved to cellblocks 1A and 1B.
"They wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff," said Gen. Karpinski, who saw CJTF-7 switch control of Abu Ghraib on Nov. 19 from her MPs to a military intelligence commander.
CJTF-7's push for "actionable intelligence" meant units such as the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit and the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad were pushing their mobile-intelligence units to vacuum up more Iraqis and bring them to Abu Ghraib. From October to December, the time span when the abuse occurred, the two cellbocks held nearly 200 prisoners.
Interrogations occurred each day. Detainees were questioned by three-member interrogation teams made up of an Army 205th Military Intelligence Brigade officer, a civilian linguist on contract and another agency representative normally from either the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency or the Army criminal investigative command.
The interrogators have been given some leeway to pressure prisoners, such as depriving them of sleep and light.
But the abuse depicted in the photos violates Army regulations, the rules of engagement for Iraq and the Geneva Conventions.
In general, the conventions state that prisoners of war must be treated humanely and not subjected to torture or scientific experiments. They cannot be threatened if they do not talk and cannot be put on public display.
Gen. Karpinski said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) frequently visited Abu Ghraib, including the high-value men in cellblocks 1A and 1B. She said she was aware of only one complaint: a Red Cross team found an Iraqi naked in an isolation cell. He told them that he had refused to talk and that the staff made him wear women's underwear.
Gen. Karpinski said when the complaint was reported to a senior Army military intelligence commander, he commented, "We have to stop allowing them to order from the Victoria's Secret catalog."
Amanda Williamson, the ICRC spokeswoman in Washington, said the group visits Abu Ghraib every five or six weeks.
Mrs. Williamson said it is ICRC policy not to comment on its observations to the press.
She also said, "There are apparently a number of different categories of people detained in Iraq. Some are POWs, and there are some detained in other categories. Nonetheless, the Geneva Conventions clearly prohibit mistreatment."
Army investigators now have scores of investigations under way. Gen. Taguba's report highlights a pattern of abuse and some shocking statements from Army noncommissioned officers, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Times.
*"[Spc.] Sabrina D. Harman, 372nd MP Company, stated in her sworn statement regarding the incident where a detainee was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis, that her job was to keep detainees awake."
*Another MP, Sgt. Javal Davis, said military intelligence officers told him, "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment." After some detainees began talking, an officer told him, "Good job. They're breaking down real fast. They answered every question."
*"The Iraqi guards at Abu Ghraib demonstrated questionable work ethics and loyalties and are a potentially dangerous contingent within the [prison]. These guards have furnished the Iraqi criminal inmates with contraband, weapons, and information. Additionally, they have facilitated the escape of a least one detainee."

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 05. Mai 2004, 15:59
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,298455,00.html
Zimbardo zu Misshandlungen

"Krieg verwandelt Menschen in brutale Folterer"
Von Christian St?cker
F?r den renommierten US-Psychologen Philip Zimbardo sind die Misshandlungen irakischer Gefangener durch amerikanische Soldaten kein Zufall. Die Situation im Irak bringe die Soldaten regelrecht dazu, Gr?ueltaten zu ver?ben. Verantwortlich daf?r sei die US-Regierung.
AP / The New Yorker
Misshandelte Gefangene: "Fass des Krieges mit Essig gef?llt"
"Wir d?rfen den Politikern und dem Pentagon nicht erlauben, die Ernsthaftigkeit der Vorf?lle mit der ?blichen, auf Pers?nlichkeitsstrukturen abzielenden Analyse beiseite zu schieben", schreibt Philip Zimbardo in einem Brief an die Mitglieder der "Society of Personality and Social Psychology". Die Erkl?rung, es gebe ein paar faule ?pfel in einem ansonsten guten Fass, sei nicht akzeptabel, hei?t es in dem Schreiben, das SPIEGEL ONLINE vorliegt.
George Bush habe gesagt, die Ereignisse sollten kein schlechtes Licht auf das an sich gute amerikanische Volk oder das Milit?r werfen. "Falsch", so Zimbardo, "die situationsbezogene Analyse sagt uns, dass das Fass des Krieges mit Essig gef?llt ist, der gute Gurken in saure Gurken verwandelt, und das immer tun wird. Er verwandelt die Mehrzahl guter Menschen, M?nner wie Frauen, in ?belt?ter."
Wesentliche Faktoren dabei seien Anonymit?t und Verlust der Individualit?t, Entmenschlichung, Geheimhaltung, Diffusion von Verantwortung, soziale Vorbilder, starke Machtgef?lle, Frustration, Rachegef?hle, Autorit?tsh?rigkeit und mangelnde ?berwachung, die ein Gef?hl des "laissez-faire" erzeuge.
Stanford University
Psychologie-Papst Zimbardo: "Soldaten in brutale Qu?ler verwandelt"
Philip Zimbardo ist nicht irgendwer. Der Sozialpsychologe war Pr?sident der m?chtigen American Psychological Association (APA), seine Publikationen, unter anderem ?ber Machtmissbrauch und Unterdr?ckung, geh?ren weltweit zum Pflichtstoff, sein Einf?hrungsbuch f?r Psychologiestudenten ist auch an deutschen Universit?ten Standardlekt?re.
Zimbardos Analyse der Misshandlungen im Bagdader Gef?ngnis basiert auf seinen eigenen Forschungen. In seinem "Stanford Prison Experiment" erfuhr der Forscher 1971 am eigenen Leib, was eine Situation, in der Macht und Unterwerfung willk?rlich verteilt werden, mit ganz normalen Menschen anstellen kann. In der Studie waren 24 Freiwillige entweder zu Gef?ngnisw?rtern oder zu Gefangenen erkl?rt worden. Die Gefangenen wurden von Anfang an gedem?tigt, mussten Krankenhausnachthemden und Ketten an den F??en tragen, wurden nur noch mit Nummern statt mit ihren Namen angesprochen.
Stanford-Gef?ngnis-Experiment: Das B?se im Menschen geweckt
Da es f?r die W?rter keine expliziten Regeln gab, entwickelten sie verschiedene Unterdr?ckungsmethoden, mit denen die Gefangenen gef?gig gemacht wurden. So wurden zur Bestrafung Liegest?tzen angeordnet, den Eingesperrten wurden Decken und Matratzen weggenommen, es gab eine lichtlose Einzelhaft-Zelle.
Im Laufe des Experiments wurden die Unterdr?ckungsma?nahmen immer extremer: Als sich die W?rter nachts unbeobachtet f?hlten, zwangen sie die Gefangenen sogar, sich auszuziehen und miteinander sexuelle Akte zu simulieren - so wie die US-Soldaten im Irak. Das Experiment, das eigentlich zwei Wochen dauern sollte, wurde schlie?lich nach sechs Tagen abgebrochen, weil die Situation vollst?ndig au?er Kontrolle geraten war. Das "Stanford Prison Experiment" bildete vor einigen Jahren auch die Grundlage f?r den deutschen Kinoerfolg "Das Experiment" mit Moritz Bleibtreu.
Zimbardo hat Mechanismen von Unterdr?ckung und Folter auch an anderen Orten untersucht, etwa bei den Todesschwadronen der brasilianischen Milit?rjunta. Aus den Ergebnissen schlie?t er, dass Personen, die in derartige Situationen gebracht werden, mehr oder minder zwangsl?ufig agressiv-unterdr?ckerische Verhaltensweisen entwickeln - auch wenn sie an und f?r sich keine grausamen oder b?sartigen Menschen sind.
"Die allgegenw?rtige Ursache ist das ?bel des Krieges", schreibt der Psychologe, "die vorgeschobene Geschichte von der 'Nationalen Sicherheit' und den ?bertriebenen ?ngsten vor dem Terrorismus, die durch zehn 'glaubw?rdige' Terrorwarnungen erzeugt worden sind. Sie verwandeln unsere Nation in eine Kultur der Opfer und unsere Soldaten in brutale Qu?ler anderer Menschen."
Zimbardo ist ?berzeugt, dass die Wunschvorstellung, die USA k?nnten den Irak demokratisieren, eine reine Utopie ist. "Das wird nicht passieren. Dieser aggressive, ?berfl?ssige Krieg ist die H?lle auf Erden, er wird langandauernde Konsequenzen in der Heimat und im Ausland haben."

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>> AHEM...

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 05. Mai 2004, 12:49
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,298425,00.html
Geheimdienste

Saddams mobile Dattellabors

Von Sebastian Knauer

Bei der Suche nach Massenvernichtungswaffen haben die US-Ermittler eine weitere Fehleinsch?tzung abgegeben. SPIEGEL ONLINE liegen die Original-Unterlagen der tats?chlich aufgefundenen mobilen Chemielabors aus Deutschland vor. Allerdings waren sie ungeeignet f?r die Herstellung von biologischen und chemischen Waffen.
AFP
US-Au?enminister Powell vor dem Uno-Sicherheitsrat (Februar 2003): "Beweis f?r die Aufr?stung mit C-Waffen"
Ende April vergangenen Jahres entdeckten US-Milit?rs im Irak einen betagten, sandfarbenen Lastwagen auf dem ein "mobiles chemisches Labor" montiert ist. Auf der Webseite der CIA wurde in einem Bericht vom Mai vergangenen Jahres das dreiachsige Fahrzeug und seine Einbauten mit Bildmaterial dokumentiert. Zu erkennen sind ein handels?blicher K?hlschrank, eine kastenf?rmige Laborzentrifuge sowie eine Abzugshaube.
SPIEGEL ONLINE liegen die Original-Konstruktionspl?ne der Laborwagen vor. Nach dem begleitenden Text und CIA-Einsch?tzung handele es sich um ein chemisches Labor, dass m?glicherweise andere "mobile Produktionsanlagen f?r Biowaffen" im Irak "unterst?tzen" solle.
Konstruktionsplan des mobilen Labors
?hnliche mobile Produktionsanlagen f?r Kampfstoffe waren von US-Au?enminister Colin Powell vor dem Weltsicherheitsrat als Beweis f?r die B- und C-Waffenaufr?stung des Irak pr?sentiert worden. Die Informationen dazu hatte zuvor eine Quelle des deutschen Bundesnachrichtendienstes (BND) namens "Curveball" (benannt nach dem Trickwurf im Baseball) geliefert.
BND h?lt an den Informationen fest
AP/ US Army
Mobiles Labor im Irak (Archiv): Keine Beweise f?r die Produktion von B- und C-Waffen
W?hrend Powell inzwischen von den angeblichen Biowaffenlabors auf gro?en Sechsachsern abr?ckte, glauben die BND-Experten weiterhin keinem Schwindler aufgesessen zu sein. "Wir halten die Angaben weiterhin f?r glaubhaft", sagt eine BND-Sprecherin. Der Informant ist Chemiker und lebe derzeit in Deutschland. Trotz intensiver Suche durch US-Milit?rs und Uno-Waffenkontrolleure sind die so genannten rollenden Biowaffenfabriken jedoch im Nachkriegs-Irak nirgendwo gefunden worden.
Aufgetaucht sind dagegen die Uralt-Lastwagen "made in Germany". Insgesamt acht Magirus-Deutz-Lastwagen, ausger?stet mit Chemielabors durch die Kaufbeurer Fahrzeugfirma Rhein Bayern, waren in den achtziger Jahren mit offizieller Genehmigung der Bundesregierung via Bremerhaven in den Irak exportiert worden.
REUTERS
Powell-Beweis: Das angeblich rollende Chemielabor
Der damalige Rhein-Bayern-Chef Anton Eyerele, 81, sp?ter wegen des Versto?es gegen das Kriegswaffen Kontrollgesetz zu einer hohen Haftstrafe verurteilt, hatte stets beteuert, dass es sich bei den Lieferungen in den Irak um "zivile Laborwagen" handele. Nach den Giftgasangriffen von Saddam Husseins Truppen auf die kurdische Zivilbev?lkerung 1988 hatte die G?ttinger Gesellschaft f?r bedrohte V?lker Recherchen zu den Mobillabors durchgef?hrt ?ber die damals der "Stern" unter dem Titel "Ich mache nur meine Gesch?fte" berichtete.
Die Ausr?stung dieser Spezialwagen f?r Wasser-, Boden- oder Nahrungsmittelproben kam von der Firma "Karl Kolb GmbH & Co KG Scientific Technical Supplies", die weltweit auch Universit?ten und Industrieunternehmen mit Laborausr?stungen beliefert.
"Simple Standardlabors f?r Agrochemie"
In den irakischen Labors fehlte nach den Konstruktionszeichnungen jedoch selbst ein handels?blicher Gas-Chromatograf, mit dem biologische oder chemische Kampfstoffe untersucht werden k?nnten. "Das waren simple Standardlabors f?r die Agrochemie", sagt heute ein Kolb-Manager gegen?ber SPIEGEL ONLINE. Die Ger?tschaften w?ren beispielsweise gut geeignet gewesen, um auch Untersuchungen in Dattelplantagen durchzuf?hren.
Beim Bundesnachrichtendienst wird die Verwirrung um die "mobilen Labors", die m?glicherweise den Informanten zu seinen farbenfrohen Erz?hlungen anregten, k?hl kommentiert: "Das sind verschiedene Baustellen."

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