SecDef McCain
Is John McCain auditioning for a non-veep Kerry admin spot?
John McCain provided crucial cover for John Kerry on his defense votes last week, vouching for his Senate colleague and friend's toughness on national security. This was a priceless endorsement for Kerry, and it played on the front pages of both the Washington Post and the New York Times. There may be more at work here then McCain's senatorial courtesy (not something he has been famous for to this point) or his smoldering animosity toward Bush. McCain is speaking as a potential member of the Kerry Cabinet.
Recent speculation has focused on McCain as a potential vice-presidential pick for Kerry. This doesn't make much sense. The political differences are just too stark and would be difficult to defend in a campaign. It's also not clear that McCain would want to be vice president, a second-fiddle job by its nature. There's another post in the Kerry administration that makes much more sense and has been the focus of a rumor going around Capitol Hill -- McCain as Kerry's secretary of defense.
This would work on all sorts of levels. The Kerry team would obviously want to tap into McCain's magic, so would be happy to have him in the cabinet. McCain as SecDef would project an image of toughness on national security, which Kerry would probably want given the current political environment. Also, the Democratic bench isn't that deep when it comes to defense and military affairs, making McCain a natural to fill this hole. Finally, every administration wants to make some gesture toward bipartisanship, which is why Norman Mineta is in the Bush administration. And there is a direct precedent for McCain as secretary of defense in a Kerry administration -- Bill Cohen, another Republican senator, as secretary of defense for Bill Clinton.
For McCain, this job would make sense as well. It would be a great capstone to his political career. It would accord with his personal interests and his family history -- his father and grandfather were admirals, and McCain could match their achievements in his own way by running the Pentagon. Finally, it would cement his image as the impossible-to-categorize, beyond-partisanship American statesman. The media would eat it up.
So when McCain assists the Kerry campaign, he is not just helping his senatorial friend, but his potential boss.
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200403231035.asp
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Why Are Oil Prices So High?
Several reasons -- but a new era of high prices is not upon us.
The sharp rise in oil prices to $37 a barrel has coincided with a number of significant events involving geopolitics, macroeconomics, and the petroleum industry. These have piqued the interest of investors and have caused many portfolio managers to ask whether this is the start of a new era of sustained high oil prices.
Is it? No. But to understand why, here are the most common questions being asked about oil on Wall Street, followed by the answers more people should know:
What role is the weak dollar playing in oil pricing?
Largely, it is a psychological and speculative role. So far, the weak dollar has had no impact on supply, demand, or inventories. For example, no producer has cut oil production because the dollar value has declined. Although OPEC has cited erosion of buying power due to the currency shift, and has given this as a reason to justify the current high barrel price, OPEC production (excluding Iraq) is estimated to have increased each month between October and January, with members persistently exceeding quotas.
Is fast growth in Chinese oil demand the impetus behind rising oil prices, and won't this result in sustained high oil prices?
Estimates of Chinese oil demand in 2003 and so far in 2004 are hovering in the 8 to 10 percent range per annum. This compares with an average growth rate of 6.5 percent from 1992 to 2002. By any measure, this growth is significant. If it persists at this level of growth, China might be responsible for higher world oil demand. But this may or may not result in sustained high oil prices depending on changes in supply and inventories. More, put in perspective, China's oil consumption is about the same as Japan's, one-quarter of the U.S.'s, and one-third of Europe's. Also, China's accelerated oil demand is at least partially offset by a slowdown in demand growth rates in Japan, Europe, Russia, Latin America, Africa, and the United States.
Why is the U.S. government filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) when oil prices are so high? When will this stop and what will happen when it does stop?
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush decided to fill the SPR to its authorized level of 700 million barrels for national security reasons. Since then, 103.8 million barrels have been added, and the SPR now holds 647.5 million barrels. Since last April, following the allied invasion of Iraq, the fill rate has averaged over 1 million barrels a week, or about 1 percent of U.S. crude oil demand. Obviously, this program is not sensitive to oil prices. At the current pace, the fill would need to go on for about another year to reach the 700-million-barrel target. Given the budget deficit, the high oil price, and the presidential-election season, the administration should cease purchases sometime in the first half of the year -- which would have the same impact as a sudden 1 percent drop in crude oil demand, causing prices to fall. (Other countries are also building their SPRs, which may also be playing a role in the speculative fervor behind the oil-price rise.)
Are rising finding-and-development costs leading to higher oil prices?
Not likely. F&D costs are cyclical and have risen from a low point. But historically, costs are not that high right now.
Are we running out of oil?
No.
But hasn't oil production been disappointing for the major oil companies?
Yes. However, some of the reasons for the disappointing production are complicated and do not suggest oil supplies have been constrained. To begin, there is a difference between production growth and production growth relative to expectation. In 2002, for example, BP's oil-production growth rate was a "disappointing" 4.5 percent relative to company expectations of 5.5 percent, even though BP's rate outstripped the growth rate for world oil demand seventeen-fold. Of course, oil companies make more money with higher oil prices and therefore prefer this environment, even though they show lower production volumes. Oil company volumes are also influenced by OPEC quotas and production, and it is difficult to time many of the factors that influence production -- such as new field start-ups, maintenance, labor strikes, and weather delays.
Does the fact that Persian Gulf nations conduct a low level of exploration mean they don't have much exploration potential? Will these countries be able to supply more oil when the world calls for it?
OPEC production is constrained by demand. Utilization for Saudi Arabia, for example, is 75 percent. Since Saudi Arabia has not been able to produce anywhere near current capacity (except for very short periods) for decades without causing a sharp downturn in oil prices, it certainly does not make sense to expand capacity further.
Going forward, OPEC will not be required to supply more oil. Rather, its production and market share will continue to shrink as has been the case since the early 1970s. Rising oil production from non-OPEC sources combined with the growth in alternative energy and market-share-grab by other fuels will force OPEC to reduce output over time. High oil prices in the past three years will only hasten this process.
If OPEC is cheating on quotas and overproducing, as the oil analysts say, why haven't inventories built to high levels?
Inventories have built, but probably not as much as forecasted by analysts. And again, part of the build has been undertaken by government SPRs. Adjusting for the slower-than-expected inventory-build in the first quarter of 2004 may mean that OPEC needs to cut production by about 2.3 million barrels a day -- which will be difficult for OPEC to do.
So -- why are oil prices so high?
Today's high prices are owing to low commercial inventories and speculation. Again, inventories are not low -- in fact, total crude-oil inventories in the U.S. are at the highest level since 1995, when oil prices were $18 a barrel. It's just that crude-oil traders have chosen to focus only on commercial stocks and have ignored oil in the SPR. The level of inventories today is consistent with a barrel price in the mid-to-high $20s.
Speculators take into account many variables, including terrorism, currencies, faith in OPEC, and momentum. Put yourself in the shoes of an oil trader. Would you leave the trading pit on a Friday night with a large net short position and risk the event of a terrorist strike that could push oil prices higher over the weekend? While the decline in the dollar has had no impact on oil supply, demand, or inventories, traders cite dollar weakness as a reason to be bullish. This stems from speculation that the dollar will keep falling and that eventually it will become attractive for consumers outside the U.S. to purchase higher quantities of oil.
Finally, after three-and-a-half years of high oil prices, with prices spending most of that time within OPEC's target-price band, OPEC has credibility. Crude-oil traders see no strong reason to doubt that OPEC will cut production to balance the market in the next two quarters, just as the organization is promising. Traders feel that there will be time to short crude-oil futures if OPEC does not do what it says. But for now, why not go with the flow.
-- Frederick P. Leuffer, CFA, is senior managing director and senior energy analyst for Bear Stearns & Co. Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_leuffer/leuffer200403230848.asp
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ELECTION 2004
FBI verifies Kerry at 'assassination summit'
Records back claim he was at meeting that discussed killing senators
Posted: March 23, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern
Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers. Subscribe to Insight at WorldNetDaily's online store and save 71 percent off the cover price.
By Scott Stanley Jr.
? 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc.
News management may have reached an embarrassing low in the Los Angeles Times for March 23 where an article by staff writer John M. Glionna purports to offer selections from the FBI file on soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who was under surveillance by the G-Men as a member of the executive board of the pro-Viet Cong Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Presenting items from 50 documents carefully selected from what it reported were 14 boxes of related government papers 12 feet high, the Times confirmed from the FBI and other witnesses that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW leadership in November 1971 at a Kansas City board meeting to run for Congress.
For years Kerry claimed that he had resigned after a July 1971 meeting in St. Louis and had not been present for the Kansas City meeting that was moved from venue to venue to try to avoid FBI surveillance of the group's most secret plans.
The reason official confirmation that he did not leave the group until after the Kansas City meeting is important, say specialists on radical activities during the Vietnam era, is that the FBI documents confirm earlier reports by those present that Kerry participated in a closed-door discussion of a proposal to assassinate seven U.S. senators who were special targets of Hanoi, with whose agents selected leaders of VVAW had been meeting.
The Los Angeles Times made no mention of this part of the story, broken 10 days earlier in the New York Sun by founding New York Times books editor Tom Lipscomb and since spiked by editors coast to coast.
Kerry reportedly voted against the killings but did not leave the meeting and call a cop. Until the FBI surveillance report surfaced to put him in the middle of the assassination discussion, Kerry claimed to have resigned before the meeting at which VVAW discussed the murder plan.
After Kerry left the board of VVAW, with which he had made his national reputation, the FBI ceased surveillance of his activities according to a bureau memo in early 1972.
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WAR ON TERROR
In '99, Clarke saw
Iraq-al-Qaida link
But Bush critic told '60 Minutes' Sunday there was 'absolutely' no evidence 'ever'
Posted: March 23, 2004
11:10 a.m. Eastern
? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official promoting a book critical of the Bush administration, insists Saddam Hussein had no connection to al-Qaida, but in 1999 he defended President Clinton's attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant by revealing the U.S. was "sure" it manufactured chemical warfare materials produced by Iraqi experts in cooperation with Osama bin Laden.
Richard Clarke
Clarke told the Washington Post in a Jan. 23, 1999, story U.S. intelligence officials had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which was hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles in retaliation for bin Laden's role in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Africa.
The sample contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, which Clarke said when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.
Clarke told the Post the U.S. did not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it.
"But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan," the paper reported.
However, Sunday night in an interview with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes," Clarke denied Saddam had any connection to al-Qaida.
Stahl pressed Clarke further, asking, "Was Iraq supporting al-Qaida?"
Clarke replied: "There is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida ever."
Clarke, who served under the Clinton and Bush administrations, has accused President Bush of ignoring threats to al-Qaida prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and focusing on Saddam Hussein at the expense of the war on terror.
In an interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed Clarke's criticism as coming from an ineffective former official.
"He was the head of counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat," Cheney said.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had a similar reply in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are, but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to."
Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies," is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the independent federal commission probing the 9-11 attacks.
The "60 Minutes" interview Sunday has raised ethical concerns for not disclosing the connection between Clarke's book publisher, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, and CBS News. Both are owned by Viacom.
At the time of the 1999 Post interview, Clarke occupied the newly created post of national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs under President Clinton.
The Post story concluded with Clarke affirming the U.S. strategy of fighting terror by legally prosecuting perpetrators of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
"The fact that we got seven out of the eight people from the World Trade Center [bombing], and we found them in five countries around the world and brought them back here, the fact we can demonstrate repeatedly that the slogan, 'There's nowhere to hide,' is more than a slogan, the fact that we don't forget, we're persistent - we get them - has deterred terrorism," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> VLAD WATCH...
Putin resurrects
Cold War threats
Presides over practice of Russian nuclear attack on U.S.
Posted: March 23, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, the bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers. Subscribe to Insight at WorldNetDaily's online store and save 71 percent off the cover price.
By J. Michael Waller
? 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc.
It was the ultimate campaign stunt: The president, clad in a navy uniform and white gloves, at sea on a sunny morning, standing on the deck of a giant titanium-hulled ballistic-missile submarine. He looked on smartly as the military began a weeklong exercise to unleash its triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers in the biggest nuclear doomsday drill since the coldest days of the Cold War.
The president's administration officially billed it as an "antiterrorism" exercise. But as land-based missiles arched their way a third of the way around the planet to the warhead target range in the Pacific, and as the bombers followed their dreaded Arctic route to fire cruise missiles over the top of the earth, the reality of the massive exercise was clear: The threat of Cold War nuclear extermination is as real as ever.
An American president well could have been run out of office for personally commanding and celebrating such political theater. The commander in chief in this case, however, was Russian President Vladimir Putin. The date was Feb. 17, less than a month before the March 14 elections that everyone expected him to win. Bezopastnost-2004, as the strategic command and staff exercise was called, was a mock nuclear attack on the United States, the largest since Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev ruled from the Kremlin in 1982.
Weeks later, Putin further consolidated his already strong control of the country. According to Jacques Amalric of the leftist French daily Liberation, Putin has placed former KGB officers in nearly 60 percent of all presidential administration posts. In early March he fired his prime minister and named to replace him a relatively anonymous technocrat with no political base but with a murky KGB background. Mikhail Fradkov has an incomplete official r?sum? that Russian critics say indicates an early KGB career. At the time of his appointment, he was head of the tax police, Russia's equivalent of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The Russian tax police, however, has a notorious past. Under Soviet rule, it was the dissident-hunting KGB Fifth Chief Directorate.
The White House expressed no concern with either development. Few American media commentators seemed to notice. The Kremlin had wanted the world to see Putin atop the conning tower of the Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine. Pravda loved the carefully orchestrated action, almost lovingly reporting on how Putin personally inspected the nuclear-reactor control room and exhorted sailors in the mess to eat pancakes in observance of Shrove Tuesday.
The Typhoon-class vessel, with the hatches of its 20 vertical missile tubes running the deck in pairs, was cruising on the surface of the Barents Sea off Russia's northwestern coast, waiting for an SS-N-23 strategic nuclear missile to burst through the ocean surface from another sub, the Novomoskovsk, which was lurking in the deep nearby. The missile's dummy warhead, according to the Russian military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), was set to strike the Kura target range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, across the Eurasian landmass, 120 degrees around the world.
There was Putin, in front of the TV cameras, waiting for the geyser of the missile from below. But there was nothing. Word came up that the missile had stuck in the tube. The Novomoskovsk, an older Delta-IV hull, fired a second missile. Again, nothing. The test was a flop - a big embarrassment for the Northern Fleet, coincidentally not far from the August 2000 Kursk disaster when a submarine was lost along with its crew of 118 men. The Russian navy was humiliated by its failure to fire the missiles, but if Putin was, nobody could see. Russia's state-controlled TV networks made sure that the dapper tough-guy Putin was seen in command - and that nobody knew the launches had failed.
For good measure, another Delta-IV sub, the Karelia, launched a missile the next day. The SS-N-23, which the Russians call Sineva, shattered out through the surface, veering wildly off course in a 98-second flight that ended when the missile blew up in midair. Putin wasn't there. He was back on land at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, another KGB man, this time out of his navy gear and sporting green army fatigues for the campaign cameras. The Russian president witnessed the flawless launch of a Kosmos-2405 spy satellite aboard a Molnia-M rocket as part of the nuclear-war exercise. Talking to reporters at Plesetsk, Putin announced a bold initiative to modernize the Strategic Rocket Forces with next-generation weapons and, according to United Press International and Russian press accounts, said he might authorize an upgrade of the nation's Soviet-era missile-defense system.
The former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, provided a platform for Moscow to launch two more ICBMs: an SS-19 and the brand-new SS-27 Topol-M, the latter aboard a mobile launcher. Their dummy warheads sailed across the continent to Kamchatka. The Russian government is deploying the modern Topol-M even as the United States provides Moscow with resources to dismantle its obsolete and deteriorating nuclear missiles - aid that allows the Kremlin to deploy the next-generation nukes and keep its arsenal within the limits set in arms-control agreements with Washington.
At least 14 strategic bombers fanned out to the west, north and south with supersonic Tu-160 Blackjack bombers heading toward the North Atlantic and old but dependable Tu-95 Bear bombers, the old Soviet Union's answer to the American B-52, firing cruise missiles at an Arctic target on Novaya Zemlya island, according to Nikolai Sokov of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Putin's nuclear political theater and choice of a KGB man as chief of government are only parts of his aggressive re-election campaign. The recentralized Russian state has squeezed the once-free news media into exercising self-censorship and prevented the rise of political parties or politicians who could challenge him. Members of the state Duma, or lower house of Parliament, complain of harassment. Some allege that Putin or forces loyal to him were responsible for the 1998 assassination of Duma member Galina Starovoitova and the more recent mysterious death of journalist turned lawmaker Yuri Shchekochikhin.
Since becoming president in 2000, Putin has sacked Parliament, forced governors out of office, driven opposition businessmen into exile and pressured the courts to rule on issues only in his favor.
"The character of Russia under Putin has been a steady gravitation toward a security state," according to Ilan Berman, a senior scholar at the American Foreign Policy Council. "Everybody talks a lot about Russia's oligarchs. What they don't understand is that Putin himself is an oligarch. His currency is not natural resources like oil or business, it's intelligence."
Anticipating the campaign, Putin cracked down on the main financier of the reformist, pro-Western opposition last year. Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, age 40, who openly funded the Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties and who bought Moscow's prestigious and, in the last 15 years, openly pro-Western Moscow News, suddenly became a target of criminal investigations. He decided to finance his own campaign to replace Putin, only to disappear for several days and wind up, disheveled and disoriented, in Ukraine. He says he was kidnapped, drugged and forced to commit embarrassing acts that his captors videotaped.
It's not an accident that the teetotaling, athletic, notoriously foul-mouthed Putin is so popular.
"The Russian people are very comfortable with the type of 'managed democracy' he brings to the table. After years of economic and political decline, they're very enamored with the type of assertive foreign policy that he's been pursuing," Berman says.
"Putin is espousing ideas larger than himself. He is espousing a Great Russia. Whether it's regional or ideological, it re-establishes Russia as a central player in the Middle East, in the Asian theater, even in places like Latin America," Berman says. "The idea is that Russia is reassuming its natural place as a great power. That is very appealing to Russians who have suffered from a decade of decline."
According to Berman, "Putin is really balancing between strategic partnership with the United States" and the priorities of selling weapons and technology to China, nuclear technology to Iran, and other issues. "There is a limit to the strategic partnership with the United States," he says. "The Russian-Iranian relationship, the Russian-Chinese relationship - these are geopolitical and inimical to American interests."
And what of the White Hoquse's policy toward Russia? Berman says, "This administration is enamored with the idea of partnership. And Putin is exploiting it."
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine.
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Report: Iran, N. Korea building secret underground nuke plant
North Korea and Iran are building a secret underground facility in northwestern North Korea to produce centrifuges to enrich uranium, according to a Japanese press report. The Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported March 10 that the factory would be located north of the Yongbyon facility near the town of Kusong. The report, quoting a military source, stated that a high-ranking Iranian military official visited Pyongyang in late January and stayed several days for negotiations with the North Koreans. The centrifuges would be used in a "cascade" - a series of such machines to produce enriched weapons-grade uranium...
N. Korea significantly eases restrictions on border trips to China
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The al-Zawahiri fiasco
By Pepe Escobar
It featured all the trappings of a glorified video game. Thousands of Pakistani army and paramilitary troops played the hammer. Hundreds of US troops and Special Forces, plus the elite commando 121, were ready to play the anvil across the border in Afghanistan. What was supposed to be smashed in between was "high-value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf enthusiastically bragged - with no hard evidence - to an eager CNN last Thursday. But what happened to this gigantic piece of psy-ops? Nothing. And for a very simple reason: al-Qaeda's brain and Osama bin Laden's deputy was never there in the first place. And even if he was, as Taliban-connected sources in Peshawar told Asia Times Online, he would choose to die as a martyr rather than be captured and paraded as a US trophy.
It now appears that world public opinion fell victim to a Musharraf-inspired web of disinformation. In the early stages of the battle west of Wana in South Waziristan, Taliban spokesman Abdul Samad, speaking by satellite telephone from Kandahar province in Afghanistan, was quick to say that talk of al-Zawahiri being cornered was "just propaganda by the US coalition and by the Pakistani army to weaken Taliban morale". Subsequently, Peshawar sources were quoting al-Qaeda operatives from inside Saudi Arabia as saying that both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had left this part of the tribal areas as early as January.
On the Afghan side, General Atiquallah Ludin at the Defense Ministry in Kabul was saying that "al-Qaeda cannot escape or enter Afghan soil". But by this time the majority of the mujahideen previously based in South Waziristan had already managed to cross back to Paktika province in Afghanistan - mostly to areas around Urgun, Barmal and Gayan. This rugged, mountainous territory is quintessentially Taliban. Many local Pashtun tribals don't even know who (Afghan president) Hamid Karzai is.
It would have been almost impossible for the mujahideen to cross to Paktika after the start of operation "hammer and anvil". By last Saturday, Mohammed Gaus, district mayor of Orgun - where the Americans keep a base - was saying that "the Pakistanis seem to have closed the border". The Americans have a main base in the village of Shkin, in Paktika, less than 25 kilometers to the west of the battleground cordoned off by the Pakistani army in South Waziristan. This base accommodates not only the US Army, but contingents of the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces, as well as members of commando 121 itself (the "anvil" side). On the "hammer" side, the Americans supply the Pakistani army with satellite photos, intelligence collected by drones and listening stations, and have installed electronic sensors and radars along the border.
All the time the Pakistani government and army were insisting that the US did not put any pressure on them to launch operation hammer and anvil. So according to military spokesman Major General Sultan, it was "just a coincidence" that US Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Islamabad at the height of the operation, and that Pakistan was being rewarded with the status of major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.
High-value target
Musharraf swore that his commanders told him a "high-value target" was in the South Waziristan tribal area, based on American intelligence. Washington believed it, quoting Pakistani intelligence. In the end, it was local intelligence that revealed that the target may in fact be Tahir Yuldash, who took control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan after its leader Juma Namangani was killed by American bombing in November 2001 in Afghanistan.
Yuldash may be the man in charge of coordinating all Central Asian al-Qaeda and/or affiliated jihadis: Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uighurs from China's Xinjiang and Chechens. He is suspected of being holed up in South Waziristan ever since he escaped the American bombing of Tora Bora in December 2001. Alongside him there is one Danyar, a Chechen commander, and of course hundreds of Pashtun tribals.
Sources in Peshawar told Asia Times Online that the "high value target" actually managed to escape in the early stages of the battle last week in a black, bullet-proof Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows from a fortress-cum-farmhouse right in the middle of the battlefield, in the village of Kolosha. These sources also confirm the Taliban claim that al-Zawahiri may have left South Waziristan as early as January and no later than early February, when word was rife all over the tribal areas about the upcoming spring offensive.
The connection in Wana of Cobra helicopters shooting missiles and a local hospital receiving a stream of civilian victims, including women and children, inevitably led the coalition of six religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which won last year's elections in the tribal areas, to furiously accuse the Musharraf government. Many people believe that the operation has been undertaken at the insistence of the US, and as such it is tearing national unity apart. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the firebrand leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), said this would lead to "more terrorism in reaction to the persecution of innocent civilians". And Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, who directs one of the most important madrassas (religious schools) in Karachi and who is close to the Taliban, added that "it will only create more hatred in the country, and it won't solve the problem of terrorism".
The way in which Islamabad has alienated the Pashtun tribals suggests that the whole operation may end up as a complete fiasco. The Pakistanis had to arrest the wives of some mujahideen to extract some kind of intelligence. Peshawar sources tell Asia Times Online that average Pashtun tribals have been the main victims all along. Local trucks and minibuses have been nowhere to be seen for days. The roads are sealed. Electricity has been cut off. Families fled heavy bombing of "strategic targets" - on foot for dozens of kilometers. Villagers were hit by mortar fire. The Pakistani army used 15 Cobra helicopters, two F-17 fighters and dozens of artillery batteries. Contrary to Islamabad's version, the mujahideen were not cornered in one area - but in eight villages around the cities of Wana and Azam Warsak: Kluusha, Karzi Kot, Klotay, Gua Khua, Zera Lead, Sarahgor, Sesion Warzak and Wazagonday.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party, grumbled that elected tribal leaders were not consulted about an operation which had been planned for three months: "Every high value target was allowed to escape months in advance while the tribal population was used as a sacrificial lamb to satisfy the power lust of the regime." Benazir added that "even the international media were duped into believing that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was besieged, when in fact Chechen and Uzbek fighters were said to be holed in the area".
The roughly 100 "suspects" captured so far by thousands of Pakistani troops amount to an overwhelming majority of Pashtun tribesmen - with a few low-ranking Chechens and Uzbek fighters and certainly no high-value Arab jihadis thrown in the mix. Word in Peshawar is that the Pashtun fighters and jihadis had much better intelligence than the Pakistani military. Peshawar sources estimate that less than 10 jihadis were killed, as opposed to almost 70 Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary troops.
A graphic sign of failure is that Islamabad was actually forced to negotiate after a de facto ceasefire. Three-hundred to 500 mostly Pashtun tribals, along with some low-level jihadis and Taliban, do remain surrounded. Islamabad's line is that tribes protecting "foreign terrorists" have no option but to surrender them, or else die fighting. Coincidentally, General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, happens to be in Islamabad at the moment on a semi-secret visit.
Any remaining "high value target" in Wana may have escaped by now - in a scheme not totally dissimilar to bin Laden's spectacular escape from Tora Bora in December 2001. At that time, hundreds of Arab and Chechen mujahideen put up very strong resistance in the frontline, while the "Sheikh" escaped to the Pakistani tribal areas using, among other means, a few tunnels. So it's no surprise that the Pakistanis have now also "discovered" a two kilometer long tunnel under the houses of the most-wanted tribal, Nek Muhammad. The tunnel may be instrumental in covering the Pakistani army's backs.
An occupation army
As Islamabad has declared the tribal areas a no-go area for the foreign press - unless in short, highly-choreographed escorted tours - it's crucial to get a feeling of the terrain. There's no "border" to speak of between both Waziristan tribal agencies, North and South, and the Afghan province of Paktika. During the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s, Waziristan was a prime mujahideen base. Afghan jihadis married locally and became residents, along with their families. During the Afghan war in 2001, al-Qaeda jihadis also took local Pashtun wives. This means that every mujahideen - Arab, Afghan and Arab-Afghan - enjoys popular support.
As in most latitudes in the tribal areas, most people carry a tribal-made Kalashnikov and have been raised in madrassas maintained by the JUI. Musharraf may now call them terrorists, but the fact remains that every mujahideen is and will be respectfully regarded by the locals as a soldier of Islam. Moreover, al-Qaeda jihadis who settled in Waziristan have managed to seduce tribals young and old alike with an irresistible deluge of Pakistani rupees, weapons and Toyota Land Cruisers.
The Pakistani army is regarded as an occupation army. No wonder: it entered Waziristan for the first time in history, in the summer of 2002. These Pakistani soldiers are mostly Punjabi. They don't speak Pashto and don't know anything about the complex Pashtun tribal code. In light of all this, the presence of the Pakistani army in these tribal areas in the name of the "war on terror" cannot but be regarded as an American intervention. These tribes have never been subdued. They may even spell Musharraf's doom.
What disappeared from the news
Musharraf's version of "wag the dog" - call it "wag the terrorist" - may have served to divert world attention from the tragedy in Iraq to the real "war on terror". It was great public relations for Washington, as the hunt for the invisible "high value target" buried the fact that two Iraqi journalists working for the al-Arabiya network were killed by the US military; it buried Amnesty International reminding everyone that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the war; and it buried weekend protests against the war in the US and Western Europe.
Musharraf himself has a lot to answer for. Why did his government and the Pakistani army not arrest al-Qaeda jihadis after Tora Bora in December 2001, when everybody knew they were in the tribal areas? It could have been only a matter of military incompetence. But the word in Peshawar is different: then, this was part of an American-organized covert ops destined to keep the al-Qaeda leadership alive, the main reason for the "war on terror". Today, the "war on terror" still has no credibility in these parts because it allows civilians to be terrorized - just as has happened in Wana.
As Asia Times Online has warned ( More fuel to Pakistan's simmering fire) what Islamabad has bought with hammer and anvil is not just the resentment of a particular tribal clan, but a full-fledged tribal revolt. Without the support of tribal leaders and mullahs, there's no way that Musharraf can play George W Bush's local cop in the "war on terror" to Washington's satisfaction. Yet he risks civil war in trying to do just this.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Policy paralysis over Roh's impeachment
By Bruce Klingner
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
The National Assembly's impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun on March 12 has plunged South Korea into a leadership crisis that will stall implementation of necessary political and fiscal reforms, impede progress on six-way talks with North Korea and undermine confidence in South Korea's economic future.
In the near term, the impeachment has unleashed a furious public backlash against the opposition parties that will likely result in a dramatic downturn in the April 15 legislative elections, while Roh and his favored Uri (Our Open Party) Party will gain favor from the populace. In the longer-term, however, although it is expected that the constitutional court will restore Roh's presidential powers, his ability to effectively govern during the remaining four years of his term has been permanently damaged.
The president has faced a blistering series of attacks during his 13 months in office, led by an opposition bitterly opposed to his policies, which it perceives as accommodating North Korean transgressions while straining the crucial bilateral relationship with Washington. Roh's troubles have also, to some degree, been self-inflected and he has been widely criticized for political ineptitude for needlessly alienating both his core base of supporters and Washington through a vacillating series of policy revisions.
The nine-member constitutional court will decide within six months if the impeachment will stand, based on a determination of the seriousness of the president's violation of the election law, which prohibits government officials from influencing political campaigns. Six of the nine justices must rule to uphold the vote in order for a new presidential election to be scheduled. Chief Justice Yun Young-chul said that the court will reach a decision "as early as possible and as precisely as possible".
Analysts expect the court will rescind the impeachment vote, based on the infraction not meeting the threshold of an impeachable offense. The court may also adopt a holistic approach by taking into account public opinion, which has been overwhelming against the impeachment decision.
Inter-Korean relations
Seoul will strive to maintain an appearance of stability and continuance of existing policies in order to reassure foreign investors as well as Washington and regional capitals concerned with the potential for North Korean actions. Existing North-South projects will continue, although inter-Korean economic talks scheduled for March 15 in the southern city of Paju were scuttled by North Korean concerns about "political instability" in the South.
New initiatives with Pyongyang, however, are unlikely given the caretaker status of the interim president. The already glacial pace of six-way talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear weapons impasse will likely be further slowed by uncertainties, both within the South Korean government as well as its negotiating partners, over the direction of Seoul's policy or even its ability to deliver on negotiations. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon sought to downplay concerns over the future of the six-way talks, claiming there would be no impeachment effect, "The North Korean nuclear issue and impeachment are completely separate issues," he said.
Ban also sought to signal Pyongyang not to endanger progress in inter-Korean and international fora. "If North Korea is passive or decides to sit out a future round because of impeachment, we will have to question North Korea's commitment to resolving the nuclear issue peacefully," the foreign minister said.
Economic stability
South Korean Minister of Finance and Economy Lee Hun-jai was widely praised for implementing a series of measures in the weekend immediately following the impeachment in order to insulate domestic financial markets from uncertainty. Lee's commendable efforts allayed initial fears of a dramatic downturn in South Korea's financial markets and enabled him to announce that international credit ratings agencies had all kept Korea's sovereign ratings unchanged.
The real danger, however, will arise from longer-term uncertainty over government fiscal and monetary policies and a consensus that the fallout from the impeachment will further delay restructuring, which investors have articulated as critical for maintaining South Korea's nascent economic recovery. A drawn-out deliberation by the constitutional court, or perception of a seriously weakened Roh presidency, will pose greater challenges for the South's recovery than the immediate reaction following the vote.
Further poisoning the domestic political well
The greatest impact of the impeachment vote will be on South Korea's domestic political landscape. Regardless of the constitutional court's ruling or the results of next month's legislative elections, Roh has been seriously injured. Roh could have likely prevented the constitutional crisis with an apology or mea culpa but his determination - some will say arrogance - will reinforce his image as reckless and politically inept, even as he is credited by some with gaining popular support through deft political tactics.
The populace, even as it rallies against the impeachment vote, will remember Roh's previous unusual, even strange, articulations of his "unworthiness" to be president and his promises to resign if his party's corruption exceeded 10 percent of his opponent's. Over time, the spike in public support for Roh will decline, as it did following a similar increase after his earlier call for a referendum on his presidency and pledge to depart if the populace did not provide a sufficient mandate.
The president has repeatedly warned of the dangers of chaos and instability if he is removed from power, but the populace may be growing tired of his political brinkmanship, which comes at the expense of progress on domestic policy reform. After the current constitutional imbroglio is resolved, the strategic question will become, "Can Roh provide effective leadership for the nation at a time of critical domestic and international challenges?"
Regardless of the outcome of the constitutional court's deliberations, the ability of the political parties to work together has been dealt a resounding blow, with the fissures between the parties exacerbated by the impeachment. The level and ferocity of acrimony within the National Assembly will escalate and further impair its ability to reach consensus on necessary legislation.
In its collective quest to attack Roh, the opposition parties have neither addressed the impact on the country of a weakened president nor articulated alternative policies that could acquire sufficient support across the political spectrum. It appears unlikely that any politician, including Roh, will take the higher moral road and advocate a collective step back from the political precipice and espouse a policy that would provide effective leadership for progress.
The Grand National Party appears too wedded to its destructive anti-Roh campaign and the Millennium Democratic Party may be unable to overcome the fierce public backlash against its part in the impeachment to be a viable voice for conciliation. If Roh and the Uri Party gain an absolute majority during next month's elections, they may be able to force through legislation, but it will be a rule marked by arrogance. If, as is more likely, the Uri party doesn't attain a majority, South Korea will be faced with a bickering, bitter partisanship that though stable, will be mired in a quagmire of stagnation.
Bruce Klingner is director of analysis for the Intellibridge Corporation in Washington, DC. Intellibridge provides customized open-source intelligence analysis for government, corporate and sovereign clients. His areas of expertise are strategic national security, political and military affairs in China, Northeast Asia, Korea and Japan. He can be reached at bklingner@intellibridge.com .
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
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Flawed interim constitution
By Bruce Fein
The appointed and much scorned Iraqi Governing Council promulgated an interim constitution on March 8, 2004. Its defects are alarming. When the Coalition Provisional Authority dissolves on June 30, 2004, Iraq is destined to disintegrate on the installment plan or faster. Styled the "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period," the interim constitution is illegitimate, amateurish and unenforceable.
It was fashioned by unelected Iraqis untutored in the arts of democratic governance and the rule of law. According to some polls, prominent IGC member Ahmed Chalabi commands less popular confidence than Saddam Hussein.
Neither through popular referendum nor elected representatives have the Iraqi people conferred moral legitimacy on the interim charter, which is no more popularly respected than the French Monarchy of Louis XVI. But no constitution consistent with democratic freedoms is worth a farthing unless voluntary compliance and popular veneration are likely to be forthcoming.
The interim constitution neglects to establish rules for creating an Iraqi government entrusted with its enforcement when the CPA dissolves concurrent with the termination of United States sovereignty on June 30, 2004. Article 2 cryptically declares the Iraqi Interim Government "shall be constituted in accordance with a process of extensive deliberations and consultations with cross-sections of the Iraqi people conducted by the Governing Council and the Coalition Provisional Authority and possibly in consultation with the United Nations."
Left undecided is whether the Interim Government will be appointed or elected; who will do the appointing or electing; whether members will represent regions, religions, ethnic groups, or equal populations on the one-person-one vote principle. At present, even crumbs of consensus are difficult to discern among Kurds, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Turkmen and other factions with less than 100 days before the June 30 deadline. And eleventh-hour political pacts concluded between sharply divided constituencies typically break at the first serious quarrel.
The unviability of the interim constitution is further established by centerpiece provisions that celebrate an Islamic theocracy and an anemic rule of law unadorned with fundamental freedoms.
Article 7 crowns Islam as the official state religion and a source of legislation. It further ordains that, "No law that contradicts the universally agreed tenets of Islam" is valid. Thus, the Holy Koran is every bit as much the supreme law in Iraq under the interim constitution as the United States Constitution is in the United States.
The Islamic theocracy enshrined in Article 7 mocks the stipulation of Article 12 that religious discrimination is prohibited. If the latter were true, then papal encyclicals would be as legally binding on Iraq as the Holy Koran. To borrow from George Orwell's "Animal Farm," all religions are equal in the interim constitution, but Islam is more equal than others.
Article 7 also discredits secular government. To determine the universally agreed tenets of Islam requires the learning of mullahs, not law school graduates. In other words, the interim constitution will be administered by Islamic scholars debating religious points, not by secular judges debating points of law.
Articles 7 and 12 additionally war over equal rights for men and women. Islam discounts the testimonies, inheritance, divorce and child custody rights of women. Four eyewitnesses are generally required to prove rape. These gender discriminations are compelled by the interim constitutional mandate that no law contradict Islamic teachings.
On the other hand, Article 12 insists that, "All Iraqis are equal in their rights without regard to gender." But to make equality and inequality equally mandatory is to enter the nonsensical domain of "Alice in Wonderland" denuded of legal principles.
The individual rights enumerated in Article 13 are ridiculously empty.
Subsection (A) promises protection of "[p]ublic and private freedoms," but declines any clues as to their core meanings. For instance, a private freedom might plausibly embrace abortion, polygamy, obscenity, contraceptives, drugs, liquor or prostitution. A judge interpreting the subsection will be unconstrained in imposing an idiosyncratic moral code. A government of men, not of laws, will prevail.
Companion rights enumerated in Article 13 are similarly hopelessly ambiguous or empty.
Subsection (B) protects freedom of expression without limitation. Does that mean defamation, child pornography, incitement to violence or criticism of the Holy Koran is protected?
Subsection (H) provides that, "Each Iraqi has the right of privacy." It is uninformative, however, on whether that right reaches same-sex marriage, sodomy or protection against wiretapping, electronic surveillance or informants.
Subsection (F) guarantees freedom of religious practice, which would seem to include jihads against Christians, Jews or non-orthodox Muslims.
Other Article 13 rights are illusionary. Freedoms to peacefully assemble, to form political parties, labor unions, or professional associations, or to demonstrate are permitted only to the extent permitted by laws enacted by the Interim Government. Article 14 rights are utopian and unenforceable: namely, individual rights to security, education, health care and social security.
Emblematic of the deep suspicions that the majority Shi'ites will seek to crush minorities, Article 61 empowers Kurds in the north occupying three governorates to block a final constitution by a two-thirds vote.
In sum, the flimsy interim constitution confirms the probability Iraq will be torn asunder after United States control ends on June 30. President George W. Bush will pay a steep political price.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Fein & Fein and international consultant at the Lichfield Group.
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Pentagon 9/11 memorial delayed
By Sean Salai
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The nonprofit group in charge of building a memorial to the victims of the terror attack at the Pentagon has raised less than $1 million of the project's projected $20 million goal and has postponed for two years opening day -- originally set for September 11 this year.
"That [first] estimate was made before we understood we weren't going to receive any tax dollars," Brett Eaton, communications leader for the Pentagon renovation team, said yesterday. "It was done before we understood what would be required for a fund-raiser of this magnitude."
At the current pace of donations, he said, the project will not open until fall 2006 at the earliest.
James Laychak, president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, said $972,000 of the project's multimillion-dollar budget had been raised as of yesterday.
Although it was reported in October that the group is attempting to raise $20 million from private sources exclusively, Mr. Laychak declined to give an updated estimate of the memorial's overall budget requirements.
"This is not a schedule-driven project," Mr. Laychak said. "We want to get it done right the first time."
Some family members of the victims said they fear the memorial will lose impact if the fund raising drags on much longer.
"I would definitely like to see it as soon as possible," said Brian P. Donovan, whose youngest brother, William, was a Navy officer who died in the Pentagon.
"I don't think this country will ever forget what happened on 9/11," Mr. Donovan said. "But if we're talking five years after the fact, the memorial will lose its edge. There have been so many memorials already."
Patricia Deconto, who lost her son, Gerald, the senior captain on duty in the Navy Command Center, said there is a chance the American public is already tuning out.
Mrs. Deconto, who described the final design for the memorial as "very appropriate," said she thought the fund raising was going very slowly. "I understand it's difficult to raise money right now, given the economy, but it's a shame that it's taking so long," Mrs. Deconto said.
Other relatives of victims said they have been unmoved by the Pentagon's efforts thus far to promote and implement the memorial, which will feature 184 metal alloy benches devoted to each victim.
The mother of the late Lt. Cmdr. Eric Allen Cranford said she has seen "maybe" one newspaper article on the memorial project.
"I think they were hoping for 2004," said Betsy Ann Cranford of Drexel, N.C., whose son served in the Navy.
Curtis Elseth, father of the late Lt. Cmdr. Robert R. Elseth, said he had purchased one of the Peter Max-designed posters being sold to help raise funds for the project, but added that he was not aware the project is making any progress.
"We get a newsletter, but I really don't know what's going on right now," Mr. Elseth said.
Mr. Laychak lost his brother, David W. Laychak, in the attack. Mr. Laychak said construction of the memorial is in the research-and-development phase.
"We've started the construction process," Mr. Laychak said. "Everybody loves the design."
Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman, the New York architects who won the design contest in March 2003, said they are already on the payroll of the Pentagon's contractor, Fairfax-based Centex Lee LLC.
"We're just waiting for the fund raising to come through," Mr. Kaseman said.
Mr. Kaseman said the polished metal benches of the memorial will be organized by the age of victims in the shape of the doomed plane's flight path and will distinguish between those who were on the ground and those who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77.
"We're calling them memorial units," Mr. Kaseman said. "They're not just benches, but individual reflecting pools of water."
Ms. Beckman said she and Mr. Kaseman are eager to get started on the benches, as they have been inactive with the project since their design was selected.
Brooklyn, N.Y., artist Jean Koeppel, who was a finalist for the Pentagon design contest and an entrant in the Ground Zero memorial competition, said she was shocked the Pentagon memorial is not receiving congressional funding.
"It seems there should be a big pile of money available for a project of this kind," Miss Koeppel said. "The Pentagon memorial also has been receiving much less press than the New York memorial."
Miss Koeppel said she was also surprised that private donations have not been more forthcoming.
Mr. Eaton, the Pentagon renovation leader, said professional fund-raiser Linda Webster of the Webster Group is launching a national fund-raising campaign next month to give the project a shot in the arm.
"This is a unique project that is contingent on how much funding we can raise," he said.
Mr. Eaton said the overall renovation of the Pentagon is scheduled to conclude in 2010 and added that the 1.93-acre site for the memorial is currently being used as a staging ground for other Pentagon renovation efforts.
The site, Mr. Eaton added, is littered with trash bins, survey equipment and other heavy-duty construction materials being used for various unrelated projects.
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Bringing Iraq Back From the Brink
Posted March 23, 2004
By John M. Powers
Bechtel helped to establish the Iraqi Telephone Exchange.
The reconstruction effort began in Iraq even before President George W. Bush announced that the regime of Saddam Hussein had been defeated. Even before the Iraqi army was driven from the field, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and a host of other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors were either hard at work on logistics and staging or waiting impatiently in Kuwait to rebuild a nation torn apart by tyranny.
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and USAID, working with Iraqis and other advisers, would operate under a massive plan to reconstruct Iraq, the likes of which has not been seen since the Marshall Plan that restored Europe in the years after World War II. Government workers, volunteers and private employees have been flowing into Iraq ever since to provide both consultancy and hands-on expertise for the many programs the United States and its allies have put on their to-do list. The CPA and USAID are working hard to restore essential infrastructure, to restore and support health care and education, to expand economic opportunity, and to improve the efficiency and accountability of governance.
Lewis Lucke, USAID's mission director in Iraq, tells Insight he reached Kuwait while the war was still raging and that on April 21, 2003, as soon as control of southern Iraq was secured, his team moved over the border into Iraq. He reports that the first goal for USAID was to rehabilitate Iraq's only deep-water seaport at Um Qasr so that food could be shipped in to avert a humanitarian crisis.
Lucke and his team were shocked at what they found. "The state of Iraqi infrastructure in general was in pretty sad shape, but it wasn't because of the conflict," he says. "It was because of ... decades of complete and utter neglect by the regime. ... It was truly unbelievable ... even to the experts." The mission director says the condition of the power plants was especially poor. He inspected one such plant with a team of subcontractors from the German company Siemens, which had built it 30 years earlier. Engineers who remembered building the plant were astounded at the state of disrepair in which they found the generator units.
For many years the Iraqi engineers had not even had replacement parts but somehow found a way to keep the machines running, Lucke says. These are "ingenious" and "clever and very capable folks technically," he says, but there are only so many times a machine can be fixed with bailing wire and chewing gum. Even so, according to the USAID mission director, Iraqi engineers sometimes were executed by Saddam's men when they could not keep a power unit on-line.
The condition of the power plants has been vastly improved, and by October 2003 power production surpassed prewar levels, says a USAID report. And supported by engineers and logistical wizards from Bechtel Corp., a private contractor based in San Francisco that has taken on enormous projects all over the world, USAID soon had put in place the new Iraqi Telephone Exchange. Assessing the situation with professional aplomb, USAID identified 1,700 "critical breaks" in the water network of Baghdad alone and teams set to work to repair them. The Army Corps of Engineers, USAID and the private American corporations have been busy rebuilding the critical Khazir, Tikrit and Al Mat bridges and nearly have completed reconstruction of the Baghdad and Basra airports.
Though many of these reconstruction projects were handled quickly under emergency conditions by Western companies, Lucke says, it is the policy of USAID and the CPA to use local Iraqi subcontractors "to the absolute extent possible" because of their in-country experience and to stimulate local employment. "This is going to work best if the Iraqis are not only involved in it but take the lead," says the mission director.
"It's large! It's the largest reconstruction operation the U.S. has undertaken since the Marshall Plan," reports Lucke, who stresses that repairing the infrastructure is not the only reconstruction that must go on in Iraq. To support all of this, the CPA and USAID have put in place an intense program of maintenance that didn't exist under Saddam. And the infrastructures of Iraqi schools and the Iraqi judicial system also are getting a much-needed overhaul.
The condition of schools in Iraq was "abysmal," Lucke says. He reports that USAID and the CPA found schools without electricity and lighting fixtures. Blackboards had been torn from the walls and desks were in a "terrible state." Saddam's regime stored weapons in schools, the mission director says, and buildings fell into such disrepair that his team discovered raw sewage backed up in school hallways.
Working with Bechtel and the NGOs, the CPA and USAID have rehabilitated 2,200 schools. Lucke anticipates another round of school rehabilitation because Congress recently appropriated $18 billion more to help Iraq recover and move toward democratic rule. And USAID has started the Accelerated Learning Program to help students who have missed or dropped out of school because of cruel punishments or because they could not afford the bribes that were extorted under Saddam's rule.
The program is designed to give children two years of accelerated schooling in one year. It provides a "master teacher" to assist classroom teachers (whom the reconstruction partners will train in modern teaching techniques) and also a community-outreach counselor to encourage attendance. All of these positions are filled by Iraqis. So far, USAID reports, 55 teachers are working in the accelerated program and 644 students have been enrolled.
Another area that is receiving attention is the Iraqi judicial system. Stephen M. Orlofsky, a former U.S. District judge, is one of three federal judges invited by the CPA to be part of a 13-member judicial-assessment team, which also includes court clerks, public defenders and defense attorneys. Orlofsky tells Insight that Iraq's courthouses "had been stripped of everything from lightbulbs to doorknobs. They had no power or had it only intermittently. No furniture, books, no telephone service. All of this was compounded by the fact that the temperature hovered at 130 degrees." Orlofsky adds that a massive amount of court documents and official records had been destroyed.
Under Saddam, Orlofsky says, judges were required to join the Ba'ath Party to gain their positions, though about 35 of the judges he interviewed insisted they were not members of the Ba'ath Party or were low-ranking members. Only one admitted he was a high-level Ba'athist, says Orlofsky, and "I remember thinking at the time, 'We should probably keep this guy because he's the only one who's told me the truth.'"
Bribery was routine in the practice of Iraqi law, taking the form of cash, gifts or sexual favors. "When I met with the attorneys, they told me the Iraqi judicial system was rife with corruption. Money changed hands frequently. The Saddam regime often intervened to influence the outcome of cases" by providing gifts to judges, Orlofsky says. Adding to the already deformed system, many of the judges who were in place had little or no legal training. Instead, they were sent to a "judicial institute" that Orlofsky says was nothing more than a propaganda school.
Even so, he observes, most members of the judiciary seemed to be excited to start reforms with the CPA despite pressure from hidden Ba'athists who continue to threaten and strike against those working for modernization. Orlofsky says he met one judge who expressed thanks to the United States for toppling Saddam. A month after their meeting, he learned the man had been killed for cooperating with the Americans. Although the Iraqi judicial system was not proactive and case management was a foreign concept, Orlofsky believes there is hope because of the commitment of key Iraqi jurists. "There's certainly a pool of talent on the Iraqi bar that can be drawn upon to select fair, impartial and independent judges," he says.
For Iraq to be fully reconstructed, the American judge tells Insight, Iraqis must establish the rule of law. Among other things that means banning torture, establishing the right to remain silent and providing counsel for suspects - all revolutionary ideas in Iraq.
Meanwhile, there is little that the CPA, USAID or other reconstructors can take from the U.S. experience in Afghanistan, says Ron Cruse, head of Logenix International, a Virginia-based company that supports agencies such as USAID in war-torn countries. He says the cultures and internal conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan are so completely different as not to translate. But for the moment, he says, it is most important that Iraqis "stand up and make their country a safer place."
Lucke and Orlofsky report the willingness of many Iraqis to join with coalition partners to make their country a better place. As Orlofsky puts it: "Because we committed 150,000 of our troops to win the war ... to those who won the war, we owe the winning of the peace."
John M. Powers is a writer for Insight.
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>> WRONG LESSON FROM NICCOLO- DAVID? ARAFAT NOW? DO IT AT ONCE?
Machiavelli in the Middle East
By David Ignatius
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A19
PARIS -- "It is much safer to be feared than loved," wrote the philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli nearly 500 years ago. That harsh logic can be seen in Israel's assassination Monday of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the terrorist group Hamas.
It follows that for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it's better to be seen as ruthless than as weak. That's especially true now, when Sharon plans to make a concession to the Palestinians by withdrawing from settlements in Gaza. The danger in this unilateral withdrawal, one of Sharon's advisers told me several months ago, is that terrorist groups such as Hamas might think they had "won" by forcing an Israeli retreat. Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff explained in the online edition of the newspaper Haaretz on Monday: "The message that Israel sent out by assassinating Sheik Ahmed Yassin is that when the disengagement from Gaza is finally implemented, Hamas will not be able to claim that the withdrawal was promoted by the group's operations."
But even Machiavelli believed that intimidation has its limits. Just a few sentences after the famous passage quoted above, he cautioned: "Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred."
By that Machiavellian measure, Sharon has failed. An enraged Hamas has vowed new suicide bombings in retaliation, and governments across the Middle East and Europe issued statements on Monday condemning Israel. "It's unacceptable, it's unjustified and it's very unlikely to achieve its objective," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
But will the Israeli operation work? That's the question a modern Machiavelli would ask. The killing of Sheik Yassin might be justified -- politically if not morally -- if it stopped the spread of the terrorism Yassin had helped foment. But even by this test, the assassination seems unlikely to achieve its intended result.
A pragmatic critique came from Sharon's own interior minister, Avraham Poraz. He explained Monday to Israeli reporters why he voted against the operation in a secret cabinet meeting: "I'm afraid that Hamas's motivation will increase. [Yassin] will become some sort of martyr . . . a national hero for them, and, I'm sorry to say, this won't prevent Hamas from continuing its activities."
Killing the partially blind and paralyzed Yassin "will only reignite and re-energize Hamas," agreed Daoud Kuttab, a prominent Palestinian journalist. "There is nothing in this operationally, except to show they are leaving Gaza strongly, not weakly." And how does Israel imagine that Gaza will be governed once it pulls out? Before the Yassin assassination, Egypt had signaled a willingness to help with security. And Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority had drawn up plans (with the tacit approval of Yassin) for restoring law and order after the Israeli army leaves. Both efforts may now collapse in the uproar over Yassin's death. It's hard to see how Israel will benefit from the resulting anarchy.
So why did Sharon do it? One obvious answer is that he is a gambler. Throughout his career, he has been willing to roll the dice on bold military operations that promise to transform the strategic landscape. That risk-taking instinct is part of Sharon's charisma among Israelis, and it explains his continuing popularity despite his many failures over the years.
But there is a deeper issue, one that goes to the heart of Israel's dilemma in dealing with the Arabs. Sharon symbolizes the belief that the Palestinians can be intimidated by military force -- and that peace will be possible only when they are sufficiently weakened and humbled. If Israel is tough enough, by this logic, it will eventually break the Arabs' will and force them to accept Israel's right to exist.
That rationale sent Israeli tanks rolling into Lebanon 22 years ago, in an operation Sharon believed would break the PLO and open the way to peace. But it didn't work out that way, and many Israelis now agree that the Lebanon war was a costly failure.
It would be fatuous to give the Israelis advice about their security. They live under the shadow of terrorism, and they must find their own solution. But they should consider the evidence of more than two decades that Sharon's approach isn't working. Rather than being humbled into submission, the Palestinians have embraced a strategy of suicidal rage. How will this gruesome cycle of violence end? Today that's impossible to answer. But perhaps both sides could begin by considering the possibility that Machiavelli was wrong. Sometimes it may actually be safer to be loved than feared. An Israel that took risks for peace might find unexpected rewards.
davidignatius@washpost.com
Posted by maximpost
at 12:27 AM EST
