We've been meaning to get back to foreign policy for a while now but this last week's news gives it
a certain sense of urgency, though HC Reform continues to be a (if not THE) major domestic agenda item. Specifically the recent news out of Afghanistan and Iran is going to cause us to shift gears and focus on the ME in general and the hot spots in particular. As to why we should care, since it seems to be off the table yet again, let's reiterate something we've said before: a stable and progressive ME is the most urgent, and perhaps the most important, foreign policy problem we have for the next decade. Aside from the obvious that we don't want any more 911s the chart, without a lot of further explanation, pretty well sums it up. Without a stable ME that becomes a reliable energy supplier in the face of mounting demographic and socionomic challenges the world economy would be in danger. When you add in the number of major flashpoints, particularly a nuclear armed Pakistan that's fragile and unstable, benign neglect is no longer feasible.
Let's Start With Iran
We've talked about Iran before and suggested that a policy of constructive engagement combined with containment is our best bet. Unfortunately that's not when the typical voter or talking head wants. They want something dramatic, quick, effective, that suits our prejudices and they can then forget about. The problems with that are manifold - it won't work, there aren't simple, short, quick or cheap answers. On top of which each of these countries and regions are their own things. All the alternatives among the chattering classes are, sadly, being frame that way and will cause more trouble than they'd fix. Take the case of Iran - the alternatives as presented are either get more stringent sanctions or mount a military attack. That was preceded of course by what appear to be fraudulent elections and protests and continued civil opposition. Of course the talking heads immediately wanted the President to come out decisively in support of the opposition, speak forcefully for democray and de-legitimize the regime.
Continued ...
There are several problems with that. On the one hand sanctions won't work - they are too porous, won't have the support of key world powers (particularly Russia and China). China is especially and legitimately sensitive, btw. They just celebrated the 60th anniversary of their Revol
ution (remember about eighty years after ours we were fighting the Civil War) and started with a historical play that traced their history from the Boxer Rebellion to now. The Chinese have very fresh memories of foreign powers interfering in their domestic affaris and aren't about to support any such thing. On top of which they need Iranian energy resources to keep the wheels on their wagon.
The other side of that coin is that a military strike is not likely to work either - their sites and resources are too dispersed, too well protected and they could cause too much trouble. Since neither extreme approach is workable we're left with something hard, long and challenging. Figure out how to work with what we've got - which means establishing working relations, sustaining them over a long period of time while keeping the pressure for good behavior on, evolving some measure of trust by finding those things we can work on (Iranian support for the Shia in Iraq, terrorists in Afghanistan to start and maybe working up to Hezbollah and Hamas in Palestine). Step by step is our only feasible alternative. Our biggest problem though is ourselves - we've got to stop seeing these countries strictly on the basis of what they can do for us by sacrificing their own interests and beginning to work with them on the basis of what mutual advantages can be established. The only discussion we've seen that attempts to take such a balanced view is a recent Kennedy School forum on Iran: War or Peace.
But we're actually in a good position and it's not an accident for several reasons. First off, the Iranian economy is coming apart about the seams, largely because the skills of its people and its vast resources are being squandered by a corrupt, ineffective theocratic kleptocracy that's turning itself into a police state. The recent protests and continued opposition would have led one to suspect that but the careful approach the US has been taking, culminating the Cairo speech, goes a long way toward changing the climate of discussion. Top that off with a major change in our European missile defense that makes it easier for Russia to work with us while at the same time mounting a better defense against Iranian weapons and voila'. The final straw is that for the Iranians to get nuclear weapons they have to process the uranium, design and build a bomb, create a reliable weapon and then get delivery systems. We have about ten years to arrest them on that path which is likely to be enough time to pursue a containment policy.
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
We're going to look back at an old diagnostic for Iraq to make several key points. First off this dates from Dec07 but the first version was published in Apr07, long before the Surge got rolling or it was even clear what the new doctrine and strategies would be. In the intervening time we'd have to change all the rankings considerably, as we all 
probably know by now.
In fact the last row, which is the one we'd really like to be talking about (long-term strategic development issues) is the critical one. As of right now it's not going well there but all things are relative - in other words it's probably a straight C across the board. The real point is the implied framework. If our strategic goal in each of these three places is to promote stability, durability and effectiveness then we have to talk about security, governance, socionomic development and long-term direction setting in each of the component parts.
The current set of alternatives being debated with regard to Afghanistan are either withdraw, go all in on a full-bore counter-insurgency or minimize commitments and use kinetic forces for a counter-terror operation. The last is unworkable and would simply boil the cauldron. Withdrawl would be even worse and would shortly see Afghanistan de-stabilize followed not too long afterward by Pakistan. Which means we're really debating the only workable alternative we have left, counter-insurgency. With all due respect to Gen. McChrystal however it's not entirely clear that his is the best alternative - though what you read in the headlines and what he actually said and means are two different things. We highly recommend you watch his recent interview on Sixty Minutes to get a blunt, straight-ahead and honest assessment. In that interview he's very candid about several key and important things that didn't get enough attention: the US military is still wedded to a force on force approach because that's its cultural DNA. Command and control coordination among all the parties, i.e. the other NATO forces, is abysmal and discombobulated. The recent elections were not satisfactory and indict the legitimacy of the Karzai government. That said, all things are indeed relative, and the improvements in governance are not too bad. However, the real key is economic and socio-political development.
Which means what we really need in Afghanistan is something like the Iraq framework broken down to the provincial and locality levels, staffing economic development with the right kind of skills and resources - which we definitely haven't done by any stretch of the imagination, putting an integrate operating plan in place and executing it and making up our minds whether we want to consider romantically pursuing some Jeffersonian ideal or do something practical. If the latter then we need to add two key strategies to our portfolio. One is to work with the local authorities to build what governance we can that is appropriate to the locale AND to create a modern clone of the old Macedonian local efforts by dividing out the "Taliban" we can work with and reconcile from the die-hard irreconcilables.
Again this is a situation where we need to re-think our strategies, devise new ones, adequately resource them (which we haven't done) and take our time and do it right. The thing everybody is forgetting is that we're where we're at beause the Administration intended to get here. Everybody expected the March decision to be magic answers but what Gen. McChrystal was tasked with was taking a prototype strategy over and evaluating it against conditions on the ground. The President is doing exactly what one would hope a good and capable leader would do - listening to all the parties, working thru to a committed resolution and then proceeding to establish and sustain a total operating plan. Which will then have to be sold to the American people, our allies and the regional stakeholders.
Pakistan, the ME and Beyond
Pakistan is incredibly central to these efforts but has its own challenges; in fact it almost came apart about the seems earlier this year. While it's a more stable and centralized state in this case that's not actually saying much. We need to apply the same framework that we've been discussing with regard to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan. And add the other major component - we have to negotiate from understanding their positions and interests. Which we haven't been doing. Pakistan can be incredibly helpful to us, not just critically important, if we respect their interests and find a way to work with them. But if they are convinced we aren't long for that part of the world and/or will make the situation worse they'll pursue the rational course for their own self-interest of lukewarm lip service while hedging their bets.
We are either committed to the ME or we are not; and if we are not then Katie bar the door because all hexx will break loose. In each and very instance we need to have an integrated framework that's adapted to the local circumstances and then supported. A ksketch of such a framework is illustrated - to be populated as a take-home test with the stakes we've already highlighted!
Are we up to it? One wonders. On the other hand we're as well positioned as we've been in decades and it's not by accident. Meanwhile if you'd like to see all our previous writings that go into more detail on the background for the ME as a whole and use Iraq as exemplar and test case may we recommend the following (we've loaded the complete essay/posting collections on Scribd).
Both of which are built around and from the following framework:
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Middle East and Islamic Countries
After Cairo, It’s Clinton Time It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry after reading the reactions of analysts and officials in the Middle East to President Obama’s Cairo speech. “It’s not what he says, but what he does,” many said. No, ladies and gentlemen of the Middle East, it is what he says and what you do and what we do. We must help, but we can’t want democracy or peace more than you do. What should we be doing? The follow-up to the president’s speech will have to be led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This will be her first big test, and, for me, there is no question as to where she should be putting all her energy: on the peace process. No, not that peace process — not the one between Israelis and Palestinians. That one’s probably beyond diplomacy. No, I’m talking about the peace process that is much more strategically important — the one inside Iraq. The most valuable thing that Mrs. Clinton could do right now is to spearhead a sustained effort — along with the U.N., the European Union and Iraq’s neighbors — to resolve the lingering disputes between Iraqi factions before we complete our withdrawal. (We’ll be out of Iraq’s cities by June 30 and the whole country by the close of 2011.) Why? Because if Iraq unravels as we draw down, the Obama team will be blamed, and it will be a huge mess. By contrast, if a decent and stable political order can take hold in Iraq, it could have an extremely positive impact on the future of the Arab world and on America’s reputation. I have never bought the argument that Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan the good war and Pakistan the necessary war. Folks, they’re all one war with different fronts. It’s a war within the Arab-Muslim world between progressive and anti-modernist forces over how this faith community is going to adapt to modernity — modern education, consensual politics, the balance between religion and state and the rights of women. Any decent outcome in Iraq would bolster all the progressive forces by creating an example of something that does not exist in the Middle East today — an independent, democratizing Arab-Muslim state. “The reason there are no successful Arab democracies today is because there is no successful Arab democracy today,” said Stanford’s Larry Diamond, the author of “The Spirit of Democracy.” “When there is no model, it is hard for an idea to diffuse in a region.” Rightly or wrongly, we stepped into the middle of this war of ideas in the Arab-Muslim world in 2003 when we decapitated the Iraqi regime, wiped away its authoritarian political structure and went about clumsily midwifing something that the modern Arab world has never seen before — a horizontal dialogue between the constituent communities of an Arab state. In Iraq’s case, that is primarily Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
Winds of Change? . No, something is going on in the Middle East today that is very new. Pull up a chair; this is going to be interesting.What we saw in the Lebanese elections, where the pro-Western March 14 movement won a surprise victory over the pro-Iranian Hezbollah coalition, what we saw in the ferment for change exposed by the election campaign in Iran, and what we saw in the provincial elections in Iraq, where the big pro-Iranian party got trounced, is the product of four historical forces that have come together to crack open this ossified region. First is the diffusion of technology. Second, for real politics to happen you need space. There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. Third, the Bush team opened a hole in the wall of Arab autocracy but did a poor job following through. In the vacuum, the parties most organized to seize power were the Islamists — Hezbollah in Lebanon; pro-Al Qaeda forces among Iraqi Sunnis, and the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Mahdi Army among Iraqi Shiites; the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; Hamas in Gaza. Fortunately, each one of these Islamist groups overplayed their hand by imposing religious lifestyles or by dragging their societies into confrontations the people didn’t want. This alienated and frightened more secular, mainstream Arabs and Muslims and has triggered an “awakening” backlash among moderates from Lebanon to Pakistan to Iran. Finally, along came President Barack Hussein Obama. Arab and Muslim regimes found it very useful to run against George Bush. The Bush team demonized them, and they demonized the Bush team. Autocratic regimes, like Iran’s, drew energy and legitimacy from that confrontation, and it made it very easy for them to discredit anyone associated with America. Mr. Obama’s soft power has defused a lot of that. As result, “pro-American” is not such an insult anymore. I don’t know how all this shakes out; the forces against change in this region are very powerful — see Iran — and ruthless. But for the first time in a long time, the forces for decency, democracy and pluralism have a little wind at their backs. Good for them.
Ballots Over Bullets I confess. I’m a sucker for free and fair elections. It warms my heart to watch people drop ballots in a box to express their will, especially in a region where that so rarely happens. So I came to Lebanon on Sunday to watch the Lebanese hold their national election. It was indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. O.K., I know. Neither man was on the ballot, but there’s no question whose vision won here. First, a solid majority of Lebanese Christians voted against the list of Michel Aoun, who wanted to align their community with the Shiite Hezbollah party, and tacitly Iran, because he viewed them as being best able to protect Christian interests — not the West. The Christian majority voted instead for those who wanted to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence from any regional power. Second, a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri, the son of the slain Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. This U.S.-supported coalition sees Lebanon’s future as a state independent of Syrian and Iranian influence and committed to its pluralism, modern education, a modern economy and a progressive outlook.
The Death of Radical Islam Is history ending yet again? Much as the hammers that leveled the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, so might the protests rocking Iran signal the death of radical Islam and the challenges it poses to the West. No, that doesn't mean we'll be removing the metal detectors from our airports anytime soon. Al-Qaeda and its ilk, even diminished in strength, will retain the ability to stage terrorist strikes. But the danger brought home on Sept. 11, 2001, was always greater than the possibility of murderous attacks. It was the threat that a hostile ideology might come to dominate large swaths of the Muslim world. Not all versions of this ideology -- variously called Islamism or radical Islam -- are violent. But at the core of even the peaceful ones, such as that espoused by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, is the idea that the Islamic world has been victimized by the West and must defend itself. Even before the United States invaded Iraq, stoking rage, polls in Muslim countries revealed support for Osama bin Laden and for al-Qaeda's aims, if not its methods. If such thinking were to triumph in major Muslim countries beyond Iran -- say, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- violent extremists would command vast new stores of personnel, explosives and funds. This is precisely the nightmare scenario that is now receding. Even if the Iranian regime succeeds in suppressing the protests and imposes the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by force of bullets, mass arrests and hired thugs, it will have forfeited its legitimacy, which has always rested on an element of consent as well as coercion. Most Iranians revered Ayatollah Khomeini, but when his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, declared the election results settled, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets, deriding his anointed candidate with chants of "Death to the dictator!" "Even if they manage to hang on for a month or a couple of years, they've shed the blood of their people," says Egyptian publisher and columnist Hisham Kassem. "It's over." The downfall or discrediting of the regime in Tehran would deal a body blow to global Islamism which, despite its deep intellectual roots, first achieved real influence politically with the Iranian revolution of 1979. And it would also represent just the most recent -- and most dramatic -- in a string of setbacks for radical Islam. Election outcomes over the past two years have completely undone the momentum that Islamists had achieved with their strong showing at the polls in Egypt in 2005 and Palestine in 2006.
The Arab world: Waking from its sleep WHAT ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure. They have, for a start, failed to make their people free: six Arab countries have an outright ban on political parties and the rest restrict them slyly. They have failed to make their people rich: despite their oil, the UN reports that about two out of five people in the Arab world live on $2 or less a day. They have failed to keep their people safe: the report argues that overpowerful internal security forces often turn the Arab state into a menace to its own people. And they are about to fail their young people. The UNDP reckons the Arab world must create 50m new jobs by 2020 to accommodate a growing, youthful workforce—virtually impossible on present trends. In almost every Arab country, fertility is in decline, more people, especially women, are becoming educated, and businessmen want a bigger say in economies dominated by the state. Above all, a revolution in satellite television has broken the spell of the state-run media and created a public that wants the rulers to explain and justify themselves as never before. On their own, none of these changes seems big enough to prompt a revolution. But taken together they are creating a great agitation under the surface. The old pattern of Arab government—corrupt, opaque and authoritarian—has failed on every level and does not deserve to survive. At some point it will almost certainly collapse. The great unknown is when.
Marrakesh Express If you want an antidote to the photographs of police officers beating demonstrators and girls dying on the streets of the Iranian capital, take a drive through the streets of the Moroccan capital. You might see demonstrators, but not under attack: On the day I visited, a group of people politely waving signs stood outside the parliament. You might see girls, but they will not be sniper targets, and they will not all look like their Iranian counterparts: Though there is clearly a fashion for long, flowing headscarves and blue jeans, many women would not look out of place in New York or Paris. Welcome to the kingdom of Morocco, a place which, in the light of the past two week's events in Iran, merits a few minutes of reflection. Unlike Turkey, Morocco is not a secular state: The king claims direct descent from the prophet Mohammed. Nor does Morocco aspire to be European: Though French is still the language of business and higher education, the country is linguistically and culturally part of the Arabic-speaking world. But unlike most of its Arab neighbors, the country has over the past decade undergone a slow but profound transformation from traditional monarchy to constitutional monarchy, acquiring along the way real political parties, a relatively free press, new political leaders -- the mayor of Marrakesh is a 33-year-old woman -- and a set of family laws that strive to be compatible both with sharia and international conventions on human rights.The result is not what anyone would call a liberal democratic paradise.
- The king’s friend A NEW political force is emerging in Moroccan politics. The Authenticity and Modernity Party, known by its French acronym, PAM, with a centrist non-ideological platform open to all comers, has been in existence for less than a year. Yet it already seems destined to win the general election in 2012. In its electoral debut in last month’s municipal poll, PAM won the ballot with 22% of the vote. Yet for all its success, the ascent towards the prime ministership of its founder, Fouad Ali El Himma (pictured), is the chronicle of a political elevation foretold.
Obama's Move: Iran and Afghanistan During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, now-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that like all U.S. presidents, Barack Obama would face a foreign policy test early in his presidency if elected. That test is now here.His test comprises two apparently distinct challenges, one in Afghanistan and one in Iran. While different problems, they have three elements in common. First, they involve the question of his administration’s overarching strategy in the Islamic world. Second, the problems are approaching decision points (and making no decision represents a decision here). And third, they are playing out very differently than Obama expected during the 2008 campaign.
Best place for Muslims to live? America This summer Muslims were murdered in Holland, Germany, and Belgium – four victims of hate crimes.These murders are just the latest examples of Islamaphobia coming out of Europe. But Europe is not the only place intolerant of its Muslim citizens. Even in some Muslim countries, expression of religion is often perceived as a threat to the secular state.One of the best places for a Muslim to live is the United States. In a lot of ways, conditions are better here than almost anywhere. As a Muslim not permitted to wear my head covering as a politician in my home country, Turkey, I know.Think about it: In Turkey, where the vast majority of the population is Muslim, you will not find a lawyer with a beard or a student at a university wearing a head scarf, but you can find plenty in New York City. In Tunisia, you won't see a religiously dressed physician at university hospitals – but you can in Alabama.In the majority of Muslim countries the government is an intrusive enterprise with eyes and ears everywhere. The result is bleak. Countries reward only sycophants of the "divine" state. Muslims feel stifled by the encroachments of the establishment and lack of religious tolerance. If a man or a woman wanted to organize a protest against the government to gain the right to practice their religion more openly or be politically active against the status quo, may God help him to escape from the wrath of the state.Many Muslim countries promote homogeneity while their citizens yearn for a right to diversity, which will give them the ability to practice their religious rituals freely.In America, on the other hand, doors open to accommodate people's religious beliefs. And that, along with citizenship rights and the opportunity to exercise the freedom to practice Islam day in and day out, is what makes the US so good for the millions of Muslims here.
Iran: Pressures, Instabilities and De-stabilization ?
Iran on a Razor’s Edge To witness these passions is to witness an Iran close to the brink — a place where it has been on other occasions since the 1979 revolution, but without finding any resolution of its long quest for a form of governance reflecting the country’s democratic yearning, Islamic faith and proud independence. It’s one thing to steal an election, another to steal it with the effrontery and ruthlessness apparent here in recent days. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said “the miraculous hand of God” was evident in the “great epic” of the election. I guess that’s one way of explaining results of an implausible strangeness. Later, perhaps playing for time, Khamenei said the Guardian Council, which oversees elections, should seriously investigate claims of irregularities. Certainly, millions of Iranians are questioning the result. Rather than the hand of God, they see the hand of a regime that perceived its most dreaded specter — “velvet revolution” — in the green banners of the opposition and opted for fraud and force. But Iranians have not been cowed. When Alizadeh and Yassamin confronted each other before me on the street Sunday, as tens of thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters streamed by, the argument quickly escalated, watched by a growing cluster of people. The real violence, Alizadeh declared, was America’s, invading Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way to talk to people like him, Yassamim retorted was to agree, because otherwise you get beaten. Now Alizadeh’s mother started screaming: “You are blind! Let God and light come into your life.” Yassamin, a documentary movie maker, turned away. “We need a Gandhi,” she said to me. “We need Moussavi to risk his life and stand there.” I received this note from an Iranian-American with family here: “The bottom line right now is whose violence threshold is higher? How much are the hard-liners willing to inflict to suppress the population and tell yet another generation to shut up? And how much are Moussavi and his supporters willing to stand to fulfill their dreams? It sounds so inhuman, but that’s what it comes down to. It’s very scary.” Many women are trying quietly to bridge the chasm and avoid the worst. I’ve heard them whispering to the Basij and the police that “We are all Iranians,” urging them to hold back. They remind me of those who placed flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns during the 1979 revolution.
Iran Jumps 11 Spots in the Failed States List When the U.N. Security Council slapped a third round of sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program in March 2008, the country's economy, bolstered by record crude prices, still looked set to roar. Oil revenues had helped Iran grow at a healthy 6.9 percent clip during the previous year. Even poverty levels were down, according to the World Bank. So how could the country jump 11 ranks in the Failed States Index this year? The index correctly penalizes Iran for macroeconomic mismanagement. Inflation doubled in annual terms from 15 to 30 percent in 2008 after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boosted social spending to "bring the oil money to people's dinner tables." As demand expanded, prices for nontraded goods such as housing rose sharply, squeezing the poor and the middle class. A flood of cheap imports kept inflation from going even higher, but jobs were lost as imports undercut local industries. The central bank restricted credit sharply to reduce inflation, hurting businesses further and putting more people out of work. Inflation did come down to below 20 percent by December, but unemployment probably increased. Iran's jobless rate hovers around 12 percent, with three out of four unemployed Iranians under age 30. Festering discontent about inequality helped inspire Ahmadinejad's drive to redistribute the oil cash. But on this score, the results were also disappointing. Between 2005 and 2007, the income of the top 20 percent rose more than four times as fast as that of the bottom quintile. The influx of oil revenues, which trickle down Iran's unequal structure of access to power and position, always seems to worsen the distribution of income. But Iran's economic weakness should not be exaggerated. The Failed States Index, for instance, too harshly critiques Iran for deficit spending and price controls. The government's 2008 budget was tied to a predicted oil price of $39.70 a barrel, far lower than the actual price for much of the year—meaning that "deficit spending" was probably well paid for. And though Iran began to limit purchases of subsidized gasoline, plenty of fuel was available at a higher—but still well below market—price. Finally, any rise in poverty will be cushioned by Iran's free education system, universal basic health insurance, and income assistance. What the index claims happened in 2008, however, may already be occurring in 2009. Much lower oil prices will cause a massive deficit. If the government tries to keep up its expenditures, inflation will return with near certainty. If the government gives in to the temptation to control key prices, the exchange rate, or interest rates, it would hurt exports. Unless a new administration reverses some of the worst policies of recent years, it is unlikely that the private sector will revive in time to help the economy this year.
Which State Security Branch Rules Tehran's Streets? Two weeks after the contested results of Iran's Presidential elections led to widespread street riots and demonstrations across the country, the Islamic Republic pronounced its harshest threat yet to protesters. At the official ceremony for Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a hard-line cleric who often delivers the sermon, said those who agitate on the streets were "waging war against God," a crime that carries the death sentence. It was the latest example in which government forces have tightened their control over and heightened their rhetoric against opposition supporters of the defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Demonstrations and rallies have ground to a halt as the heavy presence of police, Revolutionary Guards officers, plainclothes intelligence and paramilitary volunteer members in the streets have made it impossible for protesters to congregate. The government also began a propaganda campaign aimed at shifting responsibility for the violence meted out by the state onto foreign powers and the protesters themselves. State television aired a program in which witnesses and experts all agreed that Neda Agha-Soltan — the 27-year-old bystander whose death was captured on YouTube, sparking sympathy worldwide and turning Neda into a martyr — was shot by foreign agents in order to intensify people's rage. State television also broadcast another program mourning the purported deaths of eight Basijis killed by bullet wounds. The Basij, or Basijis — the paramilitary volunteer force developed by the Islamic Republic to protect the "Islamic Revolution" from civil disturbances such as the kind that have occurred these past weeks — have had an overwhelming presence on Tehran's streets, often setting up roadblocks to check cars and detain people they consider suspect. They have also been brought in as reinforcement for the police in dealing with demonstrators. Although they are an official subdivision of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and decked out with crowd control gear as well as small weapons in some cases, they are barely held accountable for their deeds and freer in meting out violence. The majority of recent deaths of protesters are thought to have been carried out by Basijis. But now the question is being raise: what branch of state security is behind the violence against protesters?
'Historic Cracks' And Hard-Liners In Iran The Islamic Republic of Iran has only had two supreme leaders in its 30-year history. For the first 10 years, the Islamic Revolution's founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was the supreme leader and was unquestionably accepted as such by the ruling clerical establishment. For the last 20 years, the supreme leader has been Ali Khamenei, a man who has never enjoyed such unquestioned status. Khamenei's problems stem from the fact that he was an unlikely choice from the beginning. He did not have the religious preeminence that underpinned Khomeini's central concept for an Islamic state: that it be led by the country's most learned Islamic jurist. His announcement as successor came only after the Khomeini's death, making him appear to be a last-minute choice. Now, with Khamenei ailing, the succession question looms again. But there is no charismatic revolutionary founder to tell the electoral body -- the Assembly of Experts -- what to do, and the assembly itself is riven by factional divides. The greatest divide is over how much of a republic the Islamic republic should be. Or, in other words: How much of a voice should the people have in a country that officially is a constitutional theocracy? In Qom, the heart of the clerical establishment, there is considerable sentiment that the theocracy should be subordinate to the constitution and sovereignty of the people. For this reason, some prominent clerics have defended the right of opposition supporters to challenge the June 12 presidential results even though the supreme leader endorsed Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president-elect the moment the Interior Ministry announced the results. On July 4, what is arguably the most important organization of religious leaders in Iran, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom, took the defense of the opposition's rights much further. In a statement posted on the association's website, the group called both the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate because of the concerns over voting fraud. The divide in Qom over the delicate balance between theocracy and constitutional rule makes the next choice of a supreme leader an extremely threatening one for Iran's hard-liners now in power. It means there is no guarantee the next elected supreme leader will be in the same mold as Khamenei. Potentially worse still for some hard-line leaders, there are strong personality clashes that could work against their interests.
In Iran, a Struggle Beyond the Streets The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy. From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said. Among the Iranian president’s allies are those who question whether the nation needs elected institutions at all. Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms. According to Iranian news reports, only two of the most senior clerics have congratulated Mr. Ahmadinejad on his re-election, which amounts to a public rebuke in a state based on religion. A conservative prayer leader in the holy city of Qum, Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini, referred to demonstrators as “people” instead of rioters, and a hard-line cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, called for national reconciliation. Some of Iran’s most influential grand ayatollahs, clerics at the very top of the Shiite faith’s hierarchy who have become identified with the reformists, have condemned the results as a fraud and the government’s handling of the protests as brutal. On Saturday, an influential Qum-based clerical association called the new government illegitimate. Yet Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Ahmadinejad and their allies still have a monopoly over the most powerful levers of state.
Senior Cleric Says Leaders of Iran Are Unfit to Rule One of Iran’s most senior clerics issued an unusual decree on Saturday calling the country’s rulers “usurpers and transgressors” for their treatment of opposition protesters in recent weeks, in the strongest condemnation by a religious figure since the contested presidential election a month ago. The decree by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident who has often criticized Iran’s ruling clerics, did not mention by name Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was clearly aimed at the clerical leadership. Posted on the Web site of Mohsen Kadivar, a dissident cleric and former student of Ayatollah Montazeri, the ruling said the recent arrests and shootings of protesters were proof that Iran’s leaders are unqualified to rule the community of Muslims. It is unlikely that the decree, or fatwa, will have any immediate effect in Iran, where opposition figures have already made their positions clear. Some prominent clerics, including Ayatollah Montazeri, have joined political figures in criticizing the government crackdown on street protests in recent weeks, and have said that they believed the election was rigged. But mostly they have done so in cautious terms. None have made sweeping attacks on the government’s credentials like the one issued Saturday. Although Ayatollah Montazeri has long been known as a critic of the government, his opinions have weight because of his seniority in Iran’s religious establishment, and because he was a key proponent of wilayat faqih, or rule by clerics — the theoretical underpinning of Iran’s theocracy. Ayatollah Montazeri, 87, was a leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and was once designated the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But he fell out with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 over the execution of a large group of prisoners and other policies he deemed unjust. The ruling came as news agencies reported that Iran’s foreign minister announced that the government was preparing a new package of “political, security and international” issues to put to the West. The minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said at a news conference that “the package can be a good basis for talks with the West,” Reuters reported. Mr. Mottaki’s statement was Iran’s first response to comments on Wednesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy, where he said the major powers would give Iran until September to accept negotiations over its nuclear program or face tougher sanctions. President Obama echoed that warning on Friday.
'It Is A Gut Feeling That All Of Us Have' A young university student next to me started the conversation, in between screams of “God is great" and “Russia, shame on you, leave our country." “It is not Islam versus Islam. It is not Shiism versus Sunnism. It is not modernism versus traditionalism. In fact, although it is based on tradition, culture, Shiism, Islam, and Iranian pre- and post-Islam ideologies, it is not limited by any of them individually but all of them collectively. It is Rumi, Saadi, Ferdowsi, Zarathushtra (peace be upon him), Muhammad (peace be upon him), Cyrus the Great, and Omar Khayyam combined. "It is an Iranian civil rights movement. It is a gut feeling that all of us have in Iran. It is a need to establish, mold, purify, imply, uphold, and protect what we call as 'citizen's rights,' which is similar to the American Bill of Rights.”
Russia, Ahmadinejad and Iran Reconsidered Moscow openly claimed that Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, organized and funded the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. These agencies allegedly used nongovernmental organizations (human rights groups, pro-democracy groups, etc.) to delegitimize the existing regime, repudiate the outcome of the election regardless of its validity and impose what the Russians regarded as a pro-American puppet regime. The Russians saw Ukraine's Orange Revolution as the break point in their relationship with the West, with the creation of a pro-American, pro-NATO regime in Ukraine representing a direct attack on Russian national security. The Americans argued that to the contrary, they had done nothing but facilitate a democratic movement that opposed the existing regime for its own reasons, demanding that rigged elections be repudiated.In warning that the United States was planning a color revolution in Iran, Ahmadinejad took the Russian position. Namely, he was arguing that behind the cover of national self-determination, human rights and commitment to democratic institutions, the United States was funding an Iranian opposition movement on the order of those active in the former Soviet Union.
From Power to Chaos — Tracking Iran's Four-Month Slide What a difference a few months can make. In early June, Iran was at the apex of its power on the world stage. Aid to insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon had helped convert Tehran into a regional superpower rivaled only by Israel. At home, hard-liners led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had consolidated control of parliament, the judiciary and the military and marginalized reform parties. This week, however, Iran heads into talks in Geneva with the U.S. and five other world powers more vulnerable at home and abroad than at any time since the revolution's chaotic early days. Despite defiant talk and a weekend display of military force, the world's only theocracy begins its most important diplomatic engagement in three decades in real trouble. Over the past four months, the Islamic Republic has faced two game changers. First, the June 12 presidential election spawned a vibrant new opposition movement, a political schism among the theocrats and popular protests that deeply undermined the hard-line regime's legitimacy among its constituents. Second, the gotcha revelation on Sept. 25 about a secret nuclear plant put Tehran on the defensive with both its enemies and allies — and undermined Ahmadinejad's U.N. media blitz, which had been designed to boost his post-election image. Now those challenges are converging, tightening the squeeze on the regime. Over the weekend, Iran's new opposition chose sides in the nuclear debate — and sided with the world. "The Iranian Green Movement does not want a nuclear bomb, but instead desires peace for the world and democracy for Iran," said a statement issued by filmmaker and opposition spokesman Mohsen Makhmalbouf. "The Green Movement in Iran furthermore understands the world's concerns and in fact has similar concerns itself." Thumbing its nose at the world may not help, since even the skeptical Russians suggested last week that further sanctions may be in order if Iran does not come clean about the secret facility and other older questions about Tehran's nuclear program. "The Iranians are in a very bad spot now because of this deception, in terms of all of the great powers," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC News on Sunday.
Iraq and Afghanistan
Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck And that is my take-away from this visit: Iraqis know who they were, and they don’t always like it, but they still have not figured out whom they want to be as a country. They are exhausted from years of civil strife and really don’t want to go there again. Yet on the big unresolved issues — how will power be shared in Kirkuk, how will the Sunnis who joined the “awakening” be absorbed into the government, how will oil wealth and power be shared between provinces and the central government — the different ethnic communities still don’t want to compromise much either. I am amazed in talking to U.S. Army officers here as to how much they’ve learned from and about Iraqis. It has taken way too long, but our soldiers understand this place. But what about Iraqis? There are now many Iraqis embedded with U.S. forces in Kirkuk. In the dining hall on the main base, I like to watch the Iraqi officers watching the melting pot of U.S. soldiers around them — men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics — and wonder: What have they learned from us? We left some shameful legacies here of torture and Abu Ghraib, but we also left a million acts of kindness and a profound example of how much people of different backgrounds can accomplish when they work together. We are going to find out just what Iraqis have learned soon. That’s an important message — otherwise Iraqis will delay forever resolving their big, nation-shaping disputes. We can’t do it for them — but our diplomats could do more to help them forge those compromises. We have special envoys for Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Arab-Israeli affairs, but for Iraq — a country key to the Middle East in which we have lost so many lives and are spending a trillion dollars — there is no special envoy, or secretary of state, totally focused on securing a decent outcome here. Vice President Joe Biden is overseeing Iraq policy, but he has too many other things to do. Iraq needs a big, tough, full-time mediator. Senior Iraqi officials are too proud to ask for our help and would probably publicly resist it, but privately Iraqis will tell you that they want it and need it. We are the only trusted player here — even by those who hate us. They need a U.S. mediator so they can each go back to their respective communities and say: “I never would have made these concessions, but those terrible Americans made me do it.” After we invaded and stabilized Bosnia, we didn’t just toss their competing factions the keys. President Bill Clinton organized the Dayton peace talks and Richard Holbrooke brokered a deal that has lasted to this day. Why are we not doing in Iraq what we did in Bosnia — when the outcome here is 100 times more important?
Many Investors Still Avoid Risks of Iraq Next month the United States and Iraq will gather hundreds of officials and company executives for a two-day conference in Washington intended to send a message that after six years of war, Iraq is open for business, and not just in oil. Now more than ever before, Iraqi officials boast that a trickle of foreign investment — including the first new hotel in Baghdad since Saddam Hussein’s government fell — is at last poised to be a flood.The experience of the company here, though, shows that economic development and foreign investment face more obstacles than security alone.The state-owned industries that dominate the country’s economy — from oil fields to dairies to textile factories — are as bloated and inefficient as they were in Mr. Hussein’s time, arguably more so. They are hobbled by corruption, still sporadic electricity and poor roads and bound by bureaucracy and central planning that leave them unable to compete with a flood of cheap imports from Iran, Turkey and beyond.New legislation intended to regulate investments, land rights, taxes, financial services and consumer protections remains stalled in Parliament. The mere mention of the sort of privatization that swept Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the collapse of Communism is anathema to officials here.
Targeting Terrorists Not since 1975 when the Church Commission investigated Nixon-era abuses in intelligence agencies, have such unusual things occurred in the world of Washington intelligence agencies as in these past few weeks. The Democratic House of Representatives threatened to pass an intelligence authorization bill which the Democratic White House has promised to veto. The former Democratic congressman who now heads the Central Intelligence Agency has been having a public disagreement with leading House Democrats about whether the CIA lies to Congress. There is a controversy about a secret CIA program to do something most Americans presumably want the CIA to do, to kill al Qaeda terrorists. The attorney general is rumored to be looking for a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogators, even though the president seemed to have earlier told CIA employees that there would be no prosecutions about alleged torture. Former CIA employees are publicly trotting out the claim that all of this attention “hurts the Agency’s morale” and that damage could result in another successful terrorist attack on the U.S. Even seasoned Washington policy wonks are finding it hard to navigate their way through all of those stories and make some sense of what has been going on. Unless we understand what all of this drama is really about, we will not get the delicate balance right between the needs of a democracy and the rule of law on one side and the requirements of a secret intelligence service on the other. And this democracy needs a functioning secret intelligence service to protect it against the current genres of threat. All of this recent Washington activity about intelligence is perhaps best understood as three distinct, but related stories playing out against a backdrop of suspicion about what the previous administration may have done in reaction to the 9-11 attacks. It is also part of a 60-year historical pattern of manic swings of opinion in Washington about the efficacy of covert action.
Mathematical Model Shows Why Defeating Insurgent Groups Like Taliban Is So Difficult Insurgent groups like the Taliban can only be effectively engaged with timely and accurate military intelligence, and even good intelligence may only succeed in containing the insurgency, not defeating it, according to a new study in the current issue of Operations Research, a flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). The study is the first of its kind to combine military intelligence, attrition and civilian population behavior in a unified model of counterinsurgency dynamics. The authors stress the role of obtaining intelligence about the insurgency. Absent intelligence, they write, not only can the insurgents escape unharmed and continue their violent attacks; but resultant poor government targeting causes innocent civilian deaths, which increases popular support for the insurgents and thus generates more recruits to the insurgency. Recent attacks on Taliban strongholds by U.S. drones have shown that deaths among civilians may end up hindering American lead efforts, Kress notes. Ill-targeted actions taken by Israel and Colombia, for example, also have shown that unintended deaths among civilians have led to increased support for insurgents. In their paper, the authors model the dynamic relations among intelligence, collateral casualties in the population, attrition, recruitment to the insurgency, and reinforcement to the government force. Even under best-case assumptions regarding the government actions, they show that the government cannot totally eradicate an insurgency by force. The best it can do is containing it at a certain fixed level. The containment or stalemate points may be either fragile or stable. If the violence level is low, the containment point is fragile, in which case the insurgents can "break away" and eventually win. If the government commits large forces and applies a heavy hand (for example, the "surge" of United States forces in Iraq) then the stalemate point is stable. The model and analysis, they write, represent a best case situation from the government perspective under the parameters put forward where (a) government force is steadily reinforced by new units, (b) it has unlimited endurance (it surrenders to the insurgents only when it is totally annihilated) and (c) the only recruitment to the insurgency is due to collateral casualties in the general population that generate resentment to the government, and therefore more recruits to the insurgency.
Preventing Another Iraq: Key in Afghanistan: Economy, Not Military National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict. The message seems designed to cap expectations that more troops might be coming, though the administration has not ruled out additional deployments in the future. Jones was carrying out directions from President Obama, who said recently, "My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops." "This will not be won by the military alone," Jones said in an interview during his trip. "We tried that for six years." He also said: "The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed." Jones said repeatedly on this trip that the new strategy has three legs, all of which he said had to be dramatically improved: security; economic development and reconstruction; and governance by the Afghans under the rule of law. "The president realizes it's on the razor's edge," Jones said, suggesting not only a difficult, dangerous time but also a situation that could cut either way. "And he's worried that others don't." The National Security Council is developing a series of measurements to assess the effectiveness of the strategy and the capability of the Afghan government and Afghan security forces. This is expected to be presented to Congress soon.Jones made it clear in his visit to Afghanistan that it is a new era and that Obama will not automatically give the military commanders whatever force levels they request -- the frequent practice of President George W. Bush in the Iraq war. "This is a decisive moment," Jones told U.S. military leaders, diplomats and the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, "a strategic moment, and we better get it right."
- WINNING: Victory In Afghanistan Having trouble sorting out who is trying to do what in Afghanistan? Wars can best be understood by examining the objectives of the various participants. In short, what does each side consider a victory. This is complicated by the fact that, as the fighting goes on, these definitions of victory tend to change.
AFGHANISTAN: Not A Good Time To Be A Pushy Pushtun The Western media reported numerous problems and much violence associated with the Afghan vote. But for those in touch with people in Afghanistan (email and blogs makes this pretty easy), the reports were far different. The Taliban huffed and puffed (mainly for the benefit of the foreign media) and generally did not deliver the violence and terror they promised. A lot of the reported "Taliban violence" in the south was the usual Pushtun tribal politics (which tends to be murderous even in the best of times). In most of the country, the only violence is the normal banditry and tribal type long typical of the region. The "vote fraud" was more common than in the West, but was mostly carried out by major politicians, not the Taliban. This form of corruption is endemic to Afghanistan and the region. That is not news, so it is not reported as it is, but embellished with tenuous Taliban connections. Makes for great headlines, but a false description of what is actually happening.
Eight Years On Americans tend to want to identify a problem, fix it, and then move on. Sometimes this works. Often it does not. Of course, imposing ourselves on hostile or chaotic societies is no solution either. The perceived arrogance and ignorance of overbearing powers can create new narratives of humiliation that will feed calls for vengeance centuries from now. What's needed in dealing with this world is a combination of understanding, persistence, and strategic patience to a degree that Americans, traditionally, have found hard to muster. We have learned much since September 11, 2001, but we are still learning this lesson. As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, with U.S. casualties rising and the Taliban revived, public opinion is turning against what was always, compared with Iraq, our "good war." No one, least of all me, has an easy fix to propose. But over the last eight years I was intimately involved with our country's effort to manage its relationship with the Middle East and South Asia. I know that success only comes from a solid, sustained commitment of resources and attention.
McChrystal's Frank Talk on Afghanistan President Obama is rethinking his entire strategy in Afghanistan after the new commander there stunned the White House with a warning the war could be lost if he doesn't get more troops in the next 12 months. General Stanley McChrystal is up against an enemy that holds the initiative, and he's working with an Afghan government shot through with corruption. Even with more troops, he warns, there has to be "a dramatic change in how we operate." That stark assessment comes from a man who is perhaps this country's most battle-hardened general and, according to those who have served with him, a one-of-a-kind commander. Asked if things are better or worse than he expected, General McChrystal told Martin, "They are probably a little worse." "What's worse than you thought?" Martin asked. "Well, I think that in some areas that the breadth of violence, the geographic spread of violence, places to the north and to the west, are a little more than I would have gathered," McChrystal replied. McChrystal's new strategy says conventional military operations designed to kill the enemy can never win this war. Destroying homes and accidentally killing civilians in the process only create more insurgents and alienates the population. In other words, for much of the past eight years, the U.S. has been sowing the seeds of its own demise. He also wants American convoys to stop their aggressive driving on Afghan streets. "It's perceived by the people as arrogance. It's perceived by the people as not caring about, you know their right to use the road. And at the end of the day, it's their roads," he said. "It sounds like you're trying to deprogram eight years of bad habits," Martin noted.
"Exactly," McChrystal agreed. "There's an awful lot of bad habits we've got to deprogram."
Report Cites Firefight as Lesson on Afghan War That firefight, a debacle that
cost nine American lives in July 2008, has become the new template for how not to win in Afghanistan. The calamity and its roots have been described in bitter, painstaking detail in an unreleased Army history, a devastating narrative that has begun to circulate in an initial form even as the military opened a formal review this week of decisions made up and down the chain of command.The 248-page draft history, obtained by The New York Times, helps explain why the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen.
Stanley A. McChrystal, is pressing so hard for a full-fledged commitment to a style of counterinsurgency that rests on winning over the people of Afghanistan even more than killing militants. The military has already incorporated lessons from the battle in the
new doctrine for war in Afghanistan.The history offers stark examples of shortcomings in the unit’s preparation, the style of combat it adopted, its access to intelligence, its disdain for the locals — in short, plenty of blame to go around.
Pakistan's Spies At an operational level, the ISI is a close partner of the CIA. Officers of the two services work together nearly every night on joint operations against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, perhaps the most dangerous region in the world. Information from the ISI has helped the CIA plan its Predator drone attacks, which have killed 14 of the top 20 targets over the past several years.But on the political level, there is mistrust on both sides. The United States worries that the ISI isn't sharing all it knows about Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, meanwhile, view the United States as an unreliable ally that starts fights it doesn't know how to finish.ISI officials believe Washington should be realistic about its war objectives. If victory is defined as obliteration of the Taliban, the United States will never win. But the United States can achieve the more limited aim of rough political stability, if it is patient.In the ISI's view, America makes a mistake in thinking it must solve every problem on its own. In Afghanistan, it should work with President Hamid Karzai, who, for all his imperfections, has one essential quality that American strategists lack -- he's an Afghan. ISI officials suggest that Karzai should capitalize on the post-election ferment by calling for a cease-fire so that he can form a broadly based government that includes some Taliban representatives.ISI officials say they want to help America with political reconciliation in Afghanistan. But they argue that to achieve this goal, the U.S. must change its posture -- moving from "ruler mode" to "support mode" -- so that Afghan voices can be heard.Talking with ISI leaders, I am reminded of something you see around the world these days. People want to help America more than we sometimes think. But they want to be treated with respect -- as full partners, not as useful CIA assets.Trust is always a conditional word when you are talking about intelligence activities, which are built around deception. But in this case, where America and Pakistan share common interests, the opportunities are real.
U.S. Says Taliban Has a New Haven in Pakistan As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, U.S. officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.But U.S. officials acknowledge they know relatively little about the remote and arid Pakistani border region, have no capacity to strike there, and have few windows into the turbulent mix of Pashtun tribal and religious politics that has turned the area into a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, who are known collectively as the Quetta Shura.Pakistani officials, in turn, have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the army has been heavily focused on curbing violent Islamist extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away.As a result, Pakistani and foreign analysts here said, Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, has suddenly emerged as an urgent but elusive new target as Washington grapples with the Taliban's rapidly spreading arc of influence and terror across Afghanistan.
from the likes of Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) this quarter, but their profits came from things like trading. From everything, in fact, but what you and I -- and certainly the preceding generation -- called banking. And it's exactly those huge profits from everything but banking that have put the final nail in the big banks as banks. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase and maybe Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) and Citigroup (C, news, msgs), too, will survive as financial institutions. But they won't be banks. The model for what these big financial institutions will be is laid out in the most recent quarterly earnings reports from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Goldman Sachs, for example, blew through Wall Street projections when it announced third-quarter earnings of $5.25 a share, more than a dollar above the Wall Street consensus. Revenue climbed to $12.4 billion for the quarter, more than double Goldman's $6.04 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2008.Not bad for a recession, eh?
