Empower the tribes! It will work!

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

By killing two South Korean hostages and refusing to release the remaining 21, including 18 women, the Taliban is taking a new path that suggests it is becoming an Afghan branch of Al Qaeda.

In the past 18 months, the Taliban has adopted more aggressive tactics – such as kidnappings and suicide bombings – imported directly from the Al Qaeda-led global jihad.

As the Monitor continues:

For Hajji Spandagul, a tribal elder from eastern Afghanistan, it is abhorrent. "This is not the culture of Afghanistan – to take women hostage, especially in the tribal culture," he says, waving his large, weathered hands forcefully.

Here in a guesthouse for tribal elders visiting Kabul, he sits with several of his colleagues from around the country. In the past, elders like Mr. Spandagul have been able to intervene in hostage situations. They often live in areas beyond the government's control, meaning they must remain neutral, carving out whatever level of peace they can between the Taliban and the Kabul.

"We are threatened on both sides," says Jamaluddin Alizai, an elder from Kandahar Province, where the Taliban resistance is centered. "During the night, the Taliban come to my area, and I have to give them food or they will kill us, then the government comes in the morning and says, 'Why did you give them food?' "

As one former member of the Taliban, Abdul Salam Raketi, now a lawmaker, told the Monitor:

"It is really dangerous for the future of the Taliban," he says. "If people are supporting the Taliban a little, they won’t support them at all anymore because the Taliban did not listen to their elders in negotiations."

Elder Spandagul calls this the work of Chechens and Pakistanis who have come here to wage global jihad – and Afghan elders are powerless to stop them. In times past, tribes had their own militia, but these were disbanded with the establishment of the Western-backed government, and nothing has risen in their place. Many police patrols are unable to venture a mile from their posts.

Notice that once again, Al Qaeda has to employ foreign mercenaries to do its dirty work. As to what to do to counter the Taliban in this area. Well here's a clue:

Mr. Alizai of Kandahar recalls the day that a group of French soldiers came and asked why the Taliban were attacking from his district. "Because I have empty hands," he says. "If we don't have weapons how can we defend ourselves? They come and cut our necks."

As the Monitor reports spells it out for us:

In areas so unconnected to the broader world, tribes still have a role to play in keeping order. But they are increasingly ground between a government seeking the trappings of a modern, centralized power structure and an insurgency seeking to further its own global ends.

As someone very wise once pointed out to me, the dumb Westerner that I am: tribal justice, swift and brutal.

On the Iraqi parliament taking a vacation...

Darioush Bayandor, who modestly describes himself as "a student of history living in retirement in Switzerland after a career in diplomacy and in UN humanitarian work" had an interesting perspective in a remarks he posted on a closed forum ( reprinted here with permisssion of the author):

In his appearance Sunday in CNN's Late Edition Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York criticized not just the Iraqi national assembly for going on a summer recess but was "outraged" also to see Iraqis played soccer while American soldiers were fighting in suffocating heat of summer.

I have every sympathy for predicament of young Americans who risk their lives fighting in Iraq. But I was frustrated that no one around reminded the congressman that if American soldiers are there it's because the US invited itself to Iraq with approval of the Congress (little matters that Rangel himself did not support the resolution) and having created in Iraq that monumental mess it's myopic and scornful for an American congressman
to want to deny the Iraqis even this fleeting joy of a cup victory and a glimpse of the lost national identity.

His silence on the vacationing politicians did strike me as conspicuous. I don't have anything nice to say about their taking a break either, but following the diplomat's lead, I'll keep my mouth shut.

Incidentally, Bayandor is a person who while he was at the U.N. assisted refugees of the Khymer Rouge as they returned to their native Cambodia, Burmese taking refuge in Bangladesh, Bosnians as they fled from Serbs, and Congolese refugees from a civil war so he clearly has some idea of how sweet the Iraqi soccer victory must have felt to this war-torn people.

More on the tribal rebels in Pakistan

According to my sources, the followers of the late Red Mosque leader are neither Al Qaeda or Taliban. This is why, I suppose, the Western media so often terms the Pakistani tribals as "Taliban-like" or "pro-Taliban."

While somebody must think this advances understanding of the situation, I have to say, I'm not in that camp.

To give you a concrete example of what I'm talking about here, let's see how the Associated Press reports about this:

Pro-Taliban fighters seized an Islamic shrine in restive northwestern Pakistan and renamed it after the Red Mosque, where dozens of militants died this month in a showdown with government forces in the capital, officials said Monday.

As I stress, notice the "pro-Taliban" fighters here as opposed to Taliban fighters as the AP would have written were in fact these rebels Taliban.

As the AP continues:

About 70 pro-Taliban militants overran the shrine of renowned Pashtun freedom fighter Sahib Turangzai and its adjoining mosque in Mohmand tribal region late Sunday, a militant representative said.

They evicted the mosque's caretakers, renamed it and declared their support for Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy cleric of the Red Mosque, who had spearheaded an increasingly aggressive, Taliban-style anti-vice campaign in the capital.

Troops finally cracked down on the mosque and Ghazi was killed along with at least 101 other people after a weeklong siege that ended July 12.

In Mohmand, the militants vowed to set up a girls' seminary at the site — reminiscent of the one in Islamabad where the anti-vice campaign was centered and that was demolished by authorities after the siege.

"We will ensure education here for students who were dispersed after the operation against Lal Masjid in Islamabad," Khalid Omar, a man who claims to speak for the militants, said in telephone calls to journalists in Peshawar.

Again, it's the pro-Taliban and the Taliban-style rebellion as opposed to the Taliban. So why does the AP do this, the reader must certainly be wondering.

Here's my theory - and from the same report:

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is under growing pressure from Washington to crack down on the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Get it? Musharraf needs to fight these rebels under the cover of combating the Taliban and al Qaeda to please Washington, which can then feel good about having supported an ally who was on the same side in this War on Terror. Opponents of Musharraf won't object because if after all these years, Musharraf still has a Taliban problem, they know this will only diminish him and the U.S. administration that backed him. Al-Qaida loves having the rebels seen as part of their "stronghold" in Pakistan. (See what I wrote yesterday on this.) And the rebels probably don't even know what's being written about them or what the implications of all this are if they do. Literacy rates in the area we are talking about are a pathetic 18 percent so whatever their trusted sources tell them, that's what they believe. (Me too, fellows, I have to rely on trusted sources too because in this case, being able to read doesn't help much in locating reliable accounts.)

Anyway, I'd still like to get this right, so if I'm wrong here....Do please send drop me a line.

Al Qaeda's "stronghold" in Pakistan

Seems to be more myth than reality to me according to this report from the London Telegraph and all the other news I've seen lately. Anyway, let's see what we have here and you decide:

A deep split has emerged within al-Qa'eda over the wisdom of the terror network's drive to overthrow and kill Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf, according to radical Pakistani Islamists allied to the terror network. . .

Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has ordered the series of retaliatory attacks on Pakistani targets that have followed the storming of the Red Mosque, an extremist stronghold in Islamabad, by Gen Musharraf's troops this month.

As the Telegraph reports, some 200 Pakistanis been killed as a result of the Egyptian doctor's revenge strikes. Now check this detail out:

Some senior figures within al-Qa'eda are alarmed that al-Zawahiri's mission to topple and kill Gen Musharraf will provoke a Pakistani military backlash that could jeopardise their safe havens in the mountainous tribal areas on the Afghan border.

A rival so-called "Libyan faction" led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, who escaped from the US Bagram base near Kabul in 2005, apparently suspects that al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born doctor, is trying to position himself as bin Laden's heir presumptive with his personal crusade. Bin Laden himself is believed to be in hiding, fearful of his whereabouts being discovered.

Do you see any Pakistanis yet on your radar screen? I mean aside from the victims of these Al Qaeda attacks? I know I don't. Now get this:

The US officials believe al-Zawahiri is running anti-Musharraf operations without consulting other leaders, hoping to foment a revolt that will result in an Islamic regime taking control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. They are investigating reports of other factions which want to consolidate their operating bases on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

"Hoping to foment a revolt" - you got that? Zawahiri is hoping he can get some Pakistanis rallied to his fight. Now check out this passage:

The high stakes were brought home by a new US National Intelligence Estimate this month. The report concluded that a resurgent al-Qa'eda, now based in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, has regained the same strength and organisation as before the September 11, 2001 attacks that prompted the US assault that drove it from Afghanistan.

The "same strength and organization"? Let's recap for a second here. Bin Laden is no where to be found he's so scared (or so dead). Al Qaeda seems to be having some serious management problems. And the only Pakistanis anyone can say with certainty that are part of this Al Qaeda stronghold are the ones getting blown up - or having their kids menaced because Al Qaeda doesn't like girls going to school. Yeah, sure, same strength and organization alright.

Anyway, in case you were wondering what the intelligence genuises in the U.S. suggest doing, this is what the Telegraph found:

US intelligence has repeated warnings to the White House that it is probably only a matter of time before al-Qa'eda stages another major attack inside the US, organised from its Pakistani strongholds. A significant faction inside the CIA wants the US to launch attacks within Pakistan to strike at al-Qa'eda now, without authorisation from Gen Musharraf.

Pakistani strongholds? Again, those places where they've been bombing and shooting up schools? Anybody ever hear of Anbar Province in Iraq?

I'd bet anything that the Pakistani tribals are a lot less stupid about Al Qaeda than these US intelligence agents seem to be. In fact, I give them as much credit as the Sunnis in Anbar - in Al Qaeda's other "stronghold."

Kalam, Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan

Kalam homemade car - ghari wala, originally uploaded by yumievriwan.

Great that it's "Islamic" but does it make money?

That seems to be the critical question in the Islamic world at least, just as I suspected (from the Financial Times):

Islamic finance may be fashionable in international markets but it is not making much of a splash at home. Take Indonesia. Just 1 per cent of bonds issued by the world’s most populous Muslim country this year were Islamic and it boasts just $5m worth of Shariah-compliant funds.

As the report continues:

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that Islamic finance is not a huge growth driver for Asia. For one, traders grumble that the market is illiquid since the banks tend to buy and hold bonds. Meantime, much of the “new” Islamic finance appears to be cannibalising existing business.

Could the next victory for Iraq be Iraq itself?

Maybe, say two analysts, Michael E. O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Saban Center. As they write in today's New York Times, while they have "harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq" after their recent 8-day trip to check out how Iraq is faring under the new surge plan, they report that "significant changes taking place." And even go so far as to be optimistic that "a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with" seems within reach. As they write:

In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

The situation is not perfect yet, as these two formerly harsh critics duly note - and the usual suspects - politicians - are largely to blame:

Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

Victory for Iraqi National Team

Victory for Iraqi National Team, originally uploaded by political barbay.

Iraq fan

Iraq celebrates football victory (what kind of karma was this?), originally uploaded by Krpasevananda K~S~A.

A Saudi talks about fighting jihad in Iraq

From yesterday's Washington Post:

The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004. . .

"My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad," said al-Shayea. "He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad."

"We didn't think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight against occupiers," said al-Shayea.

Finally the friend told him he was going to Iraq, and invited al-Shayea to join him.

He was told to shave his beard and pack Western clothes to avoid looking like a would-be jihadist. He got a passport and an airline ticket to Syria. And he managed to save $1,600 _ travel fees, he was told, that would go to smugglers, weapons training and al-Qaida's coffers.

On a cool November night toward the end of the holy month of Ramadan, he donned a black T-shirt and jeans and told his parents he was going camping in the desert with his friends.

He and his friend flew to Syria, a favored transit point for Iraq-bound fighters because Syria doesn't ask visiting Arabs for visas, and its 360-mile border with Iraq is thinly policed. A network of al-Qaida operatives sheltered him in Damascus, Aleppo and the border town of Abu-Kamal, and about two weeks later he and 23 other men were smuggled into Iraq.

Four Iraqi teenagers guided them to the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They saw Syrian border guards in the distance who fired in the air. "They didn't try to stop us. We were already in Iraq," al-Shayea said.

At al-Qaim, the men were split into two groups. Al-Shayea said his group of 12 met an al-Qaida leader who had direct links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida chief in Iraq who was later killed by a U.S. airstrike. He took the men's money and gave each $100.

"Then he asked us a question: 'Those who want to carry out martyrdom (suicide) attacks, raise your hands,'" said al-Shayea. "No one did."

Al-Shayea's group then spent a week at the Sunni fundamentalist stronghold of Rawa before al-Shayea and another Saudi man were taken to Ramadi and finally Baghdad.

Al-Shayea met his new "emir," or leader, an Iraqi who told him his first assignment was to take a fuel tanker to a Baghdad neighborhood to be collected by others.

"I felt scared. I didn't know Baghdad at all, and I also didn't know how to drive heavy vehicles," he said.

Also, he says, he was never told that the truck would contain 26 tons of butane gas, rigged to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy.

"That evening, we performed the last prayer of the day and had dinner _ a dish of chicken and aubergines," said al-Shayea. "The emir gave me a crude map of my route."

Two al-Qaida militants drove with al-Shayea, but then jumped out 1,000 yards from where he was supposed to park the truck and fled in a waiting car.

"I felt something bad was about to happen," he said.

The farther he drove, the more nervous he got until, 60 feet from the embassy, an explosion _ believed triggered from afar _ turned the back of the tanker into a fireball.

"I saw the fire and I started to scream and pray," he said.

"I looked around me and I saw everything had melted. My hands had turned black. I jumped from the window and started running without thinking of what I was doing."

The blast killed nine people.

To read about what he thinks of what he did now, and how the Saudis are trying to change the jihadist mentality, read the article.

Iraq beats Saudi Arabia to win Asian Cup

From the Associated Press:

"Those heroes have shown the real Iraq. They have done something useful for the people as opposed to the politicians and lawmakers who are stealing or killing each other," said Sabah Shaiyal, a 43-year-old policeman in Baghdad. "The players have made us proud, not the greedy politicians. Once again, our national team has shown that there is only one, united Iraq."

Here is the WSJ's perspective on Pakistan

The Wall Street Journal editors write:

Amid rising protests against the government--some of it by secular democrats, some by militant jihadis--it's easy to forget that Pakistan has prospered under Mr. Musharraf and his prime minister, former Citibank executive Shaukat Aziz. Annual GDP growth averaged 7.2% in the past three years, according to World Bank data; the inflation rate, which hovered at 23.8% in 2000, has fallen to single digits. International confidence is reflected in foreign direct investment, which rose to $2.2 billion in 2005 from $308 million five years earlier.

Relations with India may be as good as they've been since 1947. The government responded well to the devastating October 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, preventing what many thought would be a far worse humanitarian crisis. Pakistan was instrumental in capturing key September 11 plotters Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, among others. A.Q. Khan was put under house arrest, and his network rolled up. For his troubles, Mr. Musharraf has repeatedly been the target of jihadist assassination attempts, the most recent earlier this month.

As the editors conclude:

Though the Bush Administration is glibly mocked for making Mr. Musharraf an "exception" to the Bush Doctrine, the U.S. has no interest in destabilizing a nuclear-armed government already under a jihadist threat. Jimmy Carter made that mistake with the Shah of Iran....

What the U.S. can do, however, is nudge Mr. Musharraf toward a compromise with his non-radical opposition that would restore genuine democracy while strengthening his ability to challenge the jihadists. It is the best option the general has.

As to what this compromise might look like:

If he agrees to resign his military commission, he could strike a power-sharing agreement with non-religious opponents (he has reportedly held secret meetings with Ms. Bhutto). This could allow him to remain in power past parliamentary elections later this year.

Pakistan Militant Leaders: You're getting closer to Paradise by the day

Pakistan Militant Leader, originally uploaded by BHowdy.

This Abdullah Meshud, the former Gitmo detainee who became a Taliban commander in Waziristan, in fact, just made it.

The vehicle you see here was his chariot to heaven.

That would explain, I suppose why nobody is weeping. But how to explain the clean clothes if these local tribes are all supposed to be jihadists?

Oh, that's right, the Taliban uses mercenaries to fight their jihad - that is, Uzbeks. Think of them as Al Qaeda's Blackwater.

Who is a better Muslim ?

Who is a better Muslim ?, originally uploaded by flickr photographerno1.

And this was the poem that accompanied this photo:

The Killing Fields Of Islam

Using little children Men women as shield
Lal Masjid the new Islamic Killing field
A misguided Jihad
Emptiness
Unnecessary deaths
Allah Ho Akbar
A wrong message to the world
Nothing else yield
The Islamic World Life as Usual
Lips stitched Beautifully dutifully sealed
Wounds of Karbala ever fresh unhealed
yazidiyat the serpent seed
through the bleeding head of Hussain revealed
to go and live among the Hindus of Hindustan
who are more human he had once appealed
Terrorism its beginnings In Karbala
unconcealed
Misguided Martyrdom
Muslims love killing Muslims
Through a Mosque where Principles of Islam
Lay besieged
The heritage and legacy Of Yazeed
Lal Masjid
A file that finally
God Did delete
You can cheat fate once
but the God above
you cannot cheat
Abdul Rashid Ghazi
A Terrorist Thug
in a winding sheet


If you click on the link below the photo, you can see what else this Flickr poet had to say.

The Killing Fields Of Islam

The Killing Fields Of Islam, originally uploaded by flickr photographerno1.

This poem was posted along with the above photo of the Lal Masjid on Flickr:

Using little children Men women as shield
Lal Masjid the new Islamic Killing field
A misguided Jihad
Emptiness
Unnecessary deaths
Allah Ho Akbar
A wrong message to the world
Nothing else yield
The Islamic World Life as Usual
Lips stitched Beautifully dutifully sealed
Wounds of Karbala ever fresh unhealed
yazidiyat the serpent seed
through the bleeding head of Hussain revealed
to go and live among the Hindus of Hindustan
who are more human he had once appealed
Terrorism its beginnings In Karbala
unconcealed
Misguided Martyrdom
Muslims love killing Muslims
Through a Mosque where Principles of Islam
Lay besieged
The heritage and legacy Of Yazeed
Lal Masjid
A file that finally
God Did delete
You can cheat fate once
but the God above
you cannot cheat
Abdul Rashid Ghazi
A Terrorist Thug
in a winding sheet

Yep, there is a backlash going on.

On Al Qaeda's vulnerabilities

The bad news for Al Qaeda - that is if what James Clapper, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence testified before the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committee has any basis in reality. Here are some excerpts from his written statement.

First, something of a preamble:

A war is not an engineering project, in which all the tasks and challenges can be laid out ahead of time and accomplished according to a pre-determined schedule. As the troops say, “the enemy gets a vote.”

Then a defense of Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff and his apparent lack of ability or interest in controlling the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border - that is, the area where Al Qaeda is supposed to be hiding:

This is a wild and remote area over which the government of Pakistan (and the British before them) has never fully gained control. President Musharraf has tried various approaches to dealing with this problem, and has lost about 500 personnel in the process of trying to establish law and order in the FATA. Musharraf has also tried political measures to eliminate al Qaeda and the Taliban from the FATA, including making a deal with the local tribal leaders in one of the agencies under which they prevent the use of their territory as a launching pad for attacks into Afghanistan. This agreement, the North Waziristan Agreement, has not been successful, as the Pakistani government admits. While one could debate the wisdom of trying to conclude such agreements, I don’t think it is fair to charge Musharraf with being ignorant of the problem or being unwilling to deal with it. If only because of their various attempts to assassinate him, and the loss of hundreds of his soldiers, he clearly understands the extremist threat.

The news, Clapper says, isn't all bad in Pakistan:

The recent Red Mosque crisis has heightened the extremist Islamist threat in Pakistan, and brought the struggle between extremists and the mainstream to the fore.

At the same time, there are signs of a reaction against the extremists. On April 17, 2007, a convention attended by over 2,000 Pakistani religious figures in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's ethnically Pashtun North-West Frontier Province (which includes the FATA), proclaimed that suicide bombings were against Islam and condemned the forcible implementation and enforcement of Shari’a (Islamic Law). Also, internal disputes in Pakistan's tribal agency of South Waziristan recently erupted into conflict between Taliban-allied local tribes and al Qaeda-allied Central Asian groups, mostly Uzbeks. Uzbek forces offended local Pashtun groups by their criminal activity and insensitivity to local tribal customs, resulting in open warfare between locals and Central Asian fighters.

Clapper says that while Al Qaeda might be resourceful as the NIE recently suggested, it's also stupid (I'm paraphrasing here, Clapper actually said it has "weaknesses and vulnerabilities"). As he writes:

At the strategic level, I think his greatest weakness is his tendency to overreach; perhaps not surprisingly, a movement that fosters a cult of violence and death has difficulty restraining itself when violence is not in its best interests.

In Iraq, for example, al Qaeda in Iraq’s excessive violence – directed not only against Shi’a civilians but against fellow Sunnis, including insurgents, who failed to toe the al Qaeda line -- has resulted in a backlash. Iraqis in Anbar province made common cause with U.S. and Iraqi security forces against al Qaeda’s attempt to convince Iraq’s Sunni Arabs that its objective of an Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) is the only alternative to the Shia-dominated Iraqi Government. Even insurgent groups such as the Islamic Army in Iraq openly rejected the ISI and criticized them as a foreign terrorist group that has divided Iraqi society. Inspired by successes in the Anbar province, other provinces such as Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, mobilized against the ISI, who by then were on the run in Anbar.

Does Iran want to be a suicide terrorist nation?

From James Taranto's The Best of the Web in today's Wall Street Journal Online:

London's Independent, meanwhile, has this report on Iran's nuclear program:

"Another senior Iranian official said that with almost 3,000 centrifuges now running at Natanz, 'we have at the moment enough centrifuges to go to a bomb.' But the official added that Iran was barred by its own security and defence doctrine, by parliament, and by a religious fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader, from building a bomb. The official added that if Iran produced a single bomb 'what is it good for? If we attack Israeli with one bomb, America would attack us with thousands of bombs. It's suicide.'"

Why are we not reassured by a fundamentalist Muslim regime's promises not to build a bomb and use it to commit suicide?

Terrorism and Bin Laden falling in popularity

Who woulda thunk? The Financial Times reports:

Of the 16 majority Muslim countries included in the survey, 15 have shown waning enthusiasm for terrorism in general and suicide terrorism in particular, it says.

The most striking declines are in Lebanon, where in 2007 34 per cent of people say suicide bombings are justified compared with 74 per cent in 2002. There has been a similar decline in Pakistan from 33 per cent to 9 per cent and in Jordan from 43 to 23 per cent. Only among Palestinians, where 70 per cent say suicide attacks are sometimes or often justified, do a majority continue to support it.

The survey found a similar trend when it asked Muslims whether they had confidence in Osama bin Laden. Almost everywhere there has been a sharp decline in affirmative responses, with Jordan showing the biggest fall (from 56 per cent to 20 per cent). In Turkey, support has dropped from 15 per cent to five per cent since 2002.

"What is striking about these numbers is that support for terrorism has fallen by most in those countries that have experienced significant levels of domestic terrorism in the last few years – Pakistan and Lebanon being obvious examples,” says Andrew Kohut, president of Pew Global Attitudes.

No permament U.S. military bases in Iraq

It's official. The New York Times reports:

By a vote of 399 to 24, the House adopted a resolution that would limit federal spending intended “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq or to exercise United States economic control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Democrats said the measure, the latest in a series of politically tinged war votes, was needed to make it clear that America had no plan for a permanent military presence in Iraq — a fear they said was fueling some attacks on American troops and building the insurgent resistance.

Not that there were plans for permanent bases in the making, as the Times goes on to acknowledge:

House Republicans offered little resistance, saying the plan essentially reflected current law and Bush administration policy. But they criticized Democrats for what they said was meaningless legislation since the administration had not called for permanent bases.

“The bill brought to the floor by the majority today represents yet another political stunt, and an intellectually dishonest one at that, because the United States has never proposed establishing a permanent base in Iraq or anywhere else,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader.

But still, sometimes such theatre is necessary. Republicans might have known this was the case. I'm not sure most Americans did. And I'm certain most people in Iraq, the neighboring states, and many scholars who cover the region didn't.

Anyway, this should help refute at least some of the endless conspiracy theories.

A Moment of Soccer Joy, for Iraqis

A Moment of Soccer Joy, for Iraqis, originally uploaded by political barbay.

And then, naturally, the insurgents had to ruin it. Two car bombings that killed at least 50 brought the victory celebrations to an end.

On Sunday the Iraqi team faces Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup finals in Indonesia.

Check out the New York Times photo coverage of the win - and the losses.

Look what the "American neocon" French president just said

CNN reports:

Sarkozy told reporters in Libya that to consider the Arab world "is not sensible enough to use civilian nuclear power" would, in the long run, risk a "war of civilizations".

"Nuclear power is the energy of the future," he said. "If we don't give the energy of the future to the countries of the southern Mediterranean, how will they develop themselves? And if they don't develop, how will we fight terrorism and fanaticism?"

And the neocons are supposed to be the Arabs' worst enemies?

This reminds me of what Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, another notorious neocon, once said. As Peter Waldman reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Up on the podium, Mr. Lewis lambasted the belief of some Mideast experts at the State Department and elsewhere that Arabs weren't ready for democracy -- that a "friendly tyrant" was the best the U.S. could hope for in Iraq. "That policy," he quipped, "is called 'pro-Arab.' "

Others, like himself, believe Iraqis are heirs to a great civilization, one fully capable, "with some guidance," of democratic rule, he said. "That policy," he added with a rueful smile, "is called 'imperialism.' "

The cost of this tri-partite handshake in Israel

Finally, after having been paid to make peace for how-many-years, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan visit Israel to promote the Arab League's new peace inititive.

As the New York Times reports:

The league’s initiative would grant Israel full recognition and normal relations with its Arab neighbors in return for withdrawing to its 1967 borders and accepting the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

It also calls for “an agreed, just solution” to the issue of Palestinian refugees. The initiative was begun by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002.

“We are extending a hand of peace on behalf of the whole region to you, and we hope that we will be able to create the momentum needed to resume fruitful and productive negotiations” among Israel, Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world, the Jordanian foreign minister, Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib, said at a news conference with Mr. Peres, The Associated Press reported.

The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said he hoped Israel would respond positively to the proposal.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel. They have served as an official diplomatic bridge between Israel and the other Arab nations.

Israel was cool to the Arab initiative when it was first put forth in 2002, but more recently it has yielded to pressure from the United States to discuss the plan. The United States, in turn, was responding to pressure from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Let's hope all this works out because here's is how much the U.S. has spent on this Middle East peace business so far, not even counting the War in Iraq:

Israel: $94 billion
Eypgt: 61
Jordan: 9

Total $164 billion (and that's just up through 2005)

Source: The Greenbook

So what kind of moral figure is running the Taliban's insurgency now?

Recall that on May 12, the Taliban lost their axe-murdering genocidal-maniacal commander, Mullah Dadullah. Now according to The Jamestown Foundation's analyst, Waliullah Rahmani, the person in charge of the Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan is none other than Mansoor Dadullah, the deceased's half-brother.

So when did Mansoor enter the picture? Well, after he was released by the Afghan government in the deal carved out with the Italians to win the release of journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo.

Oddly enough, a "well informed" source, Waheed Mujda, told The Jamestown Foundation that Mansoor wasn't the Taliban leader Mullah Omar's ideal candidate.

According to Mujda, Mullah Omar wasn't exactly thrilled about Mansoor because he apparently opposes the overuse of beheadings and executions. Given the familial relationship, he felt Mansoor would be just as ruthless.

But as Mujda went on to tell The Foundation, apparently the OBL crew's view of his qualities trumped any hesitation on the part of the Commander of the Faithful. As Mujda put it: "Al-Qaeda leaders think that Mansoor has his brother's qualities and therefore should be supported."

While Mujda said he didn't think Mansoor was, in fact, as ruthless as the brother was, no less than Mansoor himself went on record (Al-Jazeera) to state that rest assured, he would indeed continue with his brother's tactics. True to his word, suicide bombings and executions have continued apace in Afghanistan.

Now I wonder when the Commander of the Faithful will no longer be able to live with himself for protecting these monsters at his own peoples' peril. And when will the Italian government issue their final report about the ultimate cost of their hostage release? Now I guess they'll have to wait until Mansoor is taken out of action for the final numbers.

On the AKP victory in Turkey

Photo by Traces in the Sand

The National Review, a conservative American publication for those of you who don't know it, says the outcome of Sunday's election in Turkey seems to be on balance 'delightful' news. The editors write:

The AKP’s victory was also deserved. The economy has performed well after years of instability; as a government the AKP carried out a series of sensible reforms; and as a party the AKP championed the interests of a class of provincial (and often Muslim) entrepreneurs who felt excluded from political life. Its victory thus confirms the “broadening” of Turkish democracy that has been gradually happening outside the Kemalist establishment since the death of Turgut Ozal. . .

Some observers, including some National Review Online friends and contributors, fear that Erdogan is mounting a silent coup by quietly appointing Islamists to key legal, educational, and military positions. We don’t dismiss their fears as absurd. But when an Islamic conservative party wins almost half of the popular vote, it is hard to argue that its supporters should be excluded from other branches of government. And the evidence that Erdogan has moved the AKP away from Islamism towards a Muslim version of social conservatism — notably his push for Turkish membership in the European Union — is rather stronger than signs of creeping Islamism. . .

It will need to be carefully managed and skeptically watched to ensure that the legitimate claims of secularism are protected. If it succeeds, however, it would be a useful demonstration to the entire Muslim world that democracy and Islam are not such odd bedfellows.

Now break time from lesser jihad

Surf's up in Yemen!

More great fashion - and again from Saudi Arabia

Uploaded on September 18, 2006 by xarag

Too bad the black abaya became the official outer garment of Saudi women. I wonder what the world would be like now had these traditional outfits been made the standard.

More great kid style

Asir Girl Saudi KSA, originally uploaded by Mr Saudi.

This time from Saudi Arabia of all places.

Areas of concern in Pakistan

Below is the map of the areas in Pakistan that are supposed to be under the control of the Taliban now - and where Bin Laden et al may be hiding.



And below are the persons of concern in Pakistan - that is if you are the Taliban.

The little girls pictured are persons of concern to the Taliban because girls' education is un-Islamic according to their interpretation of things, and thus, girls who go to school should be eliminated.

But given that girls schools are still operating - and well attended - in spite of the Taliban suggests to me that the locals might be very helpful should there be an solid opportunity to get rid of them.

Uploaded on December 21, 2006 by tj.devine

And look, not only are there girls' schools operating in the area, but co-ed schools too. The pictures above and below were both taken in Balakot.

Uploaded on December 21, 2006 by tj.devine

And not only does there seem to be a pervasive rationality in this region - there's even terrific style. The girl's lace chunni couldn't be cuter - and check out the boy wearing the leopard coat. And what about that backpack in the front row? Is whoever it belongs to carrying it by choice or necessity? I'd love to know what these kids want to be when they grow up.

Evaluating the National Intelligence Estimate: Al Qaeda's stronger position

The London Times reports from Baghdad:

Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood.

As the Times continues:

“People in al-Qaeda come to us and give us information,” said Lieutenant Scott Flanigan, as he drove past a line of fruit and vegetable stalls near a shabby shopping street in Doura, where people were buying bread and other groceries.

The informants were not seeking an amnesty for crimes that they had committed. “They just do not want to be killed,” Lieutenant Flanigan said.

Makes sense to me that such an organization would be losing popular support. But wait, didn't the CIA just come out with a report saying Al Qaeda is supposed to be more popular now?

See posts below.

The 9/11 Generation versus the Baby Boomers

Dean Barnett writes in The Weekly Standard:

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.

Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers--those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation--took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers' response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.

Now here is some of what Barnett says about the 9/11 generation. Specifically those who responded to the terror attacks by enlisting in the U.S. military:

Some of these men have Ivy League degrees; all of them are talented and intelligent individuals who--contrary to John Kerry's infamous "botched joke" ("Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq")--could have chosen to do anything with their lives. Having signed up, they have either gone to Iraq or look forward to doing so.

One National Guardsman, Sergeant Joseph Moseley, 28, went to Iraq only to have part of his leg leg muscle blown away - an injury, Barnett says, that will probably plague him forever:

Yet when asked about his time in Iraq, Moseley speaks with evident pride. He says the fact that he took the brunt of the IED's blow means he did his job. None of the men serving under him was seriously injured. When asked how he would feel about being characterized as a victim, Sergeant Moseley bristles. "I'm not a victim," he says. "It's insulting. That's what we signed up for. I knew what I was doing."

As Barnett continues:

Tom Cotton is another soldier who knew what he was doing. When 9/11 occurred, Cotton was in his third year at Harvard Law School. Like most Americans, he was "shocked, saddened, and angered." Like many on that day, he made a promise to serve his country.

And Cotton meant it. After fulfilling the commitments he had already made, including clerking for a federal judge and going to work for a large Washington law firm, Cotton enlisted in the Army. He jokes that doing so came with a healthy six-figure pay cut. . .

According to Barnett the above two accounts weren't unique either:

Regardless of their backgrounds, the soldiers I spoke with had a similar matter-of-fact style. Not only did all of them bristle at the notion of being labeled victims, they bristled at the idea of being labeled heroes. To a man, they were doing what they saw as their duty. Their self-assessments lacked the sense of superiority that politicians of a certain age who once served in the military often display. . .

In England last week, I talked to an officer in the Royal Navy who had just received his Ph.D. He was saying he thought the larger war would last 20-30 years; I've always thought a generation--mine in particular. Our highest calling: To defend our way of life and Western Civilization; fight for the freedom of others; protect our friends, family, and country; and give hope to a people long without it.

As Barnett concludes:

It is surely a measure of how far we've come as a society from the dark days of the 1960s that things like military service and duty and sacrifice are now celebrated. Just because Washington and Hollywood haven't noticed this generational shift doesn't mean it hasn't occurred. It has, and it's seismic.

For some reason this story made me recall one about a young North Korean that was published in the International Herald Tribune recently.

Perhaps I made this connection because I remember hearing about Baby Boomers who, while they railing against U.S. policies, were at the same time singing the praises of dictators like Kim il-sung, the father of this Leninist-Marxist, er, paradise.

Anyway, this young North Korean, Shin, actually lived in this utopia Baby Boomers were only imagining. He grew up in a prison camp:

"I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year," Shin said. "I never saw my whole family together. I don't think I saw my brother more than a few times."

There were up to 1,000 children but no textbooks in the school at Valley No. 2, the part of the camp where Shin lived. Pupils were taught to read and write, and to add and subtract, but little more. After school, children worked in the fields or mines. In most of North Korea, villages are decorated with Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong Il. Valley No. 2 had only one slogan carved into a wooden plaque: "Everyone obey the regulations!"

Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth. They scavenged whatever else they could find: cucumbers and potatoes from the fields, frogs, mice, dragonflies and locusts. Shin said he once ate corn kernels he found in cow droppings. When a teacher found a girl had hidden wheat grains in her pocket, he beat her on the head with a stick. She died the next day.

As the Tribune continues:

Shin's life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.

After having to see his mother and brother shot right in front of him, Shin eventually managed to escape to South Korea.

But unfortunately, he didn't find paradise there either, as the Tribune reports:

Now in Seoul, [Shin] said he sometimes finds life "more burdensome than the hardest labor in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told." His limited vocabulary has caused him to fail twice the written driver's license test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.

"However I try, I can't forgive her," he said. "She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn't she think what would happen to us?"

Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, "without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea."

Well, apparently Iraqis aren't the only ones in the position of recalling life under a dictatorship as relatively paradise-like.

I mean isn't this what the Baby Boomers keep saying too? Isn't this the sentiment behind, say, Michael Moore's portrayal of Iraq under Saddam as a place where all the children flew kites, the women never had to cover, and all the pretty girls could date the president's sons without any interference from religious fanatics?

Should the U.S. give up on Musharraf?

Here's the New York Times' analysis of the situation:

...as a National Intelligence Estimate released last week makes clear, the Bush White House finds itself in a similar predicament. Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the wild west tribal areas of Pakistan. It is stronger than at any time in years, and it is actively plotting new attacks.

Putting aside for the moment that this NIE is a CIA work product and therefore may not be reliable (see post below), assume for a moment things are as it says they are in Pakistan. This poses the obvious question: is the General cum President Pervez Musharraf part of the problem or part of the solution?

Here is what The Times says:

[E]vents in Pakistan in recent weeks have at last presented the opportunity for a serious campaign against Islamic radicals in Pakistan, if it’s not already too late. The breakdown of a cease-fire between elders in the tribal lands of Pakistan and the government of President Pervez Musharraf, combined with the determination that General Musharraf showed earlier this month when he ordered an assault on the Red Mosque complex in Islamabad, may have finally given President Bush something his predecessor never had: a partner who may at long last be persuaded to go after an entrenched terrorist haven.

As the Times goes on to report, "Pakistan experts" seem to think that the upcoming presidential elections may be just the "impetus for action" Musharraf needs to muster up the courage to take control of these historically tribal lands. If he succeeds, this would be the first time these areas would fall under control of Islamabad.

But the challenges General Musharraf faces are not trivial, the Times goes on to suggest:

[Pakistan's army is] designed, trained and equipped to fight India in Kashmir and deter New Dehli with nuclear weapons. That requires a dramatically different kind of strategy from what is needed in the tribal areas, whose leaders do not consider themselves part of Pakistan.

As far as what the U.S.'s immediate options are - covert action, airstrikes, or a massive ground invasion - they all seem lousy. As the Times concludes:

Yet, when asked how the United States would respond if Al Qaeda were to plot a successful attack on the United States from the tribal areas, the answer from one intelligence officials was direct: “We’d go in and flatten it.”

Before you bother reading the latest NIE

Or any National Intelligence Estimate produced by the CIA, read this book for background on the agency that produces these reports.


Or, at least today's New York Times review. Here is how the review opens:

America’s foes and rivals have long overrated the Central Intelligence Agency. When Henry Kissinger traveled to China in 1971, Prime Minister Chou En-lai asked about C.I.A. subversion. Kissinger told Chou that he “vastly overestimates the competence of the C.I.A.” Chou persisted that “whenever something happens in the world they are always thought of.” Kissinger acknowledged, “That is true, and it flatters them, but they don’t deserve it.”

A few years later, in 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Tehran. They captured a C.I.A. case officer named William Daugherty and accused him of running the agency’s entire Middle Eastern spy network while plotting to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini. Daugherty, who had been in the C.I.A. for only nine months, tried to explain that he didn’t even speak the native tongue, Persian. The Iranians seemed offended that the Americans would send such an inexperienced spy. It was “beyond insult,” Daugherty later recalled, “for that officer not to speak the language or know the customs, culture and history of their country.”

The C.I.A. never did have much luck operating inside Communist China, and it failed to predict the Iranian revolution of 1979. “We were just plain asleep,” said the former C.I.A. director Adm. Stansfield Turner. The agency also did not foresee the explosion of an atom bomb by the Soviet Union in 1949, the invasion of South Korea in 1950, the popular uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the explosion of an atom bomb by India in 1998 — the list goes on and on, culminating in the agency’s wrong call on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in 2002-3.

Tim Weiner’s engrossing, comprehensive “Legacy of Ashes” is a litany of failure, from the C.I.A.’s early days, when hundreds of agents were dropped behind the Iron Curtain to be killed or doubled (almost without exception), to more recent humiliations, like George Tenet’s now infamous “slam dunk” line. Over the years, the agency threw around a lot of money and adopted a certain swagger. “We went all over the world and we did what we wanted,” said Al Ulmer, the C.I.A.’s Far East division chief in the 1950s. “God, we had fun.” But even their successes turned out to be failures. In 1963, the C.I.A. backed a coup to install the Baath Party in Iraq. “We came to power on a C.I.A. train,” said Ali Saleh Saadi, the Baath Party interior minister. One of the train’s passengers, Weiner notes, was a young assassin named Saddam Hussein. Weiner quotes Donald Gregg, a former C.I.A. station chief in South Korea, later the national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush: “The record in Europe was bad. The record in Asia was bad. The agency had a terrible record in its early days — a great reputation and a terrible record.”

And here is how the review closes:

Weiner is not the first reporter to see that the C.I.A.’s golden era was an illusion. After the 1975 Church Committee hearings exposed the agency as “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” various authors began to deconstruct the myth of the C.I.A., most notably Thomas Powers in “The Man Who Kept the Secrets.” But by using tens of thousands of declassified documents and on-the-record recollections of dozens of chagrined spymasters, Weiner paints what may be the most disturbing picture yet of C.I.A. ineptitude. After following along Weiner’s march of folly, readers may wonder: Is an open democracy capable of building and sustaining an effective secret intelligence service? Maybe not. But with Islamic terrorists vowing to set off a nuclear device in an American city, there isn’t much choice but to keep on trying.

The Times reviewer, incidentally, was Evan Thomas, himself an author of a book on the CIA: "The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA."

Apparently the Very Best weren't good enough after all. But the myth was certainly entertaining - unless of course you were sent into one of those battlefronts the CIA was only pretending to understand.

Fatah militants in the West Bank announce ceasefire

The New York Times reports:

Scores of West Bank Palestinian militants taken off Israel’s wanted list as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas are handing in weapons and signing pledges to cease violence against Israel, saying they want to give Mr. Abbas a chance to consolidate his rule here. . .

“Everything must come to an end,” said Mahdi Maraka, an Aksa Brigades leader from Al Ein refugee camp here in Nablus, a traditional hotbed of Fatah militancy in the northern West Bank. “There are two tracks, the political and the military. Now is the time for the political stage.”

Nasr Kharaz, 31, an armed militant and spokesman for the Brigades in the West Bank, said, “The military wing of Fatah has stopped armed resistance at this stage.”

Let's hope this really does signal the beginning of a new era. As one Aksa fighter, Khalil Abayat, 45, summed up the general sentiment (including that of this armchair spectator to this conflict): “Enough. I’m exhausted. I just want to rest.”

"The REAL IRANIANS"

I'm IRANIAN, originally uploaded by HORIZON.

Be sure to check out the rest of Horizon's series of photos of "the REAL IRANIANS" - or as he writes, "the ones who LOVE OTHERS and HATE NOBODY."

What if it's not all about Greater Power after all?

Richard Bulliet channels what should be a major concern sweeping across the Middle East, not to mention the world. From Agence Global via the Pacific Free Press:

For over a century, the wise heads who populate every Middle Eastern teahouse, university podium, and diplomatic reception have agreed on one simple truth: foreign agents acting in the interest of imperialist powers -- today it’s the United States -- dictate every political event from Casablanca to Islamabad. Ayatollah Khomeini was an American puppet. So was Saddam Hussein. Osama bin Laden? A tool of the CIA, the same CIA that duped poor old Saddam into invading Kuwait. The Saud family are tools of the Bush family. Or vice versa. Needless to add, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were staged by Israelis, or perhaps by a rogue element within America’s military-industrial complex.

However nutty these conspiracy theories seem, they offer something that “the roadmap,” “democratization,” and “stand the Iraqis up so we can stand down” all lack: assurance that somehow, somewhere everything makes sense. That the rattles and grinding noises that sound like an imminent breakdown of the engine of politics are actually the normal vibrations of an invisible and omnipotent imperialist machine.

But trust in the all-controlling imperialist machine is fast running out. To the bewilderment of local pundits, suspicion is mounting that American actions in the region actually are as incompetent as they appear to be. Informants who once volunteered, with a wink and a nod, their deep “inside knowledge” of CIA activities and American strategic designs now anxiously ask: “What in the world is the Bush administration up to?” Maybe it's not a conspiracy. Maybe there is no master plan.

I wonder if the next big question on the regional agenda might not be and what if there's no master plan at all? What would happen if the birthplace of monotheism suddenly started challenging all of its basic assumptions?

If that seems, well, like a capital crime to you, pause for a moment and cogitate on the implications of the issues raised in the latest issue of the Middle East Quarterly: "Palestinians, Jebusites, and Evangelicals."

In this article, a master's in Christian studies, David Wenkel, investigates the Palestinians' claim that they have a historical claim to Jerusalem that trumps the Jews'.

I know that after I read this piece, all I could think was monotheism - and the region that gave birth to it - really are doomed if this is what it's all about in the end.

And what next? That we should all be sent back to where our DNA says we come from?

Hey, after you. Be sure to call when you get there.

Former member of British Hizb ut-Tahrir speaks

More on the presidential campaign in Pakistan

Just as I suspected, all this violence in Pakistan is, well, serving some people's political ends. As the Financial Times reports:

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's US-backed military ruler, faced calls to resign yesterday after attacks by Islamist militants claimed at least 54 more lives, bringing the death toll since Saturday to 184.

Pakistan has been torn by extremist violence since Gen Musharraf ordered commandos to storm a mosque in Islamabad on July 10, a move that led to the death of at least 75 Islamists and promises of revenge from al-Qaeda and militant groups.

Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for the Pakistan People's party, said: "The military government has failed to contain militancy and should resign to pave the way for a democratically-elected government that has the consent of the people behind it."

As a leading Pakistani pundit opined:

"We are getting increasingly sucked in to the fallout from the Afghan war," said Ayaz Amir, a leading Pakistani political commentator. "The solution lies in restoring full civilian rule. Only then will we be able to unite Pakistanis for fighting for this cause."

In other words, this is presidential campaigning, Pakistani style.

If you think American presidential campaigns are nasty...

In Pakistan, they're downright bloody. From the South Asian news service, the ANI:

The opposition Pakistan Peoples Party has blamed former military ruler General Zia ul Haq's remnants for the Islamist attack that took at least 17 lives in Islamabad on Tuesday.

'The mastermind behind the blasts and suicide attacks wants to create an impression across the world that an Islamist movement runs in Pakistan,' former federal ministers Khursheed Shah, Yousuf Talpur and Professor N D Khan and former Senator Taj Haider said in a joint statement.

Almost three hundred people have been killed in the past several weeks. While Mssrs. Shah, Talpur, and Haider's theory is not the only one out there, the wave of killings does seem to have something to do with stakeholders in the upcoming presidential elections.

The head of the PPP, incidentally, is Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who now lives in exile and is by all accounts keen to return - if she gets to run things.

Lebanon's senior Shiite cleric on civil war and Al Qaeda in Lebanon

And on whether Shiites have been creating chaos in the region lately. From The (Beirut) Daily Star:

Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said Thursday that a civil war is not likely to erupt in Lebanon. "Neither the United States nor other international forces want a civil war to happen in Lebanon because it will complicate things even more in the region," Fadlallah told As-Safir newspaper in an interview published Thursday.

Hmmm, I wonder why he remains conspicuously silent on whether the Lebanese are willing to go to war with themselves...Is this because even someone in his position can't predict what the militias will do? (Note that he has always resisted being called the spiritual leader of Hizbullah though the leadership of Hizbullah certainly looks to him for guidance.) Or is he just offering up the usual excuse - that all problems in the region can be attributed to meddlesome outsiders?

Anyway, as the Star report continued:

Asked whether the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization had any significant presence or influence in Lebanon, Fadlallah replied that they do. "However," he added, "they cannot be as harmful as they are in Afghanistan or Iraq for their area of operations is a lot more restrained."

...Fadllalah also defended Shiites in the Middle East. "They have not played a negative role in the Arab world despite the marginalization and oppression they are subject to ... and in Lebanon they are among the keenest sects to preserve security," Fadlallah said.

And some more words of encouragement from the cleric:

He said Shiites are open to cooperation with other sects to make Lebanon a "sovereign, free and independent, country."

Fadlallah said Hizbullah's arms were never used against the Lebanese, "and they will surrender their weapons as soon as we have a strong state capable of protecting its citizens."

"Shiites do no want Iran or Syria to rule over Lebanon ... they want to be equal with citizens from other sects, and any other description is not acceptable," he added.

Well, let's just hope someone other than me gets this important message.

Taliban: The world's most incompetent suicide bombers?

I'm sure you've heard the alarming statistics. As Brian Glyn Williams, an Islamic historian at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, writes in this month's Terrorism Monitor:

Suicide bombing statistics from Afghanistan alarmingly demonstrate that, if the current trend continues, 2007 will surpass last year in the number of overall attacks. While there were 47 bombings by mid-June 2006, there have been approximately 57 during the same period this year. . .

But as he goes on to say:

An analysis of the attacks carried out in the last two years reveals a curious fact. In 43% of the bombings conducted last year and in 26 of the 57 bombings traced in this study up to June 15, the only death caused by the bombing was that of the bomber himself. Astoundingly, approximately 90 suicide bombers in this two year period succeeded in killing only themselves. This number exceeds 100 when you factor in those who succeeded in killing only one person in addition to themselves. There was one period in the spring of 2006 (February 20 to June 21) when a stunning 26 of the 36 suicide bombers in Afghanistan (72%) only killed themselves. This puts the kill average for Afghan suicide bombers far below that of suicide bombers in other theaters of action in the area (Israel, Chechnya, Iraq and the Kurdish areas of Turkey).

Now why would this be? After discounting theories that this is because as Pashtuns, the Taliban fedayeen have some higher moral standard than your average suicide bomber, Willams reports:

Members of the Afghan police, government and National Directorate of Security (NDS) who were interviewed about this trend during the months of April and May 2007 offered a surprisingly unanimous explanation for the Taliban bombers' poor showing [2]. The cause for the Afghan suicide bombers' underwhelming performance, they claimed, lay in the ineptitude of the people the Taliban were recruiting as fedayeen (suicide) bombers. Afghan officials continually told stories of lower class people who had been seduced, bribed, tricked, manipulated or coerced into blowing themselves up as "weapons of God" or "Mullah Omar's missiles." Afghan NDS officials also spoke of apprehended bombers who were deranged, retarded, mentally unstable or on drugs.

Another factor that may explain the Taliban bombers incompetence is that they are notorious for recruiting children for these deadly missions.

In one case, a powerful tribal chieftain in Khost province who discovered that his son had been recruited by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani for a "martyrdom operation" managed to get him back (after threatening to attack the Taliban with his tribe); unfortunately, this is an exception, as is the recent case of a captured 14 year-old suicide bomber who was personally pardoned by President Hamid Karzai, who announced, "Today we are facing a hard fact, that is a Muslim child was sent to madrassa to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him toward suicide and prepared him to die and kill." ...

As disturbing as this video is, it pales in comparison to the discovery Afghan security officials recently made in eastern Afghanistan. In an incident that caused tears of fury among local villagers, a six year-old street urchin approached an Afghan security checkpoint and claimed that he had been cornered by the Taliban and fitted with a suicide bomber vest. They had told him to walk up to a U.S. patrol and press a button on the vest that would "spray flowers" (Daily Mail, June 26). Fortunately, the quick thinking boy instead asked for help, and the suicide bomb vest was subsequently removed.

And yet the unnamed CIA officials who contributed to the recent National Intelligence Estimate say the Taliban and it's partner in crime, Al Qaeda, are stronger than ever. Frankly, I don't buy it.

Scenes from Al Qaeda's alleged safe haven in Pakistan

Cute kids.

Uploaded on June 5, 2007 by (s@jj@d)~`~DiL~AwAiZ~`~

Nice pets.

Uploaded on September 16, 2006 by (s@jj@d)~`~DiL~AwAiZ~`~

Overall, not a bad spot, I have to say. Check out the photos in earlier posts too.

Is this where Bin Laden is hiding?

Doesn't look like it would be such a hardship assignment to check this area out.

On going towards Mahodand Lake Uploaded on 28 December 2005 by Heartkins

Not a bad place to take refuge

This is what part of the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan, alleged to one of Al Qaeda's post-Tora Bora sanctuaries looks like.

Uploaded on December 26, 2005 by Heartkins

And now for my favorite story of the day....

Even better than yesterday's item about the 52-year-old five-times-married Briton becoming Bin Laden's 27-year-old son's second wife.

From the New York Times:

For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi issued incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official in May that Mr. Baghdadi had been killed, he appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, the chief United States military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, provided a new explanation for Mr. Baghdadi’s ability to escape attack: he never existed.

General Bergner told reporters that a senior Iraqi insurgent captured this month said that the elusive Mr. Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose declarations on audiotape were read by a man named Abu Abdullah al-Naima.

General Bergner said the ruse was devised by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Although the group is mostly Iraqi, much of its leadership is foreign, and Mr. Masri was reportedly trying to mask the outsiders’ dominant role.

As the Times report continues:

General Bergner said that Mr. Masri’s ploy was to invent Mr. Baghdadi, a figure whose very name was meant to establish an Iraqi pedigree, install him as the head of a front organization called the Islamic State of Iraq, and then arrange for Mr. Masri to swear allegiance to him.

Adding to the deception, he said, the deputy leader in Osama bin Laden’s group Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, publicly supported Mr. Baghdadi in video and Internet statements.

The captured insurgent who was said to have alerted the Americans was identified as Khalid Abdul Fatah Daoud Mahmud al-Mashadani, who was said to have been detained by American forces in Mosul on July 4.

According to General Bergner, Mr. Mashadani is the most senior Iraqi operative in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. According to some reports, he served in Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard and later became an insurgent with the group Ansar Al Sunna. About two and a half years ago, Mr. Mashadani joined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, where he served as the Media Emir, or publicity director, the general said.

General Bergner said that Mr. Mashadani was also an intermediary between Mr. Masri in Iraq and Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, whom the Bush administration says are remotely supporting and guiding Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The Times, being the fair and balanced speaker of truth to power it is, suggests that the real deception here may well be the Bush administration's:

An important part of the American strategy against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been to drive wedges between the group, other insurgent groups and the Sunni population, and General Bergner’s briefing continued that theme.

This is, of course, why the Times is now calling Al Qaeda in Iraq Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Does this mean, as James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal suggests, that we should also start referring to the Times as the New Amsterdam Times?

On the latest National Intelligence Estimate...

Since it says nothing new or intelligent as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to pass on the opportunity to comment about it here.

I do have one question: How much did this rehash cost?

There better be something in the still classified part that could justify this expense, but...I doubt it.

The problem in Pakistan is not the madrasahs

According to many experts.

As Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group told RFE/RL:

"It is the secular education that needs to be improved. If people in Pakistan are given a choice, they will send their children to the better-run schools -- no matter what their religious convictions are. Wealthy and well-educated Pakistanis do not go to madrasahs. They go to a whole host of other schools, but certainly not madrasahs. What is needed is a state system that provides opportunities for far more people than it currently does."

Of course that's not to deny, as Templer goes on to note:

"There are a small number of very extreme madrasahs like the Red Mosque that need to be closed down," Templer says. "These are institutes that are fostering sectarian violence. They've caused thousands of deaths in the past decades. They are training militants. They are preaching hatred. They are a source of dangerous publications, tape recordings, preachings. These need to be closed down. I don't think any modern state could tolerate essentially vigilante armies in its own territory operating in this way. And I don't think these madrasahs are 'reformable' as such. They need to be closed down."

But as as the RFE/RL continued:

"We can see how the madrasahs have responded to the [Red Mosque] crisis," [Rasul Baksh] Rais[, a newspaper columnist and political scientist] says. "The federation of religious institutions has cut the two madrasahs [at the Red Mosque complex] from their [accreditation] list. They cut them off the list and they did not give them any legitimacy or any recognition. We don't see any uprisings at any major madrasahs throughout the country.

Forget all the polls on Muslims who claim they want shariah

Because here is the bottom line. From the Financial Times:

Two Dubai institutions are teaming up to launch Waqf Trust Services, the first firm exclusively to offer Shariah-compliant trust services.

The Dubai International Financial Centre’s investment arm and Dubai Islamic Bank have joined forces to meet demand in the region for financial succession planning and other trust-related services that follow Islamic guidelines.

So how many Muslims are really willing to put their money where their mouths are even if this means that they might have to choose the Islamic over the profitable?

According to Standard & Poor's only about 20 per cent of investors in the Gulf and Muslim Asia would be willing to do this.

I suspect these numbers are high. If these figures were correct, why hasn't this type of vehicle been offered before?

Is this what all second-term presidents do at the end of their tenure?

Try to bring about Middle East peace? President Clinton did it. As the New York Times reports, President Bush seems to be headed that way too:

President Bush announced an initiative on Monday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining months to make a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Bush called for a regional peace conference.... He exhorted Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and to show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist” and “stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media.”

He also urged them to send cabinet-level visitors to Israel, a request directed implicitly at America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which has refused to do so...

He even took a rare jab at Israel, using the word “occupation” to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

As the Times points out, this is a "pivotal shift" in the Bush administration's previous policy:

For several years, the Bush administration has eschewed direct engagement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and has refused to press Israel to dismantle settlements or to sit down at the table with Palestinian counterparts to discuss a future Palestinian state.

But now the United States is mired in Iraq and looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies that have pushed for America to re-engage in Middle East peace talks. Administration officials also are hoping to capitalize on growing anti-Hamas sentiment among leaders in Egypt and Jordan. Both of those countries have diplomatic relations with Israel; the big question remains whether Saudi Arabia, which does not, will embrace the administration’s approach

Maybe I'm wrong that this focus on Middle East peace is limited to second-term presidents. As the Times recalls:

The most notable previous Middle East peace conference was a regional meeting held in Madrid in 1991 under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union and the United States during the administration of the first President Bush.

Anyway, let's hope this second Bush administration's late-term peace processing doesn't just lead to more violence - the end result of previous administrations' efforts.

How did I miss this story?

Now usually celebrity gossip doesn't interest me (much). That said, this item reported by the London Times already a week ago sure was fascinating:

A British woman has married a son of Osama bin Laden after a holiday romance and is to apply for a visa so that he can visit Britain, The Times has learnt.

Jane Felix-Browne, a 51-year-old grandmother and parish councillor from Cheshire, has until now kept her marriage to Omar Ossama bin Laden, 27, secret from everyone apart from her immediate family and close friends. But she has now agreed to speak about her relationship with bin Laden’s fourth eldest son.

The couple reportedly met when the already five-times married Mrs Felix-Browne, was in Egypt seeking treatment for her multiple sclerosis. (Note that this is how desperate a patient in national health system must be.)

She says he fell in love with her at first sight, when he saw her riding a horse at the Great Pyramid. (And I thought the pyramids were to be disdained by Salafis, being the pre-Islamic monuments they are.)

This, incidentally, is her second marriage to a Saudi man. She married her first when she was 19.

As the Times report continues:

Omar bin Laden left Saudi Arabia as a child when his father was expelled for his extremist beliefs, his wife said. Living in exile in Sudan and then Afghanistan, he saw at first hand the creation of al-Qaeda and its techniques. Mrs Felix-Browne said: “I never had any problem with his past. Omar did not do anything wrong. He was a child when he was in Afghanistan.”

She said that her husband left Afghanistan before the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. However, some reports claim that he split from his father only after the attack on New York and an argument about tactics.

Mrs Felix-Browne insisted: “He last saw his father in 2000 when they were both in Afghanistan. He left his father because he did not feel it was right to fight or to be in an army. Omar was training to be a soldier and he was only 19.

“He told me he has had no contact with his father since the day he left him. He misses his father. Omar doesn’t know if it was his father who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t think we will ever know.”

I wonder if that last remark means that Omar doesn't think his father was behind the attacks. Does that mean Omar thinks his father lies and tries to steal credit then?

Anyway, as the Times story continues:

Apart from their religion the couple appear to have little in common. She has three sons and five grandchildren and is a respected parish councillor in the village of Moulton. She has had various jobs, including restoring houses and aircraft, and is a keen rider and scuba diver.

He works as a scrap metal dealer in Jedda and is one of at least 17 children fathered by bin Laden. His father’s reputation means that he has been ostracised by the wealthy and powerful bin Laden family and is under surveillance by the security services in Saudi Arabia.

Mrs Felix-Browne, who now uses the Islamic name Zaina Mohamad, says that she speaks to her husband for several hours every day over the internet or by telephone. During their conversations she refers to him repeatedly as “Habibi”, the Arabic for “my love”. She said: “I find it very difficult to live without him and I know he does too. But really we have the most normal life possible."

Did she really just say their life was normal? Well, perhaps by the standards of someone who has been married five times before. As the Times continues:

She was aware before her marriage that her husband already had another wife and a two-year-old child. “I haven’t seen her but I have spoken to her for about an hour on the telephone,” she said. “She is fine about it.”

I have to say, I doubt this marriage is normal even by Saudi - or Bin Laden - standards. If you want to see pictures, you have to click the link to the Times story (above).

So this really is Islamic justice?

The London Telegraph reports that the Saudis are preparing to behead a 19-year old Sri Lankan maid:

According to the Saudi authorities, Rizana Nafeek admitted strangling the four-month-old boy while feeding him with a bottle.

But Nafeek, whose job was not meant to include child care, has denied making any such admission. She claims the child had begun to choke before losing consciousness in spite of her desperate efforts to clear his airway.

Unless the Saudis reverse the courts decision, or the parents of the victim pardon the girl, Nafeek, as the Telegraph writes, "will have her head cut off by an executioner wielding a sword in front of a crowd of onlookers."

International human rights monitors are, not surprisingly, aghast that this girl is about to be executed. Not only was she just 17 at the time of the alleged crime, but she also didn't have a lawyer to defend her at her trial, and then there is the context. Saudi authorities are notorious for extracting confessions of guilt using torture. (And somehow I suspect the Saudis use harsher techniques than only providing "cheap, unbranded, unscented soap," and soccer balls that "hardly bounce.")

Recently, Saudi Arabia has permitted human rights into the kingdom.

Here is what one such locally-grown advocate had to say about the girl's predicament: "The workers commit big crimes against the Saudis," Suhaila Hammad of Saudi's Society for Human Rights was reported as saying. "Allah, our creator, knows what's good for his people," she said.

"Should we just think of and preserve the rights of the murderer and not think of the rights of others?" she wondered aloud.

So apparently this is Islamic justice - at least Saudi style. No wonder people shudder when they hear that Muslims in places like Britain want to establish sharia or Islamic law in the West.