Progress in Anbar? Yes, but the mission is not yet accomplished

Stars and Stripes interviewed Col. Sean B. MacFarland, a brigade commander who just returned to Germany after a 14-month tour in Iraq, most of which was spent in Ramadi, the largest city in the restive Sunni province of Anbar. As MacFarland told the Stars and Stripes, Al Qaeda had selected Ramadi to be the capital of "Al Qaedastan."

But thanks to the help of the local shieks, in particular one Sheikh Abdul Sattar, the mostly Sunni Arabs in Ramadi turned against the insurgents.

“One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping ... put them back together,” MacFarland is reported as saying. “The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they’re still living in poverty.”

The New York Times reported about this tribal alliance against Al Qaeda in September, saying:

Twenty-five of about 31 tribes in Anbar, a vast, mostly desert region that stretches westward from Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have united against insurgents and gangs that are “killing people for no reason,” said the tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi [yes, the man Col. MacFarland was referring to as Sheikh Sattar].

“We held a meeting earlier and agreed to fight those who call themselves mujahadeen,” Sheikh Sattar told the Times. “We believe that there is a conspiracy against our Iraqi people. Those terrorists claimed that they are fighters working on liberating Iraq, but they turned out to be killers. Now all the people are fed up and have turned against them."...

Sheikh Sattar estimated that the alliance of 25 tribes had some 30,000 armed men under its control, men who, the Sheikh said "were willing to confront and kill the insurgents and criminal gangs that he blamed for damaging tribal life in Anbar, dividing members by religious sect and driving a wave of violent crime in Ramadi."

Al Qaeda, not surprisingly, was not exactly thrilled to hear about the news of this tribal alliance. The Times quoted one Al Qaeda militant who told Reuters, “This tribal system is un-Islamic. We are proud to kill tribal leaders who are helping the Americans.”

And in spite of the progress MacFarland noticed during his stint, unfortunately, there is still an enemy that has yet to be defeated in Iraq. Just this week in fact, SITE Institute reported that the Islamic State of Iraq -the name Al Qaeda in Iraq has taken to using- claimed responsibility for three suicide bombings, two of which were targeted at the “apostate” followers of none other than Sheikh Sattar. While I'm happy to report that he survived the attacks, alas, some of those around him did not - five police officers and six civilians were reportedly killed in the blasts.

On Britain's announced reduction of forces in Iraq:

Don't just rely on the spin, check out what Prime Minister Tony Blair himself said in his remarks before Parliament. Here is an excerpt:

It is important to show the Iraqi people that we do not desire our Forces to remain any longer than they are needed; but whilst they are needed, we will be at their side...

The situation in Basra is very different from Baghdad. There is no Sunni insurgency. There is no Al Qaida base. There is little Shia on Sunni violence. The bulk of the attacks are on the MNF. It has never presented anything like the challenge of Baghdad. That said, British soldiers are under regular and often intense fire from extremist groups, notably elements of JAM...

As a result of this operation, which is now complete the Iraqi Forces now have the primary role for security in most parts of the city. It is still a difficult and sometimes dangerous place. But, many extremists have been arrested or left the city. The reported levels of murder and kidnapping are significantly down. Surveys of Basrawis, after the Operations had been conducted, show a much greater sense of security. There is reconstruction now happening in schools and health centres, around 300 projects altogether...

What all of this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be. But it does mean that the next chapter in Basra's history can be written by Iraqis.

The state of the Nato/US alliance in Italy:

In merde profondo. Or in English:

The Financial Times reports that Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday after he failed, in the words of the Times, "to persuade communists and other radical leftists in his coalition to support two cornerstones of Italian foreign and security policy. These were Mr Prodi’s determination to keep Italian troops side by side with Nato forces in Afghanistan and his decision to permit the expansion of a US military base in the north-eastern city of Vicenza."

While this would seem to be bad news for the United States (and Nato), it could be even worse news for Italy. As the New York Times' Ian Fisher reports:

[T]he government’s collapse also reflected its own inherent weaknesses, possibly signaling that Italy’s chronic political instability may be coming out of remission. In a nation that has had some 60 governments since World War II, Mr. Prodi has presided uneasily over a coalition of nine diverse parties, ranging from moderate Catholics to Communists.

Update: The Financial Times adds this perspective to the story:

Mr [Giulio] Andreotti, who was prime minister seven times and is now a senator for life, says he found petty and unacceptable the government’s insistence that its foreign policy differed from that of Mr Berlusconi.

“I would have been inclined to vote for the government, but this position of always having to reduce everything to being either for or against Berlusconi seems to me really absurd,” he adds.

How do these foreign fighters end up killing themselves in Iraq?

The Washington Post has a fascinating article today on how young Moroccans are being recruited to fight jihad in Iraq.

"The big state for al-Qaeda is Iraq," said Mohamed Darif, a political science professor and terrorism expert at Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Morocco. "Al-Qaeda has the same strategy as the United States: It wants to win in Iraq so it can transform the whole region. They are fixated on Iraq."

According to the Post's sources, Al Qaeda has focused its recruitment efforts in Morocco in a small village in a hill station in the Rif mountains called Tetouan. As the Post reports:

Designated "watchers" hang around radical mosques and other places to look for young men angry about the conflicts in places such as Iraq and the Palestinian territories. For months, the watchers try to whip up the potential volunteers' emotions further and convince them that they have a religious duty to intervene.

"The recruitment does not exclusively take place in the poorest parts of society, nor in the category of illiterates," said Benmoussa, the interior minister. Instead, he said, recruiters "target a category of people that is extremely sensitive to what they consider international injustice."

Candidates are subjected to psychological assessments from a distance to determine if they are really willing to die for the cause.

This is because these Moroccan recruits are primarily used to carry out suicide missions once they get to Iraq. As Nick Pratt, a retired Marine colonel and terrorism expert at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany told the Post, "Suicide bombings are embraced by networks affiliated with al-Qaeda because they are more lethal and generate more publicity. He said a suicide attack, on average, causes six times as many deaths and 12 times as many injuries as a conventional attack, such as a roadside bomb explosion."

Moroccan authories believe that some 50 Moroccans have been lured to fight jihad in Iraq since 2003. According to the Post's sources, "the problem is worse in other Arab countries."

The debate about the face veil

Lord Ahmed, the first Pakistani-British Muslim to become a life peer in the House of Lords, won a "Doha Debate" on Tuesday, in which he argued that Muslim women in the West should avoid wearing the face veil in the interest of the full integration of the Muslim community.

The video of the debate won't be broadcast until March 10 (check the BBC for the exact time), but yesterday's London Telegraph gives a flavor of the case the good Lord made:

"The veil is now a mark of separation, segregation and defiance against mainstream British culture.

"But there's nothing in the Koran to say that the wearing of a niqab is desirable, let alone compulsory. It's purely cultural. It's an identity thing which has been misinterpreted.

"They were supposed to be worn so that women wouldn't be harassed.

"But my argument is that women, and communities as a whole, are now being harassed because they are wearing them."

He said that the veil was a "physical barrier to integration".

The peer said that Muslims in Britain had to become more sensitive to their surroundings, in the same way as westerners walking around Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, would have to wear a head covering and long clothing before they could expect to engage with local people.

He said that he did not want to see a ban on veils, but added: "Muslims need to have a debate among ourselves about whether we need them.

"We need to re-engage as responsible British citizens and be seen once more as contributors to society rather than people who are a burden, living parallel lives," he told the paper.

I should mention perhaps (ok, I'm calling attention to this) that I was one of the people who helped Lord Ahmed prepare for this debate.

But perhaps the next debate on face veiling should be held in Pakistan, where the Times of London has just reported, a female minister was just shot dead - yes, for refusing to wear the face veil. As the Times reports:

Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and supporter of President Musharraf, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala, 70km (43 miles) north of the provincial capital, Lahore. As party members threw rose petals at her, the gunman shot her in the head, police said. They identified the attacker as Malulvi Ghulam Sarwar and said that he was opposed to the participation of women in politics and the refusal of many professional women in Pakistan to wear the veil.

“He killed her because she was not observing the Islamic code of dress. She was also campaigning for emancipation of women,” Nazir Ahmad, a police officer, said. ...

Mr Sarwar, a stonemason in his mid40s, appeared calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said. Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership, he claimed. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said.

Perhaps Pakistanis could weigh in on whether killing a woman who refuses to veil, um, impedes her full integration.

Or maybe Pakistan could host an even more germane debate - on whether this type of action is really in line with the teachings of Islam.

Sami al-Arian: He may look like Gandhi...

But Gandhi he is not, this former University of South Florida professor who pled guilty last year to assisting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.

As R.K. Joyad, a national security lawyer in Washington who writes under a pen name, observes in today's FrontPageMagazine:

A recent article in American Muslim magazine attempts to burnish the image of Sami Al-Arian....It is but the latest example of the American Islamic community asserting that terrorist operatives like Al-Arian, who is currently awaiting his deportation in a Virginia jail, are blameless victims of prosecutors run amok.

The article overflows with sympathy for Al-Arian. Quoting a friend's question to Al-Arian, the author, Sarah Shields, writes: “Has anyone told you that you look like Gandhi?”

In this case looks are indeed deceiving as Joyad goes on to remind the reader, citing the statement U.S. District Court Judge S. Moody made at Al-Arian's sentencing hearing (via the St. Petersburg Times):

Dr. Al-Arian, as usual, you speak very eloquently. I find it interesting that here in public in front of everyone you praised this country, the same country that in private you referred to as “the great Satan.’’ ...You are a master manipulator.

You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie.... The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...

When Iran, the major funding source of the PIJ, became upset because the PIJ could not account for how it was spending its money, it was to your board of directors that it went to demand changes. Iran wanted its representative to have a say in how its money was spent. To stop that, you leaped into action. You offered to rewrite the bylaws of the organization...

But when it came to blowing up women and children on buses, did you leap into action then? ... No. You lifted not one finger, made not one phone call. To the contrary, you laughed when you heard about the bombings, what you euphemistically call “operations.” ...

And yet, still in the face of your own words, you continue to lie to your friends and supporters, claiming to abhor violence and to seek only aid for widows and orphans. Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them, even among the Palestinians; and you create them, not by sending your children to blow themselves out of existence. No. You exhort others to send their children... You are indeed a master manipulator.

Muslim groups are calling on supporters to support Al-Arian in his hunger strike, which has been going on since Jan. 21. Arian is refusing to eat to protest the fact that he is still in jail - not because of his PIJ conviction, but because he is refusing to testify in another investigation. A grand jury wants to know what he knows about the International Institute of Islamic Thought, another alleged terror sponsor.

Al-Arian says he can't testify in the case because if he did, he might put his life in danger. Now that statement alone makes me curious as to what he might know. But then Al-Arian went on to plead that he doesn't have any information that would be useful to prosecutors. Perhaps you have to be a former professor to be able to reconcile those two statements as apparently the judge before whom this argument was made couldn't follow this logic either. He placed Al-Arian in contempt of court until he agrees to tell the grand jury what exactly he knows.

As Joyad goes on to write:

[A] person as connected as Al-Arian has information that will allow our nation’s law enforcers to discern who else is out there living a lie.... [The] government can compel this information through a grant of immunity, which Al-Arian now enjoys. If Al-Arian persists in refusing to provide that information, following the court ruling that he has no right to refuse based on the Fifth Amendment, the remedy is more time in prison, until he sees the light.

Prince Bandar to the rescue?

Jackson Diehl in today's Washington Post asks the following question about Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States:

Can Bandar bail the United States out of the multiple crises it has stumbled into in the Middle East? Maybe not, but Washington's old friend may be one of the best bets a desperate Bush administration has going at the moment.

Bandar, as Diehl reports, has been feverishly trying to hammer out various peace agreements. According to Diehl, Bandar is now optimistic.

He reportedly told his contacts in Washington that Iranian officials were "taken aback by President Bush's recent shows of strength in the region, by the failure of his administration to collapse after midterm elections and by the unanimous passage of a U.N. resolution imposing sanctions on Tehran for failing to stop its nuclear program. The mullahs, he said, were worried about Shiite-Sunni conflict spreading from Iraq around the region, and about an escalating conflict with the United States; they were interested in tamping both down."

Bandar is supposedly hoping to break apart Syria and Iran by getting Iran to agree to a U.N. tribunal to try those responsible for the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. As Diehl notes, "That would [essentially] be poison to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who almost certainly was behind the murder."

While Riehl dismisses the "Mecca Agreeement," the deal Prince Bandar recently helped broker between the rival Palestinian factions as "disappointing" to Washington, Riehl does acknowledge that "the Palestinian deal was secondary for Bandar."

Bandar's "main aim" says Riehl "is to defuse the multiple threats posed by Iran. If he can find a way to broker a deal that stops the Iranian nuclear program, and kick-starts a strategic dialogue between Tehran and Washington, it will be his greatest feat of all."

If he succeeds will Michael Moore fans still derisively refer to him as "Bandar Bush"?

Dad, say it 'aint so

The FreeKareem website is reporting that the family of Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, the Egyptian blogger accused of "contempt of religion" and various crimes against the Egyptian state, has disowned him.

Abdul Kareem's father, a retired math teacher, reportedly said he thinks his son should be punished according to Sharia (Islamic law) - that is, if his son does not repent for having repudiated Islam within a period of three days, he should be put to death.

An Egyptian newspaper says that Abdul Kareem's father described his son as a "monkey" who "has imitated the athiests of the West in their intellectual thinking."

No Middle East peace, not even after one whole meeting?

Was the New York Times trying to be funny with this opening paragraph in today's story, "No Progress in Middle East Talks"?

The first peace talks in six years between the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians, convened today by the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, ended without any apparent progress beyond an agreement to meet again.

And over in Thailand, more "peace" reprisals

Just to complete our weekend round-up, in Thailand, the Associated Press reports:

At least 28 bombs exploded Sunday in apparently coordinated attacks in parts of southern Thailand plagued by a Muslim insurgency, killing three people and wounding more than 50, the military said.

The bombings targeted hotels, karaoke bars, power grids and commercial sites in the country's southernmost provinces, the only parts of predominantly Buddhist Thailand with Muslim majorities. Two public schools were torched.

As to why these attacks may be occuring now, the AP offers an explanation:

Violence in the south has been escalating in recent months despite a major policy shift by the military-imposed government, which is trying to replace an earlier, iron-fisted approach in dealing with the rebels with a "hearts and minds" campaign.

More than 2,000 people have died in the provinces bordering Malaysia since the insurgency erupted in 2004, fueled by accusations of decades of misrule by the central government. The insurgents have not announced their goals, but they are believed to be fighting for a separate state imbued with radical Islamic ideology.

"We believe that the attacks were planned to cause division, create fear among the people. They want to show that they are still capable (of carrying out attacks)," a military spokesman reportedly said.

Meanwhile back in Waziristan....

Saturday's geography lesson about Waziristan came just in time for today's news. The New York Times is reporting that Al Qaeda is once again running terrorist training camps in this autonomous region of Pakistan.

The Times sources, described as "American analysts," say that the camps are being operated by Arab, Pakistani, and Afghan "militants" who report to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who serves as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man. Bin Laden himself is not believed to be playing an active management role.

While these new camps are reportedly smaller and less capable than Al Qaeda's camps were back in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule, the Times sources say that "the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature."

The Bush administration is reportedly debating about what to do about these camps. A Pentagon faction, not surprisingly, is recommending a military strike but these "hawks" are being opposed by those who are worried about collateral damage - i.e., civilian casualties.

The State Department is supposedly cautioning that any American military action would likely undermind, as the Times underscores, "President Musharraf’s military-led government."

The "militants" reportedly found a safe refuge in North Waziristan last year, after "military leader" President Musharraf agreed to withdraw his, yes, military from the region in exchange for tribal leaders ceasing their support of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. The tribal leaders have it would appear failed to live up to their end of the bargain.

Pakistani-trained terrorists were fingered by the director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who said in November that terrorist plots in Britain “often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan [and that] through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

Two of the four bombers who carried out the July 2005 subway and bus bombings in London, the reader may remember, were noted to have traveled to Pakistan prior to the attack, as have other British terrorism suspects, according to various trial transcripts.

While most of the Pakistani-trained "militants" are believed to be headed for Afghanistan, some, maybe an increasing number, may be training to attack American forces in Iraq.

The Times points ot the evidence of Al Qaeda's "increased international capability" (to use its phrase) that has surfaced recently in the attacks that its new franchisee, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the Algerian-based group, has been able to carry out in Algeria. These included last week's bombing in Algiers and the December attack on a bus carrying Halliburton contractors.

Does this mean the Sunnis will now start pressing for the break-up of Iraq?

The New York Times is reporting that new studies indicate there may be far more oil and gas deposits underneath Sunni-controlled lands in Iraq than was previously thought.

As the Times writes:

The development is likely to have significant political effects: the lack of natural resources in the central and western regions where Sunnis hold sway has fed their disenchantment with the nation they once ruled. And it has driven their insistence on a strong central government, one that would collect oil revenues and spread them equitably among the country’s factions, rather than any division of the country along sectarian regional boundaries.

As Brig. Gen. John R. Allen of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, the deputy commanding general of Multi-National Force-West, which has responsibility for Anbar Province, told the Times, “What this [new information] does is it gives Anbar and the Sunnis an economic future different from phosphate and cement,” he said, referring to products of some of the aging factories in the area.

Another "peace" attack?

Two bombs described by Indian officials as "not powerful' and "crude" still managed to kill over 65 people on an Indian train bound for Pakistan today reports the Washington Post.

India's junior Home Minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal characterized the attack as part of a "conspiracy . . . to disturb the peace process between India and Pakistan." Tomorrow Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was scheduled to arrive in New Delhi to try and work out a deal regardng Kashmir, the Himalayan region that is claimed by both India and Pakistan and that has been a subject of contention since 1947 when the sub-continent was partitioned.

Also vying for control of the region are at least a dozen mostly Pakistani-based "militant groups" (to use the Post's term) which have been fighting in Indian Kashmir since 1989.

Why was this passenger train attacked? As the Post notes, "The train links are one of the most visible results of the peace process under way between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, and one of the easiest ways to travel across the militarized border."

Map courtesy of Wikipedia

The green areas are under Pakistani control; the orange areas are under Indian control; and the area called Aksai Chin is under Chinese control.

Update: Live From Baghdad - well, not exactly

Two bombs exploded a few blocks apart in New Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 40 people and breaking the temporary lull in violence that had followed the launch of Baghdad's new security program reports the Washington Post.

Faris Salman, 30, an automobile mechanic in the neighborhood of the blasts speculated on the motive of the bombers: "Those people might be challenging the security plan," he told the Post. "They are showing that they have the strength, that they are able to target innocent and poor people."

"I was expecting this," Addis Hadi, 42, a travel agent told the Post. "No one will be able to stop the terrorists in Iraq. I did not believe in this security plan."

Well, uh, that's depressing.

Iranian humor?

In what would appear to be a non-serious response to the Bush administration's allegations that Iraqi militias are using Iranian weapons, Iran's Fars News Agency has published evidence that well, American weapons are being using by Iranian militias.

As LGF reader Dar Ul Harb points out, it seems that this evidence is not much more than an elaborate Photoshop hoax. The presentation can be seen here.

LGF, the reader may recall, was instrumental in exposing another forgery, one that sent longtime CBS news anchorman Dan Rather into an early retirement.

Live from Baghdad: "There's a tanglible decrease in all kinds of attacks."

What if the surge plan is working? It's obviously too early to break out any champagne but Iraqi blogger Mohammed Fadhil at Iraq the Model reports some good news from Iraq:

Since the multiple bombings in Shroja market district on the 12th, Baghdad hasn’t seen any major attacks and there’s a tangible decrease in all kinds of attacks.

Not only official statements say so (Defense ministry officials said today that attacks are down by 80% in Baghdad). It’s a reality I live in nowadays, at least in my neighborhood and its surroundings. It is also what I hear from friends and relatives in other parts of the city.
We are hearing fewer explosions and less gunfire now than two weeks ago and that, in Baghdad, qualifies as quiet.

I agree with what some experts say about this lull in violence being the result of militants keeping their heads down for a while. It is also possibly the result of the flight of the commanders of militant groups. Grunts left without planners, money or leaders wouldn’t want to do much on their own.

If you don't have time to indulge Congress's vanity

and watch your favorite politicians debate the merits of a non-binding resolution on Iraq, you should take time out to hear what the Hon. Rep. Sam Johnson(R-Texas) had to say.

Iraq war critics who rallied around Cindy Sheehan will no doubt appreciate the Congressman's references to his "moral authority" here - even if he is a Republican from Texas.

Is it because I'm an Other

as Edward Said would have labeled me that I can't see the logic behind the recent string of suicide bombings in Pakistan?

Yesterday yet another man blew himself up. This time, the suicide bomber detonated inside a small district court in Quetta, killing himself and 15 others, including a judge who was hearing a property dispute, the litigants, their relatives who were in attendance, and the six lawyers who were debating the case. Thirty-five people were wounded.

This was the sixth attack in a series of suicide bombings in the area that have left some 40 people dead.

As the New York Times reports:

A militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed to use suicide bombers to take revenge [for an airstrike against suspected militants in the tribal area of South Waziristan on Jan. 16]. Pakistani officials have not directly implicated Mr. Mehsud in the bombings while the investigations are under way, and he has denied any involvement, saying that his threat was an emotional outburst.

Mr. Mehsud is believed to have trained suicide bombers and sent them into Afghanistan, where there were 127 suicide attacks last year."

South Waziristan, for those of you whose Pakistani geography might be a little vague, is part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. This is an area that is only nominally under Pakistan's control, and as Wikipedia notes, about 30% of the FATA is inaccessible both politically and administratively. In other words, the Pakistani central government has no authority in about a third of this Tribal Area.

This is the area in Pakistan, incidentally, in which many experts believe bin Laden may be hiding. The Waziris are a subset of the Pashtuns, the primary ethnic group of the Taliban, the Afghan government that so kindly gave bin Laden refuge up until they were forced out of power by the U.S.-led coaltion in 2001.

Map courtesy of Wikipedia

Now while I suppose I can see why "militants" in the neighboring province of Baluchistan might want to avenge any act that aimed to harm their friends in Al Qaeda, I really can't see the logic in why they would have targeted a courtroom in Quetta.

I wonder if anyone who isn't an Other could kindly inform me of the strategy here. My email address is at the top of this page.

Dubai: "Restores one's faith in the Arabs' potential"

Thus wrote Middle East scholar Martin Kramer almost a year ago. I've been trying to pull my thoughts together about my own recent visit to Dubai but since it's impossible to compete with Martin Kramer when it comes to describing anything about the Middle East, I hope he won't mind if I quote him at length here:

Dubai is over the top, daringly cosmopolitan, and all about business and pleasure. Across the Arab Middle East, economically productive minorities have been driven out. The Emiratis of Dubai, by contrast, have turned themselves into a minority in their own country, bringing in foreigners of every kind to build up and partake in the boom. Anyone who can do anything better (and cheaper) is welcomed in Dubai. They've perfected the Arab version of the American ethos, short on democracy but long on opportunity.

The Arab world has always had privileged nodes through which it has transacted fast-track business with the world. In the colonial period, Alexandria in Egypt served as the great gateway, relying crucially on foreign minorities. Nasser put an end to that. In the immediate post-colonial period, Beirut in Lebanon emerged on top, building upon its long tradition of open exchange with East and West. Extreme brands of nationalism destroyed that. In our time, Dubai is the great entrepôt. It exemplifies that larger shift of power away from the decaying, ideology-ravaged Arab Mediterranean and toward the worldly crust of the Arabian Gulf.

Kramer then goes on to describe his visit to one of Dubai's many shopping malls:

One afternoon in Dubai, I had a bit of spare time on my hands, so I went out to the brand new Ibn Battuta Mall, named after the 14th-century Muslim traveler who journeyed from his birthplace in Morocco across North Africa and Asia to China. The mall is set up as a series of arcades, themed around the various highlights on Ibn Battuta's route: Andalusia, Tunisia, Egypt, Persia, India, and China.

The place gives new meaning to the familiar phrase "shopping mecca." The Persian arcade is a giant dome, itself a work of art on a considerable level, no doubt meant to be admired by the many Iranians who come through Dubai. Smack in the middle of it, as this photo shows, is a Starbucks.Orientalist kitsch? Definitely. But Arabs have built it. Such cross-cultural play is possible only where people are comfortable with amalgams. To see the incredible mix of people strolling this mall, happily shopping for designer labels and making their choice at the 21-cinema "megaplex," restores one's faith in the Arabs' potential for embracing a global future. It's no doubt fragile, this odd experiment in our own style of consumerism, on a stretch of hot sand a world away from us. That's all the more reason not to turn Dubai into a whipping boy for our disappointment with the rest of the Arab world.

I hope he won't mind if I post this picture here as well - to give you some idea of his eminence in the region.

"Why bother with military tribunals for terrorists?"

"Just hold them in contempt of court. They'll languish there for years," quipped Bernie Kleinman, attorney for Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber and nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, KSM, in a response to an article that appeared in today's New York Times - yes, a cover story - on one of his former clients.

Kleinman's former client, Martin Armstrong, an investment manager accused of securities fraud has spent the past seven years in jail because he says he does not have some documents that were requested by the courts.

Soon the number of years Mr. Armstrong will have spent in jail on civil contempt charges will exceed the maximum sentence he would have obtained had he been convicted of all 24 counts of securities fraud with which he was originally charged. (Prosecutors agreed to drop all but one of the charges in exchange for his guilty plea on one count.)