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December 29, 2004
Japan's place in the world/ Yoichi Funabashi:Dictatorship is the only choice
Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's oldest son, Kim Jong Nam, became the target of an assassination plot while on a trip to Austria. However, no attempt on his life was made thanks to the vigilance of Austrian security forces.
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported the plot may have been masterminded by supporters of Kim Jong Il's other sons, who apparently don't want Kim Jong Nam to succeed their father.
The Japanese government, however, remains skeptical of the theory. Naoki Ito, chief of the Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asia Division, said: ``We have confirmed that (Kim Jong Nam) visited (Austria) but have not acknowledged (that there was a plot).''
But what is certain is that reports of unusual developments concerning North Korea are on the rise.
Kim Jong Il has three sons: Kim Jong Nam, born to former actress Sung Hae Rim, and Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Woong, who were born to former dancer Ko Young Hee.
Chang Song Taek, the husband of Kim Jong Il's younger sister, was ousted early this year. Since Chang is known to have close ties with Kim Jong Nam, his downfall is seen as the start of a power struggle for succession.
Scenarios for an unstable North Korea are suddenly emerging. But some see the signs merely as elements of psychological warfare between the United States and North Korea.
Since it will be difficult to settle the North Korean nuclear issue by military means, the United States is leaning toward ``soft regime transformation.'' It is attempting to break the regime from the inside by making a big fuss over signs of unusual developments within North Korea.
Meanwhile, North Korea is once again using the situation to ``tighten the regime.'' As its economic and social problems grow increasingly serious, the government is fanning the public's sense of crisis in an attempt to prolong its life.
However, it is difficult to categorize the problem of succession as psychological warfare.
Smooth succession is one of the weaknesses of dictatorships. Throughout Soviet history, not a single person who rose to the pinnacle of power did so as initially planned. Without exception, leaders rose to the top through power struggles. Even planned regimes cannot plan the succession of leaders.
Kim Il Sung tried to overcome the succession hurdle through heredity. In 1974, he named his son Kim Jong Il as his successor. The decision was accepted based on his status as the ``great leader.'' In the three decades since, his sons have grown close to the age when he was named his father's successor.
Kim Jong Il himself is about the same age as his late father when he chose his successor. There have been fragmentary reports that Kim Jong Il told his children not to rely on their father's influence. But there are no signs that he is providing special training for them to assume leadership.
There are a number of possible reasons.
If he names his successor, he would immediately become a lame duck because everyone would bow to the next leader. That is what is keeping him from making the decision.
Kim Jong Il is the son of Kim Il Sung's lawful wife, but Kim Jong Il is not legally married to either mother of his sons. It is difficult to pass the baton to someone who was born out of wedlock.
It could also give China an excuse to interfere in North Korea's internal affairs. When Kim Jong Il inherited his father's position, China opposed, arguing that hereditary succession had no place in socialism.
Maybe Kim Jong Il is thinking that hereditary succession is a dead end. North Korea's economy and society are both in turmoil.
And random economic liberalization is about to disrupt the social order. Take the example of Kim Il Song badges. They all look the same, but actually are different according to one's class and rank. But now people can buy badges worn by high-ranking people. The social order in North Korea is breaking down.
But even more tumultuous is the state of people's minds. An activist with a nongovernmental organization that provides humanitarian assistance to North Koreans said he was surprised at the large number of people who are secretly converting to Christianity.
``Recently, a North Korean military leader timidly advised Kim Jong Il that it may be wiser to refrain from having his son succeed him,'' said a South Korea diplomat well-versed in North Korean affairs, though he stressed it was just a rumor. ``Kim Jong Il told him that he would not do that. At the same time, he suggested the idea of making the post a symbol of the state like the Japanese emperor.'' It looks like the rumor is spreading in North Korea.
But it is thanks to Kim Jong Il's solitary reign that the North Korean regime has remained stable despite its impoverished state.
Former North Korean Prime Minister Kang Song San's son-in-law Kang Myung Do, who defected to South Korea 10 years ago, once said: ``If (the) Kim Jong Il (regime) goes down, North Korea is expected to fall into utter chaos. The situation may even lead to an invasion of South Korea. It may sound like a paradox, but Kim Jong Il is preventing war.''
The observation was made around the time it was rumored that the Kim Jong Il regime was about to collapse.
Neither collective leadership nor decentralization is an option for North Korea, where dictatorship is the only way. But hereditary succession is difficult. Thus, there is no way to draft a scenario for a stable post-Kim Jong Il North Korea.
* * *
The author is an Asahi Shimbun senior staff writer and foreign affairs columnist.(IHT/Asahi: December 28,2004)
December 29, 2004 at 01:01 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 28, 2004
Iraq - whats next
Well articulated summary of the issues which require to be dealt with in Iraq. Its obviosuly not a simple answer, and will require nuancing, which isn't the Americans strong suit.
THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: Iraq: What Next?
According to a Robin Wright/Thomas Ricks WaPo piece,
we hear that Colin Powell recently stated, during a teleconference with
Bush and Blair, that he believes we have (or had?) too few troops in
the Iraq theater.
December 28, 2004 at 10:10 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
What Can the U.S. Do in Iraq?
A "far-left"ish view authored by Australian Gareth Evans.
International Crisis Group (ICG) - Conflict prevention and resolution
Middle East Report N°34
22 December 2004
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
In Iraq, the U.S. is engaged in a war it already may have lost while losing sight of a struggle in which it still may have time to prevail. Its initial objective was to turn Iraq into a model for the region: a democratic, secular and free-market oriented government, sympathetic to U.S. interests, not openly hostile toward Israel, and possibly home to long-term American military bases. But hostility toward the U.S. and suspicion of its intentions among large numbers of Iraqis have progressed so far that this is virtually out of reach. More than that, the pursuit has become an obstacle to realisation of the most essential, achievable goal -- a stable government viewed by its people as credible, representative and the embodiment of national interests as well as capable of addressing their basic needs.
That does not mean the war is over or its outcome predetermined. Nor does it mean, as some have suggested, that the U.S. ought to rapidly withdraw, for that would come at great cost to its own strategic interests, to the Iraqi people and potentially to the stability of the region as a whole. Rather, it means that Washington must grasp the extent to which the ground beneath its feet has shifted since the onset of the occupation and develop a comprehensive strategy and timetable adapted to this reality if it wants a chance to salvage the situation. And it means that the tactical achievements regularly trumpeted -- the re-occupation of insurgent sanctuaries; increased training of Iraqi security forces; formal adherence to decrees passed by the Coalition Provisional Authority and to the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL); the transfer of sovereignty; Prime Minister Allawi's generally pro-American policy and pronouncements; and even the timely conduct of national elections if that happens -- are for the most part Pyrrhic victories in a struggle that has moved on.
Crisis Group has concluded, on the basis of extended field work in Iraq and wide-ranging interviews in Washington, that despite valiant and ongoing corrective efforts, the transition process no longer can succeed as currently fashioned – that is, as the linear culmination of the process underway since the fall of the Baathist regime. It has become too discredited, too tainted, and too closely associated with a U.S. partner in which Iraqis have lost faith for it to be rescued by minor course corrections. To preserve the possibility of a united, cohesive Iraq rallying around a credible central state, elections -- together with their aftermath, the establishment of a sovereign constituent assembly -- must be perceived by its people not as a continuation of what has occurred so far, but as a fundamental break from it. This is true whether the elections are held on 30 January 2005 as scheduled or postponed until there is greater certainty that Sunni Arabs will participate in sufficient numbers to make the results meaningful.
From a U.S. standpoint, a prerequisite is to agree on and articulate clear goals and the position it wants to be in by late 2005 (the point at which the transitional process is to end) -- in particular the scope of the political and, any, military role the U.S. will still want to play. In the absence of a public statement of goals, both Iraqi and non-Iraqi actors have projected their worst -- and often contradictory -- fears upon the U.S. enterprise. Secondly, the U.S. will need to designate a lead official in Washington given presidential backing to formulate and pursue those objectives.
Beyond that, Iraqis have to be persuaded that they are engaged in the task of building a sovereign, unified and independent state, in order to remove doubt as to the allegiance of security forces, political parties, and average citizens. In many ways, the job the U.S. must now perform is a thankless one. It involves satisfying the expectations of a population now largely hostile to the U.S. and encouraging the emancipation and independence of Iraqi institutions whose credibility will depend on their distancing themselves from it.
What is now required is dual disengagement: a gradual U.S. political and military disengagement from Iraq and, no less important, a clear Iraqi political disengagement from the U.S. The new Iraqi state must define itself at least partially in opposition to U.S. policies or it runs the risk of defining itself in opposition to many of its own citizens.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the United States Government:
1. Recognise new realities and constraints under which it operates, and in particular that:
(a) the insurgency is not confined to a finite number of fanatics isolated from the population and opposed to a democratic Iraq but is fed by nationalist feelings, widespread mistrust of U.S. intentions and resentment of its actions;
(b) the current transitional process is not the answer to the legitimacy deficit but one of its sources; and
(c) national elections scheduled for January 2005 will change little unless they produce institutions that can address basic needs and prove their independence by distancing themselves from the U.S. and reaching out to all political components.
2. Designate a senior official in Washington with lead responsibility for designing and implementing a transitional strategy for the U.S. in the lead-up to late 2005, and if necessary beyond, ensuring proper coordination between agencies and with the field.
3. Develop an integrated counter-insurrection strategy that:
(a) is focused on gaining the population's support rather than on eliminating insurgents; and
(b) further subordinates military operations to political and economic initiatives -- including offers of amnesty or negotiated surrender to combatants; establishment of elected, empowered and duly funded local government structures; reconstruction; payments to displaced civilians; and compensation for damages.
4. Signal quick acceptance of a fully sovereign Iraqi government both before and after elections by:
(a) abstaining from commenting on the desired election date and making clear it would accept a delay decided by the Iraqi government;
(b) seeking participation of as many non-U.S. and non-Coalition election observers as possible;
(c) abstaining from challenging steps to revisit earlier decrees or decisions made by or in coordination with the U.S. and from interfering on sensitive issues such as economic policy;
(d) systematically consulting and coordinating on reconstruction priorities and implementation and involving local and national Iraqi institutions in the management of funds;
(e) transferring as soon as possible any prisoners to independent and credible Iraqi judicial authorities; and
(f) dealing with the new government as with any sovereign partner, conditioning longer-term support on respect for human rights, financial transparency and anti-corruption steps, and dismantling of militias.
5. Change Iraqi perceptions of U.S. by:
(a) commencing immediately and visibly the process of ending co-location of the embassy in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government and by substantially reducing its size;
(b) redeploying troops to ensure a more dispersed and less visible presence, while maintaining a rapid intervention capability;
(c) entering into transparent negotiations with the Iraqi government over the timetable for a staged withdrawal, including (if that government wishes) a target date for complete removal of all U.S. troops, and repudiating publicly and unequivocally any intention of establishing long-term military bases;
(d) making clear that the military priority is not to destroy the enemy but physically to protect civilians, in particular by limiting military operations that imperil civilians and altering procedures governing arrests, treatment of prisoners and homes searches;
(e) continuing transfer, to the extent possible, of full security responsibility to Iraqi forces in areas where Coalition forces would intervene in emergency situations only;
(f) refraining from referring to Iraq as a "model" for the region or the new "front" in the anti-terrorism war;
(g) adopting a more credible communications strategy by publicly articulating U.S. objectives, admitting setbacks and, in close cooperation with Iraqi counterparts, acknowledging and acting upon U.S. responsibility for civilian casualties by paying compensation and, where appropriate, taking disciplinary measures; and
(h) encouraging negotiations with opposition elements who do not resort to deliberate acts of violence against civilians.
6. Rethink the approach to forming Iraqi security forces by:
(a) ceasing to view them as auxiliaries to the U.S. military;
(b) halting recourse to local militias; and
(c) contributing to the emergence of an autonomous Iraqi force by putting greater priority on the development of its own logistical and transportation means, standardised recruitment, review and discharge procedures, independent and professional institutions, and national military doctrine.
7. Alter the regional climate hampering efforts in Iraq by:
(a) engaging with Iran and Syria in a direct and sustained manner that acknowledges they have legitimate interests in Iraq's future; and
(b) intensifying efforts toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian and other Arab-Israeli conflicts.
To the Newly Elected Transitional National Assembly and Forthcoming Transitional Iraqi Government:
8. Clearly demonstrate their sovereign independence by:
(a) reviewing agreements reached between the U.S. and the Interim Government as well as decisions with continuing effect made by the Coalition Provisional Authority;
(b) debating openly status of forces arrangements for Coalition troops and negotiating with the U.S. and its partners the criteria and timetable for gradual withdrawal, including a target date for completing that process; and
(c) naming a credible independent commission to investigate human rights abuses and violence against civilians since the war began, in particular by Coalition forces, and recommend compensatory damages to victims.
Amman/Brussels, 22 December 2004
December 28, 2004 at 10:05 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 27, 2004
Statesmen for these times
The Observer | Comment | Martin Gilbert: Statesmen for these times
Martin Gilbert
Sunday December 26, 2004
The Observer
A leading historian argues that Bush and Blair may one day be seen as akin to Roosevelt and Churchill
People often ask how history will remember our generation of leaders in comparison with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Many comment that today's leaders look small compared with the giants of the past. This is, I believe, a misconception.
In their day, both Churchill and Roosevelt were frequently criticised, often savagely, by their countrymen, including legislators who had little knowledge of the behind-the-scenes reality of the war.
The passage of time both elevates and reduces reputations. Today there is a cult of Churchill, particularly in the United States, but also far greater scholarly criticism, which regards him, increasingly, as a flawed war leader. The same is true of Roosevelt: his recent biographers are constantly revealing - to their satisfaction, at least - feet of clay.
Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did - that the war on terror is not a third world war - they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.
If they can move this latter aim, to which Bush and Blair pledged themselves on 12 November, it will be a leadership achievement of historic proportions.
The leaderships of Churchill and Roosevelt in the Second World War were conducted in such a way that only many years after the war were their true parameters clear. This is also true of Bush and Blair: only when the secret telegrams and conversations become available will we really know who did what, who influenced whom. Before the war against Saddam Hussein, Sir David Manning, Blair's emissary, was flying almost weekly to Washington but it may be many years before we know what decisions were reached during these journeys. Any accurate assessment of Bush and Blair must wait, perhaps a decade or longer, until the record can be scrutinised.
Yet some comparisons are already clear.
Controversy was never absent in the Second World War, either. When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 he had to struggle to overcome defeatists who urged a negotiated peace with Hitler. Similarly, Blair overcame opposition from within the Labour party to the war in Iraq, prevailing over the doubters in parliamentary debate on the eve of the Iraq war.
President Roosevelt faced a Congress resolutely opposed to going to war against Hitler. He used every means to circumvent America's neutrality legislation and to provide Britain with essential war material (some of it by the back door, across the border to Canada). Bush faced no such hurdle: Congress approved the overthrow of Hussein.
It would be wrong to minimise the challenges facing Blair and Bush. 'Even in miniature,' Churchill once wrote, 'war is hideous and appalling.' Both men had to deploy all their persuasive skills to make the case for overthrowing Hussein, despite the obvious evil of his regime. Hitler's bombing of civilians, including in Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coven try, London and Belgrade, his submarine sinking of merchant ships, and his evil racial policies left no room for doubt as to his nature.
Another burden Blair and Bush share with the earlier generation is that of explaining the troubled course of the war. Between 1939 and 1945, there were many setbacks that alarmed Britain and America, among them the Dunkirk evacuation, the Dieppe raid and the loss of the Philippines, then an American possession. Today, the war in Iraq continues with daily casualty lists, suicide bombings and rebel violence.
Churchill wrote and delivered a series of now famous speeches as bombs fell on British cities (with as many as 4,000 civilian deaths each week). Those carefully crafted speeches gave people hope. Both Blair and Bush also address their people in urgent appeals. Blair conveys his sense of moral purpose in clear, articulate phrases. Bush seems less at ease with words that, in many cases, others have crafted for him.
In 1940 Churchill made a point of ending political warfare in Britain: 'Let pre-war hatreds die,' he declared. He brought in cabinet ministers from the opposition, and gave the most demanding wartime tasks to the most capable. Today Blair and Bush conduct war in partisan terms, ensuring a vociferous opposition.
Yet they are great supporters of one another. Bush recently said at a White House meeting with Blair: 'I am a lucky person, a lucky President, to be holding office at the same time this man holds the prime ministership.' This brings to mind Roosevelt's comment to Churchill: 'It is fun being in the same decade as you.' Behind these words are a hidden wealth of allied co-operation on the future.
Churchill and Roosevelt worked together to shape the postwar world. The Atlantic Charter, which they both signed in August 1941, set out the parameters of self-government, free elections and democracy for all those nations that had been subjected to Nazi tyranny. In Iraq, Bush and Blair have adhered to the Atlantic Charter concept. Hussein was overthrown in order that a democratic Iraqi leader could be put in his place, and both leaders are persevering in this task. One problem echoes that faced by Churchill and Roosevelt: the opposition of a powerful ally.
After the Second World War, Stalin opposed the return of independent, democratic states. By force of will and arms, he prevailed over Churchill and Roosevelt. He used the Red Army to impose communist systems on eight states of eastern and central Europe, leaving only Greece on the Western side. Bush and Blair confront a different opponent: Muslim extremism, a perversion of the Islamic creed. In November they faced, from the midst of their ally Saudi Arabia, an edict issued by prominent religious scholars prohibiting Muslims of Iraq from supporting military operations by American or British forces.
A final parallel is most telling. Churchill planned a peace conference after the war, at which he and Roosevelt could persuade the king of Saudi Arabia to agree to the creation of a Jewish sovereign state in Palestine. Roosevelt died and Churchill was thrown out of office before the conference could take place. Instead of a Jewish state being created with Arab approval, the United Nations proposed two states, one Jewish, one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control. The Jews accepted. The Arabs did not, and launched five armies against the Jewish state, a failure of Arab leadership that has led to six decades of conflict.
It may be that in our time Bush and Blair will show the leadership needed to set the two-state solution back on track. Both are now firmly in the political saddle. Their leadership qualities will be put to the test in bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together in working toward an agreement. If they succeed, they will have completed what Churchill and Roosevelt inspired and will, without doubt, have sealed their place in history.
· Among Sir Martin Gilbert's books are Churchill: A Life and Israel: A History. © 2004 Newsweek Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission
December 27, 2004 at 06:55 PM in UK, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 25, 2004
Army Historian Cites Lack of Postwar Plan
Yahoo! News - Army Historian Cites Lack of Postwar Plan
Sat Dec 25,12:00 AM ET
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer
The U.S. military invaded Iraq (news - web sites) without a formal plan for occupying and stabilizing the country and this high-level failure continues to undercut what has been a "mediocre" Army effort there, an Army historian and strategist has concluded.
"There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.
"While there may have been 'plans' at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these 'plans' operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse" -- that is, laid out how U.S. forces would be moved and structured, Wilson writes in an essay that has been delivered at several academic conferences but not published. "There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."
Similar criticisms have been made before, but until now they have not been stated so authoritatively and publicly by a military insider positioned to be familiar with top-secret planning. During the period in question, from April to June 2003, Wilson was a researcher for the Army's Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group. Then, from July 2003 to March 2004, he was the chief war planner for the 101st Airborne Division, which was stationed in northern Iraq.
A copy of Wilson's study as presented at Cornell University in October was obtained by The Washington Post.
As a result of the failure to produce a plan, Wilson asserts, the U.S. military lost the dominant position in Iraq in the summer of 2003 and has been scrambling to recover ever since. "In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative . . . gained over an off-balanced enemy," he writes. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."
It was only in November 2003, seven months after the fall of Baghdad, that U.S. occupation authorities produced a formal "Phase IV" plan for stability operations, Wilson reports. Phase I covers preparation for combat, followed by initial operations, Phase II, and combat, Phase III. Post-combat operations are called Phase IV.
Many in the Army have blamed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon (news - web sites) civilians for the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq, but Wilson reserves his toughest criticism for Army commanders who, he concludes, failed to grasp the strategic situation in Iraq and so not did not plan properly for victory. He concludes that those who planned the war suffered from "stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt."
Army commanders still misunderstand the strategic problem they face and therefore are still pursuing a flawed approach, writes Wilson, who is scheduled to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point next year. "Plainly stated, the 'western coalition' failed, and continues to fail, to see Operation Iraqi Freedom in its fullness," he asserts.
"Reluctance in even defining the situation . . . is perhaps the most telling indicator of a collective cognitive dissidence on part of the U.S. Army to recognize a war of rebellion, a people's war, even when they were fighting it," he comments.
Because of this failure, Wilson concludes, the U.S. military remains "perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it."
Overall, he grades the U.S. military performance in Iraq as "mediocre."
Wilson's essay amounts to an indictment of the education and performance of senior U.S. officials involved in the war. "U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly" and tended to think of operations after the invasion "as someone else's mission," he says. In fact, Wilson says, those later operations were critical because they were needed to win the war rather than just decapitate Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government.
Air Force Capt. Chris Karns, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which as the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East oversaw planning for the war in Iraq, said, "A formal Phase IV plan did exist." He said he could not explain how Wilson came to a different conclusion.
Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who as chief of the Central Command led the war planning in 2002 and 2003, states in his recent memoir, "American Soldier," that throughout the planning for the invasion of Iraq, Phase IV stability operations were discussed. Occupation problems "commanded hours and days of discussion and debate among CENTCOM planners and Washington officials," he adds. At another point, he states, "I was confident in the Phase IV plan."
Asked about other officers' reaction to his essay, Wilson said in an e-mail Monday, "What active-duty feedback I have received (from military officers attending the conferences) has been relatively positive," with "general agreement with the premises I offer in the work."
He said he has no plans to publish the essay, in part because he would expect difficulty in getting the Army's approval, but said he did not object to having it written about. "I think this is something that has to get out, so it can be considered," he said in a telephone interview. "There actually is something we can fix here, in terms of operational planning."
In his analysis of U.S. military operations in 2003 in northern Iraq, Wilson also touches on another continuing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq -- the number of troops there. "The scarcity of available 'combat power' . . . greatly complicated the situation," he states.
Wilson contends that a lack of sufficient troops was a consequence of the earlier, larger problem of failing to understand that prevailing in Iraq involved more than just removing Hussein. "This overly simplistic conception of the 'war' led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies . . . and too little allotted time to achieve 'success,' " he writes.
December 25, 2004 at 09:45 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 23, 2004
iraq
Ancient Sumer History in Mesopotamia
December 23, 2004 at 11:21 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 22, 2004
Opus Dei: Everything you need to know about the conservative Catholic organisation
Guardian Unlimited | Today's issues | Opus Dei
Simon Jeffery
Wednesday December 22, 2004
1. For some, 2004 was a bad year - for others, it was a good year. Sometimes, the two were related. Take the author Dan Brown and Opus Dei. Brown's novel Da Vinci Code was a runaway success but, in casting the conservative Catholic group as its main villain, it perhaps made life a little bit harder for them.
2. Devoted readers of the thriller will no doubt think Opus Dei deserve it for the depicted peculiar devotion to self-flagellation and an intent to suppress the secrets of the early church, but the group feels a little misrepresented.
3. A section on its website addressed to loyal Da Vinci Code readers (who are presumably in shock that a such secret society is online) tells them: "These topics are important and valuable to study, and we hope that interested readers will be motivated to study some of the abundant scholarship on them that is available in the non-fiction section of the library."
4. Founded in 1928, Opus Dei has around 80,000 members in Europe, North and South America and elsewhere. Its invite-only members are asked to promote traditional Catholic values and prayer.
5. It is not being the sect in Brown's bestseller, but its power in the Catholic church (Joaquín Navarro-Valls, the pope's spin doctor, is a member), and links to General Franco, the ultra rightwing Spanish dictator, make it an intriguing body to outsiders.
6. Its founder, Josemaría Escriv´, became Saint Josemaría. He died in 1975, but the speed of his beatification and canonisation (the process of becoming a saint) was contested by left-leaning Jesuits, who feared Opus Dei's growing influence in Rome.
7. So it not the type of organisation one necessarily associates with the Blair government, and today's report in the Times that Ruth Kelly, a former Guardian journalist and the new education secretary, is a member seems sure to raise eyebrows.
8. The newspaper says scientists are alarmed at the impact that Ms Kelly's beliefs may have on her job. The mother of four has responsibility for a £1bn research budget, and is believed to follow a strict Vatican line on contraception, embryo research, cloning and abortion. She reportedly told Mr Blair she could never support stem cell research.
9. Such positions, are of course, possible to hold without being a member of a "mysterious" religious organisation - a significant number of those who voted for George Bush in the last US presidential election would endorse them - but, as Brown knows, a Latin name and hints of secret societies have a strange compulsion to them.
10. For its part, Opus Dei is not playing along. The handy FAQ insists it is nothing more than a group for those with a similar spiritual mindset. "For the most part [ordinary members] do their job and live their family and social lives like everyone else, doing exactly what they would do if they were not in Opus Dei," it says.
December 22, 2004 at 07:48 PM in Holy Grail | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Turkey, Syria sign free-trade accord amid warming ties on Erdogan visit
Turkey, Syria sign free-trade accord amid warming ties on Erdogan visit - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News
DAMASCUS (AFP) - Former foes Turkey and Syria signed a free-trade accord and said they had agreed to put their differences behind them during a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan, at the start of a two-day mission, and his Syrian counterpart Mohammed Naji Otri signed the deal, which had been under negotiation for several years.
"Our links will develop in all fields in the future, especially in trade," Otri said at a joint news conference, while Erdogan said it "shows how far relations have come between the two countries".
"We are in agreement. We want a comprehensive cooperation in the region," said the Syrian premier, adding that Erdogan had also agreed to increase the flow of water into Syria.
Asked about disputes over sharing of scarce water resources in the arid region, Otri said those problems "are now forgotten", according to a Turkish interpreter.
Syria has in the past accused Turkey of taking more than its fair share of the waters of the Euphrates River, a charge which Turkey has denied, saying that Syria has not built enough dams to retain the water.
Asked about proposals to jointly build a dam over the Oronte River, which flows the other way, rising in Syria and entering the Mediterranean from Turkish territory, Otri said:
"If the dam project serves the interests of Syrian and Turkish citizens, then let's build it. That would demonstrate the exemplary relations that link the two countries.
A Turkish diplomatic source said Damascus lifted its reservations to signing the trade deal "after a certain accord" was reached on Turkey's sovereignty in the southern province of Hatay, formerly Alexandretta, on which Syria had claims.
The region was ceded to Turkey in 1939 when Syria was under French mandate, and Ankara has maintained that the issue of sovereignty is non-negotiable.
The free-trade accord is the cornerstone of efforts to boost the newly found friendship between the two former foes, which came to the brink of war only six years ago.
Trade between the two countries amounted to one billion dollars in 2003.
The "new era" in relations began when Syria's President Bashar al-Assad visited Turkey in January on the first such visit by a Syrian head of state, Erdogan earlier told reporters at Ankara airport.
Erdogan, whose delegation includes three ministers, among them Foreign Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen, also met Assad and is to visit the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday before flying back home.
Turkey, a close ally of the United States and Israel, has pushed for closer relations with Syria since the US-led invasion of Iraq, despite warnings from Washington to limit its cooperation with Damascus.
Ankara and Damascus share concerns over the Iraqi Kurds' aspirations for self-rule in a future federated Iraq as they both have sizeable Kurdish communities of their own.
In 1998, the two countries nearly went to war over Ankara's accusations that Damascus was sheltering separatist Kurdish militants fighting the Turkish government.
Tensions eased when Damascus expelled Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan from his safe haven in Syria and signed a security deal with Ankara, pledging to stop supporting Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
As a result, Turkish intelligence operatives arrested Ocalan in Kenya, where he had fled. He was brought back to Turkey for trial and is serving a life sentence for treason.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, war-torn Iraq and the Kurdish question also figured in the Otri-Erdogan talks, officials said.
Turkey and Syria have since the March 2003 invasion of neighbouring Iraq signed a series of economic and security agreements, including one to jointly combat crime and terrorism.
Last year, Syria detained and extradited to Turkey 20 people wanted in connection with suicide-bombings that targeted synagogues and British interests in Istanbul.
December 22, 2004 at 07:45 PM in Syria | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Bin Laden Tape Urges Stopping Oil to U.S.
Yahoo! News - Bin Laden Tape Urges Stopping Oil to U.S.
Sat Dec 18, 4:22 PM ET
By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer
Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan (news - web sites) in the 1980s. Could he do the same to another hated superpower — the United States?
The al-Qaida leader's latest purported communication drove home the point by calling on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West and praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil producer.
In an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site Thursday, a man who U.S. officials believe was bin Laden accused Westerners of subjugating the Middle East to plunder its oil.
"Go on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said. "Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq (news - web sites) and the Gulf."
It was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape in effect called for attacks on the oil industry. But he has flaunted the economic theme before, recalling in his most recent video how Afghan mujahedeen "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt" and taunting the U.S. government over the size of its budget deficit — which peaked at $413 billion last year.
Security and terrorism experts suggest bin Laden's claims to be undermining the United States economically are largely propaganda, noting the flexible, market-driven U.S. economy is a far cry from the creaky, bureaucratic Soviet giant that disintegrated in 1991.
Still, the economic argument gives bin Laden a tool he can use to rally his supporters and inflate his aura of success by claiming damage caused by other factors as his own handiwork.
Spurred by the new audiotape, Muslim radicals using chat rooms on Islamic Web sites debated Friday what weapons could be used to attack an oil tanker in the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
Bin Laden "sees us as poised on this precipice, and he's going to push us into the abyss," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corporation.
As Bin Laden put it in his video aimed at Americans just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election: "The real loser is you. It is the American people and their economy."
The al-Qaida leader cites the experience of Afghan mujahedeen fighters "in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers" to drive the Soviets out.
Bin Laden was among U.S.-supported Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, backed with money and weapons in hopes of weakening Russia, the United States' opponent in the Cold War.
The Soviet comparison is aimed as much at bin Laden supporters as at Americans, says Rand analyst Hoffman. "That's how he motivates and animates people and addresses morale — telling them, 'No one thought we could achieve that feat, and by the same token no one thinks we can achieve this feat of defeating the United States, but we will,'" Hoffman said.
Retired Gen. William Odom, a scholar at the Hudson Institute and an expert in the Soviet collapse, said bin Laden's analogy is off base since the Soviet Union collapsed for reasons other than Afghanistan, including the weakness of its state-run economy.
As far as spending on Iraq, Odom said damage to the U.S. economy is attributable to the Bush Administration embarking on a costly war. In the fall 2003, Congress approved $87.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $25 billion more last spring, and Bush is expected to request another $75 billion to $100 billion early in 2005.
"If we're stupid enough to go off and do something like that, bin Laden can justly crow about it," Odom said. "But I don't think he can take credit for having caused it."
Odom believes no al-Qaida strategy can topple U.S. dominance.
"In an operational sense, U.S.-made policies, not bin Laden's actions, have risked putting the United States in a very serious situation," he said.
Terrorists "have never brought down a liberal democracy," Odom said. "Terrorists like bin Laden can cause trouble but they're not a strategic problem, they're a tactical nuisance."
Princeton University economist Alan Krueger said, "The U.S. economy is too large and diverse to be sunk by terrorism."
"The U.S. government budget is overflowing with red ink because of the Bush tax cuts and the aging of the baby boom generation, not because of Osama bin Laden," Krueger said in an e-mail.
On the video, bin Laden asserted al-Qaida is the cause of U.S. losses in battle: "All we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaida,' in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to private companies."
Hoffman noted that bin Laden also tried to take credit for U.S. economic difficulties after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that toppled the World Trade Center, including the sharp drop of the NASDAQ stock market and corporate scandals such as Enron.
Bin Laden has "an excellent understanding" of economic targeting, said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrew's University in Great Britain. But he would need a bigger strike to hurt the United States — one aimed at a critical part of the economy, such as shipping or financial exchanges, Ranstorp said.
"Unless they strike at the stock exchange, unless they strike at the exact critical nodes in our infrastructure, I think the economy can certainly absorb that," Ranstorp said.
This summer, federal authorities raised the terror alert for financial institutions after uncovering an alleged al-Qaida plot to attack the Citicorp building and the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) in New York; the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) and World Bank (news - web sites) buildings in Washington; and the Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, N.J. The alert has since been lifted.
Intelligence indicated al-Qaida had conducted surveillance of the buildings, U.S. authorities said. Although the information dated back several years, counterterrorism officials noted that al-Qaida has a record of extensive planning and plotting.
December 22, 2004 at 07:43 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
al-Qaida Rallies to Strike Oil Resources
Yahoo! News - al-Qaida Rallies to Strike Oil Resources
Sun Dec 19,11:49 AM ET
CAIRO, Egypt - The Saudi branch of al-Qaida called for attacks against oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf in a Web statement posted Sunday.
The statement came four days after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) urged Islamic militants to stop Westerners from obtaining Middle Eastern oil, saying such a blow would be fatal to the West.
"Try your best to stop the biggest theft in history," bin Laden said in the Thursday tape, referring to the West's purchase of Arab oil.
Sunday's statement called on "all mujahedeen ... in the Arabian Peninsula" to target "the oil resources that do not serve the nation of Islam."
It was not possible to authenticate the statement, which was signed by the group Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It was posted on an Islamic Web site known as a clearinghouse for al-Qaida statements.
The statement said the call came after "the infidels insisted on turning the land of Islam into a place where infidels and polytheists are free to roam everywhere."
It urged al-Qaida members and sympathizers around the Arab world to unite "to strike all the foreign targets in the Arabian peninsula and attack all the infidels' havens everywhere."
The Arabian Peninsula includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen
December 22, 2004 at 07:42 PM in Berlin | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Bin Laden Turns Attention to Saudis
Yahoo! News - Bin Laden Turns Attention to Saudis
Mon Dec 20, 8:23 AM
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s latest message, his first directed specifically at Saudis in years, has been widely seen as an attempt to show he is still a player in his homeland despite a security clampdown that has sharply limited al-Qaida's field for terrorist operations in the conservative kingdom
The message, released Thursday, was issued after powerful blows by Saudi security to bin-Laden's supporters in the oil-rich country, where security forces have made inroads in weakening the insurgency both with arrests and anti-insurgency campaign that undercut support for the militants.
At the same time, however, bin Laden's audiotape followed up on an al-Qaida show of strength in the country two weeks ago. Five militants attacked the U.S. consulate in Riyadh and stormed into the inner courtyard, firing guns, grabbing human shields and killing five people. Four of the attackers were killed and one was wounded in an ensuing battle with Saudi forces. No Americans were killed.
And keeping up the drumbeat Sunday the Saudi branch of al-Qaida called in a Web statement for attacks against oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. The statement called on "all mujahedeen ... in the Arabian Peninsula" to target "the oil resources that do not serve the nation of Islam."
The statement urged al-Qaida members and sympathizers around the Arab world to unite "to strike all the foreign targets in the Arabian peninsula and attack all the infidels' havens everywhere."
Analysts described the Saudi-born terror suspect's Thursday message, which included a call to followers to "concentrate your operations" on oil facilities, as a reminder that he can still cause trouble. Some also saw it as a sign he is worried about blows to his credibility or that he might lose more influence if local elections prove a success.
"It's a kind of encouragement for Saudis influenced by him after the blow they have received," said Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on militant groups. "It's a way for him to tell them he supports them, he cares about them and will, through his statement, put their cause in the international spotlight."
In the audiotape, posted on an Islamic Web site, bin Laden exonerated Islamic militants of responsibility for the violence in the kingdom, saying it was the rulers' "sins which exposed the country to God's punishment."
He also reiterated long-standing accusations that the royal Al Saud family has misused public funds and allied itself with the "infidel America against Muslims."
Addressing the Saudi rulers, bin Laden said: "You must know that people are fed up ... security will not be able to stop them."
Bin Laden's direct focus on the kingdom and its rulers is the first in about a decade. He embarked on his terrorist path in the early 1990s, after the ruling family turned down his request to use his "mujahedeen" — holy warriors, who had trained with him in Afghanistan (news - web sites) — to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The Americans led the campaign for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s ouster from the tiny emirate.
After the Saudi government stripped him of his citizenship and kicked him out of the country, bin Laden moved to Sudan and then to Afghanistan.
It was there that he took his war to a higher level, focusing on the United States and mentioning Saudi Arabia in a wider context.
"He saw himself as a world leader fighting on behalf of all Muslims, not only Saudis," said Jamal Khashoggi, media adviser to Prince Turki, the Saudi ambassador to London.
After the American ouster of Saddam in 2003, bin Laden slowly shifted his fight to both the United States and Saudi Arabia, not waiting to finish off one enemy before taking on the other.
The shift translated on the ground, Khashoggi said, into the May 2003 attack in Riyadh. Militants inspired by bin Laden struck for the first time in the kingdom after Sept. 11, 2001, attacking three residential compounds. Twenty-five people were killed.
The attacks continued, but many Saudis were revolted by the tactic. Others were distress when they understood that Muslims and Saudis were dying in the attacks along with non-Muslim foreigners. Bin Laden's credibility as a defender of Islam began to suffer.
Dennis Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said bin Laden sought in the tape to "refashion the focal point of what he's about" after losing credibility. In the tape, he implies he's about "creating a new order, a new reality and ... not about doing all these things that people say are un-Islamic."
Robert Jordan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said bin Laden's message was a reflection of how weakened he and al-Qaida had become. "He's now resorting to political rhetoric to try to influence the people," Jordan said.
One way bin Laden is trying to do that is by ridiculing upcoming, three-stage municipal elections in the kingdom, which begin in February and are seen as an attempt by the government to open the country to political reform.
"This hasn't changed anything. ...The best they can do is that they will go into the elections game as happened before in Yemen and Jordan or Egypt and move in a vicious circle for dozens of years. This is regardless of the fact that it is prohibited to enter the infidel legislative councils," bin Laden said.
Jordan said bin Laden's reference to the elections "shows he's very nervous" about them.
"He's trying create the same kind of divisiveness we're seeing in Iraq (news - web sites) about the elections, but I don't think he's going to succeed because Saudi Arabia is a much more homogenous society," he said.
Jordan also said it would be hard for the militants to carry out a huge attack on oil installations in the kingdom that would significantly disrupt production or distribution. At most, isolated attacks could be launched on less-guarded areas, he said, adding that targeting the kingdom's oil industry could backfire.
"This (oil) is the entire economic base of the country, and even those who might be critical of the West or America will be greatly offended by any destruction of their really only means of economic progress and survival," he said.
December 22, 2004 at 07:40 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
A Political Arabesque
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Political Arabesque
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 19, 2004
I have long believed that any American general or senior diplomat who wants to work in Iraq should have to pass a test. It would be a very simple test. It would consist of only one question: "Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?"
If you answered "Yes," you would not be allowed to work in Iraq. You could go to Korea, Japan or Germany - but not Iraq. Only those who understand that in the Middle East the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line should be allowed to carry out U.S. policy there.
What I worry about most right now - after a week in the Persian Gulf - is that we have entered a really complex, arabesque phase in Iraq. It requires enormous understanding of the complexities of Iraqi and Arab politics and the ability to produce outcomes not by the traditional, straightforward U.S. approach, but by the more subtle, bazaar-oriented politics in that part of the world.
For instance, with the elections in Iraq only six weeks away, and Iran actively using its influence and money to push its candidates, one thing is perfectly clear: The Bush neocons desperately need an Iraqi neo-Baath.
By that I mean they need to find a political framework that will advance the interests of the pro-Baath Sunni Arab nationalists in Iraq, but do it with a more progressive, pluralistic outlook than the old Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.
This is what we should be most focused on right now in Iraq - not the bogeyman of Iranian influence. There is no way to prevent Iranian influence in Iraq. Iran is next door and it has myriad economic and cultural links with Iraqi Shiites. Moreover, while the Iraqi Shiites are certain to emerge with the most seats in the new Iraqi parliament, and while some are pro-Iranian, the majority of Iraqi Shiites have no intention of being ruled from Tehran. The Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, not Persians, and they are aware of their Arabness. Any Iraqi leader who is depicted or presents himself as the cat's-paw of Tehran will face a backlash.
The best way to reduce Iran's influence, and to prevent civil war, is to ensure as much Sunni participation in the election as possible, so that when the new Iraqi constitution is written, the more secular Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis will balance the more religious-oriented Shiites. If there is not enough Sunni participation, the elections, rather than defusing civil strife in Iraq, will increase it, because all the spoils will go to the Shiites and Kurds, and the Sunnis will feel even more excluded.
For all these reasons, the Bush team should be working with Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arab states and even Syria to use all their contacts with Iraqi Sunnis to embolden them to take part in the elections - and to make sure they have bags of money to get out the vote, particularly among the Sunni tribes. It is imperative the Sunnis be brought in, even if some have to be bought.
Unfortunately, America's Arab friends "are doing nothing" right now, a senior Iraqi minister told me. The Americans need to be more demanding of their Arab friends, he said. While many Arab leaders are appalled at the idea of Shiites ruling an Arab state in the otherwise Sunni-dominated Arab world, they also know that a civil war in Iraq would lead to terrible instability at a time when all these Arab regimes understand they have to start reforming.
Yes, the U.S. invasion of Iraq made America some new enemies, but it also has triggered a huge debate about reform in the Arab world, said Ammar Abdulhamid, who helps run DarEmar, a pro-reform NGO in Syria. "For some people it forced the reform issue, because they said, 'Let's change ourselves before the Americans change us,' " noted Mr. Abdulhamid. Some Arab liberals want to use the U.S. presence to pressure their governments to go ahead with reform. Some regimes are feeling very vulnerable and believe the only way to stave off the Americans is to be seen as working on reforms. But one way or another, "the Iraqi issue is forcing the issue of reform on everyone, and in some ways it is independent of what actually happens in Iraq," Mr. Abdulhamid said.
A sophisticated U.S. approach that uses both sticks and carrots with Syria, Iran and America's Arab allies could still shape a decent election in Iraq, but we have to get in gear right now, and be smart. Does this administration have anyone who knows how to play this game? Attention: Iraq is having an election. Elections are rare in this part of the world, so when they happen, everyone in the neighborhood tries to vote. We need to make sure our friends do as well.
December 22, 2004 at 08:37 AM in Muslim background | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 17, 2004
A hot line to heaven
Economist.com | George Bush and God
George Bush and God
A hot line to heaven
Dec 16th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Reuters
Reuters
Is George Bush too religious? Here is a closer look at what a much-misquoted president actually says and how it compares with his predecessors
“I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president.� What? Did George Bush really say that? Does the president imagine he has a divine mission?
Well, he was quoted to that effect by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. The full quote, however, does not quite sound as if Mr Bush is labouring to scrap the republic and replace it with a theocracy. “But if that doesn't happen, that's okay,” the president continued, “I have seen the presidency up close and personal. I know it's a sacrifice, and I don't need it for personal validation.”
Still, the first part of the comment goes to the controversial nub of Mr Bush's religiosity. If you believe, along with him and John Calvin, that God involves himself in the workings of the world and all our lives, then you are always going to be vulnerable to the accusation that you think you have some sort of divine mandate.
Mr Bush clearly does believe God is involved in his life. Asked at a debate in the Republican primary contest in 1999 which philosopher he most identified with, Mr Bush replied promptly, “Christ—because he changed my heart.” At a national prayer breakfast in February 2003, he said he “felt the presence of the Almighty”. The president has talked of making decisions “on bended knee”.
Mr Bush also seems to believe there is some sort of divine plan for the world. In his speech to Congress nine days after the September 11th attacks, the president said that “freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” In other words, God is involved in the affairs of men, and to be against freedom and justice is to go against the will of God.
By the standards of most evangelical Christians, these beliefs would be considered unremarkable. But Mr Bush cannot be judged by those standards. He is president of all Americans. What about the measure of America's political mainstream? Do these beliefs make him “too religious”, meaning that he crosses the fuzzy line between church and state? Not necessarily.
Mr Bush is in fact in the mainstream of recent presidents. As Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre points out, Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school while president. Bill Clinton talked about Jesus more often than Mr Bush and has spoken in more churches than Mr Bush has had rubber-chicken dinners.
Nor, in the American context, is the president's belief that God is involved in the world's affairs exactly ground-breaking. The last paragraph of the declaration of independence—no less—starts by appealing to the “Supreme Judge of the world” and ends “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.” Both references in America's founding document are considerably more sectarian than Mr Bush's comment about God not being neutral between freedom and fear. They associate God with America's national interest; Mr Bush did not.
In these two core beliefs, then, the president's religiosity does not seem out of the mainstream. Yet it is worth examining Mr Bush's religious rhetoric more closely, for he does speak about religion more often, and more openly, than most of his predecessors. Mr Bush uses religious rhetoric in five main ways:
• As a literary device. In his first inaugural address, he referred to the parable of the good Samaritan: “When we see that wounded traveller on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.” He is especially fond of references to hymns: “There is power, wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people,” he said in the 2003 state-of-the-union address. Critics have complained that such quotations are code to please evangelicals, who recognise them. But religious imagery has been common currency in American public speaking since John Winthrop's “city on the hill” in 1630. Lincoln's speeches are rich with the sounds and rhythms of the Bible. Mike Gerson, the president's chief speech-writer, argues that to fillet out references to God would flatten political rhetoric.
• As consolation. “This world he created is of moral design,” said Mr Bush at the National Cathedral three days after the September 11th attacks. “And the Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn.” American presidents have long used religion in their role as comforter-in-chief. Remember Ronald Reagan's tribute to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger: “We will never forget them...as they prepared for the journey and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.” Mr Bush's usage is little different, and sometimes as eloquent.
• As history. On his trip to Africa in 2003, Mr Bush visited a slave-trading post at Goree Island, in Senegal. “Christian men and women,” he said, “became blind to the clearest commands of their faith...Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Saviour, and found he was more like themselves than their masters.” In talking about the historical influence of religion, Mr Bush is highly unusual among presidents. But this is the least controversial feature of his rhetoric, since it concerns itself with historical facts, rather than the justification of present policies in religious terms.
• Arguing for his faith-based policies. Potentially this is more problematic, since the point of Mr Bush's faith-based initiative is to use religious institutions to deliver social welfare. The proposals have been criticised on those very grounds (for breaching the wall between church and state). But Mr Bush is careful not to claim too much for the role of faith, saying merely that religion is an aid to social welfare, not the heart of it. “Men and women can be good without faith,” he told a national prayer breakfast in 2001, “but faith is a force of goodness. Men and women can be compassionate without faith, but faith often inspires compassion.”
• To talk about providence. At a 2003 prayer breakfast, Mr Bush argued that “behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” Yet, as he admitted in his 2003 state-of-the-union address, he does not think himself privy to that purpose: “We do not know—we do not claim to know—all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them.”
By God, by George
All this amounts to a great deal of God-talk. But is it too much? Does it cross the line? That depends, of course, on where you think the line is.
Mr Bush has been careful not to sound sectarian when talking about religion. He angered many supporters by claiming, for instance, that Muslims worship the same God as Christians (a view espoused by Harry Truman but not by most evangelicals). He visited a mosque after September 11th. “We do not impose any religion; we welcome all religions,” he said at a 2001 prayer breakfast. “We do not prescribe any prayer; we welcome all prayers.”
By and large, Mr Bush has not associated the workings of providence with America or himself. The best evidence is his frequent assertion that “the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world. It is God's gift to humanity.” To many Europeans, this formulation seems unnecessary. They argue that liberty is good in itself, not because it is God's gift. But to Americans the association is almost axiomatic, since it is rooted in the declaration of independence (“all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”). In some ways, Mr Bush is actually rejecting the “exceptionalist” claim that America is a unique nation singled out by its liberty.
Mr Bush's followers have been less prudent. They talk as if he has the mandate of heaven. “The Lord has just blessed him,” said Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I think President Bush is God's man at this hour,” said Tim Goeglein, of the White House Office of Public Liaison, soon after the September 11th attacks. But when Mr Gerson said the same thing (“Mr President, when I saw you on television, I thought God wanted you there”), Mr Bush retorted: “He wants us all here, Gerson.”
Lastly, while Mr Bush goes on about the importance of faith, he never talks about policy—even issues with a moral component—in terms of doctrine or revelation. Evangelicals, for example, want to ban gay marriage because (they say) it is against God's will. Mr Bush never says this. He opposes it on the grounds that marriage is an institution so fundamental to society that it should not be changed. That is also why he has been so cautious in arguing for his faith-based policies.
That said, to speak frequently and directly about religion in a divided America can itself be divisive. Some Americans think religion should be purely private. The Texas Republican Party's 2004 platform “affirms that the United States of America is a Christian Nation”. The Supreme Court discusses the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. When he talks about religion, Mr Bush rarely strays far from the mainstream. But America is a country in which the place of religion in the public sphere has never been fixed, and probably never will be.
© The Economist Newspaper Limited 2004. All rights reserved.
December 17, 2004 at 12:44 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Historic names live on in new model Army (but in brackets)
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
A NEW-LOOK British Army was unveiled yesterday, based on a handful of super- regiments, combining famous regimental names under new regional headings.
The long-awaited restructuring of the Army which has provoked emotive protests, particularly among supporters of The Black Watch in Scotland, was outlined by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and by General Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff and prime mover behind the changes. Some of the heat of the campaign in Scotland may be removed by the emergence of a special deal created for Scottish units.
After a request from the colonels of the Scottish Division, General Jackson agreed to preserve the identities of the present Scottish regiments using a formula that has not been followed elsewhere in the infantry. He added that the English divisions had not made the same request for this particular formula.
So, as an example: The Prince of Wales’ Division, The Cheshire Regiment will join with The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters and The Staffordshire Regiment to form the Mercian Regiment. They will become known as the 1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Cheshires), 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Worcesters and Foresters) and 3rd Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Staffords).
General Jackson confirmed that the Scottish Division was to be reduced from six battalions to five and then merged into a single Royal Regiment of Scotland.
The fourth battalion will be formed by reassigning the 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment to a new role as a support unit for the SAS. It will be formed into a tri-service “Ranger” unit, expected to be located somewhere near Hereford, where the SAS is based, to boost the availability of special operations troops.
General Jackson admitted yesterday that he had had to face some tough decisions and was well aware of the emotions generated when famous regiments were amalgamated.
Although The Black Watch was the regiment constantly in the forefront of publicity over the expected changes, General Jackson said one of the most difficult decisions was over the future of The Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment. It is a relatively new regiment but with legendary ancestors, notably the 1st Battalion The Gloucestershire Regiment, which suffered 629 casualties during the battle at Imjin River in the Korean War in the 1950s.
The RGBW, as it is called, is now to be split up, with the Gloster element being transferred to the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, and the Berkshire and Wiltshire components being switched to The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment. In addition, the newly amalgamated Devon, Dorset and Gloucestershire Regiment will be shipped over to join the Light Division, which consists now of two battalions of Light Infantry and two battalions of The Royal Green Jackets.
With the size of the Army coming down from 103,500 to 102,000 soldiers and the number of infantry battalions from 40 to 36, the Service is also going to lose six of its bands and one more will be reduced.
In the Commons Mr Hoon faced derision when he announced the biggest changes to the Army for a generation.
He told MPs the object was to make the Army more robust and to build up key specialist capabilities, such as engineers, logistics and intelligence experts. The “release” of 2,400 posts, arising from the reduction in the infantry battalions from 40 to 36, would make it possible to increase the number of specialists in these key areas.
Mr Hoon said that the infantry could be cut back because of the reduced requirement for troops in Northern Ireland. Now the new super-regiments would be given permanent bases, providing more stability and better arrangements for families.
The Foot Guards of the Guards Division, The Royal Irish Regiment and the two remaining Gurkha battalions have been excluded from the changes. The size of the Territorial Army will stay the same.
Regiments worst-affected by the changes:
The Royal Scots: Senior infantry regiment, dating from 1633 (originally as Sir John Hepburn’s Regiment). Headquarters: Edinburgh. Colonel-in-Chief: the Princess Royal. Motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (No one touches me with impunity). Recruits from Lothians and Edinburgh. Battle honours include Waterloo, Somme and Passchendaele. Nicknamed Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard. Dress includes Stewart tartan kilts.
King’s Own Scottish Borderers: First raised in 1689 (as Leven’s Regiment or the Edinburgh Regiment). Headquarters: Berwick-on-Tweed. Colonel-in-Chief: was Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester until her recent death. Motto: Nisi dominus frustra (Without the Lord all is in vain). Recruits from Borders. Battle honours include Mons, Ypres, Passchendaele, Dunkirk and Burma. Dress includes the Leslie tartan and on August 1, to commemorate the Battle of Minden, a red rose in headdress.
The King’s Own Royal Border Regiment: Dates from 1680 (as the 2nd Tangier Regiment). Acquired its present name in 1959 when The King’s Own Royal Regiment and The Border Regiment merged. Headquarters: Carlisle. Colonel-in-Chief: Princess Alexandra. Motto: Honi Soit Qi Mal y Pense (Evil be to him who evil thinks). Recruits in Cumbria and north Lancashire. Battle honours include Waterloo, Sevastopol, Ypres, Somme, Dunkirk, Arnhem and Sicily.
Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment: Formed in 1994 from The Gloucestershire Regiment and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment but its origins date from 1694 (as Sir John Gibson’s Regiment). Headquarters: Gloucester. Colonel-in-Chief: the Duke of Edinburgh. Recruits in the named county areas. Battle honours, producing 16 Victoria Crosses and one George Cross, include Waterloo, Sevastopol, Mons, Ypres, Somme and Burma. Dress distinctions include a Korean War citation patch on the top of the sleeve.
The Devonshire and Dorset Regiment: The senior county regiment dating from 1685 (as the Duke of Beaufort’s Regiment). Headquarters: Exeter. Colonel-in-Chief: the Duke of Kent. Battle honours include the Relief of Ladysmith, Mons, Somme, Gallipoli, the Normandy landings, Caen and Burma. Motto: Semper Fidelis (Ever Faithful). Dress distinctions include the Croix de Guerre ribbon.
December 17, 2004 at 12:33 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Terror laws in tatters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-1406393-2,00.html
By Frances Gibb and Richard Ford
THE Government was seeking new ways to keep terrorist suspects in prison last night after a law lords ruling devastated the anti-terrorism laws introduced by David Blunkett.
Charles Clarke, on his first day at the Home Office after Mr Blunkett’s resignation, refused to bow swiftly to the 8-1 judgment. He said that the men held in Belmarsh prison, southeast London, and Woodhill, Milton Keynes, who took the Government to court would stay in jail with other detainees.
In an overwhelming condemnation of the law introduced after the September 11 attacks in the US, the House of Lords ruled that the human rights of foreign suspects held for up to three years without charge or trial had been breached. The decision paves the way for a huge constitutional clash between the judiciary and Parliament.
It was also a big blow to Tony Blair’s determination to put security at the heart of a general election appeal next year, after the humiliating departure of Mr Blunkett.
The new Home Secretary, anxious to show he will match Mr Blunkett’s toughness on terrorism, brushed aside calls from civil liberties groups for twelve detainees held for three years on suspicion of links with terrorism, to be released or charged. Mr Clarke emphasised that his job was to protect national security.“I will not be revoking the certificates or releasing the detainees, whom I have reason to believe are a significant threat to our security.”
Mr Clarke said in a written ministerial statement that the internment provisions would remain in force until Parliament agreed the future of the law. “It is ultimately for Parliament to decide whether and how we should amend the law.”
Despite his defiance, however, ministers are known to be considering a series of measures to enable foreign terrorist suspects to be brought to trial.
These include allowing phone tap evidence, and introducing offences of associating with wrongdoers or committing acts preparatory to terrorism.
Any attempt to continue to hold suspects without trial will be met with fresh legal challenges, lawyers and civil libertarians said last night.
The law lords have no power to strike down measures contained in the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 but quashed the government “opt-out” from the European Convention on Human Rights as unjustified.
Lord Hoffman said that the case called into question “the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention”.
He added: “The real threat to the life of the nation . . . comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.”
The nine-judge panel ruled that detention without trial was not justified by the scale of the emergency facing Britain. The measures also discriminated against foreign citizens on grounds of their nationality or immigration status.
Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who represented eight of the detainees, said: “It will provoke an enormous constitutional crisis if the Government fails to act swiftly. The Government has to take steps to withdraw the legislation and release the detainees.”
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This judgment should not come as a surprise. We warned the Government at the time they passed this legislation that it would be difficult to justify.”
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “Internment has been a festering sore on our nation’s conscience for nearly three years. By acting as judge, jury and jailer the Government has flouted the very values it claims to defend.
“It must now act and charge or release all those currently held without delay.”
She said that if the Government ignored the law lords, it could spark a constitutional crisis.
The emergency measures were rushed through Parliament within three months of the September 11 attacks in the US. In all, 17 people have been detained and 12 remain in Belmarsh and Broadmoor top-security mental hospital, Berkshire. They took their case to the House of Lords after the Court of Appeal backed Home Office powers to hold them without limit or charge.
The Government opted out of part of the human rights convention on the right to a fair trial in order to bring in the legislation.
Any foreign citizen suspected of links with terrorism can be detained or can choose to be deported, but cannot be deported if it would mean persecution in the homeland.
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
December 17, 2004 at 12:28 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 15, 2004
Bush warns Iran and Syria on Iraq
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Bush warns Iran and Syria on Iraq
US President George W Bush has warned Iran and Syria not to interfere in Iraq in advance of next month's elections.
Mr Bush said he expected all of Iraq's neighbours, including Iran and Syria, to stop what he said was the flow of people and money into Iraq.
The influx was aimed at helping terrorists, he said.
His comments came on the first day of the election campaign, as at least seven people were killed and 30 injured by a bomb in the holy city of Karbala.
The blast at the gate to a major Shia shrine, the Imam Hussein mausoleum, was the first serious attack in the city for several months.
Sheikh Abdul Mehdi Karbalai, an aide to Iraq's most senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was said to be among the wounded.
A spokesman for Ayatollah Sistani told al-Jazeera television station the bomb was probably an attempt to assassinate the cleric.
'Stop the flow'
Mr Bush gave the warning after Iraq's interim Defence Minister, Hazim Shaalan, accused Iran and Syria of orchestrating terrorist attacks and branded Tehran the "most dangerous enemy of Iraq".
"We will continue to make it clear, to both Syria and Iran that, as will other nations in our coalition... that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interests," the US president said at a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"We expect people to work with the Iraqi interim government to enforce the border to stop the flow of people and money that aim to help these terrorists," he added.
Meanwhile a senior American general said the insurgency in Iraq had become "more effective".
Air Force Lt Gen Lance Smith said explosive attacks on US supply lines were slowing military operations and hindering the country's reconstruction.
He added that while there was influence and an intent to influence from Iran, the extent of it was "difficult to gauge".
As for Syria, the highest levels of government did not appear to have sanctioned such activity but there was a "significant amount" of both financial support and movement across the border of foreign fighters, he said.
On 30 January, voters will elect a 275-member assembly that will appoint a government and draft a constitution.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced he would stand at the polls backed by a 240-member list of candidates from his Iraqi National Accord party, intended to have a broad appeal.
December 15, 2004 at 11:40 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 12, 2004
Japan to put sky marshals aboard commercial flights
Sunday, December 12, 2004 at 07:44 JST
TOKYO — The government decided Friday to place sky marshals, or armed police officers, onboard unspecified commercial flights to deter hijacking. The measure apparently will mainly affect flights to and from the United States and that officers will be carrying guns, according to sources familiar with the plan.
The Chiba prefectural police, which oversee Narita airport, and the Osaka prefectural police, which have Kansai International Airport within their jurisdiction, have already set up sky marshal units. (Kyodo News)
December 12, 2004 at 01:41 AM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 11, 2004
Tension rises as Iran is accused of trying to rig Iraq poll
Tony Allen-Mills
CLAIMS of an Iranian plot to manipulate forthcoming elections in neighbouring Iraq have complicated plans for next month’s polls and heightened tension between the Sunni and Shi’ite factions in Baghdad
Scrutiny of Tehran’s role in allegedly attempting to influence the Iraqi poll has risen after a claim by King Abdullah of Jordan that more than 1m Iranians have crossed their 900-mile long border with Iraq.
Abdullah claimed last week that many of the Iranians were hoping to register and vote for pro-Iran Shi’ite parties.
“It is in Iran’s vested interest to have an Islamic republic of Iraq . . . that is very pro-Iran,” he told The Washington Post.
The king’s warnings were echoed by Ghazi al-Yawar, the interim Iraqi president, who claimed that Iran’s Shi’ite leaders were coaching Iraqi candidates and putting “huge amounts of money” into the campaign in the hope of producing a Shi’ite-led government.
The claims provoked outraged denials from the Iranian government and were played down by American and Iraqi officials who said that there was no evidence that so many people had crossed the border.
“The figure of 1m Iranians is highly exaggerated,” said Ibrahim al-Jafari, Iraq’s Shi’ite vice-president. “It is a huge number that is difficult to hide.”
Officials nonetheless acknowledged concern that the elections might produce what Abdullah described as a “crescent” of Shi’ite domination stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. “Strategic planners around the world have got to be aware that is a possibility,” Abdullah said.
Other experts suggested that Sunni leaders such as Abdullah and al-Yawar were inflating the Iranian threat to rally Iraq’s Sunni minority, which has been threatening to boycott the poll.
Last week leading Shi’ite parties made their first big push for power by presenting a unified list of 228 candidates. The list is supported by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s Shi’ite leader, but does not include supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the more militant cleric backed by Iran.
Despite continuing doubts about whether the election can be held amid current levels of violence, US authorities are pressing ahead with preparations. The prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a Shi’ite, suggested last week that the vote might have to take place over several weeks to police polling stations effectively. He said later that the elections should be held on January 30 as planned.
# A US soldier has been jailed for three years in a plea bargain over the killing of a severely wounded 16-year-old Iraqi in a burning vehicle in August. Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne claimed he and another soldier had joined in a “mercy killing”.
December 11, 2004 at 09:48 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Kremlin accused over Yushchenko poisoning
SUPPORTERS of Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-western Ukrainian opposition leader, last night hailed the results of medical tests that proved he had been poisoned, saying they would further boost his chances of victory in the December 26 presidential election.
Yurko Pavlenko, an opposition MP, said the findings by an Austrian clinic confirmed their suspicion that a mysterious illness that left their candidate’s face deeply pockmarked and discoloured had been caused by dioxin — possibly at the instigation of the Kremlin.
“This was done by people who wanted to kill him or effectively knock him out of the presidential race,” Pavlenko said. “Russia has campaigned against Yushchenko and interfered in a shameless way in the Ukrainian election, and its intelligence sources cannot be excluded from the top suspects.
“This confirmation will boost Yushchenko’s vote and will especially bring undecided voters to his side.”
Yushchenko, 50, will face Viktor Yanukovych, 54, the pro-Moscow prime minister, in the Boxing Day contest — a rerun of the second round of the election on November 21.
Yanukovych’s victory in that contest was annulled as fraudulent by the supreme court after the result brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets of the capital, Kiev, and other cities.
Dr Michael Zimpfer, director of Vienna’s private Rudolfinerhaus clinic, said extensive tests on Yushchenko had found levels of dioxin, a highly toxic chemical, 1,000 times above normal in his blood and tissue.
“There is no doubt about the fact that Mr Yushchenko’s disease has been caused by a case of poisoning by dioxin,” Zimpfer said. “It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup. We suspect involvement of an external party, but we cannot answer as to who cooked what or who was with him while he ate.”
Yushchenko’s wife, Katerina, said she knew from the beginning he had been poisoned. “We had received threats before it happened and we continued to receive threats because I think there are many people who consider my husband and the changes he would bring to Ukraine a threat to them personally,” she said.
Yushchenko, wearing a scarf in his orange campaign colour, declared: “Everything is going well. I plan to live a long time and I plan to live happily. I am getting better health every day.”
The clinic’s findings look certain to be dimissed, however, by supporters of Yanukovych, who insisted the campaign was fair. Ukrainian authorities have given a number of improbable explanations for Yuschenko’s condition, among them bad sushi.
The bitter election campaign has threatened to divide Ukraine between supporters of Yushchenko — concentrated in Kiev and the Catholic west of the country — and backers of Yanukovych in the Russian-speaking east.
Yushchenko’s supporters, who see Ukraine’s future in Nato and the European Union rather than in the Russian sphere of influence, suspect he was targeted at a dinner late on September 5 at the summer house of Volodymyr Satsyuk, the first deputy chairman of the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.
The organisation was formed from the Ukrainian branch of the former KGB and many members still pine for the days of the Soviet Union.
The American-born Katerina Yushchenko said she had tasted poison on her husband’s lips when he returned home. “I tasted some medicine on his breath, on his lips, and I asked him about it. He brushed it away, saying there is nothing.”
The next morning Yushchenko complained of headaches, a recognised symptom of dioxin poisoning. They got worse and he was rushed to hospital for treatment.
Serhiy Hrabovsky, a Ukrainian journalist, said: “Many politically active people have died suddenly in Ukraine since independence in 1991 of heart attacks brought on by suspected poisoning and in staged car accidents.”
Earlier this year Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist well known for her criticism of the Kremlin for human rights abuses in Chechnya, claimed a severe illness she suffered was caused by poison administered by Russian agents.
December 11, 2004 at 09:47 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Ukraine leader poisoned – official
Askold Krushelnycky, Kiev
THE Kremlin was yesterday accused of poisoning Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, in order to kee
The allegation by sources close to Yushchenko, 50, emerged as doctors in Vienna confirmed that the politician had been poisoned with dioxin as he campaigned for the Ukrainian presidency.
Dr Michael Zimpfer, director of a private clinic that treated Yushchenko when he fell ill six weeks before the first round of voting, said that the poison, which is soluble, may have been in the politician’s soup.
“It would be quite easy to administer this amount in soup,” said the doctor, whose tests showed that Yushchenko had 1,000 times the normal level of dioxin in his body.
He had been in a critical condition, the doctor added: “If this dose had been higher it may have caused death.”
Yushchenko’s aides suspect an attempt to kill him or knock him out of the election race was made at a dinner on September 5 at the summer house of a senior official in the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.
The sources said they believed that a member of the SBU had carried out the poisoning at the Kremlin’s instigation. “We are convinced Russia was behind it,” said one.
Yushchenko was forced to halt his campaign for treatment and returned from hospital badly disfigured — apparently by chloracne, a condition associated with dioxin poisoning.
The election run-off last month was won by Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-backed prime minister, but after mass protests and evidence of ballot-rigging the result was cancelled by the supreme court. The poll will be rerun on Boxing Day.
December 11, 2004 at 09:46 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
China criticizes Japan for calling it threat in defense guidelines
Sunday, December 12, 2004 at 07:43 JST
BEIJING — China on Saturday criticized Japan for describing Beijing as a military threat and expressed unease about new Japanese defense guidelines that loosen a ban on weapons exports
"We are deeply concerned with the great changes of Japan's military defense strategy and its possible impact," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue was quoted as saying by state media.
China regards Japan as its major rival for status as East Asia's dominant military power and reacts negatively to signs that Tokyo might shed self-imposed postwar limits on military activity.
The guidelines issued Friday ease Japan's decades-old ban on arms exports in order to facilitate a joint missile security program with Washington. But they stress that Tokyo will stick to defense, avoiding offensive military activity abroad.
The report cites threats posed by North Korean missiles and China's military buildup.
Zhang expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with that description.
"This is totally groundless and extremely irresponsible," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted her as saying.
Zhang called on Tokyo to take "prudent actions in military and security issues" in order to maintain regional stability, the China Daily newspaper and other government media reported.
Zhang appealed to Japan to "take its Asian neighbors' concern into full consideration," the reports said. She cited "historical reasons" — a reference to Japan's brutal conquest of China and other Asian nations before and during World War II.
Tensions simmering in bilateral relations stem from such issues as a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, the two countries' respective natural gas development projects in the East China Sea, and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
China is East Asia's military giant in terms of military spending, ranking third in the world in 2003 at $55.95 billion, and its official defense budget in 2004 registered double-digit growth for the 15th year.
In comparison, Japan's defense expenditures totaled $42.84 billion in 2003, which ranked second in Asia and fifth in the world, according to the latest Military Balance publication.
But Japan benefits from its strong security alliance with the United States, the world's sole superpower that topped the list with overwhelming military spending of $404.92 billion in 2003. (Wire reports)
December 11, 2004 at 08:28 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Japan takes another step away from post-war pacifism
Japan takes another step away from post-war pacifism
Japan has taken another step away from its post-World War II pacifism with the ending of its decades-old ban on military exports and telling defense planners to regard China and North Korea as potential threats.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet agreed to allow military sales -- only to the United States and for missile defense -- a day after it extended Japan's ground-breaking troop deployment in Iraq for another year.
The policy change Friday came in the form of a set of guidelines for defense policymakers, updated for the first time in nine years, along with a five-year outline for military procurements set to begin from April 2005.
The guidelines approved by the cabinet said Japan needed to change its mindset to have "multi-function, flexible defense capabilities" to deal with new threats such as terrorist and missile attacks.
A statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Japan decided to export missile parts to the United States under "strict controls" to contribute to "the Japan-US security alliance and secure the safety of our country."
Hosoda said any other military exports would be approved on a case-by-case basis. Koizumi on Friday held out the possibility that Japan, which is heavily dependent on oil shipments, could sell arms to Southeast Asian nations to fight piracy.
Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the country's largest commercial lobby, the Japan Business Federation or Keidanren, hailed the new defense policy, saying Japan was "in the midst of a major turning point."
The constitution imposed by US occupiers after World War II said Japan would forever renounce war. Japan has since produced top-of-the-line equipment which its military -- known as the Self-Defense Forces -- is forbidden to use.
Embracing its pacifist role, Japan in 1967 said it would ban all weapons sales to communist countries and other states perceived to threaten world peace. The self-imposed ban was tightened in 1976 to rule out all military exports.
Tokyo and Washington began to study a missile interception shield after Stalinist North Korea shocked the world in 1998 by firing a missile over Japan.
But Japan was forbidden from exporting missile components to its close ally because it has had a defense-only security policy since its bitter defeat in World War II.
The new defense outline comes as Japan sees increasing tension with both North Korea and China.
Japan has said Chinese ships have crossed into Japanese waters, often near disputed gasfields, at least 33 times this year, including a nuclear submarine that set off a diplomatic incident last month.
Hosoda played down the symbolism of the guidelines, noting they did not explicitly label China a threat. But he said that due to growing Chinese military and economy strength, Japan "needs to watch China."
The guidelines said: "China, which has a great impact on security in this region, is pushing ahead with enhancing its nuclear and missile capabilities in modernizing its navy and air force while expanding marine activities."
Tomohide Murai, professor of Japan's state-run National Defense Academy and specialist on East Asia security issues, said Beijing "will surely upgrade and modernize its military" as its economy grows.
"Although China has never said it would attack Japan, we cannot really rule out its offensive intention given the fact that the Chinese nuclear submarine just entered our waters," he said.
Bilateral visits have been on hold, with China voicing anger over Koizumi's repeated visits to a Tokyo shrine dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese war dead including seven men hanged for World War II war crimes.
The guidelines said North Korea was "developing, deploying and proliferating weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles," describing its military moves as serious, destabilizing factors in the region.
An advisory panel to Koizumi mapping out the defense strategies recommended in October that Japan study acquiring the ability to launch pre-emptive strikes.
But there was no explicit reference to that point in the new outline. Murai said it probably reflected "a lack of debate among people" as well as fear that such a major move would cause unnecessary concern at home and abroad.
December 11, 2004 at 02:01 AM in Israel | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Al-Qaeda: The Scope of the Threat
Dan provides a very provocative and well reasoned view on Al Qaeda
Winds of Change.NET: Al-Qaeda: The Scope of the Threat
by Dan Darling at December 8, 2004 09:25 AM
I'm sitting out the whole Armed Liberal/Kevin Drum debate for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the partisan half of me isn't going to cry too much if the Democratic Party can't articulate a consistent national security approach, but one of the things that I do think that needs to be understood to anyone seeking to understand how to fight al-Qaeda is the true scope of the threat.
December 11, 2004 at 01:15 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 08, 2004
Japan threatens to cut aid to NKorea after false evidence on kidnap row
Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Japan threatens to cut aid to NKorea after false evidence on kidnap row
Click to enlarge photo
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan protested to North Korea and threatened to cut food aid after the Stalinist state handed over other people's ashes to prove the death of a Japanese woman whom it had abducted at age 13.
DNA tests showed that charred remains handed over to a Japanese delegation last month did not belong to Megumi Yokota, the most famous of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents during the Cold War, officials said.
"The bones belonged to a number of other people," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda announced, causing relief in Japan but also fueling new anger at North Korea.
"It would be difficult under such circumstances to provide further (food) assistance to North Korea," Hosoda said. "A very big obstacle has emerged against future negotiations between Japan and North Korea."
A protest was lodged with Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing by telephone after North Korean diplomats in China refused to set an appointment to hear from the Japanese side, the foreign ministry said.
Japan has already passed laws which it can invoke to impose economic sanctions to press cash-strapped Pyongyang to come clean about its abductions of Japanese and its nuclear arms ambitions.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has been accused domestically of being too soft on North Korea, called the false evidence "extremely regrettable" but ruled out halting all dialogue.
"I'm not thinking about implementing food assistance now. We will watch how this matter develops," Koizumi told reporters.
"We must continue negotiations with both dialogue and pressure on mind. We still need dialogue in dealing with North Korea."
Tsutomu Takebe, secretary general of Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, said of North Korea: "Some people call it a rogue state and I share the impression."
Kyodo news agency later reported that a second set of remains were found not to include those of another abductee, Kaoru Matsuki.
Analysis of the cremated remains found DNA of several people including a woman, Kyodo said quoting an unnamed government source.
North Korea had reportedly told Japan that the remains may have included those of Matsuki, who was abducted in Spain in 1980 when he was 26.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il admitted to Koizumi at a 2002 summit that his country had kidnapped Japanese citizens to train spies in Japanese language and culture.
At their second summit last May, Koizumi promised to provide North Korea with 250,000 tonnes of food and 10 million dollars worth of medical supplies as "humanitarian" aid.
Japan has already shipped 125,000 tonnes of the food and seven million dollars worth of the medicines. A normalisation of relations could mean a massive influx of Japanese aid to the impoverished state.
North Korea allowed five Japanese citizens to return home after the 2002 summit but insists that eight other kidnap victims including Yokota had died.
Yokota was a schoolgirl when she was kidnapped in 1977 by communist agents. North Korea contends she died as a depressed adult in the early 1990s after marrying a North Korean man and bearing his daughter.
After months of foot-dragging, North Korea last month handed over to a visiting Japanese team medical records and other artefacts said to prove the deaths, along with personal items such as photographs of Yokota.
Families of the kidnap victims have suspected that North Korea was not letting the eight victims go home because they may have knowledge of secrets such as the regime's ways of training spies.
"Backed by indignation among the people, we demand that the government promptly impose economic sanctions," Shigeru Yokota, the father of Megumi, angrily told a news conference.
"I feel relieved," said his wife, Sakie. "I am convinced that Megumi is still alive along with other victims."
If Japan gets tough, it will add to pressure being applied by the US administration to force North Korea back to six-nation talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.
December 8, 2004 at 11:42 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Congress Passes Historic Spy Agencies Bill
Yahoo! News - Congress Passes Historic Spy Agencies Bill
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Congress on Wednesday ordered the biggest overhaul of U.S. intelligence in a half-century, replacing a network geared to the Cold War fight against communism with a post-Sept. 11 structure requiring military and civilian spy agencies to work together against terrorists intent on holy war.
The Senate overwhelmingly passed the legislation 89-2, one day after the House easily pushed through the compromise strongly endorsed by President Bush (news - web sites).
Bush praised what he called "historic legislation that will better protect the American people and help defend against ongoing terrorist threats."
"We remain a nation at war, and intelligence is our first line of defense against the terrorists who seek to do us harm," Bush said in a statement released after the Senate's vote. He gave no indication when he would sign the bill.
Lawmakers said the legislation was essential.
"The world has changed," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites), D-Conn. "Our terrorist enemies today make no distinction between soldiers and civilians, between foreign and domestic locations when they attack us."
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks three years ago on New York City and Washington, which killed nearly 3,000 people, proved that the intelligence operation established in World War II and modified afterward to fight communism wasn't effective enough against the threats of the new century, senators said Wednesday.
"We are rebuilding a structure that was designed for a different enemy at a different time, a structure that was designed for the Cold War and has not proved agile enough to deal with the threats of the 21st century," said Senate Governmental Affairs chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., voted against the bill, with Byrd saying that it was folly to expect a law to make America safer from foreign terrorists.
"No legislation alone can forestall a terrorist attack on our nation," Byrd said.
Outside the Senate doors were several of the family members who had lobbied Congress carrying pictures of their loved ones who died in Pennsylvania, the World Trade Center or the Pentagon (news - web sites).
"I don't think we've really digested it yet," said Mary Fetchet, a social worker from New Canaan, Conn. whose 24-year-old son Brad died at the World Trade Center. "It's been very emotional."
The Sept. 11 commission, in its July report, said disharmony among intelligence agencies contributed to the inability of government officials to stop the attacks. The government failed to recognize the danger posed by al-Qaida and was ill-prepared to respond to the terrorist threat, the report concluded.
In response, the legislation establishes a new director of national intelligence to oversee the nation's 15 military and civilian spy agencies and make sure they work together to forestall future attacks. The bipartisan commission said that didn't happen before terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"With landmark legislation on its way to the president, we have come very far on the road to reform," said Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, former chair and vice chair of the 9/11 commission.
The intelligence director will not be part of the president's Cabinet but is to have the same access as the defense secretary and the secretary of state. He will have authority to move intelligence assets around the globe to keep an eye on terrorist groups like al-Qaida — as well as nations like North Korea (news - web sites) and Libya.
Bush has not yet decided whom to nominate to be the first intelligence director, spokesman Scott McClellan said. "We will move as quickly as we can, obviously, to implement the provisions and move forward on the steps it calls for in this legislation," he said.
Six years after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor — after World War II was won — Congress created the CIA (news - web sites), one of the spy agencies the national intelligence director will now direct in the fight against terrorism.
"Just as the National Security Act of 1947 was passed to prevent another Pearl Harbor, the Intelligence Reform Act will help us prevent another 9/11," Collins said.
The legislation includes a host of other anti-terrorism provisions, such as allowing officials to wiretap "lone wolf" terror suspects and improving airline baggage screening procedures. It increases the number of full-time border patrol agents by 2,000 per year for five years and imposes new federal standards on information that driver's licenses must contain.
Conflicts with House Republicans over how the new national intelligence director would work with the nation's military held the bill up for two weeks, and the legislation was almost scrapped by lawmakers.
But heavy lobbying by the bipartisan commission and by families of the attacks' victims kept the legislation alive through the summer political conventions, the election and a postelection lame duck session of Congress. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) pushed hard in the final days.
___
The bill is S.2845.
December 8, 2004 at 09:32 PM in CIA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Spy chiefs face uncertain times
BBC NEWS | Americas | Spy chiefs face uncertain times
The reform of America's intelligence services has been a hard-fought struggle, but serious questions are now being asked: exactly how will this new structure work in practice, and will it really improve the ability of the US to defend itself?
One of the central findings of the 9/11 Commission was the lack of co-operation and communication within the country's vast intelligence community.
It is a community which contains 15 agencies, 200,000 employees and costs an estimated $40bn a year.
But it has found it hard to communicate, share information and set common priorities.
It has also struggled to integrate foreign and domestic information - something which is vital in fighting terrorists who cross borders.
"I think one reason that we missed some of the issues, be it Iraq or 9/11 was that we didn't have a truly focused, truly centralised and truly efficient intelligence-collection approach to the problems we face," John MacGaffin, a former senior CIA and FBI official told the BBC.
At the heart of the reforms is the creation of a new position of National Intelligence Director.
Until now a single individual, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), has had a series of overlapping responsibilities in leading America's intelligence community.
The DCI has been the Director of the CIA, has managed the overall intelligence community and acted as the president's chief intelligence adviser.
The 9/11 Commission - along with many previous studies - stated that "no recent DCI has been able to do all three effectively".
Battlefield necessities
Porter Goss, the recently installed head of the CIA, will see parts of his job hived off so that he only runs the human spy agency and the CIA will lose its position as first among equals in the US intelligence community.
The new National Intelligence Director will become the co-ordinator of the whole community, advising the president and bringing information together.
It is the co-ordinating role which is the most unclear and the reason that reform very nearly didn't happen.
At the moment, the Pentagon actually controls more than 80% of the intelligence budget.
The most expensive part of the spying game is not the CIA - which runs human spies - but bodies like the National Security Agency, which runs America's eavesdropping capability, or the National Reconnaissance Office and National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency, which collect mapping, imagery and satellite reconnaissance.
The Pentagon has long argued that these agencies are vital to supporting troops in combat.
Getting quick access to satellite images of a war zone or listening in to your enemy's communications is increasingly important in the modern battlefield.
The military argued that if they lost control over these agencies then they might lose some of their ability to protect troops in combat.
Someone, somewhere, has to decide priorities and whether a satellite passing over the Middle East looks at possible nuclear sites in Iran or at the movements of insurgents in Iraq.
The battle was over who would do that.
Impotent figure?
The Pentagon's allies in Congress fought long and hard against losing control and in the end gained assurances that the chain of command would not be broken and the military would not find itself losing out.
So exactly how much control will the new director really have?
Porter Goss
New CIA director Porter Goss will see his powers trimmed
The devil will be in the detail: exactly how will authority will be divided in practice between the new director and the Pentagon?
Can the new official really set tasking across all the different agencies, or will he instead become an impotent figure, setting priorities but without the budgetary clout to force people to carry them out?
Others also ask whether it is dangerous to create a director figure who does not have his own institution like the CIA behind him.
Could he end up a floating manager without real institutional clout who is too distant from the people in the field doing their job?
21st century intelligence
The next question is how much energy the process of re-organising consumes. One parallel may be with the Department of Homeland Security, where multiple agencies were pulled together but have taken a long time to adapt and learn to work together.
Some fear that a similar upheaval might distract the intelligence community from its day-to-day work.
The CIA's HQ at Langley, Virginia
The CIA will lose its position as 'first among equals'
And the last major question is how much difference, broad institutional re-organisation will really mean to people on the ground.
The inquiries into problems over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction made clear that the failure was not one of the wrong structure but one of not having enough spies on the ground and not analysing the intelligence in