Intelligence: February 2006 Archives

February 28, 2006

The 2020 Global Landscape

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Executive Summary

Download file

Document Cover Image: Mapping the Global Future

Report of the
National Intelligence Council's
2020 Project

Executive Summary
The 2020 Global Landscape

Relative Certainties Key Uncertainties

Globalization largely irreversible, likely to become less Westernized. Whether globalization will pull in lagging economies; degree to which Asian countries set new “rules of the game.”

World economy substantially larger. Extent of gaps between “haves” and “have-nots”; backsliding by fragile democracies; managing or containing financial crises.

Increasing number of global firms facilitate spread of new technologies. Extent to which connectivity challenges governments.

Rise of Asia and advent of possible new economic middle-weights. Whether rise of China/India occurs smoothly.

Aging populations in established powers. Ability of EU and Japan to adapt work forces, welfare systems, and integrate migrant populations; whether EU becomes a superpower.

Energy supplies “in the ground” sufficient to meet global demand. Political instability in producer countries; supply disruptions.

Growing power of nonstate actors. Willingness and ability of states and international institutions to accommodate these actors.

Political Islam remains a potent force. Impact of religiosity on unity of states and potential for conflict; growth of jihadist ideology.

Improved WMD capabilities of some states. More or fewer nuclear powers; ability of terrorists to acquire biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear weapons.

Arc of instability spanning Middle East, Asia, Africa. Precipitating events leading to overthrow of regimes.

Great power conflict escalating into total war unlikely. Ability to manage flashpoints and competition for resources.

Environmental and ethical issues even more to the fore. Extent to which new technologies create or resolve ethical dilemmas.

US will remain single most powerful actor economically, technologically, militarily. Whether other countries will more openly challenge Washington; whether US loses S&T edge.

At no time since the formation of the Western alliance system in 1949 have the shape and nature of international alignments been in such a state of flux. The end of the Cold War shifted the tectonic plates, but the repercussions from these momentous events are still unfolding. Emerging powers in Asia, retrenchment in Eurasia, a roiling Middle East, and transatlantic divisions are among the issues that have only come to a head in recent years. The very magnitude and speed of change resulting from a globalizing world—apart from its precise character—will be a defining feature of the world out to 2020. Other significant characteristics include: the rise of new powers, new challenges to governance, and a more pervasive sense of insecurity, including terrorism. As we map the future, the prospects for increasing global prosperity and the limited likelihood of great power conflict provide an overall favorable environment for coping with what are otherwise daunting challenges. The role of the United States will be an important variable in how the world is shaped, influencing the path that states and nonstate actors choose to follow.

New Global Players

The likely emergence of China and India, as well as others, as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries. In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the “American Century,” the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own. A combination of sustained high economic growth, expanding military capabilities, and large populations will be at the root of the expected rapid rise in economic and political power for both countries.

* Most forecasts indicate that by 2020 China’s gross national product (GNP) will exceed that of individual Western economic powers except for the United States. India’s GNP will have overtaken or be on the threshold of overtaking European economies.

* Because of the sheer size of China’s and India’s populations—projected by the US Census Bureau to be 1.4 billion and almost 1.3 billion respectively by 2020—their standard of living need not approach Western levels for these countries to become important economic powers.

Barring an abrupt reversal of the process of globalization or any major upheavals in these countries, the rise of these new powers is a virtual certainty. Yet how China and India exercise their growing power and whether they relate cooperatively or competitively to other powers in the international system are key uncertainties. The economies of other developing countries, such as Brazil, could surpass all but the largest European countries by 2020; Indonesia’s economy could also approach the economies of individual European countries by 2020.

By most measures—market size, single currency, highly skilled work force, stable democratic governments, and unified trade bloc—an enlarged Europe will be able to increase its weight on the international scene. Europe’s strength could be in providing a model of global and regional governance to the rising powers. But aging populations and shrinking work forces in most countries will have an important impact on the continent. Either European countries adapt their work forces, reform their social welfare, education, and tax systems, and accommodate growing immigrant populations (chiefly from Muslim countries), or they face a period of protracted economic stasis.

Japan faces a similar aging crisis that could crimp its longer run economic recovery, but it also will be challenged to evaluate its regional status and role. Tokyo may have to choose between “balancing” against or “bandwagoning” with China. Meanwhile, the crisis over North Korea is likely to come to a head sometime over the next 15 years. Asians’ lingering resentments and concerns over Korean unification and cross-Taiwan Strait tensions point to a complicated process for achieving regional equilibrium.

Russia has the potential to enhance its international role with others due to its position as a major oil and gas exporter. However, Russia faces a severe demographic crisis resulting from low birth rates, poor medical care, and a potentially explosive AIDS situation. To the south, it borders an unstable region in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the effects of which—Muslim extremism, terrorism, and endemic conflict—are likely to continue spilling over into Russia. While these social and political factors limit the extent to which Russia can be a major global player, Moscow is likely to be an important partner both for the established powers, the United States and Europe, and for the rising powers of China and India.

With these and other new global actors, how we mentally map the world in 2020 will change radically. The “arriviste” powers—China, India, and perhaps others such as Brazil and Indonesia—have the potential to render obsolete the old categories of East and West, North and South, aligned and nonaligned, developed and developing. Traditional geographic groupings will increasingly lose salience in international relations. A state-bound world and a world of mega-cities, linked by flows of telecommunications, trade and finance, will co-exist. Competition for allegiances will be more open, less fixed than in the past.

Impact of Globalization

We see globalization—growing interconnectedness reflected in the expanded flows of information, technology, capital, goods, services, and people throughout the world—as an overarching “mega-trend,” a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends in the world of 2020. But the future of globalization is not fixed; states and nonstate actors—including both private companies and NGOs—will struggle to shape its contours. Some aspects of globalization—such as the growing global interconnectedness stemming from the information technology (IT) revolution—almost certainly will be irreversible. Yet it is also possible, although unlikely, that the process of globalization could be slowed or even stopped, just as the era of globalization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was reversed by catastrophic war and global depression.

Barring such a turn of events, the world economy is likely to continue growing impressively: by 2020, it is projected to be about 80 percent larger than it was in 2000, and average per capita income will be roughly 50 percent higher. Of course, there will be cyclical ups and downs and periodic financial or other crises, but this basic growth trajectory has powerful momentum behind it. Most countries around the world, both developed and developing, will benefit from gains in the world economy. By having the fastest-growing consumer markets, more firms becoming world-class multinationals, and greater S&T stature, Asia looks set to displace Western countries as the focus for international economic dynamism—provided Asia’s rapid economic growth continues.

Yet the benefits of globalization won’t be global. Rising powers will see exploiting the opportunities afforded by the emerging global marketplace as the best way to assert their great power status on the world stage. In contrast, some now in the “First World” may see the closing gap with China, India, and others as evidence of a relative decline, even though the older powers are likely to remain global leaders out to 2020. The United States, too, will see its relative power position eroded, though it will remain in 2020 the most important single country across all the dimensions of power. Those left behind in the developing world may resent China and India’s rise, especially if they feel squeezed by their growing dominance in key sectors of the global marketplace. And large pockets of poverty will persist even in “winner” countries.

The greatest benefits of globalization will accrue to countries and groups that can access and adopt new technologies. Indeed, a nation’s level of technological achievement generally will be defined in terms of its investment in integrating and applying the new, globally available technologies—whether the technologies are acquired through a country’s own basic research or from technology leaders. The growing two-way flow of high-tech brain power between the developing world and the West, the increasing size of the information computer-literate work force in some developing countries, and efforts by global corporations to diversify their high-tech operations will foster the spread of new technologies. High-tech breakthroughs—such as in genetically modified organisms and increased food production—could provide a safety net eliminating the threat of starvation and ameliorating basic quality of life issues for poor countries. But the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” will widen unless the “have-not” countries pursue policies that support application of new technologies—such as good governance, universal education, and market reforms.

Those countries that pursue such policies could leapfrog stages of development, skipping over phases that other high-tech leaders such as the United States and Europe had to traverse in order to advance. China and India are well positioned to become technology leaders, and even the poorest countries will be able to leverage prolific, cheap technologies to fuel—although at a slower rate—their own development.

* The expected next revolution in high technology involving the convergence of nano-, bio-, information and materials technology could further bolster China and India’s prospects. Both countries are investing in basic research in these fields and are well placed to be leaders in a number of key fields. Europe risks slipping behind Asia in some of these technologies. The United States is still in a position to retain its overall lead, although it must increasingly compete with Asia to retain its edge and may lose significant ground in some sectors.

More firms will become global, and those operating in the global arena will be more diverse, both in size and origin, more Asian and less Western in orientation. Such corporations, encompassing the current, large multinationals, will be increasingly outside the control of any one state and will be key agents of change in dispersing technology widely, further integrating the world economy, and promoting economic progress in the developing world. Their ranks will include a growing number based in such countries as China, India, or Brazil. While North America, Japan, and Europe might collectively continue to dominate international political and financial institutions, globalization will take on an increasingly non-Western character. By 2020, globalization could be equated in the popular mind with a rising Asia, replacing its current association with Americanization.

An expanding global economy will increase demand for many raw materials, such as oil. Total energy consumed probably will rise by about 50 percent in the next two decades compared to a 34 percent expansion from 1980-2000, with a greater share provided by petroleum. Most experts assess that with substantial investment in new capacity, overall energy supplies will be sufficient to meet global demands. But on the supply side, many of the areas—the Caspian Sea, Venezuela, and West Africa—that are being counted on to provide increased output involve substantial political or economic risk. Traditional suppliers in the Middle East are also increasingly unstable. Thus sharper demand-driven competition for resources, perhaps accompanied by a major disruption of oil supplies, is among the key uncertainties.

* China, India, and other developing countries’ growing energy needs suggest a growing preoccupation with energy, shaping their foreign policies.

* For Europe, an increasing preference for natural gas may reinforce regional relationships—such as with Russia or North Africa—given the interdependence of pipeline delivery.

February 28, 2006 at 11:46 AM in World affairs | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 27, 2006

German spies 'gave Iraq secrets to US'

Telegraph | News | German spies 'gave Iraq secrets to US'

By Francis Harris in Washington
(Filed: 28/02/2006)

German spies handed Saddam Hussein's war plans to the Americans while their government was denouncing the planned attack, it was claimed yesterday.

The documents were transferred as the coalition completed its invasion plans in February 2003. A month later, American and British forces entered Iraq. The claims, in yesterday's New York Times, were swiftly denied by German officials.

The paper said that a classified American military document referred to Saddam and his aides meeting in late 2002 to radically amend Iraq's war plans. They had wanted an invading army slowed and deflected by Iraq's military en route to Baghdad.

But the leadership decided that the military should now mass in defensive rings around the capital. Somehow, the German agents acquired the document.

In February 2003, an officer of German intelligence, the BND, stationed in Qatar, headquarters of the coalition military, handed the paper to a US defence department agent.

The German agents were said to have ceased operations once the coalition bombing started.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government had denounced the march to war, with overwhelming support in Germany. The issue remains hugely sensitive in Germany and spokesmen for the government and the BND yesterday attempted to quash the story, although opposition parties demanded a parliamentary inquiry. Ulrich Wilhelm, a government spokesman, said the allegations were false.

Iraq factfile

A BND statement said that "the allegations. . . lack any foundation and are plain wrong".

The Berlin government has been under fire for supplying information to the Americans. It acknowledged last week that it had two agents in Baghdad at the start of the war and was forced to issue a 90-page report detailing the assistance. It revealed that the spies had passed on material about Iraqi troop deployments, including their geographical co-ordinates.

Yesterday, when asked about any meeting in Qatar in February 2003, or whether the Germans had ever possessed any documents about Iraq's defence plans, the government said such issues were classified.

February 27, 2006 at 11:19 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Enigma message cracks under distributed computing

Enigma message cracks under distributed computing | The Register

Code breaking help sought
By John Leyden
Published Monday 27th February 2006 11:51 GMT
Get breaking Reg news straight to your desktop - click here to find out how

A distributed computing project has been set up that aims to crack unbroken Enigma ciphers dating back to World War II. One of four unbroken Nazi codes has already succumbed. The M4 project is seeking help from the net community in breaking the other three codes.

Computer users interested in getting involved can download a client onto their PCs which takes advantage of idle processing time to perform number crunching in much the same way the popular SETI@Home screen saver was used to analyse radio telescope signals from space in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. The name of the project comes from the belief that the signals were encoded using a four rotor Enigma M4 device. The signals analysed by the project were captured in the North Atlantic in 1942. ®

February 27, 2006 at 10:12 PM in GCHQ | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 26, 2006

Total war: Inside the new Al-Qaeda

Total war: Inside the new Al-Qaeda - Sunday Times - Times Online

Last week’s desecration of a Shi’ite shrine moved Iraq towards civil war. Abdel Bari Atwan, who has had unique access to Osama Bin Laden, explains why Al-Qaeda wants to divide Islam
Osama Bin Laden, who had been sitting cross-legged on a carpet, placed his Kalashnikov rifle on the ground and got up. He came towards me with a warm smile that turned into barely repressed laughter as he took in the way I was dressed.

I had been kitted out in baggy trousers, a long shirt and a turban for my clandestine journey to his hideout in southern Afghanistan. The turban in particular made me feel self-conscious, as I had never worn such a thing in my life.

I spent three days with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, the only western-based journalist to spend such a significant amount of time with him, before or since. I talked at length to him, slept next to him in his cave and shared his modest food.

Listening to him during that visit 10 years ago I realised he was no ordinary figure, but it didn’t occur to me for one moment that this polite, soft-spoken, smiling and apparently gentle person would become the world’s most dangerous man, terrorising western capitals, inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of damage on the United States, threatening its economic stability and embroiling it in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As I had been eating so badly since coming to Afghanistan I was looking forward to our first meal. I’d imagined we would feast on roast deer or goat. When I saw what was available at the Eagle’s Nest, as his base was called, I thought chicken was perhaps a more likely dish.

It was still a great surprise to discover that dinner on the first night consisted of Arab-style potato chips soaking in cottonseed oil; a plate of fried eggs; salty cheese of a variety long extinct even in the villages of upper Egypt; and a bread bun that must have been kneaded with sand, as my teeth screeched and ground whenever I chewed it.

After a few bites I pretended that I did not usually eat dinner for health reasons.

Another meal featured Bin Laden’s favourite, bread with yogurt and rice, served with potatoes cooked in tomato sauce. Animal fat floated on the surface, and I could hardly force it down my throat. Afterwards I was sick under a pine tree outside the cave.

I was puzzled by Bin Laden’s chosen path. What motivates this man, from a well-known and honourable family in possession of billions, to lead such a comfortless life in these inhospitable and dangerous mountains, awaiting attack, capture or death at any moment, hunted by so many regimes?

We spoke about his wealth, and while he avoided saying exactly how much he was worth he acknowledged he still managed an extensive investment portfolio through a complex network of secret contacts. But this wealth, he said, was for the umma (the global Islamic community).

“It is the duty of the umma as a whole to commit its wealth to the struggle,” he said. “The umma is connected like an electric current.” (Surprising imagery for a man who would wish to take us back 1,500 years.) I discovered that, in contrast with the primitive accommodation, the base was well equipped with computers and up-to-the-minute communications equipment. Bin Laden had access to the internet, which was not then ubiquitous as it is now, and said: “These days the world is becoming like a small village.”

This modernity was quite at odds with the austerity recommended by the more extreme forms of Islamic fundamentalism and in particular that of his hosts, the Taliban. One of his aides laughed and said the base was “a republic within a republic”.

The next day Bin Laden took me on a guided tour, sporting the Kalashnikov so dear to him. (He told me it had belonged to a Soviet general killed in one of the Afghan jihad battles.) We walked through the trees and he explained that he loved mountains. “I would rather die than live in a European state,” he declared.

He told me about past Al-Qaeda attacks on the Americans — including the 1993 ambush on American troops in Mogadishu, which he said had been wrongly blamed on the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.

More attacks were in the planning stages, he said, and he emphasised that these “operations” took a long time to prepare. He hinted at a strike at the Americans on their home territory, but I confess I did not register the enormity of what he implied when he came out with an unforgettable statement: “We hope to reach ignition point in the not-too-distant future.”

Bin Laden also explained his long-term anti-American strategy. He told me he knew he would never be able to defeat America on its own soil using conventional weapons. He had another plan, one that would take years to reach fruition.

“We want to bring the Americans to fight us on Muslim land,” he said as we walked through the woods in the high mountains at Tora Bora. “If we can fight them on our own territory we will beat them, because the battle will be on our terms in a land they neither know nor understand.”

We are witnessing part of that plan now, in the battlefields of Iraq, which has become a breeding ground for the most ruthless and militant Al-Qaeda fighters we have seen. In the process we are discovering the new face of Al-Qaeda, as a movement involved in bloody sectarian strife against fellow Muslims.

Continued on page 2

PARADOXICALLY, the strike on American home territory in September 2001 was a setback to Bin Laden’s long-term plan. Al-Qaeda lost support among more moderate Muslims, who sympathised with the victims. It lost its safe haven and training camps in Afghanistan. And, crucially, there was dissent within the movement itself.

Some inner-circle Al-Qaeda members left as a result of what they considered to be a catastrophic decision, according to Abu Qatada, a radical cleric believed to be Al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader in Europe. (He is currently fighting a deportation order in Britain.) They predicted the US would respond with unparalleled ferocity.

Abu Qatada told me that the September 11 attacks were also opposed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who in 2001 was still a relatively obscure Jordanian associate of Al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was soon to shoot into the limelight as the central figure in this story. For, two years on, the arrival of 150,000 US troops in Iraq in March 2003 created exactly the turning point in Al-Qaeda’s history that Bin Laden had dreamt of.

Iraq is in many ways a better base for Al-Qaeda than Afghanistan. It provides an Arabic-speaking environment and culture. Geographically it is the heart of the region. In Islamic terms it is as important as Saudi Arabia and Palestine.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda’s supporters in Iraq are the minority Sunni Arabs who have been marginalised by the aftermath of the occupation, isolated from the state institutions in a rather humiliating manner, and are eager for revenge and the resumption of power.

With chilling beheadings, Zarqawi rapidly emerged as the most ferocious insurgent chieftain — though he only became the official leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq after a long wrangle with Bin Laden over attacks on the Shi’ite majority.

Militarily, Al-Qaeda has since been increasingly hardline and ruthless in Iraq, demonstrating indifference to “collateral damage”. Zarqawi has long been waging an anti-Shi’ite campaign with the express intention of fomenting the sectarian strife we are now witnessing.

Last Wednesday’s bombing of the Shi’ite golden mosque at Samarra was in all probability the work of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Shi’ite majority have most to gain from maintaining stability, but by bombing their most sacred shrine Zarqawi has finally unleashed the threat of civil war. Previous attacks had failed to provoke the retaliatory Shi’ite violence that has claimed more than 130 — mostly Sunni — lives since the mosque attack.

Zarqawi’s rationale is threefold.

First, civil war will prevent the Sunni minority from joining the current political process. He has denounced democracy as heretical on the grounds that it makes man obedient to man instead of Allah.

Second, civil war will unseat the “heretic” Shi’ite leaders, render the country ungovernable and ensure the failure of the US project.

Third, Zarqawi is mindful of the huge reserves of Sunni military support in neighbouring countries — both on a national level and among the individual mujaheddin pouring into Iraq to aid their beleaguered brethren struggling against the Iran-backed Shi’ite militias.

Civil war in Iraq could rapidly spread through the region. Many Sunni leaders are already unnerved by the growing influence of Iran in Iraqi internal affairs, and sectarian tensions have been brewing in several countries including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

Zarqawi’s language towards the Shi’ites is vitriolic. In a letter to Bin Laden dated June 15 2004 he describes them as “the lurking serpent”, claiming that “they can inflict more damage on the umma than the Americans”.

He elaborates: “These are people who have added to their heresy and atheism with political cunning and a burning zeal to seize upon the crisis of governance and the balance of power in the state . . . whose new lines they are trying to establish through their political organisations in collaboration with their secret allies, the Americans . . . they have been a sect of treachery and betrayal through all history and all ages.”

Initially Bin Laden was opposed to attacks on Shi’ites and urged Zarqawi to avoid civilian deaths. Zarqawi baldly states in his letter that if Bin Laden will not endorse an anti-Shi’ite campaign, he will not join Al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden apparently changed his mind. Any doubts he might have had about the legitimacy of targeting Shi’ite Muslims or the collateral deaths of Iraqi citizens have since been swept away in the relentless flood of bloody attacks unleashed by his latest ally.

Continued on page 3

HOW did Zarqawi become such a powerful and pivotal figure? He is a former street thug from a ghetto in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, 15 miles northeast of Amman. He was nicknamed “the Green Man” because of his tattoos. His real name is Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayilah — “Zarqawi” simply means “the one from Zarqa”.

The turnaround in his character seems to have happened towards the end of the 1980s, when he developed an interest in radical Islam — perhaps through contact with Palestinian refugees living near his home — and set off for the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.

There he fell under the spell of a Palestinian religious scholar known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Back in Jordan following the Afghan wars, both men were jailed after Jordanian police found them in possession of weapons.

Zarqawi became a prison Islamist leader, meting out violent punishments to anyone who dared disobey him. He gathered a following of hundreds of the most hardened criminals in Jordan.

Many sources testify to Zarqawi’s physical and mental resilience. He lost all his toenails under torture and endured 8½ months of solitary confinement.

Released under an amnesty in 1999, he resurfaced in Afghanistan, where he led his own movement, separate from Al-Qaeda. He fled with his men in late 2001 to avoid the American reprisals for September 11.

To understand what happened next, and to see how this obscure figure has emerged to such prominence, we have to look at the strange world of pre-invasion Iraq.

In enclaves in the Kurdish north, close to the Turkish and Iranian borders and beyond Saddam Hussein’s jurisdiction, several Sunni organisations opposed to Saddam’s secular regime had set up base. Jordanian contacts in one of these, Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), smoothed the way for Zarqawi to establish his own camp.

Ansar al-Islam is an important footnote to the invasion of Iraq. Much has been made of a possible connection between it and Al-Qaeda in the course of US intelligence efforts to link Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.

I met its leader, Mullah Krekar, in Oslo last year and he vigorously denied Al-Qaeda had helped it in any way. He said he had personally asked Bin Laden for financial help and had been turned down. (It must be added that many sources dispute this was their last meeting.)

Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda’s ideology, Saddam established contact with the “Afghan Arabs” as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.

In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba’ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.

According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.

On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam’s caches.

Most commentators agree that Al-Qaeda was present in Iraq before the US invasion. The question is for how long and to what extent. What is known is that Zarqawi took a direct role in Al-Qaeda’s infiltration. In March 2003 — it is not clear whether this was before or after the invasion began — he met Al-Qaeda’s military strategist, an Egyptian called Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, and agreed to assist Al-Qaeda operatives entering Iraq.

Makkawi is a shadowy figure. Little is known about him except that he used to be a war strategies expert in the Egyptian army. His greater strategy for Al-Qaeda, revealed on a jihadist website, is to “expand the (Iraqi) conflict throughout the region and engage the US in a long war of attrition . . . create a jihad Triangle of Horror starting in Aghanistan, running through Iran and southern Iraq then via southern Turkey and south Lebanon to Syria”.

With his new role as Al-Qaeda facilitator Zarqawi rapidly gained importance. Newly arrived Arab recruits were dependent on him for contacts and local knowledge, and — as the anti-American insurgency developed after the invasion — he provided the intelligence for co-ordinated attacks that were instantly more effective than random independent operations. As a result he effectively became the emir of the foreign jihadis in Iraq.

I believe that his aim was to drag the Shi’ites into a civil war. His choice of provocative targets bears this out: he was almost certainly behind the massacre of 185 Shi’ite pilgrims who were killed in Karbala and Baghdad in March 2004.

Zarqawi was in negotiations with the Al-Qaeda leadership for nearly a year before they finally announced an alliance and created “Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers” (Iraq) in 2004. Already established as a formidable leader, he waited to negotiate from a position of strength over his insistence on an anti-Shi’ite campaign.

Perhaps he would have preferred to usurp Bin Laden as leader of Al-Qaeda, but he had the strategic sense to realise this was not going to be possible and therefore decided to submit. He needed Bin Laden’s blessing and the Al-Qaeda name to bring him thousands of new recruits from all over the world (not just from Arab countries).

Al-Qaeda needed him, too. At the time of the new alliance its fortunes were lagging. The attacks on Afghanistan and increased security measures the world over had seen its numbers dwindle; its 2003 attacks in Saudi Arabia had hit its popularity in the kingdom.

A new presence in Iraq, especially with such a high-profile, magnetic (if terrifying) leader as Zarqawi, promised a new lease on life. The Al-Qaeda leadership was not to be disappointed.

Zarqawi’s agenda was to prove even more radical than that of the Al-Qaeda leadership; in May 2005, firmly under the Al-Qaeda banner, Zarqawi declared that “collateral killing” of Muslims was justified under “overriding necessity”. He brought a new level of psychological terror to operations with his ferocious reputation.

In July last year his old spiritual mentor, Maqdisi — still in jail in Jordan — questioned Zarqawi’s attacks on civilians, especially women and children, and his targeting of Shi’ites. Zarqawi responded with an internet posting asserting that “al-Maqdisi is being lured into the path of Satan”.

WHAT of the future? Bin Laden remains unchallenged as Al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader, but his fugitive status has created a vacancy for an overall military commander. This will almost certainly be filled by Zarqawi: a recent communiqué from Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers referred to him as the “most likely emir of the organisation in the Middle East and North Africa”.

Here I would like to introduce just one more name. When I first walked alone into Bin Laden’s dimly lit cave 10 years ago, a man was there to meet me; I was astonished to recognise him as a red-bearded Syrian writer I knew quite well from London, Omar Abdel Hakim, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, a specialist on jihad and Islam.

We spoke for a few moments and I learnt that he had left Spain, where he had both citizenship and a wife, to join Al-Qaeda. Later he was to join the Taliban, and became its leader Mullah Omar’s media adviser. “Come,” he said, leading the way into another cave. “The sheikh is waiting for you.”

I heard from him again in 1998 when he gave me a detailed account by telephone of an angry confrontation between Mullah Omar and a Saudi delegation, which asked the Taliban leader to cede Bin Laden to the United States because he was a terrorist.

The visitors, led by Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence, flew to Kandahar in a private jet. They were heatedly ordered to leave by Omar, who was enraged by their request that a Muslim government would seek to deliver a fellow Muslim to an “infidel state”.

Suri was one of the key figures who, like Zarqawi, opposed the 9/ll attacks. They have since become close collaborators. The Syrian is said to be an Al-Qaeda recruiter.

Zarqawi has maintained connections in Europe for many years, and these are nurtured by Suri, who is believed to control several Al-Qaeda groups in the West. Both men are suspected of involvement in the attacks on Madrid and London claimed by “Al-Qaeda in Europe”.

The new generation of Al-Qaeda leaders is in place – with Zarqawi and the Suri among them – and the organisation has become even more hardline as a result. The new ruthlessness about relentless violence directed at a wide range of targets in Iraq is clearly designed to shock and terrorise their enemies. But Iraq has now become a platform from which to launch international operations.

Al-Qaeda is not only attempting to destabilise the western world, but the whole of the stagnated Middle East.

© Abdel Bari Atwan 2006 Extracted from The Secret History of Al-Qa’ida by Abdel Bari Atwan published by Saqi Books at £16.99. Copies can be ordered for £15.29 with free postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585

The author, who has lived in London for 30 years, is editor in chief of the daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi

February 26, 2006 at 04:01 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up

MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up - Sunday Times - Times Online

David Leppard
MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of resources to fight Islamic terrorism.

To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the “missed intelligence” leading up to the July attacks in London.

They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21.

The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings.

Until now it was not known that any of the July 21 suspects, who are awaiting trial, were familiar to the intelligence services. It has been disclosed that MI5 had placed two of the July 7 bombers under surveillance before their attack, but judged them not to be a threat.

The new documents show that MI5, which is responsible for national security, allowed the July 21 suspect to travel to Pakistan after he was detained and interviewed at a British airport. Once in Pakistan he was monitored by SIS, which gathers intelligence overseas.

MI5 then conducted what the leaked memo says was “a low-level short-term investigation” into the suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

It stopped monitoring him because it said “the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance”.

Scarlett revealed details of the operation to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) last November. The committee, comprising MPs and peers picked by Tony Blair, is conducting a secret inquiry into the “lessons learnt” from the July attacks. It is due to be completed in April.

The Scarlett memo — marked top secret — was leaked by the dissident officers who want a public inquiry similar to that undertaken in America after the 9/11 attacks.

They believe it would highlight the need for MI5 and SIS to be given more resources to deal with Al-Qaeda. They are critical of Blair, who has ruled out an inquiry saying it would distract the security services from fighting terrorism.

The leaked memo refers to Scarlett as C — the traditional codename for the head of SIS. It states: “On the events of July itself, and the question of whether intelligence was missed, C noted that SIS had previously been involved in an earlier investigation of one of the July 21 (suspects) in Pakistan.

“This had been at the Security Service (MI5)’s behest and should be discussed with MI5.”

Another document, MI5’s November 2005 memo The July Bombings and the Agencies’ Response, has also been shown to The Sunday Times.

It names the suspect who was the subject of the 2004 investigation and shifts responsibility for the decision to stop monitoring him to the Pakistani intelligence authorities.

“(The suspect) had been the subject of a low-level short-term investigation concerning a visit he made to Pakistan after he was interviewed on departure from the UK,” it states.

“However, the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance in a terrorist context.”

The assessment echoes a decision by MI5 to halt surveillance on two of the July 7 bombers 16 months before the attacks. Both were filmed and taped by MI5 agents as they met two men allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in England.

After making what an official called “a quick assessment”, MI5 concluded Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were not immediate threats. As the MI5 memo puts it: “Intelligence at the time suggested Khan’s purpose was financial crime rather than terrorist activity.”

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “These leaks show that the need for an independent inquiry is incontrovertible.”

There is a growing consensus in Whitehall that the intelligence services will be seen to have made critical errors in failing to assess adequately the threat from at least three of the July suspects.

Scarlett conceded to the ISC that his agency had reacted too slowly. “Summing up the position before July 2005, C noted SIS were conscious of the size of the target, but equally conscious of what we did not know; we were thinly spread in North and East Africa; we were looking at new ways of increasing our reach; and we had sought funding to grow as fast as we thought feasible.

“Turning to the lessons learnt, C noted that SIS had understood the nature of the threat and that there was a great deal that we did not know. SIS had developed strategies to meet this threat.

“The attacks had shown that our strategies were correct, but needed to be implemented more extensively and more quickly,” the memo noted.

Scarlett said that even before the attacks, SIS had planned to expand overseas. “C concluded by explaining how post-July SIS were speeding up implementation of the pre-July strategy.” He said the agency did not want more money for staff.

The dissident officers believe the buck-passing revealed in the memos demonstrates that there should be closer co-operation between the agencies.

They support calls for a unified department of homeland security, along the lines suggested by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, this month.

February 26, 2006 at 03:58 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 15, 2006

The ambiguous arsenal

The ambiguous arsenal | thebulletin.org

By Jeffrey Lewis
May/June 2005 pp. 52-59 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Subscribe today!

If you read the Washington Times, in addition to believing that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are hidden somewhere in Syria, you might believe that "China's aggressive strategic nuclear-modernization program" was proceeding apace. [1] If munching on freedom fries at a Heritage Foundation luncheon is your thing, you might worry that "even marginal improvements to [China's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)] derived from U.S. technical know-how" threaten the United States. [2]

So, it may come as a shock to learn that China's nuclear arsenal is about the same size it was a decade ago, and that the missile that prompted the Washington Times article has been under development since the mid-1980s. Perhaps your anxiety about "marginal improvements" to China's missile force would recede as you learned that China's 18 ICBMs, sitting unfueled in their silos, their nuclear warheads in storage, are essentially the same as they were the day China began deploying them in 1981. In fact, contrary to reports you might have recently read that Chinese nukes number in the hundreds--if not the thousands--the true size of the country's operationally deployed arsenal is probably about 80 nuclear weapons.

Estimating the size, configuration, and capability of China's nuclear weapons inventory is not just an exercise in abstract accounting. The specter of a robust Chinese arsenal has been cited by the Bush administration as a rationale for not making deeper cuts in U.S. nuclear deployments. Likewise, opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) point to China in making the case for maintaining U.S. deterrent capabilities. Others portray China's modernization program as evidence of the country's increasingly hostile posture toward Taiwan--adding a sense of urgency to developing missile defenses. And, more recently, these concerns have raised the temperature in transatlantic relations as the European Union contemplates lifting the arms embargo imposed on China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The true scope of China's nuclear capabilities are hidden in plain sight, among the myriad declassified assessments produced by the U.S. intelligence community. Yet, such analyses have run afoul of conservative legislators, who express dismay when threat assessments don't conform to their perceptions of reality. Congressional Republicans, for instance, in 2000 created the China Futures Panel, chaired by former Gen. John Tilelli, to examine charges of bias in the CIA assessments of China. In 2002, Bob Schaffer, a Republican congressman from Colorado, complained about the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of foreign ballistic missile development in a letter to CIA director George Tenet: "The lack of attention to the pronounced and growing danger caused by China's ballistic missile buildup, and its aggressive strategy for using its ballistic missiles cannot go unchallenged. The report is misleading, and, because it understates the magnitude of threat, is profoundly dangerous."

Consequently, many defense analysts simply ignore what the intelligence community has to say. For example, two scholars in a peer-reviewed international security journal cited Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems to suggest that China's future submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)--the Giant Wave, or Julang-2 (JL-2)--may carry "three to eight multiple independent reentry vehicles." They failed to mention the consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Chinese warheads are so large that it is impossible to place more than one on the JL-2.

In another instance, a student from the National University of Singapore posted an essay on a web site claiming that China had more than 2,000 warheads. His figure was based on amateurish fissile material production estimates that incorrectly identified several Chinese fissile material facilities. [3] (Classified estimates by the Energy Department, leaked to the press, estimate the Chinese plutonium stockpile at 1.7-2.8 tons. [4] Assuming 3-4 kilograms of plutonium per warhead, China could deploy, at most, a nuclear force of 400-900 weapons.) Despite such obvious mistakes, experts from the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies all cited the Singapore essay to suggest that China might have substantially more nuclear warheads than widely believed. [5] David Tanks, then with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, called the essay "convincingly argued."

Iraq debacle or not, the estimates of the U.S. intelligence community are still a better place to start than, say, some college kid's essay posted on the internet. These analysts have unparalleled access to the full array of information-gathering technology available to the federal government. For example, the intelligence community monitors ballistic missile tests with satellite images to detect test preparations, signals intelligence sensors to intercept telemetry data, and radars to track missile launches and collect signature data on warheads and decoys. No comparable unclassified source of such data exists, unless it is released by the government conducting the test.

Moreover, the intelligence community employs well-known methods that can be evaluated for gaps or bias. Although intelligence estimates are sometimes politicized or agenda driven, systematic bias is often evident and can be observed by comparing estimates over time. For example, the intelligence community has tended to exaggerate future Chinese ballistic missile deployments, in part because Chinese industrial capacity has tended to exceed production. This information is useful when considering estimates about future Chinese deployments. Establishing a baseline consensus estimate about the size and composition of Chinese nuclear forces would allow analysts to lodge specific objections to intelligence community judgments. More broadly, a deeper understanding of the true scope of China's arsenal and its modernization efforts provides a clearer picture of Beijing's strategic intentions.

Minimum means of reprisal

Beijing doesn't publish detailed information about the size and composition of its nuclear forces. With a very small nuclear arsenal relative to the United States and Russia, China seems intent on letting ambiguity enhance the deterrent effect of its nuclear forces. Chinese force deployments suggest that Beijing's leadership believes that even a very small, unsophisticated force will deter nuclear attacks by larger, more sophisticated nuclear forces. While some Western analysts spent the Cold War fretting about the "delicate balance of terror," the Chinese leadership appears to have concluded that technical details such as the size, configuration, and readiness of nuclear forces are largely irrelevant. China's declaration that it would "not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances" reflects the idea that nuclear weapons are not much good, except to deter other nuclear weapons. In deciding what sort of nuclear arsenal to build, China settled on what Marshal Nie Rongzhen, the first head of China's nuclear weapons program, called "the minimum means of reprisal." [6]

China's reluctance to provide numerical information about its nuclear forces relaxed a bit this past spring, when its foreign ministry released an April 2004 statement that, "Among the nuclear weapon states, China . . . possesses the smallest nuclear arsenal." That statement suggests China possesses fewer than 200 nuclear weapons, the generally accepted size of the British nuclear arsenal.

The intelligence community does not publish a single, detailed assessment of China's nuclear arsenal. Instead, these estimates are scattered across multiple documents, including the 2001 edition of the Defense Department's Proliferation: Threat and Response and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center's (NASIC) 2003 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat. Some information, such as the National Intelligence Council's Tracking the Dragon series, has been released through the natural process of declassification. But much more information was released--or leaked--during the 1990s amid debates over allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage, ballistic missile defenses, and the CTBT.

Based upon these various assessments, a realistic estimate of China's nuclear arsenal is a total force of 30 nuclear warheads operationally deployed on ICBMs and another 50-100 on medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), for a total force of 80-130 nuclear weapons. (See "China's Arsenal, by the Numbers,")

Estimates provided by many nongovernmental organizations--such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)--are much higher (albeit, not as high as their more zealous conservative counterparts). They typically describe the People's Republic of China as the world's third largest nuclear power, ahead of Britain and France, with 400 or so warheads. [7] Such estimates often assume deployment of three other categories of nuclear weapons--aircraft-delivered weapons, SLBMs, and tactical nuclear weapons.

Yet, in the 1980s, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found no evidence that China had deployed nuclear bombs to airfields and, based on the antiquity of the aircraft, concluded that China did not assign nuclear missions to any of its planes--a conclusion reiterated in a declassified 1993 National Security Council report. The most recent edition of the Pentagon's Chinese Military Power suggests that China has yet to deploy the Julang-1 (JL-1) ballistic missile on its solitary ballistic missile submarine. And, in 1984, the DIA acknowledged that it had "no evidence confirming production or deployment" of tactical nuclear weapons. To the contrary, Chinese Military Power notes that the country's short-range ballistic missiles are conventionally armed, thereby freeing Beijing from "the political and practical constraints associated with the use of nuclear-armed missiles."

Room for expansion?

Over the next 15 years, the intelligence community expects China's ICBM force to expand from 18 to 75-100 strategic nuclear warheads targeted primarily against the United States and from 12 shorter-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching parts of the United States to "two dozen." [8]

Beijing's modernization plan centers on a mobile, solid-fueled ballistic missile under development since the mid-1980s called the Dong Feng (DF)-31. The intelligence community believes the DF-31 could be deployed during the next few years. Since 2002, IISS has cited "reports" that the DF-31 is deployed, but that assessment appears based on a pair of 2001 news stories in the Taipei Times and Washington Times, neither of which actually claims the missile is deployed. [9]

The intelligence community believes China is also developing follow-on versions of the DF-31: the extended-range DF-31A to replace the DF-5 (currently its longest-range ICBM) and a submarine-launched version (JL-2). The DF-31A may have a range of 12,000 kilometers and could be deployed before 2010. China is also designing a new nuclear ballistic missile submarine to carry the JL-2, which is expected to have a range of more than 8,000 kilometers. China will likely develop and test the JL-2 and the new sub (Type 094) later this decade. [10]

One senior intelligence official described the 75-100 warhead estimate to the New York Times: "[China would] add new warheads to their old 18 [DF-5s], transforming them from single-warhead missiles into four-warhead missiles," or "double the size of their projected land-based mobile missiles." [11] The estimate of 75 warheads assumes that China will supplement its existing ballistic missile force with the DF-31 ICBMs; the estimate of 100 warheads is based on the assumption that China would build half as many DF-31 ballistic missiles, but place multiple warheads on existing DF-5 ICBMs.

China has not placed multiple warheads on its silo-based ICBMs and has not begun to deploy the DF-31. Therefore, these predictions are little more than informed speculation, based on how the intelligence community imagines China might respond to missile defense and other changes in U.S. nuclear posture. Past intelligence community estimates, however, have overstated future Chinese ICBM deployments. The number of Chinese strategic ballistic missiles has actually declined, from 145 in 1984 to 80 today.

China tested its smallest nuclear warhead from 1992-1996. [12] Developed for China's DF-31 ICBM, NASIC estimated that the reentry vehicle has a mass of 470 kilograms--too heavy to place more than one on any of China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles. [13] Placing multiple warheads on China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles would probably require Beijing to design and test a new warhead, which is currently prohibited by China's signature on the CTBT. [14]

Dangerous incentives

So, let's review: China deploys just 30 ICBMs, kept unfueled and without warheads, and another 50-100 MRBMs, sitting unarmed in their garrisons. Conventional wisdom suggests this posture is vulnerable and invites preemptive attack during a crisis. This minimal arsenal is clearly a matter of choice: China stopped fissile material production in 1990 and has long had the capacity to produce a much larger number of ballistic missiles. [15] The simplest explanation for this choice is that the Chinese leadership worries less about its vulnerability to a disarming first strike than the costs of an arms race or what some Second Artillery officer might do with a fully armed nuclear weapon. In a strange way, Beijing placed more faith in Washington and Moscow than in its own military officers.

Washington has never reciprocated that trust. Instead, the United States has embarked on a major transformation of its strategic forces that is, in part, driven by concern about the modernization of China's strategic forces. President Bill Clinton reportedly directed U.S. Strategic Command in 1998 to include plans for strikes against China in the U.S. nuclear weapons targeting plan. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) identified China as one of seven countries "that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency" with nuclear weapons. [16]

Chinese strategic forces are increasingly supplanting Russia as the primary benchmark for determining the size and capabilities of U.S. strategic forces--at least in administration rhetoric. China's nuclear arsenal is reflected in the 2001 NPR in two ways. First, the review recommends reducing the 6,000 deployed U.S. nuclear weapons to no less than 1,700-2,200. In response to criticism that these cuts didn't go low enough, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that further reductions might encourage China to attempt what he termed a "sprint to parity"--a rapid increase in nuclear forces to reach numerical parity with the United States. [17]

Second, the 2001 NPR recommends the addition of ballistic missile defenses and non-nuclear strike capabilities to help improve the ability of the United States to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. [18] Here too, concern over China's arsenal lurked in the background. Shortly before he was nominated as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy (with responsibility for overseeing the NPR), Keith Payne argued that the United States, in a crisis with China over Taiwan, must possess the capability to disarm China with a first strike if U.S. deterrence is to be credible. Despite overwhelming U.S. nuclear superiority, he has argued, "China's leadership may not be susceptible to U.S. deterrence threats, regardless of their severity, largely because denying Taiwan independence would be a near-absolute goal for Chinese leaders." Thus, the United States "would have to make blatantly clear its will and capability to defeat Chinese conventional and [weapons of mass destruction] attacks against Taiwan and against its own power projection forces." [19]

Yet, if the United States were truly interested in discouraging a Chinese sprint to parity or the development of a Chinese ballistic missile force that could undertake coercive operations, the president would disavow the vision for nuclear forces outlined in the NPR. The Chinese leadership chose their arsenal in part on the belief that the United States would not be foolish enough to use nuclear weapons against China in a conflict. By asserting that Washington may be that foolish, and by attempting to exploit the weaknesses inherent in China's decision to rely on a small vulnerable force, the NPR creates incentives for Beijing to increase the size, readiness, and usability of its nuclear forces.

Larger, more ready Chinese nuclear forces would not be in the best interests of the United States. In the midst of a crisis, any attempt by Beijing to ready its ballistic missiles for a first strike against the United States, let alone to actually fire one, would be suicide. The only risk that China's current nuclear arsenal poses to the United States is an unauthorized nuclear launch--something the intelligence community has concluded "is highly unlikely" under China's current operational practices. That might change, however, if China were to adopt the "hair trigger" nuclear postures that the United States and Russia maintain even today to demonstrate the "credibility" of their nuclear deterrents. China might also increase its strategic forces or deploy theater nuclear forces that could be used early in a conflict--developments that might alarm India, with predictable secondary effects on Pakistan.

So far, none of this has happened. Chinese nuclear forces today look remarkably like they have for decades. The picture of the Chinese nuclear arsenal that emerges from U.S. intelligence assessments suggests a country that--at least in the nuclear field--is deploying a smaller, less ready arsenal than is within its capabilities. That reflects a choice to rely on a minimum deterrent that sacrifices offensive capability in exchange for maximizing political control and minimizing economic cost--a decision that seems eminently sensible. The great mystery is not that Beijing chose such an arsenal, but that the Bush administration would be eager to change it.

1. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring: Failed DF-31 Test," Washington Times, January 4, 2002, p. 9.

2. Richard D. Fisher Jr., "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1198, June 26, 1998.

3. Yang Zheng, China's Nuclear Arsenal, March 16, 1996 (www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm).

4. David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund, "A History of China's Plutonium Production," pp. 61-80; see also David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 126-130.

5. See: Fisher, "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security"; Richard D. Fisher Jr. and Baker Spring, "China's Nuclear and Missile Espionage Heightens the Need for Missile Defense," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1303, July 2, 1999; David R. Markov and Andrew W. Hull, "The Changing Nature of Chinese Nuclear Strategy," Institute for Defense Analyses, January 1997; David R. Tanks, "Exploring U.S. Missile Defense Requirements in 2010: What Are the Policy and Technology Challenges?" Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, April 1997; and "Size of China's Ballistic Missile Force," Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, no author, no date.

6. Nie Rongzhen, Inside the Red Star: The Memoirs of Marshal Nie Rongzhen, Zhong Rongyi, translator (Beijing: New World Press, 1988). See also: Nie Rongzhen, "How China Develops Its Nuclear Weapons," Beijing Review, April 29, 1985, pp. 15-18.

7. Such estimates are often based on two comments in the open literature: In 1979, a senior Defense Department official described the nuclear forces deployed by China, France, and Britain as "more or less comparable with China perhaps being the leader of the three. So it is possible that China might be the third nuclear power in the world." See: Defense Department, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for FY80; Part 1: Defense Posture; Budget Priorities and Management Issues; Strategic Nuclear Posture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office (GPO), 1979), p. 357. See also John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 253. A "senior Chinese military officer" purportedly told Lewis and Xue that China maintained "a nuclear weapons inventory greater than that of the French and British strategic forces combined."

8. Unless otherwise noted, this estimate is derived from: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002.

9. Bill Gertz, "China Ready to Deploy its First Mobile ICBMs," Washington Times, September 6, 2001.

10. Senate Committee on Intelligence, Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States, Senate Hearing 107-597, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2001, p. 79.

11. Michael R. Gordon and Steven Lee Myers, "Risk of Arms Race Seen in U.S. Design of Missile Defense," New York Times, May 28, 2000, p. A1. An earlier National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) estimate, however, suggested that the DF-5A (CSS-4) might carry up to three 470-kilogram DF-31 (CSS-X-10)-type reentry vehicles--although one assumption of this analysis was that a "minimum number of changes" were made to modify a Smart Dispenser upper stage for use as a post-boost vehicle. See Bill Gertz, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999), p. 252.

12. Defense Department, Future Military Capabilities of the People's Republic of China, Report to Congress Pursuant to Section 1226 of the FY98 National Defense Authorization Act (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1998), p. 5.

13. The NAIC estimate is found in NAIC-1442-0629-97 (no title), December 10, 1996, cited in Gertz, Betrayal, pp. 251-252.

14. John M. Shalikashvili, Findings and Recommendations Concerning the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001).

15. Defense Department, Chinese Military Power 1997, p. 4.

16. Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-60 (1998) returned China to the Single Integrated Operational Plan after a reported 16-year absence. Although classified, the Washington Post reported that PDD-60 directed "the military to plan attacks against a wider spectrum of targets in China, including the country's growing military-industrial complex and its improved conventional forces." See: R. Jeffrey Smith, "Clinton Directive Changes Strategy on Nuclear Arms Centering on Deterrence, Officials Drop Terms for Long Atomic War," Washington Post, December 7, 1997, p. A1; and Hans M. Kristensen, The Matrix of Deterrence: U.S. Strategic Command Force Structure Studies (Berkeley: Nautilus Institute, 2001), pp. 14-15. The revelation produced a confidential State Department memorandum, now partially declassified, concerning targeting policy. See: State Department, Targeting Policy, March 17, 1998 (SEA-23820.9).

17. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reduction: The Moscow Treaty, Senate Hearing 107-622, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, pp. 81, 111.

18. These quotations are drawn from the unclassified cover letter that accompanied the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. See: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Foreword, Nuclear Posture Review Report, January 2002 (www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/d20020109npr.pdf).

19. Keith B. Payne, "Post-Cold War Deterrence and a Taiwan Crisis," China Brief, vol. 1, no. 5, September 12, 2001.

Jeffrey Lewis is a research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy in College Park, Maryland.

Sidebar: China's arsenal, by the numbers

Why 80-130 operationally deployed weapons is the best estimate for China's nuclear forces

• 18 DF-5 (NATO designation: CSS-4) ICBMs. The liquid-fueled Dong Feng (DF)-5 ICBM ("East Wind") is the only Chinese missile capable of striking targets throughout the entire United States. With the greatest throw weight among Chinese ballistic missiles, the DF-5 is likely equipped with China's largest nuclear warhead, with an estimated yield of 4-5 megatons. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) estimates that China has "about 20" DF-5s. [1] In congressional testimony, Gen. Eugene Habiger, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, was more specific, revealing that China had 18 DF-5s, all of which are silo-based. [2]

• 12 DF-4 (CSS-3) ICBMs. Although NASIC lists the DF-4 as an ICBM, the DF-4 is not capable of reaching the continental United States. In 1993, the U.S. intelligence community estimated that of China's approximately ten DF-4 ICBMs, "two of the DF-4s are based in silos but most are stored in caves and must be rolled out to adjacent launch pads for firing." [3] The DF-4 reportedly is loaded with the same 2,000-kilogram, 3-megaton reentry vehicle as the DF-3. [4] NASIC estimates that China has "fewer than 25" DF-4 ICBMs. [5] The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats is more specific, stating that China maintains "about a dozen [DF-4] ICBMs that are almost certainly intended as a retaliatory deterrent against targets in Russia and Asia." [6]

• 50-100 DF-3 (CSS-2) and DF-21 (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). China's nuclear-capable "theater" ballistic missile force comprises DF-3 and DF-21 ballistic missiles. The DF-3 is a land-based derivative of the naval Julang-1 (CSS-NX-3). China is upgrading the DF-21 to replace the much older DF-3 and converting an unspecified number of DF-21 ballistic missiles to conduct conventional missions. During normal peacetime operations, DF-3 and DF-21 launchers probably remain in their garrisons, where the principle method of protecting deployments is extensive tunneling. [7]

In 1972, U.S. intelligence assessed that the DF-3 was equipped with China's earliest 3-megaton thermonuclear warhead. [8] Unofficial reports indicate that China planned a 600-kilogram warhead for the DF-21 with a yield of 400 or more kilotons, although the delayed deployment of the DF-21 in the late 1990s may have allowed China to use DF-31 type warheads tested between 1992 and 1996. [9] Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat estimates the number of launchers for the DF-3, DF-21 "Mod 1" and DF-21 "Mod 2" MRBMs as "less than fifty" each, implying as many as 150 total MRBM launchers. [10] Intelligence documents leaked to the press, however, suggest that there are fewer than 50 total MRBM launchers of all types. [11] The entire MRBM force (DF-3 and DF-21), then, comprises either 50 or 100 missiles, depending on whether 1 or 2 missiles are assigned to each launcher.

Jeffrey Lewis

1. National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, August 2003, p. 16.

2. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Ballistic Missiles: Threat and Response, Senate Hearings 106-339, 106th Cong., 2nd sess., 1999, p. 165. See also: Defense Department, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China ("Chinese Military Power"), June 2000. Chinese Military Power notes that "China reportedly has built 18 CSS-4 [DF-5] silos."

3. National Security Council, Report to Congress on Status of China, India and Pakistan Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Programs, 1993 (www.fas.org/irp/threat/930728-wmd.htm).

4. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy, March 1972, (page number redacted). See tables 5 and 6.

5. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 16.

6. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, p. 32.

7. On peacetime DF-3 (CSS-2) operations, including tunneling efforts, see: DIA, Intelligence Appraisal China: Nuclear Missile Strategy, March 1981, pp. 4-5 (DIAIAPPR 34-81).

8. DIA, Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy.

9. John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 177.

10. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 10.

11. A 1996 National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) report on the program to replace the DF-3 (CSS-2) with the DF-21 (CSS-5) suggested that China had approximately 40 DF-3 launchers and implied that the DF-21 was replacing the DF-3 on a one-to-one basis. NAIC, China Incrementally Downsizing CSS-2 IRBM Force, November 1996 (NAIC-1030-098B-96), cited in Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), pp. 233-34.

February 15, 2006 at 12:17 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 12, 2006

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites

Telegraph | News | US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites

By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 12/02/2006)

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran factfile

Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.

By then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's ayatollahs to go atomic.

In Teheran yesterday, crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.

February 12, 2006 at 12:13 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 10, 2006

Putin and Hamas: olive branch or stab in back?

Putin and Hamas: olive branch or stab in back? - World - Times Online

Jeremy Page, Moscow Correspondent for The Times, believes that Russia's attempts to engage Hamas could help to tame the terrorist organisation's radical agenda

"As is frequently the case in Russian politics, there are a number of different interest groups involved in Moscow's decision to engage with Hamas.

"President Putin is keen to restore Russia's role as a major player in the Middle East. For the last 15 years, it has been distracted by its own domestic problems and it has been sidelined by the United States.

"A lot of people who used to be involved in foreign policy and international security issues have felt rather put out as they have watched the US calling the shots.

"There are certainly others. perhaps in the Foreign Ministry, who say that this represents an opportunity for Russia to do something positive on the world stage, to prove that the country can behave as a responsible power to help to resolve some of the big stand-offs. The same is true of Russian intervention in disputes in Iran and North Korea.

"There are also those who consider this an opportunity to reclaim lost influence in the Middle East, while others will see it as a practical chance to win contracts to sell to the Palestinian Authority.

"But whatever the reasons, everyone agreed with the policy of engaging Hamas.

"Russia has historical links with organisations and regimes that the West has either very poor relations with or none at all. During the Cold War, when Israel was backed by the US, Russia aligned itself with its opponents. This meant that it has historical ties to groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah which it now hopes to exploit.

"I don't think it's Russia sticking two fingers up to the US. America is in a very difficult position - Hamas was legally elected but the White House can not talk to them because it lists them as a terrorist organisation. Russia does not.

"It is undoubtedly very useful for the West to use Russia as a channel of communication with North Korea and Iran.

"Russia also has a very close relationship with Israel and there's a huge Russian Jewish population in Israel which has grown considerably over the past 15 years. They were politically conservative and it was from this bloc that Ariel Sharon derived considerable support.

"There were always going to be people in Israel who would be annoyed by any attempts to engage Hamas, but everybody in the West knows that Russia does not consider it to be a terrorist organisation.

"There are enough people in the West who would consider this a positive move and perhaps encourage Hamas to behave more responsibly."

February 10, 2006 at 04:28 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 06, 2006

Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor
IT IS the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world’s most pressing security problems.

For five years the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear programme being diverted to produce an atomic bomb.

Those efforts, however, are now faltering. US leaders are openly discussing the looming conflict. A recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Americans favoured military intervention to stop Iran building a bomb.

Tehran scoffs at threats by the West, has pledged to press on with its nuclear progamme and defend itself if attacked.

The military option may be the only means of halting a regime that has threatened to annihilate Israel from developing a bomb and triggering a regional nuclear arms race.

Experts agree that America has the military capability to destroy Iran’s dozen known atomic sites. US forces virtually surround Iran with military air bases to the west in Afghanistan, to the east in Iraq, Turkey and Qatar and the south in Oman and Diego Garcia. The US Navy also has a carrier group in the Gulf, armed with attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. B2 stealth bombers flying from mainland America could also be used.

The air campaign would not be easy. The Iranians have been preparing for an attack. Key sites are ringed with air defences and buried underground. Sensitive parts of the Natanz facility are concealed 18 meters (60ft) underground and protected by reinforced concrete two meters thick. Similar protection has been built around the uranium conversion site at Esfahan.

“American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq centre in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq,” said the Global Security consultantcy.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US Air Force officer, predicted that knocking out nuclear sites could be over in less than a week. But he gave warning that would only be the beginning.

Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked. It could use medium-range missiles to hit Israel or US military targets in Iraq and the region. It could also use its missiles and submarines to attack shipping in the Gulf, the main export route for much of the world’s energy needs. “Once you have dealt with the nuclear sites you would have to expand the targets,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner. “There are another 125 to deal with including chemical plants, missile launchers, airfields and submarines.”

While this huge US offensive is underway Iran would almost certainly deploy its most powerful weapon. It would unleash a counter-attack through proxies in the region. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia, would attack Israel. Moqtadr al-Sadr, the militant Iraqi Shia religious leader, could order his Mahdi Army to rise up against American and British forces in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups could wreak havoc against Western targets across the world.

What began as a military operation to maintain a balance of power in the Middle East, could instead plunge the region into another conflict.

“It will have to be diplomats, not F15s that stop the mullahs,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An air strike against the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government. Finally, the strike would not, as it often said, delay the Iranian programme. It would almost certainly speed it up,” he wrote in an article.

PUBLIC OPTIONS

‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’

John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona and US presidential hopeful

‘We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history’

Abdolrahim Moussavi, head of Iran’s joint chiefs of staff

‘Give another year to make HEU (highly-enriched uranium) for a nuclear weapon and a few more months to convert the uranium into weapon components, Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009’

David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Institute for Science and International Security

‘There isn’t a military option. There certainly isn’t one on the table, let’s be clear about that.’

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary

‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’

Tony Blair

February 6, 2006 at 10:55 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 05, 2006

Focus: Freedom v faith: the firestorm

Focus: Freedom v faith: the firestorm - Sunday Times - Times Online

Not since the Salman Rushdie affair have secular Europe and Islam traded insults so vehemently. Stuart Wavell on the cartoons that threaten to force us apart
A small child led the religious chanting as the crowd converged on the French embassy in Damascus. They had come from the mosque where a preacher had inveighed against the “blasphemous cartoons” in Europe. It was not a wise place for a Norwegian to be.

By publishing Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, a Norwegian newspaper had helped to pitch Europe into the worst cultural clash between Islamic religious beliefs and western freedom of expression since Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses in 1989.

Even Nord, a Norwegian visitor to the local university, was curious to see the demonstration. Reaching the embassy, those in front began to scuffle with a line of police and the crowd’s anger grew.

Then, without warning, a Syrian grabbed Nord and addressed the crowd: “This is my friend. He is a Norwegian and a good man.”

A pin’s drop could have been heard as a menacing silence came over the crowd. The Syrian then hoisted the Norwegian on to his shoulders and commanded: “Speak for your country.”

The student surveyed his hostile audience for a moment before addressing them in Arabic. “This is just an embassy,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “It is not the country. This incident is the result of lack of understanding. We need to understand each other better and then hopefully we will have the chance to live in togetherness and we can show proper respect for you. Inshallah (God willing)!” The crowd roared in approval. But the goodwill did not last: yesterday they set fire to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies.

An army of diplomats was deployed across the globe last week in vain attempts to assuage Muslim fury at the publication in Denmark and other European countries of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad.

Initially, Britain looked on as a bemused spectator. Yet a convergence of separate events soon put the same issue in the headlines.

In Leeds the decision to bring race hate charges against Nick Griffin, leader of the British National party, backfired spectacularly when a jury cleared him of two charges of inciting racial hatred against Asians by attacking the Muslim religion.

As he walked free from court surrounded by shaven-headed thugs, Griffin vowed that he would not tone down his language. “This evening, millions of people in Britain will be holding their heads a little higher,” he claimed.

Perhaps the supreme irony was the surprise Commons defeat by one vote of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which might have made the Danish cartoons illegal in Britain.

MPs could not have imagined that some of the issues raised in that debate were to spring into alarming focus within hours as Europe and Islam confronted each other in a dialogue of the deaf.

Confusingly, the dispute mutated as fast as it grew. What began as a tasteless Danish prank became a serious issue of press freedom for some newspapers. Roger Koeppel, editor-in-chief of Die Welt, the German paper which reprinted the cartoon, was in no doubt. “It’s at the very core of our culture that the most sacred things can be subjected to criticism, laughter and satire,” he said.

Others claimed that they felt compelled to show the public what the fuss was all about. Then a Jordanian paper broke ranks to print three of the cartoons and raise another uncomfortable question. “Muslims of the world be reasonable,” wrote Jihad Momani, editor of the tabloid al-Shihan. “What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures — or pictures of a hostage taker slashing the throat of his victim?” He soon received his answer: he was sacked.

Other questions clamoured. Is there a universal right to be offensive? Can speech be free if it disparages a group in society? Should a secular society bow to the dictates of an apparently implacable religion? And — principles aside — does poking fun at extremists damage or simply encourage them? The dispute had been simmering for four months. What caused the lid to blow last week?

IT began innocently with a Danish children’s book on the Koran and the prophet’s life. Its author, Kare Bluitgen, was having difficulty finding an illustrator, complaining that all the artists he approached feared the wrath of Muslims if they drew images of Muhammad. Many cited the murder of the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh by an Islamist as reason for refusal.

Learning of this, Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the daily Jyllands-Posten, invited anyone “bold enough” from the Danish Cartoonists’ Society to submit their entries. On September 30 Carsten Juste, the newspaper’s editor, published 12 drawings, declaring he wanted to challenge the trend for “self-censorship”.

One showed a bearded Muhammad with a bomb fizzing out of his turban. Another depicted him telling dead suicide bombers that he had run out of virgins with which to reward them. In another he is portrayed as a schoolboy with a blackboard.

To many non-Muslims the drawings might seem banal and poorly executed. But in the Islamic world the offence was palpable. Muslims across the globe observe the injunction not to display pictures of animals or humans, notably Allah’s messenger Muhammad, to prevent idolatry.

Nevertheless, the row might have died out if the Danish government had not sought to make political capital of it. Despite the ambassadors of 11 Muslim countries calling on Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister, to take “necessary steps” against the “defamation of Islam”, he refused to back down, describing the cartoons as “a necessary provocation”.

“I will never accept that respect for a religious stance leads to the curtailment of criticism, humour and satire in the press,” said Rasmussen, whose centre-right minority party is dependent for survival on support from Folkeparti, an anti-immigration party.

Muslim anger flared up again in early January when the cartoons were reprinted in Magazinet, a Christian newspaper in Norway, and on the website of the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.

Last week newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland featured the cartoons. France Soir, France’s nearest thing to a “gutter press”, seemed to show particular relish in plastering its own cartoon on its front page portraying Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities and the Prophet sitting on a cloud. The Christian God said: “Don’t complain, Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured.”

Spread across two pages inside were the 12 Danish cartoons, accompanied by a strong editorial aimed at Muslim countries’ intolerance.

“We must apologise to them,” wrote Serge Faubert, “because the freedom of expression they refuse, day after day, to each of their citizens, is exercised in a society that is not subject to their iron rule . . . No, we will never apologise for being free to speak, to think and to believe.”

This was strong stuff in a country still recovering from the immigrant riots in November, when 6,000 cars went up in smoke and more than 1,500 people were arrested in the space of a fortnight.

Amid violent protests in the Middle East and death threats against senior staff, the first casualty at France Soir was Jacques Lefranc, a managing editor, who was sacked by the paper’s owner, Raymond Lakah, an Egyptian-born Catholic impresario whose main business is in the Middle East.

Protests continued to intensify. In Gaza, Palestinian gunmen closed the European Union offices and gave the French, Danish, Norwegian and German governments 48 hours to apologise. French citizens were ordered to leave.

In the West Bank city of Nablus a German citizen was seized — and later released — by armed militants.

“Millions of Muslims are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet’s honour,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, head of the extremist Hezbollah movement. “Had the apostate Salman Rushdie been killed then those low-lifers would not have dared to discredit the Prophet.”

NO British newspaper reprinted the cartoons, perhaps mindful of the Rushdie affair and the communal anguish that followed the London bombings last summer.

British Muslim leaders were commending editors on their “pragmatism and sobriety” on Thursday when the BBC was drawn into the row after broadcasting glimpses of the cartoons on its evening bulletins.

Channel 4 News, ITV and The Spectator magazine website also briefly showed the images. A BBC spokesman said they were shown “in full context” and “to give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story”.

On Thursday a small crowd of protesters shouted slogans outside the BBC’s offices in west London. The following day hundreds joined a display of fury outside the Danish embassy in the capital.

Amid calls for a holy war, they chanted: “UK go to hell, UN go to hell, Kill Denmark” and “Bin Laden is coming back”. Other banners praised the “Fab four” — the British-born suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London on July 7.

Omar Abdulla, 32, from central London said: “Anyone who insults Islam — chop their heads off. Give the perpetrators to the Muslims. If they had freedom of speech they have freedom to die.”

Such rhetoric characterised the demonstration, organised by followers of Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical preacher who now lives in Lebanon. Their press release stated that insults to Muhammad carried the death penalty, “since the Prophet said, ‘Whoever insults a prophet, kill him’ ”.

An indication of how British Muslims felt about the Danish cartoons was evident in a text and e-mail poll run by Radio 5. At one stage 58% of the responses were in favour of publishing the images, but then perplexed presenters reported an avalanche of “no” votes that exceeded 90,000.

Some Muslims said that they had received round-robin messages urging them to ring the “no” number. A woman teacher said she had not seen the images but “I felt it my duty as a Muslim to text in”.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) was trying to damp down feelings. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, its secretary-general, appealed to his fellow Muslims not to be swayed by extremists who wanted to pursue “their own mischievous agenda”. He urged them to respond “peacefully and with dignity”.

However, Sacranie also demanded that the offending European newspapers should “apologise immediately” for the “gratuitously offensive” harm they had caused.

The MCB had been one of the main supporters of the government’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This was characterised by Anthony Lester, QC, a leading opponent in the Lords, as “a targeted bid to woo British Muslim support for new Labour in marginal constituencies where hostility to the illegal invasion of Iraq had alienated many Muslim and other potential voters from Labour to the Liberal Democrats”.

The MCB made no secret of the fact that its aim was largely symbolic in seeking “parity of esteem” with Jews and Sikhs who were classed in law as religious and ethnic entities. Ironically, a crucial argument came from comedians, led by Rowan Atkinson, who raised the prospect of being forbidden to poke fun at religions.

The diluted bill was stripped of measures to outlaw “abusive and insulting” language and behaviour as well as the crime of “recklessness” in actions that incite religious hatred. Sacranie described the decision as “baffling”, criticised the “mischief making” of opponents and said he thought that the cartoons would not now be classed as an offence.

BY the end of the week Denmark was counting the cost of freedom of speech. The prime minister’s belated but incomplete apologies had not saved Arla Foods, the country’s biggest exporter to the Middle East, from losing a market worth $500m.

Finn Hanssen, international director of the chain that sells Lurpak butter and Kraft cream cheese, said that the consumer boycott had “brought our total business to a standstill” in less than a week. He thought it would take months, if not years, to recover.

In Europe, too, the damage to national interests is being assessed as the uproar and denunciations have spread to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and north Africa. Nearly 30 newspapers in 13 European countries have now published the cartoons.

Meanwhile, people are trying to make sense of the incomprehending confrontation between two cultures. Ostensibly the division is between a European tradition informed by Christianity, an iconographic religion that venerates images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the saints, and its polar opposite, Islam.

Others asked where self-censorship stops when avoiding sensitive issues for the sake of a quiet life. Mockery has strong advocates. Matthew Parris wrote in The Times last week: “Structures of oppression that may not be susceptible to rational debate may in the end yield to derision.”

In Britain a pragmatic attitude has prevailed: newspapers yield to nobody in asserting their right to freedom of speech, but they saw no justification for causing deliberate offence to Muslims.

The bottom line, say some critics, is that provocation is counter-productive. It feeds the paranoia and influence of small extremist groups who can do disproportionate damage to British society in the name of the wider Muslim population, most of whom do not share their views.

“It is just a needless and pointless stoking of a raging fire that serves no one’s interests and does no one any favours,” said William Dalrymple, the author and historian. “This is an extremely sensitive moment with western troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and things are extremely uneasy in Palestine and tricky in Iran. It is not the moment to be throwing petrol on the flames.

“From every form of realpolitik it is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time and people should pull back hard.”

Reporting team: Matthew Campbell, Paris; Nicola Smith, Copenhagen; Aatish Taseer, Damascus; Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv; Michael Sheridan, Bangkok; Sarah Baxter, Washington DC; Abul Taher, Daniel Foggo, Chris Morgan, Alex Delmar-Morgan, London

BRITAIN AND BLASPHEMY, A SHORT HISTORY

John William Gott

The last Briton jailed for blasphemy, Gott was given nine months’ hard labour in 1922 for comparing Jesus to a circus clown

Gay News

Mary Whitehouse prosecuted Gay News magazine in 1977 for publishing a poem about a centurion’s love for Christ

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

This 1979 film comedy about a man mistaken for the Messiah was initially banned by some local councils in Britain

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran put a fatwa on him when his novel, which challenged aspects of Islam, came out in 1988

Bezhti and Birmingham Rep

In 2004 the theatre was forced to withdraw the play after violent protests by Sikhs

Jerry Springer - The Opera

Christian groups threatened the BBC with a private blasphemy prosecution last year after it screened Jerry Springer - The Opera.

THEY SHOULD HAVE PUBLISHED ... THEY SHOULDN'T ... HOW THE WORLD DIVIDES ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Haji Mustafa, spokesman for Hizb-ut-Tahrir

Publishing pictures of the Prophet was simply designed to provoke Muslims. This is all part of the war on terror. After the invasion of Muslim lands and the desecration of the Koran in Guantanamo Bay, you have this, an attack on the Prophet. Surely the mark of a civilised country is that there is civility and respect. This is a mark of intolerance.

Christopher Hitchens, writer and commentator

There isn’t an inch to give, nothing to negotiate and no concessions to offer. Those of us who believe in enlightenment and free speech also have unalterable principles which we will not give up. We have to listen all the time to piratical-looking mullahs calling our Jewish friends pigs and demanding the censorship of The Satanic Verses and we find this fantastically insulting, but we don’t behave like babies. They are making a puerile spectacle of themselves.

We should say, how dare you behave in this way? They can put themselves under laws and taboos if they wish, but it is nothing to do with me or anybody else. They are completely out of order.

Basil Mustafa, lecturer in Islamic studies, Oxford

These cartoons are a form of western arrogance — anyone you don’t like, you can ridicule them, abuse them. I am not sure if Christ has been ridiculed in the same way in films in the West. There have been films about him, but not ridiculing him. The reason why Muhammad was ridiculed was because he was a Muslim prophet.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty

We say to Britain’s Muslims in friendship and solidarity — let’s close Guantanamo and end torture flights before we worry about distasteful cartoons. Shutting down free expression is particularly dangerous for minorities. How can my speech be free if yours is so expensive?

Ibrahim Mogra, leading British imam

I don’t think freedom of speech should be used to hurt Muslims and vilify Muhammad. To depict him as a terrorist, it does not do any good. What message does it give out — that all Muslims are terrorists?

Munira Mirza, British writer of Muslim origin

British newspapers should have published the cartoons. By failing to publish, they are saying that it’s acceptable to self-censor, we don’t want to rock the boat. I know lots of people who will be offended by the pictures but Muslims should be treated equally, like everybody else.

Muslims are not the only communities hurt by images. Many minority groups have this culture of victimhood and often perception is not based on reality. I think everything should be allowed to be ridiculed. Through humour, lots of European countries have managed to overcome the strict regimes imposed on them by the church.

Everybody says Islam should be reformed, but you can’t have this if there is no discussion, no debate.

Roger Scruton, philosopher

You must respect other people’s pieties and that means respecting the icons of their faith and the rituals, but that doesn’t mean you can’t criticise the content of the faith.

What we need is more discussion and less mockery. We Christians have had to put up with the most appalling satire of our symbols — it’s the way the world works. I don’t think the Danish cartoons are anything to get as worked up about as all that but I think it’s wrong to publish them.

Ziauddin Sardar, writer and broadcaster

This is not an issue of freedom of expression, it is very much an issue of power. In Britain, Muslims are in a good position and are capable of representing themselves, but in Europe they are marginalised and do not have the means to reply.

If you use your freedom of expression to denigrate and abuse, knowing they have no way of responding, then it is an act of oppression.

It is an act of banality and we are moving towards a “banality of evil”. The demonisation of Muslims is like the demonisation of Jews that led to the Holocaust and there is a similar swing to the right occurring now in Europe.

I have travelled in Holland, Belgium, France and Germany and have been horrified by the open hatred of Muslims in those countries. What this kind of exercise does is to confirm people’s belief about Muslims, that they are right to hate them and the next stage, which is one of violence, is implicit.

Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford

Those newspapers which decided not to publish cartoons of the Prophet acted wisely and in the public good. Freedom of speech is fundamental to our society and all religions need to be open to criticism, but this freedom needs to be exercised responsibly with a sensitivity to cultural differences.

Arnaud Levy, editor in chief of France Soir

It isn’t the cartoons themselves that we’re defending, it’s the right of a newspaper — Danish, as it happens, but it could be French, German, Italian, Belgian or Zimbabwean — to publish them without being threatened and without provoking condemnation.

Wadah Khanfar, director of Al-Jazeera TV

It is an insult for one billion Muslims. We profoundly respect freedom of expression but these images do not give any information or deliver any opinion. They are purely insulting.

Click here to find out more!

February 5, 2006 at 12:50 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 04, 2006

Cartoon row highlights deep divisions

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Cartoon row highlights deep divisions

By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Arab Affairs analyst

The publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has caused deep divisions across the world.

For some, they are a transient form of entertainment, for others, an attack on Islam.

No-one knows what the Prophet Muhammad looked like.

Images of him that can be found today were produced within a few hundred years of his death in the 7th Century.

These tend to be exalted representations of a human figure, and nobody can say to what extent they are a realistic portrayal of a historical figure.

A great deal of the Islamic literature about Muhammad is hagiographic - that is, unstinting in its praise.

It elevates the founder of Islam to a unique level of perfection and infallibility.

"His life was the reflection of Allah's Words. He became the Qur'an in person," a cleric wrote recently, in response to a question about the "noble character of the Prophet" sent to the "Fatwa Bank" section in the popular website, IslamOnline.

Although other scholars might not agree with this description, it broadly reflects the popular perception of Muhammad.

Two traditions

Such close identification between the Prophet and the Koran itself explains the adulation many Muslims express towards their prophet.

But at the same time it stands in sharp contrast to another Islamic tradition, based on the following Koranic verse: "Say: 'I am but a man like yourselves'."

Despite the Koranic emphasis on the fundamentally human nature of Mohammed, the hagiographic tradition continues to dominate perceptions of the Prophet.

That explains the veneration and high esteem in which he is held by Muslims.

There seems to be a confusion between two issues: the Islamic ban on any pictorial representation and respect for the character of Muhammad

But that does not explain why the cartoons in themselves were so offensive, since no-one could seriously claim that he or she recognised the features of the Prophet in any of the images drawn by the Danish cartoonists.

There seems to be a confusion between two issues: the Islamic ban on any pictorial representation and respect for the character of Muhammad.

It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the Prophet with terrorism, that is so offensive to the vast majority of Muslims.

Islam bans pictorial representations of humans or animals to discourage idolatory.

It goes without saying that this ban covers the Prophet, his companions, and major figures of the two other Abrahamite religions considered sacred by Muslims as well.

The ban seems to have been based on the perception that cultures which consider animals or their statues to be sacred literally worship these animals, rather than a complex set of meanings and values that these creatures symbolise.

Causes

The row over the Danish cartoons would probably have remained a local dispute between some Muslims and a Danish newspaper had it not been for three factors:

* the rise of violent political Islam
* America's war on terror
* modern transnational media.

America's war on terror is still largely perceived in the Arab world as a war on Islam - a perception reinforced by the fact that it is happening exclusively in Muslim countries, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.
US soldiers in the Iraqi city of Fallujah
Issues such as the Iraq war are seen as catalysts in the row

Parts of the Arab media describes it as a modern crusade. Many Arab columnists often speak of a campaign to distort and discredit Islam.

For them, the row over the Danish cartoons is yet another confirmation of this perception.

But long before the 11 September attacks and America's war on al-Qaeda, Islamists were aggressively promoting their world view and attacking liberal secular values, not only in the West but across the Arab and Muslim world as well.

The best-known example in the West is the row caused by Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which culminated in the notorious death fatwa against its author by the late Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeyni.

In Egypt, the Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz, survived a knife attack in 1994 for allegedly insulting Islam in one of his novels.

Another prominent writer, Farag Fouda, was gunned down in Cairo for alleged apostasy.

The internet and satellite broadcasting are being diligently used by Islamist activists across the world to drum up support for the doctrine of a universal Muslim nation up against an aggressive and imperialist West.

A local Danish dispute is thus quickly elevated to the level of a global conflict.

Culture clash

The row over the Danish cartoons is yet another dramatic illustration of the huge gap between secular liberal values in the West and the predominantly religious outlook of Middle Eastern societies.

But for Muslims living in Europe it poses anew the same old dilemma about integration and cultural identity.

There is a consensus in the West as to what constitutes offensive material, for example, child pornography, or dead soldiers.

Some of these issues are even regulated by law.

But part of the Western consensus is that poking fun at religious figures is acceptable.

It seems that some Muslim activists living in Europe are determined to redefine the boundaries of that consensus.

February 4, 2006 at 02:30 PM in Muslim background | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 02, 2006

Jimmy Carter: Give Hamas a chance

CNN.com - Jimmy Carter: Give Hamas a chance - Feb 1, 2006

Former president says U.S. should not cut off aid to Palestinians

Thursday, February 2, 2006; Posted: 7:12 a.m. EST (12:12 GMT)
(CNN) -- Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group's militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

Carter, who monitored last week's Palestinian elections in which Hamas handily toppled the ruling Fatah, added that the United States should not cut off aid to the Palestinian people, but rather funnel it through third parties like the U.N.

"If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government," Carter said. (Watch the former president cautiously defend Hamas -- 4:35)

"If there are prohibitions -- like, for instance, in the United States, against giving any money to a government that is controlled by Hamas -- then the United States could channel the same amount of money to the Palestinian people through the United Nations, through the refugee fund, through UNICEF, things of that kind," he added.

Carter expressed hope that "the people of Palestine -- who already suffer ... under Israeli occupation -- will not suffer because they are deprived of a right to pay their school teachers, policemen, welfare workers, health workers and provide food for people."

As president, Carter brokered a 1979 peace accord between Israel and Egypt at Camp David. That effort helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize. Through his work at the Carter Center in Atlanta, he regularly monitors elections in numerous countries.

Hamas, which has called for the destruction of Israel and has long been considered a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, was expected to fare well in last week's elections. But it dominated them, winning 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Fatah, which had been in power for decades, earned only 43.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed a resolution saying that no aid should be provided to the Palestinian Authority "if a ruling majority party within the Palestinian Parliament maintains a position calling for the destruction of Israel."

Carter said "there's a good chance" that Hamas, which has operated a network of successful social and charitable organizations for Palestinians, could become a nonviolent organization. (Watch how democracy and religion coincide among Palestinians -- 2:30)

The 39th U.S. president said he met with Hamas leaders in Ramallah, in the West Bank, after last week's elections.

"They told me they want to have a peaceful administration. They want to have a unity government, bring in Fatah members and independent members," Carter said. But he added that "what they say and what they do is two different matters."

However, Carter noted, Hamas has adhered to a cease-fire since August 2004, which "indicates what they might do in the future." He said Hamas is "highly disciplined" and capable of keeping any promise of nonviolence it might make.

February 2, 2006 at 09:28 AM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

February 01, 2006

IRA 'still involved in crime and spying'

ePolitix.com - IRA 'still involved in crime and spying'

The IRA has not given up all paramilitary activity, according to the International Monitoring Commission.

In a key step towards the possible restoration of devolution, the long-awaited assessment has confirmed the republican group has not been involved in direct acts of terror.

However, the independent commission declared that the IRA is engaged in criminality and surveillance operations.

Speaking in the Commons, Tony Blair conceded that while the IMC believed the IRA had taken a strategic decision to end the armed struggle, concerns about violence and criminality remained.

"Let me make it clear once again, all criminal activity has to cease, that is absolutely crucial," the prime minister said.

"But I think it would be quite wrong [to suggest] that there hadn't been very significant progress or that the statement that the IRA gave last July was not highly significant."

Disturbing

The report seems to confirm the police view that the republicans were still involved in organised crime, a view at odds with comments by Northern Ireland security minister Shaun Woodward.

But it said: "There are a number of signs that the organisation is moving in the way it had indicated in the July statement.

"Although some other signs are at best neutral and a few are more disturbing, most are in a positive direction.

"We are of the firm view that the present PIRA [Provisional IRA] leadership has taken the strategic decision to end the armed campaign and pursue the political course which it has publicly articulated.

"We do not think that PIRA believes that terrorism has a part in this political strategy."

The report did raise concerns over continued intelligence gathering.

"This is an activity which we believe is authorised by the leadership and which involves some very senior members," it said.

"While some of it may be for defensive purposes, it is predominantly directed towards supporting the political strategy.

"It involves among other things the continuation of efforts to penetrate public and other institutions with the intention of illegally obtaining or handling sensitive information.

"This raises the question of whether the commitment to exclusively democratic means is full and thoroughgoing, or whether there remain elements of a continued subversive intent going beyond the boundaries of democratic politics."

It concluded that the position of the IRA "is not entirely straig