News Details

Iran Update: Dissenters Executed En Masse

2007-08-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

A crowd watches an execution in Iran's holy second city of Mashhad, 01 Aug. Separately two men convicted of murdering a top Iranian judge in 2005 were hanged in public in central Tehran on Thursday, the first such public executions in the Iranian capital in five years(AFP/ISNA)

Dissenters In Iran Executed En Masse
110 Slayings This Year, Outpacing 2006
KGO By Mark Matthews

Aug. 9, 2007 (KGO) - Public executions and mass arrests signal a continuing crackdown inside Iran. The numbers reported in Wall Street Journal Editorial this week are staggering.
Iranian experts say the government of Iran is under growing pressure, not only from the U.S. and the UN, from its own people as well. There is evidence suggesting the government of Iran is responding to that pressure.
The hangings and stonings are being photographed and posted on sites like YouTube. The men and women depicted faced charges from murder, rape and adultery.
Amnesty International reports 177 people executed last year is nearly double than the year before. This year, the mark is already 110, with an increased number in public and televised on Iranian TV.
Jamal Dajani, the director of Middle Eastern programming for Link TV in San Francisco says the executions broadcast inside Iran are meant to send a message to the Iranian people.
"Well, we're not seeing the executions here because they don't air them on satellite TV, but they are aired on some of the terrestrial networks," said Dajani.
Omid Memarian, a freelance journalist, lived in Iran up until last year working for opposition newspapers. One by one, the government shut them down, so he began blogging on the Internet.
"At this time, the Iranian government, they feel more pressure from the international community. And domestically, they are facing with lots of people's demand," said Memarian.
Memarian says Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power promising a stronger economy, and he hasn't delivered. Thus, the religious crack down and government's show of force are in response to a growing unrest.
"It can be a huge uprising. They know potentially the social movements in Iran could become more harsh and more broader," said Memarian.
Memarian, who was himself jailed in Iran for 50 days in late 2004, says thousands have been imprisoned for speaking out. He says the U.S. should refrain from confronting Ahmadinejad because it gives the Iranian government an excuse.
"The government is using sanctions as an excuse to say okay 'because of sanctions we can not do our promises.' So you can see how even these pressures is a grant for Ahmadinejad's government to just go on," said Memarian.
Reports within Iran show the economy there is struggling, and the Iranian people are relatively pro-U.S. compared to other countries in the region.
These are reasons why, according to Memarian, the Iran government is turning to public executions.
Copyright 2007, ABC7/KGO-TV/DT.

Tehran Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi (2nd L) attends the execution by hanging of Majid Kavousifar and Hossein Kavousifar in Tehran August 2, 2007. Iran hanged Majid and Hossein, the killers of a judge, Hassan Moghaddas, who had jailed several reformist dissidents, before a crowd of hundreds of people on Thursday. The banner reads: "We give our condolences to all our judiciary colleagues and the deceased family on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hassan Moghaddas". REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl (IRAN)

Iran: execution of political prisoners under the pretence of common criminals
Thursday, 26 July 2007
NCRI - On Sunday, the mullahs’ regime hanged two political prisoners among twelve other prisoners, according to information received. The regime transferred Fazel Ramezani and Haj-Morad Mohammadi, members of the Bakhtyari Tribe (southwestern Iran), from the notorious Gohardasht Prison to the Evin Prison where they were executed with ten other prisoners.
Executing political prisoners such as members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) as common criminals under the pretext of drug smugglers has been a common practice in Iran.
The Iranian Resistance draws the attention of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General and all other international human rights organizations to the increasing number of the arbitrary executions and in particular that of the political prisoners under the pretext of common criminals. It called for designation of an international fact finding mission to investigate the executions.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
July 25, 2007

Iranians watch the execution of Hossein Kavousifar and Majid Kavousifar who were hanged in public in central Tehran. The two men were convicted of murdering a top Iranian judge in 2005. Their hangings were the first such public executions in the Iranian capital in five years.(AFP/Behrouz Mehri)

Jonathan Gurwitz: The Achilles' heel in an Iran gone mad
Web Posted: 08/11/2007 12:01 PM CDT
San Antonio Express-News

Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union was on the verge of catastrophe. People who suffered under the repressive rule of the communist regime in Moscow had lost faith in its guiding ideology. Calls for internal reform met with increased internal repression.
Revenue from the energy sector had for years sustained exorbitant military expenditures and propped up the Soviet state. But in the mid-1980s, America's Arab allies flooded the market with cheap Middle Eastern crude. Ronald Reagan's "Saudi strategy" led to a collapse in the price of oil. The authoritarian dictatorship that had been preserved by Siberian oil fields soon collapsed as well.
The Cold War ended. The West had won. Not a shot was fired.
There's a country today that resembles the Soviet Union of the 1980s, one that engages the West in a reckless game of adventurism, where the people have lost faith in a revolutionary ideology, that is resorting to increasingly harsh measures to deal with dissidents and whose regime is sustained solely by oil revenue.
That country is Iran.
President Bush and the major presidential candidates of both parties are correct in saying that a military option for dealing with Iran must remain a contingency for the future. But the demise of Soviet Russia suggests there's another, better way to deal with Iran that avoids military confrontation.
The case of Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year-old Iranian American scholar who has been held in solitary confinement for three months in Tehran's dreaded Evin prison on charges of anti-state activity, is the best-known, but by no means the only, example of a paranoid crackdown by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on real and imagined opponents.
The regime has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Iranians in recent months for infractions of the Islamic dress code, "hooliganism" and other ethical transgressions. State security and paramilitary groups have detained and beaten university student reformers and labor union leaders.
Iran is in the midst of an execution craze. The Iranian government has put to death more than 150 people this year, including women and juveniles. Most of the executions are public hangings, some broadcast on television. Iran expert Amir Taheri writes that 150 more are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in coming weeks.
The heightened repression, televised confessions and executions — not so subtle reminders of the lethally coercive powers of the state — come amid signs of economic unrest, rising unemployment and inflation and declining oil production. While Iran is still OPEC's second-largest exporter of crude oil, it is a net importer of refined petroleum products, including gasoline. When the government was forced to institute gas rationing in June, rioting broke out.
There's no Saudi option today with regard to Iran. The demand for energy from a robust international economy means that even if OPEC's other producers open their spigots to capacity, the price of oil won't appreciably decline. But domestic discontent and economic fragility point to the mullah's Achilles' heel.
In conjunction with U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolutions that freeze the assets of entities and individuals involved in Iran's illicit nuclear program, Congress is seeking to broaden the economic front against Tehran. The Bush administration has already had success pressuring international financial institutions to cut their ties with Tehran. Proposed congressional measures would place sanctions on European energy companies — such as Royal Dutch Shell, France's Total and Spain's Repsol — for doing business in Iran.
European governments object that this would hamper efforts to moderate Iranian extremism. Engagement, as they call it, is, however, a thin veneer for doing business at any price.
The West can deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program and support for international terrorism without ever firing a shot. But those who aren't willing to work the economic lever make a teetering Iran more durable and dangerous than it otherwise ought to be.
jgurwitz@express-news.net

DOMESTIC TERROR IN IRAN
by Amir Taheri
Wall Street Journal
August 6, 2007

It is early dawn as seven young men are led to the gallows amid shouts of "Allah Akbar" (Allah is the greatest) from a crowd of bearded men as a handful of women, all in hijab, ululate to a high pitch. A few minutes later, the seven are hanged as a mullah shouts: "Alhamd li-Allah" (Praise be to Allah).
The scene was Wednesday in Mashad, Iran's second most populous city, where a crackdown against "anti-Islam hooligans" has been under way for weeks.
[Domestic Terror in Iran]
Five convicted criminals are hung in Mashad, Iran, on Wednesday Aug. 1, 2007.
The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.
The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini.
Not all executions take place in public. In the provinces of Kurdistan and Khuzestan, where ethnic Kurdish and Arab minorities are demanding greater rights, several activists have been put to death in secret, their families informed only days after the event.
The campaign of terror also includes targeted "disappearances" designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have "disappeared" since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.
According to Gen. Ismail Muqaddam, commander of the Islamic Police, a total of 430,000 men and women have been arrested on charges related to drug use since April. A further 4,209 men and women, mostly aged between 15 and 30, have been arrested for "hooliganism" in Tehran alone. The largest number of arrests, totaling almost a million men and women according to Mr. Muqaddam, were related to the enforcement of the new Islamic Dress Code, passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) in May 2006.
Most of those arrested, he says, spent a few hours, or at most a few days, in custody as "a warning." By last week, 40,000 were still in prison. Of these, 20,363 men and women are held on charges related to violating the Islamic Dress Code. According to the Deputy Chief of Police Gen. Hussein Zulfiqari, an additional 6,204 men and women are in prison on charges of "sexual proximity" without being married.
The wave of arrests has increased pressure on the nation's inadequate prison facilities. At a recent press conference in Tehran, the head of the National Prisons Service, Ali-Akbar Yassaqi, appealed for a moratorium on arrests. He said Iran's official prisons could not house more than 50,000 prisoners simultaneously while the actual number of prisoners at any given time was above 150,000. Mr. Yassaqi also revealed that each year on average some 600,000 Iranians spend some time in one of the 130 official prisons.
Since Mr. Ahmadinejad ordered the crackdown, work on converting 41 official buildings to prisons has started, with contracts for 33 other prisons already signed. Nevertheless, Mr. Yassaqi believes that, with the annual prison population likely to top the million mark this year, even the new capacities created might prove insufficient.
There are, however, an unknown number of unofficial prisons as well, often controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or militias working for various powerful mullahs. Last week, human rights activists in Iran published details of a new prison in Souleh, northwest of Tehran, staffed by militants from the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah. According to the revelations, the Souleh prison is under the control of the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi, and used for holding the regime's most "dangerous" political foes.
The regime especially fears the growing free trade union movement. In the past four months, free trade unionists have organized 12 major strikes and 47 demonstrations in various parts of the country. They showed their muscle on International Labor Day on May 1 when tens of thousands of workers marched in Tehran and 18 provincial capitals. The regime retaliated by arresting scores of trade unionists and expelling many others.
According to Rajab-Ali Shahsavari, leader of the Union of Contractual Workers, 25,795 unionists have been fired since April. He estimates that now over 1,000 workers are losing their jobs each day, as the regime intensifies its crackdown.
Worse still, the number of suspicious deaths among workers has risen to an all-time high. According to Deputy Labor Minister Ibrahim Nazari-Jalali, 1,047 workers have died in "work-related accidents" since April. Labor sources, however, point out that none of the accidents have been investigated and, in at least 13 cases, the workers who died may have been killed by goons hired by the regime.
The biggest purge of universities since Khomeini launched his "Islamic Cultural Revolution" in 1980 is also under way. Scores of student leaders have been arrested and more than 3,000 others expelled. Labeling the crackdown the "corrective movement," Mr. Ahmadinejad wants university textbooks rewritten to "cleanse them of Infidel trash," and to include "a rebuttal of Zionist-Crusader claims" about the Holocaust. Dozens of lecturers and faculty deans have been fired.
The nationwide crackdown is accompanied with efforts to cut Iranians off from sources of information outside the Islamic Republic. More than 4,000 Internet sites have been blocked, and more are added each day. The Ministry of Islamic Orientation has established a new blacklist of authors and book titles twice longer than what it was a year ago. Since April, some 30 newspapers and magazines have been shut and their offices raided. At least 17 journalists are in prison, two already sentenced to death by hanging.
The regime is trying to mobilize its shrinking base by claiming that the Islamic Republic is under threat from internal and external foes. It was in that context that the four Iranian-American hostages held in Tehran were forced to make televised "confessions" last month about alleged plots to foment a "velvet revolution."
Over 40 people have been arrested on charges of espionage since April, 20 in the southern city of Shiraz. Khomeinist paranoia reached a new peak last week when the authorities announced, through the Islamic Republic News Agency, the capture of four squirrels in the Western city of Kermanshah and claimed that the furry creatures had been fitted with "espionage devices" by the Americans in Iraq and smuggled into the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Ahmadinejad likes to pretend that he has no worries except "Infidel plots" related to the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. The truth is that, faced with growing popular discontent, the Khomeinist clique is vulnerable and worried, extremely worried. The outside world would do well to carefully monitor and, whenever possible, support the Iranian people's fight against the fascist regime in Tehran.
Iran today is not only about atomic bombs and Iranian-American hostages. It is also about a growing popular movement that may help bring the nation out of the dangerous impasse created by the mullahs.

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

A masked Iranian policeman tightens the noose around the neck of Hossein Kavousifar in central Tehran. Kavousifar and his nephew Majid were hanged from cranes, watched by a large crowd which gathered to witness the first public executions in the capital in five years. The two men were convicted of murdering an Iranian judge.(AFP/Behrouz Mehri)

IRANIAN WORKERS ARE ON THE MARCH
by Amir Taheri
Gulf News
August 1, 2007

The way part of the Western left portrays Iran, one would believe that here we have a progressive regime opposed by small numbers of rich reactionaries beholden to the United States.
Blinded by anti-Americanism, the so-called left in the US and the European Union fails to see the true nature of the current struggle in Iran.
American intellectuals of the left such as Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Noam Chomsky have persuaded themselves that anyone who shouts "Death to America!" is fighting for "repressed humanity" and worthy of support.
For their part, the champagne and caviar socialists of Paris and London, claim that the only Iranians who oppose the mullahs are middle class intellectuals often with dual Iranian-American citizenship and, thus, deserving of being seized and tortured as hostages in Tehran.
The truth, however, is that the Islamic Republic, far from representing the mass of the Iranian poor, is an instrument of domination for a new class of rulers who control the national economy through oil revenues that account for almost 30 per cent of the gross domestic product and some 70 per cent of the national budget.
Over the past quarter of a century, the mullahs and their relatives, plus a few thousand military and security officers have shaped into a nomenclature. They have the best jobs, receive the most favours and enjoy priority in access to goods, services, and opportunities for social climbing.
The pre-revolution middle classes formed over 150 years have all but dissolved into poverty with, a good part finding refuge in exile.
Today, there are an estimated 6.5 million Iranians, almost 10 per cent of the total population of the country, in the Gulf region, Europe, Canada, the US and Latin America.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), more than 150,000 highly educated members of the Iranian middle class flee the country each year, creating "the biggest recorded brain drain in history".
Serious challenge
The most serious challenge to the new ruling class of mullahs and military-cum-security officials comes from segments of society that the left labels "the popular masses". Spearheading the fight are groups of industrial workers who have started to flex their muscles in the past two to three years.
Next week, these workers will confront President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration through a series of one-hour strikes designed as a show of solidarity with imprisoned trade unionists.
According to the Workers' Organisations and Activists Coordinating Council (WOACC) over 600 labour leaders have been arrested or "made to disappear" in a crackdown against independent trade unions that started last April.
A further 4,500 workers have been dismissed, often without pay, on vague charges of "fomenting unrest" in a number of state-owned building projects.
The largest number of arrests were made during the May 1 International Labour Day marches organised by independent trade unions in defiance of the state-sponsored ceremonies.
Next week's protests, however, will focus on two prominent independent trade unionists who symbolise Iran's growing labour movement.
The first is Mahmoud Salehi, leader of the Union of Bakery Workers in Sanandaj, capital of Iranian Kurdistan. Salehi was picked up on April 9 when security men raided his home, beat up his family and carried him to an unknown destination.
The second is Mansour Osanloo, president of the Tehran Bus Workers Union. He was abducted in Tehran on July 10 on a busy Tehran street and ended up in Evin Prison, known as "The Islamic Alcatraz".
Salehi has never been formally charged while rumours about his alleged misdeeds are spread through the state-controlled media.
According to these patently absurd rumours, Salehi is a member of the Kurdish Communist Party (Komalah), is seeking to detach the province from Iran and is, at the same time, working with the US to bring "Jewish-Crusader democracy" to Iran.
The authorities have already disbanded the Iran Labour News Agency (ILNA), an independent service covering the free trade union movement. They have also arrested 32 WOACC militants, including six members of the executive board of the Tehran Bus drivers' syndicate.
Repressive measures
Despite the repressive measures, the labour movement seems to be picking momentum.
A group of WOACC leaders has written to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director General Juan Somavia, calling for an international committee of enquiry to investigate the repression of Iranian workers' movement.
The good news is that Western trade unionists are beginning to pay attention to the struggle of their fellow-workers in Iran. Several European trade unions have already called for Salehi, Osanloo, and other Iranian trade unionists to be released. There is some hope that American labour will also join.
Somewhere along the line, the Western left may also realise that it has been duped by a few anti-American slogans into supporting a regime that is dedicated to destroying whatever progressive ideals it once espoused.
Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

Iranian police officers escort Majid Kavoosifar (C) to his execution by hanging in Tehran August 2, 2007. Iran hanged Majid and Hossein Kavoosifar, the killers of a judge who had jailed several reformist dissidents, before a crowd of hundreds of people on Thursday. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN)

Iranian policemen prepare Majid Kavousifar (C) for his execution by hanging in Tehran August 2, 2007. Iran hanged Majid and Hossein, the killers of a judge who had jailed several reformist dissidents, before a crowd of hundreds of people on Thursday. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN)

Majid Kavousifar (L) waves to the crowd before his execution by hanging in Tehran August 2, 2007. Iran hanged Majid and Hossein Kavousifar, the killers of a judge who had jailed several reformist dissidents, before a crowd of hundreds of people on Thursday. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN)

REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN)

A SPECTER IS HAUNTING IRAN
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
August 1, 2007

Penn: Sides with Iran's oppressors. Penn: Sides with Iran's oppressors. August 1, 2007 -- THE way part of the West ern left portrays Iran, you'd think that it's a pro gressive regime opposed by a few rich reactionaries beholden to the United States.
American leftists like Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Noam Chomsky have persuaded themselves that anyone who shouts "Death to America!" is fighting for "repressed humanity." The champagne-and-caviar socialists of Paris and London, meanwhile, claim that the only Iranians who oppose the mullahs are middle-class intellectuals who often have dual Iranian-U.S. citizenship - and, thus, deserve to be tortured in Tehran as hostages.
In truth, however, the Islamic Republic, far from representing the poor masses of Iran, is an instrument of domination for a new class of rulers who control the national economy through oil revenues.
Over the last quarter-century, the mullahs and their relatives, plus and a few thousand military and security officers, have morphed into a nomenclatura. They have the best jobs, receive the most favors and enjoy priority access to goods, services and opportunities for social advancement.
The pre-revolution middle classes, formed over 150 years, have all but dissolved into poverty, with a good part finding refuge in exile. An estimated 6.5 million Iranians, almost 10 percent of the country's population, have emigrated. The International Monetary Fund reports that more than 150,000 educated Iranians flee the country each year, "the biggest brain drain in history."
In fact, the most serious challenge to the new ruling class comes from what the left labels "the popular masses." Spearheading the fight are groups of urban workers who have started to flex their muscles in the last two to three years.
Starting next Thursday, these workers will confront President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration through a series of one-hour strikes to show solidarity with imprisoned trade unionists.
The regime began a crackdown on independent trade unions last April. The Workers' Organizations and Activists Coordinating Council (WOACC) notes that more than 600 labor leaders have been arrested or "made to disappear." Another 4,500 workers have been dismissed, often without pay, on vague charges of "fomenting unrest" at various state-owned projects. The largest number of arrests came at the May 1 International Labor Day marches organized by the WOACC, representing independent trade unionists, in defiance of state-sponsored ceremonies.
Next week's protests, however, will focus on two imprisoned independent union men:
* Mahmoud Salehi, leader of the Union of Bakery Workers in Sanandaj, the capital of Iranian Kurdistan, was arrested April 9. Security men raided his home, beat up his family and carried him to an unknown destination.
* Mansour Osanloo, president of the Tehran Bus Workers' Union, was abducted July 10 on a Tehran street and thrown into Evin Prison, "The Islamic Alcatraz."
Salehi's wife, Najibeh, says the union leader is seriously ill; rumors claim that one of his kidneys collapsed after weeks of torture designed to force him to offer televised "confessions."
Salehi has not been formally charged; meanwhile, the state-controlled media spread false rumors - that he is a member of the Kurdish Communist Party, wants to detach the province from Iran and is working with Washington to bring "Jewish-Crusader democracy" to Iran.
Salehi, 45, is a charismatic figure and magnetic orator. He started as an apprentice baker at aged 14, and in 2004 rose to become a founder of the city's independent bakery workers' union. A year later, he organized a "Day Without Bread" in support of hundreds of Kurdish intellectuals, teachers and workers imprisoned, often without charge.
Later, Salehi achieved national stature by emerging as a key figure in creating WOACC, Iran's first independent nationwide organization of workers, with branches in 18 of Iran's 30 provinces.
The day Osanlou was arrested, he had presided over a meeting of his executive committee that rejected new government rules. These ordered bus drivers and conductors not to admit passengers who violate the Islamic Dress Code, passed into law last May, and to restrict women passengers to buses' back seats.
Osanloo's lawyer, Parviz Khorshid, says that he hasn't been allowed to visit his client and that his demand for a medical examination of the prisoner was rejected.
The authorities have already disbanded the Iran Labor News Agency, an independent service covering the free union movement. They have also arrested 32 WOACC militants.
Despite the repression, the movement seems to be picking up momentum. A strike has shut down the textile factories Sanandaj, Salehi's hometown. In Asaluyeh, on the Persian Gulf, described by many as "the largest labor camp in the world," the estimated 150,000 workers at a dozen oil and gas projects are expected to walk out.
Dozens of state-owned factories have come to a standstill as a result of strikes in Arak, Kermanshah, Alborz, Qazvin, Bushehr, Sari and several other cities.
The good news is that Western trade unionists are beginning to pay attention to the struggle of their fellow workers. Several European unions have called for Salehi, Osanloo and other Iranian trade unionists to be released. There is some hope that American labor will follow.
Somewhere along the line, the Western left may realize that it has been duped by a few anti-American slogans into supporting a regime that is dedicated to destroying whatever progressive ideals it once espoused.

Haleh Esfandiari in an undated handout photo. Iran's state television on Monday broadcast images of two detained Iranian-American academics, including Esfandiari, apparently confessing to accusations of acting against the Islamic state's national security and spying. REUTERS/Woodrow Wilson Center/Handout

IRAN: THE CONSPIRACY THAT WASN'T
. . . THOUGH IT DOES SEEM A FINE IDEA
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
July 20, 2007

Esfandiari: Hardly a "foreign plotter." Esfandiari

July 20, 2007 -- EVER since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran has been obsessed with conspiracy theories, especially "foreign plots" to topple it. This paranoia was demonstrated again Wednesday with the televised confessions of two U.S. citizens of Iranian origin arrested in Tehran and accused of working for the "Great Satan."
To most Iranians who watched the sordid show, the two "enemies of Islam" seemed unlikely heroes of an international conspiracy. Haleh Esfandiari-Bakhash, 67, is a petite grandmother who works for a Washington think tank; Kian Tajbakhsh, a 40-something researcher working for a foundation created by billionaire George Soros.
According to Tehran state-controlled media, the two went to Iran as part of a U.S. plot to promote a "velvet revolution." Yet their TV confessions were so obviously forced that even the Public Prosecutor's Office in Tehran has distanced itself from them. A spokesman for the office told reporters: "The confessions must be regarded as a television production. . . . What the accused said on TV is not related to actual charges against them."
What is really going on?
Frequent visitors to Iran, the two had never been molested before. Both belong to groups opposed to regime change in Iran and critical of the Bush policy of challenging the Islamic Republic.
Esfandiari works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - whose director, ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton, has championed normalization with the Islamic Republic for decades. He was a key member of the Iraq Study Group, which urged the opening of a dialogue with Tehran practically on terms demanded by the mullahs.
And Hamilton built his position partly on Esfandiari's advice. The Woodrow Wilson Center has organized numerous workshops on Iran, but seldom invited regime opponents. Its guiding principle was that the Islamic Republic is what most Iranians want, and that America should help the "moderate faction" in Tehran.
Esfandiari's writings on Iran over three decades could be described as sympathetic to the Islamic revolution, although critical of some regime policies, especially on women's issues.
Soros, meanwhile, is an open opponent of Bush's policy on Iran. He has met a number of "moderate Khomeinists," indicating support for their faction. In 2004, he poured $15 million into support for Sen. John Kerry's presidential hopes. Soros would be the last person to want to overthrow the mullahs and hand Bush his biggest victory.
Both Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh have always denounced the anti-mullah opposition as nostalgia-stricken monarchists, residual leftists or worse. Both always refused to grant interviews to Iranian-opposition TV and radio shows beamed from Los Angeles, or to even the U.S.-funded Voice of America. Whatever the two were up to, they did not go to Iran to help liberate it from the Khomeinists.
Some have tried to pin the arrests on feuds within the regime. In this analysis, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his radical faction feared that the two Americans were looking to help the "moderate faction" (led by ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani) make a comeback in next year's general election.
Yet Esfandiari hasn't lived in Iran for more than 32 years; she hardly knows enough people to create a "network" for any conspiracy. Similarly, Tajbakhsh hasn't lived in Iran since his teens.
In fact, the two were easy prey for a predatory regime that, unsure of the popular mood, increasingly fears its own shadow. Their illegal arrest and inhuman treatment is part of a broader campaign by the radical revolutionary faction to terrorize its enemies inside Iran and confuse adversaries abroad.
* In recent weeks, some 150,000 women and young men have been arrested, fined, beaten up or kept in prison for days on charges of contravening the Islamic Dress Code enacted last May.
* A massive purge of the universities is under way, with thousands of students, teachers and faculty deans shown the door for allegedly "un-Islamic" sentiments. Over 400 students and teachers are reportedly held in various parts of the country without being charged.
* A state of emergency has been declared in parts of four western provinces, where ethnic minorities live, and in parts of the southeast bordering Pakistan.
* At least 30 trade unionists have been arrested and one of Iran's best-known labor leaders, Mansour Osanloo, abducted by agents of the regime. A news agency covering labor in Iran has been shut down and its assets seized.
* Dozens of newspapers and magazines have been shut and the black list of authors and books has been extended to include hundreds more names and titles.
* Several prominent figures of the rival faction, including a brother of ex-President Muhammad Khatami, face show trials on charges resembling those against Tajbakhsh and Esfandiari.
* Ahmadinejad's faction has also launched a campaign of blackmail against Rafsanjani and his entourage, including Khatami, by threatening to publish details of their alleged corruption and misuse of public funds between 1989 and 2005.
When Tajbakhsh and Esfandiari traveled to Iran a few months ago, they may have believed it would be just another visit to their former homeland. They didn't appreciate the fact that Ahmadinejad means what he says: His "second revolution" is preparing for war against the Iranian middle classes at home and the Western democracies abroad.
The episode underscores two facts: First, no dialogue is possible with a regime that demands nothing short of total submission at home and abroad. Second, the regime feels weak enough to fear a "velvet revolution" led by women, workers, students and, ultimately, even the more moderate clergy. Hmm . . . maybe someone will try it, even though the two captive Americans did not.

IRAN ABDUCTS UNION MAN
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
July 12, 2007
July 12, 2007 -- ONE of Iran's most popular civil-society leaders was ab ducted in Tehran on Tues day after chairing a meeting of trade unionists.
Mansour Osanloo, the 48-year-old president of the Union of Bus Drivers (SKSV), had just stepped off a bus when a group of bearded men emerged from a gray Peugeot and attacked him with clubs and knuckle-dusters.
Shouting, "You are an enemy of Islam," the attackers pushed him into the car and drove away. Witnesses said Osanloo was severely beaten, and his attackers continued to beat him even after they had forced him into their car.
Passengers on the bus, which had halted, tried to restrain the attackers but were held back at gunpoint.
Osanloo's friends and relatives say that secret-service agents had followed him round the clock since his return from Europe last month. On that visit, he addressed a number of international labor meetings in London, Brussels and Geneva.
In 2004, Osanloo helped create one of the first independent trade unions in Iran since the mullahs' 1979 seizure of power. He has led two successful transit-worker strikes, forcing the state-owned bus company to offer concessions.
Other workers have followed his example, creating over 400 independent trade unions with an estimated 1.5 million members. Earlier this year, the independent unions set up the Workers' Organizations and Activists Coordinating Council (WOACC) to foster unity of action. On May 1 (International Labor Day) the WOACC held the first independent workers' marches in Tehran and 11 other major cities since 1979.
Osanloo, regarded by some as "Iran's Lech Walesa," has been abducted by paramilitaries working for the government before. He's also been imprisoned twice, including a spell at Evin, the dreaded "Islamic Alcatraz."
Osanloo has been careful not to give Iran's emerging labor movement a political coloring, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regards the union leader as a threat, for the authorities fear the growth of an independent labor movement.
Workers in independent unions are still no more than 5 percent of wage earners in Iran. Most workers are either not unionized or drafted as members of unions controlled via so-called "Islamic committees."
Osanloo especially angered the authorities with his success in mobilizing international support for the Iranian labor movement. They released him from prison earlier this, and let him go to Europe for the annual conference of the International Transport Workers Federation. His friends believe the authorities had hoped that he would stay in Europe, joining other former dissidents in exile. But Osanloo had no such intention.
In London, he made a passionate appeal to workers throughout the world to support their Iranian counterparts in their quest for decent wages, human working conditions and freedom of association. In Brussels, he met leaders of the General Council of the International Trades Union Conference and managed to "open their eyes to the realities workers' conditions in the Islamic Republic," says one of his friends in Tehran.
For a quarter-century, appeals to Western labor leaders to support their Iranian working-class brethren had fallen on deaf ears, because the Tehran regime was seen as a revolutionary set-up backed by the "toiling masses." Osanloo altered that perception, persuading at least some Western unionists that suspicion or even hatred of America shouldn't translate into support for the Iranian regime in its repression of workers.
Osanloo also convinced the leaders of the International Labor Organization (of which Iran is full member) to oppose Ahmadinejad's new draft Labor Code. This would abolish virtually every right won by Iranian workers over decades of struggle, and impose rules that WOACC calls "conditions for slave labor, not employment in a free society."
Is Osanloo's abduction related to the meeting he had just chaired? The meeting certainly did two things that the authorities do not like: It condemned the government's announcement that it had "dismissed" and taken into custody six SKSV leaders. And it refused a government demand that bus drivers assume responsibility for imposing stricter "hijab" rules by keeping women passengers limited to the two back seats and forcing women "not dressed according Islamic codes" off any bus.
Osanloo told the meeting that it was not up to the government to decide who should lead the union, and called for the immediate release of his colleagues. He also recalled that a bus driver's task was to drive his passengers to their destinations safely, not to select them according to what they wear.
Mansour Osanloo is a voice for wisdom, moderation and peaceful change in a society ridden by potentially explosive contradictions. To silence that voice would be a tragic loss for Iran's future.

UNION HERO
LABOR BATTLES IN IRAN
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
June 27, 2007

June 27, 2007 -- SOME Western commentators have called him "the Iranian Lech Walesa," after the Polish trade unionist who helped bring down the communist empire. The mullahs ruling Iran, however, regard him as "a dangerous enemy of Islam."
The man himself - Mansoor Osanloo, a 48-year-old leader of one of the many illegal trade unions that have sprung up in Iran in the last few years - shies way from both sobriquets.
"We do not have a political agenda," he says. "All we are asking for is for Iranian workers to be treated as free human beings, not as slaves."
Osanloo first made his name in 2004 when, along with 14 fellow workers, he created the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran United Bus Company. Within weeks, most employees of the company - which is owned by the Tehran municipality and controlled by the Interior Ministry - had joined the new union. That left the so-called Islamic Workers' Council, a re- gime-sponsored organ imposed in many industries as an ersatz union, exposed and isolated.
Workers across the country soon emulated the Tehran example. On May Day, more than 400 free trade unions, boasting a membership of millions, raised their banners in the capital.
Osanloo and his colleagues were among the founders of the Workers' Organizations and Activists Coordination Council, which is emerging as the principal voice of wage earners - especially in the pubic sector, which accounts for more than 70 percent of Iran's economy.
The emergence of independent unions has meant the demise of "Islamic councils" in many workplaces and the virtual death of the so-called Workers' House set up by the mullahs to control labor. The free unions have chased away hundreds of mullahs who headed the Islamic councils, often enjoying high salaries and perks.
Osanloo was first jailed in 2005, after his union launched an original form of labor action: Tehran bus workers announced free rides for all comers. When the authorities sent in armed security men, the workers went on strike - bringing Tehran, a city of 12 million inhabitants, to a virtual halt.
The authorities then tried terror and intimidation. A group of 300 members of the Iranian branch of Hezbollah, armed with clubs and knives, attacked Osanloo and his colleagues and beat up their families, including small children. Osanloo suffered knife wounds, including a deep cut in his tongue, inflicted by a Hezbollah member who had vowed to "silence the enemy of Islam."
A partial return to work was soon interrupted when bus drivers refused to implement a new rule under which women passengers were confined to back seats on the buses - which, in practice, meant that more than 80 percent of the seats in Tehran's double-decker buses were reserved for men.
Anxious to prevent a prolonged strike, the authorities released Osanloo eight months later, only to rearrest him, again without charge.
This February, he was presented at a one-day trial held in camera. "They had a file against me running into 1,300 dense pages," Osanloo says. "I wonder how the judge could go through all that in a single day."
Released from prison in March on a bail of $325,000, (a huge fortune in the Islamic Republic), Osanloo was allowed to travel to London and Brussels earlier this month to address the annual conferences of he International Transport Workers Federation and the International Trade Unions Conference.
Having spent almost a year in Tehran's dreaded Evin Prison - known as the "Islamic Alcatraz" - on two occasions, Osanloo risks being rearrested and jailed at any moment. But if the Tehran authorities hoped that allowing him to visit abroad might tempt him to stay in exile, they'll be disappointed. He has no intention of throwing in the towel.
"We are at the start of a long struggle," he told me in Brussels. "We are fighting for what is a basic human right: the right of workers to organize themselves in free and independent trade unions and negotiate conditions under which they accept employment."
The current administration in the Islamic Republic considers such talk as "dangerous for the faith and the state." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has unveiled a new draft labor code under which Iranian workers would lose almost all the rights they had secured over decades of struggle and as a result of Iran's membership of the International Labor Organization.
The philosophy behind Ahmadinejad's position is simple: The division of people into employees and employers is a "Jewish-Crusader" invention. In Islam, employers and employees are part of the umma (the community of faithful), bound by divine laws that can't be questioned, let alone amended.
If enacted into law, the proposed code would outlaw the formation of unions; abolish the minimum wage and allow employers to fire any worker they wished instantly and without compensation.
The avalanche loosened by the Tehran transport workers more than two years ago has continued with hundreds of strikes, sit-ins and other industrial actions throughout Iran. An estimated 100,000 workers are now on strike in a range of industries, from textile factories in the Caspian region to sugar plantations in the southwest province of Khuzestan.
"Iranian workers are discovering their power," Osanloo says. "The authorities would be wise to acknowledge that power and address the legitimate grievances of workers. At present, however, there is no sign that this is the case."

IRAN: GENERALS WHO FEAR A FIGHT
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
June 12, 2007

June 12, 2007 -- IN Persian mythology, no warrior worth his salt would enter battle before indulging in a good dose of rajaz. Put simply, rajaz translates as boasting.
The term, however, encompasses other meanings. The hero steps into the battlefield, draws his sword, swirls several times and then stops to address the adversary who has likewise taken up position. He might recite an ode recalling the martial deeds of his ancestors. Or he might declaim a satirical sonnet mocking the enemy.
In the modern military lexicon, rajaz functions as psychological warfare.
Against that background, recent statements by several key figures in the Khomeinist leadership can be seen as rajaz. These figures appear to have bought into President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's theory that a limited war against the United States is inevitable and that, once fought, will result in the Americans running away, leaving Tehran to set the agenda for the Middle East and even beyond.
What's odd, however, is that the Islamic Republic's top brass apparently don't share Ahmadinejad's belief that a duel with the United States would be short and sweet, let alone that it would end with Tehran's victory.
Take Gen. Yayha Safavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has devoted his recent statements to reminding everyone that the Islamic Republic's military machine isn't prepared for a major war with the United States and its regional allies. To be sure, Safavi repeats some of the childish slogans about "humbling the Great Satan" and turning the Middle East into "the graveyard of global arrogance." If one reads between the lines, however, his message is clear: Provoking a major war could be suicidal for the Islamic Republic.
Defense Minister Muhammad Pour-Najjar, another senior Revolutionary Guard officer, echoes that message. In Tehran last week, he claimed that, if attacked, the Islamic Republic could launch "a storm of missiles" against U.S. interests in the region. But he didn't promise "the clear victory" (fatah al-mobin) that Ahmadinejad has hinted at on occasions. By rajaz standards, Pour-Najjar's statement sounded more like a cryptic call for avoiding war.
As if on cue, a similar message has come from Admiral Ali Shamkhani, the former defense minister and current chairman of the High Council of Strategic Defense. Shamkhani, also a Guard commander, has gone out of his way to deny reports that the Islamic Republic intended to launch missiles against Oman, Bahrain and Qatar, Persian Gulf states that host U.S. military bases. Shamkhani's intervention is significant because it appears to be aimed at countering one of Ahmadinejad's principal threats against Iran's neighbors.
The only senior Revolutionary Guard commander who echoes Ahmadinejad's rajaz is Brig.-Gen. Muhammad-Baqer Zulqadr, the deputy Interior minister for security and the bete noire of liberals in Tehran. In a speech over the weekend, Zulqadr boasted about the Islamic Republic's arsenal of missiles and claimed that the new generation of Shahab-III missiles has a range of up to 1,200 miles. Even Zulqadr, however - regarded as the most radical Guard commander - dropped hints that it wouldn't be in the Islamic Republic's interest to provoke an unequal war.
Why should Revolutionary Guard commanders anxiously distance themselves from Ahmadinejad? After all, the radical president, himself a former IRGC member, was their handpicked candidate in the presidential election of 2005.
Ahmadinejad's political rivals, including Hashemi Rafsanjani, the mullah whom he defeated, claim that the Revolutionary Guard filled the ballot boxes to ensure its candidate's victory. Rafsanjani also claims that the Guard engineered Ahmadinejad's victory to strengthen its hold on Iran's state-dominated economy. Guard commanders now account for a good part of Iran's entrepreneurial elite. Some analysts believe that the IRGC has replaced the Shiite clergy as the wealthiest stratum of Iranian society.
Muhammad Khatami, the mullah who preceded Ahmadinejad as president, had prepared a massive privatization program aimed at transferring state-owned assets worth $18 billion to private companies controlled by mullahs and their partners in the bazaars. The idea was to limit the IRGC's economic clout and restore the balance of economic power in favor of the clergy and the traditional merchant classes.
Ahmadinejad has redesigned the privatization scheme in order to enable the Revolutionary Guard to secure a major share. The IRGC feels grateful for the favor - but not to the point of endorsing his strategy of provoking war with the United States.
The Guard's commanders prefer a strategy of low-intensity operations and proxy wars against the United States and its regional allies, notably Israel. Shamkhani has described the strategy as one of "bleeding the enemy slowly over a long period."
Low-intensity operations and proxy wars sap the morale of the enemy without giving it a pretext for using its superior military might against the Islamic Republic. There's no guarantee that any full-scale war wouldn't transmute into regime change.
The Guard has a more specific cause for concern. It knows that, in case of a major war, it would be the principal target of U.S. attacks. The Americans could leave the Iranian regular army intact while dismantling the Guard's network of bases and strategic assets. The Guard's destruction could leave the "mullahrchy" defenseless and vulnerable to a power grab by the regular army in alliance with the political opponents of Khomeinism.
Iran might become then another Iraq, as far as the United States is concerned. But Ahmadinejad and his IRGC backers could end up where Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist cohorts did.
We're faced with a paradox. The Revolutionary Guard is behind almost all of the mischief that the Islamic Republic has accomplished in the region in the past 25 years. Right now, however, it's the key opponent of full-scale war with America. Its commanders, smoothed by years of power, are not as idealistic - which is to say, as suicidal - as Ahmadinejad.
The question is whether the Revolutionary Guard could act in time, perhaps by forcing Ahmadinejad's ouster, to prevent what it regards as the worst-case scenario for the regime.

TEHRAN'S TARGETS
LEBANON FIGHTING A 'MESSAGE' FROM IRAN
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
May 23, 2007
May 23, 2007 -- KUNDUZ, northern Afghanistan: A series of suicide attacks against civilians and NATO forces break the calm the city has enjoyed since 2002.
Tripoli, northern Lebanon: A little-known terrorist group called Fatah al-Islam (Victory of Islam) attacks the Lebanese army from a Palestinian refugee camp, breaking the peace that the city has enjoyed since 1990.
Mandali, eastern Iraq: Terrorists dressed in military uniforms go on a rampage, killing dozens of civilians, blowing up a few buildings and ending the peace that the city had enjoyed since May 2003.
Jask Peninsula, the Gulf of Oman: Small, unidentified boats harass a unit of Task Force 150, the 21-nation flotilla charged with a U.N. mission of stopping arms-smuggling into the Gulf region.
Gaza: Unknown gunmen break a cease-fire accord worked out by Saudi Arabia between Hamas and Fatah, triggering what looks like a burgeoning Palestinian civil war. At the same time, Islamic Jihad, which was not a party to the Mecca accord, resumes rocket attacks against Israel.
What's interesting about all these incidents is that none involved the usual suspects.
Start with Kunduz, the only Pushtun-majority city in northern Afghanistan. The attacks it has seen in recent days did not come from the Taliban, which has never had a real base of support there. The culprit was Hizb Islami, a Pushtun radical group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. And where does Hekmatyar operate from? He has been protected, armed and financed by Tehran since 1992.
What about Mandali? This Shiite-majority city has enjoyed the reputation of being the calmest place in Iraq since liberation. It's virtually impossible for al Qaeda or any other Sunni terror outfit to enter it without being spotted immediately. So how did a terror unit manage to come, kill and flee? Well, Mandali is close to the border with Iran, and it was in that direction that the terrorists escaped after their murderous operation.
As for Tripoli, the stronghold of Lebanon's Sunni Muslim community, it's unlikely that the terror group could find a genuine base within the local population. Fatah al-Islam, a recent actor on the Leb- anese scene, consists almost exclusively of non-Lebanese Arab fighters.
So how did these men get into Lebanon? Well, Lebanon has two neighbors: Israel and Syria. It's not hard to imagine how these guys got to Tripoli. And is it possible that someone in Damascus would want to push Lebanon toward a new civil war without coordinating with Syria's principal ally, the Islamic Republic in Tehran?
What about the game of cat-and-mouse played by small, armed boats against the patrol boats of the U.S.-led multinational force in the Gulf of Oman?
Well, only two navies operate in that in that part of the waterway close to the Strait of Hormuz - those of of the United States and of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that the intimidating boats operate from the Iranian coast and seek shelter there after each provocative maneuver?
The fighting in Gaza is also shrouded by mystery. It's clear that the Hamas government led by Ismail Haniyah didn't want it. But it's equally clear that Hamas' "Supreme Guide" Khalid Mishaal, who lives in Damascus and listens to Tehran, believes that a big showdown is coming between the U.S.-led "Infidel" forces and the Iranian-led "forces of Islamic revolution," and that his movement must put itself on the right side. As for Islamic Jihad, everyone knows that it was created with Iranian money in the mid-1980s and has always been Tehran's principal Palestinian client.
All this, of course, may sound like circumstantial evidence. But a careful reading of recent statements made by the Khomeinist leadership in Tehran would show that the Islamic Republic and its regional allies, including Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Hizb Islami and a dozen lesser-known radical outfits, have decided to pass on a message. The message has three themes:
* Radical Islam in the region is not controlled solely by al Qaeda and its allied groups and that the Khomeinist movement and its clients remain as potent as ever.
* The U.S.-led efforts to build a regional alliance against Tehran will provoke Khomeinist counter-attacks across the Middle East.
* Tehran regards the forthcoming negotiations with Washington as the diplomatic side of its broader campaign to destroy the Bush Doctrine and drive the United States out of the Middle East.
Strategists in Tehran appear convinced that an American retreat will take place within the next two years at most. They are also determined not to allow the United States to shape a regional alliance capable of protecting a new balance of power.
This will create a vacuum in much of the region - notably Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Tehran cannot allow rival radical groups, especially al Qaeda and the Taliban, to fill that vacuum. It is, therefore, trying to place its allies and clients in strategic positions from which to claim power in Kabul, Baghdad and Beirut, among other places.
Early signs show that a long, hot summer of conflict, perhaps even full-scale war, is ahead of us in the Middle East. The perception that the United States is divided and weak has encouraged the most radical elements throughout the region, including Tehran and Damascus.
With what was left of the so-called realists and pragmatists on the defensive everywhere, the radical agenda is unchallenged. As Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Guide" of the Khomeinist movement, said last week, Tehran can deploy suicide-martyrdom groups, a weapon "many times stronger than the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima."

[Iranians demonstrating against poor working conditions clash with a security official, May 1, 2007.]

IRAN'S ECONOMIC CRISIS
by Amir Taheri
Wall Street Journal
May 9, 2007

For the past five weeks, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Islamic Moral Brigades have been clashing with groups of young Iranians on the streets of Tehran and other major cities over the government's crackdown on "immodest dress." The crackdown is seen by many Iranians as another step toward an even more suffocating social atmosphere in the crisis-stricken country. Both Mr. Ahmadinejad and his mentor, the "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claim that the way young Iranians dress is the most immediate threat to their Islamist dystopia.
Television footage of young men and women engaged in scuffles with Moral Brigades may lead some in the West to assume that the opposition to the Khomeinist regime is mostly urban and middle class, and solely concerned with greater social freedoms. That, however, is only part of the story. While social issues continue to poison life in the Islamic Republic, it is economic issues that spell the most trouble for Mr. Ahmadinejad's struggling presidency.
Last week tens of thousands of angry workers, forming an illegal umbrella organization, flexed their muscles against President Ahmadinejad on International Labor Day in Tehran and a dozen provincial capitals. Marching through the capital's streets, the workers carried a coffin draped in black with the legend "Workers' Rights" inscribed on it. They shouted "No to slave labor! Yes, to freedom and dignity!"
Mr. Ahmadinejad centered his 2005 presidential campaign on a promise to "bring the country's oil money to every family's dinner table." After the election his position was boosted by a dramatic rise in oil prices, providing him with more than $100 million a day in state revenues. And, yet, all official statistics show that, with inflation running around 18% and unemployment jumping to more than 30%, the average Iranian is worse off than three years ago. Under the previous administration of President Mohammad Khatami, the Islamic Republic scored average annual economic growth rates of around 4%. In a nation that needs to create a million new jobs to cope with its exploding demography, that kind of growth was certainly not enough to point to any Eldorado anytime soon. But it was enough to prevent the economy from sinking. Under President Ahmadinejad, however, the growth rate has dropped to around 3% -- and that despite rising oil revenues.
Because it controls the oil revenue, which comes in U.S. dollars, the Islamic state has a vested interest in a weak national currency. (It could get more rials for the same amount of dollars in the domestic market.) Mr. Ahmadinejad has tried to exploit that opportunity by printing an unprecedented quantity of rials. Economists in Tehran speak of "the torrent of worthless rials" that Mr. Ahmadinejad has used to finance his extravagant promises of poverty eradication. The result has been massive flights of capital, mostly into banks in Dubai, Malaysia and Austria. Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, the Islamic Chief Justice, claims that as much as $300 billion may have left the country since President Ahmadinejad was sworn in.
According to Abbas Abdi, a Tehran researcher and loyal critic of the regime, Iran is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the late 1970s. The effects of this are seen in the slowdown in real-estate prices -- the first since 1997, even in Tehran's prime districts. Printing money and spending on a no-tomorrow basis are not the only reasons for the crisis. President Ahmadinejad's entire economic philosophy seems to be designed to do more harm than good.
The president's favorite catchword is "khodkafa'i" or "self sufficiency." To the horror of most Iranians, especially the millions connected with the bazaars, who regard trade as the noblest of pursuits, Mr. Ahmadinejad insists that the only way Iran can preserve its "Islamic purity" is to reduce dependence on foreign commerce.
"Whatever we can produce we should do ourselves," the president likes to say. "Even if what we produce is not as good, and more costly." His rationale goes something like this: The global economic system is a Jewish-Crusader conspiracy to keep Muslim nations in a position of weakness and dependency. Thus, Muslims would do better by relying on their own resources even if that means lower living standards.
One of President Ahmadinejad's first moves was to freeze a six-year-old policy designed to help the Islamic Republic become a member of the World Trade Organization; in his book the WTO is just another "Jewish-Crusader" invention to cement the inferior position of Muslim economies. It was with reference to "khodkafa'i" that Mr. Ahmadinejad decided to harden the regime's position on the nuclear issue, even if that meant United Nations sanctions and war with the U.S. The Iranian president claims that the seven countries currently capable of producing nuclear fuel plan to set up a global cartel and control the world market for enriched uranium, once mankind, having exhausted fossil fuels, is forced to depend on nuclear energy.
Convinced that Islam is destined for a "clash of civilizations" against the "Infidel" -- led by the U.S., of course -- President Ahmadinejad is determined to preserve what he regards as the Islamic Republic's "independence." One of his favorite themes is the claim that, forced to choose between freedom and independence, good Muslims would prefer the latter.
Khodkafa'i has had catastrophic results on many sectors of the Iranian industry. Unable to reduce, let alone stop, imports of mass consumer goods (including almost half of the nation's food) controlled by powerful mullahs and Revolutionary Guard commanders, President Ahmadinejad has tightened import rules for a range of raw materials and spare parts needed by factories across the nation. The policy has already all but killed the once-buoyant textile industry, destroying tens of thousands of jobs. It has also affected hundreds of small and medium-size businesses that, in some cases, have been unable to pay their employees for months.
Mr. Ahmadinejad has also used khodkafa'i as an excuse to freeze a number of business deals aimed at preventing the collapse of Iran's aging and semi-derelict oil and gas fields. He has also vetoed foreign participation in building oil refineries, forcing the Islamic Republic to import more than 40% of the refined petroleum products consumed in Iran. The prospect of a prolonged duel with the U.N., and possible military clash with the U.S., has also hurt the Iranian economy in the past six months.
One result of the president's weird policy is the series of strikes that have continued in Tehran and at least 20 other major cities since last autumn. Last year, one major strike by transport workers in Tehran brought the city of 15 million to a standstill for several days. Right now tens of thousands of workers in industries as diverse as gas refining, paper and newsprint, automobile, and copper mining are on strike.
President Ahmadinejad, however, is determined to impose what looks like a North Korean model on the Iranian economy. He has already dissolved the Syndicate of Iranian Employers (SKI) as a capitalist cabal, and plans to replace it with a government-appointed body. He is also pushing a new Labor Code through the Islamic Majlis (parliament) to replace the existing one written with the help of the International Labor Organization in the 1960s and amended in 1991.
The proposed text abolishes most of the rights won by workers throughout the world as a result of decades of social struggle and political reform. President Ahmadinejad believes that Western-style trade unions and employers' associations have no place in a proper Islamic society where the state, representing the will of Allah, can keep the "community of the faithful" free of class struggle, a typical affliction of "Infidel" societies.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's next coup will likely be a major privatization scheme affecting more than 40 public corporations across the country. He has promised to help the employees buy up to 10% of the shares. The rest will go to rich mullahs and Revolutionary Guard officers and their business associates, using low interest loans from state-owned banks. By the time the scheme is ready, however, the Islamic Republic may be facing too deep an economic crisis for anyone -- even greedy mullahs and corrupt Revolutionary Guardsmen -- to want to invest even a borrowed rial there.

IRAN'S CRACKDOWN
HOSTAGE CRISIS A DISTRACTION?
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
April 5, 2007
April 5, 2007 -- WAS the crisis over the cap ture of the British host ages part of a smoke screen for a crackdown on dissidents in Iran?
The question is posed in Tehran as the establishment debates the future of the regime's foreign and domestic policies.
The crackdown is beginning to gather pace. Several publications critical of government have been shut down, and numerous officials regarded as "not revolutionary enough" elbowed out, especially in the provinces. And now the regime seems to be setting the stage for show trials that recall the worst days of Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
Last month, a member of the Majlis, the regime's ersatz parliament, was sent to prison for six years on trumped-up charges. The real "crime" of Salaheddin Ala'i: He had criticized the killing of dissidents in Iran's Kurdistan province.
Next week, it will be the turn of former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, who'll stand trial on charges of undermining the security of the Khomeinist state.
Tajzadeh is one of the establishment's most interesting figures. A man with impeccable revolutionary credentials, he has always insisted that the regime cannot ensure its future by silencing or murdering critics.
The next on the block is expected to be Muhammad Reza Khatami - a brother of former President Muhammad Khatami - who also has an impressive revolutionary resume.
In 1979, he was one of the two dozen or so "students" who raided the United States' Embassy in Tehran and seized its diplomats hostage. Later, he built a career in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and solidified his revolutionary credentials by marrying a granddaughter of Ruhallah Khomeini, the ayatollah who created the Islamic Republic. During his brother's presidency, Muhammad Reza acted as deputy speaker of the Majlis.
Yet, he too, is targeted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical administration - charged with "activities that undermine the Islamic system."
Ahmadinejad believes that people like these three represent dangers for the system - if only because they insist that the authorities should obey the laws set by their own regime. In his view, a revolutionary regime, because it stands outside the normal framework of history, simply cannot be bound by any law.
According to dissident sources in Tehran, the regime's security apparatus is preparing show trials for scores of others. The chief targets: thousands of middle-class elements who joined the Khomeinist revolution because of a misunderstanding. Ahmadinejad calls them "the half-pregnant ones" - people who dream of being revolutionaries but also crave for a comfortable, Western-style bourgeois life.
Ahmadinejad's supporters speak of a "third revolution" - which, in practice, would amount to a purge of dissidents within the establishment.
Many actual or would-be dissidents have already left Iran for what they hope will be temporary exile in Europe or America. They include a dozen former Cabinet ministers and hundreds of lesser functionaries and apologists. If the looming crackdown gathers pace, thousands more may join them.
To prepare the ground for his "third revolution," Ahmadinejad has worked on three schemes.
* First, he has radicalized political discourse.
Under his two predecessors, Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, the regime had gradually changed its vocabulary by abandoning the revolutionary terminology and borrowing terms of ordinary politics.
Those two mullah-presidents spoke of economic development, civil society and a dialogue of civilizations. They also allowed some space for non-revolutionary (though not overtly counter-revolutionary) expression in such fields as art, cinema and literature.
Yes, both also banned hundreds of newspapers and magazines, and imprisoned scores of critics. They also organized the murder of numerous real or imagined opponents inside and outside Iran. But they targeted the regime's own children.
They divided Iranians into two categories: khodi (our own) and biganeh (outsider).
Rafsanjani and Khatami allowed khodi some latitude to criticize the regime - and also used these critics as safety valves to reduce tension in society.
The biganeh, however, were allowed no space for expression. Their writings were blacklisted by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, and their names banned from the media or used only in vilification campaigns. When perceived as too much of a threat, they were murdered, their corpses thrown in the streets - as was the case under President Khatami.
The radicalization of discourse under Ahmadinejad makes it hard for the "half-pregnant" to speak with forked tongues.
Khatami was able to tour the world, speaking of a dialogue of civilizations while allowing no dialogue inside Iran. Ahmadinejad recognizes the fact that a revolution is, primarily, a monologue - or even a soliloquy, addressed to itself.
* Second, Ahmadinejad aims to link any criticism of the system with foreign powers.
In the decisions to close newspapers or put "khodi" figures on trial, the authorities drop hints about illicit relations with "foreign enemies of Islam." This amounts to a return to classical revolutionary lore in which anyone who criticizes the regime must be an agent of a foreign enemy.
* Ahmadinejad's third and perhaps most important scheme is to revive the regime's pretension of sacredness. He claims to receive periodic instructions from the Hidden Imam - a Mahdi-figure who, according to Shiite lore, went into hiding in 940 A.D. and will someday return to preside over the end of the world. He has thus restored the concept of the Hidden Imam to a central position within the Khomeinist doctrine.
The concept was pure fiction from the start, and most leaders of the Islamic Republic realized that retaining it posed insurmountable theo-political problems. This is why the Hidden Imam was given a back seat under Rafsanjani and Khatami, although both are Shiite clerics.
By restoring the Hidden Imam, Ahmadinejad makes it impossible for anyone to claim that Shiism, let alone Islam, admits of a range of interpretations. In this version of the Khomeinist doctrine, Islam is equated with Shiism, Shiism with the Hidden Imam - and the Hidden Imam with the Khomeinist regime.
THE "half pregnant" had hoped that "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi might, would, at some point, restrain Ahmadinejad. Earlier this month, however, Khamenehi, in his Iranian New Year message, paid glowing tribute to Ahmadinejad, and endorsed his strategy.
The "half-pregnant" are now forced to choose between becoming full-blown revolutionaries - or joining the counter-revolution.

IRAN: 'BIG FISH' GONE MISSING
ARE TEHRAN'S FOES GETTING TOUGH?
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
March 9, 2007
March 9, 2007 -- 'A VERY big fish" - so Tehran sources de scribe former Deputy Defense Minister Ali-Reza Askari (sometimes called "Asghari" in the West), who disappeared in Istanbul on Sunday.
Askari's disappearance fits an emerging pattern. Since December, the United States and its allies appear to have moved onto the offensive against the Islamic Republic's networks of influence in the Middle East:
* Jordan has seized 17 Iranian agents, accused of trying to smuggle arms to Hamas, and deported them quietly after routine debriefing.
* A number of Islamic Republic agents have been identified and deported in Pakistan and Tunisia.
* At least six other Iranian agents have been picked up in Gaza, where they were helping Hamas set up armament factories.
* In the past three months, some 30 senior Iranian officials, including at least two generals of Revolutionary Guards, have been captured in Iraq.
All but five of the Islamic Republic agents seized in Iraq appear to have been released. One of those released was Hassan Abbasi, nicknamed "the Kissinger of Islam," who is believed to be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's strategic advisor.
Among those still held by the Americans is one Muhammad Jaafari Sahraroudi, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander wanted by the Austrian police in connection with the murder of three Iranian Kurdish leaders in Vienna in 1989.
All this looks like a message to Tehran that its opponents may be moving on to the offensive in what looks like a revival of tactics used in the Cold War.
But let us return to the "big fish."
A retired two-star general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Askari had just led a military mission to Damascus, the Syrian capital. He was making a private "shopping stopover" in Turkey on his way back to Tehran.
The Iranian mission's task was to lay the foundations for a Syrian armament industry, licensed to manufacture Iranian-designed weapons. The 30 or so experts that had accompanied Askari remained in Syria to work out the technical details.
According to some reports, Askari had stopped over in Istanbul to meet with an unidentified Syrian arms dealer who lives in Paris.
Having at first denied reports of the general's disappearance, Tehran authorities eventually came out with a confirmation. The Islamic Republic's police chief, Gen. Ismail Ahmadi-Muqaddam, issued a statement Tuesday claiming that the missing general had been abducted by a Western intelligence service and taken to "a country in northern Europe."
Foreign Ministry sources in Tehran, however, said that Askari might have defected, possibly to the United States, where he has relatives. Some reports in the Iranian and Arab media suggest that the Israeli secret service Mossad and the CIA are behind Askari's disappearance.
Israel has denied involvement in the general's disappearance, but The London Daily Telegraph speculated on Monday that Askari could have been abducted by Israel to shed light on the whereabouts of Israel Air Force Lt.-Col. Ron Arad, missing since 1986, who might have been held at one point by Iran. Askari was involved in a deal to transfer Arad to Tehran after his capture by the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted Monday as saying Iran was "taking necessary steps" to solve the case: "A director-general from the [foreign] ministry has traveled to Turkey . . . We have asked Turkey to investigate Askari's case."
According to Iranian sources, Askari, in his late 50s, joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRG) at its very start in 1979. He was an associate of Mostafa Chamran, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who returned to Iran when the mullahs seized power in 1979 and helped found the IRG. When Chamran was appointed defense minister two years later, Askari became one of his advisers.
Always in the shadows, Askari was in charge of a program to train foreign Islamist militants as part of Tehran's strategy of "exporting" the Khomeinist revolution.
In 1982-83, Askari (along with Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Mohatashami-Pour) founded the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah and helped set up its first military units. The two men supervised the 1983 suicide attacks on the U.S. Embassy and on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut - killing more than 300 Americans, including 241 Marines. Iranian sources say Askari was part of a triumvirate of Revolutionary Guard officers that controlled Hezbollah's armed units until the end of the '90s.
Askari led the 500-man Iranian military mission in Beirut from 1998 to 2000 before returning home to work for the Strategic Defense Procurement Committee. In that capacity, he often traveled abroad to negotiate arms deals.
Tehran sources claim that Askari was also involved in Iran's controversial nuclear program, which, although presented as a civilian project, is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. They also say that last November he was appointed a member of the Strategic Defense Planning Commission set up by Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Guide."
Indeed, Iran is rife with rumors about the case: Askari has been transferred to Romania, where he is being debriefed by the Americans; he had documents with him, mostly related to Iran's military purchases abroad; Israeli efforts to see him (in connection with his years of running Hezballah) have so far failed to meet with success . . .
Whether he defected or was abducted, Askari is a big catch with a mine of information about the activities of the Revolutionary Guard and its elite arm, the Quds Corps, which controls Arab and Turkish radical groups financed by Tehran. Last month, the United States accused the Quds Corps of supplying special projectiles to terrorists in Iraq to kill GIs.
Iranian-born journalist and author Amir Taheri is based in Europe.
Askari is a big catch, with a mine of information about the activities of the Revolutionary Guard.

IS BIN LADEN DEAD OR ALIVE?
by Amir Taheri
Gulf News
March 14, 2007
Last Saturday marked Osama Bin Laden's 50th birthday. However, instead of the fugitive cutting any cakes in the company of friends, the occasion inspired fresh speculation about his fate.
"May God have mercy upon him," commented one of his nephews, using the Arab formula reserved only for reference to the dead.
When the Pakistani military captured Mullah Obaidallah Akhund recently, one of their first questions was: Where is Osama Bin Laden?
The mullah should have known. As defence minister in the Taliban government, he had been Bin Laden's controller until December 2001 when the terror mastermind vanished.
According to Pakistani sources, Obaidallah claimed that Bin Laden was "alive and well". However, when asked whether anyone had seen him, the mullah was less certain.
"I know of no one," he replied.
Obaidallah is not alone in speculating about the fate of the Saudi-born fugitive. Seif Al Adl, Al Qaida's senior military commander until 2001, is certain that Bin Laden is dead.
Hiding in Iran along with his father-in-law, Mustafa Hamid (aka Abu Walid Al Masri) a theoretician of the "Arab-Afghans", Al Adl insists that Bin Laden could not be alive and yet refuse contacting his associates.
"He has either abandoned the cause or died," Al Adl said in a telephone interview from Tehran. The last time Bin Laden, or whoever pretends to be him, was heard of was April 2006 when an audiotape message was broadcast by the Qatari TV channel, Al Jazeera.
Had Bin Laden been alive he would not have allowed former associates, including the Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, to alter his strategy.
It is clear that the man in charge of whatever is left of Al Qaida is Al Zawahiri. It is also clear that he has a different strategy.
Bin Laden based his strategy on the theory of ghazva or holy raids, spectacular attacks against "infidel" powers, notably the United States, designed to break their will.
The strategy worked in the 7th century when Muslim ghazis (holy raiders) launched spectacular attacks against Byzantine and Persian empires, bringing them down in a matter of years. The theory was that Byzantines and Persians had become fat, corrupt and afraid of death, while Muslims did not fear death because they would go to paradise.
Strategy
Bin Laden believed that the strategy helped defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and would lead to the destruction of the United Sates and its European satellites. The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York was a major test of that theory.
Bin Laden's strategy had critics from the start.
One was the "Godfather of Jihad", Palestinian-Saudi Abdullah Al Azzam who insisted that "holy warriors" should focus on Muslim lands rather than attacking "infidel" territory. In 1989, Al Azzam was murdered in Pakistan - a crime his relatives blamed on Bin Laden.
Between 1989 and 2001, Bin Laden was the sole architect of jihadist strategy, tested in dozens of attacks including 9/11 in the United States. Bin Laden dubbed his strategy Qat'e al-Raas, (chopping off the head), meaning that the global system must be defeated by attacking its head, ie the US.
Al Zawahiri, however, has revived Al Azzam's strategy of focusing on Muslim lands. He calls his strategy Khal'ee Al-Yadd (chopping off the hand), designed to destroy the tentacles of the "infidel" in Muslim countries.
He divides Muslim countries into five circles of "possibilities". The first consists of Afghanistan and Iraq which Al Zawahiri believes Al Qaida can capture, once the Americans run away.
In the second circle, are Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Algeria.
The third circle includes Israel-Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
In the fourth circle are Chechnya, Uzbekistan, East Turkistan (Xingjian) and Thailand.
The fifth circle includes all other Muslim states, or states with large Muslim minorities such as India and the Philippines, which Al Zawahiri hopes to conquer.
Al Zawahiri has taken other measures that indicate that Bin Laden is either dead or no longer in control.
He has replaced key commanders of Al Qaida linked groups, including in Iraq and Algeria, by Egyptians close to himself and with no history of ties to Bin Laden.
"You could say the Egyptian mafia has taken over," says one expert. Al Zawahiri has acknowledged Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, as Emir Al Momeneen (commander of the faithful) and caliph of a putative Islamic empire. This ends Bin Laden's position as the "shaikh" and ultimate authority for jihadists.
Bin Laden's name has almost disappeared from jihadist propaganda.
Al Zawahiri has also abandoned Bin Laden's rule of never making deals with Shiites, whom he regarded as heretics and Sunni Salafists such as the Muslim Brotherhood whom he branded as "compromisers".
Adopting a more pragmatic approach, Al Zawahiri has evoked tactical alliances with the Islamic Republic in Iran and its clients such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He has also sent feelers to Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, to coordinate strategies.
Politically, Bin Laden and his strategy appear to be dead. Physically, however, although there are indications that the fugitive is dead, no one can be sure.
The evidence that he might be dead includes:
* No one claims to have seen Bin Laden since December 3, 2001 when he slipped through the American net in Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan
* His long-time Pakistani doctor, Anwar ul-Haq, issued a statement on December 12, 2001 announcing Bin Laden's death and burial on December 5.
* Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claimed on two occasions, in 2001 and 2003, that the fugitive had died. (Later Musharraf retracted, stating that he was not sure.)
* The one videotape and three audiotapes attributed to Bin Laden since December 2001, remain a matter of controversy among experts. Some believe these were made from old material.
* Between 1990 and March 2001, Bin Laden received an average of $700,000 a month from his mother. That stopped in 2001 and Bin Laden's share of the family fortune transferred to his sons in Saudi Arabia.
* Saif Al Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan ruler, has referred to some of Bin Laden's wives and children, who have received refuge in Libya, as "widows and orphans", implying that the terrorist is dead.
Bin Laden could be the latest of a series of Islamist luminaries who have hidden in the mountains of North Waziristan, part of an autonomous region close to the Himalayas. The most notorious was the Akhund of Swat, whose followers fought the British for decades in the 19th century, long after he had disappeared, presumed dead.
The part of Waziristan, where Bin Laden may be hiding, covers an area of 5,600 square kilometres and has a population of 250,000. Despite the physical difficulty of the terrain, however, it is hard to hide a fugitive such as Bin Laden in so small a territory without someone hearing something.
This is why many regional experts believe that Bin Laden has passed away. Some conspiracy theorists, however, suggest that he may be in Iran, Yemen, or even the United Sates under an assumed identity!
The man maybe dead, but the myth lives.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

Iraq: Hundreds Go Missing or Get Killed at Checkpoints

2007-07-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

Police officers conducting a routine security check in Basra. Iraqis are increasingly fearful of what might happen to them at a checkpoint. (Photo: IRIN)

Iraq: Hundreds Go Missing or Get Killed at Checkpoints

Integrated Regional Information Networks
United Nations
June 17, 2007

Samir Waleed, 39, said he is scared to go out into the streets of Baghdad after his brother was stopped at a road block, taken away and killed three weeks ago. The deteriorated security situation in the capital has given rise to an increasing number of checkpoints in the city, which, ironically, have become dangerous in themselves.
Manned by the Iraqi police, Iraqi soldiers or sometimes by militias, checkpoints are adding to the immense strain already felt by Baghdad residents. Locals say that people are often arrested at checkpoints on suspicion of working with armed groups—and after being arrested, anything can happen.
"My brother was in a car with his wife and children when police officers stopped him at a checkpoint in Mansour district. They arrested him and we never heard from him again. One week later, after looking everywhere for him, we found his body with three shots to his head in the city morgue," Waleed said.
"My sister-in-law told me that when they stopped them, they were accusing my brother of being an insurgent because of his long beard. He tried to explain to them that he was a pharmacist and just had a long beard for aesthetic purposes but even so they arrested him," he added.
Police Deny any Wrongdoing
Waleed asked the police why his brother was killed but officials in the police station in the district his brother was arrested told him they do not have any information concerning his brother's arrest. They said his brother was probably killed by insurgents when the police released him after interrogation.
"I know that they [police] killed him but I cannot prove it. It is the reality in Iraq. They stop you wherever they want and from there on you don't know what will happen to you. I have three cousins and an uncle who had the same fate; two were killed at insurgents' checkpoints while leaving Iraq and two others went missing at a Baghdad checkpoint while going to their jobs, and were later found dead," Waleed said.
Given the high rate of killings in Iraq today, security forces have been given the right to arrest whomever they want. But while citizens also want to see killers arrested, they have equal fear of the authorities.
"Checkpoints are important in Iraq to prevent terrorism but unfortunately security forces aren't behaving correctly with the local population. Even the military has to offer the minimum of respect to Iraqis while passing though checkpoints but these sad incidents [of people being killed at checkpoints] are increasing and sectarian violence is also in the background," said professor Bakr Muhammad, a security analyst at Mustansiriyah University.
Sectarian Allegiances
"Sunnis are afraid to pass though Shia checkpoints as well as the Shias through the Sunni ones. It is a rare day on which people aren't arrested or killed, and surely, most of them are innocent victims of sectarian violence. Such abuse is unacceptable and the government should do something to change this," Muhammad added.
Responding to these accusations, the Iraqi army and police say the checkpoints are there to provide security to the local population rather than more violence.
"Security forces in Iraq are providing protection to the local population against terrorists. Police officers and soldiers just arrest people who they are sure are dangerous to the community. And if some people are taken for interrogation, as soon as we have proof that they are innocent, they are released without torture or humiliation," said Col. Ali Hassnawi, a senior officer at the Ministry of Interior.
But according to Muhammad, the reality is very different as many police officers take sectarian sides and humiliate those civilians who are from another sect.
"If they don't arrest, at least they would humiliate families by using bad language, violent action or even talking badly about wives while men are forced to accept this humiliation to save the lives of their loved ones," Muhammad said.
Missing People
According to Mukhaled al-A'ani, a spokesman for local Iraqi N.G.O. Human Rights Association, the number of people who have disappeared after being arrested at checkpoints in the capital has increased significantly since February.
"Many families have asked for our help in finding their relatives after they were arrested at checkpoints in the capital. Many others aren't sure but have received information that their loved ones were passing through a checkpoint and disappeared later," al-A'ani said.
"Since February, we have registered nearly 100 cases of men disappearing after being arrested by soldiers or police officers at checkpoints in the capital. Another 25 have been arrested at checkpoints in Anbar province by insurgents [and subsequently gone missing]," he said. "Families are scared to go to security forces and ask about their relatives as they might be targeted themselves, so they ask local N.G.O.'s to help."
The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights said it has looked into many cases of Iraqis missing after being stopped at checkpoints but said police officers have shown sufficient proof that they have not had anything to do with their disappearances.
The apparent lack of justice in Baghdad has led to many of its residents distrusting authorities, whether army, police, or government officials.
"My husband and son were arrested at a checkpoint in Dora district. They were accused of being insurgents and never came home again. I tried to look for them but I was scared that my other sons might suffer the same fate so I prefer to stay at home crying with the hope that soon they might come through my door again," said Samia'a al-Din, 43, whose husband and son were arrested in March.
"Sectarian violence is affecting all people and places in Iraq and there is no safety anymore. Before, I was afraid to go out because of explosions, but now checkpoints have become much more dangerous than any other hazard in Iraq," she added. © IRIN
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Zambian poll unleashes anger at Chinese

2007-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

Violence broke out in the Zambian capital of Lusaka after anti-Chinese candidate Michael Sata lost the presidential election. Photo: Reuters

Zambian poll unleashes anger at Chinese

David Blair, Lusaka
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/zambian-poll-unleashes-anger-at-chinese/2006/10/03/1159641326318.html?page=fullpage
October 4, 2006

CHINESE shopkeepers have barricaded their properties against gangs of looters in Zambia's capital, Lusaka, as a presidential election sparked a backlash against Beijing's growing influence in Africa.
Michael Sata, an opposition candidate, won 29 per cent of the vote after accusing China of "exploitation" and turning Zambia into a "dumping ground".
Although President Levy Mwanawasa was re-elected with 43 per cent of the vote, Mr Sata won in areas most affected by Chinese investment. In Lusaka, he polled almost three times as many votes as the president.
China has become one of the key foreign powers in Africa as it searches for raw materials.
Chinese immigrants have opened shops in Lusaka, where their community has grown tenfold to about 30,000 in the past decade. But their presence has sparked great resentment.
Chinese businessmen are accused of underpaying workers, ignoring safety rules and driving local companies out of business with cheap, shoddy goods.
Last year, 46 miners died in an accident at Chambishi, a copper mine owned by Chinese investors. Three months ago, its workforce rioted over low wages and poor conditions.
"We want to work with the Chinese, but they must change," said Mr Sata, the leader of the Patriotic Front.
"Their labour relations are very bad. They are not adding any value to what they claim is investment. Instead of creating jobs for the local workforce, they bring in Chinese workers to cut wood and carry water.
"We don't want Zambia to be a dumping ground for their human beings."
When it became clear that Mr Sata had lost the election, riots broke out in his Lusaka strongholds. Mr Sata said the Government had "robbed" him of victory by "stealing votes" from under the noses of "timid and toothless" election observers from the European Union.
Resentment over what his supporters believe was a rigged election caused the unrest. But looters soon began targeting Chinese-owned shops.
In Kamwala market, the Chinese owner of a clothes store locked his heavy metal door as looters ran down the street.
All the shops nearby, many of them Chinese-owned, were empty, their windows shuttered, their closed doors reinforced with metal bars.
People vented their anger over the Chinese in the nearby town of Garden. "Wherever you go — the market, the town centre — the Chinese are there and they are putting Zambians out of business," said Joe Mamba, a 27-year-old cobbler.
"I make shoes with genuine leather. The Chinese people make bad shoes very much cheaper, so people go to them and I have no business."

TELEGRAPH

TIES THAT BIND

■China's enthusiasm for Africa dates back to the 1950s when Chairman Mao presented himself as a spokesman for the developing world.SOURCE: TELEGRAPH
■Beijing is full of large embassies for small, once-socialist African states. China now has a pressing need for oil and minerals.
■China's trade with Africa has quadrupled to $A55 billion in the past five years. Almost one-third of China's oil comes from Africa, mainly from Angola, where a deal to develop a new field was signed in May, and from Sudan, where Beijing built a 1400-kilometre pipeline and invested at least $A20 billion.
■China has given Zimbabwe fighter and trainer jets and helped President Robert Mugabe build his retirement palace.
■In Sierra Leone and Angola the willingness of Chinese companies to do business without conditions has been blamed for encouraging corruption.
■In Gabon, Sinopec, China's largest oil company, was last month ordered to stop prospecting for oil after being accused of blowing up protected rainforest.

U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis’ Role in Iraq

2007-07-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

King Abdullah

U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis’ Role in Iraq

By HELENE COOPER
Published: July 27, 2007

This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg, and written by Ms. Cooper.

WASHINGTON, July 26 — During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.
One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.
The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.
Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”
Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.
The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.
In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia, the officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed signal to a top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course.
The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents shown to Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they had obtained them from sources in Iraq. “Maliki wouldn’t be stupid enough to put that on a piece of paper,” one senior Bush administration official said. He said Mr. Maliki later assured American officials that the documents were forgeries.
The Bush administration’s frustration with the Saudi government has increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has stepped up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue a different course in Iraq from what the administration has charted. Saudi Arabia has also stymied a number of other American foreign policy initiatives, including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.
Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to prop up Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly told senior Bush administration officials of the need to counterbalance the influence Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah warned Vice President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq, American and Arab diplomats said.
Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that Saudi Arabia’s direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year as the Saudis lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must bolster Sunni groups in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.
Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — to give financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last December, Mr. Gnehm said.
The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an Op-Ed page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr. Khalilzad, now the United States ambassador to the United Nations. “Several of Iraq’s neighbors — not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United States — are pursuing destabilizing policies,” Mr. Khalilzad wrote. Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was referring specifically to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, as well as Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, have in recent months pressed their Arab counterparts to do more to encourage Iraq’s Sunni leaders to support Mr. Maliki, senior administration officials said.
“This message certainly has been made very clear in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi,” a senior administration official said. “But there is a deep reserve directed both at the person of the Maliki government but more broadly at the concept” that Iraq’s Shiites are “surrogates of Iran.” Saudi Arabia has grown increasingly concerned about the rising influence of Iran in the region.
A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return telephone calls on Thursday. But one adviser to the royal family said that Saudi officials were aware of the American accusations. “As you know by now, we in Saudi Arabia have been active in having a united Arab front to, first, avoid further inter-Arab conflict, and at the same time building consensus to move toward a peace settlement between the Arabs and Israel,” he said. “How others judge our motives is their problem.”
Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent of the flow of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, for instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top American military spokesman in Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a foreign fighter recently captured in Ramadi.
In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man had arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by a Syrian facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a suicide truck bombing on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify the man’s nationality, but American officials in Iraq say he was a Saudi.
The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers.
American military and intelligence officials have been critical of Saudi efforts to stanch the flow of fighters into Iraq, although they stress that the Saudi government does not endorse the idea of fighters from Saudi Arabia going to Iraq.
On the contrary, they said, Saudi Arabia is concerned that these young men could acquire insurgency training in Iraq and then return home to carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia — similar to the Saudis who turned against their homeland after fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Bush administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has deteriorated steadily since the United States invasion of Iraq, culminating in April when, bitingly, King Abdullah, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh, condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.”
A month before that, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed a high-profile meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, planned by Ms. Rice, by brokering a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the militant Islamist group Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel. While that agreement eventually fell apart, the Bush administration, on both occasions, was caught off guard and became infuriated.
But Saudi officials have not been too happy with President Bush, either, and the plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world has led King Abdullah to strive to set a more independent course.
The administration “thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the role of the good vassal,” said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The Saudis, in turn, “see weakness, they see a void, and they’re going to fill the void and call their own shots.”

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Baghdad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank Favored by Extremists

2007-07-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank Favored by Extremists
Officials Debated What To Do About Al Rajhi, Intelligence Files Show
By GLENN R. SIMPSON
July 26, 2007; Page A1

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- In the 1940s, two Bedouin farm boys from the desert began changing money for the trickle of traders and religious pilgrims in this then-remote and barren kingdom. It was a business built on faith and trust, Sulaiman Al Rajhi once told an interviewer, and for many years he would hand gold bars to strangers boarding flights in Jidda and ask them to give the gold to his brother on their arrival in Riyadh.
Today, Mr. Al Rajhi is a reclusive octogenarian whose fortune is estimated at $12 billion. And Al Rajhi Bank grew into the kingdom's largest Islamic bank, with 500 branches in Saudi Arabia and more spread across the Muslim world.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the bank also set off an intense debate within the U.S. government over whether to take strong action against its alleged role in extremist finance. Confidential reports by the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. agencies, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, detail for the first time how much the U.S. learned about the use of Al Rajhi Bank by alleged extremists, and how U.S. officials agonized over what to do about it.

After 9/11, the Saudi monarchy pledged its full support in the fight against global terrorism. And following violent attacks inside the kingdom in the next two years, the Saudis did launch major strikes against militants operating on their soil. But the Saudi government has been far been less willing to tackle the financial infrastructure essential to terrorism. U.S. intelligence reports state that Islamic banks, while mostly doing ordinary commerce, also are institutions that extremism relies upon in its global spread.

As a result, the Bush administration repeatedly debated proposals for taking strong action itself against Al Rajhi Bank, in particular, according to former U.S. officials and previously undisclosed government documents. Ultimately, the U.S. always chose instead to lobby Saudi officialdom quietly about its concerns.

The U.S. intelligence reports, heretofore secret, describe how Al Rajhi Bank has maintained accounts and accepted donations for Saudi charities that the U.S. and other nations have formally designated as fronts for al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

In addition, Mr. Al Rajhi and family members have been major donors to Islamic charities that are suspected by Western intelligence agencies of funding terrorism, according to CIA reports and federal-court filings by the Justice Department.

A 2003 CIA report claims that a year after Sept. 11, with a spotlight on Islamic charities, Mr. Al Rajhi ordered Al Rajhi Bank's board "to explore financial instruments that would allow the bank's charitable contributions to avoid official Saudi scrutiny."

A few weeks earlier, the report says, Mr. Al Rajhi "transferred $1.1 billion to offshore accounts -- using commodity swaps and two Lebanese banks -- citing a concern that U.S. and Saudi authorities might freeze his assets." The report was titled "Al Rajhi Bank: Conduit for Extremist Finance."

Al Rajhi Bank and the Al Rajhi family deny any role in financing extremists. They have denounced terrorist acts as un-Islamic. The bank declined to address specific allegations made in American intelligence and law-enforcement records, citing client confidentiality.
In 2002, the bank sued The Wall Street Journal Europe after an article said Saudi authorities were monitoring some Al Rajhi Bank accounts at U.S. request, in a bid to prevent them from being used, wittingly or unwittingly, for funneling money to terrorist groups. The bank dropped the suit in 2005 and the Journal published a statement saying its article hadn't reported any allegation that the bank supported or financed terrorism.

Also in 2005, a U.S. judge dismissed Al Rajhi Bank from a lawsuit filed by relatives of Sept. 11 victims. The ruling said banks couldn't be held liable for providing routine services to people who turned out to be terrorists. In a statement in response to questions about suspected terrorists among its clients, the bank noted that "Al Rajhi Bank has a very large branch network, and a very large retail customer base."

U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies acknowledge it is possible that extremists use the bank's far-flung branches and money-transfer services without bank officials' knowledge. The U.S. has never obtained proof that the bank or its owners knowingly facilitate terrorism, according to documents and former officials, despite what they describe as extensive circumstantial evidence that some executives are aware the bank is used by extremists. The 2003 CIA report concluded: "Senior Al Rajhi family members have long supported Islamic extremists and probably know that terrorists use their bank."

Most major banks around the world are bound by a patchwork of treaties and agreements that, in effect, require them to know their customers and report any suspicious activities to regulators. The rules are designed to fight terrorism, money laundering and narcotics trafficking. It's generally acknowledged that Saudi banks are bound by these rules, although experts differ on when compliance became mandatory.

The top counterterrorism official at the U.S. Treasury Department, while declining to comment on Al Rajhi Bank specifically, says Saudi officials haven't met a promise to create a commission to oversee Saudi charities, many of which bank with Al Rajhi. "They are also not holding people responsible for sending money abroad for jihad," says the Treasury official, Stuart Levey. "It just doesn't happen."

The Saudi government maintains it has been working diligently with the U.S. and others to counter terrorism. It cites its arrests of several alleged terrorist fund-raisers in recent years. The Saudis didn't respond to specific questions about their efforts to counter terrorist finance or oversee banks.

A White House statement said that "the Saudis continue to be a strong partner in the War on Terror....We have made significant progress on numerous fronts -- including the freezing of assets and the shutdown of known conduits of [terrorist] funding." A CIA spokesman said "publishing details of how our government seeks to track extremist financing" could undermine those efforts.

For the ruling Saud family, any confrontation with the Al Rajhis could be politically treacherous. To stay in power, the Sauds rely on the tolerance of clerical and business elites, many of whom view the royal family as corrupt. The wealthy Al Rajhis are a clan long at odds with the royal family. And U.S. intelligence files show the Al Rajhis also have close ties to another group critical of the royals: Saudi Arabia's conservative clerics.

The Al Rajhi empire includes hotels, housing developments, commodities trading, shipping, aviation leasing and poultry. Its core is the bank, with more than 500 branches in Saudi Arabia and other offices abroad, from Pakistan to Malaysia. For 2006, the publicly held institution reported $1.9 billion in profit and $28 billion in assets.

Sulaiman Al Rajhi grew up in the Nejd desert, the birthplace of a severe form of Islam, called Wahhabism, that forbids birthday parties, musical instruments and photographing people. In the 1940s, he and a brother, Saleh, went to the Saudi capital city. "From literally nothing -- making change on what were then the dirt streets of Riyadh -- Sulaiman and Saleh al Rajhi built the Al Rajhi Bank," Sulaiman's lawyers told a U.S. court in New York in 2005.

Sulaiman described the business in a rare interview with Euromoney magazine in 1983. With two other brothers, he and Saleh began changing money for pilgrims taking camel caravans across the desert to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. When throngs of migrant workers came to Saudi Arabia during the 1970s oil boom, the Al Rajhis helped them send their earnings home to places like Indonesia and Pakistan.

In 1983, the brothers won permission to open Saudi Arabia's first Islamic bank, one that would observe religious tenets such as a ban on interest.

But relations with the ruling family frayed. The government-controlled press in 1992 publicized Al Rajhi Bank's tangential role in an international scandal of that era, that of the bank called BCCI, U.S. diplomats reported. Then in 1994, an infant relative of the Al Rajhis died in a kidnapping. Official press accounts said the kidnappers slit the child's throat, but Saudi dissidents claimed police shot the child. Mr. Al Rajhi blamed the royal family, the CIA report says.

Although Al Rajhi Bank continued to make a show of support for the Sauds -- annual reports had flowery tributes to the royal family -- the bank began refusing to make loans to the Sauds or to finance their projects, U.S. diplomats said at the time.

With its Islamic procedures, the bank was a magnet for the clerical establishment, which grew rich from alms amid the oil boom. As the clerics' charities spread, they became entwined with Al Rajhi Bank and the conservative Al Rajhi family's own extensive financial support for Islamic causes.

There is no reliable estimate of how much the Al Rajhis have given to promote Islam over the years, but an endowment holding much of Saleh Al Rajhi's wealth gives an indication of the scale. Its Web site details nearly $50 million in direct donations within the kingdom to Islamic causes and at least $12 million in donations abroad. The overseas money went to aid embattled Muslims in Kosovo, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories and to finance Islamic instruction.

There are indications not all the giving was for such purposes. The Al Rajhi name appeared on a list of regular financial contributors to al Qaeda that was discovered in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 2002. The list was authenticated for the Federal Bureau of Investigation that year by America's top judicial witness against al Qaeda, a onetime al Qaeda business manager named Jamal Al Fadl, who is in the federal witness-protection program. He called the contributor list the "golden chain."

A 2003 German police report said Sulaiman Al Rajhi and other family members had contributed more than $200,000 in 1993 to a charity that financed weapons for Islamic militants in Bosnia, in addition to providing humanitarian aid.

The 2003 CIA report tells of efforts by two Al Rajhi brothers to keep some giving secret. It says that Sulaiman and Saleh transferred $4 million to parties in Germany and Pakistan in December 1998 using "a unique computer code to send funds at regular intervals to unspecified recipients, suggesting they were trying to conceal the transactions and that the money may have been intended for illegitimate ends."

The report says extremists "ordered operatives in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Yemen" to use Al Rajhi Bank. Mamduh Mahmud Salim, convicted mastermind of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, was carrying records of an Al Rajhi account (number 001424/4) when arrested in Germany in 1998, German police found.

In 2000, the CIA report says, Al Rajhi Bank couriers "delivered money to the Indonesian insurgent group Kompak to fund weapons purchases and bomb-making activities."

A U.S. intelligence memo dated Nov. 16, 2001, says a money courier for Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, traveled on a visa that the bank had obtained for him. The memo adds, however: "Reporting does not indicate whether bank management was witting" of the courier's terrorist connections.

Al Rajhi Bank maintained at least 24 accounts and handled unusual transactions for Al-Haramain foundation -- a charity that Treasury officials say has acted as a front for al Qaeda in 13 countries -- until the Saudi government ordered the charity shut down in late 2004, according to intelligence and law-enforcement reports. The United Nations has designated top officials of Al-Haramain foundation as terrorists, and most of its offices now are closed.

According to a federal indictment in Oregon, a top Al-Haramain official in 2000 carried $130,000 in $1,000 traveler's checks from Portland to Riyadh and deposited them with Al Rajhi -- funds the indictment says were for the ultimate benefit of al Qaeda fighters in Chechnya. The indicted official, Soliman Al-Buthe, now works for the city of Riyadh. In an interview, he confirmed carrying the checks and depositing them with Al Rajhi Bank but said that they weren't for al Qaeda and that he did nothing wrong.
[Adnan Khalil Basha]

A Jidda-based charity called the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, arranges for donors to send their donations directly to the Al Rajhi Bank. The IIRO's chairman, Adnan Khalil Basha, says the charity is "absolutely apolitical" and has elaborate spending controls to prevent illicit diversions. The charity says it works with Al Rajhi Bank simply because its fees are low and its service is best.

However, the U.N. has labeled two of the IIRO's branches and some of its officials as al Qaeda supporters. In 2004, the IIRO solicited donations through Al Rajhi Bank for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, then largely under the control of insurgents and the base of the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who led al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The IIRO's workers oversaw construction of a trauma clinic in an insurgent-controlled area of Fallujah. The U.S. saw the clinic as a haven for insurgent fighters, and Marines destroyed it in November 2004. That was "a big tragedy for us," says the IIRO's chairman, Mr. Basha.

He denies the charity had any involvement with the Iraqi insurgency. Charity officials complain that the U.S. has produced no evidence of their alleged ties to terrorism.

Two years earlier, federal agents raided the Virginia offices of a network of charities funded by Sulaiman Al Rajhi that worked closely with the IIRO and that -- according to Justice Department court filings -- provided funds to Palestinian terrorists. No charges have been filed.

A year after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. authorities began to lament the lack of Saudi action in taking down terrorists' financial infrastructure. A November 2002 CIA report said the Saudi government "has made little independent effort to uncover terrorist financiers, investigate individual donors, and tighten the regulation of Islamic charities," largely because of "domestic political considerations."

The report advised against a noisy confrontation: "A key factor for continued successful counterterrorism initiatives with the Saudis, whose society is by tradition private, closed, and conservative, will be to ensure that their cooperation with the United States is handled discreetly and kept as much as possible out of the public eye."

The U.S. began to rethink that approach after an al Qaeda attack in Riyadh in May 2003 that killed 26 people, including nine Americans. Deputies from the National Security Council, CIA, Treasury and State departments debated a proposal for legal and political action against Al Rajhi Bank, including the possibility of covert operations such as interfering with the bank's internal operations, according to Bush administration documents and former U.S. officials.

One idea kicked around was "listing or threatening to list" Al Rajhi Bank as a supporter of terrorism. Such a listing can be done if recommended by a committee representing the Treasury, State and Defense departments and the CIA and NSC, and signed by the president. The designation bars U.S. companies from doing business with the named entity. A U.S. designation also normally is forwarded to the U.N., and if that body puts the name on its own terrorist-supporter list, all member states are obliged to freeze the entity's assets.

Other ideas U.S. officials discussed included enlisting friendly countries to step up scrutiny and regulatory action against the Al Rajhis. The CIA report said that "a successful effort against the Al Rajhis would encourage efforts against other donors, or at a minimum, would discourage private funding of Al Qaeda."

Ultimately, the Bush administration again chose merely to continue privately exerting pressure on the Saudis to stiffen their oversight.

Write to Glenn R. Simpson at glenn.simpson@wsj.com

EXTREMISTS' ACCOUNTS

The News: U.S. intelligence reports say Islamic extremists often use Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank to move money. The bank has denounced terrorism and denies any role in financing extremists.
The Issue: A confrontation with Al Rajhi would be politically difficult for Saudi monarchy, and U.S. isn't satisfied with its efforts to curb the financial infrastructure essential to terrorism.
Result: U.S. has periodically debated taking action on its own against the bank, but chosen instead to lobby the Saudis quietly about its concerns.

Loose Saudi cannons in Lebanon

2007-07-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri

Loose Saudi cannons in Lebanon
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - More than 10 years ago, Lebanese comedian Wassim Tabbara staged a brilliant satire called Sleep on My Silk about Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. He showed Hariri having just returned to Lebanon in the 1990s from a fruitful career in Saudi Arabia (where he had made billions). Hariri was known at the time as Saudi Arabia's No 1 man in Beirut.
He is shown telling a wealthy Saudi sheikh about the terrible economic conditions in Lebanon, but tales of the economic misery were not enough to get the sheikh to donate to Lebanon. Hariri adds that if Lebanon falls, "Then there is no longer Bhamdoun or Aley for you!"
This was a reference to the two summer resorts that wealthy Saudis have frequented over the years for gambling and pleasure in Lebanon. Stunned by the reality, the sheikh begins to weep. "No more nightclubs for you!" More sobs. "No more casinos for you!" The sheikh falls apart in tears and starts writing out blank checks to the Lebanese prime minister.
Much has changed since then, yet much remains the same. Lebanon is still strongly allied to Saudi Arabia, thanks to Hariri's son and political successor, Saad. The Saudis invested heavily in the elder Hariri's Lebanon in the 1990s and have worked relentlessly since his assassination in 2005 to prevent the country's disintegration.
Nowadays, however, Saudi Arabia is exporting more than gamblers, tourists and investors to Lebanon. It is - unwillingly - sending terrorists and suicide bombers to Lebanon, particularly to the formerly sleepy city of Tripoli, where a radical Islamic fanatic group called Fatah al-Islam is waging war against the Lebanese Army.
Last week, Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz released his latest report on the assassination of Rafik Hariri. He confirmed that the suicide bomber who murdered the premier was not Lebanese - nor Syrian. Rather, he came from a "hot district", which probably is a reference to Saudi Arabia.
Most terrorists in radical Islamic groups from the Persian Gulf region come from Saudi Arabia. We find fewer suicide bombers from Kuwait, or any from Oman, the United Arab Emirates or Qatar.
The bomber, according to Brammertz, had spent only about four months of his life in Lebanon and nearly 10 years in a "rural area", possibly the mountains of Afghanistan. After all, hundreds of Saudis lived there when working with the United States to combat the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. This sheds light once more on Saudi jihadis in Lebanon.
Coinciding with the Brammertz report were other stories from the Naher al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Saudi journalist Faris bin Khuzam, writing for the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, put the number of Saudi jihadis in Lebanon operating from Naher al-Bared at 300. He claims they were "lured" into a battlefield "other than the one they wanted", saying that they had plans to fight the Americans in Iraq, and ended up in Tripoli.
The reason, he explained, is tight security on the Syrian border (in addition to the Saudi one) preventing them from making a breakthrough into war-torn Iraq. Instead, they found their way into Lebanon and stayed for what initially seemed to be a temporary transit period. "Gradually the pendulum shifted," Khuzam wrote, adding that "they were told that the road to Jerusalem runs through here [Naher al-Bared]". He concluded, "They chose the Saudi dream that Osama bin Laden could not fulfill."
The secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Beirut, Sultan Abu al-Aynein, confirmed this tale, saying that 23 Saudi jihadis had been killed in Naher al-Bared, all members of Fatah al-Islam. They are buried in a collective grave in the battered refugee camp.
Other members of Fatah al-Islam who have surrendered to Lebanese authorities confirmed that 43 Saudi jihadis were in Naher al-Bared. The Lebanese weekly Al-Kifah al-Arabi said more than 50 people (mostly Saudis) were arrested by Lebanese authorities, while another 45 were still fighting.
Government authorities believe that more Saudis can be found in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. Still some claim that Saudis in Lebanon can be divided into two groups: Fatah al-Islam and al-Qaeda. The first are found strictly within the Naher al-Bared camp and have almost been exterminated by the Lebanese Army, after two months of heavy combat. The Saudis in al-Qaeda are in silent cells, however, scattered all over Lebanon. They are a time-bomb that could explode at any moment.
In May, investigative US reporter Seymour Hersh gave a groundbreaking interview to CNN International's Your World Today, discussing the combat in Naher al-Bared. Hersh's comments caused an uproar in the US, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon because he blamed the US administration, the Saudis and the cabinet of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora of creating and arming Sunni fundamentalist groups such as Fatah al-Islam.
The purpose was to use them against the Iran-backed all-Shi'ite group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Shi'ites have an armed wing, the reasoning went, so why shouldn't the Sunnis as well? In March, Hersh penned an exceptionally detailed essay in The New Yorker called "The redirection", saying that the US was supporting Sunni fanatic groups to counterbalance the spread of Shi'ite Islam - and the power of Iran - in the Arab world.
Part of the strategy was increased US-Saudi planning to undermine Hezbollah in Lebanon. Another way was to encourage Sunni extremists in the region, who, although anti-American, are equally anti-Shi'ite. Hersh pointed out that this was identical to the Saudi-US strategy of the 1980s, when they armed and supported bin Laden to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The architects of this policy are US Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, and former ambassador and current Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan. They are responsible for the "redirection" toward fostering Sunni fanatics, and more recently for the creation of Fatah al-Islam to combat Hezbollah.
Hersh said, "The idea [is] that the Saudis promised they could control the jihadis, so we [US] spent a lot of money and time ... using and supporting the jihadis to help us beat the Russians in Afghanistan, and they turned on us. And we have the same pattern, not as if there's any lessons learned. The same pattern, using the Saudis again to support jihadis."
Fatah al-Islam, and the Saudis within it, rebelled against Siniora and the US, just as bin Laden did after US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1991. The Saudis, Hersh said, were telling the Americans, "We've created this movement, we can control it. It's not that we don't want the Salafis to throw bombs, it's who they throw them at - Hezbollah, [Iraqi Shi'ite cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr and the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran."
In his CNN interview, Hersh added, "The enemy of our enemy is our friend, just as the jihadi groups in Lebanon were also there to go after [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah. We're in the business of creating in some places, Lebanon in particular, sectarian violence."
All of this was dismissed as something of Hersh's imagination in March, but today, with the increasing number of Saudis showing up in Lebanon - and Iraq - it seems Hersh was not so wrong after all.
In Iraq, it was revealed by US officials that 45% of all foreign militants fighting the Americans come from Saudi Arabia. Contrary to what has been said in the past, only 15% come from Syria and Lebanon combined, and a relatively high 10% from North Africa. This was revealed in the Los Angeles Times, quoting a senior US official whose name remained anonymous.
He stressed that 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq arrive as ready-to-explode, indoctrinated suicide bombers, claiming that in the past six months, 4,000 people have been killed or injured in Iraq by these Saudi jihadis.
These words were echoed by Sami al-Askari, a senior adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He said, "The fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia has strong intelligence resources, and it would be hard to think that they are not aware of what is going on," claiming that clerics at Saudi mosques were encouraging citizens to wage a holy war in Iraq against Shi'ites.
The Saudi government acknowledges some of these realities. General Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, commented: "Saudis are actually being misused. Someone is helping them come to Iraq. Someone is helping them inside Iraq. Someone is recruiting them to be suicide bombers. We have no idea who these people are. We aren't getting any formal information from the Iraqi government. If we get good feedback from the Iraqi government about Saudis being arrested in Iraq, probably we can help."
It is a pity indeed for all those familiar with contemporary Saudi history that the terrorists in Lebanon and Iraq carry the name "Saudi". This means that they are named after the founder of the oil-rich kingdom, King Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, a heroic Arabian Bedouin who was anything but a terrorist, described often as a gentleman who wanted to develop his country at any cost.
He toyed with the idea of working with the Nazis during World War II, then shifted to the Americans during the era of president Franklin Roosevelt. Since then, Saudi Arabia and the US have worked together to combat a variety of enemies: communism, Nasserism, Khomeinism and terrorism. Hersh insists on portraying them as silent partners once again in combating Nassrallahism in Lebanon.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Iraqi Withdrawal: Seven Scenarios

2007-07-19T18:41:00.001-07:00

Iraqi Withdrawal: Seven Scenarios

by Austin Bay
July 18, 2007

What happens if the United States and coalition forces withdraw rapidly from Iraq? The U.S. and the Iraqi governments have their own scenarios. Iran, al-Qaida, Syria and Turkey have also analyzed potential outcomes.

Business and government make plans. Every plan anticipates a future outcome. Since the future can't be predicted, the best plans acknowledge uncertainty. Acknowledging uncertainty means accepting risk -- the risk of being wrong. The art of leadership is being "less wrong."

Here are seven "scenarios" sketching "potential outcomes" of a quick withdrawal from Iraq. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. You will find bits and pieces in all seven:

1) Three New Countries: Kurdistan in the north becomes an independent country -- and immediately starts to wrestle with Turkey over the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is waging a secessionist struggle in southeastern Turkey. Kurdistan has oil. Southern Iraq -- a predominantly Shia area -- becomes a Shia state, also with oil. Parts of Anbar province become a Sunni state (Iraqi Sunnistan) -- which has few oil fields.

But what becomes of Baghdad? Does it divide like a desert Berlin into Shia and Sunni sectors? Baghdad remains a source of continuing conflict.

2) Regional Shia-Sunni War: Iran sees an opportunity to recover not only the Shaat al Arab region -- the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates -- but a chance to extend its border into the economically productive areas of southern Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait immediately react to Iran's drive into southern Iraq. Iraq has served as a "buffer" between Sunni Arabs and Shia Iranians, and the buffer is dissolving. Jordan and Egypt prepare for action. The War Over Mesopotamia could last for weeks, or it could grind on for years.

3) Turkey Expands: Turkey takes control of northern Iraq to the city of Kirkuk. The Ottoman Empire once controlled Mesopotamia. Turkey has a lingering claim to areas of northern Iraq. For almost two decades, Turkey has fought with the Kurdistan Workers Party -- a Kurdish secessionist group in Turkey that has bases in northern Iraq. Turkey could conclude the way to end the war with the PKK would be to absorb Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey would pay a huge political price, however. It would lose all chance of joining the European Union. As ties with the West deteriorate, Turkey might become less secular and more Islamic in both identity and in political orientation.

4) Shia Dictatorship: Shia Arabs win the chaotic battle of neighborhoods, forcing Sunni Arabs to flee. Call it "de facto" ethnic cleansing, as the Sunnis flee to Sunni states, or move to the United States. Al-Qaida, however, retains a presence. A hard-line Shia regime takes power in Baghdad with the mission of eradicating al-Qaida. The Kurds retain a high degree of autonomy with just enough connection to Baghdad to keep the Turks away.

5) "Gang Up": A calculated version of Scenario 4 -- Rwanda in the desert. Shia Arabs and Kurds launch a coordinated campaign to eliminate Iraq's Sunni Arab community. The threat of Iranian intervention prevents Sunni Arab nations from protecting Iraqi Sunnis.

6) Chaos: Iraq shatters into ethnic enclaves, with a few "new Mesopotamian city states" managing to control oil fields. Iran and Turkey exert "regional influence" over eastern and northern Iraq, respectively, but concerned about confrontation between themselves or provoking sanctions from Europe and the United States, neither sends its military forces in large numbers beyond current borders.

Terror attacks and intermittent fighting afflict neighborhoods throughout Iraq. Local warlords rule by fear and make money by either smuggling oil, drugs or arms. This tribal hell is a perfect disaster -- the kind of disaster that allows al-Qaida to build training facilities and base camps for operations throughout the Middle East and Europe.

7) The Iraqi Center Holds: The democratic government proves to be resilient. The assumption behind this scenario is that Iraq's government is just responsive enough and its security forces are just strong enough to withstand attacks by extremists and give Iran pause. After several months of brutal warfare, the Iraqi Army destroys insurgent groups.

Out of seven "rapid withdrawal" scenarios only one -- number seven -- clearly benefits the majority of Iraqis.

Nuclear Lab Employee Arrested for Allegedly Attempting to Sell Secrets

2007-07-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Oak Ridge National Laboratory complex, Tennessee (AP Photo)

Nuclear Lab Employee Arrested for Allegedly Attempting to Sell Secrets
Contract Worker Is Accused of Trying to Sell Information to Undercover Agent

By PIERRE THOMAS, JACK DATE, AARON KATERSKY and THERESA COOK
July 19, 2007 —
A contract worker at the Oak Ridge Reservation nuclear research facility has been arrested and charged with trying to sell highly classified information about how to enrich uranium.
The two count federal indictment, unsealed Thursday afternoon, alleges Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, had possession of materials associated with uranium enrichment, and "having reason to believe that such data would be utilized to injure the United States and secure and advantage to a foreign nation, did communicate, transmit, and disclose such data to another person."
Federal sources told ABC News the Oakley, a former employee of contract firm Bechtel Jacobs, thought he was selling the information to a foreign operative, but they said he was actually selling it to U.S. undercover agent. Bechtel Jacobs declined comment for this story.
Federal sources told ABC News that Oakley, an employee of contract firm Bechtel Jacobs, thought he was selling the information to a foreign agent, but was actually selling it to a U.S. undercover agent. Bechtel Jacobs declined comment for this story.
Local media reports said Oakley was an escort who brought visitors around East Tennessee Technology Park, on the other side of the Oak Ridge complex's nuclear weapons research facilities.
Sources emphasize that the public was never in danger, but acknowledge that the case represents a major breach and raises serious questions about the security at some of the nation's most sensitive nuclear installations.
"The FBI should be congratulated for their role in thwarting this situation. However, a series of troubling security breaches show that the nuclear weapons complex simply does not take security as seriously as it should," said Peter Stockton, an investigator for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, who served as an advisor to then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.
This latest incident comes on the heels of a security breach at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory in the fall.
In that case, a contract employee at the lab took classified documents and computer files home with her. The materials were discovered only after authorities searched her home on a separate matter a domestic disturbance-call-turned-methamphetamine-lab raid.
The former employee at the center of the Los Alamos breakdown pleaded guilty to knowingly removing classified information from the national security research laboratory in May.
Nuclear lab security has been scrutinized after several embarrassing breaches at other government-run nuclear facilities.
Also at the Los Alamos National Lab, a weapons scientist was accused of stealing nuclear weapons secrets in 1999. He later pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information.
The next year, at the same facility, the FBI began an investigation into missing nuclear emergency search team hard drives. The drives were found days later behind a photocopy machine.
In 2004, when an administrative error at Los Alamos led security officials to believe that computer disks containing nuclear secrets had been misplaced, operations at the lab were ordered to essentially shut down. An FBI investigation concluded the disks had never existed.
After that incident, the Department of Energy instituted policies to reduce the amount of files and materials that could be placed on a computer disk.
Other security breaches at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and storage site near the Oak Ridge complex revealed a series of lost security keys at both sites.
The series of breaches lead to the ouster of National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Linton Brooks in January. Brooks had held the position since 2002, and was officially confirmed in 2003.
In announcing the resignation, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman referenced the "serious security breach" a few months earlier at Los Alamos and other management issues that had plagued the National Nuclear Security Administration.
"While I believe that the current NNSA management has done its best to address these concerns, I do not believe that progress in correcting these issues has been adequate," Bodman's statement said.
"I repeatedly have told DOE [the Department of Energy] and laboratory employees, and, in particular, senior managers, we must be accountable to the president and the American people, not just for efforts, but for results," he said.
William Ostendorff took the helm at the NNSA in April.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Guilty Plea in Los Alamos Security Breach
Meth Lab Search Turned Up Classified Nuclear Weapons Documents
By PIERRE THOMAS, JASON RYAN and THERESA COOK

May 15, 2007 —
A meth lab search-turned-FBI-counterintelligence investigation one that worried top nuclear security officials in Washington, D.C., about security at the nation's nuclear labs has come to an end for the contract government employee at the center of the inquiry.
Tuesday, Jessica Lynn Quintana, 23, a former worker at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, pleaded guilty in federal court to knowingly removing classified information from the national security research laboratory, after she took home sensitive documents and data from the lab last year.
Quintana had been granted a "Q clearance," which provided her with top secret restricted data and national security information, as well as access to some restricted areas at the lab. The government has rescinded her clearance status, and she faces a maximum sentence of up to one year in jail, a $100,000 fine, and a year of supervised release, and possible probation of up to five years.
The case against Quintana started Oct. 17, 2006, when police in Los Alamos, N.M., responded to a domestic disturbance at a trailer park, in which they stumbled across a small methamphetamine lab. After a few twists and turns, investigators found themselves smack in the middle of a counterintelligence inquiry.
From Drugs to Documents
According to the search warrant in the case, police found drug paraphernalia, several glass pipes and a small propane torch at the scene. Officers obtained a search warrant and arrested Justin Stone, Quintana's boyfriend, on a previous bench warrant.
But police also found several pieces of computer hardware containing information they believed to be from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory.
According to a police statement issued last fall, "During the course of the search, officers realized some of the items seized appeared to belong to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Los Alamos Laboratory security division was contacted for analysis and confirmation."
Upon this discovery, the FBI dispatched a team of more than a dozen agents to determine how the files wound up in the trailer park.
In the plea agreement filed Tuesday, Quintana admitted that she "knowingly removed documents and computer files containing classified information of the United States from a vault-type room at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and stored such documents and files at places outside Los Alamos National Laboratory, including a backpack in which she transported such documents and materials to her residence, and a computer desk drawer inside her bedroom at her residence."
Quintana was employed by Information Assets Management, Inc. and was under contract to archive classified information at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Officals told ABC News there is no evidence that she passed or sold the information to a third party or foreign government.
Sensitive Nuclear Weapons Information
Documents obtained by ABC News show a police search recovered three computer memory sticks and a compact disc containing photographs. Quintana had apparently taken the materials out of the lab so she could work on archiving the documents at her home.
In a written statement after the discovery last October, Los Alamos director Michael Anastasio said, "I regard this matter as one of utmost concern to all of us."
"There is no question this should have been taken far more seriously a long time ago by Los Alamos. The fact that this could still be happening is just absurd," said Danielle Brian, at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group based in Washington.
Scrutinizing Security at Los Alamos
Security at Los Alamos has been scrutinized in recent years after several security breaches:
In 1999, a weapons scientist was accused of stealing nuclear weapons secrets. He eventually pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information.
In 2000, the FBI investigated missing hard drives at the lab. The drives, which belonged to a nuclear emergency search team, were found days later behind a photocopy machine.
In 2004, an administrative error led security officials to believe that computer disks containing nuclear secrets had been misplaced, and operations at the lab were ordered to essentially shut down. An FBI investigation concluded the disks never existed.
After that incident, the Department of Energy instituted policies to reduce the amount of files and materials that can be placed on a computer disk.
Other security breaches at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and storage site exposed a series of lost security keys at both sites.
'Serious Problems With Security Management'
In congressional testimony in 2005, Linton Brooks, then administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the 2004 incident "revealed serious problems with security management at Los Alamos."
After the October 2006 breach, Brooks said, "I have directed NNSA's chief of defense nuclear security to personally investigate the facts at Los Alamos, and I have sent a headquarters cyber security team to ensure that there is full compliance with current departmental directives." The Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration also proceeded to launch internal investigations into the apparent security breach.
But the system's flaws didn't seem to be repaired fast enough to save Brooks' job.
Brooks was forced out of his NNSA post in January. In announcing the resignation, energy secretary Samuel Bodman referenced the "serious security breach" a few months earlier at Los Alamos, and other management issues that have plagued the National Nuclear Security Administration.
"While I believe that the current NNSA management has done its best to address these concerns, I do not believe that progress in correcting these issues has been adequate," Bodman's statement said.
"I repeatedly have told DOE and laboratory employees, and, in particular, senior managers, we must be accountable to the president and the American people, not just for efforts, but for results," he said.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

The Crisis of the Wahhabi Regime in Saudi Arabia

2007-07-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

matawwa

The Crisis of the Wahhabi Regime: Surprising developments in Saudi Arabia.
by Stephen Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi
07/16/2007, Volume 012, Issue 41

Long accustomed to abusing their power with impunity, the Saudi mutawiyin or "religious police" (more on that misleading translation in a moment) suddenly find themselves on the defensive. Increasingly challenged by critics, they felt compelled early this year to go through the motions of announcing a "modernization": Warrants would be required for searches, the use of force for moral violations would be banned. In practice, however, nothing changed. And when, this spring, two Saudi men died in custody, events took an unprecedented turn: Controversy erupted in the Saudi media; several mutawiyin members were dragged into court; and the boldest reformers called for dismantling altogether this hated institution.

But to make the story intelligible, it is necessary to begin at the beginning--with the uniqueness of Saudi Arabia. In addition to being the only state named after its rulers, and having no constitution except the Koran, this is the homeland of the radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism, the official sect of the kingdom, is a patched-together, relatively recent expression of the faith of Muhammad, and the Wahhabi institutions that support the Saudi order often seem amorphous and opaque. Given the general absence of transparency in the kingdom, this should come as no surprise.

But there is no Wahhabi institution more difficult to define than the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Founded in the 1920s, when the Saudi state came into being, as an enforcer of collective morals, this body of at least 10,000 individuals is known to Saudi and other Muslims as the mutawiyin, or "devotees." Although often described in Western media as the "religious police," the mutawiyin have little in common with a police force--they wear no uniform and receive no salary--and are better described as an Islamofascist militia, something akin to the Nazi and Communist rank-and-file party members in lands ruled by those movements. Their mission includes ideological indoctrination in the dangers of "imitating the West" (such as watching television), but they mainly enforce Wahhabi standards of behavior in public. Their constant and degrading interference with ordinary people has brought about growing discontent. If judicial scrutiny is imposed on the mutawiyin, Saudi Arabia will undergo a profound change in its social life.

A kind of adjunct to the tens of thousands of state-subsidized clerics, the mutawiyin are a pillar of Wahhabism in the kingdom. They prowl the streets of the main Saudi cities day and night. Jeddah, the commercial capital on the Red Sea, is the notable exception: Local residents claim to have run the mutawiyin out of town. Elsewhere, however, they seek out people they suspect of violating the Wahhabi code of conduct. If a woman walks outside her home in the full body covering known as the abaya but allows a fold of cloth to slip, exposing her ankle or face, the mutawiyin may scold her or strike her. If they suspect that an unrelated man and woman are meeting in public places, the patrollers may detain and harass them, insulting the female for alleged lewdness, and beating the male. If people keep walking when the call to prayer is heard and do not rush into the nearest mosque, the mutawiyin may swarm and assault them for impiety. Given the Islamic ban on intoxication, if the militia are informed that alcoholic drinks or drugs are being used in a private home, they may raid the house and beat and even kill people. If Muslim pilgrims violate the Wahhabi understanding of monotheism by praying at the shrine of Muhammad in Medina, they are likely to be taken aside and roughed up and, if they are foreign, deported.

Until now, the mutawiyin have not been called to account for their sometimes drastic deeds. They have no professional standards or training. They are free to assault people and then shove them on their way, making no record of the encounter, having carried out no official arrest, and making no provision for any hearing or further punishment, although offenses deemed particularly grave--alleged adultery, say--may land the suspect before a sharia court.

Members enter the mutawiyin from the kingdom's strictest schools and mosques. They are not paid, but are assigned to regular patrols. They wear no identifying uniform except a red-checkered headscarf. They travel in unmarked cars. Instead of a firearm, they carry an asaa, a long stick resembling a riding crop. But they have offices and detention centers, and both the chief Islamic cleric in the kingdom, grand mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, and interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz (notorious for asserting that 9/11 was the handiwork of Israel), say the mutawiyin are supported by the state. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has a chief, Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ghaith, and has lately appointed public-relations representatives, still unpaid.

The mutawiyin have benefited from the secrecy surrounding their internal functioning, and their "surprise" tactics help them maintain an atmosphere of intimidation. Their defenders claim the mutawiyin follow a prece dent in the strictest school of Sunni sharia, identified with the 9th-century jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose followers organized patrols for "prevention of sin." But such patrols remained a marginal phenomenon in Islamic history, often condemned, until the emergence of the Saudi state in the 20th century.

The Mutawiyin in Court

On July 1, three Saudi judges began a court inquiry into the death last month of a Saudi citizen, Ahmed Al-Bulawi, 50, who had been detained by the mutawiyin in the northwestern town of Tabuk. On July 2, however, four members of the religious militia accused of responsibility for the death, and whose trial had already been postponed once, were released on bail; the previous Friday, mosques in Tabuk had broadcast sermons calling on local Muslims to defend the accused.

Al-Bulawi's case represents a microcosm of the mutawiyin's history. His alleged crime consisted of inviting a Moroccan woman who was not his relative and was unchaperoned by another male into his car. His relatives demand that those who caused his death be executed. Local authorities claim that Al-Bulawi died of natural causes, although the lawyer for his family told the media that the victim's remains showed he had been beaten in the face and head. The official medical report has not been released. For what it's worth, the unnamed Moroccan woman has revealed that Al-Bulawi formerly worked as her driver.

A little before Al-Bulawi's death, in May, Salman Al-Huraisi, aged 28, died in mutawiyin hands in Riyadh. His home had been raided by militia members looking for alcohol and drugs. The Saudi daily al-Watan (The Nation) reported on June 28 that a lawyer for Al-Huraisi's family had been denied access to a medical report on the fatality, but that Al-Huraisi had died after blows to the eye and head.

Some 18 mutawiyin participated in the raid on Al-Huraisi's home, and one of them is now due for trial. Local authorities initially sought to absolve the mutawiyin in the case by throwing a blanket of equivocation over them. Representatives of the governor of Riyadh claimed that the as-yet-unidentified individual accused of the killing was not on patrol when the victim died. The pro-al-Qaeda media enterprise Al-Sahat (The Battlefields) praised this attempt to deflect blame from the mutawiyin as appropriately protecting the militia's status. But some Arabic media insist Al-Huraisi's assailant was a leader of the mutawiyin. As in the past, vagueness about how the mutawiyin operate enables their alleged misconduct.

Finally, a 50-year-old Saudi woman known as Umm Faisal ("mother of Faisal"--her full name is undisclosed) has filed suit against the mutawiyin for an incident in 2003 when she, her daughter, and a foreign maid were verbally and physically harassed while waiting in a car for her two sons. The three women were charged with public immorality, in line with Wahhabi teaching that the presence of women in cars amounts to solicitation of prostitution. On July 3, the complaint of Umm Faisal became the first ever civil action in which a representative of the mutawiyin was summoned to court, although, again, the trial was postponed, this time until September.

With all this, the kingdom is atwitter about the mutawiyin. It is proof of the entrenched totalitarianism of Saudi society that such small steps as the charging of four militia members for Al-Bulawi's death and the court appearance of a militia member in the Umm Faisal matter are seen by ordinary Saudis as significant developments, potentially heralding a new epoch in the kingdom's life.

Naturally, the defenders of the Wahhabi order are intent on the mutawiyin's survival. Prince Nayef has publicly reaffirmed his support, though not loudly enough for Al-Sahat, which complains that the all-male Shura Council appointed by the king has failed to open more mutawiyin centers and authorize payment of members. The Shura Council seems to walk a fine line between popular disaffection with the mutawiyin and extremist pressure; it also rejected reform proposals that the mutawiyin wear uniforms and include female personnel.

Predictably protective of the institution is the Wahhabi establishment. On June 21, the newspaper Al-Madina reported that the grand mufti had denounced "unfair" media criticism of the religious militia and called for repression of the critics. The grand mufti is a descendant of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703-1792), originator of the Wahhabi sect. His position has been hereditary since the Al-Wahhab family contracted a permanent alliance with the Saud clan, who leave religious affairs to the Wahhabi offspring while keeping the reins of state power for themselves.

Amid these investigations and declamations, other sporadic and confusing measures have been proposed to ameliorate public dissatisfaction with the mutawiyin. When the case of Al-Bulawi first came to light, it was announced that 380 members of the militia would be trained in "interpersonal skills," surely one of the most bizarre statements yet from the Saudi authorities. The mutawiyin further promised to create a review process for their members' practices. At the same time, however, they rejected questions about their activities put forward by Saudi human rights activists.

Moreover, recent examples of outrageous behavior by the mutawiyin abound. At the beginning of June, a certain Fahd Al-Bishi of Riyadh complained to the media that the militia had crashed their vehicle into his family car and harassed him on his daughter's wedding day because they suspected his son of drinking or traveling in the company of women unrelated to him. In March, the mutawiyin burst into Prince Salman Hospital in Riyadh and fought with security personnel while ostensibly chasing a drug dealer. A few days before that, the mutawiyin had been taught a lesson in the restive Eastern Province, whose large Shia Muslim population is subject to continual discrimination. A patrol detained a man who was listening to music, a prime offense in Wahhabi eyes. After the individual was released, he returned with several friends and beat up the mutawiyin.

Indeed, by early this year, criticism of the institution had become so frequent that the militia refrained from its usual practice of violently interrupting the Riyadh International Book Fair, which opened in February, to search for banned literature. Many Saudis saw this as another small, positive step by the circle around King Abdullah, who is at odds with Prince Nayef, and is widely believed to seek a break with the past.

Throughout this chronicle one sees the contradictory symptoms of a deepening, as yet hidden crisis of the Saudi regime. The state defends the mutawiyin while promising change, but not too much change. People speak out more candidly, but a primitive institution like the mutawiyin continues to get away with shocking acts. Trials are promised, and begin, and then are put off, under the sinister gaze of Nayef. Precisely how events will unfold is impossible to foretell, but it is not too much to say that if the mutawiyin are ever finally held to answer for their long career of oppression, the entire Wahhabi establishment may begin to crumble.

Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Irfan al-Alawi is a close observer of Saudi affairs based in the United Kingdom.

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Vietnam experiences a "quiet" sexual revolution

2007-07-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

A couple embrace on Thanh Nien street by the West Lake in Hanoi June 25, 2007. A 'quiet' sexual revolution is unfolding in Vietnam, an intensely family-oriented society that holds strong traditions of women being married by their mid-20s and having children. In the heart of the capital, Hanoi, a tree-lined boulevard aptly named Thanh Nien (Young People) runs between two lakes and is known as a 'lover's lane' for romantic trysts. (Kham/Reuters)

Vietnam experiences a "quiet" sexual revolution

By Grant McCoolWed Jul 11, 9:55 AM ET

A young woman lives with her boyfriend but hides it from her family, girls write blogs about love and relationships and couples seeking privacy cuddle in public parks at nightfall.
A "quiet" sexual revolution is unfolding in Vietnam, an intensely family-oriented society that holds strong traditions of women being married by their mid-20s and having children.
Huyen, a 30-year-old public relations executive, came to work in Ho Chi Minh City two years ago from Hanoi. After first staying with an aunt, she secretly moved into her boyfriend's apartment.
"I didn't tell my aunt," she said. "It is quite popular to move in together. Besides, Saigon is big and many couples who have moved together from other provinces live together."
Young people are dating more before marriage, having pre-marital sex, and have more outlets through the Internet to talk about the joys and problems of relationships than previous generations.
Parks in the city still called Saigon are popular at night among canoodling couples for whom privacy is a premium. Although economic change has altered the model of three generations living under one roof, it is still the norm for most.
Sitting on motorcycles with their backs to the road and oblivious to the surroundings, these couples are usually in their 20s, the age group that makes up more than half of Vietnam's 85 million population.
In the heart of the capital, Hanoi, a tree-lined boulevard aptly named Thanh Nien (Young People) runs between two lakes and is known as a "lover's lane" for romantic trysts. Couples cuddle and kiss on their bikes under the trees or in swan-shaped paddle boats out on the water.

LIGHTS OUT

The tradition dates back to the early 1980s when assignations were tacitly permitted by the straight-laced authorities, recalled sociologist Le Bach Duong.
"I still remember they would turn off the lights on Thanh Nien street at 7.30 or 8 at night so it was like an unwritten agreement between the electricity authority and the youth," said Duong, director of the Institute for Social Development Studies.
"At midnight, they turned the lights back on again."
Nowadays, the lights stay on.
It is all part of the socio-economic transformation in the communist-run country that was relatively isolated only 15 years ago after decades of war and economic failure.
"Somebody said it is a time of sexual revolution in Vietnam but it is a bit quieter than that, than what happened say in America in the 1960s and 1970s, but it's growing," said psychologist Khuat Thu Hong.
"It's difficult to explain such a rapid change."
The changes are especially sharp for single women, whose job opportunities and mobility have become equal to those of men in recent years of high economic growth and increased incomes as agrarian Vietnam moves toward industrialization.
Living arrangements are changing, especially for migrants who left home villages to study at university or work in offices and factories around the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.
Internet chat rooms, web sites, blogs and columns in the state-run "mass media" have become forums for young people to discuss love and sex and sexual orientation.
Vietnamese say attitudes toward sex and relationships have become much more open. However, most preferred not to use their full names in interviews, a telling sign that traditional family values still hold sway.
One outspoken woman is Nhu Khue, a petite 30-year-old who writes her own blog and is an active member of a web site for women www.traicasau.com/forum.
"In Vietnam, old people still want girls to be virgins but times are changing," she said.
Khue and others said that there is a perception that only Vietnamese women who date foreign men have pre-marital sex.

EXTRA-MARITAL AFFAIRS

In general, Westerners living in Vietnam view Vietnamese as abiding by traditional norms, but it is not a prudish society.
"Rice six days a week and pho (noodle soup) on the seventh," is a comment some Vietnamese make to indicate an extra-marital affair or liaisons with a prostitute.
Sharp beeps or vibrations on a married man's mobile phone can elicit quips about "the cat" (lover) calling.
Research on youth by a variety of organizations show that young people are sexually active at the same age as their parents, but the difference is that their parents were married and they are not.
These and other phenomena indicate that sex is no longer seen just for reproduction of children or an heir to work the farm, but more than that, experts said.
"Through our counseling we hear a lot of young people both girls and boys, talk about their pleasure," said Hoang Tu Anh, a medical doctor with the Consultation of Investment in Health Promotion non-governmental organization.
"In the last two or three years, there has been an upsurge in short stories or novels written by female writers on female sexuality," Tu Anh said.
The group runs a web site www.tamsubantre.com that provides a forum for people to chat under the auspices of a moderator about marriage, relationships and reproductive and sexual health.
Donors such as the United Nations Population Fund and others back a Sunday evening call-in show on Voice of Vietnam radio called "Windows of Love," a forum for people of all ages.
"It is quite remarkable that at least outwardly, all this change has not resulted in a break-up of social cohesion," said Ian Howie, UNFPA representative in Vietnam. "The rapidity of change seems to have been accommodated."

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

North Korea bans karaoke bars, Internet cafes?

2007-07-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

A Chinese man sings at a karaoke club (KTV) in Shanghai

Nation bans karaoke bars, Internet cafes?

Wed Jul 11, 9:48 AM ET

North Korea's security agency has ordered the shutdown of karaoke bars and Internet cafes, saying they are a threat to society, a South Korean newspaper reported Wednesday.
Refugees from the reclusive state say such outlets are largely located in the northern region that borders China and are frequented by merchants involved in cross-border business rather than ordinary citizens.
The North's Ministry of People's Security said in a directive that all karaoke bars, video-screening rooms and Internet cafes operating without state authorization must shut immediately, the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said.
The paper did not say how it obtained a copy of the directive.
"It is so promulgated under the mandate of the Republic in order to crush enemy scheming and to squarely confront those who threaten the maintenance of the socialist system," the daily quoted the ministry directive as saying.
"Most of the people who would go to these places are people who made quite a bit of money, normally not officials or the average person," said Park Sang-hak, an activist for human rights in the North based in South Korea.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

2007-07-15T14:50:00.001-07:00

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
===================================

Insights: Strategy and Politics
Women under Islam: Female genital mutilation

Globally, 130 million women and girls are said to have been 'circumcised'. As a cultural practice, FGM has probably been in existence for thousands of years.
Monday, July 09, 2007
By Adrian Morgan

Much has been written on the so-called "circumcising" of women, more appropriately called female genital mutilation or FGM. Globally, 130 million women and girls are said to have been "circumcised". As a cultural practice, FGM has probably been in existence for thousands of years. It has traditionally happened across Equatorial Africa, yet in the East and Horn of Africa it appears more widespread, probably as a result of Islamic influence.

In Yemen and Saudi Arabia the custom takes place, but in the Saudi kingdom it is only common in the south of the kingdom. In the United Arab Emirates FGM is not illegal, though public hospitals are forbidden from carrying out the procedure. It was primarily a custom of Somali, Omani, and Sudanese expatriates. However, there have been stories of European Muslims been sent to private clinics in UAE to have the operation. A study from the mid-1990s found that 30.8 percent of girls between the ages of 1 and 5 had undergone FGM.

In Egypt, at least 90% of women are believed to have undergone FGM. In 2005, a report by UNICEF had claimed that 97% of Egyptian women aged 15-49 had undergone the operation. Here, the issue has been a source of controversy. A CNN broadcast from 1994, in which a 10-year old girl in Egypt was shown being "operated upon" by an unskilled practitioner, caused hostile reaction. Egypt sued CNN for $500 million for damaging its reputation, but the case was thrown out by courts.

In 1995, after President Hosni Mubarak announced his intention to ban the practice, he was persuaded to drop prohibitive legislation. The move to ban FGM had been supported by the Dr Mohammed Syed Tantawi, the Mufti of Egypt, but had been fiercely opposed by the Sheikh of Al Azhar University, the largest Sunni theological college. Even a gynecologist from Cairo University, Dr Munir Fawzi, stated: "Female circumcision is entrenched in Islamic life and teaching." However, FGM was banned in general in Egypt in 1996, but was allowed in some circumstances if carried out by a doctor.

In November 2006 an international conference of scholars took place at Al Azhar in Cairo, and the general consensus was that the practice was "un-Islamic". In a final statement, the scholars announced: "The conference appeals to all Muslims to stop practicing this habit, according to Islam's teachings which prohibit inflicting harm on any human being." Finally, on June 28 2007, it was announced that the Egyptian health ministry had banned the medical profession from carrying out FGM, effectively outlawing it universally. On Sunday June 24 the Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa had said that there was no Islamic justification for FGM.

The edict by the Mufti and health ministry had come after an 11-year old girl, Budour Ahmed Shaker, had died after such an operation on June 21. Budour's mother had paid a doctor in Mina, just south of Cairo, $9 to perform the operation. The procedure had gone wrong and the girl died from an overdose of anesthetic.

There is one Hadith in the collection of Sunan Abu Dawud which claims that Mohammed approved of the practice for girls. Book 41 (Kitab Al-Adab or "General Behavior"), Hadith 5251 states:
Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah:
A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.

Though Sunan Abu Dawud is not regarded as "sahih" or "authentic" in the manner of the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim, the above Hadith is often quoted by Islamic scholars as a justification for FGM. The "spiritual leader" of the Muslim Brotherhood is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He has stated: "It is reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to a midwife: 'Reduce the size of the clitoris but do not exceed the limit, for that is better for her health and is preferred by husbands'. The hadith indicates that circumcision is better for a woman's health and it enhances her conjugal relation with her husband. It's noteworthy that the Prophet's saying 'do not exceed the limit' means do not totally remove the clitoris... Anyhow, it is not obligatory, whoever finds it serving the interest of his daughters should do it, and I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world."

The World Health Organization has long campaigned for FGM to be abolished. Three "types" of FGM are described. The method approved of by Qaradawi is Type 1: "Excision (removal) of the clitoral hood with or without removal of all or part of the clitoris." Type 2 is "Excision of the clitoris, together with part or all of the labia minora (the inner vaginal lips). This is the most widely practised form." Type 3 (sometimes called infibulation) is extreme: "Excision of part or all of the external genitalia (clitoris, labia minora and labia majora), and stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening, leaving a very small opening, about the size of a matchstick, to allow for the flow of urine and menstrual blood. Also known as pharaonic circumcision." There is a Type 4, which refers to pricking, stretching or cauterizing. Type 4 rarely happens in Muslim communities.

In Somalia, the types of FGM most commonly employed are Type 1 and Type 3. The latter method is extremely dangerous. The woman is bound for a period of up to 40 days for scar tissue to form, increasing the risk of infection. It also increases the risks when a woman becomes pregnant. The US State Department quotes a 1999 study which found that in Somaliland (north west Somalia), 91% of women had undergone Type 3, and 9% had undergone Type 1 FGM. In many parts of the nation, people believed the custom to be a religious obligation.

In Yemen, a 1999 study found that in the coastal region, 69% of women had undergone some form of FGM. Overall, the figure for FGM was around 23% of women aged 15-49. In outlying areas, the prevalence of FGM rises to 40%. Surprisingly, FGM was more common amongst educated women than the illiterate, though most girls were subjected to FGM during infancy. Only 9% of those who had been operated upon had the procedure performed by a doctor. The US State Department maintains that in Yemen most FGM is of the Type 2 variety, with Type 3 happening mainly amongst East African immigrant communities. The State Department quotes studies which claim that the Shafi'i sect demands FGM, and the Sunnis regard it as optional. One third of respondents to a 1997 survey claimed the custom was compulsory on cultural or religious grounds.

FGM occurs in south Jordan and Iraq. In the rural area of Germian, in Kurdish Iraq, a study found that more than 60% of women had undergone FGM. There is circumstantial evidence that FGM occurs in Syria, and suspicions that it also happens in Iran. It does not occur in Afghanistan, nor is it a practice in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Libya). The Bohra Muslims who live in Pakistan and parts of Gujarat in India do practice FGM. The Bohra are mostly Hindu in origin, who became converts to an Islamaili subsect of Shia Islam. A Bohra woman wrote: "I was circumcised when very young. I do not remember at what age. But I do recall the incident. My mother took me to the house of a woman in our Bohra mohalla. Except for the lady, no one was at home. I was told to lie down on my back on the floor and spread my legs. It hurt me bad and brought tears to my eyes. The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes."

There have been moves by many countries to outlaw FGM and to educate people of its dangers. However, in the West, where immigrants and refugees have settled, some have imported with them the problem of FGM. Many Western countries have introduced legislation to combat the practice. In France, where most victims of FGm come from Africa, a fine of 150,000 Euros ($203,911) and a 10 year jail term can be imposed for FGM against an adult, with a 20 year jail term for FGM against a minor under 15.

In Australia, six out of eight states have outlawed FGM. In the United States, FGM was banned under Federal Law in 1996 and between 1994 and 2006 it was also outlawed under State Law in 17 states. Britain outlawed FGM in 1985. Sweden outlawed FGM in 1982, but it soon became obvious that some migrants were taking their girl children abroad to have the procedure. As a result, a new law was imposed in 1998 to ban trafficking of girls outside of Sweden to undergo FGM.

In June 2006, 41-year old Ali Elmi Hayow became the first person to be convicted under Sweden's FGM laws. Hayow had arrived in Sweden in the 1980s and had gained citizenship. In 2002, when his daughter was 12 years old, he took two of his children to Somalia, where the daughter underwent the surgery. He claimed that "other people" had done the operation and denied the charges against him. He had taken the two children to Somalia with, he claimed, their mother's permission. The court was told that he had held his daughter down while she was mutilated.

The District Court at Gothenburg found him guilty of illegally taking the two children abroad, and guilty of arranging for his daughter to be mutilated. Both judgements were passed unanimously. Hayow was further told to pay his daughter 300,000 kronor ($41,000) in compensation, though she had demanded 650,000 kronor ($88,818). The judge said that the daughter had been a "credible" witness.

The issue of FGM has become political in Sweden and Norway. Nyamko Sabuni became Sweden's first black minister in October 2006. She was the country's integration minister. Ms Sabuni had previously argued against girls under 15 wearing the Muslim headscarf, she opposed honor killings, and suggested that all girls should undergo compulsory checks to ensure they had not been subjected to FGM. Muslim commentator Kurdo Baksi said: "I am very disappointed that a person whom I consider to be an Islamophobe has been appointed integration minister. It is a very poor start to a centre-right government's integration policy."

Norway outlawed FGM in 1995. In 2000, Kadra, a brave woman of Somali origins used a hidden camera to expose the way in which imams in Norway were encouraging FGM. This action caused her to be resented by the some members of the Somali community. In April she was beaten senseless by seven or eight Somali men. She said: "I was terrified. While I lay on the pavement they kicked me and screamed that I had trampled on the Koran. Several shouted Allahu akbar (God is great) and also recited from the Koran." Kadra received broken ribs in the attack.

Last week Oslo's largest hospital announced that over the past three years they had assisted 260 women who had suffered physical after-effects of FGM. Sarah Kahsay, a midwife said that young women had been suffering from urinary dysfunction and infections after their vaginal openings were sewn shut in "infibulation" (Type 3 FGM). Mostly the victims came from several Muslim African countries and Northern Iraq, where Kurdish girls as young as 11 or 12 had undergone FGM. Kahsay noted that 90% of referrals were of Somali origin, but her clients had also included young women from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Gambia and Senegal.

One famous Somali-born woman is Ayaan Hirsi Ali who fled to Europe where she became an MP in the Dutch parliament. She had been held down by her legs to undergo Type 2 FGM when she was aged five. She wrote: "I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat." Though Hirsi Ali acknowledges that FGM is not exclusively Muslim, does not happen in all Muslim countries and pre-dates Islam, she writes in her book Infidel that FGM is often "justified in the name of Islam".

Indonesia does not have a culture of FGM, but many of its Islamist leaders have Yemeni and Middle Eastern origins, such as the leading figures in the Front Pembela Islam and the officially disbanded group Lashkar Jihad. This group was founded by Umar Jafar Thalib in 1999. Thalib, who fought alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan, led this group to commit some of the worst atrocities in the religious sectarian conflict known as the Moluccan War. Between 1998 and 2003 this conflict claimed the lives of 9,000 people in the Indonesian islands, most of the victims being Christian.

In 2001, Lashkar Jihad used FGM as a tool in its forced conversion of 3,928 Christians living on six islands in the Moluccas (the Spice Islands). The converts, male and female, were forcibly circumcised without anesthetic. Researchers from Ambon island stated that those who carried out the circumcisions were Muslim clerics. Young girls, pregnant women, and even elderly women up to the age of 70 were forced to endure the procedure. A Christian priest said: "But we have never before seen anything like forced circumcisions in these islands. This is especially terrible for the women. How can they do that? Even Muslim women are not circumcised like this... it is forbidden in Islam."

Violence In The Name Of Allah

Afghanistan may not be one of the countries where FGM is "justified in the name of Islam" but the treatment of young girls is harsh. I have discussed forced marriage and child marriage, as well as honor killings in Afghanistan. One aspect of Islamist ideology in the country is the opposition to the education of young girls. The Taliban, friends of Al Qaeda and supposedly the "fundamental" proponents of Islam have consistently tried to prevent women from being educated.

The word "Taliban" meant "students". They tried to revive the form of Islam practiced in the 7th century. Most Taliban leaders had been educated at Deobandi madrassas, such as the Haqqania seminary in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Deobandi teachings accord women second-class status. Deobandis believe that "Women must not mix with men in public.Â Deoband tradition teaches that men are more intelligent than women and that there is no point in educating girls beyond the age of eight."

The Taliban came to power on September 27, 1996, when they castrated and tortured President Mohammed Najibullah, and hung him from a lamp-post alongside his brother. During their rule, the Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice enforced the Taliban decree that women should stay at home and not be in employment. They beat women with sticks, wire cables and hose pipes. Women were forced to wear the burka, which even covers the eyes with a grille of crochet work.

A US State Department report claimed: "In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan's highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to work."

Forced to live indoors, unable to make an income, with many widowed, the regime of poverty and privation led to women becoming malnourished. As one 35-year old widow said in the State Department report: "The life of Afghan women is so bad.Â We are locked at home and cannot see the sun."

Confined indoors away from sunlight and starved, many developed osteomalacia, a symptom of rickets, caused by a lack of sunlight and Vitamin D. The condition involves softening of the bone, making it liable to green-stick fractures. Dr Sima Samar was given the John Humphrey Freedom Award for her work for the human rights of women in Afghanistan. She ran schools and health clinics, and was subjected to death threats from the Taliban. She said at her medical clinic in Kabul in 2001: "Almost every woman I see has osteomalacia. Their bones are softening due to a lack of Vitamin D. They survive on a diet of tea and naan (bread) because they can't afford eggs and milk and, to complicate matters, their burqas and veils deprive them of sunshine. On top of that, depression is endemic here because the future is so dark."

When the US invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 the cruel regime of the Islamofascists in the Taliban came to an end, but their influence has not gone away. They continue to fight coalition forces and the Afghan government, but they also continue to deprive women of education. Those who defy their edicts against educating girls are despatched in revolting fashion.

In November last year, 46-year old Mohammed Halim from Ghazni paid the price for educating girls. He was snatched at night by Taliban members. He was partially disembowelled and then his limbs were tied to motorbikes. As the bikes sped apart, his body was ripped. The remains were publicly displayed as a warning to any who dared to teach girls. Halim was the fourth teacher in succession to be killed in the region. Fatima Mustaq is a woman director of education in Ghazni, and she and her family of eight children were subjected to death threats for educating girls.

On July 23, 2006, Michael Frastacky, a Canadian carpenter from Vancouver, was shot dead in Afghanistan. His crime had been to help build a school in the Nahrin Valley, a remote part of the Hindu Kush, where half the students were girls.

On March 8 2006, on International Women's Day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said: "From fear of terrorism, from threats of the enemies of Afghanistan, today as we speak, some 100,000 Afghan children who went to school last year, and the year before last, do not go to school."

A 2006 report by Human Rights Watch stated that last year, attacks upon teachers, students and schools increased dramatically, particularly in the southern regions. In January, there were 24 such attacks, in February there were 14, 8 attacks in March, 28 in April, 22 in May and 12 in June. From January to June 2006, the highest number of such attacks took place in Kandahar (36 incidents), followed by Helmand (27), and then Ghazni and Khost with 16 cases each.

A report from Oxfam from November last year paints a gloomy picture for the future of education, particularly for girls, in Afghanistan. More than half of Afghan children of school age - 7 million - do not attend schools. This is in denial of Article 43 (1) of the national Constitution, adopted on July 11, 2006, which states: "Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be provided up to secondary level, free of charge by the state."

Only one in five girls are able to make their way to primary schools, but only one in 20 girls receive a secondary education. Human Rights Watch and Oxfam agree that the presence of accessible schools is a problem, and where there is access to education, it is often provided by poorly trained teachers working in run-down buildings, often with only one or two rooms. These schools can be in need of repair, and most have no clean drinking water or toilet facilities. Textbooks are few and far between.

Oxfam claimed that 53,000 trained primary school teachers are needed immediately, with a further 64,000 in the next five years. There is a need for more women teachers, as only one in three are female. eachers in Daikundi province in central Afghanistan only receive $38 per month. Sometimes these teachers have to offer bribes, just to receive their wages.

There are 20,000 "ghost" teachers who are paid salaries but do not attend schools. The international community, states Oxfam, must donate $563 million to rebuild 7,800 schools across the country. An additional $210 million is needed to print and distribute textbooks over the next five years. Currently, $125.6 million has been given to Afghan's education sector. The largest donors of these funds are USAID and the World Bank. Coalition military forces in Afghanistan also contribute towards education.

When the Taliban were in power, their behavior towards women was contemptuous. A woman doctor was stopped while traveling without a male escort (mahram) in a taxi. She said: "The Religious Police chased my taxi, and when I got out in front of the hospital, they stopped me and asked why I was traveling alone. I said I was a doctor and had to go to work, but they said women of Kabul are just prostitutes and addicted to traveling in cars alone. I had to call my boss to identify me as an employee of the hospital, but my boss said he could not confirm who it was because I was wearing a chadari. The Taliban asked me to put up my veil, and once my boss identified me, they hit me with their wire on my head and injured my eye. It took fifteen to twenty days to heal."

The Taliban may be seen as extremists, but there are plenty of "devout" Muslims who are still funding their activities. The Taliban experiment, which allowed Osama bin Laden a refuge where his cronies could plot atrocities such as 9/11 and work on chemical weapons and bombs in the Derunta training camp, was designed to be a return to original "Islamic values". Islamists and "devout" Muslims criticize the decadence of the West, but rarely if ever do these same people consider the social abomination that made up the Taliban regime.

All of the worst, most primitive aspects of Islam were exemplified by the Taliban - who were true "fundamentalists". They took to heart the notion that a woman's testimony was worth only half that of a man, and with their Deobandi ideology they even believed women were half as intelligent. They denied women education, health and human rights, and did nothing to prevent the Afghan culture of honor killings and violence against women. They believed in Sura 4:34 which gives a man the right to beat his wife to keep her under control.

Currently we have politicians in both the United States and Britain who are trying to "negotiate" with the Muslim Brotherhood. The true face of the Brotherhood can be found in the Gaza Strip, in the violence of Hamas against their opponents. Although the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood may dress in suits and ties, they are still ideologically primitive and rooted in the sexist tyranny of the 7th century. Their spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi supports Type 1 female genital mutilation, and preaches that it is acceptable to kill Israeli civilians. For Hamas, women are expected to go around veiled, and like women under the Taliban they are denied sunlight. Not surprisingly, cases of rickets amongst Palestinian children have increased with the rise of Hamas' Islamist factions. The WHO reported last year that more than 4% of all children on the Gaza Strip aged between 6 and 36 months were suffering from clinical rickets.

There are no women with positions of authority either in Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. Until there are, there is no point in discussing issues with these groups. Women in the West have equal rights to men, and that means having access to power. Islamists would deny women that power, and until they can acknowledge women as equals, they live in another ideological universe to our own.

Muslim women are probably more oppressed today by Islamist conventions than they were 20 years ago. Two decades ago women did not have to wear veils to prove their religiosity. Now, women who do not cover their hair, or even their faces, are bullied by their peers into compliance. For women to have genuine equal rights under Islam, the tenets and texts of that faith would have to be interpreted allegorically and not literally. Islamists do not understand allegory. They are slaves to dogma and expect everyone else, their womenfolk included, to eventually become their slaves.

This article was also published at FamilySecurityMatters.org

Adrian Morgan is a British based writer and artist who has written for Western Resistance since its inception. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society.

Thieves steal nearly $300 million from Baghdad bank

2007-07-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

Thieves steal nearly $300 million from Baghdad bank

Thu Jul 12, 10:43 AM ET
Thieves have stolen nearly $300 million from a bank in Baghdad, police and a bank official said Thursday, in what is probably one of the biggest thefts in Iraq since the 2003 war to topple Saddam Hussein.
Police said the thieves were three guards who worked at the private Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad's Karrada district.
They said that when bank employees arrived for work on Wednesday they found the front door open and the money gone. The guards, who normally slept at the bank, had also disappeared, they said.
An official at the bank said about $300 million in U.S. dollars had been stolen, as well as 220 million Iraqi dinars ($176,000). He declined to give further details.
Police said the Interior Ministry and the Finance Ministry had set up a committee to investigate the theft.
It was not immediately clear why the bank had so much cash on hand, but Karrada is a key commercial district in Baghdad.
Ever since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, most transactions have been conducted in cash because of limited facilities to transfer money through banks or other financial institutions.
Huge amounts of money were looted from Iraq's banks during the invasion.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.

Spiked report: Pollution may kill 750,000 Chinese annually

2007-07-09T19:20:00.000-07:00

Spiked report: Pollution may kill 750,000 Chinese annually

Bennington, VT — China’s rapid economic growth has happily brought many material benefits to a people deserving of prosperity after the initial decades of communist mismanagement and misrule. Still today up to 750,000 people annually may be dying as ironic victims of the industrial success as a byproduct of the widespread pollution which literally is suffocating and choking the Mainland. And in the best traditions of the People’s Republic, information about pollution’s brutal human cost has been air-brushed from a World Bank report as to avoid “social unrest.”
The report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has been significantly edited at the request of the Chinese government. According to the Financial Times of London, “Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.”

The newspaper adds, “Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers. The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.”

Three-quarters of a million people are dying from pollution, (in the old days Maoist purges and land ‘reform’ easily reached those numbers), and it’s the usual yawn, yawn!

According to the Financial Times, China “engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”. Given the tinderbox of social problems in rural and urban China, the Communist Party fears that even seemingly non-political issues can quickly flash-up into conflict. In light of the ruler’s historic fear of chaos, there’s a perverted logic to preserve the status quo of silence, but at what cost?

Beijing’s Marxist mandarins are masters at censorship, or what is more politely called “responsible or patriotic reporting.” Since London’s Financial Times broke the sordid story, there’s naturally the impulse of the ruling Communist Party to whitewash the findings. This is expected. What should hardly follow seems to appear that the World Bank has kowtowed to these political pressures.

While communist China has operated with a culture of cover-up, corruption, and crony capitalism, within the one party state rule, there remain serious socio/economic pressures for change. Now in the countdown to the Communist party congress in October, PRC leader Hu Jintao has appointed two non-party Ministers to the government. Both the Health Minister and the Science Minister are European trained and not party members, meaning they have no formal access to the inner sanctum. Thus while Beijing can claim some political reform, the fact remains that the new Ministers, both in sensitive portfolios, can be easily sacked as fall guys.

Given that China has sixteen of the world’s most polluted cities, these findings in themselves should prove little surprise. Even Hong Kong which returned to Chinese rule a decade ago, now has a growing pollution problem. Sarah Liao, Hong Kong environment secretary told the Economist, “The sea breeze often used to save Hong Kong from the effects of filling the atmosphere with so many pollutants….we have got to the stage where we are swimming in a constant chemical soup.”

Despite the genuine social and economic reforms over the past twenty years, the People’s Republic political system remains authoritarian. Environmental issues remain very sensitive for the leadership who uses unchecked economic growth in some provinces as a tradeoff to the unchallenged political mandate by a communist party comprising fewer than five percent of the population. While fully aware of the need for a cleaner environment, Beijing views pollution issues as having the political potential to promote questioning of central authority and prompting unrest. Given the number of people dying from this pollution, the rulers have good reason to fear.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

Beijing censored pollution report
By Richard McGregorin Beijing

Published: July 3 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 3 2007 03:00

Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that its findings on premature deaths could provoke "social unrest".

The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.

China's State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to bank advisers and Chineseofficials.

"The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one adviser to the study told the Financial Times.

Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.

Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team, said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths "could cause misunderstanding".

"We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick," he said in an interview.

The pared-down report, "Cost of Pollution in China", has yet to be officially launched but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet, was released at a conference in Beijing in March.

Missing from this report are the research project's findings that high air pollution levels in Chinese cities are leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.

Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, resulting in severe diarrhoea and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was "reluctantly" excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.

The bank said the findings of the report were still being discussed with the government. A spokesperson said: "The conference version of the report did not include some of the issues still under discussion." She said the findings of the report were due to be released as a series of papers soon.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Google Earth Spills Secret Chinese Submarine Beans

2007-07-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

Google Earth Spills Secret Chinese Submarine Beans

By Katherine Noyes
TechNewsWorld
07/09/07 3:26 PM PT

A new Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarine is evident in Google Earth imagery. The submarine appears to be about 35 feet longer than the unsuccessful Xia-class sub because of an extended midsection that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the reactor compartment, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists.

Imagery on Google Earth revealed a new Chinese submarine to the public eye for the first time, according to a strategic security blogger with the Federation of American Scientists.

"A commercial satellite image appears to have captured China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarine," Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in his July 5 blog entry.

"The new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, is expected to replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) of a single boat built in the early 1980s," Kristensen added. "The new submarine was photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006 and the image is freely available on the Google Earth Web site."

Open Questions

The image shows what appears to be the new Jin-class submarine moored at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of Dalian, about 193 miles north of Qingdao, Kristensen said. It appears to be roughly 35 feet longer than the Xia-class sub because of an extended midsection that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the reactor compartment, he explained.

In 2004 the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence estimated that the Jin-class would have 12 missile launch tubes, as the Xia-class did; other sources have made different estimates. "The satellite image is not of high enough resolution" to resolve the question, according to Kristensen.

Though not confirmed in the Pentagon's May 2007 report on China's military forces, it is widely expected that China will build five Jin-class submarines, Kristensen noted.

Sensitive Information

This is not the first time images of potentially sensitive military information have been discovered on Google Earth, and it seems unlikely to be the last. Government officials in the United States and abroad have expressed concern over the potential uses of such information, and Google has declared itself open to discussion with governmental agencies if necessary.

"Google's mission is to organize and make accessible the world's information," Google spokesperson Megan Quinn told TechNewsWorld.

"Google Earth is an important component of that mission, as it enables individuals to explore and learn about their world, about places both foreign and familiar, and to gain new understandings of geography, topology, urbanism, development, architecture and the environment," she added.

Whose Responsibility?

Google Earth gets its images from a wide range of both commercial and public sources, Quinn said. "The imagery visible on Google Earth and Google Maps is not unique: Commercial high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery of every country in the world is widely available from numerous sources," she noted.

The imagery is also not real-time, Quinn explained, but rather anywhere between six months and three years old.

"We expect security concerns to be addressed primarily by the companies and governmental agencies that gather and distribute the images," Quinn said. Nevertheless, "Google takes security concerns very seriously, and is always willing to discuss them with public agencies and officials," she added.

Tempest in a Teapot?

How much of a risk Google Earth actually poses to military information is also open to debate. While the media tend to accentuate the spilling of secrets via Google Earth, most of the information that appears there has long been known already by intelligence organizations.

"The claim made by some that Google Earth increases the vulnerability of military facilities is, I believe, wrong," asserted Kristensen, who uses Google Earth routinely to monitor and analyze facilities worldwide.

"Google Earth and the public have merely been allowed to see a tiny fraction of the continuous and routine collection of intelligence from space that all major military powers do every single day," Kristensen told TechNewsWorld. "Nothing has been disclosed or compromised; the public has simply been allowed to see a little more of what's already going on."

Restricting Information

As for how the information could be used if put in the wrong hands, "of course Google Earth images can give bad people information they didn't have before, but better information has always enabled bad people to do bad things," Kristensen said.

"To argue that Google Earth should be limited because it helps terrorists target facilities is like saying we should ban all maps because they enable terrorists to find out where things are," he added. "Security of a facility is determined by the security perimeters and forces on site, law enforcement and counterintelligence operations, not whether people know the facility is there or its general outline."

Indeed, it's possible China allowed the sub to be photographed because it was ready to disclose it -- "this is as good a way as any," Herbert Strauss, a research vice president at Gartner (NYSE: IT) focusing on national security, told TechNewsWorld. "I don't think the Chinese were napping in this."

Counterintelligence Issues

Conceivably, governments can even use Google Earth and satellite images to mislead other governments with false information, Strauss pointed out, such as by adding unexpected shapes or dimensions to a submarine or airplane.

"Intelligence agencies are pretty practiced at the arts of deception and counterintelligence," Strauss said. "What you see is not always what you get."

In short, it's not at all clear this is even something the Chinese government will be surprised about, he added.

"This is not about secrets, but public debate," Kristensen noted. "Of course, countries that don't want a public debate about these issues might try to limit Google Earth."

Only a Starting Point

Google Earth may be attractive as an inexpensive, preliminary planning tool, but ultimately governments rely more on sources of higher-resolution and more timely images, Strauss said.

Indeed, it tends to be difficult to determine when most images on Google Earth were acquired, making them difficult to use for military planning, John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, told TechNewsWorld.

Google Earth also tends to include just one image of each point of interest, added Pike, who helped pioneer the use of public satellite imagery.

"A picture is worth 1,000 words, but two pictures are worth 10,000 words," Pike said. "You can tell a story with two pictures, but Google is only one image thick."

No Real Threat

Google Earth's inexpensiveness and accessibility have tremendous appeal for many purposes, Pike noted, and in fact "put me out of business" in the area of providing satellite images -- something Globalsecurity.org used to provide.

However, it's no threat to national security, he added.

"It's turned a huge number of people into amateur photo interpreters," Pike concluded. "But smart terrorists would never rely on it."

Google Earth imagery reveals entrance to China sub tunnel

Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Monday, August 7, 2006
Satellite imagery from publicly available Google Earth has been used to reveal an underwater submarine tunnel entrance located several miles south of the major Chinese naval facility at Yulin, on Hainan Island.

China has constructed an underground and underwater submarine facility on Hainan Island as part of a major buildup of naval forces in the South China Sea. The Yulin facility is strategically located close to the shipping lane from the Strait of Malacca.

Satellite imagery from publicly available Google Earth shows the major Chinese naval facility at Yulin on Hainan Island and, at lower right the underwater submarine tunnel entrance. Google Earth, courtesy Tim Brown

The tunnel was first discovered by private imagery interpreter Tim Brown of Talent-Keyhole.com, according to the current edition of East-Asia-Intel.com.
The tunnel is believed to be the base where China will deploy its newest attack and ballistic missile submarines. The Pentagon stated earlier this year that the new Shang-class attack submarine, formerly known as the Type 093, is entering service now. The submarine was described as a “next generation” system.

China is expected to deploy at least eight submarines at the base. The tunnel is one of 10 such submarine tunnels China has built to avoid detection and attack for its submarine forces.
China also is building a new ballistic missile submarine known as the Jin-class, which will carry JL-2 nuclear missiles. The Pentagon described the new missile submarine as “an additional, survivable nuclear option” to China’s strategic nuclear buildup.

A Pentagon report from 2005 said that China was using Hainan Island as a new power projection platform as part of its “string of pearls” strategy designed to control strategic sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to Northeast Asia.

The report said that Chinese activities are less about territorial claims than "protecting or denying the transit of tankers through the South China Sea.”

MISSING LINKS: COLUMNS ON THE SURPRISES OF GLOBALIZATION - CRIME

2007-07-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

MISSING LINKS: COLUMNS ON THE SURPRISES OF GLOBALIZATION

Crime The Hidden Pandemic

By Moisés Naím
July/August 2007

How crime is quietly becoming a global killer.

In the past five years, the bird flu epidemic claimed 186 victims worldwide. In the same period, another less-recognized but growing menace maimed or killed millions of people and produced massive economic losses. Like others, this dangerous pandemic ignores national borders and erupts in different places at different times. Inexplicably, it has surged in Boston and abated in Bogotá. Experts disagree about its precise causes and what explains its sudden eruptions. Unlike bird flu, it is not caused by a virus transmitted from one species to another; it is exclusively created and spread by people. I am talking about street crime.
The world is experiencing a crime pandemic. Crime rates are on the rise almost everywhere, and these statistics typically are distinct from the death and mayhem that comes with terrorism, civil war, or major conflict. The data reflect the booming number of civilians assaulted, robbed, or murdered by other civilians who live in the same city, often in the same neighborhood. Frequently, the victims are as poor as the criminals.

Crime has increased steadily for all the countries the United Nations measures, according to a 2003 U.N. report. Even in the United States, where crime rates famously declined since the mid-1990s, violent crime has risen sharply in the past two years. In 2005, violent crime had its largest annual increase in 15 years. The Police Executive Research Forum, a U.S. law enforcement association, reports that homicides increased in 71 percent of the American cities that were surveyed, robberies increased in 80 percent of them, and aggravated assaults with guns increased in 67 percent between 2004 and 2006. In Boston, murder rates are at an 11-year high. Crime is also a major problem in Britain; the European Union (EU) calls it a “high crime country.”

Of course, the United States and Europe are still relative paradises compared to other countries. In many, the situation has gotten so bad that frustrated citizens in Johannesburg, Mexico City, and even Milan have staged massive marches to protest the inability of their governments to protect them. And they are right. The streets of many cities have become more dangerous than war zones. Postcard-perfect Rio de Janeiro, for example, has become more dangerous than the bullet-riddled Gaza Strip. According to the Washington Post, 729 Palestinian and Israeli minors died as a result of violence and terrorism between 2002 and 2006. Yet in that same period, 1,857 minors were murdered in Rio.

And Brazil is not even at the top of the list. The world’s most murderous region is the Caribbean, followed by South and West Africa, and then South America. But the trend is global. Russia’s homicide rate is roughly 20 times higher than Western Europe’s. Rising crime rates are also reported throughout Asia.

In the poorest countries, the consequences of high crime rates are crippling. Crime increases the costs of doing business and makes countries less competitive. High crime rates can also scare away investors. “We were making good money in Colombia in the mid-90s,” the CEO of one multinational corporation told me. “But I decided that there was not enough money in the world to compensate for the despair that I felt during the many sleepless nights I spent worrying about my kidnapped colleagues there. We paid the ransom, got them back … and left the country.” The World Bank reckons that Latin America’s economic growth could be 8 percent higher if its crime rates dropped.

But the main reason to reduce crime rates is not to spur economic growth or attract foreign investors. The paramount purpose is to give citizens the right to walk their streets—or stay home—without fearing for their lives, a basic human expectation that millions around the world are increasingly losing.

Unfortunately, while the consequences of high crime rates are clear, their causes are far less so. Consider, for example, the notion that crime is the inevitable consequence of poverty. This idea is as common as it is wrong. There is no correlation between poverty and crime. Some poor countries have high crime rates; others don’t. Russia is far richer than Costa Rica, but its crime rates are substantially higher than those of Costa Rica. Some have suggested that crime rates may be explained by the strength of religious institutions, measured by church attendance and involvement in religious activities. Again, the statistical evidence isn’t there. Countries with high church attendance rates, such as Guatemala or the Philippines, for example, can also be plagued by murder.

So what drives up crime rates? Researchers can agree upon little beyond the general notion that crime soars in places where there is a combination of a high percentage of young males, ample drugs, and easy access to guns. Economic inequality and urbanization also accelerate crime rates (but experts disagree by how much). And, once criminal behavior takes root in a neighborhood or city, it takes a long time and an immense effort to reclaim the streets.

It is easy to dismiss growing crime rates as either a local problem or one that has been with us since time immemorial. But that would be a major mistake. Because, though we may have recently lost ground, the problem has the potential to be a far greater global nightmare. Consider China and India. They have growing populations of young males, growing levels of economic inequality, and rapid urbanization. And, though drugs and guns are still relatively hard to come by, they’re becoming easier to obtain every day. If these two nations become more like other poor countries in this regard, too, their crime rates could soar to unimagined levels. Suffice it to say, the crime pandemic would never be hidden from anyone again.

Moisés Naím is editor in chief of FOREIGN POLICY.

Crime and corruption: Enduring problems of post-Soviet development

Shelley, Louise I
Louise I. Shelley is a professor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Society and the School of International Service at American University and founder and director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) there.

In 1994 Demokratizatsiya published its first issue on organized crime and corruption. The issue, a compendium of Russian and American authors, focused on the severity of the problem and its centrality to post-Soviet economic, political, and social development. At that time, it was a daring and unconventional approach to post-Soviet studies. The publication provoked a significant response, and many were startled by its conclusions. The editors of Demokratizatsiya concluded that more attention needed to be paid to crime and corruption because few in the post-Soviet studies community or the policy community understood the significance of those issues. In our analyses we identified it as a security issue, a human rights problem, and a development issue. The regional focus of the journal has taken in the diversification of the crime and corruption problem, which has grown over the decade.

Throughout the rest of the 1990s, Demokratizatsiya published much on those issues and addressed not only domestic problems of crime and corruption but Western complicity. The corruption of foreign aid to Russia and the former Soviet states became an important recurring theme in our issues. The pioneering work of Janine Wedel on corruption and collusion in foreign assistance was published in 1996. The ideas first published in Demokratizatsiya in 1996 were recognized in 2001 by the prestigious Grohmeyer prize for major contributions to humanity.

Demokratizatsiya's critique of the crime and corruption issue was not confined to Russia. Works identified the criminal-political nexus in Ukraine, since affirmed by the indictment of former prime minister Pavel Lazarenko in Switzerland for money laundering and the ongoing criminal investigation of his activities in the United States. Essays on Kazakhstan addressed the problem of corruption, particularly that linked to the energy sector.

Human trafficking out of the former Soviet Union and nuclear smuggling, issues of increasing concern were addressed in Demokratizatsiya before they became so topical. The multiple consequences of these crimes were presented in the multidisciplinary fashion that characterizes the journal.

The controversial position that Demokratizatsiya took in exposing the crime issue in the mid-1990s required courage on the part of our journal and the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, which publishes the journal. But the leadership of Heldref insisted that it was the responsibility of a foundation to publish controversial works that might not otherwise reach the public and policy makers.

In 2002, it is hard to believe that Demokratizatsiya's attention to the issues of crime and corruption took courage and aroused controversy. It is now the common belief that corruption is a major impediment to Russian development, that significant portions of foreign aid, World Bank loans, and IMF financial transfers never reached their targets and were diverted internally or transferred to offshore accounts. Anticorruption programs are now a major focus of the United States, the European Union, and other donors to Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union.

Organized crime and corruption have not been static phenomena. Russian organized crime and corruption are much more global than a decade ago. The problem of capital flight and international money laundering continues unabated, but the problem is cumulative. The outflows of capital now total in the hundreds of billions, denying Russia the investment capital it needs. The money lost through these outflows far exceeds the foreign aid committed to the region.

The major changes in the problem can be identified as follows:

Russia has high rates of homicide that are now more than twenty times those in Western Europe and approximately three times the rates recorded in the United States. The rates more closely resemble those of a country in civil war or in conflict than those of a country ten years into a transition.

Corruption and organized crime are globalized. Russian organized crime is active in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and South America.

Massive money laundering is more than a problem of capital flight. It allows Russian and foreign organized crime to flourish. In some cases, it is tied to terrorist funding.

Crime and corruption differ significantly in diverse regions of Russia.

Homicide

Many expected the Soviet Union to explode in violent conflict. Although there have been many regional conflicts, including the ongoing war in Chechnya, widespread political violence has not occurred. Instead, in Russia there has been an unprecedented rise in interpersonal violence, particularly homicide. This suggests that the violence is inner directed rather than outer directed and may be a substitute for more overt civil conflict.

The present homicide rate in Russia is approximately 22 per 100,000, far exceeding that recorded in the Soviet period. The vast majority of homicide cases are those connected with family members or known individuals. But homicide numbers have also increased because of the contract killings associated with organized crime groups. Contract killings are most prevalent in large urban areas and in regions of Russia with valuable enterprises and natural resources. The enormous increase in homicides is a consequence of such factors as the greater availability of arms, the reduced quality of emergency medical care, and the increased familial tensions resulting from high unemployment and the absence of social benefits. The armed conflict in the Chechen region may also contribute to the rise in violence in other regions of the country.

The homicide rate is approximately half that found in countries wracked by civil war, such as Colombia. Although Russia's violent conflict is confined to one part of the country, its patterns of homicide more closely resemble those of countries with serious internal conflicts. Its homicide picture diverges significantly from those in countries such as Ukraine that have much lower rates of homicide but no armed conflict within its borders. The divergence suggests that there are great differences in the processes of transformation in these regions.

Globalized Corruption

The globalization of Russian corruption has tarnished Russia's international image and undermined its state capacity. Capital flight and money laundering deprived Russia of the possibility of investing in its infrastructure, paying salaries, and maintaining the quality of its institutions and social services. Russia's billions could not be laundered without the complicity of many Western experts in the banking sector, the legal profession, and the accounting professions. For this reason, the offshore entities of Enron closely resemble those of Gazprom and Itera.

Russia's corruption is not confined by the borders of Russia. The recent bribe payers index of Transparency International put Russia in twentieth place among the top bribe payers. South Africa identified Russians as major "corrupters" in its region. Russians use corruption to internationalize their businesses and buy assets abroad.

Through front companies, trust agreements, and other vehicles to hide wealth, the corrupt and criminalized elite of the Soviet successor states have been the major beneficiaries of the globalized economy. The most deleterious aspect of this globalized corruption is that great portions of Russia's assets are now in offshore havens, outside the reach of Russians and are so successfully hidden that they cannot be recovered.

Globalized corruption has led to massive asset stripping from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, and to a lesser degree from the smaller successor states. The hundreds of millions of dollars tied to Pavel Lazarenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine, and the enormous sums tied to President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan in Switzerland suggest that there is a common trend in the former Soviet states. Elites grab the resources and the ordinary citizens lack the capacity to address the looting of their countries. Instead national resources become part of the globalized economy.

Post-Soviet Organized Crime

Post-Soviet organized criminals are now major actors in international organized crime. They have acquired the distinction because of the diversity of their activities, the global reach of their operations, their links with other organized crime groups, and the sheer volume of their activity. Their involvement in weapons trade internationally and in massive money laundering has made them threats to national security on a regional and international level.

The audacity of their crimes also makes their criminality receive great visibility. The recent indictment of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, an Uzbek member of post-Soviet organized crime, for fixing the Olympics is indicative of this high profile crime. Tokhtakhounov, even though he never set foot in the United States, was indicted in federal court in Salt Lake City for influencing Olympic skating judges to favor the French team. Residing in Italy because of his expulsion from France, he sought to acquire a coveted French residence permit to live in his expensive Paris apartment by currying favor with the French. His involvement with the Olympic fix was disclosed by wiretaps placed on his phones in Italy at the behest of the FBI.

The case highlights several of the most important features of post-Soviet organized crime. First, the crime is so transnational that criminals can be indicted for crimes committed outside of the former Soviet states. Second, the offenses are committed in two continents simultaneously. Third, undercover policing techniques requiring cooperation between American and Italian law enforcement are needed to address this crime.

Post-Soviet organized crime groups engage in a full range of illicit activity that includes human trafficking, drugs, and weapons. In the Far East, they also trade in Russia's valuable natural resources such as fish and timber. Their crime partners are the organized criminals of Japan, the Koreas, China, and Vietnam.

Central Asian organized crime groups are major players in the international drug trade because of their proximity to the massive drug production of Afghanistan. They are also key actors in human trafficking between the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan and western Europe. Many of these individuals are trafficked through Russia and Ukraine en route to their final destinations.

Organized crime groups with greater proximity to Europe are involved in all types of illicit activity and money laundering in that region. Recent arrests in Italy reveal illicit funds in the hundreds of millions of dollars and networks that stretch across western Europe.

The organized crime links are evident throughout the world. In Florida, a Russian organized criminal linked drug traffickers from Latin America with corrupt military from Russia to procure helicopters and submarines for the Cali cartel. A submarine under construction in Colombia for drug traffickers was being built with the assistance of Russian-speaking engineers. These are only a couple examples of the extensive links now evident between Ukrainian and Russian criminals and the Colombian drug cartels.

Conclusion

Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, crime and corruption remain enduring problems for the post-Soviet states. Although they were once seen as peripheral to development, the post-Soviet experience has dramatically illustrated that these problems are fundamental to the course of development. Moreover, understanding the dynamics of the crime problem can provide a key diagnostic tool in assessing social and political stability. The fact that terrorism thrives in regions with rampant corruption makes the problem all the more salient in the contemporary environment.

The rise of the oligarchs and their control of such a significant share of the Russian and Ukrainian economies have eclipsed some of the economic significance of organized crime. But the continued importance of contract killings in key industrial sectors suggests that important operative links endure between the industrial oligarchs and organized crime.

The centrality of the crime and corruption issue was evident to citizens of the successor states before the West was sensitized to these problems. This gap in perceptions was central to the failure to develop effective assistance programs for the Soviet successor states. Demokratizatsiya, in helping to identify the importance of crime and corruption for a Western audience, helped move the debate, and we hope that it contributed to development strategies more attuned to the needs and concerns of the citizens of the former USSR. But often this change in tactics came too late to address the now deeply embedded problems of organized crime and corruption.

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Winter 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Russian investigators at the site of the assassination of anti-corruption official Andrei Kozlov. Photograph: Reuters

Russian anti-corruption official shot dead

Michael Mainville in Moscow
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian

The official in charge of cleaning up Russia's crime-ridden banking system died today after being ambushed by gunmen who shot him in the head and chest.

Central Bank first deputy chairman Andrei Kozlov, 41, had shut down dozens of banks accused of money laundering and other crimes. Russian media reported that two gunmen had been lying in wait for Mr Kozlov last night outside a Moscow sports arena where Central Bank employees were playing football.
They opened fire when Kozlov emerged, killing his bodyguard and leaving him badly wounded. Kozlov was rushed to a nearby hospital and underwent emergency surgery but died in the early hours.

Though not as common as in the turbulent 90s, contract killings of prominent figures still occur frequently in Russia and officials said they had little doubt Mr Kozlov's murder was connected with his work.

Finance minister Alexei Kudrin said in a statement that Mr Kozlov had "repeatedly infringed upon the interests of dishonest financiers" and praised him as "a very courageous and honest person who was at the forefront of the struggle with financial crime".

Anatoly Chubais, the head of Russia's electricity monopoly who was himself targeted in an assassination attempt last year, called the killing "a blatant challenge to the entire Russian government system".

"This is a case when the authorities must respond in a tough manner, promptly and mercilessly," Mr Chubais said in a statement. "[Kozlov] was one of the most professional people in the entire Russian banking sector."

A meeting of the Russian cabinet today began with a moment of silence in Mr Kozlov's memory, after which interior minister Rashid Nurgaliyev promised an investigation.

Since becoming first deputy chairman at the Central Bank four years ago, Mr Kozlov had made many enemies with an ambitious scheme to fight criminality and increase transparency in the banking system. Many of Russia's 1,200 banks are used by criminal organizations for money laundering and other financial crimes. Interfax reported that Mr Kozlov's department has withdrawn the licences of 44 banks so far this year.

Mr Kozlov was also in charge of introducing a deposit insurance scheme aimed at restoring the public's faith in the banking system after thousands lost their life savings during Russia's 1998 financial crisis. He had refused to allow dozens of suspicious banks to take part in the scheme. At a banking forum in the southern city of Sochi last week, Mr Kozlov said the Central Bank was considering introducing measures that would ban bankers found guilty of money laundering from opening new financial institutions.

The last comparable high-profile killing of a Russian official occurred in October 2002 when Valentin Tsvetkov, the governor of the far eastern Magadan region, was gunned down as he walked with this wife and bodyguard down a popular shopping street. Tsvetkov was said to have made enemies with his attempts to impose more control on the granting of lucrative fishing licences. Two suspects in his killing were arrested earlier this year in Spain.

Mr Kozlov began his career at what was then the Soviet central bank at the age of 24. He rose swiftly in the ranks and became a deputy chairman in 1997. He left the bank for two years to work in the private sector before rejoining it in 2002. He is survived by his wife and three children.

Second Probe of UNDP-North Korea Scandal Set to Begin

2007-07-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

Second Probe of UNDP-North Korea Scandal Set to Begin
Saturday , July 07, 2007

By George Russell

The next round in the investigation of the United Nations Development Program’s scandal-tainted operations in North Korea is about to begin.

The question is whether it will be any more successful than the original probe in getting a clear picture of a UNDP program that the U.S. government, among others, charges was hijacked by the communist government of Kim Jong Il and funneled millions in UNDP hard currency into North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Another big question is how much, if any, of the UNDP’s documentation will be turned over to the auditors this time for inspection. The bulk of that documentation is still in U.N. safekeeping in Pyongyang — where the previous group of auditors was barred by Kim’s government.

The bell for Round 2 was quietly sounded nearly two weeks ago, in a June 29 letter from the United Nations’ board of external auditors to a U.N. General Assembly committee that examines budget issues. A copy of the letter has been obtained by FOX News.

The letter announces that the auditors, at the urging of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, will make a second attempt to probe the depths of the UNDP’s operations in North Korea, which were suspended in February after the Kim regime refused to accept a variety of new restrictions sparked by the U.S. accusations. When the new auditing effort will begin is not specified.

The North Korean government refused to cooperate in the first U.N. audit, which was published on May 31, and which corroborated many of the U.S. accusations, based in turn on confidential UNDP inspections done in previous years.

According to the Round 1 auditors, UNDP made unauthorized hard currency payments to the North Korean government, not only for its own work in North Korea but for a variety of other U.N. agencies — at least $72 million from 2002 to 2006.

UNDP had hired 22 of its 31 staffers locally, in some cases in oversight roles. The local employees were not only nominated by Kim’s dictatorship, but remained North Korean government employees. The auditors also declared that many inspections of UNDP development projects in North Korea were only carried out under North Korean escort and in some cases by the same local North Korean employees.

Despite all that, UNDP officials declared the initial audit an exoneration, leading to declarations of “dismay” by U.S. diplomats.

Since then, the issue has further morphed into a point of visible tension between the U.S. mission to the U.N. and top UNDP officials, especially the multibillion-dollar agency’s No. 2 man, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert, who allegedly threatened “retaliation” against the U.S. in closed-door meetings over the North Korea affair. Melkert and UNDP have strongly denied the allegation.

For their part, U.S. officials raised the stakes further by documenting additional UNDP fund diversions, in some cases to known North Korean weapons developers, from their own sources. UNDP has in turn rejected the U.S. allegations as based on false evidence and challenged U.S. diplomats to come up with more and better documentation.

All told, the confrontation has marked an extraordinary watershed in relations between the $5 billion U.N. flagship development agency and its largest single financial supporter. The U.S. contributes roughly $100 million to the UNDP budget and is a member of its overseeing 36-nation Executive Board.

The question is whether a further audit will clear the air — or add to the fog.

The auditors themselves do not appear to be entirely sure.

In the letter to the U.N. budget committee, the head of the U.N. auditing board, Philippe Seguin, gingerly declares that a second probe “will provide additional evidence” to back the conclusions of the initial report.

But the auditors backed away from recommendations in the earlier document that urged the U.N. seek “accountability” for the lapses outlined in its first report and attempt to trace where UNDP money might have migrated in North Korea once it left the agency’s hands.

Nor will the new probe attempt to clarify another explosive issue: the discovery of at least $3,500 in counterfeit U.S. money that had apparently been stowed for years in a UNDP safe in Pyongyang. Such efforts would be “investigative,” Seguin says, and thus outside the auditors’ mandate.

Finally, the new probe will depend once again on the whims of North Korea’s rulers on whether the inspectors will get to visit Pyongyang at all. Seguin’s letter makes clear that the auditors require “unrestricted access” to UNDP and other U.N. operations in North Korea, as well as visas, housing, and “agreement on access to all project sites.” All were refused for the first audit.

If that permission is not granted, UNDP officials have promised that they will bring their documents, both paper and electronic, out of North Korea for inspection — something the U.S. has demanded since before the initial audit took place.

But that in turn could raise questions about whether any of the records were erased or suppressed in the months since the controversy surfaced—or even if they all have then made the trip back from Pyongyang.

All such sparring, however, lies far ahead — provided that the U.N.’s promise to keep probing continues to be honored.

George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.

COMMENTARY

A Whistleblower's Tale
By MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
July 6, 2007; Page A9

It's been more than six months since the U.S. first shone a light on the corruption in the United Nations Development Program in North Korea -- a scandal potentially involving tens of millions of dollars used to help prop up the nuclear-armed regime of one of the world's most dangerous dictators. But never mind. It's all a Bush administration plot.

Such, apparently, is the considered view of the UNDP, which has spent the past half-year variously disputing the U.S. disclosures, justifying UNDP actions on "humanitarian" grounds, or offering an "everyone-does-it" defense. Ad Melkert, the former Dutch politician who is the No. 2 official at the UNDP and the point person for oversight of the program, even threatened to "retaliate" against the U.S., according to Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

In any case, Mr. Melkert seems to be more worried about his own job than the integrity of the organization he leads. In a June 23 article titled, "Smear Campaign, U.S. Against Melkert," the Dutch daily De Telegraaf, citing "insiders at the UNDP," reported that "conservative forces in the American government want the scalp of Ad Melkert."

So it's perhaps the right moment for a reality check courtesy of the man who blew the whistle on it all -- Artjon Shkurtaj, an Albanian-born accountant who served as chief of operations for all U.N. operations in North Korea from November 2004 to September 2006. Mr. Shkurtaj -- a veteran of UNDP programs in Bangladesh, East Timor, Kosovo, Mexico, India and elsewhere -- was outraged at the violations he encountered in North Korea. After two years of trying to persuade his superiors at UNDP headquarters in New York to take corrective action, he took his information to the U.S. mission to the U.N. in May 2006. The UNDP responded by firing him this March.

A preliminary report by U.N. auditors, issued last month, confirms massive violations of U.N. rules regarding hiring practices, the use of foreign currency, and inspections of U.N.-funded projects. In a series of interviews in New York, Mr. Shkurtaj says the auditors (who were barred by North Korea from going there) barely scratched the surface of the misconduct.

We get quickly to the bottom line: Did the U.N. money go to the humanitarian projects it was supposed to fund? "How the hell do I know?" responds Mr. Shkurtaj -- oversight was so poor, the involvement of North Korean workers assigned by the government so extensive and the use of cash so prevalent, that it was impossible to follow the money trail.

Mr. Shkurtaj arrived in North Korea on Nov. 4, 2004. He says one of his first indications that something was amiss was when checks denominated in euros and made out to "cash" arrived on his desk for signature. "Rule No. 1 in every UNDP country in the world is that you have to operate in local currency," he says, "not in hard currency. It's the rule number one of development. . . in order to support the local economy and not devalue or destroy the local currency."

"I didn't sign the checks for about a week," he says, and then "it became a real mess. Headquarters contacted me, and said, 'don't become a problem. You're going to wind up a PNG, a persona non grata, and ending up a PNG means the end of your career with the U.N. . . . We are authorizing you to go ahead and sign the checks . . . So I started signing."

"Every morning from 8 to 10, we would issue checks" in euros for staff and projects, Mr. Shkurtaj says. "Then the checks, instead of going directly to the people or institutions by mail, as they should go [as specified by U.N. rules], the checks were given to the driver of our office." The driver would take them to the Foreign Trade Bank, where he would "exchange them into cash and come back to the office." North Korea did not permit Mr. Shkurtaj to have access to the UNDP's accounts at the Foreign Trade Bank, which refused even to keep his signature on file.

Then, every day at noontime, "North Koreans saying they represented U.N.-funded projects would come to receive cash at the UNDP offices." Mr. Shkurtaj says he was not allowed to require the North Koreans to sign receipts for the money or even to present IDs. "I had to trust them," he says. "But, hey, if headquarters tells me to give the money away, I'll give the money away."

On Aug. 16, 2006, a few weeks before Mr. Shkurtaj left North Korea, the UNDP resident representative, Timo Pakkala, issued a memo to the staff noting "an increased use of cash payments, in some cases to payees that are not authorized to receive payments." Citing "UNDP policy," Mr. Pakkala ordered future payments be made by bank transfer or "non-cash cheque." He also ordered staff to obtain receipts and not give money to unidentified people.

Mr. Shkurtaj says nothing happened. "The same routine continued." On Jan. 31, in a memo to Kemal Dervis, head of the UNDP, he urged that "the cashing of checks from the UNDP driver must be stopped and UNDP must demand access to the Foreign Trade Bank in all transactions with our accounts."

As the recent U.N. audit confirmed, the North Koreans who worked at UNDP were selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which also collected their salaries; both practices were violations of U.N. rules. Mr. Shkurtaj notes, too, that North Koreans selected by the government performed "core" functions such as dispensing cash -- another violation of the rules. All communications tools -- fax and telex equipment, computer servers, the local area network -- "were in the hands of the North Koreans." "All the backup data [for the office's computers] were in a storage place completely isolated with a North Korean the chief of it." When Mr. Shkurtaj wanted to file a secure report, "I would go use the telex and communications satellite at the German embassy or other embassies in the compound."

A North Korean -- Li Kum Sun -- controlled the office safe in her job as "finance officer." "Damn it," says Mr. Shkurtaj, "you had security-evacuation plans in the hands of a North Korean. It's unbelievable." One of his few on-the-job successes was to get control of the safe and petty cash taken away from Ms. Li and handed over to him in March 2006.

The U.N. audit also found numerous irregularities regarding on-site inspections of UNDP projects. Most projects are located outside Pyongyang, and Mr. Shkurtaj says one way to determine whether the required annual field visits actually took place is whether the inspectors filed expense accounts. "Everybody -- meaning one driver, one translator . . . and one or two international staff would have received per diems," he says, or submitted vouchers for gas or overtime. "That is the proof that people checked the project." Yet, "in nearly two years in North Korea . . . I signed for a maximum of two or three" such trips.

Mr. Shkurtaj recounts two inspections he attempted to carry out himself. In one case, UNDP paid for 300 computers intended for Kim Il Sung University. "Instead of the computers coming to UNDP, they went to a warehouse outside town and we were allowed to inspect them only after a month and a half of fighting [with the government]. Then we were allowed to inspect only one computer in one box. The other boxes were not allowed to be opened."

Another inspection charade involved GPS equipment supposedly going to an agricultural project on flood control. "They didn't allow us for three and a half months to see the GPSs that we gave them," Mr. Shkurtaj says.

Finally, he says, "they took us to the outskirts of Pyongyang, to an empty building, completely empty -- no desk, no chairs, no nothing. We come in and go to the first floor. Empty. We go to the second floor. Empty. On the last door of the second floor, we enter. There is only one desk in the middle of the room, and on the desk are the GPS devices that we provided. Now, you're telling me we are providing GPS devices for an empty building, without people working inside?"

During the years he worked for UNDP in Pyongyang, Mr. Shkurtaj says he filed numerous reports to his superiors but got nowhere. Finally, with several months to go in his tour of duty in North Korea, he was recalled to New York.

He says that David Lockwood, deputy assistant administrator of the UNDP, told him, "Look, it would be good for your future if you come to New York and from here we'll send you somewhere else in the world. But you have rocked the boat too much right now and you should leave for your own good."

Mr. Shkurtaj's last day in North Korea was Sept. 26, 2006. When his contract came up for renewal in March -- the vast majority of U.N. employees operate under work contracts -- he was told that after 13 years of employment at UNDP his services would no longer be needed.

A few months before his dismissal, he received an "outstanding" rating in his annual review, dated Dec. 14, 2006 and signed by Romulo Garcia, chief of the Northeast Asia and Mekong Division. Mr. Garcia described Mr. Shkurtaj as "quick, professional, highly competent, creative, hard working and dedicated."

Mr. Shkurtaj has filed a complaint with the U.N. Ethics Office, asking for reinstatement under the U.N. whistleblower protection policy. Yesterday Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon asking him to look into Mr. Shkurtaj's dismissal. His case "appears to be a fundamental test of the UN's whistleblower protection policy, one of the touted hallmarks of internal U.N. reform in recent years," she writes. "It is also highly relevant to whether UNDP has adequately internalized the need for increased transparency and accountability." Her request followed a similar letter to Mr. Ban last week from Sen. Norman Coleman, asking that Mr. Shkurtaj be accorded whistleblower protection.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shkurtaj has sent his wife and two children home to Italy -- he is an Italian citizen -- and is fast depleting his savings. He says he is "living like a bum" in New York.

Ms. Kirkpatrick is a deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Kim's U.N. Banker
June 11, 2007; Page A12
The case of the United Nations and North Korea gets curiouser and curiouser. Only a week ago, the U.N. was claiming that a preliminary audit of its programs in North Korea showed "irregularities" that were no big deal. But now the U.S. has new evidence that U.N. funds intended to help the people of one of the world's poorest countries were diverted to prop up Kim Jong Il's regime.

The latest chapter in the Cash for Kim saga shows how the United Nations Development Program operated as the North Korean dictator's private banker. The U.N. agency facilitated Pyongyang's purchases of high-tech equipment that could be used for military purposes, as well as property in France, Britain and Canada. The outlines of the scam were reported over the weekend in the Chicago Tribune and Washington Post.

The details are worth studying, however, both for what they show about the sophistication of Kim Jong Il's financial manipulation and the lack of oversight by the UNDP. Unlike the $100 billion Oil for Food scandal, there's no proof that UNDP officials were in on the game, but there's plenty of evidence of willful blindness.

Many of the transactions were carried out through North Korea's National Coordinating Committee for UNDP, established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the ostensible purpose of financing UNDP's "NEX" projects and other activities. In U.N. lingo, NEX stands for "nationally executed" and refers to programs funded by the UNDP but staffed and operated by the country in which they are located. In North Korea -- where many projects were subject neither to site visits nor careful audits -- "NEX" apparently stands for "non-existent."

The U.S. says it has documents showing that more than $7 million in UNDP money between 2001 and 2005 often ended up elsewhere. The North Koreans transferred $2.7 million for "goods and equipment" to Zang Lok Trading Co., based in Macau. Zang Lok has ties to Tanchon Commercial Bank, which was designated in 2005 under President Bush's Executive Order 13382 as the main North Korean financial agent for sales of WMD. Doing business with Tanchon violates U.S. law.

Another $2.8 million was transferred to North Korean missions in Europe and New York to "cover buildings and houses," according to the payment details. A familiar name turns up in this transaction -- Banco Delta Asia, the Macau bank sanctioned for money-laundering by the U.S. Treasury. The payments went through accounts at Banco Delta Asia at the direction of International Finance and Trade Joint Co., another Macau-based entity.

Then there's the dual-use equipment. In May of last year, the UNDP procured and delivered to North Korea global positioning system equipment, a portable high-end mass spectrometer and a large quantity of high-specification computer hardware. The purpose? The equipment was designated for what the UNDP called an "agricultural assistance project for landscaping," supposedly to help with flood control. The U.S. says the UNDP country program for 2005-2008 mentions no such project.

The U.S. has also raised concerns that North Korea used the UNDP to cover up its counterfeiting. The UNDP often paid for foreign travel for North Korean officials. In a number of cases, North Korean employees of the UNDP appear to have abetted a money-laundering scheme involving real dollars and fake dollars and the UNDP's euro account at the Foreign Trade Bank in Pyongyang. The real dollars were pocketed by the government, while the fake ones were distributed by North Korean officials on their foreign travels.

We're told that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claims to be "shocked" by these latest U.N. findings. We hope that means he's finally motivated to buck the U.N. bureaucracy and insist on the independent, external audit of U.N. operations in North Korea that he promised in January. As these revelations show, there's a long way to go before we get to the bottom of the Cash for Kim scandal.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

U.N. Cash for Kim
Echoes of Oil for Food in hard currency for Pyongyang.

Friday, January 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

The U.N.'s Oil for Food disgrace rolls on, with this week's indictment by a federal prosecutor in New York of the program's former administrator Benon Sevan. But now a new dollars-for-dictators scandal is breaking into the open, this one involving the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) and North Korea's Kim Jong Il.

Our Melanie Kirkpatrick lays out many of the gory details here, based on documents reluctantly produced by the U.N. after prodding by American officials. The tale is similar to Oil for Food in that money for programs designed to benefit North Korea's poor appears to have been used instead to sustain the government. While the total amount of cash spent by the UNDP in North Korea isn't clear thanks to the opacity of U.N. record-keeping, any hard currency is manna from Turtle Bay for the isolated Kim regime. If dollar amounts into the tens of millions over nine years are accurate, that's money that would have helped Kim stay in power and continue his nuclear weapons program.

The documents we've seen follow the program back to 1998 and the era of detente between Kim and the Clinton Administration. But what's especially alarming is that the UNDP's programs have persisted in North Korea even as Kim has banished U.N. weapons inspectors, raised the volume on his threats, tested long-range missiles and even tested a nuclear weapon--all in defiance of the U.N.'s own stated positions and Security Council sanctions.

A defense that the UNDP merely does humanitarian work--for the people of North Korea and not the government--isn't credible given the details exposed by Ms. Kirkpatrick. U.N. officials can't even say with confidence that all of the "development" projects exist because they haven't been allowed to visit their sites. Pyongyang officials insist on payments in cash that become fungible hard currency for the regime. Every U.N. dollar is one more that Kim doesn't have to raise from other (and often illegal) sources to pay off his generals or to buy a nuclear centrifuge.
The desire in some circles, including parts of the U.S. State Department, will be to dismiss all of this as no big deal because the bigger game is getting Kim to end his nuclear program. So why let a little more U.N. corruption, or incompetence, interfere with serious diplomacy?

Well, one reason is because we still don't know how wide or deep this scandal is, especially if it extends to other U.N. programs operating in North Korea. Another is that any cash to Kim contradicts U.N. and U.S. policy and helps ease pressure on the dictator to give up his nukes. And then there is the matter of the U.N.'s own credibility and failure to reform. In the wake of Oil for Food especially, why would U.N. officials allow this program to continue?

The generous explanation is incompetence, or perhaps the kind of feckless idealism that really believes such a program helps poor Koreans apart from Kim's regime. But given the U.N.'s recent track record of indictments for corruption, more venal motives need to be investigated. And it is also worth asking whether outright hostility to the U.S. policy of trying to isolate Kim has also played a role.

Whatever the motive, the Cash for Kim scandal is one more blot on the record of former Secretary General Kofi Annan. It also raises questions about the role played in North Korea by Maurice Strong, the Canadian who was Mr. Annan's envoy to Pyongyang.

We'd feel a lot better if the U.N. had quickly responded to U.S. queries and tried to get to the bottom of the mess at UNDP. But the exchange of letters between U.S. Ambassador Mark Wallace and UNDP officials described by Ms. Kirkpatrick is certainly reminiscent of the early U.N. stonewalling on Oil for Food.

Mr. Wallace and his colleagues from other nations on the UNDP executive board are right to demand a stop to the program and an independent investigation. The U.N.'s new Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, could make his own early mark by calling for a probe as part of a new era of U.N. transparency. Democrats in Congress could also be constructive by insisting on accountability, especially given how much stock they put in a competent U.N. to promote American security.
One lesson of Oil for Food, and its failure to lead to any serious reform, is that to some foreign policy elites there can be no such thing as a U.N. "scandal." That's because for them the U.N. is all about good intentions, and the hopes and dreams for peace, rather than about actual results. But it is precisely that forbearance that has allowed too many dictators to exploit the U.N. for their own purposes, and has brought Turtle Bay to its current low ebb. Getting to the bottom of Cash for Kim is one more chance to make the U.N. shape up, and to stop financing a global menace in the bargain.

U.N.'s 'Cash for Kim' Scandal: Ban Should Look Next at North Korea, World Food Program

By Claudia Rosett
Fox News
January 22, 2007

Bravo to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations for digging into the doings of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea and uncovering streams of cash flowing via the UNDP to Kim Jong Il’s regime.

That story, broken last week by FOX News and the Wall Street Journal, presents the U.N.’s new secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, with his first big test. Ban has responded by promising an “urgent” outside investigation of the global U.N. system, in which this latest scandal is just one tip in a flotilla of icebergs.

The challenge now is to ensure that Ban’s proposed investigation does not turn into yet another ritual cover-up, but instead marks the start of a real clean-up, both within the UNDP, and well beyond.

Most immediately under the microscope is some $27.7 million spent by the UNDP in North Korea over the past decades — with stunningly lax oversight.

The U.S. is questioning the extent to which the UNDP has been providing “Cash for Kim,” as the Journal, in deference to the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food debacle, dubbed the scandal.

In a press conference on January 19, defending the UNDP’s actions as perfectly aboveboard, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert, the organization’s No. 2 man, said, “We’re not talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.” Then, he added: “Over a period of 10 years it is of course tens of millions.”

Actually, this scandal points to a great deal more than that, even if Ban focuses for now only on U.N. operations in Pyongyang. The UNDP, while serving as coordinator of U.N. programs in Pyongyang, is just one of about a half dozen U.N. agencies that have been operating in North Korea, including UNICEF, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Food Program.

Combined, these agencies have poured close to $2 billion worth of resources into North Korea over the past decade or so, according to U.N. records. They have done this on terms giving Kim big opportunities to divert goods and charge fees for the benefit not of hungry North Koreans, but for his military and his gulag-running, missile-vending, nuclear-bomb-testing regime.

Of these billions in U.N.-dispensed largesse, the biggest portion by far has come via the World Food Program.

Since 1995 the WFP, according to its Web site, has shipped into North Korea more than four million tons of “commodities” — including such goods as rice, wheat and corn — valued by the WFP at $1.7 billion. A big part of this came courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, sent via the U.N. before Kim was busted in 2002 by the Bush administration for cheating on a 1994 aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal signed during the Clinton administration. For two years after that, the U.S. kept donations coming; then, since 2005 has refused to chip in. But even today North Korea continues to receive millions worth of resources via the WFP. And, the patterns appear disturbingly similar to the UNDP practices now under fire.

In the case of the WFP, Kim Jong-Il a little over a year ago gambled – successfully – on a ploy that dramatically reduced the WFP’s already limited ability to check where its aid really went. Kim’s regime declared in late 2005 that North Korea had no more need for direct food aid. But instead of closing up shop in Pyongyang, the WFP negotiated a new deal, which caved in to demands of Kim’s regime. The WFP agreed to cut back on the range and frequency of its monitoring trips and also promised to funnel some of its resources through state-run development projects. Under the label of a “Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation,” the WFP launched this arrangement last year, authorized it to run until March 31, 2008, and called for international contributions worth $102 million.

With the U.S. still holding off on aid, the WFP, according to a Jan. 17 bulletin on its Web site, has so far garnered only about 16 percent of what it asked for – resources worth $16.3 million. While a disappointment for the WFP, that amount still represents a handsome gift to Kim’s regime. A WFP spokesman, reached by phone in Bangkok, confirms that a number of the items listed in the Protracted Relief plan under a “project cost breakdown,” represent hard cash paid to the North Korean regime, or to local employees supplied – and vetted by — the Kim government.

Such items include $5 million for transport, storage and handling of the free food shipped in by the WFP; $1.39 million for “staff duty travel” within North Korea, including transportation and state guesthouse lodgings for WFP workers trying to monitor aid; $447,200 for “National consultants”; $106,400 for utilities; and $279,700 for “other office expenses.”

Under the heading of “Staff,” there also is an intriguing provision for $321,100 worth of “incentives.” The WFP spokesman explains this is projected funding to let international staff based in the hardship post of Pyongyang leave the country every six weeks for R&R – a trip that usually involves using hard currency to buy a plane ticket from North Korea's state-run Air Koryo.

Even with the WFP operating on a much lesser scale than originally envisioned in its most recent appeal, there appears to be room here for Kim’s cash-hungry regime to eke out millions for itself from this two-year project. To justify its continuing presence in North Korea, the WFP, in documents posted on its web site, provides such oblique comments as, “The capacity to import on commercial terms is limited so the country falls short of meeting its minimum needs year after year.” This comes at the end of a paragraph also attributing food shortages to “an unfavorable agricultural situation, general economic decline, environmental problems and natural disasters.”

But the WFP fails to mention the root cause of all this misery, which is the despotic Kim regime. It has systematically repressed and isolated North Koreans, starving to death an estimated one- to two-million people in the late 1990s, and stunting their lives today in order to keep its grip on power.

This regime is the overwhelming reason the economy remains rotten, the country remains so desperately vulnerable to floods and droughts, and commercial imports remain “limited.” All while the same North Korean government that is collecting overhead from UN agencies in Pyongyang enjoys seats on the executive boards of the UNDP, its affiliate the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), and of UNICEF – not to mention membership in the U.N. Disarmament Conference.

The WFP Web site includes a photo of the agency’s regional director for Asia, Tony Banbury, shaking hands with North Korea's director general for international organizations, Ri Hong-Sik, at the signing last year of the WFP’s new deal for North Korea.

That same director general currently is spending two weeks in New York, having flown business class at U.N. expense, along with two of his official cohorts from Pyongyang, for meetings of the 36-member executive boards of the UNDP/UNFPA and UNICEF.

When the U.S. Mission’s envoy for U.N. reform, Mark Wallace, pressed the UNDP recently for details of this North Korean jaunt to New York City, the UNDP reluctantly produced the information that the U.N. agencies in question were paying more than $35,000 for the roundtrip travel of the North Korean trio.

Interestingly, no other UNDP executive board members are getting this kind of subsidy. The UNDP has argued that this kind of subsidized air travel has happened before, but the case the organization cites is Afghanistan in 2002, after the collapse of the Taliban, when the Afghan government essentially was in U.N. hands. The UNDP has since said it is revising its policy to require member states to foot the bills for sending their officials to board meetings.

That’s a welcome change, but it does not address the deeper questions of why U.N. agencies that advertise themselves as agents of help, hope and good governance would entertain such client states as North Korea on their executive boards in the first place. The UNDP board also includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Pakistan. UNICEF also boasts China, Russia, Bolivia and Pakistan. And while the 36-member WFP executive board does not include North Korea, it does provide seats to some of Kim’s closest pals, including Syria, Zimbabwe, Russia (which has contributed $5 million cash, according to a WFP spokesman) and Cuba (which has sent $864,225 worth of sugar).

Emblematic of this setup was a statement in a backgrounder issued by the UNDP on January 19. Dismissing the use of U.S. dollars by U.N. agencies in North Korea as a “non-issue,” the anonymous UNDP officials who authored this document added, in what is evidently meant to be a defense of the agency, that the UNDP and other agencies in North Korea “stopped using U.S. dollars in 2001 at the instigation of DPRK government itself, which decreed as an anti-U.S. measure that the only hard currency to be used within the country should be the euro.”

The WFP spokesman confirms that inside North Korea, the euro is his agency’s medium – exchanged when necessary for North Korean won at the Central Bank. In other words, it’s not just that the U.N. lets Kim milk its programs for hard currency; the U.N. agencies also let him choose which hard currency he prefers.

The current show of public resistance by the U.S. Mission dates back to questions sent to the UNDP by Ambassador Wallace last November, during the final weeks of tenure of former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton. There has been speculation at the U.N. that this was a swat by Bolton at one of his nemeses, Mark Malloch Brown, who before serving from 2005-2006 as former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, and then as deputy secretary general, had spent years running the UNDP. But a more plausible reason is that the U.N. Mission had spotted a serious problem of U.N. aid and development agencies helping to prop up a North Korean regime that had just tested a nuclear bomb, and is now sanctioned by the U.N. itself.

In the wake of exposure of the scandal, new Secretary General Ban’s immediate promise of a system-wide audit of U.N. funds and programs is a big improvement over the stonewalls of his predecessor, Kofi Annan. But the real issue here hardly stops with the book-keeping. If Ban goes down this trail, he will quickly confront a core failing of the UN — the chronic bias, in the name of helping the downtrodden, toward supporting the dictators who tread them down. At that point, he may have to choose whose side he’s on.

Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Oil's not well in Iraq

2007-07-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Iraq's economy

Apr 20th 2007
From The Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

Oil's not well in Iraq

The announcement of a study that suggests that Iraq's oil reserves could be almost as large as those of Saudi Arabia, the world's leader, has come amid fresh evidence of the monumental difficulty of realising that potential, as bombs in Baghdad left 200 people dead in a single day and Iraqi MPs wrangled over the details of new oil legislation.

The reminder of the scale of Iraq's unrealised oil wealth has come in the form of a report by IHS, an industry consultant, providing details of existing oil reserves and of more than 400 undrilled prospects and undeveloped discoveries. The Iraq Atlas estimates that Iraq has proven reserves of 116bn barrels (slightly higher than the standard industry figure), which could be supplemented by a further 100bn barrels in the barely explored desert region to the west of Baghdad. Saudi Arabia's reserves are put at 264bn barrels, with Iran occupying second place in the world ranking with 138bn barrels.

The IHS study confirms what most analysts of the Iraqi oil sector have long suspected. The giant oilfields discovered in the Kirkuk area in the north in the 1920s and in the southern region in the 1950s required the drilling of relatively few, shallow, wells, and there was consequently little incentive for major exploration and development efforts to be deployed elsewhere. The seizure of power by Saddam Hussein at the end of the 1970s ushered in a period of wars and sanctions that prevented any significant development of the Iraqi oil sector for more than a quarter of a century. Iraq's oil production capacity has fallen from a peak of 3.6m barrels/day to little more than 2m b/d, as the industry has suffered a further battering in the chaos and violence of the post-Saddam era. Iraq has the dubious distinction of having the highest reserve/production ratios in the world.

Since the US-led invasion in 2003 there has been only limited exploration drilling, mainly in the Kurdish region, and just three contracts have been let for existing oilfield development work—to Turkish and Canadian firms in the north and to Ireland's Petrel Resources in the south. These three schemes will add a total of some 350,000 b/d of production capacity by 2009. Further progress awaits an improvement in the security situation and the establishment of a robust legal framework that will allow foreign companies to invest.

Kurds object
The civil conflict that continues to tear Iraq apart has not stopped the government from addressing the critical question of passing a new oil law. In February the cabinet approved a draft law, allowing provincial authorities to negotiate development contracts, subject to review by a Federal Oil and Gas Committee. The oil minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that the law will be submitted to parliament for final approval in the next few weeks. However, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), which has attracted strong interest from international companies to explore for and produce oil in its relatively secure region, has voiced its objections to a number of items in annexes attached to the law since it was passed by cabinet. According to remarks attributed to its chief oil official, Ashti Hawrami, the KRG has been particularly exercised by the placing of virtually all of Iraq's oilfields under the control of the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC, which is to be re-incorporated under another law likely to be passed as part of a package, also including a law on distributing oil revenue to Iraq's 18 provinces based on population). This would have a damaging impact on the production-sharing contracts that the KRG has already signed and on new agreements that are under negotiation.

The KRG has been anxious to ensure that the law is sufficiently flexible to deal with the very different conditions obtaining in its region, compared with the rest of Iraq. In Kurdistan, investors are taking on considerable exploration risk, which does not apply to the numerous fields elsewhere in Iraq that have been discovered but not developed. The law requires the KRG to submit its contracts for review, but this process could be compromised if the fields in question are designated as being under INOC control in the annexes (which have yet to be published). The law itself provides for a number of commercial frameworks, including service contracts, exploration and development contracts and risk exploration contracts. It also recognises the need to provide adequate returns and incentives to investors, within the context of best serving the national interest.

According to Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic daily, one of the annexes specifies the different categories of fields. These include 27 in production and 25 close to production, all of which come under INOC's remit, as well as 26 that have been discovered but not exploited, which will be offered to investors and contractors. The annexes also provide details of 65 blocks to be offered for exploration, according to Al Hayat.

Mr Shahristani suggested that any remaining differences about details of the law can be ironed out by the end-May deadline for its passage. However, persuading international companies and financiers to commit resources to Iraqi oil projects in the current political and security circumstances will be another matter entirely.

Overhauling Intelligence

2007-07-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

Overhauling Intelligence
By Mike McConnell
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

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Summary: Sixty years ago, the National Security Act created a U.S. intelligence infrastructure that would help win the Cold War. But on 9/11, the need to reform that system became painfully clear. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is now spearheading efforts to enable the intelligence community to better shield the United States from the new threats it faces.
Mike McConnell is Director of National Intelligence of the United States.

INTELLIGENT REFORM

Before World War II, the United States' defense, intelligence, and foreign policy apparatus were fragmented, as befitted a country with a limited role on the world stage. With U.S. entry into the war, interagency collaboration developed out of crisis-driven necessity. Wartime arrangements, although successful, were ad hoc. And after the war, President Harry Truman and Congress realized that the United States could not meet its new responsibilities without a national security structure that rationalized decision-making and integrated the intelligence and military establishments. It was against this background that on July 26, 1947 -- 60 years ago this summer -- Truman signed the National Security Act, a seminal piece of legislation for the U.S. intelligence community that laid the foundation for a robust peacetime intelligence infrastructure.

With the proper tools and public support and the help of allies, the United States built the world's premier intelligence establishment. It put spy planes in the sky, satellites into space, and listening posts in strategic locations around the world. It also invested in its people, developing a professional cadre of analysts, case officers, linguists, technicians, and program managers and trained them in foreign languages, the sciences, and area studies.

But by the time the Cold War ended, the intelligence establishment that had served Washington so well in the second half of the twentieth century was sorely in need of change. The post-Cold War "peace dividend" led to a reduction of intelligence staffing by 22 percent between fiscal years 1989 and 2001. Only now is staffing getting back to pre-Cold War levels. The National Security Act mandated that information be shared up the chain of command but not horizontally with other agencies. At the time of the act's passing, little thought was given to the need for a national-level intelligence apparatus in Washington that could synthesize information from across the government to inform policymakers and help support real-time tactical decisions. That reality, coupled with practices that led to a "stovepiping" of intelligence, arrested the growth of information sharing, collaboration, and integration -- patterns that still linger.

All these shortcomings have made the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) and the creation of the post of director of national intelligence (DNI) timely and appropriate but, by themselves, insufficient. Indeed, these measures must be only the beginning of a larger reform. The state-sponsored terrorist groups that threaten the United States are accompanied by an ever larger number of nonstate actors moving at increasing speeds across geographic and organizational boundaries. These new actors blur the traditional distinctions between foreign and domestic, intelligence-related and operational, strategic and tactical. To respond, Washington must forge a collaborative approach to intelligence that increases the agility of individual agencies and facilitates the effective coordination and integration of their work.

BRINGING DOWN WALLS

The post of DNI was created in 2005 to transform and modernize intelligence institutions, rules, and relationships to meet today's intelligence needs. Since 1947, new threats to U.S. national security have appeared, new missions have been developed, and new intelligence agencies have come into existence. A national intelligence authority was needed to focus, guide, and coordinate all the United States' 16 intelligence agencies to better provide timely, tailored intelligence support to a wide range of users with different, and often competing, requirements. The National Security Act sought to unify U.S. military and foreign intelligence efforts, but it did not envision or provide for today's requirement to integrate intelligence and law enforcement. Our main challenge in doing this is to strike the right balance between centralized direction and decentralized execution so that the Office of the DNI does not just end up being another layer of bureaucracy on top of the existing structures.

Ensuring the integration of foreign and domestic intelligence collection and analysis, as the 9/11 Commission recommended, is one of the most important responsibilities given to the Office of the DNI -- and a vital component of striking that balance. How to do this while respecting and protecting the rights Americans hold dear has been among the most difficult challenges facing the intelligence community. The difficulties have been compounded by the need to operate under the rigid barriers put in place by the National Security Act. Under the act, U.S. intelligence capabilities involve four distinct areas of responsibility: supporting the president, engaging in clandestine activities abroad in support of national policy goals, protecting the United States against Soviet penetration, and supporting strategic military operations. The director of central intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are given responsibility over the first two, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the third, and military intelligence units over the fourth.

Today, sticking rigidly to these historical distinctions would be a serious impediment to protecting U.S. national security. The United States has enemies who seek to acquire and detonate weapons of mass destruction on U.S. soil. This is a constant and significant threat, and the intelligence community's work to thwart it must not be constrained by policies of the past. U.S. intelligence agencies started to integrate domestic and foreign intelligence operations after the first World Trade Center terrorist attack in 1993 and the follow-on attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. The work took on even greater urgency after the tragedy of 9/11. As a result, Americans today benefit from the combined intelligence work of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI's National Security Branch -- an office that brings together the bureau's counterintelligence, counterterrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and intelligence components. The DHS and the FBI are providing a more integrated approach to intelligence in order to protect the United States from foreign and homegrown terrorists.

But even as the wall between domestic and foreign intelligence collection was coming down, a wall between foreign intelligence and law enforcement remained standing. In 1981, for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration was taken out of the intelligence community because of concerns that it would improperly mix intelligence and law enforcement. But that commingling was absolutely necessary: with its large law enforcement presence abroad, the DEA is able to contribute unique narcotics information and overseas experience. Hence, last year, the DNI helped the DEA establish its Office of National Security Intelligence. This newest member of the U.S. intelligence community brings access, insights, and experience in foreign and domestic narcoterrorism.

Coordinating domestic and foreign intelligence continues to be a challenge. The intelligence community has an obligation to better identify and counter threats to Americans while still safeguarding their privacy. But the task is inherently a difficult one. New technology being developed by the Office of the DNI's chief information officer and chief technology officer to access and process vast amounts of digital data to find terrorist-related information is being overseen by the DNI's Privacy and Civil Liberties Office. Another challenge is determining how and when it is appropriate to conduct surveillance of a group of Americans who are, say, influenced by al Qaeda's jihadist philosophy. On one level, they are U.S. citizens engaging in free speech and associating freely with one another. On another, they could be plotting terrorist attacks that could kill hundreds of people.

COME TOGETHER

The DNI also needs to transform the culture of the intelligence community, which is presently characterized by a professional but narrow focus on individual agency missions. Each of the 16 organizations within the intelligence community has unique mandates and competencies. They also have their own cultures and mythologies, but no one agency can be effective on its own. To capture the benefits of collaboration, a new culture must be created for the entire intelligence community without destroying unique perspectives and capabilities.

The way to do so would be to follow the model provided by the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the military in the late 1980s. The Goldwater-Nichols Act created a unified military establishment and, among other things, laid the foundations for a "joint" military. It created incentives for interservice collaboration (such as requiring joint service to achieve flag rank) and promoted joint training and development. What Goldwater-Nichols did for the military, IRTPA should provide the means to do for the U.S. intelligence community.

Greater collaboration is vital because no single agency has the capacity to survey all the available information. The U.S. intelligence community collects more than one billion pieces of information every day. Intelligence can only help inform and shape decisions if it is processed through the mind of an analyst who resolves any conflicts and ambiguities. For example, a piece of paper with a list found on a suspected terrorist -- known in the field as "pocket litter" -- could turn out to be a grocery list or a coded roster of associates. It takes an analyst trained in what to look for to tell the difference. U.S. intelligence agencies will never have enough analysts to fully examine all the data they collect, but the ones they do have can do their job better by developing new ways of thinking about analysis and information distribution in a more integrated community.

As the intelligence community grew during the Cold War, it sometimes acted like anything but a collaborative community. Analysts often did not know their counterparts at other agencies unless they reached out to them on their own. There were few processes in place to collaborate, share lessons learned and best practices, and exchange viewpoints. This approach may have worked during the Cold War, when strategic threats evolved slowly and various streams of analysis could proceed independently before being combined, but it cannot succeed today, when events evolve quickly and require rapid action.

Consider a recent example. In the spring of 2005, the CIA and the military's Northern Command received information about two passengers aboard a plane flying from the Middle East to Mexico that would shortly cross U.S. airspace. Because the flight was not operated by a U.S. carrier and was not scheduled to land in the United States, there was no requirement for the passenger list to be reviewed prior to takeoff. Although the airline's ticket agent thought the two passengers appeared suspicious, the flight departed before their names could be checked. The airline passed on the names and the flight information to U.S. authorities, however, and this information was funneled to the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. government's hub for all counterterrorism intelligence, where analysts can access more than 30 separate government computer networks carrying more than 80 unique data sources. Within hours, the NCTC found information indicating that the two passengers had been placed on a "no-fly list" immediately after 9/11 because they had lived in the United States in the 1990s, had connections to two of the 9/11 hijackers, and possessed pilot's licenses. Based on this information, the plane was denied entry into U.S. airspace, and the pilot decided to return to Europe. The intelligence community's real-time coordination and rapid-response capabilities were essential.

Interagency collaboration needs to be established at two levels: intelligence collection and intelligence analysis. To this end, the Office of the DNI is in the process of developing virtual communities of analysts who can securely exchange ideas and expertise across organizational boundaries and harness cutting-edge technology to find, access, and share information and analytic judgments. Analysts are increasingly using interactive online journals, such as classified blogs and wikis, to this end. Such tools enable experts adept at different disciplines to pool their knowledge, form virtual teams, and quickly make complete intelligence assessments. Interagency joint-duty programs are also being implemented so that personnel from any agency can benefit from the knowledge of the entire intelligence community. An example of progress thus far is the newly created Rapid Analytic Support and Expeditionary Response, or RASER, team, a group of relatively new analysts drawn from all the intelligence agencies who undertake special training so that they can react rapidly to crises, drive intelligence-collection efforts, and work as catalysts for increased integration. Starting this summer, this elite "special forces" analytic team will be ready to be deployed against some of the United States' hardest intelligence targets.

The U.S. intelligence community also needs to know where collection gaps exist, where it needs greater specific intelligence, and on what areas it is overly focused. Some gains have been made with the creation of mission managers -- a recommendation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission -- who oversee and manage high-interest topics, such as North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence, for appropriate collection and analysis. The intelligence community is also investing in more in-depth and long-range analysis so that analysts can dig deeper into issues of concern for the future, such as the changing character of warfare and energy security, unencumbered by the demands of producing current intelligence. Furthermore, addressing a critical need emphasized by the 9/11 Commission and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, the intelligence community has formed "devil's advocate" and alternative analyses, examining, for example, whether avian influenza can be weaponized and how webcams could aid in terrorist planning. Beyond these efforts, the intelligence community can still learn a lot from commercial best practices and best-in-class analytic technologies to help its analysts sift through data and more rapidly identify key insights.

CULTURE SHOCK

Old cultures and practices need to be changed so that today's intelligence community can rapidly exchange information between officers on the ground -- both at home and abroad -- and decision-makers in Washington. Most important, the long-standing policy of only allowing officials access to intelligence on a "need to know" basis should be abandoned. The U.S. intelligence community needs to adopt a mindset guided by a "responsibility to provide" intelligence to policymakers, war fighters, and analysts while still reasonably protecting sources and methods. Significant progress has been made since 9/11, but policy and cultural impediments remain. The challenge now is to convince collectors that they are not data owners so much as data providers.

The way to do so would be to share threat information with state and local officials as well as members of the private sector. The unique contribution made by men and women on the ground is vital to U.S. national security. In 2000, for example, a county sheriff's investigation into a local cigarette smuggling case in Charlotte, North Carolina, uncovered a multistate terrorist cell supporting Hezbollah. In 2005, a local police detective investigating a gas station robbery in Torrance, California, uncovered a homegrown jihadist cell planning a series of attacks in Illinois. State and local partners should no longer be treated as only first responders; they are also the first lines of prevention. Changing mentalities in this way is the responsibility of the program manager for the Information Sharing Environment, which was created by the IRTPA and exists to foster a partnership between all levels of government and both the private sector and foreign partners in order to share terrorist threat information.

Another important area in which mindsets need to change is in hiring practices. Policy barriers have stood in the way of attracting intelligence professionals with the right skills and backgrounds. The responsibility to protect sources and intelligence-collection methods from unauthorized disclosure has heightened some organizations' risk aversion. As a result, intelligence agencies have faced significant obstacles in hiring some of the people they need most: first- and second-generation Americans with fluency in languages ranging from Albanian to Urdu and with unique political, technical, or scientific skills. These men and women possess cultural insights and skills that no amount of teaching can impart. If the intelligence community is going to reach out to native speakers, it must change its recruitment practices, which currently make it difficult to hire such candidates.

STAYING ON THE CUTTING EDGE

Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. intelligence community was at the forefront of technological innovation, be it for weapons systems, computers, or satellite technology. In the last 20 years, its lead has dwindled as innovation has moved from the public to the private sector and technological know-how has spread across the world. Worse still for the United States, its adversaries have been quick to adapt to technological improvements.

The U.S. intelligence community needs to harness the promise of advances in fields such as the biosciences, nanotechnology, and information technology. The new Intelligence Advanced Research Program Agency seeks to do just that, much as a similar Department of Defense program is doing to drive leading-edge technologies to meet defense requirements. One fruit of that effort was the development in 2004 of Argus -- named for the giant from Greek mythology with one hundred eyes -- which monitors foreign news media and other open sources for early indications of epidemics or other serious biological incidents, such as increased absenteeism, failures of health-care infrastructure, and other disruptions of normal life. At the outset of the avian flu outbreak in November 2006, Argus became fully operational and provided rigorous, validated information on the disease. Today, it monitors more than one million reports a day from nearly 3,000 sources in 21 major languages in 195 countries. In the future, Argus may be able to use open-source reporting to more rapidly detect other causes of societal disruption -- especially in closed societies -- such as nuclear accidents and environmental disasters.

Beyond developing technologies, however, it is essential to make sure new tools get from the drawing board to the field. To that end, our Rapid Technology Transition Initiative focuses on invigorating research and development so that ideas can be translated into usable tools quickly and cost effectively. RTTI has already shown its value. Since its deployment late last year, the FBI's Biometric Quick Capture Platform -- a portable database funded through RTTI -- has facilitated the biometric identification of suspects in custody overseas. It has helped users collect and store fingerprint data and perform real-time electronic searches of federal fingerprint databases. These queries can quickly establish links to a person's previously used identities and past criminal or terrorist record. Just two months after the release of RTTI funds to the FBI, the bureau's field personnel were using this tool to identify whether individuals in custody overseas had criminal records or were dangerous threats to U.S. forces.

But moving cutting-edge technologies into the hands of U.S. intelligence personnel means shortening timelines for developing these technologies. In this area, there is still much work to be done. The U.S. intelligence community's European colleagues, for example, are able to build, launch, and operate a new satellite system in about five years and for less than a billion dollars. By contrast, a U.S. spy satellite system, although admittedly more complex than a European equivalent, can take more than ten years and cost billions of dollars to develop. This is due, in part, to the larger number of requirements the United States tends to place on individual systems and its higher aversion to the risk of mission failure, both of which increase the systems' complexity and the demands placed on the technology. If the U.S. intelligence community is to close this gap, it will need a more disciplined, agile acquisition policy. It was to this end that the DNI recently elevated the task of acquisitions to the level of a deputy director of national intelligence (there are four deputy directors).

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

Although the United States is improving the nuts and bolts of its intelligence system, it must not lose sight of the strategic conditions that will determine the ultimate success of those efforts. The United States must comprehend the profound threats of the times and position its institutions to meet those challenges. The intelligence community understands the threats posed by terrorists inside and outside the United States, nuclear proliferators, and rogue and failed states. Now, it must set its priorities to meet these threats.

If the efforts to improve the intelligence community are to endure, they will need sustained support from the executive branch, Congress, and the American people. It will take years to fully clarify and coordinate the DNI's responsibilities and powers, transform the collection and analysis of intelligence, accelerate information sharing, change institutional cultures, build high-tech capabilities, and boost the acquisition of new technologies. And it will take the patience of the American people and their willingness to lend their talent and expertise to the intelligence community.

India's HIV cases plunge by more than half: survey

2007-07-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

India's HIV cases plunge by more than half: survey

By Kamil Zaheer

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in India is 2.47 million, less than half of previous official estimates, according to new U.N.-backed government estimates released on Friday.

India was thought to have the world's biggest HIV-positive caseload with 5.7 million infections but the new estimate puts it below South Africa and Nigeria.

The new figure was calculated with the help of international agencies, including the United Nations and United States Agency for International Development.

"We have about 2.47 million estimated cases which is huge in terms of numbers," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told a news conference. "In terms of human lives affected, the number is still large, in fact very large. this is very worrying for us."

The prevalence level of the infection was now estimated to be around 0.36 percent of the more than 1.1 billion population from the earlier 0.9 percent, he said.

The minister's comments came at the launch of the country's new $2.8-billion National AIDS Control Program, which aims to expand free treatment for HIV-positive people and roll back the epidemic through more prevention campaigns.

Previously, the United Nations had arrived at the 5.7 million figure by using hundreds of surveillance centers to test the blood of pregnant women and high-risk groups such as injecting drug users and prostitutes over four months each year.

But a new population-based survey that took the blood samples of 102,000 people to test for HIV among the general public -- rather than specific groups -- indicated for the first time India's HIV caseload was highly overestimated.

The United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) says population surveys that do not depend on someone going to a specific government clinic are "more representative" and generate "more accurate information" for rural areas and the male population.

Voluntary groups running anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns say the new, lower numbers should not deflect attention from the need to curb the spread of the deadly virus in a country with a crumbling government healthcare system.
© 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

India's HIV cases highly overestimated, survey shows

By Kamil Zaheer

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in India is 2.47 million, less than half of previous official estimates, according to new U.N.-backed government estimates released on Friday.

India was thought to have the world's biggest HIV-positive caseload with 5.7 million infections but the new estimate puts it below South Africa and Nigeria.

The new figure was calculated with the help of the United Nations and United States Agency for International Development.

"We have about 2.47 million estimated cases which is huge in terms of numbers," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told a news conference. "In terms of human lives affected, the number is still large, in fact very large. This is very worrying for us."

The prevalence level of the infection was now estimated to be around 0.36 percent of the more than 1.1 billion population from the earlier 0.9 percent, he said.

The minister's comments came at the launch of the country's new $2.8-billion National AIDS Control Program, which aims to expand free treatment for HIV-positive people and roll back the epidemic through more prevention campaigns.

Previously, the United Nations had arrived at the 5.7 million figure by using hundreds of surveillance centers to test the blood of pregnant women and high-risk groups such as injecting drug users and prostitutes over four months each year.

But a new population-based survey that took the blood samples of 102,000 people to test for HIV among the general public -- rather than specific groups -- indicated for the first time India's HIV caseload was highly overestimated.

The UNAIDS agency says population surveys that do not depend on someone going to a specific government clinic are "more representative" and generate "more accurate information" for rural areas and the male population.

"MORE PRECISE" ASSESSMENT

To determine the new estimate, both the population survey and surveillance data were used.

"The prevalence from the national survey has been used as almost a starting base," Peter Ghys, UNAIDS's Geneva-based Manager of Epidemic and Impact Monitoring, told Reuters.

"The expanded sources of data give us a much more precise assessment of what the status is of the epidemic," he added. "The new estimate is closer to the true prevalence."

Health experts say that in a number of countries, HIV caseloads and prevalence rates have fallen, often sharply, after they carried out population-based surveys.

In India, the fact that government surveillance centers are mainly visited by poorer people -- who are more affected by HIV -- and high risk groups led to the national estimate to be skewed upwards, they add.

Ramadoss said there was no plan to reduce funding for AIDS because of the lower estimate and added the government may actually increase funding, as 140 of India's 604 districts had a HIV prevalence of more than 1 percent.

Sujatha Rao, the head of the state-run National AIDS Control Organization, said India could not let down its guard.

"This is our last window of opportunity to reverse the epidemic and ensure it does not get into the general population because if it does, we are done for," Rao said.

Voluntary groups running anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns say the new, lower numbers should not deflect attention from the need to curb the spread of the deadly virus in a country with a crumbling government healthcare system.

© 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

North Korean Leader's Health Draws Attention

2007-07-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

N.Korean Leader's Health Draws Attention
By JAE-SOON CHANG 07.06.07, 1:14 PM ET
Talk of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's health emerged again this week when he made a rare public appearance looking a bit thinner and sporting less hair.

It was the first public view of the secretive Kim since late April, when he reviewed a military parade from a balcony over Pyongyang's main plaza, clapping and waving to his soldiers as they hysterically shouted cheers, appearing deeply moved by the rare glimpse of Kim.

This week, Chinese television broadcast video of Kim meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

The 65-year-old leader - revered as a near-demigod in his totalitarian nation - brandished a big smile and looked generally well. But he also appeared to have lost some weight and hair, and South Korean news media revived speculation that he might be in poor health.

Kim's condition is of international interest because he tightly rules isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea, which is participating in a six-nation forum shepherding Pyongyang toward giving up its atomic weapons.

The new view of the leader came after unconfirmed news reports that Kim underwent some kind of medical procedure involving his heart in May, performed by doctors flown in from Germany. He was said to be so weak he could not walk more than 30 yards without resting.

In response to questions last month, the German Heart Institute Berlin said it had sent a team of doctors to North Korea to perform operations there - but not on Kim Jong Il.

Still, one of South Korea's three largest newspapers, Dong-a Ilbo, speculated this week after the video of Kim that the reported medical procedure might have made Kim "markedly leaner" and caused him to lose hair, saying such symptoms are common after heart surgery.

Kim Won-jang, a cardiologist at Seoul's Asan Medical Center, said some patients can lose appetite and thus weight after a heart operation, but not all do.

Nobody but North Korea can give a definite answer about Kim's health conditions. But the regime, which is one of the world's most closed and tolerates no independent press, has never commented on Kim's health - an absolute taboo in the communist country.

South Korea's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said last month that Kim has long had heart disease and diabetes, but added that there was no sign the chronic ailments had progressed enough to affect his public activity.

"Our assessment of his health remains unchanged," an agency official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as required by his office, also said the agency did not believe the report that Kim underwent a heart procedure. He declined to elaborate.

Some independent analysts also do not think Kim has any serious health problem.

"We can't assess his health conditions just by pictures, but even by the pictures, he didn't look that different from before," said Koh Yu-hwan, a respected North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"I think there is no possibility of a (health) mishap, at least in the next one year or two," he added.

Paik Hak-soon, a top North Korea expert at Sejong Institute outside Seoul, agreed Kim looked a bit thinner and had less hair, but said he believes Kim's health conditions are not serious enough to affect his ability to rule. "Anybody of that age has some adult diseases," he said.

Kim has ruled North Korea with an iron fist since succeeding his late father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of the nation who built a personality cult that has survived his death.

The younger Kim, said to have a fondness for fine food, expensive alcoholic drinks like cognac and a passion for Western movies, has three known sons, but has not yet publicly designated any as his successor.

His health is of particular concern as international efforts led by the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea are gaining momentum in persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

After alarming the world by conducting its first atomic test explosion in October, North Korea pledged in February to shut down its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor in exchange for economic and political concessions.

After months of delay, caused in part by snarls in resolving a financial dispute with the U.S., the regime appears to be moving to fulfill its pledge. It reached an agreement last week with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on how to verify and monitor the planned shutdown.

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North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim slims down
Thu Jul 5, 2007 6:52AM BST
By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's trademark paunch presses a little less snugly against his jumpsuits these days, but is that due to a healthier lifestyle or is he recovering from illness?

Two South Korean dailies ran pictures on Thursday of a slimmer Kim, 65, at a meeting this week with China's foreign minister, alongside photos taken about a year ago, in which he seemed plumper and with more hair in his famed bouffant coiffure.

"Kim Jong-il is noticeably thinner," read the Dong-A Ilbo's headline.

The actual condition of the Dear Leader's health is one of the secretive state's most highly guarded secrets, known to only a small circle of intimates.

Last month, South Korea's National Intelligence Service issued a report to knock down speculation that a team of German doctors had flown to Pyongyang to perform heart surgery on him.

"Although Kim suffers from chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart problems, his health has not deteriorated enough to affect his public activities," the report said, according to a copy obtained by Yonhap news agency.

And Kim has been active in recent months, making a series of field guidance trips to army bases, factories and schools.

"The weight loss is not recent but he's been losing it gradually," said Koh Yu-hwan, an expert on the North at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"If you are overweight at his age, it's a problem," Koh said.

South Korean officials had the best look at Kim Jong-il in June 2000 when he hosted an unprecedented and unrepeated summit with then president Kim Dae-jung. The North Korean leader boasted a big belly and an appetite for rich and greasy food.

Intelligence sources said it appeared he had tried to adopt a healthier lifestyle in recent years, and might have quit smoking.

The North's official media, which treat Kim with god-like reverence, have also made a shift in their coverage of one health issue. Several stories since 2003 spoke of efforts to cut down on the number of smokers, where they published almost none before.

Kim was once a legendary eater, who demanded the best food for his table, according to a book by Kenji Fujimoto who served as his sushi chef for 13 years from 1988.

Kim ballooned in size during that period as he dined on choice pork from Denmark and caviar from Iran, all washed down with many glasses of top-of-the-range cognac.

"He's quit heavy drinking, cut back on meat a lot and also on smoking," said Jang Sung-min, a former aide to Kim Dae-jung. "When he's got to watch his diet like that, it would be natural for him to lose weight."

(With additional reporting by Jack Kim and Jessica Kim)

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Policy Watch: Korea after unification
By MARK N. KATZ
SAPPORO, Japan, July 6 (UPI) -- It may years away, but the unification of the two Koreas is bound to occur some day -- the most likely route through the collapse of the North.
This could occur because "Dear Leader" proves to be a threat to too many in the Communist leadership, who agree to unification with the South in exchange for retaining some position of authority in the unified state. Or it could occur as a result of a succession struggle emerging as a result of the demise, incapacitation, or de-legitimation of the "Dear Leader."

However and whenever it occurs, though, the unification of Korea is likely to result in the government of the South taking over the entire country. If this indeed happens, how will this affect Korea's international relations?

Many Chinese observers fear that the unification of Korea will be bad for Beijing since this will result in an even stronger Korea allied to the United States -- and possibly U.S. troops -- on its very border. This view, however, is probably mistaken. There is an old adage about international relations with extraordinary predictive value that runs as follows: "When the purpose of an alliance comes to an end, the alliance itself comes to and end."

Thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed in South Korea for over half a century because both Washington and Seoul fear another attack from the North. Once Korea is united, however, there will no longer be a North Korea to fear or a South Korea to fear it.

Considering the rise of anti-American sentiment that has taken place in South Korea even though it remains under threat from North Korea now, Korean attitudes toward the United States are likely to be even less friendly once that threat no longer exists. Korean public opinion, then, can be expected to seek a distancing from the United States soon after unification. Most, if not all, U.S. armed forces stationed there may be withdrawn from the South since they will no longer be needed against the North.

Korean-Japanese relations may also become rockier after Korean unification. There are already important strains between South Korea and Japan even though both now fear North Korea and are allied to the United States. The elimination of the threat from the North will lead to the surfacing of these Korean-Japanese differences -- many of which stem from Korean resentment of the Japanese occupation of Korea for several decades until the end of World War II.

Relations between a united Korea and Russia, by contrast, might improve dramatically. It has been many years since Moscow was the principal backer of Pyongyang; Beijing largely took over this role even before the downfall of the Soviet Union. While their reasons for it differ, the fact that resentment toward the United States is common in both Russia and Korea will serve to bring Seoul and Moscow closer together, as will their joint ambivalence toward Japan. If it hasn't occurred already, the collapse of the North will enable Moscow and Seoul to expand their trade relations through linking the Trans-Siberian Railroad with the Korean railroad system.

The most important question, though, is how a united Korea will relate to China. If, as predicted here, a united Korea distances itself from the United States and U.S. forces withdraw from Korea, China will be very pleased. On the other hand, a united Korea -- which combines the South's technical expertise with the low-wage manpower that will undoubtedly exist for many years in the former North -- will prove to be a formidable competitor with China both for exports to other countries and for investment from them.

In addition, South Korea has refused to recognize the territorial concessions that North Korea made to China in the past. The differences between Seoul and Beijing on this issue matter little so long as Korea remains divided but could become a major source of contention between them after unification.

China, it should be noted, has managed to peacefully resolve its border issues with most of its neighbors and may also be able to do so with united Korea. On the other hand, the mistrust between China and India stemming from the border they fought over way back in 1962 and have yet to agree upon shows that failure to resolve a border disagreement can have a long-term negative effect.

If united Korea's relations with China are relatively good, then Korea can afford to be relatively independent of the United States and Japan and friendly with Russia. If, on the other hand, united Korea's relations with China are relatively poor, Russia is likely to be neither willing nor able to help Korea against it.

Korea, then, may find itself relying once again on its old allies -- the United States and Japan -- despite its desire not to have to do so.

--

(Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University and a visiting fellow at Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center.)

May shut down nuclear reactor early: N Korea
(AFP)

6 July 2007

SEOUL - North Korea said Friday it is considering shutting down its nuclear reactor as soon as a first shipment of heavy fuel reaches the Stalinist state as part of a nuclear disarmament pact.

Energy starved North Korea agreed in February to shutdown and seal its key Yongbyon reactor, which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium, in return for 50,000 tons of oil from South Korea.

But the North Korean foreign ministry said the shutdown could now occur ‘without waiting for the total quantity of heavy oil to reach its port.’

‘(North Korea) is now earnestly examining even the issue of suspending the operation of its nuclear facilities earlier than expected, that is from the moment the first shipment of heavy oil ... is made,’ the spokesman said in a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

South Korea promised to send its first shipment of fuel oil to its impoverished neighbour next Thursday, amid efforts to persuade the communist state quickly to shut down its nuclear weapons programme.

The South’s Unification Ministry said Friday that 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil would leave southeast Ulsan port for the North’s Sonbong port on July 12.

The North’s decision to consider speeding up the closure was prompted by ‘the desire to facilitate the process of the six-party talks,’ the foreign ministry spokesman said.

Six-nation talks -- which involve the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States, began in 2003 in an effort to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme.

The North tested its first atomic weapon last October.

A timetable for the next six-nation talks may be announced by host China next week, South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Chun Yung-Woo said Friday.

‘There’s an expectation that China may know each countries’ situation by next week and make a decision on a date,’ Chun said upon arrival at Seoul’s airport after a trip to China.

‘We can predict a date depending on the arrival of the oil and what action North Korea will take. It would be good for the six-party talks to restart after North Korea shuts down its Yongbyon facilities,’ he added.

As part of the six-nation deal brokered in February, the North will receive another 950,000 tons of oil or equivalent aid, and major diplomatic concessions, if it permanently disables its nuclear plants and declares all its programmes. The South is paying for the first tranche.

The North said Friday that six-party members should speed up plans to provide the remaining 950,000 tons of heavy oil as part of the agreement.

‘It is a stark fact already known to the world through the agreement that the DPRK (North Korea) cannot unilaterally suspend the operation of its nuclear facilities unless other participating countries fulfill their commitments,’ the foreign ministry spokesman said.

UN nuclear watchdog inspectors confirmed last Saturday after a preliminary visit to North Korea that it intends to shut down Yongbyon.

The International Atomic Energy board will meet in Vienna on Monday to authorise a second mission to monitor and verify the shutdown.

A nuclear inspector said Friday his agency plans an ‘intensive’ presence in North Korea for the first few months.

‘For the first couple of months, there will be an intensive presence and quite a large number of inspectors monitoring the nuclear facilities,’ said Malcolm Nicholas, section head of the IAEA’s department of safeguards.

Nicholas, quoted by Yonhap news agency, told a Seoul forum the agency would reduce the number of inspectors after the initial shutdown stage, but that would not interfere with monitoring efforts.

S. Korea to ship 6,200 tons of fuel oil to N. Korea next Thursday

By Sohn Suk-joo
SEOUL, July 6 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will make the first shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea next Thursday as part of a six-party deal calling for the communist state to take steps to denuclearize in exchange for economic rewards and other incentives, the Unification Ministry confirmed Thursday.

"The first shipment of 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil will leave Ulsan port for Sonbong port in the North at 12:00 p.m. on July 12," the ministry said in a statement. "SK Energy has been chosen to provide 50,000 tons of oil."
The date of delivery, originally set for July 14, has been advanced as North Korea is moving to shut down its main nuclear reactor under the Feb. 13 aid-for-disarmament deal with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. The five regional players have engaged North Korea in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks since 2003.

With the early oil delivery, South Korea expects that North Korea will accelerate its process of shutting down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, about 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang.

North Korea is entitled to 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil as a reward for a series of steps to shut down and disable its key nuclear facilities. South Korea is responsible for the first shipment of 50,000 tons.

Last Saturday, working-level officials from the two Koreas agreed on the shipping arrangements. The South Korean portion of the aid should be sent within two weeks. The remaining 950,000 tons, to be split equally between the five parties involved in the six-way talks, will be given when the North takes further steps to disarm.

The cost of the aid is to be shouldered equally by the other nations in the six-party talks. But Japan has vowed not to provide any assistance to the North until the decades-old issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang is resolved.
Implementation of the February deal had been delayed pending resolution of a banking dispute over US$25 million of the North's funds that were once frozen at a Macau bank. The issue was resolved in June after the money was transferred to Pyongyang with the help of the U.S. and Russian central banks.

ssj@yna.co.kr

Who Dispatched Saudi’s Youth?

2007-07-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Who Dispatched Saudi’s Youth?
05/07/2007
Forty-five Saudis have been fighting with the terrorist group Fatah al Islam in Nahr al Bared camp. So far, 23 of them have been killed and were buried in a mass grave, as stated by the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon [Brigadier General Sultan Abul Ainain] in Asharq Al-Awsat last Monday. The names of some of those killed were published in ‘al Hayat’ newspaper.

But what had brought these young Saudi to Lebanon’s utmost north?! What could possibly have prompted them to meddle in the complexities of the Lebanese political chess game? What interest do they have in the conflict between the March 14th Coalition forces and the Lebanese opposition led by Hezbollah?

Have Saudi Arabia's youth been turned into fuel that is ready to be used in any fire that breaks out here or there?

Are they victims or perpetrators  or both?

Undoubtedly most, but not all of them, are naïve individuals who readily believe, readily execute and readily forget  but what is the machine that produces these men? Who operates it and does the maintenance work when it is ready to stop or breakdown?!

I pose these questions with full awareness that a great number of non-Saudi fundamentalists are also implicated in this issue, suffice it to mention the Jordanian [Abu Musaab] Zarqawi, the Egyptian Abu Hamza al Muhajir, the Syrian Abu Musaab [Abu Musaab al Souri, who is a former member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and a member of al Qaeda] and the Moroccan Karim Majati in Saudi Arabia.

Although I am aware of this, it still does not negate the reality that there are far more Saudi elements in the conflagrations breaking out everywhere. After all, weren’t 15 of the 19 men who carried out the 9/11 disaster Saudi nationals? Nearly every day we hear that a Saudi national had participated with al Qaeda in an attack in Iraq, or is being tried on charges of implication with al Qaeda, or is imprisoned because of a connection to fundamentalist militant activities. We must not overlook or ignore these facts.

There must be a ‘problem’ that facilitates the recruitment of Saudi youth, embroiling them into the world’s conflicts  naturally after stamping it with the ‘fundamentalist’ stamp and transforming every political crisis worldwide into a new Badr [Battle of Badr] that demands men  and there are plenty  who are willing to die and who love death as much as their enemies do, as the famous verse goes.

Didn’t some clerics in Saudi step forward to openly and mildly state that Bin Laden was simply an ‘erroneous mujtahid,’* as though this man was not responsible for setting the Muslim world ablaze, taking it back centuries and much farther than its original backwardness. And following the attack on Manhattan wasn’t Bin Laden regarded by many Saudi preachers and well-intentioned people as the emir of the mujahideen and the new Salahuddin [al Ayyubi]?

And yet still, this tempestuous storm did not abate until after Bin Laden directed his bombs on Saudi Arabia. His disciples began threatening to establish their emirate, publicly holding the state to be ‘infidel’. It was only then that the support for al Qaeda started to wane, but not disappear!

The perplexity that afflicts everyone when confronting al Qaeda, attempting to put an end to the spawning youth associated with it is due to the fact that the required remedy for the plague that is al Qaeda ideology is radical, sensitive and costly. Perhaps there isn’t the sufficient emotional, political and social capital available to expend on this remedy. Regrettably, this is the reality that has been stated time and again since the al Qaeda ‘devils’ began to roam the land. All land has become a potential theater for al Qaeda, the latest being London, the bastion of democracy and civilization.

A young Jordanian man of Palestinian origin traveled to London to study medicine at his government’s expense, but he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity that he was granted, something that is hardly available to other Palestinians. He ignored all that and dedicated all his efforts to terrorism  if indeed the allegations against him are true, in light of three botched attacks in London and Glasgow.

Naturally, we do not want to see these charges proved, but it would not come as a surprise if he was convicted amidst this atmosphere of poisonous ideology and the media discourse dominating the Arab and Muslim world today.

It would be pointless if some were to say that we are ‘exaggerating’ matters and that these young men are part of a small group, that everything is under control and that the problem is restricted  that is, if indeed they do admit that there is a problem in the first place. Some circumvent around the problem and avoid confrontation while circulating illusions and diverting society’s attention away from the real matter at hand by referring to false battles.

I broach Saudi as an example even though the same discussion could be applied to other countries, such as Egypt, to some extent. In Saudi Arabia, the real problem in society is the presence of some secularists who seek to empty Saudi of Islam, in addition to the existence of those who want to render women into cheap commodities and objects of lust and debauchery.

It is a dishonest oversimplification and a deliberate attempt at fostering such illusions. And yet still, some people persist in this endeavor and only stop nurturing such illusions whenever a major terrorist event takes place and awakens everyone from their deep slumber. However, soon after, everything goes back to normal and this boring, detrimental and stubborn [drama] series resumes.

The truth is that none of the prominent scholars in Saudi have called for the secularization of the kingdom. This is a lie. What was demanded by some intellectuals and writers, even among some of the circles of clerics and jurisprudents, is a reconsideration of certain religious and social conditions, the expansion of social horizons and ridding development of religious politicization so that the state may advance into the future without fear.

Amidst all this is a small and humble request: Guarantee us that Saudi youth will not be used as firewood to serve the blaze of global terrorism. Are we asking for too much?

Any honest man would acknowledge that this is a necessary and crucial step; it is not a matter of being too much or too little. However, this request is considered by those who benefit from keeping the social and religious affairs unchanged because it means the disintegration of the hegemony and the tutelage practiced in the name of virtue and religious zeal over the rest of the people.

Perhaps this situation might have been acceptable (but it is unacceptable under any circumstances) at a time prior to the emergence of terrorism, however the present situation is one in which such men want to have a finger in every pie. This is a time in which we should have an honest moment of silence for reflection.

These words are prompted by a love and concern for protecting the state and its security against the storms of politics and terrorism rampant everywhere. Gloating is completely absent from this equation because matters have escalated to the point where silence or engaging in courtesies has become almost like being an accomplice in crime.

After all, Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam and of the Two Holy Mosques. It is the leader of the Muslim world and the richest Arab and Muslim country. Saudi Arabia has constantly extended its hand in peace and benevolence to both the Arab and Muslim worlds, starting with the al Taif Accord, which helped rebuild Lebanon to the Mecca agreement between the two archenemies, Fatah and Hamas, of which the latter violated that agreement.

Saudi Arabia is the country on which hopes are pinned to bring about reform and provide support in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, as well as Iran and Turkey. Saudi Arabia is a giant powerhouse, but there are some who want to remove these aspects from promising picture so that the world would only regard it as a country that is comprised of youth who are readying themselves to be terrorists, some by [Abu Musaab] al Zarqawi’s in Iraq and others by [Shakir] al Absi’s in Lebanon.

Who will safeguard these young men, and who will bring them back to their senses? This must be achieved so that it does not come as a surprise when another batch of Saudi men surface in another part of the world.

* Someone who makes legal decisions in Islamic law in accordance with his own efforts and interpretations, traditionally a jurisprudent or scholar.

http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=9480

Audio: David Leigh on the Guardian's investigation into BAE

2007-07-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

Audio: David Leigh on the Guardian's investigation into BAE
By Guardian Unlimited / News 12:46pm

'It would be nice to think someone could be called to account'

The arms company BAE is accused today of paying more than £1bn to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia in connection with Britain's biggest ever weapons deal. Investigations editor David Leigh tells Jon Dennis why ministers can claim not to have been aware of the payments. (5min 23s)

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BAE FILES

BAE, Europe's biggest arms company, claims there is 'no evidence' that it has engaged in massive corruption to sell arms overseas.

David Leigh and Rob Evans have published the evidence and documents gathered round the world in support of those allegations. Readers can judge for themselves.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles

Thinktank berates Iraq policy and warns of countrys collapse

2007-07-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

A British soldier in Basra escapes a tank that a crowd set ablaze with Molotov cocktails Sept. 19

Thinktank berates Iraq policy and warns of country's collapse

Ian Black, Middle East editor
Monday June 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Iraq can only survive if a functional and legitimate state is rebuilt from the ruins of war and occupation, drawing on the lessons of the collapse of British-ruled Basra, an influential thinktank warns today.
Overall, says the International Crisis Group, it is not enough just to resolve the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shia and Kurds. And if the US and Britain continue backing the same Shia political actors, the likely outcome will be the country's break-up into myriad fiefdoms. "Far from building a new state," their Iraqi partners "are tirelessly working to tear it down".

In a powerful critique of current policy, the ICG insists it is vital to avoid repeating the experience of Basra, where UK forces implemented a security plan, Operation Sinbad, similar to the current US-led surge in Baghdad. "The answer to Iraq's horrific violence cannot be an illusory military surge that aims to bolster the existing political structure and treats the dominant parties as partners," it adds bluntly.

Operation Sinbad was a "superficial and fleeting" success, and ended with British troops being driven off the streets in what was seen as an ignominious defeat by the city's militias, now more powerful and unconstrained than before. Some British data about its achievements, particularly about improved police performance, "defies credibility", the group notes.

The key failure in Basra, argues the report, has been the inability to establish legitimate government to redistribute resources, impose respect for the rule of law and ensure peaceful transition at the local level - a lesson it says has to be learnt across Iraq as a whole.

"Basra's political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary - and fragile - balance of interests or of terror between rival militias."

Basra's "multiple and multiplying forms of violence" may have little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance but involve "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism ... and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."

"Should other causes of strife - sectarian violence and the fight against coalition forces - recede, the concern must still be that Basra's fate will be replicated throughout the country on a larger, more chaotic and more dangerous scale. The lessons are clear. Iraq's violence is multifaceted, and sectarianism is only one of its sources. It follows that the country's division along supposedly inherent and homogeneous confessional and ethnic lines is not an answer. It follows, too, that rebuilding the state, tackling militias and imposing the rule of law cannot be done without confronting the parties that currently dominate the political process and forging a new and far more inclusive political compact. "

For the ICG, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war but has also become a failed state. It describes "a country whose institutions and, with them, any semblance of national cohesion, have been obliterated. That is what has made the violence - all the violence: sectarian, anti-coalition, political, criminal and otherwise - both possible and, for many, necessary. Resolving the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds is one priority. But rebuilding a functioning and legitimate state is another - no less urgent, no less important and no less daunting."

================================================================================
http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/middle_east___north_africa/iraq_iran_gulf/67_iraq___lessons_from_basra.pdf
Where Is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra
Middle East Report N°67
25 June 2007

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Amid the media and military focus on Baghdad, another major Iraqi city – Basra – is being overlooked. Yet Basra’s experience carries important lessons for the capital and nation as a whole. Coalition forces have already implemented a security plan there, Operation Sinbad, which was in many ways similar to Baghdad’s current military surge. What U.S. commanders call “clear, hold and build”, their British counterparts earlier had dubbed “clear, hold and civil reconstruction”. And, as in the capital, the putative goal was to pave the way for a takeover by Iraqi forces. Far from being a model to be replicated, however, Basra is an example of what to avoid. With renewed violence and instability, Basra illustrates the pitfalls of a transitional process that has led to collapse of the state apparatus and failed to build legitimate institutions. Fierce intra-Shiite fighting also disproves the simplistic view of Iraq neatly divided between three homogenous communities.

Lack of attention to Basra is understandable. Iraq’s future is often believed to depend on Baghdad, and most of the spectacular bombings have taken place in the centre of the country, far from the southern city. Observers, by now accustomed to the capital’s dynamics, have had difficulty making sense of Basra’s and so have tended to downplay them. Finally, because U.S. forces have not been directly involved, news coverage has been both limited to Arabic and British media and forced to compete with the gruesome violence that is tearing the centre apart.

But to neglect Basra is a mistake. The nation’s second largest city, it is located in its most oil-rich region. Basra governorate also is the only region enjoying maritime access, making it the country’s de facto economic capital and a significant prize for local political actors. Sandwiched between Iran and the Gulf monarchies, at the intersection of the Arab and Persian worlds, the region is strategically important. Sociologically, Basra’s identity essentially has been forged in opposition not only to the capital but also to other major southern cities such as Najaf and Karbala. For these reasons, it is wrong either to ignore it or lump it together with an imaginary, undifferentiated Shiite south.

On its face, Basra’s security plan ranked as a qualified success. Between September 2006 and March 2007, Operation Sinbad sought to rout out militias and hand security over to newly vetted and stronger Iraqi security forces while kick-starting economic reconstruction. Criminality, political assassinations and sectarian killings, all of which were rampant in 2006, receded somewhat and – certainly as compared to elsewhere in the country – a relative calm prevailed. Yet this reality was both superficial and fleeting. By March–April 2007, renewed political tensions once more threatened to destabilise the city, and relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds. Basra’s residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before.

What progress has occurred cannot conceal the most glaring failing of all: the inability to establish a legitimate and functioning provincial apparatus capable of redistributing resources, imposing respect for the rule of law and ensuring a peaceful transition at the local level. Basra’s political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary – and fragile – balance of interests or of terror between rival militias. Inevitably, conflicts re-emerge and even apparently minor incidents can set off a cycle of retaliatory violence. A political process designed to pacify competition and ensure the non-violent allocation of goods and power has become a source of intense and often brutal struggle.

Basra is a case study of Iraq’s multiple and multiplying forms of violence. These often have little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance. Instead, they involve the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors. Should other causes of strife – sectarian violence and the fight against coalition forces – recede, the concern must still be that Basra's fate will be replicated throughout the country on a larger, more chaotic and more dangerous scale. The lessons are clear. Iraq’s violence is multifaceted, and sectarianism is only one of its sources. It follows that the country’s division along supposedly inherent and homogenous confessional and ethnic lines is not an answer. It follows, too, that rebuilding the state, tackling militias and imposing the rule of law cannot be done without confronting the parties that currently dominate the political process and forging a new and far more inclusive political compact.

Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. But before and beyond that, Iraq has become a failed state – a country whose institutions and, with them, any semblance of national cohesion, have been obliterated. That is what has made the violence – all the violence: sectarian, anti-coalition, political, criminal and otherwise – both possible and, for many, necessary. Resolving the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds is one priority. But rebuilding a functioning and legitimate state is another – no less urgent, no less important and no less daunting.

Damascus/Amman/Brussels, 25 June 2007

North Korean Human Rights After the Six Party Talks

2007-07-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

North Korean Human Rights After the Six Party Talks
April 19, 2007
Watch | Streaming MP3 | Save MP3 | Details

Featuring:

Jay Lefkowitz
Special Envoy,
Human Rights in North Korea

Hosted by:

Bruce Klingner
Senior Research Fellow,
Northeast Asia,
Asian Studies Center,
The Heritage Foundation

Inconvenient Truths Pan Am Flight 103

2007-06-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Inconvenient Truths
Hugh Miles
On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was 38 minutes into its journey when it was blown up at 31,000 feet. The explosion was so powerful that the nose of the aircraft was torn clean off. Within three seconds of the bomb detonating, the cockpit, fuselage and No. 3 engine were falling separately out of the sky. It happened so quickly that no distress call was sent out and no oxygen masks deployed. With the cockpit gone, the fuselage depressurised instantly and the passengers in the rear section of the aircraft found themselves staring out into the Scottish night air. Anyone or anything not strapped down was whipped out of the plane; the change in air pressure made the passengers’ lungs expand to four times their normal volume and everyone lost consciousness. As the fuselage plummeted and the air pressure began to return to normal, some passengers came round, including the captain. A few survived all the way down, until they hit the ground. Rescuers found them clutching crucifixes, or holding hands, still strapped into their seats.

The fuselage of the plane landed on a row of family houses in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. The impact was so powerful that the British Geological Survey registered a seismic event measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale. The wing section of the Boeing 747, loaded with enough fuel for a transatlantic flight, hit the ground at more than 500 miles an hour and exploded in a fireball that lit the sky. The cockpit, with the first-class section still attached, landed beside a church in the village of Tundergarth.

Over the next few days rescuers made a fingertip search of the crash site: 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground had been killed. Bodies and debris were strewn along an 81-mile corridor of Scottish countryside. Ten thousand pieces of debris were retrieved; each was meticulously logged. Among the items recovered were the remains of a Samsonite suitcase, which investigators later established had been used to transport the bomb. The suitcase had contained clothes, clothes that were subsequently traced to the shop of a Maltese man called Tony Gauci. Gauci later became a key prosecution witness. Fragments of a circuit board and a Toshiba radio were also recovered and identified as parts of the bomb.

Twelve years later, on 31 January 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges convicted a former Libyan intelligence officer for mass murder at Lockerbie. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was tried at a specially convened court on a former US air force base near the Dutch town of Zeist. Under a special international arrangement, the court, which sat without a jury, was temporarily declared sovereign territory of the United Kingdom, under the jurisdiction of Scottish law.

Al-Megrahi is still the only person to have been found guilty in connection with the attack. He was sentenced to 27 years in jail. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a fellow Libyan intelligence officer, was acquitted. Al-Megrahi was initially told that he would spend at least twenty years in prison, but the Crown, which was prosecuting, protested that this sentence was unduly lenient and petitioned the judges for a longer one. In 2003 the judges reconvened to rule that he must serve no less than 27 years before the parole board would consider his eligibility for release. Al-Megrahi’s defence team had already lodged an appeal against the conviction, but in March 2002 the guilty verdict was upheld.

From the outset the Lockerbie disaster has been marked by superlatives. The bombing was the deadliest terror attack on American civilians until 11 September 2001. It sparked Britain’s biggest ever criminal inquiry, led by its smallest police force, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. It spelled the end of Pan Am, which never recovered from the damage to its reputation. The trial at Camp Zeist was the longest and – at a cost of £75 million – the most expensive in Scottish legal history. The appeal hearing was the first Scottish trial to be broadcast live on both television and the internet.

Lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent. Robert Black QC, an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, was one of the architects of the original trial in Holland. He has closely followed developments since the disaster happened and in 2000 devised the non-jury trial system for the al-Megrahi case.

Even before the trial he was so sure the evidence against al-Megrahi would not stand up in court that he is on record as saying that a conviction would be impossible. When I asked how he feels about this remark now, Black replied: ‘I am still absolutely convinced that I am right. No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.’

Al-Megrahi lost his appeal in 2002, but under Scottish law he is entitled to a further legal review, to be conducted by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), an independent public body made up of senior police officers and lawyers. Its job is to re-examine cases where a miscarriage of justice may have occurred: it handles cases after the appeal process has been exhausted, and if it finds evidence that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place it refers the case to the High Court to be heard again. Al-Megrahi applied to the SCCRC for a review of his case in 2003 and the commission has been reinspecting evidence from the trial for the last four years. It will submit its findings at the end of June. It looks likely that the SCCRC will find that there is enough evidence to refer al-Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court. The Crown Office has already begun reinforcing its Lockerbie legal team in anticipation of a referral.

If al-Megrahi is granted a second appeal, it will, like the original trial, be held before a panel of Scottish judges, without a jury. This time the trial will take place in Scotland, and if the glacial pace of proceedings in the past is anything to go by, it will probably not be heard before the summer of 2008. Al-Megrahi’s defence team would be ready to launch an appeal in a matter of weeks, but the prosecution would be likely to delay the hearing for as long as possible. If an appeal takes place, al-Megrahi’s defence team will produce important evidence that was not available at the time of the first appeal, evidence that seems likely not only to exonerate al-Megrahi but to do so by pointing the finger of blame at the real perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing and revealing some inconvenient truths.

Even the judge who presided over the Lockerbie investigation and issued the 1991 arrest warrants for the two Libyans has cast doubt on the prosecution’s case. In an interview with the Sunday Times in October 2005, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s larger-than-life lord advocate from 1989 to 1992, questioned the reliability of the shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the prosecution’s star witness. ‘Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say [that he] was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don’t think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.’ Lord Fraser made it clear that this did not mean he thought al-Megrahi was innocent. But he had presented Gauci as a reliable witness; he went on to become the heart of the prosecution’s case. Now he was casting doubt on the man who identified al-Megrahi.

Since al-Megrahi’s last appeal, many thousands of pages of reports, detailing freight and baggage movements in and out of Frankfurt airport, have been handed over to the defence. Largely in German and many handwritten, the papers were translated by the Crown at the taxpayer’s expense, but the Crown refused to share the translations with the defence and left it no time to commission its own. The Privy Council’s judicial committee, made up of law lords and senior judges, has declared that the Crown’s refusal to disclose this evidence is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. More damaging still, an unnamed senior British police officer – known to be a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), which implies that his rank is assistant chief constable or higher – has testfied to al-Megrahi’s defence team that crucial evidence at the trial was fabricated. If the SCCRC finds that the prosecution played foul, the Crown may decide it would be better not to continue with its case, allowing al-Megrahi to be freed immediately.

This anonymous senior officer’s testimony chimes with the well-trodden theory that the American government had a hand in fixing the trial. Hans Köchler, the UN observer at Camp Zeist, reported at the time that the trial was politically charged and the verdict ‘totally incomprehensible’.

In his report Köchler wrote that he found the presence of US Justice Department representatives in the court ‘highly problematic’, because it gave the impression that they were ‘“supervisors” handling vital matters of the prosecution strategy and deciding . . . which documents . . . were to be released in open court and what parts of information contained in a certain document were to be withheld.’ ‘The alternative theory of the defence,’ he went on, ‘was never seriously investigated. Amid shrouds of secrecy and national security considerations, that avenue was never seriously pursued – although it was officially declared as being of major importance for the defence case. This is totally incomprehensible to any rational observer.’ The prosecution, Köchler noted, dismissed evidence on the grounds that it was not relevant; but now that that evidence has finally – partially – been released, it turns out to be very relevant indeed: to the defence.

Whatever happens, al-Megrahi may not have to wait long. As soon as a further appeal is scheduled, he can make an application to be released from custody: the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who was supposed to serve no fewer than 27 years in a Scottish jail, might well be free this summer. Whether al-Megrahi is freed pending his appeal – and what conditions would be applied if he were – depends largely on whether his defence team can convince the judge that he is not a flight risk. This may be hard to do. The judge might decide that if he left the country, he might choose to stay in Libya rather than come back next year for another round in court. If al-Megrahi is exonerated, many tricky questions will resurface, not least what to do about the $2.7 billion compensation paid by Libya to the relatives of the victims of the bombing. And then, of course, there is the question of who really bombed Flight 103.

In the first three years following the bombing, before a shred of evidence had been produced to incriminate Libya, the Dumfries and Galloway police, the FBI and several other intelligence services around the world all shared the belief that the Lockerbie bombers belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), a Palestinian rejectionist organisation backed by Iran. The PFLP-GC is headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army captain; its headquarters are in Damascus and it is closely allied with the Syrian president and other senior Syrian officials. In the 1970s and 1980s the PFLP-GC carried out a number of raids against Israel, including a novel hang-glider assault launched from inside Lebanon. Lawyers, intelligence services and diplomats around the world continue to suspect that Jibril – who has even boasted that he is responsible – was behind Lockerbie.

The case against Jibril and his gang is well established. It runs like this: in July 1988, five months before the Lockerbie bombing, a US naval commander aboard USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airbus, apparently mistaking it for an attacker. On board Iran Air Flight 655 were 270 pilgrims en route to Mecca. Ayatollah Khomeini vowed the skies would ‘rain blood’ in revenge and offered a $10 million reward to anyone who ‘obtained justice’ for Iran. The suggestion is that the PFLP-GC was commissioned to undertake a retaliatory bombing.

We know at least that two months before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany. On 26 October 1998, German police arrested 17 terrorist suspects who, surveillance showed, had cased Frankfurt airport and browsed Pan Am flight timetables. Four Semtex-based explosive devices were confiscated; a fifth is known to have gone missing. They were concealed inside Toshiba radios very similar to the one found at Lockerbie a few weeks later. One of the gang, a Palestinian known as Abu Talb, was later found to have a calendar in his flat in Sweden with the date of 21 December circled. New evidence, now in the hands of al-Megrahi’s defence, proves for the first time that Abu Talb was in Malta when the Lockerbie bombing took place. The Maltese man whose testimony convicted al-Megrahi has also identified Abu Talb. During al-Megrahi’s trial Abu Talb had a strange role. As part of a defence available in Scottish law, known as ‘incrimination’, Abu Talb was named as someone who – rather than the accused – might have carried out the bombing. At the time he was serving a life sentence in Sweden for the bombing of a synagogue, but he was summoned to Camp Zeist to give evidence. He ended up testifying as a prosecution witness, denying that he had anything to do with Lockerbie. In exchange for his testimony, he received lifelong immunity from prosecution.

Other evidence has emerged showing that the bomb could have been placed on the plane at Frankfurt airport, a possibility that the prosecution in al-Megrahi’s trial consistently ruled out (their case depended on the suitcase containing the bomb having been transferred from a connecting flight from Malta). Most significantly, German federal police have provided financial records showing that on 23 December 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited £5.9 million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.

The decision to steer the investigation away from the PFLP-GC and in the direction of Libya came in the run-up to the first Gulf War, as America was looking to rally a coalition to liberate Kuwait and was calling for support from Iran and Syria. Syria subsequently joined the UN forces. Quietly, the evidence incriminating Jibril, so painstakingly sifted from the debris, was binned.

Those who continued to press the case against the PFLP-GC seemed to fall foul of American law. When a New York corporate investigative company asked to look into the bombing on behalf of Pan Am found the PFLP-GC responsible, the federal government promptly indicted the company’s president, Juval Aviv, for mail fraud. Lester Coleman, a former Defense Intelligence Agency operative who was researching a book about the PFLP-GC and Lockerbie, was charged by the FBI with ‘falsely procuring a passport’. William Casey, a lobbyist who made similar allegations in 1995, found his bank accounts frozen and federal agents searching through his trash. Even so, documents leaked from the US Defense Intelligence Agency in 1995, two years after the Libyans were first identified as the prime suspects, still blamed the PFLP-GC.

Suspicions and conspiracy theories have swirled around Lockerbie from the beginning. Some of them are fairly outlandish. In Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (2005), Brigid Keenan, the wife of the British diplomat Alan Waddams, reported that over dinner in Gambia, a former Interpol agent told her and her husband that the bombing had been a revenge attack by Iran, in retaliation for the downed airliner (though she didn’t say how he knew this). The Interpol agent claimed the cargo had not been checked because the plane was carrying drugs as part of a deal over American hostages held by Hizbullah in Beirut. Militant groups were being allowed to smuggle heroin into the US in exchange for information; the bomb had gone on board when the PFLP-GC found a loophole in this drug-running operation.

At least four US intelligence officers, including the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut, were on the Flight 103 passenger list. In the days following the bombing, CIA agents scoured the Scottish countryside, some reportedly dressed in Pan Am overalls. Mary Boylan, then a constable with Lothian and Borders police, has said that senior police officers told her not to make an official record of the CIA badge she recovered from the wreckage, asking her instead to hand it over to a senior colleague. Her testimony, too, is now in the hands of the SCCRC. Jim Wilson, a farmer from the village of Tundergarth, reported shortly after the bombing that he had found in his field a suitcase packed with a powdery substance that looked ‘like drugs’. He last saw the suitcase when he handed it over to the police, he said; he was never asked about it again.

In December 1998, Susan Lindauer, a US congressional aide, submitted a sworn deposition to the court in which she claimed that Richard Fuisz, a CIA agent, had given her a guarantee that he knew who was behind the Lockerbie bombing. Lindauer’s affidavit describes a conversation in Fuisz’s ‘business office’ in Chantilly, Virginia, in which he said he knew for sure the perpetrators were based in Syria. ‘Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever.’ ‘If the government would let me, I could identify the men behind this attack,’ Lindauer says Fuisz told her. Lindauer has since been accused by the US government of being an Iraqi agent; her case is pending. But her earlier deposition has been submitted to the SCCRC. It can’t count for much, however, since Fuisz himself is not able to comment. In October 1994, a month after Lindauer spoke to him, Fuisz was gagged by a Washington court. The US government ruled that under state secrecy laws he faced ten years in prison if he spoke about the Lockerbie bombing. UN observers have since criticised this apparent restraint of a key witness.

When Libya handed al-Megrahi over for trial, sanctions on Libya authorised by the Security Council were suspended and diplomatic relations with Britain restored. Tony Blair claims the Libyan detente was one of his most important foreign policy victories, and last month, as the long shadow began to fall across his premiership, Blair swung by Tripoli to meet again with Libya’s leader. Gaddafi has always contested that al-Megrahi is not the Lockerbie bomber and that he should be allowed to return home. Maybe the two leaders touched on the prickly topic of what should be done about the compensation paid by Libya, in the event al-Megrahi is exonerated. When al-Megrahi was handed over for trial, Libya declared that it would accept responsibility for his actions. But it never accepted guilt. This distinction was spelled out clearly in Libyan letters to the UN Security Council. In a BBC radio interview in 2004, the Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, underlined once again that compensation had been paid because this was the ‘price for peace’ and to secure the lifting of sanctions. When asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said: ‘I agree with that.’

If the court that convicted al-Megrahi now reverses its decision, then Libya would clearly have a case for demanding its money back. Since recovering the compensation from the relatives would be unthinkable, it is more likely Libya would pursue those responsible for the miscarriage of justice. ‘What they might try to do,’ Black suggests, ‘is to recoup the money from the British and American governments, who after all are responsible for the initial farce and the wrongful conviction in the first place. They paid that money on the basis of a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the British courts.’ Al-Megrahi’s acquittal on appeal would not ipso facto make a compelling case for Libya to have its money back: even if guilt can’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt – the test of the criminal burden of proof – it could still be shown that it was more likely than not (which is the burden applied to civil cases such as compensation cases). If Libya paid the money for purely political reasons then, one could argue, it might have to live with that decision. When I asked the Foreign Office whether Britain would consider reimbursing Libya in the event of al-Megrahi’s exoneration, a spokesman declined to comment.

If al-Megrahi is acquitted, he will also have the right to sue for wrongful conviction. He could claim compensation to the tune of several tens of thousands of pounds. The Crown Office, which is headed by the Scottish lord advocate, is responsible for what happened, which means that al-Megrahi would sue the Scottish Executive. The lord advocate is now one of the ‘Scottish ministers’, whereas previously he – now she – was one of the law officers of the UK Government. The Scottish Executive might refuse to pay, blaming Westminster. Westminster, meanwhile, would argue that Lockerbie is and always has been a Crown Office matter and that the UK government has no say. A political storm is on its way, especially now that the SNP is in charge in Scotland.

Since the case against al-Megrahi was so weak, it is hard to understand how the judges who presided over the trial could have got it so wrong. Black has a view:

It has been suggested to me, very often by Libyans, that political pressure was placed upon the judges. I don’t think for a minute that political pressure of that nature was placed on the judges. What happened, I think, was that it was internal politics in Scotland. Prosecutions in Scotland are brought by the lord advocate. Until just a few years ago, one of the other functions of the lord advocate in Scotland was that he appointed all Scottish judges. I think what influenced these judges was that they thought that if both of the Libyans accused are found not guilty, this will be the most fiendish embarrassment to the lord advocate.

The appointment system for judges has changed since the trial, but another controversial aspect of the al-Megrahi case may also be re-examined: the policies on disclosure. Compared to almost any other similar criminal justice system, Scotland does not have a proper system of disclosure of information. In England and Wales, the Crown has to disclose all material to the defence, according to rules set out in statute. In Scotland the Crown is allowed to modify or withhold evidence if it considers that withholding is in the ‘public interest’. At least the Scottish criminal justice system doesn’t have the death penalty.

Hugh Miles has lived in Libya, Egypt and Yemen. He works in London.

Wretched of the Earth

2007-06-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Wretched of the Earth
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Poor People
by William T. Vollmann
Ecco, 450 pp., $29.95

Understanding Poverty
edited by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee
Oxford University Press, 443 pp., $35.00 (paper)

No interview haunts me more than a conversation with a Cambodian peasant, Nhem Yen, in 1996. She was forty years old, though she looked much older, and was living with her family in a clearing in the Cambodian jungle. The area was notorious for malaria, but the family members were ambitious and industrious and figured that it was worth the risk to make more money by cutting wood for sale.

Nhem Yen's eldest daughter, who was twenty-four and pregnant with her second child, promptly caught malaria. There was no money to get med-ical treatment (effective drugs would have cost less than $10), and so she died a day after giving birth. That left Nhem Yen looking after five children of her own and two grandchildren.

The family had one mosquito net that could accommodate about three people. Such nets are quite effective against malaria, but they cost $5—and Nhem Yen could not afford to buy any more. So every night, she agonized over which of the children to put under the net and which to leave out.

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"It's very hard to choose," Nhem Yen told me. "But we have no money to buy another mosquito net. We have no choice."

That is the real face of poverty: it is not so much the pain of hunger or the humiliation of rags, but the impossible choices you face. If you can only afford school fees for some of your children, which do you send? If you must choose between medical treatment for Dad, the breadwinner, or for Daughter, the A student, which is it? Do you use your savings to provide a good dowry so Eldest Daughter can get a decent husband, or do you settle for the drunkard who will beat her and instead invest the savings in a food cart that may help provide an income to send the younger ones to school?

One measure of the ubiquity of these tradeoffs is that today, as every day, 30,000 children will die of hunger, disease, and other consequences of poverty, according to UNICEF. In many cases, those will be daughters, because parents (particularly in South Asia) don't have the resources to keep all their children alive, so they put a finger on the scales on the side of their sons. In India alone, among children aged one to five, girls are 50 percent more likely to die than boys—meaning that 130,000 Indian girls are mortally discriminated against each year.

Poverty both in the US and around the world remains a central fact of twenty-first-century life; a majority of the world lives on less than $2 a day, one common measure of who is poor. Yet we manage, pretty successfully, to ignore it and insulate ourselves even from poverty in our own country. When it pops out from behind the screen after an episode like the Watts riots of 1965 or the New Orleans hurricane of 2005, then we express horror and indignation and vow change, and finally shrug and move on. Meanwhile, the world's five hundred wealthiest people have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million.

These days, however, something interesting is stirring in the world of poverty. People like Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett have made it almost as prestigious for philanthropists to underwrite vaccinations as to underwrite the ballet. Bono and Angelina Jolie have made Africa almost sexy. And several Democratic presidential candidates have real expertise and interest in the issue, particularly domestically: Barack Obama worked as a grassroots antipoverty organizer in Chicago; Hillary Rodham Clinton has long labored on child poverty; and John Edwards has spent the last few years assiduously studying poverty and speaking out about it. On the Republican side, Sam Brownback is also very serious about poverty and related issues, including prison conditions and recidivism.

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So we now have a wealth of interest in poverty. A fruit of that, or perhaps a beneficiary of it, is William Vollmann's new work, bluntly titled Poor People. Vollmann is a terrific reporter and writer who won a National Book Award in 2005 for his novel Europe Central. He also comes across as an exceptionally nice guy, not only handing out money to people right and left but also allowing homeless people to squat next to his house in California. He gets a little testy when they use the area as a public toilet, but he still earnestly takes his daughter with him to chat with the homeless and has her shake their hands to show respect. Then he takes her inside to scrub that hand.

Vollmann's book is difficult to describe. It's not a systematic examination of poverty, and it's certainly not a treatise on how to respond to poverty —he barely discusses possible solutions. Mostly, it's a pointillist description of poor people he has encountered and interviewed extensively in Thailand, Russia, China, and elsewhere. Vollmann asks them questions like "do you consider yourself poor?" Or "why are poor people poor?" Or "are men and women equally poor?" Or "why are you poor?" Or "why are some people rich and some poor?"

The problem is that the answers often aren't very interesting, persuasive, or authoritative. It's useful to ask poor people about poverty, but after wading through three hundred pages of their equally impoverished answers, unleavened by some larger context or theme, I think Vollmann would have been better off spending some of his time asking such questions of a panel of Ivy League professors. (Granted, I'm being unfair in asking for a book that Vollmann apparently didn't want to write.)

Vollmann has written something that is perhaps closer to travel literature than poverty literature. His book is a bit like one of Paul Theroux's— but a compassionate, warm Theroux— with its finely drawn characters who are interesting in themselves but whose comments don't suggest some larger truth. The first person Vollmann sketches is a Thai woman named Sunee, a drunkard and probably a former "entertainer" in Japan. She has a daughter to whom Vollmann sometimes gives money (which Sunee periodically confiscates). Sunee rings true to me, as do all the other figures in the book. But the interview with her doesn't illuminate the challenge of poverty or suggest how to resolve it.

The most moving evocations of poverty have been fictional: Zola's Germinal, or Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Those novels have heroic characters, and you want to reach into your pocket and solve their problems by handing them a pile of cash. But in the real world, many tales of poverty are less moving and more nuanced, with a dash of self-destructiveness thrown in. It may not be entirely Sunee's fault that she is a drunkard, but it does make you less likely to react sympathetically when you read of her decline. In that sense, Vollmann's work is a useful reminder that poverty is often a shortage of more than cash. The optimistic efforts of the antipoverty campaigns of the 1960s and of many foreign aid programs didn't work out as well as hoped partly because they ended up treating poverty essentially as a redistribution issue—and it's far more than that.

The best nonfiction book on American poverty I have ever read is Jason DeParle's brilliant American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare.[1] It's a close-up look at three poor women and the impact of the effort to end welfare "as we know it." It's far too rich and complex a work to offer simple solutions, but in the end it suggests that there are real benefits to pushing some families out of welfare into work—but that those benefits are modest and still leave little hope of resolving the challenges of poverty. Still, DeParle (a colleague at The New York Times) does examine at the end of his book some programs to combat poverty and suggests that in the 1990s we began to learn what works and what doesn't in alleviating its worst forms in the United States.

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There is, I think, a liberal squeamishness about confronting the reality that one important element that sustains poverty is culture: a self-destructive pathology that arises from poverty and then entraps the poor in it for generation after generation. The culture varies with the society, and it is different for Dalits (or Untouchables) in India and for villagers in Congo and for the homeless in the US. Often, though, this culture involves elements of hopelessness, substance abuse, underinvestment in education, self-fulfilling expectations of failure, and squandered resources.

Less vivid but more insightful in depicting poverty is a recent scholarly article in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo have written a fascinating—and troubling—examination called "The Economic Lives of the Poor," based on surveys of people living on less than $2 a day in thirteen countries.[2] The surveys found the respondents to be undernourished, with 55 percent of poor adults in Udaipur, India, suffering from anemia (which also limits their ability to work and earn money). The poor also invest negligible sums in education (about 2 percent of their income), even though more investment in schooling might offer their children a way out of the cycle.

Yet it's much too simple to conclude that their lack of spending on adequate food and education is solely because they don't have the money. Part of it is the way they spend money—7 percent of their spending went for sugar. As the authors write:

A common image of the extremely poor is that they do not get to make many real choices....Yet among the non-food items that the poor spend significant amounts of money on, alcohol and tobacco show up prominently. The extremely poor in rural areas spent 4.1 percent of their budget on tobacco and alcohol in Papua New Guinea, 5.0 percent in Udaipur, India; 6.0 percent in Indonesia and 8.1 percent in Mexico....
Perhaps more surprisingly, it is apparent that spending on festivals is an important part of the budget for many extremely poor households. In Udaipur, over the course of the previous year, more than 99 percent of the extremely poor households spent money on a wedding, a funeral, or a religious festival. The median household spent 10 percent of its annual budget on festivals. In South Africa, 90 percent of the households living under $1 per day spent money on festivals. In Pakistan, Indonesia, and Cote d'Ivoire, more than 50 percent did likewise.
Festivals are one way for the poorest and most degraded families to gain dignity for a day. But the best single investment to gain long-term dignity is education, and that's the way to break the cycle. As the authors of this article note, one reason for the underinvestment in education is that illiterate parents can't judge what investments in education will pay off.

The pattern of misallocation of resources is confirmed by what I've seen in poor countries. It's routine to visit a family with a severely malnourished child (with consequences for the child's cognition if it survives), and find out that the family has some meager savings—but Dad is off drinking them up at a nearby bar. And this is dispiriting for a man to admit, but it's typically that way: abundant research shows that in poor families, women invest money in food, children, and small businesses—and men squander funds on cigarettes, alcohol, video halls, and prostitution.

We should be clear: one smart way to fight poverty is to empower women (by educating girls, by giving daughters legal rights to inheritance, by promoting banking institutions that give women control over the accounts). Once mothers control family spending rather than fathers, family resources are invested more productively, and some families can rise out of poverty very quickly. This makes the fight for gender equality in the developing world not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. Aid groups recognize this and are adjusting their strategies. For example, Helene Gayle, the new head of CARE, is making empowerment of women—including microfinance—a major strategy because of its implications for fighting poverty.[3]

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Whether in the US or abroad, I always find grassroots antipoverty workers much more useful than "experts" in Washington. At the local level you see all the frustrations and complexities of overcoming pathologies of misplaced priorities, drugs, alcohol, broken families, violence, and vast webs of self-destructive behavior —including simply acquiescence.

One of the great canards of modern life is that the poor are particularly grasping, always demanding entitlements. In fact, one of the problems in combating poverty is the opposite: the poor are far too willing to acquiesce. Vollmann writes that one of the characteristics of poverty is its invisibility —and he's right, because by and large the poor have been conditioned to retreat to the margins.

When I was covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, I spent my days in shelters with poor people who had lost everything while spending my nights with the family of a well-to-do doctor whose lovely home had been barely damaged (because it was well built and in a neighborhood located above the flood line). That's always the pattern. In a Bangladeshi cyclone, the hovels of the poor are swept away so that poor families lose their children and everything they ever owned—while the wealthy sit tight in concrete homes on higher land. In the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995, it was the poor who were crushed to death when their old houses collapsed; one rich family I visited at the epicenter had suffered little harm other than the destruction of its wine collection.

Even when middle-class or wealthy families were displaced in, say, New Orleans, they mostly figured out how to get what they needed. For a start, they demanded it. Loudly. Insistently. But the people stuck in the shelters, black and white, were typically not only poorer but also less demanding, less assertive, less skilled in negotiating their way through the system. Poor families in the shelters were neglected precisely because they were suffering so patiently. After that experience, I caught myself thinking that the problem is not that the poor riot, but that they don't riot enough.

The complexities of poverty have major implications for health care reform. A leader in emphasizing this is Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children's Health Fund, a passionate advocate for medical care for the poor, who also was my guide in New Orleans. I had thought that the obstacle for poor people—and the reason they die as a result of deficient health care —was that they couldn't afford it. But that's only one factor.

What we've seen over and over is that even if there is a free clinic, the poor family may depend on a single mother who doesn't have a car or driver's license and so can't get there. Or she can't afford the gas. Or her car doesn't have insurance. Or she doesn't understand how serious the symptoms are. Or she is working at a low-level job where she can't just ask for time off to take a child to the clinic. Or she doesn't speak English. Or she's illegal and is worried that INS agents may look at the clinic's records. Or she's got three other small children and can't leave two at home while she takes her sick child on a series of bus rides to the clinic. Or...the possibilities are endless. The point is that making medical care accessible to the poor requires much more than making it free.

Poverty is connected, of course, to race. But in recent years we've learned that it's not exactly race, because blacks from the West Indies and newly arrived immigrants from Africa have often thrived in the US while traditional African-American descendants of slaves are more likely to be stuck in the whirlpool of poverty.

There is, I think, a parallel with the minority of Japan, the burakumin, sometimes called the Untouchables of Japan. The burakumin are not a racial minority but an occupational one: they are the descendants of those who worked with leather, with dead bodies, or with dead animals. But they were no less shunned and discriminated against than American blacks, and when I lived in Japan I sometimes heard Japanese friends tell me that the burakumin "are not real Japanese." A few decades ago, burakumin were rarely invited into ordinary people's homes, they could never work in restaurants, they had little hope of marrying a non-burakumin, and they were almost universally ostracized. Even today, parents sometimes hire private detective agencies to research the backgrounds of their children's fiancés to make sure that burakumin blood does not creep into the family.

The upshot was that burakumin felt excluded from the Japanese social compact, and they fell disproportionately into alcohol, drugs, divorce, and crime. The yakuza, Japan's criminal network, is overwhelmingly composed of burakumin and another ostracized minority, ethnic Koreans. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that when a society excludes a group and treats it as second-class citizens, then the result can be not only poverty as such but also self-destructive cycles of culture and behavior that make escape from poverty all the more difficult.

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Yet the story of global poverty is, in spite of what most people think, in some ways a surprisingly successful one. We focus on those who are still poor, but in the last quarter-century far more people have been pulled out of poverty than ever before in the history of the world. Largely that's because of the economic success of Asia, and it should give pause to critics of globalization. In fact, it's precisely because of globalization that hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, and Malaysians are moving into the middle class.

Another new book on the subject, Understanding Poverty, a collection of essays by scholars, has both the depth and the data that Vollmann's book lacks. It's the kind of book that you can put down, but it's a serious examination of where we stand and what we need to do. An excellent opening chapter by the three editors—Abhijit Banerjee, Roland Bénabou, and Dilip Mookherjee—notes that in the period from the early 1980s to 2001,

poverty rates fell by almost half: approximately 400 million people crossed the $1 threshold during this time [$1 a day is often used as a measure of extreme poverty; $2 a day is also often used]. This amounts to a fairly dramatic reduction in poverty. There is thus no basis for views, often expressed by protesters against globalization and privatization, that these trends have coincided with a rise in global poverty. Most of the poverty reduction happened in Asia, and particularly in China, which has experienced growing integration into the world economy and a rise in market forces.
It's also worth noting that the part of the world that has most withstood the forces of globalization (or simply been ignored) is Africa, where the number of poor people doubled.

The common perception of rising global inequality is true in a sense— but this is largely because entire nations have prospered while others have not; it is not because of rising inequality within poor countries. The gap between the world's wealthiest and poorest people is overwhelmingly accounted for by inequities from one country to another. In contrast, most nations appear to have reduced inequality within their borders (although this is not true of the US).

The decline of poverty is not some gimmick or statistical ploy. Anybody who has traveled regularly in Asia has seen it. My wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is Chinese-American, and when we first visited her ancestral village in 1987, it was dirt poor and consisted mostly of illiterate peasants with fantastically crooked teeth (China then apparently had one orthodontist in the entire country). Now it has a paved road, the children go to school and aspire to college, the adults have cell phones and television sets, and people are starting to look plump. And the children's teeth are straight.

The same transformation is evident across China, and in South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and elsewhere. It is now taking place in Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Africa has been left out, but even Africa has some countries with exceptionally strong economic performance, like Botswana, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Mauritius.

After the fall of communism, there was a period when the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were spiraling down into penury. A few countries, like Moldova, Belarus, and Turkmenistan, are still wretched. But Russia, in large part thanks to its mineral resources, is booming. So are other parts of the former empire like Georgia, Armenia, and especially the Baltic Republics. Estonia is one of the most dynamic countries in Europe. Even in the US, for all the despair about poverty, the mid- and late-1990s saw remarkable drops in poverty rates. (The progress stopped in 2000.)

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So we should approach poverty with real hope. The last fifty years have shown that these problems have solutions—and that's why it's a bit frustrating that Vollmann is strictly a tour guide of the slums, without pointing more directly to the policies that will help.

There's no magic bullet, but health interventions have been very successful. The US spent $32 million to fight smallpox over ten years, achieving eradication in 1977. Now we save that sum every two and a half months in reduced spending on vaccines and health care. Total savings have been $17 billion, plus 45 million lives around the world, and as an investment that $32 million has yielded a return of 45 percent per year. That's why we need similar campaigns against other diseases, including malaria, elephantiasis, and of course AIDS.

Education has also proved an excellent investment, and we now know that the most cost-effective way to keep children in school isn't to ban child labor, to pass laws requiring school attendance, or even to build schools. Rather, it's to bribe parents with cash grants for keeping kids in school. Understanding Poverty cites improvements in school attendance rates of 20 percentage points by such programs. A large-scale Indonesian program to spread primary education in the 1970s is estimated to have paid returns equivalent to 10 percent per year. Likewise, microfinance was justly recognized as an outstanding antipoverty tool by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and its founder, Muhammad Yunus. Partly that's because microfinance often targets women, raising their status within societies and giving them more control over the family spending.

In the US as well, we have a clearer sense of what policies work. Large-scale income distribution programs, such as welfare and public housing, weren't very successful, and that fed a cynicism and resignation about anti-poverty efforts. But in more recent years we've learned that in the US education is a critical path out of poverty. Early childhood education and intense schooling and tutoring make all the difference. Job training helps. After-school programs help. The earned-income tax credit raises incomes of poor families. These approaches aren't easy or cheap, but they work—and these costs of empowering poor people are cheaper than the alternative of incarcerating them in large numbers.

The upshot is that we now have a much richer understanding of poverty than we did at the time of the launch of the War on Poverty, and a much better hope of success if we try again. We know that it's not just about more equitable distribution of assets, but that there are also crucial cultural issues to be addressed. We also have a better understanding of the tactics and policies that work, both in the US and in poor countries abroad.

The remaining question is whether we have the will. Perhaps books like Vollmann's may at least remind us of the poor, removing them for a moment from invisibility, and help replace our current resignation with policies that would make a considerable difference. We are not going to eradicate poverty in our lifetimes, but we could make a much bigger dent in it—and that's important if you're one of the poor. As Albert Camus said in 1948: "Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children."

In the meantime, today another 30,000 children will die of the consequences of poverty. And as dusk falls in Africa and Asia, aching parents will struggle to decide which of their children to put under the mosquito net and which to expose to malaria.

Notes
[1] Viking, 2004; reviewed in these pages by Christopher Jencks, December 15, 2005.

[2] See The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 2007). The article can be found at http:// econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_ pdf.php?id=1346.

[3] For a discussion of how women's empowerment and microfinance programs are being used to address public health issues in rural African villages, see Helen Epstein and Julia Kim, "AIDS and the Power of Women," The New York Review, February 15, 2007.