BOOKS-US: When Neocons Ruled Washington

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Michael Flynn

GENEVA, Dec 16 (IPS) – In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been ”colossally erroneous” and ”disastrous to U.S. interests”, that the Iraq War is a ”blunder of colossal proportions”, and that an attack on Iran is a ”highly likely” ”disaster” unless the country ”eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy”.

It is hard to argue with these points. But the book’s relentless, partisan rhetoric serves to confirm what is obvious from its title: ”The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel” is yet another treatise on the pernicious influence of the neocons on foreign policy.

So many studies have been penned on this subject that the noted international relations scholar Robert Jervis, in a 2005 review of a similar book, wrote that ”one may wonder whether more is needed”.

Sniegoski’s contribution is to thoroughly review the mountain of material already published on the neocons to support a thesis held by many war critics — that neocons, abetted by the 9/11 attacks and their supporters within the administration, were able to ”gain control” of U.S. policy.
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RIGHTS: Bipartisan U.S. Panel Offers Blueprint to Prevent Genocide

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) – A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority.

In a report released here Monday, the group, which was co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton’s Pentagon chief, William Cohen, and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, argued that mass atrocities threaten core U.S. national interests and that the national security bureaucracy should be reformed to reflect that priority.

Its release came on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 20th anniversary of its final ratification by the United States.
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Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition

Republished with permission on the Global Intelligence News
A Global Geopolitics Net Site

PDA, Project on Defense Alternatives
5 December 2008

Read the full article in pdf format with graphs and charts on the PDA site.

The US defense policy paradox: less security at increasing cost

The United States is entering a critical period of policy transition. Beginning with the advent of the Obama administration, and continuing through the end of 2010, all of America’s national security and defense planning guidance will be revised. Certainly the need for change is broadly felt by the public. And it is not difficult to understand why.

Recent defense policy evinces a disturbing paradox: it has been delivering less and less security at ever increasing cost. With national defense expenditures approaching $700 billion per year, the United States today accounts for about 46 percent of all military spending worldwide – up from 28 percent in 1986. Approximately 440,000 US troops are presently stationed or deployed overseas, which is close to the number overseas at the end of the Cold War. But, in no area of concern has this prodigious effort produced substantial or sure progress – not in the “war on terrorism”, weapon proliferation, relations with allies, relations with China and Russia, or in the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Mideast, or Africa. Indeed, the world seems less stable and more polarized today than it did in 2001. And anti-Americanism is at a level not seen since the Vietnam war years.

On a world scale, what parallels the present paradox in US security policy is a process of global re-polarization and re-militarization. If unchecked, this portends a return to conditions reminiscent of the Cold War, with the world consciously divided into contesting nation-state and “civilizational” blocks. Such an eventuality would fuel arms races, weapon proliferation, and conflict potentials. In this light, the process of re-polarization and re-militarization might be considered the greatest threat to our security and global peace over the next 50 years. The challenge this poses for US policy makers is to find ways to address current security problems that do not inadvertently or unnecessarily feed re-polarization and re-militarization.

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U.S.: Mumbai Massacre Seen as Major Blow to Regional Strategy

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – A week after the massacre of more than 170 people by armed militants in Mumbai, U.S. officials are scrambling to prevent the incident from blowing up into a full-fledged confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent Wednesday in meetings with Indian leaders in New Delhi warning them that any retaliation could result in ”unintended consequences or difficulties”, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, Adm. Michael Mullen, was in Islamabad pressing top Pakistani civilian and military officials to fully cooperate with any investigation.

He also urged them to crack down hard against any groups — almost certainly the officially banned Lashka-e-Taiba (LeT), according to government and independent analysts here — found to be responsible.
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Two Analysts of Global Terrorism Comment on Mumbai

Rohan Gunaratna and Larry C. Johnson

Commentary Republished on the Global News Blog

Learning from the Mumbai Tragedy

Rohan Gunaratna

The coordinated simultaneous attack in Mumbai on November 27, 2008 was a classic Al Qaeda-style attack. Although not perpetrated by Osama bin Laden’s group, the attackers and their masterminds were influenced by Al Qaeda’s methodology and ideology. The terrorists selected high profile, symbolic and strategic targets. It was a mass fatality – mass casualty attack where the terrorists were killing to kill and die. The attack primarily targeted India but also singled out Americans, its allies and friends.

The subcontinental terrorists that staged an al Qaeda-style attack in Mumbai could attack again. Although the terrorists have been neutralized, the masterminds that planned and the infrastructure that was used to prepare the attack in India’s financial capital is intact. The ideology that motivated the attackers and generated the support, still needs to be dismantled.

Asian terrorism is on the rise. The epicentre of international terrorism has now shifted to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a region straddling India and China. Today, the world’s top four countries that suffer from terrorism are Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and India. Unless, India and Pakistan work together both these countries will suffer heavily from terrorism in the coming years.

The terrorist attack in Mumbai should serve as a reminder to governments that terrorism is a global threat. Unless governments understand that terrorism is a transnational threat and they must work together to counter it, they will suffer from it. Although India has a long history of fighting terrorism and insurgency, Mumbai took India by surprise. Every successful terrorist attack is an intelligence failure. India will need to restructure its security and intelligence apparatus as well as its quick reaction forces. Their performance fell behind the scale of threat India faced on November 27-29, 2008. The spearhead of effective and efficient counter terrorism is intelligence. The key to fighting the current and the emerging wave of terrorism will rest on India’s future ability to develop sound and timely intelligence and developing liaison partnerships for intelligence sharing. The Indian security and intelligence services failed on both these counts.

India should strengthen its coverage of threat groups at home by investing in high grade -high quality intelligence collection and overseas by building intelligence sharing partnerships with its neighbours. Instead of accusing Pakistan for every attack on Indian soil, Indian leaders must understand that both India and Pakistan face a common threat. Without building a robust relationship with Pakistan, India has been strengthening its cooperation with Israel and the U.S. As the regional power, India must take the lead and reach out to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and share counter terrorism intelligence. It will require a visionary Indian leader to understand the change in paradigm after September 11, 2001, and build the structures to protect India from within and overseas.

Mumbai is a wakeup call for countries and people who have not taken the threat of terrorism and extremism seriously. Terrorism is the most serious national security challenge confronting the world today. To win, building skill and will at all levels of government is paramount. There is no better investment than educating leaders, including leaders at the highest level of government. India should call for a summit of Asian leaders to better understand the emerging threat in Asia and develop a plan of action aimed at reducing and managing the threat.

The terrorist attack has major implications for global security and for the new Obama Administration. If India threatens Pakistan, Islamabad will withdraw its 100,000 troops on Pakistan’s troubled border with Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and other threat groups are based. Such a troop redeployment will dramatically increase the threat to Afghanistan and to global security. The terrorists will benefit from such a relocation of Pakistani troops from tribal Pakistan to the Indian border.One could question if the terrorists had conceived this attack with such intentions to ease the pressure on Al Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban and its associated groups. U.S. should mediate the disputes between India and Pakistan and help build a counterterrorism partnership between these two nuclear rivals.

Larry C. Johnson responds:

“If the reports from survivors of the Taj are correct, then it is highly unlikely this was a homegrown Indian group. The fact that staff of the hotel were collaborating with the attackers tells me these were intelligence assets recruited and put in place. I don’t think it is mere coincidence that Ali Zardari announces the Paks are going to disband the political wing of ISI and the next thing you know all hell breaks loose in Mumbai.”

Larry C. Johnson’s more detailed commentary follows in the article included below.

Mumbai Update and Observations

Read the article in its orignal form on No Quarter

By Larry Johnson
Email: larry_johnson@earthlink.net
Site: http://NoQuarterUSA.net

While relations between India and Pakistan are understandably strained in the wake of this week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Pakistan is making the right moves to reassure India that it is serious about dismantling the terrorist infrastructure that exists in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Prime Minister is in India and expressing support for India and condemning the attacks. Pakistani President Zardari also has directed the head of Pakistan’s intelligence service to go to Mumbai and assist with the investigation. This follows on the heels of his directive last week to dismantle the political wing of ISI.

I suspect many of you may not know what the hell I am talking about. So here is a Reader’s Digest summary/condensed version:

A portion of Pakistan’s ISI (i.e., it’s version of the CIA and FBI combined) has provided direct support, financing and training to radical Islamists. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for example, the ISI helped organize, arm and train mujahedin fighting the Soviets. Some in Pakistan’s intelligence and military services see the support to the Islamic groups as a tool to help them confront neighbors they view as a threat–India and Iran in particular. The status of the Kashmir region (northwest India, northeast Pakistan) is a major focus for the terrorist activities of the Islamic extremists. Besides worrying about the Kashmir, the ISI, for example, also helped the Taliban get up and running.

The ISI, or at least elements in the ISI, worked directly with Bin Laden and his band:

In 2003, the US government declassified 32 documents relating to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. These included secret memos from the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). One of the DIA documents noted, “[Osama] bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network was able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan directives. If there is any doubt on that issue, consider the location of bin Laden’s camp targeted by US cruise missiles, Zahawa. Positioned on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was built by Pakistani contractors, funded by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] directorate … If this was later to become bin Laden’s base, then serious questions are raised by the early relationship between bin Laden and Pakistan’s ISI.”

In 1998, US warships in the Arabian Sea launched cruise missiles on “al-Qaeda” training camps in Afghanistan. However, at least one of the targeted camps was a HuM facility, run in conjunction with Pakistani military and intelligence officials. According to the US 9-11 Commission, many HuM volunteers and a few Pakistani intelligence personnel were killed during the missile attack. Soon after the strike, Khalil called a press conference in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and threatened the US that his men would attack Americans in their homes, just like the Americans attacked them (HuM) in their own backyard. HuM continued to operate training camps in eastern Afghanistan until US air strikes destroyed them during the fall of 2001. In 2003, HuM began using the name Jamiat ul-Ansar.

There is essentially a civil war in Pakistan. The Pakistani Government for the most part condemns and rejects terrorism and the Islamic extremists responsible for this activity. Yet, elements within the government, provide direct support to such groups and view them as an element of Pakistani national security policy.

The people who carried out the multiple attacks this week in Mumbai almost certainly were trained in camps inside Pakistan controlled by Islamic extremists (Harakat ul Mujahedin or Lashkar e Tayiba) and supported, at least tacitly, by elements of the ISI and/or Pakistani Army.

Here is what we I conclude based on the events so far:

1. The preparation for this attack was very sophisticated. There was significant prior planning to gather intelligence about the hotels, restaurants, train station, and the Jewish apartment building. This was not spur of the moment. The information on the various sites was gathered in advance and assembled into a coordinated plan.

2. The young men who carried out these coordinated strikes had training and communication support that enabled them to launch these attacks. The training most likely required at least one week and would have incorporated the intelligence about the target sites.

3. The training in marksmanship and explosives was rudimentary. The attackers learned the point and spray method of shooting, which is imprecise and not terribly effective. When we get a final count of the number of attackers and consider what they were capable of carrying in terms of ammunition and grenades, they certainly did not kill anywhere near the number of people they could have if they were highly trained in Close Quarter Battle (CQB). Please do not misunderstand me. What the terrorists have done is terrible and has inflicted unbearable suffering on thousands of families. But this could have been far worse.

4. The Government of India and their police SWAT teams (NSG) are doing a good job of managing an almost impossible situation. Military officers, not police, are more qualified to deal with a situation involving combat at multiple sites. Nonetheless, the police appear to have adapted pretty well. Despite the audacity of the terrorists, the result is going to be as expected–the attackers will be dead or jailed and police and military forces around the world will study the incident and upgrade their capabilities. It is worth noting that the United States has provided India some significant counter terrorism support to the police over the last five years. That training is paying off this week.

5. The media hysteria pronouncing these attacks as the end of the world is just silly. The Indian police are moving methodically to clear the buildings involved in the original attack. They are clearly trying to minimize other civilian casualties. These attacks have disrupted life in Mumbai for this week. But these events also are likely to spark increased vigilance and security operations that will make it more difficult for groups like these to carry out future operations.

The longterm solution to this violence requires dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and helping India and Pakistan find a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir dispute. India, I believe, will recover fine from these attacks. Pakistan? A much more difficult and dangerous problem. The United States and the rest of the world may have little ability to influence what happens inside Pakistan to tamp down the influence of Islamic extremists. We must try and this will be a significant challenge for Barack Obama’s foreign policy team. The Bush team leaves office having left things in Pakistan worse off than when they took office.

© Copyright 2008 Rohan Gunaratna and Larry C. Johnson. All rights reserved.

About the Authors:

Rohan Gunaratna:

Rohan Gunaratna is Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School for International Studies, (RSIS), Singapore. The author of “Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror”, Gunaratna debriefed high value detainees, including in Iraq.

Larry C. Johnson

Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an
international business-consulting firm with expertise combating terrorism and investigating money laundering. Mr. Johnson worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism.

 

 

Image:

The Taj Mahal Hotel Burniing
Source: www.thechetan.com
Creative Commons Image Search

Popularity: 31% [?]

INDIA: Mulling Tough Options Against Pakistan

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Analysis by Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Dec 3 (IPS) – United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in the Indian capital Wednesday to try and soothe nerves frayed by last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but is likely to face an uphill task in defusing mounting suspicion and tension between India and Pakistan.

Many Indian policymakers have adopted a hardened posture against Pakistan in the belief that its state agencies, such as the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), were behind the attacks, which have killed nearly 200 people, including 28 foreign nationals.

Conservative commentators have unleashed what is fast becoming a media campaign to demand that India takes serious punitive action against Pakistan for the attacks –to the point of striking at terrorist training camps which Indian spy agencies claim exist across the border.
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Will Israel attack Iran?

Global Intelligence News
This article was originally published on opendemocracy.net under a Creative Commons license. Read the article in its original form.

Paul Rogers

The eight-week window before the new United States president takes office is causing high nervousness among those wondering about Tel Aviv’s intentions vis-à-vis Tehran, says Paul Rogers

27 – 11 – 2008

The discussion in the last few years about a possible United States assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities has often been accompanied by the coda that if Washington refrained from targeting this member of the “axis of evil” proclaimed by George W Bush in January 2002, then Israel might – with or without American collusion or forewarning – act on its own account. Several columns in this series have examined the possible circumstances and consequences of an Israeli attack, including the likelihood of involvement of the US itself after expected Iranian retaliation (see, for example, “Israel, the United States and Iran: the tipping-point” [13 March 2008] and “Iran, Israel, and the risk of war” [24 July 2008]).

Now, the interregnum in Washington before the inauguration of Barack Obama on 20 January 2009 is coinciding with a fresh round of nervous speculation about Israeli plans and intentions. Two recent reports widely circulated in the Israeli press serve as a reminder of the continuing risk of a conflict involving Iran. The first was that Iran had on 12 November conducted another test of a medium-range ballistic missile capable of hitting targets right across the region (see “Amid nuclear tensions, Iran says it successfully launched rocket“, Ha’aretz 26 November 2008); the second was that Iran claimed on 26 November now to have installed 5,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges. 

Much is being made of Iran’s new missiles, both in Israel and the United States. Uzi Rubin – the founder of the Israel Missile Defense Association (Imda) – argues in a leading US defence journal that the new Iranian Sajeel/Ashura missile is far more advanced than any previous type (see Uzi Rubin, “Iran’s Game-changer“, Defense News, 24 November 2008). Most Iranian surface-to-surface missiles have been based on North Korean technology, especially the No Dong series of missiles, which themselves use technology based on the Soviet Scud missiles of the 1950s.  

Rubin, however, claims that the Sajeel/Ashura “is a brand-new missile, an original design more advanced than anything available to the North Koreans themselves.”  This may be rather over the top, but it does appear that the new missile is a relatively advanced two-stage solid-fuel system, which would certainly be a generation ahead of the liquid-fuelled No Dong (see Lauren Gelfand & Alon Ben-David, “New missile marks ’significant leap’ for Iran capabilities“, Jane’s Information Group, 14 November 2008).

To add to the sense of unease in Israel, the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset on 24 November that Hizbollah now has 42,000 missiles, three times the total available at the time of the July-August 2006 war. Most of these are short-range unguided Katyusha-type rockets; but others have a range sufficient to reach all the significant populated centres in Israel as far south as Beersheba in the Negev desert (see “Hezbollah missile stock ‘tripled’“, BBC News, 24 November 2008).

A time of choice

None of this, of itself, means that Israel is preparing for a military attack on Iran. But there are dangers and these need to be put in context. The overwhelming view in security circles in Israel is that a nuclear-armed Iran is completely unacceptable, either now or in the long term (see “Israel won’t allow a nuclear Iran“, Jerusalem Post, 29 August 2008). In this perspective, Israel’s regional nuclear dominance is essential for its security for as long into the future as can be foreseen. A nuclear-armed Iran is out of the question in its own terms, but also because it might also set in motion a regional proliferation of nuclear capabilities involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and ultimately even Syria.  This might be over a twenty-to-thirty-year timescale but that is not long in terms of Israeli security thinking.

Furthermore, for the more immediate future, Israeli military planners can point to the potential for a rapid Iranian “break-out” from its current civil nuclear-power ambitions. There are a number of western analysts – usually but not always of a hawkish disposition – who claim that Iran will shortly have enough low-enriched uranium to be able to run it through the centrifuge cascades. They would further enrich it to the point where there might be enough weapons-grade material for a single crude “gun-type” uranium-based bomb (see William J Broad & David E Sanger, “Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon“, New York Times, 19 November 2008).   

Whether Iran has the technology to actually produce such a device is unclear, and there have been reports that Iran’s supplies of uranium ore are so contaminated with heavy metals that the resultant bomb would not work. No one can really be sure; in any case, producing a nuclear arsenal that could serve any kind of military purpose could still take years and there is no indication that Iran intends to take this path. From the Israeli perspective, though, the possession by Iran of even one “inefficient” device would be an act of huge political symbolism, both in terms of domestic Israeli concern and its perception of its military status across the region.   

In one sense, none of these short-term developments matter as much as the real concerns among Israeli military strategists. This is that the Iranians do not seek to develop nuclear weapons in the coming years. Instead they work hard to develop their civil nuclear infrastructure – building more nuclear power stations (six more are planned after Bushehr), as well as research reactors and enrichment plants (see “Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest“, 21 August 2008). All the time, they would be acquiring comprehensive nuclear expertise that could allow them to develop nuclear weapons at any time of their choosing over the next decade.

An Israeli nightmare

There is a further political context for this kind of worst-case scenario, one that combines developments in Iran and the United States (see Trita Parsi, “The Iran-Israel cold war“, 28 October 2005). Over the past couple of years, power has become more and more concentrated in Tehran in the hands of the elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For all his populist anti-Zionist rhetoric, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is little more than a puppet, but he is presiding over a deteriorating economy that combines 30+% inflation with a budgetary crisis, the latter worsened by the recent halving of oil prices to around $50 per barrel (“The party’s over”, Economist, 20 November 2008). He faces an election in June 2009 and it is by no means certain that Khamenei will back him; Khamenei might prefer another “principalist” who would help distance the supreme leader from the current problems.

This is becoming more and more necessary since, as one current analysis puts it: “the Islamic Republic is facing an urban, educated, healthy and informed population, but has yet to deliver political liberalisation to accommodate prevailing societal realities, while economic difficulties threaten living standards” (see “Republic Enemy: US policy and Iranian elections”, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 13 November 2008 [subscription only])

If Ahmadinejad is dumped and if a Barack Obama administration is willing to engage with Khamenei, then many things become possible (see Mehdi Khalaji, “Problem with Engaging Iran’s Supreme Leader“, RealClearPolitics, 13 November 2008). They could include a continuation of nuclear developments under really strict International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision; serious diplomatic talks; and an easing of sanctions leading in turn to the ability to import badly needed oil technologies (see Jan De Pauw, “Iran, the United States and Europe: the nuclear complex“, 5 December 2007). The result could be something of an economic turnaround that would preserve the religious principalists under Khamenei and reduce the threat of a reformist comeback (see Nasrin Alavi, “Iranians’ interrupted freedom“, 8 October 2008).

For Israel’s strategists this is getting close to a nightmare scenario: a rearmed Hizbollah and an easing of US-Iranian relations while all along (at any time between around 2014 and 2040) the Iranians increase their ability to “go nuclear” at short notice.

A crucial timescale

This, again, does not make an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities imminent, but two further things have to be factored in. The first is that the Israeli Defence Forces, with all their supposed power, were efffectively humbled by Hizbollah in southern Lebanon in mid-2006 (see “Lebanon: the war after the war“, 11 October 2006). There is, as a consequence, a deep-seated desire to regain their status, both within Israel and across the region. An attack on Iran coupled with an overwhelming response to any Hizbollah action would do just that.

The second aspect is that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would not be comprehensive in its impact since Israel simply does not have sufficient air power. The intention, instead, would be to incite an Iranian military reaction directed not just at Israel but at US forces in the region, especially in Iraq. That would bring the United States into the war, which really would result in serious damage to Iran’s military capabilities, including its nuclear programme.

This is where the Barack Obama changeover is so significant. The George W Bush-Dick Cheney axis would be well-nigh certain to order just such a massive air power response. An Obama administration, on the other hand, might be just too canny to fall into the trap (see Karim Sadjadpour, “U.S. Engagement with Iran: A How To Guide“, Middle East Progress, 25 November 2008). It would recognise that US forces are so stretched in the region that a massive military response to Iranian attacks will pull the United States into a third war in the region.

This is why the current timescale is so crucial, specifically the next eight weeks through to Barack Obama’s inauguration. It also explains the deep unease in the upper echelons of several western European governments, amid a sincere hope that those eight weeks pass without incident.

This article is published by Paul Rogers, Global Intelligence News, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines.

About the author:

 In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

Paul Rogers’s most recent book is Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) – an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed

Image of the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran
Author: Hamed Saber
Wikimedia Commons.
Image of Ahmadiejad
Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain Image

 

Popularity: 35% [?]

Middle East Concerns About India – Pakistan Tensions

Global Intelligence News
Read the Article as Originally Published on Middle East Analyst

By: Meir Javedanfar

30/11/2008

The recent terrorist attacks in India should be viewed with major concern in the Middle East. After the weekend’s events, its a question of when, not if India retaliates against Pakistan.

However such an attack will force Islamabad to pull its forces away from the Afghani border, thus enabling Al Qaeda to expand its operations in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, tensions between India and Pakistan will mean that Barack Obama will have to focus his efforts there, as soon as he enters office, or even before. This could reduce US involvement and focus on the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in Iraq and the Israeli Palestinian peace process. In all cases, conservative, anti-peace parties could make use of the reduced US focus to expand their activities.

There is also the economic angle. There are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis living abroad, due to troubles at home. These troubles could send them fleeing in larger numbers, thus putting more strain on the economies of Middle Eastern countries, especially those belonging to the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.

Iran in particular has much to worry when it comes to its economy. It was placing much hope on the peace pipeline running through Pakistan and India. It was hoping that through the sale of gas to these two energy hungry giants, it could increase its income and political leverage in the region. With relations between India and Pakistan worsening, this now seems much less likely.

The current crisis between India and Pakistan is not just a test for Barack Obama. Its a challenge for the entire international community, including the Middle East. Despite the difficulties ahead, Middle Eastern countries, especially those who have leverage over Pakistan, should try to contain the current situation by pressuring Islamabad to curb the activities of terrorists on its soil. Saudi Arabia could lead the region in this case. Having emerged as the recent rescuer to Pakistan’s financial crisis, it could use its leverage over Islamabad. After Washington, Riyadh is the second biggest door opener in corridors of power in Pakistan. This could be put into good use.

The current crisis can also be viewed as the first test for global multilateral diplomacy as a tool to resolve crisis in the post Bush era. The international community should try not to fail.

© Copyright 2008 Meir Javedanfar – Middle East Analyst. All rights reserved.

Popularity: 31% [?]

POLITICS-THAILAND: Status as Regional Leader in Doubt

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 29 (IPS) – For years, Thais affected an air of superiority when talking about their regional neighbours on mainland South-east Asia. Such pride came from the country’s record of political stability — despite numerous coups — that attracted foreign investment.

But the siege of Bangkok’s international airport by a right-wing anti-government protest movement, which entered its fourth day on Saturday, is shredding the superior edge Thailand had enjoyed.

This is the fourth airport in the country that this right-wing movement has succeeded in shutting down since it took to the streets in May to force a democratically elected government to resign.
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Popularity: 21% [?]

Mumbai massacre brings Pakistan on India, US firing line

Global Intelligence News

By M Rama Rao, India Editor, Asian Tribune

New Delhi, 26 November: The Mumbai massacre will bring Pakistan into the firing line of India and the United States, say American and Indian intelligence experts.

The shape of the crisis will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan, a commentary by Stratfor has put out even as the Mumbai events were unfolding in their full terrorist fury.

Stratfor opines that as a consequence of Islamist attack on Mumbai, India and Pakistan would plunge into the worst crisis they have had since 2002.

“If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government’s domestic credibility will plunge”, the commentary points out.
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Popularity: 20% [?]

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