SPECIAL SERIES: Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Gareth Porter*

TEHRAN, Dec 15 (IPS) – Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, ”Yes, but…”

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there’s a big difference between Iranian and U.S. ideas of what such an accord would look like.

Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed here indicate that an agreement would only be possible if it represented a fundamental change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Iranian officials and analysts see the problem of U.S.-Iranian relations as a seamless web of issues on which agreement must be reached as a whole. And in addition to the bilateral issues of normal diplomatic and economic relations, they see a new U.S.-Iranian understanding on the Middle East as essential.
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TERRORISM & THE BUSINESS WORLD —AN UPDATE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.481

Global Intelligence News

by B. Raman

( A talk delivered at a symposium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology at Delhi on December 13,2008)

Terrorists target human beings—combatants and non-combatants (civilians)— as well as capabilities—economic and strategic.

2. Till the 1980s, they focused more on targeting human beings. Targeting of capabilities—-which may or may not cause human fatalities—- came into vogue in the 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out explosions in London’s financial district.

3. Targeting of capabilities does not create the same kind of public revulsion against the terrorists as the targeting of human beings does. Whereas the after-effects of the targeting of human beings remain localised in the area where they were targeted, the impact of the targeting of capabilities has a ripple effect far beyond the area where the act of terrorism was carried out.
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PAKISTAN DETAINS LET’S KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMAD?

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR–PAPER NO. 480

Global Intelligence News

B.RAMAN

Pakistani media and some foreign news agencies, including the Associated Press, reported on December 8,2008, that helicopter-borne Pakistani security forces raided a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) located at a place called Shawai, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on December 7 and detained 12 inmates of the camp, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, reportedly the operational chief of the LET.

2.Major-Gen.Athar Abbas, a spokesman of the army, while briefing the media, confirmed that the security forces had carried out ” an intelligence-led operation against a banned militant organisation and carried out several arrests” , but he did not identify the organisation as the LET. Nor did he confirm that Lakhvi was among those detained.
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INDIA/PAKISTAN: Hoax Call Hyped by Media – Get Hostilities to Brink

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Dec 7 (IPS) – A hoax phone call from India to Pakistan’s President threatening military reprisals in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai city, hyped up by media, brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to conflict.

However, analysts believe that the hostilities arising from the attack and the media hype can still be contained.

The three-day standoff in Mumbai was barely over on Nov. 28 when the late-evening phone call was made, supposedly from India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. Because of the heightened tensions, his staff bypassed routine procedures and transferred the call to Zardari.

The imposter ”directly threatened to take military action if Islamabad failed to immediately act against the supposed perpetrators of the Mumbai killings” according to a report in the daily Dawn, Pakistan of Dec. 6, which reveals that the call was a hoax that sent Pakistan into a state of ‘high alert’ last weekend, ”eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression”.
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MUMBAI: ANSWERS TO READERS’ QUESTIONS

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.478

Global Intelligence News

B.RAMAN

(In this article, I will try to answer some of the questions, which I have received from readers of my articles on the Mumbai terrorist strikes)

1.How strong is the evidence of the involvement of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) ?

It is very strong.The evidence collected till now is partly direct and partly circumstantial. The direct evidence has come from the interrogation of one of the perpetrators (Mohammad Ajmal Amir, son of Mohammad Amir Imam, of village Faridkot in the Okara District of Pakistan’s Punjab), who has been arrested and who is under interrogation. He has given details of the entire conspiracy and the involvement of the LET in it. The circumstantial evidence has come from the interrogation of four Indian Muslims arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in February,2008, during their investigation of the terrorist attack on a camp of the Central Reserve Police Force in Rampur on January 1,2008. They had reportedly spoken of the plans of the LET for future terrorist strikes, one of which was planned in Mumbai. One of them, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Hotel and other sites attacked on November 26,2008. Some other circumstantial evidence has also come from technical intelligence reportedly collected by the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) in September,2008, which spoke of the plans of the LET to launch a sea-borne terrorist strike in Mumbai.
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US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end.

Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover, some observers believe that Iraq may be able to hold them legally accountable for offences allegedly committed even before the SOFA was approved.

And, at the other end of the U.S-Iraq equation, after months of seeming inactivity — marked by continuing doubts about whether the U.S. even has legal jurisdiction over the contractors — the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may soon bring charges against three to six contractor-employed security guards for their involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.
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SOUTH ASIA: Concern for Zardari’s Civilian Gov’t Stays India

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Analysis by Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (IPS) – After United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to New Delhi and Islamabad, in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, India has added a new rationale for stepping up pressure on Pakistan for taking decisive action against jehadi extremists operating from its soil.

However, India has still not determined what approach to adopt to achieve its objective, and is wary of using means which might escalate hostility with Pakistan in ways which would “play into the hands” of those responsible for acts of terrorism against its citizens.

In a special background briefing for the media, a senior Indian official only identifiable under briefing rules as “authoritative source” said India has proof of the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in the Mumbai attacks, which left more than 200 people dead.

But India will not make this accusation publicly for fear that that would escalate tensions and weaken the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, which it regards as favourably disposed towards the peace process with India.
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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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SRI LANKA: No Calm After the Storm

Global Intelligence News / IPS

IPS Correspondents

COLOMBO, Dec 5 (IPS) – The only good thing about tropical storm ‘Nisha’, that lashed northern Sri Lanka in the last week of November, was that it brought a lull to the fierce fighting between Tamil separatist rebels and the Sri Lankan army.

According to the Disaster Management Centre, over 370,000 persons were affected by gale force winds and rains, and more than 50,000 houses were damaged — 11,000 of them completely destroyed — in nine districts in the country between Nov. 22 – 30 when Nisha struck. Eleven persons were known to have died.

The worst damage was recorded in the northern Jaffna peninsula where 330,000 people were affected and nine killed. The peninsula at the northern edge of the island has been besieged by renewed fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since August 2006.
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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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