The "Surge"'s Feet of Clay?

McClatchy also reports on what could be a portentous development if the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government doesn't walk this back.

Troops Arrest an Iraqi Ally in Baghdad - NYTimes.com
This possibility has been building for months, ever since it was decided that these Sunni militias (variously termed Awakening Councils, sahwa, or Sons of Iraq) were to be taken off the US payroll. Remember, these are the Sunni fighters - many of them former resistance fighters against the US occupation - who decided to join with the US to fight al-Qaeda forces in Iraq, after the AQI began to overplay their hand with their erstwhile Iraqi Sunni allies. Much of the credit that US politicians have heaped upon the US military for "turning the tide" and "winning the war" in Iraq was in fact due to the Sons of Iraq turning against al-Qaeda.

But people aware of the facts on the ground knew months ago that if the Baghdad government failed to bring a significant number of these guys into the Iraqi military and security forces, and find acceptable jobs for the rest of them, they might turn against the government and even take up arms against Mr. Maliki (which is why the government has been trying to disarm and, in some cases, detain them). Arresting a prominent leader of the Sons of Iraq at a time when Maliki has been hoping to burnish his nationalist credentials may prove to be a major mistake.

And the fact that US soldiers took part in the arrest, and that the US military spokesman is standing behind it, may prove to be a set-back for US efforts to disengage from Iraq (although other recent reports indicate that that disengagement is not going to happen as soon, or as quickly, as the Obama administration wants us to believe.

More on what the US has stepped into in Afpak

The NYT's Carlotta Gall reports on how the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban have coalesced - and her report includes one of those pictures worth a 1000 words, of throngs milling at a funeral for a person killed by a US Predator attack.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan today, as the NYT also reports, a mosque located about 12 miles from the northwestern city of Peshawar, on the main road between Pakistan and Afghanistan (i.e., the main supply route for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan), was hit by a suicide bomber, with at least 48 killed. Once again, the US is served notice that the Pakistani army may not be up to the job of securing the region, or the route. And when you factor in the fact that elements of the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service, have long been in cahoots with the Taliban . . . .

Mr. Obama now has his own "long" war, and the goal that he has set is going to require long and large commitment that will be hideously expensive in lives and treasure. And I don't mean just US lives. A ramped-up military effort that entails continued - or expanded - use of drones and airstrikes is going to produce a lot more "collateral damage" - innocent villagers wasted by US munitions. That in turn produces angry people intent on avenging those deaths - on the persons of US soldiers and marines; and it also produces images (which can be flashed worldwide almost instantaneously) of more Muslims killed by Americans, at huge expense to whatever hopes Obama has of recultivating the US's image abroad, especially in Muslim countries.

Obama's Plan for Afghanistan

Obama's plan for Afghanistan gets a lot of coverage today; for example, in the WaPo and the NY Times - and in a nutshell, what we're talking about is more troops, more funds, an ambitious - I would say, well nigh impossible - goal (“We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”), no timetable, no end in sight, although he does at least say that the US commitment is not open-ended.

I'm sure that's what Kennedy and Johnson were thinking in the 1960s as the US blundered into Vietnam.

The Violence continues in Baghdad

Anthony Shadid reports from Baghdad, and the news is not good.

Car Bomb Kills 16 in Crowded Baghdad Market

The US military is working mightily to project success: the number of attacks is down, US casualties are at their lowest since 2003. But if you're watching closely, you're noticing that there have been major attacks for several days now. Twenty dead, 15 dead - absolutely unacceptable in most of the world, but somehow, by our lights, minor in Iraq.

Shadid makes it plain: Iraqis are getting scared, and there's a sense that various aggrieved parties are starting to coalesce and lay plans for the time when the US troops depart. I fear Thomas Ricks may be right: the Iraq war may indeed be reaching only a halfway point. God forbid . . .

Netanyahu has his fig-leaf

This complicates things for the US considerably. And it also closes the casket on the two-state solution.
Labor Party Votes to Join Coalition to Form Government Led by Netanyahu in Israel - NYTimes.com

With the narrow Right coalition that Netanyahu seemed to be building, there was a real sense of "what you see is what you get" = extremely pro-settlements, opposed to a real Palestinian state. But now the coalition will include the Labor party, the party of Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords, the party that under Ehud Barak's leadership in the late 1990s was thought to be working toward a real settlement with the Palestinians and a possible Palestinian state.

Barak says that he won't be a "fig leaf" for Netanyahu and Lieberman, but that's indeed exactly what he will be. He gives Netanyahu now the cover of "centrist-left" respectability, and a former prime minister who once was thought to be a progressive of sorts in terms of Palestinian autonomy. If he's smart, Netanyahu will push him out there, front and center, every chance he gets, in hopes of softening the image of what is still going to be a very rightist regime, even with Labor on board. And any time the Obama administration wants to talk a little tougher with the Netanyahu government, Netanyahu can point to Barak and say, "hey, we're not all so right-wing on the Palestinians. You can deal with us."

But let's remember that after he was bounced out of office by Ariel Sharon in the 2000 elections, Barak - stung by his defeat as well as by Hamas suicide bombings - had a major hardening of heart toward the Palestinians. Let's also not forget that he is the current Defense Minister, under whose direction the IDF went in Gaza last December and killed hundreds of people. The man is hardly a champion for a Palestinian state.

But he does give Netanyahu a nice smoke-screen while he bolsters the West Bank settlements.

And finally, let's not forget, Barak has been one of the loudest in calling for military action against Iran. On that score, Netanyahu and he are peas in a pod. Together, they will likely double-team Obama's people. All of which make the ousting of Chas Freeman even more fateful.

Roger Cohen on Obama's outreach to Iran

Roger Cohen with another brave piece. The people at WINEP and AIPAC cannot be happy with this guy. But he still hammers away at points that need to be hammered:

1. It does not serve US interests to be a lap-dog to what the Israeli government wants.
2. The Iranian leadership are not "mad mullahs." We may abhor some of their policies, but they also have legitimate grievances with the US and the West, and they make their decisions as much on the basis of pragmatism, rational calculation, and national interest as of Islamic ideology.

Cohen also makes it clear that the Israelis are keeping their own military option alive, at least in their public statements and on-the-record comments.

There is nothing - and I mean, absolutely nothing, more important on Mr. Obama's plate than to prevent Israel from launching a military strike against Iran.

March 23, 2009

From Tehran to Tel Aviv

By ROGER COHEN

With his bold message to Iran’s leaders, President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement.

He abandoned regime change as an American goal. He shelved the so-called military option. He buried a carrot-and-sticks approach viewed with contempt by Iranians as fit only for donkeys. And he placed Iran’s nuclear program within “the full range of issues before us.”

By doing so, Obama made it almost inevitable that one of the defining strategic issues of his presidency will be a painful but necessary redefinition of America’s relations with Israel as differences over Iran sharpen. I will return to that below.

The innovations in the president’s Persian New Year, or Nowruz, overture to Tehran were remarkable. He referred twice to “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a formulation long shunned, and said that republic, no other, should “take its rightful place in the community of nations.” Here was explicit American acceptance of Iran’s 30-year-old clerical revolution.

He said establishing constructive ties would “not be advanced by threats,” a retreat from his own campaign position that the military option must always remain on the table. Instead he offered “mutual respect.”

I was in Iran in January and February. The visit convinced me that confrontational American high-handedness has been a disaster; that facile analogies between the Iranian regime and the Nazis dishonor six million victims of the Holocaust; that the regime’s provocative rhetoric masks essential pragmatism; and that the best way to help a young, stability-favoring population toward the reform they seek is through engagement.

Obama has now taken all the steps I called for then. The policy changes emerged from an interagency review of the failed Iranian policy of recent years. The shift demanded courage.

One of the people involved in the review told me he had been bombarded by warnings from Israel and Sunni Arab states that engagement with Iran would lead nowhere. Of course they would say that; any Iran breakthrough will shake up current cozy U.S. relationships from Jerusalem to Riyadh.

Obama’s overture represented a victory not only over such lobbying but also over officials’ favoring tightened sanctions or delaying any American initiative until after Iran’s June presidential election.

The hard part has just begun.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded to Obama with a scathing speech at the country’s holiest shrine in Mashad, recalling every past U.S. misdeed, describing prerevolutionary Iran as “a field for the Americans to graze in,” and demanding concrete steps — like a lifting of sanctions — rather than words.

View all that as an opening gambit. Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual “Death to America” chant and he said this: “We’re not emotional when it comes to our important matters. We make decisions by calculation.”

That’s right: the mullahs are anything but mad. Calculation will demand that Iran take Obama seriously.

The country’s oil revenue has plunged, its economy is in a mess, its oil and gas installations are aging. It has deepening interests in a stable Iraq and an Afghanistan free of Taliban rule. Its nuclear program involves a measure of brinkmanship that must be carefully managed. Khamenei’s essential role is conservative — the preservation of the revolution. He can only be radical up to a point.

Iran’s apparent inclination to take up a U.S. invitation to attend a conference on Afghanistan later this month may be more significant than Khamenei’s words. In any event, overcoming a 30-year impasse will take time and consistency.

The clock is ticking — and Obama’s will not be the same as that of Israel’s prime minister designate, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Already divergent U.S. and Israeli approaches to Iran were evident in Israeli President Shimon Peres’s coupling of his own Nowruz address to the Iranian people (not its leaders) with a statement predicting that they would rise up and topple “a handful of religious fanatics.”

A senior Israeli official told me Iran has 1,000 kilos of low-enriched uranium and will have 500 more within six months, enough to make a bomb. It could then opt for one of three courses.

Rush for a bomb by shredding the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, adapting its centrifuges and producing enough highly enriched uranium within a year.

Move the process to a secret site, in which case getting a bomb would take longer, perhaps two years.

Or continue making low-enriched uranium so that “it would have enough for 10 bombs if it decides to rush at a later stage.”

And where, I asked, is Israel’s red line? “Once they get to 1,500 kilos, nonproliferation is dead,” he said. And so? “It’s established that when a country that does not accept Israel’s existence has such a program, we will intervene.”

I think there’s some bluster in this. Israel does not want Obama to talk, talk, talk, so it’s suggesting military action could happen in 2009, within nine months.

Still, this much is clear to me: Obama’s new Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.

Jackson Diehl - Critical Mass in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

This report embodies a certain kind of embedded journalism, as well as stenography for the US military, but it does lay out some of the strategy that's going to be entailed in the US-led counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. And it also highlights how the US plans to bypass the central government and funnel aid to more cooperative (and competent? or pliable?) local authorities.

Again, it begs the question: What is Afghanistan supposed to be once this is all over? Or to borrow from Gen. Petraeus' famous comment about Iraq, "tell me how this ends."

Jackson Diehl - Critical Mass in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

Bad news from Israel

Shas is set to join Netanyahu's Likud-led coalition. Shas believes very adamantly in the West Bank settlement enterprise, which will therefore have now even less to fear from the Israeli government. In fact, as the report notes, a Shas member of the Knesset will be appointed housing minister in the new government. Meanwhile, Ehud Barak is willing to try to negotiate his way into Netanyahu's government, even if many in his Labor Party's leadership are opposed. If Labor does join, the odds of Netanyahu's government surviving go up tremendously - and the situation becomes even more complicated for US diplomats. Last update - 03:30 23/03/2009 Shas and Likud sign coalition agreement By Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondent, Reuters and Haaretz Service The ultra-Orthodox Shas party signed a coalition agreement early Monday to join Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu's government, according to Israel Radio. Shas lined up alongside Yisrael Beitenu as partners in Netanyahu's fledgling coalition. Likud secured a deal with the ultra-right-wing party earlier this month. Under the agreement, Shas will receive four portfolios in the new government. Party chief Eli Yishai will become interior minister, MK Ariel Atias will become minister of housing, Shas will also receive the new government's religion portfolio and a minister-without-portfolio in the Prime Minister's Office. "Israel is set to face many challenges, both social and economic and on the diplomatic and security front, as a result it is only right to combine forces and form a broad government," Shas leader Eli Yishai told journalists after the deal was signed. Likud legislator Gideon Saar, a member of Netanyahu's negotiating team, said the party would strive to broaden the coalition further in the coming days. "Now we have 53 lawmakers tied into coalition agreements headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and in the coming days we will work to broaden the parliamentary base for support for his government," Saar said. Coalition talks are scheduled to continue on Monday with Labor, United Torah Judaism and Habayit Hayehudi. Shas was also promised an increase of NIS 1.4 billion in child welfare payments. Shas and Likud on Sunday said that they had reached a compromise on the ultra-Orthodox party's demand for the education portfolio and on the appointment of an exclusive minister for ultra-Orthodox education in the next government, sources familiar with the negotiations said. United Torah Judaism was also said to have withdrawn its demand for the post of deputy education minister. Netanyahu, who served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, faces an April 3 deadline to complete the formation of a government after being given the task last month by President Shimon Peres. Netanyahu is trying to recruit the center-left Labor party, which will conditionally open coalition talks later on Monday. Labor leader Ehud Barak, the outgoing defense minister, said he would ask his party's executive for a mandate to join Netanyahu's government when it meets on Tuesday. Barak issued a statement late on Monday saying he had appointed three allies to negotiate on Labor's behalf.

Is the US going to re-fashion Afghanistan's government?

A story in The Guardian reports that the Obama administration is planning to install a prime-minister/CEO kind of figure alongside President Hamid Karzai, with whom both the US and European leaders have lost all patience. The guy they have in mind may be the interior minister, Mohammed Hanif Atmar, although let's not forget The Independent's report of several weeks ago about four other men, including at least two expatriates, that the US was priming for power. Karzai is adamantly opposed, of course. That his government is ineffective and riddled with corruption seems to be the consensus view in much of the international community, although given the general state of the country and the huge problems confronting it, one has to wonder if this kind of change will produce all that much improvement, or whether it will outweigh what is likely to be a significant downside: as The Guardian piece puts it,

The risk for the US is that the imposition of a technocrat alongside Karzai would be viewed as colonialism, even though that figure would be an Afghan.

Golly, ya think? Whoever the US installs is going to be seen as a puppet, the US's man, and will have zero credibility except as an errand boy with the power to dispense American dollars and aid.

Speaking of which, the report also states that the US plans to largely maneuver around the central government and funnel aid directly to local authorities (perhaps like some of those human-rights-loving local warlords of whom the US has been so fond?). As the report also notes - and as Mr. Obama said this evening on Sixty Minutes - the US mission in Afghanistan is from here on out going to focus on ensuring that al-Qaeda and its ilk can never use that country as a base from which to attack the US and "its interests." Perhaps we ought not be surprised, but despite all the talk of "real change," what's taking shape is another iteration of what's been US policy in the Middle East and Central Asia for decades: stability comes first, democracy and human rights come second. Of course, given the US's current economic predicament (which shows no real sign of turning around), this kind of fixing comes cheaper (although, I fear, it may not be especially cheap in the lives of American military, or civilians) and certainly reflects a well-considered pragmatism. But if it also entails deliberately undermining the authority of a central government and empowering at the local level some unsavory characters who hardly embody "American" values of democracy and humanity . . . well, the term "blowback" comes to mind, among others.

This, my friends, is going to be a very long and very bumpy ride.

Criticism of the IDF's Rampage in Gaza continues

The last couple of days have brought more critical commentary and reporting on both the IDF's atrocities in the December-January Gaza operation and the possibility that the Netanyahu coalition government will include anti-Arab racist, Avigdor Lieberman, as foreign secretary. I highly recommend Tony Karon's latest essay in The National, as well as reporting by Amira Hass in Haaretz on how IDF soldiers trashed the houses they occupied in Gaza during the hostilities, and finally, also in Haaretz, Gideon Levy, with an essay that declares that the IDF long ago stopped being the "most moral army in the world," which has long been its claim.

And I also encourage you to look into the ongoing, almost rapid-fire postings by Adam Horowitz and Phil Weiss at the Mondoweiss blog. Both men are extremely bright, thoughtful, eloquent writers who are also very well-informed about current issues and discussions in the US Jewish community - both neocons and liberals - in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead. They see a real sea-change in attitudes, especially within the liberal Jewish community, toward what they unabashedly refer to as the Israel Lobby, and toward Israel policy toward the Palestinians.

My newest op-ed is up at War in Context

And again I must thank Paul Woodward for his kindness in posting it. You'll find it here.

What makes Iraq go 'round . . .

. . . is patronage, and influence (in Arabic, wasta). I don't know the corresponding word in Kurdish, but in today's WaPo Sudarsan Raghavan has a nice piece on how entrepreneurs in Iraqi Kurdistan can't expect to do business with the regional government there unless they can link themselves to the political powers/parties that be, and the families that control them: the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which has been the province of the powerful Barzani family, and/or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the organ controlled by the other kingpin family of Kurdistan, the Talabani family (a member of whom is, of course, the current president of Iraq).

The Kurdistan Regional Government (which these two parties/families control) receives 17 percent of Iraq's annual budget (calculated to be about $6 billion for 2009) - and according to a source Raghavan quotes, from that each of these parties receives about $35 million a month. The Baghdad government has little idea of how that money is being spent. This completely goes against the grain of central-government dictates, but these kinds of relationships have long been part of doing business in Iraq (and, for that matter, elsewhere in the Arab world). The Kurds seem intent on more or less going their own way, even if they remain at least officially part of a "nation" called Iraq, but these practices are also well entrenched at the local and regional levels throughout the predominantly Arab part of Iraq, and those who are involved and have been profiting from it are going to be loathe to relinquish their prerogatives to a central bureaucracy operating out of the capital. Prime Minister al-Maliki seems intent on fashioning a strong central government, but he will have his hands full in dealing with this.