The Latest from Israel-Gaza-Palestine (31 January)

Latest Post:The Turkey-Israel Clash on Gaza -The American Jewish Committee Joins In

11:20 p.m. Intriguing manoeuvres in Cairo. Earlier it was reported that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas would be in Egypt on Sunday, at the same time that a Hamas delegation was in Egypt. Abbas' staff are now saying he will make an "unscheduled" stop in Cairo on Monday.

9:45 p.m. A potentially key development in the Middle East. I had heard, while in Dublin, of the high hopes of Obama officials for a breakthrough in relations with Syria. (You may recall that Damascus was an associate member of the Axis of Evil during the Dubya years, and the US pulled its ambassador after the 2005 killing of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri by a car bomb.)

Well, today Syrian President Bashir al-Assad met a US Congressional delegation and called for a "positive" dialogue with Washington based on, echoing President Obama's Inaugural phrase, "common interests and mutual respect".

However, before getting too effusive about the "excellent beginning", as one Congressman called the meeting, US officials may want to note that part of Assad's manoeuvring is to get (and to take credit for) recognition of Hamas. So holding out the prospect of warmer relations with Washington, while it has many uses for Syria, is also being used as a lever in the Israel-Palestine process.

9:30 p.m. Egypt says it has installed cameras and motion sensors along the border with Gaza to stop smuggling through tunnels.



6:30 p.m. Palestinian Authorian leader Mahmoud Abbas, predictably, has rejected Hamas' calls for a dissolution of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its replacement by a new umbrella Palestinian group: "[Hamas political director Khaled Meshaal's statements regarding the establishment of a new authority to replace the Palestine Liberation Organisation is an exercise in time-wasting. While he talks about establishing an organisation, he really wants to destroy what has been the voice (of the Palestinian people) for 44 years."

The PLO, founded in 1964, including Abbas' Fatah Party and other Palestinian political movements but not Hamas. Both Abbas and Hamas representatives are due in Cairo on Sunday for talks.

3:20 p.m. According to a Sydney reporter, the Israeli Ambassador to Australia has said,"The country's recent military offensives [in Gaza] were a preintroduction to the challenge Israel expects from a nuclear-equipped Iran within a year." Israel expects Tehran to "be at the point of no return" within 14 months.

3 p.m. Propaganda Story of the Day 2 (see 9:30 a.m.): Israeli military and officers are putting about the story that "an Iranian aid ship is now serving as a communications headquarters for Hamas".

The DEBKAfile, closely linked to Israeli services, added, "Iran has sent intelligence and Revolutionary Guards officers to Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, to help create a support system for the Iran Shahed's new communications purpose."

1:30 p.m. CNN's website has an update on the ongoing student demonstrations in Britain protesting the situation in Gaza. It's an article heavily tilted against the demos, focusing on the request of the National Union of Students call for an end to occupations and a supposed increase in hostility towards Jewish students.

10:25 a.m. Some good news. Despite the refusal of the BBC to air the Disaster Emergencies Committee appeal for aid to Gaza, the campaign has raised £3 million (more than $4 million) in its first week.

Morning Update (9:30 a.m.): Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is continuing his high-profile attack, which we've covered extensively, on Israel's policies in Gaza with an interview in The Washington Post: "Palestine today is an open-air prison."

Propaganda Story of the Day: The winner is in Israel's YNet News, "Thousands of al-Qaeda supporters active in Gaza". The sensationalist tale is based on information from two unnamed Palestinian sources.

A rocket from Gaza has landed near Ashkelon. There were no casualties.

And on the Eighth Day: Hopes and Fears over The Obama Foreign Policy

Whatever else is said about Barack Obama, you cannot accuse him of being slow off the mark. A day after the Inauguration, he issued the order closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and CIA “black sites” and ending torture by American agencies. Two days later, he revoked the Reagan directive banning funding for any organisation carrying out abortions overseas. On 26 January, he ordered a new approach to emissions and global warming, as the State Department appointed Todd Stern to oversee policy on climate change.



Last Monday, Obama launched his “reach-out” to the Islamic world with a televised interview, his first with any channel, with Al Arabiya. Two envoys, George Mitchell for the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan and Pakistan, have been appointed; Mitchell is already in the region searching for diplomatic settlements. All of this has occurred even as the Administration was pushing for approval of its economic stimulus package and engaging in fierce inter-agency debates over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The media, rightly but ritually, hailed Obama's symbolic renunciation of his predecessor George W. Bush. Much more substantial was this Administration's attention to methods. The American global image would not be projected and its position assured, as in the Dubya years, through military strength; instead, the US would lsucceed through a recognition of and adherence to international cooperation, a projection of tolerance, and a desire to listen. While the term “smart power”, developed over the last two years in anticipation of this Administration, is already in danger of overuse, it is the right expression for the Obama approach.

Yet, even in Obama's more than symbolic announcement, there were seeds of trouble for that “smart power”. The President had hoped to order the immediate, or at least the near-future, shutdown of Camp X-Ray, but he was stymied by political opposition as well as legal complications. The interview with Al Arabiya was a substitute for Obama's hope of a major foreign policy speech in an Arab capital in the first weeks of his Administrat. The Holbrooke appointment was modified when New Delhi made clear it would not receive a “Pakistan-India” envoy; Mitchell's scope for success has already been constrained by the background of Gaza.

Little of this was within Obama's power to rectify; it would have been Messianic indeed if he could have prevailed immediately, given the domestic and international context. The President may have received a quick lesson, however, in the bureaucratic challenges that face even the most determined and persuasive leader.

Already some officials in the Pentagon have tried to block Obama initiatives. They tried to spun against the plan to close Guantanamo Bay, before and after the Inauguration, with the claims that released detainees had returned to Al Qa'eda and terrorism. That attempt was undermined by the shallowness of the claims, which were only substantiated in two cases, and the unexpected offense that it caused Saudi Arabia, who felt that its programme for rehabilitation of former insurgents had been insulted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally and firmed quashed the mini-coup by declaring on Wednesday that he fully supported Obama's plans.

On other key issues, however, the President faces tougher, higher-ranking, and more persistent opposition. Within a day of Obama's first meeting on Iraq, Pentagon sources were letting the media know their doubts on a 16-month timetable for withdrawal. And, after this Wednesday's meeting, General Raymond Odierno, in charge of US forces in Iraq, publicly warned against a quick transition to the Iraqi military and security forces. This not-too-subtle rebuke of the President has been backed by the outgoing US Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and I suspect by the key military figure, head of US Central Command General David Petraeus.

The future US strategy in Afghanistan also appears to be caught up in a battle within the Administration, with a lack of resolution on the increase in the American military presence (much,much more on that in a moment). And even on Iran, where Obama appears to be making a overture on engagement with Tehran, it's not clear that he will get backing for a near-future initiatives. White House officials leaked Obama's draft letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a British newspaper, but State Department officials added that such a letter would not be sent until a “full review” of the US strategy with Iran had been completed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Still, all of these might be minor irritants, given the impact both of Obama's symbolic steps and of other quieter but important steps. For example, after the outright Bush Administration hostility to any Latin American Government that did not have the proper economic or political stance, Obama's State Department immediately recognised the victory of President Evo Morales in a referendum on the Bolivian constitution, and there are signs that the President will soon be engaging with Havana's leaders with a view to opening up a US-Cuban relationship. In Europe, Obama's phone call with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was quickly followed by Moscow's announcement that, in return for a more productive US stance on missile defence (i.e., Washington wasn't going to roll out the system in Eastern Europe), Russia would not deploy missiles on the Polish border. There are even signals of an advance in the Middle East through a new US-Syrian relationship, although this is probably contingent on some recogntion or acceptance of Hamas by Washington.

So why am I even more concerned about the Obama foreign-policy path than I was a week ago, when I wrote of my conflicted reaction to the Inauguration? Let me introduce to the two elephants in this room, one which he inherited and one which he seems to have purchased.

Unless there is an unexpected outcome from George Mitchell's tour of the Middle East, Obama's goodwill toward the Arab and Islamic worlds could quickly dissipate over Gaza. The military conflict may be over, but the bitterness over the deaths of more than 1300 Gazans, most of them civilians, is not going away. And because President-elect Obama said next-to-nothing while the Israeli attack was ongoing, the burden of expectation upon President Obama to do something beyond an Al Arabiya interview is even greater.

Whether the Bush Administration directly supported Israel's attempt to overthrow Hamas and put the Palestinian Authority in Gaza or whether it was drawn along by Tel Aviv's initiative, the cold political reality is that this failed. Indeed, the operation --- again in political, not military, terms --- backfired. Hamas' position has been strengthened, while the Palestinian Authority now looks weak and may even be in trouble in its base of the West Bank.

And there are wider re-configurations. Egypt, which supported the Israeli attempt, is now having to recover some modicum of authority in the Arab world while Syria, which openly supported Hamas, has been bolstered. (Those getting into detail may note not only the emerging alliance between Damascus, Turkey, and Iran but also that Syria has sent an Ambassador to Beirut, effectively signalling a new Syrian-Lebanese relationship.)

Put bluntly, the Obama Administration --- with its belated approach to Gaza and its consequences --- is entering a situation which it does not control and, indeed, which it cannot lead. The US Government may pretend that it can pursue a political and diplomatic resolution by talking to only two of the three central actors, working with Israel and the Palestinian Authority but not Hamas, but that is no longer an approach recognised by most in the region and beyond. (In a separate post later today, I'll note a signal that even Washington's European allies are bowing to the existence of Hamas.)

The Israel-Palestine-Gaza situation is not my foremost concern, however. As significant, in symbolic and political terms, as that conflict might be for Washington's position in the Middle East and beyond, it will be a sideshow if the President and his advisors march towards disaster in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Wednesday, the New York Times had the red-flag story. White House staffers leaked the essence of the Obama plan: increase US troop levels in Afghanistan, leave nation-building to “the Europeans”, and drop Afghan President Hamid Karzai if he had any objections. On the same day, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Congressional committees that the US would continue its bombing of targets in northwest Pakistan. (Not a surprise, since the first strikes of the Obama era had already taken place , killing 19 people, most of them civilians.)

So much for “smart power”. Leave aside, for the moment, that the rationale for the approach to Afghanistan --- Gates saying that the US had to defeat “Al Qa'eda” --- is either a diversion or a flight for reality, since the major challenge in the country (and indeed in Pakistan) is from local insurgents. Consider the consequences.

What happens to Obama's symbolic goodwill in not only the Islamic world but worlds beyond when an increase in US forces and US operations leads to an increase in civilian deaths, when America walks away from economic and social projects as it concentrates on the projection of force, when there are more detainees pushed into Camp Bagram (which already has more than twice as many “residents” and worse conditions than Guantanamo Bay)? What happens to “smart power” when Obama's pledge to listen and grasp the unclenched fist is replaced with a far more forceful, clenched American fist? And what has happened to supposed US respect for freedom and democracy when Washington not only carries out unilateral operations in Pakistan but threatens to topple an Afghan leader who it put into power in 2001/2?

This approach towards Afghanistan/Pakistan will crack even the bedrock of US-European relations. In Britain, America's closest ally in this venture, politicians, diplomats, and military commanders are close-to-openly horrified at the US takeover and direction of this Afghan strategy and at the consequences in Pakistan of the US bombings and missile strikes. Put bluntly, “Europe” isn't going to step up to nation-build throughout Afghanistan as a mere support for American's military-first strategy. And when it doesn't, Obama and advisors will have a choice: will they then criticise European allies to the point of risking NATO --- at least in “out-of-area” operations --- or will it accept a limit to their actions?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the lack of agreement in the Obama Administration so far on a defined number of US troops means the President might not be in accord with the approach unveiled in the New York Times. Maybe the Administration will pursue an integrated political strategy, talking to groups inside Afghanistan (and, yes, that includes “moderate Taliban”) and to other countries with influence, such as Iran. Or maybe it won't do any of this, but Afghanistan won't be a disaster, or at least a symbolic disaster --- as with Iraq from 2003 --- spilling over into all areas of US foreign policy.

Sitting here amidst the grey rain of Dublin and the morning-after recognition that “expert thought” in the US, whatever that means, doesn't see the dangers in Afghanistan and Pakistan that I've laid out, I desperately hope to be wrong.

Because, if the world was made in six days, parts of it can be unmade in the next six months.

Analysis: Provincial Elections in Iraq

The pressure of following President Obama's first days in office and events such as Gaza has pushed Iraq to the background. It shouldn't, as the country is entering a critical phase with Sunday's provincial elections. For all the vaunted success of the "surge" and the nominal US handover to Iraqi sovereignty, the country is still in "violent semi-peace". There are still bombings and killings on a daily basis, albeit much reduced below the levels of the last three years, and certain areas such as Mosul and Kirkuk are especially tense.

Robert Dreyfuss, one of the most provocative observers of Iraq, offers this analysis of the elections: "If [the process doesn't] go smoothly, and if the elections don't result in gains for parties that were shut out of the political process in 2005 -- especially among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni bloc -- then it's very likely that violence will increase once again. It's even possible that many Sunnis will return to armed resistance, and some of them will rejoin Al Qaeda in Iraq.



Iraq's Election: What to Watch For

On Saturday, January 31, Iraq will conduct its first elections since 2005, when Iraqis went to the polls to select both their national parliament and provincial councils. This time, the election will decide only the provincial councils in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Still, the election is likely to be a turning point for Iraq. Which way it turns -- toward greater democracy, or toward further instability and a return of violent resistance -- depends on what happens on Saturday.

It's not a pretty picture. The elections promise to be marred by violence, fraud, intimidation, vote-buying and bribery, bloc voting by tribes and ethnic constituencies, and undue influence by Shiite clerics.

If things don't go smoothly, and if the elections don't result in gains for parties that were shut out of the political process in 2005 -- especially among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni bloc -- then it's very likely that violence will increase once again. It's even possible that many Sunnis will return to armed resistance, and some of them will rejoin Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Viewed most broadly, the election is a test of the ability of Iraq's ruling coalition to cling to power despite having presided over a catastrophic collapse of Iraq's economy, social services, and utilities, and despite widespread public perceptions that the ruling parties are guilty of vast corruption, mismanagement, and rule by paramilitary force through party militias. The four ruling parties are the two Shiite fundamentalist religious parties, the Islamic Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the two Kurdish separatist parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). According to many sources I've interviewed, including Iraqis involved in the elections, large numbers of Iraqis view all four ruling parties with disdain. They are blamed for their inability to provide basic services such as electricity, health care, fuel, water, and trash collection, all of which are intermittent at best and nonexistent at worst. They are blamed for their mismanagement of the economy, and especially Iraq's oil, and for the unemployment rate that is estimated at 50 percent. Under ordinary circumstances, all four parties would suffer massive repudiation at the polls. But these are not ordinary circumstances.

The election is also seen as a referendum of sorts on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Dawa party is a powerful player in Saturday's vote. Although Maliki's Dawa has split and split again -- it is down to a miniscule six seats in the 275-member parliament, after schisms -- it benefits from Maliki's heavyhanded use of political power as prime minister. Despite Dawa's history as a secretive, cell-based and cult-like religious movement with obscurantist Shiite views, Maliki is drawing electoral support from Iraqis who view him as a strongman, sort of a Saddam-lite ruler, and he has recast himself as a nationalist. He's built a fiefdom in the Iraqi army, shifting and reappointing generals who support him, in a naked effort to turn the army into Dawa's private militia. He's used a pair of security organizations that report directly to the prime minister's office to carry out arrests and intimidation of rival politicians and parties, especially against Muqtada al-Sadr's allies. He's constructed paramilitary "tribal councils" in provinces all over Iraq, lavishing tens of millions of dollars in government funding on these organizations, which are in fact nothing more than outright arms of Maliki's office. And he's using the Iraqi government's state-owned media openly on his behalf.

Here's what to watch for on Saturday:

First, can the religious parties hold on? According to many accounts, liberal, nationalist, and secular Iraqis believe that the population at large is disenchanted with Dawa, ISCI and the Sadrists. Will that result in gains for parties of a distinctly secular approach, especially the party led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has broad appeal to many nationalists and Sunnis? Or will the built-in advantages of Dawa and ISCI, who control the media and the government, allow them to continue as dominant forces?

Second, will the Sunnis gain power in the provinces where they are either dominant or strong? In 2005, the Sunnis boycotted the vote, and only about 2 percent of Sunni Arabs voted at all. That led to a victory for the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a fundamentalist religious party of Sunnis tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, many analysts expect that the IIP will be decimated. Since 2003, the IIP has cooperated with the United States and with the Kurdish-Shiite ruling alliance, so if the IIP is knocked out, expect a more militant, more nationalist force to take its place. Many of the former resistance groups, the Awakening movement, and Sunni tribal parties have formed parties for the Jan. 31 election.

Key battles will be in Mosul, capital of Nineveh province in the north; in Baghdad, the capital and a province of its own, with nearly one-fourth of Iraq's population; and Diyala province, a mixed area northeast of Baghdad.

In Nineveh province, because the Sunnis boycotted the last vote, the provincial council is controlled overwhelmingly by Kurds, who are a small minority in Nineveh, confined to eastern Mosul city. The Kurds are angling to suppress the Sunni vote, and they've even armed a Christian militia. By all accounts, though, the Sunnis ought to seize control of Nineveh. If they don't, an angry and violent resistance movement is likely to emerge in the north.

In Baghdad province, now controlled by ISCI and Dawa, there's a chance that nationalist parties, Sunnis, and secular parties can win a large number seats on Baghdad's 57-seat council, and if they make the right alliances -- say, with Sadrists -- they could oust ISCI and Dawa in the heart of the country. But Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed, and many Sunnis have been displaced. It's not clear if displaced Iraqis will be allowed to vote, or if so, for whom. If the Shiite religious parties maintain control of Baghdad, again it's possible that there will be a violent reaction from former insurgents and elements of the Awakening movement.

In Diyala province, where Sunnis and Shiites are more balanced, the outcome up for grabs. Sunni and Shiite enclaves are walled off, violence is endemic, candidates can't easily campaign or promote their parties, and the results will make no one happy. It's a tinderbox.

There is also the question of outside support. Iran is undoubtedly pouring money into support for its allies, including ISCI. To a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia is probably supporting some Sunni parties and possibly some secular parties as well. Turkey is suspected of backing the IIP. And it's hard to believe that the CIA isn't giving cash to back favored candidates.

Meanwhile, the election will be incomplete because there is no vote in disputed Tamim province, whose capital of KIrkuk is claimed by expansionist Kurds. The problem in Kirkuk is so explosive that the Iraqi government decided to put off elections there altogether. And there are no provincial elections in the three Kurdish provinces in the north, which are increasingly seen as part of a separatist, independence-minded zone -- something that both Sunni and Shiite Arabs reject.

Obama on Top of the World: The Latest in US Foreign Policy (28 January)

Earlier Updates: Obama on Top of the World (27 January)
Latest Post: The Other Shoe Drops: Obama Prepares for War in Afghanistan

6 p.m. The Guardian of London: "President Barack Obama's administration is considering sending a letter to Iran aimed at unfreezing US-Iranian relations and opening the way for face-to-face talks." The letter would be in response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter of congratulations to Obama on 6 November.

2:20 p.m. We've updated this morning's story on the Obama strategy for Afghanistan.

2:02 p.m. Reports that President Obama will visit Canada on 19 February.

2 p.m. The Dennis Ross saga, which has given us nightmares, continues. He still has not been officially named as the State Department envoy on Iranian matters but "United Against Nuclear Iran", the pressure group which includes as members Ross and State's envoy to Afghanistan/Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, either has outdated info or gives the game away:

United Against Nuclear Iran thanks Ambassadors Holbrooke and Ross for their commitment, service, and leadership and we congratulate them on their recent appointments to the Department of State.

1 p.m. Pick a Number, Any Number. A NATO spokesman claims that less than 100 Afghan civilians were killed in the organisation's military operations in 2008. That compares with an estimate in The New York Times of up to 4000 and by an Afghan human rights group, based on UN numbers, of almost 700.

11:30 a.m. On the Other Hand....Only two hours after we updated on Russia's cancellation of a deployment of missiles on the Polish border, thanks to the Obama Factor, another problem crops up:

NATO countries expressed concern on Wednesday about reports that Russia plans to set up bases in Russian-backed breakaway territories in Georgia, a NATO spokesman said.

The specific issue is Russia's announcement on Monday that it intends to build a naval base in Abkhazia, which was part of Georgia but which Russia recognised as "independent" after last August's Russian-Georgian war.

10:35 a.m. It's not all bad news in Afghanistan. The Taliban have praised, "Obama's move to close Guantanamo detention center is a positive step for peace and stability in the region and the world."

Unfortunately, the feel-good moment may be short-lived. The Taliban also insisted that, if the President wants "mutual respect" with Muslim communities, "He must completely withdraw all his forces from the two occupied Islamic countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), and to stop defending Israel against Islamic interests in the Middle East and the entire world." And, as for Afghanistan, Obama should not send additional US forces as "the use of force against the independent peoples of the world, has lost its effectiveness".

9:45 a.m. Score one diplomatic/victory for the Obama Factor.

An official from the Russian General Staff has told the Interfax news agency that Moscow will suspend deployment of missiles on the Polish border: "These plans have been suspended because the new US administration is not pushing ahead with the plans to deploy...the US missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic." The news follows a conversation between President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Monday.

There are other US-Russian exchanges to watch. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister has told Iran that Moscow wants to broaden "political, trade, and economic cooperation". For the moment, however, the apparent rapprochement raises the question....

What exactly was the value of the Missile Defence pursued by the Bush Administration so relentlessly over the last eight years?

7:30 a.m. Is this for show for real? Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, contradicting the testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday,  say they have no agreement with the Obama Administration allowing US missile strikes on Pakistani territory: ""There is no understanding between Pakistan and the United States on Predator attacks."

Of course, it could be the case that the American arrangement is with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, bypassing the Foreign Ministry. Alternatively, the Pakistani Government is trying to hold to the public line of "independence" while private accepting US operations.

6 a.m. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given a challenging but cautious response to President Obama's suggestion of engagement. Speaking at an election rally in western Iran, Ahmadinejad said:

We welcome change but on condition that change is fundamental and on the right track. When they say "we want to make changes', change can happen in two ways. First is a fundamental and effective change ... The second ... is a change of tactics."

Ahmadinejad, clearly picking up on Obama's campaign slogan of "change", added, "[The US] should apologise to the Iranian nation and try to make up for their dark background and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation."

This is a significant rhetorical position that has been taken up by Iranian leaders in the past. Indeed, I suspect US policymakers will immediately think that at the end of the Clinton Administration, they made such an apology, albeit belatedly, for the 1953 US-backed coup. It should also be noted that this is a campaign speech, with Ahmadinejad staking out his foreign-policy position to the Iranian electorate.

This said, Ahmadinejad gave an important signal in a reference to Washington stifling Iran's economic development since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Decoded, this may be indicating to Obama: if you want to engage, the US has to make a commitment --- possibly even in advance of negotiations --- to ease existing sanctions on Tehran.

3:50 a.m. Glimpse the Future. Just to highlight our top post this morning on Afghanistan and the problems of the Obama strategy: "American officers distributed $40,000 on Tuesday to relatives of 15 people killed Jan. 19 in a United States raid."

The US military wasn't exactly generous in its apology, holding to the claim that a "militant commander" died along with 14 civilians. While a colonel told villages, "If there was collateral damage, I’m very sorry about that,” a US military lawyers made clear that "he payments were not an admission that innocents had been killed".

3:30 a.m. We've just posted a separate entry highlighting the apparent White House strategy in Afghanistan: ramp up the military effort, leave nation-building to others, and ditch Afghan President Hamid Karzai if necessary.

Morning Update (1:45 a.m. Washington time): It looks the campaign, pursued by some in the Pentagon, to undermine the Obama plan to close Guantanamo Bay within a year has been checked. The New York Times and CNN began running a "backlash" story yesterday that the Saudi programme for rehabilitation of terrorists was actually very, very good with only nine participants, out of hundreds, returning to their evil ways. The significance? The original spin was that two ex-Gitmo detainees who had rejoined Yemeni terrorist cells may have gone through the Saudi programme.

Then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, testifying to Congressional committees, gave full support to the closure plan: ""I believe that if we did not have a deadline, we could kick that can down the road endlessly."

The Other Shoe Drops: Obama Prepares for War in Afghanistan

Update: In a sign of division in the Obama White House, officials are back-pedaling away from this morning's story. A White House official, dropping the Karzai-must-accept line and the military-only approach, said, "President Barack Obama will press Afghan President Hamid Karzai to extend government control beyond the capital and fight corruption under a new U.S. policy with a "significant non-military component." He added, with respect to the Times article, "There is no purely military solution to the challenge in Afghanistan so there will be a significant non-military component to anything that we seek to undertake." A Pentagon spokesman added, ""That story, to me, seemed to suggest that we had some sort of view on the specific outcome of the election in Afghanistan. I don't believe that to be true."

Regular readers know that our primary concern with the Obama Administration is the foreign-policy priority of a military-first approach to Afghanistan.



Well, the White House spinners have now used The New York Times to set out the plans, and it's worse than we thought. Not only will there be war, but the US Government is prepared to push aside Afghan President Hamid Karzai if he has anything to say about it:

President Obama intends to adopt a tougher line toward Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, as part of a new American approach to Afghanistan that will put more emphasis on waging war than on development, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Karzai is now seen as a potential impediment to American goals in Afghanistan, the officials said, because corruption has become rampant in his government, contributing to a flourishing drug trade and the resurgence of the Taliban.

Among those pressing for Mr. Karzai to do more, the officials said, are Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indeed, the approach appears to be a replication of General David Petraeus's model for Iraq, "with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government". And, in case you thought Obama was going to at least complement the military strategy with a political and social approach to the turmoil in much of Afghanistan, the White House aides emphasised:

[We will] leave economic development and nation-building increasingly to European allies, so that American forces [can] focus on the fight against insurgents.

Obama advisors appear to be so clueless --- sorry, but that seems to be the appropriate word --- that they are replacing all local considerations with a sweeping portrayal of "us v. Bin Laden" as the central issue: “What we’re trying to do is to focus on the Al Qaeda problem. That has to be our first priority.”

Beyond the military question --- can you really defeat the Taliban and other insurgents head-on, rather than trying to build up a base of support in the villages through development of infrastructure and social programmes? --- Obama may be shattering a fragmented country. The "ditch Karzai" approach may have merit in light of the corruption and inefficiency allegations, but if it effectively sets aside a national government --- which the US threatened but never did in Iraq --- then what hope of a unified long-term campaign against insurgency?

And no amount of extra US soldiers --- 20,000 or 30,000 or 100,000 --- is going to offer a magic answer to that question.