Imagine this scenario: within the space of a single day, two deadly bombs hit two different cities in two different countries. The death toll from each bomb is dozens killed and dozens more injured. Both bombs are placed by arms of the same terrorist organization.
Now suppose these two cities were in France and Spain. The two countries would immediately share all the information they with each other to find a solution to a shared problem. It’s common sense. But sadly in this case, the two countries are Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have not understood this logic of sharing information, even after years of being subjected to such terrorist attacks.
On 12 March, suicide bombings in the Pakistani city of Lahore killed 72 people and injured dozens. On 13 March, a bomb ripped through the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, slaying more than 30 people and wounding dozens more. More bombs exploded in the following days.
Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.
While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.
The question: what did the secret internal Foreign Ministry report distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad mean? The document declares that the US administration will not put much effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations, opting instead to focus on November’s Congressional elections.
Why was this released in the wake of the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Israel? Was this a message to Washington over the previous “unwanted” Ametrican statements on settlements in East Jerusalem and West Bank or was it just an example of Israel trying to box in the Obama Administration by revealing, through a well-timed leak, the supposed US policy?
Then there’s the Hamas question: on Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed to Hamas to argue that an early deal for a Palestinian state is unlikely, given the strength of the organisation in the Gaza Strip.
2110 GMT: Not-Over-The-Top Statement of Today. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying to a Congressional committee, reveals that the current manoeuvres over Iran’s uranium enrichment are just like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:
My reading of what happened with President Kennedy is that it’s exactly what he did. It was high-stakes diplomacy. It was pushing hard to get the world community to understand, going to the UN, making a presentation, getting international opinion against the placement of Russian weapons in Cuba, making a deal eventually with the Russians that led to the removal of the weapons.
That is the kind of high-stakes diplomacy that I’m engaged in, that other members of this administration are, because we take very seriously the potential threat from Iran.
2100 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. After all the political positions (take your pick) he adopted at the Assembly of Experts, Hashemi Rafsanjani used a ceremony at the tomb of the late Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a warning about “uninformed individuals” (who are they?): “These individuals shirk from their responsibilities and make irrelevant declarations, thus causing the leadership to bear the responsibility of all the actions that the people reject.”
1935 GMT: Diplomatic Poses (cont.). Well, I guess Washington had to strike its own posture given the statements of President Ahmadinejad and his Syrian counterpart Bashir al-Assad in Damascus today (1335 GMT). Here’s State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:
As the secretary [Hillary Clinton] reiterated yesterday, we have expressed our concern directly to President (Bashar) Assad about Syria’s relationship with Iran. This is ultimately a decision that Syria has to make, but as President Assad assesses Syria’s long-term interests, he need only look around the region and recognize that Syria is increasingly an outlier.
We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. One step would be to make clear what Iran’s need to do differently and unfortunately there was no evidence of that today.
The key here is that it is a spokesman making the statement, not the President, not the Secretary of State. Yes, of course, the US would prefer that Damascus put Iran into isolation. But they know that, given the regional dynamics, Syria will not publicly cut off Tehran. So the real diplomacy will take place away from these statements.
1925 GMT: Back from a lengthy academic break — the US Ambassador to Britain was in Birmingham today — to catch up on the full force of Iranian propaganda. Here is the “confession” of Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, tailor-made to put the US as the main sponsor of his terrorism:
After Obama was elected, the Americans contacted us and they met me in Pakistan.They met us after clashes with my group around March 17 in (the southeastern city of) Zahedan, and he (the US operative) said that Americans had requested a meeting.
I said we didn’t have any time for a meeting and if we do help them they should promise to give us aid. They said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment, arms and machine guns. They also promised to give us a base along the border with Afghanistan next to Iran.
They asked to meet me and we said where should we meet you and he said in Dubai. We sent someone to Dubai and we told a person to ask a place for myself in Afghanistan from the area near the operations and they complied that they would sort out the problem for us and they will find Mr. Rigi a base and guarantee his own security in Afghanistan or in any of the countries adjacent to Iran so that he can carry on his operations.
They told me that in Kyrgyzstan they have a base called Manas near Bishkek, and that a high-ranking person was coming to meet me and that if such high-ranking people come to the United Arab Emirates, they may be observed by intelligence people but in a place like Bishkek this high-ranking American person could come and we could reach an agreement on making personal contacts. But after the last major operation we took part in, they said that they wanted to meet with us.
The Americans said Iran was going its own way and they said our problem at the present is Iran…not al-Qaeda and not the Taliban, but the main problem is Iran. We don’t have a military plan against Iran. Attacking Iran is very difficult for us (the US). The CIA is very particular about you and is prepared to do anything for you because our government has reached the conclusion that there was nothing Americans could do about Iran and only I could take care of the operations for them.
One of the CIA officers said that it was too difficult for us to attack Iran militarily, but we plan to give aid and support to all anti-Iran groups that have the capability to wage war and create difficulty for the Iranian (Islamic) system. They reached the conclusion that your organization has the power to create difficulties for the Islamic Republic and they are prepared to give you training and/or any assistance that you would require, in terms of telecommunications security and procedures as well as other support, the Americans said they would be willing to provide it at an extensive level.
Ebrahim Yazdi, former Foreign Minister and head of the Freedom of Movement Iran, underwent open heart surgery soon after his 10-day release yesterday. His family said that the surgery was a success.
The theological justification for al Qaeda’s wholesale slaughter of civilians was provided by Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, one of the founding fathers of al Qaeda. Because the murder of innocents is forbidden in Islam and the murder of Muslims in particular, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden required some sort of theological framework for justifying terrorism. This was provided by al-Sharif, who essentially argued in his book, “The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge,” that apostates could be murdered, and that approach, takfir (which has come to be known as takfirism) allowed al Qaeda to, for all intents and purposes, kill anyone they wanted without violating the laws of Islam by declaring them to be apostates. In other words, Dr. Fadl helped provided a theological justification for something that everyone involved knew was wrong.
The legal memos justifying torture aren’t very different in terms of reasoning–it’s clear that John Yoo and his cohorts in the Office of Legal Counsel saw their job not as binding the president to the rule of law, but to declare legal any tactic that the executive branch believed necessary to fight terrorism. They worked backwards from this conclusion, and ethics officials at the Department of Justice, we now know, decided that they they had violated professional standards in doing so. Whereas al-Zawahiri and bin Laden turned to al-Sharif for a method to circumvent the plain language of the Koran, Bush and Cheney went to Yoo and Jay Bybee to circumvent the plain language of the law. Most Islamic scholars, just like most legal experts, reject their respective reasoning as unsound.
The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
The chief author of the Bush administration’s “torture memo” told Justice Department investigators that the president’s war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be “massacred,” according to a report by released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department’s internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed “intentional professional misconduct” when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.
A US drone strike on N. Waziristan has allegedly killed Muhammad Haqqani, a son of guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Haqqani network is considered particularly skilled insurgents, and is the faction closes to both the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and to al-Qaeda. Jalaluddin’s health is said to be poor and he may have already turned most decisions over to his other son, Siraj. The Telegraph hinted that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence has ceased supporting the Haqqanis behind the scenes, and may even have helped the Americans target their drone strike.
According to Dawn, the governor of the Afghan province of Qunduz is reporting that Pakistan has “arrested Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, respectively the shadow governors of the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan” in Pakistani Baluchistan (presumably in Quetta). Islamabad has yet to confirm the report.
Josh Shahryar writes for EA:
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