foment revolution against the U.S. government was part of that dream.

Michigan-based religious militia group plotted to kill cops

By Niraj Warikoo, Ben Schmitt, and Eric D. Lawrence - Detroit Free Press (MCT)

A tense standoff that ended with the arrest of a ninth member of a multistate Christian militiaMonday night capped the end of a three-day raid that had federal and state authorities combing rural areas along the state line.

Joshua M. Stone of Clayton was arrested in Hillsdale County just after 8 p.m., a day after authorities say he took up hiding in a former militia training area about 2 miles from WheatlandChurch in Wheatland Township, said Andrew Arena, head of the Detroit FBI office.

Federal authorities say the 21-year-old was a member of a militia group known as Hutaree, or Christian warrior, that plotted to kill a police officer sometime in April and hide homemade bombs along the funeral processional route in hopes of taking out scores of others.

Two Ohio residents suspected of being part of the plot and currently under arrest are Kristopher Sickles, 27, of Sandusky and Jacob Ward, 33, of Huron.

Apocalyptic thinking

Hutaree operated out of a double-wide trailer near rural Clayton.

Their members had nicknames like Capt. Hutaree, Mouse and Pale Horse, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

They viewed police officers as the “brotherhood,” or enemy, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

And they considered themselves warriors: men and women ready to battle with Jesus against the forces of evil in the end of times.

To Hutaree — targeted by federal authorities in weekend raids in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois — that time was coming soon. And their plot to kill police in an effort to foment revolution against the U.S. government was part of that dream.

Their views are part of a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that can turn violent. Today, with changes in government and society — like a poor economy and the nation’s first African-American president — such activity is increasing in the U.S., experts said.


The number of extremist anti-government groups and militias jumped from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009, said Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that monitors extremism.


To Hutaree, the war against the government is rooted in its faith.


“He’s not violent at all,” she said. Prosecutors maintain Stone Jr. “served as an explosives instructor and demonstrator” who participated in planning and training.


Lackomar said the man who denied Hutaree happens to be Muslim and once tried to train with Hutaree but was denied admittance because of his religion. There were some rumors over the weekend that Hutaree was planning to attack Muslim Americans, but there is no mention of that in the indictment.

Radical groups like Hutaree skyrocketing across nation

By Jennifer Feehan - The Blade, Toledo

Militia organizations like Lenawee County-based Hutaree keep a low profile, but it is among an exploding number of anti-government groups that have sprung up across the country.

The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center documented a 244 percent increase in active "Patriot" groups between 2008 and 2009. Numbers jumped from 149 in 2008 to 512 last year. Among those groups, the number of paramilitary militias jumped from 42 to 127 in the same time period.

In a report issued March 2, the law center documented 47 Patriot groups in Michigan second only to Texas where the center found 52 such groups. Thirteen were listed in Ohio.

"That is a result of a couple of things," explained Heidi Beirich, director of research at the law center. "One was the Democrats taking over all three branches of government. Back when President Clinton was elected, we had the same kind of groups springing up out of nowhere."

She said the poor economy has added to the anti-government sentiment, and in a larger sense, the country's increasing racial diversity also is a factor.

"For some people, that makes them feel like their America has disappeared," Beirich said. "There is a lot of rhetoric out of these groups about, 'Where is my country, where is my freedom going? Who is that socialist maniac in the White House?' "

The law center was aware of two chapters of Hutaree militia one in southern Michigan and another in Utah although none of the nine people indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of conspiring to attack law enforcement officers was in the law center's database, Beirich said.

She said Hutaree appears to have an apocalyptic Christian approach that differs somewhat from a standard militia group "which is just very, very anti-government." The groups typically proffer paranoid conspiracy theories, she said.

"These are people who are taking up arms and training because they're so afraid the government is going to do something, so they have to be in a ready war stance," Beirich said.

In the wake of the arrests in southeast Michigan, northwest Ohio, and Indiana over the weekend, militia groups like the Lenawee County Militia and Michigan Militia posted notices on their Web sites distancing themselves from Hutaree and saying they "do nothing illegal."

Lee Miracle, coordinator of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said it bothered him that Hutaree was being labeled as a militia group "when I think the proper term would be armed cult." He said news of the alleged plot gives all militia groups a bad name.

"The Hutaree, to me, they are an extremist religious cult, a post-apocalyptic survivalist group," Miracle said. "The word 'militia' came out, and it's an easy word to float around."

He said the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia does not condone criminal activity but believes "a well-armed, educated citizenry is the best defense of a free people. "We're really a hyper-preparedness group, and we think that's the best way for a society to remain free and stable."

Americans knew little of militia groups before 76 Branch Davidians were killed in a 1993 siege by law enforcement in Waco, Texas. Then, two years to the day later, 168 people were killed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.


"There have been about 75 domestic terrorism attacks since Oklahoma City by our count, and the majority came from people with extreme anti-government views, so this stuff is dangerous," she said.

US wary of N-deal with Pak

As the he US-Pakistan strategic dialogue with Army-ISI combine at the centrestage begins on Wednesday at Capitol Hills leading daily The News ran aWall Street Journal story that quoted a senior US military official involved in talks with the Pakistanis as saying: "Everything with the Pakistanis is two steps forward and one step back".. "Anybody who expects straight linear progress out of a strategic dialogue between these two nations is really kind of naive. What it will be is a step forward and then we'll see where they go with it."

The WSJ story says: Pakistan also wants a civilian nuclear energy cooperation deal with the US, and a role in any future peace talks between the Western-backed Afghan government and the Taliban. Many US officials remain wary of such deals with Pakistan.

"Since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Pakistan has received more than $17.5 billion in US aid, the majority earmarked for the military and security, while insisting it was doing all it could to combat the Taliban and its Islamist allies. US officials have complained that Pakistan's intelligence services continued to offer clandestine support for the Taliban, which it has long viewed as a proxy it could use to secure its influence in Afghanistan and keep arch rival India out after an eventual US withdrawal.

Pakistan's fears of being outflanked by India, which has forged close ties to the Afghan government, are reflected in the document's indirect language about regional security issues, Pakistani officials say.

The paper said: The document raises concerns about India's effort to modernise its military, in part through buying US equipment and weapons. It urges Washington to take a direct role in reviving the peace process between India and Pakistan, which stalled after the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. If officials this week can begin setting the US relationship with Pakistan on a footing of greater trust and military cooperation, it would mark a success for the Obama administration's foreign policy at a time when key relations with other nations, from ally Israel to nemesis Iran, are strained.

In response to the document, officials say the Pentagon is considering up to $500 million in additional military aid to Pakistan, paid through the Coalition Support Fund, an account used to reimburse Pakistan for military activities taken in support of the US operations in Afghanistan.

Pak wants N-deal
The focus of analysis of Pakistani attitude was its 56-page document whichDaily Times, a prominent E-Newspaper, described as "Pakistan's Wish-list". It said the 56-page document - set to be discussed during the talks in Washington - includes requests for more help in dealing with water and energy crises, greater cooperation between the ISI and US intelligence outfits, more helicopter gunships and other military hardware.

Pakistan also wants a civilian nuclear energy cooperation deal with the US, and a role in any future peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Following talks with US lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the civilian government and the military had a "very clear plan" for what needed to be done. "We articulated that collectively ... what the Pakistani priorities are," said Qureshi.

Pentagon plays down the demand
The Pentagon played down the chance of any big announcement of fresh aid at the end of the talks, saying the dialogue would focus on the bolstering long-term bilateral ties.

"I would not look to this, at the end of it, for there to be some great announcement about any hard items that are being produced as a result of the conversations," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. "This is a dialogue designed to produce a better long-term strategic relationship ... this is not simply about asking and receiving items."

The News quoted WSJ story verbatim which reads like this: : Pakistan has sent a 56-page document to the US ahead of strategic talks scheduled for Wednesday, seeking expanded military and economic aid in what some American officials believe is an implicit offer to crack down in return on the Afghan Taliban.

In a report filed by Matthew Rosenberg and Peter Spiegel, the WSJ said this previously undisclosed document includes requests ranging from the US help to alleviate Pakistan's chronic water and power shortages to pleas for surveillance aircraft and support in developing the country's civilian nuclear program.

The report quotes US officials saying the document and the talks surrounding it could help redefine one of America's thorniest foreign policy relationships, if it leads to a serious Pakistani clampdown on the Taliban. The Taliban use Pakistan, a US ally, as their rear base in their fight against American and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan, and has often relied on clandestine support from elements of Pakistan's national security establishment.

But in the past few months, Pakistan has rounded up several senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban on its soil, and last year it began a series of offensives against the Pakistan offshoot of the Afghan movement. US officials are keen to see those moves broadened as a key to shifting the momentum of the Afghan war. "Right now, we're looking at something that could deliver a big part of our success in Afghanistan," said a senior US military official speaking of the document and talks.

Talk aims to stitch together fraying alliance
The document outlines a range of aid Pakistan is seeking from the US, say American and Pakistani officials who have seen it or been briefed on its contents. A high-level meeting between senior Pakistani and US officials in Washington on Wednesday aims to stitch together their fraying alliance. Many of Pakistan's requests build on longstanding demands for more US assistance. But officials on both the sides say that by detailing them in a single comprehensive document, Islamabad is trying to signal its willingness to align its interests with those of Washington, its vision for a partnership and its price.

Among the requests is greater cooperation between its spy agency and US intelligence outfits, more gunship helicopters and other military hardware needed to battle its own Taliban insurgency, and improved surveillance technology, such as pilot-less drone aircraft.

Pakistan also wants a civilian nuclear energy cooperation deal with the US, and a role in any future peace talks between the Western-backed Afghan government and the Taliban. Many US officials remain wary of such deals with Pakistan. Since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Pakistan has received more than $17.5 billion in US aid, the majority earmarked for the military and security, while insisting it was doing all it could to combat the Taliban and its Islamist allies. US officials have complained that Pakistan's intelligence services continued to offer clandestine support for the Taliban, which it has long viewed as a proxy it could use to secure its influence in Afghanistan and keep arch rival India out after an eventual US withdrawal.

"Everything with the Pakistanis is two steps forward and one step back," said a senior US military official involved in talks with the Pakistanis. "Anybody who expects straight linear progress out of a strategic dialogue between these two nations is really kind of naive. What it will be is a step forward and then we'll see where they go with it."
Pakistan's fears of being outflanked by India, which has forged close ties to the Afghan government, are reflected in the document's indirect language about regional security issues, Pakistani officials say.

Revive peace process between India & Pak
The paper said: The document raises concerns about India's effort to modernise its military, in part through buying US equipment and weapons. It urges Washington to take a direct role in reviving the peace process between India and Pakistan, which stalled after the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. If officials this week can begin setting the US relationship with Pakistan on a footing of greater trust and military cooperation, it would mark a success for the Obama administration's foreign policy at a time when key relations with other nations, from ally Israel to nemesis Iran, are strained.

Pentagon considering addition military aid
In response to the document, officials say the Pentagon is considering up to $500 million in additional military aid to Pakistan, paid through the Coalition Support Fund, an account used to reimburse Pakistan for military activities taken in support of the US operations in Afghanistan.

Last year, the US provided $2.8 billion in economic and security aid to Islamabad. A spokesman for Pakistan's military, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, confirmed to the WSJ the document's existence and the military's input, but he declined to discuss its contents.
Aides to Adm Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pentagon's primary interlocutor with Pakistan's military leadership, confirmed his staff had received the document and were analysing it.

Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the White House looked forward to this week's talks, but would not comment on any specific proposals made during meetings between "scores" of senior US officials and Pakistani counterparts over the last year.

"During the course of those discussions, a considerable number of ideas, initiatives and opportunities have been brought up by both the sides," Hammer said. "We are not prepared to comment on any one set of ideas other than to say that we are encouraged by an open and robust dialogue."

The document comes out of months of delicate and often secret negotiations between top political and military officials from both the countries, which will continue on Wednesday at a so-called Strategic Dialogue in Washington.

The meeting is to cover issues from the fight against Islamist militants to bolstering Pakistan's struggling economy. Among officials slated to attend are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the head of Pakistan Army.

"Pakistan and the United States have been partners and allies without always having a complete understanding of each other's strategic and security priorities," said Pakistan's Ambassador in Washington Husain Haqqani in a telephone interview. "This time we want to build an understanding that can serve as a foundation for the day-to-day relationship."

The senior US military official involved in recent talks with Pakistani officials, including Gen Kayani, said the new seriousness in Pakistan's approach seems to be part of a realisation that the US has a limited timeframe for directly assisting Islamabad.
The official said Gen Kayani in recent talks has focused on getting US assistance to efforts that the Afghan and Pakistani governments can sustain as US forces and investment in Afghanistan wane. Some of Pakistan's requests are likely non-starters.

N-deal would be tough
India has steadfastly refused any outside mediation in its decades-long dispute with Pakistan. And US officials say a civilian nuclear deal would be a tough sell given Pakistan's history of nuclear weapons proliferation.

To assuage the Pakistanis, the State Department has suggested setting up a bilateral working group to discuss the issue, in essence pushing a decision into the distant future. But US officials, especially those in the Pentagon, are eager to encourage Pakistan's re-engagement after nearly two years of growing tension between the allies, and say many of the other requests may be doable.

The US may, for example, be willing to give Pakistan drone aircraft, although not the high-end, armed Predator and Reaper drones that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency to kill hundreds of militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to a US official.

The official said Pakistan already gets a few hours a week of surveillance time on those drones, and they're often "not looking at the same targets we'd necessarily want to be looking at." "We want the US to recognise Pakistan's nuclear status and give us assurances not to undermine the [weapons] program," said a senior Pakistani military officer who serves as an aide to Gen Kayani. "Energy security is crucial, and we need US help."

Among the proposals the Pentagon is considering asking Pakistan to allow the US to support expanded Pakistani counter-terrorism efforts within their country.

Currently, about 150 US Special Operations forces are in Pakistan training the Pakistani military in counterinsurgency tactics. In addition, the US may press the Pakistani government to end what they view as a negative information campaign against the US by elements of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence directorate.

As Always, Army Chief Driving Pakistan’s Agenda for Talks

In a sign of the mounting power of the army over the civilian government in Pakistan, the head of the military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will be the dominant Pakistani participant in important meetings in Washington this week.

At home, much has been made of how General Kayani has driven the agenda for the talks. They have been billed as cabinet-level meetings, with the foreign minister as the nominal head of the Pakistani delegation. But it has been the general who has been calling the civilian heads of major government departments, including finance and foreign affairs, to his army headquarters to discuss final details, an unusual move in a democratic system.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been taking a public role in trying to set the tone, insisting that the United States needs to do more for Pakistan, as “we have already done too much.” And it was at his request that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed this fall to reopen talks between the countries at the ministerial level.
The talks are expected to help define the relationship between the United States and Pakistan as the war against the Taliban reaches its endgame phase in Afghanistan. It is in that context that General Kayani’s role in organizing the agenda has raised alarm here in Pakistan, a country with a long history of military juntas.
The leading financial newspaper, The Business Recorder, suggested in an editorial that the civilian government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani should act more forcefully and “shun creating an environment conducive to military intervention.”
The editorial added, “The government needs to consolidate civilian rule instead of handing over its responsibilities, like coordination between different departments, to the military.”
“General Kayani is in the driver’s seat,” said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University. “It is unprecedented that an army chief of staff preside over a meeting of federal secretaries.”
General Kayani visited the headquarters of the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., over the weekend, and will attend meetings at the Pentagon with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Monday. He is also to attend the opening ceremony of the talks between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Qureshi at the State Department on Wednesday, a spokesman at the American Embassy in Islamabad said.
The most pressing concerns in the talks, according to officials on both sides, will be trying to establish confidence after several years of a corrosive relationship between allies, which only in the past few months has started to gain some positive momentum.
But the complexity of the main topics at hand — the eventual American pullout from Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s concerns about India — is expected to make for a tough round of talks.
On the positive side for Pakistan, the Obama administration has been rethinking its policies toward the country, said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
“There is a realization that some of its assumptions over the past year were not correct: that Pakistan’s security paradigm could be changed, that its military could be pressured,” Ms. Lodhi said.
Meanwhile, concerned about efforts by the Afghan government to engage in talks with Taliban rebels, who have important bases and allies on Pakistani soil, the Pakistani government will offer itself as a mediator in any such negotiations, Professor Hussain said.
He said that the message would be, “If you want to talk to bring the Afghan Taliban into the mainstream, you should talk to us.”
Tensions with Afghanistan have been raised by some of Pakistan’s recent operations against the Taliban, most notably the recent capture in Pakistan of a senior Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The former head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said Friday that the arrest had jeopardized back-channel negotiations with Mr. Baradar’s faction of the Taliban.
But the spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Abdul Basit, said Saturday that Mr. Baradar’s arrest had nothing to do with reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan.
India’s growing role in Afghanistan was also high on Pakistan’s agenda. The spokesman for the Pakistani military, Gen. Athar Abbas, said Pakistan would be “conveying very clearly” its displeasure with India’s offer to help train the Afghan Army at the behest of American and NATO forces. Pakistan has made a counteroffer to train the Afghans, an offer that Pakistan knows is unlikely to be accepted but that it made to pressure Washington to stop the Indian proposal, Pakistani analysts said.
General Kayani arrives in Washington after what the Pakistani military considers a stellar nine months in fighting the Pakistani Taliban, first in the region of Swat and most recently in South Waziristan.
The militants, according to the Pakistanis, have been weakened in their bases in the tribal areas, but at a high cost. According to Pakistani Army figures, 2,377 soldiers were killed in the two campaigns. About 1 in 10 of those killed were officers, a very high rate, Professor Hussain said.
With those sacrifices and the heavy toll on army equipment in mind, Pakistan is expecting quicker reimbursement from the United States of its expenses in fighting the militants, General Abbas said.
Pakistan has complained that the United States has unfairly held up payments of $1.2 billion for 2009 under an agreement to help finance the fight against insurgents. For its part, Washington says its auditors need to satisfy Congress that the Pakistani military has properly spent the money owed.

China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.

XI’AN, China — For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction.

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays.
In addition to moving Mr. Pinto and his family to Beijing in January, Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders’ meeting in Xi’an.
It is hardly alone. Companies — and their engineers — are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States.
A few American companies are even making deals with Chinese companies to license Chinese technology.
The Chinese market is surging for electricity, cars and much more, and companies are concluding that their researchers need to be close to factories and consumers alike. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs here after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world’s solar panels by the end of this year.
“We’re obviously not giving up on the U.S.,” Mr. Pinto said. “China needs more electricity. It’s as simple as that.”
China has become the world’s largest auto market, and General Motors has a large and growing auto research center in Shanghai.
The country is also the biggest market for desktop computers and has the most Internet users. Intel has opened research labs in Beijing for semiconductors and server networks.
Not just drawn by China’s markets, Western companies are also attracted to China’s huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers — and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies.
Now, Mr. Pinto said, researchers from the United States and Europe have to be ready to move to China if they want to do cutting-edge work on solar manufacturing because the new Applied Materials complex here is the only research center that can fit an entire solar panel assembly line.
“If you really want to have an impact on this field, this is just such a tremendous laboratory,” he said.
Xi’an — a city about 600 miles southwest of Beijing known for the discovery nearby of 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors — has 47 universities and other institutions of higher learning, churning out engineers with master’s degrees who can be hired for $730 a month.
On the other side of Xi’an from Applied Materials sits Thermal Power Research Institute, China’s world-leading laboratory on cleaner coal. The company has just licensed its latest design to Future Fuels in the United States.
The American company plans to pay about $100 million to import from China a 130-foot-high maze of equipment that turns coal into a gas before burning it. This method reduces toxic pollution and makes it easier to capture and sequester gases like carbon dioxide under ground.
Future Fuels will ship the equipment to Pennsylvania and have Chinese engineers teach American workers how to assemble and operate it.
Small clean-energy companies are headed to China, too.
NatCore Technology of Red Bank, N.J., recently discovered a way to make solar panels much thinner, reducing the energy and toxic materials required to manufacture them. American companies did not even come look at the technology, so NatCore reached a deal with a consortium of Chinese companies to finish developing its invention and mass-produce it in Changsha, China.
“These other countries — China, Taiwan, Brazil — were all over us,” said Chuck Provini, the company’s chief executive.
President Obama has often spoken about creating clean-energy jobs in the United States. But China has shown the political will to do so, said Mr. Pinto, 49, who is also Applied Materials’ executive vice president for solar systems and flat-panel displays.

Locally, the Xi’an city government sold a 75-year land lease to Applied Materials at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex’s operating costs for five years, said Gang Zou, the site’s general manager.

The two labs, the first of their kind anywhere in the world, are each bigger than two American football fields. Applied Materials continues to develop the electronic guts of its complex machines at laboratories in the United States and Europe. But putting all the machines together and figuring out processes to make them work in unison will be done in Xi’an. The two labs, one on top of the other, will become operational once they are fully outfitted late this year.
Applied Materials has built a 360-employee operation here in Xi’an after announcing an 18-month program last year to reduce employment by 10 to 12 percent, or 1,300 to 1,500 jobs, including layoffs in the United States and Europe. Mr. Pinto said that the company was readjusting its work force as manufacturing shifted to Asia, but that the Xi’an facility involved a new approach to researching the design of an entire assembly line and was not replacing laboratories elsewhere.
Mr. Pinto is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley in his own right. While still a doctoral student at Stanford in the early 1980s, he wrote the first widely used two-dimensional computer simulation of how semiconductors work. This allowed engineers to test each one on a computer before building prototypes, shortening the semiconductor development process.
Later, he became a celebrated researcher at Bell Labs.
With China’s economy gaining strength, Mr. Pinto and his wife, then living in Santa Clara, began insisting in 2005 that their sons study Chinese once a week.
Now 10 and 11, the boys are improving their Chinese and mastering the art of eating with chopsticks.
Applied Materials has greater challenges, including fighting technological theft, a chronic problem in China.
The company has taken measures, including sealing its computers’ ports here, to prevent the easy use of flash drives to record data. Employees are not allowed to take computers from the building without special permission, and an elaborate system of computer passwords and electronic door keys limits access to certain technological secrets.
But none of that changes the sense that tectonic shifts are under way.
When Xie Lina, a 26-year-old Applied Materials engineer here, was asked recently whether China would play a big role in clean energy in the future, she was surprised by the question.
“Most of the graduate students in China are chasing this area,” she said. “Of course, China will lead everything.”

lessons from the Soviet war

Afghanistan war:

By Edward Girardet,

Lashkargar, Afghanistan

It was early summer, 1982. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was gathering momentum against the mujahideen, the country's disparate but increasingly widespread resistance movement. I'd just trekked for 10 days across rugged mountains from neighboring Pakistan to the beleaguered Panjshir Valley, an assertive thorn against the Red Army's might barely 40 miles north of Kabul.

I was traveling with a half-dozen mujahideen guerrillas accompanying a French medical team being sent to replace a group of volunteer doctors working clandestinely among the civilian population.

My purpose was to report on the largest Soviet-led offensive against the mujahideen to that date. More than 12,000 Soviet and Afghan troops would attempt to crush 3,000 fighters led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, known as the "Lion of Panjshir" and one of the 20th century's most effective guerrilla commanders.

Last month's NATO-led operation in Marjah in Helmand Province – the largest offensive of the current war – put me in mind of the Panjshir. There are clear lessons from the nearly decade-long Soviet occupation that the international community might heed in its ninth year of war in Afghanistan, with the biggest battle campaign now under way.

The Panjshir push was roughly the same size as the Marjah offensive – called Operation Moshtarak – and involved 10,000 to 12,000 coalition and Afghan troops. In the Soviet war, Western journalists reported primarily from the guerrilla side. But in contrast to most of today's media, embedded with NATO troops, we had constant access to ordinary Afghans. We walked through the countryside sleeping in villages, with long evenings spent drinking tea and talking with the locals. Frank conversation doesn't happen when one party wears body armor or is flanked by heavily armed soldiers: Afghans will only tell you what they think you want to hear. Or, even more crucial, what suits their own interests. Hence the highly questionable veracity of opinion polls in Afghanistan today.

Similar to the Marjah offensive, the Soviets warned the population of the impending attack with propaganda leaflets and radio broadcasts. They appealed to the Panjshiris to support the government in return for cash and other incentives, such as subsidized wheat. Their tactic was to force the guerrillas out, but allow the civilians to remain. To make their point, the communists lambasted the guerrillas as criminals supported by foreign interests in the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, a tactic similar to those used by the Americans against the Taliban today.

APPROACHING THE PANJSHIR THAT SUMMER of 1982, we skirted the massive Bagram Air Base, today run by the Americans but then a hugely fortified Soviet bastion blistering with helicopter gunships and MiGs. On reaching the outer edges of the mighty Hindu Kush, we encountered groups of refugees hiding among the gorges. Days earlier, Massoud had evacuated the area's 50,000 or more people, somewhat less than the population affected by the Marjah campaign. He did this to minimize civilian casualties and to give his fighters free rein.

Before dawn the morning after we arrived, we could hear the ominous drone of helicopters. As the throbbing grew louder, tiny specks appeared on the horizon, gunships sweeping over the jagged snowcapped peaks like hordes of wasps. Soon the hollow thud of rockets and bombs were pounding guerrilla positions. Intermittently, pairs of MiG-23 jets and the new highly maneuverable SU-24 fighter bombers shrieked across the skies dropping their loads.

With two journalist colleagues, I climbed to a 7,000-foot vantage over the valley. Dozens of front-line guerrillas, looking like Cuban revolutionaries with their long hair and beards, lounged among the rocks in the bright sun watching the spectacle. Grinning, they handed us glasses of tea, oblivious of helicopters roaring barely 500 meters overhead. Massoud's strategy was to empty the valley, let the Soviets in, and have fighters hit the occupation forces in their own time.

As Taliban makes comeback in Kunduz province, war spreads to northern Afghanistan

By Keith B. Richburg

KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN -- For most of the past eight years, this northern province has been relatively peaceful, far removed from the insurgency in the Taliban heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand in the south.

But the past year has brought such a dramatic Taliban comeback in Kunduz that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is planning to shift some of the ongoing troop reinforcements to the north of the country, the first significant American deployment to the region since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, U.S. officials say.

The plan for the additional 30,000 U.S. troops that President Obama is sending to Afghanistan had been to focus on the south and east of the country, where the Taliban is strongest. But U.S. officials say that about 3,000 of those troops will be shifted to operations in the north to augment a contingent of German soldiers, which numbers about 1,100 and has been more focused on reconstruction efforts than on battling insurgents.

U.S. officials are concerned about a vital NATO supply line that runs from Tajikistan through Kunduz, amid fears that the Taliban is preparing a campaign of disruption. They also said insurgents, under increased pressure from international forces in the south, are seeking to compensate by stepping up operations in the north in a bid to force U.S. forces to spread out and thus dilute their effectiveness.

Local officials and residents say two of the province's districts are almost completely under Taliban control. There, girls' schools have been closed down, women are largely prohibited from venturing outdoors unless they are covered from head to toe, and residents are forced to pay a religious "tax," usually amounting to 10 percent of their meager wages.

"The Afghan government is the lawful government," said Abdul Wahed Omarkhiel, the government head of one district, Chardara, which lies four miles from the provincial capital, Kunduz city. "But the Taliban's law is the gun."

Warning that their district is too dangerous for a foreigner to venture into, Omarkhiel, other Chardara officials and tribal elders traveled to Kunduz city to meet with a Washington Post reporter. They said disillusionment with the Afghan government, widely seen as incompetent and corrupt, and the slow pace of reconstruction had helped create favorable conditions for a Taliban resurgence.

"When people have problems, they don't go to the government. They don't go to the police," said Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament. "They go to the Taliban, and the Taliban decides. There are no files and no paperwork."

Fertile ground for Taliban

In some ways, Kunduz was always ripe for a Taliban return.

Kunduz's population is about half Pashtun, which is unusual for a northern province. These Pashtuns -- descendants of those who relocated here in the 19th century -- have maintained links with their fellow tribespeople in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

Kunduz is also home to a complex mix of armed groups, including the Hezb-i-Islami militia, loyal to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; and the Haqqani network, led by former mujaheddin commander Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son. All these groups are loosely affiliated with the Taliban. Against that backdrop, officials in Kunduz say they have just 1,500 police personnel for the entire province. "The number of police is not enough, and they are not well-equipped," said Mohammad Razaq Yaqoubi, the police chief in Kunduz. "We need 1,500 more police. And well-equipped. Then we will be able to retake those districts."

Some local officials said the Taliban was performing well as a surrogate government in the absence of any Afghan official presence, was dispensing a brand of justice that seemed swift and fair, and had tempered some of the more extreme behavior it had shown during its 5 1/2 -year rule in Afghanistan.

"They are very just solving cases," said Abdul Ghayour, head of the Chardara council. "They satisfy both sides. If it is a serious, serious case, they will solve it within one hour, without wasting your time."

"When they were in power, they were brutal," said Yarboy Imaq, the deputy head of the council. Now, he said, "there are a lot of changes to their policy" in an apparent bid to be "more acceptable to the people." When pressed in an interview, Imaq added uneasily, "If I sit here and say a lot of bad things about the Taliban, I couldn't live there even one night."

Women still bear brunt

One thing that has not changed is the Taliban's view of women.

Immediately after assuming control in Chardara, the Taliban ordered that girls be allowed to attend school only for the first three years. The elders said the Taliban mandated that girls could return to school only if they were sequestered and had female teachers, but there are none in the district.

Boys can continue to go to school but only in traditional Afghan dress, the loose-fitting salwar-kameez, according to locals.

Mahboba Haidar, who runs a women's self-help organization that includes a garment factory and a kindergarten, said the few families that could afford to have moved away from Taliban-controlled areas so their girls can continue in school.

Women in Taliban-held areas are mostly prohibited from venturing out alone or without their burqas. "When women are sick or have to go to the doctor, they have to get permission from them," said Karima Sadiqi, a member of the provincial council. "They are the same Taliban," Sadiqi said. "If they were different, they wouldn't have closed the girls' schools."

The most dramatic sign that the war had spread to the north came Sept. 4, when German troops called in a U.S. airstrike against two NATO fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in Kunduz.

The strike killed up to 142 people, a large number of them civilians who had gathered around the trucks to offload gasoline.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung in Washington and Greg Jaffe in Naray, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Jihad Jane’ and the politics of fear

Sean Collins
‘from ‘keeping America safe’, the elite’s depiction of the US as fragile and at-risk makes even lonely weirdos seem like a deadly threat.
An advert produced by the group Keep America Safe, led by Liz Cheney (daughter of former vice-president Dick), recently caused howls of protest. The video demanded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) release the names of the officials who served as pro bono defence lawyers for the Guantanamo Bay detainees, who were labelled ‘the Al-Qaeda Seven’.
Somewhat unexpectedly, conservatives joined liberals in denouncing Keep America Safe’s attacks on the DOJ lawyers. A group of lawyers and policy experts, including Kenneth Starr (the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky) and officials who served in Republican administrations from Reagan to George W Bush, called the advert ‘shameful’. In defending the seven DOJ lawyers, they noted that ‘the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre’. Even some of the most ardent defenders of the Bush-Cheney war on terror had to concede that the advert was ‘unfortunate’.
Because of the bipartisan condemnation, the Obama administration, and attorney general Eric Holder in particular, can easily brush the advert aside. The reaction to the video reveals just how isolated the former Republican hardliners associated with Cheney have become. Even the Tea Party movement, currently dominating talk on the right, treats the anti-terror policies associated with the Bush administration with suspicion at best.
Yet the routing of the Cheneys in this case does not mean that the broader Republican effort to mark the Democrats as soft on terror will be as readily dismissed. The conservative line may gain traction, but not because, as Frank Rich argued in the New York Times, the US is an ‘amnesia-prone nation’ that is likely to forget that it was the Bush regime that failed to ‘keep America safe’ under its watch. Rather, the Republican message may take hold because Obama and the Democrats continue to respond defensively to charges that they put the rights of terrorists ahead of the country’s security.
From maintaining the Guantanamo facility to continuing the use of military commissions to try terror suspects, Obama has conceded national security positions associated with Bush and Cheney. When questioned about reading so-called ‘Miranda rights’ to the Christmas Day ‘underpants bomber’, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Obama argued that this was Bush’s approach to would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid – thus endorsing the prior administration as the prime authority on the subject. As Glenn Greenwald rightly notes, Obama ‘can’t stand on his own two feet and forcefully justify civilian trials or Mirandising terrorist suspects; he has to take refuge in the fact that Bush also did it – as though that proves it’s the right thing to do, because Bush/Cheney is the standard-bearer of Toughness on Terrorism.’
Despite the unpopularity of the Bush regime, the election of Obama has not dislodged a basic impression of the two parties. The Republicans are supposed to be the tough guys, willing to do what it takes to protect American lives. Like Jack Bauer on the TV show 24, they are not going to let a few laws get in way of fighting war. Likewise, Democrats are portrayed as weak and wavering. A recent report from Democratic Party pollsters says ‘there is evidence of rising public concern about the president’s handling’ of national security issues, and that Republican gains, by depicting the administration as lenient on terrorists, should be ‘a wake-up call to President Obama, his party, and progressives’.
But this ‘Republicans strong, Democrats weak’ discussion obscures a more fundamental consensus between the two parties. Both establish anti-terror polices on the premise that the country is vulnerable and at risk. And both therefore overplay the threat posed by possible terror attacks.

What A Country

By SALMAN MASOOD

Arif Ali/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images A model presented a creation by the Pakistani designer Nomi Ansari on the last day of Pakistan Fashion Design Council Sunsilk Fashion Week in Lahore.
LAHORE, Pakistan — Security for Lahore Fashion Week was, inevitably, tight.
The show was organized by the Pakistan Fashion Design Council and it saw the glitterati of Lahore applauding 32 designers from around the country who gathered to celebrate a glamorous event that organizers showcased as being representative of Pakistan’s rich culture, and burgeoning fashion industry.
Arif Ali/AFP – Getty A design by Sahar Atif Saai.
Seats were filled almost immediately for the eight shows every day, forcing many to stand amid mad screams, applause, boisterous cheering and blaring music as 30 models sashayed down the aisle. There was enough of a display of cleavage, navel and skin to infuriate the country’s conservative mullahs.
“Life, in actuality, is a circus,” was how the announcer introduced the colorful collection of the fashion designer Nomi Ansari on the final day.
If life in Pakistan is a circus, it is perhaps a circus of contradictions, varying perceptions and stark diversity. The guests and designers here were eager to show that Pakistan is not just about bombs exploding every second day and Taliban militants finding easy refuge in the urban sprawl.
However, the hoopla could not hide the fact that the event was organized against the backdrop of terror threats. Apprehensions ran so high that the venue, the Royal Palm Gold and Country Club, was not even mentioned on the invitation cards.
Arif Ali/AFP – Getty Creations by Ammar Belal.
Last year, Lahore, the cultural and artistic capital of the country, was attacked several times by militants who struck at military and police installations, and wreaked havoc in public places. So security for Fashion Week was tight. Nevertheless enthusiastic Lahorites attended the event in droves. The response even surprised Hassan Sheheryar Yasin, one of the country’s most famous designers, whose collection under his label HSY featured couture menswear and womenswear.
“We were not sure people would turn up”, said Mr. Yasin, who is also the spokesperson for the Pakistan Fashion Design Council. “So, a big round of applause for Lahore.”
For designers like Feeha Noor Jamshed, 25, heir to the well-known local retail brand TeeJays, events like Fashion Week showed that Pakistan should not be stereotyped. “People in the West think we live on some barren land and ride camels. We never traveled on camels. We had horses. Our history is not properly represented,” she said.
“Right now, Pakistan is under the radar. There are political upheavals in other countries as well. Militancy is not just our problem. Why should Pakistan be sidelined?”
“We are fighting a psychological war through these shows,” Ms. Jamshed added. “Our soldiers are fighting a military war.”
NYT
Masuma Tahir Malhi, editor of the Daily Times’s Sunday Magazine, said that many of the shows had patriotic undertones and that many of the designers had found local inspirations in their pret-a-porter and haute couture collections.
“The thought of a terror attack did not cross my mind” Ms. Malhi said. “Those of us who were anticipating something horrid to happen also attended the event defiantly.”
Western themes were also featured. The Designer Ammar Belal’s collection “The King of Pop” was inspired by Michael Jackson’s Thriller-era outfits.
“Pakistani fashion is just not about weddings and saree,” Mr. Belal said.
The grand finale ended just before midnight on Friday. As the fashionable crowd spilled out of the main event building onto the driveway, in an eerie contrast, a religious sermon resounded from the loudspeaker of a nearby mosque, filling the air.