Muhammad Tahir

Pakistan: Imran Farooq murder linked to rows within MQM party

2010-09-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

Politician may have been about to endorse or join new party set up by General Pervez Musharraf, source claims

Imran Farooq was a senior figure within Pakistan's Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party. Photograph: AP

The Scotland Yard investigation into the murder in London of the leading Pakistani politician Dr Imran Farooq has been told that rows within his own party may have led to his assassination.

Farooq, 50, was stabbed to death earlier this monthduring an attack in which he was also beaten near his home in Edgware, north London. Farooq was a senior figure in Pakistan's MQM (Muttahida Quami Movement) party, and was in exile in London at the time of his death. The murder is being investigated by Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism branch because of the political dimension to the killing.

Sources say intelligence suggests his death was linked to rows within the MQM.

Farooq, once prominent in MQM, had taken a back seat. A senior Pakistani source said he may have been about to endorse or join a new party set up by Pakistan's former military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. The source said of the motive: "It lies within the MQM. Dr Farooq was probably going to join Musharraf."He is vowing to leave his own London exile and return home to launch a fresh bid for power. His new party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, will launch its programme in London later this week.

Asked by the Sunday Telegraph about his reaction to Farooq's murder, Musharraf said: "It is terrible that such an assassination could happen in a place like London."

Farooq, who was married with two young sons, claimed UK asylum in 1999 alongside Altaf Hussain, the MQM's leader. Hussain, who also lives in exile in London, has said "enemies of the MQM" killed Farooq and they will try to kill him. Pakistan's media reported him as saying on Friday: "Now the enemies of the movement are after my life, but I want to tell them I am not afraid of anyone, whether it's a superpower like the United States or its Nato allies or their Pakistani agents … I fear the Almighty Allah and will never bow down before the conspirators even if they get my British citizenship rescinded."

Police in London are still hunting an attacker who, one witness said, appeared to be an Asian man. Analysts say the MQM has longstanding rivalries with ethnic Pashtun and Sindhi parties in Karachi. The MQM has also been riven by occasional internecine violence.

Before entering the UK, Farooq spent seven years on the run in Pakistan from criminal charges while the MQM was engaged in a violent battle for control of Karachi. He remained a key party figure. While MQM leader Hussain is protected by private guards and rarely appears in public following death threats, colleagues said Farooq never believed he was at risk and had played a smaller role in the party since the birth of his sons, now aged five and three.

Farooq was attacked on his way home from his job at a chemist's shop. He was found near his home after neighbours witnessed what they believed was a fight. Paramedics were called but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

MQM party officials in the party's stronghold of Karachi declared a 10-day period of mourning. Previous political killings have triggered riots and deadly clashes between rival factions. Police are keeping an open mind as to the identity of Farooq's killer and their investigation continues.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/pakistan-imran-farooq-murder-mqm

US general warned British commanders that their Afghan strategy was a disaster

2010-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Michael Evans Pentagon Correspondent
American and British military commanders were at loggerheads over the right strategy for Helmand in southern Afghanistan when Britain’s ill-fated campaign began in the summer of 2006, The Times can reveal.
Disclosures by Lieutenant-General Benjamin Freakley, then the most senior US operational commander in southern and eastern Afghanistan, support the findings of an investigation by The Times earlier this year, which found that the British military had signed off on a plan for Helmand that was flawed from the start.
In an exclusive interview. General Freakley recalled that he had been scathing about the British effort in Helmand, which included an inability, in his view, to put sufficient pressure on the Taleban while also implementing reconstruction programmes to keep the insurgents on the back foot. When General Freakley felt that this was not happening, he became so annoyed that he flew to British headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, to make his point in person.
“I made a strong recommendation that they take more offensive action in Helmand because the enemy was building up,” he said.
“But I was told by the British that they didn’t believe their forces were ready, so we had all these troops just living in Camp Bastion [the main British base in Helmand].”
Those present at the meeting included Colonel Charlie Knaggs, who was in tactical charge of the British troops in Helmand, Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Tootal, commander of the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment, and Mohammed Daud, then governor of the province.
Britain’s most senior commander, Brigadier Ed Butler, who was in charge of all the British military personnel in Afghanistan, did not attend.
After what by all accounts was a confrontational encounter, an official from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office took exception to the general’s tone. “He wrote back to London saying I had been scathing about the British effort. That was true.
“But I was trying to get them to keep constant pressure on the adversary and to make sure that reconstruction efforts and spreading the governance of the Afghan Government went on simultaneously.
“Without simultaneous action you’re just poking your finger at the problem,” General Freakley said.
He said that he admired Colonel Knaggs and enjoyed working with him. He said, however, that it was his impression that there was a difficulty, even friction, over the British chain of command, with Colonel Knaggs in charge of troops in Helmand and Brigadier Butler as the senior overall commander based in Kabul. “I think Brigadier Butler wanted Colonel Knaggs just to be in charge of the British provincial reconstruction team [in Lashkar Gah],” he said.
General Freakley also criticised Britain’s tactic of sending small groups of soldiers to defend district centres in far-flung places around the province, such as Musa Qala and Sangin. The “platoon house” strategy led to assaults by the Taleban and heavy casualties among the British.
“That tactic proved disastrous,” said General Freakley, who is now commander of US Accessions Command (recruiting and army cadets) at Fort Knox in Kentucky. “They thought of a platoon house as in Northern Ireland but in Afghanistan you have to be mobile against the Taleban. You can’t be in a fixed position because the Taleban will hit you.”
At the time General Freakley was receiving messages from President Karzai asking the military to restore the district centres, which had been overrun by the Taleban. “You do that by attacking the enemy, putting in Afghan police and then staying mobile,” he said.
Contradicting claims by British commanders in the past, he said: “I don’t believe Governor Daud [then the governor of Helmand] insisted on having the platoon houses.”
Despite his criticisms General Freakley underlined his respect for the men of 16 Air Assault Brigade who were in Helmand in 2006. “I have the greatest respect for those men,” he said. “It seems that . . . they thought they were going to be involved in some sort of peacekeeping force but they had to face a very complex environment.”
General Freakley’s comments came as President Karzai said that the overall Nato strategy in Afghanistan needed to be reassessed.
“The experience over the past eight years showed that fighting [the Taleban] in Afghan villages has been ineffective and is not achieving anything but killing civilians,” President Karzai said in a statement released after a meeting with Norbert Lammert, the president of the German parliament.
Seven US troops died at the weekend in southern and eastern Afghanistan, while officials found the bodies of five kidnapped aides working for a female candidate in the western Herat province. A total of 62 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.
© Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 Registered in England

Lest We Forget

2010-08-26T10:40:00.001-07:00

by Butler Shafferby Butler Shaffer Recently by Butler Shaffer: This Land Is Whose Land?

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
~ Gustave LeBon
Hardly a day passes in which the reporting of political events does not bring to mind the teachings of, perhaps, the greatest of all psychiatrists, Carl Jung. He reminded us of a truth that most of us reject, namely, that there is a "dark side" to our unconscious minds which can easily be mobilized for destructive purposes to which our conscious minds would never subscribe. We are uncomfortable with the thought that we might harbor inclinations for dishonesty, violence, laziness, killing, etc., and unconsciously project such traits upon others, against whom we can take action. Such forces often find expression when fears and perceived threats from others cause us to fall victim to mob-like thinking, capable of being organized into political or other violent undertakings. The state thrives on conflicts it has helped to generate among people, which accounts for the parallel proliferation of disputes and increased political powers. Such dynamics have been most evident during these past nine years, as the least reflective have found it easy to accept any group identified by political leaders as a threat to some imagined sense of security.
A virulent form of this pathology has arisen in recent weeks over the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. With the same irrational, self-righteous posturing that would lead white supremacists to react to a black family moving into their neighborhood, various groups have sounded like a Greek chorus in attacking the Muslims for their alleged "insensitivity" to the "feelings" of those still traumatized by 9/11. That condemning an entire religion for the actions of a handful of its members – particularly when the 9/11 attacks were driven by political rather than religious considerations – is a form of the collectivist thinking of which Jung warned. How far might such shrieking reaction extend? Would a modern businessman properly be criticized for his plans to build a sushi restaurant near Pearl Harbor? Should the Ayn Rand Institute be charged with "insensitivity" to the religious feelings of Mormons were it to establish a facility in Salt Lake City? Is anything which the most neurotic person finds offensive to be defined as a "hate crime," or an act of "insensitivity"?
Is there any purpose to this tirade against an Islamic cultural center other than helping U.S./Israeli warmongering efforts against the Middle Eastern enemy-of-the-month? Can these fomenters of hatred expect to be taken seriously in posing as agents of "sensitivity" on behalf of victims of past wrongdoing? If they are truly concerned with respecting gravesites – even though the proposed Islamic center would not be located on the World Trade Center land – the Islamaphobes might look further than just the dead of 9/11. They might consider providing due sensitivity to earlier victims of wrongs committed in the environs of Manhattan.
The Wall Street area is the site of an earlier cemetery that functioned for more than one hundred years. Known as the African Burial Ground, it was the final resting place for what some archeologists estimate may be as many as ten thousand former slaves and black freemen. This burial site was discovered fewer than twenty years ago, during the construction of a federal office building. Somehow, I do not expect to hear the political establishment or its mainstream media campaigning against the federal government's "insensitivity" to the victims of slavery!
For reasons that the "sensitive"-minded voices of political correctness prefer to downplay or completely ignore, Manhattan had been a major center of the African slave trade into the nineteenth century. Slaves were brought into New York City ports, there to be sold. The book, Slavery in New York, published by the New York Historical Society, offers this encapsulation of this slave market:
For nearly three hundred years, slavery was an intimate part of the lives of all New Yorkers, black and white, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of New York's history. For portions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, New York City housed the largest urban slave population in mainland North America, with more slaves than any other city on the continent.
It has been estimated that, by the mid-1700s, some 25% of the workers in New York City were slaves, while half the work force beyond the city was so constituted. During this same period, about 40% of New York City homes were served by one or more slaves.
Many of the erstwhile slaves who had been set free prior to the Civil War saw the importance of owning property, rather than being the property of others. These persons formed a community in the mid-Manhattan area, called Seneca Village. Irish and German immigrants also bought land in this village. A number of white New Yorkers became troubled with the success of Seneca and, concerned about the impact this might have on the future development of Manhattan, called upon the New York City mayor – a Democrat – to use eminent domain to eliminate the village. The stolen land became a part of today's Central Park.
The black property owners resisted being removed from their homes, and were forcibly removed by police officers. As with later "urban renewal" projects in various cities – programs that destroyed the orderly nature of established neighborhoods, thus contributing to the modern disorder of the inner cities – the residents of Seneca Village were left to fend for themselves. Will any organized campaign of "sensitivity" to these victims of urban renewal be forthcoming from the current trumpets of bigotry?
Private property interests have succumbed to the socialistic nature of eminent domain elsewhere on Manhattan. When Wall Street banking and other financial interests – particularly the Rockefellers – saw the enhanced property values that would come from having a World Trade Center constructed in their neighborhood, local government employed the powers of eminent domain to forcibly deprive small businesses and other property owners of their lands. Being driven more by political interests than market demand, the resulting WTC became a white elephant unable to sustain itself without the state government – then under the governorship of Nelson Rockefeller – moving numerous state offices to this facility.
I have often wondered whether some parcels of land might be affected by a "power of place," whose influences might continue from one owner to another, and from one time period to another. It may be no coincidence that the remains of thousands of slaves – whose claims to self-ownership were so viciously denied by state and federal governments – are buried in the same area as the dead of 9/11, lands from which subsequent owners were forcibly despoiled of their property in order to serve private banking interests. Perhaps there is added symmetry in the fact that Alexander Hamilton – whose inconsistent attitudes toward slavery, and whose politically interventionist predilections would have brought him down on the side of the Wall Street banking interests – lies buried in a churchyard not far from the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Perhaps the sordid history that lies buried within this region is contributing to the playing-out of the "dark side" forces that now militate against the efforts of Muslims to build their recreation center. There is a long line of politically-generated abuses of people on Manhattan Island – and elsewhere – to be attended to before addressing the construction of a religious center that does not depend on violating the property interests of anyone. The inconstancy of the "sensitivity" to the claims of property ownership has been too unsightly and morally offensive for any of us to tolerate yet another denial of the principle of inviolability which, alone, can civilize us.
August 28, 2010
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order

Weather as a Force Multiplier:

2010-08-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

A Research Paper
Presented To
Air Force 2025
by
Col Tamzy J. House
Lt Col James B. Near, Jr.
LTC William B. Shields (USA)
Maj Ronald J. Celentano
Maj David M. Husband
Maj Ann E. Mercer
Maj James E. Pugh
August 1996

Executive Summary
In 2025, US aerospace forces can “own the weather” by capitalizing on emerging technologies and
focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war
fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact
operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures. The purpose of this
paper is to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather-modification system to achieve military
objectives rather than to provide a detailed technical road map.
A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the
atom. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as
weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our
own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of
natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control,
weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an
adversary. Some of the potential capabilities a weather-modification system could provide to a war-fighting
commander in chief (CINC) are listed in table 1.
Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather-modification
capability: (1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, (2) computational capability, (3) information
gathering and transmission, (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some
intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future.

Current technologies that will mature over the next 30 years will offer anyone who has the necessary
resources the ability to modify weather patterns and their corresponding effects, at least on the local scale.
Current demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global stresses that provide the
impetus necessary for many countries or groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability.
In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with
both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its
interests, at various levels. These levels could include unilateral actions, participation in a security
framework such as NATO, membership in an international organization such as the UN, or participation in a
coalition. Assuming that in 2025 our national security strategy includes weather-modification, its use in our
national military strategy will naturally follow. Besides the significant benefits an operational capability
would provide, another motivation to pursue weather-modification is to deter and counter potential
adversaries.
viii
In this paper we show that appropriate application of weather-modification can provide battlespace
dominance to a degree never before imagined. In the future, such operations will enhance air and space
superiority and provide new options for battlespace shaping and battlespace awareness.1 “The technology is
there, waiting for us to pull it all together;”2 in 2025 we can “Own the Weather.”

Scenario: Imagine that in 2025 the US is fighting a rich, but now consolidated, politically powerful
drug cartel in South America. The cartel has purchased hundreds of Russian-and Chinese-built fighters that
have successfully thwarted our attempts to attack their production facilities. With their local numerical
superiority and interior lines, the cartel is launching more than 10 aircraft for every one of ours. In addition,
the cartel is using the French system probatoire d' observation de la terre (SPOT) positioning and tracking
imagery systems, which in 2025 are capable of transmitting near-real-time, multispectral imagery with 1
meter resolution. The US wishes to engage the enemy on an uneven playing field in order to exploit the full
potential of our aircraft and munitions.
Meteorological analysis reveals that equatorial South America typically has afternoon thunderstorms on
a daily basis throughout the year. Our intelligence has confirmed that cartel pilots are reluctant to fly in or
near thunderstorms. Therefore, our weather force support element (WFSE), which is a part of the
commander in chief’s (CINC) air operations center (AOC), is tasked to forecast storm paths and trigger or
intensify thunderstorm cells over critical target areas that the enemy must defend with their aircraft. Since
our aircraft in 2025 have all-weather capability, the thunderstorm threat is minimal to our forces, and we can
effectively and decisively control the sky over the target.
The WFSE has the necessary sensor and communication capabilities to observe, detect, and act on
weather-modification requirements to support US military objectives. These capabilities are part of an
advanced battle area system that supports the war-fighting CINC. In our scenario, the CINC tasks the WFSE
to conduct storm intensification and concealment operations. The WFSE models the atmospheric conditions

to forecast, with 90 percent confidence, the likelihood of successful modification using airborne cloud
generation and seeding.
In 2025, uninhabited aerospace vehicles (UAV) are routinely used for weather-modification operations.
By cross-referencing desired attack times with wind and thunderstorm forecasts and the SPOT satellite’s
projected orbit, the WFSE generates mission profiles for each UAV. The WFSE guides each UAV using
near-real-time information from a networked sensor array.
Prior to the attack, which is coordinated with forecasted weather conditions, the UAVs begin cloud
generation and seeding operations. UAVs disperse a cirrus shield to deny enemy visual and infrared (IR)
surveillance. Simultaneously, microwave heaters create localized scintillation to disrupt active sensing via
synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems such as the commercially available Canadian search and rescue
satellite-aided tracking (SARSAT) that will be widely available in 2025. Other cloud seeding operations
cause a developing thunderstorm to intensify over the target, severely limiting the enemy’s capability to
defend. The WFSE monitors the entire operation in real-time and notes the successful completion of another
very important but routine weather-modification mission.
This scenario may seem far-fetched, but by 2025 it is within the realm of possibility. The next chapter
explores the reasons for weather-modification, defines the scope, and examines trends that will make it
possible in the next 30 years.

Required Capability
Why Would We Want to Mess with the Weather?
According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st
century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather— and go after him relentlessly.”1 A
global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting
CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all
possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across
the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change
it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.
People have always wanted to be able to do something about the weather. In the US, as early as 1839,
newspaper archives tell of people with serious and creative ideas on how to make rain.2 In 1957, the
president’s advisory committee on weather control explicitly recognized the military potential of weathermodification,
warning in their report that it could become a more important weapon than the atom bomb.3
However, controversy since 1947 concerning the possible legal consequences arising from the
deliberate alteration of large storm systems meant that little future experimentation could be conducted on
storms which had the potential to reach land.4 In 1977, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution
prohibiting the hostile use of environmental modification techniques. The resulting “Convention on the
Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Technique (ENMOD)”

committed the signatories to refrain from any military or other hostile use of weather-modification which
could result in widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects.5 While these two events have not halted the
pursuit of weather-modification research, they have significantly inhibited its pace and the development of
associated technologies, while producing a primary focus on suppressive versus intensification activities.
The influence of the weather on military operations has long been recognized. During World War II,
Eisenhower said,
[i]n Europe bad weather is the worst enemy of the air [operations]. Some soldier once
said, “The weather is always neutral.” Nothing could be more untrue. Bad weather is
obviously the enemy of the side that seeks to launch projects requiring good weather, or of
the side possessing great assets, such as strong air forces, which depend upon good
weather for effective operations. If really bad weather should endure permanently, the
Nazi would need nothing else to defend the Normandy coast!6
The impact of weather has also been important in more recent military operations. A significant number
of the air sorties into Tuzla during the initial deployment supporting the Bosnian peace operation aborted due
to weather. During Operation Desert Storm, Gen Buster C. Glosson asked his weather officer to tell him
which targets would be clear in 48 hours for inclusion in the air tasking order (ATO).7 But current
forecasting capability is only 85 percent accurate for no more than 24 hours, which doesn't adequately meet
the needs of the ATO planning cycle. Over 50 percent of the F-117 sorties weather aborted over their targets
and A-10s only flew 75 of 200 scheduled close air support (CAS) missions due to low cloud cover during
the first two days of the campaign.8 The application of weather-modification technology to clear a hole over
the targets long enough for F-117s to attack and place bombs on target or clear the fog from the runway at
Tuzla would have been a very effective force multiplier. Weather-modification clearly has potential for
military use at the operational level to reduce the elements of fog and friction for friendly operations and to
significantly increase them for the enemy.
What Do We Mean by “Weather-modification”?
Today, weather-modification is the alteration of weather phenomena over a limited area for a limited
period of time.9 Within the next three decades, the concept of weather-modification could expand to include
the ability to shape weather patterns by influencing their determining factors.10 Achieving such a highly
accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability in the next 30 years will require
overcoming some challenging but not insurmountable technological and legal hurdles.
Technologically, we must have a solid understanding of the variables that affect weather. We must be
able to model the dynamics of their relationships, map the possible results of their interactions, measure their
actual real-time values, and influence their values to achieve a desired outcome. Society will have to
provide the resources and legal basis for a mature capability to develop. How could all of this happen? The
following notional scenario postulates how weather-modification might become both technically feasible and
socially desirable by 2025.
Between now and 2005, technological advances in meteorology and the demand for more precise
weather information by global businesses will lead to the successful identification and parameterization of
the major variables that affect weather. By 2015, advances in computational capability, modeling techniques,
and atmospheric information tracking will produce a highly accurate and reliable weather prediction
capability, validated against real-world weather. In the following decade, population densities put pressure
on the worldwide availability and cost of food and usable water. Massive life and property losses
associated with natural weather disasters become increasingly unacceptable. These pressures prompt
governments and/or other organizations who are able to capitalize on the technological advances of the
previous 20 years to pursue a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-modification capability. The
increasing urgency to realize the benefits of this capability stimulates laws and treaties, and some unilateral
actions, making the risks required to validate and refine it acceptable. By 2025, the world, or parts of it, are
able to shape local weather patterns by influencing the factors that affect climate, precipitation, storms and
their effects, fog, and near space. These highly accurate and reasonably precise civil applications of
weather-modification technology have obvious military implications. This is particularly true for aerospace
forces, for while weather may affect all mediums of operation, it operates in ours.
The term weather-modification may have negative connotations for many people, civilians and military
members alike. It is thus important to define the scope to be considered in this paper so that potential critics
or proponents of further research have a common basis for discussion.
In the broadest sense, weather-modification can be divided into two major categories: suppression and
intensification of weather patterns. In extreme cases, it might involve the creation of completely new weather

patterns, attenuation or control of severe storms, or even alteration of global climate on a far-reaching and/or
long-lasting scale. In the mildest and least controversial cases it may consist of inducing or suppressing
precipitation, clouds, or fog for short times over a small-scale region. Other low-intensity applications might
include the alteration and/or use of near space as a medium to enhance communications, disrupt active or
passive sensing, or other purposes. In conducting the research for this study, the broadest possible
interpretation of weather-modification was initially embraced, so that the widest range of opportunities
available for our military in 2025 were thoughtfully considered. However, for several reasons described
below, this paper focuses primarily on localized and short-term forms of weather-modification and how
these could be incorporated into war-fighting capability. The primary areas discussed include generation and
dissipation of precipitation, clouds, and fog; modification of localized storm systems; and the use of the
ionosphere and near space for space control and communications dominance. These applications are
consistent with CJCSI 3810.01, “Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations.”
11
Extreme and controversial examples of weather modification—creation of made-to-order weather,
large-scale climate modification, creation and/or control (or “steering”) of severe storms, etc.—were
researched as part of this study but receive only brief mention here because, in the authors’ judgment, the
technical obstacles preventing their application appear insurmountable within 30 years.12 If this were not the
case, such applications would have been included in this report as potential military options, despite their
controversial and potentially malevolent nature and their inconsistency with standing UN agreements to
which the US is a signatory.
On the other hand, the weather-modification applications proposed in this report range from technically
proven to potentially feasible. They are similar, however, in that none are currently employed or envisioned
for employment by our operational forces. They are also similar in their potential value for the war fighter of
the future, as we hope to convey in the following chapters. A notional integrated system that incorporates
weather-modification tools will be described in the next chapter; how those tools might be applied are then
discussed within the framework of the Concept of Operations in chapter 4.
7
1 Gen Gordon R. Sullivan, “Moving into the 21st Century: America’s Army and Modernization,”
Military Review (July 1993) quoted in Mary Ann Seagraves and Richard Szymber, “Weather a Force
Multiplier,” Military Review, November/December 1995, 75.
2 Horace R. Byers, “History of Weather-modification,” in Wilmot N. Hess, ed. Weather and Climate
Modification, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974), 4.
3 William B. Meyer, “The Life and Times of US Weather: What Can We Do About It?” American
Heritage 37, no. 4 (June/July 1986), 48.
4 Byers, 13.
5 US Department of State, The Department of State Bulletin. 74, no. 1981 (13 June 1977): 10.
6 Dwight D Eisenhower. “Crusade in Europe,” quoted in John F. Fuller, Thor’s Legions (Boston:
American Meterology Society, 1990), 67.
7 Interview of Lt Col Gerald F. Riley, Staff Weather Officer to CENTCOM OIC of CENTAF Weather
Support Force and Commander of 3rd Weather Squadron, in “Desert Shield/Desert Storm Interview Series,”
by Dr William E. Narwyn, AWS Historian, 29 May 1991.
8 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen. Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report (Washington
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993), 172.
9 Herbert S. Appleman, An Introduction to Weather-modification (Scott AFB, Ill.: Air Weather
Service/MAC, September 1969), 1.
10 William Bown, “Mathematicians Learn How to Tame Chaos,” New Scientist, 30 May 1992, 16.
11 CJCSI 3810.01, Meteorological and Oceanographic Operations, 10 January 95. This CJCS
Instruction establishes policy and assigns responsibilities for conducting meteorological and oceanographic
operations. It also defines the terms widespread, long-lasting, and severe, in order to identify those activities
that US forces are prohibited from conducting under the terms of the UN Environmental Modification
Convention. Widespread is defined as encompassing an area on the scale of several hundred km; long-lasting
means lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season; and severe involves serious or significant
disruption or harm to human life, natural and economic resources, or other assets.
12 Concern about the unintended consequences of attempting to “control” the weather is well justified.
Weather is a classic example of a chaotic system (i.e., a system that never exactly repeats itself). A chaotic
system is also extremely sensitive: minuscule differences in conditions greatly affect outcomes. According to
Dr. Glenn James, a widely published chaos expert, technical advances may provide a means to predict when
weather transitions will occur and the magnitude of the inputs required to cause those transitions; however, it
will never be possible to precisely predict changes that occur as a result of our inputs. The chaotic nature of
weather also limits our ability to make accurate long-range forecasts. The renowned physicist Edward
Teller recently presented calculations he performed to determine the long-range weather forecasting
improvement that would result from a satellite constellation providing continuous atmospheric measurements
over a 1 km2 grid worldwide. Such a system, which is currently cost-prohibitive, would only improve longrange
forecasts from the current five days to approximately 14 days. Clearly, there are definite physical
limits to mankind’s ability to control nature, but the extent of those physical limits remains an open question.
Sources: G. E. James, “Chaos Theory: The Essentials for Military Applications,” in ACSC Theater Air
Campaign Studies Coursebook, AY96, 8 (Maxwell AFB, Ala: Air University Press, 1995), 1-64. The
Teller calculations are cited in Reference 49 of this source.

System Description
Our vision is that by 2025 the military could influence the weather on a mesoscale (<200 km2) or
microscale (immediate local area) to achieve operational capabilities such as those listed in Table 1. The
capability would be the synergistic result of a system consisting of (1) highly trained weather force
specialists (WFS) who are members of the CINC’s weather force support element (WFSE); (2) access ports
to the global weather network (GWN), where worldwide weather observations and forecasts are obtained
near-real-time from civilian and military sources; (3) a dense, highly accurate local area weather sensing and
communication system; (4) an advanced computer local area weather-modification modeling and prediction
capability within the area of responsibility (AOR); (5) proven weather-modification intervention
technologies; and (6) a feedback capability.
The Global Weather Network
The GWN is envisioned to be an evolutionary expansion of the current military and civilian worldwide
weather data network. By 2025, it will be a super high-speed, expanded bandwidth, communication network
filled with near-real-time weather observations taken from a denser and more accurate worldwide
observation network resulting from highly improved ground, air, maritime, and space sensors. The network
will also provide access to forecast centers around the world where sophisticated, tailored forecast and data
products, generated from weather prediction models (global, regional, local, specialized, etc.) based on the
latest nonlinear mathematical techniques are made available to GWN customers for near-real-time use.

By 2025, we envision that weather prediction models, in general, and mesoscale weather-modification
models, in particular, will be able to emulate all-weather producing variables, along with their interrelated
dynamics, and prove to be highly accurate in stringent measurement trials against empirical data. The brains
of these models will be advanced software and hardware capabilities which can rapidly ingest trillions of
environmental data points, merge them into usable data bases, process the data through the weather prediction
models, and disseminate the weather information over the GWN in near-real-time.1 This network is depicted
schematically in figure 3-1.
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 3-1. Global Weather Network
Evidence of the evolving future weather modeling and prediction capability as well as the GWN can be
seen in the national oceanic and atmospheric administration's (NOAA) 1995–2005 strategic plan. It includes
program elements to "advance short-term warning and forecast services, implement seasonal to inter-annual
climate forecasts, and predict and assess decadal to centennial change;"2 it does not, however, include plans
for weather-modification modeling or modification technology development. NOAA's plans include
extensive data gathering programs such as Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD) and Doppler weather
surveillance systems deployed throughout the US. Data from these sensing systems feed into over 100
forecast centers for processing by the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), which
will provide data communication, processing, and display capabilities for extensive forecasting. In addition,

NOAA has leased a Cray C90 supercomputer capable of performing over 1.5x1010 operations per second that
has already been used to run a Hurricane Prediction System.3
Applying Weather-modification to Military Operations
How will the military, in general, and the USAF, in particular, manage and employ a weathermodification
capability? We envision this will be done by the weather force support element (WFSE),
whose primary mission would be to support the war-fighting CINCs with weather-modification options, in
addition to current forecasting support. Although the WFSE could operate anywhere as long as it has access
to the GWN and the system components already discussed, it will more than likely be a component within the
AOC or its 2025-equivalent. With the CINC’s intent as guidance, the WFSE formulates weathermodification
options using information provided by the GWN, local weather data network, and weathermodification
forecast model. The options include range of effect, probability of success, resources to be
expended, the enemy’s vulnerability, and risks involved. The CINC chooses an effect based on these inputs,
and the WFSE then implements the chosen course, selecting the right modification tools and employing them
to achieve the desired effect. Sensors detect the change and feed data on the new weather pattern to the
modeling system which updates its forecast accordingly. The WFSE checks the effectiveness of its efforts by
pulling down the updated current conditions and new forecast(s) from the GWN and local weather data
network, and plans follow-on missions as needed. This concept is illustrated in figure 3-2.
11
33--DECIISIION
6--FEEDBACK
AIIR OPS CENTER
WEATHER FORCE
SUPPORT ELEMENT
CINC
1--IINTENT
2--WX MOD
OPTIIONS
FORECASTS//
DATA
4--EMPLOY
WX MOD TOOLS
5--CAUSE EFFECT
GWN
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 3-2. The Military System for Weather-Modification Operations.
WFSE personnel will need to be experts in information systems and well schooled in the arts of both
offensive and defensive information warfare. They would also have an in-depth understanding of the GWN
and an appreciation for how weather-modification could be employed to meet a CINC’s needs.
Because of the nodal web nature of the GWN, this concept would be very flexible. For instance, a
WFSE could be assigned to each theater to provide direct support to the CINC. The system would also be
survivable, with multiple nodes connected to the GWN.
A product of the information age, this system would be most vulnerable to information warfare. Each
WFSE would need the most current defensive and offensive information capabilities available. Defensive
abilities would be necessary for survival. Offensive abilities could provide spoofing options to create
virtual weather in the enemy's sensory and information systems, making it more likely for them to make
decisions producing results of our choosing rather than theirs. It would also allow for the capability to mask
or disguise our weather-modification activities.
12
Two key technologies are necessary to meld an integrated, comprehensive, responsive, precise, and
effective weather-modification system. Advances in the science of chaos are critical to this endeavor. Also
key to the feasibility of such a system is the ability to model the extremely complex nonlinear system of
global weather in ways that can accurately predict the outcome of changes in the influencing variables.
Researchers have already successfully controlled single variable nonlinear systems in the lab and
hypothesize that current mathematical techniques and computer capacity could handle systems with up to five
variables. Advances in these two areas would make it feasible to affect regional weather patterns by making
small, continuous nudges to one or more influencing factors. Conceivably, with enough lead time and the
right conditions, you could get “made-to-order” weather.4
Developing a true weather-modification capability will require various intervention tools to adjust the
appropriate meteorological parameters in predictable ways. It is this area that must be developed by the
military based on specific required capabilities such as those listed in table 1, table 1 is located in the
Executive Summary. Such a system would contain a sensor array and localized battle area data net to
provide the fine level of resolution required to detect intervention effects and provide feedback. This net
would include ground, air, maritime, and space sensors as well as human observations in order to ensure the
reliability and responsiveness of the system, even in the event of enemy countermeasures. It would also
include specific intervention tools and technologies, some of which already exist and others which must be
developed. Some of these proposed tools are described in the following chapter titled Concept of
Operations. The total weather-modification process would be a real-time loop of continuous, appropriate,
measured interventions, and feedback capable of producing desired weather behavior.
Notes
1 SPACECAST 2020, Space Weather Support for Communications, white paper G (Maxwell AFB,
Ala.: Air War College/2020, 1994).
2 Rear Adm Sigmund Petersen, “NOAA Moves Toward The 21st Century,” The Military Engineer 20,
no. 571 (June-July 1995): 44.
3 Ibid.
4 William Brown, “Mathematicians Learn How to Tame Chaos,” New Scientist (30 May 1992): 16.

Concept of Operations
The essential ingredient of the weather-modification system is the set of intervention techniques used to
modify the weather. The number of specific intervention methodologies is limited only by the imagination,
but with few exceptions they involve infusing either energy or chemicals into the meteorological process in
the right way, at the right place and time. The intervention could be designed to modify the weather in a
number of ways, such as influencing clouds and precipitation, storm intensity, climate, space, or fog.
Precipitation
For centuries man has desired the ability to influence precipitation at the time and place of his choosing.
Until recently, success in achieving this goal has been minimal; however, a new window of opportunity may
exist resulting from development of new technologies and an increasing world interest in relieving water
shortages through precipitation enhancement. Consequently, we advocate that the DOD explore the many
opportunities (and also the ramifications) resulting from development of a capability to influence
precipitation or conducting “selective precipitation modification.” Although the capability to influence
precipitation over the long term (i.e., for more than several days) is still not fully understood. By 2025 we
will certainly be capable of increasing or decreasing precipitation over the short term in a localized area.
Before discussing research in this area, it is important to describe the benefits of such a capability.
While many military operations may be influenced by precipitation, ground mobility is most affected.
Influencing precipitation could prove useful in two ways. First, enhancing precipitation could decrease the

enemy’s trafficability by muddying terrain, while also affecting their morale. Second, suppressing
precipitation could increase friendly trafficability by drying out an otherwise muddied area.
What is the possibility of developing this capability and applying it to tactical operations by 2025?
Closer than one might think. Research has been conducted in precipitation modification for many years, and
an aspect of the resulting technology was applied to operations during the Vietnam War.1 These initial
attempts provide a foundation for further development of a true capability for selective precipitation
modification.
Interestingly enough, the US government made a conscious decision to stop building upon this
foundation. As mentioned earlier, international agreements have prevented the US from investigating
weather-modification operations that could have widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects. However,
possibilities do exist (within the boundaries of established treaties) for using localized precipitation
modification over the short term, with limited and potentially positive results.
These possibilities date back to our own previous experimentation with precipitation modification. As
stated in an article appearing in the Journal of Applied Meteorology,
[n]early all the weather-modification efforts over the last quarter century have been aimed
at producing changes on the cloud scale through exploitation of the saturated vapor
pressure difference between ice and water. This is not to be criticized but it is time we
also consider the feasibility of weather-modification on other time-space scales and with
other physical hypotheses.2
This study by William M. Gray, et al., investigated the hypothesis that “significant beneficial influences
can be derived through judicious exploitation of the solar absorption potential of carbon black dust.”3 The
study ultimately found that this technology could be used to enhance rainfall on the mesoscale, generate cirrus
clouds, and enhance cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) clouds in otherwise dry areas.
The technology can be described as follows. Just as a black tar roof easily absorbs solar energy and
subsequently radiates heat during a sunny day, carbon black also readily absorbs solar energy. When
dispersed in microscopic or “dust” form in the air over a large body of water, the carbon becomes hot and
heats the surrounding air, thereby increasing the amount of evaporation from the body of water below. As the
surrounding air heats up, parcels of air will rise and the water vapor contained in the rising air parcel will
eventually condense to form clouds. Over time the cloud droplets increase in size as more and more water
vapor condenses, and eventually they become too large and heavy to stay suspended and will fall as rain or

other forms of precipitation.4 The study points out that this precipitation enhancement technology would
work best “upwind from coastlines with onshore flow.” Lake-effect snow along the southern edge of the
Great Lakes is a naturally occurring phenomenon based on similar dynamics.
Can this type of precipitation enhancement technology have military applications? Yes, if the right
conditions exist. For example, if we are fortunate enough to have a fairly large body of water available
upwind from the targeted battlefield, carbon dust could be placed in the atmosphere over that water.
Assuming the dynamics are supportive in the atmosphere, the rising saturated air will eventually form clouds
and rainshowers downwind over the land.5 While the likelihood of having a body of water located upwind
of the battlefield is unpredictable, the technology could prove enormously useful under the right conditions.
Only further experimentation will determine to what degree precipitation enhancement can be controlled.
If precipitation enhancement techniques are successfully developed and the right natural conditions also
exist, we must also be able to disperse carbon dust into the desired location. Transporting it in a completely
controlled, safe, cost-effective, and reliable manner requires innovation. Numerous dispersal techniques
have already been studied, but the most convenient, safe, and cost-effective method discussed is the use of
afterburner-type jet engines to generate carbon particles while flying through the targeted air. This method is
based on injection of liquid hydrocarbon fuel into the afterburner’s combustion gases. This direct generation
method was found to be more desirable than another plausible method (i.e., the transport of large quantities of
previously produced and properly sized carbon dust to the desired altitude).
The carbon dust study demonstrated that small-scale precipitation enhancement is possible and has been
successfully verified under certain atmospheric conditions. Since the study was conducted, no known
military applications of this technology have been realized. However, we can postulate how this technology
might be used in the future by examining some of the delivery platforms conceivably available for effective
dispersal of carbon dust or other effective modification agents in the year 2025.
One method we propose would further maximize the technology’s safety and reliability, by virtually
eliminating the human element. To date, much work has been done on UAVs which can closely (if not
completely) match the capabilities of piloted aircraft. If this UAV technology were combined with stealth and
carbon dust technologies, the result could be a UAV aircraft invisible to radar while en route to the targeted
area, which could spontaneously create carbon dust in any location. However, minimizing the number of

UAVs required to complete the mission would depend upon the development of a new and more efficient
system to produce carbon dust by a follow-on technology to the afterburner-type jet engines previously
mentioned. In order to effectively use stealth technology, this system must also have the ability to disperse
carbon dust while minimizing (or eliminating) the UAV’s infrared heat source.
In addition to using stealth UAV and carbon dust absorption technology for precipitation enhancement,
this delivery method could also be used for precipitation suppression. Although the previously mentioned
study did not significantly explore the possibility of cloud seeding for precipitation suppression, this
possibility does exist. If clouds were seeded (using chemical nuclei similar to those used today or perhaps a
more effective agent discovered through continued research) before their downwind arrival to a desired
location, the result could be a suppression of precipitation. In other words, precipitation could be “forced”
to fall before its arrival in the desired territory, thereby making the desired territory “dry.” The strategic and
operational benefits of doing this have previously been discussed.
Fog
In general, successful fog dissipation requires some type of heating or seeding process. Which
technique works best depends on the type of fog encountered. In simplest terms, there are two basic types of
fog—cold and warm. Cold fog occurs at temperatures below 32oF. The best-known dissipation technique
for cold fog is to seed it from the air with agents that promote the growth of ice crystals.6
Warm fog occurs at temperatures above 32oF and accounts for 90 percent of the fog-related problems
encountered by flight operations.7 The best-known dissipation technique is heating because a small
temperature increase is usually sufficient to evaporate the fog. Since heating usually isn’t practical, the next
most effective technique is hygroscopic seeding.8 Hygroscopic seeding uses agents that absorb water vapor.
This technique is most effective when accomplished from the air but can also be accomplished from the
ground.9 Optimal results require advance information on fog depth, liquid water content, and wind.10
Decades of research show that fog dissipation is an effective application of weather-modification
technology with demonstrated savings of huge proportions for both military and civil aviation.11 Local

municipalities have also shown an interest in applying these techniques to improve the safety of high-speed
highways transiting areas of frequently occurring dense fog.12
There are some emerging technologies which may have important applications for fog dispersal. As
discussed earlier, heating is the most effective dispersal method for the most commonly occurring type of fog.
Unfortunately, it has proved impractical for most situations and would be difficult at best for contingency
operations. However, the development of directed radiant energy technologies, such as microwaves and
lasers, could provide new possibilities.
Lab experiments have shown microwaves to be effective for the heat dissipation of fog. However,
results also indicate that the energy levels required exceed the US large power density exposure limit of 100
watt/m2 and would be very expensive.13 Field experiments with lasers have demonstrated the capability to
dissipate warm fog at an airfield with zero visibility. Generating 1 watt/cm2, which is approximately the US
large power density exposure limit, the system raised visibility to one quarter of a mile in 20 seconds.14
Laser systems described in the Space Operations portion of this AF 2025 study could certainly provide this
capability as one of their many possible uses.
With regard to seeding techniques, improvements in the materials and delivery methods are not only
plausible but likely. Smart materials based on nanotechnology are currently being developed with gigaops
computer capability at their core. They could adjust their size to optimal dimensions for a given fog seeding
situation and even make adjustments throughout the process. They might also enhance their dispersal
qualities by adjusting their buoyancy, by communicating with each other, and by steering themselves within
the fog. They will be able to provide immediate and continuous effectiveness feedback by integrating with a
larger sensor network and can also change their temperature and polarity to improve their seeding effects.15
As mentioned above, UAVs could be used to deliver and distribute these smart materials.
Recent army research lab experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of generating fog. They used
commercial equipment to generate thick fog in an area 100 meters long. Further study has shown fogs to be
effective at blocking much of the UV/IR/visible spectrum, effectively masking emitters of such radiation from
IR weapons.16 This technology would enable a small military unit to avoid detection in the IR spectrum. Fog
could be generated to quickly, conceal the movement of tanks or infantry, or it could conceal military

operations, facilities, or equipment. Such systems may also be useful in inhibiting observations of sensitive
rear-area operations by electro-optical reconnaissance platforms.17
Storms
The desirability to modify storms to support military objectives is the most aggressive and
controversial type of weather-modification. The damage caused by storms is indeed horrendous. For
instance, a tropical storm has an energy equal to 10,000 one-megaton hydrogen bombs,18 and in 1992
Hurricane Andrew totally destroyed Homestead AFB, Florida, caused the evacuation of most military
aircraft in the southeastern US, and resulted in $15.5 billion of damage.19 However, as one would expect
based on a storm’s energy level, current scientific literature indicates that there are definite physical limits on
mankind’s ability to modify storm systems. By taking this into account along with political, environmental,
economic, legal, and moral considerations, we will confine our analysis of storms to localized thunderstorms
and thus do not consider major storm systems such as hurricanes or intense low-pressure systems.
At any instant there are approximately 2,000 thunderstorms taking place. In fact 45,000 thunderstorms,
which contain heavy rain, hail, microbursts, wind shear, and lightning form daily.20 Anyone who has flown
frequently on commercial aircraft has probably noticed the extremes that pilots will go to avoid
thunderstorms. The danger of thunderstorms was clearly shown in August 1985 when a jumbo jet crashed
killing 137 people after encountering microburst wind shears during a rain squall.21 These forces of nature
impact all aircraft and even the most advanced fighters of 1996 make every attempt to avoid a thunderstorm.
Will bad weather remain an aviation hazard in 2025? The answer, unfortunately, is “yes,” but
projected advances in technology over the next 30 years will diminish the hazard potential. Computercontrolled
flight systems will be able to “autopilot” aircraft through rapidly changing winds. Aircraft will
also have highly accurate, onboard sensing systems that can instantaneously “map” and automatically guide
the aircraft through the safest portion of a storm cell. Aircraft are envisioned to have hardened electronics
that can withstand the effects of lightning strikes and may also have the capability to generate a surrounding
electropotential field that will neutralize or repel lightning strikes.

Assuming that the US achieves some or all of the above outlined aircraft technical advances and
maintains the technological “weather edge” over its potential adversaries, we can next look at how we could
modify the battlespace weather to make the best use of our technical advantage.
Weather-modification technologies might involve techniques that would increase latent heat release in
the atmosphere, provide additional water vapor for cloud cell development, and provide additional surface
and lower atmospheric heating to increase atmospheric instability. Critical to the success of any attempt to
trigger a storm cell is the pre-existing atmospheric conditions locally and regionally. The atmosphere must
already be conditionally unstable and the large-scale dynamics must be supportive of vertical cloud
development. The focus of the weather-modification effort would be to provide additional “conditions” that
would make the atmosphere unstable enough to generate cloud and eventually storm cell development. The
path of storm cells once developed or enhanced is dependent not only on the mesoscale dynamics of the storm
but the regional and synoptic (global) scale atmospheric wind flow patterns in the area which are currently
not subject to human control.
As indicated, the technical hurdles for storm development in support of military operations are
obviously greater than enhancing precipitation or dispersing fog as described earlier. One area of storm
research that would significantly benefit military operations is lightning modification. Most research efforts
are being conducted to develop techniques to lessen the occurrence or hazards associated with lightning.
This is important research for military operations and resource protection, but some offensive military benefit
could be obtained by doing research on increasing the potential and intensity of lightning. Concepts to
explore include increasing the basic efficiency of the thunderstorm, stimulating the triggering mechanism that
initiates the bolt, and triggering lightning such as that which struck Apollo 12 in 1968.22 Possible
mechanisms to investigate would be ways to modify the electropotential characteristics over certain targets to
induce lightning strikes on the desired targets as the storm passes over their location.
In summary, the ability to modify battlespace weather through storm cell triggering or enhancement
would allow us to exploit the technological “weather” advances of our 2025 aircraft; this area has
tremendous potential and should be addressed by future research and concept development programs.

Exploitation of “NearSpace” for Space Control
This section discusses opportunities for control and modification of the ionosphere and near-space
environment for force enhancement; specifically to enhance our own communications, sensing, and navigation
capabilities and/or impair those of our enemy. A brief technical description of the ionosphere and its
importance in current communications systems is provided in appendix A.
By 2025, it may be possible to modify the ionosphere and near space, creating a variety of potential
applications, as discussed below. However, before ionospheric modification becomes possible, a number of
evolutionary advances in space weather forecasting and observation are needed. Many of these needs were
described in a Spacecast 2020 study, Space Weather Support for Communications.23 Some of the
suggestions from this study are included in appendix B; it is important to note that our ability to exploit near
space via active modification is dependent on successfully achieving reliable observation and prediction
capabilities.
Opportunities Afforded by Space Weather-modification
Modification of the near-space environment is crucial to battlespace dominance. General Charles
Horner, former commander in chief, United States space command, described his worst nightmare as “seeing
an entire Marine battalion wiped out on some foreign landing zone because he was unable to deny the enemy
intelligence and imagery generated from space.”24 Active modification could provide a “technological fix”
to jam the enemy’s active and passive surveillance and reconnaissance systems. In short, an operational
capability to modify the near-space environment would ensure space superiority in 2025; this capability
would allow us to shape and control the battlespace via enhanced communication, sensing, navigation,
and precision engagement systems.
While we recognize that technological advances may negate the importance of certain electromagnetic
frequencies for US aerospace forces in 2025 (such as radio frequency (RF), high-frequency (HF) and very
high-frequency (VHF) bands), the capabilities described below are nevertheless relevant. Our nonpeer

adversaries will most likely still depend on such frequencies for communications, sensing, and navigation
and would thus be extremely vulnerable to disruption via space weather-modification.
Communications Dominance via Ionospheric Modification
Modification of the ionosphere to enhance or disrupt communications has recently become the subject of
active research. According to Lewis M. Duncan, and Robert L. Showen, the Former Soviet Union (FSU)
conducted theoretical and experimental research in this area at a level considerably greater than comparable
programs in the West.25 There is a strong motivation for this research, because
induced ionospheric modifications may influence, or even disrupt, the operation of radio
systems relying on propagation through the modified region. The controlled generation or
accelerated dissipation of ionospheric disturbances may be used to produce new
propagation paths, otherwise unavailable, appropriate for selected RF missions.26
A number of methods have been explored or proposed to modify the ionosphere, including injection of
chemical vapors and heating or charging via electromagnetic radiation or particle beams (such as ions,
neutral particles, x-rays, MeV particles, and energetic electrons).27 It is important to note that many
techniques to modify the upper atmosphere have been successfully demonstrated experimentally. Groundbased
modification techniques employed by the FSU include vertical HF heating, oblique HF heating,
microwave heating, and magnetospheric modification.28 Significant military applications of such operations
include low frequency (LF) communication production, HF ducted communications, and creation of an
artificial ionosphere (discussed in detail below). Moreover, developing countries also recognize the benefit
of ionospheric modification: “in the early 1980’s, Brazil conducted an experiment to modify the ionosphere
by chemical injection.”29
Several high-payoff capabilities that could result from the modification of the ionosphere or near space
are described briefly below. It should be emphasized that this list is not comprehensive; modification of the
ionosphere is an area rich with potential applications and there are also likely spin-off applications that have
yet to be envisioned.
Ionospheric mirrors for pinpoint communication or over-the-horizon (OTH) radar transmission.
The properties and limitations of the ionosphere as a reflecting medium for high-frequency radiation are

described in appendix A. The major disadvantage in depending on the ionosphere to reflect radio waves is
its variability, which is due to normal space weather and events such as solar flares and geomagnetic storms.
The ionosphere has been described as a crinkled sheet of wax paper whose relative position rises and sinks
depending on weather conditions. The surface topography of the crinkled paper also constantly changes,
leading to variability in its reflective, refractive, and transmissive properties.
Creation of an artificial uniform ionosphere was first proposed by Soviet researcher A. V. Gurevich in
the mid-1970s. An artificial ionospheric mirror (AIM) would serve as a precise mirror for electromagnetic
radiation of a selected frequency or a range of frequencies. It would thereby be useful for both pinpoint
control of friendly communications and interception of enemy transmissions.
This concept has been described in detail by Paul A. Kossey, et al. in a paper entitled “Artificial
Ionospheric Mirrors (AIM).”30 The authors describe how one could precisely control the location and height
of the region of artificially produced ionization using crossed microwave (MW) beams, which produce
atmospheric breakdown (ionization) of neutral species. The implications of such control are enormous: one
would no longer be subject to the vagaries of the natural ionosphere but would instead have direct control of
the propagation environment. Ideally, the AIM could be rapidly created and then would be maintained only
for a brief operational period. A schematic depicting the crossed-beam approach for generation of an AIM is
shown in figure 4-1.31
An AIM could theoretically reflect radio waves with frequencies up to 2 GHz, which is nearly two
orders of magnitude higher than those waves reflected by the natural ionosphere. The MW radiator power
requirements for such a system are roughly an order of magnitude greater than 1992 state-of-the-art systems;
however, by 2025 such a power capability is expected to be easily achievable.

NORMAL IONOSPHERIC REFLECTING LAYERS
(100-300 km)
IONIZATION LAYER
(MIRROR)
INTENSE MW 30-70 km
BEAMS
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 4-1. Crossed-Beam Approach for Generating an Artificial Ionospheric Mirror
Besides providing pinpoint communication control and potential interception capability, this technology
would also provide communication capability at specified frequencies, as desired. Figure 4-2 shows how a
ground-based radiator might generate a series of AIMs, each of which would be tailored to reflect a selected
transmission frequency. Such an arrangement would greatly expand the available bandwidth for
communications and also eliminate the problem of interference and crosstalk (by allowing one to use the
requisite power level).

Artificial Ionospheric Mirrors
8 MHz
5 MHz 12 MHz
14 MHz
GROUND-BASED
AIM GENERATOR
TRANSMISSION
STATION
RECEIVER
STATION
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 4-2. Artificial Ionospheric Mirrors Point-to-Point Communications
Kossey et al. also describe how AIMs could be used to improve the capability of OTH radar:
AIM based radar could be operated at a frequency chosen to optimize target detection,
rather than be limited by prevailing ionospheric conditions. This, combined with the
possibility of controlling the radar’s wave polarization to mitigate clutter effects, could
result in reliable detection of cruise missiles and other low observable targets.32
A schematic depicting this concept is shown in figure 4-3. Potential advantages over conventional OTH
radars include frequency control, mitigation of auroral effects, short range operation, and detection of a
smaller cross-section target.

IONOSPHERE
AIM
OTH
RADAR
NORMAL
OTH RANGE
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 4-3. Artificial Ionospheric Mirror Over-the-Horizon Surveillance Concept.
Disruption of communications and radar via ionospheric control. A variation of the capability
proposed above is ionospheric modification to disrupt an enemy’s communication or radar transmissions.
Because HF communications are controlled directly by the ionosphere’s properties, an artificially created
ionization region could conceivably disrupt an enemy’s electromagnetic transmissions. Even in the absence
of an artificial ionization patch, high-frequency modification produces large-scale ionospheric variations
which alter HF propagation characteristics. The payoff of research aimed at understanding how to control
these variations could be high as both HF communication enhancement and degradation are possible.
Offensive interference of this kind would likely be indistinguishable from naturally occurring space weather.
This capability could also be employed to precisely locate the source of enemy electromagnetic
transmissions.
VHF, UHF, and super-high frequency (SHF) satellite communications could be disrupted by creating
artificial ionospheric scintillation. This phenomenon causes fluctuations in the phase and amplitude of radio
waves over a very wide band (30 MHz to 30 GHz). HF modification produces electron density irregularities
that cause scintillation over a wide-range of frequencies. The size of the irregularities determines which
frequency band will be affected. Understanding how to control the spectrum of the artificial irregularities

generated in the HF modification process should be a primary goal of research in this area. Additionally, it
may be possible to suppress the growth of natural irregularities resulting in reduced levels of natural
scintillation. Creating artificial scintillation would allow us to disrupt satellite transmissions over selected
regions. Like the HF disruption described above, such actions would likely be indistinguishable from
naturally occurring environmental events. Figure 4-4 shows how artificially ionized regions might be used to
disrupt HF communications via attenuation, scatter, or absorption (fig. 4.4a) or degrade satellite
communications via scintillation or energy loss (fig. 4-4b) (from Ref. 25).
km
300
100
50
REGION
F
E
D
POTENTIAL HF PROBLEMS
ABSORPTION
ATTENUATION
SCATTER
GROUND
REGION
F
E
D
km
300
100
50
SCINTILLATION
ENERGY LOSS
GROUND
POTENTIAL TRANSIONOSPHERIC PROBLEMS
(a) (b)
Source: Microsoft Clipart Gallery ã 1995 with courtesy from Microsoft.
Figure 4-4. Scenarios for Telecommunications Degradation
Exploding/disabling space assets traversing near-space. The ionosphere could potentially be
artificially charged or injected with radiation at a certain point so that it becomes inhospitable to satellites or
other space structures. The result could range from temporarily disabling the target to its complete
destruction via an induced explosion. Of course, effectively employing such a capability depends on the
ability to apply it selectively to chosen regions in space.
Charging space assets by near-space energy transfer. In contrast to the injurious capability described
above, regions of the ionosphere could potentially be modified or used as-is to revitalize space assets, for
instance by charging their power systems. The natural charge of the ionosphere may serve to provide most or
all of the energy input to the satellite. There have been a number of papers in the last decade on electrical

charging of space vehicles; however, according to one author, “in spite of the significant effort made in the
field both theoretically and experimentally, the vehicle charging problem is far from being completely
understood.”33 While the technical challenge is considerable, the potential to harness electrostatic energy to
fuel the satellite’s power cells would have a high payoff, enabling service life extension of space assets at a
relatively low cost. Additionally, exploiting the capability of powerful HF radio waves to accelerate
electrons to relatively high energies may also facilitate the degradation of enemy space assets through
directed bombardment with the HF-induced electron beams. As with artificial HF communication
disruptions and induced scintillation, the degradation of enemy spacecraft with such techniques would be
effectively indistinguishable from natural environment effects. The investigation and optimization of HF
acceleration mechanisms for both friendly and hostile purposes is an important area for future research
efforts.
Artificial Weather
While most weather-modification efforts rely on the existence of certain preexisting conditions, it may
be possible to produce some weather effects artificially, regardless of preexisting conditions. For instance,
virtual weather could be created by influencing the weather information received by an end user. Their
perception of parameter values or images from global or local meteorological information systems would
differ from reality. This difference in perception would lead the end user to make degraded operational
decisions.
Nanotechnology also offers possibilities for creating simulated weather. A cloud, or several clouds, of
microscopic computer particles, all communicating with each other and with a larger control system could
provide tremendous capability. Interconnected, atmospherically buoyant, and having navigation capability in
three dimensions, such clouds could be designed to have a wide-range of properties. They might exclusively
block optical sensors or could adjust to become impermeable to other surveillance methods. They could also
provide an atmospheric electrical potential difference, which otherwise might not exist, to achieve precisely
aimed and timed lightning strikes. Even if power levels achieved were insufficient to be an effective strike
weapon, the potential for psychological operations in many situations could be fantastic.

One major advantage of using simulated weather to achieve a desired effect is that unlike other
approaches, it makes what are otherwise the results of deliberate actions appear to be the consequences of
natural weather phenomena. In addition, it is potentially relatively inexpensive to do. According to J. Storrs
Hall, a scientist at Rutgers University conducting research on nanotechnology, production costs of these
nanoparticles could be about the same price per pound as potatoes.34 This of course discounts research and
development costs, which will be primarily borne by the private sector and be considered a sunk cost by
2025 and probably earlier.
Concept of Operations Summary
Weather affects everything we do, and weather-modification can enhance our ability to dominate the
aerospace environment. It gives the commander tools to shape the battlespace. It gives the logistician tools
to optimize the process. It gives the warriors in the cockpit an operating environment literally crafted to their
needs. Some of the potential capabilities a weather-modification system could provide to a war-fighting
CINC are summarized in table 1, of the executive summary).

HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon?

2010-08-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

"Seldom does a book become the seminal voice of reason when pitted against dangerous conspiracies that advance the agenda of special interests. Jerry E. Smith's HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy does just that. With utmost logic, it paints an accurate picture of governmental technology run amok in its attempts to spread American hegemony at any cost - perhaps even including planet Earth."

Vin Smith Host/Producer

Vin Smith's Midnight Bookworm

Broadcast nationally on CRN Digital Talk and the National Radio Network

Weather warfare

2010-08-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, says Michel Chossudovsky
Rarely acknowledged in the
debate on global climate change,
the world’s weather can now be
modified as part of a new
generation of sophisticated
electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and
Russia have developed capabilities to
manipulate the climate for military use.
Environmental modification techniques
have been applied by the US military for more
than half a century. US mathematician John
von Neumann, in liaison with the US
Department of Defense, started his research
on weather modification in the late 1940s at
the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms
of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.
During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding
techniques were used, starting in 1967 under
Project Popeye, the objective of which was to
prolong the monsoon season and block enemy
supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The US military has developed advanced
capabilities that enable it selectively to alter
weather patterns. The technology, which is
being perfected under the High-frequency
Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is
an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative
– ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint,
HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction,
operating from the outer atmosphere and
capable of destabilising agricultural and
ecological systems around the world.
Weather-modification, according to the US
Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report,
‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible
options to defeat or coerce an adversary’,
capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of
floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:
‘Weather modification will become a part of
domestic and international security and could
be done unilaterally… It could have offensive
and defensive applications and even be used
for deterrence purposes. The ability to
generate precipitation, fog and storms on
earth or to modify space weather… and the
production of artificial weather all are a part
of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’
In 1977, an international Convention was
ratified by the UN General Assembly which
banned ‘military or other hostile use of
environmental modification techniques having
widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’
It defined ‘environmental modification
techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –
through the deliberate manipulation of natural
processes – the dynamics, composition or
structure of the earth, including its biota,
lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or
of outer space.’
While the substance of the 1977 Convention
was reasserted in the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) signed at the 1992
Earth Summit in Rio, debate
on weather modification
for military use has
become a scientific
taboo. Military analysts
are mute on the subject.
Meteorologists are not
investigating the matter
and environmentalists are
focused on greenhouse gas
emissions under the Kyoto
Protocol. Neither is the possibility
of climatic or environmental manipulations as
part of a military and intelligence agenda,
while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader
debate on climate change under UN auspices.
The HAARP Programme
Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona,
Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas
that transmit, through high-frequency radio
waves, massive amounts of energy into the
ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere).
Their construction was funded by the US Air
Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Operated jointly by the Air Force Research
Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research,
HAARP constitutes a system of powerful
antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local
modifications of the ionosphere’. According to
its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu,
HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized
change in ionospheric temperature so physical
reactions can be studied by other instruments
located either at or close to the HAARP site’.
But Rosalie Bertell, president of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic
heater that can cause major disruptions in the
ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long
incisions in the protective layer that keeps
deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’.
Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the
largest ionospheric heater ever built’.
HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a
research programme, but military documents
confirm its main objective is to ‘induce
ionospheric modifications’ with
a view to altering weather
patterns and disrupting
communications and radar.
According to a report
by the Russian State
Duma: ‘The US plans to
carry out large-scale
experiments under the
HAARP programme [and]
create weapons capable of
breaking radio communication
lines and equipment installed on
spaceships and rockets, provoke serious
accidents in electricity networks and in oil and
gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on
the mental health of entire regions.’
An analysis of statements emanating from
the US Air Force points to the unthinkable: the
covert manipulation of weather patterns,
communications and electric power systems
as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US
to disrupt and dominate entire regions.
Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive
weapon par excellence. It can be directed
against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’
without their knowledge, used to destabilise
economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can
also trigger havoc in financial and commodity
markets. The disruption in agriculture creates
a greater dependency on food aid and
imported grain staples from the US and other
Western countries.
HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-
American partnership between Raytheon
Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents,
and British Aerospace Systems (BAES). The
HAARP project is one among several
collaborative ventures in advanced weapons
systems between the two defence giants.
The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by
Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a
subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation
(ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents)
was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994.
E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US
Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday
Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a
nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by
Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest
intelligence contractors in the World.
BAES was involved in the development of
the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna
array under a 2004 contract with the Office of
Naval Research. The installation of 132 highfrequency
transmitters was entrusted by
BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc.
The project, according to a July report in
Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s
Electronic Warfare division. In September it
received DARPA’s top award for technical
achievement for the design, construction and
activation of the HAARP array of antennas.
The HAARP system is fully operational and
in many regards dwarfs existing conventional
and strategic weapons systems. While there is
no firm evidence of its use for military
purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP
is an integral part of the militarisation of
space. One would expect the antennas already
to have been subjected to routine testing.
Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate
‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic
information relevant for the
understanding of climate change’. This
mandate includes environmental warfare.
‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the
underlying military applications are neither
the object of policy analysis or scientific
research in the thousands of pages of IPCC
reports and supporting documents, based on
the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists,
policymakers and environmentalists.
‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the
future of humanity, but has casually been
excluded from the reports for which the IPCC
received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of
Economics at the University of Ottawa and
an editor at the Centre for Research on
Globalization, www.globalresearch.ca
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/haarpecologist.pdf

Invasion of the Bling-ionaires: Meet Britain's most jaw-droppingly ostentatious tourists who have supercars flown from the Middle East to UK by privat

2010-08-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

A sunny Thursday afternoon in August and the cars circling Harrods need to be seen to be believed. Million-pound Bugatti Veyrons - normally a rare sighting, even on the well-heeled streets of Central London - are, around here, about as common as Ford Fiestas.
Other cars, in a display that could rival anything in Monaco or Goodwood, drive round and round the block, pausing at the rear each time to see if their masters are ready for collection.
In the cafes surrounding the department store, every single table is taken by people from the Gulf states and the Middle East — Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Dubai.

A young Arabic man leaving his vehicle outside the Berkley Hotel in Central London

Welcome to Knightsbridge — or, as it is better known to locals, ‘Little Kuwait’.
For British residents, the summer is all about anescape to the sun; a fortnight in the South of France, the Italian Riviera or Spain. We Brits want sand, sangria, heat and a swimming pool. Anywhere but the sticky, filthy city.
For the mega-wealthy billionaire families of the Gulf states over here this summer
will tell you that they come to London because, unlike in the U.S. or France, they are made to feel welcome,’ says Hussam Baramo, the Syria-born features editor at Al Quds newspaper, a daily paper widely-read by Middle Eastern people in London. ‘They like London because they think it’s safe and friendly.’
And here, they can bring their cars with them. Around the corner from Harrods, I
saw one Veyron with every inch of its bodywork coated in gold; another, chromed all over.
Behind it, I watched a Veyron in pearlised white with shiny chromium wings making a noise like a scalded Rottweiler.
The Saudi number plate on this car was ‘999’. I watched the driver get out. He was around 25 and dressed like an off-duty Lewis Hamilton. I complimented him on his car and asked how he got it over to London. ‘In my plane,’ he said, grinning.
The car was parked in a pay-and-display’ bay, but its driver did neither. The auto show continued with a Rolls-Royce Phantom customised with a stainless steel bonnet. The number plate on this car is simply ‘1’. Later that day I Googled this vehicle and discovered that a couple of years ago its Dubai-based owner paid £9 million for the registration number alone.

Ajman Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar
A long Maybach limousine, painted in distinct orange and matt black, purred through the melee. The letters ‘RRR’ are picked out on the vehicle’s boot in a diamond-studded font.
A handsome young man and his friend, both dressed like aspirant R&B pop stars (faded jeans, Hermes belt, one of those Ralph Lauren polo shirts with the over-sized horse logo, pastel suede Hermes driving shoes, and bronze tint sunglasses) got out.
This is Crown Prince Sheikh Ammar bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, the incredibly glamorous and fun-loving son of the multi-billionaire HRH Sheikh Rashid Bin Humid Al Nuaimi of Ajman.
Ajman, in case you didn’t know, is the smallest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, but has grand plans to become a mini Dubai. RRR is the banner
for the Crown Prince’s vast portfolio of orange and black super cars — the
letters stand for Rich in Real Estate Resources.
‘How do you go about writing tickets to these guys?’ I asked a traffic warden
in Basil Street. ‘It’s impossible,’ he shrugs, showing me the computerised ticket machine he wears around his neck.
'My machine only has numbers and letters on it. Their number plates are just . . .’ He tailed off, struggling for the right word.
‘Squiggles?’ I suggested. ‘Yes. There are no keys on my machine for those.’
Last week, the wardens seemed to arrive at a solution to the problem of ticketing cars with squiggles for number plates; they started clamping them instead.
Early victims were a£1.2 million Koenigsegg CCXR (one of only six ever made) and a £350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce which were illegally parked outside Harrods.
But the traffic wardens aren’t the only ones ruffled by the fleet of supercars flooding the area.
Residents living near the Knightsbridge store say their night-time peace is being shattered by the owners racing their sports cars through the streets, describing it as being ‘like the starting grid at Le Mans’.
They have now forged a campaign group and aired their grievances to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, claiming that police and council have failed to act.
Some of the Middle Eastern visitors keep summer-houses in London — there are said to be more than 100 billionaire Saudi families with second homes in the Knightsbridge area alone— while others prefer out-of-town locations such as Bishops Avenue in North London (also known as ‘Millionaires Row’), Coombe Hill in Kingston and St George’s Hill in Weybridge, Surrey.
Next summer, many of them will take up residence at the new Knightsbridge development One Hyde Park that occupies a plum position opposite Harvey Nichols and next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where appartments cost up to £100 million.
Here, Arab summertime residents will be able to enjoy the super-luxe environment of heated floors and chilled ceilings, personalised entry systems that can include six levels of access, and a secure underground car park for their Rolls-Royces and Ferraris.

Eyecatching: The £1.2m Koenigsegg and £350,000 Lamborghini clamped outside Harrods

'Our Middle Eastern customers are usually looking for flats with between three to five bedrooms and a 24-hour porter service, usually with a view of Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens,’ says Paul Hyman, sales manager at Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward’s Bayswater branch.
‘Properties of this type are hard to come by, but wealthy Arab businessmen can generally pay over the asking price.’

During August, whole floors of hotels around Hyde Park are block-booked for Middle Eastern oligarchs, while staff up their game by flying in topnotch Arabic entertainers for private shows in the biggest suites, adapting
restaurant menus and parking the guests’ flashest cars out in front.

During the days, the men sleep in, while the women have their drivers drop them in Hyde Park where they walk in giggly groups, stopping to soak up the coolness and cloudy skies on the benches or lying on the grass in large circles with their friends.

To them, London is a welcome vacation from the restrictive, repetitive, stultifyingly predictable drudge of blandly luxurious life back home.

Many of the younger, more frustrated Saudi girls strip themselves free of the restrictive burka altogether, whooping and shrieking with delight as they change into tight jeans and vertiginous heels on the plane, as soon as Gulf state airspace
is cleared.
Once in London, the girls go round either in large groups or chaperoned by Mum, who is normally clad in a headscarf and big shades — think Joan Collins does Jumierah Beach (one of the most exclusive resorts in Dubai).

The boys like to sit outside Knightsbridge cafes all gussied up in Arabpreppy finery, two or three mobile phones each, keys to Ferraris and Lamborghinis chucked down next to their napkins.

The young females from the more liberated countries, such as Bahrain and Dubai, are dolled up like big-eyed, honey-skinned Jennifer Lopez lookalikes.

The girls who choose to keep wearing their burkas — mostly Saudi Arabians — I am told often sport the kind of make-up that hasn’t been in fashion in the West since the end of the silent movie era. Bright red lipstick, generous helpings of cranberry rouge, eyes kohl-lined in the style of Dusty Springfield.

A spokesperson for luxury concierge service Quintessentially says: ‘About 20 per cent of our clients are from the Middle East. ‘One member requested Quintessentially Travel arrange a weekend break to Ibiza on a private jet, with a fully chartered yacht waiting for their use. Another wanted a personal shopping experience requesting that two designer stores be closed for their private viewing.’ Many others prefer to shop at home.
‘During August, we will often be asked to take a selection of our most expensive diamond necklaces, rings and bracelets to a suite at a hotel in Knightsbridge,’ says jeweller Stephen Webster, whose shop is on Mount Street, in nearby Mayfair.
‘Arab customers like to shop late, but our store isn’t permitted to have late-night opening . . . so we are happy to take the store to them.’
Another famous London jeweller, who would not be named, said: ‘They like big pieces and coloured stones. The sums they are prepared to pay for them are incredible. It is not unusual for Middle Eastern customers to spend £20 million in a single visit.’
When they are not shopping or tearing around in their cars, the Arab billionaires go to the Derby, Royal Ascot and the Berkshire Festival of Falconry, sponsored by the Abu Dhabibased Emirates Falconers’ Club and attended by His Highness Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan.

Of course, London — especially during these credit-crunched times — falls over itself to court Arab business.
Middle-Eastern shoppers are expected to spend £250 million in London this summer, an increase of 11 per cent on last year.

When the people at Harvey Nichols discovered that the amount of money Middle Eastern people in London were spending was rising so dramatically, the department store decided to start using Arabic advertisements
in-store. Summer opening hours were extended to 9pm all week, and all cafe menus were modified to
include Arabic translations and a Halal food offering.

Harvey Nichols’ Fifth Floor food hall now even offers a smoking terrace for customers that comes with the shisha pipes so beloved of Middle Eastern people. One Harvey Nichols advert showed a picture of a single Lanvin shoe. The words, written in Arabic, read, ‘The English are known for having bad teeth, that is why they need beautiful shoes’.

It doesn’t matter. Very few Londoners can read Arabic, and very few Middle Eastern people fraternise with British people anyway. They’re just here for August, then they disappear, like ghosts.

PAKISTAN FLOOD NASA LATEST PICTURES

2010-08-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems globally."

2010-08-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

"‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize."

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.

Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.

The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu , HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

Why Cameron should count his fingers after shaking hands with Pakistan's Mr Ten Per Cent

2010-08-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

By MICHAEL BURLEIGH

Fairly or not, Pakistan is synonymous with angry men who bomb people or take to the streets in protest.

An effigy labelled ‘Cameroon’ was burned in response to the Prime Minister’s comments about the country ‘looking both ways’ when it comes to fighting the Taliban.

Nonetheless, Pakistanis have a good sense of humour. There are many jokes about President Asif Ali Zardari, who this weekend plans to tackle Cameron about his comments when the pair meet at Chequers.

Handshake: David Cameron with Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari last year

Here’s a typical example: Pakistani robber: ‘Give me all your money!’

Zardari: ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m the president.’

Robber: ‘OK. Give me all my money.’

Such a quip illustrates perfectly how the Pakistani leader is viewed by his people: corrupt, venal and materialistic.

However, the joke runs thin when you realise censorship laws ban anyone from emailing or texting jokes about the President (with the threat of 14 months in jail) and, as part of a crackdown on opposition groups, 500 websites including YouTube, Facebook and Google have been outlawed.

Zardari has been nicknamed Mr Ten Per Cent (and more recently, Mr Hundred and Ten Per Cent) for his rumoured habit of skimming off millions in kickbacks.

Indeed, before winning power he spent more than a decade in jail following corruption charges.

A typical story about Zardari relates how a businessman who owed him money was allegedly seized by thugs, who strapped his leg to a remote-controlled bomb and forced him to go to a bank to withdraw the cash.

Zardari’s powerbase derives from the political reputation of his wife Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007.

She had carried the torch for her father Zulfikar, the one-time prime minister who was hanged in 1979 for authorising the murder of a political opponent.

Benazir was a charismatic figure who championed Pakistan’s poor, becoming prime minister in 1988 and 1993.

In much of the Third World, political power is about dynastic entitlement, and the Bhutto-Zardari alliance was no exception.

Jet set: Mr Ten Per Cent arrives at Heathrow accompanied by his son Bilawal, seen scratching his head, and daughter Aseefa, who's holding his hand

Indeed, the Pakistan Peoples Party, which Zardari took over after his wife’s death, is referred to as the Permanent Plunder Party. Not only dogged by a reputation

for corruption, the president faces accusations of gross insensitivity for failing to return home to help tackle Pakistan’sworst floods in its history, which have so far killed up to 1,200 people and forced two million to flee their homes.

Critics understandably say he should be ‘trying to support his people, not swanning around in the UK and France’.

But the truth is that Zardari seems more concerned with self-aggrandising meetings with Cameron and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and advancing his family’s political future rather than tackling homegrowntragedies.

Indeed, it seems that a priority on his trip to Britain is to attend a rally in Birmingham to further his 22-year-old son Bilawal’s fledgling political career.

This mummy’s boy Oxford graduate, often seen in jeans and nautical themed T-shirts, is being groomed as his parents’ successor.

With opportunistic filial piety, Bilawal bears the Bhutto as well as the Zardari name.

At least there is proof Bilawal did graduate from Oxford — unlike his father, who claims to have studied at the non-existent London School of Economics and Business (a claim made just after a college degree became mandatory for Pakistani MPs.)

Another mystery is how the ruler of a country with desperate poverty and rampant illiteracy seems to be worth a rumoured £1.2 billion, despite having spent 1997 to 2004 in jail while corruptionand murder charges against him were investigated — and then dropped.

And there were the unsavoury episodes when one of his wife’s brothers was poisoned and another murdered after prolongedrows with Benazir and Zardari about hidden assets.

Originally from a minor landowningfamily, Zardari’s boat came in through an arranged marriage in 1987 with the Bhutto political clan, who have huge landholdings in Pakistan.

Though they occupied a £30 million official residence in Islamabad, with 110 acres, money was immediately diverted from funding urban parks to acquire a further 11½ acres of protected woodlands for a private polo park and parking for Zardari’s friends.

At this point, it’s worth pointing out that most Pakistanis live on just £1.25 a day.

Flood horror: Soldiers assist a boy out of a boat after he was rescued from heavy floods in a village of Deira Din Panah, in Pakistan's Punjab province

Though Zardari had no official position other than as consort to his imperiously liberal wife, he was always at hand whenever government defence contracts, broadcast licences, projects to build power stations and sugar mills, or export licences for textiles were up for grabs.

Among the reported scams is one in which a Swiss company paid 9 per cent commission into offshore accounts linked to Zardari in return for inspecting the Customs duty of all imports to Pakistan.

In a country where just one in 100 people pays income tax because of poverty, duty receipts are critical to maintaining the government’s income. This move is alleged to have netted Zardari nearly £7.5 million.

Another arrangement allegedly involved giving a Dubai merchant a monopoly of the gold imported from the Gulf into Pakistan.

According to a New York Times investigation shortly before the monopoly came into effect, £6 million was allegedly sent from the gold dealer’s company in two tranches to Citibank deposit accounts linked to Zardari.

Money is said to have been recycled via front companies in the tax-friendly British Virgin Islands into numerous overseas properties and many more in Pakistan, as well as a string of Pakistani sugar mills.

Land deals seemed to involve controversial valuations. For example, one plot worth two billion rupees was acquired for a bargain 62 million rupees.

The Bhutto-Zardari property portfolio includes a country club and polo ranch in Florida; a country estate called The House of the White Queen in France (where he stayed this week); and luxury apartments in London’s chic Pont Street in Belgravia.

Part of the portfolio is a 355-acre estate in Surrey called R Rockwood, which is up for sale for £7.5 million, though when he bought it, Zardari’s declared wealth was just £300,000.

Lavish home improvements have been made to the property. Tiny LED lights over the four- poster bed in the master suite mimic the stars in the night sky.

Bizarrely, Zardari has recreated the interior of the local Dog and Pheasant pub in the house after he tried to buy it, but the publican refused to sell. The house’s 30ft Lalique glass dining table alone cost £120,000, not to speak of the tiger-skin rugs and crystal chandeliers.

Such opulence is grotesque, particularly in light of the questionable circumstances surrounding the way the president obtained his wealth.

Now this controversial figure has arrived in Britain, apparently to lecture Cameron about how serious his government is about combating the nests of terrorists who lurk all over Pakistan.

Karachi in turmoil: Pakistani men queuing to buy fuel after the second night of violence in the capitali yesterday

By refusing to cancel the trip and return home to his flood-ravaged nation, he’s clearly made the decision that his presence in Europe will guarantee that the West will continue to pour huge amounts of aid into his venal swamp.

And, no doubt, much of this financial support will be diverted to the country’s powerful army — which is rumoured to be even more corrupt than Zardari.

All British governments have had to deal with unsavoury characters.

Apparently, this is the price we must pay for preventing any other Pakistani-related bombers, like those who stalked our transport system on 7/7, from hitting Britain.

Indeed, Pakistan is fast becoming the breeding ground for much terrorism and when we do eventually pull out of Afghanistan, ensuring Pakistan’s support will be vital to the stability of the region.

Not that he needs me to tell him, but when Mr Cameron entertains this dreadful fraud at Chequers, he should sup with a very long spoon.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH is author of Blood And Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism

The Takeaway from 91,000 Leaked Secret Documents on Afghanistan: It's Bad. Very Bad. Time to Go

2010-08-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

As unexpected as a checkered tablecloth in a pizzeria, the administration is playing down any revelations about Afghanistan, but we can draw our own conclusions.

To say the release of 91,000 classified documents has revealed a disconnect between our public position on Afghanistan and the actual situation on the ground is like inferring a disparity between yoga and bayonets. Dawn dishwashing liquid and green olive tapenade. A tray full of Southern Comfort old-fashioned sweets and a herringbone Segway.

Unlike the Pentagon Papers, we can’t even work up a good outrage, mainly because come on, 91,000 documents. That’s like reading all seven Harry Potter books thirty times over. I don’t care how authentically rustic your wand is, nobody’s doing that. There’s even questions as to whether it’s 91,000 documents, 92,000 documents, if all the documents have been released or more are being held in reserve for we mere Muggles.

I know. What’s a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there’s your problem. We don’t have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren’t necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy.

Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we’ve been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don’t even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog.

This dastardly document dump also managed to tick off Pakistani officials who dispute claims that the ISI, their intelligence agency, is collaborating with the Taliban. “These allegations are always repeated.” Hmm. Curious as to why those allegations would always be repeated, eh what? Maybe because, like the sun and those silly allegations about the rising in the East, they’re… TRUE?

And for those of you surprised by the amount of grandstanding caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures, either you forgot it was an election year or have been making too many side trips to the magic brownie counter in your medicinal marijuana store. A veritable slew of Congressmen are sharpening their budget scalpels, asking how we can toss Pakistan a couple billion a year in foreign aid while they’re helping Afghani insurgents? With friends like these, who needs enemy combatants?

As unexpected as a checkered tablecloth in a pizzeria, the Administration is playing down any revelations. “Nothing new to see here. Everything generally known. Move along.” Perhaps, just not generally known by the general public. Privately, White House officials anticipate using these leaks to pressure Pakistan to play nice. Yeah. Right. Dream on, big river. You got a better chance convincing Lindsay Lohan to give up all her nasty habits and start wearing one.

If this leak tells us anything, it’s that this is not a winnable war. Right now, America has a lot of stuff on a lot of plates and keeping them all spinning is neither cheap nor easy. Afghan plates, on the other hand, are not very full and they seem to like it like that. Especially when deep-dish pizza crumbs can get them beheaded. As they say in Animal House, “If I were us, I’d be… leaving.”

Will Durst is a San Francisco based political comedian who often writes. This being an example of questionable merit. Catch his stand up at a benefit for the Oasis Theater Ensemble in Wausau, Wisconsin, on Friday August 6th. 2 shows. And as part of the Comedy Talks series on August 15th at the San Francisco Presentation Theater with Robert Morse and Shelley Berman. For tickets: comedytalks.com or 800.838.3006. His new CD, “Raging Moderate,” now available from Stand Up! Records on both iTunes and Amazon.

As Pakistan’s Government Flounders, Islamists Step Up With Flood Aid

2010-08-03T02:34:00.001-07:00

JuD Operates Openly in Providing Flood Aid

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As Pakistan’s government struggles to cope with the massive destruction of the flooding in their northwest, many residents are finding that official aid is difficult to come by, and Islamist factions in the region are stepping in to fill the void.

Reports suggest that the Jamaat-ud Dawa, a group linked by officials to the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e Taiba, is not only operating in the region, but is doing so openly, providing help for those in need. Other groups in the region, which includes the war torn Swat Valley, are also said to be providing aid to the estimated million homeless.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the Zardari government is dropping the ball in one of the worst natural disasters the nation has seen in decades, as they have done no better in the number of man-made disasters they have created over the past few years. In many cases where military offensives have created humanitarian crises in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the government’s camps are slow to set up and ill-prepared to cope with large numbers of refugees. In these cases too large numbers of Islamist-run camps emerged, providing better help for those the government couldn’t.

While this isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself, it does further damage to the legitimacy of the Zardari government in regions which are already not entirely thrilled with his rule, while leaving many people indebted to groups that will be, or in some cases already are, part of the insurgency.

Impact of Afghan War Leak on US-Pak Relations

2010-08-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

Photo: DOD/Chad J. McNeeley

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistani chief of Army Staff points out a feature to US Admirtal Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an aerial tour of Pakistan, 24 Jul 2

Analysts Debate

Following the leak of tens of thousands of documents on the war in Afghanistan, analysts in the region are debating whether the U.S.-Pakistani relationship will suffer a setback. They say the concern comes from the documents that allegedly show U.S. military members suspected Pakistan's spy service of supporting the insurgency.

The severity of the impact by the leaked war documents on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship depends on who you ask on either side of the Durrand Line, a border shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

More than 180 documents, a relative handful of the tens of thousands released, describe alleged U.S. military concerns that Pakistan's military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has provided support and guidance to elements of the Afghan Taliban.

Is Pakistan the enemy?

While this information, supposedly from 2004 to 2009, has not been confirmed, analyst Abdul Wahid Taqat said he believes the United States should consider Pakistan its main enemy and depend on Afghanistan in the region.

Taqat was a general in the Afghan army during the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, the ISI supplied both domestic and U.S. assistance to some of these insurgents who were then fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

He said America's insistence on partnering with Pakistan is useless, and recommends the United States abandon Pakistan and start depending more on Afghanistan. The Obama administration should approach the region from an Afghan perspective, said Taqat.

CIA well informed

But retired Pakistani Brigadier-General Mahmood Shah disagrees. Shah is the former security chief for Pakistan's tribal areas, where many regional experts believe Afghan Taliban elements are hiding.

While some critics might use these documents to put pressure on Pakistan, he said he thinks the CIA is too well informed in the region to believe Pakistan is helping to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

"The government of Pakistan has no reason to punish the Americans for anything. They have been helpful. They will be helpful in the future also. At the government level, I am sure they will try to help the U.S. government for an honorable withdrawal [from Afghanistan]," Shah said.

He said that while Pakistan fights its own war against domestic Taliban elements, Islamabad has helped U.S. authorities arrest Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan and even offered its assistance in negotiating a peace deal between the Taliban and Afghan government.

Pro-Pakistan government

Afghan political analyst Akmal Dawi said it is this possibility of a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul that is Islamabad's ultimate goal, even if it costs Afghan civilians' and coalition troops' lives.

He said Mr. Karzai does not have many options as he pursues a reconciliation and reintegration plan with the Taliban, while coalition countries announce withdrawal dates.

"He is extending his hand to the same Pakistan that he clearly understands that is his enemy that over the past few years has weakened his government," said Dawi. "But he thinks he is obliged to do so because he has no other source of support."

An international relations professor at Pakistan's Quaid-i-Azam University, Ishtiaq Ahmad, said he believes the United States will not abandon Pakistan. But Ahmad said another country might increase pressure on the United States to act against Pakistan, especially as Afghan-Pakistani ties become closer.

"Now, who in the region would be disturbed the most because of this emerging trend? I think it is India; it is India's lobby in the Western world, and it is all those forces who unduly benefit in the post-Taliban era in Afghanistan," said Ahmad.

India's accusations

India has long accused Pakistan's ISI of supporting militant groups who are involved in terrorist attacks on Indian soil. Recently, India directly accused the ISI of coordinating and controlling the deadly Mumbai attacks in November 2008, an accusation Pakistan strongly denies.

Professor Ahmad said India could use these leaked documents to prove its point in meetings with U.S. officials to pressure Islamabad to rein in the ISI. But in the end, most analysts agree the likelihood of any significant change to U.S.-Pakistani relations is remote.

Pakistan Is Winning the War in Afghanistan

2010-08-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

Pakistan's Game

Of all the players in the Afghan game, Pakistan is running up the highest score. For several decades, Pakistan's policy toward Afghanistan has remained largely unchanged, regardless of who was running the country. That policy is to support Afghanistan's Pashtuns in their seemingly genetic resistance to outside control (outside in this case extends to any government located in Kabul). By supporting Pashtun autonomy, Pakistan establishes for itself a security buffer zone on its northwest frontier, which comes with a friendly auxiliary army -- the Afghan Taliban -- as a bonus.

For nearly nine years, U.S. officials have pleaded with Pakistan to suspend support for the Afghan Taliban and allow Afghanistan to unite under a central government. Pakistani officials have provided a variety of verbal responses to these entreaties but have not changed their policies toward the Afghan Taliban, whose military capability inside Afghanistan only seems to grow.

The United States cannot achieve its goals in Afghanistan while the Afghan Taliban's sanctuaries in Pakistan remain open. The Pakistani government refuses to close or even isolate those sanctuaries. Yet the massive U.S. foreign-assistance pipeline to Pakistan remains open. Why?

U.S. policymakers have seemingly concluded that they have more options and less risk by engaging Pakistan. They tried isolating Pakistan and found that course was neither wise nor sustainable. As a result, the Washington has opted to shower Pakistan with aid and hope that persistent persuasion will eventually result in greater Pakistani action against the Afghan Taliban.

The result has been a spectacular strategic success for Pakistan. Development aid from the United States has never been greater. The United States will deliver long-embargoed F-16 fighters to Pakistan and is providing other upgrades to Pakistan's armed forces. Along with this has come a de facto U.S. security guarantee against the perceived threat from India. Pakistan's diplomatic leverage over the United States has given it a free hand to work with China to upgrade its nuclear complex. Meanwhile, Pakistan's proxy forces in southeast Afghanistan are successfully defending the security buffer zone. Pakistan's dominant position has forced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to virtuallysue for peace. This could result in an ethnic partition of Afghanistan that would secure Pakistan's main objective in the conflict.

With its winning position, Pakistan's current task is to arrange a stable end-state that avoids a backlash from the losers. Pakistan and the United States are in a largely zero-sum relationship over Afghanistan. Pakistan's leaders must fashion a settlement (however temporary) that allows the United States to save face, that maintains the U.S. aid pipeline, and that keeps the de facto security guarantee in place. U.S. officials should hope that Pakistan manages the endgame as well as it has managed the rest of the match.

Pakistan no obedient ally

2010-08-02T03:49:00.000-07:00

WikiLeaks data shows how volatile nation is forced to act against own self interests

By ERIC MARGOLIS,

WASHINGTON — Release of 92,000 U.S. military field reports from Afghanistan by WikiLeaks has revealed the war’s ugly underbelly and embarrassed the hell out of Washington and its NATO allies, including Canada.

They have fired back, claiming release of these old reports from 2004-2009, endangers “our boys.”

Nonsense. The only thing the truth endangers are the politicians who have hung their hats on the Afghan War and some paid informers.

The facts are shocking: Wide-scale killing of civilians by U.S. and NATO forces; torture of prisoners handed over to the Communist-dominated Afghan secret police; death squads; endemic corruption and theft; double-dealing and demoralization of western occupation forces facing ever fiercer Taliban resistance.

I’ve been reporting on the lies and propaganda about the Afghan war since 2001.

The most interesting part of Wikigate was Pakistan’s supposedly duplicitous behaviour in aiding the U.S.-led war while maintaining secret links with the Taliban and its allies.

The U.S. government and media have been blasting Pakistan while downplaying the atrocities — and, charges WikiLeaks, “war crimes” — committed by western forces.

Here’s the bottom line on Pakistan’s “duplicity.”

After 9/11, the U.S. threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” unless it turned against the Taliban, a religious, anti-Communist movement, and opened Pakistan to U.S. military forces and intelligence operations.

This was told to me by a former head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service whose directors I have known since 1985.

Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says his nation was forced to reluctantly give in to intense U.S. pressure and abandon the Taliban, which served as Pakistan’s proxy army in Afghanistan battling the still active Afghan Communist Party — Tajik Northern Alliance, also backed by Russia and Iran. Intensifying efforts by India to extend its influence into Afghanistan deeply worry Pakistan.

Pakistan was forced by the U.S. to act against its own vital strategic interests. Southern Afghanistan has long been Pakistan’s sphere of influence.

This column revealed that in 2007, Pakistan and India concluded that the U.S. and its dragooned allies would be defeated and driven from Afghanistan. Both old foes began implementing a proxy war to control strategic Afghanistan.

Pakistan was compelled to follow a dual-track policy: Accepting semi-occupation by the U.S. and $1 billion annually from Washington and paying lip service to the U.S.-led war, while keeping open links to Taliban and tribal militants.

This was basic common sense. No one should have been surprised — particularly not Washington which has a long record of abandoning faithful allies.

Washington and U.S. media are heaping blame for the growing fiasco in Afghanistan on Gen. Hamid Gul, former director general of the ISI intelligence agency.

Gul led the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan in the 1980s and was one of America’s most formidable allies.

I knew Gul well. He is not anti-American. He is pro-Pakistan, a Pakistani patriot at a time when so many Pakistani politicians and generals have been bought like bags of Basmati rice.

Many of the false charges against Gul came from the Communist-led Afghan secret police.

What Washington really wants is a totally obedient, obsequious Pakistan, not a real ally.

But the interests of the two nations must at times diverge

Trying to make Pakistan into a satellite state will result in that vastly important, nuclear-armed nation one day exploding with anti-American hatred, as was the case in Iran in 1979.

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is putting the two nations on a collision course.

Here in Washington, the U.S. Congress just ignored the WikiLeaks scandal and voted for yet more billions to fuel the Afghanistan War.

Politicians are petrified to oppose this nine-year war, lest they be accused of being anti-patriotic, the kiss of death in hyper-patriotic America — where flag-wavers root for foreign wars so long as their kids don’t have to serve and they don’t have to pay taxes to finance them.

eric.margolis@sunmedia.ca

Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted

2010-08-02T03:22:00.000-07:00

Fox's Chief Legal Analyst: Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted for "Torturing, for Spying, for Arresting Without Warrant"

Fox News' senior judicial analyst made some surprising remarks Saturday that may go against the grain at his conservative network.

In a interview with Ralph Nader on C-SPAN's Book TV to promote his book Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should have been indicted for "torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant."

The judge believes that it is a fallacy to say that the US treats suspects as innocent until proven guilty. "The government acts as if a defendant is guilty merely on the basis of an accusation," said Napolitano.

Nader was curious about how this applied to the Bush administration. "What about the more serious violations of habeas corpus," wondered Nader. "You know after 9/11 Bush rounded up thousands of them, Americans, many of them Muslim Americans or Arabic Americans and they were thrown in jail without charges. They didn't have lawyers. Some of them were pretty mistreated in New York City. You know they were all released eventually."

"Well that is so obviously a violation of the natural law, the natural right to be brought before a neutral arbiter within moments of the government taking your freedom away from you," answered Napolitano.

"So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal," he continued.

"What should be the sanctions [for Bush and Cheney]?" asked Nader.

"They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant," said Napolitano.

"I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It's a moral crime," he said.

This isn't the first time that Napolitano's comments have veered away from the standard talking points at Fox News. He has predicted that Arizona's controversial immigration law will be blocked by the court. Napolitano also said Arizona's governor would "bankrupt the Republican Party" fighting for the law.

The liberal blog Crooks and Liars has more details on the Nader/Napolitano inteview.

This video is from C-SPAN's Book TV, broadcast.

Will Afghanistan Become the Saudi Arabia of Lithium?

2010-08-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

Lacking a legitimate rationale for staying in Afghanistan, Washington has finally admitted the country is vital to the future of America’s strategic mineral interests.

It seems that Afghanistan is a never-ending font of surprises. For decades U.S. officials took the position that Afghanistan held nothing of value for the United States, especially in the form of vital strategic resources. That assumption was a major reason for America’s consistently dismissive attitude toward Afghanistan up until the Soviet invasion of 1979 and why the U.S. was content to turn the country over to Pakistan and Saudi Arabian interests following the Soviet departure. Then on June 13, 2010 the New York Timesreported in a front-page story that a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists had suddenly discovered a vast treasure of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth worth nearly $1 trillion dollars.

But the story of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth isn’t a new one nor did the Pentagon just “discover” it. According to a Reuters report of March 16, 2009, over a year ago, Afghanistan’s minister of mines, Mohammed Ibrahim Adel, cited U.S. Geological Survey data in declaring that “In the field of minerals, Afghanistan is the richest country in the region, much more, hundreds of times more.”

Even the Times story admits that the survey information, on which the Pentagon assessment was based, came from data collected by Soviet mining experts nearly 30 years ago. American geologists became aware of it in 2004, but the data languished until 2009.

But the most revealing quote in the Pentagon report wasn’t so much that Afghanistan does indeed contain a vast wealth of minerals or even that the U.S. has carelessly overlooked a vast source of wealth for an impoverished nation. No. The key to understanding the report was framed by the reference that “Afghanistan could become the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium," and Saudi Arabia is where the real story behind the headlines begins.

This is not the first time Saudi Arabia has been used as a model for Afghanistan’s future. One might go so far as to say today’s Afghanistan and its Taliban scourge already bear the stamp of being made in Saudi Arabia.

According to author Gerald Posner in his book, Secrets of the Kingdom, the anti-Soviet Afghan war was as much a godsend for the Saudi royal family as it was for the Afghan Islamists. “Some prominent Saudi officials, like Prince Bandar, as well as his father, defense minister Prince Sultan, saw the Soviet aggression as a chance to form a closer bond with Washington. It was a rare chance, they argued to other Saudi ministers, to replace Israel as America’s strategic partner in the Middle East. And as far as the Americans were concerned, the Saudis had suddenly become a cash cow.”

The term Taliban and the movement itself were unheard of in Afghanistan until 1994. Prior to the Soviet invasion, the Taliban mentality and the madrassa structure did not exist. As an invention of Pakistan’s military intelligence with outside help, the Taliban were not recruited from inside Afghanistan but from Pakistani madrassas. This process was funded, not by Afghans, but by the Saudis and other Arab countries that continue to seek the long-term goal of a political and religious transformation of South Asia combined with the dissolution of Afghanistan as a nation state.

The Taliban version of Deobandi Islam practiced in Pakistan and the Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia were both alien to Afghan practice. Suicide bombings did not exist in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation nor even when the Taliban took control in 1996. The Afghan people never willingly embraced extremist Islam. These ideas were forced upon them under circumstances beyond their control.

From the very beginning, the United States really had no conception of what to do in Afghanistan except to follow the lead of the Saudis, with some American diplomats benignly visualizing that a Taliban victory would simply turn Afghanistan into a miniature Saudi Arabia. In his book, Taliban, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid quotes one diplomat as saying, “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”

The Obama administration has nothing good to report to the American people on Afghanistan. New revelations of the hopelessness of government corruption arrive daily. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai is in open confrontation with Washington on dozens of issues. Not only is reconstruction dead and the war failing, but General McChrystal’s application of Counter Insurgency (COIN) failed miserably. The heralded U.S. assault on Marja and the establishment of government control has come to a dead stop. According to the Washington Post, the failure at Marja has now caused the summer assault on Kandahar to be postponed indefinitely and threatens the Obama administration’s plans for a July 2011 draw-down of U.S. troops.

So, without a legitimate rationale for staying in Afghanistan and no conceivable way of justifying countless more billions of dollars or American lives, Washington has finally admitted that the country is not only important but vital to the future of America’s strategic mineral interests. But even now as the Obama administration dredges up a new reason for staying in Afghanistan past the 2011 deadline, it appears that the old motivation of transforming Afghanistan into a Central Asian Saudi Arabia remains the real motivation underlying America’s war.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of "Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story" (City Lights). Their next book, "Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire" will be published February 2011. Visit their Web site at www.invisiblehistory.com.

How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under

2010-07-31T02:40:00.000-07:00

America's role in the world should not be to prescribe some specific world order or police the planet by force of arms. It's to save itself.

The following is excerpted from WASHINGTON RULES: America's Path To Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich, published this month by Metropolitan Books

US soldiers salute during a handover ceremony at "entry control points" for Baghdad's Green Zone, now referred to as the International Zone. US military support for Iraqi efforts to secure Baghdad's Green Zone has ended in the latest step in the American withdrawal from Iraq more than seven years after its invasion of Iraq.

The world -- we are incessantly told -- is becoming ever smaller, more complex, and more dangerous. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the nation to intensify the efforts undertaken to “keep America safe,” while also, of course, advancing the cause of world peace. Achieving these aims -- it is said -- requires the United States to funnel ever greater sums of money to the Pentagon to develop new means of projecting power, and to hold itself in readiness for new expeditions deemed essential to pacify (or liberate) some dark and troubled quarter of the globe.

At one level, we can with little difficulty calculate the cost of these efforts: The untold billions of dollars added annually to the national debt and the mounting toll of dead and wounded U.S. troops provide one gauge.

At a deeper level, the costs of adhering to the Washington consensus defy measurement: families shattered by loss; veterans bearing the physical or psychological scars of combat; the perpetuation of ponderous bureaucracies subsisting in a climate of secrecy, dissembling, and outright deception; the distortion of national priorities as the military-industrial complex siphons off scarce resources; environmental devastation produced as a by-product of war and the preparation for war; the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service.

No doubt the case can, and probably will, be made that the obligations of global leadership demand that the United States take on the problems besetting Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, much as it has addressed those besetting Afghanistan and Iraq.

Little evidence exists to suggest that such efforts are likely to have a positive effect, however. No evidence exists -- none -- to suggest that U.S. efforts will advance the cause of global peace. If, as many suspect, Washington’s actual aim is something more akin to dominance or hegemony, then evidence exists in abundance demonstrating that the project is a self-defeating one.

Critics of U.S. foreign policy questioned the wisdom and feasibility of forcibly attempting to remake the world in America’s image. They believed that even to make the attempt was to court corruption in the form of imperialism and militarism, thereby compromising republican institutions at home. Representing no one party but instead a great diversity of perspectives, they insisted that, if America has a mission, that mission is to model freedom rather than to impose it.

The famed diplomat-turned-historian George Kennan, a cultural conservative, was one such critic. Senator J. William Fulbright, a died-in-wool liberal internationalist, was another. The influential social critic Christopher Lasch, a self-professed radical, was a third. Martin Luther King, arguably the dominant moral figure of the American Century, was a fourth.

Writing to an acquaintance in the midst of the Korean War, Kennan argued that Americans had for too long subjected their garden to abuse. “It seems to me,” he wrote, “that our country bristles with imperfections -- and some of them very serious ones -- of which we are almost universally aware, but lack the resolution and civic vigor to correct.” Here lay the real danger. “What is at stake here is our duty to ourselves and our own national ideals.” In a contemporaneous lecture, Kennan returned to this theme. To observers abroad, he suggested,

the sight of an America in which there is visible no higher social goal than the self-enrichment of the individual, and where that self-enrichment takes place primarily in material goods and gadgets that are of doubtful utility in the achievement of the deeper satisfactions of life -- this sight fails to inspire either confidence or enthusiasm.

Rather than obsessing about the threat posed by the Soviet Union, the nation needed to set its own house in order. By demonstrating a capacity to nurture “a genuinely healthy relationship both of man to nature and of man to himself,” Kennan believed, Americans might “then, for the first time, have something to say to people elsewhere,” perhaps even becoming “a source of inspiration” to others.

A decade after Kennan, in the midst of another dubious war, Senator Fulbright assessed the implications of believing that America’s own well-being required constant meddling abroad. It was, he wrote, “neither the duty nor the right of the United States to sort out” all of the world’s WASHINGTON RULES problems. “[M]any things happen in many places,” wrote the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “that are either none of our business or in any case are beyond the range of our power, resources, and wisdom.” It was long past time for the United States to “confine herself to doing only that good in the world which she can do, both by direct effort and by the force of her example,” abandoning her “missionary idea full of pretensions about being the world’s policeman.”

Lasch, who spent decades ruthlessly dissecting American culture, concurred. “The real promise of American life,” he insisted, was to be found in “the hope that a self-governing republic can serve as a source of moral and political inspiration to the rest of the world, not as the center of a new world empire."

Martin Luther King went even further. In the spring of 1967, preaching on the raging Vietnam War, he insisted that the time had come “for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home.” Before attempting to save others, the nation needed to acknowledge and correct its own sins and failings.

To none of these men did coming home imply passivity or so-called isolationism. It did, however, mean revising the hierarchy of national priorities. In that regard, the militarization of U.S. policy, exemplified above all by the Vietnam War, had diverted the nation’s attention from pursuing its true calling. The arduous work of creating a free society remained far from finished. Only by turning away from war would the United States be able to tackle what King referred to as the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

he essential credo to which each of these figures subscribed, a variant of the convictions first articulated by the Cultivating Our Own Garden Founders, deserves renewed consideration today. Its essence is simply this: America’s purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage of time and in light of hard-earned experience.

The proper aim of American statecraft, therefore, is not to redeem humankind or to prescribe some specific world order, nor to police the planet by force of arms. Its purpose is to permit Americans to avail themselves of the right of self-determination as they seek to create at home a “more perfect union.” Any policy impeding that enterprise -- as open-ended war surely does -- is misguided and pernicious.

By demonstrating the feasibility of creating a way of life based on humane, liberal values, the United States might help illuminate the path ahead for others who seek freedom. Or as Randolph Bourne once put it, “a turning within” is essential “in order that we may have something to give without.” Yet this “giving without” qualifies as an extra benefit -- a bonus or dividend -- not as the central purpose of American life.

In short, if the United States has a saving mission, it is, first and foremost, to save itself. In that regard, Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking. In our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves -- “Come home, America!” -- King remains today the prophet Americans would do well to heed.

A New Trinity

Here, too, there exists an alternative tradition to which Americans today could repair, should they choose to do so. This tradition harks back to the nearly forgotten anti-imperial origins of the Republic. Succinctly captured in the motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” this tradition is one that does not seek trouble but insists that others will accord the United States respect. Updated for our own time, it might translate into the following substitute for the existing sacred trinity.

First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests. However necessary, military power itself is neither good nor inherently desirable. Any nation defining itself in terms of military might is well down the road to perdition, as earlier generations of Americans instinctively understood. As for military supremacy, the lessons of the past are quite clear. It is an illusion and its pursuit an invitation to mischief, if not disaster. Therefore, the United States should maintain only those forces required to accomplish the defense establishment’s core mission.

Second, the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America. Just as the U.S. military should not be a global police force, so too it should not be a global occupation force. Specific circumstances may from time to time require the United States on a temporary basis to establish a military presence abroad. Yet rather than defining the norm, Americans should view this prospect as a sharp departure, entailing public debate and prior congressional authorization. Dismantling the Pentagon’s sprawling network of existing bases promises to be a lengthy process. Priority should be given to those regions where the American presence costs the most while accomplishing the least. According to those criteria, U.S. troops should withdraw from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia forthwith.

Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war -- the United States bestowing on itself the exclusive prerogative of employing force against ostensible threats even before they materialize—is a moral and strategic abomination, the very inverse of prudent and enlightened statecraft. Concocted by George W. Bush to justify his needless and misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq, this doctrine still awaits explicit abrogation by authorities in Washington. Never again should the United States undertake “a war of choice” informed by fantasies that violence provides a shortcut to resolving history’s complexities.

Were this alternative triad to become the basis for policy, dramatic changes in the U.S. national security posture would ensue. Military spending would decrease appreciably. The Pentagon’s global footprint would shrink. Weapons manufacturers would see their profits plummet. Beltway Bandits would close up shop. The ranks of defense- oriented think tanks would thin. These changes, in turn, would narrow the range of options available for employing force, obliging policy makers to exhibit greater restraint in intervening abroad. With resources currently devoted to rehabilitating Baghdad or Kabul freed up, the cause of rehabilitating Cleveland and Detroit might finally attract a following.

Choosing

President Lyndon Johnson had hoped that an ambitious domestic reform program known as the Great Society might define his legacy. Instead, he bequeathed to his successor a nation that was bitterly divided, deeply troubled, and increasingly cynical.

To follow a different course would have required Johnson to depart from the Washington rules. This he -- although not he alone -- lacked the courage to do.

Here lies the real significance -- and perhaps the tragedy -- of Barack Obama’s decision, during the first year of his presidency, to escalate the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. By retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary and by appointing retired four-star officers as his national security adviser and intelligence director, Obama had already offered Washington assurances that he was not contemplating a radical departure from the existing pattern of national security policy. Whether wittingly or not, the president now proffered his full-fledged allegiance to the Washington consensus, removing any lingering doubts about its durability.

In his speech of December 1, 2009, while explaining to the cadets at West Point why he felt it necessary to widen a war already in its ninth year, Obama justified his decision by appending it to a much larger narrative. “More than any other nation,” he declared, “the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades -- a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, and markets open, and billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress and advancing frontiers of human liberty.” Obama wanted it known that by sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan his own administration was carrying on the work his predecessors had begun. Their policies were his policies.

The six decades to which the president referred in his artfully sanitized rendering of contemporary history were the years during which the American credo and the sacred trinity had ascended to a position of uncontested supremacy. Thus did the president who came into office vowing to change the way Washington works make known his intention to leave this crucially important element of his inheritance all but untouched. Like Johnson, the president whose bold agenda for domestic reform presaged his own, Obama too was choosing to conform.

Still, we should be grateful to him for making at least one thing unmistakably clear: To imagine that Washington will ever tolerate second thoughts about the Washington rules is to engage in willful self- deception. Washington itself has too much to lose.

If change is to come, it must come from the people. Yet unless Americans finally awaken to the fact that they've been had, Washington will continue to have its way.

So the need for education -- summoning Americans to take on the responsibilities of an active and engaged citizenship -- has become especially acute. For me personally, education became possible twenty years ago at the Brandenburg Gate when I contemplated the disparity between what I had been conditioned to believe and what I was actually witnessing. The dissonance was too great to ignore. The ensuing process of confronting illusions (including my own) and of dissecting the contradictions besetting U.S. policy was sometimes painful and never easy. Yet it included moments of considerable exhilaration and its overall effect has been liberating. Self-awareness is a great gift. The ability to see things as they are, without blinders, is an even greater one.

Americans today must reckon with a contradiction of gaping proportions. Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits. To acknowledge the danger we face is to make learning -- and perhaps even a course change -- possible. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear. We, too, must choose.

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He is the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

White House shifts Afghanistan strategy towards talks with Taliban

2010-07-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Senior Washington officials tell the Guardian of a 'change of mindset' over the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy

The Obama administration is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.

Negotiation with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president, and the British and Pakistan governments, but resisted by the US.

The Guardian has learned that while the official position of the US government is still resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way, and Washington is now encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.

"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing." The missing element is talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.

The US rethink comes in the aftermath of the departure in June of General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan Barack Obama, apparently frustrated at the way the war is going, reminded hisnational security advisers that while he was on the election campaign trail in 2008, he had advocated talking to America's enemies.

A US review of Afghanistan policy is under way, and is due for completionin December, but officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad with knowledge of internal discussions said feelers have already been put out. Negotiations would be conducted largely in secret, through a web of contacts, involving governments such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or organisations with back-channel links to the Taliban.

"It will be messy and could take years," said a diplomatic source.

The change of heart by the US comes as Afghanistan hosts the biggest international gathering in the capital for 40 years, with representatives from 60 countries and dignitaries including the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

The dominant theme of the Kabul conference is 'reintegration', which involves reaching out to low-level insurgents to encourage them to lay down their arms.

Earlier this year, outlining US policy, Richard Holbrooke, the state department special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, made a distinction between reintegration, which the US supported, and 'reconciliation', negotiation with senior members of the Taliban. Holbrooke said: "Let me be clear.There is no American involvement in any reconciliation process."

There is growing disenchantment in the US with the war in Afghanistan, and senators on the foreign relations committee last week grilled Holbrooke over what they described as a lack of clarity on an exit strategy, on the part of the Obama administration.

The US has no agreed position on who among the leaders of the insurgency should be wooed and who would be regarded as beyond the pale. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, would be a problem given he provided Osama bin Laden with bases in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks. The US would also find it problematic to deal with the Pakistan-based insurgents led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose group pioneeredsuicide attacks in Afghanistan. The third main element in the insurgency is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a jihadist supporter who has hinted he is ready to break rank.

A source with knowledge of the process said: "There is no agreed US position, but there is agreement that Karzai should lead on this. They would expect the Pakistanis to deliver the Haqqani network in any internal settlement."

The US has laid down basic conditions for any group seeking negotiation. They are: end any ties with al-Qaida, end violence, and accept the Afghanistan constitution.

A senior Pakistani diplomat said: "The US needs to be negotiating with the Taliban; those Taliban with no links to al-Qaida. We need a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan, and it will have to be negotiated with all the parties.

"The Afghan government is already talking to all the shareholders‚ the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Mullah Omar. The Americans have been setting ridiculous preconditions for talks. You can't lay down such preconditions when you are losing."

Some Afghan policy specialists are sceptical about whether negotiations will succeed. Peter Bergen, a specialist on Afghanistan and al-Qaida, speaking at a seminar in Washington last week organised by theUnited States Institute of Peace, suggested a host of problems with such a strategy, not least why the Taliban should enter into negotiations "when they think they are winning".

Audrey Kurth Cronin, a member of the US National War College faculty in Washington, and the author of How Terrorism Ends, said talks with Mullah Omar and the Haqqani network were pointless because there would be no negotiable terms.

She said there could be talks with Hekmatyar, but these would be conducted through back channels, potenially by a third party. Given his support for jihad, she said, "it would be unreasonable to expect the US and the UK to do so.".

Asked how Obama's Afghan strategy was progressing, a senior former US government official familiar with the latest Pentagon thinking said: "In a word, poorly. We seriously need to be developing a revised plan of action that will allow us a chance to achieve sufficient security in a more sustainable manner."

Officials have mentioned possible roles in negotiation for the UN and figures such as the veteran UN negotiator, the Algerian Lahkdar Brahimi, who heads, along with the retired US ambassador Thomas Pickering, a New York-based international panel which is looking at such a reconciliation.

Another name mentioned is Michael Semple, an Irishman based in Boston at Harvard's Kennedy School who has extensive ties with the Taliban.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/obama-afghanistan-strategy-taliban-negotiate

Greg Mortenson: the US army's local guide to Afghanistan and Pakistan

2010-07-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

Humanitarian worker's book Three Cups of Tea has become required reading for US high command

Sam Jones

Greg Mortenson spent three years building schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Photograph: Ho New/Reuters

The US military's search for a detailed and trustworthy source of information on the hearts and minds of the rural communities ofAfghanistan and Pakistan has led them to an unlikely author.

Greg Mortenson is not a politician or special forces guru but a mountaineer turned humanitarian worker whose book Three Cups of Tea has become required reading for the US high command.

The book explains how a failed ascent of K2 led Mortenson to a small village in north-eastern Pakistan.

To show his gratitude to the villagers who looked after him when he came down from the mountain, the American promised to build them a school.

For three years, he lived and worked in the Karakoram mountain villages of northern Pakistan, learning about the Balti people and their culture. It led to him setting up dozens of schools – mainly for girls – in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The book takes its title from a Balti proverb: "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honoured guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family."

In 1996, Mortenson co-founded the Central Asia Institute (CAI) with Silicon Valley pioneer Jean Hoerni.

CAI, a non-profit organisation, has so far been involved in the establishment or support of 131 schools, which educate more than 58,000 children — 44,000 of them girls.

Three Cups of Tea, subtitled "One Man's Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time", was published in 2006 and has sold more than 4m copies around the world.

After proving a hit with the wives of several senior US military men, Mortenson's book eventually found perhaps its most influential reader: General Stanley McChrystal.

Hours before he flew to Washington to tender his resignation to President Barack Obama following a disastrously outspoken profile in Rolling Stone magazine, McChrystal emailed Mortenson.

"Will move through this and if I'm not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future," the outgoing commander said.

McChrystal's email provided further proof of the profound influence Mortenson's work has had on US military thinking in the region.

According to the New York Times, Mortenson has spoken at dozens of military bases and had lunch with General David Petraeus, the architect of the US's Iraq surge and the man chosen to replace McChrystal.

He has also brokered and participated in many meetings between tribal leaders and the US military in the region, where his local knowledge has proved invaluable.

However, Mortenson concedes that forging links with remote communities and helping to educate their children will not alter the situation overnight.

He expects his quest for peace, "one school at a time", to take a generation.

"But al-Qaida and the Taliban are looking at it long-range over generations," he told the NYT.

"And we're looking at it in terms of annual fiscal cycles and presidential elections."

Losing Kashmir

2010-07-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

Losing Kashmir

By Robert Grenier
CIA's Ex chief of station in Pakistan

Since 9/11 the US has focused on terrorism but has not promoted more legitimate means for people to address their grievances [AFP]

As we await what many hope will be the start, on July 15, of a renewed India-Pakistan peace process, or "Composite Dialogue" - derailed since the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 - I am reminded of two past conversations.

The first occurred in 1999.

In a meeting with a senior Pakistani official, the topic came around, as it usually did, to US pressure onPakistan to crack down on militants crossing the Line of Control to engage in "terrorist acts" in Indian administered Kashmir.

Such infiltration, of course, was widely believed to be facilitated by Pakistan's infamous intelligence service, the ISI.

Dropping for a moment the usual protests of innocence, the official challenged me to distinguish between a "terrorist" and a "freedom fighter".

That was easy, I said: "The terrorist targets civilians."

The unspoken assumption in my response was that the US would look differently upon militants engaged in legitimate resistance to oppression, provided those militants restricted themselves to "legitimate" military or security related targets.

I knew, however, that this was not a distinction my government would willingly concede; and the Pakistani, not wishing to acknowledge the legitimacy of my distinction, did not press me on it.

Fast-forward then to another conversation, this time with a senior official in the US department of defence.

It was early 2002, just months after the attacks of 9/11.

The US had just launched its "war on terrorism," and this official, perfectly innocent of any South Asian background, was trying to get a full grasp of all the terrorism we had set out to eliminate.

"What about what's going in Kashmir?" he asked. "Isn't that terrorism?"

Nearly falling out of my chair, I strongly cautioned him against setting his sights on Kashmir in the way we were already focusing on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There was a long history behind the Kashmir dispute, I pointed out earnestly, and it would be a big mistake to focus myopically on the terrorism without trying to solve the dispute itself.

Focus on terrorism

Talks must address the grievances ofKashmiris[EPA]

Nonetheless, that is precisely what the US has done since 9/11: Focusing on the illegitimate means of redress - the terrorism - without considering either the grievances which produce it or promoting more legitimate means of redressing those grievances.

The US failure in this regard has been compounded by its encouragement of similar attitudes on the part of other nations, including India, which are seen as fellow victims of terrorism, and therefore natural allies in the "war on terror".

When Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Pakistani foreign minister, meets with his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna, the threat of terrorism will hover over the proceedings in at least two respects.

The prospect of Indo-Pakistani rapprochement, finally gaining slight momentum after the debacle of Mumbai, will pose a highly attractive target for extremists who see peace between the two leading secular South Asian democracies as a threat.

Senior officials from both India and Pakistan have stressed the menace posed by extremist spoilers, and the corresponding need to make the peace process impervious to such threats.

Perhaps even more importantly, though, preoccupation with terrorism emanating from Pakistan has encouraged the Indian side to focus on the eradication of the terrorist threat as an effective precondition to serious talks.

Indeed, the concern with terrorism dominates Indian rhetoric about the upcoming talks, with Krishna having recently reiterated that "Mumbai is a deep scar; [Pakistan] must pursue those who were responsible for, conspired and perpetrated Mumbai".

While such concerns are certainly understandable, they nonetheless constitute an overwhelming distraction from the matter at hand.

Indeed, it is clear that the upcoming talks will essentially be "talks about talks".

Such concrete steps as might be taken will clearly fall into the category of "confidence-building measures," designed to create an environment of greater "trust".

The Pakistanis, too, are falling into the same trap, with Salman Bashir, the Pakistani foreign secretary, having recently said "I think what we're trying to do here is create the right environment".

We have seen all this before.

Such a process driven approach, if sustained, will doom the current effort to the fate suffered by all previous ones: Abject failure.

The status quo

he fundamental problem is that the status quo, with India in effective control of most of Jammu and Kashmir, favours India.
Thus, a sustained series of so-called confidence building measures which reduces the threat of hostilities has the effect of making the status quo more tolerable for India over time, thus creating a strong disincentive for India to engage in a real negotiation.
Correspondingly, in Pakistan, confidence building measures in the absence of progress on the core issues in dispute only make the prospect of Indian concessions on Kashmir all the more unlikely and, thus, a policy focused initially on creating trust all the less sustainable.
This is especially true where terrorism and militant groups are concerned.
In South Asia, as elsewhere, terrorism is the tool of the weak.
Without any other effective means of redressing Indian repression of Muslims in Indian administered Kashmir, a Pakistani focus on cracking down on so called "Kashmiri" militant groups based in Pakistan itself is unlikely to be accepted by the army, and only risks further undermining a Pakistani government already beset with domestic militant threats on all sides.
It is patently clear to everyone concerned, including the Pakistani army, that for Pakistan, Kashmir is lost, and will never be regained.
Thus, the challenge of an effective peace process in South Asia will be to cut through the chimera of "confidence building measures" which lead nowhere, and to frame an agreement which goes far enough in addressing the legitimate grievances of Kashmiris to make the loss of Kashmir acceptable to the majority of Pakistanis.
Once such an agreement in principle is reached, it will then be necessary for the Indian and Pakistani governments to collaborate closely in an effort to make the agreement, including some significant Indian concessions to Kashmiris' desire for greater autonomy, politically saleable on both sides.
In the same vein, it would also be necessary for India and Pakistan to collaborate in empowering the moderates in Kashmir itself who are capable of bringing about a political solution.

US sabotage
It is also patently clear that the Indians and Pakistanis are not capable of putting such a far-sighted political programme together on their own.
Rather than using the Indians' desire for great-power status as an effective diplomatic tool to encourage steps leading to a settlement of Kashmir, however, US policy is working assiduously to sabotage the process.
Firstly, by effectively encouraging India to follow the US lead in dealing with terrorism solely as an illegitimate political tool, which in fact it is, without simultaneously addressing the grievances which motivate it, the US is undermining its own interest in a Kashmir settlement.
Further, by dealing with the Kashmir dispute solely as a matter between India and Pakistan, and ignoring the plight of Kashmiris themselves, the US is delegitimising the only approach which would make Pakistani territorial concessions domestically acceptable.
The current unrest in Kashmir, which has led to the deaths of another 15 civilians in the past month, only serves as a reminder of the centrality of Kashmir and Kashmiris in the dispute - despite the state department's craven labelling of current Kashmiri violence and repression as "an internal Indian matter".
Make no mistake: Settlement of Kashmir is critical to broader regional stability.
Without a settlement of Kashmir, the Indo-Pakistani proxy battle which greatly complicates prospects for a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan is unlikely to abate.
Without a settlement of Kashmir, it will only be harder to socially isolate the extremists who pose an existential threat to Pakistan itself, and who could effectively undermine a nuclear armed state to say nothing of touching off a potentially nuclear armed confrontation between India and Pakistan.
Let us hope that the upcoming "talks about talks" serve to remind all interested parties of what is at stake, and seriously attempt to reach beyond the current, deeply flawed and unsustainable "Composite Dialogue".

Robert Grenier was the CIA's chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.

Spain: Religion, costumes and conquests - all a town needs to party

2010-07-10T23:00:00.001-07:00

The annual Moors and Christian festival gives the residents of Moraira a chance to revel in their Islamic ancestry

People dressed as Moors perform on a boat off the coast of Villajoyosa during the Moors and Christians festivities. Photograph: Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images

A small army of "Moors", made up of shopkeepers, bar owners, bakers and schoolchildren of Moraira, conquered the town's castle, a small fort no bigger than a cottage, last month. The next day it was liberated by their "Christian" counterparts in a gripping battle on the beach. So began Moraira's Moors and Christians festival, a copy (and one of many in Spain) of a celebration that began in the 16th century in the town of Alcoy to commemorate a landmark battle in 1276.

Moors conquered everywhere but the very north of Spain in the eighth century. Over the following centuries the Christians retook the country in the Christian Reconquista until, by the 1500s, most Muslims had either converted or been expelled.

In contrast to Spain's modern reputation for being inward-looking and hostile to African neighbours, Spaniards actually are curious about their North African past. Many wish to trace their ancestors back to the Moors and are proud of the magnificent Islamic architecture scattered across the country.

In Moraira, on the coast between Valencia and Alicante, everyone wants to be a Moor. Due to better dye techniques, Moorish clothing was brighter and more sophisticated. In contrast to the magnificent, yet cumbersome armour of the Christians, the Moors float down the street, resplendent in yellow and purple chiffon. Young girls show off their belly-dancing moves and jugglers entertain the crowd. Foreigners are welcome to participate and a number of British and German retirees can be seen strutting down the street in full battle dress, flanked by a crowd shouting compliments they do not understand.

Historical re-enactments, however, cost money and the financial burden on participants is huge: $490 per adult and $122 for a child – a vast amount when you consider a decent white-collar wage here is $1,840 a month, while blue-collar workers earn as little as $980. The money pays for the fiesta, along with a small donation from the local council.

So why do they do it? Some say it's tradition, others say the planning gives people something to do in the winter. "It's a fiesta!" exclaims Susanna, a teacher in the local school. "There is no reason. It's a wonderful time to get together, dress up and eat great food."

In Spain, even a 700-year-old battle is a chance to party.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/06/letter-from-spain-moors-christians

Spain: Religion, costumes and conquests - all a town needs to party

2010-07-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

The annual Moors and Christian festival gives the residents of Moraira a chance to revel in their Islamic ancestry

People dressed as Moors perform on a boat off the coast of Villajoyosa during the Moors and Christians festivities. Photograph: Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images

In Spain, even a 700-year-old battle is a chance to party.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/06/letter-from-spain-moors-christians

CNN's Octavia Nasr: Another Victim of America's Thought Police

2010-07-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abbas-barzegar/cnns-octavia-nasr-another_b_641380.html

Abbas Barzegar

Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at Emory

CNN's Octavia Nasr: Another Victim of America's Thought Police

Who would have thought that a two line tweet could end a 20 year career in journalism? It surely wasn'tCNN's senior Middle East editor Octavia Nasr, who was quickly dismissed after posting an "outrageous" comment on twitter following the passing of Lebanon's Ayatollah Fadlallah: "Sad to hear about the passing of Seyyed Mohammad Fadlallah...one of Hezbollah's Giants I respect a lot."

Nasr, a Lebanese Christian who was amongst the first women to ever interview Fadlallah immediately clarified that she did not intend to praise the cleric's life and work in toto, but rather simply call attention to the fact that he was held a "contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights."

Although she scrambled to justify her comments about the cleric -- which were much less flattering than those offered by US allies Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, Lebanese PM Sa'ad Hariri, or British Ambassador toLebanon -- it wasn't enough for the bosses.

Given that Nasr lasted about three days and Helen Thomas about a week, some would say that she hung on pretty long. But more disturbing than the breakneck speed at which Nasr's case was open and shut is the chilling reality that, despite the principles of freedom of speech and thought that provide the foundation of our society dangerous redlines still exist.

Every society has them, intellectual Berlin Walls that keep bad ideas out along with the people who carry them. These are the cerebral pressure points of public discourse that create blind spots and fruitlessly mask deep fears. Ultimately such lines tell us much more about what kind of society we think we are a part of than the content of the issues themselves.

For most outsiders Ayatollah Fadlallah was just another bearded Muslim priest warped in from the medieval period hell bent on destroying western civilization. For Middle East insiders and even the mildly educated, he was a moderating force in whirlwind of extremism. For the Iranian regime he was a stubbornly independent risky ally too powerful to ignore. For the Lebanese across society he was a curb against that government's imperialism. To his clerical peers he flirted with modernity -- occupying himself with subjects like medical ethics and domestic violence (he told women to hit back... hard).

Nasr made the mistake of assuming her nuance would be understood in tweet or a blog. She also made the mistake of assuming that CNN would defend intelligence. Instead, when the website Honest Reporting, which describes itself as "an organization dedicated to defending Israel against prejudice in the Media" triggered an online blitz insinuating that Nasr praised Fadlallah's alleged Holocaust denial, suicide bombing, or questionable role in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks, CNN sought it fit to rid itself of the problem outright. Instead of raising the public's capacity to digest the complexities of the world we live in, the network cowered to what Juan Cole has rightly called the "privatization of McCarthyism." Today Honest Reporting is claiming Nasr's outing as one of its biggest triumphs.

Since 9/11 America's redline has conflated terrorism and Israel's security, flattening all difference and particularity. As Stephan Walt and John Mearsheimer pointed out, this has dangerous consequences for both the implementation of policy and the policing of public thought (they were called anti-Semites for this). I don't think like others, who have responded to Nasr's sacking, that the Israeli lobby is to blame or that there is a Zionist cabal at work in the editing rooms of all major media outlets.

But I do think that an intellectual barricade has been created in our society that prevents any critical reflection on the complexities of Middle East politics and the rise of religious extremism, be it Islamic, Christian or Jewish. It is the same barricade that threatens the tenure of professors and blocks the work of journalists in the highest rank. Looking back, Nasr's case falls perfectly in line with the precedent created in the last few years. I doubt it will be the last.

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Epstein hopes Gazans will be ‘free to pursue their lives in dignity’

2010-07-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

Hedy Epstein

Hedy Epstein has been fighting the good fight for more than 60 of her 86 years. She escaped death in 1939 by being placed on one of the British-sponsored Kindertransport ships that carried more than 10,000 children to England and Northern Ireland.

Both her parents and almost all of her family perished at Auschwitz. Arriving in the US in 1948, she embarked on a lifelong campaign of conscience, speaking out for reproductive rights, fair housing and peace. She has raised her voice in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Cambodia. “My lesson [from the Holocaust] is that when I see injustice -- I don't care who is responsible -- I must do what I can.”

In 1982, following the Israeli-sanctioned massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, her attention began to focus on Palestine and its suffering. In 2001 she founded the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black -- the international women's peace organization.

In 1982, following the Israeli-sanctioned massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, Hedy Epstein's attention began to focus on Palestine and its suffering. In 2001 she founded the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black -- the international women's peace organization. In 2009 she joined the 1,000 activists on the Gaza Freedom March. Ms. Epstein spoke about her cases in an exclusive interview with Today's Zaman

In 2009 she joined the 1,000 activists on the Gaza Freedom March, which attempted to enter Gaza from Egypt. During that march she embarked on a hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinians. She has visited the Occupied Territories five times since 2003. Most recently she was in Cyprus offering logistical support for the Gaza flotilla.

According to the website discoverthenetworks.org, “She proudly reports that she has rewritten the post-Holocaust motto, ‘Never again!’: ‘As I stood next to the 25-foot high cement wall in Qalqilya, I coined this phrase: “Never Again (for Jews), Again by Jews”.”

Her autobiography, published in 1999, is fittingly titled “Remembering is Not Enough.” Shortly after her return to the US from Cyprus, Ms. Epstein spoke in an exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman.

Ms. Epstein, your critics claim that because you are a Holocaust survivor you should be especially sensitive to the survival of Israel. How do you reconcile that with your advocacy for Palestinian rights?

In some ways my being a Holocaust survivor has nothing to do with my criticism of Israel’s policies and practices. On the other hand, it is this very experience that has sensitized me to the suffering of others, especially of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government and military. What is the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust? It is that the victims and their descendants should not become victimizers of “the other,” in this case, the Palestinians.

You describe yourself as “anti-Zionist.” What is the origin of that philosophy?

I was born in Freiburg, a village in the Black Forest. All the Jewish children belonged to a Zionist youth organization -- I was the only one who didn’t belong, because my parents were anti-Zionist. When Hitler came to power in 1933, I was 8 years old. My parents very quickly realized that they had to leave Germany. They were willing to go anywhere in the world: “nur raus!” -- just get out!

‘When I see injustice, I don’t care who is responsible,’ says activist Epstein.

But they would not go to Palestine because they did not believe in Zionism. As a young child I did not completely understand Zionism or anti-Zionism -- but if my parents were anti-Zionist, I was too.

In 1948, about the same time that Israel was created, I arrived in the US. I had mixed feelings then about Israel. On the one hand, I was glad that there was a place for Holocaust survivors who could not, or chose not to, return to their place of origin. But on the other hand, I remembered my parents’ anti-Zionism. What would happen I could not guess -- but I feared that no good would come of the birth of the state of Israel. I was new to the US, having new experiences and new things to learn and Israel/Palestine stayed on the back burner of my interest and remained there until 1982, when I read about the Israeli-sanctioned massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. I knew that I needed to find out exactly what happened there. Who was responsible? Who had been adversely affected? What had happened between 1948 and 1982, when I was paying little attention to that part of the world?

As I learned more, I became increasingly disturbed by the policies and practices of the Israeli government and military vis-a-vis the Palestinians and their land. I began to speak out against these policies and practices.

In 2003 I went to the Israeli-occupied West Bank for the first time and have been back there five times since, most recently with the Gaza flotilla. I have tried unsuccessfully four times to enter Gaza, but permission has repeatedly been denied. They say that I am a “security risk”! An 86-year-old woman!

Earlier this month, you told The Guardian, “The mainstream American Jewish community almost speak in one voice and if you dare to criticize Israel you are called anti-Semitic and if you are Jewish you’re called self-hating, a traitor.” How do you react to accusations that advocating for human rights in Palestine equals anti-Semitism?

Naturally, being called a “self-hating Jew” or “a traitor” is not among my most pleasant experiences. However, such remarks have not and will not stop me from doing what my conscience tells me is the right thing to do.

Last year, when you were in Egypt as a member of the Gaza Freedom March, you said, “My message is for the world governments to wake up and treat Israel like they treat any other country and not to be afraid to reprimand and criticize Israel for its violent policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians.” Why do you believe there is such reluctance on the part of the world’s governments? What are they afraid of?

Fear of being accused of being anti-Semitic. ... In Germany, guilt feelings about the Holocaust also play a significant role.

Despite the fact that there is a growing pro-Palestinian rights movement in Israel, the great majority of Israelis still believes that the current state of affairs in Gaza and Israeli policies are correct. Does this indicate a national apathy to suffering?

I believe this is changing, especially after the Israeli massacre in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 and especially after the attack on the Gaza flotilla.

The average Israeli who is not politically savvy believes the government mantra that Israel is constantly under attack and is the victim -- and he/she also believes in the demonization of the Palestinians. Most Israelis are not really aware of the extent of the suffering of the Palestinian people, who may live just a short distance from them.

Israelis do not visit the Occupied Territories because they have been ordered not to go there. Yes, there is apathy, of living smugly in a very small world, not knowing and not wanting to know what is really and truly taking place in their names.

What is the underlying reason for this national apathy?

There are several explanations: Fear of “the other,” who has been described as “a terrorist”... government-initiated PR ... a complicit media that serves only as a government tool by misrepresenting the reality and plays on the existing fear by fear-mongering.

Are you satisfied with President Barack Obama’s response to the flotilla murders?

Absolutely not! Surely, he knows better. In his younger years, when he befriended Edward Said, Obama was clearly advocating for Palestinian rights. But when he came to the White House, he surrounded himself with pro-Israeli neocons like Rahm Emanuel. Where is President Obama’s backbone? Why is he so afraid of AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Do the pro-Israel folks have something on Obama?

If you could meet President Obama what would you advise?

I will probably not have that opportunity, but if I did, I would ask only one question: “What would your mentor Edward Said say about your position on the Israeli-Palestine question?”

As you are certainly aware, Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel and, furthermore, Jews have enjoyed a climate of tolerance in Turkey for more than 500 years. Are you satisfied with the reaction of the Turkish government to the flotilla massacre? What advice would you give Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan?

Turkey’s reaction is much like what the reaction of what any other country would be in similar circumstances. The flotilla attack was an attack on the sovereignty of Turkey, but the relationship between Turkey and Israel has been deteriorating recently as a result of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s outspokenness. We can also recall the meeting between Israeli and Turkish diplomats at which the Turkish representative was purposely seated at a lower level than the Israeli.

But it would be presumptuous of me to give advice to the Turkish prime minister.

Are you optimistic about the future of Gaza?

I am an eternal optimist and so I continue to hope that some day Gaza and its people will be free and able to pursue their lives in dignity -- a dignity that will prevail, despite all odds against them.

Finally, may I add a message of condolence to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims?

It is impossible to express the deep sympathy I feel for you. I wish so very much that I could lift the feelings of emptiness and disappointment from your hearts. It is very hard to understand why something like this had to happen. Life is so very unfair at times. Words are so inadequate at a time like this. I do want you to know that the memory of your loved ones is in my constant thoughts, as are you, who have lost so very much.

There will be many difficult times and tasks ahead of you. At this distance (I live in the United States) I don’t know what I can do to be of most help to you, but I hope you will give me the opportunity to be your friend by letting me know if there is any way that I can be of comfort and assistance to you.

* Mark Lieberman is a lecturer at İstanbul Technical University.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-215327-epstein-hopes-gazans-will-be-free-to-pursue-their-lives-in-dignity.html

The new ‘We’ is a manifesto for today’s pluralistic societies

2010-07-01T22:49:00.001-07:00

Tariq Ramadan

Renowned European Muslim thinker and academic Tariq Ramadan has explained his manifesto for a new “We” -- which involves Muslims, non-Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Christians and Jews coming together to contribute to their pluralistic societies in the West -- in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman.

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“We are not something to be bought and we are not to be sold. We are subject citizens, we want to be respected and we will contribute to a better future for our countries,” said Ramadan. A professor at Oxford University, Ramadan often underlines the importance of freedom and tells practicing European Muslims that they still have the option of making political, social and cultural decisions for themselves. On the issue of Islamophobia, Ramadan said: “Muslims should respect people’s fear by responding to their questions and should also resist the instrumentalization of fear in what I call emotional politics. Emotional politics uses this fear just to win the next election.”

Ramadan was in İstanbul to speak at a conference held by the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGİDER) Ramadan, who is regarded as the most influential Muslim thinker in Europe, gave an interview to Sunday’s Zaman on the highly controversial topics of modernism, Islam and secularism.

You have an article called “Manifesto for a new ‘We’” which was published in The Independent. I would like you to explain what “We” means?

I describe it as a manifesto for a new “We.” We live in pluralistic societies in the West, as well as in Muslim countries like Turkey. We are not even clear about what it means to be a pluralistic society. Instead of speaking about our differences, the principle at the beginning is to accept that these are pluralistic societies. We have no choice. The West now is full of pluralistic societies. Islam is a Western religion as well as a religion for Muslim-majority countries, and we are bound by the laws of the country, we speak the language of the country, we are loyal to the country and we have our objective. And this objective is that you and I, Muslims, non-Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews are to come together and do something to work together. So a new “We” is a vision for more contribution and to stop talking about integration.

When we look at Europe, we see some problems occurring one after the other in countries such as Greece and Spain. It starts with an economic crisis and a social crisis and then transforms into hatred and the exclusion of foreigners. Is this really the case in Europe?

The situation in Europe and in the West by and large is not very good. We have trends coming from far-right parties and populist parties targeting Muslims because they are undermining the homogeneity of the society, the culture and living together. I am Swiss by nationality, and in my country we voted against the minarets, we are talking about the burqa and headscarves. Any visible symbol of Islam is perceived as a danger, and the parties are building on that. At the same time, what is happening at the grassroots level is much better because you have Muslims settling down, working, contributing and doing their jobs. So I think that there is a state of tension within society because we are facing an identity crisis within the Muslim communities, who are asking “who are we?” and within the surrounding society. Now what we have to do is to be much more involved in society and not let far-right parties and populist parties set the political agenda. We should be much more involved in society to create a new “We.” We are citizens. We are not minorities and we are not the victims of a minority mentality. We should be involved in society; this is the best way in fact to react to the trends that we see today in Europe.

Is Islamophobia still an issue in Europe?

Yes, I would speak about racism against Muslims. Muslims are targeted if they wear a headscarf, if they have a Muslim name or if they appear to be like a Muslim. It is still difficult to get a job, to get a house, to be respected and the atmosphere is very difficult. So I would say yes, there is Islamophobia. Many people are really experiencing phobia, which means fear. Muslims should respect people’s fear by responding to their questions and should also resist the instrumentalization of fear in what I call emotional politics. Emotional politics uses this fear just to win the next election.

The integration of Muslim immigrants and Europeans was considered a challenging issue in Europe. Today can we talk about the contribution of the third and fourth generations to European society rather than their integration into society?

I would say that we have to differentiate between the discussion on Islam and Muslims in Europe, or European Muslims, with immigration, because immigration is an ongoing process. We keep speaking about immigration. Now we have millions of Europeans and we are reaching the fifth generation, not only the third one. Regarding the fifth generation in some countries such as France and the UK, we still speak about British citizens of immigrant backgrounds, of French citizens of immigrant backgrounds. These are now citizens and it means that for many people Islam is still a foreign religion and a religion of immigrants and we have to show now that it is not true. As you said, the success of integration is to stop talking about integration. It is now to speak about contribution and living together. Still, we will have immigration problems but they are not connected to Islam, they are connected to the fact that Europe cannot survive if there are no people coming from the outside. We need migrants and immigrants to help us in the economic field but we deny this. So there is an economic need and a cultural resistance. But this is another situation, it is another discussion. We have to distinguish between European Muslims living in the country as citizens and contributing and how to deal with the new immigrants who are coming in, and we have to deal with them on political, social and cultural grounds, of course.

Do you find the dialogue between Muslim immigrants and Europeans sufficient?

I speak about citizens talking to their governments. I think that at the local level it is much better than what we see. At the national level we have controversies like in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and Norway. So I would say it is not enough and we have to improve the dialogue, but if we look at the local level we can find that there are very interesting processes and trends. It is going to be a very long process. It will take at least two generations before we settle down. So we have to be patient, we have to work for the future and for the next generation, not for the next election. This is something to be made very clear. We are not something to be bought and we are not to be sold. We are subject citizens, we want to be respected and we will contribute to a better future for our countries. This is our loyalty to the country; we want the best for our countries.

Can we say that the young Muslim immigrants are contributing more to European society?

Not only the new generation, not only the third generation. We have to keep in mind and to remind people that the first generation contributed to the rebuilding of Europe after World War II. We have to say this, we have to say that mothers and fathers, even grandfathers and grandmothers, came and they contributed to society. They built France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Belgium. These countries needed these people and they were even asking these people to come. I was with Jack Straw, the previous UK secretary of state for justice, who said, “We went there to bring them here.” So we brought them to Europe. The first generation contributed, the second generation contributed and the third generation is contributing in many fields -- within academia, on the social ground, in the arts, in music, in entertainment, in sports and in anything which has to do with culture as well. So, yes, of course, the contribution is huge.

Considering the misunderstanding and even conflicts between Islam and the West, is it about the clash of cultures or perceptions?

This is what I am saying. This is not a clash of civilizations; this is a clash of perceptions. So people perceive the other in an essentialist way. This is the West and this is Islam. Well this is wrong. There are lots of things that have come from Islam in the West, and there are lots of things from the West in Islam. So they intertwine, and I would say that this perception that there are two blocs and two entities that are striving and conflicting is wrong. It is much more our perceptions that are problematic.

Do you find the Alliance of Civilizations [AoC] useful in terms of people understanding each other?

It is always useful to have platforms where you have dialogue. Now you have to ask what the intentions are and where they lead us. The first thing is that while we were talking about the clash of civilizations before, people are now talking about dialogue and alliance, saying we have to work together, and that’s fine. I was involved in this and I was invited to a meeting of the Alliance of Civilizations two weeks ago in Cordoba. My point here is really beyond that. We have to remind ourselves that dialogue and alliances should not only be symbolic and far removed from the people. So if you talk to Muslims at the grassroots level today, Europeans and Westerners at the grassroots level, these people don’t even know what is happening. So these are specialists talking to each other that are far removed from the grass roots and it has no impact. I would say dialogue and alliances are fine but we have to ask the questions of “where” and “with whom.”

Do you find Turkey to be a complex country on the basis of the idea that concepts such as modernism, secularism, Islam and women’s issues are still controversial subjects and are not likely to be settled?

I think it is not going to settle for the next two generations. There may be more controversy in Turkey than in other countries, but still it is the same everywhere. Turkey is really at the crossroads of being involved in the EU, being involved in the West and being faithful to Islamic principles. This is exactly what we see within society. So how do you deal with this? By being faithful to tradition, to practices and to principles. There are tensions, and they are difficult to overcome. This is why, as you said, Turkey has not yet settled; but it is a necessary process, and my hope is for Turkey to lead or pave the way for Muslim-majority countries to show that it is possible to have democracy and transparency but still to remain faithful to Islam. It is possible not to impose anything on women, not to push people to remove the headscarf and to be able to be fully Muslim and completely modern. This is possible, and I think that Turkey is under pressure because some in Europe want Turkey to forget much more about their principles and some other Muslims are saying you are betraying and forgetting Islam. Sometimes, you know, when you are walking down the streets in İstanbul you can feel the tension between modernization and tradition and this is part of the Turkish identity today. You are facing the challenges of your time.

Some people in Turkey support the French style of secularism, while others feel closer to the American style. What are your thoughts on the application of secularism on Turkey?

I think that Turkey should find its own way. It is not going to follow the footsteps of the French or the American system. Now we need to put things into context. The secular system was imposed on this country in a way which was very very tough. So there are developments and steps that we have to take into account. There is no way for Turkey to go ahead and push forward to find new solutions in the future if it does not question the kind of secularism that it has. You cannot just come out and say that everything which is religious is wrong. That’s not going to work. I think that Turkey should, step-by-step and in a very patient way, find its own way to solve the problem. The rule of law? Yes. A secular system? Why not, if no one is prevented from practicing her or his religion according to his or her understanding?

You are also saying that there is one Islam but many interpretations of Islam. Do you think that much of the responsibility falls not to the system in which we are living but to the individual herself to learn the original sources of Islam?

There are two things. Any individual, whether that person is a man or a woman, needs to have a basic knowledge of Islam. This is a personal commitment and responsibility. I mean you have to do that. You have to know why you pray, how to pray, what the meanings of the five pillars of Islam are and what the meanings of the six pillars of faith are. All of this is basic knowledge. Now when it comes to interpreting theQuran, you can’t. It is not for everyone to do that. Worshipping is the way for everyone to be close to the spiritual text. Your heart is moved by what you are reading. When it comes to extracting rules, not everyone can do this.

Is the Muslim world falling away from the original text and teachings of Islam?

Oh yes, in many ways. As I said today, when we speak about women, when we speak about politics and corruption, we are forgetting many of the ethical teachings and lessons that are given by Islam. So, I think that we have cultural distortion coming from the Turkish and the Arab culture, the Asian culture and even the Western culture, and we also have reductionism, which is a very literal way of reading the text but not contextualizing the text. Once again, there are things which are immutable; they are not going to change in our religion. Not everyone can just read the Quran and interpret the very meaning of it. Scholars can do that.

You say “Don’t just talk to the West, talk among yourselves.” There is a huge Muslims population but they are weak in power. Is this about their lack of confidence?

Yes, I think that is completely right. I think what is missing for Muslims today is self-confidence. We don’t lack power. We have lots of power. The Muslim-majority countries have money and the petro-monarchies have money. Even if you look at what is happening in Turkey, there are lots of opportunities. So let us use these opportunities to do something which is more important with confidence, by being more assertive and in line with our principles and understandings. The psychological factor is so important.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-213626-the-new-we-is-a-manifesto-for-todays-pluralistic-societies.html

ŞEYMA AKKOYUNLU İSTANBUL

Making room for the Taliban

2010-06-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

By Robert Grenier

The Afghan president and some Western powers are pushing for talks with the Taliban [AFP]

The Afghan president and some Western powers are pushing for talks with the Taliban [AFP]
On September 20, 2001, just nine days after the devastating attacks by al-Qaeda, George Bush, then US president, stood before both houses of the US congress, with Tony Blair, then British prime minister, to deliver an address to the American people and to the world.

That America would react in some way to the attacks was already clear. It was Bush's task to explain the principles which would guide those actions, and to rally international support for them.

With all that has happened since, it may be difficult to remember the emotional tenor of that moment. In the wake of the attacks, there had been a great international outpouring of support for the US.

It appeared that this was a moment of great international solidarity, and that out of this shock great and new things might be possible.

We remember the essence of what Bush said on that occasion, even if we no longer recall the words he used: that henceforth, there could be no middle ground between the terrorists and those who opposed them; that the US would no longer make any distinction between terrorists and those who sheltered them; and that the latter, if they refused to join with the "civilised" world, would share the fate of the former.

New beginning possible

Bush had some hard words for the Taliban in that address. And yet, beneath the surface of those words, there lurked the possibility of a new and different relationship with the Taliban.

Implicit in Bush's words was the promise of a new beginning for any government, including the Taliban's, if they would join the international coalition against "terrorism" and shift their policies accordingly.
This was the implicit bargain in my own discussions with senior Taliban leaders in those days. And yet, even then, there was a clear ambivalence in the US attitude.
Immediately after the president's September 20 address, Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, was careful to make clear that the US held out hope, however slim, for a new relationship with the Taliban.

At the same time, however, Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, was reflecting much more closely the prevailing political attitude within the US.

Rice was making it clear that she could not foresee US support for a repressive Taliban government which imposed, among other perceived abuses, drastic social restraints on women.

The limits of US political acceptance of the Taliban were never tested at that time, as of course Mullah Omar and the rest of the Taliban leadership refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, or denounce the group.

Popular western revulsion at the Taliban, however, had long made any positive political dealings with the Taliban - beyond the issuance of ultimatums regarding bin Laden - virtually impossible, even before the 9/11 attacks. I know, because I advocated for such engagement, to no avail.

Later, after the apparent defeat of the Taliban in 2001, there was even less room within the US government for positive dealings with even relative Taliban moderates.

Minister arrested

When Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, attempted to play an intermediary role between the US and Taliban elements in 2002, he was arrested and imprisoned for his pains.

The author says the Taliban has been closely integrated with al-Qaeda after 9/11 [AFP] It required many months of cajoling to induce the US department of defence to agree to Muttawakil's release as an encouragement to others, despite the Afghan government's stated interest in reaching out to such moderates.
Today, with the fortunes of the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and its Western allies at a much more difficult pass, and with the Taliban resurgent in much of the South and East, talk of political engagement with the Taliban is rife.

There are reported meetings between intermediaries and representatives of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of Hezb-e-Islami, and discussion of means to reach out to the Taliban is a major feature of the international conference on Afghanistan in London.

Even US military leaders who are working assiduously to attack and "degrade" the Taliban admit that the movement is part of the Pashtun social fabric, and will have to be politically dealt with in some way.

It seems to me, nonetheless, that any sort of meaningful political engagement with senior leaders of the Taliban remains a long way off.

The clear thrust of current Western efforts to reach out to the Taliban is in the context of "reintegration", through which simple fighters and low-level commanders are induced to return to their communities in return for some form of government assistance.

'Reconciliation necessary'

The difficulties in this approach are manifest, relying as it must on the involvement of Kabul-appointed government structures, largely seen as corrupt and inept, to mediate and implement such programs.

In view of these difficulties, observers such as Muttawakil argue that a more formal political "reconciliation" with the Taliban leadership will be necessary. Yet it is hard to see how such a political process could be viable.

Relatively low-level discussions including marginal representation from the Karzai government notwithstanding, it seems clear that Taliban leaders, very much to include Mullah Omar, have little interest in negotiating with the Kabul regime, which they see essentially as a puppet.

"It seems clear that Taliban leaders have little interest in negotiating with the Kabul regime, which they see essentially as a puppet"

Given their growing strength and confidence, they are far more interested in dealing directly with the US to negotiate the terms of a US/Nato/Coalition withdrawal. This hardly suggests a desire on the part of the core Taliban to enter the Afghan political process.
Indeed, can one really imagine the Taliban leadership standing for election in Pashtun-dominated districts, or serving in parliament? They have made clear their religious opposition to such elections.

Instead, reconciliation with the Taliban would amount to acquiescence in the Taliban's political ascendancy and control in the areas where they are currently active. It is hard to imagine this as anything other than stage-setting for a renewed civil war with the Tajiks and other non-Pushtun minorities.

It is clear that in view of the growing costs, both human and monetary, of the US involvement in Afghanistan, US aspirations there have grown far more modest.

This was the clear thrust of the speech Barack Obama, the US president, gave at the West Point military academy on December 1, 2009.

Repressive policies

The atrophy of US policy goals in Afghanistan would seem to make political acceptance of the Taliban's socially repressive policies - which appear to be moderating in any case - more viable.

Nonetheless, denial of Afghanistan as a future safe haven for al-Qaeda and others intent on employing terrorist techniques internationally remains a core US objective.

While much is made of the relative moderation of Mullah Omar's recent statements in favour of a political focus on Afghanistan at the expense of global jihad, it is hard to see these statements - even if taken at face value - as representing anything other than a statement of tactical necessity, rather than of strategic orientation.

It makes all the sense in the world for the Taliban to focus now on its national goals in Afghanistan, and to seek peaceful relations with its neighbours.

The human and monetary cost of the war in Afghanistan is growing [AFP] But once having achieved a measure of uncontested political space in Afghanistan, even if the movement eschews the global jihad for its own account, it is hard to imagine the Taliban coldly refusing all aid to those whom it regards as good Muslims, who are themselves under threat from what it regards as impious regimes backed by foreigners.
Moreover, the current dynamic within the Taliban must be seen in the context of an ever-growing alignment between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, forged under the constant pressure being exerted against them and other like-minded groups in South Asia.

The Taliban has adopted the tactics of al-Qaeda and is far more closely integrated - operationally, ideologically and otherwise - with the Arab-dominated organisation than was ever the case before 9/11.

No political or religious organisation remains static, particularly under the pressure of turbulent events, and the Taliban is no exception.

Its leaders should be watched for signs of willingness to find genuine accommodation, both with other elements and communities in Afghanistan and with outside powers having serious interests at stake in the country.

As of now, however, the relative optimism of those who see the prospect of true political accommodation with the Taliban appears to me to be misplaced.