NEOCONS HAVE THEIR SIGHTS ON YEMEN

White House warnings of an increased terrorist threat from Al Qaeda in Yemen have overshadowed the fact that neocons have been privately arguing for a large U.S. military footprint in that country. But, neocons are not the only ones telling the Obama administration to open a major base in the Port of Aden in South Yemen. Israel, Saudi Arabia and India believe it would be an important strategic move to consolidate a Western presence in the Gulf. They feel it would place even more pressure on Iran and would provide the U.S and India with an enhanced naval profile in the Indian Ocean through which China moves most of its commerce.
Yemen has a unique and highly significant geographical presence that makes it strategically vital for all shipping using the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, straddling Asia and the Middle East. The British in particular know all about Aden because the port and its surroundings were a British colony ruled from India during the days of Empire, whereas the north was part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War 1. Later, tribes loyal to Saudi Arabia and Egypt fought over it. In 1967, Britain granted Aden independence after years trying to put down a violent independence movement. At that point, the south of the country was Marxist and that led to the Soviet Union developing a military presence in the Port of Aden, making Yemen a significant part of the Cold War stand-off in the Middle East. In 1979, the Carter Administration sent a massive shipment of modern weaponry to pro-Western guerillas in north Yemen in what was the start of a lengthy period of internecine strife throughout the country. The Marxists were eventually removed from power and the country united but Yemen has rarely been truly united. It is comprised of a volatile mix of tribal loyalties and a mountainous terrain ideal for guerilla warfare. It is also awash with weapons and militias that have hardened fighters with battle experience in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
A significant feature of Yemen is that its population is close to being evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis. The Shiites are mainly in the north, adjoining the border with Saudi Arabia, and are supported by powerful Shiite figures in Iran and Iraq. The Saudis fear the Yemeni Shiites could become another Hezbollah and have made that point to Washington. Israel agrees and has argued that a U.S. military is required to prevent that happening.
Neocons point out that a major U.S. military base in Aden would be complemented by U.S. forces in nearby Oman and would make it easier for the West to deal with threats from Somalia, especially the pirates that operate from there into the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. The actual Port of Aden is a short distance from the Somali coast and is within striking distance of the Sudan where China has oil interests. More importantly for Israel, if it wanted to launch a major air assault on Iran, a U.S. base in Yemen would make such an attack easier to mount and would negate the need for the use of Iraqi airspace. From a neocon perspective, U.S. military engagement in Yemen would mean that if the U.S. decided to go to war with Iran it would be within a manageable striking distance. In that event, the U.S. would also have control over all shipping access to the Persian Gulf.
In 2009, the Russian leadership contemplated the possibility of the Russian navy having a base within the Port of Aden. Russia sent emissaries on a secret mission to Yemen to ask what it would take to re-energize the old Soviet link but Moscow’s overture was rebuffed because the West had already indicated to the Yemenis, as had the Saudis, that it would be unwise to make a deal with Russia since it would not offer the kind of financial commitment Yemen would get from the West. The West’s offer to Yemen, if some reports are accurate, was upwards of $1 billion in aid with military training for the Yemeni army and air force and a U.S. military presence built around Special Forces operations and the kind of hi-tech weaponry now being used to target Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
While the strategic value of Yemen is there for all to see, a U.S. military commitment would presents the kind of dangers the U.S. and its allies failed to anticipate before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Yemenis are a nationalistic people like the Pashtuns who make up the Taliban. They will not take kindly to an enhanced U.S. military role in their country, which could be seen by Islamists as the genesis of a planned occupation. While Al Qaeda undoubtedly poses a threat from Yemen, there is the potential for an even greater threat from home-grown Yemeni insurgents, who fought the U.S. in Iraq and previously battled the Soviets in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden fought the Soviets with an estimated three thousand Yemenis. Yemen has since supplied thousands of insurgents to fight U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those insurgents could quickly destabilize Yemen if they were convinced the U.S. wanted to establish a permanent military presence in their country.
By forging close links to the Yemeni president and his inner circle, the U.S. has once again allied itself with a Middle East leadership, which is unstable and highly unpredictable. The Yemeni government lacks a political consensus throughout the country and its military’s reach is limited. When the Saudis launched attacks against Yemeni Shiites last year, the country’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, denied any knowledge of the attacks. In 2009, he claimed his forces had apprehended an Israeli unit that was operating with a Sunni militia group. He promised to put the Israelis on trial but never made good on his promise. It would not be unusual for the Israelis to be meddling in Yemen. Israel has forged partnerships with some strange bedfellows in the region, including the Iranians when that country was at war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Israelis have also trained Kurds and Kurdish guerillas that have carried out operations designed to destabilize Iran.
One of the recent ironies of the new U.S. - Yemen relationship is that it follows years when Washington shunned Yemen and withdrew much needed aid because the Yemenis opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After the Bush White House left Yemen out in the cold, and paid little attention to it, Al Qaeda and affiliates gradually moved in and established bases.
There is some reason to believe the Yemeni leadership is exploiting the Al Qaeda threat to get large gifts of cash and weapons to consolidate its hold on the country. But, be that as it may, neocons in Washington and their friends in Tel Aviv, New Delhi, and even in London, are longing for a U.S. military footprint in Yemen. For China, such an eventuality would represent a disturbing development because it would provide the U.S. and its allies, especially India, with an expanded presence in the India Ocean which is a vital corridor for Chinese commerce. However, at the present time neocons see Iran, not China, as the priority. For them, Iran is unfinished business and Yemen could provide an ideal base from which to someday strike Iran. For the neocons, the China issue can wait.

WAS AMERICAN TERROR SUSPECT WORKING FOR THE CIA?

That question is being asked by Indian investigators looking into the key role allegedly played by an American, David Coleman Headley, in the Mumbai terror attacks that killed 166 people in November 2008.
So far, the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence services have denied he worked for them but it is known he was recruited as an informant by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency after he was caught smuggling heroin through New York in 1997. Back then, he was called Daood Gilani.
He was born in Washington in 1960 to a Pakistani father and an American mother but moved with his father to Pakistan after his parents divorced. He was raised a strict Muslim and attended a preparatory school run by Pakistan’s military. In1977, he flew to Philadelphia to live with his mother and enlisted as a student at Philadelphia Community College. Before long, he began displaying a rebellious streak and exchanged his studies for a life on the streets where he was recruited as a courier for a Pakistani cartel. In 1977, when he came to the attention of the DEA, he was living with a wife and two children in Chicago, masquerading as a lawful businessman.
From the moment the DEA recruited him, until he was charged in a U.S. court on December 8. 2009, with plotting the Mumbai attacks on behalf of the Muslim terror group Laskar-e-Toiba, much of his life was led in the shadows. It is now known, however, that one of the first things the DEA did was send him into Pakistan as part of an undercover drugs operation. That meant his existence became known to the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.
By 2002, still using his Pakistani birth name, Daood Gilani, was in contact with Laskar-e-Toiba. The group’s name can be translated as the Army of the Pure and its stated goal is to drive India out of Kashmir, the disputed region that borders India and Pakistan. Kashmir is a throwback to a time when the British divided the Indian sub-continent into India and Pakistan, leaving Kashmir isolated between the two new states yet claimed by both. Laskar has sometimes been described as a puppet of the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, which has been known to use it to carry out attacks against Indian targets in Kashmir and in India itself. It receives much of its funding from Pakistani ex-pats in Britain. Indian intelligence sources claim Gilani’s presence in Laskar terror training camps in 2002 and 2003 was known to U.S. intelligence. The Indians say that raises the possibility he had been transferred from DEA control to the CIA, whose targets were terrorists and not drug cartels? Indian investigators have also posed the theory that, while working for the DEA, he became radicalized and went rogue. India would like to know the truth.
If he went rogue, the DEA was unaware of it. In 2006, he formally changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley and continued to make trips from the U.S. to Pakistan and India. His name change implied he was a Westerner instead of someone of Pakistani or Muslim origins. That would have gave him ideal cover on trips he also made to Denmark where he is accused of plotting a range of attacks on Indian targets there.
In August 2009, he was questioned at Chicago’s O’Hare airport as he was about to board a flight to India. It is not known if he was stopped as a result of a routine check, or on the orders of U.S. intelligence. It is said that, while being questioned by airport police, he gave confusing answers to questions about his travels. He claimed he worked for the First World Immigration Service but a search of his luggage offered no evidence to support that. The FBI was contacted and its agents checked his tax record and discovered he had received no income from such a company. He was finally arrested on October 3, 2009 and three weeks later unsealed indictments accused him of travelling to Denmark to plot attacks against a newspaper and a Jewish temple. It took another two months before he was charged with the Mumbai atrocity.
Indian authorities would like to get their hands on him, or at the very least on the files U.S. intelligence have on him, as well as copies of U.S. interrogators’ notes. So far that has not happened and Indian intelligence sources allege the U.S. is hiding details about his past. They claim the U.S. knows he had contact with Pakistani army officers, al Qaeda and possibly members of Pakistan’s intelligence community.
In a strange twist to the story, the lawyer for one of the Mumbai terrorists held by India filed a motion on behalf of his client claiming Headley was one of a number of foreign interrogators who questioned his client after he was arrested. The lawyer said that his client had originally informed him he was interrogated and threatened by a Col. Headley but it was not until David Headley was arrested in the U.S. that it became clear the two Headleys were one and the same person. That claim was dismissed by the Indian prosecutor in the case but the matter will be presented to a magistrate. It is believed India may make a formal request for Headley’s extradition but all signs indicate the U.S. will not release him. Any case against him in the U.S. may well lead to most of the evidence about his past being heard in secret on the basis that to do otherwise would jeopardize national security. That legal tactic has often employed by the Federal government. It would effectively hide any links Gilani might have had to the U.S. intelligence community and its Pakistani allies.

SECRET EMAILS EXPOSE E.U. CONSPIRACY

Secret emails between the Bulgarian MEP, Antonyia Parvanova, and Estonia’s European Commission vice-president, Siim Kallas, reveal they were part of a conspiracy to discredit Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Mrs. Rumiana Jeleva, before her January 12 hearing to become her country’s next E.U. Commissioner.
A media campaign branded Mrs. Jeleva a “Mafia Bride” and she was accused by Liberal MEP, Mrs. Parvanova of lying about her financial history. It therefore came as no surprise on January 19 when Mrs. Jeleva withdrew her candidacy to be a commissioner for humanitarian affairs.
Evidence now shows Mrs. Parvanova, who was one of Mrs. Jeleva’s chief accusers at a live televised hearing in Brussels on January 12, was instrumental in spreading false claims that Mrs. Jeleva lied about her relationship to a company called Global Consult.
The other major player in the saga was Siim Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, who is one of the European Commission’s five vice-presidents. His role in the plot was hidden until January 18 when I linked him to Mrs. Parvanova in an article published in the Bulgarian newspaper, Standart, and also in the online Home Page of Euro News. Kallas, a former member of the Soviet Communist Party, is a powerful E.U. figure. His title is EU Commissioner for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud but that did not give him authority to investigate Jeleva, or to circulate information about her on behalf of anyone, especially Parvanova.
When a “New Europe” journalist contacted his office on January 19, his Press Officer angrily denied Kallas knew Parvanova.
“The story is complete rubbish,” the Press Officer insisted and then curtly denied that Kallas “had anything to do with the allegations against Jeleva.” The reporter told me it was “highly unusual for a press officer to be so aggressive.”
If Kallas did not know Parvanova and had nothing to do with the allegations against Mrs. Jeleva, what will he say when he is confronted with evidence to the contrary? The following emails exposing a Parvanova-Kallas link have not been altered by me, neither in terms of substance, spelling, capitalization, or layout. The CAB in the emails refers to the Cabinet, meaning personal office of each commissioner.

From: MAURY Etienne (mailto:etienne.maury@europarl.europa.eu)
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:05 PM
To: HOLOEI Henrik (CAB-KALLAS)
Subject: Commissioners hearings – Violation of Bulgarian laws governing the visibility of the assets of holders of public interest by Ms Rumyana Jeleva
Dear Mr. Hololei,
On behalf of Antonyia Parvanova, you will attached – for your personal reference – the translation of two documents regarding the violation of Bulgarian laws governing the visibility of the assets of holders of public interest by Ms. Rumyana Jeleva, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Best regards,
Etienne Maury
Etienne MAURY
Parliamentary assistant, Head of office
Office of Dr. Antonyia Parvanova MEP
European Parliament
ASP 9G263 / WIC M02030
Rue Wiertz / Allee du printemps
B-1047 Brussels / 67000 Strasbourg

Tel: +32 2 284 7568 / +33 3 88 17 7568
Fax: +32 2 284 9568 / +33 3 88 17 9568


That email demonstrates how Mrs. Parvanova provided documents to Kallas by way of his personal office. The recipient of the email, HOLOEI Henrik, then passed the documents to LAITENBERGER Johannes in the Cabinet of the Commission Chairman, Manuel Barroso. The second email read as follows:





From: HOLOLEI Henrik (CAB-KALLAS)
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:53 PM
To: LAITENBERGER Johannes (CAB-BARROSO)
Subject: FW: Commissioners hearings – Violation of Bulgarian laws governing the visibility of the assets of public interest held by Mr. Rumyana Jeleva
Dear Johannes,
I thought it would make sense to forward this to you as well as for info if you have not got this already!
Rgds,
Henrik

From the emails, it is apparent the fix was in by January 7, 2010, and that Parvanova and Kallas both knew what they had in place. It would not be unreasonable to conclude they had been working on the scheme for some time, which would explain how there was such a speedy turnover of Parvanova’s material from CAB-KALLAS to CAB-BARROSO.
By using CAB-KALLAS as a willing conduit, Parvanova clearly intended to keep her fingerprints well away from the conspiracy. It is a technique intelligence agencies use when they spread disinformation. They will leak damaging information about an enemy by employing a conduit that does not lead back to them. Parvanova, and perhaps others who remain at this time in the shadows, must have been convinced no one in Barroso’s office would link the Estonian, Siim Kallas, and his Cabinet, to a conspiracy against the Bulgarian Commissioner Designate, Rumiana Jeleva. Therefore, the Bulgarian connection in the conspiracy probably felt safe it would not be unmasked. In fact, damaging information on Jeleva being quietly conveyed from CAB-KALLAS to CAB-BARROSO was more likely to be perceived as an act of good faith – an attempt by a well-minded Estonian Commission vice-president to tip off his boss, Manuel Barroso, to the dangers lurking in the Jeleva candidacy. However, one must ask why Mr. Kallas got involved, or permitting his Cabinet to be party to a shady enterprise that breached E.U. rules governing the investigation of Commissioners or Commissioners Designate. Kallas had the authority, if he had so wished, to instruct his legal staff to investigate Mrs. Jeleva, but in so doing he would have had declare his interest by informing the Commission Chairman, Mr. Barroso, as well as Mrs. Jeleva. That would have raised red flags and encouraged people to ask why Jeleva mattered to him. Instead, he broke the rules by allowing his office to be used for the dissemination of information from a source not authorized to investigate Jeleva, namely Mrs. Parvanova.
As for Parvanova, she may have broken her own nation’s laws by secretly investigating its Foreign Minister and then spreading false information about her financial history.
The conspiracy against Mrs. Jeleva was an egregious example of wrong-doing and it requires serious journalistic investigation, which has been lacking in the overall coverage of the Jeleva affair. Before, and after the January 12 hearing, many journalists preferred to repeat base and defamatory allegations fueled by rumour and hearsay. In so doing, they ignored the crux of the case.
Mrs. Jeleva has bowed out of the race but what remains is a tale, which highlights a political sickness within the E.U. body politic. That sickness is manifest in the partisanship, lies, defamation, personal savagery and the kind of political narrowness that makes strange bedfellows of parties that only have their own survival in common.
Anyone who knows Rumiana Jeleva will confess that she is a fine, intelligent woman with a real sense of justice. In her role as Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister, she impressed many foreign dignitaries. She made mistakes in her presentation on January 12 when she was subjected to an interview more akin to an interrogation. Some of the questions she faced exposed a real political naiveté among MEPs. She was asked about Aden. Did that mean the port of Aden, South Yemen or the Gulf of Aden? And where is the E.U. Aden policy? Questions of that kind highlighted the incompetence of some in the undergraduate school of E.U. politics.
From a journalistic standpoint, I was shocked by the willingness of some media outlets to follow the herd to the point where there was a wearisome reiteration of defamatory allegations, which featured prominently in publications like “Die Welt.” It will now be up to others to find out how Kallas was encouraged to become a conduit for Mrs. Parvanova and who else was involved. Perhaps some journalists, who regularly cover the work of the Commission, will get their heads out of the reflex news trough and give proper coverage to this case. Perhaps, they will follow the paper trail and also ask the Bulgarian Justice Ministry and the Bulgarian Prime Minister what actions they will take when they see the correspondence between Parvanova and Kallas.
I met and interviewed Mrs. Jeleva when she was in the United States in November 2009. She impressed me as she did others I have spoken to.
On January 19, Mrs. Parvanova wrote the following letter to me:
Dear Mr. Dillon,
My office brought to my attention the following article published yesterday on the website of Standart News Bulgarian newspaper:
http://paper.standartnews.com/en/article.php?d=2010-01-19&article=31889
As I was quite astonished by the language used in this article, coming from a journalist with such references as yours, I would kindly invite you to discuss this matter with me. I would be glad to share with you all the pecularities of this hearing, which further interpretations I do not appreciate and support in any possible mean.

Best regards,

Antonyia Parvanova
Member of the European Parliament
Vice-President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
I responded that I hoped she would answer questions I would send her by email. She did not reply but three hours later I sent her a series of questions. She ignored that email too, making it clear she was not interested in transparency. As this story plays out, those at the centre of this conspiracy may be asked to account for their actions.

THE PARVANOVA SYNDROME

There are startling developments surrounding the alleged conspiracy by Bulgarian socialists and former communists in Europe to destroy the candidacy of Rumiana Jeleva, who was in line to replace Bulgaria’s only E.U. Commissioner, Megelena Kuneva.
It now being claimed in some quarters that the conspiracy began when the former Estonian president, Siim Kallas, one of the five vice–presidents of the European Commission, who was also a former member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, started the ball rolling by contacting the Bulgarian MEP, Antonia Parvanova. Those who say they know about the role played by Kallas also allege he had to be acting to please others, among them Bulgaria’s only incumbent Commissioner, Megelena Kuneva, who was angry when she learned she was to be replaced by the Bulgarian foreign minister, Rumiana Jeleva.
The same sources claim Siim Kallas asked the Bulgarian MEP Antonia Parvanova to investigate Jeleva to see if she could find “any dirty linen in Jeleva’s closet” – anything in her personal or marital background that could be used to discredit her and thereby derail her candidacy. If that is true, Kallas chose Parvanova, not because of her medical background and her lack of familiarity with legal documents, but because she could spread rumours about Jeleva with the assistance of fellow MEPs and pass them to the international media. In parts of the media, especially in Die Welt, Jeleva’s husband was portrayed as a member of the Mafia and Jeleva herself described as a “Mafia Bride” – accusations which were libelous.
It is also alleged that Siim Kallas’ had dealings with Parvanova in the days before the Brussels hearing, which coincided with Parvanova unearthing inaccurate information about Jeleva’s relationship to the company, Global Consult. If this turns out to be accurate, Kallas and Parvanova would have contravened EU laws. Parvanova, as a Bulgarian, investigating the private life of Rumiana Jeleva, who happened to be her country’s foreign minister, would have broken Bulgarian laws designed to protect the privacy of senior political figures. It has now transpired that the “documents” Parvanova presented at the Jeleva hearing had been fed to the Financial Times of Germany and other media outlets hours before the hearing.
If the Commission and the Bulgarian Justice Ministry decide to open an investigation into the conspiracy they could unearth a “paper trail” that will expose the origins and development of this conspiracy. It is up to journalists and the Commission to delve into the alleged Kallas-Parvanova connection. The Bulgarian government may ask its Justice Ministry to investigate the actions of Antonia Parvanova. Her role in what became a tawdry spectacle for the EU and Bulgaria could result in her own political downfall. Jeleva’s interrogation in Brussels was the result of a well planned conspiracy, which could become known in time as the “Parvanova Syndrome.” It is a conspiracy in which a female of one nation helps to destroy the career of a female fellow national without considering the fact that it will subject their nation and international institutions to ridicule. The “P. Syndrome” could also be defined as bitchiness, callousness and a willingness to do what is necessary to pervert the truth in the pursuit of the political destruction of a perceived competitor.
If Siim Kallas was a major player in the conspiracy one could understand why he did not use his own legal secretaries to investigate Jeleva. That would have left and obvious paper trail would have placed him front and center of the conspiracy and questions would have been asked in Brussels about his motivation. Using Parvanova as a tool would have been designed to hide his role and those on whose behalf he is now alleged to have acted. If he is shown to have been a key player, the focus will shift to his motives because Rumiana Jeleva meant nothing to him personally. However, if the allegations are proved to be true, ideology and partisan E.U. politics may have meant everything to him.
Finally, could it really be that Mrs. Kuneva’s claim in 2006 that the iPod was bad for Bulgarian youth made her more suitable for the role of commissioner than Mrs. Jeleva?

OLD EUROPE REARS ITS UGLY HEAD

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary under George Bush, angered the French and Germans when he referred to “Old Europe.” Yet, there is another Older Europe with a retrograde history that is making a return.
That was evident on January 12 in Brussels when those who long for the primitive coldness of communism were presented with an opportunity to display their atavism during hearings to confirm Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister, Rumiana Jeleva, as an EU Commissioner. Their behavior took the form of an unseemly, vicious attack on Mrs. Jeleva in front of live television cameras that transmitted the event across the globe. What occurred was a nasty charade intended to embarrass and derail Mrs. Jeleva’s candidacy. Behind it was the long hand of the Bulgarian Old Guard, now masquerading as a socialist party - people who find comfort in like-minded ideologues in Russia and among the so-called liberal Left in EU member states like Germany and Holland.
The verbal attacks on Mrs. Jeleva bore the hallmark of a well- orchestrated, bitter strategy, which held Bulgaria up to ridicule. Leading the charge against Mrs. Jeleva was the Bulgarian member of the EU Parliament, Madame Parvanova, a hawkish looking individual well suited to the role of a conspirator. She was assisted by a Dutch member of the Greens, Madame Sargentini, who was so eager to get her claws into Mrs. Jevela she reminded me of a wolf frothing at the mouth. Her determination to transform the EU hearings into a boxing match led her to forget that such occasions have rules and traditions and require a level of decorum. Still, Ms. Sargentini could be forgiven for having a fresh mouth since she was playing to the Dutch-German Left that had been feeding rumour about Mrs. Jeleva to the media for weeks, all at the behest of the BCP.
For me, witnessing the event from my study in New York, the most depressing part of the tawdry drama was the role played by Madame Parvanova. She was determined to provide other EU nationals with lies to take down a Bulgarian political rival. Part of the tragedy is that she was unconcerned about the damage she was doing to her nation’s image. Her behavior was truly primitive in a fashion familiar to many people in the Balkans. Her modus operandi was based on the premise that you do whatever it takes to discredit the opposition. Now where did she come across that philosophy? It was the ethos of those from whose political loins she and Madame Kuneva came from. Some might say it was an ethos, which encouraged political cannibalism if it served the cause. Parvanova and others created an atmosphere in which it was impossible for Mrs. Jeleva to speak freely at the hearings. Mrs. Jeleva was made to feel like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of hunters bent on her destruction.
What happened on January 12 in Brussels was a spectacle unworthy of Bulgaria as a nation and it will not be easily forgotten or swept aside. At a time when Bulgaria is seeking respectability internationally, Madame Parvanova, along with her acolytes in the shadows, made that more difficult to achieve. Whatever the merits of Mrs. Jeleva’s candidacy for the E.U. Commission, she behaved with dignity whereas her enemies showed that Old Europe is creeping back into the body politic. Bulgarians concerned about the image of their nation internationally should let Madame Parvanova know that they will not permit people like her to expose them up to ridicule for narrow political gain.
Personally, I hope Mrs. Jeleva is appointed to the Commission because it will show that the EU is not prepared to provide a platform for the conspiratorial politics of the Parvanovas and Kunevas of this world and their fellow travelers elsewhere in Europe.

OBAMA'S UNWINNABLE WAR STRATEGY

Despite the plan to send more troops to Afghanistan, the Saudis are still engaged in secret talks with the Taliban to see if a negotiated settlement can be reached. Overall, however, White House strategy for what is an unwinnable war still remains unclear.
The White House seems to believe that if the Taliban can be softened up with a troops surge they will be more likely to accept a NATO brokered agreement. That thesis presumes the Taliban is the kind of enemy that capitulates easily but history has shown otherwise. The reality is that a surge of 30,000 troops means little in a country the size of Afghanistan. It will not radically change the dynamics of the war in favor of NATO.
One thing has become clearer with time and it is that the war in Afghanistan is no longer a war against Al Qaeda. That rationale wore thin when it was clear that Al Qaeda was based in Pakistan and the insurgents fighting NATO in Afghanistan were mostly Taliban from the country’s majority ruling tribe, the Pashtuns – the same Pashtuns who fought the Soviets to a standstill. The Taliban are not all Pashtuns but NATO has been fighting mostly in parts of the country traditionally run by Pashtuns, namely the east and south. Therefore, NATO has found itself up against a traditional Pashtun nationalism that promotes the principle that invaders should be driven out no matter what their reasons for being on Pashtun territory.
While the Obama administration has been unwilling to publicly admit that there can be no victory against the indigenous Pashtuns, it has to be aware that since 2002 the prevailing view among experts and senior British military figures has been that a prolonged war in Afghanistan has to be avoided at all costs because it is unwinnable. In 2002, there were angry voices in Washington when the British High Commissioner in Pakistan told journalists at a reception in Islamabad that Washington and London had agreed to seek a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. There were immediate denials by senior U.S. and British diplomats but the cat was out of the bag.
The High Commissioner stated that negotiations with the Taliban were the only means to end the war and that people should realize there were “good and bad” Taliban and talks with the “good” Taliban were crucial to a way forward. He also pointed out that the Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the top British commander in Afghanistan, shared his views. Throughout the Afghan conflict it has always been the British who have dared to announce publicly that it is a war with no victory. Brig. Carleton-Smith stressed that, while it was militarily possible to manage the Taliban insurgency, troop increases would never deliver a “decisive military victory.” He went so far as to point out that having the Taliban across the table discussing a political settlement was exactly what was needed to end insurgencies of the type NATO faced in Afghanistan. He stressed that people should not feel uncomfortable about the concept of a negotiated settlement. In making that statement he reinforced a long standing tenet of British colonial history, especially in the 20th century that negotiated settlements with insurgents were necessary to end wars in which victory was impossible and defeat inevitable. In 2002, Brig. Carleton-Smith realized that the Taliban and NATO could fight each other to a standstill and no side would win. That is exactly what has happened since 2002, except that this year U.S. generals warned Barack Obama the war was tipping in favor of the Taliban. Some sources have suggested Obama was told that if he wanted to push for a negotiated settlement leading to withdrawal, he would have to temporarily restore the balance of power on the battlefield so he could negotiate from strength, or even parity but time was not on his side.
If that is true, Obama will need to move quickly to begin serious negotiations and divest his administration and Congress of talk of victory and winning. That may not be possible with a Congress that has taken the country into two wars within a decade. Congress has constantly ignored dissenting voices about the potential for failure in Afghanistan. Some of those voices included senior British diplomats like Sherard Cooper Coles, once an ambassador to Washington. In 2009, in a cable to the French ambassador to Kabul, Cooper Coles noted that the Afghan government was not respected by the people and corruption was rife with security deteriorating.
There have been credible reports that the Saudis, who have been acting as intermediaries in talks with elements of the Taliban, have been asked to step up their efforts in 2010. The Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai has recommended talking to the Taliban but he runs a government riddled with corruption. There are well founded suspicions that some of his inner circle would be happy with a prolonged war in which they could continue to reap large profits from U.S. subsidies and be free to run an international drugs trade with protection from NATO.
As for the Taliban, they could see the surge as a challenge, knowing that in the long term public support for NATO’s Afghan war will erode, leading to a prolonged, unpopular war, and eventually a hasty withdrawal of the type the Soviets were forced to make. At the beginning of December 2009, the White House refused to respond to news reports that the Taliban had offered the Obama administration “legal guarantees” that it would not allow Afghanistan territory to be used as a base for attacks on other countries. In return, the Taliban wanted a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The Taliban made the offer in a statement emailed to news organizations and, while no official comment was forthcoming in Washington, the Obama White House appeared to reveal its Afghan strategy in the form of two answers to a question asked by several media outlets. The question was what the response would be if the Taliban by its use of the phrase “legal guarantees meant it would sever ties with Al Qaeda. Defense Sec. Robert Gates said the Taliban would be unlikely to negotiate on U.S. terms until their momentum had been stopped. Sec. of State, Hilary Clinton, also dismissed the idea the Taliban would deliver up Al Qaeda at this stage. The statements of the two White House insiders implied an Obama strategy because on the premise that squeezing the Taliban militarily through his proposed surge would force them to agree to negotiate on U.S. terms. If that is the hand he is playing it will be doomed to fail because it suggests the U.S. position is my road or the high road. In response to such a narrow agenda, the Taliban may offer an alternative – a long, costly, unwinnable war. Time is not on Obama’s side and if he believes a troop surge will change the dynamics of the war in any significant fashion he is misguided. Brig. Carleton Smith was right that sitting down with the Taliban across a table is the only way to negotiate an end to the conflict and withdrawal of NATO. Tie is not on Obama’s side.

BULGARIA'S OLD GUARD GETS UGLY

For those familiar with the tactics of the hard line communists of the past any threat to their sense of privilege or exposure of their abuses of power was met with a vicious whispering campaign of lies against their accusers.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party, formerly known as the Bulgarian Communist Party, has learned how to be nasty by following the example of those who pulled its strings from Moscow for decades. Even though it is presently out of power, it is up to its old tricks. Here is how it operates. A Party figure feeds media outlets in Bulgaria, or other EU member nations, scandalous stories to damage the reputations of those the Party feels are a threat to its power base and to the flow of money it gets from corruption and organized crime. The media outlets run with the stories, thereby giving credence to untruths by printing and circulating them. Before long, those untruths are repeated over and over in the Bulgarian media, with variations of them fed to foreign press and political outlets. Before long, the lies become accepted wisdom.
The tactic is a ploy intelligence agencies use in psychological warfare and it is highly effective in discrediting an enemy. Sometimes, disinformation is placed outside a country from where it originates so that, by the time, it flows back to the host country, the source is difficult to track and the disinformation suddenly acquires credibility by its widespread circulation.
Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister, Mrs. Rumiana Jeleva is the target of such a campaign with its roots in Bulgaria but with manifestations in Germany. She represents what is new and promising about a Bulgaria that too often has been burdened with an international image of a state corrupt from top to bottom with a heavily compromised judiciary. She has made it clear she will not tolerate organized crime or the types of corruption that have caused havoc in her nation’s body politic. As someone, who has written about Bulgaria, and who has a history of reporting on European matters, I have been aware for a long time that the European Commission has been deeply concerned that Bulgaria lacks the political will to stamp out corruption. Like Mrs. Jeleva, there are those in Brussels who know that the communists who ran Bulgaria during the Cold War did not run away when Bulgaria found democracy. Instead, they branded themselves socialists, grabbed everything they could lay their hands on and have been grabbing ever since. They have shown no appetite for reforming the country into a modern democracy by combating corruption and organized crime.
If one takes a good look at many of the Bulgarian power brokers, who represent the tired politics of the communist Old Guard, one does not have to look far. Top of my agenda would be the present European Commissioner, Mrs. Miglena Kuneva, the daughter-in-law of a former member of the Central committee of the BCP – Bulgarian Communist Party. It is a fact that since the advent of the democratic changes, the people in power have been the children or grandchildren of the former communist elite but not so Mrs. Jeleva. She made her own way in life, gaining a PhD. in Sociology in Germany on the road to becoming a politician, without ever being the recipient of BCP nepotism.
When she became Foreign Minister she showed she was ready to confront corruption in her foreign ministry sector. She removed ambassadors from their posts for abusing their power and sacked corrupt ministry officials. Her efforts were applauded outside Bulgaria and she made a big impression on U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who invited her to Washington. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, personally supported her candidacy for the vice-presidency of the European Folk Party and she was warmly received by the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, and by the Pope. Judged by the standards of any other nation, Mrs. Jeleva would have been regarded as a successful advocate for Bulgaria abroad but her success was perceived as a major threat the moment it was clear she was in line to replace the present European Commissioner, Mrs. Kuneva. By all accounts, Mrs. Kuneva was angry when told she would not be reappointed and the news did not sit well with her communist associates at home and abroad.
Almost immediately, a Psyops – psychological operations - campaign was launched against Mrs. Jeleva, beginning with attempts to discredit her and ruin her reputation in Bulgaria and other E.U. countries. The aim was to frighten the European Commission due to rule on her candidacy to succeed Mrs. Kuneva on January 15, 2010. Bulgarian socialists, whom everyone knows are former communists of old, feared Mrs. Jeleva might use the position of Commissioner in Brussels to wage a campaign for greater transparency in her own country and thereby become a cause célèbre for those seeking to end corruption and organized crime in Bulgaria.
Mrs. Jeleva’s enemies began with a vicious, whispering campaign in the Bulgaria media, which too often thrives on conspiracy theories and lacks the journalistic integrity to analyze the information it is fed. Before long, the campaign got really ugly. When her enemies could find nothing to discredit her, they encouraged German media outlets to focus on her husband, accusing him, without any foundation of truth, of being a Mafioso. That generated German headlines such as “Gangster Bride for the E.U. Commission.” The German newspaper, Die Welt, relied on what I like to refer to as the undergraduate school of journalism tactic of repeating unfounded accusations with the phrase “it is rumored that.” A Die Welt journalist employed the phrase several times when regurgitating nasty innuendos about Mrs. Jeleva and her husband, who happens to work in a bank and takes the bus to work every day.
Two weeks before the Die Welt article appeared, Daniel Cohen Bendit, once known as “Danny the Red,” as well as a host of other nicknames to indicate his revolutionary credentials as a young man, publicly stated at a Greens Party meeting in Germany that he expected Jeleva to be questioned by the Commission regarding rumors circulating about her and her husband. Bendit should know all about the rumor factory since he was often its target throughout his political career in France and Germany. Still, the fact he made mention of the lies being circulated showed how far those lies had spread and the impact they were having.
It is not difficult to trace a psychological warfare campaign to its source. All one has to do is to look at those who benefit from it. In Bulgaria, they are the ones who care more about maintaining the status quo and furthering corruption. The attacks on Mrs. Jeleva should also be seen in the context of a serious attempt to undermine Bulgaria’s ruling government, which is the first government to truly display a determination to fight corruption and organized c rime.
As a journalist and author, I have never encouraged people to sue publications but the Die Welt material is an egregious example of a newspaper allowing itself to be used to further a campaign of vicious lies to discredit a genuinely thoughtful politician. I hope Mrs. Jeleva sues the socks off them as they say in New York where I now life. If I were Bulgarian, I would be incensed by this attempt to discredit the nation’s Foreign Minister abroad because it is having the effect of holding Bulgaria up to ridicule. Bulgarian journalists should ferret out those in the shadows who have targeted Mrs. Jeleva. If they succeed, who knows what else they will uncover.