COLLAPSE OF PASKISTAN A REAL DANGER

COLLAPSE OF PAKISTAN
A REAL DANGER


While some countries might benefit from a little more religion, too much religion could soon drive nuclear armed Pakistan into the hands of radical Islamists deeply antagonistic towards America.
The recent assassination of a governor for opposing strict blasphemy laws, which were used perversely against Christians and other non-Muslin believers, highlighted a deep religiosity within all section of Pakistani society. One of the governor’s bodyguards shot him 27 times while his other bodyguards watched. The assassin claimed he carried out the killing in the name of “The Prophet” and was applauded throughout the country, which is 98% Muslim. Tens of thousands demonstrated in support of the assassin, bringing together the most extreme and conservative elements, including groups of lawyers. For those who thought Pakistan was still a secular country there was a lesson to be learned and it is one that should resonate in Washington.
Pakistan is not, as many in Washington would like to believe, a moderate ally supportive of American foreign policy in the region. Instead, with the rise of Islamic extremism, there has been a growing anti-Americanism even as the country and its military benefits from yearly grants of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. The U.S. mainstream media has rarely shown any understanding of developing problems within Pakistan, especially the rising tide of extremism, much of it fueled by opposition from all sections of the society to the continued U.S. drone targeting of Taliban within the country’s borders. Little attention has also paid to Pakistan’s growing military links to China.
For the West, and for that region of the world, the real danger is Pakistan tearing itself apart because of the extreme religious fervor gripping its population. Opposition to the blasphemy laws brought together the Taliban and opposing militant Sunni sects, which make up more than 80% of the population, as well as Shiites, who often complain of persecution by Sunnis. Since the assassination of the governor, the voice of moderation has been silent further illustrating the fear secularists have of confronting such a wide ranging political bandwagon. Worrying for the judicial authorities is the fact the assassin was an officer from an elite police protection organization, which expressed praise for his actions. More than one thousand lawyers from a legal group until now considered liberal protested in his favor, further confirming the deep malaise within Pakistani society.
Since 9/11, America has poured tens of billions of dollars into Pakistan, all the time focused on how to persuade Pakistan’s military and intelligence agency, the ISI, to do Washington’s bidding in its war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Forgotten in Washington is how the ISI has always secretly controlled Afghanistan and that Pashtuns, who make up the Taliban, exist in very large numbers in Pakistan’s border regions and are naturalized Pakistanis. Therefore, by continuing to insist Pakistan fight its own people, Washington risks plunging Pakistan into a civil war. None of that has seemed to matter to members of Congress who protest privately, and often publicly, America is not getting bang for the buck in respect of Pakistan’s commitment to the so-called War on Terror. U.S. generals and others have complained the Pakistani military has not done enough to deal with extremists on its own soil.
Several years ago, that same Washington mentality led to a Bush policy, since expanded by Obama, of using the CIA to launch an unknown number of drone missile attacks within Pakistan. U.S. Special forces have also operated within Pakistan, seizing, detaining and assassinating targets. Pentagon estimates for the numbers of drone missile attacks are difficult to come by but media reports have sometimes put the figure at around 150, though in reality it could be well over 200. Those attacks, allied to efforts by Pakistan’s military operations against the Pakistani Taliban, have generated unheralded levels of anti-Americanism and have fed growing religious extremism throughout the country.
NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave behind a Pakistan riddled with deep antagonism towards America and a fast growing Islamic militancy. Over the years, Washington strategists have been too focused on what Pakistan can deliver militarily against the Taliban and have ignored the emergence of an educated class that favors a brand of Islam, closely resembling Wahabbism. During the 1980s, the religious education of the country’s middle class developed alongside Islam’s role in defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Islamic fervor that war induced has been revived as America’s war in Afghanistan has expanded to include attacks within Pakistan. For too long, growing religiosity in Pakistan, linked to political radicalism, went unnoticed in Washington circles as did the fact more and more of the country’s young military officers were strict Muslims. Some of them were educated in Wahabbi Madrasahs. There is growing concern among English-speaking Pakistani military elites that over time the army, which has kept Pakistan secular since its creation by the British in August 1949, may not be able to hold the line against the rise of radical Islam, especially as its ranks, and those of police forces and the judiciary, become infected with extremists spreading a religious virus.

ISRAEL'S MOSSAD NO LONGER INVINCIBLE

There was a time when the very mention of Mossad, Israel’s premier spy agency, sent shivers through its friends and enemies alike. It had an almost mythical status and its highly trained assassins were the stuff of Hollywood legend.
Mossad agents, male and female would be parachuted into a country or would arrive on its coastline from a submarine or fishing trawler. Teams providing technical back-up and other logistical support, including vehicles and escape routes, would already be in place. Kidon, as the agency’s assassins were known, would use guns, knives, chemical weapons, or secret means of assassination, which left few forensic traces. They even knew how to conceal a bomb in a target’s phone and activate it with a phone call. Their stealth and success at killing targets across the globe made their enemies fear them. Mossad spies also had a legendary status. Some were sleeper agents for decades, living a lie in other communities and waiting for a phone call or coded letter to activate them.
It has therefore come as a shock to the Israeli public and spy watchers across the globe that Mossad is showing signs it is no longer the invincible agency it was once cracked up to be. While much of its glamour and the fear factor it generated were promoted by Mossad itself, until recently it still had an unparalleled record achieving its goals.
Now, it can now be argued it has become cocky and overstretched. A former British intelligence officer, who spoke to American Free Press on condition of anonymity, felt Mossad had fallen into the trap of thinking it was so superior to its enemies it did not need to worry about them. In his view, it failed to recognize Israel has fewer friends across the globe and mistakes by Mossad, which might have been glossed over in the past, are now more likely to make headlines.
“Mossad was never going to maintain the level of success it once had because countries it targeted in the past have improved their intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities. Mossad has taken on more tasks that it can handle with the assets available to it. There is a finite limit to the number of jobs any agency can handle because training agents for work in the field is a costly, time-consuming job and top class talent is limited. Few people realize Israel’s growing dependency on the CIA for running ops in the Middle East is a sign of Mossad’s limitations,” the former British Intel officer explained.
The assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai in January 2010 was an operation the former Intel officer singled out as an example of Mossad’s decline. The 11-person hit team that carried out the Dubai killing was caught on camera and the agents’ identities compromised. So too was the way they operated, using fake passports and credit cards supplied by private American financial institutions. The operational base used for the hit was located in Europe, and not Israel, but even some of the people who ran it are now known to the German authorities. The former British spy has this to say about the Dubai hit:
“By any calculation, it was a disaster and it did a lot of damage to Mossad. Having those operatives on camera and later on an Interpol wanted list means their training was wasted. They are of no further value in the field. For that to happen was proof, if anybody needed it, that Mossad had become sloppy and overconfident.”
There is now evidence Mossad was recently been dealt an even bigger blow by the exposure of ten of its spies in Iran where it has been busy running a dirty war with the direct assistance of the CIA and U.S. Special Ops agencies. One element of this undercover war has been the targeted assassinations and abductions of Iranian scientists and other Iranian nuclear experts. Some of the Mossad-CIA operatives used in Iran were trained at a joint Mossad-CIA facility within an Israeli base close to Herzliya on the Mediterranean Sea coastline. The base is classified within CIA files as one of a number of U.S. military/intelligence sites in Israel. The sites have numbers from 51 through 56. Most of the sites contain military and technical equipment to be used in the event of a war with Iran but the one at Herzliya is also reserved for managing combined CIA-Mossad ops aimed at Iran.
Mossad and the CIA appear to have underestimated their Iranian counterparts because it took just one year for Iran’s internal security apparatus to unmask the spy network, which Iran says was involved in killing one of its scientists. Among the spies seized was a young man, who admitted he was trained by Mossad in electronic surveillance and counter surveillance, as well as in techniques for attaching bombs to cars. Israel did not deny Iran’s claims about the spy network. In the past year, Iranian intelligence has also captured and executed the leaders, and senior fighters, of the Jundullah terror network, which has been used by America and Israel against Iran. Much to the consternation of Mossad and the CIA, Pakistan has begun handing over Jundullah fighters it has captured to the Iranian military.

ONLY AN EMPIRE NEEDS BASES

At its zenith, the Roman Empire used military bases to assert its power in lands it conquered and Britain later did the same in its colonies. That appears to be the aim of the Pentagon, which has continued to build and expand military bases across the globe a time when the Obama administration is heralding a withdrawal from Iraq and a planned exit from Afghanistan.
In Iraq alone, the slow withdrawal has not prevented the Pentagon from planning for a future military presence in the country by updating some of the bases there to add clout to a large CIA presence housed in the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad. There is even talk of building a similar embassy in Afghanistan, as well as hardened sites to accommodate a reduced U.S. military presence well beyond the projected pull-out.
It is difficult to find an exact figure for the number of overseas military, naval and air bases, or to discover the cost of maintaining them. It is estimated there may be upwards of 1,000 known bases, with additional installations listed only on highly classified files. Among some of the overseas secret installations are CIA black ops centers and private prisons.
The sheer reach of the U.S. military complex is immense, especially in the Middle East where there are bases of varying sizes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Israel. Qatar, which has 200,000 citizens and twice as many foreign workers, has become a major U.S. military hub. Its Al Udeid air base is a major cog for handling intelligence gleaned from satellite and AWACs. Some operations previous dealt with at the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia have been moved to Qatar. Plans are believed to be under way to establish new facilities in Morocco and Algeria in order to further extend the U.S. reach in that part of the world. Nowhere in the Middle East, or the Horn of Africa, is insignificant when it comes to the eyes of Pentagon planners. A case in point would be the expanded naval base, Camp Lemonier, in the tiny nation of Djibouti, located between Yemen and Somalia.
Aside from strategic significance, the U.S. military presence in many countries has gone hand in hand with weapons sales. For example, Saudi Arabia is reputed to have spent up to $20 billion over several decades. Also rarely mentioned are secret supply centers for use in the event of conflict in various parts of the globe. For example, the Pentagon has financed the construction of underground weapons bunkers in countries like Israel, Jordan and Bahrain where a major naval project is close to completion. There are many new bases too in Eastern Europe, especially in areas formerly part of the Soviet Union. In all, there are few places across the globe where one cannot detect an American military footprint. One of the startling things about this empire basing mentality is the American people are never consulted and are rarely informed about the construction of overseas bases and their staggering costs. It should not be surprising to anyone that most overseas installations are close to countries with energy resources.
That means the Obama administration will be keeping a watching eye on the continuing unrest in on the Middle East. Any sign of trouble in Saudi Arabia would undoubtedly set alarm bells ringing in Washington because the House of Saud sits on the world’s largest oil reserves. Israel too would be concerned about a threat to the Saudi royals since they have had their tacit support to use Saudi airspace to bomb Iran. In fact, the House of Saud has pleaded with Israel and the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military infrastructure.
If there was political unrest in Saudi Arabia from the country’s Shia minority, the Saudi military would stamp it out and it is unlikely the Obama White House would defend the protesters as it did when people took to the streets in Cairo. The hard fact is Tel Aviv and Washington care more about Saudi’s royal despots than they ever did Mubarak. The House of Saud holds the energy card and will be the major Arab player with Mubarak gone. When all is said and done, the Saudi royals, who are Sunni Arabs, see everything in black and white, even religion. They preach hatred against Shias, who are Persian, and are not especially keen on Christians either. It is always their way or the highway and they play tough. They once told their friends, Dick Cheney and George Bush if the U.S. ever pulled all its troops out of Iraq they would arm Iraq’s Sunnis.

MERCENARIES - GLOBAL MARKET- NEW IMAGE

MERCENARIES – GLOBAL MARKET
NEW IMAGE


They are no longer called soldiers of fortune or mercenaries because the Pentagon has rebranded them Private Military Companies and created a global market for their skills. But when all is said and done, they are hired guns not bound by international rules of war, who only answer to a complex web of global corporations.
Private Military Companies, or PMCs as they are known in the war trade, are capable of putting a small army on the ground anywhere in the world with the most modern equipment and highly trained soldiers of all nationalities. They will also provide jet fighter training, cyber warfare capabilities, diplomatic protection units, port protection and specialist assassination teams, or as some in that business like to call them “specific targeting mission units.” Just as they have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, PMCs have teams of interrogators for hire, with expertise in in-depth interrogations techniques. In effect, they can do everything a small nation might require of its military, intelligence agencies, Special Forces, air force and navy. While it is difficult to assess the numbers of mercenaries across the globe, it would not be unreasonable to conclude from available data there are at least 1.5 million, with 500,000 fully employed.
Killing for profit has become a lucrative business and to put it any other way would be to ignore the fact mercenaries are, as a rule, soldiers who have been trained to kill in regular armies and Special Forces. They have skills to sell, which are in high demand in a global recession. For America, which has been fighting two wars and running special counter-insurgency operations far and wide, it has been cheaper to hire mercenaries, who are not paid pensions or guaranteed long term medical care. The new reality is America, with support from Britain, has formalized the privatization of modern conflicts, small and large, as well as the security industry internationally.
The Pentagon and State Department have never produced exact figures for the numbers of mercenaries they have employed, though most estimates put the figure at over 150,000, and possibly as high as 250,000 during the height of the Iraq War. Without those boots on the ground, fulfilling a wide range of functions, America would not have been able to conduct two wars simultaneously and also undertake military and classified Special Forces ops in countries like Algeria, Yemen, Somalia and Iran, not to mention traditional commitments in S. Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
The role of mercenaries was back in the news recently with claims Blackwater Worldwide, also known as Xe, a major PMC that has earned close to $1 billion from Pentagon, CIA and State Department, was being funded by Middle East “interests” to train an anti-piracy army in Somalia. The region mentioned was Puntland, an independent part of Somalia, from where the country’s pirates operate. It was reported Xe, whose founder, former SEAL Erik Prince is now living in Abu Dhabi, had linked up with Saracen International, another big PMC registered in Beirut, to handle the Somali contract. Saracen was formerly Executive Outcomes, one of the most notorious mercenary outfits to emerge from the post Apartheid era in South Africa. One of its founders, who helped create Saracen, is Lafras Luitingh, whose military career included a long stint as a major in South Africa’s Civil Cooperation Bureau – CCB – an arm of the country’s Special Forces during Apartheid. The CCB was later shown to have carried out many authorized assassinations though the exact figure was never known. Saracen and XE function through a web of companies worldwide, making it difficult to know who owns and controls them.
Both Xe and Saracen have been reluctant to concede any involvement in Somalia but even if they are it is just one contract. The fact is they have plenty of countries, companies and corporations vying for their skills. Erik Prince was alleged to have offered the CIA the use of an antipiracy vessel he had designed with a drone capability, high-powered weapons and the speed to out-run anything the pirates possessed. These companies are innovative and are in competitive markets. Across Eastern Europe, from Yugoslavia to Bulgaria former soldiers are applying to join PMCs.
After 2001, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw helped the Bush-Cheney strategy of rebranding mercenaries, first as military contractors and finally PMCs. Straw even suggested in a policy paper to parliament that the U.N. could save a lot of money by using PMCs rather than soldiers from national armies. The rebranding has been so-successful since 2001 that Obama has been able to spend heavily employing mercenaries. The tragedy is American taxpayers are funding private armies controlled by corporations, many of them not even registered in the United States.

ISRAEL READIES TO STRIKE

Israel has exploited the global fixation with the Libyan crisis to break a range of international laws while it secretly weighs the benefits of launching a second invasion of Gaza, or starting another war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The laws Israel has broken range from the planned construction of hundreds more Jewish settler homes on Palestinian land to the launching of a missile attack inside Sudan. The Sudan attack, which killed two men in a car near Sudan’s main port city, was carried out by Apache helicopters firing missiles of a type used only by Israel. The Sudanese government said it was an infringement of its territorial integrity and an attempt to drive a wedge between Sudan and Washington, following the normalizing of relations between the two countries. Before the attack, Israel blocked radar Sudan uses to track civilian aircraft in its own airspace. Some experts said the move could have led to a mid-air collision and exemplified Israel’s cynical use of military power. It was the second time in two years the Israeli military carried out attacks within Sudan. In 2009, it used missiles to target a convoy of cars it claimed were part of an arms smuggling operation.
Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, has also been busy running one of its familiar rendition operations, this time abducting a Palestinian engineer, Dirar Abu Sisi, in Ukraine and secretly transporting him to Israel. Sisi was responsible for redesigning Gaza’s only electrical power plant to run on diesel supplied by Egypt, making it less reliant on Israeli fuel supplies. His wife, who is Ukrainian, claims her husband was in her country applying for citizenship for him and his children because he thought Gaza was too dangerous for his family. On February 19, 2011, he vanished after being taken from a train by two men, claiming to be Ukrainian State Security agents. The Ukrainian government denied involvement in his disappearance and referred the matter to the U.N. On April 4, 2011, he reappeared in a court in Israel charged with being a Hamas rocket specialist. The Israelis alleged Hamas sent him to Ukraine to study Scud missile technology. The Palestinian Authority said his abduction was yet another classic example of Israel committing an “international crime.”
Meanwhile, there has been an increasing clamor in Israel for tougher action against Hamas and it has led to Israeli missile attacks on Gaza that have killed Hamas members and injured scores of civilians, including children. The excessive use of Israeli power, which a response to a recent Hamas rocket attack that injured an Israeli boy, signaled a growing desire by the Israeli government to launch another Gaza invasion. Such a move would draw the ire of surrounding Arab states and outright condemnation by Turkey and EU nations. Turkey has made it clear to Washington it will, under no circumstances, normalize relations with Israel while it acts like a bully.
Were Israel to launch an Operation Cast Lead II invasion of Gaza it knows it would likely face retaliation from Hezbollah, a Hamas ally. With that in mind, there are signs Israel is preparing to deal with Hezbollah, which gave the Israeli military a bloody nose in 2006. In a move, which smacks of Israel justifying military action before it begins, the Israeli military has circulated a map it says shows 1,000 Hezbollah underground sites in Lebanon. It claims the sites are for weapons storage and forward targeting and are in 270 villages beside civilian facilities, including schools and hospitals. In other words, if Israel bombs the sites in the near future, causing massive civilian casualties, it will say it warned Hezbollah it put the lives of ordinary Lebanese in harm’s way by locating its facilities near civilian structures.
Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has warned he will send forces into Israel if it attacks Lebanon. He also made it clear he possesses rockets capable of striking Tel Aviv. Hamas and Hezbollah both suspect Israel is gearing up for military action against them because it does not have Washington’s approval at this time to strike at Iran because of the tense political climate across swathes of the Middle East.

IRAQ EXIT TIED TO ISRAELI WAR PLANS?

IRAQ EXIT
TIED TO ISRAELI WAR PLANS?


White House pronouncements about an exit from Iraq may be more premature than at first thought because the U.S. military presence in that country is much larger than the Obama administration is prepared to admit. The reluctance of the White House and Pentagon to provide an accurate figure for our military footprint in Iraq, as well as neighboring nations like Jordan, may relate to credible reports Israel is preparing for conflict in 2011.

In 2010, the White House and the Iraqi leadership made much of the planned U.S. exit from Iraq, claiming U.S. troops would be withdrawn before the end of 2011 but like all such agreements the devil was in the detail. For example, the arrangement to exit Iraq embraced a continued, but considerably reduced, U.S. military presence for the sole purpose of training the Iraqi army. In the autumn of 2010, the Pentagon claimed to have 48,000 American military personnel in Iraq, the other nations of the once vaunted Bush coalition having withdrawn their soldier’s a long time ago. What the Pentagon statement failed to disclose was the number of contractor personnel within Iraq’s borders. That omission was significant since the U.S. military presence in any theater of conflict nowadays includes contractors. After Barach Obama became president, there was an increased recruitment of mercenaries, both American and foreign, employed by the Defense Department. By the close of 2009, it was estimated the increase was as high as 23% in Iraq alone.
In 2009, the Pentagon did not dispute reports that the total number of contractors working alongside the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq totaled 242,647. However, in 2011, the true figure for the size of this new standing army could well be 300,000 if one includes contractor companies providing personnel for diplomatic protection duties and for ports and other security assignments on American soil. There are also contractor units working abroad for the CIA and a range of classified Special Forces and intelligence agencies
In Iraq, the true figure for the size of the U.S. military footprint could exceed 100,000. It is certainly not the 48,000 claimed by the Pentagon. The reason is that within CENTOM AOR – Area of Responsibility – the ratio of contractors to soldiers is generally 1:1 and sometimes 2:1.
Our military footprint in Iraq may be linked to the fact the Israeli military is secretly planning for conflicts in the Middle East in 2011. Therefore, it is unlikely the Pentagon will be willing to draw down the total complement of U.S. military personnel, including contractors, in Iraq. Recently, there have been credible reports Israel’s Defense Forces have plans for wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The reason for Israel’s desire to attack both groups is that Israeli military strategists see them as Iran’s allies, who could prove to be a thorn in Israel’s side the moment it attacks Iran. The Israeli thesis is attacks against Hamas and Hezbollah will weaken Iran’s future potential for retaliation. The fact there is little international appetite for an Israeli strike against Iran at the present time has forced Israel to reset what it perceives as more manageable objectives. Hezbollah in particular represents for the Israeli military and political establishment unfinished business and Hamas was not destroyed after the last Israeli campaign in Gaza.
One has to ask why Obama would chose keep 100,000 or more U.S. military personnel in Iraq going into 2011. The answer may be two-fold. First, he may be aware of Israel’s plans to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah and such a move could lead to attacks on American assets throughout the region. The same would be true, but on much more serious scale, if Israel suddenly targeted Iran. Washington must be aware the extreme Israeli administration led by Benyamin Netanyahu is capable of ignoring international opposition and attacking Iran without Washington’s approval. But, irrespective of Obama’s military strategy, one truth emerges from our continued presence in Iraq and it is the promise of an exit is as much a myth as the claim of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

CHINA'S PLANS TO SCARE AMERICA

CHINA’S PLANS
TO FRIGHTEN
AMERICA


China is convinced it will have the ability to strike and possibly destroy every American military base in the East China region within a decade. Its aim is to ensure America will not be able to come to the aid of allies like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Chinese military strategists already have a plan to prove to Washington a conventional war with China would be unwinnable. Their overall objective is to shut the U.S. military out of East Asia by 2020.
If any of that seems far-fetched, or scare mongering, it certainly is not. Evidence now available to American military analysts confirms China is moving ahead quickly with the development of a powerful anti-ship ballistic missile with the potential to strike U.S. destroyers and more significantly aircraft carriers, which would be the floating platforms for an American military response should war break out between China and an American ally in East Asia.
The most obvious sign of China’s future intent is the rate at which it is building an offensive capability to threaten U.S. forward deployment forces and bases using massive quantities of conventional missiles of every kind. It already has a stockpile of missiles targeted at U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea. America’s two South Korean bases, Osan and Kusan, are only 250 miles from China. Presently, they have 1,000 theater ballistic missiles and 700 cruise missiles aimed at them. The American military also operates from three Japanese bases, Kadena, Misawa and Yakota. The Kadena base is approximately 400 miles from the Chinese mainland and the others two no more than 700 miles. China has 250 theater ballistic missiles and 1,000 cruise missiles targeted at those sites. While the Chinese lack theater ballistic missiles capable of striking Andersen air base on Guam, 3,000 miles away in the Pacific, within a few years that will change as China upgrades its bomber force and air-refueling abilities.
China’s near term strategy is a clever one fraught with risks. However, Peoples Liberation Army strategists believe it will succeed, if only because Washington will do everything to avoid a conventional war. In order to exploit what they see as Washington’s timidity, the Chinese have already begun to set in motion the creation of an area of denial. In other words, an area in which the Chinese will, over time, deny the U.S. military access. The steps to achieving that have begun and they involve several interlinking facets. First, China has moved ahead rapidly with a massive expansion of its convention missile arsenal. Those missiles, all of them with an offensive capability, will be aimed at U.S. bases. China is letting Washington know it is assembling its new strike potential in order to display what would happen in the event the American military coming to the aid of Japan or Taiwan. By making Washington nervous, China expects the Pentagon to situate its forces closer to Guam. That would then make it exceedingly difficult for those forces to be effective in a conflict.
Little attention has been paid to China’s expansion of its cruise missile arsenal, especially the land attack variety. The Department of Defense recently told Congress that it had suddenly discovered the Chinese had expanded its arsenal of land attack missiles with a 1,000 mile range by as much as 30% in one year. It had also increased the numbers of a new air-launched cruise missile, therefore giving jet fighters and bombers a stand-off strike capability. The Dept. of Defense was unable to confirm how many of the new cruise missiles were in service.
China has spent the past decade getting ready to fight a conventional war with America. According to the Department of Defense, China possesses the “world’s largest and most lethal short range ballistic missile force in the world.” Chinese military leaders know they would lose a conventional war were it to be fought today so they are working hard to change the balance of power. They feel sure by 2020 America will have no appetite for a war with China and will have been so convinced by then of that reality it will have reduced its military footprint in the region. That is a gamble the Chinese appear willing to take, including another that America will not go nuclear if Japan is on the verge of being overwhelmed by Chinas military.
A growing facet of China’s denial of area strategy, or as it could be defined, its setting of new boundaries, has been its belligerence on the high seas of the region. That too has been aimed at making America and its allies nervous and it has succeeded. In order to avoid conflict, the U.S. navy has begun retreating to areas China has determined are on the periphery of its area of denial.
The bottom line is China wants to be in a position to exercise total control of the seas around it by 2020. It hopes the more it builds an offensive capability threatening every U.S. military asset in the region the more America will back off, not wanting a conventional war it could easily lose. Chinese logic is that success will come from Washington accepting a conventional war with China would be unwinnable. Of course, China has not calculated on what it might lose in such a war or that America could prove to be more militarily resilient than China thinks.

SAUDIS RISK INCITING RELIGIOUS WAR

SAUDIS RISK
INCITING RELIGIOUS WAR

Propping up a Sunni dictator was not the main reason the Saudis sent tanks into neighboring Bahrain. Their real aim was to strike at Iran by suppressing the majority Shite population in Bahrain. They also wanted to send a message to Saudi Shiites that if they protest, they will do so at their peril.
The House of Saud, a close ally of Washington and Israel, has been the most divisive Arab nation in decades, spreading Wahabbism, the most militant form of Islam, through the Middle East and Asia. One of the tenets of Wahabbism is that Sunnis are heretics, very much on a par with Christians. Saudi riches created the Madrasah schools from which many of Al Qaeda’s fighters emerged and the oil rich Kingdom was the home to the majority of the 9/11 hijackers.
The movement of Saudi forces into Bahrain marked the first time an Arab nation sent troops and tanks into a neighboring Persian Gulf country. The response from nations like Iran, Lebanon and Iraq, which have majority Shiite populations, was outrage. They believe Tel Aviv and Washington encouraged the Saudis to prop up the dictatorship in Bahrain because they did not want to see another Shiite-run state in the region. The White House claimed the president was not consulted by the Saudis but that was met with derision in Iraq and Iran. Any military movements across borders in the Middle East cannot happen without the Israelis and the Pentagon knowing about them. There is so much surveillance from air, land and sea military columns leaving Saudi territory would have popped up on a computer screen in the U.S. 5th Fleet H.Q. in Bahrain. The Fleet, which is stationed there with the express purpose of spying on Iran, would have been alerted once Saudi tanks and armored personnel carriers headed for the border with Bahrain.
Some Saudi news outlets conveniently reported Washington had not been informed, insisting Saudi King Abdullah made the decision after talks with the al-Khalifa royals in Bahrain. Behind the scenes, Washington would have had every reason to support a Saudi decision to providing military backing for its neighbor. After unrest in Tunisia spread to Egypt it quickly became clear Obama was happy to support protest movements in those nations, and military action in Libya, but Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen were off-limits. Protesters in those nations would get no support from Washing even if they were beaten, rounded up, tortured and shot in the streets. From Obama’s perspective, those three “friendly” dictatorships were important to his foreign policy. Saudi Arabia was the biggest oil producer and Bahrain was home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. As for Yemen it was not important if its forces were gunning down protesters as long as it continued to back America’s counter insurgency war in the Arabian Gulf.
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who rarely makes public pronouncements joined Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, in warning the Saudis they were in danger of provoking sectarian strife throughout the region. Perhaps that is exactly what the Saudis are hoping for in the months ahead. Their goal may be to draw Iran into retaliating or supplying the Shiite opposition in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia with weapons. That would make it easier for the Saudis and the Bahrain royals to use excessive force against Shiites in their own countries. Such a policy would suit Israel’s strategy of fomenting divisions and thereby weakening its neighbors. Nevertheless, like the Israelis, the Bahraini and Saudi royals see Iran as the source of all ills in the region and have been waiting for an opportunity to strike out at the Shiites in their midst. Their suppression of Shiites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain could, however, generate a rising tide of sectarianism, which might destabilize the entire region and result in Sunnis and Shiites slaughtering each other from Lebanon to Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.
One of the glaring ironies of the ongoing strife in the Middle East is how the region is awash with weapons supplied by the world’s major arms dealers, including the ones who agreed to bomb Libya, namely the U.S., France and Britain. The weapons Gaddafi has used against his own people were bought from the U.S., France, Britain, Israel, China and Russian. The weapons provided to his opponents, via the Saudis, will have been bought by the Saudis on the international market. They will be reimbursed by Britain, France and the U.S. No matter which regime falls or rises, the global arms industry benefits. It supports both sides and is always looking for new customers. Whoever replaces Gaddafi will be encouraged to spend oil revenues on military hardware while ordinary people remain trapped in poverty.

Missed POSTS:-

THREAT TO CHRISTIANS
A STARK REALITY


The State Department’s sudden concern about Christians in Egypt, Iraq and Nigeria is a little late in coming given how the persecution of Christian communities has been gaining momentum since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the Middle East alone, as many as 500,000 Christians have fled Iraq in the last seven years and there is an ongoing attempt to force Christians to leave neighboring countries such as Syria and Egypt. Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Christian population numbered 800,000, representing 3% of the population. Then, it was a secular society and Christians did not feel under threat. The U.S. invasion and subsequent overthrow of Saddam changed all of that and plunged the country into a sectarian cauldron. Ever since, Christians and their churches have been under threat from Muslim extremists, especially, but not exclusively, Al Qaeda. The Catholic archbishop of Baghdad is on record claiming we are witnessing the decline and death of Christianity in the Middle East. His warning is credible considering the fact one hundred years ago Christians represented 20% of the Middle East population whereas the figure today is closer to 5% and dramatically falling.
Most experts looking at the recent explosion of anti-Christian feelings and the persecution of Christians believe they are a direct result of U.S. policies in the region, including Washington’s unquestioning support for Israel and its inhumane treatment of Palestinians. Some say the problem is wider in that Muslims associate Arab Christians with a West, which has supported dictatorships throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The State Department only made its feelings public after the New Year’s Day attack on a Coptic Christian Church in Alexandria, Egypt, in which twenty-one worshippers died. That happened months after the slaughter of Christians in a Baghdad cathedral, leaving many to wonder why Washington had not spoken out earlier about the threats facing Christians across the Middle East and also in countries like Pakistan.
Another irony of the State Department’s posturing is that it should have intervened before now to let Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, know he cannot continue to receive massive American finding if he persists in treating his country’s Christians as second class citizens. By doing so he is in effect depicting them to Muslims as lesser beings. Egypt has 8 to 10 million Coptic Christians but they are denied the rights of Muslims in education, the judiciary and property ownership yet the Copts existed in Egypt prior to the emergence of Islam. According to the Middle East Quarterly, in an attempt to avoid discrimination, 50,000 Coptic university graduates became Muslims in a two-year period.
The focus, however, should not be restricted to the Middle East because the ant-Christian violence from that region has spread into Islamic communities worldwide and the State Department has made no attempt to acknowledge it. Two of the most dangerous countries for Christians today are Pakistan and Nigeria. In the case of Pakistan, it survives on billions of dollars of U.S. aid and Western oil companies have a big stake in Nigeria.
Pakistan has experienced a rising tide of attacks on Christians since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and hundreds of CIA drone attacks against Taliban elements within Pakistan’s tribal belt. Pakistan also has a blasphemy law, which is directed at Christians and other religious groupings. It is a piece of legislation, which should have no place in a society that claims to be democratic and is our ally. The more the Obama expands his military campaign into parts of Pakistan the more violence likely Christians there will suffer.
From the Horn of Africa to Nigeria, the persecution of Christians has gained momentum with the spread of militant Islam. The greatest danger is the religious war between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria spreading across the continent. On March 7, 2010, more than 500 Christian men, women, children and babies were hacked or burned to death in villages south of Jos in the middle of the country. The bigger picture is that more than 60,000 people on both sides of the religious divide may have been killed in the past decade. It is believed the largest numbers of dead were Christians and, to the dismay of most observers on the ground, the authorities have failed to bring the perpetrators to justice. In fact, Nigeria’s military is a brutal, ill-disciplined force detested by Christians and Muslims alike. Many extreme Islamic groups, including Al Qaeda, regard Nigeria as the ideal breeding ground for their plans to spread an anti-Christian message across Africa. That spells a real danger the West must address sooner rather than later.
Christians face an uneasy and troubled existence in most Islamic nations across the globe yet the Middle East nation that embraces Christians, and to which many Iraqi and Egyptian Christians have fled, is Lebanon. Its constitution mandates its president, who is also the commander of the armed forces, must be a Maronite Christian. Not surprisingly, Washington’s support for Israel has made life difficult for Lebanese Christians, who suffered as much as Muslims when the Israelis carpet bombed town and cities in 2006 and contaminated large swathes of the countryside farmed by Christians with cluster bomb droplets supplied by Washington.

ISRAELI LOBBY A FOREIGN AGENT?

Declassified FBI files show that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is the most powerful lobby group in Washington, was stealing U.S. secrets as far back as 1984.
While that revelation will come as no surprise to those who have closely observed more recent spying operations by AIPAC, it should nonetheless call into question why this organization still operates openly on Capitol Hill while representing a foreign power, namely the Government of the State of Israel. The new disclosures help highlight the fact that since 1984, AIPAC has grown more powerful politically. It could be argued it is in a position to shape U.S. Middle East policy. In the past, some of its leaders have boasted that it had the means to effect the appointments of Secretaries of State.
The newly declassified FBI files relate to theft of U.S. government documents in 1984, just prior to negotiations over a proposed American-Israel Free Trade Agreement. The documents provided Israel with an outline of the White House negotiating position, thereby giving Israel a decided edge in the final passage of the agreement. According to IRmep, the Institute for Research-Middle Eastern Policy, which published the FBI files online, the subsequent 1984 agreement “wrought massive economic harm to American businesses and workers.” Another assessment concluded that it was “one of the most “unfavorable of all U.S. bi-lateral trade agreements, producing chronic deficits, lack of U.S. market access to Israel and ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property.”
The damage to the American economy happened because AIPAC “spies” linked up with Mossad agents based in the Israeli Embassy, Washington. It was a strategy that has been repeated many times since. In 1984, as the FBI quickly discovered, AIPAC members not only passed classified papers to Mossad but also circulated them to members of Congress, thereby compromising the White House negotiating position. The result was that U.S. trade barriers were lifted on all the products Israel wished to export to the American market but Israeli barriers were kept in place for many America goods. The result is that over the years that one-sided agreement led to America having an $80 billion trade deficit with Israel.
Not surprisingly, given AIPAC’s influence even in 1984, none was charged with espionage, or with the theft of the trade agreement documents. Apparently, the Justice Department concluded that espionage statutes were not broken because the material in question was not related to national security issues. As for the theft, it was not deemed serious enough to merit criminal charges. As we now know, 1984 was not to be the last time AIPAC would steal U.S. secrets. The most recently publicized example was the 2005 theft of classified Defense Department documents on Iran that found their way via two AIPAC executives to a Mossad agent at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Charges against those executives were eventually dropped.
Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, believes the real issue is that, for nearly 50 years, there has been sufficient evidence for defining and regulating AIPAC as the agent of a foreign government. He says the moment AIPAC “supplanted” the American Zionist Council as “the arm of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United states” it became a foreign agent. His argument is a simple one and it goes something like this. In 1962, the American Zionist Council was ordered by the Justice Department to file as a foreign agent under U.S. 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. Seeing the game was up with its American activities, the AZC disbanded and within six weeks morphed into the AIPAC. Its creator was Isaiah Kennen, who just happened to be the senior figure in the Israeli Ministry of Information office in New York.
Grant Smith argues that if AIPAC was forced to register as a foreign agent there would be greater public transparency surrounding its activities. In particular, the average American would be entitled to know everything about its financial dealings, including how it spent its money, the identities of its financial backers, the organizations and politicians it lobbied and the nature of the links between its American and Israeli operations. The case for registering AIPAC as a foreign agent was made by Senator William Fulbright almost four decades ago but few members of Congress have openly agreed with his view. Nowadays, it would be unheard of for a member of Congress to suggest such as thing without facing the wrath of AIPAC, which frequently posts online the political positions adopted by members of the House and Senate regarding Israel related matters.
As it stands, AIPAC is operating under the public radar, furthering its professed aim to lobby and influence Congress on all matters related to the way Israel sees the world. In recent years, it has been particularly busy behind the scenes, shaping American policy on Iran in particular. That effort has included feeding stories into the mainstream media that support Israel’s view that tougher sanctions against Iran should be followed by U.S. military action. For example, the 2005 spying episode involving AIPAC executives and Col. Larry Franklin, a Defense Dept. analyst, was centered on classified documents outlining U.S. thinking on Iran. Mossad used those documents to forge a two-tier strategy. One part of tit was to use the documents to influence members of Congress, thereby compromising White House thinking on the issue. The second part was the leaking of selected material from the documents to media outlets to inflame American public thinking on Iran. The aim was to force the White House to adopt an Iran policy more in keeping with Israel’s.
In any other nation, that kind of activity by an organization claiming to be a political lobbying body would not be tolerated. But, such is the power of AIPAC on Capitol Hill, and within some sections of the mainstream media, no one dares speak its name in vain. At its annual meeting in Washington it can command the presence of more than 120 members of Congress and prominent members of the Executive branch. Its power in ensuring Israel gets the financial aid it needs from Congress is self evident in the billions of taxpayer dollars Israel receives annually and those do not include billions in military aid. And while Congress talks about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, no mention is made of the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or that it possesses a massive nuclear arsenal built on the theft of U.S. nuclear secrets and materials.
AIPAC has ensured over decades that, no matter how often Israel steals America’s secrets, there shall be no retribution. One example of the way Israel treats espionage towards America is that it encourages AIPAC to continue to lobby Congress for the release of the Mossad spy, Jonathan Pollard, as though he were guilty of a minor infraction. The truth is that in 1985 Pollard was found guilty of very serious crimes that included the theft of America’s nuclear naval codes, as well as a manual on its global surveillance capabilities. Israel at first claimed he was part of a rogue operation and agreed to help FBI investigators if Pollard’s associates were allowed to return to Israel. The FBI agreed but Israel never kept its part of the bargain. There have been reliable reports that Israel shared some of the secrets stolen by Pollard with the Soviets in return the release of Jews held in Russia. One of the results of the deal was that the identities of CIA agents in Eastern Europe were compromised and a number of them were executed,
According to Grant Smith of IRmep, members of AIPAC’s 2010 executive committee were once leading figures in the American Zionist Council, which disbanded in 1962 after it was ordered by the Justice Department to file as a foreign agent.

OBAMA LACKS A CHINA POLICY

This year will see a worsening in relations with China as the Obama White House improves ties with India and scrambles to create a strategy to address China’s growing economic and military power.
Since he became president, Barack Obama has not shown he understands that China will use economic blackmail against the U.S. if and when it chooses. A sign that Beijing feels it can intimidate Washington came in a warning from the Chinese on January 29 that a U.S. plan to sell Taiwan a $6.4 billion arms package could hurt ties between the two nations. Implied, rather than stated, was the real possibility the hurt to the U.S. would be economic. Beijing followed up by a threat to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies supplying the arms and a promise to cancel joint military conferences.
No one doubts China’s ability to resort to economic retaliation, given it holds a massive amount of U.S. debt. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, claims that during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Russia tried to persuade China to dump U.S. bonds in order to generate a collapse of the U.S. economy but China refused. The Chinese may have realized such a move would have led to a global meltdown, which would not have favored China. Perhaps, China wanted to choose where and when it used its economic leverage over the U.S.
The recent gulf between the Obama administration and the Chinese further highlights again the fact that China has drawn a line in the sand over Taiwan. The Chinese response to news of the arms sale, which includes, two submarines and the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries, was a statement from China’s Vice-Foreign Minister, He Yafei that the sale represented “crude interference” in Chinese domestic affairs and harmed its national security. He added that it would damage cooperation between China and the U.S. on a range of international issues. One of those issues could well be Iran, a nation with which China does a lot of business, especially in the oil and gas sectors. China could use its position on the U.N. Security Council to oppose any U.S. proposed sanctions against Iran. It could also persuade Russia to do likewise, thereby dealing a blow to Obama’s Middle East policy. That would likely heighten tensions with an Obama White House, which is beginning to echo a neocon mantra that Iran must be chastised militarily. As Obama places more military hardware in the Persian Gulf, within range of Iran, he may find China and Russia taking a hard line in the Security Council. Former British P.M., Tony Blair, who appears to have joined the neo-conservative ranks, has speculated that the West might have to invade Iran, in the same way it invaded Iraq. Some observers in Britain think that Blair, in equating his decision to support the invasion of Iraq with any danger posed by Iran, is merely trying to give himself cover for his failed Iraq policy.
This latest controversy over the arms deal with Taiwan comes on the heels of a threat by Google to pull out of China and growing evidence that China’s cyber warriors have hacked U.S. defense networks in the past couple of years. Until now, the Obama White House has had little to say about that issue or China in general, aside from pleasant comments the president made when talking to Chinese students on a visit to Beijing last year. Before long, however, Barack Obama may find his administration facing a more serious deterioration in China relations as a bigger issue looms large on his foreign policy horizon. That issue relates to his predecessor’s strategy of cementing diplomatic, military and economic ties with India as a bulwark against Chinese military and economic expansionism – a policy Obama seems to support, if only because he has not offered an alternative.
On a purely economic level, George Bush’s wooing of India related to a recognition India offered a massive market for American exports, including arms sales. It may now prove to be the ideal place for Google to expand its Asia operations at a time when the Chinese government is curtailing internet freedoms. It may also be behind those who hacked Google networks in search of the secret algorithms that drive the massive search engine. One of the peculiarities of the Google-Beijing relationship is that Google, while is deplores Chinese censorship, allows its search engine to be used by Indian security authorities. It has even agreed to limit the kinds of searches that India believes might contravene its religious traditions. In contrast to India, however, China reckons it has good reason to be wary of Google because of its business dealings with the CIA non-for-profit venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, previously known as Peleus. The firm’s brief is to seek out and invest in hi-tech companies with applications that could benefit U.S. intelligence gathering across a range of agencies.
But, Google aside, the Obama administration will soon find its China relations in a tailspin over Washington’s growing acceptance of India’s determination to press ahead with major upgrades of its nuclear arsenal, its navy, its armed forces and more controversially its pursuit of ant-satellite warfare. India has publicly admitted it is determined not to allow China to have an edge in space weapons.
Ever since China angered the world by shooting down one of its own satellites in January 2007, the U.S. has quietly outstripped China in developing a new range of space warfare capabilities, especially in the field of anti-satellite missiles. It is one of the most controversial and significant areas of modern weapons development because satellites are now used for targeting as well as intelligence gathering and battlefield scanning. The loss of satellites in a modern war could prove catastrophic for one of the combatants. India has recognized this and has moved ahead to develop its own anti-satellite technology. This has happened without any criticism from Washington, which feels the door to space wars was opened by the Chinese in 2007 and it cannot be closed. China is as much angered by India’s determination to develop such a capability as Washington’s silence on the matter. The Chinese claim they abandoned plans to develop such weapons but Washington refuses to believe them.
As regards the Taiwan issue, India believes it is vital for the U.S. to assert its ties to Taiwan and its policy, mostly unstated, that it will defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. India realizes that China wants control of Taiwan so it will have a direct line of sight to the Pacific. As things stand, China feels vulnerable on the high seas because it lacks ports on the Indian Ocean and feels hemmed in by Taiwan and the Straits of Malacca. India would like to keep it that way but much will depend on whether the Obama administration creates a robust China policy as relations with China worsen in 2010.

ARE AMERICANS HELD IN IRAN FOOLS OR SPIES?

Iran says three Americans who crossed the Iraq border into western Iran in July 2009 were spies. But what if the three were merely fools who thought it was fine to go sightseeing in one of the world’s most volatile regions?
According to the families of the three, they were tourists, who simply got lost while trekking in search of breathtaking scenery in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq where it intersects with an unmarked Iranian border. That view has been supported by Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who asked for their release after they were charged with espionage. Lately, the matter took on a much more serious character when the Iranian Intelligence Minister, Heidar Moslehi, announced he was prepared to make public evidence the three worked for U.S. intelligence. The response from the U.S. to Iran’s claim has been one of anger, followed by disbelief and assertions that the Iranians are paranoid and intent on making political capital out of the arrests. According to many American news reports, the Iranians illegally detained three young Americans who loved the outdoors and mistakenly strayed into Iranian territory. In light of that criticism of Iran, one might want to ask how Homeland Security would have reacted had three Iranians, aged between 27 and 30, been apprehended in the Arizona desert, having crossed over from Mexico. The initial suspicion would undoubtedly have been that they were drug traffickers, terrorists or spies from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. It would not have been long before the mainstream media would have been warning of a new Iranian threat. It would also have been unlikely any mainstream media outlet would have suggested the Iranians were on a sightseeing trip and got lost. But, if one is to entertain the argument that the three Americans were naïve hikers one has to look more closely at their backgrounds and the circumstances surrounding their apprehension.
It appears the group was comprised of four, not three Americans. The three arrested were Shane Bauer, 27, his girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27. The fourth member of the party, who was sick in bed in Iraq at the time of the arrest of the others, was Shon Meckfessel, also in his late 20s. All were graduates of UC Berkeley, California. Meckfessel is author of an off-beat book about the Balkans and has visited the Middle East in the past. Bauer, who speaks Arabic, has written articles about the region for a slew of major media outlets. In July 2009, he was a correspondent for New American Media. The editor of that publication, Sandy Close, told the LA Times he emailed her days before his arrest and told her he was in Kurdistan to “get a feel” for the region and cover Iraqi elections. In her view, he was not given to reckless adventurism and would not have deliberately put his friends in jeopardy.
Given the four were by all accounts politically savvy, one would be inclined to think they must have been aware of the dangers facing Americans travelling in that part of the world. There have been suggestions that, since they were in the Kurdish part of Iraq, which has close relations with Washington, they knew they faced less danger. Even if there is a grain of truth in such an assertion, the reality is that any four Americans traveling in Iraq would have been at risk and even more so if they were journalists lacking the support of a major news network. Such an analysis provides the genesis of an argument that some, if not all of them, were naïve adventurists. Yet, that hardly supports the story circulated by their families that their sole purpose was sightseeing. If one credits them with foolishness one has to conclude they were on a naïve journalistic quest, hoping at the same time to explore their surroundings. That is essentially what the State Department wants Iran to conclude but it is not an easy case to make in light of the fact the four were well educated and some of them were keen students of the politics of the region, though not necessarily its precise geography. In other words, they were not good at map reading.
The perceived State Department wisdom that they were fools who lost their bearings is not without merit. That sort of thing happens regularly, especially when people go trekking, or climbing, in some of the globe’s most mountainous regions. In this instance, the region was mountainous and, as the story goes, they were based in Suleymaniyeh, a Kurdish city near Iran’s border. On the day of their arrest, Bauer, Shourd and Fattal, went hiking along narrow trails while Meckfessel remained in bed nursing an upset stomach. He later told friends his companions went off to visit a famed waterfall on the advice of locals. He next heard from them in a phone call in which they said they were surrounded by Iranian guards. He reckoned they had been given the wrong directions to the waterfall and had accidentally strayed into Iranian territory. If that is true, Bauer was the most reckless of his companions since his website credited him with extensive knowledge of the Middle East. Here is what he had to say about himself:
“Shane Bauer is a freelance journalist and photographer based in the Middle East. A fluent speaker of Arabic, his work has largely focused on the Middle East and North Africa, where he has spent the past six years.”
Bauer went on to claim his works were published in the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Canada in outlets including the LA Times, New American Media, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, The Nation and Le Monde. His girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, was listed on another website as a “teacher-activist based in the Middle East.”
If an Iranian journalist with Bauer’s experience was caught wandering in Arizona, or in Israel near the border with Lebanon, a claim he was sightseeing would be regarded with skepticism. Nevertheless, it is entirely conceivable he and his friends were foolish in the extreme. On the other hand, if all or any of them was a spy, it does not auger well for the CIA or any other U.S. intelligence outfit because of the sheer amateurish quality of the affair.
Assuming they were fools and not spies, their sightseeing exploits have created problems for Washington, which does not have a diplomatic presence in Iran. If one takes seriously some of the rhetoric emanating from Teheran, the Iranian leadership will use the Americans as pawns in a bartering game. Iran has released a list of 11 of its citizens it claims are being held by the U.S. One is a nuclear scientist, who vanished while visiting Mecca. According to Iran, three more of its citizens linked to its nuclear industry were abducted in Europe and flown secretly to the U.S. It is in that context Iran may seek to exchange its captives for Iranians it claims are being held by the U.S.

TORTURE CASE RATTLES TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE

Senior British judges thumbed their noses at London and Washington by refusing to keep secret evidence that the CIA tortured a detainee and the British government knew about it. The detainee was Binyan Mohammed, an Egyptian, who was given refugee status in the U.K. in 1994.

In releasing eight paragraphs, which had been scratched from a previous High Court hearing at the request of the British government, the public learned that the British government and its intelligence community knew about the torture of Mohamed. By delivering their ruling, three Court of Appeal judges showed they were not going to capitulate to political pressure to conceal their own government’s complicity in what they regarded as a breach of international law. Pressure on the judges to hide what London and Washington knew about Mohamed’s treatment in CIA custody had come from none other than the White House and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who publicly warned that release of the paragraphs could jeopardize the future sharing of intelligence with Britain. The British government, which is in the midst of a controversial inquiry into its unqualified support for the invasion of Iraq, tried to persuade its courts to withhold the material, which confirmed that CIA reports about Mohammed’s condition had been read in London and that his treatment breached international undertakings made by the U.K. in 1972 with respect to Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, under intense pressure from the Obama White House, lawyers instructed by Home Secretary, David Miliband, tried to convince the Court of Appeal that national security trumped the release of the paragraphs.
The British judiciary, which has often been conservative when handling matters pertaining to national security, took a different view. The appeal judges decided it was in the public interest to expose their own government to scrutiny of what it knew and denied it knew about the torture of Binyan Mohammed. It has been reported, however, that the same judges made a concession to 10 Downing Street by not releasing damning evidence showing British foreign intelligence agents were not only complicit in Mohammed’s torture but had shown a total disregard for his suffering.
What makes this case so explosive for Washington and London is that it opens up a possible legal debate about the CIA’s rendition program, thereby exposing both governments to charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Court. At the highest levels of government in London and Washington there is a genuine fear the London ruling will lead to further scrutiny of the CIA’s use of “black sites” and the roles played by other foreign intelligence agencies in facilitating renditions, or providing alternative interrogation sites. It is likely attention will focus on the fact that U.S. Joint Special Operations Command has been running its own secret sites across Afghanistan and elsewhere. Barack Obama promised to close all CIA black sites there is no evidence he has done so, or has ever addressed the issue of the Joint Special operations sites, some of which have been referred to by detainees as “the salt pit” and “the prison of darkness.”
The revelation Binyan Mohamed was tortured in a black site highlights increasing evidence that suspects are still continually rounded up and “disappeared” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the past year, families in Afghanistan have claimed that loved ones were snatched in the middle of the night by U.S. Special forces and were not seen again. The families believe their kin are being held incognito in “dark prisons.” One such “prison” exists outside Kabul and some detainees who were held there later talked about been chained in darkness for weeks. Binyan Mohamed was held in the Kabul black site for four months. His story highlights how, post 9/11, the Bush administration had a no-holds barred attitude to interrogation. There are now suspicions that, for all its rhetoric the Obama administration has not ended the Bush policy.
Mohammed was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan where he was held for several months and interrogated by CIA and British MI6 agents. In the summer of 2002, the CIA renditioned him to Morocco, which has a long history of using torture. Over the next 18 months, Moroccan interrogators broke some of his bones and cut his genitals and chest with a scalpel and razor blades. They told him the U.S. wanted him to give evidence in court against senior Al Qaeda figures they had in custody. All he had to do was say in court what he would be briefed to say. It is now believed he was kept for a long time in Morocco to allow the wounds to his genitals and bones to heal.
At 2:05 a.m. on January 22, 2004, he was flown in a CIA registered Boeing-737 jet, # N313P, to Kabul. According to the Council of Europe, the same jet was used later that day to rendition another detainee from Macedonia to Kabul. When Mohamed arrived at Kabul airport, he was whisked off to the CIA’s “dark prison” outside Kabul instead of the U.S. run prison at Bagram air base. He was held there until May before being transferred to Bagram and subsequently to Guantanamo. While he was in the “dark prison” he was allowed outside once for fifteen minutes. He later said it was the first time he had seen daylight in two years. His CIA interrogators shackled him, continuously deprived him of sleep and threatened him to such an extent he had to be kept under observation to stop him harming himself. The British judges concluded his detention had to be extreme if his captors had been worried about his state of mind.
In September 2004, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he was held until February 2009 when he was cleared of all charges and released into the custody of the British. On his arrival back in Britain, he was freed. One of the startling aspects of his confinement is that he says he was forced to sign a statement admitting he plotted with Jose Padilla to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. The so-called “Padilla dirty bomb plot” has since been exposed as an intelligence agency fiction.
Since the decision by the three Court of Appeal judges to release the classified paragraphs, the British government has sought to distance itself from charges it colluded in torture. Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, tried to set the record straight with the following declaration:
It appears that after 9/11 the U.S. changed the rules of engagement for their staff in the fight against international terrorism. When this became clear to us, Agency guidance to our own staff was changed to make clear their responsibilities, not just to avoid any involvement or complicity in unacceptable practice, but also to report on them.”
Some observers deemed Miliband’s statement a specious attempt to protect Britain’s security services, which are due to face additional scrutiny when more cases like Binyan Mohamed’s reach the British courts. One of the ironies of the Binyan Mohamed saga is that the British judges’ refusal to play ball with London and Washington, and the British public’s interest in the truth about the darker side of the war on terror, are not matched by opinion in the U.S. On the contrary, Congress and the mainstream media have shown little appetite for shedding light on those alleged to have abused international law, including hired mercenaries, now called contractors. As for the American public, too many people prefer the fictional world of “Jack Bauer” in which torture is a necessary evil, as long as we are using it.

CIA UNDERESTIMATED ITS ENEMY

As we learn more about the killing of seven CIA agents at a forward operating base in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, it is clear the Agency, and its Jordanian counterpart, the General Intelligence Department, sometimes known as the Mukhabarat, underestimated Al Qaeda and its allies within the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban.
Ever since the wipe-out of the CIA team, which had been targeting Al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders for assassination, the Mukhabarat has tried to downplay its part in what turned out to be a disastrous intelligence operation. The Mukhabarat, which likes to think it is as good as the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, had convinced the CIA it had a double agent who could deliver up Osama Bin Laden or, at the very least, his deputy, Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, for assassination. The fact that the agent eventually turned on his handlers before blowing up 7 CIA personnel and two Jordanian agents, demonstrated a serious lack of judgment on the part of the Jordanians and the CIA. While the episode exposed a dangerous naiveté on the part of some CIA operatives it also highlighted that the enemy was capable of planning a deadly intelligence sting.
The agent assassin was Human Kalil Abu Malal al-Balawi, aged 31. Like Bin Laden’s deputy, Al Zawahiri, he was a doctor, born in Kuwait, of Palestinian origin. He was married to a Turkish journalist and turned to radical Islam because of his anger at the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza where the Israeli military was accused of war crimes. Just like other radicalized Muslims over the past three decades, Balawi was particularly upset about foreigners occupying Muslim lands. His views on that issue mirrored the ethos that motivated the Mujahideen, whom the U.S. supported in their war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It is that same ethos that now fuels the ideological engine driving the Taliban and many Muslim militias across the Middle East.
In 2001, Balawi and his wife moved from Turkey to Jordan where they had two children. He worked in a Palestinian refugee camp outside Amman, the Jordanian capital and soon became very angry about the plight of Palestinians throughout the region, especially those under Israeli control. At some point in the past couple of years, he used online postings to express radical views about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as the developing war in Afghanistan. He also condemned Israeli military strategy in Gaza and the West Bank. His internet activity brought him to the attention of the Mukhabarat in its headquarters in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Within that H.Q. is an area set aside for joint CIA-Mukhabarat operations and for the interrogation of suspects seized by Jordan or renditioned to Amman by the CIA. The Mukhabarat is known for using enhanced interrogation techniques and has often been accused of torturing suspects. It operates in a society where there little accountability, a fact made clear in past State Department country reports and in the literature of international human rights organizations.
In or around 2007, Balawi found himself in the hands of Mukhabarat interrogators and was held in the section of its H.Q. reserved for high value suspects. That is where the real story begins but it is unlikely to be revealed by the CIA or the Jordanians. What we can reasonably surmise is that the Jordanians saw in Balawi the ideal terrorist agent for infiltrating the core leadership of Al Qaeda, provided of course he could be “de-radicalized.” The concept of “de-radicalizing” detainees lay at the heart of the naiveté of the CIA and Mukhabarat. It was an intelligence technique the CIA tinkered with in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and in secret prisons across the globe. It evolved around the principle that enhanced interrogation could be used to turn detainees into ideal terrorist agents. The Jordanians were familiar with the strategy and believed they could divest Balawi of his radical views. In pursuing that goal they ignored the fact he did not arrive at his radical views by accident. He was, after all, a highly intelligent individual who had espoused the concept of jihad and martyrdom for years. If history has proven anything, it is how difficult it can be to convince people who are wrapped up in religious zealotry to see the error of their ways, or to see a conflict from a westernized perspective. Balawi may have quickly realized just how desperate the CIA and Mukhabarat were to recruit him, especially when they finally promised him massive sums of money for his services. From his perspective, they were providing him with the opportunity to fulfill his dream of being a martyr. It is staggering to think that that his interrogators did not pay enough attention to the online postings he had made to radical websites in which he had warned other jihadists not be weak like him. He had even lamented the fact he would probably die some day in his bed rather than be a martyr because he lacked courage.
But, all of a sudden, he was being afforded the opportunity to be a martyr and to deal a major blow to the two nations his father has since claimed he saw as the enemy – the United States of America and Jordan. He had the opportunity to impress the man he most admired, Osama Bin Laden.
Once he became a Mukhabarat agent, run mostly by the CIA, he was sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan to infiltrate the Taliban and Al Qaeda. By then, he had clearly chosen to offer himself up to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. While we may never know the exact nature of his relationships with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, it is fair to assume he was well briefed by them in his new role as their triple agent. The fact that he was able to become a valuable and trusted asset of the CIA and Jordanians indicates that his Taliban and Al Qaeda handlers were sophisticated operators and that the CIA and Jordanians were naïve and careless. The Taliban in particular had plenty of experience running double and triple agents in the war with the Soviets. They, more than Al Qaeda, were probably instrumental in ensuring he maintained a perfect cover any time he met with his CIA and Mukhabarat handlers. It is likely he gained the confidence of the CIA in particular because the Taliban fed him actionable intelligence on parts of their own network – intelligence the CIA would have used to kill Taliban fighters. In this kind of war, it is not unusual so one side to sacrifice some of its own to perpetuate deception.
For its part, the CIA is never going to admit the damage Balawi caused but it is reasonable to believe he learned a great deal about the intelligence targeting strategies of the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At some point, his new terrorist handlers learned about the CIA’s forward operating base, “Chapman”, situated in Khost Province close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. The Taliban and Al Qaeda must have decided they could not pass up the opportunity to wipe out the CIA agents at that base. Such a blow, they would have reckoned, would seriously impair CIA targeting of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.
The CIA has not revealed whether Balawi visited “Chapman” before the fatal trip on December 30, but it is likely he did. When he arrived at the base on that fateful day, with explosives strapped to his body, he was not searched. Why? The answer is that he was considered such a critical piece in the CIA’s undercover war they regarded him as one of their own. Making that judgment cost lives and we may never know how much damage it did to the intelligence war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In reality, the CIA and the Jordanians underestimated their enemy and operated on false assumptions about radical Islam. They were guilty of bringing the devil into their lair - a devil with a sting in his tail. By any standards, one would have to admit that the sting was planned by a sophisticated enemy.
The Balawi saga highlights a war fought in the shadows. It is like a complex chess game in which a player making an ill-considered move can quickly find himself looking at checkmate.

U.S. CHINA FUTURE LOOKS MESSY

This year will see a worsening in relations with China as the Obama White House improves ties with India and scrambles to create a strategy to address China’s growing economic and military power.
Since he became president, Barack Obama has not shown he understands that China will use economic blackmail against the U.S. if and when it chooses. A sign that Beijing feels it can intimidate Washington came in a warning from the Chinese on January 29 that a U.S. plan to sell Taiwan a $6.4 billion arms package could hurt ties between the two nations. Implied, rather than stated, was the real possibility the hurt to the U.S. would be economic. Beijing followed up by a threat to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies supplying the arms and a promise to cancel joint military conferences.
No one doubts China’s ability to resort to economic retaliation, given it holds a massive amount of U.S. debt. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, claims that during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Russia tried to persuade China to dump U.S. bonds in order to generate a collapse of the U.S. economy but China refused. The Chinese may have realized such a move would have led to a global meltdown, which would not have favored China. Perhaps, China wanted to choose where and when it used its economic leverage over the U.S.
The recent gulf between the Obama administration and the Chinese further highlights again the fact that China has drawn a line in the sand over Taiwan. The Chinese response to news of the arms sale, which includes, two submarines and the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries, was a statement from China’s Vice-Foreign Minister, He Yafei that the sale represented “crude interference” in Chinese domestic affairs and harmed its national security. He added that it would damage cooperation between China and the U.S. on a range of international issues. One of those issues could well be Iran, a nation with which China does a lot of business, especially in the oil and gas sectors. China could use its position on the U.N. Security Council to oppose any U.S. proposed sanctions against Iran. It could also persuade Russia to do likewise, thereby dealing a blow to Obama’s Middle East policy. That would likely heighten tensions with an Obama White House, which is beginning to echo a neocon mantra that Iran must be chastised militarily. As Obama places more military hardware in the Persian Gulf, within range of Iran, he may find China and Russia taking a hard line in the Security Council. Former British P.M., Tony Blair, who appears to have joined the neo-conservative ranks, has speculated that the West might have to invade Iran, in the same way it invaded Iraq. Some observers in Britain think that Blair, in equating his decision to support the invasion of Iraq with any danger posed by Iran, is merely trying to give himself cover for his failed Iraq policy.
This latest controversy over the arms deal with Taiwan comes on the heels of a threat by Google to pull out of China and growing evidence that China’s cyber warriors have hacked U.S. defense networks in the past couple of years. Until now, the Obama White House has had little to say about that issue or China in general, aside from pleasant comments the president made when talking to Chinese students on a visit to Beijing last year. Before long, however, Barack Obama may find his administration facing a more serious deterioration in China relations as a bigger issue looms large on his foreign policy horizon. That issue relates to his predecessor’s strategy of cementing diplomatic, military and economic ties with India as a bulwark against Chinese military and economic expansionism – a policy Obama seems to support, if only because he has not offered an alternative.
On a purely economic level, George Bush’s wooing of India related to a recognition India offered a massive market for American exports, including arms sales. It may now prove to be the ideal place for Google to expand its Asia operations at a time when the Chinese government is curtailing internet freedoms. It may also be behind those who hacked Google networks in search of the secret algorithms that drive the massive search engine. One of the peculiarities of the Google-Beijing relationship is that Google, while is deplores Chinese censorship, allows its search engine to be used by Indian security authorities. It has even agreed to limit the kinds of searches that India believes might contravene its religious traditions. In contrast to India, however, China reckons it has good reason to be wary of Google because of its business dealings with the CIA non-for-profit venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, previously known as Peleus. The firm’s brief is to seek out and invest in hi-tech companies with applications that could benefit U.S. intelligence gathering across a range of agencies.
But, Google aside, the Obama administration will soon find its China relations in a tailspin over Washington’s growing acceptance of India’s determination to press ahead with major upgrades of its nuclear arsenal, its navy, its armed forces and more controversially its pursuit of ant-satellite warfare. India has publicly admitted it is determined not to allow China to have an edge in space weapons.
Ever since China angered the world by shooting down one of its own satellites in January 2007, the U.S. has quietly outstripped China in developing a new range of space warfare capabilities, especially in the field of anti-satellite missiles. It is one of the most controversial and significant areas of modern weapons development because satellites are now used for targeting as well as intelligence gathering and battlefield scanning. The loss of satellites in a modern war could prove catastrophic for one of the combatants. India has recognized this and has moved ahead to develop its own anti-satellite technology. This has happened without any criticism from Washington, which feels the door to space wars was opened by the Chinese in 2007 and it cannot be closed. China is as much angered by India’s determination to develop such a capability as Washington’s silence on the matter. The Chinese claim they abandoned plans to develop such weapons but Washington refuses to believe them.
As regards the Taiwan issue, India believes it is vital for the U.S. to assert its ties to Taiwan and its policy, mostly unstated, that it will defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. India realizes that China wants control of Taiwan so it will have a direct line of sight to the Pacific. As things stand, China feels vulnerable on the high seas because it lacks ports on the Indian Ocean and feels hemmed in by Taiwan and the Straits of Malacca. India would like to keep it that way but much will depend on whether the Obama administration creates a robust China policy as relations with China worsen in 2010.

PAKISTAN'S MILITARY A LAW UNTO ITSELF

If Senator Joe Lieberman thinks the Pakistani military has been bought and paid for and will do Washington’s bidding he is in for a rude awakening.
When he visited Pakistan with John Mc Cain on January 9, 2010, he announced that the Pakistani army was “on the move.” He didn’t say exactly where it was going but someone should have told him it was not where the U.S. wanted it to go. U.S. military chiefs had wanted it to go hell for leather into North Waziristan but Pakistan’s generals said they would only commit to a limited strike at Bin Laden and his associates in that region. On no condition would they send their army in with all guns blazing to take on the Taliban, which was the major force there.
Pakistan’s military knows all about the Taliban. It fought a short, bloody campaign against them in South Waziristan but failed to clear them out. Prolonged battles proved that only a massive military commitment to the area had any chance of dislodging them and it would have alienated large sections of the civilian population there and throughout the country. According to Pakistani military strategists, it would have required too many troops, thereby leaving other parts of the country vulnerable to a mobile enemy. In the final analysis, Pakistan’s generals reckoned their limited campaign sent a message to the Taliban leadership that they would return for a bigger showdown if the Taliban used the area for a safe haven for which it and Al Qaeda could attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.
It is not clear if the Taliban got the message but the generals still assert that the campaign served its purpose. They have always argued that South Waziristan is the real hotbed for Al Qaeda and similarly minded insurgents. The CIA says that is nonsense because the killing of seven of its agents in December 2009 was planned in North Waziristan. Be that as it may, the generals insist they will not be led by the nose by Washington. They have even demanded an end to drones over their territory, claiming American intelligence often selects the wrong targets and kills innocent civilians further radicalizing Islamic elements in Pakistan. They told Sec. of Defense, Robert Gates that allowing the U.S. military to operate independently over the skies of Pakistan has increased anti-Americanism. They would prefer the U.S. supplied them with drones and missiles and allowed them to do their own targeting.
The dispute between U.S. and Pakistan highlights much more than a debate about strategy. The Pakistan military, which ran the country for decades, is reluctant to cede any military decisions to its elected government. It is also unwilling to permit the judiciary to hold it accountable for its excesses, in particular for the thousand or more “disappeared” dating back to the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, Washington’s favorite dictator after 9/11. On another level, the military and the main intelligence service, the very powerful ISI – Inter Services Intelligence – believe they would be foolish to engage in massive military campaigns that would alienate Muslims across Pakistan.
Pakistan’s generals have always been equally cautious about making too many enemies among the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. They reckon that when NATO pulls out of Afghanistan, they will need allies among the Taliban in both countries if they are to prevent Pakistan from becoming a rogue state with nuclear weapons.
The military’s wish not to do U.S. bidding is tied to political deals between the country president Asif Ali Zardari and Washington. Last year, he secured $7.5 billion in non-military funding in return for promising to ensure Pakistan’s military stepped up to the plate in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The military was opposed to the deal because it required Zardari to place it under government control.
Human Rights Watch claims the military has been trying to undermine Zardari to prevent him from making it accountable for “disappearances,” as well as extra judicial killings and unapproved interventions in parts of the country. In a recent report, HRW said the military was trying to destabilize the president and the elected government:
“The Pakistani military continues to subvert the political and judicial systems in Pakistan. After eight years of disastrous military rule and in spite of the election of a civilian government, the army appears determined to continue calling the shots in order to ensure that it can continue to perpetrate abuses with impunity.”
In Britain meanwhile parliamentarians are outraged by evidence that Pakistan’s military and its intelligence arm tortured British citizens in their custody. There is a move by some M.P.s to launch an inquiry that would focus on whether Britain’s intelligence agencies were complicit in aiding or turning a blind eye to the torture.
The sheer power of Pakistan’s generals is evident in the fact that they forced Zardari to return to them control of the country’s nuclear arsenal. Behind the scenes in Washington that transfer was greeted with relief because it was felt the generals, for all their failings, were more reliable guardians of the nuclear trigger.
In 2010, it will be interesting to see how much the military continues to resist governmental interference. All signs suggest the president and the democratic process have been weakened and the military will continue to act as it chooses. Therefore, the billions of dollars in U.S. aid may alter little in terms of the balance of power. The aid has not even led to changes in blasphemy laws, which have allowed Islamic elements to claim Christian teachings insult the Prophet. Those laws have been used to foment hatred of a Christian community that numbers almost 3 million. Since 2001, there have been several massacres of Christians, culminating in one last August when seven were killed and scores injured after 60 homes were fire bombed. Following that incident local police, who could have prevented the tragedy, were merely suspended.
Since Washington is prepared to give Pakistan billions in aid it should insist that it addresses issues like the blasphemy laws. Perhaps, Joe Lieberman and his fellow senators would be better putting pressure on Pakistan to make legal changes rather than wishfully thinking the country’s generals are going to do the Pentagon’s bidding any time soon.

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.