Understanding Ahmad Chalabi

Michael Rubin explains the Iraqi leader's ascent, in the face of American opposition led by Condoleeza Rice:

Both before and after Iraq's liberation, State Department officials criticized Chalabi as an exile with little connection to his own country. CIA analysts seconded such pronouncements. On September 6, 2004, for example, Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst now at the National Defense University, told the Associated Press that "over the years, [CIA favorite Ayad] Allawi's contacts were proven to be real while Chalabi's were never what Chalabi told us." Former Defense Intelligence Agency official W. Patrick Lang described Chalabi as "basically an émigré politician" and told an Australian radio station that the CIA and State Department "didn't trust what he said [and] didn't think he understood Iraq, really." General Anthony Zinni, head of U.S. Central Command, belittled Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress as "some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London."

But, in the months before Operation Iraqi Freedom began, Chalabi returned to Iraq. And after liberation, he became an irritant to Washington policymakers. While Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer sought to run Iraq by diktat, Chalabi agitated for direct elections and restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. He clashed with Meghan O'Sullivan, now deputy national security adviser for Iraq, when she worked to undermine and eventually reverse de-Baathification. He undercut White House attempts to internationalize responsibility for Iraq in the months prior to the 2004 U.S. elections when his Governing Council auditing commission began to investigate the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal.

In a West Wing meeting, then–national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called Chalabi's opposition to the ill-fated Fallujah Brigade "unhelpful." Soon afterward, she directed her staff to outline ways to "marginalize" Chalabi. There followed espionage and counterfeiting charges — the former never seriously pursued by the FBI and the latter thrown out of an Iraqi court. Following the June 28, 2004, transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, John Negroponte — then U.S. ambassador to Iraq and now the director of national intelligence — refused to meet Chalabi. Cut off from U.S. patronage and without any serious Iraqi base, the analysts said, Chalabi would fade away.

He did not. Nor has he simply reinvented himself, as a State Department official suggested following Chalabi's November 9 address at the American Enterprise Institute. Rather, his relevance has remained constant. Unlike those of other Iraqi figures embraced by various bureaucracies in Washington, Chalabi's fortunes have not depended on U.S. patronage. His survival — and, indeed, his recent ascent against the obstacles thrown in his path by Washington — underlines the failures of diplomats and intelligence analysts to put aside departmental agendas to provide the White House with an objective and accurate analysis of the sources of legitimacy inside Iraq.

So far, when it comes to Iraq, the score is Chalabi 1, Rice 0.

US to Sanction Uzbekistan?

Over on Registan, Nathan reports that the US government will announce sanctions on Uzbekistan for human rights violations sometime next week. I guess that means Iraq will be next to be sanctioned, given the news reports of torture there--oh, I forgot, we are in charge in Iraq...

Senator Brownback Condemns Uzbekistan

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) with US troops in Iraq
A November 18th press release from the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, chaired by Sam Brownback (R-KS) announced:

Commissioners of the U.S. Helsinki Commission strongly condemned the outcome of the trial of 15 men in Uzbekistan for the outbreak of unrest in the city of Andijan. The verdicts, which were announced on November 14th, found the men guilty of trying to oust the Uzbek Government and set up an Islamic state.

“The Uzbek Government, after blocking international investigation of the bloody events in Andijan, set up a kangaroo court and expects the world to accept the verdict,” said Commission Chairman Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS). “It is especially telling that official Uzbek sources have accused the United States of involvement in terrorism. Regrettably, the Uzbek Government seems determined to isolate itself from the Western world.”

I don't like to get into an argument with a Senator from Kansas (I worked on the public broadcasting issue with Bob Dole), but Brownback is off base here. There is indeed some evidence that the US may have been involved with terrorists in Uzbekistan, directly or indirectly through NGOs.

For example: America facilitated the move of Andijan suspects out of the country, providing safe havens in Romania following the violence; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interviewed the Andijan guerrillas' leader Qobiljon Parpiev, who has called for continued violence in Uzbekistan; and at the CSCE Washington, DC hearing on June 29th, a representative from International Crisis Group said that the organization worked with Akriyama in Uzbekistan. Another witness, Marcus Bensmann, appears to have misled CSCE when he testified that he heard no chant of "Allahu Akbar" during the Andijan violence. Bensmann may have missed it, but the BBC captured it on tape--and such a cry from the crowd during violence is obvious evidence of an Islamist link, which unfortunately supports the Uzbek government's contention that the perpetrators of the Andijan violence had the goal of establishing an Islamic state.

Notably, Senator Brownback's CSCE panel did not hear testimony about her investigation of the Andijan events from Dr. Shirin Akiner on June 29th. Therefore, the CSCE's own record is partial and incomplete at this stage. More information is needed about Andijan before the US Congress can take any reasonable position vis-a-vis Uzbekistan.

Contrary to the CSCE press release, no international investigation is necessary for the US Government to issue its own report. The US doesn't need a "permission slip" to find out what happened. If they really want to know what happened, Senator Brownback as well as Congressmen Cardin and Smith might ask the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation to determine whether US taxpayer funds may have found their way into the hands of terrorists or terrorist supporters in Andijan. If the GAO finds that no US-supported individuals or organizations were involved in any way before, during, or after Andijan, it would disprove the Uzbek government's charges. If not, the GAO has an obligation to let the chips fall where they may--and Brownback, Smith, and Cardin will be better able to determine what steps need to be taken.

Such a GAO investigation, following the money going from the US to Uzbekistan, might answer remaining questions about what happened in Andijan in an objective and dispassionate fashion that could provide an alternative strategy to the escalating war of words between Washington and Tashkent--and provide a basis to reduce Uzbekistan's isolation from the Western world.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Calls for "International Investigation" of Guantanamo Prison

Acccording to the Pakistan Times the US government has rebuffed the request.

EU Protects Terrorists

Ozdemir Sabanci was killed by terrorists from the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front in 1996. Nine years later, Belgium refuses Turkey's demand to extradite accused killer Fehriye Erdal. The Journal of the Turkish Weekly is outraged, and the Sedat Laciner questions the EU's commitment to anti-terrorism:

Turkish Government, media and people perceive that Belgium acting as an umbrella for the terrorists. And they are not wrong. Combating terrorism needs international co-operation. And if two NATO members and two partners in the EU cannot co-operate in Fehriye Erdal case, they can make no co-operation in any area of fighting terrorism, because the proofs in the Erdal Case left no place to doubt about terrorism.

Sarkozy: France Faces Terror Threat

According to the Journal of the Turkish Weekly, the Paris riots have left France on edge:

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity increased after the events in France, said his country is face to face with a serious and real threat of terrorism. Sarkozy, who made a speech at the opening of a seminar, titled "The French Face to Face with Terrorism," said the government is planning also to prepare a "white book" about the domestic security organization and priorities. The minister noting there are suicide commandos among the French citizens used the words, "We do not only import the kamikazes but, we also export them." Sarkozy had previously termed the rebellious youths as "vagabonds".

Putin's Double?

Konstantin's Russian Blog calls this photo: Vladimir Vladimirovitch.

Hirsi Ali to Complete Van Gogh Film

Theo Van Gogh's collaborator plans to continue the late filmmaker's work, helming a film they had planned about Islam's attitude towards homosexuality, according to the BBC (ht LGF).

Cossacks Return to Russia

We noticed this when we lived in Moscow, and even mentioned it in a blog post. Today, the Washington Post has more on a revival of the Russian Cossacks, who just sent Meskhetian Turks from Krasnodar fleeing to the USA.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the chief rabbi has met with that nation's Cossack leader to strengthen tolerance and mutual understanding . . .

Ajami on Jordan's Terrorists

Something good from the Wall Street Journal:

In truth, the tranquility of Jordan was deceptive, secured by a monarchy that has always been more moderate in its temperament than the population it ruled. "Iraqi Insurgent Blamed for Bombings in Jordan" was a headline on the front page of the New York Times of Nov. 13: Not quite! For Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as his nom de guerre specifies, is a man from the town of Zarqa, a stone's throw from Amman. The four Iraqis who brought calamity to Jordan were in the nature of a return visit, blowback from a campaign of terror and incitement, and a traffic of jihadists that had sent deadly warriors of the faith from Jordan to Iraq. Even as they mourned their loss, the Jordanians could not see or acknowledge the darkness with which they viewed the world around them. "Zionist terror in Palestine = American terror in Iraq = Terror in Amman," read a banner held aloft by the leaders of the Engineers' Syndicate of Jordan who had come together to protest the hotel bombings.

In the drawn-out struggle over Iraq, Jordan is no innocent bystander. It was in Jordan, more than in any other Arab land, that Saddam Hussein was hailed as avenger and hero, a financial benefactor who practically starved the people in southern Iraq as he enriched sycophants and supporters in Amman. From the very beginning of his bid for regional primacy, Saddam had supporters aplenty in Jordan. He had rujula (manhood), he had money to throw around, and he held out the promise that the oil dynasties would be brought down and those borders that worked to Jordan's disadvantage would be erased in pursuit of a pan-Arab dream. A generation ago, it shall be recalled, the currents of Arab political revisionism--the envy of the poorer lands toward the oil states, the bitter sense that history had dealt the Arabs a terrible hand--converged in Jordan. It was that radicalism that forced King Hussein, in the course of the first American war against Saddam in 1990-91, to stay a step ahead of the crowd, breaking with the princes and the monarchs of the Peninsula and the Gulf, and with the United States, to side with Iraq.

Jordan never reconciled itself to the verdict of that war, and never took to the cause of the new Iraq. Sectarianism played its part--the animus against the Shiites of Iraq coming into their share of their country's power runs deep in Jordan's political class. So did pan-Arab nationalism, long ascendant in Jordan, the glue that bonded Jordan's native population with the Palestinians in the realm. From its inception as the unlikeliest of nation-states, Jordan has been the thing and its opposite--a realm ruled by a merciful dynasty and a population bristling under the controls, threatening to overrun the political limits and then pulling back from the brink out of a grudging recognition that the soft authoritarianism of the place was safer than the prospects of calamity. A stranger who encounters Jordan is always struck by that juxtaposition of stability and barely hidden rage. Waves of refugees have washed upon the kingdom: Palestinians who fled the wars of 1948 and 1967; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their cocoon in Kuwait in 1990-91, when their rage at the Kuwaitis and the immoderation of Palestinian leaders put them on the side of Saddam's project of conquest and plunder; and then, of late, a huge influx of Iraqis. It is a wonder the dynasty, and the military-intelligence apparatus that forms the regime's backbone, has maintained the stability of the realm.

Methinks the Wall Street Journal Doth Protest Too Much...

About their deal with the Corporation Public Broadcasting for a PBS show. They have a long and rambling "explanation" of their dealings with the disgraced and departed former CPB chairman, Ken Tomlinson, here. And they've posted their copies of the emails in question here.

The result:

Some weeks ago, we made a business decision not to seek a third season of our show on PBS. We informed PBS about this on November 1, before we knew what the Inspector General was doing or even when he'd file his report. When we called Ms. Mitchell to let her know, she expressed regret, and she acknowledged that PBS had failed to deliver the national carriage that she had thought she could obtain. She also repeated the truth that "it was my decision" to invite us to do a program.

Some of our friends think it was a mistake to attempt a show on PBS given our opposition to its funding over the years. And let's be clear: We haven't changed our minds. If there ever was a need for PBS, there isn't now in a world of hundreds of TV channels. But as long as PBS exists, we don't see any reason that its prime time public-affairs programming should be a satrapy of Bill Moyers and a single point of view. If Mr. Tomlinson made a mistake, it was in believing that "public broadcasting" is supposed to represent all of the public.

Of course I admit that my views of the Ken Tomlinson-Wall Street Journal scandal are colored by the fact that Journal editors used to solicit my articles and even chat with me on the phone--before the paper got its own PBS show....

Joe Wilson: Get Bob Woodward!

Will Bob Woodward go the way of Judith Miller?

Well, I guess he can start a blog, too...

Bruce Bawer on Islamism in Europe

Thanks to a tip from Andrew Sullivan, I found this interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about the riots in France:

What they've reaped, alas, is a generation of Muslims, many of whom view their neighborhoods as colonies amid enemy territory - and who demand this autonomy be recognized. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to designate part of Bradford as being under Muslim law. In Belgium, Muslims in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek consider it to be under Islamic jurisdiction. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought similar control over parts of Copenhagen. In France, an official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix's Muslim district out of respect for his declaration that it was Islamic territory. In many cities, police have stopped patrolling certain enclaves, the authorities having effectively ceded control to local religious leaders.

No surprise, then, that a Muslim rioter in Århus, Denmark, the other day cried out: "This area belongs to us!" Amir Taheri, editor of Politique Internationale, noted that the main reason for the French riots is not that two youths died hiding from cops in a transformer station; it's that the state responded to the initial unrest by sending police into an area that many locals saw as their own inviolate domain. These riots, in short, are early battles in a continent-wide turf war.

It's a war authorities can't afford to lose. By accepting separatism, Europe is becoming a house divided against itself. Governments must take a firm, aggressive, integration- oriented line - must, among other things, end separate treatment in schools and turn welfare recipients into workers. Above all, they must stand alongside Muslims who wish to integrate - not those who seek to colonize. And they must hope - and pray - that it isn't already too late.

Roger L. Simon on Open Source Media

Fair play says Roger L. Simon deserves a chance, too...

This is going to be an inchoate post from one exhausted blogger who found himself an accidental CEO of a media company that launched today. If you had told me two years ago I would be hosting such an incredible line-up of people at the Rainbow Room today, I would have thought you were the reincarnation of Timothy Leary.

But to begin with, let me say that Jeff Goldstein's keynote address was brillant. We decided to use Jeff as a last minute replacement for Judith Miller when so may advocates of "free speech" attacked us for offering her a platform. (BTW, OSM will be offering plenty of people platforms with all sorts of views. Get used to it.)

Seriously, I thought Judith did a terrific job and her speech will be posted over at OSM as soon as we can get it transcribed (but not by me, because martini-fueled transcriptions tend to be...er... erratic). The general subject matter of a possible Federal Shield Law and what that will mean to bloggers and journalists (and those who go both ways) will be the subject of an on-going series of Blogjams on OSM. Many people have expressed interest in participating, among them Jay Rosen and attorney Andrew Deutsch (a specialist in this area). I even asked the Daily Kos to participate (everybody who blogs should be concerned with this issue) but received no reply. So it goes.

I also thought Sen. Cornyn, who joined our lunch via satellite from Washington, was surprisingly blog-friendly in his remarks.

As they say at Fox: "We report, you decide."

Exit America, Enter Russia

Vladimir Socor's analysis of the post-Andijan situation in Central Asia for the Jamestown Foundation is surprisingly realistic. Socor describes how the Bush administration has evicted itself from Uzbekistan--a self-inflicted defeat in the Global War on Terror:

The relationship began unraveling in 2004 when political Washington allowed itself to be caught in a dilemma, strategic security versus democracy, regarding Uzbekistan, and began to single out that country for a one-sided resolution of that false dilemma. Tashkent's counterproductive reaction was the signing of a "strategic partnership" treaty with Moscow in June 2004, as well as changing its official discourse to characterize the United States and Russia equally as Uzbekistan's strategic partners.

Washington's mishandling of a "color-revolution" experiment in Kyrgyzstan earlier this year further damaged relations with Tashkent. Finally, the bloodshed in Andijan in May exacerbated the lack of balance in U.S. political assessments, which strongly emphasized the authorities' crackdown while downplaying the well-organized, surprise terrorist assault that triggered those brutal reprisals. Instead of offering professional intelligence assistance to elucidate this third major terrorist assault on Uzbekistan in the space of five years and help prevent recurrences, the State Department called for a purely political exercise in the form of an international investigation (over the Pentagon's objections), and made it a non-negotiable demand. Yet it was only in late July – early August that Tashkent asked the United States to vacate the K-2 base, after Washington had pressured a reluctant Kyrgyzstan to allow hundreds of Andijan refugees, including escaped convicts and suspect rebels, to be flown to third-country destinations.

A last possible chance to retrieve K-2 was missed when a U.S. delegation visited Tashkent in October, three months before the expiry of the base evacuation deadline. The base can be crucial to U.S. anti-terrorist, anti-WMD missions in a wide range of contingencies in Eurasia. Yet strategic security interests and democracy-promotion had fallen out of proper correlation in U.S. policy. The United States has forfeited an irreplaceable long-term military presence, and Russia gained the promise of one.

Washington Post Outs Bush's Anti-Terror Guru

He's Michael Doran, a former Princeton professor and author of Somebody Else's Civil War:

Extremist Salafis, therefore, regard modern Western civilisation as a font of evil, spreading idolatry around the globe in the form of secularism. Since the United States is the strongest Western nation, the main purveyor of pop culture, and the power most involved in the political and economic affairs of the Islamic world, it receives particularly harsh criticism. Only the apostate Middle Eastern regimes themselves fall under harsher condemnation.

It is worth remembering, in this regard, that the rise of Islam represents a miraculous case of the triumph of human will. With little more than their beliefs to gird them, the Prophet Muhammad and a small number of devoted followers started a movement that brought the most powerful empires of their day crashing to the ground. On September 11, the attackers undoubtedly imagined themselves to be retracing the Prophet's steps. As they boarded the planes with the intention of destroying the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, they recited battle prayers that contained the line "All of their equipment, and gates, and technology will not prevent [you from achieving your aim], nor harm [you] except by God's will." The hijackers' imaginations certainly needed nothing more than this sparse line to remind them that, as they attacked America, they rode right behind Muhammad, who in his day had unleashed forces that, shortly after his death, destroyed the Persian Empire and crippled Byzantium - the two superpowers of the age. . .

. . . Bin Laden's "Declaration of War" uses the logic of Ibn Taymiyya to persuade others in the Salafiyya to abandon old tactics for new ones. The first reference to him arises in connection with a discussion of the "Zionist-Crusader alliance," which according to bin Laden has been jailing and killing radical preachers - men such as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in prison for plotting a series of bombings in New York City following the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Bin Laden argues that the "iniquitous Crusader movement under the leadership of the USA "fears these preachers because they will successfully rally the Islamic community against the West, just as Ibn Taymiyya did against the Mongols in his day. Having identified the United States as a threat to Islam equivalent to the Mongols, bin Laden then discusses what to do about it. Ibn Taymiyya provides the answer: "To fight in the defence of religion and belief is a collective duty; there is no other duty after belief than fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion." The next most important thing after accepting the word of God, in other words, is fighting for it.

By calling on the umma to fight the Americans as if they were the Mongols, bin Laden and his Egyptian lieutenants have taken the extremist Salafiyya down a radically new path. Militants have long identified the West as a pernicious evil on a par with the Mongols, but they have traditionally targeted the internal enemy, the Hypocrites and apostates, rather than Hubal itself. Aware that he is shifting the focus considerably, bin Laden quotes Ibn Taymiyya at length to establish the basic point that "people of Islam should join forces and support each other to get rid of the main infidel," even if that means that the true believers will be forced to fight alongside Muslims of dubious piety. In the grand scheme of things, he argues, God often uses the base motives of impious Muslims as a means of advancing the cause of religion. In effect, bin Laden calls upon his fellow Islamist radicals to postpone the Islamic revolution, to stop fighting Hypocrites and apostates: "An internal war is a great mistake, no matter what reasons there are for it," because discord among Muslims will only serve the United States and its goal of destroying Islam.

The shift of focus from the domestic enemy to the foreign power is all the more striking given the merger of al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The latter's decision to kill Sadat in 1981 arose directly from the principle that the cause of Islam would be served by targeting lax Muslim leaders rather than by fighting foreigners, and here, too, Ibn Taymiyya provided the key doctrine. In his day Muslims often found themselves living under Mongol rulers who had absorbed Islam in one form or another. Ibn Taymiyya argued that such rulers - who outwardly pretended to be Muslims but who secretly followed non-Islamic, Mongol practices - must be considered infidels. Moreover, he claimed, by having accepted Islam but having also failed to observe key precepts of the religion, they had in effect committed apostasy and thereby written their own death sentences. In general, Islam prohibits fighting fellow Muslims and strongly restricts the right to rebel against the ruler; Ibn Taymiyya's doctrines, therefore, were crucial in the development of a modern Sunni Islamic revolutionary theory.

Althouse Doesn't Like Open Source Media, Either...

STILL MORE: I'm told Jeff Goldstein wasn't even at the OSM launch, which surprises me, because I began reading it on the OSM home page under their heading "live-blogging." That's an awfully strange way to introduce people to their service. Aren't ordinary people being asked to trust the OSM portal?
Also, Charles Johnson linked to this post to note my bad taste -- the "fluids" wisecrack -- and this set off his commenters who just started wildly insulting me -- hilariously assuming I'm a big lefty and using lots of bad taste insults against me. How does that make sense? If they are outraged at my bad taste, as Charles suggests they be, then why aren't the comments primly proper? They must be insulting me because they assume I'm a lefty. Ha, ha. Somebody tell Armando! Anyway, Charles's fans end up hurting him on the day when he is trying to make an impression as an elder statesman of blogging, by making his site look all trashy. And the irony is priceless: he is complaining about my bad taste. Yet "semen" and "pus" are both perfectly sound English words, not slang at all, and pointing out literary images is quite high tone.
AND NOW THIS: Wonkette links, and it's not to the semen-pus thing.
THURSDAY MORNING: One day after the launch, Jeff Goldstein's fake-live-blogging is still the only blog post quoted on the home page, under the heading "BEST OF THE BLOGS." In all this time, that's all they've found? The highlighted post ends with this line: "Or as my friend Bill Bixby once said to a French prostitute (god rest his soul), 'bonjour, you plump little tart!'" How they can think it's a good idea to open the site with such writing? Who does that appeal to? And if it didn't appeal to you yesterday morning, but you kept going back to give them another chance, what would you think? The site is stupefyingly inactive and as yet devoid of sharp commentary. There is only this obscure insider humor about the founders of the site getting drunk and talking about a prostitute.

Unicorn-Lynx's Opinions

I found this blog by looking up Pelagiya for my Russian class. It's a treasure trove.

ADL Leader Vows to Fight Evangelicals

According to The Jewish Week, ADL chief Abe Foxman thinks that American Jews are in danger from American Christians who support Israel and struggle against Islamism. He wants to make a big fuss--like he did over Mel Gibson's "The Passion." That really worked (not!).

Earth to Mars! Maybe it's time to beam Foxman up? Surely there is someone else out there who might help ADL become relevant to the real issues of the 21st century?

I don't think Gary Bauer blew up the World Trade Center, for example.

The ADL might better focus its efforts on fighting Islamism until the Global War on Terrorism is over. Anything else is a distraction at best...

East-West

The only good anti-communist is a FRENCH anti-Communist...

That's something I've believed since first reading Raymond Aron. This Gallic tradition has continued through Bernard Henry-Levy and now I'm adding French director Regis Wagnier to my list, and my Netflix queue: "Indochine" comes next.

The film stars Sandrine Bonnaire and Catherine Deneuve. It's about idealistic Communists who return from Paris to the USSR in 1946 to help build up socialism in the wake of WWII. What they find, instead, is suffering they never imagined.

The film has a certain French quality, especially in the relationships; and yet, there is something Russian there, too. Filmed in Kiev, it really looks Russian, even when the faces seem French. The fear, paranoia, suspicion--even the dancing men of the Red Army Chorus--all very Russian. What's missing is a little bit of Russian warmth, which is somehow found in even the most shocking Russian films. The French are a bit more cerebral and rational, I guess. But the picture packs a wallop, all the same.

I won't spoil it by revealing the plot. At least it has a happy ending (in a really Russian movie, the hero would be shot, I would think).

It is really, really good. And I recommend it. Add it to your own Netflix queue.