US Denies It Is Trying to Undermine Assad
As anti-government protests in Syria showed no sign of abating, the U.S. State Department Monday denied that it was seeking the regime’s ouster.
“No, we are not working to undermine that government,” said spokesman Mark Toner in response to a front-page report in Monday’s Washington Post about secret U.S. financing of Syrian opposition groups, including a London-based satellite television channel that has called for the overthrow of the Baathist regime headed by President Bashar Al-Assad.
Assad “needs to address the legitimate aspirations of his people,” Toner insisted, noting that Assad himself had spoken over the weekend about implementing “the need to lift the state of emergency as well as implement broader reforms, and certainly, we’re watching closely now to see how those words translate into deed.”
Indeed, in a bid to contain the rapidly spreading protests throughout Syria, Assad Saturday swore in a new government headed by former agriculture minister Abdel Safar and pledged, among other measures, to repeal the 48-year-old emergency law “within a week at most.”
In striking contrast to his previous public remarks, he also offered condolences and prayers for the “martyrs”—estimated by independent human rights groups at more than 200—who were killed in anti-government demonstrations since the protests began last month.
But the appearance Sunday of tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the regime’s ouster on the streets in towns and cities throughout Syria, as well as renewed protests, particularly in Homs, where as many as two dozen people were killed in protests Sunday evening, suggested to a growing number of analysts that Assad’s concessions may be both too little and too late.
“It looks much less likely today than last week that he’s going to be able to either tamp down or stomp out this uprising,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, who noted that the explicit calls by the demonstrators for Assad’s ouster marked a new stage in the confrontation.
“While the opposition may not be able to take over the state, if it can keep mounting big demonstrations, there’s going to be no foreign investment and no tourism, and the economy will founder … and there will be no future for the regime,” Landis, whose SyriaComment.com blog is widely read among regional specialists in Washington, told IPS.
Another Syria specialist, Bassam Haddad of George Mason University, also suggested Syria was quickly reaching a tipping point that would make it very difficult for Assad to regain the initiative.
“The regime can reverse the process, but it won’t, and it seems we are now approaching a point of no return in terms of the size of the demonstrations and the incapacity of the regime to make real changes that would slow the [opposition’s] momentum,” Haddad told IPS.
“I think this will be the most decisive week in determining where the uprising is headed,” he said, noting that the attempted takeover of the central square by thousands of demonstrators in Homs Monday “showed that the level of confidence of the protesters is rising very quickly.”
Washington has generally responded cautiously to the uprising. As in Egypt, it initially emphasized the importance of maintaining stability in the country, even as it also appealed for the government to offer democratic reforms and respond nonviolently to the protests.
After a particularly bloody incident in Dera’a nearly two weeks ago, President Barack Obama issued a written statement denouncing what he called “the abhorrent violence committed against peaceful protesters,” as well as “any use of violence by protesters.”
Opposition representatives who have met with U.S. officials and implored them to at least toughen its language against the regime have expressed disappointment with Obama’s caution.
Backed by neoconservative hawks who have long sought regime-change in Damascus, they have urged the administration to follow the same path it trod in isolating Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, beginning with a U.N. resolution referring Assad to the International Criminal Court and the appointing of a special rapporteur to investigate alleged abuses by his security forces.
Basing its story on recently released WikiLeaks cables, the Post reported Tuesday that the State Department had provided about $6 million to opposition groups since 2006, when U.S.-Syrian relations were at their lowest ebb under former president George W. Bush.
Much of the money has reportedly been spent on Barada TV, a satellite network run by Syrian expatriates allegedly linked to the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD), described in one cable as a “moderate Islamist organization that eschews any ideological agenda aside from ending the Asad regime through democratic reform.”
Despite Obama’s official policy of engaging Damascus, Barada TV began broadcasting in April 2009 and recently ramped up its operations and now broadcasts 24 hours a day, although various sources said it was virtually unknown within Syria.
In his remarks Tuesday, Toner insisted that U.S. support for Barada and civil-society groups in Syria was “no different” from similar “democracy-promotion” programs it supports in other countries around the world. “What’s different … in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people,” he said. He also denied that the U.S. was providing direct support for the MJD.
Nonetheless, the disclosures are likely to fuel charges by the Assad regime that the protesters are “dupes” for “foreign agents” working to promote chaos in Syria.
The administration and most independent experts , however, strongly disagree and are increasingly worried that chaos may indeed result from the growing polarization between the government and the opposition.
Indeed, the administration’s reluctance to speak out more strongly against the regime apparently stems from its doubts about the opposition, doubts that are reportedly shared by its two closest regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom—at least until now—seem to have preferred to keep “the enemy they know” rather than face the uncertainty of a Syria without Assad.
That assessment has actually “emboldened the regime,” according to Haddad. “They have known that the position of the U.S., as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia, is pro-status quo in Syria,” he said, although, as the opposition appears to have gained strength over the last several days, Washington’s position may be changing.
“I frankly don’t think they have a clue [about what to do],” Landis said of Washington’s current stance, given the mushrooming of the opposition and the hardening of its demands. “If they’re saying, [Assad] should not use violence, that means they should let the demonstrators overthrow the government, because, at this point, he’s going to have to use violence in order to put this down.”
Landis said he’s growing more worried about the reaction of the Alawite minority—of which Assad is the leader and from which the top ranks of the military and security forces are recruited—to the unrest and the possibility that the conflict could take on a sectarian character.
That worry is shared by Haddad who noted “serious reports that the latest demonstrations, especially in Homs, have a Salafi Islamist component.” Salafis, who are Sunni Muslims, regard Alawites, who constitute about 12 percent of the total population, as heretics.
“Syria is also home to Christian, Druze, and Shi’ite minorities—about 15 percent of the population—and they tend to support the Alawite regime,” according to Mohammed Bazzi, a regional expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Along with many secular Sunnis, these minorities look to Assad as a source of stability, and they fear that his fall could precipitate a civil war.”
Pakistan Moves to Curb More Aggressive US Drone Strikes, Spying
The Pakistani military’s recent demands on the United States to curb drone strikes and reduce the number of U.S. spies operating in Pakistan, which have raised tensions between the two countries to a new high, were a response to U.S. military and intelligence programs that had gone well beyond what the Pakistanis had agreed to in past years.
The military leadership had reached private agreements in the past on both the drone strikes and on U.S. intelligence activities in Pakistan, but both had changed dramatically in ways that threatened the interests of Pakistan.
The Pakistani military, which holds real power over matters of national security in Pakistan, is now insisting for the first time that Washington must observe strict limits on both the use of drone strikes and on the number of U.S. military and intelligence personnel and contractors in the country.
And they have backed up that demand with a suspension of joint intelligence operations with the United States – a program that had been strongly sought after by the Barack Obama administration.
The new Pakistani demands for restrictions on U.S. operations are being taken seriously by the United States, because it was Pakistan’s Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who communicated them to U.S. officials, as reported by the New York Times Monday.
The detention of U.S. contract spy Raymond Davis for killing three Pakistani citizens in January was a turning point in U.S.-Pakistani relations. But it was only the occasion for the Pakistani military leadership and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to take a much stronger position on larger issues that concerned them, according to Kamran Bokhari, a specialist on Pakistan for the consulting firm STRATFOR.
"What we’re seeing is ISI and the Pakistani state take advantage of the Davis affair to renegotiate the rules of the game with the United States," Bokhari told IPS in an interview.
The first move by the Pakistani military and ISI after Davis was detained was to suspend joint intelligence operations between ISI and the CIA, which had been successful in capturing a number of high-ranking Taliban leaders in early 2010.
That suspension was kept quiet for months by both sides until it was leaked by a ranking ISI official to Reuters last weekend. It was understood by U.S. officials as a bid by the Pakistanis to force serious changes in U.S. covert activities on Pakistani soil.
But Pakistan’s tough line on Davis and on the joint intelligence operations clearly got the attention of the Obama administration. U.S. drone strikes were suspended in January and February while U.S. officials sought to resolve both issues.
During the Musharraf administration, the Pakistani military had reached a private understanding with the George W. Bush administration on the use of drones against al Qaeda and its Pakistani allies.
But military and intelligence officials had watched with growing concern as the drone program shifted from targeting high level al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban officials to the rank and file members and supporters of either Afghan or Pakistani Taliban organizations.
Pakistani officials had privately sought to convince the Obama administration to narrow its targeting. Senior Pakistani officials had complained that the CIA was increasingly killing "mere foot soldiers," as reported in a Feb. 21 story by The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller.
Within hours after Davis was released, however, the drone strikes resumed, as if to make the point that the U.S. had no intention of altering its strategy of reliance on the drones.
Then on Mar. 17, a drone strike on a gathering in North Waziristan killed more than 40 people, including some Taliban members but mostly tribal elders and members of the local government militia force. The tribesmen and elders were meeting in a jirga to discuss the issue of payment for the sale of a chromite mine by the Madda Khel tribe, according to local officials.
One tribal elder who lost four relatives in the bombing said 44 people were killed, including 13 children.
The Pakistani military could hardly be insensitive to the fact that tribal leaders across the North Waziristan region were calling for revenge against the United States after the Mar. 17 bloodbath. "We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy," the elders said in a statement issued immediately after the bombing.
It also outraged public opinion all across Pakistan, where the drone war has created growing anger at the United States.
Kayani himself issued a strong statement condemning that strike as "intolerable" and said it made it more difficult for the military to fight terrorism. Pakistani officials had long been saying both publicly and privately that the program had become "counterproductive," but it was the first time Kayani himself had weighed in.
In the past, Pakistani military and government complaints about drone strikes were "hypocritical," said Anatol Lieven, a specialist at Kings College, Cambridge, and the author of a new book on Pakistan.
But Lieven told IPS the Pakistani military leadership appears to have been "seriously annoyed" by that March drone strike and its large number of civilian casualties, because "it was such a public insult."
"The Pakistanis are in a deeply humiliating position" in regard to the drone strikes, said Lieven. He said the military leadership no longer trusts the Americans’ judgment on the program, in part because the strikes are killing people in North Waziristan who are willing to make a deal to end their fight against the Pakistani military and government.
The Pakistani military’s demand beginning after the Davis arrest that the United States reduce the number of CIA and Special Operations Forces personnel in Pakistan by 25 to 40 percent, as reported by the New York Times Monday, was a response to a dramatic increase in the number of such personnel entering the country without explicit agreement from the Pakistani military, according to Lieven.
"What the Pakistanis are demanding is a rollback of a huge influx that has occurred in recent months," Lieven told IPS. "They are for a return to the status quo of last year." They are specifically complaining about more U.S. personnel who had come into the country without explicit permission, said Lieven.
The United States had increased the number of "unilateral" intelligence personnel in Pakistan — those who were not specifically involved in joint intelligence efforts — by at least a few hundred in late 2010 and early 2011.
Lieven said some U.S. officials had privately agreed that the U.S. spying in Pakistan "has gotten seriously out of hand."
The Kings College scholar said he has been assured by Pakistani intelligence officials that they are committed to helping prevent any attack against the United States from Pakistani territory, because "the consequences would be disastrous for Pakistan if there were ever an attack."
But that does not apply to the Afghan Taliban presence in Pakistan. "The Pakistanis have been giving very little help on Afghanistan," he said. And that is one reason the U.S. had increased the number of intelligence agents in Pakistan.
The Obama-Gates Maneuver on Military Spending
The Obama-Gates Maneuver on Military Spending
Last week Barack Obama announced that he wants to cut $400 billion in military spending and said he would work Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs on a “fundamental review” of U.S. “military missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world” before making a decision.
Spokesman Geoff Morrell responded by hinting that Gates was displeased with having to cut that much from his spending plan. Gates “has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without future cuts in force structure and military capability,” said Morrell, who volunteered that the secretary not been informed about the Obama decision until the day before.
But it is difficult to believe that open display of tension between Obama and Gates was not scripted. In the background of those moves is a larger political maneuver on which the two of them have been collaborating since last year in which they gave the Pentagon a huge increase in funding for the next decade and then started to take credit for small or nonexistent reductions from that increase.
The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for FY 2011 through 2020, called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted last January. That would have represented a 25 percent real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration.
Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45 percent higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official DOD data.
The Obama FY 2012 budget submission reduced the total increase only slightly – by $162 billion over the four years from 2017 to 2020, according to the careful research of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). That left an annual average base military spending level of $564 billion – 23 percent higher than Bush’s annual average and 40 percent above the level of the 1990s.
Central to last week’s chapter in the larger game was Obama’s assertion that Gates had already saved $400 billion in his administration. “Over the last two years,” he said, “Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.”
The $400 billion figure is based primarily on the $330 billion Gates claimed he had saved by stopping, reducing or otherwise changing plans for 31 weapons programs. But contrary to the impression left by Obama, that figure does not reflect any cut in projected DOD spending. All of it was used to increase spending on operations and investment in the military budget.
The figure was concocted, moreover, by using tricky accounting methods verging on chicanery. It was based on arbitrary assumptions about how much all 31 programs would have cost over their entire lifetimes stretching decades into the future, assuming they would all reach completion. That methodology offered endless possibilities for inflated claims of savings.
The PDA points out that yet another $100 billion that Gates announced in January as cost-cutting by the military services was also used to increase spending on operations and new weapons program that the services wanted. That leaves another $78 billion in cuts over five years also announced by Gates in January, but most of that may have been added to the military budget for “overseas contingency operations” rather than contributed to deficit reduction, according to the PDA.
Even if the $400 billion in ostensible cuts that Obama is seeking were genuine, the Pentagon would be still be sitting on total projected increase of 14 percent above the profligate level of military spending of the Bush administration. Last week’s White House fact sheet on deficit reduction acknowledged that Obama has the “goal of holding the growth in base security spending below inflation.”
The “fundamental review” that Obama says will be carried out with the Pentagon and military bureaucracies will be yet another chapter in this larger maneuver. It’s safe bet that, in the end, Gates will reach into his bag of accounting tricks again for most of the desired total.
Despite the inherently deceptive character of Obama’s call for the review, it has a positive side: it gives critics of the national security state an opportunity to point out that such a review should be carried out by a panel of independent military budget analysts who have no financial stake in the outcome – unlike the officials of the national security state.
Such an independent panel could come up with a list of all the military missions and capabilities that don’t make the American people more secure or even make them less secure, as well as those for which funding should be reduced substantially because of technological and other changes. It could also estimate how much overall projected military spending should be reduced, without regard to what would be acceptable to the Pentagon or a majority in Congress.
The panel would not require White House or Congressional approval. It could be convened by a private organization or, better yet, by a group of concerned Members of Congress. They could use its data and conclusions as the basis for creating a legislative alternative to existing U.S. national security policy, perhaps in the form of a joint resolution. That would give millions of Americans who now feel that nothing can be done about endless U.S. wars and the national security state’s grip on budgetary resources something to rally behind.
Three convergent political forces are contributing to the eventual weakening of the national security state: the growing popular opposition to a failed war, public support for shifting spending priorities from the national security sector to the domestic economy and pressure for deficit and debt reduction. But in the absence of concerted citizen action, it could take several years to see decisive results. Seizing the opportunity for an independent review of military missions and spending would certainly speed up that process.
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