PAKISTAN RELEASES TALIBAN LEADER SUFI MOHAMMED

The Taliban appear to have gained the upper hand in the fight against the Pakistani military in the settled districts of Swat and Shangla in the Northwest Frontier Province. While the Pakistan military claims to have killed up to 150 Taliban since operations began late last week, the government sent a telling message to the Taliban by releasing Sufi Mohammed, the leader of a virulent segment of the Pakistani Taliban.

Sufi Mohammed is one of the most dangerous Taliban leaders in the Northwest Frontier Province. As the leader of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - the Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad's Sharia Law). He is said to have "close links with the administration of the Lal Masjid," according to Sharif Virk, the chief of police for the Northwest Frontier Province as well as senior al Qaeda leaders.

The TNSM is known as the "Pakistani Taliban" and is the group behind the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban. The TNSM sent over 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. Sufi was jailed by the Paksitani government after the TNSM was banned. Last week it was reported Sufi left government custody to be treated in a hospital in Peshawar.

Time Magazine reported Sufi was released "in hopes that he can help calm the situation" in Swat and Shangla, the neighboring district which the Taliban overran last week. Sufi's release was endorsed by General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director General of military operations in the region. "Shuja calls it part of the 'political effort' needed to accompany the military campaign," Time reported. "Brute use of force alone would only take us backwards," said Shuja.

Sirajuddin, the Taliban spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah, the Swat leader of the TNSM and Sufi's son-in-law, stressed the importance of Sufi to the Taliban. "He is our leader and very dear to all of us, but our struggle for the implementation of a true Islamic system will not be affected," said Sirajuddin. "Maulana Sufi is demanding the same. It is good that the government has released him; now it should start work on the implementation of Sharia."

The release of Sufi is a clear sign the Pakistani government and the military are prepared to cut a deal with the Taliban in Swat and Shangla. The formation of a "peace jirga" is another. On November 18, Dawn reported local tribal leaders and members of the political parties have formed a peace jirga to end the fighting in Swat.

"A jirga of elders and political leaders requested both the sides to cease fire," Dawn reported over the weekend. "It urged the government to start talks with the militants. The participants said the government should implement the Shariat Act and Nizam-i-Adal regulations. The jirga convened by Syed Akber Shah Lala, cousin of provincial caretaker minister Mohammad Ali Shah Lala, was attended by former MNAs [Ministers of the National Assembly] and leaders of political parties."

The Pakistani military continues to tout high body counts in Swat and Shangla as evidence it is succeeding in the districts. Major General Waheed Arshad claimed over 150 Taliban have been killed since fighting began in Swat. "Our offensive against militants has been continuing since last night and there are reports that 20 to 30 more militants have been killed," said Arshad. Yesterday the military said 12 Taliban were killed and 40 wounded in strikes in Swat and Shangla.

The Taliban disputes the casualties sited by the Pakistani military. In an interview with Time Sirajuddin said the numbers are “totally rubbish. Only ten of our jihadis have been killed." In the past, the Pakistani military has inflated Taliban casualties while understating its own.

The military said it has mobilized 15,000 troops for a major offensive in Swat. But these troops have yet to be used in Swat, where air and artillery are primarily being used. "In Shangla we are using ground troops, and (elsewhere) in Swat we are using artillery and helicopter gunships," said Arshad. Tuesday, November 20, 2007

*

HILLARYCARE 2008

By Gary McCoy

*SHOULD HILLARY START TO SWEAT?


If the basis for her anxiety comes from the latest WaPo/ABC poll, not really. The poll shows Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa with six weeks (or less) to go before the caucuses open the primary season. However, the polling history and a small sample both fail to instill confidence in its conclusions:

The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) draws support from 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared with 26 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for former senator John Edwards (N.C.). New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson received 11 percent. The results are only marginally different from a Post-ABC poll in late July, but in a state likely to set the tone for the rest of the nominating process, there are significant signs of progress for Obama -- and harbingers of concern for Clinton.

The factors that have made Clinton the clear national front-runner -- including her overwhelming leads on the issues of the Iraq war and health care, a widespread sense that she is the Democrats' most electable candidate, and her strong support among women -- do not appear to be translating on the ground in Iowa, where campaigning is already fierce and television ads have been running for months.

Even if Iowa remained in play, it doesn't necessarily mean much this year. Iowa has not reliably picked nominees over the years in the best of circumstances, and in the compressed primary schedule this cycle, it will mean even less. Within days, a large number of delegates will get selected from big states, and Obama hasn't come close to Hillary in places like New York and California.

This, incidentally, is true of the Republican primaries, too. With the large states front-loading the primary schedules, Iowa and New Hampshire will have much less influence than Florida, California, and New York. The polling suggests that both Hillary and Rudy Giuliani can afford a slow start in the Iowa caucuses, although Rudy probably needs to show well in Iowa and New Hampshire.

This particular poll does narrow down the sample to likely caucus goers, but it only surveys a sample of 500. That's acceptable but on the small side. The Des Moines Register actually uses a smaller sample, but they have a track record of better accuracy -- and their poll shows Obama in third place as of the beginning of October. Given that the ABC poll shows no movement for Hillary in Iowa since the July poll and a small gain for Obama at the expense of John Edwards, I'd interpret that as Hillary keeping pace.

Either she leads the polling, or she's within the margin of error, and Iowa is perhaps her one really soft spot in the state races. I don't think Hillary will be breaking into a cold sweat over this poll, and I doubt it reflects any danger at all that she'll lose the nomination. Tuesday, November 20, 2007

PAKISTAN WOUNDED DICTATOR

After more than two weeks of supreme military command, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf has had enough. Enough of international pressure to lift martial law, that is.

Claiming to "have introduced the essence of democracy in Pakistan, whether anyone believes it or not," Musharraf has been more and more candid about his impatience with the West's (sometimes half-hearted) condemnation of his strong-arm tactics. My personal favorite quotes in this regard come from a BBC interview on November 16.

"Did I go mad? Or suddenly, my personality changed? Am I Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?" the general/president asked. "Have I done anything constitutionally illegal? Yes, I did it on 3 November," he said (thereby admitting that suspending the constitution is in fact unconstitutional). "But did I do it before? Not once."

When I read these interviews, I can't help but feel slightly sorry for the dictator-who-feels-misunderstood. Statements like these underscore the fact that he never really understood the rules of the game he has been playing since he came to power in a1999 coup d'état.

Democracy Shemocracy

In 2001, Pervez Musharraf had a choice: try to respond to the will of his own people, most of whom would be dead set against Pakistan playing any role in the U.S./NATO invasion of Afghanistan, or try to respond to the will of the world's largest (if not only remaining) super power, who at that point wasn't above bullying and bribing to get what it needed from Pakistan one way or another. Musharraf chose the latter, implicitly valuing international public opinion (or even a particular kind of international public opinion) over Pakistani domestic public opinion.

By doing so, Musharraf thought - correctly as it turns out - that he would enjoy some benefits on the world stage. Instead of being portrayed as a petty and narrow-minded dictator, it was in the interest of those defending U.S. military strategy to portray him as a new kind of Islamic leader, taking Pakistan towards democracy and secularism. Musharraf himself played this up, and at times signed agreements to give up many of his powers, or at least to stop heading both the civilian and military arms of the Pakistani government. In retrospect, it's obvious that he had no intention of following through on these commitments. It was obvious even at the time those commitments were made for most observers, especially those not on the payroll of Washington or Islamabad.

Musharraf - like so many U.S.-backed dictators before him, including a couple from Pakistan - assumed that this support was a kind of loyalty, that President George W. Bush considered him "our man in Islamabad" and that this implied a loyalty to Musharraf the man. Instead, as any first year political science student could have told Musharraf, the United States is merely looking after its own interests, and when the United States perceives him to be a political liability they will drop him faster than a hot potato. The debate in Washington circles now is about whether or not that line has already been crossed, and, if so, what to do about it.

The Pakistani People

The interesting thing about this story is that the Pakistani people, in whom ultimate authority would reside in a democratic system, don't come into it at all. Indeed, the mainstream political parties had been vying for the position of "successor of the general" with clear U.S. orchestration. And it must be said that both the candidates for such a position, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were equally delusional about their relationship with the United States and were equally adamant about putting U.S. interests above those of the Pakistani people when they themselves were in power in the 1990s.

In this respect, it is possible that the "General's coup" may have done a world of good. If the result of these developments is an opposition movement comprised of a broad spectrum of political parties that have to agree on a core set of principles upon which future Pakistani governments would have to be built, Pakistan could finally be in a position to answer some of the questions that have been plaguing the country since its founding in 1947. These include: What kind of government should Pakistan adopt and how should a meaningful system of checks and balances be set up? What is the role of religion/secularism/human rights within Pakistan? What are its relations with its neighbors, especially India, going to look like? And what will Pakistan's relationship with its biggest funder, the United States, look like, especially given that the Pakistan economy could probably do without such patronage for the foreseeable future?

If these questions remain unaddressed and undebated even after Musharraf leaves (for the General's coup is likely to be the end of Musharraf, just as the King's coup in Nepal saw the end of King Gyanendra) it will matter little to the average Pakistani whether the next leader is appointed based on the number of votes she received or on the number of generals he was able to bring to bring to his support.

U.S. Policy Decisions

For the United States, the policy decisions are even starker. There is no doubt that the United States has used Pakistan to have a hand, and a sometimes bloody hand, in South and Central Asian politics since about 1971. The worst crimes of U.S. complicity occurred not in the recent past, but rather during the U.S.-supported war against Bangladesh in the 1970s, and the subsequent U.S. backed dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1970s and 1980s. Cold war pretexts aside, the United States has seen Pakistan as its own military base in South Asia, with strategic importance throughout the region and extending to China and Central Asia. As long as that remains the case, all talk of democracy in Pakistan is a thin charade.

What the United States wants is a government that can take orders from Washington, not from its own people, who may not always comply with what Washington wants. This uncontroversial reality goes against all of the rhetoric about connections between democracy and the "war on terror"; the case of Pakistan shows its not democracy, but clear lines of accountability between national governments and Washington that is the real foreign policy objective here.

The alternative to the deplorable status quo would be real democracy, meaning for the first time in a long time (maybe for the first time ever), a Pakistani government that represents the will and interests of its own people. One implication of Pakistani democracy would almost certainly be an end to ties with the United States or at least an end to the cozy relationship between Washington and Islamabad that's existed in the past. Pakistanis have long been ready for a genuine Pakistani democracy. Is Washington ready for it?

Line of Fire

In the face of this somewhat bleak situation, Musharraf continually avoids any mention of the facts and sticks to his story: He's Washington's man and the West's best hope to ensure that Pakistan's nuclear technology does not fall into the wrong hands. His 2006 book In the Line of Fire and the subsequent self-aggrandizing U.S. book tour certainly tried very hard to push the narrative of Musharraf being the best soldier Washington could ever wish for. But regardless of whether or not there is an element of truth to that story, the current suspension of the constitution has nothing to do with it, as much as the government's press office may wish it were otherwise. It is rather about a supposedly democratic-minded President behaving like a despot when it seemed clear that a court judgment was not going to go his way.

A few days ago the court judgment did go his way, after he replaced several members of the Supreme Court, leaving no doubt as to the motivation behind the two-week-old state of emergency. And it is about those political moves of a year ago - book tours and the like - backfiring, as they were intended to be a political campaign for the 2007 elections, but addressed an international audience. The United States may be powerful, and launching his election campaign with a book tour may have been a good idea, but the U.S. public does not elect the Pakistani parliament. Well, not under the current constitution in any case.

Perhaps Musharraf would do well to remember his own words from 2001: "I am not at all a politician. I don't think I'm cut out for politics," he said. "I am certainly not going to stand for election."

It's too late for Musharraf to live up to that commitment, but it is not too late for the United States to withdraw its support for Musharraf's regime.

STOP ABUSING THE MEMORY OF YITZHAK RABIN

Hitherto, I was loath to publicly express my feelings on the sensitive subject of the Rabin "heritage." I do so now because I am enraged at the cynical, even obscene manner, in which the memory of an assassinated prime minister has been transformed into a cult to promote political objectives to which Rabin adamantly opposed, even at the height of the Oslo period of his career. Worse, his name is being exploited to intensify divisions, create hatred and collectively demonize and transfer the guilt of a demented evil assassin on decent law abiding sectors of society.

In the course of my years as a leader in the Diaspora before making aliya, I had considerable interaction with Rabin when he was prime minister and minister for defense. On my frequent visits to Jerusalem, Rabin would usually set aside quality time for private personal discussion. As an Australian, I found his frankness refreshing and developed a warm relationship with him. He disliked small talk and was inclined to say whatever was on his mind. Such was the nature of the man.

I liked Rabin. He was no "intellectual" but contrary to allegations by some of his right-wing critics, even when misguided he was always motivated by genuine patriotism and a desire to act in what he considered to be the best interests of the nation.

Oslo proved to be Rabin's undoing. It was widely recognized from the outset that Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and their cohorts had sandbagged him into endorsing policies which utterly conflicted with his long-standing attitudes. As the process began unraveling, he became increasingly impatient, inflexible, and aggressive toward his critics.

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Like most Diaspora leaders at the time, despite reservations, I was disinclined to criticize the security policies of the elected government, and remained on the sidelines, at times even publicly defending the government. Nevertheless in the course of my private encounters with Rabin I shared with him my growing concerns. I clearly recollect him telling me repeatedly that Oslo was a "gamble" but that he felt obliged to put it to the test. "If it fails," he said, "we will have a carte blanche to take everything back." In retrospect I find it difficult to accept that he really believed what he was saying.

IT IS therefore clear that despite the best possible intentions, Rabin gambled and failed. As a consequence, the nation paid a bitter price. Since Oslo, 1,400 Israelis were killed and some 20,000 injured. Despite one-sided and unilateral concessions, our geopolitical position is at an all time low. Beyond that, we made an irretrievable blunder by literally resurrecting Arafat who at the time, in the wake of the first Gulf War, was effectively a political corpse, even reviled by the Arabs.

To make matters worse, Rabin was only able to pursue Oslo by indulging in one of the most cynical acts of political corruption in Israel's history, shamelessly bribing unsavory opposition members in order to achieve a Knesset majority. It is therefore surely surrealistic, year after year, to hear speeches sanctimoniously extolling and misrepresenting Rabin's allegedly glorious Oslo legacy and spuriously claiming that he was the first to achieve a historic breakthrough in peace with the Arabs. Promoting such fantasies renders a disservice to Rabin.

It is even more infuriating when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Peres and Peace Now activists have the gall to claim that they are implementing Rabin's vision. How Rabin may have acted had he not been struck down by the assassin is open to conjecture. Some speculate that once he came to the realization that his gamble had failed, unlike his Labor successors, he would have reverted to his former stance and initiated tough and resolute military action.

However, what is surely beyond the realm of speculation is that Rabin was a genuine Labor Zionist and despised the Peace Now agitators. He displayed uninhibited contempt toward Beilin, Burg and the young radicals who were then steering the Labor Party toward post-Zionism. The bitter remarks about Shimon Peres which appear in his memoirs speak for themselves.

Indeed, even at the height of the Oslo debate, Rabin's views remained diametrically opposed to the proposals now emanating from those claiming to have inherited his mantle. For example, in one of his last speeches in the Knesset, on October 5 1995, only days before his assassination, referring to borders Rabin said: "We will not return to 4 June 1967 lines."

In relation to Jerusalem he said "First and foremost, united Jerusalem …as the capital of Israel under Israeli sovereignty."

And about settlements he stated "We committed ourselves before this Knesset not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim government and not to hinder building for natural growth."

IN THIS context, for Prime Minister Olmert and his allies to continuously proclaim that they are fulfilling Rabin's vision is pure Orwellian double speak.

But the problem transcends misrepresenting themselves as heirs to Rabin. Just as Oslo supporters in their time falsely depicted disapproval of Oslo as "incitement" against Rabin, so today much of the legitimate condemnation of the current government policies of unilateral concessions, is again being dubbed "incitement."

To make matters worse, by collectively portraying entire law abiding sectors of Israeli society especially Orthodox Jews and settlers, as sub- human accomplices to the Rabin assassination, the promoters of the personality cult are themselves indulging in outright incitement and defamation.

The media is also behaving shamelessly by giving exaggerated prominence to the miserable murderer and his family, to fringe groups agitating for the parole of the assassin, and to worshipers of a crazed murderer like Baruch Goldstein. Clearly the role of these contemptible marginal groups is being exaggerated totally out of proportion in order to stifle legitimate criticism and undermine freedom of expression.

Irrespective as to whether or not it is appropriate to call for a moment of silence to commemorate the memory of a murdered prime minister at a soccer stadium, the abominable behavior of despicable louts that profaned that moment of silence, reflects adversely on the entire nation. But having said that, let us be clear than any form of collective demonization or incitement invariably creates ugly backlashes.

Yitzhak Rabin should be commemorated as an assassinated Israeli Prime Minister who served his country with distinction as a leader, military commander and diplomat. However such commemorations must be apolitical and promote harmony and unity, expressing a tragic national loss as opposed to indulging in divisive and provocative political opportunism.

This, I believe, is how the overwhelming majority of Israelis would wish to honor the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.