MentalGator

Items by Blake Hounshell

FP Passport - blogging on global news, politics, economics, and ideas

• State Department: New deal reached on blind Chinese activist

  Posted: May 4, 2012, 3:19 pm by Blake Hounshell

  It looks like a deal has been reached for blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng. This just in:

  STATEMENT BY VICTORIA NULAND, SPOKESPRSON
  
  Chen Guangcheng
  
  The Chinese Government stated today that Mr. Chen Guangcheng has the same right to travel abroad as any other citizen of China. Mr. Chen has been offered a fellowship from an American university, where he can be accompanied by his wife and two children.
  
  The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen's applications for appropriate travel documents.  The United States government expects that the Chinese government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents, and make accommodations for his current medical condition.  The United States government would then give visa requests for him and his immediate family priority attention.
  
  This matter has been handled in the spirit of a cooperative U.S.-China partnership.

• Who's whispering in David Ignatius's ear?

  Posted: April 17, 2012, 6:58 am by Blake Hounshell

  Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has been on a tear lately: breaking news on the files found in Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad safe house, revealing details of the backchannel negotiations between Erdogan and Ayatollah Khamenei, and now, channeling the Obama administration's negotiating strategy toward Iran.

  At a time when Thomas Friedman is writing his 35th column complaining about the state of America's train system and urging New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to launch a third-party bid for the presidency, Ignatius is far and away America's must-read columnist right now. Iggy has always been known for his top-notch sources, especially in the intelligence community, but his columns seem especially well-sourced of late -- it's almost as if he has a weekly lunch with Tom Donilon or something.

  Let's take a look at his latest. Ignatius says that "the smart money in Tehran is betting on a deal" -- picking up on a rise in the Iranian stock market to argue that a nuclear agreement is in the offing. "So far," he writes, "Iran is following the script for a gradual, face-saving exit from a nuclear program that even Russia and China have signaled is too dangerous. The Iranians will bargain up to the edge of the cliff, but they don’t seem eager to jump." According to Ignatius, under this deal, "Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level and to halt work at an underground facility near Qom built for higher enrichment. Iran would export its stockpile of highly enriched uranium for final processing to 20 percent, for use in medical isotopes."

  In exchange, Iran would get ... nothing, at least right away. Ignatius suggests that the Europeans would agree to delay implementing their oil embargo, set to take effect July 1, and the Americans would delay their own fresh round of sanctions due to be implemented in late June.

  Frankly, I don't see how this can work. There do seem to be signs that Khamenei is laying the political groundwork for a deal, for instance by bringing his pragmatic former president, Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, back into his good graces. But any deal that doesn't visibly benefit Iran --  rather than merely preventing future harm -- will inevitably be viciously attacked within the country's fragmented political system. And I suspect, given his past behavior, that the supreme leader will stick his finger in the air before staking out a clear public position.

  It seems equally unlikely that President Obama will risk handing an electoral issue to his rival Mitt Romney by making any real concessions to Tehran. Americans may not be eager to fire up the B-52s -- and the Pentagon certainly isn't -- but they don't want to see their president look weak. And even if Obama did cut a deal, Republicans and pro-Israel groups would likely make a lot of noise, and might even be able to derail it.

  Then there's Israel, which has set the bar extremely high for these negotiations, insisting among other things that Iran shut down its Fordow enrichment plant -- the one it spent years building in secrecy and burying 200 meters beneath a mountain outside the city of Qom at a cost of millions of dollars. Indeed, everything the Obama administration agrees to apparently has to be vetted with the Israelis, who have completely unrealistic notions about what Iran is willing to accept.

  Moreover, the intricately choreographed arrangements of the type Ignatius suggests seem hard to imagine given the deep levels of distrust between the two sides. It beggars belief to think that two countries whose diplomats will barely even sit in a room with one another can work out "confidence-building measures" that will survive the political maelstrom news of a deal would unleash. We are not anywhere close to a Nixon going to China moment, in any sense of that hackneyed historical analogy.

  What will most likely happen, as Time's Tony Karon lays out here, is that the can gets kicked further down the road: Talks will proceed for the sake of talks, and a decision about whether to bomb will be deferred until at least November (unless Iran crosses a red line like installing next-generation centrifuges at Fordow).

  All of which is a long-winded way of saying that if you want to know what the Obama administration is thinking, read David Ignatius. But don't expect to be optimistic once you do.

• What’s up with Business Insider’s wacky foreign coverage?

  Posted: April 9, 2012, 12:59 am by Blake Hounshell

  On its Military and Defense page, the popular news site Business Insider is featuring two stories today by one F. Michael Maloof, who is blurbed as a "staff writer for WND's G2Bulletin, and a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

  Story No. 1: Citing Russian sources, the headline claims that "Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran's Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack." The story goes on to say that "The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources."

  The news "comes from a series of reports and leaks from official Russian spokesmen and government news agencies who say that an Israeli attack is all but certain by the summer," Maloof continues. "[S]ources say that Russian preparations for such an attack began two years ago."

  Story No. 2 alleges that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is basically in league with the Islamic Republic of Iran and is seeking a strategic alignment with the ayatollahs in Tehran. "For years," Maloof writes, "Shi'ite Iran has been a major financial supporter of the Sunni Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and quietly worked for some two years with the group to oust Washington-backed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last year." He goes on to claim that "Analysts say that Iran's Shi'ite form of Islam has more appeal among Egyptian Sunnis than among Sunnis in other Arab countries." I've not seen any credible analysts make either claim before -- and it's worth noting that the Egyptian media is rife with anti-Shia invective these days.

  This is the kind of questionable reporting you normally see on conspiracy-theory websites, not an ostensibly respectable outlet like Business Insider.

  Who is F. Michael Maloof? Careful followers of the Iraq war's aftermath may remember that he, along with fellow analyst David Wurmser, was tasked by Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith after 9/11 with finding links between Iraq and al Qaeda. "Saddam used al-Qaeda as an indirect conduit because he needed plausible deniability," Maloof later said -- a claim that was hotly disputed within the U.S. intelligence community at the time and widely discredited after the invasion, including in a 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report. Maloof's security clearance was revoked, though his allies continued to defend his work. ("The Wurmser-Maloof work was professional: carefully researched, organized, and well presented," Feith wrote in his memoir.)

  And what is G2Bulletin? According to its website, "Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is your independent, online intelligence resource edited and published by the veteran newsman and founder of WorldNetDaily.com. Each week he taps his vast network of international intelligence sources to bring you credible insights into geo-political and geo-strategic developments."

  Yes, that WorldNetDaily, one of the main "birther" websites promoting the false idea that President Obama was not born in the United States.

  My question is: Why Is Business Insider publishing this stuff?

• Red lines

  Posted: February 29, 2012, 7:49 am by Blake Hounshell

  For Iran watchers, the week or so leading up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has been a busy one.

  First, on Friday, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards report came out on Iran's nuclear program, conveniently giving fodder for all sides of the bomb-Iran debate. The IAEA report, as an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security describes, shows that Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program, including in its deeply buried Fordow plant, but having trouble with next-generation  centrifuge technology that could make its breakout to a nuclear weapon much faster. (See also the New York Times, which concludes, "The report is likely to inflame the debate over whether Iran is nearing what Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, calls entering a 'zone of immunity.'")

  Also on Friday, the Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have not changed their view that "there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb." The Los Angeles Times ran a similar story a day earlier. (In his Friday sermon, Iran's supreme leader seemed to confirm this assessment, calling nuclear weapons a "sin.")

  Then, on Monday, both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press reported on the tense negotiations between Israel and the United States over what to do about all this. The Israelis are apparently "fuming" that Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly warned against an Israeli strike on Iran's facilities. Last week's visit to Israel by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon reportedly did not go well precisely for this reason. ("We made it clear to Donilon that all those statements and briefings only served the Iranians," one Israeli official told Haaretz, a comment sure to infuriate the White House.)

  The Israelis do not plan to tell their American counterparts if they do decide to attack Iran, the AP's Kimberly Dozier reported, a move a U.S. intelligence official interpreted for her as Israel wanting to give the United States plausible deniability in the event of a strike. But another way to look at it is as one more sign that Israel and the United States simply do not trust one another.

  The key issue under discussion is what the appropriate "red lines" are -- Iranian actions that would trigger a military response by Israel or the United States. For Israel, the bar is lower, but nebulous: Defense Minister Ehud Barak talks about Iran soon entering a "zone of immunity" that will make an attack impossible. For the United States, the big no-no is weaponization. The Israelis believe that waiting until Iran decides to build a weapon is too late, but it's not clear they have the capability to take out Iran's nuclear sites (read: Ferdow) on their own.

  The Journal suggests that Obama is coming Netanyahu's way on this, but a story in today's Los Angeles Times says the opposite. Clearly there's a policy fight going on behind the scenes, and the president's recent claims that he and Bibi are on the same page can't be taken seriously. Haaretz reports tonight that "Netanyahu wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain 'red lines,'" and that the distrust between the two men only seems to be deepening. Each leader feels the other is meddling in his country's domestic politics -- Obama by seeking to turn Israeli public opinion against a strike (example), and Netanyahu by working with Republicans to attack the president as soft on Iran.

  The million-dollar question is whether all this drama is really about establishing a credible threat to get the Iranians to capitulate (while terrifying European and Asian countries into boycotting Iranian oil), or whether Israel is indeed serious about attacking if the sanctions don't work, and is earnestly seeking U.S. buy-in.

  I have some sympathy for the view that, by publicly warning against strikes, the Obama administration is undercutting Israel's deterrent. Bluster aside, Iran has shown a tendency to back down when frightened, as in 2003 when it is thought to have shuttered its nuclear weapons program, and more recently when it toned down its tough talk about blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

  But threats have consequences, too. U.S. officials haven't clearly articulated why they believe all this war talk is unhelpful, but I suspect two reasons. One is the rising cost of gasoline, perhaps the issue that terrifies the political side of the White House most heading into November. Tensions over Iran are already adding about $10 per barrel to the price of oil, some analysts say, threatening to choke off America's nascent economic recovery and make Obama a one-term president.

  But the more serious issue is that if you make such a threat, you actually may need to carry it out someday. Is that something Barack Obama, a man who has staked his presidency on winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wants above all to do "nation-building at home," is prepared to do? He's already committed to preventing Iran from getting the bomb, taking containment off the table. He's shown little inclination for taking the big political risk of putting some sort of "grand bargain" on the table. But if sanctions don't bring Iran around -- and there's no sign yet that they will -- and sabotage and asking nicely don't do the job, what then?

• Did the United States use the Kashmir earthquake to send intelligence operatives into Pakistan?

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 6:05 pm by Blake Hounshell

  That's the charge the National Journal's Marc Ambinder makes in his very interesting new book on Joint Special Operations Command, coauthored with D.B. Grady.

  They write:

  The U.S. intelligence community took advantage of the chaos to spread resources of its own into the country. Using valid U.S. passports and posing as construction and aid workers, dozens of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives and contractors flooded in without the requisite background checks from the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the country's tribal areas, largely because of the ISI's benign neglect. In Afghanistan, the ISI was actively undermining the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai, training and recuiting for the Taliban, which it viewed as the more reliable partner. The political system was in chaos. The Pakistani army was focused on the threat from India and had redeployed away from the Afghanistan border region, the Durand line, making it porous once again. To some extent, the Bush administration had been focused on Iraq for the previous two years, content with the ISI's cooperation in capturing senior al-Qaeda leaders, while ignoring its support of other groups tha would later become recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda.

  A JSOC intelligence team slipped in alongside the CIA. The team had several goals. One was prosaic: team members were to develop rings of informants to gather targeting information about al-Qaeda terrorists. Other goals were extremely sensitive: JSOC needed better intelligence about how Pakistan tranported its nuclear weapons and wanted to pentrate the ISI. Under a secret program code-named SCREEN HUNTER, JSOC, augmented by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and contract personnel, was authorized to shadow and identify members of the ISI suspected of being sympathetic to al-Qaeda. It is not clear whether JSOC units used lethal force against these ISI officers; one official said that the goal of the program was to track terrorists through the ISI by using disinformation and psychological warfare. (The program, by then known under a different name, was curtailed by the Obama administration when Pakistan's anxiety about a covert U.S. presence inside the country was most intense.)

  Meanwhile, rotating teams of SEALs from DEVGRU Black squadron, aided by Rangers and other special operations forces, established a parallel terroris-hunting capability called VIGILANT HARVEST. They operated in the border areas of Pakistan deemed off limits to Americans, and they targeted courier networks, trainers, and facilitators. (Legally, these units would operate under the authority of the CIA any time they crossed the border.) Some of their missions were coordinated with Pakistan; others were not. As of 2006, teams of Green Berets were regularly crossing the border. Missions involved as few as three or four operators quietly trekking across the line, their movements monitored by U.S. satellites and drones locked onto the cell phones of these soldiers. (The cell phones were encrypted in such a  way that made them undetectable to Pakistani intelligence.) Twice in 2008, Pakistani officials caught wind of these missions, and in one instance, Pakistani soldiers operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas fired guns into the air to prevent the approach of drones.

  Forward intelligence cells in Pakistan are staffed by JSOC-contracted security personnel from obscure firms with insider names such as Triple Canopy and various offshoots of Blackwater, but it is not clear whether, as Jeremy Scahill of the Nation has argued, the scale of these operations was operationally significant or that the contractors acted as hired guns for the U.S. government. Sources say that only U.S. soldiers performed "kinetic" operations; Scahill's sources suggest otherwise. The security compartments were so small for these operations (one was known as QUIET STORM, a particularly specialized mission targeting the Pakistani Taliban in 2008) that the Command will probably be insulated from retrospective oversight about its activities. A senior Obama administration official said that by the middle of 2011, after tensions between the United States and the Pakistani government had reached an unhealthy degree of danger, all JSOC personnel except for its declared military trainers were ferreted out of the country. (They were easy to find using that same secret cell phone pinging technology.) Those who remained were called Omegas, a term denoting their temporary designation as members of the reserve force. They then joined any one of a dozen small contracting companies set up by the CIA, which turned these JSOC soldiers into civilians, for the purposes of deniability.

• Qaddafi's spymaster takes a walk

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 9:53 pm by Blake Hounshell

  A correspondent in Doha, Qatar, sends in these pictures of Libyan ex-foreign minister and spy chief Musa Kusa taking a stroll near his "villa" in the outskirts of town. During the war, following his dramatic defection from Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, Kusa first fled to London before setting up shop at the five-star Four Seasons Doha, where he was often seen enjoying Italian cuisine and smoking in the lobby, I'm told:

  

  Funny story: a retired CIA case officer, whose name I won't share, was coincidentally placed into a room next to Kusa's, a fact my source discovered when the ex-diplomat at one point was banished from the lobby by either the hotel or his Qatari hosts, and had to resort to pacing the hall outside his room. At one point, Kusa knocked on the former CIA guy's door and asked for a cigarette; on another occasion he tried to enter the wrong room by mistake. Eventually, the Qataris (and the hotel management) got sick of him and he moved out.

  In any case, as you can see, Kusa's new digs are not quite so luxurious:

  

  

• Syrians troll through hacked emails of Bashar's presidential aides

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 5:40 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Move over, WikiLeaks: There's a new sheriff in town.

  The shadowy hacker collective Anonymous struck again late Sunday evening, exposing the email accounts of top aides to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and posting the passwords online for all to see (most of them were -- literally -- "12345").

  Expatriate Syrians pounced, gleefully delving through this treasure trove and pulling out newsworthy gems (some even joked about sending replies from the accounts, for example, "Curse your soul, Hafez"). There were few smoking guns, but one email, from U.N.-based press aide Sheherazad Jaafari to Damascus-based press aide Luna Chebel, was particularly interesting. It advises the presidential office on how to best handle Assad's Dec. 7 interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. If this is the quality of staff work Bashar al-Assad is getting... well, it explains a lot:

  Hello dear,

  Please let me know if you need anything else.
  Barbara will be here on the 2nd and the interview will be on the 4th because she is leaving on the 6th so that would give you some time to do the editing.

  Thank you.

  After doing a major research on the American Media's coverage on the Syrian issue and the American Society's perspective of what is happening on the Syrian ground, I have concluded some important points that might be helpful for the preparation of the upcoming interview with Barbara Walters.

  I based my research on online articles written about the Syrian issue, my personal contacts with the American journalists, my father and Syrian expatriates in the States.

  The Major points and dimensions that has been mentioned a lot in the American media are:

  The Violence:
  * The idea of violence has been one of the major subjects brought up in every article. They use the phrases "the Syrian government is killing its own people", "Tanks have been used in many cities", "airplanes have been used to suppress the peaceful demonstrations" and "Security forces are criminals and bloody".

  Bloodshed:
  · Bloodshed is another subject brought up in the American media. There is no mention of how many "soldiers and security forces have been killed". They think that bloodshed is done by the government to attack the "innocent civilians" and "peaceful demonstrators". Mentioning "armed groups" in the interview is extremely important and we can use "American and British articles" to prove that there are "armed gangs".

  Reform:
  · The American audience doesn't really care about reforms. They won't understand it and they are not interested to do so. Thus, a brief mention of the reforms done in the past couple of months is more than enough.
  · It is very important to mention the huge economical and political transformation that Syria has gone through in the last 11 years. Somehow, there needs to be a clarification that reform started since H.E took the office.

  Mistakes:
  · It is hugely important and worth mentioning that "mistakes" have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized "police force". American Psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are "mistakes" done and now we are "fixing it". Its worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by police men, police dogs and beatings.

  Torture Policy:
  "Syria doesn't have a policy to torture people" unlike the USA, where there are courses and schools that specializes in teaching police men and officers how to torture criminals and "outlaws". For instace, "the electric chair and killing through injecting an overdose amount of medicine"...etc.
  *We can use Abu Ghraib in Iraq as an example.

  The Comments:
  · The comments that follow any article in the American Media are a very important tool to use in the interview. The Americans now believe that their government has failed two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are asking their government to stop interfering in other countries businesses and sovereignty and to start taking care of the American internal issues.

  Obama popularity's decline and incline through the past 3 years:
  · It is worth mentioning that when Obama asked H.E to step down he himself have had a 70% decrease of his popularity in the States.
  · It would be worth mentioning how your personality has been attacked and praised in the last decade according to the media. At one point H.E was viewed as a hero and in other times H.E was the "bad guy". Americans love these kinds of things and get convinced by it.

  Facebook and You tube:
  This is very important to the American mindset. The fact that Facebook and youtube are open now-especially during the crises- is important.

  The International media:
  · We should mention that in the first month the international media was allowed in Syria. Both al Jazeera and al Arabia's offices were open but when they started to manipulate what is happening and "make up facts", the Syrian government became more cautious about who will enter the country.

  10) Civil war in Syria and the neighboring countries:
  We can use Noland and Hillary's statements encouraging armed groups to not give up their weapons as a "clear" way of asking for a civil war in Syria.

  11) The opposition:
  * a brief mention of the opposition "figures". Syria doesn't have an opposition leader with a "ready" agenda; they are all from the previous generation. The opposition was asked to meet by the Syrian government but most of them refused to attend.

  Key Points:
  The government's crackdown, the bloody regime, civil war, security forces and violence, Tanks, you tube torture clips, Pres. Assad IGNORES the bloodshed and the "help" of other countries and the Arab League", Army defectors, Robert Fords return to the US for "Security reasons", Syria is an authoritarian government.

  The Broadcasting hours and channels:
  · The interview will be broadcast across ABC News platforms - including World News, Good Morning America, This Week, ABC Radio, a full edition of Nightline, and full-length treatment across the digital space (for ABC News this now includes Yahoo as well - which means you can reach as many as 100 million people. ABC News and Yahoo recently joined forces - which is another reason why so many people now bring their interviews to us).
  

  The exact dates/times for all these broadcasts depends on when the interview is done.

  This is all ABC News - every platform. The entire interview would run on ABC News Digital; "Nightline" will devote an entire broadcast; "World News" at least one night, maybe two; "Good Morning America" a segment; "This Week" a segment. And so on.

  Thanks to Fadi Mqayed for the pointer.

• The latest Iran frenzy

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 6:15 am by Blake Hounshell

  The news gods have apparently decided it's time for yet another round of Washington's favorite parlor game: "Will Israel attack Iran?"

  The latest round of speculation was kicked off by a mammoth New York Times magazine article by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, who concluded, "After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."

  Veteran Iran hand Gary Sick ably dispensed with Bergman's argument here, noting that his reporting actually points toward the opposite conclusion:

  Like virtually all other commentators on this issue, Bergman slides over the fact that the IAEA consistently reports that Iran has diverted none of its uranium to military purposes. Like others, he focuses on the recent IAEA report, which was the most detailed to date in discussing Iran’s suspected experiments with military implications; but like others, he fails to mention that almost all of the suspect activity took place seven or more years ago and there is no reliable evidence that it has resumed. A problem, yes; an imminent threat, no.

  Bergman also overlooks the fact that Iran has almost certainly NOT made a decision to actually build a bomb and that we are very likely to know if they should make such a decision. How would we know? Simply because those pesky IAEA inspectors are there on site and Iran would have to kick them out and break the seals on their stored uranium in order to produce the high enriched uranium needed for a bomb.

  Would Israel actually attack while these international inspectors are at work? No, they would need to give them warning, thereby giving Iran warning that something was coming. The IAEA presence is a trip wire that works both ways. It is an invaluable resource. Risking its loss would be not only foolhardy but self-destructive to Israel and everyone else.

  But Bergman's article isn't the only recent bite at this apple. Foreign Affairs hosted a debate between former Defense Department officials Matthew Kroenig and Colin Kahl on whether the United States should bomb Iran itself; Foreign Policy's Steve Walt went several rounds with Kroenig; defense analysts Edridge Colby and Austin Long joined the discussion in the National Interest. Many others weighed in.

  Today, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius threw another log on the fire when he reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June" and that the Obama administration is "conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States." He added: "U.S. officials don’t think that Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project." (Reuters notes archly that Ignatius was "writing from Brussels where Panetta was attending a NATO defense ministers' meeting.")

  There have also been a number of items in recent days about Iran's murky ties to al Qaeda, including this Foreign Affairs article by Rand analyst Seth Jones and what appeared to be a follow-up report in the Wall Street Journal (never mind that the information was nearly two years old), as well as a steady drumbeat of alarmist quotes from top Israeli officials -- all reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq war. Add to this mix Iran's threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, an ongoing congresssional push for tougher sanctions, and the heated rhetoric coming from Obama's Republican challengers, and you have a recipe for a media feeding frenzy.

  Most likely, the real drivers of this latest round are the Western attempts to persuade Iran's Asian customers -- China, India, Japan, South Korea -- to stop buying Iranian oil by persuading them that the only alternative is war. Those efforts are probably doomed, despite Israel's increasingly convincing ambiguity about its ultimate intentions. Asian countries simply don't care all that much about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon -- they care about their own prosperity above all.

  So, is Israel going to attack Iran, despite all of the doubts many have raised? There are only two people who know the answer to that question -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak -- and I don't think they'll announce their decision in the New York Times. The smart money's still betting against an Israeli strike, but the odds do seem to be getting shorter.

• Is Obama really trying to overthrow the Iranian regime?

  Posted: January 10, 2012, 12:31 am by Blake Hounshell

  In a bombshell revelation sure to reverberate around the world, the Washington Post quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official seeming to suggest that the United States' goal in Iran is now the collapse of the regime. The story's headline: "Goal of Iran sanctions is regime collapse, U.S. official says."

  I say "suggest" because the Post never directly quotes the official saying outright that regime change is the policy. Here's the key passage:

  The goal of U.S. and other sanctions against Iran is regime collapse, a senior U.S. intelligence official said, offering the clearest indication yet that the Obama administration is at least as intent on unseating Iran's government as it is on engaging with it.

  The official, speaking this week on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the administration hopes that sanctions "create enough hate and discontent at the street level" that Iranians will turn against their government.

  What's more, the story's authors -- Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson, two very seasoned and careful reporters -- also spoke with a "senior administration official" who contradicted that line:

  A senior administration official, speaking separately, acknowledged that public discontent was a likely result of more punitive sanctions against Iran's already faltering economy. But this official said it was not the administration's intent to press the Iranian people toward an attempt to oust their government.

  "The notion that we've crossed into sanctions being about regime collapse is incorrect," the administration official said. "We still very much have a policy that is rooted in the notion that you need to supply sufficient pressure to compel [the government] to change behavior as it's related to their nuclear program."

  Dennis Ross, a top Middle East advisor who recently left the White House, also told De Young and Wilson that regime change was not the goal of the sanctions. And he should know, because he helped design them.

  So what's going on? I suspect that the first source, the "senior U.S. intelligence official," may have misspoken, or been somehow misinterpreted. Pursuing regime change in a well-armed country of 78 million is no small matter, nor is it the sort of thing that can be ascertained from a blind quote that's immediately contradicted by other sources. (It's also very much worth noting that the harshest sanctions -- on Iran's central bank -- were imposed by Congress over the White House's objections.) 

  Still, as my colleague Dan Drezner noted yesterday, the Obama team may be hoping that sanctions can open up fissures within the Iranian regime and provoke internal political strife -- thus giving the United States and its allies more leverage. That's not quite the same thing as regime change, however.

  It's important to remember that Iranians themselves haven't called en masse for regime change. The protests that broke out over the stolen 2009 presidential election were mainly about calling for a recount or a revote, not about bringing down the entire clerical system. More Iranians may eventually conclude that "everything must go," but as far as we can tell they aren't there yet.

  There is a certain political appeal in calling for regime change in Iran, I'll admit. Obama is being pilloried daily by the Republican presidential hopefuls for not doing enough to stop Iran's nuclear program, and he seems highly unlikely to agree to a bombing campaign that may or may not succeed in doing the job. But if he can say that he's trying to overthrow the mullahs rather than negotiate with them, he might be able to neutralize that line of attack. That's probably a bad idea, and it's no way to make foreign policy, but it wouldn't be the first time an American politician behaved like, well, a politician.

  UPDATE: The Post has now changed its headline, substantially revised the top of the story, and appended a correction. The new headline reads: "Public ire one goal of Iran sanctions, U.S. official says." That's more like it.

• Libyan diplomat unloads on Qatar

  Posted: November 4, 2011, 6:02 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a Connecticut-sized thumb of a nation sticking out of the side of Saudi Arabia, played a huge role in the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, pushing for a no-fly zone and sending significant amounts of weapons, advisers, and supplies to support the Benghazi-based rebels. Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel cheered on the rebel fighters and hosted prominent opposition figures on its airwaves. The country also helped set up a satellite channel for the interim National Transitional Council, and provided its leaders with housing in swank hotels in downtown Doha. Last week, I attended a victory party hosted by Qatar in the capital city's restored souq, which was festooned with banners congratulating the new Libya on its liberation.

  In recent weeks, however, some Libyan political figures have been ramping up their criticism of Qatar for allegedly favoring Islamist leaders like exiled cleric Ali Sallabi and Tripoli Brigade leader Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a former head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, over more secular-minded folks, and for circumventing the NTC.

  Until now, such criticism has been couched in polite, but firm terms: Thanks for helping liberate us, but you need to butt out now. Qatar even signed an agreement pledging non-interference in Libya's internal affairs.

  But yesterday, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, Qaddafi's longtime foreign minister and later U.N. ambassador who broke with the old regime in a dramatic, tear-filled speech in New York on Feb. 25, unloaded on Qatar. Shalgham, mind you, is still Libya's ambassador to Turtle Bay.

  Emirati commentator Sultan al-Qassemi translated some of Shalgham's extraordinary remarks, which were broadcast by Deutsche-Welle's Arabic channel and published on YouTube:

  On possible Qatar led coalition in Libya - Shalgam: I don't understand this coalition & I don't accept it

  Shalgam: Even the Libyans don't understand this (possible Qatar led coalition) Qatar leading America & France? Who is Qatar?

  Shalgam: Does Qatar even have an army? Qatar only has mercenaries, from Nepal & from Bangladesh & from Pakistan.

  Shalgam: What capability does Qatar have? Our brothers from Qatar helped us but I fear Qatar will meet the fate of Gaddafi's megalomania.

  Shalgam: Qatar might have delusions of leading the region. I absolutely do not accept their presence (in Libya) at all.

  Shalgam: The number of Libyan martyrs & injured & missing, if you count them, is greater than the number of Qatar's residents.

  Shalgam: What is Qatar doing there (in Libya)? Qatar isn't neutral with all parties. Qatar will gather these weapons & give them to others.

  Shalgam: Libya is in no need of Qatar's money. It was Nato that played a decisive role.

  Shalgam: The professionals who run the oil & banking industries in Qatar are Libyans.

  Shalgam: What makes Qatar so special that it sets up an operations room (in Libya) to lead Britain & the US, this is totally unacceptable.

  Shalgam: All of Qatar isn't worth a neighbourhood in Libya. The Libyan experts are the ones who are leading Qatar.

  Shalgam: We don't need Qatar in anything, thanks for their efforts, we will decide our own destiny, we don't want them to interfere

  Shalgam: We don't consider them neutral in Libya, they are backing certain people, we know their names.

  Shalgam: We don't need America or Qatar, we have officers and everything. | Question from anchor - "Was Qatar forced on the Libyans?"

  Shalgam: This is unacceptable. There was no document. They gathered in meeting in Doha. Qatar forced Qatar (on Libya)

  Shalgam: Sheikh Mustafa Abdul Jalil (NTC head) went to Qatar with apolitical people who don't know the background & didn't read the document

  Shalgam: They accepted the document. I warn our brothers in Qatar, if they continue this path to dominate Libya they would be delusional.

  Shalgam: We will resist the Qataris by all means. We will not accept to be used by Qatar.

  Shalgam: We will not accept to be a new emirate that belongs to the new "Emir of the Believers" in Qatar.

  Shalgam: I do not rule out Qatar setting up a Hezbollah party in Libya. We don't want a foreign country to interfere.

  So much for gratitude! Let's see how the Qataris respond.

• Libya's new leader declares an Islamic state

  Posted: October 23, 2011, 8:07 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  In February, when Libya erupted in spontaneous protests that quickly turned into an armed revolt, Muammar al-Qaddafi and his son Seif al-Islam had a ready response: This was an al Qaeda-backed uprising, a plot to install "Islamic emirates" paying homage to Osama bin Laden.

  The world scoffed (especially after the Qaddafis accused the revolutionaries of a lot more outlandish things, from putting hallucinogenic drugs in their Nescafe to being simple "criminals"). These weren't jihadist terrorists -- they were ordinary Libyans seeking freedom from an evil, capricious tyrant. And their leaders were secular liberals, people like Mahmoud Jibril, Mahmoud Shammam, and Ali Tarhouni -- who sold the revolution to the West and made NATO intervention politically palatable.

  This narrative was challenged as it became evident that some of the best anti-Qaddafi fighters were  Islamists like the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which was later accused by some of killing interim "defense minister" Abdel Fattah Younis. Then, when Tripoli fell in August, one of the most prominent figures to emerge was Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the bearded former emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Belhaj -- who claims to have been tortured by the CIA -- was at pains to differentiate himself from al Qaeda, but his sudden ascension took many by surprise. Leading Libyan Islamists like exiled cleric Ali al-Sallabi began to agitate against the secularists on the interim council, and Jibril's continuance in office became untenable.

  All this, however, was merely an undercurrent, and the world got swept up in the excitement of the fall of Tripoli and the subsequent liberation of Qaddafi's strongholds in Bani Walid and Sirte. Last week, the Brother Leader himself was captured and appears to have been executed later that day.

  The issue of religion in politics came roaring back Sunday, however, when interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil, thought to be a moderate, declared in his "liberation" address that Libya would be an Islamic state and that sharia law would be a fundamental source of legislation. That remark differed little from statements he had made previously, however (and all Arab states have similar provisions in their constitutions). What did catch people's attention was when he got into specifics: Libya's new constitution "will not disallow polygamy," he said, and charging interest will be forbidden.

  Libyans seemed satisfied, but secular Arab commentators were taken aback. Sultan al-Qassemi, an Emirati columnist, tweeted that Abdel Jalil had just declared "the Islamic Republic of Libya." Gulf News editor Abdul Hamid Ahmad said "Mustafa Abdul Jalil has just given an evidence to all [the] world that [the] Arab uprising will end up to be Islamic states."

  No doubt the international press is going to have a field day, and there will be some serious soul-searching in Western capitals, especially coming after the shocking way in which Qaddafi was killed and the far-from-transparent way in which his autopsy was conducted.

  It's hardly surprising that Libya is heading in a more religious direction -- the vast majority of Libyans are conservative Muslims, after all -- but what is somewhat alarming is the way Abdel Jalil simply decreed these things from the podium. If Libyans want to outlaw interest and bring back polygamy, fine, but let them do so in a democratic and transparent way: Write a new constitution and let the country vote on it.

  What's amazing is that Abdel Jalil's speech happened on a day when, next door, Tunisians lined up to vote in what look to be free and fair elections to choose a constitutional assembly. Maybe they'll end up granting a plurality to the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, and maybe a coalition of liberal and leftist parties will emerge to promote a secular state. Either way, the important thing is that the people are getting a chance to choose in an open and institutionalized process. After today, the gnawing doubts that Libyans will be able to do the same will only grow.

  UPDATE: I should note that others had a different interpretation of Abdel Jalil's speech. Al Jazeera English reports him calling for "a democratic state based on Islamic law" (their paraphrase) and quote him saying, "We strive for a state of the law, for a state of prosperity, for a state that will have Islamic sharia law the basis of legislation."

  I should also add that, while there are clear differences between technocrats like Tarhouni and Islamists like Belhaj, I don't think religion will much be a faultline in Libyan politics -- it's pretty clear where the bulk of the population stands: in the conservative middle. What is worrisome are the clear geographic faultlines -- between east and west, for instance, or between the Western mountains and the coast. Perhaps, then, Islam can serve as a glue that unifies the country as splits begin to emerge over reconstruction, how to distribute oil revenues, and the some $200 billion Qaddafi left behind.

  Tom Malinowski, whose opinion I respect tremendously, emails to tell me I've got this all wrong:

  Hi Blake,

  I just read your post on Abdeljelil declaring an Islamic state. I thought I was mostly on point, but don’t think it’s correct to say that Abdeljelil tried to decree anything. It’s always been his style to speak in simple declarative terms about what the NTC believes and plans to do, but that does not mean he is making law, which he is in no position to do. I was very happy when he said to a big crowd in Tripoli that there would be women in the post-liberation transitional government, and of course all the times he has made commitments about humane treatment of prisoners, respect for the rule of law, demanding no revenge attacks on Qaddafi supporters, and so forth. In these cases, I almost wish he had the power to decree what he says! But that’s not the case, and I don’t think that was his intention in this speech. He was simply making a personal commitment to the goals he outlined.

  He is a very conservative, religious man – the first time I met him, when he was still a Qaddafi minister, he was playing Koranic music in his office; and he has always framed discussion of issues in religious terms. Plus he is a politician (which is a good thing) who must appeal to his base in a largely conservative, Muslim country. Indeed, the reason he has been able to play the largely positive, unifying role he has played over the last few months is that Libyans do not see him as a westernized secularist like Tarhuni and Jebril. When he talks about Libya needing to be part of the world, respectful of international norms, and the like, they trust him more than the others.

  So, we shall see. This whole issue of the role of Islam will be debated in Libya over the coming year. Things could still come out very badly. But no one has decided anything. What we have is what we hoped for – an open discussion among Libyans of what kind of country they want.

• Does it really matter if Qaddafi was executed?

  Posted: October 21, 2011, 3:59 pm by Blake Hounshell

  As videos and various accounts emerge of the violent final minutes of Muammar al-Qaddafi's life -- which certainly looks to be a summary execution -- international organizations from the United Nations to Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch are issuing statements calling for an investigation into the circumstances of his death.

  Human Rights Watch writes, in a carefully pitched statement that first calls for accountability for crimes committed under Qaddafi's 42-year reign, writes, "The council should also investigate the circumstances leading to the death of Gaddafi, including whether he was killed while in detention, which would constitute a serious violation of the laws of war. Human Rights Watch called on the NTC to set up an internationally supervised autopsy to establish Gaddafi's cause of death. "

  We're also seeing a lot of pious commentary about how if Libya's transitional government doesn't get to the bottom of what happened, it's a troubling sign of its commitment to democracy, etc., etc.

  All of this is no doubt well-intentioned, and yes, in an ideal world the Brother Leader would have been duly brought to trial and prosecuted in a fair and transparent process that brought healing to the victims of his regime. But that's not what happened, it probably wouldn't have happened, and ultimately it may not matter much.

  For one thing, the entire war was pretty much a legal farce to begin with. The U.N. Security Council resolution enabling it called for countries to take action to protect civilians -- and yet NATO stretched that definition to the breaking point, more or less functioning as close air support for rebel fighters. France, Qatar, and the UAE sent weapons. Sometimes NATO's contortions on this matter reached the level of farce, like the rationale a senior officer provided the LA Times Thursday about striking Qaddafi's convoy: "Those vehicles seemed to be directing the actions of the others, and they were struck. For all we know it could have been a lower-level leader." Ha, ha.

  Furthermore, as Shashank Joshi notes, the real issue to worry about in Libya right now isn't some kind of fanciful, abstract notion of the rule of law -- that's a long way off, clearly -- it's whether the transitional government can get control of the dozens of militias that sprang up spontaneously to fight Qaddafi. (Though, given that it was a Misratan brigade that probably whacked the Brother Leader and dragged him through the streets of town, it's admittedly hard to separate that vital issue from Qaddafi's killing.)

  So, am I troubled by the manner of Qaddafi's death? Yes. But it's not realistic to expect people that have been ruled for four decades by a brutal tyrant -- who left no institutions left behind and called his people "rats" as he vowed to hunt them down "alley by alley"-- to behave like Western democrats when they finally catch him. Far more important than getting to the bottom of Qaddafi's end is stabilizing the country itself and standing up a legitimate government as soon as possible.

• Saadi: the smartest Qaddafi?

  Posted: October 21, 2011, 10:23 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  Michael Hastings's look at the Obama administration's thinking leading up to the war in Libya contains this interesting nugget about Saadi al-Qaddafi, the late dictator's son:

  As Rice scrambled to line up votes at the United Nations, Qaddafi and Saif, his son and heir apparent, didn't believe that NATO would actually intervene. Why would the West move to overthrow him after they had reintegrated Libya into the international community? "Qaddafi was genuinely surprised," says Dirk Vandewalle, an expert on Libya who has consulted with both the U.N. and the State Department. "Saif and his father were never really very good at reading accurately where Libya stood in the West. They thought everything was forgiven and forgotten." On March 17th, two nights after the meeting in the Situation Room, Qaddafi went on Libyan television and gave the speech that sealed his fate. His army, he declared, would hunt the rebels down and show "no mercy."

  Qaddafi's son Saadi immediately realized that his father had made a major miscalculation. According to Jackie Frazier, an American business consultant who worked for Saadi in Tripoli during the run-up to the war, Saadi leapt into his Jeep, raced to his father's house and begged him to withdraw the threat. "Dad," he pleaded, "you have to take it back." In a last-ditch effort to prevent the U.N. from voting to authorize military intervention, Saadi also tried to get a message out to CNN that Qaddafi would not march on Benghazi.

  Now that Muammar, Muatassim, and Khamis have been killed, and Seif reportedly captured, it sure seems as though Saadi, whose bisexuality is described in State Department cables as a source of estrangement from his father, was the one member of the Qaddafi family who was somewhat in touch with reality. Not only did he apparently see the writing on the wall, but it was Saadi who seems to have spared rape victim Eman el-Obeidi's life back in the spring, and it was Saadi who offered a cease-fire (that admittedly he clearly couldn't deliver) back in August.

  Having fled Libya in September, he's now supposedly in luxurious digs in Niger, where the prime minister has vowed not to extradite him despite an Interpol warrant calling for his arrest. I assume Saadi has his hands on some of his father's assets, which certainly helps in a country as poor as Niger.

  Of course, it was supposedly Saadi who first ordered security forces to fire on demonstrators in Benghazi, so perhaps he's not so different than his brothers after all...

• Photos: Qaddafi's end

  Posted: October 20, 2011, 3:42 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters hold what they claim to be the gold-plated gun of ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi at the site where the latter was allegedly captured in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte on October 20, 2011. A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) commander had told AFP that Kadhafi was captured as his hometown Sirte was falling, adding that the ousted strongman was badly wounded.

   

  

  Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters gather outside large concrete pipes where ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi was allegedly captured in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte on October 20, 2011. An NTC commander had told AFP that Kadhafi was captured as his hometown Sirte was falling, adding that the ousted strongman was badly wounded.

   

  

  A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighter looks through a large concrete pipe where ousted Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi was allegedly captured, with a dead loyalist gunmen in the foreground, in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte on October 20, 2011. A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) commander had told AFP that Kadhafi was captured as his hometown Sirte was falling, adding that the ousted strongman was badly wounded. Arabic graffiti in blue reads: 'This is the place of Kadhafi, the rat.. God is the greatest.'

   

  

  An image captured off a cellular phone camera shows the arrest of Libya's strongman Moamer Kadhafi in Sirte on October 20, 2011. A Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) commander had told AFP that Kadhafi was captured as his hometown Sirte was falling, adding that the ousted strongman was badly wounded.

• Son of Stuxnet?

  Posted: October 19, 2011, 3:54 pm by Blake Hounshell

  When an unknown entity, most likely some combination of Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, created Stuxnet, the mysterious computer worm widely thought to be targeted at Iran's nuclear program, cybersecurity experts warned that a new digital threat had been unleashed, with potentially dangerous and wideranging consequences.

  David Hoffman wrote about Stuxnet for FP back in March:

  The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which has closely monitored the Iranian nuclear effort, reported that in late 2009 or early 2010, Iran decommissioned and replaced about 1,000 centrifuges in its uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz. If the goal of Stuxnet was to "set back Iran's progress" while making detection of the malware difficult, an ISIS report stated, "it may have succeeded, at least for a while."

  But there are risks of blowback. Langner warns that such malware can proliferate in unexpected ways: "Stuxnet's attack code, available on the Internet, provides an excellent blueprint and jump-start for developing a new generation of cyber warfare weapons." He added, "Unlike bombs, missiles, and guns, cyber weapons can be copied. The proliferation of cyber weapons cannot be controlled. Stuxnet-inspired weapons and weapon technology will soon be in the hands of rogue nation states, terrorists, organized crime, and legions of leisure hackers."

  Industrial control systems that were the target of Stuxnet are spread throughout the world and vulnerable to such attacks. In one 11-year-old Australian case, a disenchanted employee of the company that set up the control system at a sewage plant later decided to sabotage it. From his laptop, the worker ordered it to spill 211,337 gallons of raw sewage, and the control system obeyed -- polluting parks, rivers, and the grounds of a hotel, killing marine life and turning a creek's water black.

  Now, tech researchers at Symantec and F-Secure have identified a new piece of malware they're calling Duqu, and which they say is very similar to Stuxnet.

  According to Symantec, "Duqu's purpose is to gather intelligence data and assets from entities, such as industrial control system manufacturers, in order to more easily conduct a future attack against another third party. The attackers are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility."

  Nobody knows who created Duqu, or why. (Says F-Secure: "Was Duqu written by US Government? Or by Israel? We don't know. Was the target Iran? We don't know.")

  But Symantec reports that "the threat was highly targeted toward a limited number of organizations for their specific assets. ... The creators of Duqu had access to the source code of Stuxnet, not just the Stuxnet binaries. The attackers intend to use this capability to gather intelligence from a private entity to aid future attacks on a third party."

  So are we seeing another attempt by the same crowd that brought us Stuxnet in the first place? Or disturbing evidence that the predictions of Langner and others are coming true -- that a tool intended to cripple Iran's nuclear enrichment efforts has now been repurposed, possibly by another foreign government or a criminal syndicate?

  We may find out in short order. F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen, who has adopted the hashtag #Stuxnet2, warns on his Twitter feed: "If Duqu was indeed an information gathering operation, we should expect the real attack soon."

• Rush Limbaugh on Lord's Resistance Army: "Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians"

  Posted: October 15, 2011, 7:52 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Photo: A former abductee of the Lord's Resistance Army

  Yesterday, when President Obama announced that the United States would be sending 100 special operations forces to help Uganda battle the Lord's Resistance Army, a notorious and brutal death cult led by Joseph Kony, a joke went around on Twitter that Michele Bachmann would soon be attacking the president for "targeting Christians."

  Of course, to call the LRA "Christians" is to abase the English language. As the Atlantic's Graeme Wood put it in a profile of Kony last year, "An American diplomat in Bangui compared the group to the Manson family, but given that the LRA has killed 12,000 people, the comparison is self-evidently unfair to Manson."

  Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth wrote of the group last fall:

  Its cadre often descends on a remote village, slaughters every adult in sight, and then kidnaps the children, some shockingly young -- the boys to become soldiers slinging AK-47s, the girls to serve as "bush wives." Over more than two decades, many thousands have fallen victim to these roving mass murderers. 

  But Bachmann was too smart to fall into this trap, and instead it was Rush Limbaugh who jumped on the news to attack Obama. Behold:

  Lord's Resistance Army are Christians.  They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. ... So that's a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda, and -- (interruption) no, I'm not kidding.  Jacob Tapper just reported it. ... 

  Lord's Resistance Army objectives.  I have them here.  "To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people." Now, again Lord's Resistance Army is who Obama sent troops to help nations wipe out.  The objectives of the Lord's Resistance Army, what they're trying to accomplish with their military action in these countries is the following:  "To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology."  Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting, or who are being fought and we are joining in the effort to remove them from the battlefield. 

  Then, after a break, he (sort of) realizes his mistake:

  Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys -- and they claim to be Christians.

  It takes your breath away, doesn't it?

  (Thanks to @AdamSerwer for the link.)

• Who cares about the %#&@#% $16 muffins?

  Posted: September 22, 2011, 6:35 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The latest tempest in a teapot in this season of austerity? Congressional outrage over the Justice Department's spending on food and beverages at one of its conferences in 2009. An inspector general's audit report found that the department paid $4,200 for 250 muffins and $2,880 for 300 cookies and brownies.

  "By itemizing these costs, with service and gratuity, muffins cost over $16 each and cookies and brownies cost almost $10 each," the report reads.

  Never mind that this analysis is not necessarily accurate. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a statement decrying the muffin-spending: "The Justice Department appears to be blind to the economic realities our country is facing."

  Frank Wolf, whose committee oversees the Justice Department in the House, chimed in with his own letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder:

  "It is clear that while American taxpayers were tightening their belts and making difficult financial decisions, the department was splurging on wasteful snacks and drinks as well as unnecessary event planning 'consultants.'"

  OK, let's stipulate that spending $16, or even $10, for a muffin is excessive, and a waste of taxpayer money. But give me a break -- this kind of spending is hardly the problem.

  Not only are spiraling health-care costs the real cause of America's long-term budget woes -- something Congress has done hardly anything to address -- but defense spending is by far the biggest chunk of annual discretionary spending. The Pentagon can't even pass an audit, and won't be able to do so until 2017, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's Senate testimony today. With the enthusiastic patronage of Congress, the U.S. military spends tens of billions of dollars on weapons systems that either don't work as adverstised (Future Combat Systems, anyone?), cost far more than budgeted (all of them), or are wholly unnecessary (remember the Kafkaesque fight over the Joint Strike Fighter's "alternate engine"?).

  The Justice Department's entire budget request for 2012 is $28 billion -- less than what the U.S. spends in Iraq and Afghanistan in three months. Before it was cut to only $200 million in July, the Pentagon's budget for military bands was $325 million. Military bands!

  But by all means, rant about the muffins...

• The end of the Al Jazeera decade?

  Posted: September 20, 2011, 8:05 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  The sudden resignation Tuesday morning of Al Jazeera director-general Wadah Khanfar sent shockwaves through the Arab media world, leading to intense speculation about whether the relative freedom the satellite network had enjoyed is about to come to an end.

  In his 8 years at the helm of the network, Khanfar built it into a news powerhouse in the Middle East and beyond, angering the United States and nearly every Arab regime and -- arguably -- helping take a few of them down. He presided over the opening of Al Jazeera English, the widely praised international spinoff, which recently pried open the U.S. cable market after years of a de facto boycott. Al Jazeera's Arabic-language reporters, in particular, have taken bold risks to report the news, and not only during the Arab Spring. Some of them have paid with their lives.

  Khanfar is at the top of his game. So why did he resign? In his departing note to staff, he said only that it was because he had "decided to move on" and that he had been discussing his "desire to step down" for some time.

  "Upon my appointment," he wrote, "the Chairman and I set a goal to establish Al Jazeera as global media leader and we have agreed that this target has been met and that the organization is in a healthy position."

  But is that the whole story? A couple theories are making the rounds, none of which seem to be based on any inside information. So what follows is purely speculative.

  One potential clue is Khanfar's replacement: Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, a member of the royal family. Al Thani is not a journalist; he is an executive at QatarGas, a state-affiliated natural gas producer. Given that the chairman is Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, another royal family member, this may not ultimately be such a big deal. But the optics certainly don't look good.

  There were already strong reasons to question just how much editorial independence the network really has. The U.S. State Department clearly views Al Jazeera as a tool of Qatar's foreign policy; one cable from November 2009 claims that the Persian Gulf state uses the channel "as a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries, particularly those soured by al-Jazeera's broadcasts, including the United States." Al Jazeera devotes suspiciously little time to covering the politics of the Gulf; for instance, after Qatar's rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, criticism of the Saudi royal family dropped dramatically.

  In recent weeks, the details of conversations between U.S. officials and Al Jazeera executives, including Khanfar, had been the subject of much chatter in the Arab world (Omar Chatriwala details that story for FP here). One October 2005 cable describes U.S. officials presenting Khanfar with the findings of a Defense Intelligence Agency report complaining about the network's coverage, and him agreeing to remove a particularly inflammatory slideshow from Al Jazeera's website. The cable was taken out of context and seized upon by the network's critics as evidence of a CIA-Qatari conspiracy to manipulate Arabs in the service of U.S. foreign-policy goals.

  Middle East Online is running with the headline "WikiLeaks topples Al Jazeera director." But if Khanfar somehow had to resign because of the cable controversy, which has hurt Al Jazeera's credibility in certain quarters, it doesn't wash that his replacement would be a member of the Qatari royal family. Middle East Online also reports that unnamed Qatari officials were already looking to cashier Khanfar over a supposed dispute with Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian intellectual and former Knesset member who lives in Doha (and appears frequently on Al Jazeera).

  So perhaps something else is going on. My sense from watching the Arabic network's coverage over the past few months is that it had more or less dropped the pretense of independence, and at times seemed like the official network of the Qatari Foreign Ministry. For instance, its Libya coverage was utterly over-the-top, enthusiastic cheerleading for the rebels -- and it just so happened that Qatar was heavily engaged in overthrowing Muammar al-Qaddafi. When Qatar brokered a peace agreement between warring factions in Darfur, Al Jazeera broke away from its normal coverage for two hours to show the final announcement. And, as many have noted, the Arabic channel's usual aggression has been noticeably lacking when it comes to Bahrain.

  It's hard to imagine a hard-charging guy like Khanfar -- who clearly has his own ideological leanings -- putting up with that sort of thing for very long. So maybe he just didn't want to toe anybody's line. Whatever the reason, Arabs will be watching closely to see if his successor clips Al Jazeera's wings.

  Correction: Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani is not a former minister of commerce, as I originally wrote. And QatarGas is technically state-affiliated but not state-owned.

• Wadah Khanfar resigns from Al Jazeera

  Posted: September 20, 2011, 4:16 pm by Blake Hounshell

  This morning, Wadah Khanfar, the long-time director-general of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based pan-Arab satellite network, announced he was stepping down after 8 years at the helm. Here is his resignation note, which was emailed to staff:

  Dear Colleagues,
  
  This month marks my eighth year at the helm of Al Jazeera. Having served as the organisations top executive since 2003, first as Managing Director and then as Director-General, I have decided to move on.
  
  For sometime I have been discussing my desire to step down with the Chairman of the Board. He has kindly expressed understanding and has accepted my decision. Upon my appointment, the Chairman and I set a goal to establish Al Jazeera as global media leader and we have agreed that this target has been met and that the organization is in a healthy position.
  
  Today our network spans 25 channels that broadcast in Arabic and English, and will soon by broadcasting news in Turkish, Kiswahili and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Each and everyone of you have played a role in building this network into world-class media organization founded on mutual respect and integrity. Through your hard work and persistence, often in times of great adversity, we now reach millions of viewers across the world. This includes inroads into the most competitive media market in the world, the United States of America. This was no easy feat - not long ago, then US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unfairly attacked our coverage of Iraq while today, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, hails our news coverage. We were not weakened by Rumsfeld's comments nor made complacent by Clintons'. Al Jazeera Al Jazeera is still-our independent and integral coverage has not changed.
  
  From our first Arabic news broadcast in 1996 our audience recognized the distinctive and courageous editorial agenda that was marked by our promise of independence and our motto of "the opinion and the other opinion".
  
  When we launched in 1996 "media independence" was a contradiction in terms. State media was prevalent and was blatantly used for propaganda and misinformation. Within such an environment the public probably doubted that Al Jazeera would fulfill its promise of independent journalism. We managed to pleasantly surprise them by exceeding all expectations.
  
  Authoritarian regimes were terrified at the birth of this new institution and they quickly went on the offensive. From trying to discredit our reportage and staff through disinformation to lodging official protests with the Qatari government. When this did not stop our reporting, they started harassing our correspondents, detaining our staff and closing our offices. The only way they could stop us was by jamming our satellite signal. Yet we remained steadfast in our editorial policy - in fact, each attempt to silence us further emboldened us and increased our resolve.
  
  Al Jazeera gained the trust of its audience through consistently speaking
  truth to power, and channeling peoples' aspirations for dignity and freedom. Our
  audience quickly saw that Al Jazeera was of them and their world - it was
  not a foreign imposition nor did it seek to impose a partisan agenda. We were
  trusted to be objective and to be the voice of the voiceless.
  
  It is through dedication and conviction of our staff that we have assumed a position of leadership in our industry. Even though we are a young organisation, in just 15 years our name is deeply associated with the very notion of news the world over. We are respected by our audience and hold the admiration of our peers.
  
  Prior to assuming my role leading Al Jazeera, I served the channel as a correspondent in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. It was during this time that I realized the importance of a free press with the human being at the core of its agenda. Whether it is the impact of decisions made in a country'sSituation Room or a corporate boardroom, being in the field engrains in one the responsibility to tell the story from the perspective of those affected the most. It is this culture that I have endeavored to build and maintain over the years - an independent newsroom that respects its audience, understands their collective consciousness and reports for and to them with integrity.
  
  It is this newsroom, our correspondents, producers, presenters, cameraman, editors and technicians who provided the world with integral and fearless coverage of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia and elsewhere. This newsroom that showed the world the first images of the Asian Tsunami and of the famine in Niger. In 2011 the eyes of the world watched the aspirations of millions unfold as our newsrooms broadcast, tweeted and published the events unfolding in the Liberation Squares from Sidi Bouzid to
  Jissr Al-Shughur. The coverage of these revolutions is ongoing, and we continue to report the fight of the youth to achieve dignity and freedom from tyranny and dictatorship.
  
  Contrary to the "common sense" imparted by the regimes political elite, the Arab public are not naïve demagogues or irrational believers. They are intelligent, politically astute and have a level of empathy that the political elite lack.  Our channel lives and dies by this audience and they will not forgive us if we deviate from the mission that we have lived for the past 15 years. This is perhaps the best guarantee that Al Jazeera will maintain its stellar record and lives up to its code of conduct. It is the mission for which Tariq Ayoub, and Rasheed Wali Ali Jaber gave their lives for, the mission which Tayseer Alouni and Sami Al Hajj spent years illegally detained and for which many of you were harassed. Between our audiences
  expectation and your vigilance, I am confident that Al Jazeera will continue to report with integrity and courage.
  
  I have been fortunate over the past eight years for having worked with successive Boards of Directors, each distinguished and committed to Al Jazeera. I am personally indebted to the Chairman of the Board, Sheikh Hamad Bin Thamer Al Thani, whose expertise and vision had a most profound affect onmaintaining the stability of Al Jazeera through turbulent times, while always focusing on its long-term vision of growth and excellence in
  journalism.
  
  Al Jazeera would never have accomplished its mission were it not for the support and commitment by the State of Qatar. Its people and leadership have not only provided financial backing but have endured great international pressure to ensure the independence and integrity of our newsroom and staff.
  
  I am fortunate to have had eight years working with an outstanding group of professionals. Today Al Jazeera stands as a mature organisation and I am confident that the organisation will continue to maintain its trailblazing path. It is then with this remarkable cohort of journalists, a strong organisation and exceptional backing that I leave Al Jazeera.
  
  My most profound gratitude to all of you and to the loyal audience of Al
  Jazeera.
  
  Sincerely,
  Wadah Khanfar

• They shoot donkeys, don't they?

  Posted: September 13, 2011, 11:46 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Over the last six months, I've watched countless gory videos of Arab protesters (and sometimes children) who have been beaten to death, shot in the head, run over with tanks, or otherwise brutalized by their own governments. And yet, for reasons that I can't quite fathom, few scenes have disturbed me as much as this one, said to be of Syrian soldiers gunning down a group of donkeys in cold blood:

  Syrians on Twitter tell me that the reason for this seemingly senseless slaughter is to punish villagers for supporting the protest movement by taking away their means of survival. If so, it's a particularly nasty form of collective punishment -- gunning down a bunch of innocent, helpless animals.

  The Syrian revolution has been going through a rough patch lately, with little fresh movement to isolate Bashar al-Assad's regime and what look to be smaller protests inside the country. The exiled opposition can't seem to get its act together and organize a united front, while activists inside the country are calling desperately for international protection of some kind as dozens of them continue to be killed, injured, or rounded up each day.

  It would be bitterly ironic if it took the murder of a few donkeys to summon the global sense of outrage that greeted Bashar's Ramadan crackdown. But then again, the world works in strange ways sometimes.

• Was Libya worth it?

  Posted: August 22, 2011, 1:29 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  With the Libyan rebels now largely in control of Tripoli, and two of Muammar al-Qaddafi's sons in custody after a stunning final assault of the capital, the answer seems clear: absolutely.

  Many have criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy of "leading from behind" in Libya, but that strategy now seems utterly vindicated. It was Libyans themselves, with significant help from NATO, Qatar, and the UAE, who liberated their country from Qaddafi's grip -- a fact about which they are fiercely and justly proud. It required little from American taxpayers: As of Thursday, NATO operations had cost the United States around $1.1 billion, according to CFR's Micah Zenko -- a rounding error.

  Of course, there will be problems. Not only is Tripoli not yet fully secure, but two regime strongholds -- Sirte and Sabha -- appear to remain in regime hands. Libyan state TV is still, incredibly, on the air. The "brother leader" remains at large, as do his sons Muatassim and Khamis Qaddafi, as well as his intelligence chief and brother-in-law Abdullah al-Senussi. They may try, Saddam-style, to mount an insurgency (though the speed of Qaddafi's collapse in Tripoli suggest they will find few takers).

  The National Transitional Council won't have an easy time of governing, either. Not only is it not clear how much loyalty it commands among the fighters, but Libya has effectively no institutions: It was a state run for the benefit of the Qaddafi family and its shrinking circle of friends and allies. There is little history of political pluralism in Libya, and no doubt many grievances and cleavages lurk below the surface. (Reuters journalist Michael Georgy raises some important concerns to this effect here.) There will likely be intense disagreements over how to distribute Libya's oil wealth, how to account for the last 42 years of despotic rule, how to incorporate Islam into the state, and how to disarm and integrate the disparate fighting brigades that overthrew Qaddafi. There will be a temptation to overly centralize power, fueled by oil receipts concentrated in a few hands. Hopefully, any conflicts that arise will be resolved peacefully.

  But these problems seem manageable over time, and it is in any case hard to imagine any Libyan government worse than Qaddafi, whose rule was not only deeply repressive and arbitrary at home but also destabilizing abroad. I disagree strongly with those, like CFR's Richard Haass, who would like to see some kind of foreign stabilization force -- not only is it not going to happen, but it's best if Libyans handle their own affairs as much as possible. They will make mistakes, but these will be their own mistakes. It's now their country once again.

  And that's the best news about the fall of Qaddafi. It is the only case so far in which Arab revolutionaries themselves will get the chance to overhaul the old order. In Tunisia and Egypt, the old regimes are still very much in power -- at least until new elections are held and new constitutions are written. And even then, gaining full civilian control over the military and the security apparatus will be a years-long struggle. Libya has the chance to wipe the slate clean, and given what a terrible system is being overthrown, that alone seems like reason enough to celebrate.

• Bashar al-Assad is going down

  Posted: August 8, 2011, 3:54 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  The noose around Bashar al-Assad's neck is getting tighter.

  With the extraordinary midnight statement Sunday by Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, demanding the "stoppage of the killing machine and bloodshed" in Syria and withdrawing the Saudi ambassador from Damascus for "consultations," the Syrian president's isolation is nearly complete. The remarks came after a milder Gulf Cooperation Council statement last week that, in hindsight, ought to have been seen as a warning.

  Kuwait also withdrew its ambassador Monday, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was on his way to Damascus to deliver "a very sharp message" to Assad, in the words of an anonymous senior Turkish diplomat quoted by Hürriyet Daily News.

  “[Turkey and Syria] will sit down and talk for one last time … even though one should not exclude dialogue, even in wartime,” another Foreign Ministry official told the paper. “The talks will show whether the ties will be cut loose or not … If a new [Turkish] policy is to be outlined on Syria – that’s the last meeting.”

  Yet for all the drama of leading Middle Eastern powers finally expressing their exasperation with a brutal crackdown that has lasted for nearly 5 months -- and escalated dramatically during the holy month of Ramadan -- none of these countries are yet calling for Assad's ouster, as France and the United States have done. Arab states are still signaling that the Syrian regime has a chance to stay in their good graces by carrying out those two favorite words of disingenuous tyrants everywhere: "dialogue" and "reform."

  As Nabil el-Araby -- whose tenure as Arab League chief thus far has been characterized by toadyishness and willful naivete -- put it Monday, "Do not expect drastic measures but step-by-step persuasion to resolve the conflict."

  Once you're done laughing at the notion that the League of Arab Dictators has any idea what will satisfy the Syrian people, consider this: Does anyone really still think Assad is capable of solving this thing? Not only is the Syrian regime pushing back against the external criticism, insisting it is responding to "sabotage acts" by armed Islamist gangs, but the crackdown has empowered the very elements of the regime least amenable to a democratic transition. Moreover, as Assad himself noted in his interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, it is fruitless to make changes under pressure:

  If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and in Tunisia, it is too late to do any reform. This is first. Second, if you do it just because of what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, then it is going to be a reaction, not an action; and as long as what you are doing is a reaction you are going to fail.

  I expect that over the next few days, we might see fewer provocative moves -- like this weekend's bloody assault on the eastern city of Deir az-Zour, which seems to have provoked King Abdullah's ire -- from the Syrian regime. Perhaps Assad and friends will announce a fresh round of "reforms" -- always, of course, with trap doors and escape hatches that render them meaningless. But at this point, Assad seems doomed; after so much bloodshed and anger, any genuine political solution will inevitably lead to his ouster. His wisest course of action now is to find a safe place to spend his retirement (perhaps Vogue will give him a job?).

  I imagine a loose coalition of France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States will now be working toward a soft landing for Syria -- looking for high-level defectors who could negotiate with opposition leaders and carry out what political scientists call a "pacted transition." But it's hard to imagine this working either, given that the military and security services are so tightly controlled by the Assad clan and that the opposition is so diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing comparable to the relatively upright Tunisian and Egyptian militaries in Syria, whose army has been shelling cities and towns across the country. And there is nobody for the regime to negotiate with who can guarantee calm on the streets.

  The whole Baathist system has to come down, and it probably will. The only questions now are how long it will take, and how much more innocent blood will be shed in the process.

• The video Bashar al-Assad wants you to see

  Posted: August 3, 2011, 6:04 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In the last few days, supporters of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria have been circulating a video that they claim shows regime opponents in Syria dumping the bodies of soldiers into the Orontes River in or near Hama, where the Syrian Army is currently engaged in a brutal punitive campaign against civilians who say they're defending themselves only with rocks and wooden sticks.

  Syrian TV has made great hay from the clip, citing it as devastating proof that the protesters are in fact "armed gangs" bent on sowing destruction and chaos and terrorizing law-abiding, patriotic citizens who love their wise leaders.

  Here's the video, which is not for the squeamish, as aired on Russian propaganda channel Russia Today. Someone has added English subtitles to this version:

  And here's CNN's report on the same clip:

  CNN cites a Syrian activist who confirmed the video, but other Syrian activists strongly dispute that it is from Hama. One of them, who goes by the pseudonym Edward E. Dark, summarizes the local coordinating committee's complaints about the video here:

  1) The Assi river has been dry for a month and a half now because the dams at Rastan have not been opened to allow water to flow.
  
  2) There is no such bridge in Hama.
  
  3) There is no background noise whatsoever in the video Not even a splash. Nothing.
  
  4) the way this video was distributed by unknown sources and the timing, suggests that it was released by the regime to justify an attack on Hama. This video was most likely taken in Jisr el Shughur, and shows pro-regime militia disposing on civilian bodies.
  
  They go on to say that after four months, the regime can come up with no valid accusations against Hama, so they have resorted to making some up. 

  Pro-government Syrians reply that there is such a bridge, located at the coordinates 35.151942,36.733099 in Google Earth, just north of town. Here's an image someone uploaded to Panoramio:

   

  

   

  It's hard to tell if it's indeed the same bridge, but the fence is similar to the one in the video. It also appears to be about the right height, but what about the sheer cliffs shown in the video?

  And even if it is the same bridge, how can we take the regime's story at face value? The Syrian government has very little credibility at this point. It's entirely possible that the bodies shown are those of protesters -- they are in civilian garb, after all -- and it's the security forces dumping them into the water. Another point skeptics of the video make is that phrases heard on the recording like "fuck your religion" are words Islamists would be unlikely to use. They point out that in June, Syrian state television told a similar story, claiming that armed gangs "mutilated some of the bodies [of security forces] and threw some into the river" near Jisr al-Shughour, but never provided any persuasive evidence.

  In the end, it's simply impossible to confirm either side of this story without being able to report freely from Syria, something the Syrian government manifestly does not allow. Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that a massacre is underway in Hama, with tanks now occupying the city's central square and civilians reportedly fleeing in large numbers. The overwhelming bulk of protests in Syria have been peaceful, precisely because the activists know that taking up arms would give the regime an excuse to slaughter them -- though it's perfectly capable of fabricating one out of whole cloth.

• Will Mubarak's trial bring down the Egyptian regime?

  Posted: August 3, 2011, 3:35 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  The sight of Hosni Mubarak, lying prostrate on a gurney inside a cage in a makeshift courtroom while his sons Alaa and Gamal stood dutifully by, electrified the Arab world Wednesday, raising the prospect that the ousted Egyptian dictator may soon be held accountable for his crimes.

  Yet for all the palpable excitement over Mubarak's trial, as well as that of several other top regime figures like former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly, the chaotic scenes in the courtroom -- and the rock fight outside of it -- did not exactly inspire confidence in the Egyptian justice system. In one particularly bizarre moment, a lawyer speaking on behalf of Mubarak's victims claimed that the man in the cage was an imposter, and that the real president of Egypt died in 2004. At other points, Mubarak was caught on camera picking his nose. Dozens of lawyers on both sides crowded the bar and shouted their demands, forcing the judge to shut them up.

  The trial, which will resume tomorrow for Adly and for the Mubaraks on Aug. 15, is being held under the military rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the junta that deposed Mubarak in February at the height of a popular street uprising demanding his ouster. Although the SCAF adamantly denies meddling in the civilian court system, its claims of neutrality are about to be put to the test: Mubarak's lawyer is demanding that Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, the defense minister who is now Egypt's de facto ruler, be called to the stand, along with former intelligence cheif Omar Suleiman, who briefly assumed the vice presidency during the 18 days of the revolution.

  Interestingly, Mubarak's defense team claims that it was Tantawi who was technically the ruler of the country from Jan. 28 onward, meaning that the infamous Feb. 2 "Battle of the Camels" in Tahrir Square happened on the field marshal's watch. That strategy seems dubious, however, given that this legal status was never communicated at the time -- and it was not until Feb. 11 that Suleiman appeared on state television to announce that Mubarak had "resigned his position as president of the republic." [UPDATE: Al Jazeera's Evan Hill says that the defense is actually arguing that Tantawi was in charge of security, not that he was running the country.]

  Still, it will be fascinating to see if Tantawi, Suleiman, and other senior figures like former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq will be dragged into the courtroom drama. The Egyptian regime was, and still very much is, a police state backed by the military. The circle of criminality and repression goes far wider than just a few dozen people. Mubarak isn't being tried for the 30 years of dictatorship, stagnation, and ruin he brought upon his country, but for the actions his subordinates took, allegedly under his orders, during the three weeks that brought him down. But there are no doubt many dark secrets that will come out during this trial, if the SCAF will allow it. Ironically, it might be the Big Man himself who, in trying to save his own neck and that of his sons, brings the rest of the system down with him.

• Is Iran working with al Qaeda? And is there a Qatari connection?

  Posted: July 28, 2011, 9:58 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The Treasury Department today named six alleged al Qaeda operatives that it said were members of a network that worked to facilitate the moving of "money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia" in cooperation with the government of Iran.

  The department's press release said that Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, a Syrian living in Iran, was collecting money from Gulf donors and using it to send cash to al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as dispatching "extremist recruits for al Qaeda from the Gulf to Pakistan and Afghanistan via Iran." (If so, he's not doing such a great job, as al Qaeda's branch in Iraq has recently complained of going broke, and U.S. counterterrorism officials claim the group is on the verge of defeat in Pakistan.)

  Washington has long accused Iran of meddling in Afghanistan, and more recently has blamed the Islamic Republic for a stepped-up campaign against U.S. troops in Iraq. (A few months back, I met with a UAE military official who made the same accusation about Iran supplying weapons and money to anti-coalition fighters in Afghanistan.) It's also been widely reported that senior al Qaeda figures are under some sort of house arrest in Iran, possibly as bargaining chips -- but that Iran may have recently allowed a few of those operatives to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  I was particularly interested in this latest announcement by the Treasury, because it names two individuals in Qatar, where I am temporarily based.

  One of those named, Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari, was also mentioned in an Amnesty International action alert in March as one of three individuals subject to arbitrary detention whom Sultan al-Khalaifi -- someone the NGO described as a blogger and human rights activist -- was trying to get released. Khalaifi was mysteriously arrested on March 1 by "a number of state security agents,” according to Amnesty, along with three other unnamed Qataris, and seems to have disappeared into a black hole.

  At the time, I remember thinking the case was odd, because Khalaifi had only written four blog posts -- and none of them recently. Was he really arrested for his blogging activities? One theory was that Khalaifi was somehow involved in Facebook calls for a revolution to oust Emir Hamad Khalifa al-Thani, as his blog and the "Qatar Revolution" Facebook page contained some similar themes -- that the emir was corrupt and in league with the evil Americans and Israel, that his wife was too prominent, and so on. Khalaifi listed Sayyif Qutb's Milestones, a seminal Islamist tract, as his favorite book, so it seemed clear where his political leanings lay. [UPDATE: According to this Qatari blog, Khalaifi was released in April.]

  In any event, I have no idea whether there's a link between today's Treasury announcement and the Khalaifi case, but the mention of Kuwari is certainly intriguing. Is he actually already in custody? If so, did he provide information on Khalil's (alleged) activities in Iran? And what explains Washington's motives for making this announcement today?

  Leah Farrell, a leading al Qaeda expert based in Australia, tweeted that she was skeptical of the Treasury designation, and suggested it might be motivated by a U.S. desire to put pressure on Iran.

  "Past reports have been poorly sourced and containing serious inaccuracies," she said. "I know about some of these people. They're not new and the reality is far more complex."

  "This seems like a means of overcoming a lack of leverage against Iran releasing people."

  More later.

• What did the Oslo killer want?

  Posted: July 23, 2011, 1:29 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  I have just finished reading through what appears to be the 1,518-page manifesto and handbook of the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in Norwegian history.

  The manifesto, bylined by someone calling himself Andrew Berwick, is entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" and was posted on Stormfront.org, a white supremacist website, and discovered by American blogger Kevin I. Slaughter. [UPDATE: Norwegian TV has confirmed that the author is indeed the Oslo shooter, according to the New York Times.]

  In it, "Berwick" declares himself a "Justiciar Knight Commander," a leading member of a "re-founded" Knights Templar group formed at an April 2002 meeting in London. He claims the founding group has 9 members, whom he does not name, and that three other sympathizers were not able to attend the original meeting.

  "Our purpose," the document reads, is to "seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda."

  In grim, apocalyptic language, it advocates attacks on "traitors" across Europe who are supposedly enabling a Muslim takeover of the continent.

  "[W]e should… not exceed (per 2010) aprox. 45 000 dead and 1 million wounded cultural Marxists/multiculturalists in Western Europe," the author writes. "The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come."

  The manifesto also provides detailed instructions for everything from making a bomb to raising funds to preparing physically and mentally for what the author describes as a coming three-stage "civil war" between patriotic nationalists and "multiculturalists" who are, wittingly or not, destroying European civilization.

  Filled with hateful rantings against Muslims -- whom the author claims are on a trajectory to take over Europe and erase its culture patrimony -- the writing bears a great resemblence to online comments attributed to Anders Breivik, 32, the confessed architect of a massacre that has so far claimed nearly 100 lives.

  The author also claims to be Norwegian, and says that English is not his native language. And at the bottom of the document are several pictures of Breivick in different outfits, including the frogman costume pictured above.

  Most suggestive of all, perhaps, is the detailed diary the author kept of his 82-day attempt to secretly build a fertilizer bomb while hiding out at a farm purchased explicitly for that purpose -- chronicling his attempts to construct a device that would kill as many people as possible.

  Here's his entry from June 13, when he had his first successful detonation:

  I prepared a test device today and drove off to a very isolated site. The test bomb was composed of a 3g DDNP primary and a 30g PA secondary. If this test would fail, I would abandon operation A and move forward with the non-spectacular operation B.

  I lit the fuse, went out of range and waited. It was probably the longest 10 seconds I have ever endured…

  BOOM! The detonation was successful!!!:-) I quickly drove away to avoid any potential unwanted attention, from people in the vicinity. I would have to come back a few hours later to investigate the blast hole, to see if both compounds had detonated.

  Oddly, despite his evident hatred of Muslims and Arabs, "Berwick" professes admiration for al Qaeda, which he lists as one of only two "successful militant organisations" due to its "superior structural adaptation."

  "If Muhammad was alive today," he writes, "Usama Bin Laden would have been his second in command."

  Elsewhere, he cites al Qaeda's training manual as a reference, and declares, "Just like Jihadi warriors are the plum tree of the Ummah, we will be the plum tree for Europe and for Christianity."

  In another eerie parallel, he also calls for suicidal operations in service of the larger cause: "Let us be perfectly clear; if you are unwilling to martyr yourself for the cause, then the PCCTS, Knights Templar is not for you."

  (PCCTS, he explains, stands for "Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici" or, in English, "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.")

  Chillingly, the manifesto ends:

  I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.

  Sincere regards,
  Andrew Berwick
  Justiciar Knight Commander
  Knights Templar Europe
  Knights Templar Norway

• U.S. envoy in Damascus: "Hama and the Syrian crisis is not about the U.S. at all."

  Posted: July 10, 2011, 5:24 pm by Blake Hounshell

  U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford has posted a note on the embassy's Facebook page, responding to recent demonstrations denouncing his recent trip to the besieged city of Hama:

  Outside the Embassy demonstrators complained about U.S. policy towards the Syrian government and my trip to Hama.

  As I have said before, we respect the right of all Syrians – and people in all countries - to express their opinions freely and in a climate of mutual respect. We wish the Syrian government would do the same – and stop beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators. I have not seen the police assault a “mnhebak” demonstration yet. I am glad – I want all Syrians to enjoy the right to demonstrate peacefully. On July 9 a “mnhebak” group threw rocks at our embassy, causing some damage. They resorted to violence, unlike the people in Hama, who have stayed peaceful. Go look at the Ba’ath or police headquarters in Hama – no damage that I saw.

  Other protesters threw eggs and tomatoes at our embassy. If they cared about their fellow Syrians the protesters would stop throwing this food at us and donate it to those Syrians who don’t have enough to eat. And how ironic that the Syrian Government lets an anti-U.S. demonstration proceed freely while their security thugs beat down olive branch-carrying peaceful protesters elsewhere.

  The people in Hama have been demonstrating peacefully for weeks. Yes, there is a general strike, but what caused it? The government security measures that killed protesters in Hama. In addition, the government began arresting people at night and without any kind of judicial warrant. Assad had promised in his last speech that there would be no more arrests without judicial process. Families in Hama told me of repeated cases where this was not the reality. And I saw no signs of armed gangs anywhere – not at any of the civilian street barricades we passed.

  Hama and the Syrian crisis is not about the U.S. at all. This is a crisis the Syrian people are in the process of solving. It is a crisis about dignity, human rights, and the rule of law. We regret the loss of life of all Syrians killed, civilians and security members both, and hope that the Syrian people will be able to find their way out of this crisis soon. Respect for basic human rights is a key element of the solution.

  Pointedly, no direct word about today's "national dialogue," which the opposition is boycotting -- though his remark that "this is a crisis the Syrian people are in the process of solving" suggests the United States is still not quite ready to dump Bashar al-Assad.

  In related news, Ford and his French counterpart were hauled into the Syrian Foreign Ministry Sunday and criticized for their trip to Hama on Thursday and Friday. Given that the State Department said the visit was authorized by the Syrian regime, it's likely this is all just political theater -- or even cover for an official meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem.

  Another explanation might be retaliation for the fact that Syrian ambassador to Washington Imad Moustapha was summoned to the State Department this past week for allegedly spying on Syrian-Americans and threatening their family members. The Obama administration is said to be considering restrictions on Moustapha's movements, but will likely not boot him out of the country, as that would be sure to prompt Ford's expulsion from Syria.

  UPDATE: A "senior U.S. official" tells AFP that Ford's trip to the Foreign Ministry was a previously scheduled meeting, and accuses the Syrian regime of "organizing" the protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Damascus.

• Should the U.S. ambassador have gone to Hama?

  Posted: July 8, 2011, 3:34 pm by Blake Hounshell

  It's another Friday in the Arab world, and once again Syria is witnessing huge demonstrations.

  This time, Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador in Damascus, decided to hoof it up to Hama to scope out the scene for himself. Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said Thursday that Ford had "spent the day expressing our deep support for the right of the Syrian people to assemble peacefully and to express themselves."

  She added: "So for him to go personally at this time and stand with the people of Hama, I think, expresses in physical terms, not to mention political terms, our view that the people of Hama have a right to express themselves peacefully and that we are concerned about the posture that the security forces have taken." She also said Ford had received a "very warm welcome" in Hama, where he met with at least a dozen residents of the city.

  Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who has been outspoken in calling for stronger U.S. action in Syria, cheered the visit. "The powerful visit of Ambassador Ford to #Hama shows the value of his ongoing presence in #Syria and knocked the regime off balance," he tweeted.

  Here's what Ford would have seen today:

  So far, Ford's move doesn't seem to have deterred protesters from coming out in cities and neighborhoods all across Syria, from Raqqa and Qamishle in the north to Deir az-Zour and Albu Kamal in the south to the Midan and Qaboun areas of the capital. There were even small demonstrations in quiescent Aleppo, according to Syrian activists.

  Still, the Syrian regime sees an opening, and has sought to paint Ford's visit as proof positive that the evil Americans are behind the actions of the "sabateurs" who are bent on destroying the country and neutralizing its "resistance" to Israel.

  Will it work? Perhaps on some Syrians, but I think we're well past the point where too many folks are buying what the regime is selling. Week after week, the protests keep swelling and spreading to new areas, and it's clear that it's ordinary Syrians who are voicing disapproval of their government, not foreign agents.

  And it's not as if Assad and friends haven't been trying all along to push the "foreign conspiracy" line, even as they pretend to engage in dialogue with an opposition whose demands the government has deemed broadly legitimate. As Andrew Exum, a Levant expert at the Center for a New American Security tweeted, "Re: Ford's visit to Hama, what did he have to lose? Does it in any way affect the protests if they are branded in league with the #USA? ... I mean, look, gang: it's not as if Bashar al-Asad and his stooges would go any easier on the protesters if the #USA did not side with them."

  UPDATE: And here's a video showing Ford driving through Hama. He's welcomed by protesters wielding... olive branches and roses:

  The crowd chants: "The people demand the fall of the regime" and "We kneel only for God."

• Tahrir Square is back

  Posted: June 29, 2011, 2:52 pm by Blake Hounshell

  If it hadn't been clear already, it should now be obvious that the military junta running Egypt -- the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces -- is doing a terrible job.

  Once again, thousands of angry protesters have taken over the area in and around Tahrir Square, amid the worst scenes of violence in Cairo since the events of Jan. 25 and Jan. 28. Intense battles involving rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and massive amounts of tear gas are ongoing even now, nearly 24 hours after they began.

  The details are sketchy, but from what I can piece together from online accounts, what happened was this: For the past few days, families of those killed during the revolution have been camped out in front of the state television building, demanding justice and accountablity for the deaths. Yesterday, some of them heard about a commemoration that was happening a few blocks south for families of martyrs, and wanted to attend. As it turned out, the event was to commemorate members of the police killed during the uprising, and the protesters weren't admitted. An ugly scuffle broke out, which you can see here:

   

  Things quickly devolved from there, as the families and their supporters took their protest over to the Interior Ministry. Cairo's famous thugs -- some accounts say from the neighborhood' others suggest they were plainclothes police -- suddenly made an appearance, fighting broke out, and then the black-clad Central Security Forces drove the demonstrators back to Tahrir Square. A few thousand protesters arrived to bolster the protesters, and a nasty street battle has raged ever since (you can listen to the Guardian's Jack Shenker's account here) -- creeping ever closer back toward the hated Interior Ministry. This was what the scene looked like last night:

   

  If the riot's origins are murky, so are its aims. What's clear is that the anger is mounting. Alaa Abd El Fattah, a well-known Egyptian activist, probably spoke for many when he tweeted, "dont ask me how it started, Ive no idea, most of us don't care, there is police and there is us, there is tear gas and there is rocks." The clashes have become a contest of wills between the street and the police, with neither side willing to back down. Dozens, if not hundreds, have been injured, ad hoc medical clinics have been set up, and the April 6 protest movement has called for a sit-in.

  Here we go again?

• Assad follows the Arab Tyrant Manual

  Posted: June 20, 2011, 9:08 pm by Blake Hounshell

  During the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Arabs joked that Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were following the same playbook -- which came to be known as the Arab Tyrant Manual. NPR described it as a three-step process, including "strengthening the security service," "promise political reform," and "buy off unrest."

  But there's actually a lot more to the manual than that, and its application varies from place to place depending on circumstances -- though the overall failure of these tyrants to "get it" is remarkably consistent.

  In March, at the height of the revolt in Libya, a few Twitter users, led by Iyad ElBaghdadi(@iyad_elbaghdadi) and Amira al-Husseini (@JustAmira), crowdsourced the rules of this manual and compiled them using the #ArabTyrantManual hashtag. A few of my favorites:

  @iyad_elbaghdadi: Say that the protests started as a pure youth movement but were "hijacked" by a foreign agenda

  @L_Auvergnate: Pretend you're open for dialogue and will do the necessary while killing protesters

  @iyad_elbaghdadi: Say that you "got the message" and "will act on it soon". Don't mention what "soon" means.

  @EG_Freedom: Shut down communications and kill businesses even tho protesters will publish videos anyway when the inet comes back up.

  @studentIslam: You never wanted to be a dictator. Your service to the people proves that.

  Compare to the Syrian state news agency's summary of Assad's speech today. Some choice excerpts:

  Foreign conspiracies: "President al-Assad asserted that Syria, throughout all of its history has been facing conspiracies against it for several reasons, some of which are linked to Syria's important geographic and political status and others are linked to its political stances committed to its principles and interests.

  Dialogue: "A committee on national dialogue was formed for the sake of launching a national dialogue which includes all social, intellectual and political segments in Syria in an institutional approach, the president added."

  Vague promises of reform: "'The urgent demands of people have been implemented before the beginning of the dialogue...we lifted Emergency Law and abolished State Security Court; we issued an organizing law for the right to peaceful demonstration. A committee was formed to set the draft bill for the new election law as another committee was formed to set legislations and the necessary mechanisms to combat corruption,' said President al-Assad."

  Failure to shut down communications: "‘What do we say about these political stances? What do we say about the media pressure and the advanced phones that we're finding in Syria in the hands of saboteurs? What do we say about the falsification that we all witnessed?' President al-Assad added."

  Service to the people: "President al-Assad said ‘I met people from all the spectrums of the Syrian society, demonstrators and non-demonstrators and the truth is that I consider these meeting as the most important job I've ever had as a person in charge despite the frustration and pain in the general atmosphere yet I can say that the benefit was amazing. They showed great love and amity toward me I have never felt before.'"

  That said, Assad is admittedly in a bit of a pickle here. Even if he did want to take serious steps to reform, in line with the demands of Turkey and the West, a few factors might be holding him back. One is that there are a lot of other people in Syria with a vested interest in the status quo, including but by no means limited to members of his own family. His brother, Maher, controls the most elite units of the military, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, controls the intelligence services. A bevy of cousins, notably Rami Makhlouf, control the economy. Members of Bashar's Alawite sect dominate the commanding heights of the security services. All of these people stand to lose if things change, and Assad likely feels he needs to protect the interests of this wider circle -- lest some of them decide to move against him.

  Then there is Assad's patron, Iran, which has reportedly supplied help putting down the uprising and has little interest in seeing a process of political reform take root in Syria. And what about the Arab Gulf monarchies? A few of them have made official statements of support to the Syrian regime, and even though they have stayed most silent, their interest is in seeing Assad weakened but not overthrown altogether. They'd like to see him brought low so that he comes begging for cash, and they can peel him away from Iran. That seems unlikely -- why would he trust them? -- but that sort of thing has never stopped Arab regimes from pursuing a given strategy.

  So he's stuck with the manual.

• Can Zawahiri make al Qaeda relevant again?

  Posted: June 16, 2011, 5:13 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In a move that surprised approximately zero genuine al Qaeda experts, the terrorist group has announced that Ayman al-Zawahiri has been named its new grand poobah, replacing Osama bin Laden, whose body currently rests somewhere on the floor of the Arabian Sea.

  Though it was widely expected, this is still big global news; al Qaeda remains deadly even in its grossly weakened state, and it may not matter as much as we think that Zawahiri is less charismatic than his late boss. After all, al Qaeda has been marginalized and discredited for years now -- tarnished by its killing of fellow Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and delegitimized by one prominent sheikh after another. And we'll have to see whether Zawahiri's ascension will meet with the approval of the online jihadi masses.

  And yet there are clearly many counterterrorism analysts, particularly those in the U.S. government, who worry that the Arab uprisings are creating an opportunity to slip through the cracks. As governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen are being toppled, the intelligence community is seeing its hard-won relationships with fellow spooks in Arab regimes melt away.

  And that scares them. As one senior intelligence officer recently told Newsweek's Chris Dickey, “All this celebration of democracy is just bullshit.... You take the lid off and you don’t know what’s going to happen. I think disaster is lurking.”

  And yet with the fall of Arab dictators -- and the powerful demonstration effect of nonviolent protests -- al Qaeda's very rationale is now in question. Arabs have by and larged laughed at bin Laden and Zawahiri's transparent attempts to jump on the Arab Spring bandwagon, when they haven't ignored them entirely. In Egypt, erstwhile jihadists are forming political parties and running for office -- scary stuff, if they do well next fall, but probably a healthy development in the long run. Why join al Qaeda and risk your life and livelihood when there's a chance you can implement sharia via the ballot box?

  The problem is that in three countries in particular -- Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen -- U.S. involvement is going badly, and anti-American militancy, whether it's under the al Qaeda banner or some other label, seems to hold growing appeal. For that reason, I think the question we all should be asking is whether the Obama administration's strategies in those places are really serving American interests. That's where al Qaeda's center of gravity is right now, not in Cairo or Tunis.

  Another question is whether the revolts in Libya and Syria, which have become violent (to different degrees) despite their initially peaceful nature, ultimately help al Qaeda's case. In Libya, I think not:  Muammar al-Qaddafi is clearly on its way out, and the broad international coalition against his regime has been broadly welcomed by Libyans, even those who might otherwise sympathize with al Qaeda's aims. In Syria, it's not the West that is propping up Bashar al-Assad and supporting his crackdown; it's China, Iran, and Russia. So I don't see how Zawahiri can capitalize on that situation.

  One situation that bears watching, though, is the Palestinian territories, always a powerful motivating cause for jihadist groups. There's very little hope among Palestinians that a negotiated solution is in sight, and that's why many are turning to things like Mahmoud Abbas's U.N. recognition drive, local protests, or the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. But if those peaceful initiatives don't work, what then? We might start to look wistfully at the Hamas era as the good old days.

• The peace process is still dead

  Posted: May 24, 2011, 8:31 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  To thunderous applause before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister delivered what amounted to a stunning rebuke of Barack Obama's vision of Middle East peace, just days after the U.S. president outlined his basic parameters for a two-state solution.

  There was little, if anything, new in Netanyahu's speech: He reiterated his longstanding positions on borders (he won't go back to the 1967 lines), Jerusalem (he wants it to remain undivided), refugees (none can return to Israel), and security (a demilitarized Palestinian state, with Israeli troops "along the Jordan River"). He again demanded that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" -- a determination Abbas says is for Israelis themselves to make.

  Although he said Israel would be "very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state," Netanyahu was uncompromising about just whose land he was talking about. As he put it, "In Judea and Samaria" -- religious names for the West Bank -- "the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo."

  Netanyahu also demanded that Abbas immediately "tear up" his recent unity agreement with Hamas, a movement he said was "the Palestinian version of al Qaeda."

  However vague, these are not terms that any Palestinian leader concerned for his political survival can accept, and indeed, Abbas's side was quick to reject them in no uncertain terms. (One Palestinian official said Netanyahu's speech was "a declaration of war on Palestine.") Hamas, for its part, seems as intransigent as ever. There will be no negotiations for the foreseeable future.

  Given their lack of faith in the "peace process" -- and Abbas's unwillingness to take any risks -- it now seems certain that the Palestinians will plow ahead with their statehood drive at the United Nations, a move that both Obama and Netanyahu vigorously oppose. Given how recent U.N. votes have gone, the United States will stand alone as the rest of the world denounces the Israeli occupation and embraces a Palestinian state. It may not change any facts on the ground, but it will further illustrate just how isolated America and Israel are becoming. And this may even be an optimistic scenario -- a third intifada may well break out, possibly leading to another round of destabilizing violence. Any shred of hard-won credibility the United States has regained in the Arab world as a result of the "Arab Spring" will be gone.

  So is there any hope?

  Even before Netanyahu's speech, Yossi Alpher, a devoted veteran of the peace process, had exhausted his well of ideas:

  This writer has only one hope left. After this week, the speechmaking will be over for a while. All those Israelis, Americans and Europeans of good will who for months have evinced confidence that it is still possible to squeeze a viable peace process out of Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas, should now come to their senses. It's time to prepare not for a bilateral process but for a UN process. It's not too late to leverage the Arab UN initiative into a win-win dynamic for both Israelis and Palestinians that will transform a seemingly hopeless morass into a far more manageable two-state conflict. 

  Chances of that happening, given the display we just saw in Congress? About as close to zero as you can imagine.

• The Egyptian revolution devours its children

  Posted: May 18, 2011, 8:55 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Wael Ghonim, the Google marketing executive who famously cofounded the "We Are All Khaled Saeed" Facebook page that helped spark the Egyptian revolution, is facing heat today for some comments he made on Twitter -- as well as resentment of his growing international stardom and his perceived failure to speak out more strongly against recent abuses by the Army.

  Amira al-Husseini translates Ghonim's tweets:

  The Council is losing its legitimacy with the revolutionaries but we need to realise that the revolutionaries are losing their credibility with the silent majority, who are starting to suffer from the economic side effects of the crisis

  We all agree that Egypt was at the threshold of an economic crisis, whether the revolution happened or not .. but we still cannot deny the adverse side effects the revolution has had on the work force, particularly its poor segments

  Workers who earn a daily wage (and those number not less than 1 million Egyptians) and people employed in tourism and real estate development, and many more, never hear us speaking about their concerns

  Economy should be the priority for the revolutionaries, because it is the safety valve which will guarantee the continuation of the revolution and the cleansing of Egypt from corruption

  That sparked an outpouring of criticism and support, set off by a mock Ghonim account called -- I kid you not -- @GhonimWithBalls (the bio on that account calls the real Ghonim a "crybaby bitch boy"):

  @GhonimWithBalls: How about this: Unfollow @Ghonim, then fire a tweet with #UnfollowedGhonimBecause. Let your voice be heard.

  Some highlights of the Twitter debate that followed:

  @salmasaid: I #UnfollowedGhonimBecause he is failing to do his expected responsibilities given the role he chose.

  @fazerofzanight: I #UnfollowedGhonimBecause because he doesnt deserve a platform and so I won't give him one.

  @MohHKamel: Haven't #UnfollowedGhonimBecause he did for #Egypt more than any of you. He works hard, avoids the spotlight & doesn't run his mouth off.

  @amirakhalil46: i #UnfollowedGhonimBecause he's a sell-out. Falling for the "economic stability" manipulative tactic!! Forgetting what #Jan25 is all about.

  Few of the big Egyptian Twitterati, however, joined in, and the hastag devolved into crude personal attacks and bad jokes. Even its originator lost interest after a while:

  @GhonimWithBalls: Disappointed to see #UnfollowedGhonimBecause evolve into personal attacks of @Ghonim as opposed to his views and policies.

  Ghonim can still boast nearly 156,000 followers, and many conceded that he had a point. Tomorrow, President Obama is expected to announce a bailout package for the Egyptian economy, something the country desperately needs if the revolution is to succeed.

• Is the old Middle East back?

  Posted: May 16, 2011, 11:22 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  On Sunday, for the first time since January 25, the Arab world's attention was riveted not on scenes of protesters castigating their own governments, but on much more familiar imagery: that of Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation.

  For months, Palestinian and Arab activists had planned to mark May 15 -- Youm an-Nakba or "Day of the Catastrophe," which usually takes place the day after Israel's independence celebrations -- with a civilian march on the occupied territories. For Arabs, Nakba Day represents a day of mourning, a time to commemorate the expulsion during the 1948 war of Palestinians from their villages and homes, press for the right of refugees to return, and denounce the Jewish state.

  In past years, Nakba Day has generally passed without much fanfare: demonstrations around the world and in Palestinian villages, occasional attempts to march on Israeli-held territory, met with force.

  But this is 2011, and things were rather different on Sunday. In Lebanon, a group of hundreds of Palestinian refugees tried to stream across the border and were fired upon by both Israeli and Lebanese troops. Near the Erez crossing in Gaza, IDF soldiers fired on Palestinians seeking to cross into Israel. Near Ramallah in the West Bank, a large crowd battled tear-gas-wielding riot troops with rocks and Molotov cocktails. And in Syria, another large crowd swarmed over the fence along the disputed line that separates the two countries and made it into Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Golan Heights, before being rounded up by the IDF. (Jordan and Egypt prevented smaller crowds from reaching the border.) Altogether, more than a dozen Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by live fire, according to the New York Times.

  Al Jazeera Arabic went large with its coverage, deploying a split screen to show the events live, while thousands more followed developments on Twitter using the #nakba tag. So did Syrian state television, happy to change the subject from the domestic demonstrations of the last few months. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hailed the protesters, addressing them directly: "You are adamant to liberate your land no matter how many sacrifices you make and the fate of this [Jewish] entity is to fade." Hamas declared the onset of a third intifada; its leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, declared that changes sweeping the region would "lead to the collapse of the Zionist project in Palestine and victory for the program of the nation." Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egyptian security forces violently dispersed a large crowd demonstrating in front of the Israeli Embassy, arresting a number of well-known revolutionary Twitterati.

  Somewhere in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad is smiling for the first time in weeks.

  All of this sounds a bit like the old Middle East, doesn't it? Arabs raging impotently at the Jews instead of their own brutal rulers? And yet the narrative that the Arab revolutions were never about Israel has always been wrong, or at least incomplete. For Arabs living under authoritarian regimes, Israel (and America's support for Israel) has long been seen as an important reason for their subjugation. Nowhere is this more true than in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak bucked popular opinion by selling gas to Israel below market rates and enforced a widely reviled blockade of Gaza. In Tahrir Square, there were plenty of chants denouncing Mubarak as an Israeli and American agent, no matter what Thomas Friedman says.

  Yet there is nothing impotent about Sunday's tactics, which put Israel and its American ally in an incredibly tough position. Whatever Assad's cynical motives for allowing and even encouraging the protesters to reach the Golan ("See, Bibi, you need me after all!"), Palestinians now have a powerful tool at their disposal, and there will no doubt be attempts to replicate the feat. As Haaretz columnist Aluf Benn puts it, "The nightmare scenario Israel has feared since its inception became real -- that Palestinian refugees would simply start walking from their camps toward the border and would try to exercise their ‘right of return.'"

  Even more awkward for the United States, Netanyahu is due to visit Washington in a few days in what will likely be one long exposition of the words, "I told you so." If he is smart, he will announce a serious plan for peace and get out ahead of the most serious threat to Israel's security since the 1973 war. If he is true to form, he will use the opportunity to double down on his argument for the status quo.

  President Obama has planned two speeches for the coming week: one for Thursday, billed as a disquisition on the Arab Spring, and another an address at the AIPAC conference. With George Mitchell's resignation, the peace process is officially dead. The Arab street now understands its power -- people clearly aren't going to sit around quietly waiting until September for the U.N. General Assembly to pass a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state. The BDS movement ("boycott, divestment, sanctions") is gaining steam internationally. There will be more marches, more flotillas, more escalation, more senseless deaths.

  What is Obama going to say now?

• The definition of insanity...

  Posted: May 13, 2011, 11:59 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The headline on the home page of the New York Times -- "U.S. Mideast Envoy Resigns After 2 Years of Frustration" -- says it all. George Mitchell's departing note to the president is curt: 

  When I accepted your request to serve as U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace my intention was to serve for two years. More than two years having passed I hereby resign, effective May 20, 2011. I trust this will provide sufficient time for an effective transition.

  I strongly support your vision of comprehensive peace in the Middle East and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of your administration. It has been an honor for me to again serve our country.

  What's amazing is not Mitchell resigned, but that he hung in there so long. As my colleague Josh Rogin reports, Mitchell has long been marginalized: The Israelis weren't interested in meeting him, and his own ostensible colleague in the White House, longtime peace-processor Dennis Ross, developed his back channel to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (In typical fashion, Israel and Palestinian officials took the opportunity to blame each other for Mitchell's failure.)

  This is usually the point in an article about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the author offers up an alternative strategy for advancing peace, but unfortunately I don't have one. The peace process has long been a charade -- a cowardly game of inches and incrementalism -- because none of the three parties to the dispute dares take any political risks. Most Israelis seem happy with the status quo, and the settlers' bloc has expanded to the point where its power may be impossible to check. Bibi Netanyahu has written an entire, tedious book explaining why he doesn't believe in a two-state solution, and takes every opportunity to exploit to the other side's obstructionism, divisions, and weakness. The Palestinian Authority is led by Mahmoud Abbas, a dumpy, charmless Fatah party functionary who has international support but close to zero street legitimacy; Hamas controls Gaza and has yet to admit the abject failure of its violent strategy. The Israeli and Palestinian publics still have vastly different expectations on sensitive issues like Jerusalem and the right of return, and the current political leadership on both sides has made no effort to prepare the ground for concessions. Peace seems as far away as ever.

  The one bright spot is Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has put his head down and built functioning institutions to the point where one of the many arguments made in favor of the Israeli occupation -- that Palestinians just aren't ready to run their own country -- is no longer so credible. But Fayyad is not popular domestically, either, and he may become a casualty of the recent Fatah-Hamas unity deal, a move that would spook the international donors that would keep any nascent Palestinian state afloat. The U.S. Congress is already making rumblings about cutting off aid.

  All of this comes months ahead of Abbas's September deadline for declaring independence, a move that will put him in direct disagreement with the United States just as the 2012 campaign begins to hit up. European countries have signaled quietly that they might break with Washington and recognize Palestine, and frankly at this point I think many Americans would welcome the idea, because nothing else seems to work. Barack Obama will likely give a speech in August signaling his "deep commitment" to Middle East peace, but there is no chance whatsover that he'll make any bold or creative moves in election season. According to Yahoo's Laura Rozen, he's not even planning to raise the Arab-Israeli issue during next Thursday's big speech on the Middle East.

  So the floor will be clear for Netanyahu, who meets with Obama next week and is due to address Congress on Tuesday, May 24. If past is prologue, we can expect Bibi to bamboozle: offer just enough movement to seem reasonable but not enough to actually induce the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. And why not? There's very little pressure on him domestically to cut a deal, and he knows that little pressure will be forthcoming from Washington, especially given the risk that one Hamas leader or another will pop off and say something crazy.

  Perhaps the abject failure of U.S. peacemaking efforts to date will encourage other folks -- I'm looking at you, Nabil El-Araby -- to come forward with creative solutions. But I wouldn't bet more than a few sheckels on it.

• Does Osama's death matter?

  Posted: May 1, 2011, 6:36 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  U.S. President Barack Obama has just announced that Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist, is dead.

  This is obviously a huge deal symbolically -- Bin Laden was the face of global terror, and an inspiration to thousands of wanna-be jihadis worldwide.

  But many terrorism analysts have been saying for some time that Bin Laden had lost his central importance to al Qaeda, or that he was no longer its operational leader. Al Qaeda had morphed from a cohesive terrorist group into a global franchise, this argument went. It was at once more dangerous because it was spread out, and less lethal because local operatives had neither the expertise nor the ambition to launch truly devastating strategic attacks.

  These arguments were always based on limited information -- people connecting the dots between sparse data points. I don't think anyone really knows to what extent Bin Laden was still in control, or else we would have gotten him years ago. But I imagine we'll find out more soon.

• Should the U.S. arm the Libyan rebels?

  Posted: March 26, 2011, 2:47 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Now that the no-fly zone debate seems to have been settled on the ground in Libya -- it clearly halted an impending massacre in Benghazi, and seems to have given embattled residents in Misrata and Zintan a reprieve -- if not in the U.S. Congress, discussion is now turning to whether to arm the rebels and give them more explicit political support.

  Former U.S. ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz addressed this topic obliquely in Friday's press conference. "I'm not going to get into internal discussions about whether we will provide arms or whether we won't provide arms," he said. "I can just say that we're having the full gamut of potential assistance that we might offer, both on the non-lethal and the lethal side, is a subject of discussion within the U.S. government, but there has been no final decisions made on any aspect of that."

  NPR subsequently reported, citing Pentagon sources, that among the options being considered were providing the rebels with RPGs -- presumably to use against Qaddafi's tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. The rebels are eager to get their hands on such weapons.

  Many observers are understandably leery of such a step. Not only would it be legally debatable according to the terms of U.N. Security Resolution 1973, which authorized the no-fly/no-drive/no-sail zone in and around Libya, but it would represent a risky escalation in what the Obama administration has been at pains to portray as a TLSLMA -- a "time-limited, scope-limited military action." We may know a few of the familiar faces heading the "transitional council," but do we really know who wields real power and authority among the rebels, to the extent that anyone does? What if they commit a massacre using U.S.-provided weapons? What if they prove to be just as bad as Qaddafi? What if weapons get into the hands of al Qaeda?

  And yet there are strong arguments for providing at least small arms. One reason is that weapons are probably going to pour in anyway, perhaps from Egyptian stockpiles or factories and perhaps paid for by Gulf Arab states (indeed, the Wall Street Journal has reported that this is already happening, though Egypt denies it). Another is that the West, or the United States, will have more influence with the rebels if it is arming them than if it doesn't -- and thus may be better placed to shape events going forward. And, of course, the most straightforward reason for giving the rebels weapons is because they may not be able to protect themselves -- let alone defeat Qaddafi's forces -- without them. And given that Obama has said that Qaddafi must go, the United States has staked its prestige on the rebels' victory.

  All of that is why opponents of the U.S.-led intervention feared, rightly, that America's involvement in Libya wouldn't stop with a no-fly zone. And yet what was the alternative? To sit back and watch as Qaddafi butchered his own people and re-imposed control over eastern Libya? Then what? And what kind of impact would that have on democratic uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East? Dictators everywhere would learn the lesson that brutality works, and that -- once again -- the words of the international community mean nothing. An early end to the "Arab Spring" could stoke resentment and bitterness for years, with dangerous consequences not only for the region but for Americans and Europeans as well.

  None of this is ideal. Congress is unhappy, Obama's own team is divided, the coalition diplomacy is a mess, and opportunistic leaders in China, Russia, and elsewhere are aping Qaddafi propaganda to bash the West. Those looking for consistency in U.S. policy won't find it in Bahrain or Yemen, to take just two examples. Yet thousands of Libyan lives have been saved, millions of Arabs are cheering on Western airstrikes for the first time in history, and one of the world's nastiest tyrants is on his way out. Surely all that is an accomplishment worth celebrating -- and validating by finishing the job.

• A bright voice from Libya's darkness

  Posted: March 23, 2011, 10:21 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  What does grief and courage sound like? It sounds a lot like the voice of Perditta Nabbous, the wife of Libyan citizen journalist Mohammed Nabbous, 27, who was shot and killed last Saturday by forces loyal to Muammar al-Qaddafi. Mohammed was the charismatic voice and face of Libya al-Hurra, the online TV station he set up in the early days of the uprising. Mo, as his many fans and supporters around the world called him, was attacked while trying to record footage from Benghazi.

  "He got so furious because nobody was taking pictures and videos," Perditta told me, after many Western journalists fled Benghazi ahead of a furious assault by Qaddafi's troops. Mo had been trying to reach the wreckage of a downed Libyan jet -- which later turned out to belong to the rebels -- when his car came under heavy fire. He died in the hospital several hours later. "He said, ‘I need to get proof of the plane so people will believe this,'" Perditta said.

  She is 8 months pregnant. "I want Mohamed's child to live," she told me.

  Her voice growing stronger, she called for the U.S.-led strikes on Qaddafi's air defenses and troops to continue. Here it is in her own words. I can't put it any more powerfully than this:

  "We started this in a pure way, but he turned it bloody. Thousands of our men, women, and children have died.

  We just wanted our freedom, that's all we wanted, we didn't want power. Before, we could not do a single thing if it was not the way he wanted it.

  All we wanted was freedom. All we wanted was to be free. We have paid with our blood, with our families, with our men, and we're not going to give up.

  We are still going to do that no matter what it takes, but we need help. We want to do this ourselves, but we don't have the weapons, the technology, the things we need. I don't want anyone to say that Libya got liberated by anybody else.

  If NATO didn't start moving when they did, I assure you, I assure you, half of Benghazi if not more would have been killed. If they stop helping us, we are going to be all killed because he has no mercy anymore.

  On Monday, a relief ship carrying medical supplies docked in Misrata, a town west of Benghazi that has been besieged for weeks by Qaddafi's tanks, snipers, and RPG-wielding troops. The ship, which included donations from the German aid organization Medeor, was arranged by Nabbous and his friends and supporters, who are vowing to keep the channel alive. Says Perditta, "We have to make what he started go on."

• Obama takes the plunge

  Posted: March 17, 2011, 1:50 am by Blake Hounshell

  With the passage tonight of a robust U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a no-fly zone in Libya -- and then some -- Barack Obama has committed the United States to intervening in a Muslim country for the third time in a decade.

  Only this time, the resolution's passage was a victory for the kind of painstaking multilateral diplomacy that was so often scorned by his predecessor, who preferred to work with "coalitions of the willing" and dismissed the United Nations as ineffective, weak, and morally questionable.

  Of course, there's no guarantee that a piece of paper will succeeding in protecting the thousands of Libyans cheering in Benghazi's main square from Qaddafi's forces, which are gathering some 100 miles away outside the besieged town of Ajdabiya and have completely surrounded Misrata. What needs to happen now is swift military action against Qaddafi's heavy weapons -- call it a "no-drive zone," and perhaps even the bombing of his compound in Tripoli. Are Britain and France, which have taken the lead in pushing for military action, up to the challenge? Or will the U.S. once again be called upon to clean up a nearby mess Europe couldn't solve on its own? We'll soon find out.

  One thought: It is amazing, and altogether incredible, that an uprising that began as peaceful protests calling for the release of political prisoners has made it this far, just as it is unfortunate that Qaddafi's horrific use of violence has forced the international community to intervene. But if such is the price of saving the Arab revolutions, so be it.

  The world now has to win this fight. As NATO Secretary-General Fogh Rasmussen put it earlier today, "If Gadaffi prevails it will send a clear signal that violence pays."

• The Arab nightmare

  Posted: March 15, 2011, 11:50 am by Blake Hounshell

  At the Al Jazeera Forum this weekend in Doha, where dozens of Arab political figures and activists of all persuasions gathered to discuss the dramatic events sweeping the Middle East, there was a lot of optimism in the air. One Egyptian organizer, YouTube starlet Asma Mahfouz, even expressed her hope that next year's forum would be titled "One Arab Nation With No Borders."

  Pressed over lunch about the risks of it all turning sour, one Emirati political scientist told several of us, "Let them dream. These youth have never had the chance to dream before. It is good to have dreams."

  But outside of Tunisia and Egypt, Arab dreams are fast becoming Arab nightmares. In Libya, a spontaneous popular uprising is turning into a civil war -- one that the rebels are rapidly losing. In Bahrain, protests that began as a call for civil rights and constitutional reform have devolved into ugly sectarian street battles; and as Saudi forces intervene to protect the ruling Sunni monarchy, the situation risks sparking a proxy struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yemen is kicking out foreign journalists as tribes cowboy up and activists talk of an impending bloodbath. Iraq's hapless government is clamping down on political freedom. And all of this is taking place against the backdrop of rising oil prices, a hopelessly stalled Middle East peace process, and an epic natural disaster in the world's No. 3 economy.

  There are some bright spots: Morocco's King Mohammed VI seems to understand at some level that he needs to embrace change lest he be swept up by it; Jordan has remained surprisingly calm even though its monarch, King Abdullah II, has thus far only pretended to get it; Kuwait already had a relatively vibrant political scene; and quiescent Qatar and the go-go United Arab Emirates don't seem at risk of any unrest whatsoever. But in general, the region's autocrats are responding as they always have to popular anger: with a combination of brute force, comically half-baked reforms, and economic bribes.

  What will happen next is anybody's guess, but I find it hard to be optimistic in the short term. Much depends on how the democratic transitions in Tunisia and especially Egypt go, but it will be many months before the dust settles there. In the meantime, the rest of the region is ablaze. And as they did with Iraq, Arab leaders will now eagerly point to Libya and Bahrain as cautionary examples of what happens when citizens take to the streets.

  Meanwhile, the region's two traditional problem children -- Lebanon and Palestine -- haven't even joined the fray yet. Burgeoning youth protest movements in both places are calling on their bickering, ineffective leaders to get their acts together in the name of national unity, but the forces of the status quo are far stronger. It's hard to imagine Hezbollah and Lebanon's March 14 movement in Lebanon, or Fatah and Hamas in Palestine, putting aside their differences and coming together for the common good. And Iran and its pal Syria haven't begun to make trouble yet. Now that Saudi Arabia has thrown down the gauntlet in Bahrain, the gloves may come off -- especially if the U.N. special tribunal ever gets around to indicting Hezbollah figures for the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

  None of this is to say that there is some magic formula that the United States could have employed to avoid this dangerous state of affairs. U.S. influence in the region is fast evaporating, as evidenced by the fact that its ostensible allies -- Israel and Saudi Arabia -- are now flaunting their rejection of Washington's advice: Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly about to debut an absurdly disingenuous peace initiative, and Saudi troops just rolled into Bahrain a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates urged King Hamad to compromise and embrace political reform. The Pentagon didn't even get a courtesy call.

  But what happens next will have huge repercussions for U.S. national security, and will present President Obama will terrible dilemmas in the region. If Saudi troops kill Shiites in Bahrain using American weapons, what will he say or do? Iran wasn't behind any of these uprisings, but if it starts creating mischief, how should he respond? What if Yemen turns into another Somalia? What if Palestinians rise up against Israel in a third intifada? If Egypt's transition goes badly? Right now, coming up with tough questions is a lot easier than providing answers.

• Bloggingheads chat with Issandr el-Amrani

  Posted: February 26, 2011, 6:49 am by Blake Hounshell

  Here's the video of a Bloggingheads discussion I had Friday with Issandr el-Amrani, an FP contributor who now writes for the Economist and various other outlets, about the wave of  revolutions now sweeping the Arab world. Issandr is one of the most knowledgable people I know when it comes to Middle East politics, and his thoughts are well worth your time.

  Check it out:

• Libya's information walls come tumbling down

  Posted: February 26, 2011, 9:31 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In case there were any remaining question that Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the scion of Libya's fast-fading leader, is not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy, he dispelled those doubts today by appearing on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel to declare that "everything is normal" in Tripoli even as news outlets reported on growing signs that the Qaddafi family is losing its grip on Libya.

  Earlier this week, Seif had invited foreign journalists to the Libyan capital so they could see for themselves just how wonderfully the Qaddafis were handling what he downplayed as the work of foreign-backed, pill-popping Al Qaeda terrorists bent on Libya's destruction.

  But correspondents for both Al Arabiya and the New  York Times, two news outlets that took up his invitation, managed to break away for their minders and report that all was not, in fact, under control.

  The Times' David Kirkpatrick "discovered blocks of the city in open revolt" and spoke with eyewitnesses who told of "snipers and antiaircraft guns firing at unarmed civilians, and security forces were removing the dead and wounded from streets and hospitals, apparently in an effort to hide the mounting toll." Al Arabiya reported that Qaddafi's security forces appeared to be abandoning Tripoli's streets to the rebels. And the Associated Press relayed word that the Libyan regime "passed out guns to civilian supporters, set up checkpoints Saturday and sent armed patrols roving the terrorized capital."

  Recent reports from eastern Libya, where Western news organizations have had correspondents for days now, make it clear that the Qaddafis have lost control of everywhere east of Ajbadiya, some 850 kilometers from Tripoli, while the opposition has held onto Misurata, the country's third-largest city, and is closing in on the capital from the west as well. The Qaddafis still have plenty of firepower in Sirt, their home base, and in Tripoli, but their room for maneuver is shrinking rapidly.

  So, what was Seif thinking?

  Perhaps he thought that the regime really could control the flow of information, present a cleaned-up Potemkin village inside the capital, and earn some goodwill from foreign news organizations by appearing to be cooperative. But nobody's buying the spin, and newspapers and satellite channels have become extremely sophisticated in how they leverage citizen networks in difficult reporting environments. Libyans inside the country are still, miraculously, risking their lives to take gritty cell-phone videos and upload them to Facebook or other social networking sites, where Libyan exiles pick them up, translate and provide context, and pass them along to a broader audience. Activists and journalists have been using tools like Skype to communicate directly with sources in and around Tripoli, and then spreading the news quickly on Twitter.

  So, even if Kirkpatrick were stuck being driven around by government minders who only showed him what they wanted him to see, his colleagues in Benghazi and Cairo would still be able to get the real story from brave Libyan eyewitnesses who want the world to hear their story.

  Unfortunately for Seif, Kirkpatrick managed to go a step beyond that and even managed to speak with some anti-Qaddafi folks in person:

  [A]t another stop, in the neighborhood of Tajoura, journalists stumbled almost accidentally into a block cordoned off by makeshift barriers where dozens of residents were eager to talk about a week of what they said were peaceful protests crushed by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces with overwhelming, deadly and random force.

  A middle-age business owner, who identified himself only as Turkey, said that the demonstrations there had begun last Sunday, when thousands of protesters inspired by the uprising in the east had marched toward the capital’s central Green Square. He said the police had dispersed the crowd with tear gas and then bullets, killing a man named Issa Hatey. [...]

  Asked why he and his neighbors were rising up now, after living under Colonel Qaddafi for 42 years, Mr. Turkey, 46, shrugged. “No one can tell the time,” he said. After forty years of pressure, “you explode.” Two funerals were taking place nearby for those who died on Friday, and he said they expected another big protest on Sunday. 

  It seems hard to imagine the regime can hold out much longer, given how quickly the information walls are coming down, but let's not forget that the Qaddafis have said repeatedly and emphatically that they will fight to the death. Their loyalists have every reason to believe that the rebels -- who say they are preparing to march on Tripoli and liberate the city even if it takes "pilots who are ready to crash their planes in a suicidal way" -- will exact furious retribution after 42 years of tyranny. Expect them to go down swinging.

• Libya on the brink

  Posted: February 21, 2011, 9:06 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  It took a little under a month for Tunisians -- with a vital assist from their military -- to oust Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak went from pillar of stability to disgraced ex-president in just 18 days.

  Now, as we enter a seventh day of protests and armed street battles raging across Libya, the unimaginable fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi suddenly seems very imaginable indeed.

  So far, ant-government demonstrators have more or less taken over major cities in eastern Libya, including Benghazi, the country's second-largest. The uprising has been bloody: Human Rights Watch reports that as many as 233 people have died, and probably more.

  Last night, events seemed to reach a tipping point, as representatives of several large tribes voiced their support for the rebels and several diplomats -- including Libya's envoy to the Arab League and its No. 2 man in China -- resigned in protest.

  Then, as protesters reportedly thronged Tripoli's Green Square and marched on Qaddafi's compound, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of the ruler, appeared on state television, dressed in a black suit and tie and slouching in front of a green map of Africa.

  In a bizarre, apparently off-the-cuff speech, Seif accused the protesters of receiving foreign help and seeking to set up "Islamic emirates" in eastern Libya -- that is, when they weren't doing LSD and working with African mercenaries. Warning of a "civil war" in the making, he vowed to fight "until the last man, until the last woman, until the last bullet."

  Many things still aren't clear in Libya, where rumors are flying fast and furious and foreign journalists aren't able to operate. Last night, there was a rumor going around Twitter that Qaddafi had fled to Venezuela; Caracas denied it. Another story had it that Seif had been shot by his brother Mutassim, who as the national security advisor theoretically controls large parts of the security apparatus.

  Seif's speech was certainly crazy, but he may be right about one thing: There is a nasty internecine conflict on the way in Libya. From all that we've seen, the regime will do anything to stay in power, including shooting people in cold blood with heavy-caliber weapons. It doesn't look like there will be a nice, friendly "let's all hold hands and clean up Tahrir Square" moment. After four decades of unspeakable tyranny, Libyans will be out for vengeance.

  For those interested in following events in Libya on Twitter, I've made a list of key sources to follow. Please bear in mind, however, that much of what goes around in hearsay and unconfirmed rumor -- much of it no doubt wrong. Unfortunately, it's the best information we have to go on right now. I'll keep adding good feeds to the list as I find them, and feel free to recommend your own.

• Radio Free Benghazi

  Posted: February 18, 2011, 9:00 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Revolutionaries in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, have taken over a radio station and are broadcasting their message on the Internet. Benghazi has long been a center of dissent against the rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi, who has ruled Libya with a mercurial iron fist for more than four decades.

  While it's hard to know what's going on in Libya given the difficulties in reporting there -- the country has no independent press to speak of, basically zero civil society, and is not at all welcoming to foreign journalists -- Libyan exiles have been working hard to get the word out.

  The radio commentary itself is gripping, with breathless amateur announcers calling on the international media to cover what "the criminal Qaddafi" is doing and warning fellow Libyans about "foreign mercenaries."

  "This is an Arab revolution not just a Libyan revolution. This is a Muslim revolution," I heard one announcer say.

  Perhaps the best source in English is the Libya February 17 blog, which is posting videos and short dispatches sourced to Twitter. What seems clear so far is that the government's response to widespread and growing protests has been brutal, with reports of at least 24 deaths so far and likely many more. This is not going to be the kind of peaceful revolution that I witnessed in Cairo.

• Is the Arab revolt spreading to Libya?

  Posted: February 16, 2011, 1:30 pm by Blake Hounshell

  On June 29, 1996, the Libyan regime of Moammar al-Qaddafi put down a prison revolt with deadly force, killing as many as 1,200 detainees in cold blood with grenades and machine guns. Their bodies have never been found, and the Libyan government has never fully admitted the massacre at Abu Salim Prison, despite the best efforts of witnesses and human rights organizations to document it in grim detail.

  Fifteen years later, relatives of the victims are still demanding justice. On Feb. 15, 2 days ahead of a planned nationwide day of protests, the Libyan regime arrested Fatih Tarbel, an advocate for the Abu Salim families -- sparking outraged demonstrations in the coastal city of Benghazi. The BBC says the crowd was about 2,000 people, and activists on Twitter claim that at least 2 people have died.

  It's not easy to report in Libya, and details of the protests remain sketchy and hard to confirm. It hasn't helped that some news organizations, such as the Associated Press, have confused what are doubtless orchestrated pro-Qaddafi protests with the genuine outpouring of anger against one of the world's most odious regimes (at one point, Qaddafi himself even said he might demonstrate against the prime minister).

  While it's not clear how far the unrest might spread, the mere fact that people are lifting up their heads in a brutal police state like Libya is an incredible testament to human courage. And the swift fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in next-door Tunisia is a reminder that even the toughest regimes can prove surprisingly brittle once that mantle of fear is lifted.

• Is it really over?

  Posted: February 12, 2011, 7:17 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The scene in Cairo's Tahrir Square had an aura of finality today, as volunteers dismantled barricades and checkpoints, began packing up their blankets and tents, and prepared to go home. Crowds of Egyptians strolled the square, many of them looking more like tourists as they gawked at the scene of last week's intense battles and took pictures with soldiers and bandaged-up protesters. Others -- some wearing signs saying "Sorry for Disturbance. We Build Egypt" and "Enter Egypt in Peace and Safety" -- brought out brooms, dustpans, and trash bags, sweeping away the piles of garbage and dust that had accumulated over the siege of the past three weeks.

  Mohamed Azzam, 33, an unemployed high school graduate, was ebullient about President Hosni Mubarak's departure: "For 7,000 years, we haven't had freedom."

  But while Mubarak may have left the scene, the revolution is not quite over.

  In its statement this afternoon, the military council that is now governing the country stopped well short of signaling a full transition to democracy. The existing cabinet, for one thing, will stay on for now (one exception is Information Minister Anas el-Fiky, who was reportedly arrested while trying to flee the country). The military did say it would oversee a return to an elected civilian government, but it also urged Egyptians to cooperate with the police -- a despised institution that retains broad, unaccountable powers under Mubarak's emergency law.

  Ahmed Naguib, a spokesman for the core group of organizers in Tahrir Square, said glumly that the military's statement was "not a good start." The organizing committee planned to tell people to go home, he said, but would ask the protesters to return to the square every Friday until all of their demands were met. "At least they could have named a new prime minister," he said.

  According to the coalition of youth groups who helped staged the "January 25 revolution," as it is now widely being called here, there is still a long way to go. At a press conference at the Journalists' Syndicate in Cairo, representatives of several of them -- including the April 6 Youth Movement, the Justice and Freedom Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood Youth -- laid out their objectives: an end to the emergency law, an interim government of national unity, an anti-corruption drive, accountability for the abuses and violence by police forces and armed thugs over the last few weeks, the immediate release of all political detainees, the dissolution of parliament, complete freedom of the press and association, and committee to write a new constitution.

  Mohamed Abbas, 26, said that the youth coalition had begun indirect talks with the military Friday, though he declined to comment on the discussions. Ahmed Maher, the co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, said that it was "just the beginning" of the political process and that the protesters had to "keep the pressure" on in order to ensure a transition to an elected civilian government and a new constitution. He said that Ahmed Zewail, an eminent Egyptian-American scientist, was negotiating with the Army on their behalf.

  Back in the square, Abdelaziz Abdel Qadr, a 30-year-old Arabic teacher and Muslim Brotherhood supporter, said, "The ball is in the Army's court."

  Osama Khalil, a 37-year-old English teacher who had been manning the barricades in Tahrir Square since Jan. 28, said he wasn't leaving until all of the protesters' demands were met. "We don't trust anybody."

• What's Mubarak going to say?

  Posted: February 10, 2011, 5:26 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Events are moving quickly here in Cairo.

  Hossam Badrawi, the new head of Egypt's ruling party, just told BBC that President Hosni Mubarak will "probably" make a statement this evening and hand over some of his powers. Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said that Mubarak "may" step down. And CNN is reporting that Mubarak will hand over control of the military. Right now, the military's Supreme Council is meeting to discuss the situation. It looks like tonight could be the big night -- though it's far from clear who would assume Mubarak's authority.

  Another possibility is that this is yet another attempt by the regime to undercut the protesters. Everyone here expects huge demonstrations across the country tomorrow, and small strikes have broken out in recent days. Given that every response to the protesters' demands has thus far been far from serious or adequate, why should we expect anything different now?

  UPDATE: A military spokesman popped up to say that the military would meeting regularly to discuss the situation in the country, noting that the people's demands were "legitimate." Neither Mubarak nor his deputy Omar Suleiman were shown to be present at the meeting. So, are actually witnessing a military coup?

• Taking stock in Egypt

  Posted: February 6, 2011, 12:11 am by Blake Hounshell

  Today, here in Cairo, the action began shifting outside Tahrir Square, which remains occupied by thousands of prostesters who insist they won't leave until their demands -- above all the removal of President Hosni Mubarak -- are met.

  Vice President Omar Suleiman met with an array of youth activists and opposition figures, among them top members of the Muslim Brotherhood. There are a lot of conflicting reports flying around about the talks, and former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wasn't invited to what he called an "opaque" gathering. (His brother Ali emails: "[Omar Suleiman] said he would not talk to Dr. ElBaradei according to the Washington Post because he is not part of the opposition. It just shows how fake and futile this whole process is.")

  Suleiman released a carefully crafted statement afterwards that fell well short of meeting the protesters' bottom line, and once again blamed "foreign elements" for stirring up all this trouble. I haven't watched state TV today, but foreign journalists are still being harrassed by plainclothes police types going in and out of Tahrir Square, and Al Jazeera English superstar Ayman Mohyeldin was detained for a few hours today with his hands behind his back, according to fellow journalist Ashraf Khalil.

  There's a lot of wiggle room in Suleiman's words, notably in his insistence that "the state of emergency will be lifted based on the security situation and an end to the threats to the security of society" -- the same kind of thing the regime has been saying for the last three decades. Under Egypt's emergency laws, the police can pretty much grab anyone anytime they want, without any real accountability. (For a spot-on description of how the system really works on the ground, read this excellent account by Frederick Bowie.) 

  Another item, "Media and communications will be liberalized and no extra-legal constraints will be imposed on them," provides no mechanism for ensuring that the commanding heights of the media here -- state television -- will be able to evolve into something resembling objective journalism rather than propaganda. And in an ominous sign of new restrictions yet to come, Internet watchers reported today that Egypt had dramatically data uploads, presumbly to choke off the posting of damning videos from the last few weeks and preserve the ability to do so in the future.

  There's no talk of any oversight of the police and security services  -- the so-called deep state that has been brutalizing Egyptians for more than 50 years. Perhaps such issues will be addressed by the committee being set up to "study and recommend constitutional amendments, and legislative amendments of laws complimentary to the constitution," but again -- there are no guarantees that the government will take up these "recommendations," or that the committee will include real democrats instead of the usual toadies and hacks.

  It's also worth noting that Suleiman has already violated one of the pledges he made, to "immediately release prisoners of conscience of all persuasions." Google executive Wael Ghonim, who has been missing for well over a week now, is mysteriously to be released tomorrow at 4 p.m., according to Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. Why not now? And without a complete overhaul of the legal system -- the emergency laws especially -- there's nothing to stop him and others from being arbitrarily detained once again.

  No question, the protesters have won some important victories: Mubarak and his son are finished in Egyptian politics, and a number of the most corrupt party figures have been cashiered. Tens of thousands of young Egyptians have risked their lives and their livelihoods and inspired the entire world with their courage (this incredible footage of last Friday's epic battle on Qasr el-Nil bridge leading into the square gives you a taste of it). One of the most common phrases you hear in Tahrir Square is "we've regained our dignity" -- the protesters are enormously proud of what they've done, and rightly so.

  But there are no signs that the regime is willing to concede any fundamental authority, and plenty of signs that it is trying to tire and isolate the protesters politically, divide opposition movements and groups in order to weaken them, and stall for time in the hopes of going back to business as usual.

  Meanwhile, the United States -- perhaps due to inflated fears of an Islamist takeover -- seems willing to preside over the installation of yet another military strongman in Egypt, proving that the cynicism about America that is widely shared on the Egyptian street isn't too far from the mark.

• Egypt sacks top party bosses

  Posted: February 5, 2011, 8:23 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In a seeming tactical victory for the thousands of protesters still occupying Cairo's Tahrir Square, top members of Egypt's ruling party resigned Saturday, according to Egyptian state television.

  Safwat el-Sherif, the widely reviled chief of the National Democratic Party, is out, to be replaced by Hossam al-Badrawy, a doctor who was previously the party's secretary for business. Gone, too, is Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, as well as the other four members of the Steering Committee that runs the NDP.

  Protesters were clearly not satisfied by the announcement.

  "It's a good step, a good tactical gain for the protest movement," said Ghad Party secretary-general Wael Nawara, calling instead for the full dissolution of the NDP. "So far they have not responded to any of our demands," he said. "Instead they have been sacrificing scapegoats."

  "It's just a game," said Magdy Soliman, 38, a software engineer who supports former International Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei's National Association for Change. "They're all criminals. From the same gang." (A longtime Egyptian democracy advocate who knows Badrawy well said he was "pretty decent" in comparison to other party figures and had tried to reform the NDP from within, albeit to little discernable effect.)

  The news came amid reports, sourced to U.S. and Egyptian officials, that Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman "was exploring a transition of power in which President Hosni Mubarak would give up presidential powers but remain a figurehead until elections are held."

  According to the New York Times, the Obama administration has formally backed "a gradual transition" that would involve Suleiman supervising fresh elections in September as Mubarak informally cedes power but does not leave outright.

  A group of prominent Egyptians calling itself the "Council of the Wise" is trying to mediate a similar solution between the government and protest leaders, though it's doubtful many of the demonstrators Tahrir Square will accept anything less than Mubarak's outright resignation.

  Hassan Nafaa, chairman of the political science department at Cairo University who is in touch with many opposition figures, worried that the loose coalition of groups calling for Mubarak's ouster don't have a coherent game plan. "There is no strategy. Every group has its own perception of the situation, its own dynamics, but I don't think there is any common strategy. They want Mubarak to leave or delegate authority but differ on how to achieve that."

  Meanwhile, Mubarak was shown on state television Saturday presiding over a meeting of his economic advisors, and he remains head of the NDP. A number of journalists and activists remain missing, including the bureau chief of Al Jazeera's Arabic channel, presumably swept up by the Egyptian regime's still very active and brutal security apparatus. "There's a new game in town and we don't know the rules," said one Cairo-based analyst whose organization had come under severe pressure in recent days.

  At Tahrir Square today, the army took a firmer hand, sending elite reinforcements, manning checkpoints, and pushing protesters to move their makeshift barricades inward. A top Army general appeared and urged the protesters to go home, telling them he respected their right to speak out but said that they were damaging the Egyptian economy.

  Outside the area around the square, traffic surged as life began returning to normal. State television appeared to be toning down what Nawara described as a "campaign of terror and xenophobia against foreigners," though the overall depiction of the protesters as wide-eyed radicals bent on destroying Egypt -- with the help of Iran, Israel, and Qatar, no less -- remained in place.

  "Given the events of the past 48 hours, the best possible scenario is a slightly more open authoritarian regime. Egypt's democratic moment was thwarted this time," said Joshua Stacher, an assistant professor at Kent State University.

• The Tahrir Show

  Posted: February 3, 2011, 8:21 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Greetings from the center of the world.

  I'm in Cairo, Egypt, where thousands of protesters remain holed up in Tahrir Square in the heart of this city's decaying Beaux-Arts downtown, fighting pitched street battles with pro-regime thugs and defiantly refusing to buckle under, give up, and go home.

  I arrived here this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m., after a surprisingly quick ride in from the airport. I found a city that looked largely as it did back in 2005 and 2006, when I lived here as an Arabic student, wannabe journalist, and democracy activist.

  There are, of course, some important differences. Commerce has ground to a halt. Army vehicles now dot the major arteries into the city -- I counted at least five armored personnel carriers and five tanks on the way in to downtown -- and the area around Tahrir Square shows the signs of a weeklong siege. There are burned-out wrecks and makeshift barricades at major entrances, which are halfheartedly manned by Army troops. To enter, one must show ID -- presumably one that doesn't say "I'm a police spy" -- and submit to one or more enthusiastic pat-downs by (polite) volunteer guards. But once you're inside, it's generally peaceful, as the raging rock fight near the Egyptian Museum is at the far end of the square, perhaps a quarter-mile away from the main roundabout.

  [[BREAK]]

  The square is the center of the action -- and yet somehow it seems peripheral to the politics that will determine whether Hosni Mubarak has to make a hasty exit and whether his military-backed regime will survive him.

  While I'm here, I hope to focus on the action outside the square: The regime's ruthless survival strategy, the politicking among various opposition factions, and the disconnect between what I see here and what's being discussed back in Washington. It probably won't be easy -- there are more reports today of attacks on and arrests of journalists and activists, and I'll need to keep a low profile. But I hope I can provide a little context and insight on what is a fascinating and fast-evolving story.

  Here are some questions I have so far:

  What does the vital center of the Egyptian public think of the protests? Obviously, the people in Tahrir Square will accept nothing less than Mubarak's immediate resignation. But what of the rest? I spoke with one protester, a young man who gave the name Mustafa Hassan, who admitted, "People are split now" after Mubarak agreed not to run for a sixth term. But, he said, he hadn't sympathized with the anti-Mubarak protesters until he saw what happened to them Wednesday night. "After what happened today, I started to feel different," he told me.

  Is Vice President Omar Suleiman's strategy of dividing the opposition working? Universally, Egyptians I've spoken with have little respect for the traditional opposition parties -- they're widely seen as ineffectual, uninspiring, and just as corrupt as the government itself. There seems to be a diversity of views on Mohamed ElBaradei, who is generally seen as a nice man who doesn't seem tough enough or dedicated enough to their cause. But being seen as embracing dialogue may help portray the government as the reasonable party.

  How resilient is the regime? Some of the smartest Egypt analysts I know think that the Army is deftly maneuvering to maintain its position of privilege -- presenting itself as the antidote to chaos while allowing the protesters to punch themselves out. It's hard to imagine what level of unrest it would take to truly fragment the armed forces. For now, the military seems firmly in control of the situation.

  How important is the Muslim Brotherhood? This is the question on many minds in Washington and Jerusalem, and it's a valid one. From my anecdotal scanning of Tahrir Square, it looked like the Ikhwan were a major presence but not the major presence. "Maybe 40 percent," one secular protester told me.

  Is there still any evident organization to the protest movement? Just walking around and talking to people in the square, it sure seems as if what's going on is spontaneous and led from the bottom up. But there are clearly still leaders deciding what the next move will be -- e.g., Friday protests, marching or not marching on the presidential palace, negotiating with the regime, and so on. There are about eight medical areas across the square that are regularly being restocked with fresh supplies, as well as a makeshift "hospital" inside a small mosque, and suspected infiltrators are largely protected from the mob. So who's in charge?

  Are we witnessing a revolution, a soft military coup, or a failed uprising? This is the million-dollar question, and one that I suspect can't be answered until events have run their course. Much depends on tomorrow's demonstrations: Has the regime succeeded in its usual game of divide and conquer, or will Egyptians' revulsion at this week's brutality send them to the streets in the millions? Right now, Mubarak and friends seem to have the upper hand, though Egyptians have certainly been proving the cynics wrong of late.

  To be continued…

• As pro-Mubarak demonstrators roam Cairo, Egypt's Internet roars back to life

  Posted: February 2, 2011, 2:35 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  At 11:29 a.m. Cairo time, Egypt's Internet roared back to life Wednesday after more than five days of darkness, and a cacophony of Egyptian voices returned to Twitter, Facebook, and various other social-networking sites to express their anger over last night's speech by President Hosni Mubarak.

  The immediate reason for the blackout's end seemed to be the Army's call for demonstrators to return their homes, a message sent to thousands of Egyptian mobile subscribers.

  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Mubarak supporters hit the streets of Cairo in an ominous sign that the regime was determined to hang on and perhaps exact a measure of vengeance for its humiliation over the last week. Many Egyptian tweeters claimed that the pro-Mubarak demonstrators were motivated by money or were government employees and security forces forced to be there against their will. While Mubarak undoubtedly retains some measure of support, nobody thinks these demos are spontaneous expressions of popular sentiment.

  Several news organizations -- CNN, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and ABC News, among others -- reported being assaulted or otherwise intimidated by the pro-Mubarak groups, thousands of whom entered Cairo's Tahrir Square shortly before 2 p.m. local time. Lara Setrakian tweeted that it was a "dangerous and combustible situation" in the square, with both sides squaring off against each other and chanting opposing slogans. There are similar reports of clashes in Alexandria.

  So now we see the regime's strategy emerging: concede Mubarak's sixth term, divide and conquer the opposition and buy some off with concessions, and send its thugs to intimidate the remaining protesters into going home. The government has made no promises to revoke the hated Emergency Law, and it seems that Mubarak's "constitional reform" will be aimed at allowing his new deputy, Omar Suleiman, to contest this fall's presidential election.

  The Wall Street Journal also cleared up a major mystery, shedding some light on the sudden disappearance of the police last Friday:

  At 4 p.m., the battles appeared to tip decisively in the protesters' favor. An order came down from Mr. Mubarak to the Minister of Interior, Habib al-Adly to use live ammunition to put down the protests, according to a person familiar with the situation.

  Mr. al-Adly passed on the order to his top lieutenant, Gen. Ahmed Ramzy—but Mr. Ramzy refused, according to this person.

  "It was a poor assessment of what [orders] his generals would take from him," this person said.

  When Mr. Mubarak saw that Mr. Adly wouldn't get the job done, he gave the order for the army to deploy, this person said. Mr. Adly was furious, according to the person. Mr. Adly then gave a sweeping order to pull all police from the streets, from lowly traffic monitors, to prison guards, to the vast armies of truncheon-wielding riot police that had been a ubiquitous presence around Egypt for decades.

  "That withdrawal was a disastrous mistake," said Fuad Allam, a former commander of the country's internal security forces. "You just can't do that."

  The deployment orders caught the military by surprise, according to soldiers.

  "No one expected it," a junior officer said on Monday. "The order came and four hours later we were on the streets."

  This story offers a slight twist on the going rope-a-dope theory -- that Mubarak ordered the police to disappear in order to create enough chaos to scare middle- and upper-class Egyptians into supporting a return of order and stability. In the WSJ's version, which seems very well sourced, it was the Interior Minstry itself that launched this strategy in a bid to show Mubarak that it was still essential to his regime.

  This could get very ugly indeed. As I write, pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators look like they are about to rumble in Tahrir Square. The results could be very bloody -- just as Mubarak & co. intend.

  UPDATE: It has indeed gotten bloody, with pitched battles in the square between the two sides. In a surreal moment, pro-Mubarak thugs rode into the square atop horses, camels, and donkeys. I am not joking. More later.

• Mubarak's 9 biggest mistakes

  Posted: February 1, 2011, 12:27 am by Blake Hounshell

  As hundreds of thousands of angry protesters mobbed downtown Cairo to denounce his 30-year rule, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak delivered an utterly unapologetic speech Tuesday evening, vowing to safeguard his country's stability and security while announcing that he would not seek a 6th term.

  Defending his record and saying he would "die on Egyptian soil," Mubarak indicated that he he had no intention of following the example of former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and fleeing ignominiously into exile.

  Almost immediately, the demonstrators in Tahrir Square renewed their calls for his ouster, rejecting his bid to remain in office for another few months. It seems that Mubarak has made yet another mistake, one that may ultimately lead him to share Ben Ali's fate. So what were his biggest blunders?

  1. Failing to spread the wealth. Egypt's economy as a whole has grown by a respectable amount, but most Egyptians don't feel they've gotten their fair share. Instead, they see wealthy businessman with ties to the ruling National Democratic Party stealing the country's riches.

  2. Allowing corruption to pervade Egyptian life. If there's  one thing Egyptians complain about, it's the grand and petty corruption that makes it nearly impossible for anyone in the country to make an honest living. Getting anything done requires a bribe (the infamous baksheesh) and/or connections (wasta), and high-level embezzlement is rampant.

  3. The vision thing. Say what you want about Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, but Mubarak's two predecessors knew where they wanted to take the country and had a plan for getting there. Nasser wanted to create a pan-Arab union under the banner of socialism and non-alignment, while Sadat sought to regain Egypt's martial pride before making peace with Israel and joining the West. As for Mubarak, what does he offer Egyptians? Crumbling infrastructure, decaying socio-economic conditions, and utter fealty to the United States.

  4. Half-hearted reforms. Egyptians have grown rightly cynical at their-government's on-again off-again reform efforts, characterized by unpersuasive propaganda or Orwellian doublespeak. When they hear the word "reform," Egyptians look for the catch, such as the constitutional amendment that more or less bars independent candidates from contesting the presidency.

  5. Grooming Gamal. If there's one thing nearly all Egyptians agree on, it's that they don't want to be ruled by Mubarak's British-educated son. Over the last decade, Gamal played an increasingly visible role in setting domestic policy, tying his fortunes to unpopular liberal economic reforms and wealthy businessmen who are seen as corrupt and out of touch with ordinary Egyptians. Some of the most popular chants at demonstrations in recent years were variants of "No to inheritence!"

  6. Underestimating the activists. Clearly, the Interior Ministry and the police were not prepared for the surge of protesters that first hit the streets on January 25. Accustomed to small demonstrations organized by Egypt's utterly inept, fractious opposition parties, the security forces clearly expected more of the same. But the organizers behind the current uprising are networked, tech-savvy young people who obviously know how to connect with their audience and get the word out. They're not from the political parties. The police were clearly rocked back on their heels, exhausted, and outmaneuvered last Friday -- and that's when the army had to step in.

  7. Cheating too much. In most of the parliamentary contests during his 30 year reign, Mubarak has allowed a token number of seats to go to opposition parties. But in the 2010 elections, the NDP's rigging got out of control, leaving only a handful of seats for the coopted Wafd Party. The Muslim Brotherhood was shut out, leaving it with no stake in the government and the patronage opportunities that go along with representation in parliament.

  8. Sending in the thugs. After the police forces mysteriously dissolved Friday, reports came streaming in of looters attacking people in the streets, breaking into shops and homes, and otherwise intimidating ordinary Egyptians. Many of these thugs were found to be carrying police or state security IDs. If Mubarak's hope was to drive the middle class back into the loving arms of the state, it seems he badly miscalculated -- the protests have only gotten bigger since then.

  9. Bringing in his cronies. Despite his Friday speech vowing to enact various unspecified political and constitutional reforms, Mubarak named his spy chief Omar Suleiman his vice president, dumped his cabinet, and named a retired Air Force general as his prime minister. Opposition leaders and analysts rightly interpreted this as a sign of business as usual. 

  This is hardly an exhaustive list, and I imagine Mubarak will make a few more major mistakes in the days ahead. What do you all think he got wrong? Please weigh in below.

• Who to follow on Egypt

  Posted: February 1, 2011, 11:30 pm by Blake Hounshell

  If, like me, you are obsessively following the unfolding drama in Egypt, there's no better medium than Twitter, where you can get 140-character dispatches from foreign journalists and Egyptians on the ground (at least, those that still somehow have Internet access), as well as curators and analysts watching the action from afar. Here are some, but by no means all, of my proven providers (it's also light on Egyptians right now since few seem to have Internet access at the moment):

  Egyptians:

  Abeer Allam - Egyptian-born FT correspondent in Riyadh

  Sandmonkey - Foul-mouthed Egyptian blogger

  Hossam El-Hamalawy - Blogger and labor activist

  Alaa Abd Al Fattah - Blogger and tech activist based in South Africa

  Gamal Eid - Human rights activist

  Khaled Abol Naga - Egyptian actor

  Sharif Kouddous - Egyptian-American producer for Democracy Now

  Ramy Raoof - Human rights activist and blogger

  Gigi Ibrahim - Socialist activist
  

  Amr El Beleidy - Travel writer cum activist

  Mo-ha-med - Economic consultant

  Zeinobia - Egyptian blogger

  Journos on the ground:

  Al Arabiya - Breaking news from the Arab satellite network

  Ashraf Khalil - top-notch senior journalist for Al-Masry Al-Youm

  Issandr Amrani - dean of the Cairo press corps

  Ben Wedemann - veteran Middle East correspondent for CNN

  Nic Robertson - CNN reporter in Alexandria

  Frederick Pleitgen - CNN reporter in Cairo

  Ayman Mohyeldin, Evan C. Hill, Gregg Carlstrom, Abdurahman Warsame, Dan Nolan, Sherine Tadros - Al Jazeera journalists

  Steven Farrell, Anthony Shadid, Nick Kristof - New York Times correspondents currently in Egypt

  Jan25voices - phoned-in tweets from Egypt

  Curators and analysts:

  Sultan al-Qassemi - columnist for Abu Dhabi's the National

  Brian Whitaker - Guardian editor

  Katherine Maher - tech and civil society expert with the National Democratic Institute

  Dan Murphy - Christian Science Monitor journalist, former Cairo correspondent

  Michael Wahid Hanna - Century Foundation analyst

  Steve Cook - CFR analyst

  Pomed Wire - Project on Middle East Democracy

  Marc Lynch - FP blogger, GW professor

  Daniel Serwer - Middle East expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace

  Max Fisher - Atlantic editor

  Andy Carvin - Senior strategist at NPR

  Tom Gara - Quick-witted financial journalist living in Dubai, Egypt experience

  Joshua Stacher - Professor at Kent State University with extensive knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood

  Nasser Weddady - Mauritanian activist living in Boston

  Ammar Abdulhamid - Syrian activist living in Washington

  Jacob Appelbaum - Cyberactivist monitoring the Egyptian Internet

  Kim Ghatttas - BBC State Department correspondent

• Mubarak one step closer to out

  Posted: February 1, 2011, 9:19 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  In a few minutes, according to Al Arabiya, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will speak and offer a "solution" to his country's unrest -- perhaps by agreeing not to run in this September's upcoming presidential election. Such an announcement would be an epic moment for the Middle East, and for Mubarak, who once said he would serve as Egypt's president "until my last breath."

  Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that U.S. President Barack Obama -- through retired diplomat Frank Wisner -- has told Mubarak he shouldn't run again:

  Mr. Wisner’s message, [American diplomats in Cairo and Washington] said, was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader. [...]

  His mission was to “keep a conversation going,” according to a close friend of Mr. Wisner’s.

  As a result, this person said, the administration’s first message to the Egyptian leader was not that he had to leave office, but rather that his time in office was quickly coming to a close. Mr. Wisner, who consulted closely with the White House, is expected to be the point person to deal with Mr. Mubarak as the situation evolves, and perhaps as the administration’s message hardens.

  More to come soon, but my strong hunch is that the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square will be satisfied by nothing less than Mubarak's ouster. The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl relayed via Twitter that Mubarak actually refused Wisner's counsel, and the LA Times quotes a source saying that Wisner's message was "plainly rebuffed."

  If it's indeed true that Mubarak is announcing that he won't seek a 6th term -- and nobody other than Al Arabiya is reporting that right now [UPDATE: Now Egyptian state TV says it will be a statement, not a speech] -- it's more than a little awkward that U.S. officials have already leaked his decision to the New York Times. Not that I have much sympathy for the old tyrant, but I don't think the Obama team wants to be seen dictating the course of events.

  That said, if Mubarak does indeed announce his retirement tonight, you can expect some fingerpointing at Obama for "losing" a key U.S. ally, thanklessly "throwing him under the bus," and so on.

  I wonder if the people making that argument will have the courage to spell out what itimplies: They would have preferred to see the Egyptian police and military kill and injure more peaceful demonstrators on the streets of a major Arab capital, on international satellite television, using U.S.-made weapons.

  Because let's be honest: that's what it would have taken for Mubarak to remain in power. His military was refusing to enforce a curfew or fire on protesters; his police had mysteriously fled after brutally attacking them. The morality of this position aside, can you imagine the kind of blowback the United States would face in the Arab world, let alone everywhere else?

• Can Hosni hang on?

  Posted: January 31, 2011, 6:30 pm by Blake Hounshell

  With the announcement today of his new cabinet, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak all but confirmed that he sees the current unrest sweeping across his country primarily as a security matter, not an issue that demands political reform.

  Let's look at his appointments. His new vice president is Omar Suleiman, his longtime spy chief, a man distinguished by his unstinting loyalty to the boss. The new prime minister is Ahmed Shafiq, an Air Force veteran who previously ran the civil aviation ministry. The new interior minister, retired police general Mahmoud Wagdy, last ran Egypt's vast prison system. This is not a government of reformers.

  In fact, the reformers -- Ahmed Nazif, Rashid Mohamed Rashid, Youssef Boutros-Ghali -- won't be in the new government. Although Al Arabiya reported that the latter two ministers refused to join, it's also possible that Mubarak wanted to send a signal that he blamed their economic liberalization policies for stirring up unrest.

  What's clear is that Mubarak's son Gamal, who was close to the technocrats and was widely thought to have been angling for the presidency, is finished in Egyptian politics. Nobody has seen him for days, and there are rumors that he's fled to London along with his mother Suzanne and brother Alaa.

  The other half of Mubarak's strategy is to scare Egypt's upper and middle classes into demanding a return of stability. On Friday, police forces mysteriously disappeared and thousands of prisoners suddenly escaped from several facilities. Reports of chaos and looting in the streets dominated state television, while the army did little to provide security beyond protecting government buildings. Neighborhoods have set up local watch groups, grabbing makeshift weapons like kitchen knives, baseball bats, and even, I saw in one report, lacrosse sticks.

  Will it work? I doubt it. Mubarak's legitimacy seems utterly depleted. Ordinarily, the regime would stage counterdemonstrations to show that it still has support. On Sunday, a host on Al Jazeera English challenged Mohamed Ragab, a backbencher from the ruling party, to back up his claim that "millions and millions" of Egyptians still support Mubarak. He couldn't do it.

  The opposition has called for a million-man show of strength in downtown Cairo Tuesday, while the regime has shut down the train system in what looks like a desperate attempt to deny the protesters reinforcements. But Cairo is a city of 20 million people, many of whom are already defying the military's half-hearted attempts to enforce a 3 p.m. curfew tonight. Tomorrow's demonstrations could be truly huge.

  Hosni may indeed limp along for a little while longer. But I doubt anyone is betting that he'll be there for the long haul.

  UPDATE: The Egyptian army has issued an unusual statement saying it "will not resort to use of force against our great people."

  "Your armed forces," the statement continued, "who are aware of the legitimacy of your demands and are keen to assume their responsibility in protecting the nation and the citizens, affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody."

  A lot of people are interpreting this as the army signaling that it is with the protesters and against Mubarak. I think that may be premature, but only slightly. Suleiman just appeared on television and said the government would take a look at complaints about last fall's parliamentary elections -- another attempt to buy off more moderate demonstrators (and rather meaningless as most of the problems came in runoff elections between "official" NDP candidates and "unofficial" NDP candidates). Meanwhile, both the EU and the United States are now calling for a "transition" -- i.e. goodbye Hosni. But he's a stubborn old man. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

• Biden on Mubarak: "I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

  Posted: January 27, 2011, 3:09 am by Blake Hounshell

  Whose bright idea was it to send Joe Biden out to talk about Egypt?

  The U.S. vice president just made a major faux pas tonight, the Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy reports:

  Ahead of a day that could prove decisive, NewsHour host Jim Lehrer asked Biden if the time has "come for President Mubarak of Egypt to go?" Biden answered: "No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that -- to be more responsive to some… of the needs of the people out there."

  Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: "Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with -- with Israel.… I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

  He also appeared to make one of the famous Biden gaffes, in comments that could be interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of protesters' demands. Monitor Cairo correspondent Kristen Chick, other reporters in the country, and activists have generally characterized the main calls of demonstrators as focused on freedom, democracy, an end to police torture, and a more committed government effort to address the poverty that aflicts millions of Egyptians.

  Biden urged non-violence from both protesters and the government and said: "We're encouraging the protesters to -- as they assemble, do it peacefully. And we're encouraging the government to act responsibly and -- and to try to engage in a discussion as to what the legitimate claims being made are, if they are, and try to work them out." He also said: "I think that what we should continue to do is to encourage reasonable … accommodation and discussion to try to resolve peacefully and amicably the concerns and claims made by those who have taken to the street. And those that are legitimate should be responded to because the economic well-being and the stability of Egypt rests upon that middle class buying into the future of Egypt."

  Egypt's protesters, if they're paying attention to Biden at all, will certainly be wondering which of their demands thus far have been illegitimate.

  Earlier today, outgoing White House spokesman Robert Gibbs turned some heads when he said of the protests, "This is not about taking sides." But if you look at the full context of his remarks, it's clear the Obama administration is still counting on the Mubarak regime toughening this one out.

  This evening, about 10 minutes after the Associated Press posted a video appearing to show a man being shot in the head (unconfirmed reports on Twitter later said he had died), Egyptians began reporting that their Internet access had been cut off, and an Italian company that provides a major backbone confirmed that its ties to Egypt had been severed. Other reports warned that Egyptian mobile companies were cutting off text-messaging services.

  Tomorrow, the protesters have called for massive demonstrations after Friday prayers, and many are worried that the Egyptian regime will use the opportunity to launch a major crackdown. Arabist.net reports that plainclothes security goons have been seen "pouring gasoline on vehicles and setting them on fire" and that policemen were "loading vans with clubs, nails, metal bars and other objects."

  Egypt has yet to pass the point of no return, but if tomorrow gets even uglier, I hope the Obama administration gets its story straight.

  UPDATE: Click here for a full rundown of Obama administration statements on Egypt.

• Egypt's new Suez Crisis

  Posted: January 27, 2011, 10:07 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The violent epicenter of protests in Egypt is an industrial city few outsiders know much about: the seaport town of Suez, which sits astride the Suez Canal as it opens southward into the Red Sea.

  Suez has seen its share of blood over the years. In 1967, the coastal town was nearly wiped out during the Six Day War with Israel and thereafter was the scene of sporadic guerrilla fighting between the two sides. The canal remained closed for nearly eight years, reopening only in 1975.

  In recent years, Suez has seen growing prosperity, sending billions in tax revenue from its factories and workers to the government in Cairo. But as in the rest of Egypt, that prosperity hasn't been widely shared, leading to the same sort of dashed hopes that proved so explosive in Tunisia.

  This week, Suez erupted in anger as protesters took to the streets to complain about economic conditions and their lack of freedom under Hosni Mubarak's government. It got ugly fast, with several deaths and reports of demonstrators hurling Molotov cocktails in response to a harsh police crackdown. (To get a feel for the chaos, check out journalist Ian Lee's gripping tweets from earlier today.) 

  Photographs of the mayhem are now coming out. Here are a few of the latest:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• You're so vain, you probably think these protests are about you

  Posted: January 26, 2011, 7:28 pm by Blake Hounshell

  As the unrest in Egypt continues, and Washington wonks are beginning to weigh in, I'm starting to see a familiar pattern: The discussion is shifting from what's happening on the ground -- which is still in flux -- to what the United States should or shouldn't do about it.

  The Washington Post weighed in last night with a rather predictable criticism of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's first statement on the protests, and now Politico is channeling some of the complaints by outside observers who say that the administration should be speaking out more aggressively in support of the demonstrators.

  My colleague Marc Lynch has already weighed in on this topic this morning, but here are my two cents: It's not about us. Indeed, what's been refreshing about the events in Tunisia and Egypt has been that very little of it has anything to do with the United States. For the most part, the demonstrators aren't chanting anti-American slogans; they're calling on their own corrupt, sclerotic rulers to stand aside. And that's a very healthy phenomenon.

  Instead of having Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama say some magic democracy words, I'd much rather see the United States think hard about its system of support for these autocrats. Can the U.S. credibly call for freedom in Egypt when it's subsidizing the Egyptian military to the tune of a billion and a half dollars a year? Is Egypt really so helpful when it comes to the "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians? Can we live with the Muslim Brotherhood in power, or closer to it? If the answer to these questions is the same as it's been for the last few decades, it's probably best to keep our big mouths shut.

• What will the U.S. do about Egypt?

  Posted: January 25, 2011, 11:51 pm by Blake Hounshell

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  The State Department has released the transcript of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks on the ongoing protests in Egypt:

  With respect to Egypt, which, as your question implied, like many countries in the region, has been experiencing demonstrations.  We know that they've occurred not only in Cairo but around the country, and we're monitoring that very closely.  We support the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people, and we urge that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence.  But our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people. 

  Not exactly stirring stuff, and no doubt the many Egyptians who risked their necks today will be disappointed at this statement. Still, as my friend Shadi Hamid -- a staunch democracy advocate -- points out, the United States faces a pretty tough dilemma in deciding when and how to pressure one of its closest Middle East allies to open up its political system:

  The U.S. can opt for relative silence, as it did in Tunisia. In Egypt, however, deep support of the Mubarak regime means that silence will be interpreted as complicity. On the other hand, if the U.S. offers moral support to embattled protestors, it will be actively undermining a government it considers critical to its security interests. Tunisia, as far as U.S. interests are concerned, was expendable. The revolt was spontaneous and leaderless. Islamists - mostly in prison or in London - were nowhere to be seen on the streets of Tunis or Sidi Bouzid. But if Egypt is lost, it will be lost to an uprising that includes some of the most anti-American opposition groups in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood - by far the largest opposition force in the country.

  How to square this circle? A couple weeks back, I spoke with Tamara Cofman Wittes, the deputy secretary of state who leads Middle East democracy promotion efforts. To be clear, our conversation took place days before the ouster of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and well before today's protests in Egypt. I asked her (an admittedly long and convulted) question about the Egyptian government and its intrasigence on political reform. Here's what she said:

  Look, we have a very multifaceted relationship with the Egyptian government. They're an important partner on a lot of regional issues, and they're an important partner because we share a lot of interests in this region. We share an interest in a stable Iraq that's reintegating into the Arab world. We share in an interest in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We share an interest in containing the strategic threat posed by Iran's nuclear program.

  And so we work together on all these things because  we have these common interests and we believe that Egypt can be a strong leader on these issues in the region, a stronger leader, if it engages in the kind of political reform that it's committed to both internationally and to its own people. And we'd like to see that. We've been very open about that. And I don't think there's anything we've said publicly that differs from what we've said privately on these issues.

  We've been I think very consistent in saying that the Emergency Law in Egypt should not be a regular way of doing business, that if, as President Mubarak has committed, if they're going to replace it with a counterterrorism law, it should be one that protects civil liberties.

  [Me: They've been saying that for five years.]

  Yes, they have -- you were there when President Mubarak made that commitment, and that's a commitment he made to his own people and it's one that we hope he'll fulfill.

  I imagine the Obama administration will be calibrating its message in the hours and days ahead -- but don't hold your breath for a powerful statement during the State of the Union address tonight.

• Egyptian protesters block water cannons with their bodies

  Posted: January 25, 2011, 7:06 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Every protest movement needs iconic images to rally around. In Tunisia, it was protesters holding up baguettes that symbolized the Tunisian people's demand for economic opportunity. It's still early days in Egypt, assuming today's unrest continues, but here's one dramatic video that is already making the rounds on Twitter. Watch what happens around the 1:30 mark:

• Swarm tactics befuddle police in Cairo

  Posted: January 25, 2011, 4:15 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  For the last few hours, I've been glued to my Twitter stream, monitoring the spreading protests in Egypt. The demonstrations have long been planned as a response to "Police Day," a much-unloved national holiday originally intended to honor cops in the city of Ismailia who stood against the British invasion of 1952. In recent years, it's become a potent symbol of everything that's wrong with Egypt under the rule of Hosni Mubarak.

  This year, the protesters, inspired by events in Tunisia and outraged by the death last year of Khalid Said, a young man brutally tortured and killed by police in Alexandria, organized themselves on Facebook and called for a "day of anger" across the country.

  So far,  they've succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Events are moving rapidly, but here's what we know so far: The protests began at different points in the city, such as Doqqi in Giza to the west and Shubra in the north, and converged on points downtown. I've seen reports of large crowds in  Ramses, Abdeen, Ataba, and Tahrir squares -- all major important public spaces. There are also scattered demonstrations in other parts of the country, such as Alexandria, Mansoura, and Sinai.

  It's too early to say that these are "massive" protests -- there are, after all, some 80 million people in Egypt, and no report I've seen thus far puts today's number at more than 100,000 -- but they could easily grow into something truly huge. So far, the police have mostly taken a hands-off approach, albeit with beatings, tear gas, and water cannons in some places. But if the demonstrations continue to grow, Mubarak could face the same dilemma that faced Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia: Crack down for real, try to meet the protesters' demands halfway (say, by sacking his widely reviled interior minister, Habib al-Adly), or some combination of the two.

  After today, Mubarak can't have great confidence in his Central Security Forces -- the riot police charged with putting down demonstrations. These are usually slim, scared-looking lads from upper Egypt, poorly trained and uneducated, with little pay and few perks. I've seen multiple reports of the CSF being outmaneuved and backing down in the face of protesters. The army is another matter -- more than a million men at arms, well-equipped and presumably well motivated to protect their significant interests across the country. (He can also call on the regular police and the vast resources of state security, which will no doubt be hunting down organizers in the days to come.) Will we be seeing tanks in the streets this spring?

  It may not get to that point. But the Egyptian street got a taste of its power today. For a people long thought to be quiescent, apathetic, apolitical -- it must be an electrifying feeling. Hosni is not going to sleep well tonight.

  Stay tuned.

• Palestinian leaders scramble to spin Al Jazeera leaks

  Posted: January 24, 2011, 4:23 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In case you haven't heard, Al Jazeera (along with the Guardian) on Sunday announced it had gotten its hands on more than 1,600 Palestinian documents detailing negotiations with Israeli and U.S. officials. The documents aren't all released yet, but the story is already roiling the Arab world, prompting fresh cries that the Palestinian Authority is "selling out" to Israel by offering politically sensitive concessions on Jerusalem, its holy sites, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

  Perhaps more damning, in Arab eyes, is the language used by some Palestinian leaders. Longtime peace negotiator Saeb Erekat is quoted in one document, a write-up of a Jan. 15, 2010, meeting with U.S. envoy David Hale, saying he had offered Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarized state ... what more can I give?"

  Erekat and other Palestinian leaders have made no effort to prepare their public for these kinds of concessions. In 2009, for instance, Erekat appeared on Al Jazeera and said, "There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem -- with every single stone in it -- becomes the capital of Palestine." 

  No wonder Palestinian leaders are scrambling to contain the damage, ripping Al Jazeera and even the emir of Qatar, which sponsors the satellite channel. Erekat told reporters that the documents have been "taken out of context and contain lies… Al Jazeera's information is full of distortions and fraud." For its part, the network says it has "taken great care over an extended period of time to assure ourselves of their authenticity," as has the Guardian. The State Department says it's looking into them.

  So, who leaked the papers? Most likely people within the Negotiations Support Unit, the Palestinian organization that staffs Erekat and took most of the notes, the Guardian reports:

  [A]s the negotiations have increasingly been seen to have failed, and the Ramallah-based PA leadership has come to be regarded by many Palestinians as illegitimate or unrepresentative, discontent among NSU staff has grown and significant numbers have left. There has also been widespread discontent in the organisation at the scale and nature of concessions made in the talks.

  If this speculation is right, the leakers intended to embarrass their former bosses. Mission accomplished.

  So what now? Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been ruling outside the law for some time now; there doesn't seem to be a legal means for his opponents to oust him. That means Palestinians who oppose the PA are going to need to take to the streets to voice their disapproval, Tunisia style.

  And what of the two-state solution? It was probably already dead, and these documents will only reinforce the point. But I imagine the "peace process" will limp along, one way or another, until it becomes impossible to defend anymore. I hope the Obama team has an exit strategy.

• Seymour Hersh, the Knights of Malta, and me

  Posted: January 21, 2011, 10:58 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Since my write-up of Seymour Hersh's talk is getting some coverage today, and many commenters have written in to dispute my post, I thought I should provide a little more context.

  More than a few readers, including Salon's Glenn Greenwald, complained that I hadn't rebutted Hersh's arguments. That wasn't my intention -- I was relaying what Hersh said. I did make two editorial comments: that his speech was a "rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe" and that it "quickly went downhill" after its opening line. But I imagine that when most reasonable people read the transcript -- I don't have a video, unfortunately -- they will see what I'm talking about. As far as I know, nobody, including Hersh, is disputing my quotes.

  I thought it was self-evident that several points Hersh made were off-base and conspiratorial, but perhaps it's worth spelling things out for everyone.

  1. The idea that "we're gonna change mosques into cathedrals" is "an attitude that pervades … a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." This is essentially unverifiable unless you do a survey of JSOC personnel. Good luck with that. For now, the weight of evidence suggests that JSOC is on the whole a highly competent and professional organization that has no intention of converting Muslims to Christianity around the world. If it were otherwise, I'm sure we'd be hearing about it from others besides Seymour Hersh.

  2. Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.… Many of them are members of Opus Dei." McChrystal has already denied being a member of Knights of Malta; McRaven and JSOC have thus far declined to comment. But so what if they were? Everything I've seen tells me that the Knights of Malta are a public service organization, not some kind of Catholic extremist group. And Opus Dei is hardly the secretive cabal of ruthless assassins depicted in The Da Vinci Code. It has a Facebook page.

  3. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." I have no doubt that many in the U.S. military are religious, and yes, I've heard about Jerry Boykin, Erik Prince, and those rifle scopes. But the plural of anecdote is not data -- and acknowledging there are devout Christians in the military and implying that top military leaders are embarking on a "crusade" against Muslims are two very different things. "Zealotry is viewed as being unprofessional [in the SF community]," former Special Forces officer Kalev Sepp told Stars and Stripes. "Anyone who professes religion in an open way like that is suspect to where their real loyalties lie." (Do I really need to explain this?)

  4. "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins.… They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war." I believe Hersh is referring here to challenge coins, a common sight across the U.S. military. They seem pretty innocuous to me.

  There's a lot more, but you get the idea. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say it: Odds are good that JSOC is not being overrun by Catholic fanatics.

• Fact-checking the New York Times: Did Hu really just shift China's position on human rights?

  Posted: January 20, 2011, 9:56 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  The most interesting moment in an otherwise subdued -- dare I say dull -- press conference by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao came when a Bloomberg reporter insisted that Hu answer a fellow journalist's question about human rights.

  Hu, blaming the translation, claimed he hadn't heard the question (to audible titters among the assembled press corps). He went on to give China's standard answer on human rights, which is basically, "Blah blah we've always respected human rights (yet we're also improving), China faces unique circumstances as a developing country, we favor dialogue, etc."

  He also said that "China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights," which caught the ear of New York Times reporter Michael Wines, who sees the remark as "a palpable shift for a government that has staged a two-year crackdown on internal dissent and imprisoned a Nobel laureate."

  "Until Wednesday," Wines continues, "recognizing credos like democracy and human rights as 'universal values' had been all but taboo in Chinese political discourse, although China has signed the United Nations convention that enshrines the principle of universal human rights."

  Not so, points out Forbes correspondent Gady Epstein, who passes along this Washington Post article from 2009, which discusses China's submission (pdf) to a U.N. review panel:

  "China respects the principle of the universality of human rights," the document states. But it adds: "Given differences in political systems, levels of development and historical and cultural backgrounds, it is natural for countries to have different views on the question of human rights."

  That's almost exactly what Hu said. I suppose it's different when the president himself says so with all the eyes of the world upon him, but let's not kid ourselves about whether China has made some profound new commitment to human rights and democracy. For all its very real successes in promoting development, the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of relinquishing its stranglehold on political power anytime soon, if ever. Wake me up when they stop throwing political prisoners in jail, beating people in the streets, censoring the press, and generally evincing little regard for the Chinese people's ability to chart their own future.

• Seymour Hersh unleashed

  Posted: January 18, 2011, 8:34 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office.

  In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

  "Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, "we didn't get one."

  It quickly went downhill from there.

  Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the "Cheney-Bush years" and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.

  He said that he was keeping a "checklist" of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and "rendition" of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.

  He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative "crusaders" in the former vice president's office and now in the special operations community.

  "What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over," he said of his forthcoming book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced."

  Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'"

  "That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command."

  He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."

  Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website.

  "Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

  "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community."

  Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with "a man in the intelligence community... somebody in the joint special operations business" about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. "He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.'"

  "Tunisia's going to change the game," Hersh added later. "It's going to scare the hell out of a lot of people."

  Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people.

  Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions.

  “Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh's conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, presumably because it coudn't be verified.)

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  The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed.

  "When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president," Hersh said, the station chief "just declared it was bankrupt... internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy's wrongheaded.' Off he goes. Out he goes."

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  "I've given up being disillusioned about the CIA," Hersh said. "They're trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That's all there is to it."

  Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar.

  *Note: Listening to the recording a second time, I believe Hersh said "whackos," not "radicals."

• The Arab world's horrific new trend: self-immolation

  Posted: January 17, 2011, 11:00 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  Reports are coming in that an Egyptian man has set himself on fire in front of the Parliament building in Cairo. According to AFP, citing a source in the legislature, he "stood outside the People's Assembly, poured fuel on himself and set himself on fire." (Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that the man first shouted, "Security service, my rights are lost in this country.")

  Are we now seeing a trend? Tunisia's unrest was sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a university graduate turned street vendor who burned himself to death after being harrassed and humiliated by local police. In recent days, as many as four Algerians have set themselves on fire to protest their country's economic conditions. 

  There is something horrifying and, in a way, moving about these suicide attempts. It's a shocking, desperate tactic that instantly attracts attention, revulsion, but also sympathy. Even Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the now ex-president of Tunisia, tried to show his concern by visiting Bouazazi in the hospital -- and directed the state press to release a photo of the encounter. (Obviously, it didn't earn him many points on the Tunisian street.)

  Just yesterday, in an unfortunate turn of phrase, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit dismissed speculation that Tunisia-style protests would spread to Egypt. “Those who are promoting fantasies and trying to ignite the situation will not achieve their goals and will only harm themselves," he said.

  We'll see.

  UPDATE: Now we can add Mauritania to the list.

• For Tunisia, many questions linger

  Posted: January 15, 2011, 1:22 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Events are still moving quickly in Tunisia, where word has just come out that 87-year-old Fouad Mebaza, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, is now the new interim president after someone (we don't know who) determined that yesterday's takeover by the prime minister wasn't strictly legal. Also today, Saudi Arabia announced that it had welcomed Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted president, and his family.

  Under Article 57 of the Tunisian Constitution -- invoked today by the Constitutional Council because Ben Ali has fled the country and is therefore incapable of performing his duties -- Mebaza can only be in charge for a maximum of 60 days, after which he must hold a new presidential election (in which he is not allowed to run). Whoever wins may at that point dissolve the parliament and hold new legislative elections. 

  We'll have some informed anlysis of the particulars in a few hours, but here are a few questions to think about.

  Who is actually running the country right now? The military? The security services? Top civilian officials? Where are these decisions coming from?

  Is it a good sign that the Tunisian regime, or rather what's left of it, is trying to following constitutional procedure?

  Can one of the most repressive governments in the world, where the last presidential contest saw Ben Ali re-elected with 90 percent of the vote, organize and hold a credible election in only 60 days? Does it want to, or will it try to cheat? And are there any opposition figures who have the national stature to win?

  How will the protesters, who seem to have largely stayed home again today, react to this new development? Was getting rid of Ben Ali enough to satisfy them? Or will they now fracture, as the regime probably intends?

  More later.

• Mr. Oui Oui takes charge

  Posted: January 14, 2011, 8:03 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  In a dramatic turn of events, Mohamed Ghannouchi, Tunisia's prime minister, has just announced that he is temporarily taking control of the country. Details are still murky, and nobody seems to know where President Ben Ali is. Rumor has it that he's fled to France, or Malta under Libyan protection, or that the Army prevented him from escaping.

  Ghannouchi put the matter this way: "Since the president is temporarily unable to exercise his duties, it has been decided that the prime minister will exercise temporarily the duties."

  Earlier today, after thousands of protesters surrounded the Interior Ministry and battled security forces in the streets, Ben Ali announced that he had dissolved the government and would hold elections in six months. Then there were rumblings that there would be an announcement on state television, and many assumed that Ben Ali was going to make another speech.

  Instead, Ghannouchi, a colorless functionary in his late 60s, showed up, surrounded by two other senior officials, and made his surprising announcement.

  This may not solve the crisis. Ghannouchi is not necessarily any more popular than Ben Ali, though he's not nearly as tainted by the lurid tales of corruption and excess that so damaged the ruling family. But Tunisians certainly don't respect the prime minister; they call him "Mr. Oui Oui" because he's always saying yes to Ben Ali.

  This is obviously a fast-moving story, and nobody seems to know what's going on with the Tunisian military. The police are much more powerful and numerous, and as of this afternoon there were still reports of gunfire against protesters. But there were also signs that security forces were unwilling to crack down and that may have told Ben Ali that it was time to get out of Dodge.

  UPDATE: Here's the BBC's translation of Ghannouchi's full statement:

  "Citizens, men and women! In accordance with the provisions of chapter 56 of the constitution, which stipulates that in case of the impossibility of the president to conduct his duties temporarily, he would delegate his prerogatives to the prime minister. Given the difficulty for the president of the republic to carry out his duties temporarily, I will, starting from now, exercise the prerogatives of the president of the republic. I urge all sons and daughters of Tunisia - of all ideological and political persuasions and of all sections and regions - to show the spirit of patriotism and unity in order to enable our country, which is dear to all of us, to overcome this difficult juncture and to ensure its security and stability. While I assume this responsibility, I promise to respect the constitution and to carry out political, economic and social reforms which have been announced. I will do so with perfection and through consultation with all national bodies - including political parties, national organisations and civil society components. May God grant me success!"

• Good job, Hillary

  Posted: January 13, 2011, 9:46 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Hillary Clinton gave a good speech today, excoriating Arab leaders for their lousy record on reform and bluntly warning that if they don't shape up, they'll face growing extremism and alienation among their beleaguered populations.

  "In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand," she said. "The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere."

  And she warned that "others will fill the vacuum" if "leaders don’t offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute."

  "Extremist elements, terrorist groups, and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there, appealing for allegiance and competing for influence," she added.

  Clinton's talk, at a democracy conference here in Qatar, took place against the backdrop of spiraling unrest in Tunisia, growing tension in Gaza, and the collapse of the Lebanese unity government led by Sunni billionaire Saad Hariri. She seemed fired up, perhaps because she had met earlier with civil society activists from across the region and during her previous stops in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman, and Yemen.

  According to Stephen McInerney, head of the Project on Middle East Democracy, Clinton struck the right notes.

  "Secretary Clinton's remarks today are the clearest sign yet that she understands the vital need for genuine reform and progress in the region and the dangers of maintaining the status quo," he said in an email. "I think we're seeing the impact of recent developments in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere around the region, as well as the impact of the Secretary's meetings with civil society on each stop of this trip." 

  Still, things are not looking good for the U.S. position in the Middle East right now. The peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are hopelessly stalled; Lebanon is in shambles; traditional U.S. allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are losing influence. There's definitely growing frustration with the authoritarian order across the region, though not necessarily to America's advantage.

  Improbable as it may have seemed a month ago, much depends on how events play out in Tunisia. A relatively peaceful transition of power could inspire and empower reforms across the region. An even bloodier crackdown could provoke more destructive feelings of despair and empower radicals. Or, most likely of all, the Middle East will continue to limp along as it has been, never really advancing but never really dissolving into chaos. We'll see.

• Tunisia foreign minister resigns

  Posted: January 13, 2011, 6:31 pm by Blake Hounshell

  UPDATE: The Tunisian government is denying that Morjane has stepped down, according to Al Arabiya. Meanwhile, President Ben Ali just spoke and said he had ordered security forces to stop firing on demonstrators. He also announced a series of measures aimed at mollifying popular anger, including lower prices for bread, milk, and sugar. Most important of all, he promised not to run for re-election in 2014, when his term is due to expire. We'll see if he lasts that long.

  ---

  This thing may really be happening. Kamel Morjane -- or someone with access to his website -- has just announced his resignation*:

  Citizens of the Republic of Tunisia, After witnessing the recent event that our country has been enduring since December17th  2010, I declare my inaptitude in pursuing my function in a serene and objective environment as intended.

  I declare hereby my official resignation from my function as a minister of foreign affairs at the Tunisian government. In  a last effort to assume my responsabilities, I am asking the families of the tunisian martyrs to accept my sincere condoleances and my deep regret faced to their common tragedy. I assumed the fate of the Tunisian citizens, after marrying the daughter of one of Ben Ali’s first cousins, and was a member of the family and part of their clan. I am not proud of my own family, and in an honest declaration, would be ready to be judged in court at the same time as they will be. This will be my last service to the Tunisian citizens, in hope that with my resignation, citizens of Tunisia will be more graceful towards me and my family.

  I make this decision in hope for the return of rest. I relinquish the Tunisian government to express my  deep affliction and my righteous anger toward the dire management of  this crisis, causing hence the death of dozens of young Tunisians. I am  profoundly convinced that these are not terrorist acts, but citizens  exerting their right to strike against a regime who abandoned them for  two decades. For this reason, I do not deem myself a member of this  oppressing and manipulating government. In a last resort to save face with the international media, the government is working hard from within to portray the protesters as mindless terrorists  destroying their country and refusing any peaceful discussion. The  government has hired teams of their own police in civilian attire that  go around ravaging the suburbs in an effort to spread doubt and  disseminate the truth about the tunisian people.

  I reiterate my most sincere condolences to the families of victims, not only  to the ones that passed away these four past weeks, but to all the broken families by the injustice and inconveniences caused by this clan as  well. 
  

  For a free Tunisia,

  Kamel Morjane

  This is a fast-moving story. The New York Times reports that protesters overran a mansion owned by one of the president's relatives. The Twitterverse is aflame with rumors that other members of the ruling family have fled the country. President Ben Ali is said to have three helicopters fueled up and ready for an emergency flight to Malta.

  *Note of caution: The statement has yet to be confirmed; it could be a hoax. There are reports that the Foreign Ministry is denying it. But it wouldn't be too surprising if Morjane, an urbane former senior U.N. official, stepped down. Stay tuned.

• Assange: I've got the names of Arab officials spying on their own countries for the CIA

  Posted: December 30, 2010, 7:43 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The Internets are buzzing about an interview Julian Assange gave to Al Jazeera's Arabic channel Wednesday, in which the WikiLeaks frontman reportedly threatened to release cables showing that various Arab officials were working with the CIA.

  He vowed to do so "if I am killed or detained for a long time."

  “These officials are spies for the U.S. in their countries,” Assange said, according to Qatar's Peninsula newspaper. More:

  The interviewer, Ahmed Mansour, said at the start of the interview which was a continuation of last week’s interface, that Assange had even shown him the files that contained the names of some top Arab officials with alleged links with the CIA. [...]

  Some Arab countries even have torture houses where Washington regularly sends ‘suspects’ for ‘interrogation and torture’, he said.

  He then complained, "Washington is also projecting me as a terrorist and wants to convince the world that I am another Osama bin Laden."

  Observers have long speculated about the massive "insurance" file that WikiLeaks posted on the Pirate Bay, which has by now been downloaded by thousand of people all over the world. Opening the file requires an encryption key that presumably would be released upon Assange's incarceration or untimely death. I guess it's the motherlode.

  I have my doubts about these new claims, though. The CIA vigorously protects the identities of its sources, and would have no reason to let any old schmo at a U.S. embassy know their names. It is also highly doubtful that the cables would talk about "torture houses" -- the United States has always denied that it (knowingly) outsources rough treatment to foreign governments. Not everyone believes this, mind you, but I'd be surprised if any embassy cables said otherwise.

  Maybe Assange and Mansour are confusing ordinary visits of Arab officials to U.S. diplomats with "spying," but it's hard to say for sure without seeing the cables themselves.

• The curious case of Glenn Greenwald vs. Wired magazine

  Posted: December 29, 2010, 5:13 pm by Blake Hounshell

  I love a good blog fight as much as anyone, but after reading several thousand words of accusations and counter accusations being slung between Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and Wired's Evan Hansen and Kevin Poulsen, I'm left scratching my head trying to figure out what, exactly, this particular dispute is all about.

  For those of you who haven't been paying attention, first of all: congratulations. Second, here's a quick synopsis: On June 6, Poulsen and his colleague Kim Zetter broke the sensational story that a young Army intelligence officer, Bradley Manning, had been arrested for disclosing classified information to WikiLeaks, including a video showing a U.S. helicopter gunship killing three civilians in Iraq and more than 250,000 State Department cables. Wired's main source was Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who says he turned Manning in to U.S. authorities after the latter confessed to the deed in a Web chat. As Lamo explained his motivation: "I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger."

  Four days later, Poulsen and Zetter published a new article on Manning, as well as an incomplete transcript of Lamo and Manning's chats, which had begun on May 21 and continued for a few days. "The excerpts represent about 25 percent of the logs," they wrote. "Portions of the chats that discuss deeply personal information about Manning or that reveal apparently sensitive military information are not included."

  That same day, the Washington Post published its own article on Manning's arrest, quoting from the logs, which the paper said it had received from Lamo. Some of the quotes do not appear in Wired's excerpts. Wired also continued to follow the story.

  On June 18, Greenwald wrote a long blog post raising questions about Poulsen's scoop and about Lamo. He said he found the story "quite strange," called Lamo an "extremely untrustworthy source," and accused Poulsen of being "only marginally transparent about what actually happened here."

  What was curious about Greenwald's post was that he didn't challenge any specific facts in Wired's reporting; he just pointed to what he saw as inconsistencies in the story, as well as Lamo's account, and condemned the ex-hacker's actions as "despicable." He didn't suggest outright that Manning had not actually confessed to Lamo. He didn't try to argue that Manning hadn't broken the law. He didn't say the log excerpts were fabricated. He did, however, complain that Lamo had told him about conversations with Manning that were not in the chat-log excerpts published by Wired, and called on the magazine to release them. Poulsen said he wouldn't be doing so, telling Greenwald: "The remainder is either Manning discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I'm not throwing up without vetting first."

  Still with me?

  Then, on Monday, several weeks after the cables had begun trickling out, Greenwald again returned to the issue. In a torqued-up post titled "The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired," he excoriated the magazine and Poulsen for refusing to release the full logs, calling Poulsen's behavior "odious" and "concealment" of "key evidence." Greenwald appears to have been motivated to weigh in anew by Firedoglake -- a left-leaning website whose members had been obsessively trolling the Web for stories about Lamo and Manning, and even pulled together a handy, color-coded expanded transcript from the logs -- as well as by a flawed New York Times article reporting that the Justice Department was trying to build a conspiracy case against WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange. Presumably, the logs would be an important part of the prosecution's argument.

  Wired responded to Greenwald Tuesday night with twin posts by Evan Hansen, the magazine's editor in chief, and Poulsen. Greenwald fired back with two angry posts of his own today (1, 2). Long story short: Wired reiterated its refusal to release the logs (Poulsen: "[T]hose first stories in June either excerpted, quoted or reported on everything of consequence Manning had to say about his leaking"), Greenwald rejected that explanation, and both sides traded some nasty barbs about each other and made competing claims about the nature of Poulsen's relationship with Lamo.

  What still remains a mystery to me is what, exactly, Greenwald thinks is being covered up here. What is he accusing Wired of doing, and why? Does he think that the full transcript of the logs would somehow exonerate Manning, or prove Lamo a liar? And if he catches Lamo telling a journalist something that wasn't in the logs, what then?

  Ironically, Wired seems most worried about protecting Manning, whom Greenwald is ostensibly trying to defend. The magazine has hinted all along that what's not been made public is mainly stuff that Manning would not want to see on the front page of the Daily Mail. Hansen writes:

  To be sure, there's a legitimate argument to be made for publishing Manning's chats. The key question (to us): At what point does everything Manning disclosed in confidence become fair game for reporting, no matter how unconnected to his leaking or the court-martial proceeding against him, and regardless of the harm he will suffer?

  In other words: Be careful what you wish for, Glenn.

  UPDATE: Over Twitter, Greenwald responds. Here are three tweets put together:

  To answer your question, I want the logs because it'll show if Lamo's claims are *true* - isn't that what journalism is? You seem confused because I don't know whose cause will be helped by disclosure - it'll help the cause of truth. Lamo made lots of fantastical claims about what Manning said - Wired can say if those claims are true. Why shouldn't they???

  I know Glenn is looking for a normative answer, but I'm going to answer this in a roundabout way. Reporters generally don't consider it their business to fact-check claims made by sources in other publications. They look for ways to advance a story, or move on to other topics if there doesn't seem to be any "news" to be had. They also generally do weigh the harm that will come of too much disclosure against the value of the information to be disclosed. And they judiciously husband their scarcest resource: time.

  I think some combination of all that is what is going on here, in addition to the bad blood that has been generated by Greenwald's unfortunate impugnment of Poulsen's integrity and his motives. Would it be relatively easy for Wired to take a look at the specific claims Lamo has made and check them against the logs? Probably. Would it be worth someone's time there? Maybe. Do I wish Poulsen would just directly address the seeming contradictions in Lamo's statements, in a way that protects what shred of privacy Manning has left? Yes. (In fact I emailed him this morning hoping to talk with him about it myself.) But at this point, I doubt it will happen.

• Today in unverifiable North Korea news

  Posted: December 28, 2010, 6:22 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Almost every day, there's a completely bonkers, factually dubious story in the South Korean press about North Korea (which admittedly is a pretty strange place). Today is no exception. Here's Joong Ang Daily with an article about how a train supposedly bearing birthday gifts for Kim Jong-un, the heir to the Kim family dynasty, went off the rails:

  The train was comprised of more than 40 train coaches, and eight of them were derailed, the radio station [Open Radio for North Korea] reported. The train was filled with presents for Jong-un’s upcoming birthday, which falls on Jan. 8, including luxury goods such as wristwatches and televisions in bulk, it said.

  And here's a story in Yonhap, the South Korean wire agency, about the latest consumer crazes up north:

  Skinny jeans, blue crabs, pig-intestine rolls and even human manure were some of the hottest items among North Korean consumers this year, according to a South Korean professor who has interviewed recent defectors from the communist country.
  
  Kim Young-soo, a political science professor at Seoul's Sogang University, said in a conference on Tuesday that adult movies, television dramas and instant noodle "ramen" made in South Korea are also selling "like hot cakes" in North Korea.

• What are Russian prisons like?

  Posted: December 28, 2010, 3:20 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Mikhail Khordokovsky, the ex-tycoon who was convicted in a Moscow courtroom Monday on embezzlement charges -- a development that surprised approximately zero observers -- faces a grim short-term future, judging from a cable released this week that describes the Russian prison system in painful detail.

  The cable, dated Feb. 27, 2008, and signed by then-ambassador William J. Burns, tells of a broken, inhumane system that "combines the country's emblematic features -- vast distances, harsh climate, and an uncaring bureaucracy -- and fuses them into a massive instrument of punishment." A Dostoevsky novel come to life.

  Khordokovsky has yet to be sentenced, but observers expect he could be on the hook for as many as 15 more years in jail. Since he was first arrested in 2003, he has spent much of his time in Krasnokamensk, a Siberian prison camp more than 3,000 miles from Moscow. There, he was exposed to freezing temperatures, awful food, and solitary confinement -- conditions he called "Gulag Lite." Later, during his two-year trial, he was crammed into "a 35-square-foot cell with several other men and no fresh air or sun save for a few shafts of light through a tiny ventilation window," according to an account earlier this year in FP.

  Judging by Burns's cable, Khordokovsky's experience sounds rather typical. But Russian prisons aren't simply brutal, inhospitable places. They also contain some unique features. For instance, enforcers:

  According to Lev Ponomarev, who recently established the NGO "For Prisoners' Rights," the authorities use a two-tier system of administration. The prison officials and the guards protect the perimeter of the facilities and provide the upper layer of security, but then they elevate select prisoners to act as internal enforcers among the other prisoners. These elite prisoners receive privileges and protections in return for enforcing a brutal form of order within the prisons. Ponomarev called this a "low-risk ghetto system" for the guards. "If one of their enforcers gets killed by another, they can just promote a new one. Maybe even the one that killed the last boss." [...]

  This system of using prisoners to enforce discipline and order was formally established by the Ministry of Justice in 2005. According to William Smirnov, a member of the President's Council on Human Rights, the MOJ formalized a system that had long existed. Smirnov defended the system, telling us that "It was not a bad idea, but it was poorly implemented."

  Another unique feature? Toddlers:

  At the women's prison in Mozhaisk (Moscow Oblast) the Embassy and a visiting DOJ delegation were given a tour of the prison housing facilities and clothing factory, and then treated to a bizarre fashion and talent show by the inmates. Eleven of the 43 women's prisons in the Russian Federation allow inmates to have children under age three to live on the prison grounds, and women in the other prisons who become pregnant are transferred to prisons that allow children. Only two, Mozhaisk and Mordovia, allow mothers to live and sleep in the same rooms with their young children. At age three, the children are moved to family members on the outside or to orphanages. The facilities at Mozhaisk were clean, well kept, and the factory where prisoners produced uniforms for the military, police, and other government workers appeared to be safe, well lit, and well run.

  Burns, or whoever wrote the cable, holds out no hope for change:

  A system as vast and entrenched as the Russian prison system will be difficult if not impossible to reform. The nature of the system, which has not substantively varied as it has evolved from tsarist prisons to the gulag to today's system, nurtures the spread of disease, abuse, and corruption. Observers agree that the combination of distance, isolation, corruption, and general indifference to the plight of convicts combine to create a system that is brutal and will resist attempts to reveal its inner workings, or to change it.

• Zuckerberg? Really?

  Posted: December 15, 2010, 4:22 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Judging by my Twitter feed, Time has managed to tick off the entire Internet in selecting Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its "person of the year" -- the youngest to earn the title since Charles Lindbergh. The magazine's rationale: "for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives" is not likely to mollify the Twitterati, who tend to be a snobbish crowd. (Sample: "Time Magazine just named its Person of The Year 2007.")

  Snark aside, it's unclear what's particularly 2010 about this pick. Facebook has been huge for a while now, and if anything, it may be headed for inevitable decline. I suppose it's a step up from 2006,when Time's editors picked "You" as its POY, citing the rise of "Web 2.0" sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, MySpace (remember that?), Second Life (ditto), and YouTube.

  This year, just like in 2006, the magazine asked its readers to cast their votes, and just like in 2006, it ignored them. Back then, it was Hugo Chávez who stirred the masses (though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the official runner-op); this year it was Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame, who ran away with the online poll.

  I suppose we'll now be treated to a dreadfully predictable debate about whether Time wimped out by not choosing Assange, and maybe those crazy Anonymous hackers will seek revenge on Time's servers. I'm sure the magazine's editors will embrace the discussion in any event: Controversy sells.

• Holbrooke the dove

  Posted: December 14, 2010, 9:35 am by Blake Hounshell

  

  The last words of Richard C. Holbrooke, a lion of U.S. diplomacy, were "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan" -- a sentence worth pondering as the United States heads into a fresh round of debate over a conflict that has ground on for more than 9 years, steadily escalating from a sideshow to a nightmare that threatens to consume Barack Obama's presidency.

  What did Holbrooke mean? Did he oppose the war? [UPDATE: The Washington Post has a fuller account of Holbrooke's last comment, and one person I've spoken with who was at the hospital last night says it was taken out of context.]

  Holbrooke, who until last week was running the civilian side of the Afghan war, had expressed few public doubts about the wisdom of U.S. efforts there. Despite constant sniping at him in the press (and some unkind words in Bob Woodward's latest), he remained officially upbeat about what he was doing, touting U.S. aid efforts in Pakistan, highlighting agricultural programs in Afghanistan, and trying valiantly to broker some sort of modus vivendi between the two South Asian neighbors.

  But he clearly had grave doubts about the war. He is quoted in Woodward's book saying that "If there are 10 possible outcomes in Afghanistan, nine of them are bad." Through Woodward, he also criticizes the approach urged by Bruce Riedel, who led the president's first major strategy review in the spring of 2009. It's worth quoting Woodward at length:

  The war -- or the American role in the war -- would not end in a military victory, but nearly all the focus had been on the military. There had been little discussion of reconciliation -- how the warring parties could be brought together diplomatically. That might be far off, but it had to be planned. How could the Taliban insurgents be lured off the field? Maybe it was a fantasy. But they had to sincerely try.

  The Saudis were already acting as secret intermediaries with elements of the Taliban, but the White House was not seriously engaging the issue. This was the only end for the war in Holbrooke's estimation. How could they not at least consider it?

  Holbrooke largely agreed with Biden. He saw the vice president emerging as the adminisration's George Ball, the deputy secretary of state who had opposed the Vietnam escalation. But the length of Bidens's presentation undermined his message, Holbrooke told others.

  Like Biden, Holbooke believed that even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them. That might be "the single most important intellectual insight of the year," Holbrooke remarked hours after the first meeting. Al Qaeda was much safer in Pakistan. Why go back to Afghanistan, where there were nearly 68,000 U.S. troops and 30,000 from other NATO countries? And in Afghanistan, the U.S. had all the intelligence and surveillance capability, plus the capability to dispatch massive ground forces, not just Special Operations Forces but batallions of regular troops and the CIA's 3,000-man pursuit teams.

  Astonishingly to Holbrooke, that key insight had neither been in Riedel's report, nor had it been discussed that Sunday morning. Where was the no-holds-barred debate? The president had told them not to bite their tongues. Holbrooke had to bite his because he worked for the secretary of state, who was unsure of what course to recommend. But where were the others?

  In another part of the book, Holbrooke is quoted saying that the strategy "can't work." Elsewhere, he expresses doubt that the United States can "defeat" the Taliban, complains about the Afghan police ("the weak link") and says provocatively that the U.S. presence itself "is the corrupting force" in Afghanistan. During the fall 2009 strategy review, he told Clinton privately that he supported sending 20,000 troops, but not the full 40,000 the military had requested. But he also opposed the July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops and said flatly at one point, "We're not leaving," urging that the U.S. presence be put on a more sustainable long-term footing.

  Holbrooke's relations with the military weren't always smooth. When an aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal dissed Holbrooke to Rolling Stone as "a wounded animal," he laughed it off, telling reporters, "Worse things have been said about me."

  He also had fraught interactions with former national security advisor Jim Jones, whom he clearly viewed as a lightweight (and who in return tended to see Holbrooke's ideas as impractical), and with Jones's deputy, Tom Donilon.

  But Holbrooke's biggest problem was with Obama, who in Woodward's estimation "didn't care for" him. The two men just didn't connect. In one painful anecdote, Holbrooke approaches him and asks to be called "Richard," rather than "Dick," because his wife preferred the former.

  "Later, the president told others that he found the request highly unusual and even strange," Woodward writes. "Holbrooke was horrified when he learned that his request -- which he had repeated to no one -- had been circulated by the president."

  Though we'll get the administration's formal assessment later this week, it's still too early to tell how the new "surge" in Afghanistan is going. But one has to wonder: If Holbrooke and Obama had gotten along better, or if Clinton had been less guarded in her own views, would history be playing out differently?

• You can't avoid settlements

  Posted: December 13, 2010, 2:17 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Critics of the Obama administration's approach to Middle East peace, a group that includes just about everyone who is paying attention, say that focusing on Israeli settlements for the last 2 years -- as opposed to "core issues" -- was the key mistake that hindered potential progress in other areas.

  Instead, these folks say, Obama & co. should have focused on borders, because once the Israelis and Palestinians agreed on the outlines of a future Palestinian state, it would be clear what was a "settlement" and what was merely a suburb of Jerusalem.

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put himself in this camp Monday, dismissing settlements as a "marginal" issue and calling instead for negotations to focus on -- you guessed it -- "core issues."

  "To reach peace, we need to discuss the issues that are really hindering peace, the question of recognition, security, refugees and, of course, many other issues," he reportedly said in a speech just hours before meeting U.S. envoy George Mitchell.

  One way to read those remarks is that Netanyahu is ready to roll up his sleeves. More likely, he has no intention of meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's demand to get serious and lay his cards on the table. Note that he did not mention borders at all. Instead, he appears to be reiterating his position that the Palestinians must explicitly recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which they refuse to do, that Israel needs to have control of the Jordan Valley, another nonstarter for the Palestinians, and that the Palestinians need to give up the "right of return" (this one is more reasonable) before he'll even think about trading land for peace.

  In other words, don't expect the new, settlement-free U.S. approach to yield any more progress than the old one. What's more, even if the talks did focus on borders, where the parties are supposedly closer together, it wouldn't take very long for them to come back to areas where they're further apart... namely settlements and Jerusalem. Israel won't freeze the former, and Netanyahu has said he won't divide the latter, while Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their future capital.

  The lesson here is that it's devlishly complicated to jerry-rig negotiations to avoid the tough topics, especially when neither side seems especially eager to do a deal. One can come up with all kinds of sophistry justifying one U.S. tactic or another, but if Israeli and Palestinian leaders aren't serious, and aren't feeling pressure from their own publics to make peace, then nothing will work.

• Berlusconi: Ousting me would be "political folly"

  Posted: December 13, 2010, 1:31 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The problem with elections, a wise man once said, is that the politicians always win.

  So it must seem in Italy, which on Tuesday faces a dramatic no-confidence vote in Silvio Berlusconi, the country's clownish prime minister (last seen bailing a 17-year-old belly dancer out of jail under dubious circumstances and defending his actions by saying at least I'm not gay) but appears to have no viable alternative leader waiting in the wings.

  Heading into Tuesday's vote, Berlusconi has been shoring up -- some would say buying -- support in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy's lower house, while making the public case that political turmoil would exacerbate the country's debt crisis. On Monday, he warned that ousting him would be "political folly" and a blow to Italy's financial stability.

  It's a pretty astonishing argument: I've screwed up the economy so badly that now would be dangerous to oust me. Still, there's some truth to it: Between World War II and 1994, when Berlusconi entered the scene, Italy  averaged at least one government per year. It's quite amazing that Italy is even a developed country, given its dysfunctional politics.

  Nobody seems to know whether Berlusconi has the votes, just as nobody seems to know who might replace him. James Walston runs down some Byzantine scenarios for Berlusconi successors here, ranging from Gianni Letta, a close Berlusconi associate, to Giulio Tremonti, the economics and finance minister, to Pierlugi Bersani, the opposition Democratic Party leader who staged a massive anti-Berlusconi rally in Rome Saturday. And of course, Silvio just might win.

• America can't walk away from the Middle East

  Posted: December 12, 2010, 7:14 pm by Blake Hounshell

  I know where Thomas Friedman is coming from. His column today, in which he calls on the United States to wash its hands of the Middle East "peace process" and let the Israelis and Palestinians stew in their own juices for a while, must have been enormously satisfying to write. And for U.S. diplomats, tempted as they are to say "to hell with these people, we've got other things to do," it must have been a bracing read. Dealing with the stubborn shortsightedness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders has preoccupied four American presidents over the last 20 years, taking time away from more productive endeavors.

  But unfortunately, it's not so easy to just walk away. Not only has the United States given billions in military and economic aid to Israel over the last three decades -- and provided Israel diplomatic cover at the United Nations and other fora -- it has also propped up the Palestinian Authority while Arab leaders have broken promise after promise to help. U.S. bases dot the region, and U.S. troops are currently occupying two Muslim countries. American money goes to build settlements in the West Bank.

  Not only is the United States deeply involved in the conflict, it's not as if both sides would be affected equally by U.S. disengagement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would probably be relieved. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose strategy rests on bringing American pressure to bear on Israel and avoiding making any concessions himself, clearly has more to lose. 

  Unfortunately, the enemies of peace think time is on their side: The Israeli right, because more time means more "facts on the ground" -- settlements -- and the Palestinian hard-liners, because they believe demographic and military trends are in their favor. Neither group has U.S. interests in mind.

  This is why many observers think the only way forward is for the United States to put forward its own peace plan. But is Barack Obama really willing to take this risk? So far, the answer has been no -- Obama has avoided a fight with Israel's domestic supporters every step of the way, even going so far as to offer up a ridiculously generous package of F-35s and security guarantees in exchange for a measly 90-day settlement freeze.

  More likely, the U.S. administration is hoping to shake up Netanyahu's coalition, which is why Hillary Clinton ostentatiously met with Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni last week ahead of her big speech. Her remarks also pointed in that direction: By urging Bibi to "grapple with the core issues of the conflict on borders and security; settlements, water and refugees; and on Jerusalem itself," Clinton is hoping to force him to put his positions on the table, something he has so far refused to do. If he does, and it ticks off his right-wing allies, that's OK with the United States -- Livni is waiting in the wings. If he doesn't, then at least we'll know once and for all that he cares more about keeping his coalition together than making peace. Then what?

• Evading a shutdown, WikiLeaks mobilizes Twitter supporters

  Posted: December 4, 2010, 3:58 am by Blake Hounshell

  In a bid to stay one step ahead of the governments, companies, freelance hackers trying to shut down its operations, WikiLeaks mobilized its vast base of online support Saturday by asking its Twitter followers to create copies of its growing archive of hundreds of classified State Department cables.

  By late afternoon Eastern time, more than 200 had answered the call, setting up "mirror" sites, many of them with the name "wikileaks" appended to their Web addresses. They organized themselves organically using the Twitter hashtag #imwikileaks, in a virtual show of solidarity reminiscent of the movie V is for Vendetta. In that 2005 film, a Guy-Fawkes masked vigilantee inspires thousands of Londoners to march on the Parliament similarly disguised -- while it blows up in front of their eyes. Presumably, many of these people believe they are facing the same sort of tyranny that V, the film's protagonist, fought against.

  Critics of WikiLeaks have called on the Obama administration to shut down the site, but now it's clear that doing so would be a difficult task indeed. The New Yorker's recent profile of Julian Assange, the organization's mysterious founder and front man, said that "a government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself." WikiLeaks has also posted a massive, heavily encrypted "insurance" file on The Pirate Bay, a sympathetic website, which presumably contains also 250,000-plus cables and would be released into the wild if anything happens to Assange.

  As my FP colleague Evgeny Morozov warns, aggressive action like arresting or killing Assange could spawn the rise of a vast, permanent network of radicalized hackers "systematically challenging those in power – governments and companies alike – just for the sake of undermining 'the system'." That could prove an extremely dangerous threat to the global economy and diplomatic sphere.

  Evgeny offers the sensible suggestion that governments try to steer WikiLeaks into a more productive direction. "It is a choice between WikiLeaks becoming a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International," he writes, arguing that a responsible version of the organization could pose more of a challenge to closed regimes than to the West. "Handled correctly, the state that will benefit most from a nerdy network of 21st-century Che Guevaras is America itself."

• Qataris celebrate World Cup winning bid

  Posted: December 4, 2010, 7:45 pm by Blake Hounshell

  The global reaction to Qatar's winning drive to host the World Cup in 2022 can be summed up in a word: incredulous. For a more nuanced take, David Goldblatt has a smart piece for the Middle East Channel weighing the pros and cons of holding the world's top soccer tournament in a tiny sheikhdom with plenty of money and moxy but little history of athletic excellence. Definitely worth a read, but in the meantime, check out these great photos from FP's Doha correspondent (disclosure: my wife) of Qataris celebrating the victory along the corniche Friday:

  

  

  

  

  

  For the full effect, check out the video, too.

• Who's going to get the 2022 World Cup?

  Posted: December 1, 2010, 6:16 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  While everyone in Washington and probably most global capitals is obsessing over WikiLeaks, the sports world is eagerly awaiting this week's big event: FIFA's decision on who gets to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. (To give you some perspective: World Cup was Yahoo's second-most popular search target this year, after the gulf oil spill.)

  Today, the 2022 bidders -- Australia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, and the United States -- are giving their final presentations in a last-ditch attempt to persuade any remaining fence-sitters that their country deserves the nod, and tomorrow FIFA will announce the winners. 

  The 2018 Cup is destined to go to a European country; the most interesting contest is for 2022. Soccer blogs, which have been buzzing with gossip and speculation for the last year or so, seem to think it's going to come down to a choice between the United States and -- believe it or not -- Qatar, the tiny Persian Gulf emirate whose seemingly quixotic bid to be the first Middle Eastern country to host the tournament has captured the imagination of millions of Arabs all over the world. (Disclosure: My wife's company does some small-scale work for the Qatari government in this area.)

  Unfortunately for Qatar, FIFA's bid evaluation report rated the country's facilities as "high risk" due to the fact that few of them are built. The extremely hot weather in June and July, when the Cup would be held is another major concern. In response, Qatar is sinking billions into its bid and has promised to build stadiums deploying innovative outdoor cooling technology and then donate them to developing countries. Doha, the capital, is festooned with banners (reading "22" and "Expect Amazing") promoting the bid, and seemingly every shopping mall in town has a booth handing out free bumper stickers and other paraphernalia. Expectations are high.

  And that's what worries me. Qatar has made an amazing go of it, and it would be an inspiring win for a region that has too few of them, but I'd be extremely surprised if the United States loses. Ultimately, FIFA's goal is to make as much money as possible, and Qatar can't hope to match the size of the U.S. market. But you never know. Politicians, not technocrats, are the ultimate deciders here.

  One final note: It would be a great irony if Arab leaders' sniping about Qatar's alleged support for terrorism and general troublemaking in the region, as revealed in the WikiLeaks cables, tipped the scales against the Middle East's first real shot at hosting the Cup. I think the decision has probably already been made, but you never know...

• Has WikiLeaks finally gone too far?

  Posted: November 28, 2010, 6:48 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  UPDATE: The Times' and the Guardian's coverage of the cables is up.

  Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor and commentator for the Guardian, castigates British editors for their critical coverage of WikiLeaks, the self-proclaimed whistleblower site that is about to release some 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables into the wild:

  Aren't we in the job of ferreting out secrets so that our readers - the voters - can know what their elected governments are doing in their name? Isn't it therefore better that we can, at last, get at them?

  It's a fair question. I must confess that, like plenty of other editors, I can't wait to read this batch of documents. Unlike with the last two dumps, which consisted mainly of raw reports from the field about events that had already been widely reported, it seems there are genuine revelations this time around. Already, news outlets are reporting that we can expect unvarnished American views of the shortcomings of British leaders, critical comments about Nelson Mandela, remarks about Islam that may come across poorly, allegations of corruption among Russian politicians, and so on. For news junkies like me, it promises to be good reading. I know I'm going to be up late tonight.

  As a general precedent, though, it's troubling. U.S. diplomats should be able to share their assessments candidly with the folks back in Washington without fear of waking up and finding their cables splashed across the front page of the New York Times. People who take great risks to share sensitive information with embassy officials won't come forward if they worry that the Kremlin, or the Mugabe regime, is going to punish them for their candor. And sometimes too much media attention can get in the way of quiet progress, as in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  Still, where do you draw the line? Obviously, aggressive news outlets like the New York Times publish revelations every day that cause heartburn for U.S. officials -- often thanks to sources whose motivations may or may not be good ones. That's our job. Had FP gotten its hands on these cables, no doubt we would be publishing many of them (after doing proper due diligence and allowing the State Department to make its case). We're certainly going to comment on their contents. News is news.

  But is there a principle that says it's OK to publish one-off scoops, but not 250,000 -- or for that matter 2.7 million -- of them all at once? The former feels like journalism; the latter seems grotesque and irresponsible, more like "information vandalism," in the words of secrecy expert Steven Aftergood. And even if responsible papers like the New York Times have a chance to review and contextualize them, there's no way they can dot every i and cross every t in the time allotted. There's just too much.

  WikiLeaks breezily sidesteps these sorts of questions, arguing that the global public ought to have a right to read classified documents anytime, from any government. But that may be ex post facto rationalization for a decision to publish documents the group was handed on a silver platter. It clearly doesn't work as a general rule -- otherwise, there would be chaos. And it clearly doesn't work unless you're convinced, like Julian Assange apparently is, that everything the U.S. government does is inherently nefarious.

  What do you think? Readers, please weigh in via comments, or email me at blake[dot]hounshell[at]foreignpolicy.com.

• Top 10 ways to tell your new Taliban friend is an impostor

  Posted: November 23, 2010, 4:52 pm by Blake Hounshell

  You've probably heard by now that NATO got totally punk'd by an unknown man posing as a high-ranking Taliban leader. How embarrassing. If only they'd looked out for these 10 ways of telling the true Talib from the con man, we wouldn't be in this mess:

  10. Keeps asking if the peace talks can be held in the Maldives

  9. Eyepatch switches sides from meeting to meeting

  8. Introduces himself as "Colonel Iqbal from the ISI"

  7. Runs up a large minibar tab at the Four Seasons Kabul

  6. Wife angling for a spot on "The Real Housewives of Kandahar"

  5. Claims to be texting Mullah Omar but is actually just playing Angry Birds the whole time

  4. Offers to settle Afghan War with a game of Jenga

  3. Turban made of an actual towel

  2. Wears trench coat, offers to sell the letters O and U

  1. Agrees to trade Osama bin Laden for Justin Bieber

• Burmese junta releases Aung San Suu Kyi

  Posted: November 13, 2010, 2:38 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Here's a picture of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi just after her release Saturday. The Guardian has posted a bunch of photos from her life.

  One down, ~2,199 political prisoners to go.

• Dear Congress: Your tax on Pakistani shirts and pants is hurting America

  Posted: November 12, 2010, 3:56 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Of all the many foolish, self-defeating, and downright stupid U.S. policies -- from the Cuba embargo to agricultural subsidies to the prohibition on talking to Iranian diplomats -- tariffs on Pakistani textiles probably rank among the dumbest.

  That's the conclusion I drew from the Council on Foreign Relations' thoughtful new report on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was just released this morning.

  The 112-page report, whose lead author was the council's Daniel Markey, a former top State Department official for South Asia, offers a mild-mannered, but unmistakable rebuke to the recent optimistic rumblings coming from U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan.

  The bipartisan task force behind the report -- headed by former State Department No. 2 Richard Armitage and Clinton-era national security advisor Sandy Berger -- lends "conditional" support to the Obama administration's current strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but recommends the U.S. downgrade its presence in Afghanistan if Obama's upcoming policy review finds that the current approach is failing. (Note: a number of task force members dissented from that conclusion.)

  "We are mindful of the real threat we face," the report reads. "But we are also aware of the costs of the present strategy. We cannot accept these costs unless the strategy begins to show real signs of progress." 

  The group makes a number of other recommendations -- including a vague call for the U.S. to do something about Lashkar-e-Taiba -- but to me, the textile tariffs stand out.

  "The textile sector industry accounts for 38 percent of Pakistan's industrial employment, this agreement could provide employment opportunities for millions of young Pakistanis, discouraging them from paths leading to militancy," the report argues.

  Given that additional aid to help Pakistan recover from the horrific floods that devastated the country this summer will probably be a tough sell on Capitol Hill, and the likelihood that China and other low-cost producers, not the remnants of the U.S. textile industry, would probably be hurt by lifting the tariffs, this strikes me as a no-brainer.

  Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal reported in August that there's little appetite in Washington (or Brussels) to help the struggling Pakistani textile industry, which is getting creamed by Chinese competition.

  The link between unemployment and militancy is controversial, but it doesn't get any more direct than in Faisalabad, the hard-scrabble town that was home to one of the Mumbai attackers:

  The textile crisis has hit Faisalabad-a grimy city of three million named in the 1970s for the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia-harder than anywhere in Pakistan. Scores of factories have closed recently here, in the heartland of Punjab province's textile industry.

  Umer Apparel Ltd., a Faisalabad company that exports $15 million in goods to the U.S. annually, including brands like American Eagle and Aeropostale, has laid off almost a fifth of its work force of 1,500 and is running at only three-quarters of capacity, says its chief executive, Rana Hassan Sajjad.

  Faisalabad officials are concerned about links between unemployment and a wave of Islamic extremism in the city. A number of suicide bombings by the Pakistan Taliban on government and civilian targets in Pakistan this year, including many in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, have been planned from Faisalabad, city police say."There's a valid link between joblessness and militancy," says Tahir Hussain, the chief federal government official in Faisalabad. "Wherever the militants are getting manpower, that's where the joblessness is."

  About half a million Pakistani textile workers have lost their jobs, mainly due to Chinese competition, according to the Pakistani government. The United States charges a 17 percent tariff on Pakistani-made cotton shirts and pants -- lifting it entirely would net Pakistan as much as $4 billion a year, the government estimates. (Compare that to the paltry $150 million the U.S. offered after the floods, or the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar aid bill, which is spread over five years.)

  Getting rid of the tariffs would not be without its complications. India would likely protest the move as unfair preferential treatment toward Pakistan, as would China. That isn't the real problem, though: U.S. textile producers would fiercely lobby Congress against the move, though American garment manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would mildly support it. And with a number of existing trade deals looking dead in the water, it's not clear such legislation would go anywhere.

  Last year's experience is instructive: Congress tried to pass a bill establishing special trading zones in Pakistan to get around the tariffs, but Senate Republicans spiked it in a dispute over the law's labor provisions. In any case, as the New York Times noted in an editorial back in August, "The trade legislation that finally emerged from the House last year was so hemmed in with protectionist limits that it was almost worthless."

  I hope this new report changes some minds, but betting on Congress to do the smart thing is never a good investment strategy.

• "Our little round-eyed friends will buy anything."

  Posted: November 2, 2010, 7:40 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Those wacky Taiwanese animators are back, this time with a biting parody of the infamous "Chinese professor" ad issued by the advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste. Only this time, instead of a triumphant Communist Party lecturer, it's a computer-generated panda telling the assembled students what's what.

  Here's the transcript:

  Beijing 2030

  What makes nations grow?

  Is it smart people?

  Is it freedom? Ha! this is China!

  No! It's selling cheap crap to gullible customers... like in America. Our little round-eyed friends will buy anything.

  But how do we maintain our power?

  Well, you can manipulate the RMB, pay slave wages, offer few chances for upward mobility. Cut corners on product safety.

  Melamine? A little toxin only hurts a little.

  No wonder wimpy Americans need universal health care.

  Finally, steal technology. Look what we copied from Steve Jobs! [shows futuristic iPad]

  Of course, what really makes China great... [laughs] is we have motherf*cking talking pandas.

• Has David Broder lost his mind?

  Posted: October 31, 2010, 4:47 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Today's column is very strange. Apparently Broder thinks Obama can fix the economy by threatening a war with Iran:

  With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran's ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

  I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

  In case it's not obvious, this is crazy for a number of reasons. One is that markets don't like tensions, and certainly not the kind that jack up oil prices. Second, World War II brought the United States out of the Great Depression because it was a massive economic stimulus program that mobilized entire sectors of society. Today's American military has all the tools it needs to fight Iran, and there isn't going to be any sort of buildup. Hasn't Broder been reading his own newspaper? The Pentagon is looking to find billions in cuts as it confronts the coming world of budget austerity.

  I'll leave the question of whether Iran is truly "the greatest threat to the world" to others.

• Senkaku, Diaoyu; Diaoyu, Senkaku; let’s call the whole thing off

  Posted: October 30, 2010, 12:14 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In a surprise move after it looked like the recent spat between Tokyo and Beijing was quieting down, China has just canceled a planned meeting between its premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Hanoi.

  And it did so in spectacularly undiplomatic language, with Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue (in remarks paraphrased by Xinhua, Beijing’s state-run news agency) accusing Japanese diplomats of “violating China's sovereignty and territorial integrity through statements to the media” and making “untrue statements about the content of a meeting between Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers held earlier in the day.”

  Xinhua also said Hu accused “the diplomatic authority of Japan, in cahoots with other nations,” of trying to “create noises on the issue of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea in the lead-up to the summits between ASEAN and its partners.”

  Cahoots!

  It’s no secret that China doesn’t much like Seiji Maehara, Japan’s new, unabashedly pro-American foreign minister, who after a 2005 speech characterizing China’s rise as a “threat” was all but declared persona non grata in Beijing. U.S. diplomats describe Maehara in glowing terms, a welcome breath of fresh air after a year of confused relations. Earlier this month, when Maehara described China’s reaction to the recent fishing trawler incident near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain as “hysterical,” he drew a harsh rebuke from Beijing. (To be fair, he also recently complemented Chinese president-to-be Xi Jinping on his “very gentle-looking appearance.”)

  Japan’s Mainichi News sees the cancelation of the Wen-Kan meeting as “aiming to deal a blow” at Maehara, who pissed off the Chinese again Wednesday by reiterating Japan’s claim of sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands during a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In their remarks, the two diplomats pointedly emphasized the security aspects of the U.S.-Japan relationship, and Clinton also drew China’s ire by bluntly saying the Senkakus “fall within the scope of Article 5 of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security” -- though she was only reiterating what Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen had already made clear.

  Clinton’s speech Thursday, billed as a major statement of U.S. policy in 21st century Asia, was nuanced, but noticeably chilly toward China -- making it clear that the United States is going to remain a player in Asia for the indefinite future, and that it isn’t going to let Beijing push around America’s allies in the region.

  Things are about to get chillier. The Diplomat’s Andy Sharp notes:

  Another element that could pour oil on the territorial squabbling is that video footage of the collision between the Chinese trawler and two Japanese patrol boats will be shown to a restricted number of Japanese lawmakers in the Diet on Monday. While the content of the video won’t be made public (opposition Diet members are demanding its full disclosure – and surely its only a matter of time before it finds its way onto the Internet), the reaction of lawmakers on both sides of the house will likely be a hot topic in the coming weeks.

  UPDATE: It looks like U.S. diplomats are assiduously trying to calm things down between China and Japan, and Kan and Wen apparently did meet briefly on the sidelines of the summit. But it's not clear to what extent that meeting was Wen freelancing, or whether it was a conscious attempt by China to lower the temperature. One good sign: The People's Daily reports that Clinton and Dai Bingguo, the top Chinese official on foreign affairs, had a good meeting.

• Does America have a corruption problem?

  Posted: October 26, 2010, 2:13 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Transparency International's new Corruptions Perceptions Index is out, and it's bad news for the United States: For the first time, America has slipped out of the ranks of the 20 least corrupt countries, falling below Qatar and ranking just above Uruguay to take the not-so-coveted 22nd spot.

  Obviously, anyone's who's been to either of those two countries will recognize the absurdity of the ranking (after all, the government Qatar is basically run by one family that also owns or controls a huge swath of the economy -- nepotism is not a dirty word here, it's how you get things done), but it's a troubling finding nonetheless. The United States has a lot of work to do to overcome its new global image as a bastion of crony capitalism run for the benefit of big banks with political connections.

  The news is likely to give a boost to those who argue that the bailouts of large financial institutions were a mistake, rather than a necessary if unsavory measure needed to prevent global economic armageddon.

  Other findings of note: Russia is now all the way down at 154th place, near the bottom of the list. Italy also had a bad year, sinking from 63rd to 67th. On the positive side of the ledger, hard-luck Haiti saw its ranking improve from  168 to 146, and tiny Bhutan jumped 13 places to 36th. Failed  states took their usual place at the far bottom of the list, with Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, and Somalia filling out the last four slots.

  Full rankings below the jump:

  [[BREAK]]

  Rank	Country	Score	Surveys
  1	Denmark	9.3	6
  1	New Zealand	9.3	6
  1	Singapore	9.3	9
  4	Finland	9.2	6
  4	Sweden	9.2	6
  6	Canada	8.9	6
  7	Netherlands	8.8	6
  8	Australia	8.7	8
  8	Switzerland	8.7	6
  10	Norway	8.6	6
  11	Iceland	8.5	5
  11	Luxembourg	8.5	5
  13	Hong Kong	8.4	8
  14	Ireland	8.0	6
  15	Austria	7.9	6
  15	Germany	7.9	6
  17	Barbados	7.8	4
  17	Japan	7.8	8
  19	Qatar	7.7	7
  20	United Kingdom	7.6	6
  21	Chile	7.2	7
  22	Belgium	7.1	6
  22	United States	7.1	8
  24	Uruguay	6.9	5
  25	France	6.8	6
  26	Estonia	6.5	8
  27	Slovenia	6.4	8
  28	Cyprus	6.3	4
  28	United Arab Emirates	6.3	5
  30	Israel	6.1	6
  30	Spain	6.1	6
  32	Portugal	6.0	6
  33	Botswana	5.8	6
  33	Puerto Rico	5.8	4
  33	Taiwan	5.8	9
  36	Bhutan	5.7	4
  37	Malta	5.6	3
  38	Brunei	5.5	3
  39	Korea (South)	5.4	9
  39	Mauritius	5.4	6
  41	Costa Rica	5.3	5
  41	Oman	5.3	5
  41	Poland	5.3	8
  44	Dominica	5.2	3
  45	Cape Verde	5.1	4
  46	Lithuania	5.0	8
  46	Macau	5.0	3
  48	Bahrain	4.9	5
  49	Seychelles	4.8	3
  50	Hungary	4.7	8
  50	Jordan	4.7	7
  50	Saudi Arabia	4.7	5
  53	Czech Republic	4.6	8
  54	Kuwait	4.5	5
  54	South Africa	4.5	8
  56	Malaysia	4.4	9
  56	Namibia	4.4	6
  56	Turkey	4.4	7
  59	Latvia	4.3	6
  59	Slovakia	4.3	8
  59	Tunisia	4.3	6
  62	Croatia	4.1	8
  62	FYR Macedonia	4.1	5
  62	Ghana	4.1	7
  62	Samoa	4.1	3
  66	Rwanda	4.0	5
  67	Italy	3.9	6
  68	Georgia	3.8	7
  69	Brazil	3.7	7
  69	Cuba	3.7	3
  69	Montenegro	3.7	5
  69	Romania	3.7	8
  73	Bulgaria	3.6	8
  73	El Salvador	3.6	5
  73	Panama	3.6	5
  73	Trinidad and Tobago	3.6	4
  73	Vanuatu	3.6	3
  78	China	3.5	9
  78	Colombia	3.5	7
  78	Greece	3.5	6
  78	Lesotho	3.5	6
  78	Peru	3.5	7
  78	Serbia	3.5	6
  78	Thailand	3.5	9
  85	Malawi	3.4	7
  85	Morocco	3.4	6
  87	Albania	3.3	6
  87	India	3.3	10
  87	Jamaica	3.3	5
  87	Liberia	3.3	4
  91	Bosnia and Herzegovina	3.2	7
  91	Djibouti	3.2	3
  91	Gambia	3.2	5
  91	Guatemala	3.2	5
  91	Kiribati	3.2	3
  91	Sri Lanka	3.2	7
  91	Swaziland	3.2	4
  98	Burkina Faso	3.1	6
  98	Egypt	3.1	6
  98	Mexico	3.1	7
  101	Dominican Republic	3.0	5
  101	Sao Tome and Principe	3.0	3
  101	Tonga	3.0	3
  101	Zambia	3.0	7
  105	Algeria	2.9	6
  105	Argentina	2.9	7
  105	Kazakhstan	2.9	8
  105	Moldova	2.9	6
  105	Senegal	2.9	7
  110	Benin	2.8	6
  110	Bolivia	2.8	6
  110	Gabon	2.8	3
  110	Indonesia	2.8	9
  110	Kosovo	2.8	3
  110	Solomon Islands	2.8	3
  116	Ethiopia	2.7	7
  116	Guyana	2.7	4
  116	Mali	2.7	6
  116	Mongolia	2.7	6
  116	Mozambique	2.7	7
  116	Tanzania	2.7	7
  116	Vietnam	2.7	9
  123	Armenia	2.6	7
  123	Eritrea	2.6	4
  123	Madagascar	2.6	6
  123	Niger	2.6	4
  127	Belarus	2.5	3
  127	Ecuador	2.5	5
  127	Lebanon	2.5	4
  127	Nicaragua	2.5	6
  127	Syria	2.5	5
  127	Timor-Leste	2.5	5
  127	Uganda	2.5	7
  134	Azerbaijan	2.4	7
  134	Bangladesh	2.4	7
  134	Honduras	2.4	6
  134	Nigeria	2.4	7
  134	Philippines	2.4	9
  134	Sierra Leone	2.4	5
  134	Togo	2.4	4
  134	Ukraine	2.4	8
  134	Zimbabwe	2.4	7
  143	Maldives	2.3	3
  143	Mauritania	2.3	6
  143	Pakistan	2.3	7
  146	Cameroon	2.2	7
  146	Côte d´Ivoire	2.2	7
  146	Haiti	2.2	3
  146	Iran	2.2	4
  146	Libya	2.2	6
  146	Nepal	2.2	6
  146	Paraguay	2.2	5
  146	Yemen	2.2	4
  154	Cambodia	2.1	9
  154	Central African Republic	2.1	4
  154	Comoros	2.1	3
  154	Congo-Brazzaville	2.1	5
  154	Guinea-Bissau	2.1	3
  154	Kenya	2.1	7
  154	Laos	2.1	4
  154	Papua New Guinea	2.1	5
  154	Russia	2.1	8
  154	Tajikistan	2.1	7
  164	Democratic Republic of Congo	2.0	4
  164	Guinea	2.0	5
  164	Kyrgyzstan	2.0	7
  164	Venezuela	2.0	7
  168	Angola	1.9	6
  168	Equatorial Guinea	1.9	3
  170	Burundi	1.8	6
  171	Chad	1.7	6
  172	Sudan	1.6	5
  172	Turkmenistan	1.6	3
  172	Uzbekistan	1.6	6
  175	Iraq	1.5	3
  176	Afghanistan	1.4	4
  176	Myanmar	1.4	3
  178	Somalia	1.1	3

• China's Ann Coulter

  Posted: October 26, 2010, 1:02 pm by Blake Hounshell

  I don't advise anyone to willingly dive into the fever swamps of the opinion pages of the Chinese state-run press, but sometimes it's good fun.

  Take, for instance, this recent offering by People's Daily columnist Li Hongmei, who writes like a computer-generated parody of a Chinese hard-liner:

  You do not need to toil at work, and bend on dizzily complicated formula or spend months in the Lab, but Nobel Prize is still like the beautiful passing clouds, just hard to touch. It takes no more efforts but a fatal bite to one's own Mother, he will be awarded the top honor, and catapulted to "the international stardom" overnight. People with human conscience must despise the idea, but Liu Xiaobo and the like will pounce on the chance to win a quick success. 

  Ms. Li was last seen ripping "Uncle Sam" as "too senile to lead Asia" and, my personal favorite, dissing Norway as "a Kart-like country with a tiny population of 4 million." Please weigh in below if you can figure out that last one.

  (Hat tip: @TomLasseter)

• Xi's the one?

  Posted: October 18, 2010, 1:41 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  Before he became Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden famously ripped his then opponent's lack of experience. "The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training," he said.

  Nowhere is this more true than in China, where would-be leaders spend years toiling in the Communist Party's lower ranks, clawing their way to the top in a dog-eat-dog political culture that rewards loyalty, economic performance, and savvy backroom maneuvering.

  Today, China announced that Xi Jinping has been named  the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, an important sign that he's successfully navigated this gauntlet and is destined to take over in Beijing once Hu Jintao retires in 2012. He'll have two years to learn the ropes as a civilian overseer of the world's second most powerful military, essential training for any Chinese leader.

  Xi's ascent is probably a good thing as far as the West is concerned. Here's how China analyst Cheng Li described him few years back:

  Xi has leadership experience in economic administration and favors pro-market reforms. In the provinces that he ran, Xi was particularly noted for his promotion of the private sector. His likely policy priorities lie in enhancing economic efficiency and promoting market liberalization, continuing China's high rates of GDP growth, and expanding China's integration into the world economy. 

  The rap on Xi is that he's a "princeling" -- a Chinese politician who owes his career to family connections (guanxi ) rather than hard work (his father was a top party official). Many in China are critical of this youngish group of party leaders, but Xi seems to have acquited himself well thus far. In 2008, he oversaw the successful Olympic Games, and last year he headed China's 60-year celebrations. He has a law degree and a master's in chemical engineering, and has styled himself as tough on corruption. His wife is a famous folk singer.

  At a meeting last week with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, Xi pledged to work toward closer bilateral ties with the United States, though he's made undiplomatic remarks in the past. On a tour of Latin America in 2009, Xi seemed to catch a bit of the region's anti-yanqui fervor, telling a gathering of Chinese expats, "There are some foreigners who have eaten their fill and have nothing better to do than point their fingers at our affairs. China does not, first, export revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; or third, cause unnecessary trouble for them. What else is there to say?"

  Though most analysts think Xi will succeed Hu, the appointment probably won't end the speculation over his putative rival Li Keqiang, a close protégé of Hu's with deep ties to the powerful Communist Youth League. Li's faction doesn't think much of the princelings, though there doesn't appear to be any rift between Xi and Li -- at least not one that has spilled into public view. Li is widely thought to be in line to succeed Wen Jiabao as premier, the No. 2 job in China's political system.

• Dumb power: China condemns Nobel Peace Prize

  Posted: October 8, 2010, 1:56 pm by Blake Hounshell

  With apologies to FP's Chinese readers, here's an automated translation of Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu Quan's reaction to the news of Liu Xiabo's Nobel Peace Prize. The original is here. Chime in with any suggested improvements in the comments section.

  Q: The Nobel Committee on October 8 this year's Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Chinese "dissident," Liu Xiaobo, what is your comment?

  A: The Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded "to promote national harmony and promote international friendship and to promote disarmament and peace for the convening of meetings and promotional efforts of the people", which is Nobel's wishes. Liu is in breach of Chinese law by the Chinese judicial organs of criminals sentenced to imprisonment, and its behavior and contrary to the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize. Connaught Committee awarded the Peace Prize to such a person, completely contrary to the purpose of the award and also the desecration of the Peace Prize.

  Q: Liu Xiaobo award will affect the Sino-Norwegian relations?

  A: In recent years, Sino-Norwegian relations have maintained sound development, which is conducive to the two countries and two peoples interests. Connaught Committee Liu and Nobel Peace Prize award runs counter to the purpose, will bring damage to the Sino-Norwegian relations.

  A long-time Beijing resident and political observer emails the following reaction to the award:

  I think it was an own-goal by Beijing, bungled in the usual ham-fisted way. If they hadn't leaned on Norway in such a comically villainous manner, there might have been voices on the committee who'd say, "Sure, Liu's courageous, but is he the man who '...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses'"?
  
  More interestingly is what happens now.
  
  My guess is that it will be untenable to keep Liu Xiaobo incarcerated for much longer. Beijing, as is its habit, will watch very carefully to gauge the level of popular anger online about the fact that Liu's still in jail, monitoring microblogs like Sina Weibo ( [t.sina.com] ) and online forums like Tianya and Baidu Tieba as well as the number of times the word "Nobel" or "???" (Liu Xiaobo) gets sent via IM or SMS. From what my friend watching Sina Weibo [tells me], just an hour after the announcement "Nobel" is already the top-trending term.

  My correspondent didn't anticipate, however, that the Chinese government would hit back so hard (some are translating Jiang's remarks as labeling the award an "obscenity"):

  I think Beijing will know better than to come out strongly in condemnation of the Nobel Committee's decision; instead, they'll couch their responses in terms of "We regret that this decision was made" and deny that he's a "political prisoner" (saying instead that Liu violated laws against subversion and incited for the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party, which to Beijing doesn't qualify him, as odd as this may sound, as a political prisoner). They'll look for some means of a face-saving stand-down -- to "step off the dais" gracefully, as they say in Chinese. They may try and get Liu out of the country (Chinese dissidents once abroad are notoriously ineffective), but Liu has refused to play along when that sort of solution has been proposed before, and has said he'd rather be in jail in China than exiled. So they're in a really tough spot.

  Bottom line: "If Beijing hadn't lobbied as hard as it did to deny the prize to Liu Xiaobo, perhaps it would have gone to another nominee."

• Wen Jiabao's Sarah Palin moment

  Posted: October 4, 2010, 4:07 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Here's Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, at the end of a not-so-convincing defense of China's Internet freedoms during an interview with CNN host Fareed Zakaria:

  I frequently browse the Internet to learn about a situation.

  Zakaria: What are your favorite sites?

  Wen Jiabao: I've browsed a lot of Internet Web sites.

• The politeness of David Cameron

  Posted: October 4, 2010, 2:31 pm by Blake Hounshell

  In a wide-ranging and somewhat unusual interview with David Cameron in this weekend's Financial Times, Columbia University historian Simon Schama gets the British prime minister to open up a little bit about the American right:

  Later, I would ask him what he thinks of American conservatism’s lurch to the libertarian extreme. “How shall I put this? We seem to have drifted apart … there is an element of American conservatism that is headed in a very culture war direction, which is just different. There are differences with the American right.”

  Among other interesting tidbits, the PM's favorite painting is Guernica, he enjoys the BBC spy drama Spooks, and he uses an iPad.

• The Middle East blame game begins

  Posted: October 3, 2010, 10:48 am by Blake Hounshell

  Unless George Mitchell can work a miracle in a region that has seen far too few of them over the last 2000 years, it looks increasingly like the direct Middle East talks are headed for an ignominious early failure.

  One clear sign (in case you needed any after the Palestinians threatened Saturday to walk out) is this story in today’s Haaretz by the very well-sourced Barak Ravid, who reports that Mitchell has dramatically overstated the extent to which the negotiations were going well -- to the chagrin of the Palestinian side.

  We’ll get to the reasons to be a little skeptical of this story in a minute, but first let’s look at what Ravid’s sources are telling him.

  The main takeaway is that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been telling anyone who will listen, that his ostensible partner for peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is not serious. He only wants to talk about security, and won’t engage on other “core issues” of the conflict such as the borders of an eventual Palestinian state. "I heard nothing from Netanyahu but niceties," Abbas is quoted as telling unnamed “foreign diplomats” at the U.N. General Assembly.

  The second interesting bit is that we’re learning more about what the actual contents of the discussion were. Abbas and Netanyahu held three meetings. The first one, Ravid tells us, was mainly about setting the ground rules for the discussion and agreeing to keep talking, though the two sides did have a conversation about whether to deal with borders or security first. At the second sitdown, Abbas and Netanyahu attempted (and apparently failed) to define what the “core issues” to be discussed actually were.

  The third meeting, held in Jerusalem, sounds like a real disaster, with Abbas trying to get Netanyahu to discuss the offer made by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, while Bibi again focused on security and supposedly didn’t engage on Abbas’s presentation of Palestinian positions. “The American brokers were reportedly extremely frustrated after the meeting in Jerusalem and some of them wondered if the talks hadn't in fact gone backward.”

  Cleary, we’re getting largely the Palestinian side of the story here, so we don’t have a full picture of what is going on (the story also contradicts what we heard about the first meeting, after which Abbas aides told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat that they were feeling optimistic about the talks). But it looks like Ravid did try to confirm details with Netanyahu’s office, which doesn’t seem to have pushed back very hard. Be on the lookout for a follow-up article that tells Netanyhu’s side of the tale.

  The real significance of the story, though, is not the details -- it’s the fact that they’re emerging now in such an ugly way. We’re no longer in the middle of a negotiation; we’re well into the blame game, with each side trying to hang the likely failure of the talks around the necks of the other.

  That failure is going to have repercussions for both sides. On the Israeli side, some in the Labor Party are agitating to withdraw from Bibi’s coalition, and some in the opposition Kadima Party want Bibi to boot out Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his far-right Yisraeli Beitenu party -- which has become a national embarrassment -- thus paving the way for Kadima to join the government. Meanwhile, the right is blaming Netanyahu for agreeing to the settlement moratorium in the first place. A collapse or a reshuffle of Bibi’s coalition may be exactly what the Palestinians are hoping to provoke by withdrawing from the talks. But it’s not clear whether these rumblings have much traction, and in any case Defense Minister Ehud Minister, the head of the Labor Party, seems to enjoy being at the center of the action.

  The key player to watch now is Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, who has kept her criticism of Netanyahu to a minimum while the negotiations still held out some hope of success. On Saturday, she urged Netanyahu to keep the Palestinians at the table, warning of dire consequences to Israel’s security if the talks “blow up.” Look to her now to start speaking out more often, and try to make some moves behind the scenes. It’s not clear whether she can do much, however, and she has her own internal opposition to worry about.

  Hamas, meanwhile, is licking its chops, vowing that Palestinians will return to “resistance” when, not if, talks fail. And then things will really get ugly.

  UPDATE: Haaretz, citing a story in London's pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, reports that Netanyahu has agreed to extend the settlement freeze for two months. Sourcing looks weak on this one, so let's see what actually happens.

• Nothing's going right for Obama's foreign policy

  Posted: September 30, 2010, 5:50 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  With the likely withdrawal Saturday of the Palestinians from their ill-advised direct talks with Israel, it looks increasingly like Barack Obama's foreign policy is headed for catastrophic failure.

  Nearly across the board, the president's initiatives are going down in flames. Nowhere is this more true than in Pakistan where, Jane Perlez reported Wednesday, the civilian government in which the U.S. has invested billions is perilously close to collapse -- if not facing a military coup.

  Now comes word that Pakistan is cutting off NATO's supply lines into Afghanistan in retaliation for U.S. helicopter strikes in Pakistani territory -- strikes made necessary because the Pakistani military can't, or won't, crack down on militants unless they threaten the Pakistani state directly.

  As for the war in Afghanistan, it's going very badly.

  Further east, the United States seems headed for a disastrous currency war with China, although Beijing's recent diplomatic blunders have sent Asian countries running into Uncle Sam's loving arms.

  To the west, Iraq still has yet to form a government after seven months of post-election deadlock, and attacks on the Green Zone are metastasizing in a frightening way.

  One rare bright spot is Russia where, despite the complaints of Cold Warriors and human rights campaigners, relations are at their highest point since the Yeltsin era. But much of the good work Obama's team has done could easily unravel, especially if the Senate deep-sixes the new nuke treaty.

  As for Iran, it's a mixed bag. Obama has kept Europe on board with tough sanctions, and brought along a few other players. But China is likely to undercut those efforts and relieve the economic pressure, leaving the United States and Israel with few options for stopping Iran's nuclear drive. Meanwhile, the drums of war are beginning to beat in Congress.

  Of course, if Obama really wants to make a hash of the world, I can think of no better way than to start launch airstrikes on Iran. But I doubt he's going to do that.

• Looking ahead to the post-Rahm White House

  Posted: September 29, 2010, 1:54 am by Blake Hounshell

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  The big political news today is that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, is leaving the White House and heading to Chicago to try to fill the big shoes of Richard Daley, the outgoing mayor. The move will surprise nobody who's been paying attention for the last few weeks, but this report, in the Chicago Sun-Times, seems definitive.

  I'll leave it to the domestic-policy folks to assess whether Rahm did a good job. What I'm more interested in is what his departure means for Obama's foreign-policy team.

  Major shakeups are on the way next year: Both Jim Jones, the national security advisor, and Bob Gates, the defense secretary, have told reporters they're headed for the exits in 2011. This creates a bit of a timing crunch for Tom Donilon, Jones's highly capable and hard-working deputy, who is a leading contender to be either chief of staff or national security advisor.

  Richard Wolffe lays out a rather earnest case for Donilon as Rahm's replacement here, channeling his White House sources in arguing that Donilon's work ethic, organizational chops, and range of policy experience qualifies him to be what is essentially America's prime minister.

  Wolffe comes up short, however, in responding the critiques of Donilon laid out in Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward's new book.

  Woodward's sources have a couple main beefs. The main one is that, for all his foreign-policy knowledge, Donilon doesn't understand the military, is often disrespectful toward top generals and Pentagon staffers, and makes snap judgments without considering all the options. Gates thinks Donilon would be a "disaster" as national-security advisor, according to Woodward, who also writes that Jones would "never in a million years" have made Donilon his deputy had he known how the White House dynamics would play out (Rahm had recommended Donilon, and Woodward says the men were like "two tuning forks -- when one vibrated, so did the other"). It's also clear that Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can't stand the guy.

  In one memorable scene, Jones sits his deputy down and gives him an impromptu performance evaluation. You're indispensible, Jones tells Donilon. But you've made three mistakes. No. 1, you haven't visited the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq and therefore, in Jones's words, "you have no credibility with the military." No. 2, you "frequently pop off with absolute declarations about places you've never been, leaders you've never met, or colleagues you work with" (Woodward's words, channeling Jones). No. 3, you don't have any respect for the emotional or personal needs of the rest of the NSC staff.

  In another incident, Donilon bursts into Jones's office to demand that he fire Gen. Douglas Fraser, the head of Southern Command, for his allegedly "incompetent" handling of the Haiti relief effort. Jones tells him to "calm down" and give Fraser a chance to sort out his resource constraints. Donilon's comments about another, unnamed general apparently made Gates furious.

  Now, there are plenty of reasons, both within Woodward's book and in reporting elsewhere, to think that Jones isn't exactly the second coming of Henry Kissinger, or even Alexander Haig. The man just doesn't come across as a particularly brilliant mind, and by all accounts - including Donilon's -- he doesn't work very hard. That doesn't mean Donilon would be any better, though. Maybe, with all his domestic policy experience and his good relations with the political team, Donilon would make a great chief of staff. But Woodward makes a powerful case that he'd be a bad national security advisor.

• Kim Jong Il doesn't trust his son

  Posted: September 29, 2010, 10:31 am by Blake Hounshell

  Reacting to the news that Kim Jong-un, North Korea's heir apparent, has assumed high positions in the military and the ruling Workers' Party, NightWatch's John McCreary comments:

  Today's appointments complete the bridge that links military and party authority. The young Kim has both, but in both domains he is shadowed and shepherded by his aunt, his father's protégés and by his uncle Chang Song-taek and his protégés. This young man has no independent authority. He is in training. A regent troika lurks behind the scenes that is composed of the Chang family leaders and the newest Vice Marshal in the army.

  Kim Chong-il, meanwhile, has given up none of his positions of authority , such as Chairman of the National Defense Commission, head of the party and head of all the party organizations of importance. Kim Chong-il does not trust his youngest son to govern anything, which explains the regency troika.

  The various appointments and elevation of an untested youth in this fashion has no precedent in recent North Korean history. the process looks poorly and hastily thought out in terms of competence and ability, but crafted to try to keep the Kim family in charge.

  It suggests that Kim Chong-il is sick and could die with little warning. Appointing neophytes and civilians to four-star military ranks looks ill-conceived and prone to incite resistance from professional military ranks.  The leadership is becoming much less stable and durable.

  Nevertheless, the announcements leave no room for doubt that the heir-apparent is the third son, Kim Chong-un. That does not mean he will ever govern.

• Big Afghan leaders don't cry

  Posted: September 28, 2010, 4:25 pm by Blake Hounshell

  

  I'm no expert on Afgahanistan -- but I know enough about the country to understand that crying in public probably won't win you too many supporters:

  Afghan President Hamid Karzai wept on Tuesday as he called on Afghans to “come to their senses” and move faster towards peace, or risk seeing the next generation flee abroa and lose their Afghan identity.

  Afghans must live and work in their country and serve it, he said, as he identified for the first time some of the members of a peace council that will help seek a political rather than military end to fighting with Taliban-led insurgents.

  “I do not want Mirwais, my son, to be a foreigner, I do not want this. I want Mirwais to be Afghan,” said Karzai, who himself spent many years in exile in Pakistan, while fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and later during Taliban rule.

  “Therefore come to your senses ... you are witnessing what is happening on our soil and only through our efforts can our homeland be ours,” he added, drawing huge applause from an audience at a international literacy day event in a Kabul school.

  I wonder how the Taliban will make use of this? Aside from the crying, the sentiment here is not exactly inspiring: Apparently Karzai is considering getting out of Dodge, or at least sending his son abroad for safekeeping. What does that say about his confidence in his own leadership?

  I hope Doug Lute and David Petraeus are drawing up contingency plans right now.

  One other note: I've been reading the Woodward book, and apparently not only do some U.S. intelligence reports say that Karzai is manic-depressive, others say he smokes weed. Again: not confidence-inspiring.