[Peace-discuss] Just Foreign Policy News, November 27, 2006

[Robert Naiman]

Just Foreign Policy News
November 27, 2006

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
Rafael Correa, a progressive economist who called for cutting ties
with the IMF and the World Bank, won Ecuador's presidential election,
news agencies reported.

A draft Iraq Study Group report on strategies for Iraq urges an
aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks
with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal,
the New York Times reports, but members of the commission expected a
divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal.

Iran said Sunday it is willing to help the US calm Iraq's escalating
sectarian violence if the U.S. drops its "bullying" policy toward
Iran, AP reports.

Senior members of the House Armed Services Committee and former
Defense Department officials yesterday criticized poor U.S. training
of the Iraqi army and police as a major reason the Iraqi government
cannot provide security, the Washington Post reports.

There will be no victory or defeat for the US in Iraq, Senator Chuck
Hagel wrote in a Washington Post op-ed yesterday. The time for more
U.S. troops in Iraq has passed, he says. We do not have more troops to
send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq.
Hagel is making the case for withdrawal that Congressional Democrats
should be offering, writes John Nichols for The Nation: "The US must
begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq... We've
already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost
four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month."

The Bush administration continues to insist that Iraq is not in a
civil war, but a growing number of scholars, leaders and policy
analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of the
term, Edward Wong reports for the New York Times. Wong notes that a
month after the bombing of the Samarra shrine former Iraqi Prime
Minister Allawi said, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what
civil war is."

Iraq
The anti-war movement has been a major factor in mobilizing a majority
of the American public to oppose the occupation and killing in Iraq,
Just Foreign Policy board member Tom Hayden wrote yesterday in the San
Francisco Chronicle. After peace activists sought an anti-war
candidate to run against Nancy Pelosi, she shifted from a vague
centrism to support for Rep. Murtha's call for withdrawal, Hayden
notes. After Sen. Clinton was booed at a liberal rally, she began
supporting Sen. Levin's proposal to start a phased withdrawal by
year's end.

For U.S. officials, dismantling the Mahdi Army is a cornerstone of
their plan to stabilize Iraq, the Washington Post reports. But the
militia's role in helping Sadr City residents recover from massive
attacks Thursday illustrated the political difficulties involved in
tackling them. The militiamen were heroes, residents said. They did
everything Iraq's government did not do.

A classified US government report says the insurgency in Iraq is now
self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a
year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, and other crimes
the Iraqi government and the US have been unable to prevent, the New
York Times reports.

Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, a key player in the Iraqi
government, threatened Friday to withdraw from the cabinet and
parliament if Maliki met President Bush in Jordan next week, Reuters
reported.

Britain said Monday it expects to withdraw thousands of its 7,000
military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, while Poland and
Italy announced the impending withdrawal of their remaining troops, AP
reports.

Lebanon
As the struggle between Hezbollah and the governing coalition reaches
a crescendo, people in Lebanon are asking if it is the prelude to a
civil war, the New York Times reports. Analysts say the political
situation in Lebanon and the region recalls the period before the
outbreak of civil war in 1975.

The U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center said Saturday that Israel
laid mines in Lebanon this summer, the first time Israel has been
accused of planting mines during the latest fighting, AP reports.

Israel/Palestine
A cease-fire in Gaza appeared to largely hold on Sunday after
Palestinian factions stopped firing rockets at Israel in exchange for
an Israeli troop withdrawal from the territory, the New York Times
reports.

Israel is prepared to release many jailed Palestinians, including
long-serving prisoners, in return for a soldier militants seized in
June, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert said. It was the first time he had
offered to exchange prisoners for Gilad Shalit, Reuters reports. Hamas
said Olmert's offer was not enough, alluding to its demand for an
exchange of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit.

Afghanistan
The Afghan mission threatens a rift within NATO between those nations
willing to participate fully in combat operations in Afghanistan and
those nations that are not, the New York Times reports.

Bahrain
Critics in Bahrain say recent elections were similar to those in many
Arab countries: designed to give the appearance of democracy while
maintaining the government's tight grip on power, the Washington Post
reports. Some democracy activists told the Post that Western pressure
is the only option that could force Arab governments to give up some
of their power.

Bolivia
President Morales proposed disbanding the Senate, which has been
resisting his calls for ambitious land reform legislation, the New
York Times reported in a news brief. The proposal would be considered
by an assembly that is rewriting Bolivia's Constitution.

Venezuela
Newsweek International carried a piece by former Mexican Foreign
Minister and New York University professor Jorge Castañeda which
contains several important distortions about Venezuela. He suggested
that turnout in the 2004 referendum was less than 30%, when in fact it
was 70%; he cites the discredited polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland
to suggest the presidential race is close when all reputable polls
show a substantial lead for President Chávez; he claims that poverty
has not diminished in Venezuela although official statistics show it
has fallen.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Leftist Economist Wins Ecuador Election
Monte Hayes, Associated Press, Monday, November 27, 2006; 6:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112700101.html
A leftist economist who called for Ecuador to cut ties with
international lenders appeared to have easily won the presidency of
this poor, politically unstable Andean nation, strengthening South
America's tilt to the left. Partial returns from Sunday's voting
showed that Rafael Correa - who has worried Washington with calls to
limit foreign debt payments - would join left-leaning leaders in
Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends
with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.

The returns showed Correa with as many as twice the votes recorded as
for his banana tycoon rival, who claimed the polls were rigged. Correa
was a fresh face in a field of established politicians, and won a
place in Sunday's runoff by pledging a "citizens' revolution" against
Ecuador's discredited political system.

During the campaign, he called for Ecuador to cut ties with the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Correa, who has called
President Bush "dimwitted," also wants to hold a referendum to rewrite
the constitution to reduce the power of traditional parties and limit
U.S. military activities in Ecuador. "We receive this triumph with
deep serenity and humility," the 43-year-old, who has an economics
doctorate from the University of Illinois, told a news conference.
"When we take office it will finally be the Ecuadorean people who are
assuming power."

With 31 percent of the ballots counted, Correa had nearly 67 percent
compared to 33 percent for Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's Supreme Electoral
Tribunal said before dawn Monday. Election officials said more returns
were expected later Monday but that final results may not be known
until Tuesday.

2) Panel To Weigh Overture By U.S. To Iran And Syria
David E. Sanger, New York Times, November 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/world/middleeast/27policy.html
A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated by a
bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional
diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria
but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to
officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some
amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the
commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a
potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American
withdrawal. Several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was
the only way to persuade the government of Iraq's prime minister
al-Maliki to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force.

Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing
proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period
of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American
troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi
government's forces are declared ready to defend the country.

Among the ideas are embedding far more American training teams into
Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort. While numbers
are still approximate, phased withdrawal of combat troops over the
next year would leave 70,000 - 80,000 American troops in the country,
compared with about 150,000 now. "It's not at all clear that we can
reach consensus on the military questions," one member of the
commission said.

The draft report, according to those who have seen it, seems to link
American withdrawal to the performance of the Iraqi military, as
President Bush has done. But details of the performance benchmarks,
which were described as not specific, could not be obtained, and it is
this section of the report that is most likely to be revised. While
the commission is scheduled to meet here for two days this week,
officials say the session may be extended if members have trouble
reaching consensus.

President Bush is not bound by the commission's recommendations. But
privately, administration officials seem deeply concerned about the
weight of the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission. "I think
there is fear that anything they say will seem like they are etched in
stone tablets," said a senior American diplomat. "It's going to be
hard for the president to argue that a group this distinguished, and
this bipartisan, has got it wrong."

Administration officials appear to be taking steps that will enable
them to declare that they are already implementing parts of the
Baker-Hamilton report, even before its release. On Saturday, Vice
President Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with King
Abdullah. During an interview on the ABC News program "This Week"
Sunday, King Abdullah said that his agenda with the president extended
beyond Iraq, and that his top concern in the region was the conflict
between the Israelis and the Palestinians - which he called the "core
issue" in the Middle East - along with tensions in Lebanon. But, he
said, he was hoping that Bush's meeting with Maliki would bring about
"something dramatic" to stop the violence in Iraq.

3) Iran Says It's Set to Help U.S. on Iraq
Nasser Karimi, Associated Press, Sunday, November 26, 2006; 5:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112600243.html
Iran said Sunday it is willing to help Washington calm Iraq's
escalating sectarian violence if the U.S. drops its "bullying" policy
toward Tehran, but denied organizing a summit with the leaders of Iraq
and Syria to discuss the troubles in its neighbor. President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said Iran is "ready to help" the US, saying the Americans
are "trapped in a quagmire" in Iraq. "The Iranian nation is ready to
help you to get out of the quagmire - on condition that you resume
behaving in a just manner and avoid bullying and invading," he said.

The White House, which is under pressure at home and abroad to
approach Iran and Syria for help with Iraq, played down Ahmadinejad's
offer. "The Iranians have made comments similar to this in the past.
There's nothing new there," a State Department spokeswoman said.
Engaging with Iraq's neighbors is believed to be one of the
recommendations by a panel on Iraq led by former Secretary of State
Baker.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini, meanwhile,
denied reports of a summit involving Iraq and Syria, saying it was
never on Iran's agenda."Such a summit needs certain preliminaries," he
said. Iraqi President Talabani was scheduled to visit Tehran Saturday,
but had to postpone his trip because Baghdad's airport was closed in a
security clampdown after an upsurge in violence. Syria never said
whether President Bashar Assad had intended to go.

Hosseini confirmed Iran had invited Assad for an official visit and
said Talabani would visit at some point. Iran is believed to back
Iraqi Shiite militias blamed for sectarian attacks that have killed
thousands this year. Iran has repeatedly denied the charges.
…
Hosseini on Sunday promised improved cooperation with the
International Atomic Energy Agency if the U.N. nuclear watchdog,
rather than the Security Council, takes charge of Iran's nuclear
dossier. Iran has made similar promises in the past. "If the case is
returned to the agency itself, it would be possible to review current
ambiguities better than before," Hosseini said. "The agency is the
best and the most qualified body for the case."

The IAEA officially turned over Iran's dossier to the Security Council
last February after Iran failed to answer key questions about its
nuclear activities. Last week, the IAEA rejected Iran's request for
assistance building a heavy-water nuclear reactor because of the
dispute. "It is part of the agency's duties to help member countries.
None of our activities have been illegal. Inspectors can inspect
them," Hosseini said.

The Security Council, meanwhile, is deadlocked over how to sanction
Iran for ignoring demands to stop uranium enrichment. Russia and
China, both trade partners with Iran, have called for a diplomatic
resolution rather than punitive measures, which Washington is urging.

4) Lawmakers Criticize Training And Deployment Of Iraqi Forces
Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops
Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Monday, November 27, 2006; A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112600980.html
Two senior members of the House Armed Services Committee and several
former Defense Department officials yesterday criticized poor U.S.
training and deployment of the Iraqi army and police as a major reason
the Baghdad government cannot provide security to its people. Rep.
Duncan Hunter, chair of the panel, said that 33 trained Iraqi army
battalions, now serving in provinces that are relatively peaceful,
should be moved into Baghdad or other areas where there is fighting.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), who will take over as chair of the Armed
Services Committee, focused on the Army training of Iraqi units. He
said that in many instances "the wrong types" of trainers were given
the job.

"What's really fallen down ... has been the police," said retired Gen.
Wayne Downing, who headed the Army's Special Operations Command and
briefly served after the Sept. 11 attacks in the Bush White House
handling counterterrorism. "We reconstituted the Iraqi police pretty
much in their old image," he told NBC's Tim Russert. "They are
corrupt, they are feared by the people, and we recognize this."
Downing said that once a Baghdad neighborhood is cleaned up, "we turn
it over to the Iraqi police, Tim, and within weeks it's right back to
the way it was before."

Yesterday's criticisms were expanded upon in the latest study by
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. A Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and a
specialist in Middle East intelligence and military matters, Cordesman
just returned from Iraq, where he received briefings from military and
civilian officials. One of Cordesman's central issues is that public
statements by the Defense Department "severely distorted the true
nature of Iraqi force development in ways that grossly exaggerate
Iraqi readiness and capability to assume security tasks and replace
U.S. forces." He also writes that "U.S. official reporting is so
misleading that there is no way to determine just how serious the
problem is and what resources will be required."

Cordesman says the Pentagon's Aug. 31 status report, which was sent to
Congress, lists 312,400 men "trained and equipped" among the Iraqi
army and national and regular police. But it adds that "no one knows
how many ... are actually still in service." At the same time, he
writes, "all unclassified reporting on unit effectiveness has been
cancelled."

Criticizing statements about how many Iraqi army units are "in the
lead," Cordesman notes that the Iraqi army "lacks armor, heavy
firepower, tactical mobility and an Iraqi Air Force capable of
providing combat support" - the same points McCaffrey made yesterday.
"No administration official has presented any plan to properly equip
the Iraqi forces to stand on their own or give them the necessary
funding to phase out U.S. combat and air support in 12 to 18 months,"
Cordesman says. He writes that the Iraqi army could need U.S. support
through 2010.

5) Leaving Iraq, Honorably
Sen. Chuck Hagel, Washington Post, Sunday, November 26, 2006; B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401104.html
There will be no victory or defeat for the US in Iraq. These terms do
not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future
of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis - not the
Americans. Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the
ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance,
extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military
solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this
point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more
troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution
to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together
failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in
foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -
regardless of our noble purpose. We have misunderstood, misread,
misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an
arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions
are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who
live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in
Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There
will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include
Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and
Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no
formal communication. What does this tell us? It tells us that
regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work
in their own self-interest - without the US. This is the most
encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle
East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able
to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless
destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across
the Middle East.

6) A Republican Takes the Lead on Iraq
John Nichols, The Nation, Posted 11/27/2006 @ 01:30am
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=143259
Since the election, I have argued that the November 7 vote did not
just empower Democrats to do the right thing with regard to the Iraq
debacle. It also freed up Republicans - particularly Senate
Republicans who have long been ill at ease with the neoconservative
nonsense peddled by the Bush administration. Now that the votes have
been counted, the American people are ready for swift steps to extract
U.S. forces from a no-win situation. Yet, while Democratic leaders
talk of "going slow," smart Republicans are recognizing the political
opening and seizing it. Case in point: Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel's
opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post.

Hagel has long been blunter than his Democratic colleagues about the
disaster that the Iraq occupation has become for the U.S. The Nebraska
Republican was making comparisons between the Vietnam War, in which he
served, and the Iraq imbroglio months ago - at a point when most
Senate Democrats were holding their tongues.

Hagel has now taken the mightly leap of declaring that it is time to
"form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq." "We have
misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable
intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of
Vietnam," Hagel writes. "Honorable intentions are not policies and
plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will
decide their fate and form of government."

While I might disagree with Hagel about the "honorable intentions" of
the invasion and occupation, he gets no challenge from this quarter on
his observations that the war has been "misunderstood, misread,
misplanned and mismanaged" and that the Bush administration's approach
has been characterized by "arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of
Vietnam."

Hagel is making precisely the case for withdrawal that Congressional
Democrats should be offering at this point: "The US must begin
planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat
in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has
been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to
prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8
billion per month. The US has spent more than $500 billion on our wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to
deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist
threat, which was there, and not in Iraq," the Nebraskan argues.
"We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental
appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight
and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its
policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the
past four years."

7) A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So?
Edward Wong, New York Times, November 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26war.html
Is Iraq in a civil war? Though the Bush administration continues to
insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi
scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets
the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says
that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for
control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to
force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000
people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each
side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that
most of their number are in agreement that Iraq's conflict is a civil
war. "I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of
violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable
person would have," said James Fearon, political scientist at
Stanford.

While the term is broad enough to include many kinds of conflicts, one
of the sides in a civil war is almost always a sovereign government.
So some scholars now say civil war began when the Americans
transferred sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi government in June 2004.
That officially transformed the anti-American war into one of
insurgent groups seeking to regain power for disenfranchised Sunni
Arabs against an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
and increasingly dominated by Shiites.

Others say the civil war began this year, after the bombing of a
revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a chain of revenge killings
that left hundreds dead over five days and has yet to end. Allawi
proclaimed a month after that bombing that Iraq was mired in a civil
war. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," he
said.

8) Anti-war movement deserves some credit
Some call it marginal, but organized push swayed world opinion
Tom Hayden, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, November 26, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/26/INGAKMHROD1.DTL
Although rarely credited, the anti-war movement has been a major
factor in mobilizing a majority of the American public to oppose the
occupation and killing in Iraq. To many observers, the movement seems
feckless and marginal, its rallies an incoherent bazaar of radical
sloganeering. Yet according to Gallup surveys, a majority of Americans
came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly than they came to oppose
the Vietnam War more than three decades ago. So how could there be a
peace majority without a peace movement?

Foreign Affairs, the journal of the foreign policy establishment,
wondered about this riddle in a 2005 essay by John Mueller reporting a
precipitous decline in public support for the war even though "there
has not been much" of a peace movement.

In January, when congressional opinion was shifting against the war, a
Washington Post analysis made eight references to "public opinion," as
if it were a magical floating balloon, without any mention of
organized lobbying, petitioning, protests or marches. That was
consistent with a pattern beginning before the invasion, when both the
New York Times and National Public Radio reported that few people
attended an October 2002 rally in Washington, only to admit a week
later that 100,000 had been in the streets.

It is not in the nature of elites to acknowledge people in the
streets. Foreign policy is seen as the reserve of the privileged and
sophisticated, protected from populist influence. But if anti-war
sentiment is truly unimportant, why has there been so much government
secrecy and domestic spying?

Two years ago, San Francisco voters supported withdrawal from Iraq by
a large margin. Last year many activists sought an anti-war candidate
to run against Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Shortly afterward, she shifted from
a vague centrism to support for Rep. John Murtha's call for
withdrawal.

When Sen. Hillary Clinton was booed at a liberal pre-election rally
recently, it wasn't accidental that she chose to begin supporting Sen.
Carl Levin's proposal to start a phased withdrawal by year's end.
Understandably, she didn't want booing throughout her presidential
campaign.

Iraq
9) A Day When Mahdi Army Showed Its Other Side
Militia Seen as Heroic In Aiding Bomb Victims
Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, Monday, November 27, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112601242.html
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Ayad al-Fartoosi has been a
militiaman with the Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army of firebrand cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr. Last week, he also served as a relief worker, a
policeman, a traffic controller and a guard. So did thousands of his
militia comrades who mobilized to assist victims of the deadliest
attack on Iraqis since the invasion, highlighting the power associated
with the Mahdi Army's less-publicized roles in Iraqi society. "We do
even more than what the government should do," said Fartoosi, as he
recalled the eight grueling hours after a barrage of car bombs,
mortars and missiles killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's Shiite
heartland.

For U.S. officials, dismantling the Mahdi Army and other Shiite
militias that have fomented sectarian strife in Iraq is a cornerstone
of their calculus to stabilize Iraq and bring U.S. troops home. They
view it as a crucial step toward isolating the Sunni Arab insurgency
and reconciling the nation. But the attacks Thursday illustrated the
immense difficulties involved in tackling the Mahdi Army, the
country's largest and most violent militia, in today 's Iraq. The
militiamen were heroes that day, Sadr City residents said in
interviews. They did everything that Iraq's fragile unity government
did not, or could not, do. In the days since, their actions have
boosted Sadr's popularity and emboldened him. "The Mahdi Army are the
people who helped us after the explosion," said Shihab Ahmed, a
salesman who was wounded by flying shrapnel. "They saved us."

10) U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself
John F. Burns & Kirk Semple, New York Times, November 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26insurgency.html
The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising
tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping,
counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other
crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been
largely unable to prevent, a classified US government report has
concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups
responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70
million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25
million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other
criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by
"corrupt and complicit" Iraqi officials. As much as $36 million a year
comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report
says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments - previously
identified by American officials as including France and Italy - paid
$30 million in ransom last year.

A copy of the report was made available to The Times by American
officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the
challenges the US faces in Iraq. The report offers little hope that
much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For
one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq
know about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it
paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government's ability,
or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency's financing.

"If accurate," the report says, its estimates indicate that these
"sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq - independent
of foreign sources - are currently sufficient to sustain the groups'
existence and operation." To this, it adds what may be its most
surprising conclusion: "In fact, if recent revenue and expense
estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have
surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations
outside of Iraq."

The group's estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking
the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath
nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are
fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on
huge armories left over from Hussein's days, and benefit from the
willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the
$200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less
than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for
Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The
oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that
10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel
imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the
country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that
close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If
true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.

11) Sadr followers threaten to pull out of Iraqi govt
Reuters, 24 Nov 2006 11:16:49 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL439390.htm
Radical anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, a
key player in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government,
threatened on Friday to withdraw from the cabinet and parliament if
Maliki met U.S. President George W. Bush as planned in Jordan next
week. "We asked Maliki to cancel his planned meeting with Bush because
there is no reason to meet with the criminal who is behind terrorism
in Iraq," Faleh Hasan Shanshal, a senior official in Sadr's movement,
told Reuters. "We will suspend our membership of the cabinet and
parliament if he goes ahead," he said.

12) Britain May Start Pulling Out of Iraq
Associated Press, November 27, 2006, Filed at 8:30 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Iraq.html
Britain said Monday it expects to withdraw thousands of its 7,000
military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, while Poland and
Italy announced the impending withdrawal of their remaining troops.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski said his country, a U.S. ally in Iraq
and Afghanistan, would pull its remaining 900 soldiers out of Iraq by
the end of 2007. And Italian Premier Romano Prodi said the last of
Italy's soldiers in Iraq - some 60-70 troops - will return home this
week, ending the Italian contingent's presence in the south of the
country after more than three years.

British Defense Secretary Des Browne was the second senior official in
recent days to talk of reducing the number of British troops in Iraq.
In a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Browne
also warned Iran that it faces increasing isolation if it does not use
its influence in Iraq constructively.

Lebanon
13) Chilling Echo for Lebanon, Mirror of Regional Tension
Michael Slackman, New York Times, November 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/world/middleeast/27region.html
Now an unnerving question is emerging here: as the battle between the
Iranian-backed group Hezbollah and the Western-backed governing
coalition reaches a crescendo, is it in fact the prelude to a civil
war? Lebanon's seeming slide toward civil conflict is not just a
symbol of unfortunate historic symmetry. This country is a barometer
for the region, serving as a measure of tensions and rivalries.

It is no coincidence that Lebanon is suffering its worst political
crisis in decades at a time when Iraq has descended into sectarian
war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the past few months reached
new heights and power seems to be shifting away from the
Western-allied Sunni Muslim countries of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the
Shiite state of Iran. "Generally, the regional situation at the time
was very much what it is today," said Kamal Salibi, a historian and
author from Beirut, speaking of the start of the 1975-90 civil war.

Then as now, a major Arab military humiliation prompted radicalism,
hostility and questions of legitimacy for Arab governments from
Morocco to Bahrain. Then it was the 1967 war in which Israel defeated
four armies, and the spreading ideology was secular nationalism.
Today, it is the American military presence in Iraq and the ideology
is Islamism. In both cases, rising oil prices and terrorism serve as
fuel and tool for the conflicts.

14) U.N. Group: Israel Laid Mines in Lebanon
Zeina Karam, Associated Press, Saturday, November 25, 2006; 10:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500295.html
A U.N. agency said Saturday that Israel laid mines in Lebanon during
this summer's war between the Israel and Hezbollah - the first time
Israel has been accused of planting mines during the latest fighting.
The report by the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center follows its
investigation of a land mine explosion Friday that wounded two
European disposal experts and a Lebanese medic.

Later Saturday, the agency reported that a British demining expert was
injured in a separate blast while trying to clear mines from the same
area where Friday's explosion occurred. The deminer, who worked for
the British-based land mine clearing company BACTEC, had to have his
foot amputated. The explosions were caused by Israeli anti-personnel
land mines placed in mine fields laid during the fighting in July and
August in south Lebanon, the center in south Lebanon said.

The Israeli military said it wasn't convinced the mine was recently
laid or used by Israel, saying it could have placed by Hezbollah or
another party during the decades of conflict in Lebanon. But officials
were evasive when asked whether Israel laid mines in Lebanon this
summer.

Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency, said its experts were
able to tell the mines were new Israeli anti-personnel weapons based
on their "type, shape and condition." "The entire area where the mine
fields were found had been cleared by agency experts between 2002 and
2004, so clearly these are new ones," Farran said.

Lebanon's south is riddled with land mines, laid by retreating Israeli
soldiers who pulled out of the region in 2000 after an 18-year
occupation. Hezbollah has also planted mines to ward off Israeli
forces.

Israel/Palestine
15) Israel Withdraws From Gaza as Truce Begins, Unsteadily
Dina Kraft, New York Times, November 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html
A cease-fire in Gaza appeared to be holding on Sunday after
Palestinian factions stopped firing rockets at Israel in exchange for
an Israeli troop withdrawal from the territory. The cease-fire, part
of an agreement reached late Saturday by Israeli and Palestinian
leaders to end five months of fighting in the territory, was to have
taken effect at 6 a.m. but got off to a shaky start when Palestinian
militants belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched nine rockets
into southern Israel.

One rocket crashed through the roof of a house in the Israeli border
town of Sderot but caused no injuries. The other rockets landed in
open areas. By 10:15 a.m., the rocket fire had stopped. Prime Minister
Olmert of Israel, who had been under intense domestic pressure to
authorize an even bigger military operation in Gaza to stop the rocket
attacks, spoke of restraint."The state of Israel is a very strong
country," Olmert said. "It is strong enough to fight terror, and it is
strong enough to show restraint in order to give an opportunity for
the cease-fire to come into full comprehensive and practical effect."

In Sderot, which has borne the brunt of the Qassam rocket attacks,
residents ventured out in the streets to shop and get some air, some
of them for the first time in days.

16) Olmert Says Ready to Free Palestinian Prisoners
Reuters, November 27, 2006, Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html
Israel is prepared to release many jailed Palestinians, including
long-serving prisoners, in return for a soldier militants seized in
June, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday. In a major
policy speech, Olmert said he was reaching out to the Palestinians for
peace - offering a series of humanitarian and economic incentives if
violence against Israel ceased. Within hours of Olmert's address,
Palestinian militants in Gaza fired rockets into the Israeli border
town of Sderot, despite a ceasefire declared on Sunday. There were no
reports of casualties.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack, which
followed the killing of two Palestinians in an Israeli raid in the
West Bank, where a truce is not in effect. The group said it would
carry out more rocket attacks unless Israel stopped killing or
arresting gunmen and lifted travel restrictions imposed on
Palestinians.

"In response to the prime minister extending his hand in peace, we see
what some Palestinian factions are giving in return," Olmert's
spokeswoman said. Militants in Gaza fired several rocket salvoes into
Israel soon after the ceasefire began on Sunday, but stopped after
Palestinian leaders appealed to them to respect the truce.

In his speech, Olmert repeated that he was willing to dismantle many
of the settlements Israel has built in the West Bank, which it
captured in the 1967 Middle East war, to get "real peace." "With Gilad
Shalit's release and his return safe and sound to his family, the
Israeli government will be willing to release many Palestinian
prisoners, even those who have been sentenced to lengthy terms,"
Olmert said.

It was the first time he had offered to exchange prisoners for Shalit,
whose capture in a cross-border raid by Palestinian militants
triggered an Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip.

The governing Hamas movement said Olmert's offer "was not enough,"
alluding to its demand for a simultaneous exchange of more than 1,000
Palestinian prisoners for Shalit. The Islamist militant group called
Olmert's proposal a retreat. The Gaza ceasefire, designed to halt
rocket attacks and an Israeli offensive in the territory, is seen as a
step to reviving peace talks that collapsed in 2000 before the start
of a Palestinian uprising.

Afghanistan
17) Rift Over Afghan Mission Looms For NATO
Thom Shanker, New York Times, November 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/27/world/asia/27nato.html
NATO is bigger than ever, and it is reaching further than ever before,
by taking the lead in the war in Afghanistan. But the Afghan mission
threatens a rift within the Atlantic alliance between those nations
willing and able to participate fully in combat operations in
Afghanistan and those nations that are not.

NATO's 26 members and 11 non-alliance partners have committed 32,000
troops to Afghanistan, with 12,000 Americans assigned to the NATO
portion of the mission. (Another 8,000 American troops are in
Afghanistan carrying out counterterrorism missions solely under
American command.)

Most nations have imposed restrictions on their member troops that
NATO commanders say hamper their ability to move forces for missions
and rescue other NATO forces that may get into trouble. The
restrictions include whether troops are allowed to conduct missions at
night, which parts of Afghanistan they may patrol and whether they are
permitted to conduct offensive operations against the Taliban.

President Bush is expected to push for easing the restrictions when he
meets with NATO leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday at an alliance summit
meeting in Riga, Latvia.

Bahrain
18) In Bahrain, Democracy Activists Regret Easing of U.S. Pressure
Faiza Saleh Ambah, Washington Post, Monday, November 27, 2006; A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/26/AR2006112601135.html
Bahrain's government has touted parliamentary elections here as a
model for regional reform and a milestone for democracy. But critics
say the polls are similar to those in many Arab countries: designed to
give the appearance of democracy while maintaining the government's
tight grip on power. Although many countries in the region have
introduced various degrees of political participation, from limited
municipal councils in Saudi Arabia to spirited parliaments in Kuwait
and Yemen, the reforms have consistently fallen short of the freedoms
democracy activists have sought.

The Bush administration, which said several years ago that greater
democracy in the Middle East was a cornerstone of its foreign policy,
has recently tempered its demands. Democracy activists say that with
the absence of strong grass-roots movements, Western pressure is the
only remaining option that could force totalitarian governments to
give up some of their power. "The dictatorships in the region are the
real winners of the shift in U.S. policy," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan,
editor of Forbes Arabia. "They are not serious about reform and only
respond to international pressure. They can easily repress their
populations because they have total control of all state apparatuses."

Voters went to the polls Saturday in Bahrain, a tiny Gulf country
ruled by the Sunni Muslim al-Khalifa family. Bahrain is the poorest
oil-producing country in the region and the only one with a Shiite
majority. Shiites make up 60 percent of the country's population of
700,000. The government did not allow international observers to
monitor the elections and appointed local government-affiliated groups
for the job. Officials said 72 percent of the 300,000 eligible voters
cast ballots.

Bahrain's main opposition groups boycotted the 2002 elections, the
first in three decades, because political parties were banned and the
power of the assembly had been diluted by the creation of a more
powerful upper house appointed by the king. When elections were
announced again last year, activists said they had to choose between
being left out of the political system or working within it. "There
are no democracies in the Arab world, apart from Iraq," said Sheik Ali
Salman, a cleric and head of the largest opposition group, al-Wefaq
National Islamic Society. But the runaway violence in Iraq has given
Arab governments an excuse to scale back on political reform, he
added.

Bolivia
19) Bolivia: President Threatens Senate
Simon Romero, New York Times, November 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/world/americas/25briefs-BOLIVIASENATE.html
President Evo Morales proposed disbanding the Senate, which has been
resisting his calls for ambitious land reform legislation. The
proposal would be considered by an assembly that is rewriting
Bolivia's Constitution. Tension has been increasing between the
central government and provincial authorities after governors from six
of Bolivia's nine states said this month that they would break ties
with the government. Protests against Morales also have been taking
place this week in Santa Cruz.

Venezuela
20) Hugo Faces His Toughest Test
Like so many populists in Latin America, Chávez loves the Venezuelan
poor as they are, and wants to keep them that way.
Jorge Castañeda, Newsweek International, Dec. 4, 2006 issue
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15896205/site/newsweek/
Next Sunday Hugo Chávez will put his electoral charmed life on the
line. Since 1998, when he was elected president of Venezuela in a
landslide, he's never lost a national vote. Chávez won re-election in
1999, won the referendum on the country's new constitution in 2000-and
most recently, in August 2004, he prevailed in a nationwide vote on
whether he should remain in power. But there's been attrition over the
years: Chávez has obtained smaller percentages of the vote with each
successive election and, most importantly, turnout has been shrinking
steadily; in the 2004 plebiscite, many estimated it at less than 30
percent. [The 2004 referendum had a record turnout:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/08/15/venezuela.recall/index.html,
with 70% voting and 30%not voting
http://www.cne.gov.ve/referendum_presidencial2004/ -JFP]

Polls tend to show Chávez leading by between 5 and 20 percentage
points, depending on the survey. Those most favorable to Rosales place
him between five and 10 points behind-and a couple of others,
including one carried out by the U.S. firm Penn, Schoen & Berland
Associates, show that the challenger has pulled close to Chávez, or is
even leading. [The 2 latest polls, by neutral parties, show Chavez
with a 29 point lead (Zogby, 11/24) and 22 point lead (AP-Ipsos,
11/23). The Penn, Shoen and Berland poll is not being reported by the
international press because of their use of false exit poll data in
the 2004 referendum
(http://www.cepr.net/publications/venezuela_2004_08.pdf - JFP.]

If Chávez is re-elected, it will be because Venezuela's poor
(representing 60 percent of the country's 25 million population) still
approve of his populist policies. When surveyed, respondents give the
president high approval marks in just about every category: the
direction of Venezuela's foreign policy, the effectiveness of economic
programs and optimism about the future. Chávez's humiliating defeat in
his quest for a nonpermanent seat on the U.N. Security Council does
not seem to have hurt him. In a sense, this support might be perceived
as a paradoxical condemnation of Chavez's policies: he likes the poor,
which is why they support him, and he tries to help them with his
social policies. But poverty has not really diminished in Venezuela
since 2000, so the poor also remain extremely numerous. [The official
poverty rate for the first half of 2000 was 41.6%; for the first half
of 2006 it was 33.9%. (National Institute of Statistics,
www.ine.gov.ve) This measures only cash income and does not include
the benefits of free health care or increased access to education. Yet
it is a significant decline in the poverty rate since 2000. -JFP]

-
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming
U.S. foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the
majority of Americans.