As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes [...]]]>   by Jim Lobe

As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit — the editorials, columns, and op-eds the Journal  produces usually make the most coherent case for a neo-conservative position, especially as regards anything having to do with Israel and its ruling Likud Party, as any other publication, including the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Commentary’s Contentions blog. As tendentious and bizarre as these pieces often are, they also usually offer some degree of intellectual integrity.

In that respect, the “Wonderland” column published last Thursday by the Journal‘s deputy editor of the editorial page Daniel Henninger struck me as particularly lacking. I don’t read Henninger’s column very frequently; on foreign policy, he seems to be a lightweight compared to his colleague Bret Stephens, who writes the Tuesday “Global View” column. But I read this one, entitled “Rand Paul’s Reagan,” because its title raised a favorite interest of mine — the ongoing battle between the neo-con/aggressive nationalist and the paleo-con/libertarian wings of the Republican Party.

Of course, you should read the whole thing, but the part that really jumped out at me was his juxtaposition of the “Weinberger Doctrine” and his confident depiction of Ronald Reagan as a staunch and unflinching advocate of a hawkish foreign policy:

While there was never a formal Reagan Doctrine, Ronald Reagan himself said enough and did enough to know where he stood. In his 1985 State of the Union, Reagan said, “We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent.”

Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” aligned his own policy toward Soviet Communism with the idea of “rollback,” stood at the Brandenburg Gate and cried, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” increased U.S. defense spending, deployed Pershing 2 ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in Europe amid world-wide protests in 1983, invaded Grenada the same year, and gave U.S. support to anticommunist movements in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and Latin America—with many congressional Democrats in a towering rage of eight-year opposition to nearly all of it. The words Reagan used most to support all this were “freedom” and “democracy.” He ended four decades of Cold War.

Well, aside from the fact that Henninger seems to take great pride in U.S. support for such “anticommunist” and freedom-loving movements represented by the mujahadin (and future Taliban) in Afghanistan, the Khmer Rouge (de facto) in Cambodia, the witch-burning Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and the Somocista-led contras in Nicaragua (not to mention the murderous armies and security forces of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the three main sources of all those children on the southern border now — in Central America), I find this litany of “where (Reagan) stood” in the context of any discussion of the Weinberger Doctrine quite remarkable for what it omits. More precisely, Henninger fails to devote a single word to the events that gave rise to Weinberger’s enunciation of the doctrine that bears his name: the disastrous deployment of U.S. marines at the Beirut airport and the Oct 23, 1983, bombing of their barracks in which 241 servicemen were killed.

Of course, what is relevant here was Reagan’s reaction. You would think from Henninger’s depiction of “The Gipper” that he not only would have shrugged off what was the worst one-day loss of life of U.S. servicemen since World War II. He would also have spared no effort to hunt down the perpetrators*, bombed the hell out of their suspected sponsors wherever they were to be found, and then quadrupled the number of troops deployed to Lebanon in order to demonstrate to all the world his determination to “stand” his ground in the face of terrorist threats and outrages, and defeat them.

In fact, however, Reagan did nothing of the kind. Two days after the disaster, his administration launched the invasion of tiny Grenada partly, no doubt, to divert the public’s attention from Beirut. Meanwhile, most of the surviving marines were immediately deployed offshore, and by February, they had been withdrawn entirely from Lebanon, albeit not before the USS New Jersey fired off dozens of VW Bug-sized shells at Druze and Syrian positions east of Beirut. (Neither is believed to have had anything to do with the bombing.) Weinberger, who had opposed the original deployment and had wanted to lay out the principal lessons that he thought should be learned from the debacle shortly after the withdrawal, waited until November 1984 to devote a speech to the subject. One year later, that same tough-guy Reagan, who, as Henninger recalls, warned against playing “innocents abroad,” authorized the arms-for-hostages deal that formed the basis of the Iran-Contra scandal …and then claimed that he had no idea that he was indeed trading arms for hostages. This is Henninger’s Reagan.

I should stress right away that, unlike both Paul and Henninger, I’m definitely not a defender of Ronald Reagan whose presidency, I believe, was an unmitigated disaster for the country (exceeded only by George W. Bush’s, of course), not to mention the many tens of thousands of innocent people who died or were killed by the application of the “Reagan Doctrine” in Central America, southern Africa (remember, Reagan’s support for apartheid South Africa), and Indochina. And, while I agree with Henninger that “Ron Paul’s Reagan” is not an entirely accurate rendition of the 40th president’s foreign policy, Henninger’s depiction is no less flawed. In fact, I believe it is fundamentally dishonest. After all, if you’re going to attack Paul’s central point about Reagan’s alleged adoption of the Weinberger Doctrine, the very least you can do is mention the events that gave rise to it: the ill-thought-out commitment of U.S. troops into a civil-war situation and their subsequent ignominious withdrawal. As noted by none other than Reagan’s own Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman (also a member of the 9/11 Commission), ”There’s no question it [Reagan's withdrawal] was a major cause of 9/11. We told the world that terrorism succeeds.” Of course, that particular Reagan obviously doesn’t exactly fit Henninger’s idealized and highly misleading version.

* One of the great ironies is that an alleged key planner of the 1983 barracks bombing, as well as other attacks against U.S. officials in that period, was an Iranian intelligence officer, Ali Reza Asgari, who, according to Kai Bird’s recent biography of Robert Ames (the CIA officer who was killed in the suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut six months before), was granted asylum in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration in 2007 in exchange for sharing his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program. According to Bird, Asgari has been living here under the CIA’s protection since his defection. You can find Augustus Richard Norton’s review of Bird’s book for LobeLog here.

Photo: Caspar Weinberger meeting in 1982 with then-Israeli Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon Credit: public domain

]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/wsjs-daniel-henningers-reagan/feed/ 0 http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/bowe-bergdahl-isnt-the-first/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/bowe-bergdahl-isnt-the-first/#comments Sun, 08 Jun 2014 14:55:40 +0000 Thomas W. Lippman http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/bowe-bergdahl-isnt-the-first/ via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

Americans have short memories. In all the furor over the exchange of five senior Taliban leaders for an U.S. prisoner in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, I haven’t heard anyone other than a writer for National Review Online bring up the name of Bobby Garwood.

Garwood was [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

Americans have short memories. In all the furor over the exchange of five senior Taliban leaders for an U.S. prisoner in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, I haven’t heard anyone other than a writer for National Review Online bring up the name of Bobby Garwood.

Garwood was a private first class in the Marine Corps who disappeared from his duty station near Danang in 1965, during the Vietnam War. Did he desert and go over to the enemy? Was he captured and held against his will? Nobody knew at the time, and even now, several books and movies later, the case will still get you an argument.

Bergdahl’s story most closely resembles that of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held prisoner for years by Hamas. The Israelis made the excruciating decision to buy his freedom by trading 1,027 prisoners of their own, hundreds of whom had been convicted in court of crimes against Israeli citizens — unlike the five Taliban leaders traded by the U.S., who had not been convicted of anything. Garwood’s story is different from Bergdahl’s, but the tale is useful in understanding the complexities and nuances of the prisoner issue: What really happened? What were his intentions at the time? Once he was among the enemy, did he collaborate or resist? What was his country’s obligation to him?

Under the terms of the Paris Agreement between the United States and North Vietnam, which ended U.S. military engagement in Vietnam in 1973, all of the hundreds of Americans held prisoner by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong — including a Navy pilot named John McCain — were to be released. They were duly turned over to the U.S. Air Force in three groups. I went to Hanoi to witness one of those exchanges, and it was easy to see that the Americans remained tense and apprehensive, not to say confused, until they were aboard the plane. After the last handover President Nixon told the nation that Hanoi had complied with the Paris Agreement­ — all Americans known to be held were on their way home. Garwood was not among them, and in fact was not listed by the Pentagon as a prisoner.

After an extensive investigation, the Pentagon was unable to determine exactly what had happened to him, or whether he had made propaganda broadcasts for the north, as some troops asserted; therefore he was listed at the time as “missing.” An exhaustive review of the case said that a Marine Corps “screening board” had enough information to reclassify him as a deserter but decided not to do so until he had an opportunity to defend himself if he was ever returned to the United States. “This recommendation by the USMC POW screening board clearly demonstrates that the USMC was more concerned with protecting Garwood than with prosecuting him, as they should have been, until his return and all facts disclosed,” the review concluded. Sound familiar today?

Some veterans’ groups, and wives of missing air crew members who could not accept the reality that their husbands had certainly died when their planes went down, refused to believe that all captive Americans had been released. Goaded by political opportunists, including H. Ross Perot, they claimed for years that North Vietnam had held some prisoners back as bargaining chips. There was never any truth, or logic, to this – as was established years later by a special U.S. Senate investigating committee co-chaired by McCain and another Vietnam veteran, John F. Kerry — but the story periodically got new life because somebody reported spotting a young Caucasian man in North Vietnam. Most of those sightings were of the same individual, Bobby Garwood.

There were a handful of American soldiers and Marines who chose to stay in Vietnam and did not want to come back. Many had finished their terms of duty and married Vietnamese women, or gotten caught in the Cholon culture of drugs and gambling. (Remember Christopher Walken’s Oscar-winning performance as Nick in “The Deer Hunter”?) Garwood was not one of those dropouts; he went or was taken to North Vietnam four years after he disappeared from his motor pool, and in the 1970s was living more or less openly in Hanoi, where visitors sometimes spotted him. In 1979 he passed a note to a Finnish diplomat in a Hanoi café, saying he wanted to come home. Vietnam swiftly turned him over.

Garwood was court martialed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in an 11-month proceeding that produced more than 3,000 pages of trial transcript. He was acquitted in February 1981 of desertion and refusal to fight, but convicted of communicating with the enemy and assaulting an American POW in a detention camp. He did not go to prison; he was dishonorably discharged and ordered to “forfeit all pay and allowances,” as they say in the military.

The whole truth may never be known, lost in time and the fog of war. As with Bergdahl, some of Garwood’s fellow Marines maintained that he had simply deserted and demanded that he be punished. Garwood always maintained that he did not desert, he got lost, perhaps on a laundry run or perhaps, as some suggested, on his way to a brothel. Those who want the whole story might read one of the books about him, Conversations With the Enemy, by two former Washington Star reporters. One of the authors was Winston Groom, author of “Forrest Gump.” At least there wasn’t much ambiguity about Forrest’s record in Vietnam.

Photo: A screen cap from a Taliban-released video capturing the moment Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was released into U.S. custody.

Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

by James A. Russell

The sight of Afghans lining up in droves on April 5 to cast their ballots braving threats of violence offers us some heartening images in a world that seems awash in bad news with Russia’s destructive behavior, continued anarchy and death in Syria, and other parts of the [...]]]> via LobeLog

by James A. Russell

The sight of Afghans lining up in droves on April 5 to cast their ballots braving threats of violence offers us some heartening images in a world that seems awash in bad news with Russia’s destructive behavior, continued anarchy and death in Syria, and other parts of the world teetering dangerously on the precipice between peace and war.

The pictures coming out of Afghanistan may partially salve the wounds of those that bore the brunt — and paid for — the 13-year war waged by the West against the Taliban. Those estimated 7 million Afghans that lined up to vote clearly deserve the sympathy, admiration, and respect of the international community.

Curiously, however, the images of those brave Afghans made me think of a famous quote attributed to Napoleon at some point in the early 19th century, in which he is said to have pointedly asked: “What’s the war about?”

We may draw comfort from the storyline being reported on the Afghan elections, but is that what the war was about?

The understandably favorable press coverage of the Afghan elections in some ways diverts our attention from the more troubling and largely unexamined aspects of America’s decade-plus of war in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost more than a trillion dollars, led to over a million refugees, and thousands dead and maimed civilians and soldiers.

How is it that what started out as a straightforward, punitive expedition to go after the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks became the most ambitious experiment in social and political engineering and the longest war in American history? When did we decide to do this, exactly? Did we think about the potential costs of such an ambitious effort and, perhaps most important, did we ever ask ourselves whether the stakes in Afghanistan justified the magnitude of the effort?

To be sure, it is not unknown for policy goals in wars to become inflated and/or changed so fundamentally as to bear little relationship to the initial reasons for the war. What started out in August 1914 as a war of Serbian independence gradually morphed its way into a war to contain Germany and then became the war to end all wars. In Vietnam, what began as war against communism in southeast Asia evolved into yet another grand experiment in social engineering that then became joined at the hip with the idea of “peace with honor,” which needlessly extended the war’s carnage.

More recently, the US invasion of Iraq must be considered a poster board of this phenomenon, in which we cycled through at least a dozen post-invasion war objectives before settling on another grand and misguided social engineering project.

A disturbing feature of the Afghan and Iraq wars was that the enemy had little to do with the inflation of our policy goals over the course of our involvement. They resisted our presence simply because we were occupying their countries. In both of those wars, the enemy imposed no new or distinctive political requirements on us that forced us to inflate our policy goals beyond all recognition. The undeniable truth is that we imposed these inflated goals upon ourselves and did so with little apparent deliberation, debate, or thought.

How did this happen? Seeking an answer is certainly worthy of debate and discussion — even if we are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves. It’s hard not to point a finger at what has become the feckless nature of American politics, today dominated by rigid ideology on the right, money, and special interests, all of which have led to the disintegration of common sense across party lines in foreign and domestic policy.

This fractured domestic political landscape in some ways paralleled the broken decision-making process that governed strategy and foreign policy after 9/11, which produced decisions with catastrophic consequences to American interests and objectives around the world. In this environment, soldiers were sent off to war for made up reasons by ideologues that were never challenged in a democracy that is based on a system of checks and balances. We lacked political and military leaders and a public that paid close attention while demanding no answers to Napoleon’s timeless question.

As for the Afghan elections — we should all be glad that Afghans are voting, but we should be under no illusions that a successful election means that Afghanistan will develop into a pluralistic political system that solves internal differences peacefully at the ballot box. We can only hope that’s what will happen in a process that may take generations to unfold.

Perhaps more significantly, it is manifestly unclear whether any government in Afghanistan can survive given the malign intentions of Pakistan, which has aided and abetted the Taliban and other insurgent groups with arms, money, training and a safe haven from which to plan their attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan shows no inclination to abandon its plans to destabilize the country despite America’s best efforts to buy it off with billions of dollars over the course of the war.

These are uncertainties that cloud Afghanistan’s future — whatever the outcome of the apparently successful elections. Our inability to address and answer Napoleon’s pointed question about the war in Afghanistan says more about us than those brave Afghans casting their votes for a better future, although we could surely use a little more of their courage in our own democracy.

Photo: Voters line up at a polling station on Jalalabad Road, Kabul city, on April 5, 2014. Credit: Casey Garret Johnson

by Charles Naas

President Barack Obama and the United Nations have again warned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that, unless he signs a bilateral security agreement, which gives all foreign troops complete immunity from Afghan law, these troops will be withdrawn at the end of the year. To do so would leave the Afghan military, [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Charles Naas

President Barack Obama and the United Nations have again warned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that, unless he signs a bilateral security agreement, which gives all foreign troops complete immunity from Afghan law, these troops will be withdrawn at the end of the year. To do so would leave the Afghan military, a force that now numbers over 300,000, without further western training programs, especially in the maintenance of modern equipment, infantry/special forces tactics and communications but still facing a continued Taliban  opposition.

Last year the Loya Jirga, a traditional body of eminent tribal leaders including many from Pashtun areas along the border with Pakistan — the center of Afghan Taliban strength — recommended approval of the agreement, but Karzai said the President who takes over after the April election should be responsible for an action with such long-term consequences. He has withstood allied pressure for over a year and relations between the western allies and the Afghan government are gravely frayed. Karzai’s action may seem on the surface self-defeating in light of the military’s continued need for assistance, but lets go more deeply into his dilemma.

Over 100,000 American and allied forces have been in Afghanistan for over a decade and there has been heavy fighting in localized areas with substantial civilian casualties. We have used our highly aggressive Special Forces and drones that have had some success militarily but frequently produced civilian losses. And, the Taliban usually move back in once the foreign forces depart and reportedly have a strong presence in over half of the provinces. There is no sign that the struggle is near a successful conclusion. The on-again, off-again political negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban — aimed at finding political compromises — have apparently made little progress.

Perhaps more important is that the country has become highly divided politically over the US presence. We have poured billions of dollars into our efforts to modernize parts of the country, which includes military expenditures, Afghanistan’s educational and legal systems, and its roads and medical facilities. Following the draconian rule by the Taliban, much of this aid was welcomed by major parts of the population but it also deepened the gulf between the traditional rural tribal society and the urban population. The latter have borne the brunt of the daily presence of road blocks, convoys roaring through the streets and suicide bombings. The villages have been subjected to intrusive and terrifying night raids often directed by faulty intelligence. Not to mention the fact that many of the US-led reforms in Afghan society have violate religious beliefs and long-held customs.

In Afghanistan, a nation weary from the current conflict as well as its long civil war and resistance to the Soviet Union, the US is looked upon by many as the occupier, the enemy. Karzai recognizes this fact and has been responsive by criticizing many aspects of our use of arms and refusing to sign the agreement. Any leader in Afghanistan is also cognizant of the historical fate of those who have been identified with the presence of foreign forces. All the important communist leaders who came to power as a result of the 1973 coup and the Soviet invasion met dire fates.

It’s a rough and tough country and, contrary to our own society, history is a living and breathing thing. The Afghan leaders are also fully aware that in Iran a status of forces agreement caused massive demonstrations and marked the political emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini. Karzai may have simply had enough of us and his domestic burdens.

With his warnings, President Obama has established a politically defensible basis for ending the US presence in Afghanistan and implementing a full withdrawal at the end of this year; that may well be his purpose.

But, would a status of forces agreement, which cannot be signed until the security agreement is finalized, and the retention of 3-10,000 troops ensure Afghanistan’s prosperity? Very unlikely. Whoever is elected as the new Afghan president must continue to deal with a Taliban that has shown little inclination to bargain seriously, cope with all the ethnic and cultural tensions that beset that country and depend economically on foreign assistance.

Let us not expect the victory parade. We can at least hope that the activities of  the remnants al-Qaeda, the reason we first invaded the country, will be minimized and that, as in years past, the country can slog along day-to-day. The Pakistan government has announced a military intervention into its part of the tribal area but, unless it is very substantial and near permanent, the impact in Afghanistan will be years in coming.

As one who values dearly his four years served in that country several decades ago, I deeply regret my pessimism.

by Fatemeh Aman

Escalating violence against the Islamic Republic of Iran from the volatile region of Baluchistan shows that Tehran’s approach toward regional insurgency may require revision.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Iranian consulate in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan on February 24, killing two security guards and [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Fatemeh Aman

Escalating violence against the Islamic Republic of Iran from the volatile region of Baluchistan shows that Tehran’s approach toward regional insurgency may require revision.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Iranian consulate in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan on February 24, killing two security guards and wounding dozens. A Pakistani Taliban group claimed responsibility and vowed more attacks on Iranian installations “everywhere.”

Iran’s approach to dealing with insurgency in its Baluchistan province, primarily based on militarizing the region and blaming foreign countries, could prove ineffective in decreasing tension and threaten its solid relationship with Pakistan. Just last week, in response to the hostage-taking of Iranian border guards by a terrorist group, Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahimi Fazli stated that Iranian security forces reserve the option of entering Pakistani territory should Islamabad fail to secure its border with Iran.

In the past, Taliban, Wahabis, the United States, and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly been blamed by the Iranians for promoting unrest and insurgency in Baluchistan, including for the killing of 12 people in Iran’s Kerman province in May 2006 and 14 Iranian border guards in October 2013.

There have been occasions where Iran has blamed “elements” within Pakistan’s security forces or the “shortcomings” of the Islamabad government in not doing enough to prevent insurgents from entering Iranian territory. Yet Iran has avoided directly blaming the Pakistani government for the violence at its border.

Now, however, recent threats by the Iranian government to enter Pakistani territory are unprecedented and seem at odds with Iran’s past approach towards Pakistan.

Border instability

In March 2013, Iran and Pakistan reached a security agreement aimed at combating terrorism and drug trafficking, which was signed by then Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar and his Pakistani counterpart, Rehman Malik. The content of the agreement, which is being discussed now in Iran’s parliament, is not public. However, Interior Minister Rahimi Fazli claims that once approved, Iranian armed forces will be able to enter Pakistani territory.

Baluchistan, the neighboring province between Iran and Pakistan, is prone to political turmoil.

In the 1970s, the Shah of Iran provided Pakistan full military and financial support in a crack-down on Baluchi separatists. Iran and Pakistan have been cooperating and exchanging intelligence on border security issues for decades.

However, the Pakistani region of Baluchistan is now more insecure. Iranian Baluchistan is also volatile but largely under the control of the central government. The region has also served as a major path of drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Pakistan and Iran, and from Iran extending to Europe.

Diesel smuggling has for decades been part of illicit trade in the Iran-Pakistan border region. However, Iran’s declining currency, due to sanctions, has turned fuel smuggling into a broad and organized network. At the same time, drug addiction is becoming Iran’s number one social issue and has forced the Iranian government to take stronger measures to combat drug trafficking.

Iranian Baluchi Sunni militants, who are believed to share ties with Pakistani Baluchis, have conducted several violent operations in the past including a suicide bombing in 2010 that killed dozens of people at a Shia mosque, the killing of a clergy member from the Iranian Supreme Leader’s Office in Baluchistan, the abduction and killing of hostages, and attacks against security force posts.

Tehran’s violent response to ethnic tension in Baluchistan includes the hanging of Baluchi prisoners. Most recently, 16 prisoners were hanged in retaliation for the killing of 14 Iranian border guards on October 25 of last year, for which the little-known Sunni group Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility.

It is noteworthy that Iran, while continuing its violent crackdown on Baluchi militants, has avoided playing the ethnic card inside Pakistan. The government has primarily blamed the West and the United States, the Saudis, and occasionally the “Pakistani army and ISI,” but never attempted to organize armed groups against the Pakistani government. Iran, in desperate need of stability in its Baluchistan, is well aware that induced tension would have a destabilizing impact on both “twin provinces” of Baluchistan.

In 2007, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) started building a border barrier along Iran’s border with Pakistan. The multi-million-dollar project, which includes a 91.4 cm thick and 3.05m tall concrete wall, large earth and stone dams, and deep ditches, is expected to be completed by September 2014. According to Rahmani Fazli, except for 300 kilometers of Iran’s border with Pakistan in the Saravan region, the entire Eastern border has been secured and the possibility of insurgents entering Iranian territory is “almost” zero.

Ethnic tension

It is possible that the border project, once finished, will reduce trafficking and illegal crossings at the border. However, a modern border isn’t enough to make the ethnic tensions inside Iran disappear. The Islamic Republic and the Shia-centric government of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have made little effort to fill the gap between the central government and the Sunni population, especially in the deprived region of Baluchistan. Instead, Ahmadinejad’s government and the IRGC militarized the region and alienated the Baluchi population.

President Hassan Rouhani, who in June 2013 replaced Ahmadinejad, won the majority of votes in the Sistan and Baluchistan province. Molavi Abdolhamid, a popular and well-respected Sunni Friday prayer leader of the city of Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchistan, met with Rouhani in June of last year urging him to appoint Sunnis to the cabinet level. It did not happen. However, the Rouhani administration, at least verbally, has taken early steps to narrow the gap between the Baluchi population and the central government.

Interestingly, some of the first calls against violence in the region, including against the killing of Iranian border guards in October, are always issued by Sunni Baluchi leaders. In a statement, Molavi Abdolhamid condemned the killing and warned that violence is harming the interests of the Baluchi population.

There are differences within the Iranian establishment on how to deal with ethnic challenges. But instead of blaming foreign countries for creating these tensions, which may very well be true, Tehran needs to accept responsibility and take reasonable steps to win the hearts of ethnic minorities.

At the same time, Iran  appears keen on maintaining a cordial relationship with Pakistan. Just this month, Rouhani told Pakistan’s new ambassador to the Islamic Republic that “Iran is ready to expand its political and economic relations with Pakistan.”

In response, the ambassador, Noor Muhammad Jadmani, announced that PM Nawaz Sharif is planning to travel to Iran. Meanwhile Iranian Parliament Speaker, Ali Larijani, told the Chairman of Pakistan’s Senate, Syed Nayyer Hussain Bokhari on February 19 that “recent terrorist attacks will not have an impact on the friendly relations between Iran and Pakistan.”

In the midst of the ongoing negotiations with world powers over its nuclear program, which have made surrounding Arab countries nervous, Iran needs friendly relations with non-Arab regional states more than ever. Alienating a neighbour as important as Pakistan is the last thing it should do. In fact, the viable path to a more stable region may include empowering Baluchistan to isolate extremists.

Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on August 3, 2013.

via IPS News

In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.

“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to [...]]]> by Jasmin Ramsey

via IPS News

In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.

“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to overcome their differences regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, if there begins to be some progress in that regard, then I do see opportunities for dialogue and cooperation on a broader range of issues, including my issues, which is to say Afghanistan,” Ambassador James F. Dobbins, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS at a briefing here Monday.

This summer’s election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric with centrist and reformist backing as well as close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been followed by signals that Iran may be positioning itself to agree to a deal over its controversial nuclear programme.

Rouhani’s appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to oversee Iran’s nuclear dossier has been received positively here by leading foreign policy elites who consider Zarif a worthy negotiating partner.

The Western-educated former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, which could lead to a resumption of diplomatic ties that were halted following a 2011 storming of the British embassy in Tehran by a group of protestors.

Dobbins, who worked closely with Zarif in 2001 after being appointed by the George W. Bush administration to aid the establishment of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, told IPS that “Iran was quite helpful” with the task.

“I think it’s unfortunate that our cooperation, which was, I think, genuine and important back in 2001, wasn’t able to be sustained,” added Dobbins.

The U.S. halted official moves toward further cooperation with Iran following a 2002 speech by Bush that categorised Iran as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea.

While President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009 indicated a move away from Bush-era rhetoric on the Middle East, the U.S.’s Iran policy has remained sanctions-centric – a main point of contention for Iran during last year’s nuclear talks.

Positive signs from both sides

But a recent string of events, which continued even as the U.S. seemed to be positioning itself to strike Iranian ally Syria, have led to speculation that the long-time adversaries may be edging toward direct talks, though the White House denied speculation that this could take place at the U.N. General Assembly.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham also verified the exchange but denied speculation that Syria was a subject.

“Obama’s letter was received, but it was not about Syria and it was a congratulation letter (to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani) whose response was sent,” Afkham told reporters in Tehran in comments posted on the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

That both leaders have publicly acknowledged such rare contact is an important development in and of itself, according to Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration.

“This is an effort as much as anything to test the waters in domestic American politics regarding direct talks, regarding the possibility of seeing whether something more productive can be done than in the past. And except out of Israel, I haven’t seen a lot of powerful protest,” Hunter told IPS.

“The Iranians have already backed off on the stuff about the Holocaust by saying it was that ‘other guy’. Now, and this is a reach, but keep in mind that as the slogan goes, the road between Tehran and Washington runs through Jerusalem,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-98).

“A serious improvement of U.S.-Iran relations also requires Iran to do things in regard to Israel that will reduce Israel’s anxiety about Iranian intentions on the nuclear front, and on Hezbollah,” he said.

Hunter added that “compatible interests” between the two countries, including security and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom of shipping in the vital oil transport route, the Strait of Hormuz, could also pave the way to improved relations.

A shift in Iran

Even Khamenei, who has always been deeply suspicious of U.S. policy toward Iran, has given permission for Rouhani to enter into direct talks with the U.S., according to an op-ed published by Project Syndicate and written by former Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian.

During a meeting Monday with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei also said he was “not opposed to correct diplomacy” and believes in “heroic flexibility”, according to an Al-Monitor translation.

Adding to the eyebrow-raising remarks was Khamenei’s echoing of earlier comments by Rouhani that the IRGC does not need to have a direct hand in politics.

“It is not necessary for it to act as a guard in the political scene, but it should know the political scene,” said Khamenei, who has nurtured years of close relations with the powerful branch of Iran’s military.

Iran sends out feelers

On Sept. 12, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 20 percent low enriched uranium by converting it into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).

This was described as “misleading” by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) based on how little LEU Iran had reportedly converted to fuel.

“As such, this action cannot be seen as a significant confidence building measure,” argued ISIS in a press release.

But Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (2000 to 2005), called this “an example of all-too-prevalent reductionism that seeks to fold political and psychological questions into technical ones.”

“Confidence-building measures can mean many things, but in general they have at least as much to do with perceptions and intentions as they do with gauging physical steps against some technical yardstick,” Pillar told IPS.

“Confidence-building measures…are gestures of goodwill and intent. They are not walls against a possible future ‘break-out’. If they were, they would not be confidence-building measures; they would be a solving of the whole problem,” he said.

Photo Credit: ISNA/Mehdi Ghasemi

Rohafza spends her days sitting behind a padlocked grill door, immovable and staring at Maidani, the place her son is buried. The woman’s face is pale, and her hair is graying. For two years the door has stayed closed, barring Rohafza from seeing her son’s grave. It’s her family that is [...]]]> By Sohaila Weda Khamoosh

Rohafza spends her days sitting behind a padlocked grill door, immovable and staring at Maidani, the place her son is buried. The woman’s face is pale, and her hair is graying. For two years the door has stayed closed, barring Rohafza from seeing her son’s grave. It’s her family that is keeping her gated – for her own safety, as they say – to prevent Rohafza from sneaking out at night to scream at the grave site. 

Zarmine (her back to the camera) prays in front of her brother Hashmatullah’s grave.
creidit: Sohaila Weda Khamoosh/Killid

With about 50 percent of adult Afghans suffering mental health problems, Rohafza’s story is one of millions who have undergone trauma in a war-torn country with little to no mental health services and archaic practices of handling mental illness at a family level – a combination that can make patients’ lives as tragic as the events that transformed them.

In Rohafza’s case it happened 18 years ago, when 17-year old Hashmatullah, her only son, was killed in the partisan war that followed the fall of the communist government of Afghanistan’s president Najibullah (1987-1992). Mujahedin groups that had been funded by the U.S. to fight the Soviet-backed government turned their guns on each other plunging the country into bloody civil war.

A rocket smashed into their neighbourhood killing Hashmatullah, her sister’s grandson and two of their classmates. “They were just coming back from school,” says Zarmina, one of Rohafza’s five daughters

Her father was sitting outside when suddenly there was a big blast and “Hashmat and his friends were thrown up in the air.” By the time they boy arrived at the hospital, the doctors’ efforts came too late.

“When they brought his body home, it was doomsday in our house. We sisters could hardly see the coffin for the crowds that had poured in to mourn with us,” Zarmina recalls.

According to the daughter, their son’s death unhinged both her parents, but it was her mother who lost her mind, leaving the family overwhelmed with caring for her. “Sometimes in the middle of the night we would see she was not in her bed. We would find her at Hashmatullah’s grave, screaming.”

When her mother tried to burn their house down, setting the carpets on fire, according to Zarmina, the family went ahead and tied her down with a chain. “But this only worsened her condition,” the daughter says.

As inadequate as the family’s response to Rohafza condition is, professional support is nearly non-existent in this country scarred by over three decades of war. Currently, a 60-bed clinic in Kabul is the only publicly run comprehensive mental health facility, while psychiatrists remain hard to come by. A 2006 joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health lists the total number of psychiatrists countrywide at two.

In 2010, the situation showed little improvement, with two doctors and a total of 200 beds for psychiatric services countrywide, according to WHO in an article by AFP.

Afghanistan, however, is not an isolated case. Seventy-five percent of an estimated 450 million people with mental health issues live in developing countries, with many of them being shut away, rather than treated.

Back in their village in Afghanistan, Zarmira remembers how her brother was born after a great deal of prayer and fasting by her mother, as their father had threatened to abandon the family if their sixth child was a girl. When Rohafza gave birth to a boy, she named him Hashmatullah, meaning Greatness. But he would not live long enough to fulfill his promise, laments his sister.

* Sohaila Weda Khamoosh  writes  for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.