by Derek Davison

The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.

There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Derek Davison

The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.

There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around the world in 2001, according to Rand; last year this number was 49. In 2007 there were around 100 attacks around the world by al-Qaeda and affiliated groups; in 2013 there were over 900. The report offers many of the same dire assessments as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s (CEIP) May 30 conference, “Al-Qaeda Transformed,” which featured a talk by Georgetown professor and terrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, titled “Al-Qaeda’s Curious Comeback.” Not only is the number of terrorist groups at unprecedented levels, but their geographic reach has expanded as well, particularly into Africa.

What explains this turn of events? The key lies in the word the CEIP used in the title of its conference: transformation. Al-Qaeda is no longer the single, hierarchical group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. That hierarchy still exists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, but its direct role in carrying out terror attacks is negligible and its function is more an ideological totem than an active terror network. In its place is a network of local terror groups, who share a similar Salafi ideology and who to varying degrees have chosen to align themselves with al-Qaeda’s reputation or “brand.” These local groups may be directly affiliated with “core” al-Qaeda (like Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra) or may share only the barest of connections (like Nigeria’s Boko Haram). But the overall result is a global, ideologically similar, collection of terrorist “franchises” that can exploit any local opportunity to expand their reach and capabilities. The Arab Spring, which was arguably a repudiation of violent Salafi extremism in favor of civil protest and reform movements, has actually enabled the rise and development of many of these local groups. It has led to lawless chaos and anti-government violence in places like Syria and eastern Libya, and Salafi terror groups have thrived in those conditions.

The other conclusion that can be drawn from this resurgence of Salafi terrorism, and the reemergence of al-Qaeda in its new, atomized form, is that the US’ “War on Terror” is failing. Every face of America’s counterterrorism policy has to be called into question, from the War in Afghanistan, to drone strikes (which have very likely created more terrorists than they killed), to the indefinite detention and torture of suspected terrorists (which have only served as rallying cries for terror groups).

Yes, America has managed to avoid another 9/11-style attack, but the decentralization of terror networks explains that as well. Al-Qaeda has always had two targets: the “far enemy” (America, the West) and the “near enemy” (hostile and/or secular governments in the Middle East). As al-Qaeda’s organization has decentralized, its local networks have refocused their attention on the “near enemy,” sparing America the brunt of their efforts. These regional al-Qaeda affiliates recruit new followers based on local conditions, to join a local fight. But the danger is that, as their capabilities grow, these locally focused groups will shift their attention to the far enemy. The fact that so many Salafi groups see a benefit to being connected to Al-Qaeda’s name, its cause, and its reputation shows that al-Qaeda’s core ideology still has resonance with potential recruits, so the chance that at least some of these affiliates will eventually take up Al-Qaeda’s fight against the West is not insignificant.

Both Hoffman and Rand suggest a number of policies to counter the rising Salafi tide. They range from direct US military action to countering Salafi propaganda online, to the increasingly popular idea of aiding Middle Eastern governments as they try to develop governing institutions, to improve their internal security situations, and to stabilize regions (eastern Libya, for example) that are currently outside government control. The latter is the focus of President Barack Obama’s newly proposed “Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund,” a $5 billion program aimed at training local security forces to respond to internal threats. While improving governance and security is a worthwhile goal in the abstract, these funds should not be misused. It’s a cliché to say, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” but if US counterterrorism resources are used by authoritarian regimes to stifle legitimate political opposition, then this program, too, will only damage America’s reputation and work against its long-term national security goals.

After 9/11, George W. Bush informed Americans that “they [the terrorists] hate our freedoms.” That notion, ridiculous when it was first uttered, appears all the more ridiculous today, after we’ve watched Arabs, Iranians, and Turks take to the streets to fight — and in some cases die — for their personal freedom over the past five years. It is accordingly past time for the US to reckon with how its own policies have legitimized Salafi/Al-Qaeda propaganda about “the far enemy.” Drones, detention, and torture may well have created more terrorists than they’ve killed or otherwise prevented, but there is more to it than that. A foreign policy that supports Israel regardless of what Israel does to Palestinians trapped in Gaza or forced into Bantustans in the West Bank creates anti-US sentiment. When US weaponry, whether wielded by American forces or by American clients, is killing civilians in places like eastern Libya, Gaza, and Sinai, anti-US sentiment will increase. American patronage of authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes absolutely creates anti-American sentiment. That sentiment is what will allow currently localized terror networks to shift their attention from the enemy at home to America, the enemy abroad.

It’s easy to rattle sabers about “freedom” and “human rights” when the target has already been cast as the villain, so it’s no surprise that US foreign policy has emphasized these issues when it comes to Bashar al-Assad, or Saddam Hussein, or the Iranian clerical regime. But unless America embarks on some hard choices about holding its allies to the same standards it demands of its enemies, its reputation will continue to suffer. The Leahy Amendment, a 1997 law that requires the US to cut off aid to foreign security forces that are suspects of human rights violations, ought to force these hard choices, but it needs to be applied consistently rather than ignored when it becomes inconvenient (as in, for example, Bahrain). The US military establishment chafes against Leahy’s restrictions, arguing that it constrains them from aiding foreign militaries that are confronting potential threats to the US, but this criticism is short-sighted. It’s far better for US security in the long-term if it can avoid links to acts of oppression or violence perpetrated by authoritarian regimes.

When US actions contradict US rhetoric, it damages America’s stature in the world and gives more ammunition to the message of groups like al-Qaeda. Without the political willingness to frankly and honestly examine America’s role in the world and the impact of US policy choices, then Salafi terrorism in all its forms will remain a potential threat.

Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

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by Marsha B. Cohen

Israel is putting up more than its usual security measures for the arrival of an important person, Pope Francis, who will be visiting the Holy Land May 24-26. He’ll be the third pope to visit Jerusalem since the 1967 Six Day War.

The pontiff will begin [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

Israel is putting up more than its usual security measures for the arrival of an important person, Pope Francis, who will be visiting the Holy Land May 24-26. He’ll be the third pope to visit Jerusalem since the 1967 Six Day War.

The pontiff will begin his trip in Jordan on May 24, where he will meet with Syrian war refugees and disabled youth. While there, he will visit a baptism site on the East Bank of the Jordan River; Christians’ most sacred sites were in Jordan between 1948-1967, but are now located in territory claimed by Israel. The next day Francis will meet with leaders of the Palestinian Authority and with Palestinian and Syrian refugees in the West Bank, and conduct Mass at Manger Square, the site of the Church of the Nativity, in the heart of Bethlehem. In the Palestinian territories, painted by the Israelis as a hotbed of terrorism, the Pope will ride in an open car through the streets of Bethlehem.

But on the Israeli side of the border (boundary, barrier, fence, wall or whatever you call it), where Pope Francis will spend one very full day on May 26, Israeli authorities plan to implement and enforce a strict permit regime that will keep the public behind a security cordon, and the Pope inside an armored car. According to Haaretz, Israeli authorities believe these extraordinary security measures are both justified and necessary due to fears of anti-Christian attacks by radical settlers.

The Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security agency — Israel’s FBI — have expressed concern that  right-wing extremists might try to exploit Pope Francis’ visit to to carry out a major hate crime targeting Israel’s Christian population and sacred sites throughout the country, to attract media attention. On May 21, the Israel Defense Force and the Shin Bet issued administrative restraining orders against four Jewish extremists until the Pope’s departure.

The Argentine-born Pope plans to hold a Mass at the Cenacle, a thousand-year-old structure at the the top of  Mount Zion, just outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Christian tradition reveres one of its upper floors as the setting of the Last Supper, while Jewish and Muslim traditions claim that the ground floor of the building houses the tomb of King David. Although these claims are all anachronistic, the three faiths agree that the site deserves reverence. As Ora Limor observes:

One of the most intriguing phenomena in the study of sacred space and pilgrimage to holy places is how believers of different faiths may share sanctity. Scholars and historians of religion have not infrequently noticed that the nature of a holy place retains its sanctity when it changes hands. Once a site has been recognized as holy, the sanctity adheres to it, irrespective of political and religious vicissitudes.

Jews and Christians haven’t always been willing to share access to Jerusalem’s sacred sites. Jews were not allowed to visit their holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City when they were under Jordanian control. But the Cenacle — aka David’s Tomb — on Mount Zion, was outside the Old City, and remained on the Israeli side of the “Green Line;” Christians are allowed to visit it, but are not permitted to pray there.

Since 2008, Mount Zion has been attracting “peculiar Haredi [ultra-orthodox] groups, hilltop youths, newly religious Jews and converts often motivated by hatred of Christians and Muslims,” Haaretz reports.  Increasingly brutal attacks resulting in life-threatening injuries, as well as defacement and firebombing of property owned by non-Jews, have become increasingly commonplace in the past several months. Students at the Diaspora Yeshiva, which has acquired control of many of the buildings surrounding David’s Tomb, are suspected of being among the perpetrators of violence against Christians and their churches:

The attacks have included vandalism, cemetery desecration, car arson and rock-throwing, in addition to countless incidents in which monks and Christian clergymen have been spat at and cursed. It seems to be a consensus among Christians in the area that people affiliated with the Diaspora Yeshiva are to blame.

The head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Goldstein, denies the charges against his students. Nevertheless, Goldstein was the organizer of a demonstration against the Pope’s visit by 200 ultra-orthodox Jews on May 12. More protests are planned for May 22.

Neoconservative media tend to depict Israel’s Christian population as looking to the Jewish state to secure their safety against their increasingly restive Muslim neighbors. Its 158,000 Christians, 80% of whom are Arab, constitute just 2% of Israel’s total population of 8.1 million. In fact, Christians are concerned about the upsurge in acts of vandalism targeting their institutions and sacred sites carried out by extremist Jews. In his 2013 Christmas message, Jerusalem’s Latin patriarch asserted that twenty Christian sites had been desecrated in the past year. In January, Hebrew graffiti was spray-painted on the walls of the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center calling for the expulsion of Christians from Israel’s sacred soil. The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation reported:

The shock over the incident has prompted the Christian community in Jerusalem to protest strongly, not for the first time, denouncing these acts that reveal a deeper problem that concerns Israeli society in general and Jerusalem in particular; and which seriously calls into question religious tolerance within the society that encompasses the State of Israel, which cannot manage to prevent this type of religious intolerance.

At the end of April, just a few days after the publication of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning that Israel was in danger of becoming an “apartheid state,” the section of the State Department’s 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism dealing with Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza drew attention to the growing threat posed by “extremist Israeli settlers.” It cited “399 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage” and deemed them “violent extremists” — mostly over “price tag” attacks against Palestinian Arab homes and property. “Price tag” is a code-term used by Jewish extremists to justify what they claim are retaliatory actions against Arabs or proposed policies of the Israeli government — policies that would restrict the expansion of settlements in “Judea and Samaria,” the preferred settler term for the occupied territories in the West Bank. “Price tag” has been appearing prominently in the Hebrew graffiti defacing Christian sites.

In the weeks prior to the Pope’s visit, there has been a spike in hate crimes carried out by Jewish extremists against Christians. According to Haaretz:

The various police districts were instructed by authorities to focus their operational and intelligence efforts on the Christian population and its institutions, and to consolidate extra security in these communities until the end of the visit. The police was also asked to increase its security assessments of the right-wing extremists in their various districts, with particular emphasis on holy sites.

Fueling the present wave of Jewish extremist violence against Christians have been rumors that the Israeli government plans to cede control over David’s Tomb to the Church. In February, Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist for Il Foglio who also writes for the Israeli religious nationalist news site, Arutz Sheva, claimed an arrangement had been reached in which the Israeli government would not only grant the Pope access to the site of the Last Supper for his Mass and allow Catholics to use it for daily prayer, but also cede Mount Zion and numerous Christian sites throughout Israel and the West Bank to the Vatican, ultimately leading to the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem:

Should the Vatican gain sovereignty over Mount of Zion, millions of Christian pilgrims will flock to the site, and this will threaten the Israeli presence in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and Jewish access to the Western Wall. The Vatican wants the Jews out of the Old City and apparently Israel’s government is agreeing with them. Turning the Cenacle into an active church is also a way of desecrating the holiness of the site known as the Tomb of David.

In an interview with the Catholic website Patheos, Cecilia Lakin, an attorney from Detroit who is in Jerusalem awaiting the Pope’s arrival, characterized the protesters as “a small but noisy group” who reminded her of the Westboro Baptist Church, and pose no threat to the pope’s safety. Most Israelis with whom she said she had spoken with regarded them as “annoying but harmless troublemakers,” and dismissed them with a yawn.

But a senior adviser to the Catholic Church, Wadi Abu Nassar, told Haaretz that church officials had been warning about the escalation of hate crimes by extremist Jews against Christians. If Israeli authorities do not address the problem, Israel’s standing in the international community would be damaged. “We’re already in an atmosphere of terror,” he said.

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by Wayne White

Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Wayne White

Last week, Jasmin Ramsey pointed out how problematic the recent US decision to deliver attack helicopters to Egypt is in terms of US human rights policy. The move also portrays the US as actively taking sides in a conflict pitting a repressive regime against armed opposition, with potentially adverse consequences for the US and its citizens. It mirrors Washington’s decision earlier this year to send Iraq’s abusive Shi’a-dominated government advanced weaponry to use against Sunni Arab militants. And then there is the possibility that Egyptian leaders might not have done all they could to secure Sinai, in part to extract US military aid.

Smokescreens and inconsistencies

Seemingly in no mood to help Washington defend its decision, Egypt declared officially on April 24 — two days after the delivery of 10 US Apache helicopters and $650 million in military aid to Egypt was announced — that its army had “complete control over the situation” in the Sinai! This statement directly contradicted the Pentagon’s rationale for delivering the helicopters:  to “counter extremists [in Sinai] who threaten US, Egyptian and Israeli security.”

The Egyptian army’s claim appears to be unfounded, merely self-serving propaganda. A less questionable source, a recent Reuters investigation, concluded several hundred militants were still at large in Sinai and “are nowhere near defeat.” To wit, the day before the army’s announcement, a Sinai-based group almost certainly carried out a bombing that killed an Egyptian police general near Cairo (in addition to various attacks by Sinai militants in recent weeks).

Jihadist activity in and emanating from Sinai soared following the military’s overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last year. Three groups stand out: Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), Ansar al-Sharia of Egypt, and, since early this year, Ajnad Misr (AM).  Although there have been attacks against the Israeli border and foreigners, the vast bulk of them since Morsi’s overthrow have targeted Egyptian military and police personnel.

Despite the army’s sweeping public reassurance concerning Sinai, senior Egyptian officials must have shared a more sober assessment with Washington. Indeed, more pessimistic Egyptian analysis was likely discussed during Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s exchange with his Egyptian counterpart last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, US policy aimed at reducing repression in Egypt, already struggling, has been further undermined.  To justify the helicopter delivery, Kerry on April 29 cited in his news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy the passage of the Egyptian constitution as a “positive step forward.” This is hardly in line with the facts. It hands more power to the military, and was passed with a highly suspicious 98% of the vote amidst relatively low turnout. Kerry himself back in January expressed great concern about the entire constitutional process, noting “the absence of an inclusive drafting process or public debate before the vote, the arrests of those who campaigned against it, and procedural violations during the balloting.”

The decision to go forward with the helicopter delivery became especially embarrassing on April 28 when the Egyptian government resumed its harsh repression in a stunning fashion: a judge sentenced Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and nearly 700 supporters to death. This threw Kerry even more on the defensive; while sticking with the helicopter decision, he conceded in the same news conference, among other things, that “disturbing decisions in the judiciary process” pose “difficult challenges.”

Terrorism trumps pluralism and human rights

An ominous pattern of US regional policy choices appears to be taking shape that, effectively, sweeps aside very real concerns about widespread repression and abuse in order to help regimes friendly to the US crackdown on Muslim extremists.

To place this in perspective, despite what many believe, extremists do not typically place a high priority on attacking Americans, the US and other foreigners. Most are highly localized franchises, seeking mainly to overthrow local regimes. And even when they do target foreigners, attacks almost always involve only those inside countries where the violence is taking place.

Related to the pattern noted above, for years the US has pressed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to end his exclusionist, repressive policies toward much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Maliki ignored these appeals. Mostly the result of Maliki’s purging from government, arresting, and even assassinating Sunni Arabs, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) — nearly defeated during Iraq’s Sunni Arab “Awakening” (welcomed by the US, but largely shunned by Maliki) — has rebounded dramatically in a devastating wave of violence.

Then, with its fortunes declining in Syria, fielding a sizeable Iraqi component, and responding to protests against Baghdad’s ill treatment of Sunni Arabs, a contingent of the jihadist Sunni Arab Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group seized and held the Iraqi city of Fallujah (and a few portions of nearby Ramadi) in early January; it was joined by some disgruntled Sunni Arab tribesmen. Unable to oust ISIL from Fallujah, Maliki appealed for urgent US military aid.

Despite Maliki’s role in provoking Sunni Arab violence and ignoring US pleas for moderation, Washington quickly dispatched Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, as well as ScanEagle and Raven drones to help him retake Fallujah. Since then, ISIL and its allies in Fallujah have suffered significant losses from Hellfire missile strikes.

There was, of course, a long history of American military assistance to governments with loathsome human rights records going back decades — driven by Cold War imperatives and the “friendliness” of such regimes.  More recently, however, with the emergence of robust militant Islamic groups, a new driver for such aid emerged: terrorism. This trend became especially compelling after 9/11.

Potential anti-US blowback

There is, however, danger associated with such assistance: the US risks becoming a far more important target of extremist groups on the receiving end of regime repression than is the case now.

With respect to Algeria, the US distanced itself from a military-backed regime never close to the US during most of the 1990’s in reaction to its anti-democratic and ruthless behavior that played a major role in triggering and sustaining a huge Islamist uprising. Up to 200,000 died in a savage conflict that eventually spawned several extremist groups.

By contrast, France helped the Algerian regime crush the rebels and became a prime target for extremist reprisals. When the last militant holdouts morphed into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), they shifted their operations out of Algeria into the weaker nations of the Francophone Sahel.

France was compelled to step in militarily last year to prevent Mali from being overrun by a collection of northern Malian separatists, AQIM and other extremists.  In defeat, AQIM and closely aligned militants fell back into a lawless portion of Libya, but quickly lashed out at a southern Algerian natural gas facility in order to get their hands on foreigners there.

Likewise, Sinai extremists along with ISIL in Syria and Iraq, especially in their bitterness if and when they are defeated, could shift from a narrow focus on Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi government targets toward Americans and the US. Yet, whether Iraq (where Maliki never retook Fallujah), Syria (where ISIL’s woes stem mainly from regime forces and rebel rivals), and Egypt (where US military aid probably will not determine the outcome in Sinai), the US could loom far larger as an enemy and scapegoat.

In Sinai, for example, surviving jihadists could make a far more serious effort to target the largely American Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) peacekeeping contingent based along the southern coast. Until now, MFO has been left alone except for one September 2012 attack against its base camp.

Egyptian scheming?

Lastly, Egyptian leaders appear to assign Sinai security a much lower priority than Egypt proper despite US and Israeli concerns. I learned when I served a year in Sinai as a peacekeeper that Egyptian troops loathed duty in Sinai, regarding it as a wasteland of little value compared to Egypt’s Nile Valley core. And unlike more rugged south Sinai, the north (where most attacks occur) is considerably less difficult to monitor.

This negative Egyptian attitude toward Sinai, combined with the government’s keen desire to secure renewed US military support, might have inclined Egypt’s military brass not to pursue Sinai security full-bore. If true, not pressing the fight to the maximum while Sinai simmers might be meant, at least in part, to increase Egypt’s chances of getting US policymakers to do precisely what Cairo wanted: release their hold on attack helicopters of great value in suppressing opposition in Sinai, but also in Egypt proper.

Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

by Wayne White

This weekend’s US capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’I, better known by his alias, Anas al-Libi, might net only limited information of current intelligence value while potentially resulting in militant Islamist payback in what remains a very fragile Libya. Of no less than three al-Qaeda operatives bearing the alias [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Wayne White

This weekend’s US capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’I, better known by his alias, Anas al-Libi, might net only limited information of current intelligence value while potentially resulting in militant Islamist payback in what remains a very fragile Libya. Of no less than three al-Qaeda operatives bearing the alias al-Libi (simply “the Libyan” in Arabic), Anas al-Libi could be the least significant overall. And should a Libyan militant Islamic group or militia decide to retaliate for this bold US grab, they are capable of doing significant harm.

Anas al-Libi’s former association with al-Qaeda is well-known, as are standing US indictments against him for actions related to the horrific 1998 East Africa bombing. Yet, relatively little seems to be known about how active he remained over the past few years. So the information he has might not be particularly useful if, for example, he was not knowledgeable about or involved in last year’s Benghazi consulate attack or other recent operations. US authorities apparently believe he has been working to expand al-Qaeda’s network in Libya (although perhaps not a certainty since he has been living in Tripoli without security).

By contrast, Abu Yahya al-Libi, killed by an American drone strike in northwest Pakistan in June 2012, stayed very close to both Osama Bin Laden and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He remained a key ideological hardliner within the core al-Qaeda leadership as well, right up to the time of his death. Abu Abdullah al-Libi, the former commander of the extremist al-Qaeda linked Libyan Fighting Group, participated in the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi. Since then he had moved on to Syria with some of his veteran Libyan fighters to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihad against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. He quickly rose in stature within the al-Qaeda associated ISIL until he was one of its top commanders (some say its leader). Abu Abdullah al-Libi, however, reportedly was killed in fighting in northern Syria last month.

The operation to snatch Anas al-Libi has placed Libya’s weak central government in a difficult position. Although Prime Minister Ali Zeidan contacted Washington late on Oct. 6 asking for clarifications concerning the kidnapping, he stated today that Libyan-US relations would not be affected. Yet, he probably fears potential blowback because such unilateral US action is embarrassing (regardless of whether the US struck based on advance warning or an existing understanding regarding such security operations), and his government probably does not have much of an ability to prevent militant retaliatory action.

Vast areas of the country remain under the control of various militias (some of them extremist), tribes, or other local authorities such as those in charge of Libya’s third largest city, Misrata. Much of the government’s own security is provided by militias that did not stand down following Muammar Qadhafi’s ouster, and a variety of key assets (such as the country’s vital oil installations) currently are not under effective government control.

Some such militias allied to the government provide the only security available for high value targets like official buildings and embassies, but they have been of uneven reliability. Libyan security was unable to stop an angry mob from storming the Russian embassy compound in Tripoli on October 2 after a Russian woman killed a Libyan. No Russian embassy personnel were killed or injured, but the mob broke into the compound, one attacker was killed, and there was quite a bit of damage. Had a determined, well-armed extremist militia done so, the results would have been far worse. Citing fears that the Libyan government is unable to protect its staffers, Moscow ordered the embassy completely evacuated the next day.

A senior Libyan government security official who used to command an Islamist militia appeared supportive of the raid on Sunday, but said it reflected badly on the lack of such knowledge and power on the part of his own government. He warned there that would be a “strong reaction” by militant Islamists to “take revenge” for the al-Libi capture, and predicted contrary to American hopes: “This just won’t pass.” Meanwhile, various Libyan jihadists have taken to the Internet calling for the kidnapping of US and allied citizens as well as attacks on oil infrastructure, ships and aircraft.

Al-Qaeda figures like Anas al-Libi with blood on their hands should be targeted, regardless of whether they remain active, in order to remind other key operatives of their potential fate — no matter how much time passes. Yet, even in all-out conventional conflicts, actions from isolated attacks to major military campaigns are judged upon their plusses and minuses. It remains to be seen whether, on balance, scooping up al-Libi at this particular time in a friendly, but very shaky, Libya turns out to be a wise move.

Meanwhile, Washington must increase its vigilance and security substantially relating to the US mission in Tripoli in particular. The US probably should do likewise regarding its assets in Egypt. The lengthy Egyptian-Libyan border is highly porous, and Egypt’s ruling military still has not gotten a solid hold on the Egyptian security situation. Consequently, Egypt offers another fluid environment possibly of interest to Libyan extremists seeking payback.

[While the terrible events in Egypt have delayed my plans to reply to ProPublica’s response to my critique of Sebastian Rotella’s report on the alleged build-up of Iran’s terrorist infrastructure in the Americas, Gareth Porter has written the following essay [...]]]> via LobeLog
by Gareth Porter

[While the terrible events in Egypt have delayed my plans to reply to ProPublica’s response to my critique of Sebastian Rotella’s report on the alleged build-up of Iran’s terrorist infrastructure in the Americas, Gareth Porter has written the following essay on a 2009 article by Rotella for the Los Angeles Times about an alleged bomb plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2008. It offers a very good illustration of some of the problems raised in my original critique of Rotella’s most recent work, notably the virtually exclusive reliance on sources that are clearly hostile to Iran with an interest in depicting it in the most negative light possible. But you be the judge. -- Jim Lobe]

It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war.

Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.

Thus begins the only detailed English-language press account of an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan in 2008: a May 2009 article, written with a Paris dateline, by Sebastian Rotella for the Los Angeles Times.

But despite the sense of immediacy conveyed by his lede, Rotella’s sources for his account were not Azerbaijanis. Rather, the sources Rotella quoted on the details of the alleged plot, the investigation and apprehension of the suspects consisted of an unnamed “Israeli security official”, and Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the author of a constant stream of articles, op-eds, and Congressional testimony reflecting the Israeli government’s interest in promoting the perception of a growing Iranian terrorist threat around the world.[1]

It was Levitt who described the alleged plot in Baku to Rotella as having been “in the advanced stages” when it was supposedly broken up by Azerbaijani security forces, an assertion echoed by the anonymous Israeli security official cited in the article:

 ”[Iran] had reached the stage where they had a network in place to do an operation,” said an Israeli security official, who requested anonymity for safety reasons. “We are seeing it all over the world. They are working very hard at it.”

So readers of the LA Times received a version of the plot that was filtered primarily, if not exclusively, through an Israeli lens.[2] Relying on Israeli officials and a close ally at a pro-Israel US think tank for a story on an alleged Iranian bomb plot against an Israeli Embassy is bound to produce a predictable story line where the accuracy can hardly be assumed at face value. Indeed, in this case, there were and remain many reasons for skepticism.

Yet, three years later, in a July 2012 article for ProPublica, he referred to the plot as though it was established fact.

Had Rotella sought an independent source in Azerbaijan, he would have learned, for example, that such alleged plots had been a virtual perennial in Baku for years. That is what a leading scholar of Azerbaijan’s external relations, Anar Valiyev, told me in an interview last November. “It’s always the same plot year after year,” said Valiyev, Dean of the School of International Affairs of the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku.

In fact, security officials in Azerbaijan had claimed the existence of a similar plot in October 2007 and January 2012 and only two months later, authorities arrested Azerbaijani suspects in two different allegedly Iranian-initiated plots to carry out terrorist actions against Western embassies, the Israeli Embassy and/or Jewish targets. In early 2013, prison sentences were announced in yet another alleged terrorist plot to attack the Eurovision song contest in Baku in 2012. Valiyev told me that those detained by Azerbaijani security officials are always charged with wanting to kill Israeli or US officials and subsequently tried for plots to overthrow the government, which carries the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

In a 2007 article in Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus, Valiyev observed that plots, assassination and coup-attempts were “thwarted” with regularity in Azerbaijan. “Periodically the government finds a scapegoat,” he wrote, to justify attacks on domestic critics, including “Wahabbis”, followers of Kurdish-Sunni scholar Said Nursi and/or Shiite radicals. Valiyev suggested that security officials might be “trying to show that radical Islamists could come to power…should the incumbent government lose the election.”

The Azerbaijani government and its security forces are not known for their devotion to the rule of law. The current president, Ilham Aliyev, is the son of Azerbaijan’s first president, Heydar Aliyev, who, in turn, was the head of the Soviet KGB before Azerbaijan’s independence. According to Jim Lobe, who visited Baku last year, dissidents regard the first Aliyev’s tenure as relatively liberal compared that of his son. A 2009 State Department cable described Ilham Aliyev as a “mafia-like” figure, likening him to a combination of Michael and Sonny Corleone in the “The Godfather”.

Valiyev observed that virtually nothing about the alleged plot made sense, beginning with the targets. According to Rotella’s story, the alleged Hezbollah operatives and their Azerbaijani confederates had planned to set off three or four car bombs at the Israeli Embassy simultaneously, using explosives they “intended to accumulate” in addition to the “hundreds of pounds of explosives” they had allegedly already acquired from “Iranian spies.”

But the Israeli Embassy is located in the seven-story Hyatt Tower office complex along with other foreign embassies, and no automobiles are allowed to park in close proximity to the complex, according to Valiyev. So the alleged plotters would have needed a prodigious amount of explosives to accomplish such a plan.

For example, the bomb that destroyed the eight-story US Air Force barracks at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 was estimated at 23,000 pounds of explosives detonated less than 100 feet away from the building. Valiyev told me that it is “practically impossible to find such components in Azerbaijan” because “Even a few kilograms of explosives would be tracked down by the ministry of national security.”

In his article, Rotella also referred — though only in passing — to the prosecutor’s charge that the alleged conspirators were planning to attack a Russian radar installation at Gabala (sometimes spelled Qabala) in northern Azerbaijan. But that part of the plot was also highly suspect, according to Valiyev. No reason was ever given for such a target, and it would have made no sense for either Hezbollah’s or Iran’s interests.

Built in 1984, the Gabala radar station was leased to the Russians until 2012, and 900 troops from the Russian Space Forces were stationed there. An attack on the station by Hezbollah or its supposed proxies in Azerbaijan would have represented a major provocation against Russia by Iran and Hezbollah, and was therefore hard to believe, as Valiyev pointed out in a July 2009 report for the Jamestown Foundation. Valiyev said it was far more plausible that the alleged plotters were simply carrying out surveillance on the station which, according to some reports, was being considered for possible integration into a regional US missile defense system.

Rotella failed to mention yet another aspect of the prosecution’s case that should arouse additional skepticism. The indictment included the charge that the leader of the alleged terrorist cell plotting these attacks was working simultaneously for Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Even though it has been long been discredited, the idea of an Iran-al-Qaeda collaboration on terrorism has been a favorite Israeli theme for some time and one that continues to be propagated by Levitt.

Rotella’s account of how the suspects were apprehended also appears implausible. In May 2008, when the bombings were supposedly still weeks away, according to his story, the suspects realized they were under surveillance and tried to flee.

But instead of hiding or destroying incriminating evidence of their terrorist plot — such as the reconnaissance photos, the explosives, the cameras and the pistols with silencers — as might be expected under those circumstances, the two suspects allegedly packed all that equipment in their car and fled toward the border with Iran, whereupon they were intercepted, according to the official line reported by Rotella.

Somehow, despite the surveillance, according to anonymous “anti-terrorist officials” cited by Rotella, “a number of Lebanese, Iranian and Azerbaijani suspects escaped by car into Iran.” Only those with the incriminating evidence — including, most implausibly, hundreds of pounds of explosives — in their car were caught, according to the account given to Rotella.

Even Rotella’s description of the two Lebanese suspects, Ali Karaki and Ali Najem Aladine, as a veteran Hezbollah external operations officer and an explosives expert, respectively, should not be taken at face value, according to Valiyev. It is more likely, he said, that the two were simply spies working for Iranian intelligence.

Even the US Embassy report on the trial of the suspects suggested it also had doubts about the alleged plot. “In early October after a closed trial,” the reporting cable said, “an Azerbaijani court sentenced a group of alleged terrorists arrested the previous Spring and supposedly connected to Lebanese Hezbollah plot to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Baku AND the Qabala radar station in northern Azerbaijan” (emphasis in the original). It added, “In a public statement the state prosecutor repeated earlier claims that the entire plot was an operation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”

Yet another striking anomaly about the alleged plot was the fact that nothing was published about it for an entire year. No explanation for the silence was ever made public. This silence is all the more significant because during 2009 and 2010, the Israeli government either publicly alleged or leaked stories of Iranian or Hezbollah plots in Turkey and Jordan about which the host country authorities either did not comment on or offered a different explanation. But despite the extremely close relationship between Azebaijani and Israeli intelligence services (confirmed by this US Embassy cable), neither the Israeli media nor foreign journalists were tipped off to the plot until the Israelis leaked the story to Rotella a year later.[3]

The complete absence of any leak by the Israelis for an entire year about an alleged Iranian plot to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Baku casts some circumstantial doubt on whether such a plot had indeed been uncovered in 2008, as claimed in the article.

Despite the multiple anomalies surrounding this story — the complete lack of any publicly available corroborating evidence; the well-established penchant for the Aliyev government for using such alleged plots to justify rounding up domestic critics; the US Embassy’s apparent skepticism, his failure to consult independent sources; and the 2009 publication by the Jamestown Foundation of Valiyev’s own critique of the “official” version of the case — Rotella has shown no interest in clarifying what actually happened.  In fact, as noted above, he referred to the plot again in a July 2012 article for ProPublica as if there was not the slightest doubt with regard to its actual occurrence, identifying it, as he did in the original article, as an attempted retaliation for the assassination of a senior Hezbollah operative three months before:

Conflict with Israel intensified in February 2008 after a car bomb in the heart of Damascus killed Imad Mughniyah, a notorious Hezbollah military leader and ally of Iranian intelligence. Iranian Hezbollah publicly accused Israel and vowed revenge.

Within weeks, a plot was under way against the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan. Police broke up the cell in May 2008. The suspects included Azeri accomplices, a senior Hezbollah field operative and a Hezbollah explosives expert. Police also arrested two Iranian spies, but they were released within weeks because of pressure from Tehran, Western anti-terror officials say.[4] The other suspects were convicted.

As narrowly sourced as it was, Rotella’s original 2009 story thus helped make a dubious tale of a bomb plot in Baku part of the media narrative. More recently, he continued that pattern by promoting the unsubstantiated charge by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman and various pro-Israel groups and right-wing members of Congress, such as Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, that Iran poses a growing terrorist threat to the US in the Americas. While Jim Lobe has helped deconstruct that story line, I have recently marshaled evidence showing that Nisman’s charges about alleged Iranian involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing and the 2007 JFK airport plot were tendentious and highly questionable.

Photo: Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a dinner hosted by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in November 2010.

[1] In one illustration of Rotella’s and Levitt’s long-time symbiosis, Levitt cited Rotella’s account of the alleged Baku plot as his main source about the incident in a 2013 article on alleged Hezbollah terrorism published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC).

via IPS News

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman based his 2006 warrant for the arrest of top Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 on the claims of representatives of the armed Iranian opposition Mujahedin E Khalq (MEK), the full text [...]]]> by Gareth Porter

via IPS News

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman based his 2006 warrant for the arrest of top Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 on the claims of representatives of the armed Iranian opposition Mujahedin E Khalq (MEK), the full text of the document reveals.

The central piece of evidence cited in Nisman’s original 900-page arrest warrant against seven senior Iranian leaders is an alleged Aug. 14, 1993 meeting of top Iranian leaders, including both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then president Hashemi Rafsanjani, at which Nisman claims the official decision was made to go ahead with the planning of the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA).

But the document, recently available in English for the first time, shows that his only sources for the claim were representatives of the MEK or People’s Mujahideen of Iran. The MEK has an unsavoury history of terrorist bombings against civilian targets in Iran, as well as of serving as an Iraq-based mercenary army for Saddam Hussein’s forces during the Iran-Iraq War.

The organisation was removed from the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist groups last year after a campaign by prominent former U.S. officials who had gotten large payments from pro-MEK groups and individuals to call for its “delisting”.

Nisman’s rambling and repetitious report cites statements by four members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is the political arm of the MEK, as the sources for the charge that Iran decided on the AMIA bombing in August 1993.

The primary source is Reza Zakeri Kouchaksaraee, president of the Security and Intelligence Committee of the NCRI. The report quotes Kouchaksaraee as testifying to an Argentine Oral Court in 2003, “The decision was made by the Supreme National Security Council at a meeting that was held on 14 August, 1993. This meeting lasted only two hours from 4:30 to 6:30 pm.”

Nisman also quotes Hadi Roshanravani, a member of the International Affairs Committee of the NCRI, who claimed to know the same exact starting time of the meeting – 4:30 pm – but gave the date as Aug. 12, 1993 rather than Aug. 14.

Roshanravani also claimed to know the precise agenda of the meeting. The NCRI official said that three subjects were discussed: “The progress and assessment of the Palestinian Council; the strategy of exporting fundamentalism throughout the world; and the future of Iraq.” Roshanravani said “the idea for an attack in Argentina” had been discussed “during the dialogue on the second point”.

The NCRI/MEK was claiming that the Rafsanjani government had decided on a terrorist bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina as part of a policy of “exporting fundamentalism throughout the world”.

But that MEK propaganda line about the Ira nian regime was contradicted by the U.S. intelligence assessment at the time. In its National Intelligence Estimate 34-91 on Iranian foreign policy, completed on Oct. 17, 1991, U.S. intelligence concluded that Rafsanjani had been “gradually turning away from the revolutionary excesses of the past decade…toward more conventional behavior” since taking over as president in 1989.

Ali Reza Ahmadi and Hamid Reza Eshagi, identified as “defectors” who were affiliated with NCRI, offered further corroboration of the testimony by the leading NCRI officials. Ahmadi was said by Nisman to have worked as an Iranian foreign service officer from 1981 to 1985. Eshagi is not otherwise identified.

Nisman quotes Ahmadi and Eshagi, who made only joint statements, as saying, “It was during a meeting held at 4:30 pm in August 1993 that the Supreme National Security Council decided to carry out activities in Argentina.”

Nisman does not cite any non-MEK source as claiming such a meeting took place. He cites court testimony by Abolghassem Mesbahi, a “defector” who had not worked for the Iranian intelligence agency since 1985, according to his own account, but only to the effect that the Iranian government made the decision on AMIA sometime in 1993. Mesbahi offered no evidence to support the claim.

Nisman repeatedly cites the same four NCRI members to document the alleged participation of each of the seven senior Iranians for whom he requested arrest warrants. A review of the entire document shows that Kouchaksaraee is cited by Nisman 29 times, Roshanravani 16 times and Ahmadi and Eshagi 16 times, always together making the same statement for a total of 61 references to their testimony.

Nisman cited no evidence or reason to believe that any of the MEK members were in a position to have known about such a high-level Iranian meeting. Although MEK propaganda has long claimed access to secrets, their information has been at best from low-level functionaries in the regime.

In using the testimony of the most violent opponents of the Iranian regime to accuse the most senior Iranian officials of having decided on the AMIA terrorist bombing, Nisman sought to deny the obvious political aim of all MEK information output of building support in the United States and Europe for the overthrow of the Iranian regime.

“The fact that the individuals are opponents of the Iranian regime does not detract in the least from the significance of their statements,” Nisman declared.

In an effort to lend the group’s testimony credibility, Nisman described their statements as being made “with honesty and rigor in a manner that respects nuances and details while still maintaining a sense of the larger picture”.

The MEK witnesses, Nisman wrote, could be trusted as “completely truthful”.

The record of MEK officials over the years, however, has been one of putting out one communiqué after another that contained information about alleged covert Iranian work on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, nearly all of which turned out to be false when they were investigated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The only significant exception to the MEK’s overall record of false information on the Iranian nuclear programme was its discovery of Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility and its Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.

But even in that case, the MEK official who announced the Natanz discovery, U.S. representative Alireza Jafarzadeh, incorrectly identified it as a “fuel fabrication facility” rather than as an enrichment facility. He also said it was near completion, although it was actually several months from having the equipment necessary to begin enrichment.

Contrary to the MEK claims that it got the information on Natanz from sources in the Iranian government, moreover, the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reported, a “senior IAEA official” told him in 2004 that Israeli intelligence had passed their satellite intelligence on Natanz to the MEK.

An adviser to Reza Pahlavi, the heir to the Shah, later told journalist Connie Bruck that the information about Natanz had come from “a friendly government”, which had provided it to both the Pahlavi organisation and the MEK.

Nisman has long been treated in pro-Israel, anti-Iran political circles as the authoritative source on the AMIA bombing case and the broader subject of Iran and terrorism. Last May, Nisman issued a new 500-page report accusing Iran of creating terrorist networks in the Western hemisphere that builds on his indictment of Iran for the 1994 bombing.

But Nisman’s readiness to base the crucial accusation against Iran in the AMIA case solely on MEK sources and his denial of their obvious unreliability highlights the fact that he has been playing a political role on behalf of certain powerful interests rather than uncovering the facts.

Photo: Former UN Ambassador John Bolton speaking at a MEK rally in New York on Sept. 26, 2012. The MEK was taken off the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list after lobbying that included endorsements by former officials including Bolton. Credit: asterix611/Flickr 

by Robert E. Hunter

Edward Snowden has left Moscow for an “undisclosed location” in Russia, with a one-year freedom-of-the-country pass. The US government is naturally incensed with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To borrow a Russian phrase coined by Nikolai Chernyshevsky and plagiarized by V. I. Lenin, Что делать? (Chto delat), or, “what [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Robert E. Hunter

Edward Snowden has left Moscow for an “undisclosed location” in Russia, with a one-year freedom-of-the-country pass. The US government is naturally incensed with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To borrow a Russian phrase coined by Nikolai Chernyshevsky and plagiarized by V. I. Lenin, Что делать? (Chto delat), or, “what is to be done?”

Case Snowden is not an isolated event involving a felon who stole secrets that were properly and necessarily classified and willfully leaked them, knowing this would be detrimental to the country whose security he had sworn to protect. Nor is he a whistleblower who was rightly — in his view — trying to promote a national debate on things that have “gone too far.”

What is taking place is the coming together of two strands. And understanding context is necessary to understanding current events.

The first strand is the fact that “9/11” is now almost 12 years in the past, and, except for a few isolated instances — a shoe bomber, an underwear bomber, a nutcase in Times Square and the horrendous bombing at the Boston Marathon (not part of organized terror) — the United States has been more-or-less free from terrorism in the homeland. How much of that is due to the actions of US security institutions and personnel, no one can tell, but it’s probably considerable.

This very success has led to the attenuation of fear in the US about more terrorism here. Except for New York City, that fear hovers around like what scientists call “background radiation” — something that is always there but not worried about in our own lives. Furthermore, the average American has tuned out of the two wars that were spawned by 9/11, one that has been dubbed a “war of necessity” — Afghanistan, though that is a debatable proposition, beyond the initial spasm response in later 2001 — and the other “war of choice” in Iraq, which has helped create the mess in Syria and a general Sunni-Shite low-grade civil war throughout the center of the Middle East.

Against this background is questioning around whether a second look should be taken at the balance struck after 9/11 between “homeland security” and civil liberties, including the adequate and fair functioning of the US criminal justice system.

This questioning has had several parts, including the continued incarceration of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo; the use of military tribunals rather than civilian courts for Guantanamo inmates who have had trials; the holding of Private Bradley Manning in solitary for a long time before his court martial this month on multiple counts, including “aiding the enemy;” revelations about US spying on allies including the European Union missions in Washington and New York; surveillance activities by the National Security Agency, about which we still have been told very little; and even the appearance of NSA Director General Keith Alexander at the Black Hat  hackers’ conference in Las Vegas.

Case Snowden is only one element of this overall picture and is playing out against the failure of the US government to makes its case in public that its activities in the sphere of intelligence-gathering and protecting pass muster and are indeed needed to keep us all safe. Indeed, a Quinnipiac poll indicates that a majority of Americans surveyed believe that Snowden is just a whistleblower.

Strand two is in Russia. When the Soviet Union came to an end, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton worked hard to prevent the principal successor state, the Russian Federation, from being stigmatized as a loser: “Costa Rica with nuclear weapons.” For a long time, it was a country whose GDP was equivalent to that of the Netherlands, save for oil and gas, where Russia was bursting at the seams but which, any economist can tell you, made Russia a “rentier” state, able to sell stuff that comes out of the ground but not able to do much else. The Russian military even took five days to gain the upper hand in its 2008 mini-war with Georgia, a country well down the league table in military terms — simultaneously with the Beijing Olympics, which showed off an economic powerhouse.

Russia has also objected to US (and NATO) plans to extend anti-ballistic missile systems to part of Central Europe. The Russian elite has to know that this in no way would pose a threat to Russian offensive nuclear missile systems; at least part of Moscow’s objection must be due to the sense that, somehow, the US is taking advantage of its relative weakness. We can reject that reasoning but we should not just dismiss the possibility that it could be real psychologically and hence politically for the Russians.

Something we do have to take more seriously is Russia’s interest in being more directly engaged in the Middle East. In major parts, our interests are at least compatible; in others (Syria, and beneath the surface of a supposed agreement on Iran) far less so; and, in general, we have to deal with one another at a structured, strategic level, beyond the often episodic nature of current US-Russia relations regarding this region. Snowden is grist to this particular Russian mill.

Despite what Presidents Bush and Clinton tried to do to provide Russia with at least some (limited) role in the European strategic future, it was natural that the new Russia was portrayed negatively by a lot of people, some who had (legitimate) scores to settle with the Soviet Union. A lot of Americans did likewise; it even took 20 years for the US Congress to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which had been designed to encourage the Soviet Union to permit the emigration of Soviet Jews; and the US and others did not permit Russia until August 2012 to join the World Trade Organization, despite urging by some of us, then serving in the US government in the 1990s, to do this instantly — WTO membership criteria be damned. We urged this in order to help give the average Russian a sense that, despite having lost so much, their country could become engaged in the global economy, with benefits for their daily lives and thus perhaps helping to engender a more positive attitude toward working with the West.

The Clinton administration did the right thing in balancing NATO enlargement, designed to provide confidence to Central European states, with the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997; and the George W. Bush administration took a small added step at the Rome NATO summit in 2002. But there was still no real acknowledgement, whether earned or not, that, like Pinocchio, Russia had become a “real boy” in the international political and economic system.

Case Snowden also has come at a time when the US, in particular, has been objecting to certain human rights practices in Russia, including limits not just on non-governmental organizations that are exclusively Russian, but also those which have foreign ties, like the Carnegie Moscow Center and the German political party foundations. And there have been the show trials of people who have fallen out with Putin and his supporters. The US Congress has even passed condemnatory legislation, an ultra vires action if there ever were one — except that, as the principal successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia is still bound by the 1976 Helsinki Final Act, with its human rights and activities provisions, even within the territory of sovereign states.

Take me seriously, as well as my country, Vladimir Putin is saying; and surely most Russians agree. And given that the Snowden affair at least raises issues of “fairness” and “human rights,” Putin is enjoying the chance to play games with the United States. (Of course, Putin might have more serious business in mind, which may be detrimental to US and Western interests, and this needs to be tested).

These two strands — U.S. Post-Terrorism-Stress-Rebalancing and Putin/Russia’s search for a renewed place in the sun — come together and at least in part explain the current imbroglio in US-Russian relations over Edward Snowden’s fate.

Chto Delat?

Since even in the medium-term, neither Russia nor the US really has very much to gain by this continuing controversy except mutual headaches, some way out needs to be found.

The first thing is for the US to make clear that President Obama will take part in next month’s G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg and will not make the Snowden business hostage to his being there.  Of course, as host, Putin has a stake in helping the president save face. Experience from 33 years ago counsels this approach. President Jimmy Carter pursued a “Rose Garden Campaign Strategy” in 1980 because of the Iranian hostage crisis. It cost him at the polls. And the US boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This also cost Carter at the polls.

Step two is for both countries to lower the rhetoric and, at the same time, transition to grown-up diplomacy, with an aim to get this matter resolved by the time of the G-8 summit. From the US perspective, the objective should be Snowden’s either deciding to return voluntarily to face the music, or showing himself unwilling to take any responsibility for his declared ambition and goals as a whistleblower.

For the US to achieve this means doing things about the two strands, noted above. On the role of the US intelligence community and government secrecy, it means getting on top of the controversy now rather than later and coming clean about what it is doing and what it is not doing and what it is prepared to place off-limits in the future. That includes revisions to the secret FISA Court (one that might actually turn down more than a tiny handful of government requests for surveillance authority); coming clean with Congress and the public about surveillance activities that affect Americans (where some small steps toward reassurance have been taken); and creating a process with congressional and public participants to ensure that civil liberties will indeed be protected; in effect, to strike a new, valid and enduring balance between security and citizens’ civil liberties and privacy rights.

At the same time, the Justice Department, along with the security agencies, needs to make clear that if and when Snowden returns to the US, he will be properly tried in a civilian court with a limited number of charges directly related to the real damage he (allegedly) has done to US security. No “secret list” of supposed damage to national security, where US government credibility has suffered so much. No piling on of charges, with potential consecutive sentences that add up to multiple lifetimes. And no overreaching, which even the military judge in the Manning court-martial decided the government had done by charging him with aiding the enemy.

If Snowden is thus assured of a fair trial, maybe he would then come home. Certainly, Russia could not detain him. If instead he decided to remain a “man without a country,” he would lose in the court of public opinion. Further, the damage he can cause to national security has already been done; but a standard for whistleblowing could be reset, with reasonable protections for those who do see misfeasance and malfeasance, but no free pass for those who cross the line.

Then, about Russia. Here, Putin has as much of a role to play as the US. While we need to show that we respect legitimate Russian interests that are not in conflict with ours, Putin and company have to recognize that, to be taken seriously in the outside world, they have to play by the international standards that have been developing over the last half-century. Cracking down on foreign NGOs has to be beyond the pale, as well as trying and convicting dead people (Sergei Magnitsky) who have challenged Putin’s authority or who have had the temerity to try running for Mayor of Moscow next month as a Putin critic (Alexei Navalny). What’s the point of Putin’s doing all this? These actions, while “sending signals” to other Putin opponents, should be small beer for him compared with the needs of an aspiring great power to be taken seriously by other countries.

The “Snowden part” of this drama cannot be brought to resolution unless and until he decides that he will return home. The “Putin part” can be bought to resolution when grown-ups in Moscow and Washington get together and understand why the needs of their mutual relationship should not be held hostage to anything that is not genuinely important to one side or the other.

We shall see if both sides have the wit and wisdom to proceed in this way.

The globe-trotting travails of the fugitive Edward Snowden have given us an unexpected opportunity to hear from our senior intelligence officials about the necessity of their far-reaching surveillance program designed to protect us from terrorism. But as shown by the testimony of General Keith Alexander, the chief [...]]]> via LobeLog

by James A. Russell

The globe-trotting travails of the fugitive Edward Snowden have given us an unexpected opportunity to hear from our senior intelligence officials about the necessity of their far-reaching surveillance program designed to protect us from terrorism. But as shown by the testimony of General Keith Alexander, the chief of the National Security Agency (NSA), few details have been revealed about the actual threat we are facing. These details, we are told, need to be kept secret.

Yet we are awash in information about the terrorist threat from the media. To be sure, frightening images of enemies have always figured prominently for the United States in the conduct of foreign policy and national security. During the Cold War, the specter of godless communist hordes assaulting the ramparts of democracy served as a centerpiece for the American defense buildup and its strategy of containment. Ronald Reagan famously rode his “evil empire” metaphor to election victory in 1980 — while the Soviet Union slowly crumbled before our eyes.

Even if we hyped their claims, there is no getting around the fact that the Soviet Union threatened the United States and Western Europe with incineration courtesy of its thousands of nuclear weapons. This very real threat caused the United States to pursue various arms control initiatives with its bitter adversary — much to the annoyance of the neoconservative “cold warriors” who later re-emerged to lead the country into the disastrous war in Iraq.

The 9/11 attacks provided us with the pretext needed after the end of the Cold War to prop up another boogeyman — international terrorism — to replace the dreaded “red menace”.

Of course, the spectacular nature of the 9/11 attacks deeply and rightfully disturbed Americans. The images of crumbling towers with thousands of innocent people trapped inside seemed like an apt metaphor for a new age of unrestricted warfare pitting us against shadowy networks of terrorists armed with new, dastardly and unconventional weapons.

Much of the right-wing and its neoconservative acolytes eagerly seized upon the new boogeyman to justify a decade of war and targeted assassinations abroad while shredding the constitution by unleashing the NSA to listen to our phone calls, read our e-mails and cruise our Facebook profiles.

As usual, democrats cowered in fear, not wanting to be seen as “weak” on defending the country. Government officials, terrified of another Pearl Harbor attack on their watch, left no stone unturned in expanding the reach of the state — all in the name of protecting us from the new, 10-foot tall terrorist boogeyman. In essence, the Vietnam-generation that had once protested so vigorously against the abuse of state power in the 1960s consolidated the national security surveillance state — without so much as a shoulder shrug — as they took over responsibility for governing 40 years later.

But while America’s perception of the world changed on 9/11, the world pretty much remained the same.

The 9/11 attacks turned out to be an outlier and were not followed by a new age of mass casualty terrorist war. According to figures compiled by the Rand Corporation, an average of 341 people were killed annually in attacks attributed to international terrorism from 1985-2000; from 2001 through 2008, an average of 582 people were killed.

As noted in all of the databases collecting information on terrorism, the overwhelming number of terrorist incidents around the world occur in the context of local and/or national political disputes and are confined to a relatively small number of states including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, India, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. International terrorism is virtually nonexistent at this point. Regrettably, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have played a role in the prominence of terrorist violence in these locations.

According to the State Department, 12 Americans were either killed or wounded as a result of terrorist violence around the world in 2012. By contrast, over the decade of America’s wars abroad, 1,000,000 Americans were killed or wounded in the United States as a result of gun-related violence.

If the foreign policy establishment and its finger-wagging commentariat bothered to dig a little deeper, they would discover that terrorism is a comparatively minor form of international violence that is not a strategic threat to the United States or the international community.

They would also discover that the world is actually becoming a safer place, with a steady reduction in the number of interstate wars since 1990, continued declines in the numbers of people being killed in these wars, and the complete absence of wars between developed states following the end of the Cold War.

The world’s oceans are almost completely free of political violence and it is safer to board an airplane than it is to get into your car. Conflict, terrorism and international violence are phenomena associated with failed and/or failing states in the developing world.

Like the exaggerated claims of an impending Soviet takeover of the world in the 1980s, we need to view this issue for what it really is and reign in the urge to see terrorists lurking behind every corner. They are not the equivalent of the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Instead, we get bombarded with hysterical assertions of a dangerous and threatening global environment that is simply not supported by evidence. It is a canard being foisted on the public — one that obscures the actual and serious security challenges facing the United States and the international community.

We need leaders, columnists and citizens to discuss these central points. The discourse should be used as the basis for a national debate over our proper security posture.  The world has moved on — and we need to move along with it.

via The National Interest

The State Department released last week the government’s legislatively mandated annual report on international terrorism. There is no doubt what headline the administration hopes will be taken away from the release of the report, which covers the calendar year 2012. In a  by Paul Pillar

via The National Interest

The State Department released last week the government’s legislatively mandated annual report on international terrorism. There is no doubt what headline the administration hopes will be taken away from the release of the report, which covers the calendar year 2012. In a background conference call for reporters on Friday, Senior Administration Official One got immediately to the main message being pushed: that “one of the most noteworthy conclusions” in compiling the report was a “resurgence of terrorist activity by Iran and Hezbollah.” In fact, activity by Iran and Hezbollah was the only subject of the press backgrounder, and Iran and Hezbollah were treated as two peas in a pod that jointly account for this “alarming trend.” The other briefer, Senior Administration Official Two, joined in the messaging with gusto, warning anyone who might look at Hezbollah as a political actor that it is “a terrorist organization, and not just a terrorist organization, but a broad organization that is morally bankrupt to its very core.”

Most of the incidents involving Iran that were cited as part of the “resurgence” were a set of largely unsuccessful attacks against Israeli personnel early in the year in places such as New Delhi, Tbilisi and Bangkok. Nothing was said, in either the report or the backgrounder, about why Iran would perpetrate such attacks at that particular time against those particular targets. The failure to address that question is all the more glaring because the answer to the question is clear. The attacks were tit-for-tat terrorism in response to (possibly in addition to other attacks on Iran) the serial assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists—five to date, through early last year. The Iranians made the retaliatory nature of their own operations all the more obvious by even mimicking the method of attack used against the most recent scientist to die: an explosive attached to the victim’s vehicle.

The killings of the scientists were just as much acts of international terrorism as were the retaliatory Iranian attacks. The legal definition that defines terrorism for purposes of the State Department’s report is “premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” But don’t expect to find any mention of the assassinations in the report. They are not noted anywhere, including in the section on Iran or the section on Israel (which begins with the statement, “Israel continued to be a stalwart counterterrorism partner in 2012.”) The absence of any mention of the assassinations is certainly not due to any lack of awareness among U.S. officials about the international nature of the assassinations and who was behind them.

Terrorism is a condemnable, immoral activity, no matter where and when it occurs and no matter who perpetrates it. It should not be excused or overlooked no matter what stimulated or motivated it, what causes or objectives it was intended to advance, or what relationship one may have with the perpetrator.

Last week President Obama made a refreshingly sensible and honest speech about terrorism and the policies needed to cope with it. If any such policies are to have credibility, remaining terrorism must be called to account with honesty and consistency. This week the administration failed to do that.