Washington Post - Page 12

tx_ned · #**111** Monday, June 07, 2010

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 7, 2010

KABUL -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday forced out his spy chief and his interior minister, a surprise move that eliminates two key American allies as the United States deepens its engagement here.

The departure of Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and National Directorate of Security chief Amrullah Saleh will likely become an additional irritant in the already rocky relationship between Karzai and Washington.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said both officials were "people we admire and whose service we appreciate." Atmar, Morrell added, "was one of the ministers we cared about."

Atmar earned the esteem of many U.S. officials by taking steps to reform a ministry plagued by corruption when he came into the job early last year. The Interior Ministry oversees the country's fledgling police forces, whose training is a key focus of the 30,000 additional forces President Obama is deploying to Afghanistan.

Many of the newly deployed troops are being sent to Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the Karzai administration is trying to negotiate an armistice with the Taliban, a concept U.S. officials support in principle but are wary of in practice. Both resignations Sunday appeared linked to the prospect of talks.

Atmar and Karzai had clashed in recent months over Karzai's reconciliation efforts, a senior U.S. military official who worked closely with Atmar said.

"Atmar really disagreed with the reintegration of the Taliban into the police and the army," the official said. "He had some problems with it, and frankly, we agreed with him."

Atmar's name circulated as a potential presidential candidate last year, and he is widely known to have political ambitions.

Saleh has a close relationship with the CIA that dates to Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. A former senior U.S. intelligence official said Saleh may have disagreed with Karzai's efforts to release some Taliban figures as a demonstration of his willingness to negotiate. "I can see Amrullah objecting to that," the former official said. "He was tough. He had a very clear view about what was required for security."

The former official said Saleh's departure is a blow to the Afghan spy service and is likely to be viewed as a setback within the CIA. "I would have viewed it as very bad news," the former official said.

Saleh, an ethnic Tajik, was a member of the Northern Alliance, the political and military movement that fought the Taliban during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. As such, Karzai may have seen him as an obstacle in his efforts to persuade the Taliban to negotiate a ceasefire, said parliament member Khalid Pashtoon.

"Intel has a very important role in reconciliation," the lawmaker said. "Saleh was not the right person for this job. No Taliban would ever trust this man" to negotiate.

Karzai said in a statement that he lost confidence in both men after hearing their explanations of a security breach that permitted an attack on a large conference convened last week to discuss peace talks with the Taliban.

Atmar said Sunday night that he submitted his resignation after a three-hour meeting with Karzai during which the president grilled him and Saleh about Wednesday's attack. The attack -- which involved rockets and suicide bombers -- was thwarted, and no one other than the assailants was killed. It is highly unusual in Afghanistan for government officials to be forced out because of insurgent strikes, much less unsuccessful ones.

"Unfortunately, all of the explanations were not acceptable to the president, and that's why I presented my resignation," Atmar said at a news conference.

In his own news conference, Saleh hinted that there was more to the story. "There are tens of other internal reasons," he said, but he declined to elaborate.

Karzai, who was reelected last year amid allegations of widespread fraud, has made reaching a truce with the Taliban and other armed groups the key goal of his second term. Hours before disclosing the resignations, Karzai announced the formation of a committee to review the cases of prisoners held on flimsy evidence -- the first step to implementing recommendations from last week's conference.

Karzai said he appointed Deputy Interior Minister Munir Mangal as interim minister and Ibrahim Spinzada as the new spy chief.

Meanwhile, officials announced that five NATO soldiers, including four Americans, were killed in Afghanistan on Sunday. Three were killed in a vehicle accident in southern Afghanistan, the military said. The other two were killed in attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan, the military said.

Staff writers Craig Whitlock in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller in Washington and special correspondent Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.

tx_ned · #**112** Tuesday, June 08, 2010

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 8, 2010

BEIJING

On May 24 in a vast meeting room inside the grounds of the state guesthouse at Diaoyutai in Beijing, Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army rose to speak.

Known among U.S. officials as a senior "barbarian handler," which means that his job is to deal with foreigners, not lead troops, Guan faced about 65 American officials, part of the biggest delegation the U.S. government has ever sent to China.

Everything, Guan said, that is going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China. Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the United States. Guan accused the United States of being a "hegemon" and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China's nemesis, Taiwan -- Guan said these prove that the United States views China as an enemy.

U.S. officials have since depicted Guan's three-minute jeremiad as an anomaly. A senior U.S. official traveling on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's plane back to the United States dismissed it, saying it was "out of step" with the rest of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue. And last week in Singapore, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sought to portray not just Guan, but the whole of the People's Liberation Army, as an outlier intent on blocking better ties with Washington while the rest of China's government moves ahead.

But interviews in China with a wide range of experts, Chinese officials and military officers indicate that Guan's rant -- for all its discomfiting bluster -- actually represents the mainstream views of the Chinese Communist Party, and that perhaps the real outliers might be those in China's government who want to side with the United States.

Guan's speech underscored that 31 years after the United States and China normalized relations, there remains a deep distrust in Beijing. That the United States is trying to keep China down is a central part of the party's catechism and a foundation of its claims to legitimacy.

More broadly, many Chinese security experts and officials view the Obama administration's policy of encouraging Chinese participation in solving the world's problems -- including climate change, the global financial crisis and the security challenges in Iran and North Korea -- not as attempts to elevate China into the ranks of global leadership but rather as a scheme to enmesh it in a paralyzing web of commitments.

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"Admiral Guan was representing what all of us think about the United States in our hearts," a senior Chinese official, who deals with the United States regularly, said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter. "It may not have been politically correct, but it wasn't an accident."

"It's silly to talk about factions when it comes to relations with the United States," said a general in the PLA who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The army follows the party. Do you really think that Guan did this unilaterally?"

China's fear of the United States was very much on display this past weekend during the Shangri-La Dialogue, where Gates and his Chinese counterparts clashed repeatedly throughout the program.

Gates said it was unnecessary for the PLA to hold the military relationship hostage because U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are, "quite frankly, old news." The United States has provided military assistance to Taiwan since 1949, when the Nationalist government of China fled to the island after the Communist victory on the mainland; this assistance did not stop when Washington normalized relations with Beijing in 1979.

"You, the Americans, are taking China as the enemy," countered Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu. Zhu rose to prominence in China in 2005 after he warned that if the United States came to Taiwan's defense in a war with China, Beijing would abandon its "no first use" doctrine on nuclear weapons and attack the United States.

In January, Washington announced a $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan, prompting China to downgrade its military ties with the United States. China's stance on the issue is part of a concerted campaign to change a foundation of U.S. policy in the region -- its security relationship with Taiwan. At the very least, Chinese officials said, they want the Obama administration to reiterate a commitment it made in a joint communique with China in 1982 to decrease arms sales to Taiwan.

The U.S. framing of Guan's speech and the entire PLA as being out of step with the times is significant, analysts said, because the Obama administration could fall into a trap of expecting more from China than it can deliver. On the plane back to the United States, for example, U.S. officials predicted that despite Guan's outburst, China would welcome Gates and that it would also begin to side with South Korea against North Korea following the release of a report in Seoul implicating the regime of Kim Jong Il in the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26. China did neither, and interviews with PLA officers indicate that the military is highly suspicious of the South Korean report.

U.S. officials have also expressed the hope that China would work harder to press Iran, for example, to engage in talks on its nuclear weapons program. The United States also wants China's cooperation on slapping new sanctions on Tehran. China has shown more flexibility on this issue, but it is still unclear whether it will ultimately support sanctions.

Chinese analysts say the Obama administration ignores what China calls its "core national interests" -- especially U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan -- at its peril.

"For years, China has opposed arms sales to Taiwan among other things, but we were never strong enough to do anything about it," said Cui Liru, the president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank run by the Ministry of State Security. "But our national strength has grown. And it is time that the United States pay attention."

"This is not just a talking point that can be dismissed by your government," he continued. "It is something that must be dealt with or it will seriously damage ties."

tx_ned · #**113** Thursday, June 10, 2010

By Colum Lynch and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2010

UNITED NATIONS -- After several months of grueling diplomacy, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran's military establishment -- a move that the United States and other major powers said should prompt the Islamic Republic to restart stalled political talks over the future of its nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign ministers of allied nations asked the European Union's chief diplomat to pursue talks with Iran at the "earliest possible opportunity," and President Obama asserted that "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."

"We think that the sanctions send a kind of message to the entire Iranian leadership, which is quite diverse in their assessments and reactions, that there is still an opportunity for you to participate and to work with us," Clinton said after the 15-nation council adopted Resolution 1929 in 12-to-2 vote, with Brazil and Turkey casting no votes and Lebanon abstaining.

The diplomatic outreach was aimed at underlining the commitment of the United States and its allies to moving beyond punishment to cooperation with the Iranian government. But it also appeared calculated to shift the burden to Tehran to decide whether it will embrace negotiations with the United States and other key powers.

After Wednesday's vote, Iran's U.N. envoy, Mohammad Khazaee, sounded a similarly defiant note, saying the United States and its allies will "never be able to break our determination."

'Tough, strong'

Even as Washington pushed for resumed talks, American and European officials indicated that Tehran may face a new wave of sanctions by individual countries and regional blocs if its refuses to comply with measures adopted Wednesday.

Clinton, traveling in Latin America, told reporters that the United States would move forcefully to ensure enforcement of the sanctions, which she said would make it easier to "slow down and interfere" with Iran's nuclear program.

Still, the resolution fell short of the "crippling sanctions" that she had pledged to impose on Iran a year ago, and the Obama administration was unable to secure a unanimous vote at the Security Council, as the Bush administration did on other sanctions resolutions on Iran.

The administration did succeed in preserving support from China and Russia, although only after assuring them that the measures would not impair their ability to continue trading with Tehran.

"These are tough, strong and comprehensive sanctions that will be the most significant of all of the resolutions that imposed sanctions on Iran," Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview. "The fact that the Iranians have exerted so much effort and spent so much money to block this from coming into effect is one of several indications that they really don't want these sanctions adopted and enacted."

Pushback felt

The U.S. effort to rein in Iran's nuclear program encountered its first major pushback from regional powerhouses, Brazil and Turkey, which had negotiated a deal with Iran that involved the transfer of low enriched uranium. On Wednesday, Clinton and her allied counterparts vowed to seek to engage Iran in talks on the deal.

Brazil's U.N. ambassador, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, nevertheless, faulted the United States for prematurely abandoning the diplomatic track. Turkey offered a more measured response, saying that it recognized that the United States and its partners had legitimate concerns.

"Our vote against the resolution should not be construed as indifference to the problem emanating from Iran's nuclear program," said Turkey's U.N. ambassador, Ertugrul Apakan.

The resolution will reinforce a range of existing economic, high-technology and military sanctions against Iran, encourage states to pursue Iranian vessels suspected of transporting banned materials and strengthen the United Nations' capacity to monitor enforcement. It steps up pressure on banks and insurers to sever ties with Iranian entities linked to Iran's nuclear program. And it freezes the assets of various officials, including the head of the Iranian atomic energy agency, as well as of 40 entities tied to the nation's military elite.

The sanctions target 15 companies linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and Security, said the passage of the resolution represented an "important victory for the United States," in part because it strengthens the United States' negotiating position. He added: "This creates more pressure on countries, even China, to deny Iran the ability to buy sensitive equipment illegally."

But others disagreed. Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council expert on the Middle East, called the sanctions "substantively weak."

"There are a number of 'optional' sanctions, particularly with regard to financial services," Leverett said. "The net effect of these 'optional' sanctions, which will be pursued by the United States and some of its allies, but no one else, will be to reallocate business opportunities in Iran from Western states to China and other non-Western powers."

tx_ned · #**114** Friday, June 11, 2010

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 11, 2010

In announcing the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, President Obama stressed not once but twice Iran's increasing "isolation" from the world. This claim is not surprising considering that after 16 months of an "extended hand" policy, in response to which Iran accelerated its nuclear program -- more centrifuges, more enrichment sites, higher enrichment levels -- Iranian "isolation" is about the only achievement to which the administration can even plausibly lay claim.

"Isolation" may have failed to deflect Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it does enjoy incessant repetition by the administration. For example, in his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that "the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated." Two months later, Vice President Biden asserted that "since our administration has come to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated -- internally, externally -- has fewer friends in the world." At the signing of the START treaty in April, Obama declared that "those nations that refuse to meet their obligations [to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, i.e., Iran] will be isolated."

Really? On Tuesday, one day before the president touted passage of a surpassingly weak U.N. resolution and declared Iran yet more isolated, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran gathered at a security summit in Istanbul "in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States," as the New York Times put it. I would add: And calculated to demonstrate the hollowness of U.S. claims of Iranian isolation, to flaunt Iran's growing ties with Russia and quasi-alliance with Turkey, a NATO member no less.

Apart from the fact that isolation is hardly an end in itself and is pointless if, regardless, Iran rushes headlong to become a nuclear power, the very claim of Iran's increasing isolation is increasingly implausible. Just last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an ostentatious love fest in Tehran with the leaders of Turkey and Brazil. The three raised hands together and announced a uranium transfer deal that was designed to torpedo U.S. attempts to impose U.N. sanctions.

Six weeks ago, Iran was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a grotesque choice that mocked Obama's attempt to isolate and de-legitimize Iran in the very international institutions he treasures.

Increasing isolation? In the past year alone, Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Kabul, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Caracas, Brasilia, La Paz, Senegal, Gambia and Uganda. Today, he is in China.

Three Iran sanctions resolutions passed in the Bush years. They were all passed without a single "no" vote. But after 16 months of laboring to produce a mouse, Obama garnered only 12 votes for his sorry sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and Turkey and Brazil voting against.

From the beginning, the Obama strategy toward Iran and other rogue states had been to offer goodwill and concessions on the premise that this would lead to one of two outcomes: (a) the other side changes policy, or (b) if not, the world isolates the offending state and rallies around us -- now that we have demonstrated last-mile good intentions.

Hence, nearly a year and a half of peace overtures, negotiation, concessions, two New Year's messages to the Iranian people, a bit of groveling about U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup and a disgraceful silence when the regime's very stability was threatened by peaceful demonstrators.

Iran's response? Defiance, contempt and an acceleration of its nuclear program.

And the world's response? Did it rally behind us? The Russians and Chinese bargained furiously and successfully to hollow out the sanctions resolution. Turkey is openly choosing sides with the region's "strong horse" -- Iran and its clients (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas) -- as it watches the United States flailingly try to placate Syria and appease Iran while it pressures Israel, neglects Lebanon and draws down its power in the region.

To say nothing of Brazil. Et tu, Lula?

This comes after 16 months of assiduously courting these powers with one conciliatory gesture after another: "resetting" relations with Russia, kowtowing to China, lavishing a two-day visit on Turkey highlighted by a speech to the Turkish parliament in Ankara, and elevating Brazil by supplanting the G-8 with the G-20. All this has been read as American weakness, evidence that Obama can be rolled.

The result is succinctly, if understatedly, captured in Wednesday's Post headline "U.S. alliance against Iran is showing new signs of vulnerability."

You think?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

tx_ned · #**115** Sunday, June 13, 2010

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT
The Associated Press
Sunday, June 13, 2010; 10 : 20 AM

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's main spy agency continues to train, fund and arm the Taliban despite U.S. pressure to sever ties with the group that Islamabad helped rise to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, said a research report released Sunday.

The findings could raise tensions between Pakistan and the U.S., which has provided billions of dollars in military assistance to Islamabad since 2001 to help fight the Taliban. U.S. officials believe Pakistan's support is key to defeating the insurgency.

But the country's powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, continues to work closely with the Taliban and is even represented on the group's leadership council, said the report, which was issued by the London School of Economics and is based on interviews with Taliban commanders, former Taliban officials, Western diplomats and many others.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani army, which controls ISI, rejected the report, calling it "rubbish."

"In the past, these kinds of baseless and unsubstantiated allegations have surfaced and we have rejected them," said Abbas.

He pointed out that ISI has suffered many casualties fighting militants in the country.

The Pakistan military's campaign has been focused on Pakistani Taliban battling the state, not Afghan Taliban waging war against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Many analysts have suggested in the past that current or former ISI officials have maintained links to the Taliban. But the report offers one of the strongest cases that assistance to the group is official ISI policy, and even extends to the highest levels of the Pakistani government.

"Pakistan's apparent involvement in a double-game of this scale could have major geopolitical implications and could even provoke U.S. countermeasures," said the report, which was written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," it said.

One of the most surprising allegations in the report is that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and a senior ISI official visited some 50 high-ranking Taliban fighters this spring being held at a secret prison in the country and told them they were only arrested because of U.S. pressure.

Zardari reportedly told them they would be released and that Pakistan would help support their operations, according to a Taliban member who was one of around a dozen insurgents set free just three days after the president's visit.

Zardari's spokesman was not immediately available Sunday to respond to that claim.

"It is hard to see how the international coalition can continue to treat Pakistan as an ally and 'effective partner,'" said the report. "However, an aggressive American response to Pakistan's conduct is only likely to generate further instability, especially given the army's ongoing battle against Pakistani militant groups and widespread anti-American sentiment among the population."

tx_ned · #**116** Monday, June 14, 2010

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2010

KHOST, AFGHANISTAN -- They had spent up to two years in U.S. detention, and now freedom was theirs for the price of a thumbprint. Seven Afghan men, each accused of ties to insurgents, would be allowed to simply walk away if they would pledge before their village elders -- and on pieces of parchment prepared for the occasion -- that they would stay out of trouble.

All seven quickly left their mark on the documents. But had they truly reformed? One of them, asked to forswear violence before a crowd of Afghan elders and U.S. officers at a release ceremony in this eastern town, seemed to dodge the question.

"I am a Muslim, and I would never do anything against Islam," said the ex-detainee, a bearded 26-year-old named Yusouf.

The release, which included shiny new cellphones given as parting gifts, was another in a series of high-stakes experiments to find out whether the insurgency in Afghanistan can be broken by reintegrating former combatants into their communities, rather than holding them indefinitely.

In recent months, U.S.-run detention camps -- hated by many Afghans as symbols of occupation -- have undergone a transformation aimed at putting the more pliable detainees on a path toward reentering Afghan society. The main internment center at Bagram air base was closed late last year and replaced with a facility that features inmate gardening plots, a playground for visiting children and classrooms for teaching reading and math as well as trade skills.

Detainees deemed ready to be weaned from the insurgency are flown home for a formal release ceremony in which local officials and relatives accept responsibility for keeping them straight.

The new approach has its critics. Some current and former officers involved in Afghan detentions say they fear that many of the former detainees will quickly return to their old ways, even if only because the Taliban's pay is better. But of the scores of detainees released, only a fraction have been rearrested, U.S. officials say.

U.S. and NATO officials say they think the new strategy is the right one, despite the obvious risks. Before it closed, the detention camp at Bagram was a frequent target for criticism because of overcrowding and because -- according to some American commanders in Afghanistan -- it had become a breeding ground for extremism. Military officials acknowledged in interviews that reports of abuses at U.S. detention camps also had provided the Taliban with a powerful recruiting tool.

"You can't kill or detain your way out of an insurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, deputy commander of Joint Task Force 435, which was created last fall to oversee U.S. detainment operations in Afghanistan. "For us, reintegration is the new center of gravity."

New facility, approach

Until late last year, most suspected insurgents captured in Afghanistan were housed in a converted hangar known as the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, on the grounds of one of the largest U.S. air bases in the country.

Bagram, home to more than 600 detainees, had been tarnished by repeated allegations of abuse, including accounts of fatal beatings of two Afghan men in 2002. In recent years, American commanders had begun to question whether U.S. policies at Bagram were feeding the insurgency, rather than weakening it.

It was partly at the direction of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, now the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, that Bagram was ordered closed and another facility, known as Parwan, built at the edge of the airfield a few hundred yards away. Parwan can hold up to 1,000 inmates, and although it also has interrogation cells, guard towers and razor-wire fencing, it differs starkly from its predecessor.

A detainee review board assesses each inmate to determine whether he belongs there. Detainees alleged to have committed crimes are transferred to Afghan criminal courts, while a small minority of hardened terrorists -- perhaps 40 out of a population of 800 -- are kept indefinitely in the facility's maximum-security wing. But most of Parwan's population -- typically poor, illiterate young men who were drawn to the Taliban for financial, rather than ideological, reasons -- are placed on a track aimed toward release.

"Some of them are what we call 'accidental guerrillas,' " said Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, a blunt-spoken former Navy SEAL who commands Joint Task Force 435 and flew to Khost with the seven detainees for the release ceremony.

Detainees are given a first crack at the review board within 60 days of their arrival at Parwan, and their cases come up for periodic six-month reviews. The hearings are public events, and detainees are allowed to review evidence against them and to call on outside witnesses.

But Parwan offers more than a chance for freedom. More than any previous detention camp, the facility doubles as a trade school, offering detainees a chance to learn skills that could help them build a future and break their dependency on the Taliban. Detainees can learn to read and write, or study the Koran under the guidance of moderate mullahs, or master technical skills such as farm management, carpet-weaving and calligraphy. Detainees who take up tailoring lessons are given sewing machines to take with them after their release.

"We want these guys to have skills," Harward said.

Graduation day

By design, the release of a former inmate is packaged as a community event, sometimes witnessed by as many as 100 relatives and neighbors.

The release of the seven detainees drew about 60 people to a heavily fortified U.S. base on a hilltop overlooking Khost, near the Pakistani border. To arrive here, the men had to endure a plane ride -- the first for most of them -- in a windowless Air Force C-130. For 40 minutes, they gripped the sides of their mesh seats as the turboprop bucked and plunged over eastern Afghanistan until the sturdiest of them was airsick.

Hours later, shaky after the morning's bumpy flight, the detainees were led without handcuffs into a large conference room for the ceremony. Each wore a turban, black dress shoes and a gray salwar-kameez, the traditional suit worn by Afghans. Parwan officials had supplied the clothes, along with a care package of food, water and a first-aid kit.

By turns, the men put their thumbprints on a certificate in which they pledged to no longer take up arms against Afghan or coalition forces. Then they stood uncomfortably as a long line of Khost officials, relatives and neighbors filed into the room to give speeches and snack on grapes, bananas and vanilla cake, also supplied by the Americans.

A mullah offered a prayer, and the former detainees were embraced by each of the dozen or so bearded elders who were members of a reconciliation council or "shura" that would serve as guarantor against their return to violence.

The former detainees said little about their plans. One of them, Habibullah, 30, who had been detained for four months, reckoned he would reclaim his old job as a livestock vaccinator.

Yusouf, the man who had hedged when asked whether he would renounce violence, said he would try to find a shopkeeper's job, but he lamented that jobs in Khost were scarce.

Would he honor his pledge to stop fighting? Yusouf glared at his questioner with obvious irritation.

tx_ned · #**117** Wednesday, June 16, 2010

By MARK LAVIE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 16, 2010; 11 : 00 AM

JERUSALEM -- A participant says Israel's Security Cabinet has ended its session without a decision on easing the blockade of Gaza.

Officials said earlier Wednesday the Cabinet would likely ease the land blockade of the Palestinian territory to try to blunt international condemnation over Israel's deadly raid on a blockade-busting flotilla.

The Cabinet was considering allowing some currently banned goods into Gaza. But Israel is expected to maintain its naval blockade, which it says is needed to keep weapons from Gaza's militant Hamas rulers.

A meeting participant said the Security Cabinet would meet again Thursday, and a decision was expected. The participant and the Israeli officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel will significantly ease its bruising land blockade of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, officials said, in an effort to blunt the widespread international criticism that has followed a deadly Israeli commando raid on a blockade-busting flotilla.

Senior Cabinet ministers were meeting to limit restrictions on what gets into Gaza - materials Israel says militants could use in their battle against the Jewish state - to a short list of goods, some of them desperately needed by Gaza civilians.

But the Israeli naval blockade that was at the root of the deadly raid that prompted the international outcry will remain intact.

It also wasn't clear whether key raw materials for industry would be permitted to enter again and whether Israel would end its ban on Gazan exports.

The three-year-old embargo has shuttered hundreds of Gazan factories, put tens of thousands of people out of work and brought the territory's fragile economy to a standstill. Travel restrictions that confine most of Gaza's 1.5 million people to the territory are also likely to remain in effect.

Israel, with Egypt's cooperation, has blockaded the Palestinian territory by land and sea ever since Hamas militants, with a violent anti-Israel agenda, seized control of Gaza in 2007.

For the most part, only basic humanitarian goods have been allowed in.

Items such as cement and steel, badly needed to rebuild homes and businesses after Israel's war in the territory last year, have barely been allowed in. Israel says militants can use them to build weapons and military fortifications.

Under the new guidelines, those materials will be allowed in to an undetermined extent in coordination with the United Nations, but won't be freely available to private citizens, Israeli officials said. Restrictions on things like school supplies, books, computers and toys are expected to be lifted.

"It would be nice for Gaza residents to be able to receive previously banned items such as paper, toys and computers," said Sari Bashi, an Israeli activist whose Gisha rights group has been fighting to open Gaza's borders. "But Gaza residents need to be able to receive raw materials in order to engage in productive, dignified work."

The blockade was designed to keep out weapons, turn Gazans against their militant Hamas rulers and pressure the Iranian-backed Hamas to free a captive Israeli soldier. It did not achieve those aims, however, and both weapons and goods sold at black market prices continued to flow into the territory through a large network of smuggling tunnels built under the Gaza-Egypt border.

The blockade did not provoke an international outcry until Israeli commandos killed nine Turks two weeks ago in a raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that sought to draw attention to the blockade's effects.

With pro-Palestinian activists promising to keep blockade-busting boats coming, Israel has been scrambling to find ways to ease the embargo and its own growing international isolation.

Relaxing the restrictions on goods that go through Israeli-controlled land crossings is less complicated than easing the sea blockade. Israel is afraid that weapons ships will stream into Gaza if the naval blockade is lifted, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing that Israel would "not allow the establishment of an Iranian port in Gaza."

On Wednesday, a top Israeli security chief warned against lifting the sea blockade, saying that even international inspectors would not be able to keep Israel safe.

The Haaretz newspaper on Wednesday quoted international envoy Tony Blair as hailing the expected vote by the Israeli ministers.

"It will allow us to keep weapons and weapon materials out of Gaza, but on the other hand to help the Palestinian population there," Blair was quoted as saying. "The policy in Gaza should be to isolate the extremists but to help the people"

Blair represents the Quartet of Mideast negotiators - the U.S., European Union, U.N. and Russia.

tx_ned · #**118** Thursday, June 17, 2010

By Richard Cohen
Washington Post

Several years ago, I saw Edward Albee’s wonderfully inventive play “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” It’s about a man who falls in love with a goat, which sounds preposterous, I know, until either you see the play or watch what is happening in Washington. There, from time to time, we get a procession of scapegoats who take their lumps, usually in relative silence, and then go back from whence they came -- the Land of Oil, the Land of Auto, the Land of Finance -- and everyone feels better but almost nothing happens as a direct result. It is not even particularly good theater.

The other day, for example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee did its version of Albee -- without the sex, I must add. It lined up senior executives from four huge oil companies and let them have it. One congressman, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, suggested to Lamar McKay, president of BP, that he kill himself. “During the Samurai days, we’d just give you a knife and ask you to commit harakiri.”

Given that in all likelihood BP's rules and regulation (as amended) would require McKay to submit any plans to disembowel himself to the board (sect. 4b), the suggestion was clearly unhelpful. It was even more so since Cao prefaced his proposal by saying, “In the Asian culture, we do things differently.” Harikari, also known as seppuku, is Japanese in origin. As for Asian culture, there is of course no such thing. There should be no such thing as stupid sound bites, either.

Yet Washington persists. The most serious problems facing this great nation of ours are met with ridiculous, prepared sound bites -- one after another. The results are usually not what the congressmen expect. Not only do they not become instant heroes, but in sophisticated circles, they are deemed to be fools, and ordinary people lose whatever confidence they have left in the competence of congress. I have not met one person who knows anything about finance who was impressed with the grilling given to the chairman of Goldman Sachs by the normally astute Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). And the other day, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) told the aforementioned Mr. McKay that he should resign -- presumably before he kills himself, I would think.

The first literary goat was not Albee’s, but the Bible’s. It was the famous scapegoat, loaded with the sins of the people and driven off into the desert. This was tough on the goat and, in a day or so, did not do much for the people, either. This, of course, is what is happening with congress -- theater of the absurd and a chance for Albee to update his creation. Instead of having busy chief executives come to Washington to be used as fodder for sound bites, why not send one goat? It could sit, chew some paper or tin cans, and let the congressmen have their fun.

I’m in love already.

tx_ned · #**119** Friday, June 18, 2010

By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 18, 2010

President Obama warned world economic leaders in a letter this week that the global recovery could founder on growing divisions over issues they pledged a year ago to resolve cooperatively.

As a key world summit in Toronto approaches next week, Obama referred -- sometimes elliptically but still unmistakably -- to a lengthening list of disagreements among the G-20 group of nations, including China's overvalued currency and Europe's suddenly aggressive budget-cutting.

Instead of meeting in Toronto to review the progress made toward goals announced last year in Pittsburgh, when there was a buoyant mood of world cooperation, the coming session stands as a fresh reckoning.

"We meet at a time of renewed challenge to the global economy," Obama said in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post. He called on the G-20, which includes China, India, and major European nations and whose 20 members account for the bulk of world economic activity, to "reaffirm our unity of purpose" when "significant weaknesses" continue in several of the member countries' economies.

The debate over China is a long-standing one, but Obama's letter included sharp -- though veiled -- criticism of the country's failure to be more aggressive in reducing its reliance on exports. Rebalancing the global economy by reducing large trade surpluses in China and other export powers was a main goal agreed upon in Pittsburgh. But little progress has been made, and China has not allowed its currency to appreciate -- the one step many in the United States have awaited as a sign of good faith and a way for China to curb its exports by making them more expensive.

Obama's letter did not mention China by name, but he said he was concerned about "continued heavy reliance on exports by some countries with already large external surpluses . . . I also want to underscore that market-oriented exchange rates are essential to global economic vitality."

In the past year, China and other Asian powers have helped pull the global economy out of recession -- but have maintained the same export-led industrial and currency policies that have allowed them to sock away trillions of dollars in foreign currency reserves, a model that the International Monetary Fund and others have encouraged them to change to create a more balanced world system.

The differences with Europe have been stoked by the recent crisis over Greek government debt. Greece's problems led to broader concerns about slow growth and large deficits throughout the continent, and particularly among the 16 nations that share the euro.

That has prompted a surge in budget-cutting plans that the IMF has said are appropriate for the most indebted nations, such as Greece and Spain, but that risk undercutting recovery in countries where government debt is not as urgent a problem and growth remains tentative. France, Germany and England, the drivers of the European economy, have all announced austerity plans.

"I am committed to the restoration of fiscal sustainability," Obama said, "but it is critical that the timing and pace of consolidation in each economy suit the needs of the global economy, the momentum of private sector demand, and national circumstances." The United States is setting budget goals for 2013, for example, but in the interim "will pursue measures to support the recovery in private demand and return the unemployed to work," he wrote.

"This is not a time to take our foot off the accelerator here," said Vice President Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House. "We still need to continue to create jobs and spur job growth."

Europe and the United States are not totally out of synch. European leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday approved the public release of bank "stress tests" to help clarify the financial health of the continent's banking system -- a step the administration has urged and that Obama broadly referenced in his letter. And they have agreed on the general principles of financial reform, such as better regulation of derivatives trading and new levies on the financial sector to help pay the costs of the recent financial crisis.

But the Brussels meeting also highlighted the G-20's elusive hope for unity.

Where Obama's letter emphasized the need to ensure growth, a statement released by the European Union in Brussels spoke of the "major risks" posed if European governments don't quickly cut spending.

Where Obama wants to impose a new levy on only the largest financial institutions, the Europeans want to pursue a broad, global tax on all financial transactions. The statement said Europe "will strongly defend this position" in the G-20.

"If there is no consensus in the G-20, we go forward," E.U. President Herman Van Rompuy said in a news conference.

A senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president's letter to the G-20 leaders has not been publicly released said that despite the list of issues, the group is still striving for common ground.

"I think one of the noteworthy aspects of the last 18 months is that countries didn't just go their own way," the official said. "The crisis isn't over, there are vulnerabilities and there's more work to be done in each of these areas. And they will continue to work on that agenda together."

tx_ned · #**120** Monday, June 21, 2010

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 2010

GIZAB, AFGHANISTAN -- The revolt of the Gizab Good Guys began with a clandestine 2 a.m. meeting. By sunrise, 15 angry villagers had set up checkpoints on the main road and captured their first prisoners. In the following hours, their ranks swelled with dozens of rifle-toting neighbors eager to join.

Gunfights erupted and a panicked request for help was sent to the nearest U.S. troops, but the residents of this mountain-ringed hamlet in southern Afghanistan held their ground. By sundown, they managed to pull off a most unusual feat: They kicked out the Taliban.

"We had enough of their oppression," Lalay, the one-named shopkeeper who organized the uprising, said in recounting the late April battle. "So we decided to fight back."

U.S. diplomats and military officials view the rebellion as a milestone in the nearly nine-year-long war. For the first time in this phase of the conflict, ordinary Afghans in the violence-racked south have risen on their own to reclaim territory under insurgent control.

It is a turnabout that U.S. and Afghan officials were not certain would ever occur. One U.S. commander called it "perhaps the most important thing that has happened in southern Afghanistan this year."

Although Gizab had long been used by the Taliban as a rest-and-resupply area for fighters traveling to battlegrounds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, losing access to the area represents at best a tactical blow for the insurgency. It will not, by itself, change the course of the war. There is no indication that the defeat will have any immediate effect in violence-plagued areas such as Marja or the city of Kandahar.

But U.S. officials say they have heard concern voiced by Taliban commanders on intercepts of telephone conversations. Several rank-and-file fighters, and even a few mid-level leaders, have put down their weapons and reintegrated into the community. Residents of neighboring towns have told Gizab elders that they also want to rise against the insurgents.

"The Taliban thought this place was untouchable, and what the people here showed them -- and everyone else -- was that they could stand up and break free from that grip," said Brig. Gen. Austin S. Miller, the top U.S. Special Operations commander in Afghanistan. One of his Special Forces teams moved here after the uprising to train the self-appointed local guardians, whom the American troops christened the Good Guys.

The insurrection did not draw immediate attention in Kabul or Washington because Gizab is in a remote part of the country that has largely been ignored by the Afghan government and international military forces. But as word of what occurred here has trickled out, U.S. and Afghan officials have scrambled to understand how it started and how it can be replicated.

Conversations with Gizab leaders and Special Forces officers suggest that there was no single proximate cause. The uprising appears to have been the result of a combination of Taliban overreaching, U.S. encouragement and local resentment.

"We're looking for the patterns," said a State Department official in southern Afghanistan. "If we can find it, we'll be on the verge of a breakthrough."

People's revolt

The first wave of Taliban commanders moved into Gizab in 2007. The residents were initially acquiescent, and unemployed young men in the area were eager to sign up as fighters for hire. The police's presence was nonexistent.

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