The Times - Page 6

tx_ned · #51 Monday, June 21, 2010

Carl Mortished
June 21 2010

Afghanistan is a rich source of critical resources — an opportunity for the brave

Afghanistan is Hell on Earth, a place of ragged rocks and parched hills in which warlords and drug dealers duck and dive from helicopter gunships. Nothing good there, you might think, but according to the US Government, Afghanistan is not a wasteland but a treasure trove. A king’s ransom of valuable minerals lies beneath the rubble of war, say people in Washington, copper and iron ore worth hundreds of billions of dollars, gold, silver and exotic materials: cobalt used as a catalyst in refineries, niobium and molybdenum used to strengthen steel, beryllium used to make mirrors in space telescopes.

Even as President Obama rages against America’s dependence on crude oil, strategists in Washington are fashioning geopolitical models of a precarious new world of dependency on strange metals. Afghanistan is now part of a global jigsaw puzzle of critical resources. A study by the Pentagon and the US Geological Survey reveals the scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, a resource far greater than believed. There are big reserves of lithium, a metal used in rechargeable batteries — the power source in laptops, mobile phones and electric cars. So large are the deposits that a Pentagon memo concludes, without apparent irony, that Afghanistan could become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

Out goes oil, in comes lithium. It could be the critical mineral in an electric world. But not just yet. Whatever the President says or the green lobby believes, America will be sucking at the teat of Opec for the next half century, and probably much longer. Lithium is not currently in short supply, says Roskill, a metals consultancy. Known reserves total more than 30 million tonnes, the lion’s share in Bolivia, while Chile is the world’s biggest producer. We consume 100,000 tonnes of it per year, but if only a tenth of new cars were battery powered, demand would double.

The Pentagon papers suggest that Afghanistan is a trillion-dollar mineral play, a bet on the resources that will power the new economy, right in the middle of a war zone. A Chinese consortium has already secured a contract to mine copper south of Kabul, and the Afghan Ministry of Mines is holding an investor roadshow next week in London, touting its wares to mining prospectors.

It’s an opportunity for the brave or the reckless. One that might entice a Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan the low-life soldier adventurers in Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. The two men agreed a “contrack” to neither touch liquor nor women until they had become “kings of Kafiristan”. They came to a bad end, but in Washington metals are seen as Afghanistan’s big opportunity. Just as oil might resurrect Iraq, goes the thinking, a motherlode of ore might pay for the war against the Taleban and pump-prime reconstruction.

Unfortunately, this is not really about markets; it’s about carving up the world into client states and securing supply routes, with gunboats if necessary. Oil has always been like this. It is no accident that Shell was originally a shipping company. Ever since the Rothschild and Nobel families began to buy lamp oil in Baku on the Caspian Sea, oil has been less about marketplaces than about the control of supply routes. The battle for access to oil has afflicted so many nations with conflict and corruption that we pray for oil’s demise.

We need to wake up, get down and dirty and feel the grimy ore under our fingernails. These are the minerals of mass destruction: coal, oil, uranium that stokes nuclear power stations, lithium for batteries and countless minerals that make the guts of communications technology. Afghanistan is a useful lesson, as is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where China is in headlong pursuit of the cobalt and copper resource in Katanga. China is buying control over resources in the former Congo, in Nigeria, in Canada and in Afghanistan.

Were Kipling alive today, Iraq or Afghanistan would hold no surprises for him. He might find his Daniel Dravot seeking fame and fortune: “In any place where they fight, a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King.”

tx_ned · #52 Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Nick Parker
June 22 2010

The death of the 300th British soldier in Afghanistan must not cloud our judgment

As the cost of our commitment is marked by this sad milestone, it is important to remember that every fatality in Afghanistan is terrible for family, friends and fellow soldiers; this is just as true for the first as for the 300th of our fallen. Nor must we forget those who have suffered life-changing injuries. It is self-evident that, for those intimately connected with these heartbreaking events, there can be little consolation, and at a personal level I very much doubt that the sacrifice of their loved ones can ever be “worth it”.

But conflict is tough. There will be casualties and if we cannot see beyond the personal grief that surrounds every fatality, we risk making poor judgments. The consequences of this would be even more tragic — and not just for those who pay the ultimate price. The plan for Afghanistan is on track and now is the time to hold our nerve.

As you think of our men and women serving in Helmand, please remember that they do not want sympathy — they are enormously proud of their collective endeavour. But what they do need and want is the continued support of the public.

Our commitment to Afghanistan has lasted just under nine years. Success has been hard won and progress can seem slow, but we are at a critical moment and we need steady nerves and clear thinking.

General Stanley McChrystal’s arrival in Afghanistan has brought a new approach and a sense of optimism to the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf). He has reinvigorated operations by focusing on protecting the population. We must respect Afghan sovereignty and hand them back full responsibility for their country as soon as practical. Our plan focuses on undermining the insurgency where it is at its strongest and this is supported by a significant increase in US and Nato troops.

As the insurgents see the Afghan National Security Forces maturing and taking over from international forces, Afghan-led security will become a credible prospect. But, we will not achieve it without continuing sacrifice. For Isaf, this will be a hard summer.

Security will provide the platform on which to build sustainable success. While we are still challenging the insurgency on the periphery of the populated areas, in Nad-e-Ali in central Helmand, British Forces are working closely with the Afghan Army and police. There is real evidence of improved security. Community councils have been elected that represent the views of previously disenfranchised people to a dynamic and effective district governor. The bazaar is thriving and the road to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, is secure and enables free movement and trade.

But this is not a conventional war and improved security will not be decisive. Success must come from a combination of the international community’s commitment to long-term aid, building the credibility of the Afghan administration and a coherent political approach that will stop the conflict when conditions are right.

President Karzai’s trip to Washington last month set the conditions for a long-term plan, founded in a strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the US that will be developed this year. This, coupled with the vital investment of other international partners including the UK, will underwrite Afghanistan’s future. It provides the “prize” of enduring support to a normal, developing country.

The credibility of the Afghan administration is also key. The Government’s ability to influence events outside Kabul is limited and its bureaucracy is fragile. Our task is not to run roughshod over its emerging capability, but to respect Afghan sovereignty. We must accept Afghan leadership and solutions and the international community’s approach must be better co-ordinated and aligned . The appointment of Mark Sedwill as Nato’s senior civilian representative has helped to integrate the Isaf plan with international community efforts, but this area still demands plenty of attention.

The most important ingredient of success is an aggressive political strategy that can build on the improving security. It should draw further strength from improvements in governance and development and a sense of the inevitability of progress.

This is not, conventionally, a soldier’s business, but it is something that we all depend on if our efforts are to be exploited effectively. The Prime Minister has said that we are six months into an 18-month strategy; the security element of that strategy is now well set to support the other actors who will play a part in resolving the conflict.

Lieutenant-General Nick Parker is Deputy Commander of Isaf and Colonel Commandant of the Rifles

tx_ned · #53 Wednesday, June 23, 2010

McChrystal Balls
June 23 2010

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has a reputation as the most disciplined soldier of his generation, and one of the brightest. The asceticism of his daily life, to keep himself ready for any threat, is now legendary: an eight-mile run, only one meal and just four hours sleep. It is understandable, then, that yesterday’s revelations stunned Washington — and Kabul. The general had so far forgotten the cost of careless talk that he had griped about the President and senior White House officials to a freelance reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, and over the course of some days, allowed his aides to do so too.

The most abusive remarks, such as calling General Jim Jones, National Security Adviser, “a clown”, came from unnamed aides. So did a description of the first meeting between President Barack Obama and General McChrystal, at which the general is said to have found the President unprepared and disappointing. But General McChrystal himself complained that he could not face opening another e-mail from Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy, and that he had felt “betrayed” by a leaked critique of his strategy from Karl Eikenberry, US Ambassador to Afghanistan. He is sharply critical of the President for taking three months last year to decide to send more troops. His tone towards his civilian counterparts is one of exasperation, sometimes contempt.

The overall portrait is devastating: that senior military commanders are mockingly critical of top officials in Washington, and of the President himself. That rings true, from many reports.

Clearly, General McChrystal was guilty of extraordinary folly. There is no virtue in banning Pizza Hut from US bases, as he has done, to keep his soldiers trim and remind them that they are in a war zone, nor in producing 100-page analyses of the enemy, if you cannot spot the threat in giving a magazine access to all your senior officials in informal settings. But even General McChrystal’s warmest supporters (and there are many) never credited him with skill in public relations. One general close to the President told The Times, with affection, that “Stan McChrystal is probably the best pure soldier that America has produced for years. But he’s been living in a Special Forces bubble for decades, he can’t deal with the media.”

President Obama has summoned General McChrystal to the White House this morning. His spokesman refused last night to confirm that the general’s job was safe. The Commander-in-Chief is fully entitled to give his general a dressing-down, for insubordination and for poor judgment. But it would be a profound mistake to fire him.

General McChrystal, the architect of the “surge” of US troops now reaching its peak, has produced the first coherent Afghan military strategy. That has enabled Nato to put more effort into building alliances, and into encouraging good government. To withdraw him now would be to throw away hard-won gains at a crucial point.

It would also be to dismiss the weight of his criticism. Many of his gripes are legitimate. President Obama took too long to decide on the surge. General Eikenberry was indeed covering his back from criticism. Mr Holbrooke has often behaved like a loose cannon. The White House is not at ease with the military. McChrystal was foolish, and rude, but he was right. President Obama should listen to the wake-up call from Kabul.

tx_ned · #54 Thursday, June 24, 2010

Obama’s decision to replace the US commander in Afghanistan places political considerations ahead of military ones

June 24 2010

“By some accounts,” reports a profile in the current issue of Rolling Stone, “McChrystal’s career should have been over at least two times by now.” That same profile is the reason why General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato’s forces in Afghanistan, tendered his resignation to Barack Obama on Tuesday, and why, yesterday, the President accepted it. Third time unlucky.

With his well-publicised eight-mile runs, four hours’ sleep and special forces background, General McChrystal styles himself as an ascetic warrior monk, but also seems to have a vain eye for his own myth. The most damaging comments were all made by the general’s aides, not the man himself. But they did display an abrasive culture of disrespect for the Commander-in-Chief and his civilian Administration. General McChrystal’s inner circle would appear to have been dangerously close to forgetting for whom they fight, and why.

All of this is reason enough for the general to have offered his resignation. But President Obama should not have accepted it. In doing so, he appeared prepared to sacrifice military success on the altar of political expediency. General McChrystal is the author of the troop surge in Afghanistan, and the driving force behind recent efforts to avoid civilian casualties. This is not only the most coherent and enlightened battle plan that this messy war has yet produced. It is also America’s best hope of extracting itself in anything approaching the timetable that Mr Obama has set.

The general himself, it is true, does not emerge from this profile as a particularly enlightened figure. His gung-ho dedication to his work is such that he has spent fewer than 30 days with his wife in any year since the start of the Iraq war. His language is crude, and his assessment of others, even his superiors, is blunt. He has a habit of arriving, unannounced, in the bullet-ridden trenches of infantrymen. His men adore him.

The criticisms vented by the general and his aides are the criticisms that soldiers make of politicians. Joe Biden, the Vice-President, is derided as unrealistic; Karl Eikenberry, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, as overly concerned with his own reputation; President Obama himself as militarily inexperienced. Moreover, these and other criticisms are not without merit. General Jim Jones, a Cold War veteran, may indeed be “stuck in 1985”. It is not unreasonable to liken Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative to Afghanistan, to “a wounded animal”, thrashing around because he fears for his position. Much as these remarks should not have been made in public, the President must listen to them.

Similarly, Mr Obama must consider the bigger picture, and ask himself whether the McChrystal plan, impressive as it is, is actually working. The fear must be that Washington is too concerned about the relationship between civilian and military authority, and not concerned enough about the challenges faced by troops on the ground.

The United Kingdom is not a disinterested onlooker in all this. Much British blood has been spilt in Afghanistan as a significant part of the Isaf coalition. Its deputy commander is the British Lieutenant-General Sir Nick Parker. Until yesterday he worked hand in glove with General McChrystal. This episode serves as an unhappy reminder of the extent to which our Forces are tied to the fortunes of a troubled US president.

The only silver lining to this sorry cloud is the appointment of General David Petraeus as General McChrystal’s replacement. This is a political masterstroke by Mr Obama (the general is tipped by some Republicans as a future presidential candidate himself) but also a sound military decision. General Petraeus was the architect of the 2007 troop surge that snatched triumph from stagnated disaster in Iraq. It is to be hoped that he can pull off the same trick again.

tx_ned · #55 Friday, June 25, 2010

Australia’s deposed Prime Minister lost authority through economic populism

June 25 2010

The Labour Party in Britain shies instinctively from replacing a leader — such as Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock or Gordon Brown — who has scant prospect of winning a general election. Its sister party in Australia does things less sentimentally. Despite having won a sweeping election victory in 2007, Kevin Rudd was ousted yesterday as Prime Minister by his own party. Julia Gillard, Mr Rudd’s Welsh-born successor, is now Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

The brutal efficiency of Mr Rudd’s overthrow shows a party hungry for government and thus turning on a leader who had lost authority. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) acted swiftly to preserve its position by ridding itself of an unpopular leader, in the way that the British Left ought to have done after 2007 but did not. The wider issue, which is important in the election for Labour leader in the UK as well as to Australian policy, is the extent to which a party of the moderate Left will come to terms with the limits of government.

Mr Rudd enjoyed strong approval ratings as late as this year. His Government responded capably to the financial crisis and recession. Committed to Australia’s contribution to the war in Afghanistan, Mr Rudd projected competence and moderation. Yet his poll ratings suddenly collapsed. One reason was the blow to his authority when, having advocated a carbon-emissions trading scheme to combat climate change, he suddenly abandoned it in the face of opposition in the Senate, Australia’s Upper House. Still more damaging was his adoption of a crass measure of economic populism: a supertax on the profits of mining companies.

Mr Rudd maintained that prolonged strength in commodity prices had enriched the mining companies but that the Federal Government had not received a fair share of the profits. It was a perverse argument. The resources boom enabled Australia to accumulate budget surpluses. Unlike the UK, Australia thus entered the recession with the scope to ease fiscal policy sharply without prompting concerns about the sustainability of the resulting deficit. Mr Rudd, therefore, singled out for discriminatory treatment an industrial sector whose buoyant corporate tax receipts had supported Australians’ standard of living.

The tax failed to recognise the cyclical character of mining companies’ profits, threatened the returns to shareholders and compromised Australia’s image as a place where companies can do business free from arbitrary political interference. If a company fears that the fruits of its investment may be expropriated by government, then it will defer or scale back its investment programme — which is how the mining companies responded.

There was no election for the party leadership yesterday; Ms Gillard had secured the support of her colleagues, and Mr Rudd recognised that his time was gone. The ALP will hope that Ms Gillard, a polished parliamentary performer, will prove electable in a way that Mr Rudd had ceased to be.

But the issues involved are wider than the personalities alone. There is a longstanding division on the centre-Left between those who accept the market economy as an efficient means of wealth creation, and those who regard the generation of profits as intrinsically unjust. Mr Rudd surprisingly failed to observe that distinction. Populist attacks on the corporate sector are always bad economics; fortunately, they are bad politics too.

tx_ned · #56 Saturday, June 26, 2010

The results of gatherings of the G8 usually fall short of the expectations generated in advance. That does not mean they are a waste of time

With domestic politics dominated by rapid and severe cuts to public services, it is appropriate that David Cameron’s first G8 summit should be in Muskoka, Ontario, to be followed by the G20 in Toronto. Canada, after all, has become the global exemplar of fiscal consolidation. After a week of austerity at home, Mr Cameron now turns his attention to the global economy, to the reform of banks and to trade between nations.

In an article for The Globe and Mail, the Canadian daily, Mr Cameron sounds less than wholly desperate to be there. International summits ought to deliver concrete results, he said. They need to be “more than just grand talking shops”. It is true that the results of G8 and G20 summits usually fall short of the expectations generated by the preceding rhetoric. The great victories proclaimed at Gleneagles in 2005 (money for peacekeeping in Africa, action to combat HIV/Aids, malaria and TB, springing African nations from debt traps) have hardly all been realised. In Hokkaido in 2007, G8 leaders pledged to tackle climate change, something they conspicuously failed to enact in Copenhagen. In L’Aquila last year the G8 turned out not to solve environmental reform, the digital divide or organised crime.

There is also a set of questions that are raised in the prelude to every meeting whose very repetition suggests progress from these summits is, at best, glacial. No G8 summit is complete without a demand for better global governance and for the multilateral institutions to expand their membership. The G13, which includes China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, does at least have the important emerging economies.

Mr Cameron is also right, in his article, to stress that so many of the hopes vested in G8 summits actually require singular action from national governments. The vaulting ambition of the Gleneagles summit in 2005 to make poverty history did, of course, make demands of multilateral trade and aid policy. But no serious progress was ever possible in the absence of sound institutions, enforceable property rights and the writ of law in nation states that have been so poorly governed.

So, even though international summits have achievements to their credit — the G20 meeting in 2009 in London, for example, helped to coordinate action on the global economy — Mr Cameron is right to say that the G8 is usually a talking shop. Where he may be wrong, though, is to imply that this is a bad thing. The opposite may be worse. The G8 has no official secretariat, no permanent staff, no headquarters and no executive power to enforce its conclusions, all undesirable functions it would need if it were to become more than a talking shop. As it is, this year’s hosts are spending C$1.2 billion to stage the event, including construction of an artificial lake with mock canoes.

Besides, being a location for conversation is a strong justification of international summits. In Canada, Mr Cameron will meet President Obama, President Medvedev of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China. A private conversation with Mr Obama will follow today, Mr Cameron’s first meeting with the US President since taking office. At a moment when the most senior American soldier in Afghanistan has just been sacked, and when a British company is desperately trying to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, having a date in the diary with Mr Obama is no small matter.

The agenda in Canada also returns the G8 to its raison d’être. It began, in 1975, as a place where France, Germany, Britain and the US could discuss common economic issues. It also had a Cold War function — to include Germany and Japan, the two capitalist nations excluded from the UN Security Council. In recent times the G8 has become a forum for idealism. A small measure of progress in fixing the broken economies of the world would make Canada the best G8 of recent years.

tx_ned · #57 Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Israelis are being trained to board the Mariam, which is being loaded with humanitarian supplies at the Lebanese port of Tripoli

Uzi Mahnaimi
27 June 2010

A unit of female Israeli army cadets was undergoing specialist training by elite commandos last week in preparation for a showdown at sea with an all-women Lebanese peace ship due to sail for Gaza.

The Israelis, all conscripts aged between 18 and 20, are being trained to board the Mariam, which is being loaded with humanitarian supplies at the Lebanese port of Tripoli before running the Israeli blockade.

Israel is determined to avoid another public relations fiasco following the boarding of the Turkish passenger ferry Mavi Marmara last month, in which nine activists died. It plans to use commandos to stop the Mariam and divert it to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where its cargo will be taken by road to Gaza. It hopes the all-women boarding party will minimise bad publicity.

Witnesses at the commandos’ Mediterranean base near Haifa in northern Israel reported that hardened members of the “shayetet” (the flotilla), who are more familiar with secret cross-border missions, appeared bemused by their young charges. Young women could be seen being taught to handle speedboats, prepare for emergencies at sea and clamber on to larger ships.

“The commandos are confused,” said one source. “These frogmen are trained to carry out sensitive military missions. Last month they were sent to deal with the Turkish civilians. Now they’re asking them to deal with ladies, and all of it live on television.”

The Mariam (Mary in Arabic) will fight its side in the propaganda war over Israel’s three-year siege of Gaza by carrying on board Haifa Wehbe, 34, a former beauty queen and one of the Arab world’s best-known pop singers.

Interviewed on Arabic news channels last week, Wehbe appeared close to tears as she announced her intention of joining the ship, declaring: “I’ve already prepared my will. This is a serious matter.”

Under pressure from the United States, the Lebanese government has so far refused permission for the Mariam to set sail. Another aid ship, the Naji al-Ali, is also preparing to carry journalists and members of the European parliament in defiance of the blockade.

The Israeli government appears to be most worried at how to handle the all-female crew. “They are better than us at this business of public relations,” said a defence source. “Maybe girl soldiers will let us finish off this business in a more elegant way.”

tx_ned · #58 Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Afghanistan is the Prime Minister’s conflict and he needs to clarify his aims over commitment and exit strategy

June 30 201

Yesterday, on the day that General David Petraeus appeared before the Senate to seek approval as General Stanley McChrystal’s replacement as commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan, the bodies of seven British servicemen were being brought home. The number of US-led troops killed this month has reached 100, making it the single deadliest month for the forces since the 2001 invasion.

This is now David Cameron’s war. He inherited the conflict, but difficult, urgent decisions now fall to him. He must rapidly explain to Britain the role that he intends it to take. He has made a very public about-turn on the budget deficit, on cuts and on spending. Afghanistan is no less fundamental. He must be just as direct in telling Britons — and Afghans — what he would define as success.

This war, and the strategies crafted to fight it, have changed form many times in nine years, and again in the past few months. Not only has General McChrystal gone, fired for insubordination by President Obama last week. There are also serious doubts about whether the surge that he devised, and his policy of “courageous restraint”, will succeed. One test was supposed to be a fall in military casualties. That test has not yet been met, although a military drive to consolidate control of Kandahar is planned for the autumn.

The Prime Minister has already begun to put far more emphasis on British national security than Afghan development in the way that he describes the mission. He is also beginning to narrow the definition of who the enemy is. Mr Cameron said on Monday that there was a “huge difference” between parts of the insurgency linked to al-Qaeda and its ideology, and “in some parts of Afghanistan, an insurgency based on the way particular tribes have been dealt with”.

There is new animation, in London and Washington, behind the notion of talking to the Taleban. That is a significant shift. General McChrystal and General Petraeus both appear to believe that such talks will offer more promise if the Taleban are militarily weakened first. But when the autumn push is over, and the Dutch and Canadians have pulled their forces out, the question of a negotiated settlement will be very live indeed.

Pakistan, whose stability is linked to that of Afghanistan, is both a complication and a possible source of help. Some senior Pakistani officials and military officers appear to have been conducting their own investigations into whether they can insert certain Taleban into a future Afghan government. Their calculations will be affected by their impressions of how long other countries will stay, and whether the Kabul administration now supported by Britain and the US will retain power after withdrawal.

The pressure on elected leaders to give dates for withdrawal risks undermining Pakistani support and that of key Afghans. That dilemma lay at the heart of General McChrystal’s abrupt exit; Mr Obama gave him the surge of troops, reluctantly, but insisted they would start coming home next year. On Monday, Mr Cameron told the Commons that he wanted forces to be home by the general election due in May 2015. “We can’t be there for another five years”, he said, “having been there for nine years already.” Yet he must make it clear to what extent he will take control of the timetable if the Americans disagree.

The Prime Minister does not entirely share the views of his generals on the ground, as The Times’s series this month showed. He needs to be explicit about what those differences are, and whether he thinks that long-term reconstruction is no longer feasible. He must be blunt about what Britain wants from this war, and how to get it — and where this differs from the US position. For this is not just America’s war, it is Britain’s.

tx_ned · #59 Thursday, July 01, 2010

Nico Hines,
Washington
July 1 2010

Al-Qaeda has launched its first English-language propaganda magazine designed to encourage would-be terrorists into acts of violence.

The online publication, apparently aimed at British and American readers, includes features such as ‘Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom’. However, the magazine suffered an inauspicious launch – with only the first three of the 67 pages legible due to an apparent computer glitch.

Until now, al-Qaeda has relied on Arabic websites to carry its message, but Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar and former CIA officer, said the new magazine was intended to build on recent success in the radicalisation of Western citizens.

“[It] is clearly intended for the aspiring jihadist in the US or UK who may be the next Fort Hood murderer or Times Square bomber,” he said. “The trend we’ve seen in the last year and a half is less global terrorism and much more homegrown domestic terrorism within Muslim communities.”

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical US-born cleric living in Yemen, is thought to be behind the publication called Inspire. US authorities say his online sermons, given in English, have already inspired several terrorist plots in America.

The 39-year-old propagandist is said to have helped inspire three of the 9/11 hijackers; the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre last year; the Christmas Day underwear bomber and the failed Times Square bomber.

The first edition of the magazine, published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, includes an article by Mr al-Awlaki entitled ‘May our souls be sacrificed for you’, as well as “a detailed yet short, easy-to-read manual on how to make a bomb using ingredients found in a kitchen”.

It also contains part one of a treatise on ‘What to expect in Jihad’ and translated messages from Osama Bin Laden on “how to save the earth”, and his second in command Ayman Al-Zawahari.

Anwar al-Aulaqi, another US citizen now working under the al-Qaeda umbrella in Yemen, is also featured. Michael E Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said yesterday that Mr al-Aulaqi was suspected of being directly involved in the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the son of a Nigerian banker, who tried to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day last year.

Alongside the didactic invocation of violence, the magazine appealed for user generated content. “We also call upon and encourage our readers to contribute by sending their articles, comments and suggestions to us,” the editors wrote in the introduction.

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