Time Magaize is a one of the best source of article on international issues, in this regard i am going to start a thread that will cover good articles from it.

Rogues No More?
by TIM MCGIRK

This is how bad it was for terrorist-hunters before Sept. 11. After weeks of dangerous surveillance work along the Afghan border, Egyptian investigators finally tracked down their quarry, a close associate of Osama bin Laden named Ahmed al-Khadir who was wanted for bombing the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995, killing 15 people. The Egyptians had surrounded the safe house in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar where al-Khadir, an Egyptian Canadian, was hiding. All that remained was to notify Pakistan's then chief spymaster, General Mehmood Ahmed, so that his spooks could burst in to arrest al-Khadir. Ahmed promised swift action.
It was swift, but not in the way the Egyptians had expected. That night last summer, the Pakistani security forces never turned up. Instead, a car with diplomatic plates full of Taliban roared up to the Peshwar house, grabbed al-Khadir and drove him over the Khyber Pass to safety in Afghanistan beyond the Egyptians' grasp. Put bluntly, the Pakistani spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had betrayed the Egyptians. "The next day, the ISI called up and said, 'So sorry, the man gave us the slip,'" a diplomat recalls. "It was a lie."
Since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf threw in his lot with the U.S. after Sept. 11, he has been wrestling to gain control over the 10,000-strong ISI. Transforming the organization from one that abetted Islamic militancy to one that combats it is fundamental to both Musharraf and the U.S. But it's a daunting task. Even by the shadowy standards of spy agencies, the ISI is notorious. It is commonly branded "a state within the state," or Pakistan's "invisible government." It has sponsored Muslim rebels in Indian-held Kashmir, and propped up the Taliban and by extension its malevolent Arab guests in Afghanistan though it denies these charges. Its tentacles stretch into Pakistani politics, courts and everyday life. It is much feared; a venal whisper from an ISI informer can destroy a career or lead to arrest or worse.
The preliminary signs are that Musharraf, despite many obstacles, is actually succeeding in taming the ISI. He has put trusted men into key antiterrorism posts, and the ISI's field agents around the country are carrying out their new orders. Says one Western diplomat: "There are no rogue elements in the ISI. The discipline's too strict for that."

These days, what the ISI does and does not do is more critical than ever. Intelligence sources in Islamabad say that hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives are still hiding in Pakistan. To hunt them down, American investigators need the ISI. Last week, according to tribal elders, about 40 U.S. commandos set up base in the Pakistani tribal town of Miramshah near the frontier with Afghanistan, following intelligence reports that bin Laden might be holed up nearby. Officially, Pakistan denies that U.S. special forces crossed into its tribal borderlands. Whether American troops are on the ground or not, Washington must depend, at least in part, on Pakistani intelligence to flush out remaining fugitives.

Meanwhile, Musharraf must also resolve some knotty issues that go beyond the hunt for bin Laden. To ensure Pakistan's stability, he must rely on the ISI to crack down on sectarian extremists, who have killed more than 70 people this year. Yet elements in the agency are believed to have maintained shady connections with these groups. Then there's the matter of the Pakistani leader's own survival. Many Pakistanis are angry with America these days, over the civilian bombing casualties in Afghanistan and Washington's support of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, who like most Pakistanis are mainly Muslims. With Musharraf firmly allied to Washington, diplomats say the threat of assassination is ever present. The President packs a silver-plated derringer in his chest pocket and only leaves his office in an armor-plated Mercedes, using two others as decoys. Musharraf relies on the ISI for his security. He has found other uses for the group, too. In the run-up to the referendum in April to extend his term as President, he is using ISI officials to cajole some local politicians over to his side, by appeals to their nationalism.

Musharraf's first step in reining in the ISI was to dump its chief, Ahmed. He and the President were once close friends and fellow plotters in the 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power. But former comrades say that Ahmed experienced a battlefield epiphany up in the Himalayan peaks during the 1999 Kargil offensive against India. After that, he began to pursue his own radical Islamic agenda. At a Cabinet meeting, he once yelled at an official: "What do you know? You don't even go to prayers."

More worrying than these outbursts was Ahmed's sympathy for the Taliban. When the President sent him down to Kandahar last Sept. 17 to persuade Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to hand over bin Laden, the spymaster instead secretly told Omar to resist, an ex-Taliban official told Time. Word of this double-talk reached Musharraf, who replaced him as ISI boss with General Ehsan ul-Haq, a trusted friend and ex-military intelligence chief who shares Musharraf's more Westernized views. His orders were to weed out "the beards," as the Islamic extremists are nicknamed inside the agency, and make the ISI more obedient to the President. "For us, Sept. 11 was a blessing in disguise," says one senior official. "We were scared that the religious extremists would dominate the country."

Of course, the old ISI helped create that extremist danger. Since nationhood in 1947, Pakistan has tried through war and guile to pry the remainder of Kashmir, a former princely state with a Muslim majority, away from India. Borrowing a page from the cia's proxy war backing local mujahedin against the occupying Soviets in Afghanistan the ISI began in 1989 to encourage Islamic militant outfits inside Pakistan to cross over the mountains and snipe at Indian troops in Kashmir. As a combat tactic, it was brilliant: on any given day, more than 300,000 Indian troops are busy chasing 2,000 Kashmiri militants up and down the Himalayas.

But the side effects were devastating. These militants sowed terror inside Pakistan, too. The blowback started when these holy warriors shifted their training camps over to Afghanistan. There, these Islamic extremists, recruited from radical mosques and seminaries around Pakistan, fell in with al-Qaeda. For them, bin Laden's apocalyptic vision of Islam was compelling plus he had lots of cash. As one Western diplomat explains, "There was this large militant pool, with men drifting from one outfit to another."

On a practical level, Pakistani extremist groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammad shared terrorist camps near the Afghan towns of Khost and Kandahar with al-Qaeda, according to Western diplomats and intelligence officials in Islamabad. In turn, bin Laden's agents relied on these comrades to provide a network of safe houses for al-Qaeda agents as they crossed Pakistan on their way to and from their Afghan headquarters. The ISI also vetted new recruits and laundered terrorist funds through the hawala global network of informal money changers. Says Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia: "All these Pakistani groups were closely linked to the ISI through Kashmir." It was no surprise to foreign spooks that the ISI let al-Khadir escape from Peshawar. They believe he knew too much about the agency's ties with al-Qaeda.

Nor was catching bin Laden a top ISI priority. In early 1999 the U.S. pressed the Pakistanis to establish a snatch team that could go into Afghanistan to grab the al-Qaeda chief. The Pakistanis did set up the commando unit, under the aegis of the ISI and with training by the cia. But according to one U.S. official familiar with the operation, in the end the Pakistanis didn't do "squat."

Even after Sept. 11, Pakistani loyalties were still divided. At least five key ISI operatives some retired, some active stayed on to help their Taliban comrades prepare defenses in Kandahar against the Americans. None has been punished for this disobedience. And in New Delhi, Indian intelligence agents insist that during the battle for the Taliban bastion of Kunduz, Musharraf persuaded the U.S. to allow Pakistani C-130 planes to airlift out between 300 to 1,000 of its pro-Taliban fighters before American jets poured fire onto the northern Afghan town. Both Washington and Islamabad deny this happened. What is well documented is that even halfway through the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials were still allowing military and nonlethal supplies across the border to the Taliban.

No longer is that true. The ISI is now actively supporting the U.S. "We've joined out of conviction, not compulsion," says a government official. This change has been noted gratefully in Washington. "We're quite pleased with the cooperation we've got from them," says a U.S. official. A Western diplomat in Islamabad concurs, "There's grudging compliance. The ISI is saluting Musharraf and obeying him." This required a 180 turn for Pakistani spooks. Former friends such as the Taliban and homegrown jihad outfits became the new enemies. "Overnight, our strategic assets," as one top Islamabad official puts it, "had become liabilities."

Still, by and large, the ISI has snapped into line with U.S. requests. When suspected terrorists are collared by the ISI along the Afghan border, they are turned over to the fbi for joint interrogation at safe houses in Peshawar and Kohat, near the tribal borderlands. In all, the ISI has grabbed about 300 al-Qaeda agents in recent months. Most are Yemenis, followed by Saudis and Palestinians; all were given one-way tickets to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay. It was an ISI tip-off last month that enabled the feds to put a tracking device on a car that led them to al-Qaeda's chief of operations, Abu Zubaydah the most damaging blow so far against bin Laden's outfit. The American hunters supply the electronic surveillance and fat rewards for information, while the ISI provides the human intel.

But a lot more could be done. The ISI wants to keep its militant "assets" should it decide to rev up its clandestine support for Kashmiri combatants, say Western diplomats. (For now, activity in guerrilla training camps inside Pakistan is suspended, militant sources say.) And some of these assets are downright dangerous. For example, the seven main suspects still at large in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in January all had indirect links with the spy agency through the Kashmiri conflict, according to Western diplomats. Now they are on the run, and as one investigator remarks acidly, "It seems inconceivable that there isn't someone in the ISI who knows where they're hiding." Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group to which the kidnapping suspects belonged, is under "country club" arrest at his home in Bahawalpur, a diplomat reports. Despite Musharraf's Jan. 12 ban on five extremist groups, most of their firebrand leaders were recently set free, a move that perplexed Islamabad diplomats. "We didn't have enough proof to charge them," explains a Pakistani official.

The old-boy network with the ex-Taliban also persists. In Peshawar, thousands of empty Pakistani passports were stolen last December, and many are now thought to be in the pockets of Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives. Several senior Taliban commanders, including former Interior Minister Mullah Abdul Razzak, are living openly in the southern Pakistani border town of Chaman with their wives and families. Western diplomats express frustration over this, but they reckon Pakistan may be saving the ex-Taliban clergymen, who still have backing in southern Afghanistan, as a political option in case the interim Kabul government of Hamid Karzai unravels.

Even with the ISI's help, conditions in the tribal territory still favor al-Qaeda. There are few roads into these mountain labyrinths, and as one Pakistani official gripes, "If we get a lead, it takes four days to send an agent up into the villages, and by then the suspect's gone." That should improve this June once Pakistan takes delivery of U.S. choppers and planes for border surveillance. A thornier problem for the American and ISI trackers is the tribesmen's natural affinity for bin Laden, his combative vision of Islam and the lure of big bucks from fleeing al-Qaeda fighters.

In Miramshah, not far from the U.S. commandos' new base, locals are offering a complete fashion makeover for fugitives. For $100, your beard is shaved off, you get a new set of clothes and smugglers will slip you through the checkpoints on the roads to major Pakistani cities. "These al-Qaeda are willing to pay a lot more and in dollars," one tribal shopkeeper marvels. But even shorn of his beard and sporting Western gear, it will be hard for bin Laden to avoid detection if he is hiding in Pakistan now that the ISI has joined the chase.


source
Read more: Rogues No More? - TIME

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

U.S. Diplomat Could Bring Down Pakistan Gov't
by Omar Waraich / Islamabad

The scene could have been scripted in a Hollywood action thriller: For two hours at the end of last month in Lahore, U.S. diplomat Raymond Davis was closely pursued by two visibly armed men on a motorbike. He noticed them tailing him from a restaurant to an ATM, and through the crowded streets of Pakistan's second city. They were close by when, in a crowded intersection, Davis produced his own handgun and fired seven shots. The diplomat was apparently a crack shot, and all seven bullets found their mark, killing his two pursuers. Davis then called for back-up, and a four-wheel-drive vehicle raced onto the scene, striking a Pakistani bystander who was killed by the impact. But the people in the vehicle, whose identities remain unknown, escaped from the scene having failed to retrieve Davis, who was later arrested nearby. In custody, Davis has told Pakistani authorities that he acted in self-defense, and has invoked diplomatic immunity, an international convention that protects diplomats from prosecution in the countries where they serve.

Two weeks later, Davis remains behind bars, facing murder charges. And the incident has plunged the already troubled relationship between Washington and Islamabad to a new low. Pakistani officials say Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week canceled a meeting with her Pakistani counterpart and is considering withdrawing an invitation for President Asif Ali Zardari to a trilateral summit with Afghan President Hamid Karzai later this month. But at home, Zardari faces intense pressure to prosecute Davis. The hitherto obscure employee of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad has now become a lightning rod for the fierce anti-American sentiments shared by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis.

For Washington, the matter is simple: Davis, officals say, acted in self-defense when threatened by the two armed men trailing him. His diplomatic passport entitles him to full immunity from criminal prosecution under the Vienna Convention. And that message has been firmly relayed to Pakistan. "The pressure is huge from the U.S. end," says a Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But the pressure in Pakistan, from the army and the public, is huge also."

Zardari's government, heavily dependent on U.S. aid, is keen to see Davis released. "We need them more than they need us," says the Pakistani official. But public sentiment in Pakistan makes it hard for the government to be seen bowing to U.S. pressure, and its foreign ministry won't unequivocally confirm that Davis enjoys diplomatic immunity. And the government's problem is its opponents' opportunity. Davis is being prosecuted by the state government of Punjab, run by the opposition party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif's party looks set to extract political mileage by striking a proud, nationalist posture. The case of Raymond Davis has become the new rallying point for the religious parties that drew tens of thousands of people onto the streets last month to support of the country's controversial blasphemy laws. And local media has amplified hostility, which has reached a new peak this week after one of the slain men's widow committed suicide this week, reportedly out of despair that her husband's killer would evade justice.

But the decisive pressure on Zardari in the Davis case comes from Pakistan's military, for reasons that are only now becoming apparent. Davis, they say, was no ordinary diplomat. They cite the skill with which he eliminated his pursuers as suggesting a familiarity with arms not common in the diplomatic corps. His fluency in Urdu and Pashto are also remarkable considering that he first arrived in Pakistan as recently as October 2009. A series of documents obtained by the Pakistani news channel DawnNews — some said to have been in Davis' possession but whose authenticity can't be verified — suggest that the 36-year-old Nevada native carried a diplomatic passport and was a member of the Embassy's "Administrative and Technical Staff". These documents reportedly also name him as a Department of Defense contractor, and co-owner of Hyperion Protective Services.

Equally misleading, say Pakistani officials, is the claim in Pakistani media that Davis' victims had been "ordinary men", or even as "robbers," as the State Department has suggested. "They were from the ISI," says a government official, referring to Pakistan's military intelligence agency. It isn't clear, the official says, whether they were full paid-up agents or local informants. The two men had been tasked with tailing Davis, Pakistani officials say. "He had been traveling to Waziristan and meeting with people that the army doesn't approve of," says a Pakistani official, implying that Davis had met with Pakistani militants. While U.S. contractors and intelligence agents operate in Pakistan with the military's approval and often in cooperation, it insists they operate within strictly circumscribed parameters. Davis, according to some Pakistani accounts, had crossed a red line, and was being shadowed in a crude effort at intimidation.

The loss of two men linked with the ISI has injured the Pakistani military's pride, officials say, and comes amid rising tensions with Washington. Last December, the CIA station chief in Islamabad was forced to leave Pakistan after his identity was compromised. Langley blamed the ISI for the leak, a charge that the Pakistanis deny. Relations between the two agencies are now viewed has having dropped to their lowest-level in years, even as they are forced to work together on shaping a settlement in Afghanistan.

As domestically rewarding as it may be, brinkmanship over Davis imperils the long-term fortunes of Pakistan's government. "There's no choke on aid yet," says a senior Pakistani official. But if the standoff continues, and especially if Davis is convicted, it could be reduced to a trickle. And that could have a potentially catastrophic impact on an economy threatened by hyperinflation and the devaluation of its currency in the coming months. But a brittle government under strong pressure from its electorate and military may struggle to survive if it frees Raymond Davis.


source: times magazine

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

How a democracy can work in the Middle East
by Fareed Zakaria

When Frank Wisner, the seasoned U.S. diplomat and envoy of President Obama, met with Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday, Feb. 1, the scene must have been familiar to both men. For 30 years, American diplomats would enter one of the lavish palaces in Heliopolis, the neighborhood in Cairo from which Mubarak ruled Egypt. The Egyptian President would receive the American warmly, and the two would begin to talk about American-Egyptian relations and the fate of Middle East peace. Then the American might gently raise the issue of political reform. The President would tense up and snap back, "If I do what you want, the Islamic fundamentalists will seize power." The conversation would return to the latest twist in the peace process.

It is quite likely that a version of this exchange took place on that Tuesday. Mubarak would surely have warned Wisner that without him, Egypt would fall prey to the radicalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's Islamist political movement. He has often reminded visitors of the U.S.'s folly in Iran in 1979, when it withdrew support for a staunch ally, the Shah, only to see the regime replaced by a nasty anti-American theocracy. But this time, the U.S. diplomat had a different response to the Egyptian President's arguments. It was time for the transition to begin.

And that was the message Obama delivered to Mubarak when the two spoke on the phone on Feb. 1. "It was a tough conversation," said an Administration official. Senior national-security aides gathered around a speakerphone in the Oval Office to listen to the call. Mubarak made it clear how difficult the uprising had been for him personally; Obama pressed the Egyptian leader to refrain from any violent response to the hundreds of thousands in the streets. But a day later, those streets — which had been remarkably peaceful since the demonstrations began — turned violent. In Cairo, Mubarak supporters, some of them wading into crowds on horseback, began battering protesters.

It was a reminder that the precise course that Egypt's revolution will take over the next few days and weeks cannot be known. The clashes between the groups supporting and opposing the government mark a new phase in the conflict. The regime has many who live off its patronage, and they could fight to keep their power. But the opposition is now energized and empowered. And the world — and the U.S. — has put Mubarak on notice.

Whatever happens in the next few days will not change the central narrative of Egypt's revolution. Historians will note that Jan. 25 marked the start of the end of Mubarak's 30-year reign. And now we'll test the theory that politicians and scholars have long debated. Will a more democratic Egypt become a radical Islamic state? Can democracy work in the Arab world?

source times magazine

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

Egypt Through the Lens of Iran's 1979 Revolution
by: Roya Hakakian

Ever since the crowds flooded into Tahrir Square, I've begun talking to the living-room television. "Drop that hand!" I shouted at the raised fist of a pro-Mubarak thug a few days ago. On Friday, watching the fireworks over the skies of Cairo, I enviously mumbled: "How come we didn't do that?"

We, as in the young Iranians who flooded Tehran's own equivalent of Liberation Square, Azadi, on the same exact day 32 years ago. I was 12 at the time, but the events of that year remain my existential paradox, my life's most cherished trauma.

The pundits now breezily call Iran's 1979 revolution "Islamic." But at the time, religious and secular, villagers and urbanites, educated and illiterate, all equally angrily, were marching in the streets and demanding the removal of the Shah. Iran's future was as unknowable then as Egypt's future is now.

Comparisons between Iran and Egypt abound and the guessing goes on as to what number Egypt's needle truly points on the Iranian time scale: 1979, or 2009 — the year the Green movement took the streets of Tehran. One of the dozen exuberant wallposts on my facebook page on Friday reads: "Egypt did it in 18 days. Iran will do it in a week!"

Egypt is not Iran. No two histories or nations, no matter how much they have in common, are interchangeable. But movements striving for common democratic goals have consistently exchanged the lessons of their struggles to inform and warn their comrades elsewhere against the pitfalls and to also facilitate a change of their own. The fear that fleeing dictators exude is very potent.

Today's Egyptian democratic forces ought to heed the errors of their Iranian counterparts from 1979. Above all because those errors were, by and large, not rooted in malice or ignorance but in good intentions. And also because their sinister effects did not reveal themselves until long after the euphoria had ebbed and the crowds had left the squares to resume their lives once again.

The first misstep of the Iranian secular movement came as early as 1978, when they blindly embraced a union with the religious opposition, having been perfectly disarmed by them. When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini said that he had no political ambitions, and that, once the Shah was gone, his only wish was to hunker down with a Koran at a seminary in Qom, everyone believed him. When he spoke against the violations of human rights in the Shah's prisons, the intellectuals called him their homegrown Gandhi. When he talked of gender equality and women's rights, he was hailed unequivocally as if he'd been the heir to Betty Friedan. Before rising to power, the religious opposition to the Shah, headed by the Ayatollah, told Iranians what they wished to hear and they believed everything they heard.

The few who were smart enough not to believe the Ayatollah made the common mistake smart people often make: they underestimated the intelligence of others. They were confident that they could outmaneuver the Ayatollah. The Western-educated, stylishly-suited secular leaders assumed themselves far too sophisticated to be outwitted by the plainly-dressed provincial clerics

They also did not realize that keeping the movement peaceful and nonviolent was detrimental to keeping themselves relevant and credible. Once the army had opened fire and the first victims had fallen, the religious co-opted the movement. The seculars had no substantive plans for retaliation or political comeback in light of a military attack. But the shedding of blood was the cue for the religious to enter the stage and move into the spotlight. When it came to death, the religious had a full lexicon and complete repertoire of rituals to balance the strategic shortcomings of their secular counterparts. After all, death and all of its conceptual by-products, especially martyrdom, had always been the proverbial bread-and-butter of the clergy, the spring of their livelihood.

As time passed, it quickly became clear that the easiest part of the revolution was the very thing that had seemed the hardest all along: the overthrow. Navigating the future was a most daunting task for which individuals who had spent decades dreaming of the Shah's fall had never planned for. With the revolution's victory, the movement, overcome by joy, lost its direction. They became overambitious and gave into globalistic hubris. Freedom for Iranians, employment and education for the youth, or the implementation of civil liberties were no longer enough. Those bête noires, evil Uncle Sam and his bastard child, Israel, had to also be uprooted. Once they shifted their focus from domestic issues, they had empowered the religious once again. Within months after the fall of the Shah, Iraq attacked Iran and the Ayatollah dragged the nation into a decade of destruction because, he argued, the quickest way to annihilating the world's two greatest evils was through conquering Baghdad en route to Jerusalem. Tehran, and its residents, did not satisfy the grand agenda.

Iranians allowed themselves to be manipulated. The regime cowed them into making concessions by preying on their fears — of the return of the Shah, or the staging of a coup by his loyalists within the army. Instead of remaining uncompromising on the issues that defined them, they made compromises and bought into piecemeal, gradual, interim promises. Lest monarchy return, women were told to defer their demands for equal rights. Then in 1979 the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized which the Ayatollah celebrated as a day second only to Feb. 11, the date of his revolution. Of course, he did. The seizure of the American embassy gave the Islamic radicals the ammunition they needed to conduct their assault on the hard-won and fledgling civil liberties in Iran because, the manipulative reasoning went, there was no telling how the angry Americans were going to infiltrate and avenge themselves on the nation.

In the end, the religious proved too smart to be outwitted by the secular. It made no claim to power until it had fully seized it — a quest fueled by bloodshed and extraterritorial ambitions. Let us hope that the new, wired generation of Egypt will remain as vigilant in seeing their victory through as they had been in bringing it about.

Source: Times Magazine.

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

Is it a new york time magazine ?

ak to The time news paper ka bi time magazine ha . konsa famous ha ?

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I know who am I but here is still need to know what am I ? (A.N)

previous articles are from time CNN. at the URL: URL Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com
but i will also focus on NY times, and I am thinking to upload article from other international magazines also.

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

Al Qaeda is a terrorist network of Islamic extremists created by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Mr. bin Laden, the 17th of 51 children of a wealthy Yemeni builder, inherited an estimated $300 million and created Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for "the base." Initially the group brought together Islamic fighters dedicated to driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. After the Soviet pullout, the group eventually found a wider goal: creating a "caliphate'' of Islamic states.

In 1996, Mr. Bin Laden issued a "declaration of war'' against the United States, vowing to drive it from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. In the years before 9/11, Mr. bin Laden had already become America's most wanted terrorism suspect, with a $5 million reward on his head for his alleged role in the August 1998 truck bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people, as well as a string of other terrorist attacks. The F.B.I. also named the leader of Al Qaeda as a prime suspect in the suicide bombing of the American destroyer Cole, which was attacked in Aden harbor, on Oct. 12, 2000, with the loss of 17 sailors' lives.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States military forces engaged Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan, killing and capturing some of its leaders and hobbling the group in the early years. They had a mandate to bring in Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," in the words of President Bush. Over the next few years Al Qaeda was driven from its havens in Afghanistan, and many of its leaders were caught or killed.

Mr. bin Laden and his network successfully relocated to Pakistan 's tribal areas, where Al Qaeda rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world. But as pressure from Pakistani forces increased there, a growing number of Qaeda members are believed to have relocated to countries like Yemen and Somalia, where local conflicts or instability offer new opportunities.

In its two years in office, the Obama administration has expanded a secret war against Al Qaeda, a war built around using "the scalpel'' instead of "the hammer,'' in the words of President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency's drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.

In December 2010, the Obama administration announced plans to further step up attacks on Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas to address one of the fundamental weaknesses uncovered in its year-end review of its Afghanistan war strategy.

Earlier in the year, administration officials pointed to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.

Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America's secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.

In March 2002, several hundred bedraggled foreign fighters -- Uzbeks, Pakistanis and a handful of Arabs -- fled the towering mountains of eastern Afghanistan and crossed into Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area. Savaged by American air power in the battles of Tora Bora and the Shah-i-Kot valley, some were trying to make their way to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Some were simply looking for a haven.

They soon arrived at Shakai, a remote region in South Waziristan of tree-covered mountains and valleys, and in North Waziristan. Venturing into nearby farming villages, they asked local tribesmen if they could rent some of the area's walled family compounds, paying two to three times the impoverished area's normal rates as the militants began to lay new roots. In many ways, the foreigners were returning to their home base. In the 1980s, Mr. bin Laden and hundreds of Arab and foreign fighters backed by the United States and Pakistan used the tribal regions as a staging area for cross-border attacks on Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Over the years American and NATO forces based across the border in Afghanistan have launched missile strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which also fled its base in Afghanistan to regroup in Pakistan with renewed force. In the spring of 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency sent drone aircraft over the mountains of northwest Pakistan, launching intensified attacks against Al Qaeda as well as Taliban leaders.

Michael E. Leiter, one of the country's top counterterrorism officials, said in June 2010 that American intelligence officials estimated that there were somewhat "more than 300" Qaeda leaders and fighters hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas, a rare public assessment of the strength of the terrorist group that is the central target of President Obama's war strategy.

Taken together with the estimate by the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, that there are about 50 to 100 Qaeda operatives now in Afghanistan, American intelligence agencies believe that there are most likely fewer than 500 members of the group in a region where the United States has poured nearly 100,000 troops.

As pressure increased on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, new branches of it arose in Yemen and Somalia, two chronically unstable nations. Yemen is a testing ground for the "scalpel" approach Mr. Brennan endorses. Administration officials warn of the growing strength of Al Qaeda's affiliate there, citing as evidence its attempt on Dec. 25 to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner using a young Nigerian operative. Some American officials believe that militants in Yemen could now pose an even greater threat than Al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan.

The officials said that they have benefited from the Yemeni government's new resolve to fight Al Qaeda and that the American strikes — carried out with cruise missiles and Harrier fighter jets — had been approved by Yemen's leaders. The strikes, administration officials say, have killed dozens of militants suspected of plotting future attacks.

Despite the airstrike campaign, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker. Attacks by Qaeda militants in Yemen have picked up again, with several deadly assaults on Yemeni army convoy. Al Qaeda's Yemen branch has managed to put out its first English-language online magazine, Inspire, complete with bomb-making instructions.

As a test case, the strikes have raised the classic trade-off of the post-Sept. 11 era: Do the selective hits make the United States safer by eliminating terrorists? Or do they help the terrorist network frame its violence as a heroic religious struggle against American aggression, recruiting new operatives for the enemy?

Al Qaeda has worked tirelessly to exploit the strikes, and in Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, the group has perhaps the most sophisticated ideological opponent the United States has faced since 2001.

2010's Year-End Review

At a year-end review in December 2010, Mr. Obama announced that the 97,000 American troops now in Afghanistan have made some fragile gains in the year. He said Pakistan was “increasingly coming to realize that the Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders who have been given safe havens pose a threat to Pakistan as well as the United States.”

Administration officials said they expected the Pakistani military to finally enter North Waziristan in 2011, based on private assurances from the Pakistani government.

But the real strategy appears to be for the United States to do most of the work itself — at least until the Pakistanis step up. That means even more strikes using Predator and Reaper drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and possibly carrying out Special Forces operations along the border.

The summary said the United States continued to kill leaders of Al Qaeda and diminish its capacity to carry out terrorist attacks from the region.

source: NY TIMES

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

Can Sudan Split Up Without Falling Apart?
by Alex Perry

What kind of life Achai Chol and her husband Majok Alae would build in the world's newest country came down to how much they could fit on the bus. In late November, the couple and their nine children climbed aboard a battered 44-seater outside their house in Dongle, in the far north of Sudan, and rode south across the Sahara for nine days. On the roof: 11 beds, 11 mattresses, five suitcases, a gas cooker, a fan, a television and much, much more. The family was part of an exodus of hundreds of thousands of southerners from northern Sudan before a Jan. 9 referendum on southern independence. Camping in the dust and heat by the side of the road in Abyei, just south of the effective border dividing Sudan, Achai could see nothing but good times ahead. "We are in our place," she said, beaming. "Even if we have no money, nothing bad can happen. We are on our land."

Two days later, in the nearby village of Tagalei, headman Mijak Kuol, 47, would use the same words to explain why war was imminent. "We are in our place," he said. "This is where our ancestors lived and died. We must fight for it."

Is Sudan witnessing the birth of a new nation or the restart of an old war? In the run-up to the referendum, in which southerners are expected to vote overwhelmingly to carve Africa's biggest country in two, it's possible to discern both. Africa meets Arabia in this vast land, and the two halves of the nation differ in culture, race and religion. Over two centuries, the Arab north oppressed the African south, raiding it for slaves well into the 20th century. Sudan's two long civil wars since its independence from Anglo-Egyptian control in 1956 have claimed some 2 million lives. The uncertainty that past evokes is stoking tensions among Sudan's 44 million people. Stakes are high for the wider world too. Conflict in Sudan would spill over its borders, with refugees fleeing the fighting. And Sudan attracts global economic interest: its oil reserves are significant, as are its minerals, from copper to gold.

Peaceful separation between north and south is possible. In 2005 the U.S. brokered a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to end more than half a century of conflict, creating an autonomous southern region and holding out the option of secession if the south so chose. That event at first seemed unlikely, not least because it was opposed by the south's longtime leader John Garang. But with his death in 2005, and Khartoum's continued discrimination against Sudan's regions, separation has become the south's choice. This "is the final part of our journey," said the man destined to be southern Sudan's first President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, in a speech last January.

There are reasons to share his optimism. The referendum process faces a tight timetable but one that can be met, say monitors from the Carter Peace Center. Both north and south are showing diplomatic restraint: Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has promised to let the south leave Sudan if it chooses to, and when northern bombers strayed into southern territory in December, the south did not respond in kind. Zach Vertin, Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, argues that Sudan's oil can be a force for peace. "The oil is largely in the south, and the infrastructure to export it runs through the north," he says. "So there is mutual reliance."

But if Sudan's history makes dividing the nation seem an obvious solution, drawing a line in the sand is not as easy as it sounds. Northerners can be dark-skinned, southerners can be Muslim, and the southern capital, Juba, is the southernmost Arabic-speaking town in the world. The toweringly tall Ngok Dinka tribe, whose members live around Abyei and of which Mijak Kuol is a leader, is a case in point. Though black African in appearance, the tribe has historically sided with the richer Arab north. Today, upset by Khartoum's marginalization of Sudan's regions, they want to secede along with the south. The north vehemently objects. So do the Misseriya, a tribe of cattle herders who have traditionally moved south into Ngok Dinka land during the northern dry season and who want to remain part of Sudan. And Abyei also has oil.

The dispute has already sparked violence. In 2008 the northern army leveled Abyei and killed about 100 of its residents. In 2010 the Misseriya attacked three villages nearby. To try to stop the Abyei dispute from wrecking the entire peace process, the CPA's framers included a separate, simultaneous referendum on whether to join the north or south. But a deadlock over who should be allowed to vote — whether to include the Misseriya alongside the Ngok Dinka — means that poll will not happen.

With the Abyei process broken, more killing seems likely. The Ngok Dinka are backed by the main southern rebel force, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which is moving fighters into the area. Claire McEvoy, a Sudan specialist at the Small Arms Survey, which monitors conflicts, says the north is doing the same. "Anything could happen," she says

So how does the world prevent another Sudanese meltdown? By using what, for decades, has been unthinkable in Sudan: diplomacy. Last fall, with the referendum looming, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that Sudan is a "ticking time bomb of enormous consequences," adding that the loss of the south "is going to be a very hard decision for the north to accept, so we have got to figure out some ways to make it worth their while." In November, Senator John Kerry visited Khartoum on the Obama Administration's behalf.

If the north were to allow a peaceful referendum, said Kerry, the U.S. would remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Progress in other areas, notably Darfur, the scene of bitter fighting between rebels and the regime, would lead to an end to economic sanctions — and relief of Sudan's $35 billion of foreign debt. Kerry is optimistic: "We're very hopeful," he says. "All sides are really focused on trying to avoid more conflict."

The softer Washington line on Sudan is being reflected in other capitals too. For the past 18 months, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, representing the African Union, has been the lead international mediator in talks between the north and south. The government of Qatar is hosting peace talks over Darfur. And Beijing, which extracts and imports the lion's share of Sudan's oil, is helping diplomatically too. All of this has set the scene for unparalleled international coordination, says Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general who is the U.S. special envoy to Sudan. "We did not come together by accident," he says. "We have the same mission: creating an environment where the parties themselves pull this off."

All the same, there are plenty of ways the north and south can still blunder back into war. Besides Abyei, lines between the two are blurred in at least six border disputes. Other points of contention to resolve before separation would become formal in July include how to split that $35 billion in debt, the oil, the national army, the waters of the White Nile, and grazing and land rights.

Even if deals can be reached, doubts remain over whether either north or south can thrive alone. For the north, divorce could mean a crushing alimony: most of Sudan's oil, currently accounting for 60% of Sudanese government revenue, is in the south. There is also concern about the north's political stability. The south's departure may encourage other rebel movements, and the loss of territory might be a cue for hard-line Islamists or generals to unseat al-Bashir.

If al-Bashir has worries in the north, so does the government in the south. McEvoy has been watching four warlords who, disappointed with their likely roles in an independent nation, last year broke with the SPLA and took their men into the bush. One such group killed 20 SPLA soldiers on Dec. 20. Kiir, the south's leader, is trying to buy off all four warlords with government positions. "These guys don't pose a huge threat today," says McEvoy, "but the potential in the future is huge."

Then there's the south's economic viability. Khartoum is a city of chic cafés and gleaming skyscrapers, but most southerners still live in mud huts and make do with little industry or agriculture, few roads and almost no electricity. And foreign aid doesn't do much. Last February, World Bank investigators found that their team in Juba had spent just $217 million of the $526 million they were managing in a multidonor fund to assist south Sudan's construction.

In the run-up to its anticipated inauguration as a new capital, Juba has become a boomtown, drawing a motley crew of chancers: logistics experts, car salesmen, development workers and working girls. But an economy in which the big money — from aid and oil — goes to foreign contractors or foreign bank accounts held by southern-Sudanese officials leaves most ordinary people basing their hopes for future prosperity on the wallets of a few thousand foreigners and bureaucrats. David Gressly, the U.N.'s regional coordinator in Juba, says it will take a generation before southern Sudan is fully formed. "Real success will take 20 to 25 years," he says.

So many and varied are the issues facing Sudan that most observers decline predictions. Asked about Sudan's outlook, a senior Western diplomat in Juba replies, "Damned if I know. There are an astonishing range of problems that are going to wash over this place." Failure — in the form of war — will be easy to spot. Success will be less obvious: slow, messy and with endless setbacks. But that is also a description of diplomacy. And the surprising news from Sudan is that, so far, diplomacy is working.

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It's Not Over 'til I Win

Dear I purchased Times magzine after reading its contents, but it includes new headings and old figures. Even they simply pasted the old paragraphs that show their concern for US,