Global Ruling Class: Billionaires and How They ‘Made It’
While the number of the world’s billionaires grew from 793 in 2006 to 946 this year, major mass uprisings became commonplace occurrences in China and India.
Alan Note: While this article has a resentful anti-capitalistic and somewhat pro-proletariat slant, to even praising Venzuela's Chavez in his confiscation of anything lucrative within his country, the facts and numbers are interesting.
The author's conrast, for example, of India's billionaires with Maoist terror activity stretches the link of billionaire to poverty as a root of India's challenges.
The poverty was there - as were the Maoists - before these billionaires came to be. And, within the size of India's national economy, the wealth of these billionaires is a drop in the ocean and not the "huge evil blight" he tries to present.
Almost every long established, thus accepted, industrial magnate's family background goes back to robber barons. Though you may have to go back several hundred years to reach the founder of this elite. It just took longer to reach the peaks being reached more rapidly today - in economies far greater than those available to the old financial "nobility".
In India, which has the highest number of billionaires (36) in Asia with total wealth of $191 billion USD, Prime Minister Singh declaredthat the greatest single threat to ‘India’s security’ were the Maoist led guerrilla armies and mass movements in the poorest parts of the country.
In China, with 20 billionaires with $29.4 billion USD net worth, thenew rulers, confronting nearly a hundred thousand reported riots andprotests, have increased the number of armed special anti-riot militia ahundred fold, and increased spending for the rural poor by $10 billionUSD in the hopes of lessening the monstrous class inequalities andheading off a mass upheaval.
The total wealth of this global ruling class grew 35% year to year topping $3.5 trillion USD, while income levels for the lower 55% of theworld’s 6-billion-strong population declined or stagnated.
Put another way, one hundred millionth of the world’s population (1/100,000,000) owns more than over 3 billion people. (The proletariat is suffering, they are "owned", they are enslaved by the greedy rich)!
Over half of the current billionaires (523) came from just 3 countries: the US (415), Germany (55) and Russia(53). (Discrimination of some kind?)
The 35% increase in wealth mostly came from speculation on equity markets, real estate and commodity trading, rather than from technical innovations, investments in job-creating industries or social services. (Seems perfectly normal investment practises of most businessmen. Why are these billionaires taken to task for doing what the "populace" in almost every country with stock exchanges or fast developing economies are doing)?
Among the newest, youngest and fastest-growing group of billionaires,the Russian oligarchy stands out for its most rapacious beginnings. Overtwo-thirds (67%) of the current Russian billionaire oligarchs began their concentration of wealth in their mid to early twenties. (The modern day robber barons were young. These "young turks" should not have been permitted to use their youth and aggressive minds to fight their way to the top? Admittedly murder, assassination and corruption were all an integral part of thier rise but other than in scale no different from the ancestors of our long established and reputable financial elite).
During theinfamous decade of the 1990’s under the quasi-dictatorial rule of BorisYeltsin and his US-directed economic advisers, Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar the entire Russian economy was put up for sale for a ‘political price’, which was far below its real value.
Without exception, the transfers of property were achieved through gangster tactics –assassinations, massive theft, and seizure of state resources, illicit stock manipulation and buy-outs.
The future billionaires stripped the Russian state of over a trillion dollars worth of factories, transport, oil, gas, iron, coal and other formerly state-owned resources.
Contrary to European and US publicists, on the Right and Left, very few of the top former Communist leaders are found among the current Russian billionaire oligarchy.
Secondly, contrary to the spin-masters’ claimsof ‘communist inefficiencies’, the former Soviet Union developed mines,factories, energy enterprises were profitable and competitive, before they were taken over by the new oligarchs. (Now that is stretching the truth. soviet industry was notoriously renowned for inefficiency and surviving on state funding of short falls, not profits).
This is evident in the massive private wealth that was accumulated in less than a decade by these gangster-businessmen.
Virtually all the billionaires’ initial sources of wealth had nothing to do with building, innovating or developing new efficient enterprises.
Wealth was not transferred to high Communist Party Commissars (why should it have been?) (lateral transfers) but was seized by armed private mafias run by recent university graduates who quickly capitalized on corrupting, intimidating or assassinating senior officials in the state and benefiting from BorisYeltsin’s mindless contracting of ‘free market’ Western consultants.
Forbes Magazine puts out a yearly list of the richest individuals and families in the world. What is most amusing about the famous Forbes Magazine’s background biographical notes on the Russian oligarchs is the constant reference to their source of wealth as ‘self-made’ as if stealing state property created by and defended for over 70 years (of Communism?) by the sweat and blood of the Russian people was the result of the entrepreneurial skills of thugs in their twenties.
Of the top eight Russian billionaire oligarchs, all got their start from strong-arming their rivals, settingup ‘paper banks’ and taking over aluminum, oil, gas, nickel and steel production and the export of bauxite, iron and other minerals.
Every sector of the former Communist (totally inefficient) economy was pillaged by the newbillionaires: Construction, telecommunications, chemicals, real estate,agriculture, vodka, foods, land, media, automobiles, airlines etc..
With rare exceptions, following the Yeltsin privatizations, all of the oligarchs quickly rose to the top or near the top, literally murdering or intimidating any opponents within the former Soviet apparatus and competitors from rival predator gangs.
The key ‘policy’ measures, which facilitated the initial pillage and takeovers by the future billionaires, were the massive and immediate privatizations of almost all public enterprises by the Gaidar/Chubais team.
This ‘Shock Treatment’ was encouraged by a Harvard team of economic advisers and especially by US President Clinton in order to make the capitalist transformation irreversible. (Consequences of dismantling the Communist state and regime).
Massive privatization led to the capitalist gang wars and the disarticulation of the Russian economy. As a result there was an 80% decline in living standards, a massive devaluation of the Ruble and the sell-off of invaluable oil, gas and other strategic resources at bargain prices to the rising class of predator billionaires and US-European oil and gas multinational corporations.
Over a hundred billion dollars a year was laundered by the mafia oligarchs in the principle banks of New York, London, Switzerland, Israel and elsewhere – funds which would later be recycled in the purchase of expensive real estate in the US, England, Spain, France as well as investments in British football teams, Israeli banks and joint ventures in minerals.
The winners of the gang wars during the Yeltsin reign followed up by expanding operations to a variety of new economic sectors, investments in the expansion of existing facilities (especially in real estate,extractive and consumer industries) and overseas.
Under President Putin, the gangster-oligarchs consolidated and expanded – from multi-millionaires to billionaires, to multi-billionaires and growing. From young swaggering thugs and local swindlers, they became the ‘respectable’ partners of American and European multinational corporations, according to their Western PR agents.
The new Russian oligarchs had ‘arrived’ on the world financial scene, according to the financial press.
Yet as President Putin recently pointed out, the new billionaires have failed to invest, innovate and create competitive enterprises, despite optimal conditions. Outside of raw material exports, benefiting from high international prices, few of the oligarch-owned manufacturers are earning foreign exchange, because few can compete in international markets.
The reason is that the oligarchs have ‘diversified’ into stock speculation (Suleiman Kerimov $14.4 billion USD), prostitution (Mikhail Prokhorov $13.5 billion USD), banking (Fridman $12.6 billion USD) and buyouts of mines and mineral processing plants.
The Western media has focused on the falling out between a handful of Yeltsin-era oligarchs and President Vladimir Putin and the increase in wealth of a number of Putin-era billionaires.
However, the biographical evidence demonstrates that there is no rupture between the rise of the billionaires under Yeltsin and their consolidation and expansion under Putin.
The decline in mutual murder and the shift to state-regulated competition is as much a product of the consolidation of the great fortunes as it is the ‘new rules of the game’ imposed by President Putin.
In the mid 19th century, Honoré Balzac, surveying the rise of the respectable bourgeois in France, pointed out their dubious origins: “Behind every great fortune is a great crime.”
The swindles begetting the decades-long ascent of the 19th century French bourgeoisie pale in comparison to the massive pillage and bloodletting that created Russia’s 21st century billionaires.
(The same could be said of the Mullahs in Iran several of whom number among the billionaires of the world. Supreme Ruler "ayatollah" Ali Khamenei, fearing for his fortune, transfered about $2 Billion from European and Western accounts to Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. Another "ayatollah" Hashemi Rafsanjani, another long acknowledged billionaire, has worldwide interests, including a sinble reported real estate development in Canada in excess of $1 Billion.
Latin America
If blood and guns were the instruments for the rise of the Russian billionaire oligarchs, in other regions the Market, or better still, the US-IMF-World Bank orchestrated Washington Consensus was the driving force behind the rise of the Latin American billionaires.
The two countries with the greatest concentration of wealth and the greatest number of billionaires in Latin America are Mexico and Brazil (77%), which are the two countries, which privatized the most lucrative, efficient and largest public monopolies.
Of the total $157.2 billion USD owned by the 38 Latin American billionaires, 30 are Brazilians or Mexicans with $120.3 billion USD.
The wealth of 38 families and individuals exceeds that of 250 million Latin Americans; 0.000001% of the population exceeds that of the lowest 50%. (So their wealth should be confiscated and redistributed to the poor? Who would then spend it wisely? Invest it in the industries the alleged lack of action by the billionaires which the author bemoans? Or simply fritter away the comparatively insignificant amount each of the "oppressed proletariat" would receive as their share)?
In Mexico, the income of 0.000001% of the population exceeds the combined income of 40 million Mexicans.
The rise of Latin American billionaires coincides with the real fall in minimum wages, public expenditures in social services, labor legislation and a rise in state repression, weakening labor and peasant organization and collective bargaining. (Sound like a peeved, disgruntled Communist to you, too)?
The implementation of regressive taxes burdening the workers and peasants and tax exemptions and subsidies for the agro-mineral exporters contributed to the making of the billionaires.
The result has been downward mobility for public employees and workers, the displacement of urban labor into the informal sector, the massive bankruptcy of small farmers, peasants and rural labor and the out-migration from the countryside to the urban slums and emigration abroad.
The principal cause of poverty in Latin American is the very conditions that facilitate the growth of billionaires.
In the case of Mexico, the privatization of the telecommunication sector at rock bottom prices, resulted in the quadrupling of wealth for Carlos Slim Helu, the third richest man in the world (just behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) with a net worth of $49 billion USD.
Two fellow Mexican billionaires, Alfredo Harp Helu and Roberto Hernandez Ramirez benefited from the privatization of banks and their subsequent de-nationalization, selling Banamex to Citicorp.
Privatization, financial de-regulation and de-nationalization were the key operating principles of US foreign economic policies implemented in Latin America by the IMF and the World Bank.
These principles dictated the fundamental conditions shaping any loans or debt re-negotiations inLatin America.
The billionaires-in-the-making, came from old and new money.
Some began to raise their fortunes by securing government contracts during the earlier state-led development model (1930’s to 1970’s) and others through inherited wealth. Half of Mexican billionaires inherited their original multi-million dollar fortunes on their way up to the top. The other half benefited from political ties and the subsequent big payola from buying public enterprises cheap and then selling them off to US multi-nationals at great profit.
The great bulk of the 12 million Mexican immigrants who crossed the border into the US have fled from the onerous conditions, which allowed Mexico’s traditional and nouveaux riches millionaires to join the global billionaires’ club.
Brazil has the largest number of billionaires (20) of any country in Latin America with a net worth of $46.2 billion USD, which is greater than the new worth of 80 million urban and rural impoverished Brazilians.
Approximately 40% of Brazilian billionaires started with great fortunes– and simply added on – through acquisitions and mergers. (How criminal! How dare they!)?
The so-called‘self-made’ billionaires benefited from the privatization of thelucrative financial sector (the Safra family with $8.9 billion USD) and the iron and steel complexes.
How to Become a Billionaire
While some knowledge, technical and ‘entrepreneurial skills’ and market savvy played a small role in the making of the billionaires in Russia and Latin America, far more important was the interface of politics and economics at every stage of wealth accumulation.
In most cases there were three stages:
1.During the early ‘statist’ model of development, the current billionaires successfully ‘lobbied’ and bribed officials for government contracts, tax exemptions, subsidies and protection from foreign competitors. State handouts were the beach head or take-off point to billionaire status during the subsequent neo-liberal phase.
2.The neo-liberal period provided the greatest opportunity for seizing lucrative public assets far below their market value and earning capacity. The privatization, although described as ‘market transactions’, were in reality political sales in four senses: in price, in selection of buyers, in kickbacks to the sellers and in furthering an ideological agenda.
Wealth accumulation resulted from the sell-off of banks,minerals, energy resources, telecommunications, power plants and transport and the assumption by the state of private debt. This was the take-offphase from millionaire toward billionaire status. This was consummated inLatin America via corruption and in Russia via assassination and gangwarfare.
3.During the third phase (the present) the billionaires have consolidated and expanded their empires through mergers, acquisitions, further privatizations and overseas expansion.
Private monopolies of mobile phones, telecoms and other ‘public’ utilities, plus high commodity prices have added billions to the initial concentrations. Some millionaires became billionaires by selling their recently acquired, lucrative privatized enterprises to foreign capital.
In both Latin America and Russia, the billionaires grabbed lucrative state assets under the aegis of orthodox neo-liberal regimes (Salinas-Zedillo regimes in Mexico, Collor-Cardoso in Brazil, Yeltsin in Russia) and consolidated and expanded under the rule of supposedly ‘reformist’regimes (Putin in Russia, Lula in Brazil and Fox in Mexico).
In the rest of Latin America (Chile, Colombia and Argentina) the making of the billionaires resulted from the bloody military coups and regimes, which destroyed the socio-political movements and started the privatization process. This process was then even more energetically promoted by the subsequent electoral regimes of the right and ‘center-left’.
What is repeatedly demonstrated in both Russia and Latin America is that the key factor leading to the quantum leap in wealth – from millionaires to billionaires – was the vast privatization and subsequent de-nationalization of lucrative public enterprises. (Once again I am not quite sure which government run industries in ANY country have proved to be that lucrative. Certainly none come to mind as well=managed or operated).
If we add to the concentration of $157 billion in the hands of an infinitesimal fraction of the elite, the $990 billion USD taken out by the foreign banks in debt payments and the $1 trillion USD (one thousand billion) taken out by way of profits, royalties, rents and laundered money over the past decade and a half, we have an adequate framework for understanding why Latin America continues to have over two-thirds of its population with inadequate living standards and stagnant economies.
The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a wide gamut of political institutions, business elites, and academic and media moguls. (Blame America for everything - good Marxist profile, being spread in Latin America).
First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and neo-liberal politicians who set up the billionaire-oriented economic models.
It was ex-President Clinton, the CIA and his economic advisers, in alliance with the Russian oligarchs, who provided the political intelligence and material support to put Yeltsin in power and back his destruction of the Russian Parliament (Duma) in 1993 and the rigged elections of 1996. (Socialist, almost Marxist Clinton to blame? Supporter of the former USSR and China? Oh my!)
And it was Washington, which allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to be laundered in US banks throughout the 1990’s as the US Congressional Sub-Committee on Banking (1998) revealed. (On Clinton's watch? Oh my!)
It was Nixon, Kissinger and later Carter and Brzezinski, Reagan and Bush, Clinton and Albright who backed the privatizations pushed by Latin American military dictators and civilian reactionaries in the 1970’s,1980’s and 1990’s . (Notice how in the heat of passion the language of the autor becomes ever more Communist. "Reactionaries")
Their instructions to the US representatives in the IMF and the World Bank were writ large: Privatize, de-regulate and de-nationalize (PDD) before any loans should be negotiated. (Because, unlike what the author appears to believe and claim, government run institutions are too inefficient to fund?)
It was US academics and ideologues working hand in glove with the so-called multi-lateral agencies, as contracted economic consultants, who trained, designed and pushed the PDD agenda among their former Ivy League students-turned-economic and finance ministers and Central Bankers in Latin America and Russia.
It was US and EU multi-national corporations and banks which bought out or went into joint ventures with the emerging Latin American billionaires and who reaped the trillion dollar payouts on the debts incurred by the corrupt military and civilian regimes.
The billionaires are as much a product and/or by-product of US anti-nationalist, anti-communist policies as they are a product of their own grandiose theft of publicenterprises.
Conclusion
Given the enormous class and income disparities in Russia, Latin America and China (20 Chinese billionaires have a net worth of $29.4 billion USD in less than ten years), it is more accurate to describe these countries as ‘surging billionaires’ rather than ‘emerging markets’ because it is not the ‘free market’ but the political power of the billionaires that dictates policy.
Countries of ‘surging billionaires’ produce burgeoning poverty, submerging living standards. The making of billionaires means the unmaking of civil society (really, or just in a Comunist mind?) – the weakening of social solidarity, protective social legislation, pensions, vacations, public health programs and education. (Perks of a Communist State run country or union run factories?)
While politics is central, past political labels mean nothing. Ex-Marxist Brazilian ex-President Cardoso and ex-trade union leader President Lula Da Silva privatized public enterprises and promoted policies that spawn billionaires. (Bad, bad, bad boys).
Ex-Communist Putin cultivates certain billionaire oligarchs and offers incentives to others to shape up and invest. (ditto).
The period of greatest decline in living standards in Latin America and Russia coincide with the dismantling of the nationalist populist and economies. (He means Communist?)
Between 1980-2004, Latin America – more precisely Brazil, Argentina and Mexico – stagnated at 0% to 1% per capita growth.
Russia saw a 50% decline in GNP between 1990-1996 and living standards dropped 80% for everyone except the predators and their gangster entourage.
Recent growth (2003-2007), where it occurs, has more to do with the extraordinary rise in international prices (of energy resources, metals and agro-exports) than any positive developments from the billionaire-dominated economies.
The growth of billionaires is hardly a sign of ‘general prosperity’ resulting from the ‘free market’ as the editors of Forbes Magazine claim. In fact it is the product of the illicit seizure of lucrative public resources, built up by the work and struggle of millions of workers, in Russia and China under Communism and in Latin America during populist-nationalist and democratic-socialist governments.
Many billionaires have inherited wealth and used their political ties to expand and extend their empires – it has little to do with entrepreneurial skills.
The billionaires’ and the White House’s anger and hostility toward President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is precisely because he is reversing the policies which create billionaires and mass poverty: He is re-nationalizing energy resources, public utilities and expropriating some large landed estates. (Ah! The sweet sensation of a dictator turning his country back to full fledged Communism, to rigged elections, to rule by decree, to unlimited tenure of power. Ah!)
Chavez is not only challenging US hegemony in Latin America but also the entire PDD edifice that built the economic empires of the billionaires in Latin America, Russia, China and elsewhere.
(Communist/Marxist gentle rant against capitalism and the USA, poorly disguised (pun intended) as a valid fiscal examination of economies. Well worth the read for some of he facts and an insight as to how agitators in Latin America present their anti-US and anti-capialism positions to persuade the populaces to elect Communist leaders - before losing he right to vote or be heard - as in Venezuela).
Saturday, March 31, 2007
How Have Terrorists Entered the U.S.?
Study: Since 1993, almost every means of immigration exploited
Panel Discussion Transcript
WASHINGTON — A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies examines how foreign terrorists entered and remained in the country over the past decade.
To provide a more complete picture of the threat, the report examines the immigration status not only of the September 11 hijackers but of all 48 foreign-born, radical Muslim terrorists, almost all of them linked to al Qaeda, who have been charged, convicted, or admitted involvement in terrorism in the United States since 1993.
The report, entitled "The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001," by the Center's Director of Research Steven A. Camarota, contains immigration histories for each of the 48 terrorists.
Contrary to claims that foreign terrorists have come only as temporary visitors, research indicates that they have manipulated almost every possible means of admission to the United States:
Some have indeed come as students, tourists, and business travelers; others, however, have been Lawful Permanent Residents and naturalized U.S. citizens; while yet others have snuck across the border, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, been granted amnesty, or been applicants for asylum.
The report is on line at www.cis.org/articles/2002/Paper21/terrorism.html
Among the findings:
*At the time they committed their crimes: 16 (one-third) of the 48 terrorists were on temporary visas (primarily tourists); 17 (another third) were Lawful Permanent Residents or naturalized U.S. citizens; 12 (one-fourth) were illegal aliens; 3 of the 48 had applications for asylum pending.*
Violations of immigration laws are very common among terrorists.
Not only were 12 of the 48 terrorists illegal aliens when they committed their crimes, but at least ten others had significant violations of immigration law prior to taking part in terrorism.
"Because every part of our immigration system has been exploited by terrorists, we cannot reform just one area, but must address the problems that exist throughout," said Camarota. "The solution is not to single out Middle Easterners for exclusion or selective enforcement.
Instead we need to more carefully check the backgrounds of all visa applicants, better police the borders, strictly enforce the law within the country, and, most important, reduce the level of immigration to give the INS the breathing space it needs to implement fundamental reforms."
Other findings:
*
Past amnesties for illegal aliens have facilitated terrorism. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty, which allowed him to travel abroad, including several trips to Afghanistan, where he received terrorist training.
*
Several terrorists should probably have been denied temporary visas, because they had characteristics that made it likely they would overstay and live in the U.S. illegally. Under Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, individuals who are young, unmarried, unemployed, or lack strong attachment to a residence overseas are to be denied temporary visas. Several of the September 11th hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, fit these criteria.*
Although the September 11th hijackers entered on temporary visas, legal immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizens have also played key roles in terrorism on U.S. soil. For example, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, ringleader of the plot to bomb New York City landmarks in 1993, is an LPR, and Ali Mohammed, who wrote al Qaeda's terrorist handbook, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.*
In addition to overstaying visas, terrorists have engaged in fraudulent marriages to American citizens, such as Khalid Abu al Dahab, who raised money and helped recruit new members for al Qaeda.
Others have provided false information on their applications for green cards, like Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. And at least eight terrorists held jobs illegally.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: While no security can be foolproof, if only some of those involved in a terrorist plot can be stopped by our immigration system, then it is possible that whatever conspiracy they are involved in will unravel, as was the case with the Millennium plot. Four general reforms are needed.
First, improvements in how visas are processed overseas are needed, including more vigorous background checks and interviews for all visa applicants.
Second, the fact that terrorists often flout the law means that strict enforcement of immigration law within the United States could reduce the terrorist threat.
Third, there needs to be a significant increase in efforts to police the borders. Improving visa processing while leaving the borders largely undefended is an invitation for terrorists to do as attempted Brooklyn subway bomber Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer did; having been denied a visa, he simply went to Canada and snuck across the border.
The fourth reform that is needed is a reduction in overall immigration, both temporary and permanent.
Given limited governmental resources, issuing fewer visas would mean that greater resources could be devoted to background checks on each applicant. It would also mean fewer people to keep track of within the country. Most important, it would give the State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service the breathing space they need to deal with enormous processing backlogs, now close to 5 million applications, and allow them to undertake necessary reforms.
It is simply not reasonable to expect any agency, and especially the INS, to deal with such huge backlogs and take on steadily proliferating responsibilities and at the same time fundamentally restructure itself.
Alan Note: Iran claims that together with other Islamic countries supporting anti-USA and terrorists (including Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) there are close to 500,000 - yes HALF A MILLION people in placed around the world to carry out attacks on soft targets and US assets. Assets include businesses such as McDonalds, Starbucks and other clearly American oritented enterprises.
Study: Since 1993, almost every means of immigration exploited
Panel Discussion Transcript
WASHINGTON — A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies examines how foreign terrorists entered and remained in the country over the past decade.
To provide a more complete picture of the threat, the report examines the immigration status not only of the September 11 hijackers but of all 48 foreign-born, radical Muslim terrorists, almost all of them linked to al Qaeda, who have been charged, convicted, or admitted involvement in terrorism in the United States since 1993.
The report, entitled "The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001," by the Center's Director of Research Steven A. Camarota, contains immigration histories for each of the 48 terrorists.
Contrary to claims that foreign terrorists have come only as temporary visitors, research indicates that they have manipulated almost every possible means of admission to the United States:
Some have indeed come as students, tourists, and business travelers; others, however, have been Lawful Permanent Residents and naturalized U.S. citizens; while yet others have snuck across the border, arrived as stowaways on ships, used false passports, been granted amnesty, or been applicants for asylum.
The report is on line at www.cis.org/articles/2002/Paper21/terrorism.html
Among the findings:
*At the time they committed their crimes: 16 (one-third) of the 48 terrorists were on temporary visas (primarily tourists); 17 (another third) were Lawful Permanent Residents or naturalized U.S. citizens; 12 (one-fourth) were illegal aliens; 3 of the 48 had applications for asylum pending.*
Violations of immigration laws are very common among terrorists.
Not only were 12 of the 48 terrorists illegal aliens when they committed their crimes, but at least ten others had significant violations of immigration law prior to taking part in terrorism.
"Because every part of our immigration system has been exploited by terrorists, we cannot reform just one area, but must address the problems that exist throughout," said Camarota. "The solution is not to single out Middle Easterners for exclusion or selective enforcement.
Instead we need to more carefully check the backgrounds of all visa applicants, better police the borders, strictly enforce the law within the country, and, most important, reduce the level of immigration to give the INS the breathing space it needs to implement fundamental reforms."
Other findings:
*
Past amnesties for illegal aliens have facilitated terrorism. Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was legalized as a seasonal agricultural worker as part of the 1986 amnesty, which allowed him to travel abroad, including several trips to Afghanistan, where he received terrorist training.
*
Several terrorists should probably have been denied temporary visas, because they had characteristics that made it likely they would overstay and live in the U.S. illegally. Under Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, individuals who are young, unmarried, unemployed, or lack strong attachment to a residence overseas are to be denied temporary visas. Several of the September 11th hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, fit these criteria.*
Although the September 11th hijackers entered on temporary visas, legal immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizens have also played key roles in terrorism on U.S. soil. For example, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, ringleader of the plot to bomb New York City landmarks in 1993, is an LPR, and Ali Mohammed, who wrote al Qaeda's terrorist handbook, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.*
In addition to overstaying visas, terrorists have engaged in fraudulent marriages to American citizens, such as Khalid Abu al Dahab, who raised money and helped recruit new members for al Qaeda.
Others have provided false information on their applications for green cards, like Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. And at least eight terrorists held jobs illegally.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: While no security can be foolproof, if only some of those involved in a terrorist plot can be stopped by our immigration system, then it is possible that whatever conspiracy they are involved in will unravel, as was the case with the Millennium plot. Four general reforms are needed.
First, improvements in how visas are processed overseas are needed, including more vigorous background checks and interviews for all visa applicants.
Second, the fact that terrorists often flout the law means that strict enforcement of immigration law within the United States could reduce the terrorist threat.
Third, there needs to be a significant increase in efforts to police the borders. Improving visa processing while leaving the borders largely undefended is an invitation for terrorists to do as attempted Brooklyn subway bomber Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer did; having been denied a visa, he simply went to Canada and snuck across the border.
The fourth reform that is needed is a reduction in overall immigration, both temporary and permanent.
Given limited governmental resources, issuing fewer visas would mean that greater resources could be devoted to background checks on each applicant. It would also mean fewer people to keep track of within the country. Most important, it would give the State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service the breathing space they need to deal with enormous processing backlogs, now close to 5 million applications, and allow them to undertake necessary reforms.
It is simply not reasonable to expect any agency, and especially the INS, to deal with such huge backlogs and take on steadily proliferating responsibilities and at the same time fundamentally restructure itself.
Alan Note: Iran claims that together with other Islamic countries supporting anti-USA and terrorists (including Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) there are close to 500,000 - yes HALF A MILLION people in placed around the world to carry out attacks on soft targets and US assets. Assets include businesses such as McDonalds, Starbucks and other clearly American oritented enterprises.
Friday, March 30, 2007
IRAN'S SUICIDE BRIGADES
Iran's Suicide BrigadesTerrorism Resurgent
by Ali Alfoneh
Middle East QuarterlyWinter 2007
More than five years after President George W. Bush's declaration of a global war against terrorism, the Iranian regime continues to embrace suicide terrorism as an important component of its military doctrine.
In order to promote suicide bombing and other terrorism, the regime's theoreticians have utilized religion both to recruit suicide bombers and to justify their actions.
But as some factions within the Islamic Republic support the development of these so-called martyrdom brigades, their structure and activities suggest their purpose is not only to serve as a strategic asset in either deterring or striking at the West, but also to derail domestic attempts to dilute the Islamic Republic's revolutionary legacy.
Such strategy is apparent in the work of the Doctrinal Analysis Center for Security without Borders (Markaz-e barresiha-ye doktrinyal-e amniyat bedun marz), an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps think tank.
Its director, Hassan Abbasi, has embraced the utility of suicide terrorism. On February 19, 2006, he keynoted a Khajeh-Nasir University seminar celebrating the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa (religious edict) calling for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie. As Khomeini often did, Abbasi began his lecture with literary criticism.
He analyzed a U.S. publication from 2004 that, according to Abbasi, "depicts the prophet of Islam as the prophet of blood and violence." Rhetorically, he asked, "Will the Western man be able to understand martyrdom with such prejudice? [Can he] interpret Islam as anything but terrorism?"
The West sees suicide bombings as terrorism but, to Abbasi, they are a noble expression of Islam.
So what is terrorism if not suicide bombing? To Abbasi, terrorism includes any speech and expression he deems insulting to Islam.
According to press coverage of his lecture, Abbasi noted that "[German chancellor] Merkel and [U.S. president] Bush's support of the Danish newspaper, which insults Islam's prophet, has damaged their reputation in the Islamic world and has raised the question of whether Christianity, rather than Islam, is of terrorist nature."
From the Iranian leadership's perspective, therefore, Jyllands-Posten's cartoons are evidence of Christian terrorism.
By Abbasi's definition, Iran may not sponsor terrorism, but it does not hesitate to promote suicide attacks. He announced that approximately 40,000 Iranian estesh-hadiyun (martyrdom-seekers) were ready to carry out suicide operations against "twenty-nine identified Western targets" should the U.S. military strike Iranian nuclear installations.
Such threats are not new. According to an interview with Iran's Fars News Agency released on Abbasi's weblog, he has propagated haras-e moghaddas (sacred terror) at least since 2004.
"The front of unbelief," Abbasi wrote, "is the front of the enemies of God and Muslims. Any deed which might instigate terror and horror among them is sacred and honorable."
On June 5, 2004, he spoke of how suicide operations could overcome superior military force: "In ‘deo-centric' thought, there is no need for military parity to face the enemy … Deo-centric man prepares himself for martyrdom while humanist man struggles to kill."
Abbasi's rise to prominence in the state-controlled Iranian media coincides with the growth of a number of organizations that have constrained those prone to moderation within the Islamic Republic.
Take, for example, the Headquarters Commemorating the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement (Setad-e Pasdasht-e Shohada-ye Nehzat-e Eslami), an organization founded in 2004 as a protest against President Mohammad Khatami's attempts at improving Iran's relations with Egypt.
The organization's prominence continued to grow throughout the year. On June 5, 2004, the reformist daily Shargh granted Mohammad-Ali Samadi, Headquarters' spokesman, a front page interview.
Samadi has a pedigree of hard-line revolutionary credentials. He is a member of the editorial boards of Shalamche and Bahar magazines, affiliated with the hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God) vigilante group, as well as the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, considered the voice of the intelligence ministry.
Samadi said he had registered 2,000 volunteers for suicide operations at a seminar the previous day.
Copies of the registration forms show that the "martyrdom-seekers" could volunteer for suicide operations against three targets: operations against U.S. forces in the Shi‘ite holy cities in Iraq; against Israelis in Jerusalem; and against Rushdie.
The registration forms also quote Khomeini's declaration that "[I]f the enemy assaults the lands of the Muslims and its frontiers, it is mandatory for all Muslims to defend it by all means possible [be it by] offering life or property," and current supreme leader Ali Khamene'i's remarks that "[m]artyrdom-seeking operations mark the highest point of the greatness of a nation and the peak of [its] epic.
A man, a youth, a boy, and a girl who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the interests of the nation and their religion is the [symbol of the] greatest pride, courage, and bravery." According to press reports, a number of senior regime officials have attended the Headquarters' seminars.
The Iranian officials appeared true to their word.
During a September 2004 speech in Bushehr, home of Iran's declared nuclear reactor, Samadi announced the formation of a "martyrdom-seeking" unit from Bushehr while Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the official daily Keyhan, called the United States military "our hostage in Iraq," and bragged that "martyrdom-operations constitute a tactical capability in the world of Islam."
Then, on November 23, 2004, in response to the U.S. campaign against Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, Samadi announced the formation of the first suicide unit.
Named after the chief bomb-maker of Hamas, Yahya Ayyash, also known as Al-Muhandis (The Engineer) assassinated on January 5, 1996, it consisted of three teams of unknown size: the Rim Saleh ar-Riyashi team, named after Hamas's first female suicide bomber; the Mustafa Mahmud Mazeh team, named after a 21-year-old Lebanese who met his death in a Paddington hotel room on August 3, 1989, priming a book bomb likely aimed at Salman Rushdie; and the Ahmad Qasir team, named after a 15-year-old Lebanese Hezbollah suicide bomber whose operation demolished an eight-story building housing Israeli forces in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on November 11, 1982.
Samadi said there would be an additional call for volunteers at Tehran's largest Iran-Iraq war cemetery, the Behesht-e Zahra, the following week, and even promised to consider establishing special elementary schools to train for suicide operations.
He kept his word. On December 2, 2004, the Headquarters gathered a crowd in the Martyr's Section of Behesht-e Zahra, where those who conducted suicide operations are honored. According to the Iranian Mehr News Agency, the organization unveiled a memorial stone commemorating the "martyrs" killed in the 1983 Hezbollah attacks on the U.S. Marine and French peacekeepers' barracks in Beirut.
They set the stone next to one commemorating Anwar Sadat's assassin. Samadi concluded the ceremony with a raging speech, declaring, "The operation against the Marines was a hard blow in the mouth of the Americans and demonstrated that despite their hollow prestige and imagined strength … they [have] many vulnerable points and weaknesses.
We consider this operation a good model. The cemeteries in which their dead are buried provide an interesting view and cool the hearts of those Muslims who have been stepped upon under the boots of the Yankees while they were ignored by the international community."
The suicide corps continued to expand even though there is no evidence that their patrons have made them operational. In April 2005, the semi-official daily Iran announced convocation of a unit of female suicide bombers nicknamed the Olive Daughters.
The Baztab news website, which is associated with Mohsen Rezai, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 1981 to 1997 and since secretary of the Expediency Council, cited one Firouz Rajai-Far, who said, "The martyrdom-seeking Iranian women and girls … are ready to walk in the footsteps of the holy female Palestinian warriors, realizing the most terrifying nightmares of Zionists."
Rajai-Far, a former hostage taker at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holds the license for Do-Kouhe (Two Mountains, referring to one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Iran-Iraq war) magazine, which is affiliated with the vigilante organization Ansar-e Hezbollah.
Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani bestowed theological legitimacy upon such suicide terror operations in a written message to the gathering.
Attendance at the rally indicates some endorsement and a support network for suicide operations. Attending the rally were Palestinian Hamas representative Abu Osama al-Muata; Muhammad Hasan Rahimian, the supreme leader's personal representative to the powerful Bonyad-e Shahid (The Martyr Foundation); Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, an Iranian parliamentarian; Mustafa Rahmandust, general secretary of the Association for Support to the People of Palestine; and model female fighter Marziyeh Hadideh Dabbagh.
More vocal expressions of solidarity are limited, however. The Mehr News Agency reports only a single declaration of solidarity from the spokesman of the University Basij at the Tehran branch of Islamic Azad University, who compared contemporary suicide operations with the "revolutionary deeds" of Mirza-Reza Kermani, the assassin of Nasser al-Din Shah, a nineteenth-century king vilified by the Islamic Republic, and with Navvab Safavi, founder of the Fadayian-e Islam and famous for assassinating the liberal nationalist author and historian Ahmad Kasravi.
Still, that a group at the Islamic Azad University endorsed the organization is significant. Founded to broaden the reach of education after the Islamic Revolution, the university has several dozen satellite campuses across the country and today is the largest higher education system in Iran.
On May 13, 2005, officials declared the second suicide terror unit, the so-called "Martyr Shahada unit," consisting of 300 martyrdom-seekers, to be ready. Some months later, there was a gathering of the "martyrdom-seekers" at Shahrud University. While the invited Hamas representative did not attend, they watched Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech from the "World without Zionism" conference on screen.
While the status of the third and fourth suicide brigades remains unclear, new suicide units continue to declare their readiness. In May 2006, a fifth "martyrdom-seeking" unit, named after Commander Nader Mahdavi, who died in a 1988 suicide mission against the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, declared itself ready to defend Iran. The Headquarters even claims to have recruited "thirty-five foreign Jews" for suicide attacks.\
Lebanese Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006, provided another press opportunity for Iranian suicide brigades. On July 17, 2006, Arya News Agency reported an expedition of two "martyrdom-units," one consisting of eighteen and the second consisting of nine "martyrdom-seekers," to Lebanon.
At demonstrations in Tehran and Tabriz ten days later, sixty Iranian volunteers declared their readiness for holy war. There was also a rally in Rasht, capital of the Caspian province of Gilan, on July 29. But despite the bravado, Iranian police stopped a caravan of self-described "martyrdom-seekers" at the Turkish border.
A leftist weblog quoted the governor of the West Azerbaijan province in which the border crossings with Turkey lie as saying he received a telephone call from Ahmadinejad asking him to stop the suicide units.
Training and Command
While the Iranian government seeks propaganda value out of announcements of new suicide units, it remains in doubt just how committed recruits are. When an Iranian youth magazine interviewed Rajai-Far, an organizer of the Olive Daughters, she remained elusive about how serious her recruits were about suicide.
Despite its rhetoric and the occasional rally, there is little evidence that the Iranian government has established camps to train suicide terrorists. While the Revolutionary Guards operate a network of bases inside Iran, there is little coverage—at least in open source newspapers and Iranian media—of actual training of those recruited by the Headquarters.
There have been two mentions of a military exercise for the suicide brigades around the Karaj Dam. Muhammad-Reza Ja'afari, commander of the Gharar-gah-e Asheghan-e Shahadat (Congregation of the Lovers of Martyrdom) training camp, referred to one exercise as the "Labeik Ya Khamene'i" (We are responding to your call, Khamene'i).
With the exception of the representation of Hamas in the early development of the Iranian "martyrdom-seekers," there is little proof of organizational links to external terrorist organizations.
Nor does the training of any unit mean that the Iranian government is prepared to deploy such forces. In June 2004, Samadi explained that the "activities of the Headquarters will remain theoretical as long as there is no official authorization, and martyrdom-seeking operations will not commence unless the leader [Khamene'i] orders them to do so."
But command and control remain vague. Hussein Allah Karam, a well-known figure from Ansar-e Hezbollah without formal ties to the "martyrdom-seekers," stresses that Khamene'i need not grant permission for any exercises since the trainees are not armed.
Evading the question of what need there is to create "martyrdom-seeking" units parallel with the Basij, Karam responded, "Martyrdom-seeking groups are non-governmental organizations," not part of Iranian officialdom.
The Basij, a paramilitary militia of irregulars loosely charged with defending the revolution, has not been happy with the competition. Basij Commander Mohammad Hejazi condemned the Headquarters' declaration that it sought to dispatch suicide units to Lebanon.
"Such actions have absolutely no link to [Iran's] official apparatus and only serve propaganda aims," he declared. In an indirect critique of the suicide units' leadership, he added: "Some seemingly independent groups are trying to attract … the youth with no coordination with official institutions and without the approval of the command structure for propaganda purposes.
Their goals might be noble, but their means are not correct." Government spokesman Gholam-Hussein Elham underlined this argument.
The non-governmental status of the Headquarters and the "martyrdom-seekers" was reinforced in comments of an anonymous Revolutionary Guards commander to Shargh. He explained, "Since the Headquarters … is a non-governmental organization, the organization does not look for orders from the military in case they should take action. Their operations are to be compared with the martyrdom-operations of the Palestinians which are not related to the government of Iran."
The foreign ministry, which under Khatami was more reformist than the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, referred to the Headquarters members as "irresponsible elements" who did "not reflect the line of government,"[40] and, on August 3, 2006, Iranian parliamentarian Mehdi Kuchekzadeh called the Headquarters an NGO during a rally at Behesht-e Zahra.
Baztab reacted angrily to the publication of advertisements for "martyrdom operations" in Partov, the hard-line monthly of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute in Qom, accusing the publication, the Headquarters, and the director of the institute, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi—perhaps the most radical of the Islamic Republic's religious theoreticians—of enabling outsiders more easily to label Iran as a terror sponsor.
Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi expressed similar sentiments. "Martyrdom-operations against the interests of other states must remain secret … The public exposure of such gatherings is the very proof that they are not going to do anything," he wrote.
Abtahi accuses Yazdi of harming the national interests of Iran, and more seriously, of attempting to create parallel institutions in the Islamic Republic in order to eliminate internal opposition to his political interests. Such attacks called member of the parliament Shokrollah Attarzadeh to the defense of Mesbah Yazdi.
Attarzadeh said that volunteers without connection to the ayatollah organized the "martyrdom operations," which he claimed, at any rate, to be purely defensive.
An Instrument for Power Struggles
Baztab's hostility toward Mesbah Yazdi is significant. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long sanctioned widespread use of terror and vigilante justice to keep its citizens in line. Perhaps the most prominent example was the 1997-99 serial killings in which the Iranian secret services systematically liquidated Iranian intellectuals with the aim of intimidating dissidents.
This case has been subject to extensive debate, causing a considerable uproar among the Iranian public. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security claims that the murders were committed by rogue cells in the ministry. However, Iran's most famous journalist and political dissident, Akbar Ganji, accuses the former minister of intelligence, Ali Fallahian, and Khamene'i of responsibility for the killings.
During the 2005 presidential campaign, the reformist daily Rooz warned of the formation of a new Forghan,[46] a radical Islamist group from the early days of the Islamic Revolution.[47] Ali Yunesi, minister of intelligence, and Abtahi both seconded such concerns.
Baqir Nobakht, spokesman for ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's election campaign, criticized Yazdi by suggesting that he sought to use the "army of martyrdom-seekers" for operations against his political enemies inside Iran.
For more than a century, hard-line officials have turned to vigilante groups during periods of political upheaval. Their political influence is noticeable. The 1979 Islamic revolution only strengthened such tendencies, and there is no doubt that the patrons of the "martyrdom-seekers" have used the Headquarters as a tool to maintain revolutionary values against those that might ameliorate them.
Here, the crisis regarding the change in Iran's policy towards Egypt is instructive. From almost the start of the Islamic Republic, there has been considerable tension between Tehran and Cairo. Ayatollah Khomeini objected to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's recognition of and peace treaty with Israel. After Sadat's assassination, Iranian authorities named a street after his assassin, Khaled Islambouli.
For years after, this action has been an irritant in Egyptian-Iranian relations.[52] But in January 2004, toward the end of Muhammad Khatami's presidency, the Mehr News Agency reported that the Iranian government had asked Tehran's city council to change the street name. The city council acquiesced, renaming it "Intifada Street."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi attributed the decision to improving Egyptian-Iranian relations.
The Headquarters protested, sending a letter to then-mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad defended the decision in the name of promoting unity among Muslim countries "in order to face the global Zionist front." The Headquarters responded with a press release, and a demonstration against the decision.
Mehdi Chamran, the Tehran city council chairman and brother of the late commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Mostafa Chamran, said that the foreign ministry had imposed the decision but that he preferred to honor Islambouli.
In an Iranian-style compromise, the street was finally called Mohammad al-Durrah Street after a 12-year old boy who was caught in crossfire and killed in the opening days of the second intifada. But the Headquarters was successful in scuttling rapprochement with the largest Arab state to make peace with Israel.
On January 28, 2004, the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat announced that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would not visit Iran due to the presence of a picture of Khaled Islambouli on public display in Tehran.
Those associated with the Headquarters appear willing to use irregular forces against enemies not only foreign but also domestic. Groups connected to Mesbah Yazdi roughed up Rafsanjani on June 5, 2006, in Qom.
In the past, vigilantes directed such attacks against reformers or free thinkers, but now the first generation of the Iranian revolutionaries such as Rafsanjani receive the same treatment.
And as in the past, the violence is connected to the same groupings in Iranian politics: the Keyhan editor Shariatmadari, now close to the Headquarters, as the intellectual proponent of violence against liberal elements, and Hussein Allah Karam of Ansar-e Hezbollah, now also linked to the "martyrdom-seekers" and, more directly, with Ansar-e Hezbollah itself, which publishes advertisements for the Headquarters and interviews with their spokesmen.
Conclusions
Since 9-11, the increased focus on international terror has amplified fear of terrorism. By forming suicide terrorists units, Tehran can, at a minimum, exploit such fear. Already, Western policymakers warn that any strike against Iran could spark a resurgence of Iranian-backed terror.
That the Islamic Republic has already formed suicide bomber brigades underscores that point. But the fact that the Iranian leadership must embrace such nonconventional deterrents may suggest that Tehran recognizes that the Iranian military is weaker than Iranian figures admit.
However, the suicide units may serve a dual function. They are, in effect, the most radical factions' guns-for-hire, unquestioning loyalists who are willing to die to preserve revolutionary values. As such, Iranian hard-liners can use them to saber-rattle as well as to keep reformers and liberals at bay.
This may pose the more immediate threat since the willingness of Iranian hard-liners to use violence against their internal political opponents, could pose an almost insurmountable impediment to those who might seek to liberalize the Islamic Republic from within.
Ali Alfoneh is a Ph.D. fellow in the department of political science, University of Copenhagen, and a research fellow at the Royal Danish Defense College. He thanks Henrik Joergensen and Thomas Emil Jensen, both from the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defense College, for their input.
by Ali Alfoneh
Middle East QuarterlyWinter 2007
More than five years after President George W. Bush's declaration of a global war against terrorism, the Iranian regime continues to embrace suicide terrorism as an important component of its military doctrine.
In order to promote suicide bombing and other terrorism, the regime's theoreticians have utilized religion both to recruit suicide bombers and to justify their actions.
But as some factions within the Islamic Republic support the development of these so-called martyrdom brigades, their structure and activities suggest their purpose is not only to serve as a strategic asset in either deterring or striking at the West, but also to derail domestic attempts to dilute the Islamic Republic's revolutionary legacy.
Such strategy is apparent in the work of the Doctrinal Analysis Center for Security without Borders (Markaz-e barresiha-ye doktrinyal-e amniyat bedun marz), an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps think tank.
Its director, Hassan Abbasi, has embraced the utility of suicide terrorism. On February 19, 2006, he keynoted a Khajeh-Nasir University seminar celebrating the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa (religious edict) calling for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie. As Khomeini often did, Abbasi began his lecture with literary criticism.
He analyzed a U.S. publication from 2004 that, according to Abbasi, "depicts the prophet of Islam as the prophet of blood and violence." Rhetorically, he asked, "Will the Western man be able to understand martyrdom with such prejudice? [Can he] interpret Islam as anything but terrorism?"
The West sees suicide bombings as terrorism but, to Abbasi, they are a noble expression of Islam.
So what is terrorism if not suicide bombing? To Abbasi, terrorism includes any speech and expression he deems insulting to Islam.
According to press coverage of his lecture, Abbasi noted that "[German chancellor] Merkel and [U.S. president] Bush's support of the Danish newspaper, which insults Islam's prophet, has damaged their reputation in the Islamic world and has raised the question of whether Christianity, rather than Islam, is of terrorist nature."
From the Iranian leadership's perspective, therefore, Jyllands-Posten's cartoons are evidence of Christian terrorism.
By Abbasi's definition, Iran may not sponsor terrorism, but it does not hesitate to promote suicide attacks. He announced that approximately 40,000 Iranian estesh-hadiyun (martyrdom-seekers) were ready to carry out suicide operations against "twenty-nine identified Western targets" should the U.S. military strike Iranian nuclear installations.
Such threats are not new. According to an interview with Iran's Fars News Agency released on Abbasi's weblog, he has propagated haras-e moghaddas (sacred terror) at least since 2004.
"The front of unbelief," Abbasi wrote, "is the front of the enemies of God and Muslims. Any deed which might instigate terror and horror among them is sacred and honorable."
On June 5, 2004, he spoke of how suicide operations could overcome superior military force: "In ‘deo-centric' thought, there is no need for military parity to face the enemy … Deo-centric man prepares himself for martyrdom while humanist man struggles to kill."
Abbasi's rise to prominence in the state-controlled Iranian media coincides with the growth of a number of organizations that have constrained those prone to moderation within the Islamic Republic.
Take, for example, the Headquarters Commemorating the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement (Setad-e Pasdasht-e Shohada-ye Nehzat-e Eslami), an organization founded in 2004 as a protest against President Mohammad Khatami's attempts at improving Iran's relations with Egypt.
The organization's prominence continued to grow throughout the year. On June 5, 2004, the reformist daily Shargh granted Mohammad-Ali Samadi, Headquarters' spokesman, a front page interview.
Samadi has a pedigree of hard-line revolutionary credentials. He is a member of the editorial boards of Shalamche and Bahar magazines, affiliated with the hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God) vigilante group, as well as the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, considered the voice of the intelligence ministry.
Samadi said he had registered 2,000 volunteers for suicide operations at a seminar the previous day.
Copies of the registration forms show that the "martyrdom-seekers" could volunteer for suicide operations against three targets: operations against U.S. forces in the Shi‘ite holy cities in Iraq; against Israelis in Jerusalem; and against Rushdie.
The registration forms also quote Khomeini's declaration that "[I]f the enemy assaults the lands of the Muslims and its frontiers, it is mandatory for all Muslims to defend it by all means possible [be it by] offering life or property," and current supreme leader Ali Khamene'i's remarks that "[m]artyrdom-seeking operations mark the highest point of the greatness of a nation and the peak of [its] epic.
A man, a youth, a boy, and a girl who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the interests of the nation and their religion is the [symbol of the] greatest pride, courage, and bravery." According to press reports, a number of senior regime officials have attended the Headquarters' seminars.
The Iranian officials appeared true to their word.
During a September 2004 speech in Bushehr, home of Iran's declared nuclear reactor, Samadi announced the formation of a "martyrdom-seeking" unit from Bushehr while Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the official daily Keyhan, called the United States military "our hostage in Iraq," and bragged that "martyrdom-operations constitute a tactical capability in the world of Islam."
Then, on November 23, 2004, in response to the U.S. campaign against Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, Samadi announced the formation of the first suicide unit.
Named after the chief bomb-maker of Hamas, Yahya Ayyash, also known as Al-Muhandis (The Engineer) assassinated on January 5, 1996, it consisted of three teams of unknown size: the Rim Saleh ar-Riyashi team, named after Hamas's first female suicide bomber; the Mustafa Mahmud Mazeh team, named after a 21-year-old Lebanese who met his death in a Paddington hotel room on August 3, 1989, priming a book bomb likely aimed at Salman Rushdie; and the Ahmad Qasir team, named after a 15-year-old Lebanese Hezbollah suicide bomber whose operation demolished an eight-story building housing Israeli forces in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on November 11, 1982.
Samadi said there would be an additional call for volunteers at Tehran's largest Iran-Iraq war cemetery, the Behesht-e Zahra, the following week, and even promised to consider establishing special elementary schools to train for suicide operations.
He kept his word. On December 2, 2004, the Headquarters gathered a crowd in the Martyr's Section of Behesht-e Zahra, where those who conducted suicide operations are honored. According to the Iranian Mehr News Agency, the organization unveiled a memorial stone commemorating the "martyrs" killed in the 1983 Hezbollah attacks on the U.S. Marine and French peacekeepers' barracks in Beirut.
They set the stone next to one commemorating Anwar Sadat's assassin. Samadi concluded the ceremony with a raging speech, declaring, "The operation against the Marines was a hard blow in the mouth of the Americans and demonstrated that despite their hollow prestige and imagined strength … they [have] many vulnerable points and weaknesses.
We consider this operation a good model. The cemeteries in which their dead are buried provide an interesting view and cool the hearts of those Muslims who have been stepped upon under the boots of the Yankees while they were ignored by the international community."
The suicide corps continued to expand even though there is no evidence that their patrons have made them operational. In April 2005, the semi-official daily Iran announced convocation of a unit of female suicide bombers nicknamed the Olive Daughters.
The Baztab news website, which is associated with Mohsen Rezai, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 1981 to 1997 and since secretary of the Expediency Council, cited one Firouz Rajai-Far, who said, "The martyrdom-seeking Iranian women and girls … are ready to walk in the footsteps of the holy female Palestinian warriors, realizing the most terrifying nightmares of Zionists."
Rajai-Far, a former hostage taker at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holds the license for Do-Kouhe (Two Mountains, referring to one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Iran-Iraq war) magazine, which is affiliated with the vigilante organization Ansar-e Hezbollah.
Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani bestowed theological legitimacy upon such suicide terror operations in a written message to the gathering.
Attendance at the rally indicates some endorsement and a support network for suicide operations. Attending the rally were Palestinian Hamas representative Abu Osama al-Muata; Muhammad Hasan Rahimian, the supreme leader's personal representative to the powerful Bonyad-e Shahid (The Martyr Foundation); Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, an Iranian parliamentarian; Mustafa Rahmandust, general secretary of the Association for Support to the People of Palestine; and model female fighter Marziyeh Hadideh Dabbagh.
More vocal expressions of solidarity are limited, however. The Mehr News Agency reports only a single declaration of solidarity from the spokesman of the University Basij at the Tehran branch of Islamic Azad University, who compared contemporary suicide operations with the "revolutionary deeds" of Mirza-Reza Kermani, the assassin of Nasser al-Din Shah, a nineteenth-century king vilified by the Islamic Republic, and with Navvab Safavi, founder of the Fadayian-e Islam and famous for assassinating the liberal nationalist author and historian Ahmad Kasravi.
Still, that a group at the Islamic Azad University endorsed the organization is significant. Founded to broaden the reach of education after the Islamic Revolution, the university has several dozen satellite campuses across the country and today is the largest higher education system in Iran.
On May 13, 2005, officials declared the second suicide terror unit, the so-called "Martyr Shahada unit," consisting of 300 martyrdom-seekers, to be ready. Some months later, there was a gathering of the "martyrdom-seekers" at Shahrud University. While the invited Hamas representative did not attend, they watched Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech from the "World without Zionism" conference on screen.
While the status of the third and fourth suicide brigades remains unclear, new suicide units continue to declare their readiness. In May 2006, a fifth "martyrdom-seeking" unit, named after Commander Nader Mahdavi, who died in a 1988 suicide mission against the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, declared itself ready to defend Iran. The Headquarters even claims to have recruited "thirty-five foreign Jews" for suicide attacks.\
Lebanese Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006, provided another press opportunity for Iranian suicide brigades. On July 17, 2006, Arya News Agency reported an expedition of two "martyrdom-units," one consisting of eighteen and the second consisting of nine "martyrdom-seekers," to Lebanon.
At demonstrations in Tehran and Tabriz ten days later, sixty Iranian volunteers declared their readiness for holy war. There was also a rally in Rasht, capital of the Caspian province of Gilan, on July 29. But despite the bravado, Iranian police stopped a caravan of self-described "martyrdom-seekers" at the Turkish border.
A leftist weblog quoted the governor of the West Azerbaijan province in which the border crossings with Turkey lie as saying he received a telephone call from Ahmadinejad asking him to stop the suicide units.
Training and Command
While the Iranian government seeks propaganda value out of announcements of new suicide units, it remains in doubt just how committed recruits are. When an Iranian youth magazine interviewed Rajai-Far, an organizer of the Olive Daughters, she remained elusive about how serious her recruits were about suicide.
Despite its rhetoric and the occasional rally, there is little evidence that the Iranian government has established camps to train suicide terrorists. While the Revolutionary Guards operate a network of bases inside Iran, there is little coverage—at least in open source newspapers and Iranian media—of actual training of those recruited by the Headquarters.
There have been two mentions of a military exercise for the suicide brigades around the Karaj Dam. Muhammad-Reza Ja'afari, commander of the Gharar-gah-e Asheghan-e Shahadat (Congregation of the Lovers of Martyrdom) training camp, referred to one exercise as the "Labeik Ya Khamene'i" (We are responding to your call, Khamene'i).
With the exception of the representation of Hamas in the early development of the Iranian "martyrdom-seekers," there is little proof of organizational links to external terrorist organizations.
Nor does the training of any unit mean that the Iranian government is prepared to deploy such forces. In June 2004, Samadi explained that the "activities of the Headquarters will remain theoretical as long as there is no official authorization, and martyrdom-seeking operations will not commence unless the leader [Khamene'i] orders them to do so."
But command and control remain vague. Hussein Allah Karam, a well-known figure from Ansar-e Hezbollah without formal ties to the "martyrdom-seekers," stresses that Khamene'i need not grant permission for any exercises since the trainees are not armed.
Evading the question of what need there is to create "martyrdom-seeking" units parallel with the Basij, Karam responded, "Martyrdom-seeking groups are non-governmental organizations," not part of Iranian officialdom.
The Basij, a paramilitary militia of irregulars loosely charged with defending the revolution, has not been happy with the competition. Basij Commander Mohammad Hejazi condemned the Headquarters' declaration that it sought to dispatch suicide units to Lebanon.
"Such actions have absolutely no link to [Iran's] official apparatus and only serve propaganda aims," he declared. In an indirect critique of the suicide units' leadership, he added: "Some seemingly independent groups are trying to attract … the youth with no coordination with official institutions and without the approval of the command structure for propaganda purposes.
Their goals might be noble, but their means are not correct." Government spokesman Gholam-Hussein Elham underlined this argument.
The non-governmental status of the Headquarters and the "martyrdom-seekers" was reinforced in comments of an anonymous Revolutionary Guards commander to Shargh. He explained, "Since the Headquarters … is a non-governmental organization, the organization does not look for orders from the military in case they should take action. Their operations are to be compared with the martyrdom-operations of the Palestinians which are not related to the government of Iran."
The foreign ministry, which under Khatami was more reformist than the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, referred to the Headquarters members as "irresponsible elements" who did "not reflect the line of government,"[40] and, on August 3, 2006, Iranian parliamentarian Mehdi Kuchekzadeh called the Headquarters an NGO during a rally at Behesht-e Zahra.
Baztab reacted angrily to the publication of advertisements for "martyrdom operations" in Partov, the hard-line monthly of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute in Qom, accusing the publication, the Headquarters, and the director of the institute, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi—perhaps the most radical of the Islamic Republic's religious theoreticians—of enabling outsiders more easily to label Iran as a terror sponsor.
Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi expressed similar sentiments. "Martyrdom-operations against the interests of other states must remain secret … The public exposure of such gatherings is the very proof that they are not going to do anything," he wrote.
Abtahi accuses Yazdi of harming the national interests of Iran, and more seriously, of attempting to create parallel institutions in the Islamic Republic in order to eliminate internal opposition to his political interests. Such attacks called member of the parliament Shokrollah Attarzadeh to the defense of Mesbah Yazdi.
Attarzadeh said that volunteers without connection to the ayatollah organized the "martyrdom operations," which he claimed, at any rate, to be purely defensive.
An Instrument for Power Struggles
Baztab's hostility toward Mesbah Yazdi is significant. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long sanctioned widespread use of terror and vigilante justice to keep its citizens in line. Perhaps the most prominent example was the 1997-99 serial killings in which the Iranian secret services systematically liquidated Iranian intellectuals with the aim of intimidating dissidents.
This case has been subject to extensive debate, causing a considerable uproar among the Iranian public. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security claims that the murders were committed by rogue cells in the ministry. However, Iran's most famous journalist and political dissident, Akbar Ganji, accuses the former minister of intelligence, Ali Fallahian, and Khamene'i of responsibility for the killings.
During the 2005 presidential campaign, the reformist daily Rooz warned of the formation of a new Forghan,[46] a radical Islamist group from the early days of the Islamic Revolution.[47] Ali Yunesi, minister of intelligence, and Abtahi both seconded such concerns.
Baqir Nobakht, spokesman for ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's election campaign, criticized Yazdi by suggesting that he sought to use the "army of martyrdom-seekers" for operations against his political enemies inside Iran.
For more than a century, hard-line officials have turned to vigilante groups during periods of political upheaval. Their political influence is noticeable. The 1979 Islamic revolution only strengthened such tendencies, and there is no doubt that the patrons of the "martyrdom-seekers" have used the Headquarters as a tool to maintain revolutionary values against those that might ameliorate them.
Here, the crisis regarding the change in Iran's policy towards Egypt is instructive. From almost the start of the Islamic Republic, there has been considerable tension between Tehran and Cairo. Ayatollah Khomeini objected to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's recognition of and peace treaty with Israel. After Sadat's assassination, Iranian authorities named a street after his assassin, Khaled Islambouli.
For years after, this action has been an irritant in Egyptian-Iranian relations.[52] But in January 2004, toward the end of Muhammad Khatami's presidency, the Mehr News Agency reported that the Iranian government had asked Tehran's city council to change the street name. The city council acquiesced, renaming it "Intifada Street."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi attributed the decision to improving Egyptian-Iranian relations.
The Headquarters protested, sending a letter to then-mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad defended the decision in the name of promoting unity among Muslim countries "in order to face the global Zionist front." The Headquarters responded with a press release, and a demonstration against the decision.
Mehdi Chamran, the Tehran city council chairman and brother of the late commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Mostafa Chamran, said that the foreign ministry had imposed the decision but that he preferred to honor Islambouli.
In an Iranian-style compromise, the street was finally called Mohammad al-Durrah Street after a 12-year old boy who was caught in crossfire and killed in the opening days of the second intifada. But the Headquarters was successful in scuttling rapprochement with the largest Arab state to make peace with Israel.
On January 28, 2004, the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat announced that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would not visit Iran due to the presence of a picture of Khaled Islambouli on public display in Tehran.
Those associated with the Headquarters appear willing to use irregular forces against enemies not only foreign but also domestic. Groups connected to Mesbah Yazdi roughed up Rafsanjani on June 5, 2006, in Qom.
In the past, vigilantes directed such attacks against reformers or free thinkers, but now the first generation of the Iranian revolutionaries such as Rafsanjani receive the same treatment.
And as in the past, the violence is connected to the same groupings in Iranian politics: the Keyhan editor Shariatmadari, now close to the Headquarters, as the intellectual proponent of violence against liberal elements, and Hussein Allah Karam of Ansar-e Hezbollah, now also linked to the "martyrdom-seekers" and, more directly, with Ansar-e Hezbollah itself, which publishes advertisements for the Headquarters and interviews with their spokesmen.
Conclusions
Since 9-11, the increased focus on international terror has amplified fear of terrorism. By forming suicide terrorists units, Tehran can, at a minimum, exploit such fear. Already, Western policymakers warn that any strike against Iran could spark a resurgence of Iranian-backed terror.
That the Islamic Republic has already formed suicide bomber brigades underscores that point. But the fact that the Iranian leadership must embrace such nonconventional deterrents may suggest that Tehran recognizes that the Iranian military is weaker than Iranian figures admit.
However, the suicide units may serve a dual function. They are, in effect, the most radical factions' guns-for-hire, unquestioning loyalists who are willing to die to preserve revolutionary values. As such, Iranian hard-liners can use them to saber-rattle as well as to keep reformers and liberals at bay.
This may pose the more immediate threat since the willingness of Iranian hard-liners to use violence against their internal political opponents, could pose an almost insurmountable impediment to those who might seek to liberalize the Islamic Republic from within.
Ali Alfoneh is a Ph.D. fellow in the department of political science, University of Copenhagen, and a research fellow at the Royal Danish Defense College. He thanks Henrik Joergensen and Thomas Emil Jensen, both from the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defense College, for their input.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Secret Service Needs Better Management?
The Secret Service has been plagued by high turnover rates because of mismanagement, a NewsMax investigation has found.
According to current and former agents, the Secret Service has senseless transfer policies that drive agents to quit before retirement and add to the government's costs. This comes at a time when, because of threats from terrorists, the need for the Secret Service has never been greater.
In particular, the agents cite numerous situations where agents are denied transfers to cities where their spouses work, while other agents are forced to transfer to those same cities. Often, the agents who want to transfer have offered to pay their own moving costs. Instead, the Secret Service pays $50,000 to $100,000 each to move agents who do not want to be transferred to those cities.
Other poor management practices stand in contrast to the way the FBI does business.
"We sign up to take a bullet, but that's not the hardest part of the job," Jessica Johnson, a former Secret Service agent, told NewsMax. "It's not anything that we normally face. The risk is there. But what makes the job very difficult is the mismanagement.
If the Secret Service were better managed, you'd have a lot better workforce, a lot more people who don't quit," Johnson said.
Current and former agents say the Secret Service is oblivious to the fact that since 9/11, the private sector has been offering hefty salaries to anyone with a federal law enforcement background. For those who want to keep their government pensions, opportunities have expanded as well at other federal law enforcement agencies. Secret Service and FBI agents are prized catches.
Sacrificing Quality Agents
The FBI has taken steps to retain agents, while the Secret Service has not.
In contrast to the Secret Service, after an FBI agent is with the bureau three years, unless he or she chooses to go into management, the agent can stay in the same city for the rest of his or her career. An agent going into management can stay in the same city for five years.
The Secret Service, on the other hand, typically transfers agents three to four times during a 25-year career. An agent who enters management may move five to six times. The rationale is that agents need to obtain experience in different offices, but agents say experience in one office does not translate to another office. Decades ago, the FBI had the same policy.
The bureau scrapped it because the constant moves were not necessary and led many agents to leave the bureau, wasting taxpayer dollars on moving costs and the cost of training new agents to replace those who left.
Not having to transfer as often, FBI agents can better work out living arrangements with spouses. The FBI at least tries to take into account situations where a spouse must work in a particular city, sometimes addressing these as hardship cases.
A Secret Service agent for almost 10 years, Johnson quit early this year partly because of what she called poor management practices. She said the agency is mostly run by agents who are "old school" and think everyone wants to be a Secret Service agent at any cost.
"In the old days, the Secret Service was a great gig," Johnson said. "People lined up to join. They had applications on the shelves for years. People would drop everything at the drop of a hat to get a Secret Service job. It was great pay and offered stability. Well, times have changed, but their mentality hasn't.
People can go out and make a lot more money in the private sector, a lot more money on their own, for much less risk.
Management's attitude is almost as though we should literally be thanking them every day we wake up and have a job."
The Secret Service did not respond to NewsMax's requests for comment or for percentage statistics on agent turnover.
Resignations on the Rise
Agents say resignations before retirement have increased substantially in recent years. In all, the Secret Service has close to 3,000 agents who protect the president and other national leaders as well as visiting foreign dignitaries. The agency also investigates crimes ranging from counterfeiting to fraud involving financial institutions, computers, telecommunications, and electronic funds transfers.
Out of around 140 agents in the Los Angeles office alone, agents say that every other month an agent quits before retirement.
Nationally, an agent transfers to another federal law enforcement agency two or three times a week, one agent said. That does not include agents who leave for the private sector or retire.
The Secret Service asked an analyst, then based in Washington, to study the problem of retention and the costs associated with agent turnover. She found it was an increasingly serious problem. The cost to the government of training a new agent is at least $50,000.
"The higher-ups basically dismissed her findings, saying, 'Oh, we don't have any kind of retention problem,'" said a current agent.
"They didn't want to hear it."
"Who's going to admit there's a problem?" Johnson said. "They just want to hear that everything's fine."
Internally, the Secret Service tries to hide the actual turnover rate by counting in its statistics only agents who leave the government, rather than those who accept jobs at another federal law enforcement agency, according to agents.
Those who remain with the government account for the greatest portion of the turnover.
Johnson, who is now a real estate investor, described trying to raise the issue during her exit interview.
"The supervisor who was giving me the exit interview was literally saying, 'Tell me if there are any problems we should know about,' as he was starting to escort me out the door," Johnson said. "I said, 'Well, yes, I'm sure you hear this a lot,' and I began to lay out examples of unnecessary burdens imposed on agents."
The supervisor became defensive.
"He started going on about how the military does more, and there are civilians who sacrifice more than we do in the service," she said.
In recent years, agents say a dismissive culture and a disregard for the need to retain agents have remained constant. They say that Secret Service directors stay for two or three years, then leave without changing the culture. Mark Sullivan, the current director, was sworn in on May 31, 2006.
Johnson said she accepts that by its very nature, a Secret Service agent's job is demanding. She was assigned to protect President Clinton, who was constantly traveling all over the world. She could hardly ever plan anything in her personal life because her schedule was his schedule.
"If you're on what we call the ROTA [travel rotation] for that month, then you could be called out at any time, with very little notice, to travel anywhere - in-country, out-of-country, to support a protective mission," she said. "So if the president was going to Timbuktu, you could get one or two day's notice before you'd fly off. It's very hard to make plans during that time.
Depending on how your office does it, you could get the ROTA back to back."
If a former president dies, for example, and a protectee goes to the funeral, "Your New Year's leave is canceled because you have to go stand post," she said. "And that's something we sign up for."
Johnson is single and found prospects for marriage slim while in the Secret Service.
"It was hard enough when I just had a master's degree, my own house and a career, and then add to that a gun and a badge, and I'm traveling all over the world," she said. "Oh and by the way, were you going to transfer with me? Were you going to move around the country following my career?"
The 'Juice' Required for Change
What Johnson and others resented was that the Secret Service ignored opportunities to lessen necessary burdens that go with the job. Secret Service upper-management simply doesn't want to be bothered with taking an agent's wishes into account, they say.
Nor does the agency have an open process for listing anticipated vacancies and agents' preferences for transfers. All are kept secret. If an agent has "juice" - connections to higher-ups - he or she is bumped ahead of others, agents say.
In contrast, the FBI, which has 12,500 agents, maintains online lists of requested transfers to each field office so that agents can see who is ahead of them. FBI agents say connections play no role in transfers. Because of the open lists, if the FBI did engage in such under-the-table preferential treatment, the agents would know about it.
The fact that the Secret Service's computer program for listing agent transfer preferences and bidding on promotions is an antiquated DOS-based program symbolizes how much the Secret Service cares about agents' wishes, agents say.
Johnson said that the agency's high-handed approach and preferential treatment for those who have "juice" contribute to low morale and a high turnover rate.
"One agent wanted to take leave on Christmas, and her supervisor said, 'Nobody gets their first holiday off; you're going to work,'" Johnson said.
"She had volunteers who wanted to work her assignment during Christmas.
Plenty of people who wanted the overtime. Instead, she was forced to cancel her plans to see family. The volunteers were the same grade, same pay, and same or better experience; but they weren't allowed to take her trip."
About a year ago, the Secret Service imposed limits on overtime pay and then often denied agents the opportunity to use compensatory or flex time which they had earned in lieu of overtime pay.
When flex time is taken, it usually must be taken within a week. If an agent has other duties already scheduled, the agent may be forced to forfeit the flex time. After seven years, an agent based in a major city might make upwards of $110,000 a year without overtime.
The most senseless management policy has to do with transfers. Essentially, according to agents, the Secret Service moves agents around like pieces on a checkers board without regard to their wishes. The exception is when an agent has "juice." Because agents rightly feel they are being treated unfairly, that situation contributes to poor morale in the Secret Service.
After two years on the Clinton detail based in Chappaqua, N.Y., Johnson wanted to transfer back to California, where she grew up.
"All of a sudden, they said they can't transfer anyone out of New York," she said. "They said they have no one to replace me. At the same time, they're sending out an e-mail that says anyone, regardless of where you are in your career track, if you would like to go to Los Angeles, New York, or San Francisco, raise your hand and you're there.
So I write the little memo and I raise my hand. I jump up and down, and they tell me, 'Oh, well, we can't replace you. So you can't go.'"
At the same time, Johnson said, agents who are her friends in the Los Angeles office were sending her copies of e-mails they were receiving from management saying they had to leave Los Angeles to go to protective details.
"A year later when I went to my management, they said, 'Oh well, L.A.'s full. How about the New York field office?'" she said.
When the Secret Service finally agreed to transfer her to Los Angeles after three years in New York, "I find out that we were 11 bodies short in L.A. So how did we go from being full to being 11 bodies short in four months?"
In other cases, the Secret Service disregards situations where a spouse has a job in another city. Johnson and others described one situation where an agent who was based in Los Angeles began dating a doctor in Hawaii.
Eventually, they married, and the agent put in for a transfer to Hawaii, where his wife had an established medical practice.
"We have an office in Hawaii, so it's easier for him to transfer than it is for her," Johnson said. "But the management we had in L.A. at the time had no 'juice.' He was told he couldn't be transferred to Hawaii. He quit because he said his marriage was more important."
About a month later, after he moved to Hawaii, he applied to return to the Secret Service. The head of the Hawaii office, who had the requisite "juice," re-hired him.
"Here you're being told you can't transfer; and the bottom line was, it was all about who your boss is," Johnson said.
In another case, an agent in Los Angeles married a doctor whose specialty made it difficult to find a position there. Finally, she obtained a job in Denver.
The agent asked for a transfer to Denver and offered to pay for the move himself, which would have saved the government about $75,000 in moving costs. The agent was denied a transfer. For the past year, the agent has been flying to Denver once or twice a month to see his wife and young daughter.
"He was willing to go to an office that had serious management issues just to be near his family and pay for it himself," Johnson said. "They still said no."
Meanwhile, the service asked for volunteers to transfer to Denver. Now several other agents are being transferred to Denver at a cost to the government upwards of $100,000 each. Some have greater seniority while others do not.
Agents point out that even when another agent has more seniority, the Secret Service is losing out when agents quit because the agency refuses to transfer them to a city where their spouse has a job.
"If the opening isn't available at that moment, then they can say, 'Oh, sorry, that office is overstaffed. Here are your only options,'" a current agent said. "Then sure enough, while you're still on orders to move somewhere else, orders come out for someone else to go to the same city."
In fact, agents are often "force transferred" - meaning they have no choice except to move or quit - when other agents actually want to go to those same cities.
"There are people who literally pass each other in the air because, let's say one person is leaving Detroit and the other person is leaving Kansas, and they're both being forced to switch," Johnson said. "They're making these people pay to move to a spot where they're literally having the other person in the other city move to replace them. I mean it's just mindless."
Another example of the Secret Service's high-handed way of doing business involves an agent who was based in Washington, D.C. and is married to a Navy lawyer. When the Navy gave her orders to transfer to San Diego, the Secret Service agreed to transfer him there. But after they purchased a home near San Diego, the Secret Service told the agent his transfer orders were being changed. Instead, he was to report to the Los Angeles field office.
The agent asked to transfer to a closer office in Santa Ana, but that request was denied. He has been commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles - a two-hour drive each way - every day.
Meanwhile, Johnson said, the Secret Service has trouble finding qualified applicants to replace those who are driven away.
"Getting a number of applicants is not a problem. Getting qualified applicants is always a problem," she said. "Because of the high standard they have, a large portion of the population wouldn't qualify to be an agent. They've done various things trying to recruit good people, but the bottom line is that their policies are driving away the good people they already have."
"If this were a private company, they couldn't survive," a current Secret Service agent says. "But it's the government, and nobody's accountable.
Somebody probably gets a big fat bonus because we meet our hiring goals, but nobody loses out on a bonus because we had a high attrition rate. What we need is people from outside to shake up the Secret Service."
According to current and former agents, the Secret Service has senseless transfer policies that drive agents to quit before retirement and add to the government's costs. This comes at a time when, because of threats from terrorists, the need for the Secret Service has never been greater.
In particular, the agents cite numerous situations where agents are denied transfers to cities where their spouses work, while other agents are forced to transfer to those same cities. Often, the agents who want to transfer have offered to pay their own moving costs. Instead, the Secret Service pays $50,000 to $100,000 each to move agents who do not want to be transferred to those cities.
Other poor management practices stand in contrast to the way the FBI does business.
"We sign up to take a bullet, but that's not the hardest part of the job," Jessica Johnson, a former Secret Service agent, told NewsMax. "It's not anything that we normally face. The risk is there. But what makes the job very difficult is the mismanagement.
If the Secret Service were better managed, you'd have a lot better workforce, a lot more people who don't quit," Johnson said.
Current and former agents say the Secret Service is oblivious to the fact that since 9/11, the private sector has been offering hefty salaries to anyone with a federal law enforcement background. For those who want to keep their government pensions, opportunities have expanded as well at other federal law enforcement agencies. Secret Service and FBI agents are prized catches.
Sacrificing Quality Agents
The FBI has taken steps to retain agents, while the Secret Service has not.
In contrast to the Secret Service, after an FBI agent is with the bureau three years, unless he or she chooses to go into management, the agent can stay in the same city for the rest of his or her career. An agent going into management can stay in the same city for five years.
The Secret Service, on the other hand, typically transfers agents three to four times during a 25-year career. An agent who enters management may move five to six times. The rationale is that agents need to obtain experience in different offices, but agents say experience in one office does not translate to another office. Decades ago, the FBI had the same policy.
The bureau scrapped it because the constant moves were not necessary and led many agents to leave the bureau, wasting taxpayer dollars on moving costs and the cost of training new agents to replace those who left.
Not having to transfer as often, FBI agents can better work out living arrangements with spouses. The FBI at least tries to take into account situations where a spouse must work in a particular city, sometimes addressing these as hardship cases.
A Secret Service agent for almost 10 years, Johnson quit early this year partly because of what she called poor management practices. She said the agency is mostly run by agents who are "old school" and think everyone wants to be a Secret Service agent at any cost.
"In the old days, the Secret Service was a great gig," Johnson said. "People lined up to join. They had applications on the shelves for years. People would drop everything at the drop of a hat to get a Secret Service job. It was great pay and offered stability. Well, times have changed, but their mentality hasn't.
People can go out and make a lot more money in the private sector, a lot more money on their own, for much less risk.
Management's attitude is almost as though we should literally be thanking them every day we wake up and have a job."
The Secret Service did not respond to NewsMax's requests for comment or for percentage statistics on agent turnover.
Resignations on the Rise
Agents say resignations before retirement have increased substantially in recent years. In all, the Secret Service has close to 3,000 agents who protect the president and other national leaders as well as visiting foreign dignitaries. The agency also investigates crimes ranging from counterfeiting to fraud involving financial institutions, computers, telecommunications, and electronic funds transfers.
Out of around 140 agents in the Los Angeles office alone, agents say that every other month an agent quits before retirement.
Nationally, an agent transfers to another federal law enforcement agency two or three times a week, one agent said. That does not include agents who leave for the private sector or retire.
The Secret Service asked an analyst, then based in Washington, to study the problem of retention and the costs associated with agent turnover. She found it was an increasingly serious problem. The cost to the government of training a new agent is at least $50,000.
"The higher-ups basically dismissed her findings, saying, 'Oh, we don't have any kind of retention problem,'" said a current agent.
"They didn't want to hear it."
"Who's going to admit there's a problem?" Johnson said. "They just want to hear that everything's fine."
Internally, the Secret Service tries to hide the actual turnover rate by counting in its statistics only agents who leave the government, rather than those who accept jobs at another federal law enforcement agency, according to agents.
Those who remain with the government account for the greatest portion of the turnover.
Johnson, who is now a real estate investor, described trying to raise the issue during her exit interview.
"The supervisor who was giving me the exit interview was literally saying, 'Tell me if there are any problems we should know about,' as he was starting to escort me out the door," Johnson said. "I said, 'Well, yes, I'm sure you hear this a lot,' and I began to lay out examples of unnecessary burdens imposed on agents."
The supervisor became defensive.
"He started going on about how the military does more, and there are civilians who sacrifice more than we do in the service," she said.
In recent years, agents say a dismissive culture and a disregard for the need to retain agents have remained constant. They say that Secret Service directors stay for two or three years, then leave without changing the culture. Mark Sullivan, the current director, was sworn in on May 31, 2006.
Johnson said she accepts that by its very nature, a Secret Service agent's job is demanding. She was assigned to protect President Clinton, who was constantly traveling all over the world. She could hardly ever plan anything in her personal life because her schedule was his schedule.
"If you're on what we call the ROTA [travel rotation] for that month, then you could be called out at any time, with very little notice, to travel anywhere - in-country, out-of-country, to support a protective mission," she said. "So if the president was going to Timbuktu, you could get one or two day's notice before you'd fly off. It's very hard to make plans during that time.
Depending on how your office does it, you could get the ROTA back to back."
If a former president dies, for example, and a protectee goes to the funeral, "Your New Year's leave is canceled because you have to go stand post," she said. "And that's something we sign up for."
Johnson is single and found prospects for marriage slim while in the Secret Service.
"It was hard enough when I just had a master's degree, my own house and a career, and then add to that a gun and a badge, and I'm traveling all over the world," she said. "Oh and by the way, were you going to transfer with me? Were you going to move around the country following my career?"
The 'Juice' Required for Change
What Johnson and others resented was that the Secret Service ignored opportunities to lessen necessary burdens that go with the job. Secret Service upper-management simply doesn't want to be bothered with taking an agent's wishes into account, they say.
Nor does the agency have an open process for listing anticipated vacancies and agents' preferences for transfers. All are kept secret. If an agent has "juice" - connections to higher-ups - he or she is bumped ahead of others, agents say.
In contrast, the FBI, which has 12,500 agents, maintains online lists of requested transfers to each field office so that agents can see who is ahead of them. FBI agents say connections play no role in transfers. Because of the open lists, if the FBI did engage in such under-the-table preferential treatment, the agents would know about it.
The fact that the Secret Service's computer program for listing agent transfer preferences and bidding on promotions is an antiquated DOS-based program symbolizes how much the Secret Service cares about agents' wishes, agents say.
Johnson said that the agency's high-handed approach and preferential treatment for those who have "juice" contribute to low morale and a high turnover rate.
"One agent wanted to take leave on Christmas, and her supervisor said, 'Nobody gets their first holiday off; you're going to work,'" Johnson said.
"She had volunteers who wanted to work her assignment during Christmas.
Plenty of people who wanted the overtime. Instead, she was forced to cancel her plans to see family. The volunteers were the same grade, same pay, and same or better experience; but they weren't allowed to take her trip."
About a year ago, the Secret Service imposed limits on overtime pay and then often denied agents the opportunity to use compensatory or flex time which they had earned in lieu of overtime pay.
When flex time is taken, it usually must be taken within a week. If an agent has other duties already scheduled, the agent may be forced to forfeit the flex time. After seven years, an agent based in a major city might make upwards of $110,000 a year without overtime.
The most senseless management policy has to do with transfers. Essentially, according to agents, the Secret Service moves agents around like pieces on a checkers board without regard to their wishes. The exception is when an agent has "juice." Because agents rightly feel they are being treated unfairly, that situation contributes to poor morale in the Secret Service.
After two years on the Clinton detail based in Chappaqua, N.Y., Johnson wanted to transfer back to California, where she grew up.
"All of a sudden, they said they can't transfer anyone out of New York," she said. "They said they have no one to replace me. At the same time, they're sending out an e-mail that says anyone, regardless of where you are in your career track, if you would like to go to Los Angeles, New York, or San Francisco, raise your hand and you're there.
So I write the little memo and I raise my hand. I jump up and down, and they tell me, 'Oh, well, we can't replace you. So you can't go.'"
At the same time, Johnson said, agents who are her friends in the Los Angeles office were sending her copies of e-mails they were receiving from management saying they had to leave Los Angeles to go to protective details.
"A year later when I went to my management, they said, 'Oh well, L.A.'s full. How about the New York field office?'" she said.
When the Secret Service finally agreed to transfer her to Los Angeles after three years in New York, "I find out that we were 11 bodies short in L.A. So how did we go from being full to being 11 bodies short in four months?"
In other cases, the Secret Service disregards situations where a spouse has a job in another city. Johnson and others described one situation where an agent who was based in Los Angeles began dating a doctor in Hawaii.
Eventually, they married, and the agent put in for a transfer to Hawaii, where his wife had an established medical practice.
"We have an office in Hawaii, so it's easier for him to transfer than it is for her," Johnson said. "But the management we had in L.A. at the time had no 'juice.' He was told he couldn't be transferred to Hawaii. He quit because he said his marriage was more important."
About a month later, after he moved to Hawaii, he applied to return to the Secret Service. The head of the Hawaii office, who had the requisite "juice," re-hired him.
"Here you're being told you can't transfer; and the bottom line was, it was all about who your boss is," Johnson said.
In another case, an agent in Los Angeles married a doctor whose specialty made it difficult to find a position there. Finally, she obtained a job in Denver.
The agent asked for a transfer to Denver and offered to pay for the move himself, which would have saved the government about $75,000 in moving costs. The agent was denied a transfer. For the past year, the agent has been flying to Denver once or twice a month to see his wife and young daughter.
"He was willing to go to an office that had serious management issues just to be near his family and pay for it himself," Johnson said. "They still said no."
Meanwhile, the service asked for volunteers to transfer to Denver. Now several other agents are being transferred to Denver at a cost to the government upwards of $100,000 each. Some have greater seniority while others do not.
Agents point out that even when another agent has more seniority, the Secret Service is losing out when agents quit because the agency refuses to transfer them to a city where their spouse has a job.
"If the opening isn't available at that moment, then they can say, 'Oh, sorry, that office is overstaffed. Here are your only options,'" a current agent said. "Then sure enough, while you're still on orders to move somewhere else, orders come out for someone else to go to the same city."
In fact, agents are often "force transferred" - meaning they have no choice except to move or quit - when other agents actually want to go to those same cities.
"There are people who literally pass each other in the air because, let's say one person is leaving Detroit and the other person is leaving Kansas, and they're both being forced to switch," Johnson said. "They're making these people pay to move to a spot where they're literally having the other person in the other city move to replace them. I mean it's just mindless."
Another example of the Secret Service's high-handed way of doing business involves an agent who was based in Washington, D.C. and is married to a Navy lawyer. When the Navy gave her orders to transfer to San Diego, the Secret Service agreed to transfer him there. But after they purchased a home near San Diego, the Secret Service told the agent his transfer orders were being changed. Instead, he was to report to the Los Angeles field office.
The agent asked to transfer to a closer office in Santa Ana, but that request was denied. He has been commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles - a two-hour drive each way - every day.
Meanwhile, Johnson said, the Secret Service has trouble finding qualified applicants to replace those who are driven away.
"Getting a number of applicants is not a problem. Getting qualified applicants is always a problem," she said. "Because of the high standard they have, a large portion of the population wouldn't qualify to be an agent. They've done various things trying to recruit good people, but the bottom line is that their policies are driving away the good people they already have."
"If this were a private company, they couldn't survive," a current Secret Service agent says. "But it's the government, and nobody's accountable.
Somebody probably gets a big fat bonus because we meet our hiring goals, but nobody loses out on a bonus because we had a high attrition rate. What we need is people from outside to shake up the Secret Service."
CHINA Openly Claimed Credit for 9/11 Mission/Attack Plan
China’s Military Planners Took Credit for 9/11
by John O. EdwardsWednesday, Sept. 25, 2002
Soon after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, two high-ranking Chinese military planners took credit for the 9/11 attacks – and were even hailed as national heroes in China.
In fact, three years before 9/11, the Chinese colonels had proposed the attacks and cited Osama bin Laden by name in their book "Unrestricted Warfare.”
The authors of "Unrestricted Warfare” are Senior Cols. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, and in 1999 they wrote that an attack by bin Laden on the World Trade Center would be just the type of "unrestricted warfare” that could bring down America.
The book was published by China’s People’s Liberation Army and had the endorsement of the Chinese government."Unrestricted Warfare” makes clear its purpose: offering China and other "weak” countries a strategy to destroy the U.S. without a full-scale invasion, using unusual or "asymmetrical” warfare.
NewsMax has recently obtained the CIA translation of this astounding book and has made it available with an introduction by Al Santoli, editor of the prestigious China Reform Monitor.
The importance of this book was highlighted soon after 9/11, when the Chinese colonels were treated as national heroes.
In one interview with the Chinese government-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong, the colonels offered little sympathy for the Americans killed in 9/11.
They told the paper, "The series of attacks taking place in the United States were very dreary and terrifying, but they must not be viewed from a single perspective” – that is, the U.S. as victims. The colonels then added coldly that the Americans "were victims of U.S. foreign policy.”
The colonels were quick to take credit for the attacks on the World Trade Center, telling the paper their strategy had worked and that "September 11, 2001 very likely is the beginning of the decline of the United States, as a superpower."
Qiao and Wang offer in "Unrestricted Warfare” several new methods for destroying the U.S. – from manipulating U.S. media, to homicide-suicide bombing, to using immigrants as a fifth column, and even employing cyber attacks to destroy America’s critical infrastructure.
Both colonels agreed that the unconventional attacks of 9/11 were right from the pages of their book, and they demonstrated their theory works. "The attacks demonstrated the United States' fragility and weakness and showed that essentially it is unable to stand attacks. ...
The United States, a giant tiger, has been dealing with mice; unexpectedly, this time it was bitten by mice – it has been wielding a large hammer but has been unable to find the flea.
"From a short-term perspective, the attacks in the United States will very likely have some effect on China's economy – they might affect China's economic growth. However, from a long-term viewpoint, they could be favorable to China.""Unrestricted Warfare” has set off alarm bells among several high-ranking U.S. officers.
Adm. Thomas Moorer, former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns, "'Unrestricted Warfare' reveals China’s game plan in its coming war with America.” He adds ominously, "China thinks it can destroy America by using these tactics.”Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, former chief of staff of U.S. Forces Korea, shares Adm. Moorer’s view.
"The 9/11 attacks may just be the beginning. Many terrorist nations and groups will try to imitate this operation,” Gen. Singlaub said, noting "China’s war book 'Unrestricted Warfare' will be their text.”
by John O. EdwardsWednesday, Sept. 25, 2002
Soon after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, two high-ranking Chinese military planners took credit for the 9/11 attacks – and were even hailed as national heroes in China.
In fact, three years before 9/11, the Chinese colonels had proposed the attacks and cited Osama bin Laden by name in their book "Unrestricted Warfare.”
The authors of "Unrestricted Warfare” are Senior Cols. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, and in 1999 they wrote that an attack by bin Laden on the World Trade Center would be just the type of "unrestricted warfare” that could bring down America.
The book was published by China’s People’s Liberation Army and had the endorsement of the Chinese government."Unrestricted Warfare” makes clear its purpose: offering China and other "weak” countries a strategy to destroy the U.S. without a full-scale invasion, using unusual or "asymmetrical” warfare.
NewsMax has recently obtained the CIA translation of this astounding book and has made it available with an introduction by Al Santoli, editor of the prestigious China Reform Monitor.
The importance of this book was highlighted soon after 9/11, when the Chinese colonels were treated as national heroes.
In one interview with the Chinese government-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong, the colonels offered little sympathy for the Americans killed in 9/11.
They told the paper, "The series of attacks taking place in the United States were very dreary and terrifying, but they must not be viewed from a single perspective” – that is, the U.S. as victims. The colonels then added coldly that the Americans "were victims of U.S. foreign policy.”
The colonels were quick to take credit for the attacks on the World Trade Center, telling the paper their strategy had worked and that "September 11, 2001 very likely is the beginning of the decline of the United States, as a superpower."
Qiao and Wang offer in "Unrestricted Warfare” several new methods for destroying the U.S. – from manipulating U.S. media, to homicide-suicide bombing, to using immigrants as a fifth column, and even employing cyber attacks to destroy America’s critical infrastructure.
Both colonels agreed that the unconventional attacks of 9/11 were right from the pages of their book, and they demonstrated their theory works. "The attacks demonstrated the United States' fragility and weakness and showed that essentially it is unable to stand attacks. ...
The United States, a giant tiger, has been dealing with mice; unexpectedly, this time it was bitten by mice – it has been wielding a large hammer but has been unable to find the flea.
"From a short-term perspective, the attacks in the United States will very likely have some effect on China's economy – they might affect China's economic growth. However, from a long-term viewpoint, they could be favorable to China.""Unrestricted Warfare” has set off alarm bells among several high-ranking U.S. officers.
Adm. Thomas Moorer, former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns, "'Unrestricted Warfare' reveals China’s game plan in its coming war with America.” He adds ominously, "China thinks it can destroy America by using these tactics.”Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, former chief of staff of U.S. Forces Korea, shares Adm. Moorer’s view.
"The 9/11 attacks may just be the beginning. Many terrorist nations and groups will try to imitate this operation,” Gen. Singlaub said, noting "China’s war book 'Unrestricted Warfare' will be their text.”
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Deceitful Islamic Iran's Foreign Minister
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW
'We Warned the United States' Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, 53, discusses efforts to resolve the conflict over Tehran's nuclear program, his country's right to resist and its offer to help bring peace to Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Minister, fears are growing all over the world that the intensifying conflict with the United States over Tehran's nuclear program could lead to a new military conflict. Do you share this concern?
Mottaki: There has been conflict between the United States and Iran for the past 28 years. Look at the war in Iraq and the US's unilateral approach. Time has shown that our view of things can prevail, even, more recently, in parts of the United States. Now we have sat down at the table in Baghdad with Washington, and one of the messages of this meeting is: There are political and diplomatic ways out of the crisis, but increasing military strength is not a solution. However, there are still irreconcilable differences when it comes to the conflict over Iran's nuclear program.
SPIEGEL: Isn't it a serious mistake to underestimate the US's resolve? Saddam Hussein experienced that first-hand. Mottaki: We underestimate neither the United States nor the Iranian people. SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you would be prepared for an attack on your nuclear plants?
Mottaki: The United States cannot support another crisis for its taxpayers. Certainly, the Americans have always made it clear that they are keeping all options open. From the very start, we have prepared ourselves for both a solution at the negotiating table and a confrontation. Naturally we prefer the first option. We hate war. But we also view resistance as our obligation.
SPIEGEL: Is Iran's nuclear program truly so important that you would even risk going to war over it?
Mottaki: Every country in the world sets its goals and should also be able to achieve them. On March 5, 1957, exactly 50 years ago, we signed a treaty with the United States that granted us the right to acquire nuclear power plants. The first sentence in that agreement guarantees that the peaceful use of atomic energy is one of the fundamental rights of all nations. We consider the right to development to be inalienable.
SPIEGEL: The international community would certainly be more willing to believe your claims if Iran had not repeatedly deceived the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mottaki: There have certainly been some open questions with respect to the past. However, our current work on the nuclear program is completely transparent. There are absolutely no deviations from this program. However, there are some concerns over the future. We are willing to answer all further questions concerning the past and will provide the necessary assurances and guarantees for possible future problems.
SPIEGEL: The veto powers in the United Nations Security Council don't appear to take much stock in such assurances. They support sanctions.
Mottaki: Every country is obligated to respect the decisions of the UN bodies. But the Security Council should not jeopardize its legitimate powers through illegal behavior and pressures from individual member states. There is a historical precedent. Iran is in the process of completing the nationalization of its oil industry. The beginning of this nationalization process was the subject of debate in the Security Council 50 years ago. It too was seen as a threat to peace and stability at the time, which of course was absurd. In the nuclear conflict, the question that now arises is over which offence we are actually being punished for. Uranium enrichment is one of the fundamental rights of every country.
SPIEGEL: Could you imagine, as a compromise, negotiations over outsourcing uranium enrichment to another country?
Mottaki: If we consider the history of treaties with other countries, then we have serious doubts about that.
SPIEGEL: Are you referring to Russia's current refusal to supply the fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant -- the construction of which is nearing completion?
Mottaki: We cannot invest billions of dollars in our nuclear power plants and then rely on the help of other nations to produce and supply the fuel.
SPIEGEL: How do you imagine a solution to the conflict?
Mottaki: First the path to new negotiations must be cleared. If the Security Council refers the treatment of Iran's nuclear program to the IAEA once again, we can take up the ratification of the supplementary protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in our parliament ...
SPIEGEL: ... which would allow the agency's inspector to conduct inspections at any time.
Mottaki: Only if the case is withdrawn from the Security Council at the same time. The two must be treated equally, although we doubt this will be the case. Nevertheless, we will view such steps as an attempt to build a bridge between the positions of both sides.
SPIEGEL: But Tehran is also considering cutting off oil shipments to the West if new sanctions are imposed.
Mottaki: We are the ones who must tolerate sanctions today, and that's why we are opposed to boycotts to achieve political interests. But of course we too must be granted the right to a full energy supply.
SPIEGEL: So you are using oil as a threat, after all?
Mottaki: Securing our energy supply has always been an established element of our policy.
SPIEGEL: Your president, who has a penchant for provocation, has cancelled his appearance before the Security Council in New York. Are you perhaps secretly relieved?
Mottaki: Why? The president's first speech before the General Assembly was already very constructive. At the time, he proposed that governments or private companies from other countries invest in the Iranian nuclear program. Can anybody think of a nuclear program more transparent than this?
SPIEGEL: You speak of building bridges, but thanks to his shrill speeches, your president is more notorious for demolishing bridges.
Mottaki: It so happens that we are confronted with statements of those seeking to deny us the right to use nuclear energy under any circumstance. We see this as an attempt to rob us of an inalienable right, and that is the only price we will never pay. Our president has always supported dialogue.
SPIEGEL: He caused an international outcry when he suggested wiping Israel off the map.
Mottaki: We see the constant repetition of this accusation as a sign that some countries are determined not to address the real questions but to suppress them. World War II was a tragedy that happened to take place in Europe. Many millions of people died in that war, including Jews. Who were these Jews? All documents prove that they were Europeans. Why should the Islamic world be responsible for the consequences of that war?
SPIEGEL: We see the most important question as a different one: Is Iran willing, after more than a half-century, to recognize Israel's right to exist?
Mottaki: We consider the Zionist regime in Palestine to be illegitimate. It is wrong to claim, as many do, that people without a country arrived in a country without people. There were many inhabitants of Palestine, and the Jewish survivors of World War II were not a people without a country. They were Europeans.
SPIEGEL: And because you deny the Jewish state its right to exist, you support its archenemies, like the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Mottaki: Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorists. We call this resistance. You are making a big mistake if you view the events in the region too much from the perspective of the United States. America has already made enough mistakes in this region. One is that it gives the Zionist regime free rein to conduct its aggression.
SPIEGEL: Even if Washington's actions aren't always the smartest, this by no means justifies supporting extremists.
Mottaki: If one truly wants democracy -- the declared goal of the Americans -- one must also accept the consequences. Both Hamas and Hezbollah succeeded in democratic elections, and they owe this success to their resistance to the Zionist regime.
SPIEGEL: So the bloodshed in the Middle East will continue?
Mottaki: It doesn't have to be. We are seeing recent approaches in America to a constructive policy for the region, which makes us hopeful.
SPIEGEL: Despite this domestic American criticism, especially of the Iraq policy of the administration of President George W. Bush, many US politicians believe that your country is helping fuel the Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shiites by supplying weapons to fellow Shiites.
Mottaki: Washington is simply trying to divert attention from its failed Iraq policy with these kinds of claims.
SPIEGEL: Do you deny that Iran has interests in its neighboring country, especially in the Shiite south?
Mottaki: We have no interest in Iraq being broken up into a Kurdish north, a Sunni central portion and a Shiite south. That would make the horrible situation even worse. This is why we support the government in Baghdad in its attempts to save the country's unity.
SPIEGEL: Tehran's growing influence is already sparking fears among Arab neighbors of Shiite dominance in the region.
Mottaki: But we Shiites are the minority in the Islamic world. If Shiites play a more dominant role in one country or another because they are the majority there, this is no cause for concern. Our strength is not a threat to anyone. Our religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued a fatwa that forbids sowing discord between Sunnis and Shiites. Those who do so are neither Shiites nor Sunnis. Besides, as we see in Iraq, this conflict between fellow Muslims is being brought into our community from the outside.
SPIEGEL: It is an irony of history that Iran has the "great Satan," the United States, to thank for its new strength. Shouldn't you be grateful to Washington for having liberated Iran from its enemies, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Mottaki: We have always been a powerful country. We can look back on a long and great history, and we have enormous capacities and possibilities. The Americans are now paying the price for not wanting to listen to us, and others. We warned the United States against spending billions of dollars to arm Saddam and the Taliban. By bringing down these regimes they simply corrected their old mistakes. We just hope that the US will not make any further mistakes.
SPIEGEL: German troops are also deployed in Afghanistan. The German navy is patrolling the Lebanese coast. Could this adversely effect relations with Iran?
Mottaki: The Germans are involved in Lebanon at the request of the Beirut government, whose decisions we respect. As far as the Afghanistan mission is concerned, I hope, together with my German counterpart, (Foreign Minister) Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that people will see the Germans mostly as development workers and not military personnel. However, we are very concerned about developments there and have warned our German friends that the situation could spin out of control.
SPIEGEL: Should there be further talks with the United States over solving the conflicts in the region?
Mottaki: The meeting in Baghdad was worthwhile. Our exchange was very constructive and productive. No one spoke badly about the other. We are prepared to forget the mistakes of the past. We should turn to the future, especially in the case of Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you will meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and that you plan to shake hands with the Americans?
Mottaki: As a devout Muslim, I adhere to our Islamic principles and will certainly not shake hands with Ms. Rice. As far as we are concerned, resolving the crisis in Baghdad is more important than all symbolic gestures. All parties must work together to bring the suffering in Iraq to an end.
SPIEGEL: Will Tehran be as constructive if Washington continues to intensify pressure in the nuclear conflict?
Mottaki: We will not allow our brothers and sisters in Iraq to suffer because the United States wants to deprive us of our right to uranium enrichment. But this will not make it easier to find a solution for Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Foreign Minister, we thank you for this interview. The interview was conducted by editors Dieter Bednarz and Hans Hoyng.
Note to readers: SPIEGEL conducted its interview with Mottaki prior to the news on Friday that Iran had detained 15 British Navy personnel Tehran said had illegally entered into Iranian waters near the border with Iraq. It also preceded Saturday's move in the UN Security Council to broadened sanctions against Iran.
'We Warned the United States' Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, 53, discusses efforts to resolve the conflict over Tehran's nuclear program, his country's right to resist and its offer to help bring peace to Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Minister, fears are growing all over the world that the intensifying conflict with the United States over Tehran's nuclear program could lead to a new military conflict. Do you share this concern?
Mottaki: There has been conflict between the United States and Iran for the past 28 years. Look at the war in Iraq and the US's unilateral approach. Time has shown that our view of things can prevail, even, more recently, in parts of the United States. Now we have sat down at the table in Baghdad with Washington, and one of the messages of this meeting is: There are political and diplomatic ways out of the crisis, but increasing military strength is not a solution. However, there are still irreconcilable differences when it comes to the conflict over Iran's nuclear program.
SPIEGEL: Isn't it a serious mistake to underestimate the US's resolve? Saddam Hussein experienced that first-hand. Mottaki: We underestimate neither the United States nor the Iranian people. SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you would be prepared for an attack on your nuclear plants?
Mottaki: The United States cannot support another crisis for its taxpayers. Certainly, the Americans have always made it clear that they are keeping all options open. From the very start, we have prepared ourselves for both a solution at the negotiating table and a confrontation. Naturally we prefer the first option. We hate war. But we also view resistance as our obligation.
SPIEGEL: Is Iran's nuclear program truly so important that you would even risk going to war over it?
Mottaki: Every country in the world sets its goals and should also be able to achieve them. On March 5, 1957, exactly 50 years ago, we signed a treaty with the United States that granted us the right to acquire nuclear power plants. The first sentence in that agreement guarantees that the peaceful use of atomic energy is one of the fundamental rights of all nations. We consider the right to development to be inalienable.
SPIEGEL: The international community would certainly be more willing to believe your claims if Iran had not repeatedly deceived the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mottaki: There have certainly been some open questions with respect to the past. However, our current work on the nuclear program is completely transparent. There are absolutely no deviations from this program. However, there are some concerns over the future. We are willing to answer all further questions concerning the past and will provide the necessary assurances and guarantees for possible future problems.
SPIEGEL: The veto powers in the United Nations Security Council don't appear to take much stock in such assurances. They support sanctions.
Mottaki: Every country is obligated to respect the decisions of the UN bodies. But the Security Council should not jeopardize its legitimate powers through illegal behavior and pressures from individual member states. There is a historical precedent. Iran is in the process of completing the nationalization of its oil industry. The beginning of this nationalization process was the subject of debate in the Security Council 50 years ago. It too was seen as a threat to peace and stability at the time, which of course was absurd. In the nuclear conflict, the question that now arises is over which offence we are actually being punished for. Uranium enrichment is one of the fundamental rights of every country.
SPIEGEL: Could you imagine, as a compromise, negotiations over outsourcing uranium enrichment to another country?
Mottaki: If we consider the history of treaties with other countries, then we have serious doubts about that.
SPIEGEL: Are you referring to Russia's current refusal to supply the fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant -- the construction of which is nearing completion?
Mottaki: We cannot invest billions of dollars in our nuclear power plants and then rely on the help of other nations to produce and supply the fuel.
SPIEGEL: How do you imagine a solution to the conflict?
Mottaki: First the path to new negotiations must be cleared. If the Security Council refers the treatment of Iran's nuclear program to the IAEA once again, we can take up the ratification of the supplementary protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in our parliament ...
SPIEGEL: ... which would allow the agency's inspector to conduct inspections at any time.
Mottaki: Only if the case is withdrawn from the Security Council at the same time. The two must be treated equally, although we doubt this will be the case. Nevertheless, we will view such steps as an attempt to build a bridge between the positions of both sides.
SPIEGEL: But Tehran is also considering cutting off oil shipments to the West if new sanctions are imposed.
Mottaki: We are the ones who must tolerate sanctions today, and that's why we are opposed to boycotts to achieve political interests. But of course we too must be granted the right to a full energy supply.
SPIEGEL: So you are using oil as a threat, after all?
Mottaki: Securing our energy supply has always been an established element of our policy.
SPIEGEL: Your president, who has a penchant for provocation, has cancelled his appearance before the Security Council in New York. Are you perhaps secretly relieved?
Mottaki: Why? The president's first speech before the General Assembly was already very constructive. At the time, he proposed that governments or private companies from other countries invest in the Iranian nuclear program. Can anybody think of a nuclear program more transparent than this?
SPIEGEL: You speak of building bridges, but thanks to his shrill speeches, your president is more notorious for demolishing bridges.
Mottaki: It so happens that we are confronted with statements of those seeking to deny us the right to use nuclear energy under any circumstance. We see this as an attempt to rob us of an inalienable right, and that is the only price we will never pay. Our president has always supported dialogue.
SPIEGEL: He caused an international outcry when he suggested wiping Israel off the map.
Mottaki: We see the constant repetition of this accusation as a sign that some countries are determined not to address the real questions but to suppress them. World War II was a tragedy that happened to take place in Europe. Many millions of people died in that war, including Jews. Who were these Jews? All documents prove that they were Europeans. Why should the Islamic world be responsible for the consequences of that war?
SPIEGEL: We see the most important question as a different one: Is Iran willing, after more than a half-century, to recognize Israel's right to exist?
Mottaki: We consider the Zionist regime in Palestine to be illegitimate. It is wrong to claim, as many do, that people without a country arrived in a country without people. There were many inhabitants of Palestine, and the Jewish survivors of World War II were not a people without a country. They were Europeans.
SPIEGEL: And because you deny the Jewish state its right to exist, you support its archenemies, like the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.
Mottaki: Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorists. We call this resistance. You are making a big mistake if you view the events in the region too much from the perspective of the United States. America has already made enough mistakes in this region. One is that it gives the Zionist regime free rein to conduct its aggression.
SPIEGEL: Even if Washington's actions aren't always the smartest, this by no means justifies supporting extremists.
Mottaki: If one truly wants democracy -- the declared goal of the Americans -- one must also accept the consequences. Both Hamas and Hezbollah succeeded in democratic elections, and they owe this success to their resistance to the Zionist regime.
SPIEGEL: So the bloodshed in the Middle East will continue?
Mottaki: It doesn't have to be. We are seeing recent approaches in America to a constructive policy for the region, which makes us hopeful.
SPIEGEL: Despite this domestic American criticism, especially of the Iraq policy of the administration of President George W. Bush, many US politicians believe that your country is helping fuel the Iraqi civil war between Sunnis and Shiites by supplying weapons to fellow Shiites.
Mottaki: Washington is simply trying to divert attention from its failed Iraq policy with these kinds of claims.
SPIEGEL: Do you deny that Iran has interests in its neighboring country, especially in the Shiite south?
Mottaki: We have no interest in Iraq being broken up into a Kurdish north, a Sunni central portion and a Shiite south. That would make the horrible situation even worse. This is why we support the government in Baghdad in its attempts to save the country's unity.
SPIEGEL: Tehran's growing influence is already sparking fears among Arab neighbors of Shiite dominance in the region.
Mottaki: But we Shiites are the minority in the Islamic world. If Shiites play a more dominant role in one country or another because they are the majority there, this is no cause for concern. Our strength is not a threat to anyone. Our religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued a fatwa that forbids sowing discord between Sunnis and Shiites. Those who do so are neither Shiites nor Sunnis. Besides, as we see in Iraq, this conflict between fellow Muslims is being brought into our community from the outside.
SPIEGEL: It is an irony of history that Iran has the "great Satan," the United States, to thank for its new strength. Shouldn't you be grateful to Washington for having liberated Iran from its enemies, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Mottaki: We have always been a powerful country. We can look back on a long and great history, and we have enormous capacities and possibilities. The Americans are now paying the price for not wanting to listen to us, and others. We warned the United States against spending billions of dollars to arm Saddam and the Taliban. By bringing down these regimes they simply corrected their old mistakes. We just hope that the US will not make any further mistakes.
SPIEGEL: German troops are also deployed in Afghanistan. The German navy is patrolling the Lebanese coast. Could this adversely effect relations with Iran?
Mottaki: The Germans are involved in Lebanon at the request of the Beirut government, whose decisions we respect. As far as the Afghanistan mission is concerned, I hope, together with my German counterpart, (Foreign Minister) Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that people will see the Germans mostly as development workers and not military personnel. However, we are very concerned about developments there and have warned our German friends that the situation could spin out of control.
SPIEGEL: Should there be further talks with the United States over solving the conflicts in the region?
Mottaki: The meeting in Baghdad was worthwhile. Our exchange was very constructive and productive. No one spoke badly about the other. We are prepared to forget the mistakes of the past. We should turn to the future, especially in the case of Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Does this mean that you will meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and that you plan to shake hands with the Americans?
Mottaki: As a devout Muslim, I adhere to our Islamic principles and will certainly not shake hands with Ms. Rice. As far as we are concerned, resolving the crisis in Baghdad is more important than all symbolic gestures. All parties must work together to bring the suffering in Iraq to an end.
SPIEGEL: Will Tehran be as constructive if Washington continues to intensify pressure in the nuclear conflict?
Mottaki: We will not allow our brothers and sisters in Iraq to suffer because the United States wants to deprive us of our right to uranium enrichment. But this will not make it easier to find a solution for Iraq.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Foreign Minister, we thank you for this interview. The interview was conducted by editors Dieter Bednarz and Hans Hoyng.
Note to readers: SPIEGEL conducted its interview with Mottaki prior to the news on Friday that Iran had detained 15 British Navy personnel Tehran said had illegally entered into Iranian waters near the border with Iraq. It also preceded Saturday's move in the UN Security Council to broadened sanctions against Iran.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Where Is This Man
Where is This Man?
Last month, Ali Reza Asgarid disappeared while travelling in turkey.
The Iranian general's rumoured defection to the United States could yield reams of valuable intelligence about the world's most dangerous rogue nation.
Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Who is Ali Reza Asgari and why is he important? No one is quite sure
yet, but when the Iranian general and former deputy defence minister disappeared in Istanbul earlier this year, suddenly everyone had a good spy story to follow. Did Asgari defect? Was he kidnapped by a foreign intelligence agency? And how does his fate affect the United States in its ongoing confrontation with Iran, if it does at all?
The story is roughly this. In February, Asgari travelled from Syria to
Turkey, where he checked into a hotel before apparently going
underground. According to Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, the Iranian authorities informed the Turks 10 days after Asgari's arrival that they had lost contact with him. (The Iranians were said to have initially refused to divulge Asgari's identity, or even provide a
photograph.)
As the story gained prominence in early March, the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat quoted an unidentified Turkish source as saying that Asgari had defected. This came as Iran was claiming that the general had been kidnapped by U.S. or Israeli intelligence agents -- prompting a tentative Israeli denial. Citing a U.S. official, the Washington Post reported on March 8 that Asgari was "co-operating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization." The paper did not specify who was interrogating him.
Another American official cited by the Post denied an Israeli news
story that Asgari was in the United States, before suggesting that his "disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis." An
Iranian official told the paper that Iran's intelligence service was
unsure of Asgari's whereabouts, "but that he may have been offered
money, probably by Israel, to leave the country." The official said the general was thought to be in Europe. "He has been out of the loop for four or five years no w," the Iranian was quoted as saying.
London's Sunday Times hardened the mystery a bit further. The author, Israeli reporter Uzi Mahnaimi, quoted unidentified Iranian sources as saying that Asgari "had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip."
Mahnaimi threw in some Ian Fleming by pointing out that Asgari had fled in a "daring getaway via Damascus ... organized by Western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Iran's notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a highlevel mole."
According to the Sunday Times, Asgari was at a NATO base in Germany being debriefed. "He probably was working for Mossad but believed he was working for a European intelligence agenc y," an Israeli defence source was quoted as saying. Mahnaimi added that there was "some evidence that the Mossad station in Istanbul was involved in shadowing Asgari after he arrived in Turkey."
An essential question is what Asgari took with him. The London based Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat claimed on March 9 that Asgari had left Turkey on a new passport, under an assumed name, in co-operation with "Western parties." He allegedly carried off "military and intelligence maps and documents on the Iranian military establishment, and on relations between the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization."
No less significant is whether Asgari managed to get his family out.
The Sunday Times claimed that "at least 10 close members of his family had to flee the country" with Asgari, including sons, daughters and daughters- in-law. If true, this would suggest he had considerable time to plan his departure, or at least was given great leeway, despite Vavak's purported suspicion.
However, developments in Tehran on March 13 contradicted this. Asgari's wife, daughters, sons and brother -- or at least people claiming to be them -- held a press conference denying he could have defected. Mrs. Asgari asked the Iranian authorities to find her husband, and claimed that he had actually disappeared in December, not in February.
The journalists present at the press conference were described by the Financial Times as "selected reporters," and the photos and news of the family were carried by the Fars news agency, linked to the Revolutionary Guards -- the organization in which Asgari had been a senior official.
This might suggest the family's appearance was damage control. It also indicates that the details of the Asgari case are more complex than we know, particularly the timing of his vanishing. Moreover, Mrs. Asgari insisted that her husband's stated age of 63 was wrong, and that he was in fact 46, "thereby undermining speculation that he had been a leading figure in the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in 1983 when Islamic militants blew up the U.S. Embassy and its marine barracks."
Asgari may not be alone. In a story in Israel's Yedioth Aharonot the
other day, journalist Robin Bergman quoted a British intelligence
official as saying that Iran's consul general in Dubai, who was
described as a Revolutionary Guards officer, had defected to British
Intelligence.
The source suggested the officer was providing
information on Iranian activities in the Gulf. And yesterday, Al-Sharq al- Awsat affirmed that three weeks ago the Iranians lost contact with Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, an officer in the Quds unit of the Revolutionary Guards stationed in Iraq.
The paper also reported that many other Iranians have collaborated with or gone over to the American side in Iraq in the past three years. It's always difficult to confirm such stories, however, and the information might conceivably have been exaggerated to destabilize the Iranians further in the wake of the Asgari affair.
The plot thickens, but where does it lead? Assuming a defection,
Asgari's importance seems to be that he was the effective head of the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon sometime in the 1980s. A former Mossad officer, Rami Igra, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that "Asgari spent much of the 1980s and 1990s overseeing Iran's efforts to support, finance, arm and train Hezbollah."
Dates are important here. Hezbollah was only reorganized by the
Iranians and brought together into a cohesive force in the late 1980s, four or five years after the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks. Before then, the organization was a looser patchwork of groups with Iranian ties. It was during those earlier years that foreigners were kidnapped in Lebanon. Which phase, or phases, was Asgari involved in?
And is the information he is providing useful for unlocking Hezbollah's decision-making today? Also, what does he know about the downed Israeli flier Ron Arad, who was probably taken to Iran from Lebanon, and was said to have been under Asgari's control? As a member of Iran's political-security elite, and as former Revolutionary Guards officer, he must have had access to sensitive information on Iran's dealings with militant Islamic groups. But the key issue is what operational value his information has.
If the U.S. played a role in Asgari's defection, it will boost morale
in Washington after the intelligence debacle in Iraq. The episode shows that there are cracks in the Iranian system, and that these can be exploited by the plethora of intelligence agencies today co-operating against Iran's expanding influence in the Middle East.
At a time when there are unconfirmed reports that the United States is involved in clandestine activities in Iran--particularly among the Sunni or Kurdish populations -- this kind of breakthrough surely reinforces the value of human intelligence and the advantages ofmore traditional methods of spycraft.
The Bush administration and the Pentagon will be especially interested in Iran's ties with Iraqi Shiite militias, namely the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army. Given that the head of the Badr Organization, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was given an Oval Office audience with President Bush, the U.S. will be happy (or will it?) to know more about the relationship between its Iraqi partner and Tehran. More immediately, the intelligence agencies will probably want to get a better sense of what role Iran is playing in the Iraqi insurgency. If there is disagreement between the agencies, Asgari may turn into a valuable bureaucratic asset for one side or the other.
It may be too soon to judge how big an information coup Asgari's escape will turn into, but it's already a massive political one. The moral of the story is that if the U.S. wants to deal with Iran successfully, it has to do so as much in the darker recesses of state interaction than from the top of aircraft carriers. The Iranians have always been remarkable builders of institutions. If you're going to erode their self-confidence, those institutions have to appear vulnerable. Whatever Asgari divulges, the real impact of his disappearance is that Iran can be penetrated.
Last month, Ali Reza Asgarid disappeared while travelling in turkey.
The Iranian general's rumoured defection to the United States could yield reams of valuable intelligence about the world's most dangerous rogue nation.
Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Who is Ali Reza Asgari and why is he important? No one is quite sure
yet, but when the Iranian general and former deputy defence minister disappeared in Istanbul earlier this year, suddenly everyone had a good spy story to follow. Did Asgari defect? Was he kidnapped by a foreign intelligence agency? And how does his fate affect the United States in its ongoing confrontation with Iran, if it does at all?
The story is roughly this. In February, Asgari travelled from Syria to
Turkey, where he checked into a hotel before apparently going
underground. According to Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, the Iranian authorities informed the Turks 10 days after Asgari's arrival that they had lost contact with him. (The Iranians were said to have initially refused to divulge Asgari's identity, or even provide a
photograph.)
As the story gained prominence in early March, the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat quoted an unidentified Turkish source as saying that Asgari had defected. This came as Iran was claiming that the general had been kidnapped by U.S. or Israeli intelligence agents -- prompting a tentative Israeli denial. Citing a U.S. official, the Washington Post reported on March 8 that Asgari was "co-operating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization." The paper did not specify who was interrogating him.
Another American official cited by the Post denied an Israeli news
story that Asgari was in the United States, before suggesting that his "disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis." An
Iranian official told the paper that Iran's intelligence service was
unsure of Asgari's whereabouts, "but that he may have been offered
money, probably by Israel, to leave the country." The official said the general was thought to be in Europe. "He has been out of the loop for four or five years no w," the Iranian was quoted as saying.
London's Sunday Times hardened the mystery a bit further. The author, Israeli reporter Uzi Mahnaimi, quoted unidentified Iranian sources as saying that Asgari "had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip."
Mahnaimi threw in some Ian Fleming by pointing out that Asgari had fled in a "daring getaway via Damascus ... organized by Western intelligence agencies after it became clear that his cover was about to be blown. Iran's notorious secret service, the Vavak, is believed to have suspected that he was a highlevel mole."
According to the Sunday Times, Asgari was at a NATO base in Germany being debriefed. "He probably was working for Mossad but believed he was working for a European intelligence agenc y," an Israeli defence source was quoted as saying. Mahnaimi added that there was "some evidence that the Mossad station in Istanbul was involved in shadowing Asgari after he arrived in Turkey."
An essential question is what Asgari took with him. The London based Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat claimed on March 9 that Asgari had left Turkey on a new passport, under an assumed name, in co-operation with "Western parties." He allegedly carried off "military and intelligence maps and documents on the Iranian military establishment, and on relations between the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization."
No less significant is whether Asgari managed to get his family out.
The Sunday Times claimed that "at least 10 close members of his family had to flee the country" with Asgari, including sons, daughters and daughters- in-law. If true, this would suggest he had considerable time to plan his departure, or at least was given great leeway, despite Vavak's purported suspicion.
However, developments in Tehran on March 13 contradicted this. Asgari's wife, daughters, sons and brother -- or at least people claiming to be them -- held a press conference denying he could have defected. Mrs. Asgari asked the Iranian authorities to find her husband, and claimed that he had actually disappeared in December, not in February.
The journalists present at the press conference were described by the Financial Times as "selected reporters," and the photos and news of the family were carried by the Fars news agency, linked to the Revolutionary Guards -- the organization in which Asgari had been a senior official.
This might suggest the family's appearance was damage control. It also indicates that the details of the Asgari case are more complex than we know, particularly the timing of his vanishing. Moreover, Mrs. Asgari insisted that her husband's stated age of 63 was wrong, and that he was in fact 46, "thereby undermining speculation that he had been a leading figure in the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in 1983 when Islamic militants blew up the U.S. Embassy and its marine barracks."
Asgari may not be alone. In a story in Israel's Yedioth Aharonot the
other day, journalist Robin Bergman quoted a British intelligence
official as saying that Iran's consul general in Dubai, who was
described as a Revolutionary Guards officer, had defected to British
Intelligence.
The source suggested the officer was providing
information on Iranian activities in the Gulf. And yesterday, Al-Sharq al- Awsat affirmed that three weeks ago the Iranians lost contact with Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, an officer in the Quds unit of the Revolutionary Guards stationed in Iraq.
The paper also reported that many other Iranians have collaborated with or gone over to the American side in Iraq in the past three years. It's always difficult to confirm such stories, however, and the information might conceivably have been exaggerated to destabilize the Iranians further in the wake of the Asgari affair.
The plot thickens, but where does it lead? Assuming a defection,
Asgari's importance seems to be that he was the effective head of the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon sometime in the 1980s. A former Mossad officer, Rami Igra, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that "Asgari spent much of the 1980s and 1990s overseeing Iran's efforts to support, finance, arm and train Hezbollah."
Dates are important here. Hezbollah was only reorganized by the
Iranians and brought together into a cohesive force in the late 1980s, four or five years after the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks. Before then, the organization was a looser patchwork of groups with Iranian ties. It was during those earlier years that foreigners were kidnapped in Lebanon. Which phase, or phases, was Asgari involved in?
And is the information he is providing useful for unlocking Hezbollah's decision-making today? Also, what does he know about the downed Israeli flier Ron Arad, who was probably taken to Iran from Lebanon, and was said to have been under Asgari's control? As a member of Iran's political-security elite, and as former Revolutionary Guards officer, he must have had access to sensitive information on Iran's dealings with militant Islamic groups. But the key issue is what operational value his information has.
If the U.S. played a role in Asgari's defection, it will boost morale
in Washington after the intelligence debacle in Iraq. The episode shows that there are cracks in the Iranian system, and that these can be exploited by the plethora of intelligence agencies today co-operating against Iran's expanding influence in the Middle East.
At a time when there are unconfirmed reports that the United States is involved in clandestine activities in Iran--particularly among the Sunni or Kurdish populations -- this kind of breakthrough surely reinforces the value of human intelligence and the advantages ofmore traditional methods of spycraft.
The Bush administration and the Pentagon will be especially interested in Iran's ties with Iraqi Shiite militias, namely the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army. Given that the head of the Badr Organization, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was given an Oval Office audience with President Bush, the U.S. will be happy (or will it?) to know more about the relationship between its Iraqi partner and Tehran. More immediately, the intelligence agencies will probably want to get a better sense of what role Iran is playing in the Iraqi insurgency. If there is disagreement between the agencies, Asgari may turn into a valuable bureaucratic asset for one side or the other.
It may be too soon to judge how big an information coup Asgari's escape will turn into, but it's already a massive political one. The moral of the story is that if the U.S. wants to deal with Iran successfully, it has to do so as much in the darker recesses of state interaction than from the top of aircraft carriers. The Iranians have always been remarkable builders of institutions. If you're going to erode their self-confidence, those institutions have to appear vulnerable. Whatever Asgari divulges, the real impact of his disappearance is that Iran can be penetrated.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Iran to "hit back" at US Kidnaps
IRAN is threatening to retaliate in Europe for what it claims is a daring undercover operation by western intelligence services to kidnap senior officers in its Revolutionary Guard.
According to Iranian sources, several officers have been abducted in the past three months and the United States has drawn up a list of other targets to be seized with the aim of destabilising Tehran’s military command.
In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.
“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”
The first sign of a possible campaign against high-ranking Iranian officers emerged earlier this month with the discovery that Ali Reza Asgari, former commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force in Lebanon and deputy defence minister, had vanished, apparently during a trip to Istanbul.
Asgari’s disappearance shocked the Iranian regime as he is believed to possess some of its most closely guarded secrets. The Quds Force is responsible for operations outside Iran.
Last week it was revealed that Colonel Amir Muhammed Shirazi, another high-ranking Revolutionary Guard officer, had disappeared, probably in Iraq.
A third Iranian general is also understood to be missing — the head of the Revolutionary Guard in the Persian Gulf. Sources named him as Brigadier General Muhammed Soltani, but his identity could not be confirmed.
“This is no longer a coincidence, but rather an orchestrated operation to shake the higher echelons of the Revolutionary Guard,” said an Israeli source.
Other members of the Quds Force are said to have been seized in Irbil, in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, by US special forces.
“The capture of Quds members in Irbil was essential for our understanding of Iranian activity in Iraq,” said an American official with knowledge of the operation.
One theory circulating in Israel is that a US taskforce known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) is coordinating the campaign to take Revolutionary Guard commanders.
The Iranians have also accused the United States of being behind an attack on Revolutionary Guards in Iran last month in which at least 17 were killed.
Military analysts believe that Iranian threats of retaliation are credible. Tehran is notorious for settling scores.
When the Israelis killed Abbas Mussawi, Hezbollah’s general secretary, in 1992 the Quds Force blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina in revenge.
Despite the Iranian threat to retaliate in Europe, Iraq is seen by some analysts as a more likely place in which to attempt abductions.
“In Iraq, the Quds Force can easily get hold of American — and British — officers,” said a Jordanian intelligence source.
According to Iranian sources, several officers have been abducted in the past three months and the United States has drawn up a list of other targets to be seized with the aim of destabilising Tehran’s military command.
In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.
“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”
The first sign of a possible campaign against high-ranking Iranian officers emerged earlier this month with the discovery that Ali Reza Asgari, former commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force in Lebanon and deputy defence minister, had vanished, apparently during a trip to Istanbul.
Asgari’s disappearance shocked the Iranian regime as he is believed to possess some of its most closely guarded secrets. The Quds Force is responsible for operations outside Iran.
Last week it was revealed that Colonel Amir Muhammed Shirazi, another high-ranking Revolutionary Guard officer, had disappeared, probably in Iraq.
A third Iranian general is also understood to be missing — the head of the Revolutionary Guard in the Persian Gulf. Sources named him as Brigadier General Muhammed Soltani, but his identity could not be confirmed.
“This is no longer a coincidence, but rather an orchestrated operation to shake the higher echelons of the Revolutionary Guard,” said an Israeli source.
Other members of the Quds Force are said to have been seized in Irbil, in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, by US special forces.
“The capture of Quds members in Irbil was essential for our understanding of Iranian activity in Iraq,” said an American official with knowledge of the operation.
One theory circulating in Israel is that a US taskforce known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) is coordinating the campaign to take Revolutionary Guard commanders.
The Iranians have also accused the United States of being behind an attack on Revolutionary Guards in Iran last month in which at least 17 were killed.
Military analysts believe that Iranian threats of retaliation are credible. Tehran is notorious for settling scores.
When the Israelis killed Abbas Mussawi, Hezbollah’s general secretary, in 1992 the Quds Force blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina in revenge.
Despite the Iranian threat to retaliate in Europe, Iraq is seen by some analysts as a more likely place in which to attempt abductions.
“In Iraq, the Quds Force can easily get hold of American — and British — officers,” said a Jordanian intelligence source.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Saudi Forums News Briefs
Capture, Torture of US Soldiers in Iraq Called For
An Internet poster suggests capturing American soldiers in Iraq, torturing them, and videotaping the scenes so that media coverage of these acts in the United states will affect public opinion and lead to a demand for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
The scene of soldiers groaning from inflicted pain has more influence than dozens of scenes of exploding tanks and troop carriers, and that should be sufficient to make the American administration tremble" says the posting.
All posted comments supported the idea as one participant said "It's better to tape them playing the role of barking dogs."
http://www.alhoreyah.net/showthread.php?t=16039
Riyadh Book Fair Provokes Criticism
A posting strongly criticizes the Riyadh Book Fair for banning "books of monotheism" and allowing books about sex, Sufism, atheism, and for publishing the Torah and the Bible in Arabic. A posting about the Ministry of Information's pretext for banning books by Shaykhs Qutb, Al-Fawzan, and Al-Tarifi says "It is the [same] claim by Bush and Blair: Fighting terrorism and resisting extremism."
The participant posted the cover image from the DVD of the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape and the cover of the book An Idiot's Guide To Sex, which he claims he found at the expo as well as a list and images of some reportedly banned books which included: Allegiance & Disavowal by Shaykh Salih al-Fawzan [no picture shown]
In the Shadows of the Koran [Interpretation of the Koran] by Egyptian Shaykh Qutb.
Informing Through Explaining the Invalidators of Islam by Shaykh abd-al-Aziz al-Tarifi
Unifying the Word Over the Word of Monotheism by Shaykh abd-al-Aziz al-Tarifi Koranic Studies by Shaykh Qutb Battle Of Traditions by Shaykh Qutb
Ban on Searching Cell Phones Applauded
Posters hail the decision of the head of the religious police, Ibrahim al-Ghayt, to ban the search or confiscation of cell phones of those arrested except in limited situations.
"It is a wise decision and we expect similar decisions to limit the authority of al-Hisba's [the religious police's] men with or without a reason," said one participant. Another participant said "a wise decision that needs strict monitoring and follow-up of those who intrude on people's privacy in the name of religion."
Read more on the ban
http://www.alquma.net/vb/showthread.php?t=193326
Speculation on US Envoy's Visit To al-Qasim Region
Posters wonder about the reasons behind a visit by the US Ambassador, his wife, and another US diplomat to the prince of al-Qasim Region, Faysal Bin-Bandar bin-abd-al-Aziz.
"What's the reason behind the Ambassador's visit to a region dear to our hearts? God knows best! Is this a courtesy visit or was he invited by the region's Prince? The issue is no doubt political" says one participant.
http://www.sulayyil.com/vb/showthread.php?t=28020
Crown Prince's Beard Debated As Sign of Devotion, Fashion Participants discuss why Prince Fahd Bin-Sultan grew his beard. While some think it's a sign of being more religious and following the Salafist tradition, others think it is just an attempt by the prince to keep up with fashion.
http://www.alquma.net/vb/showthread.php?t=193335
Names of Saudis Said Killed in Iraq Posted
A posting compiles a list with the names of 24 Saudi young men reportedly killed in Iraq. The posting details the circumstances surrounding the death of every one of them along with the names of their hometowns.
http://www.sulayyil.com/vb/showthread.php?t=18919
An Internet poster suggests capturing American soldiers in Iraq, torturing them, and videotaping the scenes so that media coverage of these acts in the United states will affect public opinion and lead to a demand for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
The scene of soldiers groaning from inflicted pain has more influence than dozens of scenes of exploding tanks and troop carriers, and that should be sufficient to make the American administration tremble" says the posting.
All posted comments supported the idea as one participant said "It's better to tape them playing the role of barking dogs."
http://www.alhoreyah.net/showthread.php?t=16039
Riyadh Book Fair Provokes Criticism
A posting strongly criticizes the Riyadh Book Fair for banning "books of monotheism" and allowing books about sex, Sufism, atheism, and for publishing the Torah and the Bible in Arabic. A posting about the Ministry of Information's pretext for banning books by Shaykhs Qutb, Al-Fawzan, and Al-Tarifi says "It is the [same] claim by Bush and Blair: Fighting terrorism and resisting extremism."
The participant posted the cover image from the DVD of the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape and the cover of the book An Idiot's Guide To Sex, which he claims he found at the expo as well as a list and images of some reportedly banned books which included: Allegiance & Disavowal by Shaykh Salih al-Fawzan [no picture shown]
In the Shadows of the Koran [Interpretation of the Koran] by Egyptian Shaykh Qutb.
Informing Through Explaining the Invalidators of Islam by Shaykh abd-al-Aziz al-Tarifi
Unifying the Word Over the Word of Monotheism by Shaykh abd-al-Aziz al-Tarifi Koranic Studies by Shaykh Qutb Battle Of Traditions by Shaykh Qutb
Ban on Searching Cell Phones Applauded
Posters hail the decision of the head of the religious police, Ibrahim al-Ghayt, to ban the search or confiscation of cell phones of those arrested except in limited situations.
"It is a wise decision and we expect similar decisions to limit the authority of al-Hisba's [the religious police's] men with or without a reason," said one participant. Another participant said "a wise decision that needs strict monitoring and follow-up of those who intrude on people's privacy in the name of religion."
Read more on the ban
http://www.alquma.net/vb/showthread.php?t=193326
Speculation on US Envoy's Visit To al-Qasim Region
Posters wonder about the reasons behind a visit by the US Ambassador, his wife, and another US diplomat to the prince of al-Qasim Region, Faysal Bin-Bandar bin-abd-al-Aziz.
"What's the reason behind the Ambassador's visit to a region dear to our hearts? God knows best! Is this a courtesy visit or was he invited by the region's Prince? The issue is no doubt political" says one participant.
http://www.sulayyil.com/vb/showthread.php?t=28020
Crown Prince's Beard Debated As Sign of Devotion, Fashion Participants discuss why Prince Fahd Bin-Sultan grew his beard. While some think it's a sign of being more religious and following the Salafist tradition, others think it is just an attempt by the prince to keep up with fashion.
http://www.alquma.net/vb/showthread.php?t=193335
Names of Saudis Said Killed in Iraq Posted
A posting compiles a list with the names of 24 Saudi young men reportedly killed in Iraq. The posting details the circumstances surrounding the death of every one of them along with the names of their hometowns.
http://www.sulayyil.com/vb/showthread.php?t=18919
Al-Baghdadi NOT Captured?
NOTE the language of the Koranic verse used in this denial. An example of Islam the "religion of peace"?
On 10 March, a jihadist website posted a statement issued by the Information Ministry of the Islamic State of Iraq, denying reports on that Abu-Umar al-Baghdadi, the amir of the Islamic State of Iraq, has been captured.
The website notes that the original statement is taken from Al-Fajr Media Center.
Following is the translation of the full statement:
"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creation, and prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his family and companions.
"We still hear a new lie every day within the series of lies circulated every now and then by the Safavi government these days. They claimed once arresting deputy commander of the faithful. However, few hours later they claimed that the person captured is the amir of the state's northern region.
Then, they claimed that they arrested the brothers of the commander of the faithful, may God grant him victory. They also announce on daily basis the arrest of scores of commanders and soldiers of the state and killing dozens others.
The latest-- but not last-- lie is their claim that they arrested the commander of the faithful and then denying the claim on the following day. "The fact that the so-called Al-Maliki government is going through a state of confusion and that it resorts to circulating lies indicates the serious impasse this government is facing, in addition to its helplessness and incapability on the ground and in the battlefield.
"This government and its masters had to resort to circulating lies and tarnishing the image of the mujahidin as the last option, exactly as they did when they claimed that the soldiers of the Islamic State are targeting the Muslims mosques and children and that they do hesitate to shed the blood of innocent people.
God Almighty knows that the mujahidin are not guilty of carrying out these acts. Such misinformation and lies and this fierce propaganda warfare waged by several parties to destroy the image of the mujahidin come within the context of conspiracies and plots being hatched here and there to render the Islamic State's jihadist plan unsuccessful in order to achieve the goals and schemes of the Crusaders and Safavis in the region.
"We affirm to the promoters of these propaganda campaigns that their numerous lies and fabrications will make them lose their credibility. We also assert to them the blessed jihadist operations you see in Baghdad and other areas are another proof of enemy's lies.
"And Allah hath full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind know it not." [koranic verse] "O God, destroy them and shake the earth under their feet. "O God, you are our supporter and defender.
O God, with your help we attack and fight.
O God, the heavens are yours, the earth is yours, and the sea is yours
O God, if they have forces in heavens, defeat them. If they have forces on earth, destroy them and hand them over as booty to Muslims. If they have forces in sea, drown them.
O Omnipotent God, defeat them because you are capable of doing so.
O God, we beseech you to inflict on them what you have inflicted on Pharaoh and his people.
O God, send floods to their country, shrink their wealth, decrease the number of their people, and reduce their crops.
O God, your soldiers cannot be defeated, your groups cannot be overcome.
O God, defeat them and shake earth underneath them because you are Omnipotent, Exalted in power, full of Majesty, Bounty, and Honor. You are the Living, the Self-Subsisting, and Eternal.
God is Great.
But honour belongs to Allah and His Messenger, and to the Believers; but the Hypocrites know not." [Koranic verse]
"The Islamic State of Iraq/ Information Ministry."
On 10 March, a jihadist website posted a statement issued by the Information Ministry of the Islamic State of Iraq, denying reports on that Abu-Umar al-Baghdadi, the amir of the Islamic State of Iraq, has been captured.
The website notes that the original statement is taken from Al-Fajr Media Center.
Following is the translation of the full statement:
"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creation, and prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his family and companions.
"We still hear a new lie every day within the series of lies circulated every now and then by the Safavi government these days. They claimed once arresting deputy commander of the faithful. However, few hours later they claimed that the person captured is the amir of the state's northern region.
Then, they claimed that they arrested the brothers of the commander of the faithful, may God grant him victory. They also announce on daily basis the arrest of scores of commanders and soldiers of the state and killing dozens others.
The latest-- but not last-- lie is their claim that they arrested the commander of the faithful and then denying the claim on the following day. "The fact that the so-called Al-Maliki government is going through a state of confusion and that it resorts to circulating lies indicates the serious impasse this government is facing, in addition to its helplessness and incapability on the ground and in the battlefield.
"This government and its masters had to resort to circulating lies and tarnishing the image of the mujahidin as the last option, exactly as they did when they claimed that the soldiers of the Islamic State are targeting the Muslims mosques and children and that they do hesitate to shed the blood of innocent people.
God Almighty knows that the mujahidin are not guilty of carrying out these acts. Such misinformation and lies and this fierce propaganda warfare waged by several parties to destroy the image of the mujahidin come within the context of conspiracies and plots being hatched here and there to render the Islamic State's jihadist plan unsuccessful in order to achieve the goals and schemes of the Crusaders and Safavis in the region.
"We affirm to the promoters of these propaganda campaigns that their numerous lies and fabrications will make them lose their credibility. We also assert to them the blessed jihadist operations you see in Baghdad and other areas are another proof of enemy's lies.
"And Allah hath full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind know it not." [koranic verse] "O God, destroy them and shake the earth under their feet. "O God, you are our supporter and defender.
O God, with your help we attack and fight.
O God, the heavens are yours, the earth is yours, and the sea is yours
O God, if they have forces in heavens, defeat them. If they have forces on earth, destroy them and hand them over as booty to Muslims. If they have forces in sea, drown them.
O Omnipotent God, defeat them because you are capable of doing so.
O God, we beseech you to inflict on them what you have inflicted on Pharaoh and his people.
O God, send floods to their country, shrink their wealth, decrease the number of their people, and reduce their crops.
O God, your soldiers cannot be defeated, your groups cannot be overcome.
O God, defeat them and shake earth underneath them because you are Omnipotent, Exalted in power, full of Majesty, Bounty, and Honor. You are the Living, the Self-Subsisting, and Eternal.
God is Great.
But honour belongs to Allah and His Messenger, and to the Believers; but the Hypocrites know not." [Koranic verse]
"The Islamic State of Iraq/ Information Ministry."
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Defense & Foreign Affairs Analysis
Iran Moves Toward a Domestic Watershed Despite de facto Implementation of Baker Initiative
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.
The growing public trend among Iranians of identifying with a traditional Persian character rather than an Islamist one is leading toward a major clash within Iranian society, possibly at the forthcoming celebration of the beginning of the traditional Persian New Year, NowRuz, on March 20/21, 2007, in defiance of a ban on such celebrations by the ruling Islamist clerics. There is ample evidence that a significant percentage of the Iranian population will defy the clerical Government to celebrate Now Ruz (literally “new day”, also transliterated as Norooz).
But more than that, there is growing evidence that a cultural and very Persian social renaissance is firmly underway in Iran, totally opposed to the clerics and religious governance, and despite the belief that the US had effectively abandoned the Iranian population and now favored “legitimizing” the Iranian clerical Government. There is a widespread understanding that the US State Dept. was — against the stated wishes of US Pres. George W. Bush — moving toward a softer approach toward the Iranian clerics, in line with proposals made by former US Secretary of State James Baker and the Iraq Study Group.
In recent years, the Iranian urban population had responded significantly when US Pres. Bush had promised support to Iranian aspirations to remove the clerics. A similar phenomenon occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example, and in Hungary in 1956, when populations in those countries responded to what they believed were US encouragement to seize their own destiny from Soviet control. In Iran, public support for Western values and culture remains high, but expectations of US support — even moral support — have been vitiated.
Now, despite the removal of the promise of US moral support, it seems clear that Iranian society is beginning to take charge of its own destiny, which it largely sees as independent of the clerics. The renaissance is, specifically, Persian in nature; that is, working from a basis of pre-Islamic or anti-Islamic cultural pride. The vibrancy of the Iranian publishing scene, printing ever more ornate editions of famous Persian poetry, is merely symptomatic of the new dynamism and debate in Iranian society, defying the Islamist/jihadist approach of the clerical leadership.
What is now clear is that the element of fear of the Administration is now gone among large segments of the population, who feel more free to criticize the clerics. This may in part be attributable to the fact that the clerics are themselves divided into a number of factions, each bent on assuming power. And with “Supreme Leader” “Ayatollah” Ali Hoseini-Khamene‘i, 67, reportedly ill, the battle for his post has intensified.
Significantly, although recent elections of mujtahids for the Assembly of Experts (which in turn elects the “Supreme Leader”) — which took place on December 15, 2006 — produced an even more radical Islamist Assembly, the population at large is moving in a more secular direction. The Iranian Ministry of Interior reported an estimated 60 percent turnout of the 46.5-million eligible voters for the Assembly of Experts election, and later reported that “more than 28-million people” voted, but even Administration sources in Tehran admit that this number was “a joke”, and that voter turnout was, in fact, negligible.
Now, former Pres. Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (the current chairman of the Council of Expediency Discernment) is promoting his one-time follower, former Pres. Mohammed Khatami, for the supreme leadership, in the belief that Khatami’s image of moderation — totally at odds with reality — would help bring him to power, with Rafsanjani attempting to maintain control indirectly. Pres. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad’s mentor, radical Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, is also attempting to position himself for the job, as is Mahmood Hashemi Shahroodi.
But as the showdown approaches — both within the clerical leadership and between the clerics and the public — Pres. Ahmadi-Nejad now appears to have gained power vis-à-vis Khamene’i. Although Ayatollah Yazdi may not have made as much ground as he would have liked in the Assembly of Experts, he is still a valuable ally for Amhadi-Nejad, but not as valuable as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran).
The Pasdaran leadership depends heavily on the President to retain its privileges in controlling the key legal and illegal elements of the economy. Control of liquor, prostitution, and narcotics, as well as strong control over many legal businesses has meant that the Pasdaran leadership now has a vested interest in the status quo.
But Ahmadi-Nejad’s Islamist priorities differ substantially from the Persian orientation of much the general public, which means that — perhaps beginning at the forthcoming Now Ruz celebrations — the Pasdaran may be asked to help suppress any dissidence. In the past, the working levels of the Pasdaran — who are not benefiting from the corruption — had increasingly refused to suppress the Iranian public. The clerical Government has, in recent times, spent large amounts of money and effort, using mostly Basij political police, to suppress anti-Government demonstrations. The question now is whether this will be enough.
Demonstrations in defiance of the Government continue. Teachers and cultural figures held a demonstration on March 3, 2007, in front of the Majlis in Tehran. The demonstration was the third in the past six weeks. Some 15,000 to 20,000 demonstrators called on Iranian Education Minister Mahmoud Farshidi to resign, claiming that he was more concerned about obtaining nuclear energy rather than about their livelihood.
Within this environment, Pres. Ahmadi-Nejad’s ability to maneuver has been demonstrated, along with his ability to build a power base. This has contributed to his belief that he needs to continue to use the threat of conflict with the US to sustain his position within the “creative tension” which is the hallmark of current Iranian politics.
Footnotes:
1. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis: Former US Secretary of State Baker Attempts to Bypass Bush White House on Iran Links.
That report noted:
Former US Secretary of State James Baker, who co-chaired the recent US Iraq Study Group — the main recommendations of which were rejected by the George W. Bush Administration — is working indirectly and behind the scenes to bring about direct diplomatic ties between the US and Iran.
This is in defiance of Bush White House policy which essentially has said that encouraging direct negotiations with the Iranian clerical leaders would legitimize and strengthen the power of the Iranian mullahs, making it more difficult for Iran’s secular opposition to bring about democratic change in the country.
The visit on January 25-26, 2007, to Tehran by the Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, for talks with his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani on “the critical situation in Lebanon” was, in fact, to scope out a more broadly-based resolution to the Iran-US impasse along the lines of the so-called “Baker Plan” devised by the Iraq Study Group. The Iraq Study Group recommendations had already been discounted and discarded by the George W. Bush White House, but the Bandar maneuver with Ali Larijani is an attempt to sidestep that in order to resume the process of US recognition of the clerical leadership in Iran.
2. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis: Ahmadi-Nejad’s “Message to the American Nation” Reflects Belief That Tehran Has the Strategic Initiative.
Timor Leste Elections Signify Shifting Political Landscape
Analysis. By Barry Patterson.
On February 24, 2006, Timor Leste Prime Minister José Ramos Horta declared his intention to run for the office of President in elections to be held on April 9, 2006. The current Timor Leste President, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, has stated that he will not stand for another term. It is possible that Horta and Gusmão will “job-switch”, with Horta gaining the presidency and Gusmão, if not gaining the Prime Minister’s office, playing a significant rôle in legislative politics. This will have significant implications for the future of Timor Leste’s government, and may impact on the stability of the nation.
Pres. Gusmão threatened to resign his post over civil unrest which plagued Timor Leste in May 2006, issuing an ultimatum to then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. This ultimatum resulted in Alkatiri’s resignation and the ascendance of Ramos-Horta to the presidency. Prime Minister Horta is no longer a member of the Frente Revolucionaria de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN)
Timor Leste’s ruling party and chief resistance movement prior to independence — and was appointed by Gusmão to the position. Ramos Horta, a lawyer by profession, was also serving as Defense Minister when he assumed office. He continues in both rôles.
At present, there is no significant opposition to Horta’s run for President.
Without a major change of circumstance, it is likely that Horta will secure the presidency. One of Horta’s immediate challenges in gaining the presidency will be to deal with the 600 soldiers, known as petitioners, who deserted the military in early 2006. While no longer operational in the army, the soldiers are still being paid while their future is decided.
Increased friction may also emerge between the President’s office and the Commander of the East Timor Defense Force (ETDF), Brig.-Gen. Taur Matan Ruak. As a former commander of FRETILIN’s armed wing, Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (FALINTIL), and Gusmão’s successor in that organization, Ruak is deeply entrenched in the position and has so far refused to address the petitioners’ requests as a group, offering instead to deal with the soldiers on an individual basis.
Parliamentary elections are also set to occur later in 2007. These elections will see a reduction in the number of seats in Parliament, from 88 to between 52 and 65. The current National Parliament, Timor Leste’s only representative house, was elected on an exceptional basis when the nation’s new constitution was brought in on March 22, 2002.
Pres. Gusmão’s newly formed party, the Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense (CNRT: National Council of Timorese Resistance), has the stated aim of attempting to fill the rôle of an effective opposition in Timorese politics and present a credible challenge to the dominant FRETILIN party. According to Pres. Gusmão, it intends to “knock the FRETILIN party off its pedestal as the dominant political force and remove its majority in the parliament”.
Despite being deposed from the office of Prime Minister during 2006, Alkatiri continues to be a powerbroker within FRETILIN.2 Despite his unpopularity with much of rural Timor, and his frequent clashes with the Catholic Church, it is certain that Alkatiri will play a significant rôle in the formation of any new government after parliamentary elections. Part of his unpopularity stems from his long period of exile during the Indonesian occupation. Alkatiri is of Yemeni descent and a Muslim, a point of difference in the predominantly Catholic nation. However, Alkatiri also has a reputation as a good administrator and policy thinker, in a parliament which has few skills in this area. He studied law and surveying during his exile in Angola, and is often cited as a skilled negotiator and economist.
Externally, Alkatiri has enjoyed the support of the Portuguese Government, but has had a more contentious relationship with the Australian Government which had a history of dialogue with Gusmão and Ramos Horta. This dynamic was made clear during the 2006 crisis.
The period leading up to the Presidential election and later parliamentary elections, will mark the most significant shift in Timor Leste politics to date.
It is a critical time for Timor Leste, not just in terms of party formation, but mode of government. The nation has committed to open-markets and a capitalist economy with base standards of living provided by the state; most of this is required by international organizations before economic assistance would be made available.
Ramos-Horta and Gusmão have tended to take a liberal democratic approach to government, emphasizing strong opposition, robust political debate and negotiating solutions to national and social problems. On the other hand, Alkatiri, and much of FRETILIN, prefer a “guided democracy” which is party dominated, with a strong state apparatus to deal with political dissent. Much of this later approach is fueled by FRETILIN’s perception that, as the majority party, and previously the main organization of resistance, it speaks for the population and thus has a mandate for this style of government.
Many of the problems associated with Timor Leste’s unstable democracy are endemic to similar nations which have made the transition from occupation to independence. Primarily, a lack of policy experience among representatives is a major impediment to effective government. This often results in an overweighting of power within the executive.
It is likely that there will be a flare-up of violence during the first half of 2007, intensifying during election periods. In December 2006, up to 13 people were killed; in addition, a number of people were injured in gang-related violence on the streets of the capital, Dili. On February 23, 2006, Australian troops shot three men, two fatally, during a confrontation near Dili’s Comoro airport. This represented the first confirmed fatal shooting by Australian troops in the recent policing action. United Nations vehicles continued to be attacked by stone-throwing youths through early March 2007, when this report was written.
[Four Royal Australian Air Force C-130H Hercules, carrying 100 Australian Special Air Forces (SAS) troops arrived in Dili, on March 1, 2007, in anticipation of a breakout in violence in the country. The troop insertion — part of the Australian Defence Force’s Operation Tower — followed the surrounding of rebel leader Alfredo Reinado in the central Timor Leste town of Same, 50km south of Dili. The SAS deployment was to prevent expected attacks against Australians in East Timor should Australian troops be successful in capturing Reinaldo who had become a local resistance hero.
On March 5, 2007, the Australian Government ordered the evacuation from Timor Leste of all non-essential Australian personnel from the Australian Embassy in Dili; the Australian Government security level for forces operating in Timor Leste was raised to Level Five, the highest level. Maj. Reinaldo, meanwhile, claimed that he commanded 700 troops. He has refused to surrender, saying if anything were to happen to him “people will violently rise up in their thousands”. Reinaldo warned that civil war in Timor Leste was a likely outcome should he be captured. The former head of the East Timor military police had called the present Government “corrupt” and the UN-authorized peacekeeping presence by Australian and New Zealand forces as an “illegal invasion”.
Pres. Gusmão authorized “extra powers” for the international stabilization force to hunt for, and arrest, Reinaldo.]
The outskirts of Comoro airport, home to a significant number of East Timorese displaced by violence in 2006, has been the site of a number of clashes and continued violence. A significant number of Timorese continue to avoid Dili and have sought refuge in the mountains. Timor Leste’s mountains have long acted as places of refuge and safety in period of instability and provided support for the resistance during the Indonesian occupation.
To further compound the potential for instability in Timor Leste, as of February 22, 2006, severe rice shortages were reported, initially in Oecussi, before spreading to the entire country. Rice, the staple diet of Timor Leste and many South-East Asian countries, continues to decline in supply. Prices have jumped from US35 cents a kilo to over a dollar a kilo in some parts of the nation.
Similar shortages have been experienced in Indonesia and other parts of the region. The World Food Program attributes this to a late harvest in Vietnam. The Timor Leste government and the UN World Food Program have secured 300 metric tonnes of rice and are looking to secure further supplies from abroad, in efforts to bring down the price and meet the nation’s food requirements. With late rainfalls and lower than expected rainfall levels in most parts of the nation, there are fears that the country is experiencing a drought.
More expensive food, along with increasing violence around election time, may create severe instability and a potential humanitarian crisis if current shortages are not addressed. Food security has long been a concern for Timor Leste, and intentions have been declared to rehabilitate rice fields and develop storage for such periods of rainfall fluctuation.
The United Nations continues to maintain a presence in the nation, and is focusing on the upcoming elections. On August 25, 2006, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1704 was passed, allowing for the creation of United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT), replacing the previous United Nations Office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL), which expired in August 2006. The new UNMIT mission incorporates up to 1,608 civilian personnel, predominantly police officers, and up to 34 military personnel.
The mandate of the mission ends on February 26, 2008.
In the six years since independence, Timor Leste has hosted a number of UN missions, including United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UMISET) and UNOTIL. This in itself has led to a number of structural development issues, and reveals serious inadequacies with the UN missions. With the ending of each mission, there is often a large turnover of staff. Missions also tend to be milestone/goal oriented, resulting in a lack of long-term strategic planning.
There is no reason to assume that the current mission will break this pattern.
From 2000 to 2005, UN missions created much of Timor Leste’s economic activity, spending more than $2.55-billion. Much of the money spent was limited to UN personnel. For instance, bottled water was imported, rather than an indigenous water purification capacity being developed. Similarly, portable generators were utilized, rather than a local power generation capacity being created.
The social instability of 2006 severely set back Timor Leste’s economic development. Almost 20 percent of the population continues to be unemployed and the nation has declined slightly in the UN’s Human Development Index when compared to previous years. While the National Development plan set out by the government cites a five percent growth in GDP by 2006/07, this is unlikely to be achieved Development also continues to be a point of contention in Timor Leste’s foreign relations.
The economic nationalism fostered under Alkatiri is still a policy strongly supported by the parliament. Rejection of loans which have special conditions attached — such as greater market interaction and a movement toward export based goods — has been a point of contention within the Australian foreign policy community. Similarly, Timor Leste’s acceptance of around 300 Cuban doctors to provide basic health care has drawn criticism from a number of quarters, including the US.
Internationally, Timor Leste continues to seek ascension to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and is currently the only nation in the region who is not a member. However, it has been an observer since 2002, and since 2006, a member of the larger ASEAN Regional Forum. On January 20, 2007, Timor Leste signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, a prerequisite to joining ASEAN. Prime Minister Horta suggested this may take five or more years, due to Timor Leste’s lack of economic development. The Treaty also lays much of the political foundation for a potential ASEAN free trade area.
The Treaty requires signatories to be guided by the following principles:
The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion:
Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;
Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means;
Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and
Effective cooperation among themselves.
Australia also signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in late 2006, paving the way for its own further involvement in the organization. However, member nations of ASEAN continue to express concern with Australia’s actions toward the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and particularly Fiji.
Significantly, France signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation at the same time as Timor Leste, making it the first European Nation to do so.
This may signal increased French focus on the region, and France’s intention to expand the euro’s influence into South-East Asia. The euro continues to appreciate against the US dollar; much of this growth is fuelled by the twin factors of the large US trade imbalance in East Asia and reluctance by the nations of Asia to allow their own managed currencies to rise. France’s policy in South-East Asia has been to strengthen regional integration, and political and economic development. Recent dialogues suggest that their presence in the region is likely to increase.
Conclusion. 2007 is likely to be a year of further challenges for Timor Leste, with the pressures of the nation’s first full, free elections testing the fabric of Timorese society. The election period may see many of the divisions which exist within the community rise to the surface.
The potential for violence from criminal gangs in Dili, and dissatisfied elements of the military and state security, remains a possibility. Food shortages and the inevitable increase in displaced Timorese during times of instability also have the potential to create a humanitarian crisis.
Footnotes:
* Barry Patterson is a Research Fellow at Future Directions International (FDI), the counterpart organization of ISSA in Australia.
1. Ramos Horta and Gusmão both withdrew from the organization during the Indonesian occupation due to concerns over some members’ conduct. Ramos-Horta is often credited with founding the organization, while Gusmão was one of its earliest members.
2. Charges against Alkatiri pertaining to the violence in 2006 were recently dropped due to lack of evidence, effectively freeing him to engage in public politics and contest the parliamentary elections mid-year. Former Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, accused of conspiring with Alkatiri, is also currently on trial for his alleged rôle in supplying weapons to civilians during the same period. Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year jail term for Loboto.
3. The US dollar is the currency of Timor Leste.
4. “Cuba steps in to aid East Timor health system”, ABC Online, The World Today, July 4, 2006.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1678441.htm.
5. In the army particularly, but in society generally, divisions exist along regional lines, with those from the east and west often in conflict over perceived allegiances during the independence struggle. Pre-1975 invasion political grievances are also reasserting themselves. See Weekly Global Report, May 8, 2006. Timor Leste Disturbances Reveal Unresolved Defence Issues.
PRC-Sri Lanka Strengthen Relationship
Analysis. By Judah Lieblich. The relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Sri Lanka was further strengthened on February 27, 2007, with the signing of eight separate bilateral agreements. The deals were signed after Sri Lankan Pres. Mahinda Rajapakse met with PRC Pres. Hu Jintao in Beijing for brief talks marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the countries.
Details of the projects were not immediately released, however, it is believed that they confirmed major PRC rôles in at least two projects in Sri Lanka. These projects include the building of a new $500-million coal fired power station and a planned $1-billion harbor in Sri Lanka’s south.
Sri Lanka has gained international attention for its prospective energy fields and was, as of early 2007, planning to invite bids for oil exploration, an event in which the PRC was expected to participate. The first phase of oil exploration was scheduled to begin in August 2007.
Sri Lanka has eight oil blocks, which were all expected to be sold in a bidding process. However, on February 23, 2007, Sri Lanka moved outside of this process, offering one each to India and the PRC, and opting to auction the remaining six.
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.
The growing public trend among Iranians of identifying with a traditional Persian character rather than an Islamist one is leading toward a major clash within Iranian society, possibly at the forthcoming celebration of the beginning of the traditional Persian New Year, NowRuz, on March 20/21, 2007, in defiance of a ban on such celebrations by the ruling Islamist clerics. There is ample evidence that a significant percentage of the Iranian population will defy the clerical Government to celebrate Now Ruz (literally “new day”, also transliterated as Norooz).
But more than that, there is growing evidence that a cultural and very Persian social renaissance is firmly underway in Iran, totally opposed to the clerics and religious governance, and despite the belief that the US had effectively abandoned the Iranian population and now favored “legitimizing” the Iranian clerical Government. There is a widespread understanding that the US State Dept. was — against the stated wishes of US Pres. George W. Bush — moving toward a softer approach toward the Iranian clerics, in line with proposals made by former US Secretary of State James Baker and the Iraq Study Group.
In recent years, the Iranian urban population had responded significantly when US Pres. Bush had promised support to Iranian aspirations to remove the clerics. A similar phenomenon occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example, and in Hungary in 1956, when populations in those countries responded to what they believed were US encouragement to seize their own destiny from Soviet control. In Iran, public support for Western values and culture remains high, but expectations of US support — even moral support — have been vitiated.
Now, despite the removal of the promise of US moral support, it seems clear that Iranian society is beginning to take charge of its own destiny, which it largely sees as independent of the clerics. The renaissance is, specifically, Persian in nature; that is, working from a basis of pre-Islamic or anti-Islamic cultural pride. The vibrancy of the Iranian publishing scene, printing ever more ornate editions of famous Persian poetry, is merely symptomatic of the new dynamism and debate in Iranian society, defying the Islamist/jihadist approach of the clerical leadership.
What is now clear is that the element of fear of the Administration is now gone among large segments of the population, who feel more free to criticize the clerics. This may in part be attributable to the fact that the clerics are themselves divided into a number of factions, each bent on assuming power. And with “Supreme Leader” “Ayatollah” Ali Hoseini-Khamene‘i, 67, reportedly ill, the battle for his post has intensified.
Significantly, although recent elections of mujtahids for the Assembly of Experts (which in turn elects the “Supreme Leader”) — which took place on December 15, 2006 — produced an even more radical Islamist Assembly, the population at large is moving in a more secular direction. The Iranian Ministry of Interior reported an estimated 60 percent turnout of the 46.5-million eligible voters for the Assembly of Experts election, and later reported that “more than 28-million people” voted, but even Administration sources in Tehran admit that this number was “a joke”, and that voter turnout was, in fact, negligible.
Now, former Pres. Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (the current chairman of the Council of Expediency Discernment) is promoting his one-time follower, former Pres. Mohammed Khatami, for the supreme leadership, in the belief that Khatami’s image of moderation — totally at odds with reality — would help bring him to power, with Rafsanjani attempting to maintain control indirectly. Pres. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad’s mentor, radical Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, is also attempting to position himself for the job, as is Mahmood Hashemi Shahroodi.
But as the showdown approaches — both within the clerical leadership and between the clerics and the public — Pres. Ahmadi-Nejad now appears to have gained power vis-à-vis Khamene’i. Although Ayatollah Yazdi may not have made as much ground as he would have liked in the Assembly of Experts, he is still a valuable ally for Amhadi-Nejad, but not as valuable as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran).
The Pasdaran leadership depends heavily on the President to retain its privileges in controlling the key legal and illegal elements of the economy. Control of liquor, prostitution, and narcotics, as well as strong control over many legal businesses has meant that the Pasdaran leadership now has a vested interest in the status quo.
But Ahmadi-Nejad’s Islamist priorities differ substantially from the Persian orientation of much the general public, which means that — perhaps beginning at the forthcoming Now Ruz celebrations — the Pasdaran may be asked to help suppress any dissidence. In the past, the working levels of the Pasdaran — who are not benefiting from the corruption — had increasingly refused to suppress the Iranian public. The clerical Government has, in recent times, spent large amounts of money and effort, using mostly Basij political police, to suppress anti-Government demonstrations. The question now is whether this will be enough.
Demonstrations in defiance of the Government continue. Teachers and cultural figures held a demonstration on March 3, 2007, in front of the Majlis in Tehran. The demonstration was the third in the past six weeks. Some 15,000 to 20,000 demonstrators called on Iranian Education Minister Mahmoud Farshidi to resign, claiming that he was more concerned about obtaining nuclear energy rather than about their livelihood.
Within this environment, Pres. Ahmadi-Nejad’s ability to maneuver has been demonstrated, along with his ability to build a power base. This has contributed to his belief that he needs to continue to use the threat of conflict with the US to sustain his position within the “creative tension” which is the hallmark of current Iranian politics.
Footnotes:
1. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis: Former US Secretary of State Baker Attempts to Bypass Bush White House on Iran Links.
That report noted:
Former US Secretary of State James Baker, who co-chaired the recent US Iraq Study Group — the main recommendations of which were rejected by the George W. Bush Administration — is working indirectly and behind the scenes to bring about direct diplomatic ties between the US and Iran.
This is in defiance of Bush White House policy which essentially has said that encouraging direct negotiations with the Iranian clerical leaders would legitimize and strengthen the power of the Iranian mullahs, making it more difficult for Iran’s secular opposition to bring about democratic change in the country.
The visit on January 25-26, 2007, to Tehran by the Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, for talks with his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani on “the critical situation in Lebanon” was, in fact, to scope out a more broadly-based resolution to the Iran-US impasse along the lines of the so-called “Baker Plan” devised by the Iraq Study Group. The Iraq Study Group recommendations had already been discounted and discarded by the George W. Bush White House, but the Bandar maneuver with Ali Larijani is an attempt to sidestep that in order to resume the process of US recognition of the clerical leadership in Iran.
2. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis: Ahmadi-Nejad’s “Message to the American Nation” Reflects Belief That Tehran Has the Strategic Initiative.
Timor Leste Elections Signify Shifting Political Landscape
Analysis. By Barry Patterson.
On February 24, 2006, Timor Leste Prime Minister José Ramos Horta declared his intention to run for the office of President in elections to be held on April 9, 2006. The current Timor Leste President, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, has stated that he will not stand for another term. It is possible that Horta and Gusmão will “job-switch”, with Horta gaining the presidency and Gusmão, if not gaining the Prime Minister’s office, playing a significant rôle in legislative politics. This will have significant implications for the future of Timor Leste’s government, and may impact on the stability of the nation.
Pres. Gusmão threatened to resign his post over civil unrest which plagued Timor Leste in May 2006, issuing an ultimatum to then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. This ultimatum resulted in Alkatiri’s resignation and the ascendance of Ramos-Horta to the presidency. Prime Minister Horta is no longer a member of the Frente Revolucionaria de Timor-Leste Independente (FRETILIN)
Timor Leste’s ruling party and chief resistance movement prior to independence — and was appointed by Gusmão to the position. Ramos Horta, a lawyer by profession, was also serving as Defense Minister when he assumed office. He continues in both rôles.
At present, there is no significant opposition to Horta’s run for President.
Without a major change of circumstance, it is likely that Horta will secure the presidency. One of Horta’s immediate challenges in gaining the presidency will be to deal with the 600 soldiers, known as petitioners, who deserted the military in early 2006. While no longer operational in the army, the soldiers are still being paid while their future is decided.
Increased friction may also emerge between the President’s office and the Commander of the East Timor Defense Force (ETDF), Brig.-Gen. Taur Matan Ruak. As a former commander of FRETILIN’s armed wing, Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (FALINTIL), and Gusmão’s successor in that organization, Ruak is deeply entrenched in the position and has so far refused to address the petitioners’ requests as a group, offering instead to deal with the soldiers on an individual basis.
Parliamentary elections are also set to occur later in 2007. These elections will see a reduction in the number of seats in Parliament, from 88 to between 52 and 65. The current National Parliament, Timor Leste’s only representative house, was elected on an exceptional basis when the nation’s new constitution was brought in on March 22, 2002.
Pres. Gusmão’s newly formed party, the Conselho Nacional de Resistência Timorense (CNRT: National Council of Timorese Resistance), has the stated aim of attempting to fill the rôle of an effective opposition in Timorese politics and present a credible challenge to the dominant FRETILIN party. According to Pres. Gusmão, it intends to “knock the FRETILIN party off its pedestal as the dominant political force and remove its majority in the parliament”.
Despite being deposed from the office of Prime Minister during 2006, Alkatiri continues to be a powerbroker within FRETILIN.2 Despite his unpopularity with much of rural Timor, and his frequent clashes with the Catholic Church, it is certain that Alkatiri will play a significant rôle in the formation of any new government after parliamentary elections. Part of his unpopularity stems from his long period of exile during the Indonesian occupation. Alkatiri is of Yemeni descent and a Muslim, a point of difference in the predominantly Catholic nation. However, Alkatiri also has a reputation as a good administrator and policy thinker, in a parliament which has few skills in this area. He studied law and surveying during his exile in Angola, and is often cited as a skilled negotiator and economist.
Externally, Alkatiri has enjoyed the support of the Portuguese Government, but has had a more contentious relationship with the Australian Government which had a history of dialogue with Gusmão and Ramos Horta. This dynamic was made clear during the 2006 crisis.
The period leading up to the Presidential election and later parliamentary elections, will mark the most significant shift in Timor Leste politics to date.
It is a critical time for Timor Leste, not just in terms of party formation, but mode of government. The nation has committed to open-markets and a capitalist economy with base standards of living provided by the state; most of this is required by international organizations before economic assistance would be made available.
Ramos-Horta and Gusmão have tended to take a liberal democratic approach to government, emphasizing strong opposition, robust political debate and negotiating solutions to national and social problems. On the other hand, Alkatiri, and much of FRETILIN, prefer a “guided democracy” which is party dominated, with a strong state apparatus to deal with political dissent. Much of this later approach is fueled by FRETILIN’s perception that, as the majority party, and previously the main organization of resistance, it speaks for the population and thus has a mandate for this style of government.
Many of the problems associated with Timor Leste’s unstable democracy are endemic to similar nations which have made the transition from occupation to independence. Primarily, a lack of policy experience among representatives is a major impediment to effective government. This often results in an overweighting of power within the executive.
It is likely that there will be a flare-up of violence during the first half of 2007, intensifying during election periods. In December 2006, up to 13 people were killed; in addition, a number of people were injured in gang-related violence on the streets of the capital, Dili. On February 23, 2006, Australian troops shot three men, two fatally, during a confrontation near Dili’s Comoro airport. This represented the first confirmed fatal shooting by Australian troops in the recent policing action. United Nations vehicles continued to be attacked by stone-throwing youths through early March 2007, when this report was written.
[Four Royal Australian Air Force C-130H Hercules, carrying 100 Australian Special Air Forces (SAS) troops arrived in Dili, on March 1, 2007, in anticipation of a breakout in violence in the country. The troop insertion — part of the Australian Defence Force’s Operation Tower — followed the surrounding of rebel leader Alfredo Reinado in the central Timor Leste town of Same, 50km south of Dili. The SAS deployment was to prevent expected attacks against Australians in East Timor should Australian troops be successful in capturing Reinaldo who had become a local resistance hero.
On March 5, 2007, the Australian Government ordered the evacuation from Timor Leste of all non-essential Australian personnel from the Australian Embassy in Dili; the Australian Government security level for forces operating in Timor Leste was raised to Level Five, the highest level. Maj. Reinaldo, meanwhile, claimed that he commanded 700 troops. He has refused to surrender, saying if anything were to happen to him “people will violently rise up in their thousands”. Reinaldo warned that civil war in Timor Leste was a likely outcome should he be captured. The former head of the East Timor military police had called the present Government “corrupt” and the UN-authorized peacekeeping presence by Australian and New Zealand forces as an “illegal invasion”.
Pres. Gusmão authorized “extra powers” for the international stabilization force to hunt for, and arrest, Reinaldo.]
The outskirts of Comoro airport, home to a significant number of East Timorese displaced by violence in 2006, has been the site of a number of clashes and continued violence. A significant number of Timorese continue to avoid Dili and have sought refuge in the mountains. Timor Leste’s mountains have long acted as places of refuge and safety in period of instability and provided support for the resistance during the Indonesian occupation.
To further compound the potential for instability in Timor Leste, as of February 22, 2006, severe rice shortages were reported, initially in Oecussi, before spreading to the entire country. Rice, the staple diet of Timor Leste and many South-East Asian countries, continues to decline in supply. Prices have jumped from US35 cents a kilo to over a dollar a kilo in some parts of the nation.
Similar shortages have been experienced in Indonesia and other parts of the region. The World Food Program attributes this to a late harvest in Vietnam. The Timor Leste government and the UN World Food Program have secured 300 metric tonnes of rice and are looking to secure further supplies from abroad, in efforts to bring down the price and meet the nation’s food requirements. With late rainfalls and lower than expected rainfall levels in most parts of the nation, there are fears that the country is experiencing a drought.
More expensive food, along with increasing violence around election time, may create severe instability and a potential humanitarian crisis if current shortages are not addressed. Food security has long been a concern for Timor Leste, and intentions have been declared to rehabilitate rice fields and develop storage for such periods of rainfall fluctuation.
The United Nations continues to maintain a presence in the nation, and is focusing on the upcoming elections. On August 25, 2006, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1704 was passed, allowing for the creation of United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT), replacing the previous United Nations Office in Timor-Leste (UNOTIL), which expired in August 2006. The new UNMIT mission incorporates up to 1,608 civilian personnel, predominantly police officers, and up to 34 military personnel.
The mandate of the mission ends on February 26, 2008.
In the six years since independence, Timor Leste has hosted a number of UN missions, including United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UMISET) and UNOTIL. This in itself has led to a number of structural development issues, and reveals serious inadequacies with the UN missions. With the ending of each mission, there is often a large turnover of staff. Missions also tend to be milestone/goal oriented, resulting in a lack of long-term strategic planning.
There is no reason to assume that the current mission will break this pattern.
From 2000 to 2005, UN missions created much of Timor Leste’s economic activity, spending more than $2.55-billion. Much of the money spent was limited to UN personnel. For instance, bottled water was imported, rather than an indigenous water purification capacity being developed. Similarly, portable generators were utilized, rather than a local power generation capacity being created.
The social instability of 2006 severely set back Timor Leste’s economic development. Almost 20 percent of the population continues to be unemployed and the nation has declined slightly in the UN’s Human Development Index when compared to previous years. While the National Development plan set out by the government cites a five percent growth in GDP by 2006/07, this is unlikely to be achieved Development also continues to be a point of contention in Timor Leste’s foreign relations.
The economic nationalism fostered under Alkatiri is still a policy strongly supported by the parliament. Rejection of loans which have special conditions attached — such as greater market interaction and a movement toward export based goods — has been a point of contention within the Australian foreign policy community. Similarly, Timor Leste’s acceptance of around 300 Cuban doctors to provide basic health care has drawn criticism from a number of quarters, including the US.
Internationally, Timor Leste continues to seek ascension to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and is currently the only nation in the region who is not a member. However, it has been an observer since 2002, and since 2006, a member of the larger ASEAN Regional Forum. On January 20, 2007, Timor Leste signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, a prerequisite to joining ASEAN. Prime Minister Horta suggested this may take five or more years, due to Timor Leste’s lack of economic development. The Treaty also lays much of the political foundation for a potential ASEAN free trade area.
The Treaty requires signatories to be guided by the following principles:
The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion:
Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;
Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means;
Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and
Effective cooperation among themselves.
Australia also signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in late 2006, paving the way for its own further involvement in the organization. However, member nations of ASEAN continue to express concern with Australia’s actions toward the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and particularly Fiji.
Significantly, France signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation at the same time as Timor Leste, making it the first European Nation to do so.
This may signal increased French focus on the region, and France’s intention to expand the euro’s influence into South-East Asia. The euro continues to appreciate against the US dollar; much of this growth is fuelled by the twin factors of the large US trade imbalance in East Asia and reluctance by the nations of Asia to allow their own managed currencies to rise. France’s policy in South-East Asia has been to strengthen regional integration, and political and economic development. Recent dialogues suggest that their presence in the region is likely to increase.
Conclusion. 2007 is likely to be a year of further challenges for Timor Leste, with the pressures of the nation’s first full, free elections testing the fabric of Timorese society. The election period may see many of the divisions which exist within the community rise to the surface.
The potential for violence from criminal gangs in Dili, and dissatisfied elements of the military and state security, remains a possibility. Food shortages and the inevitable increase in displaced Timorese during times of instability also have the potential to create a humanitarian crisis.
Footnotes:
* Barry Patterson is a Research Fellow at Future Directions International (FDI), the counterpart organization of ISSA in Australia.
1. Ramos Horta and Gusmão both withdrew from the organization during the Indonesian occupation due to concerns over some members’ conduct. Ramos-Horta is often credited with founding the organization, while Gusmão was one of its earliest members.
2. Charges against Alkatiri pertaining to the violence in 2006 were recently dropped due to lack of evidence, effectively freeing him to engage in public politics and contest the parliamentary elections mid-year. Former Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, accused of conspiring with Alkatiri, is also currently on trial for his alleged rôle in supplying weapons to civilians during the same period. Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year jail term for Loboto.
3. The US dollar is the currency of Timor Leste.
4. “Cuba steps in to aid East Timor health system”, ABC Online, The World Today, July 4, 2006.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1678441.htm.
5. In the army particularly, but in society generally, divisions exist along regional lines, with those from the east and west often in conflict over perceived allegiances during the independence struggle. Pre-1975 invasion political grievances are also reasserting themselves. See Weekly Global Report, May 8, 2006. Timor Leste Disturbances Reveal Unresolved Defence Issues.
PRC-Sri Lanka Strengthen Relationship
Analysis. By Judah Lieblich. The relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Sri Lanka was further strengthened on February 27, 2007, with the signing of eight separate bilateral agreements. The deals were signed after Sri Lankan Pres. Mahinda Rajapakse met with PRC Pres. Hu Jintao in Beijing for brief talks marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the countries.
Details of the projects were not immediately released, however, it is believed that they confirmed major PRC rôles in at least two projects in Sri Lanka. These projects include the building of a new $500-million coal fired power station and a planned $1-billion harbor in Sri Lanka’s south.
Sri Lanka has gained international attention for its prospective energy fields and was, as of early 2007, planning to invite bids for oil exploration, an event in which the PRC was expected to participate. The first phase of oil exploration was scheduled to begin in August 2007.
Sri Lanka has eight oil blocks, which were all expected to be sold in a bidding process. However, on February 23, 2007, Sri Lanka moved outside of this process, offering one each to India and the PRC, and opting to auction the remaining six.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
DEMOCRAT Congressman Facilitates Islamists
WHEN DOES "KNOWINGLY- STUPID" BY OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS BECOME TREASON?
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2747
From CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) to Democrat Congressman's office:
For a detailed description of CAIR, view the video at this link on this site:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2007/02/anti-cair-video-explains.html
Congressman Joe Sestak employs staffer from Saudi funded front group for Hamas - Adeeba Al Zaman :
CAIR alters fundraising poster eliminates three of four speakers names
MIM: The callers to Joe Sestak's office protesting his slated appearence at the fundraising banquet for the Council on American Islamic Relations are in for a nasty surprise.
The staffer who could be anwering their call could be none other then CAIR Philly staffer and former communications director Adeeba Al Zaman.
The U.S. Congressman's employment of a CAIR staffer signifies another advance for "legal Islamism".
In his article "How the West Could Lose" Dr. Daniel Pipes issued this dire warning: "… Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them…" (Alan Note: similar to Hezbollah's take over in Lebanon and to some degree Hamas within Palestinian territory)
MIM Note: Besides Edward Peck two other featured speakers were Parvez Ahmed CAIR National Director and Rafael Narbaez the director of the American Ansar Foundation.
A few hours after a journalist contacted Sestak's Philly office CAIR removed THREE of the four names which had previously appeared on the poster above. For background on the other speakers see: US Rep Joe Sestak to speak at CAIR Philly banquet with Edward Peck who met with terrorists on CNI "political pilgrimage" in '06
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2739
CAIR-PA's First Annual Banquet American Muslims: Connecting and Sharing Featured Speakers: Dr. Edward Peck, Congressman Joe Sestak, 7th District April 7, 2007 at 5:30 pm Hilton Philadelphia, 4200 City Avenue Download Banquet Flyer (85KB)
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=sestak10307%2Ehtm
U.S. Representative Joe Sestak [D-Penn] Employes CAIR Staffer - Saudi Funded Front Group For Hamas Gains Access To Democrat Leadership
By Beila Rabinowitz - San Francisco, CA
Calling into question Representative Sestak's competence in addressing matters of national security, it seems he can't even adequately police his own turf, in that he has granted employment to a CAIR [the Saudi funded Wahhabist front for Hamas, the Council on American Islamic Relations] staffer, Adeeba Al Zaman.
Adeeba Al-Zaman was born in Houston, TX. She graduated in December 2004 from Rosemont College with a degree in political science. From April 2005 until September 2006, Adeeba was CAIR-PA's first full-time employee, Director of Communications.
She was hired to develop the organization from the ground-up.
Among other things, Adeeba presented CAIR-PA's 10-part course, "Understanding Islam and Muslims through History and Jurisprudence" at the Paoli Presbyterian Church.
Adeeba is currently a Congressional staffer for Congressman Joe Sestak of PA District 7.
She remains actively involved in various community and interfaith activities in the Philadelphia area." This close relationship between the Democrat Representative and the Islamist group explains why Mr. Sestak is listed as the featured speaker at CAIR's fundraising banquet in Philadelphia on April 7th 2007.
CAIR is a known quantity these days, their faux moderation a thing of the past.
Senator Barbara Boxer recently rescinded an award given to CAIR because of the group's "refusal to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah" and a "whole laundry list of things" including having their civil rights and communications director Ismail Randall Royer jailed for 20 years on terrorism charges.
Details of CAIR's "handshake-away" relationship with terror can be sourced here [Ghassan Elashi's Sentencing Proves CAIR's Terror Ties].
Inquiring about the matter, our call to Sestak's office yesterday was greeted by an irritated staffer who stated that they "had gotten a lot of calls about this" [the CAIR appearance] and who then abruptly terminated the conversation when we declined to provide an address.
CAIR is actively promoting the relationship with their "inside" guy.
Iftekhar Hussain the director of the CAIR Philadelphia office - and Adeeba Al Zaman's real boss - sent out an email asking Muslims to show support for Sestak's decision to speak at their fundraiser/banquet.
We therefore think it essential for Mr. Sestak to explain why he is employing a member of an organization whose very connection with the office of a U.S. Congressman raises serious questions of national security.
CAIR Philly director Iftekhar Hussain's email to Muslims to show support for Joe Sestak who is "taking heat from some anti - Muslim constituents".
From: "Iftekhar Hussain"
Subject: KINDLY CALL JOE SESTAK AT 610-892-8623 to THANK HIM
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:57:26
Dear Friend, Peace to you!
I am writing to ask for your support on an urgent issue.
Congressman Joe Sestak is taking heat from some anti-Muslim constituents for having accepted an invitation to CAIR-PA, Philadelphia Chapter's annual banquet on April 7, 2007.
Why should he support CAIR-PA? Check out CAIR-PA's website to learn more about the work that it does to build tolerance and understanding in Pennsylvania.
Don't let him walk away with the message that he shouldn't support some of the most urgent civil rights and interfaith work in the state!
WE NEED TO SUPPORT HIS COMMITMENT TO THIS WORK—BY PHONE ONLY.
Please follow these easy instructions: Make a two-minute phone call now: Contact Congressman Joe Sestak at 610-892-8623 and tell him
1. You are a voter If you are a voter in the 7th District, that is great but not necessary. [the 7th district contains the western and northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia. It is comprised of the majority of Delaware County (except for the City of Chester and some of the eastern boroughs), a portion of Chester County east of West Chester, and a portion of southern Montgomery County in the affluent Main Line area]
2. You understand that he has accepted an invitation to speak at CAIR-PA's annual banquet
3. You want to express your support and enthusiasm for his participation in this event, which demonstrates his support for one of the state's most important civil rights and interfaith organizations.
Thank you and Best Regards
Your friends, Iftekhar and Bushra
Iftekhar Hussain:
Iftekhar is the Chair of CAIR-PA. He is also currently serving as Secretary General of the American Muslim Society of the Tristate Area of PA, NJ & DE and on the advisory committee of the American Friends Service Committee, Middle East Peace Building Unit.
He is engaged in local interfaith educational initiatives with a focus on 'Islam and the Middle East' and 'US Foreign Policy and the Muslim world'.
On behalf of CAIR-PA, he has developed a 10-part course titled 'Understanding Islam and Muslims through History and Jurisprudence' and has taught it at churches, synagogues, mosques and local county night schools. He has presented this course at over 20 different venues over the past 6 years.
Iftekhar serves as Islamic Friday prayer service leader at suburban mosques in the Delaware Valley. He has started and volunteered for PA and TX Muslim community organizations at the board level and executive committee level.
He has also worked with national Muslim organizations as consultant for local work and representation and has represented local Muslim organizations at the national level.
Under contract, he has led a process improvement study and implemented a process improvement plan for an Islamic educational foundation in the Delaware Valley.
Iftekhar was born in Bangladesh, has lived in the Middle East and Europe and studied in Texas obtaining a Bachelors and a Masters at Texas A&M University and worked toward a PhD at Penn State University.
He works as a consultant in the Pharmaceutical industry, traveling in Asia Pacific and Europe on corporate business process re-engineering assignments.
Iftekhar is married to Bushra Kourani for the past 10 years and has three children Yousef (age 8), Omar (age 7) and Huda (age 3).
Congresman Paul Findley and visit with Khalaf Al Habtoor:
How CAIR fundraises abroad
An article by Shakir Husain, "Arabs urged to invest in image-building in US," in the Dubai-based Gulf News, provides a rare glimpse into two aspects of CAIR – its activities abroad and its finances.
Parvez Ahmad, CAIR chairman visited Dubai (with former congressman Paul Findley in tow) and held discussions with Khalaf Al Habtoor and other businessmen, seeking funds for a 5-year, $50-million public relations campaign CAIR has initiated.
Ahmad called it "the most ambitious public relations campaign anywhere in the world that the Muslims have thought about to change perceptions about Islam."
He warned the businessmen that donating is in their own interest, raising the DP World fiasco and arguing that "If the image of Islam and Muslims is not repaired in America, Muslim and Arab business interests will continue to be on a downward slide in the US.
Do not think about your contributions as donations. Think about it from the perspective of rate of return. The investment of $50 million will give you billions of dollars in return for 50 years."
He argued for dealing with the image problem in the United States because it will "remain a superpower and the largest economy in the world for at least the next 50 years."
As for the finances, the article states that CAIR plans to construct a seven-storey, $24-million office building.
It already has the land and is now raising funds for the edifice. Ahmad noted that "This building will provide CAIR $3 million per year in revenues. That will provide enough stability from an operational side."
Paul Sperry reports in "The CAIR-U.A.E. Connection" that the United Arab Emirates announced on its official government website that it has set up an endowment serving as a source of income for CAIR.
The amount of the funding is undisclosed, but sources say it will be enough to help CAIR finance the construction of a new $24 million office building and a planned $50 million public-relations campaign aimed at repairing Islam's—and the UAE's—image in America.
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2747
From CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) to Democrat Congressman's office:
For a detailed description of CAIR, view the video at this link on this site:
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2007/02/anti-cair-video-explains.html
Congressman Joe Sestak employs staffer from Saudi funded front group for Hamas - Adeeba Al Zaman :
CAIR alters fundraising poster eliminates three of four speakers names
MIM: The callers to Joe Sestak's office protesting his slated appearence at the fundraising banquet for the Council on American Islamic Relations are in for a nasty surprise.
The staffer who could be anwering their call could be none other then CAIR Philly staffer and former communications director Adeeba Al Zaman.
The U.S. Congressman's employment of a CAIR staffer signifies another advance for "legal Islamism".
In his article "How the West Could Lose" Dr. Daniel Pipes issued this dire warning: "… Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them…" (Alan Note: similar to Hezbollah's take over in Lebanon and to some degree Hamas within Palestinian territory)
MIM Note: Besides Edward Peck two other featured speakers were Parvez Ahmed CAIR National Director and Rafael Narbaez the director of the American Ansar Foundation.
A few hours after a journalist contacted Sestak's Philly office CAIR removed THREE of the four names which had previously appeared on the poster above. For background on the other speakers see: US Rep Joe Sestak to speak at CAIR Philly banquet with Edward Peck who met with terrorists on CNI "political pilgrimage" in '06
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2739
CAIR-PA's First Annual Banquet American Muslims: Connecting and Sharing Featured Speakers: Dr. Edward Peck, Congressman Joe Sestak, 7th District April 7, 2007 at 5:30 pm Hilton Philadelphia, 4200 City Avenue Download Banquet Flyer (85KB)
-------------------
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=sestak10307%2Ehtm
U.S. Representative Joe Sestak [D-Penn] Employes CAIR Staffer - Saudi Funded Front Group For Hamas Gains Access To Democrat Leadership
By Beila Rabinowitz - San Francisco, CA
Calling into question Representative Sestak's competence in addressing matters of national security, it seems he can't even adequately police his own turf, in that he has granted employment to a CAIR [the Saudi funded Wahhabist front for Hamas, the Council on American Islamic Relations] staffer, Adeeba Al Zaman.
Adeeba Al-Zaman was born in Houston, TX. She graduated in December 2004 from Rosemont College with a degree in political science. From April 2005 until September 2006, Adeeba was CAIR-PA's first full-time employee, Director of Communications.
She was hired to develop the organization from the ground-up.
Among other things, Adeeba presented CAIR-PA's 10-part course, "Understanding Islam and Muslims through History and Jurisprudence" at the Paoli Presbyterian Church.
Adeeba is currently a Congressional staffer for Congressman Joe Sestak of PA District 7.
She remains actively involved in various community and interfaith activities in the Philadelphia area." This close relationship between the Democrat Representative and the Islamist group explains why Mr. Sestak is listed as the featured speaker at CAIR's fundraising banquet in Philadelphia on April 7th 2007.
CAIR is a known quantity these days, their faux moderation a thing of the past.
Senator Barbara Boxer recently rescinded an award given to CAIR because of the group's "refusal to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah" and a "whole laundry list of things" including having their civil rights and communications director Ismail Randall Royer jailed for 20 years on terrorism charges.
Details of CAIR's "handshake-away" relationship with terror can be sourced here [Ghassan Elashi's Sentencing Proves CAIR's Terror Ties].
Inquiring about the matter, our call to Sestak's office yesterday was greeted by an irritated staffer who stated that they "had gotten a lot of calls about this" [the CAIR appearance] and who then abruptly terminated the conversation when we declined to provide an address.
CAIR is actively promoting the relationship with their "inside" guy.
Iftekhar Hussain the director of the CAIR Philadelphia office - and Adeeba Al Zaman's real boss - sent out an email asking Muslims to show support for Sestak's decision to speak at their fundraiser/banquet.
We therefore think it essential for Mr. Sestak to explain why he is employing a member of an organization whose very connection with the office of a U.S. Congressman raises serious questions of national security.
CAIR Philly director Iftekhar Hussain's email to Muslims to show support for Joe Sestak who is "taking heat from some anti - Muslim constituents".
From: "Iftekhar Hussain"
Subject: KINDLY CALL JOE SESTAK AT 610-892-8623 to THANK HIM
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:57:26
Dear Friend, Peace to you!
I am writing to ask for your support on an urgent issue.
Congressman Joe Sestak is taking heat from some anti-Muslim constituents for having accepted an invitation to CAIR-PA, Philadelphia Chapter's annual banquet on April 7, 2007.
Why should he support CAIR-PA? Check out CAIR-PA's website to learn more about the work that it does to build tolerance and understanding in Pennsylvania.
Don't let him walk away with the message that he shouldn't support some of the most urgent civil rights and interfaith work in the state!
WE NEED TO SUPPORT HIS COMMITMENT TO THIS WORK—BY PHONE ONLY.
Please follow these easy instructions: Make a two-minute phone call now: Contact Congressman Joe Sestak at 610-892-8623 and tell him
1. You are a voter If you are a voter in the 7th District, that is great but not necessary. [the 7th district contains the western and northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia. It is comprised of the majority of Delaware County (except for the City of Chester and some of the eastern boroughs), a portion of Chester County east of West Chester, and a portion of southern Montgomery County in the affluent Main Line area]
2. You understand that he has accepted an invitation to speak at CAIR-PA's annual banquet
3. You want to express your support and enthusiasm for his participation in this event, which demonstrates his support for one of the state's most important civil rights and interfaith organizations.
Thank you and Best Regards
Your friends, Iftekhar and Bushra
Iftekhar Hussain:
-------------------------
Iftekhar is the Chair of CAIR-PA. He is also currently serving as Secretary General of the American Muslim Society of the Tristate Area of PA, NJ & DE and on the advisory committee of the American Friends Service Committee, Middle East Peace Building Unit.
He is engaged in local interfaith educational initiatives with a focus on 'Islam and the Middle East' and 'US Foreign Policy and the Muslim world'.
On behalf of CAIR-PA, he has developed a 10-part course titled 'Understanding Islam and Muslims through History and Jurisprudence' and has taught it at churches, synagogues, mosques and local county night schools. He has presented this course at over 20 different venues over the past 6 years.
Iftekhar serves as Islamic Friday prayer service leader at suburban mosques in the Delaware Valley. He has started and volunteered for PA and TX Muslim community organizations at the board level and executive committee level.
He has also worked with national Muslim organizations as consultant for local work and representation and has represented local Muslim organizations at the national level.
Under contract, he has led a process improvement study and implemented a process improvement plan for an Islamic educational foundation in the Delaware Valley.
Iftekhar was born in Bangladesh, has lived in the Middle East and Europe and studied in Texas obtaining a Bachelors and a Masters at Texas A&M University and worked toward a PhD at Penn State University.
He works as a consultant in the Pharmaceutical industry, traveling in Asia Pacific and Europe on corporate business process re-engineering assignments.
Iftekhar is married to Bushra Kourani for the past 10 years and has three children Yousef (age 8), Omar (age 7) and Huda (age 3).
------------------------
Congresman Paul Findley and visit with Khalaf Al Habtoor:
How CAIR fundraises abroad
An article by Shakir Husain, "Arabs urged to invest in image-building in US," in the Dubai-based Gulf News, provides a rare glimpse into two aspects of CAIR – its activities abroad and its finances.
Parvez Ahmad, CAIR chairman visited Dubai (with former congressman Paul Findley in tow) and held discussions with Khalaf Al Habtoor and other businessmen, seeking funds for a 5-year, $50-million public relations campaign CAIR has initiated.
Ahmad called it "the most ambitious public relations campaign anywhere in the world that the Muslims have thought about to change perceptions about Islam."
He warned the businessmen that donating is in their own interest, raising the DP World fiasco and arguing that "If the image of Islam and Muslims is not repaired in America, Muslim and Arab business interests will continue to be on a downward slide in the US.
Do not think about your contributions as donations. Think about it from the perspective of rate of return. The investment of $50 million will give you billions of dollars in return for 50 years."
He argued for dealing with the image problem in the United States because it will "remain a superpower and the largest economy in the world for at least the next 50 years."
As for the finances, the article states that CAIR plans to construct a seven-storey, $24-million office building.
It already has the land and is now raising funds for the edifice. Ahmad noted that "This building will provide CAIR $3 million per year in revenues. That will provide enough stability from an operational side."
Paul Sperry reports in "The CAIR-U.A.E. Connection" that the United Arab Emirates announced on its official government website that it has set up an endowment serving as a source of income for CAIR.
The amount of the funding is undisclosed, but sources say it will be enough to help CAIR finance the construction of a new $24 million office building and a planned $50 million public-relations campaign aimed at repairing Islam's—and the UAE's—image in America.
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