Author: issandr

Links October 25th to October 27th

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Links October 22nd to October 25th

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The rise of the “Awakenings” model

Is this really a good idea:

Pakistan plans to arm tens of thousands of anti-Taliban tribal fighters in its western border region in hopes — shared by the U.S. military — that the nascent militias can replicate the tribal “Awakening” movement that proved decisive in the battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The militias, called lashkars, will receive Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, a purchase arranged during a visit to Beijing this month by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistani officials said.

Do you really want to pump in tons of small arms into an area of great lawlessness and tribal rivalry?

That French Jimmy interview

For those who missed it, below is a Word file with the transcript of the Gamal Mubarak interview that appeared in the French review Politique Internationale. Nothing amazing but some interesting personal touches.

B. A. et P. D. – Dans quel état d’esprit avez-vous grandi ? 

 
G. M. – Comme beaucoup de mes compatriotes, j’ai su très vite, enfant déjà, ce que signifiait être fils de militaire. Mon père était officier de l’armée égyptienne. J’ai appris le sens de l’honneur et j’en connais plus que jamais la portée aujourd’hui. Je voudrais ajouter que ma génération est composée de milliers d’Égyptiens qui, comme moi, ont été marqués par la guerre : leur père, leur oncle, des membres proches de leur famille ont participé aux différents conflits qui ont jalonné l’histoire de l’Égypte durant les années 1960 et 1970. Cette expérience les aide à apprécier la paix à sa juste valeur…


B. A. et P. D. – Est-il difficile de se faire un prénom quand on a un père aussi éminent que le vôtre ?

 
G. M. – En réalité, ce genre de considération est secondaire. Ce qui compte, pour moi, c’est de travailler et de poursuivre les réformes engagées. C’est aux Égyptiens et aux membres du PND de se prononcer : ai-je réussi parce que je suis le fils du président ou en raison de mes compétences ? Lorsque je suis entré en politique, il y a sept ans, j’ai voulu prouver que j’étais capable de participer au processus de réformes. J’espère y être parvenu.

Drouhaud_GamalMoubarak_PolitiqueInternationale_Sep2008.doc

Update: Now also in PDF:
Drouhaud_GamalMoubarak_PolitiqueInternationale_Sep2008.pdf

Links October 20th to October 22nd

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The alternate universe of Condi Rice

Condoleeza Rice is on a mission to save her (and her boss’) legacy in the Middle East, with all this last minute peace-processing and the recent relaxation of the “no talking to Hamas or Syria” approaches of the past. She and her colleagues made a right mess over the last eight years with their “transformational diplomacy” and now they’re returning to tried-and-true methods to limit the damage, apparently with greater-than-usual focus on preparing the transition to the next administration (or so one hears). But in this (poor) al-Arabiya interview she really seems desperate to provide a positive spin to her disastrous tenure as NSA and SecState:

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, let’s take a panoramic look at the region, the Middle East. The Bush Administration came with some high wishes, hopes: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power; spreading democracy in the Middle East; a peaceful Iraq, a democratic Iraq; and after Annapolis, a commitment to have peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. And are you disappointed because some of these objectives were not met – I mean, especially on the peace process?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, first, let’s look at the Middle East when this President became President in 2001 and the Middle East now. In 2001, you had a raging intifada after the collapse of the Camp David talks. You had in power in Israel a prime minister who did not come to power talking about bringing peace, and you had Yasser Arafat in power in the Palestinian Territories. You had Lebanon with Syrian forces occupying Lebanon, which they had done for decades. Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, threatening his neighbors, as he had done for decades. There really wasn’t very much discussion of democracy in the Middle East.
And you look now and you see that, first and foremost, Saddam Hussein is out of power. And while Iraqis are struggling with their new democracy, they are now a democratic state, a multiconfessional, multiethnic, democratic state. Lebanon has a president. Lebanese forces are throughout the country for the first time in decades; Syrian forces are out. Syria has established proper diplomatic relations with Lebanon.
You have a situation in which throughout the Middle East, people talk about popular rule, women can vote in Kuwait, elections have been held in a number of places, and in the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the two-state solution is now taken for granted that this the only real possibility. And President Bush, who put it on the agenda in 2001, has helped the parties come to a process after Annapolis so that you have the first really robust peace process in a number of years.
And so yes, it’s still a difficult region, but I think a lot has been achieved over the last several years.

And look towards the bottom at how the journalist fawns over “how hard you worked” on the peace process… since when? Since she realized that not working at all on the issue in her first seven years in office was not a super idea, that’s when.

More Pamuk

Just following up on my Pamuk obsession with a link to this piece he recently published in the Guardian (from the Literary Saloon). The author talks about amassing his library, the changing status position of and novels in Turkish literature, and more. I keep meeting Turks in New York who diss the Nobel Laureate and I can’t tell what this is about. It’s almost like there is something suspect about his international success, some sense that if he’s won a global audience it’s because he’s playing to that audience and not being “authentic.”

Sinbad The Spy

In the last two years, there had been repeated leaks that some of the best intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program was coming from Germany, which was explained as one reason the Europeans (and Germany in particular) were leading the diplomatic offensive against Tehran and letting the US take a back seat in negotiations.

It turns out that a key source of intelligence for the BND, Germany’s intelligence service, was coming from a rather dodgy businessman who has just been arrested for smuggling key technology into… wait for it… Iran. Der Spiegel has published the first story on the case, and I am reproducing a full BBC Monitoring translation after the jump. First some choice excerpts:

His colleagues know the businessman from Iran as manager of a medium-sized company based in Hesse: a dignified gentleman, 61 years of age, who had just returned from a trip abroad.

The customs officers know him as a smuggler of armaments technology for Iran – this, at least, is the suspicion that has now landed him in pre-trial detention.

The BND knows him as “Sinbad.” This was the cover name under which he spied for the German foreign intelligence service for more than a decade.

. . .

The documents that Sinbad supplied came obviously from the holy of holies of the state apparatus in Tehran. He obtained pictures of tunnel rock drills, details of secret deposits, and up-to-date documents on progress in developing carrier technology for nuclear warheads. The information must have come mainly from ministries in Tehran to which he had excellent access. In Pullach, where Department 1 is based that supervised Sinbad, and in Berlin, where the analysts of Department 3 processed Sinbad’s information, everyone was thrilled. What the source from Tehran served up went together well with the fragments that the BND obtained from other sources.

As a result, a relationship of mutual trust developed between the BND and its spy in the mid-1990s, when their cooperation began. The BND paid its top spy about 1 million euros, an unusually high amount that is invested only in exceptional cases. He was, an officer said, “one of our best-quality sources in the area of proliferation in general.”

Apparently “Sinbad” was delivering technology for use in delivery systems — the Shahab series of missiles unveiled by Iran in recent years and that are a more plausible medium-term threat/deterrent against Israel and US allies (or installations) in the region, even if they don’t carry a nuclear payload. So perhaps the Iranians very well knew who they were dealing with, giving him info on a nuclear program they know they won’t be able to complete in the near-future anyway, in exchange for making progress on building a more effective deterrent against a US/Israeli preemptive strike on the nuclear program. If you can deter and project strength effectively, after all, then you can afford to take the time on the nuclear program anyway.
Continue reading Sinbad The Spy

Links October 10th to October 18th

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