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Mission impossible in Lebanon

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Aug 18, 2006

The United Nations faces a perilous road ahead as it tries to muster sufficient forces to dispatch to Lebanon to turn the fragile ceasefire into a lasting peace. This is a dangerous mission rife with potential setbacks both for both Middle East peace as well as the UN itself, which lacks the right resources and even the right mandate for its would-be peacekeepers in south Lebanon.

Already, contrasting interpretations regarding the scope of action by the now-enhanced UNIFIL (UN Interim Force in Lebanon) can be heard aplenty. Thus, whereas President George W Bush stated on Tuesday that "UNIFIL would be used to seal off the Syrian border", the head of the UN's Peacekeeping Office, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has explicitly rebuffed Bush by insisting that per the provisions of UN Resolution 1701, sealing those borders "is not something that the UN can do".

As for the more contentious issue of Hezbollah's disarmament, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan bluntly told an Israeli audience, in an interview with Israeli television on Tuesday, that this was not UNIFIL's mandate, thus raising the ire of many Israeli politicians who have rushed to criticize him as being biased against Israel.

Yet in fairness to Annan, Resolution 1701 is invoked under Chapter VI rather than Chapter VII, which means the more "robust" UNIFIL force - of up to 15,000 troops, although a more realistic figure in the near term is about 4,000 - will continue to act as they have been since they first set foot in Lebanon in 1978, not as "peace enforcers" but rather as traditional peacekeepers.

Thus unless there is a Security Council revision of the underlying modus operandi for the new UNIFIL, requiring a subsequent resolution as implicitly called for by UNIFIL's head of operation, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, it is fairly certain that the Israeli expectation of UNIFIL somehow forcing Hezbollah to lay down its arms will not materialize.

UNIFIL's role, old and new
In a word, UNIFIL is today overloaded with new and additional responsibilities while, as mentioned, underloaded with the proper legal mandate. The Security Council has thus set it up for inflated and unrealistic expectations, and perhaps even another UN debacle down the road.

Yet somehow - and this goes to the heart of a certain cognitive dissonance respecting the Security Council - UNIFIL has been implicitly if not explicitly asked to achieve more than what it is authorized to do.

To elaborate, UNIFIL is still expected to fulfill its original mandate of Resolution 425 (1978), ie, to "confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon; restore international peace and security; and assist the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area".

After receiving punishing blows by Israel, which added to its previous verbal abuse of UNIFIL workers as "useless pensioners" by striking a UNIFIL observation post and killing four, the interim force is now poised to play a more effective role by a combination of enhanced force deployment and expanded responsibilities. Above all, it will assist the Lebanese armed forces to take control of the south and to "ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind" and to "resist attempts by forceful means" to prevent it from discharging its mandate.

Per Resolution 1701, Annan has been mandated to take all the "necessary measures" to make sure that this time UNIFIL can implement the resolution's rather compounded wish list. Annan's deputy, Mark Molloch Brown, had advised the Security Council to opt for a more "sequential" approach through two or more resolutions. This was sound advice ignored partly as a result of the United States' dislike of Brown's occasional criticisms of US policy and partly due to the urgency of the crisis. This culminated in a resolution with many gray areas, such as with respect to the precise role UNIFIL is to play in south Lebanon.

As Pellegrini bluntly put it, his UNIFIL is not yet enabled to "take strong measures" to enforce Resolution 1701. For the moment, UNIFIL's more modest role, ie, monitoring the ceasefire, is proceeding rather smoothly. One only hopes that this translates into better Israel-UNIFIL relations in the weeks and months to come.

Israel in Lebanon: Temporary or long-term?
After insisting that Israeli armed forces would depart from Lebanon "within 10 days", the Israeli leadership is now revising itself, with various political and military spokesmen postponing the due date to several weeks and even months.

So don't expect a full withdrawal any time soon. The Israel Defense Forces deputy chief of general staff, Major-General Moshe Kalinsky, has been quoted in the press as stating unequivocally that the IDF would "maintain several outposts in Lebanon, even after the IDF withdraws from the area".

Supposedly, this is partly in reaction to Hezbollah's announcement that its fighters would neither disarm nor move to the north of the Litani River. "Any such withdrawal means the evacuation of south Lebanon," a senior Hezbollah official, Hassan Faflollah, told the press. Averting a political crisis at a time when Hezbollah has amassed great new political capital as a result of the 33-day war, the Lebanese government has reportedly reached an agreement with Hezbollah whereby the latter will keep its arms.

Should Israel linger in Lebanon, the stage will be set for more conflict, potentially getting UNIFIL caught in the middle. Bruised and humiliated by its military failure to defeat the Hezbollah, Israel has tough choices to make in the near future. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni meets UN officials in New York this week to hammer out the details of Israel's withdrawal, in parallel with the deployment of UNIFIL forces alongside Lebanese troops. The chances are that Israel may seek a "reversal of fortunes" by perpetuating its stay in Lebanon, based on intrinsic military and political calculations.

A crucial issue here is how soon the international community can muster the additional forces for UNIFIL, currently at 2,000, called for by Resolution 1701.

UN's challenge of mobilizing forces
On Thursday, important decisions were to be made at the UN headquarters in New York by would-be troop contributors, led by France. The United States has already announced that it will not contribute, and this, together with the paltry US$50 million aid to Lebanon announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, hardly positions the US in a better seat to deal with this crisis.

But of course the United States' pro-Israel biases in effect preclude any direct peacekeeping role in Lebanon for the foreseeable future, yet another sign of what is wrong with Washington's Middle East policy.

By escalating the rhetoric against "Islamic fascism" and insisting that Lebanon is another front in the "war on terror", President George W Bush has actually lessened his country's capability as a peace mediator. A more prudent approach would have been to step back from such caricatures of complex realities and to send signals indicating the United States' willingness to engage in dialogue with both Iran and Syria, as well as Hezbollah, which is an integral part of the Lebanese political landscape.

This aside, if the United States' direct contribution to the post-ceasefire peacekeeping is going to be minimal, it cannot at the same time expect to play a leading role in shaping policy there.

Time is of the essence, however, and all sides agree that the fragile ceasefire cannot wait for weeks or months before UNIFIL's new muscular presence is established on the ground in Lebanon. Reportedly, the UN is busy speeding up the deployment process by bypassing the usual procedures.

Yet what seems prudent in the short run may come to haunt the United Nations, given the fact that the deployment of a large UN force is only one aspect of a complex peace strategy that requires a parallel diplomatic track, particularly with respect to national dialogue in Lebanon. A small misstep, and UNIFIL and Hezbollah may find themselves on a collision course. In this case, one must expect a sad repetition of anti-UN acts witnessed in Iraq and (to a lesser extent) Afghanistan, where the (mis)perception of the UN as a Western pawn runs rampant.

Clearly, the UN can ill-afford to take any actions that could jeopardize its role and image in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which is why it is all the more important that UNIFIL include troops from Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as other members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). Concerning the latter, its representatives have reportedly traveled to Beirut to discuss a meaningful input by the OIC in the peace process.

One of the main challenges of UNIFIL's new mission in Lebanon is undoubtedly to maintain the principle of neutrality, which may be imperiled if Lebanese Shi'ites are disquieted by any over-presence of Sunni forces in UNIFIL's ranks.

Even Turkey's contribution is somewhat problematic in light of Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel. An ideal force structure should, then, come from the European Union and, even more so, non-Muslim developing nations that are members of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Another challenge is due to the fact that typically the countries contributing to the UN peacekeeping force handle military planning and, in this case, a consensus on UNIFIL's top agenda may not be easily forthcoming. A stumbling block here is the French government's singular emphasis on the need to disarm Hezbollah. Either the French tone down their expectations, or their impending leading role in peacekeeping in Lebanon will translate into untimely fissures and tensions, thereby inviting disaster.

In conclusion, Resolution 1701's plate is too full, and any expectation of simultaneous implementation of all its demands is bound to fizzle. This is because of the resolution's prioritization of the release of Israeli prisoners of war over Lebanese detainees in Israel, and reserving the right to retaliate by Israel without giving a similar right to Lebanon.

Following a "modest goal" by UNIFIL, as stated by Guehenno, has its own risk. For one thing, it could lead to an Israeli refusal to depart from Lebanon. Rather, what is needed is a focused UN strategy that operates on political and military tracks simultaneously, creating a timely buffer between Israel and Hezbollah forces first and foremost.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH18Ak01.html

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'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq

By Sami Moubayed
Aug 19, 2006

DAMASCUS - This summer former US ambassador Peter Galbraith released a groundbreaking book called The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. One of the most interesting facts presented by Galbraith was that two months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W Bush was unaware that there were two branches of Islam (Sunni and Shi'ite). Bush once also famously said, "They are misunderestimating me."

Now, with the war in Lebanon having overshadowed events in Iraq, perhaps it is the US that is "misunderestimating" the situation there, where July was the bloodiest month in terms of deaths since the invasion of March 2003.

Iraq and its people have probably been the greatest losers in the Israeli war with Hezbollah. For a month, the world's attention was completely fixated on Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah. The rising sectarian violence in Iraq, until a ceasefire came into effect in Lebanon this Monday, was ignored.

Before the Lebanon war started, it seemed that Iraq was already on the verge of civil war, due to the brutality of death squads and the visible helplessness of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A month later, Iraq is at civil war. Just look at the figures. In July, the number of Iraqis killed in sectarian violence - and what else can one call it? - was a staggering 3,438 - two times the number of Lebanese civilians killed during the 30 days of daily air raids by Israel, and more than 100 deaths a day.

This is a 9% increase over the death toll for June. And this is not Iraqis being killed by Americans. It is Iraqis killing one another. Last month, an average of 110 Iraqis were dying per day in Iraq. Despite all the denials both of US officials and of members of the Maliki cabinet, this is war, and it is a war that was started by the Bush administration.

These numbers mean many things. First, it is clear evidence that the Baghdad Security Plan of the Iraqi prime minister (started on June 14) has completely failed. It was a plan much trumpeted by Bush and Maliki because it called for the creation of more Iraq-run checkpoints to search for arms, explosives and gunmen.

Second, the staggering Iraqi death toll means that the Sunni insurgency has not been broken - or even weakened - by the death of its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

And third, the transfer of full responsibility for security to the Iraqi government seems as far away as it has ever been since the invasion of 2003.

The Americans have already started "Operation Together Forward" to reclaim parts of the Iraqi capital from warring militias. Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has called for the creation of "people's committees" to provide local security. In effect, he is saying that the Shi'ites should protect Shi'ite districts, the Sunnis should protect their own neighborhoods, and mixed areas should be patrolled by joint Sunni-Shi'ite militias.

He has every reason to lose faith in both Iraqi security and the US military. A glimpse at some events over the past few days provides tragic confirmation of the widespread chaos across the country and the war that has engulfed it.

On Wednesday, a car bomb went off in Baghdad, killing 10 people and injuring more than 40. Earlier in the day, clashes had erupted in the towns of Basra and Mosul. In Basra, armed groups engaged in combat with police and the British army after they attacked the office of the governor and the city council. In Mosul, rebels were killed by Iraqi police.

On Tuesday, violence erupted in Karbala between the Iraqi army and supporters of radical cleric Mahmud al-Hasani, leading to the death of 12 Iraqis. The attack was blamed on the "nationalist attitude" of Hasani, an ally of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is vehemently opposed to the US presence in Iraq. After storming Hasani's office, police arrested 250 of his supporters.

That same day, a suicide bomber killed nine people in Mosul outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is headed by President Jalal Talabani. Five members of the paramilitary peshmerga were killed and 36 people were wounded.

Earlier this month, Iraq police clashed with members of the Mehdi Army led by Muqtada. Maliki, who is trying to build bridges between warring factions, denied the attack, but it was confirmed by the Ministry of Defense, making the prime minister look silly.

It also enraged Muqtada and probably explains why so much violence took place in the following week, all believed to be Muqtada's doing. The clash, which took place in Sadr City, lasted for two hours and resulted in the death of two Iraqis and the wounding of 18. A second clash took place when officials stormed the Ministry of Health and arrested seven of Minister Ali al-Shamri's bodyguards. The health minister is a Sadrist.

For two years now the Americans have been denying that Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Last week, however, two US generals spoke to Congress about the situation in Iraq. And they spoke about civil war.

General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, said, "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress, "We do have the possibility of that devolving into civil war." Both acknowledged that one year ago, they did not expect things to turn so violent in Iraq.

Also last week, after the briefing of the two generals, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether the US would maintain its troops in Iraq if civil war broke out. He declined to answer, saying he didn't want to give the impression that he, too, was implying that a civil war was on the horizon. But he added that the question must be handled by the Iraqis themselves.

Currently, there are 133,000 US troops in Iraq, and this war has cost billions of dollars and 2,500 American lives. The fate of these troops, if civil war were indeed to be acknowledged by everybody, is still uncertain.

Bush has already said he does not expect US troops to leave Iraq during his presidency, which ends in January 2009. On the civil-war theme, a story leaked in Newsweek, quoting "a senior Bush aide", said the White House was seriously studying what it would do in Iraq if it were to accept that civil war had broken out.

This was also confirmed in a cable sent from William Patey, the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq, to Prime Minister Tony Blair. It sounded as pessimistic as the words of Generals Abizaid and Pace. He said, "The prospect for a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy." He added: "Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that can sustain itself, defend itself, and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror - must remain in doubt."

Amid all these problems, there is the danger of the "Hezbollah model" being adopted in Iraq. Muqtada, who has been a nightmare for the Americans since they invaded, has all the credentials to create such an organization in Iraq, modeling himself after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Muqtada is young. He is well connected in the religious establishment, he hails from a prominent Shi'ite family and he has a large following among Iraqis. Like Nasrallah, he is opposed to both the US and Israel. Like Nasrallah, he is an Arab nationalist at heart who does not want to see Iraq divided. The only difference is that Muqtada wants to establish a theocracy in Iraq.

He lacks Nasrallah's charisma, however, and the flow of money and arms from Iran. If he pulls the right strings, though, and makes wise alliances, he could receive strong support from the mullahs of Tehran - something that the Americans wish to avoid at any cost.

If it happens, and Muqtada decides to end all restraint, he could immediately bring down the Maliki cabinet. Or he could withdraw his ministers from the government and replace them with non-entities, and transform the cabinet into a political dwarf unable to make any real decisions. In this event, what would govern the state of affairs under Muqtada would be the power of the sword on the Iraqi street.

One of the things cemented in the minds of the Americans after the war in Lebanon - because of the stunning strength of Hezbollah - is that they do not want an Iraqi Hezbollah. Muqtada already has ministers in the Maliki cabinet and deputies in parliament. He has strong veto power by virtue of his constituency and popularity among Shi'ites.

The Americans want to control his rapidly rising popularity. They see the bitter reality that now they have to deal with Lebanon's Hezbollah. They truly wish that it was not there, but have not been able to defeat it or destroy it, neither with United Nations resolutions, nor through domestic Lebanese dialogue, nor through the military might of the Israeli army.

And with Iraq in such civil strife, it could in all likelihood become a battleground for the entire Persian and Arab neighborhood. The Saudis would support the Sunnis. Iran - and Lebanon's Hezbollah - would support the Shi'ites.

The United States would be trapped in the middle. It would be unable to side with any one party against the other. Supporting the Sunnis would mean supporting former Ba'athists. Supporting the Shi'ites would mean allying with Iran. And the Kurds, with whom the US gets on, are not very strong anyway and do not represent large numbers in Iraq.

The United States stands in a helpless situation. If only Bush had had a better idea of Sunnis and Shi'ites before he invaded.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH19Ak01.html

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Be skeptical ... be very skeptical

By M K Bhadrakumar

One of the significant contributions to the "war on terror" by Britain's home secretary David Blunkett before his abrupt departure from the Tony Blair cabinet last year was his statement on terrorism in the House of Commons that specifically flagged the possibility of a "dirty bomb" being planted in Britain by terrorists.

That was in November 2002, when preparations were already in an advanced stage for the march to Baghdad. We are still waiting for the dirty bomb and its lethal radiation. The dirty bomb genre, however, provoked two years later a brilliant television series on BBC2 by acclaimed documentary producer Adam Curtis, titled The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.

Curtis's argument was that much of the threat of international terrorism turns out to be in actuality "a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians ... In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Curtis placed al-Qaeda terrorism in a long line of dramatic panics in Britain's checkered history since the Elizabethan era, which included the arrival of Spanish raiding parties, French revolutionary agitators, anarchists, Bolsheviks, and Irish republicans.

Naturally, Curtis comes readily to mind a week after British authorities arrested some two dozen Muslims on August 10 for plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from United Kingdom to the United States. Not a shred of evidence has since seen the light of day in this Mother of all Dastardly Plots.

Meanwhile, wild stories of new plots in the making are in circulation. The latest was the "breaking news" regarding the emergency landing of an aircraft in Boston on Wednesday due to the tantrums of an "unruly" woman passenger. Last weekend, Michigan police locked up three hapless Palestinian-Americans for allegedly plotting an act of terrorism. The three "terrorists" were caught red-handed purchasing 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart store.

Michigan police concluded that the cell phones could be used as detonators to blow up the Mackinac Bridge, which connected the peninsula's upper and lower parts. Subsequently it transpired that the three detained "terrorists" bought and sold cell phones to make a living.

The London plot itself is becoming curiouser and curiouser. Reports have appeared that the British security agencies were feeling increasingly uncomfortable that their American counterparts rushed to make out that the alleged plot was linked to al-Qaeda. More importantly, it appears that sources in London have begun distancing themselves from the plot by claiming that the British side was pressured from Washington to go public with the plot despite a lack of evidence and clear and convincing facts whether any conspiracy in fact existed at all.

Not surprisingly, the loudest voices of skepticism about the alleged plot are heard in Pakistan, where of course the public is habitually cynical over anything that goes to the credit of the establishment. This despite the insistent claim that the UK, US and Pakistani security agencies had actively coordinated in thwarting the plot - a scenario that cast Pakistan as a plucky, feisty partner in the "war on terror", quite contrary to the prevailing impression that Islamabad is possibly indulging in doublespeak.

The skeptics in Pakistan feel that the entire plot is a crudely executed hoax by the Bush administration. It was not only the so-called "jihadi" circles in Pakistan that ridiculed the plot but even sections of opinion, which usually put primacy on reasoning. The Pakistani newspaper Daily Times commented editorially, "There is a horrible war going on in Lebanon and it is not unfolding in favor of Israel, US and UK. Iraq has gone bad; Afghanistan is getting worse.

"The Bush-Blair duo is in trouble at home and both need something really big to happen to justify their policies and distract attention from their losses ... the past record of intelligence agencies everywhere suggests they are quite capable of blowing up or underplaying things for better media management of their respective governments' performance. So a bit of skepticism is in order."

Adam Curtis had an explanation for the dilemma facing the saner sections of opinion in times of public hysteria. As he explained two years ago, such plots, when blown up in larger-than-life terms and whipping up an atmosphere of hysteria, have a way of trapping us. In the process, we get "trapped by a fear that is completely irrational".

Indeed, in a poll after the plot story broke, 55% of Americans voiced approval of Bush's handling of terrorism and homeland security. A beaming Bush promptly promised his nervous nation that the terror fight may last for "years to come". Democrats are beginning to accuse the Republicans of using the scare to political advantage ahead of the November elections to the US Congress.

Former US president Bill Clinton said: "They [the Bush administration] seem to be anxious to tie it to al-Qaeda. If that's true, how come we've got seven times as many troops in Iraq as in Afghanistan? I think that Republicans should be very careful in playing politics with this London thing because they're going to have a hard time with the facts."

All the same, it is extraordinary that the mainstream media in the US could so willingly suspend their disbelief over the patchy official claims that the plot was a "real idea" of cosmic significance. Furthermore, they dutifully ran "expert opinions" by commentators on the alleged plotters' al-Qaeda connections. Not a single mainstream newspaper in the US challenged the plot theory as such - leave alone pointed out the patent gulf between the London plotters' ambition and their ability to pull it off.

It could be that they have succumbed to the "suspiciously circular relationship between the security services and much of the media" (to quote Curtis) in which official briefings become the stuff of dramatic press stories and prompt further briefings and further stories.

At any rate, terrorism thrives on bluff. Think of the horrific bomb blasts in Mumbai last month. Unlike the ethereal London plot, it was tangible; it was verifiable. It was of a piece, by all indications, with the cycle of violence ripping apart India's composite society for the past decade or so since the Babri Mosque was pulled down by vandals incited by Hindu fundamentalists.

Yet, in the wake of the Mumbai blasts, an attempt has been made to link the abhorrent violence to al-Qaeda. As if al-Qaeda is an organized international network. As if it has members or a leader. As if it has "sleeper cells". As if it has corporate-style affiliates and subsidiaries. As if it has a strategy towards India.

Indian media people seem to be unaware that al-Qaeda barely exists at all and that it is more an idea about cleansing the impure world of Islam corrupted by the al-Adou al-Qareeb (Muslim apostates) and al-Adou al-Baeed or the "far enemy" (Israel and the Western powers), through violence sanctioned by religion explicitly for such extraordinary times.

Indian opinion makers seem to believe that countering al-Qaeda justifies a national security objective. Some among them no doubt fancy that a closer "strategic partnership" with the Bush administration becomes possible if only India were to assertively stake claim to be a frontline state in the "war on terror". But there is no way that India can hope to gain entry into the exclusive, charmed circle that comprises the US Central Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI6 and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

The so-called Islamic terror network is the trinity's fabrication. It has become what would be known in intelligence parlance as an "asset" or an "instrument". The "intelligence assets" do enjoy a certain measure of independence and autonomy vis-a-vis their sponsors but that is part of the art of dissimulation. Al-Qaeda has incrementally become then a situation or a chain of events in politics that can arouse a particular emotional reaction instantaneously.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

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