If inconsistencies are the hallmark of truth—an odd truism suggested by U.S. prosecutor David M. Rody during the recently-concluded trial of Aafia Siddiqui—then there was plenty of “truth” to go around on both sides of the proceeding, which concluded February 3 with guilty verdicts on all seven counts of attempted murder and assault.
At first glance, Siddiqui’s story is a perplexing one, albeit one that shows some familiar patterns, at least on the surface. Siddiqui—a 37-year-old Pakistani woman accused by the United States of associating with al Qaeda—began life with all the trappings of upper-middle class achievement. Born to a well-off family in Karachi, she went on to earn a BA from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University, and eventually married a Pakistani physician, with whom she had three children.
While Siddiqui’s life looked like a relatively conventional narrative of success prior to 9/11, after the World Trade Center attacks, Siddiqui became increasingly concerned about American hostility toward Muslims, a concern that eventually pushed her and her husband to move their young family back to Karachi.
At some point after her post-9/11 return to Pakistan, Siddiqui’s story begins to get murky. FBI officials, having suspected her of working as an al Qaeda operative, placed her on a list of suspected al Qaeda affiliates, which prompted her to disappear into thin air in March 2003. (Within Pakistan, it is commonly believed that she was picked up by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and later handed over to the CIA. In one of her outbursts throughout the trial, Siddiqui claimed she was kept in a secret prison and that her children were tortured.) Read the rest of this entry »
In a January 8 article for the World Policy Blog, Charles Cogan argued recently that the United States should not attempt to mediate the long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, as doing so could jeopardize America’s good relations with India and further muddle U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. On the contrary, only by accepting that India-Pakistan relations are a key part of the larger security problem can the United States end the war in Afghanistan. Thus, an active U.S. role in mediating the dispute over Kashmir and other issues dividing India and Pakistan is very much in America’s national interests.
First, tensions between India and Pakistan are hindering the latter’s efforts to aid the U.S. military in fighting militant Islamists along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Indeed, senior American military officials like Admiral Michael Mullen have pointed out that Pakistan’s need to maintain a heavy troop presence on its border with India limits the resources it can divert to fighting the Islamist insurgency elsewhere in Pakistan. These officials agree that such a presence is justified, given the history and current level of tension between the two states. While some commentators argue that the Pakistani Army is unwilling to fight extremists on its own soil, Admiral Mullen himself has suggested that casualty statistics show Pakistan to be very much engaged in the struggle against Islamist terror.
Indeed, Pakistan’s military has already suffered more casualties in its own fight against militant Islamists than has the American military in Afghanistan. Suicide bombings within Pakistan have already claimed more than 11,000 victims. Thus, the Pakistani army’s slow progress in its war against militant Islamists is due not to a lack of zeal, but rather is tied largely to its inability (because of lack of capacity) to focus exclusively on fighting terror as long as Indo-Pakistani tension persists. An easing of the tensions would likely enable Pakistan to redeploy more troops to the fight against insurgents, which would be to the benefit of American forces in Afghanistan.
Second, poor India-Pakistan relations are central to longer-term but no less serious issues that plague the daily lives of Pakistanis and contribute to the conditions that drive some of the nation’s poorest citizens into the hands of extremists.
Pakistan’s current water crisis is one case in point. While religious identity is at the core of the Kashmir dispute, water also is a root cause of the conflict. The region is the source of the main rivers flowing through much of the Indian and Pakistani Punjab (literally, “land of the five waters”) that is South Asia’s breadbasket. Antagonistic relations only encouraged India to construct the dams that, in turn, now limit the flow of water to Pakistan, threatening its agricultural heartland and creating water shortages nationwide. Of course, myopic policymakers and political horse-trading in Pakistan have only made matters worse.
But poor India-Pakistan relations remain the major contributing factor to the crisis. Far from fostering cooperation on the issue, they actually create an incentive for India to withhold water from Pakistan. The water crisis in Pakistan hurts the poorest of the poor in Pakistan—prime targets for Al-Qaeda’s recruiters. Read the rest of this entry »
America’s rapprochement with India, and its centerpiece nuclear agreement, is a bright star in the otherwise murky firmament of the George W. Bush years. India is a large power; it is a secular, democratic power, not influenced by Islamist radicalism. Its large Muslim population of 140 million seems generally—so far—not attracted to that kind of fanaticism.
India is a country with a population of 1.17 billion whose numbers are destined to exceed those of China by 2050. (Pakistan’s population, much smaller, but not insignificant, is roughly 180 million). The advantage of the U.S.-India rapprochement, in the short and medium term, lies in the fact that this huge country is right next to a string of Muslim countries whose populations are generally (though not universally) hostile to U.S. interests.
Because of the strategic importance that the United States places on both India and its troubled sister, Pakistan, policymakers in Washington have periodically tried to play the role of peacemaker in the region, hoping to push both nuclear-armed countries to resolve the bad blood between them—which, for the most part, has revolved around the contested province of Kashmir.
In 2009, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke reportedly tried to include India in his Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) portfolio, which seemed to mean that he wanted to take a crack at the Kashmir problem. The Indians, however, would have none of it, and AfPak remains limited to the two nations that make up the somewhat unwieldy conjunction.
Indian relief map of the Line of Control
Steve Coll, in a New Yorker article on March 2, 2009, brought to light a parallel or “back” channel in Indo-Pak negotiations that took place during the regime of Pervez Musharraf. If the discussions had succeeded, and it appears they came close, it could have resulted in a sort of free movement of populations across the Kashmiri line of separation—without a change of sovereignty between the advantageous Indian and unimpressive Pakistani portions. However, Musharraf went into a political tailspin after his dispute with the Pakistan judiciary and had to leave office in August 2008. With his departure, the talks seem to have ended. Ironically, according to Coll, the Indians had come to trust Musharraf, despite the fact that he was the main instigator of the abortive Pakistani attack at Kargil, in Kashmir, in 1999.
The arrangement nearly worked out reflects the Indian insistence that the line of separation (called the Line of Control) must not be altered, as this could affect the status of the Indian-held Valley of Kashmir, the beautiful “jewel in the crown” of the whole affair. Moreover, from the Indian point of view, ceding any part of Indian-held Kashmir, in what would be seen as stemming from religious reasons, would compromise the Indian political philosophy of secular government.
In any event, a settlement now seems extremely unlikely in the short term, especially after the horrific attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 which originated in Pakistan. As long as Kashmir remains as it is, unequally divided, Islamabad will likely never be satisfied, which means we can expect more Pakistani agitation inside India and an increasingly stronger riposte from New Delhi. There is definitely a fear that the two Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are not only still active; worse, extrapolating from the attack on Mumbai, these groups may have set their sights on more ambitious targets, unleashing havoc within India’s metropolitan cities rather than engaging India’s massive deployments in Jammu and Kashmir.
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, striking down a previous agreement that granted immunity from prosecution for corruption to thousands of bureaucrats and politicians, was greeted with cheers by Pakistanis, both in the streets of Karachi and amongst the diaspora in London, but with discomfort in the West.
More astute analysts, however, are concerned that the Supreme Court ruling doesn’t herald a step forward, but rather a descent back into the tussle of recriminations and accusations that have long characterized Pakistani politics. Worse, it threatens to distract national attention from far more pressing problems.
The court struck down the National Reconciliation Order (NRO) that was passed in 2007 under Western-backed President Musharraf and was billed at the time as a step towards restoring Pakistan to multiparty democracy. Although political players of all parties benefited from the deal, observers saw it largely as a compromise aimed at enabling the return to Pakistan of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Pakistan’s current president, Asif Ali Zardari.
After Mrs. Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, a wave of sympathy for her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) helped Zardari take over de facto leadership of the PPP and the presidency of the country in quick succession. But Zardari hardly enjoyed a honeymoon with voters or, for that matter, even his own party leadership. Lacking what some would term the demagogic charisma of his late wife or father-in-law, Zardari was hardly Obama-esque.
His reputation as Mr. Ten Percent—earned by his penchant for demanding bribes while serving as his wife’s minister for investment and minister for the environment in the mid-1990s—won him many enemies and, along with his appointments of cronies to top government and party posts, grated on members of the PPP itself.
Upon taking office, Zardari’s reluctance to restore the popular and respected ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry—widely seen as a last-ditch attempt to avoid prosecution for corruption—further eroded what little support he did enjoy. Only after mass, nation-wide protests did Zardari eventually relent and agree to the restoration of the chief justice to his office.
The repeal of the NRO, then, comes as a long-awaited victory for many sections of Pakistani society, from secular middle-class civil society activists to mullahs fed up with Zardari’s poor record and aggravated by his repeated evasion of corruption charges.
The concern, however, is that on a deeper level, the hoopla over the NRO shows just how much Pakistan’s political life is stagnating. Read the rest of this entry »
President Barack Obama’s long-awaited shift in strategy on the war in Afghanistan has received praise from European leaders, but getting more troops from them to help support the additional 30,000 U.S. forces now planned for deployment may prove more difficult. While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged 500 more troops in Afghanistan, and NATO promised at least 5,000 more, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview that he would send “not a single solider more.” However, the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior French official saying President Sarkozy may reconsider. Germany, which has 4,400 troops in Afghanistan, said it would be ready to do more police training but was reluctant to commit more troops. The deployment will bring the total number of American troops to 98,000, while Britain will now have about 10,000 soldiers in the region. U.S. officials have said they’re looking for an additional 5,000 to 7,000 troops from allies. The Taliban released a statement following President Obama’s announcement, saying the extra troops “will provoke stronger resistance and fighting. [The U.S. forces] will withdraw shamefully.”
In an apparent attempt to crack down on inflation and its small but growing free market economy, North Korea revalued its currency and froze all cash transactions. The move, the first in 17 years by North Korea, caused confusion within the country, according to reports. The official exchange rate between the old won and the new is now 100 to one. Some analysts see the burgeoning free market economy threatening Kim Jong-Il’s hold on power and that the aim of the revaluation is to redistribute wealth throughout the country—a single family will reportedly be allowed to hold no more than 150,000 new won (roughly $1100) in hard currency. According to reports, all cash enterprises and services have been suspended by the government. North Korea took tentative steps to liberalize its economy after a famine in the late 1990s. Since then, the black market economy has grown and illicit currency exchanges have profited. The move seems intended to wipe clean the fortunes of these underground entrepreneurs and reestablish a more “perfect” socialist state.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) began public hearings on the legality of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, which Pristina declared in February, 2008. Kosovo, which had been under a provisional UN administration since 1999, has been recognized as independent by 63 countries (including the United States) since its unilateral secession, and is expected to argue that it was never part of Serbia. “Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and that will remain the case, not only for the sake of Kosovo, but also for the sake of sustainable regional peace and security,” Kosovo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Skender Hyensi said on Tuesday. “We are certain the court will confirm the will of Kosovo’s people to be independent and free.” Serbia, however, has argued that Kosovo’s secession was a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and has claimed the move was ethnically motivated and thus illegal under international law. The UN General Assembly had asked the ICJ, which is the United Nations’ highest judicial body, for an advisory ruling on the matter at the request of Serbia. The ICJ will hear testimony from 29 countries over the next nine days before issuing its ruling. Though it will not be binding, the decision is expected to set a precedent for other secessionist movements around the world, such as in Chechnya and Basque Country in Spain.
In another jab at the United States and its Western allies, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would enrich its uranium itself rather than send it to Russia and France under a UN-brokered deal. The agreement was supposed to calm fears over Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon by offering Tehran the option of letting foreign countries (which already possess enrichment technology) process Iranian uranium. This would theoretically prevent Iran from developing its own indigenous capacity for enrichment, and would ensure that the uranium provided to Iran’s civil nuclear program would fall short of levels required for weapons production. But Iran has repeatedly been backing down from the UN deal. “The Iranian nation will produce 20 percent enriched uranium and anything it needs (itself),” President Ahmadinejad said. He also called the recent International Atomic Energy Agency censure of Iran’s secret construction of a second enrichment plant “illegal.” “The Zionist regime [Israel] and its backer [the United States] cannot do a damn thing to stop Iran’s nuclear work,” he said.
Have you noticed? More and more people are falling off the war in Afghanistan: George Will, Andrew Bacevich, Gary Wills, John Mearsheimer, and now Karl Eikenberry, former American commander Afghanistan and present ambassador there. Eikenberry, though not advocating a pullout, is reportedly not in favor of a troop increase unless President Hamid Karzai will reform his government with new and competent people, and eliminate the rampant corruption. The Ambassador’s position goes distinctly against the recommendation of the Spartan-limned Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the present American commander in Afghanistan, who wants to put in upwards of 40,000 more U.S. troops into the country.
Have you read the McChrystal report? It is quite an eye-opener. It says relatively little about al-Qaeda, which President Obama has rightly singled out as the enemy. Al-Qaeda is not even in Afghanistan anymore but in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Al-Qaeda’s strength may not number more than a couple of hundred. The retrospective truth is that Afghanistan ceased to be a “necessary war” in late 2001, when al-Qaeda escaped into Pakistan.
The McChrystal report lists three principal opponents: the Quetta Shura (the Afghan Taliban, based in Quetta, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province); the network of Jalaladin Haqqani, operating in Afghanistan; and the followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, also operating in Afghanistan. What do these three groups have in common? They all have had connections with the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI). The Afghan Taliban were created by the ISI in 1994 in order to bring Afghanistan out of anarchy and assure that country as Pakistan’s “near abroad,” away from Indian influence. Haqqani and Gulbuddin are former Mujahidin comanders in the war in the 1980’s against the Soviets, supported by the ISI and behind it, the U.S. and several other interested countries. One may ask, what are we doing in this galere? We seem to have gotten ourselves involved, almost by inadvertence, in a civil war in Afghanistan.
These three groups are an expression of discontent on the part of the leading ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, comprising some 40 percent of the population. Their discontent is focused on the government in Kabul where, though President Karzai is a Pashtun, the main security and military positions are held by the Northern Alliance, the expression of the second largest ethnic group, the Tadjiks. It was the Northern Alliance, together with American conventional and unconventional forces, that overthrew the Taliban as the protector of al-Qaeda in the Fall of 2001, after the 9/11 atttacks.
What we should be thinking about, and what more and more observers are talking about, is how do we get out of this mess? If the Taliban were to take back control in Afghanistan, would they allow al-Qaeda back in, considering what happened to them in the fall of 2001? Perhaps not. In any event, and what seems to escape the public, is that in today’s world, you don’t need training camps in Afghanistan in order to carry out terrorist attacks.
If the Taliban were to take over in Afghanistan, would the ISI stand idly by or would it try to assert some kind of control over, or at least strengthen its relationship with, the Taliban? Probably.
Gordon Brown has said it, and Karl Eikenberry has aparently said it too: Why throw more troops into the fire in Afghanistan to support a corrupt government?
Especially when the main enemy isn’t even there.
Dr. Charles G. Cogan was the chief of the Near East South Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. It was from this Division that was run the covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is currently an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission on Monday declared incumbent Hamid Karzai “the elected President of Afghanistan” for a second five-year term. The announcement comes one day after rival Abdullah Abdullah announced his withdrawal from a runoff planned for November 7. The second round balloting was canceled Monday morning after Abdullah withdrew. The number two finisher in the initial balloting on August 20 said he did not consider the Independent Election Commission to have been sufficiently reformed that a fair runoff could be guranteed, free from the widespread fraud that marked the first election round. The United States, Britain, and the United Nations each promptly issued congratulatory statements to President Karzai as the elected head of state, and others are expected to follow. Analysts believe, however, that American officials will continue to lead an intense diplomatic effort to reconcile the two candidates’ supporters and unify the country, perhaps through Karzai offering Abdullah a senior office in his administration. In a surprise visit to Kabul Monday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon exhorted Karzai to “move swiftly to form a government that is able to command the support of both the Afghan people and the international community.” Speaking at his home after the press conference, Dr. Abdullah rejected any suggestion of joining Karzai’s administration—he had formerly served as Karzai’s Foreign Minister but left after a bitter falling out—and said of his withdrawal, “I did it with a lot of pain, but at the same time with a lot of hope for the future. Because this will not be the end of anything, this will be a new beginning.” President Obama is scheduled to lead two National Security Council meetings at the White House on Afghanistan this week as he further considers his administration’s policy and further troop commitments. These deliberations had been clouded by uncertainty over the Afghan administration that would emerge from the election process.
The Pakistani military announced Monday it has captured the towns of Kaniguram, Cheena, and Makeen, strategic Taliban strongholds in the South Waziristan region of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The military, which began its current offensive on October 17, has reportedly cleared the captured areas of all insurgents, mines, and improvised explosive devices. The Pakistani government is now offering rewards totaling $5 million for information leading to the capture of Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and 17 other Taliban leaders. Meanwhile, bombings continued to shake Pakistan on Monday, largely in response to the ongoing military offensive, as one bomb near military headquarters in Rawalpindi killed 30 people, including military officers and some civilians, in a crowded pedestrian area; and. Additionally, two suicide bombings at a security checkpoint in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural center, killed a policeman and injured 25 civilians. A series of ten bombings have killed more than 300 Pakistani civilians since mid-October.
North Korea again pressed the United States to open direct bilateral talks, warning that it was prepared to “go its own way” with its nuclear program should Washington remain unresponsive. “It’s time for the United States to make a decision,” an unidentified spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry told the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday. “We have made it clear that we are ready to take part in multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, depending on the results of talks with the United States . . . If the United States is not ready to sit down face-to-face with us for talks, we cannot but go on our own way,” he added. The statement follows a rare meeting between Ri Gun, North Korea’s deputy nuclear envoy, and Sung Kim, the American special envoy on the North’s nuclear disarmament, in New York and San Diego last week. After months of defiance, North Korea has recently signaled a willingness to return to disarmament negotiations. Last month, it reaffirmed its invitation for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, to visit Pyongyang. Leader Kim Jong-Il also told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month that his country would consider a return to multilateral negotiations, which stalled in April after Pyongyang quit the forum and later conducted nuclear and long-range missile tests.But the North maintained that any return to the six-party framework; which brings together envoys from North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea; depended on the progress of bilateral talks with Washington. to amend “hostile relations.” North Korea’s spokesman reiterated this on Monday, saying “the direct parties, which are the North and the United States, must first sit down and find a rational solution . . . [If the two countries] end the hostile relationship and build trust, there will be a meaningful step toward the denuclearizing of the Korean peninsula.” But whether this will be enough to convince the Obama administration to meet one-on-one is unclear; Washington has said it will only agree to direct talks as part of a resumption of the broader, six-party dialogue.
The UN suspended its support for army units operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, accusing the Congolese army of deliberately killing more than 60 civilians this year. After a tour of the region, UN peackeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the army had “clearly targeted” civilians, and that the United Nations mission in DR Congo (MONUC) would “immediately suspend its logistical and operational support to the army units implicated” in civilian killings between May and December. Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende objected to the decision, saying the investigation was still ongoing. “We are surprised that the United Nations has announced sanctions against these units even before the conclusion of their investigation,” he said on Monday, warning that a withdrawal of support could destabilize the army. MONUC has backed the Congolese army in its military operations against Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels since January, and has provided logistical assistance in the east since a joint Rwandan and Congolese military operation was launched against against the rebel group in March. But the operation has come under widespread criticism for human rights abuses. According to human rights groups, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed, more than 7,000 women and girls raped, and more than 900,000 people forced to flee their homes since operations began in January.
Delegates from 180 countries are gathered in Barcelona today for five days of negotiations toward drafting a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in advance of the symbolic Copenhagen Conference to be held December 7-18. The Barcelona preparatory round is aimed at reconciling an apparent impasse over the contentious issue of technology financing to developing nations. Strains were evident last week when the European Commission agreed that the cost of helping developing nations to reduce carbon emissions by 2020 would total about $150 billion, but talks became stalemated over the question of which nations would pay which proportion of those costs. Central and Eastern European nations, for example, which depend heavily on coal-fired power generation, warned they could not afford to pay in proportion to their emissions. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said that a full legally-binding treaty is unlikely at Copenhagen, but he noted that he was still convinced a political deal was possible. Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard noted wryly, “Failure is the only thing we can’t afford.”
Last January, I argued on the pages of World Policy Journal that the United States should end its war against the Taliban and focus on Al-Qaeda instead. The Obama administration should negotiate directly with the moderate factions of the Taliban movement, I said, offering them a gradual withdrawal of all foreign troops and greater political inclusion in exchange for the termination of all their ties to Al-Qaeda.
In March President Obama declared himself willing to negotiate with Taliban moderates, and since then, the notion that the Taliban do not pose a direct threat to the United States has slowly begun to sink in. Last week a senior White House official said that President Obama sees a role for the Taliban in Afghanistan’s future. Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban said in a statement that they have “no intention of harming other countries” and that they are fighting solely “for the independence of Afghanistan.”
Obama should continue this conversation because it could potentially split the Taliban movement along the lines of moderates and radicals. This would make it much easier for the United States to engage the former while isolating the latter.
A major impediment to dialogue is that many Afghans remain cynical and deeply conflicted about U.S. policy in the region. A political analyst from Kandahar (whose assessments are generally sound and often prescient) recently told me that he believes that the United States wants to establish a permanent military presence in Afghanistan to keep China out of Central Asia. He also reiterated the oft-repeated Pashtun complaint that the United States is propping up a puppet government made up of Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks to sideline the Pashtun people, ensuring that Afghanistan remains weak and divided. Obama must dispel these myths once and for all, and the best way to go about this delicate task would be for him to give a speech in Kandahar. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s exaggerate. Iran has been singled out for persecution over its alleged nuclear bomb making program because in 1979 its Revolutionary Guards took the staff of the U.S. embassy hostage, causing outrage in America with even the esteemed Walter Cronkite ratcheting up the tension, putting up on the screen, as he read the nightly news, the number of days they had been incarcerated. The sitting president, Jimmy Carter, was deposed, tarred with the brush of utter failure.
Something of an exaggeration that this was the sole or even the most important factor in building a pro bomb lobby in Iran. Still it has a grain of truth: Iran has been singled out unfairly. The West and Russia are engaged in discriminating against it.
Brazil has had a nuclear enrichment program for decades (including a large ultracentrifuge enrichment plant, several laboratory-scale facilities, a reprocessing facility to make plutonium, and a missile program). In the 1980s it built two nuclear devices. Three years ago I asked the chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Brasilia if Washington was worried about Brazil. “Not at all,” he replied. “In the early 1990s Brazil dismantled its nuclear weapons program, and Argentina, its supposed enemy, has done the same.” “But,” I insisted, “Brazil still has its enrichment program and a reprocessing facility”. “We have no worries about Brazil,” he answered. “We see eye to eye.” However, Brazil still resists, in part, the probing eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog.
In 1979 the attitude of the Carter administration toward Pakistan, then attempting to build its own bomb, was almost as harsh as is the attitude of the United States toward Iran today. All American military aid was suspended, even though the Taliban were a lurking potential threat. However, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December of that year, Carter persuaded Congress to restart a large-scale arms program. For the next decade, in return for Pakistan’s help building up the anti-Soviet mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan (who later went to work for Osama bin Laden), Washington turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s effort to build nuclear weapons.
After announcing the existence of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility last week, Iran successfully test-fired surface-to-surface Shahab-3 long-range missiles. Iran declared the nuclear plant to the International Atomic Energy Agency last Monday after reportedly learning that U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the plant for some time. President Obama intended to reveal its existence at the opening of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh as diplomatic leverage in upcoming negotiations. The plant is located about 100 miles south of Tehran in the mountains near the holy city of Qom; Iran maintains the plant is for low-enriched uranium suitable only for domestic energy production and not highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and Iran conceded to allowing the IAEA to inspect the plant. But on Sunday and Monday, one week after Iran’s nuclear declaration and two weeks after President Obama refashioned President Bush’s missile defense shield, Iran began a series of successful missile launches of its short-, medium-, and long-range missiles, which could reach a maximum distance of 2,000 kilometers. This is far enough to strike Israel or U.S. military bases in the Gulf. Iran is scheduled to meet Thursday in Geneva with the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany—for preliminary negotiations on a range of issues including proliferation, though Iran insists its domestic nuclear program is not negotiable. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the Iranians must “present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program. We don’t believe that they can present convincing evidence, that it’s only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test.” The United States is preparing to impose additional sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council should negotiations fail, though the U.S. is also quietly assembling a coalition outside the Security Council should China or Russia veto a sanctions package. Russia and China maintain economic interests in Iran and many European nations believe existing sanctions against Iran have proven ineffective in persuading the Iranian government, only negatively affecting the people of Iran.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic party won a 33.8% plurality and maintained majority control in parliamentary elections in Germany on Sunday. Center-left Social Democrats posted their worst ever showing and the pro-business Free Democrats earned their best ever showing since World War II. Merkel will proceed to form a new coalition with the Free Democrats, which she believes will be a less strained coalition than in the past four years with liberal parties. The new coalition will focus on reducing unemployment and stimulating the economy with a two-stage $22 billion tax cut, even as public debt continues to increase. The two parties may find some friction in upcoming talks as the Free Democrats campaigned for far more conservative policies, seeking deeper tax cuts, restricting Merkel’s healthcare reform efforts, and nuances of Germany’s foreign policy. “We’ll have to argue over several issues,” Merkel said Sunday evening, but stressed to Germans that the government would not dismantle the welfare state. Because all major parties endorse the 4,200 German presence in Afghanistan, excepting the far left, the election is unlikely to change that commitment in either direction.
The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan failed to agree at the United Nations last week on resuming general negotiations and Indian FM SM Krishna rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal discussions even absent formal negotiations. After fighting three wars with each other over the disputed border land of Kashmir since 1947, the two nuclear-armed nations began a peace process in 2004 but discussions have been strained by rival interests in Afghanistan and, especially, since November 2008 when India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for killing 174 in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai. India requests that Pakistan apprehend and prosecute those responsible. Pakistani FM Qureshi announced the arrest of seven people connected to the attacks, with prosecution scheduled to begin October 3. Indian FM Krishna acknowledged, “Pakistan has taken some steps within its own legal system against those directly responsible for the attack on Mumbai, and the process thus instituted must gather further momentum.” Meanwhile, India announced that it has built highly destructive nuclear weapons, enabling what Indian officials consider a “proper strategic deterrent” in its international relations. Senior Indian officials say their weapon yields 200 kilotons; a nuclear weapon with a yield of 50 kilotons is considered “high yield.” The test is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan and perhaps jeopardize the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement enacted last October under President Bush. President Obama proposed at the U.N. General Assembly that nations, such as India, joint the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear nations, a proposal India quickly rejected.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey will formally sign an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia on October 10, furthering a roadmap agreed upon in April toward normalizing relations. Though Turkey still disputes Armenia’s claim that mass Turkish killings of Armenians during World War I constitutes genocide, it seeks “zero problems with neighbors,” to quote the motto of Turkish academic and Minster of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkey, a member of NATO and prospective member of the European Union, has engaged as a mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, most notably the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the 2008 Gaza War, and is also seeking to improve relations with its Kurdish citizens. The Kurds, after rebelling twenty-five years ago, prompted Turkey to ban the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the United States lists as a terrorist organization. Turkey’s reconciliation with the Kurds could dramatically improve its relation with Iraq, where a large number of Kurds settle in the autonomous northern region, projecting Turkey further into Middle Eastern affairs.
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that