Afghanistan: Coffins for the U.S. & NATO; contracts for China

Some bitter ironies in Afghanistan these days: U.S. and French soldiers gunned down by the very Afghan troops they work with. America and its NATO allies, facing huge budget problems themselves, persist in squandering billions in Afghanistan, to defeat Islamic radicals and create a propitious climate for growth and investment. Right now, the largest investments so safe guarded are Chinese.  

Another paradox, it was American engineers who, in the summer of 2010, completed a survey concluding that Afghanistan sits atop one trillion dollars of untapped copper, iron and lithium deposits. If it could just get its act together, the country had a promising future. Skeptics immediately claimed that rosy estimate didn’t take account Afghanistan’s woeful infrastructure: it could cost more to mine those resources than they were worth.

But that’s not how the Chinese see it. A few weeks ago, China’s National Petroleum Corporation became the first foreign company to be allowed to explore Afghanistan’s oil and gas reserves in the Amu Darya Basin. The deal is estimated to be worth more than $700 million. Some speculate it could ultimately be worth ten times that amount to China.

Even before that deal, however, China was already the largest foreign investor in Afghanistan. In 2007 Beijing signed a $3 billion agreement to explore huge copper deposits in Mes Aynak, south of Kabul.

India is the only other country to go after Afghan minerals. Last November a deal was signed giving Indian firms the rights to 1.8 billion tons on iron-ore, one of the largest untapped deposits in Asia.

It’s very unlikely that the Chinese [and Indians] would be making such risky bets without the security provided by the U.S. and its allies. After the copper deal was inked,  2,000 U.S. troops were deployed to provide general security in Logar Province where the Mes Aynak mine is located. They also protected the projected routes of the road and railway which will service the huge development. Another 1,500 Afghan National Police, presumably paid and trained by the U.S. and its allies, were sent to guard the mine itself.

In addition, facing restless Muslim groups in their own country, the Chinese are not at all unhappy about the U.S. and Nato taking on Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

Yet, all the while, China has consistently refused to contribute to the joint Western military force. They even turned down a request to permit NATO to ship non-lethal supplies via China to Afghanistan. 

So why aren’t the U.S. and its allies screaming about the situation?  Because, if they are to have a face-saving way out of Afghanistan that doesn’t disintegrate into chaos, they desperately need China’s huge new investments to continue and prosper.

As things now stand, once the income from opium production is deducted, 97% of Afghanistan’s GNP comes from foreign aid.  A whole new economy is needed.

After China’s National Petroleum Council signed its recent oil agreement with Kabul, experts warned that success was far from a sure thing: it could take five to ten years of expensive exploration to see if the oil fields are really worth developing.

But the Chinese are after more than oil and copper. They see each deal as another foot in the door. The are also determined to reap huge potential profits to come from rebuilding Afghanistan’s shattered infrastructure and economy, among such projects, a high-speed rail system.  In this way, without massive military deployments, China has already become a major player throughout the region. [I’ve written about China’s activities in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf in other recent blogs]  

A particularly insightful comment on China’s tactics in Afghanistan followed an article in The Diplomat:

“Achieving a peace agreement is always the number one preference for Chinese government. By nature Chinese are not interested in “beating” other group of people, but are interested in “gaining” concrete benefits. This is due to the Chinese culture and history. In Chinese culture, people believe in “harmony brings wealth”. Therefore, when dealing with a dispute, a Chinese normally do not set his goal as completely beating the others, but rather sequence his goals according to priority, and try to achieve the goal with the highest priority first, and so on. Each disputant may achieve some goal upon settlement of the dispute.”


Case in point: thanks to the Chinese, the Afghans may benefit from a real high-speed rail system before the United States.

Iran, Israel, the U.S: Blind Mans Buff

In a perilous spiral of assassinations, threats and counter-threats, the leaders of Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran keep ratcheting the tension. What is most alarming about the situation, is that the principle players and their advisors are engaged in an incredibly dangerous three-way game of blind mans buff.  

None of them expresses a real understanding of the others: of their motives, their concerns, nor their likely reactions. That’s true even with Israel and the United States:  though the U.S. risks being sucked into any conflict between Israel and Iran, the Obama administration is currently forced to guess what its supposed Israeli allies are planning.

What would America or Israel --or any country-- do if five of its scientists were assassinated by an enemy power?  How would they react if, at the same time, the mightiest country on the planet dispatched its forces towards their borders even as it tightened a blockade to garrote their economy?

Would they kowtow to the demand that they terminate any activities related to the research or development of nuclear weapons [which, of course, both Israel and the U.S. possess]--or lash out in violent reprisal?

A lot of people with important sounding titles pontificate on what lies ahead, but who are they kidding? It’s like we’re watching kids playing around with vials of highly volatile chemicals. No one’s sure when an explosion will come, nor how calamitous might be the chain reactions it ignites.  

What makes the situation even more perilous is the fact that the leaders of the three countries involved—Israel, Iran and the U.S.--are all challenged by strident enemies in their own countries.  Since this current dispute plays front and centre, every move they make is automatically the target of virulent homegrown--and often woefully ignorant--opponents.

In other words, if the leaders and their advisors were more secure on their respective thrones, they might all be able to follow a much cooler, more rational course. They might even be able to sit down and negotiate.  

Worse, is the likelihood that the principle actors, their advisors, intelligence agencies and domestic critics, don’t really comprehend what the others are up to—where they are coming from and what they want to achieve.

If it’s not blind-man’s buff, it’s shadow boxing—sparring with caricatures: In this corner, the deceitful bearded mullahs in Tehran obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons to exterminate Israel and establish a new Caliphate. In that corner, the  grasping imperialists in Washington, who for decades have used the CIA and American military to put down movements of national liberation, sustain the Zionist State of Israel and the corrupt oil-rich Arab dictators.

Those caricatures become so deeply embedded that even the supposedly objective intelligence agencies of each of the combatants—not to mention the mainstream media--tend to censor, edit out, or shy away from information that runs counter to official “truth”.

I had a personal run-in with this phenomenon in 1980 when I was a producer at 60 Minutes covering the on-going revolution in Iran during the hostage crisis.

Travelling back and forward between Tehran, New York and Washington, I was struck by the total inability of Americans—even at the highest level—to understand the emotions and history that drove the hatred of all things American that had exploded in Iran with the fall of the Shah.

Just up West 57^th street from CBS News, for instance, was a huge billboard with the diabolical image of Khomeini glowering down on New York.

I suggested we do a report to give Americans a better idea of what was driving Iran’s revolutionaries and their violent feelings against the United States.

Though certainly encouraged by radical elements in Tehran, that hatred was fueled by real facts: the shameful history of U.S. intervention in Iran, from the CIA’s organizing a coup to oust the democratically elected nationalist leader Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953 to America’s subsequent backing of the Shah of Iran.

That support included the closest of relations between the CIA and the Shah’s infamous secret police, the SAVAK, notorious for torture and brutality. [In the future, of course, SAVAK’s brutality would pale beside the horrific prisons and savage repression of Khomeini and the regimes to follow. ]

To give an idea of America’s relations with the Shah and SAVAK, I stitched together a tough report with Mike Wallace based on a series of interviews in New York and Washington. “You’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb and a presidential candidate not to know there was torture going on in Iran under the Shah,” Jesse Leaf, a former C.I.A. analyst told us.

“We knew what was happening and we did nothing about it and I was told not to do anything about it. By definition, an enemy of the Shaw was an enemy of the CIA. We were friends. This was a very close relationship between the United states and Iran.”

Another former CIA officer, Richard Cottam, also condemned the U.S. and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for turning a blind eye to the excesses of the Shah, and refusing to have any contact with the opposition groups.

“What you seemed to be saying, Professor Cottam, “Mike Wallace interjected, “is that when the question “Who lost Iran?” is finally asked, Henry Kissinger is at the top of your culprit’s list.”

“I think Henry Kissinger’s idea of diplomacy in this sense is…is intolerable,” replied Cottam.

We also reported on some of the classified U.S. government documents divulged by the Iranians who had taken over the American Embassy. Those documents showed that American diplomats based in Teheran had warned Washington months earlier of the threat of a possible hostage taking--particularly if the U.S. allowed the despised Shah to come to America for medical treatment, as the U.S. ultimately did. Those warnings had been completely ignored by Washington.

In return for releasing the hostages what the Iranian government of President Bani-Sadr was demanding was a pledge by the U.S. not to interfere in the future affairs of Iran and an agreement not to block their efforts to get back the Shah and the wealth of Iran he embezzled. They also wanted an admission by the U.S. of past wrongs. In light of that past, we asked, were those demands so outrageous?

In the context of America’s superheated passions at the time, however, even posing that question was considered outrageous.

Over the next few days, as we were preparing the report, we received calls from many Washington officials concerned about the broadcast. This was capped by President Jimmy Carter himself who called Bill Leonard, the President of CBS News, to try to convince him not to broadcast report. It would, he said, undermine U.S. negotiations with Iran at a very delicate time.

To his credit, Bill Leonard refused to back down. The only thing he requested was to change the title of our report from “Should the U.S. Apologize?”  to a more neutral “The Iran file.”

When questioned by Leonard, we argued that it was difficult to understand how our report could upset the hostage negotiations.  We were not revealing any secrets to Iran. The Iranians already knew well the role of the U.S. in their own history. The people we were informing were 20 million Americans—who didn’t understand what was really roiling Iran.  

And still don’t.

 

Iraq-Leave the wretches to their fate..

I get the feeling, with the flurry of bloody new terrorist attacks in Iraq, that we’re watching the smoldering shell of a tanker carrying high-octane fuel that’s just run off the road--waiting for the climactic explosion that will perhaps finally blow the country apart.

The temptation is to blame it all on the Iraqis themselves—those corrupt, grasping politicians and sectarian leaders, those perverse, bloody-minded peoples—they deserve what they get. Enough American lives have been lost. If after all the U.S. sacrifice, the Iraqis still want to slaughter each other, so be it.  We’re out of there.

But the fact is that we in the West—and particularly the U.S. –are as—if not more-- responsible for Iraq’s tragic plight and its foreboding future as are the Iraqis themselves.  

I’m not just talking about the past few years-but—as most commentators refuse to acknowledge--Iraq’s entire sorry, history. 

Case in point:  one of the most chilling reports about Iraq was produced by a group of Harvard medical researchers who found that the children of Iraq were "the most traumatized children of war ever described."  

The experts concluded that "a majority of Iraq's children would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives."

Particularly appalling, that report was published more than 20 years ago, in May 1991—almost twelve years before  America’s disastrous invasion, which resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis.

From the very beginning, course, Iraq was an unstable, totally artificial creation, cobbled together out of disparate remnants of the Ottoman Empire, by the British and French, as the Americans looked on with approval.

Now, fast-forward through sixty years of political turmoil, military coups, constant foreign meddling, the seizure of power Saddam Hussein, and his ill-fated decision to invade Iran.  

 From September, 1980 to August, 1988 more than a million Iraqis and Iranians died in what was the longest war of the twentieth century. As that conflict raged, Saddam also launched his genocidal attacks against the Kurds --which Presidents Reagan and Bush Senior-then Saddam's de facto allies against Iran, did their best to ignore.

Next came Saddam's disastrous invasion of Kuwait in August 1990--there again the U.S. played a hand. -followed by an abortive popular uprising against

Saddam. That revolt, which George H.W. Bush had called for, ended with Saddam's slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites--as U.S. troops stood by.

At the same time, the United Nations Security Council was implementing a Draconian embargo on all trade with Iraq. Indeed, when the Harvard study cited above was carried out, those sanctions had been in effect for only seven months. They cut off all trade between Iraq and the rest of the world. That meant everything, from food and electric generators to vaccines, hospital equipment--even medical journals. Since Iraq imported 70% of its food, and its principle revenues were derived from the export of petroleum, the sanctions had an immediate and catastrophic impact.

Enforced primarily by the United States and Great Britain, they remained in place for almost thirteen years and were in their own way a weapon of mass destruction far more deadly than anything Saddam had developed. Two U.N. administrators who oversaw humanitarian relief in Iraq during that period, and resigned in protest, consider the embargo to have been a "crime against humanity."

Early on, it became evident that for the United States and England, the real objective of the sanctions was not the elimination of Saddam Hussein's WMD but of Saddam Hussein himself, though that goal went far beyond anything authorized by the Security Council.

The effect of the sanctions was magnified by the wide-scale destruction of Iraq's infrastructure--power plants, sewage treatment facilities, telephone exchanges, irrigation systems-wrought by the air and rocket attacks preceding the war. Iraq's contaminated waters became a biological killer as lethal as anything Saddam had attempted to produce.

There were massive outbreaks of severe child and infant dysentery. Typhoid and cholera, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq, also packed the hospital wards.

Added to that was a disastrous shortage of food, which meant malnutrition for some, starvation and death for others. At the same time, the medical system, once the country's pride, was careening towards total collapse. Iraq would soon have the worst child mortality rate of all 188 countries measured by UNICEF.

There is no question that U.S. planners knew what the awful impact of the sanctions would be. The health calamity was first predicted and then carefully tracked by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Their first study was entitled "Iraq's Water Treatment Vulnerabilities."

Indeed, from the beginning the intent of U.S. officials was to create such a catastrophic situation that the people of Iraq--civilians but particularly the military--would be forced to react. As Dennis Halliday, the former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, put it to me, "the U.S. theory behind the sanctions was that if you hurt the people of Iraq and kill the children particularly, they'll rise up with anger and overthrow Saddam."

But rather than weakening Saddam, the sanctions only consolidated his hold on power. The government's rationing system became vital to the survival of the people, even though it provided less than a third of a person's nutritional requirements. Iraqis were so obsessed with simply keeping their families alive that there was little interest or energy to plot the overthrow of one of the most ruthless dictatorships on the planet. "The people didn't hold Saddam responsible for their plight," Dennis Halliday said. "They blamed the US and the UN for these sanctions and the pain and anger that these sanctions brought to their lives."

But rather than ending the sanctions or modifying them to target those items truly crucial to building WMD, the Clinton administration continued the futile policy: decimating an entire nation in order to destroy one leader.

Neither for the first nor the last time, the people of Iraq were victims of failed U.S. policy.

The Oil for Food program which was introduced in 1996 and expanded over the following years was billed as a major humanitarian measure by the U.S. It allowed Iraq to sell unlimited amounts of petroleum to pay for vital imports, not just food. But Hans Von Sponeck, who also resigned his post as U.N. coordinator in Iraq, condemned the program as "a fig leaf for the international community."

There is no question that Saddam ripped off money during the sanctions regime to attempt to rebuild his military and support his family's lavish lifestyle, but that point hides the basic issue: Iraq's needs were enormous. Even if Saddam had invested everything he skimmed from the sanctions into rebuilding his country and feeding his people, those sums would have never prevented the colossal devastation that sanctions brought about.

By the time the sanctions were finally removed, May 22, 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion, an entire generation of Iraqis had been decimated by the failed policy. A Unicef study in 1999 concluded that half a million Iraqi children perished in the previous eight years because of the sanctions--and that was four years before they ended. Another American expert in 2003 estimated that the sanctions had killed between 343,900 to 529,000 young children and infants. The exact number will never be known. It was, however, certainly more young people than were ever killed by Saddam Hussein.

(In a statement right out of Orwell on March 27, 2003 Tony Blair actually cited the dramatic increase in infant mortality in Iraq to justify the invasion.)

Beyond the death and destruction of infrastructure, the sanctions had another, equally devastating, but less visible impact, as documented early in 1991 by the group of Harvard medical researchers. They reported that four out of five children interviewed were fearful of losing their families; two thirds doubted whether they themselves would survive to adulthood. The experts concluded that a majority of Iraq's children would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives. "The trauma, the loss, the grief, the lack of prospects, the feeling of threat here and now, that it will all start again, the impact of the sanctions, make us ask if these children are not the most suffering child population on earth."

Those sanctions, I reemphasize, lasted for another 12 years after that study --terminating only with the American led invasion of Iraq, which unleashed its own horrific debacle.

It is that generation of "the most traumatized children of war ever described," who have come of age.  It is they who--if they had not fled the country –are the new military and police commanders, businessmen and bureaucrats and political and sectarian leaders and suicide bombers, all now confronted with the calamity that is Iraq .

It is also they, as the months pass, who will be increasingly blamed --along with Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops --for the next –and perhaps final-- cataclysm that awaits their country.

Ahmed Chalabi:the Conning of America

It’s ironic that only now, eight and a half years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as the last American troops pull out, that we finally get a book dissecting the machinations of one of the men most responsible for that catastrophe: Ahmed Chalabi, the brilliant, treacherous, endlessly scheming Iraqi refugee who, from 1991 to 2004, played a singular role in contorting U.S. policy towards Iraq.

The book, “Arrows of the Night,” (Doubleday) written by “60 Minutes” producer, Richard Bonin, is based on lengthy and remarkably frank interviews with Chalabi as well as scores of others who dealt with him over the years. The result is a chilling chronicle of how this charismatic and totally amoral Iraqi exile, without any power base among his own people, was, at various times, able to con everyone from the New York Times, to the CIA, to the U.S. Defense Department, to Dick Cheney-- even Iran’s intelligence chiefs--in his single-minded determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein and take power himself. 

It is a also an alarming tale of how a feckless American President, George W. Bush, buffeted by conflicting counsels of feuding advisors, stumbled into one of the most disastrous military quagmires in America’s history.  

Chalabi was born to an Iraqi family of immense wealth and influence, remarkable because they were Shiites in a country dominated by a Sunni minority. In 1958 ,however. the family was forced to flee Iraq after a military coup.  Almost from the beginning, the young exile was obsessed with overthrowing the regime in Baghdad which, after 1968, was led by Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi studied first in London, then at the University of Chicago and MIT. He was an outstanding mathematician, but with a con man’s soul. At age 32 he founded what would quickly become Jordan’s second largest bank. But his triumph was brief: Chalabi was obliged to flee that country as well when he was charged –and then convicted—of fraud and embezzlement of more than a hundred million dollars.

The contretemps might have ended the career of lesser men, but not Ahmed Chalabi. Still determined to topple Saddam, he came to the United States, convinced that the path to Baghdad led through Washington, D.C.

Lacking any real backing from Iraqis, by his own brilliance and conniving, Chalabi created a support network among influential Americans, many of them prominent neo-conservatives. They saw in the articulate Iraqi an ingenious strategist whose vision of sparking an uprising in Iraq with U.S. help, coincided with their own view: it was time for America to step forward and wield its vast power to promote democracy and other vital U.S. interests abroad. (Key among such interests were ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil and the survival of Israel.) Chalabi and his new allies set out to transform Iraq and Saddam into a hot-button U.S. political issue.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush agreed to clandestinely fund an Iraqi exile group and Chalabi was picked to head the operation, receiving a stipend of $340,000 per month. Actually, as the administration and the CIA saw it, that move was just window dressing to make it appear as if the U.S. was really doing something to overthrow Saddam. 

In fact, they had no intention of getting the U.S. involved militarily. Nor did they want a popular uprising that could have brought the majority Shiites to power, and increase the influence of neighboring Iran. What they wanted was to topple Saddam by a military coup and replace him with a more tractable government of Sunni generals.

But Ahmed Chalabi had different ideas. Rather than the CIA using him, he would use them. He deployed his secret U.S. backing to get himself elected leader of the exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, then started dictating policy to an outraged CIA. His plan, to take power himself after a popular uprising, protected by an American military umbrella.

Incredibly, at the same time he was pocketing Washington’s money, Chalabi was also dickering with Iran. He calculated that to take power in Baghdad, he would also have to win the backing of America’s prime foe in the region, the mullahs in Tehran. And, for a while, he did. In fact, in 1995, by his cunning and deceit, Chalabi almost succeeded in provoking a U.S. military intervention in Iraq and a possible war between Iraq and its neighbors.

When outraged government officials tried to rein him in, Chalabi turned to his powerful Washington backers. Over the years, they would include such figures as Steve Solarz, John Murphy, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney. Shrewd, supposedly worldly men with brilliant Washington resumes, they were dazzled by Chalabi: he was an Iraqi De Gaulle, a George Washington. They ridiculed CIA and State Department experts and rode roughshod over their warnings. 

In 2001, George W. Bush came to power and Chalabi’s lobby grew more shrill. To build their case to invade Iraq, the White House turned to Chalabi’s INC for hard evidence of Saddam’s WMD’s and his links with Al Qaeda. And, presto, Chalabi produced informants with precisely the tales required. After the invasion, when it was revealed that those informants were lying,  Chalabi was unabashed.

Similarly, when Washington asked Chalabi to gather his much-vaunted thousand-man Iraqi army, only a motley 600 showed up, many of them Iranian-speaking with no knowledge of Arabic. Turned out they were mercenaries hired at $5000 a piece—on America’s tab.

Still Chalabi’s Washington fans were unfazed. When the U.S. occupied Iraq, the exile leader was appointed to key positions in the interim government—which he then milked to build his own political base as well as a huge personal fortune.

And all the while, he continued his double-dealing with Iran; for instance, turning over to them sensitive files seized from Saddam’s secret police. Finally, in March 2004, outraged American intelligence agents discovered that Chalabi had informed the Iranians that the U.S. was deciphering Iran’s most sensitive communications.

Incredibly, Chalabi still had his protectors in Washington. President Bush only learned of the Iraqi’s treachery when he read about it in the May 10, 2004 edition of Newsweek. He also learned of Chalabi’s $340,000 monthly stipend—which was still continuing.

According to Bonin’s account, at a meeting of his National Security Council, Bush asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,  “Who does Chalabi work for? Who pays him?” Rumsfeld claimed not to know, though Chalabi’s payments were coming from the Pentagon’s own intelligence agency.

“If we’re paying this guy and he’s giving away our secrets” Bush ordered. “it needs to stop. Condi look into it.”

But even the President’s National Security Advisor, Condelezza Rice, was no match for Chalabi’s Pentagon supporters: it took two more NSC meetings, the President growing ever more irate, before, on May 19, Paul Wolfowitz announced that the INC stipend was ending. Not because of Chalabi’s treachery, but because it wasn’t “appropriate” for the U.S. to be funding an Iraq political party. 

Ironically, it was the Iranians who finally thwarted Chalabi’s ambitions. In February, 2005 the Iranian ambassador to Iraq bluntly ordered Chalabi to drop out of the race for prime minister.  Tehran would never accept a secular Shiite like Chalabi running Iraq. Chalabi might defy the Americans, but never the Iranians. “He would be dead in two days, and he knew it,” a Chalabi aide later told Bonin.

In 2007, however, Chalabi would again profit from U.S. backing. With the support of U.S. General David Petraeus, Chalabi was appointed by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to another key post, charged with restoring Baghdad’s shattered infra-structure.

True to form, within a few months Chalabi betrayed Maliki and the Americans by siding with Iranian-backed Shiite radical Moqtada-al-Sadr, whose goal was to drive the Americans from Iraq.  

Today, according to Bonin, Chalabi remains ensconced in his sprawling Baghdad compound, surrounded by a small army of security guards, and the enormous wealth his government positions enabled him to amass. But he’s no longer a contender to lead post-Saddam Iraq. History, says Bonin, has finally passed him by.

                                                            - - -

America’s military adventure in Iraq is, hopefully, ended. But there’s still much to be learned from this case study of national hubris--how the policies of the most powerful country on the planet were shaped by a group of arrogant players with insiders’ cunning and their own, often shadowy, agendas. 

It’s a lesson particularly relevant today, as the political climate heats up and another American president ratchets up tensions with Iran, while simultaneous dispatching U.S. troops to the Pacific in a new but vague and open-ended challenge.

Iran-A murky, perilous game

The downing of a sophisticated U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone over Iran is the latest ratcheting of tension between Washington and Tehran and Jerusalem. Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been crippled by sophisticated cyber attacks; key Iranian scientists and officials have been killed, including a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander who died when a rocket research site was hit by a spectacular and still unexplained explosion.

That we know. But what else is going on in this murky, perilous game?

In July, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker  that in 2007 the U.S. Congress agreed to a request from President George W. Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program."

 

That American backing included support for actions, which, were they to be committed against the United States or one of its allies, would definitely qualify as “terrorism”. 

           

Has the support for such operations continued under President Obama? If so, what does it include? Just financial backing? Training? Logistics? Clandestine raids into Iran? American “boots on the ground”?  

Predictably, such aggressive acts will provoke retaliation from Iran—a situation, which, in the context of America’s superheated presidential primaries, could spiral dangerously out of control. Which is just what militants in Tehran, Jerusalem, and Washington may be out to provoke. 

We know from President George H.W. Bush’s decision to fund the opposition to Saddam Hussein in 1991, that once such a program is launched it takes on a life of its own--extremely tricky to control, even more difficult to shut down by succeeding presidents, as Bill Clinton would discover. The funding created its own lobby, ready to run to the media and sympathetic congressman at any attempt to rein it in.

Such a potentially explosive situation would be nothing new. Washington has already been involved in a much more violent clandestine war against Iran, via its de facto ally of the time, Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980.

From early in the conflict, the U.S. secretly supplied Saddam with arms as well as satellite intelligence. By 1987, Washington was shipping American-made weapons directly to Iraq from the sprawling U.S. Rhine-Mein Airbase in Frankfurt. Some of Saddam's elite troops were even being sent to the United States for instruction in unconventional warfare by U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg.

As I detail in my book, Web of Deceit, the Reagan administration would be dangerously sucked even deeper into the conflict. Encouraged by the U.S., Saddam intensified his attacks against vital Iranian economic targets, including neutral tankers in the Gulf. Iran of course retaliated. Concerned about the safety of their own ships, the Kuwaitis asked for protection.

Some U.S. officials worried back then--just as they do today--that by venturing into the narrow confines of the Gulf, the U.S. risked direct conflict with Iran. Despite such concerns, American warships were dispatched.

On May 1987, it became dramatically clear how dangerous that policy was. An Iraqi Air Force plane mistakenly attacked an American frigate, the U.S.S. Stark, killing thirty-seven of the crew.

Then, to counter mounting congressional opposition to the operation, the Reagan administration decided to go one step further. They would justify a continued U.S. presence in the Gulf by permitting Kuwaiti ships to operate under the American flag.

That fiction would give the Kuwaitis the right to American protection.

A U.S. liaison officer was stationed in Baghdad to avoid a repeat of the Stark incident.

That, at least, was the cover story; in fact, over the following months, American officers would help Iraq carry out long-range strikes against key Iranian targets, using U.S. ships as navigational aids. "We became", as one senior U.S. officer told ABC's Nightline, "forward air controllers for the Iraqi Air Force."

The Reagan administration, in effect, decided to undertake a secret war, not bothering with congressional authorization.

Heavily armed U.S. Special Operations helicopters, stealthy, sophisticated killing machines that could operate by day or night, were ordered to the Persian Gulf. Their mission was to destroy any Iranian gunboats they could find. Other small, swift American vessels, posing as commercial ships, lured Iranian naval vessels into international waters to attack them. The Americans often claimed they attacked the Iranian ships only after the Iranians first menaced neutral ships plying the Gulf. In some cases however, the neutral ships which the Americans claimed to be defending didn't even exist.

Beginning in July 1987, the CIA also began sending covert spy planes and helicopters over Iranian bases. Several engaged in secret bombing runs, at one point destroying an Iranian warehouse full of mines. In September 1987, a special operations helicopter team attacked an Iranian mine-laying ship with a hail or rockets and machine-gun fire, killing three Iranian sailors. Official authorization for those clandestine attacks was purposely restricted to a low level in the Reagan administration so that top government officials could deny all knowledge of the illegal operations.

By early 1988, officers from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency dispatched to Baghdad were actually planning day-by-day strategic bombing strikes for the Iraqi Air Force. In April 1988, the day before a key Iraqi offensive, U.S. forces sank or demolished half the Iranian navy--one destroyer and a couple of frigates.

If Saddam had not ultimately prevailed, the Pentagon had prepared an even more ambitious strategy: to launch an attack against the Iranian mainland. "The real plans were for a secret war, with the U.S. on the side of Iraq against Iran, on a daily basis," retired Lieutenant Colonel Roger Charles, who was serving in the office of the secretary of defense at the time, told British reporter Alan Friedman.

As Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons, who was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet put it, "We were prepared, I would say at the time, to drill them back to the fourth century."

Relatively cooler heads prevailed. According to Richard L. Armitage, who at the time was assistant secretary of defense "The decision was made not to completely obliterate Iran. We didn't want a naked Iran. We wanted a calm, quiet peaceful Iran. However, had things not gone well in the Gulf, I've no doubt that we would have put those plans into effect."

Which brings us back today.

U.S.Pakistan Shipwreck:China Cleans Up-Again

The killing of 24 Pakistan troops by NATO forces is just the latest disastrous chapter in U.S. Pakistan relations. As affairs go from bad to catastrophic, it’s not just the Taliban who will benefit, but also China.

For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a very willing and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and their often strident—you could call it arrogant--political demands.   

Toeing Washington’s line, in other words, is no longer the only game in town. And the pragmatic Chinese, as always, seem willing to work with whomever holds power.

Take for instance, the outrage in both the U.S. and Pakistan after American troops secretly entered Pakistan last May 2, to kill Osama Bin Laden. The day after the killing, as Americans officials in Washington intimated that top duplicitous Pakistani military had been harboring the Al Qaeda leader, and fulminating U.S. congressmen were demanding immediate cuts in aid, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing lept to Pakistan’s defense.  He declared that "The Pakistani government is firm in resolve and strong in action when it comes to counterterrorism -- and has made important contributions to the international counterterrorism efforts."  America should respect Pakistan’s sovereignty the Chinese said.

 

As U.S.-Pakistani relations continued to curdle, the Chinese and Pakistanis only tightened their embrace. .Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, on an official visit to China told Chinese state radio, "We appreciate that in all difficult circumstances China stood with Pakistan -- therefore we call China a true friend and a time-tested and all-weather friend."

During that trip China’s Premier proved that friendship by announcing that China would supply Pakistan with 50 JF-17 fighter jets equipped with sophisticated avionics, the planes to be paid for by China.

Pakistan’s nuclear program provoked a similar flurry. The U.S. very upset by Pakistan’s clandestine development of nuclear weapons, had been looking at Pakistan’s program with a baleful eye. Not the Chinese, who raised hackles in Washington when they sold the Pakistanis two new nuclear reactors, supposedly to be used only for civilian purposes. The deal, the Chinese insisted, was peaceful. [The Pakistanis are quick to point out that the U.S. has been much more willing to forgive India—America’s ally--for also developing clandestine nukes.]

In fact, for years now, China has been the major supplier of military hardware to Pakistan. The two countries also have arms manufacturing co production deals, and  carryout joint military exercises.

But military links are just for starters. While the U.S. has spent billions on military bases in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese have been funding a sophisticated deepwater commercial port in Gwadar, Pakistan near the Persian Gulf. Just as important, they’re also rehabilitating a 1300 kilometer long highway to connect that Gwadar to China through Pakistan. You may never have heard of Gwadar, but you will in the future. “Come back in a decade and this place will look like Dubai,” a developer recently said.”

Trade between China and Pakistan has soared from $2 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2009.  After a flurry of new agreements, they are hoping to hit $18 billion by 2015. Those agreements target everything from agriculture to heavy machinery, to space and upper atmosphere research, alternative energy projects, power plants, and urban security.

The Chinese are also aiming to increase investment in Pakistan from the present $2 billion a year, to more than $3bn a year by 2012. That’s double the annual $1.5bn in economic assistance from the United States that supposedly has kept the Pakistani military in line all these years.

Indeed, since 9/11 2001, the United States has provided Pakistan with some $20 billion in aid, mostly military--in effect pay-offs for Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting terrorism. But that aid —more like mercenary payments—has done little to prevent the disastrous decline in relationship between the two countries.

The basic reason is simple:  China and Pakistan have more interests in common than do America and Pakistan. Looking to the future, powerful elements in Pakistan’s military have long viewed America’s enemies in Afghanistan, the Taliban, as valuable allies against India when America inevitably pulls out of Afghanistan. China, like Pakistan, also regards India as a regional rival to be harassed and thwarted.

By working together China and Pakistan will be able to challenge not just India, but also the United States and with its claims to hegemony in the area—particularly since President Obama’s recent announcement that 2500 U.S. marines would be stationed in Australia as part of America’s determination to increase its presence in the Pacific. 

China’s swollen coffers now also enable it to use foreign aid in the way that America did in Washington’s plusher days. After the disastrous floods in Pakistan last summer, for instance, China announced its biggest-ever humanitarian aid program including $250 million in donations. It also included a $400 million loan to help Pakistan tackle the financial impact of the flooding, and a cash grant of $10m towards a fund to compensate people rendered homeless.

--As part of this new “hearts-and-minds” policy the Chinese offered 500 university scholarships over the next three years for Pakistani students, with programs focusing on technological areas of expertise not taught in Pakistan. The two countries will also exchange high-school students, young entrepreneurs, and voluntary social workers.  Meanwhile, Chinese surgeons are being dispatched to Pakistan to perform cataract operations on 1,000 blind patients.

Such efforts are obviously paying off. It turns out the Pakistanis are now also proselytizing for the Chinese.

According to the New York Times earlier this year, “At a key meeting on April 16 in the Afghan capital, Kabul, top Pakistani officials suggested to Afghan leaders that they, too, needed to look to China, a power on the rise, rather than tie themselves closely with the United States, according to Afghan officials. 

“You couldn’t tell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative to the United States, but they were saying it could help both countries,” an Afghan official said afterward.”

 And all that was before this last catastrophic weekend.

Egypt's Military: State within a State

On Friday, Washington added its voice to Egyptians demanding that the Egyptian military give way to civilian rule. It’s instructive, however, to consider why the Egyptian brass are so reluctant.

Their resistance stems not just from a fear of an ultimate takeover by radical Muslims. There is also the fact that real civilian rule could spell an end to the system of massive military corruption and patronage that has gone on for decades in Egypt, a system that has given the military unimpeded control over a huge sector of the Egyptian economy:  “a state within a state” as a well-informed Egyptian friend of mine puts it.

That’s the state that’s now being challenged.

For years, Egypt’s top military ranks have enjoyed a pampered existence in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, bonuses, new cars, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices. In other areas, top officers are able to buy luxurious apartments on generous credit for 10% of what those apartments are actually worth.

But we’re not just talking about sensational official perks. Many of Egypt’s brass are notoriously corrupt. Vast swathes of military land, for instance, were sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

Other choice military property ran on the Nile Delta and Red Sea coast boasted idyllic beaches, and exquisite coral reefs. In return for turning the land over to private developers, military officers became key shareholders in a slew of gleaming new tourist developments. 

The reason Egypt’s military became so involved in non-military activities was because, after peace was signed with Israel in 1975, the military lost much of its raison d’etre, as did its military factories. The problem, though, was how to keep those factories going and employ the hundreds of thousands of young men who would otherwise flood the domestic market?

The answer was the military would also produce for the civilian market. Thus the generals came to preside over 16 enormous factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to heaters, clothing, doors, stationary pharmaceutical products, and microscopes. Most of these products are sold to military personnel through discount military stores, but large amount are also sold commercially.

The military also builds highways, housing developments, hotels, power lines, sewers, bridges, schools, telephone exchanges, often in murky arrangements with civilian companies. 

The military are also Egypt’s largest farmers, running a vast network of dairy farms, milk processing facilities, cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fish farms. They’ve plenty left from their huge output to sell to civilians through a sprawling distribution network.  

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the military are just naturally more efficient that civilians. Hard not to be “more efficient” when you are able to employ thousands of poorly paid military recruits for labor.

Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. And upon retiring, top military officers are often rewarded with plum positions running everything from factories and industries to charities.

Whatever the number, Robert Springborg, who has written extensively on Egypt, says officers in the Egyptian military are making "billions and billions and billions" of dollars.”

But there’s no way to know how efficient or inefficient the military are, nor how much money their vast enterprises make, nor how many millions or billions get skimmed off since the military’s operations are off the nation’s books. No real published accountings. No oversight. Just as there is no civilian oversight of the entire military budget, and that’s the way the current military regime have said they aim to keep things

Of course none of the above is a surprise to U.S. officials who dole out some 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to the Egyptian Army, and hope that sum and the neat weapons it provides will keep the army in line. [One of the most detailed studies of the military’s non-military activities was done by a U.S. military researcher at Fort Leavenworth.]

A perceptive look into all this comes via a 2008 U.S.diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The writer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo ticked off the various businesses the military was involved in, and considered how the military might react if Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak, were to lose power.

The military would almost certainly go along with a successor, the cable's author wrote, as long as that that successor didn't interfere in the military's business arrangements. But, the cable continued, "in a messier succession scenario, it becomes more difficult to predict the military's actions."

Thus, the messier scenario today.