Afghanistan: U.S. out, China surges in.

There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony--in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ranking Chinese official to visit Afghanistan in almost half a century pulled in—arriving in Kabul for a secret round of meetings with top Afghan officials. .

Question: How will China deal with the country that proved such an expensive and bloody disaster for both the U.S., its NATO allies--and the U.S.S.R before them? 

In a brief visit, unreported until he had left Kabul,  Zhou Younkang, China’s chief of domestic security, met with Afghani leaders, including President Hamid Karzai. They talked about drugs, international crime, terrorism, and developing Afghanistan’s huge natural resources—just as visiting Americans have done for years. 

The result, a cluster of agreements, among them an announcement that 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years.

Which is another irony of sorts—coming at the same time as news that the U.S. and its allies have been obliged to scale back joint operations with the Afghan military and police, because they can no longer trust the men they’ve trained. American troops in the field with their Afghan allies now keep weapons ready and wear body armor even when they’re eating goat meat and yoghurt.

So far this year 51American and NATO troops have been gunned down by Afghan military or police:  a startling 20% of all NATO casualties this year.

The off-the-wall video from California ridiculing the prophet Mohammed has only further fueled anti-American hatred.

As the New York Times quoted one 20 year old Afghan soldier, NATO casualties could even be higher.

 “We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”

There are still some 68,000 American troops based in Afghanistan, but the plans are for them all to be out by the end of 2014. Which means that China will be confronting serious security problems of its own in Afghanistan. They already have direct investments of more than $200 million in copper mining and oil exploration, and have promised to build a major railroad east to Pakistan or north to Turkestan. [See my January 2012 blog]

But they could pour in billions more if Afghanistan were a secure, well-ordered country, free from the Taliban, free from kleptocratic war lords and venal government bureaucrats, patrolled by well-trained Afghan soldier s and police:  in other words, exactly the kind of country the U.S. would like to have left behind—and didn’t.

Instead, of course, despite America’s huge sacrifice in men and treasure --more than half a trillion dollars since 2001--things haven’t worked out that way.  [For a dramatic, running count of the enormous hemorrhage that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still represent to the U.S. economy check out costofwar.com.]

Meanwhile, corruption is rampant, and it’s by no means certain that Afghanistan has—or ever will have--a national army and police force worthy of the name.

The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, peered into the Pentagon’ s 1.1 billion dollars fuel program to supply the Afghan Army, and concluded that there was no way to be ascertain how much if any of that fuel is really being used by Afghan security forces for their missions. There was also no way to know how much was stolen, lost or diverted to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Almost half a billion dollars worth of receipts detailing with fuel payments over the past four years have been shredded.

With the Americans heading for the exits, the challenge facing the Chinese—and anyone else, like India--interested in investing in the country--is how to navigate this imbroglio.  

Indeed, the Chinese have apparently already run into problems in Afghanistan. Work at the Mes Aynak copper mine in Lograr Province is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on the promised Chinese-built railroad yet. Various impediments have turned up, like recalcitrant bureaucrats, tensions provoked by the need to displace local populations, the discovery of Buddhist ruins, as well as ramshackle Soviet-era mines that first had to be cleared.

And then there’s the rival, rapacious warlords, who see the country’s resources as a way of fueling their own ambitions—like General Abdul Rashid Dotsum, who the government has accused of attempting to extort illegal payoffs from the Chinese oil company.

However, in their dealings throughout the developing world, from despots to democracies, the Chinese have shown themselves adept at navigating such quagmires. There’s no talk from Beijing of Chinese “exceptionalism”. They’ve been taking on the world as it is—not as someone in a Chinese think tank would want to remake it.

They’ve generally turned a blind eye to considerations of human rights, opted to pay off or work with the powers that be, and used offers of huge new infrastructure projects as bait, steadily increasing their share of the globe’s resources.

Many potential investors still shy away from Afghanistan. They have no idea what lies on the other side of the political abyss after 2014 when the U.S. completes its withdrawal.

China is also wary, but they’re also seriously planning their Afghan strategy for the post-American future.

As Wang Lian, a professor with the School of International Studies at the Paking University in Beijing, put it,

"Almost every great power in history, when they were rising, was deeply involved in Afghanistan, and China will not be an exception."

Unmentioned, of course, was what an unmitigated disaster that involvement turned out to be for the British in the 19th Century, the USSR in the 20th, and the US and its Nato allies --not to mention Afghanistan--to this day.

We’ll see how China fares. 

Toulouse Aftermath: Is It really?

Mohammed Merah, a teenage loser, a petty thief and unemployed garage mechanic, who achieved instant worldwide notoriety as the latest symbol of Islamic jihad went down in a hail of bullets early this morning.

He leaves a string of unanswered questions and paradoxes in his wake.

Such as, to what degree was this beardless, hash-smoking, lacoste-wearing  young tough actually linked to al-Qaeda, as he claimed to police and reporters?  To what degree was he really a self-declared jihadist, acting almost entirely on his own?  An individual target, rather than part of an organized cell, a target much more difficult for police in France and throughout Europe to deal with.

--Another paradox, mentioned in my previous blog, but well worth repeating, because it leads to a further question:

France has chosen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars sending troops to Afghanistan to support Nato and the U.S.  The presumed theory being to prevent that country from remaining a breeding-ground for terrorists to attack France and Europe and the U.S.

But it’s almost certain that Merah, like hundreds of young would-be jihadists throughout Europe of Muslim descent, was drawn to Afghanistan, exactly because French troops had joined in the invasion of that Islamic country.

Which brings up another irony (and question for Mohammed Merah.)   

Why, if he was such a rabid jihadist, did Mohammed Merah attempt in 2010 to enlist in the French military, specifically the Foreign Legion? For some reason—either because he was rejected straight off, or got cold feet—he never wound up in uniform.

If he had, the young man who became an overnight symbol for the Clash of Civilizations, might with—just a slight twist of fate--have joined French troops in Afghanistan battling Islamic militants.

Another question: what impact will this bloody national trauma have on the presidential elections, the first round due next month. Difficult to say at this point, but many commentators think that—despite attacks from the far right that he has not been tough enough on radical Islamists—the speedy resolution of the affair will only bolster an embattled President Nicholas Sarkozy.

[The French and American authorities will presumably also have to explain the fact that Mohammed Merah was reportedly also on the U.S.  "no-fly" list.] 

Ironically, it was a similar tense standoff  in 1993 that first brought Sarkozy to the national spot light:

He was then the mayor of Neuilly, a tranquil community just outside Paris. when a gunman wearing a dynamite belt burst into a local school and demanded ransome to reslease eight hostages. 

With incredible aplomb, Sarkoy talked the gunman into releasing one child and—with the TV camers rolling—walked out of the classroom with the youngster in his arms. 

After 46 hours of talks, the gunman was finally killed by police sharpshoorters. The seven remaining hostages were freed unharmed. Sarkozy was launched.

The similar bloody denouement of Toulouse notwithstanding, whoever becomes France’s next President will continue to face enormous problems—and threats.

How many other Mohammed Merah’s are out there? 

Toulouse: The Nightmare is not over

The horrific chain of 7 murders in Toulouse, France that have stunned this country, could have been lifted directly from a television thriller. In fact, this whole terrible affair has been a nightmare scenario that, for decades, has haunted authorities in France, Europe—and the United States. 

And the nightmare is far from over.

Mohammed Merah, a 24 year-old French man of Algerian origin, a few years ago gets involved with a Salafist network in France. According to the little that is known so far, Merah then heads off to Afghanistan where he links up with al Qaeda. In 2007, he is arrested for planting bombs and jailed for three years by the Afghans, but he  escapes in a Taliban-led breakout. He is later picked up by Pakistan authorities in 2010 and released.

Mohammed returns to Toulouse where his family lives and bides his time. Then last week with the most deadly aplomb, he kills three French soldiers and four days later rides his stolen motorcycle to the entrance of a Jewish school near his home and methodically shoots down a rabbi and three Jewish students.

And, in the age of You Tube and the Internet, to ensure that his gruesome act will some day be witnessed by all, around his neck he wears a video camera.

Islamic leaders in France have made clear how horrified they are that anyone—including Merah himself –would attempt to link his vicious acts with Islam. French President Sarkozy is calling for national solidarity. The leader of the Jewish community in Toulouse has declared himself “immensely relieved” by the news that the killer has been caught.

But the crisis highlighted by Merah is far from over.

The problem, of course is that Mohammed Merah is just one of between five to six million French, most of Muslim descent living in France. A large number reside in shabby, banlieues of the country’s major cities, where housing is dilapidated, unemployment high, and bitterness rampant.  

Meanwhile, the current political storm--about public street prayer, permitting new mosques, banning burkas, and controlling hallal butchers--that has roiled this country has ensured that many Muslims feel even more marginalized.

There is also a considerable burden of history. Incredibly, last night—around the same time as police were planning how to apprehend Mohammed Merah in Toulouse—my wife and I were watching a gripping movie on French TV depicting the courageous attempts of a young Algerian girl brutally tortured by French troops in Algeria as her country fought a bloody struggle for independence. (Was Merah watching the same flick? )

But what counts far more than colonial history to young French Muslims, is the fact that France chose to join Nato and the United States in invading Afghanistan. Thus, Mohammed Merah’s calculated targeting last week of four French soldiers. Ironically, three of them were also of North African origin, but, in his Salafist eyes, that probably made their “treachery” even more condemnable.

The ghastly, methodical slaughter of the rabbi and three Jewish school children four days later were—Mohammed Merah has already told the French police —revenge for the young Palestinian children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

(Did he realize that, in fact, the four people he murdered at the Jewish school were all Israelis?)

The bottom line is that there is no way that, knowing these facts, anyone can credibly write off these events as another despicable case of anti-Semitism: the same kind of deeply embedded racial hatred that has come down through the ages; the virulence that fueled the Holocaust and the dispatch with which French police rounded up Jews for the Nazis during World War II.

Mohammed Merah’s anti-Semitism was probably not driven as much by ancient loathing —but more by the actions of Israel over the past few decades--the expulsion of the Palestinians, the rampant expansion of West Bank settlements, the invasions of Lebanon, the massive attacks on Gaza, take your pick.

To prove the point, the various upsurges of anti-Semitic attacks in France have corresponded precisely with each upsurge in the bloody conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.

Whether Israel’s defenders feel the country’s actions are justified or not is almost bedside the point: those actions are regarded as outrageous in the eyes of millions of European Muslims, who watch the graphic coverage on TV and the Internet of all these grisly events—including the regular statements of Jewish leaders in France and elsewhere that they fully support Israel’s actions.

As outspoken Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery, one of the most acerbic critics of his country’s policies, has pointed the irony that Israel, created as a haven from anti-Semitism for Jews around the world, has instead, by its actions, become the greatest promoter of anti-Semitism around the world.

So, what to do?

Beef up anti-terrorism efforts even further? It turns out that Mohammed Merah was already on a “watch list” in the Toulouse region of some 600 people, from Islamic radicals to right-wing bigots. Which is how the police, through some keen detective work, finally managed to run him down. He was on that list because Pakistani police had notified French authorities after spotting the young man in 2010.   

We can be assured that anti-Terrorist units in France and across Europe have infiltrated Salafist groups and have their own watch-lists.  So why not take action?

Because if there were indeed 600 names in Toulouse, then across France and Europe, we’re talking thousands—perhaps tens of thousands --of such people. There is no way to keep them all under round-the-clock surveillance.

Then expel them all.  French citizens?  

Arrest them.

On what grounds? On whose evidence? 

Of course, anything is possible as we’ve seen in the U.S. since 9/11, and we can be sure in the current super-heated political climate in France, we’ll hear the most extreme demands.

You can also be sure that that any massive crackdown will only further increase the alienation of young Muslims. 

And, in the end, there will almost certainly be plenty of bloody-minded young men and women who will slip through the net.

How about dealing with the root problem? Launch massive programs to really integrate deprived Muslim communities in France and throughout Europe: housing, schools, jobs, etc. In fact, President Sarkozy has been making an important effort to provide better housing, but a few years of effort can not overcome decades of  prejudice and neglect.

In my view, a much more immediate way of at least alleviating the issue would be for France to pull out of Afghanistan. The adventure has cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, and some eighty-four dead soldiers, including four recently murdered by an Afghan soldier they were supposedly training. The Afghan campaign has been a disaster for all concerned.  The U.S. is headed for the doors, seeking only a seemly way to exit.  The French could show the way.

You can be sure, however, that there will be many who will cite the Toulouse killings to argue just the opposite: that the fact that Mohammed Merah may have received some terrorist training in Afghanistan is proof of the threat that jihadis operating there still pose to Europe. Thus, the imperative need to persevere until the Taliban and their allies and defeated, the threat totally liquidated.

But the problem is that, as the past decade has brutally demonstrated,  despite a huge investment in treasure and blood by the U.S. and its allies, such a military victory is not in the cards. The only way out is some kind of deal with the Taliban and their allies—a deal whereby they take a share of power, with the understanding that any attempt to turn their country again into a training ground for terrorists targeting Europe or the U.S. will be dealt with by drones and special forces, not massive troops interventions. 

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the American and Nato presence in the Muslim world have done more to ignite the outrage of young Muslims elsewhere than any ragtag training camps. Why would Mohammed Merah have gone to Afghanistan if it were not for the presence of French troops in that Muslim country?

Which brings us to Israel and Iran.

Some militant Israelis—and their backers in the U.S.—will use the Toulouse attacks to bolster the case for bombing Iran. The argument: just imagine if that Al Qaeda killer in Toulouse and others like him throughout Europe and the U.S., just imagine if they had access not just to a 45 pistol and a Kalashnikov, but to a nuclear weapon, furnished by Iran.

One would hope however, that the Toulouse attack would give Israeli hawks pause. In assessing the risks of bombing Iran, Israeli intelligence analysts have been speculating about the kind of retaliation their country might face.

It’s clear now that not just Israeli citizens would be at risk.  

In fact, compared with the 191 people killed and 1,800 wounded when al-Qaeda inspired terrorists bombed the railway in Madrid in 2004, and the 52 people killed and 700 injured in coordinated suicide attacks on the London Underground in July 2005, France so far has had it easy.

Imagine the incredible mayhem if, one day, terrorists like Mohammed Merah decided to target The Chunnel linking Paris and London?

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.

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.

Tunisia: Democratic Triumph or Prelude to U.S. Disaster?

Officially, the Obama administration greeted the “Jasmine” revolution in Tunisia with open arms, calling for free and fair elections as the U.S. scrambled to get aboard the democratic bandwagon. 

Celebration is restrained, however in Washington. Instead, there’s serious concern about who will take the place of the corrupt, 74 year-old Tunisian dictator, who, until the end, was considered an important American ally in the War against Terror.

Assuming the Tunisian military actually agrees to hold free elections [not at all a sure thing] will the generals really throw open the doors to all political groups? Nationalists? Islamists? Marxists? Anti-militarists? What forces will roil to the surface after decades of political repression? Will they throw in their lot with America’s War against Terror, or join the ranks of those in the Middle East who increasingly see what’s going on as the U.S.’s war against Islam?

Washington’s ambivalent view was evident even before the revolution was victorious. In Doha on Thursday, Hillary Clinton lectured Arab autocrats and others meeting there on the urgent need for reform and an end to rampant corruption if they wanted to save their regimes.

But just a couple of days earlier, as young demonstrators were being gunned down in the cities and towns of Tunisia, when Hillary was asked which side the U.S. was on, she replied that the U.S. was “not taking sides"”

U.S. officials have reason to hesitate. Jasmine uprisings across the Middle East and Central Asia could spell disaster for American policy.

--There is no way, for instance, that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, will permit a democratic opening. Thanks to his ironclad dictatorship, the only group who has been able to organize politically are the Islamic radicals. More secular-minded opponents have been either co-opted or imprisoned or totally cowed. The influence of the religious extremists has grown throughout the country--anti-American and anti-Israel. It’s only the military that stand between Mubarak and chaos.   

But, like a deer frozen in on-coming headlights, Washington seems immobilized. On the one hand, there’s the corrupt, despotic, and failing Mubarak. But he’s a friend. On the other hand, truly free and fair elections would almost certainly bring leaders to power much more virulently anti-Israel and opposed to U.S. policies. Perhaps they’re hoping for the Egyptian the military to step in again to save itself and its privileges--and the U.S.

-Indeed elsewhere throughout the region, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen to Ethiopia to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the picture seems markedly similar: U.S. allies are invariably corrupt dictators, maintained in power by lavish patronage and the military.

-Ironically, in Lebanon, where the public has had a growing voice in national politics, it’s the anti-American and anti-Israel Hezbollah who have ridden popular acclaim to become the decisive voice in the country.

-Similarly in Iraq, popular participation has also benefited America’s most outspoken enemy there: Moqtada al-Sadr., whose followers fought bloody battles against the U.S. after the invasion.  Seemingly vanquished, he has returned from three years in Iran to wield a decisive political voice in Iraq. He demands the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from his country.

Ironically, because of the elections in Iraq, the country that will almost certainly be calling the shots there in the future will not be the United Statues—but Iran.

-Meanwhile moderates pushing for something akin to democracy and secular rule are losing ground. In Pakistan, the soldier who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who had been outspoken in his fight against religious fundamentalism, that soldier was showered with rose petals while many of the country’s lawyers—who had once gone to the streets demanding democratic reform—celebrated the murderer as a national hero.

-And democracy in Israel? A true democracy with a vote for every person—Jews and all the Arabs under Israeli control—including those living on The West Bank? Forget it. It would be the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish State.  We don’t hear Hillary or Obama talking much about that these days.

-Indeed, at the end of her lecture to the Arab leaders in Doha, one of  Hillary’s Arab audience asked why the U.S. wasn’t doing it’s share to fight the war against Islamic fundamentalism by putting more pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinians.  Her answer –pointing out that the U.S. paid more to finance the Palestinian Authority than did most of the Arab countries—simply dodged the issue.

-Of course, it would be unfair to point out that, after her civics lesson in Doha,  Hillary returned to Washington where, even after the lurid shootings in Arizona, U.S. legislators are unable to even to discuss  clamping down on firearms, because of the all-powerful gun lobby.  It’s also Washington where American officials, from Obama on down, are terrified of taking on the pro-Israel lobby - not because the lobby represents the views of the majority of Americans—or even a great majority of American Jews, but because it wields a very undemocratic power far beyond its  numbers.