[Kabar-indonesia] Perle: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi) [+Where Taliban Rules Again]

[Joyo at aol.com]

3 articles: 

- WP/Perle: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)
- WP: Misreading Tehran
- LATimes: Where Taliban Rules Again

The Washington Post 
Sunday, June 25, 2006
-Outlook Section front page-

Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)

By Richard Perle

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he
wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them;
suppression of freedom at home and the spread of
terrorism abroad; and the "shattering and fall of the
ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic
systems."

President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an
irreversible end to Iran's nuclear weapons program,
the "expansion of freedom in all the world" and
victory in the war on terrorism.

The State Department and its European counterparts
know what they want: negotiations.

For more than five years, the administration has
dithered. Bush gave soaring speeches, the Iranians
issued extravagant threats and, in 2003, the State
Department handed the keys to the impasse to the
British, French and Germans (the "E.U.-3"), who
offered diplomatic valet parking to an administration
befuddled by contradiction and indecision. And now, on
May 31, the administration offered to join talks with
Iran on its nuclear program.

How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch "the
worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands," has
chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?

Proximity is critical in politics and policy. And the
geography of this administration has changed.
Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to
Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is
not that she is further removed from the Oval Office;
Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It
is, rather, that she is now in the midst of -- and
increasingly represents -- a diplomatic establishment
that is driven to accommodate its allies even when
(or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel
the appeasement of our adversaries.

The president knows that the Iranians are undermining
us in Iraq. He knows that the mullahs are working to
sink any prospect of peace between the Israelis and
the Palestinians, backing Hamas and its goal of wiping
Israel off the map. He knows that for years Iran has
concealed and lied about its nuclear weapons program.
He knows that Iran leads the world in support for
terrorism. And he knows that freedom and liberty in
Iran are brutally suppressed.

The president knew all this in 2003 when he learned of
Natanz, Arak and other concealed Iranian nuclear
facilities. After the International Atomic Energy
Agency became aware of Iran's hidden infrastructure in
June of that year, we could have referred the matter
to the U.N. Security Council and demanded immediate
action. But neither our allies nor our diplomats nor
the State Department experts assigned to the White
House desired confrontation. It would be better, they
argued (as always) to buy time, even though diplomatic
time for them was weapons-building time for Iran.

So, after declaring that a nuclear Iran was
"unacceptable," Bush blinked and authorized the E.U.-3
to approach Tehran with proposals to reward the
mullahs if they promised to end their nuclear weapons
program.

During these three years, the Iranians have advanced
steadily toward acquiring nuclear weapons, defiantly
announcing milestones along the way. At the end of
May, with Ahmadinejad stridently reiterating Iran's
"right" to enrich the uranium necessary for nuclear
weapons, the administration blinked again.

The mullahs don't blink -- they glare. Two weeks ago,
the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, dismissing
the United States as a paper tiger, said: "Something
very important is happening. . . . The Americans are
no longer saying that Iran must be deprived of its
nuclear rights forever. Iran has accomplished a great
thing."

The "great thing" Mohsen Rezai sees is a weakened U.S.
position, with Washington backing away from the brave
words of the past, and Rice offering to substitute the
United States for the E.U.-3. Just last week,
Ahmadinejad said that Iran will need nearly three
months to respond to our latest offer. (How time flies
when you're having fun.)

Twenty years ago, I watched U.S. diplomats conspire
with their diffident European counterparts to
discourage President Ronald Reagan from a political,
economic and moral assault on the Soviet Union aimed
at, well, regime change. Well-meaning diplomats
pleaded for flexibility at the negotiating table,
hoping to steer U.S. policy back toward d?tente. But
Reagan knew a slippery slope when he saw one. At the
defining moments, he refused the advice of the State
Department and intelligence community and earned his
place in history.

It is not clear whether Bush recognizes the perils of
the course he has been persuaded to take. What has
been presented to Ahmadinejad as a simple
take-it-or-leave-it deal -- stop the activities that
could enable you to acquire nuclear weapons and we
will reward you, or continue them and we will punish
you -- is nothing of the sort. Neither the activities
nor the carrots and sticks are clearly defined or
settled with our allies, much less with Russia and
China. If the punishments require approval by the U.N.
Security Council, the United States would need an
unlikely combination of approvals and abstentions from
council members. The new policy, undoubtedly pitched
to the president as a means of enticing the E.U.-3 to
support ending Iran's program, is likely to diminish
pressure on Iran and allow the mullahs more time to
develop the weapons they have paid dearly to pursue.

No U.S. administration since 1979 has had a serious
political strategy regarding Iran. That has been
especially evident in the past decade, when the bloom
was off the rose of the Islamic revolution, the
Revolutionary Guard joined the baby boomers in middle
age and the Islamic republic sank into political,
economic and social decline. Opponents of the regime
have been calling for a referendum on whether to
continue as an Islamic theocracy or join the world of
modern, secular democracies. They are sure of the
outcome.

The failure of successive U.S. administrations,
including this one, to give moral and political
support to the regime's opponents is a tragedy. Iran
is a country of young people, most of whom wish to
live in freedom and admire the liberal democracies
that Ahmadinejad loathes and fears. The brave men and
women among them need, want and deserve our support.
They reject the jaundiced view of tired bureaucrats
who believe that their cause is hopeless or that U.S.
support will worsen their situation.

In his second inaugural address, Bush said, "All who
live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United
States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your
oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we will stand
with you."

Iranians were heartened by those words, much as the
dissidents of the Soviet Union were heartened by
Reagan's "evil empire" speech in 1983. A few days ago,
I spoke with Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian
dissident student leader who escaped first from
Tehran's notorious Evin prison, then, after months in
hiding, from Iran.

Fakhravar heard this president's words, and he took
them to heart. But now, as he pleads for help for his
fellow citizens, he is apprehensive. He wonders
whether the administration's new approach to the
mullahs will silence the president's voice, whether
the proponents of accommodation with Tehran will
regard the struggle for freedom in Iran as an obstacle
to their new diplomacy.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) tried two weeks ago to pass
the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would have
increased the administration's too-little-too-late
support for democracy and human rights in Iran. But
the State Department opposed it, arguing that it "runs
counter to our efforts . . . it would limit our
diplomatic flexibility."

I hope it is not too late for Fakhravar and his
friends. I know it is not too late for us, not too
late to give substance to Bush's words, not too late
to redeem our honor.

rperle at aei.org

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy
Board and assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan
administration, is an American Enterprise Institute
fellow.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Washington Post 
Sunday, June 25, 2006
-Outlook section front page-

Misreading Tehran

By Karl Vick

TEHRAN The mullah asked the Korean: "What's your idea
about Iranians?" The question was rhetorical, a
greeting between veterans of a shattering week. The
mullah was among a small army of clerics overseeing
the burial of perhaps 40,000 people in three days,
victims of a catastrophic earthquake in southern Iran
during the final week of 2003. The Korean was a
rescuer packing for home after finding no survivors.

"You are closer than us to the United States," the
mullah said in a voice a half-measure louder than
necessary. "So do whatever you can to them on our
behalf."

The Korean's smile remained in place.

"Tell the Americans that you saw the clergy burying
the bodies in Bam. We are very expert at this. Tell
them: 'We will bury you, too.'

"If graves are required," he said, "we have one for
Bush."

If the destruction of Bam was like a ghoulish cartoon
-- a mud-brick city reduced to uniform brown heaps
that no earthquake expert recalled ever seeing before
-- here was a cartoon within a cartoon. The mad mullah
kept grinning and glancing toward me, the intended
beneficiary of his diatribe. A second cleric cleared
his throat in embarrassment. "This is a good
situation," said a third, "for everybody to understand
that human beings really need each other."

What's your idea about Iranians? Almost everyone I
encountered in my 10 visits to the Islamic republic
over the past 3 1/2 years resembled the mortified
colleagues of the mad mullah: gracious, hospitable,
apparently genuine in their regard for ordinary
Americans and reasoned in their criticism of
Washington. Years before the Bush administration's
recent and surprising agreement to Tehran's request
for negotiations , Iranian officials were likely as
not to close an interview with a sidelong bid for some
contact, any contact, between the two governments.

Perhaps that's why, in scanning my recollection for
scenes that might encourage the understanding that
eludes both countries, what stands out are the
extremes, outliers such as the lanky, intense cleric
in the Tehran crowd gathered for the free food and
festival on the 26th anniversary of the Islamic
Revolution. Every few steps, he bent at the waist,
plucked a paper Iranian flag from the ground and tore
the emblem from the center. Then he kissed the scrap
and stuffed it in his pocket.

The emblem contained the word ''Allah," he explained,
and a close reading of religious texts dictated that
it should never touch the ground. His son, who looked
about 7, gazed at the street littered with thousands
of the paper flags, then up at his father, struggling
for comprehension.

* * *

You tend to do that in Iran, a place that newcomers
invariably describe as not what they expected. The
reality turns out to be less severe -- less like the
billowing black chador so irresistible to
photographers: big, vaguely frightening and often in
counterpoint to the more nuanced background scene it
overwhelms.

The severity exists these days mostly as memory and
threat, a reservoir of fear that surged to the surface
of more liberal Iranians last year when Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was elected president. The day after the
election, a young secretary given to wearing spring
pastels with matching sandals showed up at work
looking like a nun. "I am making myself ready," she
said.

But the crackdown never came. Iran's ruling theocrats
know their failures as well as anyone: stunning rates
of opiate addiction, brain drain, traffic fatalities
and a feeble per capita income. They clearly have
calculated that the nation's young majority will not
abide both joblessness and ruthlessness. The fear runs
both ways.

In a morale meeting for hardliners last month, a young
man who five years ago had the power to chastise the
young women in his office for not sufficiently
covering themselves whined: "They make fun of me."

So today on one side of a Tehran thoroughfare, a
fading wall mural celebrates a Palestinian suicide
bomber, while on the other a line of posters advertise
HUMMER, a cologne named for the American war wagon.

After 2,500 years on the plateau that holds them --
along with their self-regard -- above the Arabs,
Iranians know who they are. Their traditions are
elegant. If they are indeed proud, as the children of
empire will be, a particular aspect of history often
pointed out these days is that almost all of Iran's
wars have been defensive.

"Why don't Americans know this about us?" a man asked
me last month in Arak , where the government is
building a water reactor as part of its nuclear
program.

* * *

The official spokesman of the Army of Martyrs of the
International Islamic Movement struggled to summon a
militant mien. At the time, in early 2004, U.S. troops
were fighting in the Iraqi city of Najaf, and the
leaders of the Shiite theocracy in Iran felt compelled
to rattle a saber in the name of protecting Shiite
Islam's holiest city. The group claimed to be signing
up volunteer suicide bombers by the thousands. But as
the discussion progressed, the spokesman acknowledged
that the effort was essentially public relations, and
that he, for one, was not about to blow himself up.

What about the two men sitting silently in the corner?

Perhaps, one said, but first he had a question for the
American visitor:

"Do you know the film by Mr. Jim Carrey -- 'Bruce
Almighty'?"

It was their new favorite. They had watched it over
and over. They liked the part at the end, where Morgan
Freeman, in the role of God, summons the power of the
heavens in a distinctly ominous way, clouds gathering,
stentorian oration.

They saw this as a message in line with the narrative
of Twelver Shiism, the brand of Islam followed by 89
percent of Iranians. It reveres the 12th imam, or 12th
Shiite caliph, to succeed the prophet Muhammad, the
one who disappeared 1,100 years ago and whose return
will herald the day of judgment. Iran's religious
government claims to be holding his place.

Both shook their heads when I insisted the film's
message was basically laughter.

"Americans take this very seriously, I think," one
said.

* * *

In Tehran's needle park , the junkies milled in the
slow motion of the drugs that consume the country's
unemployed. The opium addicts warned that the heroin
addicts can be aggressive. A man sat on the trimmed
grass, tipping forward at the rate of one inch per
minute.

On a table set up under the only shade tree for blocks
around, desperation was measured in the worthless,
almost surely stolen items offered for sale -- a belt,
a doorknob, last year's pocket calendar.

"I've been tortured because I've been in the United
States," announced Saeed Mahmoud. "They hate America.
I'm sorry to tell you. It's quite unfortunate."

He spoke in staccato bursts of English.

"I was educated in California." He was 47, and
addicted to opium since the shah was in power. The
mullahs mystified him.

"What did Israel do to you? Have they stolen your
glasses? What has the United States done to you?
Didn't you fight Saddam Hussein for eight years?
General Myers should be your goddess. He IS my
goddess. Osama bin Laden, give me him for a couple of
minutes, see how I do him."

He made stabbing motions with an imaginary pin.

* * *

Reporters are routinely warned against mistaking
northern Tehran for the nation at large. The same
concentration of wealth that makes the capital's
leafy, prosperous upper reaches home to every good
hotel also nurtures a spoiled population of dissolute
youth, identifiable by their haute hijab (diaphanous
scarves tossed over bouffants) and bandages indicating
recent rhinoplasty.

Last June, as Iranians were preparing to elect the
obscure Tehran mayor Ahmadinejad president, a guest in
one of the better hotels was an Iranian American
student conducting fieldwork for a doctorate in public
health.

Her topic was the increasingly profligate sexual
behavior occurring behind the compound walls of
Tehran's wealthiest neighborhoods. The work meant long
nights at the parties that lasted until the wee hours,
followed by lonely days translating into clinical
terms the exertions of young Persians whose mania for
sensation appeared to correlate inversely with their
government's disapproval.

"I have got to find a boyfriend," she said.

* * *

In a corner shop in a working-class area south of
Tehran, Mohammad Tavasoli unfolded a newspaper and
spread it into the bottom of a cage.

"I'm not very concerned about political parties," he
said. "I'm fond of birds, really."

This much was apparent from his haircut, a wonderful,
distinctly avian affair carefully upswept and curled
inward like the crest of the cockatiels in his cages.
The birdman blew a handful of seeds toward a pair of
nightingales and explained why he has never voted.

"It's only theory," he said. "No practice. The
revolution was supposed to be in the name of the poor
people, the people in the south of the city. In the
beginning, everybody was talking about this. But then
they got used to power, and there was no getting away
from it. They all love money.

"I'm indifferent and neutral. I'm not interested in
any of these debates. But I've got to tell you, I'm 44
years old. Twenty-five years ago, I was one of the
people who was looking to be martyred for this cause.
I spent six months at the war front. But now I can't
think of anything but my children's future. I'm trying
to make ends meet. I'm mired in my economic problems."

Canaries cost 60 cents to $5. Nightingales went for
more.

"The children in the south of Tehran, this is how they
entertain themselves. In the north they've got
computers, Internet, that sort of thing."

* * *

Near the center of the city, two stooped men pushed a
cleaner's cart while struggling to support a third
man, older and unable to walk by himself. Crabbing
along, Khodadad Torshamli, his brother and his uncle
were a scene from Beckett framed by the dingy white
marble that encases half the buildings in the capital.

"I just hear noises," said Torshamli, 46, when I asked
him about the Iranian nuclear controversy. "There's no
money in it, so why should we care?"

The trio had lost their jobs as farmers in the
provinces and come to Tehran like millions of other
economic migrants. They worked sweeping the tidy
streets. After four years, they were still trying to
raise money so their uncle might be able to have
surgery on his back.

"What the latest news is, I don't know," Torshamli
said. "But they keep saying they are very wise and
brave." His smile was deadpan. "What we are looking
for is security, but in these noises there's no money,
there's no security. I can't smell anything good."

He put a shoulder into the cart and got it moving
again, sideways and forward at the same time.

vickk at washpost.com

Karl Vick is the Washington Post's Istanbul bureau
chief.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The Los Angeles Times 
June 24, 2006

Where Taliban Rules Again

The fundamentalist fighters have regrouped to spread
fear in one south Afghan province mired in poverty and
the drug trade.

By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — In the sun-blasted badlands
of Helmand province, the Taliban insurgency has grown
so strong that frightened Afghan police turn to
sympathetic drug lords' militias for protection.

When police escorted civilians into the desert village
of Changer, half an hour's drive from Lashkar Gah, the
provincial capital, the convoy of SUVs stopped at an
abandoned Soviet-era military base that is now a drug
lord's outpost.

A few police officers armed with old Kalashnikovs
fanned out to guard the perimeter, while an edgy
officer roused the militia fighters resting in the
shade of a tree. He explained his concerns, asked for
backup, and six young men armed with old AK-47 assault
rifles and a battered grenade launcher joined the
entourage in a rusting Toyota Corolla.

There were no foreign troops for miles around.
Villagers said the Taliban controlled the area, and
most of the province outside Lashkar Gah.

More than four years after U.S.-led forces helped push
the fundamentalist Taliban regime out of power, the
Islamic militia's fighters have regrouped and staked
out a base of operations in Helmand, where the main
cash crop is opium poppies for the heroin trade, and
where few foreigners dare venture beyond the
provincial capital.

A tangled web composed of drug lords, insurgents and
the many inhabitants living in poverty has made
Helmand the Afghan war's key battleground.

The U.S.-led coalition says it has launched a fresh
offensive against insurgents across four southern
provinces, including Helmand. But the struggle to win
back parts of Afghanistan's south is proving
difficult.

In "night letters," leaflets posted on doors or
scattered along pathways in the darkness, the Taliban
threatens to kill anyone who works for, or cooperates
with, the government. The Islamist militia has
executed numerous people who didn't listen.

Despite coalition claims that several insurgents have
been killed in recent weeks, most in airstrikes, the
Taliban and its allies continue to recruit new
fighters with a deft combination of intimidation and
persuasion, said Gen. Zahir Azemi, spokesman for the
Defense Ministry.

Just two hours' drive from the capital, Kabul,
villagers in the desert surrounding the city of Ghazni
say insurgents launch regular attacks on police
checkpoints, plant roadside bombs, kill government
workers and burn schools. A year ago, security was
good, they say.

The Taliban recruits by striking fear into villagers
with the ruthless attacks, then offering salvation to
surviving family members and neighbors, Azemi said.

"First they create an atmosphere of fear by killing
people, slaughtering people," he said. "They cut
people's heads off with a sword or knife, then they
persuade people, and tell them, 'Let's go to paradise
together.' "

At least one tenet of the Taliban recruitment pitch —
that foreigners have not done much for villagers —
appears to be an easy sell.

Just a few months after foreign soldiers rebuilt the
dirt road through the Changer district, it is falling
apart. Afghan subcontractors hired by the U.S.
military used shoddy materials so they could boost
their profits, angry Afghan officials complained.

Few dare drive on it these days, but when they do it's
a gut-twisting race past mud-brick homes with high
walls and turrets like ancient fortresses, along a
crumbling track with washboard ruts and holes as big
as craters. Potholes are not just an annoyance on
roads outside Lashkar Gah. They force drivers to slow
to a crawl in places where speed can save lives.

Last week, a roadside bomb killed four Afghan police
officers traveling in a pickup on the main road near
Girishk, about 20 miles northeast of Lashkar Gah.

Bombs and ambushes make police reluctant to go to many
villages, and if they do risk a visit, they don't
linger.

"You've got five minutes," a nervous official told a
reporter during a stop in the village of Nad-e-Ali,
where the Taliban had executed a teacher and torched
the classrooms.

With few police officers or soldiers to worry about,
the insurgents attack civilians, which scares off aid
workers. Then Taliban recruiters tell villagers that
they have been betrayed by the foreigners.

"The Taliban come to us and they tell us, 'Look! These
are not the friends of the country. They are all just
the enemies of the government and the people of
Afghanistan because they haven't done anything for
you,' " said Tawab Khan, a security officer at a
dilapidated school.

Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, a former governor of the
province, is one of the police force's most powerful
guardians in Helmand. He is a stalky, blustering man,
who receives visitors while reclining on floor
pillows.

He has good business reasons for being the security
force's protector.

President Hamid Karzai was forced to replace
Akhundzada late last year after U.S. drug agents
caught the governor red-handed with almost 10 tons of
opium in his office.

Karzai softened the blow by appointing Akhundzada to
the House of Elders, Afghanistan's senate.
Akhundzada's brother Amir was allowed to keep an eye
on the family's interests as Helmand's deputy
governor.

Akhundzada insists that he is not a drug trafficker.
But he fields a militia that, along with fighters for
known drug lords, constitutes the only permanent armed
opposition to the Taliban and its allies.

"In the south, nobody believes the government and
nobody trusts the government," the former governor
said. "And if they don't take care of it, the
government will collapse and the Taliban will arrive
in Kabul."

The Defense Ministry openly acknowledges that failed
military and reconstruction strategies allowed
insurgents to regroup and gain control over many parts
of the south.

"We could have taken much better steps toward
reconstruction of the country, which we didn't," Azemi
said. "We could have taken much better steps to reform
or to make a management system for the remote areas in
that region, which we didn't.

"We could have built our complete army in the last
three years and we didn't. If we had a strong army of
70,000 soldiers, there would be no need for the
international community's soldiers to fight in the
region."

Afghanistan's national army has 37,000 soldiers,
including ministry staff in Kabul. That's just over
half the size coalition authorities believe is
necessary for the Afghan military to defend the
country on its own. The soldiers earn $70 a month —
about what a day laborer makes in Kabul — and fight
with poor equipment alongside U.S. troops.

"In reality, the morale of our national army is very
weak because of these situations, because they see
differences between human beings," Azemi said.

"One soldier has strong weapons, strong and modern
machinery, tanks, jets, bulletproof jackets and
helmets, and the other is fighting with a single
weapon that he doesn't even trust."

The coalition plans to supply equipment to Afghan
police, including pistols, body armor, shotguns,
grenade launchers and light tactical vehicles, and
"there are similar plans in place" for the Afghan
army, said Navy Lt. Tamara D. Lawrence, a coalition
spokeswoman.

At least 40 foreign troops, 26 of them Americans, have
died in combat in Afghanistan this year.

Afghan troops are the largest contingent in the force
of more than 11,000, including American, British and
Canadian personnel, that launched Operation Mountain
Thrust last week against insurgents in Helmand and
three other provinces.

Akhundzada thinks the latest offensive in the south is
a farce.

On Sunday, when Taliban fighters attacked the house of
Dad Mohammed Khan, Helmand's former intelligence chief
and now a member of parliament, near a U.S. base in
Sangin, the battle between insurgents, Khan's militia
and police raged for 12 hours in Sangin's bazaar.

U.S. troops never intervened, Akhundzada said. Khan's
16-year-old son and two of Khan's brothers were among
at least 32 people killed. His 17-year-old son is
missing.

"If the Americans didn't help them in the bazaar,
which was only a mile away from their base, how could
they have an offensive?" Akhundzada asked. "There is
sorrow in many houses now. What good can rebuilding a
bridge do for those people? Is that more important
than the lives of these 30 people who died?" 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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