[Kabar-indonesia] NYT: If America Wanted to Talk, What Would Iran Do? [Afghanistan; Lebanon]

[Joyo at aol.com]

5 articles: 

- NYT: If America Wanted to Talk, Iran Would ...

- A Deadline That’s Less Than It Seems 

- Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan

- Lebanese Politicians, Scarce in War, Renew Bickering

- Bomb Ruptures Gas Pipeline in Pakistan

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The New York Times
Sunday, September 3, 2006

The World

If America Wanted to Talk, Iran Would ...

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN

JUST imagine. President Bush phones up Iran’s
president, thanks him for his thoughtful letter, and
asks to sit down and discuss social, political and
economic challenges facing the two nations.

Of course, the notion that President Bush would call
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems pure fantasy. At
the moment, the United States is trying to punish Iran
for refusing to give up uranium enrichment. But
sanctions may fail, and military options seem bleak at
best.

So what might happen if Washington suddenly decided,
in a high-level public act, to follow Don Corleone’s
advice to keep one’s friends close but one’s enemies
closer? Would reaching out to Iran, like agreeing to
hold direct talks with Iran’s president, do much to
persuade Iran’s leaders to give up their willingness
to pursue a nuclear program at any cost?

Diplomats would say diplomacy doesn’t often work that
way — that public posturing is almost never what
brings peaceful resolution of deep antagonisms; quiet
bargaining, far outside the public’s eye, is. There
are exceptions, of course, like Anwar Sadat’s public
challenge to Menachem Begin to invite him to Jerusalem
to make peace in 1977.

In Iran’s case, though, political analysts and Western
diplomats here say, that kind of dramatic effort would
probably fall flat, at least at first.

Iran’s leaders are certain the West wants to remove
them from power, and so their first response, many
analysts here said, would be to charge that Washington
was laying a trap. The second reaction would be to say
that the change validated the hard-line approach
toward the West — that belligerence had worked, and
that more intransigence would get more such results.
So, at least in the short term, the public posturing
and bluster would continue.

But is Washington thinking only about the short term?

Many political analysts, Western diplomats and
reform-minded people here say a gesture from
Washington to Tehran, or more precisely a gesture that
demonstrates some degree of respect and openness to
Iran, might well be seen here as far more threatening
to the leadership than the threat of economic or
political sanctions.

“Radicalism has always been supported and strengthened
by the West,” said Emad Baghi, a former cleric from a
highly respected family who heads a human-rights
organization here even as he retains good contacts
with the judiciary.

In Iran, the term hard-liner is part of the political
lexicon, less a pejorative title than a label along
the lines of liberal or conservative. In that vein,
many Iranians refer to President Bush and his
administration as hard-liners. And the conventional
thinking here is that hard-liners help hard-liners,
with their hard-line policies.

“The forces who advocate integration of Iran into the
international system are in the minority today,” said
a political analyst with a prominent research
institute in Tehran who insisted on anonymity out of
fear of punishment. Iranian officials have cracked
down on those who criticize the government, and they
have effectively silenced any debate over their
nuclear program.

“The leadership is opposed to international
integration,” the analyst said. “They are afraid the
purity of their system would be broken, lost.”

It may be hard for Americans to appreciate the extent
to which many Iranians, at least those living in
Tehran, crave improved relations with America, and how
generally positive the image of the United States, or
at least of its people, is on this city’s streets.

But those sentiments cannot be influential in changing
Iranian society while the United States talks of
regime change and threatens sanctions, many analysts
and diplomats here argue. A European diplomat in
Tehran said that many Iranian intellectuals were
shocked, and felt undermined, when in 2002 President
Bush lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an “axis
of evil.”

Today, more than at any time in many years, Iran’s
most powerful figures define themselves with the
language of revolution. Former President Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to build economic ties with
foreign capitals and attract foreign investment. His
successor, Mohammad Khatami, talked of a dialogue of
civilizations and used the language of diplomacy.

President Ahmadinejad, in contrast, talks of returning
to the values of the revolution. An engineer by
training, he has nevertheless crafted a persona that
seems to meld the combativeness of a cleric and the
populism of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Many analysts and former government officials and
diplomats here say that as self-styled protectors of
the revolution, President Ahmadinejad and his inner
circle benefit from the isolation that comes from the
argument over nuclear proliferation. It would be hard
to maintain that posture while ushering Iran into the
World Trade Organization, for example, or into a trade
agreement with the United States.

With that in mind, they see even the taste for
American products here as a threat. “All of my
customers want the American brands,” said Ahmed Zadeh,
68, an electronics dealer in central Tehran. “Everyone
is fond of American brands.”

Such talk makes Iran’s hard-liners cringe as they seek
to portray the United States as the cause of all of
Iran’s troubles.

“Decadence,” said President Ahmadinejad during a press
conference last week, “is the result of Western
materialism. We have to some extent been
contaminated.”

This summer, the authorities have waged a campaign to
stop Tehran’s residents from watching satellite
television. It is a Sisyphean task in a city of 20
million, where rooftops are littered with satellite
dishes. (The dishes are illegal, but like almost
anything else they can be bought on the black market.)

The authorities are so eager to roll back, or hold
back, the influence of American, European, Asian
culture — indeed any outside culture — that they have
sent busloads of police into apartment complexes to
confiscate the dishes. For much of the summer this
dish war consumed more front-page space in Iranian
newspapers than the controversy over Iran’s nuclear
program.

“When the West threatens isolation, they welcome it,”
Mohsen Kadivar, a senior reform-minded cleric, said of
the hard-liners. “They cannot integrate. They feel if
Iran integrated it would lose its Islamic identity.”

And so when President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to
President Bush last spring, was he really trying to
spur a dialogue?

Or was this a faux invitation, aimed at eliciting a
predictable response that would serve to further
isolate Iran even as Iran’s president seemed
reasonable? And last week, when the president offered
to debate Mr. Bush, was it genuine, or strategic
sleight of hand?

Reading intentions is always risky, but what President
Ahmadinejad got was clear. The letter was rejected, as
was the debate.

And so he went before a cheering crowd last week and
declared: “Those who evade the exchange of ideas on
world issues cannot defend themselves logically.”

So what would have happened if the White House had
taken up the challenge and called Tehran’s bluff —
responding, for example, with a carefully crafted yes?
What would Tehran’s leaders have told the crowd then?

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The New York Times
Sunday, September 3, 2006

The Basics

A Deadline That’s Less Than It Seems

By HELENE COOPER

On June 1, world powers made Iran an offer they said
Tehran shouldn’t refuse: suspend uranium enrichment in
“weeks, not months” or face economic sanctions.

That was three months ago. Iran hasn’t suspended
anything, despite the passage of an Aug. 31 United
Nations Security Council deadline. The six countries
that made the offer — the United States, Britain,
France, Germany, Russia and China — are still debating
what to do. And last week, the day after the deadline,
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Finland
called for more dialogue with Iran before any talk of
sanctions. “For the E.U., diplomacy remains the No. 1
way forward,” the Finnish Foreign Minister, Erkki
Tuomioja, said.

All of this activity, or lack of it, raises the
question: When is a deadline not a deadline?

1. When a deal needs support from a bunch of different
countries. Because the United States already has
placed heavy sanctions on Iran since the hostage
crisis in 1979, it doesn’t have the leverage left to
inflict much more pain by itself. Washington needs the
people who actually do business with Iran — primarily
Russia and China — to get on board. And neither of
those countries are in any hurry to do so.

2. When everyone is afraid that sanctions will hurt
them as much as they’ll hurt Iran. World powers are
also dragging their feet because they know Iran could
retaliate by cutting oil production, which could drive
up the price of oil worldwide.

3. When few people think the sanctions will work
anyway. That’s the crux of the problem — the sanctions
that the United States and its European allies are
trying to get the Russians and Chinese to support are
pretty low-pressure, limited to things like travel
bans and restrictions against dual-use exports. If
Iran’s ruling mullahs really believe that a nuclear
program is their inalienable right, will they be cowed
by a travel ban? To really hurt Tehran, diplomats
would have to hit investment in Iran’s energy sector.
But that could bring about retaliation, in the form of
Tehran cutting oil production, which could lead to No.
2.

So the deadlines keep sliding by. Right now, Bush
administration officials say they hope they can get
the Security Council to vote for a first phase of
sanctions in the next few weeks. Maybe by
mid-September, when the General Assembly meets in New
York. Or by the end of the General Assembly meetings
in late September. O.K., definitely by October.

Or else.

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The New York Times
Sunday, September 3, 2006
-front page-

Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium
harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever
recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent
from last year, the executive director of the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria
Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad
news” for the Afghan government and international
donors who have poured millions of dollars into
programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly
fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the
south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As
the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also
encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising
protection to growers if they expanded their opium
operations.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons
of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world
supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,”
Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the
year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous
record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the
Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated
increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres
planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than
260,000 in 2005.

“It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of
control,” Mr. Costa said Friday in an interview before
the announcement.

President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the
results in a statement issued on Saturday and urged
the international community to expand its commitment
to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement
agencies.

The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a
major facet of its aid to Afghanistan, and it has
criticized Mr. Karzai for not doing more to challenge
warlords involved in opium production.

On Saturday, a State Department spokeswoman, Joanne
Moore, had no immediate comment on the United Nations
report, but she pointed to a fact sheet posted on the
department’s Web site that outlined efforts to support
Afghanistan’s counternarcotics campaign.

The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the
strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan,
which has left whole districts outside of government
control, and the continuing impunity of everyone
involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt
police and government officials, Mr. Costa said.

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of
opium, and 35 percent of its gross domestic product is
estimated to come from the narcotics trade.

Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in
Europe and Asia, drug officials say. Most of the
increase in poppy cultivation has occurred in five
provinces in southern Afghanistan, in particular
Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan, where security has
sharply deteriorated this year because of Taliban
attacks, Mr. Costa said.

“The southern part of Afghanistan was displaying the
ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with
large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking,
insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption,” he
said in a statement released by his office.

“We are seeing a very strong connection between the
increase in the insurgency on the one hand and the
increase in cultivation on the other hand,” he
explained in the interview.

The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night,
inviting farmers to increase their poppy cultivation
in exchange for protection, Mr. Costa said. The rebels
also profit from levies in return for protection of
drug convoys passing through the border areas they
controlled.

There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to
encourage farmers to increase poppy cultivation in an
effort to force a government reaction, which would
then turn the population further against the
government, Mr. Costa said.

But he did not blame only the Taliban for the
increase. He specifically accused the former governor
of Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhund, of
encouraging farmers to grow more poppies in the months
before he was removed from office. The result was an
increase of 160 percent in that “villain province”
from its harvest last year, he said, the highest rise
in the country.

“There is evidence of major pressure exerted by him in
favor of cultivating opium,” Mr. Costa said.

In the news briefing on Saturday, Mr. Costa also
criticized the government’s action of removing the
governor and giving him a position in the upper house
of Parliament.

“I have been on record for asking the president for
corrupt officials not to be moved around but to be
removed, to be neutralized; if records can prove
conviction, to be arrested and convicted. So far we do
not have much evidence for that And we hope that more
forceful initiatives will be taken exactly in that
area,” he said.

One province in the north, Badakhshan, where there is
no problem of an insurgency, also had a significant
increase in poppy cultivation.

Mr. Costa attributed that mostly to the lack of
government control and the presence of powerful
warlords and corrupt local officials. A substantial
drought also played a part, because no alternative
crop could survive as the poppies did.

While the government had improved its performance at
eradication of the poppy crop, it had failed to do
enough to catch traffickers and corrupt officials, he
said.

The United Nations drugs office, which measures the
eradication program, said about 38,000 acres of poppy
fields were confirmed to have been destroyed, whereas
only about 12,000 acres were confirmed destroyed last
year. Government reporting on how much was eradicated
was also less exaggerated, Mr. Costa said. In 2005,
province governors had reported eradicating about
87,000 acres and the United Nations could only confirm
12,000 destroyed. In 2006, governors reported 57,000
acres destroyed, and the drug office confirmed 38,000,
he said.

The United Nations drugs office surveys cultivation in
Afghanistan through satellite imagery and with teams
on the ground, who have even worked in
Taliban-controlled areas. Usually they travel
undercover on motorbikes, and they interview farmers
and traders in more than 2,000 villages across the
country.

International donors have put a lot of money into
training judges and investigators and preparing
high-security detention facilities for drug
traffickers, and it was now time for the government to
act, Mr. Costa said.

“I am pleading with the government to be much
tougher,” he said. A new high-security prison block
would be inaugurated in a few weeks, he said. “We have
room for 100 people and I am asking the government to
fill it within six months,” he said.

Afghanistan’s minister for counternarcotics,
Habibullah Qaderi, said at the news briefing that the
news was a setback for his ministry and for the
country. But he said the government’s strategy to
combat opium production would start to show results in
the next three years.

He said he hoped the government would be able to
capture more high-level traffickers and corrupt
officials. But he said it still lacked the capacity to
investigate and catch the “big fish.”

Several hundred people have been arrested and
convicted for drug offenses in recent months, but Mr.
Qaderi admitted most were people who were caught
carrying the drugs.

One significant prosecution involved an Interior
Ministry official, Lt. Col. Nadir Khan, who was
sentenced to 10 years in prison two months ago for
stealing 110 pounds of heroin that had been impounded
by drug enforcement authorities and selling it, a
Western counternarcotics official said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.

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The New York Times
Sunday, September 3, 2006

Lebanese Politicians, Scarce in War, Renew Bickering

By JOHN KIFNER

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 2 — The man widely viewed as
the heir to the Lebanese democratic movement, Saad
Hariri, stayed out of the country during the entire
war between Hezbollah and Israel. His No. 2, Walid
Jumblatt, holed up in his ancestral mountain palace.
Gen. Michel Aoun, the maverick Maronite Catholic who
sees himself as a future president of Lebanon,
remained in his villa in the mountainous Christian
heartland, and said little.

Meanwhile, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah,
despite being a target of the Israeli military, gave
frequent speeches from deep inside a bunker.

But now, two weeks into a shaky cease-fire between
Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel, some of the big names
of Lebanese politics are moving back onto the
political stage. The result has been an open round of
bitter political infighting and backbiting. Figures
from various factions have attacked one another in
newspapers and on talk shows.

The most vociferous has been General Aoun, who called
this week for the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad
Siniora and his cabinet.

The government is dominated by figures from the
American-backed groups that banded together in what is
known as the March 14 alliance, for the date of their
huge protest rally after the 2005 assassination of
former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which helped force
Syria to end 15 years of domination in Lebanese
politics.

General Aoun, who has established a working
relationship not only with Hezbollah but also with his
former nemesis, Syria, also called for a “government
of national unity.”

That idea, charged Marwan Hamadeh, the minister of
telecommunications and a prominent Druse member of the
March 14 group, “is in fact a Syrian attempt to topple
the government.”

Mr. Siniora refused to resign, saying: “Let these
politicians rest. The government is staying, staying,
staying.” In almost the same breath, he claimed Arab
nationalist credentials by vowing, “Lebanon will be
the last Arab country to sign a peace treaty with
Israel.”

General Aoun struck back, telling the daily As Safir
that “Siniora will pay the price of his stubbornness”
and accusing the prime minister of working with
“foreign countries” against Lebanon’s interests.

“This will happen very soon; he will not have time to
pack his things because he will be forced to leave
quickly,” General Aoun said, adding that he had warned
of “dangerous repercussions” if the government did not
resign.

“Now we will choose the appropriate time to achieve
the desired change in our own way,” he asserted,
setting off another round of recriminations between
the March 14 group and his supporters.

Mr. Hariri, the son of the assassinated former prime
minister, has been slower to try to reclaim his
standing. He returned from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere
as the cease-fire was being declared, and has made a
few speeches. His deputy, Mr. Jumblatt, still in the
mountains, held a news conference in which he was
critical of Hezbollah and asked “to whom will it offer
its victory.”

Anyone who wants to wrest the spotlight from Hezbollah
and its leader, Sheik Nasrallah, faces an uphill
battle, given the respect both won throughout the
Islamic world for standing up to Israel’s military
might.

“We are all in awe of Hezbollah,” said Jamil Mroue,
the publisher of the English-language Daily Star and a
secular Shiite.

But like many Western-oriented Lebanese, he is
troubled by Hezbollah’s militant Islamicism, its ties
to Iran and its willingness to maintain a virtual
separate state, adding: “At this stage I cannot look
at the situation and say there is a glimmer of light.”

On Saturday, one of Syria’s most important allies
here, Nabih Berri, the wily speaker of Parliament,
moved to smooth the waters by calling for something
everyone could agree on: protesting the continued
Israeli air and sea blockade.

Mr. Berri, a Shiite whose Amal movement is aligned
with Hezbollah in Parliament, announced a
round-the-clock sit-in in Parliament until the embargo
was halted.

Politicians from all factions dutifully reported to
the Parliament building on a plaza in the beautifully
restored downtown, its clock tower now decorated with
gory pictures of children wounded in Israeli air
raids. Many arrived in identical charcoal-gray
Mercedes with smoked windows.

Even Nayla Moawad, a Maronite Catholic and an
outspoken March 14 figure in Parliament, had praise
for Mr. Berri as she left the meeting, saying: “He is
behaving in a very responsible manner.”

Nonetheless, Ms. Moawad, whose husband, René, was
president for 17 days in 1989 before being
assassinated, warned that “these are very dangerous
times,” and noted that Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad had been “very clear in his threats.”

A cache of explosives had recently been discovered in
the north, she said, and it could only be intended
“not to fight Israel, but for car bombs and political
assassinations.”

When the Lebanese talk politics, it is a quick descent
into a Levantine labyrinth of old grudges, treasured
grievances, remembered massacres and betrayals, and
the hands of shadowy outside forces — most of them
probably true.

The French were the mandate power here after World War
I and, to make Lebanon more economically viable,
attached the largely Shiite rural hinterlands of the
Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon to the mountains and
coastal cities populated by Greek Orthodox, Maronites,
Druse and Sunni Muslims.

As Catholics, the French were particular patrons of
the Maronites, stacking the political system, where
power is allocated by sect, in their favor. But there
has been no census since 1932, because it would
threaten the political system.

Shiites are now believed to number about 40 percent of
the population, the largest single group.

Sheik Nasrallah appeared to be trying to ease fears
that Hezbollah would try to seize more power in his
two-hour television address last Sunday night, saying
there would be no “second round” of fighting.

Dr. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese
American University who has written extensively about
Hezbollah, said the speech was directed primarily at
Christians and Sunnis.

“It’s a way to assuage their fears,” she said. “He
adopted a modest tone. He was even apologetic, unheard
of in Arab politics. He wants to downplay fears of
Shiites running the country.”

It is, she added, “a very, very delicate situation.”

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The Washington Post
Sunday, September 3, 2006

Bomb Ruptures Gas Pipeline in Pakistan

The Associated Press

QUETTA, Pakistan -- A bomb damaged a gas pipeline
Sunday in southwestern Pakistan, cutting supplies to
thousands of homes in a region tense after a rebel
tribal leader died in a battle with government forces.

The blast damaged less than three feet of 18-inch-wide
pipeline in the mountainous area of Lakpass south of
Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, police
official Hamid Shakil.

No one was reported hurt, but the blast disrupted gas
supplies to about 2,000 homes and businesses in
Mastung and Kalat districts, Shakil said.

There was no claim of responsibility, but authorities
have blamed rebel Baluch tribesmen for similar attacks
in the past on pipelines, gas fields, railroads and
security forces in Baluchistan.

Baluch rebels have waged an often violent campaign for
a greater share of wealth obtained from natural
resources, including gas and oil, extracted in their
province.

Sunday's explosion came amid widespread anger in the
province over the Aug. 26 killing of prominent tribal
chief Nawab Akbar Bugti.

Authorities have said Bugti died when his cave hideout
collapsed during fighting between security forces and
fighters loyal to the tribal chief.

Bugti, accused by the government of leading
anti-government attacks in Baluchistan, was buried in
a state-managed ceremony in his home town of Dera
Bugti on Friday.

No one from his family attended. His relatives
condemned the government for not returning the body to
them.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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