Global News Journal

from FaithWorld:

Will the Arab Spring bring U.S.-style “culture wars” to the Middle East?

(From left: Olivier Roy, Cardinal Angelo Scola and Martino Diez of the Oasis Foundation at the conference on San Servolo island, Venice, June 20, 2011/Giorgia Dalle Ore/Oasis)

Where is the Arab Spring leading the Middle East? What will be the longer-term outcome of the popular protests that have shaken the region since the beginning of this year? Of course, it’s still too early to say with any certainty, even in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt that succeeded in toppling their authoritarian regimes. Some trends have emerged, however, and they’re on the agenda at a conference in Venice I’m attending entitled “Medio Oriente verso dove?” (Where is the Middle East heading?). The host is the Oasis Foundation, a group chaired by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic patriarch of this historic city, and guests include Christian and Muslim religious leaders and academics from the Middle East and Europe.

In one of the most interesting -- and hotly debated -- presentations, the French Islam specialist Olivier Roy described the Arab Spring as “a break with the culture and ideologies that dominated the Arab world from the 1950s until recently.” It marks a clear change in the demographic, political and religious paradigms operating there, he said. The old dichotomy of the authoritarian regime or the Islamist state has broken down, he argued, and Islam is taking on a new role in the political process. In the end, the region -- or at least the states where the Arab Spring brings real change -- could see democratic politics marked not by major efforts to establish an Islamic state but by Muslim “culture war” controversies not unlike the way hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage emerge in U.S. political debates.

(Newly wed Egyptian anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 10, 2011/Dylan Martinez)

The first trend Roy cited to back up this thesis is the sharp drop in fertility levels in the Arab world since the late 1980s and the 1990s. Several Arab countries, especially those in North Africa, now have birthrates of around two children per woman, close but still above the European average. Tunisia’s birthrate is actually lower than France's.  “The generation that is now on the job market is the last generation of big families,” said Roy, who is now director of the Mediterranean Programme at the European University Institute in Florence. “It’s a generation that has many fewer children and marries much later.”

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Taliban talks: the new mirage in Afghanistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just said in public what many have been saying for months in private, that the United States is holding talks with the Taliban to try to reach a settlement to the decade-long war in Afghanistan.  "Peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations," he said in a speech in Kabul.

We have been hearing reports about these talks for months. In the climate of disinformation that threads through the Afghan war, it is hard to say exactly when they started, but I first heard last November that the Americans had begun direct talks with representatives of the Taliban and if that was correct, they must have begun some time before that. 

 Such direct talks have long been promoted by many Afghan experts as a necessary but not sufficient condition for a political settlement. While western countries have argued that political reconciliation must be Afghan-led, the Americans are the power-brokers, and unlike the administration in Kabul, the only ones who have the authority to deliver on any concessions agreed in the negotiations.

And the United States has also shifted its position on the Taliban -- effectively admitting that the movement can be treated separately from al Qaeda by convincing the U.N.  Security Council to split its sanctions list imposing asset freezes and travel restrictions into two.

All that said, there is a danger that the U.S. Taliban talks become the new mirage in Afghanistan by suggesting that a political settlement is on the horizon if only the current strategy is maintained.  According to senior diplomats involved in international discussions on Afghanistan, the talks have yet to gain any serious traction.  One diplomat said the two sides were still "gauging each other's temperature";  another said that, "there are no serious load-bearing talks going on."

And despite U.S. insistence that its military campaign in Afghanistan is -- to use its favourite phrases -  "turning the corner" or "gaining momentum" - one diplomat suggested that the Taliban's ambitions were still as high as they had been before Washington sent an extra 30,000  troops. 

Unlike the role sketched out for them by western governments in which they would folded into a broader political process,  he said the Taliban were still looking for a serious stake in power.  Among their ambitions would be for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to be rehabilitated as "Amir ul-Mu'mineen", or supreme leader of the faithful, even if not directly running the government - an idea talked about back in early 2010.

“Fearsome risks” driving policy over-reactions

In China, where a rash of protests, sometimes violent, have recently flared up and been slapped down, echoes from this year’s ‘Arab Spring’ of rebellion against iron-fisted rulers in the Middle East and North Africa are resonating loudly.

Not so much among the people, who in the main want reform and social justice rather than revolutionary overthrow, but in government, where much of what it does is driven by worry about threats to its control.. Authorities are scared foreign political unrest might inspire trouble at home, but instead of engaging with ground-level grievances, the Chinese government’s method of addressing discontent is the heavy hand.

Far from keeping a lid on the feared protests, the crackdowns on demonstrations, activists and artists could prove counter-productive, hardening sentiment against the state and raising the profile of dissenting figureheads.

What mass protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere show is that repressive rule ultimately increases the likelihood that demands for change, when they come, will be forceful, and clashes between government and people follow. In China, the danger is that needlessly tough discipline will lead to this kind of confrontation.

“Your own policies have unintended consequences … when they (governments) over-react to a situation, that may very well make the feared event more likely,” said Max Rudolph, a  U.S. based fellow of the Society of Actuaries. “It’s the fear of the unknown, the fear of losing power.”

Common to autocratic governments is a far stronger determination to hold on to power than those elected according to purer democratic practices. That can mean repression and violence. Given that leaders of unelected regimes often face exile at best once they are thrown out, this is predictable. “If the Democrats (in the U.S.) lose power, they can come back four or eight years later, but if you’ve been ruling with force, your eventual overthrow is an existential threat, so the downside risk is much higher,” Rudolph said.

from Afghan Journal:

Ten years on, still trying to frame the Afghan War

U.S. President Barack Obama is in the midst of a wrenching decision on whether to quickly bring home the 100,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan or stay the course in the hope that the situation will stabilise in the country.

The problem is it is still not clear what the huge operation estimated to cost $100 billion a year is intended to do.  Here is what Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said last week when asked what would constitute success : “I think we’ll have a much better fix in terms of clarity towards the end of this year in terms of longer-term … potential outcomes — and when those might occur — than we do right now."  The military were in the middle of the fighting season and once that ends when winter arrives, they would be in a better position to make a call. But how many fighting seasons has the military gone through already in Afghanistan ? Their logic is that the 30,000 additional troops that Obama sent in December 2009 have started to turn things around in the southern bastions of the Taliban, and more time is needed to extend the gains in the east where the insurgency is just as stubborn.

But isn't that the way this war has been fought all these years, and indeed even before during the Russian occupation ? You muscle into one part of the forbidding country with men and armour, the insurgents melt away and launch attacks in another part.   You are then left with the option of diverting resources to fight them in a new battlefield, or risk stretching yourself thin holding on to  gains while trying to secure new ground.

One U.S. official, the Financial Times reports, (behind a paywall)   likened  it to an arcade game where the player uses a mallet  to bash a random and increasingly frantic series of moles back into their holes. Or as Senator Richard Lugar, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week : "Despite ten years of investment ... we remain in a cycle that produces relative progress but fails to deliver a secure political or military resolution."

Many aren't even convinced if it makes any sense fighting the Taliban anymore. If Obama's core objective in Afghanistan is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda,   then  that job is nearly done at least in Afghanistan where the CIA says the group's numbers are down to anything from 50 to 100.  If anything there are more al Qaeda in Pakistan, Yemen or even Somalia, and yet they don't have 150,000 foreign troops deployed to hunt them down. Is Obama now fighting the wrong war as he once blamed the Bush administration for, when they invaded Iraq ? Osama bin Laden's killing  last month in Pakistan  offers even less reason to be still fighting in Afghanistan, the sceptics argue.

If the reason for staying on in Afghanistan is to ensure that it does not become a safe haven for al Qaeda and other groups all over again, then perhaps  it needs to be fleshed out what constitutes a threat from Afghanistan . Is there a threshold number of al Qaeda fighters that make it necessary for a U.S. invasion ?  Greg Scoblete writes in the Real Compass Blog:

from Reuters Investigates:

No room at the Inn … but maybe a job in the Outback

By Rebekah Kebede

You wouldn't think you'd have to make hotel reservations months ahead of time in Karratha, a small, dusty town on the edge of the Outback  a 16-hour drive from  Perth, the nearest city. But with Australia’s commodities boom, Karratha is bursting at the seams and nowhere is it more apparent than when trying to find a place to stay.

(Above photo: A kangaroo stands atop iron ore rocks outside the remote outback town of Karattha in Western Australia. Reuters/Daniel Munoz)

About two weeks ahead of my trip up to Karratha, to do a special report on Australia's hunt for foreign labour, all hotel rooms within a 60-km radius were fully booked and after more than 20 calls, the travel agent was still coming up empty.

A few more desperate calls turned up a couple of rooms in a town called Roebourne, about 30 minutes away from Karratha at the Ieramugadu Inn, an old motel, which like many others in the area, had become worker accommodations as Karratha struggles to house the influx of labour into town. The bill came to over $200 a night—just shy of what it costs to book a room with a view of the Opera House in Sydney.  The amenities at the Ieramugadu were somewhat different: a complimentary can of bug repellent, tin-foil covered windows to keep out the light for those on night shift, and a view of a truck parking lot through a hole in the tin foil.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

A slow-burning revolution in Pakistan

Rarely does the perennial struggle for power between civilian and military authority punch to the surface quite so openly in Pakistan, yet thanks to the increasing use of the internet, it is now being played out in public across websites, Twitter, blogs and online newspapers. It is a struggle that is every bit as important as those taking place in the Middle East,  and like those of the Arab spring, one that has the potential to tip the country into even greater instability or steer it onto firmer ground.

The renewed and very public debate started with the May 2 raid by U.S. forces which found and killed Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. That unleashed an unprecedented wave of criticism against the military -- both for failing to find the al Qaeda leader, and for apparently failing to detect and react to a U.S. raid in the heart of the country.  The anger rose after militants attacked a naval air base in Karachi, and swelled further when the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was accused of beating to death Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad - an allegation it denied.

With one of its own silenced - a man well-liked for his affability and courtesy - the media raised its voice.

Colunnist Ejaz Haider published an open letter to ISI head Lieutenant-General Shuja Pasha challenging the ISI to prove it was not involved with Shahzad's death and insisting it respect the supremacy of civilian authority. Institutions of state, he wrote, "are all accountable through two levels of agency. The first and primary level of agency is granted by the people through elections to their representatives; the second, a much more restrictive level of agency, is accorded by the peoples’ representatives to bureaucratic institutions, including the military and its intelligence agencies. You, sir, are therefore a servant twice over, as are all your officers and other personnel. You are answerable to our representatives and those representatives are answerable to us."

Najam Sethi, a doyen of Pakistani journalism, wrote that  "the indignant argument that any criticism of the military is 'unpatriotic' or serves the interests of the ' enemy' doesn't wash any more. Indeed, the term 'establishment', which was hitherto used in the media to refer obliquely to the military so as not to offend and incur its wrath, is rapidly going out of fashion, and the army and navy and air force are being referred to as army, navy and air force, which is, of course, exactly what they are and have always been."

"The Pakistan military should see the writing on the wall. It must hunker down and become subservient to civilian rule and persuasion," he said.

"What we saw and read in the media in May has never happened before," wrote Cyril Almeida at Dawn newspaper. Using archive material on Dawn's reports on the Pakistan Army's defeat by India in the 1971 war, he compared the criticism levelled at the military now with the very muted coverage of its humiliating surrender in Dhaka on  December 16, 1971.

from The Great Debate:

What is the best strategy against Chinese cyberattacks?

By Ian Bremmer The views expressed are his own.

All eyes should be peeled on China, but not for the reason you think. While the biggest structural risk right now is global rebalancing, especially between China and the U.S., there is another important threat from China: cyberwars. Cyberattacks are one of the biggest fat tails (along with climate and North Korea).

It’s no surprise that the latest Google hack attack came from China. The presumption is that the vast majority of cyber attacks hitting the U.S. are coming from the Chinese government. It’s very hard to know where threats are originating – country-wise and/or person-wise -- because it’s very difficult to go back and figure out the paper trail. But at a minimum, there is an environment in China that tolerates cyber attacks.

Proprietary information around technologies – gaining profit shares, increasing revenues – allows a country to be much more economically competitive. China has leverage because everyone wants to get into China. If you want to make something in their country, you have to share the technology.

The Chinese government can really benefit from having access to proprietary data, whether it’s about Exxon's oil reserves or pricing of commodities of proprietary technologies, such as American telecommunications. China’s become much more competitive and therefore has become much more of a threat. If it’s using a non-judicious system to gain economic advantage, we need to take that very seriously.

China did something similar with high-speed rail – and that was through legal means. They undermined German and French companies in order to gain access to the technology and they now have built the best high speed rail system. If they can access that kind of information through hacking, that’s going to be seen as a direct threat.

This isn’t to say that the Chinese are evil. Historically, Western institutions invested in China, but then took the money back West. China obviously wants a good chunk of that action.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Ilyas Kashmiri reported killed in drone strike in Pakistan

Ilyas Kashmiri, commander of the al Qaeda-linked Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), has been reported to have been killed in a drone attack in South Waziristan in Pakistan. He had been pronounced dead before in 2009, only to have his death disproved through an interview he gave to the late Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad. So any assessment of the significance of his death needs to carry a big health warning.

That said, there appears to be rather more evidence this time around of his death, including a statement faxed to Pakistani media from someone who claimed to be a spokesman for HUJI. And if accurate, it would be very significant for reasons which go far beyond one man.

For a start, it would be the first clear result of renewed and redefined cooperation between Pakistan and the United States after the May 2 killing by U.S. forces of Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.  Pakistani officials, who publicly condemn drone missile strikes while condoning them in private, have said these are effective when carried out in coordination with Pakistani intelligence. Those carried out by the CIA acting alone have been blamed for causing the civilian casualties that help make these strikes deeply unpopular in Pakistan. A Pakistani intelligence official said that Ilyas Kashmiri was killed following a tip-off from local intelligence.

Ilyas Kashmiri inhabited the netherworld between Pakistan's former jihadi proxies once cultivated for use against India and the Arab "outsiders" from al Qaeda. Though HUJI  was affiliated to al Qaeda, it was never clear how far it had been integrated into the organisation. Yet it is precisely that netherworld that is the source of many of the  "double-game" allegations levelled at, and denied by, Pakistan - that its security establishment, or parts of it, maintain links to some militans while fighting others. 

Ilyas Kashmiri once fought India in Kashmir. But after being blamed for organising attacks within Pakistan, he became an enemy of the state and decamped to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Yet India in particular has alleged that he retained links to some of his former contacts in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

An Indian government report on David Headley, the American arrested in Chicago who has admitted to carrying out surveillance for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, makes several references to links between Ilyas Kashmiri and individual ISI agents. Headley, it says, visited Ilyas Kashmiri twice in 2009, and discussed plans for an attack on Denmark, where the newspaper Jyllands-Posten had published cartoons deemed offensive to Islam. The men present "even discussed a general attack on Copenhagen," it quoted Headley as saying. On both occasions, Headley travelled there with a man it named as Abdul Rehman, who in a separate part of the report is described as backed by the ISI. Another of the men who accompanied him, named as Ijaz, had retired from the airforce. "Ilyas Kashmiri knew Ijaz's brother who happened to be an ISI agent," it quoted Headley as saying.

Pakistan rejects accusations that individual ISI agents might have been in touch with Ilyas Kashmiri. Officials also frequently complain of Indian propaganda levelled against Pakistan in a "psyops" campaign by its intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW.) It has blamed its earlier inability to track down Ilyas Kashmiri on the fact that he moved frequently, and has pointed to the numerous attacks within Pakistan as evidence of its determination to fight Islamist militants. Cvilians, soldiers and the ISI itself have all been targetted in a wave of bombings across Pakistan.

Party wins big in Vietnam, but with a few twists

As has happened every few years since the mid-1940s Vietnam’s Communists won parliamentary elections last month by a landslide, claiming 91.6 percent of the chamber’s 500 seats, officials announced on Friday. No surprises there. The Communist Party has a constitutionally-mandated monopoly on power.

We noted in a story on election day that the vote was rigged to retain party control although the outcome would allow for the legislature’s role in policymaking to continue to grow incrementally.

On Friday the results showed that more self-nominated candidates and more businessmen were elected to the unicameral body this time around than ever before. Four out of 15 self-nominated candidates made it this year, including the vice chairwoman of Hanoi’s young businesspeoples’ association and a doctor who runs his own hospital. Four years ago at the last National Assembly election only 1 of the 30 self-nominees who ran landed a seat.

Voters handed seats to Dang Thanh Tam and Dang Thi Hoang Yen, two of the country’s best known capitalists and perhaps the country’s richest brother and sister duo. They preside over the conglomerate Saigon Invest Group and other companies. Pham Huy Hung, head of VietinBank, the country’s biggest partly-private bank, also got seat. So did Dinh La Thang, chairman of state oil and gas group Petrovietnam, which is probably the country’s most influential company. State media said its revenues this year are expected to be close to a quarter of the nation’s GDP and it makes annual tax contributions that put it in a league of its own.

Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the University of New South Wales, said the inclusion of businessmen in the national assembly followed the Party’s decision to allow entrepreneurs into its ranks and even install some on its policy-making Central Committee at a congress in January. “The National Assembly seems to be following that theme of getting people with practical experience that are safe into the National Assembly to add their expertise to the process,” he said.

But it may be a while before everyone’s comfortable with the arrangements. Nguyen Si Dung, deputy director of the National Assembly Office,  told reporters there was some concern about conflict of interest with regard to businesspeople now participating in the heretofore rubber stamp parliament. He called for a code of conduct that would prohibit business owners from lobbying or voting for any law that relates to their business interests, such as the law on corporate tax. Businessmen also shouldn’t join the economic committee, he said.

Other demographic targets were missed. Seventy-eight people from ethic minority groups were elected, 12 fewer than targeted; 122 women won seats, 28 below target and 1.36 percent fewer than in the outgoing parliament; 62 people under the age of 40 were elected, eight under target and 1.39 percent lower than last time. Finally, 42 non-party members won seats, which missed a 10 percent target.