March 11, 2007
Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance

By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Under the glistening dome of a mosque on Long Island, hundreds of men sat cross-legged on the floor. Many were doctors and engineers born in Pakistan and India. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts and the odd silk tunic, they fidgeted and whispered.

One thing stood between them and dinner: A visitor from Harlem was coming to ask for money.

A towering black man with a gray-flecked beard finally swept into the room, his bodyguard trailing him. Wearing a long, embroidered robe and matching hat, he took the microphone and began talking about a different group of Muslims, the thousands of African-Americans who have found Islam in prison.

“We are all brothers and sisters,” said the visitor, known as Imam Talib.

The men stared. To some of them, it seemed, he was from another planet. As the imam returned their gaze, he had a similar sensation. “They live in another world,” he later said.

Only 28 miles separate Imam Talib’s mosque in Harlem from the Islamic Center of Long Island. The congregations they each serve — African-Americans at the city mosque and immigrants of South Asian and Arab descent in the suburbs — represent the largest Muslim populations in the United States. Yet a vast gulf divides them, one marked by race and class, culture and history.

For many African-American converts, Islam is an experience both spiritual and political, an expression of empowerment in a country they feel is dominated by a white elite. For many immigrant Muslims, Islam is an inherited identity, and America a place of assimilation and prosperity.

For decades, these two Muslim worlds remained largely separate. But last fall, Imam Talib hoped to cross that distance in a venture that has become increasingly common since Sept. 11. Black Muslims have begun advising immigrants on how to mount a civil rights campaign. Foreign-born Muslims are giving African-Americans roles of leadership in some of their largest organizations. The two groups have joined forces politically, forming coalitions and backing the same candidates.

It is a tentative and uneasy union, seen more typically among leaders at the pulpit than along the prayer line. But it is critical, a growing number of Muslims believe, to surviving a hostile new era.

“Muslims will not be successful in America until there is a marriage between the indigenous and immigrant communities,” said Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American imam in New York with a rare national following among immigrant Muslims. “There has to be a marriage.”

The divide between black and immigrant Muslims reflects a unique struggle facing Islam in America. Perhaps nowhere else in the world are Muslims from so many racial, cultural and theological backgrounds trying their hands at coexistence. Only in Mecca, during the obligatory hajj, or pilgrimage, does such diversity in the faith come to life, between black and white, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite.

“This is a new experiment in the history of Islam,” said Ali S. Asani, a professor of Islamic studies at Harvard University.

That evening in October, Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid drove to Westbury, on Long Island, with a task he would have found unthinkable years ago.

He would ask for donations from the immigrant community he refers to, somewhat bitterly, as the “Muslim elite.”

But he needed funds, and the doors of immigrant mosques seemed to be opening. Imam Talib and other African-American leaders had formed a national “indigenous Muslim” organization, and he knew that during the holy month of Ramadan, the Islamic Center of Long Island could raise thousands of dollars in an evening.

It is a place where BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes fill the parking lot, and Coach purses are perched along prayer lines.

In Harlem, many of Imam Talib’s congregants get to the mosque by bus or subway, and warm themselves with space heaters in a drafty, brick building.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Imam Talib had only a distant connection to the Islamic Center of Long Island. In passing, he had met Faroque Khan, an Indian-born doctor who helped found the mosque, but the two had little in common.

Imam Talib, 56, is a thundering prison chaplain whose mosque traces its roots to Malcolm X. He is a first-generation Muslim.

Dr. Khan, 64, is a mild-mannered pulmonologist who collects Chinese antiques and learned to ski on the slopes of Vermont. He is a first-generation American.

But in the turmoil that followed Sept. 11, the imam and the doctor found themselves unexpectedly allied.

“The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,” Dr. Khan said.

Each man recognizes what the other has to offer. African-Americans possess a cultural and historical fluency that immigrants lack, said Dr. Khan; they hold an unassailable place in America from which to defend their faith.

For Imam Talib, immigrants provide a crucial link to the Muslim world and its tradition of scholarship, as well as the wisdom that comes with an “unshattered Islamic heritage.”

Both groups have their practical virtues, too. African-Americans know better how to mobilize in America, both men say, and immigrants tend to have deeper pockets.

Still, it is one thing to talk about unity, Imam Talib said, and another to give it life. Before his visit to Long Island last fall, he had never asked Dr. Khan and his mosque to match their rhetoric with money.

“You have to have a litmus test,” he said.

One Faith, Many Histories

Imam Talib and Dr. Khan did not warm to each other when they met in May 2000, at a gathering in Chicago of Muslim leaders.

The imam found the silver-haired doctor faintly smug and paternalistic. It was an attitude he had often whiffed from well-to-do immigrant Muslims. Dr. Khan found Imam Talib straightforward to the point of bluntness.

The uneasy introduction was, for both men, emblematic of the strained relationship between their communities.

Imam Talib and other black Muslims trace their American roots to the arrival of Muslims from West Africa as slaves in the South. That historical link gave rise to Islam-inspired movements in the 20th century, the most significant of which was the Nation of Islam.

The man who founded the Nation in 1930, W. D. Fard, spread the message that American blacks belonged to a lost Muslim tribe and were superior to the “white, blue-eyed devils” in their midst. Under Mr. Fard’s successor, Elijah Muhammad, the Nation flourished in the 1960s amid the civil rights struggle and the emergence of a black-separatist movement.

Overseas, Islamic scholars found the group’s teachings on race antithetical to the faith. The schism narrowed after 1975, when Mr. Muhammad’s son Warith Deen Mohammed took over the Nation, bringing it in line with orthodox Sunni Islam. Louis Farrakhan parted ways with Mr. Mohammed — taking the Nation’s name and traditional teachings with him — but the majority of African-American adherents came to embrace the same Sunni practice that dominates the Muslim world.

Still, divisions between African-American and immigrant Muslims remained pronounced long after the first large waves of South Asians and Arabs arrived in the United States in the 1960s.

Today, of the estimated six million Muslims who live in the United States, about 25 percent are African-American, 34 percent are South Asian and 26 percent are Arab, said John Zogby, a pollster who has studied the American Muslim population.

“Given the extreme from which we came, I would say that the immigrant Muslims have been brotherly toward us,” Warith Deen Mohammed, who has the largest following of African-American Muslims, said in an interview. “But I think they’re more skeptical than they admit they are. I think they feel more comfortable with their own than they feel with us.”

For many African-Americans, conversion to Islam has meant parting with mainstream culture, while Muslim immigrants have tended toward assimilation. Black converts often take Arabic names, only to find foreign-born Muslims introducing themselves as “Moe” instead of “Mohammed.”

The tensions are also economic. Like Dr. Khan, many Muslim immigrants came to the United States with advanced degrees and quickly prospered, settling in the suburbs. For decades, African-Americans watched with frustration as immigrants sent donations to causes overseas, largely ignoring the problems of poor Muslims in the United States.

Imam Talib found it impossible to generate interest at immigrant mosques in the 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo, who was Muslim. “What we’ve found is when domestic issues jump up, like police brutality, all the sudden we’re by ourselves,” he said.

Some foreign-born Muslims say they are put off by the racial politics of many black converts. They struggle to understand why African-American Muslims have been reluctant to meet with law enforcement officials in the wake of Sept. 11. For their part, black Muslim leaders complain that immigrants have failed to learn their history, which includes a pattern of F.B.I. surveillance dating back to the roots of the Nation of Islam.

The ironies are, at times, stinging.

“From the immigrant community, I hear that African-Americans have to learn how to work in the system,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, adding that this was not his personal opinion.

At the heart of the conflict is a question of leadership. Much to the ire of African-Americans, many immigrants see themselves as the rightful leaders of the faith in America by virtue of their Islamic schooling and fluency in Arabic, the original language of the Koran.

“What does knowing Arabic have to do with the quality of your prayer, your fast, your relationship with God?” asked Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “But African-Americans have to ask themselves why have they not learned more in these years.”

Every year in Chicago, the two largest Muslim conventions in the country — one sponsored by an immigrant organization and the other by Mr. Mohammed’s — take place on the same weekend, in separate parts of the city.

The long-simmering tension boiled over into a public rift with the 2000 presidential elections. That year, a powerful coalition of immigrant Muslims endorsed George W. Bush (because of a promise to stop the profiling of Arabs).

The nation’s most prominent African-American Muslims complained that they were never consulted. The following summer, when Imam Talib vented his frustration at a meeting with immigrant leaders in Washington, a South Asian man turned to him, he recalled, and said, “I don’t understand why all of you African-American Muslims are always so angry about everything.”

Imam Talib searched for an answer he thought the man could understand.

“African-Americans are like the Palestinians of this land,” he finally said. “We’re not just some angry black people. We’re legitimately outraged and angry.”

The room fell silent.

Soon after, black leaders announced the creation of the Muslim Alliance in North America, their first national “indigenous” organization.

But the fallout over the elections was soon eclipsed by Sept. 11, when Muslim immigrants found themselves under intense public scrutiny. They began complaining about “profiling” and “flying while brown,” appropriating language that had been largely the domain of African-Americans.

It was around this time that Dr. Khan became, as he put it, enlightened. A few weeks before the terrorist attacks, he read the book “Black Rage,” by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs. The book, published in 1968, explores the psychological woes of African-Americans, and how the impact of racism is carried through generations.

“It helped me understand that even before you’re born, things that happened a hundred years ago can affect you,” Dr. Khan said. “That was a big change in my thinking.”

He sent an e-mail message to fellow Muslims, including Imam Talib, sharing what he had learned.

The Harlem imam was pleased, if not yet convinced.

“I just encouraged the brother to keep going,” Imam Talib said.

An Oasis in Harlem

One windswept night in Harlem, cars rolled past the corner of West 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A police siren blared as men huddled by a neon-lit Laundromat.

Across the street stood a brown brick building, lifeless from the outside. But upstairs, in a cozy carpeted room, rows of men and women chanted.

“Ya Hakim. Ya Allah.” O wise one. O God.

Imam Talib led the chant, swathed in a black satin robe. It was Ramadan’s holiest evening, the Night of Power. As the voices died down, he spotted his bodyguard swaying.

“Take it easy there, Captain,” Imam Talib said. “As long as you don’t jump and shout it’s all right.”

Laughter trickled through the mosque, where a translucent curtain separated men in skullcaps from women in African-print gowns.

“We’re just trying to be ourselves, you know?” Imam Talib said. “Within the tradition.”

“That’s right,” said one woman.

The imam continued: “And we can’t let other people, from other cultures, come and try to make us clones of them. We came here as Muslims.”

He was feeling drained. He had just returned from the Manhattan Detention Complex, where he works as a chaplain. Some of the mosque’s men were back in jail.

“We need power,” he said quietly. “Without that, we’ll destroy ourselves.”

Since its birth in 1964, the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood has been a fortress of stubborn faith, persevering through the crack wars, welfare, AIDS, gangs, unemployment, diabetes, broken families and gentrification.

The mosque was founded in a Brooklyn apartment by Shaykh-‘Allama Al-Hajj K. Ahmad Tawfiq, a follower of Malcolm X. The Sunni congregation boomed in the 1970s, starting a newspaper and opening a school and a health food store.

With city loans, it bought its current building. Fourteen families moved in, creating a bold Muslim oasis in a landscape of storefront churches and liquor stores. The mosque claimed its corner by drenching the sidewalk in dark green paint, the color associated with Islam.

The paint has since faded. The school is closed. Many of the mosque’s members can no longer afford to live in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for millions of dollars.

But an aura of dignity prevails. The women normally pray one floor below the men, in a scrubbed, tidy room scented with incense. Their bathroom is a shrine of gold curtains and lavender soaps. A basket of nylon roses hides a hole in the wall.

Most of the mosque’s 160 members belong to the working class, and up to a third of the men are former convicts.

Some congregants are entrepreneurs, professors, writers and musicians. Mos Def and Q-Tip have visited with Imam Talib, who carries the nickname “hip-hop imam.”

Mosque celebrations are a blend of Islam and Harlem. In October, at the end of Ramadan, families feasted on curried chicken and collard greens, grilled fish and candied yams.

Just before the afternoon prayer, a lean man in a black turtleneck rose to give the call. He was Yusef Salaam, whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was later overturned.

Many of the mosque’s members embraced Islam in search of black empowerment, not black separatism. They describe racial equality as a central tenet of their faith. Yet for some, the promise of Islam has been at odds with the reality of Muslims.

One member, Aqilah Mu’Min, lives in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, a heavily Bangladeshi neighborhood. Whenever she passes women in head scarves, she offers the requisite Muslim greeting. Rarely is it returned. “We have a theory that says Islam is perfect, human beings are not,” said Ms. Mu’Min, a city fraud investigator.

It was the simplicity of Islam that drew Imam Talib.

Raised a Christian, he spent the first part of his youth in segregated North Carolina. As a teenager, he read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” twice. He began educating himself about the faith at age 19, when as an aspiring actor he was cast in a play about a man who had left the Nation of Islam.

But his conversion was more spiritual than political, he said.

“I’d like to think that even if I was a white man, I’d still be a Muslim because that’s the orientation of my soul,” the imam said.

He has learned some Arabic, and traveled once to the Middle East, for hajj. Yet he feels more comfortable with the Senegalese and Guinean Muslims who have settled in Harlem than with many Arabs and South Asians.

He is trying to reach out, but is often disappointed.

In November, he accepted a last-minute invitation to meet with hundreds of immigrants at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, an opulent mosque on East 96th Street.

The group, the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays, was trying to persuade the city to recognize two Muslim holidays on the school calendar. The effort, Imam Talib learned, had been nearly a year in the making, and no African-American leaders had been consulted.

He was stunned. After all, he had led a similar campaign in the 1980s, resulting in the suspension of alternate-side parking for the same holidays.

“They are unaware of the foundations upon which they are standing,” he said.

Backlash in the Suburbs

Brush Hollow Road winds through a quiet stretch of Long Island, past churches and diners and leafy cul-de-sacs. In this tranquil tableau, the Islamic Center of Long Island announces itself proudly, a Moorish structure of white concrete topped by a graceful dome.

Sleek sedans and S.U.V.’s circle the property as girls with Barbie backpacks hop out and scurry to the Islamic classes they call “Sunday school.”

It is a testament to America’s influence on the mosque that its liveliest time of the week is not Friday, Islam’s holy day, but Sunday.

Boys in hooded sweatshirts smack basketballs along the pavement by a sign that reads “No pray, no play.” Young mothers in Burberry coats exchange kisses and chatter.

For members of the mosque — many of whom work in Manhattan and cannot make the Friday prayer — Sunday is the day to reflect and connect.

The treasurer, Rizwan Qureshi, frantically greeted drivers one Sunday morning with a flier advertising a fund-raiser.

“We’re trying to get Barack Obama,” Mr. Qureshi, a banker born in Karachi, told a woman in a gold-hued BMW.

“We need some real money,” he called out to another driver.

The mosque began with a group of doctors, engineers and other professionals from Pakistan and India who settled in Nassau County in the early 1970s.

“Our kids would come home from school and say, ‘Where is my Christmas tree, my Hanukkah lights?’ ” recalled Dr. Khan, who lives in nearby Jericho. “We didn’t want them to grow up unsure of who they are.”

Since opening in 1993, the mosque has thrived, with assets now valued at more than $3 million. Hundreds of people pray there weekly, and thousands come on Muslim holidays.

The mosque has an unusually modern, democratic air. Men and women worship with no partition between them. A different scholar delivers the Friday sermon every week, in English.

Perhaps most striking, a majority of female worshipers do not cover their heads outside the mosque.

“I think it’s important to find the fine line between the religion and the age in which we live,” said Nasreen Wasti, 43, a contract analyst for Lufthansa. “I’m sure I will have to answer to God for not covering myself. But I’m also satisfied by many of the good deeds I am doing.”

She and other members use words like “progressive” to describe their congregation. But after Sept. 11, a different image took hold.

In October 2001, a Newsday article quoted a member of the mosque as asking “who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?” A co-president of the mosque was also quoted saying that Israel “would benefit from this tragedy.”

Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 have long circulated among Muslims, and Dr. Khan had heard discussion among congregants. Such talk, he said, was the product of two forces: a deep mistrust of America’s motives in the Middle East and a refusal, among many Muslims, to engage in self-criticism.

“You blame the other guy for your own shortcomings,” said Dr. Khan.

He visited synagogues and churches after the article ran, reassuring audiences that the comments did not reflect the official position of the mosque, which condemned the attacks.

But to Congressman Peter T. King, whose district is near the mosque, that condemnation fell short. He began publicly criticizing Dr. Khan, asserting that he had failed to fully denounce the statements made by the men.

“He’s definitely a radical,” Mr. King said of Dr. Khan in an interview. “You cannot, in the context of Sept. 11, allow those statements to be made and not be a radical.”

When asked about Mr. King’s comments, Dr. Khan replied proudly, “I thought we had freedom of speech.”

It hardly seems possible that Mr. King and Dr. Khan were once friends.

Mr. King used to dine at Dr. Khan’s home. He attended the wedding of Dr. Khan’s son, Arif, in 1995. At the mosque’s opening, it was Mr. King who cut the ribbon.

After Sept. 11, the mosque experienced the sort of social backlash felt by Muslims around the country. Anonymous callers left threatening messages, and rocks were hurled at children from passing cars.

The attention waned over time. But Mr. King cast a new light on the mosque in 2004 with the release of his novel “Vale of Tears.”

In the novel, terrorists affiliated with a Long Island mosque demolish several buildings, killing hundreds of people. One of the central characters is a Pakistani heart surgeon whose friendship with a congressman has grown tense.

“By inference, it’s me,” Dr. Khan said of the Pakistani character. (Mr. King said it was a “composite character” based on several Muslims he knows.)

For Dr. Khan, his difficulties after Sept. 11 come as proof that Muslims cannot stay fragmented. “It’s a challenge for the whole Muslim community — not just for me,” he said. “United we stand, divided we fall.”

The Litmus Test

Imam Talib and his bodyguard set off to Westbury before dusk on Oct. 14. They passed a fork on the Long Island Expressway, and the imam peered out the window. None of the signs were familiar.

He checked his watch and saw that he was late, adding to his unease. He had visited the mosque a few times before, but never felt entirely at home.

“I’m conscious of being a guest,” he said. “They treat me kindly and nicely. But I know where I am.”

At the Islamic Center of Long Island, Dr. Khan was also getting nervous. Hundreds of congregants had gathered after fasting all day for Ramadan. The scent of curry drifted mercilessly through the mosque.

Dr. Khan sprang to his feet and took the microphone. He improvised.

“All of us need to learn from and understand the contributions of the Muslim indigenous community,” he said. “Starting with Malcolm X.”

It had been six years since Imam Talib and Dr. Khan first encountered each other in Chicago. Back then, Imam Talib rarely visited immigrant mosques, and Dr. Khan had only a peripheral connection to African-American Muslims.

In the 1980s, the doctor had become aware of the high number of Muslim inmates while working as the chief of medicine for a hospital in Nassau County that oversaw health care at the county prison. His mosque began donating prayer rugs, Korans and skullcaps to prisoners around the country. But his interaction with black Muslim leaders was limited until Sept. 11.

After Dr. Khan read the book “Black Rage,” he and Imam Talib began serving together on the board of a new political task force. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Khan invited the imam to his mosque to give the Friday sermon.

That February, Imam Talib rose before the Long Island congregation. Blending verses in the Koran with passages from recent American history, he urged the audience to learn from the civil rights movement.

Dr. Khan listened raptly. Afterward, over sandwiches, he asked Imam Talib for advice. He wanted to thaw the relationship between his mosque and African-American mosques on Long Island. The conversation continued for hours.

“The real searching for an answer, searching for a solution, was coming from Dr. Khan,” said Imam Talib. “I could just feel it.”

Dr. Khan began inviting more African-American leaders to speak at his mosque, and welcomed Imam Talib there last October to give a fund-raising pitch for his organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America. The group had recently announced a “domestic agenda,” with programs to help ex-convicts find housing and jobs and to standardize premarital counseling for Muslims in America.

After the imam arrived that evening and spoke, he sat on the floor next to a blazer-clad Dr. Khan. As they feasted on kebabs, the doctor made a pitch of his own: The teenagers of his mosque could spend a day at Imam Talib’s mosque, as the start of a youth exchange program. The imam nodded slowly.

Minutes later, the mosque’s president, Habeeb Ahmed, hurried over. The congregants had so far pledged $10,000.

“Alhamdulillah,” the imam said. Praise be to God.

It was the most Imam Talib had raised for his group in one evening.

As the dinner drew to a close, the imam looked for his bodyguard. They had a long drive home and he did not want to lose his way again.

Dr. Khan asked Imam Talib how he had gotten lost.

“Inner city versus the suburbs,” the imam replied a bit testily.

Then he smiled.

“The only thing it proves,” he said, “is that I need to come by here more often.”

Subj: http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2678&Itemid=90 Islam and its economy

============
Yet, it was recognized that practices in many Islamic countries have caused
them to fall behind economically, such as the subjugation of women,
restrictions on interest payments and excessive state interference with the
economy.

In Western and many Asian countries, women have been totally integrated into
the economic system for several decades. If a culture restricts women from
working, denies them equal educational opportunities, and/or limits the
occupations they are allowed to enter, it will not be competitive with
societies that allow women to reach their full potential. Most Islamic
countries suffer from too little education (particularly in engineering and
the sciences), and too much state ownership, bureaucracy, and corruption.

by Michael Rubin
Weekly Standard
March 19, 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1670

Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 27, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped into a diplomatic minefield when she referred to the Iraqi-Turkish frontier as "the border between Turkey and Kurdistan." Turkish newspapers and television across the political spectrum condemned her remarks. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan characterized her statement as "wrong" and said that Turkey, at least, remains committed to Iraq's territorial integrity.

While the State Department said Rice simply misspoke, Turkish officials have reason to be concerned. In a plan coauthored with former Council on Foreign Relations president Les Gelb, Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic chairman of the foreign relations committee, urges ethnic and sectarian federalism in Iraq, in effect breaking the country into autonomous Sunni Arab, Shia Arab, and Kurdish units. Biden claims endorsement of a bipartisan group of heavyweights including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, and James Baker; former senior State Department officials Dennis Ross, Richard Haass, and Richard Holbrooke; and a number of senators and congressmen.

The same day as Rice's gaffe, Biden published an op-ed in the Boston Globe saying his plan "offers a roadmap to a political settlement in Iraq that gives its warring factions a way to share power peacefully and us a chance to leave with our interests intact." He is wrong. As French diplomat François Georges-Picot and his British counterpart Mark Sykes discovered after World War I, boundaries drawn in a boardroom have unintended consequences. And even as State Department spokesman Sean McCormack sought to rectify Rice's error, Kurdistan Democratic party leader Massoud Barzani commented, "Turkey, Syria, and Iran should get used to the idea of an independent Kurdistan." Barzani's confidence is understandable. Iraqi Kurdish autonomy already far exceeds his wildest pre-war expectations.

Ankara's decision not to participate in Iraq's liberation lessened Turkish influence in postwar arrangements. Many U.S. officials assigned to northern Iraq were unapologetic in their sympathy for Kurdish nationalism. Col. Dick Nabb (Ret.), for example, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Erbil, printed business cards with the Kurdish flag. U.S. military officers stationed in Erbil accepted gifts from Barzani. One, facing corruption charges in the United States, chose to remain in Erbil, where he now serves as an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Rice's inattention to symbolism further bolstered the Iraqi Kurds' nationalist drive. Rather than reinforce Iraqi unity and demand that Barzani meet her in Baghdad, during her first trip to Iraq as secretary of state, Rice flew directly to Barzani's mountaintop compound at Sari Rash. Kurdish officials painted her decision as an endorsement of their national aspirations.

Barzani and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader (and current Iraqi president) Jalal Talabani deserve credit for being tough negotiators. As Iraqi politicians debated the constitution, Barzani and Talabani won the right both to preserve their own party's militias and to veto the deployment of the Iraqi army into the Kurdish region.

But the State Department has been unwilling to meet toughness with toughness. By restricting freedom of movement on the basis of ethnicity, Kurdish authorities have violated the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Foggy Bottom nonetheless refused to make U.S. aid conditional on better behavior of the Kurds. On June 23, 2004, U.S. authorities transferred $1.4 billion to Kurdish leaders. Less than a week after receiving that windfall, the Kurdistan Regional Government signed its own oil-prospecting agreement with the Norwegian company DNO, a slap in the face to Iraqi unity.

Once the Iraqi Kurds were flush with cash, U.S. leverage eroded. Iraqi Kurdistan now issues its own visas. The Kurdistan Region maintains separate representation overseas. The Kurdistan Development Corporation competes with Iraq for investment. Barzani's nephew Sirwan runs Korek, the local cell phone company, which for nationalist reasons refuses to cooperate with the Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission, in effect keeping the Kurdistan Regional Government's capital cut off from the rest of the country. On September 1, 2006, acting by decree, Barzani outlawed display of the Iraqi flag.

Biden is correct that federalism cannot be avoided. However, he is incorrect to assume that federalism should be based on ethnic and sectarian division rather than on Iraq's existing geographical provinces. Ethnic division will not bring security. Rather than embrace peace with his neighbors, Barzani now mimics the strategy of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat--seeking diplomatic legitimacy while refusing to renounce violence.

Kurdish television and newspapers are rife with incitements to unrest, often referring to Iraqi Kurdistan as "South Kurdistan," thereby implying that large chunks of Turkey must be "North Kurdistan." Likewise, they place the eastern Syrian city of Qamishli in "West Kurdistan." The Kurdish flag adopted by Barzani is that of the short-lived, separatist Mahabad Republic, which, with Soviet backing, declared its independence from Iran in 1946. Maps printed on Iraqi Kurdish presses and sold in the Erbil and Sulaymaniyah markets show a Greater Kurdistan stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

Just as Arafat transformed the Palestinian Authority into a safe haven for terrorists, so too does Barzani. His administration provides safe haven and supplies to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorists who have been responsible for approximately 30,000 deaths in Turkey since 1984. The Turkish government accuses the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government of furnishing passports to PKK terrorists on Turkey's most wanted list. Turkish officials complain there are six PKK bases operating in territory controlled by Barzani's party. Just as weapons supplied by the Clinton administration to Palestinian security forces ended up in the hands of terrorists, so too have arms supplied by the U.S. government to Kurdish fighters, the peshmerga, found their way into PKK hands.

Barzani places little restriction on PKK travel within northern Iraq. In October 2006, two PKK leaders received treatment in an Erbil hospital; three months later they were photographed in an Erbil restaurant. Meanwhile, the PKK continues to smuggle explosives and carry out attacks in Turkey. Barzani refuses to stop weapons trafficking across the border with his own peshmerga militia, and refuses the Iraqi army permission to do so.

Turkish authorities have made countering the PKK their top priority. At the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul, President Bush promised Turkish officials a U.S. crackdown on the PKK. The next year, Rice repeated the pledge. But only in September 2006, after Kurdish terrorists detonated bombs in Istanbul and several Mediterranean resorts, killing not only Turks but also wounding more than a dozen European tourists, did the State Department appoint Gen. Joseph Ralston as special envoy to counter the PKK. His appointment has so far been more symbolic than effective. Last month, Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gül and military chief of staff Yasar Büyükanit met with national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Vice President Dick Cheney to demand real action against the terror group. Privately, Ralston told journalists he does not believe Washington will respond. Turkish leaders rightly ask why Washington can cross borders to chase terrorists, but they should not.

They may very well begin doing so, especially if the Biden plan gains traction. A perfect storm is gathering: For the first time since 1973, Turks face selection of a president and election of a parliament in the same year. Election year nationalism is incendiary. Barzani's rhetoric and PKK terror add fuel. Meanwhile, according to the Iraqi constitution, there must be a referendum by the end of this year on whether the oil-rich city of Kirkuk should become part of Kurdistan. Both Barzani and Talabani call Kirkuk the Kurdish "Jerusalem," but it is an ethnically mixed city with deteriorating security.

Asked during a February 27 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing whether Turkey would "stand on the sidelines and watch an independent Kurdistan be formed in the north [of Iraq] without going to war," Director of National Intelligence Vice Admiral J. Michael McConnell said, flatly, no.

The Kurds underestimate Turkish resolve. Many Iraqi Kurds say the peshmerga can defeat the Turkish army in the mountains of northern Iraq--and believe that, in any case, it won't come to that. But in 1998, a similar standoff occurred when the Syrian government ignored Turkish demands that Damascus stop sheltering the PKK. The Turkish army mobilized. The late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad had a more sober view of the Turks and expelled PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who now serves a life sentence in a Turkish prison. Those in Turkey's political and military decision-making circles from the time said they planned to enter Syria, with or without a green light from Washington.

Barzani also overestimates the meaning of U.S. sympathy for the Kurds. He may believe Kurdish leaders' friendship with Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, will pay off. Galbraith, who has testified repeatedly in Congress on behalf of his Kurdish clients, seeks redeployment of U.S. forces to bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, in effect shielding Barzani from the consequence of his actions. But the fact is, while Washington would not bless a Turkish operation to attack PKK camps in northern Iraq, it would understand one.

Nor would fear of European disapproval deter Ankara from attacking PKK bases. Too many European leaders have already made clear that Turkey has no hope of entering the European Union. And polls show the Turkish public no longer looks favorably upon E.U. membership. Turkish officials understand that even if they receive no green light from Washington, the only consequence of a cross-border raid would be to force Iraqi officials to seal their northern border.

It would be ironic if, while the surge is beginning to show success in Baghdad, Senate leaders undercut Iraq's integrity. The Biden-Gelb plan may look good on paper. So did the Oslo Accords and, for that matter, the Bush administration's emphasis on holding free elections where they had never before been held. But in each case, good intentions were undermined by the same Achilles' heel: the unwillingness of U.S. officials to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward incitement and terrorism.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders continue to shelter the PKK. Whether their support is active or passive is irrelevant, for there are no acceptable levels of support for terror. Nor is it responsible to undercut the security of a long-term NATO ally like Turkey. Until Iraqi Kurdish leaders expel terrorists in their midst and renounce interests beyond Iraq's border, any congressional encouragement of ethnic federalism risks plunging the region into chaos.

Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently returned from both Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey.

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By Christopher Griffin
Posted: Friday, March 9, 2007

ARTICLES
Armed Forces Journal (December 2006)
Publication Date: December 31, 2006

Begin with two countries that are allied with each other's nuclear adversaries. They spent the Cold War in opposite camps, one emerging as the free world and the other rallying a "nonaligned" movement against superpower politics. The two have bickered over nonproliferation issues for 30 years, one trying to preserve the status quo, the other challenging what it derided as "nuclear apartheid."

Is this the basis for a beautiful strategic partnership or what?

The Bush administration has come to believe that it is. Indeed, during the last five years, the administration has gradually lifted sanctions on dual-use and military sales and permitted security cooperation with Delhi, reversing a host of policies imposed in the wake of India's 1998 nuclear tests. This under-the-radar courtship culminated in July 2005 with the so-called "nuclear deal," under which the U.S. will support India's civilian nuclear program. With this step, the White House exponentially increased its strategic bet.

The nuclear deal also touched a nerve of opposition to this radical departure from longstanding policy. As the administration went to Congress for the approvals needed for the nuclear deal, a variety of voices, including senior statesmen like former President Carter and former Sen. Sam Nunn, weighed in against the passing of U.S. nuclear technology to India.

On the presumption that one should never share fissile material with strangers, I visited India earlier this year to see how this strategic partnership is shaping up on the ground.

The timing of my trip was lucky: I arrived as India was publicly debating whether to support a U.S.-led effort to refer Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council. India has longstanding ties to the Islamic Republic and many Indians questioned whether it was a good idea to abandon a fellow nonaligned government. Conversely, for American skeptics, India's alliance with Iran was clear evidence that Delhi cannot be trusted. When U.S. Ambassador David Mulford warned--accurately, albeit undiplomatically--that India's failure to cooperate on Iran would be "devastating" for the nuclear deal, Indian pundits exploded into criticism of American interference.

In principle, my first stop in Delhi was the perfect venue to discuss the question of how to square India's longstanding ties to Iran with its new strategic partnership with the U.S. The Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, an elite foreign-ministry-funded think tank, was holding its annual Asian Security Conference on India's relations with the Middle East, or in deference to the local nomenclature, "Southwest Asia." I would see Indians talking to Indians, not performing for an American audience.

Alas, my hopes for a nuanced discussion of India's emerging security strategy, or indeed any other issue, were immediately dashed. Early speakers set the tone for the conference when they declared that U.S. efforts to "dominate" the region had done "no good and much harm" and presented India with "a choice between harmony and hegemony" in international relations. Later speakers would alternate between lambasting America's Middle East policy as oil-grubbing and defending India's relationships with such countries as Sudan and Iran as necessary in the face of Washington's efforts to "squeeze India out" of the global energy market. Not the sort of stuff the Bush administration has been touting.

But as the conference wrapped up--and as my despair peaked--one of the organizers took me aside and said: "Ignore everything you've just heard." He explained that although Indians criticize the U.S. and the Singh government, they privately support closer relations with Washington. Indian intellectuals would require more time before they could break free of vestigial mistrust of America and embrace an emerging strategic partnership.

While it initially sounded as though he was apologizing to a dinner guest who had been insulted, the more time passed, the more I saw his point.

Perception Gap

In both capitals, the public debate on U.S.-Indian relations is too often obsessed with the bogeymen of the past. Whether it is the fear that India can only be developing ballistic capabilities in order to target the U.S., or apprehension that the current nuclear deal is just another Yankee ploy to undermine India's strategic ambitions, public, political dialogue--what bureaucrats call "track two"--this is has not caught up to the "track one" diplomatic agreements between the two capitals.

This perception gap is dangerous because it creates political pressures to limit the scope of a strategic partnership that's barely begun, and which may unravel the progress of the last five years. As one Indian diplomat warned when I asked about the cost of failure to carry out the nuclear deal: "Anybody who expects that, if this deal doesn't go through, then the morning after will be the same as the day before, will be wrong. . . . The next time there is a tsunami disaster, we might not take your call."

In sum, it is more than possible to destroy the potential of the partnership, and destroy it fairly quickly. This is because the partnership is starting from a weak position: Although officials in Washington and Delhi recognize the necessity for greater cooperation, there have been no major "deliverables" that skeptics would demand in exchange for closer ties.

Indeed, a near-term focus is the major source of confusion in Washington and Delhi; witness the proliferation of litmus tests and ultimatums. This U.S.-Indian relationship should not be judged in terms of immediate deliverables, but the gradual convergence of national interests. This is the essence of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's characterization of the U.S. and India as "natural allies." Although there are strong reasons for the relationship to come to fruition, it can only occur with concerted, sustained effort.

Trends indicate that over the next 20 to 50 years, India will emerge as one of the world's great powers. And the Bush administration believes that as Indian power grows, Delhi will assume greater responsibility for regional and international security. India shares Washington's support of democracy at home and abroad, opposition to international terrorism and concerns about the security of the sea lines of communication upon which the world economy depends. Philip Zelikow, the State Department official who has been one of the key architects of the Bush administration policy, said the goal is "to help India become a major world power in the 21st century."

Bharat Verma, publisher of Indian Defense Review, explained the Indian view of partnership to me: "We won't hand over strategic autonomy to anyone, but our strategic autonomy does not conflict with American interests."

But just because India's rise will not conflict with American interests does not mean there won't be differing priorities or diverging perceptions. Thus, the challenge for American strategists is to shape India's understanding of its own power, of its own growing strategic interests, of its role in the world. An essential means will be to tie U.S.-Indian cooperation into those fields where India's abilities are growing most rapidly.

Defense Industry Dilemma

Some of these possibilities for cooperation--as well as the challenges--were on display when I visited the 2006 Indian Defense Expo, jointly organized by the Ministry of Defense and the Confederation of Indian Industry. India is the largest arms importer in the developing world, purchasing some $15 billion in weapons every year, a figure expected to rise to $50 billion by 2015. India inked deals on $5.7 billion in arms imports last year, almost twice as much as the next largest importer, Saudi Arabia ($2.7 billion) and significantly more than China ($2.2 billion).

This rapid growth in Indian arms imports has fueled intense competition among exporters for market share. Russia remains the largest seller to India, providing some 75 percent of Indian arms imports, including two MiG-29K fighter wings for India's new aircraft carriers, the converted Russian ship Admiral Gorshkov and the indigenously built "air-defense ship." And India is still collaborating with Russia on several major research and development projects, including the BrahMos supersonic ramjet cruise missile, which will provide each of India's military services with long-range strike capabilities.

Delhi is also developing closer ties with other international arms suppliers. In January, it signed a $330 million joint weapons-development agreement with Israel that will cover a line of ship-mounted air-defense missiles. India also recently completed a deal to build six Scorpene submarines with the assistance of French and Spanish designers as part of a $3.9 billion naval modernization program. Three submarines in this project will include a MESAM air-independent propulsion system, tripling the time they can remain underwater.

In contrast to these countries, the U.S. remains a bit player in India's defense market. Although U.S. sales jumped from $5.6 million in 2003 to $64 million in 2005, they accounted for less than 1 percent of sales to India that year. The reasons for this low level of sales are varied, but the most evident is that the U.S. and India have their own systems for conducting international military sales and have not yet synchronized the bureaucratic and business processes that control them.

The competition to sell India 126 multirole combat aircraft is a primary example of this problem. The major competitors for the contract are the Lockheed Martin F-16, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Dassault Rafael, the SAAB Gripen and the MiG-29. The competition completed the request for information stage in early 2005 and is in limbo while the Indian government prepares its long-delayed request for proposal. Although the full F-16 and F/A-18 suites outclass their international competitors, it is not yet clear that either will win.

When I asked one U.S. industry representative about the deal, he said, "The Indians are issuing [requests for proposal] on a 60 to 90 day time frame, and we take six months to turn around a license before we can make the proposal." Another industry representative was even more critical of the U.S. licensing process, saying, "When it comes time to sell a product or the technology it entails, people at the bureaucratic level have gotten their hands on it and won't let go. . . . It's as though the bureaucracy doesn't know the policy has changed."

Indian strategists also note the challenges posed by the U.S. licensing regime. As Bharat Verma put it to me, "This market is competitive. We have the options and the money. To get into this market, you have to adapt to it."

In sum, no matter how quickly the Indian market develops, U.S. defense firms will have to fight if they are to compete on a level playing field.

Sinews of Strategic Partnership

If a U.S.-India defense industrial partnership faces major obstacles, they are perhaps mitigated by the rapid development of other forms of contact and cooperation. What companies and governments find difficult, military exchanges and exercises make easier. They do this by giving Indian officers hands-on experience with U.S. military technology, and showing the types of operations that importing such technology could enable.

The Malabar naval exercises, which resumed in 2002 after an interruption in the wake of the 1998 nuclear tests, are a case in point. In the past four years, Malabar has developed from a set of basic maneuvers to one of the most sophisticated bilateral military exercises conducted by the U.S.

Malabar 2002 consisted of basic passing exercises among naval vessels, as well as personnel exchange, antisubmarine exercises and replenishment-at-sea maneuvers. When it was hailed as a major step forward in U.S.-Indian military-to-military relations, then-Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Walter Doran and his Indian counterpart, Arun Prakash, began to discuss how they could increase the exercises' sophistication. Bolstered by a friendship that stretching back to when Doran attended the Indian Defense Staff Services College in 1979, they quickly made headway.

In 2003 and 2004, the Malabar exercise expanded to include such advanced U.S. platforms as the Alexandria, a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, and P3-C Orion maritime patrol aircraft. This upgrade permitted both sides to engage in submarine familiarization, a key capability for antisubmarine warfare collaboration. The difficulty of the exercises also increased to include "visit, board, search and seize" operations against suspected smugglers, a key capability for participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative, as well as cross-deck helicopter landings.

The September 2005 Malabar exercise featured an even more impressive leap in capabilities when two aircraft carriers, the Nimitz and India's Viraat, participated. During a month of operations, U.S. and Indian forces collaborated on everything from a joint diving salvage operation to a 24-hour "war at sea" scenario in which mixed formations of U.S. and Indian forces faced off.

The inclusion of aircraft carriers in the war-at-sea scenario also increased the communications requirements among the participating vessels. In response, the U.S. sent Centrix terminals and operators to the Indian ships, which permitted communication through the Indian Navy's existing satellite system. According to Indian Defence Review, the Indian participants were so impressed by this experience that they are considering installing Centrix in some vessels, and are even looking at the possibility of attaining NATO-standard tactical data information links systems.

In February, U.S. and Indian defense planners demonstrated an equally impressive attribute--spontaneity--when they hurriedly organized joint exercises for a U.S. naval convoy passing through the Straits of Malacca.

The growing U.S.-Indian military-to-military relationship has paid major dividends. U.S. and Indian warships jointly escorted U.S. ships through the Straits of Malacca for a year after the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom in order to guard against the possibility of a USS Cole-like attack. And in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami disaster in Asia, Doran worked with Prakash to coordinate the actions of the U.S. and Indian fleets and avoid wastage. As a result, U.S. and Indian forces established adjacent areas of operation and exchanged liaison personnel to coordinate activities. In the crisis, none of this response would have been possible but for the previous experience of working together through exercises and personnel exchanges.

But, like the overall partnership, the real strength of U.S.-Indian naval cooperation lies in the long run. Exposure of the Indian Navy to U.S. technology, practices and capabilities is the first step toward developing real interoperability between our forces. As the Indian Navy and the country's other military services acquire systems to communicate with U.S. and other allied forces, they implicitly commit themselves to operating with the U.S. It is the longer-term habits of strategic partnership that matter most.

Thus, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen explains the importance of growing interoperability when he describes the "1,000-ship fleet," which he sees as a force of "freedom-loving nations, standing watch over the seas, standing watch over each other." It is in this sense that growing U.S. interoperability with India, Japan, Australia and other Asian-Pacific partners is an important precursor transforming the security regime in Asia. The challenge is to develop a shared vision between Delhi and Washington.

In her groundbreaking study "Indo-U.S. Military Relationship: Expectations and Perceptions," Juli A. McDonald quotes a U.S. major general on the different criteria of success for the U.S. and Indian militaries. The Indians, he says, "will laud the relationship as a success if they obtain the technology that they want from the United States." The U.S., by contrast, "will view the relationship as a success if we are able to build a constructive military cooperation program that enables us to jointly operate with the Indians in the future."

These views need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, they may well be mutually reinforcing. The Bush administration is betting that as U.S.-Indian military cooperation progresses, both countries' armed services will, in effect, become core constituencies for a larger strategic partnership.

But Americans have to pay greater attention to what India's military wants. Beyond the nuclear deal, there are other elements of increased defense cooperation in the works. The transfer to India of the Trenton, an amphibious transport dock, as well as an offer for training exercises with U.S. Marines, will help Delhi deploy its planned amphibious Rapid Deployment Force. As this new capability comes online, India will be able to respond to either security crises or natural disasters throughout Asia, further bolstering its role as a net contributor to regional security whose abilities are harmonized with our own.

Another key challenge will be for the administration to shake up the military-licensing process for sales to India. In the immediate term, the multirole combat aircraft request for proposals should be seized as an opportunity to license advanced American avionics and radar systems for sale to India. Likewise, the Bush administration should work during the next three years to champion the sale of a major weapon system such as the Aegis air-defense system or the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile system. These are more than arms sales, they are strategy by industrial means; such a transfer will demonstrate--in ways that are meaningful to the Indians--the seriousness of the U.S. commitment.

India can reciprocate these moves by continuing its efforts, through bilateral working groups, to resolve American concerns about the security of any advanced technologies we transfer to Delhi and to work out the major remaining kinks in its weapons-procurement system. Delhi can also show its support of the security relationship by discreetly sharing the sonar profile of its Kilo-class submarines, a measure that would give the U.S. far more security in conflicts between the Persian Gulf and the Taiwan Strait. The approval of major arms purchases from the U.S. would also help reassure American business leaders and policymakers that they have climbed out on the right branch.

It is impossible to guarantee how the administration's big bet with India will pay off in coming decades. But, like it or not, the first order of business for the U.S. is to demonstrate that America will be a reliable security partner. Fortunately, provided that it is not spiked in the controversy surrounding the nuclear deal, significant progress has already been made, and the way forward is clear.

Christopher Griffin is a research associate at AEI.

Iraqi Forces Control Three of Four Divisions in Northern Iraq
By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 9, 2007 – Three of the four Iraqi army divisions in the north are now under the control of the Iraqi Ground Forces Command, and U.S. troops are turning over more counterinsurgency operations to those units, the top U.S. commander in the region said today.

This will allow U.S. forces to refocus its combat operations and to continue working with local governments on economic issues, said Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Multinational Division North.
U.S. troops are now serving more in an "advise-and-assist role," Mixon said. U.S. combat operations are more focused on specific targets, such as individuals and groups who finance, make and use improvised explosive devices.
Mixon reported that Iraqi units in the region are manned at about 85 percent. They do, however, have significant equipment shortages, he said.
The final division should fall in under Iraqi command and control by this summer. To help train the Iraqi troops, Mixon has added nearly 400 U.S. soldiers to his military transition teams. To help train the Iraq police, 33 transition teams were added.
Work is still needed, however, with the border security forces and with the strategic infrastructure battalions, those that secure critical oil refining and delivery infrastructure.
Mixon put dedicated training teams with the strategic infrastructure battalions but had to "weed out some of the bad eggs" in those battalions who were working with insurgents or stealing oil.
"They still need to make improvements in their overall manning, their equipping and their general professionalism, and we continue to work that each day," Mixon said.
Mixon noted that the oil refining and delivery infrastructure was in poor condition before the war, so considerable investment is needed to fix those problems.
The general said he is encouraged by progress made in the northern provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Salahuddin, but that sectarian violence still plagues Diyala province. He has moved more forces into Diyala province and increased offensive operations to throw the insurgents "off balance" and prevent them from reinforcing operations in Baghdad, he said. In the past two months, coalition forces have seen a 30 percent increase in offensive actions and attacks and have killed more than 175 enemy forces in Diyala, Mixon said.
"We see the Sunni insurgency trying to desperately gain control of Diyala, because it helps in their effort to control Baghdad and to prevent the government of Iraq from succeeding," Mixon said. "Over time, I am confident that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police will overcome these security threats in cities like Baqubah, Balad Ruz and Muqdadiyah, and throughout Diyala province."
Four provincial reconstruction teams continue to work with the government officials at the local level focusing on fiscal responsibility, management and finance. Mixon said Kirkuk officials hosted an investment law training class, and the PRT will soon offer a workshop on foreign investment. The PRT also is helping the Kirkuk government set up an investment conference in late March.
In addition, officials expect the Iraqi government to soon release about $37 million in reconstruction funds to Tal Afar. Funds are expected for rebuilding in Samarra, as well, Mixon said.
All totaled, the region has 518 projects worth more than $800 million in the works. About $75 million in Commander's Emergency Response Program funds will be spent in the region this year.