March 24, 2007
The Saturday Profile
Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq

By EDWARD WONG
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

KANAN MAKIYA’s latest creative block seems as imposing as the concrete blast walls that have sprung up across Baghdad in the four years of war.

He is having trouble putting words to paper, grappling with a new book that he says is likely to be his final political work on Iraq.

“The thing that’s difficult is the form of the book,” Mr. Makiya said as he sat down one winter evening in his living room here. “I never had this problem before the fall of the regime. Things were simpler. The dictator was there, and you knew where you stood.”

The dictator was, of course, Saddam Hussein, the target of Mr. Makiya’s vitriol in a series of acclaimed books that he wrote on Iraq, beginning with “Republic of Fear,” published in 1989.

Until the American invasion in March 2003, Mr. Makiya, an Iraqi-American born in Baghdad in 1949, was the leading intellectual voice crying out for Western and Arab nations to topple Mr. Hussein. He was a close friend of the Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi, and had the attention of neoconservatives. Vice President Dick Cheney praised him on “Meet the Press,” and Mr. Makiya was one of three Iraqi-Americans who met with President Bush in the winter of 2003.

Those were simpler days indeed, before the endless waves of car bombings, before the thousands of Iraqi and American deaths, before the descent into chaos and sectarian violence that has driven liberal idealists like Mr. Makiya into bouts of hand-wringing over a single inescapable question: what went wrong?

Which brings us to Mr. Makiya’s next book.

“I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had going into the war,” he said. “Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. A question that looms more and more for me is: just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?”

“It’s not like I didn’t think about this,” he continued. “But nonetheless I allowed myself as an activist to put it aside in the hope that it could be worked through, or managed, or exorcised in a way that’s not as violent as is the case now. That did not work out.”

HERE in this two-story Victorian house on a quiet lane south of Porter Square, the thing that “did not work out” seemed very far away. Mr. Makiya was awaiting the arrival for dinner of a former student of his at Brandeis University, where Mr. Makiya is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. While musing about Iraq, he admitted his inability to foresee the manifold shortcomings in the American project.

“There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures,” he said. Chief among the culprits, he added, were the Iraqis picked by the Americans in 2003 to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, many of them exiles who tried to create popular bases for themselves by emphasizing sectarian and ethnic differences.

“Sectarianism began there,” he said.

Mr. Makiya said he preferred not to name names. But it is well known that he had a falling out with Mr. Chalabi after Mr. Chalabi began courting Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in order to win support in Iraq’s first national elections. For years before the war, Mr. Makiya had toiled with Mr. Chalabi to organize the Iraqi exiles who, despite disparate ideologies, stood united in their hatred of Mr. Hussein.

Then there is the small issue of American policy. “Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong,” Mr. Makiya said. “The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation.”

At Brandeis, Mr. Makiya is exploring all these themes in a class this semester on — what else — post-invasion Iraq.

Because of the course, Mr. Makiya said he did not intend to work full time on the book until summer. For now, his days are consumed by his teaching duties and his obligations to the Iraq Memory Foundation, a nonprofit group he founded to record the brutalities of Mr. Hussein’s rule.

In the living room, eight hard drives contain scans of some of the 11 million pages of government documents collected by the foundation. Mr. Makiya stumbled across some of the documents himself, in abandoned offices in Baghdad after the invasion. They range from birth certificates of Baath Party members to school records to military paperwork.

The foundation has shared some documents with the Iraqi court set up by the Americans to try Mr. Hussein and his aides. Yet, Mr. Makiya refers to Dec. 30, 2006, the day Mr. Hussein was hanged, as “one of the worst days of my life.”

“It was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster,” Mr. Makiya said, his voice rising. “I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of everything I had been working for and hoping for.”

The tribunal did little to expose the all-encompassing cruelty of the Baath Party, Mr. Makiya said. And in failing to control an execution chamber filled with seething Shiite officials and policemen, the Iraqi government “actually succeeded in making Saddam look good in the eyes of the Arab world.”

He added, “Just like everything about the war, it was an opportunity wasted.”

Mustafa Kadhimi, the Baghdad director of the Iraq Memory Foundation, said Mr. Makiya’s faith in his homeland was wavering.

“When Saddam fell, Kanan started to discover many things he didn’t have before in his mind,” Mr. Kadhimi said one afternoon in his office inside the Green Zone. “Kanan is really shocked about what’s going on the ground. He’s starting to lose his hope that we can build a new Iraq, a real Iraq.”

Last summer, Mr. Makiya, who studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed a sweeping urban renewal project to Iraqi officials on a trip to Baghdad. The idea was to create, in the heart of the city, a pedestrians-only green space of several miles.

“You’re talking about a massive rethinking of the city,” Mr. Makiya said, waving his hand across a satellite map of Baghdad hanging on one wall. “Someone has to keep dreaming.”

LIKE so many things in Iraq now, it would remain exactly that — a dream. Mr. Makiya had traveled to Baghdad intending to make his pitch to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But he met with lower-level officials instead. “There was terrible stuff going on in Baghdad,” he said, “and one did not feel right making a full presentation.”

The doorbell rang. Yoni Morse, Mr. Makiya’s former Brandeis student, had arrived, stomping through the snow with a bottle of wine from Israel. The two sat down at the dinner table with Mr. Makiya’s 12-year-old daughter, Sara, and his third wife, Wallada al-Sarraf. Spread before them were aromatic Iraqi dishes that Ms. Sarraf had cooked — chicken, rice, eggplant with yogurt.

Talk turned to the presidential race. Mr. Morse mentioned the pressure that Hillary Rodham Clinton was facing to apologize for her Senate vote authorizing President Bush to go to war.

Mr. Makiya stared into his glass of red wine. “That’s so Maoist,” he said. “People shouldn’t feel the need to apologize. What is there to apologize for?”

Our Echoes Come From You

By RORY STEWART
Published: March 24, 2007
Afghanistan is now both more and less than a nation. Dialects of its official language are spoken from Iran to India. Its greetings and rituals are recognizable in Chechnya. Kabuli woodwork incorporates motifs from Syria, the Mughal Empire and pre-Islamic Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, I heard a song from a mystical order, founded in Afghanistan, which was played by musicians from the borders of Nepal.

But Afghanistan is internally fragmented. It contains diverse Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik and Baluch people, who dominate the neighboring ‘stans.’ The Pashtun majority was split with Pakistan in the 19th century. The recent civil war has eroded nationhood further.

Government policy must respond to this fragmented pluralism. The myriad social organizations, histories and experiences of isolated Afghan communities should be liberated, and the state should become less centralized. This is because Afghans do not want to be ruled by an overbearing, alien government, and the civil service does not have the capacity to govern effectively across the country.

Devolution, however, should be counterbalanced by a new idea of a nation. President Hamid Karzai has embraced ethnic diversity in his elaborate Uzbek robes and Pashtun prayer beads. He must rebuild Kabul as a national symbol. He needs a new unifying definition of Afghanistan to replace the old and still powerful myth of jihad against foreign occupation.

Afghanistan is defined by its organic relationship to wider Muslim Asia. It is a barren country that first flourished as a trading station, connecting Central Asia, Iran and Pakistan, taking silk to Rome and cotton to China. It is historically entrepreneurial, adept at exploiting foreign financial support and finding varied irregular incomes. It is now supported by the cash of four million recently returned refugees and many remittances. Afghan carpets, tiles and calligraphy are attractive to neighboring markets because they draw on a regional tradition. Afghanistan should benefit from the overland trade between its resource-rich or rapidly growing neighbors.

This trade can be developed by increasing the United States investment in building roads. A year ago, it took nearly a day to get from Kabul to Peshawar, Pakistan — which was the time it took in 1933. Now the journey can be done in half the time.

But Kabul airport, which could easily make money, is pathetic; imports are taxed 15 times as they move from the borders to the capital; exports are crippled by cumbersome regulations and transportation costs.

Karzai’s largest problem lies with his Muslim neighbors, Pakistan and Iran. He must use everything that Afghanistan shares with these countries: linguistically, historically, culturally and religiously to charm, outwit and influence them. He should do the same throughout the Islamic world. The Middle East has never been so wealthy or so generous. Yet Afghanistan has failed to win its financial support.

The United States must, like Karzai, approach Afghanistan consistently as part of a wider region. There are identical tribal and political groups on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, separated only by colonial line. We emphasize democracy and human rights and pursue an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, but we support Pervez Musharraf, a military ruler, who takes a political, negotiated approach to the same groups in Pakistan. As a result of this schizophrenia, Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders base themselves in Pakistan and attack our interests from there.

Actions in one country spread quickly to neighbors. The invasion of Iraq disturbed Iran, then the election of a Shiite government emboldened it to finance other Shiite groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Concessions to India frighten Pakistan into financing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Our response to the Taliban angers Muslims in Europe and Indonesia. Yet Afghanistan’s influence can also be positive. Shiite-Sunni violence has spread from Pakistan to Iraq. But the Murad Khane district in central Kabul, which contains five Shiite and Sunni ethnic groups, has, like the rest of Afghanistan, recently avoided sectarian violence.

This year is the 800th anniversary of the poet Rumi, who was born in Afghanistan, traveled through Central Asia, Persia and Arabia and died in Turkey, without being aware of leaving a single country. Tens of millions can recite his poetry. His line applies well to Afghanistan:

“Ma chu kuhim o sada dar ma ze tust.”

“We are mountains, our echoes are from you.”

Rory Stewart’s latest book is “The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq.” He runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul and is a guest columnist this month.

Views on globalization studied

Staff Writer -
2007-03-23 09:45:44

Enhancing trade relations between economically advanced states and developing countries would further global security in the future, as long as the advanced states protect themselves in the meantime from negative influences, a nationally recognized strategic thinker said during a lecture Wednesday.

Thomas Barnett spoke at the University Center Auditorium and shared his views on the current and the future state of global relations.

Barnett’s lecture began with a discussion of the various stances prominent 21st century thinkers take on the issue of globalization. The first was of political scientist Samuel Huntington, who contends that some states will never become players in the global economy. The second was of Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times who holds the opposite view that though some people still have not entered the global economy, eventually they will.

Barnett took Friedman’s view one step further in defining his view on the future of globalization.

“Some have it (globalization) now. Some don’t. And it’s inevitable that when the spread happens, it will generate conflict if not approached properly,” Barnett said.

Barnett backed his prediction by discussing past conflicts that resulted from globalization. He cited the historical threat of globalization on traditional, male-dominated societies. Globalization subtly reconfigured the conventional hierarchy of men as leaders and disproportionately empowered women. This trend has resulted in great conflict in countries where cultural tensions have led to violence and death, Barnett said.

He proceeded to map globalization’s future conflicts around the world. He labeled all economically advanced countries the “Functioning Core” and other countries the “Non-Integrating Gap.” The “Core” consists mainly of the United States, Western European countries, China, Japan, Russia and Australia.

Most of developing countries occupy regions in South America, Africa, most of Asia and the Middle East. All of the “Core” countries are linked to the global economy and follow rules of international trade, while the “Gap” does not.

Barnett said the “Gap” has been reducing in size as globalization is slowly spreading. However, since many terrorists have come from “Gap” countries, he said one of the best ways to move toward reducing terrorism and peacefully entering globalization is for developing nations to form alliances with “seam states,” or countries that are on the border of the “Gap.”

Barnett said three things are needed for this to be accomplished. First, he said, “Core” countries must improve their ability to withstand and mitigate 9/11-like “system perturbations.” His second point was that the “Core” must discretely filter out the “Gap’s” worst exports — such as pandemics, narcotics and terrorism — without affecting human migration trends.

“It is essential to keep immigration as wide open as politically feasible,” he said.

Barnett’s third point was to enhance and protect the “Core’s” security.

“Shrink the ‘Gap’ by exporting security to the worst sinkholes located there,” he said.

Making these countries stable, he said, will bring more investment to the global economy and create stronger linkages with the outside world. This can eventually create conditions to stabilize most countries, Barnett said.

The final result will be reduced international violence, when countries would become reliant on one another for economic prosperity and have reasons to avoid conflict, he said.

Barnett also noted that, since the end of the Cold War, U.S. military deployments have been in “Gap” countries.

David Jenkins, a junior in computer engineering, said in an interview after the lecture that Barnett’s ideas are pragmatic.

“His message was eye-opening. If all countries can become globalized, then war would decrease so much. That seems realistic.”

We have met the enemy -- and it's our bureaucracy
San Francisco Chronicle March 22 2007
Newt Gingrich
Could our bureaucracy be our own worse enemy in the war on terrorism? Looking at the way our government functions in Iraq and Afghanistan, you might well conclude that it might be.

Ask any of the commanders in charge or previously in charge and they'll say that for long-term success, civilian instruments of power are more important than the combat elements. And yet, our greatest failures have been in non-combat power: intelligence, diplomacy, economic aid, information operations; civilian support operations. Failures in these areas are among the major reasons why we are not winning the war in Iraq.

A recent report outlined routine incompetence in the missions most essential to peace and stability in Iraq: building and training an Iraqi police force. And our reconstruction efforts are pathetically slow.

In Afghanistan, it has taken us more than five years to complete a 300-mile stretch of road. It's no wonder that the only form of commerce blooming in Afghanistan is poppy production.

And in Iraq, it was estimated that with an infusion of U.S. dollars, we could jump start more than 150 old and new Iraqi factories, creating tens of thousands of jobs. One is a fertilizer plant north of Baghdad. It used to furnish all fertilizer for the ministry of agriculture. It has produced none since Baghdad fell. As a result, crop production has decreased 50 percent, according to the Pentagon's analysis.



Video: Thoughts on
the Iraq War - Dec'06

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Instead of cutting through red tape to get this and other industries up and running, Congress and the Pentagon bureaucracy are squabbling over where the money should come from and who should get the contract.

This is a Hurricane Katrina level of dysfunction. It's no wonder U.S. forces are bogged down in a decaying mess in Afghanistan and in an obviously unacceptable mess in Iraq.

This failure of the non-combat bureaucracies cannot be solved in Iraq. The heart of the problem is in Washington. And while the president and Congress bicker over sending 21,500 more military personnel to Iraq, nothing is getting done to reform our failing civilian instruments of national power.

Changing this state of affairs will be difficult. But, if we start now, victory is still possible in Iraq. The president could start today by appointing a retired four-star general or admiral to be his deputy chief of staff in charge of implementing operations in Iraq. He should be from a military background because the combat military is the only entity in Iraq that is functioning. This culture of success needs to be imposed upon our civilian instruments of power to force them to work. A bureaucrat will be too sympathetic to the bureaucratic process to insist on the changes that need to be made to achieve the desired outcome. He should have real authority to drive the system across the different bureaucracies on a daily basis. There will be resistance within but America can no longer afford to accommodate failure.

President Bush should also establish a War Cabinet, which would meet once a week to review the measures being used to gauge success, and resolve failures and enforce decisions. The president should chair the War Cabinet personally and his deputy chief of staff for Iraq implementation should prepare the agenda for the weekly review and meeting.

In addition, the State Department is too small, too undercapitalized and too untrained for the demands of winning in Iraq and in the broader war against the irreconcilable wing of Islam. There needs to be a profound rethinking of the culture and systems of the State Department so it can be operationally effective. This will likely require a substantially higher budget to implement. However, simply pouring more money into the broken system is not enough.

The Agency for International Development, as well, is hopelessly unsuited to the new requirements of economic assistance and development and should be rethought. After all, the Marshall Plan was as important as NATO in containing the Soviet Empire. We do not have that capability today.

Additionally, Congress must fix our broken acquisition process. There is a model of success that already exists. Provisional Reconstruction Teams -- led by American military commanders -- are allowed to dole out small amounts of money to get jobs completed quickly without going through red tape. Aside from completing jobs faster, this gives American commanders leverage with local communities. Congress should expand the amount of money these teams can spend.

Overall, the entire acquisition process in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be overhauled to speed up the time between when a reconstruction initiative is approved and when it actually begins. It's true that this may cause some waste and some fraud, but that risk is overwhelmed by the benefits in speed toward a successful reconstruction effort.

We can still win in Iraq. But doing so requires winning the war against the bureaucracy here at home. After all, if our government doesn't work, how can we expect to help the Iraqis create one that does?

Newt Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pace Calls for Closer Military Ties Between China, U.S.
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
BEIJING, March 23, 2007 – Military-to-military contacts will help China and the United States avoid misunderstandings and help build greater stability and prosperity in Asia, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said here today.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke during a news conference at the American embassy. He arrived in China yesterday and went into a full plate of meetings with Chinese military and foreign ministry officials.
Pace said military transparency is key to helping Chinese and American military leaders build understanding. "The biggest fear I have for the future (of U.S.-Chinese relations) is miscalculation and misunderstanding based on misinformation," he said during the news conference.
The American and Chinese military leaders also spoke about establishing a hotline between Beijing and the Pentagon. This would be another tool to help avoid miscalculations, Pace said.
The chairman said he came to listen to Chinese military leaders and work with them "to find better ways to provide for the security and prosperity of 1.3 billion Chinese and 300 million Americans."
"Basically, what I am looking for it to find ways that the military in China and the military in U.S. can foster understanding between our militaries in a way that will help foster understanding between our countries," Pace said. "(This will allow) us to become partners for the future."
He said the meetings were candid and cordial, with a good, open dialogue. He said his Chinese counterpart, Army Gen. Liang Guanglie, made a number of suggestions for military-to-military measures that could help build trust and confidence between the two nations.
The chairman said he enthusiastically supports Liang's proposals and will work with Chinese officials to speed their implementation. One is an exchange program for young officers and military academy cadets and midshipmen. Another proposal will expand search-and-rescue exercises between the nations. A third looks toward cooperating in humanitarian operations.
Chinese officials brought up the subject of Taiwan in each of the meetings with the chairman. The Chinese fear that Taiwan will seek independence. "It's clearly a fundamental issue for the Chinese government, and we should respect the fundamental nature of that issue," Pace said.
President Bush has succinctly expressed American policy in regard to Taiwan, and the chairman reaffirmed that policy for the Chinese leaders. "As a nation, we support a One China policy, the Three Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act and a peaceful resolution to the issue," he said. "President Bush has also said he does not support Taiwan's independence."
The United States is determined to find "the proper, peaceful solution to the Taiwan issue," Pace said.
Pace called on Chinese leaders to foster transparency. He used the Chinese anti-satellite test as an example for the need. He said the test surprised the international community and caused confusion.
"It wasn't clear what their intent (with the test) was," the chairman said. "When the intent isn't clear, and when there are surprises and you confuse people, you raise suspicions. I think that is one area where we can work harder between the two militaries to make sure ... we tell each other what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it (and) what our intents are, so that it is clear."
The chairman said that when he assesses any nation militarily, he looks at the country's capacity and intent.
"Clearly, both China and the United States have enormous military capacity," he said. "But equally clearly, neither country has the intent to go to war with the other country. So absent intent, I don't find threat."
The danger is a miscalculation on either side, he said. He said China and the United States need to focus on fostering information flows that allow individuals, institutions and countries to understand each other better. Individuals and nations need to understand what motivates others.
Understanding why a country puts a policy in place is just as important as what that policy is, he noted. "Over time, you build up trust and confidence that allows, then, for more transparency," Pace said.
All nations will continue to have military secrets, and not every program is explained in a military budget. "Even best friends keep something from each other," he said. "This is not about being completely open about everything."
The Chinese military budget for 2007 will grow 17 percent, and that has caused critics to questions Chinese motives. "It is not only about how (many) resources are being put into the budget, but what is that money buying, and what is the intent of that capability," Pace said. "The more we are able to share the more comfortable we will all be."
Pace said there were no tensions in his talks with Chinese leaders. "I have been welcomed as a friend and I have been treated as a friend, to include speaking very openly and candidly, as you would to a friend, about things you agree on and things that are obstacles," he said. "Then we talked about how, as military men, we can help our countries work our way through those obstacles."
Pace's next stop is Shenyang, east of Beijing, where he will view Chinese air and ground capabilities.