From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/4426

Bolstering Moderate Muslims
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
April 17, 2007

When I suggest that radical Muslims are the problem and that moderate Muslims are the solution, the nearly inevitable retort from most people is: "What moderate Muslims?"

"Where are the anti-Islamists' demonstrations against terror?" they ask me. "What are they doing to combat Islamists? What have they done to reassess Islamic law?"

My response: Moderate Muslims do exist. But, of course, they constitute a very small movement when compared to the Islamist onslaught. This means that the American government and other powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting with, funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating those brave Muslims who, at personal risk, stand up and confront the totalitarians.

A just-published study from the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, methodically takes up and thinks through this concept. Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell Schwartz, and Peter Sickle grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate Muslims to grow and prosper.

They start with the argument that "structural reasons play a large part" in the rise of radical and dogmatic interpretations of Islam in recent years. One of those reasons is that over the last three decades, the Saudi government has generously funded the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam. Saudi efforts have promoted "the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world," permitting the Islamists to develop powerful intellectual, political, and other networks. "This asymmetry in organization and resources explains why radicals, a small minority in almost all Muslim countries, have influence disproportionate to their numbers."

The study posits a key role for Western countries here: "Moderates will not be able to successfully challenge radicals until the playing field is leveled, which the West can help accomplish by promoting the creation of moderate Muslim networks."

If this sounds familiar, perhaps it is because of a similar scenario in the late 1940s, when Soviet-backed organizations threatened Europe. The four authors provide a helpful potted history of American network-building in the early Cold War years — in part to show that such an effort can succeed against a totalitarian enemy, in part to suggest ideas for tackling contemporary problems. (One example — "a left hook to the Kremlin is the best blow" — implies that Muslims can most effectively overcome Islamism.)

The authors review American efforts to fight Islamism and find these lacking, especially with regard to strengthening moderates. Washington, they write, "does not have a consistent view on who the moderates are, where the opportunities for building networks among them lie, and how best to build the networks."

NED chief Carl Gershman
They are only too right. The American government has a disastrously poor record in this regard, with an embarrassing history of accepting twin delusions: on the one hand, thinking Islamists are moderates, and on the other hand, hoping to win them over. Such government figures as FBI director Robert Mueller, State Department undersecretary Karen Hughes, and National Endowment for Democracy chief Carl Gershman wrong-headedly insist on consorting with the enemy.
Instead, the RAND study promotes four partners: secularists, liberal Muslims, moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis. It particularly emphasizes the "emerging transnational network of laicist and secularist individuals, groups, and movements," and correctly urges cooperation with these neglected friends.

In contrast, the study proposes de-emphasizing the Middle East, and particularly the Arab world. Because this area "offers less fertile ground for moderate network and institution building than other regions of the Muslim world," it urges Western governments to focus on Muslims in Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and in the Western diaspora, and to help make their ideas available in Arabic. This novel stratagem defies a centuries-old pattern of influence emanating from the Middle East, but it is well worth a try.

Even the generally hardheaded RAND study sometimes lets down its guard. Dismayingly, the quartet refrains from condemning Washington for holding talks with lawful Islamists even as it cautiously endorses European governments treating some Islamists as partners. It mistakenly characterizes the American-based Progressive Muslim Union as promoting secular Islam, when it was really another Islamist organization - but with a hip tone. (No other Islamists dared host a feature called "Sex and the Umma.")

Although Building Moderate Muslim Networks is not the final word on the subject, it marks a major step toward the systematic reconfiguration of Washington's policy for combating Islamism. The study's meaty contents, clear analysis, and bold recommendations usefully move the debate forward, offering precisely the in-depth strategizing that Westerners urgently need.

Mr. Pipes, who is the director of the Middle East Forum, resumes his column this week after taking time off to teach a course titled "Islam and Politics" at Pepperdine University.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/4426

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1682

Separate But Equal

by Asaf Romirowsky
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 17, 2007

In his recent address to Congress, King Abdullah II of Jordan dramatically quoted FDR's famous "four freedoms speech" as a means to describe American foreign policy as freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. The goal of the speech was to call for greater US involvement in facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. What is significant about this call is the Palestinian conundrum that Adbullah himself faces in Jordan.

Unlike the Palestinian cause in the West Bank, Lebanon, or Syria, the cause in Jordanian refugee camps is not as plastered all over the place as in other Arab countries where Palestinians reside. Thanks in part to an efficient secret police force, the Hashemite cult of personality remains dominant, at least in public. But Jordan's demographics continue to work against Abdullah and his dynasty.

There are approximately 3 million Palestinians living in Jordan, comprising about 2% of the total population. Of these, around 60% have Jordanian ID cards. There is a successful Palestinian upper and middle class in Jordan, but predictably an exclusive Palestinian identity seems strongest among the approximately one million refugees without Jordanian citizenship and among those who live in the squalid refugee camps. Politically speaking, Jordan has seen an active participation from their Palestinians and, since 1950, every government formed in Jordan included 2-4 ministers of Palestinian origin as well as a Palestinian Prime Minister - Sulaiman al–Nabulsi in the summer of 1956.

As in many places in the Muslim world, as well as in places with substantial Muslim minorities, it is the younger generation that is becoming more and more Islamist in its ideology while maintaining a strong Palestinian identity. Ominously, we are hearing more cries for an intifada from them on a daily basis.

In practice, all factions within Palestinian society saw Arafat as their leader for many years. The so called "cohesiveness" amongst Palestinians is now non-existent and Palestinians are now divided more than ever by region, by tribe and clan, and by religious outlook. The acrimony between Palestinians that Arafat managed to paper over is now on display as a civil war develops in the Gaza Strip. As journalist Nicholas Jubber writes, "the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are divided by their unequal economies, distinct dialects, and cultural animosities forged by their pre-1967 experiences under separate regimes—Nasser's Egypt and King Hussein's Jordan." In terms of an extended social network, West Bankers do not rely on their "Palestinian brothers" in Gaza but rather on their families and friends in Jordan. And Gazans do the same thing with Egypt.

From a political point of view, the administrative infrastructure that the Egyptians left when the Gaza Strip was captured in 1967 was very different from the one left by the Jordanians. When Rashad al-Shawwa, a Gaza businessman, was appointed by Israel as the new mayor in the summer of 1971, he proposed to implement King Hussein's "United Arab Kingdom," a plan to unite Gaza and the West Bank under one governing system. In turn, Shawwa was severely criticized for even putting forth the idea. As Nicholas Jubber notes, "heavy Jordanian investment in the West Bank helped to establish a better system of infrastructure there, and the economy is more advanced. Among the people of Gaza, accusations about the alleged snobbery of West Bank Palestinians are common." These conditions were not significantly changed during the decades of direct Israeli rule.

More ancient animosities are also on display. The on-going intifada revived tribal rivalries which originated in the days where the leading families of Jerusalem and Hebron, Nashashibis, Hussainis and Khalidis, controlled the agenda for all of Ottoman and British Palestine. As Jonathan Schanzer writes, "despite a recent flood of books and articles attesting to long-standing patriotism, the Palestinian Arab community has a longer tradition of factionalism and disunity. Indeed, it was tribalism and clan rivalries that rendered the Palestinian nationalist movement ineffectual against the Zionist movement during the first half of the 20th century." With the failure of national politics, these same families have returned as leading institutions for Palestinians. Success means choosing the right team.

The battles in the streets of Gaza today illustrate the tensions between secularism and religion in the Palestinian areas arena, a microcosm of the tensions afflicting the entire Islamic world. Arafat emerged as a secular leader precisely during the heyday of other nationalist figures like Nasser and Saddam Hussein. The Iranian Revolution changed this irrevocably, and helped trigger Islamic revivals that have or threaten to undo secular regimes, mostly tyrannical, throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds. Among Palestinians the choices are stark. Hamas represents the Islamist agenda and Fatah represents the secular lifestyle most Palestinians embraced during the later 20th century. But the Palestinian example shows that the game is basically over. The newly created Palestinian Unity government sees secular Fatah leader Abbas reduced to parity or worse with his Hamas rival Khaled Mashal. The clever wording of the document allows both Hamas and Fatah to claim that neither party had totally abandoned its traditional position. And the oblique tone was also intended to appease the Americans and Europeans. After all, the main goal of the new coalition is to get the international community to resume the flow of financial aid. In this, it has evidently been successful.

True co-existence between Palestinians under Hamas/Fatah and Israelis won't happen until Palestinian society experiences a breakthrough in democratic thought and values, one that accepts Israel's permanence and also allows for a middle class to grow, acknowledging that honest relations between Israel and Palestinians are normal and natural. Although Jordan under Abdullah could serve as a positive example for how Palestinians could become assimilated in an Arab country, the desire to keep the Palestinians in their dire state is greater. In the end, the ongoing factional violence which includes kidnappings and assassinations now threatens to return the streets of Gaza to a state of war. And the so-called unity government is just a tactical truce to be held until one party believes unity no longer serves its interests.

Asaf Romirowsky is a Campus Watch Associate Fellow for the Middle East Forum and the Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1682

The question that comes to mind is 'how do we quantify and qualify our allies in Iraq?
=======================
Fighting to Win


Now Is Hardly the Time to End Our Support and Abandon Our Iraqi Allies
By Frederick W. Kagan
Posted: Monday, April 16, 2007

ARTICLES
The Weekly Standard
Publication Date: April 23, 2007


Resident Scholar Frederick W. Kagan

As Congress again takes up the issue of support for our troops fighting in Iraq, members should have the decency to take account of the successes those troops have fought for and achieved in recent weeks. Much of the support in the Democratic caucus for cutting off funds for Iraq comes from a conviction that the war is irretrievably lost. One could be excused for thinking that in the fall of 2006, when sectarian violence seemed to be cycling out of control against the backdrop of a wrong-headed U.S. strategy. But President Bush has adopted a new strategy, put in place a new command team, and provided new resources for the effort, and the situation has begun to improve. Failure remains possible, as it always does in war, but the possibility of victory has grown significantly. Prospects for success are brightest, moreover, in the struggle against al Qaeda--the challenge that many opponents of the war claim is America s only interest in Iraq. It would be the height of folly to cut off support for the war effort just as it is beginning to show glimmers of hope in a struggle central to the safety of all Americans.

There is no question that Iraq has become the central front for al Qaeda in the world today. Thousands of foreign fighters flow along recruiting networks that span the Muslim world and into Iraq to attack our soldiers and the Iraqi people. Most opponents of continuing the war admit that fighting these committed terrorists remains a national priority for America. Some argue that an American withdrawal would reduce Iraq s attractiveness to al Qaeda, reducing the number of terrorists and the threat they pose. Many believe that it is possible to fight al Qaeda using special forces and long-range missiles without engaging in the "civil war" they believe is still raging in Iraq. Neither proposition is true.

Qaeda fighters flow into Iraq because we are there, to be sure. But they do not confine themselves to fighting us.

Al Qaeda fighters flow into Iraq because we are there, to be sure. But they do not confine themselves to fighting us. They also work to establish control over the Sunni regions in Iraq, to impose their version of Islam, and to terrorize and punish Iraqis who resist them in any way. When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in abject defeat, the radical Islamists who had fought them did not lay down their guns. They undermined and destroyed the Afghan government and went on to seize power. Al Qaeda in Iraq aims for no less. They will not stop fighting when we leave; they will redouble their efforts to take control of the country.

We will not be able to resist this development simply by using targeted strikes either with Special Forces troops or long-range missiles. Al Qaeda's approach in Iraq is different from its approach in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) does not establish remote training camps; it mixes among the population. It does not remain aloof from the fighting between tribes and sects; it encourages and benefits from that fighting. It uses sectarian violence to drive Shiites out of mixed areas and terrorizes the Sunnis who are left into supporting it. We have seen this process at work in Diyala province and Baghdad. In Anbar, AQI used Sunni resentment at their community s loss of power in Iraq to create safe havens, but even there they found it necessary to unleash violence against Sunni hosts whom they found lacking in piety and commitment. Such problems cannot be resolved by Special Forces raids from over the horizon. They must be solved by convincing the Sunni and Shiite populations that we will help them fight and defeat AQI. That is precisely what has started to happen over the course of the past several months.

Al Qaeda's atrocities in Anbar have alienated a large and growing segment of the Sunni population there. A tribal confederation including two-thirds of the major tribes has formed to combat al Qaeda. The sheikhs of this confederation are sending their sons to join the local police formations, which six months ago could hardly find a single local recruit. Iraqi police in Anbar have fought valiantly even as al Qaeda has attempted to derail this effort with new and horrific attacks, including using chlorine gas bombs.

Nor is this process limited to Anbar. Across Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites are coming to recognize that al Qaeda is an enemy that is worse and more dangerous than any other, and that American and Iraqi government forces are their best potential allies. A new group of local Sunni leaders have begun to reach out to the central government, offering the hope that, with months of careful and patient negotiations, the Sunni insurgency that has festered since the invasion might begin to wind down. Iraq, lest we forget, is an ally in the war on terror--more Iraqis have died fighting al Qaeda than the soldiers and civilians of almost any other country. The Iraqi determination to continue that fight is strengthening. Now is hardly the time to end our support and abandon our Iraqi allies.

Critics of the war also argue that the Sunni insurgency is no longer the central problem in Iraq, that sectarian violence has become the greatest and most intractable challenge. Sunni-Shiite hatred is centuries old, we are told, and American troops should not be put between hostile factions engaged in primordial violence that will spiral inevitably out of control. Facts on the ground do not support this conclusion. At the beginning of the current Baghdad Security Plan, both Moktada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leaders of the two dominant Shiite militias, ordered their followers to support the plan and stop conducting attacks against Sunnis. Sectarian attacks, also known as extra-judicial killings, dropped dramatically. In recent weeks they have risen somewhat as Sadr s militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, has begun to fragment and rogue elements have resumed their attacks. But even so, the levels remain below what they were before the Baghdad offensive began in February. This pattern is the opposite of the one we saw last year during Operations Together Forward I and II in Baghdad, when sectarian killings reached new peaks a few weeks after the start of those undertakings.

The fact that extra-judicial killings dropped when Sadr and Hakim ordered them to do so shows that the sectarian violence is not a reflection of primordial and unreasoning hatred, but rather a calculated use of force by particular individuals to advance their own agendas. If Iraqis really hated each other to the extent that an endless cycle of killing was inevitable, they would not so readily have followed the orders of their leaders.

Hurriya is a neighborhood in central Baghdad that was once mixed and is now predominantly Shiite. Jaysh al-Mahdi fighters have been working to drive out the remaining Sunni families. When new U.S. forces arrived in the neighborhood and established Joint Security Stations (JSS), they sent out word and a telephone number, asking for tips. In a story that became national news, a Sunni woman called that number and reported that three Shiite gunmen were attempting to drive her family out. American forces responded and captured two of the gunmen, but the third escaped and managed to kill the woman the next day. The story was prominently reported as evidence of the failure of the Baghdad Security Plan, with the added detail that her family left the area the next day. In truth, as the soldiers manning the Hurriya JSS told me in early April, the family left only to attend her funeral and is still living in its house. One would have expected the tip-line to dry up, of course, since the Mahdi Army had proven that it could punish informants. On the contrary. Tips to that unit have increased dramatically, and it is now receiving tips even from Shiites about IEDs that have been placed to kill U.S. soldiers, and about Mahdi Army efforts to terrorize Sunnis. Why? Because the Iraqis in Hurriya have had enough. They resent the fighters, Sunni or Shiite, who bring violence and death to their neighborhood. They want to help those, American or Iraqi, who can protect them and bring them peace.

The key to this change in attitude, which is not confined to Hurriya, but is spreading throughout Baghdad, lies in the establishment of trust between Iraqis and Americans. In the Hurriya JSS, Iraqi and American soldiers live together in a single building. They eat together, plan together, analyze intelligence and tips together, and fight together. The locals know that they are there, and know that they can respond quickly. They trust them, both Americans and Iraqis, to try to protect them from violence. This trust comes from the permanent presence of American forces in the neighborhood and from the belief that they will be there for a while. As any policeman can attest, trust is essential to getting good information about bad things happening in a neighborhood. It is as essential to fighting terrorism as it is to fighting crime. And it can happen only when American and Iraqi forces work together to protect the population they live among.

The challenges that face the American and Iraqi effort to restore stability are still daunting.

These initial positive signs are only that--indicators that things are finally moving in the right direction. The challenges that face the American and Iraqi effort to restore stability are still daunting. Questions remain about the ability or willingness of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his cabinet to establish a government seen as legitimate by all Iraqis. Al Qaeda is certainly fighting hard, and the increase in spectacular attacks in recent weeks reflects a concerted AQI effort to restart the sectarian violence. It also reflects a desperate attempt to regain a foothold in Anbar and other Sunni areas that have turned against terrorism. The media report each suicide attack as a defeat for the United States, which is exactly how al Qaeda wishes these attacks to be perceived. But this enemy is so inhuman that it regards suicide bombers in the same way it regards mortar rounds or Katyusha rockets--just another weapon in its arsenal to be deployed as necessary. We do ourselves a disservice by giving such prominence to these attacks, gruesome as they are. All they really mean is that the enemy is fighting back, as enemies do.

Americans have gotten into a bad habit of believing that the outcome of every war is predictable--that wars are either short, decisive, and victorious, like Desert Storm, or long, painful, and futile like Vietnam. The truth is that the outcome of most wars remains in doubt until they are very nearly over. Until late 1864, it looked as though the Union might well lose the Civil War. Within a year, Lincoln had triumphed. The conflict in Iraq is central to our foreign policy, indeed to our well-being. Surely we must keep fighting to win as long as victory remains possible. And it is possible, although not certain, that we will win in Iraq. Right now, the signs are more hopeful than they have been in many months. It would be a tragedy for America and for Iraq to abandon the fight just as the possibility of success began to emerge.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.

April 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Driving Up the Price of Blood

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Perhaps the most surprising thing about President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan isn’t that he has presided over the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who are members of black African tribes.

It is that President Bashir’s own family appears to come from an African tribe. Yes, Mr. Bashir has led a genocide against people like himself.

As best I can establish from my contacts in Sudan, Mr. Bashir’s grandfather was from the Falata tribe and grew up in Nigeria. He migrated to Sudan to work on the Gezira irrigation project and settled in a village called Um Audam.

Then the grandfather was killed in a dispute, and Mr. Bashir’s father and grandmother moved to Hash Banaga in the Arab north. Mr. Bashir grew up speaking Arabic, so in that sense he is Arab — but by heritage he is Falata and a black African.

Americans often misunderstand genocide, assuming it is impossible to stop because it is driven by millenniums of racial or ethnic hatreds. But historically genocide has mostly been rooted in cool, calculated decisions by national leaders that the most convenient way to solve a problem or stay in power is to scapegoat and destroy a particular group. So it has been in most past genocides, and so it is again in Darfur.

Nor is Mr. Bashir the only person in such a position. The on-and-off leader of the janjaweed militias, Musa Hilal, has unleashed his soldiers with particular brutality on another black African tribe, the Zaghawa. You can drive for hours through Zaghawa regions of Darfur where every single village has been burned; only corpses are left, and some of those have been stuffed into wells to poison them.

Yet, according to people from Musa Hilal’s hometown, his own mother is Zaghawa.

Likewise, the rebels of Darfur have sometimes turned on their own tribes — raping and murdering their own people, or those of allied tribes.

So what motivates these people? Not ancient hatreds, but greed. They are not Taliban-style extremists, but rather amoral, ruthless, calculating opportunists.

Mr. Bashir and others in his government faced a genuine problem back in 2003: African tribes (including the Zaghawa) were staging a rebellion in Darfur. Calling in the army to fight the rebels was problematic because many soldiers in the regular army are from African tribes in Darfur and might not be reliable in combat against their brethren.

So Mr. Bashir adopted an approach he had already used against rebels in southern Sudan. He armed irregular militias and gave them license to wipe out civilians and depopulate large areas. This would deprive the rebels of their base of support and send a warning to any other tribe in Sudan that might contemplate a rebellion.

Presumably Mr. Bashir guessed that foreigners might not like the idea of mass murder. But he could deny visas to prying journalists, and he had Chinese diplomatic protection at the United Nations.

So after weighing the pros and cons, Mr. Bashir decided that genocide was the simplest counterinsurgency method. Some of the marauders were driven by prejudice, and Arab attackers routinely shouted racial epithets against blacks. But the leaders —— they were just cynics. Musa Hilal and some of the rebel commanders seemed to view murder and rape simply as paths to accumulate power and livestock.

All this makes genocide easier to stop than people imagine. Where it arises from a weighing of costs and benefits, then it is possible for outsiders to impose additional costs and change the outcome. That’s what we need to do. The U.S. should lead other countries in pushing hard on all sides for a negotiated peace agreement among the warring factions, for that is ultimately the best hope to end the slaughter in Darfur and in neighboring areas in Chad and the Central African Republic.

I find President Bashir’s ruthlessness pretty easy to understand. What is harder to fathom is President Bush’s refusal to stand up to the genocide for four years. Why not impose a no-fly zone, why not hold an international conference on Darfur, why not invite survivors to the White House for a photo-op, why not give a prime-time speech about Darfur?

Perhaps the explanation for Mr. Bush’s passivity is the same as the explanation for Mr. Bashir’s brutality. Maybe Mr. Bush has made his calculations, looked at the number of calls and letters he gets about Darfur, weighed the pros and cons, and decided that Americans really don’t care enough about genocide to make him pay a major price for allowing it to continue.

You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof's blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.

Gates Visits Jordan to Thank Ally, Discuss Regional Concerns
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service
AMMAN, Jordan, April 16, 2007 – Iran and Iraq are set to be lead topics in discussions Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is slated to have with Jordanian leaders during a visit here.

Gates arrived here today to meet with leaders of this strong ally in the war on terror and thank them for the "incredible support that they're giving us both in Iraq and Afghanistan," a senior defense official traveling with Gates said.
Some 370 Jordanian troops are manning a field hospital in Afghanistan, and another 220-plus Jordanian servicemembers are performing a similar mission in Iraq. In addition, Jordan has trained 40,000 to 50,000 Iraqi national policemen at an Iraqi police academy in Jordan.
"Jordanians have for a long time been a very constructive influence (in the Middle East), and I look forward to continuing that," Gates said on the plane en route here from Washington.
During this visit, the secretary will meet with Jordan's King Abdallah and with Gen. Khaled Jamil al-Sarayrah, the country's chief of defense.
"I look forward to discussing with the King how we can contribute to his efforts and how the Jordanians can contribute to ours, not just in Iraq, but Lebanon, and the Israel-Palestinian peace process, and so on," Gates said.
Other topics of discussion for Gates and the Jordanian leaders are likely to include the half a million to 1 million Iraqi refugees Jordan is hosting that are posing a strain on the Jordanian people as well as its economic system, and the Jordanian-U.S. military-to-military relationship, the senior defense official said.
"The important message for the Jordanians is that regardless of what happens in Iraq, the United States is in the Middle East for the long term and has been for decades, and we will continue our strategic relationship with the military, as well as the Jordanian people," the official said.
The official also said Gates is interested in hearing Abdallah's take on recent Iranian activity, such as the detention of 15 British sailors and Marines and the impact of the March 24 U.N. Security Council vote imposing sanctions because Iran has refused to halt its uranium enrichment activities.
After leaving Jordan, Gates is scheduled to visit Egypt and Israel. As he travels through the Middle East, Gates intends to encourage regional leaders to bring Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his unity government more fully into the political landscape of the region, the official said.
Supporting Maliki's government is the best way to mitigate Iranian influence in the region, the official said. "We truly believe that's the most important way right now to mitigate Iranian pressure against not only us, but more importantly the Iraqi government and the coalition that's operating in Iraq," the official said.
The secretary will also be talking to the countries about how the United States can help them modify their defense strategies and "transition from the sort of post-Soviet dependency on conventional weaponry to something more expeditionary, something more related toward counterterrorism and the non-state actors that we are all working together against in the region," the official said.

Biographies: