Foreign Missionaries Find Fertile Ground in Europe
Singaporean Pastor Fires Up Staid Danes
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 11, 2007; A01

COPENHAGEN -- The "Amens!" flew like popcorn in hot oil as 120 Christian worshipers clapped and danced and praised Jesus as if He'd just walked into the room. In a country where about 2 percent of the population attend church regularly and many churches draw barely enough worshipers to fill a single pew, the Sunday morning service at this old mission hall was one rocking celebration.

In the middle of all the keyboards, drums and hallelujahs, Stendor Johansen, a blond Danish sea captain built like a 180-pound ice cube, sang along and danced, as he said, like a Dane -- without moving.

"The Danish church is boring," said Johansen, 45, who left the state-run Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church three years ago and joined this high-octane interdenominational church run by a missionary pastor from Singapore. "I feel energized when I leave one of these services."

The International Christian Community (ICC) is one of about 150 churches in Denmark that are run by foreigners, many from Africa, Asia and Latin America, part of a growing trend of preachers from developing nations coming to Western Europe to set up new churches or to try to reinvigorate old ones.

For centuries, when Europe was the global center of Christianity, millions of European missionaries traveled to other continents to spread their faith by establishing schools and churches. Now, with European church attendance at all-time lows and a dearth of preachers in the pulpits, thousands of "reverse missionaries" are flocking back, migrating from poor countries to rich ones to preach the Gospel where it has fallen out of fashion.

The phenomenon signals a fundamental shift in the power, style and geography of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most of its more than 2 billion adherents now live in the developing world. And as vast numbers of them migrate to Europe, as well as to the United States, they are filling pews and changing worship styles.

Churches in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, South Korea and the Philippines have sent thousands of missionaries to Europe to set up churches in homes, office buildings and storefronts. Officials from the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal church based in Nigeria, said they have 250 churches in Britain now and plan to create 100 more this year. Britain's largest church, run by a Nigerian pastor in London, attracts up to 12,000 people over three services every Sunday.

The trend is vivid in Denmark, where charismatic preachers from Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, Iran and Latin America have set up vibrant Protestant and Catholic churches.

'We Came Back to the West'
"When we became Christians in the East, we read the Bible and it said, 'Go out into the world and spread the Gospel,' " Pastor Ravi Chandran said to the congregation gathered at the ICC's hall in Copenhagen one recent Sunday morning. "And guess what? We came back to the West!"

Chandran, a youthful 42, grinned broadly as he looked out at the rainbow of worshipers.

"Can you say 'Amen' to that?" he asked, and Johansen, his wife and children joined the rest of the congregation in a thunderous "Amen!"

Back home after church, tucking into a lunch of traditional Danish open-faced sandwiches, Johansen said that for most of his life he hadn't bothered going to services at the "state church," as the Lutheran Church is known here.

"As kids, we were not allowed to make any noise on Sundays," he said. The church seemed to him to place a higher value on order and ancient traditions than on tending to the concerns of parishioners. "The church didn't add any value to me. It gave me nothing I could use in my day-to-day life."

Danish people joke that almost everyone in Denmark is Lutheran but almost no one is religious. On a typical Sunday morning, most of Denmark's 2,100 parish churches are lucky to attract 20 worshipers each.

Karsten Nissen, one of the country's 10 Lutheran bishops, said that a quarter to a third of all people in church in Copenhagen any given Sunday morning are attending a foreign-run service. "These churches are a gift to our Danish Lutheran Church," Nissen said. "They open our eyes to a more human way of being Christians. It's the way we were Christians 100 years ago -- a very simple way, a good way, a more pious way and a more open and happy way of worship."

Denmark's ambivalence on matters of faith spurred a national debate in 2003 after a Danish Lutheran priest admitted publicly that he didn't believe in God. Church officials suspended him for a month, but hundreds of sympathetic parishioners rallied to his defense, saying that a priest didn't have to believe in God to promote Christian values.

"This is a Christian country, but the population has forgotten what that means," said Bess Serner-Pedersen, who runs Alpha Denmark, a private group that offers adult courses in the basics of Christianity, including how to pray and read the Bible.

Serner-Pedersen said that since the 18th-century Enlightenment, which stressed reason and science as means of understanding the divine, European religious teaching has focused more on the intellectual than on the spiritual. "We have a country where the churches are talking to the mind, but we've forgotten that spirituality is about the heart as well," she said. "Our population is looking for churches that are more alive. We need these immigrant churches because they are bringing a message that we have forgotten."

Denmark is a wealthy nation of 5.5 million people that always scores near the top of surveys of the world's happiest nations. To Johansen, the problem is clear: "We're just too well-off in Europe." He earns a good salary working for the Danish shipping giant Maersk, skippering high-powered tugboats. He and his wife, Lene, a lawyer and teacher, have children ages 12, 10 and 7 months, with a minivan and bikes parked in the carport of their bright, sleekly designed home in an orderly suburb.

Johansen's work takes him all over the world, he said, and he has noticed much stronger religious faith in poorer societies. "What we call a crisis here is nothing compared to what people have to cope with in other parts of the world," he said. "We're basically rich and spoiled."

Over coffee and cakes, his friend Ib Johansen said European government leaders were partly to blame for the Continent's waning religious life. In his view, governments have zealously promoted the secular while regarding religious faith as a bit backward: "We're told, 'Grow up, man. Leave that behind. We are doing well now, we don't need God anymore.' "

U.S. Ambassador James P. Cain said that he and his family wanted to go to church shortly after they arrived in Denmark in the summer of 2005. But when they turned up for a scheduled Sunday service at a Danish Lutheran church, they found the door chained and padlocked. The next week, he said, they tried a different Lutheran church, where the entire attendance at the service was nine people -- his family and bodyguards, plus two Danes.

Cain said Denmark's lack of religious culture was partly to blame for last year's Muhammad cartoons controversy, in which a Danish paper published unflattering caricatures of Islam's most revered prophet, touching off Muslim fury around the world.

"That, for the first time in a generation, caused the Danes to realize that their loss of faith and their increasing secularism made it very difficult for them to understand, or even feel empathy for, people who felt offended by caricatures of religious images," Cain said.

'No Judging, No Doomsday Talk'
Stendor Johansen said he had all but given up on religion before he heard about Chandran three years ago. Johansen and his wife went to one of the pastor's Sunday services, then held in a hotel ballroom, and were thrilled. Chandran seemed completely different from staid Lutheran ministers -- not just because of his dark South Asian skin, but because of his sheer enthusiasm for God.

The room was filled to capacity, Johansen recalled. Africans, Asians, Europeans, Americans and Danes were dancing and singing and listening to Chandran preach in his engaging style on topics ranging from current events such as the Iraq war to the meaning of Valentine's Day.

"There was no judging, no doomsday talk," Johansen said. "Ravi made it fun and practical. He was preaching ordinary stuff that everybody needs, not things that happened 2,000 years ago. He brought the Gospel to a level where it fit my life."

On a rainy Sunday morning recently, Chandran stood on a stage in a crisp black shirt and gray blazer and faced his congregation, a wireless microphone headset fixed over his ear. Behind him were a drum set, two electronic keyboards and a 20-by-20-foot video screen. A Mexican man with a laptop and a video projector clicked a few keys to display Bible verses on the massive screen.

Before Chandran sat children wearing baseball caps turned backward, men in ties, women in colorful African dresses, teenagers in jeans and sneakers -- black, white and Asian. Chandran did a quick head count. His 120-strong congregation that day hailed from 33 countries, including 17 in Africa, 6 in Europe, 6 in Asia and 4 in the Americas. Eighteen blond Danes were mixed in among the rest.

"Heaven is going to be very, very colorful," Chandran said, to laughter and more "Amens!"

By Chandran's account, he has preached and done missionary work in 45 countries. He and his wife, Lillian Leow Mui Choo, arrived in Denmark 12 years ago as Pentecostal missionaries sent by a Singaporean church. Five years ago, Chandran decided he wanted to start his own independent church, so he began the ICC as an interdenominational Christian church, which he said now has about 150 regular members.

The church advertises in local newspapers and on television to attract members, but he has to be careful not to offend Danish sensibilities. "Religion is very private here," he said. "Among Danes, you're not allowed to talk about God. But they make an exception for foreigners."

As part of his missionary work, Chandran serves on a local government council that deals with immigrant integration. He also recently joined a government health organization, counseling people with HIV-AIDS and training other counselors. He said both positions allow him to meet many Danes.

"There is a void, an emptiness that people feel that can't be filled with 'stuff,' " he said. "Sometimes there are certain holes that can only be filled with the right peg, and sometimes that is spiritual."

From the stage, Chandran looked out past Johansen and his family, past the beaming black and white faces singing "Amazing Grace," to rows of empty seats toward the back of the 500-seat hall.

In time, Chandran said, he's going to fill every one of them.

Editorial Reviews
Review
Ernesto Zedillo :
"Nayan Chanda gives us in this volume an excellent account, both erudite and entertaining, of the globalization of human interaction. This book vividly portrays the long and sinuous, yet inexorable quest of humanity to reintegrate itself into just one family, as we once were."-Ernesto Zedillo, Director Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Former President of Mexico





Strobe Talbott :
"A magnificent and masterly achievement. Nayan Chanda has taken a buzzword of our era, globalization, and defined it in the full, rich, complex context of a phenomenon that has shaped humanity over the millennia. He conveys his prodigious knowledge with clarity, wit, and narrative verve, weaving themes from the history of science, politics, commerce, and religion into a coherent, compelling story."-Strobe Talbott, president, The Brookings Institution



Thomas L. Friedman :
"Nayan Chanda has written an invaluable, and in my view unique, history of globalization-how the concept emerged, evolved, was defused, and has now come to define today's international system. I learned a ton from this book, and I've already written two books on the subject. Students will find its analyses and anecdotes easily accessible and experts will find its arguments original and provocative. It is a real contribution to the literature-a must-read for anyone interested in understanding or teaching this subject."-Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World Is Flat





Ambassador Derek Shearer :
"Bound Together is destined to be a classic book for the 21st Century. Author Nayan Chanda has combined deep and far-ranging scholarship with a journalist's touch for story telling to craft an enthralling narrative of humankind from our birth in Africa to our addiction to the Internet. Chanda is a true global citizen. His book should be read in every home, school, business and embassy in the world, and become a vital part of our common intellectual heritage."-Ambassador Derek Shearer, Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and Director of Global Affairs, Occidental College, Los Angeles



http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Together-Preachers-Adventurers-Globalization/dp/0300112017

Reviews:

Bruce Mazlish :
"Chanda's account of globalization is a breath of fresh air. His treatment of the topic, from its origins with the first humans out of Africa to its most recent appearance in financial markets, is comprehensive, informed, and judicious. Refreshingly personal and humorous, it is probably the best single-volume work on world/global history now available, and a must for all students of the subject. Along the way, India, for example, becomes as much a focus as Europe in the overall story."-Bruce Mazlish, Professor of History Emeritus, MIT

.

Immanuel Wallerstein :
"A refreshing look at globalization in long historical and very wide geographic perspective, which poses clearly the contemporary political dilemmas we all face."-­Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar, Yale University

Jeffrey Garten :
"It is, in my view, a wonderful read-incredibly informative, insightful, and written with energy, eloquence, and simplicity. The themes were fresh and the organization especially interesting. Some of the great strengths of the book are the way he relates history to the present, the global perspective throughout, the broader-than-economics focus; and the way he describes the overlap of forces that have led to the world we now live in. My guess is that this book will be widely read and have a special place on any bookshelf that contains works on globalization."-Jeffrey Garten, former Dean and Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business at the Yale School of Management





Mois?s Naim :
"Given the avalanche of books on globalization it is reasonable to assume that for now the subject has been exhausted. This assumption crumbles after one reads Nayan Chanda's masterful analysis and discovers that this gifted writer has added a new and important layer to our understanding of why and how we are all `Bound Together.' A must read."-Mois?s Naim, Editor in Chief, Foreign Policy



.



Joseph E. Stiglitz :
"Bound Together is a graceful recounting of modern globalization with a panoramic perspective. Studded with meaningful and entertaining anecdotes, it is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got where we are today."-Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics

Bo Ekman :
"This book is a breakthrough. It tells the story of why humanity is left with no other endgame than finding the principles and practices that will answer the question, How on Earth can we live together?"-Bo Ekman, founder and chairman, T?llberg Foundation

R. Narayana Murthy :
"'Bound Together is a wonderful book that provides us with a rich and holistic perspective on globalization. The book is a must for every student of globalization."-R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies Ltd.



Book Description
Since humans migrated from Africa and dispersed throughout the world, they have found countless ways and reasons to reconnect with each other. In this entertaining book, Nayan Chanda follows the exploits of traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors throughout history as they have shaped and reshaped the world. For Chanda, globalization is a process of ever-growing interconnectedness and interdependence that began thousands of years ago and continues to this day with increasing speed and ease.
In the end, globalization—from the lone adventurer carving out a new trade route to the expanding ambitions of great empires—is the product of myriad aspirations and apprehensions that define just about every aspect of our lives: what we eat, wear, ride, or possess is the product of thousands of years of human endeavor and suffering across the globe. Chanda reviews and illustrates the economic and technological forces at play in globalization today and concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of how we can and should embrace an inevitably global world.

May 23: 2954
May 27: 3000
May 30: 3018
June 3: 3071
June 4, 3085
June 5, 3102
June 6, 3120 ll:59 p.m.
June 7 3130
June 8: 3147 / 7p
June 9 3165 .... 9:30p
June 11 3186 10 a.m.

The goal, as I understand it, is to raise up a UNITY GOVERNMENT in Iraq. I’m not sure if this is the idealistic view of the Bush administration or the realistic pressures from the regional neighbors. The Turks fear that if Kurdistan succeeds, it will empower the 5 Millions Kurds who live in Turkey. They are usually designated at the PKK and on the terrorist list by the UN and even our own state department. Their beef is that the Turks won’t recognize them or their language or there culture. The PKK is a separatist group who, as I recall, have been responsible for over 30,000 deaths of Turks in the battle. At the same time, Turkey is a moderate Islamic democratic government which is having its own challenges by Islamist elements who are migrating into the cities from the country side.

Then there is Saudi Arabia, who I believe is putting pressure on the Bush administration to keep Iraq whole because if its not, then the Shi’a will push for more prominence in the region. The Saudi’s in effect have leveraged oil production and reasonable price stability to the American fighting much of there battle against the Shi’s and containment of Iran.

Then there is Iran, who have a large Kurdish population in their north, as I recall it is about 5m as well. Iran also fears the Kurds and wants Iraq as one nation with a ‘major seat at the table’ and acknowledgment that the Bush administration is ever so reluctant to acknowledge.

The idea of a UNITY GOVERNMENT in Iraq is a hopeful outcome, but is it realistic?

When people say that under Saddam people were IRAQI before they were Sunni or Shi’a, one must remember that Saddam had an iron death grip on that nation. He murdered, by UN’s own estimates, 50, 000 of his own people a year. That is higher than the death rate now in this current state of civil unrest.

The reality today is much different as there is the objective to have a country that is ruled by a voting public, which has its majority in Shiites. The idea that these two groups would somehow and magically come together to run the country under the ‘rule of new law’ is a bit suspect when you consider some of the atrosities committed by Saddam.

The beloved Shiite cleric, during Saddam rule was Mutack Al Sadr’s father. He was revered among that large sectarian group. In fact the Iraqi Shi’a revered him so much that they have given his son, the current firebrand, much lattitude on his names sake. The senior Al Sadr was so powerful that Saddam feared him. Saddam was intent on humiliating the Senior Al Sadr and it reported that Saddam had Al Sadr’s wife raped in front of him while the elder cleric’s beard was set aflame leading to his gruesome death. So one can only imagine the deep hatred the son, would feel and the depth of his anger and desire for revenge which is the tradition of honor in that culture.

As a side note, Saddam attempted an assasination of George H Bush (41) in Kuwait. One can only imagine the depth of anger that caused. I can only imagine if someone attempted or succeeded in doing that to my father, what my response would have been.

When I interviewed retired four star General Joe Hoer, who took over CENTCOM after the first Gulf War, he sarcastically said in essence: ‘what do you expect the Sunni and Shia are going to all of a sudden get together, hold hands and sing ‘cumbaya’ by the campfire? Come on, GIMME A BREAK! “

In a conversation with a friend of mine who served in Fallujah, where the marines have done an extraordinary job in recent times, she recalled a conversation with an Iraqi which essentially went something like this: The Iraqi man said it would have been cheaper and more effective to level all of Fallujah to rebuild that area. Tribal history in that region have different tribes with different ‘personalities’ as it were. The more violent ones are simply that, MORE VIOLENT, less civilized. It is all about control and territory. Hatred of other tribes and powerbases is their way of life. Now this came from an Iraqi who was from another tribe not to distantly related. He was far more evolved in terms of civil society conceptualization.

So without a STRONG MAN like Saddam was to the old Iraq, the idea of a national Iraqi UNITY government, may be little more than a dream. Yes we can hope. Yes there is a possibility. Yes, there is progress with some outstanding Iraqi men who are being trained by the finest military on the planet today, the US military. However it will take time, not months, but years for this new Iraqi military to acquire the culture that sheds sectarian divides. It takes that long to mold American soldiers and Marines into a command and control structure. We often forget that the new Iraqi government is not old enough to walk if measure by the growth of a newborn.

However, the new Iraqi culture isn’t American culture. The recruitment for soldiers in Iraq is far different from that in American. Especially the Marines. In Iraq it is far more often than not, the money being dangled in front of them to join up. In America it has a very different ethos. The truth is that it shows with the Iraqi troops who to this day, are lagging on providing the troop levels promised to aid in the current surge. To a large extend they are in the Iraqi Police or Army by day and moonlight as Shi’a death squads by night.

So is it possible that the Iraqi government can work out its issues of compromise between the Sunni, Shi’a and the Kurds, the three major groups comprising 95% of the population? Its a good question. On the one hand, the irony is that the US politicians who are pushing and pushing for accelerated cooperation within the factions of that government are at the same time in similar disagreements over issues of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, and a variety of other national concerns in the USA. So the notion that a newly elected government in Iraq would somehow magically act faster is somewhat realistic.

Then add in the reality that Iraqi’s are deeply troubled and conflicted about the American presence in Iraq. Their deep rooted culture teaches them that Americans are OCCUPIERS while they see our military as our front line ambassadors.
So there is a conflict within them. They don’t really want them there, but don’t want them to leave. This was a point my friend Nonie Darwish made in her speech recently. The Arab world is taught by their leaders (largely corrupt) to hate Americans. It is a cultural reality.

Then there is the point that Tom Friedman has made in several of his articles about leverage. As long as we don’t have consequences and BENCHMARKS for the Iraqi’s, few if any that they have achieved, the US will have little leverage to affect its behavior. Talk is cheap while consequences are not.

So the CHESS GAME continues in this history changing time we live. I think we all need to pray for our leaders in their wisdom.

=======================================================
June 11, 2007
U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies

By JOHN F. BURNS and ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.

American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.

American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants’ extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases, Sunni groups have agreed to alert American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps.

But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq’s army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.

American field commanders met this month in Baghdad with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, to discuss the conditions Sunni groups would have to meet to win American assistance. Senior officers who attended the meeting said that General Petraeus and the operational commander who is the second-ranking American officer here, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, gave cautious approval to field commanders to negotiate with Sunni groups in their areas.

One commander who attended the meeting said that despite the risks in arming groups that have until now fought against the Americans, the potential gains against Al Qaeda were too great to be missed. He said the strategy held out the prospect of finally driving a wedge between two wings of the Sunni insurgency that had previously worked in a devastating alliance — die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s formerly dominant Baath Party, and Islamic militants belonging to a constellation of groups linked to Al Qaeda.

Even if only partly successful, the officer said, the strategy could do as much or more to stabilize Iraq, and to speed American troops on their way home, as the increase in troops ordered by President Bush late last year, which has thrown nearly 30,000 additional American troops into the war but failed so far to fulfill the aim of bringing enhanced stability to Baghdad. An initial decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad in the first two months of the troop buildup has reversed, with growing numbers of bodies showing up each day in the capital. Suicide bombings have dipped in Baghdad but increased elsewhere, as Qaeda groups, confronted with great American troop numbers, have shifted their operations elsewhere.

The strategy of arming Sunni groups was first tested earlier this year in Anbar Province, the desert hinterland west of Baghdad, and attacks on American troops plunged after tribal sheiks, angered by Qaeda strikes that killed large numbers of Sunni civilians, recruited thousands of men to join government security forces and the tribal police. With Qaeda groups quitting the province for Sunni havens elsewhere, Anbar has lost its long-held reputation as the most dangerous place in Iraq for American troops.

Now, the Americans are testing the “Anbar model” across wide areas of Sunni-dominated Iraq. The areas include parts of Baghdad, notably the Sunni stronghold of Amiriya, a district that flanks the highway leading to Baghdad’s international airport; the area south of the capital in Babil province known as the Triangle of Death, site of an ambush in which four American soldiers were killed last month and three others abducted, one of whose bodies was found in the Euphrates; Diyala Province north and east of Baghdad, an area of lush palm groves and orchards which has replaced Anbar as Al Qaeda’s main sanctuary in Iraq; and Salahuddin Province, also north of Baghdad, the home area of Saddam Hussein.

Although the American engagement with the Sunni groups has brought some early successes against Al Qaeda, particularly in Anbar, many of the problems that hampered earlier American efforts to reach out to insurgents remain unchanged. American commanders say the Sunni groups they are negotiating with show few signs of wanting to work with the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. For their part, Shiite leaders are deeply suspicious of any American move to co-opt Sunni groups that are wedded to a return to Sunni political dominance.

With the agreement to arm some Sunni groups, the Americans also appear to have made a tacit recognition that earlier demands for the disarming of Shiite militia groups are politically unachievable for now given the refusal of powerful Shiite political parties to shed their armed wings. In effect, the Americans seem to have concluded that as long as the Shiites maintain their militias, Shiite leaders are in a poor position to protest the arming of Sunni groups whose activities will be under close American scrutiny.

But officials of Mr. Maliki’s government have placed strict limits on the Sunni groups they are willing to countenance as allies in the fight against Al Qaeda. One leading Shiite politician, Sheik Khalik al-Atiyah, the deputy Parliament speaker, said in a recent interview that he would rule out any discussion of an amnesty for Sunni Arab insurgents, even those who commit to fighting Al Qaeda. Similarly, many American commanders oppose rewarding Sunni Arab groups who have been responsible, even tangentially, for any of the more than 29,000 American casualties in the war, including more than 3,500 deaths. Equally daunting for American commanders is the risk that Sunni groups receiving American backing could effectively double-cross the Americans, taking weapons and turning them against American and Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government forces.

Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in places where it has been tried before, including the French colonial war in Algeria, the British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in the early 1950s, and in Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with weapons given to the rebels being turned against the forces providing them. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division and leader of an American task force fighting in a wide area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers immediately south of Baghdad, said at a briefing for reporters on Sunday that no American support would be given to any Sunni group that had attacked Americans. If the Americans negotiating with Sunni groups in his area had “specific information” that the group or any of its members had killed Americans, he said, “The negotiation is going to go like this: ‘You’re under arrest, and you’re going with me.’ I’m not going to go out and negotiate with folks who have American blood on their hands.”

One of the conditions set by the American commanders who met in Baghdad was that any group receiving weapons must submit its fighters for biometric tests that would include taking fingerprints and retinal scans. The American conditions, senior officers said, also include registering the serial numbers of all weapons, steps the Americans believe will help in tracing fighters who use the weapons in attacks against American or Iraqi troops. The fighters who have received American backing in the Amiriya district of Baghdad were required to undergo the tests, the officers said.

The requirement that no support be given to insurgent groups that have attacked Americans appeared to have been set aside or loosely enforced in negotiations with the Sunni groups elsewhere, including Amiriya, where American units that have supported Sunni groups fighting to oust Al Qaeda have told reporters they believe that the Sunni groups include insurgents who had fought the Americans. The Americans have bolstered Sunni groups in Amiriya by empowering them to detain suspected Qaeda fighters and approving ammunition supplies to Sunni fighters from Iraqi Army units.

In Anbar, there have been negotiations with factions from the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a Sunni insurgent group with strong Baathist links that has a history of attacking Americans. In Diyala, insurgents who have joined the Iraqi Army have told reporters that they switched sides after working for the 1920 group. And in an agreement announced by the American command on Sunday, 130 tribal sheiks in Salahuddin met in the provincial capital, Tikrit, to form police units that would “defend” against Al Qaeda.

General Lynch said American commanders would face hard decisions in choosing which groups to support. “This isn’t a black and white place,” he said. “There are good guys and bad guys and there are groups in between,” and separating them was a major challenge.

He said some groups that had approached the
Americans had made no secret of their enmity.

“They say, ‘We hate you because you are occupiers’ ” he said, “ ‘but we hate Al Qaeda worse, and we hate the Persians even more.’ ” Sunni militants refer to Iraq’s Shiites as Persians, a reference to the strong links between Iraqi Shiites and the Shiites who predominate in Iran.

An Iraqi government official who was reached by telephone on Sunday said the government was uncomfortable with the American negotiations with the Sunni groups because they offered no guarantee that the militias would be loyal to anyone other than the American commander in their immediate area. “The government’s aim is to disarm and demobilize the militias in Iraq,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Mr. Maliki. “And we have enough militias in Iraq that we are struggling now to solve the problem. Why are we creating new ones?”

Despite such views, General Lynch said, the Americans believed that Sunni groups offering to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American and Iraqi forces met a basic condition for re-establishing stability in insurgent-hit areas: they had roots in the areas where they operated, and thus held out the prospect of building security from the ground up. He cited areas in Babil Province where there were “no security forces, zero, zilch,” and added: “When you’ve got people who say, ‘I want to protect my neighbors,’ we ought to jump like a duck on a june bug.”

Damien Cave and Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting.

June 10, 2007
Corporate Korea Corks the Bottle as Women Rise

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
SEOUL, South Korea — In a time-honored practice in South Korea’s corporate culture, the 38-year-old manager at an online game company took his 10-person team on twice-weekly after-work drinking bouts. He exhorted his subordinates to drink, including a 29-year-old graphic designer who protested that her limit was two glasses of beer.

“Either you drink or you get it from me tomorrow,” the boss told her one evening.

She drank, fearing that refusing to do so would hurt her career. But eventually, unable to take the drinking any longer, she quit and sued.

In May, in the first ruling of its kind, the Seoul High Court said that forcing a subordinate to drink alcohol was illegal, and it pronounced the manager guilty of a “violation of human dignity.” The court awarded the woman $32,000 in damages for the incidents, which occurred in 2004.

The ruling was as much a testament to women’s growing presence in corporate life here as a confirmation of changes already under way. As an increasing number of women have joined companies as professionals in the past half decade, corporate South Korea has struggled to change the country’s thoroughly male-centered corporate culture, starting with alcohol.

An evening out with colleagues here follows a predictable, alcohol-centered pattern: dinner, usually some grilled pork, washed down with soju, Korea’s national vodkalike drink; then a second round at a beer hall; then whiskey and singing at a “norae bang,” a Korean karaoke club. Exhorted by their bosses to drink, the corporate warriors bond, literally, so that the sight of dark-suited men holding hands, leaning on one another, staggering toward taxis, is part of this city’s nighttime streetscape. The next morning, back at the office, they are ready to fight, with reaffirmed unity, for more markets at home and abroad.

Many professional women manage to avoid much of the drinking by adopting well-known strategies. They slip away while their male colleagues indulge in a second or third round of drinking. They pour the drinks into potted plants. They rely on male colleagues, called “knights in shining armor,” to take their turns in drinking games.

Companies, too, have begun to respond. Since 2005, Posco, the steel manufacturer, has limited company outings to two hours at its mill in South Korea’s southwest. Employees can raise a red card if they do not want to drink or a yellow card if they want to go home early. At Woori Bank, one of South Korea’s largest, an alarm rings at 10 p.m. to encourage workers to stop drinking and go home using public transportation, which stops running before midnight.

“My boss used to be all about, ‘Let’s drink till we die!’ ” said Wi Su-jung, a 31-year-old woman employed at a small shipping company.

Ms. Wi, who was out enjoying the sun in downtown Seoul, said the atmosphere began changing as more women joined her company in the past couple of years. “The women got together and complained about the drinking and the pressure to drink,” she said. “So things changed last year. Now we sometimes go to musicals or movies instead.”

Kim Chil-jong, who was taking a walk on his lunch hour, said he owned a nine-person publishing company. In the last couple of years, he hired two women for the first time.

“We drink less because of their presence,” Mr. Kim, 47, said. “Before, I’d encourage my workers to drink whenever we went out, but I don’t do that anymore.”

Still, at least 90 percent of company outings — called “hoishik,” or coming together to eat — still center on alcohol, according to the Korean Alcohol Research Foundation. The percentage of women who drink has increased over all as they have joined companies.

Over all, South Koreans consume less alcohol than, say, most Europeans, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a research organization financed by industrialized nations.

But Cho Sung-gie, the alcohol foundation’s research director, estimates that South Koreans rank first in binge drinking: the goal is to drink as much as possible, as quickly as possible, so that co-workers loosen up.

Companies have awakened to the potential dangers of bingeing: health threats, decreased productivity and, with more women working, the risk of sexual harassment.

The foundation, though financed largely by the alcohol industry, is considered the authority on the country’s drinking culture. It runs programs on responsible drinking and abstinence, and assists companies to organize outings not centered on alcohol. Chang Kih-wung, a manager in the education team, has even joined company outings to the movies.

“Usually, a company decides to do something about drinking after a guest, often a foreigner, visits and makes a comment like, ‘Man, people drink like crazy here!’ ” Mr. Chang said. “So they’ll invite me for a lecture or organize a single activity — then they forget about it and go back to drinking.”

Traditionally, this corporate culture often began at the job interview itself. Asked whether they liked to drink, applicants knew that there was only one correct answer.

“If they said they didn’t drink, we’d think that we couldn’t work closely together,” said Lee Jai-ho, 40, an engineer at a paper mill that was bought by Norske Skog of Sweden in the late 1990s.

Mr. Lee said he was asked whether he was a good drinker during his job interview in 1992, and he asked the same question of job candidates later. The company’s hard-drinking culture changed, however, after it changed to foreign ownership.

It is this fear of not being accepted as full members of the team that has led many women to drink to excess. A 31-year-old lawyer for a telecommunications company, who asked that her name not be used, blacked out during a company outing shortly after she became the first Korean woman to serve as a lawyer in the legal division three years ago. “During my studies, I always competed against men,” she said. “So I didn’t want to lose to men at hoishik.”

She drank so much during dinner at a Chinese restaurant that she remembered nothing past 9 p.m., though the outing lasted until 1 a.m.

However, as more women have joined her division, she said, the emphasis on alcohol has decreased.

“Before it was always grilled pork with soju followed by mixed drinks,” she said. “Now, I can suggest that we go to a Thai or Italian restaurant.”

Not all men were so flexible, though. In the case of the 29-year-old graphic designer, when she was interviewed at the 240-employee online game company in 2004, she was also forced to submit to an “alcohol interview,” according to the court ruling. She could drink only two glasses of beer and no soju at all, she said.

Her boss, though, liked to go out with his 10-person marketing team — six men and four women — at least twice a week until the predawn hours and brooked no excuses.

One time, he told her that if she called upon a “knight in shining armor,” she would have to kiss him. So she drank two glasses of soju. Another time, after she slipped away early, he called her at home and ordered her to come back. She refused.

At the trial, the boss said he was so intent on having his subordinates bond that he sometimes used his own money to take them out drinking. He called the woman a weirdo and said of the lawsuit, “I’m the victim.”