September 19, 2007

By SETH MYDANS
Sept. 19 — The highest-ranking surviving leader of the brutal Khmer Rouge was arrested today and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as a trial drew closer in the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.

The leader, Nuon Chea, 82, was the chief ideologue of the movement and “Brother No. 2” to Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge chieftain who died in 1998.

He was arrested at his home in the northeastern town of Pailin, which has become a sort of retirement haven for Khmer Rouge cadres, and flown by helicopter to Phnom Penh, where a court spokesman said he had been placed in custody after a short hearing.

Mr. Nuon Chea was the second major Khmer Rouge figure to be arrested. In July, the tribunal charged Kaing Guek Eav, 64, known as Duch, who was the commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 people died. Prosecutors have sent three other undisclosed names to the court for possible indictment.

Duch, who has become a born-again Christian, has admitted his part in the killings and has pointed a finger at Mr. Nuon Chea, saying in an interview in 1999, “Nuon Chea, he was the principal man for the killings.”

Pursuing a radical communist ideology, the Khmer Rouge turned their nation into a vast labor camp in which nearly one-fourth of the population died from killings, torture, starvation, disease and exhaustion.

The tribunal has been delayed by a decade of civil war that followed the collapse of the Khmer Rouge and then by another decade of stalemate as the Cambodian government and the United Nations wrestled over the ground rules of a mixed international tribunal.

Further disagreements over procedural rules have slowed the work of the tribunal since it was inaugurated in the summer of 2006, and it is still likely to be several months before the first session of the court.

Scholars say the case against Mr. Nuon Chea is strong, based on extensive records kept by the Khmer Rouge, particularly at Tuol Sleng prison.

“There is substantial and compelling evidence that Nuon Chea, commonly known as ‘Brother Number Two,’ played a leading role in devising the C.P.K.’s execution policies,” wrote the scholars Stephen Header and Brian Tittemore in their book “Seven Candidates for Prosecution,” referring to the Communist Party of Cambodia.

“There is also substantial evidence that he played a central role in implementing those policies,” they said.

It was not clear whether the defendants would be tried together or separately, but it appears that the testimony of Duch could be used against Mr. Nuon Chea.

In his interview with Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review shortly after he was discovered working for a foreign aid group in 1999, Duch told of several instances in which he said he received direct orders from Mr. Nuon Chea.

Describing the killing of eight Westerners who were seized by the Khmer Rouge, Duch said, “Nuon Chea ordered me to burn their bodies with tires and leave no bones.”

On another occasion, he said, “My prison was full. Nuon Chea ordered 300 soldiers arrested. He called to meet me and said, ‘Don’t bother to interrogate them - just kill them.’ And I did.”

As an invading Vietnamese army approached Phnom Penh in January 1979, Duch said, “I was called by Nuon Chea to his office and he ordered me to kill all the remaining prisoners. I asked Nuon Chea to allow me to keep one Vietnamese prisoner alive to use for propaganda on the radio and he replied, ‘Kill them all. We can always get more.’ ”

Driven from power by the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge leadership fled into the jungles, where they continued a guerrilla war until the final collapse of their movement in 1998.

In December of that year, Mr. Nuon Chea surrendered to the government along with the movement’s former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and was treated by Prime Minister Hun Sen to a beach holiday and a visit to the ancient temples of Angkor.

Presented to the press at a noisy, jostling news conference at the time, Mr. Nuon Chea offered a reluctant and peculiar half-apology, saying, “Actually, we are very sorry not only for the lives of the people of Cambodia, but even for the lives of all animals that suffered because of the war.”

Since then he has lived with his wife and grown children in Pailin. Mr. Khieu Samphan, who has lived next door, and Ieng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, are also believed to be on the prosecutors’ list for possible indictment.

Mr. Nuon Chea, now a frail, bent man who walks with a cane and favors large dark glasses, has repeatedly expressed his innocence and his disdain for the slowly unfolding judicial process.

“They will try to find out the truth but that is not easy to find because it was more than 30 years ago,” he said in a published interview in the Cambodia Daily newspaper last year.

“It was because of two kinds of war: invasion and defense,” he said, apparently referring to a secret American bombing campaign of Cambodia in the early 1970s. “But who made the war of invasion and who made the war of defense? I made the war to defend the nation. But who made the war that led to the invasion? They must find this reason. But I don’t think there will be justice.”

Looking ahead to his likely arrest, he said: “I will read books in prison, learn another language and exercise. I will do all of this so that I can make myself strong. I told my wife not to visit me in jail and if I die, not to make a ceremony but keep the money for my children’s education. When I die it will all be finished.”

40:
If we know that maritime traffic is vulnerable to terrorism, wouldn't we want to do something about it? Harry Ulrich is doing something.
By Thomas P.M. Barnett (more from this author)
9/18/2007, 12:00 AM

Jump to story




John MacNeill
Here's the main problem in counterterrorism today: So many people and vehicles and so much data and material move through globalization's myriad networks that it seems virtually impossible to track it all effectively. And nowhere has this problem been more acute than on the high seas, which is how most commerce moves around this dirty globe.
Enter Admiral Harry Ulrich, commander of U. S./NATO Naval Forces Europe. His quest is to apply the same system we currently use in air-traffic control to sea traffic.
Worldwide, aircraft are transparent, because they're all required to carry an "identification friend or foe" beacon that allows them to be tracked leaving and entering airports by aircraft-traffic-control systems and monitored between airports by sensors distributed across a global network. Trip the wire that defines "suspicious activity" and somebody's fighter aircraft will soon be on your tail. NATO alone routinely launches two or three fighters a week to identify unknown aircraft.
No such pervasive system currently exists globally for maritime traffic. If a ship any bigger than a small freighter is flagged by a nation belonging to the International Maritime Organization, it carries an ID beacon similar to aircraft. But without a shared monitoring network, that's like tracking only selected commercial jets part of the time and giving everyone else a pass.
So Admiral Ulrich, upon taking command in Naples, Italy, three years ago, asked a simple question: "If we can do that in the air, why can't we do it on the sea?"
He made a point of pioneering his sea-traffic-control effort first inside the Mediterranean, where NATO's southern naval forces have been historically concentrated, but his real target was Africa.
Africa's littoral waters are the most ungovernable maritime space in the world. Smuggling, drug running, human trafficking, illegal immigration, illegal fishing, environmental degradation, oil theft, and piracy -- you name it, it's all there in abundance.
Ulrich wanted somebody to govern that ungovernable space, and he knows the U. S. Navy can't do it alone, much less bring Africa's meager coast-guard-like navies up to snuff. So he quickly came to the conclusion that he'd need to create a network of assets -- both public and private -- to manage that space, thus his decision to model his monitoring system on international air-traffic control.
Taking his cues from that global consortium, Ulrich began stitching together a network of shore-based sensors ringing the Mediterranean, and then began his initial monitoring by having his naval command tap into an existing IMO Automated Identification System, transforming NATO's ability to track ship traffic in the Med.
"When I got to the eastern Mediterranean last year, I was tracking sixty ships," Ulrich says. "We were relying on this old-fashioned Navy model of using sensors on ships to track what's in the ocean. We networked it through Link-11, which was built in the 1960s -- very crude. And we linked that together, and I could tell you where those sixty contacts were, but they were twenty minutes to seventy-two hours late. So then I networked all the AIS receivers and local radars around the rim of the eastern Mediterranean: Same picture, except now I have 1,538 contacts, and they're only one to five minutes late, and for each I can tell you its last port of call, its next port of call, its course of speed, and where it is within fifty feet on the earth's surface.
"All the classic systems integrators wanted to create the network, but it would have taken several hundred million dollars and six to eight years to develop. So I went to the Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I said, 'Can you help me with this?'
" 'Yes, when do you want it?'
"I said, 'As soon as is practical.'
"And they said, 'How about tomorrow?' "
Instead of hundreds of millions, Ulrich's network cost $150,000. The shore-based receivers are small, roughly the size of a radar dish you might find on a pleasure craft. Most can be attached to tall buildings or existing cell towers along the coast.
The strength of the system is obviously a function of its reach: the more countries join, the larger the shared operational picture. For now, four server farms collect and redistribute the data: The Volpe Center was the first, but now the U. S. Navy operates three others in Naples and Norfolk, Virginia, with plans for more in the future as the system expands.
So far, Ulrich has enlisted all the countries of the Persian Gulf, and he's moving down the west coast of Africa. He's got Belgium, Poland, Slovenia, Morocco. The Black Sea, Tunisia, and Algeria are next. By late summer, twenty-seven countries and counting. Now he's pitching Russia.
With Ulrich's system in place, local police, coast guards, and border patrols catch all his bad guys for him, saving an American military response. "I don't do defense; I do security," he says. "When you talk defense, you talk containment and mutually assured destruction. When you talk security, you talk collaboration and networking. This is the future. This is the thousand-ship navy, except there are no ships."

Abizaid: World could abide nuclear Iran
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military WriterMon Sep 17, 11:33 PM ET
Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

He stressed that he was expressing his personal opinion and that none of his remarks were based on his previous experience with U.S. contingency plans for potential military action against Iran.

Abizaid stressed the dangers of allowing more and more nations to build a nuclear arsenal. And while he said it is likely that Iran will make a technological breakthrough to obtain a nuclear bomb, "it's not inevitable."

Iran says its nuclear program is strictly for energy resources, not to build weapons.

Abizaid suggested military action to pre-empt Iran's nuclear ambitions might not be the wisest course.

"War, in the state-to-state sense, in that part of the region would be devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it — in my mind — to every extent that we can," he said. "On the other hand, we can't allow the Iranians to continue to push in ways that are injurious to our vital interests."

He suggested that many in Iran — perhaps even some in the Tehran government — are open to cooperating with the West. The thrust of his remarks was a call for patience in dealing with Iran, which President Bush early in his first term labeled one of the "axis of evil" nations, along with North Korea and Iraq.

He said there is a basis for hope that Iran, over time, will move away from its current anti-Western stance.

Abizaid's comments appeared to represent a more accommodating and hopeful stance toward Iran than prevails in the White House, which speaks frequently of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions. The administration says it seeks a diplomatic solution to complaints about Iran's alleged support for terrorism and its nuclear program, amid persistent rumors of preparations for a U.S. military strike.

Abizaid expressed confidence that the United States and the world community can manage the Iran problem.

"I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran — that the United States can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that makes it clear to them that while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power," he said.

He described Iran's government as reckless, with ambitions to dominate the Middle East.

"We need to press the international community as hard as we possibly can, and the Iranians, to cease and desist on the development of a nuclear weapon and we should not preclude any option that we may have to deal with it," he said. He then added his remark about finding ways to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Abizaid made his remarks in response to questions from his audience after delivering remarks about the major strategic challenges in the Middle East and Central Asia — the region in which he commanded U.S. forces from July 2003 until February 2007, when he was replaced by Adm. William Fallon.

The U.S. cut diplomatic relations with Iran shortly after the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Although both nations have made public and private attempts to improve relations, the Bush administration labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil," and Iranian leaders still refer to the United States as the Great Satan.

(This version SUBS 9th graf, Iran says ..., to CORRECT word to 'program,' sted 'problem'))

Op-Ed Columnist


By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 19, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.

David Brooks.
Robert Gates has been a godsend. After a bombastic defense secretary, we now have a candid one. After ego, we have self-effacement. After domination, we have a man who welcomes discussion.

Gates was decisive during the Walter Reed hospital fiasco. He is honest and trustworthy on Iraq. And on Monday, at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy at the College of William and Mary here, Gates delivered a speech that could define the center ground of American foreign policy.

He ran through the history of the never-ending debate between realists and idealists. He noted that this debate began just after the founding of the Republic. Thomas Jefferson saw the French Revolution as a triumph for liberty. John Adams saw it as reckless radicalism.

Throughout the messy years that followed, Gates explained, we have made deals with tyrants to defeat other tyrants. We’ve championed human rights while doing business with some of the worst violators of human rights.

“It is neither hypocrisy nor cynicism to believe fervently in freedom while adopting different approaches to advancing freedom at different times along the way,” Gates said.

Two themes ran through his speech. First, the tragic ironies of history — the need to compromise with evil in order to do good. And second, patience — the need to wait as democratic reforms slowly develop.

This was not a realist speech — Gates has evolved since he opposed the Helsinki Accords on human rights while serving in the Ford administration. But it was a long way from the soaring rhetoric of George Bush’s second inaugural. From a senior member of the Bush administration, it was remarkable.

After the speech, I asked him about the best ways to spread democracy. “We have a variety of tools. Not all of them are hammers. Ronald Reagan deployed more of the array than many,” he said. Reagan used forceful rhetoric, but also small displays of force — shooting down Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra — to demonstrate American resolve.

“I don’t think you invade Iraq to bring liberty. You do it to eliminate an unstable regime and because sanctions are breaking down and you get liberty as a byproduct,” he continued. I asked him whether invading Iraq was a good idea, knowing what we know now. He looked at me for a bit and said, “I don’t know.”

I asked him if it was a good idea to encourage elections in the Palestinian territories. He didn’t directly address the question, but he noted: “Too often elections are equated with democracy and freedom.”

I asked about how we can promote freedom in Iran while taking care of security threats. He emphasized soft power. We have to remind the Iranian public of where their regime is falling short of its own rhetoric.

Then we spoke about the speech President Bush gave in London in 2003, declaring that the U.S. should no longer settle for stability in the Middle East. “The status quo was unacceptable,” Gates agreed, while noting ruefully that in many countries early free elections led to victories for extremists.

Again and again, he returned to the importance of soft power. The U.S. “made many mistakes after the end of the cold war,” he said. Two of the biggest were shrinking the Agency for International Development and dismantling the U.S. Information Agency.

I asked if the military could perform this sort of nation-building, as it is in Iraq. “That’s very short-term stuff. Hooking up water mains. That’s not job creation or institution-building.”

I asked if it was a mistake to put the Pentagon in charge of postwar reconstruction in Iraq instead of the State Department. He thought for a long time but didn’t say anything.

When Bush first interviewed Gates for the Pentagon job, he told his staff he wanted to make sure Gates was not Scowcroft, meaning, not a hard-core realist. Bush satisfied himself that Gates is not.

But neither is Gates the Bush of the second inaugural. Yet the final thing is that on the key short-term issue — troop levels in Iraq — there is no daylight between the White House and Pentagon. Gates says there were serious disagreements among the generals about troop levels before the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra in February 2006, but not so much now. He initiated various internal reviews of Iraq, and they all came back roughly where Gen. David Petraeus is now.

“How often is a policy announced without a leak from the Pentagon?” he asks, as proof of unanimity.

Over the long term, Gates represents a shift in the foreign policy center of gravity. Over the short term, he is, to use a phrase he borrows from the historian Joseph Ellis, “improvising on the edge of catastrophe.”

Plan for Sea Canal Puts Hindu Belief In Sharp Relief
Some Indians See Controversial Route As Threat to Divinely Created Shoals
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 18, 2007; A13

ADAM'S BRIDGE, India -- In the emerald waters separating India and Sri Lanka lies a long chain of sand-capped rocky formations. Devout Hindus believe the god Ram built the shoals before a battle with a demon king. Fishermen along India's coast believe the shoals saved them from a tsunami three years ago. And environmentalists treasure them for their patch reefs, sea fans, sponges and pearl oysters.

Now, however, the shoals -- which form what is known as Adam's Bridge -- are being threatened by the construction of a massive sea canal.

The Indian government began dredging the shallow ocean bed two years ago and is now poised to break apart Adam's Bridge, whose demolition is necessary to allow ships to traverse a direct route between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. But the project has become entangled in a complex web of resistance from environmentalists, fishermen, political parties and Hindu activists.

Opposition to huge industrial projects is common in India, but the controversy over Adam's Bridge, or Ram Sethu, marks one of the first times religion has become an obstacle to major development. Thousands of Hindu protesters have rallied in the streets since last week, blocking traffic and chanting, "We will save Ram Sethu, we will save Hindu heritage!"

"Millions of Hindus believe that Ram built that bridge across the sea. Our scriptures and epics mention it," said Surendra Jain, a leader of the World Hindu Council, a hard-line Hindu group. "We will not let them destroy our religious heritage."

An ambitious project with an estimated cost of more than $500 million, the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal was originally envisioned in 1860, and at least 14 proposals have been abandoned over the years because India lacked the financial resources to build it.

Ships coming from the Arabian Sea currently go around Sri Lanka to reach India's east coast and Bangladesh. With the proposed channel, 13 yards deep and 328 yards wide, ships are expected to be able to pass straight through India's territorial waters. That would mean more revenue for India's ports.

"The ships will save about 30 hours in navigation time," said Rakesh Srivastava, a senior official at the Shipping Ministry in New Delhi. "More than 3,000 ships will use this channel every year. This is a very prestigious project for India and would lead to the economic transformation of the ports and the coastal people."

While many critics have petitioned the Supreme Court in a bid to have the project scrapped, the Hindu activists support the sea canal as long as it can be built in a way that would avoid damage to Adam's Bridge. Some activists have proposed dredging to the west of the bridge to make way for a canal.

Government officials have said that approach would be misguided. And they contend the bridge isn't important in Hinduism.

"People have mixed religion with reality," Srivastava said. The shoals were formed from calcium deposits and natural sedimentation over millions of years."

In court, the government contended that the Hindu god Ram was a mythical character, an argument that only further enraged Hindus opposed to the current project. The Hindu nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, called the statement a blasphemous insult, and the government hurriedly withdrew it.

Hindu opposition to the project is only the most recent hindrance to the canal's completion. Naval experts have questioned assertions that the canal would save ships 30 hours in travel time, as well as the economic viability of the project. Fishermen's unions have staged sit-ins, blocked rail traffic and petitioned the court.

Umayavel Tharakudiyan, a 55-year-old fisherman in the village of Ramakrishnapuram on the coast of Tamil Nadu state, said the dredging of sand has already reduced the number of fish he and others catch. He explained his fears by drawing a map of his village and the canal route in the sand.

"We will lose our freedom. For different kinds of fish, we go out at various times of the day. Once the ships start sailing, we will be assigned special times of the day for fishing. They will deny us entry with our boats and nets in some areas," he said as he sat on the sandy ground outside his thatched-roof home.

His wife, Tamilarasi, said Adam's Bridge has shielded the area during cyclones and other natural disasters. "The bridge protected us from the tsunami," she said. "Once that goes, our villages may disappear in the next cyclone."

Although the government has received formal environmental clearance for the canal, there are lingering concerns about the impact it would have on a marine biosphere reserve 12 miles west of the area to be dredged. A row of 21 islands rich in coral reefs, sea turtles, dolphins and sea cows, the reserve is one of the most biologically diverse areas in South Asia.

A recent government report said the canal could "drastically alter the dynamics of the ecosystems" in the biosphere.

"Sea animals communicate through waves, and the dredging work disturbs them. In the last six months, sea cows are losing their way and are seen closer to the shore," said Rakesh Kumar Jagenia, the wildlife warden at the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve. "It will get worse once the ships start sailing, with the high noise levels and thermal pollution."

Environmental activists and fishermen complain that despite their long struggle, it is the religious claim to Adam's Bridge that has provoked the most public interest and drawn a reaction from the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, ecologists and fishermen's groups are reluctant to build alliances with the Hindu nationalist organizations.

"People are debating nonissues," said T.S.S. Mani, an activist fisherman opposed to the canal. "This is a battle for environment, people's lives and livelihoods, but unfortunately it has acquired a religious branding."