Turkey as a Regional Power
October 23, 2007 2030 GMT

By George Friedman

Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas based in northern Iraq ambushed Turkish troops near the border Oct. 21, killing 12 soldiers and suffering 23 casualties in the ensuing firefight, according to the Turkish government. For its part, the PKK said it captured eight Turkish troops, though Ankara has not confirmed the claim.

Based on prior PKK attacks, the Turkish parliament last week authorized the use of force in Iraq. This latest attack, therefore, was clearly designed to challenge that decision. Even before the dust had settled Oct. 21, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, rejected an earlier demand from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Baghdad shut down all PKK camps in Iraqi territory and hand over PKK leaders. Talabani said Iraq cannot solve Turkey's problem, given that PKK leaders hide out in rugged mountains and even the "mighty" Turkish military has failed to kill or capture them. Specifically, he said, "The handing over of PKK leaders to Turkey is a dream that will never be realized."

If that position holds, it is difficult to imagine that the Turks won't move into northern Iraq and re-establish the sphere of influence and security they had during the Saddam Hussein era. The United States is working furiously to satisfy Turkey by taking responsibility for controlling the PKK. It is not clear whether the United States can deliver, nor is it clear whether the Turks are prepared to rely on the United States. Some move into Iraq is likely, in our mind, but even if it doesn't happen in this particular case, tensions between Turkey and the United States will remain. More important, Turkey's willingness to play a secondary role in the region is declining.

This is not really new. The Turks refused to allow the United States to invade Iraq from Turkish territory, even though Washington offered them free room to maneuver in northern Iraq in exchange for their cooperation. The Turks, however, were not unhappy with the status quo in Iraq. They also were concerned about the consequences of an American invasion and were not eager to be seen as a tool of the United States in the Islamic world.

At the same time, the Turks did not want a rupture with the United States -- given that the relationship has been the foundation of Turkish foreign policy since World War II. The refusal of the European Union to admit Turkey in particular made it necessary for Ankara to preserve its relationship with Washington. Therefore, although the invasion was problematic for the Turks, they have cooperated with the United States, allowing a large portion of the supplies for U.S. troops in Iraq to come through Turkey.

The Turkish balancing act on Iraq has pivoted on one fundamental national security consideration: that the autonomy given to Iraq's Kurds remains limited. The Kurdish nationality crosses existing borders -- into Iraq, Turkey, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria -- and represents a geographically coherent, self-aware nation without a state. Historically, the Kurds generally were compelled to be part of larger empires, including the Ottoman Empire. When that empire collapsed -- leaving Turkey as its successor -- these other countries contained Kurdish lands, with more than half of the Kurds living in Turkey. The Turks, dealing with the collapse of their empire and the building of a new nation-state, feared that Kurdish independence would lead to the disintegration of that nation-state. Therefore, they had -- and continue to maintain -- a fixed policy to suppress Kurdish nationalism.

From the Turkish point of view, the greatest danger is that an independent Kurdistan will be created in Iran or Iraq, and that the homeland will be used to base and support Kurds seeking independence from Turkey. In fact, each of these countries -- and outside powers such as the United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom -- have used the Kurds as a tool to apply pressure on Turkey, Iran or Iraq at various times. They have used Kurdish separatism as a threat, and then normally double-crossed the Kurds, making a broader deal with the nation-state in question.

The evolution of events in Iraq is particularly alarming to the Turks. Hussein was not necessarily to the Turks' liking, but he did pursue one policy that was identical to that of the Turks: He opposed Kurdish independence. The U.S. policy after Desert Storm was to use the Iraqi Kurds against Hussein -- and the United States helped carve out an area of Iraqi Kurdistan that he could not reach. The Turks, uneasy with this arrangement, entered Iraq in the 1990s to create a buffer zone against the Kurds. The United States did not object to this move because it increased the pressure on Hussein.

In looking at current U.S. strategy in Iraq, the Turks have drawn two conclusions. The first is that the United States, focused on Iraq's Sunni and Shiite areas, has little interest in controlling the Kurdish region -- the one area that is fairly unambiguously pro-American. The second is that the Iranians and Shia want an Iraq divided into three regions -- or even independent states -- and that a U.S. policy designed to create a federal state with a strong central government will fail.

Therefore, Turkey's perception is that it already is dealing with the post-war world, one in which an increasingly bold Iraqi Kurdistan is pursuing a policy of expanding Kurdish autonomy by facilitating a guerrilla war in Turkey. The PKK's actions in recent weeks confirm this view in their mind. They also believe they cannot deal with the Kurdish challenge defensively, and therefore they must defend by attacking. Hence, the creation of a security zone in Iraq.

From the Kurds' point of view, if there ever was a moment to assert their national rights, this is it. However, their highly risky gamble is that the United States will not chance an anti-American uprising in Iraq's Kurdish areas and so will limit the extent to which Turkey can intervene. Moreover, with the United States at odds with Iran, it might support a Kurdish uprising there. Hence, though the stakes are high, the Kurdish gamble is not irrational.

The Kurds in Iraq are correct in their view that the United States does not want conflict in the one area in Iraq that is not anti-American. They also are correct that this is a unique moment for them. But they are betting that the Turks don't recognize the danger and thus will place their interests second to those of the United States -- which is more concerned with stability in Iraqi Kurdistan than with suppressing attacks in Turkey's Kurdish areas. Although this might have been true of Turkey 10 years ago, it no longer is true today. The U.S.-Turkish relationship has flipped. The United States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States -- for reasons beyond getting supplies to Iraq.

Al Qaeda's geopolitical threat has subsided, no uprising capable of effecting regime change has occurred in the Islamic world and the threat of a unified Islamic world has vastly decreased. Meanwhile, the grand strategy of the United States has remained the same. It played Hitler against Stalin, Mao against Brezhnev and is now playing Sunni against Shi'i. The Sunni threat having subsided, the Shiite and Iranian threats remain. The current U.S. task is to build an anti-Iranian coalition. Regardless of whether the Europeans approve sanctions against Iran, its neighbors are important -- and one of the most important is Turkey. However, given that Turkey and Iran have a common interest in preventing an independent Kurdish nation anywhere, the more the United States supports the Iraqi Kurds, the greater the danger of an Iranian-Turkish alliance. At the moment, that is the last thing the United States wants to see, which is why the resolution on Turkish responsibility for Armenian genocide in the U.S. Congress could not possibly have come at a worse moment.

But that is atmospherics. When we look beyond al Qaeda and beyond Iran -- a country that has been unable to create substantial spheres of influence for many centuries -- we see a single country that is likely to begin bringing order to the region: Turkey. Turkey is the heir to the Ottoman Empire, which at various points dominated the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus and deep into Russia. Its collapse after World War I created an oddity -- an inward-looking state in Asia Minor. Cautious in World War II and strictly aligned with the United States during the Cold War, Turkey played a passive role: It either sat things out or allowed its strategic territory to be used.

The situation has changed dramatically. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th largest economy in the world -- larger than that of any other Muslim country, including Saudi Arabia -- and the economy has been growing at a rate of between 5 percent and 7 percent a year for five years. Most important, Turkey is not a purely export-oriented country. It has developed a substantial middle class that buys the products it produces. It has a substantial and competent military and is handling the stresses between institutions and ideologies well.

It also is surrounded by chaos. Apart from Iraq to the south, there is profound instability in the Caucasus to the north and the Balkans to the northwest. The southern region from the Levant to the Persian Gulf is tremendously tense. The stability of Egypt -- and therefore the eastern Mediterranean -- after President Hosni Mubarak departs is in question. Turkey's longtime rival, Greece, no longer presents the challenge it once did. Moreover, the European Union's effective rejection of Turkey has freed the country from many of the constraints that its membership hopes might have imposed.

Turkey has a vested interest in stabilizing the region. It no longer regards the United States as a stabilizing force, and it sees Europe as a collective entity and individual nations as both hostile and impotent. It views the Russians as a long-term threat to its interests and sees Russia's potential return to Turkey's frontier as a long-term challenge. As did the Ottomans, it views Iran as a self-enclosed backwater. It is far more interested in the future of Syria and Iraq, its relationship with its ally, Israel, and ultimately the future of the Arabian Peninsula.

In other words, Turkey should be viewed as a rapidly emerging regional power -- or, in the broadest sense, as beginning the process of recreating a regional hegemon of enormous strategic power, based in Asia Minor but projecting political, economic and military forces in a full circle. Its willingness to rely on the United States to guarantee its national security ended in 2003. It is prepared to cooperate with the United States on issues of mutual interest, but not as a subordinate power.

This emergence, in our view, is in the very early stages. Just as Turkey's economy and its internal politics have undergone dramatic changes in the past five years, so have its foreign policies. The Turks are cautiously reaching out and influencing events throughout the region. In one sense, the intervention in Iraq would simply be a continuation of policies followed in the 1990s. But in the current context, it would represent more: a direct assertiveness of its natural interests independent of the United States.

Looked at broadly, three things have happened. First, the collapse of Yugoslavia drew Turkey into a region where it had traditional interest. Second, the collapse and resurrection of Russian power has made Turkey look northward to the Caucasus. Finally, the chaos in the Arab world has drawn Turkey southward. Limits on Turkish behavior from Europe and the United States have been dramatically reduced as a result of Western strategy. Turkey believes it needs to bring order to regions where the United States and Europe have proven either ineffective or hostile to Turkish interests.

Considering the future of the region, the only power in a position to assert its consistent presence is Turkey. Iran, its nearest competitor, is neither in competition with Turkey, nor does it have a fraction of its power -- nuclear weapons or not. Turkey has historically dominated the region, though not always to the delight of others there. Nevertheless, its historical role has been to pick up the pieces left by regional chaos. In our view, it is beginning to move down that road.

Its current stance on the Kurdish issue is merely a first step. What makes that position important is that Turkey is pursuing its interests indifferent to European or American views. Additionally, the reversal of dependency between the United States and Turkey is ultimately more important than whether Turkey goes into Iraq. The U.S. invasion of Iraq kicked off many processes in the world and created many windows of opportunity. Watching Turkey make its moves, we wonder less about the direction it is going than about the limits of its ambition.

October 23, 2007
In Iraq, Conflict Simmers on a 2nd Kurdish Front

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 — Deadly raids into Turkey by Kurdish militants holed up in northern Iraq are the focus of urgent diplomacy, with Turkey threatening invasion of Iraq and the United States begging for restraint while expressing solidarity with Turkish anger.

Yet out of the public eye, a chillingly similar battle has been under way on the Iraqi border with Iran. Kurdish guerrillas ambush and kill Iranian forces and retreat to their hide-outs in Iraq. The Americans offer Iran little sympathy. Tehran even says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, a charge the United States denies. True or not, that conflict, like the Turkish one, has explosive potential.

Salih Shevger, an Iranian Kurdish guerrilla, was interviewed recently as he lay flat on a slab of rock atop a 10,000-foot mountain on the Iran-Iraq border, with binoculars pressed to his face as he kept watch on Iranian military outposts perched on peaks about four miles away.

He and his comrades recounted how they ambushed an Iranian patrol between the bases a few days before, killing three soldiers and capturing another. “They were sitting and talking on top of a hill, and we approached, hiding ourselves, and fired on them from two sides,” said Bayram Gabar, who commanded the raid, and who like all the fighters here uses a nom de guerre.

The guerrillas from the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or P.J.A.K., have been waging a deadly insurgency in Iran and they are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., the Kurdish guerrillas who fight Turkey.

Like the P.K.K., the Iranian Kurds control much of the craggy, boulder-strewn frontier and routinely ambush patrols on the other side. But while the Americans call the P.K.K. terrorists, guerrilla commanders say P.J.A.K. has had “direct or indirect discussions” with American officials. They would not divulge any details of the discussions or the level of the officials involved, but they noted that the group’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, visited Washington last summer.

Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group’s leadership, said there had been “normal dialogue” with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards said officials of the group met with Americans in Kirkuk last year.

Iranian officials have accused the United States of supplying the fighters and using them in a proxy war, though those assertions were denied by the American military. “The consensus is that U.S. forces are not working with or advising the P.J.A.K.,” said an American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye of the Navy.

A senior American diplomat said that there had not been any official contacts with the group and that he was unaware of its having received any support from the United States. He also said that Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, while in Washington, did not meet with administration officials.

Because the P.K.K. is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations and aiding such groups is illegal, the United States is eager to avoid any hint of cooperation with the P.J.A.K.

Guerrilla leaders said the Americans classify the P.K.K. as a terrorist group because it is fighting Turkey, an important American ally, while the P.J.A.K. is not labeled as such because it is fighting Iran.

In fact, the two groups appear to a large extent to be one and the same, and share the same goal: fighting campaigns to win new autonomy and rights for Kurds in Iran and Turkey. They share leadership, logistics and allegiance to Abdullah Ocalan, the P.K.K. leader imprisoned in Turkey.

While most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, the guerrillas reject Islamic fundamentalism. Instead, they trace their roots to a Marxist past. They still espouse what they call “scientific socialism” and promote women’s rights.

After skirmishes between the guerrillas and Iranian forces intensified this year, the Iranian military began shelling border villages in August, sending residents fleeing and killing livestock. The shelling drew angry criticism from Iraqi leaders, who condemned it as a disproportionate response.

But interviews with guerrillas suggest that they have inflicted considerable damage on Iran. While it is impossible to verify the claims, the leader of the P.K.K., Murat Karayilan, said the P.J.A.K. fighters had killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in Iran since August. And Biryar Gabar says 108 Iranians were killed in August alone.

The group said the intensity of its military actions varied with the degree of persecution of Kurds within Iran.

The P.J.A.K. guerrillas anchor their operations in small bases in the valleys equipped with generators, satellite television, spring wells and gardens of eggplant, pomegranates, tomatoes and peaches.

They have built several cemeteries to rebury the remains of fighters killed in previous years and to prepare for those yet to die. Pictures of more than 100 dead fighters, including women, cover the interior walls of a building inside one cemetery.

Up in the mountains, where they will stay for a year or more at a time, the fighters live spartan lives, subsisting on plain soups, tea, rice, beans, water and bread baked in makeshift ovens. They have a few tents and sleeping rolls, explaining that the only home they have is what they carry on their backs. The camps are designed for quick getaways.

The guerrillas are adept at hit-and-run tactics, and they thrive in the thin air almost two miles above sea level, climbing and hiking rapidly over the most challenging terrain. They send small teams into Iran armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, Russian-made sniper rifles and machine guns.

Typically, they will attack a few soldiers at the fringe of a larger group, said Sadun Edesa, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who said he had been fighting up here for five years. He said the small attack was usually all it took to derail an Iranian operation aimed at rooting out guerrillas inside Iran.

He was recently part of a four-man ambush team that sneaked into Iran and killed five Iranian soldiers, he said, before scampering back to camouflaged positions. “When you hit one of their groups like that, their military operation dies,” he said.

At one outpost, the guerrillas allowed a brief interview with the Iranian soldier they say was captured in the ambush described by the P.J.A.K. ambush commander, Bayram Gabar. The prisoner identified himself as Akbar Talibi, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran.

His uniform bore Guard insignia, and he sat cross-legged on a thin carpet as six guerrillas stood or squatted nearby, one resting a Kalashnikov rifle on his thighs. The prisoner said that of his 70-man unit, 15 had been killed and 17 wounded since August.

The Iranian military, the prisoner added, “wants to destroy P.J.A.K.” Iranian officials in Tehran did not respond to requests for comment about the guerrillas or the man the guerrillas identified as a captured soldier.

A former member of the Iranian Parliament, Jalal Jalilizadeh, who is Kurdish, said the guerrilla group increased its attacks and began singling out Revolutionary Guard members and assassinating other officials on the Iranian side of the border a year ago.

There are no official tallies of Iranian casualties, though Mr. Jalilizadeh estimated the total at around 100 since last year. He also confirmed several recent attacks described by the guerrillas, including the downing of an Iranian helicopter near the border in September, which killed at least six.

Mr. Shevger said he led the team that destroyed the helicopter, bringing it down it with a fusillade from machine guns and sniper rifles. “We found a weak point in the helicopter, and we opened fire,” he said. The fighting with Iran, he added, “will be worse a year from now.”

The group now has “far more” than 2,000 guerrillas fighting Iran, said Biryar Gabar, who added that most of them were based in Iran. There was no way to verify his claim.

But the group still has more than enough fighters in this part of Iraq to be a law unto itself, controlling the few roads in the area with checkpoints. A guerrilla outpost on the crest of a ridge of mountains straddling the border suggests that it holds sway over much of the border, while Iranian soldiers are garrisoned several miles away.

When the heavy shelling began in August, the Iranians also unleashed infantry attacks on guerrilla positions near this outpost but were beaten back, the guerrillas say. The outpost is concealed within a rock outcropping the size of a battle cruiser.

Above it, along the ridge, guerrilla sentries peer through binoculars at troop movements several miles inside Iran, careful to keep their heads down, they say, because the Iranians direct artillery fire at any sign of the guerrillas.

Nothing in their demeanor suggests that the guerrillas will soon abandon their fight. But their growing attacks inside Iran this year have put pressure on the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the dominant political party in the eastern sector of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which sees Iran as a crucial trading partner. For their part, the guerrillas believe that the party, whose leader is the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, has become a toady for Iran.

But party officials say it would be foolish and shortsighted not to cultivate better relations with Iran and Turkey, from whom the landlocked Kurds obtain gasoline and other critical supplies. Kurdish leaders are also keenly aware that the guerrillas remain popular with the Kurdish public.

Tension between the party and the guerrillas apparently led to a skirmish in late August, when fighters crossed the border from Iran and were attacked by the pesh merga, the armed force affiliated with the party. Mr. Karayilan said he immediately phoned a counterpart at the P.U.K., who he said told him that the party was “getting pressure from Iran.”

Mr. Talabani has warned the guerrillas to put their weapons down or leave the border. But a senior party official close to Mr. Talabani admitted that “the people would be against us” if it took action against them.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, declined to comment on the August skirmish, but he acknowledged that the pesh merga could not defeat the tough and proficient guerrillas. “If Iran and Turkey with their huge armies cannot control their borders,” he said, “how could we do that?”

The guerrillas also appear confident, though they fear the Iranian artillery. Mr. Edesa, the 22-year-old fighter, spoke with assurance about their capabilities against the Iranians. “They have a level of discipline in them as well,” he said. “But we are more disciplined. They are a military force, and they live in barracks. But we are a guerrilla force.”

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Iraqi Kurdistan, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran.

October 23, 2007
European Court Strikes Down ‘Volkswagen Law’

By MARK LANDLER
LUXEMBOURG, Oct. 23 — Striking down one of Europe’s most visible symbols of economic protectionism, the European Court of Justice ruled today that a German law shielding Volkswagen from a hostile takeover illegally restricts the free flow of capital within Europe.

The decision, which was expected, clears the way for Porsche, the sports-car maker that already owns 31 percent of Volkswagen’s shares, to take over the company, Europe’s largest car manufacturer.

“We welcome the decision of the E.U. court,” a spokesman for Porsche, Frank Gaube, said. “This brings us to a position, as Volkswagen’s largest shareholder, to fully exercise our voting rights.”

Porsche said it would discuss raising its stake at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 12. Its chairman, Wendelin Wiedeking, has said that owning a majority of Volkswagen’s shares would strengthen Porsche’s efforts to collaborate with VW on development and production.

The judgment, read out by the court’s president, Vassilios Skouris, in a terse 10-minute session in a nearly-empty chamber in this tiny grand duchy, was a stinging setback for the German government.

It comes at a time when Germany is increasingly nervous about foreign investors, particularly wealthy state-owned investment funds and hedge funds, buying into what it deems strategically important industries.

One of Germany’s governing parties, the Christian Democratic Union, is drafting new regulations that would encourage foreigners to disclose investments in German companies, and expand Berlin’s right to approve or reject those investments, based on the national interest.

In Volkswagen’s case, the specter of a foreign takeover has been lessened by the role of Porsche, a fellow German carmaker with common historical roots. Ferdinand Porsche, the patriarch of Porsche, led the company that designed the forerunner of the Volkswagen Beetle.

German officials emphasized this, even as they conceded they had lost the battle to defend the so-called Volkswagen Law.

The law was adopted in 1960 to secure the interests of the state of Lower Saxony, which owns 20 percent of Volkswagen and views itself as a guardian of workers’ rights. It caps the voting rights of any other investor in Volkswagen at 20 percent, regardless of how many shares it owns.

“Through the stakes held by Porsche A.G. and the state of Lower Saxony, Volkswagen A.G. is protected from any financial investor wishing to seize it,” the prime minister of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff, said in Germany after the decision was announced this morning.

“They cannot make speculations against shareholders who hold more than a 50 percent stake,” he added.

Shares of Volkswagen fell more than 2 percent in midday trading in Frankfurt. The stock has more than doubled this last year, because of improved operating results as well as speculation about its future.

The German Justice Ministry expressed disappointment but said it would move quickly to change the law. The ministry said it was not yet clear whether the law would be modified or scrapped entirely.

Based on the court’s judgment, it is not easy to see how Germany could salvage much of it. The judges ruled that the law’s two key provisions — the 20 percent limit on voting rights and the right of the federal government and Lower Saxony to appoint two representatives each to Volkswagen’s supervisory board — breached European law on the free movement of capital.

In a statement summarizing the ruling, the court said Germany had been “unable to explain why, in order to meet the objective of protecting workers, it is appropriate and necessary for the federal and state authorities to maintain a strengthened and irremovable position in the capital of Volkswagen.”

Now that Porsche has the right to tighten its grip on Volkswagen, the fears of the workers are likely to loom large.

Volkswagen’s employees have gone to a German court to halt a plan by Porsche to allocate seats on the board of a new holding company in a way that would reduce their number of seats to 3 out of 12, from 10 out of 20 on the Volkswagen board. A decision on that is expected Wednesday.

The chief of Volkswagen’s works council, Bernd Osterloh, said he regretted the European court’s ruling. According to Reuters, he described the law as the “victim of a raging neo-liberal mainstream” in Europe, language used by critics of what they often label American-style capitalism.

For now, Porsche seems eager to calm the waters. The company said it was under no pressure to raise its stake in Volkswagen immediately, and some analysts said it might do so gradually, to assuage the fears of Volkswagen’s workers that they will lose their voice in a combined company.

Mr. Gaube also said Porsche would welcome Lower Saxony keeping two seats on the Volkswagen board, even though it is no longer legally guaranteed that many. Lower Saxony has indicated it might increase its stake in Volkswagen to 25 percent, to counter Porsche’s influence.

But few analysts doubt Porsche’s ultimate goal. The carmaker, one of the world’s most profitable, has options to buy many more Volkswagen shares, as well as a credit line worth 10 billion euros ($14 billion).

“They’re going to start using those options on the same day, or the day after, the court ruling,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, the director of the Center for Automotive Research in Gelsenkirchen.

While the decision is a notable success in the European Commission’s campaign against protectionist moves by several European capitals, some lawyers said it would have limited use as a precedent for other cases. The importance of this case, they said, lies more in Volkswagen’s role as a symbol of Germany’s economic recovery after the destruction of World War II.

Getting Iraq To Work
By Jim Golby
Sunday, October 14, 2007; B01

Outside TIKRIT, Iraq

I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq without ever hearing about any of the good ones. That's not because horrible things don't occur here every day; they do. I've witnessed far more death and sadness than I wish anyone ever had to see. And it's not because I believe in some left-wing media conspiracy. If I'm affiliated with a political party at all, I honestly can't remember which one it is.

Rather, I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq because I've been deployed here for more than 24 months since this war began, and I think I have a story to tell that's heroic, maybe even noble. It's not my story. In fact, I'm quite average, and I'm certainly not noble. But I've been blessed to serve with some amazing officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers who have sacrificed another 15 months away from their families -- and, for once, produced something that I don't think looks all that bad, even in this desolate country.

Over the last six months, I've served at a large U.S. base in Iraq. My soldiers and I have been responsible for securing the area around the main entrance. We've played a major role in protecting thousands of soldiers and civilians who reside on the base. That's a significant accomplishment in itself, even though it's not sexy, and it has required a lot of discipline and dedication from my troops to do it so well.

But this past summer, we accomplished something else that seems to me almost unequivocally good.

In April, I began working with a group on an initiative that the U.S. government calls the IBIZ. As adept as most of us in the military are at deciphering acronyms that would befuddle the average man, we couldn't figure this one out. I think my first sergeant guessed closest, hypothesizing that it stood for "Iraq's Big-Ass Iguana Zoo." Unfortunately, IBIZ involves no arboreal lizards. It stands for "Iraqi Business and Industrial Zone."

This is an initiative intended to give Iraqi companies better access to U.S. contracts, establish security to let Iraqi companies develop, and train individual Iraqis in skills such as carpentry, plumbing and electrical work. It consists of a contracting office, two Iraqi industrial plants -- one for producing concrete and the other for crushing rock into gravel -- alongside a shipping and receiving yard and a skills training area. It also has the potential to save the U.S. government a significant amount of money by using cheaper Iraqi labor for many jobs usually performed by other contracted foreign nationals.

That's it? you say. That's all we get? Plumbers? Carpenters? I understand your frustration. It's not the stuff of a box-office hit or a gripping novel. But it's heroic. And it's noble, and I'll tell you why.

Every day, soldiers here pull duty in numerous defensive fighting positions or in guard towers, risking their lives for this idea called IBIZ. Our soldiers run the access control and security systems that screen the Iraqis and the thousands of other personnel and vehicles that come through here each week. Or they sit in up-armored Humvees and oversee contractors who construct fences or barriers around the new concrete plant and rock crusher.

And, for once, it really seems to be about Iraqi freedom.

I'm often surprised that many Iraqis still take us seriously. They see the news and listen to us lament the nearly 4,000 U.S. troops who have died while forgetting the far greater tragedy to Iraqis. I have to admit that I was shocked at what I saw when I arrived back here this year for my second tour. If the local electricity, water or sanitation systems had improved, I couldn't tell; meanwhile, the base where I was living had grown threefold and was much cozier than the two smaller bases where I had lived just 20 months earlier.

Several Iraqis I talked to at the time expressed genuine concern about how much better Americans were living in Iraq than Iraqis themselves. But then things started to change. It didn't happen as quickly as I would have liked, but some Iraqis started to see that some things might be improving for them, too.

They saw some construction begin and heard a few comments from several U.S. soldiers about 35 good jobs that would be starting near the base. Many villagers probably wrote this off as another failed U.S. promise, but the construction continued and the talk grew more concrete. Finally, the project actually opened, and nearly 100 Iraqis lined up to compete for those jobs.

For once, Iraqis see hope and money, and they want both desperately.

In the first month after the contracting office opened in June, the Iraqi contracts in the province jumped by more than 20 percent and nearly $4 million. Villagers watched two Iraqi-owned plants go up in a semi-secure area in less than two months, grabbing several enormous contracts that typically would have gone to better-positioned Turkish firms. And 35 residents from four small villages received apprenticeships for on-the-job training as carpenters, plumbers and electricians, jobs that provide lunch and a decent salary by Iraqi standards.

Now, when we tell them to expect an additional 85 jobs this winter when we expand the IBIZ skills training program to include welders, small-engine mechanics and air conditioner repairmen, Iraqis are more likely to believe us, even though it might be a different "us" after my unit rotates out of theater.

I'm the one who receives the glowing appreciation and the e-mail invitation to lunch from an Iraqi contractor in broken English for what we've done with IBIZ, but my soldiers are the heroes. And they deserve the credit.

They're not the only ones, of course. Dozens of other officers, soldiers, civilian contractors, linguists and airmen on the base have played a crucial role in making this concept a reality. Some of them balked at it initially because they thought it too great a security risk, creating a magnet for attacks; others openly opposed it. But in the end, the idea prevailed because it was a good one. It may even turn out to be a great one.

And of course, there are the Iraqis working at or with the IBIZ themselves.

Here are some remarks sent to me recently by the Iraqi who owns one of the industrial plants:

"We and each honorable Iraqi should not forget each drop of blood that the US military dropped it for our sake to put us in right way to life and we should know that we owe much for the US people."

Those words made me proud. At the same time, I realize that therein lies the problem. Iraqis owe much, possibly too much, to the American people and the U.S. military. The contracts are all U.S. government contracts, the security is all provided by U.S. soldiers, and the jobs are all dependent on massive U.S. military bases. If they weren't receiving U.S. support, these Iraqis wouldn't have many options. And if the U.S. presence fades, the Iraqi plumbers, carpenters and electricians will face a stark decision: leave the country with their families and their new skills, or fight so that their tribe or sect or village will get some share of the remaining oil revenue.

The IBIZ is only one small tactical victory in need of a much larger strategic or political triumph. Some scholars and foreign policy experts claim that one of the major lessons of Vietnam is that tactical victories do not equal success at the strategic or political level. They may be correct, but the politicians who quote them often fail to mention that tactical victories don't necessarily preclude strategic victories, either. Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker are courageous men who believe that we are making progress. When they say that, I believe them because I, too, can finally see some results. I just hope that the investment in projects such as IBIZ hasn't come too late to make a lasting difference.

In a few years, I'll have the opportunity to examine how we won or lost this war while I study public policy in graduate school. No doubt, I'll uncover mistakes that our government, politicians and military leaders made over the first few years. But for now, I am up far too late at night, worried about maintaining discipline and accomplishing my mission as my soldiers and I finish our tour.

As I drift off, I think of my wife and two daughters waiting at home. And I see once again the strange combination of hope and desperation in those Iraqis' eyes on that first day of work. Then I see the fatigue on many of my soldiers' faces as I pin awards on their chests. They are noble, and they are heroes. And I am immensely proud of what I did with them in Iraq last summer.

james.t.golby@gmail.com

Jim Golby is an Army captain on his second tour of duty in Iraq.

This article reflects his personal views and does not represent the official position of the U.S. military or the Department of Defense.

Jim Golby will discuss his article at 1 p.m. Tuesday at www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

http://quantumcreative.blogspot.com/

Friday, October 19, 2007
Global: Myth of the Wealth Gap Debunked
"The improvement of the world must be highly contextualized. And it's not relevant to have it on a regional level, we must be much more detailed." - Hans Rosling, highlighting the importance of statistically ungrouping the countries and regions of Africa (and the rest of the world) when creating strategies for aid and developmental investment.

In a fascinating TED Talk, Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institutet and Director of Gapminder Foundation in Stockholm, Sweeden, uses UN statistics compiled over the last 30+ years to graphically illustrate trends of global health and wealth. You will honestly be surprised at what you find, and keep in mind, these are all UN statistics.

From the talk:

"There is no gap between the rich and poor any longer, this is a myth. There's a little hump here, but there are people all the way." - describing the graphical distribution of wealth on the projection screen in the video

Richest 20% have 74% of the wealth
Middle 60% have 24% of the wealth
Poorest 20% have 2% of the wealth

"This shows that the concept of developing countries is extremely doubtful. We sort of think about aid like the [richest] giving aid to the [poorest], but in the middle we have most of the world population and they have now 24% of the income."

This talk is eyeopening, and the statistics are enlightening in the sense that there is now proof that the widespread adoption of free trade is benefiting not just the wealthiest of nations, but the poorest, as well.

On a separate note, if the talk mentioned at least one opportunity mixed into all of these statistics, it is the NEED TO MAKE GLOBAL STATISTICS SEARCH-ABLE. The data to help contextualize the improvement of the world exists, and most of it is publicly funded data. However, most of this data is siloed off from other data by separate databases, "stupid passwords and dumb statistics." It is time for the statisticians and entrepreneurs of the world to harness the power of these data to apply solutions and innovative ideas to the individual regions of the world. Let's get the data and do something with it.

To have a look at the TED Talk - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

To take a look at the Gapminder statistical tool - http://tinyurl.com/32l3h2

Posted by Devin at 5:09 PM 0 comments