November 4, 2007
Musharraf Consolidates His Control With Arrests

By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4, — About 500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights activists were arrested today as the government of General Pervez Musharraf tried to consolidate its control after imposing emergency rule.

About a dozen privately run television news stations remained off the air, and international channels, including the BBC and CNN, were suspended. In the city of Lahore, police officers armed with tear gas tried to break up a meeting of regime opponents at the headquarters of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. They took dozens of people away in police vans.

Around the country, at least 80 lawyers were arrested, in an apparent bid to head off demonstrations that lawyers groups had planned for Monday.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said at a news conference today that new parliamentary elections, which had been expected in January, could be “up to a year” away. He said up to 500 opposition activists had been arrested nationwide.

Musharraf announced the emergency decree, under which the Constitution was suspended and most of the Supreme Court was dismissed, on state-run television just after midnight. In a 45-minute speech, the president said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.” He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Abraham Lincoln, citing his suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for the state of emergency in Pakistan.

Musharraf accused the Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”

The main opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan on Saturday night from Dubai and accused Musharraf of using the specter of terrorism to prolong his hold on power. “This is not emergency,” she said. “This is martial law.”

Bhutto spent today at her residence in Karachi. Leaders of her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, said she would fly to Islamabad to hold talks with other opposition parties about how to proceed. But Bhutto did not show up here.

In interviews with foreign television channels, Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan after years in exile in October with the backing of the United States, appealed for free and fair elections. But sympathizers to her cause said her options for influencing the situation appeared limited.

Organizing large protests under emergency rule, and after the bomb attack on her arrival procession Oct. 18 that killed 140 people, would be difficult, said Najem Sethi, the editor in chief of The Daily Times.

“Verbally she will be very critical,” Sethi said. “But she is not going to participate in protests. She’s going to make a token representation. Behind the scenes she will work with the government for elections as soon as possible.”

Musharraf summoned foreign diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador, Anne Patterson, to a meeting Sunday to explain the reasons for his action, according to diplomats.

The emergency rule came into force less than 24 hours after Musharraf met here with the senior United States. military commander in the region, Admiral William Fallon, who warned the Pakistani leader that U.S. military assistance would be in jeopardy if he introduced martial law, diplomats said.

Soon after Musharraf’s emergency decree, Washington officials said it was unlikely that the military aid would be cut. Indeed, the general tailored his decree to stress the necessity of continuing the fight against Islamic extremists sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which may have made it difficult for the United States to back off its commitments.

Musharraf acted just days before the Supreme Court was due to decide on the legality of his re-election on Oct. 6.

Among the dozens of lawyers arrested was the president of the Supreme Court bar association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has opposed Musharraf in legal arguments and in political protests, said Ayesha Tammy Haq, an Islamabad lawyer.

“If you want to take the country away from Talibanization, these are the people who can do it, the secular middle class,” said Haq, as she waited Sunday at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi to see Ahsan.

A government spokesman, Tariq Aziz Khan, said the arrests of lawyers were “preventive measures” taken because of a “threat to future law and order.”

In the spring, lawyers spearheaded opposition to Musharraf after he fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Supreme Court later reinstated Chaudhry, who continued to irritate Musharraf. By the end of last week, the general seemed unsure that the Supreme Court would rule favorably on his re-election.

Under the emergency declaration, the Supreme Court justices were ordered to take an oath to abide by a “provisional constitutional order” that replaces the country’s existing Constitution. Seven justices rejected the order Saturday night, according to an aide to Chaudhry.

Hours later, the state-run news media reported that three justices generally seen as supporting Musharraf had taken an oath to uphold the emergency measure. And it was announced that Chaudhry had been replaced by a pro-government member of the Supreme Court bench, Abdul Hamid Doger, as chief justice.

The director of the private television channel Aaj TV, Wamiq Zuberi, said a magistrate accompanied by five vans of gun-toting police officers showed up at the channel’s studios here Saturday night. They wanted to confiscate the channel’s outdoor broadcasting van, Zuberi said. But the magistrate did not have a warrant, and the workers at the studio stood their ground, forcing the officials to leave, Zuberi said.

Aziz, the prime minister, said today that the government planned to work on “a code of conduct” for broadcasters.

Representatives of several of the major opposition parties said their workers had been arrested. Ahsan Iqbal, the secretary for information of the Muslim League party, headed by the exiled politician Nawaz Sharif, said that eight party members had been arrested in the remote district of Narowal on the border with India.

David Rohde and Salman Masood contributed reporting.

November 3, 2007
Rice Under Pressure in Trip to Turkey

By HELENE COOPER
ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 2 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came under pressure from Turkish officials upon her arrival here today to publicly blame Kurdish leaders in Iraq for the recent Kurdish rebel attacks on Turkish forces.

Ms. Rice took pains to demonstrate support for Turkey against Kurdish militants. But she continued to advise against a Turkish invasion or cross-border incursion into Iraq.

“We understand the need to do something effective against the P.K.K. threat,” she said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the P.K.K., which hides in mountains in Iraq and has launched attacks on Turkish military forces.

But, she told reporters aboard her plane en route to Ankara, the capital, “effective action means action that can deal with the threat, but that’s not going to make the situation worse.”

She said that Turkey and the United States “really need to look for an effective strategy, not just one that’s going to strike out, somehow, and not deal with the problem.”

Her comments reflect a growing frustration on the part of Bush administration officials, who are in the middle of a delicate balancing act. On one hand Ms. Rice is seeking to give Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan enough American support that he can stand up to hard-liners in Turkey who are calling for a cross-border military incursion.

But in reality the last thing Ms. Rice, or the Bush administration, wants to see is a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, one of the few relatively peaceful parts of a volatile country.

As a result, she must find a way to give Mr. Erdogan public backing — calling on Iraqi leaders to rein in the P.K.K. — while at the same time privately urging the Turks not to invade Iraq.

Mr. Erdogan, for his part, has given the United States a de-facto deadline of Nov. 5, the day of his visit to Washington for talks with President Bush on the Kurdish issue. The Turkish military has indicated that it will wait for Mr. Erdogan’s return before any operation into Iraq.

Ms. Rice is meeting in Ankara with Mr. Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ali Babacan. She will then travel to Istanbul for discussions held by countries that neighbor Iraq and a three-way meeting for American, Turkish and Iraqi officials.

From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .
In Sometimes-Brusque 'Snowflakes,' He Shared Worldview, Shaped Policy
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2007; A01

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

The memos, often referred to as "snowflakes," shed light on Rumsfeld's brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.

Rumsfeld, whose sometimes abrasive approach often alienated other Cabinet members and White House staff members, produced 20 to 60 snowflakes a day and regularly poured out his thoughts in writing as the basis for developing policy, aides said. The memos are not classified but are marked "for official use only."

In a 2004 memo on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Rumsfeld concluded that the challenges there are "not unusual." Pessimistic news reports -- "our publics risk falling prey to the argument that all is lost" -- simply result from the wrong standards being applied, he wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists," he wrote.

People will "rally" to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory."

The meeting also led Rumsfeld to write that he needed a team to help him "go out and push people back, rather than simply defending" Iraq policy and strategy. "I am always on the defense. They say I do it well, but you can't win on the defense," he wrote. "We can't just keep taking hits."

The only man to hold the top Pentagon job twice -- as both the youngest and the oldest defense secretary -- Rumsfeld suggested that the public should know that there will be no "terminal event" in the fight against terrorism like the signing ceremony on the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered to end World War II. "It is going to be a long war," he wrote. "Iraq is only one battleground."

Based on the discussion with military analysts, Rumsfeld tied Iran and Iraq. "Iran is the concern of the American people, and if we fail in Iraq, it will advantage Iran," he wrote in his April 2006 memo.

Rumsfeld declined to comment, but an aide said the points in that memo were Rumsfeld's distillation of the analysts' comments, though he added that the secretary is known for using the term "bumper stickers."

"You are running a story based off of selective quotations and gross mischaracterizations from a handful of memos -- carefully picked from the some 20,000 written while Rumsfeld served as Secretary," Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn wrote in an e-mail. "After almost all meetings, he dictated his recollections of what was said for his own records."

In one of his longer ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world." He then advised aides "to test what the results could be" if the war on terrorism were renamed.

Neither Europe nor the United Nations understands the threat or the bigger picture, Rumsfeld complained in the same memo. He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," he wrote. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

If radicals "get a hold of" oil-rich Saudi Arabia, he added, the United States will have "an enormous national security problem."

The memos delve into issues beyond Iraq and terrorism. In a memo to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley in July 2006, Rumsfeld warned that the United States is "getting run out of Central Asia" by the Russians, who are doing a "considerably better job at bullying" than Washington is doing to "counter their bullying."

As public discontent and congressional questioning grew in 2006, his final year at the Pentagon, a series of snowflakes revealed a man determined to counter the chorus of media criticism in one- or two-line zingers to staff members about specific articles.

"I think you ought to get a letter off about Ralph Peters' op-ed in the New York Post. It is terrible," he writes on Feb. 6, 2006. In a Feb. 2 New York Post column, Peters decried "chronic troop shortages in Iraq" while the Pentagon buys "high-tech toys that have no missions."

On March 10, he commanded J. Dorrance Smith, the assistant defense secretary for public affairs, to craft a "better presentation to respond to this business that the Department of Defense has no plan. This is just utter nonsense. We need to knock it down hard." A Washington Post-ABC News poll that month found that 65 percent of Americans thought that Bush had no plan for victory.

On March 20, Rumsfeld ordered a point-by-point analysis of the seven "mistakes" columnist Trudy Rubin wrote about in the Philadelphia Inquirer and a response to her essay -- which he wanted to see before it was sent out. Rubin wrote that the war had "gone sour."

"Please have someone find precisely when I said 'dead-enders' and what the context was," he ordered Smith in September 2006.

A November 2006 editorial in the New York Times that said the Army was ruined "is disgraceful," Rumsfeld wrote to Smith. The editorial said that "one welcome dividend" of Rumsfeld's departure was that the United States would "now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down."

Rumsfeld later reprimanded his staff, writing, "I read the letter we sent in rebuttal. I thought it rather weak and not signed at the level it should have been." He then instructed staffers to prepare an article about the Army. "We need to get that story out," he wrote on Nov. 28, 2006, a Tuesday. He ordered a draft by Friday.

2007
Iraqi Islamic Party: “Al Qaeda is Defeated”

“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.

Colonel Ricky Gibbs, the American brigade commander with responsibility for the Rashid District in south Baghdad today told me, “So goes South Baghdad goes Baghdad.” General Petraeus had told me similar things about the importance of South Baghdad. In fact, Rashid is quickly developing into what might be one of the final serious battlegrounds of the war.

During the meeting, another member of the Iraqi Islamic Party said that al Qaeda has changed its strategy now that fomenting civil war between Sunni and Shia has backfired. Al Qaeda has shifted targets, now trying to generate friction between tribes. This time, however, the tribes are onto the game early, and they are not playing.

Sheik Omar, who has gained the respect of American combat leaders for his intelligence and organizational skills, said the tough line against al Qaeda is also enforced at the tribal level. According to Sheik Omar, the Jabouri tribe, too, is actively committed to destroying al Qaeda. So much so, that Jabouri tribal leaders have decided they would “kill their own sons” if any aided al Qaeda. To underscore the point, he went on to say that about 70 Jabouri “sons” had been killed by the Jabouri tribe so far.

In addition to brigade commander Colonel Ricky Gibbs, four of his battalion commanders were also present: Lieutenant Colonels James Crider, Patrick Frank, Stephen Michael and Myron Reineke. Sheik Omar expressed deep gratitude for their assistance.

Omar’s influence extends beyond tribal and party levels, to include important channels within the Iraqi government and the US military in Baghdad, as evidenced by the agenda of the hours-long meeting. But for the talk about al Qaeda, the focus was mostly on other topics, such as returning displaced persons to their homes, efficiently delivering basic services and jumpstarting the economy. In fact, more and more meetings in Iraq are turning to day-to-day business, and less time is required on military and security topics like targeting and addressing intelligence-type matters, which until recently monopolized most meetings across Iraq.

Michael Yon does not receive funding or financial support from Fox News, or from any network, movie, book or television deals at this time. He is entirely reader supported. He relies on his readers to help him replace his equipment and cover his expenses so that he may remain in Iraq and bring you the stories of our soldiers. If you value his work, please consider supporting his mission.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/opinion/01cohen.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
November 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Afghanistan at the Brink

By ROGER COHEN
KABUL, Afghanistan

Afghanistan is not Iraq. That’s the good news. Decades of war are devastating, but not as crippling as decades of Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian hell. The glint of initiative outweighs fear’s residue in Afghan eyes.

Across this dirt-poor country — think sub-Saharan Africa —
small signs of initiative and awakening abound:
1.new carpet-weaving businesses,
2.surging wheat production,
3.just-opened schools,
4.solar panels on mud-brick homes.
5. Growth is more than 8 percent.

6. Since the Taliban’s fall in 2001, four million Afghan refugees have come home in one of the biggest post-1945 returns of people.

7. About 38 percent of school students are girls, up from zero.
8.Roads,
9.clinics,
10.mine-clearing and
11.several million cellphones are changing Afghan lives.

All this may seem a decent return on about $22 billion of American investment since 2002. A further $5.6 billion is under review for 2008. The strategic aim is a stable Afghanistan that is no longer for rent by terrorists from one-eyed mullahs.

But if Afghanistan is not Iraq, it’s not delivered from war either. Lebanon looks stable by comparison. Like Poland, Afghanistan has suffered the fate of a weak state between powerful neighbors. Unlike Poland, it grows poppy and inhabits a region of explosive volatility.

That’s the bad news.

I heard many assessments of how long Afghanistan will depend on Western military assistance, but Abdul Jabbar Sabit, the attorney general, was bluntest: “The Afghan Army will not be able to defend the country for 10 years, so the international force has to be here for at least a decade.”

He’s realistic. An intense U.S. effort is going into producing a credible 72,000-man Afghan Army by 2009. The number may be met, but the force’s ability to sustain itself and mount large operations will lag. Capt. Sylvain Caron, a Canadian “mentoring” a nascent battalion, said “the cultural change will take 20 years.”

The police are way behind the army. Training has been a disaster. Low salaries, belatedly rising to $100 from $50 a month, have made corruption endemic, particularly in narco-territory. Work on a credible police force has scarcely begun.

“We’re looking at a long-term commitment,” William Wood, the U.S. ambassador, told me. How long? “A number of years.” Like in post-war Germany? “It would just be dishonest to pretend to be able to give you a number.” But, he insisted: “The role of the U.S. military will change.”

Yes, it will recede, but slowly. With Afghanistan at a tipping point, the next U.S. president will face an enduring challenge here of immense proportions.

He or she must level with the American people, in a way President Bush never has, about the real burden of an attempt to build two countries from scratch at once. That burden can no longer be borne by military families alone, however much Iraqi extrication is achieved.

For now, unlike in Iraq, the U.S. has real allies here. Peter Struck, the former German defense minister, once said Germany “will also be defended in the Hindu Kush.” But that European conviction is fraying as casualties and violence rise.

The next president will have to fight to maintain NATO solidarity. Huge problems loom. Among them is breaking the growing symbiosis between drug traffickers and the Taliban. Wood described an “exploding drug industry” that “finances the Taliban” and wages “its own assault on institutional government.” The more than $2 billion spent fighting drugs “hasn’t worked,” he conceded.

Other challenges are containing the rampant corruption of governors chosen by President Hamid Karzai, better integrating sometimes contradictory international efforts and limiting the degree to which Pakistan and Iran meddle.

“The insurgents go some places I cannot go,” acknowledged Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the NATO commander in Afghanistan. Wood told me the country “is facing an insurgency that is able to reconstitute itself outside the country.” That’s grave.

As these comments suggest, the Taliban is still substantially made in Pakistan. U.S. efforts to get needed cooperation from its ally have floundered.

All these problems are redoubled by the unpopularity of Bush’s America. Iran sees in Afghanistan another chance to hurt U.S. interests. But it’s not alone. Russia likes that game these days. China is not averse. Within the alliance, the current European view of America as belligerent, simplistic and insensitive to Islam does not foster unity.

Bush is too much part of the problem to solve it. But the cost of failure is unacceptable. Defeat would destroy NATO. It would further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. It would propel nuke-seeking Al Qaeda from its Waziristan caves.

Not least, it would take those Afghan girls out of school. A Kabul crash course — and I don’t mean in kite-flying — is in order for all serious White House candidates.

Blog: www.iht.com/passages.