Iran wants talks with US ambassador
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writers
2 hours, 17 minutes ago
Iran wants to renew high-level talks with U.S. officials on security in Iraq, insisting that discussions take place between ambassadors and not lower-level functionaries, Iraqi officials said Monday.

The Iranians also want a clear-cut agenda for the meeting, which the American side has not yet provided, according to Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a member of parliament. Three Iraqi officials confirmed his account, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the press.

There was no immediate comment or confirmation from Iran's Foreign Ministry or state media.

A May 28 meeting concerning security in Iraq between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze between the two countries.

A planned Dec. 18 meeting between Iranian and American security, military and diplomatic experts was canceled a few days before it was to be held. At the time, Iranian officials said it was a scheduling problem while U.S. officials referred questions to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

American officials have since pointed out that Dec. 18 was the day Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Iraq, which forced the postponement of the meeting. For security reasons, they said they could not disclose Rice's arrival date ahead of time.

Since then, top Iranian officials in Baghdad have asked their Iraqi counterparts to push the Americans to hold a fourth-round of talks between Crocker and Qomi, an Iranian official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The two last met in August, shortly after the first and only meeting of low-level experts, which produced no concrete results.

Iran has long been accused by Washington of training, arming and funding Shiite extremists inside Iraq to kill American troops.

But in the past month, U.S. officials have said Tehran appears to have slowed or halted the flow of illegal weapons across the frontier. Iran has denied the arms smuggling accusations, insisting that it is doing its best to help stabilize its embattled western neighbor.

Crocker told reporters during a Sunday briefing in Baghdad that he would be willing to meet Qomi again, but said no date had been set for a meeting at any level.

"I would be open to this. We could do it at the experts' level or we could do it at my level. I would definitely see that as a possibility," he said. "We're looking at what we might talk about, which I think is the first and necessary step before deciding who talks about it."

Crocker said there were "some signs, some indicators that the Iranians are using some influence to bring down violence from extremist Shiia militias." They included a drop in the number of attacks that use high-tech shaped charge bombs, which American officials allege are made in Iran.

"How lasting a phenomenon that will be, and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 will be very important to the long-term future of the country," he said.

Crocker said any talks with the Iranians would focus solely on Iraqi security and would not extend into the explosive issue of U.S. accusations that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Al-Askari said a top Iranian diplomat complained to him in recent days that U.S. officials are not providing enough information about what a new round of talks at any level will achieve.

"They told us that the Americans are vague and that they want to know what is the goal, what is the purpose of these talks," al-Askari said. "They said they do not want to talk on the level of experts — that at a minimum, it should be at the ambassadorial level or even higher."

Al-Askari added that the Iranians were also upset that although they contributed to the improving security situation in Iraq, U.S. officials have not done enough to acknowledge it.

"The Iranians will not stand anymore going to talk with the U.S. one day, and the next day watch the Americans speak badly about them in the press — by saying Iran is supporting militias and supplying weapons," he said.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad was closed Monday for the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Poll: 79% of Cubans think Castro gov't can't fix problems


What's this?
By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY
The first authoritative poll of the aspirations and attitudes of Cuba's people reveals an overwhelming desire to elect the successors to Fidel Castro, says the pro-democracy group that conducted the poll.
The poll, which was secretly conducted in Cuba by the International Republican Institute (IRI), shows 79% of Cubans do not believe the current government can fix the problems facing the country and 74% want to vote on Castro's successor.

"It's kind of like a nose under the tent of the real Cuba," said James Roberts, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who served 25 years in the State Department focusing on Latin America.

"It gives what your intuition would tell you that people must be thinking in their heart of hearts, that this 50-year regime of tyranny is not something people would like to live under for another 50 years."

Among the polls findings:

•41% of Cubans believe the situation in Cuba is going badly or very badly, compared with 25% who believe it's going well or very well.

•77% of Cubans want a new system of elections.

•83% of Cubans believe changes to a more market-based economy would improve their daily lives.

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington, which represents the Cuban government, declined to comment on the poll.

While many Cuba experts said the poll results agree with their own research of attitudes on the island, pollsters said the method used is rather unorthodox.

The institute, which promotes democracy around the world and receives funding from Congress, employed pollsters who did not tell the nearly 600 Cubans they questioned that they were being polled. The pollsters engaged Cubans in conversation with a set list of topics and later recorded their answers.

Shawn Sullivan, IRI's program director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said the method allowed Cubans to speak freely. Conceding the method is unconventional, Sullivan said it was the best way to get accurate opinions in a dictatorship. "I think they're always concerned that whoever is asking the questions is working on behalf of the regime," he said.

There are risks to that method. Eric Nielsen, senior director of media strategies for Gallup, said pollsters can inadvertently skew the response during a casual conversation. "You're not pushing them down a path, but you're obviously going to get on a level of discussion where you opinions are going to be interjected," he said.

He also said that traditional polls target specific households to get a reliable cross-section of a population. The IRI poll was conducted in 14 of Cuba's 15 provinces; pollsters spoke only with people they encountered on the streets.

Cuba experts said that identifying oneself as a pollster would have yielded a false picture, given that the Communist Party has spies in all neighborhoods and criticizing the government can result in a long prison term.

"As soon as you identify yourself as a pollster, people try to hedge their answers and not be totally honest," said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

Suchlicki says that reticence is evident in a Gallup Poll done last year. Gallup questioners who identified themselves as pollsters reported that 39% of Cubans disapproved of Cuba's leadership. That number was 79% in the IRI poll.

IRI, which was once affiliated with the Republican Party but is now non-partisan, has been the subject of some controversy. Former U.S. ambassador to Haiti Brian Dean Curran, an appointee of President Clinton, accused the group of supporting the opposition groups that overthrew former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. The institute said it merely helped teach Haitians about free elections, campaigns and registration drives.

Cuba experts were divided on the meaning of the poll.

Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute, a think tank, was surprised that Cubans say their biggest problem is a broken economy. "What it means is if Raúl Castro seriously takes on the big economic problems that they've got, then he will be addressing the main problem on people's minds," said Peters, an adviser to the House of Representatives' Cuba Working Group.

Raúl Castro has run Cuba since his brother underwent surgery in July 2006. Whether he is seen as a viable leader by Cubans could depend on his attitude toward Fidel's state-controlled economic system. That's because a vast majority don't believe the current government can fix the country's problems. When asked what government could, 32% said a democratic one; only 3% said socialist. Forty-three percent did not respond.

Vicki Huddleston, former chief of the American Interests Section in Havana, said the inconclusive response indicates that Cubans may wish to preserve some things, such as free education and health care.

"They do like some of the things that they've gained," said Huddleston, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "They might not be willing to give up stability for democracy."

The Heritage Foundation's Roberts disagrees.

"They might be less afraid of losing the goods they have now if they could find out that they could get better education and health care," Roberts said. "Hopefully, they'll be able to take that plunge."

December 20, 2007
Iraqi Refugees Return, and Are Stranded

By CARA BUCKLEY
BAGHDAD — The widow Hashim crossed the border into Iraq from Syria at dusk last month, heading homeward as the sun set behind her and the sky ahead grew dark.

Her dwindling savings had bought her family passage aboard a crowded bus, but there was no telling what awaited her at journey’s end. The only sure thing was that she would have to look for a new home and a job in a city starved for work and crudely reshaped by war.

Four weeks later, Maha Hashim is sharing her uncle’s musty two-bedroom apartment with her four children, sister-in law and four nieces and nephews, in the once tortured Baghdad neighborhood around Haifa Street. She has vowed not to stay long, but has no job and cannot afford an apartment of her own. Her husband, a policeman, was killed by insurgents in mid-2006, and her old house in southern Baghdad was destroyed by a truck bomb. Her old neighborhood, Saydia, remains one of most dangerous in the capital.

“I loved Saydia but I can never go back; it broke my heart,” said Ms. Hashim, 40, a Sunni. “I need to get a job and a home, but how, and where?”

Tens of thousands of returning refugees face similar uncertainties throughout Iraq, where the government’s inability to manage the uneven reverse exodus has left the most vulnerable in an uneasy, potentially explosive limbo.

The government’s widely publicized plan to run free buses from Damascus, Syria, to Baghdad was suspended after just two runs. Thousands of Sunni refugees get no aid because they fear registering with the Shiite-led government. While aid organizations are distributing emergency packets that include utensils, blankets and food, deeper structural issues, like securing neighborhoods, supplying housing and creating jobs, remain unresolved and largely unaddressed.

A small fraction of the millions of refugees who fled Iraq have come back. While the government trumpeted their return as proof of newfound security, migration experts said most of them were forced back by expired visas and depleted savings. Ms. Hashim, for one, pawned her wedding ring and gold jewelry to stay in Syria, but came back after her uncle’s visa application was denied.

The American military has expressed deep concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to feed and house its returnees, or manage people who wish to reclaim their homes. It is widely feared that property disputes or efforts to return to newly homogenized neighborhoods could set off fresh waves of sectarian attacks.

For most Iraqi refugees, the trip home is just the beginning of their troubles. Many return to find their homes destroyed or filled with squatters, most of them displaced people themselves. But the government committee that decides property disputes is charged with hearing only cases that predate the invasion of 2003.

“We urgently need a plan; the whole government needs to be involved,” said Hamdiya A. Najaf, an official with the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration. Her ministry is overloaded with property dispute cases from Saddam Hussein’s time, when thousands were forcibly relocated. “We’re still working on the old problems,” she said. “We don’t have the mechanism to solve the new ones.”

The brewing housing crisis extends to millions who abandoned their homes but stayed in Iraq. In Baghdad alone, more than 300,000 people left one neighborhood for another, as Sunnis fled to the west and Shiites to the east, often moving into recently evacuated houses.

Afraah Kadhom’s family is among the uprooted. She is 36, and usually shrouded in a billowing black abaya, a symbol of mourning. Her father and four brothers were killed two years ago when gunmen broke through the doors to the family’s house in Huriya, a neighborhood in north central Baghdad, and methodically hunted the men down. One of her brother’s sons, Mustafa, cradled his father’s head as the man lay dying. Mustafa, who is 9 now and shy, is the oldest surviving male member of the family. “The man of our house,” Ms. Kadhom said.

The family stayed in Huriya until last December, when armed Shiite militiamen swept through, routing more than 100 Sunni families, including Ms. Kadhom’s. Ms. Kadhom and her relatives fled to Ghazaliya, in western Baghdad, where an imam found them an apartment belonging to a Shiite family that had left for eastern Baghdad.

The government has aid programs that could help Ms. Kadhom, but she views them with deep suspicion. To apply for the food program, for example, she would have to return to Huriya to unregister the family with the local council, but she is desperately afraid of going there.

Iraq’s internally displaced are entitled to 150,000 dinars, or $123, a month from the government. But Ms. Kadhom also worries that the Shiite-dominated government would punish her if she applied. Her pride is also a factor. Ms. Kadhom’s father was a sheik. The family was used to giving alms, not asking for them.

If the apartment’s owners come back, Ms. Kadhom’s family will have nowhere to go. Three weeks after her family fled, its house was bombed and the rubble bulldozed away.

“The Shiites who moved into the homes near our property in Huriya, they will kill us if we go back,” she said.

The housing situation in Baghdad resembles a fraught game of musical chairs. Some displaced people are renting refugees’ homes; others moved in secretly or by force. Still others, like Ms. Kadhom and Ms. Hashim, have nowhere to move back to, either because their homes are gone or their neighborhoods are unsafe. And as refugees return in greater numbers, and find strangers, especially strangers from a different sect, living in their homes, security gains here could be erased.

“If these people become desperate, we’re going back to square one,” said Dr. Said Hakki, director of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. “The Iraqi government is aware of it and so is General Petraeus’s office,” he said, referring to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander here.

Yet the American forces here have emphasized repeatedly that they do not want to get involved in property disputes, and the Iraqi government appears to be ignoring calls from its own ranks to step up the appeals process.

Ms. Najaf, the migration official, said she had been pleading with government ministers to create an emergency plan to rebuild homes and tackle recent property disputes. She says only the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has the power to find a solution. But she has had trouble even reaching him by phone.

“Iraqis by nature can be nervous, easily agitated,” she said. “If they see another person in their homes, who knows what will happen next. All Iraqis have pistols.”

Local courts offer the only official means of settling the more recent property disputes. But migration officials say that they are backlogged and move at a glacial pace, and that in any event their decisions are rarely enforced. The responsibility for resolving property disputes, those few that are addressed, often falls to city council members or tribal sheiks.

Dhia’a al-Dien, 42, an engineer, leads the local council in the area of Haifa Street where Ms. Hashim and her family now live. Haifa Street used to be one of the most turbulent neighborhoods in Baghdad, and its middle class fled as kidnappings and mob-style street killings soared.

When squatters descended on some apartments, Mr. Dien said he felt helpless. “They were displaced from other neighborhoods. I felt pity for some of them. Others had weapons, the invaders. There was such chaos.”

Mr. Dien said he had been able to negotiate the return process for the handful of owners who have reclaimed their buildings. Some of the squatters left; others agreed to pay rent. But hundreds of the apartments’ owners have yet to return, and he fears getting stuck in the middle when they do.

“There’s no one helping us negotiate the return,” he said, shaking his head. “The Americans are telling us that we’ve got to negotiate between each other, because it’s not their business. But the Iraqi government said it’s not their business either.”

Mudhafer al-Husaini, Qais Mizher and Balen Y. Younis contributed reporting.

Al Qaeda in 2008: The Struggle for Relevance
December 19, 2007 1815 GMT

Editor's Note:The Geopolitical Intelligence Report and Terrorism Intelligence Report will not be published during the week of Dec. 23-29. The weeklies will restart beginning Jan. 2, 2008.

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

On Dec. 16, al Qaeda's As-Sahab media branch released a 97-minute video message from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. In the message, titled "A Review of Events," al-Zawahiri readdressed a number of his favorite topics at length.

This video appeared just two days after As-Sahab released a 20-minute al-Zawahiri message titled "Annapolis -- The Treason." In that message, al-Zawahiri speaks on audio tape while a still photograph of him is displayed over a montage of photos from the peace conference in Annapolis, Md. As the title implies, al-Zawahiri criticizes the conference.

Although the Dec. 14 release appeared first, it obviously was recorded after the Dec. 16 video. Given the content of the Dec. 14 message, it most likely was recorded shortly after the Nov. 27 Annapolis conference and before the Dec. 11 twin bombings in Algeria. The two latest releases are interrelated, however, given that the still photo of al-Zawahiri used in the Dec. 14 message appears to have been captured from the video released two days later.

After having been subjected to two hours of al-Zawahiri opinions in just two days, we cannot help but wonder whether anyone else is listening to this guy -- and, if so, why? This question is particularly appropriate now, as we come to the time of the year when we traditionally prepare our annual forecast on al Qaeda. As we look ahead to 2008, the core al Qaeda leadership clearly is struggling to remain relevant in the ideological realm, a daunting task for an organization that has been rendered geopolitically and strategically impotent on the physical battlefield.

Devolution

The theme of our 2007 al Qaeda forecast was the continuation of the metamorphosis of al Qaeda from a smaller core group of professional operatives into an operational model that encourages independent "grassroots" jihadists to conduct attacks, or into a model in which al Qaeda provides the operational commanders who organize grassroots cells. We referred to this shift as devolution because it signified a return to al Qaeda's pre-9/11 model.

We noted that the shift gave al Qaeda "the movement" a broader geographic and operational reach than al Qaeda "the group," but we also said that this larger, dispersed group of actors lacked the operational depth and expertise of the core group and its well-trained terrorist cadre.

Looking back at the successful, attempted and thwarted attacks in 2007, this prediction was largely on-target. The high-profile attacks and thwarted attacks were plotted by grassroots groups such as the one responsible for the attacks in London and Glasgow, Scotland, or by regional affiliates such as al Qaeda's franchise in Algeria, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The core al Qaeda group once again failed to conduct any attacks.

British authorities have indicated that the men responsible for the failed London and Glasgow attempts were linked in some way to al Qaeda in Iraq, though any such links must have been fairly inconsequential. The al Qaeda franchise in Iraq has conducted hundreds of successful bombings and has a considerable amount of experience in tradecraft and bombmaking, while the London and Glasgow attempts showed a decided lack of tradecraft and bombmaking skills.

Regional Franchises

The al Qaeda nodes in Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula and Indonesia were all quiet this year. The Egyptian node has not carried out a successful attack since announcing its allegiance to al Qaeda in August 2006. Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Indonesian franchise, has not conducted a successful attack since the October 2005 Bali bombing, and the Sinai node, Tawhid wa al-Jihad, did not conduct any attacks in 2007. Its last attack was in April 2006.

The Saudi franchise conducted only one successful operation in 2007, a small-arms attack against a group of French and Belgian nationals picnicking near Medina, which resulted in the deaths of four Frenchmen. This is a far cry from the peak of its operational activities during the summer of 2004. The Yemen node also conducted one attack, as it did in 2006, a July 2 suicide car bombing against a tourist convoy that resulted in the deaths of eight Spaniards. The Moroccan element of AQIM attempted to carry out attacks in March and April, though the group's inept tactics and inadequate planning resulted in the deaths of more suicide bombers than victims.

These regional nodes largely have been brought under control by a series of successful campaigns against them. Police operations in Saudi Arabia, the Sinai and Indonesia have provided some evidence that the groups have been trying to regroup and refit. Therefore, the campaigns against these regional nodes will need to remain in place for the foreseeable future to ensure that these organizations do not reconstitute themselves and resume operations.

We noted in our 2007 forecast that AQIM had not yet proven itself. However, the series of attacks by AQIM this year demonstrated that the group is resourceful and resilient, even in the face of Algerian government operations and ideological divisions. In fact, AQIM was the most prolific and deadly group in 2007 outside of the active war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. With al Qaeda in Iraq facing serious problems, AQIM is in many ways carrying the torch for the jihadist movement. With other regional nodes seemingly under control, the U.S. and other governments now can pay more attention to AQIM. Throughout the coming year, the Algerian government likely will receive much more assistance from the United States and its allies in its efforts to dismantle the group. AQIM -- the former Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) -- has existed since the early 1990s and its dedicated cadre has survived many attempts to eliminate it -- though it likely will be pressed hard over the next year.

In a Nov. 3 audio message, al-Zawahiri said the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) had formally joined the al Qaeda network. This came as no real surprise, given that members of the group have long been close to Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda has a large number of Libyan cadre, including Abu Yahya al-Libi, Anas al-Libi and Abu Faraj al-Libi (who reportedly is being held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.) The LIFG-al Qaeda link became apparent in September 2001, when the U.S. government identified the LIFG as a specially designated terrorist entity (along with the GSPC and others.)

Although Libyans have played a large role in al Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, the LIFG itself has been unable to conduct any significant attacks. Historically, Libyan security forces have kept the LIFG in check to the point that most high-profile Libyan jihadists operate outside Libya -- unlike the AQIM leadership, which operates within Algeria. It will be important to watch this new node to see whether it can ramp up its capabilities to conduct meaningful operations inside Libya, or even in other countries where the group has a presence -- though we doubt it will be able to pose a serious threat to the Libyan regime.

Another relatively new jihadist presence appeared on the radar screen Feb. 13, when the Fatah al-Islam group bombed two buses in the Lebanese Christian enclave of Ain Alaq, killing three people. Following the Lebanese army's efforts to arrest those group members believed responsible for the bombing, the group holed up in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, where it endured a siege by the Lebanese army that began in March and lasted until early September. Shaker al-Abssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam, is said to have links to former al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along with al-Zarqawi, al-Abssi was sentenced to death in Jordan for his suspected involvement in the 2002 killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. He served a three-year jail sentence in Syria and then moved into Nahr el-Bared to establish Fatah al-Islam, which is believed to be controlled by Syrian intelligence. While Fatah al-Islam lost many of its fighters during the five-month siege, we have received intelligence reports suggesting that the Syrians are helping the group recover. The intelligence also suggests that the more the Syrians cooperate with U.S. objectives in Iraq, the more they will press the use of their jihadist proxies in Lebanon. In pursuing such a course, the Syrians are playing with fire, which may well come to haunt them, as it has the Saudis and Pakistanis.

Iraq's Contribution

Events in Iraq likely will have a significant impact on the global jihadist movement in the coming year. Since the death of al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq's operational ability steadily has declined. Furthermore, the organization appears to be losing its support among the Iraqi Sunnis and apparently has had problems getting foreign fighters into the country as of late. This could indicate that there will soon be an exodus of jihadists from the country. These jihadists, who have been winnowed and hardened by their combat against the U.S. military, might find the pastures greener in the countries they enter after leaving Iraq. Like the mujahideen who left Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal, they could go on to pose a real threat elsewhere.

Additionally, since 2003 Iraq has been a veritable jihadist magnet, drawing jihadists from all over the world. If there is no possibility of seeking "martyrdom" in Iraq, these men (and a few women) will have to find another place to embrace their doom. The coalition's list of foreign jihadists killed in Iraq shows that most of the fighters have come to the country from places such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, but jihadists also have come from many other countries, including the United States, United Kingdom and European Union. Jihadists in these places might opt to follow the example of the July 2005 London bombers and martyr themselves in their countries of residence.

Jihadists in Iraq have had the luxury of having an extensive amount of military ordnance at their disposal. This ordnance has made it relatively simple to construct improvised explosive devices, including large truck bombs. This, in turn, has made it possible to engage hard targets -- such as U.S. military bases and convoys. Jihadists without access to these types of weapons (and the type of training they received in Iraq) will be more likely to engage soft targets. In fact, the only group we saw with the expertise and ordnance to hit hard targets outside of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 was AQIM. As we forecast for 2006 and 2007, we anticipate that the trend toward attacking soft targets will continue in 2008.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Despite U.S. and NATO forces' repeated tactical victories on the battlefield, al Qaeda's Afghan allies, the Taliban, continue to survive -- the critical task for any guerrilla force engaged in an insurgent war. Following a pattern that has been repeated many times throughout Afghan history -- most recently in the war following the Soviet invasion -- the Taliban largely seek to avoid extended battles and instead seek to engage in hit-and-run guerrilla operations. This is because they realize that they cannot stand toe-to-toe with the superior armaments of the foreign invaders. Indeed, when they have tried to stand and fight, they have taken heavy losses. Therefore, they occasionally will occupy a town, such as Musa Qala, but will retreat in the face of overwhelming force and return when that superior force has been deployed elsewhere.

Due to the presence of foreign troops, the Taliban have no hope of taking control of Afghanistan at this juncture. However, unlike the foreign troops, the Taliban fighters and their commanders are not going anywhere. They have a patient philosophy and will bide their time until the tactical or political conditions change in their favor. Meanwhile, they are willing to continue their guerrilla campaign and sustain levels of casualties that would be politically untenable for their U.S. and NATO rivals. The Taliban have a very diffuse structure, and even the loss of senior leaders such as Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Obaidullah Akhund has not proven to be much of a hindrance.

Just over the border from Afghanistan, Pakistan has witnessed the rapid spread of Talibanization. As a result, Islamabad now is fighting a jihadist insurgency of its own in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province. The spread of this ideology beyond the border areas was perhaps best demonstrated by the July assault by the Pakistani army against militants barricaded inside the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Since the assault against the mosque, Pakistan has been wracked by a wave of suicide bombings.

Pakistan should be carefully watched because it could prove to be a significant flash point in the coming year. As the global headquarters for the al Qaeda leadership, Pakistan has long been a significant stronghold on the ideological battlefield. If the trend toward radicalization continues there, the country also could become the new center of gravity for the jihadist movement on the physical battlefield. Pakistan will become especially important if the trend in Iraq continues to go against the jihadists and they are driven from Iraq.

The Year Ahead

Given the relative ease of getting an operative into the United States, the sheer number of soft targets across the vast country and the simplicity of conducting an attack, we remain surprised that no jihadist attack occurred on U.S. soil in 2007. However, we continue to believe that the United States, as well as Europe, remains vulnerable to tactical-level jihadist strikes -- though we do not believe that the jihadists have the capability to launch a strategically significant attack, even if they were to employ chemical, biological or radiological weapons.

Jihadists have shown a historical fixation on using toxins and poisons. As Stratfor repeatedly has pointed out, however, chemical and biological weapons are expensive to produce, difficult to use and largely ineffective in real-world applications. Radiological weapons (dirty bombs) also are far less effective than many people have been led to believe. In fact, history clearly has demonstrated that explosives are far cheaper, easier to use and more effective at killing people than these more exotic weapons. The failure by jihadists in Iraq to use chlorine effectively in their attacks has more recently underscored the problems associated with the use of improvised chemical weapons -- the bombs killed far more people than the chlorine they were meant to disperse as a mass casualty weapon.

Al-Zawahiri's messages over the past year clearly have reflected the pressure that the group is feeling. The repeated messages referencing Iraq and the need for unity among the jihadists there show that al-Zawahiri believes the momentum has shifted in Iraq and things are not going well for al Qaeda there. Tactically, al Qaeda's Iraqi node still is killing people, but strategically the group's hopes of establishing a caliphate there under the mantle of the Islamic State of Iraq have all but disappeared. These dashed hopes have caused the group to lash out against former allies, which has worsened al Qaeda's position.

It also is clear that al Qaeda is feeling the weight of the ideological war against it -- waged largely by Muslims. Al-Zawahiri repeatedly has lamented specific fatwas by Saudi clerics declaring that the jihad in Iraq is not obligatory and forbidding young Muslims from going to Iraq. In a message broadcast in July, al-Zawahiri said, "I would like to remind everyone that the most dangerous weapons in the Saudi-American system are not buying of loyalties, spying on behalf of the Americans or providing facilities to them. No, the most dangerous weapons of that system are those who outwardly profess advice, guidance and instruction …" In other words, al Qaeda fears fatwas more than weapons. Weapons can kill people -- fatwas can kill the ideology that motivates people.

There are two battlegrounds in the war against jihadism: the physical and the ideological. Because of its operational security considerations, the al Qaeda core has been marginalized in the physical battle. This has caused it to abandon its position at the vanguard of the physical jihad and take up the mantle of leadership in the ideological battle. The core no longer poses a strategic threat to the United States in the physical world, but it is striving hard to remain relevant on the ideological battleground.

In many ways, the ideological battleground is more important than the physical war. It is far easier to kill people than it is to kill ideologies. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on the ideological battleground to determine how that war is progressing. In the end, that is why it is important to listen to hours of al-Zawahiri statements. They contain clear signs regarding the status of the war against jihadism. The signs as of late indicate that the ideological war is not going so well for the jihadists, but they also point to potential hazards around the bend in places such as Pakistan and Lebanon.

Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007
The New Expatriates
By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
The expat gig used to be a cushy one for U.S. executives of a certain level: jet into Tokyo or Paris, tuck family into American schools and clubs, slide into fully established local office as the bigwig from headquarters. It was more of an exotic detour for loyal lifetimers than a slingshot into directorship for the young and ambitious--but who cared? Somewhere, perhaps in Tokyo or Paris, that old-timey expatriate still sips his midday martini at the foreigners' club. But in the rough-and-tumble markets of China and India, a new generation of expats--they prefer "global executives," thank you--haven't yet had a chance to sign up for membership. They're too busy chasing local talent, adapting to a wildly different culture and riding phenomenal growth in markets vital to their companies' futures. And when they get back to the U.S., make no mistake, they'll jump the queue to the corner office.

As China and India roar ahead of the world in economic growth, multinational firms eager to partake of their labor and consumer markets are rushing in--and sending their best executives to lead the charge. The U.S. expat population has leaped over the past five years, according to experts, in large part because of growing delegations to China and India. And yet the two emerging giants remain famously tough for Western executives to navigate. In a 2006 survey by GMAC Global Relocation Services, they are cited among the three most difficult locations for expats (the third is Russia). Corporations are learning that these 21st century markets require a new kind of expat. "You can set your business back by months or even years," says Umesh Ramakrishnan, vice chairman of global executive-placement firm CTPartners, "by sending the wrong leader."

The right leader in China and India, for many companies, is someone with the drive and creativity to manage what often feels like a start-up. The highest hurdle is usually building a local workforce from the ground up in savagely competitive labor markets. "Everyone talks about the huge populations, but in reality there's only a tiny number of people qualified for the jobs you need--and everybody's fighting for them," says Ron Leonhardt, 41, Target's director of human resources in the region. Leonhardt oversees the hiring of many of the 500 workers in Target's sourcing operations in six Chinese cities and 1,200 IT, creative and financial employees in India.

Target has no stores in those countries, so Leonhardt couldn't rely on the hip, friendly Target brand to draw recruits--a far cry from the U.S., where the retailer is a household name and sought-after employer. "We're competing against IBM and Dell and brands that are already huge out here," he says. "Everyone wants to show their families they work for a big name." Recruiting at top Chinese universities, Leonhardt would show the swoosh and the bitten apple, logos the students readily recognize as Nike's and Apple's. "But when I showed them the red bull's-eye--silence," he says. He compensates by showing them Target's rank in the Fortune 500 (33rd in 2007).

In India, Leonhardt has to wage a full-court recruiting press. Candidates might receive dozens of offers, accept them all--then simply show up at the one that's most appealing. Leonhardt estimates that as many as 3 in 10 accepted hires are no-shows on the first day of work. "It's pretty frustrating, as you can imagine," he says. Employers there thus use what's called a keep-warm strategy, in which newly approved hires are plied with informational packets, calls from executives and even small gifts for their parents (Target sends stuffed versions of its mascot, the dog Bull's Eye), before their first day of work. Appealing to workers' filial loyalty is so critical in India that some employers fly parents to headquarters for visits, and at least one is said to offer parents free Internet service. Target competes by offering health insurance to workers' parents.

Once a team is in place, expat bosses often have to reinvent themselves as managers. Lin Chase, 44, arrived in Bangalore in January 2006 to head Accenture's research and development lab. "I come from a culture where people love a plan," she says. "The plan is God." Not in India. She would step away from meetings confident that a plan was in place and wait for its execution. And wait. And wait. "It happened so many times that finally I changed my whole style," says Chase. "I talk to my team every day, ask them how it's going. I spend a huge proportion of time chasing

people for commitments they made to me, but now I see it less as chasing than as a relationship."

Such flexibility is critical for running a business in China or India, and more companies are beginning to screen expat candidates to make sure they've got it. "Companies used to think that whoever was successful here would be successful anywhere else, and so they'd send that guy," says Ramakrishnan of CTPartners, which is based in New York City. "That is no longer the case." Through a battery of tests, including psychological profiling and hypothetical scenarios, the firm tries to identify ideal candidates by looking for clear demonstrations of flexibility: interest in other cultures, knowledge of at least one other language, varied careers.

More and more, the candidate turns out to be a woman, under 40 or both. Even more often, the ideal choice is an immigrant to the U.S. who can take back to the country of her birth the skills and experience honed in her adopted land. Rebecca Weiner, a China consultant who has lived in the country on and off since 1985, says she has seen an evolution of expats there from the 1980s, when corporations sent anyone who stuck his hand up, to the booming 1990s, when they sent over any heavy hitter, regardless of adaptability, to today, when corporations are more carefully selecting executives, favoring repatriated nationals and Chinese Americans. "It shows that companies realize China is the most important market in the world and it matters who they send over," she says. "Strategically, it's a very good thing."

Vicki Ho, 43, was born in Taiwan, immigrated to the U.S. at 7 and attained her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. Rising swiftly through the ranks at General Electric, she lobbied hard for an overseas assignment, finally landing one in 2005 as head of equipment-leasing for GE in China. But she learned quickly that being ethnically Chinese has some disadvantages for a U.S. executive. "Customers, particularly the older ones, thought nothing of lecturing me on how I speak," says Ho, who speaks conversational but not business Mandarin. On the other hand, she skipped some of the culture shock that slams many newly arrived expats. She is comfortable enough in her Shanghai skin to scold a woman who recently jumped a long queue at Ho's neighborhood bakery. Ho says her swift adaptation to Chinese culture, along with the very American networking skills she used to cultivate mentors and allies back at headquarters, helped her survive when GE abruptly shut her unit last year. Instead of hauling her home, the company immediately placed her atop another division in China, selling security equipment like airport baggage-screening machines. "You can get orphaned out here," she says. Instead, she raised revenue fivefold at her new unit.

The opportunities are so dazzling in China and India that many young workers--particularly those who studied the local language in school or, better yet, are native to the culture--are heading over without expat packages. Jasjit Mangat, 38, had a graduate degree in engineering from Cornell and business-consulting work under his belt when his wife Preet, 36, a cancer researcher, was offered a prestigious fellowship in India in 2003. He quit his job and went along. Though he was born and raised in New Delhi, "India was not part of my career before that," he says. He attracted several offers in Bangalore and joined Carlyle Group as an investment consultant before becoming a senior-level executive at OAT Systems, a Boston-based company that is building technology in India that identifies and tracks products. Mangat was offered a job at headquarters in 2006, and this time Preet went along (then fortuitously landed another fellowship, at Harvard). But both intend to spend more time in India--in part to raise their young daughter biculturally. Moreover, he says, his stint in his homeland now defines his career. "I can't imagine another job that won't involve India," he says.

Time abroad--especially in China and India--is becoming as "essential as an M.B.A. for a top executive's résumé," says Stacie Nevadomski Berdan, co-author with C. Perry Yeatman of Get Ahead by Going Abroad. The only problem is that the go-go growth and business style of emerging Asia can get into an executive's blood--so much so that he or she finds it hard to go back to headquarters. "I get a lot of résumés from executives just as they're being called back from an assignment," says Benjamin Zhai, head of China recruiting for Egon Zender International, a global executive-placement firm. He advises client companies to design specific new challenges for the returning expat, "or you will lose his motivation, if not him."

While companies may need them more than ever, expats agree that the eventual goal is to make their roles obsolete by developing local talent to take over the reins. That's no easy task. "We're trying to cram in 20 years of knowledge about procedures, communication, project-planning--all the things that make a business work," says Pete Lorenzen, 53, head of global IT support services for IBM in India. Still, helping his employer harness a surging new economy, he says, is "just about the most exciting thing I've done" in a long career. Who needs the foreigners' club?

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