January 9, 2008
Suharto’s Condition Deteriorates

By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Doctors struggled Tuesday to stabilize the condition of former President Suharto after a setback that they said included new signs of internal bleeding, heart problems and a buildup of fluid in his lungs.

Mr. Suharto, 86, who was forced from office 10 years ago, entered the hospital on Friday and was placed on dialysis as his heart and kidneys weakened. Doctors said his condition was stable before the setback on Tuesday.

People here in the capital monitored radio and television broadcasts for reports about Mr. Suharto, who has lived quietly in his modest home in Jakarta for the past decade, largely ignored in the bustle of democracy that followed his downfall.

“He is worse than yesterday,” said Dr. Mardjo Soebiandono, the leader of Mr. Suharto’s medical team of as many as 40 doctors, in a medical bulletin on Tuesday morning. “We are looking for the cause of the bleeding.” He said he had ordered a halt to the stream of high-ranking visitors, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who had paid their respects to Mr. Suharto in the past few days.

For 32 years, Mr. Suharto held the country in his grip, suppressing dissent and political opposition and controlling almost all areas of life, including military, business and economic affairs. He has never been brought to account for the corruption offenses and human rights abuses that he is accused of committing, and some people said Tuesday that they regretted that he might die without facing justice.

His hospitalization prompted a call from his former political party for an end to corruption cases that have been brought against him. The cases have been stymied by his ill health and by the reluctance of successive governments to push ahead with charges against the country’s former longtime leader.

Although criminal corruption cases have been dropped or shelved in the past, a civil case involving the misuse of charitable foundations has been moving ahead.

On Tuesday, as Mr. Suharto lay in intensive care, that case inched forward in a drowsy, half-empty courtroom in the South Jakarta Criminal Court. Under two lazy ceiling fans, a panel of three red-robed judges, flanked by stacks of documents, questioned a witness about technical details of one of the foundations. After an hour, the session adjourned.

Attorney General Hendarman Supandji insisted that despite the long delays and the collapse of the criminal cases, this one would move forward.

“So, Suharto’s case is over,” he said, referring to the criminal proceedings. “What’s now proceeding is the civil case against seven foundations belonging to Suharto. And the proceedings against the seven foundations are still going on.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Bush's Betrayal

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | 1/8/2008

Saul Bellow once observed that a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. President Bush’s ill-advised trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank this week to promote a "two-state solution" would seem to underscore the wisdom of Bellow’s insight.
The presumed aim of Bush’s visit, the first of his presidency, is to revive the goals of November’s all-but-forgotten Annapolis summit. There the president imperiously decided that all that was needed for a final peace settlement to be reached between Israel and the Palestinians was for two leaders with no popular constituency on their respective sides to decide that it should be so. Bush duly met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and read from a statement in which the parties promised, not a little ambitiously, to resolve "all outstanding issues, including core issues, without exception" in 2008.

It all might have ended happily at that point, with both sides having savored their share of the international spotlight, were it not for Bush’s hopelessly naïve conviction that the grand promises of the summit had any foundation in reality.

That they do not is made tragically clear by the events of the past few weeks. In late December, two off-duty Israeli soldiers, Cpl. Ahikam Amihai and Sgt. David Rubin, were gunned down while hiking in the West Bank. At least of two of their murderers, Ali Hamid Dandanes and Amar Badad Khalim Taha, are Fatah operatives -- that is, employees of Abbas’ political organization. It is thus unsurprising that to avoid capture by Israeli security, both men turned themselves in to the PA’s intelligence service, where they received understanding treatment.

This is not news, exactly. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, closely affiliated with Fatah, have continued to carry out terrorist attacks on Abbas’ "moderate" watch. But one is again left to wonder how the PA’s official tolerance for killers comports with President Bush’s professed view that Abbas "is a man devoted to peace" and that his faction is ready and willing to address Israeli security concerns.

For its part, the Bush administration has elected to look past the PA’s complicity in terrorism. Choosing hope over experience, the administration seems to have concluded that, for all their faults, Abbas and his organization are nonetheless the enemies of the Islamists in Hamas, and thus potential allies.

But this optimistic assessment is starkly at odds with Abbas’ pronouncement on January 1 that he is ready to "open a new page" by negotiating with the terrorists of Hamas. Showing an aptitude for the double talk in which his predecessor Yasir Arafat specialized, Abbas urged Hamas to accept the normalization of relations with Israel. At the same time, he called for a "partnership in the heart of the fatherland and around the struggle for its liberations," stressing that "no party should supplant another." Given that Hamas equates "liberation" with the annihilation of the Jewish state, Abbas’ appeal was more an inducement to terror than a condemnation of it.

No more propitious for the possibility of a final settlement is the history of the last sixty years. In that time, of course, the Palestinians, backed by their Arab patrons, repeatedly have rejected Israel’s right to exist, both as a geographic entity and as a majority-Jewish state.

Offered generous terms of settlement -- including Ehud Barak’s 2000 offer of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank, as well as Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and $30 billion in compensation -- the Palestinians have, in Abba Eban’s famous phrase, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Loathe to come to terms with the reality of an Israeli state, they have placed their faith in leaders who sought to accomplish with terrorism and duplicitous public relations what Arab armies had failed to do with Soviet-made artillery.

President Bush boldly recognized the fact when, in 2002, he called on Palestinians to elect "leaders not compromised by terror." The 2006 election of Hamas should have been sufficient proof that Palestinians were not equal to the task. But instead of confirming Bush in his sober realism, the violent aftermath seems to have encouraged the president in the dangerous illusion that peace is within reach.

Dangerous is the only appropriate word. Whatever the merits of the "two-state" solution in the long run, the fact remains that now is the worst possible time to put this vision into practice. Gaza, left to the untender mercies of Hamas, is today one of the most violent places in the Middle East. So intense has been the rocket barrage of Israeli cities from "Hamastan" that Israeli troops in recent days have been forced to intervene to stop the endless assault.

Against this chaotic backdrop, the administration’s insistence that Israel turn over full control of the West Bank to the Palestinian authorities looks like a prescription for disaster. It is something the president would do well to keep in mind as he tours the territory under the kind of impeccable security that Israeli citizens will not be afforded once the West Bank becomes Palestinian domain.

President Bush legitimately can claim to be the most pro-Israel president in history. It would be a shame if he now sacrificed that impressive legacy for the promise of an illusory peace.

Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine. He is a 2007 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow. His e-mail is jlaksin@gmail.com

January 8, 2008
Suicide Bomber Kills Key Sunni Leader

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MUDHAFER AL-HUSAINI
BAGHDAD — Militants assassinated two key leaders of American-backed neighborhood militias in northern Baghdad over the past two days, highlighting the militants’ strategy of eliminating militia commanders who have embraced partnerships with American forces but who themselves remain vulnerable to attack.

On Monday morning, a suicide bomber on foot killed Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, a founder of the Sunni Awakening Council in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold that until recently was a haven for insurgents.

The Awakening Councils are groups of Sunni — and in some cases Shiite — fighters who have renounced ties to insurgents and are now on the payroll of the American military, standing guard in areas that not long ago were controlled by militants.

The bomber struck at the offices of the Sunni Endowment, one of the most powerful Sunni institutions in Iraq and an influential backer of the new Sunni alliances with American forces. The suicide blast and a nearly simultaneous car bombing just yards away killed 14 people and wounded 18 others.

On Sunday, gunmen riding in a single car and brandishing pistols with silencers killed a founder of the Awakening movement in Shaab, Ismael Abbas, an Interior Ministry official said.

Shaab is a large and predominantly Shiite district in northern Baghdad that is near Adhamiya. Over the weekend, militants distributed leaflets in Shaab warning that Awakening members would be killed for “protecting” the Americans.

The killings punctuated a wave of violence that has unfolded in the capital and left more than 30 people dead over the past two days, chipping away at the relative lull the city enjoyed late last year.

On Monday alone there were eight other bombings — in addition to the Adhamiya attacks — that killed at least four people and wounded 23. Gunmen kidnapped eight Awakening Council guards in Shaab, and over the past two days the police have discovered the bodies of 13 men strewn about the city who all appeared to have been killed at close range.

Attacks are rising on Awakening Council members — fighters whose presence in volatile neighborhoods has been credited with helping bring about a sharp decline in violence.

In another such assassination, gunmen on Sunday burst into the home of an Awakening leader in the volatile city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing him and his wife, according to the police in Diyala Province.

“The suicide attacks will go on, because the enemy does exist and no one can neglect this truth,” said Bassim al-Azawi, a senior member of the Adhamiya Awakening Council. He vowed that despite Colonel Samarrai’s death, the “work of the Awakening will go on.”

While there is no concrete evidence pointing to who is carrying out the attacks, the string of assassinations has come on the heels of Osama bin Laden’s condemnation of Awakening Councils and his warning that their members will lose “this world and the afterlife.”

The most striking of the recent attacks was Monday’s killing of Colonel Samarrai. The militants were able to kill a skilled and experienced commander who had been entrusted with providing security for one of the most powerful Sunni leaders in Iraq.

In addition to leading the Adhamiya Awakening Council, Colonel Samarrai was a close aide and security adviser to the leader of the Sunni Endowment, Sheik Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai. The sheik has angered hard-line Sunni leaders in recent months by openly promoting Sunni Awakening groups.

Colonel Samarrai was also in charge of a detachment of government forces who guard the offices of the Sunni Endowment, which administers Sunni mosques throughout Iraq.

According to witnesses and Awakening officials, Colonel Samarrai’s assassin, who appeared to be acquainted with the colonel, waited patiently inside the main gate of the offices of the Sunni Endowment. When Colonel Samarrai emerged from a meeting inside the building, the killer walked up, began to embrace him, and then yanked the trigger on his hidden explosive belt.

Witnesses said the colonel’s bodyguards did not try to stop the bomber, suggesting that he was known to people at the endowment, and raising fears of complicity from within.

“He reached him easily and was about to shake hands and hug him,” said Tariq Abed, a laborer at the endowment offices who suffered wounds to his face and shoulder. He said that judging by the ease of the assassin’s approach, he must have been friends with the colonel.

The attack was closely coordinated with a car bombing minutes later outside the gate that killed several people who had rushed to the scene, and damaged trucks carrying victims of the first bombing to the hospital.

Sheik Ghafour told Iraqi state-run television on Monday night that he believed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was responsible for the attacks. Numbering well into the thousands, the members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are overwhelmingly Iraqi, but American intelligence officials say they believe that the group has foreign-born leaders.

Last week, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said the pace of attacks against Awakening fighters was “perhaps one of the clearest indications of the importance that these Awakening movements and concerned local citizens are having on improving the security situation in Iraq.”

Victims of the two blasts were taken to Numan Hospital in Adhamiya. Squads of Awakening fighters followed closely behind in pickup trucks. They removed wooden coffins and carried them inside the hospital to gather the remains of their friends.

Fears ran high that another bomber would attack, and Awakening guards blocked even anxious relatives from entering the hospital. Family members stood outside, sobbing or talking on cellphones.

One woman pleaded to see her son Ahmed, who she said was being treated inside. “He’s a young guy, and he’s never done anything bad,” she said.

One of the Awakening guards did not want to tell her the grim news. “Poor woman,” he said, when she was out of earshot. “I took him to the hospital myself and he was already dead.”

Reporting was contributed by Khalid al-Ansary, Karim Hilmi, Abeer Mohammed and Qais Mizher.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

One of the things i like about the way Tom Barnett thinks is his ability to push the 'out' button on the google map. Of course that is metaphor for putting things into a macro view context.

The overwhelming power of globalization simply will force the middle east into integration with the global community.

Enjoy ...

===========================

The Saudi pardon of the rape victim ...

Was a good move, obviously.

My point: Saudi Arabia lives in a different world than just six years ago. The 9/11-driven scrutiny and mistrust remains substantial, but it's the larger glare created by globalization's creeping embrace of the region--indeed, the embrace of globalization by some of the smaller Gulf states--that creates an uncomfortable sense of popular comparison: who wants to be seen as "backward" when the global economy is surging toward frightening (it's always "frightening") new levels of connectivity (e.g., SWFs, the central banks cooperating over the subprime mess, the rising pressure within the commercial sector to reveal environmental costs both upstream and down)?

There is an analysis out there--conventional wisdom really--that says NOCs, and the regimes that own them, are burgeoning masters of the globalization universe.

Resist this (always) premature and overwrought verdict. Shifts are constant in a global economy of this range and force and dynamism. Remember when "hot money" ran all and held wimpy states in a "golden straight-jacket" (Friedman's phrase--almost Bryanian)? Then the financial crises themselves were viewed as uncontrollable. Then the "all-powerful" WB and IMF dictated life-and-death choices for weak governments (load of books there). Then govs built up their reserves to protect themselves, putting the U.S. debt in stark relief. Then the resulting SWFs gobble up "all" of sickly institutions in the shadow of the subprime, then America becomes "sharecropper" society and so on.

My point: every action triggers a counter-reaction that pulls all into more financial entanglements and rising interdependency. In these shifts, new "all-powerful" players and entities rise--and apparently fall--with stunning regularity, their preceived omnipotence and extreme vulnerability hyped--respectively--on both ascent and descent.

In short, we never lack for fear-mongers and Chicken Littles--both professional and amateur--ready to decry the "new" boss, missing its stunning similarity to the "old" one, aka,the markets' ceaseless churn and associated--and never-ending--process of reinvention

If you want to believe such evolution ends with some entity's crowning as "untouchable," then you will be regularly disappointed but never bored.

What I find: those closest to the power-in-question feel no such ascendancy. They, like the smart money, simply gaze nervously into the future for the next iteration to appear.

Posted on Thu, Dec. 20, 2007
Plugging in to democracy

BY JACKSON DIEHL
Is the cause of liberal democracy in the Arab Middle East dead? It would be easy to jump to such a conclusion in Washington, D.C., given the Bush administration's shameless retreat from its ''freedom agenda'' and the recent campaigns by Arab autocrats to crush liberal politicians, journalists and civic activists. But it's also easy to overlook the fact that the Middle East's movement for human rights and democracy originated not in the White House but in capitals such as Cairo, Beirut and Amman. There, it is still alive, well -- and even growing.
I was reminded of this when seven Egyptian civil-society activists toured Washington in advance of a meeting last week with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. All are in their 20s; all are leaders of groups promoting such causes as women's rights, prison reform, religious tolerance and political change. All believe that Egypt could become a liberal democracy in their lifetime. And why not? They're not acquainted with the numerous Washington experts who have dismissed the possibility.

They do know a lot of people like themselves. ''The majority of Egyptians are like us, under the age of 35,'' said Ahmed Samih, the 28-year-old director of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies in Cairo. ``Our president is 85, and far away from Facebook.''

Samih, a fearless man who says that he has been a political activist since age 17, ought to know. Six months ago he founded a Facebook group called ''What happens when Hosni Mubarak dies?'' Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt under ''emergency law'' since 1981, is actually only 79. But he is noticeably fading. And Samih's group has attracted 2,741 members, almost all of them Egyptian.

Facebook and YouTube are where the young Egyptian democracy movement lives -- mostly out of reach of Mubarak's secret police. There are more than 60 Facebook groups devoted to liberal Egyptian causes; many of them have thousands of members. On YouTube, one can find hundreds of video clips showing demonstrations for human rights in Egypt, speeches by liberal activists, sermons by reformist Muslim clerics -- and torture by Mubarak's security forces, captured on cellphones.

The king of torture videos is Wael Abbas, a 34-year-old journalist and blogger. A clip he posted of police sodomizing a minibus driver with a stick scandalized the country and forced the prosecution of two officers. Last month, his YouTube account was suspended, on the grounds that his videos violated the site's standards. Following a clamor from human-rights groups and a shower of e-mails from outraged Egyptians, his access was restored, and 187 of his clips were back up last week.

This is not to say that Egyptian activists can't be found in real-life neighborhoods. One of the interesting things about the activists visiting Washington was their disdain for the aging elite of Egypt's opposition parties, who mostly confine themselves to editing small newspapers or writing books.

The activists were brought to the United States by the human-rights group Freedom House, which gave them one-month fellowships to work with U.S. community organizations and arranged for them to meet Rice on Human Rights Day. Many of them were in the United States for the first time. They seemed grateful for the opportunity to meet Rice even though they've been disappointed by her swivel in the past two years from calling on Egypt to ''lead the way'' to Arab democratization to embracing Mubarak as a ''mainstream ally'' and helpmate in Israeli-Palestinian talks.

''The United States has decided it needs Mubarak more than they need to support the human-rights cause,'' said Ola Shahba, a 29-year-old project manager for Nahdet El Mahrousa, a group that promotes community-development projects. ``We are in trouble, and we need to work our way out of it.''

Part of that work, as the activists saw it, was reminding Rice and others that support for democracy in Egypt is not a matter of charity. 'We are not just saying, `We are some idealistic group, so help us,' '' said Samih. 'We are saying, `This is in your national interest.' Reform in Egypt is important to the United States. The theory that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't doesn't work -- because the devil you know brought you Mohamed Atta.''

For now that truth seems to have been forgotten at Rice's State Department. But Samih and his friends are young, and they are busy planning for life after Hosni Mubarak and President Bush.

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post

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