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BOLIVIA: COUNTRY TO PAY $240 MILLION IN TRANSREDES TAKEOVER

Bolivia plans to pay about $240 million in its takeover of pipeline company Transredes after failing to reach an agreement with Royal Dutch/Shell and Ashmore Energy International, which own 50 percent of the company, Reuters reported June 3. Bolivia's nationalization move will not affect its output or exports to the region, Energy Minister Carlos Villegas said.

Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/5806.html?print=1
“No Sign until the Burst of Fire”
Posted By Lexington Green On May 23, 2008 @ 6:42 pm In Middle East, Military Affairs, National Security, War and Peace | Comments Disabled

[1] This brilliant article from [2] International Security, subtitled “Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier”, is one of the best things I have read about the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and astride the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The main point of the article is that our problems in the region boil down to one troublesome community:

The Taliban and the other Islamic extremist insurgent elements operating on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border are almost exclusively Pashtuns, with a sprinkling of radicals from nonborder ethnicities. The implications of this salient fact—that most of Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s violent religious extremism, and with it much of the United States’ counterterrorism challenge, are centered within a single ethno linguistic group—have not been fully grasped by a governmental policy community that has long downplayed cultural dynamics.

The British called these folks “Pathans”. The British were not notably successful in fighting them, though they did somewhat better recruiting them and [3] bringing them into their employ.

One tribe within the larger Pashtun grouping are the Waziris.

Of all the Pashtun tribes, the Waziris of greater Waziristan … are reputed to be the most conservative and irascible. The Waziris pride themselves on never having paid taxes to any sovereign and never having their lands, which they consider veiled, or in purdah, conquered.

Waziristan was the setting for Kipling’s [4] The Man Who Would be King. Waziristan is categorically the uttermost end of the earth.

In a way I suppose the Pashtuns should be libertarian heroes. The Pashtuns “constitute the largest ethnic group in the world without a nation-state.” And, unlike some other communities, they don’t want one. They govern themselves according to a code called Pashtunwalli, or “the way of the Pashtuns”. They prize their personal independence above all things. A key point of honor for this group is the provision of hospitality, even at the cost of risk or hardship. This means, for one thing, that there was no way they were going to give up Osama bin Laden, either prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan, or now.

Tragically, the informal and consensual form of governance the Pashtuns have long lived by has been put under tremendous strain by the ceaseless, large scale conflict that began with the Soviet invasion of 1979. Following that, the Pakistanis, funded by the Saudis, began a process of radicalization of the Pashtuns, supporting fundamentalist madrassas. When the Soviets withdrew, the Pakistani ISI continued the radicalization of the area, which they perceived to be in Pakistan’s interest. This caused further disintegration of the traditional order among the Pashtuns.the monster created in this ill-conceived experiment is virtually out of control. Apart from short-term tactical military successes, the political momentum of radicalization in the north appears to have gone beyond the power of the Pakistani state to contain it, let alone suppress it, which suggests that the odds of the radical fundamentalist genie being put back into the bottle are slim.

Even worse, the authors assert that US policy in the area is counterproductive:

For the United States, the short-term solution for bringing the Pashtun lands back from the radical brink is to strengthen and rebuild the tribal structures from the inside while reducing the pressures on them from the outside, rather than the current policy of doing the opposite.

… rather than applying external pressure by seeking to extend the reach of the anathematic central government, an action that historically has fomented insurrection among the proto-insurgent Pashtun,

the United States and the international community should be doing everything in their means to empower the tribal elders and restore the traditional balance to the system. One way to start in Afghanistan would be to amend the constitution to elect provincial governors and deputy governors directly, rather than the current method of having outsiders imposed upon the Pashtun provinces by ªat from Kabul.

This cuts against the idea that the USA should try to centralized authority on Afghanistan, a task no one has ever succeeded at. Rather, we should be making concrete improvements in the lives of the people there, so that they can reestablish their own way of life.

The next step is to bring rapid improvements in everyday people’s lives in the Pashtun belt, where in many places one child in three still dies before her fifth birthday. These improvements must begin to be felt quickly across a broad sweep of the Pashtun lands, before spreading Talibanization can further consolidate its position among the people and make their denial a self-fulfilling prophecy. The level of nonsecurity-related (i.e., police and army) aid actually reaching the Pashtun people in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion has been shockingly low, less than $5 per Pashtun per year, an astonishingly miserly effort considering the critical strategic nature of the region. As suggested elsewhere, military tactics, too, such as the preeminence of intrusive sweep operations, the emphasis on the so-called kill/capture mission, and the indiscriminate use of airpower in inhabited areas have been extremely damaging to counterinsurgency efforts among a revenge-oriented people with a zero tolerance for insult and “collateral damage.”

In [5] Thomas Barnett’s phrasing, we need more SysAdmin and less Leviathan, if we want long-term success in the region. We should be trying to restore order so that Pashtunwali can reassert itself. (It is interesting that this failure is precisely the same thing that was condemned at the end of the movie [6] Charlie Wilson’s War.) It would be relatively cheap to provide some material help to these people, especially compared to the downstream cost of further failure in Afghanistan.

And the cost of failure in Afghanistan could be very high:

Most alarmingly, in late 2004 the Talibanization of the north began to assume aspects of a more global character. Tactics used widely by Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaida fighters in Iraq started to appear in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area and have since spread widely. Intelligence analysts believe this is evidence of an al-Qaida-affiliated information network linking jihadist movements in multiple theaters of operation with loose operational coordination on a global scale and of a capability to move at least small numbers of personnel from one operational theater to another. … The entire border area has been wracked by a sharp increase in suicide attacks, roadside bombings with the use of improved and more deadly IEDs, and the executions of “spies.”61 In 2006 Afghanistan suffered an algebraic increase in violence, including 139 suicide attacks—a fourfold increase over 2005—and approximately 1,600 incidents of IEDs—triple the numbers for 2005.62 The year 2007 continued the steady, unbroken
upward trend of insurgent violence in Afghanistan since 2002.

More significant than the novelty of some of these technologies and tactics is the fact that they are foreign to traditional Afghan mores and contradict Pashtun tribal and religious values. This worrisome development suggests a growing linkage between elements of the global jihad and the emergence of a transnational jihadi culture. An analysis of Taliban shabnamah (night letters), which forms a major tactical component of the Taliban’s information and psychological operations campaigns, suggests that “the Afghan insurgency might very well be morphing into a campaign with more transnational concerns.”

Yet, these authors suggest that there is little grasp of the Pashtun culture on the part of the US and NATO militaries operating in Afghanistan, and from time to time across the border in Pakistan.

This country spends hundreds of millions of dollars on one fighter plane. Yet, the authors can still say, after we have been in Afghanistan for more than five years: “Most U.S. soldiers deploying to Afghanistan still receive little or no cultural or language training.” How many F-35s would we have to give up to pay for adequate linguistic and cultural training for troops who are fighting a counter-insurgency that is ultimately political in nature?

The priorities in the Military-Industrial Iron Triangle remain wildly out of line with reality. Our spending priorities are not focused on the actual requirements of the conflicts we are actually engaged in. This costs American lives, today, now. And it risks worse problems in the future.

I strongly recommend you read the entire article.

Also, it would be good to hear from anyone with knowledge of the subject who disagrees in whole or in part with this article, or can confirm it in whole or in part. Particularly, it would be good to hear from anyone has been in Afghanistan who may have some response to the article.

INDIA: CONGRESS RISKS A FUEL PRICE HIKE

Summary
India announced moderate increases in domestic fuel prices June 4 in an attempt to relieve pressure on refiners in the face of soaring global crude prices. The move is sparking a political backlash, however, that threatens to destabilize the Congress party's ability to rule.

Analysis

The Indian government raised the price of fuel June 4 to cope with pressure on refiners from soaring global crude prices. The price adjustment was relatively moderate; gasoline prices went up 11 percent to $4.43 per gallon, diesel by 9 percent to $3.10 per gallon, and cooking gas by 17 percent to $8.09 per cylinder. India also cut customs duties on gasoline and diesel by two-thirds, to 2.5 percent, and completely scrapped a 5 percent import tax on crude oil to help lower prices for state oil refiners.

Though economically necessary, the fuel price hike was a politically perilous move for the ruling Congress party. India's opposition is already launching widespread protests, and it can be expected to use the energy price issue for leverage in the run-up to national elections in 2009.

India imports more than 70 percent of its oil, and with global prices hovering around $130 per barrel, New Delhi has a crude import bill of $68 billion for 2007-2008 -– up 40 percent from the previous year. New Delhi has resisted raising fuel prices domestically, however, for fear of inciting political backlash that could bring down the government. Instead, the government has kept prices artificially low while subsidizing state oil refiners with oil bonds.

But as crude prices continued to climb, the subsidies could no longer keep up, and state oil refiners began teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. In order to avoid a worst-case scenario in which the state refiners crack under pressure, halt production and cause fuel shortages, India's government had no choice but to raise fuel prices and alleviate some of the burden on these refining firms. The June 4 increases, however, are insufficient to resolve the crisis in the long term. At most, they have bought the refiners -- and the government -- a little more time.

But even these halfway measures will not come without consequences. The price hikes are expected to send inflation to a 13-year high of 9 percent, at a time when the country's large lower class is already feeling the pinch from high food and fuel prices. Taking the political opportunity to condemn Congress for inflicting harm on the common man, India's leftist parties and main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have already coordinated a string of protests and strikes in the wake of the fuel price hike. Beginning June 5, India will witness dawn-to-dusk strikes, picketing protesters, demonstrations and rail and road blockades across the country, particularly in the leftist strongholds of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. These protests have the potential to spread and turn violent.

Congress already suffered a loss in May when the BJP swept state elections in the key southern state of Karnataka. With general elections due in 2009 and the commodity crisis showing no sign of letting up soon, Congress' political future is nowhere near assured.

Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.

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LEBANON: IRANIAN GENERAL BEHIND HEZBOLLAH'S BEIRUT OPERATION

Gen. Qassem Suleimani, chief of Iran's Quds Brigade, was personally in charge of Hezbollah's takeover of western Beirut on May 9, a source in Lebanon told Stratfor on June 4. Suleimani was assisted by 200 masked members of the Pasdaran and Basij armed groups. Hezbollah had claimed that the masked gunmen were Shia residents of the mostly Sunni-populated western Beirut.

Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.

Andrew Sullivan says:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/05/how-big-a-threa.html
How Big A Threat Is Iran?
19 May 2008 03:19 pm

When Obama describes Cuba and Iran and Venezuela as regimes that "don't pose a serious threat" to the U.S., the usual suspects go nuts.

This is "full-throated appeasement" splutters Hewitt.

Jen Rubin vents:

So, taken literally, he seems not much concerned about:
Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons,
its sponsorship of terrorist organizations,
its commitment to eradicate Israel,
its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq,
and its role in eroding Lebanon’s sovereignty through its client Hezbollah.

Of course these are different points.

It's possible to believe all that Rubin states and yet not believe that Iran actually poses a serious threat to the US as a whole.

America's economy is 68 times the size of Iran's, which is an economic basketcase, and rendered more so by religiously oriented mismanagement.
America's military capacity is simply stratospherically greater than a ramshackle Islamist state like Iran's. Yes: Iran's pursuit of nuclear weaponry destabilizes the region, and yes, if such weaponry were handed to terrorists, the threat could be enormous.

a. But it's hard to see why such a threat would be any greater than, say, Pakistan's government supplying Islamist terrorists with such weapons.
b. And Israel already has a nuclear deterrent to answer the mullah's threats.
c. It's also very hard to see how Iran could be more empowered than it has been by the Bush administration's bungling of the Iraq occupation.

The deeper question - to which it is hard to evince an easy answer - is whether Iran is uniquely immune to nuclear deterrence because the apocalyptic mindset of some of its leaders makes them suicidal as a nation and as a regime.

We have their statements - which should at times prompt alarm - and we have their record for the past quarter century.

That record suggests a despicable regime that nonetheless acts rationally in its own interests and defense.

But what are our options if we assume that this regime - unlike Kim Jong-Il or Stalin - cannot be deterred? The only logical response is invasion of pre-emptive bombing, with no clear guarantee of success and an enormous chance of blow-back in the wider war.

It seems to me that keeping some sense of perspective and balance about the threats we face is not the same thing as "appeasement." Appeasement means giving a regime something in return for its aggression, in the vain hope that it will be deterred. And making the right calls in this dangerous and complex world is not made easier by facile, constant analogies to 1938.