Month: July 2012

After a week of Syrian rebel gains – killing several top security officials and seizing control of multiple border outposts – the Obama administration is being more open about its policy of regime change in Syria. Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on Syria, wrote back in early June, “Let’s be clear: Washington is pursuing regime change by civil war in Syria. The United States, Europe, and the Gulf states want regime change, so they are starving the regime in Damascus and feeding the opposition.”

Now, the New York Times reports the Obama administration has “abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement” in favor of “increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad.” Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says “we’re looking at a controlled demolition of the Assad regime.”

Administration officials insist they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already financing those efforts. But American officials said that the United States would provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces in their widening, sustained fight against Syrian Army troops. It’s also possible the rebels would receive some intelligence support, the officials said.

Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University who has actually consulted the Obama administration on the issue, says any intervention – including arming the rebels (or, as Washington is now doing, helping facilitate the delivery of weapons from other states) – is worse than staying out of it.

The events of the last week show that those who believed that only American military action could put serious pressure on Assad were wrong.  And the likely downside of direct U.S. military involvement is as potent as ever. The new talking point that an earlier American intervention would have quickly ended the fighting is utterly divorced from Syrian reality.   American bombs were never likely to quickly end the conflict, and the open entry of the U.S. into the fray (particularly without U.N. authorization) would likely radically transform the dynamics of the conflict for the worse both inside of Syria and at the regional and global levels. And most Americans, who have not forgotten the experience of Iraq, wisely reject the enthusiasm of the op-ed pages for deeper American involvement. Military intervention by the U.S. has not been and still is not the answer, and the Obama administration deserves great credit for rejecting the drumbeat from the armchair hawks.

Nor should the U.S. be joining the dangerous game of arming the insurgency, which seems to be getting plenty of weapons from other sources.  All of the risks of the proliferation of weapons into a fragmented insurgency of uncertain identity and aspirations, so blithely dismissed by the op-ed hawks, remain as intense as ever.  There are still vanishingly few, if any, historical examples of such a strategy actually leading to a rapid resolution of a civil conflict, and all too many examples of it making conflicts longer and bloodier.  Nor is it likely that providing weapons will provide the U.S. with great influence over the groups they are.  I see no reason to believe that armed groups will stay bought, or stay loyal, just because they were given weapons, or that the U.S. would be able to credibly threaten to cut off the flow of weapons if groups deemed essential to the battle used them in undesirable ways.  As a general rule of thumb if you really think that a group might join al-Qaeda if you don’t give them guns, you’d best not give them guns.

While it appears true the Obama administration is resisting calls to intervene militarily in Syria, there is not enough scrutiny of the current policy of supporting the rebels with both lethal and non-lethal aid. I’m again reminded of the rhetorical question asked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton back in February when she argued against arming the rebels: So maybe at the best, you can smuggle in automatic weapons, maybe some other weapons that you could get in…And to whom are you delivering them?…Are we supporting al-Qaida in Syria?”

In the same press conference, she said “military intervention has been absolutely ruled out.”

This New York Times editorial laments the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees from visiting their clients, in a policy that “is imperiously punishing detainees for their temerity in bringing legal challenges to their detention and losing.”

In one case, the administration is saying that the Yemeni national Yasin Qasem Muhammad Ismail no longer has the right to meet with his counsel, David Remes, because his plea to be released was “terminated.” The Justice Department will only let them meet, it said in an e-mail to Mr. Remes, if he signs a new memorandum giving the government what Mr. Remes calls “absolute authority over access to counsel.”

A military officer would decide each time whether lawyer and client could meet. Mr. Remes could not use classified information he developed for the client without permission. He could not share what he learned from his client with other lawyers of detainees, as he could previously. He could not use it to help defend his client against criminal charges if the government brings them. He could not advocate for him with human rights groups.

Mr. Remes refused to sign. He and colleagues filed a motion this month with the federal magistrate handling disputes about lawyer-client visits at Guantánamo Bay. They argue that while their client is detained, “he retains the right to pursue any available legal avenues to obtain his release” and without “a full and fair opportunity to meet with counsel in a confidential privileged setting,” his “right to challenge his detention” means nothing.

Unmentioned in the Times piece is that the Obama administration has adopted the policy of holding detainees indefinitely even if they have been found not guilty or cleared for release by a judge.

Shaker Aamer, for example, has been held without charge at for over 10 years, and despite being cleared for release in 2007 he is still locked up. Aamer’s lawyers have claimed that he was “held in solitary confinement for 360 days at the time of filing, and was tortured by beatings, exposure to temperature extremes, and sleep deprivation, which together caused him to suffer to the point of becoming mentally unbalanced.”

Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti national, has been in Guantanamo for a decade without charge or trial. He is suspected of having been a member of al-Qaeda. But a legal study of his proceedings quoted the Tribunal’s legal advisor as saying, “Indeed, the evidence considered persuasive by the Tribunal is made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no first hand knowledge of the events they describe.” He was tortured by US guards, including being kicked, beaten with a metal chain, put in stress positions for up to 36 hours, he “was drugged, his ears were plugged, he was diapered and a sandbag was shoved over his head.” His lawyer predicted a year ago that he may be indefinitely detained, even eventually cleared for release.

Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, charged with plotting the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and just now going through legal proceedings, was told by the US that even if he is found not guilty and acquitted of all charges, they don’t have to release him. His defense attorneys asked the government clarify whether it intends to continue holding him in military detention if he is found not guilty. Because al-Nashiri is being held in military detention, the government claims, he can be held for “the duration of hostilities,” regardless of his verdict.

Adam Serwer at Mother Jones wrote recently that even the partial system of habeas corpus granted to detainees,”essentially leaves detainees at Gitmo with habeas rights in name only, since the rules make it virtually impossible for detainees to win in court.” Given the fact that the Republican Party doesn’t object to the Obama administration’s policies in this regard, this issue is decidedly irrelevant. We will not hear about it in the upcoming Obama-Romney debates.

According to reports, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) is claiming that more than 300 people – 98 soldiers, 139 civilians and 65 rebels – were killed in Syria on Thursday. This would make it the highest death toll in a single day for the whole of the conflict.

As the confusion in Syria seemed to reach new levels in the past few days – with rebels reportedly killing three of Assad’s top security officials and seizing control of the military’s border outpost near Iraq and with Assad allegedly having fled Damascus following an “information blackout” – these reports of casualties have become even less credible.

The SOHR has always been a bit of a sketchy source, despite its widespread use in the mainstream media. Rami Abdulrahman, the Syrian ex-pat who runs the UK-based organization from his London apartment, allegedly took control of the website from another individual, stealing the SOHR name when the violence in Syria picked up. Abdulrahman has been said to have suspicious ties to various groups and has been found to have reported false and fabricated information in the past. Amnesty International, on the other hand, has said that “the information provided by the Observatory has generally been credible and well researched and founded.” Antiwar.com has cited their numbers – always noting where they came from – while allowing readers to apply their own scrutiny. The truth is that very few people have a clear idea of the reality on the ground.

Given the chaos and increased uncertainty inside Syria, this alleged casualty count is being noted on the blog as opposed to the news section. The Syria issue has become very precarious and the interventionists in Washington are getting louder and louder in their calls for a so-called humanitarian intervention, the consequences of which would be far worse than anything seen so far in Syria.

For several months now, Foreign Affairs magazine has featured something of a back-and-forth debate about Iran, its nuclear program, and war. In the January/February edition, Matthew Kroenig, Georgetown professor and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote a piece, the title of which said it all: “Time to Attack Iran.”

In response, Colin Kahl, who was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense of the Middle East until December, wrote his own piece entitled “Not Time to Attack Iran.” Kahl saw a preventive strike on Iran as unjustified and counterproductive, preferring instead to heavily sanction Iran’s economy, continue to provocatively threaten Iran with military encirclement, while engaging in intense negotiations for some sort of political settlement which would be viable if both sides were willing to reciprocate valuable concessions.

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Kenneth N. Waltz, a renowned international relations theorist, argued another take with “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb.” He argued that Iran’s legitimate threat perception in the context of US and Israeli posturing is incentivizing the leadership to go for nuclear weapons, and that this would be a good thing for the stability of the region. There is an asymmetry in the balance of power in the Middle East, Waltz argued, since Israel has hundreds of warheads and doesn’t need to answer for them thanks to US support. Most importantly, he argued that new nuclear states typically become less bellicose and claimed they would not use the deterrence it would afford them to be more aggressive with proxies like Hezbollah. “In fact, by reducing imbalances in military power, new nuclear states generally produce more regional and international stability, not less,” Waltz wrote.

Now Kahl has swung back with a response to Waltz (Waltz rebuts Kahl’s rebuttal at the bottom of the link).

Waltz correctly notes that Iran’s leaders, despite their fanatical rhetoric, are fundamentally rational. Because Iran’s leadership is not suicidal, it is highly unlikely that a nuclear-armed Iran would deliberately use a nuclear device or transfer one to terrorists. Yet even though the Islamic Republic is rational, it is still dangerous, and it is likely to become even more so if it develops nuclear weapons.

States are dangerous; that’s the nature of their inherent violence. The relevant question is whether Iran would be more aggressive than it is now. Or, perhaps more to the point, more aggressive than other states which have achieved nuclear weapons. As Waltz says, “Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly…has long fueled instability in the Middle East.” Israel has been involved in, and been the cause of several devastating wars and is in violation of a long list of international laws and UN resolutions. Yet nobody in Washington considered preventive war on Israel as a better alternative.

Another example to consider is Pakistan. Kahl disputes what Waltz says is the case, that Pakistan’s conflict with India has calmed ever since both states got nuclear weapons. There are still skirmishes between the two, but they are apparently less explosive. But Pakistan has also played a bit of a double game with Washington regarding insurgent groups and cross border attacks into Afghanistan. This is certainly not desirable from Washington’s point of view, but few argued for bombing and regime change in Pakistan to prevent them from getting nukes, probably because it was a much worse alternative.

This is not to say that Iran should get the bomb, but merely to put it in the appropriate context: war is not a desirable alternative to a nuclear armed Iran. In a cost benefit analysis, war as a preventive measure is far worse than a nuclear Iran, especially with all the stabilizing effects it is likely to bring.

Kahl:

A nuclear-armed Iran, believing that it possessed a powerful deterrent and could thus commit violence abroad with near impunity, might also increase the frequency and scale of the terrorist attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets carried out by Hezbollah and the Quds Force, the covert operations wing of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And a bolder Iran might increase the number of Revolutionary Guard forces it deployed to Lebanon, allow its navy to engage in more frequent shows of force in the Mediterranean, and assert itself more aggressively in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Unfortunately, these predictions take Iran’s actions to be in a vacuum. Again, Iran is operating out of a perception of threat, and this explains its postures. Washington could easily alter its policies to incentivize Iran away from even attaining a nuclear deterrent (or, once it has the deterrent, away from bellicosity and increased activity through proxies). But it chooses not to.

I think both forces would be likely to influence a nuclear Iran; that is, both Waltz’s calming effects and Kahl’s increased bellicosity. People tend to forget in analyses like these that the country in question is not a monolith. What is also easy to forget in these debates is the reality that  there is no known weaponization going on in Iran, that US intelligence has concluded that Iran has not decided to go for nuclear weapons, and that Tehran’s actual strategy is rather explicitly to not attain nuclear weapons. These annoying little facts can get in the way of a good establishmentarian debate though.

Via Laura Rozen, this video was released by Bulgarian authorities and allegedly shows the man suspected of blowing up the bus full of Israelis yesterday.

Bulgarian authorities on Thursday released a video of the man suspected of being the bus bomber, and said that he was carrying a fake Michigan driver’s license. ABC News obtained a photo of the suspect’s fake Michigan driver’s license, which identifies the man as Jacque Felipe Martin, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, born in 1987.

Bulgarian media on Thursday identified the suspect as Mehdi Ghezali, the Times of Israel reported, which stressed the information had not been independently confirmed. News reports compiled at a Wikipedia page on Mehdi Ghezali descrbe him as a Swedish citizen of Algerian and Finnish descent who was held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from 2002-2004 after being picked up by Pakistani security among a group of 150 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran for the bombing and issued a threat of retaliation. “All the signs lead to Iran,” he said in a statement.

But former Mossad chief Danny Yatom told reporters on Thursday that Israel doesn’t know who did it and shouldn’t make accusations until they do.

“Usually it takes some time to locate those who were behind the bombing, and those who sent them,” he said. “From the modus operandi used by some organizations, it’s logical to assume that Iran or Hezbollah or Hezbollah or Hezbollah and Iran were behind this terror attack,” Yatom said. “As long as we don’t have solid information about it, it’s better to wait.”