Just Foreign Policy News
August 16, 2010
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Today, By U.S. Deaths, Afghanistan is Obama's War
According to the data tallied by the website icasualties.org, which is regularly cited in the news media, as of today 575 U.S. soldiers had died in the Afghanistan war since Obama took office - the same number that died in the war under President Bush. News media often report on such landmarks; they should report on this one, and press secretary Robert Gibbs should be asked to comment on it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/by-us-deaths-as-of-today_b_683441.html
Academics, authors and analysts urge France to repay debt to Haiti
In an open letter published today in the French national newspaper Libération, more than 90 leading academics, authors and other prominent figures from around the world are publicly calling on the French government to reimburse the 90 million gold francs France extorted from Haitians following Haiti's independence.
http://www.diplomatiegov.info/openletter.en.html
Bacevich: Washington Rules
Andrew Bacevich's new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," is a call for Americans to reject the Washington consensus for permanent war, and to demand instead that America "come home."
Get the book
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/buywashingtonrules
September 24th: JFP "Virtual Brown Bag" with Andrew Bacevich
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/bacevichtalk
Oliver Stone's "South of the Border," scheduled screenings:
http://southoftheborderdoc.com/in-theatres/
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Gen. Petraeus began a campaign on Sunday to convince an increasingly skeptical public that the US coalition can still "succeed" in Afghanistan despite months of setbacks, the New York Times reports. On NBC's "Meet the Press," General Petraeus appeared to leave open the possibility that he would recommend against any withdrawal of American forces next summer. Some Democrats in Congress [including Speaker Pelosi - JFP] are pushing for steep withdrawals early on.
2) A recent Time Magazine cover story - "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan" - by Aryn Baker, Time's Afghan/Pakistan bureau chief, gave a boost to supporters of America's continued military involvement in the country, reports John Gorenfeld for the New York Observer. But Time failed to disclose that Aryn Baker has a financial interest in the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan: her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is a board member of an Afghan government minister's $100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won development contracts with the assistance of the international military.
3) Ordinary Afghans have largely rejected the US/NATO good guy-bad guy narrative and continue blaming civilian deaths on international forces, David Nakamura reports in the Washington Post. "What we found was that regardless of the region, province, education level or political views, in many cases Afghans blamed international forces as much as the insurgents for the increase," said Erica Gaston, a human rights lawyer focusing on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute who recently interviewed 250 Afghans. Afghans say foreign forces are oblivious to their impact on neighborhoods. A shopkeeper who lives next to a security compound attacked by insurgents, and whose car was destroyed, said: "The attack was because of this security company. If they were not here, we would not be attacked…Why should they come and reside here? They should stay in a place far from civilians."
4) USAID has long been plagued by accusations of corruption and lack of transparency, notes William Easterly, writing in the Wall Street Journal. An Afghan government report in 2008 detailed abundant corruption and suggested that aid inflows contributed to it. USAID's own report in 2009 said the "tremendous size . . . [of] development assistance . . . increase[s] Afghanistan's vulnerability to corruption." According to Transparency International, Afghanistan went from the 42nd most corrupt country in the world in 2005 to the second most corrupt in 2009 [that is, under foreign military occupation, corruption increased dramatically - JFP.] USAID itself lacks transparency and accountability, Easterly notes. USAID has stonewalled researchers who asked for information on USAID grantees.
5) A May 25 US airstrike in Yemen, which killed the Marib Province's deputy governor, a respected local leader who had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight, offers a glimpse of the Obama administration's shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies, the New York Times reports. In roughly a dozen countries, the US has significantly increased military and intelligence operations. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps have been publicly acknowledged; the US military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed. Such wars come with many risks, the NYT notes: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America's secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties. Special Operations forces operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A. A US attack in Yemen on Dec. 17 used cluster bombs; an inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families. Micah Zenko of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations examines in a forthcoming book "discrete military operations" from the Balkans to Pakistan since 1991. He found these operations seldom achieve their objectives. But he said military force had tended to dominate "all the discussions and planning" and push more subtle solutions to the side.
6) Polling conducted last month by Zogby and the University of Maryland in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon and the UAE suggests views in the region are shifting toward a positive perception of Iran's nuclear program, writes Shibley Telhami in the Los Angeles Times. a majority of those polled this year say that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, the outcome would be positive for the Middle East. In 2009, only 29% of respondents viewed that as a positive. Telhami attributes this shift to disappointment with US policy under Obama on Israel/Palestine: Polling shows the conflict remains the primary prism through which Arabs view American policy in the Middle East. 61% of Arabs polled identified U.S. policy toward the conflict as the single issue in which they were most disappointed in Obama.
Afghanistan
7) A US official acknowledged a "fair chance" that a NATO jet killed Afghan civilians in southern Afghanistan last week, the New York Times reports. Witnesses said a battle with the Taliban had finished 10 minutes before the plane struck [if true, an apparent violation of the much-publicized rules of engagement - JFP.]
8) NATO and the UN are cautiously considering a Taliban proposal to set up a joint commission to investigate allegations of civilians being killed and wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan, the Guardian reports. A western diplomat said some senior NATO officers were keen on the idea but that no steps could be taken until it was considered "at the highest political level."
Lebanon
9) Lebanon is setting up a fund for Lebanese to help arm its underequipped military, days after Washington lawmakers moved to delay US military aid, Reuters reports. Defense Minister Elias al-Murr the new fund was part of an effort by President Suleiman to build up the army. Suleiman's remarks prompted Iran's ambassador to offer Iran's support to the Lebanese military. The State Department said Iran's offer showed the need for continued US support. Iran has provided more than $720 million in assistance to the Lebanese Army since 2006.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Petraeus Opposes A Rapid Pullout In Afghanistan
Dexter Filkins, New York Times, August 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/world/asia/16petraeus.html
Kabul, Afghanistan - Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces, began a campaign on Sunday to convince an increasingly skeptical public that the American-led coalition can still succeed here despite months of setbacks, saying he had not come to Afghanistan to preside over a "graceful exit."
In an hourlong interview with The New York Times, the general argued against any precipitous withdrawal of forces in July 2011, the date set by President Obama to begin at least a gradual reduction of the 100,000 troops on the ground. General Petraeus said that it was only in the last few weeks that the war plan had been fine-tuned and given the resources that it required. "For the first time," he said, "we will have what we have been working to put in place for the last year and a half."
In another of a series of interviews, on NBC's "Meet the Press," General Petraeus even appeared to leave open the possibility that he would recommend against any withdrawal of American forces next summer.
"Certainly, yes," he said when the show's host, David Gregory, asked him if, depending on how the war was proceeding, he might tell the president that a drawdown should be delayed. "The president and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice."
The statement offered a preview of what promised to be an intense political battle over the future of the American-led war in Afghanistan, which has deteriorated on the ground and turned unpopular at home. Already, some Democrats in Congress are pushing for steep withdrawals early on, while supporters of the war say that a rapid draw-down could endanger the Afghan mission altogether.
[...]
2) With Its Horrifying Cover Story, Time Gave the War a Boost. Did Its Reporter Profit?
John Gorenfeld, New York Observer, August 12, 2010
http://www.observer.com/2010/media/its-horrifying-cover-story-time-gave-war-boost-did-its-reporter-profit
The maimed face of 18-year-old Aisha, her nose and ears cut off as punishment by her Afghan husband for fleeing his home, made the cover of Time magazine last week and changed the debate over the country's military involvement in Afghanistan. Hitting stands just as a growing chorus of pundits and lawmakers had begun to question the costs, the goals and the point of the country's longest war ever, the gut-punch cover image, beneath a stunningly blunt coverline conspicuously missing a question mark - "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan" - and accompanying story by Aryn Baker, the magazine's Afghan/Pakistan bureau chief, gave a boost to supporters of America's continued military involvement in the country.
But there was more than a question mark missing from the Time story, which stressed potentially disastrous consequences if the U.S. pursues negotiations with the Taliban. The piece lacked a crucial personal disclosure on Baker's part: Her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is a board member of an Afghan government minister's $100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won development contracts with the assistance of the international military, including private sector infrastructure projects favored by U.S.-backed leader Hamid Karzai.
In other words, the Time reporter who wrote a story bolstering the case for war appears to have benefited materially from the NATO invasion. Reached by The Observer, a Time spokesperson revealed that the magazine has just reassigned Baker to a new country as part of a normal rotation, though he declined to say where.
While Baker, traveling in Italy, did not respond to Observer.com's request for comment, Time defended its cover story as "neither in support of, nor in opposition to, the U.S. war effort" but rather a "straightforward reported piece." Time added that "Aryn Baker's husband has no connection to the U.S. military, has never solicited business from them and has no financial stake in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan whatsoever."
But two years before his wedding to the Time bureau chief, Samee told Radio Free Europe in 2006 that Digistan - apparently the local arm of an international IT operation, run from a villa in Kabul - was discovering for itself that the "opportunities are definitely here" in the telecom field, thanks to "quite a bit of involvement from ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force, commanded until recently by Stanley Gen. McChrystal] and coalition forces." The same year, he told Entrepreneur: "You won't find another place that offers so many opportunities" and the AP that profits "have been higher than I expected." Three years later, Digistan was advertising for sales staff skilled in "Government and Military Procurement," reflecting the company's connection to the cloudy world of NATO-enabled civilian wartime contracts.
[...]
3) Afghans blame civilian deaths on U.S. despite spike from insurgent violence
David Nakamura, Washington Post, Saturday, August 14, 2010; A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081305821.html
Kabul - During the first six months of the year, 1,271 Afghan civilians had been killed in an increasingly violent war. On Tuesday, Hafizullah Azizi, a handsome 22-year-old who financially supported his mother and five younger siblings, was added to the list.
Azizi, a driver for a British personal security firm, was returning to the company's fortified 16-room compound in central Kabul when armed masked men sprinted toward the house. The attackers shot Azizi and another driver with assault rifles and then engaged in a firefight with a guard, according to police and witnesses. Failing to breach the exterior wall, an attacker detonated an explosive device strapped to his waist, blowing out windows and rocking cars. The two Afghan drivers and two attackers lay dead. The next day, Azizi's mother buried her son in the family graveyard near his father, an Afghan soldier who died in battle 17 years earlier.
Azizi is representative of an alarming spike in civilian deaths, up 21 percent this year largely because of an increase in insurgent violence, according to a U.N. report this week. (Add 1,997 injured, and the spike in overall civilian casualties is 31 percent.) Although NATO forces have largely made good on the pledge last year from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to decrease civilian casualties caused by their actions, the Taliban have ramped up their aggression, killing 920 civilians this year through suicide bombings, targeted assassinations and improvised explosive devices.
U.S. and NATO officials have used the figures to denounce the Taliban to win popular support for an increased presence that aims to clear out Taliban strongholds this fall. But ordinary Afghans have largely rejected this good guy-bad guy narrative and continue blaming the civilian deaths on the international forces, said experts who have studied the issue.
"What we found was that regardless of the region, province, education level or political views, in many cases Afghans blamed international forces as much as the insurgents for the increase," said Erica Gaston, a human rights lawyer focusing on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute who recently interviewed 250 Afghans.
Afghans contend that the troops are not doing enough to protect them; that foreigners are ensconced behind fortified walls and bulletproof vehicles while residents are out in the open; and that the presence of foreigners in their neighborhoods brings unwanted attention from insurgents.
"The [Afghan] government, NATO, the U.N., the American forces - they make a big, big wall of cement and they are inside," said Zafar Khanbahar, 25, Azizi's cousin. "So the insurgents, to try to kill the troops, whenever they explode [a bomb], the people in the public are hit. I blame all of them, the government, NATO and the insurgents - all."
[...]
It's not that locals don't blame the Taliban. But they insist that foreign forces are oblivious to their impact on neighborhoods.
Abdul Ahamad, 53, a shopkeeper who lives next to the Hart Security compound attacked by the suicide bombers, showed his damaged Toyota Corolla to a reporter. Its windows were blown out and the driver's side door was caved in. He said he had about $200 in savings and could not afford to fix the car. "The attack was because of this security company. If they were not here, we would not be attacked," Ahamad said. "Why should they come and reside here? They should stay in a place far from civilians."
[...]
4) How Not to Win Hearts and Minds
In a U.N. survey, 52% of Afghans said foreign aid organizations 'are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich.'
William Easterly, Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2010
http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/WSJ_Hearts_and_Minds_8.16.2010.pdf
In June, this newspaper broke the story of how Afghan officials were literally stuffing suitcases with aid money and flying out of the country. As a result, the House foreign aid appropriations subcommittee voted to cut $4.5 billion from the U.S. aid program to Afghanistan.
The situation in Afghanistan is not unique. Indeed, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been plagued by accusations of corruption and lack of transparency. But foreign aid bureaucracies traditionally have two contradictory mandates: 1) We must not give aid to corrupt recipients; and 2) We must spend the entire aid budget. No. 2 usually beats No. 1. Aid agencies put a glossy face on this outcome, which makes the victory of corruption even more likely.
An Afghan government report in 2008 (the "Kazimi report") detailed abundant corruption and suggested that aid inflows contributed to it. USAID's own report in 2009 said "corruption is now at an unprecedented scope in the country's history" and that the "tremendous size . . . [of] development assistance . . . increase[s] Afghanistan's vulnerability to corruption." According to Transparency International, Afghanistan went from the 42nd most corrupt country in the world in 2005 to the second most corrupt in 2009 (Somalia was first).
The 2009 USAID report noted that domestic Afghan anticorruption efforts fail because "often the officials and agencies that are supposed to be part of the solution to corruption are instead a critical part of the corruption syndrome." Yet it recommends providing more "resources" to these same corrupt anticorruption fighters.
The report correctly noted that part of the solution to corruption is "transparency and accountability." True, but USAID itself lacks transparency and accountability. The report fails to mention a single USAID program that has suffered from corruption.
I run a blog called Aid Watch together with Laura Freschi at New York University. When we contacted USAID after its 2009 report was released to ask how this could be so, we started informative discussions with the Afghan country desk. Unfortunately, the USAID Press Office quickly intervened, saying that any response had to come from them. Then they failed to provide any such response.
Others have had similar experiences. Till Bruckner, a field-based researcher on corruption in the Republic of Georgia, asked USAID for information on the budgets of the NGOs they funded there. When USAID refused, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request in May 2009. After months of stonewalling, USAID finally responded last month, with copies of NGO budgets-but much of the key information blacked out.
[...]
As the war there drags on, we have to ask the following question: Is U.S. aid winning hearts and minds? A U.N. survey taken in January found that 52% of Afghans believe aid organizations "are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich." I don't know much about waging a counterinsurgency, but it seems to me that we're getting very little for our money.
[...]
5) Secret Assault On Terrorism Widens On Two Continents
Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth, New York Times, August 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html
Washington - At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.
But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province's deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.
The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh's decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.
The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration's shadow war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries - from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife - the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.
The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency's drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.
While the stealth war began in the Bush administration, it has expanded under President Obama, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States government have been publicly acknowledged. In contrast with the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for example, the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in December and has never been officially confirmed.
Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.
[...]
Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America's secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.
The May strike in Yemen, for example, provoked a revenge attack on an oil pipeline by local tribesmen and produced a propaganda bonanza for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It also left President Saleh privately furious about the death of the provincial official, Jabir al-Shabwani, and scrambling to prevent an anti-American backlash, according to Yemeni officials.
The administration's demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan's mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.
For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret "Execute Orders" have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.
And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.
[...]
As word of the Dec. 17 attack filtered out, a very mixed picture emerged. The Yemeni press quickly identified the United States as responsible for the strike. Qaeda members seized on video of dead children and joined a protest rally a few days later, broadcast by Al Jazeera, in which a speaker shouldering an AK-47 rifle appealed to Yemeni counterterrorism troops.
[...]
A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.
An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the strike, the inquiry found.
[...]
Still, the historical track record of limited military efforts like the Yemen strikes is not encouraging. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, examines in a forthcoming book what he has labeled "discrete military operations" from the Balkans to Pakistan since the end of the cold war in 1991. He found that these operations seldom achieve either their military or political objectives.
But he said that over the years, military force had proved to be a seductive tool that tended to dominate "all the discussions and planning" and push more subtle solutions to the side.
[...]
That is apparent to visitors at the American Embassy in Sana, who have noticed that it is increasingly crowded with military personnel and intelligence operatives. For now, the shadow warriors are taking the lead.
6) A Shift In Arab Views Of Iran
Anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. policy is tilting public opinion in favor of Tehran and against Washington.
Shibley Telhami, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-telhami-arab-opinions-20100814,0,4569144.story
President Obama may have scored a diplomatic win by securing international support for biting sanctions against Iran, but Arab public opinion is moving in a different direction. Polling conducted last month by Zogby and the University of Maryland in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates suggests that views in the region are shifting toward a positive perception of Iran's nuclear program.
These views present problems for Washington, which has counted on Arabs seeing Iran as a threat - maybe even a bigger one than Israel. So why is Arab public opinion toward Iran shifting?
According to our polling, a majority of Arabs do not believe Iran's claim that it is merely pursuing a peaceful nuclear program. But an overwhelming majority believe that Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons and should not be pressured by the international community to curtail its program. Even more telling, a majority of those polled this year say that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, the outcome would be positive for the Middle East. In 2009, only 29% of respondents viewed that as a positive.
To be sure, the results varied from country to country, with a significant majority in Egypt viewing a nuclear Iran positively, while a majority in the United Arab Emirates viewed such an outcome negatively. However, the trend in the past year is striking.
The shortest path to understanding this turn in Arab public opinion is to examine Arab views of American foreign policy in the Middle East. In the early months of the Obama administration (spring 2009), our polling found that a remarkable 51% of those surveyed expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East, a stark contrast to nearly a decade of gloom that preceded Obama's election. A little over a year later, however, the number of optimists had dropped to only 16%, with 63% expressing pessimism. This pessimism, more than any other issue, explains the turn in Arab attitudes toward Iran. Arabs tend to view Iran largely through the prism of American and Israeli policies.
Most Arabs have no love for Iran, and many see the country as a significant threat. But the Arab public does not see Iran as the biggest danger in the region. In an open question asking about the two countries that pose the biggest threats to their security, 88% of respondents identified Israel, 77% identified the United States, and only 10% identified Iran. The angrier the public is with Israel and the United States, the less they worry about Iran, viewing it first and foremost as "the enemy of my enemy."
When American officials speak of Arab attitudes toward Iran, they are generally speaking of the positions of Arab governments, most of which are quite concerned about the growing power of Iran, especially given the decline of Iraq's regional power, which used to serve as a counterbalance. But even Arab governments that worry about Iran do so for different reasons.
Some of Iran's smaller Arab neighbors, particularly the United Arab Emirates, have genuine security worries. For more distant states such as Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, the worry is largely about Iran's influence on public opinion within their countries and Iran's support for movements opposing their governments. They understand that Iran's influence is drawn primarily from regional frustration with the United States and with the stalemate on the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is why they see addressing that conflict as the surest way to curtail Iran's influence.
All of this brings us to a crucial question: What explains the dramatic turn in Arab attitudes toward the Obama administration in the past year? It was not that Arabs didn't appreciate the effort the administration made to change American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam. Those polled identified that as the Obama administration's policy they liked most. But the reason for the shift cannot be missed: 61% of Arabs polled identified U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict as the single issue in which they were most disappointed in Obama.
Year after year, our polling has shown that this issue remains the primary prism through which Arabs view American policy in the Middle East. Arab disappointment with the slow progress toward peace, the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and the tragedy of the Gaza flotilla have provided the central window for Arab views. And Iran has gained as a consequence.
When American officials speak to the Arab public and highlight the threat of a nuclear Iran as the central problem facing the region, they cannot expect to get public sympathy or attention. The view in the region is not that confronting Iran is an essential prerequisite to Arab-Israeli peace. Rather, most Arabs believe that peace between Israelis and Palestinians must precede limiting Iran's influence.
[...]
Afghanistan
7) NATO Strike Cited In Afghan Civilian Deaths
Dexter Filkins, New York Times, August 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan - There is a "fair chance" that a NATO jet inadvertently killed five Afghan civilians during a shootout with Taliban fighters in a village in southern Afghanistan earlier this week, an American official said Saturday.
Some details were still unclear, but a local Afghan official and two witnesses said that the civilians were killed Thursday afternoon when a NATO aircraft fired on a house after a firefight with Taliban militants who had attacked a NATO convoy. The Taliban were operating in Luchak, a farming village in central Helmand Province, the epicenter of the insurgency. When the convoy arrived in Luchak, about a half-dozen Taliban fighters opened fire from behind a wall next to a house.
After a 10-minute exchange of fire, the insurgents ran away, the witnesses said. Then, about 10 minutes later, a pair of helicopters appeared in the sky, the villagers said.
Maj. Michael Johnson, a NATO spokesman, said the aircraft was a plane that had come in support of the troops on the ground.
The witnesses said the aircraft fired on the house, killing five men inside. Two Afghans were wounded.
"Afterwards some of the other villagers and I went to the house and we saw a man and woman crying and screaming for the dead," said Khair Mohammed, who lives in Luchak. "It was a very bad scene."
[...]
Major Johnson said a team had been sent to the area to figure out what happened, but its report was not yet complete. He said it was likely, though, that NATO had killed the civilians. "They feel there is a fair chance that those seven causalities were caused by us," he said. Most NATO troops in the area are American or British.
[...]
On Saturday, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan took up the matter with President Obama in an hourlong video teleconference. A statement released afterward by Mr. Karzai's aides said he had given Mr. Obama a letter calling for a "strategic review" of NATO's campaign, based on the "rightful demands of the people of Afghanistan that terrorism cannot be fought in Afghan villages."
In its own statement, the American Embassy said that Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai discussed a variety of subjects, including civilian casualties. It made no reference to Mr. Karzai's request.
8) Taliban call for joint inquiry into civilian Afghan deaths considered
UN and Nato cautiously consider proposal, which follows reports of high levels of civilian deaths caused by insurgents
Jon Boone, Guardian, Monday 16 August 2010 18.17 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/16/taliban-afghan-civilian-deaths-nato-un
Kabul - Nato and the United Nations are cautiously considering a Taliban proposal to set up a joint commission to investigate allegations of civilians being killed and wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan, diplomats in Kabul have told the Guardian.
The Taliban overture, which came in a statement posted on its website, will revive a divisive debate about whether to conduct any formal talks with insurgents who are responsible for the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and whose assassination campaign now kills one person a day on average.
The Taliban statement called for the establishment of a body including members from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, UN human rights investigators, Nato and the Taliban. "The stated committee should [be] given a free hand to survey the affected areas as well as people in order to collect the precise information and the facts and figures and disseminate its findings worldwide," the Taliban said.
One human rights organisation has already thrown its support behind the joint commission plan, which echoes a similar idea floated four years ago.
The UN and Nato are treading carefully, but western diplomats say the proposal is being carefully considered. One said that some senior officers at the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) were keen on the idea but that no steps could be taken until it was considered "at the highest political level".
[...]
The delicate balancing act for Nato is that the possible benefits of opening dialogue with insurgents must be weighted against the danger of simply giving them political legitimacy at a time when David Petraeus, the US commander of Nato forces, has ordered his communications department to cast the Taliban in the most negative light possible.
[...]
Lebanon
9) Lebanon Seeks Donors For Its Army
Reuters, August 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/middleeast/15lebanon.html
Beirut, Lebanon - Lebanon is setting up a fund for Lebanese at home and abroad to help arm its underequipped military, its defense minister announced on Saturday, days after lawmakers in Washington moved to delay United States military aid over concerns that the Lebanese Army was working closely with the militant group Hezbollah.
Defense Minister Elias al-Murr said he hoped the fund would attract donations from the millions of Lebanese living abroad as well as residents in the country. Mr. Murr said he was making the first contribution, of $670,000.
Two Democrat lawmakers said last week that they were holding up a $100 million approved package of United States military aid to Lebanon after a deadly cross-border clash between Lebanese and Israeli troops.
Mr. Murr criticized the announcement, saying that any party that wished to help the military had to do so without conditions.
He said on Saturday that the new fund was part of an effort by President Michel Suleiman to build up the army. Mr. Suleiman's remarks prompted Iran's ambassador to Lebanon to offer Iran's support to the Lebanese military.
The State Department said that Iran's offer, which is likely to alarm Western countries who fear that Tehran is increasing its influence near Israel's northern border, showed the need for continued American support to Lebanon.
Iran has provided more than $720 million in assistance to the Lebanese Army since 2006.
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.
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