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 The Pentagon Early Bird 28 Jan 2008 Use of these news items does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Item numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) IRAQ
Los Angeles Times January 28, 2008 Gates Calls For Bipartisan Work On Iraq The Defense secretary says presidential candidates should be thinking ahead about the war on terrorism. By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — If Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had his way, the protracted presidential nomination battles underway in the Republican and Democratic parties would end sooner rather than later. "Once somebody contemplates the prospect that they may be president of the United States, they're going to begin thinking about what they're going to inherit," Gates said in an interview. "And I think it will be, regardless of party, a sobering realization." It is unusual for a sitting Defense secretary to comment on an ongoing presidential campaign. Gates acknowledged it might "be an inappropriate thing to say." But when he was nominated in 2006, Gates set for himself the improbable goal of finding a bipartisan agreement for the divisive U.S. involvement in Iraq. Cooling the overheated war debate of the nomination process, he said, is one step toward a plan that both parties can generally accept. Whether Gates can succeed in such a quest before he leaves the Pentagon in a year will be one of the most closely watched dramas of the waning days of the Bush administration. "This is quite unique to have the secretary of Defense really thinking about these issues, certainly at this point of time," said John P. Burke, a presidential historian at the University of Vermont who has studied transitions between administrations. In an interview this month marking the midpoint of his expected two-year stint, Gates acknowledged that the country might never come together around the deeply contested issue of Iraq, but insisted there were areas of commonality. "I think that if we can get the situation in Iraq to the point where people see it's headed in the right direction, then maybe we can focus on the broader elements of the war on terror, and that's where I think there is a much broader degree of agreement," Gates said. "Personally, I think consensus is out of the question," he said. "What I'm talking about is a broad bipartisan agreement that sustaining some level of presence there for a longer term, for stabilization, is important." His top goal is cementing the gains by U.S. forces over the last year. But Gates considers it essential that the two parties forge a common ground on Iraq, just as they did during the Cold War, so that the military gains do not evaporate when the next administration takes office. Historians have their doubts about his chances for success. "Even at times of war or great international stress, there's an effort to rethink previous policies," said Paul C. Light, an expert on government transitions at New York University. "The incoming administration believes that the transition plan is really an effort to extend the influence of the prior administration, and they generally say, 'We're going to do it differently. We're going to be better.' " The White House changed hands during wartime in 1952 and 1968. But in neither era did the country's Defense officials make efforts to ensure a continuity of policy. "There wasn't, to my knowledge, anything that would resemble an effort by Clark Clifford, who was secretary of Defense [in 1968], to sit back and think about what the new administration needs to do," Burke said. Gates' comments reflect his views of the duties of national security professionals: to put aside partisan rancor in the interest of cool-headed, rational analysis of international crises. Gates hasn't always managed to steer clear of the political fray. But Democrats on Capitol Hill have given Gates high marks for his efforts over the last year to reach out, particularly on Iraq policy. He has met repeatedly with some of the war's most outspoken critics in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). In October, Gates appointed John J. Hamre, the deputy Defense secretary under President Clinton, to chair the Defense Policy Board, the official advisory panel to the Defense secretary once headed by Richard Perle, a leading war advocate. "He is far more open-minded, far more willing to listen to other ideas; he welcomes other ideas, he solicits ideas," Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters recently. "This is not just something personal, about body language and tone. This is substance." But there have been signs of strain. During the pre-Christmas fight over war spending, Gates chastised Democrats for meddling in war planning by attempting to insert a withdrawal timeline into its annual funding bill. Democratic leaders relented, but demands for a faster withdrawal are likely to resurface in March, when Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, is expected to unveil his next round of recommendations. Part of Gates' challenge is to mend long-festering political wounds. "Most recent secretaries did think they were responsible for bipartisan support for defense policy," Hamre said. "But Bob Gates is a unique figure in that he had to rebuild it, not just sustain it." Still, Gates' search for a post-Sept. 11 version of the Cold War consensus shows that while he is a member of the Bush administration, he also considers himself a part of the larger U.S. foreign policy establishment. Many of his policy initiatives -- including his call for additional funding for the State Department and other instruments of U.S. "soft power" -- are unlikely to be resolved any time soon. It is a point he readily admits: "One of my favorite quotes is from Walter Lippmann, and he talked about the importance of planting trees we may never get to sit under." Early in his career as a CIA analyst, Gates earned a reputation as a bullying boss. His first nomination as CIA director in the 1980s was withdrawn in the face of congressional opposition. But those who worked with him later, both at the CIA and as president of Texas A&M University, said he had learned to practice the art of consensus. Gates said the approach was essential at public institutions like the Pentagon. "The leader of an organization has to set the goal . . . but it's the professionals who will have to execute it," Gates said. "If you don't involve them in the process, whatever you try to do will go out the door right behind you." It is a leadership style markedly different from that of his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. In six years at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld gained a reputation for imposing his own vision on the military, ignoring the advice of experienced veterans. Gates bristles at the comparison. "I have never said a negative thing about Don Rumsfeld," he said. "Everything I do, everybody tries to compare to my predecessor, and I don't like it. It's not helpful." Despite his efforts to find a foreign policy consensus that will live on after the Bush presidency, Gates said crucial work remains for the final year. He acknowledges that U.S. detainee practices -- at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay -- have damaged the American reputation. But he said foreign governments and international leaders, including in the Middle East, still looked to the U.S. as an important ally. "I think you can do this right up to Jan. 20 in terms of communicating [that] the United States is prepared to be a good partner and to work with people," Gates said. "We're going to protect our interests, but we're prepared to listen and we're prepared to work with others -- and we understand the need to work with others." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576152.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times January 28, 2008 Iraq Says It's Readying Mosul Offensive Troops have reportedly arrived in the northern city, site of recent deadly insurgent attacks, in an effort to suppress militant groups. By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — Iraqi army units reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni militants. The reinforcements included Iraqi aircraft and tanks. "The largest portion of those forces have arrived already. They are Iraqi army forces and include troops, mechanized troops and air force," said Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari. "The plan will be similar to the ones implemented in Baghdad and Diyala [province]." The U.S. military said Sunday that it had no information about any Iraqi military operations in Mosul. In the last year, U.S. and Iraqi forces have mounted major campaigns to take back areas under the control of Sunni Arab militants, benefiting from the additional 28,500 American troops that arrived in the country during the first half of 2007. Al Qaeda-linked militants have lost the upper hand in Baghdad, where many former insurgents have made alliances with U.S. forces. In Diyala, insurgents remain active. At least 38 people were killed in Mosul on Wednesday, when militants blew up a building. The next day a suicide bomber assassinated the province's police chief. The violence prompted Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to pledge to take back Mosul, which is seen as a stronghold for Al Qaeda in Iraq after militants fled north under pressure from U.S.-led forces in Baghdad and in Anbar province. Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with 1.7 million people, was already rife with tensions between Arabs and Kurds. In other developments, a fire was burning today at Iraq's central bank in Baghdad, but no one was hurt, police said. The bank manages Iraq's monetary policy. It was not clear whether any documents or currency were damaged. The U.S. military announced that two American soldiers died in bomb attacks around Baghdad over the weekend. At least 3,934 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq war since the American-led invasion of March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org. In the capital, the former director-general of east Baghdad's water and sewage systems, his wife and his daughter were beheaded in their home Sunday, police said. The man's nephew also was stabbed and died later at the hospital. The former official, Ahmed Jawad Hashim, had served under Saddam Hussein, police said. He had returned to work six months after the 2003 invasion and retired four months ago, police said. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Accordance Front, a Sunni bloc that quit the Cabinet in August, began talks with the government Sunday about returning members to their posts, said lawmaker Khalaf Ayan. Times staff writers Saif Hameed and Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576194.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Boston Globe January 28, 2008 Iraqi Troops Poised To Strike Al Qaeda By Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press BAGHDAD - Iraqi Army reinforcements moved yesterday into positions near the northern city of Mosul, ready to strike Al Qaeda in Iraq targets in their last urban stronghold, a top Iraqi officer said. Major General Riyad Jalal, a senior officer in the Mosul region, said the additional forces were encamping in an Iraqi base near the city, and would open an offensive against Al Qaeda fighters "immediately after all the added troops arrive." Iraqi and US officials have not said how many additional soldiers were headed toward Iraq's third-largest city, an important trade and transportation hub, after a massive bombing there last week badly damaged a poor neighborhood, killing 38 and wounding more than 200. A senior police official was killed the next day while inspecting the damage. Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said most army reinforcements had reached the city, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. "The operations against Al Qaeda in Mosul will start soon," he said. The Iraqi military planned to use armored vehicles, tanks, and helicopters. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said 3,000 residents in Mosul would be recruited to bolster the city's police force. The US military, meanwhile, reported two soldiers killed over the weekend in separate bombings in Baghdad - one on a foot patrol Saturday near Kazimiyah and another whose vehicle was hit yesterday by a roadside bomb in northeastern Baghdad. Both attacks occurred in predominantly Shi'ite Muslim neighborhoods. The deaths raised to at least 3,934 the number of US military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Thirty American forces have died in January, seven more than December when the monthly toll was the lowest since February 2004. The US military does not plan to send additional forces to Mosul, which a military spokesman said earlier this month was the last urban safe haven for Al Qaeda-led insurgents. The United States has said Iraqi security forces will take the lead in Mosul - a major test of Washington's plan to, at an undetermined date, shrink the American force and leave it as backup for Iraqi security forces. "Regarding Mosul, an area we recognize is of strategic importance to Al Qaeda, our operations will continue in that area again not in a new way but in a continued way," said Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, a military spokesman. He also said there were "tens of thousands of pounds of explosive material" in the abandoned building that exploded Wednesday. He declined to assign blame, but Iraqi authorities quickly accused Al Qaeda. In northeast Baghdad, a former city official was stabbed to death in his home along with his wife and daughter. They lived in Talbiyah, a middle-class, predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood near Sadr City, police said. The knife-wielding attackers stormed the two-story house late Saturday, killing Ahmed Jwad Hashim, his wife, and their daughter. A visiting nephew was seriously wounded, police and hospital officials said. Neighbors gathered outside the house told AP Television News that Hashim, a Shi'ite engineer from Karbala, had been the director general of the Baghdad municipality office until he retired about four months ago. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576044.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 28, 2008 Pg. 6 No Survivors After Night Attack At Home Of Baghdad Ex-Official By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Ahmad Fadam BAGHDAD — A band of attackers on Saturday night broke into the home of a man who was a senior Baghdad city official under the government of Saddam Hussein and shot and stabbed him and his family, killing everyone in the home, an Iraqi official said Sunday. The American military also disclosed the deaths of two United States soldiers in Baghdad, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday. Also on Saturday, the leader of an Iraqi militia that had joined forces with American troops was killed by a bomb planted inside his car in northern Baghdad, the American military said late Sunday. The killing is the latest attack in a campaign by militants to single out and kill militia leaders who have agreed to provide security with payment from the Americans. At least a half dozen other militia leaders have been killed in the past month, Iraqi officials have said. The former Baghdad municipal official, Ahmed Jawad Hashem, retired several years ago and lived with his family on the outskirts of the Sadr City neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. Late on Saturday night, attackers slipped inside his house and shot him and his wife, Nisreen, in the chest and then slit their throats, the official said. The killers then slit the throats of their daughter, Zaineb, and of Haider Abbas, a young man who the official said was either Mr. Hashem’s nephew or son-in-law. Five women employed by Baghdad University were kidnapped on Sunday by gunmen who stopped their minibus in the neighborhood of New Baghdad, in the eastern part of the capital, the Interior Ministry official said. Few details were available about the deaths of the two American soldiers. One was killed by an improvised bomb on Saturday while he was patrolling on foot in Baghdad near the heavily protected Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya. The other was killed Sunday in his vehicle in northeastern Baghdad when attackers detonated a bomb. Commanders from the Third Infantry Division, which has deployed large forces south of Baghdad, say militia groups called Concerned Local Citizens, or C.L.C.’s, have not shown signs of returning to the insurgency and continue to grow stronger. But they said the security situation remained tenuous. “Conceivably, they could jump back over the fence and be part of the problem again,” the division commander, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, told reporters on Sunday in Baghdad. “You’ve got to watch that very closely.” Khalid al-Ansary, Karim Hilmi and Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting from Baghdad. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576154.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times January 28, 2008 Afghans Reject Envoy Choice By Associated Press LONDON — British diplomat Paddy Ashdown said Sunday that he had withdrawn from consideration for a U.N. post as a "super envoy" to Afghanistan after Afghan officials objected. Ashdown had been backed by the U.S. and Britain as coordinator of international aid and political efforts in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai raised objections in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Times of London reported. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576039.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 28, 2008 Pg. 6 Search For U.S. Aid Worker KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Agence France-Presse) — The police here searched Sunday for an abducted American aid worker and her driver as authorities awaited contact from the kidnappers. The Taliban, who have been linked to several kidnappings, said they were trying to see if any of their members were involved but could not “yet” take responsibility for the abductions, which occurred Saturday. Police officers searched vehicles leaving Kandahar with emphasis on the area where Cyd Mizell, 49, and her Afghan driver were seized while traveling to work on Saturday. “Our goal is to stop the suspected abductors from taking the hostage out of town and hopefully, with God’s help, arrest those who have abducted her,” said one of the officers, who gave his name only as Hashmatullah. The kidnapper has not made contact with the Afghan government or Ms. Mizell’s employer, the Philippines-based community development organization Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, they said Sunday. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576156.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Newsweek February 4, 2008 Periscope As Karzai Loses His Grip, A Familiar Face Looms By John Barry and Michael Hirsh It wasn't long ago that Afghan president Hamid Karzai was seen as a dependable U.S. ally on par with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf. But as Afghanistan has fallen into violent chaos—along with Pakistan—tensions have erupted between Karzai and the United States and Britain. One of the most worried U.S. officials is Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born ambassador to the United Nations, who is seriously considering running for Karzai's seat himself when the next elections are held in 2009, according to several U.N. and U.S. government officials. Last Friday, Karzai blocked the appointment of British politician Paddy Ashdown, the former U.N. High Representative for Bosnia, as envoy to Afghanistan. During a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Karzai said that he and many Afghan parliamentarians did not want Ashdown in the post, according to a Western official briefed on the discussions who would only speak about them anonymously. Ashdown's formal role would have been to coordinate international relief programs. But American and British officials were hoping that Ashdown might also act as a kind of viceroy, bringing order to an Afghan government that finds itself besieged by a resurgent Taliban. Karzai's opposition grew as Ashdown sought to establish what his powers as "superenvoy" might be, one official said. "Karzai has been under a lot of pressure and criticism, and he might feel that he was being marginalized," says Jim Dobbins, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. U.S. and British officials have grown increasingly disenchanted with Karzai, who is now viewed as isolated in Kabul and surrounded by corrupt or incompetent ministers. Things are not much better next door in Pakistan, where militant Islamist groups have grown bolder and the embattled Musharraf is under pressure to step down. Like Karzai, Musharraf has begun lashing out publicly against what he sees as Western interference. Khalilzad had a successful stint as U.S. ambassador to Kabul after the Taliban fell, helping to form the Karzai government and working with then Maj. Gen. David Barno, commander of U.S. forces, to pacify the country. He also served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq and was one of the principal drafters of a 1992 "grand strategy" for U.S. global dominance that became known as the "Pentagon paper." Even so, in a 2005 interview with NEWSWEEK, Khalilzad said that one thing he had learned during his term in Afghanistan was that its people "don't want to be ruled by a foreigner." Khalilzad has not directly denied that he is considering a run. His spokeswoman, Carolyn Vadino, told NEWSWEEK that "he intends to serve out his post as long as [President Bush] wants him in office. And then after that, he hopes to find a job here in the private sector in the U.S." But a senior Bush administration official who knows Khalilzad (and who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Khalilzad's plans) said the U.N. ambassador was actively exploring a run. Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan expert at Washington's Congressional Research Service, said that "most observers think he would stand only if Karzai decides not to run." During an interview this week with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth (page 47), though, Karzai seemed to leave the door open for a re-election bid. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576026.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 28, 2008 Pg. 1 Yemen's Deals With Jihadists Unsettle The U.S. By Robert F. Worth SANA, Yemen — When the Yemeni authorities released a convicted terrorist of Al Qaeda named Jamal al-Badawi from prison last October, American officials were furious. Mr. Badawi helped plan the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. But the Yemenis saw things differently. Mr. Badawi had agreed to help track down five other members of Al Qaeda who had escaped from prison, and was more useful to the government on the street than off, said a high-level Yemeni government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Badawi had also pledged his loyalty to Yemen’s president before being released, the official said. The dispute over Mr. Badawi — whom the Yemenis quickly returned to prison after being threatened with a loss of aid — underscored a much broader disagreement over how to fight terrorism in Yemen, a particularly valuable recruiting ground and refuge for Islamist militants in the past two decades. Yemeni officials say they have had considerable success co-opting jihadists like Mr. Badawi, often by releasing them from prison and helping them with money, schooling or jobs. They are required to sign a pledge not to carry out any attacks on Yemeni soil, often backed by guarantees from their tribe or family members. Many have taken part in an Islamic re-education effort led by religious scholars, now being copied on a wider scale in Saudi Arabia. A number of these former jihadists have become government informants, helping to capture a new generation of younger, more dangerous Qaeda militants — some of them veterans of the war in Iraq — who refuse to recognize the Yemeni government. Others have become mediators, helping persuade escaped prisoners to surrender. But American counterterrorism officials and even some Yemenis say the Yemeni government, more than others in the region, is in effect striking a deal that helps stop attacks here while leaving jihadists largely free to plan them elsewhere. They also say the Yemeni government caters too much to radical Islamist figures to improve its political standing, nourishing a culture that could ultimately breed more violence. “Yemen is like a bus station — we stop some terrorists, and we send others on to fight elsewhere,” said Murad Abdul Wahed Zafir, a political analyst at the National Democratic Institute in Sana. “We appease our partners in the West, but we are not really helping.” Uneasy Alliance With Jihadists All parties agree that the situation is urgent. With a young, poor, and fast-growing population of 22 million, Yemen is rapidly approaching an economic and political crisis that could result in its becoming a failed state. The government is fighting a persistent insurgency in the north, oil supplies are dwindling, and the water table in the capital is expected (according to a World Bank estimate) to run out in two years. Like Afghanistan, Yemen has a weak government with strong tribes and mountainous terrain, and a vast weapons supply. The Yemeni government argues that its approach is in keeping with their deeply conservative society, where Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein remain popular figures. Although a new American-trained commando unit has regularly captured and killed terrorists, officials say they must also show restraint with prisoners: taking a harder line or acceding to American demands to extradite people like Mr. Badawi (as the United States has asked) could provoke a violent backlash. “The strategy is fighting terrorism, but we need space to use our own tactics, and our friends must understand us,” said Rashad Muhammad al-Alimi, Yemen’s interior minister. Yemen’s uneasy partnership with jihadists dates back to the late 1980s, when it welcomed tens of thousands of returning Arab veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. While other Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, struggled with the question of how to accommodate those jihadists, Yemen was actively open to sheltering them, said Gregory Johnsen, a security analyst at the terrorism research group Jamestown Foundation. At the time, President Ali Abdullah Saleh saw the returning fighters as a useful military and ideological weapon against the restive socialists of southern Yemen. When a brief civil war broke out in 1994, President Saleh sent thousands of jihadists into battle against the south. He also forged important ties with Yemeni Islamist clerical and political figures like Sheik Abdul Majid al-Zindani, a former mentor of Mr. bin Laden who has a broad popular following and has since been listed as a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States and the United Nations. Those ties persist today, despite American complaints. Some American officials say the influence of Islamists, and entrenched government corruption, may have made possible the spectacular escape of 23 Qaeda figures, including Mr. Badawi, from a well-guarded prison in the capital in February 2006. Yemeni officials blamed poor oversight for the escape, in which the prisoners are said to have tunneled their way to the bathroom of a neighboring mosque. Finding a Balance After 2001 After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Saleh flew to Washington and pledged full cooperation with American antiterrorism efforts. At home in Yemen, thousands of former “Afghan Arabs” were rounded up and imprisoned. But Mr. Saleh was still sensitive to Islamic extremists, who remained a crucial domestic constituency. When the Pentagon leaked word of Yemeni collaboration in an American missile strike in 2002 that killed the suspected leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen, Mr. Saleh was furious. That same year, Mr. Saleh hit on an idea that he hoped would satisfy both his American and Islamist partners: “al hiwar al fikri,” or intellectual dialogue. This was an effort to inculcate the idea that Islam, properly understood, does not condone terrorism. Sessions began with hundreds of former jihadists who remained in prison without charges. “It came from the idea that terror depends on ideology, and that thought should be confronted with thought,” said Hamoud al Hetar, the cleric and judge who led the program. A cleric would sit for several hours with three to seven prisoners, mostly outside the prison, and discuss Islamic law and ethics, Judge Hetar said during an interview at his home in Sana. At first, the Saudis and others derided the idea as too soft. At the same time, many Yemeni religious scholars refused to participate out of fear that they would be assassinated by militants, Judge Hetar said. Gradually the program gained acceptance, and Saudi Arabia soon adopted its own version, including therapy and a more comprehensive reintegration program. Some critics have dismissed the dialogue program, which lapsed in 2005 after terror attacks dropped off, as a sham in which inmates feigned conversion to get out of prison. But Nasser al-Bahri, a former driver for Mr. bin Laden who spent four years with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, said it was more like a raw bargain: exempt Yemen from your jihad and you will be left alone. “It changed their behavior, not their thoughts,” said Mr. Bahri, a cheerful, talkative 33-year-old who once went by the nom de guerre Abu Jandal. “Judge Hetar cannot cancel jihad. It is in the roots of our religion.” Sitting on the floor of a bare living room in his Sana apartment, Mr. Bahri said the government helped him buy a taxi and pay for business school after his release in 2003. Although he says he still supports Al Qaeda’s global goals, he also urges other Islamists to avoid any violence in Yemen. Ali Saleh, another former jihadist who went through Judge Hetar’s program while in prison, now serves as a mediator between the government and Islamists. He helped negotiate the surrender of several of the 23 men who escaped from prison in Sana in early 2006. In exchange, the government agreed to make concessions, including releasing the men after their surrender, he said. “The government understands, in Yemen you must compromise to reach a solution,” Mr. Saleh said. “The Americans would like to put us all in jail. But if you do this, 10 men will become 20, 20 will become 100, and then — we will be an army.” A More Violent Generation Some former jihadists also work as informants for the government and have helped foil a number of attacks, Yemeni officials said. There appears to be a limit, however, to the government’s ability to co-opt Islamists. A new, more violent generation of militants has emerged in Yemen, according to Yemeni officials and older members of the jihadist community. Some of these younger men have fought in Iraq, and they refuse all dialogue, seeing Yemen’s government as illegitimate. They appear to have been responsible for the suicide bombing in Marib Province last July in which eight Spanish tourists were killed, and two other suicide attacks on oil installations in 2006. Recently, there have been warnings of more attacks in Yemen on Islamist Web sites. “They opened a door we hoped would be closed forever,” Mr. Bahri said. The younger men also see older figures like Mr. Bahri, despite his association with Mr. bin Laden, as traitors. Mr. Bahri said Yemeni security men had showed him a “death list” of 30 names written by members of this younger generation, with his name at the top. Last summer, two Internet statements claiming to be from Al Qaeda in Yemen lamented that “some of the people abandoned their principles and turned to the government.” The statement accurately describes the mediating committee on which Ali Saleh serves, and goes on to say, “Those deserters became the government’s hands; some of them turned into their spies,” according to a translation provided by the SITE Institute. Mr. Bahri said he has tried to reason with members of the younger generation of militants, but they refuse all dialogue. He and Mr. Saleh, the mediator, now carry a weapon at all times, and fear for their safety, Mr. Bahri said. In addition to the threat of these younger militants, there is the broader question of whether Mr. Bahri and his friends are involved in terrorism outside of Yemen. Mr. Bahri still supports the goals of Al Qaeda, and he speaks admiringly of Yemenis who fought in Iraq. Yemeni officials say they have stepped up efforts to prevent Yemeni men from traveling for jihad. But Mr. Bahri says he knows 10 or 15 men who fought in Iraq, including two who went through Judge Hetar’s program. Asked what he did to advance the cause of Al Qaeda outside of Yemen, Mr. Bahri smiled, and said answering the question could be dangerous — but that not answering it could also expose him to risks, from a different group of people. After a pause, he said he merely prayed for Al Qaeda’s success. Another veteran of the Afghan jihad, Ali Muhammad al-Kurdi, said in open court during the course of an unrelated terrorism trial in 2005 that he had trained two Yemeni men to fight in Iraq. He was never prosecuted for the claim, because it is not against Yemeni law. “They went to Iraq and fought, and they were killed there,” said Mr. Kurdi, a soft-spoken 33-year-old, smiling at the thought, as he sat for an interview in a cafe in Old Sana. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576139.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer January 28, 2008 Pg. 1 U.S. Sees Afghan, Pakistan Threats Antiterrorism efforts are shifting from Iraq to the war's original front to halt Taliban and al-Qaeda gains. By Robert Burns, Associated Press WASHINGTON-- In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to reenergize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The United States also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaeda is posing fresh threats. There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder. Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize. This view might explain, at least in part, the administration's increasingly public expressions of concern. At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that while the United States respects the Pakistani government's right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaeda poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan. The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in Pakistan, including personnel who are training Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in the western tribal region along the Afghanistan border. The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaeda targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike across the border under certain circumstances. In recent days, administration officials have said they would send more U.S. forces, including small numbers of combat troops, if the Pakistani government decided it wanted to collaborate more closely. It is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said his country opposed any foreign forces on its soil. The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek Musharraf's permission for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaeda and other militant groups active in the tribal regions, a senior U.S. official said Saturday. Musharraf was said to have rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through covert CIA missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces. The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown during the last two years from about 20,000 to the current total of 28,000. That is the highest number of the war, which began in October 2001. The total is to jump by 3,200 this spring with an influx of Marine reinforcements, including 2,200 combat troops who will bolster a NATO-led counterinsurgency force in the south. "There is strong pressure now from the international community to find some solution to Afghanistan because of the fear that this could quickly go south," said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We haven't lost the war yet, but we could be on our way to doing so," Tellis said in a telephone interview Friday. He strongly recommends strengthening the U.S. military presence in southern Afghanistan. It is apparent that as security conditions in Iraq improve, the administration is looking closer at what needs to be done in Afghanistan to counter recent gains by the Taliban. Gates is leading a NATO effort to produce a statement of goals for Afghanistan that spells out clearly what is at stake. Also, the administration is showing more interest in deepening its involvement in Pakistan. Teresita C. Schaffer, director for South Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday that an important indicator of that approach was the recent visit to Pakistan by Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in that region. Fallon met with senior officials, including the new chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. "Why is that happening now?" Schaffer asked. "It suggests to me that the administration is taking this much more seriously than it was." That has meant more attentiveness to the needs of U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, including officers' concerns about countering the threat inside Pakistan. "The sense I get is that at least in military terms they are getting a response from Washington which they weren't getting all along," said Schaffer, a career foreign service officer who was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576158.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Newsweek February 4, 2008 Periscope Signed And Delivered By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Mark Hosenball Osama Bin Laden appears to be reasserting his influence among the Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders upon whom he's depending for survival. Since December, the Qaeda chief has personally penned at least five brief letters, written in Arabic on white stationery, to the region's militant commanders. For the Taliban's Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, the latest correspondence is the second he's received this year from the "Sheik," as bin Laden is known among jihadis. The first was a letter of condolence after the death of Dadullah's notoriously brutal elder brother, a senior Taliban figure who was killed by Coalition forces in May 2007. An Afghan Taliban official said Mansoor was thrilled to receive the notes. "For the first time the Sheik is … reaching out to individual fighters rather than just broadcasting an audio or videotaped message," says the official, who requested anonymity for security reasons. "It's like a reward for a job well done." According to the Taliban source, bin Laden's letter-writing campaign was inspired by ramped-up military activities on both sides of the rugged border. "He sees the tide turning in his favor." Bin Laden's main point, said the Taliban official, who has seen one of the notes, is that he is "satisfied with the effort and progress of the resistance against Jews and Christians." The holy war against infidels, bin Laden added, is not his personal fight but that of all Muslims. "Jews and Christians," he wrote, "have a long history of opposing any Islamic government that is trying to establish a truly Islamic state based on Sharia law." The revelation about the letters surfaced as authorities in the U.S. and Europe are investigating possible connections between a suspected terror cell in Spain and militants in the Pakistani border areas where bin Laden is believed to be hiding. Authorities in Barcelona detained 10 men on suspicion that they were planning suicide bombings of public-transport facilities. A U.S. counterterrorism official, who requested anonymity when discussing an ongoing investigation, said several governments were looking for evidence of links between the accused Barcelona plotters and bin Laden or other Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. The U.S. official, and a source close to British counterterrorism agencies, said that investigators were also examining whether the Barcelona suspects were part of a wider plot to launch attacks elsewhere around Europe. The Spanish arrests occurred as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a reviled figure among Al Qaeda and the Taliban, was about to begin a European trip. But investigators have not yet linked the plot to Musharraf's travels. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576187.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP National Journal's CongressDailyAM January 28, 2008 Forward Observer Chief Concerns Adm. Michael Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has three big objectives as he starts this year's wrestling match with Congress. His first objective is for the chiefs to take a united stand on any major changes the lawmakers demand in the new military budget President Bush is scheduled to send to Congress next Monday. Mullen told me he has a commitment from the chiefs to take this unified approach to budget issues rather than have each service lobby its case directly with lawmakers to save this or that program. In this presidential election year, Congress almost certainly will redistribute Bush's defense dollars, either out of conviction or to make political points. Lawmakers are likely to eye cuts in such expensive programs as the Air Force F-22 fighter plane, now priced by the Pentagon at $355 million a copy including research and development costs. And the ailing national economy is bound to resuscitate the guns vs. butter argument that until now has been eclipsed by the Iraq war. Political pressures will thus test the unity of the chiefs that Mullen has forged. Besides fighting the battle of the budget, Mullen will be under the gun as the Pentagon tries to obey congressional orders, inserted in the FY08 defense authorization bill just re-passed, to take a new and extensive look at the division of labor among the services to see if it still makes sense given the changed threats of the modern era. House Armed Services Chairman Skelton championed these marching orders that require a reappraisal of the roles and missions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps every four years. One life or death question the chiefs and civilian defense executives need to address in any serious role and mission reappraisal is which armed service or agency should be given the lead role to prevent terrorists from attacking the United States with a nuclear bomb? Another less significant, but still contentious, question waiting to be addressed is whether the Air Force should be put in charge of unmanned aircraft or whether each service should operate its own. "The roles and missions of our military services are largely unchanged since the Truman administration and the Key West agreement of 1948," Skelton said in stating his case for the agonizing reappraisal. "After almost six decades it's time to once again analyze the Defense Department's roles and missions, identify the service's core competencies, discover the missions going unaddressed and examine possible duplication of effort among the branches." As one who has watched the Pentagon undertake during both Democratic and Republican administrations the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Reviews of what the armed services are doing and why, I fear the new roles and mission exercise will end up being a similar self justification of what the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are already doing rather than anything approaching a bold blueprint for restructuring. Unless Congress demands specific answers, the generals, admirals, captains, colonels and civilian defense executives will go through a mountain of paper, hold hundreds of meetings and then issue a molehill of a report, as has been the case with past QDRs. Perhaps Mullen will find a way to get the military establishment out of its defensive crouch, but I doubt it. I have fewer doubts about him achieving his two other big objectives: caring for today's servicemen and women not only when they are in uniform but afterward and fixing the Army. "I have very comfortable quarters near the State Department," Mullen told me, his voice rising. "I look out and see homeless men and women lying in the street. I realize I served with some of them in Vietnam. We cannot let this happen again to the men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm paranoid about this." He has publicly vowed to focus while chairman on the needs of the wounded and on the mental problems of present and former soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. "We're going through a tremendous time of change with respect to traumatic brain injury," says the new chief. "We have to be much more aggressive in dealing with it." As for the Army, it is indeed surprising to hear an admiral who has commanded photogenic Navy warships to be pleading the case for the lowly grunts. But Mullen says another problem that has "kept me awake at night" is a fear of breaking the Army through over-deploying its people. He says he is working toward the goal of giving soldiers two years at home for every year of deployment overseas. "The U. S. military remains the strongest in the world," says this top military officer in the land and principal military adviser to the president, "but it is not unbreakable." Mullen is a sailor who never expected to rise to the military's top job. But now that he's got it, he strikes me as a skipper who is not afraid of the rough water ahead. --George C. Wilson http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576126.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP DefenseNews.com January 27, 2008 Mullen Wants Supplemental Spending Rolled Into Annual Baseline Budgets By John T. Bennett The Pentagon should cease using supplemental spending measures to finance the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and should instead include war funding in its annual baseline budgets, said Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since Washington launched offensive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration has accounted for war costs outside annual Pentagon spending requests, requesting hundreds of billions of dollars for the wars through emergency spending measures. And despite increasing alarm from both Republicans and Democrats about the size and make-up of those war funding bills, Congress has green-lighted them each time. Some current and former defense officials, as well as lawmakers, are concerned Pentagon officials have taken advantage of the urgent manner in which Congress reviews and approves war funding bills by including funds for costly next-generation weapon systems. Those items, they say, are better suited in annual spending requests because lawmakers will have months to determine whether those items are really needed. Supplementals “have taken on, in many ways, a life of their own,” Mullen said Jan. 26. “My view is supplementals need to be dramatically reduced and put in the baseline budget as rapidly as we can,” he told a handful of reporters aboard his plane en route to Washington from Pascagoula, Miss., following the christening ceremony for the U.S. Navy’s newest destroyer, the USS Dewey (DDG 105). Mullen’s wife, Deborah, was the sponsor for the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems-made vessel. Though he said the supplemental spending measures have “come to particularly support the war in a really critical time,” he has concluded that “over time, we need to get them in the baseline budget.” Mullen’s idea is to “smoothly” roll war funding into annual defense budgets because trying to do so “overnight” would be too difficult in the complex realm of defense budgeting. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs told Defense News editors and reporters on Nov. 27 that he believes Washington — to adequately re-set the ground forces and modernize all four services — must increase yearly defense budgets to about 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. That annual level is now about 3.7 percent of GDP, according to the military and defense budget analysts. He reiterated that belief during a nearly 20-minute session with reporters on board his plane. “I’ve used 4 percent as a floor” for annual defense spending, he said. “And I am very convinced that floor is about right.” To get to his envisioned 4 percent level, Mullen would combine yearly military budgets and the emergency spending measures. “It is a combination of both what’s in the baseline budget now and the supplemental funds that takes me to right around 4 percent or just a little more of GDP,” Mullen said. “And, again, that’s why I think it’s about right for the floor when you consider the increasing cost for people, the increasing healthcare costs, the increasing procurement costs that these major investments are tied to, and for the need to continue to operate.” It remains unclear how tough of a sell the idea will be in Washington. Some former defense budgeting officials have questioned the idea, saying it appears to lack any real strategic analysis to support such a significant hike in yearly defense spending. And Mullen’s proposal would need the backing of a new administration. The two major Democratic candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton, N.Y., and Barack Obama, Ill., have each mentioned a desire to trim defense spending. The major Republican contenders — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arizona Sen. John McCain, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -— appear more in line with Mullen’s thinking, as each have advocated swelling military budgets — though McCain has long been a champion of reining in the costs of major weapon systems. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576023.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 28, 2008 Pg. 19 Fine Print Feeding Those Who Serve By Walter Pincus How much does it cost each year to provide our military and associated government personnel the food -- much of it imported from the United States -- that is served to them in Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan? Roughly $1.6 billion, according to the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia. That figure was published last week as part of a solicitation for a "prime vendor" responsible for the supply and delivery of perishables and semi-perishables in those countries for the next two years. The foods include fish, meat, poultry, fruits, vegetables, and dairy and ice cream products, as well as bakery goods and juice for the mess halls and dining facilities serving military and other "federally funded customers" in those countries. Much of the food is frozen because only limited amounts are bought at local markets, and almost none in Iraq. Also included in the mix will be packaged foods provided by the U.S. government, described in the solicitation as "Unitized Group Rations, Meals Ready to Eat, Health and Comfort packs and other operational items." Delivery will be established at military bases on land or aboard ships, at mobile tent facilities in the field and at military training exercise locations. The proposal divides the contract into food deliveries in two zones. The much larger one includes Kuwait and northern, central and southern portions of Iraq, including Baghdad, where delivery will originate in Kuwait or Turkey. Food for the second zone, which includes the west-central portions of Iraq -- particularly Anbar province -- and Jordan, will come via routes that start in Jordan. According to the government documents, the estimated value of the first zone contract is $1.3 billion annually; the second is put at $264 million per year. Since the contract is to run for two years and will include two possible extensions, each for two more years, the estimated value of the deal is $9.4 billion, according to the proposal. A Kuwaiti company, Public Warehousing Co. (PWC), has held the "prime vendor" contract since 2003. Its managing director is a member of the financially powerful Sultan al-Essa family. Another member of the family is chairman and managing director of the board of the National Real Estate Company of Kuwait, PWC's largest stockholder. PWC last won renewal of the "prime vendor" food contract for the 18 months that began in December 2005. The agreement also covered Bahrain and Qatar, and was valued at $2.8 billion a year. In the years that PWC has held the contract, more than 30 employees have been killed and 200 injured "carrying out the extremely dangerous work of providing food for U.S. troops in a war zone," the company said in a statement released in October. One reason that the United States has not exercised extension options in the 2005 contract, which could have run through 2009, may be that federal prosecutors are looking at whether PWC received kickbacks from food vendors. PWC maintains that the payments were legitimate discounts. In a quarterly financial report on its Web site, PWC said: "The U.S. government is seeking information relative to allegations of possible false claims, security and kickbacks associated with the [prime vendor] contract." It added that PWC had produced "several hundred thousand records responsive to the request" and that as of Sept. 30, 2007, the company had not been given notice that it or its employees were targets of the inquiry. One seller to PWC was the Sultan Center, one of Kuwait's largest suppliers of food items. The Sultan Center is also managed by a member of the Sultan al-Essa family who, with other family members, controls about 40 percent of the company stock. The Sultan Center owns 30 percent of the National Real Estate Company, which means it holds a minority interest in PWC. The company has sought to defend itself against allegations, reported in the Wall Street Journal, that prosecutors are looking into the overlapping ownership. Discounts from the Sultan Center would not be allowed if the companies have common ownership. Asked if PWC will compete to retain the contract, Dale Leibach, a spokesman for the Kuwaiti firm, said: "It is company policy not to comment publicly on pending solicitations for which it might compete." But he added that PWC hopes to keep working for the U.S. military in the Middle East. National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080128576097.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1514210_AEb PjkQAATJIR54q1Qjc8G%2FEFhI&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080128aaindex_concat.html&cred=hwFwzOqk3_6IBk 8IaSnRsaiKkEeZW_vakY7yNCZzyC3iJblLSFRlVrMNlXcl2z#T OP">RETURN TO TOP CQ Weekly January 28, 2008 Pg. 252 Cover Story Small Wars, Big Changes By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff When Donald H. Rumsfeld became Defense secretary at the start of the Bush administration, he set out to transform the ponderous U.S. Army of the Cold War into a highly mobile, high-technology ground force that could dominate any battlefield. What he did not foresee was a guerrilla war in the ancient streets of Baghdad that would tie down his Army for years and cost him his job. Iraq required more foot soldiers than the Pentagon had thought, and to be successful, those soldiers had to do jobs for which they were ill-prepared: negotiating with local sheiks, managing municipal governments, fixing sewers, defusing mobs, keeping the lights on and understanding tribal and religious quarrels. U.S. military leaders, including Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert M. Gates, now recognize that the nature of warfare itself is changing, from conventional conflicts between nations to “small wars” — counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, religious and ethnic strife — and that the Army must change with it. The new doctrine, spelled out in publications such as the newest Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, published in late 2006, is that the Army must be prepared to wage all types of warfare but focus much more of its attention on irregular, guerrilla conflicts like that in Iraq. This is a fundamental change that will drive most other decisions within the Army — from recruitment to equipment — and will permeate every defense debate for the foreseeable future. In fact, it already has. Military journals are full of articles and commentary on counterinsurgency. Last summer, eight months after the Army field manual appeared, the Air Force rushed out its own doctrine on the subject. For the Army, the new doctrine means a seismic culture shift. It will still have guns and tanks, but it will also need more people skilled in languages, public affairs, economic development, even anthropology. Instead of grudgingly accepting the task of nation building, as it did in the Balkans and in Iraq at first, the new Army for the most part will have to embrace the role. In this way, the high-technology, smart-weapons “revolution in military affairs” that has captivated Pentagon strategists for decades is becoming a revolution beyond military affairs. Though it is too early to tell precisely what the ramifications might be in general defense policy and the budget, most experts think the Army will not get a big budget increase, but will have to reorder its priorities, shifting money from, say, high-tech hardware to personnel. The new doctrine “is very manpower-intensive, and manpower is very expensive,” said Andrew F. Krepinevich, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank. “There could be some enormous budget implications.” The Army, for example, would probably invest less in technologies such as sophisticated sensors to gather data about electronic intercepts or heat signatures, and more money on spies. It would probably scale back its plans for a lightweight new class of vehicles and other high-tech gadgetry in the $200 billion Future Combat Systems in the interest of diverting some of that money to personnel accounts and battlefield supplies needed now. There would be additional procurement costs associated with maintaining war stocks of materiel not only for U.S. forces but for the foreign militaries and militias the United States would equip as partners. An Army set for small wars would spend less of its money on tanks and artillery and more on infantry units. If less money is spent on mechanized units, more will be spent on recruiting, training and retaining quality personnel, experts say. The Army now has about 1,037,000 active-duty soldiers and reservists and is already planning to add 74,000 by 2013, a 7 percent increase. It might need even more under the new doctrine. But Army recruiters already have trouble filling the ranks, and the service has acknowledged reducing its education requirements, for example, to meet its quotas. To make matters more difficult, the soldiers who could most capably wage unconventional war in a complex city or jungle environment would have to be highly trained and sophisticated, and that is not cheap. Some Foes in High Places Such fundamental changes are bound to meet resistance, particularly once the armed forces start extricating themselves from Iraq and Afghanistan. The lessons in counterinsurgency that the Army learned in Vietnam were largely forgotten once that war was over 35 years ago; in fact, the Army pointedly hoped to avoid similar conflicts in the future. As Gates explained it in a speech in October to the Association of the United States Army (AUSA): “In the years following the Vietnam War, the Army relegated unconventional war to the margins of training, doctrine and budget priorities.” The changes within the Army were under way long before Gates succeeded Rumsfeld 13 months ago, but Gates’ background is in intelligence, and he has enthusiastically embraced the new direction. A number of senior officers, though, including Adm. Michael G. Mullen of the Navy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Lance Smith of the Air Force, who retired this month as head of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, have warned that concentrating so much effort on counterinsurgency might leave the Army poorly prepared for a conventional conflict. Such apprehensions seem natural from the Navy and Air Force, which are designed primarily to fight major wars and now dominate the defense budget with expensive aircraft and ships. Both services play mainly secondary roles in counterinsurgency. The Air Force has seemed particularly uneasy with the Army’s new direction and its possible implications for overall defense strategy. In a monograph published by the Air University last year, Air Force Major Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. said the new Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, issued in December 2006 and encapsulating the “small wars” doctrine, “regrettably reflects a one-dimensional, ground-centric perspective almost exclusively, as evidenced by the fact that considerations of air power are confined to a short, five-page annex.” Last August, eight months after the Army-Marine manual came out, the Air Force issued its own doctrine on irregular warfare. “As Airmen, we have a unique war-fighting perspective shaped by a century-long quest to gain and maintain the high ground,” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, wrote in a forward. “We must be able to articulate Air Force capabilities and contributions to the irregular warfare fight, with its unique attributes and requirements.” Although Gates strongly supports the Army’s new doctrine and direction, he is careful in his speeches to stress the importance of preparing for any kind of war. “One of the principal challenges the Army faces,” he told the AUSA, “is to regain its traditional edge at fighting conventional wars while retaining what it has learned — and unlearned — about unconventional wars, the ones most likely to be fought in the years ahead.” A new Defense secretary might seek a different direction in another year, and opposition within the service might slow things down, but it is unlikely to halt the movement, which is driven by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts who are now moving into leadership roles. “Eventually, we’re going to have to get this,” said Krepinevich, a former Army officer. “It’s just a question of how long it’s going to take and how painful it’s going to be to learn the lesson.” Unconventional Enemies Having forgotten the lessons of guerrilla war in Vietnam, military leaders have been forced to learn them again in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “asymmetric” strategy used by today’s insurgents is as old as warfare itself, allowing a relatively weak force to tie down a stronger one by exploiting its vulnerabilities rather than meeting it head-on in conventional combat. “Folks aren’t going to attack our strength, either in a regular war or a conventional war. It’s silly to,” said the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey, in a December speech. In Iraq, insurgents do not engage in pitched battles against American armor or aircraft. Instead, they detonate makeshift but powerful roadside bombs when U.S. vehicles happen past, blow up cars near checkpoints and crowds, or hide snipers in Baghdad’s alleys. Afterward, they spread their version of events on the Internet before U.S. government spokesmen can make it to the microphones. Today’s adversaries seek to draw U.S. forces into cities, where troops are more vulnerable and where they might hesitate to return fire for fear of hitting civilians. Insurgents can exploit any such incidents in their propaganda. Such an unconventional foe cannot be defeated using conventional military means. Indeed, power alone is often ineffective or even counterproductive because, as in judo, the strength can be used against you. “These conflicts,” according to Gates, “will be fundamentally political in nature, and require the application of all elements of national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior — of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.” One of the first signs that the Army was beginning to change direction was a Defense Department policy directive in 2005 that said stability operations, meaning nation building of the sort under way in Iraq, were equal in importance to combat operations. This was a major reversal not only for the military but for the Bush administration and other Republicans who for years had reviled the idea that U.S. soldiers should do anything but fight wars. As a candidate for president in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas criticized Vice President Al Gore’s ideas for using the military to help other countries: “I mean, we’re going to have kind of a nation building corps from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war.” At a campaign stop that year, Bush said: “I’m worried about an opponent who uses nation building and the military in the same sentence.” Now, by contrast, nation building is becoming a core military mission. It is making its way into the doctrine that drives other Army decisions — from organization to tactics to budgets. Power or Protection? Many of the new approaches are expressed in the joint Army and Marine Corps field manual, which fundamentally revises for the first time in 40 years how the services conceive of this form of warfare. The document is novel in several ways. Gen. David H. Petraeus of the Army, who at the time was the commander at Fort Leavenworth before taking over in Iraq, was in charge of the project. Journalists and human rights activists were among those who reviewed a draft of the manual, and Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote the introduction for a version published by the University of Chicago Press. In the first two months that it was on the Internet, the manual was downloaded 2 million times; the Chicago Press version has sold briskly in bookstores. According to the manual, the “center of gravity” in counterinsurgency is the mass of civilians that are not rigidly committed to either the insurgency or the state. Winning them over — rather than just killing insurgents — is the key to success. The authors of the manual learned from Mao Tse-tung that the insurgent is a fish who cannot survive without a sea — the people — in which to swim. Rather than stressing the importance of military power, the manual emphasizes the role of military intelligence, training allied forces, understanding social networks in other countries, learning languages and remembering history. It even lists nine paradoxes of counterinsurgency, including, “sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.” (Paradoxes, p. 256) The new view holds that forces have to use deadly might only as a last resort. They have to allow the local population to do things t |
