The #UN, with special mention to @UN_HRC #HumanRights Council, has outdone itself this year. Thanks @UNWatch

From electing #Mugabe as Goodwill Ambassador @WHO and #Erdogan to the @UNESCO Board, to naming #SaudiArabia to its #Women's Rights Commission ...

The #UN, with special mention to the @UN_HRC #HumanRights Council, has outdone itself this year...

The Top 10 Most Evil U.N. Actions of 2017 @UNWatch 

UN Watch Briefing Latest from the United Nations  December 25, 2017 The Top 10 Most Evil U.N. Actions of 2017 10. Denied Venezuelan Hunger: In the first-ever U.N. visit to Venezuela, Alfred de Zayas, the U.N. Human Rights Council's Cuban-backed "Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order," posted propaganda photos to deny mass hunger caused by the regime's failed policies. After UN Watch exposed the sick lie—in truth, Venezuelan hospitals are filled with starving children—the U.N. official was pressured into deleting his blog post and tweet. 9. Foxes to Guard the Chickens: The U.N. elected Qatar (slave labor), Pakistan (death row for Christian 'blasphemers'), Democratic Republic of Congo (mass rape as weapon of war), Afghanistan (abuse of women) and Angola (corrupt & oppressive regime) to the 47-nation Human Rights Council, for 3-year terms beginning in January 2018. Existing members already include Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Venezuela. UN Watch led the protest with a major report and social media campaign, cited in AP, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Deutsche Welle & Spain's EFE. 8. Mugabe as Goodwill Ambassador: In October, the U.N.'s World Health Organization named Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe a "goodwill ambassador."

In 9 Years' Existence, #UNHRC Condemned #Israel More Times Than Rest of World Combined - @UNWatch

This is just utterly ridiculous!

Report: In 9 Years' Existence, UNHRC Condemned Israel More Times Than Rest of World Combined

Ahead of Debate on Gaza Report, UN Watch Releases Evidence of Systematic Bias at UN's Top Rights Body

GENEVA, June 25, 2015 - In
the nine years of its existence, the UN Human Rights Council has
condemned Israel more times than the rest of the world combined,
revealed UN Watch today, ahead of a new report to be released by the
Geneva-based NGO that documents endemic selectivity and politicization
at the world body.

The
outcome resolution for the latest Gaza report, to be introduced at the
UNHRC this week by the Palestinians together with the Arab and Islamic
states, will condemn Israel exclusively, and will mark the 62nd
resolution targeting Israel since the new and improved Council was
created in 2006 -- while the total of all other UNHRC condemnatory
resolutions for the rest of the world amounts to 55, with most of the
worst violators given a free pass, if not a seat on the council itself.

Sadly,
with members like China, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,
Venezuela and Qatar, the UNHRC today may possibly rank as a more corrupt
international organization than FIFA.

UN Watch released the following statistics today, and urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to again rebuke the Human Rights Council for treating one particular group of human beings, Israelis, out of all proportion:

I. Total UNHRC Condemnations, 2006-2015

Israel: 61 Syria: 15 Myanmar: 12 North Korea: 8 Iran: 5 Belarus: 4 Eritrea: 3 Sri Lanka: 3 Sudan: 2 Libya: 2 Honduras: 1 Afghanistan: 0 Algeria: 0 China: 0 Cuba: 0

Equatorial Guinea: 0 France: 0 Iraq: 0 Lebanon: 0 Russia: 0 Pakistan: 0 Somalia 0 Turkmenistan: 0 UK: 0 USA: 0 Uzbekistan: 0 Venezeula: 0 Vietnam: 0 Yemen: 0 Zimbabwe: 0

Total on Israel: 61
Rest of World Combined: 55

Methodology:
includes all resolutions from 2006 to 2015 that singled out specific
countries for condemnation under agenda items 4 and 7. Excludes
resolutions that also praise the country concerned, or those adopted as
matters of "technical cooperation."

__________________________________________________

II. Country-Specific Agenda Items: Only Against Israel

There is a special agenda item targeting Israel
at every regular session of the UNHRC. No other country in the world
has its own agenda item -- not Sudan, not Syria, not North Korea. It is
under this agenda item No. 7 on Monday, which Western democracies in the
last year have mostly boycotted due to its selectivity, that the
Schabas-Davis report on Gaza will be formally debated.

__________________________________________________

Philippe Val receives the Morris Abram 2015 Award for Human Rights @UNWatch

What happened to the Left?

Islam has taken the passionate spot in the hearts of the world's intellectuals of the Left.

"We must not speak of Islam, because it stigmatizes the 'victim'"

Unfortunately it's only in French, but the speech is excellent.

Discours: Philippe Val reçoit le Prix Morris Abram 2015 pour les Droits de l'Homme



 See the video on YouTube here.

Top 10 Worst #UN Decisions of 2013 @UNWatch

And they expect people to actually respect the UN?  No self respecting liberal should support this club of hypocrites.

Top 10 Worst U.N. Decisions of 2013

Published on December 31, 2013 in Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Closed

1. The UN Human Rights Council elected Hezbollah supporter Jean Ziegler, founder and recipient of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, as a top advisor.

2. The UN General Assembly adopted 21 condemnatory resolutions against Israel, compared to 4 on the rest of the world combined.

3. The same UN General Assembly elected China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council. The dictatorships will take their new seats on January 1, 2014.

4. UN Human Rights Council official Richard Falk blamed the Boston Marathon terror bombings on “the American global domination project” and “Tel Aviv.” Shortly thereafter he was praised by the council.

5. The UN Special Committee on Decolonization, charged with upholding fundamental human rights and opposing the subjugation of peoples,elected the murderous Syrian regime to a senior post.

6. The UN Conference on Disarmament in May 2013 made Iran its president.

7. The UN Economic and Social Council, which oversees the UN women’s rights commission,elected genocidal Sudan as its vice-president.

8. The UN Human Rights Council elected slave-holding Mauritania to be its vice-president.

9. The UN chose Zimbabwe, a regime that systematically violates human rights, to host its world tourism summit.

10. UNESCO, which condemned no other country but Israel, and which was silent as Hamas bulldozed a world heritage site to make a terrorist training camp, allowed Syria to sit as a judge on UNESCO’s human rights committee.

Read it online on UNWatch's website: 

Top 10 Worst U.N. Decisions of 2013 « View from Geneva

#UN Honors Warmonger, Bookburner, Mass-Murderer (#Che Guevara) - Humberto Fontana

The UN as shameful as ever honoring Che Guevara. These quotes give you an idea ofthe man and his hate-filled ideas:

“We reject any peaceful approach!" declared the man they honored last week in Havana. “Violence is inevitable! To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm!” This passage, by the way, comes from the very works enshrined and honored by UNESCO last week. 

not far from where this UNESCO/Guevara ceremony took place, the regime being honored by UNESCO burned hundreds of books and documents ... The bonfire was accompanied by the beating and jailing of the owners and purveyors of these works. The Castroite bonfire was fueled by such works as Orwell’s Animal Farm, the works of Martin Luther King, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

UN Honors Warmonger, Bookburner, Mass-Murderer (Che Guevara)

At a ceremony in Havana last week, UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) honored Che Guevara by enshrining his writings in its hallowed “Memory of the World Register.” The ceremony included several members of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s family.
“UNESCO’s work is part of our support for freedom of expression as an inalienable human right set down in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” declares the UN’s mission statement.
But not far from where this UNESCO/Guevara ceremony took place Cubans were being starved and beaten in pestiferous torture chambers for the crime of quoting the UN Declaration of Human Rights in public.
“UNESCO is known as the intellectual agency of the United Nations while “Protecting freedom of expression: an essential condition for democracy, development and human dignity,” reads the UN charter.
But not far from where this UNESCO/Guevara ceremony took place, the regime being honored by UNESCO burned hundreds of books and documents in a ceremony only slightly less spectacular than the one hosted by Joseph Goebbels in Berlin’s Opera Square in 1933. The bonfire was accompanied by the beating and jailing of the owners and purveyors of these works. The Castroite bonfire was fueled by such works as Orwell’s Animal Farm, the works of Martin Luther King, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
“I plead with Fidel Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off (Cuba’s) independent librarians” pleaded none other than Ray Bradbury at the time. “And to release all those librarians in prison, and to send them back into Cuban culture to inform the people.”
Instead of heeding Bradbury, for the crime of stocking some of the world’s bestselling books, (along with the UN Declaration of Human Rights) the Stalinist regime honored by UNESCO condemned the Cuban librarians to prison terms similar to the one a South African judge handed Nelson Mandela for planting bombs in public places. “As to the disposition of the books, magazines and pamphlets they are to be destroyed by means of incineration because they lack usefulness,” ruled the Castroite “judge.”
Just last week, the UN honored Nelson Mandela with an “International Nelson Mandela Day.” The longest suffering political prisoners in modern history (all Cubans jailed and tortured by the regime honored by the UN last week) have never received so much as a nod or wink from the United Nations.
“As the United Nations agency with a specific mandate to promote 'the free flow of ideas by word and image,' UNESCO works to foster free, independent and pluralistic media in print, broadcast and online. This foundation is why UNESCO today promotes policies for press freedom and the safety of journalists,” reads the UNESCO charter.
But the regime honored by UNESCO last week also holds the honor, according to the Paris-based “Reporters Without Borders," of jailing and torturing the most journalists per-capita on earth. Stunningly, the total number of journalists jailed by the nation honored by UNESCO (pop. 11 million) is only slightly behind that of China (pop. 1.4 billion!)
“Our purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom,” declares the UNESCO charter.
“We reject any peaceful approach!" declared the man they honored last week in Havana. “Violence is inevitable! To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”
“My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm!” This passage, by the way, comes from the very works enshrined and honored by UNESCO last week.
The “acrid odor of gunpowder and blood” rarely reached Che Guevara’s nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged or blindfolded men (and boys).
Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Che's soldiers dragged him from his cell in La Cabana, jerked his head back to gag him, and started dragging him to the stake. Little "Rigo" pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged, beseeched and finally proven to his "prosecutors" that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn't possibly have been "a CIA agent planting bombs."
"FUEGO!" and the firing squad volley shattered Rigo's little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag. “Certainly we execute!” boasted the man honored by UNESCO last week. “And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary!” Those executions (murders, actually; execution implies a judicial process) had reached about 16,000 by the time of Che Guevara’s boast, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of almost a million executions in the U.S. (This figure comes from The Black Book of Communism, by the way, written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press, neither an outpost of “right-wing Cuban exiles.”)
Quite fittingly, Che’s bloodthirsty boast was made on Dec. 9, 1964, while addressing the hallowed halls of the United Nations.

UN Honors Warmonger, Bookburner, Mass-Murderer (Che Guevara) - Humberto Fontova - Page full

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________________________ The MasterBlog

The Palestinians' Imaginary State - By Steven J. Rosen | Foreign Policy

Excellent article on the vote for a Palestinian state being sought at the UN General Assembly in September. 

 
The Palestinians' Imaginary State 
A majority of the world's countries are gearing up to recognize a Palestinian state in September. But does Palestine really qualify? 
BY STEVEN J. ROSEN | AUGUST 3, 2011
 
In a few weeks, an overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly will likely vote for collective recognition of a Palestinian state. But which Palestinian state? Of the three Palestinian states the assembly could recognize, two are real and arguably could meet the requirements for statehood. But it is the third, purely imaginary one that the assembly will endorse, one that neither has a functioning government nor meets the requirements of international law.
According to the prevailing legal standard, the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a "state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states." Both the Hamas-controlled Palestinian entity in Gaza and the rival Fatah-governed Palestinian entity in the West Bank can be said to meet all four of these criteria of the law of statehood. The one on which the United Nations will vote does not.

In Gaza, Hamas controls a permanent population in a defined territory (i.e., Gaza within the armistice lines of 1949). Gaza has a functioning, if odious, government. And Hamas-controlled Gaza already conducts international relations with a large number of states. From a narrowly legal point of view, the Hamas Gaza entity could become a state, another miserable addition to a very imperfect world.

Of course, a Hamas state in Gaza is not something most of the world wants to see. A Hamas state allied to Iran would be a severe blow to international peace and security, and it would not be a state deserving of recognition by any democracy. It would be a state arising from the military coup of June 2007, a state that engages in large-scale violations of treaty obligations and human rights. Nor does Hamas seek statehood for Gaza alone. Hamas wants eventually to rule the whole of mandatory Palestine, comprising not just the West Bank along with Gaza, but all of today's Israel too. Gaza alone is too small a prize for so grand an ambition. So this possible state is not on the table.

The Fatah Palestinian entity in the West Bank also could meet the legal requirements for statehood, and it would have more international support. It has a functioning government in the Palestinian Authority (PA), a permanent population, and international relations with a very large number of states. It also controls a defined territory, which comprises what are called areas A and B as defined under the Oslo II agreement of September 1995, plus additional territory subsequently transferred by Israel in agreed further redeployments. (Area A is the zone of full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority, and Area B is a zone of Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control.) The Fatah West Bank entity within these lines also could be recognized as a state under international law.

But Fatah, the PA, and the broader PLO do not seek statehood for this West Bank entity that arguably could meet the legal requirements. Their minimum demand is a state that includes Gaza along with the West Bank, the eastern part of Jerusalem, and all the other parts of mandatory Palestine that were under Jordanian and Egyptian control before 1967. Fatah, the PA, and the PLO are demanding title to lands and authority over populations they do not control, being as they are under the rule of Hamas and Israel.
Unlike the two Palestinian entities that already exist, either of which could be recognized as a Palestinian state because they seem to fulfill the legal requirements, the Palestinian entity that a General Assembly majority will recognize as a state this September does not actually exist on Earth. It is imaginary and aspirational, not real. And it does not meet the legal requirements.

First, it will have two rival presidents pursuing incompatible policies. Mahmoud Abbas is presenting himself as the president of the Palestine that is pressing the claim in the U.N. General Assembly, but he is not considered to be the president anymore by Hamas, the largest political party in the putative state. And Hamas has Palestine's own laws on its side in this dispute. Abbas was elected in 2005 to serve until January 2009, so his term has expired. In 2009, he unilaterally extended his term for another year until January 2010 (an extension that also has expired), but that extension did not adhere to Article 65 of the Palestinian constitution, the Basic Law. Hamas, which controls a majority in the now defunct Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), opposed the extension. According to Article 65 of the Basic Law, the legally empowered president of Palestine, since January 2009, has been PLC Speaker Abdel Aziz Dweik, a deputy representing Hamas. Palestine's ruling party, Hamas, considers Dweik, not Abbas, to be the legal president of Palestine, and it has a strong case.

Second, the Palestine that the General Assembly will recognize also will have two rival prime ministers pursuing incompatible policies. Hamas denies that Abbas has the authority to appoint Salam Fayyad as prime minister, because Abbas is not legally the president of Palestine under Article 65 and because Fayyad has not been empowered as prime minister by the Palestinian Legislative Council as required by Article 66 of the Basic Law. Neither his first appointment, on June 15, 2007, nor his reappointment on May 19, 2009, was confirmed by the PLC as required. Hamas, which controls the majority in the PLC, considers the legal prime minister of the Palestinian Authority to continue to be Ismail Haniyeh, a senior political leader of Hamas. Haniyeh was empowered by the PLC to be prime minister of Palestine in February 2006. Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from the office on June 14, 2007, after the Gaza coup, but Haniyeh counters that this decree violated articles 45, 78, and 83 and that he continues to exercise prime ministerial authority under Article 83. The PLC also continues to recognize Haniyeh's authority as prime minister. Here again, Hamas has the law on its side.

Third, this putative state of "Palestine" will also have a legislature that never meets. Elected on Jan. 25, 2006, for a term of four years, the PLC has enacted no laws, passed on no ministers, and conducted no meetings since 2007. Instead,Abbas says, "It is my right as a president to legislate laws and decisions that are called decrees. These decrees are legal, as long as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) is not able to convene."

It is common for Palestinian observers and their supporters in the West to attribute the PLC's inaction to the fact that Israel arrested 21 of its more radical members in June 2006 after the abduction of Gilad Shalit, most of whom are still in detention. The Carter Center, for example, states, "With most of its representatives in Israeli prisons, the Palestinian Legislative Council never assembled the required quorum for meetings and hence was unable to carry out legislative functions designated to the PLC." But the PLC has 132 members, of whom fewer than 20 are detained by Israel, and a quorum of the PLC requires only one more than half the members -- 67 -- to be present. So it is not Israel that is preventing a quorum.

In fact, neither faction contending to rule Palestine actually wants the PLC to meet, for different reasons. Hamas does not want it brought to session to enact new laws or amendments to existing laws when its majority has been diluted, especially because it fears unfavorable amendments to the election law. And Fatah is only too happy to see the Hamas members in jail, because it too does not want the PLC to meet, lest it enforce the Basic Law by replacing Abbas and Fayyad. PLC Speaker Dweik, whom Hamas considers to be the legally empowered president of Palestine, has said of his own arrest by Israel, "Any action that put an end to our activity in the parliament was welcomed by many, among them the Palestinian Authority."

Fourth, this Palestine that the General Assembly will recognize will also lack the ability to hold presidential or legislative elections as required by Article 47 of its Basic Law -- not because Israel will prevent them, but again because the rival Palestinian rulers will not allow them to happen. Abbas's constitutionally defined term expired in January 2009, and the terms of the PLC representatives expired on Jan. 25, 2010, so new elections for both are overdue. The 2005 Palestinian Elections Law No. 9, Article 2, which Hamas recognizes as legally binding, and the replacement Elections Lawunilaterally decreed by Abbas on Sept. 2, 2007, Articles 2 to 4, which Hamas considers an unlawful usurpation of power under the constitution, require elections by now, but no such elections are in sight. Neither of the rivals wants an election to be held under the electoral rules recognized as legally binding by the other, and neither will permit the other to compete freely on territories it controls as required by both sets of regulations.

So there you have it. The General Assembly will make a remarkable decision about all this in the next few weeks. Instead of recognizing either of the two state-like entities that already exist, each having many of the attributes of statehood required by international law, the General Assembly will create an imaginary state that has two incompatible presidents, two rival prime ministers, a constitution whose most central provisions are violated by both sides, no functioning legislature, no ability to hold elections, a population mostly not under its control, borders that would annex territory under the control of other powers, and no clear path to resolve any of these conflicts. It is a resolution that plants the seeds for civil and international wars, not one that advances peace.

 
Thaer Ganaim/PPO via Getty Images 

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as a senior official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He is now the director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum. 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/03/the_palestinians_imaginary_state?page=0,2

A New Narco-State?

Down the tunnel of drug trafficking? 

The number of warnings of alleged ties between the Hugo Chávez administration and drug trafficking networks grows constantly, as does the number of accusations against Venezuelan Government officials for protecting and covering up Venezuelan nationals and foreigners involved in drug trafficking and terrorism.

One of those accusations came from Walid Makled, a businessman who, for some years, had ties with the Chávez administration and today is in prison in Colombia charged with drug trafficking and is also wanted by the FBI and the DEA for the same reason.
 
At the end of 2010, during an interview on the Colombian television news channel NTN24, Makled dropped this bombshell: “they are accusing me of loading an aircraft at Maiquetía. If they’re going to put me in prison for that, then they should also extradite the director of the DIM (Military Intelligence Agency) at that time, Hugo Carvajal; General Henry Rangel Silva, who in 2006, was responsible for the airport; and (Luis Alfredo) Mota Domínguez.”
 
Rangel Silva, the Chief of the National Armed Force’s Strategic Operations Command; Carvajal Barrios, the director of the DIM; and former Homeland Affairs and Justice Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín have apparently been imputed by the US Government for allegedly having committed offenses involving money laundering, cooperating with drug trafficking, and supplying the FARC with weapons.
 
This week, the Department of State published its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Reportin which it states that: 

• 1) Venezuela is a point of departure for routes either directly to the United States or via Honduras and Haiti before continuing to Mexico; 
• 2) some “250 tons of cocaine a year, equivalent to more than 40% of world cocaine production” apparently passes through Venezuela; 
• 3) “illegal Colombian armed groups –including two international terrorist organizations, the FARC and the ELN- have ties with the most aggressive and successful organizations that traffic drugs through Venezuela”; 
• 4) the Hugo Chávez administration “does not take action against military and government officials who are known for their relations with the FARC”; and 
• 5) corruption inside the Venezuelan Government and its “weak and politicized” judicial system contributed to cocaine trafficking going up from 50 mt in 2004 to 143 mt in 2009.

 
If the government has nothing to hide, it should allow the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) to send a mission to verify the situation in Venezuela.

Veneconomy

Congo's east: Still smuggling | The Economist

Still smuggling

A warlord goes about his business

Congo's east

Feb 10th 2011 | KINSHASA AND GOMA | from PRINT EDITION

BOSCO NTAGANDA is a Congolese army general and former rebel leader wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for recruiting child soldiers. On February 3rd a plane from Nigeria landed in Goma, capital of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a group of his men swiftly unloaded $6.5m in cash. Pursued by police through Goma’s streets, they ferried the money to one of the general’s compounds. The plane was later loaded with over 400kg of gold, worth around $19m at today’s prices. But the authorities seized the gold and arrested the passengers—an American, a Frenchman, and two Nigerians—for trafficking.
According to the UN, General Ntaganda, once deputy to the warlord Laurent Nkunda, oversees a vast mineral-smuggling operation in eastern Congo. It is manned by former rebel allies who, under a peace deal, are now part of the army. The trade—legal and illegal—in gold, tin ore and coltan from the region is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In September, in an attempt to clamp down on smuggling, the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, imposed a ban on most mining in the east. Mr Kabila wants to root out “mafias”, he says, which include both the army and the armed militias that control the region’s mineral trade. That trade has fuelled more than 15 years of war, killing and displacing millions. But the prohibition has done little to limit the smuggling.
General Ntaganda, a Tutsi, is presumed to have the backing of neighbouring Rwanda, run by Paul Kagame, also a Tutsi. Rwanda may well have more influence in the Kivus than Congo’s own government, 1,000 miles (1,600km) away in Kinshasa. Even with an ICC indictment hanging over his head, the general freely walks around Goma. During the day he plays tennis on clay courts in the shadow of Goma’s restless volcano, Nyiragongo. At night he dines in lakeside restaurants frequented by UN and aid workers and the local elite.

Outside the town, his soldiers continue to plunder and rape. On New Year’s Day Lieutenant Colonel Kibibi Mutwara, who fought with General Ntaganda’s rebels, allegedly ordered his men to attack the village of Fizi in South Kivu province in retaliation for the murder of a soldier. At least 62 women, men, and children were raped, according to hospital officials. Unusually, Colonel Mutwara has been arrested. The trial, along with ten of his men, will begin shortly in Baraka, a nearby town.
Mr Kabila says that Congo needs peace before it can have justice. But General Ntaganda and men like him are a growing embarrassment to the Congolese, the Rwandans, the UN, and the ICC. Last month Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said that the general’s arrest was his “next objective.” But the ICC’s power is limited and in this case depends largely on the governments of Rwanda and Congo.
Mr Kabila faces re-election in November. Arresting the general could rekindle the widespread support he had in the Kivus at the last vote in 2006—supposing he can maintain some semblance of peace afterwards. And if Rwanda ended its support for a man wanted by the ICC, that could help repair the damage to its reputation from a messy election season of its own last year. Will they turn on the general?

from PRINT EDITION | Middle East & Africa

Congo's east: Still smuggling | The Economist: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

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________________________

Analysis: The problems Egypt still faces

Analysis: The problems Egypt still faces
By BARRY RUBIN
02/02/2011
Jerusalem Post

Weak moderates, a radical people, the economy's fragility, and strong Islamists.

There’s a lot of confusion about the Egyptian crisis, yet it is vital that people understand what is at stake.

The first issue is whether only the ruler or the entire regime is going to fall. The mere resignation of President Hosni Mubarak from office would not be a huge problem. Vice President Omar Suleiman or someone else will take over, the regime will make adjustments to build support (and probably repress the Muslim Brotherhood) and Egypt’s policy – certainly its foreign policy – remains relatively unchanged.

But if the entire regime falls, this would lead to a period of anarchy – bad – or a new regime – worse.

There are some huge problems:

• The moderates’ weakness. There are no well-organized moderate groups with a big base of support. Can any such politicians compete with the highly organized, disciplined Muslim Brotherhood which knows precisely what it wants? Indeed, the muchtouted Mohamed ElBardai is a weak and ineffectual man with no political experience whatsoever. Many of the activists who have backed his candidacy are themselves Islamists.

Indeed, many of the non-Islamist “moderates” are not so moderate. In sharp contrast to reformers in other Arab countries, many of the Egyptian “democrats” are themselves quite radical, especially in terms of anti-American and anti-Israel thinking.

• The public’s radicalism. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, the Egyptian public is extremely radical even in comparison to Jordan’s or Lebanon’s. When asked whether they preferred “Islamists” or “modernizers,” the score was 59 percent to 27% in favor of the Islamists. In addition, 20% said they liked al-Qaida; 30%, Hizbullah; 49%, Hamas. And this was at a time that their government daily propagandized against these groups.

How about religious views? Egyptian Muslims said the following: 82% want adulterers punished with stoning; 77% want robbers to be whipped and have their hands amputated; 84% favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.

So how is such a radical public going to vote and what policies would they support? The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to be very popular while one would think secular moderates in suits and ties would not be able to compete in elections.

• The economy’s fragility. In a country like Saudi Arabia, a government can buy off opposition. Not so in Egypt, a place where there are few resources (some oil, Suez Canal) and too many people. So how is a government going to make the public happy? It won’t be able to offer greatly improved living standards, more jobs, and better housing. Instead, demagoguery is likely – as it has so often done before in the Arab world – to be the means of gaining votes and keeping the masses out of the streets.

This means the Islamization to some degree of social life, and waves of hatred against Israel and America, the Middle East equivalent of bread (subsidies for food will be increased, but how to pay for them?) and circuses. Moderate governments thrive usually when they can offer benefits. This is very unlikely in Egypt.

• The Islamists’ strength and extremism. If someone tells you that the Muslim Brotherhood is mild and moderate, don’t believe it. In its speeches and publications, it pours forth vitriol and hatred. Making the Shari’a the sole source of legislation for Egypt is one of its most basic demands. The rights of Christians and women (at least those who don’t want to live within radical Islamist rules) are going to decline in a country ruled by the Brotherhood, even as part of the coalition.

As for foreign policy, is the alliance with the United States and the peace treaty with Israel going to survive under such a regime? Maybe but why should that happen? And of course, the regime will support revolutionary Islamists elsewhere. Even ElBardei wants an alliance with Hamas. Such a regime will not be friendly toward the Palestinian Authority or oppose Iranian expansionism (even though it might well hate Iran as Shi’ites).

And what will the effect be on the rest of the region? Everyone will know – Israel and moderate Arabs alike – that they cannot depend on the United States. Revolutionary Islamists would be emboldened to subvert Morocco and Tunisia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. With an Islamist-ruled Lebanon (for all practical purposes, if only unofficially), Gaza Strip, Iran and Turkey, and with Syrian participation, what will happen in the Middle East?

The worst kind of disaster is one that isn’t recognized as such.

Again, this has nothing much to do whether Mubarak himself stays or not, and everything to do with whether the Egyptian regime stays or not.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Analysis: The problems Egypt still faces

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Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government

Stratfor Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government on The MasterBlog

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Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government

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Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government | STRATFOR

STRATFOR Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government

"...Lebanon ultimately is a chessboard for regional and international players to use in terms of pursuing their political objectives."

Analyst Kamran Bokhari discusses the dissolution of Lebanon’s government and how the country is used as a proxy for regional power struggles.

Dispatch: Regional Factors in the Collapse of Lebanon's Government | STRATFOR

Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. 

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman appointed Saad al-Hariri, who was ousted as prime minister in a Hezbollah-engineered government collapse yesterday, as caretaker prime minister. The struggle within Lebanon continues, but there is a far greater struggle that is going on at the regional level involving the United States, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia that is manifesting itself in the government crisis in Beirut.

Hezbollah had the required number of Cabinet ministers who were willing to resign in order to be able to pull off the government collapse, and therefore what we have right now is a situation where both sides are trying to renegotiate the formation of a new Cabinet. Behind all of this is the move by the March 14 coalition of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, which is trying to work with the international community in terms of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is geared toward indicting some members of Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premiere Rafik al-Hariri, the father of the current prime minister.

The situation within Lebanon between the two rival camps — the March 8 coalition of Hezbollah and the March 14 coalition of caretaker Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri — are not just battling it out in terms of a domestic feud. This is by no means a domestic feud because each side is backed by certain powers. Hezbollah is clearly backed by Iran and has the support of Syria; the March 14 coalition of Prime Minister Hariri has the support of Saudi Arabia and, more importantly, the United States and France.

So what we have is the Lebanese political actors lacking any sovereignty — in other words, whatever their dispute is, it has to be resolved by a negotiation settled by the regional and international players. In the case of Iran, it is backing the most powerful element in the country, i.e. Hezbollah, which not only is a political movement and has a wide social presence, it also possesses a military wing — which, by the way is far more powerful than the Lebanese armed forces. That gives Iran a very powerful tool in terms of being able to project power. The Iranians can use Hezbollah against Israel, as we saw in the 2006 war, which undermines U.S. interests in the region. Therefore, Iran has a tool with which to play with and to be able to shape American behavior and extract concessions.

Ultimately, there is no permanent fix to the Lebanese crisis. It’s a cyclical issue which will crop up every now and then because Lebanon ultimately is a chessboard for regional and international players to use in terms of pursuing their political objectives.




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SWC op/ed in Friday, 12/3 Wall Street Journal: "Presbyterians Against Israel"

December 3, 2010   

  

   On the first day of Chanukah last year, a group of Christian Palestinians issued the Kairos Palestine Document which calls for a general boycott of Israel, argues that Christians’ faith requires them to side with the “oppressed,” (meaning the Palestinians), refers to the evils of the Israeli “occupation,” describes the Jewish connection to Israel only in terms of the Holocaust, denying 3,000 years of Jewish domicile and, ultimately, that there must not be a Jewish State because any religious state is inherently racist. Since then, the Kairos Document has been embraced by many mainline religious groups.

 To counteract this, Simon Wiesenthal Center officials will meet later this month with the World Council of Churches President to urge an end to the campaign against Israel and the Jewish people.

 The op/ed piece below written by Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper will appear in Friday, December 3rd's Wall Street Journal newspaper:
 
   <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572404575634813393141110.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>  
Presbyterians Against Israel <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572404575634813393141110.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>  
 by Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper
   
 In many ways, the second half of the 20th century was a high point for Jewish-Christian relations. Today, however, the anti-Israel politics of certain powerful Christian bodies hampers interfaith relations and threatens to breathe new life into medieval doctrine that demonized Jews for hundreds of years.

 In 2007, the World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of mostly liberal Protestants claiming a membership of 580 million worshippers, convened the "Churches Together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East Conference." The conference produced the Amman Call, a document that condemned violence and endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but denied Israel's right to a future as a Jewish state.

 It did so by insisting that millions of Palestinians—the grandchildren of those who left and were expelled from Palestine in 1948—have the "right of return" to Israel. As is well known, granting all third-generation Palestinians such a right would mean Israel's quick disappearance and its replacement by another Middle Eastern Mullahcracy or dictatorship.

 The Amman Call also labeled the barrier Israel has built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers—which has effectively saved untold Jewish, Muslim and Christian lives—a "grave breach of international law" that must be removed.

 In 2008, the World Council of Churches convened a group of Protestant and Catholic theologians to review the underpinnings of Christian attitudes toward Israel. (No Jews were invited.) The group published the so-called Bern Perspective, which, among other things, instructed Christians to understand all biblical references to Israel only metaphorically.

 This understanding denies the connection between today's Jews and Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah. It marks a return to "replacement theology," the medieval view that the Church has replaced Israel in God's plan and that all biblical references to Israel refer to the "new Israel"—that is, to Christians. For centuries, that view was the theological basis for denying rights to Jews in Church-dominated Europe.

 In 2009, on the first day of Chanukah (which Jews again celebrate this week), a group of Christian Palestinians issued the Kairos Palestine Document, which was immediately published on the World Council of Churches website. The document calls for a general boycott of Israel and argues that Christians' faith requires them to side with the "oppressed," meaning the Palestinians. It speaks of the evils of the Israeli "occupation," yet is silent on any evils committed by Palestinians, including the Hamas terrorists who now govern the Gaza Strip.

 The Kairos document also describes the Jewish connection to Israel only in terms of the Holocaust, denying 3,000 years of Jewish domicile. "Our presence in this land, as Christian and Muslim Palestinians, is not accidental but rather deeply rooted in the history and geography of this land," it states. "The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends on our account and in our land."

 Most importantly, these Palestinian church leaders declared that there must not be a Jewish state because any religious state is inherently racist. They mentioned in this regard only Israel, of course, ignoring all Muslim states and others with an official state religion.

 The Kairos document quickly won accolades from religious groups including from the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has 2.3 million American members and in 2004 was the first mainline American Protestant group to call for divestment from Israel.
 This past February, its Middle East Study Committee announced that it would urge the U.S. government to "employ the strategic use of influence and the withholding of financial and military aid" from Israel. While conceding Israel's right to exist, it appended an apology to Palestinians. In the words of one committee member, recognizing Israel's right to exist "is to give Israel a pass on the way Israel was created and denies the legitimacy of the Palestinian people."

 The Simon Wiesenthal Center will soon meet with the president of the World Council of Churches to urge an end to its campaign against Israel and the Jewish people. Like anti-Israel diplomatic and academic campaigns, such religious calls and writings won't improve the life of a single Palestinian. But they will certainly embolden terrorists and anti-Semites, and cast carefully nurtured interfaith relations into darkness and disarray.

 Rabbi Hier is founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Cooper is the center's associate dean.

Stratfor: Dispatch: WikiLeaks and Implications for Intelligence Sharing

Dispatch: WikiLeaks and Implications for Intelligence Sharing December 1, 2010 | 2140 GMT Click on image below to watch video: Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton discusses how the U.S. Intelligence community may return to a pre-9/11 approach to information-sharing. Editor's Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. In aftermath of the WikiLeaks disclosure Stratfor sources are indicating that the US intelligence community are looking at ways to further compartment information to prohibit this kind of disclosure in the future. In the pre-9/11 world there was not a steady flow of information, primarily between the FBI and the CIA. But the other government agencies were also affected. As a result of that, one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission was a much broader dissemination of information so analysts saw more so they could reach accurate assessments. As a result of WikiLeaks, what you're seeing is the desire to restrict that flow of data. In essence analysts will not have access to perhaps operational channel messages which contain very granular data on the sources as well as the kind of terrorism information they may need to do their job. Analysts like to see all source reporting. That would be open-source to highly classified intelligence information in order to make the most accurate assessment on whatever topic it is. By restricting what the analysts can see as a result of WikiLeaks, does impact upon that analysts ability to get an accurate read into a specific topic. In the intelligence business there is always a friction that exists between the collectors; the agents in the field, the case officers that's meeting with the sources and reporting that data back, and the analysts that are sitting behind the desk at headquarters. There has to be a very careful balance between the two to ensure that the analyst gets the data that they need to do their job as well as the operators can protect the sources identity to ensure that individuals are protected and providing information to the US government. So this is a very cyclical kind of process that we're going through right now and it's usually as a result of disastrous events like WikiLeaks or aircraft hijackings or embassy bombings or 9/11 kinds of events. Click for more videos This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us © Copyright 2010 Stratfor. All rights reserved.

"Dispatch: WikiLeaks and Implications for Intelligence Sharing is republished with permission of STRATFOR."

Canada boycotts Durban III, cites anti-Israel focus - Israel News, Ynetnews

Canada boycotts Durban III, cites anti-Israel focus

Taking a stance: Canada will not attend UN conference on racism because of negative focus on Israel, immigration minister says; Ottawa has lost faith in Durban process, whose agenda promotes racism, he says
Associated Press

Canada will not attend Durban III, a United Nations conference on racism next September in South Africa because the event has negatively targeted Israel, the country's immigration minister said Thursday.
Minister Jason Kenney said Canada has lost faith in the Durban process, a conference that began in 2001 to develop strategies to defeat racism.
"Canada is clearly committed to the fight against racism, but the Durban process commemorates an agenda that actually promotes racism rather than combats it."


Anti-Israel protest at previous Durban conference (Photo: Reuters)
Next year's event commemorates the 10th anniversary of the initial Durban conference that saw the United States walk out in protest over texts branding Israel as a racist and apartheid state.
The initial conference, which ended days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the US, produced the Durban Declaration and Program of Action.

Speeches laced with anti-Israel rhetoric

The 62-page document raises 122 "general issues," among them "concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation." It "recognizes the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the right to an independent state."
But most offensive to Canada and several other countries were speeches laced with anti-Israeli rhetoric. Canada led a boycott of Durban II in Geneva last year, where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against the Jewish state.

This week, a UN committee adopted a resolution calling for the commemorative meeting next Sept. 21 to "reaffirm that the (original Durban declaration) provides the most comprehensive UN framework for combating racism."
"We voted against this because we believe that the proposed meeting will only perpetuate the kind of ... divisive rhetoric that led Canada to boycott this process in the past," said Kenney.
Canada boycotts Durban III, cites anti-Israel focus - Israel News, Ynetnews

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Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan

Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan

By George Friedman

Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn't taken place.

It is interesting to reflect on the institutional inevitability of these disagreements. The military is involved in a war. It is institutionally and emotionally committed to victory in the theater of combat. It will demand all available resources for executing the war under way. For a soldier who has bled in that war, questioning the importance of the war is obscene. A war must be fought relentlessly and with all available means.

But while the military's top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them. Generals must think about how to win the war they are fighting. Presidents must think about whether the war is worth fighting. The president is responsible for America's global posture. He must consider what an unlimited commitment to a particular conflict might mean in other regions of the world where forces would be unavailable.

A president must take a more dispassionate view than his generals. He must calculate not only whether victory is possible but also the value of the victory relative to the cost. Given the nature of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus — first the U.S. Central Command chief and now the top commander in Afghanistan — had to view it differently. This is unavoidable. This is natural. And only one of the two is ultimately in charge.

The Nature of Guerrilla Warfare

In thinking about Afghanistan, it is essential that we begin by thinking about the nature of guerrilla warfare against an occupying force. The guerrilla lives in the country. He isn't going anywhere else, as he has nowhere to go. By contrast, the foreigner has a place to which he can return. This is the core weakness of the occupier and the strength of the guerrilla. The former can leave and in all likelihood, his nation will survive. The guerrilla can't. And having alternatives undermines the foreigner's will to fight regardless of the importance of the war to him.

The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier's patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?

Tactically, the guerrilla survives by being elusive. He disperses in small groups. He operates in hostile terrain. He denies the enemy intelligence on his location and capabilities. He forms political alliances with civilians who provide him supplies and intelligence on the occupation forces and misleads the occupiers about his own location. The guerrilla uses this intelligence network to decline combat on the enemy's terms and to strike the enemy when he is least prepared. The guerrilla's goal is not to seize and hold ground but to survive, evade and strike, imposing casualties on the occupier. Above all, the guerrilla must never form a center of gravity that, if struck, would lead to his defeat. He thus actively avoids anything that could be construed as a decisive contact.

The occupation force is normally a more conventional army. Its strength is superior firepower, resources and organization. If it knows where the guerrilla is and can strike before the guerrilla can disperse, the occupying force will defeat the guerrilla. The occupier's problems are that his intelligence is normally inferior to that of the guerrillas; the guerrillas rarely mass in ways that permit decisive combat and normally can disperse faster than the occupier can pinpoint and deploy forces against them; and the guerrillas' superior tactical capabilities allow them to impose a constant low rate of casualties on the occupier. Indeed, the massive amount of resources the occupier requires and the inflexibility of a military institution not solely committed to the particular theater of operations can actually work against the occupier by creating logistical vulnerabilities susceptible to guerrilla attacks and difficulty adapting at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the guerrilla. The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival. While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning. Since the guerrilla is not going anywhere, he can afford far higher casualties than the occupier, who ultimately has the alternative of withdrawal.

The asymmetry of this warfare favors the guerrilla. This is particularly true when the strategic value of the war to the occupier is ambiguous, where the occupier does not possess sufficient force and patience to systematically overwhelm the guerrillas, and where either political or military constraints prevent operations against sanctuaries. This is a truth as relevant to David's insurgency against the Philistines as it is to the U.S. experience in Vietnam or the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can't endure the long war has no empirical basis. What the United States has difficulty with — along with imperial and colonial powers before it — is a war in which the ability to impose one's will on the enemy through force of arms is lacking and when it is not clear that the failure of previous years to win the war will be solved in the years ahead.

Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict's strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible. This divides into several parts. This first is whether the United States has the ability with available force to achieve its political goals through prosecuting the war (since all war is fought for some political goal, from regime change to policy shift) and whether the force the United States is willing to dedicate suffices to achieve these goals. To address this question in Afghanistan, we have to focus on the political goal.

The Evolution of the U.S. Political Goal in Afghanistan

Washington's primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11. But if Afghanistan were completely pacified, the threat of Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism would remain at issue because it is no longer just an issue of a single organization — al Qaeda — but a series of fragmented groups conducting operations in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and elsewhere.

Today, al Qaeda is simply one manifestation of the threat of this transnational jihadist phenomenon. It is important to stop and consider al Qaeda — and the transnational jihadist phenomenon in general — in terms of guerrillas, and to think of the phenomenon as a guerrilla force in its own right operating by the very same rules on a global basis. Thus, where the Taliban apply guerrilla principles to Afghanistan, today's transnational jihadist applies them to the Islamic world and beyond. The transnational jihadists are not leaving and are not giving up. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will decline combat against larger American forces and strike vulnerable targets when they can.

There are certainly more players and more complexity to the global phenomenon than in a localized insurgency. Many governments across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have no interest in seeing these movements set up shop and stir up unrest in their territory. And al Qaeda's devolution has seen frustrations as well as successes as it spreads. But the underlying principles of guerrilla warfare remain at issue. Whenever the Americans concentrate force in one area, al Qaeda disengages, disperses and regroups elsewhere and, perhaps more important, the ideology that underpins the phenomenon continues to exist. The threat will undoubtedly continue to evolve and face challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the guerrilla acting against the United States.

There is another important way in which the global guerrilla analogy is apt. STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.

Nietzsche wrote that, "The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place." The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda's evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan. The guerrilla does not rely on a single piece of real estate (in this case Afghanistan) but rather on his ability to move seamlessly across terrain to evade decisive combat in any specific location. Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism is not centered on Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan, so no matter how successful that war might be, it would make little difference in the larger fight against transnational jihadism.

Thus far, the United States has chosen to carry on fighting the war in Afghanistan. As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt.

Simply withdrawing from Afghanistan carries its own strategic and political costs, however. The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world. The United States has managed to block al Qaeda's goal of triggering a series of uprisings against existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. It did this by displaying a willingness to intervene where necessary. Of course, the idea that U.S. intervention destabilized the region raises the question of what regional stability would look like had it not intervened. The danger of withdrawal is that the network of relationships the United States created and imposed at the regime level could unravel if it withdrew. America would be seen as having lost the war, the prestige of radical Islamists and thereby the foundation of the ideology that underpins their movement would surge, and this could destabilize regimes and undermine American interests.

The political problem is domestic. Obama's approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort. Where a Republican would face charges of being a warmonger, which would make withdrawal easier, Obama faces charges of being too soft. Since a president must maintain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, strategic analysis aside, the president is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon — the national (and international) political alignment won't support such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve any goal and leaves potential rivals like China andRussia freer rein.

The American Solution

The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country's economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis' ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it.

In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate. (The Taliban movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one and the same.) Washington has not succeeded in this regard, with the Pakistanis continuing to hedge their bets and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, U.S. opposition has been the single greatest impediment to Pakistan's consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and abandoning this opposition leaves important avenues open for Islamabad.

The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban. Logic suggests this channel is quite active now.

The Vietnam War ended with the Paris peace talks. Those formal talks were not where the real bargaining took place but rather where the results were ultimately confirmed. If talks are under way, a similar venue for the formal manifestation of the talks is needed — and Islamabad is as good a place as any.

Pakistan is an American ally which the United States needs, both to balance growing Chinese influence in and partnership with Pakistan, and to contain India. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason. Meanwhile, the Taliban want to run Afghanistan. The United States has no strong national interest in how Afghanistan is run so long as it does not support and espouse transnational jihadism. But it needs its withdrawal to take place in a manner that strengthens its influence rather than weakens it, and Pakistan can provide the cover for turning a retreat into a negotiated settlement.

Pakistan has every reason to play this role. It needs the United States over the long term to balance against India. It must have a stable or relatively stable Afghanistan to secure its western frontier. It needs an end to U.S. forays into Pakistan that are destabilizing the regime. And playing this role would enhance Pakistan's status in the Islamic world, something the United States could benefit from, too. We suspect that all sides are moving toward this end.

The United States isn't going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests. Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat. Such a strategic shift is not without profound political complexity and difficulties. But the disparity between — and increasingly, the incompatibility of — the struggle with transnational terrorism and the war effort geographically rooted in Afghanistan is only becoming more apparent — even to the American public.

Read more: Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan | STRATFOR