Stories of the Day

This would be a lot of fun

Ahmadinejad wants to debate Obama

Leads to follow

 

-In the New York Times, Helene Cooper breaks a story that Zalmay Khalilzad, a longtime Washington bureaucrat and -diplomat, has been holding talking for several weeks with President Hamid Karzai about being appointed to a position they both describe as a "chief executive officer' of Afghanistan.  An unnamed senior official in the Obama administration described Khalalizad's possible post as “a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn’t be responsible to a parliamentary system.”  In light of this comment, it is worth noting that Afghanistan's largest export is opium, and its largest import is Western weapons, which end up in the hands of both sides in the Afghan fields, all of this making the role of Afghanistan's C.E.O. very clear.

 As a creator of national security policy, Khalilzad has had quite a history, who was once called "Bush's favorite Afghan" worked in Dick Cheney's Department of Defense during the presidency of , and was ambassador Afghanistan and then the United nations during Bush II's reign.  As an American citizen and obvious operator, Khalilzad lacks public support in Afghanistan, making a back-room role necessary if he wishes to influence play a part in Afghan politics.  More on this to follow

 

-In the Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad has spoken to what he describe as a "top ideologue"  of al-Qaeda on the strategy being pursued by in the South Asian war theater.  As Shahzad reports, al-Qaeda militants are trying to occupy a strategic corridor  that stretches from Nangarhar province in Afghanistan through Pakistan's Khyber Agency and the Pakistani Balochistan area of Tutrbat all the way to Iranian Balochistan.  To accomplish this goal, they are hoping to form an alliance with the Iranian Jundullah (Army of God) group, Sunni insurgents opposed to the rule in Tehran.   Shahzad reports that "Jundullah leader Abdul Malik Rigi is due to meet an al-Qaeda emissary in the near future near a Pakistani Balochistan coastal town to lay the foundation for joint regional operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and India."  The main aims of the alliance would be to "destroy or disrupt operations at Chabahar port, which could be used for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supplies going to Afghanistan," as well as establish "al-Qaeda's presence in Iran to carry out operations to create a strategic balance against any Iranian role in Afghanistan and Iraq." 

 

-Jim Lobe reports for IPS on a major new public opinion survey of the Arab World.

The survey was taken between April 21st and May 11th, and polled over 4,000 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.  Of interest is the response to a question asking what issues were most central to their assessments of Obama's policy in the region. 42% replied that a withdrawal from Iraq was most important, while 26% cited the Arab/Israeli conflict.  Surprisingly, only 3% cited the U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan as most important.

The Manhunter and the CEO

I. In the past week, Washington’s great game strategy has become just a little bit clearer.  First, President Obama "ended the military career” of Army General David McKiernan, the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and signed his fate away to a new man, Army Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, a man being described by the mainstream media as a “manhunter.”  McChrystal, who was a close friend of Donald Rumsfeld, headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from 2003 to August 2008.  The JSOC is part of the military “deep state,” preferred as secret-policemen to the intelligence “deep state” by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.  As a key operator in the “deep state,” McChrystal was part of the secret war waged against Middle Eastern political opponents over the past eight years.

The idea of covert U.S. military operations is not a novel concept, as David Kilcullen, one of the leading advisors to CENTCOM commander David Patreus, has been hoping to rebuild the Phoenix program used in South Vietnam for political assassinations.  In fact, Richard Armitage, an extremely influential voice on regional policy, was heavily involved in the Phoenix program during his military tours in South Vietnam. 

As McChrystal had to go through an extensive Congressional Approval process, grisly details have surfaced of various special-forces missions that have taken place over the past eight years.  Operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the military commando’s have performed nighttime raids and brutal interrogations of political prisoners at Camp Nama in Iraq.  Seymour Hersh is actually sitting on a story right now of special operation troops serving as a global “executive assassination ring” for President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.  In a world of “extraordinary renditions” and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” none of this should come as a surprise.

McChrystal’s appointment may also be aimed as a political punch, as the Marines Special Operation Command (MarSoc) has been found responsible for much of the recent civilian carnage that has taken place in Afghanistan. They were responsible for calling in the recent devastating air strikes in Bala Baluk, which killed 147 people, most of them civilians.  This massacre caused large-scale protests, and forced puppet Karzai to “demand” that the U.S. military end air strikes, a demand that was promptly not granted by James Jones, who called it “imprudent.”  And now, a special forces expert is directing all military operations in the country, making the air strikes a virtual guarantee.     

Part II to follow.