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May 28, 2005
Zarqawi surrounded in a village home?
Zarqawi reported taken refuge in Abu Shallal, a village north of Baghdad, according a report from the
Posted by Richard Miniter at 02:14 PM
May 25, 2005
In the Mail
My friend, in the Washington sense of the word, Joel Rosenberg, has sent along an advance copy of his latest thriller, The Ezekiel Option. I have not read it yet, but I know that Joel's bestseller The Last Jihad was a real page-turner. It appears in book stores in July 2005.
Also in the mail, Gary C. Schroen's First In: An Insider's account of how the CIA spearheaded the war on terror in Afghanistan. Schroen ran Operation Jawbreaker, which hunted bin Laden in the days after 9-11. The pictures alone should answer the question, "why haven't we caught bin Laden yet." I actually looking forward to reading Schroen's book, which one CIA source tells me in "the most detailed description of a field operation written by a participant
that" he has ever seen. While the source doesn't like Schroen, he says there are a lot of "eye-popping details" that insiders are surprised to see. I'll read it and tell you what I think. Sometimes these intel guys get worked up over things that seem very small, yet other times...
Posted by Richard Miniter at 08:31 AM
May 24, 2005
The Forgotten War
U.S. and allied forces are still actively fighting elements of the
Taliban and al Qaeda, as this interesting report from an Italian website reveals. The scene of the fighting, the Paktika province, was a major area of anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s and its dense forests offer some refuge from American air power. Don't miss the last line: the Taliban commander in the region is believed to be new al Qaeda's no. 3. It seems everyone gets a chance to be AQ's no. 3 man, at least for 15 minutes...
Posted by Richard Miniter at 05:17 PM
May 22, 2005
Worth Reading
This is not, strictly speaking, about terrorism, but a literary journey into the world that foments it. While there are numerous studies showing that terrorism is not sparked by poverty (indeed, many al Qaeda terrorists come from intact, middle class families who lavished money for education on their sons), but by alienation.
Alienation is very real, keenly felt—and all but ignored by the elites who scoff that the whole idea of assimilation is oppressive. Without assimilation, you have alienation, a deep feeling of rejection by society coupled with a building sense of powerlessness. This can be a lethal combination, as any student of the life of Mohammed Atta knows. As you will see, Down the Street, Worlds Away is similar in theme to the British hit film Bend It Like Beckham. Sounds like it too would make a powerful film, if some Hollywood exec had the guts to make it.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 04:35 PM
May 19, 2005
Our friends, the Pakistanis
So Pakistan's Minister for Religious Affairs defends suicide attacks in Mesopotamia, expecting only a knowing nod from the world's press and a what-else-would-you-expect-? shrug from the State Department—but he got more than he bargained for. The Iraqi National Congress is demanding an apology. It is about time that the appointed officials of allied nations got with the program. As Bush likes to say, "You're either with us or with the terrorists." For a front-bench minister in the Musharaf government, this shouldn't be a hard choice.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 08:30 PM
May 15, 2005
Predator Preys on Perp in Pakistan?
ABC News and others reported on Saturday that a CIA drone used a Hellfire missile to kill a high-ranking al Qaeda member inside Pakistan. Of course, the Pakistanis were quick to disavow the report (allowing the U.S. to roam Pakistan's skies and kill at will is not a popular political position in Pakistan). The CIA retreated into its favored "no comment" mode, but you can almost feel the satisfied grin on their face when you phone them to ask about it. I think the story is true, although the matter of whether to target—who has been watched for months—was really the replacement of Abu Faraj al-Libi (supposedly al Qaeda's no. 3) is a matter of sharp debate among the informed sources I contacted.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 01:09 PM
Is Zarqawi knocking on Death's Door?
Don't bet on it. I was asked about this on Fox & Friends, the Fox News Channel's morning program, today, and I suggested that this report may well be disinformation. This is precisely the story that terrorists and those trained in intelligence like to use to throw American and allied forces off his trail. (It is akin to the reports that bin Laden is on dialysis.) In the Sunday Times (of London) version of the story, the doctor who allegedly treated in Zarqawi is not named and medical records have not been obtained. A single blood sample should settle the matter. Still, this could be the good news that many Iraq watchers are waiting for...
Posted by Richard Miniter at 01:02 PM
I bet they know
In an article in Pakistan's Daily Times, several military officials admit that the political risks of arresting bin Laden in Pakistan are huge. The press and other observers too easily forget that radical Islamic parties claim up to 40 percent of the vote in local Pakistani elections and that bin Laden is indeed a popular figure there.
There is also a hint that the feared Inter-Services Institute, Pakistan's CIA, knows where bin Laden is. Unlike the Israelis, it does seem quite likely that Pakistani intelligence knows where he is or could find out if they really wanted to know. It was the ISI that helped create the Taliban, al Qaeda's strongest ally, and it was the ISI that asked U.S. forces to stop shelling Kunduz, Afghanistan, where some 2000 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters here holed up in the Fall of 2001, so that it could bring in two fixed-wing aircraft to fly out its intelligence officers. Must have been quite a few embedded with the enemy... Add to that that nearly every high-level al Qaeda target captured was seized in Pakistan as well as more than 700 al Qaeda footsoldiers, more than any other single nation on Earth (including Iraq and Afghanistan).
Posted by Richard Miniter at 08:14 AM
Where is bin Laden?
This article, in The Jerusalem Post, suggests that some Israeli officials believe they know where the archterrorist is hiding. I don't believe it, but it is, as the British Foreign Office used to say, "interesting if true."
Posted by Richard Miniter at 06:54 AM
May 10, 2005
Clash of ideals, not civilizations
I found Bernard Lewis' latest remarks irresistible. Let us hope he is right. "To speak of dictatorship as being the immemorial way of doing things in the Middle East is simply untrue. It shows ignorance of the Arab past, contempt for the Arab present, and lack of concern for the Arab future. Creating a democratic political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere in the region will not be easy. But it is possible, and there are increasing signs that it has already begun."
Author of What Went Wrong and other books on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:41 PM
Not a politician
Well, the moral voice in the Israeli cabinet, Natan Sharansky, has resigned. This is not a minor development, although you have to step aside from the left-liberal consensus on the Middle East to see why. And, given President Bush's comments in Europe yesterday—blasting the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin pact favoring stability over liberty in Eastern Europe—makes one wonder if Bush sees the contradiction if his own views are applied to the Holy Land.
Here a link to a short take in The Jerusalem Post Magazine, but since it available only to subscribers, I will quote some important points below.
"When he entered politics, the centrist stand his Yisrael B'Aliya party took enabled Sharansky to hold the balance of power that allowed Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Sharon to form coalitions. At its peak, Sharansky's party had seven mandates and 175,000 voters."
"Before Yisrael B'Aliya's collapse in the 2003 election, Sharansky was portrayed as shifting rightward, but the truth is that his views have never changed. When he talks about what he would be willing to give the Palestinians, he sounds as Left as can be. He just conditions concessions on Palestinian democratization, a value that cannot be placed on the standard Israeli political map."
When I return to Israel, I plan to ask Sharansky if he think that his friend President Bush has abandoned support for Palestinian democracy, by not conditioning the Gaza withdrawal on democratic change. In fact, I have a more radical idea in mind: Gaza should be a democracy independent of the West Bank and of the PLO.
The Jerusalesm Post also noted the limited minds in the Israeli press.
"Even his departure from the cabinet this week was mischaracterized in the Israeli press as no different from the resignation of Effi Eitam. Sharansky did his best in interviews to explain that he was not protesting withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, but rather Israel's leaving unilaterally without insisting on Palestinian democratization as a prerequisite. ..."
"Even the English edition of the Hebrew Haaretz newspaper decided that the departure of a man unknown outside of Israel, IBA chief Yosef Barel, was more front-page-worthy than that of Sharansky. This despite Sharansky making Time magazine's list of the world's most influential thinkers and his new status as US President George W. Bush's guru since the president read Sharansky's book, The Case for Israel."
The Jerusalem Post quotes Sharansky, capturing a taste of what is probably bitterness. "It's unfortunate that the values I fought for don't interest people in Israel as they do in the United States," Sharansky said. "Both the Left and the Right in Israel have conceded the value of democracy. The president of the United States understands it, and it's a pity that Israeli politicians don't."
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:19 PM
May 09, 2005
The Third Man?
The arrest of Abu Faraj al-Libi—the so-called no. 3 man in al-Qaeda—has provoked both triumphalism in and cynicism in the press. So let me throw some cold water on both the hotheads and the Eyeores.
Sunday Times (of London) reporter Christina Lamb contends that Abu Faraj al-Libi is just a mid-level player. Lamb has been wrong before. Last year, she filed a front-page story saying that Pakistani troops had cornered Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's no. 2, in a mud-brick fortresss in Pakistan. Now it turns out that he was never there. Plus, she is relying on European sources who do know al-Qaeda well in Europe, but not in South Asia. So the fact that these European experts don't know much about him is of little value. Pakistan is outside their area of expertise and I doubt that they receive intel briefings. Quoting the famous French terrorism expert Brisard doesn't establish much.
Lamb is right about one thing: the captured al-Libi and the al-Libi on the FBI's most wanted list are different men. And, no, they are not related. I pointed out that out on the Fox New Channel this past week. Remember, inside al-Qaeda, there are dozens of senior officials with al-Libi in their names. It simply means "the Libyan" and is well-worn way to distinguish one Mohammed from another in the Arab world.
While there is a real debate about Abu Faraj's role (was he no. 3 or not?) inside the intelligence community, nearly everyone seems to think that his capture was a major blow to al-Qaeda. The debate is technical and turns on whether an analyst thinks that al-Qaeda no longer has a no. 3 at the top of an organizational pyramid, but instead a chain of national al-Qaeda leaders or whether the analyst believes that the organizational structure of bin Laden's network is unchanged since 2001, but the names inside the organizational boxes have changed. And while intel analysts obsess about this, the question is essentially unknowable.
As for the New York Daily News article by James Gordon Meek, I don't think that the capture of Abu Faraj al-Libi is "bigger than bin Laden." Capturing or killing bin Laden would be an enormous morale blow to the organization and would probably facture it. Remember, al-Qaeda is not a monolithic entity or interchangeable parts like the U.S. Army. The terror network is divided along ethnic lines. The Yemenis train with and take orders from Yemenis; the Saudis train with Saudis and so on. We know from interogations of captured terrorists that these ethnic groups inside al-Qaeda can be bitter rivals. Only the force of bin Laden's personality and his aura of invicibility holds the organization together.
Still the capture of al-Libi is significant. It removes a senior al-Qaeda officer who was plotting to kill the prime minister of Pakistan, America's most vital ally in the war on terror. Of the more than 3000 al-Qaeda killed or captured since September 11th, more than 700 have been captured in Pakistan. Also, al-Libi would have operational knowledge of plots around the world—and the names and locations of dozens of key al-Qaeda leaders. The effect of his arrest will ripple around the world.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:09 AM
May 03, 2005
Media Failures
Everyone frets about "intelligence failures", but no one worries about "media failures." We should. The myopia of the media could cost America and its allies the war in Iraq, by presenting an unbalanced picture that undermines public support for the war.
There are three types of media failures: a story bias, a location bias, and a source bias. These are systemic biases that cut across all media from CNN to FOX to the broadcast networks. These three biases taken together are often mistaken for an ideological prejudice (aka "liberal bias"), media failures are caused by a structural bias that is largely invisible to both the press and the public.
Story bias
The press rightly covers the so-called insurgency's bomb attacks. (No one calls them what they are: anti-democratic terrorists.) But they do not prominently cover the American military's many counter-attacks. The same day that car bombs rocked Baghdad, the U. S. Marines successfully repulsed and defeated an "insurgent" invasion originating from Syria. So when the enemy scores, it is a story. When the allies prevail, it is not. This leaves the impression that Iraq is a quagmire and our soldiers are simply hapless victims who can't lay a glove on the terrorists. By artificially limiting what is considered a story, the media misses the big picture.
Location bias
The story bias is reinforced by the location bias. It is no accident that the general tone of the coverage changed when the major newspapers and networks stopped participating in the "embed" program. (The embed program is not dead; a U. S. Army Ranger officer told me in Baghdad that the military is actually begging journalists to participate.) So most reporters are simply not seeing (or collecting video) of American and allied military operations. They all but ignore them. And journalists who are not embedded rarely accompany allied forces.
The other element of location bias is that the press rarely wanders outside its walled compound. Of course, safety is the reason. Mark Bowden brilliantly describes the isolation of the press in the latest Atlantic Monthly. Many of my friends and colleagues who work in Iraq have complained about how isolated they feel. They rarely interact with ordinary Iraqis or see Iraqi police operations as they unfold.
Source bias
Finally, there is a source bias. Many networks use "fixers," Arabic speakers who bring local officials and community leaders to be interviewed (either "on background" or on the record). For better or worse, these fixers essentially decide who is interviewed. This is a standard enough arrangement, but is can easily lead to abuses. A broader diversity of sources would help the press present a more complex and balanced picture.
As a result of this source bias, the American media has overlooked key emerging figures such as Mithal Jamal Hussein Al-Alusi, a liberal Iraqi politician, or the outgoing Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, who holds press conferences that the English-language press doesn't bother to attend.
If the CIA only covered one side, failed to leave its guarded redoubts and only interviewed selected sources, Congress (or ironically, the press) would crow about intelligence failures. Yet when the press makes identical mistakes, it gets a pass.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 11:07 PM