NightWatch

For the Night of 13 June 2008

North Korea-Japan: North Korea will begin an investigation into the issue of its alleged abduction of Japanese nationals decades ago and will repatriate a group of Japanese hijackers, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said today, Kyodo news agency reported. Japan will partially lift sanctions against North Korea in return, including a ban on charter flights and travel.

All three sets of talks this week reported progress on substantive issues and cooperation by the North’s negotiators. Such a coincidence has most often occurred when the North’s need for aid is urgent, which all NGOs and UN authorities report.

India: The Cabinet Committee on Security approved a Defence Ministry plan to raise two more mountain divisions for the Indian Army to enhance India's capabilities in the mountainous regions bordering Pakistan and China, AAJ TV reported today. Each division will have between 10,000 and13,000 troops, organized and equipped in at least three brigades. Far northern Kashmir in the Kargil sector opposite Pakistan and northeast India are the most likely basing areas. They will also have support from combat helicopters. The new divisions are expected to be combat ready in about five years.

Prime Minister Singh promised to increase development funds, improve border defense facilities and to raise new mountain divisions when he visited Arunachal Pradesh State on 31 January. China disputes the border India claims for Arunachal Pradesh State. Despite Chinese criticism, the Singh administration is keeping its promises.

Pakistan: Over 40,000 lawyers, political workers and supporters converged on Parade Avenue, the culmination point of the long march, at 2 am on Saturday, 14 June. According to initial estimates, 20,000 activists were participating in the long march, which reached Rawalpindi at 2 pm, while 20,000 others were awaiting them at Parade Avenue, where a large stage had been installed for speeches. Accompanying the lawyers were members of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Jamaat-e-Islami and Tehreek-e-Insaaf.

No news services reported clashes or injuries connected to the lawyers’ march. The political impact, if any, is not yet clear. The outpouring of support for the judges and justices dismissed summarily last November plus the press coverage of the march has made this an important influence in shaping public attitudes towards Musharraf and the delay in reinstating the judges.

Afghanistan: During this Watch, in Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison, a Taliban suicide bomber rammed the gates of the prison with his fuel truck and then detonated the tanker, allowing up to 400 hard-core Taliban to escape. The government has waffled on the numbers, but prior reporting indicated 350 to 400 Taliban were incarcerated. Prison officials said everyone escaped, “There’s no one left.” All the guards at the prison gate house were killed by the truck explosion, but the government has not released those numbers as well.

In a coordinated separate action, a suicide bomber walked up to the back of the prison and detonated himself, opening another avenue of escape. This is an embarrassing security lapse that almost certainly had assistance from within the prison system.

Iraq: The end of the spring lull in fighting appears imminent. The security situation in Baghdad is likely to deteriorate this summer. This is a warning.

In a statement read at Friday prayers at a mosque in Kufa, Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr outlined a new plan of action for fighting US forces. He ordered the Mahdi Army militia to resist US forces but to use restraint, in other words to only attack “the occupiers,” not other Iraqis.

The more ominous part of the statement announced the formation of a new armed force. "The resistance will be carried out exclusively by a special group which I will announce later," Sadr's statement read, adding that "weapons will be in the hands of this group exclusively and will only be directed at the occupier." He warned that those who disobey "will not be with me….We will keep resisting the occupier until the liberation or martyrdom.”

Sadr also called on his followers to help establish social services in Iraq's dominant Shiite community.

Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi told Agence-France Presse the action was aimed at building a more comprehensive movement that could better serve its followers.

The statement contained no additional details about the new force, including when it will be operational. Since Sadr is studying in Iran, his location suggests the new plan has been coordinated with the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Sadr’s organization is one of Iran’s proxies, funded and equipped by the IRGC.

For the record. U.S.-Iraqi talks toward a long-term security arrangement have "reached a dead end" because U.S. demands "do not take into consideration Iraq's sovereignty," Prime Minister al-Maliki said today.

Comment: From the Arab perspective, one way of interpreting events in the past two years is the alternating application of sticks and carrots to induce the US and its allies to depart. First the Arabs applied the stick. The Sunnis and, later, the Shiites tried to use attrition, featuring high numbers of attacks and high US casualty rates, to persuade the US to withdraw its forces and those of its allies. That produced the so-called surge, backfiring by increasing US military forces in Iraq.

This year, first the Sunnis and then the Shiites, at Iranian direction, switched tactics and reduced violence to create a set of quieter security conditions to ascertain whether a lull in fighting would hasten the departure of the “crusaders.” This was an application of the carrot.

This week the carrot tactic also backfired by persuading the US that Iraqis were finally ready to accept an open ended American military and contractor presence, evidenced by the decline in attacks. This misread of Iraqi temperament was memorialized in the form of a proposed security pact, which some Iraqi leaders plus the Iranians have now rejected.

Both carrot and stick have backfired with both producing a single American reaction to increase presence, access and duration regardless of whether security conditions were good or bad. Neither tactic has led to a road map by which the Americans would depart, even a rough time frame for withdrawal, or a definition of the word “temporary,” as in temporary presence. In Congressional testimony this week, US State Department officials testified that the term “permanent” as in “permanent bases” has no official definition.

Sadr has always led those who favored fighting “the occupiers,” as the only way to pressure them to withdraw. Resistance to the “occupiers” now has the backing of the quietist school led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani who issued a religious edict that US forces must be resisted. Sadr’s direction to his followers that only the “occupiers” may be attacked implies that he is making arrangements – or has made them already – with the Sunnis to fight jointly. Months of US training and support would make the Sunni tribes of the Awakening more formidable foes.

The fundamental fact of the recent lull, in this interpretation, is that nothing the Coalition did was responsible for creating the lull and, thus, the Coalition is powerless to prevent its collapse.

Zimbabwe: Police say documents linked to Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), discuss changing Zimbabwe's government. Biti was arrested on 12 June at the Harare airport upon returning from South Africa. Biti has been charged with treason, but a Supreme Court Justice today demanded the government “show cause” why Biti should not be released. They have neither released Biti nor responded to the “show cause” order.

MDC Party officials said separately that MDC leader and presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai has been detained for a third time at a roadblock and taken to a police station. Mugabe today announced that if he is defeated in the run off election, he personally would lead the armed insurrection against the MDC government. Mugabe is 84 but is fronting from a military junta that runs the Joint Operations Center. Zimbabwe cannot avoid violence.

Ireland: There will be no United States of Europe yet. Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern reported substantial vote tallies across the country show the European Union Lisbon Treaty has been rejected. Enactment requires ratification by all 27 EU members. The Treaty is dead for now, though the 18 members who have ratified it plan to proceed under their national rules. The Treaty would create a standing EU president and foreign ministry, among unifying measures.

A UK newspaper hailed the Irish "no" vote on the Lisbon Treaty as a victory against "a process hitherto shrouded in jargon and pushed along by the ‘civil servants’ who invented it". It said the "no" vote -- with 53.4 percent -- was in part in Ireland's own interest, because approval would have meant a dilution of its influence under the proposed changes to majority voting in the enlarged EU. But it was also against the "unsubtle reworking" of the EU constitution rejected by Dutch and French voters in 2005 and would have eroded national sovereignty by stealth.

Colombia: Two explosions yesterday in Bogota appear to be the work of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), government sources said. These attacks, plus other recent bombings that targeted police and civilians, suggest the rebel group may be responding to recent military setbacks by striking out to create pressure on the Colombian government, according to one commentary.

Actually, the timing suggests the new FARC leadership senses the need to show FARC has not been damaged by the death of its founder. It is a tedious and boring fact of living systems that new leaders always need to show their vitality and that they are making a difference. Usually they reorganize before they destroy things, unless they are insurgents.

End of NightWatch for 13 June