NightWatch

For the Night of 17 June 2009

North Korea: South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo reported today that according to a source on North Korea in Beijing, North Korean officials and diplomats have begun to withdraw funds from Macau in preparation against a freezing of accounts following financial sanctions.  The deposits that the North Koreans began to withdraw do not distinguish among companies doing external trade activities or private individuals, and anything that could be categorized as a North Korean account has gone into the "evacuation of funds."  However, it was not made known how much money is on receipt at which bank, or under whose name.

The article recalled that in September 2005 the US Treasury designated North Korean accounts at Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) as a "major subject of concern for money-laundering" on the grounds that North Korea was using the BDA accounts to launder counterfeit dollars –supernotes. The US froze those accounts which contained some $25 million.

The account freeze measure continued for a year and nine months, until June 2007.  The amount of frozen funds was not great, but it was reported to have delivered a significant blow because National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Cho'ng-il was using those accounts as a "slush fund."  The effect of the financial sanctions was highly effective North Korea resisted at first, but it eventually came back to the Six-Party Talks under the incentive that the US would lift the freeze.

The work of the intelligence and policy components of the Treasury Department has proven its effectiveness and its durability in isolating North Korea better than almost every other instrument of national power. Freezing the external accounts is attractive because it hurts the 30 or so ruling families in the Kim despotism and the weapons and other programs that rely on imports—such as rubber, special metals and chemicals. They include all modern conventional weapons programs, the nuclear program and the missile programs.

In the final analysis, North Korea is far from self-sufficient for all modern systems. That makes it vulnerable to financial sanctions.

Pakistan: Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs rejected comments by Indian Prime Minister Singh that Pakistan's territory must not be used to launch terrorist attacks against India, News Network International reported 17 June. Malik Ammad Ahmed Khan said in a speech to the Pakistani Senate that Pakistan would never allow its soil to be used to plan terrorist attacks, and that Pakistani President Zardari has raised concerns that India may be interfering with Pakistani internal affairs.

The Indian Prime Minister made the comment at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Yekaterinburg.

Yesterday, the Pakistani Ambassador to the US was quoted on National Public Radio admitting that Bin Laden and the top seven leaders of al Qaida are in Pakistan but reassured listeners that Pakistan was going after them. The Ambassador appears to have moved off message because Pakistani leaders, especially Musharraf, repeatedly have denied US charges and disputed US evidence that bin Laden is in Pakistan at all, much less in the north west tribal region. No clarification as yet.

For the record. Authorities closed the Peshawar Airport on 17 June for all domestic and international flights for an "indefinite period" because of terror threats as well as a planned military operation in Waziristan to find Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Press Trust of India reported. The Civil Aviation Authority, however, is citing "technical" reasons for the airport's closure.

The message behind the news item is that authorities in the capital of North West Frontier Province -- also the headquarters of the 11th Army Corps and all the police and paramilitary forces in the Province -- are not confident they can keep the airport safe and operating under threat of attack by Pakistani Taliban. That represents a significant admission of official weakness and recognition of insurgent strength.

Iran: The Guardian reported today at least 500 activists, including politicians, journalists and students, have been arrested over the past five days in the growing crackdown aimed at "decapitating" the protest movement against Ahmadi-Nejad's re-election. At least 100 have been arrested in Tabriz, a Mousavi strong-hold. About 200 were arrested at Tehran University over the 13 June weekend, although many were later released. More than 100 were arrested on 15 June after security forces engaged protesters at Shiraz University.

Update on the voter fraud allegations. The Guardian reported today that results from the 12 June presidential election posted today the Ayandeh website indicate that turnouts of over 100 percent were recorded in at least 30 towns; 26 provinces across the country showed participation levels either unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered voters; and at least 200 polling stations recorded participation rates of 95 percent or above. Also, former Iranian interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, said yesterday that 70 polling stations returned more completed ballot papers than the number of locally eligible voters.

Comment: The above data are the first details of the potential enormity of the electoral fraud, which pales Mugabe’s stratagems in Zimbabwe. Analysts have suggested that, if there was fraud, the fraud program had to be massive, coordinated and nationwide in order to produce a landslide. They added that it is difficult to maintain security on such a scale, ergo the Ahmadi-Nejad victory probably was legitimate. That was the initial NightWatch assessment—nationwide fraud is difficult to keep secret.

These new data, accepting them at face value, shed new light on this analysis. The Ministry of Interior and the Revolutionary Guards have the nationwide presence to organize and sustain a massive fraud. They also have the motive – Ahmadi-Nejad is one of their own. There were thousands of polling places. If two thirds of them reported more votes than living voters, a landslide could be engineered by decentralized fraud.

Most less developed countries rely on the Ministry of Education to supervise elections because schools are the polling places, even in the US. Relatively few countries rely on or trust the national police, i.e., the Interior Ministry. Even Education workers can be suborned, so that is no guarantee of integrity, but it looks better.

The usual tattle tale of voter fraud is a vote count that exceeds the number of living and registered voters and voter registration rolls that include a large number of dead people. This usually is the result of excessive exuberance or enthusiasm by local operatives. For example, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia at various times in their pasts and many communist states were notorious for this practice. This might be the undoing of the election.

Lengthy Note on Analysis of Instability. The Associated Press reported the following snippets about the demonstrations in Iran.

- “… It's not just young, liberal rich kids anymore: Whole families, taxi drivers, even conservative women in black chadors are joining Iran's opposition street protests. “

-“…support is growing to include grandmothers, government employees and hotel clerks.”

- "This (the Mousavi opposition) is completely different to 1999. That was between the students and the government. This is between the people and the government. This time it is all of Iran. This is a historic movement.".

- an accountant who declined to be identified said she joined the protests because she wanted her vote to count.

The key question most news services are trying to answer is whether the protests will lead to a change of government leadership or will sputter and die. The answer to that question determines whether a spontaneous uprising can convert into a self-sustaining political movement. It was the same question that analysts asked about the strikes at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 that morphed into the Solidarnosc movement.

Readers might be on the lookout for the chief indicators of the transition from episodic protests to a self-sustaining, organized opposition capable of bringing down the leadership. All were present in the evolution of Solidarnosc. The event phenomenology is identical, despite the cultural differences.

First, a series of demonstrations mounted by a single occupational, functional or ethnic group almost never transitions into a nationwide movement. These demonstrations are responses to stress and the government usually has reserves of law enforcers and incentives to relieve the stress. Carrots and sticks usually succeed in ending them.

Second is geographic distribution. Protests in capital cities are normal. Power always resides in the capital. Instability is centripetal in that opposition groups that fail to take power or influence the power holders in the capital fail. If opposition starts in the countryside and spreads, it must move to the cities or it will fail. Multiple outbreaks outside the capital are a sign of widespread discontent which is essential for a sustained, effective opposition movement.

Third, political instability always begins on the periphery. The disenfranchised in the center of Tehran, the university students whose ballots were discarded are on the political periphery of power, as are the disenfranchised in Azerbaijan, Sistan Baluchistan and other cities outside Tehran. The government always has a harder time suppressing discontent on the geographic periphery than in the capital. Thus unrest in multiple outlying population centers represents a serious threat that governments usually underestimate.

Fourth and most important, stakeholders in the existing economic system must join the opposition portests. In an earlier era, one would write that those with the most to lose from change of political leaders must join in order to a movement to transition to self sustaining status. In Iran in 1979, when the bazaaris joined the ayatollahs in advocating the overthrow of the Shah, the Shah was overthrown and fled for his life. The clerics alone lacked the clout to effect political change.

Fifth, a group leadership must emerge that can coordinate with other groups in other cities. Groups will send or publish statements of solidarity with each other, building strength through unified action. Those kinds of publicity are the signature that more complex organization, leadership and cohesion are evolving.

The government leaders usually panic and then overreact by using excessive force and in effect bring themselves down, if the government collapses or concedes.

Finally the action will progress through phases of under-reaction, over-reaction and concession and then recycle.

Applying the above to Iran. The first days of the demonstrations looked like sour grapes among the youth and urban dwellers. That encouraged the government to under-react in hopes it would allow the demonstrations to burn themselves out.

When they continued on 13 and 14 June, TV news showed pictures of uniformed men beating unarmed people with sticks. Nevertheless, the crowds forced the uniforms to retreat. This was an over-reaction, serving up beatings as a response to voter fraud claims. Governments do stupid things like this, when an immediate call for investigations or appointment of a respected commission might have pulled the rug out from under the protestors.

In the past two days the composition of the demonstrators has diversified. That is the significance of the bullets above. They show that average, everyday folk have begun to register their concerns about dishonesty. Loss of support among this demographic cohort is perilous for an administration.

The most significant new information is that professional people have joined blue-collar working people. If businesses start to close and small business owners join the protests, especially outside Tehran, the administration must fall.

The government already made one set of concessions when it approved the Guardian Council order to recount votes. That concession was not enough, signified by the continuation of the protests. Thus, the crisis management cycle is now reset. The government is now assessing whether its actions to date will placate the crowds. The demonstrations have spread. New cohorts have joined, which include stakeholders in the economy – more important than the political leaders actually.

The next step for the opposition will be characterized by greater organization and communication outside individual cities. Without leadership that can coordinate the timing and location of protests, the movement will not succeed. It is not clear that Mousavi’s political organization is yet willing to take the risks of failure associated with that leadership role.

The authority and geographic dispersion of political/religious leaders calling for the votes to be counted against the rolls hints that some kind of leadership structure is forming. There are few public signs of a national organization forming, but it is early yet. If protests persist, that will emerge.

The next step for the government will be an attempt at a wider and harsher crackdown, almost certainly. Khamenei might try to finesse the unrest by skipping the next over-reaction step, though the Revolutionary Guards will oppose a finesse move without more head cracking. The finesse move would be aimed at dispersing demonstrations by agreeing to allow ballot boxes to be compared against voter registration rolls, a major concession and gamble. If this occurs, Khamenei would show he is willing to sacrifice Ahmadi-Nejad for the sake of the theocracy, assuming the Guardian reports are accurate.

Such a concession is more likely now that the protests are diversifying. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is most likely getting worried that a systemic change is threatened on his watch. Those worries will make a leader prone to try to settle things as quickly as he can and prone to make colossal blunders.

The theocracy itself is not challenged, only the honesty of the processes it set up. Its feet are being held to the fire, as it were. If the protests continue, which now seems likely for the first time based on the evidence, the theocracy will undergo significant change by becoming accountable to the electorate in an unprecedented fashion for Iran, at least for a short while. That is tentatively and potentially tonight’s good news.

Saudi Arabia: For the record. The interior minister signaled his backing for the kingdom's controversial morality police this week, saying they were on a par with the security forces. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice -- a key arm of the powerful religious establishment -- has been under pressure after incidents wherein Saudis died in their custody or in car accidents as the police pursued them.

"The Commission completes the security forces and the security forces complete the Commission," Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said in comments carried by the state news agency SPA late on Tuesday. "If members of the Commission do wrong ... they will be treated just as the security forces are treated."

The longstanding complaint is that the virtue and vice cops were not accountable for their arbitrary and capricious exercise of arrest and flogging authority. The statement by Prince Nayef suggests these goons are being brought under more stringent control, comparable to the police. Nevertheless, the Faustian bargain between the House of Saud and the religious authorities remains intact.

Lebanon: For the record. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in which he explained Hezbollah’s failure to win a majority in the 7 June general elections as a function of a decision that the movement was afraid and not ready to shoulder the national responsibility of leadership. Nasrallah made it appear as if they deliberately came in second, despite the money and energy spent on winning. Clever speech, not convincing to anyone.

Israel-Hamas: Hamas deputy foreign minister Ahmed Youssef on June 17 said Hamas had rejected former US President Jimmy Carter's requests for the group to comply with international demands, including recognizing Israel, The Associated Press reported. Youssef said Carter, who visited the Gaza Strip on 16 June, was knowledgeable and sincere in his understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that there was no "significant change" from Hamas, and that, "Recognizing Israel is completely unacceptable."

Former Harvard Professor and expert on terrorism, John Bowyer Bell, distinguished between rogues and revolutionaries among the terrorists with whom he lived, which included Arafat’s PLO. Rogues are congenial narcissists who seek headlines and explosive sensation at the expense of progress in achieving their goals. They tend to be killers who kill without a relationship to their political objectives.

Revolutionaries are quiet folk who subvert and destroy from within by manipulation, political judo tactics and setting internal factions against each other. They collapse a system from within. Lenin is the archetypical revolutionary.

Bell called the Palestinians Rogues because they always self destruct and never seriously work to achieve their stated political goals. He wrote they are incapable of pursuing systemic change, i.e., a revolution in the relationship with Israel. Arafat was the avatar of the Palestinian rogue leaders.

Hamas’ declaration today reinforces the Netanyahu government’s position that Israel cannot support a Palestinian state that is determined to destroy Israel. That would be an act of national suicide.

Mali: The government has declared war on al Qaida, according to Afrik.com. Malian security forces engaged suspected al Qaida militants in the northern Tessalit region 17 June, as part of operations to root out militants suspected of involvement in the assassination of the security chief of the Timbuktu region on 11 June, Reuters reported. In one incident, government forces came across gunmen in several trucks, and in the ensuing fire-fight, several fighters were killed on both sides. In another incident, security forces captured a suspected al Qaeda base near the Algerian border, and at least 12 militants died while five soldiers were killed by land mines.

Ennahar online reported today that the Malian soldiers killed a total of 26 al Qaida in the Maghreb fighters yesterday near the Mali-Algerian border. “When our troops took possession of the base of the terrorists, we have counted 26 enemy elements killed. Some were even buried in a mass grave by the Salafists who have fled,” a spokesman said.

Two weeks ago, authorities in Bamako announced their intention to conduct a “serious fight” against terrorists, after the 31 May murder of British tourist Edwin Dyer, held hostage since January. Readers should assume that US and Algerian special operations forces played a role in this success and it looks like a good investment, though too late for poor Mr. Dyer. This is tonight’s good news.

Venezuela: Update. The National Assembly approved a new law that would grant the state control over the petrochemical industry in Venezuela, Globovision reported 16 June, citing a declaration made by Angel Rodriguez, president of the Commission of Energy and Mines. The draft underwent changes before the final version, and grants foreign companies in the petrochemical industry subject to the legislation up to 50 percent ownership in joint ventures, rather than a minority stake. However, according to Rodriguez, one provision in the law grants the Venezuelan government control over the decisions in jointly-owned companies.

Cyber: (Some readers might already have read the report cited below, but the facts are sufficiently striking that NightWatch chose to include some excerpts from the published Congressional report and Nextgov.com.)

“The Chinese cyberattackers -- whoever they work for -- sure are busy bees in cyberspace, according to the report of a Congressional hearing held in April by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was released last week.” The report is dated 30 April.

A ”… senior fellow at the Technolytics Institute, a cyber think tank, told the hearing that a survey of nonmilitary government outfits that monitor their Internet firewalls reported an average of 128 acts of "cyber aggression" a minute from China in March 2009. “

“That works out to 7,680 aggressive cyber acts an hour or 184,320 a day against non-Defense organizations. The senior fellow said all these attacks came from IP addresses in China but added that he did not know exactly who or what sits behind those IP addresses.”

End of NightWatch for 17 June.