NightWatch

For the Night of 26 June 2009

North Korea: Comment. This week North Korean media have threatened to inflict a nuclear fire on South Korea and the US and have staged a large anti-US rally in Pyongyang. Readers should understand these actions as manifestations of a leadership that is frightened.

That does not mean to signify that the North’s leaders would not attempt to strike out under some circumstances, but it does mean that they would do some from desperation. Should the US ever attack the North by air and sea, everything Kim Il-sung built would be destroyed irreparably. Concrete cannot be repaired; almost every building of value in Pyongyang is made of concrete.

When the North holds a large public rally, its purpose is always to demonstrate the solidarity of the people with the leadership in a grand show of national unity. Such shows are almost always phony.

The leadership group that perceives a need to stage such shows never seems to understand that the shows contradict their intended purpose. But, that is the communist way. The demonstrations are for domestic audiences. They signify the leadership is not sure the people will follow so it stages indoctrination demonstrations to show those living outside Pyongyang how to prepare for hardship and how they are supposed to respond.

The North’s leadership group is unsure about the potential repercussions of the crisis it has created but it will shoot more missiles and will fall back on communist orthodoxy to keep the people under control and working.

Burma-North Korea: For the record. Authorities in Burma said they have no information about a North Korean cargo ship, the Kang Nam, that foreign news agencies report is en route Burma, Xinhua reported on 25 June. The official New Light of Myanmar newspaper carried the denial, but noted that another North Korean cargo ship, the MV Dumangang, was expected to arrive in Myanmar from Kolkata, India, on 27 June, loaded with about 8,000 tons of rice.

Pakistan: Officials said a suicide bomber killed at least two Pakistan Army soldiers in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, known as Azad Kashmir, or Free Kashmir, which is on the west side of the Line of Control that separates Indian Kashmir from Pakistani Kashmir.

Security officials said the attacker blew himself up on 26 June near an army vehicle in Muzaffarabad — the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. They said three soldiers were wounded in the attack.

A Pakistani Taliban representative claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, The Associated Press reported. The representative said the attack proved that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has not been weakened by ongoing attacks by Pakistani security forces on his suspected hideouts in northwest Pakistan.

This is the first such attack against Pakistani soldiers in Pakistani Kashmir. It is an extraordinary event because it benefits India in that Pakistani soldiers and intelligence personnel with the mission of destabilizing Indian control of India’s Jammu and Kashmir State must now devote energy and resources to defending themselves from Pakistani Pashtuns who are retaliating for Pakistan Army operations in the North West Frontier Province.

The obvious motive of this attack is to divert Pakistan Army resources and attention. Its significance is that Baitullah Mehsud and his cohorts are willing to sacrifice the sacred Pakistani idea of Kashmiri independence for Pashtun rights and progress in installing an Islamic emirate in Pakistan, led by Pashtuns. Punjabis and Sindhis of the Pakistani plains consider such an idea obscene.

If the suicide bombing proves to be an isolated event, it will have no lasting significance. If more suicide attacks occur in Pakistani Kashmir, they would indicate a new trend in attacks; confirm the reach of Mehsud’s supporters and present a new security challenge to Pakistani forces dedicated to fight the Indians in a conventional war. This sad attack is potentially good news for India.

Politics. Today, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was acquitted from one of the two criminal convictions that bar him from holding elected office. Today’s reversal of his acquittal for a conviction of corruption is the more serious and credible of the two.

In the year 2000 – during the year after General Pervez Musharraf deemed his illegal usurpation of the Constitution in 1999 faced no effective opposition – Musharraf had then Prime Minister Nawaz tried in two different cases at the same time. One was a corruption case for the purchase of a helicopter, and the other was for conspiracy to hijack Musharraf’s aircraft – the then dismissed Chief of the Army Staff – to prevent him from staging a coup to overthrow the elected government of Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army’s General Officer Commanding V Army Corps at Karachi was insubordinate and allowed Musharraf to land at Karachi against the orders of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Once again the Pakistan Army generals defied their oath to defend the constitution and arrested the Prime Minister for attempting to uphold the constitution.

Nawaz now only requires a reversal of his second conviction for lifting the ban against running for election.

The significance is that Nawaz remains on the path to becoming either the next President or next Prime Minister of Pakistan. Neither would be good news for the US.

Iraq: For the record. Prime Minister al-Maliki criticized the governments in the region for their refusal to reject the calls by a senior Saudi cleric to kill Shiite religious scholars, Agence France-Presse reported 25 June. Saudi Arabian Mufti Sheikh Adil al-Kalbani called Shiite clerics "infidels" in a May statement. Maliki said that extremist opinions create sectarianism and inspire violence. He also said, "Silence is no longer an acceptable or friendly position towards the Iraqi people."

The US support for the al Maliki government as a political policy is increasingly irrelevant to the latent struggle between Sunnis and Shiites, in which the al Maliki looks increasingly to Iran for protection and guidance. Sunnis consider Shiites apostates at best and infidels at worst. No fundamentals have been changed by the forms and trappings of elected government. The next round of the religious civil war is slowly emerging.

Question: Why did American military leaders and diplomats attempt to establish unitary governments in Iraq and Afghanistan when Americans live in, have experience with and only know federal government systems? Why would smart Americans attempt to install /impose a British style of parliamentary government, which is alien to the US, the Iraqis and the Afghans? NW has asked this question repeatedly for the past eight years, but no one has provided an explanation or identified the policy geniuses who thought this was a good idea.

Turkey: Update. Chief of the General Staff General Ilker Basbug, said 26 June that government allegations of a military plot to undermine the government were a "smear campaign to weaken the military" and "an attempt to stir up and divide the military," Reuters reported. Basbug also guaranteed that "the military does not shelter those that would engage in coup activities."

The Islamists continue their attack on secular government by implying that Army officers are engaged in treason. The Army is the last powerful preserver of the secular legacy of Ataturk. Its political precepts are out of touch with the will of the electorate, which repeatedly votes for the Islamist AKP.

Turkey continues on the path to becoming an Islamist state. At some point the Army must overthrow the AKP administration if Turkey is to remain a secular state a little longer.

“The Islamic World:” The US State Department has appointed its first Special Representative to Muslim Communities. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Ms Farah Pandith would play a leading role in US efforts to "engage Muslims around the world". She said Ms Pandith, who was born in Indian-administered Kashmir, would bring years of experience to the role. The appointment is part of President Barack Obama's attempts to improve relations with the Muslim world, according to the BBC.

NW Comment: This appointment appears to be an extraordinary outreach initiative which senior US officials considered carefully no doubt to communicate US values. The US has tried repeatedly to persuade Islamic leaders to accept female legates of one or other kind with limited success.

This initiative seems crafted to fail. The first problem lies in appointing one person to represent the US to all “Muslim communities.” This is as risible as King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia appointing a special representative to Christianity.

There is no Muslim world. Use of the term Muslim communities should suggest to leaders that one appointment might not fit all needs. Why not a commission? A Kashmiri Sunni American Muslim must consider Iraqi and Iranian Shiites to be heretics, apostates or infidels, if she herself is devout.

The second issue is the wisdom of appointing a woman, even a Muslim believer. For example, Grand Ayatollah ali Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, talks to no Americans and has not since the US invasion of Iraq. He emphatically does not talk to foreign women, but he is the spiritual leader for the majority of Iraqis.

The people with whom the US most needs to open a dialogue in the Middle East are likely to be affronted by the appointment of a woman. Certainly, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will not talk to an American woman. The US experienced the worst consequences of cultural obduracy when Ms. Glaspie’s conversation with Saddam Hussein persuaded him that the US actually approved his invasion of Kuwait, when precisely the opposite was the US message.

Islamic leaders would be justified in interpreting this appointment as an effort to incite political activism by Islamic women. Many innocent women could die as a result and the US is in no position to help them any more than it helped the Iranian students in Tehran.

Thus, there is once again tension in US foreign policy towards Islamic states, between modeling so-called American values vs the less lofty goal of influencing foreign leaders, taking them as they are.

This comment is not about the competency of women as diplomats and representatives of US values. Rather it is about the nuance and subtlety of US perceptions of Islamic leaders and the wisdom of sending a woman ambassador to countries that are openly misogynist, in our view.

Feedback on this comment is welcome.

Somalia: The United States sent weapons and ammunition to the government in Mogadishu earlier in June to help it fight Islamist militants with ties to al Qaida, the Washington Post reported 25 June, citing an anonymous U.S. official. The official also said the decision "was made at the highest level to ensure the Somali government does not fall and that everything is done to strengthen government security forces to counter the rebels."

Such a decision borders on comedy. There is no government of Somalia because Somalia does not exist as a single political entity. Somalia is now only a geographic notation on a map of eastern Africa.

Secondly, there is no competent recipient of US arms assistance in Mogadishu. Arming the rump regime now besieged there ensures that the Islamist rebels ultimately will capture American arms and ammunition. It is time for a new policy idea and new advisors because their recommendation to do the same thing over and over again is producing the same result. And that is a behavioral manifestation of insanity.

Niger: President Mamadou Tandja, 71, announced today that he will assume sweeping emergency powers, after the Constitutional Court again said he could not extend his rule for a third three-year term. In a televised address, the president said he was assuming special powers "because the independence of the country is threatened". His address came hours after the Constitutional Court rejected his request for a review of an earlier decision that ruled his referendum unlawful.

Tandja announced his referendum plan in May, but it drew protests from the opposition and trade unions, who turned to the court. The president dissolved parliament and assumed executive powers. The country's electoral commission has set parliamentary elections for 20 August - two weeks after the referendum's proposed date.

Tandja has governed Niger since 1999, serving two terms and cannot serve a third under the existing constitution. This is a study in democracy or maybe autocracy. Presidents do not like to leave office.

Honduras: President Manuel Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces, General Romeo Vasquez, and Defense Minister Edmundo Orellana Mercado on 24 June because they would not support Zelaya’s effort to suborn the constitution by using the armed forces, according to the Tegucigalpa newspaper El Heraldo.

Zelaya had asked the armed forces for logistical support for a referendum to convene a constitutional assembly to amend the constitution so he could stay in office. The Honduran Congress and Supreme Court, both rejected Zelaya’s scheme. The Court ruled the referendum illegal.

Zelaya fired Vasquez because he told the President the military would not involve itself in political matters. Commanders of other branches of the armed forces also resigned in a show of solidarity following Vasquez's dismissal. Nevertheless, Zelaya continues to defy his Congress, the Courts and the Armed Forces.

This is a man who is inviting a military overthrow in the name of the Congress and the Courts. This is a study in democracy.

End of NightWatch for 26 June.