Nightwatch
For the Night of 28 August 2007
North Korea: South Korea’s
Choson
Ibo news paper reported yesterday that in June Kim Jong-nam, the eldest
son of Kim Chong Il returned from China
to Pyongyang. He was reported as working in the
Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Worker’s Party. This is
arguably the most sensitive of all the Party Departments because it has access
to every aspect of Party activities and all personnel files. It is where Kim
Chong Il was groomed for eventual leadership.
Today, however, Japan Today and the South Korean
daily Yonhap reported that Kim Jong-nam still lives in China, but made one of his periodic visits to Pyongyang in June. Kim
Jong-nam has been out of favor after he was caught in 2001 trying to enter Japan with a
false passport. He and his family have lived in China for several years because the
passport incident embarrassed the regime and they also seem to prefer it.
Jong-nam’s permanent return would revive attention on the
succession to Kim Chong Il. Chong
Il turned 65 in February, but is
not in good health. The late Kim Il Song designated his eldest son, Kim Chong
Il, as his successor in 1974 when he turned 64, though Chong Il had
to wait until 1994 when his father died.
Thus for health reasons and family tradition, it would seem to be time
for the succession process to begin.
The issue is important because North Korean government is an
oriental despotism, as described by Wittfogel. It mimics the personality of the
man in charge. Thus, were Kim Jong-nam
to succeed his father, he would be the first leader who has extensive foreign
travel experience and exposure. He has
fewer blind spots about the modern world, is not afraid to fly for now, and at
least can talk cordially with the Chinese.
The two other sons of Kim Chong-il are far less widely
traveled and more sheltered.
Thailand: The
electoral commission announced yesterday that general elections will be held on
23 December. The military government is keeping its promise to schedule
elections after the constitutional referendum.
Pakistan:
The daily Dawn reported yesterday
that President General Musharraf’s team of emissaries, led by Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate chief Lieutenant General Ashfaq Kiani, had a “final meeting” in London with Pakistan
Peoples Party Chairperson Benazir Bhutto and her aides. The two sides discussed
the possibility of convening an all-party conference for achieving a ‘grand
national reconciliation,’ in other words, formation of a national unity
government.
The real purpose of the meeting apparently was to present President
General Musharraf’s terms for his resignation as Chief of the Army Staff. He
wants guarantees that the political parties will elect him president for
another five-year term and will not tamper with the powers of the Presidency
while he remains in office.
This is the first public leak that Musharraf might be
willing to relinquish his military rank but it needs careful substantiation. It
might just be a trail balloon. If Bhutto senses that Musharraf is weak, she
would be prone to reject the offer and the deal. The allure of holding office
in Islamabad is
likely to be a strong incentive to compromise, even though it means association
with the military.
For Musharraf, once he leaves active duty, he risks
remaining a civilian without a government job. With yesterday’s leak, Musharraf
has let his opponents and potential partners know he has at least two plans for
retaining the Presidency: the deal with Bhutto and the
presidency-before-parliament election scheme.
The Minister of State for Information Technology resigned
today to protest Musharraf’s scheme for holding presidential elections while
remaining Chief of Army Staff.
Tonight’s Good
News, at least for Musharraf, is that the South Waziristan
tribal fighters have agreed to release 19 hostages today, which included 15
paramilitary soldiers abducted on 9 August. The government denied it made any
deals, but Dawn reported 10
militants were released from custody.
Fighting resumed in North Waziristan
however.
Afghanistan:
For
the record. A spokesman for the Coalition
forces admitted today that US forces did not have permission from Pakistan
to attack Taliban positions across the border, contradicting the statement by
an official spokesperson on Sunday. An investigation showed no such authority had
been granted from Pakistan. "We regret the miscommunication in this
event," Brigadier General Joseph Votel said.
The Afghan news service Pajhwok reported that the Taliban
might release the 19 South Korean hostages in “a couple of days,” now that
South Korea has agreed to the Taliban terms. The Taliban held a news conference
today announcing the successful negotiations. To obtain the release, the South
Korean government agreed to stop its Christian missionary activities and to
withdraw its military contingent from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
A Japanese news agency reported on Saturday that the ransom was $100,000 for
each hostage.
Iran: President
Ahmadi-nejad told a news conference that his country is ready to fill the power
vacuum in Iraq.
He said the United States'
power there is collapsing and that Iran
will fill the resulting vacuum "with the help of neighbors and regional
friends like Saudi Arabia,
and with the help of the Iraqi nation."
The government doubled the monthly gasoline ration from 22
to 44 gallons during the summer holiday period.
Iraq: Police imposed a curfew in the Shiite holy
city Karbala
following gunfights that killed 35 and wounded possibly 100 others during a
Shiite religious celebration on 27 and 28 August. They also ordered a million pilgrims to leave
Karbala.
The Associated Press reported remarks from unnamed Interior
Ministry official that Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army was responsible for attacks
on Karbala
security forces. Al Jazeerah quoted officials in Karbala who claim members of Sadr’s Mahdi
Army started the fighting by attacking Iraqi police. Today Sadr asked his
followers to remain calm and not participate in the unrest, according to one of
his aides.
The initial reports suggested Shiite factions were fighting
each other which seemed implausible during religious observances that celebrate
a core Shii mystery. A fight between Sadr’s men and the police over control of
crowd access to the Shii shrine in Karbala
is an entirely predictable development if the police tried to take charge. That is an entirely different explanation of
the shootings than reported by the international media. Shiite militias have
been more effective in protecting shrines in Karbala and Najaf than all other security
forces. In these cities, the government is the Shiite clerisy.
Turkey:
The 11th President of Turkey
is Abdullah Gul, the first president not from a secular party in the 84-year
history of modern Turkey. Gul was elected today on the third ballot, as
expected. He has already been given the oath of office. In his first statement,
Gul promised to defend secularism and to pursue Turkey’s admission to the European
Union.
Yesterday, in anticipation that Gul would win, the Chief of
the General Staff, General Yasar Buyukanit posted a warning on the army’s web
site. "Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who
can't embrace Turkey's
unitary nature, and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular
nature of the Turkish
Republic." The
former is a reference to the Kurdish communists, the PUK, and the latter is a
reference to Islamic extremists in the Justice and Development Party (AKP)
which now controls the Presidency and the parliament.
Russia-Belarus:
The Russian Ambassador to Belarus,
Aleksandr Surikov, said today that Russia
is not planning to deploy any nuclear weapons on the territory of the Belarus Republic. He did not retract yesterday’s
statement that new Russian military installations and nuclear facilities could
be located in Belarus as a
response to the proposed deployment of elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe.
Some analysts scoffed at Surikov’s statements because
political and economic ties between Belarus
and Russia
are often strained. Belarus
has a habit of not paying its energy bill, for example. However, the security
relationship has not been fettered by civilian disputes. The use of an
ambassador to make such statements is either a mistake or a deliberate test of
international reaction to an item under deliberation. Russian air defense
missile units could return to Belarus.
A strong US
statement of some kind is probably appropriate.
Air Force Major General and Long-Range Aviation Commander
Pavel Androsov issued a clarification yesterday. He told the Russian media that
Russian bombers on range patrols are not carrying nuclear warheads,
Ethiopia-Eritrea: A Foreign Ministry spokesman said
yesterday Ethiopia will
attend a meeting on 6 September in The Hague to
discuss its disputed border with Eritrea. However, the spokesman
charged "The substantial deployment of Eritrean troops into the
demilitarized zone, Eritrea's
continued constraints on (U.N. peacekeepers) ... and violations of the
cessation of hostilities make conditions for demarcation non-existent." Eritrean
officials were not immediately available to comment.
The two countries fought a succession of military actions,
involving a combined total of nearly a million men, between 1998 and 2000 over
three segments of the border, all of which have nearly no economic or other
value. The two signed a peace agreement
in Algiers in 2000 and agreed to submit to
binding arbitration by a claims commission and a boundary commission in The Hague.
The process broke down when the commission’s recommendations
did not support Ethiopia’s
claims. The meeting is not likely to
settle the border, but it should reduce tension. Eritrea
has denounced Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia and has provided military
and economic help to the Islamic Courts Union forces that the Ethiopians helped
overthrow.
Sierra
Leone: After two days of political violence, President
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in TV address today warned, “All those responsible for the
violence and lawlessness should be prepared for the consequences,"
President Kabbah warned. The government shall not hesitate for one moment to
declare a state of public emergency if the current state of intimidation,
molestation and violent acts is not stopped immediately."
The BBC reported two days of clashes have marred campaigning
for the second round of presidential elections. The memories of a decade of
barbaric civil war that ended just a few years ago have not matured the
political activists or their leaders, evidently. This is a study in democracy.
dNovus RDI
San Antonio, Texas
78232
Phone:
(210) 497-7744 Fax: 497-7709
www.dNovus.com