DebateGate

Nasrin Alavi
The claim of rights by women in modern Iran builds on the pioneering work of earlier generations, reports Nasrin Alavi.

Iranians are the first to know how easy it is for a whole nation to be reduced to the rants of a senseless politician, or for images of a handful of shroud-wearing crazies burning the American flag in Tehran to reach the western media's front-pages. But how easy is it for thousands of Iranian teachers protesting outside the Iranian majlis (parliament) - as they did on Saturday 3 March 2007 - to merit any attention?

Not very, is the answer - and especially when the drums of war are being sounded. At such times, it is more convenient to dehumanise the prospective enemy than to see this enemy as it is - composed not of 70 million Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clones but of diligent nurses, factory workers, dear uncles and aunts, poets, writers, filmmakers, students cramming for their exams, lovelorn teenagers, and, yes, protesting teachers.

It is not only teachers who are protesting. On Sunday 4 March, around thirty-three Iranian women (see photos one & two) - as far removed from Ahmadinejad as you can get - were arrested in Tehran. These women had gathered outside Tehran's revolutionary court in solidarity with five of their friends, charged with organising a rally in June 2006 against discriminatory laws against women.

Only two days earlier, they had published an open letter asserting their rights to the freedom of peaceful assembly that are afforded them by the Islamic Republic's constitutional laws:

"International Women's Day is soon upon us as our nation endures a grave period. The internal policies of domination, duress and an ineffectual foreign policy - with an insistence on pursuing a nuclear energy programme - when we have lost the confidence and trust of the world; as the confrontational issues and the continuous warmongering policies of the United State and its allies around the world with the pretext of exporting democracy and human right through sanctions and military attack has presented us with a mounting predicament. On one side - with the absence of a democratic structure - we witness decisions being made on our behalf without our presence or the presence of our legitimate leaders. While at the other end we feel the circle of the siege around us increasingly tighten as we are threatened with sanctions and the nightmare of war....

... we announce our protest against all paternalistic policies, whether they be in the name of dishonest interpretations of Islam or with the pretext of human rights and democracy and we believe what the world community should insist upon debates on democracy and human rights and not nuclear energy, and all within peaceful diplomatic dialogue, not war and destruction....

... Despite all the pressures and obstacles the Iranian women's movement in now within its most enduring and active periods in recent history."

Women in Iran: repression and resistance
Shadi Sadr, publisher, lawyer and journalist, and another one of the women under arrest, wrote in 2004:

"Today Iranian women... have imposed themselves on a male-dominated society which still believes women should stay at home. Perhaps nobody sees us, but we exist and we make our mark on the world around us. I assure you that if you look around carefully, everywhere you will see our footsteps."

Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani wrote before her arrest:

"Perhaps we will be imprisoned and become weary with the continuous summons to court. Perhaps we will not be able to continue along our path and educate our female counterparts about the existence of such discriminatory laws. But, what will you do with the countless women who come into contact with the court system - in fact, these very courts are the best educational facilities for women, through which they quickly learn that in fact they have no rights. Yes, perhaps with your security planning and your modern technology, you may be able to isolate and paralyse the current generation of Iranian women's rights activists, and stop the progression of our campaign, but what will you do with the love that we plant in the hearts of our children? Perhaps with your advanced technology, you will be able to attack the hearts of our personal computers, but what will you do with our dreams?"

Nasrin Alavi is the author of We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Portobello Books, 2005). She spent her formative years in Iran, attended university in Britain and worked in London, and then returned to her birthplace to work for an NGO for a number of years. Today she lives in Britain.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/ViewPopUpArticle.jsp?id=3&articleId=4406

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 25, 2007; Page A07

The Justice Department has quietly opened a new prison unit in Indiana that houses a hodgepodge of second-tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims, whose ability to communicate with the outside world has been tightly restricted.

At the Communications Management Unit, or CMU, in Terre Haute, Ind., all telephone calls and mail are monitored, the number of phone calls limited and visits are restricted to a total of four hours per month, according to special rules enforced by the Justice Department's U.S. Bureau of Prisons. All inmate conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated.

The unit appears to be a less restrictive version of the "supermax" facility in Florence, Colo., which holds some of the United States' most notorious terrorists, including al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski.

The Indiana unit, by contrast, is part of a medium-security facility and includes inmates set to be released in as little as two years. Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said the unit's population will not be limited to inmates convicted of terrorism-related cases, though all of the prisoners fit that definition.

Prison officials said they already seek to fully monitor the mail and other communications of all 213 "terrorist inmates" in the system. "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," the bureau said in a summary of the CMU.

The unit, in Terre Haute's former death row, has received 17 inmates since it was launched in December and eventually will hold five times that number, officials said.

Defense lawyers and prisoner advocates complain that the unit's communication restrictions are unduly harsh for inmates not considered high security risks. They also say that the ethnic makeup of the CMU's population may indicate racial profiling. "If they really believed these people are serious terrorists, they wouldn't be in this unit," said David Fathi, staff counsel for the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They'd be in Colorado with [Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber and the rest of the people that the Bureau of Prisons thinks are serious threats."

The prison bureau has come under sharp criticism in recent months for failing to adequately monitor terrorist inmates' communications. The Justice Department's inspector general reported in October that three terrorists imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had sent nearly 100 letters to alleged terrorists overseas from the maximum-security facility in Colorado.

"The inclusion of this unit is one of the many things we're doing to improve our monitoring capabilities," Billingsley said.

According to prison records, current residents at Terre Haute include five members of the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni natives from Upstate New York who attended an al-Qaeda training camp. The unit also houses Randall Royer, a defendant prosecuted as part of the "Virginia jihad" case in Alexandria, and Enaam M. Arnaout, an Islamic charity director who pleaded guilty to diverting money to Islamic military groups in Bosnia and Chechnya.

The only non-Muslim inmates are an unidentified Colombian militant and Zvonko Busic, 61, former leader of a Croatian extremist group that hijacked a jetliner and set off a bomb that killed a police officer in 1976, according to prison records and defense lawyers.

Another CMU resident is Rafil Dhafir, 58, an Iraqi-born physician from Syracuse, N.Y., who was sentenced to 22 years for defrauding charity donors and conspiring to violate U.S. economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein's government.

continued at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022401231.html?nav=rss_nation/special

By David E. Sanger and Mark Mazzetti
Published: February 25, 2007

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces became far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.

The decision came after the White House concluded that Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Bush during a visit here in September. Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country's most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their training camps.

Now, American intelligence officials have concluded that the terrorist infrastructure is being rebuilt, and that while Pakistan has attacked some camps, its overall effort has flagged.

"He's made a number of assurances over the past few months, but the bottom line is that what they are doing now is not working," one senior administration official who deals often with Southeast Asia issues said late last week. "The message we're sending to him now is that the only thing that matters is results."

Democrats, who took control of Congress last month, have urged the White House to put greater pressure on Pakistan because of statements from American commanders that units based in Pakistan that are linked to the Taliban, Afghanistan's ousted rulers, are increasing their attacks into Afghanistan.

For the time being, officials say, the White House has ruled out unilateral strikes against the training camps that American spy satellites are monitoring in North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border. The fear is that such strikes would result in what one administration official referred to as a "shock to the stability" of Musharraf's government.

Musharraf, a savvy survivor in the brutal world of Pakistani politics, knows that the administration is hesitant to push him too far. If his government collapses, it is not clear who would succeed him or who would gain control over Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

But the spread of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas threatens to undermine a central element of Bush's argument that he is succeeding in the administration's effort to curb terrorism. The bomb plot disrupted in Britain last summer, involving plans to hijack airplanes, has been linked by British and American intelligence agencies to camps in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas.

Musharraf has told American officials that Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas in recent years so alienated locals that they no longer provide the central government with quality intelligence about the movements of senior Islamic militants.

Congressional Democrats have threatened to review military assistance and other aid to Pakistan unless they see evidence of aggressive attacks on Al Qaeda. The House last month passed a measure linking future military aid to White House certification that Pakistan "is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control."

Pakistan is now the fifth-largest recipient of American aid to foreign nations. Bush has proposed $785 million in aid to Pakistan in his new budget, including $300 million in military aid to help Pakistan combat Islamic radicalism in the country.

The rumblings from Congress give Bush and his top advisers a way of conveying the seriousness of the problem, officials said, without appearing to issue a direct threat to the proud Pakistani leader themselves.

"We think the Pakistani aid is at risk in Congress," said the senior official, who declined to speak on the record because the subject involved intelligence matters.

The administration has sent a series of emissaries to see the Pakistani leader in recent weeks, including the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates. Gates was charged with prompting more action in a region in which American forces operate with great constraints, if they are allowed in at all.

"This is not the type of relationship where we can order action," said an administration official involved in discussions over Pakistan policy. "We can strongly encourage."

Relations between Musharraf and Bush have always been tense, as the Pakistani leader veers between his need for American support and protection and his awareness that Pakistan's population — and intelligence service — have strong sympathies for Al Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban. Officials involved with the issue describe the current moment between the leaders as especially fraught.

Bush was deeply skeptical of the deal Musharraf struck with the tribal leaders last year, administration officials said at the time, fearing that it would limit the government's powers to intercede in what Bush has called the "wild west" of Waziristan.

continued at: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/asia/web-0226pakistan.php

By Jennifer Loven
Associated Press
Sunday, February 25, 2007; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022400617.html?nav=rss_nation/special

Dozens of high-level officials joined in a White House drill yesterday to see how the government would respond if several cities were attacked simultaneously with bombs similar to those used against U.S. troops in Iraq.

White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend and the Homeland Security Council that she heads mapped out in advance a massive disaster involving improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The attack targeted 10 U.S. cities, both large and small, at the same time, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Townsend presided over the three-hour exercise, which brought the government's top homeland security officials to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. All Cabinet agencies were represented by their secretaries or other high-ranking officials, with about 90 participants in all, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

Stanzel said the drill revealed gaps in the government's ability to respond, but also showed that there have been many improvements since Hurricane Katrina. The storm exposed federal inadequacies when it devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. For instance, coordination with state and local authorities and the ability to get federal resources in place quickly -- key missteps after Katrina -- appeared much better now, Stanzel said.

President Bush went on a bike ride yesterday morning and did not take part in the test.

The IED attacks are common in Iraq, but Stanzel said the test was not inspired by new intelligence or any increased chatter about terrorists' desire to use IEDs inside the United States.

This was the administration's fourth such "tabletop" exercise since the first in December 2005. That exercise focused on an avian flu pandemic.

The factional fighting in the Palestinian territories is over—at least for the time being. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now has the tough job of revitalizing a peace process that has been stalled for seven years. FP spoke with Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, on Condi's difficult road ahead.

FOREIGN POLICY: Why were the Palestinians fighting each other?

Aaron Miller: For the first time since Palestinians returned to the West Bank and Gaza under the guise of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian politics are real, but now divisive and violent. When Arafat was in charge, he kept a tight rein on meaningful politics using money and guns, and through participating in a reasonably successful [peace] process between 1994 and the second Intifada at the end of the Clinton administration. As a historically legitimate figure, Arafat could co-opt, preempt, and not only threaten, but act, if he got the sense that Hamas was directly threatening the interests of the Palestinian Authority.

With Arafat’s death, the emergence of [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as] Abu Mazen, the peace process going south, Iranian support, Hezbollah’s successes, and Hamas’s electoral success, Hamas is doing well. It is now better organized, less corrupt. It has managed to attract a significant amount of the Palestinian public, either by ministering to its needs better than the dysfunctional Palestinian Authority could or through resistance against the Israelis. You have a real clash between two different visions of Palestinian society for the first time.

The Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy was all tied to the successful pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process brokered by the Americans. Now that that has collapsed, Hamas perceives an opening. And they’ve done remarkably well, given their own dysfunction, the lack of international support, their identification with Iran, and the boycott that has essentially been imposed on them politically and economically.

FP: Let’s talk about the Mecca agreement that was recently brokered by the Saudis between Hamas and Abu Mazen. Some analysts are saying that Saudi Arabia, out of fear of Iran’s influence, has essentially taken control of the Palestinian Authority. Is that your impression?

AM: No. I think that the Saudis, understanding the emotional and political dangers inherent in a civil war between factions in Gaza—against the backdrop of Iraq, which concerns them greatly—wanted to end the most severe violence by effecting a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. The purpose of this agreement was not to set the stage for negotiations with Israel. Its purpose was local: Abu Mazen had to find a way to end the factional violence. And both sides could not leave Saudi Arabia, given the Saudis’ importance and financial leverage, without an agreement.

It was not done, as the Americans and the Israelis hoped, to create a basis on which Hamas could meet the three conditions of the Quartet: Recognize Israel’s right to exist, abandon violence, and accept all agreements previously signed by the Palestinian Authority. So Mecca, I think, disappointed the administration and clearly frustrated the Israelis.

FP: Do you think the Mecca agreement, by empowering Hamas, torpedoed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent three-way meeting with Olmert and Abbas?

AM: I don’t think it torpedoed it. Even if you didn’t have a Hamas problem, the secretary’s mission was excruciatingly difficult. You’ve got several problems that will continue to impede the prospects of a serious break.

Number one, you’ve got weak leaders. Both Abu Mazen and Ehud Olmert are prisoners of their constituencies. Arab-Israeli peacemaking is difficult enough when you have strong leadership. It took Begin and Sadat five years to complete an Israeli-Egyptian agreement, and this was basically territory for peace, with very little emotional, religious, or even security consequences in comparison to the Golan or the West Bank.

Second, the gaps betweens Israelis and Palestinians on the issues that Condoleezza Rice wanted to make progress on—Jerusalem, borders, and refugees—are enormous, and those gaps have only increased since the last time we wrestled with these issues nearly seven years ago at Camp David with Arafat, Barak, and Clinton.

Finally, you do have the emergence of non-state actors functioning in non-state environments—Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon—that have demonstrated not only a capacity to undermine central authority, but to defeat or create tremendous problems for far superior military powers.

These three factors make her mission excruciatingly difficult.

FP: So what, if anything, came out of Rice’s meeting that was positive?

AM: The situation today is more difficult than it was a month ago. Factional fighting has ended between Palestinians, even though political maneuvering has not, and you have a commitment on the part of Israel and the Palestinians to enter into discussions. The secretary may have launched a secret back channel with American participation so that the two sides, with our help, will begin to meet quietly. But there’s one basic reality you can’t escape: Hamas has emerged as a genuine and legitimate part of the Palestinian national establishment, and efforts to either beat it in the streets or isolate and boycott it economically have not succeeded in the course of a year.

It took us, when we were doing these negotiations, almost 20 years to induce the secular manifestation of Palestinian nationalism, the PLO and Fatah, into the negotiating process. The question now is how long will it take to induce the religious manifestation of Palestinian nationalism—Hamas—into a process. Given the political realities for the American administration and for Olmert, it’s a stretch to believe that either of them is going to be engaged in any sort of discussion or negotiation with Hamas anytime soon.

FP: Do you think that the Saudis are hoping that the United States will be willing to deal with Hamas?

AM: I think it’s a hope, but a misplaced one. The administration has maintained moral clarity and consistency on the issue of groups that espouse violence and terror. It won’t deal with their state sponsors, with Iran and Syria. It won’t deal with Hezbollah; it’s not going to deal with Islamic Jihad; it’s not going to deal with Hamas. We are prevented by statute from supporting Hamas with assistance. Politically, it’s a real stretch to imagine the administration in some sort of back-channel dialogue. For Olmert, who has been weakened by last summer’s Lebanon war, the chances that he’ll be able to induce Hamas into a process are pretty slim.

FP: What should Condoleezza Rice do now?

AM: What we need is not a two-day strategy, but a two-year strategy. The administration must make a judgment as to whether or not they consider Israeli-Palestinian peace to be a top priority. If they do, then I think much can be done, but that would involve a different kind of effort than the secretary has launched. What you really need are essentially three road maps:

First, an Israeli-Palestinian road map in which the United States would try to broker a ceasefire, channel aid to the Palestinian Authority, and create some sort of political dialogue, probably involving Israel transferring security responsibility from West Bank areas to the Palestinians.

Second, an Arab state road map in which the United States would bring together key Arab states (probably at the foreign minister level) and the Israeli foreign minister. As the peace process went forward, the Arabs would state what it is they’re prepared to do for the Palestinians in terms of financial assistance and for the Israelis in terms of political and diplomatic contacts.

Third, a U.S. road map in which we’d lay out probably no more than two pieces of paper containing the basic parameters—call them the Bush parameters—that would guide the permanent status negotiations. We wouldn’t force a negotiation, and the last thing we need is another Camp David summit, because it would fail. But we would essentially reaffirm the desirability and feasibility of final status negotiations.

FP: The Mecca agreement sounds promising, but it seems like the world is tuning out the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you think that’s true?

AM: I do. I think we all have gotten inured to the level of violence. In relationship to other terrible situations in the world, including Darfur, and what happens in Baghdad every single day, the Arab-Israeli conflict looks relatively stable. So, I think there has been a loss of interest, a loss of hope, and a sense that … this will kind of keep. The Arabs and the Israelis, perversely, have found a way to keep it manageable, as cruel as that may sound, in a way that other crises in this world have not been.

But I happen to be someone who believes that we need to pursue it aggressively because it is one of the few issues—I would argue the only issue—in the entire international system in which three very important things come together for us.

Number one, it is in our national interest to see this conflict managed and resolved. Number two, it is in our moral interest. It really is the right thing for us to do. And number three, we have a demonstrated capacity, when we’re serious, to make a bad situation better. I can’t think of any other issue on which these three factors come together.

Aaron David Miller is currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he's writing a book on America and the Arab-Israeli negotiations. Between 1988 and 2003, he served as an adviser to six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3743&page=1

A suspicious package at the Canadian embassy in Paris triggered an alert when a staff member had a nosebleed shortly after opening the envelope.

French police said initial tests showed the contents were non-toxic and that the alert was now over.

Officers wearing decontamination suits had evacuated the building in the centre of the French capital and closed off the Avenue Montaigne.

The package contained a piece of tissue soaked in an unknown fluid.

"We don't know what it was but it's not a toxic substance," said Florent Hivert, a spokesman for the Paris fire bridge.

He said the scare, which triggered an alert for possible radiological, bacteriological and chemical danger, was now over.

Reporters said the area surrounding the building, on one of the city's smartest streets, was blocked off and fire engines and police officers were present.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6374975.stm

Feb 16th 2007
From Economist.com
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8696412&fsrc=RSS

George Bush announces more troops for Afghanistan. Is America’s foreign policy becoming increasingly ad hoc?

“BUSH Commits One Additional Troop To Afghanistan” read a recent headline in the Onion, an online satirical American newspaper. The satirists nearly got it right: on Thursday February 15th, George Bush confirmed that a mini surge of 3,200 extra troops will be sent. He also called on America’s NATO allies to beef up their own presence there, more than five years after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul.

There are certainly good reasons to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, though it is unclear what a few thousand extra might achieve. The Taliban are likely, especially in Helmand province, to launch a series of new offensives as the winter snows begin to melt. Afghans are growing frustrated by the lack of recovery: without the imposition of law and order it is proving difficult to promote reconstruction, to fight corruption in government or to get the economy working.

Mr Bush may be motivated by domestic grumbles too. Among the many criticisms from the Democrats and some Republicans of his policy in Iraq is the charge that, while sending more than 20,000 additional soldiers to Baghdad, Mr Bush has been neglecting Afghanistan. Rather than plough more scarce resources into a failed war of choice in Iraq, runs this argument, America should do more to stamp out the insurgency in Afghanistan, the breeding ground of al-Qaeda. Thus Mr Bush’s promise of soldiers for Afghanistan may be intended to show that America still has some fight to spare.

But consider the many crises underway. The risk of military and diplomatic overstretch is prompting a more ad hoc, less ideological, approach to foreign policy. This week declassified army plans from 2002 suggested that the American government expected, by now, to have only 5,000 soldiers in a peaceful and well-run Iraq. Instead it has 132,000 troops trapped in the middle of a sectarian civil war. Add America’s military commitments on the Korean peninsula, in the Horn of Africa (recent American air strikes helped dislodge Islamists from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu) and in other parts of the Middle East, and one might conclude that even the world’s strongest armed forces are performing near their limit.

That might help to explain why more pragmatic diplomats were allowed to take the lead over North Korea this week. America is clearly trying to avoid a showdown there and has agreed, during six-nation talks in Beijing, to a deal that promises energy aid and warmer diplomatic ties for the dictatorship, if a nuclear facility is closed within 60 days. Compared with America’s previous hardline approach, this looks like an abrupt about-face.

Many conservatives are horrified. John Bolton, until recently America’s ambassador at the UN, said it would leave America looking through a “soda straw” at North Korea’s nuclear activities, and would encourage other would-be proliferators to seek pay-offs for merely obeying the rules. As it happens, Mr Bolton is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think-tank where Mr Bush announced the Afghanistan surge on Thursday. Other armchair warriors at the AEI have criticised any deal with North Korea that seems to reward Kim Jong Il for behaving badly.

In contrast, on Iran, the neocons who pushed for the war in Iraq seem to be in charge. Mr Bush has sent a carrier battle-group and anti-missile batteries towards Iran, and has turned up the rhetorical heat. Iran has been blamed for providing explosives used against Americans in Iraq, and Iranians have been detained there. On this front, the administration has looked so bellicose that both Democrats and some Republicans have fretted publicly about stumbling into yet another war.

There may be a grand strategy in the different ways of handling Iran and North Korea. Perhaps America worries less about the isolated and impoverished Asian country. Evidently there is more leverage over energy-poor North Korea than over oil-exporting Iran. Perhaps getting the North Koreans out of the nuclear business may help to isolate Iran. Or a more mundane motivation may be at play: America is fighting fires however it can on different fronts, no longer guided by a single clear ideology. Irving Kristol, a founding father of neoconservatism, said that a neocon was a liberal who had been “mugged by reality”. Now, perhaps, Mr Bush’s reactive diplomacy is showing what happens when the neocons themselves face muggers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea simultaneously.

Insurgencies Rarely Win – And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe)
By Donald Stoker
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3689

Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Bush administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.

The cold, hard truth about the Bush administration’s strategy of “surging” additional U.S. forces into Iraq is that it could work. Insurgencies are rarely as strong or successful as the public has come to believe. Iraq’s various insurgent groups have succeeded in creating a lot of chaos. But they’re likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term. Sending more American troops into Iraq with the aim of pacifying Baghdad could provide a foundation for their ultimate defeat, but only if the United States does not repeat its previous mistakes.

Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America’s collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam. This loss is generally credited to the brilliance and military virtues of the pajama-clad Vietcong. The Vietnamese may have been tough and persistent, but they were not brilliant. Rather, they were lucky—they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the United States. When the Vietcong went toe-to-toe with U.S. forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were decimated. When South Vietnam finally fell in 1975, it did so not to the Vietcong, but to regular units of the invading North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong insurgency contributed greatly to the erosion of the American public’s will to fight, but so did the way that President Lyndon Johnson and the American military waged the war. It was North Vietnam’s will and American failure, not skillful use of an insurgency, that were the keys to Hanoi’s victory.

Similar misunderstandings persist over the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, the other supposed example of guerrilla invincibility. But it was not the mujahidin’s strength that forced the Soviets to leave; it was the Soviet Union’s own economic and political weakness at home. In fact, the regime the Soviets established in Afghanistan was so formidable that it managed to survive for three years after the Red Army left.

Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known, and there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922, as well as Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962. But the list of failed insurgencies is longer: Malayan Communists, Greek Communists, Filipino Huks, Nicaraguan Contras, Communists in El Salvador, Che Guevara in Bolivia, the Boers in South Africa (twice), Savimbi in Angola, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru, to name just a few. If the current U.S. administration maintains its will, establishes security in Baghdad, and succeeds in building a functioning government and army, there is no reason that the Iraqi insurgency cannot be similarly destroyed, or at least reduced to the level of terrorist thugs.

Insurgencies generally fail if all they are able to do is fight an irregular war. Successful practitioners of the guerrilla art from Nathanael Greene in the American Revolution to Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War have insisted upon having a regular army for which their guerrilla forces served mainly as an adjunct. Insurgencies also have inherent weaknesses and disadvantages vis-à-vis an established state. They lack governmental authority, established training areas, and secure supply lines. The danger is that insurgents can create these things, if given the time to do so. And, once they have them, they are well on their way to establishing themselves as a functioning and powerful alternative to the government. If they reach this point, they can very well succeed.

That’s why the real question in Iraq is not whether the insurgency can be defeated—it can be. The real question is whether the United States might have already missed its chance to snuff it out. The United States has failed to provide internal security for the Iraqi populace. The result is a climate of fear and insecurity in areas of the country overrun by insurgents, particularly in Baghdad. This undermines confidence in the elected Iraqi government and makes it difficult for it to assert its authority over insurgent-dominated areas. Clearing out the insurgents and reestablishing security will take time and a lot of manpower. Sectarian violence adds a bloody wrinkle. The United States and the Iraqi government have to deal with Sunni and Shia insurgencies, as well as the added complication of al Qaeda guerrillas.

But the strategy of “surging” troops could offer a rare chance for success—if the Pentagon and the White House learn from their past mistakes. Previously, the U.S. military cleared areas such as Baghdad’s notorious Haifa Street, but then failed to follow up with security. So the insurgents simply returned to create havoc. As for the White House, it has so far failed to convince the Iraqi government to remove elements that undermine its authority, such as the Mahdi Army. Bush’s recent speech on Iraq included admissions of these failures, providing some hope that they might not be repeated.

That’s welcome news, because one thing is certain: time is running out. Combating an insurgency typically requires 8 to 11 years. But the administration has done such a poor job of managing U.S. public opinion, to say nothing of the war itself, that it has exhausted many of its reservoirs of support. One tragedy of the Iraq war may be that the administration’s new strategy came too late to avert a rare, decisive insurgent victory.

Donald Stoker is professor of strategy and policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program. His opinions are his own. He is the author or editor of a number of works, including the forthcoming From Mercenaries to Privatization: The Evolution of Military Advising, 1815-2007 (London: Routledge, 2007).