Better Off if the Europeans Had Never Got Involved

 

 

In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview today, Jeremy Shapiro, Director of Research at the Center on the US and Europe at Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, mentions that the Unites States would have been better off if the European had never been involved in Afghanistan. “The European effort, including the German one, has been absolutely appalling in this area,” he sighed.

The Americans are at war in Afghanistan. They don’t need allies who don’t even know about that simple fact. When I recently asked a specific question to a respective officer of the German Armed Forces, he could only confirm that Germany is actually not at war in Afghanistan.

 

It is an embarrassing, in a way humiliating situation, the German Bundestag has sent its soldiers to the region. Some have been killed already in terroristic attacks, but the German Defense Minister is not ready, or doesn’t dare, to call a dead soldier a KIA. So, instead of freezing in fear and waiting for President Barrack Obama calling for new troops, rather admit that the concept of pacification and build-up democracy has fundamentally failed. And send these soldiers home. Let America win its war against terror alone.

 

 

 

They’ll Never Forget!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 2^nd of August 1990, Kuwait, the small country in the corner of the Persian Gulf was invaded by Iraqi troops. The tanks overran the tiny post Abdaly, about 50 km north of the Al Mutlaa ridge. Saddam Hussein was pretty certain that the US would not interfere. He had enjoyed, for many years, a sort of friendship among rogues, and the handshake with Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 is unforgotten, when the first war in the region, against America’s arch-enemy Iran, culminated with poison gas on one side and children with little plastic keys sent into the mine fields on the other. Stunningly, both parties, Iraq and Iran, had been eagerly supported by the West. Israel had even sold arms to Iran. It was a worldwide desire that both bastards, Saddam’s and Khomeini’s regimes, should better bleed to death, and vanish. But dictatorships do not vanish easily. One million had died when this war, which saw battles in trenches and usage of mustard gas, 70 years after WWI, ceased in August 1988.

 

As other Arab states, Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war with Iran. But soon Saddam blamed Kuwait that it had drilled for oil during the war in Iraq’s territory. There were long-standing disputes about the northern borders of Kuwait with Iraq and the tiny Emirate. Britain had configured (apparently with straight edge and compass) the borders in the Middle East. Kuwait’s boundaries were defined in 1922 in the Uqair protocol signed by Percy Cox, the High Commissioner to Baghdad who met his colleague John More, the British Political Agent to Kuwait, and Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Saud, the first Saudi monarch.

 

For Saddam a safe access to the Persian Gulf was of strategic importance. Iraq has a coast line of not more than 40 km with the Shatt al-Arab defining the boundary to Iran. But there are two muddy islands, Warbah and Bubiyan, which are just located in the northern offshore sands of the Gulf without providing Iraq with any reasonable harbor. An impressive, 2400 m long concrete girder bridge links the Kuwaiti mainland with Bubiyan Island. It had been constructed in 1983. The wonderful “Bridge to Nowhere” (in fact, the road ends at the small Bubyian post in the swamps of the marshland), spanning the shallow Khawr as Sabiyah, was heavily damaged in the events which follow but quickly restored in the aftermath of the war. The shores are very muddy here. Chalets in small villages are used, as everywhere on Kuwait’s seaside, as getaways. But there is still a lot of rubble, remains from the war.

 

In the beginning of August temperatures usually reach their annual highs, 50 degrees Celsius (122 F). Saddam’s Iraqi Republican Guards came at early in the morning at 2 am. The Amir of Kuwait, HH Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah had fled already to the neighbouring Saudi Arabian deserts. His half-brother Sheikh Fahad, was shot and killed in the Royal residence Dasman Palace by the invaders. Kuwait became what Saddam has always claimed: Iraq;s 19^th province.

                                                        

Tired of the ongoing bad news from the Middle East, the international community at first only shrugged it off. Of course, Saudi Arabia was alarmed. And so were the USA. Saddam was suspected of going ahead with invading the oil fields in the eastern provinces of the weak monarchy, too.

 

How persistent lies and war-time propaganda may lead to a change in the World’s public opinion has been better learned 12 years later, in the preparation of the next, the 3^rd Gulf War. In 1990, after Saddam had ruthlessly invaded the tiny Emirate in the corner of the Persian Gulf, it was not about weapons of mass destruction what finally led to Kuwait’s liberation by a broad coalition force. There was a bizarre story which suddenly found its way to the mass media: the incubator lie. A 15-year old Kuwaiti nurse reported atrocities of Iraqis in hospitals. In verbal testimony to the US Congress she alleged that she had witnessed that infants were taken out of incubators (which were taken to Baghdad later-on). The contentious Californian Representative, Democrat Tom Lantos put forward, as a co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, this story. Later it turned out that ‘Nurse Nayirah’ was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and her allegations baseless propaganda. Lantos played, by the way, a similar sinister role on the eve of the next Gulf war in 2002.

 

There were other liars involved in the incubator case. A Kuwaiti dentist, Dr. Ibraheem Behbehani, who was at that time head of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent, testified (as a “Dr. Issah Ibrahim”) that he had supervised the burial of 120 newborn babies after the Iraqi invasion, and personally buried 40 newborn babies “that had been taken from their incubators by (Iraqi) soldiers”. He later admitted that he had never seen babies taken from the incubators. Dr. Behbehani is now an Assistant Professor at Kuwait University working in the Department of Diagnostic Sciences.

 

“Truth is always the first casualty”, as Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, 1991.

 

“Just how rapidly this happens can be illustrated by the case of the premature Kuwait babies, supposedly left to die last August by Iraqis who then removed the incubators to Baghdad. It has become the tale used by the Kuwait government in exile, as well as by President Bush, who invoked Iraqi horrors inflicted upon the innocent children of Kuwait in his speech. It should be said right away that there are thousands of examples of such Iraqi brutality and denial of elementary human rights, not just in Kuwait but in Iraq. But the story of baby mass murder is untrue.”

 

Anyway, an international coalition force (of the keen and willing) launched Operation Desert Storm, which lasted from January 17 until February 26, 1991. Iraqi troops were wiped out of Kuwait within a couple of weeks. Kuwait was freed, and the Kuwaiti will never forget, grateful and humble. Saddam then showed the World another unbelievable escalation of war, with finally setting the oil wells on fire, an ecological warfare never having been seen before. He was hanged for his crimes against Humanity on December 30, 2006.

 

The day of Liberation, February 26, is celebrated in Kuwait every year together with its National Day on February 25.

 

Congratulations, people of Kuwait! And God bless you!

 

When I asked one of my students at Kuwait University, what event is celebrated on National Day, she responded: “Oh, we became independent in 1961. But, actually, we have never been dependent!”  

First published at Salmiya.

 

     

No New Concern?

Of course, the old ones were repeated. In the latest report on Iran of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been published yesterday, it is once more concluded that,

 

“[r]egrettably, as a result of the continued lack of cooperation by Iran in connection with the remaining issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency has not made any substantive progress on these issues. As indicated in previous reports of the Director General, for the Agency to make such progress, Iran needs to provide substantive information, and access to relevant documentation, locations and individuals, in connection with all of the outstanding issues. With respect to the alleged studies in particular, an important first step is for Iran to clarify the extent to which information contained in the documentation which Iran was shown, and given the opportunity to study, is factually correct and where, in its view, such information may have been modified or relates to non-proliferation purposes.“

 

The last part (the ‘alleged studies’) relates to the ‘laptop’ and ‘green salt’ allegations which, according to Tehran, had been ‘fabricated’. The militant Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), which has very recently been removed from the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations, had provided U.S. intelligence in 2004 with a stolen laptop with suggestive evidence for a small-scale facility to produce uranium gas.

 

The IAEA furthermore concludes that,

 

“[u]nless Iran implements the above transparency measures and the Additional Protocol, as required by the Security Council, the Agency will not be in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran. The Director General continues to urge Iran to implement all measures required to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme at the earliest possible date. The Director General, at the same time, urges Member States which have provided such documentation to the Agency to agree to the Agency’s providing copies thereof to Iran.”

 

It is self-evident that in the case of alleged forgery Iran should in fact be provided with the original files.

 

Again, it is made clear that,

 

“[c]ontrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not supended its enrichment related activities or its work on heavy water-related projects, including the construction of the heavy water moderated research reactor, IR-40 [located at Arak], and the production of the fuel for that reactor.”

 

Three remarkable statements are listed in the report. First, Iran has increased the number of centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant in Natanz, which are supposed to enrich uranium, to more than 5500. However, it has not increased the number of centrifuges which are already enriching uranium. Their number is till below 4000. Secondly, the IAEA reports Iranian claims that, since November 18 2008 and January 31, 2009, the country had produced 171 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) hexafluoride. Altogether, Iran has thus produced 1010 kg of LEU since February 2007, when fuelling the centrifuges in Natanz had begun. Thirdly, upon an inspection at the Fuel Manufacturing Plant [in Esfahan] “[i]t was noted that the process line for the production of natural uranium pellets for the heavy water reactor fuel had been completed and fuel rods were being produced.” The IAEA report mentions that using satellite imagery, there is proof that the Heavy Water Production Plant in Arak now appears to be in operational condition.”

 

The key for any progress lies in ratifying the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory. Tehran’s consistently declaimed litany that “a broader access would expose sensitive information related to its conventional military and missile related activities” must eventually be countered with a comprehensive security guarantee. It’s high time to get out of this impasse.

 

Kind of Blue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When did I eventually buy this recording (on CD, of course)? It must have been in the late 1980s. When I became interested in Jazz, 1977 or 1978, it was that of Miles’ epigones: Chick Corea, whatever he did; John McLaughlin’s Shakti; Joe Zawinul’s Weather Report. Believe it or not, I was a blood donor during my undergraduate studies in the 1970s, with the mere purpose to be able to buy every three month another LP of my heroes. Miles was sick at that time. He had disappeared from the scene. It was a couple of years before his long-awaited comeback with “The Man with the Horn”, 1980. To be honest, I didn’t love that album. I was more interested in 10 years old Bitches Brew, for me still egregious music.

 

I had an academic career, consuming, both time and energy. I kept interested in modern music, Rock music attracted more of my attention. I never missed Miles, however. For some time my motto became “So what?”, and I was humming that phrase when necessary. I loved the simplicity of that particular piece. I saw him only once, in the end of the 1980s, a couple of months only before he deceased. It was a magic moment. Miles was already very frail but I saw how he was inspiring his very young band members, in particular Foley McCreary (what has happened to him?).

 

Kind of Blue had been recorded 50 years ago, on only two occasions: March 2 and April 22, 1959. It was released in October that very year. Three geniuses were involved, Miles (tp), John Coltrane (ts) and Bill Evans (p), as well as four exceptional musicians, Cannonball Adderly (as), Paul Chambers (b), Jimmy Cobb (dr), and Wynton Kelly (p, only on Freddie Freeloader).

 

Kind of Blue is considered that Jazz album of all time. Maybe it’s true. Did it change my life? Not at all! Thank you, Miles, anyway.

 

Opportunities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks ago, Iran had launched its first satellite into orbit. It is hoped (and Iranian officials are not getting tired to emphasize) that Hope (the name of the satellite, omid in Farsi) will increase our knowledge and eventually lead to more harmony and peace on Earth.

Its inhabitants do well (especially when considering the most recent underestimations of what is called global warming) when taking a search for alternative places to live into serious consideration. One extraordinary and most beautiful area (although barren and yet icy cold) might be the Victoria Crater on Mars, an impact crater at the Meridiani Planum near the equator of the planet. The crater is about 800 meters in diameter and had been visiting by Mars roboter Exploration Rover Opportunity. That little sojourner of our second nearest neighbor in space can actually be seen on the image TRA_000873_180 which was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on October 3, 2006. After 2 ½ years, Opportunity (the robot) had just arrived at the rim of the Victoria crater after a drive of more than 9 kilometers. Provided high resolution, it can be seen roughly at the “10 o’clock” position along the rim of the crater. Whether it has crashed into the crater in the meantime is not known to me.

 

Crater Victoria has a distinctive scalloped shape of its rim. Erosion and material having fallen down the crater walls can be seen on the picture. The very special sand dunes in the center of the crater remind of similar structures in the Rub’ Al Khali of the Arabian Peninsula or the Dashte Lut in Iran.

 

Thanks to John Baez for attracting my attention to the beautiful crater.

 

 

Shut Down for Maintenance

Yesterday’s report to the Congress of Dennis C. Blair, the new director of America’s national intelligence agencies, made clear that the global financial crisis might be a greater threat to the United States than, for instance, Al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it is not only threatening the US. According to Mr. Blair, who delivered his report to the Senate Intelligence Committee, roughly a quarter of the world’s nations have experiences “low-level instability such as government changes” as a result of the current slowdown in the global economy.

 

Somewhat eagerly awaited was, of course, this year’s estimate of Iran’s nuclear program by the agencies. Whether Iran’s allegedly successful launch of a ‘rocket’ into orbit two weeks ago can actually be considered as the country’s “dogged development of a deliverable nuclear weapon”, as Mr. Blair mentioned at the hearing, might in fact be doubtful. Even he admitted, and I suppose that this statement is based on lack of further information, that a political decision about whether or not Iran is turned into a full-fledged nuclear power has so far not been made by the leaders in Tehran. “I don’t think it’s a done deal either way,” he is cited.

 

So,  most probably, no further evidence had been accumulated since the 2007 national intelligence estimate (NIE) which concluded, “with high confidence, that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” and that “with moderate-to-high confidence … Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”

 

Just in time, as usual, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) yesterday asked the question: Is Iran running out of yellow cake? Given the facts that the two uranium mines in Gachine near Bandar Abbas and Saghand in Iran’s central desert would yield only very low-grade uranium ore (it is mentioned in the report that Iran had admitted only 553 parts per million (ppm) at Saghand; less than 750 ppm is considered uneconomical to mine) of low quality and, further, that United Nations Security Council resolutions ban export to Iran especially of uranium ore, is it possible that Iran could slow all operations at Esfahan, the site where uranium hexafluoride, is produced from yellowcake (milled uranium ore) with which the centrifuges for uranium enrichment in Natanz are fueled? Is it possible that the facility is even shut down? A chart in the ISIS report should illustrate the slowing pace of uranium hexafluoride conversion at Esfahan between June 2006 (when production started) and November 2008, after, according to the November 2008 report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), maintenance had been done in the facility and conversion resumed. But its nonlinear time axis makes interpretation not easier.

 

Is Iran’s lack of uranium ore of questionable quality any reason not to be further alerted? Not for David Albright and his co-authors. According to the ISIS report, “[t]he current uranium ore shortfall illustrates a fundamental inconsistency between Iran’s stated intentions – a commercially viable, indigenously fueled, civil nuclear power industry, and its capabilities. If Iran’s objective is a latent nuclear weapons capability, it needs not invest resources in the further development of its mining industry. But if it wants to meet the requirements of even a single Bushehr-type reactor, it will need to do much more to develop its own indigenous mining capabilities, or settle its differences with the international community so that it can import sufficient quantities of yellowcake.”

 

It might be a further case of circular reasoning: If Iran’s completely insufficient nuclear program for civil purposes does not make any sense their true intention can only be to keep open the option of producing a nuclear bomb.

 

 

Joe Biden in Munich

“The Iranian people are a great people. The Persian civilisation is a great civilisation,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden conceded at the Security Conference in Munich. “But Iran has acted in ways that are not conducive to peace.” “Our administration is reviewing policy toward Iran, but this much is clear: We will be willing to talk,” he said. “We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear programme and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Is it illicit? The IAEA has not found evidence so far that Iran is diverting its nuclear program in order to construct a nuclear weapon. Biden might have further information from his intelligence agencies. But if he has not, he is distributing unproven allegations to the public as the Bush administration did before. And the public needs to know.

Yesterday, the Speaker of Iran’s Majlis, Ali Larijai, has made it clear in Munich that the carrot and stick policy of the West must be discarded. We don’t know whether Biden met Larijani in Munich. It is hoped anyway.

Desperately Seeking Recognition

A mini-satellite which has successfully (as they say) been launched into orbit is definitely better than an illicit test of a nuclear bomb, which some people still expect later this year in the Iranian desert. In its preparation of direct talks with the Obama administration, Tehran wants to show its might not only as a middle power in the region but its capability of developing the most advanced technology in spite of severe international sanctions. A most probably failed attempt of shooting a satellite into orbit had been conducted last year in August. Once again, Iran is sending signals that the urgently awaited talks with the new administration in Washington must commence soon but as equal interlocutors. While the name of the satellite (Omid) refers to one of Obama’s slogans (‘Hope’) in his campaign, it is in fact doubtful whether the international community will interpret the launching of the Safir-2 rocket as ‘unclenching its fist’.

 

Out of Control

When the Holy Father recently (in fact, immediately before the so-called Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27) rehabilitated and welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church the confessing holocaust denier Richard Williamson it was only another provocation of the German Pope. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a well-known hardliner and actually Prefect of the Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei (formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition), liked and likes to push the limits. One has to remember, for instance, Benedict’s infamous lecture in 2006, when he visited Regensburg University und insulted millions of Muslims by quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in a discussion with Persian scholar (probably in 1391 CE in a winter camp at Ankara):

 

„Zeig mir doch, was Mohammed Neues gebracht hat, und da wirst du nur Schlechtes und Inhumanes finden wie dies, daß er vorgeschrieben hat, den Glauben, den er predigte, durch das Schwert zu verbreiten.“

 

He later distanced himself from the quotation when he added footnotes to the text of his speech, which had not been there when it was published at the Vatican’s web page. Particularly revealing might be the following:

 

„[3]Controverse VII 2c; bei Khoury S. 142/143; Förstel Bd. I, VII. Dialog 1.5  S. 240/241. Dieses Zitat ist in der muslimischen Welt leider als Ausdruck meiner eigenen Position aufgefaßt worden und hat so begreiflicherweise Empörung hervorgerufen. Ich hoffe, daß der Leser meines Textes sofort erkennen kann, daß dieser Satz nicht meine eigene Haltung dem Koran gegenüber ausdrückt, dem gegenüber ich die Ehrfurcht empfinde, die dem heiligen Buch einer großen Religion gebührt. Bei der Zitation des Texts von Kaiser Manuel II. ging es mir einzig darum, auf den wesentlichen Zusammenhang zwischen Glaube und Vernunft hinzuführen. In diesem Punkt stimme ich Manuel zu, ohne mir deshalb seine Polemik zuzueignen.“

 

 

This is Pope Benedict’s typical strategy. As a scholar, even Professor in Theology, he certainly knows or should know [1] the potential explosive force of his words and deeds in a world right now struggling in a so-called War on Terror, which in fact is about religion, and, in particular, Islam [2]. It was a purposeful provocation, especially when considering the time he was talking about. In the 14^th century, the Byzantine Empire was in agony and the Islamic world had been shaken by the Mongolian conquests. There had been centuries of war in the region. Manuel’s quotation was completely taken out the context. Benedict’s main intention was rather to point to the inevitable connection of Faith and Reason. He wants to make the point that God acts, of course, su logw, with logos, meaning rationality. A bitter irony of Benedict’s argument is that, at that time, Science and Art reached its climax in the Islamic world, not in Christianity, which was still bound in the dark middle ages.

 

What Pope Benedict XVI thinks when he commits highly symbolic acts, is not really known. I am afraid he is a hypocrite. When he visited Istanbul later in 2006 (annoyingly, he talked about ‘Constantinople’ in the preparation of his visit of senior Muslim, Catholic and Greek Orthodox clerics) he paused at Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the ‘Blue Mosque’) together with Muslim clerics and in fact seemed to pray in the Makkah direction.

 

Pope Benedict should make very clear that anti-Semitism is not compatible with the message of Christ the crucified Jesus Christ and has no place in any Christian church. The above-mentioned bishop should be brought to justice rather than being welcomed back into the Catholic Church, almost an accolade. Everything else would only very badly reflect on a German Pope who might have not understood his lessons from history well.

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Maybe he doesn’t. In his Regensburg speech he refers to verse 2:256 in the Qur’an stating that “[T]here is no compulsion in religion …” was an early verse when the Prophet Muhammad was supposed to be powerless. In fact, the second Surah is one of the latest in the Qur’an, revealed after the hijra (622 CE) in Madinah, at a time when the Muslim state had established itself for the first time.

 

[2] There were some public protests in the West Bank where Christian churches were set on fire. An Italian nun was killed by Somali gunmen.