Yes, second place feels like losing

Iraq is now the second worst failed state in the world, according to the recently released Fund for Peace study. The BBC has some of the details:

Iraq ranks as the world's second most unstable country, according to an annual index of failed states.

The report - compiled by the US Foreign Policy magazine and the US-based Fund for Peace think-tank - ranks nations according to their vulnerability.

Judged according to 12 criteria, including internal conflict and society breakdown, states range from the most failed, Sudan, to the least, Norway.

As I've written previously, it is much easier to create a failed state that to rescue one.

Afghanistan is #8 on the list.


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The believers

Scott Shane had an interesting story in The New York Times dated June 23 that discussed the various people who still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to a couple of members of Congress, the story mentions a name my readers might have recognized -- Duane Clarridge. Dax, as he's known, thinks the WMD went to the Sudan on a ship.

The article includes a couple of new quotes from Charles Duelfer, who wrote the official US government report concluding the WMD programs ended more than a decade ago:

"I've seen lots of good-hearted people who thought they saw something," he said. "But none of the reports have panned out."

The article gives a lot of space to a researcher who appears to be the source for one of Representative Curt Weldon's claims.

Dave Gaubatz, described as "an Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq" says that he knows of four critical sites in Iraq that have never been inspected. Iraqis living near those spots told him there were underground WMD bunkers.

As I've said before, even if these believers are right, it means the Bush war has been a security disaster. These are still uninspected and unsecured sites nearly twelve hundred days into the war!

Gaubatz told the NYT he does not "want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands." Is it too late? Does anyone know with certainty?

Maybe someone should have thought of these risks three years ago. We already know that the US failed to secure known ammo dumps that had powerful "conventional" explosives.

It is clear why no one in the administration seems eager to pursue this lead as it is now a lose-lose situation. If they look at those sites and there are weapons, they will look like fools for failing to look before. And people might wonder why these places weren't secured.

If they look and there are no signs of any weapons ever being in the identified spots, the hunt would just remind everyone of a sore point. There were no wmd.

If they look and the weapons are gone, with evidence that they were once there, then it suggests a security disaster: missing wmd.

This last result would make this the Tora Bora story of wmd.


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Filed as: Iraq wmd

Terrorism: State sponsor update

For more than 25 years, the State Department has been required to list all state sponsors of terrorism because such a designation precludes the US from providing foreign aid and exporting arms. Here's the latest list:

Country and Designation Date

Cuba, March 1, 1982
Iran, January 19, 1984
Libya, December 29, 1979
North Korea, January 20, 1988
Sudan, August 12, 1993
Syria, December 29, 1979

On October 20, 2004, Iraq was formally removed from this list. Since May 2003, the President had made terror-related sanctions inapplicable to Iraq, under authority granted by Congress.

Iraq, of course, was previously removed from this list in February 1982, when the Reagan administration wanted to provide aid and trade credits during its war with Iraq, and was re-designated only after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. During that period, experts say that Iraq continued to sponsor terrorism.

In 2005, the State Department stopped publishing its annual report Patterns of Global Terrorism, claiming that the new National Counterterrorism Center will be publishing most of the same data. The NCTC's first report, however, is simply a chronology of 2004 incidents of terrorism.

After a bit of digging, I found the latest information about state-sponsorship of terrorism on the State Department's webpage. On April 27, 2005, Philip Zelikow, Counselor of the Department, and John Brennan, interim Director of NCTC, briefed the assembled media "on the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, and the statistical reports...prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center."

Country Reports on Terrorism is apparently the new State document that will replace the old Patterns annual report. The new report has a section on State Sponsors:

These countries provide a critical foundation for terrorist groups. Without state sponsors, terrorist groups would have a much more difficult time obtaining the funds, weapons, materials, and secure areas they require to plan and conduct operations. Most worrisome is that these countries also have the capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists.

We've heard all that before. US grievances about state sponsorship apparently haven't changed much.

However, State is claiming some US victories in the "war on terror." This is from Zelikow in the April briefing:

2004 was also marked by progress in decreasing the threat from states that sponsor terrorism – state-sponsored terrorism. Iraq's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism was formally rescinded in October 2004. Though they are still on the list, Libya and Sudan took significant steps to cooperate in the global war on terrorism.

Libya cooperated in the elimination of its WMD programs and resolved some old terror attacks by turning over suspects and paying reparations. Syria has taken some anti-al Qaeda measures, worked to close its open border with Iraq, and, oh by the way, "has not been implicated directly in an act of terrorism since 1986."

Before getting too excited by that last sentence, keep in mind that the 2000 report, released in April 2001 (about 20 weeks before the 9/11 attacks), concluded that "The [Iraqi] regime has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 in Kuwait." Within two years, the US invaded Iraq, citing its sponsorship of terrorism.

Iran is now the state of greatest concern:

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2004. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security were involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals.

Iran continued to be unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida members it detained in 2003. Iran has refused to identify publicly these senior members in its custody on “security grounds.” Iran has also resisted numerous calls to transfer custody of its al-Qa’ida detainees to their countries of origin or third countries for interrogation and/or trial.

The cited examples of state sponsorship all involve Iranian support for anti-Israeli terrorists, though the document references "reports" that Iraq may be sponsoring insurgent activity in Iraq.

On the bright side, NCTC's Brennan recognizes that focusing on state sponsorship of terror is a dated approach. The statute requiring the gathering of all this information references "international terrorism," but that's a misleading phrase as Brennan explained in the April briefing:

These criteria dated to a period of focus on state-sponsored terrorism in the early 1980s and not the transnational phenomena we confront now...."International" is also defined in the statute as "involving the citizens or territory of more than one country." And as I'll show you on the next chart, this definition, while appropriate for state-sponsored terrorism, is simply not as useful for the current trans-national threat we now face.

Maybe Brennan will be able to convince the Bush administration!

Darfur news

This week, 2 bits of news about genocide in the Sudan caught my eye.

First, from the top, down: The UN Security Council passed a French-sponsored resolution last week that recommended the International Criminal Court pursue the case. The BBC:

The UN has given a sealed list of 51 people suspected of carrying out atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region to the International Criminal Court.

Last week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution referring the situation in Darfur to the tribunal.

The list apparently includes government officials, as well as army, militia and rebel leaders.

The Sudan refuses to hand over any suspects, and it refers to the Bush administration's refusal to accept ICC jurisdiction to defend its position:

[Sudan's President Omar] al-Bashir swore "thrice in the name of Almighty Allah that I shall never hand any Sudanese national to a foreign court", he is quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

This would be the ICC's first case. It's potentially a big one since 200 to 300,000 people have died.

Second, from the bottom up: In response to student activism, Harvard has divested its investments in a Chinese oil company that does business in Sudan. This news was in the Globe, April 5:

Under mounting pressure from student activists, Harvard University announced yesterday that it will sell an estimated $4.4 million stake in PetroChina, whose parent company is closely tied to the Sudanese government, accused by the United States of waging a genocidal campaign to suppress rebels in Darfur...

"Divestment is not a step that Harvard takes lightly, but I believe there is a compelling case for action in these special circumstances, in light of the terrible situation still unfolding in Darfur and the leading role played by PetroChina's parent company in the Sudanese oil industry, which is so important to the Sudanese regime," said a statement released by Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers.

The article points out that Harvard is out in front on this issue, but that the University never fully divested from South Africa during the apartheid era. In 1990, however, Harvard divested from tobacco company stock.

Harvard owned $4.4 million worth of stock in the Chinese company, in its $23 billion endowment. Student groups are a bit worried about other companies that do business in the Sudan. Harvard's press release didn't mention any of them.

Given how worked up some Bush administration officials have been about the possibility that Europe might lift the arms embargo against China, Harvard's decision might not be about Darfur at all.

World's Worst Dictators

Last Sunday, Parade magazine released its latest annual list of the world's 10 worst dictators.

Don't laugh, as reported in the Times of India, it was "compiled by writer David Wallechinsky in consultation with Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders - human rights groups that 'have not hesitated to expose the policies of dictatorships of both the left and the right.'"

1. Kim Jong Il of North Korea
2. Omar al-Bashmir of Sudan
3. Than Shwe of Burma
4. Hu Jintao of China
5. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
6. Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya
7. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan
8. Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan
9. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
10. Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea

As pointed out by AlterNet, this is an interesting list because it brings these issues into the mainstream. After all, Parade has a "huge circulation of 35 million weekly with 77 million readers." Note: not everyone on the left is excited by this annual list.

How do these dictators figure into American foreign policy?

In a recent op-ed from The Australian, Texas A&M Professor Michael Desch pointed out that China is America's top trading partner and "the countries that have been among the US's closest allies in the global war on terrorism have been authoritarian regimes such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan."

The President mentioned a couple of those states in the State of the Union address a few weeks ago:

The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future. And the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.

He sure told them, eh? I'll bet the dictators in those allied states can barely sleep at night.

Bush said nothing about Pakistan, other than to praise them for helping to win the war on terror. China wasn't mentioned, save indirectly as a source of assistance in the ongoing effort to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

It is happening again

As reported in the Christian Science Monitor, Colin Powell said something today that no member of the Bush administration has said before:

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, said the situation in Darfur [Sudan]...qualified as "genocide." It was the first such declaration by a member of the Bush administration

Is it happening again?

And by that, I mean is the US (and the rest of the world) sitting back and watching a genocide, without doing much of anything to stop it?

The UN set Aug. 30 as a deadline to get the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed and bring them to justice, but so far the international community has not levied any sanctions. Thursday, Powell upped the ante.

"The US will propose that the next UN Security Council resolution on Sudan request a UN investigation into all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law that have occurred in Darfur, with a view to ensuring accountability," he said.

The State Department said in a report released Thursday that the 1,136 interviews by US officials with Darfur refugees revealed a "consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers." He said the evidence corroborates the specific intent of perpetrators to destroy a "group in whole or part" - using language from the 1948 genocide text.

Short version: we know enough to call it genocide, but we are still only going to recommend more study rather than action to stop it.

"Accountability" means paying for crimes after they are committed. Dick Cheney just argued that Bush administration foreign policy was pro-active, and wouldn't rely upon dated legalistic approaches regarding "criminal attacks." Of course, he was talking about terrorists striking the US, but really, what's the difference?

Innocent civilians in the Sudan are being brutally terrorized.

In the Presidential debates in 2000, Al Gore said that he regretted that the US didn't send more US troops in faster to provide "humanitarian relief measures" while hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Rwanda.

Asked the same question, George Bush said he would not have intervened to save even 600,000 people because no vital American interest was at stake. Sadly, the Clinton/Gore administration seemed to agree with this perspective at the time of the killings -- but Clinton apologized for the tardy action in March 1998.

In March 2004, Kofi Annan also apologized for the international community's "sins of omission."

As the neocons in the Bush administration have long argued, the US is the most powerful state in the world. If it says genocide is occurring, then it has a moral obligation to do something with that power to stop the crimes against humanity, even if the international law is too weak to force such action.

Visit the Amnesty International website for more information about the scope of the problem:

The reality in Darfur is that war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed with impunity and attacks by government-supported militias and government troops have led to the displacement of at least 1.2 million civilians within Darfur and an additional 200,000 refugees in Chad.

While humanitarian workers struggle to save the lives of the displaced, men, women and children remain at risk of attacks, including killings, rape and torture, by the very militia and government troops that forcibly displaced them.

The International Crisis Group provides an outline of what must be done:

History has shown that Khartoum will respond constructively to direct pressure, but this pressure must be concerted, consistent and genuine. Its sixteen-month ethnic cleansing campaign has elicited a slow-motion reaction, which is having a negligible positive impact and in some ways has made matters worse. Despite a series of high level visitors to Khartoum and Darfur, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Sudanese government has yet to fulfil its repeated commitments to neutralise the Janjaweed militias responsible for much of the violence. The international community has yet to make clear, as it must, that there will be a decisive cost to Sudan for that failure.

At minimum, tens of thousands of lives are at stake.

It is truly a global emergency of the first-order.

The Human Rights Watch webpage has a collection of very troubling photos.