http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgkvYmelMFQ

The Other Side: Shooting drones

Young film-maker Muhammad Danish Qasim talks about his short film The Other Side which has won the NFFTY award. GRAPHIC: SAMRA AAMIR

 

KARACHI: 

While seasoned film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made us proud with an Oscar award this year, it seems young film-makers are not far behind as they are working on interesting and unique projects that are garnering attention and recognition for Pakistan. One of these talented minds is Iqra University’s Media Science student Muhammad Danish Qasim whose short film The Other Side has created a buzz in Pakistan as well as at international festivals.

Plot

More than even the film itself, it is the subject that the film tackles which has helped Qasim get people to sit up and take notice. The Other Side revolves around a school-going child in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan. The child’s neighborhood gets bombed after the people of the region are suspected for some notorious activities. He ends up losing all of his loved ones during the bombing and later becomes part of an established terrorists group who exploit his loss and innocence for their own interests.

On the reasons for picking such a sensitive topic, the film-maker said, “Most of the films being made right now are based on social issues, so we picked up an issue of international importance which is the abrogation of our national space by foreign countries.”

When asked how this film on terrorism will be different from all the others that have been released since 9/11, he said, “The film takes the audience very close to the damage caused by drone attacks. I have tried my best to connect all the dots that lead to a drone attack and have shot the prevailing aftermath of such attacks in a very realistic and raw manner.”

Awards

The film has already won the Audience Award for the Best Movie in Across the Globe Category of the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle, Washington this year. However, despite this, Qasmi was denied a visa to attend the festival. “I believe the most probable reason for the visa denial was the sensitive subject of my film,” says Qasim. He recalls that when the visa officer asked about the subject matter of the film, he suggested making changes in the letter issued by his University upon hearing that the film dealt with terrorism and drone attacks.

“Although I made the changes to the letter according to the visa officer’s recommendation, they still rejected the visa and did not disclose the reason for it,” says a disappointed Qasim.

According to Qasim, “NFFTY is considered to be the biggest event for young film-makers of the world. Film schools as well as potential Hollywood producers attend the event in order to interact with young, talented film-makers. I’m disappointed that my team, especially my crew members Atiqullah, Ali Raza Mukhtar Ali and Waqas Waheed Awan, who made the film possible with their hard work and support, missed out on a major opportunity to represent Pakistan on an international forum.”

Problems along the way

Although the film’s plot is set in Miranshah, the shooting had to be done on the outskirts of Quetta city. “On the second day of our shoot, a tribal war started between two different clans of the area. We were on the brink of losing our lives as well as the footage for this film, fortunately things worked in our favour,” recalled Qasim.

What’s ahead?

After his final thesis film, Qasim plans to pursue a Masters in Film. However, the limited number of film schools and the lack of structured film programmes in Pakistan have been forcing youngsters to study abroad. He believes that film-makers in Pakistan end up pursuing other careers instead of film-making as the business is not lucrative enough as a primary occupation. He suggested that the government should form a committee to monitor the film school curricula as well as the placement of graduates. If this is asking for too much, he recommends that there at least should be a film-makers union.

“If someone from Hollywood wants to contact a Pakistani film-maker, he or she should contact it through a society, maybe a guild or a department of a certain ministry that facilitates and looks over such issues,” said Qasim.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2012.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/380304/the-other-side-shooting-drones/

Emotion and logic

Gilani has said that in the future the government will not make decisions which are “emotional”.

Now that the six-month standoff with the US over Nato supply routes finally seems to be over, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has said that in the future the government will not make decisions which are “emotional”. This was a tacit admission that Pakistan may indeed have taken steps that could be justified only as a matter of honour and not as policy decisions. By some estimates, Pakistan will earn up to one million dollars a day from the 600 or so Nato trucks that will ply our roads daily and also have over a billion dollars released from the coalition support fund that were due to us. Discarding emotions, it seems, has immediate financial effects.

In this case, taking a calm decision over the future of our relations with the US was certainly the right thing to do. But more than the civilian government, it is the establishment which needs to learn this lesson. For too long now, it has been guided by pure emotion rather than strategic concerns. From the occupation of Siachen to the insistence on asking the US for an apology for the Salala killings, it seems as if the whole issue of honour was being managed (to use a euphemism) by the military establishment. That has meant a lot of emotional chest-thumping and rhetoric when what was really needed was realism and pragmatism. The military, too, would do well to heed the prime minister’s sensible words in the future.

The country as a whole, in fact, could do with a lot less emotion. Phenomena like honour killings stem from emotion, not rationality. The anti-Americanism that permeates our body politic is again spurred by an emotional sense that the US is our enemy. We come to that conclusion without rationally considering the political and financial benefits of an alliance with the US or ever look at the damage our country would suffer should we completely break off ties with the Americans. These are decisions that need to be carefully considered because their effects will be felt for a number of years. One slight to our honour should not be enough for us to take emotional decisions that we will eventually come to regret.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2012.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/380322/emotion-and-logic/

Iran, Pakistan, Israel most negatively rated countries: BBC poll

Pakistan is the only country which rated its own influence as negative, stated poll results. SOURCE: BBC POLL

Pakistan was ranked second in the list of most negatively rated countries in the world by a global poll for BBC World Service, which surveyed 24,090 people around the world. 

Citizens of 22 countries were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone between December 6, 2011 and February 17, 2012. Polling was conducted by the international polling firm GlobeScan and its research partners in each country, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.

Pakistan was rated “mostly negative” by 51% of the respondents, getting placed just one spot above the most negatively rated country – Iran, which was rated negative by 55% of the total respondents.

According to the poll results, Pakistan is the only country which rated its own influence as negative.

A negative view of Pakistan declined by 4% as compared to 2011.

The survey results revealed that a negative view of Pakistan was found mostly in Western countries. Around 75% Americans, 69% Canadians and 72% Australians said Pakistan’s influence in the world is mainly negative. The pattern of negative perception was similar in the European countries. The view of Pakistan by India, country’s all-time arch rival, was negative as well.

Most of the respondents blamed Pakistan’s foreign policy and the poor treatment of its citizens for such a widespread negative perception of the country.

Out of 22 countries that were surveyed, Indonesia is the only one which holds a positive view of Pakistan.

Other findings

Japan was rated most positively by the majority of the respondents (58%), taking Germany’s last year position which had its positive ratings drop from 60% to 56%. This placed Germany in second place behind Japan.

Canada (53%) and the UK (51%) are the third and fourth most positively viewed countries.

China’s positive ratings rose from 46% to 50% this year.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/380329/iran-pakistan-israel-most-negatively-rated-countries-globally-bbc-poll/

SPEAKING FREELY
US punishes Iran for Palestinian resistance
By Ardeshir Ommani 

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. 

On a Sunday morning in Beirut, October 23, 1983, a yellow Mercedes Benz truck loaded with 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) of dynamite slammed against the four-story building that housed the US Battalion Landing Team Marine Headquarters. The explosion, which was heard throughout Beirut, killed 241 American servicemen. Minutes later a second truck, full of explosives, slammed against the barracks of French paratroopers nearby; the blast killed 58 French soldiers. The organization Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing. 

The question then arises: what had led to this attack, and why, thousands of miles away from their homelands, the American and French troops were in Beirut in 1983 – in the midst of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war (1975-1990)? 

The answer is directly related to the fact that on June 6, 1982, Israel, led by General Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon. The goal of the invasion was to wipe out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been pushed out of its homeland and forced to seek refuge in Lebanon. Israel’s attack was so brutal that it left its toxic trace on the Lebanese society for a long time. In 18 weeks, according to the Red Cross, as many as 17,000 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, were killed by Israeli aerial bombardment. Wherever the PLO was uprooted, a new organization that called itself the Party of God (Hezbollah) took root. Some 6,000 PLO fighters were forced out of Lebanon, mostly into Tunisia. During their presence in Lebanon, troops from the US, France, Italy and Israel backed the Christian Phalange and suppressed the Muslim majority. While in Lebanon, the so-called international peacekeeping force did not demand the total exit of Israeli soldiers from Lebanon. 

As a result on September 15, just five days after the multinational force had departed, Israeli troops directed the Christian militia to attack civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Israeli forces launched flares into the night sky to enable the killings. To the Lebanese Muslims it was not a secret that the US and France were behind the aggression and atrocities of the Zionist state. Masquerading as peacekeeping forces, the US Marines and the French paratroopers landed in Beirut again on September 24. Soon the United States administration of Ronald Reagan once again took the side of the Christian Phalangists and pressed against Druze and Shi’ite Muslims in central and southern Lebanon. The American and French so-called peacekeeping troops frequently used their firepower to shell Druze and Shi’ite positions in the mountains surrounding Beirut. 

Spotting the enemy at home, on April 18, 1983, four months before the major attacks, a suicide bomber drove his car into the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 16 Americans. The attacker was able to wipe out most of the CIA’s Middle East agents, who were meeting that day at the US Embassy. All these signs did not teach the US administration any useful lesson. On the contrary, US policy moved closer to the Phalangist and escalated its attacks on Druze and the poverty-stricken Shi’ite Muslims. Finally, the end result was that on October 23, 1983, the suicide bombers attacked the American and French barracks. 

As was shown above, “the most brilliant act of terrorism” [1] on the American and French military headquarters in Beirut in 1983 was a caustic criticism of the masses of wandering and poverty-stricken Palestinians and Shi’ite Muslims who were made homeless and destitute by the unilateral and voracious policies of the US administrations and overwhelming military forces of the Pentagon and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in favor of primarily Israel and a small minority of pro-imperialist Lebanese landlords, financiers and foreign tradesmen. 

That’s where the money is
The tragedy in Beirut was the result of two obvious reasons: that the US overt support for the Israeli policy of territorial expansion and occupation of the Palestinian homeland made the US credibility and its military forces targets of the contending forces, and the Islamic Jihad organization had already professed its responsibility for the bombings. Therefore, what made the US legal system, the courts, the intelligence services and the New York Police Department to freeze and seize huge private, non-profit and governmental assets in the US and countries in the European continent? (See The great US heist on Iranian assets
, Asia Times Online, May 1, 2012). The answer is, as the correctional officers say: “follow the money”. 

It goes without saying that the Islamic Jihad or the Hezbollah of Lebanon neither had substantial amounts of money parked in the US and European banks, nor could they be easily arrested and hauled to court. Therefore, the US legal system acted the way William “Willie” Sutton (June 30, 1901-November 2, 1980) did in the first half of his active life in the 20th century. The law officers curiously asked Willie why he robbed banks; his answer was “because that’s where the money is.” 

Trusting the Imperialist banks?
If the Palestinian Hamas, the PLO, the Islamic Jihad and the Hezbollah (Party of God) of Lebanon don’t have large amounts of cash or assets that could be frozen or expropriated, Iran – still trusting in the credibility of the world financial system – has kept large amounts of financial assets that could be easily shaken down. Iran is therefore vulnerable to the malfeasance of the US court system, which is weighted toward the wealthy and profiteers. Not surprising then is the report in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) from December 12, 2009, that more than US$2 billion allegedly held on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Citigroup accounts were secretly ordered frozen in 2008 by a federal court in New York City. This illegal appropriation of a sovereign country’s assets appears to be the largest seizure of Iranian assets overseas since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. [2] 

The illegality of the act of confiscation of a sizeable fund belonging to a sovereign state, which enjoys immunity in the sphere of international relations, speaks loudly when we learn that 18 months after the execution of the order issued by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the file remained under seal and was not made public. In 2007, a US federal judge ruled that Iran should pay $2.65 billion to families of victims of the 1983 attack. The question is why it took the US court system 24 years (1983-2007) to come up with an indictment that Iranian authorities were involved in directing the terrorist attacks on the US and French troop barracks? 

The Netherlands is still trying to convince the US authorities to return the remaining assets, which includes bank deposits, gold and real estate property. The sum of the $2 billion Iranian fund frozen in a US bank is nowadays claimed by three parties simultaneously: the Islamic Republic of Iran as the owner of the fund; a group of lawyers who are seeking to gain access to $2.65 billion (a sum greater than the frozen $2 billion fund) for personal enrichment and distribution between more than 1,000 claimants who say they are relatives of the dead or injured US troops; and thirdly, the US government, which prefers to keep the large sum of money frozen for the unforeseen future, knowing the unlawful nature of its act. By signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on December 31, 2011, President Barack Obama required the US hold the Iranian money in the frozen state and prohibits any proprietary access to it. 

In addition to the actual sums frozen or expropriated by the US authorities, there are “hundreds of billions of dollars in default judgments against Iran, levied by US Courts in favor of Americans” [3] and Israel. 

Ford-era immunity
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 21, 1976, established limitations on whether a foreign sovereign nation (or its political subdivisions, agencies or instrumentalities) could be sued in US courts. 

If a foreign defendant qualifies as a “Foreign State,” the act provides that it shall be immune to action in any US court – federal or state. If a defendant establishes that it is a “foreign state” under the FSIA, then it is entitled to sovereign immunity. For Iran to prove that it is a foreign state, it suffices to show that it is a full-fledged member of the United Nations and all its attachments. Accordingly, for the lawsuit to be taken seriously by US courts, the plaintiff must prove that one of the act’s exceptions to immunity apply. That came from a US court ruling which concluded that “with massive material and technical support from the Iranian government,” Hezbollah was able to carry out the 1983 attack. From there onward, and despite the absence of any representation in court for Iran, the court laid down the grounds for denying Iran the right to declare its foreign sovereign immunity from suits initiated by US citizens. 

Put simply, the case the United States courts and lawmakers in congress have laid against Iran in the years since the Beirut attack is based on the allegation that it provided material support to Hezbollah in connection with the bombing, and had been designated a state sponsor of terrorism on January 14, 1984, again in connection with that attack. The US decided that Iran provided Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad with materials that were ultimately used in their attacks against the US barracks in Beirut that resulted in the injury and deaths of US soldiers. On that basis, George Shultz, the US Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan, marked Iran as a “state sponsor of terrorism”. 

Such a label that could equally be applied to the United States government, since it is common knowledge that the US is the biggest proliferator of weapons, including missiles, warships, warplanes, chemical weapons and nuclear armaments. Without a doubt, these weapons are used to wage wars in which people are killed for the purpose of occupation, which fits the case of Israel against the Palestinians or the people of Syria or Iran. 

Within the peace and anti-imperialist camp, there are organizations believing that the struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its type of government and policies on gender and dress code carry as much weight and significance as their struggle against US intervention, sanctions, terrorist activities, assassinations of Iranian scientists, and war threats. This political analysis tries abstractly to equate two unequals by prescribing the same kind of treatment to problems that are entirely different by nature. The people of Iran are suffering from high prices, unemployment and lack of vital industrial commodities because of the US embargo and sanctions, not because women are wearing head scarves. In the words of Aristotle, “There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.” 

Notes: 1. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation – The Abduction of Lebanon, Nation Books, 1990.
2. US Freezes $2 billion in Iran Case, Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2009.
3. US Sanctions Hamper Iran bid to recover $1.75 billion, Reuters, January 15, 2012. 

Ardeshir Ommani, president of the American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC), is a writer and political analyst with a background in political economy. AIFC’s website iswww.iranaifc.com. The author may be contacted at: ardeshiromm@optonline.net 

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online’s regular contributors. 

(Copyright 2012 Ardeshir Ommani.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NE17Ak01.html

India dumps Iran, squeezes Obama
By M K Bhadrakumar 

The cloud cover of sophistry that has been characteristic of India’s Iran policy in recent years lifted on Tuesday when the government admitted in parliament that it had taken a policy decision to reduce oil imports from Iran. 

The frank admission came on a day when an emissary from Washington, Carlos Pascual, special envoy on energy matters in the United States State Department, arrived with the proclaimed intention of weaning New Delhi away from Tehran’s fuel. 

The Barack Obama administration will be delighted that the sustained diplomatic and political pressure on India is finally bearing fruit. Tehran, on the other hand, will view this as the unkindest cut of all the blows that New Delhi has inflicted on it over the past five year. Meanwhile, a protagonist lurking in the shade is all excited – Saudi Arabia. 

A mystery lingers. What did the Obama administration promise the Manmohan Singh government as quid pro quo? Manmohan most certainly sensitized US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of India’s “wish list” during her recent hurried visit to hold consultations personally with him just ahead of the US-India Strategic Dialogue co-chaired by her, which is scheduled to convene in Washington. 

Not as routine as it may seem 
Delhi has been under immense pressure from Washington to fall in line with the letter and spirit of the US’s sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and curtail the sourcing of crude oil from Iran. The Indian government’s official stance so far has been – and continues to be – that it is only bound by United Nations-backed sanctions. 

Beneath the veneer of a principled position, however, India has been quietly and steadily backtracking. The frank admission on Tuesday came from Junior Minister for Petroleum R P N Singh, who disclosed, “Total crude oil imported from Iran by Indian companies during 2010-11 and 2011-12 is 18.50 million tonnes and 17.44 million tonnes, respectively. The target fixed for import of crude oil from Iran for 2012-13 is about 15.5 million tonnes.” 

He made it look routine, but the cold statistics reveal that in the current fiscal year, India will be cutting its oil imports from Iran by 11%. The Indian bureaucracy is never at a loss for words and Singh added, “To reduce its dependence on any particular region of the world, India has been consciously trying to diversify its sources of crude oil imports to strengthen the country’s energy security.” 

This is a considered policy decision backed by a detailed strategy paper based on a political directive to harmonize the policy on India’s petroleum imports with Washington’s Iran sanctions. No doubt, it is a major political decision, considering that India currently imports 80% of its crude oil from over 30 countries and relies on Iran for 12% of these imports. 

Curiously, a huge “collateral” beneficiary is going to be the influential Indian corporate house Reliance. Pascual brought a proposal offering that Shale Gas in liquefied form could be supplied from the US to replace Iranian oil. Reliance holds a monopoly on Shale Gas technology in India and has invested heavily in the US Shale Gas industry. 

The US proposal is based on a perfect matching of Obama’s political need to isolate Iran with India’s energy security and Reliance’s potentially massive business opportunity. The ingenuity of the American proposal is such that the Manmohan government cannot easily ignore it. 

Meanwhile, a short-term beneficiary is also going to be Saudi Arabia, from where India hopes to make up the current shortfall in oil imports from Iran. 

Riyadh derives satisfaction that India’s traditional ties with Iran are in the doldrums and that India’s recent “gravitation” toward the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) pole in the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf gets reinforced. There are fallouts in India’s domestic politics, too, where Saudi Arabia and the other Muslim Gulf monarchies exert a larger-than-life influence by lavishly patronizing the Sunni Muslim lobbies that have a nexus with various political parties. 

But Saudi influence in India today exceeds the Sunni Muslim constituency. The Saudis have successfully emulated the pattern of US and Israeli diplomacy in New Delhi by casting their net wide in the strategic community. Indian pundits have begun arguing for the GCC side of the story in the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf. There has been a steady stream of the “Gulf Arab” leaderships visiting New Delhi – the latest being the colorful emir of Qatar. India attended the first session of the “Friends of Syria” grouping in Tunis. 

Tehran will be unhappy that Manmohan has once again caved in to US pressure to roll back ties with Iran. Simply put, India has become adept at using the “Iran card” to leverage advantages out of the US. New Delhi has entrapped Tehran in a ring of pragmatic engagement, which falls far short of Indian promises or Iranian expectations, but Iran is left with the predicament to settle for the kind of relationship India chooses. 

Superb timing 
India is shrewdly exploiting Iran’s current vulnerabilities. Thus, by taking advantage of the obstacles being put by the US on the Asian Clearing Union payment mechanism of India-Iran trade, New Delhi persuaded Tehran to accept a system of barter trade for up to 45% of its oil exports, which would effectively work as an export promotion drive for Indian companies in the Iranian market. 

Iran accepted the deal grudgingly since it is keen to continue somehow or other with its longstanding relationship on oil with India through the present difficult corridor of time. The heart of the matter is, remove oil from the Iran-India relationship and it will atrophy to virtually nothing. Evidently, New Delhi has assessed that the relationship means more to Iran than to India at the moment. 

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad telephoned Manmohan on Monday in an attempt to shore up the relationship. He stressed that Tehran sets no limits to the broadening of ties with India and that the traditional, historical relationship has been of a “brotherly” character and is assured of a “promising future”. Manmohan responded with a caveat that India attaches importance to ties with Iran and welcomes a broadening of relations with Iran “on the basis of national interests”. 

There is some evidence that Tehran is also settling for a low-key relationship. Tehran parried repeated Indian attempts to schedule a visit by the secretary general of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, to New Delhi. Tehran estimates that the consultations are best scheduled when New Delhi is genuinely open to strategic engagement with Iran. 

Having said that, the big question still remains: What is it that India hopes to extract from the Obama administration in return for its momentous decision to comply with the US’s Iran sanctions? 

Indian diplomacy is hard at work. Starting from 2006 when India began voting against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has become a factor in the US-India strategic partnership and New Delhi has been able to leverage it because Washington is extremely sensitive to Iran’s regional standing. 

Manmohan’s timing is superb. Although Obama needs to take a decision on giving a “waiver” to India under the Iran sanctions regime only in July, Manmohan took the decision now to cut India’s oil imports from Iran. 

Clearly, New Delhi has set its sights on the forthcoming US-India Strategic Dialogue in early June. After having discussed with Clinton during her recent visit the future directions of the US-India strategic partnership, New Delhi expects a tradeoff. 

Obama’s political prestige is at stake over the Iran nuclear issue, especially in a tricky presidential election year for him. Manmohan is handing over to him a major foreign policy “achievement” in making Tehran look somewhat more isolated in its region just when the talks over the Iran nuclear issue are moving into a crucial phase. 

If Indian diplomats are worth their salt, they are tiptoeing toward the US-India Strategic Dialogue with a killer instinct; they won’t settle for some two-penny worth gains. 

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey. 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NE17Df03.html

Terrorists blur into freedom fighters
By Brian M Downing 

Tensions between Iran on the one hand and the United States and Israel have eased substantially since war loomed just a few weeks ago. 

Israeli politicians, generals and security experts have openly expressed opposition to attacking Iran. More recently, the hawkish coalition in power has brought in the Kadima party, a large moderate bloc whose leaders also oppose such a strike. The P5+1 talks – which include Britain, China, France, Russia, and the US plus Germany – on Iran’s nuclear program are scheduled to begin in Baghdad next week in this calmer atmosphere. 

The Barack Obama administration has refused to support Israel’s “red line” of continued uranium enrichment, which would lead to an Israeli attack. Obama has presented a less restrictive red line of an actual weapons program, which would lead to an American attack. 

Foreign powers should act to nudge Iran into accepting the US red line, which after all offers Tehran a victory of sorts over Israeli demands and threats. Unfortunately, neither the US nor the Sunni Gulf powers are obliging and this could adversely affect impending talks and political dynamics in Tehran as well. 

The US recently deployed a number of F-22 fighters to an unnamed place in the region, probably the al-Dafra air base in the United Arab Emirates. These fighters have the latest stealth technology but have never seen combat. Iran must wonder how eager the US is to give their new planes a proper evaluation. 

Elsewhere in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are discussing a political union, which would strengthen anti-Shi’ite resolve and weaken the traditional role of smaller Gulf states as balancers between the Saudi and Iranian powers who threaten to upset the neighborhood. 

Perhaps the most objectionable act from Tehran’s view is the delisting of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which may come soon. At present, the US has designated the MEK a foreign terrorist organization, owing to its long career in assassinations and bombings. 

Back in the days of the shah in Iran, the MEK attacked US military officers and defense contractors in the name of Marxism and anti-imperialism – prevailing creeds at the time. Able to adapt to new ideas and circumstances, the MEK fought the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regime then offered its services to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who gave them a home and a steady income. He also gave them steady work inside Iran during the murderous 1980-1988 war. 

Following Saddam’s ouster (2003), Iran offered the US an exchange of al-Qaeda figures for MEK counterparts. It was all part of a wide-ranging diplomatic overture from Tehran that also put its nuclear program on the table. The State Department found the overture promising, but neo-conservatives in the White House rejected it out of hand – a blunt rejection that shapes Iran’s approach to dealing with the US to this day. 

In recent weeks, millions of Americans have seen a welter of advertisements decrying the injustice of branding the MEK a terrorist organization. The ads are especially prominent on CNN, which has also allowed at least one anchor to repeatedly shade his otherwise reputable reporting in a manner supportive of attacking Iranian nuclear sites. The MEK ads present it as a democratic alternative to the mullahs in Tehran and as the victims of an unfortunate error in the State Department. 

The media effort has been accompanied by supportive words from various retired generals and politicians, often made at prestigious social gatherings. Speakers are paid, often handsomely, though it isn’t clear by whom. 

A clue may lie in the MEK’s current work. Its long career has brought them into the service of the Israel’s Mossad, which uses them to carry out its bombing and assassination campaigns against Iranian nuclear scientists. This in turn has jeopardized the MEK’s base camp in Iraq, which is more sympathetic to Iran than to Israel or the US – a point made in the ads. 

The rehabilitated view of the MEK is not shared by Human Rights Watch or by independent Iranian exile groups. The latter persist in seeing it as a terrorist group and even as an obstacle to positive change in Iran. The leadership in Iran makes judgments in the context of their political culture, which has been formed by British and Russian occupation, the Anglo-American coup of 1953 and Iraq’s invasion that killed 800,000 Iranians. 

The MEK-Mossad campaign fits neatly into the contours of this culture – and strengthens it. Further, it builds support between the regime and the Iranian populace. Many of them yearn for reform, but almost all of them share the regime’s view of abhorrent forces all around them. 

The US’s delisting the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization would weaken popular support for reform as many Iranians will see reformists as echoing the sentiments of menacing foreign powers. Similarly, delisting the MEK would weaken moderates in the ranks of the mullahs and the state. Perhaps most significantly, it would strengthen and embolden Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is eager to effect its own political changes by replacing vacillating mullahs with steadfast generals. 

Delisting the MEK would call for synchronization across the sprawling American bureaucracy. The MEK’s woeful designation is found in the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, Homeland Security and a dozen or more bureaus. 

If one or more of them failed to delete the MEK from its terrorism roll, it might give the appearance of incoherence and even hypocrisy in US foreign policy. 

Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com. 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NE18Ak01.html

TAPI price deal close
By Robert M Cutler 

MONTREAL – Great anticipation surrounds next week’s meeting on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline project, as press reports from all sides suggest the possibility of a final agreement on transit fees. 

The 1,735 kilometer pipeline would run from southeastern Turkmenistan into Afghanistan, then parallel to the highway from Herat to Kandahar and finally via Quetta and Multan in Pakistan to the town of Fazilka in India. Pakistan and India would receive 13-14 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) of gas while Afghanistan’s take would be 5 bcm/y. 

The deal would have a lifespan of 30 years and require roughly one trillion cubic meters of Turkmenistan’s gas. Originally planned to be sourced from Dauletabad, the gas will instead, according to Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, come from the massive South Yolotan fields that the British auditing firm Gaffney Kline confirms to hold between 13.1 and 21.2 trillion cubic meters. 

The cost of construction has been estimated at US$7.6 billion, of which one-third would be financed by the Asian Development Bank, which has sponsored meetings among the various sides over the years. 

The four countries concerned signed a framework inter-governmental agreement in December 2010 that provided for three bilateral negotiations, between Turkmenistan and each of the other participating countries, over price and transit issues. While giving a certain advantage to Turkmenistan, this arrangement turned out operationally to be impractical because of the need for Afghanistan-Pakistan and Afghanistan-India transit fees to be in accord with one another. 

Disagreements arose and negotiations became complicated until January this year, when in a breakthrough Pakistan and India agreed at the ministerial level that the two countries plus Afghanistan had to agree a uniform tariff among themselves. 

It is the formula to fix such a uniform transit fee that has been under negotiation since then, which all sides have been publicly seeking to accelerate and holding more than monthly meetings to achieve. Notably, Pakistan and India have also agreed in principle to explore jointly the opportunities in Turkmenistan’s upstream oil sector. 

Various numbers concerning the price agreement have been bruited in the sub-continent’s press although these leaks must always been taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the usually reliable Indian press in particular indicates that New Delhi has been doing everything possible to promote the price agreement. 

Indian Petroleum Ministry officials have confirmed to the Indian press that India will sign the Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) as soon as the cabinet approves the note prepared for its action. This confirmation comes after conflicting reports in the press during the last two weeks of April over whether the tariff levels for final price agreement had been agreed among the sides or not. 

The TAPI project has gained this appearance of momentum as the Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline project looks to be on its last legs. This latter project is the remnant of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) so-called “peace pipeline” that foundered after New Delhi pulled out of talks with Tehran over exasperation with its continual attempts to reopen closed chapters of the negotiation and failure to respect agreements already reached, particularly over price and terms of delivery. 

The putative Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline would be sourced from the South Pars field and run over 1,100 km from Iran’s Assalouyeh Energy Zone in the south of the country through Iranshahr before crossing the border with Pakistan. Construction costs were estimated in 2009 at $7.4 billion. Initial capacity of 22 bcm/y seems, however, just as improbable as the cited possible final-stage volume of 55 bcm/y, which according to Iranian officials would anyway be contingent on Pakistan’s doubling at its own expense the pipeline to be laid inside Iran. 

Three years ago, a tentative accord set the price for Iran’s gas to Pakistan at a figure that would vary between $260 and $485 per thousand cubic meters, as a function of the average price of Japanese customs-cleared (JCC, nicknamed “Japan Crude Cocktail”) oil imports. However, even if the project is somehow kick-started, prices will have to be renegotiated, as Tehran’s new propositions are unrealistic and unaffordable. 

Further complicating the Iran-Pakistan pipeline is the fact that even the approximate route within Pakistan is far from defined. A consultant to the German company ILF, tasked with executing a feasibility study for Islamabad, has confirmed to the press that the Pakistani government has neither the finances nor the necessary technology to realize its side of the project. 

Reports continue meanwhile to accumulate that the Russian firm Gazprom is seriously rethinking its participation in the implementation of the project, specifically the furnishing of critical industrial technology such as compressor stations, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has pulled out from funding the project. 

Even Pakistan’s own Oil and Gas Development Corporation and the National Bank of Pakistan withdrew from the project earlier this year, citing adverse implications for their foreign partnerships and businesses. 

Dr Robert M Cutler (http://www.robertcutler.org), educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The University of Michigan, has researched and taught at universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia. Now senior research fellow in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Canada, he also consults privately in a variety of fields. 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Who’s who at NATO’s banquet 
By M K Bhadrakumar 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is still printing the invitation cards to its Chicago summit on Sunday. A card was printed for Pakistan President Asif Zardari on Wednesday. Pakistan became “eligible” following indications it will get down from the high horse and reopen the transit routes for military convoys into Afghanistan – despite the stubborn refusal by Washington to either apologize for the massacre of Pakistani soldiers last November in an air strike or terminate the deadly drone strikes on Pakistani villages. 

Pakistan will receive US$1 million per day from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a transit fee. Is it a fair deal – an invitation to the NATO banquet at Chicago in lieu of the reopening of the transit routes? Pakistan’s main opposition parties do not think so. But then, the government in situ always knows better. Moreover, the Pakistani military wants it that way, too. 

Zardari is raring to go, which is only to be expected. To be seen at a dazzling party is a matter of national prestige. Also, NATO isn’t inviting any Tom, Dick or Harry. For instance, neither China’s nor India’s presidents have been invited to the charmed circle in Chicago. (Russia’s was sounded out and said nyet, but that is another complicated story; and, NATO wanted to invite Israel, but Turkey put its foot down and said hayir.) 

NATO’s guest list shows Western ingenuity and, in turn, it is also a road map of the West’s global strategies in the 21st century. How does the guest list look? What is most striking is that somewhat like in Dante’s Inferno, there are rings. 

The hardcore cluster comprises the 28 NATO member countries. The next layer is of 13 countries which are considered NATO’s “global partners” – Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand from Asia-Pacific; Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco from the Middle East; Georgia from the Eurasian region; and Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland from the good old European backyard. 

This is the creme le creme of NATO’s allies. The most glaring omissions are Indonesia and the Philippines (the latter despite being “frontline states” in the Asia-Pacific and willing to needle the Chinese dragon), Saudi Arabia (despite being the Western economies’ single-biggest gas station for well over half a century), Egypt, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina (which are prima donnas in their regions). On the whole, it seems NATO feels rather uncomfortable with the Group of 20 club that is straining to be formed. 

Game of ‘tough love’ 
Moving further ahead, yet another outer ring comprises countries that are participants or collaborators of NATO’s Afghan war. These are the real “VIPs” (or “heroes”, depending on one’s point of view regarding the bloody Afghan war), because they put their necks on the block and attracted the attention of al-Qaeda to rescue NATO from the Afghan quagmire. They are (in alphabetical order and not in terms of their shedding of sweat and tears): Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, El Salvador, Ireland, Montenegro, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Ukraine and Tonga. 

It may come as a sensational detail that if the Afghan war is ever won, it could also be due to Tonga’s contribution, but facts are facts. 

The list is incomplete. This ring also has a sub-section that has Afghanistan (which is the main topic of discussion at the NATO summit) at the center surrounded by its neighbors from the Central Asian region. It seems Russia has been accommodated under this sub-head. Most certainly, Zardari goes into this niche. 

Russia is deputing merely its head of the Afghan desk at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, making its displeasure loud and clear that it resents being excluded from NATO’s key meetings regarding the conduct of the Afghan war, which regularly take place in Brussels, rain or sunshine. But it is a “nuanced” displeasure, too. Russia has no objection to NATO’s Afghan war and is even an ardent votary of it. But Russia resents NATO’s monopoly of the war; the war should be “democratized”. 

The Central Asian states are deputing their foreign ministers because technically they are also members of the rival alliance known as “NATO of the East” – the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). 

CSTO is locked in a game of “tough love” with NATO: it rivals NATO as the principal military alliance in the post-Soviet space, but it also wants NATO’s recognition as an equal so that it can convince itself of its existence (which, unsurprisingly, NATO refuses to accord on Washington’s insistence, since the US would prefer to deal with the former Soviet republics individually rather than as Moscow’s junior partners). 

CSTO’s predicament is almost a mirror image of Russia’s – longing for a room and a warm bed in the common European home but insistently being kept out and ever looking in while the US selectively keeps engaging it highly selectively on areas of concern to American strategies. (NATO, too, may well selectively engage CSTO someday, for example, to nab drug traffickers in Central Asia who subvert the Afghan economy.) CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. 

All said, however, Moscow is unsure about NATO’s invitation to the Central Asian leaderships to attend the summit. It has misgivings about NATO’s intentions in Central Asia, especially against the backdrop of the impending establishment of US military bases in Central Asia. 

After all, one purpose of the Chicago summit is to build on the alliance’s “smart strategy”, which was adopted at the Lisbon summit in 2010 to project NATO as the only truly global security organization that could eventually operate even without a UN mandate in the world’s “hot spots”. 

What will worry Moscow is that NATO has already developed a taste for forcing “regime change” in foreign lands, as the Libyan war testifies – and if the current ominous trends over Syria are any indication it could do the same. 

Besides, NATO is baiting Central Asian states with offers that they are increasingly finding to be irresistible. The hard reality is that Central Asian regimes have developed vested interests in the Afghan war with NATO generously doling out lucrative contracts for sourcing goods and services to local companies that are front desks for the region’s elites. 

The US pays a handsome amount to Kyrgyzstan as the rent for Manas air base. Now there is talk that some of the weapons and equipment in Afghanistan may be gifted to Central Asian countries through the 2014 transition withdrawal period of the war. 

Clearly, a gravy train under NATO stewardship is moving into the Central Asian steppes, which would make Moscow feel uneasy. Nonetheless, it is interesting that the Central Asian states have taken a collective decision that their heads of state will keep away from the NATO summit in the gorgeous Windy City. Arguably, it is an act of supreme self-denial by the Central Asian leaderships in deference to Moscow’s sensitivity. 

A question for the chef 
Indeed, a key country neighboring Afghanistan has been scrupulously kept out of the NATO summit although its capacity to influence the tide of the Afghan war is quite appreciable still – Iran. 

A great opportunity has been lost in constructively engaging Iran. But then, US President Barack Obama decided to play it safe. 

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is a mercurial personality, utterly charismatic and he might have ended up stealing the show that Obama has carefully, painstakingly choreographed to showcase his stature as a world leader. Too big a risk to take for Obama, no doubt, in a tricky presidential election year. Besides, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and the Israel Lobby would have given him a hard time explaining his “softness” toward Iran. 

Yet another ring on the NATO invitation chart comprises the four applicants who are waiting in the ante-room for NATO membership – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro and Macedonia. 

Georgia has the unique distinction of figuring in three rings – as NATO’s global ally, its partner in the Afghan war and as an eligible full member. The hidden message behind this extravagant attention being paid to Georgia wouldn’t be lost on Moscow. Interestingly, President Vladimir Putin’s first official visitors from “abroad” have been the leaders of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

However, this is not to say that Moscow is apprehensive of an imminent decision by NATO to admit Georgia as a member. Putin can count on major European partners like Germany, France and Italy to ensure NATO doesn’t get into a confrontation with Russia. Putin has warmed up to the exit of Nicolas Sarkozy and the emergence of the socialist government in Paris. 

At any rate, Obama too would know that the priority in his second term – if he gets it – in the Oval Office ought to be to rework the US’s “reset” with Russia and make the Russian-American partnership predictable and optimally useful for the US’s global strategies – especially with the problem of China’s rise looming as a complex challenge. 

Admittedly, NATO’s invitation list gives a fair picture of what Marxist-Leninists would call the “co-relation of forces” in international politics today. The above is not the whole picture of global politics, but it is more than half the scenario on a highly fluid panorama. 

Let me end up uncharacteristically with a touch of hubris to ask: What is a NATO summit when China and India are minding their own business and ploughing their independent furrows? 

At a minimum, Brussels should have included a category of invitees labeled as “NATO + BRICS”. Surely, the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is no less important than the European Union in the making of the world of tomorrow. Indeed, the main chef at the banquet at Chicago should answer this question – Obama. 

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey. 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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