the human province

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

Kristof has a disturbing op-ed in the Times about violence in Kenya. It's hard to know if things are getting better or worse there, and a brief talk with a European journalist friend who just got back from Nairobi doesn't clear matters up much. When I was in Ethiopia, I didn't hear much anything about Kenya, although that's really neither here nor there, since the family I was staying with didn't seem very preoccupied with foreign affairs, with the exception of Eritrea (the mother was originally from Asmara).

In any case, Kristof recounts some pretty gruesome stuff (which honestly sounds a little sensationalist), including the decapitation of infants and forced circumcision with a machete:

Until he was circumcised with a machete in front of a jeering mob and then dragged off to be beheaded, Robert Ochieng had been a symbol of modern, post-tribal harmony in Kenya.

A member of the Luo ethnic group, 16-year-old Robert had played and studied with members of another ethnic group, the Kikuyu. They were friends. And then Kenya erupted in rioting after a rigged election, and suddenly Luos were chasing and killing Kikuyus, and a mob of Kikuyus was running down Robert.

He claimed that he was Kikuyu as well, but the suspicious mob stripped him naked and noted that he was not circumcised, meaning that he could not be Kikuyu. That’s when his attackers held him down — smashing his arm when he tried to protect himself — and performed the grotesque surgery in the street to loud cheers from a huge throng.

The crowd shouted war cries and was preparing to decapitate Robert with a machete when the police arrived and rescued him.

The main thrust of his column though isn't just to describe the violence there but rather to bring attention to the idea that US acquiescence "in election irregularities in countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria, inadvertently signal[ed] that Mr. Kibaki could get away with stealing re-election."

He likens Kibaki to an African Musharraf, and while his tone in the column sounds a little too Manichaean for my taste, it is true that the US has a bad habit of supporting undemocratic leaders when it suits its immediate needs without much foresight when it comes to the consequences of that undemocratic rule.

By the by, ICG has a new report out about the situation that's worth reading.

Ezra seems to be confusing Musharraf with the people of Pakistan:

If we flip from Musharraf and begin supporting other candidates, Musharraf will flip on us. If we stick with Musharraf and he's ousted in a revolution, we will be identified as allies of the dictator. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges. This isn't a situation where we must pick the best of two bad options. Rather, it's a situation where we should show some humility, let the Pakistanis make their own decisions, and pledge to deal openly with whomever emerges.

This suggests first, that the US isn't already actively supporting a dog in the Pakistani fight and second, that "the Pakistanis" as a people will be in a position to make any sort of a decision. First, Musharraf is already propped up by financial and military aid from the US, and second, when he indefinitely postponed elections, he squashed any possibility the Pakistanis had of making their own decisions.

Perhaps the US shouldn't explicitly support the opposition, but it should support the process of democracy, even if that just means making elections a condition for continued US military and financial aid.

Ezra quotes Ignatious in order to draw a parallel between US support for the opposition in Iran (a policy that has seemed to have backfired on the US, not least because there is a credible threat that the US might attack Iran) and US support for the Pakistani opposition.

Vali Nasr, on the other hand, makes a more astute comparison of the two countries:

Musharraf's interests are no longer those of his military, and the two are now on a collision course. Generals can still end this crisis by going back to the deal Washington brokered with Ms. Bhutto, but only if it does not include Musharraf. Removing Musharraf will send demonstrators home and the Army to its barracks.

The longer Musharraf stays in power the more Pakistan will look like Iran in 1979: an isolated and unpopular ruler hanging on to power only to inflame passions and bring together his Islamic and pro-democracy opposition into a dangerous alliance.

A disastrous outcome in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with weak institutions and rife with extremist ideologies, violence, and deep ethnic and social divisions, will be far worse than what followed the Iranian revolution.

The West cannot afford to let this political crisis spiral out of control. Western leaders must keep the pressure on Musharraf, reach out to the Pakistani Army, and seriously plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

This week has made it clear to the world that the US isn't too terribly interested in democracy in Pakistan. There has been a lot of talk about Bush's retreat from talk of liberty and freedom and a lot of frowning on the administration's decision to continue supporting Musharraf financially and militarily while he trades prisoners with the Taliban and jails lawyers and judges, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." Journalists and pundits are quick to show the gap between Bush's actions and his rhetoric.

Sure, this may be the case, but where have these people been? Is this actually news to anyone? One has to look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Thailand or Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to see how serious this administration ever was about the "freedom agenda."

Pakistan is just the most recent, if not the most egregious, example of how lip service to democracy and human rights is little more than so much hot air. Let's not be naive here. The Bush administration talks the talk about democracy when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan -- and maybe applies some sanctions when it's not inconvenient, like in Burma -- but at the end of the day, the freedom agenda obviously comes in second place when fossil fuels are concerned.

Madame Bhutto pens a piece from Dubai that's critical of Pakistan's commitment to fighting al-Qaida and returning to democracy:

The West has been shortsighted in dealing with Pakistan. When the United States aligns with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, it compromises the basic democratic principles of its foundation -- namely, life, liberty and justice for all. Dictatorships such as Musharraf's suppress individual rights and freedoms and empower the most extreme elements of society. Oppressed citizens, unable to represent themselves through other means, often turn to extremism and religious fundamentalism.

Restoring democracy through free, fair, transparent and internationally supervised elections is the only way to return Pakistan to civilization and marginalize the extremists. A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Indeed, Pakistan's return to democracy is essential to America's success in South and Central Asia, as well as in the Middle East, as democratization is an integral part of fighting terrorism. Wouldn't it therefore be prudent to tie aid money to genuine political reform?

Ken Silverstein has a piece about scapegoating Pakistan on Harper's website:

It is now the conventional wisdom in Washington that American efforts to defeat Al Qaeda are being undermined by Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Islamabad Monday to deliver, wrote the New York Times, "an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf ... warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda."

...[D]ifferent countries see things differently. Pakistan and the United States have conflicting priorities in terms of national security and very different definitions of what constitutes terrorism. The Bush Administration sees Islamic terrorism as a primary menace to American national security. The United States is concerned about threats emanating from Iraq and Iran as well as Afghanistan. But Pakistan, notes a RAND study from 2004, does not perceive a threat from Iran and Iraq. The country's core security problems revolve almost exclusively around India, especially Kashmir. As to Afghanistan—Pakistan is highly uneasy about its loss of influence there over the past six years, especially now that its archenemy India has a close relationship with the American-backed Karzai government. So while the United States hopes for a stable Afghanistan with a strong central government, Pakistan prefers a weak government in Afghanistan that is dominated by Pashtuns.

...A working relationship with all Pashtuns is vital to Pakistan's survival, so it's hardly surprising that Islamabad has been far more reluctant to go after Taliban elements. As Milt Bearden notes, "Pakistan is convinced that we will leave them in the lurch no later than 2009, perhaps earlier. Thus they are unwilling to 'commit suicide' solely for American national interests." But blaming Pakistan for failures against Al Qaeda is all the rage these days, even though it's roughly equal, and misleading, to blaming Iran for the problems in Iraq.

I find this kind of silly, to be honest. Of course Pakistan has its own agenda, as does every country. But that's not the point. The point is that the US gives tons of aid to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose policies (ISI support of the Taliban, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and support of radical Wahabbis, respectively) are at odds with American interests, and also with American policy in the cases of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Financial and military support that's not expressed as humanitarian aid is obviously part of a quid pro quo agreement, so in the case of countries like those mentioned or Egypt, for that matter, it makes sense that the US would have some influence in those places.

This is not to say that Washington's interests should be at the top of the list of priorities for Islamabad, Cairo, West Jerusalem or Riyadh, far from it. The whole point is to find a compromise that benefits the interests of both countries, or ideally, the citizens of both countries. And the way that Pakistan has wielded the Taliban, is arguably not in the interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the US. The only people it benefited were the Taliban cadres and some people in the ISI. One only has to remember when Taliban officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue drug Pakistani footballers off the field in Kandahar and arrested them during the match because they were wearing shorts to know that the Pashtun-led Taliban was not on as short a leash as the ISI thought. Steve Coll's book, Ghost Wars also mentions Taliban plans to turn on their masters and change the center of gravity of the relationship between the two countries, making Pakistan more of a satellite of Afghanistan than the other way around.

The problem is that the US doesn't often take other countries' interests into consideration at all. So while I would agree with Silverman that the US should have a better look at the local context in Waziristan and Baghdad, for instance, before trying to force Musharraf or al-Maliki to do things that might be untenable for them, either politically or militarily speaking. But this does not mean that the US should just shrug its shoulders when one of its allies is doing something that is bad for both countries, just because the current regime thinks that the action is in its best interest.

After all, allies, like friends, are supposed to let each other know when they're making mistakes, even when a country thinks those mistakes are paramount to following its national interests. So while the Bush administration was content to pillory de Villepin and Chirac during the buildup to war in Iraq, we now know that Washington would have done well to listen to the Elysée's reasonable concerns. History is full of allies blindly supporting each other, like joining in an ill-advised bar fight started by your drunk friend: the UK and Australia in Iraq, France in Rwanda, South Africa in Zimbabwe.

The Post gives us a report about a young Palestinian who was captured in Pakistan and sent to a CIA black site in Afghanistan. He claims to have trained in Afghanistan years ago in hopes of going to Chechnya and then helped some of his erstwhile co-trainers to escape when the US attacked Afghanistan. Strangely enough, he was finally let go, by the Americans, the Pakistanis and finally by the Israelis.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003