Libya: All About Oil

Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:

I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.

Alex Newman wrote in the New American:

In astatement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”

Newman quoted CNBC senior editor John Carney, who asked, “Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.”

Another anomaly involves the official justification for taking up arms against Libya. Supposedly it’s about human rights violations, but the evidence is contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News website on February 28:

As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body’s Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya’s human rights record.

The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a “priority” and for bettering its “constitutional” framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens – who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.

Whatever might be said of Gaddafi’s personal crimes, the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people live in such comfort:

[Libyans] are entitled to free treatment, and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 U.S. dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans, and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe, and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful, are not inclined to drink, and are very religious.

They maintained that the international community had been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. “Tell us,” they said, “who would not like such a regime?”

Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya. The GMMR provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya’s vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.

Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that it is “all about oil,” but that theory too is problematic. As noted in the National Journal, the countryproduces only about 2 percent of the world’s oil. Saudi Arabia alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if Libyan oil were to disappear from the market. And if it’s all about oil, why the rush to set up a new central bank?

Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview of U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. “I don’t know!” was the response. “I guess they don’t know what else to do!” Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted that “[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.”

According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Lybia – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar,” Gadaffi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gadaffi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French president Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.

And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:

One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. . . . Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.

Libya not only has oil. According to the IMF, its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS, the IMF and their rules?

All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS website states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed to have as their single or primary objective “to preserve price stability.” They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don’t interfere with this mandate. “Price stability” means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit of the state, either directly or as loans.

In a 2002 article in Asia Times titled “The BIS vs National Banks,” Henry Liu maintained:

BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under financial globalization no longer serve national interests.

. . . FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.

He added, “Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation.” The “state theory of money” refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.

The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government’s own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly-owned or privately-owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government’s own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50%.

And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include “issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya” and “managing and issuing all state loans.” Libya’s wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.

That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care, and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the Great Man-Made River project. Libyans are worried that NATO-led air strikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.

So is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both – and water as well. With energy, water, and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible. Most countries don’t have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy-independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation’s own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers, and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.

If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and health care continue to be free.

China rejects reports of presence of Chinese troops in Azad Kashmir

China today dismissed reports about the presence of its troops in Azad Kashmir, days after a top Indian commander expressed concern over the presence of Chinese military in the region as “too close for comfort”.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told a media briefing here that “the reports are baseless and ridiculous.”

Lt Gen K. T. Parnaik, India’s Northern Army Commander, has said: “Chinese presence in Gilgit-Baltistan and the Northern Areas of Pakistan is increasing steadily… There are many people who are concerned about the fact that if there was to be hostility between us and Pakistan, what we think would be the complicity of Chinese.”

“Not only they are in the neighbourhood, but the fact that they are actually present and stationed along the LoC,” Lt Gen Parnaik said in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir last week at a seminar.

“As part of (China’s) ‘strings of pearls’ policy, Chinese footprints are too close for comfort,” Parnaik added, referring to the policy according to which China is actually securing sea lanes to the Middle East and Africa; crucial sources of raw materials – and untapped markets – for Chinese goods.

In New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs has sought a report from Defence Ministry on the issue.

This is not the first time China has dismissed such reports as frivolous. Last year, China officially clarified to India that some of its personnel were indeed present in Pakistan to render flood relief assistance, amid reports by a section in the American media about the presence of large numbers of Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan areas.

India has also time and again conveyed its concerns over the presence of Chinese personnel working in different projects in Azad Kashmir, claiming it was a disputed territory along with the rest of Kashmir.

The issue reportedly figured during the last December visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to New Delhi.

Fresh Indian concerns over the issue and the reported observations of the top Indian General comes ahead of the scheduled bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit at the Chinese resort of Sanya on April 13-14.

Both sides have held hectic parleys over the agenda for the Singh-Hu meeting which was expected to wide ranging, including issues such as China’s promise to address New Delhi’s concerns related to stapled visas being issued to residents of Indian-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Delegation in India Seeks Deals, Not Outsourcing

By: VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS

Nearly two years ago, President Obama rankled many people here when he said that American tax law unfairly benefited companies that created jobs in Bangalore and punished companies that hired in Buffalo.

On Tuesday, however, the president’s commerce secretary offered a friendlier message: Let’s do business. In his second stop during a weeklong tour of India, the secretary, Gary Locke, said he wanted to help American companies sell planes, tractors and power equipment to create jobs in the United States while also helping to develop India.

“What we seek is really two-way, mutually beneficial trade,” Mr. Locke said in an interview. He added that the trade should create jobs in both the United States and in India.

Mr. Locke’s visit is part of a year-old initiative by the Obama administration to double exports by 2015 to bolster a still-struggling American economy. In the case of India, the administration has also cast the effort as a way to improve economic relations with an important ally and one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.

The United States is not alone in pursuing such a strategy. Other countries, like China, Russia, France and Britain, have been sending trade missions to India.

Acknowledging that many American companies have not looked outward to bolster their businesses, Mr. Locke said in an interview that he hoped to use his “trade mission” to India, and three other countries later this year, to help businesses exploit opportunities abroad.

“Only 1 percent of U.S. companies export, and of that 1 percent, 58 percent export to only one country, typically Canada or Mexico,” he said. “And yet 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside the borders of the United States. So, if U.S. companies want to grow and expand, not only do they have to focus on the domestic market, but they have to look at the 95 percent of customers outside.”

As part of its charm offensive, the Obama administration recently removed nine Indian aerospace and defense companies from a list of restricted entities that cannot be sold certain technologies that have military uses. Mr. Locke is accompanied by representatives from 24 businesses, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Westinghouse, some of whom are hoping to win business as a result of the change in policy.

Trade between the United States and India was growing even before the administration’s recent efforts to focus on this economic relationship.

Total trade in goods and services jumped nearly 20 percent, to $54 billion in the first nine months of 2010. Later this week, India will host a biennial air show in Bangalore where American companies will try to win multibillion-dollar contracts from the Indian Air Force and civilian airlines. They will, however, face stiff competition from European and Russian companies.

Boeing had hoped to sell in India 10 cargo planes for $5 billion during Mr. Obama’s visit in November, but the deal is still not finished. Last month, however, Boeing’s European rival, Airbus, won a large order from IndiGo, a fast-growing Indian low-cost airline that plans to start flying international routes in August. IndiGo ordered 180 planes that have a list price of $15.6 billion. Deliveries are to start in 2015.

Mr. Locke is not the only American official trying to solicit business in India. Individual American states have also sent representatives to coincide with Mr. Locke’s visit. As state governments weigh painful budget cuts and grapple with lingering unemployment, some officials say that increasing exports to India and encouraging investment from its expanding companies is crucial.

“We’re not doing it to get ahead, we’re doing it to not be left behind,” said North Carolina’s secretary of commerce, J. Keith Crisco, who was in New Delhi this week with dozens of executives from his state.

This is the first trade delegation North Carolina has sent to India, Mr. Crisco said, though the state sent people to China and Brazil last year.

“Yes, we are catching up in India,” he said, adding that he expected some announcements of deals related to the trip in coming weeks.

New York State has gone even further. It set up an office in New Delhi last year and is organizing a series of investment conferences in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore this spring, aimed at Indian companies who want to expand to the United States or work as partners with a New York company.

The office is led by Kaviraj Singh, a Delhi lawyer who has lived and worked in New York. He said he planned to use the office to tie New York businesses “into a network that will make you feel as though you’ve always been here.”

India, Russia, UAE supporting Baloch insurgency

A briefing given by the then director general of military operations, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to parliamentarians has been characterised as being supportive of the US.

According to the WikiLeaks cable, a draft of a presentation shared with the US by National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani stated that Pakistan had not allowed the US to conduct cross-border operations. Parliamentarians were also told that India and Russia were involved in the insurgency in Balochistan. Pasha said India has established nine training camps along the Afghan border, where they are training members of the Baloch Liberation Army. He also claimed “India and the UAE (reportedly due to opposition to construction of the Gwadar port) were funding and arming the Baloch. Pasha also claimed that the Russian government was directly involved in funding/training/supporting the insurgency.”

Baloch insurgents at a camp south of Quetta

Former president Pervez Musharraf had also raised the point with US officials in September 2007. According to a memo, he had asked the US to intervene on “the ‘deliberate’ attempt of Kabul and New Delhi to destabilise Balochistan.”

Musharraf told officials that Pakistan had proof that India and Afghanistan were “involved in efforts to provide weapons, training and funding for Baloch extremists through Brahamdagh Bugti and Baloch Marri, two Baloch nationalists, who were living in Kabul.”

“We have letters instructing who to give what weapons [and] to whom,” he said.

A source who had attended the in-camera session told the US, “Pasha’s briefing consisted mainly of videos and photos of Taliban and other terrorist organisation’s activities that demonstrated the militants were both inhumane and un-Islamic.” According to the source, “At several points, female parliamentarians asked the army to stop showing disturbing footage, including a gory beheading.”

However, the memo notes, Pasha did not mention the threat from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a drone strike in August 2009.
In a meeting with US Senators Joe Biden (now US vice president) and Lindsey Graham, Kayani said: “He was painfully aware that the army had to retake South Waziristan since 90 per cent of the suicide bombers came from Baitullah Mehsud.” “He has to be cut down to size,” he said.

Pasha briefed members on what he termed “United States government drone incursions and missile strikes.” The source told the embassy that Pasha praised the US for its support through these methods and showed statistics to parliamentarians that demonstrated the vast majority of those killed in these attacks were either foreign or Taliban fighters.

However, politicians believed that the briefing had not provided any new information. Details of a dinner which was attended by several political leaders in attendance noted that “Pasha, unsurprisingly, defended Pakistan’s sovereignty against US incursions.”

However, they “did not share details from the briefing about foreign fighters killed in the alleged US drone attacks.”

Leaked documents show support from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani for drone strikes, and that the Pakistan Army asked for US special operations elements to be deployed with the Frontier Corps.

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) parliamentarians Shaukatullah and Munir Khan Orakzai and Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Farooq Sattar said at the dinner that they had pointed out during the question-and-answer session in parliament that “not all terrorists were tribals and that the government needed to address growing extremism in Punjab.”

Other details about the Inter-Services Intelligence have also emerged in the leaked documents.

According to an October 2009 memo, ISI director general Pasha had told the US ambassador that he had “followed up on threat information that an attack would be launched against India

between September-November. He had been in direct touch with the Israelis on possible threats against Israeli targets in India.” Pakistan does not recognise Israel as a country.

Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly proceedings

GILGIT: The Jang Group and Geo TV once again came under fire in Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly on Wednesday after an independent lawmaker once again pinpointed its senior staff for ‘spreading despondency’ in the society, demanding exemplary punishment and also their exile from the country.

“The senior members of the group, including Kamran Khan, Ansar Abbasi, Hamid Mir, and senior analysts Hassan Nisar, Irfan Siddiqi and Haroon ur Rashid are agents of Israel, India, and Russia. They are traitors, therefore they should be arrested and hanged,” said Raziuddin Razi, a lawmaker who has recently been made chairman public accounts committee. He said that after the analysis of these journalists every night it seems that the government and also the country will cease to exist the next day, “but it is not the reality”. He said that these people have no right to be called analysts or journalists. They want to topple an elected government.

Raziuddin also said in his emotional speech that these journalists be arrested and exiled. Raziuddin wanted the treasury benches, ministers and parliamentary secretaries to support him in the noble cause of ‘crusade’ against the blackmailers and said that these people always preferred to be with dictators instead of democratic forces.

In the previous day of proceedings, the Minister for Health and Information Ali Madad Sher had officially distanced his party [PPP] after a similar onslaught was unleashed by some members against the group. However, today [Wednesday] the senior minister, Mohammad Jaffer, who was also acting chief minister in Mehdi Shah’s absence, moved one step ahead in their self-imposed animosity against the Jang Group, saying that the group and its staff [Hamid Mir, Ansar Abbasi, Kamran Khan etc] were true foreign agents who not only draw money from India, Russia and Israel but also America to conspire against the state. “Not only are they being paid by India, Israel and Russia but also they are being paid by America,” he said while talking to media after the proceedings.

Lawmakers from opposition benches vehemently defended media especially the Jang Group and Geo TV, terming their presence a symbol of stability and rule of law in a country robbed by the so-called elected government of PPP.

Janbaz Khan, the PML-N lawmaker, and Raja Azam Khan a MQM member once again rose to their feet and defended the Jang Group, saying that because of this group a check on the ruling party’s corruption has been possible.

They said that these are those ‘hate mongers’ who stood firmly against Musharraf’s dictatorship and helped revive democracy in the region. “The government is just trying to hide their inefficiency behind the animosity of media.

MQM member Raja Azam Khan said that they would also support media and the Jang Group for their bold stance against the corrupt government. A PPP lawmaker, Wazir Hassan said that these anchorpersons don’t speak against the MQM because they know that if they uttered words against them they would be killed by this party.

Meanwhile, a spokesman of the Jang-Geo Group said that the Group was determined to continue bringing facts to the people. He said, the Group exposed many corruption cases including Swiss cases. It played unprecedented role in rule of law in the country, the spokesman said. The lawmakers in Gilgit-Baltistan assembly on the 5th day of its 9th session Wednesday voiced concern over the illegal chopping off of trees in forests of Astore and Skardu, demanding an in-depth inquiry into the matter.

“Is there any department to ask the forests officials as to why such deforestation is taking places in Gilgit-Baltistan,” said Abdul Hamid, a PPP lawmaker from Astore while speaking on a point of order. He demanded inquiry into the matter to stop the ‘crime’ otherwise the situation would become worse.

Wazir Shakil, another lawmaker said that deforestation is also common in his area adding that people responsible for it be brought to book. He said that the stock of trees would deplete soon if the chopping off of trees was not controlled. Deputy speaker Jamil Ahmed, who was conducting the session in the absence of the speaker, asked the advisor on forests Aftab Haider to conduct an inquiry into the matter and submit a report to the house.

The “pure food act” was presented in the house after the provincial Law Minister Wazir Shakeel submitted the bill for approval. The deputy speaker passed on the bill to a select committee for finalization and onward submission in the house.

The Way Toward a Global ‘Reset’

By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

In both Russia and the United States, the “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, to which the leaders of both countries first declared their commitment more than 18 months ago, is now being assessed. Some, often for reasons of domestic politics, are trying to belittle any achievements. Others are wondering whether a new stage in the relationship has truly begun, or whether this is just another pendulum swing in a positive direction, to be followed inevitably by a swing backward.

In assessing where we are today, it is useful to look back at the history of our relations. Even more importantly, we must consider those relations in a broader context, as part of the changes in our globalized world.

In the early 1990s, Russian expectations for cooperation with the United States were so great, the mood was euphoric. Some of that euphoria was based on illusions and on an idealized view of America – a sense that was particularly widespread among the intelligentsia. Yet, those expectations also reflected a sound belief that our two nations could indeed achieve a great deal together, both in their own interests and for global benefit.

Euphoria soon gave way to disillusionment. Later in that decade, when the Russian economy was undermined by inept reforms and while millions of Russians were plunged into poverty, many Americans applauded Russia’s leaders. Many Russians could not help wondering if a weak, cornered Russia was what the United States wanted.

Also in the 1990s, NATO was expanded while the United States proclaimed its victory in the Cold War and its intention to maintain military superiority.

What, then, was the value of the pledge President Ronald Reagan made at the Geneva summit meeting in 1985, when he joined me in solemnly stating that our two nations would not seek military superiority? And how could a relationship of trust be built on the foundation set in the 1990s?

The period when the United States could regard itself as the sole remaining superpower and even a “hyperpower,” capable of creating a new kind of empire, turned out to be relatively short. The global financial crisis – which, this time, started in America itself rather than on the world’s periphery – spurred the process of global realignment in favor of new centers of power and influence. America has had to adjust to this shift, and it has not been easy.

The proposal to “reset” relations with Russia reflected the acknowledgement that previous policy had failed. It also recognized the great potential of a partnership between the two nations. Nevertheless, objections arose from the very start. Naysayers stressed that our nations were too different to be able to build a sustainable, “organic” relationship for the long term. Moreover, in both Russia and the United States it became clear that some people still believe that our countries are potential adversaries.

Neither Russia nor the United States can afford another confrontation. Though quite different, both nations are going through a transition. They are trying to build new, often unpredictable relationships with emerging powers. The European Union, too, faces this challenge – a challenge made even more difficult by problems arising from a hasty E.U. enlargement and monetary integration.

The intercontinental area from Vancouver to Vladivostok confronts many similar problems, and many shared interests are emerging. Powerful forces of mutual attraction must emerge as well. The U.S.-Russia “reset” and the declared E.U.-Russia “partnership for modernization” should mark the beginning of the road toward a new intercontinental community. Only by working together can the United States, Europe and Russia secure a position of leadership and influence in a rapidly changing global world.

Am I calling for an association of “the North” as a counterweight to “the South,” the Islamic world or perhaps China? Far from it.

Such a plan would be a recipe for a real rather than a hypothetical conflict of civilizations – something that in today’s world is totally unacceptable. In relations with other countries, we must always seek cooperation, joint problem-solving and ways to overcome difficulties – both those that have already arisen and those that are bound to arise.

The Islamic world is grappling with the challenge of adapting to the modern era while trying to protect its cultural identity and unique civilization. As part of this painful process, extremist tendencies within political Islam are opposed by moderate tendencies and regimes that are not averse to modernization and are ready for dialogue. A community of shared civilization, with common cultural roots and diverse experience interacting with the Islamic world, must be a party to such a dialogue.

Such a community could play an equally important role in a dialogue with China.

China’s political importance will undoubtedly increase with its population and economic power. This will be a serious test, for the international community as well as China, especially since the historic evolution of any nation is not always linear. There are forks in the road, when difficult decisions must be made. China, sooner or later, will face a political choice – the problem of democracy. Engagement and cooperation with a great nation that has become not just the “factory to the world” but also a giant economic and political “laboratory” will be another key task for the intercontinental community I am advocating.

How this community will emerge and what its final shape will be is still unclear. What is clear is that we must start by building a durable security architecture, first and foremost in Europe, with the United States and Russia as partners. Recent U.S. policy statements suggest that at last even American leaders recognize that security cannot be achieved unilaterally; it requires partnership.

The proposal by Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, to conclude a pan-European security treaty applies to the same area, extending from North America to Europe and all of Russia.

I am convinced that in the future an intercontinental association of nations with a common destiny will emerge.

Big goals may seem overly ambitious or abstract, particularly at a time when Russia and the United States cannot agree on the issue of imported poultry despite their public commitment to a new relationship, and the European Union still denies Russian citizens visa-free travel.

Yet I am convinced that my proposal is not a pipe dream. The scale of global change is so vast, and the potential contribution of nations across the intercontinental space of Russia, Europe and North America is so enormous, that their close association should be seen as imperative. We must move from “reset” and partnership toward a reconfiguration of global political relations.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. He is a founding member of Green Cross International and is on its board.

Zardari assured of help for flood victims

By Munir Hussain

SOCHI (RUSSIA), Aug 18 (APP): Assuring Pakistan of their help in mitigating the sufferings of its flood victims, the Presidents of Russia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan along with President Asif Ali Zardari here on Wednesday called for collective action to lead their nations to a prosperous future by carrying out joint mega projects in critical areas of energy and transportation.This was the second meeting of the quartet which met last time in Tajik capital Dushanbe in July 2009, where it reached decisions of far reaching consequence for the security and development of the region and the world.This was a follow-up meeting hosted by the Russian President, who like in the past, underlined the need for exploiting the potential that existed in sectors of energy, transport, trade and communication.

At the opening of the quadrilateral summit, President Asif Ali Zardari, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Afghan President Hamid Karzai made statements highlighting the objectives behind the summit and the goals they wanted to achieve by coming together.

The main theme that ran through the remarks of the four leaders was to stay united against the menace of terrorism and strengthen multilateral forums to snuff life out of terrorist networks, which are relying on narco trade and illegal weapons to keep threatening the governments and civil orders to impose their narrow agendas.

The leaders had a frank discussion on various issues of mutual, regional and international importance with commonality of views on a range of issues.

The leaders recognized that they needed to enhance regional cooperation to face difficult challenges such as the natural disasters like floods in Pakistan and huge fires in Russia.

The leaders pledged to follow a shared vision and joint destiny and stay firm to root out terrorism and dampen the effects of extremism.

In his statement, President Asif Ali Zardari called upon the international community and the regional partners to help Pakistan out of a difficult situation caused by floods.

He said his nation would show its determined character and would emerge strongly out of the natural disaster.

He said improving regional cooperation was the way forward and the world was waiting for countries of this region to make joint progress in economic sphere and play important role in handling difficult challenges at international level.

The Russian President said his country would want to assist Pakistan in the construction of houses and rehabilitation of livelihoods.

The leaders discussed the internal situation in Afghanistan with the bottom line that long term peace and security will remain a distant dream without normalizing the situation in that country.

They said terrorism should be taken as a common problem and the partners should have collective strategies to answer the threats posed by terrorist networks.

The next important component of the parleys was economic cooperation and potential of launching mega cross country projects.

Pakistan and Tajikistan are already working on two important projects. One is the supply of 1000 megawatts of electricity to Pakistan from Tajikistan through a 700 km transmission line.

The second project is a road for which the Presidents of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan signed a joint declaration at the last summit agreeing to practically implement the construction of rail, roads and highways on the Panji Poyon-Sherkhon route and Bandar-Kabul-Peshawar giving access to Tajikistan through Pakistan seaports.

The leaders offered their sympathies for the losses in lives and material suffered by Pakistan and said they are with Pakistan in its hour of need.

Iran, Israel and Netanyahu

By George F. Will

JERUSALEM: When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense. After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’s tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s up to 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. Resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River. Since 2006, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock Resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember that in 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said:

“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says that Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say that Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says that CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says that 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

Reflections on India

By Sean Paul Kelley

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who’s being honest with you and wants nothing from you. These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn’t visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll start with what I think are India’s four major problems-the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation-and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality.Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one’s health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum-the capital of Kerala-and Calicut. I don’t know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India’s productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble India’s growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small ‘c’ sense.) More after the jump.

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old,if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It’s awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one’s phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India’s financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia-and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative.

Sean Paul Kelley is a travel writer, former radio host, and before that an asset manager for a Wall Street investment bank that is still (barely) alive. He recently left a fantastic job in Singapore working for Solar Winds, a software company based out of Austin to travel around the world for a year (or two). He founded The Agonist, in 2002, which is still considered the top international affairs, culture and news destination for progressives. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, on satellite radio and Air America.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ‘digging mass graves for US soldiers’

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is digging mass graves for American soldiers in preparation for a war over its nuclear programme, according to a former senior commander.

By Richard Spencer

The scene in the south of Iran where hundreds of mass graves have been dug

General Hossein Moghadam, the Guard’s former deputy chief, was speaking after film footage showed strings of freshly dug graves in the south of the country.

They were close to the site of war graves for the dead of the long war between Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which devastated the region in the 1980s.

“The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam’s soldiers have now been prepared again for US soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this big number of graves,” Gen Moghadam told the Associated Press, which obtained the footage.

The warning is unlikely to be more than symbolic. No-one expects a land invasion, should the White House authorise a strike on nuclear facilities, while Iran has so far suggested counter-action is most likely to be aimed at American allies in the Gulf and Western bases there.

Gen Moghadam’s claims might be a sign that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is increasingly reliant on the Revolutionary Guard for political backing, is feeling the heat of international diplomatic pressure over his aggressive posture on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.

Washington has made full use of the diplomatic victory it won in forcing through a new United Nations sanctions package, with the unexpected support of both Russia and China, in June.

Iranian businessmen both inside and outside the country say the economy is suffering, while President Ahmadinejad’s many enemies from within the ranks of his own conservative faction in the leadership are frequently outspoken on his domestic record across the board.

Last week Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the American joint chiefs of staffs, kept up President Barack Obama’s double-handed approach, saying that he had prepared an attack plan focusing on Iran’s nuclear plants while at the same time accepting he was unwilling to use it.

Both sides are open about the brinkmanship threats of force involve, with the wider Middle East fearing it will be sucked into open conflict. Gen Moghadam went on to say: “If the US decides to take a pre-emptive action and attack Iran, Iran will have no choice but to strike the American bases in the region.

“The heavy costs of such a war will not be just on the Islamic Republic of Iran. America and other countries should accept that this would be the start of an extensive war in the region.”

More lies than secrets for suspects in spy case

By SCOTT SHANE and BENJAMIN WEISER

WASHINGTON - The suspected Russian spy ring rolled up by the F.B.I. this week had everything it needed for world-class espionage: excellent training, cutting-edge gadgetry, deep knowledge of American culture and meticulously constructed cover stories.

A bus stop in Moscow opposite a building that formerly housed the K.G.B.

The only things missing in more than a decade of operation were actual secrets to send home to Moscow.

The assignments, described in secret instructions intercepted by the F.B.I., were to collect routine political gossip and policy talk that might have been more efficiently gathered by surfing the Web. And none of the 11 people accused in the case face charges of espionage, because in all those years they were never caught sending classified information back to Moscow, American officials said.

“What in the world do they think they were going to get out of this, in this day and age?” said Richard F. Stolz, a former head of C.I.A. spy operations and onetime Moscow station chief. “The effort is out of proportion to the alleged benefits. I just don’t understand what they expected.”

As cold war veterans puzzled over the rationale for Russia‘s extraordinary effort to place agents in American society, both Russian and American officials signaled that the arrests would not affect the warming of relations between the countries.

At a meeting with former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday, Vladimir V. Putin, the prime minister and a former spy himself, said, “Your police have gotten carried away, putting people in jail.” But he played down the episode: “I really expect that the positive achievements that have been made in our intergovernmental relations lately will not be damaged by the latest events.”

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note. “I do not believe that this will affect the reset of our relationship with Russia,” he said. “We have made great progress in the past year and a half working on issues of mutual concern.” Asked if the White House found it offensive for its partner to be spying on the United States, he said the case was “important,” but a law enforcement matter.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the police in Cyprus arrested the man known as Christopher R. Metsos, the last of the spying suspects to be detained, and American officials disclosed that they had moved to make arrests over the weekend because one of the people suspected of being Russian agents, who called himself Richard Murphy, was planning to fly out of the United States on Sunday night, possibly for good.

After years of painstaking surveillance, the F.B.I. did not want any of its targets to escape, and “you can’t take down one without taking down all of them,” one law enforcement official said.

The F.B.I. on Sunday arrested 10 people in Yonkers, Manhattan, New Jersey, Boston and Virginia and charged them with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Most were also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

American officials said they believed that most of the accused spies had been born in Russia and had been given sophisticated training before resettling in the United States, posing as married couples. They connected with various Americans of influence or knowledge, including a “prominent New York-based financier” described as a political fund-raiser with personal ties to a cabinet official, a former high-ranking national security official, and a nuclear weapons expert.

But they were instructed not to seek government jobs, because spy bosses in Moscow thought their cover stories would not stand up under a serious background investigation. So they were assigned to feed to Moscow what amounted to briefing papers on economics issues, American government players and diplomatic and military affairs.

One, the agent known as Cynthia Murphy, talked to New York contacts and reported on “prospects for the global gold market” that her bosses (whose spelling in English-language messages was imperfect) told her were “v. usefull” and passed to the Russian Ministry of Finance.

Before a visit to Moscow by President Obama last year, Ms. Murphy and her ostensible husband, Mr. Murphy, were instructed to size up American intentions from their home in Montclair, N.J. “Try to outline their views and most important Obama’s goals which he expects to achieve during summit in July and how does his team plan to do it (arguments, provisions, means of persuasion to ‘lure’ [Russia] into cooperation in US interests),” the spy bosses in Moscow asked, according to the charging papers.

Another time, Moscow offered vague instructions that might have been directed to journalists: “Try to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to State department, Government, major think tanks.”

But why would Russian intelligence ask for such information from people settled in New Jersey rather than, say, Russian Embassy experts or specialists in Moscow or Washington?

“It’s a Hail Mary pass,” said Milton A. Bearden, who served for three decades in the C.I.A.’s clandestine service and ran its Soviet and East European division as the Soviet Union fell.

“Maybe I end up next to a guy that is the minority staff director on some committee and we do barbecues, or I coach his kid in Little League,” Mr. Bearden said. “How can you lose?”

For the Russian government, he said, supporting the so-called illegals operation was probably relatively inexpensive, particularly because some suspected agents were self-supporting, as court papers show.

One, Ms. Murphy, reported an annual income of $135,000 as a financial planner, her affidavit says. And another, Anna Chapman, owned her own real estate firm in Manhattan, which her lawyer said in court was valued by his client at $2 million.

If anything, the challenge for Moscow in an operation of such duration was to make sure its agents remained loyal amid the comforts of daily suburban American life. After the collapse of Communism, Mr. Bearden said, several Czech “sleeper agents” in the United States refused to go home, saying they felt they had become Americans.

“What’s their life like, and particularly if it goes on for years?” said Burton Gerber, a former chief of the C.I.A.’s Soviet division, of the suspected Russian agents. For couples with children, for example, they may be “very guilty spies,” Mr. Gerber said, and yet influenced by P.T.A. and after-school sports.

“At some stage, do you begin to think of yourself more as American than Russian?” he said. “Without feeling a sense of betraying Russia, they may just want to lead quiet lives.”

Scott Shane reported from Washington, and Benjamin Weiser from New York. Clifford J. Levy contributed reporting from Moscow, and Mark Mazzetti and Peter Baker from Washington.

Once a diversion, now a trade

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

BLAGOVESCHENSK, Russia – It was a routine arrest, warranting only a brief mention in the local newspaper, Amur Pravda. Customs agents, suspicious of a woman’s bulky clothing, discovered she had tape wrapped around her torso.

A taxidermist prepared a bear skin for a client in Blagoveschensk. The paws can sell for $50.

Removing it, they found the contraband: several large, furry bear paws.

Closed for decades, the border between Russia and China has been creaking open in recent years, allowing more trade and travel but also clearing the way for a peculiar cross-border criminal enterprise in animal parts for Chinese medicine and cooking.

“It is very widespread just now,” Aleksei L. Vaisman, a senior coordinator for Traffic Europe-Russia, a group sponsored by WWF that monitors trade in wild animals, said of the illicit trade in animal parts in the Far East.

Not only bear paws but also bear gallbladders – highly valued for their medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities – frogs, tiger bones, deer musk and the genitals of spotted deer are smuggled daily into China.

But it is bear paws, a ritual dish for the Chinese, that are the most common commodities in this underground market, Mr. Vaisman said. He estimated that thousands were smuggled each year.

While illegal and, to most people perhaps, offensive, the traffic apparently poses no threat to the robust Siberian population of Russian brown bears, a relative of grizzlies, which is rising despite the paw trade.

The real problem with the bear paw trade, the authorities say, is that it creates smuggling channels for two other species – the Amur tiger and the Far Eastern leopard – that are highly endangered. Experts put the population of wild Amur tigers at 450, with about 30 poached each year. Only about 40 of the leopards remain in the wild.

Those channels come in many forms, and are growing busier every year, experts say. Hidden under scrap metal in trucks, slipped across the frozen Amur River in the winter or stuffed amid clothes in suitcases and carried by stony-faced smugglers, the bear paws find their way to China despite the best efforts of the Russian authorities.

On Feb. 8, Russian border patrol agents stopped two trucks carrying 447 bear paws in the village of Leninskoye, just a few miles from the Chinese border, and arrested two Russians and a Chinese national. The cargo weighed 515 kilograms, or 1,133 pounds.

Here in Blagoveschensk, it is not hard to find bear paws for sale; a casual inquiry at a meat counter can make the connection.

A saleswoman’s tight-eyed, suspicious stare greets customers at one dingy meat market. Under frosted glass lies an assortment of sausages, beef cutlets, frozen chickens and game meat – musk deer venison, bear dumplings, wild boar. This, of course, is not where the real money is made. “Call that number on the wall,” the saleswoman says, pointing to a bulletin board.

Soon, in the darkened interior of a parked Lexus sport-utility vehicle, a bear paw deal is going down. “Volodya, hi, do you have any paws?” a broker says into his cellphone. “I have a guy who wants paws.” No luck.

“Sasha, hi, do you have any paws?” he asks another source. “No, somebody just wants to look.” A pause. “Great, we’ll be there tomorrow.”

The rendezvous is set for a ramshackle building beside a potholed road on the outskirts of Blagoveschensk. The hunter pads into a back room, pops open a freezer and reveals the goods: four gnarled, frozen paws.

The paws come from bears killed legally by hunters and also by poachers. But because any export of paws is illegal, the entire trade is banned, Yuri N. Privalov, the minister of natural resources for the Amur region, said in an interview. He conceded that the illicit trade was thriving all the same.

Efforts to stanch the traffic run up against the powerful lure of quick money or, experts say, a man’s need to slake an alcoholic thirst – though seemingly only in a Siberian village would this seem an easy way to get a drink.

“A guy has nothing to do in a village,” explained Oleg V. Lezin, the owner of a taxidermist shop in Blagoveschensk. “He takes a dog and tracks down a bear in the forest, kills it and chops off the paws. He can sell those paws for 1,500 rubles a kilogram. Then he comes into town and gets something to drink, and he’s all right until the next bear.” Those 1,500 rubles would be worth about $50.

The paw trade has damaged hunting traditions with deep roots in Siberia, the taxidermist said, turning a hallowed male winter ritual into a mercantile exercise. Traditionally, Russian bear hunters would find a den burrowed into the roots of a cedar tree, gingerly approach and take a position on the opposite side of the tree from the opening. Then they would make a clamor, or throw in a burning plastic bag. When the bear scrambled out, snorting and angry, the hunters would lean around the tree and shoot it.

But now, he said, many Russians simply hunt at night from trucks equipped with spotlights.

A few years back, according to Roman A. Chikachov, a game warden in Blagoveschensk, Russian hunters took to passing off the more common wild boar gallbladders as bear gallbladders. Once they discovered this ruse, the Chinese buyers, already suspicious, became far more cautious in their dealings. The Russians, he said, are still scratching their heads over how the Chinese were able to tell the two apart.

David Miliband: How to end the war in Afghanistan

David Miliband, the former foreign secretary has written an open letter to General David Petraeus, the new commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan setting out plans to accelerate moves towards a peace deal in Afghanistan:

David Miliband is the frontrunner for the Labour Party leadership.

Dear David,

You and I both know the Afghan mission is at a decisive moment. Stanley McChrystal was a remarkable commander who had the fierce loyalty of the men and women under his command. He brought rigour and drive as well as compassion to the mission in Afghanistan. President Obama’s decisive action to put you in charge shows the urgency and importance that the President rightly attaches to this mission. There is now a race against time to persuade the Afghan people that the correct strategy is in place and show our own people it can succeed.

The first time we met, you told me there is no way to kill your way to victory in a counter insurgency. As we have discussed, the purpose of military effort and civilian improvement is to create the conditions for political settlement. The battle for power is fought in the minds of the local population, insurgents and western publics.

Better Afghan Security Forces are necessary but not enough. Better schooling and economic opportunities are vital for the loyalty of the Afghan people. But none of them are durable or possible without a political settlement. We need the tribes inside the system, al qaeda outside, and the neighbours onside. The process required is therefore two-pronged – national and regional.

First, include the excluded. Within Afghanistan, a political settlement needs arrangements, whether formal or informal, to ensure that the legitimate tribal, ethnic, and other groups that feel excluded from the post-Bonn political settlement are given a real stake in the political process and are able to compete for political representation. A peace settlement must include the vanquished as well as the victors. All of this would encourage Afghans to play a part in building stability and security so that and this is a key objective of many of the insurgents the international forces will be able to withdraw from combat, initially into a training and support role, and then altogether.

Second, go local. The provincial and district governors and their associated assemblies of elders should be given new governing powers, so they have the confidence, competence, and capacity to govern in the best interests of those they represent. Recruiting the right people for these jobs is essential and in view of the challenges of upholding justice and the rule of law, the police chief and local magistrates are equally important.

Third, a new legislative process should be established not necessarily involving constitutional change between President and parliament, in order to give parliamentarians a real stake in the success of the political settlement.

Fourth, underpinning all this must be a more concerted effort to prevent and reduce the corruption that corrodes trust. President Karzai’s promises to tackle the culture of impunity and to establish a new anti-corruption unit are only a start.

Regionally, all of Afghanistan’s neighbors and the key regional powers must recognise two simple facts: no country in the region, let alone the international community, will again allow Afghanistan to be dominated, or used as a strategic asset, by a neighboring state; and the status quo in Afghanistan is damaging to all. Crime, drugs, terrorism, and refugees spill across its borders when Afghanistan’s great mineral wealth and agricultural land should instead be of benefit to the region.

There will be no settlement in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s involvement, but India, Russia, Turkey, and China are also key. Moreover, the Iranian regime whose nuclear policies have flouted the UN and that has a record of attempting to destabilize its neighbors must acknowledge that the best way to protect its investments or promote the interests of Afghans that share its Shia faith is to work to promote peace, not undermine it.

I know there is an argument over when the time is right to go down the political track, but in truth it has already begun. It is shaped and reshaped every day in the minds of the people. The job of the Afghan government, with our strong support, should be to define a political endgame that creates a stake for all those willing to live within the Afghan constitution – and then march towards it.

You have said yourself that 70 to 80 per cent of the insurgency are not ideologically linked to al-Qaeda. Engagement with those who have been involved in attacks is difficult. But allowing space for discussion to bring people from the insurgency into Afghan society, removing the violence, is not appeasement. It is exactly what we want to achieve: the end of the war, with the sustainable capacity in the country to prevent its restart.

Now is a time for determination but also clarity. We are counting on you.

Yours,

David

‘Final Solution’ Frenzy – From Afghanistan with Love – Part I

This series by Tariq Saeedi who is based in Central Asia, would be carried by Opinion Maker in full.

By Tariq Saeedi

With Qasim Jan in Kandahar, Khalil Azad in Kabul, SM Kasi in Quetta, and GN Brohi in Nushki and Dalbandin

(nCa) – Had Van Gogh been given a canvas the size of the Eurasian landmass in 1890, he would probably have painted what the United States in painting now: Spectacular psychosis smothering withered sanity, towering talent defeated by raging madness, sky-high ambition smashed by rock-hard realities, a troubled genius in self-immolation.

Changing demeanor of USA towards Pakistan

END OF TUNNEL IN SIGHT

Brig Asif Haroon Raja

9/11 stunned and terrorized American public while the whole world watched the clips on television sets of airplanes hitting twin towers with shock and bewilderment. George W. Bush and others in corridors of power huffed and puffed in anger and hastily finalized plans to teach a lesson of life to the perpetrators who dared to commit most heinous crime on US soil. Terror attacks against twin towers in New York and on the Pentagon building in Washington were described as an attack on USA and the whole blame was pasted on al-Qaeda without having a shred of evidence. Gen Musharraf was haughtily asked on telephone from Washington by Colin Powel; “speak out whether you are with us or against us”. Immediate answer was sought from him in affirmative or otherwise in the middle of the night, leaving no scope of remaining neutral.

It meant if the answer was “we are with you’, it implied Pakistan would be bound to comply with all the US dictates blindly without caring for own national concerns. Had he expressed his inability to follow US policies running counter to Pakistan’s interests, it would have pushed Pakistan into the camp of enemies of US, thus providing justification to the US to convert Afghanistan and Pakistan into a single battleground, as was done in March 2009 through Af-Pak policy, and to proceed against the two countries simultaneously or in phases. India had strongly advocated for such a course of action and had offered full support, but because of Pakistan’s nuclear capability the US decided to first use Pakistan against Taliban ruled Afghanistan and subsequently at an opportune time proceed against Pakistan with the assistance of India.