Bharat Rakshak

B ji when did I ever say that? I think just the opposite. India should focus on Iran, but in a way that frees it (even forcibly) from its West Asian cultural moorings.

AKP - Islamist party in turkey is just using Islam as a facade. The entire project is pro business/commerce orientated.

AKP - Islamist party in turkey is just using Islam as a facade. The entire project is pro business/commerce orientated.

Correction: The place names cited by the Red Crescent official and reported in the 7 March edition of NightWatch are governates, not cities and towns. Syria has 14 governates - often translated as provinces - which administer 61 districts.

It is important to enter an instability problem at the right level, meaning at the level of political organization that provides diagnostic and prognostic results. The international press persists in describing unrest in terms of governates. Entering the instability problem at this level results in distorted narratives and exaggerated reports about the strength of the opposition and the weakness of the government.

Readers are justified in wondering why the government in Damascus has not collapsed. The reason is that the government is not now and has never been threatened by a governate-level insurrection. The fight is in local neighborhoods and most are on the political or geographic periphery of the governates, posing little threat to central authority.

Syria is about the size of North Dakota, according to the CIA World Factbook, with a few differences. Syria has 61 districts which more or less correspond to North Dakota's 53 counties. North Dakota's counties, however, are not organized into governates or provinces.

Syria supports more than 22.5 million people in the same space that North Dakota supports just under 700,000, but with a lot less water. North Dakota has no cities as populous as Syria's Homs which contains over a million people. North Dakota has no sea ports or borders with hostile enemy states.

NightWatch has sought to enter the Syrian instability problem at the district or sub-district level so as to guard against bias and get finer ground truth granularity about just what is happening in Syrian neighborhoods.

For example, a careful survey shows that today the Free Syrian Army and its supporting web sites posted situation reports indicating that this force engaged in six operations in five different governates on 7 March. Several were exchanges of gunfire in which no one was injured and one was erection of a roadblock, in a territory the size of North Dakota.

This data supports leaked information attributed to US intelligence persons that there isn't much of a Free Syrian Army. There is unrest in Syria, but there really isn't much of an insurgency. For the purposes of comparison, in Iraq in 2006, more than 300 firefights occurred daily. In Afghanistan last spring, there were around 50 firefights daily and hundreds of incidents involving makeshift explosives.

Syrian security forces were busy. Opposition sources reported dozens of activities in nine of the 14 governates. A closer look showed that the activities were concentrated in about a dozen of the 61 districts.

Nine governates sounds like a big insurrection. Unrest in 12 districts presents a far more manageable security problem than nine governates supposedly out of control, but in fact not. No governates are out of control and apparently neither are any of the 61 districts.

A still finer focus showed that most of the opposition activities were small, brief street demonstrations (which were not further defined), according to the opposition's own postings. There were no clashes except as noted above; no bombings and no terror attacks on 7 March.

Most of the government operations were local neighborhood sweeps that encountered no resistance. Other reported government actions included over flights of aircraft, some vague armor movements and shelling. The opposition sources that posted the reports were not careful to distinguish whether the operations were by law enforcement and police personnel, paramilitary militias or the Syrian armed forces. Most were attributed to "thugs," which suggests the paramilitary militias.

Unfortunately the sources also were not specific about which sub-districts or neighborhoods were under stress from government operations. Each of the 61 Syrian districts has multiple sub-districts what are called, nawahi. It is not yet possible to track activity at the nawahi level, but it would show a more fine grained definition of the status of the instability problem in Syria.

...
One day during my stay in Damascus two weeks ago, I watched Al Jazeera announce the “breaking news” of demonstrations against the Syrian government in Duma on the outskirts of the capital. I jumped into a taxi and persuaded the reluctant driver, who had also heard on Al Jazeera about trouble in Duma, to take me there.

To my initial puzzlement and subsequent revulsion, I found that Duma was as peaceful and bustling as Calcutta’s Park Street on a normal day, its residents going about their business as usual. To be sure, I asked around, but no one knew anything about any protests in their midst that day although many had heard about it on Al Jazeera. There had been demonstrations against the government in Duma, but the last time its residents protested was almost two months ago, in the third week of January, according to residents there.

Journalists are human. They make mistakes. So I gave the benefit of doubt to the Doha-based television channel, which was hailed as a refreshing new start in the global media when it was first launched. Among the scores of journalists from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, India and other non-Western news outlets who were in Syria at the same time that I was visiting, there were many who had hailed Al Jazeera on its dawn as a welcome alternative to the American and European media which now dominate international news coverage.

During the remainder of my stay in Syria, I realized that this was not a case of inadvertent misreporting. And Al Jazeera is not alone in making up news instead of reporting news. A new crop of Arabic news outlets, claiming to be free, have become active players in the Arab Spring as much as rebel movements and governments in West Asia, the latter with their specific agendas that are actually in collision with the spirit of a new democratic upsurge in the region.


...
...

India ought to wisen up to the threat that the success of the current media experiment in Syria could pose for its own multi-religious, multi-ethnic, pluralistic society. When the problems in Palestine and the rest of the Muslim ummah are eventually resolved, the new crop of pretenders to freedom of information in the Arabic media could one day target India to further the agenda of some Arab states by rewriting the rules of news reporting and diplomacy as we have understood them for a long time.

As of now, India is ill-equipped to face such a threat to its very existence. The earlier the country wakes up to this danger, the better it will be for all Indians.

Everyone is pulling out the stops to delay the Israeli strike - Gulf intelligence reported that Iran is not building th weapon but is getting the capability to do so - in line with US intel agencies..Iran hasnt take the decision yet apparently. But this itself is in dispute amongst Iranian adversaries. Everyone is assumingthe worst case scenario - Iran will go for weapon to unite the country. War is not useful for all of Iran's adversaries although it culd happen by some sort of miscalculation on both sides - hence US efforts to imrpove comms with Iran - KSA setting up intel hotlines etc.. They are going to try other methods like threat of serious force, blockade, economic collapse , skirmishes to demonstrate intent.

Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency

Shahram Amiri, center, an Iranian scientist who claimed he had been abducted by the C.I.A., upon his return to Tehran in 2010.
By JAMES RISEN
Published: March 17, 2012

WASHINGTON — While American spy agencies have believed that the Iranians halted efforts to build a nuclear bomb back in 2003, the difficulty in assessing the government’s ambitions was evident two years ago, when what appeared to be alarming new intelligence emerged, according to current and former United States officials.

Intercepted communications of Iranian officials discussing their nuclear program raised concerns that the country’s leaders had decided to revive efforts to develop a weapon, intelligence officials said.

That, along with a stream of other information, set off an intensive review and delayed publication of the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report reflecting the consensus of analysts from 16 agencies. But in the end, they deemed the intercepts and other evidence unpersuasive, and they stuck to their longstanding conclusion.

The intelligence crisis that erupted in 2010, which has not been previously disclosed, only underscores how central that assessment has become to matters of war and peace.

Today, as suspicions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have provoked tough sanctions and threats of military confrontation, top administration officials have said that Iran still has not decided to pursue a weapon, reflecting the intelligence community’s secret analysis. But if that assessment changes, it could lift a brake set by President Obama, who has not ruled out military options as a last resort to prevent Iran gaining nuclear arms.

Publicly and privately, American intelligence officials express confidence in the spy agencies’ assertions. Still, some acknowledge significant intelligence gaps in understanding the intentions of Iran’s leaders and whether they would approve the crucial steps toward engineering a bomb, the most covert aspect of one of the most difficult intelligence collection targets in the world.

Much of what analysts sift through are shards of information that are ambiguous or incomplete, sometimes not up to date, and that typically offer more insight about what the Iranians are not doing than evidence of what they are up to.

As a result, officials caution that they cannot offer certainty. “I’d say that I have about 75 percent confidence in the assessment that they haven’t restarted the program,” said one former senior intelligence official.

Another former intelligence official said: “Iran is the hardest intelligence target there is. It is harder by far than North Korea.

“In large part, that’s because their system is so confusing,” he said, which “has the effect of making it difficult to determine who speaks authoritatively on what.” ( This is exactly what I have been saying since 2008 and is the a copy of the Indian model in 98!!! )

And, he added, “We’re not on the ground, and not having our people on the ground to catch nuance is a problem.”

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes, but American intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have picked up evidence in recent years that some Iranian research activities that may be weapons-related have continued since 2003, officials said. That information has not been significant enough for the spy agencies to alter their view that the weapons program has not been restarted.

Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, agrees with the American intelligence assessments, even while Israeli political leaders have been pushing for quick, aggressive action to block Iran from becoming what they describe as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

“Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program,” said one former senior American intelligence official, who, like others for this article, would speak only on the condition of anonymity about classified information. “There is not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts.”

In trying to evaluate the potential perils of Iran’s nuclear program, the United States’ spy agencies have spent years trying to track its efforts to enrich uranium and develop missile technology, and watching for any move toward weaponization — designing and building a bomb.

Hunting for signs of the resumption of a weapons program is more difficult than monitoring enrichment and missile-building activities, both of which require large investments in plants, equipment and related infrastructure. American intelligence officials said that the conversations of only a dozen or so top Iranian officials and scientists would be worth monitoring in order to determine whether the weapons program had been restarted, because decision-making on nuclear matters is so highly compartmentalized in Iran.

“Reactors are easier to track than enrichment facilities, but obviously anything that involves a lot of construction is easier to track than scientific and intellectual work,” said Jeffrey T. Richelson, the author of “Spying on the Bomb,” a history of American nuclear intelligence. “At certain stages, it is very hard to track the weapons work unless someone is blabbing and their communications can be intercepted.”

The extent of the evidence the spy agencies have collected is unclear because most of their findings are classified, but intelligence officials say they have been throwing everything they have at the Iranian program.

While the National Security Agency eavesdrops on telephone conversations of Iranian officials and conducts other forms of electronic surveillance, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analyzes radar imagery and digital images of nuclear sites. Outside analysts believe high-tech drones prowl overhead; one came down late last year deep inside Iranian territory, though American officials said they lost control of it in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, clandestine ground sensors, which can detect electromagnetic signals or radioactive emissions that could be linked to covert nuclear activity, are placed near suspect Iranian facilities. The United States also relies heavily on information gathered by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency who visit some of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities.

But collecting independent human intelligence — recruiting spies — has been by far the most difficult task for American intelligence. Some operational lapses — and the lack of an embassy as a base of operations ever since the hostage crisis three decades ago — have frequently left the C.I.A. virtually blind on the ground in Iran, according to former intelligence officials.

In 2004, for example, the C.I.A. put a whole network of Iranian agents in jeopardy after a technological mistake by an agency officer, according to former intelligence officials.

In 2005, a presidential commission that reviewed the prewar failures of the intelligence on Iraq’s supposed weapons programs faulted American intelligence on Iran, saying it included little valuable information from spies.

More recently, the C.I.A. suffered a setback in efforts to question Iranian exiles and recruit nuclear scientists. Two years ago, agency officials had to sort through the wreckage of the strange case of Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scientist who apparently defected to the United States in 2009 and then returned to Iran in 2010 after claiming he had been abducted by the C.I.A.

His case is eerily similar to that of Vitaly Yurchenko, a K.G.B. officer who defected to the United States in 1985 and went back to the Soviet Union later that year, claiming he had been drugged and kidnapped by the C.I.A.

Like Mr. Yurchenko, Mr. Amiri’s case has provoked debate within the agency about whether he was a genuine defector, and whether any of the information he provided could be trusted.

The United States and Israel share intelligence on Iran, American officials said. For its spying efforts, Israel relies in part on an Iranian exile group that is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or M.E.K., which is based in Iraq. The Israelis have also developed close ties in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and they are believed to use Kurdish agents who can move back and forth across the border into Iran.

American intelligence officials, however, are wary of relying on information from an opposition group like the M.E.K., particularly after their experience in Iraq of relying on flawed information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group run by Ahmad Chalabi.

“I’m very suspicious of anything that the M.E.K. provides,” said David A. Kay, who led the C.I.A.’s fruitless effort to find weapons program in Iraq. “We all dealt with the Chalabis of the world once.”

Just as in 2010, new evidence about the Iranian nuclear program delayed the National Intelligence Estimate in 2007, the last previous assessment. Current and former American officials say that a draft version of the assessment had been completed when the United States began to collect surprising intelligence suggesting that Iran had suspended its weapons program and disbanded its weapons team four years earlier.

The draft version had concluded that the Iranians were still trying to build a bomb, the same finding of a 2005 assessment. But as they scrutinized the new intelligence from several sources, including intercepted communications in which Iranian officials were heard complaining to one another about stopping the program, the American intelligence officials decided they had to change course, officials said. While enrichment activities continued, the evidence that Iran had halted its weapons program in 2003 at the direction of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was too strong to ignore, they said.

One former senior official characterized the information as very persuasive. “I had high confidence in it,” he said. “There was tremendous evidence that the program had been halted.”

And today, despite criticism of that assessment from some outside observers and hawkish politicians, American intelligence analysts still believe that the Iranians have not gotten the go-ahead from Ayatollah Khamenei to revive the program.

“That assessment,” said one American official, “holds up really well.”

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz welcomes Iran's exclusion from international financial networks, saying it dealt a 'tough blow' to Iran.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday welcomed the exclusion of Iranian banks from international financial transfer networks.

The decision deals "a tough blow to Iran's economy" and "makes the import and export of oil very difficult," he told reporters before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

"This thing can cause the collapse of the Iranian economy. Is it enough? I don't know. Is it significant and will it affect their endurance? Without a doubt it is a very dramatic step," he said.

All Iranian banks that were already subject to a freeze on their EU-held assets are affected, including the central bank and several commercial lenders.

It was to be applied as of 1600 GMT on Saturday, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) said Friday.

EU countries agreed to the measure on Thursday, as part of efforts alongside the United States to pressure Iran into backing down on its nuclear program, which the West suspects is of a military nature.

Iran insists it is strictly peaceful.

SWIFT, which has a global reach, said it had to comply with EU demands because it is registered in EU member Belgium and subject to that country's legislation.

The Fate of Syria

by Raymond Ibrahim
Stonegate Institute
March 8, 2012

http://www.meforum.org/3192/syria-christians-fate
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What is the alternative to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria? Just consider which groups in Syria are especially for or against Assad—and why.

Christian minorities, who, as 10% of the Syrian population, have the most to gain from a secular government and the most to suffer from a state run by Islamic Sharia law, have no choice but to prefer Assad. They are already seeing aspects of the alternative. A recent Barnabas Fund report, "Christians in Syria Targeted in Series of Kidnappings and Killings; 100 Dead," tells how "children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim." In one instance, kidnappers videotaped a Christian boy as they murdered him in an attempt to frame the government; one man "was cut into pieces and thrown in a river" and another "was found hanged with numerous injuries."

Accordingly, it is understandable that, as an earlier report put it, "Christians have mostly stayed away from the protests in Syria, having been well treated and afforded a considerable amount of religious freedom under President Assad's regime." After all, "Should Assad fall, it is feared that Syria could go the way of Iraq, post-Saddam Hussein. Saddam, like Assad, restrained the influence of militant Islamists, but after his fall they were free to wreak havoc on the Christian community; hundreds of thousands of Christians were consequently forced to flee the violence. Many of them went to Syria."

In short, should "rebels" get their way and topple the Assad regime, the same brutal pattern experienced by Iraq's Christian minorities—who have been likened to, and killed off like, dogs, to a point nearing extinction—will come to Syria, where an anti-Assad Muslim preacher recently urged Muslims to "tear apart, chop up and feed" Christians who support Assad "to the dogs." From last week alone, some 70 additional Christian homes were invaded and pillaged, and "for the first time in the history of the conflict in Syria, an armed attack has been made on a Catholic monastery," partially in search of money.

And who are these "rebels" who see and treat Christians as sub-humans to be exploited and plundered to fund the "opposition" against Assad? Unfortunately, many of them are Islamists, internal and external, and their "opposition" is really a jihad [holy war]; moreover, they are acting out anti-Christian fatwas that justify the kidnapping, ransoming, and plundering of "infidel" Christians.

As in Libya, al-Qaeda is operating among the Syrian opposition; Ayman al-Zawahiri himself "urges the Syrian people to continue their revolution until the downfall of the Assad regime, and stresses that toppling this regime is a necessary step on the way to liberating Jerusalem." Both the influential Yusif al-Qaradawi and Hamas -- the latter supported by Assad's ally, Iran— back the "rebels." This overview should place the "opposition" -- who they are, what they want — in a clearer context.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Obama, who was remarkably reticent when Iranians seeking Western-style freedom tried to revolt against the oppressive Islamist regime of Iran, made it a point during his recent State of the Union Address to single out Assad by name as needing to go (not that the Republican presidential candidates seem to know any better; see Andrew McCarthy's recent article where, drawing on America's other misadventures in Islamic nations, he shows how the U.S. has little to gain and possibly much to lose by supporting the anti-Assad opposition).

The lesson here is clear: while it is true that not all of Assad's opposition is Islamist—there are anti-Assad Muslims who do not want a state that will be run by Islamic Sharia law —the Islamists are quite confident that the overthrow of Assad will equate with their empowerment. And why shouldn't they be? Wherever Arab tyrants have been overthrow—Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and so on —it is Islamists who are filling the power-vacuums. Just ask Syria's Christian minorities, who prefer the dictator Assad to remain in power—who prefer the devil they know to the ancient demon their forefathers knew.

Raymond Ibrahim is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

cross post of a topic that is OT in the deterrence thread



Ignoring minor Islamic divisions it appears to me that the main division in west Asia is an Arab sunni versus Persian shia. But both are united in their opposition to Israel. Arab sunnis have tied up with the west, and Iran too was right in there until Khomeini. Iran remains bad boy because of its opposition to the US.

It is the US that is playing a dangerous game here - but the danger is to Israel, not to the US.

As is openly declared and documented, the US seeks to play "balancer". Israel's destruction would kill off the US's game so that cannot happen. But an undue strengthening of either the sunni ME or the shia forces would also upset the stability of the ring. So while the US protects the stakeholders in this game it does not seek to see any of them totally destroyed, although it would like to see all of them beholden to the US. In turn the US would like to see each of these entities supportive of US power. In the ideal "world order" US power and influence is supported by other nations, while the US supports other nations in their disputes with each other. That is how the US supplies weapons to KSA, Israel and Egypt while hosting peace talks. The US opposes only those who are out and out anti-US and do not accept US "aid". Saddam, Gadhafi and Iran were in that genre.

A country that accepts US aid and depends on US power for its survival and can be depended upon to promote US power and interests is all that the US is interested in to maintain "world order". Every country is helped to either fight or hold talks with its adversaries, but permanent peace is dangerous to the US.

Muslim nations have a history of bestial violence which we keep talking about on here, but they are also phenomenally stupid in the way that they are unable to unite to topple forces like the USA. On the other hand I have heard people say on BRF that Islam is extremely dangerous and should be considered as something that will automatically and inevitably endanger India if "allowed to unite".

Either islamic nations are too stupid to see this or they are being prevented from uniting by something. It seems to me that "something" is the USA which has taken over the job of keeping the ummah fractured from imperial Britain which originally fractured the ummah.

Many Islamists have realised that and these include Osama, Zawahiri and even Lashkar e Toiba. The current "world order" requires the USA to keep Islamism fractured. The USA keeps islamism fractured by keeping Islamic disputes going. Oddly enough the only Islamic dispute that is "settled" and does not seem to raise its head is the Islam versus Christianism dispute. But the USA is complicit in keeping the Muslim-Jew and the Muslim-Hindu disputes going by helping both sides but never allowing any side to dominate.

If India were to support this state of affairs and help keep the current world order intact India must support the USA and never settle any dispute with Pakistan. I believe we have to accept the Kashmir dispute as a permanent affair because it is the Kashmir dispute that gives the US a handle on Pakistan, and from Pakistan a grip on the Sunni world.

In my view this permanent need for India to suck up to the US and keep US interests protected so the US keeps islamism fractured using India and Israel as "balancing tools" is unacceptable in the long term. It will never allow India the strategic space to do what is in Indian interests

The other issue here is what if the US loses its power? The best statement I have seen in this regard is "the US is not about to lose its power anytime soon" That is a "high hopes" statement. There are many countries who can read the US game. A few realignments can significantly degrade US primacy and the US actively suppresses such realignments. However, as I see it when enough groups in the world read the US game, the realignments will occur anyway and the US-led "world order" will fall.

It is necessary for India to be ready to fill any gaps and try and ensure that the US's fall does not mean war for India. The US of course will be happy to see war anywhere outside of the US if push comes to shove.

Describing Pope Shenouda III as a great Egyptian patriot, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna today expressed condolences on the demise of the charismatic patriarch who led the Coptic church for four decades.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/S-M-Krishna-condoles-Egyptian-Pope-Shenouda-IIIs-death/articleshow/12333129.cms



Shenouda? Coptic??

And how compatible is it with the 'socialist, secular' in the Constitution?

A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was "a bomb" certain to have serious repercussions.

Now the Russian Black Sea fleet's Iman tanker has arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea with an anti-terror squad from the Russian Marines aboard according to the Interfax news agency. The Assad government has insisted it is fighting a terrorist insurgency.
The Iman replaced another Russian ship "which had been sent to Syria for demonstrating (sic) the Russian presence in the turbulent region and possible evaluation of Russian citizens," the Black Sea Fleet told Interfax.

Moscow has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Assad regime, to which it sells billions of dollars of weapons. In return Russia has maintained a Navy base at Tartus, which gives it access to the Mediterranean.

Last week Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia had no plans to send troops to Syria.

"As for the question whether I consider it necessary to confront the United States in Syria and ensure our military presence there… in order to take part in military actions -- no. I believe this would be against Russia's national interests," Lavrov told lawmakers, according to RIA Novosti.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the U.S. government had not heard of the reports of Russian troops in Syria and declined to comment.

The United States has no intention of imposing unilateral sanctions against countries that have substantially cut down on the supplies of Iranian oil.

These include Japan and 10 European countries, Reuters reports citing the US State Department.

Meanwhile, the other 12 countries that buy Iranian oil in large quantities may face US sanctions.

These countries comprise India, China and South Korea.