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WASHINGTON — Japan’s landmark election presents the Obama administration with an untested government, creating a new set of imponderables for a White House already burdened by foreign policy headaches in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
Inside the administration, the historic change in Tokyo is raising concerns that Japan may back away from supporting key American priorities like the war in Afghanistan or the redeployment of American troops in Asia, according to senior officials.
Specifically, the newly elected Democratic Party says it may recall the Japanese naval forces from a mission to refuel American warships near Afghanistan. And it wants to reopen an agreement to relocate a Marine airfield on Okinawa, which requires Japan to pick up much of the cost for moving thousands of Marines to Guam.
The victory of the Democrats on Sunday means the White House must deal, for the first time in decades, with a Japanese government that is a complete stranger, and one that has expressed blunt criticism of the United States. The party’s leader and presumptive prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, recently spoke out against American-led globalization and called for a greater Japanese focus on Asia.
Despite the party’s campaign rhetoric, its leaders insist they will not threaten the alliance with the United States, particularly when Japan faces a fast-rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. Senior American officials said they expected Japan to remain a bulwark in Asia, even noting that the new government, unburdened by history, could play a more central role in negotiating with North Korea.
But for the most part, the United States is perplexed by what one official described as a “seismic event,” with unknown consequences for one of its most important relationships.
“The election of a new party could produce new ways of doing things, which we will have to adjust to,” said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “You’ll have this period of unpredictability.”
The big question many in Washington are asking is whether the vote was a harbinger of a deeper change in Japan, away from its historic dependence on the United States.
“There is a fear of dramatic change in the U.S.-Japan alliance,” said Michael Auslin, an expert on Japanese foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “No one knows what will happen next, or even who to talk to for answers.”
The Democratic Party struck a chord with its talk of improving ties with China and other neighbors, reflecting the fact that Japan’s $5 trillion economy has grown more dependent on commerce with its neighbors.
Fears of Japanese drift seemed to be confirmed last week when an article by Mr. Hatoyama, excerpted and translated from a Japanese journal, appeared on the Web site of The New York Times. It stirred a hornet’s nest in Washington by casting Japan’s embattled economy as the victim of American-inspired free-market fundamentalism. Yet it also stressed the importance of the American alliance.
Mr. Hatoyama’s views sent many in Washington’s diplomatic establishment scurrying to learn more about him and the Democrats. That highlighted a problem: While American officials and academics have spent decades cultivating close ties with the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for most of the last half century, they have built few links to the opposition.
Some Japan experts said it would be a mistake to read too much into Mr. Hatoyama’s remarks, and Japanese officials privately conveyed that same caution to the Obama administration.
“It was an indication they still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do in power,” said Michael J. Green, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University who served on the National Security Council during the last Bush administration. “This could get confused and dysfunctional for a while.”
Stung by the reaction, Mr. Hatoyama appears to be back-pedaling and engaging in damage control. On Monday night, he said he had not intended for the article to appear abroad, and said it was being misinterpreted. “If you read the entire essay, you will understand that it is definitely not expressing anti-American ideas,” he said.
Professor Green noted that in many ways, relations between the United States and Japan were smoother now than in years past because the trade disputes of the 1980s and 1990s were largely settled.
He said the new government would find that some of its proposals, like reopening talks on the relocation of the Futenma Marine airfield on Okinawa, were unrealistic, given the years it took to negotiate that deal. For the Obama administration, he said, the challenge will be to give Japan’s new leaders a face-saving way to back down.
Japan, experts said, could play a more muscular role in talks with North Korea if, as expected, the Democrats turn down the heat on the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea decades ago, a perennial sticking point for the Liberal Democrats.
And Obama administration officials said they were eager to dispel perceptions in Japan that a better relationship with China would somehow undermine its alliance with the United States.
“We have no desire to see our defense commitment tested by battle,” a senior official said. “We see no contradiction between Japan reducing frictions with China and a strong Japan-U.S. alliance.”
In recent years, many Japanese have thought the United States took the relationship for granted, paying more attention to China.
Traditionally, the United States has sent high-powered diplomats or political figures to Tokyo. But the Obama administration chose to send a big campaign donor, John Roos, as ambassador, passing over a longtime Asia hand, Joseph S. Nye Jr., who had been championed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Administration officials counter that Mr. Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer, will be influential because he has the ear of President Obama.
Political analysts and former diplomats say the Democrats are so sharply divided ideologically — between pacifist former Socialists and flag-flying former Liberal Democrats — that they will avoid treading too heavily on divisive foreign policy issues for fear of splitting the party.
Policy analysts also say the Japanese public would turn against the Democrats if they undermined the Washington alliance, pointing out that the opposition won because of anger with the incumbents’ failed economic policies, not because of a desire to change the nation’s reliance on the United States, which remains widely accepted here.
“They do not have a mandate for changing the alliance with the U.S.,” said Yukio Okamoto, a former adviser to several prime ministers on foreign affairs.
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_utwBWBi9WyHoFYJ44j8ivzecQREakGHrHgJfOuFcectA5dRaR1rL-nt39SU1JSK8WB1TiSuQCe9FDne7wMGefUqQSDfBIZjLFz01AfXc17S7WUI_3qWqFWFuL_RjaXvOvq0duqI1g-5senuKzlRehY=s0-d)
BEIJING — Chinese officials imposed an information blackout on Tuesday on the situation along its border with Myanmar and began taking down tents that had sheltered an estimated 30,000 refugees who fled into China to escape recent fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic rebels.
But news reports stated that many thousands of refugees remained in China, unwilling or unable to return to Myanmar, formerly called Burma, and it was not clear how the Chinese government intended to address their plight.
The Chinese authorities withheld comment on the border situation on Tuesday, aside from saying, in a Foreign Ministry briefing, that “necessary humanitarian assistance” was being provided. And they began ordering foreign journalists to leave the area around Nansan and Genma, Chinese towns on the mountainous border where the refugees have been housed in seven separate camps.
While about 4,000 refugees had returned to Myanmar on Monday, the day after the fighting ended, the pace has since slowed significantly. Only about 30 people crossed the border into Myanmar in a half-hour period on Tuesday morning, The Associated Press reported.
“It seems to be slowing down,” one foreigner near Nansan said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “There’s still a large number of refugees in and around Nansan, both in the camps and hanging around.” The foreigner, who asked not to be identified, said Chinese Army troops had stepped up patrols in the area.
An unknown number of those who fled to China during the fighting are Chinese citizens who have been conducting business in Myanmar, where China is building dams and other projects and has extensive mining ventures. They are unlikely to return soon.
China has insisted that the northern Myanmar region of Kokang is safe and stable after the fighting last week, in which hundreds of government troops overwhelmed an armed ethnic group, breaking a cease-fire that had prevailed for two decades. Human rights groups and others have warned that the junta’s actions could ignite a wider conflict in the area, where other, better armed, ethnic groups also are resisting government control.
Thai newspapers and The Irrawaddy, an independent magazine that focuses on Myanmar, have reported that the government is sending fresh troops into the northern state of Shan in an attempt to consolidate its control there. The army wants the rebels to disarm and join a government border patrol force, as required under a new Constitution. Most of the rebels have resisted the order, which would effectively place them under government control.
Myanmar’s military junta apparently seeks to take control of the region before elections, the first in almost 20 years, that are scheduled for next year. Outside monitors accuse the military junta of brutal human rights violations as part of its effort to stay in power. The Myanmar government has said that 26 of its soldiers and at least 8 rebels died in three days of battles.
The Myanmar conflict has thrust the Chinese government, one of Myanmar’s only staunch backers, into an awkward situation. China has provided diplomatic support to the junta in exchange for access to its considerable mineral wealth and cooperation in efforts to suppress a growing cross-border trade in heroin and other illicit drugs. The flood of refugees prompted the Chinese to issue muted criticism of the junta, on Friday calling for it to secure Myanmar’s borders.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ts-d8xEzbcgZyUvdJTD9J6V43slkUDK7jIdpbCGBfvIrEa4-ZmKvQs4FkQTl8j4csSP0oEiZwWs5taFeLgnnLmkkuf90gVXNZge0ilTgXfCV6gtwv1Q3MvWgahr7kjdduWJP0d04bUaeKI4oA82TA=s0-d)
CAIRO — As Iran’s universities prepare to start classes this month, there is growing concern within the academic community that the government will purge political and social science departments of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” according to academics and political analysts inside and outside Iran.
The fears have been stoked by speeches by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as by confessions of political prisoners, that suggest that the study of secular topics and ideas has made universities incubators for the political unrest unleashed after the disputed presidential election in June.
Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services.
“Many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at a gathering of university students and professors on Sunday, according to IRNA, the state news agency. Teaching those “sciences leads to the loss of belief in godly and Islamic knowledge.”
For years, the study of subjects like philosophy and sociology has been viewed suspiciously by Iranian conservatives. During the earliest days of the Islamic Revolution, the nation’s leaders closed universities and tried to sanitize curriculums to fit their Islamic revolutionary ideology. The efforts ultimately failed under the weight of more pragmatic forces eager to engage with Western economies, and a student population hungry for contemporary ideas and contact with the West.
But that failure never healed the ideological differences that have made it impossible for the nation and its hybrid elected and religious institutions to agree on one course, even one identity. In recent years, academics who attended conferences abroad, or took part in cultural exchange programs, were often vilified at home or viewed suspiciously. Some were arrested on charges of trying to organize a soft revolution.
The recent speeches by the country’s leaders suggest that they may no longer be willing to live with such ambiguity after months of unsuccessfully trying to extinguish the political and social crisis set off by the election.
“Iran is going through a crisis of legitimacy for the regime, and the crisis is based on the regime’s inability to respond to the demands for reform from the increasingly youthful population,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “The only response it can think of is to stop teaching of the social sciences.”
Rasool Nafisi, an academic based in Virginia who is an expert on Iran, agreed: “Khamenei’s statement does not bode well for the Iranian universities.”
“He seems to try to pick up where the Islamic republic left off over two decades ago when the late Ayatollah Khomeini expressed similar aversion to ‘Westoxicated learning’ in the universities, and ordered dropping all but natural sciences from the university curricula,” Mr. Nafisi said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called for “the promotion of a spiritual environment in universities” and requested that the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad make this a “serious concern,” according to Iranian news services that reported on the comments the ayatollah made Sunday.
During Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first term in office, his administration forced out many professors and replaced them.
“I think that they don’t like maybe new ideas to get to Iran,” said an Iranian academic now living outside the country. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in the Iranian society to become very popular. That is the aspect which makes problems for them.”
The state’s renewed focus on education took center stage last week when the confession of a prominent reformer, Saeed Hajjarian, who had been the theoretician behind the reform movement, was broadcast on national television.
The confession, dismissed by reform leaders as a reflection of the views of Mr. Hajjarian’s jailers, provided a lengthy criticism of human sciences, especially sociology and political science. The confession also addressed Mr. Hajjarian’s application of political theories to his own work, saying, “For these unworthy interpretations which became the cause of many immoral acts, I ask forgiveness of the Iranian people.”
In another development, Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said that the government had prepared an updated nuclear proposal to give to the West, Iranian news services reported.
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sAXd7Ft_KWZKf8wvRLsycyYp1upK9efUWzyJVmIzNj0JltTG6QQeLGT61zMz5W1Pe8mtIM2_c1RseXH2j6RZipN-LohYtvepdppPaTkp1O9EX832szGesehvX-DKxZtN2F6buW1zqoex7iiik3HeU=s0-d)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite, Hamid Karzai, and endorse his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorabak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.
But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.
Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.
At the end of the day, 23,900 ballots were shipped to Kabul, Mr. Bariz said, with every one marked for President Karzai.
“Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot — not a single person,” Mr. Bariz said in an interview here in the capital, where he and a group of tribal elders came to file a complaint. “Mr. Karzai’s people stuffed all the ballot boxes.”
The accusations by Mr. Bariz, and several other tribal leaders from Shorabak, are the most serious allegations so far that have been publicized against Mr. Karzai’s electoral machine, which faces a deluge of fraud complaints from around the country.
The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday that the number of complaints about vote stealing and other forms of fraud had reached 2,615.
Mr. Karzai’s campaign is accused of forging ballots, stealing votes and preventing people from going to the polls.
In Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s family is in control, allegations of a type similar to those made in Shorabak have been made in many of the province’s 17 districts. Early election returns show that Mr. Karzai has managed to capture nearly 48,000 votes, compared with only 3,000 for Mr. Abdullah, his nearest challenger.
Slightly less than half of all ballots have been counted. Mr. Karzai leads with about 46 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Mr. Abdullah.
Mr. Karzai and his aides deny any sort of fraud, and they have hunkered down in the presidential palace to await the final results. But the allegations are casting a cloud over his re-election campaign, raising the prospect that even if he wins his presidency could be seriously tainted.
At the same time, the allegations are increasing the pressure on American officials to ensure that the accusations of fraud are properly investigated. An election widely perceived as having been stolen could deal a serious setback to the Obama administration, which has committed itself to prevailing here in the nearly eight-year-old war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Allegations like those described by Mr. Bariz are throwing the basic integrity of the election into question. Much of the story told by Mr. Bariz and the other tribal elders was impossible to verify. But it appeared credible. All three men spoke in great detail. And all of them were willing to be publicly named and to have their photographs taken.
As recently as 10 months ago, Mr. Bariz said, he had considered himself an ally of President Karzai. He had been nominated by a group of Bariz elders to be the governor of the Shorabak District, a desolate stretch of sand and scrub that sits on the country’s southwestern border with Pakistan. Mr. Bariz’s nomination was ratified by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, who was appointed by President Karzai.
But as election day neared, Mr. Bariz and other leaders in his tribe said they could not bring themselves to support Mr. Karzai for another five-year term. The reason, he said, was that Mr. Karzai’s government had done so little good.
“There are no clinics, no schools, no roads, no water dams — nothing,” Mr. Bariz said. “We decided to support someone who would unify the country.” The leaders of the Bariz tribe picked Mr. Abdullah, a former foreign minister.
In theory, the decision by the elders sealed Mr. Abdullah’s victory in Shorabak: nearly everyone in Shorabak belongs to the Bariz tribe. As is common in many such societies, tribal leaders in Afghanistan often negotiate with politicians to deliver the votes of their tribe.
Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager in southern Afghanistan, Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the candidate met a large group of Bariz tribal elders in Kandahar on Aug. 12 to receive their endorsement. It was a joyous affair, Mr. Esmatullah said, for which even women turned out. But not everyone who wanted to come to the endorsement ceremony was able to make it.
“The police were blocking the roads,” Mr. Esmatullah said.
The next day, Mr. Bariz said, officials in Kandahar were furious. One of Kandahar’s senior officials, Mohammed Anas, ordered Mr. Bariz not to return to his home in Shorabak. Mr. Anas said he had no choice.
“When I asked him why he wouldn’t let me go home, he said, ‘Because your whole tribe is going to vote for Dr. Abdullah,’ ” Mr. Bariz said.
Mr. Bariz did not speak to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s younger brother, only to more junior officials like Mr. Anas. But few decisions of any import are believed to be taken in Kandahar without the approval of Ahmed Wali Karzai. On the streets, his nickname is “The King of the South.” Last year, for instance, Ahmed Wali Karzai was widely seen as having replaced the governor, Rahmatullah Raufi, when he fell out of favor.
Attempts to contact Ahmed Wali Karzai were unsuccessful.
When election day finally came, the ballots were never delivered to the polling centers in Shorabak, said two Bariz tribal leaders who were charged with overseeing the sites. Instead of going to the polling places, all the ballots and ballot boxes were delivered to the district government’s headquarters. That place, the tribal leaders said, had been commandeered by the Afghan Border Police.
“The ballots were never delivered,” said Abdul Quyoum, a farmer from the village of Karaze, where one of the polling sites was supposed to be. “I waited all day.”
Mr. Quyoum was one of two tribal elders from Shorabak who traveled to Kabul with Mr. Bariz. The other was Fazul Mohammed, who told a nearly identical story.
When the ballots were not delivered to the polling site, Mr. Mohammed said, he walked to the district government headquarters to see what was wrong. The building, he said, was being guarded by officers of the Afghan Border Police. As an election official, Mr. Mohammed said, he was allowed to go inside.
“The border police were stuffing the ballots, hundreds of them, into the boxes,” he said. “And there were other people who were counting the ballots and keeping the records.”
Mr. Mohammed said he protested but was told to leave. Later, he said, he was told that a total of 23,900 ballots had been filled out, all in Mr. Karzai’s name.
“Dr. Abdullah did not receive a single vote,” he said.
Mr. Bariz, the governor, said he had not returned to Shorabak.
“I don’t think I am going to be governor much longer,” he said.
Sangar Rahimi contributed to this report from Kabul.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_usIxy5HMQB270vUfl7CD8_zU8Suk0OO2YA1lqnndHWYKaL5bYb0we0kLFdQKteVZJ0xQ8_4DKN8mhSGPj7bnbi1V-4R96mub2CMxvS71IGdJKC7MOku4-Y-UXsT6b1R7YToAV4dUDC0wZE2X4GWCs3=s0-d)
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
TEHRAN, Sept. 1 -- Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that the country is ready to reopen talks with world powers increasingly concerned about Iranian intentions, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
The announcement by Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili came a day before a meeting in Germany of representatives from six nations, including the United States, that are seeking to develop a strategy for addressing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"Iran has prepared to present its revised package of proposals . . . and is ready to hold talks with world powers . . . in order to ease common concerns in the international arena," state television quoted Jalili as telling reporters.
Iranian officials did not comment on whether the timing of the proposal is connected to the Sept. 15 deadline set by the White House for Iran to respond to an offer to reopen talks on the nuclear issue.
U.S. officials say Iran has responded to previous offers only with vague generalities that did not provide a basis for negotiations, and President Obama has suggested that if Iran does not make a serious counteroffer by the end of this year, it could face renewed sanctions. U.S. officials said Tuesday that they would reserve judgment until they receive an official communication from Iran.
"We're prepared to respond to some kind of meaningful response," said Ian Kelly, a spokesman for the State Department. "We're not going to respond to something that's made through the media."
Hassan Qashqavi, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said sanctions would not be effective. "Using the worthless and ineffectual tool of sanctions will not have any effect on Iran's lawful pursuit of its legal rights," he said, emphasizing that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful and is meant to generate energy. U.S. officials have said that they think Iran is seeking to weaponize its nuclear program.
Iran continues to enrich uranium, though the rate has slowed in recent months, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report issued last week. The enrichment is a violation of four rounds of U.N. sanctions.
Also in Iran on Tuesday, members of parliament demonstrated strong support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nominee for defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who is wanted by Argentina on suspicion of a role in the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The attack killed 85 people.
The parliament is expected to vote on Ahmadinejad's cabinet picks as early as Wednesday.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
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By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 -- The prospect of United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip teaching children about the Holocaust has sparked fierce resistance this week from leaders of the Palestinian Hamas movement and forced international officials to confront a situation fraught with political risk.
U.N. officials, who say they are only discussing changes to a school program on human rights, have not commented directly on whether any new curriculum will reference the Holocaust. But Hamas leaders, saying any such reference would "contradict" their culture, are moving quickly to head off the possibility.
"Talk about the holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and religion," Jamila al-Shanti, a Hamas legislative official, said in a statement distributed Tuesday after a meeting among elected leaders of the radical Islamist group and the head of the Hamas-run Education Ministry in Gaza.
Hamas Education Minister Muhammad Askol used similar language in criticizing the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, saying it was not respecting Hamas's "sovereignty" over Gaza. He said he planned to ask for a meeting with agency officials to "assure the necessary coordination."
His remarks came a day after Hamas spiritual leader Yunis al-Astal said teaching children about the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II would be "marketing a lie." He characterized the possible introduction of the subject into Gaza schools as a "war crime."
UNRWA provides food, education and other services for about half of Gaza's population, including about 200,000 children. It has clashed previously with Hamas on a variety of issues, including whether to support mixed-gender summer camps.
In the latest dispute, the agency risks being caught between its usual practice of deferring to local officials on school curriculums and overlooking central facts about world history.
There is currently no mention of the Holocaust in schools run by UNRWA in Gaza, according to Karen AbuZayd, the agency's commissioner general.
UNRWA follows the curriculum set by local officials but has been supplementing it with lessons on human rights it developed on its own, according to an agency official. AbuZayd said a program on the details of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being developed for Gaza middle schools. Though still in draft form, the lesson "will go into some history," she said.
The Universal Declaration was issued by the United Nations in December 1948, in the aftermath of World War II and in recognition of Nazi atrocities.
"It is very much a draft," AbuZayd said, adding that before its introduction into classrooms, it would be circulated among community groups for reaction.
The content of school curriculums is a volatile part of the Arab-Israeli conflict and has taken on a heightened pitch in recent months. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu considers Israel's historical claims central to reaching a peace agreement and has said he would support creation of a Palestinian state only if Palestinian leaders acknowledged Israel as a legitimate Jewish homeland.
Israeli Arabs have complained about recent moves by the country's Education Ministry to remove the word "naqba" -- or catastrophe -- from lessons taught in Arab schools about the events surrounding Israel's creation, while Jews feel that the texts prepared by the more moderate Palestinian Authority still diminish the Jewish experience.
Palestinian Authority textbooks, used in the occupied West Bank, refer to Nazi massacres and anti-Semitism as part of high school lessons about World War II but do not go into detail about the scope of the genocide, according to Israelis and Palestinians familiar with the texts.
On both sides, "there is really no mention of the other story -- of how the other side sees it," said Gershon Baskin, co-chief executive of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, a think tank that has examined textbooks. Baskin is on an advisory panel for a U.S.-funded study, announced on Tuesday, in which Israelis and Palestinians will review each other's textbooks, while U.S. experts perform a computer analysis of the language used in them.
Although both Palestinian and Israeli schools could do a better job, Baskin said, Hamas's outright denial of the Holocaust, as well as opposition to its mention in Gaza schools, is "a step beyond."
Special correspondent Islam Abdel Kareem in Gaza City contributed to this report.
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By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Private security contractors who guard the U.S. Embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a "significant threat" to security at a time when the Taliban is intensifying attacks in the Afghan capital, according to an investigation released Tuesday by an independent watchdog group.
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) launched the probe after more than a dozen security guards contacted the group to report misconduct and morale problems within the force of 450 guards who live at Camp Sullivan, a few miles from the embassy compound.
The report highlighted occasions when guards brought women believed to be prostitutes into Camp Sullivan and videotaped themselves drinking and partially undressed. It also outlined communications problems among the guards, many of whom don't speak English and have trouble understanding orders from their U.S. supervisors.
"The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security," POGO said in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlining the security violations.
The report recommends that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates immediately assign U.S. military personnel to supervise the guards. It also calls on the State Department to hold accountable diplomatic officials who failed to provide adequate oversight of the contract.
"These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "The secretary and the department have made it clear that we will have zero tolerance for the type of conduct that is alleged in these documents.
The guards work for ArmorGroup North America, which has a $180 million annual contract with the State Department to protect the embassy and the 1,000 diplomats, staffers and Afghan nationals who work there. The State Department renewed the contract in July despite finding numerous performance deficiencies by ArmorGroup in recent years that were the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.
At the time, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Moser acknowledged "deficiencies" by the contractor but said "performance on the ground by ArmorGroup North America has been and is sound." Subcommittee Chairman Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) agreed to the renewal of ArmorGroup's contract, though she said she had reservations.
Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., company that owns ArmorGroup, declined to comment on Tuesday's POGO report.
In one incident in May, the report says, more than a dozen guards took weapons, night vision goggles and other key equipment and engaged in an unauthorized "cowboy" mission in Kabul, leaving the embassy "largely night blind," POGO wrote in the letter to Clinton. The guards dressed in Afghan tunics and scarves in violation of contract rules, and hid in abandoned buildings in a reconnaissance mission that was not part of their training or duties. Later, two heads of the guard force, Werner Ilic and Jimmy Lemon, issued a "letter of recognition" praising the men for "conspicuous intrepidity" with the State Department logo on the letterhead.
"They were living out some sort of delusion," one of the whistleblower guards said in an interview with The Washington Post from Kabul. "It presented a huge opportunity for an international incident."
The guard, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he feared retribution, said, "It's insane here. If you didn't go along with the game plan you eventually were going to make a mistake and put yourself in a position" to be let go.
The report said supervisors held near-weekly parties in which they urinated on themselves and others, drank vodka poured off each other's exposed buttocks, fondled and kissed one another and gallivanted around virtually nude. Photos and video of the escapades were released with the POGO investigation.
Conduct of contractors providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the subject of controversy and other investigations in recent years. The government relies heavily on such contractors for security and other needs.
A new Congressional Research Service report said that as of March, the Defense Department had more contract personnel than troops in Afghanistan.
The 52,300 uniformed U.S. military personnel and 68,200 contractors in Afghanistan at the time of the research "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD in any conflict in the history of the United States," the report said.
About 16 percent of the contractors are involved in providing security, compared with about 10 percent in Iraq.
Although contractors provide many essential services, "they also pose management challenges in monitoring performance and preventing fraud," according to Steven Aftergood, who first disclosed the congressional report on his Secrecy News Web site Tuesday.
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
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By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- Cultivation in Afghanistan of opium, the nation's most lucrative cash crop and a major funding source for the Taliban, has fallen sharply this year in large part because an excess supply of the drug has pushed down prices to a 10-year low, according to a U.N. report scheduled to be released Wednesday.
The Obama administration has changed course on its opium policy here, moving away from eradication efforts favored by the Bush administration that senior officials now say wasted millions of dollars. Instead, funding is being directed toward programs to persuade farmers to grow other crops. But more than those nascent efforts, U.N. officials said, the cause of the decline in opium cultivation this year was a deteriorating market for the drug.
"Overall, you could say we are now profiting from a fantastic market correction," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the Afghanistan office of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "There is just too much supply around, so the attractiveness is diminishing."
The area under opium poppy cultivation fell this year by 22 percent, to 123,000 hectares, or about 304,000 acres, the second consecutive year of decline after a rapid growth of opium farming since the war began in 2001, according to the United Nations' 2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey. Twenty of the country's 34 provinces are considered poppy-free, two more than last year.
Much of the decline was in Helmand province, in the south, where U.S. Marines have launched an offensive against the Taliban. Helmand still accounts for nearly 60 percent of all opium grown in Afghanistan, and drug money continues to fuel the Taliban and the corruption that plagues the Afghan government.
Although the area under opium cultivation declined sharply, the drop in the production of the drug was less dramatic because farmers were able to extract more opium per poppy bulb. Driving both declines, officials said, is a drop in prices to levels not seen since the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from the late 1990s to late 2001. The report found a 40 percent drop in the total value of opium produced, down to $438 million, or 4 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. This helped push more than 800,000 people out of the opium business.
"There's only so much the Taliban can store in the caves," Lemahieu said.
The amount of surplus opium still stashed in Afghanistan is staggering, officials said. The U.N. report said the world's annual demand for opium derivates such as heroin is not more than 5,000 tons, but the drug stockpiles in Afghanistan may be double that. And these stockpiles are durable, Lemahieu said, able to last in good condition for 10 to 15 years. In some areas along the border with Pakistan, opium is used as currency, he said.
The drug industry is so prevalent in places such as Helmand that coalition commanders there say it is often difficult to distinguish between Taliban members, drug traffickers and criminal gangs, all of which take part in the business.
Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which operates in Helmand, said that "all those people will coexist very happily as a partnership, while there is a level of chaos," but that his troops are attempting to interrupt and split the networks.
The U.N. report praised Afghan and NATO troops for destroying tons of chemicals, seeds, drugs and 27 labs this year, as well as for moving away from eradication as a policy.
"You've seen some pretty sizable operations down south in Helmand," said Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. "Our presence there and our activities in the area may have contributed to some of those figures" of declining opium cultivation.
U.N. officials estimate that the Taliban collects at least $125 million a year from opium production, including by taxing farmers and levying "protection" fees for cargo trucks transiting its territory. There are also signs that the group is increasingly involved in the high-end value aspects of the business, including converting opium to heroin and trading in precursor chemicals, such as acetic anhydride. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, wrote in the report that there is "growing evidence" that "some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels."
Still, officials said the Taliban is wary of compromising its Islamic ideology and placing in jeopardy funding sources from other Muslim countries by fully committing to the drug trade, Lemahieu said.
"Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is still the leader of the Taliban, and he is not a drug trafficker," Lemahieu said. "That ideological sharpness is so important for them. So you cannot compare them yet with the FARC," he said, referring to the Colombian guerrilla group heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.
The U.S. and British governments are rushing to develop programs before the planting season begins in October to encourage Afghan farmers to grow crops such as wheat and fruit instead of opium. The programs offer vouchers to buy cheap seeds and provide farm workers with infrastructure jobs. The U.N. report said a rural development program to employ farmers needs to be as ambitious as the military offensive.
"There is no need to bribe farmers to stay away from drugs: market forces are already doing this," the report said.
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By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
KABUL, Sept. 1 -- As vote tallies keep dribbling out from Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, it appears increasingly likely that President Hamid Karzai will reach the 50 percent plus one vote that he needs to win reelection.
But what will happen after that is far from clear, and tension and suspicion have mounted as the vote count drags on amid widening charges of electoral fraud. Afghans are confused, jittery and bracing for street violence -- or at least a protracted period of political polarization and drift.
Legally, the internationally led Electoral Complaints Commission will have the last word on whether the fraud was extensive enough to change the results, but its investigations could go on for weeks after the official tally is announced. That leaves open the possibility of a delayed runoff between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, or even nullification of the election.
"I think it's clear Karzai has won, but that doesn't resolve the crisis we are facing," said Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies. "The ultimate goal here is to stabilize the country and defeat the Taliban. If we don't come out of this election with a legitimate and strong government, it could have a major impact on both Afghanistan and on the entire NATO effort here."
Karzai's lead over Abdullah, his former foreign minister, has widened slowly but steadily. On Monday, with nearly half the votes counted, the Afghan election commission said Karzai was ahead by about 46 to 32 percent. But Abdullah has alleged "massive state engineering" of the vote and vowed he will not accept a flawed Karzai victory as legitimate.
Both major candidates have publicly urged their supporters to await the official results, which are expected in about two weeks. But behind the scenes, reports have circulated of threats of violence by the opposition and high-pressure tactics by government officials, alternating with rumors of power-sharing deals between Karzai and Abdullah.
The atmosphere of fraud and strong-arm behavior surrounding the election has also heightened tensions between Kabul and Washington, just as U.S. officials are scrambling to justify their military commitments here and find new strategies to salvage the faltering and expensive war against Taliban insurgents.
American officials have expressed rare public dismay at Karzai's electoral courtship of controversial former warlords. Karzai's aides, in turn, portrayed his recent meeting with the U.S. special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, as an imperious political lecture from Washington. If Karzai remains in power, it is unclear whether he will seek to mend fences with Washington or continue his populist demonizing of the West.
Despite the domestic and international concerns about an illegitimate election, the complaints commission is also under pressure to somehow address the fraud problem without forcing a second election. Many Afghans and outside observers say a runoff would be costly, stressful and just as vulnerable to fraud and insurgent attacks as the Aug. 20 poll. A flawed single election that lets the country get back to normal, they argue, would be the lesser evil.
"Would a second round clear the air and have more legitimacy? That's a question mark," said one U.N. official here, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said it might be wiser for Afghans to forge a "consensus of governance, if not government," rather than force another electoral exercise in the middle of a guerrilla war.
But neither Karzai nor Abdullah appears inclined to reach out. Both represent ethnic groups that are bitter longtime rivals with large emotional and economic stakes in the outcome. Both have formed alliances with powerful figures who have demanded significant concessions in exchange for their support.
Abdullah has said several times that he will "defend the Afghan people's vote," while some of his supporters, including experienced militia fighters, have vowed to take to the streets if he is declared the loser. Karzai, in turn, has enlisted the electoral backing of several former militia leaders accused of rights abuses and drug trafficking.
Grant Kippen, the low-key Canadian elections expert who heads the Electoral Complaints Commission, has attempted to stay above the partisan fray as his staff sorts through more than 2,000 fraud complaints. He has said that several hundred are serious enough to potentially affect the results and that he will take as much time as is necessary to investigate them properly, regardless of the rising public tension and pressure for a final outcome.
But a certain amount of discretion and subjectivity is involved in both the vote tally and the fraud detection process, one foreign elections expert said. In addition to the formal complaints investigated by Kippen's panel, he said, polling results that "smell funny," such as a box full of genuine-looking ballots that favor one candidate by 600 votes to 1, can either be "set aside" by the election commission or added to the count.
Kippen's findings could be political dynamite if they show that, as many observers suspect, much of the fraud was committed on Karzai's behalf in the southern region that is his ethnic Pashtun heartland, and where insurgent violence kept hundreds of thousands of people from voting.
Such a finding would raise the prospect of a president being reelected with a slim and questionable mandate from his own supporters and facing the hostility of an opposition convinced that he stole the election.
"There are warlords on both sides of this divide, and we cannot afford to be drawn into another ethnic conflict over this election," said Mir, the policy analyst. "This needs to be a time of reaching out to the opposition, not exacting vengeance. Otherwise, the only beneficiaries will be the Taliban."
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