Elite Guard in Iran Tightens Grip With Media Move - NYTimes.com

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By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran continues to manage the aftershocks of its contested presidential election, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has moved aggressively to tighten its grip on society, most recently with its takeover of a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly.

The nearly $8 billion acquisition by a company affiliated with the elite force has amplified concerns in Iran over what some call the rise of a pseudogovernment, prompting members of Parliament to begin an investigation into the deal.

“It’s not just a matter of the Guards dominating the economy, but of controlling the state,” said Alireza Nader, an expert on Iran and co-author of a comprehensive RAND Corporation report on the Revolutionary Guards.

The Guards was created as an elite military force at the founding of the Islamic republic, but its broad mandate — to protect the revolution — has allowed it to reach far beyond its military capacity and evolve into the nation’s most powerful political and economic force.

Its ability to enhance its status even further since the election has important implications for the future of Iran’s domestic politics, decisions on its nuclear program and prospects for long-term relations with the West, said Iranian analysts inside and outside of the country. Increasingly, it is the interests of the Guards and its allies that are driving the nation’s policies, and those interests have often been defined by isolation from the West.

“I think they really see themselves comfortable in a situation where they are isolated and in control,” said Michael Axworthy, a lecturer in Middle Eastern and Iranian history at the University of Exeter in England.

But as its role expands deep into society, the Guards also finds itself forced to balance its ideological inclinations with the practical aspects of protecting its own interests, the analysts said. For example, Iran has refrained from criticizing China, an important trade partner, over its crackdown on Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

And with inflation over 20 percent and manufacturing in serious decline, the Guards and its allies have appeared ready to take steps to head off new sanctions over the nation’s nuclear program. The Guards oversees the nuclear and missile program, and the recently revealed enrichment plant near Qum is built into a mountain on a Guards base.

“A lot of it is about ideology, but a lot of it is about money, too,” Mr. Nader said.

The election in June set off a wave of protests and national discontent, with many charging that the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stole the election from his main reform opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi. That conflict and the ensuing state crackdown accelerated a reordering of Iran’s political landscape that began with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s election four years ago. The old guard revolutionaries, like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the reformers and the clergy have been largely shoved aside. The mainline conservatives have been divided.

But the Guards and its allies, including the president, have been emboldened and remain firmly in control. There have been some student protests since universities reopened, and small street scuffles, but nothing like the huge protests that rocked the nation right after the election.

“In a strategic sense, I don’t think Iran is in a fundamentally different place than it was before elections, not in the way it approaches negotiations or the way it looks at its foreign policy,” said Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran project at the New America Foundation and a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University.

Since the protests, senior Guards officials and former officials have been moved into many important government positions. There is now talk that the Guards’ leadership is considering transforming the Basij militia, a volunteer force under its command, into a professional, full-time force. Another tool for extending the Guards’ reach at home has been privatization, initially intended as a means to improve the economy but criticized more recently as a shell game.

The takeover of Iran’s telecommunications system followed a familiar pattern. A private firm, initially approved by Iran’s Privatization Organization, was excluded as an eligible bidder because of a “security condition” one day before shares were put on sale. Mobin Trust Consortium, affiliated with the Guards, then won the bidding.

Until this case, the most striking instance of the Guards’ muscling into a business involved management of the Imam Khomeini Airport. In May 2004 the Guards shut down the airport and evicted the Turkish company that had the contract to run it. The Guards then put its own firm in place. The Guards also appears to have defied an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to privatize its many holdings, which run from laser eye clinics and car dealerships to control of oil and gas fields, according to the RAND report.

Despite this and other instances of apparent defiance, Iranian analysts said that the supreme leader remained close to and was supported by the Revolutionary Guards, and that he had maintained control in part by frequently changing commanders. The ayatollah sided publicly with Mr. Ahmadinejad in the political crisis, damaging his standing as a fair arbiter, and so he has relied more on security services, primarily the Guards, to preserve his authority.

Parliament’s decision to look into the telecommunications deal is its second inquiry into a privatization transaction. The first involved three companies affiliated with the Basij militia. In August they simultaneously bid to control the largest lead and zinc mine in the Middle East, in Iran’s Zanjan Province. The final sale price was less than $2 billion, one-third of the $6 billion the government had said the mine was worth two years earlier.

During the investigation, auditors found evidence that the three sister companies colluded to ensure the lowest possible price, according to Iranian newspaper reports.

Some analysts argue that the Guards, with a firm control of major sectors of the economy, has little interest in opening relations with the West, because integration with the global economy could bring in competition and require a degree of transparency the force is not comfortable with.

“They profit by a situation in which there are sanctions and shortages and in which the people can’t get what they want, and they are able to control a fairly small stream of what the people want at an inflated price,” Mr. Axworthy said. “I don’t think the Revolutionary Guard is very likely to put pressure on the Iranian regime to open politically in order to open economically.”

But there is also a sentiment that says the Guards Corps may become more pragmatic when it comes to the rest of the world.

“The I.R.G.C. can’t be both a revolutionary and militant organization, bent on destroying the world and exporting the revolution, and at the same time a big domestic capitalist agency with its finger in a bunch of pies,” said a sociologist in Iran who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Being the latter moves one towards conservatism and pragmatism, not radicalism.”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

At Harvard, Leaner Times Mean No More Hot Breakfast - NYTimes.com

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By ABBY GOODNOUGH

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweat suits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings.

By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more. With the cuts extending beyond hiring and salary freezes to measures that affect what students eat, where they study and other parts of their daily routine, the euphoria of fall in Harvard Yard is dampened.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences anticipates a deficit of $130 million over the next two years and is awaiting recommendations from groups of faculty members and students who have been weighing the options.

“Everyone is worried,” said George Hayward, a junior who lives on a part of campus, the Quad, that lost its library to the cuts. “It could be anything next; nobody really knows.”

Harvard is not the only elite university where student life is more austere this fall: Princeton has closed some computer labs, and one of its dining halls on Saturdays. At Stanford, the annual Mausoleum Party, a Halloween gathering at the Stanford family burial site, lost $14,000 in financing and might be canceled.

But many here assumed student life at Harvard, more than at any other institution, was immune from hardship. The loss of scrambled eggs, bacon and other cooked breakfast foods in the dorms of upperclassmen on weekdays seems to have stirred the most ire.

“Students generally feel that if you come to Harvard, for what you’re paying, you should probably have the right to a hot breakfast,” said Andrea Flores, a senior who is president of the Undergraduate Council. “They want to preserve the things that are at Harvard that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Some students are feeling the cuts more than others. Mr. Hayward said that those who live on the Quad, a 15-minute walk from Harvard Yard, were disproportionately affected because the library there was closed and shuttle bus service to and from the central campus curtailed. (Quad residents are touchy to begin with — “getting quadded,” or assigned to live in that area, is many a student’s nightmare.)

Varsity athletes have also suffered disproportionally, said Johnny Bowman, a junior who is monitoring the cuts for the Undergraduate Council, because they were the biggest devotees of hot breakfast. “It was a big shock,” Mr. Bowman said. “Athletes were accustomed to coming back from early morning practice and getting their nutrients — a solid meal.”

On top of that loss, some club teams find themselves sharing space at the Malkin Athletic Center because it now closes earlier on weeknights. Khoa Tran, president of Harvard Taekwondo, told The Harvard Crimson that his team would have to share practice space with the Crimson Dance Team.

“It will be an interesting mix because they will be playing dance music while we do our routines,” he told the paper. “We ourselves yell every time we kick... and we kick a lot.”

Harvard’s endowment was $26 billion in June 2009, down from $36.9 billion in June 2008, a 27 percent decrease. The loss is especially hard on the Faculty of Arts and Science, which includes Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering, because the endowment provides half of its budget.

Though faculty jobs have so far been protected, the university laid off 250 staff members this summer, said Jeff Neal, a Harvard spokesman. He said it was too soon to know whether future cuts would affect students.

“We are working hard to minimize the impact of the global financial downturn on any substantive aspect of student life,” he said in an e-mail message.

Mr. Neal pointed out that despite its budget problems Harvard had increased financial aid to students to $145 million this year, from $136 million last year. More than 60 percent of this year’s freshman class, a record number, is receiving financial aid, he said. The total cost of a year at Harvard is $48,868.

Ms. Flores said that after excluding students from conversations about what to cut last spring, the administration was now seeking their ideas. It scrapped a plan to end weeknight shuttle service at 1:30 a.m. instead of 3:45 a.m. after an outcry, she said, though it did cut service on weekend mornings.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has started an online “idea bank” where students can suggest savings. The 170 submissions so far include charging tour groups to enter Harvard Yard and having students clean their own bathrooms instead of paying other students to do it under a work program.

“We understand we have to give up something,” Ms. Flores said. “But students want to be able to say what they’re willing to give up and what they want to protect. As long as that’s part of the discussion, I think the process can hopefully be done peacefully.”

For U.S., Leaving Iraq Is a Feat That Requires an Army - NYTimes.com

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By MARC SANTORA

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — There is no more visible sign that America is putting the Iraq war behind it than the colossal operation to get its stuff out: 20,000 soldiers, nearly a sixth of the force here, assigned to a logistical effort aimed at dismantling some 300 bases and shipping out 1.5 million pieces of equipment, from tanks to coffee makers.

It is the largest movement of soldiers and matériel in more than four decades, the military said.

By itself, such a withdrawal would be daunting, but it is further complicated by attacks from an insurgency that remains active; the sensitivities of the Iraqi government about a visible American presence; disagreements with the Iraqis about what will be left for them; and consideration for what equipment is urgently needed in Afghanistan.

All the while, the Army must sustain its current force of about 124,000 troops across the country, trucking in fuel, food and other essential supplies while determining what to leave behind for the 50,000 troops who will remain in a mostly advisory role until 2011.

“It’s a real Rubik’s Cube,” Brig. Gen. Paul L. Wentz, the commander of the Army’s logistical soldiers, said in an interview at this sprawling military complex north of Baghdad, which will serve as the command center for the withdrawal effort.

But just as the buildup in the Kuwaiti desert before the 2003 invasion made it plain that the United States was almost certain to go to war, the preparations for withdrawal just as clearly point to the end of the American military role here. Reversing the process, even if Iraq’s relative stability deteriorates into violence, becomes harder every day.

The scale of the withdrawal is staggering. Consider a comparison with the Persian Gulf war in 1991: it lasted 1,012 hours, or about six weeks, and when it was over, Lt. Gen. William G. Pagonis, in charge of the Army’s logistical operations at the time, wrote a book, “Moving Mountains” (Harvard Business Press Books, 1992), about the challenges of moving soldiers and equipment in and out of the theater.

He called the undertaking the equivalent of moving all the people of Alaska, along with their belongings, to the other side of the world “in short order.”

The current war in Iraq has lasted more than 57,000 hours, or more than six and a half years. And now General Pagonis’s son, Col. Gust Pagonis, is one of the leading logisticians assigned to the task of figuring out how to extricate America from the desert.

“When I told my dad what my assignment was, he just laughed and said good luck,” Colonel Pagonis said.

A major reduction in troops is not scheduled to begin until after the January national elections. But preparations for that withdrawal can be seen on the roads across Iraq, with an average of 3,500 trucks a night traversing the nation on sustainment and redeployment missions.

The military has largely identified which materials are not essential anymore and has begun to move them out of the country, in some cases to Afghanistan. For instance, lumber, ammunition and barriers used to defend against car bombs are all desperately needed in Afghanistan, and as bases are taken apart here, those are among the items sent to the fight there, commanders said.

In August, about 3,000 shipping containers and 2,000 vehicles were shipped out of Iraq, and the heavy lifting is just beginning.

“When the brigade combat teams come out, I want to be in a position where I don’t have to deal with the excess equipment and matériel at the same time,” General Wentz said.

In a conference room here at the base, dozens of soldiers monitor the movements of every American truck in the country on two large flat-screen televisions, using GPS technology and radio communications, getting current information about attacks and the progress of convoys. Every movement is planned about 96 hours in advance to allow for rehearsals and readjustments.

As the pace of withdrawal is stepped up, the American military must also assuage the worries of Iraqi politicians who want the American troops to be less visible, so most missions are carried out in the dark of night.

The Americans hope that by next spring, they will be operating from what General Wentz described as a hub-and-spoke system, with 6 supersize bases and 13 smaller ones. Fewer bases means traveling greater distances, at greater risk.

“The distance between two points does not get any shorter,” said Colonel Pagonis, asserting that the logisticians in his command — known as “loggies” — are also warriors.

Turning the former American bases over to the Iraqis, and deciding what to give them, have proved to be among the biggest challenges.

Until May, there was no system in place even to figure out who legally owned the property where Americans had set up camp. This led to scenes like the one at Forward Operating Base Warhorse, where a local Iraqi commander showed up essentially demanding a list of items that the Americans were not ready to turn over.

So last spring, panels made up of Iraqi and American officials were set up to help work through some of these issues.

Congress has limited the total value of equipment — like computers and furniture — that the military can leave to the Iraqis to roughly $15 million per base, but that amount does not include items considered part of the infrastructure, like buildings, sewerage and power facilities.

Even coming up with a value for some of the American investments is hard because in many cases the initial costs were inflated by large outlays for security.

Commanders say it is often simply more economical to turn over more equipment to the Iraqis because the cost of moving it is prohibitive. Last month, the military announced the end of its detention operations at Camp Bucca on the Kuwaiti border and said that $50 million worth of infrastructure and equipment would be given to the Iraqis.

The United States has also brokered a deal with an Iraqi trucking network, led by a coalition of tribal sheiks, to move equipment that is not deemed sensitive between bases. The truckers currently move about 3 percent of all American matériel here, commanders said.

Commanders also said they would closely watch the January elections for what they say about the reliability of Iraq’s security forces and the direction the country is heading. But for the planners of the withdrawal, there is no time left to wait and see.

“You can’t wait for some big ‘Aha!’ moment,” said Brig. Gen. Heidi Brown, a deputy commander overseeing the withdrawal. “That does not give you flexibility. That just puts you in a box.”

House Votes to Expand Hate Crimes Definition - NYTimes.com

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By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.

Democrats hailed the vote of 281 to 146, which brought the measure to the brink of becoming law, as the culmination of a long push to curb violent expressions of bias like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.

“Left unchecked, crimes of this kind threaten to ruin the very fabric of America,” said Representative Susan A. Davis, Democrat of California, a leading supporter of the legislation.

Under current federal law, hate crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction are defined as those motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion or national origin.

The new measure would broaden the definition to include those committed because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It was approved by the House right before a weekend when gay rights will be a focus in Washington, with a march to the Capitol and a speech by President Obama to the Human Rights Campaign.

Republicans criticized the legislation, saying violent attacks were already illegal regardless of motive. They said the measure was an effort to create a class of “thought crimes” whose prosecution would require ascribing motivation to the attacker.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, called the legislation radical social policy.

“The idea that we’re going to pass a law that’s going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking, I think is wrong,” Mr. Boehner said.

Republicans were also furious that the measure was attached to an essential $681 billion military policy bill, and accused Democrats of legislative blackmail.

Even some Republican members of the usually collegial House Armed Services Committee who helped write the broader legislation, which authorizes military pay, weapons programs and other necessities for the armed forces, opposed the bill in the end, solely because of the hate crimes provision.

“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a senior Republican member of the committee.

On the final vote, 237 Democrats were joined by 44 Republicans in support of the bill; 131 Republicans and 15 Democrats opposed it. The Democratic opponents were a mix of conservatives who were against the hate crimes provision and liberals opposed to Pentagon provisions.

The military bill has yet to be approved by the Senate. But the hate crimes provision has solid support there, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the overall bill outweighed his own objections to including the hate crimes measure.

Mr. Obama supports the hate crimes provision, though the White House has raised objections to elements of the bill related to military acquisitions. If signed into law, the hate crimes legislation would reflect the ability of Democrats to enact difficult measures with their increased majorities in Congress and a Democrat in the White House.

“Elections have consequences,” Mr. McCain said.

Similar hate crime provisions have passed the House and the Senate in previous years but have never been able to clear their final hurdles. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that it was fitting that Congress was acting now, since next Monday is the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s killing. The hate crimes part of the bill is named for Mr. Shepard and James Byrd Jr., a black man killed in a race-based attack in Texas the same year.

The hate crimes legislation would give the federal government authority to prosecute violent crimes of antigay bias when local authorities failed to act. It would also allocate $5 million a year to the Justice Department to provide assistance to local communities in investigating hate crimes, a process that can sometimes strain police resources. And it would allow the department to assist in the inquiry and local prosecution if requested.

“The problem of crimes motivated by bias,” the measure says, “is sufficiently serious, widespread and interstate in nature as to warrant federal assistance to states, local jurisdictions and Indian tribes.”

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded reports of more than 77,000 hate crimes from 1998 through 2007 and that crimes based on sexual orientation were on an upward trend.

“The hate crimes act will hopefully deter people from being targeted for violent attacks because of the color of their skin or their religion, their disability, their gender or their sexual orientation, regardless of where the crime takes place,” he said.

But Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, said the measure could inhibit freedom of speech and deter religious leaders from discussing their views on homosexuality for fear that those publicly expressed views might be linked to later assaults.

“It is just simply wrong,” Mr. Pence said, “to use a bill designed to support our troops to reverse the very freedoms for which they fight.”

Democrats, however, noted that the bill would specifically bar prosecution based on an individual’s expression of “racial, religious, political or other beliefs.” It also states that nothing in the measure should be “construed to diminish any rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Picking the Most Visible of 205 Names - NYTimes.com

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By WALTER GIBBS

OSLO — The Norwegian Nobel Committee spent seven months winnowing the résumés of dissident monks, human rights advocates, field surgeons and other nominees — 205 names in all, most of them obscure — before deciding to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the most famous man on the planet, Barack Obama.

“The question we have to ask,” Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s new chairman, said after the prize was announced on Friday, “is, ‘Who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world?’ And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

While in recent decades the selection process has produced many winners better known for their suffering or their environmental zeal than for peacemaking, Mr. Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister, said he intended to incorporate a more practical approach.

“It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling and idealistic,” Mr. Jagland said in an interview, “but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world.”

Mr. Jagland, 58, leaned back in his chair in the committee room, surrounded by photographs of Peace Prize winners dating to 1901. Three previous American presidents look out from the wall: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. But the 2009 award to Mr. Obama, in his freshman year as president and still directing two wars, could be the biggest of them all.

While some leaders and commentators around the world lauded the selection, others said Mr. Obama had not yet earned it. Should his presidency descend into a military quagmire, as Lyndon B. Johnson’s did during the Vietnam War, the 2009 award could prove an embarrassment.

Several prominent Nobel observers in Oslo said the Nobel committee had put the integrity of the award at stake. But Mr. Jagland seemed to savor the risk. He said no one could deny that “the international climate” had suddenly improved, and that Mr. Obama was the main reason.

Of the president’s future, he said: “There is great potential. But it depends on how the other political leaders respond. If they respond negatively, one might have to say he failed. But at least we want to embrace the message that he stands for.”

He likened this year’s award to the one in 1971, which recognized Willy Brandt, then the chancellor of West Germany, and his “Ostpolitik” policy of reconciliation with Communist Eastern Europe.

“Brandt hadn’t achieved much when he got the prize, but a process had started that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Mr. Jagland said. “The same thing is true of the prize to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, for launching perestroika. One can say that Barack Obama is trying to change the world, just as those two personalities changed Europe.”

Mr. Jagland, who was elected Sept. 29 to be secretary general of the Council of Europe, represents the Labor Party, but the five-member Nobel committee is more than the collection of Scandinavian socialists that its critics in the United States sometimes imagine. Its members are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament to roughly reflect the party makeup of that body. The current committee includes two members from the Labor Party, one from the Socialist Left Party, one from the Conservatives and one from the far-right Progress Party. Mr. Jagland said all five members backed this year’s choice.

Geir Lundestad, who as executive director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has handled the committee’s administrative affairs since 1990, said the committee met six or seven times this year, starting several weeks after the nomination deadline of Feb. 1. It did not pick a winner until Monday. He said Oslo faced a major challenge to get ready for what will likely be among the largest civic events in Norwegian history: the award ceremony Dec. 10 at which Mr. Obama will be expected to deliver a speech.

Responding to the analysts who expressed concern for the authority of the prize, given Obama’s lack of accomplishment so far, Dr. Lundestad said, “We are very optimistic that this will turn out to be a success and a highlight in our history.”

Mr. Jagland was asked if the committee feared being labeled naïve for accepting a young politician’s promises at face value. He shrugged and said, “Well, so?”

Egyptian Pro-Reform Activists Say U.S. Commitment Is Waning - washingtonpost.com

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By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 9, 2009

MAHALLAH AL-KOBRA, Egypt -- Four months after President Obama delivered an address from Cairo in which he voiced American commitment to human rights and the rule of law, concern is mounting among Egypt's pro-reform activists that the United States is abandoning its long-standing efforts to bring democratic reforms to the Arab world's most populous nation.

Since the speech, Egyptian security forces have launched a fresh campaign against the banned Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamist opposition group, arbitrarily arresting hundreds of members, from young bloggers to senior leaders. The government has prevented a centrist opposition movement from legally becoming a political party. In this Nile Delta industrial city, the epicenter of recent worker strikes, the government has appeared unresponsive to labor concerns -- or is cracking down.

"We are very disgruntled with President Obama," said Kamal al-Fayoumi, a labor leader who was jailed by the government for launching a major strike last year. "He has given the regime the green light to do what it wants with the Egyptian people."

U.S. pressure for democratic reforms in Egypt, once effective, waned in the final years of the Bush administration. But critics charge that the pressure has significantly eased at a time when Egypt is nearing a crucial political transition: The presidential election is set for 2011, and speculation is rife that incumbent Hosni Mubarak, 81, will anoint son Gamal as his successor before the election, raising fears that the regime will undemocratically extend its 28-year-old rule.

"We may have changed tactics, but our commitment to democracy and human rights promotion in Egypt is steadfast," a U.S. Embassy official said in an e-mailed response to questions. Senior American officials will continue to raise these issues in meetings with Egyptian counterparts, the official added.

The frustrations have been compounded by sharp cuts in U.S. funding for democracy programs in Egypt as much as by the Obama administration's soft tone and warmer relationship with the Mubarak government. Activists say Obama's middle-ground approach could have significant repercussions in a region dominated by autocrats, who respond only to pressure.

"His reduced talk of democracy is giving these non-democratic regimes the security that they won't face pressure. And that's having a negative impact on democracy in the Arab world," said Ayman Nour, a prominent opposition politician.

Today, the Obama administration is increasingly relying on Egypt to jump-start the Arab-Israeli peace process and to contain pro-Iran radical groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Obama has met with Mubarak three times, reestablishing Egypt's position as a key strategic ally in the Arab world. This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration, during which tensions between Washington and Cairo raged over U.S. policies in the Middle East, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and American criticism of Egypt's political and human rights record.

The clearest indication yet of the U.S. shift is the funding cuts, activists say. Last year, the United States allocated $54.8 million for democracy programs, of which $27.85 million went to civil society programs, the nexus of grass-roots activism for democracy. This year, the funding has shrunk to $20 million, of which $5 million went to civil society groups. The cuts were made by the Bush administration; for 2010, the Obama administration has allocated $25 million, an increase from this year's funding but still well below the 2008 figure. The U.S. Embassy official said an additional $4 million in funding for civil society groups would come from other sources.

Although the Bush administration's policies were largely reviled across the Arab world, many Egyptians credit them with ushering in some political reforms. Under U.S. pressure, Egypt held its first contested presidential election. Independent newspapers, Web sites and blogs flourished.

"The truth is it was pressure by George Bush that brought political reforms and political mobilization," said Ibrahim Issa, a columnist and government critic who was jailed for writing that Mubarak was ill.

Senior Egyptian officials openly admit they prefer Obama to Bush.

"He is not interfering in the domestic affairs of countries," said Ali Eddin Helal, a top spokesman for the ruling National Democratic Party. "He's not trying to achieve objectives through confrontation or pressure, but through brokering and reconciliation."

Nour, the opposition politician, was a beneficiary of American pressure. Criticism of the regime mounted after he was jailed on unsubstantiated fraud charges in the wake of the 2005 election. He was freed this year. The release was widely seen as a bid by Mubarak to improve relations with the Obama administration -- and to send a signal that any U.S. pressure would be counterproductive.

In an interview, Nour shook his head when asked whether he thought the Obama administration would apply similar pressure if the government were to jail him again.

"They are focused on Israel," Nour said. "They believe the current regime works, so they shouldn't take any risks."

Others sense a growing fatigue. "The Americans, I think, are fed up with the Egyptians," said Anwar E. el-Sadat, the nephew of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and an opposition leader. "They have been spending millions promoting democracy, and nothing happened."

The government, meanwhile, is escalating its crackdown. On Saturday, 16 Muslim Brotherhood members were detained on charges of violating a law that requires government approval to hold a political gathering.

The Muslim Brotherhood's opposition to U.S. policies in the Middle East, as well as its popularity, ultimately helped to doom the Bush administration's push for political reforms. American officials worried that the Islamists could one day replace Mubarak if democracy took root.

Many activists fear that the Obama administration feels the same way -- and will legitimize what many expect will be Gamal Mubarak's ascendancy in a nation that has never experienced a democratic transfer of power.

"We were hoping Obama would be different than other U.S. administrations," said Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights. "But America is concerned more about stability than democracy."

North Korea Massively Increases Its Special Forces - washingtonpost.com

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Commandos Trained in Terror Tactics In Effort to Maintain Military Threat

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 9, 2009

SEOUL -- North Korea has massively increased its special operations forces, schooled them in the use of Iraqi-style roadside bombs and equipped them to sneak past the heavily fortified border that divides the two Koreas.

By expanding what was already the world's largest special operations force, the North appears to be adding commando teeth to what, in essence, is a defensive military strategy. The cash-strapped government of Kim Jong Il, which struggles to maintain and buy fuel for its aging tanks and armor, has concluded it cannot win a conventional war, according to U.S. and South Korean military officials.

But by combining huge numbers of special forces with artillery that can devastate Seoul and missiles that can pound all of South Korea, North Korea has found an affordable way to remain terrifying, ensure regime survival and deter a preemptive strike on the nuclear bombs that make it a player on the world stage, say U.S. and South Korean military analysts.

"The North Koreans have done what they had to do to make sure their military is still a credible threat," said Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., a North Korea specialist who is a professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico. "They can still inflict tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Seoul on the first day of combat."

The havoc-raising potential of North Korea's special forces has grown as their numbers have increased and their training has shifted to terrorist tactics developed by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in Korea.

"The capability is really very large, and they will use these tactics," Sharp told reporters recently in Washington.

In a conflict, tens of thousands of special forces members would try to infiltrate South Korea: by air in radar-evading biplanes, by ground through secret tunnels beneath the demilitarized zone (DMZ), and by sea aboard midget submarines and hovercraft, according to South Korean and U.S. military analysts.

Disguised in the uniforms of South Korean police and military personnel, special forces are also expected to try to walk into Seoul. Dressed as civilians, they may also arrive aboard passenger flights from Beijing and other foreign capitals.

"These are not your standard North Korean guys," Bechtol said. "They are the best-trained, best-fed and most indoctrinated soldiers in the North. They know how to fight, and if they are caught, they are trained to kill themselves."

Their primary mission, in the event of war, is to leapfrog the DMZ and create chaos among the 20.5 million residents of greater Seoul, while harassing South Korean and U.S. forces in rear areas, military and intelligence experts said.

It has been 41 years since North Korea mounted a commando raid inside South Korea, but the South has been forced to respond to an old threat turned new.

South Korea's army is trying to improve the mobility of its trench-bound frontline infantry and has canceled plans to reduce some reserve units. It has reversed the long-planned removal of a special warfare command from southern Seoul and has begun moves to buy advanced transport planes to deliver its special forces inside North Korea.

The navy has been ordered to change its focus from patrolling the sea to defending the shoreline from commando attacks, according to Kim Jong-dae, who edits a military magazine in Seoul and who until 2007 was a policy adviser to the defense minister. The South Korean government declined to comment on the navy's orders.

'Profoundly Loyal'

South Korea and the United States agree that the number of North Korean special forces is rising, but they disagree on how much.

The number is now 180,000, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. That's a 50 percent increase since the South's last official count three years ago. But Sharp, the U.S. commander here, puts the number at 80,000 (although that still dwarfs the special forces of any country, including the United States, which has about 51,000.)

Much of the difference appears to be a dispute over the definition of special forces. North Korea has retrained and reconfigured about 60,000 infantry troops as special forces in the past three years, South Korea says. The United States agrees that this reconfiguring has occurred, but it "does not count [retrained infantry] as special forces," according to Maj. Todd Fleming, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Korea.

Whatever the number, there is widespread agreement that the North's special forces are increasingly formidable. Sharp describes them as "tough, well-trained and profoundly loyal," while being capable of illicit activities, strategic reconnaissance and attacks against civilian infrastructure and military targets across Northeast Asia.

Their low-tech, low-cost training includes throwing knives, firing poisonous darts and running up steep hills wearing backpacks filled with 60 pounds of rocks and sand, said Ha Tae-jun, a former South Korean commando who has debriefed captured members of the North's special forces. They are also drilled in street warfare, chemical attacks, night fighting, martial arts, car theft and using spoons and forks as weapons, say South Korean government reports and military experts.

South Korean and U.S. forces in Korea have begun counterinsurgency training in the past year to respond to what are thought to be new tactics -- including the use of improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs -- that North Korean special forces have adopted from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Staff officers from the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., have come to Korea to help prepare soldiers for the new threat.

In decades past, North Korean special forces have demonstrated remarkable fighting ability and grit when cornered inside South Korea. In 1968, a 31-member team attacked Blue House, the presidential residence in Seoul. Although they failed to assassinate President Park Chung-hee, they killed 68 South Koreans over the nine days it took to track them down. Several commandos committed suicide to avoid capture, one was unaccounted for and one was taken alive.

Boots on the Ground

North Korea has repeatedly threatened to turn Seoul (located just 35 miles from the border) into "a sea of fire." To make that possible, it has moved about 70 percent of its military units and up to 80 percent of its total firepower to within 60 miles of the DMZ, according to the Strategic Studies Institute, a research arm of the U.S. Army War College.

But the capacity of North Korea to protect and maintain that frontline armor has declined since the 1990s. Flight hours for the North's military aircraft have plummeted for lack of fuel, as has training of mechanized ground forces.

North Korea has also begun to question the utility of the tanks and armor it can afford at the front, after seeing the ease with which U.S. precision weapons shredded Saddam Hussein's armored forces in Iraq, according to a South Korean Defense Ministry report.

"They were really shocked watching how the Americans destroyed Iraq's tanks," said Kim, the military affairs editor.

What North Korea still has in extraordinary abundance are boots on the ground, thanks to universal conscription and a mandatory 10 years of military service for men, seven years for women.

"The North Koreans made a decision based on the resources they have," said Kwon Young-hae, a former director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service. "The best way for them to counterbalance the South's technological advantage is with special forces. When Kim Jong Il gives pep talks to these troops, he says, 'You are individually, one by one, like nuclear weapons.' "

Special correspondent June Lee contributed to this report.

In Saudi Arabia, a Campus Built as a 'Beacon of Tolerance' - washingtonpost.com

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High-Tech University Draws the Ire of Hard-Line Clerics for Freedoms It Provides to Women

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 9, 2009

THUWAL, Saudi Arabia -- On this gleaming high-tech campus edged by the Red Sea, May Qurashi crossed a barrier the other day. She played a game on PlayStation with some male fellow students. Her best friend, Sarah al-Aqeel, is also reaching for the forbidden. She's getting her driver's license.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict constraints, Saudi women like Qurashi and Aqeel may neither mingle with men nor drive. But at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened last month on this sprawling site 50 miles north of Jiddah, men and women take classes together. Women are not required to wear traditional black head-to-toe abayas or veil their faces -- and they can get behind a steering wheel.

"I don't think religion should have anything to do with higher education," said Qurashi, a 23-year-old biological engineering graduate student.

The research university is the latest, and so far most significant, endeavor by a Persian Gulf nation to diversify its economy and help wean the region from its dependence on oil wealth. Saudi officials describe the multibillion-dollar postgraduate institution as the spear in the kingdom's efforts to transform itself into a global scientific center rivaling those in the United States, Europe and Asia.

But the kingdom's powerful religious establishment is increasingly voicing criticism of the university. On Web sites, clerics have blasted the school's coeducational policy as a violation of sharia, or Islamic law. Last week, a member of the influential Supreme Committee of Islamic Scholars, a government-sanctioned body, called for a probe into the curriculum and its compatibility with sharia law, local newspapers reported.

"Mixing is a great sin and a great evil," Saad bin Nasser al-Shithri was quoted as saying in the al-Watan newspaper. "When men mix with women, their hearts burn, and they will be diverted from their main goal," which he said is "education."

His comments sparked outrage from influential advocates of modernization. "It's the sort of thinking that, if not for the King, would have kept this country wandering the desert on the backs of camels in search of water and pasture," the al-Iqtisadiya newspaper editorialized.

In an unprecedented action, reformist King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz issued a royal decree over the weekend removing Shithri from his post, according to the official Saudi Press Agency and Western diplomats.

Many Saudis and Western analysts view the university as a test of Abdullah's ability to challenge hard-line Islamic clerics and expand freedoms, including rights for women, in the Middle East's most religiously austere country. In a speech last month inaugurating the university, the king, 85, declared that "faith and science cannot compete except in unhealthy souls" and that "scientific centers that embrace all peoples are the first lines of defense against extremists." He said he hoped the university, known as KAUST, would become "a beacon of tolerance."

"I interact a lot with men. We hang out together. We go to classes together," said Qurashi, her moon-shaped face framed by a black abaya. "But I'm a Muslim woman. I want friendship and nothing more. If I can stick to my religion and my normal values, then what's wrong with that?"

Challenging Barriers

Three years ago, Abdullah ordered executives of the Saudi national oil company, Aramco, to build the university, fulfilling a 25-year-old vision. The kingdom was in the midst of an economic crisis, and the monarch realized that his country could no longer rely solely on oil, said Nadhmi al-Nasr, the university's interim vice president and a senior Aramco executive.

Today, the campus is a scientist's dream. It houses one of the world's faster supercomputers. A three-dimensional virtual reality room takes visitors into an archaeological dig or a coral reef. Ultra-high-resolution photography allows the study of mountain rock formations.

Research centers focus on vital areas such as finding alternative forms of energy and sources of potable water. Solar energy partially powers the campus; electric vehicles provide public transport. Fortune 500 companies such as Dow Chemical fund research. The goal, university officials said, is to effectively collaborate with industry to create a new generation of researchers, inventors and entrepreneurs.

"We'll be exporting electricity to Europe and Asia one day," Nasr said.

There are 71 professors, many from the United States, and 817 students from 61 countries. Nearly 400 students began classes last month; the rest will arrive next year. Saudi students, including 20 women, make up 15 percent of the student body.

To attract top scientists and postgraduate students, the university -- which is run by an independent board of trustees -- offered generous tax-free salaries, large houses, a golf course and a yacht club. They also set out to overcome the country's societal restrictions.

Ahmad al-Khowaiter, the interim vice president for economic development and an Aramco executive, said that the intention was not "to break social boundaries." Nevertheless, interviews conducted on the campus over three days suggest that many students and faculty members hope to contribute to a broadening of academic freedom and women's rights in the country.

One workshop held on campus recently explored the challenges facing Saudi women in the higher educational system. A higher percentage of Saudi women than men graduate from college with a degree. But they are restricted to attending all-female institutions, and social and cultural barriers stop many from entering scientific research and other postgraduate programs. They are often directed to the study of humanities and the arts -- science is viewed as a "male" profession -- and are expected to raise families. After graduation, they have trouble finding good jobs, and women in leadership roles are rare in companies, universities and government.

Nasr told the mostly female audience that the university wants to ensure that female academics are among its leaders. "I hope in my lifetime I will see a Saudi female become president of KAUST," he said.

The audience, which included Qurashi and Aqeel, exploded with applause.

Jasmeen Merzaban, a biochemistry professor and one of five women on the faculty, said she hoped the university will help change perceptions of women. "We have the knowledge and power that we can move forward and be just as good as our male colleagues," she said.

But on many Saudi Web sites and chat rooms, the reaction is mixed. A video posted on YouTube shows a Saudi KAUST employee in white tribal garments gyrating his hips on a table after the university's inauguration, as men and women cheer and dance along. By Thursday, the video had been viewed more than 67,000 times and drawn 129 comments.

"God have mercy on the employee. He wasn't raised properly. He should be punished," wrote one person.

"The purest place on earth is not segregated, and that is the holy mosque in Mecca," a university supporter responded.

Some question whether the Saudi educational system will modernize and improve enough to funnel more qualified students to the university -- or whether KAUST will remain mostly a facility for foreigners.

"It remains to be seen whether the university will be an island of freedom in an ocean of repression, or whether it can help spread freedoms to other parts of the kingdom," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Choosing Lines to Cross

Not everyone in Aqeel's family supports her decision to study in a coed environment. Two brothers, she said, advised her parents to order her to veil her face on campus -- as she does when she walks with them.

She refused. "I'm not doing anything wrong," she said with a newfound boldness.

Now she eats lunch and dinner with her male classmates. She studies with them. A Canadian male classmate is teaching her how to play the piano. But when she goes to parties, she doesn't dance.

"We have red lines we shouldn't cross," she said.

Ben Ali, 82, Whose Chili Bowl Became a D.C. Landmark, Dies - washingtonpost.com

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Chili Bowl Founder Satisfied Craving for Food, Friendship

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 9, 2009

If the rest of the world sees Washington as a place of large monuments and gleaming public buildings, many of the people who actually live in the city build their lives around smaller, more humble institutions. For them, one of the most important addresses in town is Ben's Chili Bowl, a simple diner famous for its down-home menu of chili, half-smokes and fries.

Ben Ali, who founded the restaurant in 1958 and created its unmatched chili recipe, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at his home in the District. He was 82.

His family-run diner on U Street NW has been one of the most enduring institutions of Washington, a place where families meet after church and where night owls come to talk, flirt and, not least, eat.

The landmark eatery opened when U Street was the city's glittering "Black Broadway," a strip of nightclubs and theaters that catered to Washington's black middle class and helped define the city's pulse and taste. It became a steadfast symbol of Washington's perseverance through good times and bad, feeding the dignitaries who came to Washington as well as the ordinary folks who call the District home.

In a statement, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty called Ben's Chili Bowl "one of the greatest treasures in the District of Columbia."

On Jan. 10, the restaurant received perhaps its greatest publicity boost when Fenty and president-elect Obama dropped by for a half-smoke -- a smoked sausage that is often called the signature food of Washington. Mindful of a sign that warned, "Who eats free at Ben's: Bill Cosby. No one else," Obama paid for his $12 tab with a $20 bill, leaving the change as a tip. The president's name has been added to Cosby's as the only patrons allowed to dine without paying.

Mr. Ali, a Trinidadian immigrant who had studied dentistry at Howard University, tried several careers before opening the diner with his Virginia-born fiancee, Virginia Rollins, on Aug. 22, 1958. They were married seven weeks later.

He thought Washington might be hungry for the kind of spicy dishes he had known while growing up in the Caribbean and cooked up the first batches of chili on his own. His recipe remains a closely guarded family secret.

At first, the chili was served only atop hot dogs, hamburgers and half-smokes. Mr. Ali's chili topping proved so popular that he began to serve it in bowls. This March, Bon Appétit magazine ranked Ben's chili as the best in America.

"No reasonable discussion of great chili joints can take place without mention of this U Street institution, open since 1958," Andrew Knowlton wrote in the magazine.

Michael Stern, who with his wife, Jane, might be the country's foremost expert on down-home food, has called Ben's half-smoke "sensational" and the chili "positively addictive."

But it wasn't merely the food that made Ben's Chili Bowl a local institution. In its early days, residents of the surrounding Shaw neighborhood sat alongside entertainers Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Redd Foxx, and Ben's became a favorite late-night gathering place. Bill Cosby became a loyal customer in 1959, when he was in the Navy, and later courted his wife, former University of Maryland student Camille Hanks, at Ben's.

In 1968, when riots and fires devastated swaths of downtown Washington, the offices of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were across the street from the Chili Bowl. Mr. Ali was able to keep his restaurant open during the height of the unrest, serving protesters, police officers and firefighters alike. According to his family, Mr. Ali used a bar of soap to write "Soul Brother" on the window. The restaurant was untouched through the riots.

As the neighborhood deteriorated and other businesses shut down throughout the 1970s and '80s, Ben's Chili Bowl stayed open, but with shorter hours. As drug dealing proliferated nearby, Virginia Ali told The Washington Post in 2003, the restaurant stopped selling cakes and pies because addicts were drawn in by the sweets. The D.C. police conducted surveillance on drug dealers from an upstairs window in the restaurant.

After construction began on Metro's Green Line in the 1980s, Ben's Chili Bowl sat above a 60-foot crater and was one of the few active businesses on the street. The restaurant was reduced to only two employees, besides Mr. Ali's family, yet it continued to attract a loyal and international clientele.

After the Green Line opened in 1991, U Street became chic again, and Ben's Chili Bowl was at the center of the neighborhood's rebirth. Celebrities ranging from Shaquille O'Neal to Hillary Rodham Clinton began to show up, and Cosby sang the restaurant's praises on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

When Ted Koppel retired in 2005 as host of the ABC News show "Nightline," his farewell party was held at Ben's. The restaurant was featured in the films "The Pelican Brief" and "State of Play." By the late 1990s, no D.C. politician would dream of running for office without dropping into Ben's for a ritual half-smoke and milkshake. Former mayor Anthony A. Williams mentioned the restaurant in an inaugural address and called Ben's the "restaurant where my constituents would most likely run into me."

Former mayor and current D.C. Council member Marion S. Barry first visited the Chili Bowl in 1966.

"I'll tell you how much of an institution Ben's Chili Bowl is," Barry told The Post in 1998. While visiting Accra, the capital of Ghana, Barry met the city's mayor, who was an alumnus of Howard University. "The first thing he said: 'Glad to have you in Accra. Is Ben's Chili Bowl still there?' "

Mahaboob Ben Ali was born June 13, 1927, and grew up in San Juan, Trinidad. His grandparents were from northern India.

In 1945, Mr. Ali came to the United States as a student.

"I came here to become a doctor," he said in a February interview with the News India-Times. "I knew Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth. I had studied in the British system. I could quote any of the poets."

While studying at the University of Nebraska, he said, he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his back. After months of convalescence, he attended four other colleges before graduating from Howard. He dropped out of Howard's dental school, then waited tables, ran an import business, sold real estate and drove a taxi. Even after opening Ben's Chili Bowl, he held other jobs, most notably as a motivational speaker, teaching sales skills to military officers and others.

In case any of his three sons took over Ben's Chili Bowl, Mr. Ali gave them all the middle name of Ben. His two younger sons, Kamal and Nizam, now operate the restaurant, a location at Nationals Park and a recently opened annex, Ben's Next Door.

In addition to his wife and sons, survivors include a son, Haidar Ali, a Los Angeles musician who performs under the name Sage Infinity; a brother; two sisters; and three grandchildren.

When Mr. Ali and Virginia Rollins were married October 10, 1958, she converted to his Muslim faith. Although Mr. Ali was reluctant to admit it in public, he firmly obeyed the Islamic prohibition on pork. Throughout his life, he never tasted the hot dogs and half-smokes that made his restaurant famous.

Al Qaeda urges Uighur jihad in China. So what? |- csmonitor.com

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Another day, another Al Qaeda video. This time it was from the prolific jihad video star Abu Yahya al-Libi, a militant preacher and seasoned guerrilla fighter who some Al Qaeda watchers think is the likely eventual replacement for Osama bin Laden.

His pitch? For China’s Muslim Uighur minority to “prepare for jihad in the name of God” and expel the Beijing “thugs” from Xinjiang, the Chinese province where most Uighurs live. It’s a pitch he’s made to a number of nations before (Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine come to mind). In each case the response has been, well, a resounding silence.

His appeal to the Uighurs has Al Qaeda on well-trod ground. Since the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden teamed up with Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to form the “Islamic front against crusaders and Jews” (Al Qaeda’s formal name) in 1998, they have pitched their propaganda and outreach efforts to places where Muslims feel marginalized or oppressed.

Al Qaeda has dispatched operatives to encourage religious wars in Indonesia, to infiltrate Muslim separatist groups in the Southern Philippines, to fight in Yemen’s civil wars, and to recruit operatives from the Muslim minorities in country’s like Kenya. Bin Laden and his lieutenants bang their drum continuously about the Israeli occupation of Palestine for similar reasons. Al Qaeda has reasoned, not without justification, that it’s easier to raise recruits from among Muslim populations who have grievances against their own governments.

The Uighurs have plenty of grievances. There are roughly eight million of them living under Chinese rule in a region many of them would like to see independent. Anger at the influx of Han Chinese - the country’s dominant ethnic group - into Xinjiang led to bloody riots in June that claimed about 200 lives (mostly Han Chinese) and saw Chinese troops dispatched to the streets of Urumqi, the provincial capital.

But just as Al Qaeda has managed to encourage some bomb attacks but failed rather spectacularly in its broader goal of converting large numbers of Muslims to its zero-sum game/ world-view in places like Indonesia, so Mr. Libi is likely to be disappointed in his efforts to recruit the Uighurs into the global jihad camp. Even the Sunni Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has turned a deaf ear to Libi’s entreaties (Hamas recently crushed a group seeking to create an Al Qaeda style Islamic emirate in Gaza).

While separatist sentiment is undeniably strong amongst Uighurs, it generally takes the form of ethno-nationalism, not a desire to convert the world and unite it under a single, Sunni Muslim caliph. After all Rebiya Kadeer, a key exiled Uighur separatist leader, constantly speaks of the need to save “Uighur civilization,” not Islam.

None of this is to say that some Uighurs aren’t sympathetic (and China would like, along with Libi, to classify most of the Uighurs as Al Qaeda sympathizers, though for different reasons). But Al Qaeda propaganda has failed time and again to attract large numbers of Muslims to its side - even in a troubled country like Iraq, where a devout Sunni minority is worried about domination by the country’s majority Shiites. While Al Qaeda fellow travelers won sympathy from Sunni fighters in the early years of the Iraq war, they eventually wore out their welcome in many communities with their strict version of Islamic law and demands that locals bow to their ways.

To be sure, Libi himself is a rising star in the jihadi world. A veteran of Afghanistan’s wars and about 40 years old, at most, the native Libyan has taken an increasingly public role for the group since famously escaping from US custody at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in July of 2005 (a fellow escapee, Omar al-Faruq was later killed by British forces while fighting near the Southern Iraqi city of Basra).

Like much of Iraq’s top leadership, Libi’s presumed to be in hiding along Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan. Until he’s killed or captured, expect more videos and call for jihad from the ambitious young militant. Just don’t expect anyone to listen to him.

Al Qaeda may be angry about the status of Uighurs in China. But most Muslim regimes are keeping quiet.

Mapping the Global Muslim Population - Pew

A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population

October 2009

Executive Summary

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories¹ in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater.

More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

These are some of the key findings of Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population, a new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. The report offers the most up-to-date and fully sourced estimates of the size and distribution of the worldwide Muslim population, including sectarian identity.

Previously published estimates of the size of the global Muslim population have ranged widely, from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.² But these commonly quoted estimates often have appeared without citations to specific sources or explanations of how the figures were generated.

The Pew Forum report is based on the best available data for 232 countries and territories. Pew Forum researchers, in consultation with nearly 50 demographers and social scientists at universities and research centers around the world, acquired and analyzed about 1,500 sources, including census reports, demographic studies and general population surveys, to arrive at these figures - the largest project of its kind to date. (See Methodology for more detail.)

The Pew Forum's estimate of the Shia population (10-13%) is in keeping with previous estimates, which generally have been in the range of 10-15%. Some previous estimates, however, have placed the number of Shias at nearly 20% of the world's Muslim population.³ Readers should bear in mind that the figures given in this report for the Sunni and Shia populations are less precise than the figures for the overall Muslim population. Data on sectarian affiliation have been infrequently collected or, in many countries, not collected at all. Therefore, the Sunni and Shia numbers reported here are expressed as broad ranges and should be treated as approximate.

These findings on the world Muslim population lay the foundation for a forthcoming study by the Pew Forum, scheduled to be released in 2010, that will estimate growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide and project Muslim populations into the future. The Pew Forum plans to launch a similar study of global Christianity in 2010 as well. The Pew Forum also plans to conduct in-depth public opinion surveys on the intersection of religion and public life around the world, starting with a 19-country survey of sub-Saharan Africa scheduled to be released later this year. These forthcoming studies are part of a larger effort - the Global Religious Futures Project, jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation - that aims to increase people's understanding of religion around the world.

Download the full report PDF (62 pages, 10MB)

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Footnotes

1 For a definition of “territories,” see the methodology.

2 See, for example, CIA World Factbook; Foreign Policy magazine, May 2007; Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, 2008; Adherents.com; and IslamicPopulation.com.

3 See, for example, IslamicWeb.com; “Shia Muslims in the Middle East,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 2006; and “The Revival of Shia Islam,” Vali Nasr speaking at a Pew Forum event, July 2006.

Map: Distribution of Muslim Population by Country and Territory »