Out of Guantanamo and Bitter Toward Bin Laden

By Faiza Saleh Ambah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 24, 2008; A08

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- A calling to defend fellow Muslims and a bit of aimlessness took Khalid al-Hubayshi to a separatists' training camp in the southern Philippines and to the mountains of Afghanistan, where he interviewed for a job with Osama bin Laden.

Hubayshi, 32, a Saudi native, was among the Arab fighters dug in with bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora during the U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan in 2001. He later spent time in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in a Saudi jail.

He was released in 2006 into a world radically altered by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Muslim fighters were no longer viewed in Arab countries as larger-than-life heroes, and clerics had stopped urging young Muslims to fulfill their religious duties by fighting on behalf of their brethren.

Hubayshi had also changed. He had grown disillusioned with bin Laden, whose initial idealism had turned into terrorism, he said, adding that his family, "not bin Laden," had suffered when he was at Guantanamo.

U.S. government documents and a series of interviews with Hubayshi provide a rare look into the mind and motivation of a man who trained for religious warfare, never fought in combat and now says he believes in the political process.

His life today in the city of Jiddah is comfortably routine. On most days, he wakes before dawn, drinks an espresso made by his wife and takes a 90-minute bus ride to his job as a controller at a utilities company. But "if the government had not helped me marry and get my job back," he said, "I might be in Iraq now."

In 1995, Hubayshi was a 19-year-old college student looking for more meaning in his life. Bin Laden was a hero to many Muslims, and aiding Muslims in distress seemed like the most admirable and altruistic route. He was initially inspired by a fiery taped sermon extolling the virtues of waging war against the enemies of Islam, but a series of videotapes produced by Arabs fighting in Bosnia completed his transformation.

The tapes showed Muslim women and children sprawled dead and bloodied in a market. One woman's head had been blown off. Muslim civilians with rifles were shown fighting the Serbian army, and the only ones helping them, Hubayshi said, were Arab fighters trained in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets.

"I couldn't sleep at night knowing that women were being raped and children slaughtered, just because they were Muslim," he said. "I had to do something."

By the time he got in touch with the Arabs fighting in Bosnia, the war was over. So Hubayshi took a five-week vacation from his new job at the utilities company and made his way to the southern Philippines, where he lived in wooden shacks in a humid jungle camp for Arab fighters. He said he slept well for the first time since seeing the Bosnia tapes.

But the Philippine separatists lay low most of the time he was there, and he soon felt restless and yearned for better training.

His contacts arranged for him to go to Afghanistan, and in 1997 he went to a camp in the southeastern city of Khost. He learned to fire antiaircraft missiles, antiaircraft machine guns, antitank weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and became an expert in explosives.

By 1999, the fighting in Afghanistan had become mostly ethnic. He packed his bags to return to Saudi Arabia. "I was not there . . . to help Afghans fighting Afghans for political gain," he said. "If I was going to die, I wanted to die fighting for something meaningful."

As he was making his way home, he was arrested in Pakistan at the Peshawar airport and sent to prison.

Hubayshi said that he was released two months later but that the Pakistanis kept his passport. He traveled on a fake passport to Yemen and was smuggled into Saudi Arabia, where he returned to work at the utilities company.

Two years later, he learned that he was wanted for questioning by Saudi authorities. Not willing to risk jail, he left the country on a fake passport and returned to Afghanistan in May 2001, he said.

In the years that he had been away from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's influence had spread and the organization had become more like a corporation, he said, with company cars and many safe houses. The Taliban, a radical Islamist militia that had taken control of most of the country by 1996, had also grown more powerful.

Hubayshi became adept at making remote-controlled explosive devices triggered by cellphones and light switches. Impressed by his skills, an associate of bin Laden's asked him to join al-Qaeda, or at least meet with bin Laden, he said.

In the summer of 2001, Hubayshi recalled, he spent half an hour with bin Laden at a converted military barracks near the city of Kandahar. The two sat on carpets in bin Laden's office and shared a fruit platter.

"What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?" Hubayshi said he asked.

"That you don't betray us and we don't betray you," bin Laden responded, and offered him a plot of land, Hubayshi said.

But bin Laden's "fight had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn't convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group."

On Sept. 11, 2001, Hubayshi said, he was training Chechen fighters in explosives in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In October, when the first U.S. airstrikes hit Jalalabad, the Afghans "blamed us . . . and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks."

Weeks later, an associate of bin Laden came seeking experienced fighters, and those without families left for Tora Bora. In the trenches there, the fighters ate and slept and cleaned their weapons, surrounded by the distant sounds of bombardments.

"Bin Laden was convinced the Americans would come down and fight. We spent five weeks like that, manning our positions in case the Americans landed," he said.

As the airstrikes moved closer, and with the United States' Afghan allies advancing, bin Laden decided to retreat and left one morning. His aides told 300 Arab fighters to make their way to Pakistan and surrender to their embassies.

Pakistani authorities stopped the fighters near the border and handed them over to the U.S. military, which sent them to Guantanamo Bay.

Hubayshi remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden's betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there. "The whole way to Cuba, I prayed the plane would fall," he said. "There was no dignity in what he made us do."

Hubayshi said he is sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians: "That was wrong. Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier."

His wife of one year said she had been looking for a husband who did not take drugs or drink alcohol, who was polite and had a kind mother. "He is a very good husband," the 26-year-old said on condition that her name not be published. Some segments of Saudi society follow strict social codes that deem it shameful for a woman's name to be made public.

In all the years he spent trying to help Muslims, Hubayshi said, he regrets he did not do more.

"My dream was that I would fight when there was fighting, and teach children when there was peace," he said. "I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools."

Another Tour Ends Without Solid Plans On Mideast Peace

Rice 'Encouraged' by Interest in Meeting

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 3, 2007; A10

SHANNON, Ireland, Aug. 2 -- After years of setbacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out this week to make one more push toward Middle East peace on behalf of an administration that has less than 18 months left in office. She got some polite nibbles, but not yet the big bite needed to ensure that President Bush's call last month for an international meeting of the region's major players will yield substance.

Many Arab governments want a full-blown conference that produces a broad and specific agreement, while the administration has talked instead of a meeting to explore options and ideas. The basic problem is one that has plagued the peace process for years: the wide gap on issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jewish settlements -- and the tough negotiations required to resolve them.

After her talks Thursday with the Palestinian leadership on the last leg of her four-day trip, Rice addressed growing concerns among Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Arab world that yet another U.S. effort will not get off the ground or will fizzle once the parties get together. She tried to assure all sides that any meeting would be "substantive and meaningful" and advance a two-state solution resulting in a Palestinian state. Bush "has no desire to call people together for a photo op," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

En route back to Washington, America's top diplomat conceded that "we haven't given much thought to how" the meeting will look and said preliminary diplomacy will require at least two more trips to the region. The tentative plan is to hold the meeting in November, U.S. officials say.

"I didn't issue invitations, but I was really pretty encouraged by the interest in it, by the willingness to discuss it, by the open-mindedness about the states that might attend," she told reporters traveling with her. The presence of countries that have not made peace with Israel -- notably Saudi Arabia, author of an Arab League regional peace proposal -- is vital to the credibility of any conference.

"We're going to try. All you can do is take advantage of an opening, and I think there is an opening," Rice said. People in Israel and elsewhere in the region see Abbas's government as one "which is serious, which is professional, which is focused on delivering security for people on the ground," she said.

Rice said the U.S. goal is to weave together several elements in the peace effort. These include new bilateral talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, who are scheduled to meet Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho; special envoy Tony Blair's work to build up the Palestinian capacity to govern; and the wider regional diplomacy with eight U.S. allies in the Arab world -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The latest U.S. effort, often referred to as the "West Bank first" strategy, seeks to exploit the political split between the two main Palestinian factions. The armed Islamic movement Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, seized full control of the Gaza Strip this June, ending a power-sharing arrangement with the rival Fatah faction. Abbas, a Fatah leader, then formed his own government in the West Bank. The United States is seeking to aid Abbas, strengthen his security forces and foster peace talks with Israel that will eventually win popular support and isolate Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel.

But in its current regional approach to peace, the Bush administration is effectively sidelining a policy shift Rice heralded in 2005: "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region . . . and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

This week, the administration announced its largest arms sale package, worth at least $20 billion, to Saudi Arabia and five Persian Gulf sheikdoms, offering some of the Middle East's most undemocratic governments more muscle and a greater sense of security, to win support for U.S. goals.

On her last stops in Israel and the West Bank, Rice's mission met with skepticism. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said in an interview that Bush's July 16 initiative could backfire if the U.S.-orchestrated meeting is "only a verbal, feel-good exercise."

"There's a real sense that it may be too little, too late," she said. "As usual, American presidents leave it to the end of their term to deal with the Palestinian crisis for the legacy of an outgoing president."

The Israeli press cast doubt on whether the traditional Arab players even represent the real powers anymore.

"Iran has all but completed a hostile takeover of the anti-Israel camp, which now consists mainly of Tehran's proxies and allies -- Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda," the Jerusalem Post editorialized Thursday.

Motivating Iraq's Neighbors to the Table

By Brian Katulis
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Friday, July 6, 2007; 12:00 AM

Last week, Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) broke with the Bush administration and called for the United States to begin redeploying troops from Iraq.

Though most observers focused on the senators' call to start bringing U.S. troops home, less attention was paid to the second part of what Lugar and Voinovich said -- that the United States needs to intensify its diplomatic efforts with Iraq's neighbors to get them to play a more constructive role in the region.

This second component -- stepped-up diplomacy to stabilize Iraq -- is easier said than done. In a complicated region fraught with intense conflicts and tensions, Iraq's internal conflicts have in some ways already become proxy wars for regional forces, pitting country versus country, Shi'a Muslims versus Sunni Muslims, and Arabs against Persians against Kurds.

Unraveling these tensions will not be a simple task. In fact, achieving bipartisan consensus among America's warring political factions may actually be easier than getting all of Iraq's leaders and neighboring countries on the same page about the next steps in Iraq. But the United States should not shy away from these diplomatic challenges; international and regional diplomacy are a key to managing the national security threats associated with Iraq.

After much delay, the Bush administration finally began the process of reaching out to Iraq's neighbors by participating in regional security conferences in Baghdad and Egypt earlier this spring. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, held limited bilateral discussions with Iran in late May. These moves represent steps in the right direction, but they are not nearly enough to address the complex set of issues related to Iraq. Two key ingredients are missing from these efforts: providing the right structure for support, and giving the right motivation for all of the countries involved.

How should the United States structure its efforts to forge a new international consensus on what to do about Iraq? President Bush should announce that he is willing to work with other global powers and all of Iraq's neighbors to develop a new U.N. Security Council Resolution to replace the current one, which expires at the end of 2007. The current U.N. mandate legitimized the current U.S. military presence in Iraq, despite Saudi King Abdullah's claims to the contrary when he called the U.S. troops an "illegitimate occupation" at an Arab summit conference this past March.

This new U.N. resolution should ensure that other countries do their share to help stabilize Iraq and the Middle East. It should include transparent, verifiable commitments by Iraq's neighbors not to undermine Iraq's security and territorial integrity, and it could aim to develop collaborative regional security initiatives to contain Iraq's conflicts. A new resolution should also incorporate the International Compact for Iraq, a five-year plan launched earlier this spring with benchmarks for Iraq's national reconciliation and economic reconstruction in return for formal commitments of support from the international community for Iraq.

What's the best way to motivate other countries to act more constructively on Iraq? The United States should tell the world that it plans to redeploy its troops from Iraq within a specified time frame. This announcement will motivate countries to share the burden on Iraq. Leaders around the world and in the Middle East fear that the forthcoming U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq will lead to terrible consequences for their own countries' interests. This fear is one of the few remaining sources of leverage and power that the United States has over these other countries.

It is time for the United States to capitalize on these fears and get others to do their share to advance their own countries' self-interests in containing and managing Iraq's conflicts. As Voinovich said last week, once Iraq's neighbors "know we are genuinely leaving, I think all of a sudden the fear of God will descend upon them and say 'We've got to get involved in this thing.'"

The main goal of this diplomatic shift is to ensure that the costs of intervening to exploit Iraq's internal divisions are much higher than the benefits that could be gained from working collectively to contain, manage, and ultimately resolve Iraq's conflicts.

More than four years of going it nearly alone in Iraq has undermined U.S. national security. With U.S. military readiness declining as U.S. ground troops feel the strain of extended deployments and the so-called "coalition of the willing" in tatters -- only about 12,000 of the 25,000 troops from countries other than the United States remain in Iraq -- the time has come for a strategic shift, rather than minor adjustments in military tactics.

The United States needs to forge a new international consensus on Iraq -- one that recognizes the threats posed by Iraq, structures international action in a new U.N. resolution, and motivates other countries by sending a clear signal that the United States is leaving Iraq and leaving soon.

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and co -author of the Center's new strategy for Iraq and the Middle East, "Strategic Reset."

Why the Iraq war won't engulf the Mideast

By Steven A. Cook, Ray Takeyh and Suzanne Maloney
Thursday, June 28, 2007
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WASHINGTON:

Long before the Bush administration began selling "the surge" in Iraq as a way to avert a general war in the Middle East, observers both inside and outside the government were growing concerned about the potential for armed conflict among the regional powers.

Underlying this anxiety was a scenario in which Iraq's sectarian and ethnic violence spills over into neighboring countries, producing conflicts between the major Arab states and Iran as well as Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government. These wars then destabilize the entire region well beyond the current conflict zone, involving heavyweights like Egypt.

This is scary stuff indeed, but with the exception of the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds, the scenario is far from an accurate reflection of the way Middle Eastern leaders view the situation in Iraq and calculate their interests there.

It is abundantly clear that major outside powers like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey are heavily involved in Iraq. These countries have so much at stake in the future of Iraq that it is natural they would seek to influence political developments in the country.

Yet, the Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, and others are very unlikely to go to war either to protect their own sect or ethnic group or to prevent one country from gaining the upper hand in Iraq.

The reasons are fairly straightforward. First, Middle Eastern leaders, like politicians everywhere, are primarily interested in one thing: self-preservation. Committing forces to Iraq is an inherently risky proposition, which, if the conflict went badly, could threaten domestic political stability. Moreover, most Arab armies are geared toward regime protection rather than projecting power and thus have little capability for sending troops to Iraq.

Second, there is cause for concern about the so-called blowback scenario in which jihadis returning from Iraq destabilize their home countries, plunging the region into conflict.

Middle Eastern leaders are preparing for this possibility. Unlike in the 1990s, when Arab fighters in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union returned to Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and became a source of instability, Arab security services are being vigilant about who is coming in and going from their countries.

In the last month, the Saudi government has arrested approximately 200 people suspected of ties with militants. Riyadh is also building a 700 kilometer wall along part of its frontier with Iraq in order to keep militants out of the kingdom.

Finally, there is no precedent for Arab leaders to commit forces to conflicts in which they are not directly involved. The Iraqis and the Saudis did send small contingents to fight the Israelis in 1948 and 1967, but they were either ineffective or never made it. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arab countries other than Syria, which had a compelling interest in establishing its hegemony over Lebanon, never committed forces either to protect the Lebanese from the Israelis or from other Lebanese. The civil war in Lebanon was regarded as someone else's fight.

Indeed, this is the way many leaders view the current situation in Iraq. To Cairo, Amman and Riyadh, the situation in Iraq is worrisome, but in the end it is an Iraqi and American fight.

As far as Iranian mullahs are concerned, they have long preferred to press their interests through proxies as opposed to direct engagement. At a time when Tehran has access and influence over powerful Shiite militias, a massive cross-border incursion is both unlikely and unnecessary.

So Iraqis will remain locked in a sectarian and ethnic struggle that outside powers may abet, but will remain within the borders of Iraq.

The Middle East is a region both prone and accustomed to civil wars. But given its experience with ambiguous conflicts, the region has also developed an intuitive ability to contain its civil strife and prevent local conflicts from enveloping the entire Middle East.

Iraq's civil war is the latest tragedy of this hapless region, but still a tragedy whose consequences are likely to be less severe than both supporters and opponents of Bush's war profess.

Steven A. Cook and Ray Takeyh are fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations. Suzanne Maloney is a senior fellow at Saban Center, Brookings Institution.

Iraq: Latest U.S. Charges On Iran Raise Tensions

By Sumedha Senanayake

July 4, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The U.S. military announced on July 2 that it had arrested a senior Hizbollah operative in the southern city of Al-Basrah on March 20 and that he had admitted to working with the Quds Force, a secret military wing linked to Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).

The operative, Ali Musa Duqduq, also reportedly indicated that he had assisted in planning and carrying out an attack on a military base in Karbala on January 20 that killed five U.S. soldiers.

U.S. Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner said Duqduq was the liaison between the Quds Force and a breakaway Shi'ite group that actually carried out the Karbala attack. This group was supposedly headed by Qays al-Khaz'ali, a former spokesman for radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Bergner noted that given the sophistication of the Karbala attack, where fighters dressed in U.S. security uniforms to bypass several checkpoints; the fighters "could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds Force." And by extension, singling out the Quds Force means that Bergner is strongly implying the Iranian leadership must have had prior knowledge to the operation.

In addition, Duquq reportedly acknowledged that the Quds Force and Hizbollah operated camps near Tehran to train Iraqi fighters that were later sent back to Iraq to carry out attacks. He apparently claimed that approximately 20 to 60 fighters were being trained at any given time.

A Long Litany Of Accusations

The charges are not the first time the United States has accused Iranian-linked agents of operating in Iraq. On January 11, U.S. forces arrested five Iranians in the northern city of Irbil, accusing them of having links to the Quds Force. Not only does Tehran deny these accusations, it denies the existence of the Quds Force.

However, the recent revelations paint the most detailed picture publicly released of Iran's alleged indirect military involvement in Iraq.

Duqduq's reported confession would seem to support the notion that the Iraq conflict is being turned into a proxy war between Shi'ite-dominated Iran and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, with U.S. forces caught in the middle.
If enough Sunnis lose faith in the political process and accept the notion that change can only be brought about at gunpoint, then all hope for national reconciliation will vanish.


U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker expressed concerns about alleged Quds Force involvement in Iraq during a May 28 press conference in Baghdad, after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Hasan Kazemi.

"I laid out before the Iranians a number of our direct specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq, their support for militias that are fighting both the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces," Crocker said. "The fact that a lot of the explosives and ammunition that are used by these groups are coming in from Iran, that such activities led by the IRGC Quds Force needed to cease, and that we would be looking for results."

Pitting Iran Against Saudi Arabia

At the same time, there has been much speculation in the regional and international press concerning the issue of alleged Saudi support for Sunni fighters in Iraq, which Riyadh purportedly sees as a counterweight to Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias. Indeed, a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq would be direct threat to Saudi Arabia, influencing the kingdom's sizable and long-repressed Shi'ite minority.

On November 29, 2006, the then-director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, Nawaf Obaid, published an opinion piece in "The Washington Post" suggesting that if the United States withdrew its troops from Iraq, Saudi Arabia would arm Sunni Arabs to counter Iran's alleged support of Shi'ite militias in Iraq. Obaid was subsequently fired for his comments.

Two weeks later, on December 13, 2006, "The New York Times" reported that Saudi Arabia would intervene on behalf of Iraq's Sunni Arabs if the United States prematurely pulls out of Iraq. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz allegedly made the suggestion to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney when the latter was in Riyadh on November 25.
The Sunni-Shi'a Divide In The Middle East: Click to enlarge the image.


An escalation by Iran and Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to a broader regional conflict that could destabilize the Persian Gulf region. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group underscored this danger when it warned that regional states "may take active steps to limit Iran's influence, steps that could lead to an intraregional conflict."

The Sunni-Shi'a Divide

The new accusations that the Quds Force has been training Shi'ite militias will not come as a surprise to Iraq's Sunni Arab community. One of the major grievances Sunni leaders have repeatedly expressed about the post-Hussein Iraqi government is its clear tilt toward Shi'ite Iran. A tilt, Sunnis claim, that has pushed the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad to further marginalize Iraq's Sunni population.

Indeed, the aim of the so-called Iraqi armed resistance -- the nationalist movement that is dominated by Sunnis and ex-Ba'athists -- is not only to end the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq, but also to counter what they see as Iran's dangerous influence in Iraq. The resistance and many Sunni leaders, claim that Iran arms Shi'ite militias with the purpose of killing Sunni Arabs, and the Iraqi government does little more than turn the other way. They point to the government's inability or unwillingness to disarm al-Sadr's militia, the Imam Al-Mahdi Army.
An escalation by Iran and Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to a broader regional conflict that could destabilize the Persian Gulf region.


Although the frequency of sectarian killings attributed to Shi'ite militia elements dramatically dropped during the first two months of the U.S. troop "surge" that began in February, bodies, bound and sometimes headless, have recently begun to appear more frequently in and around Baghdad, a sign that the sectarian killings have resumed.

Moreover, Sunnis see themselves as being besieged by rabid anti-Sunni sentiment from the Shi'ite-led government. Legislation to repeal the de-Ba'athification process and allow thousands of ex-Ba'athists to return to their government positions has been met with strident opposition from Shi'ite leaders. The review committee responsible for proposing constitutional amendments has yet to announce its recommendations.

Radicalizing The Sunnis

Last week, an arrest warrant was issued against Sunni lawmaker and Iraqi Culture Minister As'ad al-Hashimi, prompting the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni political bloc in parliament, to withdraw its six members from the Iraqi cabinet.

Iraqi Culture Minister As'ad al-Hashimi (epa file photo)Duqduq's revelations may further radicalize some elements of the Sunni community toward armed resistance. Sunni lawmaker Abd al-Nasir al-Janabi, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, told Al-Jazeera satellite television on June 30 that he had resigned from parliament and quit the Iraqi Accordance Front because he felt that the political process had "become a tool of destruction in the hands of the U.S. and Iranian occupation in Iraq." Consequently, al-Janabi decided to join the armed resistance because it was the only option afforded him and "the only way to rescue Iraq from the crisis it is facing."

Although Al-Janabi's position is extreme, it is could be telling. If enough Sunnis lose faith in the political process and accept the notion that change can only be brought about at gunpoint, then all hope for national reconciliation will vanish.

The United States will then have to deal with an even a more fervent Sunni armed resistance, re-energized Shi'ite militias, and the threat from Al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters. The ensuing scenario could push the U.S. military deeper into the Iraq predicament and eventually lead to the disintegration of the nation.

Iran: Expert Discusses Iran's Quds Force And U.S. Charges Concerning Iraq (RFE/RL)

February 16, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates has described as based on "hard fact" U.S. assertions that an elite branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is training and arming Shi'ite extremists in neighboring Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush recently accused Iran's Quds Force of supplying weapons, including armor-piercing bombs, that were used to kill U.S. soldiers. RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari talks about the Quds Force and its alleged role in Iraq with Mahan Abedin, director of research at the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism and editor of "Islamism Digest" journal.

RFE/RL: We hear a lot about Sepah Quds, or the Quds Force, these days. We know that it's an elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) that operates outside Iran. But apart from that, there is very little reliable information about it. What information do you have?

Mahan Abedin: There's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation about this specialized unit -- the Sepah Quds, or the Quds corps. As far as I know, the corps was formed in the early 1980s, at around the same time that the Sepah Badr [the Badr Corps, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI] was created. Now there is a chain of specialized departments in the IRGC that were formed around that time, and these kind of specialized units dealt with promoting the Islamic republic's foreign policy. The Badr Corps, for instance, was created to organize Iraqi exiles in Iran; and its founder was a chap called Esmail Daghayeghi, a member of [the IRGC], an exceptionally talented young man. I suspect the Quds corps has pretty much the same history as the Badr Corps.

RFE/RL: What is its main function and in what countries has it been operating in the past two decades?

Abedin: Its essential function is to conduct special operations outside of Iran, and historically -- over the past 25 years or so -- it's been involved in the following theaters: involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s; it had extensive involvement in Lebanon; extensive involvement in Iraq throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, when they were working with Iraqi dissident groups and the Kurdish faction in the north to undermine Saddam [Hussein's] regime. [The Quds Force] was extensively involved in Bosnia in the early 1990s; it was in charge of supplying arms to the Bosnian Muslims. Their operations -- which have rarely received any coverage -- [included] their involvement in southern Sudan in the early 1990s, when they worked with the Sudanese army. So it's been involved in various theaters."

RFE/RL: What role does the Quds Force play in Iraq, and how does it operate?

Abedin: What they do essentially is work with militias and armed factions in Iraq, and they enable them to gain a critical advantage over their adversaries -- and their adversaries are, first and foremost, the Sunni factions.

RFE/RL: Does that mean they provide them with training?

Abedin: It depends on what you mean by "training." They would certainly give them highly specialized training in forming networks whose primary function is to gather and manipulate intelligence, and that's the primary battle in Iraq. Whoever is getting the best information and is able to exploit that information in the quickest time, they have a strategic advantage over others because the theater is so fluid and so complex. And that's the kind of training they do. If you talk about arms training, that is not necessarily the case, because a lot of these [fighters] already have that training.

RFE/RL: U.S. officials say the Quds Force has provided militias in Iraq with sophisticated weapons that have been responsible for the deaths of at least 170 U.S. soldiers. How solid is the U.S. evidence, in your view?

Abedin: Well, first and foremost: If the Americans are really convinced that the Iranians had killed 170 of their troops, they wouldn't be sitting pretty in Baghdad -- their response would have been much more robust. So that's an indication that these allegations are essentially political. If they have evidence, they've certainly not made it public. You could make the case that the Quds Force is giving people training in how to form these networks, how to manage them, how to manage their distribution operations, and how to manage the flow of information. You can make a case for that, but I strongly doubt that the Americans would have that kind of information. This is not the kind of information that you can access easily.

RFE/RL: Is it possible that the Quds Force is involved directly in attacks against U.S. forces and coalition troops?

Abedin: Not at all, because that's not Iranian policy. The contention which the Americans have made -- now they've backtracked from it -- is rather quite silly, because now what they are saying is that maybe the Quds Force is doing it without the official sanction of the Iranian government. The Quds Force, although it's a highly specialized department, it is subject to strict, iron-clad military discipline. It's completely controlled by the military hierarchy of the IRGC, and the IRGC is very tightly controlled by the highest levels of the administration in Iran. If the Quds Force was going around blowing up American soldiers, then that would be definitely sanctioned by the highest levels of the Iranian government. But my point is that they're not doing that, because Iranian policy in Iraq is not about that. Iranian policy in Iraq is to give proper training and support to Iran's natural allies in Iraq in order to influence their political positioning in post-occupation Iraq. The Iranians are far too smart, in my view, to challenge American power in Iraq directly.

RFE/RL: How large is the Quds Force?

Abedin: Not very large at all. I think its core doesn't go beyond 800 people. These kind of specialized departments tend to be very small. But it's a very capable force -- their people are extremely talented [and] they tend to be the best people in the IRGC.

RFE/RL: There were reports that the five Iranians who were detained in Irbil in January by U.S. forces are members of the Quds Force.

Abedin: That's quite possible. But every embassy in Baghdad, every consulate in Iraq -- whether it's American, British, [or] Hungarian -- they are all staffed by intelligence officers; so Iran is not unique in that sense.

Saudi Prince Rules Out Vote to Pick Parliament

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A senior Saudi royal ruled out direct elections to Saudi Arabia's unelected parliament in published comments, days after King Abdullah appeared to hold open the possibility.

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy closely allied with the United States, held elections for half the members of its municipal councils in 2005, and reformers now hope for elections to the Majlis al-Shura, or Consultative Council, to follow other Persian Gulf nations.

"When I go to the Shura assembly, I meet members who are of the finest caliber in the country, and that's what's important -- the people and quality. It's not important how they got there, it's important how they are," Interior Minister Prince Nayef said.

The interior minister also told members of the Shura council that the kingdom was holding more than 3,000 suspected militants, many linked to a campaign by al-Qaeda launched in 2003 to overthrow the pro-Western royal family.

Saudi Arabia has said that since 2006 it has foiled at least two major plots against major oil facilities in the kingdom, the world's largest oil exporter. Nayef told the Consultative Council on Sunday that preparations were being made to establish a force of 35,000 men to protect oil and industrial installations.