Tougher Stance on Pakistan Took Months

By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick Updated: 08/05/2007
Last September, when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf visited the White House to tout a controversial plan for driving al-Qaeda from his country, President Bush responded at a joint news conference with a trademark profession of faith. When Musharraf "looks me in the eye" and says there "won't be a Taliban and there won't be an al-Qaeda, I believe him," Bush said.
Ten months later, the administration's top terrorism official gave reporters a starkly different view of that plan, declaring that al-Qaeda had established a safe haven inside the very country that Bush had hailed as a "strong partner" in the war on terrorism. Musharraf's anti-terrorism plan "hasn't worked for Pakistan. It hasn't worked for the United States," Frances Fragos Townsend, White House homeland security adviser, said in late July.
The change in the administration's public tone came after months of internal U.S. discussion and quiet diplomacy to pressure a key ally into taking direct action against what analysts say was a newly assertive al-Qaeda rebuilding a stronghold to plan attacks against Western targets -- a disconcerting replay of the period before Sept. 11, 2001.
As classified reports throughout the past year showed al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters opening new training camps and moving operatives and money across the Afghan border, the White House dispatched a stream of high-powered officials to Islamabad to pressure a reluctant Musharraf into changing course.
When the diplomatic campaign finally failed, the administration took a more dramatic step. After years of professing uncertainty about the whereabouts of al-Qaeda's commanders, it publicly declared in excerpts of a new National Intelligence Estimate what analysts had long believed: The terrorist group had ensconced itself in a remote mountain enclave ostensibly under Pakistani control. In late spring, drafts of that document were deliberately altered to reveal this conclusion, a move that "changed the complexion" of the nearly finished report, a senior intelligence official familiar with the revisions said.
The July 17 U.S. claim sparked outrage in Islamabad but helped yield the result that U.S. officials sought. Musharraf abandoned his truce with tribal leaders and on July 19 formally launched a military offensive aimed at breaking the terrorists' grip on the frontier provinces.
The events leading to the public confrontation with Pakistan -- including the alarming evidence of al-Qaeda and Taliban retrenchment in northern Pakistan -- were described in new detail by more than a half-dozen senior administration and intelligence officials. None would talk about the subject on the record, citing the sensitivity of the bilateral relationship and the political fallout from the intelligence assessment.
Pakistani officials say the change in tactics had nothing to do with U.S. pressure, and they insist that Musharraf's plan for using tribal militias to drive out al-Qaeda remains viable. "We are as committed to defeating terrorism as the United States is, because the threat to us is far greater," Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, said in an interview.
But U.S. officials say Musharraf's new offensive is already having a more tangible impact than months of diplomacy and subtle pressure on tribal chieftains and mullahs in remote villages. After a spike in terrorists' cross-border raids into Afghanistan over the past year -- including a doubling of the number of attacks in June compared with the previous year -- violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border leveled off last month.
Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of U.S. conventional forces in Afghanistan, recently linked that progress to the start of the Pakistani offensive. Speaking to reporters in Kabul, Rodriguez also said that U.S. and Pakistani forces were doing a better job of sharing intelligence and coordinating their response to Taliban attacks, adding that the United States saw no need to deploy its forces on the Pakistani side of the border.
"They're a sovereign country," he said, "and they're doing a military operation now to provide better security there."
The stream of high-powered visitors who flew from Washington to Islamabad early this year bore no good news for Musharraf. Starting with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Feb. 12, and followed closely by Vice President Cheney and others, the Americans showed Musharraf sensitive intelligence revealing a substantial increase in al-Qaeda activity in the country's west.
Cheney and the other visitors warned Musharraf that his deal with the region's largely autonomous tribal chiefs months earlier had broken down. Under the agreement, Musharraf promised economic and military aid to the tribes and pledged to pull back Pakistani troops if local leaders kept al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters out.
The Bush administration was initially optimistic about the accord, endorsing in particular the idea of empowering local forces to fight terrorists. But by early this year, U.S. analysts had collected a mountain of evidence showing that the initiative had backfired.
Intelligence gleaned from captured Taliban fighters, communications intercepts and overhead surveillance showed that the terrorists had exploited the vacuum created by departing Pakistani troops. Using a combination of bribes and intimidation, foreign fighters had secured the protection of tribal leaders and had begun boldly rebuilding a network largely dismantled during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Taliban militants had renewed the smuggling of weapons and explosives for attacks inside Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda members were traveling to and from the region by air, using Pakistani airports, and over land through Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran, reports showed.
Al-Qaeda's expanding infrastructure in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas was concentrated in a region known as North Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan. But the groups were more mobile and their training camps smaller than in the period before 2001. "These people adapt to the measures that the Pakistanis and we have pushed against them: how they congregate, how they train, how they move money," one official said.
The U.S. analysts also concluded that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had successfully replaced upper-level officials and lieutenants that U.S. and allied forces had captured or killed over the years. Many were fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s who had returned to bin Laden's side. They included Uzbeks and other Central Asians, as well as Arabs.
Al-Qaeda's bench strength, the analysts realized, was not deep, but it was very wide. Its new lieutenants were assigned regional responsibilities across the world and were charged with planning operations, often a year to a year and a half in advance. They were "recruiting like mad, and training," one intelligence official said.
The intelligence was an eye-opener for Musharraf, though he already sensed the deal was in trouble, said officials familiar with the meetings. But Musharraf did not promise a swift response. The Pakistani president said he was "evaluating the deal" and "making adjustments," but cautiously: There were tribal and ethnic sensitivities to consider, and the risk of further army deaths, beyond the hundreds killed in the tribal areas in recent years.
Musharraf also had a complaint of his own: His leverage over the tribal militants had slipped because of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Foreign fear of the might of the U.S. military, felt throughout the Muslim world immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was dissipating as U.S. troops became increasingly bogged down in Iraq. Now, he said, tribal leaders who had once cooperated with Musharraf because of his alliance with the Americans saw little reason to be afraid.
Neither U.S. nor Pakistani officials raised their voices. "They were very respectful," one U.S. official said. "It was just: 'Here's the information. Let's talk and see how we can move forward.' "
But internally, the Bush administration was unsure how much pressure to apply and, indeed, how useful an ally Musharraf had turned out to be.
On one side were U.S. diplomats and policymakers, particularly at the White House, who said Musharraf's commitment to the fight is genuine. While his democratic credentials are less than ideal -- the career army general came to power in a military coup -- he increased civil freedoms and brought economic reforms that allowed Pakistan's middle and professional classes to flourish, his U.S. supporters argued. Without the general, they worried, the crucial U.S.-Pakistan partnership could collapse.
"To say we've been supporting Musharraf is simplistic," said Xenia Dormandy, who recently left a position as the National Security Council's director for South Asia. "Musharraf has spent six years walking a fine line between a rock and a hard place. Could we push him more? You won't know the answer until you've pushed him too hard and he collapses."
On the other side were intelligence and military officials increasingly frustrated by what they viewed as Pakistan's half-hearted effort in the fight against terrorism. They preferred using a hammer instead of kid gloves in Islamabad, arguing that Musharraf -- with a diverse and fractured opposition -- was politically strong enough to weather the fallout from taking a more aggressive stance.
The difference of views was mostly about tactics, since U.S. diplomats and intelligence specialists both worried that the next Pakistani leader will be less cooperative. "He's not perfect," one defense official said. "But we have to get away from the view that other countries need to see the world exactly as we do."
Musharraf's turnaround in the end was pushed along by his own worries that conservative Muslims posed a new domestic threat, U.S. intelligence specialists said. A spate of terrorist bombings around the country coincided with the occupation by student militants of the Red Mosque in the capital, and Musharraf -- partly to shore up his support within the army -- decided to crack down.
In the tribal areas, Musharraf deployed two additional brigades, bringing the number of troops in the region to 100,000. In preparation for entering tribal villages, the troops have reoccupied abandoned checkpoints and dug trenches, an administration official said. In just more than one week of conflict, more than 200 Pakistani troops have been killed, U.S. officials said.
Pakistan continues to assert that the tribal agreement was the correct approach, however, and its leaders still hope to salvage portions of the pact.
As a long-term strategy, it remains important to try to win over the people of the tribal areas, and for that "you need a number of carrots as well as sticks," said Durrani, the ambassador.
Durrani said Pakistani intelligence officials are not convinced that al-Qaeda's Pakistan operations are as elaborate as U.S. experts believe. "We say there are no safe havens," he said. "Maybe there are al-Qaeda people hiding in caves or running for their lives, but they aren't operating in the open because they can't."
Durrani contends that whatever al-Qaeda elements do exist in Pakistan will soon be driven out or rendered ineffective.
U.S. officials who have tracked terrorists' movements in Pakistan say they are closely monitoring the fresh deployments of Pakistani troops to see what impact they will have. "The presence of new divisions has made the locals nervous, so the level of activity is down," one U.S. defense official said. "But unless the Pakistanis remain active, this may just be a lull."
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

House Passes Bill to Change Spy Program

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 04, 2007
Filed at 10:27 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.
The 227-183 vote, which followed the Senate's approval Friday, sends the bill to Bush for his signature. He had urged Congress to approve it, saying Saturday, ''Protecting America is our most solemn obligation.''
The administration said the measure is needed to speed the National Security Agency's ability to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other communications involving foreign nationals ''reasonably believed to be outside the United States.'' Civil liberties groups and many Democrats said it goes too far, possibly enabling the government to wiretap U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties without adequate oversight from courts or Congress.
The bill updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. It gives the government leeway to intercept, without warrants, communications between foreigners that are routed through equipment in United States, provided that ''foreign intelligence information'' is at stake. Bush describes the effort as an anti-terrorist program, but the bill is not limited to terror suspects and could have wider applications, some lawmakers said.
The government long has had substantial powers to intercept purely foreign communications that don't touch U.S. soil.
If a U.S. resident becomes the chief target of surveillance, the government would have to obtain a warrant from the special FISA court.
Congressional Democrats won a few concessions in negotiations earlier in the week. New wiretaps must be approved by the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, not just the attorney general. Congress has battled with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on several issues, and some Democrats have accused him of perjury.
The new law also will expire in six months unless Congress renews it. The administration wanted the changes to be permanent.
Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush's veto threats and the impending August recess.
''This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances,'' said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during the debate preceding the vote. ''I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment,'' which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Republicans disputed her description. ''It does nothing to tear up the Constitution,'' said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif.
If an American's communications are swept up in surveillance of a foreigner, he said, ''we go through a process called minimization'' and get rid of the records unless there is reason to suspect the American is a threat.
The administration began pressing for changes to the law after a recent ruling by the FISA court. That decision barred the government from eavesdropping without warrants on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through U.S. communications carriers, including Internet sites.
----
The bill is S. 1927.

False report of rescue operation aired

8/1/2007 11:05 PMNEW YORK (AP) -- An erroneous report Wednesday that an operation was underway to rescue the South Korean hostages in Afghanistan played widely in the media, raising questions about whether reporting such maneuvers in real time might put the operation itself at risk.
The Taliban has held a group of 21 church-group volunteers hostage for two weeks, seeking the release of prisoners, including some held by the United States. A deadline set by the Taliban passed on Wednesday with no word of the hostages' fate.
The Reuters news service issued a three-paragraph report at 7:42 a.m. ET Wednesday that an operation aimed at rescuing the hostages was underway. A full-length story moved at 7:51 a.m. Both stories quoted Khowja Seddiqi, a district chief in the area, as the source.
At 9:31 a.m., Reuters sent notice that the story had been withdrawn, saying that "the official quoted in the story did not make the comment reported."
"The error occurred because of a miscommunication between correspondents," Reuters spokesman Ty Trippet said. "When it became clear that this was not the case, we immediately issued a worldwide advisory withdrawing the original story and making clear that it was wrong."
The Associated Press could get no confirmation of the original Reuters report, spokesman Paul Colford said. The news agency ran a story later in the morning saying that the Afghan military denied media reports claiming that a rescue attempt had been launched.
One potential source of confusion was that the Afghan military had dropped leaflets in the area warning residents of an upcoming military mission. The military said action was weeks away and unconnected to the hostage crisis.
The confusion over the leaflets had nothing to do with Reuters' original report, Trippet said.
CNN's Kiran Chetry, at 8:29 a.m., said that Reuters had reported that a rescue operation had started. Fox News Channel's Steve Doocy said there were "some wire reports today that the army over there is dropping leaflets on towns saying, you know, you better get out because we are about to launch an operation to try to liberate these people."
ABC News ran the Reuters report on its website, although spokesman Cathie Levine said the network had incorrectly, it turned out confirmed the report. It was couched on "Good Morning America," where it was reported that a rescue operation "may be getting underway."
A report on BBC News was led: "Fighting has erupted in the area where a group of South Korean hostages are being held by the Taliban, suggesting an operation has begun to free them."
Both South Korea and the United States have ruled out military operations to rescue the hostages, South Korea's foreign minister said after meeting with a U.S. diplomat on Thursday.
The idea of reporting on such a mission before the results are known can pit competing interests against each other: the compelling need of news organizations to report the news as it knows it versus the knowledge that the news may put some people in danger.
In this case, the AP "might have waited to report (news of a rescue operation) until there was some indication that our reporting wasn't going to cause additional danger," said John Daniszewski, the news organization's international editor. "The general policy is we would not want to inject ourselves into the story and cause danger to people."
He compared it to reporters invited along on a police raid. They wouldn't call the targets of the raid for comment ahead of time, he said.
"You don't want to be part of the story," he said. "You want to be a witness to it."
Levine said ABC News also takes such things into account. "In this case, the story had already been on a wire service and had been reported worldwide," she said.
Reuters declined to address the issue, other than to note that its original report had been sourced to an Afghan official.
(This version corrects time of second report to 7:51 a.m., not p.m.)

Dozens killed, injured in renewed Pakistan violence

A suicide bombing and an attack by militants boost the toll to more than 250 deaths since government forces stormed a radical mosque last month.
By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

11:51 AM PDT, August 4, 2007

New violence flared today in Pakistan's rugged border region, where a suicide bombing and an attack by militants on an army checkpoint left at least 23 people dead and dozens injured.

More than 250 people have been killed in a wave of bombings and other attacks that began after government forces stormed a radical mosque last month in the capital, Islamabad.

Insurgent groups, many of which have their bases in the tribal belt straddling the Afghan border, have vowed to exact vengeance for the mosque assault, which left more than 100 people dead.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is under heavy pressure from the Bush administration to rein in the militants. But in his politically weakened state, some observers have questioned his commitment to an all-out battle in the frontier region.

The suicide attacker, driving a car packed with explosives, struck near a busy bus station in the town of Parachinar in the North-West Frontier province, which borders Afghanistan. The bomber apparently tried to ram into a bus packed with passengers but hit a vehicle next to it instead.

At least nine people were killed and more than 40 hurt in the blast, local officials said. Some of the most seriously injured were taken to the provincial capital, Peshawar, for treatment.

In the semiautonomous tribal region of North Waziristan, where a pact between militants and the government broke down last month, insurgents attacked a security checkpoint before dawn, setting off a firefight that lasted hours and left four soldiers and 10 militants dead.

Such attacks have become more brazen in recent weeks, and insurgents are using more and more sophisticated weaponry, military officials said.

Also today a senior opposition leader was released from prison, a day after the Supreme Court ordered that bail be granted while his case was reviewed.

Javed Hashmi, who had spent four years behind bars on charges of inciting mutiny, emerged to the cheers of supporters in the city of Lahore.

Before being sentenced to a 23-year jail term, Hashmi was a vociferous critic of Musharraf, who seized power in a coup eight years ago. Confrontation has been brewing for months between the general and an emboldened pro-democracy movement that has demanded that he relinquish his military role or step aside.

Hashmi, a member of the party of exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said he would immediately join forces with those seeking to oust Musharraf.

"There will be no compromise with dictators," he told reporters outside the jail. "I will only consider myself a free man when the entire nation will get freedom from these generals."

laura.king@latimes.com

British Make Initial Gains Against Taliban

By CARLOTTA GALL

SANGIN, Afghanistan — The British Army compound here in a drug lord’s former villa, with its sandbagged windows and lookout posts and shrapnel-scarred walls, is a reminder that until just a few weeks ago Sangin was one of the most dangerous towns in Afghanistan’s most dangerous province, Helmand.

Since their arrival last spring in this lawless region of mountains and desert, British troops have lost 64 men in almost daily combat against a Taliban force second to none in size and ferocity in the country. The insurgents still control half the province, the most serious threat to Afghanistan’s stability.

Yet despite the presence of thousands of Taliban fighters, and some tough fighting still ahead, British military commanders here say they believe they have turned a significant corner. In recent months they have succeeded in pushing the Taliban back and keeping them out of a few strategic areas.

At the same time, they say, popular support for the insurgents is eroding.

“We see it now as a threat that can be countered,” Maj. Hamish Bell, second in command of the British battalion deployed in northern Helmand, said of the insurgency.

The progress in Helmand is perhaps the most important anywhere in the country, military commanders say, given that the province has the largest concentration of insurgents and produces 42 percent of Afghanistan’s opium crop, which has helped fuel the insurgency. If they can get Helmand right, they say, it could pave the way to broader progress against the Taliban.

But while Helmand shows what is possible in Afghanistan, commanders warn that a long, hard fight remains to win back territory from the Taliban, region by region, village by village, and success is not assured. Nearly six years into the war, a third of Afghanistan’s provinces are in the grip of insurgents, a level far worse than it was from 2002 to 2005, the years immediately after the American-led invasion, when the Taliban were toppled and forced to retreat across the border into Pakistan.

Provinces like Helmand, remote from the capital and relatively calm, were only secured by a light American military presence, leaving them wide open when the Taliban chose to return.

In the other southern provinces, Kandahar and Oruzgan, the Taliban presence remains strong. Fighting the Taliban is like pressing mercury or squeezing a balloon, commanders say: as insurgents are suppressed in one area, they emerge in another.

And once pushed back in conventional fighting, the Taliban switch tactics to suicide attacks, roadside bombs and kidnappings. In one measure of the lingering dangers even here, in early July the 14-year-old son of Sangin’s police chief was kidnapped on a road outside town and killed.

But military commanders say the progress in Helmand is an indication that NATO forces have found their stride since last year, when the Taliban staged a spectacular resurgence, taking advantage of the transfer of southern provinces from American commanders to an expanding NATO force.

As NATO forces have become better established and more numerous in southern Afghanistan, American forces have been able to deploy more troops in the east. There, they are also reporting gains in some border areas. All of this has helped NATO forces take the offensive against the Taliban, rather than fighting from their back foot, as they were forced to do last year, and gain local confidence.

“I don’t think the Taliban will come back,” said Abdul Rahman, 45, a paramedic, the only qualified person working in a small private clinic here. “They have been weakened.” Also the people would not support the Taliban anymore, he said.

What has made the difference here, the British say, is a shift in their tactics and a doubling of force numbers, to nearly 6,000 today, with more troops on the way.

When the British paratroopers arrived in Helmand, President Hamid Karzai asked that they focus on preventing small district centers from falling to the Taliban, so grave was the insurgent threat. Surrounded and cut off, the British came under attack up to seven times a day. They used artillery fire to clear an area just for supply helicopters to land.

Over the winter they deployed mobile marine units to push the Taliban back from besieged district compounds and out of the town centers. In spring and summer, they staged sweeping operations, with help from American, Afghan and small Danish and Estonian units.

In May they pushed the Taliban out of the Sangin area. With three companies in the valley, they have since thwarted attempts by the insurgents to reinfiltrate.

“It’s not over but indications are that the uplift in forces and the more offensive mind-set has been successful,” said Maj. Dominic Biddick, 32, commander of Company A of the Royal Anglian Regiment, now based in Sangin. The British base, once virtually under siege, has not taken a single hit in a month, he said.

The British have now been able to focus on their original counterinsurgency plan, which was to create “inkblots,” or secure zones around the main towns, and gradually expand security outward. In this way they are starting reconstruction projects in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, the town of Gereshk on the main road, and now Sangin.

Strategically located, Sangin, a rich agricultural town on the banks of the Helmand River, commands access to the north, where most of the Taliban are concentrated, and to the hydroelectric dam at Kajaki, a major United States development project.

The Taliban threat remains even in these secure zones. But Lt. Col. Stuart Carver, who commands the Battle Group North, said, “There aren’t big groups of 50 Taliban roaming around town and taking over big parts of the town.”

The strong British and Afghan security presence in Sangin has for the first time encouraged local Afghans to come forward with information on Taliban movements.

This year, the Taliban have lost ground and men, including some high-level commanders, and are struggling to find recruits among the local population, Colonel Carver said.

NATO officials categorize the Taliban into two types of fighters. Tier one, as they are called, are hardened, ideologically driven men who have come back to fight from their rear base in Pakistan. Tier two fighters are local men who may join the war for a variety of reasons — economic, tribal or religious.

“The biggest change from last year to this year is there has been no tier two mobilization,” Colonel Carver said. “They have tried,” he said of the Taliban.

Still, military officers said, the Taliban never seem short of forces. They have filled out their ranks with foreign fighters, mainly Pakistanis, but also a handful of Arabs and Chechens, as well as Afghans from other provinces, like neighboring Oruzgan.

The military has found Pakistani identity cards on dead fighters, as well as papers and CDs with jihadi propaganda in Chechen and Arabic, one officer said. A large group of men from Pakistan’s tribal area of Waziristan were killed in one battle, Colonel Carver said.

But the weakening of the Taliban is apparent even to local people, like Hayatullah, 29, a farmer who fled northern Helmand last year and now lives near the main British camp, Bastian, in central Helmand.

“The Taliban are not stronger,” he said, “If they were strong, they would come down and fight the British here.”

Sangin, which was a ghost town three months ago, is struggling slowly back to life. Shops have reopened, while others lie in rubble, and the initial silent hostility toward the foreign troops is starting to thaw.

A few tribal elders have asked the military for help in clearing irrigation channels. Afghan, American and British military medics offered two days of free consultations in mid-July and were swamped by hundreds of people, including dozens of women and children. That was a step toward acceptance, Major Biddick said.

He and other commanders hope that momentum will build.

“I think the big battle was for local support,” Colonel Carver said. “A proportion of the locals now think we are actually going to stay, and therefore they are prepared to throw their cards in with us. Before, they thought we were going to come in, kill a few Taliban and then leave.”

“It has gone from people too scared to even look at you or wave in case someone was watching, now they will talk,” he added. “It’s a step forward that they will talk to you, and it’s a real step forward that they talk to you as if you can solve their problems.”

After a year and half of intense fighting, not all local people are persuaded, however. “We don’t expect good government, only bloodshed,” said Hajji Mullah Fida Muhammad, an elderly man with a white beard. He said he thought the Taliban were still strong enough to win the town again. Others expected them to try again.

“The Taliban is out there, so we expect more fighting,” said Hajji Mullah Salim, 55, a cloth merchant. He had returned to open his shop, but his family was still camping out in the desert for safety, he said.

There is still talk of a Taliban offensive, but NATO commanders are keeping the pressure on the insurgents, and say the danger now is the shift in Taliban tactics, toward roadside and suicide bombs. The guerrilla tactics are threatening enough and can erode local support, as the local police chief, Hajji Ghulam Wali, can attest.

It was his son who was pulled out of a taxi and kidnapped by insurgents on the road from Sangin to the provincial capital. The Taliban commander, Tor Jan, taunted Hajji Wali on the telephone, telling him to quit his job to save his son.

When he refused, they bound his son’s hands and feet with a chain and returned him dead, riddled with 20 bullets. Then, in mid-July, a bomb detonated in the pushcart of a boy as the police chief’s car passed the town bazaar, killing four people, including the boy.

“They committed a terrible crime,” Hajji Wali said of his son’s killing. “Islam does not permit such cruelty.”

Still, he said, the town was safer. The Taliban, he insisted, “have lost morale, they are weak now.”

“Before we could not go to the bazaar, but now they are hiding and cannot go to the bazaar,” he said.

He, like several Afghan officials interviewed in the province, urged the British to press their advantage and finish the Taliban while the insurgents are down.

Wary of the ease with which the Taliban can reinfiltrate areas, the British are moving with care. British commanders said the job now was now to consolidate control of Sangin and Gereshk, rather than pursue Taliban in their holdouts.

“We could deploy and clear the rest but the danger is if we clear the Taliban out we create a vacuum,” Major Biddick, the British commander in Sangin, said. The Afghan government also needs to catch up in deploying more army and police to fill the vacuum, he added.

“This is setting the conditions 12 months in, and Afghanistan will be measured in decades, not years,” the major said. “We realize it is just the tip of the iceberg.”

U.S. forces kill mosque bomber in Iraq

Sat Aug 4, 2007 4:13PM EDT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces said on Saturday they had killed the al Qaeda leader who masterminded the bombing that destroyed the twin minarets of the revered Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra in June.

An earlier bombing of the mosque in February 2006 triggered a wave of tit-for-tat sectarian violence between majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands.

The U.S. military said Haitham al-Badri, the al Qaeda leader in Salahuddin province, was killed by U.S. forces on August 2.

They said he was responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque on June 13 this year that destroyed its minarets and sparked a series of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques.

"During an operation August 2 east of Samarra, Coalition Forces killed ... Haitham al-Badri, the al-Qaeda in Iraq emir of Salahuddin province. He is also the terrorist mastermind responsible for the Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra on June 13," the U.S. military said in a statement.

The Iraqi government has previously blamed Badri for the mosque attack in February 2006.

They said he was in charge of an al Qaeda unit consisting of two Iraqis, four Saudis and a Tunisian.

That bombing was a turning point for Iraq, lifting the lid on simmering tensions between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs.

Afghanistan: Top U.S. Commander Optimistic On Developments In Eastern Region

By Ahto Lobjakas

August 4, 2007 -- A top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan says the country's armed forces are increasingly able to hold their own against insurgents in one of the country’s more troubled areas.

Speaking this week in a video-link news briefing from the Bagram airfield in Afghanistan, Brigadier General Joseph Votel, deputy commander of NATO's regional eastern command, praised the Afghan National Army's growing competence.

He also praised its ability to cooperate not only with NATO forces, but also with local authorities and its Pakistani counterpart across the border.

He told the briefing that the Pakistani military’s increased military presence in Pakistan’s restless tribal areas, which followed the siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad last month, may already be having an effect on the cross-border traffic of insurgents into Afghanistan.

"Over the last week compared to the week previous to that, border incidents -- activities along our forces [at the]border here at Regional Command East have really decreased by 50 per cent. Over time, if we look at about a month or so, there has been a slight rise, but as I mentioned, just recently over the last week we've seen a little bit of a decrease," Votel said.

"Whether that is caused by the Red Mosque incident [in Islamabad], the activities there, or the increase in Pakistani military activity in the Federally Administered Tribal Area, that could be one explanation for it."

Border Patrols

General Votel said that in a "normal week," his forces are involved in some 10-20 "incidents" along the 570-mile stretch of border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which they patrol. He said the length of the border and the extremely rugged terrain in the region mean no one really knows how many illicit incursions into Afghanistan go undetected.

General Votel said the mainly U.S. forces in the area are braced for further insurgent movements across the border as military operations on the Pakistani side of the border continue. He said his troops are in "near real-time" tactical contact with Pakistani units across the border.
"We rate their capabilities as becoming very, very good. They are definitely moving in the right direction."

Although the region is one of the most difficult, General Votel said the Afghan National Army (ANA) is doing very well.

He noted that its main shortcomings have to do with what are known as "enabling capabilities" -- the equipment and logistics needed to support a military operation -- rather than manpower or skills.

"We rate their capabilities as becoming very, very good. They are definitely moving in the right direction. We look at the Afghan company-size formations, we look at their battalions and we [see that] they are capable of conducting operations, [although] in most cases they are still dependent on ISAF forces to help them with some of their logistics, to help them with aerial movement, to help them with close air support in situations where it is needed and certainly to help them with [medical evacuation] capabilities," Votel said.

'Leadership Qualities'

General Votel also praised the ANA's "leadership qualities." He highlighted one particular recent operation in eastern Ghazni province, in which an Afghan corps commander was in overall command of a force consisting of both ANA and NATO units.

Although Afghan officers have previously led operations involving NATO units in other parts of the country, none is said to have matched the scope of that in eastern Ghazni.

General Votel said the ANA's standards are improving against the backdrop of a heightened threat presented by the insurgents. He said there exists an Al-Qaeda "influence" in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, which manifests itself in the presence of foreign fighters who lend local insurgents "confidence and expertise." Apart from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, numerous other groups are known to be active in the region, further complicating the situation there.

General Votel also noted the increased use of heavy weaponry by insurgents, citing increased attempts to target NATO aircraft from the ground with rockets. He said some of the weapons recovered from insurgents were manufactured in Iran, but added there is no evidence about whether the weapons signify the Taliban enjoy direct support from the Iranian government.

General Votel said that surveys conducted within NATO's eastern command region show the ANA is seen by the Afghan population as "one of the most respected institutions."

He said, however, that the country's police force lags behind the ANA by comparison.

"Certainly there is work left to be done with the police structure here. We think we've got a lot of good things in place to do that. It will take some time, the Afghan National Police are probably a year or more, probably a couple of years behind where the army is right now. We've got efforts to really focus on area, and make sure we give them the capabilities they need to be successful," Votel said.

General Votel did not answer a question about how long it will take for the Afghan army and police to be able to provide security in the country's east without a constant western presence. However, he did say he "grows more optimistic every day" of the possibility of such an eventuality.

General Votel said he believes that given the choice, Afghans will chose the vision of a stable and democratic Afghanistan over the "vision of the Taliban."

Senate Votes To Expand Warrantless Surveillance

White House Applauds; Changes Are Temporary

By Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A01

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.

At the White House, where officials had voiced concern about that requirement, a spokesman praised the Senate vote and called on House leaders to quickly follow suit. The legislation will "give our intelligence professionals the essential tools they need to protect our nation," spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Democratic leaders expressed disappointment about the result, but they pointed to language that would require lawmakers to reconsider the key provisions in six months.

"My Republican colleagues chose to rubber-stamp a flawed administration proposal that fails to provide the accountability needed in the light of the administration's past mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Sixteen Democrats and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined all 43 Republicans in supporting the measure, which is nearly identical to a proposal prepared by the Bush administration. "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us," Lieberman said during the Senate debate. "This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection."

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill's approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government's electronic surveillance. "If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening," he said.

Congressional Democrats and the White House clashed throughout the day not only over the scope of the changes in the law but also over whether the other side was bargaining in good faith. Democrats said they were convinced that their proposal met key the demands of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) quoted him as saying that the bill "significantly enhances America's security."

But Republicans cited a letter from McConnell yesterday afternoon calling the proposal unacceptable and warning that it would prevent him from protecting the country adequately from terrorist attacks. That assertion in turn prompted charges by Democrats that the White House had overruled McConnell in an effort to gain political advantage by painting their party as weak on terrorism.

"We did everything he wants," Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said of McConnell, "and now he says he doesn't like the bill. They didn't move the goal post; they moved the stadium." Pelosi herself accused the Republicans of not caring "about the truth."

White House officials disputed Democrats' account of the tentative deal, and Republicans said McConnell's objections were justified by the Democrats' decision to subject more surveillance to oversight by a special intelligence court than the administration wants.

Adding to the drama was Bush's pressure on lawmakers to stay in Washington until a new measure is passed. The president said he opposes Congress's adjournment for its summer recess this weekend unless it approves "a bill I can sign." Presidents have the power to call Congress into emergency session to consider matters of national importance, although the power is rarely used.

"We have worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution," Bush said at a news briefing after a meeting with counterterrorism officials at FBI headquarters yesterday morning. "But we are not going to put our national security at risk."

The administration and congressional Democrats agree on the need to update the FISA statute to reflect the realities of 21st-century telecommunications, including the ever-expanding digital world of e-mail, podcasts and text messages.

White House and intelligence officials have sought a broad overhaul of the act to allow spy agencies to listen in on terrorism suspects quickly, without having to apply for a court order, as is required for surveillance that targets U.S. residents. But Democratic leaders say the administration's proposals could lead to broad searches of phone calls and e-mails by ordinary Americans without judicial review.

"Given the experience of the last few years, we are reluctant to give blanket authority to any president, most especially this one," said a senior Senate aide familiar with negotiations on the surveillance bill.

White House officials complained that Democratic proposals do not give them a crucial tool: the ability to begin wiretapping without having to go to a court. "Every day we don't have [this wiretap authority], we don't know what's going on outside the country," a senior White House official said. "All you need is one communication from, say, Pakistan to Afghanistan that's routed through Seattle that tells you 'I'm about to do a truck bomb in New York City' or 'about to do a truck bomb in Iraq,' and it's too late."

The administration has been negotiating with Democrats for weeks over the issue, but talks intensified as Congress prepared to adjourn this week. Last year, the administration mounted a similar high-pressure campaign on the eve of a congressional recess, to revise legislation governing the interrogation and trial of detainees.

Adding to the urgency for the administration is a secret ruling by a FISA judge earlier this year that declared surveillance of purely foreign communications that pass through a U.S. communications node illegal without a court-approved warrant -- a requirement that intelligence officials have described as unacceptably burdensome.

Staff writers Josh White and Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.

Aided by U.S., militants widen reach

A Sunni group, partners in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, is becoming more ambitious. Some fear it can't be trusted.
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Times Staff Writer

August 4, 2007

BAGHDAD — The leader of the Revolutionaries of Amiriya sits in his headquarters in an abandoned high school here, explaining the militant group's latest mission: policing and rebuilding Sunni Muslim neighborhoods.

"We need to return the services to the neighborhoods. Al Qaeda destroyed streets, schools, electricity, even mobile phone towers," said the man known as Abu Abed, or Saif. "They made the people here desperate."

Since partnering with U.S. forces in May to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq in the walled, middle-class west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriya, the Sunni militant group has broadened its reach to overseeing city services. And it is pushing ambitious plans to police a few other Sunni neighborhoods, against the wishes of the Iraqi army and government, some Sunni leaders and U.S. soldiers, who say the militants can't be trusted.

U.S. military leaders, who have used the same tactic in Al Anbar province, say their goal is to turn the fighters into Iraqi police in areas where the Shiite-dominated security forces aren't trusted, or can't go.

Military commanders acknowledge that there's a risk that the Sunni fighters they're attempting to co-opt could betray them or fuel the country's civil war by turning their arms on Shiite militias such as Al Mahdi army and Badr Organization. But U.S. strategists are betting that giving the Sunni Arab groups a stake in a stable Iraq, and paying them a monthly salary, will quell violence and help U.S. forces repel Al Qaeda in Iraq, one of several high-profile Sunni Arab groups in the insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

"You make them dependent on you for a paycheck, you take their biometrics; you've got their names, you know where they go for work every day because they work for you," a U.S. diplomat said of the experiment.

"You have got commanders over them. This is a much safer place to be than having these guys out in the wilderness fighting you."

Analysts say the experiment is risky at best.

"They may be infiltrated by the unturned insurgents like Al Qaeda in Iraq and use knowledge gained about American forces and positions to abet attacks on our troops," said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Most of all, their loyalty to the central government is questionable at best, so you are creating even more warlords and militias in an already confused and volatile situation."

Already, U.S. commanders have begun reining in their new allies.

"You can watch your own neighborhoods, but you can't watch somebody else's neighborhood," U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said he has told tribal leaders in the Taji area north of the capital, where Sunni militias have been enlisted in policing roles.

Saif, the Amiriya Revolutionaries commander, is becoming a power broker of sorts between U.S. forces and Sunni groups eager to assume the same roles in Khadra, Shurta overpass, Haifa Street and Bakriya, and in more mixed neighborhoods such as Adhamiya, Bab al Muadam and Fadil.

"All I need and ask of the U.S. is protection for me and my fighters," he said. "We still apply the law."



'Going undercover'

Last month, the militants, clad in T-shirts and tracksuits and openly toting AK-47 assault rifles, greeted U.S. soldiers visiting the group's headquarters in the former high school.

Saif, 35, looked more like a police detective than a militant, in pressed slacks and a button-down plaid shirt, a gold Iraq pin on his lapel and a black pistol strapped to his right thigh.

Capt. Dustin Mitchell, 30, who serves as a liaison with the group, said he was impressed by their ability to find weapons stockpiles, roadside bombs and Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders.

"It's like going undercover in the police, in civilian clothing. And that's kind of something we can't do as white boys in the U.S. Army," Mitchell said. "It's just a goldmine of information that you ain't going to find anywhere else."

Saif, a former member of Saddam Hussein's military, said many in his group had been members of the 1920 Revolution Brigade and Islamic Army, groups that have fought U.S. forces, Al Qaeda in Iraq and Shiite militias.

Asked whether his men had fought U.S. troops, Saif, with soldiers looking on, smiled.

"If the door gets broken down and my family is inside, I'm going to defend myself, I'm going to defend my family," he said. "Then I discover he's my friend, that he came from a faraway country to give me freedom."

Saif claims to have killed 22 Al Qaeda in Iraq operatives during two months of working with U.S. forces.

"We are the sons of this neighborhood, of the streets," Saif said. Residents trust them "because they know what kind of morals we have."

Reviews are mixed from U.S. soldiers who have worked with the Revolutionaries of Amiriya.

Sgt. Joe Frye, 31, of Panama City, Panama, has watched them search homes, nimbly traversing streets laced with roadside bombs with a speed and stealth that can't be matched by armored U.S. convoys.

"We've accomplished more in the few weeks working with these guys than in the nine months we've been here," Frye said.

But Lt. Brendan Griswold, 24, says he's seen members of the group, who often patrol in black ski masks, confiscate cars with little cause, a common complaint among Amiriya residents. Other soldiers reported seeing the militants beat suspects with rifle butts during raids.

"I don't like going out with them. I don't trust them," Griswold said during a patrol in Amiriya. "They get a little bit out of control."



Plan is paying off

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl, a West Point graduate whose 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, has provided supplies, ammunition and other aid to the militants, said the partnership was paying off. U.S. and Iraqi casualties, explosions and shootings in Amiriya have dropped in the last three months, military records show, and U.S. and Iraqi troops have detained more suspects, defused more bombs and seized more weapons.

"Even with [the] surge, you can't put a soldier on every street corner," he said. "That's the value of what they do."

Kuehl is trying to persuade Iraqi army leaders to support the group, but those commanders remain critical of the fighters.

"We've been in government four years, and we're not giving weapons to anyone who comes," Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari said. "If we don't control those people, they will use their arms against us."

Kuehl acknowledges that as the Revolutionaries of Amiriya grows, the group may abandon plans to join the Iraqi police and become a Sunni counterpoint to the Shiite militias they have long fought.

"The challenge will be trying to keep it under control," Kuehl said of the group. "We do not want this to become another sectarian militia."

The U.S. military collects identifying information from the members, including fingerprints and retina scans, but the fighters are not screened or supervised.

"You don't know how far you can trust them a few months from now," said Sgt. David Alexander, 24, of Amarillo, Texas, stationed in a bombed-out bunker near the group's office. "They're with us now because we have a common goal. But what happens when we kill all the Al Qaeda guys? … If they want to go out and capture somebody for revenge, there's nobody to prevent them from doing that."

Saif seemed to confirm those fears, saying that even as his men become Iraqi police officers, they will continue to go after Shiite militias to avenge dead comrades, including his brothers.

"It is our nature as Iraqis," he said. "We have revenge issues."

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Rasheed and Saif Hameed, and a special correspondent in Baghdad contributed to this report.

In Iraq, a Perilous Alliance With Former Enemies

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A01

FORWARD OPERATING BASE ISKAN, Iraq -- Inside a brightly lit room, the walls adorned with memorials to 23 dead American soldiers, Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage stared at the three Sunni tribal leaders he wanted to recruit.

Their fighters had battled U.S. troops. Balcavage suspected they might have attacked some of his own men. The trio accused another sheik of having links to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. That sheik, four days earlier, had promised the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq and protect a strategic road.

"Who do you trust? Who do you not trust?" said Balcavage, commander of the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, his voice dipping out of earshot.

An hour later, he signed up some of America's newest allies.

U.S. commanders are offering large sums to enlist, at breakneck pace, their former enemies, handing them broad security powers in a risky effort to tame this fractious area south of Baghdad in Babil province and, literally, buy time for national reconciliation.

American generals insist they are not creating militias. In contracts with the U.S. military, the sheiks are referred to as "security contractors." Each of their "guards" will receive 70 percent of an Iraqi policeman's salary. U.S. commanders call them "concerned citizens," evoking suburban neighborhood watch groups.

But interviews with ground commanders and tribal leaders offer a window into how the United States is financing a new constellation of mostly Sunni armed groups with murky allegiances and shady pasts.

The two-week-old initiative, inspired by similar efforts underway in Baghdad, Anbar and Diyala provinces, has more than halved attacks here against American troops, from 19 a day to seven, U.S. commanders said. But in a land of sectarian fault lines and shifting tribal loyalties, the strategy raises concerns about the long-term implications of empowering groups that steadfastly oppose the Shiite-led government.

Shiite leaders fear that the United States is financing highly trained and well-armed militias that could undermine the government after American troops withdraw. Shiites worry such groups could weaken central authority and challenge democratic institutions that many would like to see take root.

U.S. generals said they vet the backgrounds of every recruit, but ground commanders here said that is all but an impossible task.

"Officially, we will not deal with those who have American blood on their hands," said Balcavage, 42. "But how do you know? You don't. There's a degree of risk involved. A lot of it is gut instinct. That's what I'm going on. They didn't teach me how to do this at West Point."
'It's Like Rent-a-Cop'

In this fertile region, divided by the Euphrates River and torn by violence, U.S. soldiers are overstretched and Iraqi troops are in short supply. Isolated Sunni tribal lands have provided extremists with havens that are off-limits to U.S. patrols and Iraq's mostly Shiite security forces.

"We've done nothing in this area, because we could not get in there," said Col. Michael Garrett, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, adding that the tribal strategy will "buy time and access."

The sheiks are promised reconstruction projects in their strongholds and jobs for their fighters in Iraq's security forces. In return, they pledge to patrol their lands, battle al-Qaeda in Iraq and dismantle roadside bombs, the main killer of U.S. soldiers.

The sheiks commit to securing oil pipelines and U.S. military supply routes, taking over some of the duties of Iraq's army and police. The fighters are provided with badges, yellow reflective belts and arrest powers.

"It's like rent-a-cop," said Maj. Rick Williams, a Tulsa native who is a liaison to tribal leaders in the region.

The goal is to mimic the successes unfolding in the Sunni heartland of Anbar, where U.S-backed sheiks have fought al-Qaeda in Iraq for months. There, insurgent attacks have dropped dramatically.

But in this patch of north Babil province, colored in green hues and crisscrossed with irrigation canals, marshes and fish farms, the tribal and sectarian landscape is more complex than in Anbar, which is homogenously Sunni. Babil's battle lines blur easily.

Hundreds of local Sunni tribesmen have aligned themselves with al-Qaeda in Iraq or other Sunni insurgent groups, such as the Islamic Army. Shiite tribes are weak because loyalties to clerics are stronger than allegiances to sheiks.
'They Took Everything'

Most of the new recruits hail from the Jenabi, the largest and most influential tribe. Under Saddam Hussein, the Jenabi were considered a "golden tribe," filling the ranks of his elite Republican Guard and army. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Jenabi, like so many other Sunni tribes, joined the insurgency.

Ahmed Rasheed Khadr, 38, was among them. He and his fighters fought U.S. forces with a vengeance, he said. But by 2005, Khadr was facing a new threat. Extremists linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq overran Howija, where his family owned 700 acres, and imposed strict interpretations of Islamic laws. And like Afghanistan's Taliban, they banned smoking, television, even cellphones with video cameras, Khadr said.

The Jenabi splintered. Some sided with the al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters out of fear. Others joined because they wanted to isolate themselves from the region's Shiites and their militias. Those who refused to align were targeted, often by their own tribesmen.

"The Jenabi tribe, the problem they're having is that the al-Qaeda is them," Balcavage said.

Galib Youssef Fahad, Khadr's cousin, can't forget Nov. 12, 2005.

"Al-Qaeda attacked our area of Howija. They slaughtered 15 of our men, some our sons, uncles and brothers," said Fahad, his eyes dull with sorrow. "After the massacre, they burned our houses and stole our cars. They took everything."

He and his tribesmen fled to Hay al-Askari, where they live today.

Sensing an opportunity, both Fahad and Khadr say they now want to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. After years of feeling disenfranchised, they seek legitimacy. They want their lands back and money that will strengthen their control over their tribe. They hope for political empowerment and a stronger position after an American withdrawal.

But the main reason they visited the U.S. military base last week was this: They had heard that another Jenabi leader, known as Sheik Sabah, was working with the Americans.
An Offer to the Sheiks

It was 5.20 p.m. one day last week. First Sgt. James McGann told Balcavage that some sheiks from Howija were at the gate of the base. They wanted to see him.

"Maybe they're al-Qaeda," Balcavage quipped. His face turned serious.

"Are they enemy?" he asked, recalling attacks on Americans in Howija. McGann shrugged.

A half-hour later, after the visitors had been frisked and relieved of their weapons, they were taken to the Bastogne Room, named for the town in Belgium where a previous generation of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment fought during World War II.

Outside the conference room are four photos, in elegant wooden frames, of comrades killed in this war. Nearby is a wall covered with photos of armaments, bombs and other reminders of the perils outside.

Balcavage stared around the room. Fahad, Khadr and a third Jenabi leader, Falah Khadr Muhammad, sat on one side along with three other tribesmen. Farther down the table was a thick-bearded American civilian and former Special Forces soldier.

And next to Balcavage: Fadhil Youssef, a former Sunni insurgent who had spent six months in a U.S. military detention center. He was Balcavage's conduit into the arcane world of Iraq's tribes. Balcavage said he trusted him.

Speaking through an interpreter, the commander made his offer to the sheiks. Each of their men would receive about $350 a month. That pay would create an incentive to join the Iraqi police, whose salary is roughly $500, when it was possible, he said. The military would also pay the sheiks $100 for every bomb plucked off the roadside.

They would need to sign an interim contract, and if they properly secured the area they would be paid in 30 days. The money, he said, would be paid to the sheiks, and they could divide it up any way they chose.

He urged them to stay united.

"If we are going to work with Jenabis, we're going to work with all the Jenabi tribes," Balcavage said.
'We Will Support You'

It was the sheiks' turn to speak.

They immediately accused Sheik Sabah of having links to al-Qaeda in Iraq and of playing a role in driving them off their lands.

"Sheik Sabah represents the leaders of al-Qaeda who did the killing," Fahad said.

Balcavage asked Fahad whether Sabah belonged to the Islamic Army, which is fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, or to al-Qaeda in Iraq itself.

"Al-Qaeda," Fahad replied. Sabah, he alleged, claimed to have switched allegiances to the Islamic Army as a way to make himself more attractive to the Americans.

Perplexed, Balcavage looked at Youssef. It had been less than two weeks, but two rival factions already had arisen within the "concerned citizens." Sabah had formed a group called the VIP Council. Youssef's was called the Iraq Rescue Council.

Later, Youssef told Balcavage that Sabah had been trying to force other sheiks to join his faction. "They take their guns and wave the American flag in the air," Youssef said. "No one can say no."

Meanwhile, Fahad was speaking with the former Special Forces soldier, known as JR. For security reasons, U.S. commanders here declined to provide JR's name or affiliation.

"We have a lot of men. We want to fight and chase al-Qaeda out of the area," Fahad said. "We are ready."

"They want to go home, and they want to control the area," JR said. "So with our help, you'll bring your people back into this area?"

Fahad and the other sheiks nodded. They told him they have about 90 fighters.

JR, asserting control, pored over a map of the area.

"It will be an honor to retake the lands al-Qaeda has taken from you, and we will support you," he said.

Balcavage asked Youssef to start preparing a contract for the sheiks, who then had their photos and fingerprints taken in the conference room. Their retinas were scanned and their weapons registered.
'I Can Do a Better Job'

Khadr said he planned to use the U.S. money to buy more arms on the black market. "We have some personal protection arms, but if we want to really fight al-Qaeda and destroy them, we need more weapons," said Khadr, with a faint smile.

But he's not holding out hope that his tribesmen will be allowed to join Iraq's Shiite-dominated army and police. So far, he and other tribal leaders have dispatched their men to three separate military recruiting drives. At each, the government refused to let them join the army, U.S. commanders and tribal leaders said.

The government, Khadr said, is inefficient. Officials "have failed to pull the people towards them. They have failed to fight militias and insurgents. They have failed in running the whole country," he said.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top U.S. commander in Babil and other areas south of Baghdad, said last month: "If these 'concerned citizens' don't get a sense that the government of Iraq is going to embrace them and allow them to be legitimate, this is all for nothing."

But in some cases, the sheiks are signing up to replace the Iraqi government in their areas. Williams, the tribal liaison, recalled how a man named Sheik Abdullah approached him one day and told him that Sunni tribal leaders didn't want the Iraqi army to control a pipeline that ran through their land.

"I can do a better job protecting the pipeline," he told Williams, promising to use his 300 fighters if the Americans called off Iraqi soldiers and awarded him a security contract.

Williams said Abdullah would soon get his contract.
'I Could Be Horribly Wrong'

After the meeting, Balcavage discussed with another commander whether they should give a cache of weapons to help the sheiks retake their lands in Howija from al-Qaeda in Iraq. They quickly decided against it.

Balcavage said he didn't know whether Youssef and other sheiks were trying to poison the military's relationship with Sabah. On July 23, Sabah signed an initial contract to provide 300 men and guard a key supply route to Fallujah and Baghdad.

"The only thing I know is my experience with Fadhil," said Balcavage, referring to Youssef. "I'm trusting my gut. I could be horribly wrong in this situation."

And what about Sabah? Was Balcavage worried about the al-Qaeda in Iraq allegations?

"I'm going to reel him in," Balcavage said. "To keep your enemy close type of thing. Feel him out. I'm going to see how many contacts, how much information I can find out from him. I'll bring his tribe in, if nothing else, and make sure all the agreements get signed."

On Thursday, a group of senior-ranking sheiks made contact with U.S. commanders to become "concerned citizens."

Sabah is their representative.

Gulf States Buy Arms With Wary Eye on Iran

Hosting U.S. Forces Seen as a Vulnerability

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A12

CAIRO, Aug. 3 -- Arab nations in the Persian Gulf are snapping up new U.S. arms offers partly out of fear that U.S. military installations on their territory would make them targets in any American war with Iran, regional experts said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the prospective weapons sales for Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf nations this week as she toured the Middle East with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The two sought to win support for U.S. peace efforts in the region and reassure Arab allies worried about fallout from U.S. policies toward Iraq and Iran.

Bush administration officials said they expected the arms deals for the Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- to total at least $20 billion.

Saudi Arabia, with Israel and Egypt, is one of the United States' most powerful allies in the region. The United States pulled most of its forces out of the Saudi kingdom by 2003, but the five other Gulf countries host armored brigades, air-refueling sites and other installations of the U.S. Central Command. All told, Gulf bases host an average of 40,000 U.S. troops, with an additional 20,000 American troops afloat offshore.

For the Gulf hosts, "this makes them vulnerable. It's quite clear that if the U.S. is going to have any military strike against Iran, then they are going to use these military bases. . . . I don't think Iran will miss any chance to impose damage on the region," said Ibrahim Saif, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, in a telephone interview from Amman.

Rice said the Gulf arms package would "help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."

The governments themselves were more guarded. Qatar's foreign minister already had announced that his country would not take part in any attack on Iran, and the Emirates' president ruled out use of his country's territory.

"Of course they have to say it, because Iran is a big gorilla, the 800-pound gorilla," in their neighborhood, said Thomas Mattair, a Washington area author on the Middle East and former research director of the Middle East Policy Council. "But genuinely, their preference is that we don't use force."

"They're concerned about Iran's capability to retaliate against them, to inflict damage on them," Mattair said by telephone. "They've been asking us not to do it. Obviously, they've been getting mixed signals from this administration, as everyone else has" regarding preemptive strikes on Iran.

Arab leaders this week gave scant public acknowledgment of the U.S. arms offer. Rice was the central player in an Arab summit at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but photos on many front pages here showed only Arab leaders smiling and holding hands with Arab leaders, with no U.S. official in sight.

Syria, an ally of Iran, called the arms deals "dangerous." In a statement about the arms sales on his official Web site, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "All U.S. efforts are for the creation of differences among our brothers in the region to impose its ideas and hegemony."

Gulf states, with their tiny armies, hope to buy deterrence with the arms packages, Mattair said, but the new deals probably will prompt a matching buildup by Iran, which is already sprinting to lengthen the range of its missiles and hone its nuclear technology.

Ultimately, U.S. arms sales in the Gulf often are a matter of rewarding the prime protector of the Middle East with oil dollars, analysts said. The U.S. military also offers up some of its more coveted product lines to ensure that Gulf allies keep looking to the United States as its primary protector, rather than Russia or China.

"Was selling U.S. arms to Gulf countries in the past ever a deterrent to Iran or anyone else?" asked Khaled al-Shami in an article in the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi. "Or is it an indirect way to spread around oil revenues where U.S. warships embark?"

Rice also announced a 10-year renewal of the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt has received from the United States each year since 1987. Egypt has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid since signing a peace accord with Israel in 1979.

Egyptian human rights activists said the U.S. arms renewal gave Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tacit U.S. sanction to proceed with his crackdown on all forms of opposition here.

Tuesday, as Rice and Arab leaders talked at Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian court refused to release imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour. The court rejected defense contentions that beatings and other harsh treatment in custody had made his diabetes life-threatening.

Nour was the lead challenger to Mubarak in 2005 elections. A court later sentenced him to five years in prison after convicting him of political fraud. Nour's supporters said the case against him was falsified. Rice told reporters Thursday on the flight back to Washington that she had raised Nour's case privately with Mubarak. Her inquiry went unreported in Egyptian newspapers during the trip.

"The United States decided to replace one commodity, democracy . . . after it discovered the dangers of exporting democracy without the necessary complementary package of cultural and social change and public liberty," wrote Hussam Ittani, a columnist for Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper. "What is the replacement? A commodity whose usefulness was proven in the past: gigantic arms deals."

Staff writer Robin Wright and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

Afghan President, Besieged by Crises, To Meet With Bush

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A10

KABUL, Aug. 3 -- As Afghan President Hamid Karzai prepares for a two-day meeting with President Bush at Camp David starting Sunday, his government is confronting contradictory pressures at home and abroad over how to secure the release of 21 surviving South Korean hostages, combat the aggressive Taliban insurgency and rein in Afghanistan's flourishing opium poppy trade.

Bush administration officials have described the meeting as a private "strategy session" between partners and a chance to reiterate unwavering U.S. support for Karzai's beleaguered government. But here, analysts and politicians say that in return for providing $10 billion in aid and more than 20,000 troops, U.S. officials may be pushing Karzai to take or accept harsh actions that many Afghans adamantly oppose.

The most urgent issue is what to do about the Taliban, the once-defeated radical Islamic militia that has roared back to life as a power-hungry, media-savvy guerrilla force. It is taking ever more audacious actions -- such as kidnapping 23 Korean church volunteers on a bus July 19 -- while moving ever closer to this tense capital in its campaign to drive out foreign troops and restore strict Islamic rule.

Karzai, a genial diplomat from a country of tribal traders, has always preferred to negotiate his way out of problems. He has repeatedly called on Taliban fighters to reconcile with his government, and he is attempting to solve the current hostage crisis through tribal mediation. Many Afghans, exhausted by years of conflict and angry at repeated civilian casualties during foreign strikes against the Taliban, support a negotiated peace with insurgents.

But U.S. officials have rejected this approach, especially in hostage situations. Administration spokesmen say pressure must be applied on the Taliban to secure the Koreans' freedom, including the possible use of force. Two hostages have been killed, and Taliban officials are demanding the withdrawal of 210 South Korean troops and the release of a group of imprisoned insurgents in exchange for the hostages' lives.

"It is really difficult to know what to do," said Nader Nadery, president of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "The government can't give in to the Taliban's demands, or they will be encouraged to repeat the same terrorist actions. But the Taliban are already winning the psychological war, delaying the hostage situation to gain time and public attention."

Although the insurgents are not strong enough to defeat pro-government forces, he said, "their psychological presence is everywhere. With every incident, somehow they win."

In recent months, the Taliban has made its presence felt in widening swaths of territory, moving farther out of its traditional base in the south and into provinces ringing the capital. Taliban fighters have seized the Koreans and executed local judges in Ghazni province, killed schoolgirls in Logar province and abducted two German engineers in Wardak province, killing one.

Officials are especially alarmed by the growing insurgent presence in Wardak, a poor region of fields and orchards just southwest of Kabul. As recently as April, there was no sign of insurgents in the region. Now, officials said, Taliban fighters hold armed meetings in village mosques and send threatening letters that force girls' schools to shut down.

Many people in Wardak blame the Karzai government for multiple failures that have spawned the Taliban revival. They said that promised roads and schools were never built, local authorities are corrupt and security is abysmal, with as few as four poorly trained policemen per district.

"The government has lost the confidence of our people, and the Taliban are getting more powerful," said Roshanak Wardak, a rural obstetrician and member of parliament from Wardak. "A lot of our boys have no jobs or education. The Taliban pay them and tell them the Americans have come to erase Islam from their country. I am very much worried," she added. "If the Taliban get power again in our province, it is only one leap to the capital."

U.S. diplomats and analysts repeatedly have expressed concern, saying that the Karzai government needs a stronger presence outside Kabul, providing better services and security in poor areas that are vulnerable to Taliban blandishments. State Department officials said Karzai and Bush will discuss the need to assert central authority in rural areas.

Much of the U.S. military's emphasis here, however, remains on killing or capturing insurgents, and American military officials are skeptical of efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. But energetic pursuit of insurgents has produced another problem -- a mounting toll of civilian casualties, mostly in bombing raids. The deaths have inflamed public opinion, turned many Afghans against the foreign forces and further strained Karzai's credibility.

"Sooner or later, every liberating force becomes an occupying force," said one Western analyst here. "A majority of Afghans were glad to see the coalition arrive in 2001, and most of them still are, but collateral damage and cultural insensitivity are key issues here. Even if the Taliban are using civilians as human shields, in the court of public opinion it is still the foreign forces that killed them."

The third issue in which Karzai faces contradictory pressures is how to stop the spread of opium poppy cultivation and trafficking. The crop has grown to record levels since the overthrow of the Taliban, which had banned it in 2000. The drug trade has become economically intertwined with the revived insurgency.

The Bush administration, which largely ignored Afghanistan's poppy problem for several years while concentrating on hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, is now extremely worried about the trade's role in shoring up the new Taliban. Richard A. Boucher, the senior State Department official for South Asia, said this week that "the tie between insecurity and poppy production is more and more clear," as are the links between the drug crop and the Taliban insurgency.

But U.S. and Afghan officials differ on the cure. The United States endorses aerial crop spraying and aggressive eradication along with alternative agricultural programs and better law enforcement. But Karzai has rejected the harsher eradication methods in the face of threatened revolts by farmers and public opposition.

"If Karzai comes under a lot of pressure to spray, it would be a big mistake," said Paul Fishstein, executive director of the nonprofit Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit here. "It would provide the Taliban with a huge propaganda gift. It would be perceived by farmers as a hostile act and it would further alienate them from the government. It might work as a way to destroy a crop, but if you really want to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, it would have the opposite effect."

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.

Maliki's Impact Blunted By Own Party's Fears

Hussein-Era Secrecy Persists, Analysts Say

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 3, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD -- As the U.S. military attempts to pacify Iraq so its leaders can pursue political reconciliation, Iraqi and Western observers say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his inner circle appear increasingly unable to pull the government out of its paralysis.

At times consumed by conspiracy theories, Maliki and his Dawa party elite operate much as they did when they plotted to overthrow Saddam Hussein -- covertly and concerned more about their community's survival than with building consensus among Iraq's warring groups, say Iraqi politicians and analysts and Western diplomats.

In recent weeks, those suspicions have deepened as U.S. military commanders have begun to work with Sunni insurgents, longtime foes of the Shiite-led government, who have agreed to battle the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"The level of mutual trust is so low that you really have to not just rebuild trust, you have to build trust in the first place, and that is still very much a work in progress right now," said Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the top U.N. envoy to Iraq.

The prime minister's close aides counter that Maliki can lead and that party leaders are committed to building a broad-based government.

"The Dawa party has no special request that Maliki must listen to us," said Hassan Suneid, a Dawa legislator and close adviser to the prime minister. "We do not want to impose a government different than what everybody else wants. Trust me, the Dawa party is the one who pushes Maliki to be open-minded to other voices."

There are many reasons for Iraq's political stagnation. In the fifth year of war, Iraq's politicians remain more loyal to their sect, clan, tribe and region than they are to the nation. A culture of fear, inherited from Hussein's reign, remains entrenched.

"Some of the coterie of Maliki fear their friends more than they fear their enemies," said Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite who heads Iraq's Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification. "You can't separate people from their backgrounds. Most of them were used to secret-society politics, not open politics."

The mistrust has deep roots. For decades, the Dawa party, through a secretive, cell-based structure, waged an underground resistance to Hussein's government, including at least one assassination attempt. Hussein suppressed the movement, whose goal was to turn secular Iraq into an Islamic state ruled by its Shiite majority. Thousands were executed or chased into exile. Maliki, sentenced to death, fled to Syria in 1980. In the vacuum created by the U.S.-led invasion, the Dawa party reemerged as a potent force in the rivalry to forge a new Iraq.

But Dawa members and other Shiites remained suspicious of the motives of the United States and the Sunnis, partly because of the Shiites' history of being oppressed and betrayed, including what they viewed as an American failure to back a Shiite uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"There is not a single Iraqi who is not affected by the recent history of Iraq," said Qazi, the U.N. envoy. "And all of these things make governance extremely difficult for anyone."

In January 2005, the United Iraqi Alliance won the elections, ushering in Shiite power. After the Bush administration, along with Kurdish and Sunni leaders, opposed Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jafari, Maliki became the compromise prime minister.

Since then, frustration has grown over Maliki's leadership, both in Iraq and in Washington. The government has failed to pass so-called benchmark laws the Bush administration sees as pivotal to political reconciliation. They include laws to tap Iraq's oil wealth equitably and reintegrate former members of Hussein's Baath Party into the government, as well as power-sharing constitutional reforms to appease Sunnis.

Last month, Maliki announced that the cabinet had approved oil legislation and would forward it to parliament. But the next day, Sunnis and Kurds opposed it. Kurdish politicians charged that unauthorized changes had been made to the legislation. For many, the episode was another example of secretive decision-making in Maliki's government.

Maliki's critics say a key reason for Iraq's political woes is his reliance on Dawa party stalwarts selected more for loyalty than political experience. "The problem is none of them have any sense of governance and how a government should function and run," said a senior Iraqi official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he works closely with Maliki. "They are mixing running a political party and running the government. They don't see the whole government as their government, only the people who they task, the people who they deputize."

Some Dawa party figures concede they are inexperienced. "None of us have run a government before," said Haider al-Abadi, an influential Dawa legislator. "We cannot deliver miracles."

He and other Dawa politicians insist that others are responsible for the government's difficulties. "There are always people inside the government and people outside who want to give the perception that the government is weak and it is about to fall," Abadi said.

Abadi, a British-trained engineer who returned to Iraq after 27 years and served as telecommunications minister, said rumors of a governmental collapse are being spread by "some enemies within the U.S. establishment."

"Some special intelligence units," he explained, his voice lowering during an interview at a coffee shop in the U.S.-protected Green Zone. "They have their own plan. That's what frightens us. People want to wreck the whole thing without any alternative."

Maliki, observers say, is trying to compensate for his party's frail position against his Shiite rivals. Unlike influential Shiite clerics Moqtada al-Sadr or Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the Dawa party controls no militia and has a small grass-roots following today.

"He's trying to strengthen the Dawa party at the risk of marginalizing other political groups," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political analyst.

Maliki has accused Arab research centers and media of waging "a conspiracy against Iraq" by portraying insurgents as Islamic freedom fighters. Nadhmi said Hussein, too, began to suspect conspiracies, especially as he grew isolated by the international community.

"Many people see some similarities between Maliki and the late Saddam, except he's much weaker than Saddam Hussein," Nadhmi said. "People feel he's in power because he's backed by American tanks. Others say the Dawa party is not popular enough to win elections on their own."

The reliance on Dawa members has helped fuel accusations that Maliki favors Shiites at the expense of Iraq's minorities, particularly Sunnis. In recent months, Maliki has visited or given aid to Shiite victims of bombings, while Sunni areas have been largely neglected. U.S. military commanders, too, have expressed frustration at what they see as the sectarian nature of Maliki's office.

Maliki and his advisers are already mistrustful of new U.S. alliances with Sunni insurgents and tribal leaders who have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Where the Bush administration sees a success story, Maliki and other Shiites worry that the United States is empowering groups still determined to overthrow their government.

"The policy of the American forces is to fight al-Qaeda even if they work with the Devil themselves," Suneid said. "These insurgents will become militias in the future. If they don't trust the government, then we should not arm them."

"Are we bringing the Baathists back?" said Abadi, referring to members of Hussein's now-disbanded party. "We don't want to get rid of al-Qaeda and replace them by other criminals."

Maliki is also losing some Shiite support. Earlier this year, the Fadhila Party withdrew its 15 members from his coalition. Followers of Sadr, Maliki's political benefactor, quit the cabinet and last month withdrew from parliament. Tensions were so high that senior Sadr leaders were publicly declaring that Maliki's government was nearing collapse. The Sadrists ended their boycott after Maliki promised to rebuild a Shiite shrine in Samarra, damaged in a recent bombing.

"The Dawa is looking after Dawa interests," said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he works closely with the government. "Other Shiite parties are equally troubled by Maliki and Dawa."

Chalabi described Maliki as a capable leader but said, "The prime minister's office is dominated by party people, and others find it difficult to break through. That needs to change."

The top Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, has largely withdrawn from the government over frustrations with Maliki's leadership. Last month the Shiite-dominated parliament voted to oust Sunni speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani because of his fiery behavior, prompting an initial pullout. The Sunnis were further enraged by an arrest warrant for the Sunni culture minister, who is accused of responsibility for an assassination attempt against another Sunni legislator.

"Upsetting them now is not in the government's interests, because you are working towards a bigger goal," the senior Iraqi official said at the time, referring to Sunni legislators. "You don't need it, even if it is a legal issue."

Suneid disagreed. He said that Maliki cannot control the actions of parliament and that the warrant was a judicial matter. It was Dawa and other alliance members, he added, who persuaded the Sunnis to return to parliament last month.

But the Accordance Front bolted again Wednesday, leaving only the Sunni vice president and one of six cabinet members in place, and said Maliki had failed to release detainees who Sunni leaders say are unjustly imprisoned, remove militia members from the police force and meet other demands.

On the streets, Maliki and his government are becoming less relevant. Abdul Amir Ali is a Shiite shopkeeper in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood and a Dawa party member. In an interview seven months ago, he brimmed with praise for Maliki.

Ali's allegiance is fraying. He struggles with electricity shortages, poor medical care and high fuel costs that have steadily worsened this year. Karrada, once considered a safe area, has become a magnet for suicide bombers and mortar attacks.

"Those who came to lead are only now learning the alphabets of leadership. They know how to wage a resistance, but to lead the country? This is difficult for them," said Ali, seated inside his sweltering shop last month.

He hasn't completely lost faith in Maliki, but Ali said he had expected his life to improve. "Now, it is as if Maliki doesn't exist. All parties are working for themselves," he said.

Pakistanis Rebuke Obama For Military Force Remark

By Rohan Sullivan
Associated Press
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A12

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 3 -- A top Pakistani official on Friday called Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama "irresponsible" for saying that, if elected, he might order unilateral military strikes in Pakistan against al-Qaeda. Protesters chanted anti-U.S. slogans and burned an American flag in the street.

Obama's comment on Wednesday heightened anger created here last week by senior Bush administration officials' statements that they would consider such strikes if intelligence warranted them.

Also inflaming the situation was a comment Tuesday by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who is a making a bid for the White House, that the best way he could think of to deter a major terrorist attack on the United States would be to threaten to retaliate by bombing the holiest of Islamic sites, Mecca and Medina.

U.S. officials quickly condemned Tancredo's remarks. "It is absolutely outrageous and reprehensible for anyone to suggest attacks on holy sites, whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish or those of any other religion," deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

In Miran Shah, a major town in the lawless region that borders Afghanistan, about 1,000 tribesmen condemned recent Pakistani military operations in the area and vowed to repel any U.S. attack.

In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, about 150 people chanted slogans against the United States, Obama and Tancredo at a demonstration organized by Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of six hard-line religious parties. Protesters set fire to a U.S. flag.

Top officials in the government of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally, bristled at Obama's comment. "It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say," Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said. "As the election campaign in America is heating up, we would not like American candidates to fight their elections . . . at our expense."

Bush called Musharraf on Friday to congratulate him on the 60th anniversary of Pakistan's independence. According to a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, Bush said that "recent statements emanating from the U.S. regarding possible U.S. action inside Pakistani territory" were "unsavory and often prompted by political considerations in an environment of electioneering."