Target: Bin Laden

The shaky politics of Pakistan and doubts about Al Qaeda could soon put the terrorist leader in our grasp.

April 13, 2008

Osama bin Laden lives among friends, follows news on satellite television or the Internet and reads books about American foreign policy; this much can be safely inferred from his periodic audio and video statements. His latest topical punditry surfaced just a few weeks ago on jihadi websites when he addressed violence in Gaza and the pope's travels.

Because of his passable grasp of current events, Bin Laden may well understand what many Americans do not: that he is more likely to be killed or captured during the next year or so than at any time since late 2001, when he escaped U.S. warplanes bombing him in eastern Afghanistan, at Tora Bora.

This welcome change in probabilities has almost nothing to do with the Bush administration's counter-terrorism strategy, which remains rudderless and starved of resources because of the war in Iraq. It is a consequence, instead, of dramatic political changes in Pakistan, where Bin Laden is believed to be hiding and where Al Qaeda's local mistakes and the restoration of civilian democracy have combined to make him considerably less safe.

Bin Laden's personal approval rating in Pakistan, as measured by a number of international polls, is plummeting. Beginning last year, Al Qaeda began to support an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings on Pakistani soil; the campaign culminated in the murder of two-time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December. Before, when Bin Laden targeted the United States and Europe, many Pakistanis saw him as an Islamic folk hero. But although Pakistanis remain deeply skeptical about the United States, they have changed their thinking about Al Qaeda as hundreds of their own innocent civilians have become its victims.

In a poll released in February, Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, found that Bin Laden's popularity had fallen by half over just six months, to about 24%. In the Northwest Frontier Province, along the Afghan borderlands where he is most likely to be hiding, it fell into single digits. Recent British polling in the most radicalized border areas is less encouraging, but there is no doubt that the general picture in the Northwest Frontier is one of increasing anxiety and resentment toward Al Qaeda.

These souring attitudes are important because, in the past, hunts for terrorists hiding in Pakistan have almost always ended when a disillusioned (and generally greedy) local resident has dropped a dime on the fugitive for reward money. During the 1990s, for example, it took a number of frustrating years until the United States tracked down Mir Amal Kasi, a Pakistani who killed two CIA workers outside the agency's headquarters in 1993. It took about as long to locate Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing; colleagues ultimately betrayed both men. Now that a larger number of Pakistanis see Bin Laden as a nihilistic killer, the chances that such a walk-in informant will surface have grown.

So have the odds that the Pakistani government will act on such information. For six years after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration undermined the search for Bin Laden by organizing its alliance with Pakistan in a way that created perverse incentives -- incentives that actually encouraged the Pakistanis not to find him. It did this by providing unquestioning support to the country's military leader, President Pervez Musharraf, and by sending more than 90% of its $10 billion-plus in aid to the Pakistan army or the army-controlled government. Much of this aid is still paid today as direct "rent" for counter-terrorism operations by the army and its principal intelligence branch.

The structure of this U.S.-aid pipeline, set against the decades-long history of on-again, off-again American support for Pakistan, encouraged Pakistan's top military commanders to believe that if Bin Laden were ever captured or killed, the U.S. might reduce its support or even go home. A fugitive Bin Laden became their meal ticket.

Now these incentives have been at least partly reversed. Musharraf's popularity and authority have collapsed in Pakistan following a succession of political blunders. Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who leads the newly elected civilian government behind the scenes, claimed before the national vote in February -- both at home and in Washington -- that the restoration of democracy would be a much more reliable means to defeat terrorism in Pakistan than America's narrow reliance on Musharraf. Zardari's more sophisticated advisors, such as Pakistan's new ambassador at large, Husain Haqqani, a long-time professor at Boston University, understand that this theory of democracy-as-counter-terrorism is viewed with considerable skepticism at the Pentagon and inside Washington's intelligence bureaucracy.

Pakistan's new democratic government should now be motivated to prove its case. Delivering Bin Laden -- which Musharraf's government so conspicuously failed to do -- would be a coup of global proportions for Pakistan's new civilian leaders, and it would bring considerable political and other rewards to Islamabad. It would demonstrate, in the most dramatic way possible, that a democratic government can be as effective a partner in counter-terrorism as the army, if not more so, and by doing this, it would change debate in Washington and Europe about the costs and benefits of investing in democracy in Pakistan.

This new equation of incentives inside Pakistan is highly complex -- for example, the army and the intelligence service have their own institutional interests, and this may lead them to resist entreaties from civilian leaders to step up the hunt for Bin Laden -- but the previous stalemate that governed the hunt, and which led to years of willful and self-conscious passivity in Pakistan's leadership, has at last been broken. Now, at least somebody in Pakistan's government has a good reason to find Bin Laden. And striking at a time when the Al Qaeda leader's local popularity has collapsed reduces the domestic political risks.

Where would they look? All of the best evidence -- the media pipeline that delivers Bin Laden's statements; the circumstantial evidence visible in his videos; fragments of available intelligence reporting and the known history of his movements -- points to Pakistan. Anything, of course, is possible -- perhaps we will discover some day that he was living all along in a suburb of Paris and conducting the most successful deception operation in history. But that seems unlikely.

Within Pakistan, an urban hideaway cannot be ruled out. Other Al Qaeda fugitives, such as Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, have been discovered in Pakistan's cities. But even if Bin Laden has shaved his beard and filled his wardrobe with baggy jeans, he would be taking enormous risks if he set up in a Karachi condo or a Rawalpindi town house.

By far the most likely scenario, as officials have repeatedly suggested, is that he has hunkered down in a secluded, mud-walled tribal compound along the Afghan border. This is territory where he has had many friends for years and where Pakistan's national government today has very little presence. The tribal agencies of North Waziristan and Bajaur seem the most likely sanctuaries. Unfortunately, "narrowing" the search to such vast and remote places along Pakistan's 1,200-mile border with Afghanistan is like narrowing a search to Alaska -- if Alaska's population were deeply hostile to outsiders.

Would it matter much if Bin Laden were killed or caught? Al Qaeda has grown beyond the point where decapitating its leadership would end the organization, but Bin Laden has been a charismatic leader, and if he were killed, the resulting succession struggles might prove problematic for the organization. If he is not captured, silencing his on-air commentary would also be moderately helpful.

But the biggest reason to find him is the same as it has been since November 2001. That month, a video discovered in Afghanistan showed a notably self-satisfied Bin Laden smiling as he described how, on the basis of his engineering studies, he had calculated that fire and explosions from the 9/11 attacks might cause a few interior floors of the Twin Towers to collapse, crushing those inside, but that he had been surprised -- and delighted, as his tone of voice conveyed -- that the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed completely. The simplest principles of justice remain more than ample in this cause.

Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and a staff writer at the New Yorker, is the author of "The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century." His previous book, "Ghost Wars," won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2005.

Out of Guantanamo and Bitter Toward Bin Laden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Fallujah, Peace Through Brute Strength

Iraqi City's Fragile Security Flows From Hussein-Era Tactics

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 24, 2008; A01

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The city's police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a husky man with a leathered face and a firm voice that resonates with authority, ordered an aide to shut his office door. He turned to his computer. Across the screen flashed a video, purportedly made by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In the video, branches are thrown into a pit the size of a coffin, then doused with kerosene and ignited. The camera pans to three blindfolded men, kneeling, mouths sealed with tape. Six armed men in black masks stand behind them. One declares: "These three men fought and killed al-Qaeda. We will punish them according to Islam." The masked men then kick the three into the burning grave.

Zobaie angrily turned off the video. "How can we show mercy to those people?" he asked. "Do you want me to show mercy to them if I capture them?"

Zobaie, 51, knows the nature of the men in black masks. He is a former insurgent. Now, as the police chief, he has turned against the insurgency, especially al-Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. military showcases Fallujah as a model city where U.S. policies are finally paying off and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the region to promote the rule of law and a variety of nation-building efforts.

But the security that has been achieved here is fragile, the result of harsh tactics recalling the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown five years ago. Even as they work alongside U.S. forces, Zobaie's men admit they have beaten and tortured suspects to force confessions and exact revenge.

In the city's overcrowded, Iraqi-run jail, located inside a compound that also houses a U.S. military base and U.S. police advisers, detainees were beaten with iron rods, according to the current warden. Many were held for months with no clear evidence or due process. They were deprived of food, medical care and electricity and lived in utter squalor, said detainees, Iraqi police and U.S. military officers, who began to address the problems three weeks ago. Last summer, the warden said, several detainees died of heatstroke.

In Zobaie's world, to show mercy is to show weakness. In a land where men burn other men alive, harsh tactics are a small price to pay for imposing order, he said.

"We never tortured anybody," he said. "Sometimes we beat them during the first hours of capture."

His men, he added, abuse suspects because "they don't surrender easily. They don't confess. They say: 'I am innocent. I haven't done anything.' They start to defend themselves."

The story of Zobaie and his police force opens a window onto the Iraq that is emerging after five years of war. American ideals that were among the justifications for the 2003 invasion, such as promoting democracy and human rights, are giving way to values drawn from Iraq's traditions and tribal culture, such as respect, fear and brutality.

"We don't have any Thomas Jeffersons here," said Capt. Sean Miller, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division from Fairfax, Va., who works closely with Zobaie. "What we do have here is generally a group of people who are trying to save a city. It won't fulfill our ideals or what we desire."

Once a member of Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Zobaie is driven by allegiance neither to the United States nor to Iraq's Shiite-run central government. He wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. But for now, he needs the United States to bolster him with military muscle and funds. And the U.S. military today depends on men such as Zobaie to help bring about the order and security in Iraq that could eventually lead to the end of the American occupation.

"I have realized that Americans love the strong guy," Zobaie said.

A Turning Point

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zobaie contacted other Republican Guards and military officers. Many had lost their jobs when U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army. For the next two years, Zobaie said he was a commander in the Sunni insurgency. "Everywhere I could reach, I fought the Americans," he said. "I didn't feel well until I hit the Americans. Then I felt comfortable."

But a turning point came in 2004. U.S. troops and insurgents fought fiercely in Fallujah. Zobaie battled U.S. forces in the nearby town of Zaidan, where he grew up. By mid-2005, he had grown wary of the foreign fighters and radicals, with their brutal tactics and rigid interpretation of Islam. They banned smoking, satellite television, even Pepsi, because the prophet Muhammad never drank it. One day, Zobaie said, he was stopped at a checkpoint in Zaidan and forced by fighters to watch three men saw off another man's head with a knife.

By April 2006, Zobaie had had enough. He joined the new Iraqi army and was appointed a brigade commander. Then senior Shiite officers had him removed. When al-Qaeda in Iraq militants learned he had enlisted, they kidnapped one of his cousins, who had also joined the army. Zobaie never saw him again. Zobaie said he decided to return to fighting, but against a new enemy: "On that date, it became a public war between us and al-Qaeda."

In November, a relative who was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq kidnapped Zobaie's brother, Ahmed, and beheaded him with a shaving razor. Zobaie found his head and body four days later. The relative disappeared. A week later, Ahmed's wife gave birth to a daughter.

Zobaie become Fallujah's police chief that December. He sent his wife and seven of his eight children to Iraq's Kurdish semiautonomous region for their safety. When it was time to select a code name to speak over police walkie-talkies, he chose "Ahmed."

'Difficult Decisions'

Zobaie opened his office door. Outside, policemen in blue and white uniforms saluted. Down a narrow corridor he walked past 126 small portraits of officers killed on duty. A tall, wiry policeman followed Zobaie -- his 21-year-old son, Saif. He's the man Zobaie trusts most on his force.

The police headquarters, built with U.S. funds, sits inside a large compound ringed by layers of blast walls in the heart of Fallujah, a dusty city of tan buildings, palatial houses and wide streets about 35 miles west of the capital, Baghdad.

Zobaie lives here and sees his family once every 40 days. He wakes at 5 a.m. to pray and polishes his shoes every morning. He's gracious, but once he threw Saif in prison for showing up to work late. When they visit neighborhoods, Zobaie and his senior officers hand out soccer balls and candy to children.

The jail is to the left of his office; to the right is a building housing U.S. advisers and police trainers. U.S. Marines also live nearby in a joint security station.

A year ago, snipers awaited anyone who wandered outside. Hand grenades were often thrown at the gates. Mortar shells landed nearly every day.

To fight back, Zobaie recalled, he began to think like the insurgents. He ordered his force of 1,200 men to monitor car mechanic shops to avert bomb-making. He ordered oxygen tanks inside hospitals counted at the end of each day because the canisters were often used for bombs. Backed by U.S. troops, his men staged raids and detained scores of al-Qaeda in Iraq members. He has also launched a network of intelligence operatives around the city, a system that was the backbone of Hussein's security apparatus, police officials said.

"He made very brave and difficult decisions," said Maj. Mohammed Fayadh al-Esawi, police commander in the city's Andalus neighborhood. "He proved that in a critical era, he was the right person, at the right time, to be police chief."

A City 'Like a Big Jail'

Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered, and police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities, each with its own joint security station staffed by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. It also has been buying the loyalties of former Sunni insurgents, paying them $180 a month to join a neighborhood force that works with the police.

Those tactics have damped down the violence. Shops stay open longer, streets are clogged with traffic, and soccer fields brim with children and young men. But for many residents, Fallujah remains a shadow of its former self. "The city is like a big jail," said Abu Ahmed, a well-known doctor who asked that his nickname be used because he has treated people who were brutalized by Zobaie's men.

Zobaie ordered imams at mosques to stop preaching in support of the insurgency and against American troops. The mosques have long been a breeding ground for insurgents. Sheik Abu Abdul Salman, an influential 67-year-old imam, didn't like Zobaie's order. "He's worse than Saddam Hussein," Salman said.

When Zobaie heard of the remark, his voice rose in anger. "Sometimes people are just saying that I did this, I did that. . . . Okay, I tell them, 'Where were you when al-Qaeda was running this city?' "

Meeting the Public

Zobaie drove out of his compound in a gray sport-utility vehicle, with a Glock pistol, issued by the U.S. military, on his left hip. A blue and white police pickup truck mounted with a large machine gun followed. His son Saif manned the gun.

Zobaie's convoy pushed through the city center along a wide, dusty road, past buildings pocked by mortar rounds and bullets. At a taxi stand, Zobaie stepped out, with Saif behind him. A crowd, recognizing the police chief, gathered around him.

"How's the situation?" he asked, smiling as he shook hands. Some said it was good. But a man pushed through the crowd and confronted him, complaining of mistreatment by the police as he entered the city. Zobaie turned serious. He realized, he said, that he had to gain people's trust and confidence.

"Any policeman who does something bad will be punished," he assured the crowd. He then yelled out his cellphone number, in case anyone had more complaints about his men. Many punched his number into their phones.

Obeying 'Only the Force'

Inside a joint security station in the Sinaa neighborhood, Wissam Fezaa, 20, was screaming into a police radio: "Arrest him! Arrest him!" A man did not have the proper badge to drive his truck.

"He will stay for 30 to 40 days in prison as punishment so he'll never do it again," said Fezaa, who was wearing a blue T-shirt with "Fallujah Police" emblazoned on the back. Asked whether the punishment was too harsh, he replied, "If we were not strong, we cannot control the city."

That is how Zobaie's men control Fallujah. With two U.S. Marines a few feet away, Fezaa said that if he caught a criminal or terrorism suspect in front of people, he would not hurt him. And if he captured him alone? "I wouldn't even let him walk afterward," he said. He pulled an electric stun gun from his leg holster. "I've used this before," he declared.

Capt. Mohammed Yousef, a ruddy-faced police investigator in another joint security station, said he sometimes has to beat suspects to make them confess. He has interrogated suspects since 1994, he said, and sees no need to change his methods.

"Since Saddam Hussein until now, Iraq obeys only the force," Yousef said. "We are practicing the same old procedures."

Abu Rahma, 43, a taxi driver and father of four, was a victim of that approach. He was taken into custody last March and tortured in Fallujah's jail. "They kept beating me to force me to confess," he said. "I told them I am not with al-Qaeda, and neither is my brother. They beat me everywhere on my body. . . . Some of my nails were taken out."

Abu Rahma spent 64 days in the cell. On the 65th day, he was released. "It was like being born again," he said.

Zobaie's harshest critics also acknowledge that Fallujah needs a man like him.

Salman, the imam, said Zobaie controls the city with "a fire fist."

"But to be honest, security is restored under this guy," he said. "We have a saying in Iraq: 'Fever is better than death.' We were dead. Life stopped at 2 p.m. Everybody was afraid of themselves, including me. If he didn't use the force, the security wouldn't be restored. We don't like the weak man."

Dire Conditions

The U.S. military advisers give courses in ethics, the rule of law and human rights to Zobaie's force. They teach the men how to gather evidence, write proper records and follow judicial procedures. But newly arrived senior U.S. officers were stunned when they made a surprise visit to Fallujah's jail last month.

Inmates were not given meals. For food, they relied on relatives or bribed corrections officers. There was no money to buy fuel for generators, no power for air conditioners and heaters. Last summer, six detainees died of heatstroke, said Lt. Col. Daoud Suleiman, who was promoted to warden two weeks ago.

Prisoners suffered from skin diseases, Suleiman said. The sewage system was broken. Corrections officers beat the soles of detainees' feet with rods. Doctors visited only once a month.

Iraq's central government, which has long neglected Fallujah, offered no funds for the prison. U.S. military officers had visited routinely for months but taken no action. "It's a typical Iraqi jail," said Maj. Mike Cava, a military judge advocate. "Their standards are different than ours. They just do things the Iraqi way."

Suleiman said he had asked U.S. military officers for help several times. Lt. Col. Mike Callanan, who works on rule of law issues, said fixing the jail was not a focus of the U.S. military until recently. Three weeks ago, the U.S. military started providing meals, clothing, blankets and hygiene kits to detainees.

Callanan said the U.S. military has warned police officials that it does not "condone torture and beatings of prisoners."

Zobaie denied that conditions were bad at the prison and offered to give a tour to a reporter. "This is my prison. This has nothing to do with the Americans," he said. Moments later, he turned to Suleiman and said: "Take him and show him the prison. The Americans are hurting our reputation." But the Marines who secure the compound barred entry to the jail, despite repeated requests to their commander.

Zobaie didn't fire the abusive jail staff. He transferred them to other precincts.

"If you go through the history of Iraq, you will see that only the tough guy can control the country," he said. He rattled off the names of every leader since Iraq's monarchy ended in 1958 with a bloody coup. Hussein, he said, had lasted the longest in power.

Aid and Mistrust

With American help, Zobaie's influence is growing. He presides over school graduations and launches municipal projects. He helps approve reconstruction contracts and meets with tribal sheiks. Last week, a member of parliament visited his office: He needed Zobaie's help to settle a land dispute.

"This politician came to me to solve the problem and not the city council," Zobaie said, beaming. He was wearing a dark suit with a black and silver tie, not his uniform.

An hour later, Zobaie met Maj. Robert C. Rice, of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, and a Fallujah government official to plan a sports day for next month. "You will need to spend a lot of money on it," Zobaie told Rice. "We want this to be a special day." Then, with a wave of his hand, he said he would donate his monthly salary and send a team of policemen to play in the soccer tournament.

Rice was wary. U.S. commanders are concerned that Zobaie's force could become a militia someday. Ninety-five percent of the men are Sunnis from Fallujah, more loyal to sect and tribe than to the government. Three weeks ago, U.S. troops raided the office of Suleiman, the prison warden, searching for illegal weapons, Suleiman said, exposing the mistrust. Rice, referring to the sports day, told Zobaie, "We want to be careful that it does not come across as an Iraqi police-dominated event."

Zobaie has asked the U.S. officers to help obtain more aid for the city from the regional and central governments. Already, the U.S. military is employing street cleaners, building schools and putting up $9 million worth of solar street lights. But some U.S. officers question why insurgents once determined to kill them have so quickly embraced them.

"Every time they talk to you there's an agenda," said Miller, the captain who works closely with Zobaie. "You have to figure out what they want right now. If it is this easy, it begs the question: What are we giving them that we don't know that we're giving them?"

What Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

"When the Americans leave the city," he said, "I'll be tougher with the people."

Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

Vatican Security Worries Over bin Laden Tape

By IAN FISHER

ROME — The Vatican on Thursday rejected an audiotaped accusation from Osama bin Laden that Pope Benedict XVI was leading a “new Crusade” against Muslims, but Italian security officials were concerned about the threats included in Mr. bin Laden’s new message.

“These accusations are absolutely unfounded,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope’s chief spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “There is nothing new in this, and it doesn’t have any particular significance for us.”

The audio message attributed to Mr. bin Laden was released Wednesday night and was addressed to “the intelligent ones in the European Union.” It was posted on a militant Web site on Wednesday, and an English transcription was distributed Thursday by the SITE Intelligence Group in Bethesda, Md., which tracks postings by Al Qaeda on the Internet.

The audiotape listed broad grievances, but specifically mentioned the pope, and coincided with the busiest week of the year at the Vatican, the week leading up to Easter Sunday. The pope, who turns 81 next month, will appear at several public events, including the annual Good Friday procession of the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum.

In the five-minute message, the speaker said there would be a “severe” reaction against the publication in Europe of cartoons many Muslims considered offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. He said the cartoons — one reprinted last month in Denmark, more than two years after they were first published there — “came in the framework of a new Crusade in which the pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role.”

Without naming any specific action or target, the speaker said, “The response will be what you see and not what you hear, and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God.”

Father Lombardi dismissed the accusations, noting that the pope had condemned the cartoons several times and stressed that “religion must be respected.”

Al Qaeda and its supporters have issued several threats against the pope since he quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor in a speech in Germany two years ago referring to Islam as “evil and inhuman.” The pope apologized for the anger caused by the speech, saying that the view expressed in the quotation was not his own.

Asked about heightened security concerns, Father Lombardi said the recording “does not in any way affect the conduct of the pope.” He said the Vatican had no plans for any more security than what was already in place for the public events leading up to Easter.

An Italian security official, however, was quoted anonymously on Thursday by the ANSA news agency as saying that officials were taking the threats “seriously.” A spokesman for the nation’s Interior Ministry declined to answer specific questions about the threat, referring a reporter to the ANSA report.

The report stated that Italian antiterrorism officials would meet Friday to analyze the tape. It said the message would be “examined with attention to the threat surrounding the pope.” Though the Vatican is technically a separate and sovereign state, Italy provides policing and security for the pope.

After violent demonstrations against his speech two years ago, the pope has called frequently for dialogue between Christians and Muslims. A delegation of Muslim scholars met with Vatican officials this month to prepare for broader talks between the pope and Muslim representatives later this year.

Benedict XVI is scheduled to make his first visit as pope to the United States from April 15 to 20, with stops in New York and Washington. The Secret Service and the New York Police Department, responsible for the pope’s security on the trip, had no comment on the bin Laden audiotape.

Paul J. Browne, a deputy police commissioner in New York, said in an e-mailed statement that the department “has been working closely with the United States Secret Service to provide the highest level of protection possible for the pope during his visit to New York.”

Daniele Pinto contributed reporting.

War-ravaged Iraq city 'alive again'

Fallouja has been rebuilt since the 2004 battles. Stores again are doing a brisk business, and the population is nearly back up to 300,000.
By Tony Perry
Time Staff Writer

March 21, 2008

FALLOUJA, IRAQ — The one-lane bridge over the Euphrates River where a mob hung the charred bodies of slain Americans four years ago is now a focal point in the revitalization of this war-ravaged city.

The Iraqi government and the U.S. plan to widen the pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge so shoppers can stream into Fallouja's western neighborhood and buy food, clothing and other goods from stores that again line the streets of a city once given up for dead.

The comeback of Fallouja, the site of two major battles between Marines and insurgents in 2004, surprises even the most optimistic U.S. planners.

"It continues to outpace all expectations," said Navy Capt. John Dal Santo, part of a State Department-funded effort called the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Fallouja.

City Council leader Sheik Hamed Ahmed said that he was pleased with the city's progress but that he needed more generators for his neighborhood. Ahmed's three predecessors were assassinated by insurgents, but he has refused to back down.

"Fallouja is alive again," he said.

Restaurants, bakeries, photo shops, tire stores, Internet cafes, a body-building studio and other businesses line the avenues and side streets. BMWs share lanes with donkey carts on congested thoroughfares.

The Anbar provincial government and the central government in Baghdad have poured tens of millions of dollars into street repair, rubble removal and school reconstruction. The governor has assigned what Americans might call ward heelers to tend to the needs of the city's nine districts.

In 2004, Fallouja was a major base for the emerging Sunni Arab insurgency. On March 31 of that year, it was also the site of one of the most macabre images since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: young Iraqi men dancing in glee as the burned remains of American private security workers hung from the aging bridge.

Most civilians fled the city before the second Marine assault, in November 2004. And there are still signs of the fierce battles: crumpled buildings, downed power lines and bullet-riddled homes.

Other problems also remain: an undersized police department; shortages of electricity, clean water and gasoline; high unemployment; and a small but resistant cadre of insurgents waiting to launch a counterattack.

Yet Fallouja is vibrant again, and its population has climbed back close to its pre-assault level of about 300,000.

Police are on the streets. A new hospital is set to open this spring, funded by the U.S. and the Iraqis. Marines have removed many of the barriers and concertina wire that gave the city what one officer called the "Berlin 1945 look."

There have been soccer tournaments and art contests. And there are plans for a soft-drink bottling plant.

"Fallouja has gone through a metamorphosis -- these people want their lives back," said Lt. Col. Christopher Dowling, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. "Fallouja has its soul back."

Several hundred Marines live side by side with Iraqi police officers in outposts across the city. In five months, Dowling's Marines have carried out 7,000 patrols in the city and its suburbs without suffering a fatality or major injury.

To ensure continued security progress, Marines conduct late-night raids several times a week after picking up intelligence about possible insurgent activities. The troops also have sought to provide employment to young Falloujans to help win their loyalty.

One of Dowling's more successful efforts has been to pay youths $10 a day to pick up trash. Many of the main streets are now among the cleanest of any city in Anbar province.

Fallouja also has a court system and judges, unlike most cities in the province, which lies west of Baghdad. Elsewhere, judges who fled the country have not returned.

"Two years ago, even after the war was over, people were stealing and hiding," Iraqi police officer Jassim Hamid Khousan said. "Now is better. God willing, if the insurgents come back, we will fight."

Haji Mohammed Hussin feels safe enough to reopen and expand his kebab restaurant, closed when the city was controlled by insurgents. He also owns a restaurant in Baghdad that remains closed, he said, because it has been confiscated by Shiite Muslim militiamen.

When Dowling stopped by to drink tea, Hussin had a request: Extend the hours at the main checkpoint so more people can come in from the suburbs for a late dinner.

"We need more people," Hussin said.

Done. The checkpoint will stay open an hour later.

An estimated 20,000 people a day stream through five checkpoints to shop or work in the city. The checkpoints are staffed by Marines, Iraqi police and an all-female contingent called the Sisters of Fallouja.

This is the second Fallouja assignment for the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. It was a lead unit in the November 2004 assault, suffering 19 fatalities. Most of the current officers and enlisted are new to the battalion.

But some are veterans from 2004, including Staff Sgt. Terrance Gant, who remembers the fight to recapture the bridge. Marines attacked insurgent strongholds from the north, south and east -- pushing west toward the bridge was one of the final objectives.

Gant visited the bridge and adjoining streets the other day and found small boys selling ice cream, a fishmonger hawking catfish, and food and trinket stores doing a brisk business.

"This is a step forward," Gant said. "It shows me my Marines didn't die in vain."

tony.perry@latimes.com

After a Decade at War With West, Al-Qaeda Still Impervious to Spies

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 20, 2008; A01

BARCELONA -- A decade after al-Qaeda issued a global declaration of war against America, U.S. spy agencies have had little luck recruiting well-placed informants and are finding the upper reaches of the network tougher to penetrate than the Kremlin during the Cold War, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials.

Some counterterrorism officials say their agencies missed early opportunities to attack the network from within. Relying on Cold War tactics such as cash rewards for tips failed to take into account the religious motivations of Islamist radicals and produced few results.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said, al-Qaeda has tightened its internal security at the top, placing an even greater emphasis on personal and tribal loyalties to determine who can gain access to its leaders.

Alain Chouet, former chief of the security intelligence service of the DGSE, France's foreign spy agency, said it can take years for informants to burrow their way into radical Islamist networks. Even if they're successful at first, he said, new al-Qaeda members are often "highly disposable" -- prime candidates for suicide missions.

He said it might be too late for Western intelligence agencies, having missed earlier chances, to redouble efforts to infiltrate the network. "I think you cannot penetrate such a movement now," he said.

At the same time, those agencies have made their task harder by blowing the cover of some promising informants and mishandling others.

In January, Spanish police arrested 14 men in Barcelona who they suspected were preparing to bomb subways in cities across Europe. Investigators disclosed in court documents that the arrests had been prompted by a Pakistani informant working for French intelligence.

The revelation infuriated French officials, who were forced to withdraw the informant -- a rare example of an agent who had successfully infiltrated training camps in Pakistan. Spanish authorities expressed regret but said they had no choice; after they failed to find bombs or much other evidence during the arrests, the case rested largely on the informant's word.

"Suicide attacks don't allow for a lot of margin to make a decision," said Vicente Gonzales Mota, the lead prosecutor. "Acting after an attack would be a tragedy."

Ten years ago, on Feb. 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring it "the individual duty of every Muslim" to kill Americans and their allies around the world. Looking back, some U.S. and European intelligence officials said their governments had underestimated the enemy and thought they could rely on old methods to destabilize al-Qaeda.

During the Cold War, for example, the CIA had enjoyed some success in recruiting KGB moles and persuading Soviet officials to defect. The agency was also able to buy off Afghan warlords with suitcases of cash, persuading them to fight Soviet forces in the 1980s and to turn on the Taliban in 2001. A similar approach has worked, to a limited extent, against insurgents in Iraq: An informant's tip led directly to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.

But al-Qaeda's core organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan has so far proved impervious to damaging leaks.

Part of the problem is that the CIA and FBI had very few Arabic-speaking officers who could handle or recruit informants. Instead of making it a priority to develop human sources, the agencies assumed they could rely on spy satellites and other high-tech tools.

Arab and Pakistani spy agencies, preoccupied with domestic politics and other threats, weren't much help either, officials said.

From 1992 until November 2004, "we worked side by side with the Egyptians, the Jordanians -- the very best Arab intelligence services -- and they didn't recruit a single person who could report on al-Qaeda," said Michael Scheuer, who in the 1990s led the CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden. He left agency in November 2004.

After Sept. 11, U.S. officials tried another tried-and-true tactic: offering huge rewards for information leading to the capture or death of al-Qaeda leaders, including $25 million apiece for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

That lure, however, has proved largely ineffective in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No rewards have been publicly announced under the program in either country since Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003.

Scheuer said money and other traditional inducements are unlikely to persuade Islamist radicals to betray a religious cause to which they are fervently committed. While people operating on the fringes of al-Qaeda -- arms suppliers, narcotics dealers and rival extremists -- might be tempted, he said, the chances are remote with people higher up the chain of command.

"We're still kind of stuck in the Cold War approach to this," Scheuer said. "This is a much more difficult target than the Soviets were. These people are true believers. They're living according to their beliefs, not in the lap of luxury."

Walled Off Against Spies

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI and European law enforcement agencies have had some luck recruiting informants in their own countries, enabling them to break up alleged terrorist cells in Miami, New York, London and Copenhagen.

But al-Qaeda's central leadership in Pakistan has remained immune, in part by further tightening its already sophisticated internal security apparatus, current and former intelligence officials said.

Its recruiters cautiously seek out new operatives at training camps run by other radical groups, such as the Taliban. Those chosen are given specific assignments and rarely come into contact with high-ranking al-Qaeda figures. They must also pass extensive background checks, which usually require personal references from movement sympathizers, officials said.

Tribal or family connections are paramount, and certain categories of people automatically come under suspicion, officials said. For years, al-Qaeda avoided Algerian recruits, they added, because it was assumed that Algerian terrorist groups had been infiltrated by that country's security services.

"We're facing a very disciplined organization," said Louis Caprioli, former chief of international counterterrorism for France's domestic security service and now a consultant for GEOS, a global security firm. "These people have well understood they are the target of informants, so it makes it all the more difficult to penetrate them."

U.S. and European spy agencies have avoided sending their own undercover officers to training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials said.

Few operatives, they said, have the language skills, personal backgrounds and knowledge of radical Islam that would enable them to talk their way into the camps. Plus, the political consequences of having a spy unmasked by al-Qaeda would be enormous, they added.

Beyond that, undercover officers usually require an extensive support network that would be hard to sustain for the several years it might take to worm into the al-Qaeda hierarchy, said a former senior British intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Undercover operatives might also find themselves ordered by al-Qaeda to organize a suicide attack or kill someone. "Which you can't let them do," the former British official said. "You have an obligation to prevent it from happening."

Attempting to wiggle out of such an assignment would only raise suspicions. Al-Qaeda people are "very canny about this sort of thing," the former official said. "They have this preemptive and fairly brutal approach. If you're suspected of being an informant or agent, you're dead."

Recruiting outsiders to serve as spies has its own challenges. The United States and European countries have restrictions on hiring informants with shady pasts. In 1995, for instance, the CIA adopted guidelines that require special approval to recruit paid sources who have been accused of human rights abuses or serious crimes.

Partnering with such people, moreover, can backfire.

Last month, authorities in Casablanca arrested a Belgian-Moroccan citizen, Abdelkader Belliraj, and charged him with plotting terrorist acts. Investigators said he worked closely with al-Qaeda and had met in Afghanistan with Zawahiri, the network's deputy leader, in 2001. During his interrogation, according to Moroccan officials, Belliraj confessed to involvement in six unsolved murders in Belgium in the late 1980s.

The case exploded into a scandal a few days later when newspapers in Brussels reported that Belliraj had served as a paid informant for Belgium's domestic intelligence service, even as his network plotted assassinations and robbed armored cars in Europe.

'Inside the Jihad'

But counterterrorism officials maintain the hope that one day they will succeed in placing someone inside al-Qaeda. The network does have a vulnerability, they note: It remains dependent on a fresh flow of outsiders to replenish its ranks, and agents could be introduced into that flow.

On March 6, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an al-Qaeda commander, posted an audio recording on the Internet in which he advertised for recruits to fight NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The network has a particular need for engineers and doctors, he said, adding, "Your brothers in Afghanistan are waiting for you."

Al-Qaeda has also shown that it will accept newcomers from unusual backgrounds.

Adam Gadahn, a 29-year-old Californian with Jewish roots, moved to Pakistan after he converted to Islam a decade ago. He joined al-Qaeda a few years later and now serves as a propaganda adviser, in direct contact with Zawahiri and other top leaders. In 2006, he was indicted for treason by a U.S. grand jury.

In the mid-1990s, a Moroccan-born informant working for France's foreign intelligence service infiltrated two training camps in Afghanistan and forged a personal relationship with several high-ranking al-Qaeda figures.

The informant -- a wine-loving, tobacco-smoking Muslim with the gift of the gab -- found his way to the camps simply by showing up in Pakistan and asking around, according to a book he published in 2006 titled "Inside the Jihad."

Writing under the pseudonym Omar Nasiri, the informant said his French handlers had discouraged him from undertaking the mission because they doubted he could succeed.

"I was a gift that walked in the door, but they always underestimated me," Nasiri said in a recent interview. "I told them, 'You know, guys, I'm not doing even 10 percent of what I can do.' And it made them mad when I said that. But they knew I was right."

He was placed in a witness protection program in 2000. European intelligence officials confirmed that he had worked as an informant but would not discuss details.

In the interview, Nasiri said it would be very difficult, but not impossible, for paid informants to infiltrate al-Qaeda in South Asia today. "Every moment of my existence was a test, every little answer, every little movement," he recalled of his time in the camps. "You had to show complete devotion to the cause. If someone does all this to blend in, even if it is deception, the risk is that sooner or later he will believe it."

Special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas in Madrid contributed to this report.

Bin Laden Threatens Europe Over Muhammad Cartoons

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 20, 2008; A11

BERLIN, March 19 -- In a new audiotape released Wednesday, Osama bin Laden warned Europeans that they will face a "severe reckoning" for repeatedly publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in newspapers and magazines.

The five-minute speech was the second time in four months that bin Laden has delivered threats to European countries. He made only one oblique reference to President Bush -- calling him "your aggressive ally . . . who is about to depart the White House" -- and instead addressed his remarks to "the intelligent ones in the European Union."

The al-Qaeda leader criticized European countries for joining in military campaigns in Muslim lands. Although he lamented those actions, he suggested that the Muhammad cartoons were even more immoral and that retaliation was coming.

"It paled when you went overboard in your unbelief . . . and went to the extent of publishing those insulting drawings," he said. "If there is no check on your freedom of words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions."

The audio recording was accompanied by a still photograph of bin Laden holding an automatic rifle and was released by As-Sahab, the media arm of al-Qaeda.

In 2006, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad, prompting protests throughout the Muslim world. Followers of the faith generally consider depictions of the prophet blasphemous. Other European publications reprinted the cartoons, citing the right to free speech.

Last month, a cartoon showing Muhammad with a bomb for a turban was reprinted in Danish newspapers after police in Copenhagen said they had disrupted an assassination plot against the illustrator.

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Foreign fighters in Iraq seek recognition, U.S. says

Interrogations of 48 detainees to understand their motivations provide a picture of typically young, lonely recruits.
By Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 17, 2008

BAGHDAD — Young, lonely and struggling to make a mark.

The U.S. military Sunday presented a profile of foreign fighters, who are blamed for about 90% of the suicide bombings that have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq. It was based on interrogations of 48 men captured by U.S.-led forces here in the last four months, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told reporters at a briefing inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Smith said most militants were single men in their late teens and early 20s recruited by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a largely homegrown Sunni Arab militant group that the U.S. military says is led by foreigners. They typically come from large, lower-income families in which they struggled to be noticed.

"Most of these young men wanted to make an impression, but paradoxically they did not tell their families they were going off to Iraq to fight for Al Qaeda out of fear of disapproval," said Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

Smith's presentation comes at a time when the number of high-profile suicide attacks in Iraq has inched up, many of them carried out by bombers with explosives strapped to their waists.

U.S. officers stress that the number of attacks overall remains down since the military finished sending an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq in June. But Smith acknowledged that a modest rise in attacks using explosives vests, including 18 in February, was troubling.

"It is a difficult target to stop, and the only effective way is to take down the networks that feed this type of terrorism," he said.

In the latest such attack, a man blew himself up Sunday in front of a Kurdish political party office in the northern city of Mosul, injuring a guard and six civilians, police said. Two policemen were injured by a roadside bomb on their way to the scene, police said.

Fighters also have started to wear explosives vests and blow themselves up when captured, Smith said, a tactic previously used only by senior leadership.

The interviews conducted with detainees are helping U.S. forces to understand the backgrounds, motivations and recruitment of foreign fighters. Smith said most were from the Middle East and North Africa, including about 40% from Saudi Arabia.

More than half of the approximately 240 foreign fighters in U.S. custody come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, according to figures provided separately by the military.

Smaller numbers were recruited in Jordan, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. In addition, several hundred foreign fighters are in Iraqi custody.

Most described their upbringing as religious but not extremist, Smith said. Many said their fathers were harsh and often abusive. Most reported little or no previous military experience. Before they were recruited, many worked as taxi drivers, construction workers and in other low-paying jobs. Others were students.

Their recruiters preyed on their desire for recognition, acceptance and friendship, Smith said.

Many detainees told their interrogators that they were first approached at their mosques. Others were approached at work and invited to attend discussions at the mosque.

These conversations would begin as a harmless discussion about Islam that over several weeks would shift to the war against U.S.-led forces in Iraq, he said.

The recruits were often shown videos of Americans purportedly abusing Iraqis and were urged to help avenge the mistreatment by killing Americans, Smith said. Insurgent strikes against U.S. forces also were shown.

Once they agreed to join the fight, most of the young men were flown to Syria and then smuggled into Iraq by road, he said. The facilitators who met them in Syria often entertained them at nightclubs and bars during the months it sometimes took to get them to Iraq, Smith said.

But when they reached Iraq, those destined for suicide missions were sequestered in safe houses with copies of the Koran and few other amenities. They complained that their Iraqi handlers looked down on foreigners, did not give them enough food and treated them harshly, Smith said.

Some spoke of their disillusionment on discovering that most of the attacks carried out by insurgents were directed against the Iraqi people rather than U.S. forces.

"Again and again, we heard this reality bothered the recruits," Smith said. "They had not come here to kill Iraqi civilians. . . . They felt misled."

Eventually, most just wanted to go home, he said. But their handlers had their passports and their money, so they felt trapped.

All 48 fighters interviewed by U.S.-led forces were men, but a growing number of suicide attacks have been conducted by Iraqi women.

U.S. officers have suggested that the insurgents are using women because they attract less attention. The insurgents may also be having difficulties recruiting foreign volunteers.

About 120 foreign fighters were entering Iraq each month at the peak of the influx in mid-2007, but that figure has dropped to about 40 to 50, Smith said.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

A special correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report.

Iraqi feel-good stories prove elusive

Some American readers clamor for upbeat reports, but positive news is not easy to find.

By Garrett Therolf

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 16, 2008

BAGHDAD — Afew days after arriving in Iraq early this year, I followed Army Gen. David H. Petraeus on a walk through a marketplace on the capital's east side.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq didn't wear a helmet, and he gently scolded his security detail for encircling him. "I want to get close to people. They need to feel comfortable coming up to me," he told them.

Boys and girls recognized Petraeus from television, and they moved around him. He talked to them about soccer and their neighborhood, and he turned to me and said, "See, they say they feel safer now."

The outing, despite its made-for-TV quality, gave me a hopeful feeling. During a tour of Iraq a year earlier, I encountered mostly pessimism among the Iraqis I interviewed. A reader wrote me to say that I was an "Al Qaeda cheerleader" for a story that included quotes from U.S. soldiers troubled about the difficulties of fighting insurgents. Many more asked, "Isn't there some good news to report?"

The Petraeus appearance was an early indication that I would be able to show there was. Clearly, it seemed, I would be able to move more freely, to interview more candidly. At the time, I couldn't tell by how much, but Petraeus' media advisor suggested that I should be able to safely drive to many more sections of the city, interview people openly on the street and linger for an hour or so in homes and businesses.

Over the following weeks, I traveled across Baghdad with private security to write about a man who had allegedly been tortured by a provincial police chief and about errant U.S. military airstrikes that killed civilians. I also was embedded with the military to report on the lack of a legitimate process to resettle displaced Iraqis who returned to their homes and found squatters unwilling to leave.

I gave equal time and attention to reporting what might be called "good news" stories.

One line of inquiry concerned a bank branch in Amiriya, a Sunni Arab neighborhood on the west side of the capital that the American military said was one of Al Qaeda in Iraq's most important strongholds last year.

When I had visited the district in May, members of the Army unit responsible for the area said they were fighting desperately to open a branch of the state-owned bank. Many of the residents were former civil servants, and without the bank, they couldn't pick up their pensions.

Over the course of more than a year, the military paid to have the facility rehabilitated, sought to cajole the Finance Ministry into sending a shipment of cash and helped vet the bank's guards.

"The bank is probably one of the most important things in the neighborhood. Opening it told people the government still cares about you," Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl said when I called him shortly after he returned to the U.S.

Meanwhile, I learned of another possible story: about a Chinese restaurant that had been opened in Baghdad's Karada district by three laid-off steelworkers from China's Hubei province -- the first eatery here to be owned and operated by someone from outside the Middle East in years.

A local Times reporter, Saif Hameed, was so inspired by the willingness of the Chinese to come to Baghdad that he wrote them a welcome letter, which he got translated into Mandarin.

"The fact that you left your families behind and came here lifts my spirit and deserves the greatest respect," Hameed wrote. "I couldn't sleep yesterday, no matter how hard I tried, thinking about you and admiring you."

I visited them and they agreed to a future interview.

Within weeks, I heard back from the military regarding Amiriya. The bank was no longer something the military was willing to highlight.

"The unit operating in the same area as the bank doesn't categorize the bank operations as a top priority because they don't directly affect the good of the community of Amiriya," an Army spokesman, Maj. Mark Cheadle, wrote in an e-mail. "So, the bottom line is they would rather not sponsor an embed or visit for something they don't deal with on a regular basis." My request for a follow-up "embed" was denied.

I tried to arrange a visit that would not involve the military, but the neighborhood is surrounded by checkpoints that were judged too dangerous for us to pass. Without being accompanied by soldiers, there was no way for me to tell the story.

Cheadle proposed that I instead write about a videoconference that allowed schoolchildren in Baghdad and Texas to ask questions of each other. I declined.

A few days later, the restaurant employees said they had changed their minds about the interview. They were too scared to raise their profile through a news story. And a Chinese Embassy spokesman said his office had persuaded them to return home, although they were still operating in recent days. "The situation is far too dangerous for them to work here," the spokesman said.

Because of such fears and the inefficiency that pervades the capital, these "good news" stories evaporated before I could tell them. After only a month in Iraq, I once again left having filed mostly "bad news" stories.

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

A Jailhouse Conversion Splits Terrorists, and In-Laws

The Saturday Profile

By SETH MYDANS

JAKARTA, Indonesia

SENTENCED to death for a terrorist bombing, the brother-in-law of Nasir Abas writes to him from prison calling him an infidel and an enemy of Islam.

“I don’t reply,” Mr. Abas said. “I feel sympathy for him because he is under pressure in jail. He is not in a normal emotional state.”

But even in a normal emotional state, a convicted terrorist could be excused for being furious with Mr. Abas.

Once a high-ranking commander in the region’s deadliest terrorist group, Mr. Abas, 38, has been born again as an anti-terrorism evangelist. Working with the police, he visits his former comrades in jail in an effort to persuade them to cooperate and to mend their ways.

He appears at public forums and he has published a book called “Exposing Jemaah Islamiyah,” the terrorist group he once belonged to, which is linked to Al Qaeda and is behind most of the major attacks in the region in recent years.

His philosophical conversion is a boon to the police, who have taken what Indonesia’s counterterrorism chief, Asyaad Mbai, calls a “soft, humane approach” to detainees, treating them as wayward brothers rather than as criminals. They are given special privileges in prison, and in some cases their families receive financial support.

“It has the dual function of tainting some who accept and also winning members to a cooperative stance, so the police get more intel than before,” said Sidney Jones, senior adviser to the International Crisis Group and an expert on terrorism.

As part of this approach, Mr. Abas said he tried to convince detainees that their view of holy war is misguided, that the police are not evil and that cooperating with them is not a sin.

“I explain to them that it is wrong killing people with bombs,” Mr. Abas said. “This is not jihad in Islam. You are killing unarmed civilians. It is a shameful thing.”

He tried telling that to his brother-in-law, Ali Ghufron, when he was still able to visit him in prison, and they ended up shouting at each other, he said.

“He will not return my salaam,” Mr. Abas said, referring to a Muslim greeting. “He does not want to see me any more.”

His brother-in-law, known as Mukhlas, is one of three men scheduled to be executed soon for the bombings in 2002 of two nightclubs in Bali that killed more than 200 people.

“He says it’s a war,” Mr. Abas said. “America killed our civilians in Chechnya and Afghanistan and so on, so we are taking revenge on them.”

THEIR dispute reflects a rift that has caused Jemaah Islamiyah to move away from large-scale terrorist acts; there has not been a major attack since 2005, a second bomb attack in Bali.

“The broad picture is of a highly fractured movement which for now is weakened in capacity but in a constant state of flux, mutation and realignment,” said Ms. Jones, the terrorism expert.

For Mr. Abas, this schism plays itself out as a domestic dispute.

Family ties, including intermarriages, are a common way of cementing relationships within the terrorist movement. Fathers, sons, cousins and in-laws are connected by complex family networks.

But there has never been a rupture as public and personal as this clash between one of the group’s most aggressive killers and its highest-profile defector.

Caught in the middle is Mr. Abas’s sister Farida, who he said simply tries to duck as her husband and brother snap at each other.

“I say to my sister, ‘Mukhlas says I’m an infidel. Do you believe that?’ ” Mr. Abas said. “She says, ‘I don’t want to think about what you two have quarreled about. This is a problem between you and it is not my problem.’ ”

During a long sushi dinner recently at a downtown restaurant, his switch from terrorist to counterterrorist remained a bit of a mystery — a combination perhaps of impulse, self-interest and rationalization.

One day, as he tells the story, he was charging at his police captors, hoping to die for his cause; the next morning he was theirs, informing on his comrades and advising on tactics to combat them. He insists that he was not mistreated or coerced.

It all started, he said, because he hated to do his high school homework. Born in Singapore and raised in Malaysia in a working-class family, he was delighted to discover a Muslim boarding school where the curriculum mostly involved the reading of the Koran.

One thing led to another, as it often did in those days, and he soon felt a calling to fight for his fellow Muslims in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. There, at a Qaeda training camp, he discovered a knack for weaponry, and quickly became an instructor.

After six years there, he helped establish a terrorist training camp in the southern Philippines, then rose to command one of four territorial divisions of Jemaah Islamiyah. Some of the detainees he visits now are his former subordinates, he said.

By the time he was arrested in Indonesia in 2003, he said, he had already turned against the killing of civilians, calling it bad tactics and bad religion.

When he talks with detainees, he said, it is the story of his detention and overnight conversion that interests them the most. He presents it as a parable of pragmatism, and his listeners are welcome to take him at his word.

THROUGHOUT his night of interrogation he kept silent, Mr. Abas said he tells them, offering nothing but a prayer to God. But throughout, he said, he was thinking.

“I told myself, you must accept the reality that you got arrested,” he said. “God did not let me die, so there is something God wants me to do.”

By morning, he said, he was ready. He said a prayer and began to talk, offering the police a flood of detail about the structure and activities of Jemaah Islamiyah.

Nothing he did was inconsistent, he insists; simply an adaptation to circumstances.

“My change was that I agreed to continue my same mission together with the police,” he said. “My mission is to stop the crimes, stop the violence, stop the deviants. Bombing is an evil deed, and my obligation is to stop evil deeds.”

From this perspective, no one deserves punishment more than his brother-in-law, a mastermind of the deadliest terrorist act the region has seen.

But with his execution, Mr. Abas’s sister will become a widow and her children will lose their father. As if in a gesture of penance for the rift, Mr. Abas seems almost obsessive in describing his brother-in-law as a wonderful husband.

“Mukhlas stayed in the house,” he said. “He cooked. He washed clothes. He taught the children. He cleaned the home. He read books to the family. He never hurt the children. He never raised his voice. That is how good a husband he was.

“Not like me,” Mr. Abas said. “I’m not a good husband. I am away from my family. I never wash my family’s shirts and I never cook. Thank God my wife still loves me.”

Judge sides with Khadr defence team

OMAR EL AKKAD

Globe and Mail Update

March 14, 2008 at 3:49 PM EDT

A U.S. military judge has sided with Omar Khadr's defence team and ordered that a senior U.S. officer be deposed before Mr. Khadr's trial begins.

In a ruling issued Friday, Army Colonel Peter Brownback sided with the defence on five motions, granting Mr. Khadr's lawyers more access to a variety of information the prosecution had until now refused to hand over.

One of the most important rulings regarded a U.S. officer named "Lieutenant Colonel W.," who wrote a report about the 2001 Afghanistan firefight where Mr. Khadr is alleged to have killed a U.S. soldier. In a copy of the report dated the day after the firefight, the Lt.-Col. wrote that the U.S. soldier's attacker was subsequently killed by other soldiers.

In an almost identical copy of the report written several months later, that reference is altered to say that the U.S. soldier's attacker was only "engaged" by other soldiers, implying the attacker — alleged to be a then-15-year-old Mr. Khadr — lived.

Because of the discrepancy in the two reports, Mr. Khadr's defence team asked for access to the Lt.-Col. so he could be questioned before the trial begins. Over the objections of the prosecution, Judge Brownback agreed with the defence, saying the taking of testimony "is in the interests of justice."

The judge also ruled that the prosecution must provide to the defence a list of all personnel who interrogated Mr. Khadr. If the defence wishes to interview any of those personnel, the judge ruled, the prosecution must provide a phone number and time for such an interview.

The prosecution was also ordered to make available to the defence any notes taken by interrogators and other government agents during all interrogations of Mr. Khadr dating back to 27 July, 2002 — the day of the Afghanistan firefight during which Mr. Khadr was captured.

Despite the string of victories, Mr. Khadr's defence team is complaining that the prosecution is stalling the release of certain documents to the public. Friday's judge's decisions came as a result of several motions filed by the defence. However, those motions, which contain more details about certain allegations and evidence, have not yet been made public. Mr. Khadr's lawyers argue that's because the prosecution is hoping to release the documents after the current bout of media attention to the case dies down.

Lawyers were set to leave Guantanamo Bay on Friday afternoon, and are not officially due back until May. However it is expected that the two sides will be back in court at Guantanamo Bay arguing over more discovery motions next month.

Mr. Khadr faces several charges before a U.S. military commission here. The most serious of the charges is murder. If convicted, the 21-year-old could face life in prison.

Following the revelation that a U.S. military report on the firefight was altered, Mr. Khadr's case was raised in Question Period in Ottawa Friday morning. In response, the Conservative government repeated the same position they have previously stated on the case: the charged against Mr. Khadr are very serious and the government has received assurances he is being treated humanely.

C.I.A. Secretly Held Qaeda Suspect, Officials Say

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday.

The suspect, Muhammad Rahim, is the first Qaeda prisoner in nearly a year who intelligence officials have acknowledged has been in C.I.A. detention. The C.I.A. emptied its secret prisons in the fall of 2006, when it moved 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but made clear that the facilities could be used in the future to house high-level terrorism suspects.

Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he signed an executive order that formally reiterated the C.I.A.’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon.

Mr. Bush used his veto power last weekend to block legislation that would have prohibited the agency from using the techniques, and this week the House of Representatives failed to override the veto.

Military and intelligence officials said that Mr. Rahim was transferred earlier this week to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. In a message to agency employees on Friday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Rahim had been put into the C.I.A. program because of “his past and the continuing threat he presented to American interests.”

Intelligence officials would not say whether the C.I.A. had used any of what it calls an approved list of “enhanced” interrogation techniques against Mr. Rahim during his months in secret detention.

“This detention, like others, was conducted in accordance with U.S. law,” said Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman. He declined to say whether the C.I.A. currently had custody of any other prisoners.

Government officials described Mr. Rahim, an Afghan who has fought battles for two decades, as a Qaeda planner and facilitator who at times in recent years had been a translator for Osama bin Laden.

They said he was captured and detained by local forces last summer in a country they would not name before being transferred to C.I.A. custody. Pakistani newspapers reported last summer that Pakistani operatives arrested Mr. Rahim in Lahore in August.

Before Mr. Rahim, the last prisoner the C.I.A. acknowledged it had detained was Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd held by the agency for six months before being transferred to Guantánamo last April.

In his message to C.I.A. employees on Friday, General Hayden called Mr. Rahim a “tough, seasoned jihadist” with “high-level contacts” who at times had served as a personal translator for Mr. bin Laden. The message said that in 2001, Mr. Rahim helped prepare the Afghan cave complex of Tora Bora as a hideout for Qaeda fighters fleeing the American-led offensive.

According to an American counterterrorism official, Mr. Rahim is in his 40s and is a native of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, a rugged mountain territory that has long been a hive of jihadi activity.

The counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Rahim had attended radical madrasas, or religious schools, in Pakistan.

The Bush administration last month formally charged six Qaeda operatives said to have been involved in plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. Five of the six detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, had been in C.I.A. custody until September 2006, when they were among the 14 prisoners moved to Guantánamo.

Military prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty against the six men, government officials have said. During a speech on Friday in London, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said he hoped that the six men would not receive the death penalty. If they were to be executed, he said, “they would see themselves as martyrs.”

Also on Friday, a lawyer representing Majid Khan, who had spent more than three years in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons, briefed Senate Intelligence Committee staff members on her client’s description of his treatment there as torture. The lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the first lawyer to speak to Congress after meeting with a prisoner who was in the C.I.A. program.

The 90-minute meeting was closed, and Ms. Gutierrez said that she could not reveal what Mr. Khan had said about his treatment because the government declared prisoners’ statements to be classified.

Ms. Gutierrez said her testimony was aimed at giving Congress independent information on the C.I.A. program, which she said “is operating criminally, shamefully and dangerously.” C.I.A. officials say all of the agency’s interrogation techniques were lawful at the time they were used.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is conducting an extensive review of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and so far it has identified nearly 50 tapes, including one that showed what a military spokesman described as the forcible gagging of a terrorism suspect.

The Pentagon review was begun in late January after the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that it had destroyed its own videotapes of harsh interrogations conducted by C.I.A. officers, an action that is now the subject of criminal and Congressional investigations.

The review was intended in part to establish clearer rules for any videotaping of interrogations, Defense officials said. But they acknowledged that it had been complicated by inconsistent taping practices in the past, as well as uncertain policies for when tapes could be destroyed or must be preserved.

The officials said it appeared that only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of interrogations worldwide since 2001 had been recorded.

The officials said the nearly 50 tapes they identified documented interrogations of two terrorism suspects, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri, and were made at a Navy detention site in Charleston, S.C., where the two men have been held.

The initial findings of the Pentagon review represent the first official acknowledgment that military interrogators had videotaped some sessions with detainees and could widen the controversy over the treatment of prisoners in American custody. A Pentagon spokesman, Geoff Morrell, cautioned that the review was incomplete, and a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Don Black, said that interrogation videotapes had been routinely destroyed if they were judged to have no continuing value.

The only tape the officials described is of Mr. Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was arrested in December 2001 while in college in Illinois and moved five years ago to the jail after being designated an “enemy combatant.” Government officials say they believe he was an operative for Al Qaeda who was plotting attacks.

Two government officials said that the tape showed Mr. Marri being manhandled by his interrogators, but did not show waterboarding or any other treatment approaching what they believed could be classified as torture. According to one Defense Department official, the interrogators dispensing the rough treatment on the tape were F.B.I. agents.

An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment, citing a continuing review of detention practices that is being carried out by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.

Mr. Black, the spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said its director, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, had reviewed the tape and was satisfied that Mr. Marri’s treatment was acceptable.

He said that Mr. Marri was chanting loudly, disrupting his interrogation, and that interrogators used force to put duct tape on his mouth, while Mr. Marri resisted. Mr. Black said most of the videos showing Mr. Marri’s interrogations had been destroyed. The government has never charged Mr. Marri, but because of his designation as an enemy combatant, the Pentagon is allowed to hold him indefinitely.

The scale of detention and interrogation by the military, with tens of thousands of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, dwarfs that of the C.I.A., which has held fewer than 100 high-level Qaeda suspects. The C.I.A. has acknowledged videotaping only two terrorism suspects, in 2002, and military officials said that the review, ordered in late January by James R. Clapper, the Pentagon’s senior intelligence official, had similarly found that only a small number of detainee interrogations had been videotaped.

“This is not a widespread practice,” said Mr. Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. He said that it was up to individual military commanders whether to tape interrogations and that the videotapes were often used as the basis of written intelligence reports. In addition to the existing interrogation videotapes, there are existing recordings that show interactions between military guards and terrorism suspects, including detainees’ forcible removal from cells at Guantánamo, military officials said.

Images of rough treatment of detainees is a delicate subject for the Pentagon. Soldiers’ snapshots of the abusive treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq set off a firestorm and led to prison terms for a number of military personnel.

Congress imposed a ban in 2005 on all harsh interrogation methods by the military but left a loophole for the C.I.A. Last month, Congress voted to extend the ban to the C.I.A., but President Bush vetoed the bill.

The C.I.A. acknowledged in December that in 2005 it had destroyed the only interrogation videotapes that its officers had made; the tapes showed two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al- Rahim al-Nashiri.

Lawyers for Mr. Marri, who have challenged his imprisonment in court, sought access to any tapes or other records of his interrogations, but in 2006 a federal judge in South Carolina said the government did not have to produce any tapes. That decision is being appealed.

Jonathan Hafetz, one of the lawyers, said Mr. Marri had heard guards describe “a cabinet full of tapes” showing his interrogations, but had never had independent confirmation that such tapes existed. Mr. Marri has alleged that earlier in his imprisonment he was deprived of sleep, isolated and exposed to prolonged cold.

Mr. Hafetz said he planned to file papers in court on Thursday describing the psychological harm done to Mr. Marri. “Locking someone up for five years without charges is a disgrace and a betrayal of American and constitutional values,” he said.

The difficulties in the Pentagon’s review can be glimpsed in a seven-page court filing last month by Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the military commander at Guantánamo Bay.

Admiral Buzby’s report describes an array of digital video recorders used to capture “activities” — it does not specify whether interrogations are included — in at least four subcamps at Guantánamo. But the systems automatically recorded over older material when they reached capacity, he wrote.

In some cases, Admiral Buzby wrote, “We suspect that the recording devices contain recorded data but we are unable technologically to confirm whether data remains.”

Afghanistan: Al-Qaeda Bloggers' Sparring With Taliban Could Signal Key Differences

By Ron Synovitz

An Internet-fueled squabble between Taliban leaders and influential Al-Qaeda sympathizers over nonviolent tactics and foreign influence in Afghanistan hints at deep disagreements that could alter counterinsurgency efforts in that country.

Islamic extremists who regularly post messages to a pro-Al-Qaeda website in Egypt are accusing Afghanistan's Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad. Prominent Taliban have responded by lashing back with criticism of their own.

The development suggests a rift is emerging between the Taliban leadership and religious extremists in the Arab world -- including the Al-Qaeda network that the Taliban had hosted in Afghanistan while it planned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Such a break could affect Afghan government efforts to convince Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and peacefully resolve their differences with officials, which could in turn influence whether non-Afghan Al-Qaeda fighters continue to be welcomed among the Taliban.

Internet criticisms of the Taliban follow a February statement from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar announcing that his movement wants to maintain positive and "legitimate" relations with countries neighboring Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar, who heads a Taliban leadership council that was purportedly formed in 2003, also has said that the Taliban is exploring the possibility of holding peace negotiations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

"We want to have legitimate relations with all countries of the world," Mullah Omar's statement said. "We are not a threat to anyone. America believes that the Taliban is a threat to the whole world. And with this propaganda, America wants to use all other countries to advance their own interests."

Pro-Al-Qaeda bloggers who were angered by Mullah Omar's statement were further outraged in early March when the Taliban expressed solidarity with Iran by condemning the latest round of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities.

'Nationalist Trend'

Anyone with a password can post messages to the Al-Qaeda linked website. But some of the harshest remarks about the Taliban leadership have come from writers who are labeled as among the most influential on the website.

One of those bloggers -- who calls himself "Miskeen" or "The Wretched" -- responded to the Taliban declaration on Iran by writing: "This is the worst statement I have ever read.... [T]he disaster of defending the [Iranian] regime is on par with the Crusaders in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Mullah Salam Zaief has been a prominent spokesman for the Taliban since the 2001 ouster"Miskeen" also wrote that a "nationalist trend" appears to be penetrating the Taliban. Other pro Al-Qaeda bloggers have called for Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri to censure the Taliban over their recent statements.

But the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan -- Mullah Salam Zaief -- tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that the bloggers have no understanding of the topic.

"Somebody who is speaking from Egypt really doesn't have knowledge of the exact situation on the ground in Afghanistan," Zaief says. "He doesn't even convey the policies of the whole organization [of Al-Qaeda]."

"The conflict in Afghanistan doesn't mean [the Taliban] has to confront the world," Zaief continues. "Afghans are very tired of war. They want their homeland. They want peace in their country. They want independence. Whether they are Taliban or other Afghans, I don't think either wants to confront the entire international community. The Taliban doesn't want to rule the world."

A Path To Talks?

Independent analysts link the Taliban's quest for international legitimacy to the possibility of future negotiations with Karzai's government.

Karzai said in September that he was ready to negotiate with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar himself, in order to put an end to the Afghan insurgency. In December, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood said he would support reconciliation talks -- with some conditions.

One of the main sticking points for negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban appears to be the fate of Al-Qaeda. Formal negotiations could lead to the expulsion of Al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan if they did not commit themselves to supporting Karzai's government.

When asked what the Taliban thinks about Al-Qaeda extremists trying to dictate Taliban policies in Afghanistan, Zaief said foreign extremists are more interested in their own benefit than what is good for Afghans.

"I think every Afghan now has the experience that with intolerance toward each other -- if people do not live in peace and harmony with each other -- the bloodshed and devastation will continue for a long time," Zaief said. "Nobody has the right to ignore the importance of stability in Afghanistan. They should at least not be making such irresponsible comments. [The Al-Qaeda bloggers] were raising the question of the foreign-troop presence in Afghanistan. But now, I think Afghans have to tolerate the presence of foreign troops in the country because they have no other option."

Although Zaief lives in Kabul and his location is known by Karzai's government, he is still considered a prominent member of the Taliban whose views reflect those of the Taliban leadership. But his remarks about the need for Afghans to tolerate the presence of foreign troops were not supported by a Taliban statement on the issue released on March 11.

That statement says the Taliban's fight is aimed only at driving U.S.-led coalition forces from Afghanistan. It calls on U.S. allies to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. It also calls on Afghanistan's former mujahedin factions to help the Taliban drive U.S. troops from the country.

Leaders of some of those mujahedin factions helped U.S. forces drive the Taliban regime from Kabul in late 2001 and now hold positions within Karzai's cabinet or are prominent members of the Afghan parliament.

RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report from Kabul and Prague

Iraq Attacks Lower, but Steady, New Figures Show

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD — Newly declassified statistics on the frequency of insurgent attacks in Iraq suggest that after major security gains last fall in the wake of an American troop increase, the conflict has drifted into a stalemate, with levels of violence remaining stubbornly constant from November 2007 through early 2008.

The new figures, presented Tuesday at a Senate hearing in Washington by David M. Walker, the top official at the Government Accountability Office, emerged a day after eight American soldiers were killed in bomb attacks, five in downtown Baghdad and three in Diyala Province. And the trend appeared to continue Tuesday, as bombings and small-arms attacks led to casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces in or near at least eight cities.

In the deadliest of those attacks, a roadside bomb between the southern cities of Nasiriya and Basra struck a bus full of Iraqi civilians, killing at least 16 and wounding 22, Iraqi police officials said. But Iraqi security forces also reported deadly attacks in Hilla, Karbala, Baquba, Mosul, Kut, Baghdad and Dulia, just north of the capital.

In a report presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr. Walker, the comptroller general, acknowledged that the insurgent attacks tallied by the American military had decreased to an average of about 60 a day in January, in the latest available count, from about 180 a day in June 2007.

But that lower number, which is roughly equivalent to the levels of violence in the spring of 2005, has remained essentially unchanged since the last significant decrease between October and November.

“While security has improved in Iraq, a permissive security environment has yet to be achieved,” Mr. Walker wrote, using a term meaning an environment safe for ordinary business and social activity.

Mr. Walker and two other federal officials also testified about concerns over corruption in contracting and about problems tracking arms shipments to Iraqi and American forces.

American commanders in Iraq have been warning for months that the security gains were far from irreversible, particularly since progress in Iraqi political reconciliation, which would presumably address the tensions underlying the violence, has been halting.

Smaller security improvements in the past have been followed by surges in violence. Modest gains in security near the end of 2005, for example, were obliterated a few months later when the bombing of a sacred mosque in Samarra set off nearly a year of sectarian killings.

Based on reports from February, violence may already be increasing. An independent tally by The Associated Press recorded a jump last month in the average number of Iraqis killed per day compared with January’s figures.

The accountability office figures use a different measure, the number of attacks recorded against security forces and Iraqi civilians.

Daily reports of violence are, by their nature, grainy and uncertain measures of trends in Iraq, but following the large American death toll the day before, the attacks on Tuesday were strikingly widespread.

A health directorate official in Kut said clashes between the police and the Mahdi Army, the dominant Shiite militia, left 14 people dead and 47 wounded. In Dulia, a police official said, a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint, killing five and wounding 30.

And in Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a neighborhood council meeting, killing one council member and wounding eight others, while gunmen in another part of the city attacked a prison for juveniles, wounding three guards and freeing three inmates, an Interior Ministry official said.

The Senate hearing also dealt with findings by both the accountability office and an independent federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, that thousands of pistols, automatic rifles and other equipment delivered to Iraq cannot be accounted for.

Under questioning by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the Defense Department’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Claude M. Kicklighter, said a system was in place to prevent “a major leakage” of weapons to insurgents or the black market. He said weapons of Iraqi forces and the American-led coalition were now accounted for by serial number, down to the company level.

“That’s not awfully comforting,” Mr. Leahy said. “I mean, I’m not trying to quibble words here, but obviously the first sets of weapons came out with really no adequate way of checking them.”

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Ramadi, Kut, Karbala, Basra, Diyala and Salahuddin.