Petraeus: Iran Trying to Bolster Influence in Iraq

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; 1:10 PM

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, accused Iran today of seeking to "create a Hezbollah-like force" in Iraq to exert Tehran's influence there, but denied that he was preparing the ground for a U.S. attack on Iran.

In a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington after two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, defended their assessments of incremental progress in Iraq and again warned that the way forward will be difficult.

"It will be a long, hard grind," Crocker said. "Right now, I think that grind is making progress."

Asked whether his testimony about Iran could be viewed as part of a campaign to build toward an attack, Petraeus said: "I'm not blaming Iran for all that's gone wrong in Iraq." But he said Iran has contributed to sophisticated attacks in Iraq that otherwise would not be possible, including strikes with armor-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" and 240mm rockets.

"The evidence is very, very clear," Petraeus said. He cited documents discovered during the capture in March of Qais Khazali, a Shiite Muslim militant with ties to the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the arrest of a deputy commander of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite group supported by Iran. Petraeus said the evidence links Iran to an attack in Karbala in January that resulted in the deaths of five U.S. soldiers.

Under interrogation, Khazali was asked if he could have carried out that attack without Iranian support, Petraeus said in the news conference. "He literally throws up his hands and laughs and says, 'Of course not,' " the general said.

Khazali and other captives have told U.S. investigators about funding, training, weapons and ammunition they had received from Iran, he said.

A videotape of the Khazali interrogation was shown to Iraqi leaders, "several of whom then went to Iran and made their case, quite forcefully, about their concern of Iranian involvement," Petraeus said.

In response to another question, Petraeus said he and Crocker agree that "you can't win in Iraq . . . just in Iraq." Rather, success requires "greater involvement with respect to some of the neighboring countries, some of the source countries for foreign fighters," he said. "And it certainly involves Iran."

He said Iraqi leaders "have developed much greater concern about Iran's activities, about the activities of the Quds Force with respect to the militia extremists that, in many respects, appear to be trying to create a Hezbollah-like force that they could use to gain influence in Iraq."

Petraeus said that he has the authority he needs to conduct operations inside Iraq and that his concern about Iran "doesn't mean that it's something for which I should have the authority to pursue, any more than we should have that with respect to Syria or elsewhere."

In written testimony submitted to Congress, Petraeus said U.S. forces had captured "the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps' Quds Force." He also cited the recent discovery of Iranian-backed forces called the "Special Groups" in Iraq.

"These elements have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran, and indiscriminately rocketed civilians in the International Zone and elsewhere," Petraeus testified.

"It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq."

In a separate development, U.S. officials said Washington would press for new, tougher U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program when diplomats from six nations meet next week. The gathering of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, is set for Sept. 21 in Washington. Two participants -- Russia and China -- have been reluctant to go along with tougher sanctions than those adopted in two Security Council resolutions, and contentious negotiations are expected.

During today's news conference, Petraeus said al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq has been driven from some former strongholds but continues to pose a major threat.

"We believe that al-Qaeda-Iraq is off balance," he said, although it "certainly remains very dangerous." He said he calls the group "the wolf closest to the sled" because it "has carried out the most horrific attacks in Iraq," notably those that have sparked the greatest "ethno-sectarian violence."

The general said al-Qaeda in Iraq now is "much more on the run than they have been at any time that I can recall since they really established themselves in Iraq," having been largely driven out of Anbar province and Baqubah. He indicated that the group still operates in Diyala province and several Baghdad neighborhoods and is trying to open "new fronts" in northern Iraq.

Asked if he expects "tens of thousands" of U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for at least the next five years, Petraeus said, "I wouldn't hazard a guess on that. It's very, very difficult to project out much farther beyond the horizon at this point in time, even just to mid-July of next year."

According to recommendations Petraeus made public Monday, that is when about 30,000 troops should be withdrawn, bringing the U.S. military presence down to about 130,000 -- the level before a "surge" of reinforcements ordered earlier this year by President Bush.

Crocker said the two days of congressional testimony showed that there are "deep divisions" and "a lot of frustration" among lawmakers--feelings he said are shared by U.S. officials serving in Iraq. But he said he came away "somewhat encouraged" that amid the frustration, lawmakers showed "willingness to listen to our explanations" and asked a number of "thoughtful and probing questions."

As long as Iraq is moving on an "upward" trajectory, Crocker said, "we need to demonstrate some strategic patience, some resolve and commitment, because this will be a long process. There are no shortcuts. There is no switch to flip."

Persistent Censorship In China Produces Art of Compromise

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 9, 2007; A09

BEIJING -- Yan Lianke, one of China's most popular contemporary novelists, is busy composing a new book, using his trusty pen to scratch out line after line of Chinese characters for what promises to be another biting satire of life under the Communist Party.

But not too biting.

The novel will be a patently absurd story about a well-meaning but weak professor, Yan said, crafted as a fantasy and so clearly fictitious that he hopes it will escape the censor's veto. Just in case, Yan said with a twinkle, he is writing two versions at once, watering down the controversial sections for Chinese readers -- and party watchdogs -- while keeping the full flavor of his provocative imagination for editions to be published abroad, outside the censor's grasp.

"Of course, this will affect the quality of the book," he acknowledged in an interview, smiling softly as if sharing a dark family secret.

Yan's little compromise illustrates one of the most tragic aspects of the Communist Party censorship that is imposed on journalism and art in China. In many ways, the country's 1.3 billion people are being deprived of the full bloom of their culture, with thousands of artists like Yan forced to calculate how much they can get away with rather than cutting loose with their talent unfettered.

China has come a long way from the days of Mao Zedong, when singing the praises of socialism was virtually the only form of art allowed by the party. But the principle has remained the same. The party still has a giant bureaucracy with broad authority to control what Chinese hear, see and read. After nearly 30 years of reforms set in motion by Deng Xiaoping, censorship is arguably the least changed aspect of the party's rule.

As a result, writers and other artists are forced to navigate between what they want to say and what the party might allow -- and to consider how high the cost would be if the censors were to hand down a ban. "This is a really big headache," Yan said, speaking in the straightforward language of his native Henan province and his peasant origins.

Yan, who turns 49 next month, is no stranger to China's censors. His first novel, "Xia Riluo," was banned in 1994 because of official outrage over its depiction of two army heroes who go bad. To make matters worse, Yan was in the employ of the People's Liberation Army at the time, assigned to write propaganda. He was kicked out a decade later when he published "Enjoyment," the rollicking story of local Chinese officials who try to buy Lenin's corpse from Russia to attract tourists to their backwater town.

Yan's most notorious run-in with the censors came in 2005, when a literary magazine published his "Serve the People," a novella in which an army officer's wife has an affair with a young recruit and finds that destroying her absent husband's Mao icons and shredding his Little Red Book enhances her sexual desire.

Copies of the magazine sold briskly. But when officials in the party's Central Propaganda Department realized why, they issued an emergency order recalling 30,000 copies already out and banning distribution of any more.

Despite the ban and condemnation -- outraged officials called the story a slander against the People's Liberation Army -- the book quickly caught the attention of China's literature lovers. It was translated and published abroad and is still widely read by Chinese young people adept at accessing forbidden overseas Web sites.

Yan's most recent clash with officialdom displayed some of the most insidious aspects of China's censorship, which includes covering up public health problems such as AIDS and SARS in the name of maintaining a good image of the country. Yan said he got interested in the AIDS epidemic in 1996 through a friend. He got in touch with Gao Yaojie, a bold doctor who brought an outbreak in Henan to public attention and who filled in Yan on how blood sales had resulted in wholesale contamination of villages.

In 2004, after censorship of health threats had begun to loosen following the SARS epidemic, Yan posed as an AIDS researcher's assistant and returned to Henan to trace what had happened. A local party official let him do the research, he said, but made him pledge not to write about his findings, saying the truth would destroy the economy if it got out.

"At first, I had hoped to do a nonfiction book about the situation in Henan, and then maybe a novel," Yan recalled. "But considering the ban on 'Serve the People' in 2004, I thought it would be hard to get the censors to approve a nonfiction book. So I finally decided to write a novel first."

"The Dream of Ding Village" was finished in August 2005 and published in early 2006. In the fictional world of Ding Village, peasants are encouraged to give so much blood, and the government makes so much money off the sales, that a pipeline is built to ship the blood to market as if it were oil.

The condemnation was clear. But the satire had already been toned down on orders from the publishing house, Yan said, and the fantasy setting was designed to round off the edges. "I didn't worry about it very much," he said. "It was not journalism, right? That's why I wrote it as fiction."

But party censors decided otherwise. They intervened with the publisher after about 100,000 books had been printed, 80,000 of which had been distributed to bookstores. Ren Chun, a spokeswoman for Shanghai Wenyi Publishing Co., wrote a letter to Chinese media that said, "We got orders from the upper level saying the book cannot be published, cannot be sold and cannot be advertised." In the same letter, she said newspapers should abstain from writing about the ban because AIDS is "a very sensitive topic" in China.

Yan said he was never contacted by the censors and has no idea where the ban originated or why. He learned about the censors' intervention only when payments stopped coming from the publishing house, he said. That is standard practice, he noted, because the censors' activities are themselves censored.

For a publisher that wants to stay in business, or an editor who wants to keep his job, this consideration is important. Jia Zongpei, chief editor of Shanghai Wenyi Publishing Co., hung up on a reporter asking what "upper level" told him to stop publishing the book. "I can't tell you anything about it," he said. "Please understand me."

Xu Naiqing, director of book publication at the Shanghai Propaganda Department's press and publishing bureau, said his office did not impose the ban, even though the publishing firm is headquartered in Shanghai. Officials at the General Administration of Press and Publication, part of the party's Central Propaganda Department in Beijing, said they had no idea where the ban came from. They suggested faxing a question; one was faxed, but there was no response.

Yan, by then experienced in book bans, realized he would have to settle for whatever had been earned on copies sold before the ban. But for him, an important point was a contractual provision obliging his publishing firm to give the equivalent of $6,500 to the real-life village behind the story for treatment of its AIDS patients.

The company refused, arguing that it had suffered a large financial loss. Yan, who had pledged to donate an equal amount from his earnings, lodged several entreaties. When they were ignored, he said, he hired a lawyer and filed suit. At the end of a long arbitration, the suit was settled in April with payment of about $50,000 to Yan, based on copies sold before the censor stepped in, but no donation to the village.

Yan himself had assumed that responsibility even before the settlement. He turned over the equivalent of $13,000 to the village in January, just before Chinese New Year, he said, so people there would have enough money for a meal of dumplings, as demanded by tradition.

Despite his experience, Yan said, he thinks the writer's life is improving in China and he has no intention of emigrating. When he got into trouble for his first novel 13 years ago, he recalled, propaganda officials forced him to write self-criticisms for six months.

"But I didn't have to write any for 'The Dream of Ding Village,' and this is progress," he said with a half-smile that betrayed his appreciation of the irony. "I believe that one day in the future, writers will be able to publish anything they write about China."