President Obama has asked the Pentagon's top generals to provide him with more options for troop levels in Afghanistan, two US officials said late Friday, with one adding that some of the alternatives would allow Obama to send fewer new troops than the roughly 40,000 requested by his top commander. Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on Friday, holding a 90-minute discussion that centered on the strain on the force after eight years of war in two countries. The meeting - the first of its kind with the chiefs of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, who were not part of the president's war council meetings on Afghanistan in recent weeks - prompted Obama to request another such meeting before he announces a decision on sending additional troops, the officials said.
AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN
Karzai Rival Says He Is Withdrawing From Runoff - Dexter Filkens and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times. Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, announced on Sunday that he would withdraw from the Nov. 7 Afghan runoff election, effectively handing a new term to Mr. Karzai but potentially damaging the government’s credibility. Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Abdullah said that the Afghan people should not accept the results of an election run by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, which has been accused of favoring Mr. Karzai. “I will not participate in the Nov. 7 election,” Mr. Abdullah said, because a “transparent election is not possible.” Mr. Abdullah said that Mr. Karzai’s government had not been legitimate since May, when the initial round of balloting was originally to have taken place. Before Mr. Abdullah’s announcement, American and other Western diplomats said they were worried that a defiant statement by Mr. Abdullah could lead to violence and undermine Mr. Karzai’s legitimacy, and they were urging him to bow out gracefully. Obama administration officials have scrambled for weeks to end the deadlock, trying to ensure a smooth government transition as President Obama weighs whether to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan. People close to Mr. Abdullah said that his representative met with Mr. Karzai on Saturday but that they were unable to make any progress on the issue that brought the two campaigns to loggerheads: Mr. Abdullah’s demands that the Afghan election system be overhauled to head off more fraud in the second round. After the first round of voting, a United Nations-backed panel threw out nearly a million of Mr. Karzai’s ballots - one-third of his total - on the ground that they were fake.
Afghan Challenger Drops Out of Election - Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez, Associated Press. President Hamid Karzai's challenger withdrew Sunday from next weekend's runoff election, effectively handing the incumbent a victory but raising doubts about the credibility of the government at a time when the US is seeking an effective partner in the war against the Taliban. Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he made his decision after Karzai turned down his demands for changes in the Independent Election Commission and other measures that he said would prevent massive fraud, which marred the first round balloting Aug. 20. Abdullah stopped short of calling for an electoral boycott and urged his followers "not to go to the streets, not to demonstrate." Azizullah Lodin, the head of the Karzai-appointed commission, said he would have to confer with constitutional lawyers before deciding later Sunday whether the runoff would proceed without Abdullah. Kai Eide, the top UN official in Afghanistan, said in a statement that the next step is to "bring this electoral process to a conclusion in a legal and timely manner." The statement did not address whether the runoff should go forward.
Afghan Challenger Drops Out of Runoff - Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times. President Hamid Karzai's only challenger today pulled out of this week's election runoff, saying the incumbent turned down his demand for changes to prevent the rampant fraud that marred the first round of voting in August. The withdrawal of Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah threw into disarray a vote that US officials and their allies had hoped would produce a credible partner in the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. Azizullah Lodin, head of the government-appointed Independent Election Commission, said the panel would have to consult lawyers before deciding whether to proceed with Saturday's vote with just one candidate. UN Special Representative Kai Eide said in a statement that the next step was to "bring this electoral process to a conclusion in a legal and timely manner." The statement did not address how this should be done. Some US and other officials have questioned the rationale of proceeding with a poll whose outcome is known, given the danger to voters and security personnel. Taliban insurgents have vowed to disrupt balloting. Members of Karzai's campaign said they believed the vote should go ahead but would be guided by the election panel. Moyin Marastial, a legislator and advisor to Karzai's camp, said Abdullah's decision was "disappointing for the people of Afghanistan."
As Kabul Awaits Runoff, 'Everything Has Stopped' - Pamela Constable, Washington Post. Traffic in Afghanistan's congested capital is worse than ever this month, with carloads of religious pilgrims arriving from the provinces to take flights to Saudi Arabia for hajj, and wedding parties scheduled back-to-back in ornate halls to beat the approaching winter weather. But beyond family and religious obligations, this is a capital on hold. Economic activities, from office-building projects to sidewalk shoeshines, are being held hostage to a messy and uncertain presidential election process that has dragged on since early August. An electoral runoff has been scheduled for Nov. 7, but the crisis may deepen because the major challenger to President Hamid Karzai is threatening to pull out of the race on Sunday. A solution can't come too soon for Abdul Manan, 38. He sells PVC pipe for residential and commercial construction - or used to sell it before his business crashed to a halt two months ago. "Everything has stopped -- the investment from the donor countries, which affects government and private projects, which affects the big contractors and the small suppliers like me," Manan said as he watched TV in his warehouse, surrounded by piles of dusty white pipe. "Everyone says they are waiting to see what happens in the elections."
Qaeda Had Role in Attack on UN Staff, Official Says - Dexter Filkens, New York Times. The deadly suicide attack at a United Nations guesthouse here last week was a joint operation directed by an Afghan warlord based in the tribal areas of Pakistan and by an operative of Al Qaeda, the Afghan intelligence director said Saturday. The attack was carried out by three men at dawn on Wednesday. Dressed as Afghan police officers, they went over the walls around the guesthouse and began shooting and attacking with grenades. They killed eight people, five of them foreigners who worked for the United Nations. The attackers wore suicide belts, but only one of them managed to detonate his explosives. The other two were shot and killed. The attack could have been much more deadly, but United Nations guards and the Afghan police kept the attackers away from the other United Nations workers inside, security officials said. The intelligence official, Amrullah Saleh, said at a news conference here that six Afghan suspects had been arrested, including an imam who had provided a hideaway for the attackers. He said the suspects had said that the three suicide attackers were all from the Swat Valley in Pakistan, a region under Taliban control earlier this year.
Pakistanis Laud Clinton's Candor - Raza Khan, Washington Times. Pakistani political analysts as well as students praised Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for speaking the "truth" during her visit last week, but also warned that Washington will have to match her words with action in order to crush al Qaeda- and Taliban-led terrorism. A day after Mrs. Clinton ended her three-day visit, during which she suggested that the Pakistani government was not doing enough to capture al Qaeda leaders, Pakistan's prime minister said the country does not have "any other option" but to defeat the militants. "We are at war," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Peshawar, where a car bombing killed more than 115 people on Wednesday as Mrs. Clinton arrived in Pakistan. "Our civil leadership, our military leadership and political leadership ... we are on the same page that we have to fight the militancy. We do not have any other option, because their intentions are to take over" the country, the Associated Press quoted Mr. Gilani as saying. The Pakistani army and air force have been targeting militants' strongholds in the South Waziristan region close to the Afghan border in a massive offensive that began more than two weeks ago.
Clinton in Pakistan Encounters Widespread Distrust of US - Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times. Every time Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to win over Pakistanis during her three-day charm offensive last week, they fired back a polite but firm message: We don't really trust your country. No matter how hard Clinton tried to reassure audiences in Lahore and Islamabad with talk of providing economic aid where it's needed most, Pakistanis seized on her visit as the perfect moment to lash out at a US government they perceive as arrogant, domineering and insensitive to their plight. At a televised town hall meeting in Islamabad, the capital, on Friday, a woman in a mostly female audience characterized US drone missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets in northwestern Pakistan as de facto acts of terrorism. A day earlier in Lahore, a college student asked Clinton why every student who visits the US is viewed as a terrorist. The opinions Clinton heard weren't the strident voices of radical clerics or politicians with anti-US agendas. Some of the most biting criticisms came from well-mannered university students and respected, seasoned journalists, a reflection of the breadth of dissatisfaction Pakistanis have with US policy toward their country.
The Real Afghan Strategy - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinon. Hikmatullah, a tall Pashtun farmer dressed in turban and white cloak, looks slightly bewildered as a US Army officer offers him tea and bread and questions him about what he wants from life. A crowd has gathered around them on the steps of the local bakery, young boys and old tribesmen gawking to see what the fuss is about. Hikmatullah says that he's a happy man with five children and that what he wants most is security. From the quizzical look on the farmer's face, perhaps he's wondering: Can these pleasant, tea-drinking American soldiers really be the same people who are assaulting Taliban fighters in this region of eastern Afghanistan? The answer is yes. Even as US forces show a gentler side with their new stress on people-friendly counterinsurgency, they continue to conduct devastating attacks on the enemy. It's this mix of hard and soft that's the essence of the US battle plan here, but this reality is not well understood back in America. The Washington debate about the Afghanistan war -- pitting advocates of a broad counterinsurgency strategy against those who favor a narrower counterterrorism approach - has sometimes been misleading, at least in terms of what actually goes on here. The fact is that US forces are doing both missions every day and night - and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one.
McChrystal Lite - Tom Donnelly and Tim Sullivan, Weekly Standard opinion. In its continuing search for an alternative to General Stanley McChrystal's comprehensive counterinsurgency approach to the war in Afghanistan, and with President Obama having eliminated the minimalist counterterrorism plan of Vice President Joe Biden, the White House has lately been floating a split-the-difference trial balloon: "McChrystal Lite" or, to give the veep his due, "McChrystal for the cities, Biden for the countryside." Last week the New York Times was allowed a sneak-peak of what this half-pregnant approach might look like. It reported that White House advisers are aiming to defend "about 10 top population centers." A number of press accounts indicate that the number of additional troops would be capped at around 20,000 - half the 40,000 recommended by McChrystal - no more than four brigade-sized units and the needed support. The Times also indicated that McChrystal had briefed the White House on how he would employ any reinforcements: "The first two additional brigades would be sent to the south, including one to Kandahar, while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation." To the Washington punditocracy, half a loaf sounds about right; even if they don't think it's the right strategy, they think it's what Obama will do as a matter of domestic politics. But does it make any military sense?
IRAQ
Suspect in Bombings Kills Investigator - Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post. A man being questioned in connection with last Sunday's devastating bombings targeting Iraqi ministries grabbed a gun from a guard and fatally shot a senior investigator, Iraqi officials said Sunday. The investigator, Maj. Arkan Hachim, returned fire after he was wounded. The suspect was also fatally shot, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior. Ministry officials acknowledged that the incident showed "a dereliction," and they vowed to "investigate the matters behind this incident." The statement did not identify the suspect. Nor did it explain how investigators had linked him to the bombings or note when the shooting occurred. The bombings targeting the Justice Ministry and the Baghdad Provincial Council buildings in central Baghdad killed nearly 160 people and wounded hundreds. It followed the Aug. 19 bombing of the Foreign and Finance ministries, which were similarly devastated. The statement said the suspect took the handgun of a guard as he was being taken to get a drink of water. He wounded the guard before barging into Hachim's office and shooting him, officials said. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed Sunni insurgents with ties to Saddam Hussein's regime and to al-Qaeda in Iraq for the spate of attacks. Maliki has asked the United Nations to investigate the bombings.
Iraqi Officer Delving Into Bombings Is Killed - Marc Santora, New York Times. A senior Iraqi police officer who was investigating last week’s deadly bombings that struck at the heart of the Iraqi government was killed Thursday night in his office, according to security officials, gunned down by a suspect who was taken to him for questioning. The suspect, who was being held in connection with twin suicide bombings last Sunday that killed at least 155 people, shot himself after killing the investigator and wounding another police officer, the officials said. He later died of his wounds. While that version of the events was itself deeply embarrassing for the Iraqi security forces, a statement issued Saturday afternoon by the Interior Ministry, which acknowledged a “dereliction of duty” before the shooting, countered news media reports that the officer, Maj. Arkan Hachim, was killed because his investigation was rattling powerful political forces. According to the statement, the suspect managed to wrestle a weapon from one of his guards as he was being given water. The officer was shot, and as the officer fell to the ground, Major Hachim moved to disarm the suspect and was shot in a struggle, dying later at the hospital, the statement said. There were competing versions of the events, highlighting divisions among the security forces. When asked Friday about the shooting, the spokesman for the Baghdad Operation Command, which oversees security in the capital, said Major Hachim was not involved in investigating the bombings.
Bombings Place Unique Burden on Iraq's 1st DNA Lab - Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post. The Baghdad morgue DNA unit's latest enigmas arrived last week in plastic bags. There was a hand, a right arm and a headless torso with blood-soaked shreds of an Iraqi army uniform -- the first body parts recovered after deadly bombings last Sunday that hospital officials had been unable to identify. "With big bombings, when you have 100 dead, maybe 20 bodies will be beyond recognition," said physician Taha Qasim, head of forensics at the morgue, as he surveyed the human remains neatly laid out on black stretchers in the facility's mortuary. "Those come here." Physicians at the year-old DNA lab, the first in Iraq, have begun using science to solve new and old mysteries in a country where war and sectarian conflict have created legions of them. Since they began processing samples regularly, morgue officials said, they have collected nearly 4,000 from unidentified bodies and relatives of people missing after explosions. Those have yielded dozens of matches, they said. The officials said they intend to open two more labs in coming years that would work exclusively on mass grave cases - a project with the potential to provide information to thousands of families and shine a light on some of the darkest chapters of Iraq's bloody history.
IRAN
Iran's Opposition Leaders Vow Continued Defiance - Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press. Iran's opposition leaders vowed Saturday to continue challenging the ruling system despite a harsh crackdown by security forces that killed dozens of protesters in post-election turmoil. The statements Saturday from opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and former president Mohammad Khatami were seen as attempts to reinvigorate the anti-government Green Path of Hope movement just days before an annual state-sponsored rally against the United States. Mousavi suggested his supporters may take to the streets Wednesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran by militant students. Hard-liners have called on security forces to take tough action against any opposition rally that day. Thousands were arrested in the crackdown this summer that crushed mass protests in support of Mousavi, who maintains the June 12 presidential election was stolen through large-scale fraud. It was the country's worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The opposition says at least 72 protesters were killed; the government puts the number of confirmed dead at 30.
UNITED STATES
1,600 are Suggested Daily for FBI's List - Walter Pincus, Washington Post. Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list. During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a "reasonable suspicion," according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. FBI officials cautioned that each nomination "does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously watchlisted person." The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are US citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's "no fly" list.
Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret CIA Jails - Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, New York Times. FBI agents who arrived at a secret CIA jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a CIA official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,’ ” according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department. The documents include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a CIA interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says department officials declined to prosecute the case. The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington advocacy group. Some are new versions of documents previously released.
Uighurs Leave Guantánamo for Palau - David Johnston, New York Times. Six Chinese Muslims were flown from the United States military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Palau, the island nation in the Pacific Ocean, as part of the Obama administration’s effort to close the prison, an administration official said Saturday. The transfer leaves seven of the Chinese detainees, known as the Uighurs, still confined at the naval base, along with 208 other men. The Uighurs have been at the heart of a long-running legal, political and ethical debate about the detention center since their incarceration there more than seven years ago. The prison has become an international symbol of American excesses in the war against terrorism, and an increasingly frustrating problem for the White House. The release of the men had been announced by the Justice Department, but the timing was kept a secret for security reasons until the detainees were safely in Palau, where they are expected to remain while seeking a permanent home elsewhere. Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents three of the men, said, “Palau is courageous to offer our Uighur clients a temporary home. We are hopeful that other countries like Australia and Germany will resettle them permanently.”
CANADA
2 Suspects Tied to Detroit Imam Arrested in Canada - New York Times. The police in Windsor, Ontario, arrested two men on Saturday who were linked to Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the imam of a Detroit mosque who was killed by FBI agents during a raid in Dearborn, Mich., on Wednesday. Mohammad Philistine, who is also known as Mohammad al-Sahli, and Yassir Ali Khan were the last of 10 suspects to be arrested on a variety of charges, including illegal possession of firearms, conspiracy to sell stolen goods and mail fraud. The agents of the FBI’s counterterrorism squad had also intended to arrest Mr. Abdullah on the same charges. Staff Sgt. Dave Kigar of the Windsor police said that the Saturday morning arrests were made without incident. The two men are residents of that city, which lies across the Detroit River from Dearborn, but their nationalities are unclear.
AMERICAS
Mexican Farmworker Activist, 14 Others Slain - Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times. A flamboyant farmworker organizer who called himself a modern-day Emiliano Zapata has been slain in a brazen ambush that also killed 14 members of his family and staff, officials said Saturday. Prosecutors in the border state of Sonora, where the slayings occurred, said they were investigating a number of possible motives. Sonora, like much of Mexico, has been hit by a wave of killings tied to drug-trafficking gangs. The union leader, Margarito Montes Parra, was killed in the southern part of Sonora bordering the state of Sinaloa, a major center for the production and transport of marijuana and heroin. The farmers whom Montes represented often find themselves trapped in the drug war, with traffickers forcing them to work illicit crops. But Montes also had chalked up numerous enemies in tumultuous land disputes over more than two decades. Montes, his wife and two children were traveling in a small convoy with at least 11 other relatives and staff members to a rural hacienda Friday afternoon when they were ambushed by several assailants armed with large-caliber weapons, investigators said. All 15 were shot to death, they said. Red Cross workers arrived at the scene to find bullet-riddled bodies on the side of the road. There were reports that three people in the group had survived. The killings sent a chill through peasant activist groups that often have a testy relationship with the Mexican government. Several organizations joined Saturday to demand a thorough investigation "to the final consequences" and to ask for protection for leaders.
ASIA PACIFIC
Philippines Hit by Typhoon, the 4th Storm in a Month - Associated Press. The fourth major storm to whip the Philippines in about a month lashed the capital and nearby provinces on Saturday, leaving fresh floods and new misery before blowing out of the country. At least seven people were killed and several were missing. Typhoon Mirinae, with winds of 93 miles per hour and gusts of up to 115, slammed into Quezon Province northeast of Manila around midnight Friday. It quickly swept westward out to sea south of the capital and weakened into a tropical storm on Saturday afternoon. The typhoon appeared to be heading next toward Vietnam. Philippine authorities evacuated more than 115,000 people in nine provinces east and south of Manila on the main island, Luzon, the National Disaster Coordinating Council reported.
MIDDLE EAST
Israel Putting Forth 'Unprecedented' Concessions, Clinton Says - Karen DeYoung and Howard Schneider, Washington Post. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had offered "unprecedented" concessions on West Bank settlement construction in an effort to restart peace talks, a departure from the administration's earlier criticism of Israel and a possible signal of impatience with the refusal of Palestinian leaders to join negotiations. At the start of a day of diplomacy that stretched from Abu Dhabi to Jerusalem, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israel's latest offer, relayed by Clinton, to curb most West Bank construction. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the plan would have excluded about 3,000 Israeli housing units under construction and would not have applied to East Jerusalem - thus falling well short of what has become a firm Palestinian demand for resuming direct talks with Israel. "The US said that is the best they can get" from Netanyahu, even though the Obama administration considers settlements 'illegal and illegitimate,' " Erekat said. The Palestinians will not accept a resumption of talks on that basis, he said.
Clinton Praises Israel Stance on Peace Talks - Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, trying to coax Palestinian leaders to restart peace talks with Israel, said Saturday that Israel was offering "unprecedented" concessions to limit the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Clinton's remarks moved the Obama administration closer to Israel's position and further from that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has refused to return to negotiations without a total freeze on settlement activity on land Palestinians claim for a future state. After a day of meetings with leaders of both sides, Clinton appeared no closer to ending the impasse. Clinton met with Abbas in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before flying to Israel. Abbas told reporters after the meeting that he had stuck to his position that "peace must have its commitments - [that] being the complete halt to settlement building." Abbas' spokesman, Nabil abu Rudaineh, added: "There was no breakthrough in the talks." The settlements, built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War, have been a stumbling block in decades of efforts to end the conflict. The last round of US-brokered talks broke off last December, in part because Palestinian leaders felt the process was undermined by ongoing settlement activity. Nearly 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
Clinton Asks Abbas to Return to Talks - Mark Landler and Ethan Bronner, New York Times. Dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s efforts to restart Middle East peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton failed Saturday to persuade the Palestinian leader to accept an Israeli proposal that would slow but not stop the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, insisted that Israel must halt all construction of housing units before broader negotiations could begin. He rebuffed an Israeli proposal - developed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and relayed by Mrs. Clinton - to complete about 3,000 units and temporarily freeze other construction, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said after the meeting. “This is a nonstarter,” Mr. Erekat said. “Mr. Netanyahu has a choice, settlements or peace, and he has chosen settlements.” Mrs. Clinton’s meetings, which came after a three-day trip to Pakistan, followed on President Obama’s pledge last month to redouble American efforts to revive the peace process. But on a marathon day of diplomacy that took her from the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi to Israel and then on to Morocco, she discovered that if anything, the hurdles to a peace negotiation have grown larger.
Thirsty Plant Dries Out Yemen - Robert F. Worth, New York Times. More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men (and some women) for their mild narcotic effect. The farmers have little choice: qat is the only way to make a profit. Meanwhile, the water wells are running dry, and deep, ominous cracks have begun opening in the parched earth, some of them hundreds of yards long. “They tell us it’s because the water table is sinking so fast,” said Muhammad Hamoud Amer, a worn-looking farmer who has lost two-thirds of his peach trees to drought in the past two years. “Every year we have to drill deeper and deeper to get water.” Across Yemen, the underground water sources that sustain 24 million people are running out, and some areas could be depleted in just a few years. It is a crisis that threatens the very survival of this arid, overpopulated country, and one that could prove deadlier than the better known resurgence of Al Qaeda here.
SOUTH ASIA
Maoist Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India - Jim Yardley, New York Times. At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government. “That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh. Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period. If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain. For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country’s democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed.
Dalai Lama Says Trip to a Disputed Region in India Isn’t Political - Edward Wong, New York Times. The Dalai Lama said Saturday that the Chinese government was wrong to attribute political motives to his travels, including a planned trip in early November to a Buddhist mountain enclave in northeastern India that China claims as its territory. “The Chinese government considers me a troublemaker, so it is my duty to create more trouble,” he said jokingly, according to The Associated Press. “The Chinese government politicizes too much wherever I go. Where I go is not political.” The Chinese government has protested the Dalai Lama’s plans to visit the Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state that borders Chinese-governed Tibet and the nation of Bhutan. China claims that Tawang is historically part of Tibet, which China has controlled since 1951. The Chinese government has said the Dalai Lama’s plan to visit affirms his “splittist” intentions. China has long accused him of advocating for Tibetan independence, even though the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, says he wants only genuine autonomy for Tibet. India says a self-governing Tibet ceded Tawang to British-ruled India in a 1914 treaty.
EVENTS
The US Military Academy’s Department of History is pleased to invite you to a West Point Symposium on the History of Irregular Warfare, 18-20 November 2009. The symposium will feature the scholarship of five cadet panel presenters with commentary by distinguished guest scholars, including: Dr. Stephen Biddle as our keynote speaker, Dr. Jeremy Black, Col. Robert Cassidy, Dr. Conrad Crane, Dr. George Herring, Dr. Brian Linn, and Dr. Peter Mansoor. Additionally, Dr. James Le Sueur (Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics, 2005) will present a special lecture on Algerian society since 1963. Col. Gian Gentile, a History faculty member, will participate as part of the “Visiting Scholars Panel” with Dr. Crane, Dr. Mansoor, and Col. Cassidy. (Invitation and POC Information) (History of IW Symposium Agenda)
BOOKS
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan - Doug Stanton.
Horse Soldiers tells the important story of the Special Forces soldiers who first put American boots on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001. Fighting alongside the Northern Alliance, the troops, often riding on horseback, achieved several important victories against the Taliban.
War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age - Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker.
War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age argues that two intimately connected trends are putting modern armies under huge pressure to adapt: the rise of insurgencies and the rise of the Web. Both in cyberspace and in warfare, the grassroots public has assumed increasing importance in recent years. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Web 2.0 rose from the ashes. This newly interactive and participatory form of the Web promotes and enables offline action. Similarly, after Rumsfeld's attempt to transform the US military into a lean, lethal, computerized force crashed in Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency rose from the ashes. Counterinsurgency is a social form of war - indeed, the US Army calls it armed social work - in which the local matrix population becomes the center of strategic gravity and public opinion at home the critical vulnerability.
The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the US Military for Modern Wars - David H. Ucko.
Confronting insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has recognized the need to "re-learn" counterinsurgency. But how has the Department of Defense with its mixed efforts responded to this new strategic environment? Has it learned anything from past failures? In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD's institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality.
Journey into Darkness: Genocide in Rwanda - Thomas P. Odom.
In July 1994, Thomas P. Odom was part of the US Embassy team that responded to the Goma refugee crisis. He witnessed the deaths of 70,000 refugees in a single week. In the previous three months of escalating violence, the Rwandan genocide had claimed 800,000 dead. Now, in this vivid and unsettling new book, Odom offers the first insider look at these devastating events before, during, and after the genocide.
Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage - Donovan Campbell.
Donovan Campbell, first as a Marine and then as a writer, shows us that the dominant emotion in war isn’t hatred or anger or fear. It’s love. His story stands as a poignant tribute to his men–their courage, their dedication, their skill, and their love for one another, even unto death.
The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose - Anthony Zinni and Tony Koltz
The intellectual complement to Zinni and Clancy's bestselling Battle Ready (2004), a narrative memoir salted with specific policy recommendations, this volume provides the former US Central Command chief's analysis of America's current global position. Zinni begins by asserting that America's status as "the most powerful nation in the history of the planet" has created a de facto empire. The US has no choice: if it fails to take the lead, nothing significant happens. At the same time, Americans must recognize that, in a global age, there can be no zero-sum games.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education - Craig Mullaney
The Unforgiving Minute is the ultimate's soldier's book - universal in its raw emotion and its understanding of the larger issues of life and death. Mullaney, a master storyteller, plunges the depths of self-doubt, endurance, and courage. The result: a riveting, suspenseful human story, beautifully told. This is a book written under fire - a lyrical, spellbinding tale of war, love, and courage. The Unforgiving Minute is the Three Cups of Tea of soldiering.
Great Powers: America and the World after Bush - Thomas P.M. Barnett
In civilian and military circles alike, The Pentagon’s New Map became one of the most talked about books of 2004. “A combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Carl von Clausewitz on war, [it is] the red-hot book among the nation’s admirals and generals,” wrote David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Barnett’s second book, Blueprint for Action, demonstrated how to put the first book’s principles to work. Now, in Great Powers, Barnett delivers his most sweeping - and important - book of all.
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One - David Kilcullen
A remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us "on the ground" to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the big global war (the "War on Terrorism") and its relation to the associated "small wars" across the globe: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Chechnya, Pakistan and North Africa.
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 - Thomas Ricks
Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.
Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned - Rufus Phillips
Phillips details how the legendary Edward G. Lansdale helped the South Vietnamese gain and consolidate their independence between 1954 and 1956, and how this later changed to a reliance on American conventional warfare with its highly destructive firepower. He reasons that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies, or even ourselves took us down the wrong road. In summing up US errors in Vietnam, Phillips draws parallels with the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests changes in the US approach. Known for his intellectual integrity and firsthand, long-term knowledge of what went on in Vietnam, the author offers lessons for today in this trenchant account.
Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq - Peter Mansoor
This is a unique contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Iraq war, analyzing the day-to-day performance of a US brigade in Baghdad during 2004-2005. Mansoor uses a broad spectrum of sources to address the military, political and cultural aspects of an operation undertaken with almost no relevant preparation, which tested officers and men to their limits and generated mistakes and misjudgments on a daily basis. The critique is balanced, perceptive and merciless - and Mansoor was the brigade commander. Military history is replete with command memoirs. Most are more or less self-exculpatory. Even the honest ones rarely achieve this level of analysis. The effect is like watching a surgeon perform an operation on himself. Mansoor has been simultaneously a soldier and a scholar, able to synergize directly his military and academic experiences.
The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq - Bing West
From a universally respected combat journalist, a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around - and the choice now facing America. We interpret reality through the clouded prism of our own experience, so it is unsurprising that Bing West sees Iraq through the lens of Vietnam. He served as a Marine officer there, and he thinks politicians and the media caused the American public to turn against a war that could have been won. Now a correspondent for the Atlantic, West has made 15 reporting trips to Iraq over the last six years and is almost as personally invested in the current conflict as he was in Vietnam; this book, his third on Iraq, is his attempt to ensure that the "endgame" in Iraq turns out better than in his last war.
Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq - Linda Robinson
After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war. Linda Robinson conducted extensive interviews with Petraeus and his subordinate commanders and spent weeks with key US and Iraqi divisions. The result is the only book that ties together military operations in Iraq and the internecine political drama that is at the heart of the civil war. Replete with dramatic battles, behind-doors confrontations, and astute analysis, the book tells the full story of the Iraq War’s endgame, and lays out the options that will be facing the next president.
The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 - Bob Woodward
Woodward interviewed key players, obtained dozens of never-before-published documents, and had nearly three hours of exclusive interviews with President Bush. The result is a stunning, firsthand history of the years from mid-2006, when the White House realizes the Iraq strategy is not working, through the decision to surge another 30,000 US troops in 2007, and into mid-2008, when the war becomes a fault line in the presidential election. As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the US military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the US government from 2006 through mid-2008. The White House launches a secret strategy review that excludes the military. General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, believes that President Bush does not understand the war and eventually concludes he has lost the president's confidence. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also conduct a secret strategy review that goes nowhere. On the verge of revolt, they worry that the military will be blamed for a failure in Iraq.
We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam - Harold Moore and Joe Galloway
In their stunning follow-up to the classic bestseller We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway return to Vietnam and reflect on how the war changed them, their men, their enemies, and both countries - often with surprising results. It would be a monumental task for Moore and Galloway to top their classic 1992 memoir. But they come close in this sterling sequel, which tells the backstory of two of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles (in which Moore participated as a lieutenant colonel), their first book and a 1993 ABC-TV documentary that brought them back to the battlefield. Moore's strong first-person voice reviews the basics of the November 1965 battles, part of the 34-day Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Among other things, Moore and Galloway (who covered the battle for UPI) offer portraits of two former enemy commanders, generals Nguyen Huu An and Chu Huy Man, whom the authors met - and bonded with - nearly three decades after the battle. This book proves again that Moore is an exceptionally thoughtful, compassionate and courageous leader (he was one of a handful of army officers who studied the history of the Vietnam wars before he arrived) and a strong voice for reconciliation and for honoring the men with whom he served.
In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point' Class of 2002 - Bill Murphy
The West Point cadets Murphy follows through their baptism by fire are an admirable sample of young American men and women: intelligent, ambitious and intensely patriotic. Most come from career military families and hold conservative opinions. Murphy describes their four years at West Point with respect even when discussing their love lives and marriages. All yearn for battle, and most get their wish. The book's best passages describe the confusion of moving to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting insurgents, for which they lack both training and equipment. All feel something is not right but concentrate on the job at hand; some inevitably die or are grievously wounded.
Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy - Steven Metz
Today the US military is more nimble, mobile, and focused on rapid responses against smaller powers than ever before. One could argue that the Gulf War and the postwar standoff with Saddam Hussein hastened needed military transformation and strategic reassessments in the post–Cold War era. But the preoccupation with Iraq also mired the United States in the Middle East and led to a bloody occupation. What will American strategy look like after US troops leave Iraq? Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem “developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework.” He sees a pattern of misjudgments about Saddam and Iraq based on Western cultural and historical bias and a pervasive faith in the superiority of America’s worldview and institutions. This myopia contributed to America being caught off guard by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then underestimating his longevity, and finally miscalculating the likelihood of a stable and democratic Iraq after he was toppled. With lessons for all readers concerned about America’s role in the world, Dr. Metz’s important new work will especially appeal to scholars and students of strategy and international security studies, as well as to military professionals and DOD civilians. With a foreword by Colin S. Gray.
