america faces the future the center on law … · panelists: patrick clawson, prof. toby craig...

IRAQ, IRAN,AND BEYONDAMERICA FACES THE FUTURE

JANUARY 24, 2007

THE CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY AT THE NYU SCHOOL OF LAWpresents:

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Special thanks to:

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Friends of the Center on Law and Security

Editor in Chief: Karen J. Greenberg

Editorial Advisor: Tara McKelvey, CLS Fellow

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Copy Editor: Katie Sticklor

Index Editors: Zachary Stern and Mike Torres

Design: Wendy Bedenbaugh

With thanks to Nicole Bruno, Colleen Larkin, David Tucker, and the staff of the Center on Law and Security

Cover photo©istockphoto.com/BlaneyPhoto

Copyright © 2007 by The Center on Law and Security

THE CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY AT THE NYU SCHOOL OF LAW


January 24, 2007

IranIragbook 3/30/07 12:02 PM Page 1

2 IRAQ, IRAN, AND BEYOND: AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE

The Center on Law and Security is a unique kind of think tank, bringinginfluential practitioners and intellectuals together to debate matters of criticalimportance to global stability. To the end, the Center's frequent conferencesinclude professors, policy experts, journalists, officials, and those engaged in thedaily practice of national security. The diversity of our participants provides rareinsights into the nation's political and cultural life with the goal of inspiring newpolicy solutions at home and abroad.

This conference, “Iraq, Iran, and Beyond,” is the second in our America Facesthe Future series. The Center assembled leading experts to discuss the potentialregional consequences of current American foreign policy decisions in theMiddle East. Our participants focused to a large extent on the future role of theU.S. in Iraq, on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and on the threats to regional peaceand security posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda. The speakers shared anumber of common themes, including the United States' lack of information andunderstanding about Arab and Muslim cultures, the fragility of alliances, and theincreasing destabilization of the Middle East. There was some consensus thataggressive diplomacy, founded upon well-informed and realistic assessmentsof the balance-of-power and strategic complexities in the region, offers anopportunity for a constructive route forward.

These edited proceedings represent the Center's effort to contribute to theenhanced understanding required for the public to understand the challengesthat lay ahead. We also hope that they will help enable politicians and diplomatsto craft wise and constructive agendas, both now and in the future.

Karen J. Greenberg Executive Director


Participant Biographies

Introduction by Prof. Gary Sick

Opening Remarks by Col. W. Patrick Lang

PANEL ONE: THE PROXY WAR: IRAQ, SAUDI ARABIA, AND IRANPanelists: Patrick Clawson, Prof. Toby Craig Jones, Dafna Linzer, Lawrence WrightModerator: Steve Simon

PANEL TWO: THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF AL QAEDAPanelists: Peter Bergen, Steve Coll, Prof. Barnett RubinModerator: Karen J. Greenberg

PANEL THREE: THE LAST BEST CHANCE: NEW PLANS OF ACTIONPanelists: Max Boot, Prof. Noah Feldman, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Salameh Nematt, Prof. Paul PillarModerator: Daniel Benjamin

PANEL FOUR: THE NEIGHBORHOOD: DOMINOES READY TO FALL?Panelists: Steven Cook, Prof. Fawaz Gerges, Prof. Farhad Kazemi, Craig UngerModerator: Prof. Stephen Holmes

Index

About The Center on Law and Security

Publications

Contents


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Daniel Benjamin was named director of the Centeron the United States and Europe and a senior fellowin Foreign Policy Studies at the BrookingsInstitution in December 2006. His scholarly interestsinclude American foreign policy, European affairs,terrorism, the Middle East and South Asia. Togetherwith Steven Simon, Benjamin has written twobooks. The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House,2002) was named a New York Times Notable Bookof 2002 and won the Arthur Ross Book Award. TheNext Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and aStrategy for Getting it Right (Holt/Times Books,2005) was named a Washington Post Best Bookof 2005.

Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the NewAmerica Foundation in Washington, D.C.; anadjunct professor at the School of AdvancedInternational Studies at Johns Hopkins University; aresearch fellow at New York University’s Center onLaw and Security; CNN’s terrorism analyst; andauthor of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World ofBin Laden (Free Press, 2001). Holy War, Inc. was aNew York Times bestseller. His most recent book,The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of alQaeda’s Leader (Free Press, 2006), was named oneof the best non-fiction books of 2006 by TheWashington Post.

Max Boot is a senior fellow in national securitystudies at the Council on Foreign Relations in NewYork. He is also a weekly foreign affairs columnistfor the Los Angeles Times, a contributing editor toThe Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor toThe New York Times, The Washington Post, ForeignAffairs, and many other publications. He is theauthor of War Made New: Technology, Warfare, andthe Course of History, 1500 to Today (GothamBooks) and The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Warsand the Rise of American Power (Basic Books). TheSavage Wars of Peace was selected as one of the bestbooks of 2002 by The Washington Post, Los AngelesTimes, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research atthe Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Hehas published Op-Ed articles in major newspapersincluding The New York Times, The Wall StreetJournal, and The Washington Post. In addition to his

frequent appearances on television and radio, he hasauthored more than 30 scholarly articles on theMiddle East in such journals as Foreign Affairs,International Journal of Middle East Studies, TheMiddle East Journal, and Les Cahiers de l’Orient.He has also testified before congressional commit-tees more than a dozen times. He is currently serv-ing as senior editor of Middle East Quarterly.

Steve Coll is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Hisprofessional awards include a Pulitzer Prize forexplanatory journalism for his series, with David A.Vise, about the SEC in 1990. His South Asia corre-spondence won the 1992 Livingston Award for out-standing foreign reporting. He received the 2000Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverageof the civil war in Sierra Leone, as well as theOverseas Press Club Award for international maga-zine writing. His latest book, Ghost Wars, won the2005 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, as wellas the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Rossaward for the best book on foreign affairs during thelast two years.

Steven Cook is the Douglas Dillon fellow at theCouncil on Foreign Relations. He is an expert onArab and Turkish politics as well as on U.S.-MiddleEast policy. He is the author of Ruling, But NotGoverning: The Military and Political Developmentin Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, forthcoming). He has publishedwidely in a variety of foreign policy journals, opin-ion magazines, and newspapers including ForeignAffairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, TheWeekly Standard, The New Republic Online, TheNew York Times, The Washington Post, FinancialTimes, and The International Herald Tribune.He is also a frequent commentator on radio andtelevision.

Noah Feldman is the Cecilia Goetz Professor ofLaw at the New York University School of Law andan adjunct senior fellow at the Council on ForeignRelations. He specializes in constitutional studies,with particular emphasis on the relationship betweenlaw and religion, constitutional design, and the his-tory of legal theory. Feldman is a contributing writerfor The New York Times Magazine and the author ofthree books: Divided By God: America’s Church-

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES, JANUARY 24, 2007


State Problem and What We Should Do About It(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); What We OweIraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building(Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad:America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

Fawaz Gerges holds the Christian A. Johnson Chairin International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studiesat Sarah Lawrence College. He is a senior analystand regular commentator for ABC News and a com-mentator for Morning Edition on NPR. He appearson many television and radio networks throughoutthe world, including CNN, CBS, NPR, BBC, and AlJazeera. He is the author of Journey of the Jihadist:Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2006), andThe Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005). His books also include:America and Political Islam: Clash of Interests orClash of Cultures? (Cambridge University Press,1999); The Superpowers and the Middle East:Regional and International Politics, 1955-1967(Oxford and Westview Press, 1994); and TheClinton Administration’s Approach Toward IslamistMovements (The Council on Foreign Relations: NewYork, 1999).

Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of theCenter on Law and Security. She is the editor of AlQaeda Now (Cambridge University Press 2005) andThe Torture Debate in America (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2006) and co-editor of The TorturePapers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005). She is a frequent writer andcommentator on issues related to national security,terrorism, and torture and has authored numerousarticles on the United States and Europe duringWorld War II.

Stephen Holmes is a faculty research advisor at theCenter on Law and Security and the Walter E. MeyerProfessor of Law at the New York University Schoolof Law. His fields of specialization include the his-tory of liberalism, the disappointments of democra-tization after communism, and the difficulty of com-bating terrorism within the limits of liberal constitu-tionalism. His new book, The Matador’s Cape:America’s Reckless Response to the War on Terror,will be published in the spring of 2007.

Toby Craig Jones is a Mellon postdoctoral fellowand visiting assistant professor in the History

Department at Swarthmore College. His mainresearch interests focus on the history of state-building, politics, and Shia-Sunni relations in SaudiArabia and the Gulf. He has published in theInternational Journal of Middle East Studies,Middle East Report, Foreign Affairs, the ArabReform Bulletin, and elsewhere. He is currentlyrevising a book manuscript on state-building andsectarianism in Saudi Arabia.

Farhad Kazemi is a professor of politics andMiddle Eastern studies at New York University. Aleading scholar on issues of the Middle East,Kazemi is a member of the Advisory Group forPublic Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World,appointed in 2003. He is affiliated with severalnotable organizations, including having served aspresident of the Middle East Studies Association andthe Society for Iranian Studies. Among his manyaccomplishments, Kazemi is a leading member ofseveral organizations including the AmericanPolitical Science Association, the InternationalStudies Association, the International Society ofPolitical Psychology, the International PoliticalScience Association, the Council on ForeignRelations, and the Atlantic Council.

Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officerof U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army SpecialForces (The Green Berets). He was trained and edu-cated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S.Army and served in that region for many years. Hewas the first professor of the Arabic language at theUnited States Military Academy at West Point, NewYork. In the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), hewas the defense intelligence officer for the MiddleEast, South Asia and terrorism, and later the firstdirector of the Defense Humint [human intelligence]Service. For his service in the DIA, he was awardedthe Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive,the equivalent of a British knighthood. He is an ana-lyst and consultant for many television and radiobroadcasts, among them the The NewsHour with JimLehrer on PBS.

Dafna Linzer is a national security correspondent atThe Washington Post, where she focuses on nonpro-liferation and intelligence. Before joining The Post,she spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for theAssociated Press, based in Jerusalem and at theUnited Nations. She won the U.N.’s 2005 Gold

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES 5



Medal for international reporting for her coverage ofIran’s nuclear program and the Bush administration’spolicies on Iran.

Salameh Nematt is the Washington bureau chief ofAl-Hayat international Arab daily (London) and theLBC, the Lebanon-based Arab satellite channel.Throughout his journalistic career, he has con-tributed to several Arabic, English and other foreignlanguage publications, including The Economist,Middle East, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Mideast Mirror,Die Zeit, Newsweek, BBC World Service (English),DPA, UPI, Oxford Analytica, as well as internation-al broadcast media such as BBC World, ITV News,ABC news, PBS, CBC radio and TV, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and Al-Hurra.

Paul Pillar is a visiting professor and member of thecore faculty of the Security Studies Program in theEdmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service atGeorgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, inwhich his last position was national intelligenceofficer for the Near East and South Asia. He is theauthor of Negotiating Peace and Terrorism and U.S.Foreign Policy.

Barnett Rubin is the director of studies and seniorfellow at the Center on International Cooperation atNew York University. He is currently deputy chair ofthe Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, a memberthe Steering Committee of Human RightsWatch/Europe and Central Asia, the ExecutiveBoard of Human Rights Watch/Asia, the Board ofthe Open Society Institute’s Central Eurasia Project,the Conseil Scientifique of the Fondation MédecinsSans Frontières, and the Board of the InternationalLeague for Human Rights. Rubin is the author ofBlood on the Doorstep: The Politics of PreventingViolent Conflict (2002). Among the publications hehas authored, co-authored, or edited are TheFragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation andCollapse in the International System (2002; first edition1995) and Calming the Ferghana Valley: Developmentand Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (1999).

Gary Sick is a senior research scholar at the MiddleEast Institute at Columbia University’s School ofInternational and Public Affairs and an adjunct pro-fessor of international affairs at SIPA. He is also amember of the board of Human Rights Watch in

New York and founding chair of the AdvisoryCommittee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East.He is the author of All Fall Down: America’s TragicEncounter With Iran (Random House, 1985) andOctober Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and theElection of Ronald Reagan (Random House, 1991).

Steven Simon is the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellowfor Middle Eastern studies at the Council on ForeignRelations. He is the co-author of The Age of SacredTerror (Random House, 2002), which won theCouncil on Foreign Relations 2004 Arthur RossBook Award, and co-editor of Iraq at theCrossroads: State and Society in the Shadow ofRegime Change (Oxford University Press/IISS,2003). He is also the co-author of Building aSuccessful Palestinian State (Rand Corporation,2005) and The Arc: A Formal Structure for aPalestinian State (Rand Corporation, 2005). Mostrecently, he co-authored The Next Attack (HenryHolt, 2005), which examines the evolution of thejihad since September 11, 2001, and America’sresponse, and was a finalist for the Lionel GelberPrize in 2006.

Craig Unger is an author and analyst. He appearsfrequently as an analyst on terrorism, Saudi-American relations and the oil industry on CNN, theABC Radio Network and many other broadcast out-lets. He has served as deputy editor of The New YorkObserver and was the editor of Boston magazine. Hehas written about George H. W. Bush and George W.Bush for The New Yorker, Esquire, and Vanity Fair.

Lawrence Wright is a fellow at the Center on Lawand Security, an author and screenwriter, as well asa staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His bookon al Qaeda, The Looming Tower (Knopf, 2006), hasbeen named one of the top ten books of 2006 by bothThe New York Times and The Washington Post andwas nominated for the 2006 National Book Award.A portion of that book, “The Man Behind BinLaden,” was published in The New Yorker and wonthe 2002 Overseas Press Club’s Ed CunninghamAward for Best Magazine Reporting. He has alsowon the National Magazine Award for Reporting aswell as the John Bartlow Martin Award for PublicInterest Magazine Journalism. Currently, he is work-ing on a script for MGM about John O’Neill, theformer head of the FBI’s office of counterterrorismin New York, who died on 9/11.


It is commonly said that the United States has no Middle East strategy. That may not be truemuch longer. The United States has begun to establish the framework of a new coalitionstrategy in the Middle East that could rebuild tattered alliances, shift attention away fromthe Iraqi catastrophe, and provide a touchstone for policymaking that could appeal acrossparty lines.

The organizing principle of the new strategy is confrontation with and containment ofShia influence – specifically Iranian – wherever it appears in the region. The United States’allies in this endeavor are Israel and the traditional (authoritarian) governments of predom-inantly Sunni Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. One unique feature of this otherwiseunremarkable set of long-standing friendly governments is the possibility that the Arabstates may subordinate their hostility to Israel, at least temporarily, out of their even greaterfear of Iranian/Shia dominance of the region.

One of the products of the United States’ armed intervention in the Middle East since9/11 has been a shift in the fundamental balance of power. In the name of fighting terror-ism, the United States empowered Iran. By removing the Taliban (Iran’s greatest threat tothe east), then removing the government of Saddam Hussein (its deadly enemy to the west),and finally installing an Iran-friendly Shia government in Baghdad for the first time in his-tory, the U.S. virtually assured that Iran – essentially without raising a finger – wouldemerge as a power center rivaled only by Israel. It is one of the great ironies that U.S. pol-icy would inadvertently make it possible for these two non-Arab states on the eastern andwestern flank of the Arab Middle East to dominate the traditional Arab heartland. Theprocess was further accelerated by U.S. democratization policies that put its traditionalArab allies on the defensive.

Although these were unintended consequences of U.S. policy, the effects dismayedfriends and foes alike. From Iran’s perspective, it was a strategic gift of unparalleledproportions, tarnished only by the fact that its two major enemies had been replaced by apugnacious U.S. military giant looking for new worlds to conquer. That tarnish was gradu-ally removed as the United States found itself increasingly bogged down in the Iraqi quag-mire, with a public fast growing disillusioned with the ugly realities of empire building ina hostile and unforgiving environment. Erstwhile U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, Jordan,Egypt, and elsewhere privately viewed U.S. actions as a failure at best and a betrayal atworst. They were ripe for a change.

The origins of the new cooperative undertaking are murky, but they appear to have beengalvanized by the Israel/Hezbollah war in Lebanon during the summer of 2006. This eventwas perceived by Israel, the United States, and the Sunni Arab governments in Saudi Arabia,Egypt, and Jordan as an Iranian attempt to extend its power into the Levant by challengingboth Israel and the Sunni Arab leadership. Whether Iran in fact had any direct control overthe decision by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, to kidnap Israeli soldiers is farfrom clear; however, the perception of growing Iranian strength and reach – a fundamentalshift in the Middle East balance of power – was unquestioned and hugely menacing to thetraditional power brokers of the region. They initially had to swallow their words of discon-tent as Hezbollah acquitted itself very creditably and entranced the Arab “street.” But oncethe war was over and Hezbollah began challenging the predominantly Sunni and ChristianLebanese government of Fouad Siniora, their initial misgivings reemerged.

INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR GARY SICK 7

INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR GARY SICK



In the following months, we have seen a number of indicators of a new coordinated pol-icy approach. Senior Saudi officials have met privately with equally senior Israeli officials,which was itself a remarkable new development. The content of the discussions has notbeen revealed, but one of the participants is rumored to be Prince Bandar bin Sultan, theformer Saudi ambassador to Washington and presently Secretary-General of the SaudiNational Security Council, one of the architects of the U.S./Saudi collaboration against theSoviets in Afghanistan, and a wheeler-dealer of legendary reputation. During the same timeperiod, Bandar began a series of private visits to Washington, meeting with U.S. officialsat the highest level. Apparently these meetings occurred without the knowledge of theSaudi ambassador, who abruptly resigned after the information became public.

The United States successfully shepherded a resolution through the United NationsSecurity Council (UNSC) denouncing Iran’s nuclear program and imposing limited sanc-tions. It was unanimously adopted, and it gives Iran 60 days to change its policies or theissue will be revisited. In President Bush’s speech on January 10, 2007, announcing a troopincrease in Iraq, he focused a surprising amount of attention on Iran. The announcedincrease of the U.S. naval presence in the Gulf region together with the supply of Patriotanti-missile batteries to the Gulf were widely interpreted as warning signals to Iran. TheUnited States is taking an expansive view of the UNSC sanctions by prohibiting a majorIranian bank from operating in the U.S. and by leading a campaign to persuade others todo the same. In the meanwhile, Israel has maintained a drumbeat of criticism of Iran’snuclear program, including suggestions that it may be called upon to launch a strike againstIran on its own if no one else is willing to act.

There have not been (and probably will not be) any formal announcements, but theaccumulating evidence suggests that a major new strategy is being pursued. It is still in itsearly days, but here is my own interpretation of the division of labor that seems to beemerging:The United States will:

• Drop any further talk about democratization in the Middle East;• Use its influence in the United Nations Security Council to keep the pressure on

Iran (and to a lesser extent Syria) with sanctions and coordinated international disapproval;

• Provide military cover for the Arab Gulf states as they take a more confrontational position vis-à-vis Iran (Patriot missiles, additional naval aircraft, etc.);

• Undertake a more vigorous diplomatic effort to find a settlement of the Arab/Israeli dispute, recognizing that even limited visible progress will provide diplomatic coverfor the Arab states if they are to cooperate more closely with Israel;

• In Lebanon, provide covert support for efforts to support the Siniora government to thwart Hezbollah, probably in close cooperation with Israeli intelligence;

• Organize dissident movements in Iran, primarily among ethnic groups along the periphery or other targets of opportunity, to distract and potentially even destabilizethe government in Tehran; and

• will do the following in Iraq:(1) keep attention focused on Iran, including raids and general harassment of its representatives;(2) keep U.S. forces in country to prevent the situation from descending into a full- scale civil war or a breakup of the country (or, as Henry Kissinger presents it in a recent article, combining both points: “They [U.S. troops] are there as an expression


INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR GARY SICK 9

of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy suppliesof the industrial democracies depend”); and(3) consider engineering a more Sunni-friendly government, especially if Prime Minister Maliki is unwilling or unable to control the Shia militias.

The Arab states (the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, plus Jordan and Egypt,or “6+2”) will:

• Provide major funding and political support to the Siniora government in Lebanon and work to undercut Hezbollah’s influence and image;

• Attempt to woo (or threaten) Syria away from its alliance with Iran with promises of money and support of Syrian efforts to regain the Golan Heights;

• Provide facilities and funding to assist the various U.S. initiatives above; and• Attempt to bring down the price of oil, which will remove some political pressures

on Washington and make life more difficult for Iran.Israel will:

• Provide intelligence support to U.S. (and potentially Arab) anti-Hezbollah efforts in Lebanon;

• Keep international attention focused on the Iranian threat as a uniquely dangerous situation that may even demand Israeli military intervention;

• Use long-standing Israeli contacts, especially with the Kurds in Iraq and Iran, to foment opposition to the Tehran government; and

• Be prepared to make sufficient concessions on the Palestinian issue and the Golan to provide at least the perception of significant forward motion toward a comprehensive settlement.

A tripartite strategy of this sort has a number of appealing qualities. By keeping atten-tion focused as fully as possible on Iran as the true threat in the region, it tends to changethe subject and distract public attention from the Iraqi disaster. It provides something of realvalue to each of the participants, while most of the distasteful parts of the plan are plausi-bly deniable so they will not have to be explained or justified in great detail to skepticalobservers in any of the countries involved. In the United States, the antipathy to Iran as aresult of the hostage crisis in 1979-81, among other things, is so strong that such a strategyis likely to have widespread appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike, with enthusiasticendorsement from pro-Israel lobbying groups.

Perhaps most important of all, it provides a single, agreed-upon enemy that can serve asthe organizing point of reference for policies throughout the region. Like the Cold War, thiscan be used to explain and rationalize a wide range of policies that otherwise might be quiteunpopular. The holy grail of U.S. Middle East policy has always been the hope of persuad-ing both Arab and Israeli allies to agree on a common enemy and thereby relegate theirmutual hostilities to a subordinate role. Trying to get the Arabs to conclude that the SovietUnion was a more immediate threat than Israel was always a losing proposition, though itdid not prevent several U.S. administrations from trying. But Iran, as a large, neighboring,non-Arab, radical Shia state, may fulfill that role more convincingly.

The advent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, with his extravagant rhetoric and pop-ulist posturing, makes that a much easier sell than it was under President MohammadKhatami. More than anyone else, Ahmadinejad is responsible for the appeal of this strate-gy. He has done immense – and perhaps irreparable – damage to Iran’s image in the worldand its genuine foreign policy objectives. The fact that Iranian parliamentarians are



banding together in opposition to him and his policies is evidence that this has not goneunobserved in Tehran, but it may be too late.

Will the strategy work? Well, it does not necessarily mean an immediate recourse tomilitary conflict, as some are predicting. The underlying fundamentals have not changed:none of the tripartite protagonists stands to gain by an actual war. Especially after the Iraqiexperience, it is widely understood in Washington that a war with a country as large and asnationalistic as Iran would be immensely costly and almost certainly futile. Moreover, thereis no halfway solution. You cannot do a quick air strike and realistically expect it to endthere. The situation would inevitably escalate and ultimately require boots on the ground.That is a bridge too far for the United States at this juncture. However, the strategy is delib-erately provocative and risks prompting a belligerent Iranian response (or perhaps it isdeliberately looking for a belligerent response) that could quickly escalate into an armedexchange. So the threat of military action is not insignificant.

Will the new policy persuade Iran to change its policies? Probably not, although knowl-edgeable Iranian political observers say that Iran is actually ripe for a deal that wouldinclude both the nuclear and Iraqi issues. Iran will have a celebration in a few weeks aboutits initial success in running a linked series of centrifuge cascades. That would be themoment when they could accept at least a temporary suspension of enrichment activitieswithout renouncing their national “right to enrich.” If the Europeans (and Americans) areinterested in moving to a settlement of the nuclear issue, that would be the moment to revis-it and/or creatively reformulate the array of proposals – Iranian and European – that arealready on the table.

The new tripartite strategy is not really about Iran, however, but rather about the threeprotagonists. It brings them together, gives them a common purpose, offers an alternativeto the current misery of reporting about Iraq, and provides a focus for future planning thatmight gain a wide measure of support. Unfortunately, that suggests that actually finding anegotiated solution with Iran is very much a secondary priority.

OPENING REMARKS BY COLONEL W. PATRICK LANG

Most of the difficulties that we have experienced in the Middle East are of our owncreation. They are largely the product of a lack of comprehension of the situation we arefacing. Several years ago, at a seminar in Washington, I offered the opinion that the majorproblems we have in Iraq are caused by the fact that we did not intervene in the Iraq of theIraqis – the Iraq that they lived in, understood in their guts, and provided the basis for theirexistence – but instead we had invaded the Iraq of our dreams. This fact is beginning tobecome more and more evident. The Iraq that we entered in 2003 was largely a constructof a lot of well-meaning people who simply either could not see or refused to see that thecountry was not what it was expected to be.

It may be difficult for you to understand how America’s current situation in Iraq cameabout, but I think that it is very simple. You see the results of it everyday. The president ofthe United States has now admitted that there were many mistakes made in the early daysin Iraq and perhaps in the not-so-early days. In many ways, these mistakes continue tooccur. I do not think for a minute that people willfully intended to do things that were egre-gious and would lead to disastrous results, as has been the consequence in many cases. It


is just that they failed to understand what was going on.I continue to be asked by the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps to try to explain to them,

and to consult with them, about why it is that their expectations in Iraq are so seldom metwith regard to how the Iraqis are going to behave and what the relationships are between dif-ferent groups. If you talk to them about the kind of things that I am going to talk to you abouttoday, in the end some senior officer with two or three stars on his shoulder says somethinglike, “So this culture thing is really important, is that right? Is that what you’re saying?” Andyou hesitate to agree, because the “culture thing” has come to have a bad name in the lastcouple of years in academic circles. I belong to the board of a foundation here in New York.I have noticed that the academic people who are on the board – when they are voting on pro-posals for research and matters of that kind – will often say, “Well, surely this is not just anappeal to the culture argument.” There is a handicap in using that term.

But what I mean by culture is the totality of the worldview of the people of a particulararea, or an ethnic group, or an ethno-religious community. It is based upon their history;their religious sciences; the economics of their area; their tribal customs, if there are any; andlocal laws derived from the experience of this people over time. All of these things wraptogether to produce a certain worldview.

I think that the basic error we have committed in going into a number of these places isbelieving that our own particularly American attitude toward culture is predominant in theworld. We have a tendency to believe, through the experience of the melting pot in the UnitedStates that has produced a fairly homogenous culture throughout the country, that there is acertain common thread to the existence of humanity, and that everybody is basically thesame underneath. We tend to believe that, while there may be circumstances involved thatmake people appear to be different on the surface, underneath everybody basically wants thesame thing. We believe that if you scratch the surface of any human being anywhere, youwill find someone remarkably similar to anyone who lives in New York City, or Phoenix, orwherever it is you want to talk about.

We believe that if that inner person is released, he will automatically take up the kind ofactions and have the kind of attitudes that are expected by us, because we think that the kindof people that we are is becoming the norm for humanity around the world. In other words,we think that the evidences of their cultures are superficial and transitory, perhaps evidenceof backwardness, perhaps imposed on them by oppressors such as Saddam Hussein, and thatif the shell of apparent local difference is shattered, these people will quickly emerge into thebright uplands of mankind’s progress toward the future and look remarkably like Americans.I think that we tend to believe deep in our hearts, as the crazy colonel did on the beach inApocalypse Now, that inside every Vietnamese there is an American trying to get out.

I assure you, having known a lot of Vietnamese, that this is not true. It has not been truein any of the places that I have served in around the world. I spent a long time in the Armyin Special Forces (we were kind of traveling, armed anthropologists), in military intelligence,and in international business. I have found that people are profoundly different in manyplaces. It is true that they hunger, they lust, they want to go to sleep. They want to have

OPENING REMARKS BY COLONEL W. PATRICK LANG 11

“The Iraq that we entered in 2003 was largely a construct of well-meaning people who could not see or refused to see that the country

was not what it was expected to be.”



children, and they want shelter. Yes. But above that level of existence, there is a great vari-ety of difference in human beings by group. It is not superficial at all. These differences arequite deeply seated and the expectation that you could easily change someone’s culture,especially a group culture, is probably illusory.

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking that changing a culture will be easy to do,because there will always be somebody who apparently belongs to that culture willing to tellyou that it is going to be easy, for a variety of reasons.

In many cases, people just do not understand their own situation very well. In particu-lar, I am referring to those individuals who have been acculturated toward the West, usual-ly toward the United States, in such a way that they are very willing to tell you how muchthey are like you. They are usually seeking some advantage; a visa, a contract, or somethingof the sort. In many cases, people actually know what it is they ought to be. They were taughtin school. For example, if you ask almost any Iraqi, “Is Iraq a unitary state? Are the Iraqisone people through and through?” almost any Iraqi will say yes, because they were taughtfor long periods of time that that is what they should think. The fact that it is not true in itsaccomplishment is something they are just not going to tell you, period, and they do not seeany reason why they should.

The terms “emic” and “etic” are very important in dealing with this issue. I was actuallytrained as an anthropologist. The emic data in this instance is that which people will tell youabout themselves. The etic data is that which you come to believe is true about them aftercareful study, including study of the emic data. This is a very important distinction which Ihave always tried to teach to intelligence analysts, and now I try to teach to colonels andgenerals as well – that you cannot blindly accept what people say about themselves or elseyou'll end up in a bag somewhere.

A very capable American officer assured me when he came out of command a coupleof years ago that it was not important whether Iraqis were Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, orKurds; that they were all Iraqis together. I said, “How do you know that?”

“They tell me that, everyday.” “Has it occurred to you that it might not be true?”“Why would I think that?” he asked. “They know their own country.” It is a big mistake to accept an opinion like that. Among the things you have to be very

careful of is the testimony of émigrés. We accepted an awful lot of testimony from émigrésbefore our intervention in Iraq, and a lot of what they told us turned out to be absolute rub-bish. Not only did they have their own view of what their country was like whenever it wasthat they had last seen it, but they were also quite willing to tell you whatever was necessaryto bring them back to their homeland, and into power.

Whenever I had a chance to vote on whether or not an analyst was going to be hired orpromoted, I always used to look for certain things in his background. I looked for knowl-edge of history, philosophy, language, the religious sciences of the area – all of the thingsthat make up the totality of a human being’s perception of his environment in a grouppattern of thought. When you are dealing with a really foreign culture, you have to be verycareful not to try to apply the models derived from Western social science in a blind and

We accepted an awful lot of testimony from émigrés before our intervention inIraq, and a lot of what they told us turned out to be absolute rubbish."


OPENING REMARKS BY COLONEL W. PATRICK LANG 13

oblivious way. If I am going to hire a political scientist for this sort of task, I want to see whatis inside his degree.

I was at Fort Leavenworth a couple of months ago, the great schoolhouse of the U.S.Army out on the frozen plains of Kansas. I was participating in a program to train anthropo-logical advisors for Army brigade commanders in the field in Afghanistan. Think about that.They are going to give somebody a quickie course in anthropology pertaining to Afghanistanand then send them to the wilds of eastern Afghanistan to advise some infantry colonel as tothe tribal customs of Pashtuns.

That was an interesting thing, but what struck me the most was that, in addition tohaving Pashtuns, anthropologists, and others who had served with these tribes for theirinstructors, they also had some very classy political scientists from various universities.What I noticed was an effort to take the Pashtuns, who were the equivalent of square pegs,and hammer them and their customs into round holes that fit the frames of reference and theterms of whatever discipline the instructor speaking at the time came from.

And, of course, it does not work. People have tried this endlessly; over and over again.You can take, for example, the issue of Arabic grammar as taught in the English language.If you study Arabic in an English-speaking environment, you will find that the parts ofspeech and the structure of sentences are described in terms familiar to you. There are sup-posedly verbs, noun, objects, case endings, and adjectives. That is all rubbish. The things thatare described in these terms in English are not really those things at all. They are somethingcompletely different.

You have to be careful that you do not hammer the total knowledge of all these peopleinto little categories that you are comfortable with, but which do not mean anything at all interms of trying to understand them.

My advice to anybody who wants to successfully deal with really foreign cultures is tostart young – at about 20, go out there and live with them for five or six years and immerseyourself in the culture. I know that is not possible for everyone, so my real advice is to soakyourself in all of the components of their culture until you get to the point where you canwalk in their shoes. If you cannot walk in their shoes, then you do not really understand whatthey think, and you never will. You will always be guessing about what they are thinking, andwhat their real motivations are.

Carl von Clausewitz would say that you need to saturate yourself in their ways ofthinking, in the things they think about, and in their habits of thought to such an extent thatknowledge becomes so thoroughly engrained that it becomes capability.

There are lots of examples of this in Arab culture – habits of speech; their habit ofexaggeration, which is intended to give emphasis to anything; their demanding continualassurance of something before they believe it is really true; and their willingness to tell you“yes” when they mean “no.”

When I was defense attaché in Saudi Arabia, I dealt with an American Air Force majorgeneral who thought that the Saudis meant it every time they said “yes.” Most of the time,they meant “no.” They were just trying to get rid of him. He would tell me, “But they said‘yes.’” I said to him, “If they come and tell you ‘yes’ two or three times, and insist on it, andthey want to sign something about it, then they mean it.” The same is true about asking PrimeMinister Nuri Kamal al Maliki for access to Sadr City. Those are things you have to guardagainst. You have to become a part-time member of their culture if you are to understandwhat it is that they are likely to do. It is possible to forecast what people are going to do ingroups, but you have to achieve that state in which knowledge becomes capability.



PANEL ONE: THE PROXY WAR: IRAQ, SAUDI ARABIA, AND IRAN

Panelists: Patrick Clawson, Prof. Toby Craig Jones, Dafna Linzer, Lawrence WrightModerator: Steve Simon

Steve Simon:In the summer of 2006, Israel and Hezbollahfought a war in Lebanon that was more con-clusive for Washington than it was for thegroups battling it out on the ground. InWashington, the war crystallized viewsamong policymakers and others that there wasactually something very much deeper goingon in the Middle East. There was a fundamen-tal realignment, and the summer war inLebanon was the first battle fought betweenthe emerging contenders in this new MiddleEast – the United States and its allies on theone hand, and Iran on the other.

This view found traction and wasexpressed in some rococo descriptions. NewtGingrich, a former speaker of the House ofRepresentatives, called it the beginning ofWorld War III. Whether or not that is what onethinks it was, that is how people viewed it.The subsequent events in Iraq have tended toreinforce this view among people who held itto begin with. This is in part because thereare two paradigms for understanding what isgoing on in Iraq (in Washington anyway;there are probably very different paradigmsin New York).

The paradigms in Washington are essen-tially these; there is a moderate, civic-minded,nationalist political center in Baghdad that isyearning to breathe free. But outsiders in theform of al Qaeda and Iran are stoking extrem-ist violence in order to prevent these moder-ates from self-actualization and the Iraqi statefrom achieving political maturity.

The other paradigm, of course, is that out-siders actually have very little to do with it;that the Iraqis have effectively been long-stripped of their ability to formulate a kind ofnormal politics. This is because SaddamHussein had systematically destroyed civilsociety over the course of nearly 30 years.Twelve years of sanctions had decimated the

middle class, and the U.S. invasion had decap-itated the government. So what was there towork with? That is the other paradigm.

I won’t attempt to assess which paradigmis true. I just point them out because theyillustrate the stakes, it seems to me, for thosewho are inclined to see an emerging realign-ment with the United States and its allies onthe one side and Iran on the other. Allies of theUnited States within the region – principallythe Sunni states – have jumped on this ratherenthusiastically. But, of course, they are deal-ing with Islamist oppositions, so signing ontothe great Sunni/Shia divide and demonizingIran is like somebody running for CityCouncil and going to Coney Island and eatingkreplach and hot dogs – it is what you do toboost your prestige.

We have a great panel here that will helpus get to the bottom of this interpretativemorass. I hope that Patrick Clawson andDafna Linzer will tell us about how the U.S.and Iran got to this point. It seems to me thateverything was hunky dory in 2002 – theIranians were cooperating with us inAfghanistan, and we had nothing but nicethings to say about one another. And then aseries of events beginning with a bombing inSaudi Arabia seemed to sour this. Now wefind ourselves in this very perilous state.

Patrick Clawson:You have spoken and written a great dealabout what happened, Steve; namely that withthe end of the Taliban regime and the over-throw of Saddam Hussein, Iran had achieveda great strategic breakthrough in the region,and they felt that they had great strategicstrength. That, combined with the high priceof oil, meant that Iran felt that it was imprac-tical for the West to take action against themon the oil front, and that they had a great dealof income. They also felt that the breakdown


PANEL ONE: THE PROXY WAR: IRAQ, SAUDI ARABIA, AND IRAN 15

in the Arab-Israeli peace process empoweredthose who were closest to them.

So Iran felt emboldened, and a great manyof the leaders of the Islamic Republic sharethe same objectives that MahmoudAhmadinejad states in stark terms, but theyhad long felt that those objectives are notrealizable. Now they appeared to be realiz-able, and Iran pushed ahead, confidentenough to brush off U.S. objections, and theUnited States therefore encountered greatproblems in dealing with them. That becameextraordinarily apparent in the confrontationover the nuclear program, which Iran had longkept hidden, but which was revealed at aboutthe same time.

That, then, is the overall background forthe decisions taken by the United States overthe last few months about how to engage withIran, particularly the decision that the key the-ater of engagement will be Iraq. The adminis-tration’s analysis of the problems facing ourstrategy in Iraq is that the Shia communitylost patience, that Abu Musab al Zarqawi’sefforts to provoke a war between Sunnis andShia turned out to be a spectacularly success-ful strategy (unlike his earlier approaches),and that the fundamental problem that theUnited States faces in Iraq is Shia violenceand not the Sunni insurgency. The administra-tion feels that the Sunni insurgency is some-thing that can be dealt with by the UnitedStates and its Iraqi allies, particularly if theIraqi government gets more traction on theground, which cannot happen until the Shiatargeting of Sunnis for elimination stops.

Furthermore, the administration stronglysenses that those who are primarily encourag-ing the Shia violence against random Sunnisare the most radical elements within the mili-tias, and constitute only a small proportion of

those militias. (Twenty percent is often cited.)The administration senses that those radicalmilitia members are doing this with theencouragement and support of the Iranians,who are interested in splitting those elementsoff and doing to the main militia movementswhat they did so successfully to the Amalmovement in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Iranwas able to provide political and material sup-port for the most radical elements, which thenorganized within the larger Amal movementand later split off as a separate organization,Hezbollah. They were then able to carry outan internal civil war within the Shia commu-nity, to emerge victorious, and to dominateShia politics in Lebanon to the point thatNabih Berri, the leader of Amal, is effectivelyreduced to being Hezbollah’s spokesman. TheU.S. strategy is to tell people like Moktada alSadr that that is where their future lies, too,unless they join with us in cracking down onthe Iran-supported Shia violence againstSunnis.

This campaign against Iranian influencein Iraq is essential to solving the Iraq problem.It is also essential to cementing our relation-ship with the Saudis, which has been rockynot just since 9/11 but for 15 years. TheSaudis were not particularly eager to be closeto the United States from the mid-1990sonward, certainly from the Khobar Towersbombing onward. It is really quite remarkablethat, in many ways as a result of theHezbollah/Israel war over the summer, theSaudis, in the view of the administration, havehad an epiphany and have begun to view theregion through an Iranian lens. At a time whenthe United States is unpopular and weak, theSaudis have decided to embrace the UnitedStates in the warmest way that they have inmore than a decade. We see closer collabora-tion between the United States and SaudiArabia on intelligence, military, and politicalmatters.

This is also very much driven by a Saudiconcern that the United States might not standup to Iran. Seeing what is happening in Iraq,and that the United States is doing nothingabout the Iranian influence there, the Saudis

“This campaign against Iranian influencein Iraq is essential to solving the Iraq

problem. It is also essential to cementingour relationship with the Saudis.”



are worried that perhaps the United States isgoing wobbly at the knees, and that it needs tobe bucked up. Therefore we have suchextraordinary scenes as Dick Cheney’s trip toSaudi Arabia. Mr. Cheney is not somebodywho particularly likes to travel, and he certain-ly does not like to take long plane trips just togo see a foreign head of state and then comeright back. This was done quite expressly sothat the Saudis could say to him, “Don’t eventhink about talking to the Iranians and theSyrians.” So the United States thinks that thestrategy of going after the Iranian influence inIraq will make a difference in reassuring Gulfallies, will reinforce the Saudi approach, andwill help create greater regional pressureagainst Iran.

Finally, this approach of going after theIranians’ influence in Iraq offers someprospect of a positive effect on the Iraniannuclear program and on Iranian activities ingeneral. It is hard to believe that it is coinci-dental that, after the passage of U.N. SecurityCouncil Resolution 1737 and two U.S. arrestsof Iranian high officials within the space ofthree weeks, we see the Iranian press sudden-ly starting to criticize Mr. Ahmadinejad. Thisincludes criticism from Keyhan, the main con-servative newspaper that has always beenamong his biggest supporters, and had alwaysbeen vicious about attacking anybody whocriticized him. There have also been articles –whether in Keyhan, Jomhouri Eslami,Hamshahri, or on the radio – explicitly link-ing the criticism of Ahmadinejad to his overlyaggressive approach toward the West on thenuclear issue.

This is very encouraging, because we havelong been told that the nuclear issue wasuncontroversial in Iran and that everyone sup-ported it. Now it is a rare day when there areno articles in the Iranian press criticizing thepresident for endangering the country andencouraging the American bullies.

It was particularly telling that, after theAmerican raid on what the Iranians describedas a consulate in Irbil, the Iranian reaction wascomplete silence for four days. Ahmadinejadwas in Venezuela at the time. The next day, he

and Hugo Chávez were together. Chávezstood up and delivered one of his diatribesagainst the United States. Ahmadinejad talkedabout the importance of economic coopera-tion and said nothing about the Irbil raid. Sothis more assertive approach against theIranian presence in Iraq may also be helpfulon the Iranian nuclear issue.

Dafna Linzer:I will address a few things that Patrick said,and then go back to something that Stevementioned in his introduction – a bombing inSaudi Arabia in May 2003 and how it has hadan impact on our current situation.

In regard to what Patrick said about thisU.S. strategy to get a little tougher with Iran,the hope is that it will cause the Iranians toback down on the nuclear program. That is, ofcourse, one view. It does not take into accountthe possibility that Iran’s reaction may beescalation. That is something that I know hasconcerned people inside the intelligencecommunity and some areas of the Bushadministration, and why it took quite a bit oftime for people in the administration to cometo the conclusion that this is the way theywanted to go.

There are many ways in which the Iranianscould escalate inside Iraq. That could rapidlychange the dynamic at a time when the U.S.military, and certainly the administration, arelooking to calm things down. There is theHezbollah issue, there is western Afghanistan.There are many ways in which the Iranianscould hurt U.S. citizens and U.S. interests inthe Gulf. Whether or not the strategy is defi-nitely going to turn the Iranians in a differentdirection is up for discussion. So far I do notsee a lot of evidence that that is a sure thing,

“The United States went into Iraq andfound itself in a world full of surprises.

The Iranians went in with a very clear picture of what they

wanted to accomplish.”



but that is certainly what this is built on.The May 2003 bombing in Saudi Arabia

was a big moment; it led to a break betweenthe U.S. and the Iranians. There had been agreat deal of quiet, but effective, cooperationafter the September 11th attacks – coopera-tion in Afghanistan and cooperation on alQaeda. The Iranians turned hundreds of alQaeda fighters who had fled across their bor-ders over to U.S. allies. They handed overphotographs, fingerprints, and the names ofevery person that they had arrested comingacross the border. This led to quite a bit ofcooperation both privately on intelligencechannels and diplomatically withAfghanistan.

Pat Lang’s earlier comments about expec-tations, and the difference between how yousee yourself and how others see you, are rele-vant here. There were a series of surprises forthe Iranians throughout this process. They feltthat they had been helpful on Afghanistan,and thus deserved to be rewarded, and yetwere punished by speeches such as PresidentBush’s State of the Union address in which heincluded them in “the axis of evil,” an accusa-tion which came in the middle of that cooper-ation. These sorts of things stopped and start-ed the cooperation quite a bit, and certainlyaffected the Iranians’ position on many issues.

They did feel, however, that in the run-upto the invasion of Iraq, they were on the samepage as the United States, that the cooperationin regard to Afghanistan would continue inregard to Iraq, and that they could make somekind of deal. The Iranians agreed not to inter-fere with the invasion and kept that promise.They thought that they would get somethingout of it – possibly a deal with the Americans,better cooperation, or perhaps a swap of the alQaeda high-value targets that they hold asbargaining chips (most believe) in exchangefor some of the Iranian dissidents who are ina camp in Iraq. That deal did not go through,and a lot of this fell apart because of the May2003 bombing in Saudi Arabia. There aresome intelligence indications that one of thehigh-value targets who was in Iran at the timemay have been connected somehow to the

bombing. As far as I know, the intelligence isnot very firm but exists in some form oranother. I think that is how things started tohappen inside Iraq between the United Statesand Iran.

The United States went into Iraq andfound itself in a world full of surprises. TheIranians went in with a very clear picture ofwhat they wanted to accomplish. When youhear people in the administration talk abouthaving U.S. troops embedded with Iraqitroops, you should know that the Iranianshave been doing that for three years withShiite militias. They have been fully embed-ded, providing logistics, weaponry, intelli-gence – anything they can to further the gainsof the Shia in Iraq. So when you hear talkabout being behind the curve on Iraq, this iscertainly an area where the U.S. is vastlybehind the curve and where the Iranians havemoved ahead – frankly years ahead – of wherethe U.S. wants to be with the kind of influencethey have.

In addition, the Iranians have made greatgains in recruiting people in Iraq. They havetheir own intelligence station, which is abouthalf the size of a C.I.A. station, and whichgives them an enormous amount of influenceand ability. They are focused on a single thingand are not as distracted as U.S. intelligenceand U.S. troops.

That is where I think we are in Iraq.Patrick brought up the issue of Saudi Arabia,which is essential for all of the United States’Sunni Arab allies in the region. They are verynervous about the situation, and seem pre-pared to get into the mix as the Iranians havedone, or at least want the United States tothink that that’s the case – that they couldexpand the conflict even wider if the UnitedStates does not get tougher with the Iranianinfluence inside Iraq.

The administration has been hesitant to dothat. They have spent a lot of time trying notto do that, and trying to concentrate on theareas that were important to them when theyfirst went into Iraq. The big focus was on theSunnis, on the Baathists, the dead-enders, andso forth, and they did not see how significant



the Iranian influence with the Shiites wasbecoming or how the militias would end upbecoming so violent and so aggressive in theinsurgency.

I agree with Patrick that this is becomingthe new front between the United States andIran, and it is in the middle of the hottest battle-field in the world right now, which is significant. The U.S. strategy for dealing with the Iraniansinside Iraq should not be confused with anIraq policy or an Iraq strategy. It is an Iranstrategy. As Patrick said, the idea is to encour-age the Iranians to back down on their nuclearprogram. Even if people in the administrationemphasize Iran’s ties to terrorism, their rela-tionship with Hezbollah, or any of their otherinterests in the region, it is their nuclear pro-gram that is at the top of the minds of the prin-cipals in the administration.

That is not because Iran is a year awayfrom getting a bomb, but because they are onthat track. U.S. intelligence still believes thatIran is about a decade away. Those estimatescan change. You can put no stock in them orall of your stock in them. I am not sure thatany intelligence estimates have rung true in avery long time, other than about the SovietUnion. But the estimates are there. I think thatthe Iranian nuclear program is struggling. Theestimate never changes, no matter how manyterrible centrifuges and poor quality arrange-ments they seem to put together. That is animportant thing to note as well. But that is thenumber one issue for the administration – thenuclear program.

Steve Simon:In his testimony to the Senate, Robert Gates,the new Secretary of Defense, raised thespecter of regional war. He said that the costof failure in Iraq would be “incalculable.” Heleft it undefined, but the general idea is that ifthe U.S. were to pull out, everyone else wouldgo in. Some of this thinking had been spurred,I suppose, by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi royal fam-ily surrogate who wrote a piece in TheWashington Post on November 29, 2006 abouthow the Saudis would have to move in.

Larry, I would like your perspective on

how the Saudis in particular see Iraq, theirinterests, and the region evolving following anAmerican withdrawal. What could or wouldthe Saudis do to protect their interests, giventheir own large Shia population, as well astheir own domestic political interests in termsof their Sunni constituency?

Lawrence Wright:This gets back to Pat Lang’s comments aboutwhat people say about themselves and whatwe observe about their behavior. Nawaf Obaidis a mysterious figure. He is a security con-sultant who ostensibly worked for PrinceTurki al-Faisal, who fired him after he wrotethat Op-Ed piece in the The Washington Post.

Patrick Clawson:Prince Turki ostensibly fired him.

Lawrence Wright:Ostensibly fired him, yes. Perhaps we shoulduse the word “ostensibly” in front of everyactive verb having to do with Saudi Arabia. Inthe Op-Ed piece, Obaid suggested that theSaudis would essentially invade Iraq – thatthere are irresistible tribal ties, that the pres-sure on the Kingdom would be too great. Theywould have to go in. Prince Turki then osten-sibly let him go. Prince Turki resigned shortlythereafter, ostensibly because his cousin,Prince Bandar, was conducting private talks atthe White House that he wasn’t privy to,which may have had to do with creating analliance between the Saudis and the U.S.against Iran. (All of this is a little mysterious,and I am not going to say that I understand ittotally.)

What we can observe about the Saudis’past behavior may help us determine whetherwe should take them at face value now. TheKhobar Towers bombing in 1996 comes tomind. There are still questions about whatreally happened, but the most likely link is thatan Iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah groupbombed the American quarters there. TheSaudis were essentially bombed by theirneighbor. This was a bombing on Saudi soil.How did they react?



Well, they restricted the flow of informa-tion to the U.S. because they were afraid thatwe would retaliate. I asked Richard Clarke,formerly the director of counterterrorism atthe National Security Council, whether wewould have retaliated. He said, “Damn right.We would have gone in and bombed them.”The Saudi response to being attacked on theirown homeland was to not tell the U.S. Theyfelt that they had to live there, that it was theirneighborhood. They were terrified of the kindof response that the Iranians might be able toengender within the Kingdom, and towardsthe Kingdom’s interests around the world.This probably pertains also to the 2003 bomb-ing that Dafna talked about. So, there is a gap,I suppose, between what Nawaf Obaid saidthat the Kingdom would do and what theymight actually do. The Saudis typically do notinvade other countries. They hire mercenariesto protect themselves.

So if we were to withdraw from Iraq, themost likely result, in my opinion, would be acataclysm within the region, beyond just theSunni/Shia split. For one thing, there isalready an overwhelming flood of refugeesfrom neighboring countries, Jordan and Syriain particular. They are dealing with an enor-mous economic problem trying to accommo-date the refugees that they are getting now.Imagine what it would be like if, instead oftens of thousands, there were millions fleeingto the borders.

How would the neighbors react? Veryactively, I would think, with the Jordaniansgetting into it with the backing of Saudimoney. I cannot quite envision Saudi troopsgoing across the border, but I can certainlyenvision them actively protecting that border

and doing whatever they can to stop any fur-ther intrusions. I can imagine them activatingmujahedeen to go across the border – simplyopening a one-way door so that a lot of peoplewould go into Iraq to protect Sunni interestsas a way of guarding against stirring upShiites within the Kingdom.

So, I see the U.S. withdrawal as being veryconsequential in the region – not to say thatstaying isn’t consequential, but we would befooling ourselves to think that even a carefullymanaged withdrawal wouldn’t have dramaticconsequences for the region.

Steve Simon:There are already millions of refugees pour-ing over borders, as somebody in the audiencenoted. I wonder whether the Saudis are wor-ried about a blowback problem, whether it isreally possible to have a one-way door, despiteall of the money that they are going to pay tobuild a wall along the border.

Toby, I was hoping you would talk abouttwo related questions. Is there some kind ofprimordial, horrible Sunni/Shia “thing”unfolding in Iraq that is inexorable and terri-bly consequential? And is a broader sectariandivision unfolding within the region, relatedto what is going on in Iraq?

Toby Craig Jones:I’ll comment on both of those questions. Byway of providing context and background,sectarianism – and Sunni/Shia conflict, ofcourse – has quite a history in the region. Ithas ebbed and flowed based on the politicalinterests of ruling states that have risen andfallen over time. It is not necessarily primordial,but sectarianism becomes a convenient instru-ment of asserting and situating political powerin the specific interests of those who rule.

This is one of those moments when sectar-ianism has become convenient in Iraq. In the20th century, there was no absence of sectari-an tension. The small Sunni majority retainedand managed political control until veryrecently. The Shia have enthusiasticallyembraced their new-found political powerbased on various things – vengeance, libera-

“The real reason we haven't beenattacked is that al Qaeda was

essentially a zombie for three years, until we invaded Iraq

and reawakened this creature.”



tion, whatever we want to call it. So, sectari-anism will continue to be an issue of centralconcern.

In addressing the regional dimensions ofthis, I will talk about what I know, which is theShia community in Saudi Arabia, and howSaudi Arabia itself has managed the relation-ship between its Sunni constituency and thedomestic Shia community. The Shia commu-nity in Saudi Arabia has been called a fifthcolumn for Iran, an internal threat, divisive,and at moments certainly willing to use vio-lence to achieve its own interests.

I am going to be alarmist. There are ten-dencies in Saudi Arabia that we can identifytoday that suggest that the presence of theAmericans in Iraq is increasingly irrelevant,and that the issue of withdrawal may or maynot be a concern moving forward. SaudiArabia has put itself on a war footing, and theAmerican presence, while it may change thedynamics of how this war footing materializesor develops, will probably not ultimatelydetermine the extent to which Saudi Arabia’sposturing and positioning for future conflictwill produce violence.

In the past two years, Saudi Arabia – withits perception of an Iranian threat and the sit-uation in Iraq – has determined that it is goingto exacerbate and re-embrace the kind of pol-itics that had hatched in the 1980s after therise of Khomeini in Iran and the Iran/Iraq war.That is when it first principally identified theShia threat as something that could potential-ly undermine its hegemony within the Gulfand the region more generally. Saudi Arabiahas always embraced, since early in the 20thcentury, an anti-Shia streak. But that was notmanifested publicly; it was not something thatwas talked about openly. After the Iranian-revolution-turned-Islamic-revolution, SaudiArabia found that its interests were betterserved by embracing, supporting, and build-ing an institutional and ideological frameworkthat was specifically anti-Shia.

For example, as much as their support forthe mujahedeen in Afghanistan was aresponse to the Soviet invasion, checkingKhomeini’s power and expansion into centralAsia was no less a significant part of theirthinking. Funding for Iraq in the Iran/Iraq warlikewise demonstrated the Kingdom’s inter-ests in checking Khomeini’s expansion west-ward. Certain kinds of institutions were estab-lished and materials published during the1980s and 1990s that were vitriolic in theiranti-Shiism.

This largely went away in the 1990s.Rapprochement between Saudi Arabia andIran was achieved on the surface, if not inpractice. There were closer relations by theend of the decade – close enough that they hadreestablished diplomatic ties and were willingto talk about security and regional issues.

The Iraq war has disrupted that balanceand has led Saudi Arabia back into the land ofinstitutionalized anti-Shiism and sectarian-ism. Constituencies within the country havebeen allowed to proceed with toxic and com-bustible domestic politics.

Two trends are identifiable. I will say byway of qualification that Saudi Arabia hasalways had a difficult relationship with its cler-gy. Yet one particular group has been especial-ly troublesome since the 1990s. This group isthe Islamic Awakening. They were radicalizedafter the Americans arrived to fight Iraq in thefirst Gulf War, and their radical tendenciestook on an antigovernment tone. The govern-ment cracked down on them in the middle ofthe 1990s, imprisoning many. They were suffi-ciently chastened upon their release fromprison in 2000 and 2001 to no longer espouseor articulate specifically anti-al Saud senti-ments, in public at least. Several of thembecame quite prominent in the reform move-ment that emerged in 2003, and which has dieda painful death in recent years.

Members of this Islamic Awakening com-munity have always, or at least recently, clungto anti-Shia and sectarian tendencies beneaththe surface. In recent months, though, therehave been some disturbing trends. Prominentmembers of this group met alongside a group

“Saudi Arabia has put itself on a war footing.”



of Iraqi clerics in Istanbul in early Decemberand articulated a need for more open, sectari-an warfare in Iraq. They outlined a positionpaper arguing for the need to wipe out thePersian menace to the east and to the north,which about 40 of them signed. This is quitedisturbing.

On the surface, of course, it is disturbingbecause there is a group of Saudi clerics whoare marching around the region promotingopen warfare, but it is also disturbing becausethe Saudi government has done nothing tosilence them. These are the same people whoquite publicly maintain close relationshipswith jihadi networks and who are the mostcorrosive influences in the community.

The second trend that demonstrates amobilization against the Shia both domesti-cally and regionally is identifiable in a spe-cific kind of political response to SaudiArabia’s own Shia community. In 2003, theShia were openly embraced by then-CrownPrince Abdullah as part of a national reformmovement. They were put center stage as anexample of how Saudi Arabia was movingforward with religious tolerance and politicalpluralism. The Shia were able to speak open-ly, they published openly, and they were ableto pursue their political, regional, and cul-tural interests with a bit more safety thanthey had in previous years. Much of that hasgone away.

Saudi Arabia cracked down harshly aftera group of Shia marched in support ofHezbollah during its confrontation with Israelover the summer. Scores of people werearrested for political reasons, especially thosemost closely identified with the old networkof Saudi Hezbollah. In addition to politicalarrests, there have been a series of culturalcrackdowns. Most recently, a group of pil-grims from the Eastern Province aboard a buson their way to Mecca were detained andprevented from carrying out their religiousrituals. This was a particularly provocativemove, but it follows on the heels of similarmoves in which the government has closeddown hussainiyas, the community centersthat the Shia use to speak about religious and

community matters. Perhaps also of interestis the government's sweeping initiative in thelast three or four months to close down mixedSunni/Shia salons, which have largelybecome identified as potential places forcross-community collaboration that reflectthe kind of principles of pluralism that hadbecome of interest in 2003.

Those two tendencies – permitting anti-Shia ideologues to become more prominentand cracking down on the Shia communitydomestically – suggest that a trend is under-way in which Saudi Arabia has alreadydecided that it is going to pursue a local andregional politics of sectarianism, and that it isquite committed to this.

One might say that Saudi Arabia is simplypursuing short-term interests, and that theycould change this any time. I think that thebroader problem, and this speaks to the poten-tial for regional conflagration, is that if SaudiArabia is doing this, they are painting them-selves into an ideological corner from which itwill be very difficult to escape.

There are various domestic pressures thatare brought to bear on the Kingdom, particu-larly from the radical Sunni clerics who arevery difficult to control and contain once theyare operating under some momentum. If theydo generate any kind of following inside theKingdom and outside, it is conceivable thatSaudi Arabia would not be able to reversecourse and chart an alternative path. The dis-turbing note here is that this is the exact samekind of politics that Saudi Arabia pursuedwith hard-line Sunni radicals in the 1980s andearly 1990s, and we all know what came outof Saudi Arabia as a result of that.

EXCERPTS FROM THE QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION:

• • •Stephen Holmes (from the audience):Larry, you and Toby have both spoken aboutwhat Saudi Arabia might do in Iraq. What arethey doing now? Is Saudi intelligence in Iraq?Are they opening the door now to deliberatelysend people over?



• • •Lawrence Wright:I think that Saudi Arabia is afraid of blow-back. They have already seen the conse-quences of young Saudis going into Iraq andthe radicalizing effect that that has within theKingdom. Saudis are the majority, by someestimates, of the suicide bombers in Iraq. Theexperience that the Saudis have had, though, isthat they come back.

One of the Saudis’ big mistakes early onduring the Afghan war was imagining that itcould be a good policy to let unemployed andunhappy young men with radical ideas go offand fight this jihad, thinking that that woulddispose of them. It imported the problemback into the Kingdom in a much moreprofound way.

• • •Dafna Linzer:My sense is that the Saudis are not openingthe gates and letting people go directly in.They are making it a little bit more difficult,forcing them to go around. As far as I can tell,Iraq is one of the only areas of cooperation incounterterrorism intelligence right nowbetween the Saudis and the United States,specifically because of the blowback issue –they do not want these people coming home,they are desperate to prevent that.

• • •

Question (from the audience):What would happen if the United States wereto reduce its role in the region?

• • •

Lawrence Wright:If the United States were to pull back fromIraq, the psychological effect on al Qaeda andradical Islam would be profound. People havebeen talking about how we have not beenattacked here since 9/11, and saying that wemust be doing something right.

The real reason we haven’t been attackedis that al Qaeda was essentially a zombie forthree years, until we invaded Iraq and reawak-ened this creature. It is much more potent now.It is focused on Iraq, but we would be crazy to

think that there is not going to be an immenseamount of blowback when all of the jihadiswho are going into Iraq begin to leave. Manyof them are going to be focusing their effortson us and our allies, and they will be muchmore emboldened if they feel like they havebeen victorious in Iraq.

• • •

Question (from the audience):If the U.S. were to scale back, could al Qaedacause a spark that would pull us back in?

Lawrence Wright:There are many things al Qaeda can’t do thatthey would like the U.S. to do for them. Takingon Iran is one of those things.

Al Qaeda probably couldn’t shut down theStrait of Hormuz or destroy the Saudi oilfields. Iran could. By provoking a confronta-tion between the Sunni and the Shia that couldthen spill into a U.S./Iranian conflict, al Qaedaaccomplishes its goals by using us.

• • •Patrick Clawson:The best way to avoid that conflict is by press-ing Iran hard with diplomacy and with unifiedinternational efforts, such as those at theUnited Nations recently. It is discouraging tohear people who recommend against steps todeter and dissuade Iran; who recommendagainst forceful diplomacy because they holdout the fear of war.

The best way to avoid that war is by press-ing Iran, as Secretary of State CondoleezzaRice has said – offering a better path, a pathtoward reintegration in the world communityif they cooperate. We should be stepping upour efforts to make Iran’s choices starker, pre-cisely to avoid the scenario that you describe.

• • •


PANEL TWO: THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF AL QAEDA 23

Karen J. Greenberg:In the fall of 2001, the United States launcheda rather successful attack against Afghanistanwith the hope of destroying the Taliban and alQaeda. By many estimates, the Taliban arenow re-emerging. Some would say that alQaeda has also gained new strength. Today,we have assembled a panel that can authorita-tively tell us about what is happening.

Barnett Rubin:I’d like to emphasize from the start that theTaliban and al Qaeda are not the same thing.While they have had common interests attimes, they have also had divergent interests,and this has led to splits or disagreementswithin the Taliban leadership at various times.

The day after President Bush’s speech onJanuary 10th announcing his ostensibly newstrategy in Iraq, the heads of all of the U.S.intelligence agencies, led by then-NationalDirector of Intelligence John Negroponte, tes-tified before the Senate Select Committee onIntelligence. Here is what he said (I am para-phrasing, but I have read it over several times,trying to figure out if President Bush wasactually briefed on it or not). I am not neces-sarily endorsing all of these points, but this isthe official analysis of the intelligence agen-cies of the United States.

He said: The greatest threat to the UnitedStates is terrorism. The most dangerous ter-rorist organization in the world is al Qaeda.The leaders of al Qaeda now have a new safehaven in Pakistan along the border withAfghanistan. In this safe haven, where theyare protected by some Pakistani tribes and anumber of armed groups that we can looselyrefer to as Taliban, they are planning to inflictmass casualties on the United States. Ofcourse, this sanctuary could expand as the

Taliban expand their power insideAfghanistan (and, I should add, Pakistan) andexpand the territory that they control and haveaccess to in those two countries.

Negroponte then noted that the number ofattacks by the Taliban and other forces alliedwith them had doubled in the past year, thatthe number of suicide attacks had quadrupled,and that the Taliban leadership enjoys a safehaven in Pakistan (which is, I should mention,the world’s leading source of nuclear prolifer-ation to regimes that are less unlikely thanothers to allow terrorists to get access tonuclear materials).

That is the intelligence agencies’ analysisof what constitutes the major threat to theUnited States. The president’s response was tosend more troops to Iraq, to escalate histhreats against Iran, and to once again qualifyPakistan as our leading ally in the war on terror.

I do not suggest that we should putPakistan on the axis of evil and have a policytoward it like we have toward Iran. I think thatthe policy toward both countries is mistaken.Neither of them has a stake in supporting alQaeda’s global campaign for an Islamiccaliphate and the destruction of the UnitedStates, but I think that neither of them takethose objectives as seriously as our govern-ment appears to do. Pakistan certainly contin-ues to believe that it can play games with theseorganizations precisely in order to play uponour fears to its own advantage. Its ability to doso – and what I continue to see (although Ihave limited access) as our own government’slack of understanding about what the localactors see as the stakes in these conflicts –have prevented us from elaborating a realisticpolicy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We need a coherent policy toward both ofthose countries. This has to be nested within a

PANEL TWO:THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF AL QAEDA

Panelists: Peter Bergen, Steve Coll, Prof. Barnett RubinModerator: Karen J. Greenberg



coherent policy toward the regions aroundthem and globally, which is one of thefundamental reasons that we have seen there-creation of this cross-border safe havenfor the Taliban.

It is a mistake to believe that United Statesofficials can obtain the type of knowledge thatyou would need to operate effectively on theground in these areas. Of course, they can bemore effective or less effective, but my mainpoint is that you need genuine partners to allywith who do have that kind of practitioner’sknowledge. The type of knowledge needed isnot finite but fractal in the sense that the moreyou look at the situation, the more complex itbecomes; the more you know about it, themore you realize how much you don’t know.

Afghanistan is but one case in which thecategories that our government, public, andpress bring to bear on the understanding of sit-uations – derived from our interests and ourunderstanding of what has happened to us –deprive us of the ability to understand whomwe are working with and what they are tryingto do.

That is, September 11th was described asan attack on freedom. Our enemies were theenemies of freedom, and everybody had to beeither with us or with the terrorists. The factis, not everybody in the world analyzes theirown political dilemma in terms of whetherthey are with us or with the terrorists. Nor dothey agree with the terrorists. They have theirown interests, but they see that by being withus in some way, however partially, they canget resources with which to accomplish theirother goals.

Of course, this is actually the core elementof Pakistan’s national security policy; that is,forming a relationship with the United Statesbased on opposition to the Soviet Union, or to

Iran, or to al Qaeda in order to obtain themilitary assistance that it wants in order tobalance India, which it believes does not fullyaccept its right to exist as a state. Therefore,its behavior toward Afghanistan and towardother issues is a function of that nationalsecurity problem, not of the United States’problem with terrorists.

On a more microscopic level, when theUnited States went into Afghanistan in 2001(and here I am partly relying on BobWoodward’s books and others) the only high-level discussions that I have learned of werediscussions about whom we could get tofight against our enemies, and what theywould want in order to do that. But there wasno analysis done of what the post-war conse-quences of empowering various groupswould be.

That led to ethnic issues in Afghanistan,and also to the country basically being takenover by a bunch of armed gangs (I highlyrecommend Sarah Chayes’s book, ThePunishment of Virtue: Inside AfghanistanAfter the Taliban, about her experience inKandahar). It also led to a pattern of involve-ment in local politics that we really did notunderstand; a pattern of involvement thatenabled us to be very effectively manipulatedby local warlords, by power-holders, and alsoby Pakistan.

Kandahar is the homeland of the Talibanand the Afghan monarchy, and it is an area ofPashtun tribes. Within Afghanistan, Kandaharsees itself as first among equals. That is to say,the leader of the state should be fromKandahar and should be a member of one ofthe leading tribes of Kandahar. That is thecase now. Within Kandahar itself, there has tobe a balance among the leading tribes.

Because of basically tactical considera-tions during the taking of Kandahar, theUnited States Army empowered Gul AghaShirzai, a Barakzai commander with very lit-tle political support; marginalized the forcesof Hamid Karzai and his allies; and created asituation where the local people perceived thatwe were supporting a drug-trading mafialeader at the expense of the other groups and

“Not everybody in the world analyzestheir own political dilemma

in terms of whether they are with us or with the terrorists.”


PANEL ONE: THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF AL QAEDA 25

tribes in Kandahar. Then, because of competi-tion over smuggling routes, drug trafficking,and some ethnic issues, he pursued a conflictwith Ismail Khan, a Persian-speaking leaderwho took Herat (also with U.S. assistance),and began giving military assistance toPashtun tribes on the outskirts of Herat. (Bythe way, Persian speakers and Pashtun tribesfrom Kandahar have been fighting overHerat for about 400 or 500 years.) He wasencouraged in this – armed and paid to dothis – by Pakistan, which saw the NorthernAlliance to which Ismail Khan belonged asbeing an anti-Pakistani group, and whichalso did not want Afghanistan to develop astable government.

Basically, this struggle over smugglingincome and ethnic politics, and Pakistaniattempts to produce a pro-Pakistani govern-ment in Afghanistan, was portrayed by theAmericans as Pakistan, our ally in the war onterror, helping us with the aid of our localmilitia ally, Gul Agha Shirzai, against the ter-rorist axis-of-evil Iranians. The IranianRevolutionary Guard had welcomed ourSpecial Forces into Bagram Air Base andhelped us arm them, of course for their owninterest as well.

Similarly, Colin Powell had said there wasno need for a Marshall Plan in Afghanistan,which is a very simple economy, and with afew hundred million dollars the countrywould be on its feet again. So, there was alsono major economic assistance coming into thecountry for the first year or so, no reconstruc-tion assistance, and we were seen to be alliedwith corrupt leaders and being manipulatedby Afghanistan’s long-term opponent (enemyperhaps) Pakistan, a successor to the BritishEmpire and to the Mogul Empire.

Now, this pattern could be replicated invarious parts of the country, but the result wasthat the people in Afghanistan had tremen-dous hopes, actually, for the U.S. intervention,and most of them welcomed it as a rescuemission rather than as an invasion or an occu-pation. They started very early on to losefaith. In a series of interviews that I held withelders from all over the country on two occa-

sions during the past year, I found them to beextremely embittered. They said things like,“We have finally concluded that the interna-tional community is not really here to assistAfghanistan but that they have some othergoals.”

I do not mean to say that it would havebeen easy to establish good governance inAfghanistan, but the general pattern of sup-porting very bad governance in Afghanistanand seemingly ignoring it is what created anopening for the Taliban. The Taliban do havethis microknowledge of the patterns of tribalfactions, of clan politics in southernAfghanistan. That said, they would not havebeen able to create such an insurgency if theydid not have a safe haven in Pakistan, whichthey do have. They certainly receive supportfrom the religious parties that are in power inthe border provinces, and which have militiasin the tribal territories. The relationship to thegovernment is not clear, except that the gov-ernment does not take any decisive actionagainst them. There are reports that the intel-ligence agency continues to help them; not, ofcourse, because they hate America, butbecause of their conflict with Afghanistan.

The conflict between Pakistan andAfghanistan, which senior officials of ouradministration did not even know about whenI told them about it, is something that goesback as long as those two countries have exist-ed (which is not that long, Pakistan havingonly existed for 60 years). They always talkabout problems with the border. Afghanistandoes not recognize that border as a border. Ithas never accepted the incorporation ofPashtun territories and Baluch territories intoPakistan. Of course, it does not have thepower to take them back, but that has had allkinds of effects on the relationship betweenthe two countries.

That is why Afghanistan turned to theSoviet Union to build its army. That is whyPakistan has always tried to disempowerPashtun nationalists and support PashtunIslamists in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.As part of the British border settlement thatAfghanistan does not recognize, Pakistan has



maintained, and has strengthened in certainways, the autonomy of those tribal agenciesalong the border. That border has a state thatdoes not recognize it on one side and, on theother side, agencies that are not controlled bythe government.

So this is a perfect area for the creation ofsafe havens. What is actually required in bothcountries are measures that would be difficult,time-consuming, and expensive in order togradually resolve or de-escalate that long-standing conflict and build up institutions ofgovernance on both sides of the border. At themoment, the policy that we have instead beenpursuing has unintentionally aggravated therelations between the two countries to thepoint where they find it very difficult to com-municate about what we insist are their sharedsecurity interests, although they apparently donot always see it that way.

Peter Bergen:I agree with everything that Professor Rubinsaid. There is one note of optimism – ABCand the BBC conducted a significant poll inDecember and found that the Afghans’ viewof the future has declined from a positive rat-ing of 77 percent to 55 percent, but that stillfavorably compares to the perception of thefuture that people have in the United States.Something like 80 percent of Afghans have apositive view of the international and U.S.presence in Afghanistan. That is not to saythat the situation is not much worse than itwas even two years ago. But, unlike in Iraq, Ithink that in 2007 in Afghanistan, with somereal political will, we could reverse some ofthe things that have gone wrong.

Let me address the al Qaeda question. Ithink that there has been a sort of convention-al wisdom in the last two years that al Qaedathe organization has been replaced by alQaeda the ideological movement. The evi-dence for that was that the attack in Madrid in2004 seemed to be the work of a bunch ofdrug dealers and radicals with very little con-nection to al Qaeda, although they managed tokill 191 commuters. Other evidence for thatincluded the Miami case last summer, where a

group of al Qaeda (wannabes) allegedly plot-ted to blow up a number of federal buildings.

Although the ideological movement cer-tainly exists, we were not attacked by a groupof ideas on 9/11, but by an organization.While it is bad if lots of people around theworld do not like the United States, what isreally bad is if they organize themselves insuch a way that they can attack us. I am goingto give you seven or eight pieces of evidencethat I think indicate that al Qaeda is verymuch in a position where it might be able toattack us sometime in the next five to tenyears.

The London attack on July 7, 2005 wasreported both by the media and also strange-ly by the British government as being carriedout by a bunch of homegrown guys who wereradicalized in Leeds and who conducted themost successful terrorist attack in Britishhistory. In fact, that initial picture was com-pletely wrong. Two of the main suicideattackers had gone to Pakistan, had trained inan al Qaeda training camp, and had madesuicide tapes with al Qaeda’s media division,as-Sahab (which means “the Clouds” inArabic). It was an out-and-out al Qaedaoperation.

That gets to the second piece of evidence,which is that al Qaeda’s reach into the UnitedKingdom is really quite strong. In an unprece-dented, or at least very rare, public speech,Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head ofthe British domestic intelligence service, saidpublicly that there were 30 plots they wereaware of, many of which linked back to alQaeda in Pakistan in the post-9/11 era. Shealso said that the number of people in Britainwho had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistanwas growing.

Operation Crevice, a trial that is ongoingin Britain right now, is one of the cases thatdemonstrate that this is accurate. A group ofpeople, none of whom had gardens, had 1,300pounds of fertilizer that they were keeping ina storage facility in West London. The courtdocuments show that they, too, had trainedwith al Qaeda. Also, General Michael Maples,head of the United States’ Defense



Intelligence Agency, said something extreme-ly interesting in December 2006. He said,point blank, that the attempt to bring down tenAmerican planes with liquid explosives backin August was an al Qaeda operation directedfrom Pakistan. He did not mince his words.

The activity of as-Sahab, the al Qaedapropaganda arm that I have already men-tioned, is a further piece of evidence for alQaeda’s reorganization. It would be one thingif it were all talking-head propaganda, but as-Sahab is now documenting suicide missionsin Afghanistan conducted by both Afghansand Arabs. It is documenting quite skillfulimprovised-explosive-device attacks in east-ern Afghanistan against American Humvees.And, of course, it is also producing a lot oftalking-head propaganda which actuallymakes a difference. When bin Laden sayssomething, or Ayman al Zawahri starts talkingabout Somalia, people respond. There arepeople who want to respond to these things. Ican promise you that they will try and inter-vene in some way in Darfur. If there is a U.N.intervention in Darfur, the U.N. mission therewill certainly be attacked, in my view, by alQaeda affiliates in the region. In the past year,as-Sahab has produced 58 videotapes, whichis triple the output from 2005, an unprece-dented amount.

You might say, “Hey, this is all propagan-da.” But, to me, this shows that there is adegree of organization. I do not say there is afixed studio location – as-Sahab Studios,Incorporated, Waziristan – but there are camerapeople, there are editors and there is a fairlymajor operation there. And, of course, binLaden and Ayman al Zawahri have hardlybeen silent. In fact, Ayman al Zawahri is say-

ing so many things now that they are barelynewsworthy. We have had about 20 videotapesfrom Ayman al Zawahri this year, and fiveaudiotapes from bin Laden. They do not seemtoo hassled by the global war on terrorism,given their output.

There is a link between bin Laden’s state-ments and the actions he has undertaken. InSeptember of 2003, bin Laden, for the firsttime, mentioned Spain as a place that jihadistsshould attack. Of course, six months laterthere was the attack in Madrid. Bin Laden hasrepeatedly called for attacks on Saudi oilfacilities. Just last year we had an attack onperhaps the most important oil facility in theworld by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Saudi Arabia.Luckily, it did not work out, but next time wemay not be so fortunate. Bin Laden hasoffered truces to members of the coalition inIraq who are willing to pull out. Of course, Ithink that has something to do with theLondon attack. Obviously the British govern-ment did not take up the offer of a truce withal Qaeda.

Another piece of evidence is that moregroups are joining al Qaeda. G.S.P.C., whichis the largest Algerian terrorist group, justannounced that it is now part of al Qaeda.Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a sort of maverickAfghan warlord, said on al Jazeera somemonths ago that he was part of al Qaeda. Eventhough there are differences between theTaliban and al Qaeda, there are many fewerdifferences than there have been in the past.The Taliban are a very provincial bunch ofpeople. Mullah Omar visited his own capital,Kabul, only twice in the five years that heactually ran the country. Now the Taliban aretalking about Iraq, Palestine, and the globaljihad. They have morphed ideologically andtactically with al Qaeda. They are saying thesame things and they are using the sametechniques.

Paul Cruickshank (a Fellow here at theCenter on Law and Security) and I have col-laborated in looking at jihadist terrorism sincethe invasion of Iraq because we were bothsomewhat skeptical that the invasion of Iraqwas in some way beneficial to the war on ter-

“I think that a radiological bomb attackin a major European city,

although not an American city, is quite a plausible scenario within

the next five years.”



rorism. It is very interesting; if you look at theAfghan suicide attacks, they did not reallyhappen in 2003, and took off in 2004. TheTaliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan werelooking at the experience of the Iraq war andlearning from it. There were 21 suicide attacksin 2005 and 139 this past year. The graph isexponential. The graph is also exponential forimprovised explosive devices and for attackson international forces in Afghanistan.

Professor Rubin has already referred tothe safe havens on the Afghan/Pakistan bor-der. According to a U.S. intelligence officialwho was recently in the region, there are2,000 foreign fighters there. There are sevenfederally administered tribal regions. Therehave already been peace agreements with twoof those regions and the Pakistani govern-ment, and they have not resulted in anydecline in violence in Afghanistan; quite thereverse. And, of course, they benefit alQaeda.

Finally, there is Dafna Linzer’s andThomas Ricks’s fine piece in The WashingtonPost on November 28, 2006 about what isreally going on in Anbar Province. It was theU.S. Marines, not a bunch of flaming liberals,who said that al Qaeda is now actually incharge of Anbar Province. If you think aboutZarqawi’s plan in Iraq – to try to provoke acivil war between the Sunni and the Shia, sothat the Sunnis finally get the message thatal Qaeda is the only entity that can protectthem – that is what has happened in AnbarProvince, according to the U.S. Marines’own assessment.

That is where we are with al Qaeda today.Where are we going to be with al Qaeda fiveyears from now? Making predictions aboutthe future is always a very bad idea, I’m sure.In 1996, when the bin Laden unit was set upat the CIA, I do not think that anybody,including anybody who had a strong interestin the subject, could have predicted the 9/11attacks five years later. But we do know a lotmore about al Qaeda today than we did fiveyears ago, and I think we know what theirintentions are. We have somewhat less of anidea of their capabilities, but I’m going to try

to sketch out some things that I think will hap-pen in the next few years.

First of all, I think their haven on theAfghan/Pakistan border is secure. There is avery important election that will happen in2007 in Pakistan, arguably the most importantelection post-9/11 other than our own, whichis the presidential election. No one is going towin that election by saying, “I am going tohelp the U.S. in the war on terrorism.” Thatwould not be a winning ticket in Pakistan. So,whoever the successful candidate is, there isgoing to be less effort to help the UnitedStates on this issue.

There are 400,000 visits by U.K. citizensto Pakistan every year. Not all of those peo-ple are going to Pakistan simply to visit fam-ily, and I think that the possibility of ourbeing attacked by a British citizen is a rea-sonably high one if al Qaeda is able to attackus in the next five years. The haven in Iraq, Ithink, will continue to exist, and al Qaeda’sability to attract European militants to itscause will continue to exist. That is relevantto our safety because European citizens ben-efit from the visa-waiver program, a programthat I am not suggesting we change in anygreat way. An interesting example of the kindof person we could expect attacking theUnited States in the future is MurielDegauque, the female Belgian baker’s assis-tant who conducted a suicide operation inIraq in November of 2005. When the war isover, that kind of person may come andattack here.

I do not believe that al Qaeda central isgoing be able to attack the United Statesdirectly in the next five years. The plan toattack American aircraft that was foiled in theU.K. in August was an attempt to attack usdirectly in a place other than the UnitedStates, but even al Qaeda may recognize thatthe American Muslim community has notadopted the al Qaeda ideology. In my view,there are no American sleeper cells. There isvery scant evidence of them. KarenGreenberg and the Center on Law andSecurity’s work on the terrorism trials in theUnited States demonstrates that very few of



these trials have been about terrorists orintended terrorist activities.

In terms of tactics that I think al Qaedawill use in the future, I think that they willcontinue to attack oil facilities in SaudiArabia and Iraq. They will continue to attackWestern brand names around the Muslimworld, particularly hotels. They will continueto attack Israeli and Jewish targets outside ofIsrael. They have already done a lot of thatsince 9/11.

There are three things that I think theywill use that they have not done to mucheffect so far. One is increasing the use offemale jihadists, perhaps female jihadi sui-cide attackers. We have seen some evidence ofthis in Iraq, in Jordan, in Kashmir, and inEgypt in the last two years. The people whorun al Qaeda, of course, are huge misogynists,but they do recognize that from a tacticalpoint of view female jihadi suicide attackershave certain advantages.

There are two other things that wouldhave very a damaging impact on Americaninterests. One would be bringing down a com-mercial airliner with a rocket-propelledgrenade or surface-to-air missile, which iswell within al Qaeda’s capabilities. This is nota Chicken Little scenario. They tried to do itin Mombasa in 2002 with an Israeli passengerjet; it almost succeeded. They tried to bringdown a DHL jet in Baghdad in 2003. Theyhave tried it before, and I think that they willtry it again. Obviously, such an attack, if suc-cessful, would have a transformative impacton global aviation and tourism. Finally, I thinkthat a radiological bomb attack in a majorEuropean city, although not an Americancity, is quite a plausible scenario within thenext five years. Such an attack obviouslywould have a nasty effect on global investorconfidence.

Steve Coll:I am going to concentrate on the currentstructure of Pakistan’s relationship with theTaliban, and talk a little more specificallyabout the themes that Professor Rubin out-lined, which I endorse entirely.

Carlotta Gall wrote a terrific piece in TheNew York Times on January 21, 2007. Shequoted unnamed Western diplomats who saidthat Western governments believe thatPakistan’s government is supporting theTaliban. That was the extent of the assertion inthe piece. It raises questions that have bedev-iled India in the face of bombings in Delhiand Bombay, and bedevil not only the UnitedStates but also Canada, Britain and theNetherlands, whose soldiers, in addition toAfghans, are targets of attacks coming out ofthe tribal areas. The questions are: To whatextent is Pakistan’s relationship with theTaliban formalized today? What commandand control, if any, exists? To what extent isthat relationship an expression of the failureof the Pakistani state to control the Islamistpolitical parties, movements, and militiaswhich it has sponsored in the past, and contin-ues to tolerate? Are there weekly meetings?What evidence is there?

I think this is important, because thePakistani assertion that they have no formalrelationship with the Taliban, and that they infact seek to prevent the Talibanization of theNorth-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan,and the tribal areas, is an important reasonwhy they continue to receive large amounts ofaid from the United States and Europe.

I cannot give you a code-word level inven-tory of the evidence, but I do have a sense thatthat there is convincing evidence of activecontacts with Taliban leaders in Pakistan thatare monitored by Western governments, andthat involve the same characters who havestaffed the Afghan bureau of Pakistan’sDirectorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (or“ISI”) for 20 years. Some of these officers inthe Pakistan Army are serving officers, someare retired officers back on contract, andsome are retired officers who may be actingas religious volunteers. Even when you iden-tify a colonel, it is difficult to know whetherhe is receiving a pension or a salary, or has thebenefit of zakat contributions.

Maybe it does not matter, but I think thatin a government-to-government relationshipwhere quite a lot of money is flowing through



the pipeline the evidence is important.Ultimately it will matter, and the Pakistanigovernment understands this most of all,because as Professor Rubin said, one of theirtricks has been to pull off this balancing actthat allows them to maximize the resourcesthat they draw down from the West while alsomaximizing their freedom of action, as theysee it, in an existential struggle against India.If they are judged to be actively engaged withthe Taliban, that could put that balancing actin jeopardy.

My information about staffing in theAfghan bureau of the ISI is a little out of date,but I certainly know that about a year ago a lotof the people who were in that bureau on thePakistan side were people who had beeninvolved with the Taliban pre-9/11, and whowere presumed to be sympathetic and whoenjoy rich relationships with people like theclan that surrounds Jalaluddin Haqqani. He isa former Taliban minister whose family andallies control the area around Miram Shah,one of the hot areas of Taliban border-crossingoperations.

I think there is still a question about whatthe exact nature of this policy is, but the evi-dence is not inconsequential. Professor Rubinalluded to another way to think about it, whichis to ask what a Pakistani government that wasgenuinely pursuing an aggressive anti-Talibanpolicy would reasonably do, even grantingthat their self-preservation should be one ofthe objectives of their anti-Taliban policy.

What would they do, and are they doingit? That is a much easier question to answer.They are not doing it. They are not making thearrests of shura members and others that theywould be arresting if they were genuinelyattempting to break up the Taliban leadershipon Pakistani soil. To the contrary, inSeptember 2006 they cut a deal with triballeaders in North Waziristan, including peoplewho openly identify themselves as Talibanleadership and who issue statements in thename of the Taliban. The nature of that dealwas essentially to exchange agreements abouttargeting. The local militants agreed not to tar-get Pakistani army or government forces, and

the Pakistani army agreed to accept voluntari-ly self-compliance with the objective of notrunning attacks into Afghanistan. I think it iswell understood that the result of this has beena sharp increase in attacks from this veryregion by these very groups.

What does Pakistan say in its defense?Pervez Musharraf was here in the fall to meetwith the president (and to sell his book on TheDaily Show). The message that the Pakistanione-or two-star generals delivered to the pres-ident was apparently about the complexity ofthe tribal areas; these are very complicatedareas and Pakistan must be trusted to engagein its neo-colonial political strategy.

In any event, their defense is not altogeth-er divorced from the facts. They point out thatthese regions have been radicalized by 20years of warfare and, not incidentally, by U.S.and Pakistani government policy. They pointout that the old system of secular-minded, orat least loyal, political agents has beendestroyed. And it has been destroyed. In itsplace has arisen a system of religious leader-ship that is, although it can be complicatedfrom agency to agency, very much allied withthe objectives of the Taliban and al Qaeda onthe whole, as are the two major religious par-ties that hold power in the provincial govern-ments just down the hill from the tribal areas,and which control their infrastructure, theirministries, their patronage systems, their auto-

“What would a Pakistani governmentthat was genuinely pursuing

an aggressive anti-Taliban policy reasonably do,

even granting that their self-preservation should be one

of the objectives? What would they do, and

are they doing it? They are not.”



mobiles with flashing red lights, and all therest of the good things that come with provin-cial government.

The Pakistani army has struggled to comeup with a convincing strategy. They have attimes thought about the use of military force,and they sent a brigade or so up into Wanawhich was very badly beaten up and quicklystopped. They now claim to have two regulararmy divisions deployed in the tribal areas.Although I am not sure that anyone thinks thatthere are really two divisions’ worth ofPakistani soldiers up there, there are clearly aheadquarters and a few brigades there, andsome Americans floating around in thesebases. But the Punjabi-dominated army doesnot have much room to run around there, andcertainly the Caucasians in their midst areequally constrained, if not more so.

The official Pakistani strategy in the trib-al areas these days is to try to revive thesystem of secular political agents throughpolitical processes supported by developmentwork. The difficulty is precisely whatProfessor Rubin referred to, which is that thesecular political parties in this region thatwould be the natural allies of a locallygrounded anti-Taliban strategy, recognizableto Pashtuns as legitimate, are regarded withdeep suspicion by Musharraf and his col-leagues in the officer corps because of theirhistorical calls for an independent Pashtunnation. They are also considered suspiciousbecause of their perceived alliance, in theview of the Pakistani officer class, withIndian, Soviet, and other interests over theyears. So, just as Musharraf has failed tomake what those in the West would regard asa natural bargain with the Pakistan PeoplesParty – after all, a secular, robust party thatcould protect people like Musharraf from alQaeda-sponsored assassination plots – he hasalso failed to figure out a way to build a polit-ical future with the Awami parties, the secularparties, out there.

I am afraid that is going to persist into thenext year. The upcoming election cycle isgoing to be important, and it is not veryencouraging so far.

Why does Musharraf do the things hedoes? I do not think that anybody can answerthat question. If you have watched him speakwith Jon Stewart, if you have read his book(which I have, and cannot say that I wouldrecommend it absent a professional reason toread it), there is a flowering of ego in thatmanuscript that exceeds even the typicalpolitical memoir of its type. There is a list ofevery certificate that he has ever won in hislife, including his high school bodybuildingcompetition. He bears grudges againstpeople who interfered with his careeradvancement 25 years ago, and he lists themby name.

Interestingly, when he writes about theproblem of Afghanistan, he describes theNorthern Alliance in a transparently hostileway, as an instrument of Indian mischief-mak-ing and hegemony, and an India that willnever accept the existence of Pakistan. Youwould think that someone working for himwould have been brave enough to say, “HeyBoss, you’re right about this, but we could getourselves into trouble if we are this transpar-ent about our perceptions.” But no, it is sittingright there on the page.

Carlotta Gall’s terrific piece in The NewYork Times referred to Pakistan’s long ambi-tion to control political and strategic space inAfghanistan. That is true as far as it goes, butI think that for someone like Musharraf it ismuch more pointed than that. It is all aboutIndia, and it is all about a very specific his-tory with both openly declared and clandes-tine warfare with India. Musharraf was acommando in the clandestine warfare, afterall. He lives a very secular life, he is secularin a personal sense, but as a general he hasbeen a bit of a jihadi even within his owngroup. After he took power in 1999, he wentup to Muzaffarabad, talked to KashmirIslamist groups, and got them all riled up. Heembraced the Taliban after thinking about itfor a couple of months. He recognizes thatthese groups frighten the people that hewants off-balance, and he has been moreaggressive in embracing them than some ofhis colleagues.



The most likely networks that al Qaeda’sleadership takes advantage of as it builds theinfrastructure that Peter Bergen described arethose that it has the longest history with, in myjudgment. It is just common sense; I do nothave any special information about it. As oneAfghan I was talking to said, “Hey, if I knewwhere bin Laden was, I’d get the$25,000,000.”

But Julaluddin Haqqani’s networks havealways been very close to bin Laden in partic-ular, and al Qaeda was essentially formed inthe territory that Haqqani meaningfully con-trolled. Haqqani was a direct client of theCentral Intelligence Agency in those days. Hewas a unilateral; he received big bags of cash.We were one degree separated from bin Ladenthrough Haqqani, and his sons still thrive inthe Miram Shah area.

The other network is GulbuddinHekmatyar, who I think announced a fewweeks ago that he had helped bin Ladenescape after Tora Bora and had ushered himinto the networks that gave him, at leastinitially, sanctuary. That makes sense, too,because Hekmatyar has always been theAfghan leader who bin Laden has mostexplicitly singled out for praise. Hekmatyarhas a long relationship with the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood-influencedpolitical party in Pakistan that is now veryprominent in the North-West FrontierProvince. It controls a lot of infrastructure.After Hekmatyar came back from Iran, he pre-sumably floated back into these networks.Both Hekmatyar and Haqqani have longhistories with ISI, so they have the goods tokeep somebody quiet and safe.

Lastly, there is going to be a presidentialelection next year, but I think it is actuallyalready over. I think that Musharraf is going tobe reelected, and that the only question iswhich quarter of the year it will be in. Thegeneral betting is that he will be reelected inthe fall. It is not a direct election; it is an indi-rect election by the assemblies that he alreadycontrols. He is going to be reelected by theexisting assemblies, and then they will electnew assemblies. He will keep his uniform on,

I think, so not much is going to change.The concern that the government of the

United Kingdom has, for instance, aboutbeing on the receiving end of these attacksthat Peter has described (and that you’d wishthe government of the United States also hadconcerns about, but is distracted with otherquestions on the whole), is that the persist-ence of these religious parties in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistanwould seem unacceptable given the amountof violence and conspiracies that seems tobe rolling out of this territory. You wouldwish for a political process that could some-how promise to replace these religiousgovernments with something less openlyhostile. That will possibly be the result of theprovincial elections that will now probablyoccur in the first quarter of next year.Musharraf ’s objective in all of this, unfortu-nately, seems to be self-preservation, andsecondarily the prosecution of the war thathe sees himself waging against India byclandestine means.

Karen J. Greenberg:What is the relationship between what youhave identified as the important realities andthe understanding of our State Department,the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff?Do you think that they are listening to thenuances that you are talking about, or do youfeel that there is a gap between what they seeand the reality as you have described it?

Steve Coll:There are people who are well informed, ofcourse, in the middle and upper levels of thebureaucracy, but many of them are prisonersof a policy that does not allow much runningroom around these kinds of issues. There hasalso been, at least when I encounter it, somuch rotation in these important jobs in thefield, and there is so much force of gravity inIraq that even when you run into someonewho has started to develop a richer understand-ing of this the conversation is all about Iraq.

We saw this in the good piece that TheWashington Post produced last September



about the failure to even look for bin Laden,never mind locate him.

Barnett Rubin:I have, shall I say, selective access to suchpeople. I probably get to speak to the peoplewho tend to agree with me. Therefore, I can-not give you an objective analysis. Myimpression is that people who are sent toAfghanistan in order to be on the ground theredevelop a pretty good understanding of thesituation by the time they leave.

As Steve Coll said, there are people inWashington who know. I did have a number ofdiscussions in November with high-levelPakistani civilian officials in Islamabad andPeshawar, including one retired general whowas governor of North-West FrontierProvince. Certainly one of the least-crediblethings that they say is that they do not haveinformation about Taliban activities becausethey cannot tell the Taliban apart from thelocals, although members of al Qaeda are eas-ier to identify because they are foreigners(Musharraf said this at the Council on ForeignRelations, too).

Of course, given the history that we allknow about, that is an extraordinarily incred-ible statement, which is what I told a fairlyhigh-ranking State Department officer. Ifthey were to say, “We know exactly whatthey are doing, but it is very dangerous for uspolitically,” that would be a little bit morecredible.

I had other discussions, too. OneAmerican official said to me, “We have noconcrete evidence that Pakistan is supportingthe Taliban,” which is almost word-for-wordwhat an assistant secretary of state said to mein 1995. So it is very easy for Pakistan,because they just recycle the same things thatthey were doing ten years ago, and it seems towork. At the strategic level, you have peoplewho apparently count more on their personalfeel for a certain individual than on whatsome mid-level intelligence agent may givethem. I guess certain people find GeneralMusharraf very credible when they look intohis heart.

Peter Bergen:I visited Afghanistan four times in the pastyear and spent a fair amount of time with theU.S. military. Every single American officerthat I met said, “The solution in Afghanistan ispolitical, not military.” I thought that was aninteresting observation that was universallyheld, so there are plenty of people in thebureaucracy who understand these issuesrhetorically and perhaps even in fact. As towhether there is recognition within the U.S.government of al Qaeda’s resiliency, both FBIDirector Robert Mueller and John Negropontemade nods in that direction in their recentcongressional testimony.

EXCERPTS FROM THE QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

Steve Simon: (from the audience):A couple of days ago, a senior administrationofficial was asked whether the war in Iraq ishurting us in Afghanistan, especially since thesurge is going to require more resources. Thisis a paraphrase, but the official answered bysaying something like, “You’re exactly right,and we have to stay in Iraq because otherwisethe insurgents in Iraq will flow toAfghanistan.” In effect, he described Iraq asbeing the forward security perimeter ofAfghanistan.

I thought that this was an astonishingstatement, but it was delivered with a greatdeal of conviction, so I was wondering if thepanelists would comment on it, given theirexpertise on both Iraq and the Afghan/Pakistani fronts.

Barnett Rubin:At the strategic level, it is very clear that theinvasion of Iraq had a hugely negative impacton our operation in Afghanistan. As we know,starting on September 12, 2001, Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld wanted to bombIraq because there were not enough targets inAfghanistan, and the lack-of-target problemcontinued. So, resources were drawn away,and then on the other side, Iraq became arecruitment and capacity-building center for



the jihadis. The phenomenon that they areconcerned about is already happening; if notthrough the physical flow of people, whichmay be happening (although to a smallextent), then through the learning process.

The idea that jihadis will go from Iraq toAfghanistan is very much worrying theIranians. I had a discussion with a number ofIranian senior officials in Kabul in Novemberwho told me that it has already started, basi-cally because the jihadis think they have donetheir job in Iraq and can now redeploy theirforces. One of the Iranian officials said thatthey are coming in through Kunar Province,where there are some specific madrasas thatare friendlier to Wahhabis and Salafis thanthose in southern Afghanistan.

His hair was on fire, to use an expression,because he wanted to share this informationwith the United States and did not have theauthorization to do that. He thought that it wasin the national interest of both countries, butour people do not have the authorization totalk with him, and he does not have theauthorization to talk with us. So, again, whilethere is a possibility of that fallout, there isalso a possibility of joint management of thatfallout with Iran, which has common interestswith us on both of those fronts, but that issomething that we are not exploring.

Peter Bergen:As you know, Steve, this is a retread of the“flypaper” theory. The flypaper theory holdsthat the war in Iraq will draw all of the badguys to one place. The logical flaw in this isthe assumption that there is a finite group ofpeople that you can attract to one placeand kill.

In fact, we have vastly expanded the num-ber of people who want to do us damage. Inthe work that Paul Cruickshank and I aredoing, we looked at jihadi terrorist attacksaround the world since the invasion of Iraqand found that they have gone up sevenfold.Of course, much of that is in Iraq and some ofit is in Afghanistan, but it is also true aroundthe Arab world, and to some degree in Europe.The only place where there has been a

decrease is in Southeast Asia (and that hasnothing to do with Iraq, it is just to do with theparticular situation in Southeast Asia).

The argument is absurd on the face of it,but I think it is related to the larger flypaperargument.

Steve Coll:If you were to map money, weapons innova-tions, volunteers, and the movements amongthem currently, you would see that the samenetworks that are sending people around toSyria and Iraq are also going in throughKarachi and up to the frontier. It is an easiertrip, because you do not have to deal with theuncertainties that you encounter in Syria andthen on your way into Iraq.

But the more important traffic in terms ofactual plots that have been unraveled is, asPeter described, between Pakistan and theU.K. What is interesting is that it is a com-pletely different infrastructure that is non-Arab. Lashkar-e-Taiba and its offshoots have apresence in the U.K. for fundraising, and thereis an enormous amount of infrastructure thatis used to move in that direction. That is aSouth Asian/European highway.

• • •


PANEL THREE: THE LAST BEST CHANCE: NEW PLANS OF ACTION 35

Daniel Benjamin:Pat Lang understood this conflict very earlyon. He summed it up for me, saying, “Whenyou drive the car over the cliff, your optionsnarrow.” I haven’t heard anyone improve onthat since.

We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We havethe chaos there that has been amply discussed.Although I would say the conventionalwisdom is that we have no good options, andcertainly very few that have many virtues tothem, we are in this mess nonetheless. Weneed to come up with the best idea possiblefor going forward.

While it may be true that the options havenarrowed, certainly there have been many dif-ferent plans put forward. We are, of course,headed for the surge. That seems like a fore-gone conclusion right now. It is also beingcalled by some “The McCain Doctrine,” forreasons I cannot imagine. Other options are“double down” and “go long.” There are theGelb-Biden Partition Plan, the GalbraithPartition Plan, the Murtha RedeploymentPlan, and the Levin Redeployment plan.Others, and I think this is more inchoate, havecome up with humanitarian intervention toprotect the innocents as they relocate in theethnic cleansing. There are garrisons and can-tonments, and I am sure that we are soongoing to see the “Give War a Chance Plan” asone way of dealing with the Sunni insurgency.

This raises, I think, serious questions thatwe need to grapple with, which include: Whatplan will do the best to safeguard, so far aspossible, American interests; to limit thekilling which, as Noah Feldman has pointedout, is a moral obligation of ours, since we didget the Iraqis into this mess in a very realsense? What should we do to avoid a widerwar, a regional war, a proxy war? There aremany different interests at stake here in what isthe most economically vital part of the world.

I’d like to ask the panelists to illuminatethe particular virtues of these different plans,or to put forth ones of their own.

Col. W. Patrick Lang:There is positive value in proposing actualoptions for the future, even if they have nar-rowed considerably over the last few years. Istart by saying that I do not think there is anydoubt whatsoever that the president’s inten-tions, as stated (which are, of course, nationalpolicy), are the ones he intends to adhere to.Given that, I think there is going to be atremendous struggle in Baghdad and to a less-er extent in Anbar Province over the next year.I personally think that, however much we wishour expeditionary force all the best opportuni-ties they could have, we will still have this sit-uation unresolved a year from now, and wewill still have a large force in Iraq. I think thatis what the future is very likely to be.

Nevertheless, I have felt for some time apersonal responsibility to state what I thinkwould be an alternative policy, to counter theargument “Well, you don’t like our plan,what’s your plan?”

I do not represent anybody, but I thoughtthat I would offer such a plan. My position isthat ongoing combat operations, and anyfuture combat operations that are likely toensue with regard to Iran or Syria, or anythingof that sort, are not likely to be decisive inresolving the foreign policy issues in theUnited States’ favor, much less in favor of thevarious other countries.

Although it is useful in a diplomatic senseto threaten people, either explicitly or implic-itly as appropriate, and to keep a large militaryforce around as a balancing weight in negoti-ations, I think that the best way to resolve thiswould be for the United States to emphatical-ly, strongly, and persistently lead a round ofnegotiations with both the internal and exter-

PANEL THREE: THE LAST BEST CHANCE: NEW PLANS OF ACTION

Panelists: Max Boot, Prof. Noah Feldman, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Salameh Nematt, Prof. Paul PillarModerator: Daniel Benjamin



nal parties to this conflict in the greaterMiddle East. The United Staes should seek toengage each of them under our leadership,that is, the leadership of the president andwhatever other foreign partners we couldengage, in an attempt to reduce the number ofconflicts-of-interest that are perceived to existbetween us and the various players.

This would not be with the belief that youcould create a paradise-on-Earth in whichthere would be no hatreds, no conflicts, andno killings, but rather to reduce the level ofheat in these various conflicts to a level atwhich it would again resemble something weare more familiar with.

I am very much in favor of continuing thewar against international jihadism. I think thatthe international jihadi movement, which peo-ple in this country like to call “al Qaeda,” is adedicated and irreconcilable enemy of theUnited States, and that they should be pursuedto the ends of the Earth and destroyed becausethere is no way to make peace with them.

But with regard to regional peace in theMiddle East and all of the various problemsand conflicts that threaten to break out intowar at present there, I think we should do as Isaid. We should go around in a tough-minded,not accommodating, not “we’re giving up toyou” kind of spirit, and seek to negotiate all ofthe different issues that exist between us andthem, or between them and them, whoever the“them” is.

We cannot do that just on the basis of try-ing, for example, to negotiate with theIranians over what it is they are doing in Iraqthat we do not like. That would be just foolish

in my opinion, because if we do that, theIranians, who have the upper hand there, willhave no particular reason to negotiate with usat all. But there are a lot of different issuesthat the Iranians have over which we couldreach enough of an accommodation to reducethe level of heat and the possibility of warthroughout the region.

Many will say that this is realpolitik witha vengeance. It certainly is. I am in favor of anaggressive waging of diplomacy, with the endin mind of preventing the outbreak of war. Ihave considerable personal experience withwar, and I do not wish to see it break out inany more places. I think that avoiding war, ifyou can reach a reasonable accommodationwith people, is a worthwhile goal in itself.

Daniel Benjamin:Could we have the kind of diplomatic initia-tive that you suggest if it were not backed byforce, since we seem to be a little out of luckin that regard? And second, could we actuallycontain the issue of the Iranian nuclear pro-gram within this round of diplomacy? Thatissue seems to be almost as big as what isgoing on in Iraq.

Pat Lang:To the first point, I think that the UnitedStates, whatever our present difficulties are inIraq, remains by far the strongest militarypower on Earth. By maintaining a force inbeing in the region while negotiations of thissort are conducted, backed up by the enor-mous, overwhelming power of Americanstrategic and other forces, there is no difficultyin having the military weight to influence theoutcome.

As for the Iranian nuclear program, I amunconvinced that the Iranians really wishabove all else to possess nuclear weapons andthe missiles to employ them. There are a num-ber of Iranian issues having to do with theirplace in the international order in the MiddleEast, and involving their economy, all ofwhich we play a role in with a good deal ofenthusiasm. And so, I think that if we went tothe Iranians on the basis of all of the different

“I am in favor of an aggressive waging of diplomacy, with the end in mind

of preventing the outbreak of war. I haveconsiderable personal experience withwar, and I do not wish to see it break

out in any more places.”



issues that involve us and them, with the aimof, for example, getting them to put theirnuclear program under the full safeguards ofthe International Atomic Energy Agency,there would be some chance of their doingthat. It is certainly worth the attempt.

Salameh Nematt:I would like to start by taking a snapshot ofthe situation in the region, a picture as itstands now. I think that what is most strikingabout the region today is that nobody hasdecisively won in the confrontation with theother. If we look at the big picture of theAmerican/Iranian confrontation – whether itis a confrontation over domination of Iraq;over Lebanon, with Iran backing Hezbollahagainst the U.S.-backed government; or inPalestine, where the Iranians have succeededin playing an influential role in Hamas poli-cies versus the Fatah secular movement, andin the relationship with Israel – I think theonly thing in common between all the crisesin the region is Iran, as a senior administrationofficial said to me a few weeks ago. Iran is thecommon denominator of all the problemsAmerica has in that part of the world, andprimarily, of course, in Iraq.

The insurgents have not won in Iraq.When people argue that America has lost thewar in Iraq, the question that comes to mindis, who won? I do not think that the insurgentshave won. Back in 2004 the insurgents wereable to claim that they held territory. Theyheld Falluja, for example. Today the insur-gents do not hold a single part of Iraq. True,Anbar is a problematic area from which mostof the attacks are being launched. There arenot enough resources to take care of Anbar;but again, the insurgents cannot claim thatthey hold the territory, and now 4,000 troopsare supposed to be earmarked for that par-ticular region.

Saddam Hussein is gone. If there wereBaathists who thought that there was still achance of a deal to save and perhaps reinstallhim, they now realize that this is not going tohappen. And in the Middle East, politicalsymbolism is very important; sometimes

more important than facts. Perceptions aresometimes more important than facts.

In my view, the Iranians have had a verygood last three years, in the sense that theyhave consolidated their influence in Iraq. ButI would disagree with those who say that theIraqi Shiites have sold themselves to theIranians. I think that if I were an Iraqi Shiite,I would be insulted if somebody told me thatI was Iranian. While they do have strategicinterests with Iran, and an interest in notupsetting Iran because it is a neighbor withwhom they have to live, that does not meanthat they are agents of the Iranians.

There is a big clash between the ayatollahsof the Shiites in Iraq, such as Sistani, and theayatollahs of Iran who basically believe invelayat-e-faqih. Sistani believes that theclerics should not be running politics. This isa fundamental and very important difference.I think that ultimately there will be aconfrontation between the mullahs of Iranand the mullahs of Iraq in terms of their rolein society. There will also be a confrontationover who dominates in terms of marja as areference point for the Shiites in the world,with the Iraqis claiming that Najaf is moreholy than Qom, an assertion with which mostShiite scholars would agree.

Again, the insurgents have not won inIraq. The Americans are losing interest, losingtheir stomach for the war, and they are just fedup with this messy situation where they do notsee a clear victory. On the other hand, theIranians have also not won in the sense thatjust when they thought the Americans weregoing to “cut and run,” the U.S. decided tosend more troops and engage countries thatare now clearly hostile to Iran, such as SaudiArabia, Egypt, and Jordan, to try to play arole, at least in the Anbar Province. I have

“I think that the Iranians have absolutely no interest in destabilizing

Iraq, a country where fellow Shiites havegained power.”



information that some military advisors andintelligence agents have been moved fromthese countries into Anbar through Jordan totry to explore the possibilities, talking to sometribal leaders to see if they could actuallybring troops to control the security situation inAnbar. If that happens, it would be very sig-nificant. It would be the first time that Islamictroops, maybe under the U.N. umbrella,maybe covertly, would be actually movinginto Anbar to control the biggest trouble thatthe Americans and the Iraqis are facing.

If I were to predict, I would say that thesituation will look much better in ninemonths, not only because of the 20,000 troopsbeing sent in the surge, but because of the waythat all of the troops, all 140,000, will be used.They will be used differently than before. Thatis what General David Petraeus has been talk-ing about, and I think this is important. Hemight not want to spell out publicly his planfor fear of giving advance notice to theinsurgents, but I believe that the insurgentsare getting fed up.

There is insurgency fatigue in Iraq. Weonly see what happens on the American side.In a democracy you have to be transparent,because the government is held accountable tothe people. This is not the case on the side ofthe insurgents. The majority of the Sunnis inIraq now are fed up with al Qaeda. They feelthat al Qaeda is driving them to hell. Lastyear, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad predictedthat “a year from now, the Shiites would askus to leave, and the Sunnis would beg us tostay.” The Sunnis realize now that if theAmericans lose in Iraq, they will be slaugh-tered. There will be genocide, there will beethnic cleansing. This is exactly the incentivethat would drive countries like Jordan, SaudiArabia, and Egypt to move in to see what theycould do to stop this. This is probably thebiggest new development in the so-called newstrategy in Iraq. I think the tactics are beingchanged.

It is another story for Lebanon andPalestine, but I think the biggest breakthroughthat the Iranians have achieved in the regionhas been their ability to split not the Shiites

and the Sunnis, but the Shiites themselves,and even the Christians in Lebanon, wherehalf of the Christians went with Hezbollah.They also broke that barrier with the Sunniswhen they established an alliance with Hamas,which is a Sunni Muslim organization. This iswhere Iran has been very successful.

I think, on the other fronts, it is far fromsettled that the Iranians have won. I think theIranians received a slap in Somalia because oftheir work with al Qaeda, and the IslamicCourts of Somalia has been unrolled byAmerican-backed Ethiopian troops over thecourse of a few weeks.

Daniel Benjamin:Well, I must say it is bracing to hear optimism.It is true that it is hard to identify a clear win-ner, but would you disagree with the proposi-tion that Iran has at least a near-term interestin chaos in Iraq, because its principal enemy ispinned down and being bled?

Salameh Nematt:There is a strong argument that if Americaconfronts Iran, the Iranians will create hell forthe Americans in Iraq. I would argue againstthat. I think that the Iranians have absolutelyno interest in destabilizing a country wherefellow Shiites have gained power. The Shiitesare the government in Iraq, and they are, atleast for now, in an alliance with the Iranians.Why would Iran try to destabilize a govern-ment that is supposed to be their ally, and riskthe possibility of America installing a Sunnidictator, backed by the Arab Sunni states, tocrush the Shiites and purge the Iranian influ-ence from Iraq? I do not think that the Iranianswould do that, simply because they are notstupid.

The other factor is the Iranian nuclearissue, which is, in my view, probably thebiggest hoax in political memory. First of all,I do not think the Iranians are serious aboutobtaining a nuclear weapon. They know theywould never be allowed to, and that theIsraelis would take care of it first. Even if theydid get a weapon, what could they do with it?As a practical matter, they couldn’t use it. Is it



a deterrent against the Israelis? Not really,because if the Israelis wanted to wipe Iran offthe map they would have done it already. Whyshould they wait for the Iranians to get thebomb? I do not think that the talk aboutnuclear weapons serves any point except forone thing, which is to use it as a bargainingchip with the Americans and the others con-cerned in order to consolidate Iranian region-al influence and power. I agree with Pat Langthat the Iranians are using this as a means to abetter deal with the Americans and the Israelisin regard to their role in and their dominationof the Gulf region at least.

If you dominated the Gulf region, if youdominated its oil policies, you would be in astrong position to negotiate with the West. Youwould be holding a very important weapon –oil prices – if you could coordinate oil produc-tion among producers. One could easily arguethat the Iranians are trying to convince theSaudis. They could say, “Why are you produc-ing oil at full capacity? You could get twice asmuch for half of the output if you go alongwith us. We would have the West begging usto increase our production, and then we coulddictate our terms. Why are you selling the oilso cheap?” This is their argument.

The Saudis respond by saying, “We wantAmerican protection against your ambitionsin the region. The Americans have no inten-tion of occupying us, but you could stir upthe Shiite minority and cause us serioustrouble.”

So, in my view, the Iranians just want todominate the region. They do not want to doanything against America or Israel. They wantto bargain with these powers. At the height ofthe Islamic Revolution under Khomeini, theIranians were doing business with Americaand Israel, “The Great Satan” and “The LittleSatan.” This is known as the Iran-Contra

Affair. If I were in the shoes of the U.S. gov-ernment, I would not even discuss the nuclearissue with Iran. I would not bargain over thenuclear issue, I would just talk business abouttheir regional role and their intervention inIraq, Palestine, and Lebanon.

Max Boot:This panel is a microcosm of the Congressand American public opinion. Everybody isdeeply unhappy with the current course ofevents in Iraq, but nobody knows what thealternative ought to be; or rather, many peo-ple have different ideas about what the alter-native ought to be, and there is very littleconsensus.

I certainly agree with the consensus viewthat the path we are on now is not the rightone, obviously. We are heading toward defeatin Iraq, and American soldiers and the Iraqisthemselves are paying a very high price forthe current course of events. Like most peo-ple, I do not have any great degree of certain-ty, given where we are today and consideringPat Lang’s comment that there are no goodoptions when you are going over a cliff. So Ido not have any great option that I think wouldmagically solve everything and make the situ-ation better in the course of two weeks, twomonths, or even two years.

I think, however, that there are someoptions which are less realistic than others. Iwant to begin with some of the unrealisticoptions which I hear being talked about asalternatives to what the Bush administration isdoing (which itself is unrealistic, but I’ll cometo that).

The big option, which was the product ofmonths of labor by the Iraq Study Group, isbasically that we should go hat-in-hand to theIranians and to the Syrians and ask them toplease help us out in Iraq. I think everybody isstill scratching their heads trying to figure outwhy our enemies in Syria and Iran would beinterested in bailing us out of this situation,where we are losing and they are gaining theupper hand. I do not mind negotiating. I agreewith Colonel Lang that by all means weshould negotiate. But I say that we have to

“The Iranian nuclear issue is probably the biggest hoax in

political memory.”



negotiate from a position of strength, wherewe have something to bring to the table, andare not just abject pleaders to our enemies.That is unfortunately the situation that wewould be in today if we were to try somehowto negotiate our way out of Iraq based on thegood will of the Syrians or the Iranians. I donot think they would help us.

I am not sure that the help they could giveus would be very useful in any case, and theprice they would exact would be incrediblyhigh, including having to go along with theIranian nuclear program, having to go alongwith the Syrian domination of Lebanon, andvarious other unpalatable options. I just donot think that a negotiated solution with theneighbors is a very realistic way out of thismess in Iraq, which is being driven largely byinternal Iraqi dynamics. While the Syriansand Iranians could certainly pour fuel on thefire, I do not think that they could extinguishthe flames.

Other options which have been thrown outthere are also, I think, extremely high-riskwith very low probabilities of success. I heartalk about options such as gradually drawingdown U.S. troops while building up our advi-sory presence with the Iraqi forces, or perhapsmoving the U.S. troops into bastions in theKurdish areas or in western Iraq. It soundsrealistic, but I do not think it really is. Whenyou consider, for example, the option of posi-tioning U.S. troops on the borders away fromthe population centers, and basically saying,“Let Iraq have its civil war, we will just try tocontain it on the borders,” I am not sure that itis realistic to expect tens of thousands of U.S.troops to sit a few miles away while massiveethnic cleansing, or even genocide, is beingperpetrated. What good would the troops bedoing there?

Would they be keeping Iraq’s neighborsfrom intervening? I doubt it, because whilethey could keep Syrian or Iranian troop for-mations from crossing the frontier, that isunlikely in any case. Simply having regulartroop formations on the border is not goingto stop Iraq’s neighbors from providing arms,or money, or advisors – the kind of support

they already provide – to various factionswithin Iraq.

I do not think there is much that U.S.troops could do simply by redeploying, or byfollowing the notion that we could somehowpolice western Iraq from forces in Kurdistanor Kuwait. Iraq is a big country, a country thesize of California. It would be like policingSan Francisco from Los Angeles, or policingNew York City from Albany. It is not a terriblyrealistic scenario if you think about themechanics of how it would actually work.

There are other options out there, includ-ing various versions of a partition of Iraq,including one that is being pitched by my oldboss, Les Gelb. I do not think this has gottenvery far, because when you think about howyou would implement it, you have to realizevery quickly that it is a recipe not for decreas-ing bloodshed, but for increasing it, at least inthe short term. When you think about how topartition multiethnic parts of Iraq, such asBaghdad or Mosul, what you are looking at isan India/Pakistan type of partition, whichmeans that millions of people could potential-ly be killed.

I am not completely dismissive of optionsthat call for decreasing the U.S. combat trooppresence and increasing our advisory effortswith the Iraqi army. There is something to besaid for that, and I know that there are a lot offolks in our Special Forces community whoare in favor of that option. But we have to real-ize that it is a very high-risk option, becausethere is a very real risk that the Iraqi securityforces, which are rickety in the best of times,would completely collapse if we were sudden-ly to start drawing down U.S. combat troops.You would have a complete disintegration.U.S. advisors would be hostage to fortune, andwe would see terrible losses among them.

The Iraqi security forces are no greatshakes right now, and to the extent that theyare being held together at all, it is by a massiveAmerican military presence. I am not sure thatwe could sustain that presence at much lowertroop levels.

I am afraid that if we do start pullingtroops out, however we portray this in the



news media, whether we call it redeploymentor whatever we call it, the reality that wouldcome through to the Iraqis is that we would bewithdrawing, we would be conceding defeat,giving up. We might see an acceleration of thecollapse of the country which is alreadygoing on, and that would lead us to some ofthe dire consequences of precipitous with-drawal which the Iraqi Study Group itselfwarned about.

As bad as the situation is now, it is nothard to imagine that it could get worse. About100 Iraqis are dying a day now. We could see1,000 Iraqis dying a day. We could see neigh-boring states being drawn in. We could seemassive refugee outflows destabilizing neigh-boring states. We could see western Iraqbecoming a Taliban-style haven of Sunniinsurgents. We could see Shiite insurgents car-rying their campaign across the border intoSaudi Arabia. There are all sorts of direscenarios that are very easy to envision.Maybe they wouldn’t happen. Maybe every-thing would be okay if we were to pull out, butI do not think that is the way to bet. I think theway to bet is that things would get a wholeheck of a lot worse.

I think there is a recognition of that, eventhough people are very upset about what isgoing on. We are not seeing a massive “pullout now” movement, even among theDemocratic leaders in Congress. I think theyare very wary of the consequences of immedi-ate withdrawal as the Iraq Study Groupwarned, and rightly so.

If we are not going to withdraw tomorrow,what do we do? The option that PresidentBush is pursuing is highly imperfect right

now, but I would argue that it is probably theleast-bad option.

We have not been able to control Baghdad.I think a lot of that comes down to sheer lackof troop numbers, that you cannot control acity of 6,000,000 people with 120,000 troops.

If you look at the standard counterinsur-gency formulas, which are contained in thecounterinsurgency manual that GeneralPetraeus and General James Mattis workedon, you need about one counterinsurgent per50 people in the population, which suggeststhat you need a force level of about 120,000-130,000 to control Baghdad, and probablyanother 120,000-130,000 to control the rest ofthe Sunni triangle.

If we were carrying out this surge optionin a perfect world, without any limitationsimposed from the outside for various reasons,I would say that our best bet right now, shortterm, would be to send about another 130,000troops to Iraq. Obviously that is not a terriblyrealistic proposal. We do not have 130,000troops to send because of the major error thatPresident Bush made early in his presidencyby not enlarging the size of the active-dutyArmy and Marine Corps. We are badly over-stretched and there are huge limits to what ourmilitary can provide, given where we are rightnow. Twenty thousand is far from an idealnumber. I think it can, nevertheless, withinthose limitations, improve things, especially ifthose troops are used in a classic counterinsur-gency campaign of the kind we pursued in TalAfar and a few other places in Iraq.

That approach has not generally been pur-sued in Baghdad, at least not recently, wheremost of our troops have been based in largeforward operating bases on the outskirts of thecity, venturing into the city only for infrequentpatrols or convoys. If we actually moved ourtroops into the city, positioned them in for-ward operating posts in the city itself, madethem a constant presence on the street, andpursued this classic population security coun-terinsurgency strategy, it could pay off.

Even given the constraints, I think therewould be certainly enough troops to mount aneffective counterinsurgency campaign in the

“There is a very real risk that the Iraqi security forces,

which are rickety in the best of times,would completely collapse

if we were suddenly to start drawingdown U.S. combat troops.”



central areas of Baghdad, to go after the mixedSunni/Shiite neighborhoods, to go after someof the Sunni neighborhoods. It is not going toclean up the entire city right away. It is proba-bly not going do anything about Sadr City inthe short term, but I do think that we have theresources to improve the situation in centralBaghdad.

I think we can accomplish that, especiallyif we take other badly needed steps along withthe increase in troop numbers. We also need tohave more advisors within the Iraqi army. Weneed to expand the size of the Iraqi army, weneed to commit more resources to it, and pro-vide them with heavier arms and equipment.We need to expand the size of the Iraqi prisonsystem and impose some kind of system ofmartial law. That would allow us to capturemore violent offenders, get them off the streetand keep them off the street, and end the kindof “catch-and-release” policy that our troopscomplain about now, where the troops capturebad guys who are then released by the Iraqicourts. We need to institute a system of bio-metric identity cards so that we have a betteridea of who is living in Baghdad and otherareas and so that we can tell insurgents apartfrom the civilian population.

There are a whole host of steps that weneed to take along with the troop increase. Ifwe do not, the impact of the troop increase isprobably not going to be that great. But if wedo take them, and if we carry out an effectivecounterinsurgency strategy, more troops canbe very helpful. The challenge, of course,will be long term – sustaining the gains thatyou might get on the security front in thenext few months, or in the next year, withoutkeeping a massive U.S. military presencein Baghdad. That is going to be a hugechallenge.

I cannot fool you and say that I think thatthe prospects of success are tremendous. Ithink that the odds of failure are still high, nomatter what we do right now. But if we pullout right now and give up, the odds of failurewill be 100 percent. I think that if we carryout the surge policy, and perhaps evenincrease the size of the surge (which I think

is possible), and take some of these othersteps, there is still a possibility to salvage anacceptable outcome from what is currentlyan unacceptable situation. I am not makingany kind of utopian promises here, or sayingthat this is somehow a magical formula forsuccess. All I am saying is that it is the least-bad option.

Daniel Benjamin:Thank you for a comprehensive overview. Letme push you on one issue. You said that theodds of failure would still be pretty high.According to some estimates, we would need,and have needed from the beginning, some-thing like 500,000 troops in Iraq for an occu-pation and to be prepared for a counterinsur-gency mission.

If you believe the odds are against you,isn’t there a big opportunity cost to pursuingthis kind of Baghdad-first strategy, as opposedto containing the civil war within Iraq’sboundaries? The issue is not just about Syriantroop formations coming in – I agree with youthat that’s unlikely – but rather spillovereffects in other countries, particularly some ofthe more fragile ones in the region, such asJordan.

Max Boot:I would be curious to hear about how themechanics of this containment strategy wouldwork. If Jordan were to be threatened – bymassive refugee flows, for example, evenhigher than the refugee outflows that theyhave already had to date – does that mean thatwe would position U.S. troops on Iraq’s west-ern border and tell refugees at gunpoint thatthey can’t go into Jordan? How would it work?

Daniel Benjamin:They can usually tell the difference betweenrefugees and combatants.

Max Boot:But a massive outflow of refugees themselveswould destabilize Jordan. This is one of thesesupposedly realistic policy scenarios that I donot want to dismiss altogether, but I am just



not convinced that U.S. troops could sit bywhile horrible atrocities, even worse thanwhat has been happening today, are being per-petrated a few miles away. I recall that whenterrible human rights abuses were occurringin places like Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s,I and a lot of other people said that we couldnot just sit by and watch. We were thousandsof miles away then, not 20 miles away, so I donot think it is a terribly viable policy to saythat U.S. troops would watch while the worstatrocities in the world go on a few miles away.I am not sure what good they would be doingsimply by watching.

Paul Pillar:The conventional wisdom about there beingno good options has been referred to a numberof times. While it may be conventional, it isstill wisdom. It has to be the starting point forany discussion of options. It means that it is awhole lot easier to shoot down anyone else’sproposal than to defend one’s own plan. Howa debate on this set of topics comes out large-ly depends on how the question is framed andstructured.

I noticed that the president or his speech-writers skillfully framed the debate in a cou-ple of respects in his speech on January 10,2007. He challenged anyone with a betterplan for stability in Iraq to come forwardwith it. In other words, he put the burden ofproof on someone else. That provides protec-tion if there is no good plan to bring aboutstability.

There is also the rhetoric about all the badthings that will flow from the plan not beingsupported, which we heard again in thepresident’s State of the Union address. Thissidesteps two questions. First, how much ofthe nightmare are we already seeing, every-thing from refugees to terrorist exploitationof the conflict? And second, even if thingscould get even worse, or would likely getworse, if the U.S. were to pull back ratherthan surge in, how much chance is there thatsomething like that would happen eventuallyanyway, making it a question of delayrather than prevention?

The Iraq Study Group report, of course,had very high expectations placed on it beforeit was published, but its main contribution wasnever going to be coming up with bright newideas or new ways to pull this particular rabbitout of a hat. The main value of the ISG exer-cise would have been to provide politicalcover for a way out of this mess that both thepresident and his opponents could have point-ed to as a reference point despite all the basesfor criticism – a reference point that couldhave been the basis for a consensus in whichno side would have had to say that it hadthrown in the towel to its political opponents.Well, the president chose a different route.

I think that the real issues, the most impor-tant and interesting issues on this question ofIraq right now, are more in Washington than inIraq. In regard to the surge plan, let me pointfirst to what I think is a valid principle embod-ied in it, which is that security affects the pol-itics just as the politics affects security. Inother words, it is a valid point that the totallyunacceptable security situation in Baghdad isa direct and important impediment to any fur-ther progress in the political reconstructionprocess in Iraq. But the plan is not really new.We have tried to surge in other ways inBaghdad in the past. As Max Boot pointedout, the numbers are still short of what coun-terinsurgency doctrine would call for. Just toget close to those numbers, there is still thesame old reliance on Iraqi troops, and evenmore so on Iraqi police, with the same ques-tions about reliability and loyalties that havebeen a problem before.

Secondly, this is never going to be aclassic counterinsurgency because it is not aclassic insurgency on the other side. It is acivil war. Stephen Biddle has written aboutthis and I totally agree with what he has said.

Any discussion that we can have about theprospects of this particular plan for apprecia-

“We have, today, two governments inTehran and Washington that bring out the

worst in each other.”



bly improving things is really a discussion onthe margins, which I do not say in order tobelittle it. That is because we are talking aboutmarginal differences in degree of hope forpulling this particular glob of fat out of thisfire, and there are all kinds of uncertaintieshere. It is so marginal, and so beset withuncertainty, that I would even argue that thisparticular factor in the Iraq policy equationalmost washes out compared to other majorfactors that we have not talked about here, andwhich go beyond Iraq.

One factor is all of the various ways inwhich this conflict continues to affect broad-er U.S. interests. This includes, but is by nomeans limited to, the effects on internationalterrorism as they were summarized by theintelligence estimate that was partly declassi-fied on September 26, 2006; that it is a“cause célèbre” for the jihadists, that it is arecruitment tool for al Qaeda, that it is one ofthe major factors propelling the growth ofand sustaining the jihadist movement andshaping a whole new generation of jihadi ter-rorists. There is also the issue of the UnitedStates’ larger standing among populationsaround the world, which the BBC released apoll about on January 23, 2007. That is onewhole set of factors, beyond what happensinside Iraq.

The third is perhaps too obvious to needstating, but is the least uncertain – the directexpenditure of blood and treasure. As I tellmembers of Congress to whom I talk aboutthis, “You, the representatives of theAmerican people, are the best experts as tothe tolerance of the American people forthat.” It is not people like us on this panel.Someday someone is going to write a defini-tive biography, or psychobiography, ofPresident Bush. It is going to explain a wholelot more about what this plan and associatedthings are all about than any of us who arepresumed to be Middle East experts can.Frederick Kagan of the American EnterpriseInstitute was quoted in The Washington Poston January 21, 2007. He said, “The guy whois most committed to winning and finding away to win is the president. He always has

been; he’s the only reason we are still in thisfight.” I think I agree with Kagan on that.

With all the things you sometimes hearabout similarities and differences between theVietnam War and Iraq, let me just point outone big difference. Richard Nixon and HenryKissinger inherited the Vietnam War. GeorgeW. Bush did not inherit this war. It is totallyhis own, and we know him as a president whofinds it very hard to admit a mistake. I do notsee any real change in the current course, andI consider the plan announced on January 10,2007 to basically be a variation on the currentcourse over the next couple of years. Thatbeing the case, I think that a lot of us who haveconcerns about some of our policies in theMiddle East need to think at least as muchabout Iran in the weeks ahead.

Some of my friends and government typesare more worried than I am, although I doshare some of the worry, of waking up onemorning and reading about U.S. militarystrikes on Iran. There are certainly signs thatare a basis for worry. Even if a strike is notplanned, we are doing certain things, such assending military deployments to the PersianGulf and raiding Iranian consulates, whichmay increase the chances of clashes and con-frontations. We have to remember that some-thing like the accidental shooting down of anIranian airliner during the Iran/Iraq War is thesort of thing that can happen in an atmosphereof confrontation in that part of the world – anincident, by the way, which many Iranians stillbelieve was a deliberate act by the UnitedStates rather than a tragic case of mistakenidentity.

We have, today, two governments inTehran and Washington that bring out theworst in each other. I am not implying anyequivalence here. I am just looking at thedynamics as a political scientist would.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly makesthings difficult, with his absolutely execrable,outrageous rhetoric about Israel, theHolocaust and all sorts of other things. I read-ily admit that that makes it hard for anyone inWashington – Republican or Democrat, who-ever is in charge of our policy – to be seen



making anything that looks like an approachto Tehran. Ahmadinejad really is somebodythat I think we all love to hate. But I think wesee some encouraging signs in Tehran that theIranians realize some of the liabilities of hav-ing this guy out front rhetorically, even thoughhe does not really run national security policy.This is demonstrated by some of the results inthe recent local elections and elections for theCouncil of Experts, in which forces alliedwith Ahmadinejad did not do well. Morerecently, some reports suggest that peopleassociated with the supreme leader, AyatollahAli Khamenei, and elsewhere in the govern-ment would like Ahmadinejad to strike alower profile with things like the nuclearissue. That is one half of it.

But we have to recognize the other half –that the United States, through its policies, isa very big influence on Iranian perceptionsand behavior. It simply does not make sensefor us in the United States to say, “We do notlike what you are doing in Iran, you Iranians,”and not realize that we are a major influencein the thinking in Tehran, which of coursesees the United States as a major threat alongwith Israel. When they perceive a policy thatis basically still centered around the hope forregime change, there is simply no incentive tocooperate.

The question of incentives for cooperationwas raised earlier. I think that one of thebiggest things that you have to applaud theIraq Study Group for is putting the emphasison regional diplomacy up front in the report,even though that opens them up to criticism, Ithink validly, about the Iranians and Syrians(no matter how much good will they exhibit)pulling our particular fat out of the Iraqi fire.I think that their ability to do so has been over-stated. But why would they cooperate?

There are basically two reasons, if wewere to give them the proper incentives. First,as Salameh Nematt mentioned earlier, theyhave a strong incentive not to have total,unending disorder on their western boundary.Second, because there are a lot of things thatthey want from the United States – not just tocave on the nuclear issue, there are all kinds of

other things, including the matters of frozenassets, of what to do with the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, of economic and trade relations, and ofsomething much vaguer that the Iraniansdescribe as “respect.” But they have no hopeof getting any of that.

Daniel Benjamin:Your bottom line, then, is that it hardly matterswhat the policy is in the near-term in terms ofcontrolling the consequences or changing thecourse of events. I think one of the lost mes-sages of the ISG report is that we are, at thispoint, endangering our security in the rest ofthe world. And our forces are stretcheddangerously thin.

I would like to ask your views on that.Secondly, to bring up something that Salamehmentioned, do you agree with the argumentthat the Iranians have a certain kind of rela-tionship with our troops in Iraq, that ourtroops are hostage-like, that the Iranianscould cause us a lot more trouble if theywanted to?

Paul Pillar:As to the first point, I absolutely agree. Tospeak to Max Boot’s earlier point about beingin a position of strength and so on, we are in aposition of weakness because we are so tieddown. Although the Iranians are concernedabout being literally encircled by the U.S. mil-itary, the vibrations that I have gotten fromjournalists who have gone to Tehran is thatthey are not exactly shaking in their bootsabout this impending attack business becausethey know that we are tied down.

As to the second point, I do agree. I dis-agree, perhaps, with Salameh. One of ourbiggest vulnerabilities in terms of how theIranians could respond, although not the onlyone, is in Iraq. The Iranians have beenputting out all kinds of lines of influencewith a wide variety of groups in Iraq, mainlyto make sure that their influence will be therewhenever the dust finally settles. They havenot even begun to use those lines of influencein a way that they could to cause more deadlytrouble for us.



Noah Feldman:I would like to begin with the closing scenarioin Iraq, and then move backwards to try tofigure out what is going happen in the nextfew years. For this part of my remarks, I hopeto wear a wholly realist hat. There should beno moral or ethical component to it at all.Then I will conclude my remarks with someobservations about the moral or ethical impli-cations that I will describe.

So this is an attempt at being purely pre-dictive. Iraq is a denominationally and ethni-cally divided society with populations that, atcertain flashpoints, are imbricated. Baghdadhas large numbers of Shia and a large numberof Sunni. There used to be a lot of Kurds liv-ing there; many of them are now gone. Kirkukis obviously another multiethnic flashpoint. Ina scenario like that, there are really only twoversions of the final ending, and they areversions of the same thing.

In each scenario, those elites who arecapable of generating the authority to get peo-ple to listen to them (which partly meanspolitical elites, and partly means quasi-mili-tary and militia elites) have decided that inlight of the exertion of force upon them itwould be better to stop fighting and reachsome sort of a power-sharing arrangementthan it would be to keep on fighting. I beginwith the proposition that the fighting cannotend until that happens. It is important to add“in light of the exertion of force upon them,”because I can really picture two differentvariants on this final conclusion.

One is a final conclusion in which thesedifferent leaderships, having bled, decide thatthey cannot gain anymore than they alreadyhave, and reach some sort of negotiated settle-ment where the populations remain imbri-cated, Baghdad does not become whollyethnically cleansed, and the neighborhooddivisions (which are becoming increasinglysharp) remain the de facto divisions.

The other scenario is where there has beena much more extensive kind of ethnic move-ment (and this is, by the way, a preconditionof all of the partition plans. No matter whatthey tell you, this is a precondition of all of

the plans; that large numbers of populationhave been moved around, presumably mostlynot by choice). That is the other possible sce-nario, and even here the fighting ends whenleaders of these various moved-aroundfactions just decide that there is nothing moreto be gained by fighting forward.

Let me now project backwards. There isno question in my mind that Colonel Lang iscorrect that there will still be roughly thesame number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the endof President Bush’s term as there are now,partly for the reasons that Max Boot hasdescribed – that, in fact, it is not viable tostand there while people are being killed. It isalso partly for the reasons that Paul Pillardescribed, that the president himself, person-ally, is deeply committed to this project and isnot going to walk away and watch thesemassacres happen on his watch.

So now let me talk about a best-case sce-nario and a worst-case scenario for the nexttwo years. The best-case scenario is that thecivil war currently going on in Iraq, which iswhat I would describe as a contained and con-trolled civil war (a “controlled burn” if youwant to use the forest fire metaphor), willbleed various parties enough that the variousplayers think that they have more to gain bycutting some sort of a power-sharing deal thanthey do by continuing to fight and waiting tosee what the next U.S. president is going todo. I do not think that this is a very high-prob-ability outcome. But I do not think it iscompletely impossible. If adding to the num-ber of troops in Iraq, which is really what weare talking about here, is actually somewhatable to increase stability in and aroundBaghdad, that will be a marginal reason forthe various players to think that they have aninterest in cutting some sort of a deal, becausethe efficacy of continuing to fight will bereduced for them.

And so I think that Paul is exactly right. Atthe margins, there is really no question thatwe could make some positive contribution toreaching this outcome where the negotiatedsolution comes at the end of the next twoyears. I would describe this whole thing as the



“controlled fire” model. The idea is that thefire burns itself out under some control. Thecontrol is exerted by our troops, and the fire isa civil war.

The alternate scenario is that at the end ofthe next two years when a new president takesoffice (it does not really matter for these pur-poses whether the new president is aDemocrat or a Republican), the U.S. tries totake steps that would consequently put us insome of the positions that Max described. Forexample, the new president might say that weare going to just start withdrawing troops. Astroops are withdrawn, if the civil war has notburnt itself out, the violence of the civil warwill escalate, ethnic cleansing will escalate,and civilian deaths will escalate.

At that stage in the scenario where a pres-ident, having gamed us out, nonethelesswants to withdraw, the only option left wouldbe to use air power in an extremely impreciseway to try to stop some of the worst of theethnic cleansing. The model for this is, andwill be, the former Yugoslavia. When ethniccleansing gets bad enough, it can be limited,but by no means eliminated, by air power.Some of that air power could ultimately beused to bring the local forces to realize thatthey have more to lose by continuing to fight.After the fighting has stopped, we wouldhave to reintroduce some sort of peacekeep-ing troops, probably still Americans in thatperiod, but Americans under a very differentset of conditions. They would be under con-ditions of actual peacekeeping rather thancounterinsurgency.

I think a lot more people would end updying in this scenario, but many could die inthe controlled burn also. I would describe it asthe “not-really-controlled burn.” This is theidea that the fire needs to burn itself out, thecivil war needs to play itself out. After thathappens, the various players will get somesense of who has the capacity to win and whohas the capacity to lose.

Parenthetically, I do not think anybodyhas a good sense of that. Salameh Nemattsaid, and I think it is very interesting, thatthere is a concern about who would win insuch a civil war. I actually think there areplausible arguments on both sides. I do notthink that the Sunni insurgents who believethat they will beat the Shia in the long run arecrazy. Their numbers are much smaller, butthey have the remnants of an officer corps.None of the Shia fighting forces has per-formed very impressively anywhere in Iraqyet, including militias and governmentalforces. That is probably because of theabsence of a trained officer corps.

It will certainly be a long and a bloodyfight between the two sides, and obviously theShia have a plausible argument to think thatthey will win because there are more of themin the long run. In a long-enough fight, theywould have a tremendous advantage. I actuallythink that it is rational for both sides to thinkthey can keep on fighting, and that is one ofthe reasons that the civil war scenario isdeepening right now.

In sum, the fire is going to have to burnitself out. The question is, does the fire burnitself out in a controlled burn with us present,or does the fire burn itself out after we with-draw a couple years from now and put our-selves in some awkward positions? The coverthat I think the new president would use in thelatter circumstance would be, “I was electedby the American people saying ‘withdraw.’ Iam withdrawing. We do not like to see mas-sacres, but we cannot send ground troops intothose massacres. We are just going to use airpower, much in the way that the air power wasused in former Yugoslavia eventually after along process.”

“I think that what we are ethically

obligated to do is to try to save as many

lives as we can on the way to a

balanced outcome in which

the different parties in Iraq enter into

some kind of a peace agreement.”



Let me turn for just a minute to the moralor ethical consequences of this vision. There isan adage that philosophers like that says“ought implies can;” that it is not plausible tosay that I have a moral obligation to do some-thing if I cannot practically or realisticallymake it happen. If one believes this, which noteverybody does, then any account of what ourmoral obligations are to Iraqis must be condi-tioned on what we can realistically do. I wantto avoid an ethical mistake that I think hasbeen made again and again in the debate overthe Iraq War. The mistake is in saying that wecannot realistically add 120,000 more troops,for example, because the American publicwould never stand for it.

I hope you see the moral error there. It isin saying that “we” are different from the“American public.” They are one and thesame. If there is a moral obligation to add120,000 troops in order to get the situationunder control, it is not an answer to say that itis unrealistic because we (the same peoplewho are the moral agents) do not want do it. Ido not want to be understood as saying thatbecause we are as a nation lacking in the willto do the right thing, we are excused ethicallyfrom it. That is getting “ought implies can”backwards.

However, the civil war has at this pointreached such a serious state, and the govern-ment of Iraq has such a weak hold on a claimto be a government, that I think that what weare ethically obligated to do, as the countrythat initiated the scenario in the first place, istry to minimize the deaths along the way – totry to save as many lives as we can on the wayto a balanced outcome between the differentparties in Iraq in which some kind of a peaceagreement is entered into.

That is why I think that it is probably agood thing that, as a realistic matter, we arestuck there for the next two years. That is alsowhy things will be very tricky for the nextpresident, assuming that the next presidentwants to enter into some sort of withdrawalmodel. There is an image of our being in thesame place two years from now as we aretoday; that deaths continue at a controlled rate

in the meanwhile, but the parties refuse toreach a negotiated settlement because theythink that we will eventually leave and want tosee what will happen.

That could be where we are in two years,but I suspect not. I think that two years is along time, and at the end of that time we willbe closer to the parties having some sense ofwhat they think should happen next. But I donot want to guarantee that; that may not bethe case.

So, from an ethical or moral standpoint, Iam opting for the controlled burn. Notbecause I like it (I am not happy about it atall), not because we couldn’t have done betterat every stage, not because we weren’t under amoral duty to have many more troops therefrom the beginning – I believe all of thosethings to be the case – but because I think thatit is the best scenario given the constraints thatare on us right now.

Daniel Benjamin:The premise built into your controlled burnis that our presence is controlling the burn,but the statistics actually indicate the oppo-site. We surged last summer in Baghdad.Killings have gone up dramatically. Theconclusion I would draw from that is that weought to get our people out of there. It is reallyan open question, especially consideringPaul Pillar’s view, whether our presence is inany way contributing to restraining theviolence, is it not?

Noah Feldman:It is certainly an open question insofar as thereis no place that you could look in a book andfind out the answer to it, I’ll grant you that.These are just questions of the best argumentsone can raise. Certainly our surge in Baghdadlast time was an open invitation to the insur-gents to either stand and fight or walk awayand show that our strategy was working. Forthe most part, they chose to fight, and theyhave gotten the better of it.

I do not think it follows that our walkingaway from Baghdad, for example, would sub-stantially reduce the degree of violence. The


PANEL FOUR: THE NEIGHBORHOOD: DOMINOES READY TO FALL? 49

reason is simply the bare fact of where thepopulations are. What we have seen is theincreased breakdown of Baghdad into distinctneighborhoods with distinct centers of con-trol; not just the government over here,Americans over here, insurgents over here,Jaish al Mahdi over here, and indeterminategangs over in this other neighborhood. Thebreakdown has been into many, many sub-groups. Those sorts of neighborhood arrange-ments are profoundly unstable.

If someone could convince me that ourpresence is what is causing the problem (andpeople have been saying this quite rationally

from the very beginning); that if we left, peo-ple would say, “Okay, the Americans are out,now we understand our strategic position andnow we can negotiate a settlement,” I wouldabsolutely think that was the right thing to dostrategically, tactically, and morally. But thusfar I haven’t heard arguments that convinceme that that would be the scenario. Instead, itseems to me that the most likely scenario isthat a greater degree of withdrawal would leadto just what we have seen happening – a lossof control in Baghdad, greater Balkanization,greater instability, and quasi-ethnic-cleansingof neighborhoods.

PANEL FOUR: THE NEIGHBORHOOD: DOMINOES READY TO FALL?

Panelists: Steven Cook, Prof. Fawaz Gerges, Prof. Farhad Kazemi, Craig UngerModerator: Prof. Stephen Holmes

Stephen Holmes:This panel will focus on the regional conse-quences of the war in Iraq. Several peoplehave already spoken about the likelihood ofother countries being drawn in, and aboutrefugees flooding out. The conversation so farhas primarily been about Iran and SaudiArabia. I’d like for this panel to focus onTurkey, and perhaps Israel. I’d also like thepanel to address issues such as the nucleararms race in the region and the wider effectsof the Sunni/Shia battle in Iraq. Does thatconflict affect the relationship betweenHezbollah and Hamas, for example?

The title of this discussion refers to thedomino metaphor, and whether those domi-noes are ready to fall. That question does notaddress the idea of a democratic wave; that is,a democratic domino effect. People are nottalking about that anymore. Condoleezza Ricedid not mention it when she was in Cairo inOctober 2006. There is a lot to be said aboutthat, but I will just give one example. In 1837,Alexis de Tocqueville wrote one of his letterson Algeria. This was after the French hadinvaded, and the purpose of the letter was toshow that the power to conquer militarily isnot the power to govern. He asked this

question: Let’s imagine that a Chinese armyinvaded France, and that this Chinese forcethat invaded and conquered France knew noFrench, knew nothing about French history,knew nothing about French institutions, andnothing about French law, but wished toreform the French political system. Would itbe likely to succeed?

It would be very unlikely, he concludes. Ithink there is a lesson there.

Steven Cook:We are here to talk about whether the domi-noes will fall, and what effects U.S. policyhas had on the region as the result of ourinvasion of Iraq. It is abundantly clear thatthe political effects throughout the regionhave been massive.

First and foremost is the rise of Iran andits regional ambitions. Second, there is thereemergence of Sunni/Shia politics, which isreverberating well beyond the Gulf. FawazGerges has spent some time in Cairo; I wasthere in September. I know that people inAlgeria are talking about the Sunni/Shia con-flict. These are places where it is relativelyhard to find a Shia. It is particularly amazingin a place like Egypt, where Zeinab and



Hussein are venerated – these are central fig-ures in Shia theology, yet Egypt is overwhelm-ingly Sunni.

Third, our policy choices have done greatdamage to our relations with Turkey as theresult of the possible emergence of an inde-pendent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. This hashad a significant effect not only on Turkishforeign policy, but on their domestic policy aswell. A more forceful Turkish military hasreemerged. This is certainly not good forTurkey’s efforts to consolidate the ratherextraordinary political reforms that they haveundertaken since mid-2003 or so. At the sametime, our policy choices, the situation innorthern Iraq, and the possibility of the rise ofan independent Kurdistan have resulted in amassive dose of nationalism that made theassassination of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, possible.

The fourth effect that our misguided poli-cies have had on the region is the diminutionof the United States’ strategic position in theArab world. If any casual observer of Arabmedia were to see the juxtaposition of the U.S.occupation of Iraq and Israel’s occupation ofPalestinian territories, they would see that aclear message is being sent. This has mostrecently resulted in efforts on the part of ourtraditional allies – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, andJordan – to carve out foreign policies that aremore independent from our own. It is no coin-cidence that Hosni Mubarak’s son, GamalMubarak, the presumptive successor to theEgyptian presidency, suddenly announced inSeptember that Egypt would be pursuing itsown nuclear program. It is no coincidence thatthe Saudis have been flirting with the Chinese,or that every Egyptian official whom I meet

with is either coming from or going toBeijing.

This has been somewhat ameliorated bythe perceived Iranian threat in the region.Unlike the response to Vice President DickCheney’s tour in 2002 to drum up support foran invasion of Iraq, my sense is that our tradi-tional Arab allies would be tripping overthemselves to take part in the destabilizationof Iran. That being said, the strong undercur-rent of looking for ways to carve out moreindependent foreign policies still remains.From my own perspective, that is not neces-sarily a bad thing. But from the point of viewof the decision-makers in Washington, thatmay be disastrous.

Finally, just consider for a moment whatthe war in Iraq and its outcome to date havedone to Arab leaders. Imagine for a secondthat you are an Arab potentate in Cairo,Amman, or Riyadh. What has happened inIraq is a fundamental break from your worldview. Contrary to myths about the Middle Eastbeing an Arab region, there is now a Kurdishpresident of Iraq. Contrary to your ideas aboutSunni supremacy, the Shia are clearly going tocontrol Iraq. Contrary to your efforts to main-tain your authoritarian rule, there has beensome genuine effort to establish an open andmore democratic political system in Iraq. Thateffort has not worked out very well to be sure,but the January 30, 2005 elections in Iraqparticularly reverberated amongst populationswithin the region. Leaders in the region areclearly shaken as a result.

Do I believe that the dominoes are readyto fall based on all of this? Absolutely not. Itis not likely. One of our grave misperceptionsabout the Middle East is that the region ishopelessly unstable. I actually see the regimesin the region as being quite stable. Phenomenasuch as extremism and violence may beindicative of a variety of interconnected prob-lems, but they do not necessarily suggestinstability. I think the idea that regimes in theMiddle East are unstable and vulnerable topolitical challenges is too narrow and underes-timates their proven capacity to survive andmuddle through seemingly catastrophic crises.

“It is no coincidence that Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal Mubarak,

suddenly announced in September that Egypt would be

pursuing its own nuclear program.”



There have been a whole host of them, includ-ing Egypt’s defeat in 1967, bread riots inEgypt in 1977, and riots in Jordan in 1989.Saddam Hussein’s regime remained intactafter the Iraqi defeat in the first Gulf War.

I do believe that a regional war as theresult of a collapse in Iraq is entirely possible.Should Iraq fail, regional powers would mostcertainly get involved. After all, Nawaf Obaid,a former advisor to the recently departedSaudi ambassador to the United States, said asmuch in The Washington Post on November29, 2006. Some believe that this will ultimate-ly result in a regional war. It was interestinghow President Bush used this as a politicaltool to garner support for the surge (which isa misnomer, it is more like an ooze) in hisState of the Union address on January 23,2007. The nightmare scenario being spit outby some has been picked up by the adminis-tration as a reason to say that we must supportthe surge, the escalation, the augmentation ofU.S. troops in Iraq.

I think that those people have not spentenough time in the Middle East. We areunlikely to see Saudi, Egyptian, or Jordanianboots on the ground in Iraq. These countrieswill continue to do what they have been doing– arming and funding factions in a proxy waragainst Iran. That means that it will largely becontained within Iraq. After all, the Saudis arebuilding a wall along their border with Iraqfor precisely this eventuality. (Sadly, the con-struction of walls is a growth industry in theMiddle East these days.)

The exception is Turkey. We could see amassive commitment of Turkish forces acrossthe border into northern Iraq in order to pre-vent either a takeover of the city of Kirkuk orthe emergence of an independent Kurdistan.The reason that I am so concerned about thishas more to do with what is happening inBrussels than with what is happening inKirkuk, northern Iraq, or Ankara. The moretrouble that the Turks get into with theEuropean Union, the less likely it is that themain political actors in this drama in Turkeywill feel constrained from taking precipitousaction to prevent the emergence of an inde-

pendent state in northern Iraq. As Turkey getsinto trouble with the European Union, theTurkish general staff will feel less compelledto toe the line on Turkey’s E.U. drive. Theywill feel that they have very little to lose andmuch to gain from snuffing out Kurdishnationalism in northern Iraq.

So, in the end, I do not think that there willbe a falling dominoes effect in the region. Ithink that the regimes are largely stable andintact, but I believe that we are in for a verydifficult and potentially violent time in theregion.

Stephen Holmes:How are Turkish/Iranian relations evolving inrelation to the Kurdish threat?

Steven Cook:That is a very interesting question. I was inAnkara in November, and I spent some timewith people from the Turkish general staff. Idid not want to come out and say, “Hey, whatare you guys up to with the Iranian side?” Itried to do it in a sly way. I said, “You know,it’s clear that the Iranians have themselvestaken steps against the PKK, the KurdistanWorkers Party, this terrorist organization.What do you make of their capabilities?”

They essentially gave me the answer I waslooking for, which is, “There is no coordina-tion between the Iranians and the Turkish mil-itary, but maybe there actually is some coordi-nation between the Iranians and the Turkishmilitary.” What they basically said to me was,“Look, as long as the Iranians are taking onthe PKK, we do not really have a problem.

“The idea that regimes in the Middle Eastare unstable and vulnerable to political

challenges is too narrow and underestimates their proven capacity tosurvive and muddle through seemingly

catastrophic crises.”



And as long as they are taking on the PKK, wedo not have a problem actually engaging withthem on that particular issue.”

That has all kinds of implications forTurkish/Israeli relations as well.

Stephen Holmes:Turkey is a Sunni power and Iran a Shiapower. That Turkey and Iran seem to be col-laborating, at least on this one dimension,speaks to larger regional Sunni/Shia relations,doesn’t it?

Steven Cook:Certainly. The logic of Kurdistan and Kurdishnationalism is driving close relations betweenTurkey and two countries with which it hastraditionally had very difficult relations –Syria and Iran.

After all, in December 1998, the Turksthreatened war against Hafez al Assad, thepresident of Syria at the time, because he washarboring Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of thePKK. Turkey is now the one country (inaddition to Iran) in the world that Syriaactually has warm relations with. So I thinkthat this issue, which is seen as an existentialissue for all three countries, is really drivingthe relationship.

Fawaz Gerges:I am spending six months in the Middle Eastinterviewing activists, nationalists and main-stream and radical Islamists. My goal is tounderstand the relationship between the twoleading forces in the region – the nationalistsand the Islamists – and their relative weightand influence. At the risk of simplification, Iwant to put some tentative observations on thetable based on lessons learned since the springof 2006.

First, the region is boiling, not just in Iraq,but also in Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Palestine,Egypt, and elsewhere. What off icialWashington views as “clarifying moments”are in fact deepening and widening fault linesthat are shaking Middle Eastern societies totheir very foundations. I will focus only onthree of them, which are pivotal.

The first is the widening socioeconomicdivide between a very tiny elite and criticalsegments of the Arab population. On average,between 30 and 40 percent of the Arab popu-lation lives at the poverty line or below. All ittakes is a visit to the poverty belts surroundingArab cities in Egypt and Sudan, or Sanaa,Beirut, or Algiers, to see millions of youngMuslims who hardly subsist and who have nostake whatsoever in the existing order. Severaldevelopments make this widening socioe-conomic gulf between the haves and have-nots unique and dangerous: obsessiveconsumerism, the new media or communi-cations revolution that has reached everycorner of the Arab and Muslim world, andthe declining or collapsing social functionsof the Arab state.

There are indications that militancy ismigrating into these poverty belts. Since itsinception in the mid-1970s, the jihadist or mil-itant Islamist movement has basically beenelitist. Some of the brightest and most educat-ed young Arab and Muslim men led thejihadist movement from its inception until themid-to-late-1990s. Their ideology is nowspreading into refugee camps and the urbanpoverty belts of Arab and Muslim cities. Thisis something recent and alarming.

The dominant wisdom in the United Statesis that the Arab state system is durable; that ithas withstood various shocks and socialupheavals. But is it as durable as it used to be,and how long will that forced durability last?Are there systemic forces threatening it?Although social revolutions are unlikely atthis historic juncture, urban riots, social chaosand politically driven violence are very likely.It could take only a tiny incident such as a riotover a soccer game, a protest against humanrights violations by the security services, or ahunger protest to precipitate social chaos andurban rioting. I hope that I am wrong, but Iwould not be surprised to wake up one dayand see entire posh neighborhoods in Araband Muslim cities on fire. The burning ofArab cities is not farfetched but a real possi-bility, reflecting a reservoir of accumulatedgrievances and the social deprivation in the



region that has been taking place particularlyin the last 15 years. So the widening socioeco-nomic gap, coupled with obsessive con-sumerism, the new media revolution, and thedeclining social functions of the state, maythreaten the very foundation of the forceddurability of the Arab state system.

A second, related fault line revolvesaround the increasing legitimacy gap betweenthe Arab ruling elite and the population. Thevacuum of legitimate political authority hadnever been as wide as it is today. It has beenexacerbated by the dismal economic perform-ance of the Arab state and a widespread per-ception by citizens that the Arab rulers aresubservient to American foreign policy.

A consensus exists, outside of the rulingcircles, that the status quo is no longer viable.There are now moderate voices calling forcivil disobedience. Radical and nationalistIslamists are calling for open revolt. This isnothing new, but what is interesting is thevocal anger expressed by the oppositionthroughout the Arab world. The paradox isthat the opposition is also fragmented. Onewould have expected the opposition to con-struct a united front to resist the dominantruling order, but I am puzzled at their inabilityto coalesce and force Arab regimes to open upthe closed political system.

It is little wonder that mainstreamIslamists represent the only viable alternativeto the relatively secular authoritarian order.The fragmentation of social and politicalopposition groups has created a bipolarity –one in which mainstream Islamists, particular-ly the Muslim Brotherhood, are the majorchallenge to the status quo. In almost every

Arab society, mainstream Islamists (asopposed to radical and militant Islamists) haveemerged as the leading social and politicalforce.

In addition to the fragmentation of theopposition groups, public apathy is the hall-mark of Arab politics. There is no politicalparty or organization in the Arab Middle Eastthat could mobilize more than a few thousandprotesters on the street, other than the MuslimBrotherhood in Egypt, other mainstreamIslamists in the region, and sectarian groups inLebanon. Egypt is a case in point. In Egypt,with 75 million people, there is no politicalparty other than the Muslim Brotherhood thatcould draw more than 2,000 or 3,000 peopleto the street. This apathy persists, despite thedeclining social functioning of the Arab stateand its dismal economic performance. Why?In the last 50 years, authoritarianism and ide-ological immobilization in the Arab worldhave sapped the strength of Arab citizens andestranged them from the political process.

They are fed up with the elite, both theopposition and the ruling elite, who promisedheaven and delivered dust.

Sadly, mainstream Islamists have providedneither the vision nor the initiative to build abroad alliance of social forces and transformthemselves and the political space in theprocess. They arm themselves with generaland vacuous slogans like “Islam is thesolution.”

A third fault line that has recently burstinto the Arab and Muslim world is theShia/Sunni divide, including in traditionallynon-sectarian societies like Egypt, Yemen, andJordan. Even there, the sectarian divide is res-onating. In my interviews, some radicalIslamists have told me that the Shia representa more existential threat to the Sunnis than theAmericans do. “America can never infiltratethe social fabric of Sunni societies, while theShia can,” they said.

The spillover from the Iraq war is threat-ening social harmony and peace fromLebanon to Syria to the Gulf. Unfortunately,American strategy in Iraq has widened thegulf between Shia Iran and the Sunni-domi-

“I would not be surprised to wake up one day and see entire posh

neighborhoods in Arab and Muslim cities on fire.

The burning of Arab cities is not farfetched but a real possibility.”



nated states in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,and Jordan, and is indirectly sowing the seedsfor a transnational sectarian battle. The trans-formation of Sunni and Shia public opinion isastonishing.

How is America seen in this volatileregion? The dominant narrative pins theblame for deepening and widening internalfault lines on America. Time and again, I amtold that Westernization and globalization,America’s support for Israel and authoritarianMuslim regimes, coupled with America’s warin Iraq and Afghanistan, are the sources of theills besetting Arab and Muslim societies.

Now it would be futile to talk about whatthe Bush administration can do to preventsocial disintegration and the escalation of hos-tilities in the region. We must await the com-ing of a new administration – one that beginsthe process of extracting American forcesfrom Iraq’s shifting sands and trying toresolve the region’s simmering conflicts, par-ticularly the Palestine/Israeli conflict. Thecoming administration, along with the UnitedNations and the international community,must also try to develop a new Marshall Planto help Arabs rejuvenate their collapsedeconomies and institutions.

Stephen Holmes:Could you please say just a word about howthe democratization agenda of the UnitedStates, no matter how superficial it may havebeen, is perceived in the region? Is it per-ceived as part of an aggressive Americanact?

Fawaz Gerges:Without pressure from the international com-munity, Arab regimes will resist reformingand opening up the closed political system.The United States went about it the wrongway. Because of its invasion and occupation ofIraq and the subsequent devastation that hastaken place, the Bush administration’s rhetoricon democracy is not taken seriously by Arabsor Muslims. The rhetoric is widely perceivedas a ploy to dominate and subjugate theMuslim world. Now liberals say to the Bush

administration, “Please leave us alone. Youhave done a great deal of damage to ourdemocratic agenda.”

Stephen Holmes:Just to clarify, the way we carried out ourdemocratization has been disastrous, has poi-soned the reputation of democracy, and hasweakened the allies of liberalization anddemocratization of the region. But in princi-ple, do you think a slow, well-handled, intelli-gently organized opening up – by increasingpolitical rights and so forth – would be a wayto manage the incredible problems that youhave described for us? Could it address thepotential for deadly urban riots, the socioeco-nomic differences which are so volatile, therage and the fragmented elite you described?Those problems seem so massive that it ishard to imagine how any form of democrati-zation would be a solution to them.

Fawaz Gerges:Based on public surveys, if you ask ordinaryArabs, generally speaking, about their priori-ties, democracy does not rank high amongthem. Bread-and-butter issues top their con-cerns and worries. Democracy is a luxurywhen their economic survival is at stake.

The question is, how do you construct acreative, functioning economic agenda withpolitical liberalization? Million of Arab andMuslim children are starving. The rhetoric ofdemocracy means very little unless it is trans-lated into concrete actions, such as helping tobuild a productive social base, the rule of law,and a universal commitment to human rights,and reducing tensions by resolving festeringregional conflicts.

Steven Cook:If it is the hope of Arab liberals that a newadministration with a clean slate could dothis more intelligently and in a coherent fash-ion, then they are likely to be waiting for along time. As one senior Democratic foreignpolicy wallah said to me recently, “Thedemocratization agenda in the Middle East isdead. It is dead.”



Farhad Kazemi:I have just returned from the Arab side of thePersian Gulf, and what my dear friend FawazGerges said reverberates even there.

I will emphasize three points. I will talkfirst about Iran’s perception of its own insecu-rity in the region, second about the process ofShia empowerment in the Middle East, andthird about the nuclear issue and the conse-quences if it is not handled properly.

We think of Iran as this aggressive coun-try over there, but we should realize that therehave been a host of internal and externalissues that have increased the country’s per-ception of insecurity in the region since 1979.I will just point to some of them.

First is the revolution. Then there is theprocess of Islamization of society and of thepolitical system. There is the invention of theconcept of Supreme Jurisprudent by AyatollahKhomeini. On top of that, there are the col-lapse of the USSR, the arrival of six newMuslim republics in Iran’s neighborhood,problems with neighbors in the Persian Gulf,stormy relations with the Taliban inAfghanistan, the war with Iraq of course, aswell as problems in Europe, Argentina andelsewhere. Furthermore, since the revolution,Iran has played an active, and I would sayhighly divisive, role in the Arab/Israeliconflict – a role that used to be positive buthas become very negative. Then there is theimposition of U.S. trade sanctions underPresident Clinton, and the embargo. Therehave also been all kinds of other issues.

So, to someone sitting in Iran and lookingout at the world, this is a very insecure envi-

ronment (some of that by their own doing, byall means). This is especially true since Iran isnow surrounded by American forces, not onlyin Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in many ofthe Gulf states, in the Caucuses, in CentralAsia, and so forth.

Adding to this problem has been thedevelopment of a new issue in Iranian politicssince 2005, concerning the demise of thereformers and the emergence of Ahmadinejadwith his millenialistic, populist, hard-lineview of Iran’s role in the world. Although inthe long run, the demise of the reformers maynot turn out to be quite that way – there is asocial movement for reform that has not hadthe room to become a political party. ButAhmadinejad’s rise creates two issues that arevery important to observe. First, this is thebeginning, or maybe even the flowering, ofthe role of military and intelligence elementsin the highest level of Iranian politics. Afterall, Ahmadinejad’s base was in theRevolutionary Guard and in intelligence. Thisprocess is new. Iran may have been the firstempire in the world, but they never had a reg-ular standing army until the Pahlavis, and themilitary was subservient to the civilians. Thisprocess, which began before Ahmadinejad, isbeginning to develop further. It is not, frommy point of view, a good thing. It may haveserious implications for the future and for theway in which Iranian politics will move along.

The second issue involves Shia mythologyand the role of the Hidden Imam (the last of12 imams, who is expected to return as theMessiah). This is a populist message thatresonates within the psyche of the IranianShia, whether they like Ahmadinejad or not.

Added to all this is the Shia empowermentthat has taken place within the Middle East.This began with the Iranian revolution, fol-lowed by the Lebanese Shia emergencethrough Amal and then later Hezbollah(which was created by the Iranians).Hezbollah has gradually transformed into acritical political organization within Lebanesepolitics.

And what did we do? We toppled Iran’stwo worst enemies – Saddam Hussein and the

“Whether it is in a few months or a few years, we will need to engage

Iran in some formal fashion that is acceptable by our standards

and by the standards of international justice.”



Taliban. A cynic would say that the U.S. isIran’s secret weapon. But the situation is notquite as simple as that. As I have said, theIranians are surrounded by U.S. forces in theregion. I think that the American actions inIraq will be viewed historically as a thresholdevent. The Shia were already emerging as aforce in the region but this gave them a phe-nomenal base that will have reverberationsfor a long time to come. The Shia will play acritical role in Iraqi politics in the future, nomatter what. They have been emboldened;they have had a taste of power and willalways be a signif icant player in Iraqipolitics.

But even though there is a close relation-ship between the Iranian and the Iraqi Shia,and connections between the Iranians, theIraqis and the Lebanese Shia at the highestlevels, the Iraqi Shia will not play second fid-dle to the Iranians in the long run. This is trueeven though Ayatollah Sistani, the mostimportant ayatollah in the region, is an Iranianand carries an Iranian passport. When thingsare eventually settled (and only heaven knowswhen that will be), I think that there will besome important divisions on theological,nationalistic, and other issues between theIranians and the Iraqis.

I am very worried about Iran’s potentialnuclear weapons development. Most Iraniansbelieve, along with their president, that theyhave a right to nuclear energy. But the differ-ence between nuclear energy and nuclearweapons is very important. Until recently, theregime in Iran had made the discussion ofnuclear weapons a national issue and notsomething for public discourse, exceptthrough blogs and Web sites and so forth. Thathas changed in the past few weeks, partlybecause of Ahmadinejad’s failure to deliver onhis economic policies, and partly because theyare frightened that an action may take placeagainst Iran by the U.S., Israel, or a combina-tion of the two. The options for the U.S. arenot very bright. I do not know what I wouldadvise any president.

If we do attack the nuclear sites, Irancould do a lot of damage to our interests in

retaliation. This means that Iraq would bemuch worse than it is today. Iran has clientsin Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, inHamas, in Islamic Jihad, and with others.There is a potentially limitless amount ofdamage that could be done, and a conflictsituation of that sort could give the Iraniansthe incentive to do it.

The option of regime change throughclandestine action and support of Iranian dis-sidents is sometimes discussed, although notas often anymore as it had been. That optionis no more attractive than a military strike.We saw what happened in Iraq of course, butIran is a bit more problematic. The IslamicRepublic, for better or for worse, is in firmcontrol. Furthermore, there is no credible,organized opposition group, inside the coun-try or out. There is no equivalent of theNorthern Alliance in Iran that could success-fully take charge, even with external support.The Islamic Republic has institutionalizedthe revolution and has enormous means ofviolence at its disposal, which it is willing touse. This is not the Shah’s regime. They willuse those means of violence when the timecomes.

Furthermore, there are a whole host ofpeople in Iran, whether they like the regime ornot, who are economically dependent upon it.In terms of the military, more than a millionpeople, maybe two million, are dependentupon the system when you include the regulararmy, the Revolutionary Guards, and all oftheir dependants. Then there is the Iranianbureaucracy and all of those who work for it.Finally, and very importantly, there are thestate-controlled foundations that were createdafter the revolution with the funds of theancien regime. These foundations have bil-lions of dollars of assets at their disposal. Theyown land and factories, and there are manypeople who work for them.

So, unless there is something better withsome chance of success, the idea of regimechange does not have a chance under the sun.I have been arguing for years – including withthose who are antagonistic toward the IslamicRepublic, with its dismal record on human



rights and tolerance – that maybe there is adiplomatic route. Pat Lang spoke earlier aboutan “aggressive waging of diplomacy.” I don’tknow what that means exactly, but there issomething about it that appeals to me. Thepolicies of sanctions and the isolation of Iranhave not worked. The foreign policy failureshave been on both sides. Whether it is in a fewmonths or a few years, we will need to engageIran in some formal fashion that is acceptableby our standards and by the standards ofinternational justice.

Stephen Holmes:There has been some discussion today about agrowing split, or a turn of Iranian politicalopinion against the president. Could you sayjust a word about how you read the situation?

Farhad Kazemi:It has been going on for a while, and the pressis now covering it. Regarding the nuclearissue, the president of Iran is not the key actor.Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, AliLarijani, and Hashemi Rafsanjani are. Thepresident has taken too much of an aggressiveposition on the nuclear issue. They wanted tocut his wings off, and they have.

More importantly, the pro-democracymovement is often youth-led. This was thecase when the students of Tehran Universityrose against oppression. Of course, the regimetook them down forcefully. The students failedto make a connection between the wonderfulideals of democracy, and of liberty, and thebread-and-butter issues with which mostIranians are faced. We have recently seen stu-dents emerging once again. Students whowere upset about the way things were happen-ing prevented Mr. Ahmadinejad from giving atalk at Amir Kabir University in December,2006. They actually tried to attack his car, andchanted “Down with the dictator.” So, there isobviously a great deal of sentiment in Iran thatis not necessarily pro-president, and thosewho are in charge are taking notice of that.But more importantly, I think that Iranians arevery scared that some action may take placeon the nuclear issue by the U.S. and its allies.

Stephen Holmes:How do Iranians understand America’s actionsover the last few years? That is, they under-stand that they have been labeled as part of theaxis of evil, that Americans want a regimechange and want to hurt Iran. They also under-stand that what we have done has helped Iran,as you have said. It has made Iran stronger,and destroyed their enemies to the left and tothe right. And I assume they believe thatAmerican policy is both intelligent andcoherent. So how do they understand what wehave done, given our hostile intent and itsbeneficial effect?

Farhad Kazemi:I was at a meeting at Oxford after Saddam wastoppled but before things got out of hand. Aleading Iranian ayatollah was there, and hesaid, “Oh, we love the Americans, they arewonderful. The most important thing is thatthe Shia are getting what they are entitled to inIraq.” And that sentiment was shared by manyothers.

I think that the U.S. has made some signif-icant errors in dealing with the Iranians, andvice versa. The “axis of evil” speech com-pletely destroyed the help that the Iraniansgave the U.S. in Afghanistan and their willing-ness to go even further. That gave them leewayto think that the U.S. couldn’t be trusted nomatter what they did. But really, the topplingof Saddam and the Taliban was a phenomenalgift to them, two crumbs thrown in theirdirection.

Craig Unger:I’d like to broadly discuss some of the conse-quences of the war in Iraq, and then talk a lit-tle bit about the next step in Iran. If you lookat the unintended consequences of the war,they have really been quite breathtaking. Itseems that, in every case, we have empoweredour enemies and hurt our friends. We have allheard about how Iran has been empowered,but, if you look at Israel, it is arguably in amore precarious position than it has been insince 1948. The Saudis are worried about theascendancy of the Shia. Turkey is worried



about the growing Kurdish nationalism. GarySick articulated the most optimistic scenario,it seems to me, as to whether or not there is anew realignment. In that scenario, Hezbollah,Iran, Syria and Hamas are on one side (theanagram I hear a lot these days is “HISH”)versus the United States, Israel and the Sunniallies – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan – onthe other.

I think that everything is so fluid at thisstage, and there are so many contradictions,that it is hard to say if anything positive hasemerged from that realignment. If anythinghas, it may well be the drop in oil prices,which has recently been reported as part of aSaudi drive to impoverish Iran.

I think that the larger questions, though,are what the U.S. policy toward Iran is, andwhether the Bush administration, having madeits bet, will double down. It was quite interest-ing to hear many people on the earlier panelstalk about the Iranian nuclear threat as a phan-tom threat. Gary Sick has noted that theirnuclear program has been in development for22 years, while even Pakistan was able todevelop a nuclear weapon in just a handful ofyears. He made the case that Iran is mademore powerful by threatening to build aweapon than by actually having one.

At the same time, the Bush administrationhas essentially built the fire, and all of the ele-ments will be in place by the end of February.The question is, will they light the match?First, they deployed minesweepers to thePersian Gulf, with the idea that if we were tobomb Iran in order to take out their nuclearoperations, Iran would retaliate by blockadingthe Persian Gulf. That would cut off about 40percent of all the oil in the world and send oilprices through the roof. The minesweepers are

there as an advance countermeasure. Inaddition, we have two carrier groups there.More recently, and this has been very quiet,the command responsibility for Iran wastransferred from the United States CentralCommand, which really has its hands full withIraq and Afghanistan, to the StrategicCommand.

If you put that all together, we have thecapability to launch a very powerful naval andair attack on Iran. In addition, AdmiralWilliam Fallon is replacing General JohnAbizaid. Although Fallon is said to be some-one who is very good at knitting coalitionstogether, he is also a naval man capable ofoverseeing such an operation. If that were tohappen, I think that everything would go outof control. There would be a major oil war.The supply lines to America’s 130,000 troopsin Iraq could easily be cut. The Shia in Iraqwould obviously not look too kindly onAmerican troops, and something as simple asrocket-propelled grenades could disrupt thosesupply lines. That would make Americantroops almost hostages and very vulnerable.

What could trigger such an event? It wasinteresting to hear Paul Pillar say that Irandoes not take these threats very seriously. Atthe same time, I think that there are a numberof trigger mechanisms by which things couldget out of control. One of those would be areplay of the Israel/Hezbollah conflict that wesaw last summer. President Bush, in hisspeech on January 10, 2007, said that wewould pursue enemy supply lines acrossborders, into Iran if necessary. Many peopleinterpreted that as potentially being a casusbelli for the next war. I think this is potentiallyvery dangerous.

On a different note, and this is somethingthat is very much outside the Shia/Sunni para-digm, Kurdish troops went across the borderinto Turkey last summer, during theIsrael/Hezbollah conflict, and killed 15Turkish soldiers. At least 20,000 Turkishsoldiers were then amassed on the Iraqiborder. It fell to the American ambassador tosay essentially, “It is okay for Israel to go intoLebanon, but you cannot go into Iraq.”

“We have the capability to launch a verypowerful naval and air attack on Iran.

...If that were to happen, I think that everything would

go out of control.”



Stephen Holmes:One of the more conservative panelists saidearlier that the administration believes thatevery problem we have in Iraq is due to Iran.What do you think about that perception, andwhat that could mean?

Craig Unger:A report in The Los Angeles Times on January23, 2007, flatly contradicted that. I do nothave real specifics, but it is certainly not everysingle problem.

Stephen Holmes:Well, your remarks provoke the question. Isthe problem going to be an intentionalAmerican drive motivated by embarrassmentthat we have strengthened Iran? Do we have todo something to weaken Iran now that wehave strengthened it? Or is it going to be thesort of thing that Barbara Tuchman wroteabout, a bluffing game that slowly, inadver-tently turns into something else?

Craig Unger:If you go look at the neo-conservative plansgoing back to 1996, Iran was always the focus.In 1996, for example, the neo-con paper “AClean Break” was written, and it establishedIraq as the target. It was written for BenjaminNetanyahu, then the prime minister of Israel.Two days later, Netanyahu delivered a speechbefore a joint session of Congress, and headded one line saying that Iran was ultimatelythe target in terms of Israeli regional security.So, I think that that is part of the calculus.

Fawaz Gerges:Empirically, it does not make sense to pin theblame for America’s troubles in Iraq on Iran,for the simple reason that the insurgency orresistance is Sunni-led. It is as much opposedto Shia Iran as it is to the American militarypresence. The bulk of American soldiers havebeen killed by the Sunni-dominated resist-ance, not by the armed Shia militias, whichhave targeted and killed Sunni civilians.

The fundamental problem in Iraq lies ininternal divisions among the various Iraqi

communities. Neither Iran nor Syria is mainlyresponsible for the escalating security situa-tion in Iraq.

EXCERPTS FROM THE QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

• • •Question (from the audience):Professor Gerges outlined a very dire situationand suggested that the Islamists are the onlyviable alternative. At the same time, though,the Islamists have not much more than slogansif you push them a bit further. This suggeststhat they might not be viable in the long-run interms of solving bread-and-butter kinds ofissues. Could you please comment on thisdichotomy, and how we might put some betteralternatives in place?

• • •Fawaz Gerges:There is a dichotomy in the Middle Eastbetween the secular, authoritarian regimes onthe one hand and mainstream Islamists on theother. Liberal voices hold the regimes respon-sible for creating this dichotomy as a result oftheir closure of the political system and theircrackdown on progressive, secular elements.

While governments succeed in silencingprogressive voices, they have failed to do sowith the Islamists. The Islamists possess theirown resources including mosques, Quranicschools and their social infrastructure. In away, Muslim rulers enabled mainstreamIslamists to become the only viable politicalalternative. I went to Imbaba, one of the poor-est neighborhoods in Egypt. I interviewed apoor Egyptian and he said, “Listen, supposemy son gets ill at two in the morning. He isdying. Who do I call? Who is there? TheMuslim Brotherhood.” The Brotherhoodwould send a doctor to his house in the middleof the night. “Who do you want me to votefor,” he asked, “the government or the MuslimBrotherhood?”

• • •Steven Cook:There is a certain amount of tension betweenmy analysis and Fawaz’s about stability and



instability in the region, but if you take a lookat Fawaz’s presentation, there are elements ofan argument that I made. Think about Egypt inparticular. Why do I think that this regime isso stable? It is for the very reasons that Fawazhas pointed out. There is a broad spectrum ofopposition, but they are hopelessly fragment-ed. There is a relatively tightly-knit regimethat has not had any cracks. Importantly, thereare no signs of the military in Egypt separat-ing itself from President Mubarak.

What you see, particularly in the relation-ship between the Muslim Brotherhood and theregime, is a recurring pattern of relations inwhich the state giveth with one hand andtaketh away with the other. In the two weeksbetween regular security sweeps, agents of theregime are making deals with the Brotherhoodand the Brotherhood is taking them. Theywant you to think that they are stupid. Theyare very, very smart. They are very shrewd.And these regimes are actually rather flexibleand supple in their ability to repress, under-mine, deflect or divide their oppositions.

• • •

Paul Cruickshank: (from the audience):I was actually in Cairo in January 2007, andspoke to the leadership of the MuslimBrotherhood. What I found was not just emptyslogans. They have now decided to formulatea manifesto, a new party. They are coming upwith a very specific program which will bereleased this spring.

The new generation of leaders in theMuslim Brotherhood seems quite seriousabout taking their reform program in a differ-ent direction. Their democracy rhetoric seemsgenuine. So, the question is, should the U.S.administration be talking to the MuslimBrotherhood?

• • •Fawaz Gerges:I think Paul is absolutely correct that theMuslim Brotherhood has come a long way.The Muslim Brothers are trying to evolveunder harsh conditions and frequent persecu-tions. In the final analysis, the challengefacing the Brotherhood is to construct a new

vision that resolves the tensions and contra-dictions in its rhetoric in respect to the rela-tionship between religion and politics, and toinstitutionalize a comprehensive programlaying out its position and stance on state,society, economics, and foreign policy.

There is a great deal of turmoil takingplace within the Muslim Brotherhood. In thelast few months I have interviewed scores ofBrotherhood rank-and-file, as well as theSupreme Guide and top leadership.

The Bush administration is mistaken tolump together mainstream Islamists like theMuslim Brotherhood as well as al Qaeda, theSalafis, and other radical and enlightenedIslamists.

Steven Cook:There is all of this talk about the evolution ofthe Muslim Brotherhood. This manifesto, thisevolution, strikes me as part of a pattern thatwe have seen. If you were to go back to 1987and read the platform of the Islamic Alliance,you would think that the Muslim Brotherhoodis a democratic-oriented organization. It isextraordinary.

I do believe that the organization canevolve, but here is my question. They havecertainly appropriated the discourse ofdemocratization and reform, and they pickedthis up because in Egyptian society, andbeyond, this is clearly a new part of the con-versation. But have they repudiated their his-torical interpretation of Shariah that seems tocontradict some of the basic principles ofdemocratic government? To my mind, that hasnot happened yet. That does not mean it willnot happen – it is important to point out thatprior to the most recent session of the People’sAssembly, the 19 Muslim Brotherhood inde-pendents were the most responsible, bestpoliticians in the chamber, and the same istrue of the current crop.

I am just not there yet. When they do that,when this does happen, then I will say, well,okay.

• • •


IRAQ, IRAN, AND BEYOND: AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE: INDEX 61

A“Clean Break, A”, 59

ABC, 26Abdullah (king of Saudi Arabia), 21Afghanistan

al Qaeda safe havens in, 26, 28and Iran, 16, 56and Pakistan, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31and Taliban, 23, 24, 25, 55as destination for jihadists, 34attacks in, 27, 28, 30, 34madrasas in, 34Soviet Union in, 8, 20U.S. military operations in, 23, 33, 54, 55, 58U.S. training of anthropological advisors to

serve in, 13U.S. understanding of, 24, 25, 26, 33

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 9, 15, 16, 44, 45, 55, 56, 57

al Jazeera, 27al Qaeda

and Arkia Airlines (Mombasa missle attack, Nov. 28, 2002), 29

and DHL (Baghdad missle attack, Nov. 22, 2003), 29

and Europe, 28and Iran, 22, 38and Iraq, 14, 27, 28, 29, 38and Israel, 29and Pakistan, 23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34and Saudi Arabia, 27, 28, 29and Taliban, 23, 27and U.K., 26, 27, 28, 32, 34and U.S., 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 31, 32as-Sahab media division of, 26, 27current strength of, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33effect of Iraq war on, 19, 44global campaign of, 23, 36psychological effect of withdrawal from

Iraq on, 22safe havens, 23, 26, 28training camps, 26use of networks, 32

Algeria, 27, 49Algiers, 52Amal, 15, 55America. See United StatesAmerican Enterprise Institute, 44Amir Kabir University, 57Anbar Province, 28, 35, 37, 38Arabs, 8, 9, 27, 53, 54, 55Assad, Hafez al, 52

BBaathists, 17, 37Baghdad, 7, 14, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49Baluchistan, 25, 29, 32BBC, 26, 44Beirut, 52Berri, Nabih, 15Biddle, Stephen, 43bin Laden, Osama, 27, 28, 32, 33bin Sultan, Bandar, 8, 18Bombay, 29Bosnia, 43Bush administration. See United StatesBush, George W., 8, 10, 17, 23, 41, 43, 44, 46,

51, 58

C Cairo, 50, 60Canada, 29Center on Law and Security, 27, 28Chávez, Hugo, 16Chayes, Sarah, 18Cheney, Dick, 16, 50China, 50CIA, 28, 32Clarke, Richard, 19Clausewitz, Carl von, 13Clinton, Bill, 55Council on Foreign Relations, 33

D Darfur, 27Degauque, Muriel, 28Delhi, 29Dink, Hrant, 50

E Egypt, 7, 9, 37, 38, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60Ethiopia, 38European Union, 51

FFaisal, Turki al, 18Fallon, William, 58Falluja, 37Fatah, 37

GG.S.P.C. (Salafist Group for Preaching and

Combat), 27Gates, Robert, 18Gingrich, Newt, 14Golan Heights, 9

INDEX


Gulf Cooperation Council, 9Gulf War (1990-91), 20, 51

H Hamas, 38, 50, 58Hamshahri, 16Haqqani, Julaluddin, 30, 32Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 27, 32Herat, 25Hezbollah, 7, 9, 14, 15, 18, 21, 37, 38, 49, 55, 58Hormuz, Straits of, 22Hussein, Saddam, 7, 11, 14, 37, 51, 55, 57

IIAEA, 37Imbaba, 59India, 29, 31, 40Iran

and Afghanistan, 16, 56and al Qaeda, 22, 23, 38and Hamas, 37, 38, 56and Hezbollah, 7, 15, 16, 18, 37, 55and Iraq, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45,

56, 59and Islamic Jihad, 56and Israel, 37, 39, 44and Khobar Towers bombing, 18and Lebanon, 15, 37, 38, 39, 56and Palestine, 37, 39and Saudi Arabia, 19, 20, 39, 51, 58and Somalia, 38and Syria, 52and Turkey, 52as focus of tripartite strategy, 8, 9, 10, 58concern about jihadists, 34cooperation with U.S., 14, 17, 25, 45, 57hostage crisis, 9Iranian reaction to Ahmadinejad, 9, 16, 45, 57negotiations with, 10, 36, 39, 44, 45, 57nuclear development program of, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16,

18, 36, 38, 39, 40, 45, 56, 57, 58perception of insecurity, 55perception of the U.S., 57policy toward U.S., 18possibility of regime change in, 45, 56, 57possible response to a U.S. military strike, 45, 56relations with U.S., 37, 39, 44, 45response to U.S. policy, 16role in Middle East, 7, 14, 15, 20, 37, 38, 39,

49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59sanctions against, 8, 55, 57U.S./Saudi policy toward, 18U.S. neo-conservatives and, 59

Iran Air (U.S. Navy shoot-down, July 3, 1988), 44Iran/Iraq War, 20, 44, 55Iran-Contra affair, 39

Iranian revolution, 20, 39, 55, 56, 57Iraq

and al Qaeda, 14, 27, 28, 29, 38and Iran, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45,

56, 59and Taliban, 27and U.S. neo-conservatives, 59civil war in, 40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48compared to Vietnam, 44consequences of war in, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27, 33,

34, 43, 42, 44, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58consequences of withdrawal from, 20, 22, 38, 40,

41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51, 54effect on terrorism, 27, 28, 34, 43, 44elections in, 50empire building in, 7ethnic cleansing in, 35, 38, 40, 46, 49genocide in, 38, 40government of, 38, 48insurgency in, 15, 18, 35, 37, 38, 43, 59Iraqi perception of, 12jihadists in, 34militias in, 9, 15, 17, 18, 46, 47, 59partition of, 35, 40, 46prison system of, 42reconstruction in, 43regional intervention in, 17, 18, 19, 38, 40, 51role in tripartite strategy, 8, 9sectarianism in, 15, 19, 21, 28, 49, 59security forces of, 17, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47U.S. understanding of, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 28U.S./Saudi counterterrorism cooperation in, 22

Iraq Study Group, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45Irbil, 16ISI, 29, 30Islamic Alliance, 60Islamic Awakening, 20Islamic Republic of Iran. See IranIslamists, 14, 25, 29, 52, 53, 54, 60Israel, 7, 8. 9. 10, 14, 15, 21, 29, 37, 39, 45, 49, 50,

52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59Istanbul, 20

JJaish al Mahdi, 49Jamaat-e-Islami, 32jihadists, 21, 22, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 44, 52Jomhouri Eslami, 16Jordan, 7, 8, 9, 19, 29, 37, 42, 50, 51, 53, 58

KKabul, 27, 34Kagan, Frederick, 44Kandahar, 24Karachi, 34Karzai, Hamid, 24

62 INDEX: IRAQ, IRAN, AND BEYOND: AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE


IRAQ, IRAN, AND BEYOND: AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE: INDEX 63

Kashmir, 29, 31Keyhan, 16Khalilzad, Zalmay, 38Khamenei, Ali, 45, 57Khan, Ismail, 25Khatami, Mohammad, 9Khobar Towers bombing (June 25, 1996), 15, 18Khomeini, Ruhollah, 20, 39, 55Kirkuk, 46, 51Kissinger, Henry, 44Kosovo, 43Kunar Province, 34Kurdistan, 40, 50, 51, 52Kurds, 9, 12, 40, 46, 50, 52, 58Kuwait, 54

LLarijani, Ali, 57Lashkar-e-Taiba, 34Lebanon, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 38, 40, 52, 53, 58London bombing (July 7, 2005), 26, 27Los Angeles Times, 59

MMadrid bombing (March 11, 2004), 26, 27Maliki, Nuri Kamal al, 9, 13Manningham-Buller, Eliza, 26Maples, Michael, 26Mattis, James, 41Mecca, 21Miram Shah, 30, 32Mubarak, Gamal, 50Mubarak, Hosni, 50, 60Mueller, Robert, 33Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, 17, 45mujahedeen, 20, 21Musharraf, Pervez, 30, 31, 32, 33Muslim Brotherhood, 32, 53, 60Muslims, 28, 52, 54Muzaffarabad, 31

N Najaf, 37Nasrallah, Hassan, 7Negroponte, John, 23, 33Netanyahu, Benjamin, 59Netherlands, 29New York Times, 29, 31Nixon, Richard, 44North Waziristan, 30Northern Alliance, 25, 31, 56North-West Frontier Province, 29, 32, 43

OObaid, Nawaf, 18, 19, 51Öcalan, Abdullah, 52oil prices, 9, 14, 39, 58Omar, Muhammad, 27Operation Crevice, 26

PPakistan

and Afghanistan, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31and al Qaeda, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34and India, 24, 30, 31, 32and Iran, 24and nuclear proliferation, 23and Pashtuns, 25and Soviet Union, 24and Taliban, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33elections in, 28, 32national security strategy of, 24, 30nuclear development in, 58partition from India, 40policy toward U.S., 24, 30tribal territories of, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31U.S. understanding of, 25, 32, 33

Palestine, 9, 27, 37, 38, 50, 52, 54Pashtuns, 13, 24, 25, 31Persian Gulf, 7, 16, 39, 44, 49, 55, 58Petraeus, David, 38, 41PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), 51Powell, Colin, 25

QQom, 37

RRafsanjani, Hashemi, 57refugees, 19, 42, 49Rice, Condoleezza, 22, 49Riyadh bombing (May 12, 2003), 16, 17Rumsfeld, Donald, 33

SSadr City, 13, 42Sadr, Moktada al, 15Salafis, 34Sanaa, 52Saudi Arabia

and al Qaeda, 27, 28, 29and China, 50and Iran, 19, 20, 39, 51, 53, 54, 58and Iraq, 18, 20, 21, 37, 38, 51and Shia empowerment, 57and U.S., 8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 50domestic policy toward radicals, 21, 22domestic policy toward Shia, 19, 20, 21on war footing, 20


64 INDEX: IRAQ, IRAN, AND BEYOND: AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE

potential response to withdrawal from Iraq, 18, 19response to Israel/Hezbollah conflict

(summer 2006), 7response to Khobar Towers bombing, 18, 19risk to oil facilities in, 22, 27, 29role in tripartite strategy, 7, 8, 9, 58

September 11th attacks, 7, 15, 17, 22, 24, 26, 28Shia

as focus of U.S. policy in Iraq, 15as threat to U.S. troops in Iraq, 58empowerment of, 7, 50, 55, 56, 57in Lebanon, 15, 55in Saudi Arabia, 18, 20, 21relations between Shia in Iraq and Iran, 7, 17, 18,

37, 38, 55, 56, 57Shirzai, Gul Agha, 24, 25Siniora, Fouad, 7, 8, 9Sistani, Ali al, 37, 56Somalia, 27, 38Soviet Union, 7, 9, 18, 20, 25, 31, 55Sudan, 52Sunni/Shia conflict, 14, 15, 19, 22, 49, 52, 53

See also Iraq, sectarianism in.Sunnis

as focus of U.S. policy in Iraq, 17in Iraq and al Qaeda, 38in Saudi Arabia, 18, 19, 20, 21

Syria, 8, 9, 19, 34, 35, 38, 42, 52, 53, 58, 59

TTaliban, 7, 14, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31Tal Afar, 41Tehran University, 57Tocqueville, Alexis de, 49Tora Bora, 32Tuchman, Barbara, 59Turkey, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58

U United Kingdom, 26, 27, 29, 34United Nations, 8, 16, 27, 38, 54United States.

and al Qaeda, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 36and Arab/Israeli relations, 9and Islamists, 60and Lebanon, 37and realignment in the Middle East, 14, 58and the Muslim Brotherhood, 60attention focused on Iraq, 32consequences of Middle East policy of, 7, 49, 50,

55, 56, 57, 58, 59democratization policy of, 7, 49, 54intelligence estimates by, 18, 23, 28, 44international perception of, 7, 25, 26, 44, 45, 50,

54, 57

military operations in Afghanistan, 23, 24, 25, 33,34, 54, 55, 58

military strength of, 36, 45moral obligations in Iraq, 35, 48, 49naval presence in the Persian Gulf, 8, 58policy toward Afghanistan, 23, 24, 25, 26policy toward Iran, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22,

23, 34, 38, 39, 44, 45, 50, 55, 56, 57, 58policy toward Iranian influence in Iraq, 15, 16,

17, 18policy toward Pakistan, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31popular support for war in Iraq, 37, 39, 41, 44, 48possibility of military strike against Iran, 10, 35,

44, 56, 57, 58potential troop response to atrocities in Iraq, 42,

43, 46relations with Iran, 37, 44, 45relations with Saudi Arabia, 15, 16, 18, 22role in tripartite strategy, 7, 8, 9, 58strategy in Iraq, 16, 17, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,

42, 43supply lines in Iraq, 58troop strength in Iraq, 8, 23, 33, 35, 37, 40, 41,

42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 55understanding of foreign cultures, 10, 11, 12, 13

VVenezuela, 16Vietnam, 11, 44

W Wahhabis, 34Wana, 31Washington Post, 18, 28, 32, 44, 51Woodward, Bob, 24

YYemen, 53Yugoslavia, 47

Z Zarqawi, Abu Musab al, 15, 28Zawahri, Ayman al, 27


ABOUT THE CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY 65

ABOUT THE CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY

Founded in 2003, The Center on Law and Security is an independent, non-partisan,

global center of expertise designed to promote an informed understanding of the major

legal and security issues that define the post-9/11 environment. Towards that end, the

Center brings together and to public attention a broad range of policymakers,

practitioners, scholars, journalists and other experts to address major issues and gaps

in policy discourse and to provide concrete policy recommendations.

Through its many activities, the Center generates local, national, and international

awareness of the legal dimension of security issues. These programs include:

Conferences

Prosecuting Terrorism: The Global Challenge, Annual

Presidential Powers: An American Debate, April 2006

Terrorism and Security, June 2006

Secrecy and Government: America Faces the Future, April 2007

Open Forums

Al Qaeda, with Steven Simon and Lawrence Wright

Hezbollah, with Peter Bergen, Hala Jaber, and Michael Sheehan

The Muslim Brotherhood, with Alexis Debat and Nick Fielding

The Next Attack, with Daniel Benjamin, Stephen Holmes, and Steve Simon

Distinguished Speaker Series

including Bernard Haykel, Seymour Hersh, Scott Horton, Mary Ellen O’Connell,

Ted Sorensen, and Jeremy Waldron

Weekly Colloquium

led by professors Noah Feldman, David Golove, Stephen Holmes, and

Richard Pildes; with national security experts and legal scholars including

Viet Dinh, Joshua Dratel, Judge Kenneth Karas, Marty Lederman, and

Judge Richard Posner

Salon Dinners

including Richard Clarke and Gary Hart

Fellows

Peter Bergen, Sidney Blumenthal, Paul Cruickshank, Amos Elon,

Judge Baltasar Garzón, Tara McKelvey, Dana Priest, Michael Sheehan,

Craig Unger, Lawrence Wright

S u b s c r i b e t o p o d c a s t s a t w w w. l a w a n d s e c u r i t y . o r g


THE NYU REVIEW OF LAW AND SECURITY

No. 1: Al Qaeda and the Terrorist Threat (Winter 2003)

No. 2: Crime vs. War: Guantánamo (Spring 2004)

No. 3: Are We Safer? (Fall 2004)

No. 4: Torture, the Courts, and the War on Terror (Spring 2005)

No. 5/6: Prosecuting Terrorism: The Global Challenge (Summer/Fall 2005)

No. 7: Prosecuting Terrorism: The Legal Challenge (Spring 2006)

No. 8/9: Current Issues in the Muslim World (Forthcoming 2007)

TERRORIST TRIAL REPORT CARD

United States (Winter 2005)

United States (September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2006)

Europe (September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2006)

AMERICA FACES THE FUTURE SERIES

Presidential Powers: An American Debate (April 25, 2006)

Iraq, Iran, and Beyond (January 24, 2007)

Secrecy and Government (Forthcoming, April 12, 2007)

FOR THE RECORD

The NSA Wiretapping Program (Winter 2007)

Port Security (Forthcoming 2007)

BULLETIN ON LAW AND SECURITY

Europe’s Home-Grown Terrorism Threat (Fall 2004)

The NSA and the War on Terror (Spring 2006)

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

By Stephen Holmes: The Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response

to Terror (2007)

Edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel: The Torture Papers:

The Road to Abu Ghraib (2005)

Edited by Karen J. Greenberg: Al Qaeda Now (2005),

The Torture Debate in America (2006)

66 CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY PUBLICATIONS

PUBLICATIONS

For more information and copies of publications, contact us at [email protected]


THE CENTER ON LAW AND SECURITY AT THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

110 West Third Street, Suite 217

New York, NY 10012

(212) 992-8854

www.lawandsecurity.org • [email protected]


america faces the future the center on law … · panelists: patrick clawson, prof. toby craig...

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