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Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is not publicly pressing panic buttons in Afghanistan, but the recent Riga summit reflected mounting signs of unease and strains in an organisation that is 26-nation strong and growing. This is the organisation’s first out-of-Europe military commitment and there is confusion and divided counsel on its aims and future.
   From the American point of view, it is unfortunate that Nato’s mettle will be tested by how it performs in Afghanistan, a mission officially said to last till February 2009. The omens are hardly encouraging because the 32,000 troops are short of an estimated 2,500 men and major European nations have imposed caveats on how and where their forces can be used. All that President George W Bush was able to coax out of his counterparts at Riga was the troops’ availability in ‘emergencies’ and a promise of additional 500 soldiers.
   This has left the Canadians and the British and the Dutch fighting the dirty war in the South, despite the advance warning of the British commander of Nato forces, Lt Gen David Richards, ‘We need to realise we could actually fail.’ It is incredible to recall that some five years ago, the US unilaterally launched the invasion of Afghanistan, pointedly rebuffing Nato offers of help under a clause of the organisation. But then President Bush became distracted by the Iraq prize, as he saw it, and was forced to seek Nato assistance.
   The problem is that there is argument over what kind of an animal Nato is. Founded as a Cold War organisation to insulate Western Europe from the perceived Soviet threat, it reinvented itself after the end of the Cold War by accepting the American aim of containing the diminished Russia and re-dividing the European continent yet again. The new Nato was built on a betrayal of the West German and American commitment to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to move the organisation’s boundaries east, to Moscow’s detriment. The ultimate humiliation of Russia was underlined by taking in the three Baltic states.
   But the West European continental heavyweights, free from the constraints of the Cold War, were chafing at the bit to cut themselves loose from American apron strings. They posited their own Rapid Reaction Force, carefully casting it as complementary to Nato, meeting stiff American resistance. America leads Nato and is zealous of retaining its hegemony in Europe while France, among others, is equally keen to fly the European flag.
   The consequence of bringing in the former Communist states and the Baltic nations was a notable accretion of strength to the United States because the new members are seeking American protection against a potentially hostile Russia. The American invasion of Iraq revealed how divided Nato and the European Union were. The earlier experience of the US-led 11-week bombing of Serbia and Kosovo under the Nato banner was far from happy for all European Nato capitals. Afghanistan represents the third phase in Nato’s existence and is now being billed as a test for US leadership in Afghanistan and Nato’s future.
   If some European countries give the impression of being in Afghanistan almost against their will — the main continental European flag-wavers of the Stars and Stripes are militarily weak and inexperienced in performing the required tasks — they are implicitly making a statement. European objectives are increasingly diverging from those of the Bush administration and Nato cannot be dragooned into playing the role of the world policeman under US leadership.
   True, the concept of the European Rapid Reaction Force has not gone very far while Nato’s own version is almost ready. And Nato is now saddled with the unsavoury task of bolstering a weak central government in a war-ravaged country of non-existent institutions witnessing a booming growth industry fuelled by poppy cultivation and a resurgent Taliban who have surprised Nato by the ferocity of their attacks while traversing a porous border with Pakistan. Americans have separately retained 8,000 of their troops under their command for anti-terrorism operations.
   Perhaps the key lies less in how well or poorly Nato performs in Afghanistan — the Pakistanis seem to be banking upon the organisation tiring of the military conflict and going away, much to their strategic advantage — but in how America will define Nato’s future role. Terrorism remains a scourge and must be fought but there are reservations in Europe and the rest of the world over America’s methods of fighting it. Afghanistan seems the wrong place to test European resolve to mould Nato to America’s grandiose geo-strategic objectives.
   Nato’s present woes highlight the changed scenario in Afghanistan. The scourge of the suicide bomber has become a new phenomenon in the country. President Hamid Karzai, often described as the mayor of Kabul to highlight his restricted writ, has the almost impossible task of governing a country of warlords growing fat on narcotics trade and a rejuvenated Taliban keen to exploit American distractions in Iraq and an under-strength Nato force to reclaim their land.
   Afghanistan is many years away from a Taliban-dominated government, should it come to pass. But if it happens, will we see the clock turn back to an anti-Taliban alliance, including India, seeking to neutralise the new scheme of things? It is too soon to tell, but some of the emerging problems are an echo of the Iraq situation. How can one undertake nation-building tasks without a secure environment? Estimates suggest that consolidating gains in Afghanistan will require a time scale of at least five years. Will Nato have the stamina and will to pay the costs in lives and treasure for bringing a semblance of peace and prosperity to the country?
   Pushtuns remain the dominant force in the present power structure in Kabul, to the dissatisfaction of other ethnic groups that strongly feature in the Northern Alliance. How these rivalries play out remains to be seen, but Nato will have its hands full in negotiating through the ethnic divides and a Taliban force that believes that the wheel has turned full circle and its fortunes are about to take a turn for the better.

WASHINGTON, Dec 6: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s months-long diplomatic effort to get five other powers to agree to a tough United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions against Iran now seems certain to fail, because of Russian and Chinese resistance.
   The beneficiaries of that failure in Washington will be Vice President Dick Cheney and other hardliners, who have been anticipating that such a development would help them persuade President George W Bush to begin the political-diplomatic planning for an air attack on Iran.
   For more than seven months, Rice has based her Iran strategy on the premise that a coalition of the five permanent Security Council members (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China) plus Germany (P5 plus 1) could reach agreement to impose significant costs on Iran for its refusal to bow to the demand to end uranium enrichment. As recently as September, both Rice and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, who coordinates Iran policy, publicly expressed confidence that the coalition would ‘stay together’.
   But the Rice coalition strategy has been swimming against a powerful geopolitical tide. Russia and China have no interest in a weakened Iran, and have been signalling for months that they are not on board with Rice’s strategy. In May, Rice tried to trade off the Bush administration’s concession of agreeing to join direct negotiations with Iran for a commitment by the other five powers in the coalition to pass sanctions enforceable under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. But Russia and China blocked that plan, and the proposal to Iran from the P5 plus 1 group contained no reference to sanctions.
   Now the Russians, with apparent Chinese support, are insisting that any resolution on Iran’s nuclear programme fall well short of ‘sanctions’ in the sense of punishment of Iran.
   Last month, the Europeans circulated a draft that would have required that countries prevent the sale and supply of a long list of equipment, technology and financing to all of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, including dual-use items and related technologies. It would have required that states ‘prevent the supply, sale or transfer’ of such technologies, ban travel by Iranian officials connected with either programme, and freeze their assets.
   But it did not characterise Iran’s nuclear programme as a threat to international peace and security, as Rice wanted. Furthermore, it would have allowed Moscow to continue its assistance to Iran for the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
   
   European position
   As reported by the Washington Post, Rice proposed amendments to the draft that would have closed both those loopholes. When the Europeans rejected those amendments, then US ambassador to the UN John Bolton threatened to withdraw US support from the resolution. But the British, French and Germans held firm.
   The Russians, however, were insisting on a much narrower set of restrictions than those provided in the European draft. In early November, the six nations were deadlocked on the scope of the resolution. Now the European Union has circulated a draft that would only prohibit export of the most dangerous items that could be used to make a nuclear weapon or a ballistic missile, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Bill Varner.
   But the EU draft retains the same travel ban and asset freeze to which Russia had objected previously. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear on Friday [December 1] that Moscow would support ‘sanctions aimed at preventing nuclear materials and sensitive technologies from getting into Iran’ but objects to sanctions aimed at individuals, such as travel bans and the freezing of assets abroad. ‘Russia is against punishing Iran,’ he declared.
   The Russian position on Iran sanctions appears to ensure that the resolution will not even be as strong as the commitment already undertaken by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which includes every country known to possess the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.
   
   Russian and Chinese interest
   The imminent collapse of Rice’s coalition on Iran sanctions reflects the fundamental conflict of interest between Russia and the Bush administration, not only on Iran’s nuclear programme but on broader geopolitical issues.
   Dr Celeste A Wallander of Georgetown University, who with Robert Einhorn of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies conducted interviews with 20 current and former Russian defence officials and analysts on Russian views on proliferation, wrote in a recent policy paper that Russia had no intention of helping create new nuclear states but would not ‘risk political relationships with important regional powers’ to support US non-proliferation efforts.
   Russian officials viewed the Iranian nuclear issue primarily in geopolitical terms, Wallander wrote, and they doubted that the US really cared about proliferation per se. They believed Washington should fix the ‘demand side’ of the proliferation problem –– Iranian insecurity and fear of US policy –– instead of focusing primarily on the ‘supply side’ of the problem, according to Wallander.
   Chinese interests on the Iran issue parallel those of the Russians. Beijing has been seeking to strengthen its strategic partnership with Russia, particularly since the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and overt strategy of using alliances with Japan, India and South Korea as leverage on Beijing. Both China and Russia appear to view the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as a vehicle for countering US power across Asia. Last year, Moscow and Beijing signalled their joint interest in cooperation with Iran against US pressures by inviting Iran to become a member of the SCO.
   Rice appeared to concede last week that the United States would not get agreement on the kind of sanctions on Iranian officials for which she had been pushing. She said she was for ‘maintaining unity but I am also in favour of action. We will just have to look at what the options are.’
   Rice was given the Iran portfolio when she became secretary of state in January 2005, and has apparently sought to move administration policy away from the option of using military force. She even indicated privately to a few figures outside the administration this year that she hoped her move to offer talks with Iran in the context of EU-Iran talks on the nuclear issue would result in broader US-Iran negotiations.
   But Rice’s diplomatic track on Iran was narrowly constrained from the beginning by a broader Bush administration policy of refusing any diplomatic compromise with Iran. Cheney and then-secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld apparently agreed to let Rice go down that track in early 2005 because they knew that any diplomatic effort through the Security Council to get sanctions against Iran would end in failure and that such a failure was a necessary prelude to any use of force.
   According to an article by the neo-conservative Lawrence F Kaplan in The New Republic on October 2, aides to Cheney have been convinced from the beginning that Rice’s Iran strategy would not be an obstacle to their own plans because they knew it would fail.
   
   The aides to Cheney insisted that the administration was not yet prepared politically for a shift to the military track, according to Kaplan. But once Rice’s diplomatic effort becomes a highly visible failure, Cheney and his allies in the administration are poised to begin the process of ratcheting up pressure on Bush to begin the political planning for an eventual military attack on Iran.
   Inter Press Service. Gareth Porter is a historian and national-security policy analyst.

BEIRUT: A truck laden with yellow Hezbollah flags drives past the Christian neighbourhood of Gemayzeh early Sunday morning in downtown Beirut. There’s a picture of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on the windscreen, but it’s not his name that the young men on board are chanting. ‘General, General!’ yell these young Shiite boys.
   Their chant is for the leader of Hezbollah’s largest Christian ally, the former General Michel Aoun. And this van captures an important dynamic that many of the international and Lebanese press have omitted from their coverage of the last few days –– that almost a quarter of the crowd at the huge anti-government protests have been Lebanese Christians.
   The size and commitment of the Christian participation became clear Sunday, as thousands of Christians from Aoun’s ‘Free Patriotic Movement’ marched in from East Beirut to join their Shia allies in calling for the Prime Minister to resign.
   ‘We are all Christians and we are against the government,’ 45-year-old Joseph from East Beirut tells me as he walks past with his son, ‘We want our own Lebanese government with no Syrian influence, no American influence and not any influence from other Arab countries. ‘
   Umm, but haven’t we been told that Hezbollah are just Syrian agents? Why would nationalist anti-Syrian Christians want to be in a coalition with them?
   ‘No! I’m not worried about Hezbollah working for the Syrians,’ Joseph exclaims. ‘Maybe Hezbollah likes Syria’s words against Israel and in that they supports Syria––but in Lebanon they are Lebanese!’
   For Joseph, the fact that his Shia allies have never been involved in his country’s many civil wars is proof enough of the party’s commitment to Lebanese nationalism. ‘Hezbollah has never used its weapons inside Lebanon against the Lebanese,’ he explains, ‘Not like the other side; they all killed each other and ran militias.’
   As the marchers walk on, they pass a TV crew they think is from ‘Lebanese Forces’ Television, a network that belongs to a pro-government Christian party firmly aligned against Hezbollah and Syria.
   ‘The Christian people in Lebanon are different to what you are showing on TV!’ yells one young man at the camera crew as others join in with, ‘Stop your lies!’
   ‘We are yelling at them because they do not tell the truth,’ explains 30-year-old Mona to me after party officials make the crowd march on. ‘They are saying that it is only Muslims who are here protesting. They say all Christians belong to the Lebanese Forces. But look, we are here demonstrating and we are not Shiite!’ she says exacerbated.
   Twenty-eight-year-old Sharden believes the media have been ignoring them on purpose. ‘We know all the media in the world, especially the Americans, are trying to make the picture that it is just the Shiites. They don’t want it to look like the Lebanese are united against the government,’ he tells me.
   It’s hard to tell exactly how many of Lebanon’s Christians belong to parties aligned with either Hezbollah or the government. Both will tell you that their numbers make up 70% of all Christians in Lebanon––and it’s a continuously argued figure that no one in this country seems to know the answer too.
   ‘They’re not the majority of Christians,’ scorns 26-year-old Hammad as he watches the crowds march past. ‘They might have used to be with Aoun, but not now he’s with Hezbollah.’ A pro-government supporter, Hammad describes the coalition between Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah as just ‘a marriage of convenience.’
   ‘Aoun just wants to be the president and Hezbollah has promised him this, so now he will do anything to reach that,’ he accuses. ‘He would work with the devil just to be president!’ interrupts Hammad’s friend Ziad.
   To these government supporters, ‘the devil’ is Syria. And it’s a strange twist of Lebanese politics that Michel Aoun spent many of his years in exile in France lobbying against the Syrians and calling for their withdrawal from Lebanon –– to now be in coalition with the Syrian-backed Hezbollah; leaving many Lebanese to view this new coalition as disingenuous. ‘I believe he’s turned pro-Syrian,’ charges Hammad. ‘I believe he’s even working for them now, the Syrians.’
   Hezbollah’s keenness to highlight their Christian allies was obvious at Friday’s [December 1] huge opposition rally, with Aoun given the role of key speaker rather than the crowd favourite Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; and many pro-government supporters view these kind of tactical moves very cynically. ‘To make Aoun speak is to try and show people that the opposition is united. Hezbollah doesn’t really care about Aoun. They just want him now –– to use him to say ‘the Christians are with us’,’ alleges Hassan.
   Whatever is behind this strange coalition between the hardline Shiite group and their Christian allies, it’s certainly producing some unique cultural mixes. As the march reaches downtown Beirut’s St Georges cathedral, Hezbollah TV vans are out the front transmitting Sunday mass live. ‘No, we don’t usually have Sunday mass broadcast on Al-Manar,’ one of the Fathers tells me inside, ‘but it’s still just normal mass, nothing political is said here.’
   As I push my way out of the packed church, I pass a funny looking kid on the steps. He has an orange T-shirt and wristband in the colour of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, but a yellow Hezbollah cap and a picture of Hassan Nasrallah hanging around his neck.
   ‘Oh yes, I’m a Christian, I went to mass,’ explains nineteen-year-old Josef... and um, why do you have a picture of the man the West sees as a terrorist leader hanging off you? ‘Because I love him,’ says Josef simply, ‘He’s a good man, and he’s not bad like all the others.’
   Later that afternoon, representatives from all Hezbollah’s allies are given the stage, but the crowd is told that the speeches won’t start until everyone puts down their party flags. After fifteen minutes of delay, a respectable amount of Lebanese flags dominates and Hezbollah TV is allowed to begin their broadcast.
   Once again, the universal demand is for Siniora’s immediate resignation, but listening to the speeches from these opposition speakers, there is certainly unifying themes here that bring this seemingly mismatched coalition together.
   Hezbollah’s Christian and Druz allies stand proudly with the party’s Shiite army, and they join in Hezbollah’s accusations that the government failed to adequately support them during the July war with Israel.
   ‘During the Israeli invasion, the government stood on the sides if not against the resistance!’ cried the Druz opposition party leader Talal Erslan. ‘Maybe the execution of the resistance to Israel was executed by the Shiites, but I Talal Erslan, I am one of you!’
   It had been a long day and it was growing cold, but the crowd responded enthusiastically to his calls. ‘We are ready to give our blood to this resistance,’ he declared to a cheering crowd. ‘ And we’re proud not to be called the allies of Israel, this government just follows the American and Zionist rule!’
   The speeches end and the crowds slowly disperse, while those who are sleeping here dig in for another night. ‘Hezbollah are the best thing that happened to Lebanon,’ 24-year-old Maurice, a Christian, tells me. ‘They are real Lebanese. Israel is our enemy too and we are with Hezbollah against Israel.’
   CounterPunch.com, December 6, 2006. Sophie McNeill is a reporter with SBS Television Australia, her blog from Lebanon can be found at http: //www9. sbs.com.au/

The Tigers’ victory

I am really glad and excited that Bangladesh thrashed Zimbabwe and is leading the ODI series 3-0. Congratulations to all the players, especially Shahriar Nafees for his great effort. Good luck Tigers!
   Amzad Hossain
   Dept of English, DU
   

When the highest court of justice was vandalised it crossed too many red lines; it broke many past records (like killing of one time Speaker of the then provincial Assembly in the chamber). Such things belong to medieval times or in mythology.
   It was a display of instant violence and professional bankruptcy that none can be proud of and few would even think of justifying. Our heads hang in shame. Incidents that marked the naked power struggle between political rivals are testing the nation’s capacity to accept a descent to anarchy and brutality in the name of democracy.
   When things slide into an abyss so deep and dark, something will have to give. What that will be?
   Husain
   Dhaka
   

Next on Quick Comments

a. Election Commission announces fresh election schedule; election on January 23. b. Drastic changes in top level civil admin: Cabinet secretary retires; home and establishment secretaries changed; 54 joint secretaries reshuffled (The Daily Star, Front Page, December 7) c. Iraq grave and deteriorating, report warns US (New Age, Front Page, December 7)