|
[Once again the drug trade's significance rears its ugly head. But -- in spite of what this story says -- an increased US presence will have no intention of weaning Afghanistan from drug production of any other nation from consumption. As FTW has been documenting since its start, it is the control of the drug trade which drives US ambitions. That's why there was virtually no opium production in Afghanistan when the US invasion began, and why almost every year since it has reached record levels. In 2004 the opium harvest exceeded 4,500 metric tons and is still growing.
So Gulliver finds one more challenge from the "little people"; one more demand on an overstretched military. But the drug money is a prize the US will do anything to keep control of, so that it can continue to prop up its increasingly shaky financial markets. - MCR]
'Troubled' Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran triangle may deepen US presence
Khaleej Times Online (AFP)
25 March 2005
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005
/March/theworld_March643.xml§ion=theworld
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
WASHINGTON - Dogged by drug, terrorism and nuclear threats, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are fast becoming a "troubled triangle" that could deepen US presence in the region, experts told a conference on Thursday.
The problem is compounded by their strategic interests in each other's backyard, including Iran's strong influence in Afghanistan as Tehran strives to become a nuclear power, leaning toward Russia, China and India to create a strategic counterweight to the United States, they said.
Drugs in Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of opium, is deeply tied to warlords, terrorists and drug mafias within the country.
The drug trade is fuelling Pakistan's booming heroin market and increasing addiction among youths, as well as social ills in Iran, the conference organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington was told.
Terrorism is a major problem in the region, with the Afghanistan-Pakistan border a key hideout for the al-Qaeda network, including possibly terror mastermind Osama bin laden.
Aside from being accused by the United States of having a covert nuclear weapons program, Iran has been blamed for backing terror groups in the region.
"Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are a troubled triangle and the US strategy now is to involve the US government in the region in a way to reduce the troubled nature," said Larry Goodson from the US Army War College.
But while a long term American commitment can help Afghanistan wean itself from drug dependency and boost reconstruction of the war-wrecked nation, and restore democracy to military-led Pakistan, it might fuel greater anti-American sentiment in the region, he warned.
"The US faces, as it does in Iraq, a real conundrum in that we have to stay in order to achieve strategic interest of stabilizing and transforming these troubled regions but our very presence there is going to continue to attract some of the more militant jihadists who want to challenge their conception of the US project for the world," Goodson said.
"Anti-American attitudes are at an all-time high in some areas. We really can't stay and yet we dare not go," he said.
In the first salvo on its global "war on terror," Washington led an invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 to overthrow the hardline Taliban regime for backing al-Qaeda, which staged the deadly terror attacks on the United States.
Vali Nasr, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said Pakistan and Iran were becoming "uneasy" neighbors amid their controversial nuclear capabilities.
"Iran's nuclear program and Pakistan's proliferation of nuclear technology is an explosive issue and for both countries it is about regime survival," said the expert on political Islam and Shiite doctrine.
Iran's nuclear technology was built on support from Pakistan, before it became a key US ally.
Pakistan admitted this month that its disgraced top scientist A.Q. Khan had supplied Iran with centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for atomic warheads.
"The Pakistan regime can suffer seriously or fall from power if A.Q. Khan's network involved the military," Nasr said. "More recently Pakistan has been accusing Iran of unnecesarily cooperating with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) on the A.Q. Khan issue."
Pakistan's leaders very much blame Iran for inciting an insurgency in Baluchistan, a huge but sparsely populated province bordering Iran, "which has become an important problem for the Musharraf government."
"Iran is using ethnic tensions to prevent Musharraf from consolidating power and prevent it from consolidating relations with Washington," Nasr said.
If the United States wants to extend its influence from Islamabad through Kabul and further north, he said: "It will require a sustained American presence, long term, in the region."
"The big question is how and what fashion and how long is the United States going to be engaged in this high level way in Pakistan and Afghanistan and a very different way and negative way towards Iraq," Goodson said.
Ayesha Siddiqa, an ex-Pakistani government director of naval research and now a scholar, said "strategically, it will be positive for Pakistan to support a hostile policy towards Iran" although both countries were worried by President George W. Bush's "preemption" doctrine.
The strategy calls for "preventive" military action by the United States and its partners against groups or countries, which harbor terrorists and have dangerous weapons.
[These dire warnings about the dollar from Malaysia's former PM take on added significance when we recall that Malaysia was one of the few countries in the world to ever successfully withstand an assault on its currency by George Soros. The Malaysians are not amateurs in the world of finance. That same George Soros has recently been pouring undisclosed millions into three other countries: Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. All three have had coups or tainted elections within the last year and pro-US factions have emerged on top. I'd take this warning seriously. -MCR]
Mahathir: US dollar collapsing
B.K. SIDHU, MUGUNTAN VANAR and RUBEN SARIO at the International CEO conference in Kota Kinabalu
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2005/3/30/business
/10547137&sec=business
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
THE US dollar is facing an imminent collapse, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad warned yesterday.
The former prime minister told a conference of some 650 chief executives from 30 countries in Kota Kinabalu that a standard gold currency was the best alternative for international trade.
The dollar was only retaining some value because of fears of a global economic catastrophe if it was rejected as a currency of trade, he said in his keynote address, Leadership in the Age of Uncertainties - The Effect of Global Events in Business.
"But the catastrophe will come one day, because even the most powerful country in the world cannot repay loans amounting to US$7 trillion," Dr Mahathir said at the closing of the three-day international CEO conference.
"The uncertainty is with the timing, not whether it will collapse."
Noting that the dollar had devalued by as much as 50% against the yen, he said it was doubtful if the greenback could recover to its old strength. Instead, it would continue to slide, as the present American administration under President George W. Bush did not consider deficits worth reducing.
Dr Mahathir said, due to America's huge deficit, the US currency had no backing, but continued to be in use because some people still accepted payments in dollars.
"But there will come a time when we will switch away from the dollar, and we have suggested the use of gold for international trade," he said.
He added that if companies did not want to be "short changed", they should insist on payments in alternative currencies such as the euro, or be paid in US dollars but in euro-equivalent in value.
Dr Mahathir later told reporters that he was giving his personal views after having studied the current depreciation of the dollar.
"Unless they (Americans) change their president and have a more responsible president who will try to reduce the deficit, they will have serious trouble with the US currency," he said.
On whether Malaysia should reject the use of the greenback for trade, he said it was up to the Government to decide.
"But it has to be seen if the US will be responsible enough, and start to reduce its deficit," he added.
Dr Mahathir said he believed central banks worldwide were reducing their US dollar reserves, and he suspected that Bank Negara was also switching to other currencies.
He also said that local companies going abroad should form an association open to credible members who can deliver the job.
Effort to Form Iraqi Government Collapses Two Months After Elections, Ethnic Groups Fail to Agree on Coalition
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 29, 2005; 1:22 PM
original story here
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
BAGHDAD, March 29 -- Iraq's attempt to fill the first posts in a national-unity government erupted in shouting and factional strife Tuesday, as what politicians described as last-minute power plays overran a Shiite- and Kurd-led effort to form a coalition with Sunnis.
A National Assembly session meant to elect the essential post of assembly speaker opened with Islamic prayers followed by a veiled lawmaker rising to her feet in black robes to denounce "these behind-the scenes" talks on a new government.
A quick series of complaints followed with rank-and-file lawmakers expressing frustration at the more than two months of haggling over forming a government following the Jan. 30 national elections.
"Why don't you give us the details of what is going on in this democratic process?" said the robed lawmaker, whose identity was not discernible from a television feed that was journalists' only access to the session.
"What shall we tell those who sacrificed their lives in the 30th of January?" lawmaker Hussein Sadr, whose own bloc has been linked to this week's latest delay, asked the assembly.
"Speed up!" Sadr said. Assembly leaders abruptly ordered news cameras out of the hall after 22 minutes. For the Iraqi public, television broadcasts of what was only the second session of their new parliament snapped to black, then went to a Saddam Hussein-era-style tape of a popular singer warbling an Iraqi national anthem.
At issue is the post of assembly speaker. Shiites and Kurds say they are determined to fill the spot and several others with Sunnis in hopes of defusing a two-year, Sunni-led insurgency.
Shiite Muslims, who form a majority in Iraq, and Kurds won the most seats in the new 270-person assembly, which is supposed to elect a government to succeed an interim one seated after the March 2003 U.S. invasion.
Sunni Muslim clerics, who have seen their minority's fall from dominance in Iraq, told Sunnis to boycott the Jan. 30 vote. Picking a speaker is a necessary first step before the assembly can elect new Iraqi leaders and a Cabinet, although many deals on those posts also remain shaky.
Interim President Ghazi Yawar abruptly withdrew as the consensus Sunni candidate for the speaker post Monday. The opening of Tuesday's session in a Saddam-era convention hall was put on hold for 1 1/2 hours while Iraqi leaders gathered in a side room pressed Yawar to change his mind.
The effort failed. Lawmakers also were unable to settle on a willing replacement among the 17 Sunnis in parliament.
Finally, officials said, they gave Sunnis 48 hours after Tuesday's session to come forward with a candidate.
Jalaledin Saghir, a hard-line Shiite cleric and politician, said the Shiite-Kurd coalition had warned it would appoint a Sunni speaker if the Sunnis themselves failed to do so.
Several other lawmakers from various blocs said they knew of no such ultimatum, however.
Yawar and interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular politician who controls a few dozen seats in parliament, are both seeking deals out of the impasse that would increase their political influence and counter the Shiites' dominance of the incoming government, lawmakers said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Please Note
This function has been disabled.
|
|
|
|
'Troubled' Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran triangle may deepen US presence