LATimes:Pakistan shuts down U.S. 'intelligence fusion' cells Pakistan also tells the U.S. to cut back its troops in the country, in a move amid deepen

Pakistan shuts down U.S. 'intelligence fusion' cells

Pakistan also tells the U.S. to cut back its troops in the country, in a move amid deepening mistrust after the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden and a CIA contractor's shooting of two Pakistani men. Joints Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen heads to Pakistan for talks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-pakistan-20110527,0,5278634.story

Reporting from Washington—

In a clear sign of Pakistan's deepening mistrust of the United States, Islamabad has told the Obama administration to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the country and has moved to close three military intelligence liaison centers, setting back American efforts to eliminate insurgent sanctuaries in largely lawless areas bordering Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.

The liaison centers, also known as intelligence fusion cells, in Quetta and Peshawar are the main conduits for the United States to share satellite imagery, target data and other intelligence with Pakistani ground forces conducting operations against militants, including Taliban fighters who slip into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and allied forces.

U.S. special operations units have relied on the three facilities, two in Peshawar and one in Quetta, to help coordinate operations on both sides of the border, senior U.S. officials said. The U.S. units are now being withdrawn from all three sites, the officials said, and the centers are being shut down.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the steps are permanent. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew Thursday to Pakistan for a hastily arranged meeting with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army. A Pentagon official said the two will probably discuss Pakistan's demands for a smaller U.S. military presence.

The closures, which have not been publicly announced, remove U.S. advisors from the front lines of the war against militant groups in Pakistan. U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus spearheaded the effort to increase the U.S. presence in the border areas two years ago out of frustration with Pakistan's failure to control the militants.

The collapse of the effort will probably hinder the Obama administration's efforts to gradually push Pakistan toward conducting ground operations against insurgent strongholds in North Waziristan and elsewhere, U.S. officials said.

The Pakistani decision has not affected the CIA's ability to launch missiles from drone aircraft in northwest Pakistan. Those flights, which the CIA has never publicly acknowledged, receive assistance from Pakistan through intelligence channels separate from the fusion centers, current and former officials said.

The move to close the three facilities, plus a recent written demand by Pakistan to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel in the country from approximately 200, signals mounting anger in Pakistan over a series of incidents.

In January, Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, shot dead two men in Lahore who he said were attempting to rob him. He was arrested on charges of murder but was released and left the country in mid-March, prompting violent protests in several cities.

Soon after, Pakistan ordered several dozen U.S. special operations trainers to leave the country in what U.S. officials believe was retaliation for the Davis case, according to a senior U.S. military officer.

Then, on May 2, five U.S. helicopters secretly entered Pakistani airspace and a team of U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden and four others at a compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison city near the capital, Islamabad. The raid deeply embarrassed Pakistan's military and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment across the country.

Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani brigadier, blamed the decision to close the three intelligence centers on the mistrust that has plagued U.S.-Pakistani relations in recent months. Washington's decision to carry out the raid against Bin Laden without informing Pakistan's security establishment brought that mistrust to a new low, he said.

"There is lot of discontent within Pakistan's armed forces with regard to the fact they've done so much in the war on terror, and yet they are not trusted," Hussain said. "Particularly after the Abbottabad raid … the image of the armed forces in the eyes of the people has gone down. And they hold the U.S. responsible."

The two intelligence centers in Peshawar were set up in 2009, one with the Pakistani army's 11th Corps and the other with the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which are both headquartered in the city, capital of the troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The third fusion cell was opened last year at the Pakistani army's 12th Corps headquarters in Quetta, a city long used by Taliban fighters to mount attacks in Afghanistan's southern provinces. U.S. troops have staffed the Quetta facility only intermittently, U.S. officials said.

The closures have effectively stopped the U.S. training of the Frontier Corps, a force that American officials had hoped could help halt infiltration of Taliban and other militants into Afghanistan, a senior U.S. military officer said.

The Frontier Corps' facility in Peshawar, staffed by a handful of U.S. special operations personnel, was located at Bala Hissar, an old fort, according to a classified U.S. Embassy cable from 2009 that was recently made public by WikiLeaks.

The cable, which was first disclosed by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, hinted at U.S. hopes that special operations teams would be allowed to join the paramilitary units and the Special Services Group, a Pakistani army commando unit, in operations against militants.

"We have created Intelligence Fusion cells with embedded U.S. Special Forces with both the SSG and Frontier Corps" at Bala Hissar, Peshawar, the 2009 cable says. "But we have not been given Pakistani military permission to accompany the Pakistani forces on deployments as yet. Through these embeds, we are assisting the Pakistanis [to] collect and coordinate existing intelligence assets."

Another U.S. Embassy cable said that a "U.S. Special Operations Command Force" was providing the Frontier Corps with "imagery, target packages and operational planning" in a campaign against Taliban insurgents in Lower Dir, an area of northwest Pakistan considered an insurgent stronghold.

In September 2009, then U.S. ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, wrote in another classified message that the fusion cells provided "enhanced capacity to share real-time intelligence with units engaged in counter-insurgency operations" and were "a significant step forward for the Pakistan military."

The intelligence fusion cell in Quetta was not nearly as active as the facilities in Peshawar, current and former U.S. officials said. Pakistan has long resisted pressure to intensify operations against Taliban militants in Quetta. The city, capital of Baluchistan, is outside the tribal area, which explains Pakistan's reluctance to permit a permanent U.S. military presence, a U.S. official said.

Despite the ongoing tensions, Pakistani authorities have agreed to allow a CIA team to inspect the compound where Bin Laden was killed, according to a U.S. official. The Pakistanis have signaled they will allow U.S. intelligence analysts to examine documents and other material that Pakistani authorities found at the site.

A U.S. official briefed on intelligence matters said the reams of documents and electronic data that the SEALs seized at the compound have sparked "dozens" of intelligence investigations and have produced new insights into schisms among Al Qaeda leaders.

guardian: Osama bin Laden tried to establish 'grand coalition' of militant groups

Among the material seized in the compound, where Bin Laden may have been based for at least five years, are his notes on how many Americans he believed an attack needed to kill to force a change in Washington's Middle East policies and on who were the best senior political officials to target in the US.

Osama bin Laden tried to establish 'grand coalition' of militant groups

Al-Qaida leader spent final weeks trying to strengthen links with Afghan and Pakistani insurgent groups in bid to 'stay relevant'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/30/osama-bin-laden-militant-alliance

Osama bin Laden spent much of his last weeks alive planning a new attempt to bring the disparate factions among insurgents and militants fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan together under the umbrella of al-Qaida.

The terrorist leader, who had made repeated efforts to unify militant groups, was even considering risking leaving his safe house in Abbottabad, the northern Pakistani garrison town, to try to build a fresh alliance through face-to-face meetings, sources in Pakistan, Afghanistan and America have told the Guardian.

Western intelligence services and Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions committee, told the Guardian the reports that Bin Laden was planning a "grand coalition" were credible.

"Bin Laden found it pretty difficult to be marginalised and was making a huge effort to stay relevant. There was some indication that he was looking at re-energising links with [other local militant groups] to give himself a central role," Barrett said.

Mediating alliances and focusing the efforts of disparate groups has been a favoured strategy of Bin Laden since the late 1980s. Many experts say that, with the growing sophistication of local groups such as the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the role of international militants in the region has diminished.

"In recent years, al-Qaida has become increasingly marginal in the region, particularly in Afghanistan," said Thomas Ruttig, a Kabul-based analyst. "The Taliban have people who have been fighting for 30 years and who have little to learn from outsiders."

Western intelligence officials in Kabul told the Guardian they believe there are probably no more than 100 extremists affiliated with al-Qaida fighting in Afghanistan and that relations with the other insurgent groups there and in Pakistan are "variable and dynamic". "Most of the guys fighting in this region have a very local focus. That leads to friction with the internationals," one said last week.

Bin Laden had known key insurgent figures such as the cleric Jalaluddin Haqqani or the Islamist former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for decades.

American investigators hope the trove of data seized in the raid on the Abbottabad compound this month, in which Bin Laden and his 22-year-old son, Khaled, were killed, will cast light on the relations of al-Qaida and other militant groups in the region and beyond.

Special forces seized dozens of computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices, such as disks, DVDs and flash drives, from the safe house.

The data includes emails sent as recently as last month by a courier on behalf of the al-Qaida leader. The sheer size of the haul – described by one official recently as a mother lode of intelligence – has slowed the flow of information, however.

"My understanding is that we are talking about something the size of a small college arts faculty library," said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst and expert in south Asian Islamist militancy. "There is a huge amount that needs processing."

Almost all the data is in Arabic, and needs to be translated into English. A further problem, US officials have said, is that it is unclear whether many of the messages, instructions and notes written by Bin Laden were ever sent or ever reached their intended destination.

"They could have been just jottings. He probably got bored, like anyone else," Riedel said.

Intelligence gathering

American former intelligence officials told the Guardian the immediate priority of the dedicated teams set up to work through the data would be to search for any operational information that could avert terrorist plots, rather than to focus on more strategic issues.

So far, the investigators have found evidence confirming only that certain broad types of target – such as trains and planes – were still of interest to Bin Laden.

According to officials and an American law enforcement bulletin two weeks ago, Bin Laden was also interested in hijacking and blowing up oil and gas tankers.

Among the material seized in the compound, where Bin Laden may have been based for at least five years, are his notes on how many Americans he believed an attack needed to kill to force a change in Washington's Middle East policies and on who were the best senior political officials to target in the US.

There are also indications that Bin Laden was contemplating trying to negotiate some kind of pact with the Pakistani government.

Investigators are also looking for details of the financing of al-Qaida. Much of the money for the terror group came from personal contacts of Bin Laden's and what is believed to be a relatively small number of donors in the Middle East. One official with knowledge of the operation said last week it was hoped that the cache would identify these.

Of particular interest would be any communications with al-Qaida's Sheikh Sa'id al-Masri, believed to be the group's chief financial officer until he was killed last year, the official said. The key thing the investigators will be seeking to assess is the nature of Bin Laden's role in recent years within the al-Qaida organisation.

Since his death, US officials have described the 54-year-old Saudi-born militant leader as "central" to the group and "a micro-manager" linked to "every plot" in America and Europe.

However, some doubt Bin Laden could have been closely involved in day-to-day management, given that the compound where he lived was without internet access or telephones. Communicating may have involved a laborious process of writing messages offline, saving them to a USB key and then having a courier take them to a distant internet cafe or other terminal to be sent.

The two men who lived with Bin Laden, his three wives and up to 15 children and grandchildren put batteries in their mobile phones only when they were at least 60 miles from Abbottabad, for security reasons, according to one report. This will have limited Bin Laden's ability to run the group, officials told the Guardian.

The data retrieved has already shown that Bin Laden was in touch with a small number of senior al-Qaida figures, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian veteran militant who is now expected to succeed as the head of the group.

In a statement released in February this year, Zawahiri told followers to avoid "civilian casualties" in their attacks, saying he had been asked to issue the directive by Bin Laden himself.

According to news reports, Bin Laden's notebooks show his displeasure at a suggestion in the Islamist extremist internet magazine Inspire, published from the Yemen by an al-Qaida affiliate, that a farm tractor be converted into a "killing machine" by attaching blades to its wheels. This was not "representative of al-Qaida", he complained.

There is also evidence that Bin Laden had the final say in leadership appointments, pointing out the defects of potential candidates to close senior associates such as Zawahiri.

But some officials seeking to divine the future direction of Islamist militancy point to the conclusions of Moroccan investigations into the bombing of a Marrakech cafe days before the al-Qaida leader died.

A government statement said: "The individuals were absorbed by jihadist ideology, and had allegiance to al-Qaida and had already made several attempts to join some of the hotbeds of tension, especially Chechnya and Iraq, before deciding to carry out terror in the homeland." There was no evidence of a direct connection with the al-Qaida leadership, the investigators said.

"The suspects learned on the internet how to make the two remote-detonated explosive devices," the statement said.

Shortly after the death of Bin Laden, al-Qaida's online al-Fajr Media Centre issued a statement telling every "mujahid Muslim, if there is an opportunity, do not waste it".

"Do not consult anyone about killing Americans or destroying their economy," the statement continued. "We also incite you to carry out acts of individual terrorism with significant results, which only require basic preparation."

WashPost:Haqqani insurgent group proves resilient foe in Afghan war

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/haqqani-insurgent-group-proves-resilient-foe-in-afghan-war/2011/05/27/AG0wfKEH_story.html

KHOST, Afghanistan — The United States knows where to find the most feared insurgent family in the Afghanistan war.

Troops can point to the downtown Khost mansion owned by its patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani; the million-dollar blue-tile mosque he built for the city’s residents; and his base of operations 20 miles away in Pakistan. They are aware of his trucking and warehouse businesses, his sons who command about 3,000 fighters, and their sophisticated training camps that conduct courses in withstanding interrogation and firing rockets across borders.

Defeating the Haqqanis is another matter.

“Haqqani is the most resilient enemy network out there,” said Col. Christopher Toner, commander of the U.S. military brigade in this eastern Afghan province.

Outnumbered by the Taliban and less famous than al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network nevertheless poses an intractable problem for U.S. troops, particularly as the focus of the war shifts toward the Pakistani border.

After an intensive focus on fighting Mohammad Omar’s Taliban in southern Afghanistan in 2010, the Obama administration is in talks, mediated by Germany and Qatar, with an Omar deputy. But a political deal with the Taliban — still a distant prospect — would not necessarily end the war in the east: the Haqqani network is seen as the least reconcilable of the Afghanistan war’s motley crew of insurgent factions.

The Haqqani family, protected from all threats save for the occasional U.S. drone strike in its Pakistani sanctuary of North Waziristan, has carved out a lucrative niche by exploiting the porous border with smuggling rings and bribery.

The Haqqanis rely on their Pash­tun tribal connections and their patrons in Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to U.S. military officials.

The Haqqanis hew to the relatively narrow goal of ruling a three-province swath of eastern Afghanistan that was once their exclusive domain but is now shared with thousands of American troops.

“They want power, wealth, money and a seat at the table when this thing is over,” Toner said.

The Haqqani fighters cooperate with the Taliban but are “not fully subordinate” to Omar and sometimes extract tolls from Taliban fighters who transit their territory, said a U.S. military intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter for the record.

Resourceful network

Haqqani’s fighters slip into Afghanistan along mountain passes and historic trade routes, including several illegal border crossings used by hundreds of cargo trucks each day. The men generally fight in Afghanistan for many weeks before returning to Pakistan for a break of several months, U.S. officials say.

When in Afghanistan, the fighters move from village to village, never spending more than one night in the same house. They rarely use cellphones or radios, because the communications can be picked up by U.S. surveillance technology, and know to exploit the “red zone” — the one-kilometer-wide buffer zone near the border that U.S. troops do not enter without clearance from their commanders.

Even as U.S. troops work to deplete the ranks of Haqqani fighters — about 150 of them are killed or captured every month in Khost — the group regenerates. The Haqqanis dip into a seemingly endless supply of Afghan refugees and young men and boys schooled at conservative Islamic madrassas in Pakistan’s tribal areas. U.S. soldiers recently arrested a 15-year-old who they suspect is an insurgent cell leader.

To avoid detection, Haqqani fighters sometimes take elaborate precautions. U.S. troops noted how several people will convene at an Afghan safe house, each with a different bomb component — batteries, wire, clothespins and homemade explosives.

The fighters report to leaders in Pakistan and often do not know their comrades. Even if one is arrested, “he can’t give you the other six dudes,” said Capt. Daniel Leard, the company commander in the border district of Terezayi. “Even if you take out one arm, you can’t take out the whole network.”

‘The shadow government’

The titular head of the organization, Jalaluddin Haqqani, has been a militia leader for three decades, and he received money and weapons from the United States during the war against the Soviets. Then-U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-Tex.), who championed the rebel cause, famously described Haqqani as “goodness personified.” Haqqani exacted a heavy toll on Soviet troops by besieging his home town of Khost. His status as a war hero gave him a credibility among Afghans that lasts to this day.

Now in failing health, Haqqani plays more of a symbolic role in the organization, which has been run for the past few years by his son Sirajuddin and, to a lesser extent, a second son, Badruddin. Sirajuddin is known for his business savvy, earning money from trucking, extortion and racketeering. The fighters conduct kidnappings, collect illegal taxes and shake down Afghan shopkeepers for protection fees.

“They’re trying to position themselves as the shadow government that will take over as the official government if they can win the war,” said Lt. Col. Jesse Pearson, a battalion commander in Khost. “That’s what their motivation is. I do not see them as ideologically based.”

Haqqani fighters receive extensive training in Pakistan, U.S. troops said. They have “live fire training that is every bit as realistic and funded and supported as anything we do in the States,” Leard said.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed last month on Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost in separate rocket attacks; at least one is suspected to have been staged from Pakistan.

The level of expertise in the Haqqani network has helped the group strike targets far from its base, including in the Afghan capital, Kabul. A suicide bombing this month inside an Afghan military hospital, as well as several other assaults on hotels, embassies and shopping malls, have been attributed to Haqqani fighters.

Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, openly accused Pakistan’s main intelligence agency of supporting the Haqqani network. To Afghan officials, there has long been little doubt of ties between the group and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “They are an element of the ISI. The whole world knows that,” said Lt. Col. Atiqullah Torzan, an Afghan border police commander in Khost. “They get 100 percent support.”

Pakistan denies the allegation. Pakistani officials have long pledged a military operation in North Waziristan to target the insurgents hiding there but have not delivered.

Weak links along border

To combat the Haqqani network, the United States has sent more troops to eastern Afghanistan: A 5,000-man brigade operates in Khost and in part of neighboring Paktia province. The Haqqanis are also a leading target of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

The military pressure has taken its toll not only in the number of killed and captured insurgents, but also in less tangible ways. U.S. military officials said the greater presence of troops at border checkpoints has slowed illegal truck traffic and diverted it to other parts of the border, increasing the costs of bringing weapons into battle. Insurgents have complained in intercepted communications of wanting to attack but not having the money, bombs or people to do it. Pearson, the battalion commander, says he thinks Haqqani’s men are in “full defense mode” and are “hiding and trying to stay alive.”

“Frankly, we’re bringing terror to the terrorists,” he said.

But the Afghan security forces along the border remain a weak link in the fight. In Terezayi district, along the Pakistan border, there are just seven policemen on any given shift to patrol an area with a population of more than 100,000.

The border police have more men on the payroll, about 300, but only a third are present for duty at any one time. Those who serve are notoriously susceptible to bribes, which helps the Haqqani fighters slip through. The price the policemen charge, about $4 per vehicle, rises to about $40 for more important insurgent cargo, U.S. military officials said.

“We’re talking illegal imports of up to 200 trucks a day, semitrailers,” Leard said. “That’s enough to feed the insurgency in all of Khost.”

WashPost:Cost of war in Afghanistan will be major factor in troop-reduction talks

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-will-be-major-factor-in-troop-reduction-talks/2011/05/27/AGR8z2EH_story.html

Of all the statistics that President Obama’s national security team will consider when it debates the size of forthcoming troop reductions in Afghanistan, the most influential number probably will not be how many insurgents have been killed or the amount of territory wrested from the Taliban, according to aides to those who will participate.

It will be the cost of the war.

The U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operations in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and it is seeking $107 billion for the next. To many of the president’s civilian advisers, that price is too high, given a wide federal budget gap that will require further cuts to domestic programs and increased deficit spending. Growing doubts about the need for such a broad nation-building mission there in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death have only sharpened that view.

“Where we’re at right now is simply not sustainable,” said one senior administration official, who, like several others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.

Civilian advisers, who do not want to be seen as unwilling to pay for the war, are expected to frame their cost concerns in questions about the breadth of U.S. operations — arguing that the troop surge Obama authorized in 2009 has achieved many of its goals — instead of directly tackling money matters. When the president’s war cabinet evaluates troop-withdrawal options in the next few weeks presented by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander, “it’s not like each of them will have price tags next to them,” the official said. But “it’s certainly going to shape how most of the civilians look at this.”

The question of cost will have a far greater impact on the eventual decision than it did during the White House debate about the Afghan surge in late 2009. The heightened fiscal pressures, coupled with bin Laden’s killing four weeks ago, could shift the balance of power in the Situation Room toward Vice President Biden and other civilians who had been skeptical of the surge and favor a faster troop drawdown than top commanders would prefer.

“Money is the new 800-pound gorilla,” said another senior administration official involved in Afghanistan policy, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It shifts the debate from ‘Is the strategy working?’ to ‘Can we afford this?’ And when you view it that way, the scope of the mission that we have now is far, far less defensible.”

Military and civilian officials agree that the cost of the Afghan mission is staggering. The amount per deployed service member in Afghanistan, which the administration estimates at $1 million per year, is significantly higher than it was in Iraq because fuel and other supplies must be trucked into the landlocked nation, often through circuitous routes. Bases, meanwhile, have to be built from scratch.

The U.S.-led effort to create a new national army, which Afghanistan never had, already has consumed more than $28 billion. The Pentagon wants $12.8 billion for fiscal 2012 — the largest single line item in next year’s Defense Department budget request — to continue training and equipping Afghan soldiers.

To civilian administration officials, the budgetary drain of the Afghan war means fewer resources to put toward other pressing national security challenges.

Last year, the United States spent nearly $1.3 billion on military and civilian reconstruction operations in one district of Helmand province — home to 80,000 people who live mostly in mud-brick compounds — about as much as it provided to Egypt in military assistance.

Civilian officials expect top military commanders to resist calls for steep reductions. Military leaders maintain that the 30,000-troop surge and an increase in civilian reconstruction efforts have resulted in a dramatic turnaround of what had been a foundering war, creating the possibility of a reasonably stable nation.

They insist that a rapid withdrawal of forces would make that goal unachievable by rolling back territorial gains against the Taliban and jeopardizing efforts to develop Afghan security forces and build government institutions. U.S. military officers also contend that the aim of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban — an outcome espoused by the White House and the State Department, but not as vigorously embraced by top commanders — would be at risk if there were fewer troops to pressure the insurgents.

“We’re at a critical point in the war,” one senior military official said. “If we send the message that we’re letting up, what incentive does the Taliban have to make a deal with us?”

Civilian officials argue that recent gains against the Taliban and al-Qaeda have largely been the result of a counterterrorism strategy implemented by Special Operations forces, not the costly, large-footprint counterinsurgency mission that aims to secure the country district by district. Reducing conventional forces, some civilians assert, will not fundamentally alter the calculus that has led to interest among Taliban leaders in exploring peace talks with the Afghan government and U.S. representatives.

“Our mission is to disrupt and dismantle al-Qaeda, and what the bin Laden killing shows us is that you can do that with a small number of highly skilled guys,” the second senior official said. “You don’t need Army and Marine battalions in dozens of districts.”

Concern about war costs is putting new political pressure on Obama, much of it from fellow Democrats. On Thursday, the House narrowly defeated an amendment calling for an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fixed timetable for turning over military operations to the Kabul government. The vote, 204 to 215, was far thinner than last year’s 162-to-260 tally on the same issue.

In the Senate, influential members have said recently that the cost of the war merits a reexamination of the overall U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. “It is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said this month.

Some Republican presidential hopefuls also are beginning to have second thoughts about the scope of the war, which White House officials think could provide political cover to Obama as he pursues a drawdown. Among those who have questioned the cost is former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who told ABC News that “we have to evaluate very carefully our presence in Afghanistan,” which he called “heavy and very expensive.”

An initial indication of the White House’s view on the costs occurred this month when the National Security Council rejected the military’s request to expand Afghanistan’s security forces by 73,000 personnel.

Concerned not just about the price of training but also the cost of maintaining the force — estimated at $6 billion to $8 billion a year, which far exceeds the resources of the Kabul government, whose annual budget is about $1.5 billion — the NSC authorized the addition of just 47,000 personnel. That would bring the total combined size of the Afghan army and national police force to 352,000.

“We’re building an army that they’ll never be able to pay for, which means we’re going to have to pay for it for years and years to come,” the first official said.

Military officials said reducing troop levels might not reduce costs proportionally because of the need to sustain bases and other infrastructure. Their intention is to “thin out” U.S. forces in many areas, not withdraw entirely, to facilitate an orderly transition to the Afghan government. “Pulling out more forces than prudent may not yield the cost savings everyone wants,” the senior military official said.

Although troop reductions will almost certainly begin in July — the month Obama promised to start a drawdown — military engineers and contractors continue to expand bases across southern Afghanistan.

At Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine outpost in Helmand province, workers recently finished building a second runway that can accommodate the Air Force’s largest cargo jet, even though some military officials deemed the existing runway sufficient. The base also has been outfitted with paved streets, complete with American-style signs.

Recent supplemental appropriations to fund the war, which have included billions of dollars for construction and equipment, “have been like crack” cocaine for the military, said one officer in southern Afghanistan.“We’ve become addicted to building.”

But moving too aggressively to control that spending could open the White House to criticism that it is depriving troops of necessary supplies and infrastructure. As a consequence, administration officials have concluded that the only practical way for them to bring down costs is by reducing troops.

“The head count is the only variable that we can control,” said a civilian official involved in war policy.

msnbc: Karzai: NATO risks being seen as 'occupying force' Afghan president says he will no longer allow airstrikes on homes

Karzai: NATO risks being seen as 'occupying force'

Afghan president says he will no longer allow airstrikes on homes

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43221031/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

Afghan President Hamid Karzai angrily warned NATO forces fighting in his country that they risk becoming seen as an "occupying force" if they do not stop attacking Afghan homes with air strikes as they hunt insurgents.

Karzai said he would no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses because they have caused too many civilian casualties.

A recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women would be the last, he added.

"If they don't stop air strikes on Afghan homes, their presence in Afghanistan will be considered as an occupying force and against the will of the Afghan people," Karzai told a news conference in Kabul Tuesday.

"From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed," he added.

It was the president's strongest statement against the strikes, which NATO says are a necessary weapon in the war against the Taliban insurgency.

NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government coordination and approval.

NATO officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Karzai's statement.

foxnews:Five Top Generals Defect From Qaddafi's Army

Five Top Generals Defect From Qaddafi's Army

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/30/generals-defect-qaddafis-army/

Eight top Libyan army officers, including five generals, who have defected from Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime appealed to their fellow officers Monday to join the revolt to hasten the end of Qaddafi's 40-year rule.

Italian Foreign Ministry officials presented the generals, two colonels and a major to reporters in Rome three days after they fled Libya.

One of the officers, Gen. Melud Massoud Halasa, estimated that Qaddafi's military forces are now "only 20 percent as effective" as what they were before the revolt broke out in mid-February, and that "not more than 10" generals remain loyal to Qaddafi.

Former Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam, who now backs the anti-Qaddafi rebels, told the news conference that the eight officers are "part of 120 officials who left and abandoned Qaddafi and are now out of Libya."

Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler, long had close economic and diplomatic ties with Tripoli, but Rome was among the first Western nations to break with the regime and establish formal relations with the Libyan National Transitional Council, that is representing anti-Qaddafi forces.

Gen. On Ali On read an appeal to fellow army officers and top police and security officials "in the name of the martyrs who have fallen in the defense of freedom to have the courage" to abandon the regime.

The general, wearing street clothes like his fellow defectors, denounced both "genocide" and "violence against women in various Libyan cities."

Another general, identified as Yahmet Salah, told reporters that Qaddafi had only two brigades left that were allegedly carrying out the arrests and killings.

Mahmoud Shammam, of the National Transitional Council, said none of the funds from abroad, including those promised earlier this month at an international conference hosted by the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome, had yet reached the anti-Qaddafi forces. He also said that a council representative would go to the OPEC meeting in Vienna next month.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/30/generals-defect-qaddafis-army/#ixzz1NuK9ZXEt

GUARDIAN:Five of Gaddafi's generals are among latest defectors to rebels as South African president seeks to broker ceasefire

Al-Jazeera footage captures 'western troops on the ground' in Libya

Five of Gaddafi's generals are among latest defectors to rebels as South African president seeks to broker ceasefire

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/30/western-troops-on-ground-libya?CMP=twt_iph

Armed westerners have been filmed on the front line with rebels near Misrata in the first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict.

A group of six westerners are clearly visible in a report by al-Jazeera from Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines west of the town of Misrata. Five of them were armed and wearing sand-coloured clothes, peaked caps, and cotton Arab scarves.

The sixth, apparently the most senior of the group, was carrying no visible weapon and wore a pink, short-sleeve shirt. He may be an intelligence officer. The group is seen talking to rebels and then quickly leaving on being spotted by the television crew.

The footage emerged as South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma, arrived in Tripoli in an attempt to broker a ceasefire. He described reports that he would ask Muammar Gaddafi to step down as "misleading", and said he would instead focus on humanitarian measures and ways to implement a plan concocted by the African Union for Libya make a transition to democratic rule but not seek Gaddafi's exile.

The westerners were seen by al-Jazeera on rebel lines late last week, days before British and French attack helicopters are due to join the Nato campaign. They are likely to be deployed on the outskirts of Misrata, from where pro-Gaddafi forces continue to shell rebel positions to the east.

There have been numerous reports in the British press that SAS soldiers are acting as spotters in Libya to help Nato warplanes target pro-Gaddafi forces. In March, six special forces soldiers and two MI6 officers were detained by rebel fighters when they landed on an abortive mission to meet rebel leaders in Benghazi, in an embarrassing episode for the SAS.

The group was withdrawn soon afterwards and a new "liaison team" sent in its place. Asked for comment on Monday, a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "We don't have any forces out there."

The subject is sensitive as the UN security council resolution in March authorising the use of force in Libya specifically excludes "a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory".

Despite more than two months of bombing by Nato, rebels have remained unable to advance west of Misrata, or west of Brega, 300 miles to the east. The capital, Tripoli, also remains in the grip of Gaddafi, who has defied all attempts to force him to leave.

However, a fresh blow to his position came yesterday as eight Libyan army officers appeared in Rome, saying they were part of a group of as many as 120 military officials and soldiers who had defected from Gaddafi's side in recent days.

The eight officers – five generals, two colonels and a major – spoke at a news conference organised by the Italian government. The officers said they had defected in protest at Gaddafi's actions against his own people, citing killings of civilians and violence against women. They claimed that Gaddafi's campaign against the rebels was rapidly weakening.

Air force pilots landed in Italy and defected earlier in the rebellion. Under-trained and under-manned rebel forces have been encouraging defections as a way to whittle away support for Gaddafi in the absence of a ground army sent to assist them.

The latest group are reported to have been spurred largely by tensions arising from the appointment newcomers to senior positions in the security services.

The behaviour of these men, many of them relatively youthful Gaddafi loyalists in their mid-30s, are throught to have stirred anger and dismay among the army's officer ranks.

In April, William Hague announced that an expanded military liaison team would be dispatched to work with the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, which is positioning itself as a democratic alternative to Gaddafi's rule.

The foreign secretary said the team would help the rebels improve "organisational structures, communications and logistics" but stressed: "Our officers will not be involved in training or arming the opposition's fighting forces, nor will they be involved in the planning or execution of the [transitional council's] military operations or in the provision of any other form of operational military advice."

There were unconfirmed reports at the time that Britain was planning to send former SAS members and other experienced soldiers to Libya under the cover of private security companies, paid for by Arab states, to train the anti-government forces.

nationalarchives.gov.uk:handbook for spies:Alexander Foote

'Rote Drei' agent files

Alexander Foote (KV 2/1611-1616)

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2004/may21/foote.htm

Foote was the only British agent in the Rote Drei Soviet spy ring. Born in Derbyshire in 1905, he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and after his return was sent by Russian Military Intelligence to Switzerland, where he worked as a radio operator until arrested by the Swiss authorities in 1943. Following his release, he became disillusioned with Communism, and he handed himself in to the British authorities in Germany, providing them with details of the work of the Rote Drei. An account by Foote of his exploits, Handbook for Spies, was published in 1949. These files mainly concern actions following Foote's decision to hand himself over to the British.

KV 2/1611 (1936-1947) begins with notes gathered about Foote as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, and continues with details subsequent to his arrest in Switzerland. As information emerged from sources in Switzerland, Foote was linked to Rado's network, and the Security Service gathered as much detail as it could about him, which is on file. Included is a copy of his birth certificate, and notes on investigations of others who served in Spain alongside him. He was believed to have left Switzerland for France after the war, so it emerges as a surprise on the file when he handed himself over to the British authorities in Germany in 1947. This file contains records of his first interviews with the British, and the subsequent hand-written brief for his interrogation by Michael Serpell, during which Foote outlined his activities after leaving Spain. The file encloses photographs of various Rote Drei suspects shown to Foote, including Rado and Rachel Duebendorfer.

KV 2/1612 continues the story with further interview reports detailing Foote's activities, and shows leads provided by him being followed up. The file includes a detailed interim case summary, a copy of Foote's false German passport with a photograph, and a false British Army Pay Book made out in the name of A J Forde, created to give Foote cover for his return to Britain.

The need for the false pay book emerges on KV 2/1613, where it becomes clear the Security Service had acted to disguise the fact that Foote had returned to Britain via RAF Northolt, and had instead tried to lay a trail seeming to take him through a Channel port, so that his defection might not be suspected by the Russians. The file contains further reports of his interviews, including that with his sister Margaret Powell, in September 1947. The file also contains Foote's RAF service record, and a photostat of his passport papers. The file notes the first comments about Foote's perilous financial condition and his inability to support himself.

KV 2/1614 continues the story from 1947 into 1948, including the final interview with Foote (this by William Skardon). It includes the original of Foote's letter pleading for funds in November 1947 and the Service's considerations about what steps to take for him, which include their efforts to get his account of his activities published and so produce some income for Foote. The file also notes that Foote was approached by a fellow member of the Rote Drei, Jean Pierre Vigier, for a meeting - and it was considered that the Russians might still not be aware that he had been 'blown'. The file includes details revealed by the Home Office Warrant against his sister's house in Forest Row, East Sussex, which continue into KV 2/1615 (1948-1949). This file also notes Foote's declining health, concerns about the various payments made to him, the Service's efforts to get his book published and the results of an examination of Foote's luggage when it was sent to him by Herzel Swiatzky. Photographs of pages from his notebook and other documents in the luggage are included in the file.

KV 2/1616 covers 1949-1952, effectively the period from the publication of Handbook for Spies. Among many press clippings relating to the publication, the file contains reports of further interviews with Foote arising from new leads thrown up by the publication, and requests from the FBI. A minute note indicates that the book is 'substantially true', and correspondence makes clear that the head of SIS had read and cleared the book for publication. The file contains two photographs of Foote. It also contains photographs of players in the Katz case, which Foote had been shown but was not able to identify.

cnn:Fareed's Take: Netanyahu doesn't want a deal [zakaria]

Fareed's Take: Netanyahu doesn't want a deal [zakaria]

We've just gone through an arcane debate about whether Barack Obama said anything new when he called for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed upon land swaps. In fact, that has been the working assumption of all negotiating parties - America, Israel and the Palestinian Authority - for over 20 years. It is what the Camp David talks of 2000 were based on; it's what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's talks with the Palestinians was based on.

The newsworthy and real shift in U.S. policy was President Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Instead of thanking Obama for this, Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to stage, in the words of the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas, "Nothing less than a bizarre tirade at the White House on Friday, educating the president about the plight and the pogroms of Jews throughout history."

So why did Netanyahu do this? Does it help Israel's security or strengthen it otherwise to stoke tensions with its strongest ally and largest benefactor, Washington? Does such behavior further the resolution of Israel's problems?

No, but it helps Netanyahu stir up support at home and maintain his fragile coalition.

The real revelation, which has been picked up by many in the Israeli press, is that it shows finally that Netanyahu simply doesn't want a deal. He always has a new objection, a new problem, a new delaying tactic because, at core, he has never believed that the Palestinians should have a state.

Here is the young Bibi, 33 years ago, at a forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

"I think the United States should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons, the first one being that it is unjust to demand the creation of a 22nd Arab state and a second Palestinian state at the expense of the only Jewish state. There is no right to establish the second one on my doorstep, which will threaten my existence. There is no right whatsoever."

Prime Minister Netanyahu's references to the indefensible borders of 1967 last week also reveal him to be mired in a world that has really gone away. The chief threat to Israel today is not from a Palestinian army. Israel has the region's strongest economy and military by far, complete with an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The chief threats to Israel are from new technologies - rockets and biological weapons - and from demography. Its physical existence is less in doubt than its democratic existence as it continues to rule millions of Palestinians who are entitled to neither a vote nor a country.

Ironically, the young Bibi understood that it was impossible to keep the Palestinians in such serf-like conditions forever. Listen to him advocating that Palestinians should be given citizenship, either in Jordan or in Israel:

"In the event that this negotiation process will continue, I am sure that what we're talking about is, in fact, eventual citizenship of some kind, either Jordanian or Israeli or in any other arrangement."

If the Palestinians were smart, they'd take Prime Minister Netanyahu up on that offer of citizenship in Israel, and then Bibi would wish he had been for a two-state solution all along.

foxnews:CIA Veterans View Usama Bin Laden Death as Payback

CIA Veterans View Usama Bin Laden Death as Payback

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/29/cia-veterans-view-usama-bin-laden-death-payback/#ixzz1NmoWQj2v

For a small cadre of CIA veterans, the death of Usama bin Laden was more than just a national moment of relief and closure. It was also a measure of payback, a settling of a score for a pair of deaths, the details of which have remained a secret for 13 years.

Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy were among the 44 U.S. Embassy employees killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the embassy compound in Kenya in 1998.

Though it has never been publicly acknowledged, the two were working undercover for the CIA. In Al Qaeda's war on the United States, they are believed to be the first CIA casualties.

Their names probably will not be among those read at Memorial Day celebrations around the country this weekend. Like many CIA officers, their service remained a secret in both life and death, marked only by anonymous stars on the wall at CIA headquarters and blank entries in its book of honor.

Their CIA ties were described to The Associated Press by a half-dozen current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because Shaw's and Hardy's jobs are still secret, even now.

The deaths weighed heavily on many at the CIA, particularly the two senior officers who were running operations in Africa during the attack. Over the past decade, as the CIA waged war against Al Qaeda, those officers have taken on central roles in counterterrorism. Both were deeply involved in hunting down bin Laden and planning the raid on the terrorist who killed their colleagues.

"History has shown that tyrants who threaten global peace and freedom must eventually face their natural enemies: America's war fighters, and the silent warriors of our Intelligence Community," CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a Memorial Day message to agency employees.

These silent warriors took very different paths to Nairobi.

Hardy was a divorced mom from Valdosta, Ga., who raised a daughter as she travelled to Asia, South America and Africa over a lengthy career. At the CIA station in Kenya, she handled the office finances, including the CIA's stash of money used to pay sources and carry out spying operations. She was a new grandmother and was eager to get back home when Al Qaeda struck.

Shah took an unpredictable route to the nation's clandestine service. He was not a solider or a Marine, a linguist or an Ivy Leaguer. He was a musician from the Midwest. But his story, and the secret mission that brought him to Africa, was straight out of a Hollywood spy movie.

"He was a vivacious, upbeat guy who had a very poignant, self-deprecating sense of humor," said Dan McDevitt, a classmate and close friend from St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, where Shah was a standout trumpet player.

Shah — his given name was Uttamlal — was the only child of an Indian immigrant father and an American mother, McDevitt said. He had a fascination with international affairs. He participated in the school's model United Nations and, in the midst of the Cold War, was one of the school's first students to learn Russian. From time to time, he went to India with his father, giving him a rare world perspective.

"At the time, that was unheard of. You might as well have gone to Mars," said McDevitt, who lost touch with his high school friend long before he joined the agency.

Shah graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and Ball State University's music school. He taught music classes and occasionally played in backup bands for entertainers Red Skelton, Perry Como and Jim Nabors. His doctoral thesis at Indiana's Ball State offered no hints about the career he would pursue: "The Solo Songs of Edward MacDowell: An Examination of Style and Literary Influence."

"He was one of our outstanding people," said Kirby Koriath, the graduate student adviser at Ball State.

Shah and his wife, Linda, were married in 1983, the year he received his master's degree. In 1987, after earning his doctorate, Shah joined the U.S. government. On paper, he had become a diplomat. In reality, he was shipped to the Farm, the CIA's spy school in Virginia.

He received the usual battery of training in surveillance, counterespionage and the art of building sources. The latter is particularly hard to teach, but it came naturally to Shah, former officials said. Shah was regarded as one of the top members of his class and was assigned to the Near East Division, which covers the Middle East.

He spoke fluent Hindi and decent Russian when he arrived and quickly showed a knack for languages by learning Arabic. He worked in Cairo and Damascus and, though he was young, former colleagues said he was quickly proving himself one of the agency's most promising stars.

In 1997, he was dispatched to headquarters as part of the Iraq Operations Group, the CIA team that ran spying campaigns against Saddam Hussein's regime. Around that time, the CIA became convinced that a senior Iraqi official was willing to provide intelligence in exchange for a new life in America. Before the U.S. could make that deal, it had to be sure the information was credible and the would-be defector wasn't really a double agent. But even talking to him was a risky move. If a meeting with the CIA was discovered, the Iraqi would be killed for sure.

Somebody had to meet with the informant, somebody who knew the Middle East and could be trusted with such a sensitive mission. A senior officer recommended Shah.

The meetings were set up in Kenya, former officials said, because it was considered relatively safe from Middle East intelligence services. It was perhaps the most important operation being run under the Africa Division at the time, current and former officials said. Among the agency managers overseeing it was John Bennett, the deputy chief of the division. He and his operations chief, who remains undercover, were seasoned Africa hands and veterans of countless spying operations.

Because of the mission's sensitivity, Shah bottled up his normally outgoing and friendly personality while at the embassy.

"This is the glory and the tragedy of discreet work," said Prudence Bushnell, the former ambassador to Kenya. "You keep a very low profile and you don't do things that make you memorable."

Officials say Shah was among those who went to the window when shooting began outside the embassy gates. Most who did were killed when the massive bomb exploded. He was 38. Hardy was also killed in the blast. She was 51.

The U.S. government said both victims were State Department employees. But like all fallen officers, they received private memorial services at CIA headquarters. Every year, their names are among those read at a ceremony for family members and colleagues.

Hardy's daughter, Brandi Plants, said she did not want to discuss her mother's employment. Shah's widow, Linda, sent word through a neighbor that the topic was still too painful to discuss.

Shah's death did not stall his mission. The Africa Division pressed on and confirmed that the Iraqi source was legitimate, his information extremely valuable. He defected and was re-located to the United States with a new identity.

Bennett later went on to be the station chief in Islamabad, where he ran the agency's effort to kill Al Qaeda members by using unmanned aircraft. He now sits in one of the most important seats in the agency, overseeing clandestine operations worldwide. His former Africa operations chief now runs the agency's counterterrorism center. Both have been hunting for bin Laden for years. Both were directly involved in the raid.

Shah and Hardy are among the names etched into stone at a memorial at the embassy in Nairobi, with no mention of their CIA service. Shah is also commemorated with a plaque in a CIA conference room at its headquarters. Both were among those whose names Panetta read last week at the annual ceremony for fallen officers.

"Throughout the effort to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda, our fallen colleagues have been with us in memory and in spirit," Panetta said. "With their strength and determination as our guide, we achieved a great victory three weeks ago."

Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi was targeted because it was a major CIA station. He died never knowing that he had killed two CIA officers there.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/29/cia-veterans-view-usama-bin-laden-death-payback/#ixzz1NmolvNqr

msnbc(nytimes): For anarchist, details of life as FBI target One organizer of anticorporate protests is among dozens of political activists to come un

For anarchist, details of life as FBI target

One organizer of anticorporate protests is among dozens of political activists to come under scrutiny of counterterrorism operations(nytimes)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43208176/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

AUSTIN, Tex. — A fat sheaf of F.B.I. reports meticulously details the surveillance that counterterrorism agents directed at the one-story house in East Austin. For at least three years, they traced the license plates of cars parked out front, recorded the comings and goings of residents and guests and, in one case, speculated about a suspicious flat object spread out across the driveway.

“The content could not be determined from the street,” an agent observing from his car reported one day in 2005. “It had a large number of multi-colored blocks, with figures and/or lettering,” the report said, and “may be a sign that is to be used in an upcoming protest.”

Actually, the item in question was more mundane.

“It was a quilt,” said Scott Crow, marveling over the papers at the dining table of his ramshackle home, where he lives with his wife, a housemate and a backyard menagerie that includes two goats, a dozen chickens and a turkey. “For a kids’ after-school program.”

Mr. Crow, 44, a self-described anarchist and veteran organizer of anticorporate demonstrations, is among dozens of political activists across the country known to have come under scrutiny from the F.B.I.’s increased counterterrorism operations since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other targets of bureau surveillance, which has been criticized by civil liberties groups and mildly faulted by the Justice Department’s inspector general, have included antiwar activists in Pittsburgh, animal rights advocates in Virginia and liberal Roman Catholics in Nebraska. When such investigations produce no criminal charges, their methods rarely come to light publicly.

But Mr. Crow, a lanky Texas native who works at a recycling center, is one of several Austin activists who asked the F.B.I. for their files, citing the Freedom of Information Act. The 440 heavily-redacted pages he received, many bearing the rubric “Domestic Terrorism,” provide a revealing window on the efforts of the bureau, backed by other federal, state and local police agencies, to keep an eye on people it deems dangerous.

'Fat guy in an S.U.V.'
In the case of Mr. Crow, who has been arrested a dozen times during demonstrations but has never been convicted of anything more serious than trespassing, the bureau wielded an impressive array of tools, the documents show.

The agents watched from their cars for hours at a time — Mr. Crow recalls one regular as “a fat guy in an S.U.V. with the engine running and the air-conditioning on” — and watched gatherings at a bookstore and cafe. For round-the-clock coverage, they attached a video camera to the phone pole across from his house on New York Avenue.

They tracked Mr. Crow’s phone calls and e-mails and combed through his trash, identifying his bank and mortgage companies, which appear to have been served with subpoenas. They visited gun stores where he shopped for a rifle, noting dryly in one document that a vegan animal rights advocate like Mr. Crow made an unlikely hunter. (He says the weapon was for self-defense in a marginal neighborhood.)

They asked the Internal Revenue Service to examine his tax returns, but backed off after an I.R.S. employee suggested that Mr. Crow’s modest earnings would not impress a jury even if his returns were flawed. (He earns $32,000 a year at Ecology Action of Texas, he said.)

They infiltrated political meetings with undercover police officers and informers. Mr. Crow counts five supposed fellow activists who were reporting to the F.B.I.

Mr. Crow seems alternately astonished, angered and flattered by the government’s attention. “I’ve had times of intense paranoia,” he said, especially when he discovered that some trusted allies were actually spies.

“But first, it makes me laugh,” he said. “It’s just a big farce that the government’s created such paper tigers. Al Qaeda and real terrorists are hard to find. We’re easy to find. It’s outrageous that they would spend so much money surveilling civil activists, and anarchists in particular, and equating our actions with Al Qaeda.”

Investigation of political activists
The investigation of political activists is an old story for the F.B.I., most infamously in the Cointel program, which scrutinized and sometimes harassed civil rights and antiwar advocates from the 1950s to the 1970s. Such activities were reined in after they were exposed by the Senate’s Church Committee, and F.B.I. surveillance has been governed by an evolving set of guidelines set by attorneys general since 1976.

But the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 demonstrated the lethal danger of domestic terrorism, and after the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. vowed never again to overlook terrorists hiding in plain sight. The Qaeda sleeper cells many Americans feared, though, turned out to be rare or nonexistent.

The result, said Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent now at the American Civil Liberties Union, has been a zeal to investigate political activists who pose no realistic threat of terrorism.

“You have a bunch of guys and women all over the country sent out to find terrorism. Fortunately, there isn’t a lot of terrorism in many communities,” Mr. German said. “So they end up pursuing people who are critical of the government.”

Complaints from the A.C.L.U. prompted the Justice Department’s inspector general to assess the F.B.I.’s forays into domestic surveillance. The resulting report last September absolved the bureau of investigating dissenters based purely on their expression of political views. But the inspector general also found skimpy justification for some investigations, uncertainty about whether any federal crime was even plausible in others and a mislabeling of nonviolent civil disobedience as “terrorism.”

Asked about the surveillance of Mr. Crow, an F.B.I. spokesman, Paul E. Bresson, said it would be “inappropriate” to discuss an individual case. But he said that investigations are conducted only after the bureau receives information about possible crimes.

“We do not open investigations based on individuals who exercise the rights afforded to them under the First Amendment,” Mr. Bresson said. “In fact, the Department of Justice and the bureau’s own guidelines for conducting domestic operations strictly forbid such actions.”

It is not hard to understand why Mr. Crow attracted the bureau’s attention. He has deliberately confronted skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members at their gatherings, relishing the resulting scuffles. He claims to have forced corporate executives to move with noisy nighttime protests.

He says he took particular pleasure in a 2003 demonstration for Greenpeace in which activists stormed the headquarters of ExxonMobil in Irving, Tex., to protest its environmental record. Dressed in tiger outfits, protesters carried banners to the roof of the company’s offices, while others wearing business suits arrived in chauffeured Jaguars, forcing frustrated police officers to sort real executives from faux ones.

“It was super fun,” said Mr. Crow, one of the suits, who escaped while 36 other protesters were arrested. “They had ignored us and ignored us. But that one got their attention.”

More amiable than combative
It got the attention of the F.B.I. as well, evidently, leading to the three-year investigation that focused specifically on Mr. Crow. The surveillance documents show that he also turned up in several other investigations of activism in Texas and beyond, from 2001 to at least 2008.

For an aficionado of civil disobedience, Mr. Crow comes across as more amiable than combative. He dropped out of college, toured with an electronic-rock band and ran a successful Dallas antiques business while dabbling in animal rights advocacy. In 2001, captivated by the philosophy of anarchism, he sold his share of the business and decided to become a full-time activist.

Since then, he has led a half-dozen groups and run an annual training camp for protesters. (The camps invariably attracted police infiltrators who were often not hard to spot. “We had a rule,” he said. “If you were burly, you didn’t belong.”) He also helped to found Common Ground Relief, a network of nonprofit organizations created in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Anarchism was the catchword for an international terrorist movement at the turn of the 20th century. But Mr. Crow, whose e-mail address contains the phrase “quixotic dreaming,” describes anarchism as a kind of locally oriented self-help movement, a variety of “social libertarianism.”

“I don’t like the state,” he said. “I don’t want to overthrow it, but I want to create alternatives to it.”

This kind of talk appears to have baffled some of the agents assigned to watch him, whose reports to F.B.I. bosses occasionally seem petulant. One agent calls “nonviolent direct action,” a phrase in activists’ materials, “an oxymoron.” Another agent comments, oddly, on Mr. Crow and his wife, Ann Harkness, who have been together for 24 years, writing that “outwardly they did not appear to look right for each other.” At a training session, “most attendees dressed like hippies.”

Such comments stand out amid detailed accounts of the banal: mail in the recycling bin included “a number of catalogs from retail outlets such as Neiman Marcus, Ann Taylor and Pottery Barn.”

Mr. Crow said he hoped the airing of such F.B.I. busywork might deter further efforts to keep watch over him. The last documents he has seen mentioning him date from 2008. But the Freedom of Information Act exempts from disclosure any investigations that are still open.

“I still occasionally see people sitting in cars across the street,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve given up.”

This article, "For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target," first appeared in The New York Times.

foxnews:Small Signs Suggest Waning Support for Qaddafi

Small Signs Suggest Waning Support for Qaddafi

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/28/small-signs-suggest-waning-support-qaddafi/

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Young men waved their assault rifles in the air, spraying celebratory gunfire. Others let off fireworks. Drivers honked and leaned out of their cars waving green flags and chanting in support of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The shaking cacophony of bangs and bullets one recent evening all served to camouflage the thin turnout at a pro-Qaddafi demonstration in his stronghold, the capital of Tripoli. Only several hundred showed up, and many seemed more interested in having fun than in showing solidarity with the regime.

Gauging the views of Tripoli's 1 million residents is difficult because of restrictions placed on journalists. But small signs, such as dwindling attendance at pro-regime demonstrations, suggest that support in the capital for Qaddafi's four-decade-long rule is on the wane.

Fewer appear willing to be human shields to protect Qaddafi's compound from NATO strikes. Brief gunbattles break out in some neighborhoods. There are whispers of dissent.

Authorities violently quelled protests in Tripoli against Qaddafi's rule early in the three-month-old rebellion. Soldiers, police and other armed men shot and killed demonstrators. They detained suspected protesters, and intelligence agents continue to keep a close watch on residents.

Rebels have had more success so far elsewhere in the country. They have seized swaths of eastern Libya, setting up a de facto capital in Benghazi. In western Libya, the rebels have a toehold in the port city of Misrata and cling to towns along a mountain range.

Tripoli has remained fairly quiet since the initial protests were crushed. Most residents seem focused on surviving through the rebellion, rather than taking sides.

If Tripoli ultimately falls, the cause of the regime's collapse may have less to do with advancing rebel armies than with NATO bombing raids and popular anger over rising food prices and long lines at the pump.

Since the uprising began in mid-February, food prices have soared. Vegetable oil rose from less than one Libyan dinar to four dinars. Pasta, a Libyan staple has risen from half a dinar to 2 dinars.

Oil production at Libya's major refineries is down to a trickle because of the fighting.

Outside gas stations in the capital, drivers wait two or three days on lines stretching for miles.

"Protest? People are too busy trying to get fuel," said a taxi driver of pro-Qaddafi demonstrations.

In some cases that anger is bubbling over.

In the coastal town of Zawiya, an hour's drive from Tripoli, crowds waiting for days for fuel attacked a minibus carrying journalists on a state-supervised trip to the Tunisian border.

A knife-wielding attacker pushed and slapped a government official in an attempt to board the minibus. The journalists were unharmed, but violence against a government official would have once been unimaginable in Libya.

In the first few weeks of the Libyan crisis, state television filmed thousands of demonstrators, and highways clogged with beeping cars in support of the leader.

Nowadays, far fewer show up at pro-regime gatherings.

In last week's demonstration in the center of Tripoli, car owners waiting in a miles-long line for gas at 3 a.m. barely paid attention to the drivers of a few dozen cars beeping and waving their green flags.

The scenes of maniacal devotion at the rally seemed to be a result of young men wanting to have fun rather a deeply felt commitment to the regime. They rushed wherever they saw bright television camera lights, wildly belly dancing, chanting and pumping their fists.

Another group of young men strutted past.

"Tell the truth!" one of them yelled at reporters, then adjusted his baseball cap.

"Hey!" he yelled at his buddies, "lets go chant against Al-Jazeera!"

They giggled and ran away.

There were similar scenes after NATO bombs struck two buildings on a residential Tripoli street last week.

Some two-dozen men chanted, clapped and danced in support of Qaddafi around the burning buildings. Close by, hundreds of residents stood and stared at the damage, ignoring the loud demonstrators.

Text messages sent to Libyan mobile phones last week informed residents that a funeral would be held for seven Muslim clerics who were slain in a "barbarian crusader attack" -- a NATO airstrike -- on a guest house in the oil port town of Brega.

Only a few hundred people, many of them soldiers, attended.

In the early days of the uprising, hundreds flooded to defend Qaddafi's compound, where human shields live in tents.

Night after night, state television broadcasts live from the compound, known as Bab al-Aziziya, showing people singing and dancing in a main square. But they rarely appear to number more than a few dozen.

Elsewhere, small signs of defiance are emerging.

Some Libyans, all on condition of anonymity, speak out against Qaddafi when government officials are out of sight.

"The regime is like a palm tree that has grown crooked," said an elderly Tripoli merchant, referring to a Libyan proverb. "All its dates have landed elsewhere," the merchant said. That was a reference to the country's wealth, which many here complain hasn't been distributed fairly.

One man pointed to his one-dinar note, sporting Qaddafi's face.

"No good," he said before quickly tucking the bill away.

On an outing for journalists last week, the owner or manager of a cafe quietly switched his television from blaring Al-Arabiya -- a Saudi-owned news channel despised by the regime -- to Libyan state TV when he saw the reporters approaching.

Presumably he thought government minders weren't far away.

Few pro-government Libyans cite adoration of Qaddafi to explain their stance. Instead, they say they worry about the country's stability.

A pharmacist said she lived well and thought the rebels were tearing the country apart. She was angry at NATO for the bombing raids that crash and boom almost every night in Tripoli. Speaking at the recent demonstration, a 28-year-old computer engineer who only gave his first name, Sufian, said he wanted security.

Another man, Riad Mansour, 35, said he feared Libya would "turn into another Palestine" -- wrecked by occupation and internal instability.

But it seems many others in the capital hope Qaddafi will go, even as they sit on the sidelines.

"We have not seen the wealth of our land," said the elderly merchant. "We are poor and we should be wealthy. And it's his fault."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/28/small-signs-suggest-waning-support-qaddafi/#ixzz1Nf7wKfYx

CFR.ORG:Do the Saudis Have a Brezhnev Doctrine?

Do the Saudis Have a Brezhnev Doctrine?

http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/05/25/do-the-saudis-have-a-brezhnev-doctrine/

Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2011

by Elliott Abrams

Saudi Arabia has reacted to the Arab Spring by pledging $4 Billion in aid to Egypt, and it is expected to help Tunisia as well. Has it become enamored of youthful protests for democracy? The fact that Saudi troops remain in Bahrain, helping crush the movement for greater democracy there, suggests something else is going on. And the invitation from the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC to Morocco and Jordan to join the group points in the same direction.

My theory is this: for the Saudis, it’s fine if citizens of a fake republic like Tunisia or Egypt demand a real republic with real elections and democracy. But they draw the line at monarchies: kings have to stay in charge. So they lecture the kings of Morocco and Jordan to be careful about too many reforms (if the rumors are correct), and invite them to join the Club of Kings that is the GCC. Presumably financial benefits will follow, so long as the kings don’t play around with any experiments that might give Saudi subjects ideas of their own. And in Bahrain, they put down a revolt that might have brought constitutional monarchy—though admittedly that situation appears far more complex in the eyes of Saudi royals, as the Bahrainis who would be empowered are Shia whose success might give Saudi Shia unacceptable ideas about their own fate.

Brezhnev explained himself in 1968 as follows in answering claims that after the “Prague Spring,” Czechoslovakia should be allowed to determine its own fate: “the implementation of such ‘self-­determination,’ in other words Czechoslovakia’s detachment from the socialist community, would have come into conflict with its own vital interests and would have been detrimental to the other socialist states.”

The Saudi message may be similar: the implementation of excessive reforms by any king would conflict with his own vital interests and those of other monarchical states, so it will be resisted. Kings have to stick together. Foolish nations that long ago adopted republican forms can go right ahead with their experiments and their revolts.

REUTERS:Saudi $4 bln lifeline to Egypt won’t come for free

Saudi $4 bln lifeline to Egypt won’t come for free

http://blogs.reuters.com/columns/2011/05/23/saudi-4-bln-lifeline-to-egypt-wont-come-for-free/

DUBAI — Autocratic governments can act faster than multi-lateral financial institutions. Saudi Arabia’s $4 billion lifeline to Egypt comes just as the country is still discussing an aid package with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Cairo has hinted it wasn’t ready to accept the conditionality attached to both bodies’ financial help, usually in the form of stringent fiscal discipline. But it’s unlikely that Saudi money will come with no strings attached.

The Saudi package, in the form of soft loans, credit lines, bond purchases, and central bank deposits, dwarfs the financial assistance pledged last week by Barack Obama in his “Arab spring” speech. It will make the kingdom one of Egypt’s largest external creditors.

Details on the funding are scarce, but together with the $2 billion-plus support from the United States, partly in the form of debt relief, Egypt is roughly half way to plugging what it estimates could be a funding gap of up to $12 billion until mid-2012. The rest is expected to come from the IMF and World Bank.

Modest by Saudi standards, the investment nonetheless is a huge step up in the financial relations between two countries which haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. They have been at odds over Islamic fundamentalism and secular nationalism, played out through a proxy war in Yemen. Official Saudi loans to Egypt amounted to just $308 million at the end of December — less than one percent of the country’s total external debt of $34 billion. If influence is proportionate to money spent, Saudi would rank in Egypt next to America, which has significantly shaped political policy in the country over the years.

The question is what Saudi wants in return. Loans from international institutions are expected to be aimed at supporting inclusive growth and the transition to democracy and an open market economy. But the House of Saud supported Mubarak and doesn’t share the democratic ideals of revolutionary Egyptians. Still, it has a big interest in the stability of its neighbour, the region’s most populous Arab nation.

It’s still unclear which political forces the Saudis would support in Egypt, where elections are due later this year or in early 2012. For now Riyadh seems mostly to be trying to stay on the safe side of any future government.

FOXNEWS:Egypt Permanently Opens Gaza Border Crossing

Egypt Permanently Opens Gaza Border Crossing

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/28/egypt-permanently-opens-gaza-border-crossing/?test=latestnews

After four years, Egypt has permanently opened the Gaza Strip's main gateway to the outside world.

The move to lift most travel restrictions on Gaza residents brings long-awaited relief to the territory's Palestinian population and a significant achievement for its Hamas rulers. But it raises Israeli fears it will be easier for militants to go in and out of Gaza.

The first busload of passengers crossed into Egypt on Saturday morning at the Rafah terminal, where about 400 Gazans awaited.

Egypt and Israel have maintained a blockade over Gaza since 2007 to weaken Hamas following its violent seizure of the area. But after the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, Egypt's new military rulers decided to ease the blockade.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/28/egypt-permanently-opens-gaza-border-crossing/#ixzz1NdDXBvvc