Replies to post #8603 on Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

The road to perdition
PAUL MCGEOUGH
September 26, 2009


Armed patrol on the K-G Road in the Paktia Province.

After eight difficult years, Afghanistan has gone off the rails. America's top general says he needs thousands more troops to avoid defeat, and Barack Obama has added "cut and run" to America's list of options. The Herald's chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, and the SBS Dateline cameraman David Brill travelled to Afghanistan's south-east, where a Taliban warlord has declared war against a $US100 million road being built by the Americans. Their report, Highway to Hell, is on Dateline tomorrow night at 8.30 on SBS One.

As ominous as the spot thunder storms electrifying the mountain air this time of year, Jalallulidin Haqqani's and Pacha Khan Zadran's shared history of victories and defeats rumbles menacingly across the craggy south-east. And just as theirs is no ordinary falling out, the $US100 million ($115 million) bid to link the remote, eastern border city of Khost to the hub-city of Gardez, south of Kabul, is no ordinary road project.

Standing between them, astride a ribbon of bitumen snaking its way towards one of Afghanistan's most treacherous mountain passes, is the unlikely figure of Robert Campbell - a lean, leathery US Army colonel who finds himself slipping between the sliding doors of time. On one side, ancient tribal enmity, big-man chest-thumping and insurgency diktats issued amid feuds, internecine ethnic loyalties and strange codes of honour and conduct; on the other side, a faltering, US-led bid to root democracy in the parched, rocky valleys of the Hindu Kush.

Inevitably, the tale of Haqqani and Pacha Khan entwines with that of a huge effort to build this new road, as a parable on the crisis gripping their homeland. Told in several parts, it is the story of Washington getting one up over Moscow. It's a tale of Afghan power-brokers milking the international donor community, hedging their bets while playing footsies with the Taliban and other insurgencies, because they're unconvinced Washington and its allies will not cut and run.

More than that, it reveals the dual dialogue that is a flaw in the glass of a chaotic effort to haul Afghanistan into the 21st century. Local leaders, from the President down, tell the world what it wants to hear, while tribal elders and local warlords kowtow to those above them in the power chain, as they carve up the country and its people on their own brutal, near-biblical terms.

Connecting Khost and Gardez, the K-G Road is part of a grand design to break five strategic centres from economic and social dependency on neighbouring Pakistan. By linking them together and to the national ring-road, they might be hooked back into Kabul's orbit.

In Paktia province, people worry about who will control the road. Will Jalallulidin Haqqani slap a tourniquet on it and hold the city of Khost to ransom - as he did so relentlessly in the past? Will Pacha Khan Zadran throw up checkpoints to extract tolls from all who pass - as he did so voraciously in the past?

For Americans stuck between them, the contest is as much about a showdown between two
old tribal enemies as it is about the longevity and viability of the Kabul government.

Campbell, the American colonel, knows the stakes are high and that he dare not underestimate either opponent. "They have very different objectives," he tells the Herald while patrolling the K-G Road late last month. "Pacha Khan wants to control commerce on the road; Haqqani wants to control Khost."

Haqqani's whereabouts are a mystery. "The last I heard, he was in Pakistan - in Miram Shah," says a senior US officer, referring to a small town in the wilds of Waziristan, just over the border. When the Herald previously searched for Pacha Khan, the Pancho Villa lookalike was at home in the woodcutters' village of Wazi Zadran, lolling on a pile of floor cushions, his girt ample and the whiteness of his teeth visible below the black-dyed moustache. A belt of bullets stretched diagonally across his chest as he worked a great length of cotton into a classic Pashtun turban.

This time, he is in a private hospital in suburban Kabul. Lifting his hospital-greens, he reveals a flabby stomach and the bandaged wound of his hernia operation. Bare-headed, Pacha Khan is in an armchair. The warlord has not shaved in several days. A briefcase is on the floor and an AK-47 against the wall. Armed men guard the corridor and the street outside. Huddled in a corner beside a small primus stove and its bent teapot is an old woman. Almost cowering, she pulls a veil across her eyes because two male strangers have been ushered into the room.

Pacha Khan has a great sense of entitlement. "One-third of this country belongs to me," he says before revealing he views power more through the prism of past factional wars than the permanence of the nascent Afghan state. "I share equal rights with [President] Hamid Karzai and Abdul Haq [another former Mujahideen commander executed by the Taliban as he organised a 2001 uprising]. By rights, I should be Karzai's deputy or defence minister. He refuses me, [n]but I could bring peace to this country in less than a year."

Pacha Khan has a problem, however. Within the local dynamic, Haqqani's bloody and brutal opposition to the Kabul government and its US-led backers, leaves him little room to manoeuvre on the anti-Kabul, anti-US side. Despite him being the first old-guard warlord to violently challenge the Karzai presidency, Pacha Khan is obliged, however reluctantly, to line up with Kabul and the Americans. Haqqani sucks all the oxygen of opposition.

"I don't oppose Karzai," Pacha Khan says. "The President is a good national figure. There is no alternative and I ordered my people to vote for him. We don't clash … I just demand my rights every now and again." He finished there, but might have added: "And Karzai ignores me."

He is at pains to deny that he and 59-year-old Haqqani were ever close. "I reject that we were friends," he insists. "He always had his own ideas - even in the time of Jihad [the 1990s]. Now he works for al-Qaeda and the [Pakistani intelligence service] ISI. He serves their agenda; I support the Afghan Government."

Pacha Khan and Haqqani come from opposing sub-tribes of the Zadran tribe, which sprawls across a dozen high-mountain districts in three eastern provinces. Pacha Khan is Supeer; Haqqani is Mizai. Haqqani has tried three times to kill Pacha Khan. That pales against US efforts to assassinate Haqqani - usually by dropping bombs on suspected hideouts on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Last year, Haqqani's bearded face emerged from a Taliban propaganda video to taunt the Americans: "Now as you see, I'm still alive."

In his Kabul hospital room, Pacha Khan's gold fillings flash the indignation. "Haqqani keeps launching these suicide-bomb attacks on me," he says. "Each time God saved me. Some of my men were injured in the attacks, but Haqqani will try again and again and again as long as I am alive. We are enemies."

Both men were Washington darlings when they fought side-by-side with huge supplies of American arms against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Pacha Khan was paid American millions to have his militia join the failed chase for Osama bin Laden after the Taliban fell in 2001.

The Americans see Pacha Khan almost as a cartoonish representation of the Afghan warlord trying to assert authority in the face of a significant Haqqani challenge. "Cuddly evil," says one. Others opted for the descriptive scumbag. "To describe this guy as pragmatic is a massive understatement," said another of the warlord's wild record of switching sides and lashing out in fury when he does not get his way.

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Pacha Khan was made to cough up 42 truckloads of heavy arms. He refuses to disarm entirely and is presumed capable of fielding 2000 to 3000 soldiers.

After the fall of the Taliban, the warlord was so impressed with American firepower he arranged for it to be turned on his enemies. He lied to the Americans that a convoy of elders bound for Kabul to attend Karzai's 2002 inauguration were Talibs. The Americans bombed, killing more than 60. "He knows how to eliminate his political rivals by whatever means," says a US military analyst.

The CIA assessed PKZ - its name for Pacha Khan - as "brutish, mercurial and unstable''. His eldest son was killed in an early 2003 clash with US forces. Last year, Haqqani's youngest son, Omar, died in a clash at the Satukandav Pass, the highest point on the K-G Road. Campbell, the American colonel, is clear about Haqqani: "His business is killing people and trying to delegitimise the Afghan Government."

For Afghans, the Haqqani myth is rooted in his fierce fighting against Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s - and his 1991 capture of Khost from the Moscow-backed Kabul government. He allegedly introduced suicide bombs to the Afghan war.

Haqqani was Paktia governor under the Taliban; Pacha Khan under Karzai.

When Pacha Khan was sacked from the post, his men took to the streets, guns blazing, as he tried to bomb his way back into office. Angry US Special Forces were caught in the crossfire, but their plans to arrest the warlord were stymied by a decision in Washington that Pacha Khan was untouchable. When Pacha Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, his militia attacked Afghan Government installations in the south-east for two years. Both men see Khost as a prize worth fighting for. A year after the Taliban fell, Pacha Khan forces were driven out by rivals who exploited confusion generated by a rumour that Americans had arrested Pacha Khan. On another occasion, Pacha Khan laid siege to Khost because the Americans spurned him.

These days, Campbell reckons he has Pacha Khan's measure. "He has a shady past, but now he is on the side of the Government. He wants this road to happen." Why? Because violently extorting tolls from truck drivers is profitable. As much as the Americans distrusted Pacha Khan, they worried he would bolster the respectability of the Taliban and al-Qaeda if he defected to them with his mujahideen warlord credentials.

"Haqqani wants to dominate the road so that he can hold Khost to ransome," says Campbell. "He wants to own the road to stop traffic getting through by closing it when he likes - and his use of foreign fighters makes him a force to reckon with.''

Of Pacha Khan, Campbell says locals ''will think about trying to shut down the road if they don't get what they want [from Kabul]. They are not fools - they feel left out and they know what's going on. Pacha Khan is a powerful force. He lives in Kabul and comes back here like an evangelist, making speeches and riling up the people. Then he leaves and the elders have to deal with the aftermath."

An analyst on Campbell's staff says Haqqani opposition to the road is rooted in denying ''people access to the outside world". ''He wants to keep the people as they are - prisoners of their ignorance and religion. Haqqani figures that if he makes the road as costly as he can, we'll be forced to pull out."

Poverty is deep in the Zadran Arc. Villagers eke out existence, farming crevices or narrow ledges in the mountains. Illiteracy is high and some American officers worry that children's growth is stunted. The only non-farm employment is driving jingle-trucks with their decorative chains dangling from the bodywork. So the Zadran staunchly defend the K-G Road, right?

Well, no. In the mountains, something doesn't add up. Zadran are swathed in warrior heritage. Haqqani and Pacha Khan are legends because, as mujahideen commanders in the 1980s, they sensationally defied all but one short-lived Soviet effort to break the mujahideen grip on the K-G Road.

Today, some locals risk their lives by working on US bases and last year there were loud demands for funding and authority for them to stand an arbaki force - a local militia to defend the road. But they shun service in the new Afghan security forces and their warrior instincts don't kick in unless a bag of money is on the table. "At times we tell the elders that they are an embarrassment to themselves," says US Sergeant Brent Koegler. "They got the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but they can't fight 20 Talibs who threaten their village? They're supposed to be awesome fighters."

This indifference by locals is staggering in the face of excoriating speeches by Pacha Khan and other senior figures at a community meeting last year at Combat Out Post Wilderness, as work began on the road.

Warning people their fence-sitting embarrassed him, Pacha Khan demanded they take sides. "Don't shame yourself into being stuck in the middle, by not picking a side and not fighting," he hectored. "It is shameful to be whining to the Government one minute that you can't fight the Taliban; and at the next moment, telling the Taliban when they come to your door that you are on their side."

General Said Gul, chief of staff of the Afghan National Army, told the people: "We let you keep your weapons in the name of your Pashtun culture, [but] things have to change. If my enemy continues to shoot at me from your doorsteps, I'm not going to respect your elders or your tradition.

"I keep hearing that Paktia is the land of respect; the land of the brave, the land of the proud. What pride? What bravery? What respect? I don't see any of it. I was sent here to protect your sisters, your wives and your kids. And if you are the enemy, how am I going to fight you and protect them?"

At the Kabul hospital, Pacha Khan sets out his solution. It was wrong, he says, to let a major contract to an Indian firm. "I warned them to give the contract to the Turks, not the Indians. The road will not be finished unless the Turks get the construction contract and I get the security contract - the budget should be split between us." He insists he does not have a particular Turkish contractor in mind, with an eye to a big fat kickback.

Seemingly oblivious to the loathing prompted by his extortionate toll collections on the road just a few years ago, he goes on: "I would have to set up checkpoints and patrol the road."

But would Pacha Khan do a better job than the South African firm managing the security cocoon around the road work? He feigns ignorance. "South Africans? I've not seen them on the road. All I hear about is IEDs [improvised explosive devices], kidnappings and terrorists running around. There'd be none of that if it was a proper Afghan security operation.

"I have an army of 3000 fighters. I would defeat Haqqani - he is a thief who comes in the dark. You should ask the Americans why they can't beat him. They have more than 60,000 troops and forces from 40 other countries and they still can't deal with him? And if he operates from Pakistan, why are the Americans not putting more pressure on Islamabad to shut him down?"

Kabul will not allow Pacha Khan a look-in. It fears the Zadran's fierce independence and seeks to weaken and undermine the tribe, lest there be an uprising in a region traditionally left to manage its own affairs. The Zadran claim as their right the Ministry of Tribal and Border Affairs but have been denied this influential post for nearly 20 years. No Zadran has been made a foreign ambassador. Efforts last year by elders to iron out differences between Zadran sub-tribes ignited American speculation that the Zadran were bent on resisting Kabul.

Says Pacha Khan, with a wagging finger: "We should not be forgotten, but we don't get what we deserve in terms of schools, clinics and economic development; we don't get the jobs we need. It concerns me that Paktia is seen as the forgotten province."

The Haqqani Network is the only significant element of the insurgency not based inside Afghanistan. His local support and training bases are supplemented by lethal long-range hit-and-run missions by mostly foreign fighters based in Pakistan. Influential as he is in Paktia, however, Haqqani must work with the reality that tribes do sit on the fence, play his game but also play America's. "They want to keep in touch with the Americans and Kabul," says Thomas Ruttig, a 25-year veteran of the region and a member of the Afghanistan Analysts' Network. "The Zadran are split, but the tribes are strong."

The Haqqani Network is judged by analysts to be the most unreconcilable of the Afghan insurgency units. Haqqani is believed by the US to be the Taliban figure most closely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, to be in receipt of Arab funds and to get help of sympathetic elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services in cross-border movement and in hiding his operatives in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

American eavesdropping last year reportedly heard the Pakistani military chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, describe Haqqani as ''a strategic asset''. Colleagues of the general were overheard warning Haqqani of attacks against his forces. In the 1980s war against the Soviets, Haqqani was one of Washington's strategic assets, receiving significant funds and huge arms shipments.

"Today, Haqqani seems to enjoy a 'most-favoured' status among some Pakistani and Saudi authorities who repeatedly have suggested including him as a 'moderate' in attempts to start negotiations with insurgents," Ruttig writes in a paper published in July.

After the 1990s civil war, Haqqani threw in his lot with the Taliban and their Saudi Arabian guest - bin Laden. He went from being Washington's well-funded mujahideen darling to sworn enemy.

Haqqani, one of the most powerful American-backed mujahideen warlords against the Soviets, was undefeated in the subsequent mujahideen civil war. With the mid-1990s emergence of the Taliban, he signed up with the fundamentalists, reportedly making available his plentiful stocks of US-supplied Stinger missiles. His reward was to be the first non-Talib in the Kabul ministry and later commander of Taliban forces and governor of Paktia. There, he formed a personal and organisational bond with bin Laden, who had his al-Qaeda training camps near Khost.

Shortly after the Taliban fell, Haqqani was courted by the US and Kabul. He was reportedly offered the post of Karzai's prime minister. Later his brother Ibrahim and son Ishaq were arrested and used unsuccessfully as bargaining chips to turn Haqqani. Haqqani told reporters in Islamabad late in 2001: "We will retreat to the mountains and begin a long guerrilla war to reclaim our pure land from infidels and free our country like we did against the Soviets … We'll deal with [the Americans] in our own way."

Haqqani is believed to be a member of the Taliban leadership council and to have embraced the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar as his spiritual leader. But Haqqani operates his own command, a semi-independent warlord with autonomy from the Taliban.

"Haqqani's strength is intimidation," says the analyst Ruttig. "He is ruthless, so he intimidates people."

Haqqani has extended his operations into the provinces of Wardak and Logar, on Kabul's doorstep. He's been blamed for last year's assassination attempt on Karzai; last year's bombing of the Serena, Kabul's only five-star hotel; last year's suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul; and a car-bomb attack on NATO military headquarters in Kabul in the lead up to the August 20 presidential election.

He refused to agree to Mullah Omar's 2006 order to cease attacks on ordinary Afghans. "Haqqani would be responsible for two-thirds of all the strife there [in the Zadran Arc],'' ventured an American analyst. ''Some of the communities are very Taliban, and much of the rest is neutral. No one in the whole area is pro the Kabul government or the NATO forces."

Haqqani, who has an Arab wife and funding from Dubai and other Arab regions, was excluded from the Bonn process, where the international blueprint for Afghanistan was stamped. His nemesis Pacha Khan was at the top table for festivities, hob-nobbing with diplomats. "His fury at being left out is the reason for his resistance," says US Captain Gary McDonald at COP Dyesai in the depths of the mountain pass. "How much of that is in play? The son has to continue the father's war because the father was so disrespected."

In the way of the tribes, Pacha Khan's son has been installed as the sub-governor of Wazi Zadran, the seat of Pacha Khan power. When the Taliban fell, the son was a twentysomething car dealer in Dubai. "None of the father's presence," says a senior American officer. "He watched out for the family interests, but he is not very dynamic." This arrangement leaves much of the running in Paktia to Haqqani.

The fathers may be handing power to the sons and, in Paktia, the Americans are banking on leadership shortcomings in the younger generation.

But already the Americans rank Haqqani's son Serajuddin, 35, as an influential insurgency leader in the east. He is understood to have taken over day-to-day running of the terrorist network. "The Haqqanis have had a successful succession," says a US analyst. ''But I can't say the same for Pacha Khan and his boy"

Pacha Khan bridles at the suggestion his warlord days are over. As the Herald's question is translated, his entire brow quivers. Stabbing a finger in the air, he says: "I have not delegated my power or authority to anyone - my son is just the district chief to help secure the area. I'm 58 - and still a strong man."

Colonel Campbell is disarmingly frank about his circumstances. With 19 years of conventional military service behind him, he is also a model spokesman for Washington as American forces in Afghanistan attempt to switch to the counterinsurgency objective of protecting people and growing communities, instead of relentlessly pursuing the enemy in the gaps between communities. "What I have changed in the lives of the people will be the indicator of my success,'' says Campbell. "Beating my chest on rounds fired and enemy kills is one thing … I can kill 150 fighters, but next year another 150 will come over the mountains. What I have to do is create an environment in which they can't come back."

While remaining ''on the offensive'' and looking for the enemy, ''we look for sources of discontent that can be exploited by the Taliban and we try to fix them. We have to be the anchor that pulls the people towards the Kabul government. If they are afraid, we have to separate them physically and psychologically. The people are the centre of gravity."

As the Afghanistan crisis enters its ninth year, there is a growing sense that the number of Americans in central Asia is insufficient, and that the ''more'' that Barack Obama might provide won't be sufficient enough to make a real difference.

"The first eight years have been wasted," says Thomas Ruttig. "And it is very difficult to answer what do we do now. We've been talking up a rosy picture for the last five years - and now we have awakened to a nightmare."

Insurgency leaders are wont to claim time is on their side; that the Americans will be ground down and will leave. But at COP Dyesai, Sergeant Brent Koegler has seized the sentiment as his own. "We can wait out the Taliban … we just have to keep doing what we are doing."

Koegler seems to embrace the local inshallah principle of deferring to a higher authority - God willing, things will happen. His boss, Neal Erickson, doesn't buy it. "I hope it's not inshallah," he says. ''Inshallah is nice - but it doesn't get shit done."

TOMORROW In The Sun-Herald, Paul McGeough explains how the Taliban get their share of Washington's road money through a protection racket.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-road-to-perdition-20090925-g6bh.html

[fuagf]

Brown revolt exposes power struggle within Britain's Labor Party


Prime Minister Gordon Brown, center, is fighting a fresh challenge to his leadership
from within his own Labor Party, something its rivals hope to seize on. (Pool Photo
By John Stillwell Via Getty Images)

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 8, 2010

LONDON -- It took almost seven hours Wednesday for David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, to issue even lukewarm comments backing his prime minister, Gordon Brown, in the face of a party revolt. Others among Brown's top lieutenants, including the defense minister, were even less ringing when they did come to his defense.

Related: *Britain's Labor Party shaken by challenge to Brown
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010602752.html

Indeed, what has been perhaps most remarkable in the attempt to dethrone Brown as prime
minister has been not the voices of his enemies but the muted backing of his friends.

So far, Brown has successfully squelched a revolt launched by two senior Labor Party lawmakers calling for a vote that could have forced him out of office just months before general elections. But the revolt exposed a behind-the-scenes Shakespearean power struggle underway within the party, one that left political watchers marveling Thursday at the weak support Brown eventually mustered among many of his top ministers.

One of the few ministers who wasted no time in backing Brown was Ed Miliband, the energy secretary and the younger brother of the foreign minister. Some read that as Ed Miliband jockeying for position within the party against his more-established brother, seeking to curry the favor of the Labor faction that remains solidly behind Brown.

A few Labor ministers backed the prime minister only after holding personal meetings with him, allowing Brown just enough support to quell the revolt -- had they bolted, Brown's government might have fallen -- but leaving him and his party deeply wounded.

The timing of Labor's problems going public could not have been worse. Brown is facing an
uphill battle against a Conservative Party embodied by the fresh-faced and popular David Cameron.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Insert: Increase your odds winning on elections! Watch Rupert ..

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of the UK's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and the party's leader Tony Blair.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember .. who knew he was a neocon? - It ruined the rest of his life . No one in the world respects him now .. he's done, finito and finished ... he couldn't even get the job as pres of the EU.

He did it to himself .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43848480 .. see reply for Blair 'original' neocon ..
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain. Though this has recently started to change, with The Sun publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and seemingly lending its support to David Cameron's Conservative Party, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch "were in regular communication" and that "there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
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Britain is also confronting a convergence of national and international crises. The war in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unpopular here, and analysts are warning that Britain, with finances battered by the economic crisis, might have trouble managing its future debt load unless deep cuts are made soon.

But Brown's political clout to push through major policy initiatives is quickly diminishing, at least until British voters ultimately decide his fate in a ballot that must be held by early June. The turmoil has also further weakened his chances of fending off the resurgent Conservatives, shown in opinion polls to be close to ending Labor's nearly 13 years in power.

In the process, it has raised the specter that for the next several months, Brown will be a
lame-duck prime minister in a nation viewed as deeply entwined with U.S. interests on the world stage.

"There was certainly some consideration by several of Brown's ministers yesterday over whether or not to back him," said Jonathan Tonge, head of the political department at University of Liverpool. "In the end, none of them wanted to wield the knife. But yes, of course, this is further damaging to Gordon Brown."

Brown himself joked Thursday about what the British press has dubbed "the snowstorm plot," in reference to the blizzards that have ground Britain to a halt this week. At the start of a meeting on British growth strategy, he made reference to the weather that shut down some roads, as well as to the failed revolt, saying, "Heart in hand, yesterday, I did not think I would be here today."

The anatomy of Wednesday's revolt was still emerging. It began when Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, two Labor Party lawmakers and former ministers under Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, texted letters to their colleagues Wednesday morning, calling for a secret ballot on Brown's leadership. Analysts say they were calculating that David Miliband and other top ministers would seize the opportunity and abandon Brown's side.

Their calculations were apparently based on reported grumblings within Brown's inner circle. Earlier this week,
British news media reported that a "key member" of Brown's cabinet was considering tendering a resignation.

Though Brown's aides in the end did back him, only a few did so in passionate terms. For instance, when David Miliband appeared before cameras Wednesday night, he merely said, "I am working closely with the prime minister on foreign-policy issues and support the reelection campaign for a Labor government that he is leading."

On Thursday morning, after senior party officials were reportedly criticizing him for his response, David Miliband spoke
out more forcefully in Brown's favor and denied that any cabinet member had been involved in the move against Brown.

"We have got an election to fight; Gordon is leading us into it. We are determined to win it, under his leadership," he told Sky News.

One thing was for certain: Conservative leader Cameron waited no time in jumping on the
divisions, telling the Times of London that the prime minister was in "deep trouble."

"You just have to ask yourself how much time do you think senior ministers spent yesterday thinking about the budget deficit, about the education of our children, about the war in Afghanistan and how much were they thinking about their own careers?" Cameron told the Times. "We cannot go on like this. We've got to have an election and a change of government."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010703774.html?hpid=moreheadlines

SURE .. Cameron's senior ministers would not be thinking about their own careers as much as Brown's are. Would they?