The US protection of the MEK, an anti-government militia now based in Iraq that has conducted terrorist actions in Iran and is listed on the State Department's roster of terrorist organizations should come as no surprise as Bush has pushed to support the terrorist TNI, proposed the use of taxpayer money to fund the terrorist organization, AUC, is backing the separatists and the establishment of a Uighur Government-in-Exile in Washington some of which are considered terrorists and is harboring the Chechen terrorist Akhmadov, an accomplice of Basayev whose bloody trail has lead to the heinous attack in Beslan resulting in the deaths of a large number of Russian school children, an attack in which Bush must share blame.
So it goes in Bush’s ‘War on Some Terror’. #msg-6177070
The U.S. support of the terrorist group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is another example of Washington’s support and use of terrorism on a worldwide scale. The HT case in point referenced at the bottom of this text is another highly questionable extremist organization also being used to install ‘democracy’, this time in Asia. One would be hard pressed to consider any country taken over by a terrorist group answerable to their mentors in the West as democratic.
-Am
By Mahan Abedin
Jun 8, 2005
A recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) that documents and condemns serious human-rights abuses by the Iraqi-based and formerly armed Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) came as welcome relief to dozens of former members of this controversial organization who have consistently complained of gross human-rights abuses in MEK camps in Iraq since 1991.
The MEK insists that it should lead a US-backed effort to bring what it has termed democratic rule to Iran. Last month it organized a rally, attended by several powerful Republican lawmakers and billed as the "2005 National Convention for a Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran", at Washington's historic Constitution Hall.
Since the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, where the MEK had been based since 1986, the group has tried to persuade Washington that it holds the key to overthrowing the Islamic republic next door. It has been backed in this quest by right-wing lawmakers, a group of hardline neo-conservatives and retired military officers called the Iran Policy Committee, and some US officials - particularly in the Pentagon - who believe the MEK could be used to help destabilize the Iranian regime, if not eventually overthrow it in conjunction with US military strikes against selected targets.
While the group's supporters in the Pentagon so far have succeeded in protecting the several thousand MEK militants based at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border from being dispersed or deported, they have failed to persuade the US State Department to take the group off its terrorist list, to which it was added in 1997 based on its attacks during the 1970s against US military contractors and its participation in the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Teheran. The European Union also cites the MEK as a terrorist organization.
After a year-long tug-of-war between the two US agencies, a truce between the State Department and the Pentagon was apparently worked out. MEK members at Camp Ashraf were designated "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. Since then, the Pentagon has recruited individual members of the MEK to infiltrate Iran as part of an effort to locate secret nuclear installations, according to recent articles published in The New Yorker and Newsweek magazines. At the same time, nearly 300 members have taken advantage of an amnesty in Iran to return home, leaving a total of 3,534 MEK members inside Camp Ashraf as of mid-March, according to the HRW report.
Given that the HRW report is a major strategic setback for the MEK, it is not altogether surprising that this controversial organization and its Western backers have started a major propaganda campaign, accusing former members of maintaining ties with Iranian intelligence services. It is important to review both sides of the argument to understand the full significance and the implications of the HRW report.
A controversial organization By all accounts, the MEK is a controversial organization. The group emerged in the mid 1960s as a splinter faction from the Freedom Movement of Iran (itself a splinter group from the National Front). In the 1970s, the MEK gained notoriety by assassinating five US military technicians in Iran. The organization enthusiastically welcomed the Islamic revolution of 1979 and was even more enthusiastic about the seizure of the US Embassy later that year. However, the organization's inability to penetrate the inner sanctums of power, coupled with the misgivings of the revolutionary regime toward this quixotic group, eventually propelled them into conflict with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
From 1981-83, the MEK prosecuted a serious campaign of violence against the Islamic republic; in the process, eliminating many of its top officials and ideologues. But this came at a terrible cost to the organization, which lost more than 8,000 of its members in executions and street battles with revolutionary guards. Indeed, by late 1983 the MEK network had been completely eliminated inside Iran. The group's entire leadership and more than 90% of the remaining members took refuge in Paris, where the group underwent a series of bizarre transformations in the mid-1980s.
Always a quixotic and perplexing organization, the MEK promoted an ideology based on Marxism-Leninism and Shi'ite theology. However, in January 1985 Massoud Rajavi - keen to consolidate his dominance over the organization - married the wife of his right-hand man and set in motion an "ideological revolution" that was theoretically designed to turn the MEK into the antithesis of the Islamic regime. The result was the wholesale "feminization" of the organization and the placing of females - irrespective of competence - in all top positions.
Consequently, the MEK banned all relationships within the group and commanded their members to fully eschew their individualism and devote all their energies to the cause. Given the extremity of these transformations, even sympathetic observers could not dismiss the notion that the MEK had become an isolated cult. But to the MEK, these changes were necessary to maintain the unity of the organization in the face of the Islamic republic's relentless security and propaganda onslaughts.
Another hugely controversial feature of the MEK was its decision in 1983 to ally itself with the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Massoud Rajavi moved to Baghdad in 1986, and the following year announced the formation of the National Liberation Army. The NLA fought alongside Iraqi forces against Iranian troops, thus completely destroying the organization's rapidly diminishing credibility inside Iran. Moreover, a number of Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurdish organizations have alleged that MEK forces played a role in the suppression of the so-called Safar Intifada of March 1991 against the former Iraqi regime. In a remarkable reversal of fortunes, the same forces that the MEK allegedly helped suppress in 1991 are today in power in Baghdad and thus - at the very least - anxious to expel them from Iraqi territory.
MEK and its dissidents Historically, the MEK has had major problems with internal dissidence. In the mid-1970s, the organization was almost destroyed as a result of an internal "Marxist" coup. The root cause of the problem was the organization's awkward mixture of Marxism-Leninism with Islam. In the mid-1980s, another wave of dissenters caused a major crisis inside the organization. This time the dissenters, led by Parviz Yaaghoubi, were objecting to Rajavi's "ideological revolution" and his increasingly bizarre personality cult.
Anxious to suppress any signs of internal dissidence, the MEK labeled all dissenters as either "quitters" or "agents". The former category applied to those former members who left the MEK quietly and did not raise their objections publicly, thus saving the organization from embarrassment. The latter - and far more sinister - category was applied to those former members who chose to publicize their differences with the organization. As a highly centralized, disciplined and overly pretentious organization with impeccable authoritarian instincts, the MEK is unable to accept criticism from any quarter, let alone criticism from those formerly in its ranks, whom it sees as lacking the quality and stamina to continue the fight against what it anachronistically calls the "Khomeini regime".
The MEK's problems with its dissidents became much more serious following the ending of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, which saw its Ba'athist hosts being decisively defeated and driven out of Kuwait by an international coalition led by the United States. Several dozen members and active sympathizers deserted its Ashraf base, northeast of Baghdad, protesting, among other things, the MEK's complicity in the suppression of Kurdish and Shi'ite rebels in the aftermath of the Kuwait war. The arrival of these former members in Europe and their organized attempts at spotlighting the alleged abuses and deviations of the organization, led the MEK to intensify its character assassination campaigns against its former members. The organization even coined a new term, borideh-mozdoor (quitter-mercenary) to denounce its former members. This term had a simple logic; the former members were quitters simply for leaving the organization and they were mercenaries because their disclosures - irrespective of accuracy - coincided with the propaganda of the Iranian government.
The MEK went even further and accused the active former members of having been "bribed" and effectively recruited by the Iranian intelligence services. These accusations had worked well against one former senior member, Saeed Shahsavandi, who had been captured by Iranian forces during the MEK's ill-fated "Eternal Light" operation at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Shahsavandi spent nearly two years in Iranian prisons before he was released and allowed to leave for Europe. Having settled in Germany, Shahsavandi began to outline his perspective on why things had gone so badly wrong with the MEK. Not surprisingly, the MEK started a merciless character assassination campaign against Shahsavandi, not only accusing him of having been sent to Europe at the behest of the Iranian intelligence services, but also of having taken part in executions of imprisoned MEK members. The accusation of complicity in executions was particularly outrageous, but it had the desired effect; Shahsavandi was forced into silence. Nearly 15 years after the events, it has turned out that accusations that Shahsavandi had Iranian intelligence links were completely unfounded. Indeed, it was revealed earlier this year that certain personalities inside the MEK, including veteran member Mohsen Rezai (better known as "Habib") had maintained a relationship with Shahsavandi throughout these years.
HRW report and MEK dissidents The 28-page HRW report, "No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps", details how dissident members of the MEK were tortured, beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group's policies or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. The report is based on the direct testimonies of a dozen former MEK members, including five who were turned over to Iraqi security forces and held in Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam's government. The witnesses also reported two cases of deaths under interrogation by MEK operatives.
Disclosures on detentions inside MEK camps and torture at the hands of senior members are nothing new and date back from as early as April 1991. However, this is the first time that a credible and high-profile human-rights organization has verified the testimony of former members and thus given a major boost to a wide spectrum of people who want the MEK to admit to their abuses and correct their behavior accordingly.
It is not only former members who have been putting pressure on the organization in the past several years, but a wide array of Iranian organizations and personalities, including the hugely respected Iranian human-rights lawyer and activist Karim Lahiji and Farah Karimi, a Dutch member of parliament of Iranian origin. But true to form, the MEK prefers to label its critics as "agents" and "apologists" of the Islamic republic rather than address the very serious and altogether credible allegations that have been made against it in the past 15 years.
In the bizarre ideological cosmos of the MEK, Human Rights Watch, by lending credence to the disclosures of MEK dissenters, has become an agent of the "Khomeini regime". Historically, the MEK has never seen the virtue of being open with the public that it is trying to address. The fate of the MEK's "ideological leader", Massoud Rajavi, is a case in point. More than two years after the downfall of Saddam, not a word has been heard from Rajavi, who is believed to be hiding in the Ashraf camp, in Iraq's eastern Diyala province.
But what of the MEK allegations that the most active and vocal former members are disinformation agents at the behest of the Iranian intelligence services? First and foremost it is important to note that not a single shred of credible evidence has ever been presented to establish a relationship between any former member and Iranian intelligence. Instead, the MEK has relied on "confessions" from former members before they are "expelled" from the organization. But more than anything else, these signed confessions point toward the existence of torture and aggressive interrogations at MEK camps. The MEK also issue reports from their "sources" inside the Iranian government, which strangely coincide with their own propaganda. Not surprisingly, these "confidential" reports have all the trappings of disinformation and propaganda in its most amateurish forms.
Consider, for instance, how the MEK has tried to tarnish the reputation of one former member, Mohammad Hossein Sobhnai, who spent eight years in solitary confinement in a MEK prison and whose testimony to HRW was particularly damning. The MEK claimed that its sources in Iran had secured an internal memorandum of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (VEVAK) containing the following information: In an internal VEVAK report dated February 20, 2002, Ramin Darami, a member of the Sobhani ring, wrote to Haj Saeed, his new handler, "After we entered Iran through legal channels [from Iraq], we were sent to Marmar Hotel in Teheran and were given a high-level reception. While we were in Marmar Hotel, the head of our team was brother Mohammad Hossein Sobhani and others in our group were Ali Qashqavi and Taleb Jalilian. Our brothers from the Ministry of Intelligence paid us daily visits and resolved all our problems, and during this period I spoke to Haj Mahmoud ... My stay in the hotel lasted 10 days ... During the period we stayed in Marmar Hotel, your proposed plans were reviewed several times by brother Mohammad Hossein Sobhani within our team and we were briefed on it." While these so-called "disclosures" are only intended for a select audience (namely the MEK's sympathizers), it is unlikely that even the most hardcore of MEK supporters could really believe such puerile concoctions.
In fact, it has been claimed that the MEK's relentless efforts at branding active former members as Iranian intelligence agents has made it easier for the "real" agents to operate covertly inside the organization. Indeed, by all accounts the MEK has been heavily penetrated by Iranian intelligence. The organization has on occasion accepted this and published lists of alleged infiltrators. One of the most successful infiltrators was Mohammad Edalatian, whose entire family was connected to the MEK (and whose brothers were executed in Iranian prisons). While in Iranian detention (on charges of MEK activity), Edalatian was recruited by Iranian intelligence and on his release from prison was tasked with penetrating the MEK organization in Iraq. On completing his mission, Edalatian killed three MEK operatives on the Iran-Iraq border and subsequently returned to his handlers. At first the MEK reported that Edalatian had been "martyred" alongside his other three comrades, but several months later Edalatian turned up on Iranian TV and disclosed his mission.
Broadly speaking, the pattern of Iranian intelligence activity against the MEK over the past 24 years has been more geared toward penetration and subversion, rather than elaborate disinformation campaigns. There is a good reason for this: the MEK suffers from a severe credibility problem inside Iran and among Western political and media elites. In other words, there is no real need to tarnish the image of an organization that has no presence inside Iran and which has no serious widespread Western audience.
Conclusion Even if we accept at face value the MEK accusation that its former members are working at the behest of Iranian intelligence, this still does not absolve them of their human-rights abuses, for surely even agents have human rights too. The signs of torture and mistreatment are all over the bodies of the former members who have consistently lobbied human-rights organizations for the past 15 years to get the MEK officially listed as a serious abuser of the human rights of those closest to it.
The HRW report has tremendous long-term consequences for the MEK, and at the very least deprives it of yet another propaganda plank. For as critics of the organization have pointed out, a group that is a serious human-rights abuser cannot effectively protest at the human-rights abuses of the Iranian government. More broadly, the HRW report complements US government reports of 1994 and 1997 that branded the MEK as undemocratic and terrorist, respectively. The combination of these official listings means that no matter how hard the MEK and its handful of Western supporters try to win the group a measure of respectability, they are likely to be thwarted time and time again.
Mahan Abedin is the editor of Terrorism Monitor, which is published by the Jamestown Foundation, a non-profit organization specializing in research and analysis on conflict and instability in Eurasia. The views expressed here are his own.
(Additional reporting by Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service.)
Reference: Why wouldn't Straw comment on the "opposition" - the Hizbut Tahrir (HT) - in the Andijan incidents? Tashkent has alleged that HT activists in the city communicated with "mentors" in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, it is well-known that the HT's "headquarters" are in the United Kingdom. HT spokesmen appear routinely in the coffee shops of plush London hotels to give media interviews. #msg-6369039 http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=6369039&txt2find=straw
Uzbek authorities alleged that HT cadres in Andijan were in touch with their leaders in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Of course HT spokesmen in London routinely denied the charges.
Many Jihadi organizations , even Sikh militant ones were allowed to operate in UK , whose role remains questionable .USA trained and financed most of the Jihadi outfits in Afghanistan and gave them international exposure by bringing them to Albania and Kosovo to fight Russian ally Milosevich. #msg-6573452
Imankulov said he has obtained information indicating that members of different radical groups may be attempting to join forces in a single organization. He said groups like the IMU, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Uighur separatists, and Tajik and Kyrgyz Islamists are uniting, calling themselves the Islamic Movement of Central Asia. Under the guidance of the IMU, he said, the new group’s aim is to create an Islamic caliphate that will begin in Uzbekistan before expanding to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and moving on to the rest of Central Asia and northwest China. #msg-6351646
This surfaces once again: Neither side wants a detente. World peace is for Miss America hopefuls, it is not reality.
The United States does not want peace. To the following list of North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran you may add Asia and Latin America.
Clearly, ending North Korea's nuclear crisis or even eliminating "evil" is not the ultimate goal of the US. What the US really wants, and is exploiting the North Korea "crisis" to achieve, is to deploy sufficient military forces and resources in the western Pacific (especially close to Taiwan) so as to encourage Taiwan independence, thereby checking China's growth as a power that might compete with the US. Not long ago, the US and Japan were talking about using Japan's Shimoji Island as a military base. Only about 200 miles from Taiwan, Shimoji has a "runway capable of safely handling a fully loaded F-15C fighter jet", observed James Brooke in the New York Times. #msg-4722542
To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".
Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.
"A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained. #msg-5461656
-Am
Iran's election hangover
By Pepe Escobar
Jun 18, 2005 Iranian theocracy-meets-democracy - for all its imperfections - swung into action on Friday as 46.7 million eligible voters were asked to choose a new president from seven candidates. All indications are that only three will be left standing at the end of the day: the wily mullah - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the populist cop - Mohammed Baqir Qalibaf; and the reformist - Mostafa Moin. The latest indications are that Rafsanjani will garner about 40%-plus of the vote, with the other two trailing. In which case, Rafsanjani will square off against the nearest challenger on July 1 as a candidate needs 50% support to win outright.
Half of Iran's 67 million people are less than 25 years old, and two-thirds of the electorate are under 30 - 15 year olds are allowed to vote. Thus they have no memory of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. For the candidates (average age 62), the Holy Grail was how to capture not only the massive youth vote but also the female vote (52.1% of the population; no female candidates allowed).
After the reformists were dealt a huge setback in early 2004 when the Guardians Council disqualified almost all of their candidates for being "un-Islamic", Iranians became experts in deploying boycott as an electoral weapon. Nevertheless, voter turnout this time is expected to be higher than 50%. The regime for its part deployed a huge propaganda campaign - on the media and the mosques - urging people to vote.
The next Iranian president will face myriad internal problems - basically jobs, jobs, jobs (one out of three Iranians is unemployed) and the end of corruption - as well as tremendous political turbulence along Iran's borders both in the Middle East and Central Asia, not to mention Washington hawks' "axis of evil" obsession with regime change.
The revolution won't be televised It's easy to point out what won't change. Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will remain the Supreme Leader, the definitive "defender of the revolution" (and commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces), with the system of velayat-e-faqih assuring the preeminence of religious jurisprudence over politics.
No wonder people like Abdullah Momeni, a spokesman of the largest Iranian reformist student organization, called for a boycott. After outgoing president Mohammad Khatami's failures to push through promised reforms, nobody realistically believes any reformist president can face the Guardians Council. Many students in Tehran in fact are basically saying "no matter who wins, we will all lose".
Some powerful political players may not lose at all. A geopolitical axiom in the "axis of evil" era is that the hardest core of the mullahcracy in Tehran as well as the most imperialistic neo-conservative armchair warriors in Washington feed on each other. Neither side wants a detente.
No one knows whether this Iranian presidential election will represent a revolutionary turning point or just a hollow reality show. It is certainly much more representative than what passes for political life in US-supported Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan or Uzbekistan.
The George W Bush administration has dismissed the elections as "rigged". President Bush said that "Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world". All this is inevitable when neo-conservatives still dream of blowing up the Iranian regime.
Iran has all the potential to be the new China. Tehran's gross domestic product is larger than Shanghai and Beijing put together. The new generation of Iranians instinctively knows it - and they want to start building this new China, right here, right now.
Iranian students don't forget that Rafsanjani, under his two previous presidential mandates, sent thousands of intellectuals to jail and ordered libraries to be burned. Perhaps the most revolutionary perspective at the moment is being exposed by people such as prominent activist Ebrahim Yazdi: "Not voting would play into the hands of totalitarian forces. It is after the election that the reform movement will begin."
Rafsanjani's show? Rafsanjani, a faithful disciple of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution, is the ultimate Persian Machiavelli. A wily pragmatist and former two-term president, he now cloaks himself as self-appointed savior of the Iranian nation. Hard to swallow for many - as he's widely considered to be the wealthiest man in the country. Extremely well connected, Rafsanjani's reach threatens even the Supreme Leader. They've been rivals since Khomeini was in power.
As much as he describes himself as "a pillar of the revolution", Rafsanjani has also stressed that "young people should not be prevented from expressing their views and opinions". His recipe to re-start the economy is more privatization, thus more jobs. On foreign policy, the key issue in Rafsanjani's platform is that he's against the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb, as he's "going for a policy of relaxation of tension and detente, and this is a policy I will apply to the United States".
Qalibaf, 43, Iran's former top cop and presidential adviser, also describes himself as a pragmatist. He says he's neither a conservative nor a right-winger - though he's definitely close to Khamenei. Oozing charm, he's aiming for mission impossible - trying to bridge the gap between the mullahs and the nation's youth. He's got the religiously correct credentials (his wife is not allowed to shake hands with an unknown man, for instance) as well as authority (a veteran of the Iranian security forces). On the other hand, his campaign slogan could have been fashioned by Madison Avenue: "Iranians have a right to a good life." Some European diplomats comment he could even prevail over Rafsanjani. Crucially, the Rafsanjani camp in Tehran sees Qalibaf as a Trojan Horse - introduced by Khamenei to undermine or even bury his old rival.
Moin, 50, educator, medical doctor, reformer and former minister of university education and technology, will try to follow in the footsteps of Khatami. In his rallies, according to the Tehran Times, he called for the "upcoming establishment of a Democracy and Human Rights Front in Iran to defend the rights of all Iran's religious and ethnic groups, the youth, academicians, women, and political opposition groups whose rights are often neglected."
His target was 16 million high-school students, 7 million academics, more than 2 million college students, at least 1 million teachers and 50,000 professors who badly want an educated man as main interlocutor - not a millionaire mullah or a cop. But vast swathes of the intelligentsia - as well as the media industry - may vote for him just out of despair. The Moin camp hopes that if he reaches the second round, the silent, fed-up majority will decide to support him en masse. It's an ambitious strategy. The Moin camp says they are laying the groundwork for a mass movement; this election is just the beginning.
TEHRAN (AFP) Jul 16, 2005 Iran's spy chief on Saturday warned the country's nuclear scientists against "traps" laid by Israeli and American intelligence agencies.
"Iranian scientists must beware of enemy plots," Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
"Americans and Israelis are trying to approach (them) through different means."
"We call on scientists and specialists to be vigilant when they travel abroad so they don't fall into enemy intelligence services' traps," he said.
"We have identified a number of scientists who involuntarily fell into the traps of enemy intelligence services and we are saving them."
Yunessi announced in December that around 10 people had been arrested on charges of spying for American and Israeli intelligence, including a number of workers at the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation.
Some of them were allegedly sent by the United States and Israel to try and sell nuclear material in a sting operation aimed at showing Tehran was seeking the bomb even as it insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
Washington and Israel have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of diverting its civilian nuclear energy programme into manufacturing atomic weapons, charges Tehran strenuously denies.
Background: Azerbaijan is key to understanding the region and the power. During the past decade the only western source of power and force projection into the region was with the USACC. The United States Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. It was this body that has, and remains, the source of negotiations, planning and structure in the region.
Iran rather than Iraq is the real prize. Iran is the main obstacle to US plans to develop international oil and gas projects in the Caspian.
To control, or dominate Iran, Bush has to encircle it: Afghanistan to the East, Turkey/Azerbaijan to the North, Iraq to the West, the South are already U.S. stooges. #msg-1263010
Bush has a history and an agenda of using one faction or ethnic group against another.
To this end the United States is training 20,000 Kurds to oppose Iran and it seems also Azerbaijanis. If Bush can add the Arabs to this group he might be able to come up with a formidable force to oppose Iran with little of our own troop involvement.
Where the details of the operation with the participation of Azerbaijanis against Iran are being considered. #msg-6273446
On April 11, John J Fialka of the Wall Street Journal revealed that the US Department of Defense will spend $100 million over the next few years to establish the "Caspian Guard", a network of police forces and special operations units "that can respond to various emergencies, including attacks on oil facilities". Russia is also expanding its Caspian Fleet, as it too presses its claims to offshore fields in the region. Under such circumstances, it is all too easy to imagine how a minor confrontation could erupt into something much more serious, involving the US, Russia, Iran, and other countries. #msg-6368606
-Am
ATTENTION FOCUSES ON IRAN IN BUSH-ALIYEV TALKS Rovshan Ismayilov 4/11/06
An upcoming meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and US President George W. Bush is fuelling speculation about what role Azerbaijan may play in the conflict between Iran, its neighbour to the south, and the US over Iran’s nuclear research program.
The White House announced on April 10 that President Bush will meet with President Aliyev in the White House on April 28. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Information about the White House’s invitation was first reported by Radio Liberty on April 6 and confirmed by Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on April 7. Novruz Mammadov, the head of the presidential administration’s international relations department, said that Ilham Aliyev will meet with US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The largely unexpected invitation has sparked frustration among Azerbaijan’s opposition and celebrations among the country’s ruling elite. During last year’s parliamentary election campaign, the opposition had targeted the lack of a White House invitation for President Aliyev as proof of Azerbaijan’s poor record on democratic reform.
Coming just one month after a US State Department report that strongly criticized human rights conditions in Azerbaijan, the sudden invitation has surprised many local observers. News of the trip has encouraged speculations over what role Azerbaijan might play in the conflict between the US and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear research program. Attention is also being given to the ongoing Nagorno Karabakh talks, Caspian surveillance system negotiations and other security and energy issues.
Iran, which borders Azerbaijan and has a large ethnic Azeri minority, is expected to feature prominently in the White House’s discussions with President Aliyev. Recent articles in The New Yorker and The Washington Post have indicated that the US administration is considering launching a military attack against Iran. The April 10 New Yorker article by investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh claims that "US Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups," including ethnic Azeris.
Azerbaijani officials have been careful in discussing what the US conflict with Iran means for Baku’s relations with Washington. In a visit to the Azerbaijani capital in late March, however, Assistant US Secretary of State Daniel Fried stated that the US is keeping the Azerbaijani government informed about its plans concerning Iran "because Azerbaijan has the right to be aware about it," local media reported. Fried also said that the US looks forward to reaching consensus with Azerbaijan on this issue. The US official did not dismiss the possibility of US troops being deployed in Azerbaijan some day, although said that a large military base should not be expected any time soon.
Turan news agency chief political analyst Zafar Guliyev believes that Iran is the main reason for Ilham Aliyev’s invitation to the US. "I think they [the US] will try to involve Azerbaijan in the anti-Iranian coalition. The White House wants to get Azerbaijan’s approval for using its territory against Iran. To get Azerbaijan’s participation in the coalition is as important as it was during the Iraq campaign," Guliyev told Day.az on April 10.
While acknowledging that Iran has featured in a topic of discussion with Washington, government officials, however, maintain that Azerbaijan does not intend to join any alliance against the Persian Gulf state. At an April 6 press conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov rejected reports that the US is attempting to include Azerbaijan in an anti-Iranian coalition. "Azerbaijan has no intention to become part of a coalition against someone else and wants to build friendly relations with all the region’s countries," Azimov said. The official noted only that "Azerbaijan is concerned about some activities of Iran in the disputed sector of the Caspian Sea."
Azimov stressed that "the US wants nothing from Azerbaijan." Washington’s interest in Azerbaijan, the official continued, is "to see Azerbaijan developing as a normal stable state. That is why possible threats to Azerbaijan’s national security were discussed."
Guliyev argues that sooner or later Azerbaijan will have to choose between Washington and Tehran. "For the time being, the Azerbaijani government did well balancing in its foreign policy, but there are moments when choice is inevitable."
Independent political analyst Rasim Musabekov agrees that concerns over Iran form the primary reason for the White House’s invitation to President Aliyev, but sees little chance that Azerbaijan would stand with the US against Iran. "Given the geographical neighborhood, and the historical, cultural and human links, it is impossible for Azerbaijan to become a member of such a coalition. But regardless of whether Azerbaijan supports US plans or not, their realization – whether as economic sanctions or military actions -- will have a huge impact on our country."
Analysts project that the two sides will discuss many issues about Iran that are unrelated to the country’s nuclear ambitions, among them border security, prevention of Iranian threats against US and Western-owned property in Azerbaijan, and security for Azerbaijan’s oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijani officials have noted that they are also interested in discussion of Iran’s treatment of ethnic minority Azerbaijanis.
Many observers assume that securing Azerbaijan’s support for the US position on Iran will be linked to progress on resolution of the 18-year conflict with Armenia over the disputed exclave of Nagorno Karabakh. Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has announced that he received an "interesting proposal" for resolution of the Karabakh dispute during his April 7-8 trip to Washington. Before meeting with Mammadyarov on April 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke on the phone with both President Aliyev and Armenian President Robert Kocharian, according to the US State Department press office.
Baku, according to Mamadyarov, will announce its response to the proposal when Steven Mann, US co-chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, which supervises the Karabakh talks, visits the Azerbaijani capital on April 18.
Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov, who visited Washington in late March, has also told reporters that a130-kilometer-long section of the Azerbaijani-Iranian border, currently under Armenian occupation, made up part of his discussions with US officials.
A series of recent visits paid to the US by Azerbaijani officials and to Baku by senior US diplomats indicate further likely topics for discussion during President Aliyev’s visit. Security, energy and reforms issues were also discussed during an April 8 meeting between Condoleezza Rice and Elmar Mammadyarov, US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Reno Harnish told Turan on April 10.
For its part, the delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Azimov reviewed joint anti-terror efforts, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), border security and the general military and political situation in the Caspian Sea basin. The delegation included Azerbaijani Naval Forces Commander-in-Chief Shahin Sultanov, and high level representatives from the Ministry of National Security and State Border Service.
Of particular note are the two Caspian Sea basin surveillance systems proposed by the US (Caspian Guard) and Russia (CasFor). Russia maintains that the two systems cannot exist in the same area, and favors establishment of a common system, according to Gennady Yevsyukov, spokesperson for the Russian embassy in Baku. Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, however, has stated that Azerbaijan will have to make the ultimate decision about whether the two systems can co-exist.
According to Azimov, a number of agreements were reached during the visit. "The . . . risks and threats in the Caspian region [are] very complicated. There are elements of war, terrorism, environmental threats," Azimov told the state-run Azertag news agency on April 1. "In this regard, the US will cooperate with Azerbaijan very closely. We have reached a number of agreements." The official stated that "several groups of the US experts" will visit Baku to consider the possibility of Azerbaijan joining the G-8 club of industrialized countries’ WMD non-proliferation initiative.
Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in Baku.
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