SPY EYES

29 November 2012: despite aggressive lobbying by the US and Israel, 138 member states voted for uplift of Palestine’s status, 41 (including Australia) abstained while only 9 voted against. France, Spain and Belgium voted in favor, while the US, Israel were only able to convert Canada, Czech Republic, Panama, Palau, Nauru, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands to their cause. Even after the highest world forum has made its decision to acknowledge Palestinians’ right to self determination the United States remains loyal to her ally. The United States has threatened to withhold funds to the Gaza strip; Netanyahu condemned President Abbas for spreading hatred and war crime rumors. He criticized Abbas for blowing the matter out of proportion; for his hypocrisy in preferring the General Assembly over a trip for ‘peace talks’ with the Likud government in Jerusalem. So how successful has dialogue between the two been?

In 1949 “Palestine” had been wiped off the map. 78% of the country had become Israel, the other 22% divided between Jordan and Egypt. The very existence of a Palestinian people was vehemently denied by the Israeli establishment. This denial had been turned into an article of faith, an inseparable part of the Zionist ideology that had brought the Jews to the Promised Land. Much later, Golda Meir famously declared that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people”. Respected charlatans wrote popular books “proving” that the Arabs in Palestine were pretenders who had only recently arrived. The Israeli leadership was convinced that the “Palestinian problem” had disappeared, once and forever.

The Palestinians however have continued to struggle. Rebellion has become part of their nature, more accurately a state of existence. However by denying them their identity, their status as a people who belonged to that land, Israelis have adopted an ideology that can only create more hurdles in the path of any reconciliation. This ideology of hatred and denial is therefore the first hurdle in the way of peace talks between the two.

The resolution adopted by the United Nations forum 65 years ago to the day, to partition historical Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state, has finally been reaffirmed. And yet the powerful vote in Palestine’s favor comes as a surprise, and has left those fighting for an independent Palestine overwhelmed. Even though the bloodshed on Gazans over the past few weeks invited a lot of criticism, the pro-US and anti-Hamas narrative remains equally convincing.

“At 1:00 a.m. the bank was bombed, and everyone in the area was awakened from sleep.  Doors were broken and windows were shattered.  There was an agonizing sound, as if we were in a battlefield.”

“The bombing went on every day.  F16 U.S. jets were hitting hard.”

“This is more than anyone can tolerate.  We were unsafe at any place at any time.”

U.S. media and government statements are full of accounts about the scattershot Hamas rocket fire that had taken one Israeli life in the months before the Israeli bombing campaign.  The U.S. government demands that Gazans disarm completely.  Due to simple racism and a xenophobic eagerness to get in sync with U.S. military policy, Western commentators disregard the bombardment of Gazan neighborhoods by the Israelis which has caused thousands of casualties over just the past few years. They robotically frame Israel’s actions as self-defense and the only conceivable response to Palestinians who, under whatever provocations, dare to make themselves a threat.

Mahmud Abbas apparently has achieved a milestone for his people, a legacy that historical leader Yasir Arafat had begun has been continued, or so it seems. Unfortunately the fact is that Palestinian politics has been tampered with badly. Their political representatives are labeled terrorists funded by Iran (Hamas) who disrespect the international decorum. Mahmud, between the Western disapproval of Hamas  and the international sympathy towards the Palestinian cause has discovered a fine niche where he ‘controls’ the digressers in the West bank, and lets the Israelis know he is still the better option. Abbas has been accused of plotting with Israel to overthrow the elected Hamas government, helped brushed the Goldstone report aside (that revealed Israeli war crimes), and for lobbying against the Shalit swap to keep Hamas on the peripheries.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly voted to admit “Palestine” as a non-member state. On Friday, Israel announced its intention to build thousands more settler housing units on the territory of this supposed state. What now will be the international response in the wake of the UN vote? How can NATO forces, the only physical manifestation of the UN, be deployed to save the Palestinians if the United States is going to veto against any such intervention? Last year Palestine went to the United Nations Security Council with a case to enter the United Nations as a member-state on equal footing as Israel. With this plea rejected, this year Abbas went and appealed to the nations of the World and won them over. Yet, even after an overwhelming majority in favor of the independence of Palestinian people, their problems remain unsettled.

An important point to note is how helpless and ineffective the international community’s voice has been made, by creating institutions and systems which don’t push anything forward unless the few powerful agree. The hypocrisy of the United States in stressing that the nations of the World have erred by voting for the Palestinian cause is appalling. Not only do these representatives leave the explanation to the media that starts bickering, they leave themselves clear of any dirt, letting the people rot in a sea of confusion.

With Abbas not the perfect leader, the sudden celebration seemingly premature, and the increasingly diverging narratives on both sides, the recent UN vote on Palestine seems to have raised more concerns than it has rested.

Tacstrat Analysis

Visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin said here on Monday that Russia is not an advocate of the Syrian government.

“We are not protecting the regime, and we are not advocates,” Putin said during a press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “What worries us is the future of Syria. We do not want recent mistakes to be repeated.”

Turkey and Russia explicitly have opposite views about Syria. Moscow is a key ally of Syria while Ankara is supporting the opposition trying to replace Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Our positions on Syria are the same but we have different ideas on how the future of Syria will be constructed. We are exchanging views with our Turkish friends. We have developed new ideas during our meeting with the Turkish premier on which we will work,” said Putin.

Putin arrived in Turkey Monday amid tensions between Moscow and Ankara over the Syrian crisis.

“Syria is not in a position to use nuclear weapons,” Putin told reporters, adding that “There are no nuclear weapons in Syria. They are not even close to make it.”

Regarding the Syrian shell that had landed in Turkey earlier, Putin said “Turkey and Russia are neighbors who have great responsibilities. We will continue to consult with our Turkish friends and work on new ideas.”

“Russia understands Turkey’s concerns, however, deploying Patriot missiles is not the model we prefer,” Putin said, responding to a question over deployment of Patriot missiles along Turkey’s border with Syria. “We think that this is the not the right model and could deteriorate the situation.”

The two countries’ relations deteriorated when Turkey forced a Syria-bound plane to land in Turkey in October, claiming that it had Russian-made defense equipment on board. Moscow said the plane was legally carrying radar parts for Syria.

Although Turkey and Russia have different viewpoints over Syria, their economic relations continue to grow in high speed. The two countries aim to increase the trade volume to 100 billion U.S. dollars in the coming years.

Putin’s visit to Turkey is his first trip since October. He was suffering from a serious back trouble or other illness, according to rumors.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) holds a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 3, 2012. Putin arrived in Turkey on Monday amid tensions between Moscow and Ankara over the Syrian crisis. The two countries signed deals in trade and energy fields during Putin’s one-day visit.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R Front) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L Front) applaud after the signing of the contracts during a joint press conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 3, 2012. Putin arrived in Turkey on Monday amid tensions between Moscow and Ankara over the Syrian crisis. The two countries signed deals in trade and energy fields during Putin’s one-day visit.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (3rd R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (3rd L) look at the signing of the contracts during a joint press conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 3, 2012. Putin arrived in Turkey on Monday amid tensions between Moscow and Ankara over the Syrian crisis. The two countries signed deals in trade and energy fields during Putin’s one-day visit.

Xinhuanet

Two Pakistani journalists filing reports home from Washington are quietly drawing their salaries from US State Department funding through a nonprofit intermediary, highlighting the sophisticated nature of America’s efforts to shape its image abroad.

Making a clear connection

Countering environment of misinformation

The November 21 cease-fire that ended the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas left key issues unresolved. Even if calm has been temporarily restored to the area, history suggests that it is unlikely to last. Over the past decade, the absence of violence has not meant peace but merely a temporary lull until the next outburst. Long after any given cease-fire, Israelis and Palestinians do not forget the injustices and killings that incited hostilities in the first place. Absent a political solution that addresses each side’s core grievances, a relapse into violence is inevitable.

If Israel and the international community wish to break this pattern, they need to reconsider their strategic approach to Hamas. Historically, Israel has failed to take advantage of the sporadic appearance of potential interlocutors within Hamas, preferring instead to rely on temporary cease-fires coupled with extrajudicial assassinations. “Mowing the lawn” — the metaphor that a number of Israeli officials have used to describe what they see as a necessary chore of intermittently destroying Hamas’ infrastructure in Gaza — is an unsustainable solution that only perpetuates the cycle of violence. The international community’s boycott of Hamas, upheld on the grounds that it is a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction, has failed. A new approach is desperately needed.

Hamas is not some marginal resistance organization; it is a powerful political movement that has integrated itself into the Palestinian national fabric. Born out of the social services network of the Muslim Brotherhood, which catered to local needs in the West Bank and Gaza for decades, Hamas garners support from many Palestinians, who believe that the movement is justly fighting for their rights against a brutal occupation. As a crucial player in the Palestinian nationalist movement, it commands legitimacy domestically and among key allies abroad, whether or not the United States, Europe, Israel, or even the Palestinian Authority try to wish it away.

Such a force cannot be beaten into submission by military measures, such as last month’s assassination of Ahmed Jabari, Hamas’ military chief, or the killing of the organization’s top leaders in 2004. In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections on a platform that sought to legitimize the very resistance that Israel hopes to destroy. Since then, Israel has tried everything from targeted assassinations and arresting elected Hamas parliamentarians to collective sieges on the population of the Gaza Strip — none of which has succeeded in eliminating the group. If anything, such tactics only strengthen Hamas’ ideological commitment to resistance and substantiate its claims that violence is the proper response to the conflict.

The fact of the matter is that Hamas represents a significant proportion of the Palestinian public. Israel’s use of overwhelming force may decimate Hamas’ military infrastructure, at terrible cost to civilians in Gaza, but it cannot undermine the group’s core message. The only viable alternative, then, is for Hamas to be recognized as a central player alongside the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

To see how this might work, it is necessary to understand Hamas’ stance toward negotiations. Hamas is a grassroots organization that derives its legitimacy directly from the people it seeks to represent. Given that Hamas was elected on a platform of safeguarding the right to resist Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and protecting Palestinian interests, any deviation from these goals will discredit it.

As Hamas evolved from a marginal resistance movement to the governing body of the Gaza Strip, it attempted to circumvent ideological constraints by signaling its willingness to accept pragmatic solutions. For example, it continued to refuse to explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist while indicating that it would accept the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. In doing so, Hamas withheld its acknowledgment of Israel’s legitimacy while conceding the country’s de facto reality.

In January 2007, on the heels of Hamas’ electoral victory, the organization’s leader, Khaled Meshal, told Reuters:

We in Hamas are with the general Palestinian and Arab position and we are with the consensus of the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state on the June 4 [1967] borders, including (East) Jerusalem, the right of return and the withdrawal of Israel to these borders.

The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel. The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent. There is a reality that Israel exists on Palestinian territory. The problem is that the Palestinian state does not exist. My concern as a Palestinian is to found this state. International relations are not based just on recognition.

We as Hamas and as Palestinians do not talk about recognizing Israel or accepting it as a reality. As a Palestinian today I speak of a Palestinian and Arab demand for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or a state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land. This is reality but I don’t deal with it from the point of view of recognizing or admitting it. It is a fact that was the result of historical factors.

Meshal’s statement fell short of the full recognition of Israel’s legitimacy that was demanded by the Quartet (the body representing the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia). The result was these powers’ utter refusal to negotiate with Hamas or to encourage Israel to do so — a stance that helped bring about the civil war between Fatah and Hamas and the current divide between Gaza and the Fatah-governed West Bank.

The divergence between the Quartet’s conditions and Hamas’ position may be vast in terms of ideology and semantics, but such a gap does not preclude cooperation on practical issues. The leaders of Hamas are the first to admit this: Osama Hamdan, its representative in Beirut, attempted to deal with the Quartet’s conditions following Hamas’ victory by explaining that the refusal to recognize Israel is simply a “question of vocabulary.”

Refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist is a widely held position among Arabs and Palestinians, whether openly asserted or not. Some Palestinian factions and leaders can — and do — pander to the international community by semantically conceding Israel’s legitimacy, but such positions remain unpopular among the masses. For most Palestinians, Israel’s creation represents the moment of their disenfranchisement — the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. So today, Israel is simply seen as the current manifestation of a historic injustice, not as a legitimate state. Hamas understands this perfectly. If it were to accept the conditions demanded of it by the Quartet and Israel, Hamas would jeopardize its popular support. (Fatah and the PA have set exactly such a precedent.)

Given that Hamas has shown a willingness to adopt practical solutions, regional and international powers should focus on reaching pragmatic agreements rather than attempting to bridge ideological gaps. By engaging with Hamas instead of boycotting it, the international community could test the organization’s limits on a number of core issues that must shape any final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, including the future borders of the Palestinian state.

Hamas is a Palestinian resistance movement, and so it will always seek to advance Palestinian self-determination and end the occupation. This struggle is not limited to the control of Gaza’s borders but rather to the trajectory of Palestinian nationalism more broadly. Given that stance, engagement with Hamas can succeed only within a wider framework that seeks an end to the conflict in a just manner.

For starters, finding a practical political solution with Hamas will require Israel and the international community to encourage the reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah. Only a government that includes both factions could assure Israel that any agreement it reached with the Palestinians would last. For this to succeed, Israel and the Quartet need to lift their threat of boycotting any Palestinian government that includes Hamas. In the past, Hamas has shown significant flexibility on the question of its role within a unified Palestinian government. In 2007, its elected legislative council went so far as to suggest that the party might be willing to concede the post of prime minister if the Quartet lifted its boycott and engaged with the unity government. Since then, several rounds of reconciliation efforts have failed, but wider changes in the Arab world have revived the possibility that they could succeed.

Once such a government forms, negotiations with Israel could proceed in good faith. Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority have all at some point displayed a readiness to countenance the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, so that could be a viable starting point for negotiations. Given changes on the ground, it very well may be that other alternative frameworks are pursued instead. In any case, such talks would not and could not immediately address the historic grievances on either side — Israel’s demand to be fully recognized and the Palestinian demand for the right of return being among the most prominent. Nonetheless, they could begin to address the nonideological core issues of contention in the conflict, such as the status of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the presence of Jewish settlers on the West Bank, and Gaza’s borders.

Negotiations on practicalities such as these would serve as confidence-building measures and enhance the Palestinians’ quality of life, economic development, and long-term security. Over time, these improvements would undermine Hamas’ justification for violent resistance, underscoring that practical arrangements are often the necessary precursors to broader political settlements.

In the context of any honest quest for peace, the international community and Israel’s opinions about Hamas’ ideology and tactics are irrelevant. Hamas is a key stakeholder in the conflict, with grievances that represent the views of many Palestinians, and there can be no long-term solution without its involvement. If Israel and the international community keep refusing to engage Hamas, last month’s cease-fire will ultimately prove a mere stopgap, paving the way for the next round of violence.

Foreign Affairs

Once again, Egyptians are out in the streets. Yet these demonstrations are quite different from those in January and February 2011, when people of every faith, class, and political persuasion joined together to bring down a dictator. Indeed, Egypt’s triumph of national unity has turned into a bitter impasse over narrow interests. Demonstrators surround the Supreme Constitutional Court not to protect the sacred institution but to shut it down, judges declare an open-ended strike, and groups of angry protesters rally against one another, each challenging the other’s right to a place in the national dialogue. In the abstract, heated debate is a good thing for countries undergoing political transitions. In Egypt, however, the result has been instability.

There are a variety of explanations for Egypt’s tribulations. Some argue that decisions made by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF)  back in February and March 2011, including on the timing of the transition and the principles that guided it, explain the current bind. Others point to the lack of a permanent constitution and parliament, which the SCAF dissolved in June 2012 at the recommendation of Egypt’s highest court. These critics argue that the absence of rules, regulations, and laws left the country vulnerable to the whims of incompetent generals and then authoritarian Islamists. Egyptian liberals and secular revolutionaries, meanwhile, fear the Islamist ideology of President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. Egypt’s newly approved draft constitution, which includes a particular interpretation of Islamic law, and a massive Brotherhood-sponsored rally last Saturday to “save sharia” from opponents of the new code only reinforce their fears.

There is truth in all of these explanations. Certainly, it would have been easier to consolidate a new political order if the SCAF had laid out a more sensible transition, if the officers had not dissolved the People’s Assembly, or if the drafting of the highest law in the land had been more inclusive. But the deadlock in Egyptian politics runs deeper. Morsi’s decisions last month to grant himself powers above any court, retry the deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, and rush the passing of a new Brotherhood-driven draft constitution — and his party’s unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimate concerns of millions of Egyptians — result from a worldview that should be familiar to Egyptians.

The Brothers, like the Free Officers who came to power in 1952 and produced Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Mubarak, are what the Yale anthropologist James Scott calls “high modernists.” High modernism, which places a premium on scientific knowledge and elites with special skills, is inherently authoritarian. It might seem a strange designation for the Brotherhood, since most observers think of it as a religious movement. But in reality, the group has used religion to advance a political agenda. To suggest that the organization’s leaders are dilettantes when it comes to Islam would be an overstatement, but the majority of them are first and foremost doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and engineers. They think of themselves as a vanguard that is uniquely qualified to rebuild Egypt and realize its seemingly endless quest for modernization. Moreover, they believe that the people entrusted them with the responsibility to do so as a result of free and fair elections in late 2011 and 2012.

With the Brotherhood in control of the now-dissolved People’s Assembly, Shura Council, Constituent Assembly, and the presidency, this vanguard thought it could choose a path for Egypt within the councils of its own organization. There was no need for consensus or negotiation, hence Morsi’s August 12 decision to decapitate the national security establishment and his subsequent efforts to place sympathizers in influential positions within the state-controlled media. In a television interview broadcast on November 29, he even called his recent decree an effort to “fulfill the demands of the public and the revolution.” There is, he implied, no reason to question his decisions, which were in the best interest of Egypt.

Morsi’s miscalculation — which both he and the Brotherhood later compounded — was to think that everyone understood the results of the Egyptian elections the way the Brothers did. In other words, that they gave him and his party a mandate to rule with little regard for those who might disagree. The Brotherhood’s discrediting of the tens of thousands who turned out in protest as felool (remnants of the old regime) and thugs was not only positively Mubarak-esque but also reinforced Morsi’s “Brothers know best” approach to Egypt’s political problems. It is easy to dismiss the opposition’s charge that Morsi is the “new Mubarak” as hyperbole from a group of people who have become well-versed in manufacturing outrage. Still, they have a point. Both men share the high-modernist worldview, which did not bode well for political reform under the previous regime and does not augur well for democracy in Egypt’s future.

 Foreign Affairs

WASHINGTON: The US on Monday fined a Chinese state-owned company $3 million after it agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for exporting US-made coatings to a Pakistan nuclear plant against US restrictions.

China Nuclear Industry Huaxing Construction Co. was charged with conspiring with the China subsidiary of the US company PPG Industries to deliver high-performance epoxy coatings to the Pakistan nuclear power plant without obtaining permission.

The Chashma II plant, under construction at the time the shipments were made, 2006-07, was on the US Treasury’s “Entity List” subjecting it to specific license requirements for exporting certain items to it.

PPG and its China subsidiary, PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co, were already fined $3.75 million two years ago in the case.

“Huaxing – the PRC-corporate entity that bought the coatings for application in the Pakistani reactor – has accepted responsibility for its role in the crime,” said US Attorney Ronald Machen.

“The lesson here is clear: we will pursue violations of US export controls wherever they occur in the world, we will prosecute both individuals and corporate wrong-doers, and a corporation’s status as foreign-owned, or even state-owned, will not bar enforcement of those laws in US courts.”

The Chashma nuclear facility, in Punjab province, is controlled by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, which was placed under US export restrictions in 1998 after Pakistan successfully detonated a nuclear bomb for the first time.

The Express Tribune

Top administration lawyers may hint at the end of the war on terror, but al Qaeda’s third generation is as deadly as ever. Bruce Riedel breaks down the group’s new power bases.

While Pentagon lawyers claim al Qaeda’s tipping into defeat, in fact we are seeing the emergence of the third generation of the terrorist movement.

It seems that whenever a measure of realism regarding the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan sobers the debate among policymakers and observers, the Asia Foundation brings forth a new—predictably sunny—“Survey of the Afghan People.” Year in, year out, these doubtless well-meaning and clearly painstaking efforts portray a population that is essentially happy with the direction the country is going, confident in government institutions, and doing better economically than the previous year. The findings, which defy logic, never fail to amaze Afghans or Westerners who spend significant time in Afghanistan. Nevertheless they are cited with numbing regularity by current and former U.S. officials as reason to “hope.”

At a crucial inflection point in the Afghanistan mission, U.S. policymaking should not be based on foundations so unsound. A serious strategy for withdrawal from Afghanistan must take reality, not wishful thinking, as its starting point.

What makes surveys so attractive to decisionmakers is their apparent neutrality and scope. While people who undergo daily life in Afghanistan tell stories, surveys tabulate numbers. They stake implicit or explicit claim to representative, nationwide coverage. So their findings are accorded the stature of “empirical” research, while experience is often disparaged as “anecdotal.”

And yet polling, a notoriously complex art, is almost impossible to conduct meaningfully in Afghanistan. Surveys are plagued by methodological flaws that corrode the value of their results. Though polling reports’ dense texts often acknowledge these flaws, the caveats are not reflected in the numbers. And it is the numbers that so many officials, experts, and journalists love to cite.

In the case of the 2012 Asia Foundation survey, perhaps the most significant flaw is that nearly one-third of the planned “sampling points” could not be accessed by interviewers, largely for security reasons. So people in safer neighborhoods or villages were interviewed instead. One result is a series of polls that cannot be used to track trends over time, since the sample population is never the same.

But the implications of this defect go deeper—to undermine the report’s fundamental conclusions about Afghan confidence. “Public optimism about the overall direction of Afghanistan is currently at its 

Afghans are ever happier about a country in which it is ever more life threatening to get around? On the bare face of it, such a proposition seems absurd—an absurdity the report reduces to a clinical observation: “The opinions of those living in insecure areas are likely to be underrepresented in survey findings.”

In other cases, the answers to one question may have invalidating implications for the answers to another. For example, a total of 64 percent of respondents agreed that “it is generally not acceptable to talk negatively about the government in public.” Could that result have a bearing on the number of respondents (75 percent) who professed to feel the Afghan government is doing a good job? In a similarly illuminating inconsistency, the survey authors acknowledge that 42 percent of those who said they had confidence in the Afghan National Army also said they feared to encounter it.

A broader problem with this and other surveys has to do with how Afghans tend to use language in the complex and threatening environment they have learned to navigate over the past several decades. I have rented out offices to polltakers—and watched them sit at the desks and fill in the answers they were supposed to be getting from respondents. A friend who worked as a field researcher a few years ago told me his supervisor dictated the desired responses. But even if research staff were truly pounding the dirt roads and impartially recording respondents’ answers, those answers are more unlikely in Afghanistan than in most other countries to reflect what the speaker actually thinks.

Afghans are survivors. For thirty years marked by invasion and civil war, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could get them killed. So most Afghans have grown skilled at discerning the likely orientation of the person they are talking to, and—if no overwhelming interest dictates otherwise—saying what they think he or she will want to hear.

In the West, the notion of “independent” polling is broadly accepted, because no significant segment of society rejects the intrinsic principle, and pollsters are typically seen as embodying broadly accepted scientific principles. In Afghanistan, by contrast, only the government and the international community conduct polls. The Taliban or nonviolent dissidents do not. So surveyors are likely to be seen as tied to the Afghan government and its international backers.

While the Asia Foundation researchers are instructed to tell respondents, “Your answers will be kept confidential and your name will not be given to anyone,” there is no reason a random Afghan should believe that. Out of self-preservation, random Afghans are likely to answer pollsters in ways they believe will be pleasing to the government and its international backers.

It is time to stop deluding ourselves with such patently distorted information, and using it as a basis for analysis or for placating the public with a comforting message. It is dangerous to build strategy on such quicksand.

Recent conversations with ordinary Afghans indicate that weapons are rapidly being bought up, at least in the north, and business is slowing as fewer people are willing to incur risk in a situation they judge to be increasingly unpredictable. Such factors provide more eloquent indications about prevailing conditions than do opinion surveys.

A more candid appreciation of Afghan realities would allow for more accurate assessments of Afghans’ likely contingency planning and that of their neighbors, which in turn might induce U.S. decisionmakers to consider how to avert or at least mitigate the significant dangers of the momentous upcoming international withdrawal. A measure of realism is a minimal starting point.

Carnegie Endowment

Ehud Olmert is running. Or maybe he’s not. He insists he’ll only make an announcement about his political future on Israeli soil, though he seems to take great pleasure in dropping hints. Either way, the former Israeli prime minister had a two-pronged message on this weekend’s trip to America: Benjamin Netanyahu can be beaten in the upcoming elections in January. And peace with the Palestinians is still possible.

Coming just after the Netanyahu government announced it would build move forward on new settlements that the New York Times described as “effectively dooming any prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” and at a time when optimism in Washington about the Middle East writ large is at a deserved low, it’s an alluring message. The conventional wisdom here has it that President Barack Obama needs to find a way to work with Bibi in his second term, because, difficult and disrespectful as the Israeli leader might be, he’s not going anywhere.

Olmert offers the tantalizing possibility that maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be this way.

I caught up with the former prime minister on the sidelines of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum, a largely off-the-record confab packed with high-level U.S. and Israeli officials, think tankers, and other assorted muckety-mucks. He was traveling light, as top Israelis often do — with no entourage other than a security detail that seemed unusually relaxed.

The night before, Olmert had just held a public “conversation” with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, where he had scathing words for Netanyahu, his successor and former colleague in the Likud Party. Israel’s settlement announcement, coming on the heels of a vote in which the United States was just one of nine opponents of Palestinian observer status, was the “worst possible slap in the face to the president,” Olmert said.

The former prime minister also had strong words for Netanyahu’s chief backer Sheldon Adelson, whom he said had “bought the political system” in Israel and “thought he could do the same thing in America with $100 million.” Specifically, Olmert described his discomfort with a fundraiser Mitt Romney held in Israel with Jewish-American donors, including Adelson,  who may have actually spent as much as $150 million in support of Republican candidates. It “smelled of something which was not appropriate,” Olmert said. “I thought it was made in order to create the impression among American Jewish voters that Romney is riding on the shoulders of Israel to the White House, which I thought was a mistake. And the prime minister took part in this effort, which was totally unacceptable.”

Olmert even broke the Saban Forum’s ground rules by revealing that earlier on Saturday, Chicago mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had ripped into Netanyahu off the record for betting against the president’s re-election — a view he suggested was shared in the Oval Office. “I don’t know how friendly Rahm Emanuel is with the president but I think he supports him,” Olmert joked. “If he said what he said, probably he reflected a sentiment which may not be only his private sentiment, but something that many other people share with him.”

But Olmert’s real beef with Netanyahu — the real reason he must go — is that he is “not dedictated to the pursuit of peace in a realistic way,” a mission he described as the “primary responsibility of every Israeli government.” Once a hard-line mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert has now embraced the peace process with the passion of a convert, almost leaping out of his chair and gesturing emphatically at one point to exclaim, “What the party will reject, the people will accept!”

Olmert also worries that Netanyahu talks too much about Iran. “I think that Iran is a genuine problem — enough to justify policies, and measures, and statements by Israel,” he told me. “The question is whether we don’t talk too much about it, we don’t make it too much of a public issue, we don’t create an unnecessary international debate that raises the profile of this, and perhaps prevent some countries from taking measures which they may have wanted to take but they don’t want to be seen as Israel sort of giving orders, public orders to them.”

As it happens, the qualities Olmert says Israelis are looking for in a challenger seem to describe Olmert himself (or perhaps Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister and Mossad veteran who is definitely running in January). “Experience in taking decisions on matters of national importance: matters of security and matters of defense and matters of potential national crisis, in the context of international relations, particularly with the United States of America, which is the greatest ally Israel has,” he told me, noting, in case I didn’t get the message, “And relations with America and with the American president are of great significance to Israeli voters.”

But it seems to me, I replied, that Netanyahu had yet to pay any political price for that tension. “Well, you know, for the time being,” he said archly.

Foreign Policy

The oddly named project will cost up to $100 million, take more than two years to complete, and can only be built by workers from specific countries with proper security clearances. Palestinians need not apply.

When complete the well-guarded compound will have five levels buried underground and six additional outbuildings on the above grounds, within the perimeter. At about 127,000 square feet, the first three floors will house classrooms, an auditorium, and a laboratory — all wedged behind shock resistant doors — with radiation protection and massive security.

Only one gate will allow workers entrance and exit during the project and that will be guarded by only Israelis.

The bottom two floors are smaller, according to the full line of schematics uploaded to the Army's Acquisition Business Web Site, and possibly used for equipment and storage.

As impressive as the American design features already are, Ada Karmi-Melamede Architects will decorate the entire site with rocks it chooses, but are paid for by the contractor, and provide three outdoor picnic tables.

Pincus also found this detailed description of the mezuzahs that will adorn every door in the facility:

These mezuzas, notes the [US Army] Corps, “shall be written in inerasable ink, on . . . uncoated leather parchment” and be handwritten by a scribe “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” The writing may be “Ashkenazik or Sepharadik” but “not a mixture” and “must be uniform.”

Also, “The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.” The mezuza shall be supplied with an aluminum housing with holes so it can be connected to the door frame or opening. Finally, “All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base’s Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

Along with this request is another called 911 Phase 2.

Also in the $100 million range, Pincus finds the “complex facility with site development challenges” requiring services that include “electrical, communication, mechanical/ HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] and plumbing” requirements telling; and along with the fact that the contractor must posses a U.S. or Israeli Secret Security Clearance, he believes this phase to be a secure command center.

Pulitzer Prize winning, Yale grad, born in 1932 whose worked intelligence and media in D.C. since 1955 closes his piece with these shadowy words.

"The purpose of Site 911 is [un] clear."