Laura Rozen reports on the state of talks between the U.S. and Iran: Amid rising tensions, preparations for possible new Iran nuclear talks.

Those talks will of course lead to nothing. Iran's nuclear program is not the real reason why the Israel is pressing the United States into a conflict with Iran. From the very beginning the aim was regime change in Iran to keep up and reenforce Israel hegemony in the Middle East.

The next phase of the plan, which began with the unilateral sanctions Congress, "bought and paid by the Israel lobby" (© Tom Friedman) set up against Iran, is to incite the country into attacking the United States or Israel.

The Rozen piece quotes Patrick Clawson from the Israel Lobby's Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

"I think it's heading towards confrontation," Clawson said. "The whole point from the beginning is if we put pressure on the regime, the Iranians will crack at some point."

So far, at least, there's little sign the strategy is yielding the desired result. The Iranians have to date responded to the prospect of the tightened financial sanctions on the country's oil sector with an announcement of the launching of operations at the fortified, underground Fordo nuclear enrichment facility–together with sporadic threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. "The Iranians are screaming and yelling and upset and threatening," Clawson said.

So why isn't that a sign that the U.S. strategy is failing?

"It's a lot better to have a fight" that Iran provokes, Clawson replied, before adding: "Better to enter World War II after Pearl Harbor, and World War I after the sinking of the Lusitania."

Clawson does not mind to see Americans die for Israel's gains. Pearl Harbout, sinkung the Lusitania, what is not like with that?

Clawsen is director of the Iran Security Initiative at WINEP. He is in charge of the lobby's plans towards Iran. When he says the current running strategy isn't failing, but is intended to incite Iran to shot first, that likely is the plan.

But I doubt that Iran will fall for it. So far it has reacted very restrained to the secret war the U.S. and Israel are running against it. If pressure increases, it is much more likely to start an indirect secret proxy campaign, while keeping plausible deniability, of its own. One target set might be oil infrastructure on the western coast of the Persian Gulf, another one Israeli scientist and military traveling in foreign countries.

Blinded by their superiority complex Clawsen and the like fail to see that two can play the game.

Dear Haaretz,

using this picture of an Ethiopian immigrant in this context is racism. It amplifies prejudices.

bigger

After six quiet weeks the U.S. yesterday again fired a drone on alleged "militants" in Pakistan.

This will have serious consequences in Pakistan. As former Reuters South Asia correspondent Myra MacDonald opines:

Perhaps the most accurate definition of the drone war which has been fought over the tribal areas of Pakistan would be this – making the same mistake over and over and expecting a different outcome.

The outcome is higher anti-American sentiment in Pakistan which will necessitate that both the government and the military will have to take stronger anti-American positions even if some within them might have agreed to the drone strike as, two days ago, a piece in the Express Tribune let one assume.

The drone attack comes at a moment where the Pakistani government, the military and the Supreme Court are at each others throat.

Two conflicts have build up over the memogate and corruption amnesty cases. In a interview with the Chinese People's Daily Prime Minister Gilani accused the head of the army Kayani and the head of its spy service ISI Pascha of illegal behavior. Both had given testimony to the Supreme Court without the approval of the government. Kayani was in China when Gilani gave the interview to the Chinese press.

Through its public relation arm the ISI rejected the accusations and warned the government of "very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the Country".

Cont. reading: Blowback – When A Drone Attack May Justify A Coup

The censors at the Washington Post missed the truth slipping through in one piece today and had to correct it.

The current version of a DeYoung/Wilson piece on Iran sanctions is headlined: Public ire one goal of Iran sanctions, U.S. official says. It starts with an editorial remark:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that a U.S. intelligence official had described regime collapse as a goal of U.S. and other sanctions against Iran. An updated version clarifies the official’s remarks.

Ahheeemm.

Below we document the current text and the original version as published earlier today and for now still available through a cache. It was headlined: Goal of Iran sanctions is regime collapse, U.S. official says

That headline is also still in the URL of the current version of the piece: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/goal-of-iran-sanctions-is-regime-collapse-us-official-says/2012/01/10/gIQA0KJsoP_story.html

A tweet by Foreign Policy (owned by WaPo) editor Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) pointed out that there was an intermediate third version of the piece which, unfortunately, I can not find anymore.

WaPo changed the first headline to "Goal of Iran sanctions is to get nation to abandon alleged nuclear program, U.S. official says" ht @shashj

Shashank Joshi (@shashj) then found:

This is such a joke. WaPo revises the headline *again* to "Public ire one goal of Iran sanctions, U.S. official says" washingtonpost.com/world/national…

The original version is on the left, the current – at least twice corrected one – on the right:

Cont. reading: WaPo Censors Iran Sanctions’ Regime Change Intent

Al-Assad blames 'external conspiracies' for Syrian violence

"The mask has fallen off these faces," [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad] said. "No wise person denies these international conspiracies that (are) being done in order to spread fear inside. But this time, it was done with people from inside."

Bashar al-Asad is right. There are international conspiracies to take him down.

This is for example obvious when the expatriate Syrian National Council uses a policy papers arguing for military intervention in Syria that was written by a neocon and Israel supporter and paid for by the U.S. State Department. To further the military intervention the paper is defended by doing away with the local protesters in Syria who oppose any intervention.

Michael Weiss is Director of Communications and Public Relations for the Henry Jackson Society, a British neocon organization which patrons include the U.S. neocons Richard Perle, William Kristol and James Woolsey. He also has a blog at the Telegraph website.

Michael Weiss is also executive director of Just Journalism a "pressure group whose stated goals are to focus "on how Israel and Middle East issues are reported in the UK media." Critics characterize Just Journalism as a "privately-funded mouthpiece for Israel". Until the end of 2009 Weiss published a blog for the Jewish magazine Tablet.

Recently Weiss wrote a policy paper Safe Area for Syria – An Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards (pdf) which is an amateur attempt (Weiss is, as far as can find out, neither a lawyer nor does he seem to have military experience) to write a playbook for military intervention in Syria:

In the interest of assessing all suggested options for hastening the end of a totalitarian dictatorship and/or averting a mass humanitarian catastrophe, this paper examines the way in which foreign military intervention could work for Syria.

The paper was written for the Strategic Research & Communication Centre, a somewhat mysterious organization in Britain that claims to offer "Informed insight on Syria", founded in 2010 and run by the Syrian expat Ausama Monajed who "previously served as the director of Barada Television". As is known from Wikileaks cables:

Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria.

We can safely assume that Ausama Monajed, who's current organization does not reveal its funding sources, is still on that indirect U.S. State Department payroll.

The paper Weiss wrote to argue for military intervention is endorsed as a Special Report by the expat Syrian National Council on its slick new website.

In a recent Foreign Affairs piece Weiss again argues for military intervention in Syria but sees a more united opposition as a requirement toward that. He achives that more united opposition by simply doing away with those parts of the opposition that are against intervention.

His way to do so is seemingly to promote the interventionist expat Syrian National Council (SNC) while denigrating the non-interventionist on-the-ground protesters in Syria who are organized in the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change:

Making matters worse, in the last two weeks, the SNC has further embarrassed itself by sending mixed messages about its real intentions. First, the group said that it was in favor of foreign military intervention. But on December 30, 2011, reports swirled that Ghalioun and a handful of senior SNC figures had inked a unity agreement with the anti-interventionist National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, a domestic opposition group that activists suspect is a cover organization pushing reconciliation with Assad’s regime.

The local Syrian protesters who do not want outside military intervention are now a "cover organization pushing reconciliation". Cover for whom? How dare the protesters in Syria to want a peaceful solution and have a "cover" for that!

Two high-ranking members of the SNC, Ausama Monajed and Radwan Ziadeh, told me that the council rejected the text of the agreement, which they claimed was only a "draft." Sure enough, a few days later, the SNC launched its official Web site that, drawing on a blueprint I prepared, called for outside forces to establish a safe zone in Syria. This more aggressive call for foreign military intervention reflects a need to hang on to support from the protesters, who now often denounce the regime and the SNC in the same breath.

Weiss then does away with the split between the expatriate regime-change-by-force militants and local Syrian protesters who want peaceful solutions by simply vanishing the later:

Nevertheless, there are signs of progress. Now that the SNC has endorsed foreign intervention, bringing it in line with what all factions of the Syrian insurgency have advocated for months, there is a greater likelihood that the various political and military arms of the opposition will unite, if only out of their shared desperation over the unabated carnage.

See, that nasty "cover organization pushing reconciliation" that represents the real protesters in Syria is now simply done away with.

The neocon org's communications director and excecutive director of a "mouthpiece for Israel" Michael Weiss writes a paper to further military intervention in Syria for a U.S. State Department funded expat Syrian think tank which then gets adopted by the expat militant Syrian National Council.

Weiss then takes to the pages of Foreign Affairs where he excommunicates the anti-intervention local Syrian protesters as "cover organization pushing reconciliation" to then claim that military intervention is endorsed by all factions involved in the Syrian protests.

Assad says that there are "international conspiracies" driving the violence to overthrow the Syrian government by force. He is right. The neocons and zionist are out to take him down by military forces against the will of the Syrian people including that of the protesters.

In mid December I called the new "western" sanctions on Iran a self inflicted wound:

In total the markets will be more nervous and the risk premium included in oil prices will go up. Iran and the other Persian Gulf countries will make more money. Everyone else will have to pay more for oil with the price increase for the "west" likely much higher than for the "east". This while the "west" is in economic trouble and the "east" is still expanding.

It will be the most stupid self inflicted wound world policy has seen for a while.

Since then the price of oil has increased from some $104 per barrel Brent crude to $113/bbl today. Considering that in 2006, with most economies humming, Brent was around $70 and that unlike then major economies are now still in recession the price hike is enormous. Iran is clearly showing that it too can play the economic sanctions game. Since mid December it increased its oil export income by $22.5 million per day which further damages "western" economies.

That may well be the reason why U.S. defense secretary Panetta in yesterdays TV interview somewhat played down the Iran case and moved the U.S. "red line", which once was "enrichment", to actual nuclear weapons:

Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us.

We can be sure that Iran will not cross that red line. It has said all along that it does not want a nuclear weapon and there is no reason to suspect that this will change.

But if only nuclear weapons are the red line, why is the administration still preparing more sanctions?

Unofficial administration spokesman David Ignatius reveals the plans for the 2012 foreign policy:

As for the Iranians, they seem for the first time in years to be genuinely nervous — not because of U.S. or Israeli saber-rattling but because economic sanctions are causing a run on their currency and the beginnings of a financial panic in Tehran. And more sanctions are on the way this year. At some point, the Iranian regime will actually be in jeopardy — and it will punch back. That’s the scenario the White House must think through carefully with its allies. If the current course continues, a collision with Iran is ahead.

The recent rapid devaluation of the Iranian currency, the Rial, is not a success of the sanctions. The slump has other long term economic reasons and, as Prof. Djavad Salehi-Isfahani explains, was "largely expected and welcomed by economists". It will help the Iranian industry to increase its non-oil exports and will make unwelcome cheap imports from China and elsewhere more expensive thereby helping the local Iranian industry and increase employment in Iran.

More sanction means more pain for "western" economies. As it has already shown with its recent maneuver Iran can easily inflict such pain. One does not even have to consider a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the economic panic and military consequences (pdf, 38 pgs) that would cause. An explosion on a pipeline in Iraq, a mishap in a Saudi refinery or one lone old mine in the Straits of Hormuz damaging an empty (even Iranian?) old tanker would be enough to push oil prices to even higher levels. Just as the U.S. uses clandestine methods, the killing of scientists and cyber attacks, to inflict damage on Iran, Iran can, if it wants to, use such methods to increase the price of oil without leaving its fingerprints.

There is also much less unity in applying these sanctions than the U.S. wants to acknowledge. The French foreign minister tried a fait accompli when he announced that the EU had agreed "in principle" to similar oil sanctions and central bank on Iran as the U.S. has enacted. It had not and is unlikely to do so:

The three biggest EU importers have serious debt problems. Greece imports a quarter of its oil from Iran, Italy about 13 percent and Spain nearly 10 percent.
…
Other aspects of the prospective embargo are being discussed and a final decision is unlikely to be quick, diplomats said. Some EU capitals are suggesting the impact of sanctions be reviewed after a fixed period, with the possibility of suspending them if they prove ineffective.
…
Some capitals have raised concerns, they said, that sanctions on the central bank would harm the chances of getting Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear work.

I expect that any further EU sanctions on Iran to be rather superficial and easily circumvented.

That is good because the "western" sanctions are not only creating self inflicted damage, they may even be counterproductive in that they leave no way out for Iran and may raise the incentive for Iran to eventually build a nuclear weapon.

That "more sanctions are on the way" from the U.S. side, as Ignatius asserts, must then have other reasons than Iran's nuclear program. There they do not make sense. But we have know that for quite a while. The U.S. sanctions are designed to lead to regime change in Iran. They will not achieve that. Within Iran they will united the people and the Iranian leadership. Iran is also smart enough to not provoke an open war that could endanger the regime. At the same time the U.S. can not start a war on Iran without inflicting catastrophic damage on the world economy.

So what do I expect will happen?

More sanctions may well come. But they will hurt "western" economies more than Iran. They will be responded to by Iran tit for tat with ever increasing oil prices. Iran has already announced more maritime maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz. When those and the accompanying propaganda have passed the price of Brent crude may well be at $120/bbl and the U.S. economy on its way into another downturn.

MSNBC writers promotes a colonel of the Syrian army into "a top Syrian general".

Report: Top Syrian general defects with 50 troops

BEIRUT — As Arab League monitors prepared a report on Syria's compliance with its agreement to halt violence against protesters, a senior general reportedly said on live TV he was defecting from the regime's army with up to 50 of his soldiers.

Colonel Afeef Mahmoud Suleiman made the announcement live on Al-Jazeera's Arabic News channel on Saturday, the news organization reported.
…
Al-Jazeera reported that Suleiman was in the air force logistics division.

There is nothing in the AlJazeerah report that says anything about a general officer. There is only an alleged colonel. No agency reprorted the defection of a general. MSNBC made that up. In all modern military the rank of a colonel is below the lowest general officer rank. The AlJazeerah video shows the "colonel" together with 14 armed men in quite untidy mixed camouflage. At least two of those wear trainers, not military boots. We can not be sure that they are soldiers at all.

But lets assume that colonel is real. Applying the usual quotas the 600,000+ strong Syrian military will have some 500-600 officers in the rank of a colonel. One of them deserting, especially from a rather irrelevant air force logistic job, is not a sign of those forces weakening.

But why is the supposedly reality based MSNBC making this colonel into a "top general" contradicted one paragraph later in its own piece? Do they believe their readers will not notice such falsehood? Such obvious propaganda is usually reserved to British tabloids.

And why is Justin Raimondo's supposedly honest antiwar.com site featuring this nonsense?

So a carrier group from the U.S. Navy rescues some Iranian fishermen who were captured by Somali pirates …

And just by chance the New York Times' very best war reporter, former marine captain C.J Chivers and his photographer side kick Tyler Hicks, are somehow on board of one of the Navy ships. Their story has the fantastic dateline "ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL AL MULAHI, in the Gulf of Oman". It gives a detailed reportage of what happened including interviews with the Iranian captain and some pirates.

It is well written, as usual by Chivers, but there is something missing in his piece. Why is he where he is?

When was he send to that carrier in the Arabian Sea? That carrier went through the street of Hormuz only three days ago. Chivers being there was just by chance? His reporting with a teaser today and the main fill on tomorrow's NYT weekend edition page 1 is just by chance? He just got lucky?

Sure. Those Iraq WMD stories in the NY Times were also just by chance? They also by chance always came in the weekend edition? Judith Miller was just lucky that she picked them up?

The real questions: How long ago was this propaganda show planed? Who set it up? And how much of it was real?

And what will the Times have to pay back for getting this propaganda coup scoop handed to it by the Navy?

Those peaceful Syrian revolutionaries …

January 4th, 2012

The Free Syrian Army plans to kick off "huge operations" this week against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the force's commander, Col. Riad al-Assad, said Wednesday.

January 6th, 2012

A suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded 63 in Damascus Friday, Syria's interior minister said ..
…
The blast came two days before an Arab League committee was due to discuss an initial report of Arab observers who are checking Syria's compliance with an Arab plan to halt President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on nearly 10 months of unrest.

Those observers will probably report that the Syrian government is not totally complying with the government. It seemed that the U.S. and other anti-Syrian entities did not wanted the observers to say anything about the compliance and the violence from the other side. The plan was to solely damn the Syrian government and to push the Arab League to call for NATO intervention.

Col. Riad al-Assad blew that plan up. Yesterday his folks announced the exact place of the "huge operation" in comments on the AlJazeera website. He proved the Syrian government is right in its assessment that the Free Syrian Army and its followers are just another terrorist group. It will be hard to argue for intervention when it is so obvious that the major violence is not from the government's side.

After Karzai proved that his U.S. overlords do not care about the Afghan government as they ignore his repeated calls to stop night raid, the Afghan president seems to want to repeat that by point again asking for Afghan authority over Afghan prisons and prisoners:

President Hamid Karzai abruptly demanded on Thursday that the American-led coalition hand over all Afghan prisoners in its custody and cede control of its main prison in Afghanistan within a month. He said that his government had evidence that Afghan law and prisoners’ human rights were being violated at the prison.

The demand stunned the coalition leaders, who were not consulted before the announcement, according to American and European officials in Kabul.

So Karzai "abruptly demanded" and officials were "stunned". The report is by the New York Times so no one here will be astonished that that is wrong. There is nothing "abruptly" in Karzai's request and therefore no reason to be "stunned".

Consider:

Cont. reading: Losing The Perception War Over Bagram/Parwan Prison

Joseph Fitsanakus of Intel News writes:

One of Mauridania’s leading daily newspapers, Al-Huriyeh, says that the spy ring, which allegedly consisted “businessmen and activists [from] several Arab nationalities”, was uncovered following the arrest of one of its members, identified as Fares al-Banna. A Jordanian citizen of Palestinian extraction, al-Banna was arrested for larceny, which eventually lead to a warrant issued for searching his premises. Upon searching his house, authorities reportedly found a handwritten letter, addressed to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, in which al-Banna claimed had been recruited by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. In the letter, al-Banna also claimed that he had participated in the January 2010 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The letter also alleges that al-Banna helped Mossad carry out a bombing of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409, which blew up in mid-air on January 24, 2010, five minutes after taking off from Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, en route to Addis Ababa. Al-Huriyeh reports that al-Banna’s letter suggests the Mossad blew up the plane in order to kill one or more Hezbollah targets who were on board.

There is a minor issue with that report in that the plane did not blew up. According to the Lebanese investigation progress report (pdf) from February 10, 2011 the plane did not "blew up" but ditched into the sea after some very unusual maneuvering.

The [flight] recorders data revealed that ET 409 encountered two stick shakers respectively at time 00:40:01 for a period of 29” and at 00:40:56 for a period of 26”. 10 “Bank Angle” warnings were registered between 00:38:41 and 00:40:54; an over-speed clacker was also registered from time 00:41:25 till the end. The maximum registered AOA was 32° at 00:40:14, maximum registered bank angle was 118° Left at 00:41:14, the maximum registered speed was 407.5 knots at 00:41:28, the maximum registered G load was 4.412 at 00:41:28 and the maximum registered nose down pitch value was 63.1° at 00:41:16.

There is no discernible reasons why the pilots might have made these maneuvers. So this may have been an accident in bad weather, sabotage on the plane or something else. The discussion of the incident at the Professional Pilot Rumor Network is inconclusive.

The plane crashed on 25 January 2010.

Moon of Alabama reader Juan Moment pointed me to three videos one Faris al-Banna uploaded to youtube shortly after the incident on February 14 2010 and February 19 2010.

The first one (53 views as of now) shows photos from two men in an office and then of one man standing in a harbor with probably oil installations in the background. He seems to looks quite similar to the one pictured along the Al-Huriyeh piece.

The second (16 views) just show the relevant man filming himself saying nothing with some Arabic background music. In the third video (32 views) the man talks quite earnestly into the camera in Arabic, then turns up some music, then talks again.

The youtube user Faris al-Banna has no other videos. Only those three he uploaded three weeks after the plane crash in Beirut. We do not know for sure if he is the same Faris al-Banna as the man in the Mauredania spy-case though judging from the newspaper picture it could be him.

Neither Juan nor I understand Arabic and we do not know what the man in the video says. It could be a message to a lover or something else. Maybe on of the readers here knows Arabic and will let us know?

After promoting war on Iraq through false weapons of mass destruction stories the New York Times is promoting war on Iran through false weapons of mass destruction stories.

Here its reporter Steven Erlanger lies about the recent IAEA report on Iran:

The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign.

The November 18 IAEA report (pdf) does not say that Iran's program has a military objective.

It quotes from a UN resolution that expressed "concerns about the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme", later says it had "identified outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme" and repeats similar language several time. All the outstanding issues the IAEA mentions predate 2003.

Nowhere does the IAEA claim that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective. The New York Times just made that up.

My endorsement of Ron Paul for the purpose of moving the Overton window of political acceptable ideas has generated quite a lot of comments, some of them unusual harsh (and no, I am not thinking of Lizard's comments here).

When discussing presidential elections in the U.S. please keep in mind what Iowa and the other circus shows are about:

The Iowa caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

From that one might argue that taking part in the process is meaningless. But that view is wrong. Those in power have to choose the one "who least offends the public" to stay in power and in that they do have to take the public opinion into account.

If there is a strong turnout for an anti-war candidate it will have some influence. It may not be decisive but it is the only low cost influence a voter has. Use it. And then, if you can, put up a real fight.

The Muslim Brotherhood is winning the elections in Egypt. This sets the stage for a huge political fight between the U.S. supported Egyptian military and the people of Egypt.

The brotherhood is against the Egypt-Israel peace treaty and wants to put it up for a referendum. The outcome can not be in doubt.

The U.S. holds secret talks with the military dictatorship to somehow save that agreement. As part of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty Egypt is receiving some $1.3 billion military and economic aid per year. That sum is simply a bribe and the brotherhood is now on the record rejecting such payments:

The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) announced Monday that it will seek an end to US aid to Egypt when parliament is seated in January.
…
Ahmed Abou Baraka, legal consultant for the FJP, told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that one of the chief goals of his Islamist party which so far has won the majority of seats in the upcoming parliament, is to abolish US aid to Egypt in all its forms, economic and military, because it is used as a means to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs.

Having allowed the election it will be difficult for the U.S. and the military to argue against the demands of the majority. We of course know that U.S. talk about democracy is just that and the pretense only holds as long as the voters in foreign countries vote in the U.S.'s and Israel's interest.

But how will Washington go about it? And will the Egyptian military follow the orders of its bribed high officers when the fight against its people really begins? And what will happen within Egypt when Israel, as it announced, will again bomb and occupy Gaza?

Another attack on Gaza could well be the spoiler for Washington's plans – whatever they are. It is hard to imagine that the Egyptian people and the military would this time just stand by and watch as they had to do under Mubarak's rule. It could well be that in this case, like in Pakistan, U.S./Israeli arrogance would finally end its influence over a foreign power.

Adding a bit to yesterday's post on the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban reuniting.

What we are watching now is a very substantial reconfiguration of the Pakistani role in the Afghanistan conflict.

Having been threatened with being "bombed back to stone age" in 2001 Pakistan helped the United States' operation in Afghanistan. This angered its own Pashtun population which radicalized and started to operate against the Pakistani government. A bloody civil war ensued between the Pashtun in the Federal Administrated Tribal Area on the border with Pakistan and the Pakistani army which cost over 30,000 people their life.

But finally the rather meager payoff the Pakistani government and military received from the U.S. did no longer compensate for the political costs. U.S. arrogance in the Raimund Davis case, in taking out Osama Bin Laden, in the drone war and in demanding ever more Pakistani action against its own people while at the same time blaming Pakistan for every ill in Afghanistan increased the antipathy. The attack on a Pakistani border post was the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Pakistan is now making peace with its own Pashtun who will united with their brethren in Afghanistan and fight the invaders there. It will do without U.S. money which is anyway more and more based on conditions Pakistan can not reasonably fulfill.

Pakistan will allow the U.S. logistic line to be reopened but will heavily tax every load that passes through. This, the overflight rights it continues to provide and its influence on the Taliban will be its leverage in the negotiations over the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan.

Confronted with a Pakistani firm stand the Obama administration had the the good sense to not allow its hardliners to widen the conflict into an all out war against Pakistan.

This is then also the end of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.

The fighting is not over though and will continue while the negotiations are ongoing. That may take several years. The Taliban will not allow for permanent U.S. troop stationing in Afghanistan which is something the U.S. military and the anti-Iran hardliners very much want. Only a continued war of attrition against U.S. troops will make it clear to them that such a position is too expensive to hold.

The Taliban may agree to join the government or to some other conditions that allows the U.S. to save its face while it leaves. What happens after that is up in the air and will largely be decided by the Afghans themselves.

While there are rumors of back channel talk between the U.S. and Pakistan to patch up the relationship after the November 26 killing of 26 Pakistani troops by U.S. forces, the situation on the ground is unlikely to ever be the same than before the incident.

The U.S. might in future again be able to route some logistic traffic through Pakistan. A ship with U.S. military load arrived in Karachi today. The costs though will be higher now and it is doubtful that the Pakistani military will ever again allowed it to use drones to kill this or that family in the tribal agencies in "signature strikes" because they "behave like terrorists".

My hunch is that that is the real story behind the reuniting of the Pakistani Taliban with the Afghan Taliban:

On the directive of their supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban on Sunday formed a joint five-member Shura or council with Pakistani militant organisations, making a pledge to stop their fight against their own armed forces and instead focus their attention against the US-led forces in Afghanistan.

After weeks of hectic efforts, a high-level delegation of the Afghan Taliban, sent by the Taliban supreme leader, finally succeeded in bringing together different Pakistan militant groups on a single platform and make a promise that they would stop fighting the Pakistani security forces and end suicide attacks, kidnappings for ransom and killing of innocent people in the country, particularly in the militancy-hit tribal areas.
…
Mulla Omar, according to Taliban sources, wanted the Pakistani Taliban groups to focus on Afghanistan, where their fight against the foreign forces was in a decisive phase. "Convey my message to the Pakistani Taliban that you have forgotten the real purpose, which is to fight the invading forces in Afghanistan and liberate it from their occupation," said a Taliban leader quoting Mulla Omar.

I believe that the Pakistani military intelligence service ISI has promised the Pakistani Taliban that the drones will not fly again and that it will stop the Pakistani military fight against the Taliban in Pakistan. That, in my view, would be the concession the Pakistani Taliban will have asked for to end the fight within their country and to re-concentrate on Afghanistan.

If this works out as planned the Afghan Taliban, reinforced with Pakistani fighters and resources, will be able to push for more territorial gain in Afghanistan in 2012 than they achieved last year.

Meanwhile the U.S. embassy in Pakistani is working on another likely fruitless project to fight "extremism" in Pakistan:

The three-person unit in the U.S. Embassy public affairs section was established in July. It plans to work with local partners, including moderate religious leaders, to project their counter-extremist messages and push back against the militants' extensive propaganda machine, said U.S. officials.

It will use TV shows, documentaries, radio programs and posters. It also intends to ramp up exchange programs for religious leaders and public outreach to conservative Muslims who previously had little contact with American officials.

"There are a lot of courageous voices speaking out against extremism here in Pakistan," said Tom Miller, head of public affairs at the U.S. Embassy. "Our job is to find out how we can amplify those narratives."

The unit is just now ramping up operations, said officials. It was funded with an initial budget of $5 million that officials hope will grow. Officials declined to provide details on specific programs they are funding or plan to fund, for fear that publicly acknowledging U.S. involvement would discredit their partners.

The money flow is unlikely to stay secret and the blowback against those "moderates" who are dumb enough to take it will be harsh. The U.S. still fails to see that "extremism" in Pakistani is to a large part a reaction to what the U.S. does in Pakistan and elsewhere and not to what it, or its payed surrogates, say.