Yemen is a Haven for Qhat (Qat), not Al-Qaeda--Intervew with William O. Beeman

Yemen: A Haven for Qhat (Qat) Not Al-Qaeda

New America Media, Interview, , Sandip Roy, Video by Ann Bassette, Posted: Jan 30, 2010

At an international forum in London this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Yemen to "take ownership" of their own long-festering problems -- including corruption, internal strife and poor governance -- if the country hopes to overcome threats from Islamist extremists and poverty. University of Minnesota Professor William O. Beeman, a noted scholar on the Middle East, believes the narcotic qhat is one of those root causes. He spoke to NAM's Sandip Roy.


Yemen: A Haven for Qhat Not Al-Qaeda from New America Media on Vimeo.

William O. Beeman--Attacks on Iran Are Attacks on Obama (New America Media)

Attacks on Iran Are Attacks on Obama

New America Media, News analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 18, 2009 Review it on NewsTrust

In the last few weeks, there has been a flurry of unsubstantiated accusations against Iran. These accusations may seem to be aimed at Iran but, in fact, a pattern is emerging, which suggests that the attacks are really directed at destroying the Obama administration by discrediting its goodwill gesture toward Iran, which is a sharp departure from the Bush-era foreign policy.

One charge, launched against the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), accuses them of illegal lobbying for Iran. This attack has two prongs — allegations made by Iran analyst Hassan Daioleslam (aka Hassan Dai), and a “hit piece” by conservative writer Eli Lake in the Washington Times . NIAC has fought back with a lawsuit against Dai, but the damage has been done.

NIAC has primarily been a voice for Iranian Americans in foreign policy matters. However, they have committed a sin in the eyes of the neoconservatives, by consistently calling for a dialogue between Washington and Tehran.

The attacks on the NIAC and Iran are ultimately directed at undermining the Obama administration for its overtures toward Iran. It has now come to light that neoconservative author Kenneth Timmerman is behind the NIAC attacks, as reported by journalist Josh Rogin on the political blog, The Cable.

Another unsubstantiated claim is that Iran was helping Yemeni rebels from a Zaidi Shi’a sect known as the Houthis, in border attacks against Saudi Arabia. The Houthis have been attacking Saudi facilities for decades. The accusations have come largely from Saudi Arabia, but have been promulgated here in the United States as further “proof” that Iran aids terrorists. However, Middle East experts in the United States see no connection whatsoever between Iran and the Houthis.

Nevertheless, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute wrote on October 30 of the Houthi in Yemen: “Perhaps the greatest al-Houthi threat posed to the U.S. is the possibility that Iran has identified them as a potential proxy – similar to Hezbollah or Hamas – on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia, a prospect that could yield the mullahs leverage in international negotiations.”

This remark was inserted in an article claiming that the Houthi served as a “safe haven” for Al-Qa’eda—a group that advocates the assassination of Shi’ite Muslims, the religion of both the Houthi and the Iranians.

Another unsubstantiated claim is that Iran was shipping arms by sea to Hezbollah. On November 5, Israel seized a German-owned, Cypriot-operated cargo ship flying the Antiguan flag, carrying arms. The Israelis immediately announced that this ship was carrying Iranian arms bound for Hezbollah. However, there was no proof that any of the arms came from Iran, and Hezbollah denied that they were being directed to them.

There is also the flimsy FBI lawsuit -- initiated during the Bush administration -- against the tiny New York-based Alavi Foundation, which promotes instruction of the Persian language and culture in American universities and several mosques around the country. The FBI suit claims that the foundation was funneling income to Iran through Bank Melli, the Iranian national bank. Since the income from the foundation is miniscule in international terms, and is committed already to educational programs, it is hard to see how Iran could benefit much from its operations.

Finally, there are the renewed vacuous claims about the empty Iranian facility near Qom, discovered last summer and touted widely as “proof” that the Iranians were making a bomb. The latest IAEA report on the site has now been published, and it asserts that while Iran should have notified the IAEA about its plans to build the facility, Iranian officials, according to the report, “provided access to all areas of the facility. The agency confirmed that the plant corresponded with the design information provided by Iran, and that the facility was at an advanced stage of construction, although no centrifuges had been introduced into the facility.

Thus, the facility was non-operational, and no fissile material (uranium) had been introduced into the plant. 
 


These attacks follow immediately on the heels of the Vienna talks with Iran, which seemed to signal progress on the Iranian nuclear issue, and the appointment of two highly knowledgeable individuals on Iran and the Middle East at the Department of State -- Dr. John Limbert, Deputy Undersecretary of State for Iran, and Dr. Tamara Wittes, Deputy Undersecretary of State for the Near East -- marking a sharp departure from the Bush administration, which made appointments largely based on ideology rather than expertise.

The world has seen these tactics many times now. The moment the United States and Iran have the tiniest success in reaching accord on something, the accusations against Iran crank up. The fact that all of the above events lack substantive proof is of far less importance than their propaganda value. We see the accusations being trumpeted as truth by the press and by senior and seemingly sober politicians. Of course, all this takes place against a background of attempts to show that the Obama administration is "soft on Islam."

Clearly, substantial players in the United States (and Israel) want to make sure that the United States and Iran remain estranged forever. To achieve this, they engage in lies, distortion and misinformation. The effects of these accusations are as strong in Iran, where they are known to be false, as they are in the United States, where they are naively believed to be true.

That this is neither intelligent nor mature thinking, and is ultimately detrimental to U.S. interests, matters not a whit to the accusers. These people may think they are patriots for carrying out these actions, but they are corrupting America's future in the region.

There is, besides, plenty to complain about regarding Iran's leaders and their recent action without resorting to fiction.

William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and is past-president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for more than 30 years. His most recent book is The “Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.” (Chicago, 2008). 


Willliam O. Beeman--A New Era in U.S.-Iranian Relations?

A New Era in U.S.-Iranian Relations?

William O. Beeman

Iran is in the midst of celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Since the United States has also had a recent revolution of sorts in its political life, it would make sense to see how these two events might coincide to produce a new future relationship between the two nations.

The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and with him the extraordinary influence that the United States had on Iranian life. According to many right-wing pundits, the revolution was the start of an era of hostility between the United States and the Muslim world—an era that they see as still underway.

However, now with President Barak Obama in the White House, clearly a new rhetoric has taken hold—one in which the United States does not assume an automatically hostile posture toward Iran or the Muslim world, but will base its actions and reactions on deeds rather than perception of ideology. The depths of our past mutual hostility can be seen in the fact that President Obama’s mere willingness to talk to Iran is seen as earth-shattering in some quarters.

In this light it is important to look at matters from an Iranian perspective. The Iranian Revolution was not an anti-American Revolution, it was an anti-colonial revolution directed at all outside control of Iranian affairs. Americans forget that one of the great slogans of the Revolution was “Neither East nor West.” The United States unfortunately inherited the mantle of Great Britain and Russia, who had oppressed the Iranian State for more than 150 years before Ayatollah Khomeini began to rail against the Shah. Iran was just as upset with those powers as with the United States, and still remains distrustful of all European influence in its affairs.

Even after the Revolution, Iran sought not simply to oppose the United States, but rather to chart its own course as a regional power, an industrial leader, an economic force in the region and as a diplomatic broker for its neighbors. Although its revolutionary ideals were the driving force in many of its early policies—such as the founding support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, these ideals soon proved to have little currency in an Islamic world where the Iranian Shi’a were viewed with suspicion.

So, the original Revolutionary ideals, initially hailed throughout the Islamic world now have little practical force, and Iran has changed in turn. Today Iran’s politics are less ideological and religious than practical. It has good diplomatic relations with all of its neighbors, and despite the fiery pronouncements of its largely powerless president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, operates with caution in the region. It no longer has any effective control over Hezbollah, and never had much direct influence over Hamas or other regional oppositionist groups.

Indeed, now there are many possibilities for building ties with the United States if Americans can only wake up to them. The U.S. has common cause with Iran on many fronts. In political terms, the United States and Iran both oppose Islamic extremists like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite attempts on the part of the Bush administration to tie Iran to these groups to frighten the American public, the truth is that Iranians oppose them fervently. One prime reason is because these extremist groups utterly reject Shi’ism, even to the point of sanctioning the murder of Shi’a believers, such as the Hazara minority in Afghanistan.

Like the United States Iran also favors stability in the region. Again, contrary to the Bush-era accusations, Tehran’s leaders are not pleased with the militarism of individuals like Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, and have worked to quiet his opposition groups in Iraq in the name of a more comprehensive stability for the Shi’a community, which must eventually rule Iraq. Tehran’s leaders also want stability in Afghanistan. Iran is host to millions of Afghan refugees. They would like most of them to go home, and that can’t happen until Afghanistan is quiet once again.

Other areas of potential cooperation include prevention of drug trafficking, environmental protection, health care, trade stabilization and international transport. Iran also has a strong stake in culture and tourism. The whole world travels to Iran to see the astonishing historical and archaeological sites—except for Americans.

Americans see it as a paradox that Iranians love Americans and American culture, but this is no surprise given the primacy of Iranian independence rather than opposition to the West in its national sentiment. As long as the United States does not try to dominate Iran, treating the Islamic Republic with “mutual respect” (to quote President Obama), Iranians have no problem with Washington. Iran’s youthful population now has a majority of citizens who have no experience of the original Revolution, or remembrance of Ayatollah Khomeini or other Revolutionary leaders.

It is not likely that any administration will offer Iran congratulations on the anniversary of its Revolution, but just stopping the invective pouring out of Washington will be congratulations enough. It is time to realize that a generation has passed since the United States’ hostile reception of the Revolution. With a new generation comes a new opportunity. With luck we will see the mood of Washington change. It was always permissible to denigrate Iran in American politics. A good first step toward a “breakthrough with Iran” would be to let it be known that this cheap political rhetoric is no longer acceptable in the Obama Era.

__________________________

William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and past President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. His most recent book is The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago, 2008).

Former Officials Say Iran Helped on Al-Qaeda (AP)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iran;_ylt=AiiymPbtqjCtDDCupADcFJ4LewgF#

Former officials say Iran helped on al-Qaida

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

Tuesday 7 October 2008, 6:23 PM ET

Commentary by William O. Beeman:
One of the ways that the Bush administration has tried to make a case for attacking Iran is to identify it as "the chief state sponsor of terrorism." As part of this campaign, the Bush administration has tried ruthlessly to tie Iran to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. One way is to claim that Iran is supporting Al-Qaeda. This makes no sense, since Al-Qaeda is dominated by extremist Salafi Muslims who, in their most severe pronouncements call for the killing of Shi'a Muslims as blasphemers. This article shows that the Bush accusations about the connections to Al-Qaeda are lies. Barry Schweid is a veteran AP reporter with impeccable credentials.

In an effort to help the United States counter al-Qaida after the 9/11 attack, Iran rounded up hundreds of Arabs who had crossed the border from Afghanistan, expelled many of them and made copies of nearly 300 of their passports, a former Bush administration official said Tuesday.

The copies were sent to Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, who passed them on to the United States, while U.S. interrogators were given a chance by Iran to question some of the detainees, Hillary Mann Leverett said in an Associated Press interview.

Leverett, who said she negotiated with Iran for the Bush administration in the 2001-3 period, said Iran sought a broader relationship with the United States. "They thought they had been helpful on al-Qaida, and they were," she said.

For one thing, she said, suspected al-Qaida operatives were not given sanctuary in Iran.

Some administration officials took the view, however, that Iran had not acknowledged all likely al-Qaida members nor provided access to them, Leverett said.

Many of the expelled Arabs were deported to Saudi Arabia and to other Arab and Muslim countries, even though Iran had poor relations with the Saudi monarchy and some other countries in the region, Leverett said.

James F. Dobbins, the Bush administration's chief negotiator on Afghanistan in late 2001, said that Iran was "comprehensively helpful" in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack in working to overthrow the Taliban and collaborating with the United States in installing the Karzai government in Kabul.

Iranian diplomats made clear at the time they were looking for broader cooperation with the United States, but the Bush administration was not interested, the author of "After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan," said in a separate interview.

The Bush administration has acknowledged contacts with Iran over the years even while denouncing Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and declining to consider a resumption of diplomatic relations.

"It isn't something that is talked about," Leverett said in describing Iran's role during a forum at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute.

Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, a former career CIA analyst and a former National Security Council official, jointly proposed the next U.S. president seek a "grand bargain" with Iran to settle all major outstanding differences.

"The next president needs to reorient U.S. policy toward Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon did with China in the 1970s," Flynt Leverett said.

Among the provisions: The United States would clarify that it is not seeking change in the nature of the Iranian regime but rather in its policies, while Iran would agree to "certain limits" on its nuclear program.

Iran considers most of its neighbors as enemies. Among its incentives for improving U.S. relations is that they feel that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would be less provocative, the Leveretts said.

Gareth Porter--Bush Covered up Musharraf Ties with Al-Qaeda, Khan (Anti-war.com)

August 20, 2008
Bush Covered Up Musharraf Ties With al-Qaeda, Khan

by Gareth Porter


Commentary by William O. Beeman:
The United States Government and President Pervez Musharraf appear to have had a common interest in no doing anyting to curtail Al-Qaeda or finding Osama bin Laden. For President Bush, the continued presence of bin Laden assured that the "Global War on Terror" for which the Pentagon has been issuing war medals for the last years, would continue unabated, justifying every form of destruction of human rights and American civil liberties. For Musharraf, the fact that bin Laden was never found allowed him to milk the United States for billions of dollars of military and civilian aid, something that continues to the present day. Gareth Porter now shows us that the Bush administration was completely aware of Musharraf's ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and just didn't bother to tell Congress or the American public. What is astonishing is that the Bush administration seems to have made no plans for Musharraf's departure. Two warring political factions are left to wrangle over power in Islamabad, while the fate of Pakistan's nuclear bombs remains uncertain. This is about the worst political muddle perpetrated by the Bush administration since the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.

It is well known that Bush repeatedly praised Musharraf as the most loyal ally of the United States against terrorism, even though the Pakistani military was deeply compromised by its relationship with the Taliban and Pakistani Islamic militants.

What has not been reported is that the Bush administration covered up the Musharraf regime's involvement in the activities of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology export program and its deals with al-Qaeda's Pakistani tribal allies.

The problem faced by the Bush administration when it came into office was that the Pakistani military, over which Musharraf presided, was the real terrorist nexus with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As Bruce Riedel, National Security Council (NSC) senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration, who stayed on the NSC staff under the Bush administration, observed in an interview with this writer last September, al-Qaeda "was a creation of the jihadist culture of the Pakistani army."

If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, Riedel said, it was the Pakistani military, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate.

Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative-dominated Bush Pentagon were aware of the intimate relationship between Musharraf's regime and both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda was not a high priority for the Bush administration.

After 9/11, the White House created the political myth that Musharraf, faced with a clear choice, had "joined the free world in fighting the terrorists." But as Asia expert Selig S. Harrison has pointed out, on Sept. 19, 2001, just six days after he had supposedly agreed to U.S. demands for cooperation against the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda, Musharraf gave a televised speech in Urdu in which he declared, "We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban."

In his memoirs, published in 2006, Musharraf revealed the seven specific demands he had been given and claimed that he had refused both "blanket overflight and landing rights" and the use of Pakistan's naval ports and air bases to conduct anti-terrorism operations.

Musharraf also famously wrote that, immediately after 9/11, Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if Musharraf didn't side with the United States against bin Laden and his Afghan hosts. But Armitage categorically denied to this writer, through his assistant, Kara Bue, that he had made any threat whatsoever, let alone a threat to retaliate militarily against Pakistan.

For the next few years, Musharraf played a complicated game. The CIA was allowed to operate in Pakistan's border provinces to pursue al-Qaeda operatives, but only as long as they had ISI units accompanying them. That restricted their ability to gather intelligence in the northwest frontier. At the same time, ISI was allowing Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to operate freely in the tribal areas and even in Karachi.

The Bush administration also gave Musharraf and the military regime a free ride on the A.Q. Khan network's selling of nuclear technology to Libya and Iran, even though there was plenty of evidence that the generals had been fully aware of and supported Khan's activities.

Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins wrote in their book The Nuclear Jihadist that one retired general who had worked with Khan told them there was no question that Khan had acted with the full knowledge of the military leadership. "Of course the military knew," the general said. "They helped him."

But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet's memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan's operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.

The following January and early February, Khan's house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan's activities.

That whole scenario had been "carefully orchestrated with Musharraf," Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell's chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.

But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al-Qaeda officials – and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported July 15, 2004, that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27, or 28 July." Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.

The military source added, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole."

Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry's acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al-Qaeda leader.

Meanwhile, Musharraf was making a political pact with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to ensure victory in state elections in the two border provinces where Islamic extremist influence was strongest. This explicit political accommodation, followed by a military withdrawal from South Waziristan, gave the pro-Taliban forces allied with al-Qaeda in the region a free hand to recruit and train militants for war in Afghanistan.

Yet another deal with the Islamic extremists in 2006 strengthened the pro-Taliban forces even further.

But Bush chose to reward Musharraf by designating Pakistan a "Major Non-NATO Ally" in 2004 and by agreeing to sell the Pakistani Air Force 36 advanced F-16 fighter planes. Prior to that, Pakistan had been denied U.S. military technology for a decade.

In July 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda's new "safe haven" was in Pakistan's tribal areas and that the terrorist organization had reconstituted its "homeland attack capability" there. That estimate ended the fiction that the Musharraf regime was firmly committed to combating al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Had the Bush administration accurately portrayed Musharraf's policies rather than hiding them, it would not have avoided the al-Qaeda safe haven there. But it would have facilitated a more realistic debate about the real options available for U.S. policy.

(Inter Press Service)