[Kabar-indonesia] IHT: Jihad Is a Global Fad [+Kissinger: Tehran's Choice]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

also IHT by Henry A. Kissinger: Now Tehran's Choice Is Cast 
in Starker Terms; IHT: Iran: Money Can't Buy Us Democracy;
and Asia Times: Tehran teeters on the path to war

International Herald Tribune
August 1, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

Jihad Is a Global Fad  

by Jessica Stern 
The Boston Globe

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts 
 
The images coming out of Qana, Lebanon - where dozens of women and children 
were crushed in an Israeli raid during the weekend - are heart-shattering. 
Exposed to those images, many of us have difficulty getting back to our workaday 
lives. We look at our own children with new awe and realize how lucky they - 
and we - are.
 
Nonetheless, we are plagued by new fears. This summer we are learning, yet 
again, a lesson that human beings seem doomed perpetually to forget: Violence, 
once unleashed, seems to create its own evil momentum. Those who attack others, 
even in self-defense, must be prepared for the collateral damage that 
inevitably ensues. That damage is measured, not just in childrens' lives, but also in 
damaged souls, on all sides of the conflict. But today, we must calculate a 
new form of collateral damage, which is the way that cynical terrorists 
capitalize on military mistakes. And whatever we learn about what really happened at 
Qana or at Haditha or at Abu Ghraib, there is little doubt that the terrorists 
will benefit.
 
Terrorists often start out as "true believers" who are seduced and sometimes 
victimized by a bad idea. The images coming out of Qana are a gift to the 
terrorists who aim to spread the false idea that the West is deliberately aiming 
to destroy the Islamic world, deliberately striving to harm and humiliate 
Muslims.
 
The only way to understand how this phenomenon works is to hang out with 
Muslim youths and talk to them. I have done quite a bit of that in various parts 
of the world in Western cities, in Palestinian slums, and in Pakistani 
madrasas. And what I've learned is this: Jihad has become a global fad, rather like 
gangsta rap. It is a fad that feeds on images of dead children.
 
Most of the youth attracted to the jihadi idea would never become terrorists, 
just as few of the youths who listen to gangsta rap would commit the kinds of 
lurid crimes the lyrics would seem to promote. But among many Muslim youths, 
especially in Europe, jihad is a cool way of expressing dissatisfaction with a 
power elite whether that elite is real or imagined; whether power is held by 
totalitarian monarchs or by liberal parliamentarians. And we should not assume 
jihad is a Middle Eastern or European problem. The idea is spreading here in 
America as well.
 
Jihad has become a millenarian movement with mass appeal, similar, in many 
ways, to earlier global movements such as the anarchists of the 19th century or 
even the peace movement of the 1960s and '70s. But today's radical youth are 
expressing their dissatisfaction with the status quo by making war, not love. 
They are seduced by Thanatos rather than Eros. Newly-wed pro-jihadi youths 
spend their wedding nights watching today's ghoulish pornography: the beheadings 
of foreigners held hostage in Iraq. Children film themselves reenacting these 
beheadings, seduced by a familiar drama of the good guys killing the bad guys 
in order to save the world.
 
There is an appeal to an identity of victimhood: If I am a victim of someone 
else's bad actions, I have an excuse for not meeting expectations - my own or 
others'. There is an appeal to righteous indignation. There is an appeal to 
avenging wrongs visited on the weak by the strong. The narrative will be more 
seductive if moral questions seem to have easy answers, if good and evil can be 
easily distinguished, if perpetrators and victims stand out in stark relief, 
and if they never trade places, as they often do in the real world.
 
And the West sometimes plays right into the hands of terrorist ideologues, 
whose success depends not only on the appeal of the narrative they weave, but 
also their ability to illustrate it with facts, or at least pictures that appear 
to be facts. Iraq, alas, is producing many of the pictures the terrorists 
need. Qana is an added boon.
 
To win this war, Americans need to understand that we are fighting an idea, 
not a state. Military action minimally visible and carefully planned and 
implemented may be necessary to win today's battles. But the tools required in the 
long run to win the war are neither bombs nor torture chambers. They are ideas 
and stories that counter the terrorist narrative - and draw potential recruits 
away from the lure of jihad.
 
Jessica Stern, a lecturer on terrorism at Harvard University, is author of 
"Terror in 
the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill." This article first appeared 
in The Boston Globe.
 
------------------------------------------

International Herald Tribune
August 1, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

Now Tehran's choice is cast in starker terms  

by Henry A. Kissinger 
Tribune Media Services

NEW YORK Iran II
 
The world's attention is focused on the fighting in Lebanon and the Gaza 
Strip, but the context leads inevitably back to Iran.
 
Unfortunately, the diplomacy dealing with that issue is constantly 
outstripped by events. While explosives are raining on Lebanese and Israeli towns, and 
Israel reclaims portions of Gaza, the proposal to Iran of last May by the 
so-called Six (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) for 
negotiations on its nuclear weapons program still awaits an answer.
 
It is possible that Tehran reads the almost pleading tone of some 
communications addressed to it as a sign of weakness and irresolution. Or perhaps the 
violence in Lebanon may have produced second thoughts among the mullahs regarding 
the risks in courting and triggering crisis.
 
However the tea leaves are read, the current Near Eastern upheaval could 
become a turning point. Iran may come to appreciate the law of unintended 
consequences.
 
For their part, the Six can no longer avoid dealing with the twin challenges 
that Iran imposes. On the one hand, the quest for nuclear weapons represents 
Iran's reach for modernity via the power symbol of the modern state; at the 
same time, this claim is put forward by a fervent kind of Muslim extremism that 
has kept the Muslim Middle East unmodernized for centuries.
 
This conundrum can be solved without conflict only if Iran adopts a modernism 
consistent with international order and a view of Islam compatible with 
peaceful coexistence.
 
Heretofore, the Six have been vague about their response to an Iranian 
refusal to negotiate, except for unspecific threats of sanctions through the UN 
Security Council. But if a deadlock leads to de facto acquiescence in the Iranian 
nuclear program, prospects for international order will dim everywhere. Every 
country, especially those composing the Six, will face growing threats, be 
they increased domestic pressure from radical Islamic groups, terrorist acts or 
the nearly inevitable conflagrations sparked by the proliferation of weapons of 
mass destruction.
 
A modern, strong, peaceful Iran, by contrast, could become a pillar of 
stability and progress in the region.
 
This cannot happen unless Iran's leaders decide between representing a cause 
or a nation, whether their basic motivation is crusading or international 
cooperation. The goal of the diplomacy of the Six should be to oblige Iran to 
confront this choice.
 
Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of 
its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks. It is 
often asserted that what is needed in relation to Iran is a diplomacy comparable 
to that which, in the 1970s, moved China from hostility to cooperation with 
the United States. But China was not persuaded by skillful diplomacy to enter 
this process. Rather, China was brought, by a decade of escalating conflict with 
the Soviet Union, to a conviction that the threat to its security came less 
from capitalist America than from the growing concentration of Soviet forces on 
its northern borders.
 
The contribution of American diplomacy was to understand the significance of 
these events and to act on that knowledge. The Nixon administration did not 
persuade China that it needed to change its priorities. Its role was to convince 
China that implementing its strategic necessities was safe and would enhance 
China's long- term prospects.
 
The challenge of the Iranian negotiation is far more complex. Iran has 
reacted to the American offer to enter negotiations with taunts and has inflamed 
tensions in the region. Even if the Hezbollah raids from Lebanon into Israel were 
not planned in Tehran, they would not have occurred had their perpetrators 
thought them inconsistent with Iranian strategy.
 
Iran has not yet made the choice of the world it seeks - or it has made the 
wrong choice from the point of view of international stability.
 
The crisis in Lebanon could mark a watershed if it confers a sense of urgency 
to the diplomacy of the Six and a note of realism to the attitudes in Tehran.
 
Up to now, Iran has been playing for time. The mullahs seem to seek to 
accumulate as much nuclear capability as possible so that, even were they to suspend 
enrichment, they will be in a position to use the threat of resuming their 
weapons effort as a means to enhance their clout in the region.
 
The Six will have to be prepared to act decisively before the process of 
technology makes the objective of stopping uranium enrichment irrelevant.
 
Well before that point is reached, sanctions will have to be agreed on. To be 
effective, they must be comprehensive; half-hearted, symbolic measures 
combine the disadvantage of every course of action.
 
We must learn from the North Korean negotiations not to engage in a process 
involving long pauses to settle disagreements within the administration and 
within the negotiating group, while the other side adds to its nuclear potential.
 
A suspension of uranium enrichment should not be the end of the process. A 
next step should be the elaboration of a global system of nuclear enrichment in 
designated centers around the world under international control - as proposed 
for Iran by Russia. This would ease implications of discrimination against 
Iran and establish a pattern for the development of nuclear energy without a 
crisis with each entrant into the nuclear field.
 
But it will not be possible to draw a line between nuclear negotiations and a 
comprehensive review of Iran's overall relations to the rest of the world. 
The legacy of the hostage crisis, the decades of isolation and the messianic 
aspect of the Iranian regime represent vast obstacles to such a diplomacy.
 
If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with 
contemporary Islamic fervor, a collision with America - and, indeed, with its 
negotiating partners of the Six - is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to 
fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of 
the world.
 
At the same time, an Iran concentrating on the development of the talents of 
its people and the resources of its country should have nothing to fear from 
the United States. Hard as it is to imagine that Iran, under its present 
president, will participate in an effort that would require it to abandon its 
terrorist activities or its support for such instruments as Hezbollah, this 
awareness should emerge from the process of diplomacy. Such an approach would imply 
the redefinition of the objective of regime change, providing an opportunity for 
a genuine change in direction by Iran, whoever is in power.
 
It is important to express such a policy in precise objectives capable of 
transparent verification. A geopolitical dialogue is not a substitute for an 
early solution of the nuclear enrichment crisis. That must be addressed 
separately, rapidly and firmly.
 
But a great deal depends on whether a strong stand on that issue is 
understood as the first step in the broader invitation to Iran to return to the wider 
world. For that very reason, America has an obligation to explore every 
honorable alternative.
 
Henry A. Kissinger heads the consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. This 
article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.
 
---------------------------------------

International Herald Tribune
August 1, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

Iran: Money Can't Buy Us Democracy  

Akbar Ganji 
The New York Times

TEHRAN 
 
In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress for $75 
million to help Iran's democratic opposition. In Iran, her request was widely 
discussed in the news media and in opposition circles. It became particularly 
controversial after an article in The New Yorker on March 6 suggested that this 
money might be used in an attempt to change the regime in Tehran with the help of 
Iranian democrats, particularly those living abroad.
 
I was freed from prison amid these discussions. For six years, I had been 
behind bars on account of investigative articles I had written about the 
assassinations of dissident intellectuals.
 
On numerous occasions, my interrogators accused me, and the entire opposition 
to clerical rule, of being dependent on the United States. They even claimed 
that CIA agents with suitcases full of dollars routinely came to Tehran to 
distribute cash to members of the opposition, including reformists who supported 
the former president, Mohammad Khatami. Some of the interrogators took these 
propaganda claims seriously and asked prisoners about the location of these 
dollar-filled suitcases.
 
While the pledge of American money may have added to the regime's anxieties 
about its future, it has done nothing to help the democratic movement. The 
battle between freedom and despotism in Iran remains unresolved for deeply 
internal reasons. It is, I am convinced, a problem with profound historical and 
cultural roots.
 
We have learned from our history that despotism can be imported, and that 
despotic rulers can survive with the help of outsiders. But we have also learned 
that we have to gain our freedom ourselves, and that only we can nourish that 
freedom and create a political system that can sustain it.
 
Ours is a difficult struggle; it could even be a long one. Anyone who claims 
to possess a golden formula for bringing freedom to Iran, and claims that all 
he needs is foreign cash and foreign help to put his plan into effect, is a 
swindler.
 
What we need in our fight for freedom is not foreign aid but conditions that 
would allow us to focus all of our energies on the domestic struggle and to 
rest assured that no one is encouraging the regime's oppression. We need to know 
that no one is providing the regime with new technologies for filtering the 
Internet, and that no one is making deals with the regime that give it 
financial support or psychological succor.
 
Surely, we need the moral and spiritual support of all the world's forces for 
peace and freedom. We hope these forces will be relentless in criticizing any 
policy that, under the guise of ending the crisis in the region, only fans 
its flames.
 
The United States could better spend its $75 million on developing centers 
for Iranian studies in American universities, thus advancing the world's 
understanding of Iran and the Middle East, both in the past and in the present. Of 
course, American universities already have many first-class scholars on Iran, 
Islam and the Orient. The problem then lies in the vision that impedes the use 
of this knowledge and instead insists on immediate results.
 
That same vision, and the search for immediate results, led the United States 
to give large sums of money to the Islamic fundamentalists who converged from 
all over the world in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviet Union, 
America's chief rival at the time. The rest is history.
 
Freedom-loving Iranians inside and outside the country are against American 
military intervention in Iran. Such a war would be of no help in our fight for 
freedom; in fact, it would only contribute to our further enslavement, as the 
regime would use war as an excuse to suppress any and all voices of opposition.
 
The American policy of confronting the Iranian regime's nuclear adventurism 
is correct. But the rationale for opposing this adventurism should not be that 
the mullahs oppose the West and the United States. The West's double standard 
on nonproliferation is not defensible. The entire Middle East must be declared 
a nuclear-free zone. Opposition to the dangerous process that has begun in 
the region - a process that the Islamic Republic has helped turn into a crisis - 
must be based on a more general call first for regional, then for global, 
nuclear disarmament.
 
In July I traveled to the United States to offer a view of Iran altogether 
different from the one presented by the mullahs. Many Iranians want freedom; we 
fight for it, and we do not fear prison and oppression. Our demand is for a 
secular, democratic political system in Iran. Many of the Iranian people, who 
are incidentally deeply devout, support this demand.
 
The best help the world can offer us is to listen to the different voices of 
our society, and when forming a policy toward Iran or an image of its people, 
do not reduce our country to the regime that rules it most brutally.
 
Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist, is the author of a forthcoming 
collection of writings on Iran's democratic movement. This article was translated 
from the Persian.
 
----------------------------------------

Asia Times
Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Tehran teeters on the path to war

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi 

The United Nations Security Council's new resolution on Iran gives Tehran 
until the end of August to suspend all uranium-enrichment-related activities or 
face the prospect of international sanctions, an ultimatum instantly denounced 
by Iran as illegal and unjustified. This means that Iran now faces a double 
crisis, given Israel's military onslaught against its strategic ally in Lebanon, 
Hezbollah. 

Thus, contrary to what has become an article of faith in the Western media, 
about Iran somehow gaining influence due to the war in Lebanon, the exact 
opposite may be in the works, particularly if Israel's latest claim of destroying 
most of Hezbollah's rockets turns out to be true. 

For the moment, the fog of war disallows anything more than a  provisional 
conclusion with respect to how this war impacts Iran, its external relations 
and nets of alliances in the region and beyond. 

The uncertainties of war, ie, whether or not it will culminate in a quagmire 
or decisive Israeli victory subsequently bolstered by an international buffer 
force that would prevent Hezbollah's future role as a deterrent shield for 
Iran in the event of a foreign attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, give rise to 
different scenarios, each of which contains a certain plus and minus for Iran. 

One scenario, hoped for by Iran, is that a ceasefire will be put in place 
whereby Hezbollah can claim victory, after having withstood the ferocious 
bombardments and the ground attacks (which it has defended against rather admirably 
so far). 

But given Israel's unwillingness to halt the war even for 48 hours, after the 
massacre of civilians in Qana giving rise to the United States' premature 
statement that Israel had consented to the temporary halt, clearly shows Israel's 
determination to prevent even a tiny yet tangible step toward this scenario. 
It is pushing instead for a clear and unambiguous victory aimed at Hezbollah's 
military disintegration. 

While most likely Israel will not get its ultimate wish granted, and will 
ultimately have to settle with a much-diminished Hezbollah at the end of the 
military campaign, nonetheless its current efforts are dealing a huge blow to an 
important edifice of Iran's deterrent strategy. 

Only by resorting to an inverse logic can we possibly consider as a gain what 
is clearly a net loss for Iran, seeing how Iran will be prevented in the 
future from counting on Hezbollah to strike back at Israel in the aftermath of a 
showdown with either Israel or the United States. 

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that there are strong voices of concern 
within Iran's ruling establishment, some claiming the war in Lebanon as a 
victory for Israel, with serious negative ramifications for Iran's "national 
security and even her territorial sovereignty", to quote Ali Montaseri, an Iranian 
penning in Baztab.com, a website closely linked to President Mahmud 
Ahmadinejad. 

Another commentator, Seyed Salaman Safavi, has similarly written, "If Israel 
triumphs in this battle, not only the nuclear dossier, but also the 
territorial integrity of Iran will be jeopardized." 

Increasingly, the military leaders of Iran, particularly in the Revolutionary 
Guard, can be heard warning of Iran's direct entanglement in the conflict. 
Led by the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they have 
denounced the United States' call for Hezbollah's disarmament and any North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization role in Lebanon, calling instead for an immediate 
ceasefire, return of refugees and exchange of prisoners. 

At the same time, Iran is not blind to the strategic setback caused by the 
asymmetrical war in Lebanon, vesting its hopes on Hezbollah's ability to deter 
the invading Israeli army or, at a minimum, to drag the enemy into a protracted 
guerrilla warfare reminiscent of the 1982-2000 campaign that culminated in 
Israel's departure - the "day of infamy" in Israel's history, per an editorial 
in the Jerusalem Post back then. 

Meanwhile, the question of Syria, and the current US efforts to wrest 
Damascus away from Tehran, is also disquieting Tehran, dampened at the same time both 
by the United States' and Israel's inability to offer anything seriously 
tangible on the table to Syria; as well as by Syria's own security concerns 
reinforcing its alliance with Tehran. 

Thus so many of Iran's moves and counter-moves are linked to developments in 
the Lebanese theater of conflict, and here fears and opportunities go 
hand-in-hand. 

Whereas a stalemate or even quagmire may benefit Iran's position with respect 
to the nuclear crisis, the obverse possibility of Hezbollah's substantial 
weakening, not to mention the squeeze on Damascus, will translate into a more 
vulnerable Iran confronted with the distinct possibility that Phase 1 of a 
multi-stage conflict with the US and Israel has already started in Lebanon and Gaza. 

On a related note, historian Immanuel Wallerstein has predicted that Israel's 
military gambit in Lebanon will prove to be a "catastrophic blunder" 
paralleling the United States' predicament in Iraq. This is a distinct possibility, if 
the net of Israel's ground invasion expands, as it has almost on a daily 
basis, one that Iran is banking on to happen. But the chances are reasonably high 
that Israel, learning from the past, will ultimately frustrate Tehran's hopes 
by making it a limited war followed by an international buffer that would tie 
the hands of whatever fighting was left in Hezbollah. 

What is to be done? 

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made a last-ditch 
attempt to forestall the Security Council resolution on Iran's nuclear program by 
threatening that the international package of incentives currently under 
consideration would no longer be considered if the said resolution were adopted. 

Faced with the grim prospect of UN sanctions in the months ahead, Iran is now 
grappling with one of the most important decisions of its post-revolutionary 
government. 

The package contains several "positive aspects", per the admission of Iran's 
chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, and Iran may blame itself in the future if 
things turn for the worse and the opportunity to seize on the package of 
incentives, such as the offer of nuclear assistance, entry to the World Trade 
Organization, and the like, is lost. Certainly, Iran's economy would benefit 
enormously if the incentives were fully implemented. 

But where will the road lead if Iran rejects the proposal and the UN's 
ultimatum? Most likely to a new round of Iran's global isolation, something dreaded 
by nearly all of its top politicians. Can it be avoided? Can Iran somehow come 
up with a middle answer that would reflect a new flexible response? In terms 
of this it would agree to a "voluntary and non-legally binding" suspension of 
its sensitive nuclear activities short of appeasing the other side entirely. 

And if so, what would this middle path look like and, more important, would 
it be enough? 

As the debate rages on inside Iran, which had until now leaned more and more 
in favor of rejecting the US-led demand to give up its budding nuclear fuel 
cycle, the discussions have now focused on national-security interests and 
concerns, in light of the conflict in Lebanon. 

In fact, privately some Iranian politicians consider a near-future attack on 
Iran all but a foregone conclusion, and are trying to determine what the 
appropriate (preemptive) response should be. 

Their growing security anxiety is partly fed by the realization that the 
Western governments and media have succeeded to some extent in pinning the 
conflict in Lebanon on Iran, by accusing it of masterminding Hezbollah's "reckless 
adventure" of July 11, when its fighters crossed the blue line and attacked an 
Israeli patrol. 

Yet given the lethal weight of Israel's massive and disproportionate 
response, Iran cannot afford to risk its national interests by following a hardline 
policy that would pave the way to the nightmare military-confrontation scenario. 

The voices of moderation are currently heard in tandem with the hawkish 
voices, calling for Iran's exit from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and 
direct military involvement against Israel in the region, and it is too soon to 
tell which voices will prevail. 

What is certain, however, is that there is no magic solution to the double 
crisis, and every scenario has pros and cons, which are hard to pre-calculate in 
the midst of a regional conflict clearly not yet even half over. 

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in 
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's 
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 
2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential 
latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: 
Debating Facts Versus Fiction. 

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us 
about sales, syndication and republishing .) 
   
------------------------------------------
Joyo Indonesia News Service
------------------------------------------