THE TECTONIC SHIFT - U.S. Task Force on Support of Middle East

"Task force tackles how U.S. can support vulnerable Middle East" PBS NewsHour 3/30/2016

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SUMMARY:  There have been tectonic and tragic shifts across the Middle East and North Africa in the five years since the beginning of the Arab Spring movement, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions more displaced.  To examine the role America has played, and will play, in the region, Judy Woodruff talks to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Since the start of the Arab uprisings five years ago, we have seen a tectonic shift across the Middle East and North Africa, upending the political order of the last century.

What began with hope has dissolved into civil war, extremist violence and strife.  The human toll has been enormous, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions more displaced.  And the role the United States has played and will play in the Middle East is now being examined in depth.

One group looking at these issues is the 'Middle East Strategy Task Force' at the Atlantic Council, a think tank here in Washington.

Its co-chairs of the task force join me now.  They are former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served in the Clinton administration, and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.  He served in the George W. Bush administration.

And we welcome both of you back to the “NewsHour.”

Secretary Albright, let me start with you.

Why take on this added responsibility now co-chairing this task force?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Former Secretary of State:  Well, it's great to be with you and with my friend Steve.

The reason that we did this is because we're concerned about the fact that people are looking at the Middle East kind of in short-term ways and doing Band-Aids that have been going on, and that it was really important to take a deeper, longer look, because the issues, as you raised them, are going to take a long time to resolve.

And we needed to really take a deeper look.  We also wanted it to be bipartisan, and we looked at a number of areas.  One was the security issue, but governance issues, issues to do with religion, refugees, education, the economy.  We had papers that we did with that.

And then we went to the countries in order to really get a view of what is going on.  We also have a lot of international advisers, but part of it, Judy, is — and the way that you opened this, it is as serious and terrible as you described, but it also has whole opportunities.  And those are the things that we wanted to look at.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And that's what I want to ask you about, because you have just come back, as the secretary mentioned, from a trip to the region.

Many people look at this part of the world and they see a crisis in every country, whether it's ISIS, or a repressive leader or a refugee influx crisis.  How do you see the region?  Do you see it as a collection of problems, or a place that has a manageable set of issues that you can get your arms around?

STEPHEN HADLEY, Former National Security Adviser:  Well, it's very tough.

I mean, it is a crisis in the Middle East, but it's also a crisis from the Middle East.  And what I think people don't realize is the global consequences of this.  There are, of course, economic crises, but we have, of course, refugee flows that are taxing neighboring states.  They are a real problem for the European Union, putting enormous stress on the European Union.

There is, of course, a terrorist problem, which is increased, as we saw, with attacks on Brussels and Paris.  So it is a crisis in the Middle East.  It is a crisis from the Middle East.  It's affecting the whole country — the whole globe.

At the same time, as Madeleine pointed out, there are positive things going on.  One of the things we noticed is, youth are playing a role in their societies.  They are empowered, they are connected, they are entrepreneurial.

And you are seeing start-up commercial ventures starting.  You are seeing start-up bottom-up community organizations that are trying to solve local community problems.  There's a real bottom-up entrepreneurship that is going.

MIDEAST - Iran vs Israel

"Violence and Iranian missile tests cause havoc in Israel" PBS NewsHour 3/9/2016

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SUMMARY:  A wave of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces has left the Middle Eastern state in turmoil, further exacerbated by the recent ballistic missile tests from Iran’s hardline Republican Guard faction.  Gwen Ifill talks to Daniel Estrin of the Associated Press for more on the situation in Israel.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Vice President Biden met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders today amid a deadly spike in attacks in Israel.

Yesterday, an American war veteran and student, Taylor Force, was killed in Jaffa during a series of stabbings.  Today, after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden condemned the attacks and the apparent celebration of the tactic by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ political party.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:  The kind of violence we saw yesterday, the failure to condemn it, the rhetoric that incites that violence, the retribution that it generates, has to stop.  There can’t be — there cannot be unilateral steps to undermine trust that only takes us further away — further and further away from an outcome.

GWEN IFILL:  The vice president also responded to Iran’s test launch of ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.  The Israeli government has strongly opposed the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal reached with Iran last summer.

Biden today said, if Iran were to break the deal — quote — “We will act.”

I’m joined now by Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem, who’s covering the story for the Associated Press.

Daniel, we have seen months and months of these stabbing attacks, especially horrific.  What’s behind them?

DANIEL ESTRIN, Associated Press:  That’s a good question.

Palestinians say that it’s the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, a desperation, that there seems to be no solution and no end if sight, and no hope for a future for them.

Israeli officials say that this is a Palestinian campaign of incitement and lies fueled by social media.  And you see a lot, especially today on Twitter.  The Fatah Party, the political party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, posted a photo of a cartoon basically extolling the stabber that stabbed the American student.

NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "The Lovers" a Lesson on Theocracy

"A chronicle of Afghanistan's modern-day Romeo and Juliet" PBS NewsHour 3/7/2016

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SUMMARY:  Zakia and Ali are Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet -- with all the heartache that description implies.  Separated by religion, ethnicity and their own families, the young couple defied them all by eloping.  Rod Nordland of the New York Times chronicles their remarkable odyssey in his book, “The Lovers,” and joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the intersection of romance and religion in the Muslim world.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Zakia and Ali first came to the world’s attention in the pages of The New York Times in 2014.  Later, the paper would capture their story on video.

They had grown up on adjacent potato farms in Afghanistan’s remote mountain province of Bamiyan, playing together as children, and, as teenagers, falling in love.

ZAKIA (through interpreter):  At first, I wasn’t aware of my feelings, because I didn’t know him.  I was very young and didn’t understand these things.  When I was out in the farm fields, he wrote his cell phone number and gave it to me.  Then we talked on the phone and he said, “I love you,” and we got to know each other and started to love each other.

ALI (through interpreter):  It looked to me that it wasn’t possible for us to get together.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Indeed, it was prohibited because of the Afghan custom of arranged marriages and by Islamic law.  The two were separated by religion and ethnicity, she a Sunni and Tajik, he a Shiite and Hazara.

When their love became known, the couple, especially Zakia, faced condemnation, beatings and later the threat of death from her family.

ROD NORDLAND, Author, “The Lovers”:  Her family were not wealthy, but they were big and they were numerous.  And they — on their side, in their quest to kill her, they had a very powerful weapon, and that was the knowledge that nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for an honor killing in Afghanistan.

JEFFREY BROWN:  A new book tells the story.

It’s called “The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet,” by New York Times Kabul bureau chief Rod Nordland.  Nordland wrote the original article and a number of follow-ups.

We met recently at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., as a new exhibition on Afghanistan art, Turquoise Mountain, was being installed.

Nordland told me he'd been looking for a way to report on so-called honor killings, the murder of young women by their own families for causing them shame.
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ROD NORDLAND:  When it comes to a lot of these abusive customary practices, that’s right.  They’re still as prevalent as they once were.

Honor killing, child brides, the practice of baad, when a little girl is sold to pay a family debt, often a debt for some moral crime that a male relative has carried out.  It would be unfair to say there hasn’t been improvement, because there are millions of girls in schools that didn’t exist during the Taliban time.

Still, when you look at the metrics, Afghanistan still remains the worst place in the world to be born a woman, in life expectancy, maternal mortality, anything.  And you look at it, and that’s pretty shocking, considering the investment that we have tried to make in bettering women’s lives.

COMMENT:  This should be a warning against the extreme Christian Conservative movement to force everyone to abide by their beliefs (gay marriage, abortion, etc).

WAR ON ISIS - Child Suicide Bombers

 "ISIS is recruiting more children to carry out massacres" PBS NewsHour 3/3/2016

aka "Child Murders"

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SUMMARY:  A new report found there were three times as many suicide attacks in the Middle East committed by children this year compared to last.  Experts blame Islamic State propaganda that glorifies martyrdom for indoctrinating orphaned and disaffected children to extremist views.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Mia Bloom of Georgia State University for more on the changing face of Islamic terrorism.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  A new report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point chronicles the increasing use of children as fighters for the so-called Islamic State.

The report’s authors, based at Georgia State University in Atlanta, documented the Islamic State’s own propaganda, which praises deceased young fighters as martyrs.  It shows how the group uses children and youth in suicide operations.  They found three times as many suicide attacks involving young people in January of this year than last year.

For more on the study’s findings and what they mean, we’re joined by one of the report’s authors, professor Mia Bloom.

Problem Bloom, unfortunately, child soldiers aren’t anything new.  So, how is ISIS using them differently?

MIA BLOOM, Georgia State University:  So, we started our study with a baseline looking at the literature on child soldiers, looking at biographies and autobiographies of people who had been child soldiers, in order to get a sense of what we thought we might expect.

And so we expected that children would be used when they ran out of adults or when they couldn’t find adults, or that children would be used against civilian targets.  And we didn’t find either of those.  Instead, what we found was that children in ISIS are used alongside the adults, not instead, and, in fact, only 3 percent of the time were children used against civilian targets; 61 percent of the time, they were going after what we would call hard targets, military, police, militias, and the army.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  So they’re doing just what the grownups do.

MIA BLOOM:  They’re doing exactly what the grownups do, and, in fact, we found considerably more suicide bombers than anyone expected.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And you said — you actually break it down; 39 percent are driving basically car bombs?

MIA BLOOM:  Thirty-nine percent were car bombs.  These were vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, so it’s a VBIED.

But many of the children were also wearing what we would call a suicide belt, which is an individual IED that is attached to them, so they were part of these marauding raids, these inghimasi, so they would go into the target, shoot and then blow up the IED or the suicide belt at the end of the operation.

MIDEAST - While Syria Burns

"Russian airstrikes continue despite fragile Syrian cease-fire agreement" PBS NewsHour 2/12/2016

You didn't actually expect Russia to honor the agreement, in fact there was a built-in loop-hole.

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SUMMARY:  Seventeen nations led by the U.S. and Russia offered a Syrian cease-fire agreement in Munich Friday, to be enacted in one week.  But Russian airstrikes in the region have continued unabated, President Bashar al-Assad is still vowing to retake all of Syria, and rebel groups, who were not part of negotiations, may be reluctant to comply.  Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports.

MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour):  Moreover, the agreement allows continued airstrikes against ISIS and similar terror groups.  That provision could let Russia continuing attacking any rebel groups fighting against its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

It’s a point not lost on rebels on the ground today.

MAN (through interpreter):  I do not like the idea of cease-fire, because it might be for our benefit only for a short period of time.  But the things we’re watching right now, including airstrikes in the northern and southern rural areas or in the liberated areas that we are in, this is not called cease-fire.

MARGARET WARNER:  As if to confirm it, Assad told Agence France-Presse in an interview yesterday, before the deal was announced, that he means to retake the whole of Syria.   He said: “This is a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation.  It makes no sense for us to say that we will give up any part.”

Indeed, the Syrian military and its allies, backed by Iran and by the Russian airstrikes, are now on the verge of cutting off Aleppo, the country’s largest city.  They have severed all but one of the rebels’ vital supply lines to the north from Turkey, and continue gaining ground.  That would leave Assad stronger than he has been in years.

All this leaves the various rebel factions in a precarious position.  They were not part of the Munich agreement and must now decide whether to abide by what was approved there.  Today, the main opposition umbrella group, which supports the cease-fire generally, called this one a weak agreement.

An adviser for the group predicted the Russians will intensify their bombing in the coming days, telling the “NewsHour”: “The Russians are setting the pace on the ground and they still will.  The agreement weakens us and moderate allies, while allowing Assad to set the terms.”

IRAN DEALS - The New vs Old Sanctions

"New Iran sanctions appear as old sanctions lift for nuclear deal compliance" PBS NewsHour 1/18/2016

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SUMMARY:  Many sweeping sanctions ended with the news that Iran's nuclear program has complied with a landmark agreement.  But a new round of limited sanctions were announced Sunday in response to an October missile test that violated a United Nations ban.  In addition, Iran released four Iranian-Americans in a trade for seven Iranians held in the U.S. Hari Sreenivasan reports.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The new sanctions aimed at Iran’s ballistic missile program sparked fresh criticism from Tehran, after a weekend of milder words.

HOSSEIN JABERI ANSARI, Spokesman, Iranian Foreign Ministry (through interpreter):  The Islamic republic of Iran, as it has made clear in the past, will respond to such acts of propaganda and harassment by following its legitimate missile program more seriously and boosting its defensive and national security capabilities.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The limited sanctions announced Sunday followed a missile test in October that violated a United Nations ban.  Far more sweeping sanctions are ending, after Saturday’s announcement that Iran’s nuclear program has complied with a landmark agreement.

President Obama hailed the accord’s formal implementation in a Sunday appearance at the White House.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  Under the nuclear deal that we, our allies and partners reached with Iran last year, Iran will not get its hands on a nuclear bomb.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Under the agreement, Iranian technicians removed the reactor core at the Arak nuclear site, effectively ending its production of plutonium for a possible weapon.  The regime also cut the number of centrifuges at its Fordow and Natanz sites for enriching uranium.  And it shipped tons of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia.

As the nuclear deal came to full power, Iran released four imprisoned Iranian-Americans.  They include Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saeed Abedini.  Rezaian, Hekmati and Abedini are now undergoing physical and psychological evaluations at the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.  Family members gathered there today to be reunited.

MIDEAST - Iran vs Saudi Arabia

"How does the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict affect Mideast diplomacy?" PBS NewsHour 1/4/2016

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SUMMARY:  Why did Saudi Arabia execute a prominent Shiite cleric if it knew that it would inflame tensions with Iran?  Judy Woodruff gets analysis of what that rivalry means for the region from Vali Nasr of John Hopkins University and Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now we return to the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

I’m joined by Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute.  And we welcome you both.

Randa Slim, to you first, why did the Saudis execute this cleric whom they had imprisoned already for several years?

RANDA SLIM, Middle East Institute:  This is a crisis that needs to be looked at through the context of an ongoing rivalry for power between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

And this execution is a message from the Saudis to Iran, but also it’s a message to its own domestic constituency.  But I think the crisis that has been caused by this execution is primarily driven by domestic factors.

We have two regimes in this case in Saudi Arabia and Iran that are acting out of fear and out of feelings of insecurity about the long-term stability of the regime.  And they are using this crisis as a way to consolidate power and support internally and to send messages also regionally.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, Vali Nasr, the Saudis had to know that this would inflame and anger Iran.

VALI NASR, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University:  Yes, they did.

And this came after another crisis which followed the death of several hundred Iranian pilgrims during a tragedy in Mecca last year.  The relations got very tense.  Both sides accused one another of bad intentions.  And Iran had also warned about the killing of this cleric, and so had the United States.

And the killing of a cleric, particularly Shia Islam, is not a trivial matter.  And the Saudis knew that this — killing a Shia cleric is not like killing any other Shia activist.  And I think Randa is absolutely correct that there was a domestic factor.  This execution case came a few days after the Saudis announced their first austerity package internally as a consequence of reduction of oil prices.

It also came regionally right after the United States first included Iran in the Vienna process.  And then the Shia government in Iraq, with American and Iranian support, recaptured Ramadi.  It looked like the Iranians were actually on much of an upswing in the region than the Saudis were.  So, it’s also a signal.  In addition to the domestic policy, it’s a signal to the United States as well.

"A view from Iran on heightened conflict with Saudi Arabia" PBS NewsHour 1/5/2016

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SUMMARY:  As the diplomatic fallout continues over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric and the ensuing destructive protests, how does Iran see the crisis?  William Brangham talks to Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times.

MIDEAST - Arab World vs ISIS

"What role should Mideast countries play in Islamic State fight?" PBS NewsHour 9/18/2014

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HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Joining me now to explore that is former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher.  He’s now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace and author of “The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism.”   Robin Wright is a journalist and author who has reported extensively on the Arab world and neighboring Iran.  She’s also a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center.  And Nader Hashemi is director for the Center for Mideast Studies at the University of Denver.

Marwan, I want to start with you.

This week, the Obama administration has been laying out the case to try and drum up support for the U.S. plan against the Islamic State.  How much support is there in Jordan, where you are?

MARWAN MUASHER, Former Foreign Minister, Jordan:  There’s a lot of support in Jordan against, you know, ISIS.  That doesn’t mean, of course, again boots on the ground in the case of the Jordanians, but it will mean a lot of intelligence support, a lot of logistical support, a lot of support that we have seen before, when Jordan cooperated with the Americans against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the predecessor of I.S. in Iraq in 2007.

So, you can expect much of that support again.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Nader Hashemi, what’s your take on the people and the leaders in the Middle East and how much they support the U.S. plan?

NADER HASHEMI, University of Denver:  Well, I think one always has the make that distinction between the people and the leaders of the Middle East, because what the people want is not always reflected in sort of official elite position.

I think there’s, you know, always the back drop of the legacy of external intervention, the legacy of colonialism, and more recently the legacy of the disaster of the Iraq war.  People, I think, are very feared of a repeat in — of that scenario playing itself out if this intervention goes badly wrong.

And there is also, I think, just the general sort of uncertainty and lack of clarity in terms of what Obama’s long-term strategy for the region is, because he seems to have been sending signals in recent years that he really wasn’t interested in investing any time and attention in the Middle East.  He wanted to pivot to Asia.  He wanted to reduce the American footprint, all for very good reasons.

And then his whole strategy with respect to the bloodletting and the disaster in Syria has raised a lot of questions just about where Obama stands, what his grand strategy is.  So, I think there’s a lot of sort of deep concern, both at the popular level and also at the governmental level, with respect to what comes next.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 8/29/2014

"Shields and Brooks on Islamic State as ‘cancer,’ Crist’s campaign" PBS
NewsHour 8/29/2014

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the week’s top news, including the threat of the Islamic State, the struggle to unify allies in the Mideast, the prospects of immigration reform and the Florida gubernatorial race.