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Friends or foes?
UK’s blunt talk |
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Getting worse
What India wants
“We regret the inconvenience…”
Organic farming is worth
it
China’s jobless numbers mount
Iraqis’ living conditions still difficult
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Friends or foes?
HOW fragile the Bharatiya Janata Party is, is borne out by the party’s reaction to former Vice-President of India Bhairon Singh Shekhawat’s decision to contest the next Lok Sabha elections. Instead of taking it in his stride, party chief Rajnath Singh went to the extent of comparing it to taking bath at a small well after an immersion in the Ganga. When Mr Shekhawat gently reminded him that the party chief was not even born when he started his political career, party leaders began scurrying for cover. After all, there was no bar on a former Vice-President contesting an election. Also, he was no longer a member of the BJP who could be disciplined by the party. The episode underlines, if anything, how insecure Mr Lal Krishna Advani, Mr Rajnath Singh and others are feeling on the eve of parliamentary elections. All that Mr Shekhawat, a veteran leader whose stature in the BJP is comparable to that of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, needed to shake his confidence was to throw his hat in the ring. Suddenly, Mr Advani, whom everybody thought was the prime ministerial candidate if the NDA won a majority in the next election, found himself driven to a corner. This is because, more than anyone else, Mr Advani knew that if there was a tie for leadership after the elections, Mr Shekhawat who is a pastmaster in building relationships cutting across party lines could even get away with the cake. That his hawkish postures in the past and the subsequent certificate of secularism he bestowed on Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah have distanced Mr Advani from many political leaders and some of the BJP’s own cadres is a truth he cannot shy away from. That is why he is feeling vulnerable to threats from a person of Mr Shekhawat’s stature. For all its boastful claims of a party in the ascendant, the BJP is a house divided against itself. Mr Shekhawat’s statement that he would like former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje to be behind bars is something which no Congress leader has uttered so far. In Uttar Pradesh, former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh’s supporters do not even allow the party nominee for Bulandshahr to visit the constituency as they believe it was he who was instrumental in the defeat of their leader in the last Lok Sabha elections. With friends and well-wishers like Mr Shekhawat and Mr Kalyan Singh, the BJP does not need enemies like the Congress.
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UK’s blunt talk
WHAT British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband said in New Delhi on Tuesday while discussing the problem of cross-border terrorism once again brought into focus the “fundamental responsibility” of Pakistan to launch a crusade against the terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT), which planned and executed the Mumbai attack on November 26. The cause and effect theory, as is cited by Pakistani leaders during any debate on terrorism, cannot be taken seriously in the case of those who have been killing and maiming innocent people on pretexts like the “unresolved issue of Jammu and Kashmir”. Those indulging in terrorist activity are enemies of humankind and they deserve no mercy from the Government of Pakistan. “The (Mumbai) attackers were part of a global terror network, whose sole belief was death and destruction”, as Mr Milliband pointed out. Pakistan cannot evade its duty to go the whole hog against the LeT, functioning under the umbrella of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and other such outfits. India has provided it enough evidence to proceed against these killer networks. It is the height of Islamabad’s irresponsibility to describe the dossier given to it by New Delhi as having little proof of the involvement of elements in Pakistan in the Mumbai carnage. A copy of the dossier has been submitted to various other countries too like the US and the UK and they are convinced that the mischief against India was the handiwork of terrorists operating from Pakistan and abetted by the LeT. Islamabad is, in fact, guilty of not honouring the commitment it has made that no territory under its control will be allowed to be used to spread terror. It deserves the severest punishment for its failure to act decisively against the terrorist networks based in Pakistan. In the case of the Mumbai attack, Pakistan has been saying that it will cooperate in the investigation of the case, but what it has been doing is just the opposite of this. Islamabad is, in fact, helping the culprits involved in the Mumbai mayhem in various ways to get off the hook. It is in no mood to hand over the guilty to India for trial here. And if they are tried in Pakistan the ends of justice cannot be met. As it is well known, Pakistan’s legal system and intentions have too many infirmities to ensure a speedy trial and punishment for the guilty men.
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Getting worse CAUGHT in a fraud of enormous proportions, the Satyam story is getting murkier by the day. It was not just a case of B. Ramalinga Raju fiddling with accounts to inflate profits and a botched bid to take over the two Maytas firms promoted by his sons. Senior officials of the company, some of whom have been declared innocent by Raju in his confession letter, knew what was coming, it seems. They offloaded 9.5 lakh Satyam shares at Rs 300-500 a share last year. Ordinary investors suffered huge losses as Raju’s admission of guilt sparked an 83 per cent plunge in the Satyam price. Insider trading at such a large scale failed to alert the regulator either. On Tuesday the government handed over the Satyam case to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, perhaps realising rather belatedly that it warranted a very serious probe. Already separate inquiries are being held by the state police, the capital markets regulator and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. On Wednesday Satyam’s new board appointed KPMG and Deloitte as its new auditors to replace the discredited PwC. The new auditors have, indeed, a daunting job ahead as they will have to verify all claims in the balance sheets and restate Satyam’s earnings for at least seven years - the period during which Raju claims to have fudged the accounts. In this dark scenario comes a silver lining. Satyam’s rivals, particularly Infosys and TCS, have displayed commendable ethical behaviour - or practical sense - by not poaching on the beleaguered firm’s top professionals or its business clients, who might be looking for a switchover. Such restraint will help Satyam to make an early fresh start. The government has committed financial aid to the troubled company, whose affairs are under scrutiny at the Prime Minister’s level. The issue is not just to save the jobs of Satyam’s 53,000 employees, but also to restore investor confidence and keep the faith of the clients. The image of the IT sector, the biggest foreign exchange earner for the country, has been damaged and needs to be restored. It would take a big effort and long time to do so.
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What is a ship but a prison? — Robert Burton |
What India wants MUMBAI has shown that India has not found a suitable antidote to stopping cross-border terrorism inflicted on it by Pakistan since the early 1990s despite the threat to go to war over it in 2002 after the attack on Parliament. Initially limited to J&K, the scourge has become an all-India menace after jihadis crossed the red line demarcating the disputed territory. This transgression went unchallenged without any politico-military response, encouraging the handlers of jihad to refine strategy and lethality of attacks. India’s tolerance of repeated assaults on its sovereignty and democracy and its overwhelming desire to accept compromise have amazed western strategic experts. Maintaining the world’s fourth largest military and security establishment that cannot protect its people is equally befuddling. The planners and perpetrators of Mumbai were convinced the mission would be accomplished easily and India would take it lying down. Two dozen major terrorist attacks in the last four years, including one against the embassy in Kabul, have left 1000 dead. Mumbai was waiting to happen; what is worse, it happened even after US intelligence agencies warned that attacks would come “from the sea against hotels and business centres in Mumbai”. Public indignation and outrage was even more severe than at the time of the attack on Parliament which led to Operation Parakram. Despite the clearest evidence ever of Pakistani complicity, the government response was tentative. As nationals of 22 countries were killed or wounded, New Delhi approached the UN, internationalising a bilateral issue, rightly highlighting the evil of terrorism. It made the usual demands: asking Islamabad to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, custody of India’s 20-most wanted, and bringing to book the handlers of the attack. The precision strike against Mumbai is attributed to elite killers of the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba, finessed by the Pakistan Army. Contrary to claims that it is cooperating with the civil government, distancing itself from politics and had severed ties with militant groups, the motive for the warlike act by the Army was to provoke a crisis and return it to centre-stage. This would allow security forces to disengage from the highly unpopular war in the West and shift the strategic focus to the Indian border. Completely surprised, India initially relied wholly on diplomacy, virtually ruling out the military route. Before the start of the Kargil war, the government had declared that the Line of Control would not be crossed. During Operation Parakram a studied ambiguity was maintained on the use of force. Foreclosing the options limits the strategic canvas forfeiting flexibility. True, the coercive diplomacy option had been exhausted in Operation Parakram even as India had a distinct military edge over Pakistan. The military option was blunted by Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail even as it pressed ahead with cross-border terrorism. To counter this India crafted first a limited war doctrine and later a cold-start operational strategy, but neither could fructify under a nuclear overhang. How to cold-start a limited war and keep it limited is the dilemma. While nuclear weapons prevent a crisis from escalating, they do not prevent a crisis from occurring. Seven years after the Parakram and several mini-crises on the way to Mumbai, cross-border terrorism thrives without any effective riposte. How is India going to get Pakistan to dismantle terrorist infrastructure, disarm, demobilise and reintegrate the jihadis in society? Only the Pakistan Army and the ISI under international pressure have any chance of doing this. The big challenge before the government is to prevent the next high profile terrorist attack before elections next year which could compound the ongoing crisis. The 2001-02 crisis was unique: there was a second major strike against a military cantonment in Kaluchak even as the two armies faced each other. War clouds, which had been deflected after the attack on Parliament by the US extracting concessions from Pakistan, including commitment to ending cross-border terrorism, suddenly reappeared after Kaluchak. This time the US and the international community shifted the focus from cross-border terrorism to a nuclear exchange and defused the crisis by securing more specific pledges from General Musharraf on ending terrorism. Now Pakistan, by heightening tension along the border, has diverted the focus from
terrorism in Mumbai to war. Take a look at the Parakram and how things were different then. A BJP-led NDA government, strong on national security and keen on settling core issues with Pakistan, was in place. Before the attack on Parliament, J&K was confronting highest levels of violence, with instability and terrorism spreading outside the state. Army Chief Gen S Padmanabhan had said that the Army was fighting one Kargil every 16 months. A top gear coercive diplomacy backed by full military deployment was launched. The military government in Pakistan was doing US bidding in Afghanistan and there was no Talibanisation of Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan was in the mopping-up phase and the Afghan Taliban had taken sanctuary on Pakistan’s western borders. While the bulk of Pakistan’s 11 and 12 Corps were still deployed in the West, India came close to crossing the red line twice in January and June 2002. War was prevented on both occasions by US diplomacy as it was not in its national interest. Today the geo-strategic picture in different. The Mumbai attack has exposed the government’s inept handling of internal security so close to elections. Yet the security situation in J&K has never been better and violence levels at an all-time low, as the high turnout in the elections has shown. Pakistan has a weak civilian minority government where the military is calling the shots. Internal insecurity is at its peak with jihadi suicide bombers roaming around freely in Punjab. With the war in Afghanistan gone horribly wrong, Pakistan’s cooperation is paramount for US- Nato forces to turn the war around. For better compliance from Pakistan, the US is likely to offer inducements on Kashmir and Afghanistan. Despite the newly crafted India-US strategic partnership, the US will be even less willing and able to prod Pakistan to concede to India’s demands. The calibrated diplomatic response has so far yielded only UN strictures against leaders of terrorist groups in Pakistan. India’s military options from surgical strikes to a limited war to a naval blockade are either too ineffective or symbolic or too dangerous. A diplomatic confrontation that drags on contains the risk of rogue elements in the Pakistan Army provoking a localised conflict with the potential to escalate. A strategic stalemate is politically the least satisfactory outcome for India unless the US can extract concessions for India as it reluctantly did in 2002. Evidence that the US has can be the key to forcing Pakistan to yield and end the crisis. But it won’t end cross-border
terrorism.
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“We regret the inconvenience…” IT was on a day in 1981 that I was returning from Thimpu after discussions with the Planning Commission of the Royal Government of Bhutan. Courtesy their Ministry of External Affairs, I was travelling by one of their swanky foreign cars, gliding along the picturesque Thimpu-Phuntsholing highway on way to Bagdogra, our airport across the Bhutan border. The car suddenly stalled 55 miles short of Phuntsholing. There was no traffic along the route and no help by way of a repair mechanic. The IAC flight was leaving Bagdogra at 2.10 p.m. I was heartened to see a similar car belonging to the Department of Architecture of the Royal Government of Bhutan on its way to Thimpu with a Senior Architect from the Government of India in it. He was one Mr Malhotra, a helpful and amiable person. He asked the driver if he could first leave him at Cheema Kothi, the project settlement of the Chuka Hydel Project and then drop me to Phuntsholing. The driver humbly declined Mr Malhotra’s suggestion for fear of being called to explain an “unauthorised” journey. Mr Malhotra’s perceptive comment was that it was we who have taught them our undue reverence for some of the less intelligible provisions of the rules for not doing a thing. With an apology he left for Thimpu. After what felt like a considerable wait, a bus on its way to Phuntsholing passed by and took me in. I was worried that I may miss the flight and have to stay the night at Bagdogra. A quick plan suggested itself to me. The Royal Government of Bhutan had a facilitation centre at Phuntsholing with an Under Secretary of their Ministry of External Affairs posted there. She had conducted me to a hotel in Phuntsholing on my way to Thimpu and to my great luck offered to help. She could not give me a regular car as those were gone to Bagdogra for receiving Bhutan Government’s ministers. But she gave me a jeep. I was not sure if the jeep would get me to Bagdogra in good time. All that now remained was to request the Bagdogra airport if they could delay the departure. With a stunning thoughtfulness she conveyed a half truth to Bagdogra airport that a guest of His Royal Majesty the King was on way and if they could delay the departure. The jeep then raced at breakneck speed, prepared to level down any obstacle on the way. Despite the best effort of the driver, we reached Bagdogra at 2.40 p.m. I was flung into the aircraft along with my baggage. As the flight took off, the airhostess rendered the customary apology about the inconvenience caused. I sat with a sense of guilt relieved by the thought that no one knew the
culprit.
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Organic farming is worth it
THE recent report of the Punjab State Farmers’ Commission (PSFC) on the relevance and feasibility of organic farming in Punjab has created a fresh debate on the subject. The report lacks research rigour and logic on many fronts. One, the report defines food security, which is used to assess the role of organic farming, as just enough food production. It does not realise that food security is not just about production and availability of food but also about access to relevant food in a hygienic food preparation and consumption environment for a healthy life. Two, the report also seems confused in its objective of locating the relevance of organic farming in the state. It keeps referring to both food security and farmers’ income. It is difficult to understand how food security, which is a national concern, becomes the mandate of a state-level farmers’ commission, which was set up to deal with the agrarian crisis in the state and not resolve the food insecurity problem. The food security argument for conventional chemical farming is no different from Monsanto’s
argument that GM crops were necessary to feed the hungry millions in the world! Three, it does not even seem familiar with many global trade and quality standards like Eurepgap and recommends Indiagap certification without realising that Eurepgap (now Globalgap) is a private collective standard set up by the retailers in Europe. How can this be replicated at the India level? Four, the report includes Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as a component of the organic farming definition, which is factually incorrect because IPM does not exclude the use of chemical inputs. Five, from a market point of view, organic farming is well defined and cannot be confused with other terms like biological farming, ecological farming or natural farming, which the report does not differentiate. Six, the report is also not well informed about many facts about organic production and trade e.g. it states that for a farm to be certified as organic, it should be managed organically for a minimum of three years. The fact is that if a farm has not used chemical inputs in the past, as shown by farm history, then it could be converted into fully organic after two years or even earlier. Otherwise, even if a farm is not certified fully organic, its produce can be sold as in-conversion produce of year one or year two. The transition period depends on the local soil and agricultural context. The report recommends organic farming in vegetables and milk due to the problem of chemical residues in these products. If that is the logic, then why not fruits, cereals, pulses and oilseeds also be produced organically? Surprisingly, the report seems to justify the adulteration of milk by producers and vendors in the name of lack of chilling facilities, which lead to the curdling of milk. So far as milk curdling is concerned, it is important to ask how other milk-producing states in India are dealing with the issue where milk production and distances involved are much larger and infrastructure is poorer. Though the report recognises the sustainability of soil health and the eco system as a crucial concern, it does not recognise the role of organic production processes in that. The report asks questions like: Does organic food taste better or is it more nutritious and safer? It does not realise that, for a product to be sold, what matters is market preference and perception, which can be created and leveraged, especially in food about which buyers/consumers are so careful and sensitive. It is not the scientific finding on taste or nutritional aspects of food which matters in the market but the preferences of buyers and consumers. Surprisingly, the report does not show any awareness of the fair and the ethical trade aspects of food and fibre markets and more so in organic food, which are so important in global markets today and these dimensions are about health – both human and animal – and environmental aspects of food production. If there is no edge in organic production, why do people pay premiums for organic food? Can one afford to say that simply because organic does not taste better than conventional, as claimed by scientific research, farmers should be deprived of an opportunity to harness such market potential? The report argues that it will not be possible to match the input requirements for organic farming due to inadequate number of animals in the state. The important question is: why can’t the number of animals be increased, especially when the report recommends large-scale organic milk production? Also, if chemical inputs could be produced by setting up high-cost plants in the past and even imported, to raise agricultural productivity, why not increase the number of animals to support organic production? The report asks: Is organic farming more profitable? This question is biased as why should one expect organic farming to be more profitable than conventional farming, especially when it has many non-business benefits like improved soil health, safer food and a better environment? Could conventional farming in the state be viable without the MSP? The report makes a sweeping statement that there is no organised market for organic produce and underplays the individual and corporate efforts at marketing of organic products. The report does not recognise the lower cost benefit of organic production and just focuses on price premiums. Were not price premiums in domestic market and export prices in the case of conventional paddy, wheat, and basmati a major factor in their viability? If the commission is so worried about profitability alone, then why recommend the controlling of burning of crop residues? The important question to ask is: Is conventional farming as practised today viable only because of subsidies on chemical inputs and the MSP or on its own? On the other hand, there are no subsidies for organic production. To that extent, the profitability comparison is unfair. It is also difficult to understand that if mainstream field crops are not viable organically, how milk, meat or eggs can be so, when all of them require organic inputs like fodder or poultry/cattle feed? Given the high conversion inefficiencies in milk products, diverting large areas for this kind of production may, in fact, go against the very purpose of ensuring food security, which the report is so concerned about unnecessarily. If organic farming is so unviable and not suitable for Punjab, why was it being promoted during the Congress regime as part of its crop diversification programme and why was it not questioned? So far as its obsession with food security is concerned, the report has not bothered to ask the question: If food production or availability was the only way to ensure food security, why has not India achieved it even today i.e. after four decades of chemical-based farming? It is saddening to note that the report is obsessed with food security and higher income for farmers as if agriculture is only about these two, and not social and ecological sustainability. It uses the arguments of labour shortage to justify the use of chemical inputs, ignoring many other ill-effects of indiscriminate use of such modern inputs e.g. in wheat, due to mechanical harvesting, wheat straw was sold at Rs 5-6 per kg. last year which was not good for the animal husbandry industry. It shows no awareness of the alternative and indigenous methods of weed and pest control like the Non Pesticidal Management (NPM) of crops. In fact, the report does not question the given cropping pattern in the state which is at the root of the present crisis. Is it not fair enough to leave it to the farmer to decide whether s/he wants to be organic, instead of a state-level body giving a mandate on this? The writer is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Management in Agriculture, IIM, Ahmedabad
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China’s jobless numbers mount FOR months, the Communist Party had been able to deflect anger about factory closings toward the companies themselves. The party managed to come off as the benevolent savior by handing out cash to make up for unpaid salaries. The strategy stopped working at the Jianrong Suitcase Factory in late December. When offered 60 percent of their wages to disband their protest and go home, the workers pushed back at riot police sent to keep them locked in their factory compound in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan. According to several witnesses, more than 100 irate workers broke through the cordon, some shouting, "There are no human rights here!" As a global recession takes hold and China's economy continues to slow, growing legions of unemployed workers are becoming increasingly bold in expressing their unhappiness — expanding a debate over how to protect the Chinese economy into long-fought disputes over other issues such as freedom of expression and equality before the law. During most of the past two decades, concerns about China's human rights record have been overshadowed by the speed of its economic development and growing political influence in the world. But as the economic crisis has grown, so, too, have challenges — both small and large — to the state's power. In late November, two men whose village was involved in a dispute over a land deal took ink-filled eggs and desecrated Communist Party and national flags in Chongqing, the largest of China's four provincial-level municipalities, in a protest that copied the infamous defacing of Mao Zedong's portrait in the capital in 1989. In December, 300 academics and other intellectuals signed a declaration of human rights known as Charter '08 that circulated on the Internet, sending Chinese authorities on a nationwide manhunt for its author. Labor rights activist Li Qiang said China's economic problems have put the spotlight on social issues that have long existed — such as the growing gap between the urban rich and the rural poor and the fight for worker rights — but were played down by the government during the recent boom. "The crisis in the West is purely economic. But in China it's a huge political problem," said Li, director of the New York-based China Labor Watch. The ripple effects of the sharp economic downturn are growing: Crime is rising, as are labor strikes by taxi drivers, teachers, factory workers and even investors unhappy that their stock market holdings are now 70 percent off their peak. Although Chinese authorities have been able to quickly disband the recent protests, there is concern that a single national-level event, if mishandled by authorities, could lead to a serious political crisis. The greatest threat may come from the newly unemployed. Unemployment is now estimated to be at its highest levels since the Communist Party took over in 1949. Job creation and preservation has become a top priority of China's leaders, who are acutely aware of the role a deteriorating economy played in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Economists say that if the growth of China's gross domestic product dips below 8 percent – a healthy rate in most countries – it would be a disaster here. The reason is that the demand for jobs would far outpace China's ability to create them. Estimates by government research agencies for urban jobless top 18 million, or 9 percent of the workforce — a rate unimaginably high to those who remember the guaranteed cradle-to-grave employment during Mao's time. This figure doesn't include the growing number of jobless among the 160 million migrant workers who are mostly employed in factories. The rural unemployment rate could be as high as 20 percent. In addition, 1 million college graduates are not expected to be able to find jobs this year. China's social security minister, Yin Weimin, has said that the employment situation in China is "critical," with people fighting for jobs that don't exist. This year as many as 24 million people will be competing for as few as 8 million newly created jobs. To combat unemployment, the Chinese government in recent weeks has reinstituted controls that in some ways turn back the clock to the "iron rice bowl" era that China has tried so hard to leave behind during 30 years of economic reforms. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
Iraqis’ living conditions still difficult Inadequate
supplies of food, water, electricity and health care have replaced security as the primary concern of Iraqi citizens, the Pentagon said in a progress report Tuesday. But nearly six years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the nation's long-term stability remains threatened by disagreements among its power brokers, the Pentagon report said. The quarterly progress report, required by Congress, was the final assessment submitted before President George W. Bush leaves office in a week. By the end of November, it says, weekly security incidents had reached their lowest point since the U.S. military began systematically counting attacks on military targets and civilians in January 2004. In Baghdad, the number of attacks declined 72 percent from the previous year. "The security environment in Iraq continues to improve as violence has dropped dramatically in the last 20 months and normal life is returning to the country," the report says. "Many residents now express greater hope for the future and are demanding a better standard of living." The Pentagon reports initially were criticized as unrealistically upbeat and became more grim over time. In the past year, as security across Iraq improved, the reports have grown more positive yet have retained a cautious tone. The basic findings of the latest report, the 14th, were broadly accepted by Iraqi experts, but some warned that the situation remained fragile and progress could be reversed as the U.S. withdraws
its forces. "There has been unmistakable progress in Iraq," said Vikram Singh, a scholar at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. "It is probably true the average Iraq now has more concerns over the quality of life rather than mere survival. The danger is none of the underlying political challenges in Iraq have been addressed." The Pentagon report acknowledges that political tensions remain and have continued to stall key pieces of legislation other than the recent U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which set the term for America's military departure. "The underlying sources of instability in Iraq have yet to be resolved," the report says. "Iraq remains fragile because its major power brokers do not share a unified national vision." The report also says that Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who has opposed the U.S. presence, has continued to transform his organization into a social and cultural movement that provides social services to Iraqis. The report says al-Sadr could be positioning himself for "reentry into Iraqi politics."
— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post |
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