Made in the USA?

Focus On Mideast Arms Flow

U.S. and Israel, fearing a renewal of fighting, press other countries to ensure that their weaponry doesn't get into Hezbollah's hands.
By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2006

WASHINGTON — The United States and Israel have launched a diplomatic effort to prevent other countries from helping rearm Hezbollah, warning that a resumption of the weapons flow could reignite fighting in Lebanon just as the cease-fire takes hold.

Officials have pressed major world arms suppliers — notably Russia and China — to ensure that their weaponry doesn't find its way to the Lebanese militant group. They also have urged Turkish officials to prevent any flow of weapons across their land or airspace.

Israeli officials, who were jolted by the sophistication of Hezbollah's missiles during the 34-day war, fear that the militant group could procure weapons with an even greater reach into Israel and overcome its defenses. Israeli officials have made it clear that they would try to destroy any shipment they detected, although such an attack probably would bring a Hezbollah retaliation and set off new fighting.

"We're very concerned about this issue," said one Israeli official who declined to be identified. "It's the most urgent one on the table right now."

The stepped-up effort by U.S. and Israeli officials to cut the weapons flow to Hezbollah came as U.N. officials appealed Friday for greater European participation in an expanded multinational force for Lebanon. President Bush urged France to increase its pledge of 200 troops to augment its troops already serving in Lebanon.

"France has said they'd send some troops," Bush said at Camp David. "We hope they send more."

Italy, meanwhile, formally agreed Friday to contribute troops to the Lebanon force. The government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the number had not yet been determined, but officials previously said they might send as many as 3,000 soldiers, a contingent that probably would be one of the largest.

As Israel sought to stem the flow of more advanced munitions to militant fighters, officials disclosed Friday that a senior Israeli delegation visited Moscow this week to complain that Russia had sold sophisticated laser-guided Kornet antitank weapons to Iran and Syria, which in turn passed them along to Hezbollah. Iran and Syria are the main backers of the group. Russia disputed the charge, saying it kept tight controls on such sales.

Turkish and Chinese diplomats could not be reached for comment Friday.

David Schenker, a former top Pentagon policy aide on issues pertaining to the Middle East, said attempts to halt the arms flow would face difficulties.

He said Russia and China had been inconsistent in their support of such efforts. Now, with China eager to maintain its close relationship with Iran, a key oil supplier to the energy-hungry Asian nation, hopes of persuading Beijing to bar weapons transfers "is a longshot at best," he said.

U.S. officials are asking that arms sales to countries such as Syria and Iran be accompanied by restrictions on resales and transfers, especially to groups such as Hezbollah. U.S. officials also may use diplomatic incentives — support for Turkey's goal of European Union membership, for instance — in pressing their case.

U.S. officials acknowledged that they had talked to Turkey about cutting off the shipment of arms by Iran across its territory, a route used this summer after Israeli forces cut off the usual land and sea routes from Syria into Lebanon.

Acting on suspected weapons transfers, Turkey twice forced Iranian planes bound for Syria to land at the Diyarbakir airport to search for rockets and other military equipment. The incidents took place July 27 and Aug. 8, the Hurriyet newspaper reported, but no military equipment was found.

A senior U.S. official, who like others insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy, said the Bush administration had "talked to any number of countries about this…. We've made the case that we want them to be alert to this, and if they find people thinking about transferring materials that may not be going to the Lebanese army, they put a stop to it." He said the United States offered its help in trying to halt the flow.

The U.S. official said it appeared that the major countries didn't want to see a return to fighting and "are pretty much on board with this." Yet he acknowledged the difficulty of maintaining an effective arms embargo, pointing to the final years of Saddam Hussein's reign in Iraq.

"No embargo is perfect," he said. "That is a concern."

U.S. officials say that United Nations members are specifically obligated to do what they can to block arms traffic to Hezbollah under the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last week.

During the fighting, Hezbollah used its sophisticated antitank weapons with lethal effect. According to Israeli estimates, nearly half the 118 Israeli soldiers who died in the conflict were killed by such weapons.

Hezbollah also fired advanced Chinese-designed C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles at an Israeli warship July 14. One of the missiles damaged the ship and killed four Israeli sailors.

Israel disabled a portion of Hezbollah's long-range missiles in the opening hours of the conflict. But Israeli officials fear that if there is renewed fighting, Hezbollah will be better prepared. Next time, the militants may have better ways of concealing their arms, and the weapons may be deadlier, Israeli officials say. Larger, longer-range missiles could enable Hezbollah to target Tel Aviv with missile payloads capable of taking out entire city blocks, they say.

Although Israel sustained about 4,000 missile strikes in the last month, they primarily were from short-range rockets.

"The next round of this could make the last one look like a picnic," said an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic efforts underway.

Israel has been hoping that the new multinational force being formed for duty in Lebanon will be able to block arms shipments through Lebanon's borders, airports and seaports. But unresolved U.N. discussions about the force's duties have left unclear the extent of its role in guarding those entry points.

One U.N. official said early this week that the force would not take a direct role, acting only as an advisor at the border crossings.

Schenker, now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he was skeptical that the U.N. force would have the manpower or the skills to halt the arms flow at the Lebanese border. But he said the Lebanese government could turn to independent international "third party monitors," an idea that has been used by Jordan and Indonesia to watch the passage of banned goods through their borders.

Schenker agreed that Israel, which may have destroyed as much as three-fourths of Hezbollah's rockets and missiles, has a huge stake in halting the rearming.

If Hezbollah is able to restore its arsenal, he said, "this whole campaign may have been for naught."

Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Rome and Johanna Neuman in Washington contributed to this report.

Why Israel's Plans To Curb Hezbollah Went So Poorly

Nation Misgauged Response; Military, Civilian Leaders Were Sometimes at Odds; Creating a New Hero for Arabs
By Guy Chazan, Karby Leggett and Neil King
Wall Street Journal
August 19, 2006

When its bombs began falling on southern Lebanon 39 days ago, Israel had high hopes that it could severely damage or even destroy Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group rooted there. Crippling it, they and their Washington allies hoped, would rid Israel of an implacable enemy. It would also set back Iran, a longtime supporter of the group, at a crucial time in Iran's nuclear negotiations with the West.

But with the fighting stopped, Hezbollah remains far from defanged. Indeed, in many eyes it is the victor, having faced down the mighty Israeli military and hugely enhanced its standing with the anti-Israeli populations across the Mideast.

Even the scaled-back ambitions that Israel and the U.S. settled on as the conflict unfolded remain in peril. A cease-fire designed to box in Hezbollah militarily appears tenuous, bogged down in disagreements over what a peacekeeping force in part of Lebanon could accomplish and which countries will participate. Lebanon's government, one of the main actors in any plan to disarm Hezbollah, says it can't do so without concessions from Israel that the Israelis appear unlikely to make. Meanwhile, Syria, dealt a big setback last year when it was forced to withdraw from Lebanon, seems to have regained some standing as one of the backers of the tenacious Hezbollah fighters.

What happened? Israel repeatedly underestimated Hezbollah. It miscalculated the political support it would win from Lebanon. Israel's civilian and military leadership divided over how to wage the war. And some Western powers, having seen Hezbollah's might, are wary of taking it on by getting into a peacekeeping venture.

The war and uneasy peace are causing earthquakes across the Middle East. Tremors are rippling through Israel, where an emotional reexamination of what went wrong is under way. Lebanon is groping for a path forward that won't plunge the country into another civil war. Hezbollah is crowing that it has won a victory -- even though the extent of the beating it took is also becoming clearer. President Bush said in his view the militant group is the loser, though it may take some time for the world to see it that way.

The shock waves, meanwhile, have also rattled the balance between two major regional powers: Israel and Iran. Israel and the U.S. remain far from where they wanted to be now, and Iran -- along with fellow Hezbollah-backer Syria -- has gained confidence from Hezbollah's stalwart fight.

The rest of the Middle East now finds itself torn more than ever before between the two poles in a fast-polarizing region. Sunni-Muslim allies of the U.S. such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan quietly express deep concern about Shiite-Muslim Hezbollah and the rising influence of Shiite Iran. Yet populations in the U.S.-ally countries -- hostile to Israel and angry with America -- have been electrified by the upstart Hezbollah and its eloquent leader Hassan Nasrallah. If leaders such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah are going to introduce democratic reforms, as the Bush administration wants, they could find themselves lacking by comparison with the charismatic new Arab hero Mr. Nasrallah.

In Iraq, where the U.S.-backed government is led by Shiite political parties, some are close to Iran and share a faith with Hezbollah. Militant groups like Iraq's Mahdi Army -- which is modeled on Hezbollah's blend of arms, religion and politics -- will watch to see how strong a Hezbollah emerges. What happens in Lebanon in the coming weeks and months thus will influence a host of issues crucial to the U.S., from oil to terrorism to hopes for a flowering of democracy.

The stakes didn't seem so high on the morning of July 12. But the foundations of a larger crisis were already in place. Israel had ended an 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, only to watch as Hezbollah claimed victory and began a major effort to further arm. And there had been clashes before. In late May, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, which responded by bombing a stretch of earth-and-rock fortifications inside Lebanon. At least since 2004, the Israeli military had plans in place for possibly attacking Hezbollah.

Defining Features

At 9 a.m. July 12, Hezbollah fighters who had sneaked into Israel fired on an Israeli armored vehicle, killing some soldiers and taking two captive. Quickly, some defining features of the conflict to come emerged. The Israelis immediately sent a tank into Lebanon after the abductors, hoping to cut them off before they reached a nearby town. But a Hezbollah mine crippled the tank a short distance over the border. An Israeli unit sent in to rescue the tank crew was pinned down by Hezbollah for hours. Eight Israeli soldiers were killed that morning, and the two captured ones were hustled away. There's been no word about them since.

Israel was already dealing with another hostage crisis in the Gaza Strip Palestinian territory, and its leadership's next decision shaped the rest of the conflict. At a meeting 11 hours after Hezbollah's attack, the cabinet voted to escalate the violence spectacularly, taking the fight not just to Hezbollah but to Lebanon.

The Israeli leadership made another fateful decision: to do most of the fighting from the air, with bombing strikes. There would be no massive ground assault, largely on the advice of Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, a former air force commander.

The decision to mount a robust response transformed the border shoot-out into a war and virtually guaranteed it would become a crisis. And the reliance on air power wound up limiting Israel's options, rather than delivering the rapid crippling of Hezbollah that Israeli leaders hoped for. Within hours of the abduction of its soldiers, Israel bombed not only Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon's south but also major roads and bridges farther north. The next day, it bombed Lebanon's main airport and imposed a naval blockade.

The aim, in part, was to cut Hezbollah off from Iranian and Syrian supplies and hit Hezbollah missiles farther north. But the widespread bombing was also designed with hopes that Lebanese groups opposed to Hezbollah, especially Sunni Muslim and Christian communities would try to rein the group in. And at first, that's what happened.

Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fuad Siniora, was angry at Hezbollah's provocation. Behind closed doors, he and others in his government began developing a plan that they felt, with international help and some Israeli concessions, might eventually bring Hezbollah to disarm.

President Bush was briefed about the rapidly escalating fighting early on the morning of the first day. He and his staff quickly also agreed to try to capitalize on the incident to accomplish the long-pursued goal of getting Hezbollah to give up its weapons. Disarming of the group is something the United Nations had called for two years ago, in Resolution 1559.

For a few days, the Israelis, the U.S. and the Lebanese government were working together off much the same script with regard to disarming Hezbollah. But as Israeli bombing continued fiercely day after day, devastating southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut, Lebanese leaders began aiming their ire at Israel, at times even praising Hezbollah's fight.

At an emotional diplomatic gathering in Rome on July 26, Mr. Siniora, while by now fuming about Israel's widespread bombardment, presented a seven-point Lebanese plan for disarming Hezbollah. He called for an immediate cease-fire, quoting a line from the Roman historian Tacitus: "They created a destruction and called it peace." But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice avoided any call for an immediate truce and continued work on a wider plan to disarm Hezbollah.

Then an Israeli bomb hit a residential complex in the Hezbollah stronghold of Qana, killing more than a dozen children, and much of world opinion turned sharply in favor of a quick halt to the fighting. Mr. Siniora cancelled a meeting with Ms. Rice. For the first time in the crisis, Israel and the U.S. were alone, viewed by much of the world as joined in their desire to carry on the fight despite the human toll.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, was showing that its fighters' tenacity -- driven in large part by deep religious convictions -- was no fluke. The group fired sometimes more than a hundred missiles a day into Israel, hitting cities such as Haifa. On the evening of July 14, Mr. Nasrallah spoke by telephone on Lebanese television and urged viewers to look out their windows at the sea. There, one of Israel's most formidable warships was ablaze, hit by a laser-guided Hezbollah missile. Israeli and U.S. officials were taken aback at the sorts of weapons Hezbollah had received, apparently from Iran and Syria, although both countries deny this.

Even as it carried out the biggest bombing campaign in its history, Israel delayed a major ground offensive. Politicians worried about taking heavy casualties in territory that Hezbollah knew far better than their troops, and about getting involved in another grueling occupation. Military commanders chafed at the restraint -- the beginning of a rift between Israel's elected leaders and the military leadership.

On the afternoon of July 27, which was two days before the bombing in Qana began to turn diplomatic currents against Israel and the U.S., Lt. Col. Ishai Efroni, a stout 42-year-old deputy commander of a base in northern Israel, complained that his men were eager to fight in Lebanon but couldn't. "We are using only about 15% to 20% of the resources we have now," he said at the time. "We're being held back."

One question sure to be examined, as Israel convenes panels of inquiry on the war, is whether it should have begun a large ground campaign sooner. Another question: whether the Israeli military was over-confident that an air campaign could cripple Hezbollah's ability to bombard Israel with rockets.

As diplomatic pressure built for a cease-fire, French and U.S. officials at the U.N. worked out a compromise. It promised to halt fighting and quickly bring in a force of 15,000 U.N. troops; they would help an equal number from the Lebanese army to replace the Israeli forces as they withdrew. The deal, outlined in Security Council Resolution 1701, repeated a call for Hezbollah to disarm, leaving vague how that would happen.

Cease-Fire Holds for Now

The cease-fire has held so far. But it appears increasingly unlikely its terms will be carried out in full, especially the disarming of Hezbollah. Under the cease-fire plan, which Lebanese government officials say Hezbollah agreed to, the group is supposed to move its fighters north of the Litani River, which is about 18 miles north of Israel. Hezbollah now says it won't do this, and instead has pressured the Lebanese government to accept a compromise: Hezbollah would store its weapons out of public view in return for a pledge that the Lebanese army wouldn't actively hunt for them.

Israel, meantime, says it won't complete its pullout of southern Lebanon before the full arrival of a combined Lebanese and international force. But with Hezbollah still possessing a large arsenal, countries that had pledged to contribute to the international force are starting to balk.

During the fighting, Secretary of State Rice repeatedly said there was no reason to halt it if this meant leaving the situation "status quo ante" -- the same as before. So now the U.N., working with the Lebanese government, needs to come up with a plan to move Hezbollah toward disarming. But the kinds of Israeli concessions Lebanon's government believes it needs to make this happen are ones Israel isn't very likely to make.

One involves a disputed area known as Shebaa Farms, a small piece of land near Israel and Syria that Israel controls. Hezbollah claims the area is Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory. The U.N. says Shebaa Farms actually is part of Syria.

Lebanese government officials say that if Israel were to withdraw from Shebaa Farms, Hezbollah would lose its last solid argument as to why it must remain armed to resist Israeli occupation. Yet Israel has declined to even discuss withdrawing from Shebaa. A senior aide of Lebanon's Mr. Siniora says a best-case scenario is that Lebanon can somehow persuade Israel to relinquish control of the disputed territory.

Without movement on issues like Shebaa Farms, Lebanese say the situation will likely fester, with Hezbollah, at best, keeping its arms but concealing them. But that situation risks a return to fighting at any time. And with the troops of the Lebanese army and the international force positioned between Israel and Hezbollah, a new flare-up would be far more complicated than the war that just ended.

If the procedure outlined in the cease-fire agreement isn't effective in disarming Hezbollah, the U.S. and Israel may feel increasing pressure to consider another policy reversal: making a deal with Syria, one of Hezbollah's biggest supporters and a lifeline for its military wing. Both Israel and the Bush administration have worked hard to isolate Syria in recent years. Some officials relished its humiliation when its army had to end a long occupation of Lebanon last year, amid accusations Syria was involved in the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister. (Syria denied the accusations.)

Yet some prominent Israeli and U.S. experts have argued that a deal with Syria could be the best hope for seeing that Hezbollah is disarmed and the Syrian-Iranian alliance broken up. Such a deal would require more sacrifices from Israel, including perhaps an offer to open negotiations on a possible Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967. And President Bush would have to explain the policy about-face to hawkish supporters.

Some Israeli officials say the setbacks in Lebanon could, paradoxically, also lead to new thinking about possible diplomatic solutions to long-running conflicts with the Palestinians. They cite the 1973 Yom Kipper War: The aftermath of that conflict, which also raised questions about Israel's ability to defend itself, led to a historic peace deal with Egypt.

Need for New Policy

Certainly, Israel is now badly in need of a new policy on the Palestinians: This week it shelved plans for a unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank, with officials saying that events in Gaza and Lebanon had proved such pullouts don't enhance Israel's security.

Also in the mix is a looming showdown over Tehran's nuclear program. Iran faces an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline to suspend uranium enrichment at its nuclear facilities. If the U.S. and other Security Council members can reach an accommodation with Iran on nuclear and other issues over time, Iran could potentially prompt Hezbollah to drop its weapons, some say. On the other hand, if the nuclear dispute grows to include imposition of economic sanctions or military posturing against Tehran, Hezbollah could become even more belligerent.

U.S. and Israeli officials say Hezbollah has suffered real losses, particularly to its ability to fire the sort of longer-range missiles that could hit Israel's biggest cities. A senior State Department official contends that "Hezbollah has been boxed in militarily."

Yet Hezbollah in some ways is energized by the outcome. It is flush with cash, some of it evidently from Iran, and is now handing out money to Lebanese whose homes Israel destroyed. In addition, Hezbollah is still standing after battling the strongest military in the region -- plus, in the eyes of some Hezbollah supporters, that military's biggest backer. A banner strung across a ruined building in the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut reads: "Made in the U.S.A."

Making Peace Stick In Lebanon

By Franklin D. Kramer
The Washington Post
Saturday, August 19, 2006; A17

Not all peacekeeping forces are successful, and certainly not in Lebanon, where U.S. Marines on a peacekeeping mission were killed in their barracks by terrorist truck bombs and where, a few years later, a U.S. military officer leading a United Nations peacekeeping force was kidnapped and killed. If peacekeeping is to be part of a long-term answer for Lebanon, the force there needs to be carefully designed to generate an effective solution rather than become part of the problem, as has been the case in the past. To do that requires answering five key questions.

First, what is the mission of the force? It may seem obvious that the overall purpose is to limit the use of violence. But the key question is how the force proposes to do that. Will it be an observer force, a reactive force or a force designed to create new conditions on the ground? To put it another way, will the force actively take on Hezbollah, will it leave that task to others, or will Hezbollah in effect be left alone? Over time, Hezbollah will seek to regain military strength. Will the peacekeeping force seek to ensure that Hezbollah has as little capacity as possible to commit violence? That was the purpose of the force put into Bosnia, and there the peacekeepers maintained the monopoly on violence. Lebanon will be a much harder task, but unless controlling violence is an affirmative mission, the peacekeeping effort is unlikely to succeed in the long-term.

Second, what will be the relationship of the force to the Lebanese government, and particularly to the Lebanese military? It will be going into a country where substantial efforts have been made to generate a more effective central government, with true control over the entire country. A critical element is how to turn Hezbollah into a political, not a military, movement. Enhancing the strength of the Lebanese government and giving it a monopoly on the use of force is thus a key to creating a stable, long-term situation. The government is unlikely to succeed unless it gets significant support from the outside -- and, especially, develops a continuing approach to disarming Hezbollah.

A coordinated effort between the peacekeepers and the government will be critical. The peacekeeping force will need political direction that allows it and the Lebanese military to offer complementary capabilities. An operational political-military committee should be created, consisting of both Lebanese officials and empowered representatives of the peacekeeping force. The committee needs to be promptly established and to meet regularly to resolve the numerous issues that will undoubtedly arise. Unlike many other missions, this one is in a country with a democratically elected government. It must align its efforts with those of the host government.

Third, will the mission go beyond the purely military? Lessons learned from numerous peacekeeping forces demonstrate that unless non-military security, economic, governmental and social factors are taken into account, military peacekeeping has no chance of long-term success. Hezbollah has made inroads into southern Lebanon in part because, beyond its terrorist activities, it also provides social services. Any peacekeeping effort will need the support of the people and therefore will have to move quickly into the non-military arena. It needs to be recognized that this force will be in competition with Hezbollah. There often is a "golden hour" when residents are delighted to have order restored with outside assistance, but in time outside "liberators" all too often turn into "occupiers" when the non-military problems are not taken care of promptly and effectively.

Fourth, what will be the composition of the force? The United States apparently will not be in the patrolling military element. Newspaper reports have suggested a role for various nations, including Turkey, France, Pakistan, Italy, Malaysia and Indonesia. The absence of the United States in the main force does not mean it will fail -- there are other forces that are highly competent. In East Timor, the United States was not involved; Australia very effectively led a U.N. force while the United States played an important backup role in logistics and other support, with the prospect of providing direct military support if necessary.

But a key question is the broad inclusion of Arab as well as other Muslim nations. Patrolling in a potentially hostile area is much more difficult if the peacekeeping force cannot communicate easily with the locals. And the engagement of Arab and Muslim nations could be important in finding a long-term solution.

Fifth, what resources will be provided beyond the peacekeeping force? As noted, non-military security, economic, governance and social factors all will be major elements of a real solution -- but these elements do not come free. It's important to enter a peacekeeping enterprise with eyes wide open about the overall costs. Doing just enough to fail might only add to the instability and insecurity in the region.

Lebanon presents a very hard problem, and it will take real resources to create a good solution. There is a "donors' conference" planned this month, but all too often such conferences are longer on pledges than on performance. The United States needs to recognize the value of playing a lead role in reconstruction if stability is to be achieved.

The U.N. resolution and the efforts many countries made to help establish the cease-fire demonstrate that the world recognizes we cannot stand aside while instability stalks the Middle East. But Lebanon is complicated, and as this very difficult undertaking gets going, it needs to be done in a way that makes success the probable outcome. Such a result will benefit the people of Lebanon, Israel, the greater Middle East and the world at large.

The writer was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1996 to 2001. He is currently an international consultant on defense and national security.

War On Daddy's Dime

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
August 18, 2006

I’m not sure yet who’s the winner in the war between Hezbollah and Israel, but I know who’s the big loser: Iran’s taxpayers. What a bunch of suckers.

Isn’t it obvious? As soon as the reckless war he started was over, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared that Hezbollah would begin paying out cash to the thousands of Lebanese families whose homes were destroyed. “We will pay compensation, a certain amount of money for every family to rent for one year, plus buy furniture for those whose homes were totally destroyed,” said Nasrallah. “These number 15,000.”

Nasrallah also vowed that his organization would help rebuild damaged houses and businesses, promising those affected that they will “not need to ask anyone for money or wait in queues” to get relief funds. To paraphrase the All-State commercial, “You’re in good hands with Hezbollah.”

But wait — where will Hezbollah get some of the $3 billion-plus needed to rebuild Lebanon? Last time I checked, Hezbollah did not have any companies listed on the Nasdaq. The organization doesn’t manufacture anything. It doesn’t tax its followers. The answer, of course, is that Iran will dip into its oil income and ship cash to Nasrallah, so that he will not have to face the wrath of Lebanese for starting a war that reaped nothing but destruction.

Yes, thanks to $70-a-barrel oil you can have Katyusha rockets and butter at the same time. When oil money is so prevalent, why not? Hezbollah and Iran are like a couple of rich college students who rented Lebanon for the summer, as if it were a beach house. “C’mon, let’s smash up the place,” they said to themselves. “Who cares? Dad will pay!” The only thing Nasrallah didn’t say to Lebanese was, “Hey, keep the change.”

In the cold war, Russian taxpayers were the suckers who rebuilt Arab armies every time they got crushed by Israel. Now Iran’s citizens will foot the bill with their oil income — assuming the ayatollahs actually put their money where their mouth is. (Iran was always happy to spend money on Hezbollah rockets. Let’s see if it will pay for schools and clinics.)

This is why I am obsessed with bringing down the price of oil. Unless we take this issue seriously, we are never going to produce more transparent, accountable government in the Middle East. Just the opposite — we will witness even more reckless, unaccountable behavior like Nasrallah’s and Iran’s.

Been to Syria lately? Why do you think it can afford to shrug off U.S. sanctions? It also is not making microchips. It is, though, exporting about 200,000 barrels of oil a day, and that is what keeps a corrupt and antiquated regime in power. The Syrian regime subsidizes everything from diesel to bread. As in Iran, almost half of Syria’s people are teenagers, and without real economic reforms, widespread unemployment and unrest are just around the corner — but for now, oil money postpones the reckoning.

Ditto Iran. Iran is OPEC’s second-largest producer, selling the world about 2.4 million barrels of oil a day and earning the regime some $4 billion a month — the government’s main source of income. To buy public support, Iran’s regime subsidizes housing, gasoline, interest rates, flour and rice.

According to an Aug. 2 report on Bloomberg.com, “Iran spent $25 billion on subsidies last year, or more than half the $44.6 billion it collected through crude oil exports.” But Iran actually has to import more than one-third of its gasoline, because it can’t refine enough itself. This became so expensive the regime wanted to ration subsidized gas but feared a public backlash. No wonder. Bloomberg reported that subsidized gasoline in Iran is 34 cents a gallon.

Repressive governments like Iran’s and Syria’s use oil money to buy off their people and insulate themselves from the pressure of political and economic reform. When oil prices get high enough, they can even buy a monthlong war in Lebanon. Why not? It’s like a summer sale: “Now, this summer only: 34 cents-a-gallon gasoline and a war with the Jews and new living room furniture for Lebanese Shiites! Such a deal!”

If we could cut the price of crude in half, it would mean that all of Iran’s oil income would go to subsidies — which would be unsustainable and therefore a huge threat to the regime. It would also make Iran’s puppets, like Nasrallah, think three times about launching wars with Israel that might ravage Lebanon again.

Too bad we have a president who tells us we’re “addicted to oil” but won’t do anything about it. That sort of hypocrisy just makes Nasrallah’s day.

Start Talking to Hezbollah

Op-Ed Contributor
By LAKHDAR BRAHIMI
The New York Times
August 18, 2006

WHAT a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.

The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.

Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.

And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.

Rather than helping in the so-called global war on terror, recent events have benefited the enemies of peace, freedom and democracy. The region is boiling with resentment, anger and despair, feelings that are not leading young Arabs and Palestinians toward the so-called New Middle East.

Nor are these policies helping Israel. Israel’s need for security is real and legitimate, but it will not be secured in any sustainable way at the expense of the equally real and legitimate needs and aspirations of its neighbors. Israel and its neighbors could negotiate an honorable settlement and live in peace and harmony. As often happens in complex conflict situations, however, the parties cannot do it alone. They need outside help but are not getting it.

It is perhaps too early to draw lessons from this month of madness. What is clear, however, is that Hezbollah scored a political victory and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has become the most popular figure in the Muslim world. As for Israel, it does not seem to have achieved its stated objectives. Should these trends continue, it is hard to imagine stability coming to the region soon.

So what can be done? The international community should take several steps — some concrete, some conceptual — to address the current crisis.

First, priority must be given to ensuring Lebanon’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord, which I helped negotiate on behalf of the Arab League. This agreement specifically required that the Lebanese government, like all states, have a monopoly over the possession of weapons and the use of force.

Second, we must recall that Hezbollah came into existence as a consequence of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Like all movements, it has evolved: it was initially a militia and a resistance movement against foreign occupation. It then developed into both a political party and a social organization, providing valuable services to its impoverished community.

Rather than trying to isolate Hezbollah, we should be encouraging it to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon. It would then, in turn, be legitimate to expect Hezbollah to accept the Lebanese state’s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force.

Third, it is something of a paradox to ask Iran and Syria to sever relations with Hezbollah while asking them to use their influence to obtain its compliance with the cease-fire resolution. Would it not be more effective to demand that both countries, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, scrupulously respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs?

Fourth, the most valuable contribution Israel can make to lasting peace across its northern border is to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms.

Finally, urgent and sustained attention must be focused on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue. A wealth of United Nations resolutions and other agreements already exist that provide a basis for a just and viable solution to the Middle East conflict.

One approach could be for a team of mediators to be mandated by the Security Council and an international conference (including the Arab League) to take on the formidable task of reviving the pre-existing agreements that work best and then seeing that they are put in place.

If the United States and other key countries could see this conflict through a different lens, there could be a real chance for peace. This would be the best way to signal genuine respect and atonement for the suffering inflicted on so many innocent people for so many years.

Lakhdar Brahimi is a former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General.

Hezbollah in Beirut

Hezbollah supporters swept the rubble on Wednesday in a southern suburb of Beirut destroyed by Israeli bombs.
The New York Times.

A Path To Lasting Peace

By Condoleezza Rice
The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 16, 2006; A13

For the past month the United States has worked urgently to end the violence that Hezbollah and its sponsors have imposed on the people of Lebanon and Israel. At the same time, we have insisted that a truly effective cease-fire requires a decisive change from the status quo that produced this war. Last Friday we took an important step toward that goal with the unanimous passage of U.N. Resolution 1701. Now the difficult, critical task of implementation begins.

The agreement we reached has three essential components:

First, it puts in place a full cessation of hostilities. We also insisted on the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah must immediately cease its attacks on Israel, and Israel must halt its offensive military operations in Lebanon, while reserving the right of any sovereign state to defend itself. This agreement went into effect on Monday, after the Israeli and Lebanese cabinets agreed to its conditions.

Second, this resolution will help the democratic government of Lebanon expand its sovereign authority. The international community is imposing an embargo on all weapons heading into Lebanon without the government's consent. We are also enhancing UNIFIL, the current U.N. force in Lebanon. The new UNIFIL will have a robust mandate, better equipment and as many as 15,000 soldiers -- a sevenfold increase from its current strength. Together with this new international force, the Lebanese Armed Forces will deploy to the south of the country to protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area. As this deployment occurs, Israel will withdraw behind the "Blue Line" and a permanent cease-fire will take hold.

Finally, this resolution clearly lays out the political principles to secure a lasting peace: no foreign forces, no weapons and no authority in Lebanon other than that of the sovereign Lebanese government. These principles represent a long-standing international consensus that has been affirmed and reaffirmed for decades -- but never fully implemented. Now, for the first time, the international community has put its full weight behind a practical political framework to help the Lebanese government realize these principles, including the disarmament of all militias operating on its territory.

The implementation of Resolution 1701 will not only benefit Lebanon and Israel; it also has important regional implications. Simply put: This is a victory for all who are committed to moderation and democracy in the Middle East -- and a defeat for those who wish to undermine these principles with violence, particularly the governments of Syria and Iran.

While the entire world has spent the past month working for peace, the Syrian and Iranian regimes have sought to prolong and intensify the war that Hezbollah started. The last time this happened, 10 years ago, the United States brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Syria. The game of diplomacy was played by others, over the heads of the Lebanese. Now Syria no longer occupies Lebanon, and the international community is helping the Lebanese government create the conditions of lasting peace -- full independence, complete sovereignty, effective democracy and a weakened Hezbollah with fewer opportunities to rearm and regroup. Once implemented, this will be a strategic setback for the Syrian and Iranian regimes.

The agreement we reached last week is a good first step, but it is only a first step. Though we hope that it will lead to a permanent cease-fire, no one should expect an immediate stop to all acts of violence. This is a fragile cease-fire, and all parties must work to strengthen it. Our diplomacy has helped end a war. Now comes the long, hard work to secure the peace.

Looking ahead, our most pressing challenge is to help the hundreds of thousands of displaced people within Lebanon to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. This reconstruction effort will be led by the government of Lebanon, but it will demand the generosity of the entire world.

For our part, the United States is helping to lead relief efforts for the people of Lebanon, and we will fully support them as they rebuild their country. As a first step, we have increased our immediate humanitarian assistance to $50 million. To secure the gains of peace, the Lebanese people must emerge from this conflict with more opportunities and greater prosperity.

Already, we hear Hezbollah trying to claim victory. But others, in Lebanon and across the region, are asking themselves what Hezbollah's extremism has really achieved: hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. Houses and infrastructure destroyed. Hundreds of innocent lives lost. The blame of the world for causing this war.

Innocent people in Lebanon, in Israel and across the Middle East have suffered long enough at the hands of extremists. It is time to overcome old patterns of violence and secure a just, lasting and comprehensive peace. This is our goal, and now we have laid out the steps to achieve it. Our policy is ambitious, yes, and difficult to achieve. But it is right. It is realistic. And ultimately, it is the only effective path to a more hopeful future.

The writer is secretary of state.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad

Editorial
The New York Times
August 16, 2006

As everyone with a television is aware, Lebanon has just suffered through a terrible month, with more than 1,000 people killed, most of them innocent civilians. But Iraq has suffered through an even worse month. Since June, more than 3,000 Iraqis have been killed each month, and the rate continues to rise. While Lebanon is now trying to pick up the pieces, Iraq is falling apart at an accelerating pace.

As Americans debate where to go from here on Iraq, one thing should be clear. Staying the course until President Bush leaves office 29 months from now is not an option. It is no longer even clear just what course America is on. Most of what Washington now claims to be doing cannot withstand the most elementary reality test.

Just this week, Mr. Bush defined America’s purpose as supporting an inclusive national unity government. Every day, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no such unity government, that there never has been and that the various branches of the Iraqi leadership are not trying to create one.

Iraq’s elected government is dominated by two Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalist parties. They are backed on the streets of Baghdad and in the Shiite south by two Hezbollah-like armed militias. In Parliament, their power is reinforced by two Kurdish separatist parties, also with their own militias, which have been allowed to run the Kurdish northeast like an independent state within a state.

Washington doesn’t complain too loudly about these militias, because without them, the Iraqi government would be even weaker than it is now. But so long as they are allowed to enforce their murderous brand of vigilante justice, it is ludicrous to claim that Iraqis enjoy democracy or the rule of law.

Some Sunni parties also participate in the government, but without any real policy-making power. This week, the Sunni speaker of Parliament considered quitting to protest his isolation.

Outside Shiite and Kurdish areas, the authority of Iraq’s government is barely felt. There, Sunni insurgents fight and kill American troops. That insurgency did not die down after Saddam Hussein was captured, as Mr. Bush once hoped it would. Nor did it die down when elections were held, when the constitution was ratified, when the government was formed or when the local leader of Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed. The insurgency rages on, and no one knows when, how or if it might end.

The other key element of Mr. Bush’s policy is his promise that as Iraqi forces stand up, American forces will stand down. Even on the rare occasions that Iraqi forces have stood up, they have often been unreliable and ineffective. In June, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced a drive by Iraqi and American troops to secure Baghdad. Baghdad became even less secure, and more American troops had to be called in to do a job they were supposed to be phasing out of. More Iraqis were killed in July than in any other month of the war.

And the mayhem in Baghdad continues unabated. Local policing is, in fact, a job that only Iraqis can do successfully. But almost three and a half years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, there is still no Iraqi force capable of taking this on. And it is hard to see how the present Iraqi government will ever field such a force, so long as its power depends on armed sectarian militias that fuel the Baghdad violence.

Things in Iraq are not going to get better by themselves. The answer is not blind perseverance in staying a course that has demonstrably failed.

Over 1,000 Iraqi Police Officers Resign in Fallujah

In other news from Iraq, the Los Angeles Times is reporting over one thousand police officers in Fallujah have left their jobs after receiving death threats. The mass resignation occurred after pamphlets were distributed in the city reading "We will kill all the policemen infidels whether or not they quit or are still in their jobs." The size of Fallujah’s police force has shrunk from two thousand to just about one hundred.

Rebuilding Israel's deterrent

The Washington Times
August 15, 2006

It is no exaggeration to say that Israel today is entering one of the most dangerous periods in its history. The radical Islamist regime in Tehran commanding a population more than 10 times Israel's size, its coffers swelled by rising oil and gas prices is ascendant: It flouts U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding it halt its nuclear weapons program. Now, in the wake of the "cease-fire" barring offensive Israeli military operations against Tehran's client Hezbollah, the terrorist group can claim, with substantial accuracy, to have prevailed twice on the battlefield with Israel over the past six years.
Israelis on the right and left are coming to the conclusion that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government's inept prosecution of the war against Hezbollah has left Israel in a much more dangerous, vulnerable position to confront the Islamofascist threat from the north.
Israel's failure to meet the Hezbollah challenge will likely have major implications for Israel's value as an ally to the United States. "Part of the reckoning will be our reputation as a strategic partner, when we tell the Americans, 'Give us the tools and we'll do the job,'" Itamar Rabinovich, Israeli ambassador to the United States under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, told the New York Times. "Part of our self-image is of military miracle workers, and we didn't do that this time." There is no pleasant way to say this: Over the past six and a half years, Israel's handling of the Hezbollah threat from Lebanon is a compendium of failure and self-delusion by governments of the right, left and center that have emboldened Israel's enemies and endangered its people. Ever since Hezbollah chased Israel out of Lebanon on May 24, 2000, there have been continuing provocations on the border: random shooting attacks that killed Israelis, kidnappings of Israeli soldiers and Katyusha rocket attacks. Time and again, Israel restricted itself to retaliatory airstrikes but little else. A 2004 exchange of hundreds of imprisoned terrorists for an Israeli businessman and three soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah further emboldened the terrorists.
Prior to the July 12, 2006, attack in which Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, setting off the current conflict, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, spoke openly of Hezbollah's intent to kidnap more Israeli soldiers to exchange for imprisoned terrorists.When Hezbollah snatched the soldiers, Sheikh Nasrallah apparently believed that the Israeli response would again be a weak "proportional" one.
Instead, Mr. Olmert surprised him by launching a 33-day military campaign aimed at dislodging Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, severely damaging it as a military force capable of threatening Israel and killing its leadership.
Although Israel succeeded in killing hundreds of terrorists, destroying numerous Hezbollah bases and armories and pushing its forces a few miles farther away from the border, Sheikh Nasrallah and most of Hezbollah's leadership have survived.
Hezbollah remains a viable fighting force, capable of firing hundreds of rockets into Israel each day right up to the end of the war. Despite the arms embargo placed on Hezbollah by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, IDF Chief of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin acknowledged Sunday that Hezbollah will be reinforced in the future with weapons from Syria and Iran.
Moreover, Hamas representatives say openly that Hezbollah's success in standing up to the IDF can serve as the springboard for a new wave of violence in the Palestinian territories.
The Kadima Party, created in November by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his protege, Mr. Olmert, could be the number one casualty of failure to defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon. Kadima leaders have spoken of the need to rise above the preoccupation with holding territory and the notion that military men were uniquely suited to lead a country that has been in a state of war since its inception.
Ari Shavit, a left-leaning columnist for Ha'aretz, wrote on Saturday that Hezbollah "surprised us this summer with the low level of national leadership," which included "scandalous strategic bumbling." Israelis, Mr. Shavit continued, "were drugged by political correctness." Israeli elites and the Israeli government "did not have the tools to deal with the reality of an inter-religious and inter-cultural conflict. It made the baseless assumption that the occupation [of the Palestinian territories] is the source of evil. It assumed that it is the occupation that is preventing peace and causing unrest."
On the political right, former Minister of Defense Moshe Arens, a respected elder statesman, declares that Mr. Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz proved "not fit to govern Israel in these trying times." As "the war they so grossly mismanaged wore on, as northern Israel received its daily dose of 150-200 rockets, the Galilee was destroyed and burned to the ground, over a million Israelis sat in shelters or abandoned their homes and both civilian and military casualties mounted gradually the air went out of" Mr. Olmert and his colleagues. Then, Mr. Arens says, they used the fig leaf of a Security Council resolution to extricate them from the war they were incapable of winning.
In the coming months, Israelis have difficult choices to make. One of the most difficult, wrenching decisions will involve whether Mr. Olmert's government, which is less than five months old, is capable of leading the nation at a time of tremendous, existential danger.

A Self-Defeating War

By George Soros
Wall Street Journal
August 15, 2006

The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued; a plot that could have claimed more victims than 9/11 has just been foiled by the vigilance of British intelligence.

Unfortunately, the "war on terror" metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder. But the war on terror remains the frame into which American policy has to fit. Most Democratic politicians subscribe to it for fear of being tagged as weak on defense.

What makes the war on terror self-defeating?

First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their whereabouts hidden. The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment among their families and communities that in turn serves to build support for terrorists.

Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.

Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions. And, as the British have shown, al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England.

Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world.

Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won. An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of money. Most importantly, it has diverted attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan, addressing the looming global energy crisis, and dealing with nuclear proliferation.

With American influence at low ebb, the world is in danger of sliding into a vicious circle of escalating violence. We can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor. If we persevere on the wrong course, the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality. It is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions. However, not admitting it is bound to prove even more painful in the long run. The strength of an open society lies in its ability to recognize and correct its mistakes. This is the test that confronts us.

Mr. Soros, a financier, is author of "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror" (Public Affairs, 2006).

The Best Guerrilla Force in the World

Analysts Attribute Hezbollah's Resilience to Zeal, Secrecy and Iranian Funding
By Edward Cody and Molly Moore
The Washington Post
Monday, August 14, 2006; A01

BEIRUT, Aug. 14 -- Hezbollah's irregular fighters stood off the modern Israeli army for a month in the hills of southern Lebanon thanks to extraordinary zeal and secrecy, rigorous training, tight controls over the population, and a steady flow of Iranian money to acquire effective weaponry, according to informed assessments in Lebanon and Israel.

"They are the best guerrilla force in the world," said a Lebanese specialist who has sifted through intelligence on Hezbollah for more than two decades and strongly opposes the militant Shiite Muslim movement.

Because Hezbollah was entrenched in friendly Shiite-inhabited villages and underground bunkers constructed in secret over several years, a withering Israeli air campaign and a tank-led ground assault were unable to establish full control over a border strip and sweep it clear of Hezbollah guerrillas -- one of Israel's main declared war aims. Largely as a result, the U.N. Security Council resolution approved unanimously Friday night fell short of the original objectives laid out by Israel and the Bush administration when the conflict began July 12.

As the declared U.N. cease-fire went into effect Monday morning, many Lebanese -- particularly among the Shiites who make up an estimated 40 percent of the population -- had already assessed Hezbollah's endurance as a military success despite the devastation wrought across Lebanon by Israeli bombing.

Hezbollah's staying power on the battlefield came from a classic fish-in-the-sea advantage enjoyed by guerrillas on their home ground, hiding in their own villages and aided by their relatives. Hasan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, summed up the guerrilla strategy in a televised address during the conflict when he said, "We are not a regular army and we will not fight like a regular army."

The group's battlefield resilience also came from an unusual combination of zeal and disciplined military science, said the Lebanese specialist with access to intelligence information, who spoke on condition he not be identified by name.

The fighters' Islamic faith and intense indoctrination reduced their fear of death, he noted, giving them an advantage in close-quarters combat and in braving airstrikes to move munitions from post to post. Hezbollah leaders also enhanced fighters' willingness to risk death by establishing the Martyr's Institute, with an office in Tehran, that guarantees living stipends and education fees for the families of fighters who die on the front.

"If you are waiting for a white flag coming out of the Hezbollah bunker, I can assure you it won't come," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of the Israeli army's general staff, said in a briefing for reporters in the northern Israeli village of Gosherim. "They are extremists, they will go all the way."

Moreover, Hezbollah's military leadership carefully studied military history, including the Vietnam War, the Lebanese expert said, and set up a training program with help from Iranian intelligence and military officers with years of experience in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The training was matched to weapons that proved effective against Israeli tanks, he added, including the Merkava main battle tank with advanced armor plating.

Wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles were the most effective and deadly Hezbollah weapons, according to Israeli military officers and soldiers. A review of Israel Defense Forces records showed that the majority of Israeli combat deaths resulted from missile hits on armored vehicles -- or on buildings where Israeli soldiers set up observation posts or conducted searches.

Most of the antitank missiles, Israeli officers noted, could be dragged out of caches and quickly fired with two- or three-man launching teams at distances of 3,200 yards or more from their targets. One of the most effective was the Russian-designed Sagger 2, a wire-guided missile with a range of 550 to 3,200 yards.

In one hidden bunker, Israeli soldiers discovered night-vision camera equipment connected to computers that fed coordinates of targets to the Sagger 2 missile, according to Israeli military officials who described the details from photographs they said soldiers took inside the bunker.

Some antitank missiles also can be used to attack helicopters, which has limited the military's use of choppers in rescues and other operations. On Saturday, Hezbollah shot down a CH-53 Sikorsky helicopter in Lebanon, killing all five crew members, according to the Israeli military. As of late Sunday, Israeli troops still had been unable to retrieve the bodies because of fierce fighting in the area of the crash.

The Hezbollah arsenal, which also included thousands of missiles and rockets to be fired against northern Israel's towns and villages, was paid for with a war chest kept full by relentless fundraising among Shiites around the world and, in particular, by funds provided by Iran, said the intelligence specialist. The amount of Iranian funds reaching Hezbollah was estimated at $25 million a month, but some reports suggested it increased sharply, perhaps doubled, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over as president in Tehran last year, the specialist said.

Fawaz Trabulsi, a Lebanese professor who helped lead Palestinian-allied militia forces against the Israeli army in 1982, noted that Hezbollah's fight has differed in several respects from that mounted by the Palestine Liberation Organization during the 1980s. In that war, Israeli forces punched straight northward and reached Beirut in a few days with only minor resistance, he recalled, saying Israeli officers seemed to think they could duplicate that performance against Hezbollah.

One reason for the sharp difference is that Israeli intelligence had much less detail on Hezbollah forces, tactics and equipment than it had on the PLO, which was infiltrated by a network of spies, said Trabulsi, now a political science professor at Lebanese American University. "Hezbollah is not penetrated at all," he said.

Nehushtan, the Israeli general, said the Israeli military had enough information to appreciate the fighting ability and weaponry of Hezbollah as the conflict opened. In addition, Israeli warplanes have hit pinpoint targets throughout the fighting, presumably on the basis of real-time intelligence reaching the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv through drones and other surveillance equipment. Other observers, however, said the sweep of fighting over the last month -- when Israel on several occasions said it controlled the terrain, only to continue fighting in the same border villages -- suggested intelligence had not provided an adequate appreciation of the battlefield.

"I think it's no secret that the Israeli military didn't have the intelligence on this," said Richard Straus, who publishes the Middle East Policy Survey newsletter in Washington. "They didn't know what Hezbollah had, how it had built up, what it was capable of."

Another difference that gave Hezbollah fighters an edge is the experience they acquired in combating Israeli troops during the nearly two decades of Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. In contrast, Palestinian guerrillas had gained most of their experience fighting Lebanese militias in the civil war here -- using nothing more than assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades -- and were unprepared and unequipped to resist the advance of Israel's modern army.

"The difference is in training, the difference is in weapons, but the big difference is that most of the Palestinians had never engaged in fighting Israel," Trabulsi said. "They were used to fighting a civil war in Lebanon."

Hezbollah's resistance to penetration by Israeli intelligence was part of a culture of secrecy extreme even by the standards of underground guerrilla forces. The code fit with a tendency toward secrecy in the Shiite stream of Islam, called faqih . It also fit with a sense of solidarity against others that Lebanese Shiites have been imbued with since the beginning of their emergence as a political force in the mid-1970s, when their first organization was called the Movement of the Deprived.

One young Lebanese doctor learned that her brother had been a Hezbollah fighter for several years only when the movement notified her he had been killed, colleagues said. Similarly, a Lebanese man found out his brother was a senior Hezbollah militia officer only when informed of his death; the brother had cloaked occasional trips to Tehran by saying he was trying to start an import-export business.

Reporters who over the last month went to the bombed-out sections of southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah had its headquarters were approached within minutes by young men asking who they were and what they were doing there. Interviews with the people living there, most of whom were ardent Hezbollah supporters, were not allowed, the young men said. Around the battlefields of south Lebanon, however, the militia was busy fighting Israeli troops and hiding from airstrikes.

Reporters were free to move as much as they dared, since they, too, feared being hit by Israeli jets.

Even the movement's political leadership was kept in the dark about many military and intelligence activities, Trabulsi noted. Ghaleb Abu-Zeinab, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau, said in an interview, for instance, that he was not informed about operations on "the field," Hezbollah shorthand for the villages and hillsides across southern Lebanon where the battle raged.

"They have a military and intelligence organization totally separated from the political organization," Trabulsi said.

A dramatic example of the secrecy and careful preparations for conflict with Israel was Hezbollah's al-Manar television. The station has kept broadcasting its mix of news and propaganda from hidden studios throughout the fighting, despite repeated Israeli airstrikes against relay towers and antennas across the country. Lebanese said some of the broadcasts seemed to include coded messages to Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. But as with most things about Hezbollah, they were not really sure.

Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, used al-Manar to make a number of speeches rallying his followers and explaining his strategy. With his cleric's turban and student's mien, appearing on the screen in pre-taped broadcasts, he was perhaps the biggest secret of all, hunted by Israeli warplanes and hiding in a location about which Lebanese could only guess.

Moore reported from Jerusalem. Correspondent Jonathan Finer in Gosherim contributed to this report.

We Should Not Tolerate The Preachers Of Jihad

By Richard Perle
London Sunday Telegraph
August 13, 2006

Omar Sheikh was a promising LSE student from a comfortably middle-class Anglo-Pakistani family. On a humanitarian mission to Bosnia in 1992, he was recruited into a life of terror. In July 2002, he was sentenced to death in Pakistan for his role in the beheading of an American journalist, Daniel Pearl.

In his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, Bernard-Henri Levy recounts young Omar's reaction to the suggestion that he go to Afghanistan for training. He imagines him thinking "…he has to finish his studies… and his father is still the one who decides everything." "We'll talk to your father," he is told by the Islamist he meets in Bosnia. "I'll organise a meeting for him with Maulana Ismail, imam of the Clifton mosque, a holy man, who is experienced at guiding young English Muslims to our places in Afghanistan and who will find the words to convince him, I'm sure. It's an honour for a family to have a son who abandons his useless studies to consecrate himself to the life of jihad."

Thus was a bright student from a good family lured into a holy war that aims to impose Islamist fundamentalism on the world.

It is a war fought with planes crashed into buildings or blown up in mid-air, roadside bombs, kidnappings, beheadings and other unspeakable instruments of terror. It is decentralised but global in scope, from madrassas in Pakistan, to mosques in London, to "charities" in America, to banks and boardrooms in the Middle East.

It is a war with a cultural and ideological component that is lavishly financed by easy oil money from states like Saudi Arabia that we have long (and foolishly) regarded as "moderates" and "friends". It is a war utilising sophisticated technology for destruction and communications, and equally sophisticated techniques for inculcating lethal extremism.

The warriors in this jihad are identified, indoctrinated and recruited by men who manipulate the power of faith to induce a fanaticism whose ultimate expression is the martyrdom of suicide missions. Among them are clerics who have rewarded their welcome into our liberal, open societies by preaching our destruction.

How many acts of holy war - how many recruitments? - were performed by the imam who carried out his assigned task of facilitating Omar Sheikh's training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan? By what concept of liberal democracy must we allow these clerics who are out to destroy us the opportunity to reach impressionable young people with their message of holy war?

It has always been difficult to draw the fine line between protected speech, which is fundamental to our individual liberty, and incitement to prohibited criminal activity. In the United States, that line has long been defined by the concept of a "clear and present" danger. You don't claim the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre as a matter of free speech. In the UK, too, advocacy that falls short of incitement to immediate violence has been widely tolerated.

But combating Islamist extremism may require rethinking the idea of imminence in judging the dangers, and the appropriate response to them, of the insidious process leading ultimately to acts of mass murder. It is the act of recruitment into the swamp of a world divided into believers and infidels that may well be the more appropriate line dividing acceptable from unacceptable advocacy.

Yet in both the UK and the US we have been reluctant - dangerously so - to restrict, and in many cases even to monitor, what is said in the mosques and social centres of Islamist extremists.

In both our countries, there is great resistance to the effective surveillance of extremist Islamist groups. Opposed by most Muslim and civil liberty organisations, which fear that official scrutiny will lead to harassment and discrimination, police authorities have found it difficult to gather essential intelligence that could give timely warning of the formation of cells and networks destined to plan and execute acts of terror.

There was a (largely partisan) outcry in the US when it was learned that telephone conversations and bank transfer records were being scrutinised for terrorist connections, even though not a single aggrieved individual could be found. The occasional, inevitable mistakes by over-worked police and security organisations have further inhibited aggressive surveillance.

After 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali and the rest, all carried out in the name of jihad, and after the chilling discovery of the successfully foiled plot to destroy thousands of air travellers last week, it is obvious we need to know what is going on in those parts of the Muslim community where Islamist extremists have made inroads. At the same time, we need to encourage the vast majority of Muslims who do not share jihadist views to join in opposing them.

To gain the trust and confidence of the American and British Muslim communities, officials in both countries have "outreach" programmes to work with mainstream community leaders. Sadly, these programmes have often left the silent majority of moderate, tolerant Muslims on the sidelines while courting organisations and leaders who are doing more for the disease than the cure.

In an important study released by the British think tank Policy Exchange, "When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries", Martin Bright has described what he calls "the Government's bizarre dalliance with the Islamists".

Based on leaked official documents, Bright demonstrates convincingly the Foreign Office's eagerness to work with, and inevitably enhance the standing of, representatives of the Muslim Brother-hood, an organisation committed to holy war ("Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"), as well as individuals who have openly supported suicide bombing.

Inexplicably, the British Government has accepted as its main partner on Muslim issues the Muslim Council of Britain despite "the clear Islamist sympathies of its leaders".

Something similar has happened in the US, where extremist leaders claiming to speak for America's tolerant Muslim community have been received at official events. On both sides of the Atlantic we need to abandon the illusion that extremist leaders are authentic and less voluble moderates are not. Talk to the latter - and keep a close watch on the former.

Richard Perle is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defence in the administration of Ronald Reagan.