Egypt’s Toshka makes desert bloom

by Jonathan Wright
Reuters

The organic tomatoes are red and juicy, the potatoes massive and flawless. But they are sitting by the roadside in Egypt’s Western Desert, 250km from the nearest large town and thousands of km from the European supermarkets where in mid-winter they could fetch premium prices. They are some of the first fruits from Egypt’s Toshka project, the largest irrigation scheme undertaken in the country since the Aswan High Dam revolutionised an ancient water management system in the 1960s.

The Egyptian government has invested over five billion pounds in Toshka over the past eight years, including $300m on what it says is the world’s largest pumping station, all to turn the desert green. But with the water flowing and much of the infrastructure in place, the government and agri-businesses at Toshka are finding that logistics and marketing may be key to making the most of the 540,000 acres available.

Egypt, where 72 million people live off 8.3 million acres of arable land in the Nile Valley and Delta, badly needs to expand agriculture into new areas. In the absence of significant rainfall, almost all the water must come from the Nile along irrigation canals. Costs rise sharply the further from the valley the water must travel.

Toshka, a project that President Hosni Mubarak has strongly backed, is the largest single element in a master plan to add 3.4 million new acres of farmland by 2017, a 40 per cent increase.

But so far it is making only the tiniest dent in the balance of trade, mainly through grapes exported to Europe by air from a project run by Saudi businessman Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. As in other parts of the country, the government faces a choice between growing grain to reduce the cost of wheat imports and concentrating on crops that can earn high prices abroad.
For the moment, officials and businessmen say exporting is the way to go for Toshka, once they have a packing plant ready, contracts with buyers and regular cargo flights to nearby Abu Simbel airport on the western shores of Lake Nasser.

“The aim is to export 70 per cent of the crops. Because it’s a remote area, the product is expensive,” said Hussein El Atfy, undersecretary at the Ministry of Irrigation. “The climate is fantastic, the soil and the water are clean, and we can have fruit and vegetables ripe a month or two before anyone else in the region,” said Hady Fahmy, chief executive of South Valley Company, a state-owned firm that has developed 6,000 of the 120,000 acres in its Toshka concession.

Ibrahim Kamel, a prominent businessman with agricultural interests, said he had been sceptical about the Toshka project at the start, on the grounds that Egypt had higher priorities than reclaiming desert land in such a remote area.

“But having seen the water flow, I now withdraw all that and say that I am convinced. Anyway, now that we have invested all this money, there’s no going back,” he told reporters. Kamel said the land might be perfect for the kind of organic fragrances in which his company, Kati Aromatics, specialises.

“If you want to do organics, this is the best way to start, on virgin land,” he said.
Critics of the Toshka project have said they doubt it can do much to alleviate the population pressure in the Nile valley, one of the world’s most densely populated agricultural areas. But Atfy said the plan was to settle 2 million people in the Toshka area by 2017, sustained by 700,000 new jobs.

Few people moved to Egypt’s new desert cities when they started in the 1970s but now some are booming industrial and residential areas, with the same facilities as anywhere else. Toshka, which was entirely uninhabited 10 years ago, already has 15,000 people and the project has drawn more people to nearby Abu Simbel, a settlement which has grown up around pharaonic temples which were moved to higher ground in the 1960s to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser.

Ibrahim Ismail, a 25-year-old technician from Sharkia province in the Nile Delta, said he had spent the 18 months at Toshka, maintaining irrigation equipment on a salary of 500 pounds a month, more than he would earn at home.

For the moment he lives in bachelor quarters, working 30 straight days and then taking 10 days off. But if the company builds accommodation for married people and a school, he would consider a complete move to the frontier settlement. “Life is good in Toshka,” he said.

Denmark says Egypt started it

AP

COPENHAGEN, Feb. 18. — Egypt played a central role in the months leading up to the firestorm over the Prophet Mohammad cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, Denmark’s foreign minister said today.

Mr Per Stig Moeller said the crisis appeared to have calmed down in January but reignited after an “unexpected” consumer boycott began in Saudi Arabia on 26 January. Egypt spearheaded criticism against Denmark after the Denmark initially refused to get involved in the dispute over the drawings.

Prominent Egyptian Islamist sent for trial

Reuters
Saturday, February 18, 2006;

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's public prosecutor referred a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood for trial in an emergency state security court on Saturday on charges related to last year's parliamentary elections, judicial sources said.

Hassan el-Hayawan, from the Nile Delta province of Sharkia, northeast of Cairo, was charged with possessing weapons and inciting violence.

But Mohamed Habib, the deputy leader of the Islamist group, which won 88 seats in the 454-member assembly in November and December polls, dismissed the charges. "I think they bugged his telephone and misunderstood what they heard," he told Reuters.

Hayawan is the only Brotherhood member to be formally charged in connection with the elections, Habib added.

Egyptian security detained more than 1,000 members during the elections and accused the group of planning violence, a charge the Brotherhood denies.

All the others have either been released or remain in detention without trial.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an officially banned organization which fields candidates as independents, is Egypt's largest opposition group.

Time not right for US-Egypt trade pact

Fri Feb 17, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The time is not right for the United States and Egypt to begin negotiations on a free- trade agreement, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview on Friday with Arab media.

"I do believe a free-trade agreement will benefit Egyptians and will benefit the economic reform in Egypt -- I think that it is an important element. But we are at this particular point just not in a position to pursue it very actively although we will continue to talk about it," Rice said.

Rice, who travels to Egypt on Tuesday, acknowledged some opening of Egypt's political system, but said Washington was disappointed with a decision to delay this year's local elections.

Her statement followed U.S. criticism of the jailing of Egyptian liberal opposition leader Ayman Nour in December on forgery charges that he and his lawyers say were fabricated to keep him out of politics.

"It is important that we have the right atmosphere for free-trade agreements because they have to of course go through Congress, they have to be approved. But it is not a matter of punishment, it's just a matter of the timing being not quite right," Rice said.

Egypt had been on a short list of potential U.S. free-trade partners for a number of months until Nour's jailing.

U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman said this week it was still possible the two countries would begin talks. But talks with Malaysia were more likely to start next, he said.

Confused on Hamas

The Washington Post
Saturday, February 18, 2006; A32

THE SPOKESMAN for the French Foreign Ministry was asked the other day if there had not been some confusion in policy toward the fundamentalist group Hamas since its victory in the Palestinian elections. Answer: "There is no confusion at all in the French position, not on this or on any other question."

Well, okay. Still, things do seem a tiny bit muddled at the Quai d'Orsay: France, after all, is simultaneously refusing to talk to Hamas and encouraging Russia to do so. Nor is Paris the only capital where "confused" seems to describe the thinking about how to handle the Islamic majority that is due to be sworn in today in the Palestinian legislature. Though they are pretty sure they disagree with the French, neither the Bush administration nor the Israeli government is clear about many of the other questions Hamas's ascendance has raised.

In part this is a good thing. Responding well to Hamas will require a careful balancing act from Israel, its Arab neighbors and the West. The trick is to calibrate a strategy that will push Hamas toward moderation -- and punish it if there is none -- without provoking chaos in the Palestinian territories or undermining the democratic process that the United States has done so much to promote. The United States and its allies in the so-called Quartet for Middle East policy -- the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- got off to a good start by spelling out three conditions for Hamas to meet in exchange for recognition: the renunciation of violence, acceptance of Israel and agreement to existing Palestinian-Israeli accords. The Bush administration and Israel have gone a step further, ruling out any aid or financial transfers to a Hamas government, though not necessarily independent aid groups working with the Palestinian population, if the political conditions are not met.

Had the Quartet remained united in this approach, Hamas might have been forced to choose between transforming itself into a peaceful political movement or failing in its goal of establishing an effective Palestinian government. But before the international pressure could even begin to build, Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a safety valve by inviting Hamas to send a delegation to Moscow. His initiative was quickly backed by France -- the other nation in the Quartet with a history of trying to play Middle East politics to its own advantage. Having broken the diplomatic embargo, Hamas now needs only money: If it can squeeze enough from Gulf states, Iran or, eventually, Europe, it will establish the principle that Islamic fundamentalists openly committed to suicide bombing and the destruction of Israel need not alter their policies to rule. That means a triumph for Osama bin Laden and Iran's extremist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Moscow's intervention is not the only danger. Another is the temptation of the Bush administration to join with Israel, which is lukewarm about Arab democracy, and Egypt, which is

doing its best to prevent one from emerging in Cairo, to strip Hamas of its victory or force it out of office. The three governments have been consulting about ways to bolster secular Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and push him into a confrontation with the Islamists. This week the outgoing Palestinian legislature voted to hand the president extensive new powers, and Mr. Abbas himself has asserted his control over the security forces and media. While some of the maneuvering may be permitted by the Palestinian constitution, the Bush administration will destroy its larger democracy policy if it is seen to conspire with Israel and Arab autocrats to reverse the outcome of one of the freest elections in Arab history. Letting Hamas rule and be judged by Palestinians on its results will require more patience. But it is also more likely to bring about, in the long run, a Palestinian government that the world can welcome.

The Shame of the Prisons

Editorial
The New York Times
February 18, 2006

Who needs sophomoric cartoons to inflame the Muslim world when you've got the Bush administration's prison system? One reason the White House is so helpless against the violence spawned by those Danish cartoons is that it has squandered so much of its moral standing at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. This week, the world got two chilling reminders of why both prisons must be closed.

On Thursday, the United Nations Human Rights Commission issued a scathing report on the violations of democratic principles, human rights and the rule of law at Guantánamo Bay: indefinite arbitrary detentions, hearings that mock fair process and justice, coercive and violent interrogations, and other violations of laws and treaties.

The Bush administration offered its usual weak response, that President Bush has decided there is a permanent state of war that puts him above the law. And that is exactly the problem: by creating Guantánamo outside the legal system for prisoners who, according to Mr. Bush, have no rights, the United States is stuck holding these 500 men in perpetuity. The handful who may be guilty of heinous crimes can never be tried in a real court because of their illegal detentions. A vast majority did nothing or were guilty only of fighting on a battlefield, but the administration refuses to sort them out.

Some members of Congress tried to exert control over Guantánamo Bay late last year. But their efforts were hijacked by Bush loyalists, who made matters worse by stripping the prisoners there of the basic human right to challenge their detentions.

Now the only solution is to close Guantánamo Bay and account for its prisoners fairly and openly. The United States then needs a prisons policy that conforms to the law and to democratic principles.

The U.N. report followed a broadcast by an Australian television station of previously unpublicized photographs taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003. Many were similar to the pictures the world saw two years ago when the scandal of abuse, humiliation and torture first broke. Others show even worse abuses and degradation.

All are a reminder that the Bush administration has yet to account for what happened at Abu Ghraib. No political appointee has been punished for the policies that led to the atrocities. Indeed, most have been rewarded.

The prison was a symbol of the worst of the Hussein regime. Now it's a symbol of the worst of the American occupation. Congress should order it replaced. And perhaps John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, could keep his promise to dig out the truth about Abu Ghraib.

US asks Palestinians to return aid

By Sue Pleming
Reuters
Fri Feb 17,2006

The United States has asked the Palestinian Authority to return $50 million in U.S. aid because Washington does not want a Hamas-led government to have the funds, the State Department said on Friday.

The money was demanded as part of a full review of all U.S. aid for the Palestinians that began soon after the militant group Hamas' surprise victory in elections last month. A Hamas-led parliament was set to be sworn in on Saturday but it could take several weeks for a Cabinet to be formed.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the caretaker government of President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to return the money, given last year for infrastructure projects after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

"In the interests of seeing that these funds not potentially make their way into the coffers of a future Palestinian government (made up of Hamas) ... we have asked for it to be returned and the Palestinian Authority has agreed," McCormack told reporters.

A Palestinian official confirmed Washington had asked for $50 million in aid to be returned. "The Palestinian Authority promised to comply," the official said.

Over the past decade, the United States has given about $1.5 billion in aid to the Palestinians, mostly through aid groups.

McCormack reiterated U.S. policy that aid could not go to Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist group, but he said the United States was looking at ways of ensuring humanitarian assistance could reach the Palestinians.

For a Hamas government to get direct aid, it would have to renounce violence, recognize Israel, disarm militias and agree to past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be visiting Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates next week to discuss, among other issues, how to deal with Hamas and to convince those nations not to fill any funding gap.

The mediating powers in the Middle East -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- issued a statement last month in which they said Hamas must reject violence and recognize Israel or risk losing aid.

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS

Several aid groups want the U.S. government to grant a waiver for humanitarian assistance to enable them to communicate with a new Palestinian government.

Elizabeth Sime, country director for CARE's program in the West Bank and Gaza, said world donors must understand that getting aid to the Palestinians required cooperation at least "on a technical level" with the Palestinian Authority.

McCormack told Reuters it was premature to talk about a waiver, adding it would be a few weeks before the review was completed.

Peter Gubser, president of American Near East Refugee Aid, said he feared his charity's school program might be affected by an aid cut because the group had to deal with Palestinian ministries.

Like many others, his group was looking at how to shift aid in a way that complied with U.S. law. A school program that would require dealings with the Palestinian Authority may be curbed and so his group might, for example, put more funds in their milk program for Palestinian preschoolers.

InterAction, an umbrella group representing about 160 aid groups, said there was concern any sharp cut in foreign assistance would create more unrest and hurt the weakest.

The group's president, Mohammad Akhter, said it was possible to work with civil society groups not linked in any way to Hamas. He pointed out the United States had given food aid to the North Koreans even though it opposed their polices.

In the Mideast, the Third Way Is a Myth

By Shibley Telhami
The Washington Post
February 17, 2006; A19

The reality shown by Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections is this: If fully free elections were held today in the rest of the Arab world, Islamist parties would win in most states. Even with intensive international efforts to support "civil society" and nongovernmental organizations, elections in five years would probably yield the same results. The notion, popular in Washington over the past few years, that American programs and efforts can help build a third alternative to both current governments and Islamists is simply a delusion.

In Arab politics there are primarily two organized power groups: Islamic organizations, drawing their support from a disenfranchised public mobilized by the mosque, and governing elites. Sure, there are many other organizations, sometimes even ones whose aspirations match those of large segments of the public, but their chances will remain small. This we have ascribed to bad governments always forcing the choice between themselves on the one hand and the Islamists on the other.

But this is usually the outcome of normal politics, even in mature democracies. Most people around the world would be hard-pressed to see the U.S. political system as a multiparty one. Even in many parliamentary multiparty systems, politics evolves into competition between two dominant parties, making it extremely difficult for a third way to emerge. It is a remarkable leap of faith to expect that we can engineer a different outcome in the Middle East.

It isn't that democracy is not possible in the Arab world. In fact, the remarkable thing about the Palestinian elections was that they were free and highly contested under difficult circumstances. Over 20 percent of the candidates, including those of Hamas, were female. The ruling elites accepted defeat and stepped aside. In the limited parliamentary success in Egypt, government candidates lost in a majority of the districts contested by the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and the results stood.

But in this historic moment Islamists remain the most well-organized alternative to governments, a situation that is unlikely to change soon. And current governments are not popular: A survey I conducted in October with Zogby International (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates) asked Arabs which world leaders they admired most (outside their own countries). The only leader who received double-digit support was French President Jacques Chirac (for his perceived defiance of the United States on Iraq). No sitting Arab ruler received more than 2 percent. A plurality of Arabs believe that the clergy plays "too little" a role in Arab politics. There is a vacuum of leadership that will inevitably cost governments in truly free elections.

This leaves U.S. foreign policy with limited choices. Full electoral democracy in the Middle East will inevitably lead to domination by Islamist groups, leaving the United States to either continue a confrontational approach, with high and dangerous costs for both sides, or to find a way to engage them -- something that has yet to be fully considered. Given this, skepticism about the real aims of these groups should be balanced by openness to the possibility that their aims once they are in power could differ from their aims as opposition groups. This requires partial engagement, patience, and a willingness to allow such new governments space and time to put their goals to the test of reality. Hamas, in fact, could provide a place for testing whether careful engagement leads to moderation.

If we are not willing to engage, there is only one alternative: to rethink the policy of accelerated electoral democracy and focus on a more incremental approach of institutional and economic reform of existing governments. There is no realistic third party that's likely to emerge anytime soon.

Whatever the message of American foreign policy on democracy, it has not been clear in the Middle East. Most Arab governments see the American advocacy of democracy as primarily aimed at pressuring them to cooperate on strategic issues (such as Iraq, the war on terrorism and the Palestinian-Israeli issue) and at diverting attention from the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The majority of Arabs surveyed in our poll do not believe that the United States is serious about the pursuit of democracy and that the Middle East is even less democratic than it was before the Iraq war.

The focus on democracy, and the United States as a key agent in driving it, has been a distraction from other central challenges. The single most significant demographic variable correlated with anti-Americanism in the Arab world is income. In Gaza, where unemployment is nearly 50 percent, per capita income is half of what it was in the late 1990s. Income is related to the quality of education. In Egypt, home to one-quarter of Arabs, Cairo University, the leading Arab university, is now rated 28th -- in Africa. Human rights violations remain widespread in the region, where our own troubling behavior toward prisoners has significantly hampered our ability to lecture others. Concerted efforts in those areas of economic, educational and judicial development, coupled with a strong human rights policy, have a far greater chance to make a difference.

Despite all its troubles, the United States remains the most powerful country, still powerful enough to reshuffle the deck in the Middle East. But it will never be powerful enough to determine where the cards fall.

The writer is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and a non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution.

Uproar over U.S. ports

The Washington Times
February 17, 2006

The White House is obviously not listening to the congressional uproar over Dubai Ports World. Lawmakers want to know why a federal panel allowed a state-owned United Arab Emirates shipping firm to pay $6.8 billion to acquire six major American ports -- including critical ones in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia -- despite its home country's glaring ties to international terrorism. But the White House is yawning.
The issue interrupted this week's House Ways and Means Committee hearings on the budget, and Treasury Secretary John Snow's non-answer -- he explained to curt questioning from Rep. Mark Foley, Florida Republican, that the Commission on Foreign Investment in the United States followed its regular processes -- simply won't cut it. Yesterday, Stewart Baker, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, asserted flatly that "We came to the conclusion that the transaction should not be halted." National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said that it was "rigorously reviewed." In other words, the White House considers it a done deal.
But why? Why must the United States let a state-owned firm from a hotbed of radicalism own the major ports of the Eastern seaboard? No one has answered this to our satisfaction.
Both sides of the aisle are outraged. "Foreign control of our ports, which are vital to homeland security, is a risky proposition," said Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Democrat. "Riskier yet is that we are turning it over to a country that has been linked to terrorism previously." Mr. Schumer started a campaign to reconsider the deal this week with the support of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, and others who believe that the sale received too little scrutiny. Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, said he was concerned. The New York Times editorial board disapproved of it yesterday. When an odd alliance of Messrs. Schumer and Coburn and the New York Times agree that the deal was rushed and dangerous, the White House should know it has a problem.
The deadlock cinch here is that Dubai Ports World doesn't even have to be a willing collaborator to be a danger to the United States. All other things being equal, an Arabic company is easier for terrorists to penetrate than a British or American firm. In the least nefarious of scenarios, Dubai Ports World might not even know what happened until after some future attack. That would be possible even if the dockworkers are the same and even if most of the local management is exactly the same. There are other frightening scenarios. What happens if the government of the United Arab Emirates backs away from the counterterrorism support President Bush currently lauds it for?
The president and the treasury secretary should call this deal off on national-security grounds. The United States gains nothing and risks everything by letting Dubai Ports World own these hubs of commerce. Discouragingly, it appears the White House doesn't see it that way.

Knocking On Osama's Cave Door

The CIA Operative Says He Was There at the Right Time. His Ex-Bosses Insist No One Was Home.
By Richard Leiby, Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post
February 16, 2006

NEW YORK -- Gary Berntsen was known at CIA headquarters as an aggressive field operative, the type inclined to act first and ask permission later. But he possessed the right combination of brawn and brains for tough missions. When summoned to the front office in the Counterterrorist Center in October 2001, Berntsen recalls, his boss's orders were simple: "Gary, I want you killing the enemy immediately."

He left for Afghanistan the next day determined to eliminate one man in particular. By Berntsen's telling, he could have gotten Osama bin Laden -- if only they'd given him the troops and the time to get the job done.

Now whenever he sees the al Qaeda leader threatening attacks against Americans, "I'm horrified," Berntsen says. "I feel haunted by the fact that it wasn't done. I did every single thing I could do there."

So what to do next? Write a book. It seems to be a popular career afterlife for a growing number of spooks. Berntsen's contribution to the genre is "Jawbreaker," his score-settling insider's account of how bin Laden eluded capture at Tora Bora that December. Its cover advertises it as "The Book the CIA Doesn't Want You to Read!"

The world's most notorious terrorist has been in Berntsen's sights since 1998, when he investigated al Qaeda links to the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. In his book, Berntsen recounts a 23-year counterterrorism career, but the headline is this: Bin Laden escaped through snow-covered mountain passes into Pakistan, the ex-spy alleges, because U.S. generals failed to heed his call for 800 troops.

Berntsen's account is sharply at odds with that of Army Gen. Tommy Franks, former head of Central Command, who has written that bin Laden "was never within our grasp." All due respect to Franks, Berntsen says, but "I was the guy on the ground" who ran the CIA's largest paramilitary operation against the Taliban and bin Laden.

"We could have ended it all there."

Berntsen, 48, who retired from the agency last June, calls himself an "adrenaline addict" and looks the part of an action dude: Six feet tall, 225 pounds, with penetrating green eyes, close-cropped hair and an elastic face that reflects a simmering intensity that occasionally rises to a full boil. During lunch in a quiet French restaurant in Manhattan, he serves up his story with grins and grimaces and large helpings of bravado.

His covert line of work was simple: Find and neutralize terrorists. Now his overt mission is self-promotion: He wrangles reporters and talk show hosts (among them the shock jocks Greaseman and Mancow), offering sound bites on CNN, and doing all he can to boost sales of "Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander," authored with a wordsmith named Ralph Pezzullo.

The book takes its title from the CIA name for units that operated in Afghanistan even before the war, then worked side by side with Special Forces and Special Operations troops and initiated combat missions. Though "Jawbreaker" would seem to capture Berntsen's tough-guy persona, he says it was just a code word spit out by a computer.

"I'm grateful it came out with something good that I can make use of on the cover of my book." He chuckles. "It could have been 'Doorstop' or something like that."

The book's release was stalled for more than four months by the CIA's publications review board, which vets manuscripts by active and retired employees. Berntsen took the CIA to court twice to release the manuscript. "Didn't they read my psychological profile?" he marvels, then spells out what it would say: "This guy is a risk-taker. And if he believes he's right, he's not gonna walk away. They just wanted me to go away."

The book dropped on Dec. 27, right into the black hole between Christmas and New Year's, which further irritated the author. But Berntsen found some advantage in the censorship: "Jawbreaker" is replete with blacked-out passages, after some of which he inserts stinging notes to the reader. Such as: "CIA censors redacted this section dealing with a bureaucratic tie-up at headquarters that had put our whole operation at risk."

A CIA spokesman, Tom Crispell, said that "as a rule" the review process is done within 30 days. "But a complicated manuscript can take longer" and negotiations between the author and the agency over redactions can further extend the process, he added. "We are legally obligated to protect sensitive intelligence information from disclosure."

Slipping the Noose
"Jawbreaker" is the latest in an expanding shelf of books from counterterrorism experts who fault politicians and CIA paper-pushers for not fully recognizing the threat of al Qaeda before 9/11. Berntsen's friend Michael Scheuer, who headed the agency's bin Laden task force and authored "Imperial Hubris," offered an astounding blurb:

"Read this heartbreaking book, keep it safe, and reread it after al-Qaeda detonates a nuclear device in America. You will then know who signed the death warrant for tens of thousands of your countrymen."

It's the second book by a Jawbreaker team leader. Last year agency veteran Gary C. Schroen, who preceded Berntsen into the battle, published "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."

Schroen's memoir recounted instructions from Cofer Black, then director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center: "I want bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able to show bin Laden's head to the president."

Berntsen got the same sort of speech. If the Saudi's scalp eluded him, it wasn't for a lack of his shouting and cursing up the communication lines to get his small team the military backup he needed to grab bin Laden.

Berntsen says he knew exactly where the 1,000-man jihadist force had fallen back in the mountainous region near the Pakistani border. An Arabic-speaking Jawbreaker team member reported hearing bin Laden speaking on a radio taken from a dead al Qaeda fighter. The terrorist leader exhorted his followers to keep fighting and, at one point, apologized "for getting them trapped . . . and pounded by American airstrikes," Berntsen writes.

By his estimate, there were just 40 Special Operations soldiers and a dozen other Special Forces on hand to head off bin Laden's potential flight "across hundreds of miles of caves and mountain passes." The exclamation points come fast and furious in the book as Berntsen vents:

"We needed U.S. soldiers on the ground! . . . I'd sent my request for 800 U.S. Army Rangers and was still waiting for a response. I repeated to anyone at headquarters who would listen: We need Rangers now! The opportunity to get bin Laden and his men is slipping away!!"

He recalls shouting at an Army general in Kabul who had made it clear that ground troops would not be coming, for "fear of alienating our Afghan allies." "Screw that!" Berntsen retorted.

In Berntsen's view, the Afghan militia that Franks relied on was "unreliable" and "cobbled together at the last minute" -- certainly not the army to trust with nabbing the man who had ordered the 9/11 attacks. "I'd made it clear in my reports that our Afghan allies were hardly anxious to get at al-Qaeda in Tora Bora," he writes. But his superiors at Langley told him it wasn't the CIA's call to make.

This account seems to jibe with Sen. John Kerry's charge during the 2004 campaign that President Bush had wrongly "outsourced" the job of getting bin Laden to Afghan warlords. Franks, in a New York Times op-ed piece in October 2004, defended Bush, saying: "I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality. . . . We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001."

Berntsen writes that Franks "was either badly misinformed by his own people or blinded by the fog of war," but his critique stops there.

"I am a Republican," he says, staunchly supporting the president and his approach to the war on terrorism. "It doesn't help to be beating up on George Bush. I could be saying savage things about a lot of people, but it doesn't help. I don't want to diminish the president's ability to fight this war."

Berntsen prefers to call the Afghan campaign a "flawed masterpiece" -- the flaw being that bin Laden escaped.

Learning to Fly Straight
The son of an aerospace engineer, Berntsen misspent his youth in the teenage wastelands of Long Island in the mid-1970s. "Dope wasn't my thing," he writes, "but I drank beer by the six-pack from the age of thirteen." He graduated one from the bottom of his high school class of 300 -- a "functional illiterate with a 65.6 grade point average."

He straightened himself up by joining the Air Force, where he was a firefighter for four years. Crises, explosions, people dying around him: "I learned to function under high levels of stress. I actually kind of like it."

He parachuted out of airplanes for sport. He was studying political science and Russian at the University of New Mexico when the CIA recruited him.

The agency's Middle Eastern division was in mourning when he arrived in 1983. Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists had blown up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans, several CIA employees among them. "Almost the entire station was wiped out," Berntsen says.

Station chief William Buckley -- whom Berntsen had gotten to know in Washington -- was later kidnapped, tortured and killed by a group of Hezbollah jihadists. "There was no way I couldn't volunteer to go to the Middle East," he says. "I felt a personal obligation. I figured, if I don't step up, who's gonna do it?"

He eventually would learn Farsi, head operations against Hezbollah and spend three years with the Iran unit in Europe, "deployed all over the world against assassins," he says.

He also served in Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Balkans and South America. He won't discuss the details but says, "Every time there was a difficult job to do, I got sent." Berntsen generically describes being in the middle of gun battles and directing combat and air strikes, but says he, personally, never had to kill anyone.

"Extremely well informed" is how Sandy Vogelgesang, former ambassador to Nepal, remembers Berntsen. "He's rock solid -- the kind of person who evokes total confidence."

From Berntsen's perspective, the CIA lost its way in the Clinton years, particularly under then-Director John Deutch and his deputy, George Tenet. On the paper covering the lunch table he draws a pie chart to illustrate how Tenet "shrank" the covert-ops mission of the agency. Much like the 2002 book "See No Evil" by Robert Baer, another former counterterrorism operative, Berntsen's memoir depicts a sclerotic spy service clogged by bureaucratic inertia after the Cold War, ill prepared to penetrate terrorist groups.

"In George Tenet's CIA the conduct of operations was less important than Beltway politics and networking on the seventh floor [at Langley]," Berntsen writes. "I watched in frustration as officers who sat in safe staff jobs were promoted faster than ops officers who risked their lives in the field."

No comment, said Bill Harlow, a former CIA spokesman helping Tenet write a memoir. "Director Tenet won't be offering any comments on anybody's books, good or bad."

(Perhaps he'll open up once he has a book to flog.)

'Gotta Break China'
There's a grand tradition among those who work in the trenches for any organization to fume about the boneheads and second-guessers at the top and in the rear echelons. The guys on the ground get labeled "difficult personalities." Hotheads, sometimes. Berntsen says any such criticism of him "may be valid," but makes a point: "Why is it that Gary Berntsen was always the guy who was sent?"

Black, who approved Berntsen's assignment to Afghanistan, answers: "When you go into battle, you don't go with your weak sisters. He is exactly the kind of guy you want to have."

Black and others point out that there was no modern playbook for intelligence officers waging war as they did in Afghanistan -- it hadn't been done since World War II. "He went into a battle whose outcome was highly uncertain," Black says, "and lived up to the highest tradition of dropping OSS agents into Nazi Germany."

"Gary did a helluva job," agrees Billy Waugh, a legendary Special Forces veteran who served with Berntsen and appears in the book. Waugh was 72 at the time he deployed to Afghanistan as a CIA contractor. He affords Berntsen a high honor: "I called him the old man. . . . He was the boss."

The very qualities that set Berntsen apart may ultimately have undermined his career. He wanted to stay months longer in Afghanistan but was posted back to Latin America (where he was on 9/11). "There were politics involved" is how he vaguely puts it now.

But he has no regrets: "There's a time to be diplomatic, but after they kill 3,000 people in your country, you just say, 'I'm doing this!' Somebody's gotta break china, and I'm out there breaking china."

He believes "additional catastrophic attacks" on America are coming and the last great hope lies in the CIA's clandestine service -- but it must cultivate a new generation of operatives like him. The ones whose psych profiles come back "risk-taker."

He issues pronouncements as if they should be engraved in marble under the CIA insignia at Langley. Such as: "It's not about connecting the dots. It's about collecting the dots."

And: "The field leads. Headquarters doesn't lead. Sorry ."

"Let me explain something," he says. "When you're in the field, you see it, you smell it, you hear it, you're writing about it, you send messages back to Washington. But Washington always has a hard time understanding it all. You know what I mean. . . . They spend their afternoons at their soccer games with their kids. . . . They're involved, but they don't live it like you do."

In Afghanistan, "I had a little green notebook. I'm keeping track of everything that I'm doing on the fly -- with no staff. . . .

"How much staff do you think General Franks had? Me: No staff!"

He sips his coffee. Laughs quietly. "I'm just hanging out there on the end of a very long branch."

You can tell it is a place he likes to be, a man alone with uncertain ground below. He is unafraid to drop, but talking to him for a few hours reveals a certain anxiety, a sense that he's casting about. He is a warrior who needs to know his next mission.

At midlife, Berntsen is reconfiguring his career and more. Separated from his wife of 20-plus years, he has moved back to the New York area. His daughter, a Navy intelligence officer, just got married. His son is in college.

Berntsen is already writing his next book, which will be about counterterrorism policy. He's pitching a TV documentary and a movie. He's thinking about getting back into government service. He's networking with Republican politicians. He wants someday to run for office.

The war won't end when somebody boxes up the head of bin Laden. "The fight we're in will be for the next two decades, and I plan to be part of this fight," he says.

But there is one thing he's learned since leaving the battlefield: "I have to take it down to a point below simmer and try not to be so angry."

Kyrgyzstan Seeks Rent Rise For U.S. Base

By Agence France-Presse
DefenseNews.com
February 15, 2006

MOSCOW -- Kyrgyzstan wants the U.S. to pay over 100 times more than it does at present for use of an air base in the ex-Soviet republic, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said in an interview published Feb. 15.

”According to our new calculations, they should pay $207 million (174 million euros),” Bakiyev said, apparently referring to an annual sum, in the interview published by Russia’s Kommersant daily.

The current rent paid by Washington for use of the Manas base near the Kyrgyz capital “represents a little over $2 million,” Bakiyev said.

The new figure has not been arrived at “by accident,” he said. “There are international norms for the cost of a hectare of land and a square meter in an international airport of this level.”

Manas, known by U.S. forces as Ganci, is a staging post for operations in nearby Afghanistan.

Its role has expanded since another base used by the United States in neighboring Uzbekistan was closed last November on the orders of the Uzbek government.

Kyrgyzstan’s foreign ministry said last month that new conditions for use of the base had been set out in a letter to the U.S. ambassador, including “a significant increase in the lease fees, payment for ecological damage, as well as a few other points reflecting Kyrgyzstan’s national interests”.

In addition to its rent payments, the United States makes major payments for aircraft fuel — money that has been the subject of controversy in the past due to accusations of corruption.

Blair Wins Parliament Vote Criminalizing 'Glorification' of Terror

By ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
February 16, 2006

LONDON, Feb. 15 — After a series of bruising parliamentary duels, Prime Minister Tony Blair secured victory in the House of Commons on Wednesday in a vote to expand counterterrorism laws by making "glorification" of terrorism a criminal offense.

Legislators voted 315 to 277 in a ballot that pitted Mr. Blair's Labor Party against the Conservative and Liberal Democratic opposition. Seventeen Labor dissidents voted against the measure.

Mr. Blair's critics said the vote, one of three crucial parliamentary tests in as many days, was as much a display of political maneuvering as a strengthening of British laws, which already include prohibitions like those used last week to prosecute Abu Hamza al-Masri, a firebrand Muslim cleric. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for soliciting to murder and promoting racial hatred.

Opponents had said the term "glorification" was legally vague and unnecessary. "The existing law is quite adequate to the problem," said Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But hours before the vote, Mr. Blair insisted in Parliament that "if we take out the word glorification, we are sending a massive counterproductive signal."

Political analysts said Mr. Blair seemed to be positioning himself to argue that the opposition was soft on terrorism. The prime minister, admonishing William Hague, a Conservative opposition leader, said the measure was "absolutely vital if we are to defend this country successfully against the likes of Abu Hamza."

Evoking the terrorist attacks on London's mass transit system last July 7, Charles Clarke, the home secretary, said, "It is the glorification of terror which, in the view of the government, is an essential method for those individuals and organizations who pursue terrorist ambitions and seek to get individuals, like the 7/7 bombers, to commit to their suicidal and destructive ends."

But Mr. Hague accused the government of "ineffective authoritarianism" and called the draft legislation "a press release law designed to catch the headlines."

Mr. Blair announced that he would tighten existing terrorism laws after the July bombings, in which four attackers killed 52 people on the transit system. But there have been several setbacks to his plans.

A proposal to close mosques used by radical imams has been dropped, and a plan to extend the permitted period of detention without charge or trial to 90 days from 14 has been abandoned in favor of 28 days.

Speaking after the vote, Mr. Blair said the new law "will allow us to deal with those people and say: Look, we have free speech in this country, but don't abuse it."

Under British parliamentary procedures, the draft law must go back to the upper House of Lords, which removed the term "glorification" when it first considered the legislation. The upper house could still try to excise the term, provoking a standoff with the House of Commons.

The debate has been sharpened by the trial of Mr. Masri and by protests two weeks ago against drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that were printed in a Danish newspaper.

With a welter of Islamic outrage around the world, a group of Muslim demonstrators on Wednesday converged on the Danish Embassy in London bearing placards including one calling for opponents of Islam to be beheaded. Another praised the July 7 killers as "the fantastic four."

The Wednesday vote followed one on Monday in which the government narrowly won approval for mandatory identity cards and another on Tuesday when Parliament voted to ban smoking in all indoor public places in England.

Clearing the Jordan Valley of Palestinians

By AMIRA HASS
February 15, 2006

Someone who apparently had an especially sarcastic sense of humor decided to officially name the Jordan Valley Road, Route 90, the "Gandhi Road." The reference is not to Mahatma Gandhi, but to Rehavam Ze'evi, who advocated "transfer"--the expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. Perhaps he understood that this was indeed the appropriate name for the eastern road. For not only on this road, but throughout the enormous and beautiful expanse of the Jordan Valley and the eastern slopes of the hills, there is an oppressive sense of absence, loss, and emptiness.

The Palestinians have disappeared from the valley, aside from a few thousand who live there plus some to whom Israel agrees to give daily entrance permits for various reasons. It is not even possible to include the approximately 35,000 residents of Jericho among those remaining, because the Israel Defense Forces forbids them to travel northward of Area A, where they live.

Thousands of residents of the neighboring towns and villages in the northern West Bank, which are sometimes only a few kilometers away, are absent from the valley, even though they have relatives and friends, privately owned land, houses, commercial ties and jobs there. Also missing are the Palestinian cars that in the not so distant past used to transport these absentees. Missing as well are the thousands of potential travelers to Jordan, the vacationing families and school students. These potential customers are absent from the colorful stalls at the crossroads.

Israeli soldiers control this absence via four principal checkpoints that divide the valley from the rest of the West Bank. They obey the orders of their commanders: It is forbidden for any Palestinian--in other words, some two million people (the 1.4 million residents of Gaza are already forbidden to come to the West Ba nk in any case)--to enter the valley, except for those whose official address, in their ID, is the Jordan Valley.

Some will say that these are security measures, whether legitimate or excessive, citing the attacks on settlers in the region over the last five years. But primarily, this is a direct continuation of a long-standing Israeli policy that intensified during the Oslo period. This policy has turned the Palestinian Jordan Valley, about one-third of the West Bank, into a story of lost opportunities from the point of view of its Palestinian potential: a potential for agricultural development and tourism, for improving and expanding existing communities or building new ones, for enabling a variety of lifestyles--urban, rural and semi-nomadic, modern and ancient, almost biblical.

The Israeli Oslo architects were careful to ensure that the Palestinian Authority would not be able to develop the valley during those fateful years when many believed that rehabilitating the economy was the proper basis both for a peaceful solution and for increasing support for such a solution.

The Oslo architects designated most of the eastern West Bank as Area C (full Israeli control), which is off-limits to Palestinian development. Only the settlements were allowed to develop, thanks primarily to the theft and exploitation of Palestinian water sources. A military training zone, where the IDF has conducted exercises ever since it conquered the West Bank, occupies 475 square kilometers of the valley and impairs the traditional lifestyle of thousands of semi-nomadic or Bedouin shepherds in the area. These shepherds are frequently turned out of their tents or forbidden to graze their sheep on these expanses or to raise a little wheat and produce for food.

At one time the explanation was that this is a firing range; once it was an issue of illegal construction. Just last Thursday, civil administration personnel demolished the tents, tin huts and sheepfolds of some 20 agricultural families in five different places in the valley. It is clear what scares the Israeli planners: A significant portion of the Palestinian communities in the valley turned from seasonal extensions of villages in the northern West Bank into permanent communities in the middle of the last century. Jews are encouraged to settle in the valley, but every conceivable method is used to deter Palestinians from doing so.

Preventing development and halting a long-standing natural process of construction and population expansion is a form of emptying out. But over the last few months, this effort expanded to include active measures: From time to time, soldiers come during the night and remove to the other side of the checkpoint those who live or work in the valley but whose official address is elsewhere. In the morning, these people return via the hills, evading the soldiers, taking the risk of stepping on a dud artillery shell.

And in October, people were given another reason to become fed up with life in the valley: Palestinian farmers were prevented from selling their produce to Israeli farmers at the nearest border crossing between the valley and Israel.

Instead of traveling five kilometers, they were forced to travel 50, to a distant cargo terminal (Jalameh), and to wait endlessly at the internal checkpoints, knowing that a large portion of their vegetables would be spoiled by the sun and the bumping around. Knowing that there would be no reward for their labor.

The army swears that these prohibitions bear no relation to the politicians' declarations that the valley will remain in Israel's hands forever. But in practice, they are helping to empty it of Palestinians, in preparation for its official annexation to Israel.

Pakistan's Costly 'Other War'

By Selig S. Harrison
Washington Post
February 15, 2006

The usual explanation for Pakistan's failure to go all-out against al Qaeda and Taliban forces along the Afghan frontier is that Gen. Pervez Musharraf's armed forces and intelligence services are riddled with Islamic extremists. But there is also another, equally disturbing, reason. Musharraf has increasingly been forced to divert ground forces and U.S.-supplied air power from the Afghan front and from Kashmir earthquake relief efforts to combat a bitter, little-noticed insurgency in his strategic southern coastal province of Baluchistan.

Musharraf's "other war" against the Baluch, an ethnic minority of 4.5 million, has become increasingly bloody in recent weeks. According to U.S. intelligence sources, six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totaling some 25,000 men, are battling Baluch Liberation Army guerrillas in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas. The independent Pakistan Human Rights Commission has reported "indiscriminate bombing and strafing" by 20 U.S.-supplied Cobra helicopter gunships and four squadrons of fighter planes, including U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets, resulting in 215 civilian dead and hundreds more wounded, many of them women and children.

Visiting U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told human rights commission leaders recently that the Baluch conflict is an "internal matter" for Pakistan to resolve and that the United States has not raised the issue with Musharraf. This policy should be reversed, not only to stop the carnage but also because the United States has a major strategic stake in a peaceful accommodation between Islamabad and Baluch leaders. The administration should call on Musharraf to start negotiations immediately, and President Bush should keep up the pressure when he visits Islamabad in March.

Multiethnic Pakistan, dominated by the Punjabis, who control the army, is likely to become increasingly ungovernable in the absence of a political settlement with the Baluch. A continued military confrontation in Baluchistan could well intensify long-festering ethnic unrest in neighboring Sind and embolden various anti-Musharraf forces throughout Pakistan. Musharraf's ability to put adequate military resources into the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, already limited, would be further reduced, undermining U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

The strategic importance of Baluchistan has grown since China started building a port for Pakistan at the Baluch port of Gwadar, close to the Strait of Hormuz, with a projected 27 berths, enough for a major Pakistani naval base that could be used by Beijing. The Baluch ancestral homeland stretches west beyond Gwadar into adjacent Baluch-majority areas of eastern Iran, where there is a nascent Baluch rebellion against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran fears Baluch nationalism, but India is more ambivalent. New Delhi wants a stable Pakistan that will negotiate a peace settlement on Kashmir. At the same time, many Indian commentators appear happy to see Musharraf bogged down in Baluchistan and hope that the Baluch crisis will force him to ratchet down Pakistani support for Kashmiri Islamic extremist insurgents.

Musharraf has presented no evidence to back up his accusations that India is aiding the Baluch insurgents. But New Delhi did say on Dec. 27 that it is "watching with concern the spiraling military violence in Baluchistan" and called for political dialogue. Both Baluch and Sindhi leaders have often said that they would welcome Indian intervention to liberate them from Islamabad.

At present, most Baluch leaders do not call for independence. They are ready to settle for the provincial autonomy envisaged in the 1973 Pakistani constitution, which successive military regimes, including the present one, have nullified. What the Baluch, Sindhis and a third, more assimilated ethnic minority, the Pushtuns, want above all is an end to blatant economic discrimination by the dominant Punjabis. Most of Pakistan's natural resources are in Baluchistan, including natural gas, uranium, copper and potentially rich oil reserves, both onshore and offshore. Although 36 percent of the gas produced in Pakistan comes from the province, Baluchistan consumes only a fraction of its production because it is the most impoverished area of Pakistan. For decades, Punjabi-dominated central governments have denied Baluchistan a fair share of development funds and paid only 12 percent of the royalties due to the province for the gas produced there.

The Baluch were forcibly incorporated into Pakistan when it was created in 1947 and have subsequently staged two short-lived rebellions, in 1958 and 1962, as well as a protracted struggle from 1973 to 1977 that involved some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch tribesmen.

The big difference between earlier phases of the Baluch struggle and the present one is that Islamabad is no longer able to play off feuding tribes against each other and faces a unified nationalist movement. Another important difference is that the Baluch have a better-armed, more disciplined fighting force. Baluch leaders say that rich compatriots in the Persian Gulf are providing the money needed to buy weapons in the flourishing black market.

It is clear that a continuing Baluch insurgency would pose a major threat to the Musharraf regime and to U.S. interests in Pakistan. Future military and economic aid to Islamabad should clearly be withheld until Musharraf stops his military repression in Baluchistan and enters into serious negotiations with Baluch leaders. Once the present crisis is defused, the United States should launch a sustained effort to promote a process of democratization in Pakistan that gives long-overdue recognition to its multiethnic character.

The writer, former South Asia bureau chief of The Post, is the author of "In Afghanistan's Shadow," a study of Baluch nationalism. He is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy.

Afghan Gas Pipeline Nears Reality

By Scott Baldauf
Christian Science Monitor
February 15, 2006

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- If all goes well this week, Afghanistan may soon be on its way to having a gas pipeline going through its territory.

The ninth meeting of oil ministers for Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan started Tuesday in Ashkabad, Turkmenistan's capital. And according to Afghan officials, the three countries are closer than ever to a deal.

"When I met with the Turkmenistan vice president, and with [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, and with President Pervez Musharraf, they all said this is a very good project, and it will have a good effect on the regional economy," says Mir Sediq, Afghanistan's minister for mines and industry.

Even India is interested in the project, and Indian officials will be attending the Ashkabad meeting as observers. "Manmohan Singh told me, 'We have a population of 1.3 billion people, and we cannot continue to grow without power," says Mr. Sediq. "One or two pipelines are not enough. We'll need three or four.' "

From the time it was first proposed in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1,000-mile-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project, or TAP, has always had a certain unrealistic aura to it. Clearly Pakistan has a growing need for energy. Just as clearly, Turkmenistan has a lot of natural gas. The dilemma has always been Afghanistan: Would you put a gas pipeline through a country with a raging civil war?

For much of the 1990s, American oil company Unocal answered "yes," and hired Afghan consultants - such as the soon-to-be president Hamid Karzai; soon-to-be US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad; and soon-to-be minister of Mines and Industry Sediq - to help negotiate with tribal chiefs and militia warlords. Eventually, Unocal shelved the project, in part because of the Taliban's intransigence, and in part because of pressure from human rights groups for trying to do business with them.

But with the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, and the support of foreign forces to keep relative peace, Afghanistan has suddenly turned into a "safe" investment choice, at least from the perspective of the oil industry. That is the assessment of the Asian Development Bank, which recently commissioned a study that gave its support to the TAP. Security is an issue, the ADB report says, but an issue that can be resolved with a few protective measures.

Then there's Pakistan: Will it be able to consume enough of Turkmenistan's gas for the project to be viable? At the time the TAP was first proposed, Pakistan's economy was growing at 4.5 percent a year. Today, its growth rate is estimated at 8.5 percent. Pakistani energy officials estimate that they will run out of domestic gas supplies in 2010.

The final cost of the project is currently estimated at $3.7 billion, up from the $2.5 billion price tag estimated in the 1990s. Unocal is now out of the picture, replaced by Argentine energy company Bridas.

For Afghanistan, this project could be a welcome source of jobs and income. After the three-year construction period, annual revenue for the Afghan government would reach around $350 million to $450 million.

This is less than the $2.2 billion in Afghanistan's illicit opium economy, but it has the advantage of being clean.

Israel takes on Web sites used by Hamas

Israel reportedly has launched a campaign against Web sites used by Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups. Ma’ariv reported Tuesday that the Foreign Ministry’s legal department has compiled a list of foreign servers that host jihadi sites, apparently unaware that their content violates international anti-terror regulations.

According to the newspaper, the ministry has recommended that Israeli missions abroad encourage local Jewish groups to lobby against the sites. A pilot campaign targeting one such site is under way. Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the report.

New 'Allah' doc ready to raise a ruckus

Dubowski vows to screen pic in every Muslim nation
By ED MEZA
VARIETY
Feb. 14, 2006

Sandi Dubowski, who won the Teddy gay and lesbian award in 2001 for his controversial doc "Trembling Before G-d," may cause an even bigger stir with "In the Name of Allah," which explores the struggles of homosexual Muslims.

Gay Indian Muslim helmer Parvez Sharma is directing the pic, which looks at gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims across the Muslim and Western worlds.

"The world right now needs to understand Islam, and these are the most unlikely storytellers of Islam," Dubowski said, who is producing 'Allah.'

Doc will undoubtedly prove an even thornier film to export than "Trembling."

Sharma and Dubowski plan to submit the pic to all major festivals in the Muslim world as well as in the West, but if it's rejected, Dubowski said, "We'll find ways of screening it in every Muslim nation, even if it's underground."

Dubowski already faced problems with the international release of "Trembling Before G-d." Pic faced protests and bans in South Africa, Mexico and Baltimore.

But Dubowski has managed to open doors in the Hasidic and Orthodox communities in Israel, U.S. and U.K. and has toured the world over the past five years doing 800 live events with diverse religious and secular groups.

Quieter presence urged in Mideast

By John Diamond
USA TODAY
2/14/2006

WASHINGTON — The United States should launch a major covert information campaign to promote the nation's image in the Middle East and sow division among radical Muslim groups, according to a West Point critique of U.S. terrorism policy.

The strategy, amounting to a secret campaign for hearts and minds, could involve paying for favorable publications and schools that promote moderate Islamic philosophies.

The report also proposes using Muslim allies, or at least groups hostile to the more militant Islamic movements, to exploit ideological rifts within terrorist groups.

Through it all, however, "it is essential that the U.S. hand not be seen," said the report by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. military academy.

The authors of the unpublished report, civilian scholars Jarret Brachman and William McCants, confirmed the authenticity of the report obtained by USA TODAY. Though not an official U.S. military document, it has circulated widely among U.S. intelligence officials and officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff. The authors regularly brief Pentagon officials on terrorism issues.

KEY FINDINGS

* Jihadi writings reveal divisions the U.S. government should exploit.

* Large-scale U.S. intervention fuels anti-U.S. attitudes.

* Muslim-on-Muslim violence hurts the terrorist movement.

* U.S. role in propaganda must be hidden.

The report, completed Monday, says the United States should rely on "proxies" for military action in the Middle East, if force is necessary.

"Direct engagement with the United States has been good for the jihadi movement," the authors argue, because it reinforces the perception in the Mideast of the United States as an anti-Islamic crusader.

"The United States should avoid direct, large-scale military action in the Middle East."

Such action, the report says, "rallies the locals behind the movement, drains the United States of resources and puts pressure" on allied regimes.

Titled "Stealing al-Qaeda's Playbook," the report is based on a detailed study of jihadist writings and communications and is meant to help better understand the enemy, Brachman said in an interview.

The current U.S. anti-terrorist strategy is reactive, the authors argue in briefing slides accompanying the report. They dub the strategy, "Whack-a-Terrorist," after the game "Whack-a-Mole."

Retired general Wayne Downing, the center's chairman and a former head of Special Operations Command, has been advising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on ways to make the command more effective against terrorist groups.

In the report's foreword, Downing writes that although U.S. intelligence agencies have devoted more resources to translating jihadi texts and broadcasts, they don't have enough people to pay enough attention "to the most useful texts" they have collected.

Last year, the U.S. Special Operations Command issued $300 million in contracts for three companies to spread pro-American propaganda without revealing the U.S. connections.

One contractor, the Lincoln Group, became the focus of a Pentagon investigation in December because of reports it had paid Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-U.S. stories as part of a U.S. information warfare strategy in Iraq.

Abu Ghraib Called Incubator for Terrorists

By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
February 15, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — American commanders in Iraq are expressing grave concerns that the overcrowded Abu Ghraib prison has become a breeding ground for extremist leaders and a school for terrorist foot soldiers.

The reason is that the confinement allows detainees to forge relationships and exchange lessons of combat against the United States and the new Iraqi government. "Abu Ghraib is a graduate-level training ground for the insurgency," said an American commander in Iraq.

The American military has halted transferring detainees to Iraqi jailers until the Iraqis improve their prisoner care. But concerns about the growing detainee population under American control have prompted a number of officers to stop sending every suspect rounded up in raids to Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Many inmates might instead be released if initial questioning indicated that they were not hardened fighters against the American troops and the Iraqi government.

"These decisions have to be intelligence driven, on holding those who are extreme threats or who can lead us to those who are," another American officer in Iraq said. "We don't want to be putting everybody caught up in a sweep into Jihad University."

The officers insisted on anonymity to discuss their individual field operations because they are not involved in creating policy for the military across Iraq.

The perception of the prison as an incubator for more violence is the latest shift in how Abu Ghraib has been seen — once a feared torture dungeon of the Hussein government, then the center of the storm over prisoner abuse by Americans and ever since a festering symbol of the unsolved problems of handling criminals, terrorists, rebels and holdovers from the Baathist era.

Officials at the Pentagon say the latest questions about the prison have been raised by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, and by Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, commander of the American-run prison system there.

General Gardner has ordered a number of steps to deal with the problem, with the goal being to isolate suspected terrorist ringleaders from the broader detainee population and to limit clandestine communications among those in custody.

"We are clearly concerned about the potential for extremists and insurgents to use our detention facilities as recruiting and networking centers and are aggressively taking actions to disrupt their efforts," Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for General Gardner, wrote in an e-mail exchange. "Central to our program is a continuous and systemic analysis of the population inside each compound to identify extreme negative influences and corresponding actions to separate the insurgent and extremists from the general population.

"We also attempt to reduce illicit communications between detainees in separate compounds to disrupt their ability to network and recruit."

Plans to turn over Abu Ghraib, three other prisons and their inmates to the new Iraqi government have been stalled despite American commanders' concerns that overseeing the detainees saps personnel and continues to blot the American image. After a series of raids on Iraqi-run detention centers late last year uncovered scores of abused prisoners, commanders at American and allied prisons said no detainees, or centers, would be handed over to Iraqi jailers until American officials were satisfied that the Iraqis were meeting international standards for detainee care.

Concerns voiced by military officers in Iraq have intensified in recent weeks, with a growing prison population at the four major detention centers under American and allied control. The overall detainee population stood at 14,767 this week, an increase from 10,135 in June 2005 and a significant jump even from the end of December, when the number stood at 14,055, according to American military statistics.

Abu Ghraib held 4,850 detainees as of Jan. 31, a steep increase from 3,563 last June but a slight dip from 4,924 in late December.

At present, Iraqis may be freed from the American-run detention centers after review by a special panel, the Combined Release Board. Detained Iraqis are turned over to Iraqi jailers only if they are convicted by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, American officials said.

The problem of insurgent networking and instruction in the detention system is part of a broader problem in the American counterterrorism effort. American military and intelligence officers say Iraq has become a magnet for violent extremists from across the Islamic world. The officials warn that violent extremists who are not killed, captured and held or persuaded to give up the struggle will emerge battle tested, and more proficient at carrying out terror attacks elsewhere.

Some officers warn of a parallel to the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, when radical Islamic fighters drawn to fight the Soviet occupiers forged strong relationships with religious extremists from within Afghanistan and across the Islamic world.

The Right Way to Pressure Hamas

Editorial
The New York Times
February 15, 2006

America and Israel have to walk a very narrow line in defining their relations with a democratically elected Palestinian government built around Hamas, a party that not only endorses terrorism but also commits it. They cannot possibly give political recognition or financial aid to such a government. Neither can any country that claims to oppose terrorism. That defines the right side of the line.

On the wrong side lies the kind of deliberate destabilization that, according to a report by our Times colleague Steven Erlanger, Washington and Jerusalem are now discussing. That would involve a joint American-Israeli campaign to undermine a Hamas government by putting impossible demands on it, starving it of money and putting even greater restrictions on the Palestinians with an eye toward forcing new elections that might propel the defeated and discredited Fatah Party back to power.

Set aside the hypocrisy such a course would represent on the part of the two countries that have shouted the loudest about the need for Arab democracy, and consider the probable impact of such an approach on the Palestinians. They are already driven to distraction by fury, frustration and poverty. Is it really possible to expect that more punishment from the Israelis and the Americans, this time for not voting the way we wanted them to, would lead them to abandon Hamas?

In the long, sorry history of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, there is not a shred of evidence to support the notion that pushing the Palestinian population into more economic desperation would somehow cause them to moderate their political views. In fact, experience teaches the exact opposite.

Fatah lost last month's election because its incompetence and corruption drove Palestinian voters into the arms of the more austere, social-services-oriented Hamas. If the new government fails to deliver because it puts continued terrorism over the well-being of the Palestinian people, it may indeed be booted out of office. But a Hamas that could explain continued Palestinian misery by a deliberate American-Israeli plan to reverse the democratic verdict of the polls would be likely to become only stronger.

Washington publicly asserts that no such plan is being discussed. A far wiser course for the United States to pursue would be to step back and desist from deliberately provoking the Palestinians, and give Hamas a chance to reconsider its own options. Some hints about its intentions may emerge from the way its leaders respond to overtures by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Last week, Mr. Putin indicated that he intended to invite them to Moscow for a visit.

Mr. Putin's move was controversial in the West, and perhaps he should have provided more warning. But that would be a minor snub indeed if he prods Hamas toward renouncing terrorism, accepting Israel's right to exist and reviving the peace process.

325,000 Names on Terrorism List

Rights Groups Say Database May Include Innocent People
By Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A01

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of alleged international terrorism suspects or people who aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials.

The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) -- created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency -- contains a far greater number of international terrorist suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of separate individuals is estimated to be more than 200,000, according to NCTC officials.

U.S. citizens make up "only a very, very small fraction" of that number, said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency's policies. "The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," he added. An NCTC official refused to say how many on the list -- put together from reports supplied by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies -- were U.S. citizens.

The NSA is a key provider of information for the NCTC database, although officials refused to say how many names on the list are linked to the agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping effort. Under the program, the NSA has conducted wiretaps on an unknown number of U.S. citizens without warrants.

The government has been trying to streamline what counterterrorism officials say are more than 26 terrorism-related databases compiled by agencies throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Names from the NCTC list are provided to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), which in turn provides names for watch lists maintained by the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies.

Civil liberties advocates and privacy experts said they were surprised by the size of the NCTC database, and they said it further heightens their concerns that such government terrorism lists include the names of large numbers of innocent people. Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for privacy rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the numbers "shocking but unfortunately not surprising."

"We have lists that are having baby lists at this point; they're spawning faster than rabbits," Sparapani said. "If we have over 300,000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we've got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case."

Asked whether names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic intelligence intercept program, the NCTC official said, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that he could not discuss specifics but said: "Information is collected, information is retained and information disseminated in a way to protect the privacy interests of all Americans."

The NCTC name repository began under its predecessor agency in 2003 with 75,000 names, and it continues to grow. The center was created as part of a broad reorganization of U.S. intelligence agencies after failures to disrupt the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It is the main agency for analyzing and integrating terrorist intelligence and is under direction of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

Its central database is the hub of an elaborate network of terrorism-related databases throughout the federal bureaucracy. Terrorism-related names and other data are sent to the NCTC under standards set by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, signed by President Bush in September 2003, according to a senior NCTC official. The directive calls upon agencies to supply data only about people who are "known or appropriately suspected to be . . . engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism."

"We work on the basis that information reported to us has been collected in accordance with those guidelines," Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, the center's director, said in a statement.

Analysts at the NCTC review all incoming names and can reject them if they do not have an apparent link to international terrorists, officials said. "That is not common, but it does happen," an NCTC official said, citing as examples a domestic or foreign drug dealer or a member of a U.S.-based extremist group, when neither has any sign of international terrorist connections.

NCTC then sends a subset of the repository list to the FBI's screening center, and each entry includes a reference "to how the individual is associated with international terrorism," according to a June 2005 report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. This reference is assigned one of 25 codes such as "Member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization," "Hijacker" or "Has Engaged in Terrorism," according to the report. The report also notes the codes are split in two categories: "Individuals who are considered armed and dangerous and those who are not."

Fine's office criticized the TSC for including nearly 32,000 records of people in the "armed and dangerous" category but giving them the lowest handling code, which meant that no report needed to be sent back to the FBI if they were encountered in the United States by law enforcement officers.

The TSC consolidates NCTC data on individuals associated with foreign terrorism with the FBI's purely domestic terrorist data to create a unified, unclassified terrorist watch list. The TSC, in turn, provides, for official use only, a version giving name, country, date of birth, photos and other data to the Transportation Security Agency for its no-fly list, the State Department for its visa program, the Department of Homeland Security for border crossings, and the National Crime Information Center for distribution to police.

Shannon Moran, a spokeswoman for the FBI screening center, declined to answer detailed questions about the center's work, including how many names are on its list, how many U.S. citizens are included and whether the FBI database includes names linked to the NSA program. Fine's office reported last year that the FBI database included more than 270,000 names, including a large number of people associated with domestic terrorist movements such as radical environmentalists and neo-Nazi white supremacists.

"If being placed on a list means in practice that you will be denied a visa, barred entry, put on the no-fly list, targeted for pretextual prosecutions, etc., then the sweep of the list and the apparent absence of any way to clear oneself certainly raises problems," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies.

The growth of terrorist-related data networks within the U.S. intelligence community has greatly accelerated since Sept. 11. Before the al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there were databases containing terrorist identities at the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI and State Department. In addition there were 13 independent watch lists, but none of the watch lists or databases were interoperable.

Currently, according to an NCTC official, there are 26 classified data networks carrying terrorism material. In a December 2005 interview on Federal News Radio, Redd said his agency "is really the only place in government and certainly in the intelligence community where all counterterrorism intelligence comes together." He also said that analyses of terrorism issues from all 15 intelligence agencies come into the NCTC, which then puts them on its Web site.

"What that means," Redd said, "is about 5,000 analysts around the counterterrorist intelligence community can pull up that Web site and see . . . what every other agency has as well, assuming they have the clearances."

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the size of the NCTC list and other terrorism-related databases underscores the severity of the "false negative" problem, in which innocent people -- including members of Congress -- have been stopped for questioning or halted from flying because their names are wrongly included or are similar to suspects' names.

"One of the seemingly unsolvable problems is what do you do when someone is wrongly put on this watch list," Rotenberg said. "If there are that many people on the list, a lot of them probably shouldn't be there. But how are they are ever going to get off?"

Egypt Postpones Local Elections Despite Objections

The Washington Post
Associated Press
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A15

CAIRO, Feb. 15 -- The Egyptian parliament Tuesday postponed local elections for two years despite opposition from the United States and a leading religious group, a state-owned newspaper and lawmakers said.

President Hosni Mubarak issued a decree last week calling for the delay, saying he needed time to draft legislation giving municipalities more power.

A law establishing the delay "was approved by a majority, and the government succeeded in refuting the opposition's objections," according to al-Gomhuria in its early Wednesday edition.

A spokesman for the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Saeed Katatni, said the law was approved by 348 of parliament's 454 lawmakers.

"This is a sad day for Egypt. The dictatorship of majority again tried to exploit their numbers to prevent the voice of the people," Katatni said. The Brotherhood made a strong showing in legislative elections last year, and some saw the new law as an effort to block the group's ascendance.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration supports Egypt's progress toward democracy but opposed Mubarak's decision to put off local elections. "We will be talking to them about this," McCormack said Tuesday. "As a matter of principle, we don't support postponing of elections that have been scheduled."

The Wrong Man in Iraq

Editorial
The New York Times
February 14, 2006

In selecting Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its nominee for a second prime ministerial term, the dominant Shiite bloc has betrayed the hopes of all those who have wanted Iraq's first constitutionally elected government to make a fresh start at reunifying the country, rebuilding the economy and putting an end to the beating, torture and murder of civilians by Shiite militia members in and out of the official security forces.

Mr. Jaafari has been a spectacular failure on all these fronts over the past 10 months. He is unlikely to do a better job if he gets the job a second time, particularly since he owes his selection to a political deal with the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a man whose own armed gang, the Mahdi Army, is very much part of the problem.

The Mahdi Army controls the Shiite slums of Baghdad and, with allies, controls the slums of Basra as well, imposing fundamentalist Islamic mores, Taliban style, on those deemed insufficiently devout.

The support of the Sadr bloc was crucial to Mr. Jaafari's one-vote victory over a more promising opponent. Mr. Sadr's spokesman has already made it clear that the price for those votes will be support for Mr. Sadr's political program, which includes solidarity with the anti-American governments of Iran and Syria and has inspired Mahdi Army attacks on American and British troops.

Mr. Jaafari's nomination by the Shiite bloc is not quite tantamount to his election by the new Parliament. By itself, the bloc controls only 130 of Parliament's 275 seats, while a two-thirds majority is required to approve the new prime minister and the cabinet.

That gives important leverage to the Kurds, with just over 50 seats, and to various Sunni Arabs and independents. Ideally, these groups will use their leverage to ease out Mr. Jaafari. The very least they should do is to counteract Mr. Sadr's destructive and growing influence.

Sixty-four votes, half of them loyal to Mr. Sadr, won Mr. Jaafari this nomination. That is less than one-quarter of the new Parliament. Democracy does not require confirming him as prime minister.

Italian minister puts Mohammad cartoon on T-shirts

By Crispian Balmer
Tue Feb 14, 2006

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli has had T-shirts made emblazoned with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could embarrass Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, told Ansa news agency on Tuesday that the West had to stand up against Islamist extremists and offered to hand out T-shirts to anyone who wanted them.

"I have had T-shirts made with the cartoons that have upset Islam and I will start wearing them today," Ansa quoted Calderoli as saying.

He said the T-shirts were not meant to be a provocation but added that he saw no point trying to appease extremists.

"We have to put an end to this story that we can talk to these people. They only want to humiliate people. Full stop. And what are we becoming? The civilization of melted butter?" Calderoli said.

The publication of the cartoons in some European newspapers, including one showing an image of the prophet with a bomb for a turban, have provoked widespread anger in the Muslim world.

Many Muslims believe it is blasphemous to depict the Prophet and there have been a number of violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.

The Northern League, which is gearing up for an April general election, has leapt on the controversy to promote its own far-right political agenda.

RELIGIOUS WAR

The League has long led the charge against illegal immigration and its leaders say the cartoon violence shows the dangers of allowing Muslim immigrants to settle in Italy.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg of the religious war Islamist extremists have declared on us," Calderoli told reporters earlier this month.

The Italian press reported that Berlusconi last week urged Calderoli to take a more moderate stance over the issue, but the minister said on Tuesday he had no intention of keeping quiet.

"As for Berlusconi, seeing as he has compared himself to Jesus Christ, I would call on him to follow (Christ's) example and think about evangelizing Christian values and not be evangelized by Islam," Calderoli was quoted as saying.

Berlusconi caused a storm at the weekend when he said: "I am the Jesus Christ of politics...I sacrifice myself for everyone."

Maintaining a steady stream of anti-foreigner invective, Calderoli earlier this month dismissed a Palestinian journalist on a television chat show, as: "that suntanned lady". He also said he was delighted newcomers to Italy would not benefit from a government scheme to encourage people to have more children.

"I am proud of the fact that the baby bonus will only go to Italian citizens. I say to all those Ali Babas that either Allah or their governments will have to think of them."

The League's anti-immigrant stance has found a sympathetic audience in the wealthy north of Italy, where many third world immigrants have settled in recent years.

League politicians say the immigrants are responsible for growing crime rates and are also challenging Italians for jobs.

Latest opinion polls say the League will get up to six percent of the vote in the April election against just 3.9 percent in the 2001 ballot. However, it is not clear what part the anti-immigrant rhetoric has played in this increase.

Egypt Pushes 2-Year Delay in Local Vote

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
The New York Times
February 14, 2006

CAIRO, Feb. 13 — President Hosni Mubarak has moved to postpone for two years local elections that were scheduled for April, turning away from a promise made during his recent presidential race to promote democratic practices, Egyptian analysts and political leaders said Monday. Thousands of local council positions were to be on the ballot.

The move, which raised some concerns in the American administration, was widely seen as an effort to preserve the governing National Democratic Party's monopoly on power at a time when its grip has begun to falter.

It was also seen as an effort to block the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which made unprecedented gains in recent parliamentary elections, from promoting an independent candidate for president in 2011.

Mr. Mubarak's allies in the upper house of Parliament and in his party said the planned postponement was, in fact, a step toward greater democracy because it would allow time to put in place a new law for greater decentralization.

"According to the current constitution, the local governments have no power and depend fully on the central government," said Muhammad Kamal, a leading member of the governing party's secretariat and a member of the upper house. "The concept is to move local councils more toward becoming local governments, rather than local administration. We want to empower decentralization."

Nasser Amin, director of the Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, a pro-democracy group based in Cairo, said, "The government is not ready now for the election, and they are not ready because they are afraid to be defeated or lose badly, like they did in the parliamentary election."

The president's decision, quietly approved Sunday by the upper house and expected to sail through the lower house, presents the United States with a difficult choice: criticize Mr. Mubarak and chance strengthening the Islamist opposition, or stay silent and fuel charges that the United States only supports democracy that promotes its own agenda.

While President Bush has identified spreading democracy as a cornerstone of his Middle East agenda, Egypt has demonstrated a reluctance to open up its political process.

But the United States has seen recent elections aid the rise of Islamists, including the recent victory by the militant group Hamas in Palestinian voting.

In addition, local political analysts said, the United States may be more inclined to hold its fire after the recent conflict over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. The strong reactions to the cartoons may have further helped the region's Islamist parties.

In Washington, officials said they were troubled by Mr. Mubarak's action and called on Egypt to heed the wish of its citizens for democracy.

"We were concerned by the reports and are in touch with the Egyptian government to ascertain the facts," said Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman.

Many people in Egypt, however, were quick to criticize the government's decision, insisting it was a betrayal of Mr. Mubarak's campaign promises and an attempt to hold down the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The obvious big picture is that many of the promises made by Mubarak throughout his campaign and his program for political reform have not come through," said Salama Ahmed Salama, a political analyst and columnist for Egypt's most widely circulated daily newspaper, Al Ahram. "They are being delayed and there is no clear mechanism for carrying them out. All they are doing is postponing."

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose strength is in grass-roots support generated by the social services it provides, sharply criticized the plan, saying it was an attempt to ensure that the president's son, Gamal, does not face a strong challenger should he run in 2011. The younger Mr. Mubarak, 41, has not said if he will run, but was recently promoted to a leading role in the governing party.

"This is a step toward hereditary succession of the president's position," said Muhammad Habib, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Parliamentary elections last year demonstrated that the secular political parties were weak, and that the governing party was losing support, leaving the banned Brotherhood as the only organized opposition able to generate votes.

The Muslim Brotherhood cannot field a candidate for president in the party's name, even though it controls 88 of 454 seats in Parliament, enough to do so under the law. It is disallowed because it has been banned as a result of violent activities decades ago, and because it is a religious organization.

Under the new law, however, it could support an independent candidate under a complex formula that would be aided if the Brotherhood controlled local councils as well as its seats in Parliament. The councils handle matters like building schools and providing water.

Mr. Kamal, of the governing party, said the delay would not undermine the Brotherhood's political prospects, though others pointed out it would give the governing party time to regroup after the parliamentary elections last year.

The president's spokesman, Souleiman Awad, said, "This is part of the attempt to decentralize the government," and added that it is "part of the reform President Mubarak promised."

But even within the governing party, the argument that postponing a vote by two years was about democratic reform ran into skepticism.

"Of course it's because of the Muslim Brotherhood," said Osama el-Ghazali Harb, a party member and political analyst at the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "The last parliamentary elections proved that the N.D.P is much weaker than anyone predicted; all the other parties are disappointing beyond imagination. The only alternative that is capable of filling the vacuum and of challenging the N.D.P. is the Muslim Brotherhood."

Local elections have not traditionally been hotly contested. But a change in the Constitution last year, which opened the way for multi-candidate elections for president, gave local councils some power over the ability of independent candidates to run for president of the nation.

Even if the brotherhood did not manage to field a candidate for president, controlling local councils would be a way to spread its influence and build its support.

"These all are attempts to protect the weak party against other political powers," said George Ishaq, a spokesman and a founding member of Kifaya, a secular pro-democracy movement. "They are afraid of the Brothers and they are afraid of all potential political power. They are so weak that they put all other political powers under siege."

Mona el Naggar and Abeer Allam contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.