Two more polio workers killed in northwest Pakistan

Event notice: Afghanistan 2014: Planning for the Transition, Monday, February 4, 2013. 12:15-1:45PM. Featuring Saad Mohseni, who has been described as Afghanistan's first media mogul, and Peter Bergen, director of the New America Foundation's National Security Studies Program (NAF).

Tragedy on the road

A roadside bomb killed two more polio workers in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, when the motorcycle they were riding was struck by an explosion, though it was unclear whether the men had been targeted or not (AP).

A court in the United Kingdom is considering whether to hear the case of Noor Khan, who is accusing the British government of providing intelligence to the CIA that was used in drone strikes, one of which killed his father, Malik Daud Khan at a meeting of tribal elders in North Waziristan in 2011 (NYT). The case threatens to implicate European governments in the controversial U.S. drone campaign, which Europe has so far declined to replicate on their own.

According to India's The Hindu newspaper, Pakistan has lodged a complaint with the the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) alleging that since 1998, Indian forces have tortured and decapitated at least 12 Pakistani soldiers in cross-border attacks, and massacred 29 civilians (AFP). The Line of Control that divides the disputed territory of Kashmir has witnessed several deadly skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani troops over the past few weeks.

Flying accusations

Afghan officials are furious over the U.S. military's blacklisting of an Afghan airline, first reported by the Wall Street Journal last week, over allegations that the airline, Kam Air, has been involved in narcotics smuggling (NYT). Kam Air officials have denied the allegations, and the Afghan government says it has no knowledge of the alleged smuggling, and both parties are demanding an explanation from the United States.

Sound of music

Afghanistan's first youth orchestra is likely to travel to the United States to perform at Washington DC's Kennedy Center and New York City's Carnegie Hall in the next few weeks (TIME). Ahmad Sarmsat, an Afghan musician who trained in Russia and Australia, and American director William Harvey, are working to send 52 young musicians from the National Institute of Music, which Sarmsat founded in 2009 in an effort to revive Afghanistan's music scene after years of Taliban repression.

-- Jennifer Rowland

The Egyptian Treadmill - By Marc Lynch

Cairo is having yet another crisis. This week's dramatic storming of the Semiramis Hotel just off of Tahrir Square by unknown thugs, the massive unrest and bloodshed leading to the imposition of emergency law in the canal cities, and ongoing clashes in Tahrir Square are fueling a general sense of the collapse of public order. The immediate spark for the surge of violence was the verdict on last year's soccer mayhem, combined with the aftermath of the Jan. 25 anniversary protest. But really, it feels like it could have been anything.

The latest manifestation of Egypt's ongoing political and institutional crisis has many causes. The exceptionally clumsy leadership from the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsy's repeated attempted power grabs. The opposition's rejection of the political transition but inability to offer any compelling alternative. The frustration of revolutionaries and the emergence of violent, anarchic trends on the streets. Intense social and political polarization that neither side seems capable of restraining. The economic crisis and security vacuum keeping everyone on edge. In this context, Defense Minister Gen. Abd el-Fattah el-Sissi's widely quoted comment that the ongoing crisis "may lead to the collapse of the state and threatens the future of the coming generations" sounds more like sober analysis than veiled coup threat.

The U.S. response thus far has been characteristically low-key. There's almost certainly a sort of crisis fatigue, a sense that the Egyptian political class has cried wolf about the sky falling a few too many times. Still, the White House and the State Department have condemned violence on all sides, and called for an inclusive dialogue to build a consensus that respects the rights of all citizens. As has been the case throughout the Arab Spring, the Obama administration has drawn a line at the use of violence. But it correctly continues to insist that the solution to the crisis must come from Egyptians.

For many Egyptians, and much of the Egypt policy community in the United States, this isn't enough. The United States should do more, do it differently, and do it more boldly (for examples, see this new collection of comments by top experts just released by the Project on Middle East Democracy [PDF]). Most of the critics agree that Washington should do more to support Egyptian democracy (not all, of course -- Mubarak nostalgia has made an ugly comeback, especially among those on the right who always despised the Muslim Brotherhood more than they cared for Arab democracy). This is a bit tricky, though, because the Muslim Brotherhood actually won reasonably free and fair democratic elections. Pushing to bring down this elected government in the name of democracy would ordinarily be viewed as a tough sell. 

The Obama administration believes that it is supporting democracy in Egypt, and it has a pretty good case to make. It isn't just its (still contested) role during the 18 days in helping to nudge Mubarak from power. The Obama team can also point to its quiet role in pushing the Egyptian military to commit to the transfer of power to an elected government, to live up to that commitment, and to not tip the presidential election to Ahmed Shafiq, a retired general and Mubarak loyalist. The administration consistently stuck to its position even when faced with a blizzard of panicked calls for postponement over violence, institutional chaos, legal shenanigans, or the stated or unstated recognition of imminent defeat (even I went wobbly once during intense clashes just before the parliamentary election, when it appeared that an election couldn't possibly be held amidst such chaos; I was wrong). Unlike the Bush administration, which gave up on Palestinian democracy when Hamas won elections, Obama did not back away when the Islamists won. The Obama administration has demonstrated in word and deed a commitment to supporting Egyptian democracy far beyond anything previously shown by an American government.

That does not mean that Obama wanted the Muslim Brotherhood to win the elections. It takes a pretty skewed view of American politics to see any advantage whatsoever for Obama in Islamist electoral wins. Nor does anyone in Washington have any illusions about the Muslim Brotherhood -- if there's anybody here who actually believes that the Brotherhood is made up of liberal, Israel-loving, free-market, evangelical democrats then I haven't met them. Most just don't think that's the point. The Muslim Brotherhood has performed abysmally in power, and has many unattractive qualities, but it won the elections.  Many of Egypt's problems are endemic to transitions from authoritarian regimes and almost every other player on the Egyptian political scene has contributed to the fiasco. Of course, Obama has worked with Morsy as the democratically elected president of Egypt. But that doesn't mean he "supports" or "backs" Morsy, any more than diplomatic relations with Britain means that Obama "backs" David Cameron.

Boob Tube - By Mitchell Prothero

BEIRUT ' "Lebanon isn't a country so much as it's a place, full of people," a Lebanese friend told me recently.

In your average country, the thinking went, citizens share a sense of national identity -- not to mention a basic sense of common interests and purpose. The Lebanese on the other hand, my friend meant, seem thrown together at random: Their social and political views run the gamut, from sexually liberated supporters of liberal democracy to teetotaling partisans of Islamic theocracy.

Lebanon likes to celebrate its diversity. And it's true: It boasts the Middle East's largest Christian population, one of the largest proportions of Shiite Muslims in the Arab world, and a Sunni middle class that often appears more concerned with commerce than about Islam and jihad. All these disparate parts, however, don't add up to a nation: Lebanese often spend their lives within a few blocks of each other and often remain virtual strangers clustered into neighborhoods or enclaves, and the country remains violently divided on the political issues of the day -- most recently, the bloody 22-month civil war in neighboring Syria.

As a result of Lebanon's sometimes comical, often tragic political scene, locals and foreigners alike often overlook that the country boasts perhaps the freest media environment in the Middle East. Like its famed religious eclecticism, however, media diversity does not translate into a melting pot -- rather it just provides each side a foxhole from which to launch potshots at its enemies. The result is channels that reinforce all their viewers' prejudices and biases in a manner that can make Fox News look pretty close to its comical slogan of "fair and balanced."

While it's not entirely true that you can judge a person's background by what he or she watches on television, in Lebanon a pattern does appear to exist. Right-wing Christians have MTV and LBC, owned by businessmen with close ties to the Lebanese Christian Phalangist movement. Lebanon's Shiite Muslims have Al-Manar, Hezbollah's television station, and its more secular, trashier cousin, NBN. Meanwhile, Sunni Muslims have the Saudi-centric Future TV, a media appendage of a major political party owned by the Hariri dynasty.

The least bleak perspective can often come from New TV, a station that began as an independent voice in 2001, but one that leans toward a secular audience generally not fond of Israel. It's usually the best source of journalism with the fewest number of forehead-thumping moments of absolute propaganda. And in my neighborhood, the Christian bourgeoisie looks to French satellite channels to remind it of the myth of its "Phoenician" roots and help equip them to make the often ridiculously racist argument that they are indeed not Arabs.

There are some moments of popular unity: Lebanon used the earlier part of the 2000s to pioneer reality-television programming in the Arab world. And during the month of Ramadan, which can feel like the old-fashioned "sweeps week" on American networks, miniseries draw strong attention from across the political spectrum, as do old Egyptian movies and trashy music videos of local stars. Hyperaware of the increased audience share throughout the Arab world, the plotlines often reflect the attitudes of the ownership but with a strong populist tendency toward Israelis as villains.

But beyond this, there's little mixing of ideas. If you support the rebellion in Syria or don't ache for the destruction of Israel, you're unlikely to watch Al-Manar for very long. For the most part, pro-Syrian regime partisans don't sit down in front of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, which have played a central role in cheerleading for the rebels. And Hezbollah members don't really watch a lot of music videos and ribald soap operas -- at least, in front of me.

Morning Brief: Amid continuing unrest, Egyptian army chief warns of state collapse

Top news: Egyptians defied curfews in three major cities on Tuesday as clashes with police continued as the head of the Egyptian army warned that unrest could topple the state, the most pointed sign yet of exasperation from the country's most powerful institution.

In his most critical comments to date, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister, said that "political, economic, social, and security challenges" require united action since disagreements between the Islamist government and their opponents "on running the affairs of the country may lead to the collapse of the state and threatens the future of the coming generations." While there was no immediate indication that the military would move to seize power, el-Sisi's comments puts the military in a difficult bind as it is caught between the government's instructions to put down the unrest and Egyptian's unwillingness to restore calm to the streets.

Responding to a call by President Mohammed Morsy to join a national dialogue, prominent Egyptian politicians in the opposition bickered over who was responsible for the violence, and Mohammed el-Baradei, the former diplomat and failed presidential candidate, called for a unity government that would include members of the opposition.

Despite appealing for calm and granting the police extra powers, Morsy appeared powerless to stop the unrest, fueled by discontent over his regime's sluggishness to implement reforms and death sentences against a group of soccer fans that sent their families and hooligans into the street.

U.S. politics: The U.S. Senate confirmed John Kerry, the democratic senator from Massachusetts and former presidential candidate, as the next secretary of state in a an overwhelming vote, 94-3. Three Republicans -- John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma -- voted against the nomination. Kerry voted present.

Think Again: Immigration - By Shannon O'Neil

"Mexicans Will Keep Flooding the United States If Allowed."

Not likely. Starting in 2005, the number of migrants coming from Mexico -- who comprise one-third of the U.S. foreign born population -- began declining. The deceleration then picked up pace with the 2008 world financial crisis, so much so that a 2012 Pew Hispanic report noted that for the first time in decades, the number of Mexicans entering the country was the same as those leaving -- leading to a "net zero" in terms of flows.

Though the U.S. recession played a role, perhaps the most important -- and permanent -- factor behind this shift is demographic. In the 1970s, even as mortality rates declined, Mexican women on average had seven children. Today, that number is much closer to two -- much like the United States. This means that the "extra" Mexican youth who came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s have dissipated, and are unlikely to return again. These fewer siblings are staying in school longer -- most now through high school and many into college -- further reducing the pool of young men and women searching for opportunities to the north.

Economic prospects at home have also improved. The booms and busts of the 1980s and 1990s, which pushed so many Mexicans across the border, seem to have ended. Instead, Mexico's new economic story is one of a growing middle class -- now some 60 million strong -- made up of lawyers, accountants, small and medium size business owners, higher-skilled factory workers, and taxi drivers, among many other professions. These economic shifts also have encouraged Mexicans to stay home.

This is not to say that immigration from Mexico will dry up completely. The combination of better pay and rising U.S. demand for labor will continue to draw many from Mexico -- as well as from around the world -- to America's workplaces. For instance, immigration from Central America -- though much lower in terms of sheer numbers -- continues unabated. And immigration reform, which is now on the table after the Republican Party's record-low showing with Hispanic voters, could make it easier for many to stay, and for more to come. 

Still, even if new legislation opens the door to citizenship, history suggests that all of these immigrants wouldn't rush in. In the 26 years since Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which created a pathway for legalization, fewer than a third of the 2.7 million Mexicans eligible under the law decided to naturalize.

David McNew/Getty Images

Pakistan miltary makes gains against militants in northwest

Real talk

Pakistani security officials said Wednesday that they had destroyed more than a dozen militant hideouts and killed at least 23 militants in Khyber tribal agency (Reuters, ET). Local residents say the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Islam militant groups had tried to take control of a strategically important village, and killed some 43 people in two days of fighting as the villagers resisted their takeover.

The district government of Gujrunwala in Punjab Province has decided to send 800 policemen to guard 800 teams of health workers administering polio vaccinations to children under five years of age, in response to continuing attacks on polio workers across Pakistan (ET).

Witnesses will testify live from Pakistan via video link next month in the trial of 77-year old Florida imam Hafiz Khan, who is accused of providing financial support to the TTP (AP)

Looking back

With eleven days left in his 18-month tour as commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen told the Washington Post that he is proud of the gains made by coalition forces and of the growth of the Afghan Army, but that much of those military gains have not been accompanied by the establishment of effective governance, which is the key to long-term stability (Post).

-- Jennifer Rowland

Gunmen kill police officer escorting polio workers in northwest Pakistan

World's most dangerous jobs

Militants in the Swabi District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province gunned down a policeman escorting polio vaccination workers on Tuesday (AP, Dawn). Local officials said the health workers immediately suspended their door-to-door program. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is reportedly launching a pilot program to de-radicalize 18 extremist religious schools throughout the country, including one in Punjab Province said to still be run by Hafiz Saaed, who is closely linked to the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Guardian).

Pakistani law enforcement agents in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday arrested the former chairman of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA), Tauqeer Sadiq, whom the Supreme Court has accused of embezzling over 80 billion rupees (Dawn). The Court has also accused Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf of illegally appointing Sadiq to head OGRA, and helping him flee the country after he embezzled money.

And the Express Tribune reports that Prime Minister Ashraf has transferred 1.2 billion rupees out of a fund created by international donors and intended for Pakistan's flood victims, and distributed it to constituencies of the ruling Pakistan People's Party's senior leaders (ET).

School daze

Deep in the historically Taliban-held territory of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, the proportion of children attending school continues to rise, despite fears that the Taliban will return to power when NATO's combat mission ends (NYT). The schools also struggle with insufficient official funding for teachers, books, running water and heat, as well as deeply entrenched cultural biases against the value of education.

Political football

On Monday, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik responded to an op-ed by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan about being Muslim in India by requesting that India provide security to Khan, to which Indian Home Secretary RK Singh said India is "quite capable" of protecting its own people (BBC). Apparently, neither official really understood the actor's article, in which he expressed frustration because, "I sometimes become the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India."

-- Jennifer Rowland

Saving Syrians, One Blanket at a Time - By Wijbe Abma

KILIS, Turkey ' I am a 21-year-old, independent aid worker. I don't work for any country or NGO, but for Syrian civilians.

The project I started isn't just about bringing help, it's about bringing hope. The idea started small and simple: I wanted to take blankets to refugees. Before I knew what I was getting into, it had grown big and complex: I've just come back from Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, where I delivered my second batch of aid -- 500 blankets.

It all started when I finished a university exchange in South Korea and decided to travel back home to the Netherlands overland. After crossing Russia from east to west and north to south, in early October I ended up in Antakya, a Turkish city near the Syrian border that is teeming with refugees.

It was here that I met Ali, a refugee from Aleppo. Ali was very excited when I told him I came from the Netherlands -- some years ago, his son made a Dutch friend in Aleppo. When this Dutch guy heard that his friend's family had escaped the war-torn city, he decided to come down to Antakya to meet his Syrian friend once more. He met the family, except for the person he was looking for. Ali's son had died while fleeing due to regime shelling.

I listened to his story, horrified. I had no idea what to say. Ali kept the conversation going by explaining how difficult life was now for innocent civilians caught up in a deadly mix of violence, cold, hunger, and uncertainty. I tried to keep travelling, but his story haunted me. I wanted to do something to help.

Reading up about the humanitarian situation in Syria, I was struck by how much aid was needed. It seemed that hardly any of the big NGOs were bringing aid inside the country. So far, countries have given less than 4 percent of the funds that the United Nations said is necessary to implement its aid program in Syria.

I decided to visit Bab al-Salam, a makeshift camp situated just a few hundred feet into Syria, across the Turkish border. The camp hosted perhaps 4,000 Syrians, living in miserable conditions.

I was greeted at the border by a teenager in a camouflage outfit. He held a gun -- the first time I'd seen such a weapon, aside from computer games. I was given a Free Syria entry stamp in my passport and told: "Welcome to Free Syria." Before I knew it, I was speaking with the management of the camp.

We drank sweet tea and they asked me what I came for. I explained that I wanted to help, and offered them 100 blankets bought from my own savings. My only requirement was to hand out the blankets myself -- there were stories floating around about aid disappearing or being sold for weapons. 

The manager and his friends burst out laughing. "We need 4,000 blankets", he said, "100 is pointless!"

Israel's New Kingmaker - By Neri Zilber

TEL AVIV ' Though one of Israel's best known public figures, Yair Lapid, the surprise star of the Jan. 22 election, is a mystery abroad. He now finds himself in the unexpected position of kingmaker, free to dictate terms to a badly weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lapid will likely emerge as Netanyahu's senior coalition partner, giving him significant influence over the direction of Israeli policy. There is a growing possibility that the former columnist and television anchor will be Israel's next foreign minister, putting his formidable media skills to good use as his country's top diplomat. But on policy, Lapid would enter the Foreign Ministry as something of an enigma: During the campaign, he focused largely on middle-class domestic issues such as compulsory army conscription for the ultra-Orthodox, and housing and education reform.

It would be wrong, however, to underestimate Lapid. He isn't simply a charismatic reader of teleprompters, and his worldview is far from "vapid," as some have dismissed it. Based on the available evidence, Lapid, a self-described centrist, has a definite worldview that hews closer to the left than the right. The signs are encouraging that he will be a moderating influence on the next Netanyahu government.

The first hint as to Lapid's worldview can be gleaned from the people with whom he surrounds himself. Lapid formed the Yesh Atid ("There is a Future") party less than a year ago, after which he personally handpicked the slate of candidates. Out of these 18 future parliamentarians, three can be described as holding foreign policy or security backgrounds.

Yaakov Perry, number five on the party list, is a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's vaunted internal security agency. Perry, along with five other former Shin Bet chiefs, made headlines recently after taking part in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers, a damning indictment of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. The title alludes to the film's main thesis -- that for all of Israel's security and intelligence successes keeping the Palestinians at bay, there is no military solution to the conflict. "When you retire," Perry says in one of the film's most illuminating lines, "you become a bit of a leftist."

Number six on the party list and a close Lapid confidante is Ofer Shelah, a former military affairs commentator and sports broadcaster. Shelah is best known as a harsh critic of Israel's handling of the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead. His book Captives in Lebanon is a methodically researched denunciation of Israel's political and military echelon during the 2006 conflict; after the 2009 war, he called Israel "a crazy country" that had "adopted the ethical scale of Vladimir Putin" because of what he perceived as the needless prolongation of the campaign.

Fighting rages between militant groups in Pakistan's northwest

The Rack: Luke Mogelson, "Which way did the Taliban go?" (NYT Magazine).

Explosive rivalry

Clashes between the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) Pakistan and Ansar al-Islam militant groups broke out in the Khyber Tribal Agency on Friday, continued through the weekend and were still ongoing Monday, resulting in the deaths so far of almost 60 people, most of whom are being identified as militants (Dawn, ET, AP, The News). Fighting between the two groups began when the TTP captured an Ansar al-Islam base on Friday, prompting Ansar fighters to attempt to retake the base by force.

Bus services and trade across the Line of Control dividing the disputed territory of Kashmir resumed on Monday, after being suspended on January 10 following some of the worst cross-border violence in a decade (AP, NDTV, Dawn, AFP). And Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Bismullah Khan Mohammadi arrived in Pakistan on Sunday for five days of talks, beginning with a meeting with Pakistan's Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Rawalpindi on Monday (Dawn, ET).

Deadly blasts

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the middle of a public square in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz City on Saturday, killing 10 policemen, including the head of the police counterterrorism department, Abdullah Zemarai, and the head of the traffic police, Sayyed Aslam Sadat (NYT, CNN, BBC, AFP). Later on Saturday, a police truck carrying officers and detainees hit a roadside bomb in Kandahar City, killing 10 of those on board (AP, BBC, ). The police had driven to a residential area of the city to inspect a bomb discovered there; they detained three suspects and were returning to headquarters when they hit the buried explosive.

The Afghan government has criticized a United Nations report about widespread and systematic torture of detainees in Afghan-run prisons, inviting Afghan reporters into the detention centers to view the facilities and interview some detainees (NYT). President Hamid Karzai has also appointed an official commission to investigate the findings in the report.

Changed our minds

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense spent $50,000 to buy and destroy the first 10,000 copies of a book on the Afghan war entitled Operation Dark Heart, saying the book contained classified information (NYT). Almost three years later, censors at the Pentagon now say 198 of the 400 passages that they previously forced author Anthony Shaffer to delete are actually fine to print.

-- Jennifer Rowland

Broken Tooth and New Macau - By Benjamin Carlson

MACAU ' One of Macau's most infamous gangsters must be feeling like Rip Van Winkle.

When Wan Kuok-koi, 57, better known as Broken Tooth, was released from prison on Dec. 1, nearly 14 years after he went behind bars, he emerged to a city utterly transformed. Instead of cars burning in the streets, Bentleys with dual Macau-China license plates prowl newly built highways. Gone is the sleepy, rough-around-the-edges colonial backwater, supplanted by a city that has become the gaming capital of the world, with more than five times the annual gambling revenue of Las Vegas. In a little more than a decade, Macau has calmed down, cleaned up, and gotten immensely rich. And now, nearly two months after being freed, the former leader of 14K, Macau's biggest and most-feared criminal triad, has barely made a ripple. After vowing there was "absolutely no way" he would disturb the peace in Macau, Broken Tooth seems to have gone into hiding, with local media reporting a rumor that he exiled himself to Thailand or Hong Kong for several months as part of an agreement with Chinese authorities.

One month before he was arrested in 1998, Wan said that "anyone who's done something bad to me will never escape. I won't kill him. I'll make him take a voyage to another world." Now he says he simply wants to become a law-abiding citizen, and that revenge is a thing of the past. "I don't want to affect the stability of Macau. There's absolutely no way I want to do that. I want to be left alone," a bashful-sounding Wan said to the Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post.

It's a far cry from the swaggering Broken Tooth of old, but one that fits the times. In 1998, Wan was the irrepressible criminal king of Macau, then a Portuguese colony in its tumultuous last days. Like Bugsy Siegel in 1940s Las Vegas, he had a reputation for violence, ruthlessness, and ambition that approached megalomania. Wan earned his nickname as a young man after crashing his car and damaging his teeth. (He later had them capped.) As he rose through the triad ranks, he was shot twice and survived an attack from a meat cleaver that rendered two fingers permanently immobile. In the 1990s, he drove a purple Lamborghini and bragged about losing more than $1 million at a single gambling session. In an interview with Newsweek in 1998, he claimed to have 10,000 triad followers. And at the time of his arrest for loan sharking and money laundering, he was said to be watching the 1998 movie Casino, an autobiographical film he commissioned to dramatize his criminal exploits (not, it seems, connected to the Robert De Niro film of the same name).

In the years leading up to Macau's handover to China, triad violence surged as gangs vied for a bigger share of the pie that would be left after Portuguese power receded. The high point was 1999, the year of the handover, when 42 people died in gang-related attacks. Broken Tooth's triad torched cars and was believed to have killed a Portuguese gambling official near the Casino Lisboa. At Wan's disco, Heavy Club, a mannequin dressed in a police uniform reportedly dangled from a noose tied to the ceiling.

Under Portugal, a somewhat reluctant colonial power, the city had a sleepy air and a sluggish economy to match: a combination of triad violence and the Asian financial crisis caused Macau's gross domestic product to contract by 6.8 percent in 1998. Portugal repeatedly tried to return Macau to China as part of its 1970s decolonization push, but Beijing refused to retake sovereignty until 1999. At the time of the handover, textile manufacturing dominated Macau's economy, and the relatively small casino industry was controlled entirely by Stanley Ho. Seen in Macau as a sort of roguish, eccentric patriarch -- part Howard Hughes, part Donald Trump -- Ho allegedly earned the money to start his first business as a reward for single-handedly defeating pirates who attacked an employer's ship during World War II.

Nowhere is the contrast between then and now more apparent than in the Lisboa, Ho's landmark property and one of the city's oldest and most iconic casinos. It was also Broken Tooth's old haunt. Wan allegedly had a $50 million stake in a VIP room at the Casino Lisboa and was arrested in a suite at its hotel back in 1998. Then, the casino -- a tacky structure resembling a multicolored onion -- was guarded by a battalion of cops wielding automatic weapons. Today, the automatic weapons are gone, the casino has expanded with an enormous, glitzy addition shaped like a golden lotus flower, and the lobby is filled with tourists elbowing each other to pose in front of a life-sized gingerbread house. (The seamier side remains: A basement hallway below the Lisboa has a parade of prostitutes perpetually cat-walking between a restaurant and a fruit stand.)

In 2002, the Macau government broke Ho's monopoly on gaming and opened it up to international players. It granted six casino licenses to foreign operators, including Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn and GOP-bankroller and Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson. (Ho remains a powerhouse; he owns 17 of Macau's 34 casinos.) Beijing also loosened restrictions on mainland tourists coming to visit Macau, in an effort to boost the economy after the SARS epidemic struck China in 2003. And yet Macau's success was far from a sure bet.

Qin City - An FP Slide Show

In his article for Foreign Policy, "Broken Tooth and New Macau," Benjamin Carlson describes Macau's transition from a crime-ridden colony to a thriving international gaming capital. When Broken Tooth, one of Macau's most infamous gangsters, was released from prison in December after serving a 14-year sentence, he encountered an entirely different Macau from the one he left. How will the erstwhile criminal kingpin of Macau fit into this new world of glitz, glamour, and gaming tables?

In this photo, fireworks erupt during the Mid-Autumn Festival in Macau in September 2011. "Gone is the sleepy, rough-around-the-edges colonial backwater," writes Carlson. Today, he says, it has been "supplanted by a city that has become the gaming capital of the world, with more than five times the annual gambling revenue of Las Vegas."

ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

Buzz Bomb - By Jeffrey Lewis

Since the government of Syria's Bashar al-Assad began to totter, the nonproliferation community has been waiting to see if he will unleash what is believed to be a large stockpile of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas. The possibility that Assad might use chemical weapons is widely regarded as a possible trigger for U.S. intervention. In December, President Obama warned Assad of "consequences" in the event Syria used its chemical weapons. A few days earlier, Hillary Clinton warned that the United States was "certainly planning to take action" in the event of "credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people."

So, what makes for "credible evidence"? Enter Josh Rogin, reporter at Foreign Policy, who published a pair of stories detailing a State Department cable regarding possible chemical weapons use by Syrian forces in Homs. An administration official described the cable as having "made a compelling case that Agent 15 was used in Homs on Dec. 23."

The implication, obviously, is that the "compelling case" is the "credible evidence" that should prompt Washington to rethink its policy limiting itself to "non-lethal" aid to Syrian opposition forces and take action. A reconsideration might be in order, though not for the reason you think.

For starters, somehow, no one has bothered to mention that Agent 15 doesn't exist.

Yep. Agent 15 is one of the bogus bits of intelligence that helped make the case for invading Iraq. Like many good fish stories, this one has a kernel of truth. A single document found by U.N. inspectors (at the infamous Chicken Farm, if you must know) mentioned something called "Agent 15." UNSCOM and others believed Agent 15 was a glycollate, related to laboratory experiments that Iraq admitted to with chemically similar incapacitants usually referred to as BZ or "buzz." But Iraq never produced BZ, Agent 15, or similar incapacitants.

"Agent 15" entered our collective lexicon in 1998, however, when the British announced they had "received intelligence, believed to be reliable, which indicated that, at the time of the Gulf War, Iraq may have possessed large quantities of a chemical warfare mental incapacitant agent known as "Agent 15." George Robertson, then defense secretary, described it as "one more filthy uncivilised weapon of war in [Saddam's] armoury." He warned that Agent 15 could result in: "dilated pupils, flushed faces, dry mouth, tachycardia, increase in skin and body temperature, weakness, dizziness, disorientation, visual hallucinations, confusions, loss of time sense, loss of co-ordination and stupor." In other words, it turns you into the stars of Absolutely Fabulous. (I've placed a copy of the MOD report on my blog, ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Robertson refused to divulge further details, claiming that the Ministry of Defense had yet to evaluate the report. In fact, he'd done quite enough. The always restrained British press went -- and I am going to use the technical term here -- apeshit. (My favorite headline: "Iraqi 'zombie gas' arsenal revealed.")

The claim didn't stand up to scrutiny, even before the war. The United Kingdom doesn't seem to have asserted the existence of Agent 15 stockpiles after March 2002, which is about the time the CIA put out a fact sheet stating clearly that "Iraq never went beyond research with Agent 15." For all the bullshit reasons we invaded Iraq, Agent 15 was not one of them.

I don't want to spoil the ending if you still haven't gotten through Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, but we didn't find ­­any chemical weapons stockpiles in Iraq. No VX, no sarin, no Agent 15. The British government has not publicly revealed the source of the information, but one can get a flavor of the bum dope being peddled by Iraqi "sources" on chemical weapons from British and American reviews of the intelligence. Without naming names, these reports describe a litany of fabricators in surprising detail. (You want to read pp 100-101 of the Butler Report and pp. 126-130 of the Robb-Silberman Report.) In theory, this experience should be a cautionary tale.

On the other hand, CRAZY DICTATOR HAS ZOMBIE GAS!

Once "Agent 15" entered the debate, it stuck. It routinely appeared in laundry lists of Iraqi chemical agents from nongovernmental experts, presumably compiled by overworked interns. Eventually, there were reports of Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah getting high on Agent 15 before battle. David Hambling wrote a hilarious, and appropriately skeptical, post about this silliness.

Continental Shift - By Gordon Adams

The U.S. military has left Iraq and will leave Afghanistan soon. One might assume that this means a lower level of U.S. military operations overseas. Not so fast. Military operations in Mali and the connected Algerian hostage crisis have highlighted a major shift in U.S. military strategy and overseas engagement, especially in our support for security forces in Africa.

Gradually, through a growing security assistance program and special operations forces action, U.S. engagement in Africa is shifting from a focus on governance, health, and development to a deepening military engagement. And while the Pentagon portrays this expanding military engagement as a way to empower Africans, it is actually building security relationships that could backfire, harming our long-term foreign policy interests.

The United States has had military relationships at a low level in Africa for some time. Before 9/11, these took the traditional form of educating African military officers in the United States though the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET), at a cost of roughly $10 million a year. And the United States has had for decades a small Foreign Military Financing program, providing equipment, training, and services to select African militaries at a cost of around $20 million a year. Neither program has been a centerpiece of U.S. overseas security assistance.

The slide into Africa began in earnest after the Rwandan genocide and the 1998 embassy bombings. A larger U.S.-funded training program was started in the 1990s as a peacekeeping initiative, ultimately morphing into the Bush-era Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI). Through GPOI, the United States has been providing more training to African militaries, seeking to enhance their ability to conduct peacekeeping operations. By now, hundreds of thousands of African soldiers have been trained and are involved in operations in the Horn of Africa -- and perhaps soon in Mali -- at a cost of nearly a billion dollars.

A focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations has driven this engagement forward, especially in East Africa. It is not easy to obtain data on how much has been spent on these efforts, but they include training and arming African counterterrorism forces, increasing the presence of U.S. Special Operations forces, and developing closer ties with military operations spreading from North Africa to the central African countries bordering on the Sahara Desert, and from Djibouti to the Atlantic.  

In 2008, this scattered engagement by the U.S. military was pulled together in the creation of a new U.S. regional command. Africom was intended to be a new kind of command, one that integrated military operations with the broader U.S. diplomatic and foreign assistance efforts in Africa.

This is now the key to the "slide" -- after decades of leaving Africa pretty much alone or engaging through health and economic assistance, the United States is now seriously involved, but driven by the mantra American "security." Mixing these messages (development, health, and security) is proving difficult for the African countries. They have begun to wonder why the United States has suddenly developed an interest in their continent. Uneasy African governments resisted the notion that Africom should actually be based on the continent as the United States wanted, so the headquarters remains in Stuttgart, Germany.

Well, they might have reason to be concerned. A growing "security" focus for U.S. engagement in Africa changes things. So does the growing lead the Pentagon and the Special Operations forces are taking in that engagement. When security takes the lead, too often, governance and development step aside. And, while the security focus is ostensibly intended to strengthen African capacities to provide national and regional stability, they have the consequence, intended or not, of dragging the United States into Africa's internal politics, at a potential cost to our long-term interests.

Paranoid Plots and Empty Aisles - By Peter Wilson

CARACAS - Lidia Gonzalez doesn't have time to look for counter-revolutionaries. She's too busy looking for sugar.

Hours after Venezuelan Vice President -- and current de facto leader of the country in Hugo Chávez's absence -- Nicolás Maduro told the nation that government security forces had uncovered a plot to assassinate him and the president of the National Assembly, Gonzalez was waiting in line at the store. Shelves were riddled with empty spaces where the food used to be.

An employee at the Agriculture Ministry here in Venezuela's capital city, she was returning home when a friend called to let her know that sugar had just been delivered at their local supermarket. She promptly forgot about Maduro and his exhortations to beware of foreign agents looking to destabilize the country.

"I haven't seen sugar in weeks," she says. "The revolution is important and I love our president. But I suspect Maduro was just talking nonsense. It's just another farce, another show. They have cried wolf too often."

Maduro made his accusations before tens of thousands of red-shirted followers who heeded the government's appeal to flood the streets of Caracas on Jan. 23 in a show of support for President Hugo Chávez. The president remains in intensive care in a Cuban hospital and hasn't been seen or heard from since Dec. 11, when he underwent his fourth operation for cancer. Since then, there have been repeated rumors that he is unconscious, breathing with a ventilator, or dead. All have vehemently been denied by Maduro and the government. Doubts only grew after the Madrid-based El Pais erroneously published a photo of a man it claimed was Chávez breathing with the help of a machine. The paper subsequently said it had been duped and that the photo had come from a medical website. The Venezuelan government has vowed to sue the paper in Spanish courts.

Maduro said during the Jan. 23 rally -- which was held on the 55th anniversary of the overthrow of Venezuela's last dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez -- that right-wing extremists from both Venezuela and abroad were involved in the assassination plot. He often had to shout above the din of his supporters, many of whom were chanting "With Chávez and Maduro, the country is safer!'' and "They will not return!" in reference to the country's pre-Chávez leaders.

"We have been following for some weeks groups who have infiltrated the country with the objective of making an attempt against the life of my colleague, [National Assembly President] Diosdado Cabello and against my life," Maduro said to the crowd. "The criminals who have slipped into our country aren't here to ask us for cacao." 

Maduro, who was anointed Chávez's heir apparent on Dec. 8, provided no proof of his allegations, but said the government would shortly take action against the plotters. After the speech, Maduro left for Cuba where he said he would meet with Chávez, leaving others to give more details.

Pakistan PM under fire for interference in murder case

New Post: Javid Ahmad, "Afghanistan's special forces are a bastion of hope" (FP). 

Embattled premier

Murder charges against the owners of factory in Karachi where a fire killed 259 people last year were dropped on Thursday, reportedly at the request of Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, in a move that both the public and government officials have decried (NYT, ET). The Prime Minister's office sought to clarify the situation later Thursday, with Ashraf's press secretary Shafqat Jalil telling the Express Tribune that Ashraf had asked provincial officials to take another look at the case to determine if the factory owners had been falsely implicated (ET).

Things got even worse for the Prime Minister on Thursday, when the Supreme Court ordered the National Accountability Bureau to submit their evidence that Ashraf, along with Interior Minister Rehman Malik and the Pakistan People's Party Secretary General Jehangir Badar, had illegally appointed Tauqeer Sadiq as the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, and then helped Sadiq flee the country after he allegedly embezzled 83 billion rupees ($850 million) (ET, ET, DT).

Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan said Thursday at the World Economic Forum that he is confident his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), will sweep Pakistan's upcoming elections, because "people want a change," and alleged that the current regime is waging a propaganda war that aims to discredit PTI (AP).

The murder of a middle class young man in one of Karachi's wealthiest neighborhoods has sparked anger in Pakistan against the upper class, members of which often get away with wrongdoing through bribery or by twisting police and officials' arms (AP). Shehzab Khan was allegedly gunned down by two men from two of Karachi's wealthiest families after having an argument with one of their servants, and most of Karachi's residents do not expect justice to be served.

Missed target

A car bomb in the eastern Afghan province of Kapisa thought to have been targeting a NATO convoy killed at least five civilians and wounded 25 others on Friday (VOA, BBC, AP). The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. 

Books and bonds

Despite vocal protests from the right wing in India, the Jaipur Literary Festival began Thursday with three celebrated Pakistani writers (NYT). Some were angered by calls to ban Pakistanis from the festival, but one of the Pakistani authors in attendance, M. A. Farooqi, said in an interview, "If the basis of the objection is a tragic incident that caused grief and pain and people are expressing their grief by saying that we are no longer in a welcoming mood - I respect that."

Combat Ready - An FP Slide Show

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced plans to lift a ban on women in combat that has been in place since 1994. News outlets like the Associated Press and the Washington Post called the move "groundbreaking" and "a watershed policy decision" that could open up hundreds of thousands of front-line positions to women -- including, potentially, jobs in elite commando units.

While front lines may never be the same, the announcement was just the latest step in a gradual loosening of restrictions on American women at war: the Pentagon announced last year that it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions to women (though thousands of others jobs were still off-limits), and women have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- wars in which the line between combat and non-combat situations was often blurry. Here's a look at some of the women who have been paving the way for the female fighters to come.

Above, soldiers play poker at their base in Ramadi, Iraq in March 2005.

Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

Combat Roles - By Joshua E. Keating

See images of the women who've been moving closer and closer to the front lines for years.

This week's decision by the U.S. Department of Defense to open up combat positions to women was certainly a historic day for the U.S. Armed Forces, but American women have actually been seeing combat for some time now. In wars without a defined front line, where anywhere can quickly become a combat zone, the difference between "combat" and "non-combat" roles often breaks down. One hundred fifty-two women have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight lost their lives last year. These are their stories.

 

ARMY SPC. BRITTANY GORDON
Died: Oct. 13 in Kandahar
Age:24

A native of St. Petersburg, Florida -- and daughter of the city's assistant police chief -- Gordon was nicknamed "Queen Bee" by her friends and graduated high school in 2006. She had expressed interest in a career in law and spent a year at the University of Florida before signing up for the Army. She worked as an intelligence analyst and spent a year on a base in Seattle before being sent to Afghanistan.

Gordon was killed by a suicide bomber who attacked a U.S. delegation delivering furniture to the remote Maruf district of Kandahar province. A former U.S. military officer and four Afghan intelligence personnel were also killed in the bombing.

Gordon, who turned 24 just days before her death, had been scheduled to return home last December. "If I would describe her, she had no fear. She wanted to make a difference. Because that's what military people do: make a difference in the lives of others," her cousin, the Rev. Evelyn Thompson, told the Tampa Bay Times.

 

MARINE SGT. CAMELLA STEEDLEY
Died: Oct. 3 in Helmand Province
Age: 31

Steedley first joined the Marines in 2001 and was serving on her first deployment to Afghanistan. Steedley was an air operations clerk serving with the 1st Marine Logistics Group. The Marine Corps has said only that she died "supporting combat operations" in Helmand, and the circumstances of her death are currently under investigation.

Steedley, originally from San Diego, lived in San Clemente with her husband of eight years, also a marine, and their four children. She had received numerous commendations including two Marine Corps Good Conduct Medals, three certificates of commendation, and numerous others.

 

ARMY SGT. DONNA JOHNSON
Died: Oct. 1 in Khost
Age: 29

A member of the North Carolina Army National Guard, Johnson was on her second tour of duty after having deployed to Iraq in 2007. Johnson was killed along with two other members of the guard after a suicide bomber detonated his vest while they were on foot patrol in a market in the eastern city of Khost. She is survived by her wife, Tracy Dice, who also serves in the military.

Johnson, who married Dice in Washington D.C. in 2011, shortly after the repeal of the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, is the first known married, lesbian service member killed in action, and some supporters were angered when initial press reports failed to mention Dice. Because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, Dice is not recognized by the Department of Defense as Johnson's spouse and is not listed as a next of kin -- meaning she was not among those first informed of her wife's death and learned of it via the Internet -- and is not eligible for the grief counseling or honors typically afforded military spouses. It was only thanks to an intervention from Johnson's mother that Dice was allowed to accompany the casket from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Dice is currently fighting a legal battle with the Department of Veterans' Affairs to be granted survivor's benefits as Johnson's widow. The U.S. Supreme Court is due to review the Defense of Marriage Act later this year.

 

ARMY CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 THALIA S. RAMIREZ
Died: Sept. 5 in Logar Province
Age: 28

Though she listed San Antonio as her hometown when she enlisted, Ramirez grew up mostly in Nairobi, the daughter of a Kenyan mother and a Puerto Rican father. She joined the Army in 2003, shortly after moving to the United States, and initially worked as a water purification specialist before becoming a helicopter pilot in 2008. She was killed along with copilot and fellow Texan Jose Montenegro in a helicopter crash in Logar. The cause of the crash is still under investigation. She is survived by a husband, currently living in North Carolina, and her parents in Kenya.

Ramirez had escaped from a firefight in June and been awarded the Army's Air Medal. She had flown more than 20 missions and 650 hours on her tour of duty, which was scheduled to end in just days. "She selflessly risked everything, on a regular basis, in defense of her brothers and sisters in arms," her commander, Lt. Col. Landy Dunham, told the San Antonio Express-News.

Pakistan holding 700 suspected militants without charge - Attorney General

New Post: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, "America's non-committal relationship with Afghanistan" (FP).

Guilty until proven innocent

Pakistan's Attorney General Irfan Qadir told the country's Supreme Court on Thursday that the security forces are holding some 700 suspected militants without charging them, under a controversial law that has been condemned by human rights organizations (AP, AFP, Dawn). The admission came during a hearing on seven suspected militants who had been held by Pakistan's intelligence agency since May 2010 and who say they were abused during their detention.

The United Nations will reportedly launch an investigation into the use of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Palestine to assess the extent of civilian casualties in different types of strikes and the legality of the strikes in countries where the UN has not officially recognized a conflict (Guardian). The inquiry will be led by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur who ha previously said that "double tap" strikes, in which a drone fires a second round at a target when rescuers have arrived on the scene, could constitute "war crimes."

Officials in India-administered Kashmir on Monday published an advisory in a local English-language magazine detailing how locals should prepare for nuclear war (AJE, AFP). In an editorial on Tuesday, the newspaper called the advisory "ill-timed and inopportune," as India and Pakistan come off a tense period following several skirmishes at the Line of Control that divides Kashmir.

Over 100 children died of measles in Pakistan in less than three weeks at the beginning of this year, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to call it "an alarming outbreak" on Wednesday (AFP, ET). Many affected residents blame the government for failing to carry out an effective and extensive vaccination program.

Spiderman of Sukkur

The town of Sukkur in Pakistan's Sindh Province has its very own Spiderman, but this diminutive wall-climber saves lives in a different way (ET ). Calling himself Raees "don," he charges students 500 Rupees to deliver completed tests by scaling the back wall of a local school, slipping through a window, and placing the documents right onto the student's desk.

-- Jennifer Rowland

Israel's January Surprise - By Jonathan Schanzer

TEL AVIV - With all eyes on the expected rise of Naftali Bennett, the poster boy of the settler movement, it was centrist Yair Lapid, a former newscaster, who emerged as the rising star in Israeli politics following Tuesday's election. In the process, he served up an all-you-can-eat buffet of crow to the chattering classes.

To be fair, Israeli elections are hard to predict. The Times of Israel's Raphael Ahren noted that polls are deeply flawed in Israel, and dark-horse candidates often surge unexpectedly. But this election's wrong-headed guidance, mostly forwarded by analysts in the United States, went beyond the numbers -- it was wrapped up in their narrative of where Israel was heading.

Pundits declared that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing for a war against Iran while building more settlements, and the Israeli people roundly backed him. As David Remnick wrote in the New Yorker, "the story of the election is the implosion of the center-left and the vivid and growing strength of the radical right" -- a process that would buttress Bibi's policies and, in the process, isolate Israel from the United States.

This, to put it mildly, did not happen.

Netanyahu's coalition party won an estimated 31 seats -- a far cry from the 48 seats he initially expected after merging parties with right-wing politician Avigdor Liberman. And after all the hoopla, Bennett's party, Jewish Home, only managed to earn 11 seats.

The center-left, meanwhile, surged. Lapid and his new Yesh Atid Party took second place with an estimated 19 seats, followed by the left-leaning Labor Party, which captured an estimated 15 seats.

At last count, according to Israeli television, the Israeli public was split straight down the middle, 60 seats for the left and 60 seats for the right, with religious parties capable of defecting to the left if offered the right deal.

There is a high probability, given Likud's numbers, that Netanyahu will remain prime minister. But the Israeli electorate, by giving voice to the left, has changed the tone and tenor of the next Israeli coalition government, which will invariably include a broader spectrum of views on everything from Iran to the peace process to a host of domestic issues.

Brexit Blackmail - By Alex Massie

LONDON ' The late William F. Buckley once summed up the purpose of National Review, the magazine he founded, as to "[stand] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." It was, he suggested, "out of place" not least because "there never was an age of conformity quite like this one." Something similar might be said of Britain's awkward relationship with the European Union.

Much of the continent has long favored an ever closer union. Britain, however, has stood alone, demanding opt-outs from the provisions of European treaties (on matters such as the euro and border currency) and stubbornly resisting anything that smacks of the creation of a European "superstate." Britain, proud and stubborn, was late to the European party and ever since has loitered on the fringes, never quite sure whether it was a good idea to come at all. The EU has proved a poor replacement for the long-lost glories of empire. If Europe was to be the future, it was still only a pale shadow of the past.

Until recently, however, the idea that Britain might actually leave the EU -- the so-called "Brexit" -- seemed most improbable. That is no longer the case. The previously impossible now seems quite possible. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Wednesday, Jan. 23, that his Conservative Party now favors a popular referendum on Britain's continuing membership in the European club. The "in or out" referendum, which Cameron considered unnecessary even two years ago, is, at least in part, a response to the eurozone's economic crisis and the resultant moves toward an even stronger political -- as well as fiscal -- union. Britain will have no part of that. And because polls show a majority of Britons favoring a referendum (and some showing more Britons want to leave the EU than remain in it), we may expect the opposition Labour Party to eventually endorse a plebiscite too.

Cameron says he does not want to leave the EU, but merely reform it. Britain, he says, must grasp the opportunity afforded by the eurozone's woes and fundamentally alter the terms of its membership. Sovereignty must be repatriated, and Europe's ability to impact British social and business policies sharply curtailed. (The only example Cameron cited, mind you, was the EU-inspired working conditions for doctors in Britain's hospitals. Would Britain really leave the EU over such an ostensibly trivial matter?)

If Cameron persuades his European colleagues to accept these reforms, then he promises to campaign "with heart and soul" for Britain to remain within the EU. But if he fails -- and "success" has not yet been defined -- then he, as well as his party, will presumably press for a British exit. In other words, the status quo will not be enough. It is not quite clear why a status quo that Britain can -- however unhappily -- live with now (otherwise, Cameron would favor leaving immediately) would become intolerable in 2017. This, however, does not appear to trouble the prime minister or his deeply Euroskeptic party.

By acceding to pressure to commit to a referendum -- assuming he wins the next general election, scheduled for 2015 -- Cameron has made the "Brexit" more likely. This Overton window has shifted. Cameron's own future is now inextricably tied to the European issue. If he thinks a single speech can solve his domestic problems, he is liable to be disappointed. But there's a bigger risk in this brinkmanship. There is a danger that other European leaders will conclude life with Britain is more exhausting and frustrating than it is worth. Should they do that, then Cameron may be forced to support a British exit after all.

Cameron, however, was at pains to try to present his ultimatum as a constructive contribution to the debate on Europe's future. As the prime minister reminded his European colleagues, thousands of British bodies lie in European cemeteries -- bodies of those who died fighting for peace on the continent. Britain, the none-too-subtle subtext was, will take no lectures from its European partners. Nor will the country be accused of being a "bad European." On the contrary, his suggestions for reform were meant constructively and should be shared by all EU members. Predictably, this proved an unpopular message. As Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister, warned in an op-ed in the Independent: Cameron is "playing with fire.... He can control neither the timing nor the outcome of the negotiations, and in so doing is raising false expectations that can never be met and jeopardising both Britain's long-term interests and the unity of the EU."

Cameron's message is that the EU should concentrate on boosting its international competitiveness, rather than on moving toward an ever more centralized union. The continent should make a virtue of its diversity. Any "one-size-fits-all" solution, he said, is a recipe for guaranteed failure. Most of all, Cameron stressed, the single European market -- which remains a work in progress -- needs to be protected and expanded (to include, for instance, a true single market in services). This, it should be noted, is a sensible message and one that might be approved by plenty of other European countries.

Morning Brief: Netanyahu clings to power amid a disappointing Likud showing

Top news: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely suceeded in holding on to power in Israeli parliamentary elections but emerged from the polls significantly weakened after his right-wing coalition lost seats in the Knesset, according to exit polls. With nearly all the votes counted, early reports indicate that each block received 60 of parliament's 120 seats, but because certain Arab parties are excluded from coalition building, it is likely Netanyahu will be asked to form a coalition government and retain his hold on the premiership.

The vote represents a powerful rebuke of Netanyahu, who called the election with the expectation that he would cruise to victory and consolidate political power with a right-wing coalition. The election's biggest victor is Yair Lapid, the leader of the centrist party, Yesh Atid, which won 19 seats in the legislature, second only to Likud's 31. A political newcomer, Lapid ran a charismatic and centirst campaign focused on domestic issues and on a call to integrate Israel's ultra-orthodox population, which has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years, into the army and workforce.

The messy process of coalition building now begins, and while Netanyahu is likely to remain as prime minister, he will have to cobble together a coalition on the heels of a humiliating election defeat. Netanyahu, who said he would like to form a broad coalition government, called Lapid and told him that "we have the opportunity to do great things together."

In remarks to his supporters after the announcement of initial results, Lapid sounded a similar note of unity, raising the possibility that a broad coalition government may be formed. "I call on the leaders of the political establishment to work with me together, to the best of their ability to form as broad a government as possible that will contain moderate forces from the left and right, the right and the left, so that we will truly be able to bring about real change," Lapid said.

United Kingdom: British Prime Minister David Cameron said that he would offer a referendum on continued UK membership in the European Union after his government has negotiated concessions in the terms of the country's membership. Cameron's Tories face an electoral challenge from the right in the UK Independence Party, which has been gaining in the polls recently and threatens to unseat the Conservative government. But the remarks, which came in a long-awaited speech and were aimed at shoring up the Conservative flank, elicited furrowed brows in European capitals. "You cannot do Europe à la carte,' said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "Imagine the E.U. was a soccer club: once you've joined up and you're in this club, you can't then say you want to play rugby."

Flyover Country - By Micah Zenko

During the four-day siege of the In Amenas gas field, which culminated in an opaque takeover by the Algerian military that reportedly killed dozens, several pundits and journalists asked why the U.S. military did not send drones or special operations forces to free the hostages or kill the Islamist militants holding them. One CNN anchor asked Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "I'm curious as to your perceptions whether the U.S. is taking too much of a back seat." The following day, another CNN anchor seemed puzzled as to why Algeria would only permit the United States to fly unarmed drones over its territory, to which Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr noted: "The U.S. view is that the Algerians would have to grant permission for U.S. troops, U.S. military force, to go in there."

CNN should not have been surprised. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations received blanket permission to transit Algerian airspace with surveillance planes or drones; instead, they received authorization only on a case-by-case basis and with advance notice. According to journalist Craig Whitlock, the U.S. military relies on a fleet of civilian-looking unarmed aircraft to spy on suspected Islamist groups in North Africa, because they are less conspicuous -- and therefore less politically sensitive for host nations -- than drones. Moreover, even if the United States received flyover rights for armed drones, it has been unable to secure a base in southern Europe or northern Africa from which it would be permitted to conduct drone strikes; and presently, U.S. armed drones cannot be launched and recovered from naval platforms.

According to Hollywood movies or television dramas, with its immense intelligence collection and military strike capabilities, the United States can locate, track, and kill anyone in the world. This misperception is continually reinvigorated by the White House's, the CIA's, and the Pentagon's close cooperation with movie and television studios. For example, several years before the CIA even started conducting non-battlefield drone strikes, it was recommending the tactic as a plotline in the short-lived (2001-2003) drama "The Agency." As the show's writer and producer later revealed: "The Hellfire missile thing, they suggested that. I didn't come up with this stuff. I think they were doing a public opinion poll by virtue of giving me some good ideas." Similarly, as of November there were at least ten movies about the Navy SEALs in production or in theaters, which included so much support from the Pentagon that one film even starred active-duty SEALs.

The Obama administration's lack of a military response in Algeria reflects how sovereign states routinely constrain U.S. intelligence and military activities. As the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General's Air Force Operations and the Law guidebook states: "The unauthorized or improper entry of foreign aircraft into a state's national airspace is a violation of that state's sovereignty.... Except for overflight of international straits and archipelagic sea lanes, all nations have complete discretion in regulating or prohibiting flights within their national airspace." Though not sexy and little reported, deploying CIA drones or special operations forces requires constant behind-the-scenes diplomacy: with very rare exceptions -- like the Bin Laden raid -- the U.S. military follows the rules of the world's other 194 sovereign, independent states.

These rules come in many forms. For example, basing rights agreements can limit the number of civilian, military, and contractor personnel at an airbase or post; what access they have to the electromagnetic spectrum; what types of aircraft they can fly; how many sorties they can conduct per day; when those sorties can occur and how long they can last; whether the aircraft can drop bombs on another country and what sort of bombs; and whether they can use lethal force in self-defense. When the United States led the enforcement of the northern no-fly zone over Iraq from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey from 1991 to 2003, a Turkish military official at the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher was always on board U.S. Air Force AWACS planes, monitoring the airspace to assure that the United States did not violate its highly restrictive basing agreement.

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan cleared in inquiry

Press Release: MANHUNT, a documentary based on Peter Bergen's book by the same name is showing at the 2013 Sundance Festival (NAF).

New Post: Candace Rondeaux, "Afghanistan's colossal intelligence failure" (FP).

No trouble here

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen has been cleared of any wrongdoing following a Pentagon investigation into potentially inappropriate email communications with a Tampa socialite connected to the scandal surrounding Gen. David Petraeus' resignation (Reuters, Post, AP, CNN, ). The allegations against Gen. Allen caused the White House to put on hold his nomination to become supreme allied commander in Europe.

Unhappy campers

In a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson on Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar voiced her concern about reports that the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan is to be exempt from the United States' codified rules governing targeted killing (ET).

Militants in the tribal agency of South Waziristan on Wednesday dumped the mutilated body of a purported Afghan spy, Asmatullah Kharoti, accused by the militants of helping to coordinate U.S. drone strikes (AFP). A note on the body accused Kharoti of collaborating on specific strikes, saying, "he is responsible for the killing of five of our senior members, including Mullah Nazir, in drone attacks. He confessed that he installed chips in digital Korans."

An explosion in the nearby Orakzai tribal agency on Wednesday killed five suspected militants who were believed to have been building an improvised explosive device (IED) (Dawn). And four tribesmen were gunned down in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday, possibly due to their membership in an anti-militant militia (Dawn).

Not playing games

The All Pakistan DC, DVD, Audio Cassette Traders and Manufacturers Association has ordered that two popular video games, "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" and "Medal of Honor: Warfighter" be removed from shelves of game stores across the country (Tel). The move was prompted when shop owners complained that the games portrayed Pakistan, and particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, as supporting al-Qaeda and other militant jihadist organizations.

-- Jennifer Rowland

Missing Peace - By Douglas J. Feith

Israel votes on Jan. 22, and a remarkable feature of its election campaign has been the way politicians on the left have shunned the peace slogans they passionately promoted in the salad days of the peace process.

"Peace Now!" "Land for peace." "There's no alternative to peace." After Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat sealed the Oslo Accords in September 1993 with their famous handshake at President Bill Clinton's White House, these were proud exclamations of Israel's "peace camp." But for many Israelis, sad history over the last 20 years has discredited such talk.

These elections are expected to keep Benjamin Netanyahu of the conservative Likud Party as prime minister of a coalition government. Left-of-center parties have been campaigning about economic and cultural issues but avoiding talk of peace. Israel's Haaretz newspaper notes that the chief of the Labor Party "has decided to play down her party's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and that "issues of peace and the territories have been marginalized in the pre-election rhetoric."

Why has the left changed its tune? Israelis in general continue to crave peace, but the state of Palestinian politics leaves them hopeless. According to recent Dahaf Institute and Smith Consulting polls, more than two-thirds of Israelis support the creation of a non-threatening Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. If extra security provisions are assumed, support rises to 75 percent. But, as Dahaf reports, many Israelis do not believe "that the Palestinians will uphold the conditions of peace and especially those elements dealing with security."

There are grounds for this skepticism. In the Oslo process, Israel gave governmental power to the new Palestinian Authority (PA), including control over the territories in which virtually all the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza live. Israeli prime ministers from parties on the left and the right then offered previously unthinkable concessions, including the sharing of Jerusalem and land swaps involving pre-1967 Israeli territory. In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Likud withdrew completely and unilaterally from Gaza, forcibly removing more than 8,000 Israeli settlers.

Terrorism against Israelis, however, intensified after the Rabin-Arafat handshake, with PA support. In 2000, Arafat, then the PA president, rejected an extraordinarily forthcoming peace offer from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (of the Labor Party) and launched the Second Intifada, which lasted more than four years and cost more than 1,000 Israeli lives. After Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, won parliamentary elections there and seized executive power, forcibly expelling PA officials.

CIA drone campaign in Pakistan to be exempt from rules - report

New Posts: Knox Thames, "The Pakistani Taliban's 'preposterous' ask" (FP). Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik and Jeffrey Dressler, "The case for an enduring mission in Afghanistan" (FP).

Free reign

The Obama administration is reportedly close to finishing the codification of its drone policies in a "playbook" that delineates clear rules governing the use of targeted killing around the world, but declares the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan exempt from these restrictions (Post).

A lawyer for Pakistan's intelligence agency told the country's Supreme Court on Monday that the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) held seven suspected militants who were sought by the court for a year and a half without sufficient evidence to try them (AP). The admission is likely to heighten concerns in Pakistan of human rights abuses perpetrated by the security establishment under the guise of counterterrorism efforts.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Jalil Jilani said at a press conference in Abu Dhabi on Friday that Pakistan plans to release all of its remaining Taliban detainees, including former deputy leader of the Taliban Mullah Baradar, in an effort to support the reconciliation process in Afghanistan (Reuters, AJE, AP, NYT). And the family of an official who was found dead in his home last week while investigating corruption charges against Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf is calling for an inquiry into his death (BBC, AJE). 

Coordinated attack

Five Taliban suicide bombers stormed the headquarters of the traffic police in Kabul early on Monday morning, starting a firefight that was followed by a remotely detonated car bomb that allowed them to rush into the compound (NYT, AP, Tel, LAT, AJE, Guardian, CNN, BBC). A battle between the insurgents and security forces lasted until just after 2PM, with all of the insurgents and at least three traffic officers reported dead.

A report released by the United Nations on Sunday found that despite a year of efforts to stem incidences of torture in Afghan prisons, abuse of detainees at the hands of the Afghan police forces has risen (NYT, AP, BBC, Guardian, LAT, WSJ). More than half of Afghanistan's 635 conflict-related detainees reported abuses such as being hung by their wrists from the ceiling, severely beaten with cables and rods given electric shocks, and threatened with sodomy.

Kabul's malodorous pollution

Air pollution in Kabul is a serious problem, and one that is often blamed on the city's poor sewage system; one municipal official declared in 2007 that the city "has the highest level of fecal matter in the atmosphere in the world" (NYT). The head of the United Nations Environment Program in Kabul calls that an urban legend, and says, "I think the need by diplomats for danger-pay raises is what has kept reports of fecal matter danger very high."

-- Jennifer Rowland

Obama's Biggest Global Moments - An FP Slide Show

The project of the first two years has been to effectively deal with the legacy issues that we inherited, particularly the Iraq war, the Afghan war, and the war against al Qaeda, while rebalancing our resources and our posture in the world. If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it's, 'Wind down these two wars, reestablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.'

Sashes, Swords, and Swearing In - By Joshua E. Keating

U.S. President Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second term on Monday in a highly choreographed inauguration ceremony on the National Mall. Some of the traditions surrounding the inauguration are codified by law -- the actual swearing-in occurs as close as possible to noon since that's when the last presidential term officially ends according to the 20th Amendment to the Constitution -- while others are customs that have emerged over time: the now de rigueur presidential stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue dates back only to 1977, when Jimmy Carter did it as a populist gesture; John F. Kennedy began the tradition of having an inaugural poet when he invited Robert Frost to read in 1961. But how do other countries inaugurate their leaders?

Most countries with presidential systems have some kind of pomp-filled inauguration ceremony. (Prime ministers tend to be sworn in with less fanfare in parliament.) Many presidents take an oath of office -- some more religious than others -- and give an inaugural address to the nation. Parades through the capital and military reviews are also pretty standard fare. But there are some intriguing local variations.

The inauguration of the Mongolian president, for instance, includes several days of celebrations, including wrestling matches -- the president doesn't participate, unfortunately. The cost of the celebrations was criticized in 2009, so presidential Wrestlemania may not last forever. In Turkmenistan, the president is traditionally sworn in standing on a white felt mat -- a symbol of good luck -- and is given "bread and salt as a symbol of prosperity and well being" and a "quiver with arrows symbolizing the people's unity." In Tanzania, the president receives a symbolic spear and shield when he is sworn in. Most Latin American leaders also wear presidential sashes that they receive at their inaugurations.

Presidents also frequently add their own personal touches. In 2006, a day before his official swearing-in, Bolivian President Evo Morales -- the country's first indigenous leader -- held a traditional ceremony at a sacred pre-Incan site, where, "barefoot and dressed as a sun priest, he received a baton, encrusted with gold, silver and bronze, that will symbolize his Indian leadership."

Tributes to national heroes are common during inaugurations. The motorcade of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee made a stop at a monument to Mohandas Gandhi en route to his swearing-in. The president of Taiwan is sworn in while standing before a portrait of the country's founder, Sun Yat-sen.  

Russia's inaugurations are notable for including a ceremony in which the  "nuclear briefcase," containing the codes to the country's arsenal, is handed over to the new president. In France, the outgoing president holds a private meeting with his successor on inauguration day during which the nuclear codes are handed over. In the United States, the handover of Armageddon-unleashing power is a bit more subtle. During the swearing-in ceremony, the military aide carrying the so-called "nuclear football" -- who stays with the president at all times -- crosses the stage to stand by the new leader.

101 Things People Want Obama to Do in Term 2 - By Elizabeth F. Ralph

President Barack Obama is one of only 17 U.S. presidents elected to a second term. And ever since he defeated Mitt Romney to earn himself another four years in office, everyone from Paul Volcker to the Taliban has weighed in on what he should do now. In an effort to make life easier for the soon-to-be re-inaugurated president, Foreign Policy has gathered much of this advice into one concise list.

Obama should...

1. Think legacy

2. Go for greatness this time -- and start with the inaugural address

3. Say this during the inauguration today -- and these things

4. Resolve America's political and economic problems

5. Help Africa do the same

6. Foster entrepreneurship and innovation

7. Overturn Citizens United

8. Broker lasting peace in the Middle East

9. Stay out of Israel-Palestine peace efforts, for now

10. Meddle in Israel's election

11. Worry about Bethlehem, Pennsylvania rather than Bethlehem, Palestine

12. Intervene in Syria

13. Stay away from Syria

14. Assassinate Bashar al-Assad

15. Enact a Marshall Plan for 2013

16. Stop being so European

17. Push gun control without Congress

18. Get tough on criminals instead

19. Admit his true feelings on the Second Amendment

20. Amend the Constitution

21. Listen to the NRA

22. Tackle gun control internationally, not just domestically

23. Stay pivoted toward Asia

24. Rethink the pivot

25. Pray that China overtakes the United States

26. Not freak out about China

27. Reform the Foreign Assistance Act

28. Talk to the Taliban

29. Admit he's lost in Afghanistan. And leave. Thanks! - The Taliban

30. Stop being so reasonable

31. Stop governing like a visitor from a morally superior civilization

32. Get his authority back

33. Answer this: Are you a moralist or a realist?

34. Listen to Brookings

35. Listen to Chuck Hagel

36. Listen to Hugo Chávez

37. Forget Chavismo

38. End the Cuba embargo

39. Not end the Cuba embargo

40. Offer Iran a generous deal

41. Not expect Iran to come to the negotiating table

42. Write the rule book for drones

43. Stop using drones

44. Use drones. They're the best tool we have.

45. Keep the drones, but develop alternative solutions

46. Abandon his cybersecurity executive order

47. Reduce the nuclear arsenal with New START II

48. Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb

49. Come to the table with congressional Republicans

50. Bypass congressional Republicans

Shaking Hands, Kissing <i>Tinokot</i> - An FP Slide Show

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Once Upon a Time in la Françafrique - An FP Slide Show

French soldiers have been on the ground in Mali since last week, trying to beat back Islamist militants who seized control of the country's northern half in a coup. But France, of course, has a long history in the region, which it colonized in the late 19th century -- naming it Soudan français (French Sudan) -- and occupied until Mali's independence in 1960. From the mosques of Timbuktu to the Bandiagara cliffs, French postcards collected on the site Images du passé en Afrique de l'Ouest offer a glimpse into Mali's colonial past.

Around 1905, the French photographer Francois-Edmond Fortier captured the view above of the famous Sankoré Mosque, which was built in the 14th century at a time when Timbuktu was a center of scholarship, commerce, and culture. The Islamist group Ansar Dine seized control of the city last year, imposing sharia law and destroying many famous shrines and tombs.

Should Obama Have Intervened in Syria? - By Marc Lynch

With an estimated 60,000 dead and no end in sight, Syria is not only a humanitarian tragedy of mind-boggling, heart-rending proportions -- it's also the most difficult analytical issue I've ever grappled with, and the one the Obama administration has most struggled to get right. But it's important to dig into where exactly it went wrong.

The real U.S. failure of leadership in Syria is not that it refused to intervene militarily.  Nor is it that it failed to arm the opposition. Its failure was that it could not find a political solution to prevent the descent into armed proxy war --- a descent we could all see coming. The spiraling catastrophe of the last six months confirms every warning about the dangers of an armed insurgency -- extending the conflict, making it bloodier and more extreme, and devolving power to the men with guns rather than the peaceful activists.

This catastrophe all too powerfully demonstrates why Kofi Annan's United Nations mission was worth supporting. His plan never had a great chance of success, but it was not hopeless. Annan and his supporters were right about a few big things: that the political process had to take precedence over the military track, that state institutions needed to be preserved in order to prevent a descent into anarchy, that Bashar al-Assad's backers abroad needed to support the process, and that the center of gravity had to be the undecided Syrian middle ground. There were moments when it seemed like it might work, as when Russia flirted with the Geneva agreement on a transitional government (it ultimately didn't go along), or when a meaningful Security Council seemed within grasp (it wasn't).

But for all that, nobody can deny that Annan failed. What is more, the conditions that made his initiative worth trying have disappeared. Syria's state institutions have largely collapsed, and the armed insurgency has largely overtaken the peaceful protest movement. Nobody dreams anymore about a unified Security Council. The middle ground has largely disappeared, as most Syrians who haven't already fled have either chosen their side or retreated into sullen, scared apathy. Pity Annan's successor Lakhdar Brahimi for continuing to play out this string.

The blame for this dire situation, to be clear, lies primarily with the Assad regime, which chose to kill its way through its crisis rather than seek a safe exit. Critics of the International Criminal Court have warned that the prospect of international justice makes leaders in Assad's position more likely to fight to the death. War crimes prosecutions were kept off the table largely in order to keep an exit option open for Assad (I thought an indictment should have been pursued last year). But he chose to fight nonetheless. I (like many others) underestimated the regime's ability and willingness to butcher its own people and hold onto power; I expected regime elements to dump Assad as a liability long ago, or the disgusted Syrian middle ground to defect en masse. I still think that he ultimately will lose, albeit at nigh unbelievable cost, but we all need to be honest about the poor track record of that prediction.

Were there missed opportunities to do better? Advocates of intervention frequently complain that the United States could have prevented this fiasco through earlier, more forceful action. This is easy to say, but almost certainly untrue. Last year, a wide range of serious analysts inside and outside the government, including me, looked carefully at a wide range of possible military steps: no-fly zones, safe areas, bombing campaigns, arming the opposition. None could in good faith conclude that these limited military measures would lead to a rapid end to the conflict. Far from avoiding today's tragedy, U.S. military intervention would very likely have made things in Syria worse.

Al Qaeda Is Alive in Africa - By Daniel Byman

It has been over a year and a half since Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, but now it seems like al Qaeda is everywhere: from Algeria to Somalia, from Mali to Yemen, from Pakistan to Iraq. In July 2011, arriving in Afghanistan on his first trip as U.S. defense secretary, Leon Panetta said, "We're within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda." But on Wednesday, Jan. 16, Panetta seemed to express a good deal less optimism, making clear that the Algerian hostage crisis currently unfolding was "an al Qaeda operation." So has al Qaeda really become this web of linked groups around the world pursuing a common jihad against the West? And what is the relationship between the al Qaeda core and its affiliate organizations?

These are important questions; the debate about whether the United States should join the French and step up involvement against jihadi groups in Mali centers on these complicated ties. For while al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and his lieutenants in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area consume much of our thinking on al Qaeda, the United States is also fighting al Qaeda affiliates like al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al-Shabab in Somalia, which is also linked to al Qaeda.

In 2012, the United States conducted more drone strikes on AQAP targets than it did against al Qaeda core targets in Pakistan. In Mali, U.S. concern is heightened by reports that some among the wide range of local jihadi groups like Ansar Dine have ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). If groups in Mali and other local fighters are best thought of as part of al Qaeda, then an aggressive effort is warranted. But if these groups, however brutal -- and despite the allegiances to the mother ship they claim -- are really only fighting to advance local or regional ambitions, then the case for direct U.S. involvement is weak. The reality is that affiliation does advance al Qaeda's agenda, but the relationship is often frayed and the whole is frequently far less than the sum of its parts.

Al Qaeda has always sought to be a vanguard that would lead the jihadi struggle against the United States. Abdullah Azzam, one of the most influential jihadi thinkers and a companion of bin Laden, wrote, "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward" and that this vanguard is a "solid base" -- a phrase from which al Qaeda draws its very name. At the same time, al Qaeda sought to support and unify local Muslim groups as they warred against apostate governments such as the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and Hosni Mubarak's Egypt. Convincing local groups to fight under the al Qaeda banner seems to neatly combine these goals, demonstrating that the mother organization -- now under Zawahiri -- remains in charge, while advancing the local and regional agendas that the core supports.

More practically, in the past, the al Qaeda core has offered affiliates money and safe haven. In Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree in Pakistan, jihadists from affiliated groups came to train and learn and proved far more formidable when they returned to their home war zones. They also returned with a more global agenda, advancing the core's mission of shaping the jihadi movement. It also gave the core a new zone of operational access to conduct terrorist attacks in other places. Perhaps most importantly, the core al Qaeda managed to change the nature of the affiliates' attacks, so that in addition to continuing to strike at local regime forces, they also select targets more in keeping with the core's anti-Western goals. AQIM's attack this week on Western tourists and foreign oil workers in Algeria mimics the change in strategy. AQAP has taken this one step further and gone after the United States outside its region, twice launching sophisticated attacks on U.S. civil aviation.